by Диана Дуэйн
As she grew, she had quickly given up thinking much about sharing her body with others. Her agemates indulged in all the delightful anticipation of adolescence — the feeling that something magical awaited them when sharing began. But when the time carne she had plunged into an experience1 that had about it nothing of magic. Instead, every sharing had a touch of the sordid about it, a taste of fear which made her want to have it finished quickly. Afterwards, she would inevi-tably plunge into another sharing, in search of what had been missing. She never found it. Nor, as she got close to the brink of focusing, had she ever managed that, either. How could she, when sharing felt so much like Fire?
Slowly Segnbora lifted her gemmed head, and sang relief and grief and wear)' regret at the walls. From the shadows her mdeihei took up the dark melody and shared it with her in compassionate plainsong. "Oh Immanence," she sang, "I'm full of Power, and in danger of running forever dry; I've shared a hundred times, and I'm virgin still; I walk on water, and yet thirst …" She brought her wings down against the floor in a gesture of bitterness.
"And tlie nightmare was right, too. I'm a killer. The Shadow has merely to touch that memory ever so lightly, and I kill one more time. Is this my destiny, then? To be a clock-work toy that can be set to kilting by any fool who happens to find the key?" Gentle and ruthless, her mdeihei answered her in one long note that shook the cave. "Fes.'"
"Or so it seems," Hasai said kindly. She looked over at her mdaha, catching for the first time the unease that had always been in his voice. She had never be-fore been Dracon enough to hear it. He gazed back, gentle-eyed, huge, terrible as a thundercloud with wings. And yet, to Dracon eyes, he was also frightened, crippled, shadowed.
"Mdaha," she said, bending her head down close to his. "Your discomfort bears looking at, for haven't you often told me that the mdeihei, and you, are me?" "Often."
"That being the case," she said, "it comes time now to deal with your stone, sithess&ch." He looked at her almost sadly, knowing — as he had always known — that it was true. "For you are me, and at Bluepeak the Shadow will strike at you too. If you succumb, I will too. Then Lorn dies, and the Kingdoms founder, and I'm forsworn. And more than that: The green place you fought for, the world you treasure so, will fall under the Shadow's domination, and not even Dragons will be safe."
Hasai was still as stone, except for his tail, which lashed nervously. Segnbora leaned closer, flipped her own tail around to pinion it and hold it down. The sight of her tail briefly surprised her. It wasn't like Hasai's. It was scaled in star-emeralds as fiery green as new spring growth. It was spined in yellow diamond.
"It has to do with rue somehow, doesn't it?" she said. "With going mdahaih in a human — and with something older than that, even— Hasai, it
must be settled, or the Shadow will settle it for us!"
He started to draw downward, away from her touch. 'There is yet time—"
"No there's not!"
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Hasai lashed free of her tail, began to rise slowly from his crouch, wings lifting, the diamond sabers of the forefingers coming around to threaten her.
Segnbora gazing up, unmoved. "I am you, sitkesmh," she said. Beloved.
Hasai moved not a muscle. As the momentary anger slowly ran out of him, his eyes changed. They were no less afraid, but now there appeared in them room for something else.
"Now," Segnbora whispered. "Quickly." The fluid, black-glittering splendor of him made itself into a curve, a pounce, a terrible striking downward, a living knife. Stone sliced open like parting flesh, the blood was memory, it leaped—
Their Sun ate their world. They saw it happen. They had had warning — both ahead-memory of the actual incident, and years of wild starstorms, during which the Sun's light was too intense to drink without dying, and every Dragon had to leave the Homeworld for a time, and wait far out in the cold for the Sun's fire to die down.
Shell-parents grew infertile, and eggs that should have hatched roasted in the stone instead. At last came the final storm they had dreaded. In haste, all of Dragonkind streamed off their red-brown world and hung helpless in space, watch-ing their star swell to a hundred times its size and devour their Homeworld.
They were orphans.
