Triumph of the Darksword - Margaret Weis [157]
“But alone!” Saryon looked at Joram in despair. “On a dead world! Swept by storms! The earth itself shakes. Where will you live? The cities lie in rubble.
“The mountain fortress of the Font stands unharmed,” Joram said. “We will make our home there.”
“Then I will stay here with you!”
“No, Father.” Joram glanced again at Garald’s tall, upright figure as it made its lonely way across the plains. “Others need you now.”
“We will not be alone, Father,” Gwendolyn said, placing her soft hand over her husbands. “The dead will inherit this world. We will be company for them and they will be company for us.”
Saryon saw—standing behind Gwen—indistinct shapes and ghostly forms, staring at him with intense, knowing eyes. He even thought he saw, though it vanished when he looked at it directly, a fluttering of orange silk.
“Farewell, Father,” Gwen said, kissing his wrinkled cheek. “When our son is of age, we will send him to you to teach as you taught Joram.”
She smiled so sweetly and cheerfully, looking at her husband with so much love in her face, that Saryon could not find it in his heart to pity her.
“Good-bye, Father,” Joram said, grasping the catalyst’s trembling hand tightly. “You are my father, the only true one I ever knew.”
Clasping Joram in his arms, Saryon held him close, remembering the baby whose small head once rested upon his shoulder. “Something tells me, my son, that I will never see you again, and I must say this to you before we part. When I was near death, I saw—I understood, at last.” His voice breaking, he whispered huskily, “What you did was right, my son! Always believe that! And always know that I love you! I love you and honor you—” His words failed, he could not go on.
Joram’s tears, mingling with Saryon’s, fell into the black hair that curled upon his shoulders. The two clung to each other as the storm winds blew about them more fiercely. One of the guards, with a nervous glance at the swirling clouds, moved forward to tap the catalyst respectfully on the shoulder.
“It is time for you to go. May the Almin be with you, Father,” Joram said quietly.
Saryon smiled through his tears.
“He is, my son,” he said, placing his hand over his heart. “He is.”
APPENDIX:
The Game
Of Tarok
Tarok is one of the earliest known games utilizing the tarot cards, whose appearance in Europe around the fourteenth or fifteenth century still remains shrouded in mystery. Many theories exist concerning the origin of the allegorical and mystical cards, relating them to everything from the Egyptian Book of Thoth to the Hebrew Kabbalah to roving bands of Christian dissenters who may have used the symbolic pictures on the cards to teach their lessons to an illiterate populace.
Most scholars credit gypsies with introducing the cards into Europe. Since most Europeans of the time believed—erroneously—that the gypsies came from Egypt (hence the name gypsy), it is easy to see how the theory arose that the cards were Egyptian in origin, a theory that is open to debate. It is doubtful that the gypsies themselves invented the cards. They used them merely for crude forms of divination, without any apparent understanding of the cards’ complex symbolism.
The cards gained popularity in Europe despite the fact that they were frowned upon by the Church. Many of our earliest references to the tarot cards are edicts banning their use. The cards were popular among the wealthy nobility, however, and this kept them in existence. Hand-painted decks decorated with gold leaf, crushed lapis lazuli, and other substances with such exotic names as “dragon’s blood” and “mummy dust” appeared in royal courts.
It is speculated that since fortune telling was prohibited by the Church, games utilizing the cards were invented. The introduction of movable type made the cards available to the general populace, and eventually the tarot decks were soon too popular and widespread for the Church and politicians to continue fighting. Christian