Forging the Darksword - Margaret Weis [0]
Raising the hammer, Joram hit the clay box, shattering it at one blow. The firelight gleamed orange on his skin as he crouched over the dark object lying in the midst of broken clay and splintered wood.
“It isn’t hot,” whispered Joram in awe, holding his hand above the object. “Come nearer, Saryon! See what we have created!”
What had he expected? They had failed. Recoiling, Saryon jerked his arm from Joram’s grasp. This thing that lay upon the stone floor was not beautiful. It was ugly. A tool of darkness, an instrument of Death, not a bright shining blade of light. Joram was a beginner, untrained, without skill, without knowledge, with no one to teach him. The sword he had fashioned might have been wielded a thousand years before by some savage, barbaric ancestor.
But there was something more horrifying about the sword, something devilish—the rounded knob on the hilt combined with the long neck of the hilt itself, the handles short, blunt arms, and the narrow body of the blade would turn the weapon into a grim parody of a human being.
Lying like a corpse at his feet, the sword was the personification of Saryon’s sin.
“Destroy it!” Saryon gasped hoarsely. “Destroy it, Joram, or it will destroy you!”
Prologue
The black, greasy column of smoke wafted away on the chill air as the ashes of the victim drifted down to fall upon those who complacently believed they had just saved a soul. Here and there, amid the smoldering ruins, tongues of flame licked out, greedy for more. Finding nothing but charred remains, the fire crackled and died. Smoke rolled into the sky, casting a shroud over the wretched village, drawing a pall over the sun.
The crowd dispersed, many making the sign of the cross, combining this with gestures to ward off the evil eye or any other curses that might be lingering in the tainted air. Muttered remarks of “foul witch” were a dark accompaniment to the priests sanctimonious pleadings with someone—it may have been God, though the priest didn’t sound at all certain about it—to forgive the sins of this tortured being and provide it with eternal rest.
Two figures huddled together in a rat-infested alleyway. Both were dressed exactly alike, in black robes with hoods pulled low over their heads. One leaned upon a carved wooden staff, highly polished and decorated with nine strange symbols. This was obviously the older of the two, for he was stooped and the hand upon the staff was gnarled and wrinkled, though its grip was firm.
His companion was obviously much younger; he stood tall and straight, though his shoulders slumped and he seemed bowed down with grief. He held a cloth across his nose and mouth, ostensibly to keep away the sweet stench of burning flesh, but in reality to hide from the old man the fact that he wept.
The two had remained unobserved by the crowd because they had chosen to remain unobserved. Silently they stood, silently they watched. Now, as the last ashes of one they had loved blew down the cracked stone streets, the old man let out a slow breath.
“Is that all you can do?” cried the other, nearly choked with grief. “Sigh? You should have let me—” He made violent, intricate patterns with his hand in the air. “You should have let me—”
The old man laid a restraining hand upon his arm.
“No. That would have only made matters worse for us. She was strong. She could have saved herself but she kept our secret, though they broke and burned her body. Would you take that triumph away from her?”
“Why have they done this? Why are they doing this to us?” the young man cried wretchedly, his long, fine-boned hands endeavoring to wipe away the tracks of his sorrow. “We have done no evil! We have only tried to help …”
The old man’s face grew stern, his voice crackled like the flames as he spoke. “What they do not understand, they fear. What they fear, they destroy. So it has ever been with their kind.” Sighing again, he shook his hooded head. “But I see it growing worse. A new age is coming, an age in which there will be no place for us. One by