Forging the Darksword (48 page)

Behind him, Joram dragged the heavy door shut again, then hurried to his work. Standing in the forge, relaxing in the warmth, Saryon stared around in the fascination he could no longer deny. Strange tools gleamed in the reflected glow of the coals that burned brighter as Joram, operating the bellows, gave them life. The children born of this fiery union cluttered the floor—horseshoes, bits, broken nails, half-finished knives, iron pots. Absorbed in his work, Joram paid no attention to the catalyst. Sitting down, careful to keep out of the young man’s way, Saryon listened to the harsh breath of the bellows and realized suddenly that he could no longer hear the wind.

The storm raged still, its fury increasing, perhaps, in its triumph at its victory over the catalyst. The wind roared through the streets, tore limbs from trees, tiles from roofs.
Rain knocked threateningly at every door, sleet tapped against the windows. Those inside the large brick dwelling upon the hill overlooking the Technologists’ settlement were able to ignore the storm, however. Absorbed in the intricacies of their games—and there was more than one game being played—they paid scant attention to the vagaries of nature without, being far more concerned with those within.

“Queen of Cups, high trump card. That takes your Knight, Simkin, and the next two tricks are mine, I believe.” Blachloch laid a card upon the table and, sitting back, stared at Simkin expectantly. “How are our prisoners getting along?” the warlock asked casually.

Looking at the card before him in some consternation, Simkin regarded his hand thoughtfully. “Plotting against you, O Winning One,” he said with a shrug.

“Ah”—Blachloch smiled slightly, rubbing the tip of his finger along his blond mustache—“I guessed as much. What are they plotting?”

“Doing you in, that sort of thing,” Simkin replied. Looking up at Blachloch with a sweet smile, he laid a card down upon the warlock’s queen. “I’ll sacrifice this to protect my Knight.”

Blachloch’s expressionless face tightened. The lips compressed, drawing the mustache into a straight, thin line. “The Fool! That card has been played!”

“Oh, no, dear boy,” said Simkin with a yawn. “You must be mistaken—”

“I am never mistaken,” Blachloch retorted coldly. “I have followed the fall of the cards with the utmost attention. The Fool has been played, I tell you. Drumlor sacrificed it to protect his King …” The warlock looked at his henchman for confirmation.

“Y-yes,” stammered Drumlor. “I—I … That is—”

Having been invited to play simply so there would be three, Drumlor had neither love for nor interest in the game. Like many of the other guards, Blachloch had taught him to play in order that the warlock would have someone with which to game. These nights were nerve-racking experiences to poor Drumlor, who barely remembered the last card he had played, much less a card ten tricks earlier.

“Really, Blachloch, the only Fool this imbecile remembers is the one he saw this morning when he looked into the mirror. I say, if you’re going to get into a snit, go back through the tricks! It doesn’t matter anyway”—Simkin tossed his cards on the table—“you have defeated me. You always do.”

“It isn’t the winning,” Blachloch remarked, turning over Simkin’s cards and sorting through them, “it is the game itself—the calculating, the strategy, the ability to outwit your opponent. You should know that, Simkin. You and I play the game for the sake of the game, do we not, my friend?”

“I assure you, dear fellow,” said Simkin languidly, leaning back in his chair, “the game is the only reason I continue to exist on this wretched patch of grass and gravel we call a world. Without it, life would be so boring one might as well curl up into a ball and drop oneself into the river.”

“I will save you the trouble one day, Simkin,” Blachloch said mildly, sorting back through the tricks, flipping the cards over with skilled, rapid motions of his slender hands. “I do not tolerate those who mistakenly believe they can outwit me.” With a flick of his wrist, the warlock tossed a card in front of Simkin. There were now two Fool cards upon the table.

“It isn’t
my
fault,” said Simkin in aggrieved tones. “It’s your deck, after all. I shouldn’t wonder if
you
weren’t trying to cheat
me
,” The young man sniffed and the orange silk appeared in his hand. Delicately, Simkin wiped his nose. “Frightful night out there. I think I have caught cold.”

