Forging the Darksword - Margaret Weis [178]
For long moments he stood there, unable to move. Then he had the strangest feeling—as though he were slowly rising up off the floor and, drifting backward, could look down and see himself still standing there. Up and up he floated, watching his body slowly walk over to the sword. Spiraling around, going ever upward, moving further and further away, he saw himself wrap the sword in rags. He saw himself lift it carefully in his arms. Cradling the sword to his bosom, he saw himself walk out of the forge.
The heavy oaken door shut upon the catalyst’s shuffling tread and the whisper of his robes. Silence flowed back into the forge like the shadows of night, seeming to quench even the glowing coals with its heaviness. It was shattered suddenly by a clattering bang. A pair of huge tongs slipped from the nail upon which they were hanging and landed in a water bucket with a splash.
“Sink me,” muttered the tongs. “Didn’t see that damn thing in the dark. And it would be full.”
The sound of a bucket overturning, followed by water running out onto the floor, was accompanied by a wide and varied assortment of oaths until Simkin stumbled out of the wreckage to stand in the middle of the forge, dressed in his usual, gaudy, if somewhat damp, finery.
“I say,” remarked the young man, wiping the water from his beard and glancing about him, “what an extraordinary business. I haven’t been so entertained since the old Earl of Mumsburg flew a rebellious serf over his castle. Tied a rope around his ankle and hung him out in a stiff breeze. ‘Chap tried to rise above his station,’ the old boy said to me as we watched the peasant flapping in the wind. ‘Now he knows what it’s like.’”
Shaking his head, Simkin walked casually over to stand near the dark splotch of still-wet blood that had soaked into the sand on the floor of the forge. He gestured, and a bit of orange silk materialized at his command. Drifting gently down to the floor, it covered the splotch. With a snap of his fingers, Simkin caused the silk and the blood spot to vanish.
“’Pon my honor,” he murmured with a languid smile, “we should have a jolly time in Merilon.”
Then Simkin, too, was gone, drifting away into the air like a wisp of smoke.
The Last Card
There was no dinner party at Bishop Vanya’s this night.
“His Holiness is indisposed,” was the message the Ariels carried to those who had been invited. This included the Emperor’s brother-in-law, whose number of invitations to dine at the Font were increasing proportionately with the declining health of his sister. Everyone had been most gracious and extremely concerned about the Bishop’s welfare. The Emperor had even offered his own personal Theldara to the Bishop, but this was respectfully refused.
Vanya dined alone, and so preoccupied was the Bishop that he might have been eating sausages along with his Field Catalysts instead of the delicacies of peacock’s tongue and lizard’s tail which he barely tasted and never noticed were underdone.
Having finished and sent away the tray, he sipped a brandy and composed himself to wait until the tiny moon in the timeglass upon his desk had risen to its zenith. The waiting was difficult, but Vanya’s mind was so occupied that he found the time sliding past more rapidly than he had expected. The pudgy fingers crawled ceaselessly along the arms of the chair, touching this strand of mental web and that, seeing if any needed strengthening or repaired, throwing out new filaments where necessary.
The Empress—a fly that would soon be dead.
Her brother—heir to throne. A different type of fly, he demanded special consideration.
The Emperor—his sanity