The Door Into Shadow

THE DOOR INTO SHADOW

DIANE

THE DOOR into shadow

DUANE

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)

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 saw the Goddess's hand. She had been working quietly, so as not to alarm Her old adversary the Shadow. Her hand seemed visible elsewhere too. Freelorn had taken com-panions 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 sorcer-ess, trained in the Silent Precincts and in every other place in the Kingdoms that dealt in the use and mastery of the blue Fire that some women bear, Segnbora d'Welcaen tai-Enraesi was a spectacu-lar and expensive failure. She had the Fire in prodigious quantity, and couldn't focus it. On her way home from one more school that couldn't do anything for her, chance threw her together with Free-lorn's people one night. 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 Free-lorn'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 omi-nous—s he started wondering whether even the tai-Enraesi luck would do her any good. There were stories about this place, about soul-eating monsters that guarded innumerable doors into Other-wheres. Even the mildest of the stories were gruesome. Fear gripped her, but her oath gripped her harder. She stayed with Freelorn and his people.

And there in the Hold, fulfilling her fears, the stories she had heard came 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 Fire to replace Freelorn on his throne, Segnbora lay in the darkness and considered the old rede that spoke of her family's luck. That luck would run out some day, when the last of her line died by his or her own hand, in a time of ice and darkness. But that hardly had anything to do with her. She wasn't the last of the tai-Enraesi, and anyway her luck was holding splendidly. She would be riding 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 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 Rodmis-tresses 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 held quite still in her sleep 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 had locked Death in. Slowly it would suck the Universe dry of life, and She could not prevent it. Nor could She prevent Death's dark-ness from casting shadows sideways from Her light — rogue aspects of Her, darksides, bent on destroying more swiftly what was already doomed. The Maiden was grief-stricken, and took counsel with Her otherselves 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 ambiva-lence 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 in a rage 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, knowing all along what was going to happen. She knew 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 when 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 hand — 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 Khavrinen. 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 man quickly, then, the dream said. For look wha

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, turn-ing red as soon as it fell. Monsters gnawed the dead. Else-where 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 peo-ple 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. The royal magics were failing. If they weakened enough to let the Shadow fully into this world, into Bluepeak, this was what would happen.

The soundless voice of the dream spoke urgently. Freelorn must see to the Royal Bindings quickly. This is his job, he's the Lion's Child and heir to Arlen. Go with him, Herewiss, in the full of your Power. Use the Fire to the utmost. He'll need assistance.

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 back-ground, getting stronger by the minute. As she watched, the sky grew dark. 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 now 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 sunk back slowly against Herewiss. Then there was a deeper darkness, and the two of them stood to-gether 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. .

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 be-lieved 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! /— Hurry! NO!!

The scream tore through her 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' sud-den 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 mat-ter. As a fire elemental, Sunspark had not had much experi-ence 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 she was still half-sleeping. Beside her in the bedroll, blond Lang was still blanket-wrapped, but neverthe-less 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 face, and Segnbora was shocked to see his terrified expres-sion. 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 shoulder musculature, 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. He reached out for it, and at his touch his Power ran down the blade: blinding blue Fire, twisting and flurrying about as if 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 ab-sently. 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 was talking fast. He had yanked a shirt out of the blankets and was struggling into it, while in his lap Khavrinen 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 and leaned back, closing her eyes and brac-ing 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.

It was an old midnight pain that Segnbora had come to know as well as the arthritis in Harald's right knee, or Drill's self-consciousness about his weight. Indeed, no Precinct-trained sensitive could have helped underhearing her sur-roundings as Segnbora did. It 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. Those of others were an unwelcome burden.

"Lorn, enough," Herewiss said, catching Freelorn's an-guish himself. "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 emphalically. "I saw."

"He's dreaming true," Segnbora said quietly. Freelorn's frightened eyes flicked to her. "He's focused now," she said hurriedly. "It's to be ex-pected."

"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?"

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 pro-cess. I was given all this Power. Now it has to be used, fully, and I won't be able to 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 done a little reading on the subject," he said.

It was a great understatement, for among the responsibili-ties of a throne prince of Arlen was the curatorship of rr'Virendir, the Arlene royal library, and that meant intimate knowledge of nearly every extant writing dealing with both mundane sorcery and more elevated matters of Power.

"All the sources say 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, and the elemen-tal threw back a smug feeling. During the time Herewiss had spent in the Hold forging Kheivrinen, Sunspark had come to.

be his loved too. Lorn, not yet at peace with the situation, was still subject to occasional twinges of jealousy.

"I don't mean shapechanges," Lorn said with exaggerated patience. "Soul-changes. Great alterations in personality. Madness and other brands of sanity that human beings don't usually survive."

"The change needn't be harmful," Herewiss put in. "Re-member, 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 they 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, very 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 a situation."

"True, but you know the royal rites, don't you? You have to do it." "Who says?"

"Whom do you think?" Herewiss said, very gently. "When you dream true, Whom 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 pretty annoyed about that missing money, and if we go back to Arlen so soon, and he hears 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 at all? The Shadow is a far greater danger. It can't afford to leave you alive now, can It? 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 Khavrinen'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 atten-tion. "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 follows his liege oaths too well," Free-lorn 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

THE DOOR INTO SHADOW

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 deaf-ened 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. But if this argument keeps up any longer I'll have to sleep outside." She went over to Freelorn in her shift and offered him Charriselm hilt-first, about an inch from his nose. "Do you seriously want your oath back?" she said. "That whole 'my— lordship-shall-be-between-you-and-the-Shadow-while-in-my-service' busi-ness?" Lorn glared up at her, fierce eyes going fiercer. 'Wo/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. "Good night, Lorn," Segnbora said, and went back to her bedroll. She was careful not to smile until her back was turned. Sunspark pulled itself back down into the firepit, and 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 fall-ing asleep, and the physical sensations of those asleep already — breathing, the slide of muscles, muted pulse-thunder. It 5 a gift, she told herself for the thousandth time. Truth,

however, reared its head. It was a nuisance. If her Fire was focused, as Herewiss's was, she wouldn't be having this prob-lem. . If. She exhaled sharply at her useless obsession with what she couldn't have. It wasn't focused. It would never be. She had given up. Other things had become more important now. Oaths, for example. .

It had been 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, and regarded 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 embarrass-ment. (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, driven to the brink of panic, unable to do even the smallest sorcery. Hands upheld, shak-ing all over, she cowered before the advancing, screaming horrors and made blinding light — a byproduct of her blocked Fire — until even that guttered out and left her exhausted.

Segnbora bit the inside of her cheek, annoyed even though Herewiss had been compassionate afterward.

(What we're facing,) he said with gentle sarcasm, (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?)

(I plan to win,) she said. (What are you going to do?) He looked across the room at her for a while, still not moving. (I'm glad you're here,) he said finally. (I can't tell Aim about this—) A quick thought, a flicker of the shape of an arrowhead, passed between them. (I hope you won't either.) (Of course not.)

He straightened, laid Khavrinen aside. Away from its source, the Fire in the blade died down to the merest glow. Only in his hands did a little Flame remain burning. Looking down at Freelorn, Herewiss absently began to pour it from hand to hand. Like burning water it flowed, the essence of life, the stuff of shapechanges and mastery of elements and magics of the heart, the Goddess's gift to the Lovers and to human-kind, the Power that founded the world, that the Shadow had lost and caused men to lose.

And there's nothing It haf rs more, Segnbora thought to herself. Though love probably comes close. She closed her eyes to the light of Herewiss*s hands, shud-dered, and went to sleep.

TWO

… ere the Dark could spredde so far as to kyll all Powre and thought… there fled to Lake Rilthor that was holie, the men and wQimyn gretest of Fire att that time. And of theyre greate might and Powyre, that those whoo came after the Darke should learn agayn the wrekings of those auncient daies, those Wommen and Men did drive their Flame down intoo the mount at the talk's heart; and all dyed there, that Fyre might bee spared from the Danrk for those to comm after. Therefore it ys called Morrow-fane,

(Of the Dayes of Travaile, ms. xix, in rr'Virendir, Prydon)

In the long west-reaching shadow of the glittering gray walls that rose a hundred fathoms high, fourteen figures stood: seven riders, and six horses, and a creature that looked like a blood-bay stallion, but wasn't. Dawn was barely over, and the morning was still cool. The vast expanses of the Waste all around — sand and rubble and salt pans — was sharp and bright in the crisp air. But behind them the Hold from which they had departed wavered and shimmered uncannily, as if in the heat of noon. "Be glad to be out of here," Lang muttered from beside Segnbora.

She nodded, yanking absently at her mare Steelsheen's reins to keep her from biting Lang's dapplegray, Gyrfalcon. The Hold unnerved her too. The Old People from whom the humans of the Middle Kingdoms were descended had wrought with their Fire on an awesome scale. Within those slick and jointless towering walls, odd buildings reared up: skewed towers, blind of windows; stairs that started in midair and went nowhere; steps staggered in such a way as to suggest that the builders had more legs than humans; more rooms inside the inner buildings than their outer walls could possi-bly contain.

And worst of all, or best, the place was full of doors— entrances into other worlds. Likewise, there were entrances to other places in this world, and doors into areas not even classifiable as worlds or places. People could go out those doors and return. People, or things, could come in them, as the hralcins had. Segnbora shuddered. "You sure you can pull this off?" Freelorn was saying nerv-ously to Herewiss.

"Mmmph," Herewiss said. He was standing with Khavrinen unsheathed, and seemed to be minutely examining a patch of empty air three feet in front of him. The Fire that ran down from his hand flooded the length of Khavrinen, leaping out from it in quick tongues that stretched out and snapped back, reflecting his concentration.

Behind Herewiss, Sunspark extended its magnificent head to nibble teasingly at the sleeve of Freelorn's surcoat, leaving singed places where it bit. (You have to be careful, doing worldgating inside a world,) it said, sounding smug. (Don't distract him.) Freelorn smacked the elemental's pose away and got a scorched hand for his pains. "He could have used one of the doors in the Hold. Now he's got to use his Flame—"

(It's simpler doing it yourself,) Sunspark said. It knew about such things, having been a traveller among worlds before love had bound it to Herewiss's service. (Those doors are com-plex; it would have taken quite a while to figure them out. Don't complain.) "I'm not."

Segnbora felt like laughing, but restrained herself. Sun-spark had done perhaps more than any of them to save their lives two nights before, holding the hralcins off until Herewiss could break through into his Flame. It had done so specifically because it knew Herewiss loved Freelorn and would have been in anguish if he died. But Sunspark seemed determined not to admit his motives to Lorn — and Freelorn, if he knew, was at best ambivalent about them.

Herewiss was now scowling at the air he had been examin-ing, or whatever lay beyond it. It was dangerous, this business of opening doors to go from one place to another. Gates, when opened, tended to tear as wide as they could. A person doing a wreaking had to maintain complete control, or risk ending up in a world that looked exactly like the one he wanted to journey in, but with minor differences — a differing past or future, say, or familiar people missing.

Segnbora was not happy that one man was trying to pull off a gating by himself, and in such an unprotected place. All her previous experiences with worldgates had been in the Silent Precincts, where safe-wreakings bound every leaf

about the Forest Altars. Always there had been ten or twenty senior Rodmistresses on call to assist if there was trouble, and never had a gate been held open long enough for so many to pass through. She hoped Herewiss knew what he was doing. . Herewiss didn't move, but from where Khavrinen's point rested against the ground, a sudden runnel of blue Fire un-coiled like a snake and shot out across the sand. It put down swift roots to anchor itself, then leaped upward into the air. The atmosphere prickled with ruthlessly constrained Power as the line of blue light described a large doorway as tall as Herewiss and equally as wide. When the frame was complete the Fire ran back along its doorsill and reached upward again, this time branching out like ivy on an unseen trellis, filling the doorway with a network that steadily grew more complex. In a few breaths' time the door became one solid, pulsing panel of blue. Sweat stood on Herewiss's face. "Now," he said, still un-moving.

The blue winked out, all but the outline. From beyond the door a wet-smelling wind struck out and smote them all in the face. Lake Rilthor, their destination, lay in the lowlands, a thousand feet closer to sea level than the Waste. Through the door Segnbora saw green grass, and a soft rolling meadow leading down toward a silver-hazed lake, within which a hill was half-hidden. "Go on," Herewiss said, and his voice sounded strained. "Don't take all day."

They led their horses through as quickly as they could, though not as quickly as they wanted to, for without exception the horses tried to put their heads down to graze as soon as they passed the doorway, and had to be pulled onward to let the others through. At last Segnbora was able to pull through the reluctant Steelsheen. She was followed closely by Here-wiss and Sunspark, behind whom the door winked out with a very audible slam of sealed-in air.

Segnbora turned to compliment Herewiss and found him half-collapsed over Sunspark's back, with Freelorn support-ing him anxiously from

THE DOOR INTO SHADOW

one side. He looked like a man who

had just run a race; his breath went in and out in great racking gasps, and his face was nearly gray. "I thought there would be no more backlash once you got your Fire!" Freelorn said.

Herewiss rolled his head from side to side on the saddle, unable for several moments to find enough breath with which to reply. "Different," he said, "different problem," and began to cough.

Freelorn pounded his back ineffectually while Segnbora and the others looked on.

When the coughing subsided, Herewiss rested his head on the saddle again, still gasping, " — open too wide," he said. "What? The gate?" "No. Me."

Confused, Freelorn looked at Segnbora. "Do you know what he's talking about?"

She nodded. '*In a worldgating, the gate isn't really the physical shape you see. The gate is in your mind — the 'door' shape is just a physical expression of it. When you open a gate, you're actually throwing your soul wide open. Anything can get. out. And anything can get in. It's not pleasant."

"*I can't hear anything,'1 ' Dritt muttered, wondering what all the discussion was about.

"Swallow,"Herewiss said. "Your ears'11 pop." At last, his strength returning, he looked around with satisfaction. "You're better than I am with distances, Lorn. How far from Lake Rilthor would you say we are?" Freelorn shaded his eyes, looking first at the Sun to orient himself. "It's lower—"

"Of course. We're sixty leagues west." Freelorn looked southwest toward the lake, and to the mist-girdled peak rising from its waters. "Four miles, I'd say." "That's about what I wanted,"Herewiss said, pleased. "Not bad for a first gating."'

"It's so quiet," Harald said,, looking around suspiciously. "It's a holy place/" said Moris, unruffled and matter-of-fact as always.

Segnbora looked around at the silent green country, agree-ing, opening out her undersemes to the affect of this place.

Like most fanes or groves or great altars, Morrowfane had a feeling as if Someone was watching — Someone who would only speak using the heart's own voice. Yet the feeling was less personified, more awesome, than any she had ex-perienced before. Above everything hung a waiting silence like the one when the hawk sails high and no bird sings. Below the silence was a slow, steady throbbing of incalculable power, as if the world's heart beat nearby. A ruthless benevo-lence slept at the center of Lake Rilthor, she sensed, and slept lightly. It was no wonder that there wasn't a town or a farm or even a sheepfold for miles around.

remembered shape of the runner's throat was not letting his words out.

"Fyrd!" he managed to croak, and pushed away from Black-mane, unsheathing Khavrinen hurriedly.

The word took Segnbora by surprise. "But that was think-ing! Fyrd are Shadow-twisted, but they're just of dumb animal stock. They don't think!" She let the rest of her protest drop then. There was no mistaking what she had felt.

"My move was anticipated," Herewiss said bitterly. He swung Khavrinen sideways, whipping a great brilliance of Fire angrily down the blade. "It's a step ahead of me — and mock-ing me, too."

Segnbora understood. At Bluepeak, long ago, the Shadow had driven down that first terrible breed of thinking Fyrd into the Kingdoms. Far more dangerous than the noxious things It had twisted out of the beasts of ancient days, these Fyrd had the cunning of warriors. It had taken the Transformation, in which Earn and Healhra burned away their very forms and their mortality, to exterminate that breed. And now, for Here-wiss, here they were again—

Steel scraped out of sheaths all around as movement be-came visible in the high grass to the east. Segnbora's under-senses brought her more and more clearly the experience of their hungry rage. They knew their quarry was human, and they hated them. They had come to murder.

