by Diane Duane
In the Othersight the army was a black blot of leashed panic, terror with nowhere to run. Now, while they couldn’t move to prevent the damage—
Herewiss gave the sorcery an extra boost, a push of power to keep it alive while he turned his attention away from it. Then he turned to Sunspark, looking at him with the Othersight—
—and was amazed. Sunspark burned beside him, almost intolerable even to his altered vision, blazing as flaming-white as the pain at the bottom of a new wound. Its outline was that of a stallion still, but confined within that outline was the straining heart of a star, an inexpressible conflagration of consuming fires. Now Herewiss began for the first time to understand what an elemental was. This was one note of the song the Goddess sang at the beginning, when She was young and did not know about the great Death. One pure unbearable note of the song, a note to break the brain open through the ears and the burnt eyes—a chained potency looking for a place to happen, a spark of the Sun indeed, whose only purpose was to burn itself out, recklessly, gloriously. One more falling star, one more firebrand flung against the night by the Creatress in Her defiance—
Herewiss slipped warily into Sunspark’s mind, confining himself to the narrow dark bridge that represented his control over it, a sword’s-width of safety arching over unfathomed fires. (Sunspark. Go, take their tents, their wagons, everything, and burn them. I don’t want us being followed.)
(And the men?) Its inward voice was no longer a thing of concepts, but of currents of heat and tangles of light.
(Don’t kill!!)
It resisted him, testing, defying his control, and in his heart Herewiss shuddered. He had not really understood what a terror he had chosen to bind. Its fires ravened around him, barely constrained by its given word. Nothing more than its sense of honor kept him from being consumed, but at the same time it was not above trying to frighten him into releasing it. And it did not understand his scruples at all. (What is death?) it sang, its up-leaping fires dancing and weaving through the timbre of its thought. (Why do you fear? They would come back. So would you. The dance goes on forever, and the fire—)
(Maybe for you. But they have no such assurances, and as for me, you know my reasons. Go do what I told you!)
It laughed at him, mocking his uncertainty, and the flames of its self wreathed up around Herewiss, licking, testing, prying at the cracks in his mind. It was without malice, he realized; it was only trying to make him understand, trying to make him one with it, though that oneness would destroy him. He held his barriers steadfastly, though in some deep part of him there was a touch of longing to be part of that fire, lost in it, burning in nonambivalent brilliance for one bare second before he was no more. The greater part of him, though, respected death too much, and refused the urge.
(Go!) he said again, and withdrew himself. Sunspark gathered itself up, leaped, streamed across the sky like a meteor, a trail of fire crackling behind it and lighting the lowering clouds as if with a sudden disastrous dawn.
The men before the keep, frozen in their silent regard of the Lion, saw Sunspark coming and knew it for something perhaps more real than they were. The few minds still bright with disbelief bent awry and went dark as if blown out by a cold wind. Herewiss, though shaken, turned his thought back to his sorcery, and as Sunspark swept down among the tents of the soldiers, the Lion roared, a sound that seemed to shake the earth clear back to where Herewiss sat.
It was too much. The army broke, scattering this way and that in wild disorder, screaming. Sunspark flitted from place to place in the first camp, the one on the eastern side, leaving explosions of white fire behind it. The flames spread with unnatural speed, leaping from tent to wagon as if of their own volition. Herewiss opened a door in the encircling cloud, parting it to the northward, and people began to flee through it. Sunspark saw this and hurried the process. It dove into the southern camp like a meteor and ignited it all at once into a terrible pillar of flame, driving the stampeding army around the west side of the keep and toward the opening in the cloudwall. They fled, officers and men together, with their screaming horses. Sunspark came behind them, though not too closely, spitting gledes and rockets of fire with joyous abandon.
Herewiss sighed and dissolved his remaining illusions, the Lion last of all. The great white head turned to regard him solemnly for a moment. Herewiss gazed back at it, seeing his own weary satisfaction mirrored in the golden eyes, himself looking at himself through his sorcery; then he withdrew his power from it with a sad smile. The image went out like a blown candle, but Herewiss imagined that those eyes lingered on him for a moment even after they were gone….
