Forging the Darksword (26 page)

“But, Father,” argued Jacobias, “we do, or should do, what we are s
uited
to do! Forgive me for speakin’ blunt, Father Saryon, but I’ve seen you in t’field. If ye’ve been outdoors at all, it must’ve been in some royal lady’s rose arbor! You can’t take ten steps without fallin’ over a rock! The first days you were here the sun burned you so bad we had to lay you in the creek to bring you ’round. You was fair roasted. And you jump at yer own shadow. Why I never in my life saw a man run so fast as you did when that locust flew up in your face.”

With a sigh, Saryon nodded, but he did not answer.

“Ye’re not a young man anymore, Father,” Jacobias’s wife said kindly, her heart softened by the catalyst’s look of fear and despair. Reaching out her hand, she placed it over
Saryon’s hand that rested, trembling, on the table. “Surely there must be some other way. Why don’t you drink your tea and go back to your bed. We’ll talk to Father Tolban …”

“There is no other way, I assure you,” Saryon said softly, with a quiet dignity that was apparent even through the strained look of fear on his face. “I thank you for your kindness and … and your caring. It is something I—I didn’t expect.” Rising to his feet, leaving his tea untouched, he faced them. “Now, I must please ask you to give me the help I need. I know you have contacts out there. I don’t ask you to name them. Just tell me where to go and what I must do to find them.”

Jacobias, a look of indecision on his face, glanced at his wife. Leaving her tea untouched as well, she was staring into the coals of the fire. He squeezed her hand. Without turning her gaze to him, she nodded her head. Rumbling deep in his throat, Jacobias rumpled up his hair, scratched his chin, and finally said, “Very well, Father. I’ll do what I can fer you, though I’d sooner send a man Beyond! I would indeed!”

“I understand,” Saryon said, genuinely affected by the man’s obvious pain. “And I truly thank you for your help.”

“You are a kind and gentle man,” said Jacobias’s wife suddenly, still staring into the fire. “I’ve seen you look at us with something in your eyes that says we’re not animals but people to you. If—if you see my son—”

She could not go on, but began to weep silently.

“You better be getting gone, Father,” Jacobias said gruffly. “Moon’s almost to the tops of the trees and ye’ve a ways to go. If you haven’t made it to the river by the time she sets,” he added sternly, “sit yourself down and wait till mornin’. Don’t go bumblin’ about in the dark. Ye’re liable to tumble down a cliff.”

“Yes,” Saryon managed to say, drawing another deep breath and smoothing the folds of his robes around him with his shaking hands.

“Now, come here”—Jacobias led the catalyst to the door, which opened at his approach—“and look where I point and listen to my words careful, for they could mean life instead of death, Father.”

“I understand,” said Saryon, holding onto his courage as tightly as his hands gripped his sack.

“See that star yonder, the one at the tip of the stars they call the Gods Hand. You see it?”

“Yes.”

“That’s the North Star. It’s not called God’s Hand fer nothin’, ’cause it’ll point yer way, if ye let it. Keep that star in yer left eye, as the saying goes. Know what that means?”

The catalyst shook his head, and Jacobias checked a sigh. “It means—Never mind. Just do this. Always make certain yer walkin’ straight toward the star and just a bit to the right of it like. Never let the star get to the right of you. Understand? If so, you’ll end up in centaur land. If they get hold of you, you can just pray to the Almin for the swiftest death there is.”

Saryon stared up into the night sky, looking at the star, and felt suddenly dismayed. He had never looked up into the night sky before, he realized. At least, not out here, not where the stars seemed so close and so many. Overwhelmed at the vastness and immenseness of the universe and of his own tiny, tiny part in it, it seemed to Saryon terribly ironic that another tiny, cold, faraway and uncaring part was going to lead him. He thought of the Font, where the stars were studied as they affected a person’s life from his birth. He saw the charts spread out on the table, he recalled the calculations he had made regarding them, and it occurred to him that he had never once really looked at the stars as he was looking at them now. Now that his life truly depended on them.

“I understand,” he murmured, though he didn’t, not in the slightest.

Jacobias looked at him dubiously. “Maybe I should take him,” he muttered to his wife.

