Seven Swords

Chapter 63

'My prepossessing appearance seems intact at least,' Felabba announced. 'Let us see if my powers and insight have held up as well.'

Irissa moved beside the cat. 'This shadow sprang from

a moment of my thoughtless vanity, and I re-created it from the silver of my eyes. I even sent it thither. I should bear the risk of releasing it.' 'If Those Without thought you suitable for the task,' the

cat replied, 'they would not have sacrificed our sublime separate selves. As we could not remain cut in twain, neither can you. Besides, the impulse of the shadow to join with its caster now that Eeryon has left this world is too strong for you to banish. Stand back and let me get on with it.' Kendric pulled Irissa away from the water. The cat is

right for once. You have risked too much of late, as have we all.' Irissa tightly clasped her hands. 'Yet I feel so responsible

for its well-being. I resurrected it-'

'Hush!' the cat hissed over its shoulder. 'I call a wail

wraith.'

'A wailwraith ... Thane crept nearer the still pond. I've never seen a wailwraith, though I've heard you and

Father talk of such things." 'No one has ever seen a wailwraith,' Irissa said. 'We've

heard its inconsolable call through many worlds, but perhaps they were only echoes of our own uncertainties.' No one has seen a wailwraith because a wailwraith doesn't exist,' Kendric put in more gruffly. 'It's a tale.

to scare children from the dangerous rims of ponds

and pools. If the cat manages to raise one, I'd ask its pedigree." 'How sweet these big blunt words fall on my little pointed ears, the cat commented. 'A skeptic to the last. Now be still, all of you!

The cat lifted one paw and tapped gently on the water's

still surface.

A sound like the tinkling of distant bells pealed through the clearing. From the tiny dimple of the cat's touch, the water rippled outward in swelling silver rings. Concentric circles scribed the pond to the edges of its rectangular shape.

Then the water hardened into black ice; circles froze. where they were. The cat patted the surface again. This time the water rang with a dull thud, like a door that. is knocked upon.

Each of the thin silver circlets shattered. Cracks ran from ring to ring, drawing a disintegrating web over the pond. The web itself lifted and tented into a peak. Silver glinted among the blackened veins of some ancient cob web. Other peaks lifted alongside the first. Baleful eyes of weary wariness beyond belief peered through the aged veiling. Long strands of waterweed tangled in its broken skeins.

'It is huge, Thane whispered. *Something dwells within, Javelle added, and my ser pent circlet tightens until it's likely to choke off circulation

in my wrist." Irissa put a hand to her own circlet. Her fingertips traced a pattern of tiny fissures fragmenting the im

pervious Iridesium. In moments the magical metal would.

shatter! Hurry, Felabba!" she urged.

'Now you see it,' the cat muttered. 'A great, damp, uncomely creature and you haven't heard it sing close up yet. Aid me, seeress. Call your shadow."

Kendric's hand clasped Irissa's shoulder as she gathered her powers to summon this unwanted but essential part of herself. The task was easier than she had thought. She merely let Eeryon cross her mind, merely let regret rise until it left a sliver of an opening in her mind, heart, and magic.

A silver snowspout was spinning free of the water, sifting up through the web. Issiri took shape there, spark ling, dancing, eager to be a free spirit again.

'You call me, her joyous, childish voice wafted over the web-crusted water. I will have self again and bright son, and Quickstones from the man who gives them

'You will have all that, the cat said, 'but only in the world Without. Not here. Here is for humankind... and creaturekind . . . and a few of us that are neither. You. are shadowkind and belong to Without. Accept the wail wraith. It will carry you swift and sure to the dark rivers below into the darker seas beneath all the worlds. Those Without will end your sorrows on their unreachable

shores. 'Not Without! Here. And now. I weary of coming and going at all others' beck and call. I. . . know this world.

I like it. I 'You will like the illusions of Without better, dream eater. Embrace the wailwraith. It has known the same sorrows as yourself.'

The shining figure upright on the water turned to regard

the huge shrouded face beside it. 'No!' it pled. 'No...!' Irissa echoed it, moving to water's edge to intervene.

'Now!' the cat commanded.

And the wailwraith, with its sightless eyes and toothless

mouth and great skeletal limbs like tree roots, submerged,

drawing up the skirts of its tangled net, trapping a twist

ing, sinuous silver fish in its watery toils. Issiri vanished with a last, heart-stopping wail. The cry was joined - and then surmounted by a hideous scream

of loss wrung from the wailwraith's vanishing form. Their cries lengthened and interwove into a single

plaint, then grew thin and faint and faded away. Irissa's hand dropped from the circlet, which felt whole again. She felt whole again, but she also sensed and emptiness despite the fullness in her heart. The salvation of all that was dear to her had come at the extinguishing of this last, unlawful segment.

'It had to be.' Kendric kept his hands on her shoulders as though to lend her his strength. "Those Without recog nized a duty to provide for such a half-life as hers. She will see Eeryon again. Irissa's quick glance to his eyes was both stricken and incredulous. I know it, Irissa. Neither of them will suffer, becaus neither of them wronged their own natures, however ill-begotten by Geronfrey."

'I wouldn't want to be in Geronfrey's gauntlets now,' Thane put in. "Those Without seem merciless to those who betray Without and within."

'I hope Eeryon is happy in Without without Geronfrey,' Javelle said to no one in particular. The cat came by and rubbed genially against her leg.

Its touch was fleeting. Felabba moved with stately grace. once more to the party's head, where she sat and began to clean the wet paw that had begun the summoning by wetting it further. "The shadow boy and his mother will have a happy

reunion,' the cat declared. 'No doubt they will share

their world with that unprepossessing hound or its spirit.' "Finorian!' Irissa realized tardily. 'Her spirit has been. called to Without, too."

'Imagine... Kendric began. Irissa smiled at him. His flesh had regained its healthy color, although his extended life span was apparently not retroactive gray would streak his dark hair for decades and decades to come. He smiled like a callow youth, however, while he added the last unlikely image to their sketchy knowledge of Without.

'Imagine having Finorian for a ... grandmother!" he

concluded. ""Poor Eeryon" indeed.'

'Perhaps not. Finorian taught me a thing or two. We

might see Eeryon again yet,' Irissa suggested.

Kendric's arm clasped her shoulders and turned Irissa

firmly to face the wavering world gates. 'First we see

more of ourselves in our natural places. How do we go

back and to where?'

"These gates lead to many worlds, Thane said. 'And

they've been left ajar. We can go anywhere we like

-

within reason, and more ... I think we can come here

again and take different paths.'