by Diane Duane
Tonight it would have a chance.
*
The afternoon dawdled on, hot and still, until the light grew more and more golden, and the air started to cool. Westward the sunset began in long streaks of orange and gold and smoke-grey. Now the rich light was gilding all the roofs of Prydon, turning thatch the color of bronze, and slate to dark polished copper, from which the sunset glared in occasional intolerable brightness as the Sun declined. Lionhall’s dome shone red-golden. But down in the alleys, everything was coolness and shadow: and that was much to Segnbora’s taste.
She stood at the street-side window, gazing down as the Sun went down truly, and the darkness began to seep into the streets, the warmth leaching more swiftly out of the sunset now. “Lorn,” she said.
He did not move from where he stood at the other window, gazing out westward. There was much less noise out in town than there would normally be, but that was not what Lorn was paying attention to, she knew.
“Not this one,” she said.
“What?” He finally turned to look at her.
“It’s not the sunset you’re thinking of,” Segnbora said. “I’ve seen that one, briefly. It’s not anything like.”
“You mean you’ve remembered it ‘ahead’—”
Segnbora nodded. It was beginning to be a curse, these last few days: for memories of things that might happen were crowding out those of things in the past. She glanced down at her hand on the windowsill; the sill was clearly visible through it, more so than even earlier in the day.
“How certain are these memories?” Lorn said quietly.
“Ahiw mnek’hej,” Segnbora said, and then laughed at herself, an uneasy sound. She had also been losing Darthene, the past few days. “They’re quite probable. But they’re not utterly certain, Lorn; and they’re fragmentary. The sunset you’re thinking of, I saw the afternoon we sat with Eftgan, after the Hammering. But just a flash of it—”
There was an abrupt creaking sound. Segnbora looked over to the bedroom door, to see if Herewiss was coming out. But the door had not moved. She turned toward the window again, and looked down in shock at the claw that had come over the edge of the windowsill, just missing her hand, and split the oak plank of it the long way.
The mate to that claw, or paw, came up over the sill a moment later. It hooked over the edge of it, rather than digging into the wood, and something on the far end of the ugly coarse-furred limb began to pull itself up against the braced claw. It was the closest thing to a living sickle that Segnbora had ever seen, and her response to it was immediate. She had instantly drawn Skádhwë at the sight of the first one; now, as the claw’s mate came over, she chopped them both off neatly at the sill. The shadowblade went through the wood like butter, and the limbs. There was a hoarse grunting sound from outside, and then a thick crunching sound as something hit the gravel down in the yard.
“Lorn,” she said. “Look down!”
“What?” He looked out the window, gulped, stepped back, and slammed the shutters closed, dropping the bolt.
“Here,” she said, kicking one of the disconnected limbs toward him. “What do you make of this?”
The inner door burst open, and Herewiss almost fell into the room. “What the—”
“I don’t know,” Segnbora said. “Some new kind of Fyrd, perhaps? I haven’t seen this one before. But look down.” She glanced down out of her own window. “One, two—five—”
There was a thin scream from the horseyard out behind the building: a human throat. “How many out there, would you say, Lorn?” Segnbora said.
“I saw six or seven—it was hard to tell—”
“Something bulky-bodied,” she said to Herewiss, as he reached for Khávrinen. “Four limbs, all like that. If there was a head, I didn’t see it.”
A scratching sound came from outside, rattling through the stone and mortar, muffled but ugly. “Rian,” Herewiss said. “So much for secrecy. He knows we’re here.”
“But they’re not coming in,” Segnbora said. “They could, to judge by what that one did to the windowsill. Whatever those things are, they’re just meant to keep us inside.”
The scratching sound from outside was getting louder, and coming from up on the roof-slates as well. “To keep Lorn inside, you mean,” Herewiss said, looking at Freelorn. “The Sun’s going down. This would be his first chance at Lionhall.”
Herewiss opened his mouth, but at that moment the door to the outer hall was flung open. All three of them whirled to face it, Herewiss and Segnbora with Khávrinen and Skádhwë at the ready, Lorn with the black knife from the Regalia that was all he had been carrying since Súthan was broken. But it was just Dritt, with his blunt peasant face and his floppy peasant clothes, and an armful of stuff, mostly weapons.
