Forging the Darksword (49 page)

“What did you say about Blachloch?” he asked, trying to banish his uncomfortable thoughts and trying also to keep his mind from the fact that the sand in the bottom of the hourglass was accumulating rapidly.

“The first time he heard the chanting, so Andon says, he heard the clues and deduced the existence of the books. But the old man—who feared Blachloch from the beginning—refused to tell him where to find them. That must have been frustrating for the warlock.” The half-smile almost touched Joram’s lips. “A master in the art of ‘persuasion’ and he doesn’t dare use it, knowing that the entire camp would rise against him.”

“He’s biding his time, that’s all,” Saryon said softly. “He has the people so firmly in his grip now that he can take what he wants.”

Joram did not answer; his gaze was fixed on the clay box, though he glanced impatiently at the hourglass now and then. Saryon, too, fell silent, his thoughts leading him places he would just as soon not wander. The silence grew so deep that he became aware of the difference in the sound of their breathing—his somewhat rapid and shallow as opposed to Joram’s deeper, more even breaths. He began to fancy he could hear the swishing of the sand falling through the neck of the glass.

The sands ran out. Slowly, almost reluctantly, Joram rose to his feet and reached for a hammer. Grasping it in his
hands, he stood above the mold where it rested on the stone floor of the cavern, staring down at it.

“What about you?” Saryon asked suddenly. “Why did Andon show the books to you?”

Looking up at the catalyst, the dark eyes dark no longer but glowing as if their cold ore had been heated among the coals, Joram smiled—a smile of victory, triumph, a smile that touched his lips, if only with darkness. “He didn’t. Not the first time. Simkin did.”

Raising the hammer, Joram hit the clay box, shattering it at one blow. The firelight gleamed orange on his skin as he crouched over the dark object lying in the midst of broken clay and splintered wood. His hand shaking with eagerness, he cautiously reached out to pick it up.

“Careful, the heat …” warned Saryon, moving nearer to it, drawn by a fascination he refused to explain to himself or even to admit.

“It isn’t hot,” whispered Joram in awe, holding his hand above the object. “Come nearer, Saryon! Come look! See what we have created!” Forgetting his enmity in his excitement, he grasped the catalyst’s arm and dragged him closer.

What had he expected? Saryon wasn’t certain. There had been illustrations of swords in the ancient text—detailed drawings of gracefully curved blades, ornately carved handles, done with the loving remembrance of those who had once held these tools of darkness in their hands. Saryon was surprised he recalled the illustrations with such clarity, having told himself repeatedly that these
were
tools of darkness, instruments of Death. Yet now he realized, when he felt the pangs of disappointment, that he had been picturing them in his mind, secretly admiring them for their delicate efficiency. He had been eager—maybe as eager as the young man—to see if he couldn’t emulate this beauty.

They had failed. Recoiling, Saryon jerked his arm from Joram’s grasp. This thing that lay upon the stone floor was not beautiful. It was ugly. A tool of darkness, an instrument of Death, not a bright and shining blade of light.

It occurred to Saryon that centuries of craftsmanship had been behind the making of the swords portrayed in the ancient texts. Joram was a beginner, untrained, without skill, without knowledge, with no one to teach him. The sword he
had fashioned might have been wielded a thousand years before by some savage, barbaric ancestor.

It was made of a solid mass of metal—hilt and blade together, possessing neither grace nor form. The blade was straight and almost indistinguishable from the hilt. A short, blunt-edged crosspiece separated the two. The hilt was slightly rounded, to (fit the hand. Joram had added a bulbous protrusion on the end in some attempt to weight it, Saryon having reasoned that this would be necessary in order to handle the weapon effectively

The weapon was crude and ugly. Saryon might have been able to deal logically with that. But there was something more horrifying about the sword, something devilish—the rounded knob on the hilt, combined with the long neck of the hilt itself, the handle’s short, blunt arms, and the narrow body of the blade, turned the weapon into a grim parody of a human being.

The sword lay like a corpse at his feet, the personification of the catalyst’s sin.

