Seven Swords

Chapter 53

The old cat settled into the four sharp points of her leg bones, hardly noticing when her younger self padded over and sniffed cautiously at her ragged tail.

'Get used to it. We can do nothing for anyone or anything until the children return from the hidden gate

they've taken.' 'Even the great Felabba can do no more than wait?' The cat's old eyes flicked to Kendric's self-contained

figure. He looked frozen in death already. 'I have always done that,' Felabba answered. There is

much greatness in waiting." Irissa rose up on her knees, hissing her impatience. But the odd formal clearing was still and silent, filled with the act of waiting. The hound from Without waited for his master; Kendric waited for his immortality to walk through a doorway and his mortality to hesitate on the brink of a threshold of its own. Old Felabba waited for the ripeness of its predictions. Young Felabba had ceased pacing and settled down, mimicking its elder self even to the position of its ears.

Irissa looked to the pond. Within it, she sensed, some severed part of herself was waiting, too. She sat on her heels beside Kendric, her hand on his wrist so she should instantly detect any sign that the poison had done with waiting and had decided to be lethal.

'Blue-worms!' Javelle said. Then she frowned and was silent. 'Blue-worms?' Eeryon inquired. These were the first words he had spoken since their parting of ways. His eyes did not quite meet theirs.

'Strange creatures who associate with the ludborgs of Rengarth, Thane explained. They are long, thin, and glow blue, but I don't think these rods of light are alive like them.'

"The light rods are something." Eeryon lifted his right sleeve. Along a swath from wrist to elbow ran a dark bristle of silver threads that had seared to black. 'I tried to cross. Luckily, I led with my arm, else I would have sizzled like a fish over fire.'

A smile flickered over Javelle's features as Eeryon's words reminded her of their beach encampment. That benign time seemed a thousand years away.

She glanced to Thane. His expression had softened, too. All three, she realized, wished for a return to the time when they had not guessed each other's danger - and vulnerability.

'We can... unite our forces to pass the barrier, Javelle

suggested.

A sword doesn't divide in two.' Thane sounded angry. 'We can settle that later.' Javelle was conscious of distant grains of sand passing an hourglass neck; their dying father couldn't wait on arguing children.

'How can we settle it? Thane was unappeased. Javelle's eyes narrowed thoughtfully. 'Let you and Eeryon duel with magic to decide who keeps the sword. But first, we must get it.'

Fear and reluctance and then a fierce aura of possession radiated from both boys' faces. Javelle couldn't understand them. They were as alike as twins in some ways and implacably different. Above all, she knew she had to reckon with their matching vanity, their pride.

'All right.' Thane was curt when he finally agreed. He knew the need for speed as well as Javelle, though he less liked to show it.

"That seems fair.' Eeryon spoke coolly, as if his mind were deep in the reaches of Without. 'How do we defeat

the blue lights?

Thane ripped a piece of braid from the side seam of his trousers and offered the frayed end to the cunning needles

of light. They sliced right through the material with the high-pitched buzz of angry insects.

Powder drifted through Thane's fingers to the stone floor.

'What of the cable snake your eyes uncoiled to topple the onlookers in Rengarth?' Javelle asked her brother.

Eeryon looked so amazed that Thane quickly justified the trick. 'A game I played. I can do it again, but if even Eeryon's magical silver threads cannot withstand the knives of light

'Eeryon's threads are material made magic.' Javelle spoke with an unexpected authority. "The rope conjured from your eyes is immaterial, like this light. Perhaps-' Thane was already concentrating. Under the hoods of his eyes, threads from the pale silver and gold of each eye met in the middle and formed a single bronze cable.

As before, the emanation wove through the air. It breached a space between two crossed blades of blue light and paused. Nothing happened, save the hovering cable trembled a bit. Encouraged, Thane directed the rope up and over the topmost lance of light. Then it wove in and out among the light beams, always drawing them down toward the archway's bottom.

When the tension drew tight enough for the magical cable to touch the unfathomable light, all three watchers held their breaths. Thane hesitated, then boldly pulled the slack rope tight. A humming vibrated even the floor beneath their feet. For a moment the sides of the doorway seemed likely to crash together as the cable pulled the blue lights from their roots.

Instead, the blue rods bent! Long they grew, like uncoiled snakes, flexing within the knot of Thane's rope until they were all caught and tied taut in a bundle near the floor. The doorway was not totally clear, but an inverted V of space waited for someone agile to cross it. 'Your silver threads might anchor my rope,' Thane

suggested to Eeryon. The boy from Without whipped forth his left arm,

freeing lashings of silver thread to secure the straining rope. Javelle clapped her hands in glee. 'Who goes first?" You're not going, Thane said, 'it might be too dangerous.

'You may need me, Javelle retorted. 'Who thought you through the door?'

We're not through yet. I'll go first."

I'm first in line.' Eeryon's taller, broader body blocked the path. 'You duel after we find the sword, remember?' Javelle

told Eeryon. In fairness, she turned on her brother next.

