Legacy of the Darksword (18 page)

At that moment Joram entered the
room. I could not see him, from my angle in the kitchen, but I knew by the
sight of Saryon’s face, which had become as white as polished bone. Gwendolyn
and Eliza exchanged glances—conspiratorial glances. It had been by their design
that we three were in the back part of the kitchen, leaving Saryon and Joram in
the living area alone.

Joram advanced in my view, and my
heart sank, for he was every bit as grim and stoic and cold as I had seen him
on the hillside. Saryon stood tall and straight, his hands at his sides. The
two gazed at each other long minutes without moving or speaking. I don’t know
what I feared—that Joram would denounce his mentor and order him out of the
house. I could envision this stern, proud man doing anything.

Eliza and Gwen clasped hands. My
own hands grew chill and I was worried for Saryon, who had begun to sag and was
looking very ill. I was going to go to him. I had already taken a step in that
direction.

Joram reached out, clasped his
arms around Saryon, and held him in a fast embrace.

“My boy,” Saryon murmured brokenly,
stroking the grown man on the back as perhaps the catalyst had once lovingly
stroked the baby.
“My dear boy!
How good it is ... You
and Gwen . . .” Saryon broke down completely.

Gwen was sobbing into her apron.
Eliza stood watching, tears rolling unheeded down her cheeks, on her lips a
sweet, sad smile. I had tears in my own eyes, and quickly dried them on the
sleeve of my sweater.

Joram straightened. He was taller
than my master now; Saryon having become stooped with the years. Joram placed
his hands—brown and rough—on Saryon’s shoulders and smiled briefly, darkly. “Welcome
to our home, Father,” he said, and his tone belied his affectionate gesture,
for his voice was cool and shadowed. “Gwen and I are pleased that you have come
to visit us.”

He turned to her and his dark
countenance lightened somewhat when his eyes fell upon her, as if the sun had
broken through the clouds and was shining on his face.
His
tone to her softened.

“Our guests must be hungry. Is
supper ready?”

Gwen hurriedly wiped her eyes on
the tail end of her apron and replied, in a faint voice, that the table was
laid and invited us to sit down. I was going to help serve, but Eliza said no,
I was to sit with the other men.

Joram took his place at the head
of the long plank table. He placed Saryon at his right hand. I sat down next to
Saryon, on my master’s right.

“I believe you have met Reuven,”
Saryon said mildly.
“My assistant and scribe.
Reuven
wrote your story, Joram.
At King Garald’s behest, so that the
people of Earth could understand our people.
The books were very well
received. You would like them, I think.”

“
I
would like to read
them!” said Eliza, placing the bowl of steaming beans on the table. She clasped
her hands and stared at me in awe. “You write books! You didn’t tell me.
How splendid!”

My face was hot enough that we
could have toasted the bread by holding it to my cheek. Joram said nothing.
Gwen murmured something polite; I’m not sure what, I couldn’t hear for the
pounding of blood in my head and the confusion of my thoughts. Eliza was so
beautiful. She was regarding me with respect and admiration.

Shipboard romance, I expostulated
with myself sternly. You are in a strange and exotic location, meeting under
unusual circumstances. Not only that, but I am the first man near her own age
she has ever met. It would be completely wrong of me to take advantage of this
situation. She would need a friend, in that brave new world to which she was
going. I would be that friend and if, after she had met the hundreds of
thousands of other young men who would be clamoring for her attention, she
happened to still think well of me, I would be there for her. One more catalyst
in the throng . . .

Saryon nudged me with his bony
knee beneath the stone table. I came back to reality with a jolt, to find that
Gwen and Eliza were taking their seats; Eliza sitting directly across from
Saryon and Gwen across from her husband. As the women sat down Joram rose to
his feet in respect. Saryon and I did the same. We all returned to our seats.

“Father,” said Joram, “would you
offer a prayer?” Saryon looked astonished, as well he might, for in the past
Joram had never been at all religious. Indeed, he had once held a grudge
against the Almin, blaming Him for the tragic circumstances of his life, when
by rights the blame should have fallen on the greed and evil ambition of men.

We bowed our heads. I thought I
heard a snigger, coming from the vicinity of Teddy, but no one else seemed to
hear anything.

“Almin,” Saryon prayed, “bless
and keep us in these dark and dangerous times. Help us to work together to
defeat this dread enemy, who seeks to destroy and defile the glory of
Your
creation. Amen.”

Eliza and Gwen murmured “Amen” in
response. I said it myself, silently. Joram said nothing. Lifting his head, he
sent a black look at Saryon that, if he had seen it, must have struck him to
the heart. Fortunately, he did not. My master was studying Eliza, who sat
across the table from him.

“You are very much like your
grandmother, my dear,” Saryon said to her.
“The Empress of
Merilon.
She was said to be the most beautiful woman in Thimhallan. And
she
was,
one of them.” He turned his mild gaze to
Gwen. “The other, of course, was your mother.”

Gwendolyn and Eliza both flushed
at the compliment and Eliza asked Saryon to tell her about the Empress, her
grandmother.

“Papa never talks about the old
days,” Eliza said. “He says that they are gone and it is useless to think about
them. I’ve read about Merilon and the rest in the books, but that isn’t the
same. Mother has told me some, but not much. . . .”

“Did she tell you about how she
saved us from the
Duuk-tsarith
when we first came to Merilon?” Saryon
asked.

“No! Did you, Mama? Will you tell
the story?”

Gwen smiled, but she, too, had
seen the look her husband cast on Saryon. She said something to the effect that
she was a poor storyteller and would leave that to the good father. Saryon
launched into his tale. Eliza listened with rapt attention. Gwen stared at her
plate, made only the barest pretense of eating. Joram ate his food in silence,
looked at nothing and everything.

