Forging the Darksword (20 page)

“And the Emperor refused him?”

“They draped Merilon in weeping blue again this year, didn’t they?” Dulchase asked, rubbing his hands. “Yes, the Emperor had guts enough to face up to His Holiness, even though it meant that His Holiness stalked out in a huff and now refuses to go near the Royal Court.”

“I can’t believe it,” Saryon murmured.

“Oh, that won’t last long. It’s just for show. Vanya will be the winner in the end, no doubt about it. Just wait, the next matter that comes up, the Emperor will be only too happy to give in. They’ll be reconciled, and Vanya will simply wait until next year to do it all over again.”

“I didn’t mean that,” Saryon said, glancing around uneasily and drawing Dulchase’s attention to one of the black-robed
Duuk-tsarith
, who was standing silently in the corridor, his face hidden in the depths of his cowl, his hands folded before him as was correct. Dulchase snorted again in disdain, but Saryon noticed that the Deacon crossed the corridor
to walk upon the other side. “I mean, I can’t believe the Emperor refused him.”

“It was all due to the Empress, of course.” Dulchase said, nodding knowingly and slightly lowering his voice, with a glance at the Enforcer.
“She
wanted it done, and so, of course, it was done. I tremble to think what might happen if she took it into her head to want the moon! But you should know that. You’ve been at court.”

“No, not that much,” Saryon admitted.

“In Merilon and doesn’t attend court!” Dulchase dashed Saryon an amused glance.

“Look at me,” Saryon said. Flushing, he raised his large, clumsy hands. “I don’t fit in with the rich and the beautiful. You saw what happened during the ceremony seventeen years ago, when I got the color of my robe wrong? And I don’t believe that I’ve once gotten it right since then! If the color was
Apricot Flambé
, I was
Rotting Peach.
Oh, you laugh, but it’s true. Finally I left off changing it altogether. It was easier wearing the plain, untrimmed white of my rank and calling.”

“I’ll bet
you
were a hit!” Dulchase said caustically.

“Oh, wasn’t I!” Saryon answered with a bitter smile and a shrug. “You know what they called me behind my back—Father Calculus. It was because all I could ever talk about was mathematics.” Dulchase groaned. “I know. I bored them to tears, some to invisibility. One night the Earl simply dwindled away, before my eyes. He didn’t mean to, poor man. He was frightfully embarrassed and apologized most handsomely. But he’s getting old—”

“If you only made the effort …”

“I tried, I truly did. I joined in the gossip and the revelry.” Saryon sighed. “But it proved too difficult.
I’m
getting old, I suppose. I’m asleep two hours before most people in Merilon even think about sitting down to dinner.” He glanced around him at the stone walls that glowed softly with a magical radiance. “I enjoy living in Merilon. Its beauties seem to me as new and awe-inspiring as they did on that day I first saw them, seventeen years ago. But my heart is here, Dulchase. I want to pursue my studies. I need access to material here. There’s a new formula I’m devising and I’m not quite certain
about some of the magical theorems involved. You see, it’s like this—”

Dulchase cleared his throat.

“Ah, yes. I’m sorry.” Saryon smiled. “There goes Father Calculus again. I get too enthusiastic, I know. At any rate, I was planning to make my request to return here, then I received this summons from the Bishop ….” Saryon’s face grew shadowed.

“Cheer up. Don’t look so frightened,” Dulchase said casually. “He’s probably going to offer you condolences on the death of your mother. Then, like as not, he’ll invite you back himself. You’re not like me, after all. You’ve been a good boy, always eaten your vegetables, that sort of thing. Don’t worry about anyone at court. Even as boring as you undoubtedly were, my friend, you could
never
outbore the Emperor.” Dulchase glanced sharply at Saryon’s averted face. “You
have
been eating your vegetables, haven’t you?”

“Yes, of course,” Saryon answered hastily, with an attempt to smile that was a dismal failure. “You’re right. It’s probably nothing more than that.” Glancing at Dulchase, he found the Deacon staring at him curiously. Once again, the terrible burden of guilt for his crime assailed him. Feeling completely unable to stay around the shrewd, penetrating Deacon any longer, Saryon made his rather confused goodbyes and hastened away, leaving Dulchase to stare after him with a wry grin.

