Legacy of the Darksword (34 page)

He gazed at us, his eyes
narrowed. “If you want to recover the
Darksword, that
is where we must go. The Dragon of the Night is the Darksword’s guardian.”

Saryon caught Joratn in his arms.
Touching the fabric of the crimson-stained robes, the catalyst felt the warm
wetness of life’s blood draining from Joram’s body, falling through Saryon’s
fingers like the petals of a shattered tulip.

TRIUMPH
OF THE DARKSWORD

E
liza listened gravely to Mosiah’s
arguments against going. She asked Father Saryon if there was any way to
retrieve the Darksword without facing the dragon. On his replying that there
was not, she said it was her intention to go with Father Saryon, but that she
would not ask any of the rest of us to go with her. In fact, it was her express
command that we remain behind.

Needless to say, that was one
command in her reign she could not convince any of us to obey. After some
further discussion we headed for the cave—all five of us.

“Now at least,” said Mosiah as he
trudged along behind me, “we won’t have to worry about dying at the hands of
the Hch’nyv.”

“According to Father Saryon,” I
signed, “the dragon is charmed. As I recall, a person is able to control one of
these dragons if he touches the charm the warlocks embedded in the dragon’s
head.”

“Thank you, Mister Encyclopedia,”
Mosiah retorted sarcastically. We had left the sunshine and returned to the
shadows, walking beneath the willows and cottonwoods that bordered the river. “It
takes a very strong and powerful personality to cast a charm on a dragon. My
respect for Father Saryon is vast, but ‘strong’ and ‘powerful’ are not words I
would use to describe him.”

“I think you underestimate him,”
I signed back defensively. “He was strong enough to sacrifice himself when they
would have turned Joram to stone. He was strong enough and powerful enough to
assist Joram in fighting Blachloch.”

Mosiah remained unconvinced. “Twenty
years have passed since he left the Darksword with the dragon! Even if Father
Saryon
did
actually charm the beast, the charm could not possibly hold
it that long!”

I felt regretfully that Mosiah
was right. The Dragons of Night had been designed by their creators as killing
machines, made to slaughter on command. During the Iron Wars some of these
dragons had escaped their creators and wreaked havoc among their own forces.
After the war the
D’karn-duuk,
who had made the dragons and controlled
them, were mostly dead. Those who survived were too battle-shocked and
exhausted to deal with the Warchanged. The Dragons of Night escaped and fled
below ground, seeking to hide from the light of day, which they loathed and
feared, in the endless night of tunnel and cave.

They
have
no love for
man,
remembering
always
who
had
doomed them to this
dark
life
and hating
them for it.

We
had
now
arrived at
the cavern entrance. Halting
on the
riverhank,
we
stared at it
bleakly.
The opening—
dark against the gray
rock
face
—
was
an
enormous
archway
of
gray
stone,
easy
for
all
of
us to enter, or it would
have
been
had not most of
it been sunk
underwater! A
part
of the river
had branched
off, flowed, swift
and
deep, into the
cavern.

“You’re out of luck, Father,”
Mosiah
said.
“The river has changed course. Unless you would have us
swim these treacherous currents, we can’t go inside.” The raven, perched on
a
tree
limb, gave a raucous caw.

I am ashamed to say that my first
reaction was one of relief, until I saw Eliza.

Up to this time she had borne
calmly and courageously all dangers and setbacks. This disappointment was too
much for her to bear. She clenched her fists.

“We must get inside!” she cried,
her face white to the lips, adding wildly, “I
will
swim if I have to.”

The water flowing into the cave
was fast-moving, with small, swirling whirlpools and dangerous eddies that
splashed and foamed among sharp rocks. Swimming was not an option.

“We could build a raft,” said
Scylla. “Lash together some logs. Perhaps the Enforcer with his magic—”

“I am not a conjurer, nor am I
Pron-alban,
a craftsman,” said Mosiah coldly. “I am not learned in boatbuilding, and I
don’t think you want to wait while I study up on the subject.”

“I wasn’t asking you to build a
full-blown sailing vessel,” Scylla returned, her eyes flashing in anger. “But I
do
think you might be able to use one of your fire spells to burn out
the inside of a log so that we could make a canoe.”

“Canoe!”
Mosiah snorted. “Perhaps we’ll
use your head, Sir Knight. It must be hollow enough! Has it ever occurred to
you that I will need to conserve all the Life I have left to extricate us from
the clutches of this dragon, which—I have the feeling—isn’t going to be exactly
charmed
to see us.”

All this time Father Saryon had
been attempting to say something. At last, he had his chance. “Do you have so
little faith in me, to think I would bring you to a drowned cave?”

He smiled as he said the words,
but we felt the rebuke, especially
myself
and Eliza.

“Forgive me, Father,” Eliza said,
looking remorseful. “You are right. I should have had faith in you.”

“If not me, then at least in the
Almin,” Saryon said, and he cast a glance at Mosiah which indicated that the
elderly priest had also heard at least part of our former conversation.

Mosiah said nothing, made no
apology. He stood stoic and silent, his arms crossed, his hands concealed in
the black sleeves of his robes.

Saryon continued, adding briskly,
“There is a path, over here. A rock ledge runs above the water level. This path
leads to a corridor which takes us away from the river, down into the bowels of
the cavern.”

The path along the riverbank made
a meandering turn to the left, circling around a large willow, whose limbs and
trunk sheltered part of the cave entrance from view. Saryon parted the swaying,
leafy branches and there was the rock ledge, leading into the cavern.

