Triumph of the Darksword - Margaret Weis [12]
“Not yet,” said the witch, reading his thoughts. “But they will grow and keep on growing until they pierce right through skin and muscle and organs, tearing out your life with them. Now, I ask you again. What is your name?”
“Why? What can it matter?” Mosiah groaned. “You know it!”
“Humor me,” the witch said and spoke another word. The thorns grew another fraction of an inch.
“Mosiah!” He tossed his head in agony. “Mosiah! Damn it! Mosiah, Mosiah, Mosiah.
Then their plan penetrated the haze of pain. Mosiah choked, trying to swallow his words. Watching in horror, he saw the witch become Mosiah. Her face—his face. Her clothes—his clothes. Her voice—his voice.
“What do we do with him?” the warlock asked in subdued tones.
“Throw him in the Corridor and send him to the Outland,” the witch—now Mosiah—said, rising to her feet.
“No!”
Mosiah tried to fight the warlocks strong hands that dragged him to his feet, but the tiniest movement drove the thorns into his body and he slumped over with an anguished cry. “Joram!” he yelled desperately as he saw the dark void of the Corridor open within the foliage. “Joram!” he shouted, hoping his friend would hear, yet knowing in his heart that it was hopeless. “Run! It’s a trap! Run!”
The warlock thrust him into the Corridor. It began to squeeze shut, pressing in on him. The thorns stabbed his flesh, his blood flowed warm over his skin. Staring out, he had a final glimpse of the witch—now himself—watching him, her face—his face—expressionless.
Then, she spread her hands.
“It’s all the rage,” he saw himself say.
What happened after that, Mosiah couldn’t be certain. Mercifully, he lost consciousness in the Corridor. When he came to, days later, he was in the Sorcerer’s crude town in the Outland. Andon, their elderly, gentle leader, was with him as was a Theldara—a healer—and a catalyst who had been sent to the Sorcerers’s village by Prince Garald himself. Mosiah begged to know the fate of his friends, but none in the secluded village could—or would—tell him.
The following weeks were ones of pain when he was awake and terrible dreams when he sank into the magically induced sleep. Then he heard, in a whispered conversation not intended for his ears, what had happened to Joram and Father Saryon. He heard about the catalyst’s tragic sacrifice, about Joram’s voluntary walk into Beyond.
Mosiah himself drew near death. The Theldara tried everything but told Andon that the young man’s magical Life was not working to save him. Mosiah didn’t care. Dying was easier than living with the pain.
One day Andon told him he had visitors, two people who had been brought to the village by orders of Prince Garald.
Mosiah couldn’t imagine who they could be and he didn’t much care. And then his mother’s arms were around him, her tears bathing his wounds. His father’s voice was in his ears. Gently, tenderly, his parents’ rough, work-worn hands led their son back to life.
The memories of his pain and his despair overwhelmed Mosiah and he felt as though the Corridor were smothering him. Fortunately, the journey was short. The feeling of panic subsided as the Corridor gaped open. But the terror was replaced by feelings more profound yet no less painful—feelings of sorrow and of grief. Stepping from the Corridor, Mosiah gritted his teeth, nerving himself. Although he had never visited the Borderlands, he had familiarized himself with them and he knew what to expect.
A shoreline of fine white sand, dotted here and there with patches of tall grass that eventually, near the shifting mists of gray leading to Beyond, died out completely, leaving a beachline as stark and bare as a picked bone. Upon this beach would stand the Watchers and here, as well, would be Saryon—his flesh transformed to stone.
“The sight is not dreadful as you might expect,” Mosiah had heard Prince Garald tell a group gathered around him during a party one evening not long ago. “There is a look of peace on the man’s stone face that makes one almost envious of him, for it is a peace that no living man can know.