Triumph of the Darksword (39 page)

“I don’t know!” Garald snapped, moodily pacing the length of the room “Simkin’s story about Nat or Nate is obviously a lie, yet there was enough truth in it to lure Joram into believing him. And others, too, I might add.” He glanced at Lord Samuels, who stood apart from them, staring unseeing into the garden.

“If my daughter is a Necromancer, this Temple could be the only place in this world where she might find help!” Milord turned an agonized face toward the Prince. “If we go blundering in, Your Grace, we might ruin everything.”

“Or we might save their lives!” Mosiah interjected. “We could take the Corridor, Your Grace, just check to make certain everything is all right. Simkin
was
with the enemy, after all!”

“I know! I know! I know!” Garald shouted impatiently, striking his hand down upon the table “I know Simkin! I know he’d gamble away his soul, Joram’s soul, and the souls of everyone in this world for anything from a dancing chicken to a boiled potato if it caught his fancy!”

“In which case,” Cardinal Radisovik said softly, “Joram is in real danger. Perhaps, Garald, Mosiah is right….”

A black form appeared in the center of the War Room, coming upon them with the suddenness of a thunder clap. The hands of the
Duuk-tsarith were
clasped tightly before him as was proper—only they were clasped too tightly, the fingers twisting with the strain. His voice, when he spoke, was tighter still.

“Your Grace, the enemy is on the move!”

“What?” Garald demanded in astonishment. “Are they leaving?”

“No, Your Grace. They are—”

A brilliant, blinding light exploded in their eyes. The huge glass windows imploded. The room was swept by a storm of shattered crystal. Paintings fell from the walls; the walls themselves cracked and buckled. A large ceiling beam split and sagged. The walls, the ceiling, the very foundation of the house shook and trembled.

Nearby explosions completed the message that the warlock, lying dead, his body riddled by shards of glass, was unable to deliver.

Merilon was under attack.

The house of Lord Samuels gave a final shudder. The timeglass, which had withstood the initial shock wave, tumbled from the mantelpiece, the glass case breaking into a hundred glittering fragments. Free from its confines, the tiny sun rolled under the carpet. The tiny world bounced into the ashes of the fireplace.

T
he Temple of the Necromancers held an honored place in the world—it stood on the very top of the Font, the tallest mountain in Thimhallan. The foundation on which it had been built had been magically leveled, but the Temple had more the appearance of perching on a rocky crag than resting firmly on solid bedrock. This was undoubtedly due to a trick of the eye, as the saying went, enhanced by the fact that the Temple and its Garden occupied the only level ground that existed at that dizzying height.

According to legend, the Temple of the Necromancers had been raised up from the stone of the mountain by the hands of the dead themselves. The summit of the mountain formed the Temples cavelike back wall, the magically altered peak that spiraled gracefully into the clouds was the Temple’s roof. The two side walls, facing east and west, were built out from the back. Following the natural lines of the mountain, they each rose up from the tops of sheer cliffs Bishop
Vanya’s Garden—referred to in these days as the “top” of the mountain—was actually five hundred feet below.

The columned portico of the Temple, facing north, opened onto a large, circular expanse of level ground. Here, paving stones had been laid out in the shape of a wheel. Nine sidewalks formed nine spokes that led from the outer walkway to a huge altar stone in the hub of the wheel. One symbol of each of the Nine Mysteries was engraved at the end of each walkway. All nine symbols were repeated, carved into the altar stone.

This area had once been well kept. Comfortable wooden benches stood at intervals around the wheel’s hub. Between each of the nine spokes, beds of flowers had bloomed, coaxed by the hands of the druids to grow at this high altitude.

In this once lovely Garden, in this magnificent setting, people came from all over Thimhallan to counsel with, ask advice of, or merely pay a cordial visit to their dead. The Necromancers—born to the Mystery of Spirit and permitted by the Almin to dwell in both worlds, that of the living and that of the dead—acted as interpreters, carrying messages from one world to the next and back again.

The Necromancers had been a powerful Order, the most powerful in Thimhallan at the time of the Iron Wars, or so it was whispered. A word from the dead had been known to topple thrones and bring down royal houses. The
Duuk-tsarith
who feared nothing living, reportedly had trembled when they approached the Gardens of the Necromancers. There had been those, particularly among the rulers of the land, their warlocks, and their catalysts, who had looked upon this power with a jealous eye.

No one knew exactly how the Necromancers perished during the Iron Wars. It was a confused time. Countless numbers of people lost their lives during that bloody conflict. The Necromancers had always been a very small sect; few people were born to the Mystery of Spirit, and fewer still had the discipline to enable them to endure a life of death. It is easy to understand how a small group might have perished and their passing gone unnoticed.

Suffice it to say that at war’s end the catalysts announced that the Necromancers had been wiped out. The practicers of the Dark Arts, the Technologists, were blamed for the murders,
as they were blamed, for every evil that had befallen the land during the past century.

Few missed the Necromancers. The dead of the land—and there were many—had generally died bitter deaths. The living were only too happy to put their grief out of their minds and get on with living, which, in many cases, was difficult enough.

If any thought to wonder why no more children were born to the Mystery of the Spirit, they might have asked the catalysts or the
Duuk-tsarith
or the parents of children who occasionally heard voices not audible to others or talked to friends that were not there. In these instances, the children either outgrew this strange phase or, if the “phase” persisted, the children disappeared.

What Father Saryon said about the Temple was true—people
were
prohibited from setting foot on Temple grounds. But—and this is not to disparage the word of the catalyst, who was undoubtedly repeating the gossip of the Font—it was
not
true that the Temple had fallen under a curse. It was
not
true that certain powerful catalysts had tried to lift the curse and had never returned.

