Swords & Dark Magic: The New Sword and Sorcery

Will you at least keep me and use me? the demon whispered. I am a powerful weapon. If you feed me human lives, I can give you vengeance on your enemies.

Morlock said nothing, but carried Andhrakar back to the village where the Broken Fist stood. He found the town abandoned: everyone had fled to escape Viklorn and Andhrakar. Morlock broke into the blacksmith’s shop, kindled a fire in the forge, and assembled a set of tools at the anvil.

You cannot destroy my prison in a primitive smithy like this, the demon said, sounding somewhat uneasy.

“You don’t know what I can do,” Morlock disagreed. “Nor have you guessed what I’m going to do.”

He fashioned a spearhead, exactly like Andhrakar in form. He even managed to give its surface a glassy basaltic glaze, something like the dark crystalline surface of Andhrakar. He tempered it, hammered it, let it cool, and polished it. He unfixed Andhrakar from its shaft and put the new spearhead on the shaft, with Viklorn’s severed hand still attached. Then he took the greatest hammer in the smithy and he struck the new spearhead until it lay in fragments.

Morlock took a chisel and carved on the side of the anvil: HERE I, WHO MADE ANDHRAKAR, DESTROYED IT, BECAUSE IT KILLED MY FRIEND LEEN. FORGIVE ME AND REMEMBER ME: MORLOCK AMBROSIUS.

Liar! the demon screamed inside his mind.

Morlock shrugged. “The world thinks I made you, which is a lie. I only imprisoned you. If I could have imprisoned you in a spittoon, or a wooden doorstop, or something not obviously deadly I would have done so. The magical laws which govern imprisoning demons limited me. But I can negate one lie with another. These fragments of the accursed spear Andhrakar will become cherished heirlooms, perhaps to be reforged as a new weapon someday—”

They’ll know! They’ll know it’s not me!

“—not as effective as the old weapon, of course, but they don’t make anything like they used to. And no one will go looking for Andhrakar, since everyone knows where it is. There will be no advertising for your new resting place. You will wither and die in the dark and you will eat no more human souls.”

I am immortal.

“You say so, but I never believed it. You eat things; I think you’ll starve to death if you never eat again. Anyway, we’ll try the experiment. I’ll stop by in a few hundred years to see how you’re doing.”

He threw the accursed spear-blade imprisoning the demon Andhrakar into the pit under an outhouse. Then he shoveled a hundredweight of soil atop it.

At last, he wanted a drink rather badly. He broke into the Broken Fist and availed himself of Leen’s left-behind stock. At least, he poured himself a cup of wine and stood at the bar, preparing to drink it. He stood there for a moment, watching his distorted reflection in the smooth, dark surface of the wine.

When people returned to the town, they found the inscription on the anvil, and the fragments of the spearhead, and they reacted much as Morlock had anticipated. They also found the broken door of the Broken Fist, and they saw the wine cup, full to the brim, standing untouched on the bar. But they did not see Morlock, then or ever again.

A WIZARD IN WISCEZAN C. J. Cherryh