Seven Swords

Chapter 50

'Perhaps. Yet I doubt it was a wailwraith. No one has ever seen such a creature, why should we be so blessed - or cursed? Perhaps I knew what it was a shadow of myself I loosened to precede me here, to act for me, I hoped, against such dangers as Geronfrey.' 'What was it?' Javelle came forward to join them,

glancing delicately at Thane.

This boy you call Eeryon. It was... is... his mother, I suppose. It seeks him first, and his good. I thought it wouldn't harm you."

It hasn't.' Thane said tightly. "But perhaps now that it's

free it wants to draw you into its shadow, as it has always

walked in yours. It hungers for something. Credit me with

magic enough to know a starving spell when I see it. I know.' Irissa put a consoling hand to Thane's shoulder. I thank you now. Like Javelle, I didn't quite feel that way at first."

Such is the strength of a hungry spelling," he reminded her sternly. And Javelle. Irissa turned to her with a rue ful expression. "Thane is right. There is always another way. If I could almost call your father's sword from where it rests through this dark and haunted water, we can discover where it truly lies and claim it in reality. Your father is not dead yet.'

'How do you know?' Javelle demanded hotly.

Irissa paused to think, or perhaps - feel. 'I would know,

as would you.' 'You forget. I have no magic to discern such things.' Irissa hugged Javelle until her circlet rang lightly on the

snake circling Javelle's lowered forehead. You have a better casting crystal than magic on that subject <- a special bond with Kendric. Perhaps that will mean more than all of Thane's or my magic before this quest is through.'

'Perhaps.' Javelle softened slowly, 'I told Father once that I would not build my life on a "perhaps." 'You have to, Javelle,' Thane said seriously. 'If Father

is as deadly ill as Mother says, we all do.'

'Why don't you,' the young cat asked, 'use the water for a mirror?' 'It's too dark to see anything in it,' Javelle answered

promptly. 'It's too dangerous,' said Thane. 'Dark Mirrors have

done us all much harm.'

'It's too shallow and too deep,' Irissa said more para doxically. 'I seek in it too much that means everything to me to use its mere surface.'

'Not as a magical mirror,' the cat explained. As a mere mirror. Find reflection just beyond your petty selves yet not so deep as your dearest hopes.'

'Easy for you to say,' Thane jibed. 'You risk not so much as a whisker in this dusky water.'

'Very well.' As if treading an invisible tightrope, the

cat's white paws minced one before the other until she

balanced on the pond's very edge.

"I have never required a looking-glass for my toilet,' she sniffed. Perhaps that is why I can see past foreground reflections to the edges of the mirror. Forget glimpsing your own worried faces or lost swords and dangerous water-spirits. Look beyond your feeble selves to the tapestry of things that hangs rippling in the waters."

They all leaned forward to see the wonder the cat had evoked Irissa and Thane fiercely, their Torloc eyes focused; Javelle far less confidently.

'I see it!' Javelle was the first to announce despite the handicap of purely human vision. There, behind us - a kind of gray... wavering. It's a city lined with many shops.' - or one city street 'Shops. The cat seemed in danger of laughing again,

although that was quite impossible. "Such a plain way of

putting it - "shops." Yes, you see, half-blind child, what better eyes than yours have overlooked. Shops, indeed." What shops?' Thane was indignant. 'I see nothing but filaments of silver threading the water and a glow far below.'

The same glow as when Father took the flaming torch beneath the springwaters?" Javelle asked eagerly. Father did what?"

I forgot. You were tangled in a tapestry-thread gate upstairs when Father fought the dungeon devil fish. He took an unquenchable torch into the springwater with him.

Then perhaps Father is-'Thane leaned over the pond, searching for the dim aquatic light he'd seen before. 'No.' Irissa's hand clamped his arm before his balance could overtip him. 'Water is not your father's element. But now I see what Felabba refers to - Javelle's spectral shop

fronts. Only

they are not shops, but-'

Doors of all descriptions, you poor blunderers.' Felab

ba's tail lashed the flattened grasses. 'Gates of many colors.

This pondtop scum but reflects them. The reality lies beyond the forest archways.' And the sword? Javelle asked quickly. The sword itself?'

The sword itself rests in the world Rule has become since you left it. We are caught in prism-gate, which sits outside any world, even Without."

The sword is beyond one of the doors?' Thane firmed.

con

Beyond one of the doors,' the cat echoed complacently. Then-'Thane was rushing to the half-seen walls that hung before the dark forestscape behind him, pacing the

rectangle around. 'But which one, which door?' Felabba knows.' Irissa bent to catch the cat's eye. The cat refused to look at her.

Thane stopped. 'If it knows everything, why do we bother to try to do anything?' Felabba's knowledge is less than magical, in this case. She aw Beryon take the right gate, didn't you?' Irissa inquired.

Found out, the cat chewed upon its whiskers. While it mulled the most mysterious thing to say. Briarwhip lumbered up behind Javelle. Suddenly, the creature's unappealing maw opened to take folds of her tunic hem into its fangs.

Javelle batted at the three ugly eyes and tried to pull free. Briarwhip only whimpered through clamped teeth and shook its massive head. Each shake pulled Javelle a step or two backward. Briarwhip shook again pulled. Retreated and pulled. Shook and retreated. and

Javelle found herself being drawn away from the others toward the dark woods, toward the vaguely outlined doors shimmering on the sylvan backdrop. 'Stop it!' she ordered, still edging backward.