But they weren't homeless.. Wisely, ihe older Dragons had looked to the youngest Dragoncels to see what they ahead-remembered of their own going mdahaih. What they had found was the place they'd know as mdeihei — an odd, cool little world, greener than theirs, covered with a strangeness called water and inhabited by life of bizarre and fascinating kinds,
One Dragoncel, however, remembered more than the oth-ers. He knew the way, and would die upon reaching their goal. His name was Dahiric, The Dragons gave him. another name: Worldfinder. They put him at their head and he led. them out into the Great Dark. How long they travelled there, none of the Dragons were
ever sure. Many died along the way — starved for Sunfire in the empty wastes — but Dahiric, a doomed and purposeful green-golden glimmer at the head of ten thousand others, never veered from the memory he followed. Born only to die, and to make this journey, he was determined to succeed. Finally, after what might have been ages as humans reckon time, they found the place. It was all that the mdeihei— to-be had seen: strange-colored, but alive; a home at last; stone to sink their claws into. They dropped down toward it — and found what Dahiric, and many more, were to die of. From the dark side of the world, where it had been hiding, a black foul air came boiling out toward them. It was blacker than the space in which they hung, and it was alive. It hated thought and light and any kind of life but its own. It was also vast enough to swallow the bright little planet whole: a project on which it had been working for eons. It didn't relish the Dragons' interruption.
Dahiric knew his duty. Gripping a double wingful of the little planet's field of forces, he dove down into the roiling blackness, flaming. The Dark drew back, and the Dragons saw Dahiric drive a long tunnel down into it. At the tunnel's bot-tom his light blazed like a falling star. But Dahiric was young. His fire was limited by his immaturity. His flame went out, and the Dark closed behind him. After a little while he came float-ing out of the boiling blackness, dead.
Had there been air to carry the baltlecry the Dragons raised, stone would have shattered across the world. Ten thousand strong, they dove at the Dark from every angle, flaming as best they could. Their fire was in short supply, however, since they had been out in the night so long, and ten thousand Dragons were not enough. The Dark opened before them, swallowed them, spat back the dead. Soon there were nine thousand, seven thousand, fewer. Many had no offspring yet and went rdahaih in a second, without time to make their peace with the Universe from which they were departing. Some went, mad from the strain of having so many relatives become mdahaih in them in so short a time. Others so afflicted flung themselves into the Dark and. were lost too.
THE DOOR INTO SHADOW
A. few simply fled, and lived.
One of these was the youngest of the Homeworld's Dragon-eels. He had never been quite normal. When he had become fully sdahaih at last, and his shell-parents and relatives had asked him when and where he would go mdahaih, his answer frightened them all. What he foresaw was darkness and cold and terrible pain; and then the odd, crippled body of an alien. . one who was certain she would go rdahaih and take with her all the mdeihei. It was a terrifying vision, and all rejected it.
He grew, and yet the vision did not change. Therefore, he slowly became resigned to being a curiosity among his own kind. As befitted a Dragon, he came to make light of the difference, submerging it in placidity. But he did not realize that the way he did this — by learning to stand a little aloof, even from his mdeihei — also encouraged other Dragons to stand aloof from him as well.
Hasai became estranged from his own kind. He took no mate. He held his peace. He flew alone. And when he finally foun
d himself facing that same awful blackness that in min-utes had killed half his race, Hasai failed. With no comrade who would admit to fear, and so support him toward courage, he became nearly blind with terror. He fled.
The rest of Dragonkind, fortunately, had not exhausted their options. There in empty space they convened in body and mind, and held Assemblage — the last full Assemblage that would be held for a generation or two, until the Advo-cate summoned them again two thousand years later. They paid the price of Assemblage — the lives of the DragonChief and the Eldest — and then all those left alive turned their hearts inward and gave their will and power over to the Im-manence.
Few of them saw where the Messenger came from. She was a Dragon in shape, but even the webs of Her wings burned intolerably bright. Her every scale was a star, a point of power so terrible it could be felt through Dragonhide. The Messen-ger wheeled and dropped through the massed Dragons, scat-tering them — then halted above the raging, boiling immensity of the Dark. Through their othersenses, the Dragons could feel the Dark's alarm as it reached up to snuff out this trouble-some intruder. Likewise, they heard its silent scream of pain
as the Messenger flamed, letting loose a torrent of Dragonfire as potent as a star's breathing.
