The Tale of the Five Omnibus

by Diane Duane

  “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—”

  “—and you broke it.”

  “Splinters everywhere, the Chief Wardress ducked and turned around and took one right in the rear. Oh, such embarrassment you haven’t seen anywhere. The Wardress claimed I did it on purpose—she and I had had a few minor disagreements on matters of theory—”

  “Kerim is a disagreement looking for a place to happen.”

  “Yes,” Segnbora said tiredly, “she is. Well. They went down the whole Dark-be-damned list of trees, and I broke oak Rods and ash and willow and blackthorn and rowan and you name it. Finally the Wardresses who were there said they’d never seen anything like it, but they couldn’t help me. So here I am, so full of Power that sometimes it crawls out my skin at night and changes the ground where I lie—but I can’t control so much of it as to heal a cut finger, or bring a drop of rain.” She sighed. “A whole life wasted in the pursuit of the one art I can’t master.”

  Herewiss sat there and felt an odd twisted kind of pleasure. So I’m not the only one like this! Well, well— But then he pushed it aside, ashamed of it.

  “Precisely,” Segnbora said, her voice tight, and Herewiss blushed fiercely. “Oh,” she said, and smiled again, “they really push you at Nhàirëdi; my underhearing got awfully good.”

  “I’m sorry—”

  “Don’t be. I must confess feeling a moment’s satisfaction when I realized what your problem was. I’m sorry, too.”

  Herewiss sighed. “You’re a long way from the Forest Altars.”

  She shrugged. “How long can a person keep trying?

  I spent three more years in the Precincts, fasting and praying and trying to beat my body into submission—I thought I could tame the Power that way.” She snorted. “Silly idea. I ended up half-wrecked, with the Fire almost dead in me from the abuse. I had to let it rest for a long time before it would come back. Then after a while I said, ‘What the Dark!’ and just went off to travel. The Power’s going to wither up in me soon enough, but there’s no reason to be bored while it does. I made Freelorn’s acquaintance in Madeil; and traveling in company is more interesting than being alone. Especially with him.” She chuckled.

  “But you still have a lot going for you,” Herewiss said, though the empty place in him realized how such a statement might feel to her. “You studied at Nhàirëdi, you certainly got enough sorcery from them to make yourself a living by it—”

  Segnbora shrugged again. “True. But I have better things to do with my life than spell broken cartwheels back together or divine for welldiggers or mix potions to make men potent. Or I thought I had. I was going to reach inside minds and really understand motivations—not just make do with the little blurred glimpses you get from underhearing, all content and no context. I was going to untwist the hurt places in people, and heal wounds with something better than herbs and waiting—to really hear what goes on in the world around, to talk to thunderstorms and soar in a bird’s body and run down with some river to the Sea. I was going to move the forces of the world, to command the elements, and be them when I chose. To give life, to give Power back to the Mother. To sing the songs that the stars sing, and hear them sing back. And they told me I’d do all that, and I believed them. And it was all for nothing.”

  She looked out into nothing as she spoke, and her voice drifted remotely through the descending dusk as if she were telling a bedtime story to a drowsy child. From the quiet set of her face, it might have been a story laid in some past age, all the loves and strivings in it long since resolved. But the pain in her eyes was here-and-now, and Herewiss’s underhearing caught the sound of a child, awake and alone in the darkness, crying softly.

  He sat there and knew the sound too well; he’d heard it in himself, in the middles of more nights than he cared to count. “If you had it, you know,” he said, trying to find a crumb of comfort for her, “you’d just die early.”

  He had tried to make a joke of it, an acknowledgment of shared pain. But she turned to him, and looked at him, and his heart sank. “Who cares if you die early,” she said very quietly, “as long as you’ve lived.”

  He dropped his eyes and nodded.

  They sat and gazed at the sunset for a while.

  “I’m sorry,” Segnbora said eventually, pulling her knees up to her chest and wrapping her arms around them. “The problem is much with me these days; it’s dying, you see. But it must be worse for you. At least for me there’s hope—”

  “There’s hope,” Herewiss said harshly, “just fewer people to believe in me. A lot fewer.”

  “That’s what I meant,” she said, and to his surprise, he believed her. “That jolt you gave me when we touched—you certainly have enough to use. If you live in the Brightwood, you must have tried the Altars too—”

  “Yes.”

  “And?”

  “They turned me away.”

  “They did what?”

  “I couldn’t use a Rod.”

  “Well, of course you couldn’t! It’s a woman’s symbol, your undermind would interfere with it. What were they thinking of?”

  She was all indignation now, and Herewiss, feeling it was genuine, warmed to her somewhat. “You’re a man; what did they expect? And just because you couldn’t use a Rod, they gave up on you?”

  “Yes.”

