Seven Swords

Chapter 45

Ours, yours - does it matter? Yes.

Irissa had no answer to that. She paced, moving back and forth before the misted mirror, wishing she could shake the fog into physical form and then deal with it. Yet she was moving, she realized, feeling the soles of her feet strike sharply on stone, feeling the gentle wind of her own movement. She had become too used recently to not feeling, to not moving, to barely being.

Come help, mouthed the mirror in her mind. Wouldn't I if I could? Can't you do anything?

am holf-here, you holf-there. We are half again less than Aren't we all half of what we can be? You must...we we could be.

must do something. We are alone.

We cannot be 'alone.' We are alone, as they are.

Irissa's hands cupped her mouth to catch a whimper of fear. They were cold as flint and steel and her breath didn't warm them. She was aging, fading, icing over, as Geronfrey had predicted. Without did not destroy by fire and lightning. Without froze - softly, slowly, leaching life from limbs and senses inch by inch. Without... emptied. Ah.

The mirror had sighed, as Irissa had not breath enough - or presence left to do. It occurred to her that Issiri, spirit, phantom, stolen self, had more life and freedom than herself at this moment. Pace. And think. And fight. And crush flint and steel,

steel and flint, into the unfeeling palms of her disin

tegrating hands and mind and magic.

Flint.

And steel.

Irissa fell to the floor, collapsed to the floor. The mist swirled in the mirror, still wailing in her mind. She ripped her tunic hem. Her hands felt frozen as they tore the silk, and the fingers barely functioned. When the rip of thread from thread screeched in her ears, it sounded as if it came from the wrong side of the windows.

Yet she was tearing off ragged strips, coiling them into a pile, She opened one fist. Empty. Panic beat like a heart within her. She opened the other. b****y bits of stone and metal lay there, unfelt, almost unseen.

Irissa took one between each thumb and numb, folded fingers. She struck them together. Nothing. She struck again, until her knuckles grazed, as if she were laboring at some phantom washboard, scraping her skin off and scrubbing a spark from the dark she lived in. Brightness broke the gesture in two, made Irissa freeze

She struck et spsin, hande, drawing adamant de acres ungiving all. A bit of heights A in the encompassing dark of Without

This time the spark fell into the nest of fabric. I struck again fenten, harder Another ember plummer to limp silk. And another. She struck so fast and hand her bruised knuckles ringing like bonewood bracel that a shower of stars fell to fabric and then ate through fabric and met each other blazing and then united into a tiny flicker of Blame and then took hold and then burned.

Irissa heild her unfeeling hands over the blare. Flames danced on the mirror of her ringstone, warmed the red of Bloodstone and the gold of Shinestone into a new conjoined sembiance of blood and heat.

Irisss lifted the burning tatters in her icy hands. She felt only light, not hest. Then, bearing her flaming brand, she walked into the black oily veil of the Dark Mirror.

Fire met water with the hiss of a thousand serpents

Gold met silver. Without probed the worlds beyond With

out. Hot seared into cold. Flint and steel broke glass Body penetrated emptiness. Absence violated presence Irisse- or her mind or her magic - spiraled into the dark seas underlying Without. Fire flamed through water like a gilt crimson feather adrift on an endless stream

Irisse felt herself some part of herself - borne along a channel carved through adamant iron and spit out into a wider world. She sizzled through space and time impossible to penetrate in physical form, sensing the warmth of her hallowed flame shedding in her wake like a skin.

When the heat had abated enough so she could open har eyes, she was sputtering in salty water. She was cold, and wet, and barely able to breathe the air that came to hat in fragrant gulps. She was struggling onto drier land with burning, bleeding fists that would not unfold into hands And, she was still in the dark.

Father? This is your father?'

Eeryon stood frozen in his own footsteps as the waves smoothed away all trace of his earlier path. Javelle and Thane had waded ashore a few feet away. They stood together, brother and sister, while he stood apart. Alone. As if addressing his solitary stand, Briarwhip came over and cringed at his side.

Yes, Eeryon said, not knowing what to say next. Javelle relieved him of the uncertainty by speaking before he could offer anything more self-implicating. Then your father must have stopped and turned the wave that would have smashed us. He is a most powerful

mage, as you said. We thank you, sir. She smiled into

Geronfrey's impassive face.

I could have done that, Thane murmured. 'If I'd thought of it. No one paid him any attention. Geronfrey folded his gloved palm shut and tucked both

hands into his wide sleeves. He stood regarding them, as stunned by their presence as they had been by his sudden appearance. Here, in Rule, his eyes were a pale sky-blue and his hair and beard were gilt. Eeryon barely recognized him, and kept silent. Geronfrey's eyes turned to him, anyway. 'You left

without telling me,' he noted pleasantly. 'I - we... had an opportunity to take a gate to Rule. I thought you wouldn't want me to miss the chance."

