Seven Swords

Chapter 46

ing here, it should be equally difficult for Geronfrey. 'Yes.' Eeryon was silent a moment. 'If we are indeed in Rule, we had better separate and be about our own business."

Thane, so eager to be rid of Eeryon at first, was the first to object. 'Why? We still don't know the location of our ...quest.' 'It might be better to part,' Eeryon answered, his ex

pression torn between annoyance and anguish. 'Just take your path and I'll take mine.' 'He's ashamed of us, Thane.' Javelle approached them,

the cat still lying limp in her arms. 'He doesn't want his father to see him in the company of someone un powered like myself. Perhaps even you aren't up to the powers they share.'

Nonsense! Thane dismissed the notion Nel Beryon denied almost as violently. His sea-cred pled with Javelle. It has nothing to do with you ar pour powers, or lack of them."

At least let us explore the forest together, Thane put in levelle will be tending the cat and of no use. Once w find the lay of it, I'll be happy to part company. Besides, you can help me heal Felabba. Beryon hesitated, half-minded to plunge into the thick

underbrush and leave them and his conflicting feelings

far behind. Briarwhip whimpered at

feet, as if

begging his agreement to Thane's proposal. All right. But I can't delay long. If my... father has violeted his residence in Without, the circumstances must be dire. He came to warn you, Eeryon," Javelle told him. He

knew you were in danger and somehow broke through an

unbreakable barrier. A father will do that sort of thing.

Ours would."

Beryon stared at her, at her unshaken assumption that his father was like theirs, or anyone else's. It made him suddenly angry. It made him want to run away and hide in the deepest crinkle of Without- forever. But there was no way to run unless you first pretended you didn't. need to.

Let's do as Thane said," Eeryon decided, and seek a way into the wood, and shelter. This time Javelle let his hesitant fingers brush Felabba's fur. "The cat feels warm. She may revive without magical intervention. Come with me if you want to."

Eeryon plunged into the forest's underbelly. Briarwhip turned its three anxious eyes on the remaining two. 1 don't like it, Thane said.

Eeryon's father is a strange, terse man, Javelle agreed He seemed to be... laughing at us." 'Eeryon wasn't laughing at him.' Thane shuddered.

What an awful life Eeryon must have had in Without.' javelle pensively rocked the cat. "Will we find the sword. Thane? Will we find a way back?"

'Of course. We haven't got this far for nothing. And we'd be better off without Eeryon. He's a strange one After we rest for the night and sleepyhead wakes and can walk on her own again - I'm for following our Torkoc noses to old Rindell and leaving Eeryon to his own bleak business."

Javelle looked troubled, but fell into step behind brother while he parted the brush for them both.

'Oh, Felabba,' she whispered into the cat's dry underfur, 'I want to go home, but first I want to find the sword. perhaps I can at least do that, find it. It shouldn't take magic simply to find something old that's lost.

The forest was oddly still. Wind barely stirred the branches Other than choking underbrush, little foliage grew at their level. They wove through mazes of moss-covered trunks, moving deeper into darkness.

'It's odd.' Thane said suddenly, 'that sea and sand keep such close quarters with moss and shadow.' 'I feel as if everything's been pinched together,' Javelle added.

'Perhaps that's why it's called the Shrinking Forest,

Eeryon said. 'I fear our only shelter will be the interlacing

pine boughs above our heads.'

They paused to search for a likely resting place. Nothing appealed, especially not the bitter brown beds of fallen needles that carpeted everything. Ancient pinecones scented the air as old pomanders

might perfume a chest, a smell both stale and heavy. The

forest felt unused, abandoned.

'What's that?' Javelle gestured with the cat in her arms toward a tunnel of oddly parallel trunks. Silver flashed far down the dull line of trees. 'Let's see.' Thane moved into the unlit avenue under the

pines.

The three heard only the fallen branches snapping beneath their feet and their own labored breathing as they struggled forward on a slick, shifting carpet of needles. No sunlight filtered through the interwoven limbs

above, but the silver-white glisten ahead drese them on Soon they saw its source-glittering stalactites de scending like gigantic snow-season ice daggers. A forest af such chill daggers plunged into the needle-strewn earth. Well. Thane stopped at an icy columa and petted the

surface sheen. 'It's cold, but not icy, more like stone that

has never felt sunlight.

'What shall we do? The way is barricaded. Javelle was right. The wood had ended in a planting of ice daggers thicker than pine trunks, forming a con struction that was not so much a clearing as a space the lce shards had forced between the trees.

It hung there in all its intricacy - a huge snowflake jammed into the pines.

unmelting It almost resembles a building," Thane added, slipping under an arch between two huge fangs of ice. "Wait! Javelle advised too late. She clutched Felabba closer and sidled through the same opening, her shoulder

bumping the chill surface.

Eeryon came last, dazed, silent. He had never seen the like of this.

Once through the ice-pillared passage, the party reached an inner open space. All around them soared plinths of ice, some swagging sideways to bridge each other. The frozen pillars met high above, glimmering in the dark where all the ice's internal shimmer could not reflect more than phantom light.

'It feels even colder here than it looks,' Javelle said. 'You know what this reminds me of? Thane prodded. "Think of the tapestries."

You tell me to cite the tapestries?"

"The flaming castle of Mauvedona, he returned promptly.

'only its opposite." Javelle turned slowly, cradling the slumbering cat. The edifice of ice offered a certain magical sweep of form and excess of aspiration. It leaped up, almost as flame might, sharp and turreted. But so might falling water freeze. Thane pushed farther into the cold dark heart of the

place, lured by a twinkle ever out of reach. Javelle fol lowed. She didn't want Thane out of her sight, every step within the bristling ice-dagger wood seemed to drive new obstacles between the threesome. Here! Thane's voice rang jubilantly. There's a chamber

within where some light flares Javelle glanced over her shoulder. Eeryon was hesitating at the twisted entrance pillar. She couldn't see Thane ahead, so took another step on the slippery surface. In her arms, Felabba stirred and began struggling free.

