Doom of the Darksword - Margaret Weis [70]
The Bishops crawling hand suddenly slammed, palm down, upon the rosewood desk. “I do not understand” — his voice was even and controlled, a control that was costing him — “why it is that you Duuk-tsarith with your highly touted powers cannot find one young man!”
The two black hoods turned slightly toward each other, the glittering eyes exchanged glances. Then the black hoods faced Vanya and the wearer of one of them, her hands folded before her, spoke. Her tone was respectful without being conciliatory. Clearly, she knew herself to be mistress of the situation.
“I repeat, Holiness, that if this young man were normal, we would have no trouble locating him. The fact that he is Dead makes locating him difficult. The fact that he carries darkstone upon his person, however, makes it almost impossible.”
“I do not understand!” Vanya exploded. “He exists! He is flesh and blood —”
“Not to us, Holiness,” the witch corrected him, her warlock partner supporting her arguments by a slight nodding of his hooded head. “The darkstone shields him, protects him from us. Our senses are attuned to magic, Eminence. We move among the people, throwing out tiny filaments of magic as a spider throws out silken filaments of her web. Whenever any normal being in this world comes within our range, those filaments quiver with Life — with magic. This provides us with vital information about the person: everything from his dreams, to where he was raised, to what he has lately eaten for dinner.
“With the Dead, we must take extra measures. We must readjust our senses to react to the Death within them, the lack of magic. But with this young man, protected as he is by the darkstone, our senses — our filaments of magic, so to speak — are absorbed and swallowed up. We feel nothing, hear nothing, see nothing. To us, Holiness, he literally does not exist. This was the tremendous power of the darkstone in ancient days. An army of Dead carrying weapons made of darkstone could come up upon a city and remain completely undetected.”
“Bah!” Vanya snorted. “You talk as if he were invisible. Do you mean to say that he could walk into this room right now and you wouldn’t see him? That I wouldn’t see him?”
The black cloth covering the witch’s head shivered slightly, as though the woman checked an irritated gesture or suppressed a sigh of impatience. When she spoke, her voice was extremely cool and carefully modulated — a bad sign to those who knew her, as evidenced by the slight whitening of the knuckles on the hands of her companion.
“Of course you would see him, Holiness. And so would we. Isolated and alone in this room, our attention upon him, we would be able to recognize him for what he was and so deal with him. But there are thousands of people out there!”
The witch made a sudden movement with her hand that caused her companion to cringe involuntarily, uncertain what she might do. Though the Duuk-tsarith are trained from childhood in strict discipline, the witch — a high-ranking member of the Order — was known to have a volatile temper. Her companion would not have been overly surprised to see the crystal wall behind the Bishop begin to melt like so much ice on a summer day.
The witch restrained herself, however. Bishop Vanya was not one to anger.
“So, as you said before, the only way to catch him is for someone to bring him to us,” Vanya muttered, his fingers crawling over the desk.
“Not the only way, Holiness. That would be easiest. There would be the sword to deal with, of course, but I doubt if he has had time to truly learn how to use it or to understand its full powers.”
“It was reported to us, Eminence,” added the warlock, “that one of your own catalysts was with the young man. Could we not work through him?”
“The man in question is a weak-minded fool! Had I been able to maintain contact with him, I could have kept him under my control,” Vanya said, the blood mounting in his puffy face until it was nearly as red as the fabric of