Seven Swords

Chapter 42

was a better base than magic. She struggled up, as if- breathless - she were racing

through an alien element for a distant piece of hersel Javelle broke the sea's surface like a creature summoned breathed wind instead of water. With her came another. Her eyes crossed Eeryon's. Their dark focus had faded The sea shone through him and found a salty echo in her pounding blood.

She smiled, nodded, and said nothing. Clymerind sailed on into the twilight, drawn by silver reins fastened to a flotilla of sea-born coursers. As land ahead - as lost realms - grew from a hairline

into a sandy scar... into a thickness on the horizon, the sun plunged its ruddy torch into the silent sea and the tangled wind hissed like snakes.

Moonlight strummed the taut lines of Eeryon's magic and dusted the sand with quicksilver. Clymerind glided toward the huge land mass the night obscured. Its ocean-called steeds remained invisible and unfelt, except for a deep tremor in the island's heart now and then.

Sunfall had come soon after they had sighted the main land, so javelle and Thane slept on the pillowing sand dunes. All had agreed to fast in deference to their seg. born coursers. It would seem... rude to fish among the shallows for small fry while greater fish still ferried them through the deep.

So, fireless and unfed, the trio began what they hoped would be their final night on the island. Only Eeryon kept watch on the silvered wires of his magic. Thane thought that unnecessary. Magic was an unboiling pot, Thane had declared.

No need to hover; once properly set in motion, magic

would not fade at the maker's inattention. They could all

sleep. Eeryon had agreed pleasantly enough, but insisted on sitting up, anyway. He knew he could not sleep whether magic twanged the air or not. Even if sleeplessness were not a natural condition for him, he would have found it impossible after the day's numbing revelations.

Eeryon watched waves roll over the beach like lacy white clouds. Night in these worlds beyond Without was much like anytime in Without, he mused. Briarwhip sat attentively at his side.

'It is the same sword,' he told the creature softly,

He took its silence, as always, for agreement. 'What my father demands of me will slay their father - or at least allow him to die in his natural span of years.

Again the beast kept silence, not even moving. Eeryon sighed. "Their father sounds a man worth preserving, if their feeling for him means anything. And their mother sent them on this errand, so she, too, would be stricken if I obtain the sword instead of them. He revised his thought. 'When I obtain the sword instead of

them." Briarwhip whimpered and nudged closer. The beach was cold in the dark, as the tepid air of Without had never been. Eeryon appreciated the beast's rough, more tangible presence now. He would miss the forn - and the name

the sword. when they returned to Without. With Of course he had to do it, Eeryon admonished himself. It was the ultimate obedience his father had demanded of him.

-

Geronfrey. The name had been branded into the dark behind the dark of his eyes when he had first heard it from the mage's own lips so recently. Its meaning had lain in the very novelty of it. Now the name was seared into his equivocal soul. He had never thought to hear it invoked as an enemy's name by those he considered his first and only - friends.

Yet he had not been made to deny his heritage, his purpose. Whyever Geronfrey wanted the sword, the reason must be paramount. Nothing else could override it. Nothing.

Eeryon shut his eyes to the moonlit sand and sea. No moon beamed on Without, and there was no sand, no sea, hardly any sound except distant crackling lightning and snapping thunder. Eeryon wished he could be back in that undemanding

dark, answering to only one force - Geronfrey - instead of to other eyes and ears, instead of to himself. 'I must!' he whispered fiercely. 'Must, must... D and... must.' must

His word seemed like the sea's suspiration hissing softly over the sand. It was almost low and rhythmic enough to lull him into the alien state of sleep, of tem porary forgetfulness. Almost.

Briarwhip's abrasive cost rubbed Beryon the wrong w as the massive beast stirred. The boy's eyes rolled open. The animal was fidgeting beside him. He saw why. Before him the sea was sweeping higher. Closer. Even as Eeryon watched, one high way

was washing up the dunes toward his feet! He leaped up to retreat. The wave had already flushe far past the wetline. No backward pull diminished its s

and speed.

Instead of ebbing, it grew larger and higher

narrower - into a curl of liquid shape composed of moon

light and the sea's eternal silver spittle. Feet like she

peeped from the ruffle of its watery hem. Arms moved in the liquefaction of its flowing sleeves. A face crested to its peak and stayed there. The walking wave walked on, becoming more humas like with every step, until... a woman worked from silver foam and seaweed neared Eeryon, the sea's deeper

daylight glimmer greening her eyes. Briarwhip growled and bared formidable fangs. Thick hairs along its spine stiffened to battle quills.

'Hush,' Eeryon commanded quietly, glancing over his shoulder to Javelle and Thane. They remained sleeping unmoved. Even the puddle of white that was the cal Felabba stayed curled into its inhuman dreams.

The apparition drew toward Eeryon as if seeking him. He saw now that the night, the alien moonlight, had deceived him at first. This woman was real and human as, as... Javelle, though taller, though somehow both older and younger.