The Dark writhed convulsively, ripped away from the world with a jerk and a soundless howl of rage. It streamed toward the Messenger to engulf Her utterly, but the Messenger only spread wings and claws and seized it. Working at the forces in space with fiery wings, She drew the Dark away from the world, screaming and struggling. Together they dwindled, drawing farther away from the little blue world, until all that could be seen of them was a light like a dwindling star. Those who dared to follow came back and reported that the Messen-ger had plunged, together with the Dark, into the heart of the nearby yellow Sun. Neither came out again.
Later, the survivors found Dahiric's body among those of the slain. The others they burned in Dragonfire, as was the custom on the old Homeworld, but Dahiric they bore down to the surface of the new world. There they found a fair place at the endpoint of a great spur of land, where water washed it. They uprooted a mountain, as had been done on the Homeworld for Phyiril and Saen and others of the Parents, and they laid it over him, melted it around him, and made a dwelling there for the new DragonChief. Thereafter, the Dragons settled into their new young world, and watched humankind come slowly out of the caves into which the bale-ful influence of the Dark had driven them. . . and behind the rest of the Dragons, a silver-and-black Dragoncel drifted to earth like the last leaf of autumn. His shame at his cowardice gripped him like the pain of giving-up-the-body, and would not leave. True, no other Drago'n ac-cused him of fear, but no one comforted him, either. He was alone, as always. Alone with a new shame, and with the old hidden terror of the day he would go mdahaih in a human. All these burdens he buried under layers of Dracon placid-rty. The centuries went by. He maintained his dignity, flew alone, and kept silent. Then finally his life became reduced to waiting for the stars to assume the proper configurations. This they did. At last, his luster dimming, Hasai spiraled down to the Morrowfane by night and crept into a cave there, to wait for the seizures, and to wait for the one who would
come.
He looked across the cavern at her now, head held high, waiting for her to disapprove of him and pronounce a sen-tence worse than death: eternal imprisonment with a sdaha whose opinion of him was not passive placidity, but active scorn. Behind him, the mdeihei were strangely silent. "You ran," Segnbora sang. He said nothing.
"And you are of value nonetheless," she said, weaving around the words a melody that attributed importance to her words. "You did what you did, and here you are. And here am I, too … or should I say, here are we."
Hasai looked at her in amazement. She sighed a little fire and unfolded one emerald-strutted wing, laying it over his back in a gesture of affection.
TOC o "1–3" h z "So where do we go from here?" she asked. i*
He opened his mouth, and nothing came out for a momentA " 'Sithesssch,'you said,"he sang in dubious tones. Nf
She flipped her tail in agreement. *.
"Then only one matter still troubles me …"
"What?" — >
"The mdeihei, and their opinion. As you know, they do not judge, but merely advise. Still, I would like to know that they are not ashamed." Segnbora considered the matter, listening to the utter si-lence in the background where the mdeihei usually sang. "Mdaha, don't worry. If they are truly of the Immanence, as they claim, they will understand."
The doubt fell out of his voice, but Hasai still looked at her strangely. "You're truly sdahaih at last," he said. "It's very odd."
"How so? You knew how it would be." He dropped his jaw, smiling. "Sometimes, for the sake of surprise, we forget a little."
Segnbora spread both wings high and curved her neck around to look at them. "Well, I certainly feel sdahaih. Shall we go test it?" "There's more to being sdahaih, and Dracon, than flight,"
Hasai said, and his song trembled with the joy of one who's found something long lost. "Memory. And its transforma-tion." She shook too, thinking of all the painful experiences she could accept, or remake if she wished. Now that she was sdahaih, the ever-living past was as malleable as the present. There were some things she wouldn't change, experiences that had made her what she was now. Balen, she thought. He stays. There's unfinished business there, somehow. But as for other matters—
For the first time since that afternoon under the willow, her love was clean — and now more than ever before she wanted to give it away. "I remember a place," she sang quietly, look-ing at Hasai, "where stars swirl in the sky like a frozen whirl-pool, and the Sun is red and the stone is as warm as your eyes—"
He met her glance with eyes that blazed. "Toe mnek-e"," he sang. We remember. Wings lifted and beat downward, and the cave was empty.
