“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.
8
The Forging of the Darksword
“What 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 pil
e. “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.
“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.
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