Seven Swords

Chapter 37

Thane leaned his back against the stone and let himself collapse. Sealed now and for forever, I think. It was from that very pillar,' Javelle recalled, that Geronfrey reached through time and space to destroy our mother and failed."

Well, he's failed again." Thane clapped gold dust from

his palms and noticed the stock-still pillars. 'What hap

pened to the Wrathmen?'

I handled them.' Javelle couldn't resist looking smug. You? With what?" 'Words. Magic isn't the only weapon, you know.'

'Words? What words?"

'No spell, if that's what you mean. I simply reminded

them of the past, their past." 'Hmpf.' Thane sounded dubious but couldn't deny that the danger had ended. He took a wider survey of the area. 'Where is that wild boy from Without? And his unattractive pet? They both bolted as soon as things got difficult.

"They... vanished.' Javelle frowned her puzzlement.

"That's like a coward, winking away from danger.

'I don't think it was that. Eeryon didn't seem afraid of

the Wrathmen... only intrigued." 'Well, I'm just as satisfied with him gone. I don't need

extra baggage dogging our quest. Don't look so sour, I didn't mean you. but neither did Javelle didn't brighten at Thane's grumpy admission which she didn't believe for a moment she belabor the puzzling matter of Eeryon's disappearance

At least we know we're in Rule,' she pointed out, 'But where in Rule are we? If this is Clymerind, the island could sail anywhere. And with this eternal mist we'll never see far enough to find another land. We should make for the shore - maybe there's a boat."

'Clymerind has been sunk all these years. There aren't likely to be any boats left. And why has the island risen now?'

'We can't answer any questions unless we go look. Thane bounded up the path leading to the rim rocks. 'Come on!'

Javelle hesitated to cast a troubled glance behind her.

The stone Wrathmen stood stolid guard, their features

frozen into death masks upon the pillars, so the circle

looked like a ring of upright effigies.

The stone swords both cleaved and united their forms. The blades were blunt, incipient shapes now, as rough as rudimentary spines. Nothing fearsome remained to the figures but their awful stillness, their funereal sobriety.

Javelle thought of her father frozen into such premature stillness- not now, but in twenty, or twice twenty, years. She would be older herself by then, but could expect her half-Torloc heritage to extend her life span, if not bestow a full measure of Torloc longevity. Father had no reason for such a hope. Association was not the same as blood relationship.

Thane was right, Javelle knew. They two must be about their vague but vital quest. What happened to Eeryon didn't matter to them. Yet it did, in a way she couldn't name, and she knew that Thane wouldn't understand.

'Come on, Javelle! Or I will call you baggage. She turned to follow him up the rocky path. Where the mist thinned at the top, Javelle could see Felabba waiting, her vertical pupils slit to needle-width and her eyes

dreaming shut horizontally, so they formed a crossroad of north and south, east and west.

One last look the stone Wrathmen, the thin puddles spilled over the rocky basin, wind swirling the mist into smoke - then Javelle scrambled up the incline. Her boot heels sprayed loose pebbles into a hail that pelted the water below.

You must have a massive mind; you took long enough to make it up.' The cat lingered while Javelle caught up. But then one who can singlehandedly subdue a circle of walking, talking, sword-bearing stones with a few well chosen words would be mighty beyond magic. You could have told Thane yourself that you intervened

Why? He is puffed up enough as it is. Let him wonder if you have unsuspected talents. I simply point out that it is unwise for you to be so deluded." 'Neither of you is very encouraging," Javelle answered glumly. Ahead, Thane's back was fading into the sour gray mist. She half-ran to catch him up, her boots smack

ing free of the adhesive mud stride by stride.

The cat followed in a disconcertingly silent trot. Its last words carried to Javelle with a mocking note. 'Encouragement is for children,' it said, then fell behind and abruptly silent.

Behind the fading party of three, in the shallow bowl of fallen Valna, wind roughened the water and stirred the soupy mist.

Only these natural things moved - not the Wrathmen, not the empty pillar with a seam of gold sewn down its center. Then, so abruptly it seemed some natural phenomenon

had cut loose from the cloudy sky, invisible fists pummeled

the shallows and slapped water, spreading droplets. It seemed the beginning of a storm of gargantuan rain drops slow and rhythmic, then faster and harder. The hollows in the water moved in a straight, rapid path, striking deeper, until they smacked into solid stone beneath the liquid.

The cloud whence these sudden drops came curled into view over their oncoming path a curly, gray stormcloud that rubbed airy shoulders with the mist and shrugged it off.

Three dim glows sparked like marshlights at the cloud's lowered head. Eeryon's ethereal hound was racing across the deserted hollow, lacing through the pillared Wrath men's mist-mired feet. Its small bright eyes sought eagerly for something. With a yelp, the creature found it. Briarwhip, restored

to his new yet unpleasant form, bounded up the path and

stopped with ungainly haste. He sank on his haunches

and c****d his snarled head.