"Dammit," Herewiss muttered, "Sunspark, where are you when I need you?!" But no answering thought came, and Herewiss hefted Khavrinen grimly. Only two days forged, and already the sword would be tasting blood.

There was little time to prepare. One moment the dark backs were jolting through the tall grass and the next, with a wave of grunts and screeches, the Fyrd were upon them. Segnbora found herself holding her blade too high to guard against a maw that was suddenly springing at her throat. She

threw herself sideways. Jaws went mick! above her, in the air where she had been. She hit the ground, rolled, found her footing and sprang up again. The maw hit the turf where she had been. For a moment it tore the ground with teeth and talons, its hunched back to her. That was all she needed. Chosing her spot she swung Charriselm up, sliced through thick flesh to the shock of bone. The maw writhed and screamed once, as its half-severed head flopped into the grass. She paid it no more heed, simply whipped the blood off Charriselm and swung around to find another foe. There were certain to be plenty—

were true, this one could afford to take its time.

"Oh Goddess," whispered Freelorn from beside her. "A deathjaw!"

"With the Fire,"Herewiss said between gasps, "possibly — " He lifted Khavrinen again, but there was. no great hope in the gesture. Deathjaws were so fearsome that there was only one way to successfully hunt them: stake out a human being as bait, and hide a Rodmistress close by to do a brainburn when the thing got close enough. We've got plenty of bait, but he doesn't know the protocol for a brainburn. If he did, he would be doing it. The shambling form came closer. "Run for it," Herewiss said, sounding very calm. Everyone hesitated. "I mean it'!"'

Lang turned, and Moris, and Harald, but they were slow about retreating. Freelorn didn't move from beside Herewiss. "Lorn — "

"Big, isn't it," Freelorn said. His eyes were wide with fear, but his voice was as steady as if he was discussing a draft horse. '"'Shut up. Dusty," Freelorn said. "Do whatever you're going to do to that thing. I'll watch your back."

Segnbora stepped up behind them as they set themselves. "I don't know how to burn it," Herewiss said to her. "The eye, though, that's possible — "

(Singers,) it said, looking to the northwest. (The ones with fur.)

"Wolves? Perfect." Herewiss glanced down at Khavrinen, which blazed just long enough to burn the blood off itself. "We won't be climbing the Fane until sunset, since a Sum-moning there works best at twilight. But damned if I'm going to put up with any more Fyrd, in the meantime. I'll go have a word with the wolves and see if I can work something out. Now, how do I manage this—" He frowned, closed his eyes. Fire swirled outward from Khavrinen, hiding both sword and wielder. The pillar of bril-liance shrank as it swirled, and sank close to the ground. When the blue Flame died away it left behind a handsome cream-white wolf with orange-brown points and downturned blue eyes.

(Not bad,) Sunspark remarked, (for a beginner.) (Hmp!) Herewiss said, grinning a wolf-grin. (Stay close till I get back, loved, just in case the Fyrd try again. I won't be long.)

The wolf bounded away through the long grass. Watching him go, Segnbora dug down in her belt-pouch for a square of soft paper, with which she began cleaning off Charriselm's blade. When she had finished, she looked thoughtfully at the Fane. It seemed to gaze back, calm and blind and patient, waiting for something. Fyrd so close to this place — that's unheard of. All ike rate are changing. After this nothing is going to be the way it was.. Not even me, She shook her head uneasily, not entirely understanding the thought,

"You going to stand there all day?" someone shouted at her. Freelorn and the others were in the saddle, getting ready to ride down to the Fane. Segnbora swung up into Steel-sheen's saddle and went, after them,

She sat underneath an old rowan tree near the lakeshore, her 'back, against its trunk,, and watched the long shadows of men, horses, and trees drown in slow dusk. The Fane, a half mile away across Rilthor's water, shone golden as a legend where its heights still caught the sunset. The mirroring water

lay still in the breathless evening, ihe mountain's burning image broken only by the wakes of the gray songswans gliding

by. Truly it's not so impressive, she thought, stretching. The Fane's mountain was a little one, no more than a half mile wide at the base, broad at

the bottom and flat at the top, stippled roughly with brush and scrub pine.

But for all the seeming plainness of the landscape, their camp that day had been abnormally quiet. Freelorn had been pacing and frowning most of the afternoon. Herewiss had come back from his parley with the wolves, reporting success

Lang slouched further down against the tree, his face calm,

but his heart shouting, Yes, and look what happened to them! Beorgan and Beaneth dead of the Shadow or of sorrow, Raela gone off through some door and never heard of again, Efmaer dead in the mountains or worse in Glasscastle—

Segnbora twitched uneasily, resettling her back against the rowan's trunk. She heartily wished there was something else to try, but over twenty years she had exhausted the talents of instructors all over the Kingdoms. "I thought I might talk you out of it," Lang said, very low. "I like you the way you are." The words came a breath too late. She had chosen. "I don't," she said. "But if you go up there there's no telling what'll happen to you—" "I know. That's the idea!" Lang pulled back, pained.

"Look," she said. "Twenty years of training, and I'm Fire-trained without Fire, Fin a sorcerer who doesn't care for sorcery and a trained bard who's too depressed to tell stories. It's time to be something else. Anything."

4 'But, Berend—"

The use of the old nickname, which Eftgan had coined so long ago, poked her in a suddenly sensitive spot. She laid her hand on Lang's, startling him out of his frightened annoy-ance. "You remember the first time we met? You tried to talk me out of joining up with Lorn, remember?"

"Stubborn,"Lang muttered, "you were stubborn. I couldn't stand you." She glanced at him humorously. "Maybe change isn't such a bad thing, then?"

They traded gentle looks through the dark, and he squeezed her hand. "Care to share afterwards? If you haven't turned into a giant toadstool or some such, of course."

Her heart turned over inside her. When Lang made such offers, there was always more love in his voice than she could answer with, and the inequity troubled her. It had been a long time since her ability to share had been rooted in anything deeper than friendship. "Yes," she said, hoping desperately he would be able to lighten up a little. "You

disturb me, though. You have a prejudice against toad-stools? …" Lang chuckled.

"You two ready?" said another voice, and they both looked up, Herewiss was standing beside them with Khavrinen sheathed and slung

over his shoulder. Freelorn was with him, arms folded and looking nervous.

"What do you mean 'you two'?" Lang said. "I prefer to die in bed, thanks."

Segnbora squeezed his hand back and got up, brushing herself off. "You found the raft, I take it."

THE DOOR INTO SHADOW

"It was hidden in the reeds," Freelorn said. "In fact, the reeds were growing through it in places. Evidently not many people come this way." "Just the three of us are climbing, then." Herewiss said. "Still, it's probably better that we all go across — in case any Fyrd get by our rearguard."

Lang nodded and got up, and the four of them went off to join the others by the lakeshore. Dritt and Harald and Moris were standing at a respectable distance from the raft, for Sunspark was inspecting it suspiciously.

(You really want me to get on this thing?) it said to Here-wiss as he came up. (That water's deep, If I fell in there—) It shuddered, at the thought.

"So fly over," Herewiss said, stepping onto the raft from the bank.

Sunspark gazed across at the Fane, its mane and tail burn-ing low. (There's a Power there, and in the water,) it said. (I'm not sure I want to attract Its attention. . ) "Then come on."

Three

The Goddess's courtesy is a terrible thing. To the mortal asker She will give what is asked for, without stinting, without fail. Nor will She stop giving until the gift's reciptent, like the gift, becomes perfect. Let the asker beware. ..

(Charesttcs, 45)

35

THE DOOR INTO SHADOW

They all climbed onto the raft. Sunspark came last, picking its way onto the mossy planks with the exaggerated delicacy of a cat. But it stood quite still in the midst of them as Herewiss and Freelorn poled the raft. No one broke the silence. On the water the feeling of being watched was stronger than ever.

The raft grounded, scraping and crunching on a rough beach of pale pebbles, Herewiss stepped off, Freelorn behind him, and each of the others in turn. Everyone winced at the sound of their footsteps. Segnbora, second-to-last off, thought she had never heard anything so loud as her light step on the gravel. Sunspark, behind her, got off and made no sound at all. It was carefully walking a handspan above the ground.

They were not only watched, they were felt. There was no mistaking it. There was no threat in the sensation; the regard running through them was patient, passive. But whatever fueled it was immeasurably old, and huge. The others looked at one another wondering, as the Power reached up into them, and found old companions suddenly strange.

Segnbora, feeling what they felt, understood the sensation as most of her companions couldn't. The Fire within her, that had dwindled over the years and was now nearly dead because of her lack of focus, was suddenly leaping up as wildly in her as if a wind had blown through her soul The Power pushed at her, urging her upward toward the mountain. At the same time it looked through her at the others, and looked through them at her, determining what changes, would be made—

Oh Goddess, she thought, this is what I'm needed. 'There' was no mistaking the Source of what stirred here, though this

half-slumbering immensity of calling Flame was only the least tithe of Her Power. And I'm terrified—

Herewiss and Freelorn were standing transfixed, keeping very close to each other. She could not see their faces, but Freelorn's arms were unwound from around Herewiss for the first time since the morning. Khavrinen in its back-sheath was blue-while with Fire. Its light shone through seams in the scabbard, and the hilt blazed like a torch. "There's the trail," Freelom said quietly, looking upward. "Til race you," Segnbora said, just as quietly. She slipped past them and started climbing.

The trail wasn't too difficult. Part of it followed old gullies or slide-paths; part of it seemed to have been cut into the hillside, but only lightly, so that rockfall or deadwood fre-quently blocked the way. The hill was no more than five hun-dred feet high, but in the starlight it was hard to see where to put one's feet. Each of them fell and slid at least once. By the time they reached the flattened hilltop, they were all bruised, and breathing hard.

But the gasping for breath didn't last. It was replaced al-most immediately by a sensation of being anchored, centered, secured past, any dislodging. Freelorn and. Herewiss stood as still as Segnbora, feeling their pulses become tranquil, their breath come more gently. The three of them, stood poised at the apex, of the world's Heart. The Universe swr ung around them, slow and silent, waiting. After a few moments Segnbora sank to one knee, bending to touch the gullied ground with one hand, the ground where Raela and Efmaer and Beorgan had stood. She could feel the Power, bound, waiting, alive. Her own.Fire strained downward to reach it, and, unfocused, could not. But that seemed unimportant as she knelt there, feeling the ages run through her. This place was more impor-tant than the needs of any one human being.

Freelorn. turned to Herewiss, "Loved," he said, his voice uncertain, "'something's strange inside me—"

"Of course there is." Herewiss reached out to Freelorn and drew him close, not so much in compassion as in, exultation. "It's your Fire. You have a spark of it like everyone else; here

at the heart of Fire, how could you not feel it? The Fane is reaching up to you." "I thought so." Freelorn sounded almost in pain. "It wants me. But I don't know what to do." "Listen to what it has to say to you," Herewiss said. "Just feel it. Few enough people ever do."

Herewiss let go of Freelorn with his right arm, then stretched slowly upward and felt behind him for Khavrinen's hilt. He drew the sword from the back-scabbard slowly, with relish and ease and much tenderness, as he might have drawn himself from his loved after passion spent. The sword swept effortlessly over his head and downward before him, Fire trailing behind the blade. Even now, before the wreak-ing had begun, the Flame was too bright to look at direct-ly.

"So much," Lorn said, soft-voiced, blinking and tearing in the light. "You can do anything now. …"

"Yes. For the moment." Herewiss laughed gently at Free-lorn's puzzled look. "Lorn, how did you think 1 was able to destroy those hralcins? Under normal circumstances twenty Rodmistresses, fifty, couldn't have done it. I was in 'break-through,' as they call it in the Precincts, and I will be for maybe another tenday or so. After that the Power begins to drop to more normal levels. That's surely why She wants me to hurry."

He gazed down at the Flame-flowing sword in his hand. "I'll give back some of what was given to me," he said, resting Khavrinen's point on the ground. The Flame about the blade burned brighter, lighting the hilltop more brilliantly with every breath he took, "It's going to cost me, Lorn. But it will be worth it."

His words failed him, then, but his Fire did not. The light was becoming like an otherworldly Sun now, a blaze of deter-mination and joy that dazzled the mind as much as it did the eyes, transfiguring what it touched.

Segnbora had a brief vision through the brilliance of a young god raising His arms, offering His loved, across His two hands, the thunderbolt He wielded… In.her vision the other, blasted by the overpowering magnificence into another

shape, yet somehow still unchanged, reached out hands to lay them, fearless, in the Fire—

For long seconds Segnbora did not move, could not. Once not too long ago, when Herewiss had been away and Lorn had seemed to need consoling, she had entered a little way into the relationship between these two — sharing her-self with Lorn, offering her friendship. At the time she had thought her motives benevolent enough. But recent events had made her suspect that, in fact, she had been the one in need of consoling. Now, by this light, in which any untruth withered and fell away, she clearly saw the shape of her own loneliness and sorrow. Likewise she saw the essential twoness of Herewiss and Freelorn — something even Sunspark had perceived more clearly than she did. No more interference, she thought. There was no sadness about it. The decision came almost triumphantly, with a feeling of celebration and re-lease.

This was Herewiss's moment, and Lorn's, not hers. Un-steadily — for the forces being freed on the hilltop had made her a bit lightheaded — Segnbora turned her back on the ferocious glory raging there. By the time one of the Lovers began speaking Nhaired in invocation—"Ae, hn'Hldfede, irun-taje Lai—'"'she was descending from the hilltop, sliding and stumbling down the path. Dear Goddess, Segnbora thought as she reached the end of the steepest part of the path. The first wreaking he tries is the Naming of Names? I wish I had his faith. Ifsonu dark power should slip close enough to hear—

The possibility so unnerved her that Segnbora lost her balance. She had to grab at brush to catch herself. An inner Name was a powerful commodity even after its owner's death, useful to lend power to various spells and wreakings. The Names of great Rodmistresses, for instance, were passed down through, generations. In Segnbora's own family, Queen Efmaer's ancient Name was. preserved, though the Queen herself was long lost.

Segnbora exhaled in sudden arn.usem.ent at the notion that someday sorcerers and Rodmistresses. would probably pay great treasures for the true Name of one Herewiss — a slim

dark young man with a tendency toward creative swearing in dead languages—

The path went right out from under her. It was not her own clumsiness this time, but the Morrowfane itself trem-bling under her feet. Segnbora looked up. The blaze on the hilltop, hidden till now by the bulk of the hill, was hidden no longer. A narrow, sword-shaped core of

blue-white Fire swung up into view, and then a light of impossible brilliance broke the night open from end to end. Like lightning burn-ing in steel, it turned the dark into sudden day and extin-guished the stars. The Fane shook to its roots as outpoured Firelight smote into everything, illuminating every leaf and tree trunk and stone with fierce clarity. On the surface of the shivering lake, the light shattered into countless knives and splinters of dazzle.

Blinded, Segnbora turned away and rubbed her eyes. When they saw clearly again, she started once more down the trail. She had no trouble finding her way; the Fane was lit like midrnorning. At one point she paused for breath, looked around, and saw something she had missed in the dimness on the way up — a huge crevasse or cavern around on the south-ern face of the hillside, an opening into darkness that even Herwiss's Fire didn't illumine. How about that The World's Heart has a secret in it—

Above her Herewiss's Flame dimmed and faded, leaving her looking at where the cave entrance had been. He's taking a rest, I suppose. I bet I could have a closer look at that before he starts shaking things again— Once piqued, Segnbora's curios-ity would never give her peace until it was satisfied, and she knew it so she gave in. Scrabbling up off the trail, she used scrubby bushes and trees to climb toward the area she had seen. It took, a few minutes to climb up a ravine that ran down between, two folds, but finally the cave opening loomed huge before her, dark as uncertainty. There Segn-bora halted, uneasy. Her undersenses were still blunted from, the onslaught of Power and. joy at the top of the hill, but not so much so that she couldn't catch an odd mental flavor that grew stronger the closer she came to the cave-mouth. Something hot. Metal? Slow? She drew Charriselm with a whisper of steel that suddenly

sounded very loud indeed. Very carefully she stepped over and around the boulders that lay about the great cave en-trance, and slipped a few feet inside where she paused to listen again.

