Triumph of the Darksword - Margaret Weis [5]
The man stopped speaking abruptly He felt the sword move! Thinking he might have imagined it in his anger, he gave the stone weapon a tug, as though to draw it out of its rock scabbard. To his amazement, the sword slid out easily, he nearly dropped it in surprise. Holding it, he felt the cold stone warm at his touch and, as he watched, astonished, the rock turned to metal.
The man lifted the Darksword to the light. The rays of the dying sun struck it, but no flame blazed from its surface. Its metal was black, absorbing the sun’s light, not reflecting it. He stared at the weapon for long moments. One part of him was attentive to the woman’s voice; he could hear her moving farther down the beach, calling to person or persons unseen. He did not watch her. He knew from long experience that, although she never acknowledged his existence, she would not stray far from him. His gaze and his thoughts focused on the sword.
“I thought I had rid myself of you,” he said, speaking to the weapon as if it were alive. “Just like I thought I had rid myself of life. I gave you to the catalyst, who accepted my sacrifice, then I walked—walked gladly—into death.” His eyes shifted to the gray fog that rolled upon the white sand snore. “But death is not out there….”
He fell silent, his hand gripping the hilt of the sword more firmly, noticing how much better it suited him, now that he was older, with a man’s strength. “Or maybe it is,” he remarked as an afterthought, his thick, black eyebrows drawing together in a frown. His gaze came back to the sword, then his eyes shifted to meet the unseeing eyes of the statue. “You were right, Father. It is a weapon of evil. It brings pain and suffering to everyone who comes in contact with it. Even I, its creator, do not understand or comprehend its powers. For that reason alone it is dangerous. It should be destroyed.” The man’s gaze turned once again, frowning, to the gray fog. “Yet now it has been given to me again …”
As if in answer to some unspoken question, the leather scabbard fell from the statues hands and landed in the sand at the man’s feet. He bent down to pick it up, then started as something warm dropped on his skin.
Blood.
Aghast, the man looked up. Blood oozed from the cracks in the statues hands, dripped out of the deep gouges in the stone flesh, ran down the broken stone fingers.
“Damn them!” the man cried in fury.
Standing up, he faced the statue of the catalyst, seeing now not only blood running from the hands but tears falling from the stone eyes.
“You gave me my life!” the man cried. “I can’t return that to you, Father, but at least I can give you the peace of death! By the Almin, they won’t torment you anymore!”
The man lifted the Darksword and the weapon began to glow with an eerie, white-blue light. “May your soul rest in peace at last, Saryon!” the man prayed, and, with all the strength of his body, he drove the sword into the statue’s stone breast.
The Darksword felt itself wielded. Blue light twined and twisted along the blade, surging up the man’s aims as the weapon thirstily drank the magic of the world that gave it life. Deep, deep into the rock it plunged, striking the statues stone heart.
A cry escaped the statue’s cold, unmoving lips—a cry heard not so much with the ears as with the soul. The stone around the sword began to shatter and crack. Jagged lines spread through the statue’s body with snapping, rending sounds that obliterated the catalyst’s pain-filled voice. An arm broke at the shoulder. The torso split into shards and toppled from the trunk. The head cracked at the neck and tumbled to the sand.
The man yanked the sword free. Blinded by his tears, he could