Triumph of the Darksword - Margaret Weis [148]
“Good-bye, my friend … my father,” he whispered.
He noticed that, strangely, his weakness was gone, the pain had disappeared. Rising to his feet, he walked to the altar stone with firm, unfaltering steps.
He raised the sword as he drew near the altar, and the blade began to burn with blue flame. The altar stone responded, the symbols of the Nine Mysteries starting to shine with a white-blue light. He touched each symbol carved into the rock, tracing them with his fingers: Earth, Air, Fire, and Water Time, Spirit, and Shadow Life. Death.
Turning to his wife, he held out his hand “Will you come stand beside me?”
He might have asked her to dance. “Of course!” she answered with a laugh. Jumping to her feet, she ran lightly down the stairs, her gown trailing in the blood.
Drawing near her husband, he saw her gaze curiously at his injured arm. Her blue eyes glanced at Saryon, then at the dead Executioner, then at Simkin’s body, and an expression of sad, puzzled wonder shadowed her face. Looking back at Joram, she reached out and touched his blood-soaked sleeve with the tips of her fingers. He flinched, and she drew her hand away quickly, putting it behind her, staring at him shyly.
“You did not hurt me. Not my arm, at least,” he amended, for he knew she must have seen the pain on his face. “I was remembering … long ago, when you first touched me like that.” He gazed at her searchingly “Have they truly found peace in death? Are they happy?”
“They will be, when you free them,” she answered.
That was not the answer he wanted, but then, he realized, he had not asked the question that was in his heart. Will I find peace in death? Will I find you once again? He could never ask that question, he realized, for it would have no meaning for her.
She was watching him expectantly. “They are waiting,” she said, a touch of impatience in her clear voice.
Waiting…. It seemed the whole world was waiting, had waited, perhaps, ever since the moment of his birth.
Turning from her, Joram grasped the hilt of the Darksword with both hands. Lifting the weapon high over his head, he braced his feet firmly in the soil of the dead Garden. He drew in a deep breath, then—with all his strength and might—he plunged the Darksword straight into the heart of the altar stone.
The sword entered the rock easily, so easily that it astonished him. The altar stone flared a brilliant white-blue and shivered. He felt the tremor beneath his hands, as though he had thrust the sword through living flesh. The tremor extended out from the stone, traveling farther and farther.
Beneath his feet, the mountain itself shuddered. The ground quivered and heaved like a live thing, splitting apart. The Temple tottered on its foundations; cracks split the walls; the roof caved in. Joram lost his footing and fell to his hands and knees. Gwendolyn crouched near him, staring around her, wide-eyed and fascinated.
Then, suddenly, the shaking ceased. Everything was still and quiet once more. The flaming light of the altar stone faded. Nothing about the stone appeared changed, except that the sword had vanished. No trace of it remained.
Joram tried to stand, but he was too weak. It was as if the sword—taking its last victim—had drained the life from his body. Leaning wearily against the altar stone, he looked out across the plains, wondering vaguely why it was beginning to grow dark when it was still noonday.
Perhaps it was his own sight failing, the first shadows of death. Joram blinked rapidly, and the shadows did not diminish. Staring at the sky more intently, he realized that it was not his failing vision. It was truly growing darker.
But such an odd, eerie darkness. It came from the ground, rising up over the land like a fast-flowing tide, fighting the sun that still lit the land from above. In this strange battle of darkness and light, objects stood out with unnatural clarity, every line sharply delineated and defined. Each dead plant stalk