The Tale of the Five Omnibus

by Diane Duane

  “I know what worked for me, and for Herewiss. It should work for other humans, but Herewiss keeps complicating it with explanations.” It laughed gently. “If I come to understand why our loving works for him, that will be enough for me. And the sooner, the better. No use wasting time.”

  “Why not?” Lorn said. “You won’t die any time soon.”

  “He will,” said Sunspark.

  Lorn was shaken. “And what was it that worked for you?”

  Its voice was soft, and even puzzled, as if even now it didn’t understand the answer. “Fight with all your power, to the death, and lose the battles, first. Learn defeat. Then you get everything. Win, and lose it all.” It shook its head slowly, and sat up, stretching fore and aft, cat-fashion. “If I had won,” Sunspark said, reflective, “he would be ashes on some south wind, and I would have been free… of this.” It gazed down over the parapet, toward the lower towers, in one of which Herewiss lay. “Free of him, of love, and fear, and death… free of you mad creatures.” To Freelorn’s amazement, it turned and bumped his head against his shoulder, and the touch was warm. “Mastery is better,” it said, muffled, “even if I’m on the wrong side of it.”

  Very slowly Lorn put a hand up to stroke the burning pelt. It was like hot velvet to the touch, and Sunspark shivered in response. “Maybe it’s unlikely,” he said to it, rubbing the good place behind the ears, “but it might be interesting anyway, to try to master you, and find out firsthand what the Dark you’re talking about.”

  One eye opened and looked at him. “So it might be at that,” it said, sounding amused. Then it straightened up. “He’s waiting for you,” it said, and leaped off the parapet, dissolving into a streak of fire that struck outward into the night.

  What have I gotten myself into? Lorn thought, and sighed, and went down to bed. In the morning, he would ride for Arlen.

  FOUR

  They who say we are made in the Goddess’s image, they say true. For She made the world, yet in the heat of Her creation forgot the Shadow of Death that lurked, waiting Its chance: and unthinking She bound it into the world, and now rues Her doing. And we, like Her, make works that we fancy shall last for ever, but leave this or that great matter out of our reckoning; and then rue the mistake after. Here, though, we come at last by Her mercy to differ. For the mistakes we make, we can set right: She, never. All the hosts of man must come to the Last Shore before She may end the world and begin anew. Yet though we may set our mistakes aright… how often do we so? And in this the Shadow’s laughter may be heard. In our pride and blindness is Its only hope… and the means by which the likeness between us and Her is made complete.

  (s’Lehren, Commentaries on the Hamartics)

  Dead tired, wrung out, held safe and close, he would have thought that this once he was safe from the dream. He found out otherwise. It started as innocently as they tended to—one of those strange, slightly frantic, funny dreams in which good friends and people you’ve never seen before all rush around on bizarre missions that make perfect sense while you’re dreaming, and none whatsoever when you wake. He remembered wading a muddy river in company with Herewiss and Lang. Where the rest of his people were, he couldn’t imagine. A while later in the dream, he remembered that Lang was dead, fallen off the trail over the Scarp near Bluepeak. But in the dream, Lang’s appearance was some kind of good omen, so he let it pass: they were too busy to bother with small business at the moment, it would wait. Then suddenly they were in an inn somewhere—so he thought, anyway: a small crowded room full of shouting people. No, not shouting—singing. Over the singing, as if he had his head bent to catch an intimate conversation quite nearby, he could hear two people talking together softly.

  “What was the problem?”

  “Dear one, I seem to be pregnant.”

  “That’s news! Will you be all right?”

  “For a few months, at least. But—”

  And then a pause as he realized this was not an inn at all, but some kind of cave, in which some sound was echoing and hissing so that it sounded like many voices talking at once. It might be the sea, outside. That would make sense, for he could smell salt air. He headed for the shadowy walls of the place, hunting a doorway, while the voices began to argue.

  “Wait a minute! What do you mean, you’re pregnant? I’m pregnant!”

  “That’s ludicrous! What have you been doing to get pregnant?”

