Seven Swords

Chapter 35

Nonsensel' a voice hissed in her ear- or rather, hissed beside her ear. It was not the snake's. "Great silly statues of stone, has the drip of Valna's underwater caves in your ears all these years made you deaf to reason? Enemies from Without threaten Rule, but they do not stand here before you."

Javelle, finding herself still unsundered, opened her eyes. If stone warriors could be said to blink, the five Wrathmen were batting stony lashes. She glanced to her shoulder. Felabba, her hair whipped

into ill-kempt peaks from her recent grooming, was

spitting wrathfully at the assembled stone giants. The cat's

green eyes flashed lurid fire. 'Can you not hear your own future speak?" it continued in great umbrage. 'Your day is done and only Valna's slow rise to the surface has wakened you. Would you destroy the heirs to your guardianship? Sleep again, stone men, and let those of us young enough to deal with fresh dangers get about it. You creak in brain as well as body."

'Who speaks to us so?" 1. Felabba, who am Guardian. Know you that the sword

has been found.'

They fell back as if struck. "Yet there is a gate here to Without,' Glent said

stubbornly. For a moment he reminded Javelle of her father. She remembered that it was for her father's longer life span she had dared Without and faced the circle of his lost bond brothers. She wondered if Wrathmen donned stubbornness with their armor, and wished she could stay and talk and know them better, exchanging tales and

comparing the details of old days she had never shared. The cat had no patience for Wrathmen frozen past

their time or a young woman with a thirst for times befor hers.

You have been roused from a long dream too soon brothers, it announced. You have done your duty and asked who goes there, and she has told you all you needed to know and more. So sleep again and stay out of our

way time is short and the stakes are dire." Whether it was pure feline ire or some other com manding quality the cat contained, the Wrathmen drew back, dragging rock-bound feet.

Javelle was almost sorry to feel their heavy shadows ebb away. She was moved to follow them, save that cat claws curved into her shoulder, carving warning into

her skin.

The Wrathmen resumed their previous places, great lumbering dancers in a pattern too huge for them to see more than a portion of it. They settled into their frozen selves, the upright swords dividing their tall figures. Their eyes shut, one by one. 'Kendric,' said one, acknowledging that which had been

nameless until now. 'Kendric,' the others repeated in a

whisper of dry pebbles shifting, admitting him once again

to their number, in absentia.

If the Wrathmen gave their sole surviving member a parting benediction, Felabba had no such sweet farewell for them.

'Relics!' the cat spat, loosening its admonishing grip Javelle. 'More in the way than out of it when they were alive, and more so now that they are entombed."

on

"They were an awesome sight," Javelle objected. So you would have thought until they ground your bones to powder. The fact is they are rather stupid, an

attribute your quest and Rule cannot afford at the moment

'I suppose I'm glad Thane fetched you.' "Thane?" The cat looked as surprised as a cat will ever permit itself. 'No one "fetched" me but my innate good sense.

"Then... where is he and Beryon?" The cat narrowed its gorgeous eyes and hefted a mud

caked paw to the services of its tongue. 'Indeed. A most interesting youth. It seems you had better do something about finding them."

17 I am no sorcerer. Together, they have more magic than I hold, even with you sitting on my shoulder. The cat c****d its head. 'Don't expect me to leap into that disgusting dampness that soaks the ground here abouts. I've bathed enough for half of my ninety-nine lives already today.'

'Ninety-nine-?' Flabbergasted at the notion of a cat outlasting ninety-nine lives, Javelle turned her ention on the surrounding area without further argument. The Wrathmen had faded into their pillars again. They

looked less like men and more like stalagmites with human features scratched across their surfaces. She saw clusters of broken boulders that shone with the same pale phos phorescence that encased the Wrathmen. These must be shattered stalactites, she realized. What cataclysm had shaken sunken Clymerind, destroying the Oracle of Valna and bringing the island afloat again, after all these years?

Javelle ranged farther, a cat clinging docilely to her shoulder. The snake unwound itself from her throat and slithered into a circlet at her temples again, taking its tail in its mouth and thus ensuring its own continuing silence. Javelle suddenly envisioned herself exiled here with only

Felabba and the snake for company. The thought was horrific enough to urge her to call out. 'Eeryon-! Thane!' A new absence struck her. 'Briarwhip?

In the distance, a lone voice bayed hopelessly.

She paced the brackish ground, brushed past the motion

less Wrathmen, wove in and out of their forms looking

for any sign of the others. Her encounter with her father's

past had so absorbed her mind and emotions that she

had been numbed to the departure of her companions one by one. First Eeryon, then Thane and Eeryon's cloud creature. Javelle glanced up at the brim of rock above. Much misty land spread in the dark beyond this focal place. She would be searching terrain as empty and unpromising

as Without itself. She shivered, a chill finally seeping into her boots and her fingers, spreading fear into her heart And then she rounded the empty pillar - the sixth pillar that would have housed her father's form had he not been spared for further adventures beyond Rule.

Thane was there, around the unseen, opposite side holding his magic disc before him like a shield. He was silent, intent, and almost frozen Wrathman-solid, and the disc was still. It shone sun-bright, reflecting in a dark blot upon the stone pillar's surface, reflecting in a hole -

a window to Without. "Thane-?"

