Triumph of the Darksword Read online

  According to legend, the Temple of the Necromancers had been raised up from the stone of the mountain by the hands of the dead themselves. The summit of the mountain formed the Temples cavelike back wall, the magically altered peak that spiraled gracefully into the clouds was the Temple’s roof. The two side walls, facing east and west, were built out from the back. Following the natural lines of the mountain, they each rose up from the tops of sheer cliffs Bishop Vanya’s Garden—referred to in these days as the “top” of the mountain—was actually five hundred feet below.

  The columned portico of the Temple, facing north, opened onto a large, circular expanse of level ground. Here, paving stones had been laid out in the shape of a wheel. Nine sidewalks formed nine spokes that led from the outer walkway to a huge altar stone in the hub of the wheel. One symbol of each of the Nine Mysteries was engraved at the end of each walkway. All nine symbols were repeated, carved into the altar stone.

  This area had once been well kept. Comfortable wooden benches stood at intervals around the wheel’s hub. Between each of the nine spokes, beds of flowers had bloomed, coaxed by the hands of the druids to grow at this high altitude.

  In this once lovely Garden, in this magnificent setting, people came from all over Thimhallan to counsel with, ask advice of, or merely pay a cordial visit to their dead. The Necromancers—born to the Mystery of Spirit and permitted by the Almin to dwell in both worlds, that of the living and that of the dead—acted as interpreters, carrying messages from one world to the next and back again.

  The Necromancers had been a powerful Order, the most powerful in Thimhallan at the time of the Iron Wars, or so it was whispered. A word from the dead had been known to topple thrones and bring down royal houses. The Duuk-tsarith who feared nothing living, reportedly had trembled when they approached the Gardens of the Necromancers. There had been those, particularly among the rulers of the land, their warlocks, and their catalysts, who had looked upon this power with a jealous eye.

  No one knew exactly how the Necromancers perished during the Iron Wars. It was a confused time. Countless numbers of people lost their lives during that bloody conflict. The Necromancers had always been a very small sect; few people were born to the Mystery of Spirit, and fewer still had the discipline to enable them to endure a life of death. It is easy to understand how a small group might have perished and their passing gone unnoticed.

  Suffice it to say that at war’s end the catalysts announced that the Necromancers had been wiped out. The practicers of the Dark Arts, the Technologists, were blamed for the murders, as they were blamed, for every evil that had befallen the land during the past century.

  Few missed the Necromancers. The dead of the land—and there were many—had generally died bitter deaths. The living were only too happy to put their grief out of their minds and get on with living, which, in many cases, was difficult enough.

  If any thought to wonder why no more children were born to the Mystery of the Spirit, they might have asked the catalysts or the Duuk-tsarith or the parents of children who occasionally heard voices not audible to others or talked to friends that were not there. In these instances, the children either outgrew this strange phase or, if the “phase” persisted, the children disappeared.

  What Father Saryon said about the Temple was true—people were prohibited from setting foot on Temple grounds. But—and this is not to disparage the word of the catalyst, who was undoubtedly repeating the gossip of the Font—it was not true that the Temple had fallen under a curse. It was not true that certain powerful catalysts had tried to lift the curse and had never returned.

  The truth of the matter was very simple—no one had ever bothered. The only curse the Temple of the Necromancers lay under was the curse of being forgotten.

  The red robes of his disguise rustling about his ankles, Menju the Sorcerer stepped cautiously out of the Corridor onto the long neglected grounds of the Temple. The Thon-li who brought him here were shocked beyond measure at his traveling to this place and had earnestly tried to dissuade him. Only by stating that this was a wartime emergency had the Sorcerer been able to convince them to send him to his destination.

  Their fears, however, had done nothing to bolster his confidence. His hand clasping the phaser gun kept concealed in his pocket, words of a spell for repelling the dead on his lips, Menju looked swiftly around and instantly sensed the true nature of the place. Relaxing, he breathed a sigh of relief.

