Legacy of the Darksword - Margaret Weis [35]
“Well, sir.” I relaxed, smiled, and shrugged. “I can try.”
“All right, then,” he said.
“Do you know the way?” I asked. “Where are we going?”
He looked out again across the landscape, toward the mountains that rose, snowcapped, on the horizon.
“There,” he said. “The Font. The only building left standing, after the terrible storms broke over the world with the destruction of the Well of Life. Joram and Gwendolyn took refuge there, and there, according to King Garald, is where they live still.”
We started walking back to the air car. “We have seventy-two hours,” I told him, “before the last ship leaves.”
He gave me the same shocked look I had given the commander. “So short a time?”
“Yes, sir. But surely it won’t take nearly that long. Once you explain the danger to Joram . . .”
Saryon was shaking his head. I wondered if I should tell him what the base commander had said about Joram’s being insane, decided that I would keep that to myself. I did not want to add to my master’s worries. My research on the book had seemed to indicate that Joram was a manic-depressive and I thought it quite possible that the isolation of his life, plus the tension created by the arrival of the Technomancers, might well have driven him to the breaking point.
Reaching the car, I opened the door for Saryon and saw the leather scrip draped over the backseat. I pointed at it.
“You dropped it,” I signed. “The base commander found it for you.”
Saryon stared at the scrip in perplexity. “I couldn’t have dropped it. I didn’t bring it. Why would I?”
“Is it yours?” I asked, thinking that perhaps it might belong to someone on the base.
Saryon peered closely at it. “It looks very much like mine. Somewhat newer, perhaps, not quite as worn. Odd. Such a thing could not come into the possession of anyone on base, because such a thing has not been made for twenty years! It must be mine, only . . . Mmmm. How strange.”
I reminded him that he had been distracted and upset, that perhaps he had brought it and not remembered. I also hinted that his memory had failed him before—he was constantly forgetting where he put his reading spectacles.
He cheerfully acknowledged that I was right and admitted that it had crossed his mind to take the scrip, but that he had been fearful of losing it. He thought that he had put it back in its accustomed place.
The scrip remained lying on the backseat. We entered the car and my thoughts centered on trying to remember all that the commander had told me about the operation of the vehicle. The odd discovery of the leather scrip passed clean out of my mind. Saryon settled into the passenger’s seat. I assisted him with his seat belt and then fastened my own. He asked worriedly if there weren’t more safety restraints and I said, with more confidence than I felt, that these would be adequate.
I pushed the ON button. The air car began to hum. I pushed the button marked JETS. The humming grew louder, followed by a whoosh of the jets. The air car rose off the ground. Saryon had fast hold of the door handle.
All was going very smoothly. The car was drifting upward when Saryon spoke. “Aren’t we going too high?” he asked in a cracked voice.
I shook my head, and taking the wheel, I pressed on it, intending to level us off.
The wheel was far more sensitive than I had anticipated, certainly more sensitive than the wheel of the air car in the amusement park. The car lurched downward and headed at a high rate of speed straight for the ground.
I jerked back on the wheel, pulled up the nose. At the same time I inadvertently increased the power and we soared up and jumped forward, the sudden thrust nearly snapping our necks in the process.
“Almin save us!” Saryon gasped.
“Amen to that, Father,” came a sepulchral voice.
Saryon stared at me and I think it was in his mind that perhaps the whiplash had miraculously restored my speech. I shook my head emphatically and motioned with my chin—my hands were gripping the wheel so tightly that I dared not let go—that the voice had come from the backseat.
Twisting around, Saryon