Six Fantasy Stories Volume Two

The Sword That Spoke-2

Solea did not seem to feel a thing.

Someone touched my shoulder, and I jumped. Whirling, I saw the emerald-scaled thing that had taken my husband's place.

"Aren't you going to welcome your lord home?" The creature's rasp mingled with Rodrigo's rich bass, both voices talking at once.

As I curtsied, I never took my eyes off the monster in front of me. "Welcome home."

"What's this?" said the creature and Rodrigo. "No kiss for the conquering hero?"But that was something I could not bring myself to do. "I have come down with something, my lord. I do not wish for you to catch it in the midst of your campaign."

The creature grinned. "What do you think you have, my darling?"

"Something to do with waking up," I told him, "on the wrong side of the bed."

"Call them guerritos. War things." That was what Tizona said when I met with him that night. "It is just one of the things they have been called, but it will do."

Though it was a warm night, I felt frozen to the bone. "Why have I never seen them until now?"

"You were not touched by magic," said Tizona. "Not until you took me to the bruja."

My eyes burned as tears welled up in them...tears of helpless, hopeless confusion. "No one else can see them?"

"Some can, sometimes," said Tizona. "Most see only the effects of their presence. The shadows men cast when they come back from battle. The darkness they bring with them. The pain they cause."

"This is madness." I shook my head roughly, trying to drive away the truth. "How is it even possible?"

The candlelight flared on the gleaming flat of Tizona's blade, then dimmed. "Every man, when he takes up arms against another man, makes a deal in his heart. He summons a guerrito to do the things that go against the dictates of his soul.

"How else do you imagine your loving husband could behead or dismember another human being? How else could the same hands that caress your sweet face choke the life from someone else's throat?"

A defensive impulse rose up in me. "Rodrigo is a good man. A great man."

"Which is how the guerrito gains purchase," said Tizona. "El Cid needs it to fight his wars."

Tears rolled down my face as I slumped forward. "And the wars are important. El Cid fights to liberate Spain from the Moors."

"We both fight for that," said Tizona.

"So what now?" I said. "What can I do?"

"What do you want to do?" said Tizona.

I thought about it. "Will the guerrito only come during battle?"

Tizona hesitated. "It depends."

"What do you mean?" I said.

"Guerritos are...unpredictable. We must wait and see." The candle flame danced on Tizona's smooth surface. "But you have an advantage."

"Advantage?"

"You are touched by magic," said Tizona. "You can see the guerrito coming. You will know to avoid it."

I swallowed hard and nodded. "And what if I want to get rid of it?"

"I do not believe that is possible," said Tizona.

"Please don't say that." I dropped my head in my hands and sobbed. "Please don't."

A draft slipped through the room, and the candlelight rippled over Tizona's blade. For an instant, the light on the steel almost looked like a face.

"I will think about it," said Tizona.

*****

For a while after that, things were fine. Almost normal.

For a while.

I lived my life as before, for the most part—tending our home and taking care of Rodrigo between the wars of El Cid. From time to time, I was even almost happy again. Almost.

I still feared the guerrito and worried it would reappear...but I took steps to avoid it. I stayed away from Rodrigo when the creature would most likely be active—before, during, and after battle. I let the thing have him for the fights, the Reconquista wars to liberate our homeland...and then I reclaimed him for my own when the blood and dust had settled.

Meanwhile, Tizona helped me through the dark times, when the fear and paranoia rose up within me. Without our midnight talks, I could not have made it through.

Over time, I even dared hope that all would be well. So long as I stayed in my part of Rodrigo's life, and the guerrito stayed in his, there would be no cause for conflict. Women and guerritos had lived like this for ages, hadn't they? I saw no reason Rodrigo's creature and I could not thrive by the same uneasy truce.

And so it went. For a while.

One day, we had an argument.

It started over nothing—a dinner party. I had accepted an invitation from my cousin, King Alfonso...but Rodrigo wanted nothing to do with it. He felt as if Alfonso was using me to control him.

It was a typical fight, the kind couples have all the time. It quickly escalated into a shouting match that was more about the unspoken pressures between us than the supposed reason it had started in the first place.

And then it happened.

"Alfonso would be nothing without me." A vein throbbed in Rodrigo's temple as he shouted. "It is El Cid who brings him greatness! I am not his lackey or his lapdog, and my wife does not hold my leash!"

"Who fields your armies and pays for your wars?" I said. "Perhaps it is you who would be nothing without him."

Suddenly, Rodrigo's face filled with rage...true fury beyond the limits I'd seen in our fight so far. Eyes wide, nostrils flaring, teeth clenched, he stood and glared at me, heating to a boil.

Even before he started to change, I took a step back. I sensed it.

The face of the creature flowed over his features like the shadow of an eclipse crossing over the sun. His eyes blazed with red light, and his skin turned to deep green scales. The forked tongue slithered from his mouth like a millipede.

Guerrito.

"Come here, darling." The guerrito took a step toward me, leering, reaching. "It is time for us to make up."