Nothing. I must have been imagining that feeling. Cautiously, keeping her left hand against the cave wall, she took another step in. The faint crunch of her footstep echoed away into the dark. She took another step. This one echoed too. The place was huge, filling most of the mountain from the sound of it. Another—

A voice spoke, and Segnbora froze, clenching Charriselm. Her heart pounded. For a moment she thought the cave was about to fall in on her. The voice was huge, and incredibly deep. It thundered, rumbling, shaking the air; yet there was music in it, a slow and terrible song of pain. Hair stood up all over Segnbora. She could make nothing of the words the voice seemed to be speaking. At the end of the sentence, the silence that fell was waiting for her answer.

She swallowed hard. "I don't know that language," she said, her1 voice.sounding amazingly small despite all the echoes it awoke. "Do you. speak, Arlene or Darthene?"

There was a long pause; then the voice spoke once more. It, used Darthene, but the timbre was that of a storm on the Sea. "You were a long time corning," it said. "But you're thrice welcome nevertheless.

Segnbora leaned against, the wall of the cave, bewildered. Her eyes were getting used to the darkness, and in, the faint starlight from the doorway she could make out a, great lumpy mass lying on the floor of the cave before her. The hot stone smell she had noticed before was coming from it, though there was little actual warmth in the place. "I don't under-stand," she said. "What are you?"

"""Lkhw'ae," the voice said, a rumbling growl and, a sigh. Segnbora gripped Charriselm even tighter, for that word of the strange language she did understand. A Dragon— The voice' began to speak again, and was suddenly choked off. Rocks cracked, and rattled, about in the cave, rolling, shat-tering, The Dragon had abruptly started thrashing around. Segnbora leaped, for the doorway, as afraid of being attacked as of a cave-in; but after a, few moments the uncontrolled

motion subsided and the immense half-seen bulk of the Dra-gon lay quiet again. She stared at it fearfully.

"I am about to lose this body," the Dragon said, an an-guished-sounding melody winding about the words. "That is the cause of my seizures."

"You're dying?" Segnbora said, and then had to grab for balance once more as another convulsion threw rocks in all directions. When the Dragon had settled again, she saw that it was looking at her from great round eyes, each of which was at least four feet across, globed and pupilless. Segnbora shud-dered as she realized how big the rest of the beast must be, and was glad she couldn't see it. "Going rdaheih." The Dragon whispered the word, but even its whisper sounded like a thunderstorm. "My time came upon me." The pain in its voice confused Segnbora. No one but Marchwarders — the humans who lived with Dragons in their high places — knew much about Dragons, but the one thing everybody said about them was that they never died. Even more confusing was the undercurrent of joy that ran under the Dragon's pain, growing stronger by the moment. "No matter." it said. "You are here. At last, what was, is—" The words had an ominous sound to them. For an instant she considered running away, but did not. She had been curi-ous about Dragons ever since the first and only time she had seen one, at the age of seven, soaring over the blue Darthene Gulf. Now that old curiosity was raging, and it overcame her fear.

Slowly Segnbora sheathed Charriselm, then began to pick her way toward the Dragon's head among the fallen stones, watching carefully in case another seizure should occur. Lying flat on the rubble, the head from lower jaw to upper faceplate was twice her height. Above it, the spine in which the shield-ing faceplate terminated speared up into the gloom for an-other ten or fifteen feet. Segnbora reached out gingerly and touched the edge of the plate between nose and eyes, It was hard and rough as stone, and warm.. The eye on that side regarded her steadily, but she couldn't read its expression. It looked dimmer than it had.—

"Are you sure you're not just ill?" Segnbora said. "T know my time," said the Dragon. "I welcome it. I always have."

She shook her head. With her hands on the Dragon, she could feel its wear)' sorrow as if it were her own — but also that perplexing joy, both sober and expectant at once.

"Is there anything I can do for you?" she said. The Dragon's eyes flared brighter, and a tremor ran up and down its body. "Arke-sta rdakeh q'ae hfyn 'tsa!" the Dragon whis-pered in a great rush of fulfillment, as if its last fear had been lifted from it. "If you truly ask/' it said in Darthene, "don't let me — die — uncompanioned. *' Segnbora shivered, having misgivings. Again she consid-ered running away, but only briefly. "I'll stay with you." "Yes," the Dragon said. The light of its eye ebbed again. "You always did."

That was when the last, and worst, convulsion happened. Walls shook. Stone chips and splinters rained from the ceil-ing. The floor danced. There was nothing for Segnbora to grab for support but the Dragon's head. A brief feeling of hot stone—

"Are you going to kill meT" said the child to the Dragon.

"Kill your?" The Dragon smiled at him. "Certainly not until we have been introduced."

fates for Opening Night, Nia d'Eleth

The darkness tears wide, splitting as hewn skin does when the sword strikes.

This is Etachne field, all one gloomy sodden mass of miser)' —lead-gray above with clouds that have been pouring rain for three days now, dun and black and red below with the scat-tered bodies of the slain. The stench is incredible. Those who fight do so with their faces wrapped, and fall as often to the sick miasma of the air as to Reaver arrows. Fyrd are harrying the fringes of the battlefield, devouring the dead. A few hun-dred feet away, a maw and a horwolf and a nadder are busily dismembering a fallen woman. Her surcoat was once Darthene midnight blue. Now it is mostly red-brown.

THE DOOR INTO SHADOW

She gulps down sourness for the hundredth time and stares across the misty valley. Somewhere over there the Reavers have retreated into cover, regrouping for the next attack, There are only about a thousand of them left, but those are more than enough to break the Darthene defense at the other end of the valley and let them out into the open lands, Once that happens they'll begin pillaging at Etachne and leave the country burning behind them as far as Wend wen. Around her the Darthenes holding the gap are huddled, soaked through, hungry, outnumbered, waiting.

The Rodmistress is dead, so they have no idea when rein-forcements may be coming. Segnbora is the only sorcerer left, and over the past few days her sorceries have been going progressively flatter — a starved sorcerer is good for very little. It was all she could do yesterday to stop the miserable rain for a little while; today her head still aches with the backlash. OA, food, she thinks. Just oatcakes and milk— She stops herself, does a brief mind-exercise to calm down.

It doesn't work. Her partner Eftgan has been gone for three days now, ridden off for the reinforcements; and the Goddess only knows whether she lives or not, for there's a great silence where her mind used to be. Oh, Tegdne, loved, be all right, please— She winces away from the painful thought, opening her eyes on the Fyrd again. The sickness comes up in her throat as she sees them tugging at the limbs of the woman in Darthene blue. Then sickness turns to rage and she throws her sodden cloak off savagely and stands up in the rain, fists clenched.

"Ira maehsta in? aehsta," she whispers, as within, so without, and begins a bitter poem in Nhaired, shaping in her mind a construct. Anger— fueled sorcery is dangerous, she knows, but anger and terror are all she has left. Her desperation fuels the sorcery, scansion shapes its skeleton, meter sets the beast-shape, filling it out. Words link in sliding musculature, the hot pelt of intent furs it over, angry purpose glares like eyes beneath a shaggy mane of verse.

Uncaring of the backlash to come, she grips the shape of words and wraps it round her like a cloak — then drops to all fours in the rain, and leaps roaring at the Fyrd— —and the darkness falls.

(—they all do that, we've watched them do that since we first came. Yet while they feel for one member of their kind, they still do murder on others, Sttiuh-std annikh'S—) (We don't understand* it either. What about this one—)

Here's the last rise before home, with the little rutted track that serves for road. Steelsheen quickens her pace a bit, sens-ing road's end. The air is full of the smell of salt: beach-grass hisses incessantly on either side of the track. She makes the top of the rise — and there it is, spread out blue and wrinkled, glittering and lovely, the Darthene Gulf. "The Sun is beginning to pierce through from a silver sky; the black beach glistens as the waves slide back; sandpipers dance daintily after them, poking for whelks in the bubbling crevices and tide pools. She looks across at the lonely stone manor-house built on the headland — Home! Steelsheen breaks into a canter, They 'II be so proud. My master

has never before given live steel to anyone so young. And Tegdne has spoken for me to see if I can be in the royal household. To live in Darthisf in a town with walls f And Sheen, Father mil be so proud when he sees her. A real Steldene, a silverdust Steldene, and I broke her myself with all the tricks he taught me!

She punches the inare into a gallop and rides into the demesne, under the old stone arch with the tai-Enraesi arms, lioncelle, passant

THE DOOR INTO SHADOW

regardant, sword upraised in the dexter paw. Chickens scatter in all directions. Dogs scramble to their feet and bounce around her, barking, as she rides in to the dooryard with a great clatter of hooves. She dismounts. A yellow cat on the doorstep opens one eye at the noise, says a rude word and closes the eye again.

Segnbora laughs as she pulls offSleelsheen's saddle, drops it on the ground, fends off various dogs with pats and scratches, and bends to chuck the rat under the chin. Three weeks she has been on the road from Darthis. Three weeks of lousy wea-ther, an attack by bandits and a case of the flux. One cat, how-ever grumpy, isn't going to spoil this splendid homecoming. "Mother, Father, I'm back!" she shouts, shoving open the front door and swaggering in.

She walks through the little main hall with its benches and carvings and hangings and firepit. Secretly she's a little shocked by the shabbiness of the place; it never looked this run down before she went to the city, Her father's old com-plaints about failed crops and the sorry state of family finances suddenly begin to disturb her— "Mama?"

No answer. She's in the kitchen, then. Through the hall and out into the big stone-paved kitchen and pantry. Her mother is just stepping in the far door with a string of onions from the buttery shed outside. Close behind is her father, who carries a newly dispatched chicken. "Hi!" she shouts.

'" 'Rerend!" says her mother, and ""'Don't shout,'" says her father, both at once.

She trots over, embraces them both in a huge hog, and pulls her sheathed sword out of her belt to show them. "Mama, look, I named it Gharri—"

"How is your Fire coming, dear?" her mother interrupts. Her father says nothing, waiting for the answer, holding him-self aloof. And suddenly it's all wrong. Don't they think if I had finally focused, I'd have come in here streaming blue Fire from every orifice? Why d&n*t they—

"Mother," she says, "can't you ever ask me about some-thing else?"

Her mother looks surprised. "What else is there?" she says; and, "Don't talk to your mother in that tone of voice," her father says. "I have to rub down my horse, excuse me." She bites the inside of her cheek hard to keep from saying anything else, and walks out the way she came— —and then darkness again.

She staggers about, lost in the darkness of her self, and begins to tmderstand madness.

(Stihe'h, stikeh-std annikh'S-!) rumbles the voice of storm again. It's joined by more voices, all intoning the same rushing phrase, a litany of incomprehension and curiosity. They won't go away. They bump and jostle her roughly when she stumbles into them in the dark, feeling for a way out

The p'lace where she walks is walled and domed and floored in adamant, built that way long ago to protect her inner verities. There her1 memories are stored. Some have been buried by accident, some she's seated in stone on purpose; many stand about smooth and polished from much 'handling,

It's the buried ones that chiefiy interest her invaders. Stone means nothing to them, it 'being one. of their elements. Cruel claws slice down effortlessly. White fire bums and melts. Delicate talons turn over exposed thoughts — old joys like polished jewels, razory fragments of pain. (Khai" rae todwt? Sshir'stihe'-khai'?)

(No, this moment's fairer far. Look.! hadn't thought they sang—) —it's quite dark, but she needs no light to know that the slab of marble is a handspan from her nose. The sound of her breathing is loud

beneath it, and the condensation from her

breath drips 'maddeningly onto her face'. The sarcophagus —

shaped Testing Bath is full of icy water, and Segnbora, naked as a fish, is submerged in it up to her face. Her hands are bound to her sides. On her chest rests a ten-pound stone. Above her is the three-inch-thick lid of the Bath, open only at the end behind her head, just enough to let in air and Saris's voice.

This is the final test of a loremistress-Bard, which will deter-m ine whether three years of training will desert her under extreme stress. There's no telling which of the Four Hundred Tales she'll be required to recite faultlessly tonight, or what song, or poem, or legend. When the lid is removed in the morning, she'll be expected to take up the kithara and extem-porize a poem in tragic-epic meter on the forging of F6rlennh BrokenBlade.

"Sunset to sunrise?" she had said to Eftgan this morning, be-fore the last of the orals. "I can do that, standing on my head." Now she's not so sure. She feels like she's been in this cold, wet tomb forever. She suspects it's more like two hours. "The Lost Queen's Ballad," Saris says from outside the Bath.

Segnbora closes her eyes, hunting for the memory-tag she uses to remember that ballad, and finds it. She sings softly, in a minor key:

"Oh, when Darthen's Queen went riding out of Barachael that day, she rode up the empty corrie and she sang a rondelay;

and the three Lights shone upon her as on Skadhwe's bitter blade, and she fared on up that awful trail and little of it made;

She stood laughing on the peak-snows with the new Moon in her hair, and she smiled and set. her foot upon, the Bridge that isn't There;

She took the road right gladly to the Castle in the Sky, and Darthen's sorrel steed came back, but the Queen stayed there for aye. …"

She lies there expecting to be asked for the rest of the history — the suicide of Queen Efmaer's loved, and her jour-ney up to Glasscastle, where suicides go, to get her inner Name back from him. But no, that would be too easy. "Jarrin's Debt," says Saris.

Segnbora sighs. "As long ago as your last night's dreams, and as far away as tonight's," she begins, "the Battle of Blue-peak befell. …" — and the darkness in the Bath is suddenly the darkness inside her mind.

Damn you! Damn you all to Darkness! Get out of here!

the Forges, why do I waste my time on walking butchers' meat?"

She gets up, slowly, resheathes the practice sword in her belt and settles into a ready stance: one hand gripping the imaginary sheath, the other at her side, relaxed. She's seeth-ing, for the other advanced students, starting to eat their nunch, are watching from the sides of the courtyard. Maryn, around whom she danced with insulting ease this morning, is snickering, damn him.

Even as her eyes flick away from Maryn, she sees Shihan drawing. She draws too, spins out of reach as she does so, comes around at him from his momentarily undefended side and hits him — not a hard blow, but so focused that his whole chest cavity seems to jump away from it. Quite suddenly, to her absolute amazement, Shihan is on his left side on the ground, with the point of her practice sword leaning delicately against his ribs. Shihan's eyes close with hers like steel touching steel, and bind there, a bladed glance. All around the courtyard people have stopped chew-ing. No one in her class has ever downed Shihan. Segnbora starts to tremble.

"Good," Shihan says in a voice that all the others can hear. "And wrong," he adds more quietly, for her alone. "Come and eat." They step off to the far side of the courtyard, apart from the other students, and settle under the plane-tree where Shi-han's nunch-meal lies ready — blue-streaked sheepVmilk cheese, crumbly biscuits, sour beer. Shihan silently casts a few crumbs off to one side and spills a few drops of beer as libation to the Goddess, then starts eating.

"Was it your anger at Maryn that caused you to stop think-ing?" Shihan asks. "Yes, sir."

"Feeling when you strike is all right," says her master. "First time I've seen you do that. There may be hope for you yet. Provided," and he glances up with a frown, "that it's the right kind of feeling." She sits quiet while he eats. "Listen," Shihan says. "Don't try to figure this out: just

hear it, let it in. When you strike another, especially to kill, you're striking yourself. When you kill, the other takes a little part of you with them, past the Door. If you do it in anger, what they take is the part of you that feels." Shihan wipes his mouth on his sleeve. His eyes burn with the intensity of one imparting a sacred mystery to a fellow initiate. "Kill in anger often enough and your aliveness starts running out too. Soon there's nothing left but a husk that walks and speaks and does skillful murder. Were you angry at me?" He shoots the ques-tion at her sudden as a dart. "Master! No."

"But I'm the one that anger struck down. See how easily it used you?" Segnbora stares at. the ground, her face burning. "Shihan, I didn't think—" "I noticed," he says, for the first time smiling. "Keep that up.*"

She shakes her head, confused. "Master, in killing in war or in self-defense, if I'm not supposed to feel angry — what should I be feeling?" He looks at her. "Compassion," he says, gruff-voiced. "An-guish. What else, when you've just killed yourself?"

