Triumph of the Darksword Read online

  The Bishop appeared indifferent. “Capturing Joram must be up to you and Simkin, I’m afraid. I know nothing of sordid matters. I am a churchman, after all.”

  “Oh, really!” Simkin heaved an exasperated sigh. “This has gone on quite long enough! Which was something else the Duchess said, her sixth taking an interminable length of time over dying. I told you I have it all planned.”

  Spreading the orange silk out upon Vanya’s desk, Simkin waved his hand over it and letters appeared on its surface.

  “Shh—” he hissed as Menju was about to read it aloud. “The Font has ears and eyes, you know. Meet me here”—he indicated the name of the place written on the silk scarf—“tomorrow at noon. You will have Joram and his wife, both completely at your mercy and unsuspecting as babes.”

  Bishop Vanya, his lips pursed, his eyes practically buried in rolls of fat, took one look at the name of the location written on the silk and grew extremely pale. “This place is out of the question!”

  “Why?” Menju asked coldly.

  “Surely you know its history!” Vanya said, regarding the Sorcerer incredulously.

  “Pah! I have not believed in ghosts since I was five! From descriptions I vaguely recall reading of this place, it will suit our purposes admirably. Plus I begin to see the inklings of Simkin’s plan to get Joram there without suspicion. Most ingenuous, my friend.” The magician glanced down his elegant nose at the Bishop. “You are not using this pretense to wriggle out of our agreement, are you, Holiness?”

  “Far from it!” Vanya protested earnestly. “I am concerned only for your safety, Menju.”

  “Thank you, Eminence.” The Sorcerer rose from his chair.

  “Remember, you have been warned. You will handle everything?” The Bishop remained seated, concealing his handicap.

  “Certainly, Holiness.”

  “Then I believe that it is all we have to say to each other.”

  “Yes, although there is one more matter we need settled.” The Sorcerer turned to Simkin. “You are entitled to a handsome reward for your services, Simkin. That is, I assume, why you’re doing this, after all….”

  “No, no!” protested Simkin, looking deeply offended. “Patriotic. I regret that I have but one friend to give for my country.”

  “I insist that you accept something!”

  “I couldn’t possibly,” said Simkin loftily, but with a glance at Menju from beneath half-shut eyelids.

  “My world, and this one”—Menju gestured at Vanya—“will be eternally grateful.”

  “Well, perhaps there is one small favor you can do for me, now that you mention it.” Simkin drew the orange silk slowly between his fingers.

  “Name it! Jewels? Gold?”

  “Bah! What do I need with filthy lucre? I ask only one thing—take me back to your world.”

  The Sorcerer appeared considerably astonished at this request. “Are you serious?” he asked.

  “As serious as I generally am about anything,” Simkin replied offhandedly. “No, wait. I take that back. I fancy I’m more serious about this than usual.”

  “Well, well. Is that all? Take you with me?” Menju laughed expansively. “Nothing easier! It’s quite a brilliant idea, in fact! The hit you will make as part of my act! You will be the toast of the universe without doubt, my friend! I can see the marquee now!” The magician waved his hand. “THE SORCERER and Simkin!”

  “Mmmm….” The young man smoothed his mustache thoughtfully. “Well, well. We can discuss that later. For now, we really must be going. Collect the Major, don our disguises, and return to those remarkably ugly buildings in which you odd people choose to dwell.”

  Rising slowly up into the air, his red brocade dressing gown flashing like flame in the bright lights of the Bishop’s chambers, Simkin drifted over to the tapestry-covered wall.

  As he passed by Menju, muttered words came floating back. “SIMKIN and the Sorcerer …”

  7

  Eye In The Sky

  The sun sank down into the horizon hurriedly, without calling attention to itself. Night came quickly to Thimhallan, therefore, and a new moon rose. Curved in a malicious grin, it might well have been laughing at the follies of mankind that met its eyes…

  “The magician takes me for a fool?”

  Left alone with the Cardinal after the departure of Simkin and his “friends,” Bishop Vanya sat behind his desk, glaring at the empty chair the Sorcerer had lately occupied.

