by Diane Duane
Herewiss didn’t move, but from where Khávrinen’s point rested against the ground, a sudden runnel of blue Fire uncoiled like a snake and shot out across the sand. It put down swift roots to anchor itself, then leaped upward into the air. The atmosphere prickled with ruthlessly constrained Power as the line of blue light described a doorway as tall as Herewiss and twice as wide. When the frame was complete the Fire ran back along its doorsill and reached upward again, this time branching out like ivy on an unseen trellis, filling the doorway with a network that steadily grew more complex. In a few breaths’ time the door became one solid, pulsing panel of blue.
Sweat stood on Herewiss’s face. “Now,” he said, still unmoving.
The blue winked out, all but the outline. From beyond the door a wet-smelling wind struck out and smote them all in the face. Lake Rilthor, their destination, lay in the lowlands, a thousand feet closer to sea level than the Waste. Through the door Segnbora saw green grass, and a soft rolling meadow leading down toward a silver-hazed lake, within which a hill was half-hidden.
“Go on,” Herewiss said, and his voice sounded strained. “Don’t take all day.”
They led their horses through as quickly as they could, though not as quickly as they wanted to, for without exception the horses tried to put their heads down to graze as soon as they passed the doorway, and had to be pulled onward to let the others through. At last Segnbora was able to pull the reluctant Steelsheen through after the others. She was followed closely by Herewiss and Sunspark, behind whom the door winked out with a very audible slam of sealed-in air.
Segnbora turned to compliment Herewiss and found him half-collapsed over Sunspark’s back, with Freelorn supporting him anxiously from one side. He looked like a man who had just run a race; his breath went in and out in great racking gasps, and his face was going gray.
“I thought there’d be no more backlash once you got your Fire!” Freelorn said.
Herewiss rolled his head from side to side on the saddle, unable for several moments to find enough breath to reply. “Different,” he said, “different problem,” and started to cough.
Freelorn pounded his back ineffectually while Segnbora and the others looked on. When the coughing subsided, Herewiss rested his head on the saddle again, still gasping. “—open too wide,” he said.
“What? The gate?”
“No. Me.”
Confused, Freelorn looked at Segnbora. “Do you know what he’s talking about?”
She nodded. “In a worldgating, the gate isn’t really the physical shape you see. The gate is in your mind—the ‘door’ shape is just a physical expression of When you open a gate, you’re actually throwing your soul wide open. Anything can get out. And anything can get in. It’s not pleasant.”
“I don’t know about you people, but I can hardly hear,” Dritt said rather loudly.
“Swallow,” Herewiss said. “Your ears’ll pop.” At last, his strength returning, he looked around with satisfaction. “You’re better than I am with distances, Lorn. How far from Lake Rilthor would you say we are?”
Freelorn shaded his eyes, looking first at the Sun to orient himself. “It’s a little higher—”
“Of course. We’re sixty leagues west.”
Freelorn looked southwest toward the lake, and to the mist-girdled peak rising from its waters. “Four miles, I’d say.”
“That’s about what I wanted,” Herewiss said, pleased. “Not bad for a first gating.”
“It’s so quiet,” Harald said, looking around suspiciously.
“It’s a holy place,” said Moris, unruffled and matter-of-fact as always.
Segnbora looked around at the silent green country, agreeing, opening out her undersenses to the affect of this place. Like most fanes or groves or great altars, the Morrowfane made you feel that Someone was watching—Someone who would only speak using the heart’s own voice. Yet the feeling here was less personified, more remote, than any she’d experienced before. Above everything hung a waiting silence, as when the hawk sails high and no bird sings. Below the silence was a slow, steady throbbing of incalculable power, as if the world’s heart beat nearby. A ruthless inturned benevolence slept at the center of Lake Rilthor, and slept lightly. It was no wonder that there wasn’t a town or a farm or even a sheepfold for miles around.
—It was not a smell, or a feeling, or a vision precisely, that started to creep up on her. Segnbora stood up straight, glancing around at the others. None of them sensed what she had. Herewiss and Freelorn were leaning against Lorn’s dun, Blackmane, together, speaking quietly; Moris and Dritt had walked off a little way to look southwest at the Fane; Lang was rubbing down the perpetually sweaty Gyrfalcon; Harald was seeing to yellow-coated Swallow’s cinches. Sunspark had disappeared on some mysterious errand of its own.
