by Diane Duane
Herewiss grimaced. (The psychic energy canceled out all right,) he said, (but I had no idea there was so much movement-energy in that lateral fault. Damn!)
(Don’t berate yourself,) Hasai said. (The move wasn’t badly chosen for one so new at the game. And who’d have thought it could be played with humans at all?) He was delighted. (Come, Firebearer, try it again. There’s always a solution.)
(Well then, how about this…)
For a long while afterward Segnbora’s mind was filled with the feeling of rock shifting and grinding and mountains falling over in various disastrous combinations. She started to get bored. The game Hasai and Herewiss were engrossed in was like an extremely complicated variation of checks—and though Segnbora enjoyed playing for the delight of crossing wits with another player, her inability to think more than three or four moves ahead usually kept the game short and its ending predictable. Freelorn, to her intense irritation, looked over Herewiss’s shoulder in fascination, understanding everything.
(That’ll do it!) she heard Herewiss say at last.
Focusing her attention fully on the scene she was now feeling, Segnbora found, to her amazement, a Barachael valley still relatively intact, with both town and fortress unhurt, and the Eisargir Pass successfully sealed. Some distance away in her mind, she could feel Herewiss grinning like a child who had beaten a master.
(That was an elegant enough solution,) Hasai said. (And as I understand the Shadow from my sdaha, It would have to intervene Itself to foul the situation any further, which It’s reluctant to do, not so? It fears risking defeat.)
(That’s right,) Herewiss said. (There’s one move that still bothers me, though. The next-to-last. That one root of Aulys, the one that’s split up the middle—)
(Move it as a whole, and you’ll be safe.)
Hasai’s perception of the valley winked out, leaving them standing in her cave again. Segnbora took her hand out of Hasai’s mouth and looked at it closely. There were no burns or blisters. Her mdaha rumbled at her in amiable mockery. “Hearn’s son,” he said, “when this business is over, I’d be delighted to play with you again. There are some stresses in the volcanic country in west Arlen that might stretch you a little.”
Herewiss nodded. “With ‘Berend’s cooperation, absolutely.” He turned to Segnbora. “I’ll be starting the wreaking at sunset tomorrow. Lorn and Sunspark will keep an eye on our bodies while we’re out of them, and Lorn will be tied partially into the wreaking to keep us in touch with what’s happening in real time. Are you still with us?”
She felt like telling him no, but Hasai, gazing silently down at her, was looking also at one of her memories in particular: night outside the old Hold, and Segnbora’s voice saying to Herewiss, “You’ll find your Power, prince… I’ll help if I can.”
“Of course,” she said. “Dark, it must be years since I last moved a mountain.”
Herewiss, hand in hand with Freelorn, gave her an approving look. “Later, then,” he said. Fire from Khávrinen blazed up and swirled about them. They vanished.
Segnbora folded her arms and looked up at the silver eyes gazing placidly down on her. “You’re up to something,” she said.
Hasai flicked his wings open, a humorous gesture that made cool wind a second later. “When one knows what’s going to be,” he sang in slow amusement, “one tends to make it happen that way.”
“So what’s going to happen?”
Hasai slowly dropped his jaw at her. “Live, sdaha, and find out.”
He vanished into a memory. Segnbora sat for a moment on the bench, listening to the amused song of the mdeihei— then grinned with anticipation, and went off to bed.
***
“How are the stars?” Herewiss said from behind Segnbora.
“Almost right,” said Freelorn. He was beside her, leaning on the sill of the tower window. “Another quarter-hour and the Moon’ll be in the Sword.”
“Great. I’m almost done.”
The Moon, just past its first quarter and standing nearly at the zenith, looked down on a valley that flickered with campfires and the minute shiftings of Reavers going to and fro. Around Barachael’s walls, a lazy ring of fire smoldered, flaring up every now and then when some skeptical Reaver got too close. Segnbora, feeling a touch naked without surcoat and mail, turned her back on the valley vista and watched Herewiss at work.
