Triumph of the Darksword - Margaret Weis [70]
The two stood in the center of the compound, talking together in low voices. Traveling the Corridors, the magi were returning to Merilon. The injured and dying had been sent through the Corridors first, then the catalysts, then the wizards. Some were so exhausted they staggered inside and collapsed. Others couldn’t walk at all but had to be carried.
They evacuated the fortress under the cover of darkness, the weary Sif-Hanar working until the end; Joram refused to allow even starlight to shine down upon them.
Joram’s grim tone, his precautions, and his ceaseless searching of the skies made Garald increasingly uneasy. “At least we did what we set out to do,” he said. “We have made them afraid of us. We have proved to them that they cannot sow the seeds of death without reaping its bitter harvest as well.”
“Yes,” Joram agreed, but he remained grave and his eyes continued their watchful vigil.
“What will they do now?” Garald asked quietly.
“Hopefully they are confused, frightened, perhaps even arguing among themselves,” Joram replied. “They may—if we are lucky—leave this world. But if not, the next time they attack, they will know what to expect. They will be prepared. And so we had better be prepared ourselves.”
Eventually, the magi were gone. Joram and the Prince were alone now, standing in the rubble of the blasted and ruined fortress of the Field of Glory.
We are alone—if you don’t count the dead, Garald thought. Looking at the huge cairn that had been made of stones taken from the shattered walls, he thought back on the beginning of this day, remembering with bitter pain his dreams of the glories of battle, his delight in the silly game he had been playing.
Some game. If it hadn’t been for Joram, he would be lying beneath that pile of stones. No he wouldn’t. There would have been no one left alive to bury him.
“Please, please let this be ended!” he prayed fervently “Please grant us peace and I promise I …”
But even as he spoke, he saw a dark figure emerge from the Corridors. Coming up to stand before Joram, the Duuk-tsarith gestured pointing toward mountainous country to the north. Joram nodded wordlessly and glanced at Garald. Turning away, weary and despairing, the Prince pretended he didn’t notice. He knew without hearing what the warlock had reported. The enemy hadn’t fled, they had done what Joram predicted and gone into hiding.
Now what? Garald wondered bleakly. Now what?
A hand touched his arm. Turning, he saw Joram at his side. Together, in silence, the two entered the Corridor and disappeared, leaving the fortress to the night and the dead.
Beyond
I leave this record with Father Saryon to be read in the event that I do not survive my initial encounter with the enemy …
The enemy.
I call them this, yet how many of them have become my friends over these past ten years? I think back on them, especially those who have ministered so gently to my wife and who helped me through those first few terrible months when I, too, feared I might lose my sanity. If word reaches them of what I am doing, I know they will understand, however. For they have fought him—the one known as the Sorcerer—far longer than I.
I am going to tell you everything, you who read this. I wonder, as an aside, who that will be. My old friend, Prince Garald? My old foes, Xavier, Bishop Vanya? It doesn’t matter, I suppose, since you will all find yourselves on the same side in this conflict. Therefore I will set down everything that has happened to me as best I can explain it. It is imperative that you understand this enemy in the event that you are forced to fight him alone, without my aid.
I will start at the beginning, or perhaps I should say the end.
I can tell you little of my thoughts and feelings when I walked—as I suppose I did—into death, into Beyond. There is a darkness that comes over me sometimes that I cannot control. This darkness has been diagnosed