Forging the Darksword - Margaret Weis [45]
She sighed, and the fingers that tugged and pulled at the tangles in Joram’s hair grew lingering and caressing. Glancing at her face reflected in the glass of the windows opposite where he sat at the wooden table, Joram saw his mother smile a half-smile and sway a little to some unheard music. Raising her hand, she patted her filthy, matted hair. “What beautiful things we created, he and I,” she said softly, smiling dreamily. “I was gifted with Life, Mama used to tell me. Of an evening, to please and entertain my family, your father and I would fill the twilight with rainbows and phantasms of wonder that brought tears to the eyes of those who beheld them. It was only natural, your father said, that we, who could create such beauty, should fall in love.”
The fingers in his hair tightened, the sharp nails dug into his flesh, and Joram felt the sticky liquid of his own blood trickle down his neck.
“We went to the catalysts for permission to marry. They performed a Vision. The answer was no. They said we would not produce living issue!”
Tearing at the tangled mass of black hair, she ripped at the knots with her talonlike nails. Clutching at the table, Joram welcomed the pain of his flesh that masked the pain of his soul.
“Living issue! Hah! They lied! You see!” Grasping Joram around the neck, Anja hugged him in fierce, greedy passion. “You are with me, my sweet one. You are my proof that they are liars!”
Pressing his head against her breast, she rocked him back and forth, crooning “liars” to herself and to him as she smoothed out the silken curls of his hair.
“Yes, hearts delight, I have you,” Anja murmured, stopping in her combing for a moment to stare fixedly into the fire. Her hands dropped to her lap. “I have you. They could not stop us. No, even though they ordered your father to leave our house and return to the Cathedral, they could not keep us apart. He came back to me that night, the night after their foul Vision. We met in secret, in the garden where we had given life to such beautiful creations.
“He had a plan. We would produce a living child and prove to the world that the catalysts were lying. They would be forced to let us marry then, don’t you see?
“We needed a catalyst to perform the ceremony that would create a child in my womb. But we could find none. Cowards! Those he ventured to approach refused, fearing the wrath of the Bishop if they were discovered.
“And then came word, he was being sent to the fields, a Field Catalyst!” Anja snorted. “Him! Whose soul was beauty and fineness, to be sent to a life of drudgery and toil. Little better than the peasants who are born to it. And it meant we would never see each other again, for once you have trudged in the mud of the fields, you may never walk the enchanted streets of Merilon.
“We were desperate. Then, one night, he told me that he knew of a way—an ancient, forbidden way—that we could use to produce a child.”
Anja’s hands twisted. She sank down upon a stool, her eyes still staring into the fire. Joram could not look at her, his stomach clenched with anger and a strange, almost pleasurable sensation of pain he did not understand. Instead, he stared out the window at the calm, lonely moon.
“He described the ancient way to me,” she said softly. “I was sickened. It was … bestial. How could I do it? How could he? Yet, how could we not? For if he left me, I would die. We sneaked off …”
Anja’a voice dropped to where Joram could just barely hear her.
“I remember little of the night you were conceived. He … your father … gave me a drink made of some bright red flower …. It seems to me that my soul left my body, leaving the body for him to do with it as he would. As if in a dream … I remember his hands touching me … I remember an awful, searing pain. I remember … a sweetness ….
“But we were betrayed. The catalysts had been trailing us, watching us. I heard him cry out, then I awoke with a scream to find them standing over us, staring down at us in our shame. They took him away, to the Font