(-ae" wnh khai-pfaaa ur'ts'shatiineh rahiw?) (I dm "t know for certain; all I fell there before was a memory of cold dirt. It must be something interesting. See how thick the stone is over it? Several of us wiU be needed—) OH NO YOU DON'T!

•—maybe it was the momentary burst of outrage that let her briefly out into the light again.

Whatever the reason, suddenly the world was bright and clear, though it seemed, very small, and the creatures that moved through it were earthbound and crippled of mind.

She was not in the Morrowfane country anymore. This was some twilit camp under the lee of a hill. She could feel the warmth of a fire against her side. She lay on her back, her limbs aching so much that she couldn't move. To her left sat Lang, warm in the firelight, gazing down at;

her with a bleak, helpless expression. Her distress at her im-mobility fell away at the sight of him. Lang mattered: He was stability, normalcy, all embodied in one stocky blond shape.

In all her life before this terror she had never cried for help but once, and that time help had been refused. She had never asked since. But now she had lost her mind, and surely there was nothing else to lose. Oh Lang, she tried to cry, I'm crazy, I'm scared, I can't find my way out, but I'm here—

But the words caught on a blazing place in her throat, got twisted out of shape and came out hoarse and strange. "R'mdahe, au'Lang, irikhe', stihe-sta 'ae vehhy't-kej, ssih haa-htЈ—" Not far away Herewiss and Freelorn lay together with their backs against a rock, holding weary conversation with the campfire that burned between them and the place where she lay.

(—indeed not,) the campfire was saying. Sunspark's eyes, ember-bright in the flickering fire, threw a glance of mild interest in her direction. (There aren't that many things in this bland little corner of the Pattern that can bother my kind. But we used to come across other travellers among the worlds, and some of them told of being unseated in heart or mind after coming to a world loo strange for them to understand. They lost their languages, some of them—)

"Did they get better?" Freelorn said. His tone indicated that he desperately wanted to hear that they did.

"Lorn," Herewiss said gently, putting his arm around his loved and hugging him, "we're going to have to leave her somewhere safe. She can't ride, she can't talk, she can't take care of herself. The arrow-shot she got from that last batch of bandits would have been the end of her if I hadn't been to the Fane first and learned what to do." Freelorn didn't answer.

"I went as deep as I could last night," Herewiss said. "I couldn't hear anything but a confusion of voices, and if I can't reach her there's nothing more we can do. Look, tomorrow afternoon — tomorrow night, maybe — we'll be riding through Chavi to get the news. We can leave her there; they'll be glad to have her. She'll take her time, get better, and follow us

when she can. Face it, Lorn, the Shadow's after us. We can't care for an invalid from here to Bluepeak."

"She saved my life," Freelorn said, his voice breaking harshly out of him. He wasn't angry at his loved, but at the unfairness of the Morrowfane, which had done this to her and left him untouched. "Several times. ."

"She knew what she was doing, all those times,"Herewiss said. "She knew what she was doing when she went up the Morrowfane. Lang told us so. And shell know why we're doing what we're doing, and understand." But there was little hope in his voice—

and make it come as real as the others.

She shuddered violently. No, oh no. And in any case I won't be left behind at the next inn as if I were a lamed horse!

Her bruised and battered pride got up one more time from the hard floor to which it had 'been knocked, and made itself useful. I am a tai —

Enraiesi. If my ancestors could see me they would laugh

roe to scorn! And I'm a sensitive trained in the ways of the inner mind, Fire or no Fire. I won't stand inside here and do nothing!

Off to one side, distantly, she could still hear Freelorn and Herewiss talking. Gulping with terror, Segnbora turned her back on them, con-centrated as best s'he could, and began making her way toward the huge

voices, deeper into the dark. .

Five

Offer an enemy a fatse show of hospitality in order to damn him. and the fires will fall on your head, not his. Give him the truth with his meat and drink, and trust it not to sour the wine. .,

s'Jheren, Advice unasked, 199

It was a long walk, full of halts, hesitations, and confusions, for the voices seemed to grow no nearer as she walked. Then abruptly she discovered that she had a seeming-body again, by walking into a wall, hard. She staggered back from it, momentarily seeing white with pain — then stepped forward with arms outstretched, and bashed her fingertips into the wall. She pushed close to it, spreading her arms wide, embrac-ing the familiar roughness; she laid her face against it and squeezed her eyes shut against tears of vast relief. At last this place was beginning to behave as it should.

Any trained sorcerer has an inner milieu into which he or she retreats for contemplation or preparation of sorceries. This, at last, was hers — not an abstraction of blackness and things buried, but the old cavern a mile down the seacoast from the house at Asfahaeg, her favorite secret place as a child.

Long ago the coast dwellers had broken a thirty-foot hole through the cavern's high, domed ceiling, turning it into a rude temple where they performed wreakings and weather-sorceries to the sound of the waves crashing just outside. As an adult sorcerer Segnbora had made its image part of her, a great airy cave full of sunlight or moonlight and the smell of the ocean.

She opened her eyes again, pushed back cautiously from the wall and looked up, trying to find the shaft-hole in the ceiling. After a moment she located it, though the shaft was

distinguishable from the rest of the ceiling only by two or three faint stars that shone through. Odd. The cavern had never been this dark before. . She turned and looked the

other way, trying to get herself oriented somehow. The faint rumble of the Sea bounced all around her, difficult to localize, but at last she thought she detected a slight difference in sound right across from her, a deadness that might mean the cave's opening onto the beach. She stepped cautiously away from the wall, then started to walk.

She touched something, It wasn't the wall. It was smooth, and dry, and hot. In her shock she stumbled forward instead of jerking back, and the something clamped down on her outstretched right hand, hard. She cried out wordlessly in rage and horror at the frighten-ing violation.

"It seems rude to put your hand in the Dragon's mouth and then scream before you know whether you've been injured," said a huge, slow, deep bass viol of a voice, from right in front of her.

Whatever had been holding her hand released it. Segnbora backed away and stood there rubbing the hand, which had been held tightly but not hurt. She was bitterly angry at her-self for having shown fear, "What the Dark are you doing in here?" she yelled, "We were invited," said the voice, puzzled. "Your accent is poor,"it added. "Speak more slowly."

"Accent—" She stopped and realized that she hadn't been speaking Darthene, or any human language, but the odd and terrible one that the voices in the darkness had been using. "'Never mind that! You can't be in here, this is me!" "'What is *me"?" the voice said without curiosity. "Rather, say "We are here/" There was a pause.

'"'May we ask why you keep it so dark in here? Were you keeping it so because the place where we met was dark?"

"I can remedy that," Segnbora said, annoyed. She lifted a hand, called up a memory of noon sunlight pouring in through the shaft—

•—and nothing happened. """'You are leaving us out of the reckoning," said the deep, slow voice as calmly as before. "Perhaps you would assist me then," Segnbora, said, an

noyed and uneasy. She concentrated again. "Sunlight …"

This time the light came, streaming down through the shaft from a sky that seemed bluer and deeper than usual. Segn-bora looked down and away from the blinding light — and was blinded instead by the intruder.

The rough dark textures of the face she had touched in the Fane were dark no longer. The sunlight spilling down from above shattered and rainbowed from scales like black sap-phires, every one with its shifting star. The Dragon blazed and glittered like a queen's ransom, his every breath and move-ment creating a shower of dazzle around him.

Now, Segnbora thought in wonder, / begin to understand that old story about Dragons spending their time lying on piles of jewels. .

His head hung above and before her, no longer an inert, half-perceived shape as it had been in the Morrowfane cave. It was an elongated head: sleeker and more slender than a snake's. Its mouth was a beak, like that of a snapping turtle. It was the point of the beak, at the very end of the immense serrated jaw, that had closed on her hand.

Her gaze travelled upward. From the beak to the place where the jaw met the neck was twenty feet at least The eyes were great pupilless globes filled with liquid fire, blazing a brilliant white even in the full sunlight. In the iron braziers of the nostrils the same light glowed though not so brightly

The Dragon was watching her with no less interest. "Cast-ing one's skin for the last time is always a nuisance," it said, "but it's still one of the more pleasant things about going mdahaih. You like this body better than the one you saw in the cave?"

"No!" Segnbora started to say, but the thought snagged on the new language living in her throat, and wouldn't move. The Dracon tongue, she realized then, put a great emphasis on accuracy of expression, and her one, bald, angry word was therefore insufficient. "You look absolutely beautiful," she said at last, "and I wish to the Dark you'd go away."

"It wasn't my idea to become mdahaih in a human, believe me," the Dragon said. "Nor was it that, of the rest of the mdeihei. They've been making a great deal of noise about it."

She had never heard the words before, and she under-stood them instantly. Mdahaih: indwelling within a host body and mind. Mdeihei: the indwellers, the souls of linear ancestors, the thousand-voiced consensus, the eternal com-panions.

The thought made Segnbora's hair stand up. She realized then that the sound she had been hearing in the background was not the Sea. It was other voices, like that of the Dragon. It's a pleasant enough sound, she thought. A single Dragon sounded like a bass viol talking to itself — a deep breathy voice full of hisses and rumbles and vocal bow-scrapes. But Drag-ons in a group seemed to prefer speaking together, and had been doing just that ever since she walked back into her cav-ern. The result was a constant quiet mutter of seemingly sourceless voices: scores of them, maybe hundreds, coiling together words and meaning-melodies in decorous, dissonant musics. Now they were growing louder, They didn't approve of Segnbora, of her clumsy gropings and, her rudeness to them in the darkness into which they had been thrust. Nor did they approve of the abnormal singleness of her mind, and they said so, in a dark-hued melody that sounded like a consort of bass instruments upbraiding its audience.

"I don't much care whose idea this whole thing was," Segn-bora. said, "But won't you, creatures please—" She fumbled for the right word, but there was no word for undoing the mdahaik relationship. "Won't you just go away?" she said finally, feeling uneasy about, the vagueness of the term.

'"'Where?" the Dragon, said, puzzled. "Out of us!" She stopped, then, annoyed. In this language there seemed to be no singular pronouns. The only singular forms in the language were for1 inanimate objects, and human beings, and other such crippled, single-minded, entities.

"That is impossible," the Dragon explained patiently. It had. lowered its voice into its deepest register, the one used for addressing the very young. "You are mdeihei, and will be until you die,'*'*

The word it used was res *uu>: lose-the-old-body-and-move-into-a-new-one. Segnbora rubbed at her aching head in bewil-deimenl.

"Listen," the Dragon said, "if you were one of us, you'd bring about hatchlings in time, and the soulbond between you and them would be established once they broke shell The bond would grow stronger in them as they grew, and weaker in you as you became old. Finally, when you left your body, you would be drawn into them: become mdahaih. And so it would be with their hatchlings, on through the generations, forever …"

"Forever," Segnbora whispered, feeling weak. "But all those voices — they can't all be your ancestors…. we wouldn't be able to hear for the noise!"

"The ones furthest back are hardest to hear. They fade out in time — which may be as well. The mddhm are for advice, among other things, and what kind of advice can someone gone mdahaih fifty generations ago give to the sdaha, the out-dweller? The strongest voices are the newest, the first four generations or so."

Segnbora sat down on the floor, miserable. The great head inclined slightly to watch her, causing another brief storm of rainbows. "What happens," she said eventually, "if I die, and there are no children, and no one is close by to accept the linkage, the soulbond, as I seem to have done for you?"

She could see no change of expression in the iron-and-diamond face, but the Dragon's tone went grave. "A few have died and gone rdahaih," he said: not "indwelling" or "out-dwelling," but "und welling." "They are lost. They and their mdeihei vanished completely, and from the mdnhei of every Dragon everywhere. They cease to be. ." Segnbora shuddered.

The Dragon's wings rustled in its own unease. "Yourpeo-ple have a word," he said. "A Marchwarder taught it to us: 'immortality." He said that humans desire it the way we desire doing-and-being. We have '"immortality' already; only rarely do we lose it. Had you not come to the Fane, we would have gone rdahaih. Mercifully the Immanance at the heart of what-was-and-is saw to it that you were there." I'll never get married, then, Segnbora thought, heavy-hearted. Humans had a Responsibility: They had to reproduce tfaem —

selves at least once, and until the Responsibility was fulfilled she was not free to marry any man or woman or group. She couldn't take the chance of passing this curse along to a child. She couldn't! It was going to be hard to die without knowing whether she would see the Shore—

"O sdaha," the Dragon said quietly, "since we're going to be together for a long time — regardless of your plans for hatchlings — perhaps we might know your name?"

She stared upward, angry again in the midst of her pain. "I don't remember asking you to listen to me think!"

"Among sda'tdae, there's no use in asking for permission or refusing it," the Dragon said. "One hears. You'll find there's little I will hide from you. Nor do I understand why so many of your memories are lying here sealed in stone, though doubtless, answers will become plain in time."

The pattern of notes the Dragon wove around them said plainly that he considered her something of a disappoint-ment. Still, there was compassion in the song behind the words, and amusement mixed with wry distaste at the situa-tion he found himself in. Segnbora rose slowly, She was finding it difficult to be angry for long with someone so relentlessly polite — espe-cially when, he was. so large. She was also getting the uneasy feeling that all the courtesy and precision built into the Dra-con language was there to control a potential for terrible savagery.

"Segnbora d'Welcaen tai-Enraesi," she said, giving him the eyes-up half bow due a peer.

"Hasai s'Vheress d'Naen s'Dithe d'Rr'nojh d'Karalh mes'-en-Dhaa'lhhw'ae," the Dragon said, giving his name only to the nearest five generations.

The named ancestors sang quiet acknowledgment from the shadows beyond the sunlight. Hasai lowered his head almost to the floor' and raised his wings in greeting, spreading them fully upward and outward in an awesome double canopy. Membranes, like polished onyx stretched between batlike finger-struts, and the sunlight was blocked suddenly away.

Her breath went out of her again, in sheer amazement. "Oh, my," she said., awed, "you are big. May I look at you?"

"Certainly."

Segnbora walked around to her left, putting some fifteen yards between herself and Hasai so she could see more of him at once. Fifty feet of jeweled neck led down to two immense double shoulders, from which sprang both the backward-bent forelimbs, now folded underneath Hasai, and the first * "upper arm" strut of the wings. Each of these struts ended at the first bend of the wing in a curved crystalline spur, as sharp as the diamond talons on each forelimb's four claws, but much longer.

Segnbora walked the length of the Dragon, out of the shadow of his wings, past the great corded hindlimbs, which were taloned as the forelimbs were. Slowly she walked along the crystal-spined tail, scaled in sapphires above, crusted in diamond below — and walked, and walked, and walked. Finally she came to the end of it, where the sapphires were small enough to be set in an arm-ring, and the last crystalline barb, sharp as a sword, lanced out ten feet or so from the foot-thick tailtip.

She looked back up the length of the body between the wings. It was like looking at a hill wrought of gems and black metal. Even supine on the stony floor, the slenderest part of Hasai's body, his abdomen, was at least fifteen feet high and perhaps forty around. His upper shoulders were at least thirty feet across. There was just too much of him. "I can't understand how you fly," Segnbora said, starting back up the other side.

"The proper frame' of mind," Hasai said, arching his head backwards to watch her. "After all, our people aren't built like the flying things you have here. We are light. Observe." Hasai lifted up the last ten feet of his tail and dropped it on her. Reflexively, knowing she was about to be crushed, Segn-bora threw her arms up to ward the tail away — and found herself supporting it on her hands. It was very heavy, but not at all the crushing weight she had expected.

"See?" Hasai said, flicking the tail away to lie at rest again.. Segnbora shook her head in wonder. The rough under-crusting looked like diamond, the' scales, looked like sapphire— "What are you made of?" she said, starting' to walk again.