  “The same thing you have!”

  Lorn began to laugh quietly to himself as he went, because it occurred to him suddenly in the dream that one of the two people arguing was male. He walked on, into the stony shadows, and then began to wonder whether he was going in the right direction. The seacrash was dwindling away into silence.

  He paused, stood still, feeling nervous. The last sound faded away, leaving him standing in silence and darkness.

  Moonlight there was, lying faint in long parallelogram- shapes upon the patterned floor. He went by it, touching a familiar doorframe here, turning a corner there, now knowing surely where he was going, for he had walked these pillared halls by night and day for sixteen years of his life. The old almeries and chairs and presses looked at him calmly as he went by in the moonlight, and the stairway up to his old room spread itself broad for him, though he couldn’t go up there just now. He had other business; they were waiting for him. He found the great curtained archway in the white marble walls that led to the hall he was looking for, the place where they were waiting. He put out his hand to touch the embroidery- stiffened velvet of the curtain, feeling acutely the touch of the gold wire under his fingertips. He moved to push the curtain aside.

  And then he heard it, that low awful moaning sound, and barely had time to turn and flee before it burst out from the curtains behind him—the pale thing. He had seen it often enough before, it had been chasing him seemingly for his whole life, and he didn’t need to turn to know what it looked like. He didn’t even need to turn to see it. Fleeing, all his attention fixed ahead of him as he ran pounding down the tiles and looking for some place to hide, he could still see it clearly coming behind him, with that same doubled vision of the Blackcastle courtyard. A huge thing, scabrous, pallid, with a shape that never stayed the same for long, but flowed and changed like some glowing corruption. But mostly it had a broad pale body—of a deadly paleness, like something leprous—and long soft grabbing arms, and a wet white toothless maw that drooled pus and slime, and huge chill vacant eyes like sick moons that refused to stay in one place like eyes should. He ran, he ran, but it did him no good—it never did. It would get its claws into him and his blood would run with its corruption, he would feel the poison stink of its breath in his face as it lowered its mouth to his and—

  — the door, oh blessed Goddess, there was the door out into the garden! He ran for it in horror, tugged at its iron handle, it was stuck, hammered helplessly at the oaken, iron- nailed width of it, then yanked again in crazed desperation as he heard that evilly longing moan behind him. This time the door flew open, so fast that it hit him in the mouth. He gasped with the shock, flung himself sideways and through—

  — and found something worse. The sky was red, red like blood, long streaks of blood across a black like death, and the taste of blood in his mouth, and something screaming through thunder, the end of the world. There was his choice. Flee out into that, and die; or stay and face the pallid thing that hunted him, that he heard coming up behind him, that reached out for him even now and wrapped its great soft horrible arms around him and turned him around by force and held him, held him till he screamed for help, any help, even death would be better than this, and he struggled, wild and desperate, as its mouth came slowly down—

  Lorn was sitting up in bed, panting. The room was dim, but the Moon was long since gone; the light coming in the window was the beginning of dawn, all rose and gray. Herewiss was not in bed, and all the covers were wrapped around Lorn for once. He couldn’t think of any time when he had ever wanted them less. In left-over loathin
g he struggled out of them, kicked them away, and sat there in the bed naked and shivering.

  The door opened hastily, and Herewiss came back in, in his robe, dripping. “You shouted!” he said, and hurriedly sat down on the bed and reached out to Freelorn. “Are you all right?”

  “No.”

  “That dream again.”

  “Yes.”

  Herewiss sat silent for a moment. Then he said, “You’re overwrought. We’re all overwrought. That’s all.”

  “Tell me about it,” Freelorn said softly.

  Herewiss reached out to him and held him, held him hard. “I don’t want to leave you either,” he said into Lorn’s shoulder.

  Freelorn hugged him back. “Let’s not start again. They’re going to be waiting downstairs for you before too long, and I need to say goodbye to them. And we need to be brave and strong and certain for them, and all the rest of the idiocy.”

