by Diane Duane
Nor was it the only grave. When she found strength to stand again, the death-taint led her to four others scattered around the edges of the field. All were deeper and better concealed, and all were older: the oldest perhaps three months old, the newest about three weeks.
So much for Eftgan’s messenger, Segnbora thought, standing over the last grave. From the intelligencer’s grave and three others, the souls were long flown, despite the brutality of their deaths. But from the one under the yew tree came a sensation of vague, scattered, helpless loss. There were two souls trapped there, shattered by their murder, trying to coalesce in time to find the Door into Starlight before the strength to pass it was lost.
Segnbora swore bitterly, torn with pity for the struggling dead and her own inability to do anything for them. Sorcery has no power over the opening or closing of that final Door. She knew the protocols for the laying of the dead. Without the Fire, they were beyond her. But not beyond Herewiss, or Eftgan—
She headed back for town at a run, pausing outside the postern gate to remove the sticktights and hay blades from her clothes. The inn’s common room was, if possible, noisier than it had been. There were perhaps a hundred people in there, laughing, joking, singing…and Segnbora’s hair stood up at the thought that any one of them might be a murderer several times over.
She found Freelorn relieving the barmaid of another bottle of potato wine, and swung him aside to a spot where they couldn’t be overheard. “Lorn, where’s Herewiss gone?”
“He’s still out talking to you know who—” Lorn looked more closely at Segnbora. “You’re shaking!”
“Lorn, never mind. Smile! Something’s very wrong, and we’re not supposed to know about it. Take your time, but find Herewiss—!”
“—so if the others agree, we’ll go to Barachael,” Herewiss’s voice said softly as he came up behind Freelorn from the other side. “It’s as good a place to hide as any, and it’s a lot closer to Arlen than we are now… What’s wrong?” he said, looking at Segnbora.
Before she could say a word, his underhearing brought him the answer. His eyes went wide with shock. “Show us,” he said. “Lorn, go out the front way. I’ll take the side. By the postern gate?”
Segnbora nodded and went out the way she had come, doing her best not to seem like she was hurrying anywhere. Freelorn and Herewiss were through the postern and into the hay ahead of her. She tied up her gown again and hurried after.
“Eftgan’s gone to readjust her Door,” Herewiss said when she reached them. “It may take her a little while—seven people, six horses, and Sunspark are a larger group than usually uses that gateway.” He lowered his voice. “I think she’s ready to openly back Lorn against Cillmod. She’ll give us the details tomorrow, at Barachael.”
“That’s wonderful,” Segnbora said, “but with the problems she’s been having, she’s hardly in a position to leave Barachael for a campaign in Arlen.”
“True. But I think I can help her, and free her to help us in return. Though the Reavers are pouring through the Chaelonde Pass, it’s a simple enough matter to close that avenue—”
“Close it how?” Segnbora said. “The Queen’s Rodmistresses have been doing illusion-wreakings there for years, but to less and less purpose all the time since so many people have died in that pass over the centuries. The built-up negative energies there are enough to ruin even the best Rodmistress’s work, and it’s doing nothing to stop the Reavers any more—”
“I’m not planning to waste time with illusions. It’s time for something less subtle. A sealing.”
“You mean physically closing the pass?” Freelorn said, stunned. “As in knocking down a few mountains?”
“Yes.”
“And you call that simple?”
“Yes. Dangerous, too. It’ll require a lot of power, but it’s also less likely to go wrong.”
“Then what you saw in that dream—”
As they approached the spot Segnbora had sensed, Herewiss shook his head. “Later, Lorn.” To Segnbora he said, “How long have the people in that last grave been dead?”
“Grave?”
“A week or so, I think. They’re weak – they were getting along in years to begin with, I think, and shock of their death was considerable. You have the protocols—”
“I have them.”
“Protocols, what protocols?” Freelorn said.
“For raising the dead,” Herewiss said. “Stay close, Lorn, I’m going to need you. …Oh, sweet Mother,” he added as the full force of the sour smell of murder hit him. Segnbora was already tearing—the psychic residue of violent death became not easier, but harder to handle with repeated exposure.