The animal waited, patiently, as it must have done many times before. Mist shifted before it, slid belly-down over the slimy stones. Then mist parted. A thin script of silver thread was writing an indecipherable message on the dusky air. Air darkened to solid black as the thread laced up Eeryon's velvet sleeve.

Fog was suddenly drifting over his newly visible boots. Darkness had become clothed flesh. Only the pale glow of Eeryon's hands and face moved as he leaned forward to pat Briarwhip awkwardly on the docile head.

Even now the center of Eeryon's eyes were dark - empty, endless. Slowly, as though mist were seeping into the chalice of his being and filling it, the color changed to silver-blue.

He shook his head, not quite fully seeing yet and thus aware that he most likely could not be fully seen. But then he noticed that there was no one to see him.

Eeryon studied the circled Wrathmen, disappointed to find them mute and motionless, muffled by the stone as before they had come to life. His luminous eyes pierced the wandering mist, finding no sign of his former companions.

"They are gone, Briarwhip,' he mused, patting the coarse hair again. The gesture gave him no pleasure; as a cloud the creature possessed a phantom fleecy texture. Here, in the world beyond Without, its texture was crude and brutal, like the other aspects of this place.

Beyn shivered at the cold and the dep The de of without had been to Indifferently continand that Car had never felt it. Yet her, as well as in Without, will subject to the same arbitrary absses from his self He turned to equird up the path. He could have been gobe for moments or hours. So, too, could they

Aloor again, Briar," he told the hound 1 miss the company. He stood to survey the inhospitable landscape It's not so different from Without, with the dimess and the mist. But we know this is Rule, because Javelle said so Come, we must find the sword. Then, perhaps, thar be time to find javelle and Thane again. He started off, his silver-embroidered sleeves flashing

in the ponderous air. Briarwhip gamboled after, long claws scraping the scattered stones beneath them. The fog trailed them to the pathtop, then sank back into the cold cup of the land, swirling round and round the rocky rim.

Wrathmen were reflected in the shallow black water that

cloaked the ground, their sword blades seeming to shine

silver when clothed reflectively in the water's liquid

alchemy.

More silver roiled in the flat, shiny water, curling in puddles formed from dimples in the rocks. Silver thinned and coiled, then coalesced into a pattern.

A face appeared there more suggestion than reality. Glittering eyes blinked wide. A form almost seemed to surge up from the water's thin skin- features breaking through a nose that sniffed something familiar, eyes that searched for something lost, a mouth that opened and spread and wailed its unspeakable loss.

A gasp shook the ground an indrawing of presence and sound and water and air. Fog thickened into a smoky finger and pointed into the water's surface, into the face shattering there.

Then the silver was gone.. and the face - even, for a moment, the fog, Unclothed, Valna revealed its bones - a stark, collapsed cavern fallen into boulders with stagnant pools surrounding a shabby circle of standing stones.

At last mist exploded from the water in a cloud of exhalation and softened the scene, rising to the very rim of rocks like steam and concealing everything in a thick vell of cloud-white.

Free, she was free. Motion sped past her, or she outsped it. She was not so much caught in current as she was the current, water fading into waves behind her. She turned as she streaked through the liquid foam, black glass walls gliding soundlessly by.

She was water-borne, tunneling through the long dark,

but not water-bound. She could breathe water, or air, or

fire, or freedom. Free! She spun as she shot ahead, long silver hair tangling round her skin like satin threads. She caught flashes of herself reflected in the black rock walls to either side- a quicksilver form speeding through its element.

Quickstone Mountain, it was set in my hand... A whole

mountain of Quickstone she would see

soon. And...

and other things that belonged to her. Yes, she had not

seen anything for so long... to see now- oh, pretty,

pretty, shining, flashing, speeding freedom. Yet something tugged at her spirit, hooking her euphoria and reining it, a thin invisible line fixed to her heel. She couldn't always feel it, only now and then. It was not silver and precious, like herself, but it was like herself in another way, one that made her sigh and breathe out a

cluster of bubbles. Her freedom was conditional in some unspoken way. in a way she knew more deeply within her. There would be a price, but when had she not paid some price? And why worry?

Now she was skimming the dark water that seeped everywhere to buoy up many worlds, swept in its warm liquid embrace to a place where she would find that which was lost.

She had lost many things, including her life - not once but twice. Now it was her turn to find things bright. sparkling, special things that were hers.

One thing that had been hers and had been taken. That was not right, always she had been given things: time and jewels and once a bright silver stone as she lay Now she lived, spirit and speed and quick, glancing dying...