Seven Swords

Chapter 32

Irissa moved quickly past the tower windows that were webbed in tapestries. These were not the familiar hangings of her own invention, but iron-stiff expanses emblazoned with all manner of monster and alien vista.

A circuit brought her back to where she had begun, to her own image in the only untapestried windowframe. She lifted a hand to the seductive surface - so smooth, dark, peaceful and recoiled to see her fingers thin to bone - as they neared their reflection. Death, Irissa thought, that way lay death now - in the

past, in Rengarth, where Kendric even now died in gaudy

inches. Irissa whirled to study the iron tapestries, to eye the mockery of motionless folds beaten into their forms. 'Unlike you, I weave my imaginings into weapons,' a

voice intoned in a metallic echo. Irissa spun to face the

surrounding windows in turn, knowing her undefended

back was always to one of them.

A sheet of brocaded iron stirred or rather, an image rusted free of its surface. Massive bearing-beast's forelegs and hooves stepped over the windowsill into the chamber, bringing its rider's upper torso into view.

His garments were patched leather, thick and plain. Age had settled like snow over his features, softening flaxen. hair and beard to white, carving crevasses into the once youthful slopes of his face. At some point in entering the room, his steed melted away, even the reins dissolved rom leather-gloved hands.

Geronfrey stood alone in the tower chamber with Irissa -tattered, torn, worn to the bone that shaped his skin. 'What brings you to Without, seeress?" he asked, his once-melodious voice scraping painfully in her ears.

She lifted her hands, then let the gesture escape itself,

as if freeing an invisible bird. "There must be a reason,' Geronfrey ground through lips so stiff they hardly moved. 'A Torloc never travels without reason."

"Without.' Irissa tried to keep her dread of such a fell place from her voice. She was amazed to hear her words carry clear and ring almost sweet in the metal-shuttered tower.

'Without,' Geronfrey repeated, 'has been my home for all these . years.'

More than eighteen years, Irissa tolled to herself. Javelle's birthday always marked the year of Geronfrey's escape- banishment to Without. 'We thought... I thought

'You thought me dead? No, I do not die, more's the pity and more's the trouble for you and yours. Without takes its toll, though.' Geronfrey lifted a stiff arm, the gauntlet upon it rusty as caked blood, the fanciful threads gleaming with dull Iridesium glory. 'I am not a thing of Without, and pay my price for sanctuary.' His gaze, once sky-blue and now a bitter ebonberry-black, appraised her. 'As will you.'

'I don't seek sanctuary-' 'You should,' Geronfrey snapped, his voice fairly c***k ling, 'for that is all you will find here in Without - cold,

empty sanctuary." 'What of Those Without-?"

Geronfrey's laugh was as empty as the world he claimed. "Those Without! Tales told to idiots. I have delved the true, hideous secret of Without nothing. There is nothing Without, except more nothing. All you see was ... woven by me - painstakingly - from my magic. Only this... structure that I have imposed upon nothingness keeps your being whole, keeps me alive. All else is ... nothing.'

'But... my children have gone here - that's why I have come!' Irissa immediately regretted disclosing her quest or at least one part of it. Yet her worry had been too great to stifle.

'If your children came here, then your children are gone, Geronfrey responded shortly. 'If I with my sons of magical practice can manage only these few small shards of an existence - shabby raiment, an iron-bound tower -how could your children survive here for more than a

moment?' 'I do.'

'Only because you were fortunate enough enough to be drawn here through the doorway of -fated my Dark Mirror. I take it your offspring share no such umbilical cord to my mirror-?'

No! Nor to you, either. So perhaps the purity of their hearts and minds will be a talisman through Without.' Geronfrey turned away, giving her his stiff-clothed back,

becoming one of his guardian tapestries.

'I have... offspring, too."

Irissa's soul wanted to shiver at Geronfrey's mention of the unborn infant he'd torn from Issiri's dying body, but something in her stiffened alertly. An inner ear c****d. Survival instinct prompted her to ask quietly, "Then your offspring lives in Without with no harm?'

'Without is his mother. It delivered him and suckled him

and sent him off to his particular lessons.'

'His?'

'My son. Geronfrey's voice strengthened. He who will complete my quest and deliver me back to the worlds beyond Without. He is among my better. . . creations."

'Poor boy,' Irissa murmured.

Geronfrey's face grew thunderous, then crinkled in unexpected self-mockery.

'You do not seem to appreciate my achievements, seeress. Think of what I have done! How I... drew ... a flesh-and-blood boy from the stuff of spirit, how I reared him here - in the vast wilds of Without... without any of the things deemed so necessary to the nurture of a human. How I made a man of him and sent him to reclaim my... property." Irissa felt a strange, irrational stirring rather like pride

and more like possession. Questions thronged at her lips. but she quelled them.

You must Indeed have conquered the vast Without Geronfrey, she probed with a calculated bow to his vanity "if you can send a half-human boy back to the worlds

beyond.' A trifle. Geronfrey's gloved hand waved in stiff imi tation of its former suppleness. He has... inherited some small talent from his mother his first and former mother, who is no longer with us."

