Seven Swords

Chapter 55

A flotilla of jet-black moths, their wings softer than moss-velvet, fluttered around everyone's heads, circled like reiling spots before their eyes.

irissa almost lost the sword as she evaded the airborne tackers. Javelle helped uphold it while Thane sent a tering array of gold and silver flutterbys against the ark moths.

Fluttering wings clashed like swords until only dark and bright powder remained to sift to the grass. A snake with shining black scales the size of leafmeal

scraped over the flattening grasses, the passage of its

body strumming a sinister song.

Wind and water moved to the notes of that melody. stirred like motes in the sun-slashed air. There was no sun here, only a leaking light that filtered through the thick needles of the pine trees, that reflected from the secret bottom of the pond, that came from twin hilts, both gleaming desperately against the dark.

The black snake shed its skin as it crawled, each un veiled self growing larger and darker. It reached the boots of Eeryon - forgotten Eeryon, who seemed to have vanished although he was still clearly visible. The snake began weaving upright on its fattening coils, a thing of such black velvet subtlety that the onlookers hardly believed they saw it.

Dark spiraled around the unmoving boy and then it whispered in his ear.

'The sword is yours. Take it.' He edged away from the wall of swaying scales. 'I... cannot stand against them all.'

'You cannot stand against me,' the voice as dry as dead leaves said. "Take it. Claim it. Claim your reward from me."

'No!' Eeryon turned away from everyone and everything serpent, sword, the people witnessing the scene.

The blackness and the snake form was not so much a real presence now, as an absence - screwed tighter around the boy dressed in black until it seemed to garb him in something even darker.

I have my means, my vengeance, and my rewards. Everything you are is honed to claim that sword. Do it!" No! I don't know why you want the sword, but I do Laure why they do. And their need is life and light. I've wough of the worlds outside Without to know the de of such as you and I have to weight here."

The spent roared like a wave of wind.

'Spoiled son. For this did I nourish you? It is not yours

to ask questions, only to answer my needs." "Thane and Javelle answer their father's needs without his asking them, without defrauding another. Theirs is the deeper claim, the greater need. You have life eternal, Father, and magic and Without. What can these people have that you would need?"

'Loyalty!' the voice thundered. 'Gratitude. You are bereft of such qualities."

You never taught me that, Eeryon said quietly, although the anguish of his answer shook in his voice. You taught me only what I needed to know to serve you; you never taught me how to serve you even if you didn't know what you needed. My loyalty and gratitute go to these others And your obedience?" To you, as always. I shall return to Without

Without the sword?'

I shall return to abide by your will. But here I am not myself, as you have shaped me. Here I am... something other. If you do not like it, let me return." If you do not bear the sword, there is no reason for you

to return, shadow! You are mere scum from the top of an

old well. Without fresh water beneath, you grow rancid

in my sight. Go. Or stay. You shall fade in ignorant inches

and never know why.'

Eeryon began trembling - not in the way Kendric had moments before, or the earth had, but in the manner water quivers at the buffeting of raindrops, like a sub stance being torn apart by the bludgeoning of its very kind and nature.

He didn't speak now. The others could barely distinguish his dark form against the encompassing blackness. Only few wispy tendrils of silver sparkled on his sleeves - and they were snapping, breaking into lint.

Irissa could stand it no longer. She moved toward the antwined dark, her silver eyes about to flare.

A smooth black snake's head, so velvety it was furred, ashed out of the air toward her. 'Would you interfere in ily business?" the serpent demanded. Its coils - and

they seemed to be endless looped toward her, hovered at the edge of the sword still in Irissa's hands. Behind her, Kendric stirred, his mind-made blade lifting Before either of them could challenge the interloper, a bay sounded behind them. Briarwhip came rolling forward like a thunderhead, its form changing even as it

charged.

With a draught of noxious sulfur it sped past Irissa and

swallowed the snake into its expanded form. The two elements boiled together the invisible darkness of the serpent, the altered, elongated shape of the cloud-beast. Eeryon watched numbly from beyond the combatants, knowing no more than the others why his faithful pet should now bite the unseen yet magical hand that had fed its very existence.

The serpent form was swelling now, too, bubbling into a great black thunderhead. Gray and black cloud contended in their vaporous way, and each mixing of the two resulted in a re-forming of the individuals.

Now there was no doubt that the serpent had been a sending of Geronfrey, for the sorcerer's shape was growing detailed before them, down to the dark gauntlets that covered his hands. And Briarwhip. . . the creature was growing human by the inch, its backbone spines elongating into flailing hair, its coarse coat billowing into flowing robes.

'You have your chance, Geronfrey, a new voice crackled from the gray cloud - a voice of echo and distance, yet strong for all that. Kendric stepped forward, shocked. 'I know that voice.'

'Who?" Javelle and Thane asked in unison, watching the conflict with wide eyes and little understanding. "The dark cloud is Geronfrey,' Irissa put in, 'or, rather. Geronfrey's emissary in this world.'

'We guessed that,' Javelle said. "But why does Eeryon's

cloud-hound attack its true master?'

