Legacy of the Darksword (46 page)

I did not go far. Strong hands
caught hold of me, hands covered in silver gloves. They affixed a silver disk
on my breast. Pain tingled through my body and I found myself unable to move.
Just to breathe was a struggle. My limbs were paralyzed.

They attached silver disks to
Saryon, who stood near me, and to Mosiah. I was glad to see that they feared
him, for it meant that he was not dead. Scylla’s hands remained free. Her feet
were bound by some type of metal restraints that clamped over her combat boots.
Weakly, she pushed herself into a sitting position, and I realized that she could
not move the lower portion of her body. She looked up at Eliza.

“Forgive me ... Your Majesty,”
Scylla said softly. “I ... failed you. I failed him.”

Eliza said nothing. I don’t
believe she even heard. She was lost in her grief. Her head lay on her father’s
still breast, her arms cradled him. She urged him to come back to her by every
term of endearment, but he could not respond, not even to her loved voice.

“Bring the mother,” Smythe
called. “We might as well have the entire family.”

A Technomancer emerged from the
shadows of the burned trees, dragging Gwendolyn by the arm. She was disheveled,
her clothes stained and torn, but she did not appear to have been harmed.

The image we had seen in the
dragon’s lair must have been a trick, I thought. Yet even now, with proof at
hand, I doubted. I had seen the love in her eyes. No disguise, however clever,
could have feigned that. Her first concern was for her grieving daughter.

Gwendolyn put her arms around
Eliza, who sobbed against her mother’s breast.

“Oh, Mother, it is
all my
fault!”

“Hush, child!” Gwen smoothed
Eliza’s black curls, the curls that were so like her father’s. “It would not
have mattered. If you had not taken the Darksword, your father would have used
it and they would have killed him. Your father loved you, Eliza, and he was
very proud of you.”

Eliza shook her head, unable to
talk. Gwen continued to soothe her.

“Your father is well, now, child.
At long last, he is well and he is happy.”

Silence fell, a silence broken
only by Eliza’s lessening sobs. I glanced worriedly at Saryon. His body
trembled with the enormity of his own emotion. Tears slid unchecked down his
cheeks. He could not lift his hand to wipe them away.

Kevon Smythe stood before us,
holding the Darksword. His lip curled slightly. “An ugly thing, isn’t it?”

“You’re no beauty yourself.”

I knew that voice. Simkin!

I looked about expectantly,
hopefully, my eyes searching the darkness.

Nothing appeared, not a teapot,
not a stuffed bear, not a washed-out, watercolor transparency of the foppish
young man.

I began to doubt myself. Had I
really heard the voice? Had anyone else heard it? Smythe was still gazing
triumphantly at the sword. The Technomancers, who outnumbered
us
at least three to one, were at ease, relaxed. Why not?
Their captives were completely immobilized. Scylla was concerned with Mosiah,
who was starting to regain consciousness. Gwen and Eliza comforted each other.
Saryon wept for the man that had been dearer than a son.

I must have imagined it, I
thought, despair closing in on me.

“It is almost midnight, sir,”
said one of the Technomancers, speaking to Smythe.

“Yes, thank you for reminding me.
I will take the sword to the meeting place. Once I hand it over to the Hch’nyv—”

“You’ll be a fool if you do,”
Scylla told him. “They will never keep their bargain with you. They will allow
no humans to remain alive.”

“On the contrary, they appear
quite well disposed toward us,” Smythe countered smoothly. “Perhaps because we
have shown them how we can be of use to them.”

“What are your orders while you’re
away, sir?” the Technomancer asked. “What do we do
with
these?” The
silver-gloved hand gestured, included all of us. “Kill them?”

“Not all of them,” Smythe replied
after a moment’s thought. “Hand the Enforcer over to the Interrogators. He’ll
soon be glad to die. Turn the girl and her mother over to the Interrogators as
well. Joram must have told them something about how he forged the Darksword,
where he discovered the darkstone, and so forth. They may yet be of use to us.”