  Segnbora frowned at Herewiss, and he leaned back, stricken by the angry intensity of the expression. “There are few enough women since the Catastrophe who have the Power,” she said, “less than a tenth of us—and no men at all— Do they think there are enough people running around using Flame that they can afford to throw one away? A male, no less.” She shook her head. “They must have been crazy.”

  “I thought so at the time.”

  “What did they say?”

  Herewiss shrugged. “I asked for help in finding something else to use as a focus. I thought that, since the sword is very symbolic of the Power for me, that I might use one as focus. They said it was hopeless, that the Power was a thing of flesh and blood and the lightning that runs along the nerves, and that it could never flow through anything that hadn’t been alive, like wood. Well, I said, how about a sword made of wood or ivory? Oh, no, they said to me, the sword in conce
pt and design is an instrument of death, and unalterably opposed to the principles of the Power. They just wouldn’t help me at all. I guess I didn’t fit their image of how a male with the Power would act, when one finally showed up. So I left, and went my own ways to study.”

  Herewiss stretched, making an irritated face. “Well, for whichever of the reasons they gave me, they’ve been right so far. I tried using various sorceries to condition the metal of a sword to the conduction of Flame. That was silly—the Power and mundane sorceries are two entirely different disciplines. But I tried it. I tried swords of wood, and ivory, and horn, and bone, but those didn’t work. I finally started forging my own swords and using my blood at various stages—melding it with the metal, tempering the sword with it, writing runes on the blade with it—”

  “Nothing, though.”

  “Well, not quite. Once, the business with the runes, that began to feel as if it would work—almost. Not quite, though. There was a stirring—something was starting to happen—but the sword still felt wrong. They all do. It could be they’re right about the dichotomy between swords and life.”

  “Maybe you need to know your Name,” Segnbora said.

  Herewiss went stiff for a moment, feeling threatened by the subject. The matter of Names wasn’t usually mentioned in casual conversation, and certainly not between two people who had just met. But Segnbora’s tone was noncommittal, and her expression reserved. She shifted her eyes away as he looked at her, and Herewiss relaxed.

  “Maybe,” he said, looking away himself, his fingers playing idly with the empty scabbard. “But I don’t know how to find it. I mean, I’m not all that sure who I’m supposed to be. I have ideas—but it’s like water in a sieve. I pour myself into them, into this role, or that identity, and they won’t hold me. I’m a passable sorcerer—”

  “A little more than passable.”

  “Yes, well—but that’s not what I want to be. Sorcery is an imposition on the environment, a forcing, a rape. The Power is a meshing, a cooperation, like love. You don’t make it rain; you ask it to, and usually it will, if you ask it nicely. You know that. I have no desire to be just a very talented rapist, when I have the potential to be a lover, even a clumsy one. So. I’m all right as a warrior, but I don’t have a sword; and I don’t want to kill anyone anyway. I’m a fair scholar—I know six dead Darthene dialects and four Arlene ones; I can read runes a thousand years old. But there’s more to life than sitting around translating mouldering manuscripts. I’m not much of a prince—”

  Segnbora’s eyebrows went up. “My Goddess. You’re that Hearn’s son? I didn’t make the connection—that’s a fairly common name up north.”

  Herewiss bowed slightly from the waist. “The same.”

  “And I thought my family was impressive. I’m sorry; please go on.”

  “There’s not much more to say, really. I don’t know—I’m so many people, and no one of them is all of me—”

  Segnbora nodded. “I know the problem.”

  “There was a period when I gave the problem a lot of thought. I said to myself, ‘Well, maybe the Power will follow if the Name is there.’ So I tried all the ways I could think of to find out. Fasting—yes, you know how that is—and a lot of time spent in meditation. Too much. Once I sat down and turned everything inward, everything, and all that happened was that I got stuck inside and couldn’t find my way out again. I rattled around in the dark and struck out at the walls, but they seemed to be mirrored—and I found myself thinking that if I hit the walls, I would hurt the inside of me—and there were voices in the dark, some of them seemed to belong to my parents, or to people I knew; some of them were kind, but some were ugly and twisted—” Herewiss shook his head. “I got out eventually, but I’ll never go that way again. I might not be so lucky the next time.”

  Segnbora stretched her arms over her head and let them drop to encircle her knees again. “I heard it said once,” she said, so softly that Herewiss had to strain to hear her, “—oh, a long time back—that to find your Name, you have to turn the mind and heart, not inward, but outward rather; that you have to pay no attention to the voices in the dark—or, rather, accept them for what they are, but take their advice only when it pleases you, and don’t allow yourself to be driven by them. Look always forward and outward, not back and in.”

  “Now, I understand that not at all,” Herewiss said. “How can you get to know yourself by looking out? Who besides yourself can tell you what you are, or what you’re going to be?”

  “I don’t know. I haven’t found my Name, either. Maybe I never will.”

