Forging the Darksword

by Margaret Weis

  What does it matter, thought Saryon wearily. “No, it’s all right.”

  “I’ll see you at breakfast, then. Would you care to eat your meals with me?” Father Tolban asked hesitantly. “There’s a woman, too old to work in the fields, who earns her way by doing such chores.”

  Saryon was about to reply that he wasn’t hungry and didn’t expect to be, when he suddenly took notice of Tolban’s anxious, pinched face. Something occurred to Saryon then and, remembering the pouch someone had thrust into his arms before he left the Font, he handed it to the Field Catalyst.

  “Certainly, Brother,” Saryon replied. “I would be pleased to share your table. But you must let me pay my way.”

  “Deacon … this—this is too much,” stammered Tolban, who had been eyeing the hefty sack hungrily ever since they’d arrived. The fragrant aroma of bacon and cheese filled the air.

  Saryon smiled wryly. “We might as well eat it now. I don’t believe I will be needing it where I am going, do you, Brother?”

  Flushing, Father Tolban muttered some incoherent reply and backed hurriedly out the door, leaving Saryon to stare around the dwelling. Once it might have been a relatively nice place to live, he thought bleakly. The wooden walls were polished, the branches that formed the roof gave some signs of having been skillfully mended and repaired. But its past owner had been dead a year, the dwelling allowed to fall into ruin. Apparently no one had entered it since the man’s murder; there were remnants of its former owner scattered about in the way of clothes and a few personal items. Picking these up, Saryon tossed them into the firepit, then glanced about.

  A bed, formed out of a bough of the tree, stood on one side of the small room. A crudely shaped table and several chairs huddled near the firepit. Branches formed a few shelves in the walls that had once been the tree’s trunk, and that was all. Thinking of his comfortable cell in the Font, with its down mattress, warm fire, and thick stone walls, Saryon gave the bed where the murdered man had slept a shuddering glance. Then, wrapping himself in his robes, he lay down on the floor, and gave way to despair.

  The next morning, after sharing Tolban’s meager breakfast, Saryon was introduced to the cacklings and crowings of Marm Hudspeth, who considered him a wonder sent from the Almin himself. Then the catalyst was taken outside to meet the rest of his people and to begin his duties.

  According to the part he was told to play, Saryon had been sent to the fields for some minor infraction committed against the Order, and was supposed to appear discontented and rebellious. He was not, as has been said, a very good liar.

  “I don’t know if I can play this part,” he confided to Father Tolban as they trudged through the mud toward where the Field Catalyst stood patiently in line, waiting for the morning’s Gift of Life.

  “What—being angry at the Church? Angry at the fate that brought you here? Oh, you’ll play it all right,” muttered Father Tolban gloomily, the spring wind whipping his robes about his stick-thin, dried-up body. “For all the good it will do you.”

  And so Saryon discovered. He had not been in Walren a day before he lost some of his own despairing misery in his anger at the way these people were forced to live.

  He had thought his own dwelling small and cramped until he found that entire families lived in shacks no larger. Food was plain and coarse and scarce after the harsh winter. Unlike the fortunate inhabitants of the cities where the weather is controlled, the Field Magi are subject to the whims of the varying seasons. In Merilon, surrounded by its magical dome, rain came only if the Empress decided that the sunlight had grown tiresome, snow fell only to glimmer beautifully in the moonlight on the crystal palaces. Here, on the border, there were terrible storms, the likes of which Saryon had never experienced.

  “The nobles there”—Father Tolban glanced in the direction of distant Merilon—“fear these peasants. And with good reason.” The Field Catalyst shuddered. “I saw them, the day that accursed boy murdered the overseer. I thought they were going to murder me, as well!”

  Saryon shivered, too, but it was from the cold. The winds had been blowing steadily off the mountains and, until they switched, spring was more like winter. Opening a conduit to Marm Hudspeth, Father Tolban gave the magus sufficient Life to envelop the two catalysts in a cozy globe of warmth that made Saryon feel as though he were sitting in a bubble of flame. But it didn’t help much. The cold seemingly defied magic. It had dwelt in this shack longer than mortals. Creeping from the floors and walls, it seeped up through Saryon’s feet and into his very bones. He wondered if he would ever again be warm and sometimes thought, rather bitterly, that Bishop Vanya could at least have told him he intended to torture him before his execution.

