Triumph of the Darksword - Margaret Weis [152]
“Your Grace,” said the catalyst softly, coming up to stand beside him.
Raising his head, Prince Garald looked at the catalyst and a wan smile of recognition lightened his face. “Father Saryon I wondered where you had gone.” He glanced at the catalyst’s neatly bandaged head. “I feared perhaps your injury–”
“No, I am fine,” Saryon said, reaching up to touch the bandage and wincing slightly. “The pain comes and goes, but that is to be expected, so they tell me, with what they call a ‘concussion.’ I have been to the healing rooms in the ship, but it was to visit our young patient.”
“How is Mosiah?” Garald asked gravely, his smile disappearing.
“He is improving … finally,” Saryon said with a sigh. “I have been with him most of the night and we came very near losing him. But we finally persuaded him to take the treatment offered by the … the healers of their kind”—he gestured toward the strange humans—“since the Theldara have lost their power. Eventually, Mosiah listened to me. He accepted their help at last, and he will live. I left him in the care of Lord and Lady Samuels to come tell you.”
Prince Garald’s face darkened. “I don’t blame Mosiah. I would not have taken their treatment,” he said with a bitter oath. “I would sooner have died!”
Angry tears filled his eyes. He shook his manacled hands, fists clenched, his wrists straining against his bonds. Seeing this, one of the guards raised his weapon and said something in a sharp voice that sounded inhuman and mechanical through the metal helm.
“I would sooner have died!” Garald repeated in a choked voice, glaring at the guard.
Saryon laid his hand upon the Prince’s arm, about to offer what words of comfort he could, when a stirring among the waiting crowd caught their attention and that of their guard as well.
Three figures walked down the ruined street of Merilon. Picking their way carefully among the rubble that littered the streets, they passed the still-smoldering, fire-blackened trees of the Grove, and approached the Gate. One of the three—a short-statured, muscular man in a plain, neat uniform—did not pay much attention to the wreckage, but regarded it with the grim face of one who has seen this kind of thing all too often. The two accompanying him, however, appeared genuinely moved and distressed by it.
One in particular—a golden-haired woman with a gentle, lovely face—gestured here and there, speaking to her companion in a low voice, shaking her head as though recalling happier times. The companion—a dark-haired man dressed in white robes, his right arm in a sling—bent close to hear her; the man’s face, though stern and dark, was marked by a grief the depths of which few could know or understand.
One person watching saw, one person understood. Saryon brushed his hand swiftly across his eyes.
The three people were accompanied by at least a dozen silver-skinned, weapon carrying humans, who kept their eyes and weapons trained on the crowd.
The silence of the people of Merilon broke. The crowd surged to its feet. Shaking their fists at the white-robed man, they screamed curses and threats. They threw rocks. People lunged out of line, trying to attack the man. The silver-skinned humans closed around their commander and the man and the woman, while other guards shoved the worst offenders back against the wall or turned their stunning light beams on them, causing them to crumple to the ground. The most violent were taken into custody and hustled away to the makeshift guardhouse within what was left of the Kan-Hanar’s office.
The black-haired man in the white robes did not appear angry or frightened. He even stopped a guard from apprehending a young woman who had darted out of the crowd to spit upon him. His concern appeared to be for the golden-haired woman, for he put his arm around her and held her close, protectively. She was pale but composed and looked at the people with a sad sympathy, all the while appearing to speak words of comfort to the man.
The shouting and the rock-throwing continued as the three