She turned and looked east, her hand dropping to Charriselm’s hilt. There it was again, another flash of othersight—vague and odd, focus bizarrely rounded, colors all awry. And smell too, acrid, terrible, enraging. That’s familiar, I know that—
Then the memory found her: that one time in the Precincts when the novices, carefully supervised, were allowed to shapechange and feel what a beast’s body was like. “Herewiss!” Segnbora said, turning to him in alarm.
He put his head up to the wind, gazing eastward as she had, but saw nothing.
“You just did a wreaking,” she said. “You may still be overloaded. Taste it!”
Herewiss closed his eyes and reached out his undersenses. Segnbora did too, standing swaying in the long grass, and caught the impression again, stronger this time. Now there was something even more unnerving added to the flash of skewed viewpoint: thought, stunted and twisted and bizarre, but thought. And it was all of hate.
The mind she touched bounded above the whipping grass for a moment. It saw forms on the horizon, the source of a maddening stench.
She heard a cough, opened her eyes to see Herewiss choking as he tried to speak. His empathy must have been more profound than hers, for the remembered shape of the runner’s throat was keeping the words from getting out. “Fyrd!” he croaked at last, and pushed away from Blackmane, hurriedly unsheathing Khávrinen.
Segnbora’s eyes widened. “But that was thinking! Fyrd are Shadow-twisted, but they’re just beasts. They don’t think!”
“My move’s been anticipated,” Herewiss said bitterly. He swung Khávrinen sideways, whipping a great brilliance of Fire angrily down the blade. “Our enemy’s a step ahead of me. And mocking us!”
Segnbora understood. At Bluepeak, long ago, the Shadow had driven that first terrible breed of thinking Fyrd down from the mountain country into the Kingdoms. Far more dangerous than the first noxious things It had twisted out of the beasts of ancient days, these Fyrd had the cunning of warriors. It had taken the Transformation, in which Earn and Healhra burned away their very forms and their mortality, to exterminate that breed. And now, for Herewiss’s sake, here they were again—
Steel scraped out of sheaths all around as movement became visible in the high grass to the east. Segnbora’s under-senses brought her more and more clearly the experience of their hungry rage. The hunters knew their quarry was human, and hated them for it. They were coming to do murder.
“Dammit,” Herewiss muttered, “Sunspark, where are you when I need you?!” But no answering thought came, and Herewiss hefted Khávrinen grimly. Only two days forged, and already the sword would be tasting blood
There was little time to prepare. One moment the dark backs were jolting closer and closer through the tall grass; the next, with a wave of grunts and screeches, the Fyrd were upon them. Segnbora found herself holding her blade too high to guard against a maw that was suddenly springing at her throat. She threw herself sideways. Jaws went snick! the air above where she had been. She hit the ground, rolled, found her footing, sprang up again. The maw hit the turf where she’d rolled. For a moment it tore the ground with teeth and talons, its hunched back to her. That was all she needed. Choo
sing her spot Segnbora swung Charriselm up, sliced down through thick flesh to the shock of bone. The maw writhed and screamed once, its half-severed head flopping into the grass. She paid it no more heed, simply whipped the blood off Charriselm and swung around to find another foe. There were certain to be plenty—
—More maws, five or six of them, broad and round with piggish, wicked eyes; several keplian, horse-looking things with carnivores’ teeth and three razory toes on each forefoot; other shapes less identifiable. The standard Fyrd varieties had been twisted yet further away from the animals they had anciently been. Segnbora forgot about specifics and dove away from the spring of one maw, took another one across the chest with a two-handed stroke and was knocked down by its momentum. Move, move, as long as you’re moving you’re safe! she could hear her old sword-instructor Shíhan shouting at her as she scrambled back to her feet.
