Legacy of the Darksword (16 page)

Her mother relented.
“Very well.
Reuven may go if he wishes. Make yourself
presentable first, Eliza. I can refuse her nothing,” she added to Saryon in an
undertone, half-proud, half-ashamed.

And that was why they had not
taken “Teddy” away, when both Gwen and Joram knew quite well that the bear was
not a real bear. I could imagine the guilt both felt, forced to raise their
child in isolation. Joram’s own childhood had been one of bitter loneliness and
deprivation. He must have believed it a sad legacy to pass on to a daughter, a
legacy that pained him deeply.

Eliza set Teddy in a flower
basket and gave him a laughing admonition not to go and get himself lost again.

“This way, Reuven,” she said to
me, smiling.

I had gained great favor with her
by the “discovery” of the bear, which hadn’t been my doing at all. I glanced
back at the bear as I followed after Eliza. Teddy’s black button eyes rolled.
He winked.

I deposited the knapsack next to
the bear, though I took my electronic notepad with me. Saryon and Gwendolyn sat
together on a stone bench in the shade. Eliza and I walked together through the
garden. Eliza shook her skirts down, covering her legs. She pulled the
broad-brimmed hat over her head, hiding the shining black hair and leaving her
face in shadow. She walked swiftly, with long strides, so that I had to adjust
my normally slower pace to match hers.

She said nothing the entire way
across the garden. I, of course, maintained my accustomed silence. But the
moment was a comfortable one. The silence was not empty. We filled it with our
thoughts, making it companionable. That her thoughts were serious I could tell
by the somber expression on her shadowed face.

A wall surrounded the garden. She
opened a gate and led me through it, down a flight of stone steps, which
crisscrossed the cliff face. The view from the mountain, overlooking the other
buildings of the Font—some whole, many crumbling—was breathtaking.
The gray stone against the green hillsides.
The mountain
peaks against the blue sky. The trees dark green clumps against the light green
of the grass. As of one accord, unspoken, we both stopped on the narrow steps
to gaze and admire.

She had gone down before me, to
lead the way. Now she looked back up at me, tilting her head to see me from
beneath the brim of her straw hat.

“You find it beautiful?” she
asked.

I nodded. I could not have spoken
had I wanted to.

“So do
I
,”
she said with satisfaction. “I often stop here on my way back. We live down
there,” she added, pointing to a long, low building attached to another, much
larger building. “My father says it is the part of the Font where the catalysts
used to live. There is a kitchen there and a well for water.

“Father made looms for Mother and
me. We use the rooms up here for our work. We spin our own thread, weave our
own woolen cloth. That comes from the sheep, of course. And the library is
here, too. When our work is finished, we read.
Sometimes
together, sometimes separately.”

We were walking down the stairs
as we talked. Or I should say, as
she
talked. But with her I did not
feel as if I were in
a
onesided conversation.
Sometimes people, embarrassed by my handicap, talk around me instead of talking
to me.

Eliza continued to discuss books.
“Papa reads the books on carpentry and gardening and anything he can find on
sheep. Mama reads cookery books, though she likes best the books about Merilon
and the treatises on magic. She never reads those when Father is around,
though. It makes him sad.”

“And what books do you like?” I
asked with sign language, moving my hands slowly.

I could have used the notepad,
but it seemed out of place in this world, an intrusion.

“What books do I like? That’s
what you said, wasn’t it?” Eliza was delighted to understand me.
“The Earth books.
I know a great deal about Earth’s
geography and history, science and art. But my favorites are fiction.”

I looked my astonishment. If
there had ever been Earth books on Thimhallan, they must have been ancient,
brought here at the time of Merlyn and the founders. If she has learned science
from those, I thought, she must think the Earth is flat and that the sun
revolves around it.

I remembered then that, according
to Saryon, Simkin had once gotten hold of a copy of Shakespeare’s plays. How he
managed to do this, Saryon was not certain. He speculated that back before the
Iron Wars, before Simkin’s magical power began to wane as the magic Life in
Thimhallan began to
wane,
Simkin had once traveled
freely between Earth and Thimhallan. It’s possible that he either knew
Shakespeare or—as Saryon used to say ironically—perhaps Simkin
was
Shakespeare!
Had “Teddy” given Eliza books?

Eliza answered my questioning
look. “After Thimhallan was destroyed, the evacuation ships came to take the
people to Earth. My father knew he would be staying here and he requested that
the ships bring supplies, tools, food until we could raise our own. And he
asked them to bring books.”

Of course.
It all made sense. Joram had
spent ten years of his life on Earth, before returning to Thimhallan. He would
know exactly what he needed to survive with his family in exile, what was
needed for both body and mind.

We had, by this time, reached the
portion of the Font where Joram had taken up residence. We did not enter,
however, but skirted around the Gothic-style buildings (I was reminded of
Oxford ). We followed various meandering paths and walkways past the enormous
edifice and I soon became quite lost. Leaving the buildings behind, we
continued down the mountainside, but only for a short distance. Ahead of me was
lush green hillside. Running against the green grass of the hill, I saw a white
blotch—a flock of sheep, and one dark spot—the man tending them.

At the sight of Joram, I halted.
My coming did not now seem like such a good idea. I pointed to Eliza, then out
to her father. Touching my breast, I patted the top of the stone fence, which
was, by the smell and the sight of one or two sheep resting in
sheds,
the sheep pen. I indicated I would wait here for
their return.

Eliza looked at me and frowned.
She knew quite well what I had said;
indeed, the two of us were
communicating with an ease
which, had
I thought about it,
was
quite
remarkable. I was too dazzled and overwhelmed to think coherently about
anything then.

