The Door Into Shadow totf-2

by Диана Дуэйн

  fairly started.

  Fortunately, Herewiss had not lost his grip on her hand. Half crouched over and supported desperately by Freelorn, he was beginning to shine like a vision as his soul settled more firmly into the spirit-to-body connection necessary for full Power flow. In his free hand, Khavrinen blazed like chained lightning, impossible to look at with the eyes of either body or mind. Herewiss struck deeper into his Power, tapping what seemed an inexhaustible source, and straightened with re-found strength. Then he was inside Segnbora's perception, as Dracon as she.

  The Fire burning in her throat was suddenly blue, an awe-some counterpoint to the dark burning of the faults, and the rage of the frustrated Shadow. Stirred by Its influence, the player on the Inside made a move. But it was a poorly rea-soned move, born of fury and the hope of a quick win. The lateral fault jumped an inch north and south.

  Segnbora felt Herewiss smile the satisfied smile of a player whose opponent has fallen into a trap. The burning blue upflow of his Fire seared through her perception and poured in a great flood down into the valley's stone, binding together three of the vertical faults. Like diverted lightning, the released energy of the lateral fault stitched whiplash-quick through the strata in several diff-erent directions. But Herewiss was quicker. Fire streaked through the strata too, sending fault-blocks up or down, blocking and absorbing forces, setting up piece by piece the final checkmate that would freeze the lateral forever and seal the Eisargir Pass. Two more moves and he would have it!

  Bent over double by the fault-pain, which was harder to handle now than while she had been out-of-body, Segnbora heard someone a long way off shouting in thought. She couldn't make out concepts, though.

  "They're not?" Freelorn said, much closer, and very alarmed. "Dusty! They're not all clear of the pass yet. Sun-spark says you have to hold off if you don't want all those Reavers dead—"

  Herewiss said nothing aloud, but Segnbora could feel his resolve. No one dies of this, not even them, Yet the position he had set up in the stone was delicate and couldn't be maintained for long.

  The Shadow, sensing Herewiss's hesitation, immediately called the attention of the foiled, blocked forces in the stone to the weakest spot in Herewiss's game: the root of Aulys that was split in two. Pressure played about it like lightning. Half of the massive root twitched, about to shift. .

  (Hold your position,) Segnbora said. Both inside and outside the stone at once, she anchored herself with rear talons and barbed tail, and reached out to sink diamond fangs into the trembling root. It struggled and tried to tear away from her, vibrating so violently that she was certain she was going to lose teeth. But a Dragon never lets go except by its own decision.

  She held. Eyes squeezed closed, every muscle pulled taut as a rope, her tail desperately tightening its anchor around a lower stratum as she felt her fore-talons slipping. She held, using her mind, feeling the rock as a whole.

  "They're out! They're out of the pass! Dusty/" Canny and desperate, the Shadow kicked two of the remot-est vertical faults as a distraction. Herewiss was having none of it. Using Segnbora's Dracon-self as she had, he descended deeper into the stone, deep enough to set his jaws around his last move, a great marble fault-block half a mile south of Barachael. This was the key to the puzzle. Diamond fangs set hard into the stone. He heaved— The blow came at her, not at him, and took them both off-guard. Preoccupied with the immensities, neither of them expected the sudden choking darkness at their back in the place where the mdeiha dwelt. A song of madness swept the mdeihei, controlled them, sent them tearing at the floor of Segnbora's cave. Razor talons and ruthless blasts of Dra-goniire ate and sliced down through the stone of her memory, to lay it bare and make it real. For one memory in particular they searched. .

  (No!) she screamed at them, but they paid her no heed. Stone crumbled away like curd. Even now the memory was coming to birth, coming true: darkness, gravel grinding against her face, that old anguish … There was no way to stop it, except by breaking the empathy, leaving Hasai,

  THE DOOR INTO SHADOW

  halting the wreaking—

  Herewiss held the block of stone in jaws that ran with blue Fire, but he couldn't move it without her. He strained at it, tapping deeper into his Fire and deeper yet, not giving up. Vet without her link to the Dracon perception, he could not go further.

