Legacy of the Darksword - Margaret Weis [101]
“I know the risk well,” Saryon said, with a flash of his old spirit. “I ran that risk myself, all alone, twenty years ago. Not out of choice, mind you, but out of desperation. I don’t need you three to remind me.”
He gazed at us, his eyes narrowed. “If you want to recover the Darksword, that is where we must go. The Dragon of the Night is the Darksword’s guardian.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Saryon caught Joratn in his arms. Touching the fabric of the crimson-stained robes, the catalyst felt the warm wetness of life’s blood draining from Joram’s body, falling through Saryon’s fingers like the petals of a shattered tulip.
TRIUMPH OF THE DARKSWORD
Eliza listened gravely to Mosiah’s arguments against going. She asked Father Saryon if there was any way to retrieve the Darksword without facing the dragon. On his replying that there was not, she said it was her intention to go with Father Saryon, but that she would not ask any of the rest of us to go with her. In fact, it was her express command that we remain behind.
Needless to say, that was one command in her reign she could not convince any of us to obey. After some further discussion we headed for the cave—all five of us.
“Now at least,” said Mosiah as he trudged along behind me, “we won’t have to worry about dying at the hands of the Hch’nyv.”
“According to Father Saryon,” I signed, “the dragon is charmed. As I recall, a person is able to control one of these dragons if he touches the charm the warlocks embedded in the dragon’s head.”
“Thank you, Mister Encyclopedia,” Mosiah retorted sarcastically. We had left the sunshine and returned to the shadows, walking beneath the willows and cottonwoods that bordered the river. “It takes a very strong and powerful personality to cast a charm on a dragon. My respect for Father Saryon is vast, but ‘strong’ and ‘powerful’ are not words I would use to describe him.”
“I think you underestimate him,” I signed back defensively. “He was strong enough to sacrifice himself when they would have turned Joram to stone. He was strong enough and powerful enough to assist Joram in fighting Blachloch.”
Mosiah remained unconvinced. “Twenty years have passed since he left the Darksword with the dragon! Even if Father Saryon did actually charm the beast, the charm could not possibly hold it that long!”
I felt regretfully that Mosiah was right. The Dragons of Night had been designed by their creators as killing machines, made to slaughter on command. During the Iron Wars some of these dragons had escaped their creators and wreaked havoc among their own forces. After the war the D’karn-duuk, who had made the dragons and controlled them, were mostly dead. Those who survived were too battle-shocked and exhausted to deal with the Warchanged. The Dragons of Night escaped and fled below ground, seeking to hide from the light of day, which they loathed and feared, in the endless night of tunnel and cave.
They have no love for man, remembering always who had doomed them to this dark life and hating them for it.
We had now arrived at the cavern entrance. Halting on the riverhank, we stared at it bleakly. The opening—dark against the gray rock face—was an enormous archway of gray stone, easy for all of us to enter, or it would have been had not most of it been sunk underwater! A part of the river had branched off, flowed, swift and deep, into the cavern.
“You’re out of luck, Father,” Mosiah said. “The river has changed course. Unless you would have us swim these treacherous currents, we can’t go inside.” The raven, perched on a tree limb, gave a raucous caw.
I am ashamed to say that my first reaction was one of relief, until I saw Eliza.
Up to this time she had borne calmly and courageously all dangers and setbacks. This disappointment was too much for her to bear. She clenched her fists.
“We must get inside!” she cried, her face white to the lips, adding wildly, “I will swim if I have to.”
The water flowing into the cave was fast-moving, with small, swirling whirlpools and dangerous eddies that splashed and foamed among sharp