  “But if the Emperor fears rebellion, why doesn’t he improve conditions?” Saryon asked irritably, endeavoring to wrap his feet up in the skirts of his white robes. “Give these people housing, enough to eat—”

  “Enough to eat!” Tolban looked shocked. “Brother Saryon, these people are strong in magic to begin with. I’ve heard it said they’re stronger than the Altanara, the noble wizards. How could we control them if they became stronger still? Right now, they are forced to depend upon us to provide them with Life. They must use all their energy to survive. If they ever gained the means to store it up …” He shook his head, then, glancing around fearfully, he drew close to Saryon. “And there’s another reason,” he whispered. “Their children aren’t born Dead!”

  A month passed, then two. Days and nights grew warmer, and Saryon learned the work of a Field Catalyst. Rising with the dawn, never feeling as though he’d had enough sleep, he mumbled wearily through the Ritual, joined Father Tolban for a frugal breakfast, then made his way into the fields where the magi were waiting. Here, the catalyst put into practice those mathematical exercises he’d been taught from childhood. He learned to measure out Life in exact and minute degrees, since it would never do to give a Field Magus too much. He trudged the rows with them—uncaring at first. It seemed nothing could penetrate the depths of his unhappiness. Even the sight of a small seedling, springing up from the earth, was like sunlight streaming through a break in storm clouds, cheering him for only a moment, then vanishing into darkness once more.

  The catalyst had not forgotten, however, the real reason he was here. Mostly from boredom and to keep his mind off his own misery, Saryon spent the evenings talking with the people, and he had no difficulty in getting them to discuss Joram. They scarcely talked of anything else, in fact, the death of Anja and the murder of the overseer having been a high point in their lives. Over and over they related the story with relish during the brief hour they were permitted to socialize after their meager dinners.

  “Joram was a fey one,” said the father of the runaway Mosiah. “I saw him grow from a babe to a man. I lived with him in this village sixteen years, and the words he spoke to me I could count upon the fingers of this hand.”

  “How could he be among you all that time and you have no notion that he was Dead?” Saryon asked.

  They shrugged. “If he was Dead,” said a woman, with a contemptuous glance at Father Tolban. “Joram did the work, same as the rest of us. So he didn’t have Life enough in him to walk the air. Neither do you, Catalyst.” She said this with a sneer and the others laughed.

  “He were a pretty babe,” commented one.

  “And a comely man,” said another. At this Saryon saw a young girl nod so enthusiastically that she blushed red when she noticed him watching her. “Or he would have been, “the older woman added, “if he ever smiled. But he didn’t, nor laughed neither.”

  “Nor cried,” said Mosiah’s father. “Not even when he was little. I saw him take a bad spill once—Joram was always fallin’ or stumblin’ into things, seems like. Anyway, he split his head clean open. Blood ran down his face. It liked to knocked him silly for a bit. A growed man would have cried over that and not felt the least shamed. He had tears in his eyes, too. By the Almin, the lad was only eight or nine. But he gritted
his teeth and blinked them back. ‘Damn it, boy,’ I said, running over to help him, ‘let out a holler or two. I would if I’d taken a hurt like that.’ But he only gave me such a look with those brown eyes of ’is it was a wonder I warn’t turned to stone on the spot.”

  “It was his mother done it to him,” said the older woman with a sniff. “She was moonstruck, was that one. Wearin’ that fancy dress ’til it fell off her body. Fillin’ his head with stories of Merilon and how he was better than the rest of us.”

  “He had beautiful hair,” said the young girl, shyly. “And, I—I think I saw him smile … once. We were working together in the woods and I found a wild rose. He seemed so unhappy most of the time that … that I gave it to him.” The young girl looked down at her hands, flushing. “I felt sorry for him.”

  “What’d he do?” The woman snorted. “Bite your hand?”

  The others snorted derisively or snickered, causing the young girl to blush and fall silent.

  “What did he do?” Saryon asked gently.

