Triumph of the Darksword

by Margaret Weis

  Garald’s expression did not change; he remained standing stiffly, tensely, staring straight ahead.

  Sighing, Joram clasped the Prince’s arm more firmly. “But we did not,” he said softly. “This world was becoming like my mother—a corpse, rotting and decaying, maintaining a semblance of life by the magic alone. Our world itself is dead, except in the hearts of its people. You will carry Life with you, my friend, wherever you go. May your journey be blessed … Your Grace.”

  Garald’s head bowed, his eyes closed in anguish. His own hand, its wrist scarred and bleeding, rested for a brief instant on Joram’s. Storm clouds massed on the horizon, lightning flickering on their fringes. Tiny whirlwinds surged about the ruins of Merilon, sucking up bits of dust and rock and tossing them into the air. Shaking himself free of Joram’s grip, the Prince turned away.

  His tattered cape whipped around him, and debris scattered beneath his booted feet. Without a backward glance, Prince Garald exited the crumbling Gate and began the long walk across the barren plains to where the air ship waited.

  Sighing, Saryon drew his hood up around his head to protect him from the stinging sand.

  “We should be going along as well, Joram,” he said. “Another storm will break soon. We must be on our way to the ship.”

  To the catalyst’s astonishment, Joram shook his head.

  “We are not going with you, Father.”

  “We only came to say good-bye,” Gwendolyn added.

  “What?” Saryon stared at them in perplexity. “This is the last ship! You must take it—” Suddenly, their meaning became clear. “But you can’t!” he cried, looking around at the ruins of Merilon; the lowering, swiftly moving storm clouds. “You can’t stay here!”

  “My friend”—reaching out, Joram clasped Saryon’s broken hand in his own—“where else can I go? You see them, you hear them.” He gestured toward the refugees being herded out the Gate toward the waiting ship. “They will never forgive me. No matter where they go or what happens to them, my name will always be spoken with a curse. They will tell their children about me. I will be reviled throughout time as the one who fulfilled the Prophecy, the one who destroyed the world. My life and the lives of those I love would be in constant danger. Far better for my wife and me and for our children that we remain here, in peace.”

  “But alone!” Saryon looked at Joram in despair. “On a dead world! Swept by storms! The earth itself shakes. Where will you live? The cities lie in rubble.

  “The mountain fortress of the Font stands unharmed,” Joram said. “We will make our home there.”

  “Then I will stay here with you!”

  “No, Father.” Joram glanced again at Garald’s tall, upright figure as it made its lonely way across the plains. “Others need you now.”

  “We will not be alone, Father,” Gwendolyn said, placing her soft hand over her husbands. “The dead will inherit this world. We will be company for them and they will be company for us.”

  Saryon saw—standing behind Gwen—indistinct shapes and ghostly forms, staring at him with intense, knowing eyes. He even thought he saw, though it vanished when he looked at it directly, a fluttering of orange silk.

  “Farewell, Father,” Gwen said, kissing his wrinkled cheek. “When our son is of age, we will send him to you to teach as you taught Joram.”

  She smiled so sweetly and cheerfully, looking at her husband with so much love in her face, that Saryon could not find it in his heart to pity her.

  “Good-bye, Father,” Joram said, grasping the catalyst’s trembling hand tightly. “You are my father, the only true one I ever knew.”

  Clasping Joram in his arms, Saryon held him close, remembering the baby whose small head once rested upon his shoulder. “Something tells me, my son, that I will never see you again, and I must say this to you before we part. When I was near death, I saw—I understood, at last.” His voice breaking, he whispered huskily, “What you did was right, my son! Always believe that! And always know that I love you! I love you and honor you—” His words failed, he could not go on.

  Joram’s tears, mingling with Saryon’s, fell into the black hair that curled upon his shoulders. The two clung to each other as the storm winds blew about them more fiercely. One of the guards, with a nervous glance at the swirling clouds, moved forward to tap the catalyst respectfully on the shoulder.