The soaring began at the Homeworld, and never quite ended. They made the Crossing all over again, together this time. Other Dragons
looked curiously at the one who in fore-memories had been alone, but who now went companioned by some child of the Worldfinder's line, green-scaled and golden-spined, with eyes the fiery yellow of the little star to which they journeyed.
They saw the Winning again, not with guilt this time, but simply as one of the events that would eventually bring them together. Afterwards, they fell to earth like bright leaves drift-ing, and lay basking in the Sun. They glided together through long afternoons, taking their time so that the people below would have something to marvel at. They matched speed for speed in the high air, and tore it to tatters of thunder. They went bathing in the valleys of the Sun, and chased the twilight around the world for sport. He made her a present of the sunset, and she made him one of the dawn, and they both drank them to the dregs until the fire of their throats was stained the red of the vintage.
They lived in fledgling and Dragoncel and Dragon, in child and girl and woman — found memories that were lost, discov-ered past and future. Gazing into one another for centuries, they also found completion. And at the bottom of that, they found Another gazing back. One Who became them as They became It. Goddess-Immanence and peers, Made and Maker, the two Firstborn, They flowed together. Not merely One, not simply the same. They were. For that, even in Dracon, there were no words.
Eventually they remembered the way home, and — living in it — were there. Segnbora, leaning back against the immense forelimb from which she had not moved all night, looked up at her mdaha's silver eyes. "I have to be getting back," she said. "They'll be wonder-ing where I am." "Best hurry and tell them. Sehf'rae, sdaha." "Seht …"
Halfway out the entrance to the cave, she paused, touching her breast in confusion. In the place where the nightmare had bitten her, there was nothing but a pale, crescent-shaped scar.
"Dragons heal fast," Hasai said from behind her. A quiet joy like nothing she had ever heard sang around his words. She knew how he felt. "Sehe'rae, mdaha," she said, and w
ent out.
rf
She opened her eyes on a dawn she could taste as well as see. When she stood up to stretch, she saw the Moon, three days past third quarter, the phase under which she had been born, hanging halfway up the water-blue sky like a smile with a secret behind it. Picking her way back toward the camp, she came across someone waiting for her with his back to the rising Sun. His long black shadow stretched out toward her, the stones within it outlined brightly by the Fire of the sword he leaned upon.
"Welcome back," Herewiss said as she approached. Skadhwe was struck into a nearby rock. She raised a questioning eyebrow at Herewiss as she plucked it out and re— sheathed it. '
"I didn't touch Skadhwe," he said. "I asked it politely, and we reached an accommodation."
"Thank you," she said. She glanced down at the cracked and broken links of her chammail. "This whole thing was a setup— You knew the nightmare was here. You knew twenty miles away. You couldn't no! have known."
He caught the merriment in her voice and grinned. "I'm on other business than just Lom's and Eftgan's," he said. "There's all kinds of power in this world, looking to be freed. I do what I can."
"I could have died," she said, "of what it said to me. I understood it, it spoke the truth, and yet I killed it anyway. The despair could have finished me."
THE DOOR INTO SHADOW
"I know," Herewiss replied. "My decision was not made lightly. If you hadn't been strong enough. . yes, you would have died. And I would have laken responsibility for it."
She looked at him, pitying and loving him, both at once. "'Thanks," she said.
*'I didn't do much of anything," he said, half-bowing gra-ciously. "You seem to have found your own solutions."
He looked past Segnbora with great interest. Turning, she was just as interested to see the long-necked, long-bodied, short-legged Dracon shadow that lay behind her. It was posi-tioned as if the creature that cast it were standing on her hind legs. Experimentally she pointed a finger, and saw the shadow of the forewing barb cock outward.
