Legacy of the Darksword - Margaret Weis [14]
The D’karn-darah ignored all this and went immediately to Saryon’s body, which continued to sleep soundly. He put out a silver-covered hand and shook the catalyst by the shoulder.
“Saryon!” he said loudly.
Beside me, I could feel Saryon’s spirit shiver. I was thankful, then, for Mosiah’s arrival and his timely warning. If my master had been wakened in the night and seen such a horrific sight bending over him, he might never have recovered from the shock.
At that moment I heard a female voice say “Reuven!” loudly. I felt a slight brushing sensation across my shoulder. Then I knew that the second person, the one who had entered by the back door, had gone to my room. She was standing over my body.
The D’karn-darah shook Saryon again, more forcibly, turning the sleeping body over in the bed. “Saryon!” the man repeated, and his voice was harsh.
I trembled, for I was afraid he would do Saryon some harm. Mosiah again reassured both of us.
“They will not hurt you,” he repeated. “They do not dare. They know you may be of use to them.”
The one who had been in my room now appeared in Saryon’s bedchamber.
“Same thing?” she asked.
“Yes,” answered the D’karn-darah who stood beside my master. “Their souls have fled. They were alerted to our coming.”
“Duuk-tsarith.”
“Of course. Undoubtedly the one named Mosiah, that Enforcer who was once the catalyst’s friend.”
“You were right, then. You said we would find him here.”
“He has been here. He is probably still here, hiding in one of their cursed time folds, no doubt. And the other two are probably with him right now. Very possibly”—the man’s silver faceless face turned and gazed around the bedroom—”they are listening to us at this moment.”
“Then it is simple. Torture the body. Pain will cause their spirits to return. They will be only too glad, after a while, to tell us where to find the Enforcer.”
The female D’karn-darah raised her hand, and where before had been five fingers were now five long steel needles. Electricity began to arc from one to another. She reached the hand with the horribly crackling needles toward Saryon’s defenseless form.
Her partner halted her, his own hand closing around her wrist.
“The Khandic Sages will be here tomorrow, working their own methods of persuasion. They would know that we had been here and they would not be pleased.”
“They know that we are hunting this Enforcer. They want him as much as we do.”
“Yes, but they want this catalyst more.” The D’karn-darah sounded irritated. “Very well, we will leave him to them. A pity we could not have arrived a few moments sooner. We would have been able to capture the Duuk-tsarith. As it is, our meeting is only delayed, Enforcer!” He spoke to the air. “And, you, Catalyst.” The silver face turned toward the figure in the bed. “I leave this, my . . . business card.”
He opened the palm of his gloved hand, reached into his other palm, gave a twist, freeing some object—I could not see what. He tossed that object onto the bed, at the feet of Saryon’s slumbering figure. Then the two of them left the bedroom, left the house by the back door.
At their departure, the machines in the house returned to normal. The lights went off, the CD player ceased to play.
We waited, hidden, for some time, to make certain the D’karn-darah were gone and that this was no trick to lure us out of hiding. When Mosiah permitted us to return, my spirit drifted back to find my body. I looked down upon myself.
This was much different than looking into a mirror, for the mirror shows us what we see every day, what we have grown accustomed to seeing. Before now, I had never seen myself with such clarity. And though I was eager to return to Saryon and had questions to ask of Mosiah, I was so entranced by this ability to see myself as a casual observer might see me that I took a few moments to do just that.
Physical attributes I knew well. The mirror shows us these. Fair hair, worn long, that someone in my childhood once called “corn silk.” Brown eyes beneath eyebrows