The tower room had been emptied of everything but two narrow pallets and a chair. Around these, in what had been the empty air in the middle of the room, Herewiss was building his wreaking—the support web that would both protect him and Segnbora and slow their perception of time long enough for his Fire to do its work. He stood in britches and shirt, as Segnbora did, with one hand on his hip. With the other hand he wielded Khávrinen as lightly as an artist’s stylus, adding line after delicate line of blue Flame to what had become a dome of pulsing webwork with him at its center.
The completeness of his concentration, and the economy and elegance of the structure itself, delighted Segnbora. Lady, he’s good, she thought, admiring the perfect match between the inner symmetry-ratios of the wreaking and the meter of the spell-poem he was reciting under his breath. They were fools to throw him out of the Precincts just because he was male…
Segnbora’s glance fell on the lifeline he’d just drawn, noticing its brilliance. “If you leave my pulse running that fast,” she said, “I’ll be in bad shape when we get back.”
“Nervous, huh?” he said, glancing at her and lifting Khávrinen away from the description of a parabola. He touched the sword’s tip to the pulse line, draining it of some Fire. “Better?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Sunspark?”
Hot light flowered in one corner of the room and consolidated into a slim red-haired young woman with cheerful golden eyes. (They’re impatient down there, loved,) she said, amused. (They keep testing me.)
“Fine, just so long as they don’t get too interested in khas-Barachael. You know what to do?”
(This being the fourth time you’ve asked me,) Sunspark said, folding her arms in good-natured annoyance, (I dare say I do. None of them will leave the valley. They’ll find the way into the plains barred, just as Barachael town is barred to them. On the night of full Moon, immediately before the eclipse starts, I’ll begin driving the lot of them back up the pass. None will die.)
Herewiss nodded, narrow-eyed, completing the interconnection of several lines. “I hate to admit it,” he said, “but there’s a possibility that something’ll go wrong with all this. If the pass fails to seal properly, and I’ve exhausted myself, and they get down into the valley again—”
(Loved,) Sunspark said, (if that happens I’ll be quick with them. Their bodies will be consumed before the pain has a chance to start.)
Herewiss looked gratefully at the elemental from inside the shimmering blue web of the wreaking. “Thanks, loved. I’ll do my best to make it unnecessary.” He rested Khávrinen point-down on the floor and gazed around at the finished spellweb. “Lorn?”
“The Moon’s right,” Freelorn said, turning away from the window. “Let’s go.”
Trembling a bit with excitement, Segnbora unbuckled her swordbelt, drew Skádhwë from it, and tossed the belt in one corner. Herewiss walked out through the web and then turned inward to face, from the outside, the part of it specifically concerned with his body.
“A little to the left, ‘Berend,” he said as she moved into position. “Lorn, you’re fine.” They each stood at one corner of an equilateral triangle. “All together: step—”
Segnbora walked through the part of the Fireweb sympathetic to her, feeling the charged-cobweb crackle of it as it brushed against her face and hands. The hair stood up all over Segnbora as the spell passed through her body and rooted in flesh and bone. At the same time came an astonishing wave of lethargy that spread through her as quickly as blood beats outward from the heart. Hurriedly Segnbora lay down on the left-hand pallet, settling herself as comfortably as she
could. She laid Skádhwë down the length of her, folded both hands about its hilt at heart level, and began relaxing muscles one by one.
Across the circle, Herewiss was settling himself with Khavrinen, while Freelorn bent over him. “My head aches,” Lorn said. “Is it supposed to do that?”
“That’s the part of your mind that’s slowing down to keep up with us,” Herewiss said, starting to sound drowsy as the wreaking took hold of him too. His eyes lingered on Freelorn for a moment.
“Don’t even think it,” Lorn said, and bent lower to kiss Herewiss good night. Herewiss’s eyebrows went up for a second, then down again as his eyes closed.
(Mdaha,) Segnbora said to her inner depths, closing her own eyes, (see you when I’m out of the body!)
(I think not,) the answer came back, faint but amused.
