The Tale of the Five Omnibus

by Diane Duane

  (Coming back,) it said. (This dying,) it added, butting its head up against Herewiss’s chest, (it’s very interesting. I really must try it again some time.)

  “But Spark, those things ate souls—! !“

  (So they did. It was uncomfortable. Though I think I gave them a fair case of indigestion. How long have I been gone?)

  “Hardly a day—”

  (It seemed longer,) the elemental said, very wearily. (I had some trouble finding my way in the dark. Though I seemed to hear someone calling my Name over this way—)

  Herewiss rested his head between Sunspark’s ears, his cheek against the golden mane. “Thank You,” he said. “Thank You.”

  (It was nothing,) Sunspark said absently. (How did you manage to survive, by the way?)

  Herewiss straightened up, unlaced his arms from around its neck and showed it Khávrinen, gripped in his hand.

  (I see. Your focus indeed. And you’re changed, too,)

  Sunspark said, regarding him from golden eyes. (If I ran into you in the middle of nowhere now, I would know you’re a relative. You, too, are fire.)

  “Well, and a few other things,” Herewiss said. “Sunspark, what you did last night—”

  (I would do again,) it said. (You are my loved. And anyway, shall I dare less than you?)

  Herewiss put his arms around Sunspark’s neck again, gathered it close, and wept like a child.

  ***

  Back in the hold, Freelorn and his people were sitting around the firepit, pledging one another in great drafts of Narchaerid and rr’Damas and Jaráldit wines that Sunspark had filched for them. Herewiss, however, sat cross-legged in the dust about half a mile from the hold, looking at the Moon and stars. Khávrinen was laid across his knees.

  (Hearn was right all the time,) he was saying to the night. (Always he used to tell me, ‘When you’re praying, don’t beg the Goddess. What mother can stand hearing her children whine at her? Talk to Her, tell Her what’s on your mind. You’ll always get answers back. Lie to Her and you’ll get lies back—but tell Her the truth and you’ll find solutions.’ And he was right. There is a part of each of us that is part of You—I just never really saw it until last night—and though it speaks in one’s own voice, there’s no mistaking the source of the answer.)

  Your father is a wise man, the reply drifted back after a while.

  Herewiss nodded.

  (Herelaf wouldn’t tell me what he was for,) he said. (There can, of course, be no deception on that last Shore—and he did tell me that he might not have been finished. Which leaves me with a conclusion that I find frightening. Was he trying to tell me that what he was for—was specifically to be my brother, to die on the end of my sword—and so to begin the events that ended in last night? To make me into what I am now? Was that it?)

  The silence drifted around him for a long time.

  (It’s not an answer I like,) he said.

  It is the answers we dislike the most, came the reply, that tend to have the most truth to them.

  (But, Mother, it isn’t fair! Not to him, not to me—)

  He knew what the answer was going to be. It was spoken with a smile, a sad one. Who ever said anything was fair, son of Mine? That’s My fault, and every time I hear that cry, it goes straight through Me. But next time. Next time—

  He nodded, sighed. (I’m sorry. Mother, I really feel guilty about complaining. I have so very much: the Fire, my Name…and one of Yours, too. That’s what I’m for—to find the rest of Your Name, as much as to find mine.)

  That’s a start.

  (You’re looking too,) he said in sudden realization. (But it is through we who live that You look. And when all who live find their Names, and all the other pieces of Yours—)

  Silence. A star fell.

  Herewiss smiled. (My life had been so pointed toward one thing that I guess I panicked—I was afraid there would be nothing left for me to do. Béorgan’s mistake…. But if this is true, if I’m for seeking out Your Name wherever it is to be found, and freeing it, I’m going to be awfully busy. This is a big world….)