But he remained uninterested, unanswering. His face was stiff with effort- eyes and nostrils flared, lips and eyebrows taut. He seemed to have been that way forever. And dancing against the shining gold surface of Thane's disc was a small buzz of darkness, a restless gnat of force incarnate that flitted here and there.

Thane foiled its every foray, the glow of his disc forcing it back as a shield turns a clever sword feint. He looked as if he had been so engaged forever - no wonder he had not challenged the Wrathmen, no wonder he had not come to Javelle's rescue.

A switching tail beat Javelle across the back. Felabba's

face leaned close to her cheek. There was no comfort in

the soft blink of fur across her skin, just utter concen

tration, like Thane's. 'What is it?' Javelle whispered.

'A gate,' Felabba said. "Those long-slumbering Wrath men were roused by something more potent from Without than our poor party - a gate great enough for a gnat and no more. These Wrathmen would have pounded them selves to dust on this soggy earth before their clumsy swords would have repelled this monster from Without." 'Who is it, then? Perhaps if I can name it, that will help

Thane repel it. Felabba, you can't afford mystery now -

tell me!' "Thane knows the name as well as its bearer does. A good thing you dealt with the antiquities yourself, girl, for

your not-so-foolish brother had better things to do than save your fur.' 'Who or what is it? Tell me, or I'll throw you to the

puddle!' "Wait. You knew the names of men long dead and took some pleasure in telling them so. Surely, there are other names you know from your parents' past that you so treasure, names not even they like to remember. lavelle leaned as far over her brother's shoulder as she

dared. 'Geronfrey,' she breathed. "You are right, Felabba,

I have not forgotten him, though I would like to.'

'Nor has he forgotten you,' the cat replied in sardonic tones pitched deep within Javelle's ear, 'be assured. Nor has he.'

Like a child clinging to his mother's skirts, Kendric curled his fist into a tapestry fold. His balance gave, but not his grip. Green-gold rings

ripped from the rod twelve feet above. Collapsing tapestry

fabric sagged with Kendric. He released his grasp to preserve the hanging and lurched toward the central table of Irissa's empty receiv ing room. Broken rings clattered against the wall as the tapestry slowly lapsed into stillness again.

Kendric blinked beads of sweat from his eyelashes. His arms buckled as if stuffed with fabric. Even the table's sturdy stone pedestal could hardly uphold him. Sinking, his arms flung around it, he swept a candelabra to the floor. The crash echoed in his eyes not his ears. He knew

that he should hear more ... see more... but he was

learning to lean on his will alone, rather than his senses.

Those senses were drowning in a lush interior tide of

poison.

Something tugged on his attention - barely. Some words came to him - remotely, though he recognized their source as the ludborg who had appeared at his elbow. 'How did you come here?' it demanded.

'Lurched,' Kendric answered after long consideration. He was haunted by a shadow, that raven of stoic self mockery that always came to pick the bones of a dying warrior. Black humor in a habiliment of phantom feathers.

Kendric stared at the tapestries, watching the designs swim fishlike before his eyes. For a moment he wondered if he had dreamed leaving the bedchamber. Then the ludborg tugged him alert again.

'You are ill, Ruler, and wander. You must return to bed.' it insisted.

'Not wander,' Kendric forced the words out in weary response. 'Wonder. I wonder.' The thought, like most thoughts now, hooked his fevered mind on a sharp curl of speculation. He flailed at the thin end of an idea - a rational notion leading somewhere far beyond what he could see in his present state. Impatient, Kendric roused his flagging energies to brush the ludborg aside and lurch toward the windows.

'It is dark without, Ruler; opening the shutter will shed

no 'Dark without,' Kendric intoned thickly. 'Darker within." It was not the windows he sought, although he crashed

light.'

into a pair of braced shutters. Kendric rebounded from them before the ludborg could scurry to his aid. A stool bounced away before the thrust of his unsteady leg. He leaned his ungainly, weakened weight against the cool stone wall and stared at what he had come to see. "There's nothing here for you, Ruler.

She has gone." 'Gone.' Kendric repeated, his deep, slurred voice tolling the word like a death knell. The ludborg wailed - an unheard-of event - and

vanished.

Kendric didn't notice. An unfinished tapestry lay crumpled over Irissa's work-frame. The threads writhed like worms before his uncertain vision. And in the center of the weaving a great hole spread like a blackened blood stain from top to bottom and side to side.

Kendric reached a mottled hand he looked like some sun-bruised lizard now and hardly noticed it to touch the blot, the vacancy.

His perception betrayed him. His hand never quite reached the tapestry's midnight center - or it receded from his grasp. Perhaps he did not move at all, but dreamed and in dreaming, died.

Something jostled what Kendric had used to regard as his shoulder and now was a far-flung part of himself he had not the energy to reclaim.

'Drink, commanded a distant voice, somehow-despite It all familiar.

The always-green-with-borgia glass goblet appeared before his face, its incarnate color darkened by a swirling streak of brown.

Kendric drank because he still trusted the voice because his will had been strong enough to get him here and little more, because he never could resist an offer of borgia... that raven mockery again - pick, pick, picking at his bones and sorely welcome to them, most sorely

His lips never felt the cool glass, the warm liquor But even as he drained the goblet and the green seeped upward to refill it, he felt a certain vigor warm his blood and bones,

Kendric shook his head to clear it.

"Scyvilla, Raler, as I am called here

Of course. S-Scyvilla Kendric

from the wall, surprise

I pushed away