Forging the Darksword - Margaret Weis [49]
But Joram was not interested in jewels or in Anja’s incoherent ramblings that were growing more and more frequent. Clutching at the shredded remnants of his mother’s skirt, he begged, “Please, Anja, tell me when. When will I see the wonders of Merilon? When will I see the Silken Dragon and the Three Sisters, and Spires of Rainbow Crystal, and the Garden of the Swan and the—”
“Ah, my sweet one, my pretty one,” Anja said fondly, reaching out to stroke the black curls that tumbled about his face. “Soon we will go to Merilon. Soon you will see the beauty and the wonder that is Merilon. And they will see you, my butterfly. They will see a true Albanara, a wizard of a noble house. For this I am educating you, for this I am, working. Soon I will take you back to Merilon, and then we will claim what is rightfully ours.”
“But when?” Joram persisted stubbornly.
“Soon, my beauty, soon,” was all Anja would say.
And, with that, Joram had to be content.
At eight, Joram took his place in the fields with the other children of the Field Magi. The tasks the children performed were not difficult, though the days were long and tiresome, the children working the same time span as the adults. They were assigned such mundane jobs as clearing a field of rocks or carefully gathering worms and other insects that fulfilled their small destinies by working in harmony with man to raise the food that nourished his body.
The catalyst did not grant the children Life; this would have been an uncalled-for waste of energy. So the children walked, not floated, among the fields. But most had enough natural Life force within them to be able to send the rocks to the air or cause the wingless worms to fly above the plants. Often they enlivened their work—when the overseer and the catalyst weren’t watching—by holding impromptu contests in magic. On those rare occasions when Joram was cajoled or goaded into exhibiting his skill, he easily matched their feats using the sleight-of-hand techniques at which he had become adept. And so they took no particular notice of him.
Most of the time, in fact, the other children did not invite Joram to join in their play. Few liked him. He was sullen and aloof, instantly suspicious of friendly overtures.
“Don’t let anyone get close to you, my son,” Anja told him. “They will not understand you, and what they do not understand they fear. And what they fear, they destroy.”
One by one, after each had been coldly rebuffed by the strange, dark-haired child, the other children let Joram severely alone. But there was one among them who persisted in his attempts to be friendly. This was Mosiah. The son of a high-ranking Field Magus, intelligent and outgoing, Mosiah was unusually gifted in magic—so much so that the catalyst, Father Tolban, had been overheard talking of sending him to one of the Guilds to earn his living when he was older.
Charming, outgoing, and popular, Mosiah himself couldn’t explain why he was attracted to Joram, except perhaps that it was in the same way the lodestone is attracted to iron. Whatever the reason, Mosiah refused to be rebuffed.
He took every opportunity to work near Joram in the fields. He often sat with him during lunch break, talking away about this and that, never expecting or demanding a response from the silent, withdrawn boy at his side. The friendship might have seemed one-sided and thankless—certainly Joram did nothing to encourage it and was often curt in his infrequent responses. But Mosiah sensed that his presence was welcome, and so he kept on, chipping away at the stone facade Joram had built, a facade as hard and tall as the one that encased his father.
The years passed the village of Walren and its residents uneventfully, the seasons blending into one another, only occasionally assisted by the Sif-Hanar if nature didn’t act in accordance with their designs.
As the seasons blended together, so the lives