  He ran the fingers of one hand up and down Khávrinen’s blade again. (Mother, mightn’t You have chosen better for the first man to have Flame in all these years? The Fire won’t lessen my flaws—they’re in danger of getting bigger, if anything. And even with all this Power—and I know I have much more than the average Rodmistress—can I really change the world that much, will I really be worth it? There’s so little time, so little of me—)

  That, and the voice came firmly as that of a mother taking a sharp knife away from a child, that evaluation I reserve for Myself. By the common conception of it, humankind doesn’t consider something ‘worth it’ unless they get their investment back, preferably with a profit. By this criterion, most of the Universe is ‘not worth it.’ But I know—as do all the others who care—and the voice smiled at Herewiss— that it’s often necessary to give and give and not get back in any way save the knowledge that the worlds are better for it. Freelorn is right, in that respect. Béaneth was right. Béorgan the doomed was right; so were Earn and Healhra and all the others. They knew they were doomed, but they did the right thing anyway, trying to make the world better.

  The voice sighed. Valiant absurdity, lost causes, such things may be doomed to incompletion and failure of one kind or another, but they are none of them ‘wasted.’ Judge these things by whether they will prolong the Universe’s life, or bring joy to what I made, and that is their worth. All things must die, but I will not scatter My poor botched creation like a child kicking over a misbuilt sandcastle. I will make it work the best I can.

  Herewiss nodded.

  (What shall I do now?) he asked.

  You’re asking Me? Herewiss could feel an amused grin stirring somewhere. What would I do?

  He grinned back. (Share the gift. Defy the Death.)

  The answer was silence.

  Herewiss stood up and was silent in return for a while as he gazed up at the stars. High above him burned the Moon, chill and silver in the quiet. Down the gray length of the sword, the blue Fire flowed and rippled in the stillness.

  Wordlessly, he told the stars and She Who watched his inner Name. It surged in him like fire, and made him blaze with sheer joy, just to say it.

  As he did, across the western sky there burned a line of fire, slow and silent. Then another fell, but closer, and another, trails of brilliance all around him, falling stars like rain in summer—burning blue, a storm of starfire, beating on the silver desert. At the white heart of the downpour Herewiss waited, hardly breathing, as he watched the bright rain fall.

  Slowly, then, the starfall lessened, passing like a sudden shower—fewer stars and fewer falling, here and there a single stardrop. One last one, vivid blue like Flame, and then the sky was still.

  Herewiss breathed out, smiling. “I’ll keep Your secret,” he said.

  He slipped Khávrinen through his belt, and went back to the hold, and Freelorn.

  THE TALE OF THE FIVE, PART 2:

  THE DOOR INTO SHADOW

  Author’s note on book 2

  The Door into Shadow was first published in the U.S. by Bluejay Books in 1984. That edition’s text, unchanged except for the substitution of British spellings for American ones, was used for the Corgi / Transworld Books editions of Shadow in 1992. For the book’s next U.S. edition, published by Meisha Merlin Books in 2001, various minor changes and additions were made to the original text, including the restoration of a small amount of material edited out of the 1984 edition.

  This ebook closely follows the 2001 text, with some new emendations of the kind that are pretty much unavoidable when a writer starts proofreading something written more than two decades before. The latest changes are mostly a matter of slight restructuring, rephrasing and polishing: no significant new plot or character material has been added. Future printed editions of The Door into Shadow will use this version of the text.

  A link to a higher-quality version of the m
ap image following can be found online at the Door into Shadow ebook page at DianeDuane.com . – DD

  A map of the Bluepeak region

  The Wound is healed

  by the sword that deals it:

  the heart is knit

  by the pain that breaks it:

  the life is made whole

  by the death that starts it:

  the death is made whole

  by the life that ends it.

  (Hamartics, 186)

  PROLOGUE

  Four lands hemmed in by mountain and waste and the Sea—those were the Middle Kingdoms: and the greatest of them, Arlen and Darthen, were in peril of destruction. For seven years Arlen’s throne had been empty of the royalty needed to keep the land fertile and the people at peace. And Darthen suffered as a result of Arlen’s lack, for the Two Lands were bound together by oaths of friendship and by joint maintenance of the royal sorceries that kept their lands safe from the ever-present menace of the Shadow.

