Triumph of the Darksword (21 page)

Removing his hand from that of his friend, Joram thrust it in the sleeves of his robes. The temperature inside the icebound fortress was gradually falling, growing colder and colder.

“They plan to destroy the barriers, release the magic back into the universe,” he replied. “They will take you prisoner and carry you back to their worlds.”

“But if such is their object,” argued Garald, with the strange sensation that he was debating a point in a meaningless dream, “why are they killing everyone they encounter, including civilians?” He gestured. “They’re not taking prisoners? Or, if they are,” he added, remembering Radisovik’s observation, “they’re only taking catalysts!”

“Are they?” Joram appeared startled, his gaze shifting swiftly to Garald.

“Yes! I saw—the nobles, their wives, their children, riding in their glittering carriages, coming with their wine and their lunches to watch a game. These creatures murdered them!” Once again, Garald was turning over that body, seeing the grinning face of the skeleton. “Is this how they fight in Beyond?” he demanded angrily. “Do they slaughter the helpless?”

“No,” said Joram, appearing grave and troubled. “They are not savage like the centaur. They do not love to kill. They are soldiers. They have rules of warfare, handed down through centuries. I don’t understand. They wanted prisoners.” He paused, his face darkened. “Unless….” He did not continue.

Garald shook his head. “Make some sense of it for me, Joram.”

“I wish I could!” It was a murmur, spoken almost to himself. “I thought I knew them. Yet I have proof now that they betrayed me. Are they capable of more …?”

Garald looked at him intently, hearing again the old, familiar bitterness in Joram’s tone and now something else as well—an echo of pain and loss.

“All the more reason we must fight them,” Joram said suddenly, his voice as cold as the chill breath blowing from the ice wall. “We must show them that they will not take this world as easily as they anticipated. We must make them fear us so that when they leave they will never return.”

“But what will be our weapons?” Garald asked helplessly. “Ice?”

“Ice, fire, air. The magic, my friend,” Joram said. “Life—Life will be our weapon … and Death.”

Reaching behind him, he drew the Darksword from its scabbard. “Long years have passed since I made this. Yet I’ve often dreamed of that night—the night in the blacksmith’s when I forged the metal and Saryon gave it Life.” Joram turned the sword, studying it. His man’s hand fit it better than had the boy’s, but it was still heavy and awkward and unbalanced, difficult to wield. “Do you remember?” he asked Garald, the half-smile touching his lips, “the day we
met? When I attacked you in the glade? You said this sword was the ugliest of its kind you had ever seen.”

Joram’s gaze went to the sword the Prince wore at his side. The sun sparkled off the ornately carved hilt of shining silver. By contrast, it did not even flicker in the beaten metal of the Darksword. He sighed.

“Though I didn’t know about the Prophecy, I knew I was bringing something evil into the world with this sword. Saryon knew it—he warned me to destroy it, before it destroyed me. I’ve thought about it since then, and I’ve come to understand that I wasn’t the one who brought the evil into the world with the sword.” He gazed down upon the weapon, running his fingers over the crude, misshapen hilt. “The sword
is
the evil in the world.”

“Then why keep it?” Garald glanced at it, shuddering.

“Because, like any sword, it cuts two ways,” Joram replied “Now, the Almin willing, I can use it to save us. Will you fight, Your Grace?”

Still the Prince hesitated. “Why are you doing this for us, Joram? If, as you say, we brought this fate upon ourselves, why do you care? After what we did to you—”

“You call me Dead! …” Joram murmured, repeating the last words he had said before he walked into Beyond. “But it is you who have died. It is this world that is dead.”

He stared at the sword, dark and unlovely in his hand. “I was gone ten years. I came back, hoping to find the world changed, intending to—” He stopped abruptly, scowling. “But never mind that. It isn’t important now. Suffice it to say that I returned to find that you—this world—had
not
changed. In an effort to gain power, you had tortured and tormented a helpless being. I abandoned my project, my hopes, and walked the land in bitterness, seeing everywhere the signs of tyranny, injustice.

“In my anger, I planned to return to Beyond when I discovered that it, too, had betrayed me.” The dark half-smile twisted his lip. “I had no world, it seemed I was willing to leave you, all of you.”—his bitter glance included the creatures of iron attacking the wall of ice—“to your fate, little caring whether either of you won or lost.

“Then a man, a very wise man, reminded me of something I had forgotten. ‘It is easier to hate than to love.’” Joram fell silent, his gaze going to the sparkling wall of ice, to the trees, the surrounding hills, the blue sky, the fiery sun. “I realized that this world is my home. These people are my people. And therefore I cannot speak of it in the second person. I say ‘you’ tormented Saryon, but I should say ‘I’ tormented that good man. Had it not been for me, he would not have suffered.”

Absently, Joram ran his fingers through his dark, tangled hair. “And there is one other reason,” he said, an inexpressible sadness shadowing his face. “Not a day passed during those ten years in another world that I didn’t dream of the beauty of Merilon.”

He looked quizzically at Garald. “It is easier to hate than to love. I’ve never done anything the easy way. Do we fight for this world … Your Grace?”

“We fight,” said the Prince. “And call me Garald,” he added with a wry smile. “I still hear those words. ‘Your Grace’ stick in your throat.”

T
hey said afterward—those that survived—that they were led into battle by the Angel of Death.

Confused rumors about Joram began to spread among the magi fighting for their lives inside the fortress of stone and ice. Few knew his true history—Mosiah, Garald, Radisovik, and the witch. Many more knew fragments of it, however, and it was these fragments that were hastily whispered to companions during the brief lull in the battle following the raising of the ice wall. Emperor Xavier had said enough prior to his death to enable people to piece these fragments together as they might have a broken stone statue. Unfortunately, it was like putting together a statue that they had never seen whole in the first place.

