Forging the Darksword (44 page)

“Go on!” Joram demanded harshly. Muscles in the young man’s arms twitched, the blood veins stood out beneath the brown skin as his hands gripped the edges of the table, the dark eyes flared in the candlelight.

Mesmerized by the suddenly feverish gaze of the young man, Saryon hesitantly opened a conduit to Joram … and felt nothing. The magic filled him, tingled in Saryon’s blood and his flesh. But it went nowhere. There was no pleasant rush of transference, no surge of energy between the two bodies …. Slowly the magic began to seep out of him as he stared at Joram in disbelief.

“But this is impossible,” he said, shivering uncontrollably in the chill prison cell. “I have seen you work magic …”

“Have you?” Joram asked. Letting go of the table, he stood up straight and folded his arms across his chest. “Or have you seen me do this?” With a sudden movement of his hand, he produced a rag with which he proceeded to mop up the spilled water. Clapping his hands, he made the rag disappear, an ordinary occurrence to Saryon—until he saw the young man pull the damp rag out of a cunningly concealed pocket in his shirt.

“My mother called it sleight-of-hand,” Joram said coolly, seeming to enjoy Saryon’s discomfiture. “Do you know of it?”

“I have seen it at court,” Saryon said, leaning his head on his hand. The dizziness had passed, but the aching in his temples made it difficult to think. “It is a … game ….” He gestured feebly. “Young … people play it.”

“I wondered where my mother learned it,” Joram said, shrugging. “Well, it is a game that has saved my life. Or perhaps I should say it is a game that
is
my life—all life being a game, according to Simkin.” He gazed down upon the catalyst with a sort of bitter triumph. “Now you know my secret, Catalyst. You know what no one else knows about me. You know the truth, something that even my mother couldn’t face. I am Dead. Truly Dead. No magic stirs within me at all, less than what is in a corpse, if we believe the legends of the ancient Necromancers, who were able to communicate with the souls of the dead.”

“Why have you told me?” Saryon asked through lips so stiff he was barely able to shape the words. A memory came to his aching mind, a memory of one other who had been Dead, truly Dead; one who had failed the Tests utterly as no one has failed them before or since ….

Joram leaned down again, close to him. The catalyst found himself cringing away from the touch of the young man as he would have cringed at the touch of dead flesh. No! Saryon told himself, staring at the young man in horror, his mind incapable of handling the rush of thoughts that burst over him in a crashing wave. Feeling himself drowning beneath them, the catalyst banished them, blocked them out. No. It was impossible. The child was dead. Vanya had said so.

The child was dead. The child is dead.

Seeing the catalyst’s confusion, Joram drew a little nearer.

“I tell you this, Catalyst, because it would have been only a matter of time before you found out anyway. The longer I stay here, the greater my peril. Oh”—he gestured impatiently—“there are walking Dead among us, yet they have some magic. I am different. Completely, unspeakably, horribly different! Have you any idea, Catalyst, what Blachloch and these people—yes, even the Sorcerers of the Ninth Mystery—would do to me if they found I was truly Dead?”

Saryon could not answer. He could not even comprehend what the young man was talking about. His mind had shut its doors, refusing admittance to these dark and terrifying thoughts.

“You must make a decision, Catalyst,” Joram was saying, his voice coming to Saryon as through a dark fog. “You must either take me to the Enforcers now or you will stay with me here and help me.”

“Help you?” Saryon blinked in astonishment, this statement jolting his aching brain back to reality. “Help you do what?”

“To stop Blachloch,” said Joram coolly, the half-smile shining in his dark eyes.

Tempted …

“I
regret the incident, Father, as I am certain you do,” said Blachloch in his expressionless voice. “And now that the punishment has been administered and the lesson learned, we will speak no more of it.”