  Glancing up at him, the girl smiled. “He didn’t take it. He acted almost like it frightened him. But he smiled at me … I think he smiled. It was more with his eyes than his lips—”

  “Foolish child,” snapped the woman, who was her mother. “Go home and finish your chores.”

  “It’s true, though,” said one of the others. “I never seen hair so thick and black on the head of any living being. But if you ask me, it were a curse, not a beauty.”

  “It was a curse,” Marm Hudspeth muttered, peering at the abandoned, tumbledown hovel that had been Joram’s home with an eager gleam in her eye. “The mother was cursed and she passed it on to her son. She chewed at him, gnawing away at his soul. She dug her nails into him and sucked his blood.”

  Mosiah’s father laughed derisively, causing Marm to glare at him. “Ye’ve little to laugh at, Jacobias,” she cried shrilly. “Yer own boy’s gone off to find him! Dead? Yes, Joram is Dead and it’s my belief Anja took the Life from him. Drew it out of his body to use in her own! Ye’ve all seen the white scars on his chest …”

  “What scars?” Saryon was about to ask. But the conversation ended abruptly when Jacobias, with a show of magical force Saryon found quite alarming considering the magus had worked a full day, angrily vanished into the air. Shaking their heads, the other Field Magi made their weary way to their shacks to get what sleep they could before daybreak found them back in the fields again.

  Returning to his own dwelling, Saryon thought about what he’d heard, beginning to form a picture of this young man in his mind. Product of a cursed and unholy alliance, raised by an insane mother, the young man was probably half crazed himself. Add to the fact that he was Dead (Father Tolban had expressed no doubt whatsoever on this point), and it was a wonder he had not murdered or committed some other brutal act before this.

  And this was the young man Saryon was supposed to go into the Outland and find?

  The priest’s bitterness increased. Anything—even the Turning to Stone—seemed better than this torture.

  Saryon’s life at this juncture was truly miserable. Accustomed as he was to spending his days in study, wrapped in the comforting, silent solitude of the libraries or his warm, secure cell, he found the life of a Field Catalyst one of bone-aching weariness, sore and swollen feet, and mind-numbing monotony. Day in and day out he and Father Tolban were in the fields, granting Life to the magi, walking along after them through the rows of wheat or corn or beets or whatever it was that grew there. Saryon never knew. It all looked the same to him.

  At night, he lay on his hard cot, every joint and muscle hurting. Though desperately tired, he could not sleep. The wild wind howled around the mean shack, whistling in through cracks and chinks that all the magic of the magi could never keep closed. Above the wild sounds of the wind, he could hear other noises—living noises—and these frightened him more than anything else. They were the noises of the beasts of the Outland, who, he was told, sometimes felt bold enough or hungry enough to approach the village in hopes of stealing food. These howls and growlings made Saryon realize that bad as this life was here, it was nothing compared to the life he had to look forward to—life in the Outland. His stomach clenched every time he thought of it, and he often began to shake uncontrollably. His only bitter comfort was the knowledge that he probably would not survive long enough to suffer.

  Four months passed thus—Saryon’s allotted time to establish himself as a renegade catalyst. He didn’t know whether he had fooled anyone or not. Supposedly sullen, rebellious, and hotheaded, Saryon generally came across as sickly and wretched. The magi were so lost in the drudgery of their own lives, however, that they didn’t pay much attention to him.

  As the day set for his departure in late summer drew near, Saryon had heard nothing from the Font, and he began to hope that perhaps Bishop Vanya might have forgotten him. Perhaps just sending me here is punishment enough, he thought. Surely one Dead young man doesn’t matter that much.

  Saryon determined that he would simply stay where he was until he heard something. Father Tolban still obviously considered himself Saryon’s inferior, and would do whatever the priest told him.

  But this was not to be.

  Sitting alone in his cabin a few nights before he was supposed to leave, Saryon was startled and alarmed to see a Corridor suddenly open before him. He knew, even before the figure materialized, who had come to visit him, and his heart sank.

  “Deacon Saryon,” the figure said as it stepped from the Corridor.

  “Bishop Vanya,” Saryon said, bowing to the floor.