Several of the catalysts fighting in the fortress had been present at the Judgment of Joram. Those who had been standing near Prince Garald heard him pronounce that name, and they remembered it. Xavier’s words,
The Prophecy
is fulfilled. The end of the world is come
, were repeated in hushed tones, as was each catalyst’s version of what had occurred that dreadful day on the beach when they had all witnessed this man—this Joram—step into Beyond.

“He is Dead….”

“He carries a sword of darkness that sucks the life out of its victims….”

“He murdered countless numbers, but only the wicked, or so I heard. He was falsely accused and now he has come back from the dead to seek his revenge….”

“Xavier fell at his feet! You saw it! What more proof do you want? The old Emperor dropped out of sight opportunely for The DKarn-Duuk, didn’t he? What does it matter who hears me now? Xavier’s dead now and I’ll wager
he
won’t come back….”

“The Prophecy? I heard a tale once that had to do with a Prophecy, something about the old wizard, Merlyn, and a king with a shining sword that would come back to his land and save them in their hour of need….”

A sword Joram bore, but it did not shine. When he called for battle and the people gathered around him, it seemed to those watching that he held a fragment of the night in his hands. His face was dark and unyielding as the metal of the weapon he carried. There was no call to glory in his words or the grim tone in which they were spoken.

“This will not be a day celebrated in legend and song. If we fail, there will be no more songs….”

He was dressed in the white robes of those who escort the dead to their final rest—the white robes of a pallbearer. The magi and the catalysts who heard his words that day knew that they went forward without hope, even as he had gone forward into Beyond.

“You are fighting an enemy who is not of this world. You are fighting an enemy who is Dead, an enemy who can deal death with the swiftness of a lightning bolt. Your only advantage is your Life. Use it wisely, for when it is gone you will be at their mercy.”

When Joram’s voice ceased, there were no cheers. Silence shrouded the magi, silence broken only by the hissing of the light beams cutting through the ice and the fearsome
rumblings of the creatures of iron. When the magi went forth into battle, they went in silence.

According to Joram’s orders, the wall of ice came down. Spells had to be cast, and the wall was draining the Life from the magi and their catalysts. Each warlock, witch, and wizard from that point on was responsible for his or her own means of protection from the deadly light beams.

Acting on Joram’s advice, some became invisible. Though this would not protect them from death should a beam strike them, he said, they were not obvious targets and they could sneak up upon the enemy unobserved. Others protected themselves from the heat-seeking “eyes” of the monsters by surrounding themselves with their own ice walls or causing their body temperatures to drop drastically. Still others turned themselves into were-animals, fearsome beasts who attacked their prey before the victims knew what was upon them.

As in the ancient days, catalysts were changed into familiars—small animals who traveled with the magi, able to hide easily in bushes or the limbs of trees or beneath rocks.

Using the Corridors that Prince Garald forced the
Thon-li
to open, the magi took the field, dividing up, spreading out, fighting in small groups. There had not been time to plan complex strategy. Joram ordered hit-and-run tactics designed to confuse the enemy and keep him off-guard. Once on the field of battle, he and Prince Garald traveled the Corridors, going from group to group, advising them on the best means of fighting.

Joram showed the
Duuk-tsarith
how to cast lightning so that it would kill the creatures of iron, not strike their iron scales harmlessly as it had done before.

“See that part of the creature where the head is attached to the body? Like the soft underbelly of the dragon, that is the place where it is most vulnerable. Cast the lightning bolts there, not against the scales.”

The warlocks did so and were astounded to see the creatures of iron explode, catch fire, and burn.

“Use the Green Venom spell,” Joram counseled the witch “The creatures have a vulnerable spot on top of their heads. Cover that with the poisonous liquid and watch.”

Though this seemed absurd—after all, the poison affected living flesh, not metal—the witch did as she was ordered. A gesture of her delicate hand caused the green, burning liquid to coat the top of the creature of iron as it would coat the skin of a human victim. To her amazement, the witch saw the head of the creature burst open. Screaming in pain, the strange humans flung themselves out of it, their skin covered with the green poison that had apparently seeped through the top of the creature’s head, dripping on the humans concealed inside.

At Joram’s command, the druids sent the forest into battle. Giant oak trees with the strength born of centuries heaved themselves from the ground and lumbered forward to the attack. Catching one of the creatures of iron, their huge roots wrapped around it, cracking it like one of their own acorns. The stone shapers caused the ground to gape beneath the iron monsters, swallow them whole, then close over them, burying their enemy inside. The
Sif-Hanar
called down rain and hail upon their enemy, plunged him into night, then blinded him with daylight.

“When you fight the metal-skinned humans, remember that the metal is not skin,” Joram told his people. “It is a type of armor, such as that worn by the knights in the old House Magi tales. There are gaps in this armor—the largest between the neck and the helmet.”

Mosiah, changing into a werewolf, knocked a strange human to the ground and sank his sharp teeth into the unprotected throat. With one blow of a massive paw, a were-bear caved in a helmet. A were-tiger dug her claws through the silver skin, shredding and mauling.

“These humans know little of magic. They are frightened of it. Use their fear against them, particularly their subconscious fears, which are similar to our own,” Joram instructed.

Illusionists created gigantic tarantulas that dropped down out of the trees, their hairy legs twitching, their many-faceted red eyes burning like flame. Blades of grass turned into swaying, hissing cobras. Skeletons clutching pale swords in their bony hands rose up out of the ground.

“Call upon the creatures of
our
world to come to our aid.”

A force of centaurs was summoned. Consumed by the wild excitement of bloodlust, they attacked and killed the strange humans, then rent the bodies limb from limb and began feasting on their victims’ raw, mangled flesh.