Seven Swords

Chapter 22

Never mind that his gate led to the one place of all worlds most to be avoided - the world Without. Never mind that his attempt had webbed him in the curtain to that world. Beyond the window awaited Without. Beyond Without - if one... or two... survived it awaited more gates and more worlds.

One of them was Rule and held the sword on which their father's life hung. 'I will help, Javelle spit between her teeth. Before she could act on her intentions, while her will was still gathering and tightening, the snake stirred again as if roused by her resolve. It writhed into her hair, making goosebumps rise on her scalp. It tangled its coils among her curled locks and untangled again to circle her skull.

At last it came to rest its smooth small-scaled metal belly over her forehead and its head hanging a bit heavy over her right ear.

Javelle had heard the tales of her birth how Kendric had tried by force to wrest the birth-snake from her body, how it had settled at her temples like a scaly crown. Later, when she was again inspected, it had retreated elsewhere on her person. Never did it aspire to her head again. ... until now.

Old words from a bitter prophesy echoed in her mind. she shall bear a greater magic than any in Rengarth...'

Not within! Without! Outside herself. Not inborn, but beside-born! The Overstone egg had delivered its own offspring the same moment Javelle took independent breath in this world of Rengarth. She could open her parents sorely needed, because she had always carried the key.

Javelle moved to the window, slowly, purposefully. Thane shouted at her to go back, but she hardly heard him. She heard instead a dry, satisfied hum in her ear, in her heart. Now she knew.

'Thisss,' said the voice at her ear. 'For this I was born.'

The Overstone snake lifted its glittering head, its darting tongue sniffing the sulfurous air as Javelle approached the veil between Rengarth and Without. The web dissolved without warning. Aghast, Thane caught himself a moment before falling through.

'You! You opened it! Thank you, sister; now stand back and don't breathe a word of this, except to Mother. But I think she will know.'

He braced himself with one last look back before leaning into the roiling darkness Without.

Javelle jumped to the windowsill beside him.

No! Don't follow.' His spring was already in motion - he was plummeting into a new, unknown tapestry of dark and danger and vast empty places, growing smaller every instant as if shrinking into some new, unilluminated tapestry.

Javelle leaped, too, for the first time in her life breaking custom. For once, she followed Thane determinedly - right through the window into Without. impulsively.

No wind howled in the room. No storm broke loose beyond the windowframe. No new figures grew visible in the dark it bounded. -

The cat sat for some moments regarding the dark window, as if watching a mouse hole in hopes of the imminent reappearance of prey. Then it sighed audibly. with a peculiar, catlike trill. 'I suppose,' it mused aloud to the empty tower, 'that there's nothing else for it.

One bound brought it atop the windowsill, Moonlight from a source other than a moon painted it a softer shade of white.

The cat lifted a paw that had landed on some sticky fallen web filaments, then gathered its limbs into a taut assemblage of furred muscle and sprang gracefully through the window into the dark.

Kendric sat up, moaning in loud surprise. The fish t flitted within the bedchamber walls boiled in their la waters until he subsided.

'You must rest,' Irissa advised softly, leaning over his Kendric recognized a tone he had heard applied to s children and brushed the suggestion aside.

'I must have gotten chilled in the water, that is all

He stood or tried to then sank back onto the grea circular bed. 'A stiffness. I feel as if I'd been beaten wit thistleweed cudgels.'

Irissa was expertly plucking at the bedclothes, them over him. He'd seen that maneuver before, too.

'I'm not... sick, only-' he repeated, then stopped. The proper word wouldn't come. He had never felt as he fet now. Not just tired, but exhausted. Not cold, but froze to the marrow. Not worn, but worn . . . narrow.

'Rest,' Irissa insisted in a pleasant lulling monotone Everything seemed to have drawn back from Kendric's body. Even the bedclothes had shrunk from his skin. He felt that he still floated in some dark, alien substance that was half-water, half-air, as Rengarth itself was half-liquid half-land.

'What's this?' Irissa was asking, the soft pillow of her palm resting on his shoulder. An ache had settled there that her flesh warmed.

'A bruise, no doubt,' he admitted lightly. "That dev swanfish didn't bite, but it thrashed more than a mite. I flailed like a convention of whips... heads, fins, ta everything.'

Irissa nodded absently, hearing Kendric's voice soften into sleep. No wonder his shoulder hurt, she thought a she let the linen softly drape it. A bruise as large as her hand already marked the skin with lurid Iridesium shades of purple, saffron, and green.

Kendric's eyes had shut. His hair, still damp, looked blacker against the pale pillows. The cowl of wet gray strands around his face shone bright as polished silver.

Frowning, Irissa skimmed fish-silent from the chamber. Thane, she decided, must not fail in finding a gate. And quickly. The halls were unpeopled as she rustled through them. The entire palace exuded a subdued air. Perhaps the tale of Kendric's battle with the tainted fish in their very midst had sobered the inhabitants.

Javelle's white, worried face - as it had looked at the dungeon spring - lilted to the forefront of Irissa's memory like a wailwraith's visage rising from a pondtop to frighten an unwary passerby.

Irissa paused, her hand on a wall supporting her. Deep alarm thrummed through her frame - not a magical alert, but more vague and therefore more disturbing. Instinct, that most human and arbitrary of skills, was pulling steadfastly on the sleeve of Irissa's attention. She hurried to her receiving room.

She could deal with whatever had upset Javelle later. First, she must find Thane, and ensure that he would find a gate. Otherwise Irissa froze on her own familiar threshold.

The candles were lit, wavering merrily against the curtained walls. The room was empty - and Thane would never have left without finding a gate or reporting failure directly to her.

Irissa moved to the table at the room's center. Some impish wind delved among the weavings, making the one dimensional towers swell, woven waves crest, and small thread-dressed figures shift in their flat, hanging worlds.

Irissa shivered, feeling the Iridesium circlet tighten on her brow, as it did when she felt anxious. Her own domain seemed cold and abandoned and somehow hostile.

'Ah.' A voice behind her sounded the genteel triumph of having found her. She turned to see a ludborg in the doorway blissfully nodding its empty hood.

'Good evening, Reginatrix. Scyvilla has sent me to his dinners to celebrate our deliverance from the devil swanfish.'

'Dinner.' The word was too simply domestic to mix with Irissa's darker instincts at this moment. 'Kendric is... announce that he is, ahem... assembling fatigued. I think another day-'

'Ah.' The hood nodded sagely - or perhaps Irissa attributed some change of expression to that expression less hollow of cloth. 'I doubt not that the innovative Scyvilla can keep his conjurings fresh under a only crystal for another day.'

The ludborg turned to go, then directed a slice of its empty hood and a parting thought over its curving shoulder. 'Besides,' it added, "'the young ones were nowhere to be found, and a family celebration would be hardly that without them.'

'Nowhere?' Irissa's sharply sounded question pinned the ludborg to the threshold like an arrow through the sleeve.

'You sound... alarmed, dear Reginatrix. I would exile myself to the Bubblemeres were I to cause you needless worry. Scyvilla himself assures me that such young people are prone to sudden disappearances and as sudden reappearances." 'Nowhere?' Irissa repeated, a bit nervously. In the palace, you mean-?"

The palace, the stables, the marketplace. We have a thousand hidden eyes and ears, my kind and I, and a certain instant communication is possible through the blue-worms. They are nowhere about - in any place we might look. No doubt they will reveal themselves at their whimsey, as many times before.'

'No doubt.' Now Irissa's voice faded in its turn. An invisible web of worry was pushing her a step back from everything around her.