Saryon glanced around quickly. “No,” he said. “No, there would be trouble. I’ve stayed too long as it is. Someone might have seen us. Thank you very much. Both for your help and—and your kind words. Good-bye. Good-bye. May the Almin’s blessing be with you both.”

“Maybe it’s not right of me to say this, Father,” Jacobias said roughly, “me not bein’ a catalyst an’ all, but may the Almin’s blessing be with
you.”
Flushing, he looked down at the ground. “There. I don’t reckon He’ll take offense, do you?”

Saryon started to smile, but the quivering of his lips led him to believe he might very well weep instead, and that would be disastrous. Reaching out, he shook hands earnestly with Jacobias, who appeared to be in the throes of some dilemma, for he was still staring at Saryon as though trying to make up his mind to speak further. His wife, hovering near him, suddenly lifted Saryon’s hand in hers and pressed it to her rough lips.

“This is for you,” she said softly, “and for my boy, if you see him.” Her eyes filling with tears, she turned and hurried back inside the mean dwelling.

Saryon’s own vision was dim as he started to walk away, only to feel Jacobias’s hand on his shoulder.

“Listen,” said the Field Magus. “I—I think you should know. It may make things a bit easier for you. There—there are some people who’ve been … making inquiries so to speak about you. They’re in need of a catalyst, I fancy, so likely they’ll be takin’ an interest in you above the ordinary, if you get my meaning.”

“Thank you,” said Saryon, somewhat startled. Bishop Vanya had implied much the same thing. How had he known? “Where will I find these—”

“They’ll find you,” Jacobias said gruffly. “Just remember about the star, though, or the first thing that’ll find you will be death.”

“I’ll remember. Thank you. Good-bye.”

But Jacobias was still not easy in his mind apparently, for he held Saryon back one last instant.

“I don’t approve of ’em,” he muttered, frowning. “Not from anythin’ I’ve seen, mind you, just from what I’ve heard. I hope the rumors mayn’t be true. If they are, I pray my boy hasn’t got hisself involved. I didn’t approve him goin’ out there, but we had no choice. Not when we heard the
Duuk-tsarith
was being sent to talk with him ….”

“Duuk-tsarith?”
repeated Saryon, puzzled. “But I thought he ran off with that young man who killed the overseer, that Joram …”

“Joram?” Jacobias shook his head. “Dunno who told you this. That strange young man hain’t been seen here in over a year. Mosiah was hopin’ to find him, that’s for certain; somethin’ I wasn’t hopeful of myself. A walkin’ Dead man …”
He shook his head again. “But that’s not what I meant to go on about.” Holding onto Saryon’s arm, Jacobias looked at him earnestly. “I didn’t want to say nothin’ about this round his mother. But if the boy
is
in bad company and is followin’ ways of—ways of darkness, speak to him, will you, Father? Remind him that we love him and think of him?”

“I will, Jacobias, I will,” Saryon said gently, patting the man’s work-worn hand.

“Thank you, Father.” Jacobias cleared his throat, and wiping his hand over his eyes and nose, he waited a moment to compose himself before he went back into the shack. “Good-bye, Father,” he said.

Turning, he stepped back inside and shut the door behind him. Looking into the window, for a moment unwilling to leave, Saryon saw the Field Magus and his wife standing in the moonlight that beamed in through their window. He saw Jacobias take his wife into his arms and hold her close. He heard her muffled sobs.

Sighing, Saryon clutched his sack and started walking across the fields, his eyes on the stars and, occasionally, on the vast darkness to which the stars were drawing him. His feet stumbled over the uneven ground that was nothing to him but patches of white moonlight and black shadow. Reaching the edge of the village, he looked out over the fields of wheat that stirred gently in the breeze like a moonlit lake. Turning, Saryon glanced back one last time at the village, at his last contact, perhaps, with humanity.

The tree dwellings sat stolidly on the ground, their interlaced branches casting eerie, intricate shadows in the moonlight. There were no lights within the shacks; the faint light gleaming from Jacobias’s window went out as Saryon watched. Too tired to dream, the Field Magi slept.

For an instant, the catalyst thought he might run back. But even as he gazed at the peaceful village, Saryon realized he couldn’t. He might have, an hour earlier, when the fear inside of him had been very real. But not now. Now he could turn and walk away from them, turn and walk away from everything in his past life. He would walk into the night, guided by that tiny, uncaring star above. Not because he had discovered any newfound courage. No. It was a reason as
dark as the shadows of the moonlit trees that rustled about him. He could not go back, not until he had the answer. Bishop Vanya lied to him about Mosiah. Why?