  — stone shattered and melted. Don't suffer, don't let it come true again! Break the link! the darkness sang to her, consoling, se-ductive. The memory became more real. A green afternoon, under the tree. . No, what's he doing here? What's he — no! No! Break the link! (I can'!.) Then live in the horror, without respite, forever. The last stone was torn away from the memory. In such anguish that she couldn't even scream, Segnbora flung her-self utterly into the Dracon-self, into Herewiss, into her own self and her own death. Fire blazed; the terrible stresses Here-wiss had been applying to the fault-block gripped, took, pulled it up out of its socket—

  The gameboard rumbled and leaned upward as if a hand had tipped it over, Pieces tried to slide off every which way. Lost in the pain of contact with that memory, Segnbora could nevertheless sense Mount Adine's shuddering as the ground at the end of the khas-Barachael spur began to rise, first bulging, then cracking like a snapped stick.

  Sai khas-Barachael danced and jittered on its ridge like a knife on a pounded tabletop, held secure only by Herewiss's Fire and will The earth on either side of the lateral fault

  thrust up, then slammed together like a closing door. The fault expended its energies in a noise like the thunderstorms of a thousand summers. Hills crumbled and landslides large and small crawled downward all the length of the Chaelonde valley. The river itself tilted crazily out of its bed and rushed down into a new one as the block Herewiss had triggered shoved its way above ground, making a seedling mountain, a new spur for Adine.

  Behind them, the Houndstooth peak of Aulys seemed to stand up in surprise, look over Adine's shoulder, and then fall back in a dead faint. The terrible thundering crash of its fall went on for many minutes, a sound so huge it obliterated every other sound and was felt more than heard. It was a sound never to be forgotten: the sound of the pass between Eisargir and Aulys being sealed by the Houndstooth's ruin.

  Hours later, it seemed, the singing roar that encompassed the world began to die down. Segnbora found herself still alive, and was amazed at that. Herewiss was nowhere to be felt in her mind. She was on hands and knees on the floor of her cavern. Slowly, aching all over, she levered herself up and found herself looking at Hasai.

  He was droop-winged and weary-looking, dim of eye, crouching in the middle of a badly torn-up and melted stone floor. Behind him, lurking shameful in the shadows, she could just make out the dark forms of the mdeihei. Many eyes watched her, but their voices for once were still as they waited to see what she would do.

  "O sdaha," Hasai said, singing slow and sorrowful, "we betrayed you." He made no excuse, offered no explanation, merely accepted the responsibility.

  She breathed in, breathed out, as weary as the Dragon before her. The mdeihei waited.

  There were thousands of things she felt like saying to them, but what she said was, "Ae mdeihei, Nht'e'lhhw'ae. " We are for-given.

  The shadowy forms drew away. Segnbora laid a hand for a moment on one of Hasai's bright talons. There were great talon-furrowed rents in the floor. They had slag piled all

  around them that smoked ominously like pools of magma. "Will you clean this mess up, mdaha?"

  He looked at her as if he wanted very much to say some-thing more. At last, he said only, "Sdaha, we will do that." "Sehe'rae, then—" She turned her back on him and stepped back up into the outer world.

  The room still jittered with little aftershocks left over from the quake, and echoed with the voices of all Freelorn's band. Herewiss leaned wearily by the window, with Freelorn sup-porting him on one side and Sunspark on the other. Eftgan was in front of him, and all four were talking at a great rate. Segnbora pushed herself up o
ff the floor and rubbed her eyes, looking out the window.

  Her normal sight was now clear enough to show her a Chaelonde valley much broken and changed, but with Bara-chael still mostly intact. The darkened Moon wore a fuzzy line of silver at its edge, first sign of the eclipse's end. The air that came in the window was astonishingly sweet to the under-senses, as if many years' worth of trapped death and pain had been finally released.

  Leaning against the windowsill, she looked at Herewiss. He was drawn and tired, and all the Fire was gone from about Khavrinen for the moment. For the first time she could remember, it was simply gray steel with an odd blue sheen. But Herewiss's eyes were alive with a satisfaction too big for all of Barachael valley to have contained — the look of a man who finds out he is what he's always believed himself to be.

  Seeing her, he reached out a hand. Across the open window they clasped forearms in the gesture of warriors after a battle well fought.

