Forging the Darksword Read Online Free PDF Page B

From that moment on, for the next fourteen years, he spent every day with her in study and in prayer. When Saryon was twenty, he left his mother’s house forever, traveling through the Corridors to the most holy, most sacred place in Thimhallan—the Font.
    The history of the Font is the history of Thimhallan. Many, many centuries before, in a time whose memories were crushed and scattered amid the chaos of the Iron Wars, a persecuted people fled to this world, voluntary exiles from their own. The magical journey had been a terrible one. The great energies needed to perform such a feat drained the last vestige of life from many of their number, who gave up their lives willingly so that their kind might survive and prosper in a land they themselves would never see.
    They came to this place because the magic in this world was strong; so strong it drew them to it—a lodestone leading them safely through time and space. They stayed in this place because the world was empty and alone.
    There were drawbacks. Terrible storms raged over the new, raw land. Its mountains spewed fire, its waters ran savage, its vegetation was thick and untamed. But, as their feet touched the ground, the people felt the magic stirring and beating beneath them, like a living heart. They could feel it, sense it; and they searched for its source enduring countless hardship and untold suffering on the way.
    At last they found it, the source of the magic—a mountain whose fire had burned out, leaving the magic behind to glow like a diamond beneath the bright, unfamiliar sun.
    They called this mountain the Font and here it was, at the Well of Life, that the catalysts established their home and the center of their world. At first there had been only a few catacombs, hurriedly shaped and hewn by those eager to escape the perils of the world outside. During the centuries, these few, crude tunnels had grown into a maze of corridors and halls, of chambers and rooms, of kitchens and courtyards and terraced parks. A university, built on the side of themountain, taught the young
Albanara
the skills they would need to rule their lands and their people. Young
Theldari
came to advance their healing arts, the young
Sif-Hanar
to study the ways of controlling wind and clouds, all assisted by young novitiates among the catalysts. The craft guilds had their centers of learning here as well. In order to provide for the students and their teachers, a small city sprang up at the foot of the mountain.
    At the very top of the mountain was a grand cathedral, the summit of the mountain peak itself forming the vaulting ceiling, the view from the windows so magnificent many wept for the sheer awe and beauty of the sight.
    Few there were on Thimhallan who saw the view from the summit, however. Once, the Font had been open to all, from Emperor to housemagus. Following the Iron Wars, that policy had changed. Now only the catalysts themselves, plus those privileged few who worked for them, were permitted within its holy walls, and only the highest officials of the Church allowed to enter the sacred chamber of the Well. There was a city within the mountain as well as without, the catalysts having everything they needed to live and continue their work within the Font. Many novitiates walked through its doors as young men and women and, if they left at all, it was only in whatever form the dead take as they journey Beyond.
    Saryon was one of these novitiates, and he might have lived his life out peacefully here as had countless others before him.
    But Saryon was different. In fact, he came to think of himself as cursed ….
    The
Theldara
, one of those few outsiders chosen to live in the Font, was working outdoors in his herb garden when a venerable old raven hopped gravely down the pathway between the neat rows of young seedlings and, with a croak, informed his master that the patient had arrived. With a word of gracious thanks to the bird—who, being so old that he was losing the