He shook his head to clear it. The backlash was getting to him already.
(Sunspark?)
It paused and looked back at him, a tiny intense core of light far down in the field.
(Are they all out?)
(Nearly.)
(Good. Look, the keep door is opening—it’s all fire there, go and part it for Lorn and his people and bring them through.)
(As you say.)
Slowly, hesitantly, six faintly glowing figures rode out of the keep and paused before the flaming eastern camp. The bright blaze that was Sunspark joined them there, and they all headed toward the fire, which ebbed suddenly.
The Othersight departed without warning, in the space of a breath. The sorcery dwindled and died away, the wall of cloud evaporated, emotion dissipating before the wind of relief. Herewiss sagged, feeling empty and drained. The fragile spell-structure swayed and fell and shattered inside him, the bright crystalline fragments littering the floor of his mind, sharp splinters of light hurting the backs of his eyes. Backlash… He put his hands behind him and braced himself against the ground, fighting the backlash off. There was one more thing he had to do.
The pain in his head was like hammers on anvils—Herewiss laughed at the thought, and found that it hurt to laugh, so he stopped—but he held himself awake and aware by main force, waiting. It was hard. Presently there were hands on him, helping him up. Herewiss opened his eyes and knew the face that bent over him, even in a night of impending storm and no stars.
“Lorn,” he whispered, reaching out, clinging to him.
“Herewiss. Oh Goddess. Are you all right?” The voice was terrified.
“Yes. No. Get me up, Lorn, I have something to do. When I finish, tie me on Sunspark here—”
“Fine. Up, then, do it, you’ve got to rest.”
“You’re telling me. Where’s Sunspark?”
“The horse, he means. Dritt, give me a hand. Segnbora, help us—”
“Right.” A new voice. Female. Where did she come from? Oh—the sixth one…. Strong hands stood him up, guided him to Sunspark.
He put out his hands, braced himself against the stallion’s shoulder. “N’stai llan astrev—”, he began, spilling out the simple water-deflecting spell as fast as he. could, for the darkness was reaching up to take him—
He finished it, and sagged back into the supporting arms. “East,” he said, but his voice didn’t seem to be working properly, and he had to push the words out again harder, “—straight east—”
Darkness deeper than the stormy night enfolded him, and as he drowned beneath the black sea roaring in his ears, he felt the rain begin.
FIVE
Silence is the door between Love and Fear,
and on Fear’s side, there is no latch.
Gnomics, 33
Sunset was glowing behind his back when Herewiss woke up. He opened his eyes on a wide barren vista of earth and scattered brush, streaked with crimson light and long shadows. He stretched, and found that he ached all over. It wasn’t all backlash; some of it was the pain of having been tied in the saddle and taken a great distance at speed.
“Good evening,” someone said to him.
He didn’t recognize the voice, a deep, gentle one. Then as he turned his head, the memories snapped back into place. The new person, the woman. This must be her.
Looking up at
her, Herewiss’s first impression was of large, deep-set hazel eyes that lingered on him in leisurely appraisal, and didn’t shift away when he returned the glance. And hands: long, strong-fingered hands, prominently veined, incongruously attached to little fragile bird-boned wrists and too-slender arms. She was very slim and long-limbed, wearing with faint unease a body that didn’t seem to have finished adolescence yet. But her muscles looked taut and hard from assiduous training. She sat cross-legged on the ground by Herewiss’s head, those strong hands resting quietly on her knees, seemingly relaxed. But his underhearing, hypersensitive from the large sorcery he had worked, gave him an immediate feeling of impatience, an impression that beneath the imposed external calm seethed something that had to be done and couldn’t. Her dark hair was cut just above the shoulders; Herewiss looked at it and smiled. She wants to make sure they know she’s a woman, he thought, but she doesn’t have the patience for braids….