“Goddess, what is that,” Freelorn said, and coughed.
Both Segnbora and Herewiss looked at him, surprised. “You smell something?” Herewiss said.
“Don’t you? Like a charnel pit.” Freelorn coughed again. Herewiss looked most thoughtful, for the graves were covered and the night air was sweet even here; the stench was purely a matter of the undersenses.
They came to the yew tree, and stopped. Quickly, for the stench was becoming overwhelming, Herewiss reached over his shoulder and drew Khávrinen. Its Fire, suppressed all through the evening, now flared up, a hot blue-white. Concerned, Segnbora threw a look over her shoulder at the walls of Chavi.
“Only our own people and Eftgan will be able to see the Fire,” Herewiss said, quiet-voiced, slipping into the calm he would need for his wreaking. “Now then…”
The wavering of Flame about Khávrinen grew less hurried as its master calmed, yet there was still a great tension in every curl and curve of Fire. With the tip of the sword, Herewiss drew a circle around the tree, the graves, Freelorn, and Segnbora. Where Khávrinen’s point cut the fallow ground, Fire remained, until at the circle’s end it flowed into itself, a seamless circle of blue Flame that licked and wreathed upward. Finally, when he had stepped into the circle to join the others, Herewiss thrust Khávrinen span-deep into the soft dirt, laid his hands, one over the other, on the sword s fiery hilt, and began the wreaking. “Erhn tai ‘mis kuithen, ástehae sschüur; usven kes uibren—”
The words were in a more ancient dialect of Nhàired than any Segnbora had been taught. Even in Nhàired, which held within many odd rhythms, the scansion of this wreaking-rhyme was bizarre. Freelorn fidgeted, watching his loved with unease as Herewiss reassured the trembling yew and the murder-stained earth that he was about to end their pain, not make it worse. He stood and called the Power up out of him, sweating. The circle’s Fire reached higher, twisting, wreathing, matching the interlock of word with word, of thought with rhyme—
Herewiss poured out the words, poured out the Flame, profligate. Power built and built in the circle until it numbed the mind, until the eyes saw nothing anywhere but blue Fire, and a man-shaped shadow at the heart of it, the summoner.
Segnbora was overwhelmed. She did the only thing safe to do—turned around inside herself and fled down to the dark place in search of Hasai. His Power, thought, he has too much! No one can have that much! Even in her own depths she could see nothing but burning blue light, but at last she stumbled into Hasai and flung her arms around one hot, stony talon. Concerned, the Dragon lowered his head protectively over her.
Outside, after what seemed an eternity of blueness, tension ebbed. Segnbora dared to look out of herself again and saw the pillar of Fire that wreathed about Herewiss diminish slightly as he released his wreaking to seek outside the circle for the fragments of the murdered people’s souls. He spoke on, in a different rhythm now, low and insistent, urging outward the unseen web the Fire had woven of itself, moving it as an ebb tide pushes a thrown net away from shore. When the web had drifted across the entire field, he reversed the meter of his poetry and began pulling it in again.
Segnbora swallowed hard. Light followed the blue-glittering weave; dusts and motes and sparkles drifted inward, small coalescing clouds of pallid light. They drifted inward faster now, co
iling into two separate sources; these grew brighter and brighter, tightening to cores of light that pulsed in time with Herewiss’s verse. A last sharp word from Herewiss, a last burst of blue light, dazzling—
The Fire of the circle died down to a twilight shimmer, though about Herewiss and Khávrinen, Flame still twined bright. Segnbora found herself looking at two solid-seeming people—a man, shorter than herself, middle-aged, stocky, with a blunt, worn face; a woman of about the same age, still shorter, but more slender for her height. They both looked weary and confused. Segnbora gazed at them pityingly in that first second or so, seeing strangers—
—and then knew them.
She couldn’t move. “‘Kani, what happened?” the man said, looking at the woman with distress. “We were in bed…”
His voice, the voice that had frightened her, praised her, laughed with her. The woman turned to him. Her face. The sight of it made Segnbora weak behind the knees, as if struck by a deadly blow.
