Triumph of the Darksword - Margaret Weis [110]
Following a highly satisfactory meeting with the Executioner, the Bishop retired to his bedchamber. Here, assisted by a novitiate, he was engulfed in a voluminous nightshirt and helped to his bed. Once there, Vanya realised he had forgotten, in the excitement of the evening, his nightly prayers. He did not get back up. Surely this once the Almin could make do without receiving instruction and advice from his minister.
In another part of the world, Major Boris, too, went to his bed. Lying on his regulation cot, he was ostensibly trying to rest, although he didn’t know which alternative he feared worse—that he wouldn’t fall asleep or that he would. Either way, he knew his dreams were likely to be extremely unpleasant.
Two men were still awake—the Sorcerer and the Executioner, both planning how to take their prey upon the morrow.
The moon, finding nothing interesting in that, was about to set when, after all, it did run across something amusing.
A bucket with a bright orange handle sat in a corner of the geodesic dome that served as the headquarters for the army from another world. This was by no means an ordinary bucket. Having worked itself into a state of indignation, it was, literally, coming apart at the seams.
“Menju, you cheat! You’re not playing at all fair! Taking Joram back to a brave, new world and not me!” The bucket flipped its handle about quite savagely. “Well, we’ll see about that!” the bucket predicted ominously. “We’ll see.”
Per Istam———Sanctam….
Count Devon is truly sorry about the china cabinet, but it happened, he thinks, because he is uneasy in his mind about the mice nibbling his portrait. The painting would be glad to return to its old place upon the wall if only someone would so instruct it. He has tried, but it doesn’t hear his voice.
“He doesn’t want the portrait destroyed, for without it he can’t recall what he looks like.
“The mice concern him. He says there are far too many. It comes with being shut up in a closed, comfortable attic without any predators; his late wife being terrified of cats. The mice have had a comfortable life and are now fat and sleek with a decided taste for art. Yet he has discovered in his solitary, wakeful ramblings (for the dead who can sleep do so, never to wake, while those who can’t find sleep roam constantly in search of rest) many small corpses in the attic.
“The mice are dying, and he can’t understand why. Their tiny bodies litter the floor, more each day. And here is a very Strange thing. He has heard from a woman who once lived across the street and who, it seems, died from lack of attention and it took three days for somebody to notice, that the mice in her attic are suffering the very same fate.
“Sealed up, safe and secure, they are, she says, suffocating.”
1
Emperor Of Merilon
Night attempted to lull Merilon to sleep, but its soothing hand was thrust away by those preparing for war. Joram took command of the city, naming Prince Garald his military leader. He and the Prince immediately began to mobilize the population.
Joram met with his people in the Grove Gathering around the ancient tomb of the wizard who had brought them to this world, many of the citizens of Merilon wondered if that almost forgotten spirit stirred restlessly in his centuries-old sleep. Was his dream about to end and yet another enchanted kingdom fall to ruin?
“This is a fight to the death,” Joram told the people grimly. “The enemy intends to wipe out our entire race, to destroy us utterly. We have seen proof of this in the wanton attack upon innocent civilians on the Field of Glory. They have shown no mercy. We will show none.” He paused. The silence that flowed through the crowd grew deeper, until they might have been drowned in it. Looking at them from where he stood on the platform above the tomb, Joram said slowly, emphasizing each word, “Every one of them must die.”
No one cheered when Joram left the Grove. Instead, they turned quickly and quietly to their duties. Women trained