Legacy of the Darksword (35 page)

At this, Scylla gave a brief,
mirthless laugh. “You’re such a comfort!” she said through clenched teeth.

“I have my magic,” Mosiah told
her. “I don’t want to use it, unless I have to. But I will not let you fall.
Look at me. Look at me, Scylla.”

Scylla managed to twist her head,
looked at Mosiah.

He extended his hand. “Here, take
hold.”

She raised her arm, the armor
scraping against the rock, and slowly reached toward Mosiah, her hand
outstretched. He clasped his hand over hers, and held on to her tightly. Her
face smoothed in relief. She ventured forward. He drew her along the path,
holding her steady.

At the end, when they reached
safe ground, Scylla gave a great shuddering sob and covered her face with her
hands. I think Mosiah would have put his arms around her, but for her armor.

Hugging her would have been
tantamount to embracing an iron stove.

“I have shamed myself,” Scylla
whispered fiercely.
“Before my queen!”

“By what?
Proving you’re human like the
rest of us. I, for one, was happy to see it. I was beginning to wonder.”

Scylla uncovered her eyes and
looked at Mosiah, as if she suspected there might be more to this statement
than appeared. He was half-amused, half-sympathetic,
nothing
deeper.

“Thank you,” Scylla
said,
her voice husky. “You saved my life, Enforcer. I am in
your debt.” Subdued, she walked over to Eliza and knelt before her on one knee.
“Forgive me, Your Majesty, for my cowardice in the face of danger. If you wish
to remove me from the position of trust in which you have placed me, I will
readily understand.”

“Oh, Scylla!” cried Eliza warmly.
“We are of Mosiah’s opinion. We are glad to see that you are flawed, like the
rest of us. It’s very difficult to love a paragon.”

Scylla was overcome and, for a
moment, could not speak. At length, wiping her hand across her nose and eyes,
she stood up and threw back her head, faced us proudly, if somewhat defiantly.

“Which way do we go now, Father?”
Eliza asked.

We had been concentrating so hard
on the path behind us that we had given no consideration to the path before us.
The river veered off to the right. Our ledge ended, but we could see the
shadowy opening of what appeared to be a tunnel.

“We go down,” said Saryon.

“Perhaps the killer’s gone.
...”

“I doubt it. He didn’t get what
he came for.”

JORAM;
TRIUMPH
OF THE DARKSWORD

W
e went down. And down. And down.
A flaming brand lit our way. Mosiah had been going to expend more of his
magical Life to provide light, but that proved unnecessary.

“You will find a brand,
tinderbox, and flint in a small chamber near the entrance to the tunnel,”
Saryon advised us. “I left them there myself, on the chance that someday I
would return.”

“Tools of the Dark Arts,” Mosiah
said, with a slight smile, barkening back to a time on Thimhallan when the use
of such “tools” as a tinderbox and flint was prohibited. Such objects gave Life
to that which was
Dead
.

Scylla carried the brand, walked
in front with Saryon. I remained at Eliza’s side, our hands twined together.
From this point on, our lives would be changed for good or ill. Perhaps, in a
short time, we would be dead. It didn’t matter anymore that she was a queen and
I was her house catalyst. Our love, a love that had sent down its roots in
early childhood, had grown strong like the oak, and though the tree might be
cut down, it could never be uprooted.

Mosiah followed behind alone, the
raven having refused to accompany us anywhere near the dragon.

The path ran smooth, cutting down
through the rock in a steep spiral that was almost a corkscrew. It was easy to
walk, almost too easy. It seemed to be hurrying us downward—a circumstance
which we found ominous.

“This was never formed by nature,”
Mosiah observed.

“No,” Saryon agreed. “So I
thought when I first discovered it.”

Mosiah came to a halt. “And you
descended this all unknowing, Father? When anything from griffins to darkrovers
could have been at the bottom? Forgive me, Father, but you were never the
adventurous sort. I think you should tell us how you first found this cave.
Before we go on.”

“
We will not have this!” Eliza was
angry. “You have insulted Father Saryon for the last time, Enforcer—”

“No, child,” Saryon said. Looking
about, he found an outcropping of rock and sank down upon it. “Mosiah is right.
Don’t tell me, Daughter,” he added with a smile for her, “that you yourself are
not curious about what we will find when we reach the dragon’s lair. I could
use the rest. We must not be long, though. We must reach the dragon’s lair
before night falls, while it is still sleepy and lethargic.”

“Amen to that,” Mosiah said.

What I write now is Father Saryon’s
story, in his own words.

I have sometimes wondered what
would have happened if Simkin had not tricked Menju the Sorcerer into sending
him to Earth. I think matters might have turned out much differently. Had
Simkin been here, I am certain that he might have saved Joram’s life. Emperor
Garald does not agree with me and I must admit that I see his view. There is no
doubt that Simkin set Joram up for the ambush, for it was Simkin who suggested
that Joram find help for your poor mother in the Temple of the Necromancers.
And it was there the Executioner waited for him and killed him.

I will never forget that terrible
day.

I had gone to the Temple with
Gwen and Joram, at his request, though I feared traveling to such a dreadful
place. Joram was desperate. Gwendolyn was drifting further from us every day,
it seemed. She spoke only to those who were dead and gone. She had no care for
the living, not even for her own husband, whom she had once dearly loved. Her
parents were sick with grief. When Simkin told us his fool story about having a
little brother who was cured by the dead, Joram grasped it as a drowning man
grasps at a bit of wood.

