Legacy of the Darksword (24 page)

“Subdued him,” Eliza said, noting
that Mosiah had averted his gaze once more.
“How?
Tell
me. What did they do to my father?”

“Tell her,” Scylla said. “She
needs to understand the nature of the enemy against which we fight.”

Mosiah shrugged.
“Very well.
They struck Joram over the head, dazing him.
Then they inserted the needles. You may have read of a practice known as
acupuncture. Needles are inserted into specific areas of the body to produce
regional anesthesia. The
D’karn-darah
have
developed the reverse. Each needle is charged with electromagic. The stimulus
it produces in the body is extraordinarily painful and debilitating. The pain
is only temporary, however, and goes away when the needles are removed. But
until then, a person is reduced to a state of helpless agony. When Joram was
sufficiently subdued, they took him away. Father Saryon demanded to be allowed
to accompany him, and of course, they were grateful to have an extra hostage.”

“You escaped,” said Scylla.

“There was nothing I could do,”
Mosiah returned coldly. “I risked being captured myself and they have no reason
to keep me alive. I deemed that I could be more useful surviving to fight them
than throwing away my life needlessly.”

Eliza had gone very pale during
the description of her father’s torment, but she stood strong and quiet. “What
happened to my mother?” she asked, her voice quavering only slightly. She was
fighting hard to remain under control.

“I don’t know,” Mosiah confessed.
“If I had to guess, I would say that the
D’karn-darah
took her. But, if
so . . .”He appeared thoughtful,
then
shrugged
helplessly. “I don’t know.”

“Do
you
know?” Eliza
turned to Scylla.

“Me? How could I know?” Scylla
demanded, astonished that she was even asked. “I wasn’t there. I wish I had
been, though.” She looked quite grim.

“Well, what do we do now?” Eliza
was calm, very calm,
much
too calm. Her hands were
clenched
together,
the fingers twined tightly, the
knuckles white.

“We wait,” said Mosiah.

“Wait! Wait for what?”

“We must wait for them to contact
us,” said Mosiah.

“To tell us where to bring the
Darksword,” Scylla added.
“To make the exchange.
The Darksword for your father’s life.”

“
And I will give it to them,”
Eliza said.

“No,” said Mosiah. “You will not.”

“Now the game begins
in
earnest.”

FORGING
THE DARKSWORD

“I
will
give it to them,” Eliza
countered. “You won’t stop me. I should never have taken the Darksword in the
first place. What they do with it doesn’t matter—”

“It does,” said Mosiah. “They
will use it to enslave a world.”

“My father’s life is all that
matters,” Eliza maintained stubbornly.

She swayed where she stood. She
was exhausted, her strength almost gone. There was nowhere to sit down; every
piece of furniture in the room had been smashed. Scylla put her arm around the
young woman, gave her a bracing hug.

“I know it all looks very bleak
now, Eliza, but things are not as bad as they seem. We’ll feel better for a cup
of tea. Reuven, find something for us to sit on.”

She did not speak the instruction
aloud. She signed the words to me! Smiling, she quirked her pierced eyebrow as
much as to say,
See, I do know you!

Of course.
All that would be in my “file.”
Once I was over my astonishment, I left the room in search of chairs. And I
felt better, having a task to perform. I had to go to distant and long-unused
parts of the building to find any furniture that was still intact. Surely the
D’karn-darah
could not imagine that they would find the Darksword hidden in a
straight-backed wooden chair, but that’s how it appeared. The destruction was
wanton and cruel and seemed, to my mind, to have been the result of fury and
frustration over not finding what they sought rather than of any true hope of
discovery.

If this is what they do to
objects, what will they do to people? I asked myself, and the thought was
chilling.

I found no chairs, but I did come
across several short wooden stools from one of the lower level rooms which must
have, I think, been used as a classroom for children. I do not know how the
Technomancers missed this room, except that it stood at an odd angle off a
corridor and would have been in pitch-darkness during the night.

As I picked up one of the stools
I noticed, even in my weariness, how it had been crafted out of a single piece
of wood.
Crafted by magic, held together by magic, which
prohibited the use of nails or glue.
The wood had not been cut, but
lovingly shaped and coaxed into taking the form the creator wanted.

I rubbed my hand over the smooth
wood and suddenly, inexplicably, tears came to my eyes. I wept for the loss,
for all the losses—the loss of my master, the loss of Joram and Gwendolyn, the
loss of their daughter’s peaceful, serene way of life, the loss of Thimhallan,
the loss of such simple beauty as I held in my hands, the loss of that other
life of my own, the life of which I’d had such tantalizing glimpses.

I startled myself, for I am not
given to tears and sobbing. I don’t believe that I had cried since I was a
child. I was half-ashamed of myself, when I finally forced myself to quit, but
the outburst of emotion had done me good, acting like a release valve. I felt
calmer and oddly rested, more capable of handling whatever might come.

Picking up four stools, slinging
the rungs over my arms, I returned to the main living quarters.

I found I had not been the only
one working. The smoldering furniture had been carried outdoors, either by
Mosiah or his magic. The smoke was clearing from the room, blown away on a
crisp morning breeze. A fire crackled in the fireplace. Water was heating in a
kettle which, though dented, had survived the destruction. Scylla was scooping
loose tea leaves into a cracked pot. Eliza was sorting through broken crockery,
searching for any cups that might have escaped intact. She looked up at me with
a wan smile when I entered. She, too, was better for having something to do.

Lifting one half of a large
broken platter, she found Teddy lying beneath it.

The bear was in a sorry state.
One arm was completely ripped off, one button eye missing. His right leg hung
by a thread, his stuffing dribbled out of torn seams. His orange scarf was
bedraggled and singed.

