by Диана Дуэйн
He looked at her in sudden horror. Had Lorn been so indiscreet as to mention the blue Fire—
She shook her head at him, smiling, and was silent. For a while she gazed into the fire, and then said, 'And how old are you now?'
'Twenty-eight,' he said, shortly, like an unhappy child.
The lady rubbed her nose and leaned back in her chair until her pose almost matched Herewiss's. 'You feel your time growing short, I take it.'
'Even if I had control of the Power right now,' Herewiss said, 'it would be starting to wane. I'd have, oh, ten years to use it if I didn't overextend myself. Which I would,' he added, smiling a little at himself. 'Oh, I would.'
'How so?' She was looking at him again, a little intrigued, a little bemused.
Herewiss drained his cup and stared into the fire. 'Really! If I came into my Power, there I'd be, the first male since Earn and Healhra to bear Flame. That is, if the first use didn't kill me. Think of the fame! Think of the fortune!' He laughed a little. 'And think of the wreaking,' he said, more gently, his face softening, 'think of the storms I could still, the lives I could save, the roads I could walk. The roads . . .'
He poured himself another cup of wine. 'The roads in the sky, and past it,' he said. 'The roads the Dragons know. The ways between the Stars. Ten years would be too high an estimate. Better make it seven, or five. I'd burn myself out like a levinbolt.' He drank deeply, and set the cup down again. 'But what a way to go.'
The lady watched him, her head propped on her hand, considering.
'What price would you be willing to pay for your Power?' she asked.
The question sounded rhetorical, and Herewiss, dreamy with wine and warmth, treated it as such. 'Price? The Moon on a silver platter! A necklace of stars! One of the Steeds of the Day—'
'No, I meant really.'
'Really. Well, right now I'm paying all my waking hours, just about; or I was, before I had to get Freelorn out of the badger– hole he got himself stuck in. What more do I have to give?'
He looked at her, and was surprised to see her face serious again. Something else he noticed; there was an oddness about the inside of her cloak. … He had thought it as black within as without, but it wasn't. As he strained his eyes in the firelight, there seemed to be some kind of light in its folds, some kind of motion, but faint, faint – He blinked, and didn't see it, and dismissed the notion; and then on his next look he saw it again. A faint light, glittering—
No, – it must have been the wine. He rejected the image.
The lady's eyes were intent on him, and he noticed how very green they were, a warm green like sunlit summer fields. 'Herewiss,' she said, her voice going very low, 'your Name, would you give that for your Power?'
Of all the strange things he had heard so far, that startled him badly, and the wine went out in him as if someone had poured water on the small fire it had lit. 'Madam, I don't know my Name,' he said, and wondered suddenly what he had gotten himself into, wondered what kind of woman kept an inn out here on the borders of
human habitation, all alone—
He looked again at the cloak, with eyes grown wary. It was no different. In the black black depths of it something shone, tiny points of an intense silvery light, infinite in number as if the cloak had been strewn with jeweldust, or the faint innumerable stars of Healhra's Road. Stars—?
She looked at him, earnest, sincere; but the testing look was also in her eyes, the look that awaited an answer, and the right one. A look that dared him to dare.
'If you knew it,' she said, 'would you pay that price for your Power?'
'My Name?' he said slowly. Certainly there was no higher price that he could pay. His inner Name, his own hard-won knowledge of himself, of all the things he could be-But he didn't know it. And even if he had, the thought of giving his inner Name to another person was frightening. It was to give your whole self, totally, unreservedly; a surrender of life, breath and soul into other hands. To tell a friend your Name, that was one thing. Friends usually had a fairly good idea of what you were to begin with, and the fact that they didn't use it against you was earnest of their trustworthiness. But to sell your Name to a stranger-to pay it, as a price for something – the thought was awful. Once a person had your Name, they could do anything to you – bind you to their will, take that Name from you and leave you an empty thing, a shell in which blood flowed and breath moved, but no life was. Or bind you into some terrible place that was not of this world. Or, horrible thought, into another body that wasn't yours; man or beast or Fyrd or demon, it wouldn't much matter. Madness would follow shortly. The possibilities for the misuse of a Name were as extensive as the ingenuity of malice.