'Let Eeryon go first." Thane allowed Eeryon to straddle the bundle of blue lights and pass it. 'You made a bad bargain," he whispered to Javelle. 'Who knows what trick Eeryon may treat us to? He may even vanish with the sword before I have a chance to duel him.' 'I wouldn't have made a bad bargain unless I had a better

way out of it,' she answered mysteriously. 'And Eeryon

won't disappear. He knows he'd never have crossed this

threshold without our help.' 'I thought you were eager to find the sword?' Eeryon asked from across the opening, waiting politely.

Thane was so impressed by Eeryon's restraint that he let Javelle precede him through. She hopped over the bent rods of light so adeptly both boys caught their breaths for fear such confidence must end in a fall.

But soon all three were through the archway and staring at the great longsword high on the opposite wall. Dozens of other swords decked the same wall, some of them polished mirror-bright.

None carried the great age - the broad, long blade, the massive hilt with its leather-wrapped grip - of one rust dappled sword that they all had recognized instantly, even Eeryon who had never seen it.

'It sings of magic," he said, moving to the wall.

Thane hastened to scramble after him, but Javelle caught

his sleeve so violently he stopped. 'What?' he whispered in brotherly annoyance. "You must

leave me alone so I can defend our right to the weapon. 'What of that other weapon?" Javelle pointed to another Thane spun unbelievingly to face it.

wall.

Another sword hung there - long and plain and rusted

and right. 'What? Thane repeated dully. At the wall before them, Eeryon was studying the lay

of the first sword they'd seen. 'Or that one?' Javelle said precisely, pointing to a third wall.

'Another sword?'

'And that and that. And that.' Rapidly, she indicated three more swords hung at various heights throughout the chamber, each of them identical to the others. But,' Thane said, and was silent.

'But,' Javelle thought, frowning until the serpent circlet shifted on her furrowed brow. 'It is not enough to find the sword. We must choose the right one."

'How?'

'Father said his sword bore the signs of every blow took.'

it

gave and 'All swords bear nicks. Only Father would know his own.'

'We handled the mind-made sword ourselves not many

days ago.

'Not long enough to memorize its oddities. Besides, they all hang high. We shall have to struggle mightily to inspect them, much less lug them all down. There must be an easier way.'

'You mean a magical way,' Javelle retorted, eyeing the sword above her hungrily.

'Magic is hard," Eeryon said behind them. He stared up,

numbering the swords. 'Six swords are the same. What

does this mean?'

"There were always Six Swords, forged together in Rengarth when it was more accessible and sent to Rule. Our father carried one, but the Wrathman from each of the other five Realms carried his own ancestral sword."

Eeryon was not answered. These Wrathmen were those cast in stone on the once-sunken island?" Yes,' Javelle said.

"But their swords were with them, turned to stone.' Perhaps the spirit of the swords remained with them," Thane interrupted. 'Obviously, the actual swords were lost in various parts of the land and refound by living

descendants of the Rule our parents knew. There's a placard beneath this one, who can read it?" 'I can, if you'll boost me up. Javelle leaned against the wall to wrench off her boots.

The young men exchanged glances, then both bent to push her high on their shoulders so quickly she squealed her sudden fear and clutched a mounte lax handle to keep her balance. Yet she was near enough to read the severe black letters printed so perfectly and small that they must have been inscribed with a mouse-tail. "A long sword," it says.

"That we can see,' came from the ground. "exceptionally long, the blade alone nearing five feet. Believed carried by me-medieval mercenary knights of unusual height."*

"That we knew, Thane complained. 'Except for the land called Medevil. Come down, Javelle.'

'Wait!'

'We can't.'

'The writing says more. "One of six similar weapons recovered from various portions of elder lands. Although all are of the same age, C." Javelle stopped reading. 'It just says the letter "C," with a period."

'Whoever wrote that obviously knew nothing of the swords' true history. You might as well declaim a lud borg's blue-worm mating rituals and expect as much sense. ""C. undetectable. This particular sword bears more rust

because it alone was... 'Well?' Even Eeryon sounded impatient now. was found in water." Javelle lifted her hands to

the n***d steel slung in a cradle of three metal prongs.

Beneath her stockinged feet, two shoulders stiffened in unison.

Under her fingers, the cold metal warmed as if wel coming her touch. She knew their quest had ended with the odd words of the strange placard. She also knew that now would begin the true fight for the sword.

'Come down,' Thane ordered tersely. She hesitated. To descend would bring chaos on their uncertain alliance. 'Perhaps I can unfasten it ...

"Too heavy.' Thane's hand tightened around her ankle. 'You'll overbalance us all. Come down.' He tugged roughly on her leg, almost toppling her.

Javelle screamed and clutched the sword by the upper,

dull, false edge. It still bit into her soft palms. Then the shoulders beneath her were shifting like angry earth when it murmurs against the beings above it. Another voice was calling into the confusion - an angry, irritated voice. Javelle finally toppled as predicted, grab bing the long hilt for purchase and pulling the terrible weight free.

The sword fell with her, on her. Buckling bodies broke

her fall. They lay in a mutually bruised pile on the floor

- Thane and Eeryon, Javelle and the sword.