Triumph of the Darksword (35 page)

Though the outside world was dark and slumbering, the city of Merilon burned with light. It might have been day beneath the dome—a terrible, fear-laced day whose sun was the fiery glow of the forge. The
Pron-alban
had hastily conjured up a workplace for the blacksmith. He and his sons and apprentices like Mosiah worked to repair weapons damaged in the previous battle or create new ones. Though many in Merilon looked with horror upon the Sorcerers, practicing their Dark Art of Technology, the citizens swallowed their fears and did what they could to assist.

The
Theldara
tended the injured, buried the dead, and hastily began working on enlarging both the Houses of Healing and the Burial Catacombs. The druids knew that, by the rising of the moon tomorrow night, they would need many more beds … and graves.

City Below was thronged with people: War Masters arriving continually from all over Thimhallan, catalysts coming
from the Font, refugees pouring in from the Outland, fleeing the nameless terror. The streets were so crowded it was difficult to either fly or walk. University students filled the cafes and taverns, singing martial songs and thirsting for the glories of battle. Moving through the crowd, the
Duuk-tsarith
walked the streets like death personified, keeping order, quelling panic, and quietly whisking away those of the students whose eagerness in practicing their spell-casting seemed likely to prove more dangerous to themselves than the enemy.

City Above was wide awake as well. Like the Field Magi, many of the nobles were also practicing for battle. Sometimes their wives, too, stood beside them. But more often the noble ladies could be found opening their large houses to the refugees or tending the injured. A Countess might be seen brewing herbal tea with her own hands. A Duchess played at Swan’s Doom with a group of peasant children, keeping them amused while their parents prepared for war.

Joram watched over everything. Everywhere he went, people greeted him with cheers He was their savior. Taking the romantic half-truths Garald had woven around the true story of Joram’s lineage, the people further embroidered it and decorated it until it was practically unrecognizable. Joram tried to protest, but the Prince silenced him.

“The people need a hero right now—a handsome king to lead them into battle with his bright and shining sword! Even Bishop Vanya doesn’t dare denounce you. What would
you
give them?” Garald asked scornfully. “A Dead man with a weapon of the Dark Arts who is going to bring about the end of the world? Win this battle. Drive the enemy from the land. Prove the Prophecy wrong?
Then
go before the people and tell them the truth, if you must.”

Joram agreed reluctantly. Surely Garald knew what was right.
I can afford honor
, the Prince had once told him.
You cannot.

No, I suppose I can’t, Joram thought. Not with the lives of thousands in my hands.

“The truth shall make you free?” he repeated to himself bitterly. “I am destined, it seems, to spend my life in shackles!”

It was nearly midnight. Joram walked by himself in the garden of Lord Samuels’s home. Leaving the city, he had come back—at Father Saryon’s insistence—to get what rest he could before the morrow.

He could have moved into the Crystal Palace. Glancing up above him, through the leaves of a myrtle tree, Joram could see the Palace hanging over him like a dark star. Its lights extinguished, it was barely visible, shining in the pale light of a new moon.

Shaking his head, Joram looked hastily away. He would never go back there. The Palace held too many bitter memories. There he had first seen his dead mother. There he had heard the story of the death of Anja’s child. There he had believed himself nameless, abandoned, unwanted.

Nameless….

“I wish to the Almin that fate had been mine!” Pausing beneath the snow-laden boughs of a drooping lilac bush, Joram leaned against it for support, ignoring the chill water that dripped from the leaves, soaking his white robes. “Better to be nameless than to have one name too many!”

Gamaliel. Reward of God. The name haunted him. The memory of his father haunted him. He could still see the old man’s eyes…. Realizing, he was shivering violently, Joram began to walk the dark paths again, trying to warm himself.

At least the rain had stopped. Several
Sif-Hanar
, arriving through the Corridors this evening from other city-states, brought an end to the deluge. A few of the nobility demanded that the magi change the weather to spring again immediately, but Prince Garald refused. The
Sif-Hanar
would be needed for the upcoming battle. They could end the rain and keep the temperature moderate in Merilon this night, but that was all. The nobles grumbled, but Joram—their new Emperor—agreed with Garald, and there was nothing the nobles could do.

But Joram supposed he could look forward to future arguments like that. He stumbled as he walked. He was tired almost to the point of exhaustion, having slept fitfully last night after the battle, troubled by dreams of two worlds, neither of which wanted him—the real him.

Nor do I want either of them, he realized wearily. Both have betrayed me. Both hold nothing for me but lies, deceit, treachery.

“I won’t be Emperor,” he said to himself in sudden resolve. “When this is ended, I’ll turn Merilon over to Prince Garald to rule. He is a good man; he will help change it to a better place.”

But would he? Could he? Good and honorable and noble as he was, the Prince was
Albanara
, those born with the magical gifts needed to rule. He was accustomed to diplomacy and compromise; he reveled in the intrigues of court. Change, if it came at all, might be long in the coming.

“I don’t care,” Joram said tiredly. “I’ll leave I’ll take Gwendolyn and Father Saryon and we’ll live quietly by ourselves someplace where it won’t matter to anyone what my name is.”

Moodily pacing the garden, hoping to wear himself out so that sleep—deep and dreamless—would claim him at last, Joram found himself walking near the house. Hearing voices, he glanced up at a window.

He stood outside a downstairs room that had been made into a bedchamber for Gwendolyn. Clad in a rose-colored nightgown with long, flowing sleeves, his wife sat in a chair at her dressing table, allowing Marie to brush out her lovely, golden hair. All the while, she talked animatedly to the dead Count and a few other deceased who had apparently joined the party.

Lord Samuels and Lady Rosamund were in their daughter’s room as well. It was the sound of their voices that had attracted Joram’s attention. They stood close to the window, talking to a person Joram recognized as the
Theldara
who had treated Father Saryon during his illness in the Samuels’s house.