Mosiah offered to go first and I
thought perhaps this was his way of making amends for having been so
short-tempered.

“Don’t follow me until you
receive my signal,” he cautioned.

He entered the cave, taking the
raven with him, and soon passed beyond our sight. I wondered why the bird had
been invited to come, then realized—when it came flapping back out of the cave
entrance, like an overlarge bat—that the raven was to be the messenger.

“Come ahead,” the bird croaked in
a raspy voice.
“One of you at a time.”

Eliza went next, entering the
cavern stalwartly and without fear. My fear
for
her was enough for both
of us, however. I watched her as long as I could, as if my will alone would
hold her on that ledge and she must fall when she was out of my sight.

The raven had flown in with her
and I waited in agony until the bird returned. “She is safe. Send the next.”

“You go, Reuven,”
said
Saryon,
a
smile in his
eyes.

I could not believe I was
actually eager to enter that cave, but now nothing could have kept me from
it.

Chill damp air washed over me and
I had to wait until my eyes adjusted to the darkness. The light shining outside
the cavern gleamed off the rushing water and lit my way for a short distance.
The path was wide here and I was able to make fairly good time.

But then the path narrowed, until
I could barely place my two feet side by side. The ledge rounded a bend in the
wall, which cut off the light. I expected this part to be dark and was
astonished to find the way bathed in a warm reddish glow. One of the
stalactites overhead radiated light and warmth, as if the rock had been heated.
I could see the path, a shimmering ribbon of gray above the black and
shimmering water. The raven winged past me, returning to Mosiah.

I understood now why the Enforcer
had offered to go first. He had walked the darkness in order to light the way
for the rest of us.

The path began to rise and here
it narrowed farther, until I was forced to place my back against the wall and
shuffle sideways. I crept along, out of sight of my friends behind me, not yet
within sight of Mosiah and Eliza ahead of me. One false step and I would plunge
into the murky, foaming water below. Sweat beaded on my brow and trickled down
my breast; the cold air set me shivering. I had never in my life felt so alone.

I took another step and I could
see the end, and there, waiting for me, were Mosiah and Eliza. I was so eager
to reach them that I was tempted to fling caution to the winds and make a dash
for safety.

“Easy now,” Mosiah warned. “This
is the hardest part.”

I controlled the urge to bolt. I
pressed so hard against the rock that I scraped the flesh off my back and edged
carefully along the path. It grew wider as I went and I was able to quicken my
pace. I stumbled into Eliza’s arms and we clung to each other for comfort, our
shared warmth driving away the thought of falling into the swirling water. I
blessed Saryon for having sent me ahead to have this time with her.

Mosiah watched us with a faintly
sardonic smile on his lips, though he said nothing, merely sending the raven
back with the message, “Next!”

Father Saryon arrived, his
movements so awkward and ungainly upon the ledge that we thought more than once
he must topple over. He would always manage to save himself, however, his hands
snagging an outcropping of rock when his foot slipped or his feet maintaining a
toehold when his hands could not find purchase.

He reached us at last and wiped
dirt from his palms. “That was much easier than the first time I made that
trip,” he said, keeping his voice low. Though the dragon was far down in the
very bottom of the cavern, we dared not take a chance on its hearing us. “I did
not have a wizard with me to provide light.” He nodded his thanks to Mosiah. “And
I was carrying the Dark-sword at the time.”

“What drove you to make the trip
at all, Father?” Mosiah
asked,
his eyes visible in the
shadows of his hood only by their reflection of the red-glowing stalactite. He
had sent the raven back for Scylla. “Were you pursued?”

Saryon was silent a moment, his
face pale and haggard at the memory. “I think, on reflection, that I probably
was not, but I had no way of knowing that at the time. Besides, to be safe, I
had to believe that they
were in
pursuit. What led me into this cave?
Instinct, maybe, the instinct of the hunted to seek a dark place in
which to hide.
Or maybe the hand of the Almin.”

Mosiah lifted an eyebrow, turned
away, and watched the path. We heard the clash of steel against rock and Mosiah
muttered, “So much for stealth.”

The sound was immediately
muffled. A short wait, and then Scylla appeared, rounding that same treacherous
bend, the red of the stalactite burning like flame in her silver armor.

She was having a difficult time
of it. The breastplate prevented her from flattening her back against the wall,
as the rest of us had done. She was inching her way along, clinging to the wall
with her hands. And then she came to a halt, leaned her head back against the
wall, and closed her eyes.

“Tell her,” Mosiah said to the
raven, “that this is no time for a nap!”

The
raven floated
over,
hovered
near Scylla.
We could not
hear what she said,
but the
words seemed
forced
out in
a gasp that was audible
from
where we stood.

“She
says
she
can’t
move,”
the
raven
reported. Landing on the
path
beside Mosiah, it began
to clean its beak with
a
clawed foot. “She knows she’s going to fall.”

Frozen in terror, Scylla clung to
the wall. My heart ached for her. I had known the same fear and the Almin only
knew what had kept me going. The sight of Eliza, I think.

“She needs help,” said Father
Saryon, gathering up the skirt of his robe.

“I’ll go,” said Mosiah. “I don’t
want to have to drag both of you out of the river!”

He returned along the treacherous
path. Facing the wall, he edged his way forward, until he was within an arm’s
length of Scylla.

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

Scylla could not move her head to
look at him. She could barely move her lips. “I ... I can’t swim!”

“Bless the girl!” Mosiah said in
exasperation. “If you fall into the water, you won’t have to worry about
swimming. You’ll sink like a boulder in that armor.”