The truth of the matter was very simple—no one had ever bothered. The only curse the Temple of the Necromancers lay under was the curse of being forgotten.

The red robes of his disguise rustling about his ankles, Menju the Sorcerer stepped cautiously out of the Corridor onto the long neglected grounds of the Temple. The
Thon-li
who brought him here were shocked beyond measure at his traveling to this place and had earnestly tried to dissuade him. Only by stating that this was a wartime emergency had the Sorcerer been able to convince them to send him to his destination.

Their fears, however, had done nothing to bolster his confidence. His hand clasping the phaser gun kept concealed in his pocket, words of a spell for repelling the dead on his lips, Menju looked swiftly around and instantly sensed the true nature of the place. Relaxing, he breathed a sigh of relief.

Though the sun beamed from a cloudless sky, an aura of sadness and melancholy hung over the Temple like thick fog, casting an almost perceptible shadow on the broken walls
and the crumbling stone. There was an eerie stillness about the place, too; an unnatural quiet, as if countless numbers of unseen people were standing about, each holding his or her breath, waiting for something to happen.

Shivering in the still, cold mountain air, the Sorcerer put his phaser away, grinning over his fears. But it was a weak grin at best and he sat down upon one of the decaying stone benches with an unintended suddenness, resulting from his knees giving way.

What had he expected, after all? he scolded himself. Legions of howling dead, leaping, shrieking, out of the darkness to protest this trespass? Skeletal hands touching his? Figures in white winding sheets and chains stalking about, bewailing the degenerate state of his mind and promising him three ghostly visitors before morning?

“Bah! Humbug!” he said aloud and was able to laugh—with only a slight shudder—at his own little joke.

Wiping the chill sweat from his brow, Menju took a moment to regain his composure and to investigate his surroundings. He had come here purposefully early to do just this. The sun was even with his left shoulder. He had over an hour until noon.

Phaser in hand, he carefully and coolly began to examine every rock and boulder around the perimeter of the Temple grounds. He checked out his surroundings with elaborate care. Despite his immediate observation that there was no one here, Menju had the strangest impression that someone was examining
him.
Finding nothing and no one, however, he firmly banished the thought, considering it to come from the same childish source as the clanking chains and white sheets.

Leaving the cliff’s edge, the Sorcerer walked down one of the paths through the dead Garden, desiring a closer look at the altar stone. The path he selected was the one of his own Mystery—that of Technology. Whether he chose this path out of superstition, a feeling of homesickness, or because it merely suited his humor, Menju didn’t bother to analyze.

Stalks of dead plants that had not decayed in the cold, dry air of the high mountain elevation stuck up out of the frozen dirt on either side of the path. Small, dead, ornamental saplings lay with their roots in the air, having been blown over by the winter winds. The Sorcerer glanced without in
terest at the remnants of the Garden. Arriving at the altar stone, he stared at it curiously, running his fingers over the symbols of the Nine Mysteries carved into the rock. It was an unusual type of rock, he saw. Some sort of ore. Perhaps darkstone? he thought, feeling a tremor of excitement.

Examining it closely, he tried to recall legends he had heard about the altar stone. How it had been raised out of the Well of Life far below, at the base of the Font. How it had been a sort of plug in the Well and how, once the stone was removed, the magic gushed forth like magma, flowing out over the world.

That made sense, he realized suddenly. The darkstone had capped the Well! It was an exhilarating thought.

Standing at the center of the world, directly above the source of the magic, Menju could feel Life pulsing around him, surging through him. He reveled in the sensation. He couldn’t believe he had forgotten how exciting it was, possessing the magic again.

The Sorcerer studied the boulder critically. It was huge! It must stand at least seven feet tall. His arms would not even go halfway around it. It weighed—what—a ton? If it
was
darkstone, its value would be incalculable? His hand, touching it, shook with anticipation.

“Joram will know if it is darkstone or it isn’t,” the Sorcerer murmured, smiling to himself. “I must try to keep him conscious when I capture him, at least until he’s had a chance to tell me.”

Patting the altar stone fondly and longingly with his hand, the Sorcerer continued his inspection, finally reaching the Temple itself.

Nine stairs shaped out of stone led up to the porch. Nine crumbling columns supported a broken roof that jutted out from beneath the spiraling summit of the mountain. Drawing nearer, the Sorcerer saw that parts of the ceiling had collapsed beneath the weight of rock and years. Large chunks of stone littered the floor. The altar, barely seen through the shadows, appeared to have been crushed by a ceiling beam. Climbing the crumbling stairs, Menju noted with satisfaction that the darkness inside the Temple was thick and impenetrable.

Menju nodded to himself. Taking one final look around, he glanced out over the plains far to the north, to where the city of Merilon stood glittering in the sun. Squinting, he stared intently at the city, thinking he saw the glint of metal. Was it Major Boris’s tanks taking up position to bombard the magical dome? Or was it the sunlight, flashing off an icebound lake? He couldn’t be certain.

Shrugging, the Sorcerer turned away. Once he had. The Darksword, it wouldn’t matter anyway. Meanwhile Boris and his men could have their fun. It kept the Major occupied, kept him from brooding. And it would heat up the blood of the soldiers, filling them with the fear and hatred necessary to exterminate the people of this world.

The sun was high above his head. It was nearly time. Returning to his selected hiding place, Menju mulled over matters in his mind. The fighting on this world was likely to be long and costly, even with the Darksword. These people wouldn’t go to their deaths without a struggle. A pity he couldn’t use some of those depopulation bombs that killed without damaging buildings and such. Would those disrupt the magic? Possibly not. He’d have to consult the physicists. Come to think of it, Joram might know.