Doom of the Darksword - Margaret Weis [151]
The two stood on the balcony, looking down through the nine levels to the golden forest on the floor. It was a breathtaking view, each level glowing with its own color — with the exception of the level of Death, which remained nothing but a gray void. Magi were floating both up and down now, the revelries having extended to all the levels. Glancing at the stairs, Joram saw the catalysts toiling up them, their shoes making shuffling sounds, their breathing labored.
And that gave him the excuse he needed.
“You go on down, my lady,” he told Gwendolyn, releasing her slowly and reluctantly. Preoccupied as he was, he had still been very much aware of the warmth and fragrance and the occasional touch of smooth skin and soft flesh moving so near him. “Tell your father I am coming. I will walk.”
Gwendolyn looked so astonished at this and regarded the catalysts making their way up and down the stairs with such a pitying gaze that Joram could not help smiling. Taking her hand in his, he said to her inwardly, Soon, my dear, you will be proud to walk these stairs with your husband. Aloud he said, “Surely, you can understand that I could not ask Father Dunstable to grant me Life today, no matter how important the occasion….”
Gwendolyn’s face flushed. “Oh, no!” she murmured, ashamed. She had, in truth, forgotten about the poor catalyst. Of course, Joram might have gained Life through another catalyst, but there were many magi who were so fond of and loyal to their catalysts that to use another — a stranger at that — would have been tantamount to committing adultery. “Of course not. How foolish of me to forget and” — she raised her lovely eyes to Joram’s — “how very noble of you to make this sacrifice for him.”
Now it was Joram’s turn to flush, seeing the love and admiration in the blue eyes and thinking how he had earned it with a lie. Never mind, he told himself swiftly. Soon she will know the truth, soon they will all know the truth….
“Go ahead, your father is waiting,” Joram said somewhat gruffly. He escorted her to the opening in the ornamental balcony used by the magi entering and leaving the Hall of Majesty and handed her off it with a bow. His heart lurched as he watched her step gracefully into nothing, and it was all he could do to remain standing and keep from reaching wildly to save her from what — in his case — would have been a deadly plunge to the golden forest nine levels below. But, smiling up at him, Gwendolyn drifted downward as gracefully as a lily riding the water, the layers of her gown floating out about her like petals, the bottom layers clinging to her legs, keeping her body covered modestly.
“Water level,” Joram muttered, and, turning, ran to the stairs and hastened down them, nearly knocking over a puffing, irate catalyst — the same catalyst, he noticed in passing, that Simkin had taken such delight in tormenting.
Going down the stairs was certainly much easier than coming up. Joram might have been flying himself, he moved so rapidly, and it seemed no time at all before he was standing oh the Water level, trying to catch his breath — whether from the descent or his mounting excitement he couldn’t tell.
Gwendolyn was nowhere to be seen, and he was just about to go off searching for her impatiently when a voice called, “Joram, over here.”
Turning, he saw her gesture to him from an open door he had not noticed amidst the waterlike surroundings. Hurrying past illusions of mermaids swimming with vividly colored fish, Joram reached the door, devoutly hoping that the private meeting chamber wasn’t going to be a dark grotto filled with oyster shells.
It wasn’t. Apparently, the illusions were confined to the area around the balcony, for Gwendolyn introduced Joram into a room that — except for the extreme opulence and luxury of the furniture — might have come from Lord Samuels’s dwelling. It was a sitting room, designed to accommodate those magi who wished to relax and avoid the expenditure of magical energy. Several couches covered with silken brocade in fanciful designs