  Though the sun beamed from a cloudless sky, an aura of sadness and melancholy hung over the Temple like thick fog, casting an almost perceptible shadow on the broken walls and the crumbling stone. There was an eerie stillness about the place, too; an unnatural quiet, as if countless numbers of unseen people were standing about, each holding his or her breath, waiting for something to happen.

  Shivering in the still, cold mountain air, the Sorcerer put his phaser away, grinning over his fears. But it was a weak grin at best and he sat down upon one of the decaying stone benches with an unintended suddenness, resulting from his knees giving way.

  What had he expected, after all? he scolded himself. Legions of howling dead, leaping, shrieking, out of the darkness to protest this trespass? Skeletal hands touching his? Figures in white winding sheets and chains stalking about, bewailing the degenerate state of his mind and promising him three ghostly visitors before morning?

  “Bah! Humbug!” he said aloud and was able to laugh—with only a slight shudder—at his own little joke.

  Wiping the chill sweat from his brow, Menju took a moment to regain his composure and to investigate his surroundings. He had come here purposefully early to do just this. The sun was even with his left shoulder. He had over an hour until noon.

  Phaser in hand, he carefully and coolly began to examine every rock and boulder around the perimeter of the Temple grounds. He checked out his surroundings with elaborate care. Despite his immediate observation that there was no one here, Menju had the strangest impression that someone was examining him. Finding nothing and no one, however, he firmly banished the thought, considering it to come from the same childish source as the clanking chains and white sheets.

  Leaving the cliff’s edge, the Sorcerer walked down one of the paths through the dead Garden, desiring a closer look at the altar stone. The path he selected was the one of his own Mystery—that of Technology. Whether he chose this path out of superstition, a feeling of homesickness, or because it merely suited his humor, Menju didn’t bother to analyze.

  Stalks of dead plants that had not decayed in the cold, dry air of the high mountain elevation stuck up out of the frozen dirt on either side of the path. Small, dead, ornamental saplings lay with their roots in the air, having been blown over by the winter winds. The Sorcerer glanced without in terest at the remnants of the Garden. Arriving at the altar stone, he stared at it curiously, running his fingers over the symbols of the Nine Mysteries carved into the rock. It was an unusual type of rock, he saw. Some sort of ore. Perhaps darkstone? he thought, feeling a tremor of excitement.

  Examining it closely, he tried to recall legends he had heard about the altar stone. How it had been raised out of the Well of Life far below, at the base of the Font. How it had been a sort of plug in the Well and how, once the stone was removed, the magic gushed forth like magma, flowing out over the world.

  That made sense, he realized suddenly. The darkstone had capped the Well! It was an exhilarating thought.

  Standing at the center of the world, directly above the source of the magic, Menju could feel Life pulsing around him, surging through him. He reveled in the sensation. He couldn’t believe he had forgotten how exciting it was, possessing the magic again.

  The Sorcerer studied the boulder critically. It was huge! It must stand at least seven feet tall. His arms would not even go halfway around it. It weighed—what—a ton? If it was darkstone, its value would be incalculable? His hand, touching it, shook with anticipation.

  “Joram will know if it is darkstone or it isn�
�t,” the Sorcerer murmured, smiling to himself. “I must try to keep him conscious when I capture him, at least until he’s had a chance to tell me.”

  Patting the altar stone fondly and longingly with his hand, the Sorcerer continued his inspection, finally reaching the Temple itself.

  Nine stairs shaped out of stone led up to the porch. Nine crumbling columns supported a broken roof that jutted out from beneath the spiraling summit of the mountain. Drawing nearer, the Sorcerer saw that parts of the ceiling had collapsed beneath the weight of rock and years. Large chunks of stone littered the floor. The altar, barely seen through the shadows, appeared to have been crushed by a ceiling beam. Climbing the crumbling stairs, Menju noted with satisfaction that the darkness inside the Temple was thick and impenetrable.

  Menju nodded to himself. Taking one final look around, he glanced out over the plains far to the north, to where the city of Merilon stood glittering in the sun. Squinting, he stared intently at the city, thinking he saw the glint of metal. Was it Major Boris’s tanks taking up position to bombard the magical dome? Or was it the sunlight, flashing off an icebound lake? He couldn’t be certain.

