Triumph of the Darksword (49 page)

Joram’s tears, mingling with Saryon’s, fell into the black hair that curled upon his shoulders. The two clung to each other as the storm winds blew about them more fiercely. One of the guards, with a nervous glance at the swirling clouds, moved forward to tap the catalyst respectfully on the shoulder.

“It is time for you to go. May the Almin be with you, Father,” Joram said quietly.

Saryon smiled through his tears.

“He is, my son,” he said, placing his hand over his heart. “He is.”

The Game
Of Tarok

T
arok is one of the earliest known games utilizing the tarot cards, whose appearance in Europe around the fourteenth or fifteenth century still remains shrouded in mystery. Many theories exist concerning the origin of the allegorical and mystical cards, relating them to everything from the Egyptian Book of Thoth to the Hebrew Kabbalah to roving bands of Christian dissenters who may have used the symbolic pictures on the cards to teach their lessons to an illiterate populace.

Most scholars credit gypsies with introducing the cards into Europe. Since most Europeans of the time believed—erroneously—that the gypsies came from Egypt (hence the name
gypsy)
, it is easy to see how the theory arose that the cards were Egyptian in origin, a theory that is open to debate. It is doubtful that the gypsies themselves invented the cards. They used them merely for crude forms of divination, without any apparent understanding of the cards’ complex symbolism.

The cards gained popularity in Europe despite the fact that they were frowned upon by the Church. Many of our earliest references to the tarot cards are edicts banning their use. The cards were popular among the wealthy nobility, however, and this kept them in existence. Hand-painted decks decorated with gold leaf, crushed lapis lazuli, and other substances with such exotic names as “dragon’s blood” and “mummy dust” appeared in royal courts.

It is speculated that since fortune telling was prohibited by the Church, games utilizing the cards were invented. The introduction of movable type made the cards available to the general populace, and eventually the tarot decks were soon too popular and widespread for the Church and politicians to continue fighting. Christian symbolism even came to be used on the cards, perhaps in an effort to try to make them more palatable to Church officials.

In general, the tarot decks that exist today have changed little over the past five hundred years. The tarot deck includes the twenty-two cards of the Major Arcana and the fifty-six cards of the Minor Arcana, or suit cards. The first twenty-two cards are known as trump cards, the word
trump
deriving from the Latin
triumphi
, or triumph. The word
tarot
comes from the sixteenth-century Italian term
tarocchi
, the plural of
tarocco
, which was used to refer to the Major Arcana cards and later to the entire deck.
Arcana
is a Latin word meaning mysterious or secret.
Tarot
is the French derivative of
tarocchi
, and it was this term for the cards that became popular in the English language.

Throughout the centuries, scholars have attempted to analyze the allegorical and mystical meanings of the tarot cards, particularly those of the Major Arcana. Beginning with the first card (numbered either 0 or 22), known as the Fool card, the deck also includes cards picturing the Magician, the Sun, the Moon, Death, the Hermit, the Hanged Man, the Lightning-Struck Tower, the Devil, and the World, among others.

A favorite theory concerning the allegorical meaning of the tarot is that the cards represent the Fool’s (man’s) journey through life. The Fool is generally represented as a youth walking heedlessly along the edge of a cliff. His eyes are on the sun; he is not watching where he is going and appears to
be in imminent danger of falling. A small dog (man’s base, physical nature) barking at his feet appears to be either trying to warn the Fool away from the cliffs edge or drive him over. The people the Fool meets—such as the Magician, the Hermit—and the experiences he undergoes in his journey through life will provide him with the self-understanding he must acquire in older to complete his journey successfully.

Our fascination with the cards and our enjoyment of the games that were developed using them continues to this day. Most modern card games use a revised version of the tarot deck, retaining almost all the cards of the Minor Arana, or the suit cards, plus the joker, or the Fool card. Among the Minor Arcana are the court cards: kings, queens, knights, and pages, plus cards of each suit numbering from one (the ace) to ten. The suits of the early Minor Arcana were swords, cups, coins, and staves, now known as spades, hearts, diamonds, and clubs.

The game of tarok—still popular in some places in Europe—is unusual in that it retains use of the cards of the Major Arcana as well as the Minor Arcana. It can be played by two or three players, although later rules include up to four players.

