Seven Swords

Chapter 15

Thunder rumbled in the distance, as it always did.

The place in which he lived was vast, and dark - so dark that clouds roiled in its upper spaces and lightning snapped under the unseen eaves.

It contained many rooms, though the rooms themselves were so huge they felt unconfined. It was never easy to tell when he moved from one chamber to another. And it didn't matter, for every room mirrored every other room - dark and vast and empty.

Eeryon could hardly tell the passage of time, either, though it sometimes felt as if huge, lazy eons had rolled cloud-silent through these great rooms. At other times, he perceived days and months and years as no more than a clump of dustballs in the corners he couldn't see.

The only thing he had to pass the time - besides the company of his pet, a disembodied demon Eeryon had trapped in a passing thunderhead was his lessons.

Today, he was learning how to eat.

'Why?' he had demanded. His existence had been whole from the first. Shattered memories revealed nothing earlier but more space and more dark and more commands from the Dark Man who commanded this space and time. His magic-master encouraged questioning, although he never brooked having his answers disregarded.

'Why?' Eeryon had asked. 'I don't need to eat.' It was true. Nothing here ate, except each other and that for reasons other than sustenance.

'You may need to be seen eating, in places you will be.' The magic-master encouraged curiosity but not challenge.

'Where?'

'In worlds where you will go.'

'When?'

'When I say.'

Eeryon sighed to recall that conversation, brief lightning bolts. The two-pronged instrument the master had given him - calling it a fork - lay in his slack hand the tines prodding a lump of some white mushy stuff.

'Eat,' the master had thundered, 'and ask questions later when you have proven your abilities.'

This 'eating' was perhaps the most distasteful task the master had required thus far. Eeryon shoved a sodden lump toward his mouth, his tepid senses recoiling from the mere approach of something with the smell, texture, and look of food.

He had never eaten, not even as the master was fond of boasting loudly to the unseen spirits that called from time to time 'mother's milk.'

Eeryon wondered what milk was. And a mother. But there were many things the master did not see fit to tell him. He stabbed another lump of food into his mouth, then stiffened. The morsel never arrived, though he still felt the thrusting motion of his arm.

Eeryon held his breath, although that made no differ ence. Another of the Dark Moments had come. They never announced themselves. There would be a tingle in his limbs followed by a wave of weakness. His sight would dim, then paradoxically sharpen.

Finally, he would feel himself fade from his own mind. His senses - never intense - withdrew as his consciousness was cloaked in a deeper dark than the night all around him. He could not even feel his heart beat, though he knew that the master would be angered to know of this defection of Eeryon's.

The magic-master's words came back. 'You must be reliable, Eeryon, or you will be of no use to me.' That which was of no use to the master

The Dark Moments had come more although Eeryon could not say for how long. There was no 'long' in this place, no before and after, only a constant continuing.

He remembered first glimpsing himself in the Dark Mirror as it lay like a wet and sticky rug at the base of the deepest chamber. The black, gleaming surface had reflected him - all of him except his eyes. Fascinated, Eeryon had stared right through those eyes into twinkling empty darkness and had understood his awful difference. Even the cloud-demon had eyes, albeit three of them.

During Dark Moments, Eeryon suspected, all the rest of him shrank into a tight impervious ball and escaped through his empty eyes. Where he escaped, he didn't know. Although the master had educated him to a roster of many names - Rengarth, Rule, the Paramount Athanor, Rindell Pond, the Oracle of Valna, Mauvedona - none of them touched him any more concretely than a wandering cloud butting its way through the place's maze of massive rooms.

Eeryon felt a thickening of his face, felt his mouth gagged with cloud. The Dark Moment passed, and he was obediently swallowing the horrible food he must appear to like. Only one thing he took into himself truly sustained him, and that was knowledge.

'Very good.'

The magic-master was there, towering, his gloved hands folded into his sleeves.

Eeryon glanced down at his empty plate. It looked whole again, relieved of its pasty burden. Why couldn't he remain uncontaminated, too? But the magic-master always had a reason. Now he shared a minute portion of it.

'You may be required to exercise your eating talents sooner than you suspect. The worlds Within await you. You will find them close and confusing, but you are... to the press of power born. You will adapt well.' It was an order.

'What of the sword?' the boy asked in the face of this unprecedented confidence.