Her damp fingers flicked to the taut threads leading from his sleeves as if using them as guidelines. The silver filaments thrummed at her touch like lute springs, emitting a sound sometimes high and sweet... sometimes as low and throaty as a warning cry.

Briarwhip's tail lashed the sand, thumping a drum beat of alarm until Eeryon's quick hand on the animal's shoulder stilled it.

The woman paused opposite Eeryon, so close he could

see grains of sand glittering on her bare feet like cold stones. A network of gems glistened over her diaphanous gown, glimpsed as fleetingly as living silver scales from

'Are you fish?" Eeryon wondered aloud, although in a the sea itself. hushed tone. The woman's laughter fell more lightly than

syllable. I come by water, boy. I am not of water. I come by the dark water under all the worlds... and the silver lines of your magic calling to the voice of my freedom. You called for help, didn't you?' his softest

She apparently found Eeryon as strange as he did her. She moved toward him, hesitated, then smiled her pale phantom's smile, studying him in mutual intensity. Who are you?" he asked.

The certainty in her silver-green eyes flickered. 'I fear I have... lost my name. For some reason, also lost." Her face softened as she dismissed the notion of a name. 'It doesn't matter. There are names that are greater than names such as "Mother." "Son."*

Eeryon stumbled backward a step, nearly overturning Briarwhip in the process. He was not used to his cloud companion making so solid an obstacle. He was not used to confronting strangers on the even stranger shores of another world. He was not used to having all his assump tions shaken in a single day.

'You're a dream,' he accused. 'I never dream. I cannot

dream.' 'How sad." Her wistful voice was as elusively seductive as the surf's. 'I have had naught but dreams in my life, and most of them bad.' Her hand reached to his arm as

if to prove her existence. Who are you?' he gasped, forgetting discretion. 'I don't know, she answered honestly enough, a vagueness

in her eyes that echoed her aspect. But I know that you are mine. How your sleeves... shine - and your hair. I had a Quickstone once- liquid running silver in my hand. And then- Sorrow took her eyes, drew her attention inward.

In the moment she looked elsewhere, Eeryon felt her compelling spell snap, 'Mother?' he intoned the allen word, even more out of

step in this place and with this person. 'Mine,' she said in a possessive way that soon became a sing-song chorus. 'Mine. I have lost much that was mine,

but something still remains... mine.'

'Javelle said my... mother must have died at my birth Eeryon burst out. Let her be a ghost, a spirit, he told himself, an apparition from the swelling sea.

'Birth? Memory stirred her vacant eyes. Her body moved uneasily, as if feeling unseen bonds tightening. remember no birth... only death. Slow, fading death. A man gave me a Quickstone once,' she recalled, bright ening. 'So bright.' Her eyes turned back to his. 'Perhaps a Quickstone hastened your birth. My Quickstone. You are mine

She reached for him with her white, wet hands as vaporous as clouds and as grasping as bone. Her face blazed like the moon. Eeryon felt seared by light and mystery, as if Thane's overheated fire had sprung up into living form to consume him.

His horror raged high, along with another emotion new to him - denial. He felt the lines of his sleeve-sent magic slacken, felt everything around him loosen - sight, sound, feeling, scent.

Blessed darkness came to reclaim him. The scene around him faded, Briarwhip dissolved, too, into cloud form. The woman was the last object he saw, a bright mist dissipating on the beach as if drifting away in search of something it had lost.

'Where's Eeryon?' Javelle asked, waking in the night. 'Who knows?' Thane's voice was sleep-thick and 'Wandering around, as he always does.' grumpy

'I thought I felt something - a fleeting fog

throat. It stings."

'Sea mist. Go back to sleep.' 'My sentiments exactly,' a new voice put in. Felabba

stood, stretched luxuriously in the moonlight, then turned and settled facing in an opposite direction. Felabba, didn't you sense anything?" Javelle persisted. I only sense that night is for sleeping and daylight for

asking silly questions." But I did feel something,' Javelle insisted.

From the nearby dunes, Thane snored, asleep again. The cat said, 'Really,' and flattened its ears as if to stopper them. ... eerie,' Javelle repeated to no one.

Something.

The silver serpent stirred against her skin, as if dream

ing, but remained silent.

Morning showed the islanders an endless vista of im mobile mainland - beach and birds and a fence of dark green forest beyond.

Eeryon had wakened the others without comment and

now stood contemplating the land across the water as if

too numb to see it.

'It looks like the Shrinking Forest!' Javelle exclaimed as she spied tall pinetops farther inland. 'I can't believe that we've come so close to our goal on the first try."

'It is the Shrinking Forest, Thane asserted. 'For a forest that shrinks, it grows rather thick and tall,"

Eeryon noted. He had been unduly quiet that morning and now avoided the others' eyes. Javelle tried to share a mutual glance, but found him quicker than she at evading it. All she glimpsed were the dilated black holes of his expression, his pupils.