Seven Swords

Chapter 12

'And if you go on alone, as I did, generation after generation?'

'I go on, Irissa straightened, feeling wind sifting through the vanishing Spectral City, feeling her precious time blowing away in stinging grains of sand. 'Speak to me, Finorian, of gates and Rengarth and a remedy for Kendric's mortality. He is Ruler of Rengarth now, born of magic stock. Still, despite all that, he... ages.'

'Even I aged - ultimately,' Finorian snapped, 'as you will, too, should you be as unfortunate to live as long. What is that specter at your hip, that bit of white fog I innot focus upon?'

Irissa smiled. A cat. I found it in a well.'

Finorian was silent for a good long time, so long her face fractured into isolated features upon the water - two askew eyes, some serpentine strands of white hair, a mouth in mid-sentence being driven into different directions.

Irissa despaired. Who would have thought the Old Woman of the Well would be one so innately hostile to Kendric? Although, at the end, even Finorian had softened toward him.

The phantom mouth was moving on the pale green water, quickly.

'You have come to the right well, seeress. Know this: there is no gate from or to Rengarth, save these wells. Be quiet! There is little time, as you said. Only one who is a specter - or part-specter can pass. That is how the pale pair from Edanvant came to Rengarth through a well they were mostly mere spirit already. I see nothing of the phantom about you.

'But. There is indeed a way to grant Kendric a life span as elongated as his body. And it is not magical at all. He left his sword, one of the Six Swords of Rule, in Rindell Pond when he left Rule with you. Only that sword will - melded with the mind-made sword he con jured in the Inlands - prolong his life. You must fetch it to him.'

'How? If I cannot leave Rengarth? If there is no gate?"

Finorian's face was a glint of surface reflections. Beneath Irissa's weight, the well wall was eroding with every passing moment. She felt thin sunlight on her back and saw the city around her fading to morning mist.

Only the motion-dappled wellwater still kept its spectral shape. She leaned closer to read Finorian's disintegrating lips. The words came to her ears like a distant whisper.

'It will take more than a seeress's Far Focus to find a way from Rengarth, more than a Wrathman's mighty arm and wayward will. More even than a white cat this time. I wish I could know the outcome... it promises to be interesting. You have always given me that.

"The sword,' Finorian's revenant hissed. "The seventh sword, Irissa, will answer your need. And you are it lies in Rule, where even magic has died.'

Irissa leaned toward the dark water that was turning violently green, as everything around her was. She felt she was leaning into a bottomless glass of borgia in search of her own reflection.

A sharp reminder on her arm etched a warning into her flesh.

Careful,' a sardonic voice cautioned behind her. "You'll fall in and get more than wet in what's left of that well.'

Irissa jerked back, finding herself standing in a Ren garthian meadow staring intently at a patch of green grass the wind whipped this way and that, as if trying to read fortunes in their patterns.

She absently put her hand to her arm. The palm came away with a pattern of red, random dots. The cat, weigh ing heavy on her shoulder, insinuated its gawky head next to hers again. Whiskers tickled deep in her ear, as did a low voice.

Another journey - save that it can't be made. Your conversation has begun to ring a bell. I recall a rather overbearing fellow, all bluster and no finesse. I hope he is not to be involved in this inconvenient journey that is impossible.'

You are Felabba,' Irissa accused softly, finding it as hard to believe her own words as she had found Finorian's unpalatable.

Felabba, Melabba, does it matter? I have many lives and many names and more memories. Sometimes they do not all coincide.'

'Then I shall call you Brittlebones, not Bitterbones as Kendric did,' Irissa threatened, lifting the cat to Thunder mist's withers for the ride back to Solanandor Tierze.

'Hardly appropriate.' The cat arched its back into an agile half-hoop. 'Kendric, hmm? I can hardly contain my desire to see this person that so rubs Finorian the wrong way.'

The cat curled into a decidedly larger lump than before at the fore of Irissa's saddle, forcing her back against the cantle. Irissa gathered the reins, studying the vacant grasslands for a moment. Perhaps the Spectral City would someday vanish utterly. Even exiled spirits, like mortal had her essence gone? It was a marvel to evoke the Eldress men, must have a limited longevity. And Finorian, where again, even for a moment.

Irissa sighed deeply, a sign as much of resolve as of anxiety. She urged Thundermist into a canter that had the cat hanging on for all of its dubious lives.

'Despite doomsayers,' Irissa announced, 'I find myself optimistic. Finorian has told me what I craved - the sword that was Six is now Seven and is the answer to my quest. And where there are barriers, there are ways around them. And Kendric is not overbearing, but otherwise he has not changed a bit, Felabba. And it is I who can hardly wait for him to look upon you again - whatever age or incarnation you claim.

'It shall be,' Irissa promised, 'in Finorian's exquisite understatement, interesting.

This,' Kendric demanded incredulously, is the sorry object of your quest?'

A silence prevailed, during which Kendric glowered at the object atop the table. The object atop the table glowered back. It was, of course, the cat.