It was then that I ran.

Heart hammering like a horse's hooves, I bolted from the bedroom and slammed the door after me. He hurled the door open and gave chase.

The sound of his boots battering the floor behind me was enough to speed my flight downstairs. I flung myself into the chapel just a few steps ahead of him and barred the oak door.

He pounded on the door for a while, laughing and cursing me the whole time...and then he gave up. I knew I was lucky, because he could have broken the door down at any time if he had chosen to. He could have hacked his way through it with Tizona. He had decided to spare me.

Even so, I did not leave the chapel for a very long time. I did not come out until the next morning. By then, the guerrito was gone.

But not for long.

In the months and years to come, the guerrito appeared more often.

Gone were the days when his visits had coincided only with battles. No time or place seemed to be off-limits to him anymore.

Sometimes, I expected his arrival, as when Rodrigo lost his temper. Other times, the change seemed to come from out of the blue, shocking me with its suddenness and apparent senselessness.

Always, when it happened, I was terrified. I ran and hid when I could, with the creature at my heels...but sometimes, when the change caught me unawares, I had nowhere to go. Scalded by the waves of rage and malice radiating from the guerrito, I would watch and wait, wondering when it was finally going to hurt me.

"He is driving me mad," I told Tizona. "Have you thought of a way to get rid of him?"

Tizona gleamed in the flickering candlelight. "I am sorry, but not yet."

"Every day, I fear for my life," I said. "I wonder when the wrong word from my lips or look in my eyes will send me to my death bed."

"I hate to say this, Doña Jimena," said Tizona, "but in that regard, among women, you are hardly alone."

Things did not get better.

The guerrito came more often and stayed longer. Soon, it was there half the time, exuding its hellish menace in the heart of my world.

Its moods were uniformly dark, its tantrums epic. Whatever breakables there were in our home, the guerrito obliterated them in its fits of rage.

And yet, it did not hurt me. For the time being, it seemed content with terrorizing me, holding me in constant suspense of my seemingly inevitable murder.

Eventually, it wore me down. The relentless terror of my every waking moment. There came a point when I got used to it.

I stopped running from the guerrito. No longer did I flee and hide every time it showed its horrible face.

My fear was no less, but I learned to live with it. It was either that, or leave my beloved Rodgrigo.

"There is always the convent," said Tizona. "You would be safe behind its walls."

"I cannot leave him," I said. "No matter the danger."

"But why?" said Tizona.

"Because my husband is still in there," I said. "And I love him. I need him...and so does Spain."

With each passing year, the guerrito's presence increased...and its influence grew. At first, this influence could be seen in little things—impulsive words and actions in social circles. Uncharacteristic decisions in business and politics. Arbitrary changes in the way Rodrigo conducted his life.

Then, one day, he turned a corner. The guerrito's recklessness took over.

And we were exiled because of it.

It started with a victory.

El Cid led a force into Granada to fight the Moors...and as usual, he triumphed. It was another grand step in the campaign to retake all of Spain from the Africans.

Unfortunately, it was done without King Alfonso's permission.

The next thing I knew, Rodrigo and the children and I were escorted out of Castille. We were thrown into exile because of my husband's recklessness...which I knew was the recklessness of the guerrito shining through.

But the worst was yet to come.

"You're working for the Moors now?" As much as I'd gotten used to surprises, my husband's latest shock struck me like a blast of lightning.

"Alfonso thinks to crush me." Rodrigo stood in the hot sun and glowered. He had just returned from meeting with the Moorish Emir of Zaragosa. "But I will rise up again and claim what is mine."

"But you have fought against the Moors your whole life," I said. "How can you even consider fighting for them?"

As I watched, the guerrito's leering features replaced Rodrigo's. "I have no more loyalty to them than to the king who exiled me. I only want their treasure to pay for my wars."

"We're talking about the Moors!" I said, though I knew my words fell on the guerrito's deaf ears. "Have you no loyalty to the people of Spain? Have you no loyalty to anyone?"

The guerrito's forked tongue flickered, a glistening pink obscenity. "Only myself," he said.

As I stood there, contemplating what until now had been an unimaginable future, I kept waiting for Rodrigo to reappear. Perhaps, if the guerrito stayed away long enough, I could get through to my husband. Maybe I could weaken the creature's influence and talk Rodrigo out of serving Moorish masters.

But Rodrigo did not come back that day.

"Have you thought of a way to get rid of the guerrito?" I asked Tizona. We were in a house in Zaragosa now, in a Muslim prayer chamber instead of a chapel.

"I know things are bad now," said Tizona.

"The guerrito is here all the time," I said. "It rarely lets me see Rodrigo at all."

"Some guerritos are like that," said Tizona. "They must have everything. They must conquer."

I wiped tears from my eyes with the back of my hand. "I just want my husband back. I want my Rodrigo."Tizona's polished blade shimmered in the candlelight. "I have been thinking about this for a very long time. Perhaps there is a way."