"Battling life alone was always Joram"s way," Saryon said, and his voice was filled with affectionate sorrow and understanding. "His blood is that of Emperors. He comes from a long line of rulers who held the fate of nations in their hands. To ask for help would be a sign of weakness. You recall the effort it took him to ask me to help him create the Darksword. He was-"
Saryon paused. I had been wondering when this would occur to him.
"Joram could not not have forged a Darksword," he said excitedly. "Not without a catalyst. I drew Life from the world, gave Life to the Darksword, which in turn used that Life to drain Life from those who possessed it." have forged a Darksword," he said excitedly. "Not without a catalyst. I drew Life from the world, gave Life to the Darksword, which in turn used that Life to drain Life from those who possessed it."
"He didn"t need you to forge the sword itself, Father. He only needed you to enhance its abilities."
"But without a catalyst to do that, the sword is no more dangerous than any other sword. Why would the Technomancers still want it?"
"Consider the number of catalysts among our people, Father. Catalysts living in poverty in the relocation camps, who would be more than willing to exchange their gifts for the promise of wealth and power from the Technomancers. Though the corrupt Bishop Vanya is now dead, his legacy lives on among some of his followers."
"Yes, I can see how that could be true," said Saryon sadly. "How did Joram manage to escape the watchful eye of the Duuk-tsarith Duuk-tsarith long enough to forge the sword?" long enough to forge the sword?"
Mosiah shrugged and spread his hands. "Who knows? Such a feat would be relatively simple, especially if he had an amulet made of darkstone. Or, for all we know, he forged this sword years ago, before we began to keep watch. None of that matters now, however. We attempted to keep word of this new Darksword secret, but the Technomancers found out. Their interest has been rekindled."
"Are Joram and his family in danger?" Saryon asked anxiously.
"Not for the moment, mainly because of the efforts of the Duuk-tsarith. Duuk-tsarith. Ironic, isn"t it, Father. Those who once sought Joram"s death now risk death themselves to guard his life." Ironic, isn"t it, Father. Those who once sought Joram"s death now risk death themselves to guard his life."
"You?" Saryon asked. "You"re risking death?"
"Yes," Mosiah replied, very calmly. He gestured around the darkened room. "Thus the reason for these precautions. The T"kon-Duuk T"kon-Duuk are eager to get their hands on me. I know too many of their secrets, you see, Father. I am a great danger to them. I have come to warn you of them, of the techniques they will try to use to persuade you to take them with you to Joram-" are eager to get their hands on me. I know too many of their secrets, you see, Father. I am a great danger to them. I have come to warn you of them, of the techniques they will try to use to persuade you to take them with you to Joram-"
Saryon raised a hand to halt the flow of words. Mosiah ceased speaking instantly, with a quiet respect for the elderly catalyst which did much to increase his favor with me. I could never trust him completely, not while he wore the black robes of the Enforcers. The Duuk-tsarith Duuk-tsarith never worked for just one end. They worked for several and sought to gain the middle into the bargain. never worked for just one end. They worked for several and sought to gain the middle into the bargain.
"I will not go," Saryon said firmly. "Have no fear of that. I would be of no use. I don"t know what you or they or anyone else thinks I could do."
"Joram respects and trusts you, Father. Your influence with him is-" Mosiah broke off.
He was staring at me. They were both staring at me. I had made a noise. It must, I realize, have sounded very strange-a guttural sort of croak in my throat. I made a signal to my master.
"Reuven says that there is something out there," Saryon said.
The words had not yet left Saryon"s lips before Mosiah was standing next to me. This sudden movement of his was at least as startling as the apparition I thought I had seen outside the window. One moment he was across the room from me, sitting in the darkened hallway, and the next instant he was by my side, peering out the window. In his fluid, silent motion, he was one with the shadows. Imagine my astonishment when, glancing back at my master to be certain he was all right, I caught a glimpse of Mosiah, seated in his chair!
I realized, then, that the Enforcer next to me was insubstantial. Mosiah"s shadow, so to speak, had been sent on an errand by its master.