  “It is time for you to go. May the Almin be with you, Father,” Joram said quietly.

  Saryon smiled through his tears.

  “He is, my son,” he said, placing his hand over his heart. “He is.”

  APPENDIX:

  The Game

  Of Tarok

  Tarok is one of the earliest known games utilizing the tarot cards, whose appearance in Europe around the fourteenth or fifteenth century still remains shrouded in mystery. Many theories exist concerning the origin of the allegorical and mystical cards, relating them to everything from the Egyptian Book of Thoth to the Hebrew Kabbalah to roving bands of Christian dissenters who may have used the symbolic pictures on the cards to teach their lessons to an illiterate populace.

  Most scholars credit gypsies with introducing the cards into Europe. Since most Europeans of the time believed—erroneously—that the gypsies came from Egypt (hence the name gypsy), it is easy to see how the theory arose that the cards were Egyptian in origin, a theory that is open to debate. It is doubtful that the gypsies themselves invented the cards. They used them merely for crude forms of divination, without any apparent understanding of the cards’ complex symbolism.

  The cards gained popularity in Europe despite the fact that they were frowned upon by the Church. Many of our earliest references to the tarot cards are edicts banning their use. The cards were popular among the wealthy nobility, however, and this kept them in existence. Hand-painted decks decorated with gold leaf, crushed lapis lazuli, and other substances with such exotic names as “dragon’s blood” and “mummy dust” appeared in royal courts.

  It is speculated that since fortune telling was prohibited by the Church, games utilizing the cards were invented. The introduction of movable type made the cards available to the general populace, and eventually the tarot decks were soon too popular and widespread for the Church and politicians to continue fighting. Christian symbolism even came to be used on the cards, perhaps in an effort to try to make them more palatable to Church officials.

  In general, the tarot decks that exist today have changed little over the past five hundred years. The tarot deck includes the twenty-two cards of the Major Arcana and the fifty-six cards of the Minor Arcana, or suit cards. The first twenty-two cards are known as trump cards, the word trump deriving from the Latin triumphi, or triumph. The word tarot comes from the sixteenth-century Italian term tarocchi, the plural of tarocco, which was used to refer to the Major Arcana cards and later to the entire deck. Arcana is a Latin word meaning mysterious or secret. Tarot is the French derivative of tarocchi, and it was this term for the cards that became popular in the English language.

  Throughout the centuries, scholars have attempted to analyze the allegorical and mystical meanings of the tarot cards, particularly those of the Major Arcana. Beginning with the first card (numbered either 0 or 22), known as the Fool card, the deck also includes cards picturing the Magician, the Sun, the Moon, Death, the Hermit, the Hanged Man, the Lightning-Struck Tower, the Devil, and the World, among others.

  A favorite theory concerning the allegorical meaning of the tarot is that the cards represent the Fool’s (man’s) journey through life. The Fool is generally represented as a youth walking heedlessly along the edge of a cliff. His eyes are on the sun; he is not watching where he is going and appears to be in imminent danger of falling. A small dog (man’s base, physical nature) barking at his feet appears to be either trying to warn the Fool away from the cliffs edge or drive him over. The people the Fool meets—such as the Magician, the Hermit—and the experiences he undergoes in his journey through life will provide him with the se
lf-understanding he must acquire in older to complete his journey successfully.

  Our fascination with the cards and our enjoyment of the games that were developed using them continues to this day. Most modern card games use a revised version of the tarot deck, retaining almost all the cards of the Minor Arana, or the suit cards, plus the joker, or the Fool card. Among the Minor Arcana are the court cards: kings, queens, knights, and pages, plus cards of each suit numbering from one (the ace) to ten. The suits of the early Minor Arcana were swords, cups, coins, and staves, now known as spades, hearts, diamonds, and clubs.

  The game of tarok—still popular in some places in Europe—is unusual in that it retains use of the cards of the Major Arcana as well as the Minor Arcana. It can be played by two or three players, although later rules include up to four players.

