“I want you to know something about the sword I wear – something I haven’t shown you.”
I looked down at the sword in its sheath next to Woltan’s leg. It was not very long, and did not seem special in any way; but then I opened my third eye, and gasped. The blade glowed an emerald green, a color I’d never seen before, and inside the pommel, I saw a tiny purple light.
Woltan chuckled. “Perhaps I don’t need to show you after all.”
“You have a pixie in your blade, like Carolina in mine!”
Woltan nodded. “She is neither as experienced nor as old as your Carolina, but she is strong and she is loyal and I love her. It was through her that I first heard of you, as well as from one other cousin of hers.”
It was then that Kara entered the room. I looked at the short blade at her side, and gasped again.
Her blade shown a tangerine orange, and in the pommel there was a small bright turquoise light.
Kara smiled. “It is not only the book of Id that the dark lord sought to steal back from my people. He seeks all the blades and the pixies within.”
I looked at the two of them. “Then you two can communicate together.”
Woltan nodded. “Through our blades, through the pixies inside, yes we can. But we cannot communicate directly, only talk to our pixies and have them talk to their kin. And even the pixies have trouble finding who still serves in a sword, and if it is being used or the sword has been lost. Nevertheless, it is one of the few means of communication left to us. Once, there were many portals that sent messages between the three cities: this one, the city of the Kriek, and the city of the merpeople. Now, all that is lost, and you and Kara and Kalle are the first visitors we have had in several hundred years.”
“Have you any news of the glass castle?”
Kara shook her head. “We haven’t heard anything. It is too early to be sure, but we fear, the castle, it may have fallen to the dark lord.”
“My father was a diplomat for King Lowen.”
“Are you sure?” Kara asked. “Have you ever thought, Anders, that maybe …”
“Maybe, what?”
“That maybe your father was more than a diplomat?” Kara suggested.
“What do you mean, more than a diplomat?” I asked.
“Could he have been a spy?” Woltan asked.
I shook my head. My father? A spy? That was ridiculous. “My father dealt with paper and people. He was a diplomatic liason,” I said.
“Where was he, the night he was taken?” Kara asked. “And why were you locked in your room?”
“He always locked me in my room, when he went away on missions.”
“Did he tell you where we he was going?”
I shook my head.
“Did he ever tell you what he was doing, or where he was going?” Woltan asked.
“He never told me anything,” I said, shaking my head.
“Diplomats don’t go away on secret missions,” said Kara. “And they don’t lock up their children when they go away.”
I shook my head again. My father a spy? Some kind of secret agent? I might have believed that when I was 6, but now?
Maybe it was time to believe again. If only I could talk to him and find out what was really going on.
“Can’t you contact someone who can tell you?” I asked the two of them. “Someone who would know something? About what’s happening? About what happened to my father?”
Woltan shook his head. “My sister Jona has the other sword here, and has been searching. We seek contacts at the glass castle and among the merpeople, but so far in vain. Among the Kriek, Kara is the last bearer of a complete blade. Her uncle bears a broken sword that still houses a pixie, although the communication between them seems incomplete.”