"The sword... moves in the water, attracting more eyes than mine - and yours. Premature as your fishing expedition was, I may have to send you sooner than I thought.

"To-?"

To the worlds f*******n us, as ours is f*******n them. You are my heir, Eeryon, but first you must prepare the way for my return, so there is something for you to inherit

'Heir?' The word was new to him.

'Never mind. Just serve me as you have - unquestion ingly. You know your purpose."

"To acquire the sword.'

'You know your goal.'

To bring it back to you."

'You know your means."

'Magic, the boy said promptly. 'All the magic that I may command."

'Against any foe."

Against any foe mortal or magical."

'In any world. 'In any world - Within or Without.'

The mage nodded, his golden beard and eyebrows glinting in the dimness. He pulled an arm free of his robe, his iridescent leather glove moving to Eeryon's head. Such a gesture was so unheard-of that the boy feared the glove would pass right through his brain.

But his senses remained solid, and the weight of a bony hand followed the curve of his skull.

'You are my son, my heir,' the magic-master intoned with a deep undercurrent of emotion. You are my key that will free me from the... terrible empty wastes of Without, where only my powers keep my small domain here free of consumption. You will return me to the worlds Within that are mine by right of magic. My survival rides on your untried powers.'

'I almost called the sword to my hand from the Dark Mirror!'

"The sword may be called, but will not answer. You must capture it in the common, mortal way, by questing for and claiming it. You must bear it back, fighting obstacles. A sword can take life, and that sword - in the wrong possession - will take my long life from me. To win immortality, one must risk mortality. You must engage upon a trial of bone and blood as well as magic.

'What do I know of such things?"

Little, the magic-master admitted. But you will learn, quickly. Your talent is inborn.' He turned in that motion that preceded his abrupt departure, then paused. 'I give you a parting gift, my son."

Eeryon's face looked up, expectant. He had received no gift but lessons and loneliness.

'My name,' said the image, smiling fire-white through the golden bush of his beard. 'Ger frey.'

The name was only the second Eeryon had heard applied to anything he had seen, besides his own, and he had not really seen himself.

In that moment, the magic-master's quest became his, as he became the magic-master's, as he became son to father and mage to mage.

Thane? Are you becoming a recluse?'

Javelle udled on the threshold to her mother's greeting mom, fresh from a ride on Thundermist. Her clothes were wind creased, her coiled hair even more ruffled, and her cheeks were burnished apple-red.

With the shutters half drawn, the chamber was dim, it by the random glitter of the tapestry threads. Thane sat cross logged atop the table in the room's center. He was Swing intently at the walls.

Thane?" Javelle clumped into the room in her riding boots, forcing her presence into his view. I'm thinking.' He sounded as if that should quiet her.

Thinking.' Her tone managed to make the pursuit seem unprecedented. 'Well, that is a departure.'

He ignored her, keeping his chin cradled on his fists, which were braced in turn on his akimbo knees.

Mother will have your skin for scratching her weep willow tabletop, Javelle tried next. I haven't scratched it.' You will. Javelle's fingertips stroked the glossy surface. Wood was rare in Rengarth; this table was polished to a glaze just shy of mirror-bright. She kept silent, regarding her brother's profile.

He withstood her scrutiny, or worse, ignored it as easily as he did Javelle herself. I haven't seen you for three days," she said. Lucky you.'

Yes, but... She boosted herself atop the table beside him. Oh, this wood is chill...! Thane, is something the matter?

Javelle would never admit it, but her brother's absence had revealed how much she depended upon his presence for company, motivation, and invigorating doses of aggravation.

I'm just studying these tapestries of Mother's, that's all. I never really looked at them before."

These?" Javelle eyed the somber walls with their rec tangles of storied patterns. Worms of reflective thread writhed across the woven surfaces as the air shifted the hangings. Perhaps you need light-'She moved to jump down and go unshutter the window.

'No!'

Thane, why not?'

'I can... see them better in the semi-dark, that's all. If I half-close my eyes, the... things... in them move, live again."

That's the wind, silly. They always waver like that. Thane, you never cared about the tapestries before. You never even noticed them. What is the matter with you?'

'A nosy sister.'

'Merely curious. It hardly concerns me if you wish to stay indoors and moon over some moldy hangings.'

'If Mother made them, they will never molder."