The Tale of the Five Omnibus

by Diane Duane

Oh no you don’t—! His old studies in sorcery, crude art that it was compared with the Fire, now stood him in good stead. That particular spell structure was always at its weakest just below the point of its furthest extent, the imbalance in the out-stroke coming of the sorcerer’s concentration being wholly focused on the striking point of it. Herewiss set his Fire deep into the structure of the spelling, choosing to see it as woodgrain, as the neck of the spearshaft. He watched the Fire sink into it, saw the “wood” glow blue and begin to bend, heard the groan of its resistance. Then, in one quick motion, he snapped it—

  All the force bound into the spell rebounded catastrophically, like a snapped bowstring, into the mind of its worker. The silent, anguished scream that followed gave Herewiss just a breath’s worth of time to be angrily satisfied: then he was too busy controlling the sick feeling in his own gut, the reaction to having been hit with the spellweapon in the first place. His vision cleared enough to remind him that he had a body, and that he must grip his cup and not drop it.

  Cillmod had gone on talking, noticing nothing until Khávrinen burnt up blinding blue. “Folly, of course. Such children have a way of not surviving: opposing forces begin to struggle for them, and—” He glanced in surprise from the sword, now beginning to dim down, to Herewiss’s face. “My lord Herewiss, are you not well?”

  Herewiss was resisting the desperate desire to gasp for air. One gasp got out despite everything he could do. Then he smiled wanly and said, “Someone tried to poison me earlier. Nothing serious.”

  This had nothing to do with his present discomfort, of course, but it was the truth, if a misdirecting one. Cillmod looked shocked. “Here?” And then his face settled into an chilly nonexpression that Herewiss knew, with another disturbing pang, from having seen Lorn wear it. Rage. “Who would dare—!”

  Herewiss had his breath back now. “I shouldn’t like to deprive you of the chance to find out for yourself,” he said, gently, but with angry irony of his own. “The blow missed, sir. Poison is a poor tool to use on someone with the Fire.”

  He said nothing of the other blow that had just glanced off him, busying himself for the moment with weaving the unseen mail of his Fire more tightly around him. Our Rian was most interested in what I might be thinking. And possibly was hearing leakage: I must be careful. But why— Surely he, and everyone else who might be interested, knew that Lorn’s daughter was long dead. But —

  Herewiss stopped that thought before it could progress any further. I am going to have to guard myself most carefully. These attacks are going to continue in strength and subtlety until Rian is certain of where my own strengths lie. And that worried him. It would be pleasant to think he could misdirect those assessments. But he had had more than enough trouble just keeping this single attack from burning part of his mind away. Where is he getting such power?! Herewiss thought. Mere sorcery should have hardly any effect on a Fire-fueled wreaking—

  Herewiss looked away from Cillmod for a moment, toward the terrace windows. He dearly wanted to get a glimpse of Rian, if he was even in the room. Surely he would have left, being about to work a sorcery like that; no one had the concentration to move about, talk, make sense, while dealing with the fueling and launching of such a magic. And the backlash alone would drop him like an axe in the skull, Herewiss thought with grim satisfaction. Not something that one would want the whole Arlene court to see.

  Cillmod followed his glance. “They will be wondering what we’re up to,” he said. “I suppose we should go in. But my lord—”

  “Herewiss will do,” he said, much to his own surprise.

  “Herewiss, then. Your poisoner was none of my doing.”

  “I believe you,” Herewiss said. Though for what reason, the Goddess only knows: I have none. None but one that makes me distrust myself—

  Cillmod nodded and made his way back into the hall.

  Herewiss followed at a respectable distance, nodding courtesy to those who watched him come. He looked casually around the room, and got the shock that he had been half-expecting. Rian, there, over by the curtains to the left side of the throne, in conversation with several Arlene courtiers: unconcerned, laughing. Herewiss caught a side view of him and saw the man’s erect stance, his complexion, not even slightly pale; flushed a bit, in fact, as if with wine.

  He is immune to backlash.

  Impossible!