“Good evening to you,” he said, propping himself up on one elbow and then frowning—he had forgotten how sore he was. “I’m sorry I missed your name when we were on the way out—”
“You were hardly in a condition to remember it if you’d heard it,” she said, reaching out to touch hands with him. “Segnbora, Welcaen’s daughter.”
“Herewiss, Hearn’s son,” he said, touching her hand, and then flinching. No matter how fordone he might be, there was no mistaking the feel of Flame. And she was full of it, spilling over with it. It had sparked between their hands, faint blue like dry-lightning, as if trying to fill the empty place in him. Something very like envy whirled through Herewiss’s mind, to be replaced immediately by confusion. With power like that, what was she doing here?
She was rubbing her hands together thoughtfully, and still looking at him, her curiosity more open. But at the same time she read the look in his eyes, and her expression was rueful. “You felt right,” she said softly. “The funny thing is, I think I did too….”
For a few moments more they regarded each other. Then Segnbora dropped her eyes, reaching down with one hand to play with the peace-strings of her sword, sheathed on the ground beside her.
“That was some sorcery you worked,” she said, and looked up again. Her face was all admiration, masking whatever else was in her mind. “You were out for two days.”
“Where are we now?”
“About fifteen miles from the border of the Waste. We only have to cross the Stel. Freelorn will be glad you’re awake. He was worried about you.”
“Don’t know why,” Herewiss said, and sat himself up with an effort. “He knows I always take the backlash hard.”
“I’m sure. But he never saw anything like that display before. Some of the effects were—”
“Unexpected.”
“Yes. Especially that business with the fire.”
“Where is he?” Herewiss said hurriedly.
“Out hunting. They left me here to watch you. This is safe country, too empty for Fyrd, I think. They’ll be lucky to find anything. Dritt is here too.”
He looked around and located Dritt sitting atop a boulder, a big stocky silhouette against the sunset. He was munching something, and Herewiss became immediately aware of the emptiness of his stomach.
Segnbora was rummaging in a pouch. “Here,” she said, handing him an undistinguished-looking lump of something crumbly.
“Waybread?”
“Yes.”
It looked terrible, like a lump of pale dirt with rocks in it. He bit into it, and almost broke a tooth.
“Goddess above,” he said, after managing to get the first bite down, “this is awful.”
“And what waybread isn’t?”
“Worse than most, I mean.”
“It’s also more sustaining than most.”
“I think I’d rather eat sagebrush.”
“You may, if they don’t find anything out there. Eat up.”
Segnbora took a piece too, and they sat for a few minutes in silence, passing her water skin back and forth at intervals.
“The fire,” Segnbora said suddenly. “And your messengers—the hawk, that ball of flame that met us when we came out—those really interested me. Those were no illusions. Those were real.”
He studied her uneasily, not responding, trying to understand what she was up to. She was looking thoughtfully over his shoulder at something fairly close by. Herewiss put his mind out behind him and felt around. Sunspark was some yards behind him with the other horses, once again a vague blunt warmth wrapped in the stallion-form, grazing unconcernedly.
(Yes?) it said.
(Our friend here—) Herewiss indicated Segnbora.
(So?)
(I think she sees you for what you are.)
Sunspark waved its tail, making a feeling like a shrug. (That’s well for her. I’m worth seeing… .)
Herewiss returned his attention to Segnbora. She continued to gaze past him for a moment. Remotely he could sense Sunspark lifting its head, returning her look.
(Another relative,) it said. (This world seems to be full of my distant cousins.)
“An elemental?” Segnbora said, turning her eyes back to Herewiss.
“Yes. Why?”
She gestured at his empty scabbard. “You have no sword.”
“I beg your pardon?” Herewiss said, shocked.
“I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to change the subject. But I’d been meaning to ask you about that.”
Herewiss felt outrage beginning to grow in him, and a voice spoke up in his memory: some Darthene regular, way back during the war. (“Spears and arrows are a boy’s weapon! Afraid to get up close to a Reaver? … A man isn’t a boar to be hunted with a lance. A man takes on another man blade to blade. Earn’s blood must be running thin in the Wood —”)
Oh, Dark, I thought I got over this a long time ago! Herewiss took a deep breath and pushed the anger down. “It may be none of your business,” he told Segnbora, as gently as he could.
