Legacy of the Darksword - Margaret Weis [71]
“You escaped,” said Scylla.
“There was nothing I could do,” Mosiah returned coldly. “I risked being captured myself and they have no reason to keep me alive. I deemed that I could be more useful surviving to fight them than throwing away my life needlessly.”
Eliza had gone very pale during the description of her father’s torment, but she stood strong and quiet. “What happened to my mother?” she asked, her voice quavering only slightly. She was fighting hard to remain under control.
“I don’t know,” Mosiah confessed. “If I had to guess, I would say that the D’karn-darah took her. But, if so . . .”He appeared thoughtful, then shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know.”
“Do you know?” Eliza turned to Scylla.
“Me? How could I know?” Scylla demanded, astonished that she was even asked. “I wasn’t there. I wish I had been, though.” She looked quite grim.
“Well, what do we do now?” Eliza was calm, very calm, much too calm. Her hands were clenched together, the fingers twined tightly, the knuckles white.
“We wait,” said Mosiah.
“Wait! Wait for what?”
“We must wait for them to contact us,” said Mosiah.
“To tell us where to bring the Darksword,” Scylla added. “To make the exchange. The Darksword for your father’s life.”
“And I will give it to them,” Eliza said.
“No,” said Mosiah. “You will not.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
“Now the game begins in earnest.”
FORGING THE DARKSWORD
“I will give it to them,” Eliza countered. “You won’t stop me. I should never have taken the Darksword in the first place. What they do with it doesn’t matter—”
“It does,” said Mosiah. “They will use it to enslave a world.”
“My father’s life is all that matters,” Eliza maintained stubbornly.
She swayed where she stood. She was exhausted, her strength almost gone. There was nowhere to sit down; every piece of furniture in the room had been smashed. Scylla put her arm around the young woman, gave her a bracing hug.
“I know it all looks very bleak now, Eliza, but things are not as bad as they seem. We’ll feel better for a cup of tea. Reuven, find something for us to sit on.”
She did not speak the instruction aloud. She signed the words to me! Smiling, she quirked her pierced eyebrow as much as to say, See, I do know you!
Of course. All that would be in my “file.” Once I was over my astonishment, I left the room in search of chairs. And I felt better, having a task to perform. I had to go to distant and long-unused parts of the building to find any furniture that was still intact. Surely the D’karn-darah could not imagine that they would find the Darksword hidden in a straight-backed wooden chair, but that’s how it appeared. The destruction was wanton and cruel and seemed, to my mind, to have been the result of fury and frustration over not finding what they sought rather than of any true hope of discovery.
If this is what they do to objects, what will they do to people? I asked myself, and the thought was chilling.
I found no chairs, but I did come across several short wooden stools from one of the lower level rooms which must have, I think, been used as a classroom for children. I do not know how the Technomancers missed this room, except that it stood at an odd angle off a corridor and would have been in pitch-darkness during the night.
As I picked up one of the stools I noticed, even in my weariness, how it had been crafted out of a single piece of wood. Crafted by magic, held together by magic, which prohibited the use of nails or glue. The wood had not been cut, but lovingly shaped and coaxed into taking the form the creator wanted.
I rubbed my hand over the smooth wood and suddenly, inexplicably, tears came to my eyes. I wept for the loss, for all the losses—the loss of my master,