There are many different versions of the rules of tarok. The following comes from
The Encyclopedia of the Tarot
by Stuart Kaplan, and was the basis for the game played by our characters. It uses the seventy-eight card deck, the dealer deals three hands of twenty-five cards each, leaving three cards facedown on the table. The players sort their hands and the dealer discards his three most useless cards, exchanging them for the three on the table.

Points are scored before play begins. The twenty-two trump cards vary in value, and points scored are determined by which trump the players hold and how many. Players then score additional points by taking “tricks”—high cards taking low cards One hundred points wins the game.

The Fool card is the lowest card in the deck. It cannot take a card of any suit, but it may be played to any suit that is led. The fascinating aspect about the Fool card as far as we are concerned is that it may be substituted to protect a card of greater value. If, for example, a king of cups is led and the
player following holds the queen of cups, that player may substitute the Fool in order to save his queen.

For those interested in learning more about the tarot cards or the game of tarok, the following are recommended reading:

The Encyclopedia of Tarot
, Volume 1, by Stuart R. Kaplan, U.S. Games Systems, Inc., New York, 1978.

A Complete Guide to the Tarot
by Eden Gray, Bantam Books, New York, 1981.

LEGACY OF THE
DARKSWORD

BY MARGARET WEIS and
TRACY HICKMAN

The premier Science Fiction and Fantasy storytellers, Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman have thrilled millions of readers with their exciting
Rose of the Prophet
series, the
Death Gate Cycle
, and especially the
Darksword
series. With the publication of LEGACY OF THE DARKSWORD they cement their position as High Fantasy’s reigning authorial team. For those who have followed the series from the beginning, and for those who have just discovered these spellbinding wordsmiths, LEGACY OF THE DARKSWORD provides a sense of magical wonder and delight. The following scene is but a small taste of the inimitable Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman.

S
aryon, now somewhere in his sixties or seventies, as reckoned by Earth time, lived very quietly in a small flat in Oxford, England. He was uncertain of the year of his birth in Thimhallan, and thus I, who write this story out for him, cannot provide his exact age. Saryon never did adapt well to the concept of Earth time relative to Thimhallan time. History has meaning only to those who are its products and time is but a means of measuring history, whether it be the history of the past moment or the history of the past billion moments.

For Saryon, as for so many of those who came to Earth from the once-magical land of Thimhallan, time began in another realm—a beautiful, wondrous, fragile bubble of a realm. Time ended when that bubble burst, when Joram pricked it with the Darksword.

Saryon had no need for measuring time anyway. The catalyst (though no longer required in the world, that is how he always termed himself) had no appointments, kept no calendar, rarely watched the evening news, met no one for lunch. I was his amanuensis, or so he was pleased to call me. I preferred the less formal term of secretary. I was sent to Saryon by command of Prince Garald.

I had been a servant in the Prince’s household and was supposed to have been Saryon’s servant, too, but this he would not allow. The only small tasks I was able to perform for him were those I could sneak in before he was aware of it or those which I wrested from him by main force.

I would have been a catalyst myself, had our people not been banished from Thimhallan. I had very little magic in me when I left that world as a child, and none at all now after living for twenty years in the world of the mundane. But I do have a gift for words and this was one reason my prince sent me to Saryon. Prince Garald deemed it essential that the story of the Darksword be told. In particular, he hoped that by reading these tales, the people of Earth would come to understand the exiled people of Thimhallan.

I wrote three books, which were immensely well received by the populace of Earth, less well received among my own kind. Who among us likes to look upon himself and see that his life was one of cruel waste and overindulgence, greed, selfishness and rapacity? I held a mirror to the people of Thimhallan. They looked into it and did not like the ugly visage that glared back at them. Instead of blaming themselves, they blamed the mirror.

My master and I had few visitors. He had decided to pursue his study of mathematics, which was one reason that he had moved from the relocation camps to Oxford, in order to be near the libraries connected with the ancient and venerable university. He did not attend classes, but had hired a tutor, who came to the flat to instruct him. When it became apparent that the teacher had nothing more to teach and that, indeed, the teacher was learning from the pupil, the tutor ceased to make regular visits, although she still dropped by occasionally for tea.

This was a calm and blessed time in Saryon’s tumultuous life, for—although he does not say so—I can see his face light when he speaks of it and I hear a sadness in his voice, as if regretting that such a peaceful existence could not have lasted until middle age faded, like comfortable jeans, into old age, from thence to peaceful eternal sleep.