An unusually strong gust of wind hit the house, causing timbers to creak. From somewhere nearby came a crash, a tree limb breaking off and falling to the ground. Shuffling the cards, Blachloch glanced out the window. His gaze suddenly became fixed.

“There’s a light in the forge.”

“Oh, that,” said Drumlor, starting. He had been nodding off to sleep, his body slowly sliding out of his chair to Simkin’s infinite amusement. Catching himself, the man struggled upright. “The smith’s got some men … workin’ late.”

“Indeed,” said Blachloch. Stacking cards neatly, he slid them across to Simkin. “Your deal. And remember, I am watching. Which of the men is working?”

“Joram,” said Simkin, sliding the cards over to Drumlor to cut.

A muscle twitched in Blachloch’s cheek, the eyes narrowed. The hand that had been negligently lying upon the table tensed, the fingers curling in upon each other slightly. “Joram?” he repeated.

“Joram. An inauspicious gameplayer, by the way,” Simkin said, yawning. “Too impatient. Quite often he can be inveigled into playing his trump cards early on, instead of holding them until later in the game, when they’ll do him more good.”

Preparing to deal, Simkin’s attention was on Blachloch’s face, not the cards.

“What about the catalyst?” Blachloch asked, gazing out the window at the red spot of flame in the cavern that winked on and off, obscured by the driving rain and sleet.

“A much more skilled player, though you might not think so to look at him,” Simkin replied softly, absently shuffling the cards again. “Saryon plays by the book, my friend.” A smile lingered upon Simkin’s lips. “I say, let’s not play anymore. I begin to find this game deadly dull.”

Drumlor cast Simkin a look of profound gratitude.

“I’ll tell your fortune instead, shall I?” the young man asked Blachloch nonchalantly.

“You know I don’t believe in that—” Turning from the window, Blachloch caught a glimpse of Simkin’s face. “Very well,” he said abruptly.

The wind rose again. Rain tried to enter by the chimney, hissed as it fell into the fire. Sitting back into his chair, Drumlor crossed his hands over his belly and drifted off to sleep. Simkin handed the cards to Blachloch.

“Cut them …”

“Skip that nonsense,” the warlock replied coldly. “Get on with it.”

Shrugging, Simkin took the cards back.

“The first card is your past,” he said, turning it over. A figure in a miter sat upon a throne between two pillars. “The High Priest.” Simkin raised an eyebrow. “Now, that’s a bit strange …”

“Continue.”

Shrugging, Simkin turned over the second card. “This is your present. The Magus Reversed. Someone who’s magic but isn’t …”

“I’ll interpret them for myself,” Blachloch said, his eyes on the cards.

“Future”—Simkin turned over the third card—“King of Swords.”

Blachloch smiled.

The Forging of the Darksword

“W
hat a strange color it burns,” Saryon murmured. “Iron glows red. This is white. I wonder why? The difference in properties, undoubtedly. How I wish I could study it—Now, be careful. Measure it precisely. There.” He scarcely breathed, lest even that should cause Joram to slip and pour too much of the molten liquid.

“This doesn’t seem enough,” Joram remarked, frowning.

“No more!” Saryon said urgently, his hand darting forward to stop the young man. “Add no more!”

“I’m not,” Joram replied coldly, lifting the crucible and setting it aside.

The catalyst felt he could breathe again. “Now you must—”

“This part I know,” Joram interrupted. “This is my craft.” He poured the fiery liquid into a large mold made of clay, held in place by wooden boards.

Looking at it, Saryon swallowed nervously. His mouth was dry, tasting of iron, and he thirstily drank a cup of water.
The heat in the forge was stifling. His robes were black with soot and wet with sweat. Joram’s body glistened in the firelight. Held back by a leather band around his forehead, his black hair curled tightly around his face. Watching the young man as he worked, Saryon felt that tug upon his memory, a sliver of pain as sharp as a thorn.