  In those days there appeared a man with the blue Fire: not just the spark of Flame that every man and woman possesses, but enough to channel and use to change the world around him. His lover was the child of Arlen’s last king, heir to his usurped throne. In the Firebearer’s relationship to Freelorn, King Ferrant’s son, many later suspected the hand of the Goddess—working quietly, as She so often does, so as not to alarm Her old adversary the Shadow.

  Her hand seemed visible elsewhere too. Freelorn had taken companions with him into his exile. They lived as outlaws and bandits, stealing what they needed when they had to—though none of their hearts were in it. One of them in particular would certainly have been elsewhere, if she had had a choice. Swordswoman and sorceress, trained in the Silent Precincts and in every other place in the Kingdoms that dealt in the use of the blue Fire that some women bear, Segnbora d’Welcaen tai-Enraesi was a spectacular and expensive failure. She had the Flame in prodigious quantity, and couldn’t focus it. On her way home from one more school that could do nothing for her, chance threw her together one night with Freelorn’s people. Bitterly frustrated with what seemed a wasted life, desperately needing something useful to do, Segnbora swore fealty that night to the rightful heir of the Arlene throne, and fled with him and his people into the eastern Waste where Freelorn’s loved, Herewiss, awaited him.

  The children of House tai-Enraesi traditionally had a talent for getting themselves into dangerous situations. There in the Waste, in an ancient pile built by no human hand—a fortress rising gray and bizarre out of the empty land, skewed and blind-walled and ominous—Segnbora started wondering whether even the tai-Enraesi luck would do her any good. There were stories about this place, legends that whispered of soul-eating monsters guarding innumerable doors into Otherwheres. Even the mildest of the tales were gruesome. Fear gripped Segnbora, but her oath gripped her harder. She stayed with Freelorn and his people.

  And there in the Hold, fulfilling her fears, the stories she’d heard started coming true—even the one of how nothing good would come out of this terrible place until (ridiculous improbability) a male should focus his Fire.

  On the night Herewiss declared his intention to use his newly gained Flame to put Freelorn on the throne of his fathers, Segnbora lay long awake in the dark, considering the old rede that spoke of her family’s luck. That luck would run out some day, the rede said, when the last of her line died by his or her own hand, in an hour of ice and darkness. But at last she was sure that the rede had nothing to do with her. She wasn’t the last of the tai-Enraesi, and she was about to ride out of here with three good friends, a sometime lover, a prince about to retake his throne, a fire elemental, and the first man in a thousand years to focus his Fire. So maybe, maybe just this once, everything was finally going to turn out all right….

  ONE

  Sirronde stared at the Goddess. “Are You saying, then, that You were wrong to make heroes?”

  “Indeed not,” She said. “But I should have warned them— if you save the world too often, it starts to expect it.”

  Tales of the Darthene South,

  book iv, 29

  When she was studying in the Silent Precincts, the Rodmistresses had warned her: if you’re going to look for meaning in a dream, first make sure it’s your own. Any sensitive is most sensitive in her sleep, and others’ dreams can draw you in and fool you. Now, therefore, Segnbora kept quite still and silent so as not to disturb whoever else was dreaming the landscape into which she had stumbled. It wasn’t often, after all, that one was privileged to see the Universe being created.

  The Maiden was working, as She always is, while the other two Persons of the Goddess, the Mother and the Eldest, looked on. Young and fair and preoccupied was the Maiden, as She worked elbow-deep in stars and flesh and dirt. She was so delighted with the wild diversity of Her creation that She never noticed the Mother and the Eldest desperately trying to get Her attention. They saw what she did not: the shapeless, lurking hunger that hid in the darkness at the Universe’s borders.

  Finally the Maiden, satisfied that Her world was complete, cried out the irrevocable Word that started life running on its own, and sealed the Universe against any subtractions. And the instant She had done so, Death stood up from where it had been hiding, and laughed at Her.