  Goddess help us all—

  It was growing late, and he had too much to think about. Andaethen was making her way around the room, in the process of making her good-nights. Herewiss went to join her, then paused a moment as he watched Cillmod head for the Throne, and stop.

  Sunspark was there, committing lazy and unconcerned treason. It lay draped over the Throne, smoking gently, but (Herewiss noticed with relief) not singeing the cushions. Its chin was propped on the Throne’s arm, and its tail hung over the other one, twitching ever so gently as it gazed across the room at the courtiers who were staring at it.

  Herewiss decided to play the part it had offered him. “Sunspark,” he said, “heel.”

  That tail twitched once or twice more, thoughtfully, as the languid, burning eyes slid sidewise to regard him. Then Sunspark stood up in the throne, and arched its back, and yawned, cavernously. Every fang burned white. When the yawn was done, it stretched fore and aft like a cat by a hearth, and worked naughtily with its claws for a moment on the arm of the throne. Threads of smoke went up into the still air where those white-hot sickles scorched the wood, then hid themselves demurely in the huge paws again. Sunspark stepped down from the Throne and paced over to him, its tail lashing gently.

  ‘Heel’, indeed, it said. I will get you for this, some day.

  You started it, loved.

  As Andaethen joined him, Herewiss watched Cillmod take the Throne again, and brush, rather bemused, at the ash on its arm. He looked over at Herewiss, and surprisingly, smiled—not a dissembling expression, not hostile: genuine amusement.

  Ah, heaven, he thought regretfully. Why can’t things be simple? Herewiss bowed to Cillmod, rather more deeply than he had at first. Then he turned, sparing no one else a glance, and followed Andaethen out.

  TEN

  The rain is my blood, and the Earth my flesh, and the stones my bones, and the wind my breath: my thoughts are my own, but let them turn to Her.

  — Regaliorum, 4

  A tenday after Herewiss’s hand-kissing, he sat in his room at the embassy scratching with quill on parchment, trying to draw a map. “Trying” was the operative term, for it was one of life’s ironies that not all the Fire in the Goddess’s world could make a person a better draftsman than he had been to start with. Herewiss looked at the blot he had just made, right across the route of the Kings’ Road about a mile away from Prydon, and running up the slopes of Vintners’ Rise. He sighed and reached for the scraping-knife.

  From behind him came the sound of a throat being cleared. He leaned back in the chair, almost too far, but Andaethen put a hand on his shoulder and braced him. She looked down at the map. “Looks like chicken-scratchings,” she said, “but not much worse than the last one, I suppose.”

  “Thank you so much, madam. You fill me with encouragement.”

  She smiled and looked at what he had drawn. The map showed the ground immediately around Prydon city and for about five miles eastward, with special attention paid to the various hills and rises that might interest an army heading in that direction. There were a few small oblongs drawn on it, meant to indicate the present positions of Arlene troops; one north of the city, two south. “He hasn’t committed himself any more clearly than that, I’m afraid,” Herewiss said. “Not yet, anyway.”

  “Which ‘he’ are we talking about? Cillmod? Rian?”

  “No,” Herewiss said. “Meveld, the Commander-general.” He was one of the many mercenaries who had been bought in, and it was Herewiss’s unhappy opinion that Cillmod had really gotten good value when he bought him.

  Andaethen scratched idly at a stray i
nk-spot on one side of the parchment. “Why two groups to the south and only one to the north, I wonder?”

  “Hard to say, this early on. Possibly that second group of troops will be moved somewhere else shortly. Seems likely, as it’s mostly cavalry—they’re no good over there among the hills and the wetlands.” Herewiss leaned back again. “A lot of the mercenaries the Arlenes bought have been stabled out across the country, and have to be recalled… that’s still going on. But by next tenday we should have a much better idea of the kinds and numbers of their strength, and where to start putting our own. And the tenday after that, we’re almost on top of the First of Autumn.”

  Andaethen nodded. “Will you be speaking to herself tonight?”

  “In a while.”

  “Then read her this, if you would,” she said, “and tell her I should have more news on that matter in five days or so.”

  “Very well.”