  "What was it you said?" Segnbora said, thinking back to the old Hold in the Waste, and the night her sleep was inter-rupted. " 'There was blood on the Moon, and the mountain was falling'—?"

  Dog-tired as he was, Herewiss's eyes glittered with the thought that his true-dream might not prove as disastrous as he had believed, particularly for the man who stood beside him. "Got it right, didn't I?"

  Twelve

  She nodded, put an arm out and was unsurprised to find Lang there, wary ofSkadhwe but ready to support her. "Only one problem, prince—" "What's that?"

  She grinned. "After this, people are going to say you'll do anything to avoid a fight. ."

  Laughter in death's shadow fools no one who understands death.

  But if you're moved to it, be assured that the Goddess will smile at the joke.

  — found scratched on the wall in the dungeon of the King of Steldin, area 1200 p.a.d.

  "I hate — letting them think they're driving us," Herewiss said between gasps. "But it's better this way."

  He stood in the midst of carnage, the burned and hacked bodies of fifty or sixty Fyrd. Here and there in the rocky field of this latest ambush, Freelorn's band stood cleaning swords, leaning on one another, nr rubbing down sweating horses and swearing quietly. Segnbora leaned gasping against Steelsheen's flank, unwill-ing yet to sheathe Skadhwe. The last Fyrd to come at her had been one of the new breed of keplian, bigger than the usual sort, with clawed forelimbs and those wickedly intelligent eyes that were becoming too familiar these days.

  She had had no trouble immersing herself in the other's eyes to effect its killing. The problem had been getting out again afterward. She felt soiled, as if she had stepped in a pile of hatred that would have to be scraped off her boots. "How many times is this?" Lang said, coming up beside her.

  "Seventeen, eighteen maybe—" "I don't know about you, but / feel driven." Segnbora nodded. Fifteen days ago they had ridden out of Barachael, and had had nothing for their pains ever since but constant harrying by ever-increasing bands of Fyrd. All had come from the southwest, where Something clearly didn't want them to venture. Freelorn had suggested world-gating straight to Bluepeak, where they would meet the Queen; but Herewiss, unwilling to tempt the Shadow into direct intervention by too much use of Fire, had vetoed the idea.

  So they rode, and were harried. Herewiss always took them north, out of the way, after an attack such as today's. In day-light, anyway. In darkness they turned again and tacked southwest, toward Bluepeak. They were losing time with these detours, and knew it. Everyone's temper was short, and getting shorter.

  "Let's go," Herewiss said, sheathing Khavrinen and turn-ing Sunspark's head northward as he mounted.

  There was annoyed muttering among Freelorn's band, and heads turned toward Lorn in appeal. But Lorn, already up on Blackmane, looked wearily after his loved and shook his head. "Come on," he said, and rode off after Herewiss.

  They rode a brutal trail through country made of the stuff of a rider's nightmares. They had long since left behind the green plains of southern Darthen. Presently they were cross-ing the uninhabited rock-tumble of Arlen's Southpeak coun-try. Glaciers had retreated over this land when the Peaks were born, leaving bizarrely shaped boulders scattered across scant, stony soil. Acres of coarse gravel with a few brave weeds growing out of it might be all one would see from morning 'til night.

  The horses were footsore from being kept at flight-pace on such miserable ground. The grazing was poor, too. After the well-filled mangers of Barachael's stables, it was hardly sur-prising that the horses were in no better mood than their riders. Though no one lived in this barren country, it would be only a matter of time before they ran into Reavers, or Arlene regulars in Cillmod's pay. If not them, there would certainly be Fyrd.

  "This is all your fault," Freelorn grumbled at Segnbora as Steelsheen picked her way along beside Blackmane.

  Segnbora looked up in surprise from her contemplation of Skadhwe, which lay ready across the saddlebow. "Huh?. . Oh, well, in a way it is. I caused the Battle of Bluepeak, too. Ask me about it sometime."

  He glowered at her, and nodded toward Herewiss. "All he did was seal up the Shadow's favorite avenue into the King-doms. What do you do but start making love to It… and then jilt It!"

