Legacy of the Darksword - Margaret Weis [84]
Perhaps it was, perhaps it wasn’t.
We had no way of knowing, and after the Kij vines we could no longer assume that magic on Thimhallan was as depleted as we had once thought. I remembered what the Technomancers had said about “residual pockets.”
All that could be seen inside the city was the thick forest, which had been part of the marvelous Zoo, for which Zith-el was known. Oddly, if the wall was gone, the forest had not encroached onto the grasslands.
“Were there any survivors in Zith-el?” Eliza asked. Her voice was strained. Mosiah said no word of blame, but the daughter of the man who had caused the downfall of Thimhallan must feel defensive.
“Yes,” Mosiah answered, “and they were the most unfortunate of all. When the magic was weakened, the creatures of the Zoo were set free and took their revenge on those who had kept them prisoner.”
Eliza gazed on the city that had once teemed with life, whose walls now encompassed nothing but death. She knew the history of her father and what he had done and why he had done it. Joram was honest, brutally honest, and I do not believe that he would have spared himself in the telling. In all probability he had judged himself more harshly than even his detractors.
But sealed up, safe and secure, inside the Font, Eliza had never been brought face-to-face with the knowledge of what her father had done to this world and to its people. Father Saryon and I had disturbed Eliza’s tranquillity by bringing her visions of a different world. The Technomancers had shattered her happy life, her innocent pleasure in her home and her family. Mosiah’s words and the crumbled walls of Zith-el shook her faith in her father, the worst and most painful shock of all.
The air car had slowed. Scylla lowered it into the tall stands of grass that surrounded the city. The shadows of the mountains had brought dusk to us on the plains, though the sky was still bright behind them. She kept the lights off.
She and Mosiah discussed how best to proceed, arguing over whether it would be better to remain in the air car or leave it outside the city and enter Zith-el on foot.
“The Technomancers know we are here,” Mosiah observed. “With their sensor equipment, they’ve probably been following us since we left the Font.”
“Yes, but they don’t know how many we are or if we have the Darksword,” Scylla argued.
“We’re here, aren’t we?” Mosiah returned bluntly. “Why else would we come?”
Scylla admitted that he had a valid point, but she urged stealth as opposed to driving right up to the gate. “At the least, we should not turn over the Darksword until we are assured of the hostages’ safety.”
Mosiah shook his head.
I left that decision to them. With four of us facing an army of Technomancers, it didn’t seem to me to make the slightest bit of difference what we did. Pulling out my electronic notebook, I began looking up some reference material I had acquired on Zith-el, thinking to let Eliza read my notes.
When I found them, I started to show them to her, then checked myself.
Believing herself unobserved, shrouded in the twilight shadows, she had leaned down and, with one hand, drawn off the blanket from the Darksword. It was dark against darkness.
Her father had forged the first Darksword. Father Saryon had given it Life. The blood of thousands had consecrated it. Now here was a second, another. Would blood stain its blade as well?
Her face was so open, so honest, emotions passed across its surface like ripples on still water. I could guess her thoughts. Her words, spoken softly to herself, proved my guess right.
“Why did he forge it anew? Why did it have to come back into the world? And what should I do with it now?”
Sighing, she leaned against the seat, her expression sad and troubled.
And yet, what choice did she have?
None that I could see. Unable to offer help, I did not intrude on Eliza’s private pain. I reread the notes written by an