“I wish I knew what rats are crawling around in
your
closet, old friend. I’m not the first to wonder why you were sent to Merilon seventeen years ago. Well, whatever it is, I wish you luck. Seventeen years might as well be seventeen minutes as far as His Holiness is concerned. Whatever you’ve done, he won’t have forgotten, nor forgiven either for that matter.” Heading back to his own duties, Dulchase shook his head with a sigh.

Leaving Dulchase, Saryon fled to the haven of the Library, where he could count on being left alone. But he did not study. Burying himself beneath a mound of parchment, well out of sight from any who might chance by, the Priest put his tonsured head in his hands, feeling as miserable as he
had when he had been summoned to Vanya’s chambers seventeen years earlier.

He had seen Bishop Vanya on numerous occasions during the past years, since the Bishop always stayed at the Abbey when visiting Merilon. But Saryon had not spoken to him since that fateful time.

It was not that the Bishop avoided him or treated him coldly. Far from it. Saryon had received a very kind, very sympathetic letter on the occasion of his mother’s death, expressing the Bishop’s deepest sympathies and assuring him that she would rest in the same tomb as his father in one of the most honored places in the Font. The Bishop even approached him during the funeral ceremonies, but Saryon, under the guise of being deeply grieved, turned away.

He was not comfortable in the Bishop’s presence. Perhaps it was because he had never truly forgiven His Holiness for condemning the small Prince to death. Perhaps it was because, whenever he looked at Vanya, Saryon could see only his own guilt. He’d been twenty-five years old when he had committed his crime. Now Saryon was forty-two, and he felt he’d lived more in these last seventeen years than he had in all those first twenty-five! What he’d told Dulchase about his life at court was only partially true. He
didn’t
fit in. They
did
consider him a crashing bore. But that wasn’t the real reason he avoided it.

The beauty and the revelry of court life was, he’d discovered, nothing but an illusion. As an example, Saryon had watched the Empress succumb, day by day, to a wasting illness that the Healers found impossible to treat. She was dying, everyone knew it. No one discussed it. Certainly not the Emperor, who never failed to comment nightly on how improved his lovely wife looked and how beneficial the spring air brought about by the
Sif-Hanar
(it had been spring a year in Merilon) was for her recovered health. Everyone in the court nodded and agreed. The magical arts of her ladies in waiting put color into the Empress’s chalk-white cheeks and changed the hues of her eyes.

“She looks radiant, Your Majesty. Only grows more beautiful, Majesty. Never seen her in such delightful spirits, have you, Highness?”

They could not, however, add flesh to the sunken face or dim the feverish luster of her gaze, and the whispers around court were, “What will he do when she dies? The line runs through the female side. Her brother is visiting, heir to the throne. Have you been introduced? Allow me. Might be wise.”

And through it all, through all the beauty and illusion, the only reality seemed to be Bishop Vanya—moving, working, lifting a finger to beckon someone here, motioning with his hand to smooth something out there, guiding, controlling, always in supreme control himself.

Yet Saryon had seen him shaken once, seventeen years ago. And he wondered, not for the first time, what it was that Vanya was keeping hidden from them. Once again, he heard the Bishop’s words, I
could give you the reason—
Then the sigh that stopped the words, then the look of stern, cold resolution.
No. You must do what I tell you without question.

A novitiate appeared before him, touching him gently on the shoulder. Saryon started. How long had the boy been standing there, unnoticed?

“Yes, Brother? What is it?”

“Forgive me for interrupting you, Father, but I have been sent to bring you to the Bishop’s quarters, whenever it is most convenient.”

“Yes. Right now will—uh—be fine.” Saryon rose to his feet with alacrity. Not even the Emperor, it was said, kept Bishop Vanya waiting.

“Father Saryon, enter, enter.” Vanya, rising to his feet, made a cordial motion with his hand. His voice was warm, though Saryon thought it seemed a bit strained, as if he were having a difficult time keeping the fires of his hospitality burning.

Starting to kneel to kiss the hem of his robes as was proper, Saryon was vividly and painfully reminded of the last occasion when he had performed this act, seventeen years earlier. Perhaps Bishop Vanya remembered as well.

“No, no, Saryon,” Vanya said pleasantly, taking the priest by the hand. “We can dispense with obsequities. Reserve
those for the public for which they are intended. This is a private,
quiet
little meeting.”