“Then why are you so obvious about it? You wouldn’t be wearing that around if you didn’t want to attract attention to it. Freelorn’s people think it’s something to do with a family feud, and they won’t mention it for fear you’ll take offense. But there’s something else there—”
“Freelorn knows. And he doesn’t speak of it either,” Herewiss said, trying to frighten her away from the subject with a sudden knife-edge of anger in his voice.
“Maybe someone should,” Segnbora said, so very softly that he sat back in confusion. “I saw how he looks at that scabbard. He looks at it, but he doesn’t look at it—as if it was a maimed limb. He hurts so much for you. I didn’t know why—but now— It’s a matter of Flame, isn’t it?”
“Listen,” Herewiss said, “why should I discuss it with you? We’ve barely met.”
Segnbora smiled at him, that dry, rueful smile again. “Fair enough,” she said. “Let me tell you who I am, and perhaps you’ll understand. I come of fey stock from a long way back—generations of Rodmistresses and sorcerers. The male line has descent from Gereth Dragonheart, who was Marchwarder with M’athwinn d’Dháriss when the Dragons were fighting for the Eorlhowe. The female line comes down from Enra the Queen’s sister of Darthen. Two terribly eminent families…and I’m something of an embarrassment to both of them.”
Segnbora began playing with her sword’s peace-bindings again, smiling slightly. “We usually come into our Power early, if it’s there. They took me to be tested when I was three years old, and they weren’t disappointed. The Flame that was in me shattered all the rods and rings and broke the blocks that they gave me to hold, and the testers got really excited. They said to my mother and father, ‘This one is a great power, or will be when she grows up—you should have her trained by the best people you can find. Anything less would be a terrible waste.’ So they did. And I studied with Harandh, and Saris Elerik’s daughter, and the people at the Nhàirëdi Institute in Darthis, and I did a year with Eilen—”
“That old prune?”
“You know her. Yes. And others too numerous to mention. I hardly spent more than a year or two in the same place.”
“It’s not the best policy to change teachers so often,” Herewiss said. “I wouldn’t think there would be time to build up a good relationship—”
“You’re right, it’s not, and there wasn’t,” Segnbora said. “There was this little problem, you see. I had too much Flame. I kept breaking the Rods they gave me to work with; they would just blow right up, boom—” She waved her hands in the air— “any time I tried to channel through them. And all my teachers said, ‘It’s all right, you’ll grow out of it, it’s just adolescent surge.’ Or, ‘Well, it’s puberty, it’ll be all right after your breasts grow.’” She chuckled. “Well, they grew all right, but that wasn’t the problem. After a while I started wondering why every teacher seemed in such a hurry to refer me to another one, supposedly more experienced or more advanced. Once or twice I made so bold as to ask, and got long lectures on why I should let older and wiser heads decide what was best for me. Or else I got these short shamefaced speeches on how I needed more theory, but everything would be all right eventually.”
Herewiss made a face.
“That’s how I felt,” Segnbora said. “Well, what could I do? I gave it a chance, stuffed myself with more theory than most Rodmistresses would ever have use for. It was better than facing the truth, I suppose. And eventually I got to be eighteen, and they took me to the Forest Altars in the Brightwood, and I spent a year there in really advanced study—or so they called it. You know the Altars?”
“I live in the Brightwood,” Herewiss said dryly. And a lot of good it’s done me! “Go on.”
“Yes. Well, when I turned nineteen, and Maiden’s Day came around, I swore the Oath, and they took me into the Silent Precincts, and they brought out the Rod they had made for me. They were really proud of it, it came from Earn’s Blackstave in the Grove of the Eagle, it’d been cut in the full of the Moon with the silver knife and left on the Flame Altar for a month. And they gave it to me and I channeled Flame through it—”
