Triumph of the Darksword - Margaret Weis [82]
“My men will not murder innocent—”
“Oh, but they already have, Major Boris,” the Sorcerer interrupted with a shrug. “Your men are terrified of the people of this world. What is that quaint saying of Joram’s? ‘What they do not understand, they fear What they fear, they destroy.’ A few more battles like the one they’ve been through today and they will be more than willing to exterminate these wizards. Now, I asked you a question about reinforcements. How long?”
Major Boris ran his tongue over his lip. He had to swallow several times before he could speak. “Seventy-two hours, at least.”
The Sorcerer shook his head thoughtfully. “Seventy-two hours! That won’t do, I’m afraid. That’s too long. The magi will attack us before that. Joram will push them to it.
“Not even your magic can make it any quicker, Menju!” James Boris said with a bitter smile. “We have to get the message through and we’re having trouble with the communications link-up. The starbase is on alert, but the men will have to draw supplies and board the ship. Then there’s the jump. Turn me and all my men into chickens, if you want,” he added, seeing the magician’s tan, handsome face flush in anger. “It won’t help speed matters any.”
The Sorcerer stared intently at James Boris, but Major Boris stared just as grimly back. There are limits you can push a man—even a shattered man. The magician had apparently reached them. “We need to stall for time then,” Menju said smoothly, turning away from the sweating, tight-lipped Major. “And, above all, we need that sword!”
James Boris, sighing, put his elbows on the table and rested his aching head in his hands.
Frowning in thought, the Sorcerer stared down, unseeing, at the teapot that was, under the man’s scrutiny, suddenly very quiet and subdued. No steam rose from its spout, the gurgling noises inside it had ceased.
The magician began to smile. “I have a plan,” he murmured. “Peace … we came here in peace … just as you said, Major Boris.” Reaching down, Menju lifted the green teapot with the bright orange lid in his hands. “Now, all we need is someone to carry our message to the one man—a pious holy man—who will undoubtedly—if we play our cards right—be most eager to help us.”
2
Of Great Price
It was no longer spring in Merilon. Winter had come to the domed city, as it had come to the lands outside the city’s magical cover. It was not that winter had been decreed to occur that day, or that the Sif-Hanar were derelict in their duties. Winter had come to Merilon because there were too few Sif-Hanar left to alter the season. Those who had survived the battle at the Field of Contest were so weak that they barely had breath enough to mist the icy air, let alone attempt to conjure the pink and fluffy clouds of spring.
It was snowing inside the city for the first time that even the oldest resident could remember. It had started out as rain; the heat from thousands of living bodies combined with the heat and moisture given off by the trees and plants within the Grove and gardens of Merilon had been enough to overburden the air trapped within the city. Without the Sif-Hanar to govern it, the humidity level within the dome rose until the air itself began to weep—crying for the dead, or so the story went. With the coming of night, the rain changed to snow and now the city lay buried beneath a blanket of white—
“—like a corpse,” said Lord Samuels heavily, staring out a window.
The frozen, snow-shrouded garden that he contemplated sorrowfully was not the same garden where his Gwendolyn had loved to walk. It was not the garden where her love for Joram had grown and blossomed. It was not the same garden where Saryon, nursing his dark secret, had sought to protect the blossom by uprooting the plant. No, this garden was far grander, far lusher than the one that had nurtured so many dreams in its dark soil.
The garden was grander