Seven Swords

Chapter 18

The moment had passed. The two stood conversing on a flight of shallow stairs midway between bottom and top. Javelle had the odd notion that for an instant they had stepped outside of time.

I... won't,' she promised. 'And perhaps your crystals were right. I may be the wrong one. But she added quickly, that doesn't mean I won't be right again."

'Good girl,' Scyvilla approved.

For a moment Javelle feared he would attempt to pat her on the head, but she had grown too top-lofty for that. He scurried away, the unbroken globe glistening between the pincers of his sleeves. No doubt he sought another victim to impress his scrying skills upon.

Javelle sighed and continued down the stairs. At the next turning she met a linen-layer with her chin atop an armful of sheeting and a head full of just the information Javelle craved.

The dungeons,' this woman answered smartly when Javelle posed her prime question. 'Some townsfolk came - most agitated - and your father led 'em all below. Dark and dusty it is down there. I like my upper stories better, despite the stairs.' And up she tripped the endless flights, as merry as Scyvilla about his errands.

Dungeons. Javelle, puzzled, began clattering down the stairs. Once the palace dungeons had been a magical maze that had held her father briefly captive. Now they served as a storage area divided into cellars root cellars and wine cellars, spice cellars and flower-drying cellars, old furniture cellars and empty, good-for-nothing cellars.

She and Thane had played hide-and-seek among the cobwebs and casks. Sometimes, they had frightened each other with ghoulish stories - she telling more terrible fancies than he, because she was older. Thane had retaliated with magical tricks, sending shadows marching against her and dropping phantom spiders as large as casting crystals onto her shoulders...

Javelle's nose scented the half-remembered odors of the rooms below as she hurried down the kitchen stairs they also exhaled a fetid reek that spoke of a new, rank dampness in long-dry places.

She rushed down the dark steps, guided by flickering torches ahead and the echoing murmur of voices. Some thing was happening. Something . . . exciting. Thane, she thought a bit maliciously, would be angry that he'd been in Irissa's chamber mooning over tapestries and that she alone had witnessed the uproar. be sorry that he suddenly had 'more important things to do.

The first voice she heard clearly was not her father's

'Poison,' it was declaring in demanding tones, 'is the province of Rulers and ruling clans.'

Javelle burst around a corner to find a wall of backs blocking her way. The townspeople. Facing them all was her father. He acknowledged her arrival with a raised eyebrow, but he didn't question it, being more concerned with the townspeople's complaint.

'Why are you so certain that this "poison" that taints your water supply begins here?' he asked reasonably.

For answer, a burgher hefted a glass vase filled with liquid. In the torchlight, filmy snakes of black writhed on the water's oily surface.

"This is the water we draw from our wells and rinse down our streets,' she said heavily. 'It springs from here because the palace was built over a natural spring to guard it from taint.'

'And now you believe the source has been poisoned. 'Perhaps not intentionally,' another citizen admitted.

'Perhaps the poison was meant only for the ruling family and inadvertently leaked into the city's supply. We have not had a royal poisoning in many years,' he added almost wistfully. "And will not,' Kendric said definitely. Why couldn't the cause be natural?"

'Because The burgher was astounded. 'Because poison is the way of Rengarth.'

'Not since I have been Ruler.'

But when you are gone?"

Over their heads, Kendric saw Javelle's face whiten in the pallid light. 'I don't intend to be gone for some time. Besides, I can't leave. None of my family can. Nor can you. We had better solve this problem for all our sakes. Let me see the vase of untainted water again."

The shopkeeper - who kept a stand fragrant with fresh tongue-sweets, Javelle remembered - lifted another narrow vase. Rengarthian water swirled against its clear sides, reflecting a faint glimmer of rainbow colors - red, blue, violet, gold, and green.

Water was not only life in Rengarth, it was beauty. For a moment poison was forgotten. They all smiled to see the fresh liquid swirling in its endless dance.

By way of contrast, Kendric lifted the burgher's dark ened vase even higher, shaking the water into a clot of twisting black tendrils laced with poisonous green, crimson, and purple. All these virulent shades were intensified versions of the clean water's opalescent purity.

"This other,' he said, 'came from the town. Let's compare it with the palace source-water.'

He bent below Javelle's line of sight. She pushed her self past the gathered people to see. Kendric was kneeling at the stone lip of the underground pool she and Thane used to pretend was the Outer Abyssal Sea. He dipped an empty vase in the night-black water and lifted it into the torchlight.

Bubbles clouded the liquid, then burst. The water settled, clearing. Brows all around knit in puzzlement. Then the clearing water stirred and darkened. Rainbow-dark threads floated within the glass.

'The source!' the burgher crowed. "Tainted.'