  There are many different versions of the rules of tarok. The following comes from The Encyclopedia of the Tarot by Stuart Kaplan, and was the basis for the game played by our characters. It uses the seventy-eight card deck, the dealer deals three hands of twenty-five cards each, leaving three cards facedown on the table. The players sort their hands and the dealer discards his three most useless cards, exchanging them for the three on the table.

  Points are scored before play begins. The twenty-two trump cards vary in value, and points scored are determined by which trump the players hold and how many. Players then score additional points by taking “tricks”—high cards taking low cards One hundred points wins the game.

  The Fool card is the lowest card in the deck. It cannot take a card of any suit, but it may be played to any suit that is led. The fascinating aspect about the Fool card as far as we are concerned is that it may be substituted to protect a card of greater value. If, for example, a king of cups is led and the player following holds the queen of cups, that player may substitute the Fool in order to save his queen.

  For those interested in learning more about the tarot cards or the game of tarok, the following are recommended reading:

  The Encyclopedia of Tarot, Volume 1, by Stuart R. Kaplan, U.S. Games Systems, Inc., New York, 1978.

  A Complete Guide to the Tarot by Eden Gray, Bantam Books, New York, 1981.

  ABOUT THE AUTHORS

  Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman are The New York Times bestselling authors of the Dragonlance® series, The Darksword Trilogy, and the Rose of the Prophet trilogy. With The Death Gate Cycle, this imaginative team opens an ambitious, new chapter in epic fantasy.

  A SPECIAL PREVIEW

  LEGACY OF THE

  DARKSWORD

  BY MARGARET WEIS and

  TRACY HICKMAN

  The premier Science Fiction and Fantasy storytellers, Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman have thrilled millions of readers with their exciting Rose of the Prophet series, the Death Gate Cycle, and especially the Darksword series. With the publication of LEGACY OF THE DARKSWORD they cement their position as High Fantasy’s reigning authorial team. For those who have followed the series from the beginning, and for those who have just discovered these spellbinding wordsmiths, LEGACY OF THE DARKSWORD provides a sense of magical wonder and delight. The following scene is but a small taste of the inimitable Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman.

  Finally, a child may be born to the rarest of all the Mysteries, the Mystery of Life. The thaumaturgist, or catalyst, is the dealer in magic, though he does not possess it in great measure himself. It is the catalyst, as his name implies, who takes the Life from the earth and the air, from fire and water, and, by assimilating it within his own body, is able to enhance it and transfer it to the magi who can use it.

  —FORCING THE DARKSWORD

  Saryon, now somewhere in his sixties or seventies, as reckoned by Earth time, lived very quietly in a small flat in Oxford, England. He was uncertain of the year of his birth in Thimhallan, and thus I, who write this story out for him, cannot provide his exact age. Saryon never did adapt well to the concept of Earth time relative to Thimhallan time. History has meaning only to those who are its products and time is but a means of measuring history, whether it be the history of the past moment or the history of the past billion moments.

  For Saryon, as for so many of those who came to Earth from the once-magical land of Thimhallan, time began in another realm—a beautiful, wondrous, fragile bubble of a realm. Time ended when that bubble burst, when Joram pricked it with the Darksword.

  Saryon had no need for measuring time anyway. The catalyst (though no longer required in the world, that is how he always termed himself) had no appointments, kept no calendar, rarely watched the evening news, met no one for lunch. I was his amanuensis, or so he was pleased to call me. I preferred the less formal term of secretary. I was sent to Saryon by command of Prince Garald.

  I had been a servant in the Prince’s household and was supposed to have been Saryon’s servant, too, but this he would not allow. The only small tasks I was able to perform for him were those I could sneak in before he was aware of it or those which I wrested from him by main force.