"What did you see? Tell me! Immediately!" he demanded. The words blazed in my mind.
I signaled with my hands. Saryon translated.
"Reuven says he thinks he saw a person dressed all in silver-"
Mosiah-the Mosiah seated in the chair-was on his feet. His shadow had returned to its body.
"They are here," he said. "The D"karn-darah. D"karn-darah. Blood-doom knights. Either they followed me or they have come for their own reasons. I fear it is the latter. You are not safe here, either of you. You must come with me. Now!" Blood-doom knights. Either they followed me or they have come for their own reasons. I fear it is the latter. You are not safe here, either of you. You must come with me. Now!"
"We"re not dressed!" Saryon protested.
It must be a very real and present danger which sends an elderly man dashing out into the cold winter night clad only in his nightshirt and bedslippers.
"You don"t need to be," Mosiah replied. "Your bodies aren"t going anywhere, except to bed. Follow my instructions exactly. Father, remain where you are. Reuven, go upstairs to your room and climb into your bed."
I was not happy at the thought of leaving my master, though what I could have done against the power of the Duuk-tsarith Duuk-tsarith was open to question. Saryon indicated with a nod that we were to obey Mosiah and that is what I did. I urged Mosiah to care for my master and left to go upstairs to my small room. was open to question. Saryon indicated with a nod that we were to obey Mosiah and that is what I did. I urged Mosiah to care for my master and left to go upstairs to my small room.
Saryon always waited until he heard me in the bedroom, which was on the level above his, before turning out the downstairs light. Tonight was the exception since his light was already off. As I have said, it was usually my practice to spend some time writing, but-acting on Mosiah"s orders-I abandoned this custom and retired immediately to my bed. I turned out my light and the house was dark.
Lying alone in the darkness, I began to be afraid. It is easy to frighten oneself at this time of night. I recalled childhood terrors of monsters lurking in the closet. The fear I experienced could not be banished by a flashlight, however. I wondered why I was experiencing this feeling of dread and I realized it was because I felt Mosiah"s fear.
Whatever is out there in the night must be terrible, I thought, to have frightened someone as powerful as the Duuk-tsarith. Duuk-tsarith.
I lay in my bed, ears stretched to catch every sound. The night had its usual noises, I suppose, but they were all alarming to me, who had never before paid them much heed. The bark of a dog, the whine and snarl of fighting cats, a lone automobile traveling up the street. I invested these with such sinister meanings that when Mosiah"s words again lit up my mind, I was so startled that my shudder shook the bed frame. lay in my bed, ears stretched to catch every sound. The night had its usual noises, I suppose, but they were all alarming to me, who had never before paid them much heed. The bark of a dog, the whine and snarl of fighting cats, a lone automobile traveling up the street. I invested these with such sinister meanings that when Mosiah"s words again lit up my mind, I was so startled that my shudder shook the bed frame.
"Come to me," said Mosiah. "Not your body. Leave that behind. Let your soul rise from its sh.e.l.l and walk with me."
I had no idea what the man was talking about.
I think I would have laughed-in fact, I am afraid that I did giggle, perhaps from nervous tension-except that I felt his dire urgency. Bewildered, I lay in my bed, wondering what I was supposed to do, wondering if my master knew what to do. Mosiah-or perhaps I should say the "shadow" of Mosiah-took form in the darkness, standing at the foot of the bed.
He held out his hand to me. "It is quite simple," he said. "You "You are coming with me. Your body is staying behind. My body is downstairs right now. Yet here I stand before you. Picture yourself rising up out of bed and walking with me. You are a writer. You must have traveled like this in your imagination many times. When I read your description of Merilon, I could see it again in my mind, it was so vivid. You are a professional day-dreamer, one might say. Simply concentrate a little bit more." are coming with me. Your body is staying behind. My body is downstairs right now. Yet here I stand before you. Picture yourself rising up out of bed and walking with me. You are a writer. You must have traveled like this in your imagination many times. When I read your description of Merilon, I could see it again in my mind, it was so vivid. You are a professional day-dreamer, one might say. Simply concentrate a little bit more."
