Seven Swords

Chapter 2

'No.' Thane broke off his own grass stem and chewed it thoughtfully. 'Father's never furious... just disappointed, which is worse. I think he might even be stern about that sword, though, even if you're the one who took it. You know his life hangs upon it.'

'I know his magic is tied to it! That's all I wanted to ... study it. I can't take magic for granted.'

'Who can?' Thane dusted his palms together and rose, failing to observe the way his sister almost answered, then visibly held her tongue instead. 'Well, what did you learn from the sword?' "

That it is too heavy to carry great distances. No wonder even Father hung it on the wall.'

'Father doesn't need swords much anymore. Thane came close, then suddenly knelt beside his sister. I've never seen it close up. Huge, isn't it?'

Javelle smiled, pleased that Thane would be as unable to handle it as she. 'It's Father's. Maybe no one else will ever be big enough to carry it, will grow large enough to carry it.' 'Who wants to? .. I thought you said that.'

'I didn't expect to use it as a weapon.'

'What else good is it?' She eyed him from under veiled lashes.

'Magic,' she whispered. 'Magic,' he scoffed. 'Oh, I suppose. . . once... it hoarded some small magic. But even Father no longer relies on it, or notices it, other than to guard it. It's one more of the things he and Mother never talk about ... well, before we were here . . . things that were more then than they are now.'

Thane rocked back on his heels and grew as stern as only a younger brother can when he's feeling smug. 'But I believe Mother when she says the sword is vital to Father's survival. And, Javelle, it was safe on the wall in Solanandor Tierze! We were safe. How will we return it without anyone noticing?'

She smiled at the implicit aid Thane's question prom ised. 'Nobody notices the old sword anymore. Nobody looks up at the wall. Nobody notices me much; that's how I took it."

'Well, I can't blame them for not noticing you,' Thane said in a tone of brotherly baiting. Javelle didn't answer, but something in her face made him break off the taunt. 'I'm sorry I got the magic and you didn't,' he said gruffly. 'I don't even know why you miss it.'

'Because I never had it! That's the sort of thing a person misses most of all. I don't... fit.'

'Fit? Where?'

'Here. With you all.'

'Father'd take that sword broadside to your own broad side if he heard you say that.''

No, he wouldn't, Father's not like that. It makes it even worse."

You are a gloomy girl!' The boy jumped up and paced to his grazing bearing-beast. 'Come on, we'll get the sword back and I... I won't even tell.

' Thanks,' she responded sarcastically, stung by the adult impatience tinging his voice. I can't find any magic in it, anyway. It doesn't even talk.'

Should hope not. Listen, I remember Mother saying once that Felabba sprang from the hilt Edanvant! Wouldn't that be exciting, if we found old Felabba again after all these years?'

'Speak for yourself, brother. Father wouldn't thank you for that.'

'Still The boy collapsed to the ground on the liquid limbs of youth. His hands traced the hilt runes. 'I could try. Felabba here, kitty, here, kitty . . . kitty-' –

Thane, stop that! You could actually start something. The worst that could have befallen me was getting eaten by leaveweavers. You might actually... raise something.' 'Afraid? Here, kitty, kitty-' Thane!' Half-angry, half-panicked, Javelle tussled him for the sword, shoving his magical hands from the hilt as if pushing them from the fire. 'You'll unloose something you can't contain, you'll-'

They froze together. Beneath their dueling hands the hilt shone with a soft white light. Their palms, reddened by the glow, drew back, although no heat forced them.

'It is magic, and it answers your innate magic,' Javelle said dully, but not anything in me. At least we know it still keeps its powers.'

"This is wonderful.' Rapt, Thane watched the light fade as his hands retreated. He pushed his palms forward. The light intensified at their approach.

Javelle sat back to watch her brother toy with the phenomenon. 'Are you thinking of anything specific to make it glow?'

'Nothing. I'm just touching it.'

'Oh.'

He glanced over his shoulder, his face alight in the hilt glow. 'Javelle, you do have your birth-serpent.'

Reminded of what she took for granted, her hand touched her waist. A slim silver belt of albino Iridesium was aglimmer with pale rainbow highlights. She sighed, her waist expanding. At the movement, the belt flashed, vanished, then reappeared to scale her arm and twine the upper portion.

A delicate serpent's head froze into a new place near her shoulder. This mobile bauble. . . Javelle dismissed it bitterly. 'Tis a nuisance, a thing of its own whim and not mine. It doesn't speak, either.' 'Why must magical things always speak? You do enough of that for all of us.' 'I can cure that."

He made a face and jumped up. 'Help me with the sword, and we'll get back before anyone notices.'

In silence they lifted the heavy sword, swaddled it in burlap, and tied it again to Javelle's saddle.

'Thundermist would be happy to leave it here,' she noted. Her mount rolled a pale eye as the sword weighted its withers again.