But—
—to have the Power.
To have that blue Fire flower full and bright through some kind of focus, any kind. To heal, and build, and travel about the Kingdoms being needed. To talk to the storm, and understand the thoughts of Dragons, and feel with the growing earth, and run down with the rivers to the Sea. To walk the roads between the Stars. To be trusted by all, and worthy of that trust. To be whole.
Even as he sat and thought, Herewiss could feel the Power down inside him; feeble, stunted, struggling in the empty cavern of his self like a pale tired bird of fire. It fluttered and beat itself vainly against the cage-bars of his ribs every time his heart beat. Soon it wouldn't even be able to do that; it would drop to the center of him and lie there dead, poor pallid unborn Otherlife. Whenever he looked into himself after that, he would see nothing but death and ashes and endings. And then soon enough he would probably make an end of himself as well—
'If I knew it,' he said, and his voice sounded strange and thick to him, fear and hope fighting in it, 'I would. I would pay it. But it's useless.'
He looked at the innkeeper and was faintly pleased to see satisfaction in her eyes. 'Well then,' she said, pushing herself a little straighter in the chair, 'I think I have a commodity that would interest you.'
'What?' Herewiss was more interested in her cloak. 'Soulflight.'
He stared at her, amazed, and forgot about the cloak. 'How – where did you get it?'
'I have my sources,' she said, with a tiny twist of smile. She was watching him intently, studying his reactions, and for the moment Herewiss didn't care whether she was seeing what she wanted to or not.
'Are you a seeress?' he asked.
She shrugged at him. 'In a way. But I don't use the drug. It fell into my hands, and I've been looking for someone to whom I might responsibly give it.'
For a bare second Herewiss's mind reeled and soared, dreaming of what he could do with a dose of the Soulflight drug. Walk the past and the future, pass through men's minds and understand their innermost thoughts, walk between worlds, command the Powers and Potentialities and speak to the dead—
But it was a dream, and though dreams are free, real things have their price. 'How much do you have?'
'A little bottle, about half a pint.'
Herewiss laughed at her. 'I would have to sell you the Brightwood whole and entire with all its people for that much Soulflight,' he said. 'I'm only the Lord's son, not the Queen of Darthen, madam.' 'I'm not asking for money,' she said.
'What then? How many times do I have to sleep with you?'
She broke out laughing, and after a moment he joined her. 'Now that,' she said, 'is a gallant idea, but unless you have the talisman of the prince who shared himself with the thousand virgins, I doubt you could manage it. Not to mention that I'd be furrowed like the fields in March, and I wouldn't be able to walk for a month. How would I run the place?'
Herewiss, smiling, looked again at her cloak. The fire had died down somewhat, and he could see the stars more clearly – countless brilliantly blazing fires, burning silver-cold. He also perceived more clearly that there was a tremendous depth to the cloak, endless reaches of cool darkness going back away from him forever, though the cloak plainly ended at the back of the chair where the lady leaned on it.
He l
ooked at her, dark hair, green eyes like the shadowed places about the Forest Altars, wearing the night. He knew with certainty who She was. Awe stirred in him, and joy as well.
'What's the price, madam?' he said, opening himself to the surges building inside him.
'I'll give you the drug,' she said, 'if you will swear to me that, when you find out your inner Name, you'll tell it to me.'
Herewiss considered the woman stretched out in the old tattered chair. 'Why do you want to know it?'
She eased herself a little downward, looking into the fire again, and smiled. After a little silence she said, 'I guess you could call me a patroness of sorts. Wouldn't it be to my everlasting glory to have helped bring the first male in all these empty years into his Power? And as all good deeds come back to the doer eventually, sooner or later, I'd reap reward for it.'
Herewiss laughed softly. 'That's not all you're thinking of.'
