Legacy of the Darksword - Margaret Weis [48]
I shook my head. It was not my place to tell her. I indicated again that I would wait for them here and motioned that she should go to her father. She pouted some, but I think that was mostly reflexive, for she was really very sensible and finally agreed—though reluctantly—that perhaps this way was best.
She ran off down the hill, her skirts flying, her hat blown back, her dark curls rampant.
I thought about her, when she was gone. I remembered every word she said, every expression on her face, the lilt and tone of her voice. I was not falling in love. Not yet. Oh, maybe just a little bit. I had dated several women before now—some of them seriously, or so I thought—but I had never been this at ease, this relaxed with a woman. I tried to figure out why. The unusual circumstances of our meeting, the fact that she was so open and unabashed and free to speak her mind. Perhaps the simple fact that we had been born on the same world. And then the oddest thought came to me.
You did not meet as strangers. Somewhere, somehow, your souls know each other.
I grinned at this impossibly romantic notion, though the grin was a little shaky, considering the vivid image I’d experienced of Eliza as Queen and myself as one more dull, plodding catalyst.
Banishing such foolish notions from my mind, I reveled in the beauty of my surroundings. Though I could see wounds upon the land, wounds caused by the war and later the storms and quakes and firestorms which had raged over Thimhallan, the wounds were healing. Young trees grew amid the ashes of the old. Grass covered the ragged scars and gouges on the landscape. The constant wind was softening the tooth-sharp cliffs.
The solitude was peaceful, quiet. No jets roared overhead, no televisions yammered, no sirens wailed. The air was crisp and clean and smelled of flowers and grass and far-off rain, not petrol and the neighbor’s dinner. I was immensely content and happy as I sat there on the low stone wall. I could picture Joram and Eliza and Gwen living here, reading, working in the garden, tending sheep, weaving fabric. I could picture myself here and my heart suddenly yearned for a life so simple and serene.
Of course, I was oversimplifying, romanticizing. I was deliberately leaving out the hard work, the drudgery, the loneliness. Earth was not the horrid place I was picturing by contrast. There was beauty to be found there, as well as here.
But what beauty would be left to any of us if the Hch’nyv destroyed our defenses, reached our world, and ravaged it as they had ravaged all others? If the power of the Darksword could truly be used to defeat the aliens, then why shouldn’t Joram relinquish it? Was this the conclusion Saryon had reached?
I worried and wondered and dreamed as I sat upon the wall, watching Eliza on the hillside, a bright speck against the green. I saw her meeting with her father. I could not see, from this distance, but I could imagine him staring over to where I sat. They both stood still, talking, for long moments. Then they both began to round up the sheep, driving them down the hill and back toward their pen.
The stone wall on which I sat grew suddenly very cold, very hard.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The sword was made of a solid mass of metal—hilt and blade together, possessing neither grace nor form. The blade was straight and almost indistinguishable from the hilt. A short, blunt-edged crosspiece separated the two. The hilt was slightly rounded, to fit the hand. . . . There was something horrifying about the sword, something devilish.
FORGING THE DARKSWORD
Eliza and her father came back, driving the sheep before them. I watched them the entire way, the sheep flowing like a huge woolly caterpillar across the grassy hillside. Joram walked steadfastly behind, reaching out now and then with his shepherd’s crook to guide an errant ewe back into the flock. Eliza dashed about them like a sheepdog, waving her hat and flapping her long skirts. I have no idea, knowing nothing of the tending of sheep, if she did harm or good,