Legacy of the Darksword - Margaret Weis [36]
“I know that voice,” he muttered. “But it can’t be!”
I don’t know what I expected—the Duuk-tsarith, I suppose. Not completely certain how to stop the air car, I kept driving and at last managed to stabilize it. I cast a quick look in the rearview mirror.
There was no one in the backseat.
“Ouch! I say!” The voice had a peevish quality to it now. “This great smelly green bag has fallen on top of me. I’m being frightfully dented.”
Saryon was searching wildly around the backseat and was now groping about with his hands. “Where? What?”
I managed at last to halt the air car. I kept the jets on, and we remained floating in the air. Reaching back, I shoved aside the knapsack.
“Thanks awfully,” said the leather scrip.
CHAPTER EIGHT
“Let me be your fool, sire. You need one, I assure you.”
“Why, idiot?” asked Joram, the half smile in his dark eyes.
“Because only a fool dares tell you the truth,” said Simkin.
FORGING THE DARKSWORD
“Simkin!” Saryon gulped, swallowed. “Is that you? “In the flesh. Leather, actually,” replied the scrip. “You can’t be,” Saryon said and he sounded shaken. “You’re . . . you’re dead. I saw your corpse.”
“Never buried,” the scrip returned. “Grave mistake. Speaking of stakes, one through the heart. That or silver bullet or sprig of holly in the heel. But everyone was so busy those last few days, destroying the world and so forth, I can see how I came to be overlooked.”
“Stop the nonsense.” Saryon was stern. “If it is you, change into yourself. Your human self, that is. I find this very disconcerting. Talking to a ... a leather scrip!”
“Ah, bit of a problem.” The scrip wriggled, its leather ties curled in upon themselves in what might have been embarrassment. “I don’t seem to be able to do that anymore. Become human. Rather lost the knack. Death takes a lot out of a fellow, you know, as I was saying just the other day to my dear friend Mer-lyn. You remember Merlyn? Founder of Merilon? Adequate wizard, though not as good as some would have you believe. His fame due entirely to his press agent, of course. And spelling his name with a y, I mean—how pretentious! But then anyone who goes around dressed in a blue-and-white star-spangled bathrobe—”
“I insist.” Saryon was firm, ignoring the desperate attempt to change the subject. He reached out his hand for the leather scrip. “Now. Or I shall toss you out the window.”
“You won’t get rid of me that easily!” said the scrip coolly. “I’m coming with you, no matter what. You can’t imagine how boring it has been! No amusement, absolutely none. Toss me out,” the scrip warned as Saryon’s hand drew nearer, “and I’ll change into an engine part on this simply fascinating vehicle. And I know very little about engine parts,” he added, as an afterthought.
Recovering from the initial shock of hearing what I considered to be an inanimate object speaking, I was regarding Simkin with a great deal of interest. Of all those whose stories I had written, those concerning Simkin intrigued me the most. Saryon and I had argued in friendly fashion over just exactly what Simkin was.
I maintained that he was a wizard of Thimhallan with extraordinary powers—a prodigy, a genius of magic, like Mozart was a genius of music. Add to this a chaotic nature, an addictive lust for adventure and excitement and a self-centered, shallow personality, and you have a man who would betray his friends at the drop of an orange silk scarf.
Saryon admitted that all this was true and that I was probably right; still, he had reservations.
“There are things about Simkin that your theory doesn’t resolve,” Saryon had once said. “I think he is old, very old, perhaps as old as Thimhallan itself. No, I can’t prove it. Just a feeling I have, from things he’s mentioned. And I know for a fact, Reuven, that the magic he performed is not possible. It is simply, mathematically, not possible. It would take far more Life than a hundred catalysts could give for him to transform himself into a teapot or a bucket. And Simkin could perform this magic, as you say, at the drop of his orange silk scarf!