That nagging question and its attendant dark shadow accompanied Saryon into the wilderness, proving a valuable companion, for it kept the catalyst’s mind occupied and forced his other companion—fear—to straggle along behind. Keeping one eye on the star, a feat that proved increasingly difficult for the catalyst as he plunged deeper and deeper into the thick forests, Saryon pondered this question, trying to find excuses, trying to find explanations, only to be forced to admit to himself that there were no excuses and that he had no explanation.

Bishop Vanya had lied, that much was quite clear. What was more, it had been a conspiracy of lies.

Stopping for a moment to rest, Saryon sank down on a boulder to massage his aching and cramping leg muscles. The strange, ominous sounds of the forest growled and whispered about him, but Saryon was able to ignore them by going back, in his mind, to Bishop Vanya’s chambers in the Font the day he had been called there to hear Father Tolban’s story. Vanya’s words came to him clearly, mercifully drowning out a low snarl from some predatory animal stalking its prey through the night.

It seems that this Joram had a friend
—Saryon could hear Vanya quite plainly—
a young man called Mosiah. One of the Field Magi, hearing noises in the night, woke and looked out his window. He saw Mosiah and a young man he is positive was Joram engrossed in conversation. He could not hear all of what was said, but he swears he overheard the words “Coven” and “Wheel.” He said Mosiah drew back at this, but his friend must have been persuasive because, the next morning, Mosiah was gone.

Yes, Mosiah had gone. But not because of Joram. He had fled because of rumors that the
Duuk-tsarith
were interested in him.

A shrill scream behind Saryon, cut off suddenly by a furious growl, had the catalyst up off his boulder and running through the forest before he was quite aware of what had occurred. When he was once more master of himself, he drew several deep breaths to calm his rapidly beating heart.
Forcing himself to slow down, he took his bearings on the star that he could barely make out through the branches above him and discovered to his dismay that the moon was setting.

The catalyst recalled Jacobias’s warning against wandering about in the dark at almost the same time he recalled, quite clearly, Father Tolban’s furtive glance toward Bishop Vanya as the Bishop was relating the tale about Joram and Mosiah. Saryon recalled Tolban’s guilty flush when he saw the catalyst looking at him. A conspiracy of lies.

But why? What were they hiding?

Suddenly Saryon had the answer. Hurrying forward with some vague idea of making his way to the river before the moon set, Saryon worked out the mystery much as he worked out his mathematical equations. Vanya
knew
Joram was in that coven. He had lied to conceal the true source of his knowledge. In fact, Saryon realized, Vanya knew lots of things about the coven—that they were in need of a catalyst, that they were dealing with the king of Sharakan. It was logical, therefore, that the Bishop had a spy planted within the coven. That much worked out. But, Saryon frowned, his equation lacked a final answer.

If Vanya had a spy in the coven, why did he need Saryon?

Distracted by these thoughts, the catalyst stumbled about in his mind nearly as badly as he was stumbling about in the gathering darkness. Coming to a halt, Saryon caught his breath, fixed his position by the star, and listened for the sound of the river. He did not hear it and, logic finally convincing him that he had not walked far enough to reach it, he decided to heed Jacobias’s words and rest for the remainder of the night.

Saryon began to look for a place to spend the hours until dawn. He had not crossed the river yet, and naively assumed he was relatively safe. Not that it would have mattered much otherwise. The catalyst was so exhausted by both the unaccustomed exercise and the nervous strain and tension that he knew he could not go another step. Reasoning that it might be better to stay near the trail (without bothering to wonder who or what had made the trail), Saryon gathered his robes about his bony ankles and hunched down at the base of a
gigantic oak tree, making a very uncomfortable bed between two huge, exposed roots. Drawing his knees up to his chin, he settled himself in the undergrowth and prepared to wait out the rest of the night.

Saryon had no intention of falling asleep. He would not have believed it possible that he
could
fall asleep, in fact. The moon had set and, though the stars shone brightly above him, the night was dark and frightening around him. Strange noises rustled and growled and snuffled. Wild eyes stared at him and, in desperation, he closed his own.