Demon-Killing Sword

1.3 Memory

Not the past, strictly, but memories. Anything could trigger them. People, objects, places. She was along for the ride, helpless in the grips of the magic. The only way to break free was to watch the memory to the end.

It's not the worst ability, she thought. Plenty of mixed-bloods were worse off. Her eyes drifted to the opposite bank of the river, to a girl whose skin shone where scales grew in patches. Sanna spontaneously combusted and was forever setting her house on fire, for example. That was a thankless magic. No, hers had upsides. Thanks to her ability, she'd been able to watch a masterpiece shape up from the raw clay when she'd found a shard of a gilded pot. Seen a prince court a princess when she'd accidentally stood on the right part of the riverbank. But sometimes she found knives, or dirty rope, or torn clothes.

Blood. Screaming. A desperate voice, crying out for help that never came. Blows, meaty, wet. A long, slow gurgle, harsh rasping for breath.

A shiver crawled up her spine. Muninn clutched herself tight, then slapped her cheeks. It was fine. It wasn't real. A memory. She hadn't seen it happen. It could have been centuries ago. It could have been someone's nightmare. It was fine. It was fine.

Focus! That memory. Think about the man and the king. That was safe. Nothing bad had happened. She looked at the stick. How had something so mundane triggered something like that? Was it from a tree by the gates?

It was too muddy to tell. With a sigh, she abandoned her basket—good luck to anyone who wants to find those claws in that mud—and wandered over to the river. It wasn't much cleaner than the mud. She plunged the stick into it and wiggled it a few times, then scraped the mud off with her fingers. It had a weird shape, this stick. A lump in the middle, for one. A weird round bit on one end. She pulled it out of the river and found herself holding, not a stick, but a sword.

Muninn gaped. A sword! A real live...broken, useless sword. The blade of the sword only extended an inch or so from the hilt. She swung it a few times, but it didn't even swish through the air satisfactorily. Muninn sighed. It would have been worth so much more if it wasn't broken.

No! Grateful, grateful. It's still worth something. Every quarter-penny counts, she reminded herself.

What was a sword doing buried in the river mud, anyways? She examined the sword. Nothing about it stood out to her. It was fairly simple construction, without any fancy stones set in it or anything that looked particularly valuable. She frowned. The memory hadn't explained anything about the sword, not how it had been broken, not what it had been used for; just that some man had been knighted with it.

Now that they need the demons dead.

She stuck the sword through her belt and went back to cleaning out the basket. For the man to have thought that, he must have been heading out of the wall shortly after the demons went mad.

Muninn paused and turned toward the walls. Dark and looming, they blocked the horizon to the north. Beyond them, far in the distance, heavy clouds of miasma lurked. When the miasma had receded this far, she could imagine what the country might have looked like, once upon a time. Beyond the walls, the foothills grew into a proper mountain range, snow-capped and impervious. Trees stretched to the horizon, proud pines and noble hardwoods. From here, it was a dense mass of green, thick as a carpet. If I was on the wall, I bet I could see Lake Sølvvann today. Once, she'd seen it from the top of the clock tower. When she was younger, and her father had still been around, he'd taken them there.

"That used to be the kingdom," he'd told them, gesturing out at the wilds. "Out to the mountains and around to the left, past the lake, all the way to the head of the river."

He hadn't been there to see it. No one she knew had. Since the two heroes had failed, one after another, a hundred years ago, no one had ventured past the walls. Was that one of the heroes? She struggled to recall his face. It was a smudge, a vague impression of dark eyes and bright cheekbones. The memories never stuck around. Like dreams, they faded out of her head, details blurring until everything was a mess.

If it was, then this sword... She looked down at it. This unremarkable nub, the Demon-Killing Sword? No way. It couldn't be. That sword had been lost ages ago. It wasn't something someone like her could find sifting on the riverbank.

But isn't that where so many lost things turn up?