Seven Swords

Chapter 34

Fiforn, Javelle breathed in her mind, bearer of the lance. She was watching whole tapestries of elemental earth take living form, seeing names from forgotten Rule take on reality.

Another Wrathman c****d a creaking arm to sling a bow from his back. Javelle knew and named him, too - dead Thrangar, the Torloc, picked to bones in Geronfrey's undermountain keep, then reassembled at Valna for a final, after-death battle twenty-some years ago. Dead Thrangar, still preserved in monumental rock and coming when called, coming without present purpose to battle innocent foes.

The gray of one Wrathman's form glowed with a carmine undercurrent - Prince Ruven-Qal of the Burning Powder still smoldered in this lost, reawakened place, Javelle marveled. And Glent of the Stones - gray and stiff even in life - it must be he stalking forward in rock-semblance, bearing a gilt-edged axen invitation to battle..

Javelle mentally tolled the Wrathmen's names and weapons, too awed to quail before them. Some had been her father's friends, others his foes- unwillingly. All had been his fellows. She could not fear them, though she should, although buried, coiled magic had been unsprung and would lash out no matter who stood in its path.

At the moment, Eeryon kept closest company to the revivified Wrathmen. The sword blade of one still shone like fresh-forged steel - the one Eeryon's impulsive magic had probed. A power bond linked that sword, its bearer, and the boy from Without. Now that power choked upon itself, turned back on its source, rebounded from the stony purpose of the oncoming Wrathman. 'Eeryon!' Javelle warned, the word catching in her

throat. The name meant nothing here in Rule, or Valna ... Better that she should use her father's mother's. or her

Eeryon remained fixed, as if stone-spelled himself. The Wrathman's brilliant blade reared like summer lightning to crash down upon him. Thane, intent on finding his own magic, never noticed Eeryon's rebound upon him. Javelle, unused to magic, could do no more than watch and wish she did not see the danger so clearly.

Eeryon remained unmoved in his peril, even when the advancing Wrathman's mighty stone boots neared the verge of his. The stone sword grew liquid-bright with longing and aimed straight for his heart.

Javelle screamed. Thane whirled to face her, a spin ning disc edged like a whetstone blurring between his hands. The Wrathman's sword - still radiating the spark from Eeryon's magical fingertips - drove straight at the

boy. And Eeryon vanished.

Just vanished. Completely.

That gave even the Wrathman pause. Briarwhip howled from the rim of the rocks until his yammers ground on their ears like stone on stone.

Thane's spinning whetstone spun, redundantly.

Where ? Javelle wondered. 'Did the stone sword

shatter him?" T'll shatter them,' Thane threatened, lifting the disc's flat lethal edge that turned and floated between his hands. Stone will bruise flesh but metal will slice stone."

Eeryon!' Javelle called into the mist. Briarwhip's bays echoed her. Nothing else answered... nothing except the grinding resumption of motion as the balked Wrathman turned to the next closest target - to Javelle herself, unarmed, too near to flee and too ordinary to vanish.

Against her throat, the serpentine necklace tautened nervously. It hadn't spoken since opening the gate to Without at least she hadn't hea it. Now it seemed likely to throttle her. Her head shook in annoyance as much as denial. She felt anger that she wouldn't even be permitted to speak a last word to her slayer, but would go down silent and undefended, even by herself.

Speak? Javelle thought. Why speak in the face of a seven-foot-tall man of stone who doesn't recognize what he does or whom he does it to? Yet she had recognized him from the stories told her as a child. But what could she say to the stone-eared revenant of a man her father had slain, however reluctantly? 'Valodec.'

The Wrathman's name on Javelle's tongue surprised

them all, perhaps Javelle most of all.

All the stone men paused. Thane, his round blade still whirling within his spread hands, looked sharply at her. In their mutual gaze, he remembered who Valodec was and that the Wrathman would have no cause to spare Kendric's offspring.

The voice came with the low, lazy rumble of earth before it erupts.

Who speaks to stone?' the figure asked. Javelle held her ground. 'Are you not Valodec, he of the

golden voice and the Gauntlet That Never Fails?' She nodded to his hands clenched upon the sword hilt, where faint veins of color gloved one fist and forearm. "Golden," the voice croaked with something like

irony. At least, Javelle thought, I've distracted him from destroying all around him. 'How do you know of my voice and my glove?"

'You make a marvelously solid specter, Valodec," Javelle continued, hearing her voice ring uncomely and uncer tain. She spoke along the path she had started nevertheless, 'In the land I come from, there is an entire city peopled with specters, but they are mist - like the ground fog here at risen Valna. You must be a mighty spirit to take such solid form.'