Javelle's heels slid out from under her just as the car half-leaped, half-fell from her grasp. Javelle was skidding through space, her arms thrashing. She found Thane when her flying legs knocked his feet om under him. Entwined they slid down a tilted passage of ice toward the maze's center, where light magnified itself from plinth to plinth

Breathless, too shocked to cry out, they plunged over a precipice. They slid down cascades of frozen water as if descending an icy flight of stairs carved large enough for a mountain to climb. The light increased the deeper they plummeted a sere, white light that gave no heat and threw no shadows.

The way narrowed and grew circular. They were tumbling around and around toward a narrow point below as if spinning down the sides of a funnel. They finally jammed to a stop, a tangle of limbs, at the funnel neck

Above them, a widening gyre of ice yawned for hun dreds of feet. They were caught in the twisted heart of a frozen water spout that had screwed itself deep into the earth beneath the forest. The silence was breathtaking, and Felabba had not fallen with them. No face peered over the ice's edge far above. They were alone, unhurt, unable to help themselves.

Eeryon stood as frozen as the pillars around him. Javelle and Thane had vanished as if sucked into the Dark Mirror. He was not surprised when one of the icy plinths spawned a brightening shaft of light and revealed his father's image at the heart of it.

What happened to them?" Eeryon demanded. Geronfrey's ice-blue eyes were unblinking in the frozen surface. He didn't answer directly. 'You are free now to pursue your own mission. Make haste and bring me the sword,"

'You have diverted them into this cold maze,'" Eeryon complained. 'I know when you appeared at the margin of the wood that you wouldn't be content to let me act on my own.' were not acting, Eeryon,

You that is the trouble. You have been seduced by the wonders of the worlds beyond Without. Your concentration fails. You forget to whom you owe your eyes, your magic, your very existence."

I do not forget,' the boy said leadenly. Then cease lingering and find the sword.'

'Why is it so valuable to you?' 'You never asked "why" before."

"There are no "whys" in Without, but here' "Here" is a world to ensnare you, a trap for the un wary. Take example from this web of ice and preserve yourself from a more silken subterfuge.'

'I was following your wishes . . . 'At your own pace, while you studied the will and wishes of others. There is no profit but self-delusion in such dallying. Go before I forget what you are... or before I lose my patience and show you what you are.'

Geronfrey's image shifted in the blurred ice - it black ened and silvered by turns. Hooves, tails, and horns blended into legs and arms and head. No matter how the form changed, Eeryon could always see the two matched pits of eyes, he could look directly through them into the unshaped vastness of Without.

He fled, not waiting to see his father resume his familiar shape in the ice dagger, not wondering how Thane and Javelle had fared in the maze's hollow heart.

Silver-white pillars of ice fled past him, rushing to his rear like white-barked trees. He breathed more easily as the trunks around him darkened. At last he was sur rounded by unreflective forest again. He turned back

to regard the silver light that had softened into a white glow.

When he faced back to the woods, Briarwhip was there, scratching its spine on a tree root. Eeryon watched the creature writhe in earthy delight, its ugly limbs splayed to the branches above, and smiled.

The smile faded as another familiar form moved into his awareness. The cat Felabba settled beside another

watching him. 'I couldn't help it,' Eeryon said quickly.

'Did anyone ask?' 'You ask with your eyes."

'You mistake my eyes. They tell, not ask.' 'And... what do they tell me?'

"That you have company on your quest.' 'No! You cannot come. My father will not tolerate it. 'He is absent now.' 'He is never absent. You will see.' 'I have seen. In another embodiment, Geronfrey struck

me mute for a time. In this one, he has merely struck me.

I fancy that his power or at least his pride - weakens

with long lapses of time. But I landed on my feet, as do

all my kind. I suggest if you are to find the sword that we

begin our next journey.'

"They may need you within the ice-maze.' The cat never spared a glance beyond Eeryon. 'They need me more with you.'

'You will keep me from completing my quest.'

The cat paused before answering, its mouth lifting in a

mock smile. "To the contrary. I will aid you in your quest' Eeryon stared into the sage green eyes for some time. The cat's expression never changed, nor its waiting posture. Suddenly, Briarwhip bounded up and dashed past the cat as if to play. Then the cloud-hound ran down the aisle of pines and waited, tail wagging.

Such a down-to-earth invitation to get on with it over ruled Eeryon's reservations. He set out behind the eager creature, Felabba stalking silently behind him. He did not offer to carry the cat, and it did not ask.

From that moment on, Eeryon's path became simpler. He felt he trod old ground, and when a large gray stone Aomed in his way, he edged around it, unsurprised. Stones begat stones. Soon Briarwhip was dashing in and of tumbled stone piles. The trees had drawn back

places, And then he came upon it in the still reflection of a pond. Rindell Pond, he knew it. Even the air struck him with a kind of rightness. Eeryon gazed down into the forest shaded water, watching first Briarwhip's - then Felabba's animal faces appear upon the water. His own did not. Here, he had no reflection.

out

leaving cleared ground.

Graceful, limp-limbed trees trailed the water at either end. Eeryon studied the surroundings to avoid the painful absence of his own image. The pondwater seemed end lessly deep. Its shape followed no natural sway of the land, but held to a rigid rectangle.

Eeryon saw nothing that promised a sword, or a way to a sword. He might as well be trapped amid icy teeth, as Thane and Javelle were. Then he banished the others from his mind. To think of their plight, of their father's, was to undermine his own resolution, his own father. Eeryon sighed, but it became a shudder.