  The Bishop had been all pleasant smiles—or at least the half of his face that could smile had been smiling—until his guests left. But once they were gone—Simkin’s voice prattling away merrily the while, its irritating tones the last sound Vanya heard as the Corridor closed about them—the smiling side of the face became as cold and frozen as its paralyzed other half.

  “The Darksword! That is what he wants,” Vanya snarled, the pudgy hand crawling over the desk, the Cardinal staring at it in a horrible kind of fascination. “A token of goodwill! Bah! He knows the truth about it, about its powers. Joram must have told him. Menju knew about Simkin, after all. He knew about the Turning, he knew about Joram crossing into Beyond. Yes! He knows about the sword!

  “You are the fool, Menju, to think I would give it up!” Vanya muttered, his plans bubbling and fermenting, coming to a frothing head. It appeared, from the perspiration on his brow, that his mental cup was overflowing.

  “You Sorcerer! You devil of the Dark Arts! No wonder you have no fear of demons in that cursed place you have chosen to do your foul deed. You are one yourself, no doubt. But you might as well serve me as serve a Darker Master. Rid me of the Prophecy. Rid me of Joram. I’ll make of him a martyr and throw you to Prince Garald and the mob that will be howling for your blood. They’ll have you and your pitiful army to crucify. I’ll have the Darksword….”

  With the heat of his emotions, the ice thawed, the smile returned to half the face.

  “Send for the Executioner,” ordered the Bishop.

  “The fat Priest takes me for a fool,” the Sorcerer said complacently.

  Staring into a mirror he had conjured up, he carefully straightened his tie and smoothed nonexistent wrinkles from his lapels. He and the Major were back at their headquarters seated in the Major’s office. He had divested himself of his disguise—though Simkin had assured him, before leaving, that the red brocade dressing gown “is you!”

  “I think you are mad!” Major Boris muttered in hollow tones.

  “What did you say, James?” the Sorcerer asked, though he had heard well enough.

  “I said I don’t understand!” the Major returned heavily. “What have you done except put us in a more desperate situation than ever! Why did you reveal our plans to Joram! You knew it would force him to attack us before the reinforcements arrive—”

  “Assuredly,” the Sorcerer said coolly, combing his thick, wavy hair.

  “But why?”

  “Major”—the magician continued to look critically into the mirror—“consider this. We have sent a frantic message for reinforcements back to our world. They arrive and find us seated calmly in the midst of this enchanged realm, not a shot being fired. Then we regale them with tales of giants and dragons, whimpering that we don’t dare fight because the bad bogeymen are going to get us? They will double up with laughter!” His usual suave and unruffled appearance restored, the Sorcerer banished the mirror with a clap of his hands. Turning, he faced the Major. “Instead, they find us battling for our lives against monsters and crazed wizards. They’ll enter the fight, kill without mercy, and be only too glad to wipe out this demonic populace.”

  “And by provoking Joram to attack, you’ve forced me to fight as well,” Major Boris said, staring out into the night with glazed, unseeing eyes.

  “It isn’t that I don’t trust you, Major.” Reaching across the table, the Sorcerer patted James Boris’s right hand. Shuddering at the touch, the Major snatched his hand away, thrusting it protectively in his pocket. “It was just that I
needed … insurance I think it a bit naive of you to believe that Joram would have let you escape this world unharmed anyway. You saw them mobilizing Merilon for war….”

  Major Boris had seen, and he remembered. Darkening the room, Bishop Vanya had invited his guests, before they left, to look upon Merilon the Beautiful.

  Preparing for war, Merilon’s twilight had been changed into day—its streets lit by countless angry, flaring suns. The Major’s grim face grew grimmer still as he gazed upon nightmare monsters flying through the air, legions of skeletons marching down the street. He could repeat the Bishop’s scornful words, tell himself that they were illusions, incapable of harm. But who would tell his men, facing these things on the field of battle? And if he did tell them, why would they believe him? Especially if they had just seen their comrades torn to shreds by the beaks of real cockatrice, their invincible tanks crushed beneath the feet of real giants. There was no separating illusion from reality in this awful world.