  And who’s brave for you? he quite clearly heard Herewiss’s heart cry out. Oh, Lorn, I can’t do it just now, yet you need me—

  It would have been too easy to agree with that. But he thought of Sunspark, and watched what he did. “Come on,” he said, thumping Herewiss’s shoulder, and then reached down to hold up one sodden sleeve. “One last bath, huh?”

  “It’s a long way to Prydon,” Herewiss said, sounding rueful.

  Lorn pushed him out of the bed, and got up himself, looking for something to wrap around him. “Go on. I’ll catch up.”

  Freelorn found his own robe and his razor, and started to go after—then paused for a moment, juggling the razor case thoughtfully.

  “Are you coming?” Herewiss shouted from down the hall. Freelorn considered and discarded several possible responses. “Coming?” he finally shouted back. “I’m not even breathing hard.”

  He headed out, following the laughter.

  ***

  Breakfast was a comradely but hasty affair. The Queen had appointments in the South that afternoon, and she needed time to prepare the sorceries of the Kings’ Door, the single permanent worldgate in the human part of the Middle Kingdoms, for the single step that would take her and her assistants a thousand miles. There were also other considerations. For those heading west to Arlen, they needed an early start to make sure that they would be at the Red Lion, the first staging inn along the Kings’ Road, by nightfall. Freelorn would not be able to see them on their way, for the Queen didn’t want him going out of Blackcastle without her.

  “We are going to encourage some misconception about your whereabouts,” Eftgan had said to Freelorn the day before. “Since you’re going out of here disguised, I am going to do a shapechange on one of my own people and have it seem as if you’re still here after you’re gone. It won’t fool the worst of the powers we’re dealing with, or not for long. But it’ll create confusion in Arlen, and that’s all to the good.”

  So Freelorn came down to breakfast, rather behind Herewiss. Their farewells were made, in private as usual. Now Lorn was ready for the rest of them… but nervous on other counts. Herewiss would be taking Moris with him to Prydon as an “equerry” and eyes-behind, but no one else except, of course, Sunspark. Segnbora was going her own way alone with Hasai, for quicker movement; Dritt and Harald were riding out south and east with messages to the nearest of the Darthene lords on whom levies were being settled. Lorn hated to see his people split up so. They were used to working together and covering for one another. But they would manage well enough.

  At the top of the stairs that led down to the small side hall where breakfast was laid out, Lorn paused. There they were, his little group, finishing their meal. He headed down the stairs. One by one his people caught the sound of his step, and looked up to greet him: and stared.

  Herewiss looked at him in shock. “What have you done with your mustache?!”

  Lorn stared back. “It fell in love with a passing caterpillar and ran off. What do you think? I shaved it, for pity’s sake.”

  He looked at Eftgan, who was gazing at him over a cup of cold mint tea with a sort of a cockeyed approval. “And I wouldn’t mind finding a barber and having my hair cut shorter, later on.”

  “That was wisely done,” Eftgan said, and everyone looked at her. “Well,” she said to them all, “I’m going to be putting a shapechange on him. I had thought I would make it a cleanshaven seeming anyway, to confuse matters as much as possible. But not even the best shapechange would be any good if someone happened to touch his face and find a caterpillar there.”

  Laughter broke out, and Lorn went to the table and helped himself to a small trencherbread and a stoup of cider with cinnamon in it. Herewiss, picking up seconds of fried bread beside him, looked closely at Lorn and then laughed and said, “You look really strange.”

  “Well, thanks kindly.”

  “No, I just meant I’m not used to seeing your upper lip…. ” He looked curiously at Lorn. “You look older.”

  “I thought it would go the other way.”Segnbora came up beside them with the remains of a plate full of cold cucumber and melon in lemon pickle, and looked at Lorn. “It’s pale,” she said. “It’ll look better after it tans.”

  “I hope so. I hope I can get used to how it feels. Naked.” He rubbed it.

  She smiled, in the offhand manner of someone who has something else on her mind. “Lorn, I’m glad you came down before we had to leave: I have to tell you something. No, Herewiss, stay. Lorn, listen—”

  “He’s pregnant,” Freelorn said suddenly.

