Legacy of the Darksword - Margaret Weis [6]
I am used to receiving mixed compliments for my work, and therefore I made no reply. It is never dignified to defend one’s creative endeavors. And I made allowances for the fact that Mosiah had been one of the central participants.
“As for my leaving the relocation camp,” Saryon said, continuing the earlier conversation, “I did what I thought was best for everyone.”
His hand holding the teacup began to shake. I rose, went to him, and removed the cup, placing it on the nightstand.
“This house is quite nice,” said Mosiah, glancing around, somewhat coldly. “Your work in the field of mathematics and Reuven’s work in literature have made you a comfortable living. Our people in the relocation camps don’t live as well as this—”
“They could if they wanted to,” Saryon said, with a flash of the old spirit.
Knowing him as I do, and knowing his history, I guessed that this must be the same driving spirit which led him to seek out the forbidden books in the Font library. The same spirit that helped Joram forge the Darksword. The same spirit that faced the Turning with such courage and kept his soul alive, though his flesh had been changed to rock.
“No barbed wire surrounds those camps,” Saryon said, speaking with increasing passion. “The guards at the gates were placed there when we first came to keep out the curious, not to prevent our people from leaving. Those guards should have been gone long ago, but our people begged for them to stay. Every person in the camp could have entered into this new world and found his or her place.
“But do they? No! They cling to some hopeless dream of returning to Thimhallan, of going back there to find—what? A land that is dead and blasted. Thimhallan has not changed since we left. It will not change, no matter how much we wish for it. The magic is gone!” Saryon’s voice was soft and aching and thrilling. “It is gone and we should accept that and go on.”
“The people of Earth do not like us,” said Mosiah.
“They like me!” Saryon said crisply. “Of course, they don’t like you. You refuse to mingle with the ‘mundane,’ as you call them, although many of them have as much magic in their bodies as you do in yours. Still, you shun them and isolate yourselves from them and it is no wonder they look upon you with distrust and suspicion. It was this same pride and arrogance which brought about the collapse of our world and put us into those relocation camps, and it is our pride and arrogance which keep us there!”
Mosiah would have spoken, I think, but he could not do so without raising his voice to interrupt my master, who, now conversing on his pet topic, was on his soapbox—a quaint term used by the natives of this world.
Indeed, Mosiah appeared moved by this speech. He did not reply, at first, but remained seated in thought a short space of time.
“What you say is true, Father,” he said. “Or, rather, it was true at the beginning. We should have left the camp, gone forth into the world. But it was not pride which kept us behind those barricades. It was fear. Such a strange and terrifying world! Oh, admittedly, the Earthers brought in their sociologists and their psychologists, their counselors and teachers to try to help us ‘fit in.’ But I am afraid that they did more harm than good. The more they showed us of the wonders of this world, the more our people shrank away from them.
“Pride, yes, we had our share,” he continued. “And not misplaced. Our world was beautiful. There was good in it.” Mosiah leaned forward, his elbows resting on his knees, gazing earnestly at Saryon. “The Earthers could not believe in it, Father. Even the soldiers who had