“Simkin changed himself into a
tulip,” Saryon was saying, bringing the story to its conclusion. “He planted
himself in the bouquet your mother was carrying and urged her to tell the
guards at the city gate that my young friends and I were all guests of her
father’s! And so they admitted us—who were in reality fugitives from the
law—safely into Merilon. She told a lie, of course, but I believe that the
Almin forgave her, for she acted out of love.”

Saryon smiled benignly and gave a
gentle nod toward Joram. Gwendolyn lifted her head, looked at her husband. He
returned the look and again I saw the
darkness, that
seemed to hang over him perpetually, lift. The love that had been kindled that
day still burned, its warmth surrounded us and blessed us.

“Mama!
You were a heroine! How
romantic. But tell me more about this Simkin,” Eliza said, laughing.

At this, Saryon looked extremely
discomfited. My glance went involuntarily to the stuffed bear, which seemed to
be quivering with either anticipation or suppressed laughter. Saryon opened his
mouth. I’m not sure what he would have replied, but at that moment Joram, his
face grim, shoved his plate back and rose to his feet.

“We’ve had enough stories for the
night. You came here for a reason, or so I understand, Father. Come into the
warming room and tell us. Leave the dishes, Gwen,” he added. “Father Saryon has
important work to do back on Earth. We don’t want to prolong his visit
unnecessarily. You and Reuven will be our guests tonight, of course.”

“Thank you,” said Saryon faintly.

“It will only take a moment to
clear the table, Joram,” Gwendolyn said nervously. “You and Father Saryon go
into the warming room. Eliza and Reuven and I will—”

Her chill, trembling hands
dropped a plate. It struck the stone floor and shattered.

All of us stood and stared at it
in unhappy silence. Everyone in that room read its dread portent.

The sword lay like a corpse at
Saryon’s feet, the personification of the catalyst’s sin.

THE DARKSWORD

E
liza brought a broom and swept up
the remnants of the plate.

“Reuven and I will do the dishes,
Mama,” Eliza said in a low voice. “You stay with Papa.”

Gwendolyn did not reply, but she
nodded, and going to Joram, she put her arm around him, rested her head on his
chest. He held her fast, bowed his dark head over her blond hair, and kissed
her gently.

I cleared the table, carried the
plates into the kitchen. Eliza tossed the broken plate into a bin,
then
filled a tub with hot water from a kettle that had been
steaming on the hearth. She didn’t look at me once, but kept her eyes on her
work.

I guessed what she must be
feeling: guilt, remorse. Prospero’s daughter wanted to see this brave new
world. She was certain in her own mind that this was why we had come—to take
her back with us. She wanted to go, to see the wonders about which she had only
read. Yet she realized, perhaps for the first time, how her going would grieve
her parents. She would never leave them.

She won’t have to. They will come
with her. The knowledge cheered me.

Joram made certain that Saryon
was settled comfortably near the fire,
then
sat down
in what I must assume was his accustomed chair. Gwendolyn took her place in a
chair beside Joram’s, near enough that they could reach out and
touch
hands.

On tables beside each chair were
several books and, near Gwen’s chair, a basket holding balls of yarn,
hand-carved knitting needles, and another basket of mending. She reached, by
habit, for one of these. Only when the basket was in her lap did she look at
Father Saryon, and with a sigh, she put her work away and folded her hands
together tightly.

No one said a word. We might have
been a party of mutes, except that then the silence would have been alive, with
thoughts flying from one to another, faces animated,
eyes
bright and speaking. Each person in that room stood behind a wall—a wall of
time and distance, fear and mistrust and, in my master’s case, deep sorrow.

Finishing the dishes, we joined
the others. Eliza lit candles. I added another log to the fire. Eliza went to
her own chair, near a table piled with books and another basket of handwork.
There not being any more chairs, I retrieved one from the kitchen and placed it
near my master.

Joram regarded Saryon with grim
expectation, black brows drawn in a straight heavy line above his eyes, his
expression stern and impregnable, a solid rock cliff, challenging Saryon to
hurl himself against it.

Saryon had known this would not
be easy. I don’t believe he imagined it would be this hard. He drew in a
breath, but before he could speak, Joram forestalled him.

“I want you to take a message to
Prince Garald, Father,” Joram said abruptly. “Tell him that his commands have
been thwarted, the law broken. My family and I were to have been left alone and
in peace on this world. That peace has been disturbed by a man named Smythe,
who came seeking the Darksword. He dared to threaten my family. I threw him out
with orders to never return. If he does come back, I take no responsibility for
what might happen. That goes for anyone else seeking the Darksword as well.”

This statement obviously included
us and made Saryon’s task no easier.

“I cannot think why they have
come in the first place,” Joram continued. “The Darksword was destroyed when
the world was shattered. They are wasting their time searching for something
that doesn’t exist.”

He was not lying, not outright.
True, the original Darksword had been destroyed. But what about the new one,
the one he had most recently made? Or did it truly exist? Perhaps the
Duuk-tsarith
were
mistaken. Saryon did not dare ask. To do so
would be to admit that Joram was being spied upon and that would send him into
a rage.

My master had the look of a man
about to go swimming in an icy lake. He knows that entering the water little by
little will only prolong the agony and so he plunged straight in.

“Joram, Gwendolyn”—Saryon’s
compassionate gaze included them both—”my business here does not concern the
Darksword. I am here to take you and your family back to Earth, where you will
be safe.”

“We are safe here,” said Joram
sternly, glowering, “or we would be if Garald would keep his word and enforce
his law! Or does he want the Darksword, too? That’s it, isn’t it?” He bounded
out of his chair, loomed over us threateningly.
“That’s
why you’ve come,
Father!”