  “Then have a good night, after you’ve done your business. By the way, the night of your dinner for the court is set. Four days from now.”

  She went out. Herewiss looked at his map for a moment, then pushed it aside and got up. For a moment he just stretched, trying to get the crick out of his back: unsuccessfully, as usual. He had not been comfortable lately, either physically or spiritually. Increasingly, since his handkissing, he had the sense of Arlen, and of Prydon in particular, not as either a city or country, but as a web, with one huge, patient, silent, smiling spider sitting at the heart of it, feeling every shake, every breath of wind that stirred the strands. And he stood obviously at the end of one of the larger strands, poking it, plucking it, trying to produce some reaction by his quiet visits to the disaffected. There had been no reaction.

  For his own part, Herewiss had taken to guarding his thoughts even more vigilantly before. He was spending his strength, as well, extending the Fire’s protection to Andaethen and several of her staff. It was wearing him out.

  He went over to the door, shutting it gently. Moris was out in town somewhere this evening, having his own business to do for Andaethen; he would not try to come in this door when he saw it closed. But just for safety’s sake, Herewiss touched the lintel, and the door, leaving between them an unseen thread of the Flame that would hold like steel, but also reveal afterwards who had touched the door, and what their thought was at that moment.

  That done, he looked around the room, found another chair that he could lean back in without tipping it over—not an antique, this time—and pulled it to the middle of the room, near the writing table. Then slowly Herewiss walked around them both, describing a careful circle on the marble floor with Khávrinen’s point. When he was done, he sat down in the chair, with the sword laid across his lap, and in his mind held a spark of intention to the circle, like a flame to the wick of a lamp.

  Immediately the blue Fire sprang up all around, along the path he had traced. He sat and waited for a moment, steadying his breathing and throwing extraneous thoughts and concerns out of his mind. Also, he listened, with all the senses now available to him. Since he started doing these afternoon or evening work sessions, he had felt something, not exactly pressing against the barrier of Fire, but leaning against it. Not an attack—merely an assessment, a feeling that someone was not only trying to find out how strongly his barriers were held, but whether Herewiss perceived the “leaning” presence at all. Herewiss made no response to these efforts. Better that whoever “leaned”—surely either Rian or one of his under- sorcerers, of which he had several—would feel that Herewiss didn’t know that he was being tested.

  This time, the “leaning” feeling wasn’t there. Herewiss shrugged, then closed his eyes and slipped down into the part of him where his Fire lived. It was no longer, as it had been, a single forlorn spark, buried at the core of him. Now his whole insides seemed lighted with it, like an open-windowed house full of sunshine. But he had made himself, as many adepts do, a place in which to work, something more congenial and less abstract than the sheer perception of light. Now Herewiss opened the door to it and stepped inside.

  It had changed, of late. Originally it had looked like his old forge back in the Brightwood: a clutter of crowbars and anvils and swordblanks, a scatter of good metal and bad, ready to be made into whatever he needed. But now it looked more like the old Hold in the far eastern Waste—the plain black stone of the walls and floors and ceilings, and the many, many doors. He would walk among them, these days, looking in each one for the answer to the problem he was posing at the moment, or the source of the repose he needed.

  He wandered down the hallway, looking in the open doorways to see what he might see. Herewiss had long since learned that he found out, on the average, more interesting things when he wandered than when he went looking a-purpose. And you’re lazy, he thought, chiding and amused. It was true: most sorcerers and Rodmistresses were. He could have done any number of specific spells to take him directly into the minds of the ones he sought. But at this point, a whole two months into his usage of Fire, he was already getting tired of the mechanics of the business, and was coming to be more fond of the functionality of the Fire than of the ceremony often associated with it, and the ability of his mind to find whatever he sent it after. It might take a while, but sooner or later it would turn up. Meanwhile, he wandered the halls.

