Seven Swords

Chapter 58

never seen him do it before. We were unnaturally protected in Rengarth. This is the world Kendric and I left and hidden pockets of power.' - one full of many pitfalls 'We can do nothing?" Javelle worried, laying her head

briefly on her mother's shoulder. The gesture was an old

one, not practiced recently. Irissa brushed back Javelle's

always disreputable locks, found her fingers sliding over

the snake circlet's smooth cool scales.

'We can do everything when it is necessary. Unti - then, it is your father's challenge and he must answer it Besides, despite all Geronfrey's assumed advantages Kendric has one or two you forget.'

'What

'Sometimes giving someone a reason to survive is the

best protection anyone can offer.'

us?' Irissa smiled at Thane. 'I was thinking of the newly reforged sword surely it must be doubly powerful now that it has met itself coming and going. And he has us, in a sense. To protect." 'But we wanted to protect him.' Javelle complained.

The two mulled the paradox Irissa had given them, as paired kittens worry a skein of yarn. She glanced across the field of challenge to the shadowy woods beyond it. Another shadow watched from there, alone and unnoticed save for herself.

For a moment Irissa felt a surge of sympathy for this dark twin to Javelle, a fact unknown to either of them. She almost motioned Eeryon to her side, then considered. what price he would pay for such a public defection if Geronfrey - as usual managed to survive this en counter. Instead, she sighed and watched the battle commence. She couldn't say she approved of it.

Geronfrey had spoken truly: it was to be a battle between light and dark. His blade gleamed like a midnight sky as it sawed the air above Kendric. The Hunter's neck bowed this way and that, precisely tuned to his rider's motions to avoid blocking a blow. The beast added a quill from its own quiver to the contest the probing thrusts of its wicked spiral horn.

Kendric avoided the pair's preliminary posturing with broad sidesteps. Each move was plotted, quick but effec tive, to preserve his strength. Each time the Hunter pranced to turn and follow him, the chains girding its belly and hanging in a skirt over its muscular hindquarters

rang out a flurry of metallic incantations. Geronfrey's sword sliced the air, making a great black comet of itself, but hardly ever threatening Kendric.

Still, as much as the sorcerer enjoyed cutting such a formidable figure, the Hunter and the sword edge were swiping closer and closer to their prey. Kendric's evasions

turned around the pivot of a tighter and tighter center.

No monsters were aborning and dying in the hole to Without behind Geronfrey he was monster enough astride his four hooved bearing-beast. It was the most direct confrontation between the two, between even frisse and Geronfrey, as if the mage disdained to use his full range of magical resources, as if he despised his enemies too much to fear them. Irisse and the children watched in silent stillness while

the Hunter's mincing hooves thudded the ground, while

Briarwhip cowered at the half-seen facade wall, while Ken

dric became the center of a turning circle of man and

beast.

Suddenly, the sword lifted in Kendric's two-handed

grasp. Even as it rose, the molten glow of the hilt-light

flashed down the steel's entire length. A thin tongue of

flame lashed the Hunter's bunched hindquarter muscles,

severing chain links that fell to earth in a shower of

chimes.

The Hunter stumbled, dipping momentarily to its knees. At that moment, the second sweep of Kendric's melded blade met Geronfrey's shadowy straight-edge of stone, The clash shook the needles from the hovering pines,

set the Hunter's war chains dancing on its muscular body. Its black hooves minced away, striking sparks from the fallen metal links.

Kendric straightened from his battle crouch, his hands

tingling from delivering the blow. There was no denying

the brunt of it, but he felt as if a helmetful of blood had

just flushed from him. His knees grew watery and the echo of the chains pounded in his head. Worse than that where before man and beast had stood in one conjoined form, now two such monsters

waited bearing two shadow swords. Kendric blinked his eyes and shook his head, hearing something within rattle. It wasn't the Hunter's chains, but something loose within the skull of his senses. Black moths danced again before his eyes and buzzed in his ears in a high-pitched skirl of sound. The ground seemed to heave beneath his feet

- to a

different tempo under each one. Many voices droned in his ears - the children's, Irissa's, Finorian's, the cats', the hound's, the Rynx's even. When he glanced to his defense, his blade, he saw the glowing steel had forked into a serpent's tongue of living light. He saw it wavered and did not cut straight anymore,

The rainbow above seemed to be sinking over him like a softly scented veil. Grasses grew up to meet it - tender green shoots pushing past Kendric's knees, his elbows, his eyes...

Only the dark center of his vision seemed real - where an unfamiliar face hung over a huge horned head and watched him as if witnessing a drowning,

Kendric struck out - blindly at the dark. The bright sword cleaved it, again and again, engaging and shattering

a curved ebony horn, meeting a black blade and smashing it like a crystal. Kendric fought forward, his feet churning through the

ensnaring marshgrass. The sword struck chain and melted it. It fell on Iridesium gauntlets and bounced off. Kendric almost lowered his blade, confused. Did he fight Valodec again? Valodec of the golden voice and the falgonskin glove that failed him not? He would not want

to slay his bond brother a second time... And then he saw Valodec himself striding into the dark pupils that had swollen to encompass his entire field of vision. Valodec moved as a specter does in an un naturally even gait. Valodec smiled and stretched out a gauntleted hand webbed in all the colors of the rainbow and asked for the sword.

Kendric leaned forward to surrender it. Only at the last

moment did his nature revolt. He struck instead, straight for the heart of Valodec, straight for his inner darkness. Kendric heard the distant tinkle of bells ringing or chains breaking or glass shattering,