Legacy of the Darksword (12 page)

“They do not have far to travel
and the catalyst is familiar with this land,” she told the base commander. “The
priest is an old friend of Joram’s. They will not be in any danger. And they
will have communicators in the air car, which they can use should they run into
any unforeseen circumstances.”

She gave me a sideways glance as
she said this, to see my reaction. I guessed then that we would have escorts—of
an unseen kind. The
Duuk-tsarith,
perhaps hidden in their folds of time,
would be guarding us.

“What about a driver?” asked the
commander.

“I will drive—” the aide began.

I shook my head emphatically and
tapped myself on the chest. On my handheld computer, I typed out,
I will
drive.

“Can you?” the aide asked me,
clearly dubious.

Yes,
I replied stoutly, which was
almost the truth.

I had driven an air car once
before, at an amusement park, and had just about got the hang of it. It was the
other cars, coming every which way at me, which had confused me and caused my
driving to be slightly erratic. If mine was the only air car in this part of
the solar system, I figured I would be fairly safe.

Besides
—I held up the computer for the
aide to see what I had written—
you know that he will not let anyone else
come with us.
She did know, but she didn’t like it. My guess was that this
had all been arranged—the air car, I mean—with the understanding that she would
drive us, keep an eye on us, make her reports. Haven’t you got spies enough? I
thought bitterly, but did not put into words. I had won this round and could
afford to be magnanimous.

“Keep in contact,” the base
commander warned. “Circumstances with the enemy could change.
And probably not for the better.”

The aide returned to the ship, to
complain to the General. The base commander accompanied me to the air car, gave
me quick refresher lessons in operating the thing—lessons which served to
confuse me thoroughly. I tossed the knapsack in the backseat and left the air
car to fetch Saryon, who, in his eagerness, had started walking in the
direction of the distant mountains.

I hadn’t taken six steps when the
commander called after me. I turned to see him picking something up off the
ground.

“Here.” The commander handed it
to me. “The priest dropped this.”

He held out Saryon’s leather
scrip, one of the few objects he had brought with him from Thimhallan. I
recalled it well, for it was given an honored place in his study, carefully
arranged upon a small table near his desk. I always knew when Saryon was
thinking about Joram or about the past, for he would rest his hand upon the
scrip, his fingers stroking the worn leather.

I thought it touching that he had
brought the scrip with him, perhaps as a holy relic, to be rededicated. I
couldn’t imagine, though—cherishing the scrip as he did—how he had come to
carelessly drop it. Thanking the commander, I placed the scrip in the backseat
along with the knapsack. Then I went to retrieve my master.

“Air car,” he said, and gave me a
sharp look. “And who’s to be the driver?”

“I am, sir,” I signed. “It’s
either that or the General’s aide will drive us, and I knew you wouldn’t like
to have a stranger along.”

“I would much prefer that
alternative to being splattered against a tree,” said Saryon irritably.

“I have driven an air car before,
sir,” I returned.

“In an amusement park!”
Saryon snorted.

I was hoping that in his
excitement, he would have forgotten the circumstances.
Apparently
not.

“I will go find the General’s
aide, sir,” I signed, and started to head back toward the ship.

“Wait, Reuven.”

I turned around.

“Can you . . . really drive one
of those contraptions?” He cast a nervous glance at the air car.

“Well, sir.” I relaxed, smiled,
and shrugged. “I can try.”

“All right, then,” he said.

“Do you know the way?” I asked. “Where
are we going?”

He looked out again across the
landscape, toward the mountains that rose, snowcapped, on the horizon.

“There,” he said.
“The Font.
The only building left standing, after the
terrible storms broke over the world with the destruction of the Well of Life.
Joram and Gwendolyn took refuge there, and there, according to King Garald, is
where they live still.”

We started walking back to the
air car. “We have seventy-two hours,” I told him, “before the last ship leaves.”

He gave me the same shocked look
I had given the commander. “So short a time?”

“Yes, sir.
But surely it won’t take nearly
that long. Once you explain the danger to Joram . . .”

Saryon was shaking his head. I
wondered if I should tell him what the base commander had said about Joram’s
being insane, decided that I would keep that to myself. I did not want to add
to my master’s worries. My research on the book had seemed to indicate that
Joram was a manic-depressive and I thought it quite possible that the isolation
of his life, plus the tension created by the arrival of the Technomancers,
might well have driven him to the breaking point.

Reaching the car, I opened the
door for Saryon and saw the leather scrip draped over the backseat. I pointed
at it.

“You dropped it,” I signed. “The
base commander found it for you.”

Saryon stared at the scrip in
perplexity. “I couldn’t have dropped it. I didn’t bring it. Why would I?”

“Is it yours?” I asked, thinking
that perhaps it might belong to someone on the base.

Saryon peered closely at it. “It
looks very much like mine.
Somewhat newer, perhaps, not quite
as worn.
Odd.
Such a thing could not come into
the possession of anyone on base, because such a thing has not been made for
twenty years! It
must
be mine, only . . . Mmmm.
How
strange.”

I reminded him that he had been
distracted and upset, that perhaps he had brought it and not remembered. I also
hinted that his memory had failed him before—he was constantly forgetting where
he put his reading spectacles.

He cheerfully acknowledged that I
was right and admitted that it had crossed his mind to take the scrip, but that
he had been fearful of losing it. He thought that he had put it back in its
accustomed place.

The scrip remained lying on the
backseat. We entered the car and my thoughts centered on trying to remember all
that the commander had told me about the operation of the vehicle. The odd
discovery of the leather scrip passed clean out of my mind. Saryon settled into
the passenger’s seat. I assisted him with his seat belt and then fastened my
own. He asked worriedly if there weren’t more safety restraints and I said,
with more confidence than I felt, that these would be adequate.