"Flesh, bone, hide. And you?" Segnbora blinked. "About the same. …" "You're not quite as tough, however," the Dragon said, sounding mildly rueful. "1 remember the beast you will be riding, biting you there—" The glittering tail snaked up at Segnbora again, prodding her delicately in the chest. "You will be bleeding, and wishing for hide more like mine, that the beast would have broken its teeth on—"

As politely as she could, Segnbora undid the tailspine from her surcoat's embroider)', where it had snagged. She was wrestling with an unease that was no longer vague. She had noticed before, while fumbling for words, that in Dragon language there seemed to be several extra tenses for verbs. Now they all. became clear. 'They were precognitive tenses— future possible, future probable, future definite. Dragons, she realized, remember ahead as well as back. She shuddered, wanting to reject the possibility of ever doing that herself.

"We're not buUt to remember everything that happens to us," she said then to Hasai, resentfully. "Not consciously, anyway. Listen…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. I

can feel the mdeilm back there remember-ing everything that ever happened to them, every sunset and conversation and breath of wind. We don't do that."

"It makes seo.se that you would reject ahead-memory," Hasai said. "'You do not have it, the warders tell us. You even have trouble dealing with what is. But to reject our past-memories as well—"

Segnbora shrugged, "What good, are fifty generations of Dragon memories to a. human.?*''

"But you're not a human," Hasai said calmly. "Not totally. Not anymore." He looked, away from her, a Dragon shrug, matching hers, "Sooner or later you will look and see. Doubt-less not. soon."

Segnbora went narrow-eyed with anger at the Dragon's cool dare — and at the realization that this situation, was com-pletely out. of her

control. "'Show me now," she said.

Hasai bent, his head, down beside her and dropped his jaw slightly in an expression of mild amusement. His action gave

Segnbora a frightfully clear view of diamond fangs as long and sharp as scythes, and of the three-forked smelling-tongue in its recess beneath the blunt one used for speech. Worst of all, she could see the fulminous magma-glow of the back of the throat, where Dragonfire seethed blindingly. "Well," Hasai said, watching her calmly as a sleepy volcano, "will you put your hand in the Dragon's mouth willingly this time?" "Why not," Segnbora said, nervous, and irritated for being so. "Here, take the whole arm—"

Without giving herself time to hesitate, she went over to his great toothy table of a lower jaw and thrust her arm up to the shoulder between two huge forefangs, resting the forearm on the dry hot tongue. Slowly and carefully Hasai closed his mouth, holding Segnbora" s arm immobile but not hurting it.

(Comfortable?) he said wordlessly, his inner voice sound-ing, if possible, bigger than his outer one, "Yes, thank you." (Well, then. .)

Without warning, Segnbora found that her body felt won-derful. Her eyes could suddenly see colors she had been miss-ing: the black reds, the white violets. She felt for the first time the curves and planes of the energy flows that were as much a Dragon's medium as the currents and flows of atmosphere. Her muscles slid lithe and warm beneath gemmed skin. Her eyes held light within them as well as beholding it without. An old, yet delightful burning banished the cold from her throat and insides. Power was there, and strength. — the dangerous grace of limb and talon and tail. She felt reborn. She also felt hungry.

(We'll eat,) she heard one of her selves suggest, Agreeing, she crouched and coiled her way over to the door of the cavern, folded her wings carefully and slipped out.

(Wa.it a moment — that door's only a few feet wide!) (That, was your memory,) said one of the mda.heit a strong voice, fairly recently alive. (This is mine.) Out they went into the brilliant light, of noon at, Onoli. (This isn't my beach, either!) (No, my old one.)

Immediately she spread her wings right out to their fullest, to feel the sunfire soak into the hungry membranes and run through her like white-hot wine. She basked, drinking her fill of the light, lazing while the strange-familiar thoughts of a Dragon's day-to-day life flowed through her.

The mdeihei rumbled lazy assent, a placid rush of low voices blending with the sound of the waves. She got up after a while, raising her wings, feeling with them the flows of all the forces that Dragons manipulated and took for granted, as fish accept water or birds the air. It was an old delight: the chief joy of the Dragonkind, dearer even than, speech. (What else are we for?)

The wings were hands. She grasped the currents she felt moving about her, pulled herself upward, sprang and flew.

The first, leap took her high over the shore, and she watched with amazement and delight as she gained altitude. Boulders dwindled to

pebbles and the huge crash of the breakers shrank to a soft-spoken crawl.

(Inland, perhaps?) said the mdaha who had spoken, her song' calm with her own joy.

(Oh, please!)

She' wheeled, catching currents of air and fields of force with her wings and, her mind, gaining more altitude and speed as she soared south and west, over northern Darthen. Below them, the sunlit headlands of Sionan and Rul Tyn lay patched and quilted, with small field— squares. There were threads of brown road, and, toy houses like a child's carved playthings. Southward stretched wilder, emptier lands, tree-stippled hills, forests like green shadows on, the fields.

She leaned up toward the sky and gained, more height, watching the sunlight flash, on, a river-strung series of little lakes.. Upward still she dove, through a furry fog of cloud-cover, and saw the Darst below go pewter-shadowed. More distant lakes and. rivers seem to hover unsupported in the haze below. She dipped one wing, stretched the other up and out in a bank. Over her the patterned sky turned as if on a pivot., wheeled like a, starry night about her center. .

The higher and farther she went,, the lovelier it all became. Thick, clouds as white as drifting snow rose up before her,

balzing in the sunlight. Bounded by these mountains of the sky, drowned far down in the depths of air, the land lay dim and still. Pacing her above the silence, the white Sun rode, swimming soundlessly in an unfathomable eternity of blue.

Still higher she climbed. Above her the sky went royal blue, then violet. Her wings lost the wind entirely and began to stiffen in the great cold above the air. She stopped beating them and fixed them at full soaring extension. Her mind was doing all the work now, manipulating fields and flows, trigger-ing the shutdown of some body functions, the initiation of others which would protect her in the utter cold of the Empti-ness.

The sky went black, and the stars came out, the winter stars that summer daylight hid, burning steady as beacons. In the same sky with them hung the ravening Sun, unshielded now by the thick cloak of the world's air. It was a searing agony on her membranes but an ecstatic heat within. Quite suddenly the mdaha whose memory this was flipped forward, tumbling end for end—

Had she been breathing, breath would have gone out of her. Below her, she saw an impossibility. The flat world was curved. The black depths of the Mother's night rested against that curvature, holding it as if in a careful hand. The whole great expanse of the Middle Kingdoms, from Arlen in the west to the Waste in the east, could be seen in a single glance. Beyond them were unknown lands, unsailed seas — the whole of human experience and possibility held under a fragile crys-tal skin of air.

Awed, she spread wings and bowed her head to the wonder. Surely this was the way the Dragons had seen, the world on the day they came falling out of the airless depths: a jewel, a treasure, life—

(Perhaps you understand now,)' Hasai said, his voice hushed with old love, old pain, (why we decided to stand and fight for a home.) She hung there, unmoving in the silence beyond all si-lences, and understood. (Not that we've forgotten what we left,) said the other mdaha. (Torn and see—)

Something happened to the Sun hanging behind her back. It fell suddenly strange, but welcome, like the touch of a friend corning up from behind. She turned and found that it

had changed, was bigger, hotter, pinker. Close beneath her hung the memory of the ancient Homework! red-brown and dry; a harsh place, a birthplace, dear and dead.

A great mournful love for the lost lands where her kind was born rose up in her at the sight. But the mournfulness turned to something deeper and more piercing as she looked off to one side. Suspended there, seeming to cover half the endless night, was a great swirled pattern of stars. They seemed fro-zen in midturn — a whirlpool spraying drops and gemlets of rainbow fire, its arcs sinuous and splendid as the curve of a tail, its heart ablaze like the memory of the Day of Dawning, when, the World's Heart beat its first.

Oh, My Maidm, my Queen, they know You too— She could find no other thought. Thinking was driven out of her by the immensities. After a while she realized she was leaning against Hasai's face, her cheek resting on the great sapphired one, her left arm holding the Dragon close and her right in his mouth, up to the shoulder. And her face was wet. She straightened up, abashed.

Hasai let her arm loose, and Segnbora spent a few moments brushing herself off and trying to find some composure. Hasai watched her gravely, wailing. "It felt real!" '"And so1 it was."

"But that happened a, long time ago!" """Certainly. And, it happened again, right, then."' "But it was a, memory," Segnbora said, confused. "If I had tried to change what was happening, I couldn't have." ""'Of course you, could have changed, it," Hasai said, politely. "We wondered that you, didn't try." She shook, her head again. Perhaps she was just not think-ing well in this language yet.

"It was. very beautiful," she said after a pause. ""We thank 'you, sdaha." There was nothing in Dragon life more important than memories, and the sharing of them. "It's well that you find value in who we were, and are, for we cannot

leave. Henceforward, you will have to deal with us as we are — as we shall deal with you."

Segnbora looked up in sudden anger at the immense face above her. "Who are you to dictate terms to me in my own mind?" she cried. "You say 'your own mind'," Hasai said. "You imply owner-ship — or at least control. Prove your claim. Leave this 'mind* and then come back. Or better still, remove us."

There was a long silence, during which Hasai watched her, and neither of them moved.

"We cannot leave, either," said Hasai. Baffled, Segnbora shook her head. "Now what?" she said finally. "Now," Hasai said, "we sue for pardon of wrongs done in haste."

He bowed to her, his wings going up again, and his great head sinking low; lower than ever, this time, till it almost touched the floor. Those eyes as tall as her body were below her own.

"I am — sorry — about the mdeihei. " The words came out of him oddly; to a Dragon this was like apologizing for breath-ing. "They were trying to find out what kind of place they were in. That can be very important. We are large as your kind reckons size, true enough; and well armed, and long-lived. But we have our fears too."

Segnbora became conscious that the rustling in the shad-ows had stopped, and that many eyes were gazing out of it at her with a frightening and alien directness.

"I am aware of your dislike for others delving in your memories. I will keep the mdeihei out of your past — though you are of course welcome to ours. But I don't know what I can do about your future—"

"Neither do I," Segnbora said, with a rueful laugh. "The present is giving me enough problems already." Suddenly she was thinking about Lorn, and Lang, and the others. Had they left her in Chavi as planned? She had to get out and see where she was. . "Since you are us now," Hasai said, sensing both the joy and danger her liege represented, "you must be more conscientious in safeguarding your body. There is more than just one of you to go rdahaih if you're careless."

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"And you of course will take care of me for the same rea-son—"

"We would take care of you anyway, shared mindspace or no," Hasai said. "Life is the Immanence's gift, not to be thoughtlessly cast away even when it is alien — or angry."

Segnbora bit the inside of her lip, ashamed of herself. / did ask for a change at the Fane, she thought after a moment. The request has certainly been granted! But it's just like the old stories: If you don't specify what you want when you wish for something, you may get a surprise. .

"I must go." Segnbora turned and headed for the little low door of the cavern. "Sehe'rae, sdaha," said the huge viol-voice from behind her: Go well, outdweller. Segnbora paused. "Sehe'rae—" she said, and tasted the next word. " — mdaha. " Mindmate.

The mdeihei, pacified at last, settled back into the song of the ages, the litany of all their memories, all their lives. Segnbora threw a last glance at Hasai, burning in iron and diamond in the light from the shaft. Then she turned and ducked through the door—

"Six days," Herewiss said. "We thought we'd have to leave you in—"

"I know. I heard you. I would have done the same thing.** Freelorn and Herewiss glanced at one another in relief. To the sound of more rustling, Lang dropped to the grass beside them. He stared at Segnbora and said nothing; but her under-hearing woke up as if it had been kicked, bringing her a flood of worry, not nearly as relieved as that of the others.

She took another drink to gather her composure, and then looked at Lang and said quietly, "You told me so. …" He shrugged and looked away.

THE DOOR INTO SHADOW

"Here," Freelorn said, "you ought to see'—" He got. up, went off and rummaged around in his bags for a moment, then came back with a small square of polished steel, a mirror,

Segnbora looked at herself. The same old face — prominent nose, pointed chin, deep-set eyes with circles smudged a bit darker than usual. But her hair wasn't the same: It was coming in shockingly silver-white at the roots, "Oh dear," she said, and couldn't find anything else to say.

Lang got up abruptly and went away.

Segnbora handed Freelorn back his mirror and looked at

Herewiss. "I had quite a night. Can I sleep a little more? Then I'll be able to ride/" … — „j

Herewiss nodded. "Rest," he said. "Chavi is still a day away, and we're not in such a hurry that you can't recuperate

, *»

* She nodded back, suddenly very weary, and lay down, gratefully wrapping her blankets around her. Some time after she closed her eyes, she realized that neither her liege-lord nor his loved had moved, but were still watching her, wonder —

flr

" Berend," Freelorn said very quietly, "the thing that happened to you at the Fane— What was it?"

"Not 'it'," she sighed, without opening her eyes. "'Them.'"

This time the darkness was only sleep, and she embraced

it.

Six

If you'll walk with kings and queens, well; but take care. For the Shadow aims ever at them — and though It often misses, It doesn't scorn to hit the person standing closest.

Askrythen, 14, xi

It was an odd riding that someone standing on the old diked road to Chavi would have seen approaching through the eve-ning. Indeed, maybe it was better that no one was there to witness it.

Between the tall hawthorn hedges in the fading light came, first, two men in country clothes, one on a sorrel, one on a bay. Their horses

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flinched and shied occasionally, for their riders were juggling stones, and dropping them frequently. A third man on a black palfrey was repeatedly plucking a single string on a lute, trying to elicit the same note twice in a row from his tone-deaf companion. Then came a young slim woman in a worn brown surcoat, riding a Steldene steeldust mare. She spoke occasionally to the empty air, like a. mad-woman, with a hoarse voice; and frequently raised a hand to brush back hair that was oddly pale at its roots and part,

Behind her, bringing up the rear, rode a tall dark man on a blood-bay stallion and a short dark man on a black-maned chestnut. The small man was waving his arms and arguing about something; his tall companion nodded gravely at most of what he said, glancing occasionally over to his. left, where' a hundredweight boulder was floating along beside him in the

air.

"Look at them. Look at them! They'll never manage a jug-gling act with people watching them.! Dusty, I love them, but they can't juggle air!"

* 'They 11 do all right. They're just out of practice. It's been seven years since they juggled for a living, after all." "Yes, but—"

'"Lorn, they'll do all right. So will you, and so will Moris and

Dritt and the rest. Most of the entertainers on the road are only mediocre anyway. And it's not as if gleemen's immunity depended on whether we're good or not. No one's going to suspect anything. This is the middle of nowhere." "Mmmmf. . "

(Hah!) Sunspark said suddenly from beneath Herewiss. (For one lousy penny I'm supposed to cut off my legs?)

Segnbora tried to put her head under her wing in token of mild exasperation, and found she couldn't. She made a face. "The punch line

usually conies at the end of the joke," she said.

(Oh. Well, there's this beggar—) "That one won't work now. We know the ending. Start another.." (All right.) It thought a moment, and Segnbora shook her head, bemused.

While she had been busy with Hasai, Dritt had made the mistake one day of trying to make friends with Sunspark by telling it a joke. Since then it had decided that joking was a vital part of human experience, and had been demanding everyone to teach it the art, on pain of burning them when Herewiss wasn't looking. As soon as she was in the saddle again, Sunspark had accosted Segnbora. In no mood for jok-ing, she had suggested that it tell her jokes, and thus learn by doing. She'd had no peace since,

(—SO' there are these two women, they go into an inn and the innkeeper conies to their table, and one of the women says,, 'Bring us the best red wine you have, and. be sure the cups are clean!* So the innkeeper goes off, and comes back with a tray, and says, "Two red wines. And which, one asked for the' clean cup?1 *)

Herewiss closed his eyes and laughed. "Not. bad." (I made it up,) said Sunspark, all childish pride. It did a quick, capriole out of sheer pleasure, and almost unseated Herewiss. "Oof! Watch that, you. On second thought, maybe we should increase your part, in the act. We could use another jester." "Mnk'qalasihiw, Hkir—"' Segnbora, cleared her throat. The

Dracon language was beginning to fascinate her, and her desire to master it sometimes caused it to get out of her mouth before Darthene did. "I mean, Herewiss, there's only one problem with that. What happens if an audience doesn't laugh?"