“Mother,” she whispered.
“Hol, no,” Welcaen said. “The innkeeper woke us up, he said the horses were loose—” She broke , horrified by the memory. Segnbora was stunned. That beautiful, sharp, lively voice was dulled now, like that of anyone who died by violence. “They tricked us into coming out here,” she said at last. “He had an axe. His wife had—”
Her husband’s eyes hardened, a flash of life left. “Why did they bother with such illusions? We have no money—”
Herewiss stood unmoving, seemingly dispassionate; but even through her shock Segnbora saw that he had to swallow several times before he could get his voice to work. “Sir,” he said, “madam… It was no illusion, what was done to you.”
“Hol,” Segnbora’s mother said, stepping forward to get a better look at Herewiss. She moved like a sleepwalker. “Hol, this isn’t one of them—”
Holmaern looked not at Herewiss’s face, but at his sword, and his face went angry and scornful just for a flash. “This is ridiculous. It’s more illusion. Men don’t have Fire!”
“This man has it,” her mother said, a touch of wonder piercing the sleepy sound of her voice. “Sir, did you save us?”
“Lady Welcaen,” Herewiss said. “I didn’t save you. Of your courtesy, tell me what brought you to the inn here.”
“Reavers,” she said, dreamy voiced, as if telling of a threat years and miles gone. “They came down through the mountains at Onther, looking for food, and overran the farmsteads. We and a few of our neighbors had warning. We got away north before the burnings and told our news here to the innkeeper so he could spread it elsewhere in the countryside. And tonight he woke us up—”
Holmaern turned to his wife, slow realization changing his expression to a different kind of dullness. “‘Kani,” he said. He reached out to touch her, but it was plain from his expression that she didn’t feel as he expected her to. “‘Kani, we’re dead.”
Segnbora saw her mother’s eyes go terrible with the truth. “You’re—” She fought for words. “If we’re— But where’s the last Shore?”
Though Herewiss’s face was very still, something moving gleamed there in the light of his Flame: tears. He gazed down at Khávrinen, and Segnbora felt him calling up the Power again, a great wash of it. This time the framework he built with it took a strange and frightening shape, one she didn’t know.
“I am the way,” he said, speaking another’s words for Her. He let go of Khávrinen and lifted his arms, opening them to her mother and father. They gazed at him in wonder. Freelorn, across the circle, went pale as if with some old fear.
Herewiss was still there as much as any of them, but within the outlines of his body the stars blazed, more brilliant than they had been even in Hasai’s memory of the gulf between worlds. Within Herewiss, about those stars, was a darkness deeper than that gulf could ever be. Segnbora trembled at the sight of him. Herewiss trembled too, but his voice was steady. “Who will be first?” he said.
Holmaern held Welcaen close. “Can’t we go together?”
Herewiss shook his head sorrowfully. “I’m too narrow a Door,” he said. “Besides, even at the usual Door, everyone goes through alone…”
Husband and wife looked at one another. “We have a daughter,” her mother said after a moment. She glanced around the field, but saw nothing. “Will you send her word—?”
Segnbora’s heart turned over and broke inside her. “Mother!” she said, choking, desperate, feeling more abandoned by that terrible placid regard that didn’t see her than by her mother’s death itself.
“Segnbora d’Welcaen tai-Enraesi is her name,” her father said, and even through the dullness the words came out proudly. “She was eastaway in Steldin last we heard. Something about some outlaws…but she’s had so much training: she can take care of herself. Send her word…”
“Father!”
Her tears made no difference; her father didn’t answer. “Come on, Hol,” her mother said, and reached up a little to touch her lips to his—then turned away toward Herewiss. “A man with the Fire,” she said. “I never thought I’d live to see the day.” And there on the threshold of true death, she smiled. “I didn’t, did I?…”
Herewiss shook his head silently, opened his arms. Welcaen moved into them, throwing a last glance at her husband on the threshold of true death. “I’ll wait for you,” she said.
Herewiss embraced her. She was gone.
Holmaern stepped slowly forward. “Father!” Segnbora cried as he moved into Herewiss’s arms.