  She had locked the doors of the world, and locked Death inside it. Slowly it would suck the Universe dry of life, and She could not prevent it. Nor could She prevent Death’s darkness from casting shadows sideways from Her light—rogue aspects of Her, darksides, bent on destroying more swiftly what was already doomed. Grief-stricken, the Maiden took counsel with Her other selves to find some way to combat Death. Among Them, They invented first the heart’s love, and then the body’s—lying down together in the manner of woman with woman, and becoming with child.

  The Maiden, becoming the Mother now, brought forth twins—sons, or daughters, or daughter and son; the ambiguity of the dream made the Firstborn seem all of these at once. Swiftly They grew, and discovered love in Their Mother’s arms—then turned to one another and discovered it anew. But in the midst of Their bliss, surrounded by the blue Fire that was Their Mother’s gift and Their pride, the Death stood up again. It entered one of the Lovers and taught that one jealousy.

  The shadowed Lover slew the innocent One—and in the same act destroyed Its own Fire, which had been bound by love to the Other’s. Cursing, the Dark Lover fled raging into the outer darkness, where It would reenact Its murder and loss and bereavement for as long as the Universe should last. It was not a Lover anymore, but the Shadow.

  In the dream Segnbora wept, having known all along what was going to happen, and that mortals would be reenacting this tragedy in their own lives forever. The dream broke, then, and gradually re-formed as an image in water does after a stone is thrown in.

  She saw a scene skewed sideways, as if her head rested on someone’s shoulder. Much of the great room where she stood was dark, but in her hand—which had become a man’s—she held a core of blinding white light, wreathed all about with flames as blue as summer sky. Herewiss, she realized. Last night.

  His weariness was so terrible he could barely stand. He had banished the hralcins, the soul-eaters, yet he was too tired to exult in the focus he had forged—the unfinished sword he would call Khávrinen. He was the first man in a thousand years to focus the Fire, and he knew what difficulties lay ahead. The Shadow would not long tolerate him, or any man who enjoyed the Power It had cast away. It would deal with him quickly, before the Goddess had time, through him, to consolidate newly regained ground.

  We must move more quickly, the dream said. For look what the Shadow has planned! Segnbora shuddered in her sleep at the sight of a whole valley suddenly buried under mountains that had formerly stood above it. Dead, a voice said soundlessly. She’s dead. Snow whirled wildly down onto a battlefield under the mountains’ shadow, where something heaved as if trying to take terrible shape, and the snow turned red as soon as it fell, while monsters gnawed the de
ad. Elsewhere a wave of blackness came rolling down out of murky heights, crashed down onto a leaping, threatening fire, and smothered it.

  The air was thick with the feel of ancient sorceries falling apart, fraying. Grass forgot how to grow. Grain rotted on the stalk and fruit on the bough. Plague downed beasts and people alike, leaving their blackened corpses to lie splitting in the sun. Even the scavenger birds sickened and died of what they ate. It was happening already, happening now. The royal magics were failing. If they weakened enough to let the Shadow fully into this world, into Bluepeak, this outcome was inevitable, irreversible.

  The soundless voice of the dream spoke urgently. Freelorn must quickly see to the Royal Bindings. This is the work for which he was made; he’s the Lion’s Child, heir to Arlen. Go with him, Herewiss, in the full of your Power. Use the Fire to the utmost. He’ll need all the help you can give.

  But I just got the Fire, Herewiss said, terrified. It takes time to master it!

  There is no time. What must be done needs doing now. The Other is coming!

  And she could feel it, that throbbing of hatred in the background, getting stronger by the minute. The sky grew dark, and the snow blasted about them, in that place to which they would have to go to reinforce the Royal Bindings. Herewiss’s Fire, for so long a blaze within him, was going faint under a blanket of oppressive power. Just in front of him, Freelorn started to stand up. The whole dream focused then on the sight of Freelorn’s back, with a three-barbed, razor-sharp Reaver arrow standing out of it.

  Sagging, Lorn sank back slowly against Herewiss. Then a deeper darkness fell, and the two of them stood before a Door in which burned the stars that would never go out. Freelorn, his face in shadow, was pulling his hand gently out of Herewiss’s grasp, turning away toward death’s Door…