That was not to be, of course, and that brings me to the evening that seems to me, looking back on it, to be the first pearl to slide off the broken string. The pearls that were days of Earth time and that would start falling faster and faster from that night on until there would be no more pearls left, only the empty string and the clasp that once held it together. And those would be tossed away, as useless.

Saryon and I were pottering about his flat late that night, putting on the teakettle, an act which always reminded him—so he was telling me—of another time when he’d picked up a teakettle and it wasn’t a teakettle. It was Simkin.

We had just finished listening to the news on the
radio. As I said, Saryon had not up until now been particularly interested in the news of what was happening on Earth, news which he always felt had little to do with him. But this news appeared, unfortunately, to have more to do with him than he or anyone else wanted and so he paid attention to it.

The war with Hch’nyv was not going well. The mysterious aliens, who had appeared so suddenly, with such deadly intent, had conquered yet another one of our colonies. Refugees, arriving back on Earth, told terrible tales of the destruction of their colony, reported innumerable casualties, and stated that the Hch’nyv had no desire to negotiate. They had, in fact, slain those sent to offer the colony’s surrender. The objective of the Hch’nyv appeared to be the annihilation and eradication of every human in the galaxy.

This was somber news. We were discussing it when I saw Saryon jump, as if he had been startled by some sudden noise, though I myself heard nothing.

“I must go to the front door,” he said. “Someone’s there.”

Saryon, who is reading the manuscript, stops me at this point to tell me, somewhat testily, that I should break here and elaborate on the story of Joram and Simkin and the Darksword or no one will understand what is to come.

I reply that if we backtrack and drag our readers along that old trail with us (a trail most have walked themselves already!) we would likely lose more than
a few along the way. I assure him that the past will unfold as we go along. I hint gently that I am a skilled journalist, with some experience in this field. I remind him that he was fairly well satisfied with the work I’d done on the first three books, and I beg him to allow me to return to this story.

Being essentially a very humble man, who finds it overwhelming that his memoirs should be considered so important that Prince Gerald had hired me to record them, Saryon readily acknowledges my skill in this field and permits me to continue.

“How odd,” Saryon continued. “I wonder who is here at this time of night?”

I wondered why they did not ring the doorbell, as any normal visitor would do. I indicated as much.

“They have rung it,” Saryon said softly. “In my mind, if not my ears. Can’t you hear it?”

I could not, but this was not surprising. Having lived most his life in Thimhallan, he was far more attuned to the mysteries of its magicks than I, who had been only five when Saryon rescued me, an orphan, from the abandoned Font.

Saryon had just lit the flame beneath the teakettle, preparatory to heating water for a bedtime tisane which we both enjoyed and which he insisted on making for me. He turned from the kettle to stare at the door and, like so many of us, instead of going immediately to answer it or to look through the window to see who was there, he stood in the kitchen in his nightshirt and slippers and wondered again aloud.

“Who could be wanting to see me at this time of night?”

Hope’s wings caused his heart to flutter. His face flushed with anticipation. I, who had served him so long, knew exactly what he was thinking.

Long ago (twenty years ago, to be precise, although I doubt if he himself had any concept of the passage of so much time), Saryon had said goodbye to two people he loved. He had neither seen nor heard from those two in all this time. He had no reason to think that he should ever hear from them again, except that Joram had promised, when they parted, that when his son was of age, he should send that son to Saryon.

Now, whenever the doorbell rang or the knocker knocked, Saryon envisioned Joram’s son standing on the doorstoop. Saryon pictured that child with his father’s long, curling black hair, but lacking, hopefully, his father’s red-black inner fire.

The demand for Saryon to go to the front door came again, this time with such a forceful intensity and impatience that I myself was aware of it—a startling sensation for me. Had the doorbell in fact been sounding, I could envision the person leaning on the button. There were lights on in the kitchen, which could be seen from the street, and whoever was out there, mentally issuing us commands, knew that Saryon and I were home.

Jolted out of his reverie by the second command, Saryon shouted, “I’m coming”, which statement had no hope of being heard through the thick door that led from the kitchen.

Retiring to his bedroom, he grabbed his flannel robe, put it on over his nightshirt. I was still dressed, having never developed a liking for nightshirts. He
walked hastily back through the kitchen, where I joined him We walked from there through the living room and out of the living room into the small entryway. He turned on the outside light, only to discover that it didn’t work.

“The bulb must have burned out,” he said, irritated. “Turn on the hall light.”

I flipped the switch. It did not work either.