“Have you seen—” he gasped, out of breath from running up the stairs.
“Yes!” “Goddess, it’s cold in here,” Dritt said, looking around him in puzzlement.
Sunspark came padding out of the bedroom in hunting-cat shape, its eyes wide with alarm. “There’s something on the roof,” it said.
“Several somethings,” Dritt said, glancing upward. The sound of grating claws on the slates was horrible.
“No, just one,” Sunspark said. “I don’t mean the things crawling up the walls. I just tried to burn one of them—” It shivered.
“‘Tried’?” Herewiss said, glancing at it in concern.
The temperature was dropping fast: it might have been the other end of autumn, almost winter, from the feel of it. Outside, an uncomfortable silence had fallen, broken only by claw-scratchings on the walls and the roof.
“One way or another, we can’t stay here,” Herewiss said. “We’ve got to get to Lionhall. Segnbora, let Harald know we’re on our way—tell him to get close enough to keep the place in view, but not to be seen himself. And get Hasai.”
“On his way already,” Segnbora said. Her mdaha had felt her alarm, and was shouldering upward through her mind; but he was finding it harder going than usual. This was another of the problems that had been besetting them—not only was Hasai having trouble “going away” when he had been physical, but it was taking a lot of time for him to become physical in the first place. Segnbora found herself beginning to tremble. But the cause didn’t feel like fear. Cold, possibly—
Herewiss rested Khávrinen’s point on the ground, began to speak in Nhaired. Abruptly he stopped, glanced around him: started to speak again; then stopped again, and swore vilely.
“What’s the matter?” Dritt said.
“Gating’s blocked,” Herewiss said. “We can’t just vanish out of here. It’s Rian’s doing, and there’s no telling how long he can hold it.”
“Until we freeze to death?” Dritt said, dropping some of the weapons he was carrying onto a table and starting to stuff them into a bag he had brought in with him. “Is that part of the same sorcery?”
“No,” Herewiss said. “Sunspark is right. Whatever’s on the roof—that’s the source.” He frowned. “The trouble is, it feels like—”
“An elemental,” Sunspark said, sounding grim. “Not someone I desire to meet, in my present condition. I told you: there are those who are to ice as I am to fire. Apparently Rian has decided to go out and get an elemental of his own from somewhere,” it said bitterly. “My fault. I put the thought into his head by challenging him. And even if I were quite well, I doubt I could do much—”
Segnbora looked up. Rime was forming on the exposed beams of the ceiling. “It means to leave Sunspark harmless, or dead, and us unconscious from the cold. But we can’t deal with it from in here. And if we open the windows again, we’re going to have more trouble with those knives-on-legs. We’d better get downstairs. At least that way we have two ways to break out if we must—”
“Right. Lorn—” Herewiss looked at him, standing there with nothing but the black knife of the Regalia. “You need more than that. At least take a sword—”
“No,” Lorn said. “No swords
... it might confuse the issue. Dritt, don’t you still have that bow you were so fond of?”
Dritt smiled a sanguine smile, reached into the bag, and came out with the little Steldene horn-and-sinew recurve bow. It was brown ivex horn, laminated in several layers, and no more than two feet long. It looked like a child’s bow... until you tried to string it, or draw it. Freelorn strung it now, with a grunt, and took the short arrows Dritt gave him, sticking them in his belt. “Let’s go.”
They pounded down the stairs: Herewiss first, Sunspark, Freelorn and Dritt, Segnbora last. The horses were screaming in the stable, probably terrified by the monster-scent from the things clambering about the walls of the rooming house. Segnbora clutched at the walls of the stairwell as they went down—she was shaking harder and harder, so that it was beginning to interfere with her balance. Mdaha—!
