"Katae!" the blade shrieked. "My smith predated katae by ten thousand years! He devised and forgot about more techniques than any swordsmith since his day!"

"Don't get your quillons in a braid," I said, continuing my examination. The sword, "Ersatz," was once famed as the sharpest, most intelligent sword around, but so many fakes were made that the name became a byword for cheap and shoddy. "You look like you can still hack with the best of them."

"I'm still as sharp as I ever was," the sword insisted. "But I can't get anyone to believe it. YOU didn't believe it."

"The jury's still out, as far as I'm concerned," I said, but I was starting to take his word that he was what he said he was. "Where are the others?"

"I know not where most of my companions be," Ersatz admitted, the steel-blue eyes dropping slightly. "Many of us haven't seen one another in over a century. If truth be told, most of us don't care for each other. Kelsa—she is the great scrying crystal, the most accurate viewer of the future ever crafted, and she has never made a direct statement since the day she was carved. When time is of the essence, she cannot get to the point!"

"That's your specialty." I grinned.

"You have a sharp wit yourself, my friend."

"So, what am I supposed to do with you?" I asked. "I don't really need a trophy for my wall, especially not a talking trophy."

The blue eyes looked alarmed. "Nay, friend, I wouldn't want to be a fixture. For a time I was embedded in the wall of yonder eating establishment," the sword managed to glance in the direction of the street. Out the inn's door I could see a red-walled hut with customers emerging carrying flat, gooey comestibles that were this dimension's equivalent of pizza. "I lived side by side with a wain's worth of junk from all over this dimension. I was only freed from the endless chatter of 'tonight's specials' and 'two-for-one dinners' when the patrons