Legacy of the Darksword - Margaret Weis [131]
“Father!” Mosiah’s call was urgent.
“Wait,” said Saryon quietly.
A figure stood before us in the middle of the dragon’s lair. Calm and relaxed, she might have been standing in our living room back home. She took no notice of the dragon, who had pressed its body back up against the wall, as far from her as it could manage.
“Mother!” Eliza breathed.
Mosiah was beside us. “It could be another trick!”
My first thought was that the Technomancers must be very brave or very desperate to enact a charade before such a dreadful audience as the Dragon of the Night. Then I realized that desperate was an apt description of Kevon Smythe as we had last seen him.
Gwendolyn looked exactly as I had seen her when we first met, except that the lines of care and worry had been smoothed from her face. Her expression was serene. She had eyes for only her daughter, and no Interrogator could have mimicked the love and pride with which she gazed upon Eliza.
“It is my mother,” Eliza said, her voice aching with longing. “I am sure of it.”
“Wait,” Mosiah counseled. “Don’t go near. Not yet.”
Remembering the horror of the last meeting with the Interrogator, Eliza remained standing beside Saryon. She wanted this to be real. Yet how could it? From where had Gwendolyn come? And why had she come to us now, in the middle of the dragon’s lair?
“I want you to meet someone, Daughter,” Gwen said.
She reached out her hand, reached into the darkness, and another figure appeared, shimmering into view at Gwendolyn’s side. I was reminded of Simkin, for this second figure had the same watercolor, transparent look to it that Simkin had exhibited when he wasn’t playing at being stuffed. Gwen led the figure by the hand, drew the figure close to us.
And then I recognized the person. I gasped and looked wildly at Eliza. I even reached out and touched her, to make certain she was real. Eliza stood beside me and Eliza stood before me, both at the same time or, rather, one in one time and one in another. The one before me I recognized as Queen Eliza. She wore the same blue riding habit, the same circlet of gold glinted in her dark hair.
Mosiah sucked in his breath. Saryon smiled wistfully, sadly. He kept his arm around Eliza, supporting her.
“What . . . what is this?” Eliza, my true Eliza, cried brokenly. She stared at her reflection in time’s mirror. “Who is this?”
“You, my daughter,” said Gwendolyn. “You as you might have been in another time. She cannot speak to you, for in her time she is dead. I alone can understand her words. She wanted to prove to you, to all of you”—her gaze swept over every one of us, lingered longest on Mosiah—”that everything you have experienced has been real. That I am real.”
“I don’t understand!” Eliza faltered.
“Look at yourself, Eliza. Look at yourself and open your mind to the impossible.”
Eliza stared long at the shimmering figure and then she suddenly looked around at Saryon, who smiled and nodded yes to her unspoken question. She next looked wildly at me and I signed, “I am as you remember, in this time and the other.”
Her lips parted, her eyes glistened. Her gaze next went to Mosiah, who grudgingly and reluctantly inclined his hooded head.
“I am your Enforcer, Your Majesty,” he said, a hint of irony in his voice.
“Your Majesty. So Scylla called me. I never even noticed that until now. So some part of me did know, even then,” Eliza said softly, wonderingly, to herself.
“And now, my daughter,” Gwendolyn said, “you must heed my instructions and obey them. You must take the Darksword to Merlyn’s tomb. Now. This moment. It must be lying on Merlyn’s tomb at midnight.”
“Merlyn!” Eliza was amazed. “Teddy kept talking about Merlyn. He said something about giving the sword to Merlyn—”
“Oh, Blessed Almin!” Mosiah snorted in disgust.
“But . . . Father. You don’t know, Mother!” Eliza went back to her point of main concern. “They’ve poisoned him! I must give