Off to her left she heard Steelsheen scream in defiance and crash into a Fyrd; a skull crunched, crushed by hooves. At the same time Segnbora got a pinwheeling glimpse of Khávrinen jerking up in Herewiss’s hands after a downstroke. A half-seen form came at her low and sideways—Segnbora chopped at it, a poorly aimed blow that slid off hard smooth plates. Hissing, the nadder’s gigantic serpent-head rose up before her, then struck. She danced desperately aside, swung scythe-style at it and chopped off the head at the neck.
Segnbora turned away and looked around. Khávrinen struck downward again, and as it struck both Herewiss and the keplian he had killed moaned aloud. The Fire wavering about those parts of the blade not yet obscured illuminated Herewiss’s face. Tears? Segnbora thought, though not entirely in surprise. Khávrinen was more of a symbol than a weapon, and Herewiss was no killer—
Steelsheen trampled another maw, and Moris nailed the last one to the ground with a two-handed straight-down thrust. Finally everyone was standing still, panting, sagging, wiping blood out of their eyes.
“More coming!” Segnbora said, wanting to moan out loud at the feeling of yet another of those hot, hating minds heading their way from the north. The source was still a hundred yards away, but showing much more of itself above the grass than had the other Fyrd. Segnbora recognized it, and her heart constricted in terror. She’d never seen one of these, but if the stories of the creatures’ endurance were true, this one could afford to take its time.
“Oh Goddess,” whispered Freelorn from beside her. “A deathjaw!”
“With the Fire,” Herewiss said between gasps, “possibly—” He lifted Khávrinen again, but there was no great hope in the gesture. Deathjaws were so fearsome that there was only one way to successfully hunt them: stake out a human being as bait, and hide a Rodmistress close by to do a brainburn when the thing got close enough. We’ve got plenty of bait, thought, but he doesn’t know how to do a brainburn, or he’d have done it by now.
The shambling form was closer. “Run for it,” Herewiss said, sounding very calm.
Everyone hesitated. “I mean it,” Herewiss shouted, “what are you waiting for? ”
Lang turned, and Moris, and Harald, but they were slow about retreating. Freelorn didn’t move from beside Herewiss. Herewiss’s glance darted sidewise to him. “Lorn—!”
“Big, isn’t it,” Freelorn said. His eyes were wide with fear, but his voice was as steady as if he was discussing a draft horse.
“Lorn—!”
“Shut up, Dusty,” Freelorn said. “Do whatever you’re going to do to that thing. I’ll watch your back”
Segnbora stepped up behind them as they set themselves. “I don’t know how to burn ,” Herewiss said to Segnbora, without looking at her. “The eye, though, that’s possible—“
—Put a longsword into that little eye and hope to hit the brain? Segnbora didn’t dare laugh at the idea. The deathjaw was close—shaggy-coated, brindled, the size of three Darthene lions. Shiny black talons gleamed on its great catlike paws. The deathjaw opened its mouth just a little, showing two of its three lines of fangs above and below. Then it finally began to run, its face wrinkling into a horrible mask.
Herewiss swung Khávrinen up with elbows locked and let it charge—his only option, for running was as hopeless as a slash-and-cut duel would be. The blade into the eye, she heard him thinking, and Fire down the blade, enough to blast the brain dead. I hope—
He never had a chance. While still twenty feet away the deathjaw screamed horribly as fire suddenly bloomed about it, eating inward through flesh and muscle and sinew quick as a gasp. The still-moving skeleton burned incandescent for a moment more before the swirling flames blasted bone to powder, then ate that too. The deathjaw was gone before its death shrieks faded.
And Sunspark appeared—a brief bright coalescence like a meteor changing its mind in midexplosion, steadying down to the horse-shape again. It came pacing over to Herewiss and Freelorn and Segnbora, exuding a feeling of great pleasure, its mane and tail burning merrily as holiday bonfires. (You called for me?) it said to Herewiss, who was gasping with deferred terror.
He gulped for breath. “I believe I did,” Herewiss said.
Sunspark looked at Freelorn with an expression of good-natured wickedness and said nothing.
“Thank you,” Freelorn said, courteous enough; but there was a touch of grudge in his voice.
Sunspark snorted. (Gratitude! Next time I’ll choose my moment with more care. A little later, say.)
“Choose the moment—!”