  “No, I’m pregnant, but—” She stopped. “What??”

  Both she and Herewiss stared at Freelorn. He sighed. “Sorry. I think I overheard you. Underheard you. Hasai is pregnant, right?”

  Segnbora looked at Herewiss. “What have you been doing to him?!”

  “Nothing unusual,” Herewiss said. “It’s just crossover. You of all people might have expected it.” And then he blinked. “What do you mean ‘no, you’re pregnant’??”

  “Uh, I am. That’s why I wanted to talk to you, Lorn. You’re definitely her father. She’s almost two months—”

  “‘Her?’ A girl?”

  “I’d be a pretty poor hand with the Fire if I couldn’t tell that much, even this early,” Segnbora said. “I would have said something earlier, but I wasn’t sure. Before I broke through, I thought the stresses of picking up Hasai and the mdeihei had just thrown my flowering off schedule. Then these past few days, I was too busy to notice the ‘strangeness’ right off… I’ve gotten so used to having other lives inside. But now I know.” She smiled.

  “A little girl!”

  Segnbora smiled.

  “Wait a minute,” Herewiss said. “Hasai is male!”

  Segnbora glanced at him, a helpless comic look. “They don’t handle these things the way we do,” she said. “If the sdahaih part of a Dragon is pregnant, the rest of them are likely to get broody too, if many more of them are female than male. Most of my mdeihei are female… Hasai’s line is famous for it. It falls most intensely on those most recently mdahaih. That’s Hasai.”

  “Where are they all this morning?” Freelorn said, looking around as if expecting the breakfast room to go suddenly dark.“They’re off discussing it. And teasing Hasai, I’m afraid. I’m going to have to have a few thousand words with them.”

  Herewiss looked closely at her. “Are you all right? Can you ride?”

  “Ride?” She laughed. “I intend to fly. But I suspect the Dracon parts of me are going to affect this pregnancy. It may be a while before I come to childbed. Even now she’s not as far along as a two-month’s child would normally be.”

  “A little girl!” Lorn said softly.

  Segnbora put her plate down, pulled him close and hugged him. “I just wanted to make sure you knew that I’ll be taking good care of her,” she said. And in his ear she said, “Not every day I get to cart a princess of Arlen around the countryside, after all.”

  Freelorn was becoming more confused than he had ever been in his life. “Look,�
�� he said, “whatever—just take care of yourself, all right?” He put out a hand to touch Segnbora’s face.

  “I will,” she said, her eyes gentle. “My liege and my dear friend… you do that too. None of your famous last stands while you’re traveling, hear? We need you alive.”

  Lorn nodded. “And you too,” she said to Herewiss. “Don’t start playing to the groundlings for no reason. Save your Power; you’re going to need it.”

  Herewiss smiled, took her hands, kissed them. “They’re getting ready to go,” she said, squeezing his hands, and turned away.

  Freelorn looked at Herewiss. “I hate these goodbyes.” “The hello will be long,” said Herewiss, “as usual.”

  After a few minutes they went out into the courtyard outside the hall. It was mostly empty, so early in the morning: a breeze was rising, so that the Blackstave’s leaves showed mostly their silver undersides against a sky of perfect blue. Freelorn went from horse to horse, saying goodbye to Dritt and Harald and Moris.

  Finally he stopped by Sunspark. It was saddled and bridled, but the bridle was for show: the elemental could have munched up any bit ever made if the notion took it. Lorn patted its neck, and Sunspark looked at him out of eyes that were fierce, but not afire.

  “Take care of him,” Lorn said, under his breath.

  “I shall,” it said as softly: “I shall indeed.” And it nipped him in the shoulder. Without thinking, Lorn punched Sunspark as casually in the nose, and as hard as he would have punched his own Blackmane. Sunspark started straight up, came down again in a great clatter of hooves, showing eye-white and with ears laid back flat. It started to rear… and then settled down, putting its ears up again. “There really may be some interest in this,” it muttered to him as Herewiss came over and mounted up.