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Henry Lion Oldie.

Fragments of novels in english translation


Henry Lion Oldie. The way of the sword (Synopsys)

Novel; about 165.000 words, 1994.


Book 1 : Kabir

The world described in the novel is unprecedented among the works of
the world fantasy. Its history and geography is very like the Earth in
Middle Ages, but with an essential difference: here all arms such as swords,
spears etc. have a mind of their own. Arms of the same type form something
like human families or clans. The living swords etc. call themselves
"Brilliants", and they consider the human beings to be but their "Carriers",
like dogs or horses, and don't even suppose that they are intelligent too.
And the people in their turn have not the slightest idea about the way
things are. Nevertheless, this society is rather stable: the skill of
fencing being raised to the level of high art any duels never result in the
blood-spilling or Carriers's death. Thanks to easily understandable reasons
the wars have also been forgotten long ago. In one word, this world is a
kind of "feudal utopia".
But we learn that something is going wrong there. Mysterious and bloody
murders began to happen in a number of towns. Not only people are killed,
but also the intelligent arms happen to be destroyed. Such things have not
happened here for almost eight centuries!
The main heroes of the novel are the upright sword Dan Ghien called the
Unicorn and its Carrier - a young nobleman Chan Unkor.
The scimitar Sheshez ruling over the Emirate (from the Brilliants'
point of view) invites the Unicorn to investigate those crimes. The same
task is given by the man-Emir Daud to Chan Unkor.
As the result Chan himself gets into trouble: during a fencing
competition his right hand was cut away. Being under the psychic influence
(unaware of it) exercized by his sword, the young man feels that he cannot
live without fencing and tries the last remedy: following the advice given
to him by the Emir's jester Druddle he orders a smith to forge an iron hand
for him, although he understood very clearly that this was a nonsense.
But as the result of secret ancient rites the iron hand acquires life
of its own! It becomes the intermediary between the man and his sword, a
link between the two intelligent races. The heroes understand that in order
to oppose the murderers they have now to change their minds; soon they
manage to overcome the interdiction to kill inherent to both of them while
saving the life of the jester Druddle in a city street at night. The same
night the man and his sword together with the jester's blunt dagger Dziuttee
which is more widely known as the Kabir Executioner leave the capital
following the footsteps of the murderers towards the native country of
Chan's ancestors, Maylan (closely reminding the ancient China). Their