Forging the Darksword - Margaret Weis [9]
Saryon nodded, his eyes fixed intently upon his father’s face.
“That much I can do with the power of my magic. But, wouldn’t it be wonderful, I ask myself sometimes, to be able to raise this boulder up out of the earth and shape it into … into …” he paused, then waved his hand, “into a house, for us to live in … just you and I …”
A shadow darkened the wizard’s face as he glanced back in the direction of the house he had just left, the house where his wife was already up and busily attending to her ritual of morning prayer.
“Why don’t you, Father?” his child asked eagerly.
The wizard’s attention returned to his surroundings, and he smiled again, though there was a bitterness in the smile that Saryon saw but did not understand.
“What was I saying?” the wizard murmured, frowning. “Oh, yes.” His face cleared. “I cannot shape a house from rock, my son. Only the Pron-alban, the craft magi, possess that gift of the Almin’s. Nor can I change lead to gold as can the Mon-alban. I must use what the Almin has given me …”
“I don’t think much of the Almin, then,” said the child petulantly, poking at the grass with a toe, “if all he gave me was these old shoes!”
Saryon glanced up at his father out of the corner of his eye after he spoke to see the effect of such a daring, blasphemous remark. It would have had his mother quivering in white-faced anger. But the wizard put his hand upon his lips as though to keep them from smiling against his will. Clasping his arm around his son, he drew the child close.
“The Almin has given you the greatest gift of all,” said the wizard. “The gift of Life-transference. It is in your power, and yours alone, to absorb the Life, the magic, that is in the ground and the air and all around us into your body and focus it and give it to me or someone like me so that I may use its power to enhance my own. This is the gift of the Almin to the catalyst. It is his gift to you.”
“I don’t think it’s a very good gift.” Saryon pouted, squirming in his father’s embrace.
Lifting him up, the wizard set the little boy upon his lap. Better to explain things to the boy now and let him get the bitterness out of his system when they were alone together than to upset his pious mother.
“It is a good enough gift that it has survived through the centuries,” the wizard answered severely, “and it has helped us survive the centuries, even the times in the old Dark World where the ancients lived, so we are told.”
“I know,” said the little boy. Nestling his head against his father’s chest, he recited the lesson glibly, speaking unconsciously in the clipped, cold, precise voice of his mother. “Then we were called ‘familiars’ and the ancients used us as a repos—reposi—repository”—he stumbled over the hard word, but eventually brought it out, his face flushed with effort and triumph—“of their energy. This was done so that the fire of the magic did not destroy their bodies and so that their enemies would not discover them. To protect us, they shaped us into the likeness of small animals, and thus we worked together to keep magic in the world.”
“Just so,” said the wizard, stroking the child approvingly on the head. “You recite the catechism well, but do you understand it?”
“Yes,” said Saryon with a sigh. “I understand, I guess.” But he frowned as he said it.
Putting his finger beneath the boy’s chin, the wizard turned the solemn little face up to look into his.
“You understand and you will be thankful to the Almin and work to please him … and to please me?” the wizard asked softly. He hesitated, then continued. “For you will please me, if you try to be happy in your work, even though … even though I may not be around much to let you know that I am watching you and interested in you.”
“Yes, Father,” said the child, sensing a deep sorrow in his father’s voice that he longed to ease. “I will be happy, I promise. But why won’t you be here? Where are you going?”
“I am not going anywhere, at least not for a little while,” his father said, smiling again and ruffling the fair hair. “In fact, it