  I would have been a catalyst myself, had our people not been banished from Thimhallan. I had very little magic in me when I left that world as a child, and none at all now after living for twenty years in the world of the mundane. But I do have a gift for words and this was one reason my prince sent me to Saryon. Prince Garald deemed it essential that the story of the Darksword be told. In particular, he hoped that by reading these tales, the people of Earth would come to understand the exiled people of Thimhallan.

  I wrote three books, which were immensely well received by the populace of Earth, less well received among my own kind. Who among us likes to look upon himself and see that his life was one of cruel waste and overindulgence, greed, selfishness and rapacity? I held a mirror to the people of Thimhallan. They looked into it and did not like the ugly visage that glared back at them. Instead of blaming themselves, they blamed the mirror.

  My master and I had few visitors. He had decided to pursue his study of mathematics, which was one reason that he had moved from the relocation camps to Oxford, in order to be near the libraries connected with the ancient and venerable university. He did not attend classes, but had hired a tutor, who came to the flat to instruct him. When it became apparent that the teacher had nothing more to teach and that, indeed, the teacher was learning from the pupil, the tutor ceased to make regular visits, although she still dropped by occasionally for tea.

  This was a calm and blessed time in Saryon’s tumultuous life, for—although he does not say so—I can see his face light when he speaks of it and I hear a sadness in his voice, as if regretting that such a peaceful existence could not have lasted until middle age faded, like comfortable jeans, into old age, from thence to peaceful eternal sleep.

  That was not to be, of course, and that brings me to the evening that seems to me, looking back on it, to be the first pearl to slide off the broken string. The pearls that were days of Earth time and that would start falling faster and faster from that night on until there would be no more pearls left, only the empty string and the clasp that once held it together. And those would be tossed away, as useless.

  Saryon and I were pottering about his flat late that night, putting on the teakettle, an act which always reminded him—so he was telling me—of another time when he’d picked up a teakettle and it wasn’t a teakettle. It was Simkin.

  We had just finished listening to the news on the radio. As I said, Saryon had not up until now been particularly interested in the news of what was happening on Earth, news which he always felt had little to do with him. But this news appeared, unfortunately, to have more to do with him than he or anyone else wanted and so he paid attention to it.

  The war with Hch’nyv was not going well. The mysterious aliens, who had appeared so suddenly, with such deadly intent, had conquered yet another one of our colonies. Refugees, arriving back on Earth, told terrible tales of the destruction of their colony, reported innumerable casualties, and stated that the Hch’nyv had no desire to
negotiate. They had, in fact, slain those sent to offer the colony’s surrender. The objective of the Hch’nyv appeared to be the annihilation and eradication of every human in the galaxy.

  This was somber news. We were discussing it when I saw Saryon jump, as if he had been startled by some sudden noise, though I myself heard nothing.

  “I must go to the front door,” he said. “Someone’s there.”

  Saryon, who is reading the manuscript, stops me at this point to tell me, somewhat testily, that I should break here and elaborate on the story of Joram and Simkin and the Darksword or no one will understand what is to come.

  I reply that if we backtrack and drag our readers along that old trail with us (a trail most have walked themselves already!) we would likely lose more than a few along the way. I assure him that the past will unfold as we go along. I hint gently that I am a skilled journalist, with some experience in this field. I remind him that he was fairly well satisfied with the work I’d done on the first three books, and I beg him to allow me to return to this story.

  Being essentially a very humble man, who finds it overwhelming that his memoirs should be considered so important that Prince Gerald had hired me to record them, Saryon readily acknowledges my skill in this field and permits me to continue.

  “How odd,” Saryon continued. “I wonder who is here at this time of night?”

  I wondered why they did not ring the doorbell, as any normal visitor would do. I indicated as much.

  “They have rung it,” Saryon said softly. “In my mind, if not my ears. Can’t you hear it?”

  I could not, but this was not surprising. Having lived most his life in Thimhallan, he was far more attuned to the mysteries of its magicks than I, who had been only five when Saryon rescued me, an orphan, from the abandoned Font.