Sunspark threw a merry glance at its rider. (If they don't laugh, we get rid of them and bring in a new audience.) The thought "get rid of them" was attached to plans for the same sudden-death fire that had been the end of the deathjaw.

THE DOOR INTO SHADOW

Freelorn glanced up at the sky, no doubt to invoke the Goddess's protection on their next audience. Herewiss looked hard at his mount. Sunspark laid back its ears and showed all its teeth around the bit, then subsided somewhat. (They will come back,) it said, sulkiness showing in the thought, (you told me so!) "They will. But there's no reason to hurry people out of this life."

"Don't be hard on it," Segnbora said. "It learns quickly. Another few months and I dare say the audiences will be safe." Freelom and Herewiss exchanged unconvinced, humorous glances, but Segnbora didn't noticed

She was feeling hot — but then, these days, she felt hot most of the time. She closed her eyes to glance back, in mind, at Hasai. Through this day and the day before he had been stretched at ease in the seaside cave, looking out of her eyes, silent for the most part. He stayed out of her thoughts except to ask an occasional question. The rest of the time the rumble of his private thought blended with the bass chorus of the mdeihei, a sound Segnbora found she could now start to ig-nore, like the seashore when one lives nearby. She looked down into herself now and saw Hasai sunning himself in the noon light that splashed down through the cave's shaft. His wings were spread out flat like a butterfly's, lying easy on the floor; his neck was curled so1 that his head lay under one of them in the position. Segnbora had tried to achieve before.

"That one is insolent," Hasai said, referring to Sunspark. "Is it not?"

In Dracon the question was rhetorical, and Segnbora had no answer for it. She turned away from Hasai without further thought and opened her eyes again on the evening. There was a sweet sharp hawthorn scent in the air.

*' Berend, did you hear me?" Freelorn said. "No, Lorn, I was talking to my lodger." She reached out and picked a white blossom off the hedge past which they were riding, held it to her nose.

"Oh. Sorry. What are you. going to do tonight? Pass the purse?" "She can sing/* Herewiss said. "You can? Well, that's news! You know many songs?" "A few/* Segnbora said. She reined Steelsheen back to ride abreast of Herewiss and Freelorn, suddenly feeling the need for company more normal than that she carried inside her. "I'm best with a kithara, but I'll do all right with the lute."

Herewiss was still being paced by that boulder. It was easily half Sunspark's size, but he showed no sign of strain, and at the same time was keeping Khavrinen from showing so much as a flicker of Fire. His control was improving rapidly. "You won't have any trouble with your part of the act, that's plain," Segnbora said.

Herewiss shrugged, waving the rock away with one hand. It soared up over the hedge like a blown feather and dropped out of sight, hitting the ground in the field on the other side with an, appalling thud.

"It's easy," Herewiss said. "Even the ecstatic part of the Fireflow — those overwhelming' sensations of pleasure you ex-perience during a wreaking — are under control since we dimbed the Fane/"

Freelorn looked, thoughtful, ""You know, I wonder whether the Goddess installed that ecstatic aspect of the Fire on pur-pose, to keep people from doing large wreakings casually; as a sort, of control—"

'"'More likely as a, reward, to make sure the Power's used. But in either case, I'm as free of the ecstatic part of the flow as I desire/" He paused, then went on nervously. "It's a little dangerous, though. The.first time I picked up that rock, I had to be careful that the whole field didn't come with it. ."

Lorn laughed, and reached out to squeeze the hand of his loved.

After a while, at a turn in the road, they could make out a low huddle of squared-off silhouettes against the horizon. Lamps burned like

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yellow stars in each window.

"Your guest—" Freelorn said abruptly to Segnbora. "You said 'they' before. ."

"Hh'rae nt'sseh," she said, and corrected herself with a smile. "It is they. But it's also he. Mostly he."

Freelorn's expression was impossible to read. "Are you— still you?"

Oh Goddess, Lorn, if I only knew! she wanted to cry; but she kept her voice calm. "I'm not sure. Oh, Lorn, let it lie … when we have time, I'll take you and Herewiss inside and introduce you. I'm me enough to function, at least."

Freelorn hastily cast around for something else to talk about. The lane had widened into a road of a size to drive cattle down, and was well tracked and rutted. "Been a lot of traffic here, I'd say."

"For this time of year, yes." Segnbora gazed up at the town. "How many days in Spring this year?" "Ninety-three," Herewiss said. "A Moon and a day till Mid-summer. Why?"

"Just wondering. . Used to be my mother and father would start up for Darthis now, to do Midsummer's in the city with the rest of the Houses. We used to pass this way. But we haven't done the trip since they built the inn at Chavi. My father started having trouble with his legs. It was arthritis, and he couldn't take the long rides anymore," Suddenly she' missed him terribly, in spite of the poor understanding he'd had of her.

"You know this place, then," Herewiss was saying. '"That's a help."

She nodded, blinking back unexpected tears. "They'll be glad to see players. Not many come' down here, es-pecially after the bad weather sets in. They probably haven't been entertained since last summer."* She1 glanced! at Freelorn. "If things are as bad in Arlen as they are here. .. don't overcharge them, okay? From the look of the fields,

this year's harvest isn't going to be any better than the last." Freelorn nodded. Good harvests were a king's responsibil-ity. Bad ones were a

sign of trouble — like the empty throne

in Arlen. "I'll see to it," he said.

Segnbora nodded, pleased. Lorn was changing. In most respects he was still the same brash, adventure-hungry prince whom she loved so dearly, but increasingly he was overcome by thoughtful silences. When he spoke, there was a new sobri-ety in his tone. She could sense why. The land through which they trav-elled was his by right, and its plight was desperate. The fields were dry and dusty; the people, over-taxed, were in rags. What prince could see this and fail to feel his heart swell with outrage, fail to feel his sword-hand itch for justice? There was a cause growing in Freelorn*s mind, and it excited her.

Nevertheless, they were a long way from restoring him to his throne. They were so few, after all, and had been away so long., Indeed, it was months since they had heard any news of the kingdom. The usurper's authority would be well established by now. It was for that reason that Lorn had chosen the inconspicuous town of Chavi for their first real foray into civilization. Here, disguised as entertainers, they could gather intelligence without arousing suspicion.

(How about this?) Sunspark said. (The Goddess is walking down, the road and She sees a duck—)

They rode up to the town's rough fieldstone-and-mortar walls and were readily admitted. Chavi was much as Segn-bora remembered it. The town's central square was stone-paved, surrounded by earth and fieldstone houses with

soundly thatched roofs. A few, though, still had turf roofs, with here and there a scamp flower growing. Men drying their hands on dishtowels and young women with floury hands came' to the windows, attracted by the sound of hooves on, cobbles. Up at the front of the line of riders, Dritt unslung his dm— brel and began banging it earnestly, calling their wares: "Songs and stories, tall tales! Shivers and chuckles, sleepless nights, horrors and heartthrobs, deaths and delights! Mim-icry, musicry, tragedy, comedy—"

A small crowd began to gather. Dritt began juggling two knives and a lemon, breaking the rhythm occasionally by catching the lemon in his mouth, and making puckery faces when he let go of it. Harald was strumming changes on Segn-bora's lute, and angling it so the torchlight from the cressets by the inndoor would catch the mother-of-pearl inlay.

Herewiss dismounted, pulled the saddle off Sunspark, and snapped his fingers. The stallion disappeared, replaced by a great white hound of the kind that runs with the Maiden's Hunting. The fayhound danced once about Herewiss on its hind legs — bringing ooohs and aaaahs from the audience, for upright it stood two feet taller than he did — then, at his clap, it sat up most prettily and begged. At another clap it bowed to the audience, grinning with its huge jaws. At a fourth clap it changed to a tree that creaked and groaned as if a wild wind tore at it; then to a huge serpent that coiled around Herewiss and tried to squeeze the life out of him, and finally to a buck unicorn.

A delighted cheer went up from the crowd, the kerchiefed ladies and dusty-britched men applauding such illusion as they had only heard of before. Man and unicorn held their tableau, while Moris turned handsprings on the stones, and Freelorn went inside to dicker with the innkeeper for the night's room and board.

Not long afterward Lorn emerged, and gestured to the crowd for silence. He was wearing the very slight crease of frown that was all he allowed himself when disturbed in pub-lic. "Kind gentlemen, good ladies," he said, "we'll begin our evening's entertainment an hour after sunset. Please join us, one and all."

The crowd in the street, murmuring appreciations,, began to disperse. Herewiss stood up and dusted himself off. "Everything all right?" he said to Freelorn, noticing that faint crease of worry.

"Yes," Freelorn said, in the same tone of voice he would have used to say "no." "The innkeeper worries me, though." "He's stingy?"

"No. We hardly had to bargain, he gave right in. It's some-thing about his manner—" "Maybe he was busy."

Freelorn shrugged. "Could be — the place is lively inside. Come on, I want a bath before dinner."

They stabled the horses, including Sunspark, who wanted to indulge its fondness for oats but promised to follow later.

The inn itself, the "Yale and Fetlock," was a long, low, battered-looking place of fieldstone with a weedy turf roof and a rammed dirt floor. The main room was smoky and full of people, all in the linens and woolens of townsmen. Some sat eating at long rough tables starred with rushlights. Others stood eating at sideboards, sat drinking in the middle of the room, or simply milled around. All were talking at the top of their lungs. (Sweet Immanence,) Hasai said, sitting up in alarm behind Segnbora's eyes and looking out at the jostly drinkers' dance, (what's being decided here?) (What?)

A — memory now surfaced, but of a sight she had never seen. In a stony deserted vale. Dragons, a great crowd of them, moved among one another in a precise and graceful pattern. It was nn's'raihle, Convocation — sport and ceremony and family fight and celebration all. at once, the form of dis-agreement and resolution that Dragons found the most ele-gant and, delightful.

(Oh,) Segnbora said, seeing the likeness to nnYraihle in the tense movement in the room. (No1, mdaha, this is social. 'They'll talk about whatever's happening, but they won't be making any decisions here.)

(How can they all abrogate their responsibility like that?) Hasai said, uneasy. (You, all live here; how can you not act to nin the world?)

THE DOOR INTO SHADOW

(lib—) Segnbora stalled, watching Freelorn. He had some-how already found a mug of ale, and was shouting in an old roan's ear, "Ei, grand'ser, what's all the pother for?"

"Reavers!" the gaffer shouted back, and started telling of mcursions to the south in Was ten and Nestekhai. (Well?)

She breathed out, wondering what to say. (Uh. Hasai, most humans are empowered only to make decisions regarding themselves — or those close to them. They don't sit down, have an argument about something and then make a decision by which all humans will be bound. They would never all agree—)

(Then how do you get this world to work? How do you get anything accomplished?) Hasai said, bewildered.

Segnbora shook her head. "Done" didn't translate well; "do" and "be" seemed to be the same word in Dracon — stihl. (That will take time to explain. .)

(Never mind, then. I see that there are more important matters to be concerned with. These incursions by the Reav-ers. . are they close by, do you think?)

Segnbora made a face. (Too close. I wish we were farther north. But we dare not be; we would arouse too much curios-ity there. Excuse me, Hasai. I've got to get ready for our show—) (Certainly.)

She found the innkeeper. He was a knifeblade of a man, all grin and nervous energy. Segnbora could see that he would have made a quick business of the dickering. She got a mug of rough cider from him, and went to her bath.

Scrubbed and dressed in her worn but serviceable black gown with the tai-Enraesi crest on one shoulder, she went back to the common room and began talking to the patrons, assessing their mood, asking for requests. Just the sound of their voices gave her pleasure. They spoke in the old reassur-ing South Darthene accent that had been her mother's. It was a rich speech, slow, broad and full of archaisms. "Maistress," the slow-smiling, staid-faced townsfolk called her. "Aye, gaffer, tha'st hit it," she would drawl back, and they would laugh together.

She found Freelorn and Herewiss and the others at the best table by the central hearth, and sat down with them to a meal of aggressively garlicked lamb and buttered turnips, baked bannocks, and a soft, sharp sheep's-milk cheese to spread on them.

Freelorn, reviling the vintage of the cool white potato wine that had been brought up for them from the ice-cellar, never

theless drank off three cups one after another, and by mistake almost drank the Goddess's cup as well. Lang gave Segnbora a nudge, and they traded glances. Freelorn had been in a mood like this the night he had gotten them all chased out of Madeil, the night Segnbora ran across him.

"It's all right, I think," she whispered. Herewiss took the wineflask gently away from his loved and forestalled his protests by saying, "Who's performing first?" This started the predictable argument, punctuated with ex-clamations of, "I need more practice!"; "You are too in good voice, I heard you in the outhouse!"; "Oh, don't be a cow-ard!"; "I'm a coward, huh, then you go first!"

Segnbora groped under the table for the lute, causing more exclamations. She winked at Lang and pulled her chair over by the hearth. Behind her, as she tuned the lute's slack ela-string, the fire leaped, roaring up the chimney. There was a momentary hush close to the hearth, then intrigued whispers. The fire had acquired eyes.

"Thank you," she said, stroking the lute. "This is how it was," she said. That had been the storyteller's opening line from time immemorial. The quiet spread far back in the room. "There was a queen who would not die—"

THE DOOR INTO SHADOW

It was a relative's story, and an old favorite of hers: the tale of Efmaer d'Seldun tai-Earn6si, the first woman to be both Queen of Darthen and a Rodmistress.

In the fourth year of Efmaer's reign came an outbreak of lunglock fever. Efmaer did what she could to treat those of the royal household who were ill, but the Fire was of no avail. Soon she caught the malady herself. There was bitter mourn-ing then, for under Efmaer's rule the land had prospered as never before. When finally she fell into the unconsciousness that precedes death, her attendants stole weeping from her rooms, leaving her to die peacefully in the night.

But none of them knew their Queen's determination. It wasn't yet her time to die. When she suddenly found herself standing before the open Door into Starlight, and felt the forces at her back pushing her toward it, Efmaer rebelled. She caught at the black doorsills and hung over the starry abyss by ten straining fingers. Peace and the last Shore awaited her

at the bottom of the darkness, but Efmaer would have none of them. She hung on.

When her tearful attendants slipped into her bedchamber in the morning to prepare her body for the pyre, they found her not dead, but sleeping. She looked drawn and fever-wasted, but the sickness was broken. In her hand, clutched tight, was a long sharp splinter of darkness — a broken-off piece of the Door.

Later, when Efmaer was well again, she wrought the splin-ter into a sword. Skadhwe, it was called in Darthene, "Dark-harm." It would cut anything, stone or steel or soul, and many were Efmaer's deeds with it across the breadth of Darthen and down the length of her reign. And if anyone spoke in fear to Efmaer because she had cheated Death at its own Door, the Queen would laugh, unworried, certain the Shadow would never bother avenging so small a slight.

Whether she was right no one could surely say, for Efmaer's loved, Sefeden, killed himself, and his soul passed into Meni Auardhem, into Glasscastle, to which go suicides and those weary of life.

Then Efmaer grew frightened, for Sefeden knew her inner Name; and therefore his soul could bind her to this world when it was time to pass onward and be reborn. In haste Efmaer rode to Barachael, and climbed Mount Adine, above which Glasscastle appeared at times of sunset and crescent Moon and Evenstar.

There was at that time no way for one still in the body to cross to the castle. The souls of the dead and the minds of the mad found their way across with no need of a physical road. It would have been easy for Efmaer to attempt the crossing to Glasscastle in a bird's shape, or as a disembodied soul, but she was no fool. The terrible magics of the place would have warped her own wreaking out of shape and killed her. Yet she had to get into Glasscastle; yet she could not get into Glass-castle.

For some people this would have been a problem. But Efmaer waited for the time of three Lights, when the castle faded into being. When it was fully there, she drew Skadhwe and smote the stone of Adine with it, opening a great rent in

the mountain, like a wound. With her Fire, Efmaer brought about the chief wreaking of her lifetime, singing the moun-tain's blood out of its wound, drawing out the incomparable iron of the great Eisargir lodes, tempering it in Flame and passion, hammering it with ruthless song into a blue-steel bridge that arched up to the Castle, fit road for a mortal's feet.