'No, it's not, I suppose,' said the innkeeper. 'Look, Herewiss; power, in all its forms, is a strange thing. Most of the power that exists is bound up, trapped, and though it tries to be free, usually it can't manage it by itself. The world is full of potential Power of all kinds, yes?'
He nodded.
'But at the same time, loss of power, the death of things, is a process that not even the Goddess can stop. Eventually even the worlds will die.'
'So they say.'
Her face was profoundly sorrowful, her eyes shadowed as if with guilt. 'The death is inevitable. But we have one power, all men and beasts and creatures of other planes. We can slow down the Death, we can die hard, and help
all the worlds die hard. To that purpose it behooves us to let loose all the power we can. To live with vigor, to love powerfully and without caring whether we're loved back, to let loose building and teaching and healing and all the arts that try to slow down the great Death. Especially joy, just joy itself. A joy flares bright and goes out like the stars that fall, but the little flare it makes slows down the great Death ever so slightly. That's a triumph, that it can be slowed down at all, and by such a simple thing.'
'And you want to let me loose.' 'Don't you want to be loose?'
'Of course! But, madam, forgive me, I still don't understand. What's in it for you?'
The lady smiled ruefully, as if she had been caught in an omission, but still admired Herewiss for catching her. 'If I were the Goddess,' she said, 'and I am, for all of us are, whether we admit it to ourselves or not – if I were She, I would look at you as She looks at all men, who are all Her lovers at one time or another. And I would say to Myself, "If I raise up that Power, free the Fire in him, then when the time comes at last that we share ourselves with one another, in life or after it, I will draw that strength of his into Me, and the Worlds and I will be the greater for it." And certainly it would be a great thing to know the Name of the first male to come into his Power, lending power in turn to me, so that I would be so much the greater for it . . .'
Herewiss sat and looked for a moment at the remote white fires of the stars within the cloak. They seemed to gaze back at him, unblinking, uncompromising, as relentlessly themselves as the lady seemed to be.
'How do I know that you won't use my Name against me if I ever do find it out?' he said, still playing the game.
The lady smiled at him gently. 'It's simple enough to
guard against, Herewiss,' she said. 'You have only to use the drug to find out Mine.'
The look of incalculable power and utter vulnerability that dwelt in her eyes in that moment struck straight through him, inflicting both amazement and pain upon him. Tears started suddenly to his eyes, and he blinked them back with great difficulty. Full of sorrow, he reached out and took her hand.
'None of us have any protection against that last Death, have we,' he said.
'None of us,' said the innkeeper. 'Not even She. Her pain is greatest; She must survive it, and watch all Her creation die.'
Herewiss held her hand in his, and shared the pain, and at last managed to smile through it.
'If I find my Name, I will tell you,' he said. 'I swear life by the Altars, and by Earn my Father, and by my breath and life, I'll pay the price.'
She smiled at him. 'That's good,' she said. 'I'll give you the drug to take with you tomorrow morning.'
A silence rested between them for a few minutes; they rested within it.
'And if I should in my travels come across your Name,' Herewiss said, 'well, it'll be my secret.'
'I never doubted it,' she said, still smiling. 'Thank you.'
For a while more they sat in silence, and both of them gazed into the fire, relaxed. Finally the lady stretched a bit, arching her back against the chair. The shimmer of starlight moved with her as she did so, endless silent volumes of stars shifting with her slight motion. She looked over at Herewiss with an expression that was speculative, and a little shy. He looked back at her, almost stealing the glance, feeling terribly young and adventurous, and nervous too.
'Let's pretend,' he said, very softly, 'that you're the Goddess—' '—and you're My Lover—?' 'Why not?'
'Why not indeed? After all, You are—' '—and You are—' —and for a long time, They were.
Something awoke Herewiss in the middle night. He turned softly over on his side, reaching out an arm, and found only a warm place on the bed where She had been. Slowly and a little sadly he moved his face to where Hers had lain on the pillow, and breathed in the faint fragrance he found there. It was sweet and musky, woman– scent with a little sharpness to it; a subtle note of green things growing in some patterned place of running waters, sun-dappled beneath birdsong. He closed his eyes and savored the moment through his loneliness; felt the warmth beneath the covers, heard the soft pop of a cooling ember, breathed out a long tired sigh of surrender to the sweet exhaustion of having filled another with himself. And despite the empty place beneath his arm, that She in turn had filled so completely with Herself, still he smiled, and loved Her. With all the men and women in the world to love, both living and yet unborn, She could hardly spend much time in one place, or seem to.