Coming, he said, but he still sounded remote. Far off behind his voice, she could hear the mdeihei singing a high frantic chorus of distress; she had never heard the like from them in all the weeks she and they had been cohabiting in her mind. But we’ve been in this kind of position before. They didn’t sound like this at Barachael, or Lionheugh—
The stairway ended in a middle hall: one door out to the front yard and the street, one out to the courtyard in the back. The cold was seeping down here as well, and getting worse by the second. “We can’t stay in here more than a few minutes,” Herewiss said. “We need some help. Where’s Hasai?!”
Au, mdaha, she heard the voice, from still too far away. There is—a barrier—
She was shaking all over now. Herewiss looked at her with astonishment. “‘Berend—”
“No, it’s all right,” she managed to gasp. Even speaking was hard. But what was shaking her didn’t entirely come from inside: she was growing more able to understand it by the second. She was caught precisely between two forces. One was clearly the Shadow, for it tasted of self-preservation and terror—not informed, but blind. The other one --
—she recognized the trying-to-happen feeling that had been teasing her at the Eorlhowe Gate: but many times stronger, now. Something wanting to happen, needing to, almost pleading with her to do it and make it so—
But do what?
She gasped again, scrubbed at her eyes, steadied herself against the wall. As she did so her glance caught her shadow thrown against the wall by the dim light of the rushlight in its clamp by the other doorway. The shadow was winged, and struggling --
Skádhwë was in her hand. Segnbora stared at the shadow. Far back in her mind the mdeihei keened, but Hasai was silent. Segnbora leaned there, as the cold grew around them, and icicles formed, and the air became like knives to breathe. And something was weighing down on her: a force—no, more than one—utterly silent, making no move to suggest or restrain.
That shadow. Not hers. Not her.
A hunch, she thought. No more.
There’s nothing else to go on, anyway. Mdaha—
She felt about in her mind for him, and found that though he had been silent, his mind was no more still than hers was. He balanced too, on what he perceived as the “fulcrum”, the wind that blew through her—hovering as perfectly as a Dragon could: afraid, but at the same time eager. The “something” was trying to happen to him too.
Do it, sdaha, he said. Do it!
She turned to Herewiss, and frost sifted down off her. “Light,” she said, all her attention turned inward. “I need light!”
“Which way?”
“Behind me. Out the back door. Dritt, pull it open when I say.”
Herewiss stepped behind her and lifted Khávrinen. The balance in the forces bearing down on her and Hasai shifted: the terror grew. Segnbora faced the door, and lifted Skádhwë, ready.
“Now, Dusty,” she said. Behind her, Herewiss lifted Khávrinen, and the lightning broke loose inside the front hall, but lingering, terrible, a light too bright to see anything by. Her shadow leapt out utterly black against the door. NO! screamed the back of her mind.
“Now!” she said to Moris. He pulled the door open. Her shadow struck out through it to lie on the cobbles, long and razory, black as space against the oblong of searing light, and the wings spread from the shadow as it lay there, beating desperately. Segnbora took a great breath, a gasp of air like the last one before a dive, and struck down with Skádhwë, cutting the flagstones of the floor, but also her shadow.
The pain hit her, terrible and unfair-seeming, as always when you cut yourself. Her shadow fell away from her, and ripped itself free of the stones of the courtyard, and began to stand up whole: wings, tail, the gemmed length of body and neck, growing as they had at Bluepeak: but much more solid, much more real. Herewiss’s Fire blazed rainbows from the black star-sapphires of Hasai’s hide as he coiled the great mass of himself together, and the walls on the far side of the courtyard cracked and slumped outward. The spear-long spine at the end of his tail lifted, and the wing-barbs cocked out, and Hasai lifted his head, and bared every diamond fang, and hissed thunder at something out of sight, up on the roof.
Segnbora had slumped to her knees as the screaming began in her head. The mdeihei sounded like they were dying, but she had no time to spare for them. She had done something, but she didn’t know what, and it was terrible, terrible for good; that she was sure of. And now her trembling was genuinely from fear. What have I turned loose on the world?....
“Come on,” Freelorn said, and helped her up. Together they lurched out the door after the others. Segnbora looked around the courtyard and saw the black creatures clinging to the walls of the old house, and also saw what was on the roof.