  Fear chewed at Boris, like centaurs devouring the flesh of their living victims. His right hand, hidden in the pocket of his fatigues, shook. It was all he could do to keep from bringing it out to examine it, to see if it still was a hand….

  “My men may be hunks of meat in your trap,” he told the Sorcerer bitterly, “but we’re not going to wait for the wizards to fall on us like ravening wolves. I’m going to attack their city tomorrow. Take them by surprise.”

  The Sorcerer shrugged. “I don’t care what you do, Major, as long as you do not interfere with my plans for acquiring the Darksword.”

  “I won’t,” James Boris returned heavily. “I need the damn sword, remember? I’ll launch the attack at noon. You’re certain Joram will be out of the way by then?”

  “Absolutely.” Menju said, rising and preparing to take his departure. “And now, if you’ll excuse me, Major, I have plans of my own to make for tomorrow.”

  The Major continued to look glum.

  “What about this … Simkin? I don’t trust him.”

  “That fop?” The Sorcerer shrugged. “He’ll do what he’s promised. He wants his reward, after all.”

  “But you’ve no intention of taking him back with us, have you, Sorcerer?” Major Boris stood up as well, keeping his hands in his pockets. “He may be a fop, but he’s a dangerous one. From what I’ve seen, he’s a better magician than you can ever hope to be!”

  The Sorcerer regarded the Major with a cool, unfaltering gaze. “I trust that shot made you feel better, James. Now you can go to your bed with some shreds of dignity clinging to you. Not that I have to explain, but to be quite honest I had considered taking him. He would be an undoubted asset to my act. But you are right. He is too powerful. He would—so to speak—demand top billing. Once he has given me Joram, Simkin will meet the same fate as everyone else in this world.”

  “And what about Joram?”

  “I want him alive. He will be useful to me. He’ll tell me of the powers of the Darksword and how to construct more of these weapons—”

  “He won’t, you know.”

  “He’ll have no choice. I’ll have his wife.

  The moon roamed across the sky, perhaps in search of new diversion. If so, it found little.

  Following a highly satisfactory meeting with the Executioner, the Bishop retired to his bedchamber. Here, assisted by a novitiate, he was engulfed in a voluminous nightshirt and helped to his bed. Once there, Vanya realised he had forgotten, in the excitement of the evening, his nightly prayers. He did not get back up. Surely this once the Almin could make do without receiving instruction and advice from his minister.

  In another part of the world, Major Boris, too, went to his bed. Lying on his regulation cot, he was ostensibly trying to rest, although he didn’t know which alternative he feared worse—that he wouldn’t fall asleep or that he would. Either way, he knew his dreams were likely to be extremely unpleasant.

  Two men were still awake—the Sorcerer and the Executioner, both planning how to take their prey upon the morrow.

  The moon, finding nothing interesting in that, was about to set when, after all, it did run across something amusing.

  A bucket with a bright orange handle sat in a corner of the geodesic dome that served as the headquarters for the army from another world. This was by no means an ordinary bucket. Having worked itself into a state of indignation, it was, literally, coming apart at the seams.

  “Menju, you cheat! You’re not playing at all fair! Taking Joram back to a brave, new world and not me!” The bucket flipped its handle about quite savagely. “Well, we’ll see about that!” the bucket predicted ominously. “We’ll see.”

  Per Istam———Sanctam….

  Count Devon is truly sorry about the china cabinet, but it happened, he thinks, because he is uneasy in his mind about the mice nibbling his portrait. The painting would be glad to return to its old place upon the wall if only someone would so instruct it. He has tried, but it doesn’t hear his voice.

  “He doesn’t want the portrait destroyed, for without it he can’t recall what he looks like.

  “The mice concern him. He says there are far too many. It comes with being shut up in a closed, comfortable attic without any predators; his late wife being terrified of cats. The mice have had a comfortable life and are now fat and sleek with a decided taste for art. Yet he has discovered in his solitary, wakeful ramblings (for the dead who can sleep do so, never to wake, while those who can’t find sleep roam constantly in search of rest) many small corpses in the attic.