“Destroy it!” he gasped hoarsely, and was actually stretching out his hand to take hold of it, with some wild notion of hurling it into the very heart of the blazing coals, when Joram knocked him aside.

“Are you mad?”

Losing his footing, Saryon stumbled backward into a stack of wooden forms. “No, I am sane for the first time in days,” he cried in a hollow voice, picking himself up. “Destroy it, Joram. Destroy it, or it will destroy you!”

“Going into the fortune-telling business?” snarled Joram angrily, “You’ll rival Simkin!”

“I do not need cards to see the future in that weapon,” Saryon said, pointing at it with a trembling hand. “Look at it, Joram! Look at it! You are Dead, but life beats and pulses in your veins! You care, you feel! The sword is
dead!
And it will bring only death.”

“No, Catalyst!” Joram said, his eyes as dark and cold as the blade. “For you will give it Life.”

“No.” Saryon shook his head resolutely. Gathering his robes about him, he sought for the words to argue with Joram and make him understand. But he could look at
nothing, think of nothing, but the sword lying upon the stone floor, surrounded by the refuse of its making.

“You
will give
it Life, Saryon,” Joram repeated softly, lifting the weapon clumsily in his hand. Bits of clay clung to its surface. Thin tentacles of metal, from where the molten alloy had run into small crevices within the mold, branched out from the body. “You talk very righteously of death, Catalyst. And you are right. This”—he shook the sword awkwardly, almost dropping it, its weight twisting his wrist—“is dead. It deals death. But the blade cuts both ways, Saryon. It deals life as well. It will be life for Andon and his people, to say nothing of the others out there Blachloch plans to exploit.”

“You don’t care about any of that!” Saryon accused, breathing heavily.

“Perhaps I don’t,” Joram said coldly. Straightening, tossing the curly mane of black hair back from his face, he stared at Saryon, the dark eyes expressionless. “Who does? The Emperor? Your Bishop? What about your god even? No, just you, Catalyst. And that is your misfortune, not mine. Because you care, you will do this for me.”

Saryon’s tongue clove to the roof of his mouth. Words seethed in his brain, but found no utterance. How could this young man see into the very darkness of his soul?

Seeing the catalyst’s agonized face and wide, staring eyes, Joram smiled once again, that eerie smile in which there was no light.

“You say we have brought death into the world,” he said, shrugging. “I say death was already in the world, and we have brought life.”

The sword lay upon the anvil. Joram had placed it once again into the coals, heating it until the metal was malleable. The weapon glowed red, taking on the properties of the iron in the alloy rather than the white-glowing darkstone. Now, with ringing blows of his hammer, the young man beat the edges of the blade thin. Once the weapon was tempered, he would use a stone wheel to grind the point and edges to cutting sharpness.

Saryon watched Joram work, his mind in turmoil, his eyes glazed and stinging. His head pounded with the hammer blows that jolted through his body.

Life … death … life … death … Every hammer blow, every heart beat, struck it out. Saryon had been wrong. The sword wasn’t dead, he realized now. It was alive, terribly alive, twisting and jerking, seeming to revel in every blow. The noise was unnerving, but when Joram finally cast the hammer aside, the terrible silence was louder and more painful than the hammer’s pounding. Gripping the sword firmly with long iron tongs, Joram looked grimly over at the catalyst. Hunched miserably in his robes, Saryon shivered with a chill sweat.

“Now, Catalyst,” said Joram. “Grant me Life.” He spoke in a mocking voice, imitating Blachloch.

Saryon closed his eyes, but he could still see the red fire of the forge imprinted upon the lids. It seemed his vision swam with blood. Joram’s image was there, an indistinct patch of darkness, while the weapon he held glowed a garish green. Visions appeared amidst the flame and blood—the young Deacon, dying; Andon, bound to a wooden stake, his body sagging beneath the blows; Mosiah, running, but not fast enough to shake off his pursuers.

I say death is in the world ….

Saryon hesitated. Other visions came to his mind—the Bishop carrying the tiny Prince to his death, all the children he himself sent to their deaths “for the sake of the world.”