I pushed the ON button. The air
car began to hum. I pushed the button marked JETS. The humming grew louder,
followed by a whoosh of the jets. The air car rose off the ground. Saryon had
fast hold of the door handle.

All was going very smoothly. The
car was drifting upward when Saryon spoke. “Aren’t we going too high?” he asked
in a cracked voice.

I shook my head, and taking the
wheel, I pressed on it, intending to level us off.

The wheel was far more sensitive
than I had anticipated, certainly more sensitive than the wheel of the air car
in the amusement park. The car lurched downward and headed at a high rate of
speed straight for the ground.

I jerked back on the wheel,
pulled up the nose. At the same time I inadvertently increased the power and we
soared up and jumped forward, the sudden thrust nearly snapping our necks in
the process.

“Almin save us!” Saryon gasped.

“Amen to that, Father,”
came
a sepulchral voice.

Saryon stared at me and I think
it was in his mind that perhaps the whiplash had miraculously restored my
speech. I shook my head emphatically and motioned with my chin—my hands were
gripping the wheel so tightly that I dared not let go—that the voice had come
from the backseat.

Twisting around, Saryon stared.

“I know that voice,” he muttered.
“But it can’t be!”

I don’t know what I expected—the
Duuk-tsarith,
I suppose. Not completely certain how to stop the air car, I kept driving
and at last managed to stabilize it. I cast a quick look in the rearview
mirror.

There was no one in the backseat.

“Ouch! I say!” The voice had a
peevish quality to it now. “This great smelly green bag has fallen on top of
me. I’m being frightfully dented.”

Saryon was searching wildly
around the backseat and was now groping about with his hands.
“Where?
What?”

I managed at last to halt the air
car. I kept the jets on, and we remained floating in the air. Reaching back, I
shoved aside the knapsack.

“Thanks awfully,” said the
leather scrip.

“Let me be your fool, sire. You
need one, I assure you.”

“Why, idiot?” asked Joram, the
half smile in his dark eyes.

“Because only a fool dares tell
you the truth,” said Simkin.

FORGING
THE DARKSWORD

“S
imkin!”
Saryon gulped, swallowed. “Is
that you
? “In the flesh.
Leather, actually,” replied
the scrip. “You can’t be,” Saryon said and he sounded shaken. “You’re . . . you’re
dead. I saw your corpse.”

“Never buried,” the scrip
returned.
“Grave mistake.
Speaking
of stakes, one through the heart.
That or silver bullet or sprig of
holly in the heel. But everyone was so busy those last few days, destroying the
world and so forth, I can see how I came to be overlooked.”

“Stop the nonsense.” Saryon was
stern. “If it
is
you, change into yourself. Your human self, that is. I
find this very disconcerting. Talking to a ... a leather scrip!”

“Ah, bit of a problem.” The scrip
wriggled, its leather ties curled in upon
themselves
in what might have been embarrassment. “I don’t seem to be able to do that
anymore. Become human. Rather lost the knack. Death takes a lot out of a
fellow, you know, as I was saying just the other day to my dear friend Mer-lyn.
You remember Merlyn?
Founder of Merilon?
Adequate
wizard, though not as good as some would have you believe.
His
fame due entirely to his press agent, of course.
And spelling his name
with
a
y,
I mean—how pretentious! But then
anyone who goes around dressed in a blue-and-white star-spangled bathrobe—”

“I insist.” Saryon was firm,
ignoring the desperate attempt to change the subject. He reached out his hand
for the leather scrip.
“Now.
Or I shall toss you out
the window.”

“You won’t get rid of me that
easily!” said the scrip coolly. “I’m coming with you, no matter what. You can’t
imagine how boring it has been! No amusement, absolutely none. Toss me out,”
the scrip warned as Saryon’s hand drew nearer, “and I’ll change into an engine
part on this simply fascinating vehicle. And I know very little about engine
parts,” he added, as an afterthought.

Recovering from the initial shock
of hearing what I considered to be an inanimate object speaking, I was
regarding Simkin with a great deal of interest. Of all those whose stories I
had written, those concerning Simkin intrigued me the most. Saryon and I had
argued in friendly fashion over just exactly what Simkin was.

I maintained that he was a wizard
of Thimhallan with extraordinary powers—a prodigy, a genius of magic, like
Mozart was a genius of music. Add to this a chaotic nature, an addictive lust
for adventure and excitement and a self-centered, shallow personality, and you
have a man who would betray his friends at the drop of an orange silk scarf.

Saryon admitted that all this was
true and that I was probably right; still, he had reservations.

“There are things about Simkin
that your theory doesn’t resolve,” Saryon had once said. “I think he is old,
very old,
perhaps
as old as Thimhallan itself. No, I
can’t prove it. Just a feeling I have, from things he’s mentioned. And I know
for a fact, Reuven, that the magic he performed is not possible. It is simply,
mathematically, not possible. It would take far more Life than a hundred
catalysts could give for him to transform himself into a teapot or a bucket.
And Simkin could perform this magic, as you say, at the drop of his orange silk
scarf! He died when Technology invaded the realm.”

“What do you think he is, then?”
I had asked. Saryon had smiled and shrugged. “I have absolutely no idea.” My
master was about to pick up the scrip. “I’m warning you!” Simkin told us.
“Carburetor!
I have no notion what one is or what it does,
but the name attracts me. I will become Carburetor if you so much as lay a
finger—”