Seven Swords

Chapter 25

'Now? No...

'When were you certain?'

Her eyes finally met his with an expression that was desperate, sad, and yet defiantly rueful. 'Yesterday,' she said.

Kendric regarded the darkly glittering figure she had woven into the tapestry. The background was barely etched, but the figure was worked with startling detail.

'Life-size,' he noted. 'Even I was not so honored in your hangings.'

'You would have overgrown the space,' Irissa returned with a hint of her usual humour. Then her expression dulled again. 'And it must be exactly life-size.' 'Why? Why now, Irissa, why resurrect that which has been dead for nearly two decades? That which never really lived? It can't serve you well. It can't serve us well-'

'It will serve, Irissa insisted. Her hands fisted into the tapestry, puckering the cloth and making the jewels sprinkled over the woven figure sparkle.

Kendric studied the gemstones, recognizing colors leeched from the Iridesium circlet at Irissa's temples. No wonder she looked so drained! None of her magic had been used to weave the tales the other tapestries told. This ...new experiment was fashioned of all magic.

"Why?" he demanded again.

I was not the only one missing this morning.'

'Who else?

Kendric, I would give my eyes to not tell you

He caught her arms in an embracing grip. Keep your eyes and just give me answers, Irissa. The worst, tell me."

Her face shattered again, though some iron semblance of control still presided over its disintegration. Kendric prepared himself to learn what he would probably give his ears not to hear.

"They're gone, Kendric! Gone.'

'Who?'

For answer she led him to the wall, to one tapestry - the hanging that showed an empty tower with eight windows each overlooking a different vista. I'd given him a task,' Irissa began, the words tumbling forth now that she'd unstopped them. "A nigh-impossible task to find a gate from Rengarth.'

Thane? Kendric was beginning to sense the height. depth, and width of the tragedy.

Thane. He was so... talented, so instinctive. I knew he could do it-'

"Was? Irissa, you speak as if he were dead-!"

Her head shook mournfully, and there was a flash of madness in her eyes. 'Not dead. Only ... gone.' "Then get him back!'

'I... will, only you must let me."

"Thane, gone... Kendric absorbed the news without question. Irissa had never lied to him - or anyone else But he still didn't understand her response to that. devastation.

'Why are you showing me this empty tapestry, this old room where we once banished Geronfrey and saw her - that thing you weave into life again on your loom? We saw her die once, and yet again. Why do you evoke her now? You saw Geronfrey strike her dead to steal the breath of death from her body - that unborn babe he coveted so much he'd take it dead as well as alive.'

I must raise up old memories! There is a way for me to follow, to find my own gate. But I must have help. Her help.'

Kendric frowned. 'If Thane found a gate and took it, why are you so afraid that he can't return? He'll come back, Irissa! Why you think you must have a gate from Rengarth, I don't know, but if Thane is mage enough to find one, he's mage enough to return.' Hope lit her eyes to quicksilver. 'You may be right. I perhaps have too little faith in him.' Then her expression darkened again. 'But, Kendric-'

"What?'

'Javelle doesn't have the skill to return, and if she and Thane are separated, if they separated in the gate, as you and I did once-' 'Javelle?'

The news stunned him. 'Javelle is gone as well?'

Irissa only nodded.

'You did say. . . "they." Both gone?'

With the worst known, Irissa straightened a little. She looked into Kendric's eyes and found not the anger she dreaded but a bewildered despair she found even harder to confront.

For once words wouldn't cross the threshold of her tongue. She lifted his hand he was so shocked that it hung heavy in her grasp - and put it to the tapestry, to the two tiny white figures against the dark background of a window.

He jerked slightly as his flesh touched the fabric, then his forefinger found the familiar forms. Lightning bolts of metallic thread danced in the stormy woven sky as Kendric's tracing fingers shook the tapestry.

'I can see them.' His words were reluctant. 'Woven in. So... small. Not even as babes were they this ... perfectly tiny. Irissa, what magical curse is this that sews our children into the dead skin of our earlier lives?

'Curse, I hope not. Magic it is, yos. Thane's, I think, mostly. And then some other... element.'

"Geronfrey?"

Irissa couldn't bear the baffled fury in Kendric's face. 'No, I think not. I hope not.' Her finger rested on a pinpoint of pale thread, one single stitch that had not been there before. 'See here? I believe Felabba went through, too. Perhaps she helped open the gate, perhaps she left this... message in the tapestry.'

'I think... I believe... I hope,' he repeated. "Why don't you know, seeress? Your connivance led Thane to manufacture a gate and drag Javelle through with him. Am I supposed to rest easy because you "think" Felabba is along?

Worse and worse. That... callow meddler who doesn't even claim to be Felabba's shadow could be less use than its carping predecessor! Irissa, what have you done? Why have you done it? Can you undo it?'

'Yes! Yes, that's why I was working on the new weaving. There is a partial gate from Rengarth - in the Spectral City. Our friends there told me as much, but one can only pass through it if one is part spirit, so-'

Kendric shook his head. It buzzed as if a thousand flies were eating his brain from the inside out. Even though his eyes discerned the unmistakable forms of Thane and Javelle in the tapestry, his heart refused to believe they had been reduced to a few tiny stitches in a vast plain of threads.

Irissa blamed herself, and he suspected she was right to do so, but he didn't want to add to the chorus of accusation, not when his own emotions were so unsteady.

'Perhaps you are right,' he told her carefully, listening to his voice rasp in his ears as if spoken through iron filings. Perhaps I am better off not knowing the worst.

'We are all better off not knowing the worst,' another voice put in.

They turned to see Scyvilla hovering on the threshold, a smoky casting crystal in his grasp.

'But it is our fate to know,' the ludborg continued in a heavy tone. He crossed the threshold in a smooth rolling motion. 'And my fate to tell. I am afraid, friends, I come bearing dire news.'

Scyvilla paused and his empty hood twitched solemnly from one to the other until the silence grew unbearable.

Irissa began laughing. She laughed until hands came and caught her ... and voices jousted around her... and the figures in the tapestry came to life and laughed with her until they cried . . . and coldstone tears of every color piled so high in the room she could no longer see any thing beyond the gorgeous glitter of her tears.

The world Without was emptier than any place Javelle had ever imagined could be.

She crouched on solid something as if having landed there from a small leap downward, her fingertips lightly fanned on a surface that was hard, dark, and cold.

Darkness extended in all directions. Empty darkness.

"Thane?' she called. There was no answer, not even an echo.

Javelle stood in slow stages, feeling oddly unbalanced. No landmarks of up and down guided her motions. She wondered briefly if she had gone blind.