(What?) She tried to hold off the wreaking long enough for Hasai to explain, but it was no use. Briefly the spell fought with her lungs, then conquered them and slowed her breathing. That done, the Firework wound deeper into her brain, altering her thought rhythms toward the profound unconsciousness of wreaking suspension. For a second of mindless panic Segnbora fought that too, like a drowning swimmer….and then thought, What am I doing? I chose this danger. I choose it now!
The phrasing of the thought was Dracon, and out of Dracon reflex, scared but determined, she took a long breath of the Fire. It burned. But as with Hasai’s fire, she matched with it, meshed with it, felt it sink in – and everything, even Hasai and the mdeihei, fell away….
ELEVEN
“Choose,” She said to the cruel king. “For I am bound by My own law, and what you desire shall be given you, until you shall ask Me for something beyond My power to grant.”
One by one he told her his desires, and one by one she granted them all—until at last, alone, desolate King of an empty city, he cried out to Her in anguish, “Change my heart!”
“I shall leave you now,” the Goddess said, “for you have asked a boon past My power. Only one has the power to fulfill that wish….and you are doing so.”
(from “The King Who Caught the Goddess,” in Tales of old Steldin,
ed. s’Lange, rr’Virendir, 1055 p.a.d.)
Segnbora was wide awake. She swung her feet off the pallet and stood up with Skádhwë in her hand. The room around her was foggy and hard to see—Herewiss’s spellweb had already slowed her time sense considerably. Dust and convection currents moved around her at what seemed many times their normal speed. Her othersenses were wide awake too, and showed her strange blurs going swiftly about the room—one yellow-bright as fire, one dark with an odd tangle of potential at its heart: Sunspark and Freelorn.
Herewiss still lay in his body, the blue-white core that was his soul struggling yet with the shell that surrounded it. Tense with the sensation of his difficulty, Segnbora turned away from him to gaze down at herself where she lay on her pallet.
(Mdaha?) she said. No answer came back; evidently the mdeihei were tied to her body, and must stay there, silenced, when she left it.
She looked down at her still form, drowned in a repose deeper than any sleep. It had been a long time since the Precincts, when she had last been out-of-body and able to see herself so clearly. A lot had changed since then. There was a wincing fierceness about the corners of the eyes now that hadn’t been there when she was younger, and even in this sleep the body looked tense, as if prepared to move in a hurry. Too much time alone, she thought, with the curious objectivity of the soulwalker. Too much time on the run…
(It’s not that bad,) Herewiss said from behind her. She turned, and was quietly astonished by what she saw. It wasn’t that Herewiss’s inner self didn’t look like his outer one. It kept that tall lean look, a smith’s no-nonsense musculature, and the fine-featured face made handsome by sleepy, gentle eyes. But through it, like sunlight through crystal, blazed the Fire, potent for creation and destruction, all wound about with a straightforward joy in the Fire that was more blinding than the Flame itself. He looked dangerous, and utterly magnificent.
(Well met,) Segnbora said, and meant it.
His expression was thoughtful. (You speak for me too,) Herewiss said. Maybe he caught her bemused look, for he said, (We’re short of time, but have you noticed that?)
He pointed behind her. Segnbora looked over her shoulder, away from the quick-flickering light of the Fire-web. Laid out along the floor, long and dark behind her, was her shadow.
(That’s impossible!) she said in momentary indignation, turning. (You can’t have a shadow out of the body!) Yet there the darkness lay, stretching to the wall and right through , blandly contradicting what she’d been taught in the Precincts. Experimentally Segnbora raised an arm, and was dumbfounded to see the serrated shape of a Dragon’s wing lift away from the shadow-body.
Behind her Herewiss was restraining his laughter. (Seems my mdaha’s truly becoming part of me,) Segnbora said, amused in spite of herself.
(Where is he? I thought he’d be here with us.)
(So did I. He’s with my body, looks like.)