Perhaps the world had existed only in each one of those children.

All around Saryon was stillness and silence. He could hear his own heart beating, like muffled hammer blows, and he knew that for him, the world existed now only in Mosiah, in Andon, in the children of that small farming village who had watched their homes burning. Drawing a deep breath, Saryon summoned the magic.

The catalyst felt it flow into his body, filling him with the Enchantment and, at the same time, demanding an outlet. Slowly he rose from the chair where he had been sitting and came forward to stand before Joram.

“Place the weapon on the floor before me,” Saryon tried to say, but the words were inaudible.

Obeying more by instinct than because he understood, Joram laid the weapon at the catalyst’s feet.

As he knelt for the Ritual of the Dawn, as he knelt for Evening Prayers, as he knelt before the Almin who was far away, attending services at the Font, Saryon knelt on the stone floor before the sword. Reaching out a trembling hand, he grasped hold of the hilt. His flesh shriveled as he touched it; he feared it might burn him, but the magical alloy had already grown cold and rigid. The bitter chill of the iron shot through his arm, striking a blow to his heart. But Saryon held the sword fast, exalted by a strength of spirit that overcame the weakness of the flesh.

With a soft sigh, Saryon repeated the prayer that accompanied the granting of Life and felt the magic flow from the world, through his body, into the dead hunk of man-begotten metal.

In his hand, the sword began to glow again, this time with the white radiance of the molten darkstone. Brighter and brighter it shone, appearing hot enough to melt through the very rock upon which the blade rested, but it was still cool to the touch; the catalyst still held the hilt in his hand.

He couldn’t let go! He couldn’t close the conduit he had opened to the weapon! Like a Living being, the sword sucked the magic from him, drained him dry, then used him to continue to absorb magic from all around it. Gasping for breath, feeling himself growing weaker and weaker, Saryon tried to wrench his hand free from the weapon, but he couldn’t move it.

“Joram!” he whispered, “help me!”

But Joram was staring at the sword, its cold, white glow was so bright it seemed the moon had escaped the storm clouds and come here to rule.

Fainting, Saryon sank onto the floor, his mind in a stupor as the magic surged into him, through him, and out of him with a force that was carrying his own Life force with it. Darkness closed around him even as the light grew brighter and brighter.

And then strong arms lifted him and strong hands were dragging him across the cold floor, propping him up against something he was too sick and dizzy to recognize. He could not see, a brilliant white light blinded him. Where was the a
sword? The white light was far from him, halfway across the cavern it seemed, yet it also seemed to him that he still held the cold metal in his hand and would always hold it, forever and ever.

Outside, Saryon could hear the wind again, and feel its cool breath upon his cheek. He must be lying near the cavern entrance, he thought dimly, and then the sound of the wind was swallowed by a hissing noise. Opening his eyes in horror, he saw Joram plunge the cold, burning sword into the water trough. A cloud of white, foul-smelling steam rose up around him, like a ghost fleeing its lifeless body.

Saryon closed his eyes again, his brain too weary to absorb any more. The light, the fog, Joram’s white face, everything merged together into a swirling, suffocating vortex. Nausea swept over him, his stomach clenched. He was going to be sick. Slumping down, he pressed his fevered cheek against the cold stone, longing for a breath of fresh air.

Above the hissing of the boiling, bubbling water, he heard Joram’s voice whispering an almost reverent invocation.

“The Darksword …”

Simkin’s Deal

T
he journey back from the forge through the gray of early morning was one of furtive stumbling, bone-chilling cold, and mind-numbing exhaustion. The gale had blown itself out. The wind died, the rain ceased. The only sounds in the still-sleeping town were the dripping rainwater from the eaves of the houses and the half-awake bark of some unusually dedicated house dog. But the cold was bitter. Even the prison began to seem a haven of peace and warmth to Saryon as he staggered through the strange, dark streets, supported by Joram’s arm. With him as well, the young man carried the Darksword, pressed close against his body, hidden beneath his cloak.