It clutched the roofslates with claws of ice, and gazed down on them with milky eyes that seemed frozen blind: a lizard-thing, an ugly parody of a Dragon, wingless, all its blue-white scales knobbed with ice and frosted with rime. It smoked with cold in the warm summer-night’s air, and it opened its pallid mouth and hissed threat at Hasai.
“Au rhhu’h,” he sang, scornful: oh, indeed? He reared himself up, the black wings spreading wide, and his jaw dropped.
Segnbora, who knew what was coming, had the sense to squint. The others staggered and almost fell, taken by surprise by what few humans had seen before: Dragonfire at full force—not the controlled sort used to merely melt stone, but as’rien, sunbreath, which they use on each other. It was less like fire than lightning, but lightning that ran in a stream, like water, and thunder crashed around it as the violent heat of its passage simply destroyed the air between Hasai and its target. The ice-elemental screamed and writhed and struck out through the stream of Dragonfire that splashed over it. The front half of the boarding house simply vanished in that light, not even having time to catch fire, and numerous of the black four-limbed creatures went with it. The ice elemental fell as the house did, and Hasai arched his head down, following its movement, destroying everything around it. It scrambled up out of the molten pit his breath was rapidly digging for it, and astonishingly came on toward them, still hissing.
Segnbora suspected what would happen next, and wavered away from Lorn, raising Skádhwë. A wall of Fire, a dome of it, grew around her and Lorn and Dritt; Herewiss, off across the courtyard, had already started something similar for himself and Sunspark. It was just as well, for Hasai paused, as if for breath. The air went abruptly like iron with the cold: all around them, the buildings sheeted over with ice, the very moisture in the air froze out of it and started sifting down as snow; stones in the walls and the gravel on the ground began to pop and crack with the frost --
Hasai glanced over at Sunspark. “I mentioned that we would have a chance to compare technique,” he said. His eyes narrowed; Hasai drew himself up, and flamed again, in earnest this time.
Everything went absolutely white. That violent light washed out everything but a faint greyish shape at the center of it, which screamed and writhed, and rose up.
And suddenly was not there any more.
The light faded. The gravel all around the circles that
Segnbora and Herewiss had made, had scorched away like sawdust. The five of them stood on two round pedestals of stone; everywhere else in what remained of the courtyard, except for the stables-area behind them that had been shielded by Hasai’s wings, the stone of the hill had burnt away. Some feet down, what was left of it bubbled uneasily. Sunspark was looking around it with an approving expression, its tail twitching thoughtfully. Segnbora breathed out, and then froze—something was missing, something inside her. She glanced up and around. “Mdaha?”
He was nowhere to be seen.
“You’re solid again,” Lorn said to her.
Segnbora glanced down at the hand holding Skádhwë. “Yes,” she said. But somehow she wasn’t relieved.
“Where did he go?”
She listened briefly to the back of her mind. “He’s not inside. The mdeihei are there, but they’re not saying anything. Which is the first time that’s happened,” Segnbora said, and smiled slightly, despite herself.
“It might be wise,” Herewiss said, “to get out of here.”
“Can you gate?” Dritt said.
Herewiss shook his head. “No, that’s still with us, I’m afraid.”
“But the force that was oppressing me is gone,” Sunspark said. It lashed its tail, fire swirled about it; a moment later, it was standing in horse-form. “I can bring you where you need to go.”
“Good. Just don’t stream fire all over the place the way you like to do. We need to be inconspicuous. ‘Berend, let Harald know we’re coming. Where is he?”
“North side of the square,” Segnbora said, “about two streets up and one over to the right—I don’t know the name of it. You know, Lorn—the one that has the fish stall right next to the tavern with the bay window.”
“Drover’s Entry,” Lorn said to Herewiss.
“Spark, see it in my mind? Right. Let’s go.”
*
Five minutes later they all stood in the alley, glancing around them in concern that they weren’t inconspicuous enough. We might have saved our time, Segnbora thought, tempted to laugh. Everyone in this part of town heard the racket Hasai just made, and no one wants to come out for fear of finding out what it is....