  Shrugging, the Sorcerer turned away. Once he had. The Darksword, it wouldn’t matter anyway. Meanwhile Boris and his men could have their fun. It kept the Major occupied, kept him from brooding. And it would heat up the blood of the soldiers, filling them with the fear and hatred necessary to exterminate the people of this world.

  The sun was high above his head. It was nearly time. Returning to his selected hiding place, Menju mulled over matters in his mind. The fighting on this world was likely to be long and costly, even with the Darksword. These people wouldn’t go to their deaths without a struggle. A pity he couldn’t use some of those depopulation bombs that killed without damaging buildings and such. Would those disrupt the magic? Possibly not. He’d have to consult the physicists. Come to think of it, Joram might know.

  What about Joram? Would he cooperate? Entering the Temple, the Sorcerer allowed himself a smile of satisfaction. His plan was foolproof. Joram was known to be devoted to his mad wife. Once realizing that Menju had Gwendolyn captive, Joram would be only too happy to cooperate. Insane though the woman may be, at least she was capable of some form of rational thought. Better that than seeing her mental capacity reduced to the level of a rotting tomato.

  Menju switched the setting on his phaser from “kill” to “stun.” Crouching down in the darkness behind a column of the ruined Temple, conscious of a breathless hush that had settled over the top of the world, the Sorcerer waited.

  6

  The Executioner

  Menju’s instincts were right. He was being watched. And though most of the eyes watching him belonged to the dead, one pair did not. One pair belonged to the living. Someone else had arrived at the Temple of the Necromancer. Someone else was waiting.

  The presence of the humans disturbed the dead, who had not seen living bodies on their hallowed ground in centuries. But it was not just the presence alone of these two men that caused the spirits restless agitation. Clustered about their Temple, they watched with unseeing eyes, listened with deaf ears, spoke with dumb mouths. For there was no one to understand them, no one to hear them, and their sense of frustration was great. The dead—who were one with the mind of Almin—knew the danger but were helpless to act. All they could do was watch with those watching and wait with those waiting.

  This second Watcher was, in reality, the first. He had arrived at the Temple of the Necromancer very early in the morning, just as the pale, cold sun was struggling up over the mountain peaks, creeping sluggishly into the sky as if wondering why it bothered to rise at all. Even the eyes of the dead—who see time moving not second by second as do the living, but as one vast, everchanging ocean—nearly missed noticing this man. Emerging from the Corridor, he vanished again instantly, disappearing almost in the second of his appearance.

  It took some doing, but the dead located him, or at least part of him, for this man was good at his calling. No human eye could pierce his shield of invisibility, and it was all the spirits could do to keep his image in their minds. The man they saw was dressed formally for the commission of Justice, wearing gray robes decorated with the symbols of the Nine Mysteries. Many of the dead recognized him—the Executioner—and they either trembled or cursed him.

  One of the most powerful warlocks in Thimhallan, the Executioner dwelled within the Font. His services belonged exclusively to the catalysts in general, and Bishop Vanya in particular. In return for performing such deeds for them as the Turning to Stone and the Banishment to Beyond, the Executioner was given unlimited Life and freedom to use that Life as he chose. Thus he had been able to develop his skills in the discipline of magic far beyond those of his peers.

  This day, however, the Executioner was not going to rely upon magic. As did the other Watcher in the Temple, he carried in the pocket of his gray robes a Tool, a demonic device created by the Dark Arts of Technology.

  Intrigued by the device, which he had spent the night studying, the Executioner withdrew it and examined it intently. The dead, drawn by curiosity, crowded around, gazing at the device in shock and horror. What it was and what it did they had some idea, since they were one with the Creator of All. They found the terrible device difficult to understand, however, as perhaps did the Creator, who must have, on occasion, regretted giving mankind intelligence that was turned so often to malevolent pursuits.