He had seen hair like that, admired it. It had been long ago in … in … The memory was almost there, then it was gone. He sought for it again but it would not return and remained lost in the leaves of musty books, buried beneath figures and equations.

“Why are you staring at me? How long is the cooling period?”

Saryon came back to the present with a start. “I—I’m sorry,” he said. “My thoughts were … far away. What did you ask?”

“The cooling …”

“Oh, yes. Thirty minutes.” Rising stiffly to his feet, he suddenly realized he had not moved for an hour, and decided to see if it was still storming. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Joram reach for a timekeeping device, and it was a mark of Saryon’s abstraction that he gave it no more than a glance, although, when he had first seen what Andon called an “hourglass,” he had been lost in fascination at its remarkable simplicity.

He felt the cold before he even neared the cavern entrance. Bitter as it had been before, it was worse now, contrasted with the warmth of the forge. Once again, Saryon could hear the howling of the wind but it sounded distant, as though the beast were chained outside, wailing to get in.

Shaking his head, Saryon hastily returned to the forge, where Joram was busy cleaning up all traces of their strange work.

“How much darkstone exists?” the catalyst asked, watching Joram carefully brush the fine grains of the pulverized ore into a small pouch.

“I don’t know. I found these few rocks in the abandoned mines below Andon’s house. According to what I read in the texts, there was a large deposit of the ore located around here. Of course, that’s why the Technologists came to this place after the war. They planned to forge their weapons
anew, return, and take their revenge on those who persecuted them.”

Saryon felt the accusing, penetrating gaze of the dark eyes, but he did not flinch before it. From what he had seen in the books, the members of his Order had been right in banishing this Dark Art and suppressing this dangerous knowledge. “Why didn’t they?” he asked.

“They had too many other things to worry about,” Joram muttered, “such as staying alive. Fighting off the centaurs and the other mutated creatures created and then abandoned by the War Masters. Then there was hunger, sickness. The few catalysts who had come with them died, leaving no heirs behind. Soon, all the people cared about was survival. They stopped keeping records. What for? Their children could not read. They didn’t have time to teach them—the fight to live was too desperate. Eventually, even the memories and the old skills died, and with them died the idea of going back and seeking their revenge. All that remain are the chants of the Scianc and a few rocks.”

“But the chants carry the tradition, surely they could have been used to carry on the knowledge,” Saryon argued mildly. “What if you are wrong, Joram? What if these people realized the horror they had come near bringing upon the world and chose to deliberately suppress it themselves?”

“Bah!” Joram snorted, turning around from where he had hidden the crucible in the refuse pile. “The chants preserve the key to the knowledge. It was the only way the wise could hope to pass it on, when they saw the darkness of ignorance beginning to close in around them. And that is what refutes your sanctimonious theory, Catalyst. There
are
clues in the litanies to those who truly listen to them. That is where I got the idea of searching in the books. To the Sorcerers”—he gestured out beyond the cavern walls at the settlement—“the chants are nothing but mystical words, words of magic and power maybe, but, when you get right down to it, only words.”

Saryon shook his head, unconvinced. “Surely there would have been those before now who recognized that.”

“There have been,” Joram said, the half-smile burning deep in his dark eyes. “Andon, for one. Blachloch for another. The old man knew the clues were there, he knew they
led to the books that had been so carefully preserved.” Joram shrugged. “But he couldn’t read. Ask him sometime, Saryon, about the bitter frustration that gnawed at him. Hear him tell about going down into the mine shaft and staring at the books, cursing them even, in helpless fury, because he knew that in them was the knowledge to help his people, more precious than the treasure of the Emperor, and just as impossible to acquire—to those without the key.”

Joram spoke with a low, passionate intensity Saryon found quite remarkable in the usually reticent, sullen young man. When Joram mentioned the key, his hand closed over some unseen object, his eyes flamed with a feverish excitement. The catalyst stirred uncomfortably. Yes, now he had the key, the key to the treasury. And Saryon himself had shown him how it fit the lock.