Legacy of the Darksword - Margaret Weis [123]
The Technomancer flung Father Saryon to the ground. His hands were bound, he was unable to break his fall, and he landed heavily, crying out in pain. I would have rushed forward then and there, but common sense and Mosiah’s whispered warning prevailed.
Simkin approached Father Saryon, looked down at him.
There was a sharp snapping sound.
The Technomancer standing nearest Simkin stared wildly, gasped, and backed away.
“What are you doing?” he cried shrilly.
“Following orders,” said Simkin. “Giving you a hand.”
He held out his own hand, which he had broken off at the wrist.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The magic that Joram longed for and sought every morning to feel burning in his soul never came to him.
When he was fifteen, he stopped asking Anja when he would gain the magic.
Deep inside of him, he already knew the answer.
FORGING THE DARKSWORD
“ In addition, I’ll help you get ahead,” Simkin added. He lifted his head from his shoulders—unscrewed his head would be more precisely the term—and flung it straight at one of the Technomancers.
The man may have had some small magical powers, although from what I had seen, the Technomancers were so beholden to Technology as to make the magic almost irrelevant. Certainly he had never seen magic in such maniacal form. He gaped when Simkin broke off his own hand. But when Simkin’s head, covered with a silver hood, the ends flapping, flew through the air at him, the Technomancer gave a strangled cry and flung his arms over his face. Simkin’s head exploded with a force that stopped my heart, shook the cave . . . and resulted in a shower of daisies.
“Now!” Mosiah yelled.
The Life flowed through him and transformed him as he ran. His black robes writhed around him, flattened to cover his body in spiky black fur. His head elongated, changed to a muzzle with yellow fangs protruding from beneath black, curled lips. His legs transformed into the legs of a beast, his forearms were covered with black fur, claws sprouted from the fingernails. The hem of his robes twisted into a tail with a barb sharp as a razor. Mosiah had become a darkrover, the type known as a hunterkill, one of the most feared of all the creations of the ancient war masters.
The Technomancer uncovered his eyes, gazed in bafflement at the daisies drifting down around his head. They might have been scattered over his grave. The next sight he saw was a terrible one—a hunterkill bounding across the cavern floor, running upright on its powerful hind legs, jaws snapping, its claws reaching for the Technomancer’s throat.
His silver robes acted as armor, capable—as Scylla had said— of deflecting all attacks by conventional weapons. The darkrover was certainly not a conventional weapon, however. Mosiah hurled himself on the Technomancer. The silver robes crackled and the darkrover shrieked in pain, but Mosiah’s claws scratched and tore. His weight carried the Technomancer to the ground.
The other Technomancer guard was not quite as befuddled by the magic surging around him as his fellow. A weapon appeared in his hand, a scythe, that gleamed with a fell energy. He stood over Father Saryon, swinging the scythe in a vicious arc. The blade sang as it whipped through the air, reminding me of Simkin’s off-key humming.
Eliza and I held back, agonized, afraid for the captives. But there was nothing we could do. Saryon lay flattened on the ground. Every sweep of the scythe came a little closer to him. Joram was behind the scythe-wielding Technomancer, leaning up against the cavern wall, his eyes bright and burning with the effects of the poison. He lurched forward, with the idea of knocking down the Technomancer from behind.
The guard heard him, however. Whipping the scythe around, he struck Joram on the side of the head with its handle. Joram fell, landed near Father Saryon. Even then, defiantly, Joram raised his head. Blood, fresh blood, covered his face. His head sank between his arms. He lay still.
Eliza cried out and would have run to her father, regardless of her own danger.