Legacy of the Darksword (21 page)

How do you know about the army
base?
I typed.

“I’ve been there,” she said with
a smile at my surprise. “Simkin showed me. It was his idea to take the sword
there tonight.”

She fondled the bear, rubbing his
head.

“Oh, no one at the base ever saw
me,” she said. “I made certain of that. Simkin used his magic to keep me
invisible. I would sit on crates and watch the people come and go and listen to
them talk. I’d do that for hours, when Mama and Papa thought I was in the
library studying.” She grinned impishly. “I used to watch the skyships take
off, blasting fire and roaring like thunder. Simkin said they were traveling to
Earth. I would imagine what it would be like to be on one. Yesterday, when you
and Father Saryon came, I thought—”

Her smile faded. Resolutely, she
buried her dream. “I was wrong,” she said, and started to stand up.

I stopped her. I had a great many
questions, mostly concerning Simkin. I thought it extremely odd and perhaps
even sinister that he was suggesting giving the Darksword away. But those
questions could wait.

The army base is a long distance
from here,
I
told her.
Many miles.
You could not reach it
tonight or even tomorrow by walking.
Certainly not carrying
the heavy sword.

“We weren’t planning to walk all
the way,” she said, avoiding my eyes. “We can’t use the magical routes we
normally travel, because of the Darksword destroying the magic. But Simkin said
that you . . . um . . . had an air car. We were only going to borrow it. I
would have brought it back. I know how they operate. I’ve even ridden in one before,
though no one knew I was there.”

So much for Prospero’s daughter.
The brave new world was old hat
to her.

Please come back home,
I wrote.
This burden is not
your burden. That is why it seems so heavy. It is your father’s and he alone
can cast it off or choose to carry it. Besides, you could be in danger.

“What?” She stared at me, amazed
and disbelieving.
“How?
There is no one here beyond
the Border but Father Saryon, my parents, and
ourselves
!”

I did not feel that I could offer
adequate explanation.
Come back.
Talk to Father Saryon.
Besides,
I added,
your mother told us that, by morning, Joram will have
had a change of heart. He is reacting out of hurt and anger. When he thinks
about things, he will do what is necessary. You shouldn’t take that decision
away from him.

“You are right,” Eliza said,
after a moment’s thought. “It was only by accident I found the sword. We missed
Papa one afternoon—it was the day after that horrible Smythe-man came. Mama was
worried and sent me to look for him. I searched all over and no sign of him.
When I finally found him, where do you think he was?”

I shook my head.

“In the chapel,” she said. “I
came in the door and there he was. He wasn’t praying, like I thought at first.
He was sitting on the stair beneath the altar and this—the Darksword—was across
his knees. He was staring at it as if he hated and loathed it, but yet as if he
loved it and was proud of it.”

Eliza shivered and drew her cloak
more closely around her. I pressed my body a little nearer, to warm her and
warm myself both. The picture she painted with her words was not a pleasant
one.

“The look on his face frightened
me. I was afraid to say anything, because I knew he would be furious. I wanted
to leave. I knew I
should
leave, but I couldn’t. I sneaked into a little
alcove near the door and I watched him. He sat for a long, long time, just
staring at the sword. And then he gave a great sigh and shook his head. He
wrapped the sword up in this cloth and opened up a little hidden door inside
the altar itself. He put the sword in there, inside the altar, and he shut the
door and left. I waited until he was gone before I dared move. I felt ashamed.
I knew I had seen something I shouldn’t have seen. Something that was secret
and private to my father. And now he’ll know.” Her head drooped. “He’ll find
out I was spying on him. He’ll be so terribly disappointed.”

Maybe not,
I typed.
We’ll take the sword
back to its hiding place and he’ll never realize it was gone.

“Are you sure that would be
right?” she asked me, troubled. “Wouldn’t that be lying, in a way?”

The truth will serve no purpose,
I wrote,
and only hurt him.
Later, when all this is passed, then you can confess to him what you did.

She liked that. She agreed to
return to the Font with me, although she refused to let me carry the sword.

“It is my burden now,” she said
with a half smile.
“At least for a little while.”

I was given the honor of carrying
Teddy. Trying to ignore the fact that the bear winked its button eye at me as I
took hold of it, I was about to ask Eliza how long she had known Teddy was
Simkin or vice versa, when suddenly the bear said, in quite a different tone, a
serious alarming tone, “We are not alone.”

“What?” Eliza asked, pausing and
staring around. “Who’s there? Is it Papa?”

“No, it is not Papa! Keep quiet!
Don’t move! Don’t even breathe!
Too late.”
Teddy
groaned. “They’ve heard us.”

Silver shimmered in the night.
Two figures clad in silver robes, their faces hooded and masked, were walking
along the highway. They were twenty paces from us and coming up on us rapidly.
Eliza opened her mouth. I put my fingers on her lips, to warn her to keep
silent. We stood in the shadows, hardly daring to breathe, as Teddy had
cautioned. The figures continued walking and they came to a halt, right
opposite us. Their faceless faces turned slowly in our direction.

“This is where we heard voices,
sir,” one was saying, speaking into some sort of communication device. “They
came from somewhere around here. Yes, sir, we’ll check it out.”

Eliza shrank close to me. Her free
hand clutched mine. She pressed the Darksword to her body. I put my arm around
her, held fast to her, and thought frantically of what to do if they found us,
which it seemed they must do any moment. Should we make a break for it? Should
we—

“Almin’s blood,” said Simkin
irritably. “It seems I must get you out of this.”