Taking care that he didn’t allow any of the light shining from inside the house to fall upon him, Joram crept softly through the wet foliage and, hidden by the shadows of the dark garden, drew near the window to hear their conversation.

“There is nothing, then, you can do for her?” Lady Rosamund asked in pleading tones.

“I’m afraid not, milady,” the
Tbeldara
said bluntly. “I’ve seen madness in many forms in my life, but nothing to equal this. If it
is
madness, about which I have my doubts.”

Shaking her head, the druidess poked and picked at various packets of powders and bunches of seeds and herbs that she carried in a large wooden container that hovered obediently in the air beside her.

“What do you mean? Not madness?” Lord Samuels demanded. “Talking to dead Counts, going on about mice in the attic—”

“Madness is a state into which the subject falls whether he or she wills it or not,” said the
Theldara
, thrusting out her jaw and glaring at Lord Samuels. “Sometimes its brought on by upsets in the body’s harmonies, sometimes by upsets in the soul’s. And I tell you, milord and milady, that there is nothing wrong with your daughter. If she talks to the dead, it’s because she obviously prefers their company to that of the living. And from the way I gather some of the living have treated her, I don’t much blame her.”

Having fussed over and arranged her medicines to her satisfaction, the
Theldara
called briskly for her cloak.

“I’ve got to get back to the Houses of Healing and tend those who were wounded in that terrible battle,” she said as the servant assisted her with her wrap. “You were lucky I happened to be making another call out near here or I wouldn’t have had time to look in on this case. Too many others are dependent on me for life itself.”

“We’re very grateful, I’m sure,” said Lady Rosamund, twisting the rings on her fingers, “but I don’t understand! Surely there must be
something
you can do!”

They followed the
Theldara
to the door of Gwen’s bedchamber, and Joram, moving close to the window, was forced to press his face against the pane in order to hear the druidess’s reply. He might have spared himself the trouble, however, for the
Theldara
spoke in a loud, clear voice.

“Madam,” she said, raising a finger in the air as though it were a flagpole and she was going to hoist her words on it, “your daughter chooses to be
who
she is and
where
she is. She may live her entire life in this manner. She may decide at breakfast tomorrow that she doesn’t want to anymore. I can’t say and I can’t force her to come out of that world into one that doesn’t appear to me to be much better. Now I must get back to those who truly need me. If you want my advice,
you’ll do as your daughter says—hang up that painting of Count Whosit and buy a cat.”

The Corridor opened wide, swallowing the druidess at a gulp. Lord Samuels and his lady stared bleakly after her. Turning listlessly, they looked back into the bedchamber where Marie was endeavoring to persuade Gwen to go to bed. But Gwendolyn, blithely ignoring the catalyst, continued to talk to her unseen companions.

“My friends, you are all so agitated? I can’t understand why. You say dreadful things are going to happen tomorrow. But dreadful things are
always
happening tomorrow. I don’t see why this should make tonight any different. I will sit with you tonight, however, if you think it will help. Now, Count Devon, tell us more about the mice. Dead, you say, with no trace of blood.

“Dead mice?” Lady Rosamund laid her head on her husband’s chest. “I wish she were dead herself, poor child!”

“Hush, don’t say such a thing!” said Lord Samuels, holding his wife close.

“It’s true!” Lady Rosamund cried “What kind of life is she leading?”

His arm around his wife, Lord Samuels led her from her daughters room Marie remained with her charge, sitting in a chair near the bed. Gwen, relaxing, propped up among her pillows, chatted with the air.

Though he was chilled to the bone, Joram remained standing in the dark garden, his head pressed against the glass.

Your groom’s gift to her will be grief…

The catalyst’s words echoed mournfully in his soul. Once long ago Joram had dreamed of being a Baron. Everything would be right with his life when he had wealth and power. Now he was Emperor of Merilon. now. He had wealth, but there was nothing he wanted to buy. He had squandered the only thing he’d ever had of value. now. He had power. And he was using it to fight a war—a war that would cost countless lives.

Dead bodies lying in the scorched grass.

Tiny, furry bodies littering the attic …

My
fault!
My
doing! The Prophecy is coming to fulfillment despite everything I do! Maybe there’s nothing I
can
do to stop it! Maybe I don’t have a choice. Maybe I’m being dragged inexorably to the edge of the cliff….

“Damn You!” He swore at the dark and cheerless heavens. “Why have You done this to me?”

In despairing, bitter anger, he slammed his fist against the trunk of a young spruce tree.

“Oooof!” gasped the spruce. With a painful cry, it toppled over. Branches writhing, leaves rustling, the tree lay moaning at Joram’s feet.

I
    say!” gasped the spruce “You’ve killed me!”

The air shimmered around the tree, eventually coalescing, somewhat weakly, into the prostrate form of Simkin. Clutching his stomach, he rolled on the ground, his clothes every which way, leaves stuck in his hair and beard, the orange silk wrapped around his neck.

“Simkin! I’m sorry!” Fighting a wild desire to laugh, Joram helped the young man stagger to his feet. “Forgive me I—I didn’t know that tree … was you.”

A chuckle escaped him. Recognizing in it a note of hysteria, Joram firmly forced himself to swallow it. His lips twitched, however, as he assisted the weak-kneed, doubled-over Simkin inside the house.

“Blessed Almin!” Lady Rosamund cried, meeting them in the hallway “What has happened? Simkin? Are you all right? Oh, dear! The
Theldara’s
just left!”

Wheezing pathetically Simkin gazed at Lady Rosamund with pain-filled eyes, mouthed the word
brandy
, and fainted dead away, collapsing in a pitiful heap on the floor.