I tried to dissuade him, but he
refused to listen. Simkin told us to be at the Temple at noon, when the power
of the Temple would be greatest. The Emperor believes that Simkin knew in
advance that the Executioner would be there waiting for Joram, but I don’t
think so. I think Simkin merely wanted Joram out of the way, so that
he—Simkin—could pretend to be Joram and so travel to Earth, which is exactly
what he did.

I don’t suppose it matters now,
one way or the other. Your father and I went to the Temple . I remained with
Gwen, who
Was
exceedingly troubled by the voices of
the dead. Joram stood by the altar. I heard four sharp, distinct cracks, one
after the other.

I was paralyzed with fear, not
knowing what dread fate these awful sounds portended.

The cracking sounds stopped. I
looked about and saw nothing amiss, at first. I was about to take Gwendolyn
into the Temple , where she would be safe, when I saw Joram slump against the
altar.

His hand was pressed over his
chest and blood welled from between his fingers.

I ran to him and caught him in my
arms. I lowered him to the ground. I did not know then what had happened to
him. Later I learned that he had been killed by a heinous tool of the Dark
Arts, a weapon known as a “gun.”

All I knew then was that he was
dying and there was nothing I could do except
hold
him.

“The Darksword . . .” he said,
his voice coming in painful gasps. “Take it, Father. . . Hide it ... from them.
My child!”
He clasped my hand with his dying strength,
and I believe that he willed himself to live the few moments longer it took him
to impart this message. “If my child is in need . . . you must give the sword.
. .”

I had not known then that Gwen was
pregnant. Joram knew, and that was another reason he had wanted so desperately
to find a way to help her.

“Yes, Joram!”
I promised, through my tears.

He looked past me, to Gwen, who
stood above him.

“I am coming,” he said to her,
and closed his eyes and slipped away to join the dead.

She reached out her hand, not to
the body, but to his soul.
“My beloved.
I have waited
for you a long, long time.”

You know what happened after
that. The forces of Menju the Sorcerer attacked Thimhallan. Our armies were
crushed, utterly defeated. If Menju had had his way, we would have been
exterminated into the bargain, but the man we know now as General Boris
protected us.

Menju did not insist on our
destruction. He had what he wanted. He sealed up the Well of Life so that magic
no longer flowed into the world of Thimhallan. Bereft of their magic, most of
the people in Thimhallan said bitterly that they might as well be dead. Many
did kill themselves. It was a terrible time.

Fortunately, Garald, who was then
King of Sharakan, following the death of his father, was able to act quickly
and take control. He brought in the Sorcerers, the practitioners of the Dark
Arts, and they taught our people how to use tools to do what magic had always
done for them in the past. Gradually, as the years went by, we rebuilt the
cities, though the buildings were crude and ugly, compared with what they had
once been.

But all that would come later.
Joram was dead. I had two responsibilities now, or rather three. The Darksword,
Gwen, and the child she bore. Whoever had killed Joram must still be in the
Temple and, indeed, I saw the Executioner rise and start to move toward us.

He was a powerful
Duuk-tsarith.
I could not hope to escape him. Suddenly, however, he was pushed backward,
almost to the edge of the cliff. I saw him struggling, but he fought an
invisible foe!

And then I knew—the dead were
giving us a chance to escape.

Picking up the Darksword, I
grabbed Gwen’s hand. She came with me docilely. We fled that sorrowful place.
Later, when the Emperor sent to recover Joram’s body, it was found
laid
out in state inside the Temple of the Necromancers. The
hands of the dead tended him, who had been
Dead
in his
lifetime.

All of Thimhallan was in
confusion, as you can imagine. Bad as that was for some, it was good for me,
for no one cared about a middle-aged catalyst and a young woman they took for
my daughter. My first thought was to go to the Font. I am not sure why, except
that it had been my home for so long. Arriving there, I realized my mistake,
for though the place was in an uproar, there were people who knew me and
connected me with Joram. In order to be truly safe, I would have to take Gwen
and travel to a part of the country where neither of us
were
known.

It was while I was at the Font,
however, that I came across a child, a little boy of about five years of age.
He was an orphan, they said. His parents were catalysts, and had been killed in
the first assault. The boy was mute. He could not speak, and whether that was
due to the shock of seeing his parents slain before his eyes or if he had been
born mute, none could say.

I looked at that silent boy and I
saw in his eyes the same emptiness, the same grief, the same loss I felt in my
own heart. I took him with me. I named him Reuven.

We started our journey. I chose
to relocate to Zith-el. Although I had heard that the city was heavily damaged
in the war, it was one place where I was certain that no one would know me.

The magical wall that guarded the
city was gone. The Zoo creatures had mostly escaped and returned to the wild.
The inhabitants were dazed and disbelieving. All of the tall buildings had been
destroyed, but Zith-el is also a city of tunnels, and the survivors moved
underground.

We found a small place for
ourselves, little more than a niche in one of the tunnels. Here Gwen and little
Reuven and I dwelt, living on the sustenance that was brought to us by our
conquerors.

Gwen never did return to the
world of the living. She was happy with the dead, for Joram was with her. She
remained with me only long enough to bring her child into this world, and then
she died. Reuven and I were left alone with the baby. I named her Eliza.

But I am getting ahead of myself.

I had carried with me, all this
time, the Darksword. And not a day dawned but that I feared someone would find
me and then they would find it. Menju the Sorcerer was searching for the
Darksword, so I heard. Fearing the use he might make of it, I determined to
hide the sword in a place where it would never be discovered.

I prayed to the Almin for
guidance and that night I dreamed I was walking in the Zoo. The next morning I
wrapped the Darksword in a blanket and carried it to the Zoo. This was
dangerous, even foolhardy, you might say, for though many of the Zoo’s
creatures had run off, others had stayed behind. I might run into a centaur or
worse.