Totentanz

Book 2 Chapter I: Die Zukunft

DIE ZUKUNFT
German, "the future"

Sometimes, I feel the past and the future pressing so hard on either side that there's no room for the present at all. -- Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited

Diarnlan opened her eyes. She promptly wished she hadn't. Once again she saw the only-too-familiar tree. Its gold leaves glinted and flickered as if laughing at her. She glared up at it. For a while she couldn't be bothered to move. What was the point? She would just run into Karandren again no matter where she went. Even being sent back wouldn't guarantee she'd avoid him. It was like he was her shadow. Everywhere she went he would turn up too, and no matter how far she ran she could never escape him.

Nothing happened. Eventually she grew tired of lying in the snow. She sat up, looking around warily for any sign of her hated ex-pupil. At least he had the decency to be nowhere in sight.

Wait a minute. Where was Saungrafn?

Diarnlan leapt to her feet. She looked around in increasing alarm. Saungrafn had been right beside her when she last ended up here. Now it was nowhere to be seen.

She rounded the tree trunk and stopped in her tracks. Her mouth fell open.

There was an expanse of flat ground beyond the tree. Karandren was there, practicing sword-forms. The sword in his hand was only too familiar.

"Get your filthy hands off Saungrafn!"

He spun around. Absently Diarnlan noted his feet didn't sink into the snow, instead gliding on top of it like a skater on an ice rink. Karandren bowed mockingly, at the same time tossing Saungrafn into the air with one hand and catching it with the other. Diarnlan half-expected him to drop it or accidentally stab himself. Unfortunately he didn't. He twirled it around and around like a juggler at a carnival. It would be difficult enough to do that with an ordinary sword. There was a reason real jugglers used wooden swords, after all. But with a soul-weapon? That was only supposed to let itself be used by its creator?

Diarnlan glared at Saungrafn. "You traitor. What's wrong with you? You should at least have the decency to cut his hand off."

She got the distinct impression that if Saungrafn had a head, it would have shaken it disapprovingly.

"Oh, shut up," Karandren said with his usual politeness.

Diarnlan glared at him. Through gritted teeth she said, "I know it's expecting too much of you to behave like a human being, but don't you know it's rude to touch someone else's soul-weapon? How would you like it if I grabbed part of your soul?"

There was a brief silence. Karandren stopped spinning the sword around and looked at her expectantly.

"Well? Aren't you going to say it?"

Diarnlan blinked. "Say what?"

Karandren shrugged. "I expected you to say something about my not having a soul."

That hadn't even occurred to her until now. Strange. A few lifetimes ago she would have said it long ago and wouldn't have needed him to mention it.

"What's the point in stating the obvious?" she asked instead.

Karandren shrugged again. He raised Saungrafn and flung it at her face. Only the reflexes created by several lifetimes of being attacked prevented her from having her skull split open by her own sword. She glared at it as it sailed past her head and landed in the snow. Behind her there was a muffled sound like a yelp hastily cut off. She ignored it. Probably Karandren had just cut his own hand on the sword. Serve him right if he had.