Triumph of the Darksword - Margaret Weis [15]
“How did you know—? Oh, skip it,” Mosiah said tiredly, stumbling as the sand shifted out from beneath his feet. “You said you come here a lot Why? What do you do?”
“I keep the catalyst company, of course,” Simkin said, regarding Mosiah with a self-righteous air. “Something you are too busy to do. Just because the poor man’s been turned to stone doesn’t mean he doesn’t have feelings. Must get frightfully boring, standing there all day, staring out into nothing. Pigeons landing on your head, that sort of thing. Might be different if the pigeons were interesting. But they’re such wretched conversationalists. Then I should think their feet must tickle, don’t you?”
Mosiah slipped and fell. Reaching down, Simkin hauled him upright. “Not far,” the young man said reassuringly. “Almost there.”
“So, what do you … uh … talk about?” Mosiah asked, feeling unaccountably guilty. He knew that those sentenced to the Turning were, in actuality, still living, but he had never considered that it might be possible to talk to them or to provide them with some measure of human involvement.
“What do we talk about?” Simkin asked, pausing a moment as if to get his bearings, though how he could tell where he was in the blinding storm was more than Mosiah could figure. “Ah, yes. We’re headed in the right direction. Just a few more steps. Now, where was I? Oh, yes. Well, I regale our statuesque friend with the latest gossip from court. I exhibit my newest fashions, though I do find it depressing that his responses to them are definitely what one might call stony. And I read to him.”
“What?” At this startling statement, Mosiah stopped floundering through the sand, partly to catch his breath and recover his strength and partly to stare at Simkin in amazement. “You read to him? What? Texts? Scriptures? I can’t imagine you—”
“—reading anything so boring?” Simkin lifted an eyebrow. “How right you are! Gad! Scriptures!” Growing pale at the thought, he fanned himself with the orange silk. “No, no. I read him jolly things to keep up his spirits. I found a large book of plays written by this frightfully prolific chap back in the old days. Quite entertaining. I get to act out all the characters. Listen, I have some of it memorized.” Simkin assumed a tragic pose. “‘But soft, what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet has fallen through the glass. Oh, pardon me, thou bleeding piece of earth….’” He frowned. “Is that how it goes? Doesn’t quite scan.” Shrugging, he continued. “Or, if we’re not in a scholarly mood, I read him this.”
With a wave of his hand, he produced a leather-bound book and handed it to Mosiah. “Open it, any page.”
Mosiah did so. His eyes widened. “That’s disgusting!” he said, slamming the book shut. He glared at Simkin. “You don’t mean you read that … that filth to … to—”
“Filth! You peasant! It’s art!” Simkin cried, snatching the book away from Mosiah and consigning it to the ethers. “As I said, it helped keep up his spirits—”
“Helped? What do you mean ‘helped’?” Mosiah interrupted. “Why past tense?”
“Because I am afraid our catalyst is now in the past tense,” Simkin said. “Move the shield over a fraction of an inch. There, at your feet.”
“My god!” Mosiah whispered in horror. He glanced back up at Simkin. “No, it can’t be!”
“I’m afraid so, dear boy,” Simkin said, shaking his head sadly. “There is no doubt in my mind that these blocks, these stones, these worse than senseless things are all that is left of our poor bald friend.”
Mosiah knelt down. Protected by the magical shield, he brushed away the sand from what appeared to be the statues head. He blinked back sudden tears. He had been hoping, praying that Simkin had made a mistake, that this was one of the other Watchers, perhaps. But there was no denying that it was Saryon—the mild, scholarly face; the gentle, loving expression he remembered so well. He could even see, as Garald had said, the look of infinite peace carved forever in the stone.
“How could this happen?” Mosiah demanded angrily. “Who could have done such a thing? I didn