He got up, then, moving slowly and carefully with half-closed eyes so as not to break the pleasant half-sleep, half-waking state he was experiencing. Herewiss wrapped a sheet around himself, went out of the room and padded ghost-silent down the hall to listen at the next door down. Nothing. He pushed the door gently open, went in, closed it behind him. Lorn was snoring faintly beneath the covers.
Herewiss eased into the bed behind Freelorn, snuggled up against his back, slipped an arm around his chest; Freelorn roused slightly, just enough to hug Herewiss's arm to him, and then started snoring again.
Herewiss closed his eyes and sank very quickly into sleep, dreaming of the shadowed places in the Bright-wood, and of serene eyes that watched eternally through the leaves.
When Herewiss came down to breakfast, Freelorn was there before him, putting away eggs and hot sugared apples and guzzling hot minted honey-water as if he had been up for hours. This was moderately unusual, since Freelorn almost never ate breakfast at all. More unusual, though, was the fact that he was up early, and looked cheerful – he was usually a later riser, and grumpy until lunch time.
Herewiss sat down next to him, and Freelorn grunted by way of saying hello. 'Nice day,' he said a few seconds later, around a mouthful of food.
'It is that.' Herewiss looked up to see Dritt and Moris come in together. Dritt was humming through his beard, though still out of tune, and Moris, usually so noisy in the mornings, went into the kitchen silently, with a look on his face that made Herewiss think of a cat with more cream in his bowl than he could possibly finish.
Herewiss reached over to steal Freelorn's mug, and a gulp's worth of honey-water. 'Is she making more?'
Freelorn nodded. 'Be out in a minute, she said.'
Segnbora came down the stairs, pulled out the chair next to Herewiss, and sat down with a thump. She looked a little tired, but she smiled so radiantly at Herewiss that he
decided not to ask her how it had been.
'Did you give her our best?' Freelorn asked, cleaning his plate. 'It was mutual, I think.'
Freelorn chuckled. 'I dare say. Where are Lang and Harald?'
'They'll be down – they were washing up a few minutes ago.'
'Good. We should get an early start – if we're going to find this place of yours, I want to hurry up about it. And I would much rather see it in daylight.'
'Lorn, I doubt it's any worse at night.'
'Everything is worse at night. With one exception.'
'Is that all you ever think about?'
'Well, there is something else, actually. But it's easier to make love than it is to make kings.'
Lang came thumping down the stairs and sat down across from Segnbora. 'How was it?'
'Oh please! It was fine.'
'This hold,' Lang said, 'will we be seeing it tomorrow?' 'If the directions I got are right.'
(They are,) Sunspark said from the stable. (Tomorrow easily. I can feel the place from here.)
'Before nightfall?'
'I think so.'
'Good.'
'I wish you people wouldn't worry so much,' Herewiss said. 'It's not haunted, as far as I can tell.'
'—which can't be far. Nobody will go near the place! Morning, Harald.'
'Morning,' Harald sat down across from Herewiss. 'How was she, then?'
Segnbora sighed at the ceiling. 'She was fine. Twice more and I can stop repeating myself . . .'
'Can you blame us for being curious? I mean, a lady like
that—' But as Lang said it, the smile on his face caught Herewiss's eye. A little reflective, that smile, and a little reminiscent, almost wistful . . .
The kitchen door swung open, and Dritt and Moris and the innkeeper came out laden with trays; more eggs, more steaming honey-water and hot apples, with a huge bowl of wheat porridge and a pile of steamed crabs from the river. They put the things down, and as the grabbing and passing commenced, Herewiss looked over the heads of Freelorn's people to catch the lady's eye.
