Seven Swords

Chapter 33

She began pacing the chamber's coiled limits, eyeing the stiff metallic scenes. If Geronfrey and his...shadow son had survived Without, so could her son talented Thane. And Javelle? her inner voice asked.

Irissa shook her head, though there was none to record the denying gesture. She didn't know... about Javelle. But if Thane could escape Without, surely he'd take Javelle on his tunic tails - hadn't he dogged her steps enough in Rengarth, didn't he owe his sister that?

Yes. Her children would survive Without, Irissa decided. Geronfrey had not even known that they had come here - another reason to think they had successfully passed through on their way to Rule. But... what of him, that... other boy? That unnamed,

unbirthdayed boy spawned upon a shadow and reared by

a renegade sorcerer in an empty abyss. She was harsh in her judgment, her prejudice, some inner voice warned her. Geronfrey's son was just a boy, like any other.

Not like any other!

Only a boy, beloved of his mother... Not any mother - a travesty, as Kendric once had called Issiri, that which should not have ever been allowed to be. As this sorcerer's son should not have been.

He is, as Geronfrey is. As his mother is ... -is not!

Irissa clutched her middle and hurled toward the Dark Mirror. It had brought her to this entrapping end. It would bring her out. She was no stranger to mirrors, not now when her mature powers had learned to face her own reflection.

Another reflection shadowed her in the mirror, not her own - a silver aura that exceeded the contours of her figure and shone like twin stars from the center of her eyes. Her own enhanced image enchanted her. She studied

the luminescent softness of the reflection, stared into the mirrored eyes until she detected the phantom play of green beneath the silver. Her whole figure shimmered and shifted as it rang through the rainbow changes of Iridesium - mellow saffron, wild azure, deep crimson, emerald-green.

Fascinated, frozen, Irissa watched herself assemble and disperse, break into a million fragments and compress into a shape she knew to be her own and no longer only hers alone.

Only a stab of will through her very heart enabled Irissa

to wrench away from the glistening surface as ensnaring

as tar. At last her vanity came back to haunt her that

tiny impulse to look where she should not. Geronfrey had

used that temptation more than twenty years ago to trap

a slim ghost of Irissa in his Dark Mirror. Irissa herself had shrugged off that incipient vanity. But Geronfrey had not. He had nourished it into a full-blown persona, shaped a glancing momentary weakness into a being that could grow beyond its own inception - and yet... yet it could not escape its self-fascination.

Irissa knew a wave of sick insight. She had passed through the spectral well into Without only because she had taken a semblance of her shadow self, Issiri, inside her.

Now, because she had swallowed her own self, Irissa could never take the tunnel of Dark Mirror back to Rengarth or any place other for only one reason.

By taking her mirror-haunted shadow self upon herself. Irissa was now forever exiled on the wrong side of the mirror, helpless to aid anyone - even herself.

Six tall stone figures circled in the mist. They guarded a bowl of rock scooped from the surround

ing terrain. Tissue-thin rain sifted over them, mingling with the ground fog that eddied at their knees. Unmoved by the elements, the circled stones maintained their grim guard-duty.

Tis a fey-looking place. Reluctance tinged Thane's normally buoyant voice.

'It reminds me of Without,' Eeryon said noncommittally. Javelle was silent. At her temple the circlet snake stirred and warm belly scales tickled her neck as it migrated. The serpent finally curled discreetly around her throat beneath her tunic, like some considerate muffler determined to preserve her against the chill air without betraying its presence.

Briarwhip whined. A shake of his coarse coat doused everyone with icy beads of moisture. By the monster hound's side, Felabba sat assiduously l*****g a muddy forefoot.

Then the land lurched beneath their feet, casting cat into cloud-creature, and human into human.

The humans, startled, clung together uneasily until their balance was restored, but the animals hissed their separate distaste and leaped apart. A fissure in the ground snaked between them - not wide enough to swallow a housecat, but deep enough to twist any foot that blundered into it.

'Without never shook so,' Eeryon said. 'Nor Rengarth.' Thane sounded more shaken than the

landscape. 'Perhaps ... we should explore the space below. It's the only sign of . . . habitation we've seen. Javelle?'

Shocked into further silence, Javelle chewed her lip. She hated to hesitate on such a rare occasion - her brash younger brother deferring to her judgement... 'Yes,' she heard herself say in steady tones, 'we should explore. But I don't think this site has ever been a

"habitation."* Thane grimaced. 'You know what I meant. Eeryon, you lead. That beast of yours might have a nose for danger. Our cat is no match.'

Felabba kept her rear leg hoisted over her shoulder and

interrupted her bath to stare icily at Thane. You may think so, but if that Briarbeast has not warned you yet, then it has no sense of peril at all.'

'I suppose you mean we're already in trouble up to our necks.'

'Nicely put,' the cat answered Thane, resuming her

grooming.

"Then stay here and keep safe while we look around.' 'I will,' she replied, settling down with tucked-in legs until she resembled a moonweasel muff. The faintest hint of a purr hung on the damp air.