I bent every ounce of my
strength, my will, into attempting to break free. I focused all my energy upon
lifting my hand, to tear the paralyzing disk from my chest. I could not move so
much as my little finger.

“As for the priest and the mute
and the CIA agent or whatever she is,” Smythe continued, “we will give them to
the Hch’nyv, as a symbol of our good faith. The rest of you, make the
arrangements for the first of those refugee ships to land. Go aboard and start
the culling process. You know those we want: those who are young, fit, and
strong. Pull out the elderly, children below an age where they might be of
use,
and any who are sick or handicapped. They will be given
to the Hch’nyv, as we agreed. Also remove any magi who possess Life and who
refuse to join our ranks. Execute them immediately. Once they are back on their
homeland, they might be a danger to us.”

Smythe held up the Darksword, his
two hands clasped just beneath the hilt. “Now that the Darksword is mine—”

“Am
I yours?” cried the sword in a
mocking voice. “Oh, this is the happiest day of my life! Give us a hug,
snookums!”

The Darksword began to wriggle
and writhe. The bulbous head atop the hilt nodded back and forth, the
crosspiece—that was like two arms—waved up and down. The blade twitched this
way and that. Smythe stared wildly at the undulating sword, clutching it as he
might have clutched a snake which he fears will bite him if he lets it fall.

The crosspiece arms elongated.
The bulbous head expanded, the hilt became a neck, the blade transformed into
the body of a man not old, not young, with a face like a fox wearing a silky
beard. He was dressed all in orange, from his feathered hat to his velvet
doublet to his shapely legs and glittering shoes.

The astonished Smythe still held
on to Simkin—a solid, flesh-and-blood Simkin—who laughed and, flinging his arms
around Smythe, gave him a smacking kiss on the lips.

“Did you mean it? Did you truly
mean it? Am I yours?” Simkin asked, holding Smythe at arm’s length and
regarding him with grave solemnity.

“Seize him!” Smythe shouted in
rage, and struck at Simkin with his hands.

“Wrong answer,” said Simkin
softly.

A Technomancer ran forward, fixed
one of the silver paralyzing disks onto the orange velvet doublet.

“Why, how kind!”
Simkin regarded the disk with an
appraising frown,
then
looked up at the Technomancer. “But
I don’t think it goes with my outfit.” Casually, he plucked off the silver disk
and placed it neatly on the breast of the startled Technomancer.

The man’s body
jerked,
went rigid.

“Tell me what you have done with
the Darksword,” Smythe demanded, almost choked with rage, “or I’ll order them
to shoot! You’ll be dead before you can draw your next breath.”

“Fire away,” said Simkin with a
yawn. He leaned against the tomb and stared very hard at his fingernails. “What
was that, Smythe?
The Darksword?
I’ll tell you exactly
where it is. It is being guarded by a dragon, a Dragon of the Night. You might
be able to recover it, but not before midnight.
Poor
Cinderella.
I’m afraid you’re going to turn into a pumpkin.”

Smythe gnashed his teeth in fury.
“Shoot him!”

Silver robes shimmered and
coalesced. Each Technomancer held a sleek, shining silver handgun.

A beam of blinding light slashed
through the darkness. It did not hit Simkin, but struck the tomb right next to
him. The marble exploded, fragments of rock flew through the air. A second beam
of laser flared. Simkin caught the light in his hands. Molding the laser light
as if it were clay, he made it into a shining ball, and flung it up in the air.
The ball transformed into a raven, which took wing, flew once around Simkin’s
head,
then
fluttered down to perch on the tomb. The
raven began to clean its beak with a claw.

Kevon Smythe’s
face was
mottled
red
and
white. Saliva flecked his lips. “Shoot him!” he tried to command
again, but he was so hoarse with fury and fear that his lips formed the words
but no sound came out.

“Oh, I say. I find this quite
fatiguing,” said Simkin languidly. He waved an orange silk handkerchief and the
Tech-nomancers’ handguns changed into bouquets of tulips. The silver disk fell
from my breast onto the ground, where it turned into a mouse and scampered off
into the grass. I could move again, breathe again.