Her father hesitated; his head turned toward her, and the Firelight caught in his hazel eyes. A flicker stirred there, like a vaguely recollected memory. Herewiss paused for a breath, two breaths.
“Tell her we love her,” Holmaern said. He gathered Herewiss close, passed through, and was gone.
Khávrinen’s Fire went out, and the circle faded to a blue smolder and died. Beside his now-dark sword Herewiss went slowly to his knees, and sobbed once, bitterly. Freelorn went to him, held him close with a helpless look: he was crying too.
Segnbora had no power to do anything but stand and look at now-empty air, and breathe in the fading scent of death.
Herewiss was gasping for control. “It’s not, that’s not something people are meant to be! Life—” He gasped again. “Lorn, it’s supposed to be life I give—”
Freelorn buried his eyes against Herewiss’s shoulder, then straightened. “And what kind of life would they have had, dead and on the wrong side of the Door, wandering ghosts? What do you think you gave them?”
Segnbora stood still, seeing behind her eyes, with the immediacy that came of Hasai’s presence, old lost times that were somehow also now: summer mornings in Asfahaeg, rich with sunlight and the smell of the Sea; winter nights by the old hearthside in Darthis; afternoons weaving with her father, riding with her mother; laughter, anger, argument, joy, the sounds of life. They were real, infinitely more real than what she’d just seen. She turned and walked away, back toward town.
The truth started to catch up with her at about the same time that Freelorn and Herewiss did, in the middle of the hayfield. They stopped her, looked at her as if expecting her to lapse into some new state of madness. “Well?” she said. “What’s the problem?”
“What are you going to do?” Freelorn said, sounding wary.
Segnbora felt Charriselm’s sweaty grip in her hand and thought of the innkeeper—hurried, merry sharp-faced, with eyes that wouldn’t meet hers. “I’m going to kill someone,” she said, turning toward town again.
“’Berend!” Freelorn said. She ignored him, hurrying off through the hay, which bit at her legs and hissed at her as she waded through it, faster and faster. It would have been us next, she thought. Someone doesn’t want southern news getting abroad—and we came from that direction, just as they did. I might well have been the next one. Wearing the same arms as the last two they killed, who knew whether I might have been looking for them, might have suspected something? Pprobably Lorn and the others
would have been killed at the same time, or soon after. And Eftgan, if she stayed long enough and the innkeeper guessed who she was—
Behind her she could feel Fire stirring again. Herewiss had begun another wreaking, and she suspected what it was. Herewiss was a strategist. He would count it folly to kill a spy, and thus alert the spy’s superiors to the fact that that someone had discovered the game they played. He was building around the innkeeper and his wife a wreaking that would later cause them to dream the murders of those they’d agreed to kill, when in fact they would go on their way, unnoticed and unharmed. It was all perfectly sensible, and Segnbora despised the idea.
(Don’t waste your time,) she said, silent and bitter. (He won’t know what’s happened to him until a second after I hit him, when he tries to move and falls over in two pieces. And as for his wife—)
She went quietly through the postern, expecting an empty street. Instead, Moris and Dritt were there. So was Harald, standing silently with their horses. Lang was just joining them, along with Eftgan, who had her cloak about her shoulders and her unsheathed white Rod in her hand.
Segnbora would have brushed past the Queen to take care of unfinished business in the inn, but Eftgan’s hand on her arm, together with her look of concern at the sudden taste of Segnbora’s mind, stopped Segnbora as if she had walked into a wall. “‘Berend? What happened?”
Segnbora looked down at Eftgan’s brown eyes, so like her mother’s, and flinched away, unable to bear it.
“Oh, my Goddess,” Eftgan said. “Herewiss?”
In a breath’s worth of silence Herewiss showed Eftgan what Segnbora had found, what he had done for her parents, and the dream-wreaking he had woven and implanted in the innkeeper, and afterward in his wife. “Can we get out of here now?” he said, sounding deadly tired. Sunspark paced to him in its stallion shape, and Herewiss leaned on it, sagging like a man near exhaustion while Sunspark gazed at him in uncomprehending concern.
