Forging the Darksword - Margaret Weis [142]
“Then, what happened? Why—”
“More of Simkin’s lies,” Joram said, shrugging his shoulders. “The soft-hearted, soft-headed Mosiah rushed in to save your precious skin, and I went to get him out of it. It was none of our affair, after all, if you were stupid enough to defy Blachloch. Then Simkin—But, what does it matter?”
“What did Simkin have to do with it?” Saryon asked, trying to pour the water into the cup and slopping most of it over the table.
“What does Simkin ever have to do with anything?” Joram replied. “Nothing. Everything. He got Mosiah off, which was more than the idiot deserved.”
“What about you?”
Throwing his arm indolently over the back of the chair, Joram turned back to face the catalyst. “What does it matter about me? I’m Dead, Catalyst, or had you forgotten? In fact,” he continued, spreading his arms wide, “this is your big chance. Here we are … alone. No one to stop you. Open a Corridor. Send for the Duuk-tsarith.”
Sinking into a chair, feeling his strength give way, Saryon murmured, ‘“You could stop me.” He had, in fact, been considering that very idea and was appalled to find the young man had penetrated so far into his mind. “Even the Dead have magic enough to stop a catalyst. I know. I’ve seen what you can do ….”
For long moments, Joram stared at Saryon in silence as though considering something. Then, rising suddenly, he approached the table and leaned down over it, looking directly into the catalyst’s pale, drawn face. “Open a conduit to me,” he said.
Puzzled, Saryon drew back, reluctant to give this young man any additional strength. “I don’t think—”
“Go on!” Joram demanded harshly. Muscles in the young man’s arms twitched, the blood veins stood out beneath the brown skin as his hands gripped the edges of the table, the dark eyes flared in the candlelight.
Mesmerized by the suddenly feverish gaze of the young man, Saryon hesitantly opened a conduit to Joram … and felt nothing. The magic filled him, tingled in Saryon’s blood and his flesh. But it went nowhere. There was no pleasant rush of transference, no surge of energy between the two bodies …. Slowly the magic began to seep out of him as he stared at Joram in disbelief.
“But this is impossible,” he said, shivering uncontrollably in the chill prison cell. “I have seen you work magic …”
“Have you?” Joram asked. Letting go of the table, he stood up straight and folded his arms across his chest. “Or have you seen me do this?” With a sudden movement of his hand, he produced a rag with which he proceeded to mop up the spilled water. Clapping his hands, he made the rag disappear, an ordinary occurrence to Saryon—until he saw the young man pull the damp rag out of a cunningly concealed pocket in his shirt.
“My mother called it sleight-of-hand,” Joram said coolly, seeming to enjoy Saryon’s discomfiture. “Do you know of it?”
“I have seen it at court,” Saryon said, leaning his head on his hand. The dizziness had passed, but the aching in his temples made it difficult to think. “It is a … game ….” He gestured feebly. “Young … people play it.”
“I wondered where my mother learned it,” Joram said, shrugging. “Well, it is a game that has saved my life. Or perhaps I should say it is a game that is my life—all life being a game, according to Simkin.” He gazed down upon the catalyst with a sort of bitter triumph. “Now you know my secret, Catalyst. You know what no one else knows about me. You know the truth, something that even my mother couldn’t face. I am Dead. Truly Dead. No magic stirs within me at all, less than what is in a corpse, if we believe the legends of the ancient Necromancers, who were able to communicate with the souls of the dead.”
“Why have you told me?” Saryon asked through lips so stiff he was barely able to shape the words. A memory came to his aching mind, a memory of one other who had been Dead, truly Dead; one who had failed the Tests utterly as no one has failed them before or since ….
Joram leaned down again, close to him. The catalyst found himself cringing away from the