Forging the Darksword - Margaret Weis [144]
Clenching his hands into fists, Saryon wrapped his arms close to his body. “The man must be stopped. What help can I give you?” he asked Joram abruptly.
Joram’s face showed no reaction to the catalyst’s question. But within himself, he was exultant. His plan was progressing. But he must proceed carefully. After all, he thought grimly, he had to lure the man into the ways of the Dark Arts. Giving Saryon one cool, appraising glance, Joram returned to looking out the window, his arms folded across his chest as he leaned against the brick wall. “Is he gone?”
“Who?” Saryon glanced around, startled. “Blachloch?”
“The Duuk-tsarith have the power to make themselves invisible. Still, I would suppose you have the power to sense his presence.”
“Yes,” Saryon replied after a moment’s concentration.
“He is gone.”
Joram nodded and continued leading the unsuspecting catalyst toward darkness. “Simkin told me that you had once read some of the forbidden books about the Ninth Mystery.”
“Only one,” Saryon admitted, flushing. “And I—I just had a glimpse of it ….”
“How much do you know about the Iron Wars?”
“I have read and studied the histories—”
“Histories written by the catalysts!” Joram interrupted coldly. “I knew those histories, too, when I came here. I read the books. Oh, yes”—this in reply to a rustling sound he heard behind him—“I was raised as a child in a noble house. My mother was Albanara. But surely you knew that?”
“Y’s, I knew …. Where did she get the books?” Saryon asked.
“I’ve wondered,” Joram said softly, as if answering some often-asked, inner question. “She was disgraced and outcast. Did she come to her home in the night, traveling the Corridors of time and space? Did she float through the hallways she had known as a child, returning to the site of her lost youth and shattered life like a ghost doomed to haunt the place where it died?”
Joram’s face darkened. He fell silent, staring out the window.
“I’m sorry for distressing you—” Saryon began.
“Since then,” Joram interrupted coldly, “I have read other books, their information is far different from what we were taught. Always remember, Andon says, it is the winners of the war who write the histories. Did you know, for example, that during the Iron Wars, the Sorcerers developed a weapon that could absorb magic?”
“Absorb magic?” Saryon shook his head. “That’s ridiculous ….”
“Is it?” Joram turned to look at him. “Think about it, Catalyst. Think about it logically as you are so fond of doing. For every action, there is an opposite and equal reaction, isn’t that what you had said?”
“Yes, but—”
“Therefore, it stands to reason that in a world that exudes magic there must be some force that absorbs it as well. So the Sorcerers of long ago reasoned, and they were right. They found it. It exists in nature in a physical form that can be shaped and formed into objects. You don’t believe me.”
“I am sorry, young man,” said Saryon through clenched teeth. He sounded disappointed. “I gave up believing in the House Magi’s tales when I was nine.”
“Yet you believe in faeries?” Joram said, regarding the catalyst with the strange half-smile that rarely touched his lips, only the brown eyes.
“I was with Simkin,” Saryon muttered, flushing. Drawing as near the fire as possible, he hunched down over it. “When I’m around him, I’m not certain whether I believe in myself, much less anything else.”
“Yet you saw them? You talked to them?”
“Yes,” Saryon admitted grudgingly. “I saw them …”
“Now you see this.”
Joram plucked the object from the air—so it appeared—and laid it on the table before the catalyst. Picking it up, Saryon regarded the object suspiciously.
“A rock?”
“An ore. It is called darkstone.”
“It seems similar to iron, but what a strange color,” Saryon said, studying it.
“You’ve a good eye, Catalyst,” said Joram, pushing a chair over with his foot and seating himself