Herewiss felt dubious for a moment (How are you going to tell me what’s happening in the stone, then? If he’s not here—)
Segnbora started to lean on Skádhwë, then aborted the gesture as the sword’s point began to pierce the stone they stood on. (Well, I have my memories of what ’s like to be one of the mdeihei. All I have to do is live in them completely enough and we’ll be fine.) She wished she was as certain of that as she made sound, especially since she’d spent enough time lately resisting that very thing. (Now, where do we have to go?)
Herewiss nodded at the room’s north wall, laying Khávrinen over his shoulder. Segnbora did the same with Skádhwë, and together they walked through the wall and into the clear air over Barachael. The stars wheeled visibly in the paling sky above them, moving a little faster each moment as Herewiss’s wreaking further slowed their time sense.
(How about that, it works,) Herewiss said, pausing. (A moment. Lorn?)
The answer came not in words, but in swift-passing impression of concern, relief, encouragement. All was well in the tower, though Freelorn wondered why Herewiss had waited so long to check in with him; nearly an hour had passed.
(We’re all right, loved,) Herewiss said. (The pauses may get pretty long, but don’t worry about us unless the web fails.) He broke contact and walked down the air toward Barachael valley. Segnbora followed.
Their othersight was stimulated to unusual clarity by the wreaking, and the Chaelonde valley bubbled like a cauldron with normally unseen influences. The Reavers’ emotions were clearly visible, a stew of frustrated violence and fear. Barachael town crouched cold and desolate behind the invaders. As the low threshold of her underhearing dropped lower still, Segnbora heard the slow bitter dirge of the town’s bereaved stones, which were certain that once more the children of their masons had been slaughtered. The other lives of the valley, birds and beasts, showed themselves only as cautious sparks of life, aware of an ingathering of Power and lying low in order not to attract attention.
The sky to the east went paler by the moment, and the Moon slid down the sky and faded in the face of day, looking almost glad to do it. While they watched, the Sun leapt into the sky too quickly, as if it wanted to put distance between itself and the ground.
The ground was a problem. Dark negative energies seethed in it the way thoughts of revenge might seethe in an angry mind. Though the faults weren’t yet very clear, it was plain that these negative energies ran down most of them, draining toward the foundations of the valley, where they collected in a great pool of ancient, festering hatred.
(We have to get into empathy with that?) Segnbora said, revolted.
(I’ll grant you, I’d sooner sit in a swamp,) said Herewiss, striding down the air toward the reeking morass. (Still, the sooner we do it, the sooner we can get out and get clean again. Come on down this way…)
He led the way around toward the base of the easternmost spur of
Adínë. There one of the vertical faults followed the spur’s contour, a remnant of a day long before when the earth bad shrugged that particular jagged block of stone above the surface. The fetid swirl of emotion in the valley broke against the spur as a wave breaks, flowing around it and up the pass. Herewiss stepped carefully down onto a high ridge of the spur and waited there for Segnbora. When she caught up, they both paused to watch the way the shadows in the valley shrank and changed. The few moments’ walk down from Sai khas-Barachael had begun at sunrise, and now it was nearly noon.
(Now what?)
Herewiss lifted Khávrinen. Fire ran down from it and surrounded him until he blazed like someone drenched with oil and set alight. (In,) he said. Glancing down at the ridge they stood on, he stepped down into the earth as if walking down stairs.
(Show-off,) Segnbora thought, though with affection. She walked down the outer surface of the ridge, seeking the way into the mountain that would best suit her. Turning, she saw her incongruous shadow against the ridgewall behind her. Impossible… as impossible as a human becoming a Dragon. So why not? Reaching behind her with both hands, Segnbora grasped it and pulled it forward about her shoulders like a cloak, becoming what she couldn’t be.
It was astonishingly easy. There was fire in her throat again, and she had wings to feel the air, one of which was barbed not with a claw of white diamond but with a sliver of night made solid. She dug her talons into the naked stone. Without moving, Segnbora knew what lay beneath her, felt it as if it was her…for it was. The deep, slow, scarce-moving selfness of the rock, the secret burning at the roots, the earth’s heavy veins running with the mountain’s blood… they were her veins, her blood, her life.