'Perhaps it has never been Geronfrey's subject.' Kendric smiled grimly. 'First his shadow son turns on him, now the shadow's clouded shadow. I almost pity the man.

Don't, Irissa advised with a shudder. Sudden com prehension swept her face free of worry. 'But can't you guess what who Briarwhip really is? Her eyes studied the children's puzzled faces.

Javelle's cleared first. "Finorian! Can it be? Are you sure?

She strode into the sky to fight the evil over Edanvant. Afterward, only dark and light clouds could be seen clashing in the forms of Finorian and another, but... If something of Finorian survived that encounter, why would she embody it in a thing as lowly as Briarwhip? Thane objected. If something of Finorian survived," Kendric ruminated

grimly, it would take any form to survive."

Finorian may not have perished in her battle with

Geronfrey, She must have been cast into Without after

ward.' Irissa smiled suddenly. She was waiting there, all this time! Long before Geronfrey was forced to take the gate to Without to flee us in Rengarth, Finorian was already there, although perhaps not in physical form. She attached herself to that shadow son. Finorian had always been hungry for a young one to rear. She watched him, shadowed him, saw to it that Geronfrey would never break his will

You give a cloud great credit, Kendric sighed. He looked weary, too weary to stand and too weary to seek to sit. Irissa was enchanted by the rightness of her theory. 'So

now, cloud battles cloud once again. Finorian fights to stop Geronfrey from impinging on a world f*******n to him, for Geronfrey remains barred from acting directly in the worlds outside Without.'

Then he stalks us from afar still,' Thane said in sudden rage. 'We will never be free.' He fails, Thane,' Irissa said, 'He always fails.'

'Does he?' A tone of adult challenge made Irissa look quickly to Javelle. An expression of bitter reality curdled her daughter's face. 'Look to Father and say again that Geronfrey always fails." Frozen for an instant, Irissa stared at her daughter,

stared at the silvery metal serpent banding her brow. The tiny pale scales teemed with an aurora borealis of light and color, bright as bruises. She turned to Kendric despite the seething contention

between the clouded forces only a few feet away. He was nearly unconscious on his feet. It was a moot point whether man upheld sword or sword supported man. Neither seemed likely to stand upright long. As both swayed to the whim of the earth's magnetic call, Kendric's eyes were falling shut. And the sword's hilt-light was dimming.

'Quickly!' Irissa gestured the children over. 'Support your father. I must meld the swords

With an effort that looked beyond her strength, she swung the ancient sword alongside the one that echoed it in every line, Between her entwined fingers, only a faint luminescence leaked from the hilt.

Clouds towered over the five figures, boiling as if formed from corrosive steam, black and white blended into an overhanging gray.

Irissa sensed the force hovering to distract her. She even sensed a familiar if not well-loved voice advising, 'Pay no mind to so much disembodied vapor, seeress. I will blow it away to the farthest reaches of Without ...

Join the swords. Irissa repeated her own instructions to

herself. Easily thought, not easily done. She was aware of a darker cloud hovering on her inner horizon... one that could end Kendric's fading life force here and now Yet another cloud formed behind Kendric - a yearning glimmering puff of silver mist dappled with a Quickstone waterfall of gems.

Irissa caught her breath. Even as she opened her mind to her magic to rejoin the swords, so she opened herself to another natural rejoining between herself and the - spectral shadow self once called Issiri!

Then another shadow slipped between Irissa and her faint self-image . . . had a new champion as unlikely as Finorian - intervened? Or could the child betray both its parents?

Eeryon.

Irissa barely waited to consider the shadow son's motives in separating her from that side of herself that had been his phantom mother. Instead, Irissa cast motives and fear and anger aside, delving into the pure silver well of her magic, intent on dipping from it freely no matter who sought to steal the silent thunder of that inner storm.

Her hands tightened on the conjoined crossguards, feeling the metal warm to the rhythm of her pulsebeat. She saw the hilt-lights well up silver in the center of her eyes. Both weapons had been made - and unmade. Now they would have to be made one reforged a fourth and last time into one indivisible, perhaps immortal object.

Such matters took all of Irissa's heart and mind and spirit. She had no time to mind anyone else, not even her children, not even Kendric.

Let me pass.' The creature from the sea glimmered

moonlight-bright, and its loveliness made Eeryon ache.

Your silver sleeves have gone ragged, boy, since last we

alked. And they were so pretty..

Eeryon wasn't sure how he found himself standing mard between his once-private apparition and the family hind him. That was odd. He'd never considered himself have enough 'self to stand in anything's way. First he ad defied the sending of his father's powers. Now he layed barrier to a wave of fog that could easily flow over - even through him, he suspected.

It didn't. The figure remained scintillating on the heavy above the dark pond as if hung there to dry. A vapor finger unfurled from its cloudy robes and almost nched him. He flinched but felt nothing.

She glitters so,' the figure wailed, 'her silver eyes, her nds that hold sunshine in their fists. Let me pass. I am de for light. I must... absorb it, warm myself at it, at suck it, swallow it...

in the mist shifted as if to surge past him.