The warlock sat at the wooden table in the prison. Evening’s gray and dismal light—the same color as the damp walls—came through the small window, along with a chill wind that rattled the ill-fitting casement, blowing out the candle flame and rendering the meagre fire practically worthless. Standing beside the window, Joram cast a glance at the catalyst. Though bundled in his cloak and his robes. Saryon was gray himself with the cold. Joram smiled inwardly. Clad only in his rough woolen shirt and soft doeskin breeches, the young man leaned against the wall and stared out the cracked window, ignoring both the catalyst and the warlock.

“Does this mean I can return to Andon’s?” Saryon asked, his teeth chattering.

Blachloch smoothed the thin blonde mustache upon his upper lip. “No, I am afraid not.”

“I am to be kept a prisoner, then.”

“Prisoner?” Blachloch raised an eyebrow. “There are no magical spells laid upon this house. You are free to come and to go as you choose. You have visitors. Andon was here last night. The young man”—he gestured toward Joram—“continues to work in the forge daily. With the exception of the guard, who is here for your own protection, this in no way resembles a prison.”

“You can’t expect us to live in this wretched place during the winter!” Saryon snapped. The cold must be giving the catalyst courage, Joram thought. “We’ll freeze.”

Blachloch rose to his feet, his black robes falling in soft folds about his body. “By the time winter comes, I am certain you will have proven your loyalty to me, Father, and you can move to quarters more suitable for a man of your age. Not back with Andon.” Blachloch’s black hood stirred slightly as he moved to depart. “I have often wondered if it was the old man’s influence that caused you to defy me. I have, in fact, heard some rumor to the effect that he and his people refuse to eat the food I provided.” Joram had the impression the warlock was looking at him. “Starvation is a slow and uncomfortable way to die, as is freezing to death. I trust this rumor is untrue.”

His black robes brushing the dirt floor, Blachloch came to stand beside Saryon and laid his hand upon the catalyst’s shoulder.

“Grant me Life, Father,” he said.

Glancing back, Joram saw the catalyst shudder at the touch of the thin Angers that seemed the embodiment of the biting wind. Involuntarily Saryon sought to free himself and the Angers closed over his shoulder. Bowing his head, the catalyst opened a conduit to the warlock and, suffused with magic, Blachloch vanished from sight.

Clenching his hands into fists, Saryon wrapped his arms close to his body. “The man must be stopped. What help can I give you?” he asked Joram abruptly.

Joram’s face showed no reaction to the catalyst’s question. But within himself, he was exultant. His plan was progressing. But he must proceed carefully. After all, he thought grimly, he had to lure the man into the ways of the Dark Arts. Giving Saryon one cool, appraising glance, Joram returned
to looking out the window, his arms folded across his chest as he leaned against the brick wall. “Is he gone?”

“Who?” Saryon glanced around, startled. “Blachloch?”

“The
Duuk-tsarith
have the power to make themselves invisible. Still, I would suppose you have the power to sense his presence.”

“Yes,” Saryon replied after a moment’s concentration.

“He is gone.”

Joram nodded and continued leading the unsuspecting catalyst toward darkness. “Simkin told me that you had once read some of the forbidden books about the Ninth Mystery.”

“Only one,” Saryon admitted, flushing. “And I—I just had a glimpse of it ….”

“How much do you know about the Iron Wars?”

“I have read and studied the histories—”

“Histories written by the catalysts!” Joram interrupted coldly. “I knew those histories, too, when I came here. I read the books. Oh, yes”—this in reply to a rustling sound he heard behind him—“I was raised as a child in a noble house. My mother was
Albanara.
But surely you knew that?”

“Y’s, I knew …. Where did she get the books?” Saryon asked.

“I’ve wondered,” Joram said softly, as if answering some often-asked, inner question. “She was disgraced and outcast. Did she come to her home in the night, traveling the Corridors of time and space? Did she float through the hallways she had known as a child, returning to the site of her lost youth and shattered life like a ghost doomed to haunt the place where it died?”

Joram’s face darkened. He fell silent, staring out the window.

“I’m sorry for distressing you—” Saryon began.

