Seven Swords

Chapter 54

'Don't move!" the strange voice was shouting. Distant

stones echoed with the uneven, hurrying steps of an unseen newcomer. A ball of gold light bright as any multiplicity of suns swam toward them in the dimness. They helped each other up, Javelle maintaining custody of the sword because she would not release it.

'Don't move,' the voice behind the bobbing light threat ened. 'You have no right to slip in here by night. No right to disrupt the exhibits, to damage the installation, to dismantle a sword from its hangers. Give it to me.'

'It's heavy, Javelle said.

'A girl! What's a girl want with a sword? I can see why you boys would think it smart - a sword to mount at home and boast about... but a girl has no right to be

sneaking around in the dark stealing swords." 'We can't steal what belongs to us.'

'Belongs to you? Crazy. Now, look here. I'm armed. I warn you."

The voice let the ball of light spin until it illuminated his own form. He was only a little old man with a white pointed beard like a goat's at the end of his chin and watery eyes magnified by circular lenses of coldstone.

Is it Chaundre of the Inlands, do you think? Thane

whispered to Javelle. I remember our parents talking of

his seeing contrivance."

What would he be doing here in Rule? Stonekeepers never even traveled from keep to keep in their own world." Eeryon glanced from brother to sister and to the old man, mystified by their puzzling words.

Rule?" The old man gestured with both the thick rod that cast the bright light and some Iridesium-dark metal contrivance in his other hand. "The Golden Rule is to do unto others as you would have them do unto you, you've got that right enough. But you three thieves have no right to take what's not yours and even less to lose in ex change... but your liberty - oh, yes, a lot of long months you'll spend cooped up for this trick.

'We have a right,' Javelle said hotly, and we are not thieves. This is our father's sword.'

'Is it?" Eeryon asked suddenly. 'Perhaps his day is long past. Time may not run the same in every world. Perhaps another has inherited it and you steal it.'

'Our father liveshow can another have inherited sword? Thane argued. 'Your father left this land-'

his

'As yours did-' Javelle put in. "Geronfrey abandoned Rule also. He has no more right than our father . . .'

Fathers be damned,' growled the old man. 'And rights. I'm in charge here, I'm armed and no one shall take any property anywhere for any reason. It belongs here. And you three will be the only ones leaving, for quick incarceration.'

I see,' said Thane. 'You are the guardian of the place.' The old man straightened. He was wearing dark trousers and tunic, with a medallion glinting from one shoulder.

"Guardian, yes.'

'But we wouldn't have been allowed through the gate, Thane explained, 'had we no right to be here."

'So you had an accomplice inside. Who?" 'An accomplice Without,' Javelle said, smiling. The

secondborn cat, Felabba."

'Cats!' The old man shuddered, making his light dance and blind their eyes. 'Can't stand them. Sneak thieves, every last pussyfooted one of them. No one takes what i guard. No one. Now march!'

He gestured with the light of one hand and the dark.

ness in the other. They consulted each other's eyes and

shrugged. Javelle had held the sword during the interrogation; the young men bracketed either side of her, each ready to claim the weapon should her custody falter. She knew it as well as they, and was determined to hang on to it, no matter how heavy it weighed, to maintain the truce. She remembered her father's lesson that she could carry more than she thought.

Javelle took a step, dragging the sword with her. The tip struck stone, scraping tunelessly.

'Leave it,' the old man ordered. 'It's mine. It belongs here. You three have brought nothing here but trouble and that's all you'll take from here.

'No,' said Javelle stepping forward again. The old man raised the darkness in his right hand. The light in his left shook unaccountably.

'I don't care what claims you have. I don't care if you're just youngsters. No one takes from me-'

Simultaneous loops of silver and gold lashed from either side of Javelle like a forked serpent's tongue. With the same motion they entwined both talismans of light and dark and wrenched them from the old man's grasp.

The light hit the floor with a clank and rolled away like a renegade sun still shining fiercely. The dark implement clattered floorward also, sliding along stones until its form was lost.

The old man wailed as Thane and Eeryon each grabbed

an end of the sword Eeryon's shining palms, little suns in themselves, caught hold of the cutting end with no difficulty and ran. Javelle, disinherited, followed them after stooping to

retrieve her boots. Her foot stumbled over something hard on the floor. She tripped forward and ran, guided by the glow ahead - a mellow needle of light that was not the implement of a greedy old guardian wizard, but one she had seen before.

She followed the fleeing hilt-light of Kendric the Wrath

man's magic-ridden and one true longsword.

Kendric's head lifted. He listened.

'What is it?' Irissa's voice was husky with worry. Kendric pushed himself upright, using his sword for a

cane. 'Something tingled my palms,' he said with a weary smile. 'I took it for the old battle-itch, but my sword resonates so much that I can hardly hold it. Touch it.'

Irissa's fingertips lightly pressed the n***d steel near the hilt, feeling a deep vibration. 'How can you hold on

to it?' 'Not easily,' Kendric admitted, lacing his fingers around the leather-bound grip.

He balanced the point on the ground, actually dug into it. Nearby grasses shivered as if possessed of an ague. Then the earth itself trembled. Sudden wavelets dashed against the pond sides. The translucent veils of the facades to many worlds shook as if caught in a wind-wrack. Briarwhip jolted up to four unsteady feet and the two Felabbas leaped as with one mind to the lower branches of a pine, where they swayed with the moaning tree limbs,

'We will not hold our feet,' Irissa chattered between her teeth, barely keeping them from clamping her tongue. 'What's happening? What brute magic is about?"