  They sat there in depressed and companionable silence for a while. Then Herewiss looked up and grinned at Segnbora. “Well,” he said. “Maybe I can’t command wind and wave, but this much I can do—”

  He cupped his hands before him, and beside him Segnbora leaned close to watch. Herewiss closed his eyes, reached down inside him, found the flicker of Flame within him, breathed softly on the little light, encouraged it, cherished it, and then willed—

  It flowered there in his outstretched hands, a tiny wavering bloom of fire that grew and bent in the wind of his will: as vividly blue as a little child’s eyes, with a hot white core like a newsprung star, but gently warm in his hands—

  It went out, and he folded his hands together and strove to thank the Power in him, rather than cursing at it for being so feeble. He looked at Segnbora. “Can you?”

  She gave him an amused sidelong look. “Watch,” she said, and reached out before her as if to support something that Herewiss could not see, hanging in the air. It came before he was ready for it, sudden, brilliant, so bluely brilliant that it outraged his eyes and left dancing violet afterimages: a lightning flash, a starflower, a little sun, hanging in the air between her hands. For a moment an odd blue day lit the desert, and everything had two shadows, sharp short black ones laid over long dull streaks of red-purple light and darkness. Then the light went out, and Segnbora let her hands fall. “As you see,” she said, “I can’t maintain it. Maybe I can find work as a lighthouse beacon.”

  Herewiss looked up at Dritt, who still sat on his rock, unconcerned, eating; he had spared them no more than a curious look. “Do you do this often?” Herewiss said.

  “Every now and then, in dark places. They’ve seen it before—they think it’s an illusion-charm. None of them but Freelorn would know real wreaking from sorcery if it walked up and bit them; and Freelorn never says anything about it…. And speak of the Shadow, here he comes.”

  They both stood up, and Herewiss wobbled for a moment, the world darkening in front of him and then brightening as the dizziness passed. He made a mental note to keep being careful of the backlash for the next couple of days. Four forms on horseback were approaching slowly, and the horse in the lead had a young desert deer slung over its withers.

  Herewiss stood there, his hands on his hips, and watched the figure in the saddle of the lead horse. Their eyes met while the riders were still a ways off, and Herewiss watched the smile spread over Freelorn’s face, and felt his own grow to match it. The horse ambled along toward the camp, and Freelorn made no attempt to hurry it. An old memory spoke up in Freelorn’s voice. “I hate long good-byes,” it said, looking over a cup of wine drained some years before, “but I love long hellos… .“

  (Are you going to do it now?) Sunspark asked, with interest.

  (Do what?)

  (Unite.)

  (Spark, don’t ask questions like that! It’s not polite.)

  The group drew rein and dismounted, and Herewiss glanced at them only briefly. They all looked about the same as they had when he had last seen them. Lang, a great golden bear of a man, slid down out of his saddle like a sack of meal, grinned and winked at Herewiss, and then went over to hug Segnbora; when the hug broke, the two of them got busy starting a fire in the lee of the boulder. Tall, skinny, cold-eyed Moris with his beaky nose swung down from his horse, nodded to Herewiss and spoke a word of greeting; but his eyes were
mostly for big Dritt, still up on the rock, and for him Moris’s eyes warmed as he climbed up to sit beside him. Harald, a short round sparse-bearded man, staggered past with the deer over his shoulder. He waved a hand at Herewiss and hurried past him, puffing.

  And then Freelorn eased himself out of the saddle. Herewiss went slowly and calmly to meet his friend—

  —and was hugging him hard before he knew what happened, his face crunched down against Freelorn’s shoulder, and much to his own surprise, tears burning hot and sudden in his eyes as Freelorn hugged him back. Five-in-Heaven, did I really miss him that much? I guess I did…

  (So where are the progeny?) said someone in the background.

  (Sunspark, what within the walls of the world are you talking about?) Herewiss said, prolonging the hug.

  (That wasn’t union? I thought you’d changed your mind and decided to go ahead. You give off discharges like that just for greeting each other? Isn’t that wasteful?)

  (Sunspark, later.)

  They held each other away, and Freelorn was laughing, and sniffling a little too. “Goddess Mother of us all, look at you!” he said. “You’re bigger than you were. You cheat, dammit!”

  “No, I don’t. Lorn, your mustache is longer, you look like a Steldene.”

  “That was the idea, for a while. Look at the arms on you! That’s what it is. What the Dark have you been doing?”

  “I’m a swordsmith,” Herewiss said. “I hammer a lot. If you want to look like this, you can, but it’ll take you a year or so. That’s how long I’ve been at it. Lorn, you twit, what’s the use of trying to look like a Steldene if you’re going to wear that around?” He nodded at Freelorn’s black surcoat, charged with the Arlene arms, the white Lion passant guardant uplifting its great silver blade.

  “Who’s going to see it out here?”

  “That’s not the point. You were wearing it in Madeil, weren’t you?”

  “No—my other one got stolen out of my saddlebag. Let me tell you what happened—”