'Coming, Javelle?" Thane threw the question over his shoulder. He was already nudging Eeryon. The two, trailed by the cowering Briarwhip, jolted down the rocky slope toward the somber stone figures. "They don't know, do they?" Felabba mused softly, her

breath etching a delicate cloud castle in the air. Javelle crouched beside the cat and sighed. 'You'd think Thane had invented this place, the way he runs roughshod over it. He used to follow me all the time, whether I would have him or not. Now he goes his own way, whether I will follow or not.'

'He knows not where he goes - or how close to the strings of fate his rash dagger cuts. But you do, my girl, oh, yes. What will you do about it?'

Javelle stared at the cat, into the deep emerald eyes awash in alien, animal wisdom. Seed pearls of moisture trembled on Felabba's sweeping whiskers. An odd tiny black cross of imperfection impressed the curve of one lush iris

I thought, Felabba, that you were our guardian. Isn't that why you followed us through the gate?" Only if you give me something worthy to guard,' the creature snapped. Your brother is a fool and you are

mired in your own uncertainty.

What of Eeryon? What is wrong with him?" Felabba's limpid eyes drowsed shut. Now you ask a good question... for much is wrong there. Though what is right with him will be all your salvations." Javelle stood impatiently. 'Father was correct. In any

form-old or young - you are a riddlesome, canting creature, full of sly hints and no real help. The cat chuckled, an odd sound coming from the svelte feline face. 'You are your father's daughter, as Thane is his mother's son. Answer me this: whose child is Eeryon?"

marquis-cut emeralds of its eyes slanted shut. It

dozed, entrenched on its folded limbs, frosty breath

tendriling from its pink nostrils like dampened falgonfire. Javelle's boot heel spurned a spray of rocks as she rose and hurtled down the incline after her brother and Eeryon, as she moved farther into the fog and the marshy ruins below.

'It must have been a great stone palace once, Thane was saying as she approached. 'And these ... figures are half-fallen pillars. But the walls are crude- His hand stuttered over the half-wall of tumbled rocks.

Another tremor agitated the ground. This time the land buck until the tall pillars trembled and the rocks ground their stony jaws. The three stood silent, Javelle still many sword-lengths from the others. They all fought to maintain their separate balance on a dancing tray of earth held in some palsied giant's hands.

Eeryon alone seemed unconcerned: tremors hardly moved one who had been reared amid thunderheads. Before the shudders had shivered to a stop, Eeryon was moving purposefully toward the six pillars. He stood child-slight among their seven-foot-high presences and my father."

studied the crumbling, carved faces. "These men are most solemn-visaged, like my father

'My father is not so solemn, but he is as tall, Thane boasted, coming to inspect the stones now that Eeryon had confronted them. 'Mine is not so long, but powerful-Eeryon began, his

face growing troubled with the memory. "They are tall- and powerful.' Javelle burst from the sidelines. 'Why shouldn't they be? Thane, don't you remember anything of the tales told in the tapestries, of father's last stand in Rule, of his bond brothers?" 'Wrathmen?' Awe cracked Thane's youthful voice.

"These are likenesses of Wrathmen?' Impatient breath made Javelle seem to spit. 'Not like nesses, the Wrathmen themselves. The Six. Or five of them, rather."

Thane's eager hand reached toward the vertical stone

slash running from each man's chest to a point between

his carven feet. Then... this... is one of the Six

Swords

'Sword-?' Eeryon's hand raised, too. Overeager magic sent a silver finger of lightning from his palm toward another stone blade.

'No-!' Javelle knew naught of magic, but she remem bered how the Wrathmen living and dead had gathered at the Oracle of Valna. 'Half of these are time-frozen effigies, not true swords and swordsmen. Some fell spell may-' As if to contradict her and prove their mobility, the

massive stone pillars began to c***k. Shale flaked from

their surfaces, pattering to the puddles at their mired

feet.

The great gray longswords ripped free of the rock that sheathed them, stone blades lifting in unison. Five adamant faces cracked stiff eyelids to reveal stone-blind eyes glittering like mica behind them. Hands mailed in rocky gauntlets flexed creaking fingers.

Shards of encompassing stone splintered into a rain of pebbles that dimpled the fog-drifted water at their feet. Only the vacant sixth pillar stood whole and still. The other five had become living rock-warriors now, grinding with

grim memory into battle, answering the call of ignorant magic with their own even more ignorant mayhem.

A gray fog of stone-dust dimmed the sheen of their Iridesium mail, but every link held its ancient shape. The five figures moved in concert toward the three intruders while Briarwhip howled and paced at the moving circle's We have no weapons," Javelle cried, not really expecting rim.

even weapons to stay the revived Wrathmen, not expect

ing to do anything but articulate her tardy despair. Thane ignored her warning, his sturdy figure braced while he delved desperately inward searching the unseen well of his magic for the salvation of a trick. Despite his talents, he was not facile in facing danger. Eeryon stared raptly at the oncoming warriors who churned the shallow waters with dragging, leaden feet. As they revived, as the rock that encased them ground

away, hints of their former character and grandeur

twinkled from their aspects. The lancepoint one carried

seemed to sharpen with each step, an amethyst vein

jeweling the tip.