“Keep moving!” The voice in my head was urgent. Then it added, in softer tones, “No, thank you.”
Saryon went to his small bedroom, where he placed the tea and the biscuits on the nightstand beside his bed. I pulled up the chair. Picking up the book, I found the place where we had left off reading last night.
Saryon climbed into bed and it was only when he was safely tucked beneath the sheets that he remembered he usually brushed his teeth at this point. He looked at me, made a motion of using a toothbrush. I shrugged my shoulders, helpless to advise or assist.
Flustered, he was about to mention it to the Enforcer, then changed his mind. Giving me another glance, he settled himself. He opened the book, and drank a sip of tea. I usually ate a biscuit, but at that moment, due to the dryness in my mouth, I couldn’t have swallowed one and I feared I would choke.
The Duuk-tsarith, watching us from the shadowed hallway, appeared satisfied. He left momentarily, returned with a chair from the kitchen, and sat down in the hall. Again came the whispered words of magic, and both Saryon and I looked about expectantly, wondering which of the pictures on the wall was going to turn green.
None did.
“I believe,” said the silent voice, “that you usually listen to music, do you not?”
Of course! Saryon had forgotten. He switched on the CD player, which was, as far as he was concerned, one of the most miraculous and wondrous devices of this technological world. Beautiful music—I recall that it was Mozart—filled the room. Saryon began to read aloud from the book Right Ho, Jeeves by P. G. Wodehouse, one of our favorite authors. We would have been quite content had not the shadowy figure been perched, like Poe’s raven, in the hall.
“It is now safe to talk,” said the Duuk-tsarith, and this time he spoke the words aloud, albeit in a low voice. He drew the cowl back from his face. “But keep your voice down. I have deactivated the devices of the D’karn-kair, but there may be others present of which I am not aware.”
Now that we could talk, all the questions which had been crowding my mind fled. Not that I could have spoken them myself, but I could have let my master speak for me. I could see that Saryon was in much the same state.
He could only munch his biscuit, sip his tea, and stare. The face of the Duuk-tsarith was in the direct light and Saryon seemed to find something vaguely familiar about the man. Saryon would later tell me that he did not experience the sensation of overwhelming dread one usually feels in the presence of the Enforcers. Indeed, he felt a small thrill of pleasure at the sight of the man and, if he could only have remembered who he was, knew that he would be glad to see him.
“I’m sorry, sir.” Saryon faltered. “I know that I know you, but between age and failing eyesight …”
The man smiled.
“I am Mosiah,” he said.
CHAPTER TWO
One by one, after each had been coldly rebuffed by the strange, dark-haired child, the other children let Joram severely alone. But there was one among them who persisted in his attempts to be friendly. This was Mosiah.
THE DARKSWORD
I believe that Saryon would have exclaimed aloud in astonishment and pleasure, but he remembered in time the injunction to keep our voices down. He started to rise from his bed to go enfold his old friend in a fond embrace, but the Duuk-tsarith shook his head and motioned with his hand that Saryon was to remain where he was. Although the bedroom shades were drawn, the light was visible from outside and so was the catalyst’s silhouette.
Saryon could only stammer, “Mosiah … I can’t … I’m so sorry, my dear boy … twenty years … I’m getting old, you see, and my memory … not to mention my eyesight …”
“Don’t apologize, Father,” Mosiah said, falling back on the old form of address, though it was hardly applicable now. “I have changed a lot, over the years. It is small wonder you did not recognize me.”
“Indeed you have changed,” said Saryon gravely, with a sorrowful glance at the black clothing of the Enforcer which Mosiah wore.
Mosiah seemed surprised. “I thought perhaps you might have heard that I had become one of the Duuk-tsarith. Prince Garald knew.”
“We rarely speak, the Prince and I,” said Saryon apologetically. “He felt it was best, for my own safety, or so he was kind enough to say. Remaining in contact with me would have damaged him politically. I could see that clearly. It was the main reason I left the relocation camp.”
