Flane held it to the light that filtered through a cracked window. His eye went along the keen edge.
"It forms a diamond shape through the middle. If we were to break it clean, those friezes would form the outer edges of the diamond, and the two sword-edges, the upper and lower points."
Flane shook his head wonderingly, staring at the blue hilt of the sword. Glitterings like the sky at night stared back at him, the buried points of light in the haft winking and twinkling like stars. Like a beam of silver light, the blade sprang from the star-shaped guard, a shimmer of deadly steel.
"A sword like this would be famous," he muttered. "People would talk of it. And yet—and yet I have never heard of any such a sword."
"Nor have I," sighed red Aevlyn.
Harth waited for them outside the spaceship, to walk with them across the sands toward the magniship. As they went, Flane whistled to Saarl, and drew his reins under his arm. The megathon trotted daintily at his heels.
Energy surged in Flane's chest, lifting it; like a great wave elevating itself in a concave greenness lipped with foam-bubbles, it grew in him. Here before him was a task: To fight the Darksiders. No longer would his life be a goalless ramble across desert sands. Instead he had a people who would be like brothers to him, who was an orphan. He stood a moment, staring at the monument of his own folk, watching sunlight dapple the silvern hull of the spaceship.
Then he turned his face to the magniship and went up the ladder. He saw that Saarl was stabled below decks, and walked with Aevlyn toward the master-cabin.
Here Harth awaited him with maps and charts.