  He paused by one doorway that was dark, recognizing it for what it was: an aspect of one of his worst fears, some old threat sealed away, forgotten—it was hard to tell which without piercing the barrier. No need, or curiosity, for that at the moment. Herewiss passed that door by: passed by a doorway on a wide, white sea, white beach, silver sky, one he hadn’t seen before. He paused a moment, interested, then moved on. There was no use attempting to mark the positions of these worlds behind the many doors; they moved around at whim, or in response to motions in the great Pattern in which they coexisted with all the other worlds. No use marking any one world, anyway: if he truly wanted it, later, it would make itself available. The old Hold was nothing if not obliging in these matters… though occasionally he wondered what its own purposes were, and whether he was fulfilling its desires, or his own…

  Eventually he came to Segnbora’s door, the gateway that led onto her own physical and mental realities. The doorway smelled to his othersenses of salt water, and also of hot stone, a faint scorched smell—the clean, mineral reek of Dragons.

  He peered through the doorway into the gloom. It was fairly dim in there. There was a light like sunshine from a low doorway off to one side: not much else. All he could see was stone—stone floor, stone walls, the up-arching emptiness of a stone ceiling above. “Anyone home?” he said, and heard his voice echo from the rock far above.

  “Herewiss is here!” someone said: Segnbora’s voice, and sounding singular for a change. “Come in, do,” she said.

  He stepped in, making his way through the darkness toward that doorway. It was a long walk—a Dragon would fit through it with ease, and it was at least a quarter mile away. Herewiss went quietly across the stone, looking occasionally at the many eyes that gazed at him out of the darkness. He waved casually to them, and kept going.

  Herewiss came out onto a beach—the black sand of the western Darthene coast, in brilliant hot sunshine. The crash of surf came from some distance away: the tide was far out, over a mile of flats. Right in front of him, Hasai was there, lying flat on his back with his wings laid out on the sand at full extension. Lying all around were scraps and sheets of something black and glittering, twisted and stiff. Off to one side, Segnbora sat on the sand, half-naked for the heat, and leaned up against the huge wall of Hasai’s neck while she worked at a sheet of the black stuff, picking at it delicately. “Well met,” she said. “It’s been some days.”

  “It has, that, but—” He stopped short, staring at her.

  Segnbora was not entirely there: he could see Hasai through her, though dimly. He looked down at the sand, saw her shadow lying there, light black on dark: a human shadow again. He didn’t know
whether or not he should be alarmed by that. The tenuous look of her was alarming enough.

  “Are you all right?” Herewiss said, to both of them. “When did this happen?”

  Segnbora’s face fell a bit, watching his reaction. ‘Well,” she said, “it seems to have happened after we went to the Eorlhowe. And I may be wrong, but—” she held up a hand and turned it over, looking at it front and back, “it seems to be getting more pronounced, the last day or two. If this goes on much longer—” She shrugged.

  “If it goes on much longer, what?”

  “I don’t know!” said Segnbora. “This has never happened to me before… so I’m short of clues as to the whys and wherefores. But I’m all right otherwise.”

  It was just like her to add something like that: as if any “otherwise” could be enough to offset the fact that she was fading away. “What brings you out this way, rhhw’Hhir’hwisss?” Hasai said.

  “Newsgathering. I’m going to talk to the Queen shortly; I thought I’d see what you had to say.”

  “Well, we see that the Arlene mercenaries have been called in,” Segnbora said, turning over the sheet of black stuff she had dropped on her lap, and beginning to work on it again. It was gemmed in great shining cabochons, black and gray and white, though more palely than Hasai, and the stones of it didn’t have the same somehow-living look to them as his hide did. Segnbora followed his glance and then laughed. “Oh, this! Herewiss, even Dragons cast their skins.”

  “But not after ‘the last time’, I thought.”

  “You remember that, do you,” she said. Far down the length of his neck, Hasai’s eye shifted: he and Segnbora looked sidewise at one another. “Usually,” she said, “they don’t. But he felt the urge come on him suddenly—”

  “After you went to the Eorlhowe?…. ”

  Hasai gave his neck a half-turn so that his head came to rest right-side up, some feet from Herewiss. “It is unusual,” he said. He glanced down the length of himself with mild satisfaction. “It looks fine, I must say. A new hide always does. But I cannot say what it means.”