And when I did not immediately move, Mosiah"s tone sharpened. "Saryon will not leave without you. You are putting him in danger."
He knew that would rouse me. It would have roused me from my grave. I closed my eyes and imagined myself rising up from my bed and joining Mosiah. At first, nothing happened. I was in such a flutter of excitement and fear that it was difficult to concentrate.
"Relax," Mosiah said softly, hypnotically. "Relax and slough off the heaviness of the body that weighs you down."
His words no longer burned in my mind, but seemed to flow through it like running water. I found myself relaxing, letting the water run over me. My body did, in fact, feel very heavy, so heavy that I knew I could not lift it. And yet, there was the imperative that I bad to leave! that I bad to leave!
I stood up and I walked over to join Mosiah. When I looked back, I was not surprised to see the heavy body still lying in the bed, slumbering soundly, to all appearances.
My fears were forgotten in my wonder and awe.
I started to move toward the door, thinking to go through it and down the stairs to my master"s bedroom, as I was accustomed, but Mosiah stopped me.
"You are no longer constrained by physical barriers, Reuven. A thought will take you to Saryon."
And he spoke truly. The moment I thought about being with my master, I was there beside him. At the sight of me, Saryon smiled and nodded and then, hesitantly, as if having to relearn skills long forgotten, his soul left his body.
I was not surprised to see his spirit suffused with a soft radiant white glow; a distinct contrast to Mosiah, whose spirit seemed cloaked with the same black robes his body wore.
My master was pained by this, as I could tell. And so could Mosiah.
"Once-you remember, Father-my soul was bright and crystal clear as Reuven"s. The dark and terrible things I have seen since have left their mark upon me. But we must hurry. They will wait only until they think you are asleep. Don"t be afraid, I will not let them harm either of you."
Mosiah"s soul slid back into its body. He spoke a word, reached out with his hand as if to some invisible door, pushed on nothing, and walked inside.
"Hurry!" he commanded. "Follow me."
The mind thinks of the strangest things at the most inappropriate times. I remembered, suddenly, a television cartoon I had seen as a child, in which the character-perhaps a rabbit, I"m not certain-is being chased through the forest by a hunter with a gun. The rabbit is cornered, apparently, until he opens a hole in the cartoon, crawls inside, and pulls the hole in after him, leaving the hunter extremely befuddled.
Mosiah had done the very same thing. He had opened a hole in our bedroom and was urging us to crawl inside!
Saryon, having lived for many, many years in the magical world of Thimhallan, was much more accustomed to such arcane manifestations than I was. He immediately entered the hole, then beckoned to me to follow. I started to cross the room, remembered that I didn"t have to rely on my feet, and wished myself at my master"s side.
I was in the hole. The hole closed behind me and formed a bubble around us, holding us suspended in the air, floating somewhere near the ceiling of Saryon"s bedroom.
"A Corridor?" Saryon asked, amazed. "Here on Earth?"
I must mention, by the way, that we did not speak, but communicated mind to mind. And it occurred to me that, in this spirit realm, I was no longer mute. I could talk and be heard. The knowledge filled me with such trembling joy and terrible confusion that I was immediately rendered more silent than I had ever been in the physical realm.
"Not as you mean it, Father. Not a Corridor in time and s.p.a.ce such as we had on Thimhallan," Mosiah replied. "That skill has been lost to us, and we have not regained it. But we do have the ability to slip inside one of time"s folds."
I must try to explain the sensation of being hidden in a "fold" of time, as Mosiah called it. The only way I can put this is to say that it was very much like hiding behind the folds of a heavy curtain. And, in fact, I began to feel an almost smothering constraint upon me, which is caused by, so I learned later, the knowledge that time was pa.s.sing for my body and I-the spirit- was standing still.
The sensation is not as bad, I understand, for those who enter the fold with both mind and body, for one has only to step out again to be caught up in time"s flow. But, despite the fact that my body was slumbering, I began to feel a panic inside me akin to that felt by someone fearing he may miss the last train home. The train-i.e., my body-was moving on ahead, and I was running frantically to catch up. I think I would have attempted to escape, then and there, but I would not leave Saryon.