“Since then,” Joram interrupted coldly, “I have read other books, their information is far different from what we were taught. Always remember, Andon says, it is the winners of the war who write the histories. Did you know, for example, that during the Iron Wars, the Sorcerers developed a weapon that could absorb magic?”

“Absorb magic?” Saryon shook his head. “That’s ridiculous ….”

“Is it?” Joram turned to look at him. “Think about it, Catalyst. Think about it logically as you are so fond of doing. For every action, there is an opposite and equal reaction, isn’t that what you had said?”

“Yes, but—”

“Therefore, it stands to reason that in a world that exudes magic there must be some force that absorbs it as well. So the Sorcerers of long ago reasoned, and they were right. They found it. It exists in nature in a physical form that can be shaped and formed into objects. You don’t believe me.”

“I am sorry, young man,” said Saryon through clenched teeth. He sounded disappointed. “I gave up believing in the House Magi’s tales when I was nine.”

“Yet you believe in faeries?” Joram said, regarding the catalyst with the strange half-smile that rarely touched his lips, only the brown eyes.

“I was with Simkin,” Saryon muttered, flushing. Drawing as near the fire as possible, he hunched down over it. “When I’m around him, I’m not certain whether I believe in myself, much less anything else.”

“Yet you saw them? You talked to them?”

“Yes,” Saryon admitted grudgingly. “I saw them …”

“Now you see this.”

Joram plucked the object from the air—so it appeared—and laid it on the table before the catalyst. Picking it up, Saryon regarded the object suspiciously.

“A rock?”

“An ore. It is called darkstone.”

“It seems similar to iron, but what a strange color,” Saryon said, studying it.

“You’ve a good eye, Catalyst,” said Joram, pushing a chair over with his foot and seating himself at the table. Picking up the other small piece of rock, he studied it himself, frowning. “It has many of the same properties as iron. But it is different.” His voice grew bitter. “Vastly different, as I have reason to know. What knowledge do you have of iron, Catalyst? I wouldn’t have thought you had much to do with ores.”

“If you do not want to call me by my proper title, which is ‘Father,’ I wish you would call me by my name,” said Saryon
gently. “Perhaps that would remind you that I am a person like yourself. It is always easier to hate than it is to love, still more easy to hate a class or race of people because they are faceless and nameless. If you are going to hate me, I prefer that you do it because you hate
me
, not what I represent.”

“Keep your sermons for Mosiah,” Joram answered. “What I think of you or you of me doesn’t matter in this, does it?”

Seeing Joram’s lip curl in disdain, Saryon sighed and looked back at the small stone he held in his hand. “Yes, I studied ores,” he said. “We study all the elements of which our world is composed. It is knowledge valuable in and of itself, plus it is knowledge that is useful and necessary to those of our Order who work with the
Pron-alban
, the Stone Shapers, or the
Mon-alban
, the Alchemists.” Saryon’s brow creased in puzzlement. “But I don’t recall seeing or reading about any mineral that looked like this, particularly one with the same properties as iron.”

“That’s because all references to it were purged after the wars,” Joram said, regarding the catalyst hungrily, his hands twitching as though he would tear knowledge from the man’s heart. “Why? Because the Sorcerers used it to form weapons, weapons of tremendous power, weapons that could—”

“—absorb magic,” Saryon murmured, staring at the stone. “I’m beginning to believe you. Inside the Chamber of the Ninth Mystery, there are books scattered about the floor and stacked in piles against the walls. Books of ancient and forbidden knowledge.”

Watching the catalyst intently, Joram saw that Saryon had forgotten the chill wind that wailed mournfully through the window, that the catalyst had forgotten his own fear and discomfort and unhappiness. Joram looked into his eyes and saw there the same hunger he knew was in his own—the hunger for knowledge. The words came almost reluctantly from Saryon’s lips: “How did they do it?”

I have him, thought Joram. Once, the man came close to selling his soul for knowledge. This time I will see to it that he completes the bargain.