Briarwhip finally did, more deliberate than obedient, freeing Javelle's clothing with a quick release of its jaws. 'Briarwhip saw, too,' Irissa realized, laughing at the cat, at Thane, before striding over to Javelle. Her daughter was brushing her tunic free of wrinkles, unaware of where she stood. 'Here.' Irissa's finger lifted to indicate a plain

door, barely recognizable as such beside the ornate doors

and gateways neighboring it.

The cat had trotted over behind Thane, hissing some unkind feline curse at Briarwhip en route. 'True,' Felabba said when she arrived.

'Why not simply tell us?" Thane demanded

'It would not be a cat if it simply told us.' Irissa smiled at the animal. 'Its nature is to teach us by teasing us with

either side of the truth." 'Its nature is not much help, Thane grumbled.

'So your father said.'

Mention of Kendric sobered the party instantly. 'We must hurry,' Javelle pled. "The miserable cat has toyed with us and wasted time that could be precious to

Father. We must take the gate and find the sword." 'I'll do it,' Thane offered brusquely. 'You found the sword too heavy to lift before.'

'You are no stronger!' Javelle objected. 'Not yet, anyway. 'Neither shall go,' Irissa decided, 'now that I am here.

I am stronger than both and I have lifted the sword before.' The cat sighed and sat at their feet, limbs tucked in. leaving one forepaw bent, as if ready for hasty rising. What is wrong now?" Irissa

asked. 'And you talk of me wasting time. The cat c****d an ear to the pond behind them. 'Have you considered that? That! That... shadow self. You dare not leave it un tended, seeress.'

Leave it? I loosened it, bade it leave me.' 'That was in Without, where other rules apply. Flexible rules. Here, the shadow might fatten on your absence, might become you by the time you returned . . . might usurp yourself. You have heard of Usurpers before now, seeress?"

Irissa was startled into deep thought." "Tis true, Geron frey provided Issiri a good example in usurpation. But I am the greater being-'

'Says who you? Felabba jeered. Perhaps the shadow self has a shadow heart and mind and life, even a shadow magic of a sort. It has a shadow son, certainly. Perhaps the shadow self would seize its time, and who could blame it?'

'Then who will go for the sword?' Irissa demanded.

'You?'

'Those sent for the sword. Why change the rules now?' 'A long, roundabout way to say you wish me to keep you company,' Irissa noted.

'We will go?' Javelle couldn't believe that her wish was granted. 'But keep together, Irissa charged them both. 'And you have dealt with this Eeryon before. Remember that he is on a countererrand to ours. Remember that he must serve

his father, not yours.'

'Eeryon wouldn't-' Javelle began.

'Eeryon did,' Thane reminded her brutally. 'He left us fallen into the ice pit. He's beaten us here - perhaps it's already too late. Perhaps he's taken the sword and returned to Without."

'No!' Tears made Javelle's eyes sparkle with almost magical light.

She reached for the snake circlet as if to wrench it from her temples. But she was no more able to loose it than her parents had been at her birth. Her eyes fell on the creature who had pulled her to the right - or the wrong door. Did it serve Eeryon, or them? Was it true - or false? ugly

'We have naught to guide us but this beast's impulse. Irissa said, reading Javelle's thoughts. She looked over her shoulder, shudderingly, to guard against ghostly selves stealing from the water. This place is a... crux between worlds. My magic doesn't reach its full stride here. Perhaps Thane's will not, either. You both must go and carry the heavy sword together, face your erstwhile friend as one enemy.

'The cat is right: the shadow self I released haunts and impedes me. I doubt it will permit one as strong as myself to pursue its shadow offspring. Even shadow ties are sometimes stronger than magic.'

Javelle lifted her palm to the door. There was no latch or handle; she could only push it inward. In the dark rectangle, a lurid, fire-scribed palm mirrored hers for a moment. She gasped and jerked her hand back, then pushed it forward harder onto the impression of itself. The door melted before them as she and Thane walked

through. Watching, Irissa saw her children pale to shad ows. They swiftly became mere glimmers fragmenting int motes against the darkling forest. "That is the hardest part of having children,' Felabb

observed from her lowly position on the ground. 'Watch

ing them leave.' 'How would you know?' Irissa wondered. 'You've nev had any.'

'Have you kept me company every step of my long wa around the worlds? Have you trod in my pawprints? W is to say what I have or have not had in my travels? N I, who in this current life remember only the birthwate of a spectral well. But I may have mothered... million in my times.'

I hope not,' Irissa murmured. The half-sketched facade

shook like a faded tapestry into sight and out of it. 'Ken

dric would not survive such news even if the children should bring all Six Swords back from beyond the shadow door.' Irissa suddenly collapsed into a crouch, her fingers reaching to smooth the furrowed catbrow.

Oh, Felabba, what or when you are, I do not care. You may incarnate yourself in multiples and number lives in the millions, but there is only one Kendric. Can you do nothing say nothing that will aid us in saving him?" The cat stirred uneasily and looked away. 'I am young in my old age. My memories shatter with my multiplicity.

I have come before and have not been... unnecessary.

Perhaps I will yet prove myself essential here.' Irissa rocked back on her heels. The wood was dark, the black water still. The hideous beast from Without had curled into a waiting ball and laid its noxious head upon its paws. 'Once,' Irissa recalled, 'when I was temporarily blinded,

you or some past or future you - told me things I

would have rather not heard."

'So is the way of a cat, if it can speak."