The bear vanished from my hand. A
translucent form, much as if smoke had taken the shape of a young and foppish
nobleman from about the time of Louis XIV, materialized right in front of the
Technomancers.

“Oh, I say! Lovely night for a
walk, isn’t it?” Simkin languidly waved his orange scarf in the air.

I must give the Technomancers
credit. They would have been more than human if they had not been startled by
the apparition materializing before them, but they kept amazingly calm. One
thrust her hand into the molten fabric of the silver robe, held up a gob of it,
and a device shaped itself out of the fabric.

“What is this thing?” asked the
other Technomancer, a male by his voice. The faceless head was gazing at
Simkin.

“I’m analyzing it now,” the woman
replied.

“Analyzing me?
With
that?”
Simkin cast the device a scathing glance and smiled smugly. He
seemed to find the entire idea hilarious. “What does it say I am?
Spirit?
Specter?
Spook?
Ghost?
Ghoul?
Wraith?
I know—doppelganger! No, better yet.
Poltergeist.”

He sidled around, craned his head
to try to get a look at the device. “Perhaps I’m not here at all. Perhaps you’re
hallucinating. Sleep deprivation.
A bad acid trip.
Or
maybe you’re going mad.” He appeared eager to help.

“Residual magic,” the woman
reported. Snapping shut the
device,
she slid it back
into the robe, which seemed to swallow it whole. “We postulated that there are
likely to be pockets of leftover magic all over Thimhallan.”

“Residual magic!”
Simkin quivered, his voice
cracked with outrage. He could barely speak for his emotion. “Me! Simkin! The
darling of Kings, the play toy of Emperors! Me! Magical leftovers! Like some
damn moldy sandwich!”

The Technomancer was reporting in
again.

“The voices checked out, sir.
Nothing to worry about.
Residual magic.
A substanceless phantasm, possibly an Echo.
We were
warned about such. It poses no threat.”

He paused a moment, listening,
then said, “Yes, sir.”

“Our orders?” the woman asked.

“Continue. The other teams are on
site and advancing.”

“What do we do with this thing?”
The woman gestured at Simkin. “It has a voice. It could warn the subject.”

“Unlikely,” the man responded. “Echoes
mindlessly repeat words they’ve heard others speak. They mimic, like parrots,
and like parrots, sometimes give the illusion of appearing intelligent.”

I cannot describe the look on
Simkin’s face. His eyes bulged, his mouth opened and shut. Perhaps for the
first time in his life— which, considering that he was probably
immortal,
had certainly been a long one—he was struck dumb.

The man started to walk on. The
woman was more dubious. Her silver face was turned toward Simkin.

He hung in the air, appearing
more nebulous than when he had first taken shape; a wisp of smoke and orange
silk that looked as if it could be puffed away in a breath.

“I think we should disrupt it,”
the woman said.

“Against orders,” the man
returned. “Someone might see the flash and raise the alarm. Remember, those
damn
Duuk-tsarith
are around here, too.”

“I suppose you are right,” the
woman agreed charily.

The two walked on, moving at a
rapid pace up the highway toward the Font.

Eliza and I kept still, waiting
until they were out of earshot and beyond. I hushed Eliza when she would have
spoken, for I could see by the Technomancers’ swift and easy movement that they
had some sort of night vision and I was afraid they might have technologies
which enhanced their hearing, as well.

When they had disappeared, going
down a dip in the highway, I moved cautiously to where I could get a better
view. I guessed from their words what was going forward, but I needed to see it
for myself.

Here and there across the
hillside, figures, shining silver in the lambent light, formed a cordon around
the Font, moving inexorably toward it, closing in.

“Who are they? What are they?”
Eliza demanded.

“Evil,” I signed, and she needed
no translation.

“They’ve come for the Darksword,
haven’t they?” she asked fearfully.

I nodded and recalled the glowing
listening devices in the living room.

“Would they ...” She had to pause
to find the courage to speak. “Would they
kill
to get it?”

I nodded again, reluctantly.

“They won’t believe Papa when he
says he doesn’t have the sword,” Eliza said, thinking through the scenario, as
I was myself. “They’ll think he’s lying, trying to keep it from them. If we
give it to them, perhaps they’ll leave us alone. We must take it back! We’ll
use the shortcut.”

I agreed. I could see no other
way. But it occurred to me that even taking the shortcut, burdened as we were
with the heaVy sword and forced to keep to the shadows, we would arrive long after
the Technomancers had stormed the building.

Simkin! Simkin could warn Joram,
could tell him that we had the sword and we were bringing it back.

I turned to see the diaphanous
figure floating over the highway. The words
residual magic
blew hot
against my face, like a dry desert wind.

“No threat? Well, we’ll see about
that!” cried Simkin.
“Mer-lyn?
Merlyn, where are you?
Never around when you might be of the slightest use, of course.
The old fool!” and with that, he was gone.

“Yow
fool is here to save you
from your folly. Rather a nice ring to that. I must remember it.”

SiMKIN;
DOOM OF THE DARKSWORD

I
hoped that Simkin had read my
thoughts and was gone to alert Joram and the others to their danger. Capricious
and erratic as I knew Simkin to be, however, my hope was a forlorn one. And I
did not think it likely we could count on Merlyn—with a
y
or
an
i
—to save us.

“Hurry!” urged Eliza, taking my
hand and drawing me back among the trees. “This way is faster!
Through the fields.”

We had to cross the wall, not
difficult, as it was low to the ground. Eliza was hampered by her long skirt
and her cloak, and needed both her hands to climb over. She hesitated only a
moment, looking into my eyes, then she handed me the Darksword, wrapped in its
cloth blanket.