Scylla reached down, plucked off
the ankle manacles, as she might have plucked off a pair of shoes. She assisted
Mosiah to stand. He was very pale, but fully conscious and alert. He regarded
Simkin with narrowed eyes, not trusting him. Saryon was freed as well. His
expression was troubled. Simkin was having a good time, playing with us all,
not just the Technomancers. Certainly, it appeared that he was on our side, but
we had no way of knowing how long that might last, especially if he grew bored.
Right now, though, he was simply having fun. The Technomancers produced other
weapons: stasis grenades, morph guns, reaper scythes, only to have them
transformed into objects strange, useless, and grotesque—anything from
saltshak-ers to bananas, clock radios, and pink gin fizzes adorned with tiny
umbrellas. The magic burst around us in a dazzling array like a fireworks show
gone berserk.

I began to fear I was losing my
mind and I was not surprised to see some of the Technomancers bolt and run.

In the midst of all his foolery,
Simkin caught sight of Eliza. She stood near her mother, staring at him in
bewildered astonishment.

He ceased his magic show. Doffing
his feathered hat, he extended his leg, and made a graceful bow. “
Your
Majesty.” Rising, he replaced the hat at a jaunty angle
on his head and asked, “Do you like my outfit? I call it Apocalypse Apricot.”

Eliza looked dazed. The sight of
Simkin emerging from the Darksword had shocked her from her grief. But she didn’t
know what to make of this. Like the rest of us, she wondered if he brought
victory or if he was fixing the lock and seal on our doom.

“Who
are
you?” Kevon
Smythe demanded.

“A pocket of residual magic,”
said Simkin with a sly smile. “That’s the problem, isn’t it? You don’t know me.
You and your kind never did. Oh, you tried to manipulate me. You tried to use
me. But it never truly worked, because you never really believed in me.”

Simkin turned on his fancy orange
heel. He gave the raven a pat on the head and smoothed its feathers, to which
affectionate gesture the bird answered with a rude croak. Grinning, Simkin
walked around the marble tomb to stand at Joram’s head.

We watched him in silence. None
of us moved, not Eliza nor Saryon, not Mosiah, Smythe, nor the Technomancers
who still had nerve enough to remain. Simkin held us all in thrall.

He gazed down at Joram’s ashen
face that was still and cold as the marble on which he lay. Simkin ran his
fingers through Joram’s black curls, carefully arranged them on the dead man’s
shoulders.

“He believed,” Simkin said. “He
could make no use of me whatsoever. I betrayed him, I mocked him,
I
used him. He shattered a world to free
me,
he gave his life to protect me. What I do now, I do for him.”

Again, Simkin transformed,
shriveling and shrinking, withering in upon himself. He was, once again, the
black and unlovely Darksword. Except that this time I noted the sword had a
flashing orange jewel embedded in the hilt.

The Darksword placed itself
across Joram’s chest.

A wind rose from the west, strong
and biting cold. Above us, in the night sky, the storm clouds blew away, torn
to shreds by the wind. The light of star and starship glittered white against
the darkness. And then the wind died. The air was still.

All waited, stars and wind and
ourselves
.

Scylla stretched out her hand. “You
can wake up now, Joram.
Hurry.
It’s nearly midnight.”

Joram slowly opened his eyes. He
looked first at Scylla.

She nodded. “All is well.”

I knew then that my vague
understandings had been right.
She
was the one who had sent us
hopscotching through time. She was the one who had brought all this about. She
was an agent, as she had claimed, but she did not work for the CIA or the FBI.
She was an agent of God.

Joram turned his head, looked
over at Gwen and Eliza.

Gwen smiled, as if she had been a
party to the charade. I saw then, gathered around her, shadowy figures,
hundreds of them.
The dead.
She had once spoken for
them and they had not forsaken her. She had escaped capture by the
Technomancers. The dead had rescued her. The vision we had seen in the dragon’s
lair was true.