“Poor Teddy!”
Eliza said, and taking the
maltreated bear in her arms, she began to sob.

She had borne up bravely until
that moment. That was her release valve.

Mosiah, with a wry smile, seemed
about to say something, but Scylla forestalled him with a look and a shake of
her head. Mosiah certainly wasn’t taking orders from Scylla and would have gone
on to have his say, except that even he could see this wasn’t the time.

I longed to comfort Eliza, but I
felt myself in an awkward position. I had only known her a day and a night—a
traumatic day and night, to be sure, but that wasn’t really relevant. Her grief
was hers
alone,
and there was really nothing I could
say or do to ease it.

I set down the stools near the
fire. Mosiah walked over to gaze out the window, his black robes leaving a
sinuous trail in the ash on the floor. Scylla poured water from the kettle into
the teapot. By this time Eliza had dried her tears.

“I’ll sew him back together,” she
said, using the sleeve of her shirt to wipe her eyes.

“Don’t bother,”
came
a weak voice. “I’m done for.
Finished.
Kaput.
The sands of my hourglass are running low. My
goose is cooked. My stuffing left to be nibbled by mice. What happened? Did we
win? Is your dear father safe, child? That’s all that matters. If so, my life
has not been spent in vain. Tell me, before I slip away to meet my Maker—”

“He’d only throw you back,”
Mosiah said shortly. Leaving the window, he came to stare grimly down at Teddy.
“Don’t fret over this fool, Eliza. Simkin is immortal.
And a
very bad actor.”

“
So this is Simkin,” said Scylla,
joining them. She stood over him, her hands on her hips. “You were my favorite
character in Reuven’s books, you know.”

Teddy gazed up at her with his
one remaining button eye.

“Pardon me, madam,” he said
stiffly, “but I don’t believe we have been introduced.”

“I’m Scylla,” she answered, and
handed me a cup of tea.

Perhaps it was my fatigued
imagination, but at the sound of that name, Teddy’s black button eye glittered
in the firelight and stared very hard at Scylla.

“Put me together again, will you?
There’s a dear child.” Teddy spoke to Eliza, but he continued staring at
Scylla.

“Put yourself together, fool!”
Mosiah said irritably. “Let Eliza alone.”

“No, I don’t mind,” Eliza said.

She found her mother’s
workbasket, tossed into a corner, and though her lips tightened a moment when
she picked up the basket and its scattered contents, she retained control over
herself. Sitting down on the stool, she took the amputee bear into her lap and
restuffed him, then began to stitch his arm on.

Teddy smirked insufferably, when
Eliza was not looking, and made such suggestive noises—particularly when she
was poking the stuffing back into him—that I could have cheerfully torn him
apart again. But his foolery ceased whenever his black-button gaze fell on
Scylla.

We sat down on the short-legged
stools, drew them near the fire. Eliza sipped her tea and sewed up Teddy.

“How long will we have to wait?”
she asked, trying to sound calm.

“Not long,” Mosiah replied.

“According to General Boris’s
scouting reports, the Hch’nyv will be within attacking range of Earth and
Thimhallan within forty-eight hours,” Scylla said.

“The Technomancers must have the
Darksword away from here and back on Earth before then,” Mosiah added.

Eliza glanced at me and a faint
flush stained her cheek. “So these . . . aliens really are a threat? It’s not a
trick? They would really kill us all?”

“
Without
hesitation.
Without compunction.
Without pity
or mercy,” Scylla replied, grave and somber.
“We
have found no level on
which we can communicate with them, although it is rumored that others have.”

“The Technomancers have made
contact,” said Mosiah. “That much we know. We fear that Smythe has made some
sort of deal with them.”

Forty-eight hours.
Not very much time.
No one spoke, but each sat silent,
absorbed in his or her own thoughts. Mine were very black and despairing. And,
as if conjured up from the darkness of the mind, the smoke, and the fire, an
image took shape and form upon the hearth.

Kevon Smythe stood before us.

“Don’t be afraid,” Mosiah said
swiftly. “It is a hologram.”

It was well he said this, for the
image appeared very real, not watery, as do many holograms. I would have sworn
that the man himself stood before us. It must be the magic of the
Technomancers, which so enhanced the electronically created image.

“I have read of such things!”
Eliza gasped. “But I have never seen one. Can he ... can he hear us?”

She asked this because Scylla had
her ringer to her lips and she, along with Mosiah, was hunting for the source
of the hologram. Finding it—a small boxlike object tucked into a recess in the
fireplace—they both examined it, both careful not to touch it. They exchanged glances—the
first time, I believe, they had looked at each other directly—and Mosiah,
nodding his head, drew his hood over his face and clasped his hands together.

Eliza stood up. Teddy slid,
forgotten, from her lap. When he looked as if he was about to protest, I set my
foot upon him and kicked him backward, none too gently, underneath my stool.

If I had not admired Eliza before
now, I would have done so then. She was exhausted, frightened, grieving,
anxious
. She was well aware that this was the man who was responsible
for the abduction of her parents and Father Saryon. Yet she faced him with the
dignified reserve of a Queen who knows that any overt show of anger will only
demean
herself
and never faze her enemy.

When I look back on that moment
in memory, I see her clothed in gold, shining more brightly than the paltry
light of the hologram of the Technomancer. She did not beg or plead, knowing
both those to be fruitless. She asked of him what she might have asked of any
base intruder.

“What do you want, sir?”

He was not wearing his suit, but
was clad in white robes that I later learned were the ceremonial robes of the
Khandic Sages. Around the sleeves and hem and neck were laid out in a grid
pattern tiny filaments of metal, which glinted and winked as they caught the
light. I thought at the time they were merely fanciful decoration.