And now it was Mosiah who looked sadly upon Saryon, and the catalyst who was stricken with confusion and guilt.
“I … deemed it was best,” Saryon said, flushing. “There were those who looked at me … if they didn’t blame me, I brought back memories… .” His voice died away to silence.
“There are those who say you abandoned them in return for favors,” Mosiah said.
I could no longer contain myself. I made a quick and violent gesture with my hand, to negate these cruel words, for I could tell that they wounded my master.
Mosiah looked wonderingly at me, not so much in astonishment that I did not speak—for he, as an Enforcer, must already know everything there was to know about me, including the fact that I was a mute—but that I was so quick to defend Saryon.
“This is Reuven,” said Saryon, introducing me.
Mosiah nodded. As I said, he must have known all about me.
“He is your secretary,” Mosiah said.
“That is what he has me call him,” Saryon said, glancing in my direction with a fond smile. “Though it has always seemed to me that ‘son’ would be the more appropriate term.”
I felt my skin burn with pleasure, but I only shook my head. He was dear as a father to me, the Almin knows, but I would never take such a liberty.
“He is mute,” Saryon continued, explaining my affliction without embarrassment.
Nor did I feel any embarrassment myself. The handicap which one has had a lifetime seems more normal than not. As I had foreseen, Mosiah had advance knowledge of this, as his next words proved.
“Reuven was only a small child when the Shattering”—the term the people of Thimhallan now use for the destruction of their way of life—”occurred. He was left an orphan. Whatever happened to him was so traumatizing that it bereft him of speech. You found him, critically ill and alone in the abandoned Font. He was brought up in the household of Prince Garald, educated in the relocation camp, and sent to you by the Prince to record the story of the Darksword. I read it,” Mosiah added, with a polite smile for me. “It was accurate, as far as it went.”
I am used to receiving mixed compliments for my work, and therefore I made no reply. It is never dignified to defend one’s creative endeavors. And I made allowances for the fact that Mosiah had been one of the central participants.
“As for my leaving the relocation camp,” Saryon said, continuing the earlier conversation, “I did what I thought was best for everyone.”
His hand holding the teacup began to shake. I rose, went to him, and removed the cup, placing it on the nightstand.
“This house is quite nice,” said Mosiah, glancing around, somewhat coldly. “Your work in the field of mathematics and Reuven’s work in literature have made you a comfortable living. Our people in the relocation camps don’t live as well as this—”
“They could if they wanted to,” Saryon said, with a flash of the old spirit.
Knowing him as I do, and knowing his history, I guessed that this must be the same driving spirit which led him to seek out the forbidden books in the Font library. The same spirit that helped Joram forge the Darksword. The same spirit that faced the Turning with such courage and kept his soul alive, though his flesh had been changed to rock.
“No barbed wire surrounds those camps,” Saryon said, speaking with increasing passion. “The guards at the gates were placed there when we first came to keep out the curious, not to prevent our people from leaving. Those guards should have been gone long ago, but our people begged for them to stay. Every person in the camp co
uld have entered into this new world and found his or her place.
“But do they? No! They cling to some hopeless dream of returning to Thimhallan, of going back there to find—what? A land that is dead and blasted. Thimhallan has not changed since we left. It will not change, no matter how much we wish for it. The magic is gone!” Saryon’s voice was soft and aching and thrilling. “It is gone and we should accept that and go on.”
“The people of Earth do not like us,” said Mosiah.
“They like me!” Saryon said crisply. “Of course, they don’t like you. You refuse to mingle with the ‘mundane,’ as you call them, although many of them have as much magic in their bodies as you do in yours. Still, you shun them and isolate yourselves from them and it is no wonder they look upon you with distrust and suspicion. It was this same pride and arrogance which brought about the collapse of our world and put us into those relocation camps, and it is our pride and arrogance which keep us there!”