'Vaaaalna. Valnaaaa. The word breathed from five grinding stone mouths,

between their calcified teeth. 'How does she know?' asked another, stepping alongside Valodec and thus confronting Javelle with double danger.

She answered this new threat, the new question.

'I know, Glent of the Stones, because my father was

forced to battle you as well as Valodec in the last days of

Rule as he and you knew it. You he was able to spare

'Spare! He left me bruised and broken in the Rocklands.'

"You would have left him lifeless." Glent growled, all the rage his half-frozen face would allow to escape.

Javelle rushed on, answering for another's past in her own behalf. 'My father only defended himself from both of you. Glent, you believed him a betrayer of your brotherhood, as Valodec did, but who was at the gate with you to beat back the monsters from Without here in Valna?'

A third stone man lumbered over to the first two. I know that man's name as well as I know my own."

'Yes, Fiforn, Javelle said, noting the amethyst glint of the lancepoint atop the staff in his left hand.

Rock could not gasp, but it could grind, as if chewing ponderously upon her words. Fiforn had not expected to be called by name ever again.

Only two figures hung back. Javelle decided to be done

with it. And you, Prince Ruven-Qal of Tolech-Nal, and Thrangar,

who could have been my sire had Finorian's plans come to pass, you know my father's name and have no reason to dislike it.' They came as if called like dogs, the last two towering figures. Surrounded, Javelle had forgotten everything

beyond the broken wall she had drawn to herself, the rim

of the living and the dead made moving stone.

You have no reason to defend Valna against me,' she finished. Her hands lifted. 'I am unarmed, even of magic. What do you know of Valna, daughter of He Whom We Have Not Named?' Fiforn asked.

"Only that a wise Oracle once was said to speak here, and once a gate to dread Without opened here. That six Wrathmen, living and dead, fought back the outer monstrosities that would have destroyed Rule. That only one Wrathman left this place. The others were rock entombed as guardians against another cracking of that gate. That only two people left to tell of what had tran spired here. I have heard the tale from them both in their different ways - my mother and my father.'

In the silence Javelle heard the rasp of her own breath ing. No sound came from the Wrathmen, who stood as stolid as mountains.

'You come from Without, one charged in a bass grumble. Javelle turned slowly to see which of the five had spoken. 'I have passed through Without, but I come from Ren garth.'

'Nothing survives Without unless it is a thing of Without. And the things of Without that invade our world we are sworn to slay." 'Is Rule so feeble these days that it must fear two boys,

an unmagicked girl, and a four-legged creature too dumb

to speak?'

One stone sword elevated - Glent's. Its blunt point lifted to Javelle's midsection. "Torloc. I see the strain now. You are Torloc.'

'Partly. You had no time for Torlocs in Rule, but didn't a Torloc seeress stand with you here at the Oracle of Valna?' 'You are not she.' The accusation was articulated by

the most melodious of the grinding voices, Valodee's No. But, Velodec of Clymerind, this very nomad island that now upholds our feet, you have most reason to remember her. You met her in the forest on your deaths day. As she was the last woman you saw, she was the first I saw my mother."

"Torloce lie, Glent growled. 'Have we not stayed our swords long enough? Must we heed every garrulous chir who plants herself in our path? Finish them all. I say. and be sure of it.'

Three swords lifted, shadowing Javelle like limbs from a graven tree. She realized the magnitude what she had braved and, panic-stricken, took her eyes from the Wrathmen to search the mist for some sign of Thane. There was none. The three swords lowered, their shadows twining into one.

"Wait!' thundered another voice. Stone scraped stone as Thrangar's sword crossed the descending trio of his bond brothers' weapons, "I am Torloc; I died and was immured in Valna with you. If prejudice be your justification, that is not reason enough to slay her."

Stone abraded stone. The mutual weight of three swords pushed Thrangar's defensive blade to the ground. Valodec hung back, uncommitted, the puzzlement upon his rigid features slim hope for Javelle.

She hunted for a c***k in their circle, a space she could slip through while they debated. They were too massive. Had she magic, she might have become liquid and flowed through them. Had the snake proven a more reliable familiar, it would have done more than knotted itself around her throat and remained silent. Had Thane been older or Eeryon stronger, perhaps they could have saved her.

Thane! The Wrathmen's disagreement over the swift ness of her fate permitted Javelle another look around. All she saw was the same murky, mist-choked marsh - the same, except that Thane and his wheeling disc were nowhere to be seen, nor was Briarwhip. Had they all vanished like Eeryon?

T'd rather vanish, Javelle muttered through closed eyes,

than be sliced. A sound severed the air and then a rush of wind came, the first she'd felt here. She braced for the crushing contact of a blunt stone blade and felt a few quick taps upon her shoulder, followed by the sudden presence

of a weight.