I found out later that he felt the same, but that he would not leave because of me. We laughed over that, but our laughter was hollow.
"Shh, hush! Look!" Mosiah cautioned.
He did not silence us so that we would not be heard-for that was not possible, not even for the D"karn-darah. D"karn-darah. He silenced us that we might hear them. What we heard and what we saw chilled us. He silenced us that we might hear them. What we heard and what we saw chilled us.
Though we could move through physical barriers, we could not see through them. Trapped inside time"s fold, we could not move to another part of the house or see what was transpiring in any other part of the house except Saryon"s bedroom. My hearing is acute, however, and the nervous tension I was under accentuated it. I heard a slight clicking sound, which was our front-door lock giving way. The creak of the door"s hinges (which Saryon had been asking me to oil) meant that the front door was being stealthily opened. At the same time I heard the snick of the lock of the back door, heard the door itself sc.r.a.pe across the mud rug which we had placed at the entrance.
Whoever had been out there had entered the house by the front and by the back. But try as I might, I could not hear them moving at all through the front part of the house. One of them was in the bedroom before I was fully aware of his coming.
He was clad all in paper-thin silver robes that clung to his body and crackled faintly as he moved, occasionally emitting tiny blue sparks, like the fur of a cat in the darkness. His face was plastered with the same paper-thin silver, so that only the outline of features-a nose and mouth-were visible. Silver fabric covered his hands and feet like a second skin.
He stood in the bedroom and Mosiah, with a whispered thought, called our attention to a strange phenomenon. The machines in the bedroom knew the D"karn-darah D"karn-darah was there. The machines responded to his coming. was there. The machines responded to his coming.
The machines" response was not overt or dramatic. I would not have noticed it, except for Mosiah"s mention. The bedroom"s overhead light, which had, of course, been turned off, flickered on. A faint hum of music came from the compact-disc player. The reading lamp gave a feeble gleam.
The D"karn-darah D"karn-darah ignored all this and went immediately to Saryon"s body, which continued to sleep soundly. He put out a silver-covered hand and shook the catalyst by the shoulder. ignored all this and went immediately to Saryon"s body, which continued to sleep soundly. He put out a silver-covered hand and shook the catalyst by the shoulder.
"Saryon!" he said loudly.
Beside me, I could feel Saryon"s spirit shiver. I was thankful, then, for Mosiah"s arrival and his timely warning. If my master had been wakened in the night and seen such a horrific sight bending over him, he might never have recovered from the shock.
At that moment I heard a female voice say "Reuven!" loudly. I felt a slight brushing sensation across my shoulder. Then I knew that the second person, the one who had entered by the back door, had gone to my room. She was standing over my body.
The D"karn-darah D"karn-darah shook Saryon again, more forcibly, turning the sleeping body over in the bed. "Saryon!" the man repeated, and his voice was harsh. shook Saryon again, more forcibly, turning the sleeping body over in the bed. "Saryon!" the man repeated, and his voice was harsh.
I trembled, for I was afraid he would do Saryon some harm. Mosiah again rea.s.sured both of us.
"They will not hurt you," he repeated. "They do not dare. They know you may be of use to them."
The one who had been in my room now appeared in Saryon"s bedchamber.
"Same thing?" she asked.
"Yes," answered the D"karn-darah D"karn-darah who stood beside my master. "Their souls have fled. They were alerted to our coming." who stood beside my master. "Their souls have fled. They were alerted to our coming."
"Duuk-tsarith."
"Of course. Undoubtedly the one named Mosiah, that Enforcer who was once the catalyst"s friend."
"You were right, then. You said we would find him here."
"He has been here. He is probably still here, hiding in one of their cursed time folds, no doubt. And the other two are probably with him right now. Very possibly"-the man"s silver faceless face turned and gazed around the bedroom-"they are listening to us at this moment."
"Then it is simple. Torture the body. Pain will cause their spirits to return. They will be only too glad, after a while, to tell us where to find the Enforcer."
