Seven Swords

Chapter 1

'Well,' she said, addressing no one, 'At least I have some talent as a thief.'

She sighed and regarded the empty land, ignoring the chatter of a nearby brook. The meadow shook its long green hair back and forth as if to dry it by the light of the three suns rolling slowly up the sky.

A s***h of snow-frosted mountains glittered at the fringe of the rumpled land. Over her shoulder, where she glanced with guilty regularity, the spires of a sprawling city shone alabaster in the bright daylight. The girl wiped her embroidered sleeve over her damp brow, simultaneously pushing back a corona of wiry brown hair. Next to her, a dappled bearing-beast pawed the turf.

'I know. I seldom ask you to carry more than myself.' She stretched to unbind a burlap-wrapped object fixed to the saddle. A tall girl, she still had to struggle to free the binding. The object swung toward the ground, shed ding its homely burlap skin. Sunlight glanced off a length of n***d steel.

She caught the falling sword hilt, grunting.

'Great, unbending clumsy thing! You'd be better used carving a banquet boar. Stand differently-!' up, will you, until I say

She braced the weapon upright, its six-foot length from point to hilt head topping her own by inches. It spun in her grasp as she balanced it uneasily on its point. The heavy hilt swayed from side to side, pulling her with it.

'Be still!' She pressed her hands down on the crossbar until the point bit the tough sod. 'For a reputedly magical thing, you are most unwieldy.

' She sighed again and regarded the rear for pursuers.

constant ripple of windblown grass and running water made both foreground and background shimmer. This earth was as dappled as her bearing-beast. Few trees punctuated the meadows. She had passed under the shade of the only one in view.

Tall and broad, the tree dripped green leaves, each centered with an iridescent blue eye. The girl's mother had compared them to a 'weepwillow' tree in her birthworld. And then her father would smile at her mother and they would say no more of things that apparently mattered only to them.

The sword mattered to her father, the girl knew that never mind that it had hung ceremonially on the walls for as long as she could see, and could remember what she saw. Her mother had insisted the sword was life itself to her father. She should not have taken it.

A sound made her start, sweaty palms sliding off the crossbar. She waited, but it did not recur. Perhaps it was only the... creak... of a tree branch. She wasn't used to such noises in a mostly treeless world. The tree was squeaking in the wind, showing off for a rare visitor, that was all, she told herself, wiping a palm on her braid welted trousers.

Half-released, the sword's inevitable weight sank against her youthfully slight shoulder. She braced it with her own weight.

'What shall I do with you now that I have you? In the tales, such things have a tendency to speak and call one "master." You do not seem the talkative sort. Where, then, does your magic lie? What can you do for me?'

The sword was silent, reputed powers. its weight more eloquent than its 'Oh! I should not have taken you.' She wanted to sit down, but dared not. Once she sank under the sword's weight it would overcome her. A daring exploit would become a laughable escapade.

Her arms shook, the muscles finally protesting their overwork of the past few hours. She had thought that by taking the sword, having it to herself, studying it, she could learn its magic. It did not seem to have any magic - except by reputation and that exaggerated.

She leaned the hilt against the bearing-beast's dappled shoulder, but it minced away on silvery hooves. Above, glossy leaves rustled, shifting colors as they moved azure eyes blinking green and then blue again.

She'd never been near enough a tree to observe its vagaries. The magic the wind wove through its branches dazzled her more than the vaunted powers of the leaden sword.

As she watched, rings of translucent coils arched from the foliage, glittering like silver samite.

Stunned, she stood gaping at the display, as if the tree had suddenly turned into some Solanandor Tierze merchant slinging tricolor silks into the marketplace sunlight.

'Javelle - the sword!'

She turned, long hair whipping her cheek. Something was cresting the hill behind her. A familiar yet unwanted face - twisted into an unfamiliar expression hung - over a bearing-beast's neck. The rest of the beast rose into view as if levitated as it galloped up the rise. The arrival was swift and surprising, thanks to silence. She couldn't hear its hooves pounding the turf until the entire creature was visible.

Despite the warning, the girl froze, surprise-stricken on two fronts. Around her the gauzy coils curled into a circle, assuming a serpentine shape.

Her alarmed bearing-beast tried to sidle away, but its shaggy side bumped the encompassing coils. The beast whinnied its distaste, then crowded closer to the circle's center, to the girl still upholding the long silver sword.

'Leaveweavers!' the advancng rider warned as he neared. 'Strike them.'

She looked to her feet, where the diaphanous lengths writhed knee-high. She no longer took them for webspin or ground mist or some phenomenon of the shimmering land, but an enemy, however unknown. She clasped the hilt's tapered crossbar and backed away, allowing the

sword to angle almost horizontally to the ground.

Her fingers twined the rune-inscribed hilt, tightening until the cryptic symbols impressed her palms. No one knew the runes' meaning - no one living, at least that was what her parents claimed. Her shoulders tautened to lift the sword. Had all the weight been hilt-borne, she could have done it.

Instead, the weight ran like mercury down the entire six feet of hilt and sword. Attempting to control it with untried muscles was like trying to hold a wild bearing beast on a line of meadow-floss.

The only magic she'd found in the sword was the way its inordinate length became a leash that bound her. She scraped the tip over the ground, watching grasses crushed rather than cut. The point prodded the leaveweaver bellies, but they only whirled away.

Beyond them, the oncoming bearing-beast pulled up sharply as its rider pounded to the ground. He drew no sword, but reached out as though to wrestle the serpents' translucently twining bulks.

Inside her circle, the girl sank down beside the fallen sword and watched from within the ring of airy bodies. She didn't know what to expect, only the inevitable outcome.

The boy he was younger than she, smaller than she pressed his hands along the quivering surface of leave weaver belly. An instant alteration made their spinning pause. Their glittering crystal coloration dulled, hard ened. They became as pale as old bone and, like old bone, faded to ashes.

Leaveweaver substance sifted to the grasses, catching on the wafting blades, leaving a dust-mote haze in their wake. The boy looked up from odd-colored eyes - one amber-gold, the other quicksilver-gray. He panted, then squatted, studying the girl across the gulf between them as if leaveweavers still separated them.

'Why?' he asked.

She was the elder. 'Why did you follow me?'

He grinned. A notion that you were doing something

you weren't supposed to. I always get an itch in my palm ... when you're up to something."

'Itch! You only want to cause trouble."

'How can I when you're always there before me?' His head shifted sheepishly. 'Javelle... I was worried Mother would find out about you riding off again. You know how she frets when you wander alone.'

'I "ride off" because I wish to be alone.'

He glanced to the ashy ring of grass. You would have been with them.'

During a pause she tore out a sheaf of grass and braided it.

'Thank you,' she said without looking up. 'I'd heard of grassweavers, but not leaveweavers. How did you know?'

He shrugged, his expression blending fifteen-year-old wisdom with childish pride. 'It just came to me. There's a lot more in Rengarth than anybody knows about - or will know about until somebody comes into the wildlands to explore it.'

'I did,' she reminded him.

'And nearly got eaten!'

The relish he took in the words made her laugh at last. 'Oh, Thane, you are such a . . . an infant sometimes."

'Look at what being older got you. Mother may be worried, but Father will be-'

'Furious?'