“But I want you to come with me,”
she said petulantly, as if that would make all the difference.

I shook my head, indicated that I
was tired, which was true enough. I am not much accustomed to physical exertion
and we must have walked two kilometers already. Taking out my notepad, I typed,
Your
mother is right. You should see him
alone.

She looked at the notepad and
read the words. “Father has something like this,” she said, touching it
hesitantly with one finger.
“Only much larger.
He
keeps records on it.”

She was silent. Her frowning gaze
turned from me to the sheep and the distant, dark, roving figure that kept
watch over them. Her frown eased; her gaze was troubled. She turned back to me.
“Mother lied to Father Saryon, Reuven,” Eliza said calmly. “She lied to herself
at the same time, so perhaps it doesn’t really count as a lie. Papa is
not
happy.
He was content, before that man Smythe came, but ever since then Papa has been
brooding and silent, except for when he talks to himself. He won’t tell us what’s
wrong. He doesn’t want to worry us. I think it will be good for him to have
Father Saryon to talk to. What is it,” she asked, in a pretty, wheedling tone, “that
he plans to say?”

I shook my head. It was not my
place to tell her. I indicated again that I would wait for them here and
motioned that she should go to her father. She pouted some, but I think that
was mostly reflexive, for she was really very sensible and finally
agreed—though reluctantly—that perhaps this way was best.

She ran off down the hill, her
skirts flying, her hat blown back, her dark curls rampant.

I thought about her, when she was
gone. I remembered every word she said, every expression on her face, the lilt
and tone of her voice. I was not falling in love. Not yet. Oh, maybe just a
little bit. I had dated several women before now—some of them seriously, or so
I thought—but I had never been this at ease, this relaxed with a woman. I tried
to figure out why.
The unusual circumstances of our meeting,
the fact that she was so open and unabashed and free to speak her mind.
Perhaps the simple fact that we had been born on the same world.
And then the oddest thought came to me.

You did not meet as strangers.
Somewhere, somehow, your souls know each other.

I grinned at this impossibly
romantic notion, though the grin was a little shaky, considering the vivid
image I’d experienced of Eliza as Queen and myself as one
more
dull
, plodding catalyst.

Banishing such foolish notions
from my mind, I reveled in the beauty of my surroundings. Though I could see
wounds upon the land, wounds caused by the war and later the storms and quakes
and firestorms which had raged over Thimhallan, the wounds were healing. Young
trees grew amid the ashes of the old. Grass covered the ragged scars and gouges
on the landscape. The constant wind was softening the tooth-sharp cliffs.

The solitude was peaceful, quiet.
No jets roared overhead, no televisions yammered, no sirens wailed. The air was
crisp and clean and smelled of flowers and grass and far-off rain, not petrol
and the neighbor’s dinner. I was immensely content and happy as I sat there on
the low stone wall. I could picture Joram and Eliza and Gwen living here,
reading, working in the garden, tending sheep, weaving fabric. I could picture
myself here and my heart suddenly yearned for a life so simple and serene.

Of course, I was oversimplifying,
romanticizing. I was deliberately leaving out the hard work, the drudgery, the
loneliness. Earth was not the horrid place I was picturing by contrast. There
was beauty to be found there, as well as here.

But what beauty would be left to
any of us if the Hch’nyv destroyed our defenses, reached our world, and ravaged
it as they had ravaged all others? If the power of the Darksword could truly be
used to defeat the aliens, then why shouldn’t Joram relinquish it? Was this the
conclusion Saryon had reached?

I worried and wondered and
dreamed as I sat upon the wall, watching Eliza on the hillside, a bright speck
against the green. I saw her meeting with her father. I could not see, from
this distance, but I could imagine him staring over to where I sat. They both
stood still, talking, for long moments. Then they both began to round up the
sheep, driving them down the hill and back toward their pen.

The stone wall on which I sat
grew suddenly very cold, very hard.

The sword 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. . . . There
was something horrifying about the sword, something devilish.

FORGING
THE DARKSWORD

E
liza and her father came back,
driving the sheep before them. I watched them the entire way, the sheep flowing
like a huge woolly caterpillar across the grassy hillside. Joram walked
steadfastly behind, reaching out now and then with his shepherd’s crook to
guide an errant ewe back into the flock. Eliza dashed about them like a
sheepdog, waving her hat and flapping her long skirts. I have no idea, knowing
nothing of the tending of sheep, if she did harm or good, but her grace and
exuberance brought joy to her father’s dark eyes and so of course she was
permitted to have her own way.

That joy dimmed considerably and
vanished altogether when those dark eyes turned their intense and unsettling
gaze upon me.

The sheep flowed past me in a
woolly wave, smelling strongly of damp wool—for it had rained upon the
hillside—bleating and baaing so that it was impossible to hear. I stood to one
side, keeping out of the way, trying not to hinder Joram’s work. I was very
uncomfortable and wished devotedly I had not come.

Joram’s gaze raked me from head
to toe as he came up the hillside. When he was level with me and I started to
bow my greeting, he abruptly withdrew his gaze and did not once glance in my
direction again. His face was so cold and set that it might have substituted
for the granite cliff face opposite me and no one would have noticed the
difference.

He paid me not the slightest
attention. Since he was involved with his work, I was able to study him,
curious to see the man whose life story I had written.

Joram was in his late forties at
this time. Of a serious, somber mien, he looked older than he was. The rugged
life, spent mostly out-of-doors, in the wayward and harsh Thimhallan weather,
had tanned his skin a deep brown, left his face weathered and seamed. His black
hair was as thick and luxuriant as his daughter’s, though his was touched with
gray at the temples and gray strands mingled with the black throughout.