Seven Swords

Chapter 56

'No,' Eeryon said, not knowing why the refusal hurt him. 'You can stay where you are and talk to me.

"Talk to you? Mutter at a shadow? You are insubstantial, shadow boy! And dark and unbright. Nothing. Not solid, as I shall soon be . . . oh, just let me pass a few tendrils of my hair-' Smoky serpents drifted toward him, but he recoiled from their spectral touch.

'No.'

You are mine!' the creature suddenly cried. 'My belonging. My living gem. I know you. I died for you!' But you never lived for me.' Eeryon felt calm, listening

to the truth falling from his own lips after a long time of

hearing and seeing and feeling only lies.

He had never felt more real. He had never felt more. Emotions collided like contending clouds within him love and pain and hate and pride and sorrow and gratitude and regret and shades of them all blended together. Most of all, he felt pity for this pulsating remnant

of being straining before him for a raw piece of life, no

matter how secondhand, how shadowy, no matter how

stolen. His father, Geronfrey, for all his power, was

equally pathetic in his way. 'Remnants, Mother,' he soothed the apparition - and himself in a deeper way. 'We are all remnants of other people's lives. The magic of it is that we think ourselves our own selves. That is when we become dangerous. Hold

back and let be what will be.' "But I will not be if I do not hunger, do not hold

'No, Eeryon said simply. 'No, you will not be.' This silenced the phantom, this stopped it as perhaps

his ragged magic never could. How can shadow be so strong?' it asked him wistfully shadow

'By facing shadow,' he answered. 'By finding within oneself.'

Will... shadow see shadow ... again?" 'I don't know. I can barely see you anymore - or

any

of them.'

Yet you defend them, and their unshadowhood."

't defend you, and him, and whatever bit of myself I call my own.

'Let me pass,' it wailed again, as if to break him. You can pass, Eeryon said, spreading wide his shadow arma on which ghostly threads still scribed a broken pattern, 'You have only to be willing to pay the price! You mean to risk destroying myself!

"To risk destroying me.' The apparition coiled into its melancholy fog, silent for a long time. Then it sank into the water, in stages,

thoughtfully, When Earyon turned back, they had all forgotten him again.

The unleashing of her full Torloc powers had made Irissa resemble her shadow even more. An aura of silver light overlay her figure. The Iridesium circlet and her eyes shone with an icy sun's brightness.

This moonlit nimbus broke wavelike over the sword's metal shores. Quicksilver drops of it spattered from blade and hilt to rain upon the ground like steel tears.

Within the living halo of light the sword melted and hardened in turn, glowing copper, then red, then black, then white. All these shades were natural stages to heated metal, but then another series of changes added their colors to the transition the blue of Irissa's Skystone dominated, then faded into gold Shinestone into red Blood stone into beige Drawstone and finally into a clear color that bordered on translucence the shade of Floodstone.

Within the single cabochon of her ring these selfsame hues flared.

From outside the magical corona of color cloaking Irissa and the sword, two hands intruded. The aura flickered as they broke the veil,

Then Kendric's hands - bruised to the gaudy bright ness of Iridesium joined Irissa's on the crossguard. It seemed for an instant as if this intervention had shaken The spell, had broken its caster. Irissa quivered like a flame. The swords buckled, their

straight blades wavering. Then the ring on Kendric's left hand ran through its colors - copper Sandstone, plain Shunstone, Torloc-green Gladestone, silver Lunestone, and, finally... black Nightstone. The two swords - blade and hilt - shifted through every

change, their forms overlapping as Drawstone made them water-clear and ran them together, and separating as the Shunstone's plain power rended them from each other. Irissa struggled to keep them conjoined and added her ring's round of changes to Kendric's. Soon the shades melded in turn silver and gold to bronze, blue and green to aquamarine, black and red to purple, and copper and clear to burnt gold. When the Drawstone's trans lucent plainness coincided with the Shunstone's solid dullness, all color exploded, evaporated from Irissa and Kendric and the swords.