Mosiah would have spoken, I think, but he could not do so without raising his voice to interrupt my master, who, now conversing on his pet topic, was on his soapbox—a quaint term used by the natives of this world.
Indeed, Mosiah appeared moved by this speech. He did not reply, at first, but remained seated in thought a short space of time.
“What you say is true, Father,” he said. “Or, rather, it was true at the beginning. We should have left the camp, gone forth into the world. But it was not pride which kept us behind those barricades. It was fear. Such a strange and terrifying world! Oh, admittedly, the Earthers brought in their sociologists and their psychologists, their counselors and teachers to try to help us ‘fit in.’ But I am afraid that they did more harm than good. The more they showed us of the wonders of this world, the more our people shrank away from them.
“Pride, yes, we had our share,” he continued. “And not misplaced. Our world was beautiful. There was good in it.” Mosiah leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees, gazing earnestly at Saryon. “The Earthers could not believe in it, Father. Even the soldiers who had been there had difficulty believing what they had seen with their own eyes! On their return, they were ridiculed, and so they began to doubt their own senses, saying that we drugged them, made them see things that weren’t there.”
Mosiah shrugged. “The ‘ologists’ were kind and they tried to understand, but it was beyond their capacity to do so. Such an alien existence to them! When they looked at a young woman of twenty, to all appearances healthy and normal—by their standards—who did nothing all day but lie in bed, they could not understand what was wrong with her. When they were told that she was lying in bed because she was accustomed to floating through the air on wings of magic, that she had never walked a step in her life and had no idea how to walk, nor any inclination to do so, now that her magic was gone, they could not believe it.
“Oh, yes, I know that they appeared to accept it on the surface. All their medical tests confirmed the fact that the girl had never walked. But deep inside, in the inner core of their being, they did not believe. It is like asking them to believe in the faeries of which you wrote in your book, Reuven.
“Do you talk to your neighbors of your visit to the faeries, Father? Have you told the woman who lives next door, who is a secretary for a real-estate broker, that you were nearly seduced by the faerie queen?”
Saryon’s face was exceedingly red. He stared down at the sheets, absently brushed away a few biscuit crumbs. “Of course not. It wouldn’t be fair of me to expect her to understand. Her world is so … dissimilar… .”
“Your books.” Mosiah’s penetrating gaze shifted to me. “People read them and enjoy them. But they don’t believe the stories, do they? They don’t believe that such a world ever existed or that such a person as Joram ever lived. I have even heard it suggested that you pretend to have this affliction of yours to avoid interviews, because you are afraid that you would be revealed as a fraud and a fake.”
Saryon glanced anxiously at me, for he was not aware that I had heard these accusations. He had gone to great lengths to spare me. I therefore took care to indicate that they caused me no concern, which, in truth, they did not, for so long as my work pleased one man, and that my master, I cared nothing for what others thought.
“And herein was created a strange dichotomy,” said Mosiah. “They do not believe us, they do not understand us, and yet they are afraid of us. They are afraid that we will regain powers they do not believe we possessed in the first place. They try to prove to themselves and to us that such power never existed. What they fear, they destroy. Or try to.”
An uncomfortable silence fell between us. Saryon blinked and attempted to stifle a yawn.
“It is your normal time to retire,” Mosiah said, suddenly coming back to the present. “Do so. Keep to your routine.”
It was my custom to bid my master good night and go to my room, to spend some time writing before I, too, went to bed. I did so, going upstairs and turning on the light. Then I crept back down the stairs in the darkness. Mosiah did not look particularly pleased to see me, but I think he knew that nothing short of my death would keep me from my master’s side.
Saryon’s room was now dark. We sat in the darkness, which was not, after all, very dark, due a street lamp right outside the window. Mosiah drew his chair closer to Saryon’s bed. The CD player remained on, for it was Saryon’s habit to fall asleep to music. It was much past his usual hour for retiring, but he stubbornly refused to admit he was tired. Curiosity kept him awake and fighting his body’s need for rest. I know because I felt the same.