The female D"karn-darah raised D"karn-darah raised her hand, and where before had been five fingers were now five long steel needles. Electricity began to arc from one to another. She reached the hand with the horribly crackling needles toward Saryon"s defenseless form. her hand, and where before had been five fingers were now five long steel needles. Electricity began to arc from one to another. She reached the hand with the horribly crackling needles toward Saryon"s defenseless form.
Her partner halted her, his own hand closing around her wrist.
"The Khandic Sages will be here tomorrow, working their own methods of persuasion. They would know that we had been here and they would not be pleased."
"They know that we are hunting this Enforcer. They want him as much as we do."
"Yes, but they want this catalyst more." The D"karn-darah D"karn-darah sounded irritated. "Very well, we will leave him to them. A pity we could not have arrived a few moments sooner. We would have been able to capture the sounded irritated. "Very well, we will leave him to them. A pity we could not have arrived a few moments sooner. We would have been able to capture the Duuk-tsarith. Duuk-tsarith. As it is, our meeting is only delayed, Enforcer!" He spoke to the air. "And, you, Catalyst." The silver face turned toward the figure in the bed. "I leave this, my . . . business card." As it is, our meeting is only delayed, Enforcer!" He spoke to the air. "And, you, Catalyst." The silver face turned toward the figure in the bed. "I leave this, my . . . business card."
He opened the palm of his gloved hand, reached into his other palm, gave a twist, freeing some object-I could not see what. He tossed that object onto the bed, at the feet of Saryon"s slumbering figure. Then the two of them left the bedroom, left the house by the back door.
At their departure, the machines in the house returned to normal. The lights went off, the CD player ceased to play.
We waited, hidden, for some time, to make certain the D"karn-darah D"karn-darah were gone and that this was no trick to lure us out of hiding. When Mosiah permitted us to return, my spirit drifted back to find my body. I looked down upon myself. were gone and that this was no trick to lure us out of hiding. When Mosiah permitted us to return, my spirit drifted back to find my body. I looked down upon myself.
This was much different than looking into a mirror, for the mirror shows us what we see every day, what we have grown accustomed to seeing. Before now, I had never seen myself with such clarity. And though I was eager to return to Saryon and had questions to ask of Mosiah, I was so entranced by this ability to see myself as a casual observer might see me that I took a few moments to do just that.
Physical attributes I knew well. The mirror shows us these. Fair hair, worn long, that someone in my childhood once called "corn silk." Brown eyes beneath eyebrows that I did not like. They were thick and dark brown, in stark contrast to my fair hair, and gave me a grave and overly serious aspect. The features of my face tended to be sharp, with prominent cheekbones and a nose that was called aquiline. It would grow beaky as I aged.
Being young, my body was lithe, although certainly not strong. Exercise of the mind suited me far better than running very fast on a machine that took me nowhere. Yet now I looked at those thin hands and spindly arms with disfavor. If Saryon was in danger, how could I defend him?
I found that I did not have the leisure to spend long on this inspection. The nearer my spirit drew to my body, the more it longed to return, and I had the impression that I dove down to my body from a great height. I awoke, shaking, stomach clenching, as one does from a falling dream. And I have wondered, ever since, if perhaps those dreams aren"t really the first tentative journeys our spirits make.
I sat up in my bed, shaking off the feelings of sleep that clung to my body. Hurriedly grabbing my robe, I wrapped it around myself, and switching on the hall light, hastened down the stairs. Light came from Saryon"s bedroom. I found my master, looking as groggy as I felt, staring at the object which the D"karn-darah D"karn-darah had left upon the blanket. had left upon the blanket.
"It will not harm you," Mosiah was saying as I entered. "You may pick it up, if you like."
"I will do so, sir," I signed, and swooped down upon the object, gathering it into my hand before Saryon could touch it.
Mosiah watched me with a slight smile, which was, I think, approving. Saryon just shook his head with fond exasperation.
When I was certain that the object was benign, not likely to explode or burst into flame or-I don"t know what I"d expected exactly-I opened my hand and held it out. Saryon and I peered down on it wonderingly.
"What is it?" he asked, puzzled.