'No.' 'Why send Eeryon, Thane spoke up, 'when you can obviously go yourself on whatever errand you need done?' The blue eyes took a long time to move to Thane's

suspicious features, and a longer time to sum the boy up.

Geronfrey peered into his youthful face as if searching for the lineage of an old friend, or enemy.

'Some things are only obvious to the young, the sorcerer said at last. "My presence here is strictly limited. I can only traverse small amounts of space outside Without, and then only in a pseudo-form. In fact, only luck showed me

a way to Rule.' 'Lucky for us that you came,' Javelle put in. 'I don't know how we'd have survived that wave or turned it How did you do that?"

Geronfrey smiled. 'Sometimes I don't know my own

strength. His look grew piercing. 'Your strength is not

magic, is it, girl?' 'No.' Javelle hated confessing her lacks to too-perceptive strangers. 'Not magic. Not like them.'

"Them." Geronfrey eyed Thane again until the boy shifted uncomfortably. His regard fell last and finally fully on Eeryon. 'You have no time to waste, my son. I can bide here long enough to show you the proper path. This wood is

thick and fey, populated by latter-day dangers even I

have never encountered. Come.'

They hesitated, all of them, even Briarwhip. Then Felabba, her eyes still half-shut from salt and sand, stalked stiff-legged from under the shelter of Briarwhip's belly. Geronfrey's fingers snapped up like a whip. A five-sided ball of fire scribed with symbols flashed over the sand. Felabba smelled rather than saw it spinning straight for her. She yowled and

sprang sideways. The fireball dodged with her. For a moment, all the onlookers could see was a rolling white and red blur bouncing down the beach. Only the tangled limbs of the driftwood log stopped the momentum. A terrible hiss sputtered in the curling surf. Felabba lay long and limp in the foam. The fireball faded, branding red-hot script into the sand.

'Felabba!' Javelle was the first to reach the young cat and threw herself on her knees in the surf. 'You have killed her,' she accused the sorcerer.

Geronfrey stood unmoved, his hands tucked in his sleeves again, catlike. 'I had not seen such a creature before and took it for a danger. He did not sound either Javelle cradled the unconscious cat, its legs dangling sincere or sorry. over the crook of her arm. 'Poor Felabba." She staggered upright with the burden. 'Can't you... revive her, then, with your magic?'

'Alas. Magic never undoes what it does. Another's magic might wake her. Perhaps your magic, boy.' He stared at Thane until the young man dropped his glance. Despite Felabba's straits, Thane felt an instinct to hoard

his magic, hide it from Eeryon's father's view. He touched

the cat's wet forehead, Javelle's shoulder, in awkward

consolation. 'Maybe our mother could... cure her. I'll try-' Not now,' Geronfrey's voice commanded. 'I told you that dangers abound. You'd best retreat into the forest and find shelter.' He stepped back like a host indicating his great hall and swept a hand into the leafy dark beyond him. 'Eeryon." Eeryon went, speechlessly, Briarwhip skulking at his

heels. You don't stay?" he asked as he came abreast of

his father.

'I told you; I cannot. Not for long. This world has aged beyond me, but it is new to you. Don't worry. I have left provision for you.' Geronfrey's mild blue eyes lifted to the two young people lingering on the sand. 'And your friends."

His gloved hand descended to just above Eeryon's shoulder - as if he were not really there to touch him - and squeezed into a fist. 'You near your goal. You cannot afford to share it. Remember that."

Geronfrey bowed back into the woods, vanishing on the dark unreflecting curtain of greenery. For a moment his sober garb mingled with the branches and leaves - then only brush was trembling there in the soft sea breeze.

Javelle and Thane approached the place numb wonder. Eeryon would have smoothed Felabba's lolling

head but Javelle shrugged him away, turning so he couldn't touch the cat. 'I'm sorry,' he said. Eeryon couldn't bring himself to say that his father had 'not known' his spell's strength. His

father knew everything.

'She's not dead, Thane put in, bored with apologies for

spilt milk. 'Javelle always thinks the worst. The just

knocked herself silly on the driftwood. That was a most

convincing fireball your father loosed how does he do Eeryon shrugged. I told you he was powerful. Somehow he harnesses the light and heat from the storms Without 'Yet he can't... appear... in Rule for more than a few moments?' Thane asked.

it?'

'It's not easy to leave Without. Or enter other worlds, even in the image only.' 'At least we've kept our family's archenemy from coming here,' Javelle put in.

Eeryon stiffened. 'Kept someone out? How?'

'It was when you were... lost,' Thane said. 'At the

Oracle of Valna. I spotted Geronfrey trying to use the un

tenanted pillar as a gate to Rule and sealed it with the

cutting edge of my magic. He'll never break through there.

And if even your father is barred from physically appear