This,' he continued after a strained moment, 'is the prize to be pried from your mysterious journey, the pur pose you would not speak of? And why not it is indeed unspeakable.'

Irissa burst into laughter then, as Kendric's highest dudgeon met its match in the lithe white cat's icy superi ority. Secretly, she was much relieved. Her return with the cat obscured the true object of her mission. That she was not yet willing to confide.

Kendric, she knew, was as secretly enjoying his re acquaintance with an old adversary. He had planted huge fists on his hips as he stalked around the table, inspecting the creature from whisker to tail.

The cat's emerald-green eyes never left Kendric. Its head followed his movements with a liquid, lazy grace.

'It seems to have improved in the washing,' Kendric noted at last. "The coat is brighter, the whiskers longer, the teeth whiter. Still, not a prepossessing animal, by any stretch of the-'

The cat stretched an idle paw and batted Kendric's elbow as he passed. Kendric responded by pouncing on the narrow torso and lifting the cat high above his head.

'Strike me, will you? Such impertinence could leave you high and dry.'

'Kendric, it's just a kitten,' Irissa soothed. This one was never "just a kitten," if this is indeed a version of Felabba.'

'It speaks.'

'Not to me,' Kendric answered in a tone that demanded demonstration.

The cat drooped over his hand limp-limbed, taking advantage of its tree-high perch to stare idly at the chamber's stained-glass ceiling. Since a flock of Rengarth's ample birdlife was suspended between the glass and glittering net, the view was doubly interesting to the cat.

Kendric lowered his arms. "Flex your claws, will you? It is as intractable as ever, save it is blessedly silent

'What would one say to a wall?' the cat asked tartly as its paws touched table again.

Kendric smiled grimly. 'And contrary as ever. I knew if I praised its silence I should be honored with its voice. 'You are both unfailingly predictable,' Irissa said fondly 'Now... Kitty, If you won't claim Felabba's identity or her name-'

'Not Kitty,' the beast begged, turning in a circle as it settled down to bathe its hindquarters between inter rogations. 'Proper names are vital, didn't this... legendary Felabba teach you this?"

'It is not the same cat,' Irissa said, turning to Kendric as if she'd finally made up her mind. 'As you say, it's much younger than the Felabba we knew." 'It speaks,' he contradicted Irissa with her own argument.

It speaks. Yet it was born of a crystal shard pulled from some other world's water, and an immersion in a Spectral City well matured it. Still, it is young and has shown no great gift for magic. Perhaps it will entertain the children.'

They are getting old for such simple entertainment.

The cat paused, its tongue drooping roselike from its mouth. 'My kind is never simple and rarely an entertain ment,' it suggested tartly.

'Felabba it is,' Kendric named it. In memoriam.' He turned to Irissa. 'I am glad to see you back, even with this in hand. How did you know such a creature lurked out there? Did it call you?'

Something did, Irissa evaded. "Kendric, the Spectral City is... dying.'

All magical things are prone to... eventual evaporation.

As are all mortal ones?"

'No, not so fast as mortal ones. But still, the city may have haunted these grasslands for centuries. You can't expect everything to wear as well as you do.'

No. Irissa thought a moment. 'But I can try to make them.'

As well command a cat.' He glanced to Felabba to find the disconcerting eyes focused on Irissa. Kendric's unease swelled inside him like a secret. Part of his discomfort came from confronting an old familiar in new alien form.

No matter what he called the cat, it simply had not the age and thorny wisdom of its namesake. Most of his disquiet came from contemplating Irissa. She was becoming as inexplicable as their offspring - moody, secretive.

He doubted he could survive three Torloc tempests that chose to brew at once. He turned to the bottomless goblet of borgia, Scyvilla's for-once-apt gift, and drained it. The cat watched dis approvingly, as if miffed by his rough and ready con sumption of such silken borgia. Kendric shrugged.

He had never been a sipper at life, and didn't intend to start now. 'What do you think?' Irissa asked the children at sunfall when she presented the cat during the before-dinner family hour. Silent for a change, Javelle looked to Thane. They burst out laughing together. Thane had hoped to find Felabba and produce her himself, Javelle tattled.

'He still can,' Kendric put in. This is a pale imitation of the real Felabba.' How so?' Thane curiously circled the cat, which once again occupied a tabletop. The animal yawned as Kendric enumerated the original Felabba's many gifts and good graces.

"This is too.... young and sleek a cat. The real Felabba was somewhat crooked of spine as well as intention. Its coat was matted here and there from the lazy application of its tongue. Yet that tongue thought nothing of applying its sandy side to criticizing myself and your mother at every turn.'

Felabba the Second yawned and began biting, with icy hauteur, the hair between its toes.

'Is it female, like the original?" Javelle wanted to know.

'I have not... looked,' Kendric admitted. Perhaps you two would care to investigate."

They started forward eagerly, Thane at the fore. The cat's gaze never left them. Its black pupils slitted to the width of one of Irissa's eyelashes, although no light had increased in the twilight room.

Thane can do it,' Javelle said, pausing.