Kieran nodded. “They will hold him to accounts, all right, but he’s a slippery character. He may yet talk his way out of it. I hope he does, for I would dearly like to encounter him again. A pity about that special blade of yours.”
“It was broken, anyway,” said Sorak. “It’s no great loss.” But even as he spoke, he wondered. It had returned to him once before; it could yet return to him again. Only time would tell.
“We had best see to the wounded,” he said, then suddenly, he staggered against Kieran as everything started to spin. He felt the mercenary catch him.
“Sorak! Are you wounded?”
Kieran’s voice sounded as if it were coming from the bottom of a well. The sounds around him receded and Sorak’s vision blurred; he gasped for breath.
Then, slowly, everything came back into focus… but he was elsewhere. And this time, it was not only his body that seemed to have been transported. It was his mind, as well.
He stood in a dark room, illuminated only by one thick candle standing on a wooden table. There was someone seated at that table, a robed figure cloaked in darkness. And he heard a low, raspy voice say, “He is coming. I can feel it.”
The robed figure leaned forward into the light and Sorak tensed inwardly as he saw the shaved skull of a templar. It was an old woman, and on her head she wore a chaplet of beaten silver bearing the crest of Nibenay. She sat in a peculiar posture, with one arm hanging limply at her side, favoring her shoulder as if it were injured.
“It will not be long now,” she said, looking up at him, “but he will surely come. And it will be up to us to stop him.”
The feeling was surreal. It was as if the templar were looking straight at him and speaking to him directly. At the same time, he felt not himself at all. It was as if his body had somehow become alien to him. It felt large, grotesque and… but then the templar’s next words mesmerized him.
“Valsavis is dead. The Nomad has fulfilled his mission. Somehow, he must have managed to make contact with the Sage. Now, he will be truly dangerous.” The templar smiled wanly. “You haven’t the faintest idea what I’m talking about, do you?”
Sorak felt his head shake slowly.
“No matter. You do not need to understand. Your needs are simple. That must be reassuring. In a way, I envy you your simplicity. You eat, drink, sleep, defecate, and kill. But then, that is what you were bred for. The subtleties of life escape you, and yet it concerns you not. How refreshing, in a primitive way. Does my conversation bore you?”
Another head shake.
“No? Well, I rather doubt you would admit it if it did. Perhaps it truly does interest you in some way. I do not imagine anyone has ever bothered to converse with you before. What would be the point? You could not answer, anyway. Doubtless, the only words anyone ever spoke to you were commands… or pleas for mercy. And those last fell on deaf ears, of course. No one ever taught you mercy. I doubt you even understand the concept.
Still, I’ve come to find our one-sided conversations comforting. Do you know why?”
Brief head shake.
“Because a templar has no one in whom she can confide. Oh, when she’s young, she can share confidences with her senior sisters, but as she grows older, she learns about such things as palace intrigue and political maneuvering and soon realizes she can profit best by keeping her own council. Her life becomes a maze of ritual and duty, and she becomes isolated, commanding of respect and fear and yet, a lonely woman. Do you know what it means to feel lonely?”
This time, a nod.
“Ah. Of course. I thought you would. Then perhaps you can understand. Have you ever mated? No? Not even once? Well, who knows, that may be for the best. That means you cannot have unreasonable expectations. Do you know how old I am?”
Head shake.
“I am almost two hundred years old. That surprises you. I look old, but not that old, eh? Well, I am. Magic can extend one’s life, if one knows how to use it.” The templar sighed. “My husband’s magic. A power so great it makes me tremble, even after all these years. I was brought to him when I was just fifteen, but I had already learned something of love. Oh, I was a virgin, else I would not have been acceptable, but I was not entirely innocent, you see. There was a boy, a lovely boy of seventeen… I can still see his face as clearly as if he were standing right here in front of me. I can still recall our cautious rumblings, clumsy and yet tender. We swore we would always love each other, but we were afraid to go much further than sweet kisses and intimate caresses. And then I was chosen for the harem of the Shadow King and I never saw him again.
“No, not true,” the templar continued, after a brief pause. “I saw him once, many years later. I chanced across him in the street. He was afraid even to look me. I imagine he found himself a fat little wife and sired fat little sons, and lived his life… and died. This is the first time I have even spoken of him in over a hundred and fifty years, and yet, even though his bones now molder in a grave, he has never left my thoughts. I think back to those bygone days of girlhood and wish just once, we could have had the courage to…”
The templar fell into a long, contemplative silence. Finally, she looked up, and the wistful look was gone, replaced by the cold, regal demeanor of a servant of the Shadow King.
“Memories. They serve no useful purpose. And we are here to