When had she wrought the bridge, she climbed it. She came to the crystal doors of Glasscastle and passed them, searching for Sefeden to get her Name back from him. But she did not come out. And at nightfall Glasscastle vanished into its eternal twilight, until the next time of three Lights in the world. .

"And from that day to this," she said at last, unnerved to feel the tears coming, "no one has been so bold as to say they have seen Efmaer d'Seldun among the living or the dead. With her, Skadhwe passed out of life and into legend; and in the years since the Queen's disappearance, cheating Death has gone out of style. . "

THE DOOR INTO SHADOW

The applause embarrassed her, as usual. She was glad to get out of what was now a very hot chair, and give place to Dritt and Moris and their juggling. Someone pushed a cup of cold wine into her hand. She took it gratefully and made her way to the back of the room, wiping her eyes as surreptitiously as she could. "Smoke," she said to Lang as she came up beside him. "Mmm-hmm."

Together they held up the wall awhile, leaning on one another's shoulder and watching Moris and Dritt juggle ob-jects the audience gave them: beerpots, platters, clay pipes, truncheons, rushlight holders. Nothing fell, nothing at all. "I can't believe it!" Lang whispered. "Did all that practicing actually pay off?"

"Not a chance," Segnbora whispered back. "I smell Fire. Herewiss threw a wreaking over them. I doubt they'll be able to drop even a hint until it breaks."

Freelorn came toward them through the crowd, with an-other cup of wine in his hand. "Lorn," Segnbora said softly as he joined them, "just you watch it. Don't get sozzled."

"Yes, mother."

Segnbora settled back against the wall again and went back to watching the jugglers, particularly poor Moris, who had just been handed a full winejug to add to the other objects being juggled. He was giving it a look such as the King gave the Maiden when he had come to beg one of the hares She was herding. Glancing back at Lorn to see his reaction, Segn-bora saw that he wasn't paying attention. He was watching someone off to one side, out of the hearthlight, eyes wide with admiration.

A blocky man moved and Segnbora could see over his shoulder. Past him, there, a small figure slipped out of her cloak, accepted a cup from the passing barmaid and raised it to her lip, looking over the rim in Freelorn's direction. She was a short woman with close-cropped hair of a very fair blonde, small bright eyes like a bird's, a mouth that quirked up at one corner—

Segnbora froze for a breath, two breaths, watching the light from a wall-cresset catch in the butter-blonde hair, giving its owner a halo. (Teg&ne,) she said silently, fighting hard to keep her delight off her face. Her loved from those long-ago days at the Precincts — here! (You're a long way from home: is Wyn keeping supper hot for you?)

("Berendf Are you here!) The face across the room didn't change a bit, but Segnbora heard the old familiar laughter, sounding all the more real for being silent. (Now I see! 'Be-rend, you—.')

(Me what? What are you doing here?) She bowed her head over her cup, needing the darkness to hide the smile that wouldn't stay in.

(I was told to come. I dreamed true last night. She told me, *I knowr your troubles and your questions. Go quickly to Chavi and you'll find answers.' I used the Kings' Door, and a mile away I smelled so much Fire that — oh 'Berend, I'm so glad for you!) {Not me, Tegane.) She flicked a mind-glance at Freelom. (It's this one's loved.)

(You mean—) Eftgan's emotions swung rapidly from em-barrassment to incredulity. (Then that uproar in the Power we

all felt last week was someone donating to the Fane! And that story I got from the Bright wood people about a man focus-ing—) (It's true,) Segnbora said, and leaned back against the wall, weak from the backwash of Eftgan's excitement. Moris and Drill finished their juggling, amid much ap-plause. There was no opportunity to go to Eftgan, however, for at that moment Herewiss walked in through the door from the stabieyard and took his place by the hearth. The room quieted.

Herewiss didn't bother with the lengthy introduction that some sorcerers used to assure that their illusions would take root in the spectators' minds. Nor did he bother with spells. He just sat back in the chair, one arm leaning casually on his long sheathed sword. "My gentlemen,

my ladies," he said, "a little sorcery."

It was a great deal more than that, but since no Fire showed there was no way for the audience to tell. They chuckled appreciatively when tankards and plates engaged in a slately aerial sarabande in the middle of the room. They clapped when one empty table shook itself like a sleepy dog, got up and began stumping around the room on its legs. They hooted with pleased derision when the big rough fieldstones in the fireplace all suddenly grew mouths and began talking noisily about the things they had seen in their time, some of which made for very choice gossip.

When finally all the flames in the rooms shot up suddenly, swirled together in the empty air and coalesced into a bright-feathered bird that hung upside down by one foot from the chandelier and croaked, "Tve got it! The Goddess is walking down, the street and She meets this duck. ." the storm of laughter and applause became' deafening.

Not even Eftgan's composure remained unshattered. "My Goddess," she whispered, and from clear across the room Segnbora could feel her smothering down the Flame that was trying to leap from, her Ro>d in response to the FireBow Here-wiss was letting loose. A good sorcerer would have had no trouble producing such effects by illusion; but these were actual objects moving

around, briefly alive and self-willed. Normally it would have taken two or three Rodmistresses working in consort to pro-duce even one of the transformations taking place — but there sat Herewiss all by himself, looking like a child enjoying a new toy.

The table had sneaked up behind one tall woman and was nibbling curiously at her tunic, like a browsing goat. The stones had begun singing rounds, Sunspai k had forgotten by now that it ought to have been holding onto the chandelier, and was simply suspended upside down in midair, getting laughs for jokes without punch lines attached.

(How is he doing that?!) Eftgan said, bespeaking Segnbora very quietly, so as not to distract Herewiss.

(Most of these things were alive once,) Herewiss said si-lently, not moving or looking up. (It's just a matter of remind-ing them how it was. Mistress, I can taste your Fire but I can't place you — though there's something familiar about your pat-tern. You know my loved, perhaps?)

(The pattern might be familiar prince) the small woman said, as two chairs put their arms about each other and begin dancing in a corner, muttering creaky endearments, (because you and 1 have met. At Lidika fields you jumped in front of a Reaver with a crossbow and took the quarrel for me while I was having trouble with a swordfight—)

The hearthstone snorted as if in great surprise, then settled into a bout of ratchety snoring. (Eftgan! The Queen's grace might have given me warning!)

(I didn't want to disturb your concentration, prince, though it appears I worried for nought. But pardon me if I leaveoff complimenting you for the moment. I have business here, and you're part of it, I've been told. If I rework the wreaking on the Kings' Door, can you come with me to Barachael tonight?)

(Depends on Freelorn, madam,) All the candles on tables and in sconces tied themselves in knots and kept on burning. (We're on business of our own, and 1 have oaths in hand that may even supersede the oaths of the Brightwood line to Darthen.)

(Oh, that business. I think your business and mine will go well enough together.) (Then we'll talk when I've finished.)

At that Lorn quietly left the shadow of his doorway, heading across the common room — ostensibly to get another drink— and "noticed" Eftgan in what appeared to be the fashion of one potential bed-partner noticing another. He paused be-side her, bent toward the pretty woman, and with a smile that any onlooker would have found unmistakable, said in her ear, "Since it's my throne we're talking about, madam, and my country, I'd best be there too. Don't you think?" Eftgan smiled back, the same smile. "Sir," she whispered, "that sounds good to me."

The room had become such a merry hurly-burly of laughter and clapping that saying anything and having it heard was becoming impossible. Freelorn went off for his drink, leaving Eftgan to say silently, and with some diffidence, ('Berend, have you taken a mind-hurt recently? There's a darkness down there that didn't used to be. Is there anything I can do?) (Dear heart, I don't think so,) she said silently. (I'm told the change is permanent.) (You mean She—)

(No. Well, not directly. If you want to take a look. .) (Yes.)

Across the room, their eyes caught and held, then dropped again as their minds fell together in that companionable meld that had always come so easily.

Segnbora saw and felt, in a few breaths" space, a rush of images, that were Eftgan's surface memories of the past four years. Initiation into the royal priesthood, her brother's death, and her own investiture as Queen. The hot morning spent hammering out her crown, in the great square of Dar-ttiis, alone and unguarded, wondering whether someone would come out of the gathered crowd to kill her, as was her people's right if they felt her reign would not be prosperous. Worries about Arlen and, the usurper who sat in power there, making raids on her borders. Marriage to her loved, Wyn s'Heleth. Childbirth, midnight feedings, Narnings, ceremo-nies, the rites of life, all tumbled together with the lesser and greater drudgeries of queenship: mornings in court-justice, evenings spent in the difficult wreakings that were necessary

to buy her land temporary reprieve from the hunger and death creeping toward its borders.

There was more. Border problems. Reavers gathering in ever greater numbers on the far side of the mountain passes, pouring through them almost as if in migration. The loss of communications with numerous villages in the far south— suggesting that their Rodmistresses were dead. The loss of one of her best intelligencers here in Chavi, some weeks back. The sudden, urgent true-dream that showed Eftgan plainly the reason for all the Reaver movements of late. This last discovery had been more shocking than anything the Queen had been willing to imagine.

She had been so shocked, in fact, that she had not once, but several times, opened and used the Kings* Door, the danger-ous worldgate in the Black Palace at Darthis. She had done so tonight, and so here she sat in faded woolens and patched cloak and embroidered white shirt, like any countrywoman with a pot of beer. Yet her eyes were open for trouble, and for the answers she had been promised. Her Rod was sheathed and ready at her side.

Segnbora touched lightly on all these things, meanwhile letting Eftgan do what she didn't trust the mdeihei to do: turn over her memories one by one. When they were done, Segn-bora saw Eftgan stare down inside her at a shape burning in iron and diamond. Hasai stared back up, bowed his head and lifted his wings in calm greeting, then went back about his own concerns, singing something low and solemn to the rest of the mdeikei.

When their glances rested in one another's eyes again, Segnbora and Eftgan both breathed a sigh of relief at the end of the exertion. (He's very big,) Eftgan said. (And how many others are in there?)

(Maybe a couple hundred. I tried counting and had to give up. They don't count the way we do, and I could never get our tallies to agree. Tegane, what's bringing all these Reavers down on us? You saw something—)

(I did.) Eftgan was profoundly disturbed inside, (Part of the reason is storms. Their weather Is worsening. It was never very good to begin with, and now the Reaver tribes farthest south are faced with a choice. Either they move north or freeze even at Midsummer. The tribes already

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close to us are feeling the pressure. There are more people hunting those lands than the available game can support. Thinking Fyrd are driving them too. But worse than that—)

(What could be worse!) (Cillmod is in league with them,) Eftgan said, sour-faced, (and the Shadow is directing them all.) Segnbora stared, then took a long drink to hide her nerv-ousness.

(There's worse yet to come,) the Queen said. (My Lady tells me that a great shifting and unbalancing of Powers is about to occur in the area around Barachael during the dark of the next Moon. On one hand, Reavers are gathering on the far side of the Barachael Pass, as if for a great incursion. On the other—) The Queen took a drink. (On the other, we're due for a eight of three Lights shortly. And that means that Glass-castle will appear. Now, what might, go into Glasscastle doesn't concern me. What might come out of it does. Unhu-man things, monsters, have been summoned out of there before by sorcerers of foul intent—)

(But who in the Kingdoms would do something like that? That whole area is soaked with old blood! Nine chances out of ten, a sorcery would go askew—)

(No one' in the Kingdoms would attempt such a thing,) Eftgan said. (But I have other news. The dying thought of a certain Rodrnistress managed to reach me, even though her bones had just been turned to flour inside her,) "What!" Segnbora said aloud, in utter shock. She drank again to silence herself.

(The Reavers have got sorcerers now. Apparently someone has gotten a few of them over their fear of magic. It is that individual, who surely has no knowledge or concern for sor-cerous balances, who worries me. Think what horrors he wight, call forth from Glasscastle! He could easily protect the Reaver incursion, and destroy our defense — what, then?)

Segnbora thought of Herewiss's dream, of mountains fall-ing on mountains, and blood on the Moon, and said, nothing. (I need him,) said Eftgan, catching the images, which were in agreement with those in her own true-dream. (I can't be in all the places I must be, just now. One of my other spies tells me that Cillmod and some of his mercenaries are about to attack my granaries at Orsvier. I must be there to lead the defense. But Glasscastle and Barachael also have to be pro-tected, and it will take Fire of an extraordinary level to man-age that. Up until now, I thought I was the only one in Darthen who had achieved that level. Now—) She looked over toward where Herewiss stood by the hearth, grinning at the applause he was receiving for his "sorcery." (I can't tell you how glad I am to be surpassed,) Eftgan said. (Especially at a time like this, when everything seems to be happening at once.)

(Queen,) Segnbora said, (you say that everything's happen-ing at once. . well, he's one of the reasons.)

Eftgan nodded, understanding. Then, as Herewiss stepped away from the hearth, she crossed glances with him, a "let's-talk" look.

(I'll see you later, TegЈne,) Segnbora said, putting her drink aside, and headed for the door that gave onto the back of the inn.

Lang was hurrying in as she stepped out. "You on now?" Segnbora said. "Uh-huh. Wish me luck." "You won't need it. Except maybe to keep yourself from being knocked unconscious by the money they'll throw."

Lang smiled. "Where're you headed? — Oh, my Goddess," he said. Before Segnbora could say anything about either the Queen or her own increasingly urgent need to find a friendly bush, Lang had spotted Eftgan. "She's here? After seven years, she finally tracked down poor Dritt and Moris!"

"Ssssh. Tell the two of them to keep mum; something's on the spit, I'm not sure what yet."

Lang said nothing, only touched her shoulder gently as she went past, out into the alley and the cool air.

A shiver went down her back. It was more than just a reac-tion to the coolness outside, after the heat and smoke of the inn. Cillmod in league with the Shadow? She drew up her gown to keep it off the wet ground, and went down the alley behind

the inn, looking for a drier spot to take care of her business. The alley ended in a cobbled street that led to the town's fields through an unguarded

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Quietly Segnbora walked down the street, patting Char-riselm once to make sure it was loose in the sheath, unbarred the gate, and slipped out. She relieved herself in the shadow of one of the ubiquitous hawthorn hedges, then stood stretch-ing awhile, listening to the night and letting herself calm down. Far behind her, the sound of Lang's baritone escaped through the inn's back door, following the lighter notes of the lute through the reflective minor chords of "The Goddess's Riding":

"… But if I speak with yon Lady bright, I wis my heart will bryst in three; Now shall I go with all my might Her for to meet beneath Her tree "

"Tegane," Segnbora whispered, smiling. Moon-bright, the nickname said in Darthene. Eftgan had liked it; she had never been terribly fond of her right name. In fact, she had returned the favor, turning segnbora, "standard-bearer," into 'berend, a verb. It meant "swift-rushing": impetuous, always in a hurry, sometimes too much of one — as when the Maiden had let Death into the worlds by accident.

And as their names, so they had been together while they were in love: Eftgan swinging slow and steady through her moods, like the Moon, waxing and waning, giving and with-holding; Segnbora pushing, hurrying, urging, not sure what she wanted but not willing to wait long for it. The senior Rodmistresses had paired them off to work to-gether in hopes that Eftgan's Fire, unusually intense for a sixteen year old, might influence Segnbora's enough to make her focus. They expected the play-sharing that usually took place between work partners to make the two novices' pat-terns match more closely. No one, however, had expected these two, who were so unlike — one a tall, loud, spindly daughter of hedge— nobility, the other a small, compact, quiet daughter of the Eagle — to fall in love. . Segnbora thought of the day Eftgan had had to leave the

Precincts. It was sudden. Her brother Bryn had been killed by Fyrd while hunting.

"They're going to make me be Queen," Eftgan had said, bitter, standing in the green shade with her face averted from Segnbora. She had been trying not to cry. Tegane—

" 'Berend, you can't do anything for me. Any more than I've been able to do anything for you, all this while. Perhaps its better that I'm leaving now. You can't focus, and I can't be happy around you using the Fire and watching you suffer while I do wreakings. If this kept on much longer, we'd be hating each other."

This was the truth, and it reduced anything Segnbora could have said in reply to a meaningless noise. The two of them stood in the shade, hardly able to look at one another, and made their good-byes. Each laid a kiss in the palm of the other's hand, the restrained and formal farewell between kinsfolk of the Forty Houses.