Kendric shook his already shaking head. Coldstone sweat dewed his particolored skin. He stood as if forged from the metal he resembled, unmovable in a madly mobile world.

"The crux is shifting,' Irissa thought aloud. 'Soon we shall lose sight of the prism-gate. With that goes all chance of... of seeing our children again!' 'And the sword,' put in young Felabba sourly from her

unsteady perch.

At that very instant the sword hilt buckled from the clasp of Kendric's hands. Only his quick grab kept it upright and in his custody. We must not lose the sword,' Irissa warned. He only grunted his agreement, shaking like a man

mounted on a wildly bucking bearing-beast, his muscles

strung taut as bowstrings while he battled for control of

the sword.

Wait! What is that?" Irissa pointed to the elusive wind blown image of walls and doors. A feeble glow was blossoming at the heart of the plainest door. I cannot hold it!' Kendric burst out, leaning with the

sword at an angle toward the door. Then two booted feet and one unbooted broke the spectral door's tenuous surface in unison. A bolt of bright light clashed through, then several arms and faces. Three young people stood in the clearing before Irissa and Kendric - their faces flushed, the sword borne horizontal in their arms, like a dead body being returned to its kin from a far-off war.

'Here! Bring it here!' Kendric urged.

The gilt-haired boy on one end hesitated, but the others were too strong for him, and too obedient to another. All three moved forward, lifted the weapon upright. As sword raised to parallel sword, the earth softened its shaking. Grasses stood vertical again and waves flattened to mirror smoothness. The restless trees hushed and only Kendric shook in his arms alone, so weary were they from restraining the whole wild earth's will through the reins of his sword.

Kendric took several deep, ragged breaths. His face had paled so all could see the poison bruises running riot on the livid skin. Kendric looked nothing like himself, but he did resemble a man sick unto death.

Eeryon suddenly whirled away from him - saw Irissa, started and spun away yet again. 'You can have it,' he said, so low hardly anyone heard it. Irissa did, and so did Briarwhip. The beast advanced on spindly legs to Beryon, whimpering.

Kendric reached a palsied hand to the leather-bound hilt

Javelle and Thane kept custody of. Ancient leather flaked

from his fingers like the disintegrating cover of a book

old beyond memory. More light poured from the rune inscribed hilt beneath, fanning the flame within the duplicate hilt in Kendric's other hand. My blood was running cold,' he admitted, his face hopeful in the double hilt-light. "How did you find it,

obtain it?" 'Javelle got it,' Thane said suddenly. 'Javelle climbed up as she did before in Rengarth and got it down. Javelle found it. And then... He looked over his shoulder to the dark silhouette that was Eeryon. 'He helped."

'He did not hinder. Felabba the Younger said, mincing around the boy's dark-booted feet without touching him. "That much is certain."

'I thank you,' Kendric croaked in a poison-roughened voice. 'No children can gift their father better than employing their separate talents together - to bring him hope.'

Javelle and Thane stood rapt, silent, terrified to death. They had never seen their father stricken - even his limited mortality had only been a distant, unfelt threat to them. Now Kendric's altered aspect was dreadful enough to wring the hearts from them. Even Irissa's warnings of his mortality had not prepared them from the awful evidence of it.

'We must... join the two swords somehow,' Irissa said briskly, stepping into the triad. She'd agonized at the delay even as she'd allowed father and children their moment of mutual reunion and reevaluation.

The time of utter understanding and harmony between them passed. Time-suspended emotions between father and children broke like a bubble, a casting crystal. Eyes fell, feet shuffled back. Irissa caught the original sword's hilt in her own hands as the children surrendered it, already braced for its great weight.

'Somehow,' she repeated, narrowing her silver seeress's eyes at both weapons. Now came the moment when she

could do more than wait and worry. Now she could act! 'A most touching reunion,' came a cold coil of whisper in her ear.

Irissa's head jerked up to Kendric. 'Who spoke?' 'Not I.' He frowned beyond her to the forest. "I see a black bird perched in yon tree. Perhaps it talks."

Felabba!' Irissa ordered, never turning to see the tree in question or its dark-feathered percher.

Like paired hunting hounds the two cats turned with a liquid bound and made for the tree. Sharp claws sprang them up the trunk, but the black bird swept to earth like a big dark leaf just as they crawled out along the limb. The leaf wafted in an unseen updraught and rose higher

became a bat. It circled Irissa's head, flapping and croaking. Loose the sword, seeress, or it shall cut you,' the bat croaked.

I'll cut you,' Kendric responded, lifting his mind-made

blade. It... melted. Five feet of steel wavered, the hilt bent in his hands like a wand of butter.

I'm weak-' he began, as if blaming himself and ashamed.

'Not you.' Irissa struck at the flapping leafbat with one hand, but it tangled in her hair. She tossed her head in revulsion until her strands of dark hair snapped like whips. Iridesium sparks shot into the glade's murky air. The bat's fragile, leafy form cracked into brittle bits.

Irissa screamed her distaste of this sending shattering

on her person. Javelle and Thane rushed over to help flail

the remnants from her hair.