Legacy of the Darksword - Margaret Weis [27]
“The button apparently did not work. No guards appeared. The woman, however, assured the Bishop that he had no reason to be afraid.
“ ‘I have come to give you information,’ she said. ‘First, I suggest that you discontinue your war against the Hch’nyv. You have no chance—absolutely none—of defeating the aliens. They are far too strong and too powerful. You have seen only a smattering of their entire force, which numbers in the billions of billions. They will not negotiate with you. They have no need. They intend to destroy you and they will succeed.’
“The Bishop was astonished. The woman, he said, was very calm and imparted this terrible information in a tone which left no doubt in his mind but that she spoke the truth.
“ ‘Excuse me, madam,’ the Bishop said, ‘but who are you? Whom do you represent?’
“She smiled at him and said, ‘Someone very close to you, who takes a personal interest in you.’ Then she continued, telling him, ‘You and the people of Earth and Thimhallan have one chance for survival. The Darksword destroyed the world. It may now be used to save it.’
“ ‘But the Darksword no longer exists,’ Bishop Radisovik protested. ‘It was itself destroyed.’
“ ‘It has been forged anew. Offer it to Thimhallan’s maker and find salvation.’
“At that moment the Bishop’s intercom buzzed. He turned to answer it, and when he looked back, the woman was gone. He had not heard her leave, any more than he had heard her enter. He questioned his secretary and the building’s security people, who said that no one had either gone into or come out of the Bishop’s office. The button on the desk was discovered to be operational. No one could say why they hadn’t heard the alarm.
“What was truly remarkable,” Garald added, “is that the security cameras in the building show no evidence of this woman, not even the camera which is placed in the Bishop’s office. Even stranger—at that point in time we knew nothing of the fact that Smythe had been to visit Joram or that Joram had, as the woman said, forged a new Darksword.”
“To what does the Bishop attribute this visit, then?” Saryon asked.
Garald hesitated, then replied, “Judging from what the woman said, about representing someone very close to the Bishop, someone who takes a personal interest in him, the Bishop is convinced that he was visited by an agent of the Almin. An angel, if you will.”
I noted that General Boris shifted in his chair and looked extremely embarrassed and uncomfortable.
“An agent, maybe,” said the General. “CIA, Interpol, Her Majesty’s Secret Service, FBI. But not of God.”
“How very interesting,” said Saryon, and I could see him mulling over this in his mind.
“Whoever brought us this information, our own researchers now want that sword,” said General Boris. “To determine if there really is some way we can use it to stop the Hch’nyv.”
“But that wasn’t what the an—the woman said,” Saryon interposed. “She said that the sword must be returned to Thimhal-lan’s maker.”
General Boris had the look on his face of a man indulging a child’s whim to hear a fairy tale. “Who is that supposed to be— Merlyn? You find him, Father, and I’ll give him the Darksword.”
Saryon appeared very stern, considering this sacrilegious.
“At the very least,” said King Garald in mollifying tones, “we must keep the Darksword out of the hands of the Techno-mancers.”
Saryon now appeared troubled, as if he were rethinking an already-thought-out determination. The other two would have pressed him further, had not an enormous black limousine rolled up at that moment.
General Boris put his hand to his ear.
“I see it,” he said, speaking to an aide through a communicator. The General looked around grimly at us, adding, “Smythe is here.”
CHAPTER SIX
“This is my magic,” said Joram, his gaze going to the sword lying on the floor.
FORGING THE DARKSWORD
‘aryon and I had watched a performance of Gounod’s Faust on the BBC recently and Mephistopheles was much in my mind as I waited to meet the head of the Technomancers. Smythe certainly did not look the part of Mephistopheles, being of