  Saryon saw the Bishop glance around his poor surroundings, but, beyond a raised eyebrow, he didn’t take much notice, his attention being centered on his Priest. “Soon you begin your journey.”

  “Yes, Holiness,” Saryon replied. He was still on the floor, not so much from humility as from the fact that he simply did not believe he had the strength to rise.

  “I do not expect to hear from you for some time,” Vanya continued, standing near the Corridor’s opening—a black void of nothingness. “Your situation among these—um—Sorcerers will be delicate and it will be difficult for you make contact …”

  Especially if I am dead, Saryon thought bitterly, though he did not say it.

  “Still”—Vanya was going on—“there are ways we have of communicating with those far distant. I will not elaborate, but do not be startled to hear from me if I deem it necessary. In the meantime, try to send a message through Tolban when you think you will be able to turn this Joram over to us.”

  Saryon stared up at the Bishop in amazement. The young man again! All Saryon’s pent-up misery and anger over the last months found its outlet. Slowly, his bones creaking, the priest struggled to his feet and faced Vanya defiantly.

  “Holiness,” Saryon said respectfully but with an edge in his voice that was born out of fear and desperation, “you are sending me to my doom. At least let me die with what dignity I can. You know I cannot possibly survive even one night in the Out land. Keeping up the pretense of hunting for this … this Joram … was all very well before an inferior but we can at least dispense with it between ourselves—”

  Vanya’s face flushed, his brows contracted. Pursing his lips, he drew in a deep breath through his nose. “Do you take me for a fool, Father Saryon?” he bellowed.

  “Holiness!” Saryon gasped, blanching. He had never seen the Bishop so angry. It was more frightening—at the moment—than the unknown terrors of the Outland. “I never—”

  “I thought I had made myself clear. The importance of bringing this young man to justice cannot be overemphasized.” Vanya’s pudgy fingers stabbed the air. “You, Brother Saryon, have a high opinion of yourself, it seems! Do you honestly think I would go to this considerable expenditure of time and effort simply to divest the Order of one foolish priest? I undertake nothing with an expectation of failure. I have information about these practitioners of the Dark Arts, Saryon. I know th
ey need one thing, and that one thing I am sending them—a catalyst. No, you will be quite safe, I assure you, Father. They will see to that.”

  Saryon could not answer. He could only stare at the Bishop in utter confusion. One thought managed to rise to the top of the swirling waters of his mind. Once again he wondered, what was it that made this one Dead young man so vitally important?

  Seeing his priest dumbfounded, Bishop Vanya shut his lips with a snap and, turning, prepared to take his leave. Then he hesitated, and turned back again to face the catalyst.

  “Brother Saryon,” the Bishop said in a peculiarly soft voice, “I have pondered long whether to tell you this or not. What I say now must not leave this room. Some of what I am about to reveal to you is known only to myself and the Emperor. The political situation in Thimhallan is not good. Despite our best efforts, it has been deteriorating for years. We have it on good authority that the kingdom of Sharakan has been influenced by certain members of this Coven of the Wheel. They have not yet embraced the Dark Arts that nearly destroyed us centuries ago, but their Emperor has been so rash as to actually invite these people to his kingdom. The Cardinal of the Realm, who sought to counsel against this, was dismissed from the court.”

  Saryon stared at him, transfixed. “But why—”

  “War. To use them and their infernal weapons against Merilon,” Vanya said with a heavy sigh. “Thus you see how vital it is that we take this young man alive and, through his trial, expose these fiends for what they are—murderers and black-hearted Sorcerers who would pervert dead objects by giving them Life. By doing this, we can show the people of Sharakan that their Emperor is in league with the powers of darkness, and we can then encompass his downfall.”

  “His downfall!” Saryon clutched at the back of a chair, feeling weak and dizzy.

  “His downfall,” Vanya repeated sternly. “Only then, Father Saryon, will we be able to prevent a catastrophic war.” He looked grimly at the catalyst. “You see now, I hope, the extreme urgency and importance of your mission. We dare not attack the Sorcerers’ camp. Sharakan would come instantly to their aid. One man must slip in, retrieve the boy … I chose you, one of my most intelligent brethren—”