  The night previous, Bishop Vanya had called the Executioner to his office. Giving him his orders, he had made certain that the warlock knew exactly what was required of him.

  “For returning to this realm and bringing upon it untold danger, the sentence of death is placed upon this man Joram,” pronounced the Bishop’s sonorous voice. “He has tricked the people into naming him Emperor; therefore, the rest of the Duuk-tsarith are bound by strict oaths to protect him You—the Executioner—are to consider yourself above these laws, since the Church—the highest authority in the land, existing by the blessing of the Almin—has decreed Joram’s death. Once the sentence has been carried out, you will retrieve the Darksword and bring it immediately to me to prevent its presence in the world from causing further harm.”

  The Bishop had stopped here for breath and to carefully scrutinize the Executioner in order to make certain that he understood what he was meant to understand and didn’t what he wasn’t.

  “Further,” the Bishop had continued, sucking in a noseful of air, “although the execution of Joram is undeniably justified, we consider that it will be best—the people being in a nervous and unsettled state—to allow the populace to believe that their Emperor has met his death at the hands of the enemy. A man called Menju the Sorcerer, a criminal you yourself cast into Beyond, is meeting with Joram at the Temple of the Necromancers—clear proof, by the way, that our Emperor intends to betray his people. It would be quite beneficial to all concerned if the two, Joram and this Sorcerer, were to have a falling out that would result in the Emperor’s death…”

  The Executioner, understanding perfectly, had bowed in acquiescence and removed himself from the Bishop’s presence without uttering a word.

  Entering a Corridor, the warlock left the Font, traveling through time and space until he arrived at the secret, subterranean chambers of the Order of Duuk-tsarith. Making his needs known to those in charge, the Executioner was immediately given access to certain rooms kept sealed off from the rest. In these rooms, the personal effects confiscated from the bodies of the strange humans were being studied.

  Various members of Duuk-tsarith, engaged in sorting and cataloging the effects, bowed in homage to one so high-rank ing in their Order, and stood aside from their work to allow him to examine the objects. He was not interested in the remarkable timekeeping devices or the ugly jewelry or the pieces of parchment that had captured images of other strange humans, mostly females and children. The Executioner passed over these without a glance. He was interested only in the weapo
ns.

  Although not born to the Ninth Mystery himself, the Executioner was familiar with the tools of the Dark Arts, having studied them as he had studied much else in this world. Carefully he went over the cache of weapons, examining each one he came to, being careful not to touch any of them. Occasionally he asked a question of one of the Duuk-tsarith standing respectfully nearby. The Executioner discovered, however, that he knew as much, or in some cases more, about these weapons than they did.

  Although he had not participated in the battle, he had watched it with interest, noting the lethal swiftness with which the weapons casting the beams of light could kill. He studied these first. Small enough to fit in the palm of the hand, the metal devices gave absolutely no indication, at least outwardly, of how they were operated.

  The Executioner was just beginning to think he might have to trust his luck to one of these anyway, hoping he would not accidentally incinerate himself while endeavoring to figure out how it worked, when he came to something that suited him much better.

  A projectile weapon.

  He had read of these in the ancient texts of the Dark Arts. Although as far as anyone knew, none of these devices had ever been constructed on Thimhallan, they had been theorized and a few crude renderings of how they might work still existed. This weapon was, of course, much more complex than any of the drawings the Executioner had seen, but he assumed it operated along the same principles.

  Wrapping it gingerly in a cloth, the Executioner placed the weapon and a large number of what appeared to be its projectiles in a box. He sealed the box with strong runes of protection against fire and explosion, then, carrying the box carefully, he left the dark and secret chambers of the Duuk-tsarith, and traveled the Corridors to Merilon.

  The blacksmith, nearly on the verge of collapse from exhaustion, was considerably startled to see a gray-robed figure emerge from the Corridor outside his makeshift forge in Merilon. Everyone on Thimhallan knew of the Executioner, by legend if not by sight. Strong and stalwart man though he was, the blacksmith could not help shuddering with fear when the warlock approached him.