Darksword - 03 - Triumph of the Darksword by Tracy Hickman

Author:Tracy Hickman
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: Fantasy
ISBN: 9780553274066
Publisher: Bantam Books
Published: 1997-03-31T10:00:00+00:00

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 and so was the house, being, like the garden, built on a magnificent scale. Lord Samuels and Lady Rosamund had finally attained their dream. They were, at last, nobility. The cost had been nothing more than they had been prepared to spend—their daughter. Too late they realized they had exchanged a pearl of great price for a mere bauble.

Shortly after his daughter’s disappearance, Lord Samuels had taken to haunting the deserted sands of the Borderland searching for her. Every day, following his work at the Guild, he traveled through the Corridor to that desolate, barren place, roaming up and down the beach crying out her name until it became too dark to see. Then, exhausted and despairing, he would return to his home.

His sleep was restless, sometimes he woke up and insisted on returning to the Border in the middle of the night, saying he had heard Gwen calling to him. He ate little or nothing. His health began to suffer. The Theldara—the same blunt woman who had tended Father Saryon—told Lady Rosamund that her husband was in a dangerous state of body disharmony that could cause his death.

At this juncture Lady Rosamund had received a visit from Emperor Xavier. The Emperor was all kindness and understanding.

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