Strange, that both bulbs should have chosen this time to burn out.

“I don’t like this, Master,” I signed, even as Saryon was unlocking the door, preparing to open it.

I moved to stop him, but—having been stunned by the sudden trickle of magic into my being—I was slow to react.

I had tried many times to convince Saryon that, in this dangerous world, there might be those who would do him harm, who would break into his house, rob and beat him, perhaps even murder him. Thimhallan may have had its faults, but such sordid crimes were unknown to its inhabitants, who feared centaur and giants, dragons and faeries and present revolts, not hoodlums and thugs and serial killers.

“Look through the peephole,” I admonished.

“Nonsense,” Saryon returned. “It must be Joram’s child. And how could I see him through the peephole in the dark?”

Picturing a baby in a basket on our doorstoop (he had, as I said, only the vaguest notion of time), Saryon flung open the door.

We did not find a baby. What we saw was a shadow darker than night standing on the doorstoop,
blotting out the lights of our neighbors, blotting out the light of the stars.

The shadow coalesced into a person dressed in black robes, who wore a black cowl pulled up over the head. All I could see of the person by the feeble light reflected from the kitchen far behind me were two white hands, folded correctly in front of the black robes, and two eyes, glittering.

Saryon recoiled. He pressed his hand over his heart, which had stopped fluttering, very nearly stopped altogether. Fearful memories leapt out of the darkness brought on us by the black-clothed figure. The fearful memories jumped on the catalyst.

“Duuk-tsarith!”
he cried through trembling lips.

Duuk-tsarith
, the dreaded Enforcers of the world of Thimhallan. On our first coming—under duress—to this new world, where magic was diluted, the
Duuk-tsarith
had lost almost all of their magical power. We had heard vague rumors to the effect that, over the past twenty years, they had found the means to regain what had been lost. Whether or not this was true, the
Duuk-tsarith
had lost none of their ability to terrify.

Saryon fell back into the entryway. He stumbled into me and, so I vaguely recollect, put his arm out as though he would protect me. Me! Who was supposed to protect him!

He pressed me back against the wall of the small entryway, leaving the door standing wide open, with no thought of slamming it in the visitor’s face, with no thought of denying this dread visitor entry. This was one who would not be denied. I knew that
as well as Saryon, and though I did make an attempt to put my own body in front of that of the middle-aged catalyst, I had no thought of doing battle.

The
Duuk-tsarith
glided over the threshold. With a brief gesture of his hand, he caused the door to swing silently shut behind him. He put back the cowl, revealed his face, and stared intently at Saryon for several seconds, almost as if expecting some response. Saryon was too flustered, too upset to do anything except stand on the braided rug and shiver and tremble.

The Enforcer’s gaze shifted to me, entered my soul, caught and held fast to my heart, so that I feared if I disobeyed, my beating heart would stop.

The
Duuk-tsarith
spoke. “First, I caution you both to remain silent. It is for your own protection. Do you understand?”

The words were not spoken aloud. They were fiery letters, traced across the back of my eyes.

Saryon nodded. He didn’t understand what was going on, any more than I did, but neither of us was going to argue.

“Good,” said the Enforcer “Now I am going to perform a magic spell. Do not be alarmed. It will not harm you.”

The
Duuk-tsarith
spoke inaudible words, that came to me only in whispers. Fearfully, not terribly reassured by the
Duuk-tsarith’s
promise, we stared around, waiting for the Almin knew what to happen.

Nothing happened, at least that I could see. The
Duuk-tsarith
, his finger on his lips, again to enjoin silence, led the way into the living room. We shuffled
along behind him, keeping close to each other. Once we were in the living room, the Enforcer pointed one long, white finger.

A painting hung on the wall, a painting which had been acquired along with the flat and which depicted a pastoral scene of cows in a field. From behind that painting now glowed an eerie green light.

The
Duuk-tsarith
pointed again, this time to the phone. The same green light surrounded the phone.

The
Duuk-tsarith
nodded to himself, as if he’d expected to find this phenomenon, whatever it was. He didn’t bother to explain. Once again, and this time emphatically, he silently cautioned us not to speak.

And then the
Duuk-tsarith
did a most peculiar thing. He turned left and entered the darkened living room, with the calm repose of a guest who has been invited to remove his hat and coat and stay to tea. Moving with quiet grace among the furniture, the Enforcer walked to the window, parted the curtain a minuscule crack, and looked outside.