Tremors of aimless emotion shook Irissa to her finger tips. It was as if something other welled up inside her skin. A silvery veil shadowed her sight, straining Geron frey's grim figure through a deceptive mist of glamour She felt herself sink to the bottom of her soul as another's ind ant heart embraced her within and without.

Through the silver shimmer, Irissa saw Geronfrey's iron face freeze, if that were possible. "What new powers have you assumed in Rengarth?" he demanded more of himself than of her.

Irissa broke the spell of the veiling shadow. 'How do

you think I found a gate from Rengarth? I came through

the Spectral City, whose inhabitants are culled from a

millenium's worth of your victims. They aided me. And

aid me still.'

"Ah.' Geronfrey nodded, his brow knit into a scowl. 'Perhaps your hidden spectral allies will help prolong your physical self here for a while, then. Without the proper safeguards, nothing human can live here."

"What of your son, isn't he half-human?" 'He is of Without, I told you."

But you have... sent... him forth from Without. How will he survive elsewhere?"

The thought had not occurred to Geronfrey. 'Survive beyond Without? Of course he will. For this purpose he was spawned to return to Rule and... But you are truly beneficent to worry about my son when your own offspring face such imminent danger, if they are not already dead.

Waves of conflicted feelings crested against Irissa's

throat, confusing her. She fought an insane urge to pester Geronfrey for his son's name, to curse him for the danger or death of her own. But her own son was safe. She would surely sense it if Thane had perished, so her son was safe. No, her son was horribly endangered! The wild reversal of her emotions seemed a phenomenon impressed on Irissa from outside herself. Or from so deeply within she could not see it.

You mentioned... Rule,' she managed to say, trying to hide her inner disarray. Geronfrey looked disconcerted, as if he'd said too much.

"Don't fret about other places. The one you inhabit now is hard enough to survive. His pitiless eyes narrowed. How many years is it, seeress, since I was compelled to leave Rengarth at the hands of yourself and that over lengthy consort of yours?' Almost eighteen as humans count them. Didn't you

mark them in the birthdays of your son?"

You forget, he was not "born" in the common way." Irissa felt a great wrench, as if time had wrung itself inside out. She could hardly speak for the pain, and didn't.

Geronfrey, frozen into himself deeper than ever by his

lonely exile in Without, failed to notice her paralysis.

'You keep well,' he conceded, raising a snow-white eyebrow to study her. 'Better than I. But then you are Torloc and have benefited from living in a benign world all these years. In my world. Rengarth.'

'Reclaim it!' Irissa challenged suddenly. Geronfrey shrugged. 'And your Wrathman, how does he keep?'

Irissa's mind winced away from the question, from seeing even in her mind the twin dangers that hung over Kendric like paired scimitars - the quick death of poison and the slow demise inherent in a human life span. Some other, cooler part of herself answered for her.

'Kendric keeps as Wrathmen of Rule do, strong and vigilant.' 'He is Ruler of Rengarth - for now as I was before and shall be again."

'But he seems ever a thing of Rule, does he not?" Irissa encouraged him. 'Is that why you sent your son there for a thing of Rule?"

'How did you know that the sword-?' 'Sword?' Irissa felt herself hold double breaths,

Geronfrey laughed. You could never dissemble. Anxious motherhood has made you clumsier than ever. You know what sword, if you don't know why, and you are yet seeress enough that I will keep you ignorant until my needs are fulfilled.'

'You think to keep me here?" 'Don't sound so indignant. You've propelled yourself

into a cul-de-sac of your own making. There is no exit from Without - or none that will serve your needs. My barriers keep much that is unpleasant out. Pass them if you must and if you can, but you will not like their opposite sides.'

Involuntarily, Irissa glanced over her shoulder to the

Dark Mirror. She saw her own pale face vanishing into

it and taking one last look back at her.

'Back?' Geronfrey anticipated. 'I think not. What serves as a door moving forward would become a doom moving backward. Remember it is a mirror, with two sides. One faces the future and is a birthing box; the other turns to the past and is a bier. Stay here awhile, seeress, and contemplate, for that is all you have the power to do now. Think upon your failings, past and present. I doubt that there will be any future ones to regret.

Geronfrey turned to brace a cracked leather boot upon one windowsill. The harsh tapestry bowed outward at his impending presence, as if shrinking from it. The scene scribed upon its riddled surface assumed dimension, because the welcoming cyclorama of an unwelcoming world of dark and cloud and distant thunder.

Geronfrey walked into his bitter, ugly world and vanished. Alone, Irissa clasped her arms as if to hold herself within herself, as if stifling an invisible outflow of some unseen substance - blood, emotions, spirit. Geronfrey's words echoed in his metal-curtained tower

room. At least Irissa heard them. Children lost. Another, less natural child sent on a peculiar errand. To Rule. For the sword. The same sword that would extend Kendric's life, perhaps spare it from the poison.