Then Eftgan turned away and vanished among the green leaves of the outer Precincts; and Segnbora went in deeper, and didn't come out till her soul was cried dry, a matter of some days. .

Now Segnbora stood bemused for a moment, then realized that a dark head seemed to loom just over her shoulder, though of course there was nothing between her and the stars of late spring.

(When you forget me, when you let us be one, it can be this way,) Hasai said, dispassionately. (Do you prefer discomfort, apartness?) She almost said yes, but held her peace. "It was a very private memory," she said quietly. (Sdaha, you still don't understand. You must be who you have been to be who you are.)

Segnbora shook her head, weary. Every time I think I under-stand the mdeihei, I find I don't at all. . She looked out across the field into which she had ducked when she came through the hedge. It was tall with green hay that whispered in the starlight. On an impulse she

THE DOOR INTO SHADOW

tucked her robe up into her swordbelt and started across it, wading waist-deep, enjoying

the sensations: the rasp and itch of the hay against her legs, the darkness, the cool wind. Hasai said nothing, his mind resting alongside hers, tasting the night as she did—

She stopped short in the middle of the field. Something teased at her undersenses, a whiff of wrongness that was out of tune with the clean night. She stood there with eyes closed to "see" better—

(I'm here. I feel it also.) (Come on.)

Seven

"You are cruel," Efmaer said. "More cruel than any legend has ever told."

"No more cruel than humans to themselves, who keep hope as a precious jewel."

Then the Shadow vanished, and Efmaer filled the air where lit had been with curses, and rode away after the soul of her loved..

(Efmaer's Ride, traditional: part

the Second)

Segnbora unsheathed Charriselm and went off eastward through the standing hay. Another hedge loomed up before her, without stile or hedge-gate. With Charriselm she cut an opening, making certain that it would be too small for a cow to escape through in the morning, and squeezed through.

The sour mind-stench she had smelled got stronger by the second, becoming so terrible that Segnbora wondered how she could have missed it from fifty miles away, let alone from the town. At the edge of the field the ground under her feet seemed to be burning with it. Her inner hearing buzzed and roared as if two powerful hands were choking her. She stopped and held still, forcing herself not to gag. The

THE DOOR INTO SHADOW

stench was coming from beneath an old yew with peeling bark and drooping branches.

She walked under the tree and went to her knees. The fallow ground had been plowed almost up to the tree trunk. The furrows lay neat and seemingly undisturbed, yet when Segnbora thrust her hands into the still soft ground and turned it over, she sat back on her heels, sick to her stomach and sicker at heart. There is no mistaking the smell of a grave, especially a shallow one.

Nor was it the only grave. When she found strength to stand again, the death-taint led her to four others scattered around the edges of the field. All were deeper and better concealed, and all were older: the oldest perhaps three months old, the newest about three weeks. So much for Eftgan's messenger, Segnbora thought, standing over the last grave. From the intelligencer's grave and three others, the souls were long flown, despite the brutality of their

deaths. But from the one under the yew tree came a sensation of vague, scattered, helpless loss. There were two souls trapped there, shattered by their murder, trying to coalesce in time to find the Door into Starlight before the strength to pass it was lost. Segnbora swore bitterly, torn with pity for the struggling dead and her own inability to do anything for them. Sorcery has no power over the opening or closing of that final Door. She knew the protocols for the laying of the dead, but without Fire they were useless to her. But Herewiss, or Eftgan—

She headed back for town at a run, pausing outside the postern gate to remove the sticktights and hay blades from her clothes. The inn's

common room was, if possible, noisier than it had been. There were perhaps one hundred people there, laughing, joking,

singing — Segnbora's hair stood up at the thought that any one of them might be a murderer several times over.

She found Freelorn relieving the barmaid of another bottle of potato wine, and swung him aside. "Lorn, where's Here-wiss gone?"

"He's still out talking to—" Lorn stopped short of saying the Queen's name, then looked more closely at Segnbora. "You're shaking!"

"Lorn, never mind. Smile! There's something very wrong and we're not supposed to know about it. Take your time but find Herewiss—"

"— so if the others agree, we'll go to Barachael," Herewiss's voice said suddenly as he came up behind Freelorn from the other side. "It's as

good a place to hide as any, and it's a lot closer to Arlen than we are now. . What's wrong?" he said, looking at Segnbora. His

underhearing brought him an an-swer that made his eyes go wide with shock. "Show us," he said. "Lorn, go out the front way. I'll take the

side. By the postern gate?"

Segnbora nodded and went out the way she had come, doing her best to take her time. Lorn and Herewiss were through the postern and into the hay ahead of her. She tied up her gown again and hurried after. "Eftgan's gone to readjust her Door," Herewiss said when

she reached them. "It may take her a little while — seven peo-ple, six horses, and Sunspark are a larger group than usually uses that gateway." He lowered his voice. "I think she's ready to back Lorn against Cillmod, openly. She'll give us the de-tails tomorrow, at Barachael."

"That's wonderful," Segnbora said, "but with the problems she's been having she's hardly in a position to leave Barachael for a campaign in Arlen."

"True. However, I believe I can help her, and thus free her to help us in return. You see, the Reavers are pouring through Chaelonde Pass, and it's a simple enough matter to close that avenue—"

"But the Queen's Rodmis tresses have been doing illusion-wreakings there for years," Segnbora objected. "They're no longer strong enough. People have been dying in that pass for centuries, and the built-up negative energies are enough to ruin even the best Rodmis

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tress's work."

"Oh, I'm not planning mere illusions. I'm planning some-thing more powerful, and less subtle: a sealing."

"You mean physically closing the pass?'* Freelorn said, stunned. "Shaking down a few mountains?" "That's right." "You call that simple?"

"Simple, yes. And dangerous, too. It will require much Power, but then it's also less likely that something will go wrong …"

They slowed as they approached the spot Segnbora had sensed before. Herewiss looked at her as he let drop what he had been saying. A long moment passed.

"How long have the people in the grave been dead?" he asked her. "Grave?"

"A week or so, I think. They're weak. They were getting along in years, I believe, and the shock of their death was considerable. You have the protocols—" "I have them."

"Protocols, what protocols?" Freelom said. "For raising the dead,'"' Herewiss said. "Stay dose, Lorn, I'm going to need you. . Oh, sweet Mother," he added as

the sour smell of murder hit him. Segnbora was already tear-ing — the psychic residue of violence became not easier, but harder to handle with exposure.

"Goddess, what 15 that," Freelom said, and coughed. Both Segnbora and Herewiss looked at him, surprised. "You smell something?" Herewiss said. "Don't you? Like a channel pit." Freelom coughed again. Herewiss looked most thoughtful, for the graves were cov-ered and the night air was sweet even here; the stench was purely a matter of the undersenses.

They came to the yew tree, and stopped. Quickly, for the smell was now overwhelming, Herewiss reached over his shoulder and drew Khavrinen. Its Fire, suppressed all through the evening, now flared up, a hot blue-white. Concerned, Segnbora threw a look over her shoulder at the walls of Chavi.

"Only our own people and Eftgan will be able to see the Fire," Herewiss said, quiet-voiced, slipping into the calm he would need for his wreaking. "Now then. ."

The wavering of Flame about Khavrinen grew less hurried as its master calmed, yet there was still a great tension in every curl and curve of the Flame. With the tip of the sword, Here-wiss drew a circle around the tree, the graves, Freelorn, and Segnbora. Where Kh&vrinen's point cut the fallow ground, Fire remained, until at the circle's end it flowed into itself, a seamless circle of blue Flame that licked and wreathed up-ward. Finally, when the three of them had stepped inside the circle, Herewiss thrust Khavrinen span-deep into the soft dirt, laid his hands, one over the other, on the sword's fiery hilt, and began the wreaking. "Erhn tot 'mis kuithen, dstehae sschur; nsven kes uibrm—"

The words were in a more ancient dialect of Nhaired than any Segnbora had been taught. Even in Nhaired, which held within it many odd rhythms, the scansion of this wreaking-rhyrne was bizarre. Freelorn was fidgeting, watching his loved with unease as Herewiss reassured the trembling yew and the murder-stained earth that he was about to end their pain, not niake it worse. He stood and called the Power up out of him, sweating. The circle's Fire reached higher, twisting, wreathing, matching the interlock of word with word, of thought with rhyme—

Herewiss poured out the words, poured out the Flame, profligate. Power built and built in the circle until it numbed the mind, until the eyes

saw nothing anywhere but blue Fire, and a man-shaped shadow at the heart of it, the summoner.

Segnbora was overwhelmed. She did the only thing safe to do — turned around inside herself and fled down to the dark place in search of Hasai. His Power, he has too much! No one can have that much! she thought. Once in her own depths she could see nothing but burning blue light, but at last she stumbled into Hasai and flung her arms around a hot, stony talon. Concerned, the Dragon lowered his head protectively over her.

Outside, after what seemed an eternity of blueness, tension ebbed. Segnbora dared to look out of herself again and saw the pillar of Fire that wreathed about Herewiss diminish slightly as he released his wreaking to seek outside the circle for the fragments of the murdered people's souls. He spoke on, in a different rhythm now, low and insistent, urging out-ward the unseen web the Fire had woven of itself, moving it as an ebb tide pushes a thrown net away from shore. When the web had drifted across the entire field, he reversed the meter of his poetry and began pulling it in again.

Segnbora swallowed hard. Light followed the blue-glitter-ing weave; dusts and motes and sparkles drifted inward, small coalescing clouds of pallid light. They drifted inward faster now, coiling into two separate sources; they grew brighter and brighter, tightening to cores of light that pulsed in time with Herewiss's verse. A last sharp word from Herewiss, a last burst of blue light, dazzling— The Fire of the circle died down to a twilight shimmer, though about Herewiss and Khavrineti, Flame still twined bright. Segnbora found herself looking at two solid-seeming people — a man, shorter than herself, middle-aged, stocky, with a blunt, worn face; a woman of about the same age, still shorter, but more slender for her height. They both looked weary and confused. Segnbora gazed at them pityingly in that first second or so, seeing strangers—

Her husband's eyes hardened, a flash of life left. "Why did they bother with such illusions? Wr e have no money—"

Herewiss stood without moving, although through her shock Segnbora saw him swallow four times before he could get his voice to work.

"Sir," he said, "madam … It was no illusion that was wrought upon you."

"Hoi," Segnbora's mother said, stepping forward to get a better look at Herewiss. She moved like a sleepwalker. "Hoi, this isn't one of them—"

Holmaern looked not at Herewiss's face, but at his sword. "That's impossible. Men don't have Fire!" The words came with a flash of disbelief and scorn. Segnbora remembered too well his bitterness over the fact that, despite all the money he had spent, she had never focused.

"Tins man has it," her mother said, a touch of wonder piercing the sleepy sound of her voice. "Sir, did you save us?" "Lady Welcaen," Herewiss said. "I didn't save you. Of your courtesy, tell me what brought you to the inn here."

"Reavers," she said, dreamy voiced, as if telling of a threat years and miles gone. "They came down through the moun-tains at Onther looking for food, and overran the farmsteads. We and a few of our neighbors had warning. Wr e got away north before the burnings, and told

our news here, to the innkeeper, so he could spread it among those of this town. And tonight he woke us up—"'. '.vm' Holmaern turned to his wife, slow realization changing his expression to a different kind of dullness. " 'Kani," he said. He reached out to

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touch her, but it was plain from his expres-sion that she didn't feel as he expected her to. " 'Kani, we're dead." Segnbora saw her mother's eyes go terrible with the truth. "Oh. . but then. . where is the last Shore?"

Herewiss stared down at Khavrinen, and Segnbora felt him calling up the Power again, a great wash of it. This time it took a strange and frightening shape, one she didn't know.

"I am the way," he said, speaking another's words for Her. He let go of Khavrinen and lifted his arms, opening them to her mother and father. They gazed at him in wonder. Freelorn, across the circle, went pale. Segnbora trembled at the sight of him. Herewiss was still there as much as any of them, but within the outlines of his body the stars blazed, more brilliant than they had been even in Hasai's memory of the gulf between worlds. Herewiss trembled too, but his voice was steady. "Who will be first?" he said.

Holmaern held Welcaen close. "Can't we go together?" Herewiss shook his head sorrowfully. "I'm too narrow a Door," he said. "Besides, even at the usual Door, everyone goes through alone.

м

Husband and wife looked at one another. "We have a daughter," her mother said after a moment. She glanced around the field, but saw nothing. "Will you send her word—?"

Segnbora's heart turned over and broke inside her. "Segnbora d'Welcaen tai-Enraesi is her name," her father said, and even through the dullness it came out proudly. "She was eastaway in Steldin last we heard. Please tell her. . tell her that we love her." "Come on, Hoi," her mother said then. "We've got time to go-"

Herewiss opened his arms. Welcaen moved into them, throwing a last glance at her husband on the threshold of true death. "I'll wait for you," she said.

Herewiss embraced her, and she was gone. r; A aie? h?;y

Next Holmaern stepped slowly forward. When he was still one pace away, however, he paused, a last glimmer of earthly concern showing in his eyes. He spoke to Herewiss. "Sir, you will tell her, won't you? She is my daughter, and although I have been slow to say so, she is very dear to me."

"Your message has already reached her," Herewiss assured him.

Holmaern looked relieved. With a nod of thanks, he gath-ered Herewiss close, passed through, and was gone.

Khavrinen's Fire went out, and the circle faded to a blue smolder and died. Beside his now-dark sword Herewiss went slowly to his knees, and sobbed once, bitterly.

"That's not the way it is supposed to be." He gasped again. "Lorn, it was supposed to be life I give—"

Freelorn went to him, and held him close. "And what kind of life would they have had, dead and on the wrong side of the Door?" Segnbora stood still, seeing behind her eyes, with the im-mediacy that came of Hasai's presence, old lost times: sum-mer mornings in Asfahaeg, rich with the smell of sunlight and the Sea; winter nights by the old hearthside in Darthis; after-noons weaving with her father, riding with her mother; laugh-ter, anger, argument, joy, the sounds of life. She turned and walked away, back toward town. The purpose behind her stride caught up with her at about the same time that Freelorn and Herewiss did, in the middle of the hayfield. They stopped her, looked at her as if expect-ing her to lapse again into a state of madness like that she had experienced after the Fane. "Well? What's the problem?" she asked, her anger hot and quick.

"What are you going to do?" Freelorn asked warily. Charriselm's grip was sweaty in her hand as she thought of the innkeeper — hurried, merry, sharp-faced, with eyes that wouldn't meet hers.

"I'm going to kill someone," she said, and shook out of their grasp. " 'Berend—" Freelorn said.

She ignored him, hurrying off through the hay. Didn't he realize that it wasn't only because of her parents that she had

to do this? Lorn's people might easily have been the next victims, bringing — as might be thought — news from the South. She at least would have to be killed, since she wore the same arms as two others who were silenced, and was thus probably in search of them. Behind her she could feel Fire stirring again. Herewiss had begun another wreaking. She understood why. He was a strategist. He would count it folly to kill a spy, and thus alert the spy's superiors to the fact that that someone had discov-ered the game they played. He was building around the inn-keeper a wreaking that would later cause the man to believe he had murdered those whom he was duty-bound to murder, when in fact they would go on their way, unnoticed and un-harmed. It was all perfectly sensible, and Segnbora despised the idea.

(My way is more efficient,) she said, silent and bitter. (He won't know what's happened to him until a second after I hit him, when he tries to move and falls over in two pieces. And as for his wife—)

She went quietly through the postern, expecting an empty street. Instead, Moris and Dritt were there. So was Harald, standing about silently with their horses. Lang had just joined them, along with Eftgan, who had her cloak about her shoul-ders and her unsheathed white Rod in her hand.

Segnbora would have brushed past the Queen to take care of her unfinished business in the inn, but Eftgan's hand on her arm, together with her look of deepening concern at the taste of Segnbora's mind, stopped Segnbora as if she had walked into a wall.

" 'Berend? What happened?" Segnbora looked down at Eftgan's brown eyes, so like her mother's, and flinched away, unable to bear it.

"Oh, my Goddess," