by Diane Duane
No!
Do what you must to come to the full of your Power. There’s no time! Her voice was almost frightened. Herewiss had never believed She could sound that way.
But if I do—and we get there—then Lorn—
It must not be prevented.
But—
You must not attempt to prevent it!
I—
Hurry!
NO!!
The scream tore through her own throat as she sat bolt upright in the bedroll, sweating—still seeing against the darkness the long ruinous fall of an entire mountain, still hearing the crash of it, first note in a song of disaster.
In the great main hall of the old Hold, people fumbled frantically for their swords—the memory of the hralcins’ sudden arrival the night before was very fresh. The fire in the firepit rose up too, putting several broad curves of flame over the edge and leaning anxiously out to see what was the matter. As a fire elemental, Sunspark had not had much experience with fear, but after last night it was apparently taking no chances.
Segnbora lifted a hand to her pounding head and found that she was holding her sword, Charriselm. Evidently she had drawn it while still half sleeping. Beside her in the bedroll, blond Lang was still blanket-wrapped, but nevertheless he had found his graceknife in a hurry. Lying propped on one elbow with the knife in one ham of a hand, he blinked at her like an anxious owl. A few feet away, big swarthy Dritt and lanky Moris were sitting up back to back, looking as panicked as Segnbora felt. On the other side of the firepit, Harald was attempting simultaneously to string his bow and brush the brown hair out of his eyes. All of these looked at Segnbora as if they thought she was crazy.
“A bad dream?” Lang said.
She nodded, sliding Charriselm back into its sheath and looking across the room toward the firepit and the bedrolls laid down there.
Herewiss was sitting up, bracing himself with one hand, rubbing his eyes with the other. He took the hand away from his , and Segnbora was shocked to see his terrified expression. Lorn was holding Herewiss tight and peering worriedly into his face. Under other circumstances it could have been a touching and humorous sight—the little, dark-mustachioed, fierce-eyed man comforting someone who, judged by his slim hard build and well-muscled shoulders, might have been the village blacksmith.
“Are you all right? What happened?”
“It was a dream,” Herewiss said, his voice anguished.
“Shh, it’s all right.”
“No, it’s not.” Herewiss rubbed his eyes again, then glanced around him with frightened determination. He started searching in the blankets for his clothes. “We’ve got to go.”
“What?”
“We have to hurry!” Herewiss grabbed one bunched-up blanket and impatiently shook it. A sword fell out and clattered to the floor—a hand-and-a-half broadsword of gray steel that would have seemed of ordinary make except for the odd blue sheen about it. Herewiss snatched it up, and at his touch his Power ran down the blade: blinding blue Fire, twisting and flurrying about in bright reflection of his distress.
“It was—there was—the mountain fell down, just like that! And there were thousands of Fyrd, and bigger monsters too—and a wave came down over everything, and Sunspark went out—”
(I did not!)
“Loved, slow down so I can understand what the Dark you’re talking about—”
“So much for a whole night’s sleep,” Lang muttered under his breath. Putting his knife away under the rolled-up cloak that was serving them as pillow, he lay down again. “Wake me up when they’re finished?”
“If necessary,” Segnbora said, rubbing his shoulder absently. The gesture was more for her comfort than for his. Her underhearing was wide awake, bringing her the hot coppery blood-taste of Herewiss’s fright as if it were her own.
Herewiss had yanked a shirt out of the blankets and was struggling into it, while in his lap Khávrinen kept on blazing like a torch. “It’s angry as anything,” he was saying. “And It’s going to work the worst mischief It can, by putting pressure on the Royal Bindings that have been keeping It in check.” He started feeling around for his britches. “For seven years no one’s reinforced the Arlene half of those bindings, and they’re wearing thin—”
Freelorn glanced away from Herewiss. Segnbora put her hands behind her head and leaned back, closing her eyes and bracing herself against the gut-punch of grief and anger she knew would come from Lorn. When his father had died on the throne, and the Minister of the Exchequer, Cillmod, had taken the opportunity to seize power, Freelorn had fled for his life with a price on his head. Now Lorn would wonder again whether staying in Arlen to see to the Bindings, and possibly getting killed as a result, might not have been the more noble course. This was an old midnight pain that Segnbora had come to know as well as the arthritis in Harald’s right knee, or Dritt’s self-consciousness about his weight. While no Precinct-trained sensitive could have helped underhearing her surroundings as Segnbora did, that was the gift she would have been happiest to lose when she gave up her studies. She had enough trouble dealing with her own pains.
“Lorn, enough,” Herewiss said, catching Freelorn’s anguish too. “The fact remains that if the Shadow leans Its full strength against the Bluepeak bindings, we’re done for. The Kingdoms will founder. I saw the southern passes full of Reaver armies. And the plains full of Fyrd. There were storms and earthquakes, and where the earth opened a whole town fell in. And that cliff at Bluepeak—” Herewiss broke off.
Freelorn, still holding him close, looked puzzled. “But it was just a dream!”
“Oh no,” Herewiss said, shaking his head emphatically. “I saw.”
“He’s dreaming true,” Segnbora said.
Freelorn’s frightened eyes flicked to her. “He’s focused now,” she said. “It’s one of the first things that happens…”
“What about the cliff?” Freelorn said to Herewiss.
Herewiss closed his eyes and sagged back on his heels, looking tired. “It was snowing—”
“A month and a half before Midsummer’s? You call that dreaming true?”
With a great effort Segnbora held her face still as Herewiss saw again that image of Freelorn turning away from him, away from love and life toward death. “Lorn,” Herewiss said. “I was shown a lot of things. I don’t know what they all meant. I don’t think most of them have happened yet. But some of them will, unless they’re prevented.” He swallowed hard. “I have to assist in the process. I was given all this Power. Now it has to be used, fully, and I won’t be able to take my time about its mastery, either.”
Freelorn looked askance at his loved, getting an idea and not liking it. “But what other way is there, but to work into your Power slowly?”
“The Morrowfane, Lorn.”
Freelorn looked grim. “I’ve read a little about that,” he said, and this was likely a great understatement, for among the responsibilities of a throne prince of Arlen was the curatorship of rr’Virendir, the Arlene royal library, which dwelt at length on such subjects. “Everything I’ve seen suggests you can’t go up there without coming down changed—”
(What’s the problem with that?) Sunspark said from the firepit. The reaction was understandable; change was a fire elemental’s chief delight. (Just yesterday Herewiss changed—quite a bit—and you didn’t mind.)
Lorn glanced with annoyance at Sunspark as the elemental radiated smugness at him. Freelorn’s discovery that Sunspark had also come to be a loved of Herewiss’s during the time spent forging Khávrinen had left him with reactions that were complex, and far from settled.
“I don’t mean shapechanges,” Lorn said with exaggerated patience. “Soul-changes. Great alterations in personality. Madness, or types of sanity that human beings don’t usually survive.”
“The change needn’t be harmful,” Herewiss put in. “Remember, the place is a great repository of Flame. All the legends agree on that. Those who climb the Fane are given what’s needed to do what t
hey must do in a life.”
“Then why do so few people go up it?”
“For one thing, you need focused Fire, and enough of it to keep the Power of the place from blasting you,” Herewiss explained. “For another, so few people want what they need… . Lorn, listen. This is necessary. It’s part of getting you back on your throne. If we don’t get to Bluepeak by Midyear’s Eve, so that you can aid in restoring the bindings, there won’t be a country left for you to rule.”
“But I was never Initiated into the Mysteries. If I had been, we wouldn’t have these problems—I’d be King, and that slimy bastard Cillmod would be out looking for other employment.”
“True, but you know the royal rites, don’t you? You have to do it.”
“Who says?”
“Who do you think?” Herewiss said, very gently. “When you dream true, Who do you think sends the dream?”
Lorn held very still, and most of the fierceness faded out of his eyes. “There’s another problem. You know the money I removed from the Arlene treasury in Osta? Well, Bluepeak’s in Arlen too. Cillmod’s probably annoyed about that missing money, and if we go back to Arlen so soon, and he finds out about it… ”
Herewiss said nothing.
After a moment or two, Freelorn shrugged. “Oh, what the Dark! If the Reavers and the Shadow are going to come down on Arlen, Cillmod hardly matters. I suppose I have no choice anyway. I swore that damn Oath when I was little. ‘Darthen’s House and Arlen’s Hall—’”
“‘—share their feast and share their fall,’” Herewiss finished. “If Arlen goes, so does Darthen. And after them Steldin, North Arlen, the Brightwood…”
Freelorn laughed, but without merriment. “Why am I even worried about Cillmod? The Shadow’s a far greater danger. It can’t afford to leave you alive now. You’re the embodiment of the old days before the Catastrophe, when males had the Power. The time of Its decline…”
Herewiss shook his head and smiled, an expression more of grim agreement than of reassurance. “We’ll both be careful,” he said. “That is, if you’re coming with me?”
Reaching down, Freelorn gently freed one of Herewiss’s hands from Khávrinen’s hilt, and held the hand between his own. “No more dividing our forces,” he said. “From now until it’s done, we go together.”
Herewiss held his peace and didn’t change expression. Segnbora had to drop her eyes, seeing again that image of one hand that let go of another’s, the face that turned away.
All at once Freelorn was thumping on the floor for attention. “Listen, people—”
Segnbora nudged Lang. He rolled over under his covers. “Whatever you say, Lorn, I’ll do it,” he said, and pulled the blanket back over his head.
“There’s a man who takes his oaths a little too seriously,” Freelorn said with a grimace of affectionate disgust. “On his own head be it. But for the rest of you—I can’t in good conscience ask you to go on this trip. The Shadow—”
“The Shadow can go swive with sheep for all I care,” Moris said with one of his slow grins. “I haven’t come this far with you to stop now.”
“Me either,” Harald said, stubbornly folding his huge bear’s arms.
“You’re not listening,” Freelorn said, in great earnest. “Your oaths are a matter of friendship and I love you for them. But it’s not just Cillmod we’re playing with now. It’s the Shadow. Your souls are at stake—”
“The things that were in here last night ate souls too,” Dritt said calmly, putting his chin down on his arms. “Herewiss did for them all right.”
(I helped,) said the voiceless voice from the firepit. Eyes looked out of the flames at the company, then came to rest with calm interest on Freelorn. (I’m coming too.)
The building rumble of irritation in the room, combined with so much unspoken affection, was making Segnbora’s head ache; the walls of this place, opaque to thought, bounced the emotions back and forth until the undersenses were deafened by echoes.
“Look,” she said, shaking free of her own blankets. “If we’ve got to get an early start in the morning—” She glanced at Herewiss. “—it can wait until morning?”
“I suppose so,” he said.
“Good. Then I want some sleep.” She went over to Freelorn in her shift, drawing Charriselm again as she came, and offered him the blade’s hilt about an inch from his nose, while giving Lorn a look suggesting that perhaps that was where she meant to insert it. “You swore on this, on all our blades, that your lordship would be between us and the Shadow while we wielded them in your service. You want to take that oath back?”
Lorn glared up at her, fierce eyes going fiercer, “No! Are you crazy? What makes you think I’d—”
“What makes you think we would?”
Freelorn held absolutely still. His anger churned wildly for a moment, then fell off, leaving reluctant acceptance in its place.
Segnbora shoved Charriselm back into its sheath. “Good night, Lorn,” she said, and padded back to her bedroll, taking care not to smile until her back was turned.
Sunspark pulled itself back down into the firepit as people settled themselves again. Soon the darkness of the hall held no sound but Harald’s cloak-muffled snoring.
It took Segnbora a little while to get enough of the blankets unwrapped from around Lang to cover herself. That done, she lay on her back for a long while, gazing up at the smoke-shaft in the ceiling, through which a few unfamiliar stars shone. Her underhearing, sharpened by all the excitement, brought her the faint dream-touched emotions of those falling asleep, and the physical sensations of those asleep already: breathing, the slide of muscles, muted pulse-thunder.
It’s a gift, she told herself for the thousandth time. Appreciate it. Truth, however, reared its head. The talent was a nuisance. If her Fire was focused, as Herewiss’s was, she wouldn’t be having this problem. …If. Segnbora exhaled sharply at her useless obsession with what she couldn’t have. Her Flame wasn’t focused. It never would be, and she had given up. Other things had become more important now. Oaths, for example.
It seemed like a long time ago. All of a month, she thought—a busy month full of desperate rides, escapes, sorcery, terror, wonder. All started by a chance meeting in a smelly alley, when she had stumbled on a dark fierce little man losing a swordfight to the crude but powerful axework of a Royal Steldene guard. The small man looked as if he was about to be split like kindling. She had intervened. The guardsman never saw the shadow who stepped in from behind.
Over the course of the evening, she found she had rescued family; though the tai-Enraesi were only a small poor cadet branch of the Darthene royal line, and strangers to court, the Oath of Lion and Eagle was binding on them too, and a king’s son of Arlen was therefore a brother.
The relationship got more complex with time, however. On the road Segnbora had shared herself with Freelorn, as she sometimes did with the others, for delight or consolation. But before that, more importantly, came friendship, and the oaths. Before Maiden and Bride and Mother I swear it, before the Lovers in Their power, and in the Dark One’s despite: My sword will be between you and the Shadow until you pass the Door into Starlight.
She exhaled quietly. Her determination was set.
There has to be a way.
There has to.
You’re not going to get him…
***
After a while, as she lay at last near the brink of sleep, Segnbora sensed something shining. She opened one eye. Across the room sat a form sculpted of darkness and deep blue radiance—Herewiss, cross-legged, shoulders hunched wearily as he gazed down at the sleeping Freelorn. Across his lap lay his sword, wrapped about with curling flames the color of a twilight burning low.
She lay unmoving, regarding him. Eventually the thought came, tasting as if it had been soaked in tears and wrung out. (You know, don’t you.)
(Yes.) She felt sorrow still, and now a touch of embarrassment. (Sorry. You know how it is with dreams.)
(No matter
. I’ve been in a few others’ dreams myself.)
(The scales are even, then.)
He nodded. Herewiss didn’t look up, but his attention was fixed so intensely upon her that no stare could have been more discomfiting.
(You understand what you’re getting into?) he said. (It may not be just Lorn heading for that Door. Probably me too. Maybe all of us will have to die so the Kingdoms can go on living.)
(Those who defeat the Shadow,) Segnbora said silently, (usually die of it. It’s in all the stories.)
(Defeat!) Now he raised his head. His look was pained at first, then incredulous.
(I love him too,) she said.
(You’re as crazy as the rest of us,) Herewiss said. The thought was sour, but there was a thread of amusement on it like the bright edge of a knife. He threw her a quick image of herself as she had been the night before, when the air in the hall had been full of the stink of hralcins. As the monsters had come shambling across the floor toward them she had stood frozen on the brink of panic, unable to do even the smallest sorcery. All she’d been able to do was stand shaking before the advance of the screaming horrors, and make blinding light—a byproduct of her blocked Fire—until even that guttered out, exhausted.
Segnbora bit the inside of her cheek, pained by the image regardless of the compassion of Herewiss’s viewpoint. (What we’re facing,) he said, (is the father of those things, and worse—the Maker of Enmities, the engenderer of the shadows at the bottoms of our hearts, Who can overturn the world in fire and storm.You have some new defense that you’ve come up with since last night? A strategy sufficient to stop a being so powerful that to be rid of it the Goddess Herself can only let the Universe run down and die?) The irony was gentle, but it was there.
(I plan to win,) Segnbora said at last. (What are you going to do?)