  She started to disagree with Freelorn, and then thought better of it. "So I did." "You're probably in worse trouble with It now than Here-wiss is."

  Segnbora frowned at the exaggeration, though it was typi-cal of her liege. "Oh? What do you know about it?"

  At that moment Herewiss dropped back to join them, and said, "Considering that he's read the entire royal Arlene li-brary collection on matters of Power, he probably knows more about it than either of us. Face it, "Berend. The Shadow already knew of the threat that I posed, but at Barachael It became aware of you, too. And as they say, your newest hatred is the most interesting. "True," Freelorn added, becoming serious now. "No doubt It believes you're Its deadliest foe at the moment—" "Ha! Some foe …" she said, thinking of her still-unfocused Fire.

  The wreaking she had performed with Herewiss had been successful, but now she was almost sorry she had agreed to participate. Ever since, she had not been able to stop brood-ing about her Fire. Over and over again, Hasai's words had run through her mind: Your fear cripples you. You must give it up,

  Recognizing an old hurt about which they could do noth-ing, Herewiss and Freelorn fell silent.

  Annoyed both at herself and at them, Segnbora took the lead for a while, riding apart and letting the quiet conversa-tion of the others fade beneath her awareness of the sur-rounding country. Skadhwe's reassuring blackness soaked up light at her saddlebow. Its weightlessness, at first unsettling, had become second nature. It was very useful in a fight… And certainly no other sword was all edge and no flat. Likewise, no other sword would, cut anything but, the hand of its mis-tress, as Freelorn had discovered while handling it one morn-ing— Skadhwe seemed not to care for being used by anyone else'. It was delicate, but very definite, about drawing Lorn's blood. Of her, it had demanded nothing so far, and Segnbora thought of Efmaer's words with unease, wondering when the weird would take hold.

  Unease seemed to have overtaken everybody these days. No longer were they simply fugitives on the run from Gill-mod's mercenaries; the Shadow was after them now, too, and the knowledge that their souls were in peril had them all on edge.

  Segnbora could feel the Shadow working on them even now, driving the group apart, subtly sapping its effectiveness. Even Herewiss was short of conversation these days. He had drawn closer to Lorn, pulling away from the others. As for Freelorn, although every step toward Bluepeak brought the reality of his true-dream closer, he had a haunted look. His followers turned to him for answers, but as often as not came away with a strong sense of his inner distress. At this rate, she thought morosely, they'd never make it to their rendezvous with the Darthenes, at the place where they were massing to take the Shadow's attack.

  The afternoon dragged the Sun down to eye level and turned the western horizon
into a blinding nuisance. (Sdaha,) Hasai said from way down, (we smell water.) (You've been quiet today. Where?) (West and south. A league as the Dragon flies.) She nodded and thumped Steelsheen's sides, bringing her about in order to inform Herewiss of a place to camp. Hasai had been quiet much of the time since Barachael — a sentient silence with satisfaction at its bottom. . and something else she couldn't quite underhear. (You're finally becoming properly sdahaih,) he had said one evening as she drifted off'toward, sleep. (Anything can happen now.) There had been an ominous overtone to his musing. (What do you see, mdaha?) she had asked sleepily.

  But he and the mdtihei had turned their attention away from her, singing wordless foreboding with strange joy woven through, it. They're crazy, she had thought, and gone to sleep. Dragons were always ambivalent about their foreseeings, as if they couldn't — or wouldn't — decide what was good, or bad.

  The camp they found three leagues ahead was in a stony, scrubby canyon: shattered, green-white cliffs above, and dry watercourse below. Scant rains kept alive the brush and sev —

  eral little spinneys of warped ash and blackthorn, but nothing else. "Where's the water?" Herewiss said to Segnbora, an-noyed. "There," she said, speaking Hasai's words for him, and gestured at the face of the cliff. Herewiss gave her a look and dismounted from Sunspark. "No rest for the weary," he said, and advanced on the cliff with eyes closed, checking her perception. Then he opened his eyes, picked a spot, and brought Khavrinen around in a roundhouse swing. Splintered stone shot in various direc-tions, trailing Fire. Water followed it, bursting from the rock in a momentary release of pressure and then subsiding to a steady stream down the cliffs face.