Kendric nodded, then shook his head. 'Yes, but poison is administered by the pinch,' he said, 'not the pool. It is a specific, sneak-thief sort of weapon, a coward's choice-'

'We care not the nature of the beast, Ruler, only that it be vanquished,' someone complained.

'You cannot vanquish a ... beast, as you say, until you know its nature.' Kendric put the vase on the ground and peered into the black water beyond it.

Javelle stared, too. The pool looked no different than did of old. It had always seemed dark, because the under cellars were ill-lit. Now, apparently, a new blackness wa seething in its placidly lapping waters. favelle shivered at the thought of ill festering bene the palace's very foundations.

She shuddered so hard she dislodged the snake choker from her throat. It slipped down her torso, almost falling, before it looped her wais She ignored its movement, wondering intently what he father would do.

He was about to tell them all. I've heard it said that all the water on Rengarth. every river, brook, lakelet, fishpond, puddle, lagoon well, and dimple - meets itself coming and going deep underground.

'Yes!' the sweetshop keeper shouted.

"Thus our concer Soon this one tainted spring could make all Rengarth an evil-smelling cauldron!' 'Or,' said Kendric, rising, 'some taint from elsewhere could have migrated here."

They had not considered that, or the enormity of the notion. In the silence, Kendric undid his belt with the ceremonial dagger and began wrestling himself out of his braid-gilded tunic.

'What are you doing? the burgher demanded. He sat down without answering and tugged off his boots. Javelle noticed the worn soles, the scuffed orange hide. Shabby boots didn't become a Ruler, she thought resolving only to wear the richest footwear when she came to the High Seat.

Then she realized whom she would be succeeding, and horror overcame her unthinking vanity Kendric finally stood, barefoot and bare-chested among his subjects, unchagrined because he had never thoug of them as subjects, any more than he had thought himself as Ruler.

"You are going to... go in? Swim?" Javelle had fina spoken, because she could no longer bear to remain sile

Watch my boots,' he answered cryptically.

She flushed, knowing he had noticed her disdain for his worn footwear, realizing that he treasured that very wear as a remnant of Rule. 'And you hand me that torch.'

He reached out a hand.

You're taking a torch into the water?" someone manded incredulously. de lavelle was silent, not having refound her voice yet. Kendric chuckled. He liked to confound those who would extend him some ritual obeisance, yet knew no more of him than they did of the central sun that daily drew its train of bright twins across the sky. And he welcomed a problem that required solving.

I need to see where the underwater caverns and rivers lie.'

'See?'

'See.' Kendric passed his ring before the torch flame, each of the five shades within the central cabochon bright ening in turn. The watery silver color flared brightest and bluer. Then the flame acquired the same silvery aquamarine hue. It fanned with a cool, ethereal light, seeming more a thing of liquid than of fire now.

Lunestone, Javelle reminded herself. Her father's ring numbered the cool blue silver light of Lunestone among its component colors.

Kendric stepped past the pool lip, his bare foot quest ing into the water and finding no support. With a shrug of massive shoulders, he passed the torch to Javelle, crouched, then braced his hands on the edge and lowered himself into the dark, chuckling wavelets.

She bent to return the torch, feeling its chill bright light beat across her cheek. He took it and smiled at her, for her. Then the black pool swallowed him as he sub merged. Only the torch was still visible beneath the water, an exotic long-finned fish of azure flame skimming below the surface.

At least he is brave,' a townsman commented his breath.

Javelle whirled on the speaker, fresh fire in her eyes.

'As well as wise,' the burgher added quickly. "Though I fear in this instance...

They turned back to the water, fear multiplying in all their minds in different manners. Javelle had always excel. led at frightening herself, especially in dark, unknown, f*******n places. And she had learned of late - for the first time to fear for her father. It was an unsettling notion and it took full form in her imagination.

He could drown. Or he could... breathe... the water and consume poison beyond saving. He could find an underwater river and be swept away forever, so far that they'd never find his bones. He could hit his head on a rock and drown. Or he could lose direction in the bottom less dark and drown

The possibilities were endless, she discovered, watching with the sort of parental horror she had witnessed many times directed toward herself. She began to understand. Aging was just the half of it. Try to hold back the night and you soon grew too busy to deal with the dangers of the day...

'What do you think he does?' someone asked her, deferring.

She shook her head, watching the water. Kendric remained submerged for many anxious seconds that added like grains of sand into a pile of minutes.

'He's drowned,' the sweetshop keeper wailed finally.

'Swept away to the Bubblemeres to be a wellwraith,' predicted another. 'Left us to the taint.'

'No,' Javelle said, but no one heard her.

Then the pool's center erupted into a fountain of spray, a blue flame burning at its center. Kendric's head surfaced next, sputtering into speech.

'My dagger - throw it to me, quickly!'

Javelle swiftly pulled it free of the belt. She hurled it haft-first across the black water, hoping her arm had sent it far and true enough.