'Mother wouldn't. You know how she frets over Father.'

'Father can take care of himself.'

'Daughter can't.'

'If you hadn't come, she would have had to! Maybe I have no magic because you're always there first with yours.'

He shrugged. 'Maybe you have no magic because you're lucky. And I'm not.'

'Thane, do you sometimes wish you . . . didn't?' He stared across the shifting land. 'I always wish wish that I didn't have what I do and did have what I don't. Mother would say that's the Torloc in me. Come on, I'll race you home."

It was worse than their youthful imaginations could have conjured: they had been missed. The sword had been missed.

'Why?' their mother demanded, worry and ire striking

mutual sparks from her eyes' normal silver serenity.

Irissa paced to release the tension that had coiled around her since midafternoon, when both disappearances had been discovered. Kendric sat on the edge of a table, looking troubled but unshaken, the sword lying aslant beside him.

They all met in the family common room - an inno vation Irissa and Kendric had brought to Rengarth to safeguard their privacy. No one witnessed the children's belated shame, the parents' fear and anger, but themselves.

'You.' Irissa swirled to a stop, her dark hair flying beneath the containing band of an Iridesium circlet at her temples. She faced Javelle, a paler, slighter version of herself whose amber-warm eyes held a sullen sorrow.

You are the elder,' Irissa told her daughter. 'And apparently the instigator. You should have known better. At your age I was-'

'An ignorant barefoot seeress in Rindell,' Kendric reminded her, his tone managing to be both fond and cautionary.

Irissa whirled on him, unleashing her tight-reined fear. 'She was - they were out alone in the wilds of Rengarth, that even natives do not traverse lightly. And they had taken your sword-!' 'My sword. I am the aggrieved party; I should rebuke to the degree I feel it necessary." mete out Irissa considered, then slapped her hands to her sides and went to stand beside Kendric. 'Mete,' she invited.

The children silently regarded their parents. Irissa and Kendric were awesome by any standards - child or adult. To the people of Rengarth, they had been Ruler and Reginatrix for the past eighteen years. More, they were legendary strangers, wanderers of many worlds, the first outlanders to find and enter Rengarth in generations.

To any who confronted the pair, they made a combi nation formidable in any world. Irissa, six feet tall, was a Torloc seeress at the long-lived peak of her kind's magical powers, like her kind still young-girl youthful and bound to be for many, many years. Yet she possessed a certainty only great inner and outer power conveys.

Kendric's uncommon height alone marked him in any world's crowd-seven feet from chestnut-thatched head to sillac-hide-booted feet. His birthright had claimed him the High Seat of Rengarth as heir of a fallen Ruler and Reginatrix. His pregnant mother had spirited him to another place through a magical gate the world of Rule where he grew up as a warrior Wrathman and had encountered Irissa by a forest pond in Rindell.

Together they had survived many challenges to body, mind, heart, and soul. None had proved as deeply reward ing, puzzling, and frustrating as parenthood.

Kendric cleared his throat. 'Tell me about the leave weavers."

Javelle and Thane exchanged a glance, then Thane answered.

'Like grassweavers - or at least the grassweavers you and Mother encountered on the way to Frostforge years ago, before we were born.'

'We know when it was,' Irissa put in dryly, absently braiding and unbraiding her foremost locks, never a good sign.

'I named them leaveweavers on the spot,' Thane said. 'They looked like the grassweavers you described, only smaller.'

'Smaller!' Javelle was disbelieving. "They were huge.'

'They just looked that way because they had you circled.' 'Circled?' Now Irissa was incredulous. 'Javelle, you were surrounded by these creatures with no means to repel them?'

'With no magic!' Javelle answered, tears suddenly thickening her voice. 'I had the sword.'

'What happened?' Kendric interjected.

Javelle spun to face him, but was silent until Thane broke in. 'I caught up with her just then. I...' He looked to Irissa, explaining himself to Irissa. 'I... touched the leaveweavers to powder.'

She nodded understanding. Torloc magic was an out pouring of hands and eyes, a kind of witchery with will. No Torloc male had ion when the wombwitch had presented their secondborn.

His joy at fathering a son shone dimly through a greater wonder at finding the infant eyes off-colored one a strange, luminous gold; the other the pure silver of a Torloc seeress.

Irissa had immediately known Thane for a radical permutation on the Torloc family tree. Her Torloc kin - beyond reach in Edanvant - still did not suspect what a revolution in the ancient struggle for power between Torloc men and women was aborning and abrewing in Rengarth.

Perhaps they never would. She and Kendric, and their offspring, could no more leave Rengarth than they had been supposed to be capable of finding it.

Irissa smiled at her son, knowing he explored his powers in a world that accepted magic, knowing that he was not kept ignorant and manipulated, as she was at his age.

Kendric was watching Javelle.