Saryon looked at the Bishop sharply, hearing more said in the tone of the words than in the words themselves.

“I am—am honored, Holiness,” Saryon began in some confusion, “to be summoned into your presence—”

“There is one here, Deacon, I would like you to meet,” continued Bishop Vanya smoothly, ignoring Saryon’s words.

Turning, startled, Saryon saw that there was another person in the room.

“This is Father Tolban, a Field Catalyst from the settlement of Walren,” said Vanya. “Father Tolban, Deacon Saryon.”

“Father Tolban.” Saryon bowed as was customary. “May the Almin’s blessing be yours.”

It was no wonder Saryon had not noticed the man upon first entering. Brown and dried and withered, the Field Catalyst disappeared into the woodwork as thoroughly as if he had grown there.

“Deacon Saryon,” Tolban mumbled, bobbing nervously, his eyes darting from Saryon to Bishop Vanya and back to Saryon again, his hands twitching and tugging at the long sleeves of his untrimmed, mud-stained, and shabby green robes.

“Please, everyone be seated,” Vanya said kindly, indicating chairs with a wave of his hand. Saryon noticed that the Field Catalyst waited a moment—to make certain he had really been included in the invitation, he supposed. This made things rather awkward, since by courtesy Saryon could not really sit down without the Field Catalyst seating himself as well. Starting to sit, he noticed that Tolban was still standing, forcing him to catch himself and stand back up, just about the same time as Tolban had finally decided it was permissible for him to sit. Seeing Saryon standing, however, the Field Catalyst leaped to his feet again, his face flushing red in embarrassment. This time, Bishop Vanya intervened, repeating the invitation to be seated in a pleasant but firm tone.

Saryon sank into a chair, relieved. He’d had visions of jumping around most of the afternoon.

After inquiring if anyone cared for refreshment—which they didn’t—and some further polite talk about the difficulties of spring planting and the prospects for this year’s harvest, all of which were answered weakly and somewhat confusedly by the obviously nervous Field Catalyst, Bishop Vanya finally came to the point.

“Father Tolban has quite an unusual story to relate, Deacon Saryon,” he said, still in his same pleasant voice, as if they were three friends indulging in idle talk. Saryon’s tension eased a bit, but his mystification increased. Why had he been called to Vanya’s private chambers—a place he had not set foot in for seventeen years—to listen to a Field Catalyst relate a story? He looked at Vanya sharply, only to find the Bishop looking at him with a cool, knowing expression in his eyes.

Quickly, Saryon turned his attention to the Field Catalyst, who was drawing a deep breath as if about to plunge into icy water, now prepared to pay close attention to the little dried-up man’s words. Though Bishop Vanya’s face was smooth and placid as always, Saryon had seen a muscle twitch in the man’s jaw, just as he had seen it twitch at the ceremony for the dead Prince.

Father Tolban began his tale, and Saryon discovered that he had no need to force himself to listen. He could not have torn himself away. It was the first time he heard the story of Joram.

The catalyst experienced several emotions during the telling, emotions ranging from shock to outrage and revulsion—the normal emotions one feels upon hearing such a grim, dark revelation. But Saryon knew, too, a stomach-clenching, bone-chilling fear, a fear that spread from his bowels through his body. Shivering, he huddled deeper into his soft robes.

What am I afraid of? he asked himself. Here I am, sitting in the Bishop’s elegant chambers, listening to the halting, stumbling words of this withered old catalyst. What could possibly be wrong? Only later would Saryon recall the look in Bishop Vanya’s eyes as he listened to the story. Only later would he come to understand why he shivered in terror. As it was, he decided at the time it was nothing more than the
vicarious thrill of fear one enjoys listening to the stories of the nursery, stories of dead creatures who stalk the night ….

“And by the time the
Duuk-tsarith
arrived,” Father Tolban concluded miserably, “the young man had been gone several hours. They tracked him as far as the Outlands, until it became obvious that he had vanished in the wilderness. We could see where his trail disappeared across the borders of civilization. They also found centaur tracks. There was little they could do, and in fact, they simply assumed him lost to this world, since all know that few who venture into those lands return. That is how I reported it.”

Vanya frowned and the catalyst flushed, hanging his head. “I—I was premature, it seems, in my judgment, for now, a year later—”