“Forgive me, Father,” said Mosiah at last. “I did not mean to be drawn down that old road, which, in truth, has long been overgrown with weeds and now leads nowhere. Twenty years have passed. That young girl of twenty is now a matron of forty. She learned to walk, learned to do for herself what had previously been done for her by magic. She learned to live in this world. Perhaps she has even come to believe something of what the mundanes tell her. Thimhallan is nothing but a charming memory to her, a world more real in her dreams than in her waking life. And if, at first, she chose to cling to the hope that she would return to that enchanted world of such miraculous beauty, who can blame her?”
“A world of beauty, yes,” said Saryon, “but there was ugliness there, too. Ugliness made more hideous by being denied.”
“The ugliness was in the hearts of men and women, was it not, Father?” Mosiah asked. “Not in the world itself.”
“True, very true,” Saryon said, and he sighed.
“And the ugliness lives still,” Mosiah continued, and there came a change in his tone, a tension, which caused both my master and me to glance at each other and brace ourselves, for we each felt that a blow was coming.
“You have not been back to the camps for many years,” Mosiah said abruptly.
Saryon shook his head.
“You have not been in contact with Prince Garald or anyone else? You truly know nothing of what has been going on with our people?”
Saryon looked ashamed, but he was forced to shake his head. At that moment I would have given all I own to be able to talk, for it seemed to me that there was accusation in Mosiah’s tone, and I would have spoken most vehemently in my master’s defense. As it was, Saryon heard me stir in restless anger. He set his hand on mine and patted it gently, counseling patience.
Mosiah was silent, wondering, perhaps, how to begin. At length he said, “You maintain that our people could leave the camps of their own free will, as you did. In the beginning, that might have been true. It is not true now.
“The guards of the mundane left us years ago. To give them credit, they fought to protect us, as they were ordered, but they were not equal to the task. After several had died and more had deserted, the army pulled out. The guards of the mundane were replaced—by our own.”
“Fought against whom? Who attacked you? I’ve heard nothing of this!” Saryon protested. “Forgive me for doubting you, Mosiah, bu
t surely, if such dreadful things were happening, journalists from all over the world would have descended on the camp.”
“They did, Father. The Khandic Sages spoke to them. The journalists believed the lie—they could not help themselves, for the Khandic Sages coat all their bitter lies with the sweet honey of their magic.”
“Khandic Sages! Who are they?” Saryon was bewildered, shocked beyond coherent speech. “And Prince Garald … How could he … He would have never allowed …”
“Prince Garald is a prisoner, held hostage by his love for his people.”
“A prisoner!” Saryon gaped. “Of … of the mundanes?”
“No, not of the mundanes. And not of us Enforcers, either,” Mosiah added, with another slight smile, “for I see that question in your mind.”
“Then of whom? Or what?” Saryon asked.
“They call themselves T’kon-Duuk. In the language of the mundanes—Technomancers. They give Life to that which is Dead. Most horribly”—Mosiah’s voice lowered—”they draw Life from that which is dead. The power of their magic does not come from living things, as was true in Thimhallan, but from the death of the living. Do you remember the man who called himself Menju the Sorcerer? The man who sought to murder Joram?”
Saryon shuddered. “Yes,” he said in a low voice.
“He was one of them. I know them well,” Mosiah added. “I used to be one of them myself.”
Saryon stared aghast, unable to speak. It was left to me—the mute—to communicate. I made a gesture, pointing from Mosiah to Saryon and myself, asking in dumb show why Mosiah had come to us with this information now, at this time, and what this all had to do with us. And either he understood my gesture or he read the question in my mind.
“I have come,” he said, “because they are coming. Their leader, a Khandic Sage known as Kevon Smythe, is coming tomorrow to talk to you, Father. The Duuk-tsarith chose me to warn you, knowing that I am the only one of that order you would trust.”
Legacy of the Darksword Page 2