(So that you’ll appreciate me more.)
“You mean you watched those things attack us and you didn’t—!”
“Lorn, enough,” Herewiss said. “It doesn’t think the way you do. Luckily for us. Loved,” he said to the elemental, “did you notice any other wildlife in these parts while you were having breakfast?”
(Singers,) it said, looking to the northwest. (The ones with fur.)
“Wolves? Perfect.” Herewiss glanced down at Khávrinen, which blazed just long enough to burn the blood off itself. “We won’t be climbing the Fane until sunset, since a Summoning there works best at twilight. But damned if I’m going to put up with any more Fyrd in the meantime. I’ll go have a word with the wolves and see if I can work something out. Now, how do I manage this—”
He frowned, closed his eyes. Fire swirled outward from Khávrinen, hiding both sword and wielder. The pillar of brilliance shrank as it swirled, and sank close to the ground. When the blue Flame died away it left behind a handsome cream-white wolf with orange-brown points and downturned blue eyes.
(Not bad,) Sunspark said, (for a beginner.)
Herewiss grinned a wolf-grin. (Stay close till I get back, loved, just in case the Fyrd try again. I won’t be long.)
The wolf bounded away through the long grass. Watching him go, Segnbora dug down in her belt-pouch for a square of clean soft cloth, with which she began cleaning off Charriselm’s blade. When she’d finished, she looked thoughtfully at the Fane. It seemed to gaze back, calm and blind and patient, waiting for something. Fyrd so close to this place—that’s unheard of. All the rules are changing.
But after this, nothing is going to be the way it was. Not even me.
“You going to stand there all day?” someone shouted at her. Freelorn and the others were in the saddle, getting ready to ride down to the Fane. Segnbora swung up into Steelsheen’s saddle and went after them.
***
Somewhat later she sat with her back against the trunk of an old rowan tree near the lakeshore, watching the long shadows of men, horses and trees drown in slow dusk. The Fane, half a mile away across Rilthor’s water, shone golden as a legend where its heights still caught the sunset. The mirroring water lay still in the breathless evening, the mountain’s burning image broken only by the wakes of gray songswans gliding by. It’s really more a hill than a mountain, Segnbora thought, stretching. The Fane was no more than half a mile wide at the base, broad at the bottom and flat at the top, stippled roughly with brush and scrub pine. Nothing so spectacular…except for what you can’t see.
And it was the unseen which all day had kept their camp so abnormally quiet. Freelorn had spent most of the afternoon pacing and frowning until Herewiss returned from his parley with the wolves, reporting success and a throat sore from much howling. Now he sat under a nearby alder, meditating, with Khávrinen flaming in his lap. For a long while Herewiss hadn’t moved, gazing across at the Fane with an expression half wonder and half fear, while Freelorn took to pacing again. Harald and Moris had been keeping so close to one another that one might have thought they had been lovers for only a week or so, rather than years. Dritt and Lang had become obsessive about caring for their horses, and the otherwise fearless Lang had been looking over his shoulder a great deal. Even Sunspark, in its horse-shape, had been cribbing quietly at an elm tree, leaving small scorched places bitten out of the bark.
Segnbora laughed at herself then, a mere breath of merriment. And look at me. All the time I’ve spent on the trail, a hunted woman—and look what kind of watch I’m keeping. My back turned to open country, where Goddess knows what could be coming up from behind—and me sitting here staring at this silly hill as if it’s going to jump out of the water and come after me! Yet that silent, remote benevolence kept watching her, kept waiting.
In the distance a clear melodious sound, like the night finding its voice, rose up—joined a moment later in the long note by another voice wavering downward a third, and yet another, higher by a fourth. The unsettling harmony sent a delighted shiver down her spine. The wolves were on post as their rearguard, singing to while away the watch.
The Goddess’s dogs, Segnbora thought. It was the old affectionate name for them, the votaries who sang to Her mirror, the Moon, through all its phases, silent only when She was dark and dangerous. Where the Moon tonight? Segnbora wondered, glancing upward. It hadn’t yet risen. But she was distracted, as always, with the sight of the first few stars pointing through the twilight, and the memory they always recalled.