  “The mice are dying, and he can’t understand why. Their tiny bodies litter the floor, more each day. And here is a very Strange thing. He has heard from a woman who once lived across the street and who, it seems, died from lack of attention and it took three days for somebody to notice, that the mice in her attic are suffering the very same fate.

  “Sealed up, safe and secure, they are, she says, suffocating.”

  1

  Emperor Of Merilon

  Night attempted to lull Merilon to sleep, but its soothing hand was thrust away by those preparing for war. Joram took command of the city, naming Prince Garald his military leader. He and the Prince immediately began to mobilize the population.

  Joram met with his people in the Grove Gathering around the ancient tomb of the wizard who had brought them to this world, many of the citizens of Merilon wondered if that almost forgotten spirit stirred restlessly in his centuries-old sleep. Was his dream about to end and yet another enchanted kingdom fall to ruin?

  “This is a fight to the death,” Joram told the people grimly. “The enemy intends to wipe out our entire race, to destroy us utterly. We have seen proof of this in the wanton attack upon innocent civilians on the Field of Glory. They have shown no mercy. We will show none.” He paused. The silence that flowed through the crowd grew deeper, until they might have been drowned in it. Looking at them from where he stood on the platform above the tomb, Joram said slowly, emphasizing each word, “Every one of them must die.”

  No one cheered when Joram left the Grove. Instead, they turned quickly and quietly to their duties. Women trained alongside the men; the very old and the infirm staying behind to mind the children—many of whom might be orphans when night fell again on Thimhallan.

  “Better that,” Mosiah’s father said to his wife as they both prepared to practice for battle, “than dead.”

  A call went forth for War Masters, who came to Merilon through the Corridors from all parts of the world. Under their tutelage, the civilians, including the Field Magi, were given hasty instruction in fighting the enemy, aided by their own catalysts.

  Mosiah’s parents took their places beside old Father Tolban, the Priest who had served the village of Walren for so many years. Due to his advanced age, the meek, dried-up Field Catalyst could have remained behind with the children. But he insisted on going to battle with his people.

  “I have never done a worthwhile thing in my entire life,” he told Jacobias. “I have never
known a proud moment. Let this be it.”

  Though the outside world was dark and slumbering, the city of Merilon burned with light. It might have been day beneath the dome—a terrible, fear-laced day whose sun was the fiery glow of the forge. The Pron-alban had hastily conjured up a workplace for the blacksmith. He and his sons and apprentices like Mosiah worked to repair weapons damaged in the previous battle or create new ones. Though many in Merilon looked with horror upon the Sorcerers, practicing their Dark Art of Technology, the citizens swallowed their fears and did what they could to assist.

  The Theldara tended the injured, buried the dead, and hastily began working on enlarging both the Houses of Healing and the Burial Catacombs. The druids knew that, by the rising of the moon tomorrow night, they would need many more beds … and graves.

  City Below was thronged with people: War Masters arriving continually from all over Thimhallan, catalysts coming from the Font, refugees pouring in from the Outland, fleeing the nameless terror. The streets were so crowded it was difficult to either fly or walk. University students filled the cafes and taverns, singing martial songs and thirsting for the glories of battle. Moving through the crowd, the Duuk-tsarith walked the streets like death personified, keeping order, quelling panic, and quietly whisking away those of the students whose eagerness in practicing their spell-casting seemed likely to prove more dangerous to themselves than the enemy.

  City Above was wide awake as well. Like the Field Magi, many of the nobles were also practicing for battle. Sometimes their wives, too, stood beside them. But more often the noble ladies could be found opening their large houses to the refugees or tending the injured. A Countess might be seen brewing herbal tea with her own hands. A Duchess played at Swan’s Doom with a group of peasant children, keeping them amused while their parents prepared for war.

  Joram watched over everything. Everywhere he went, people greeted him with cheers He was their savior. Taking the romantic half-truths Garald had woven around the true story of Joram’s lineage, the people further embroidered it and decorated it until it was practically unrecognizable. Joram tried to protest, but the Prince silenced him.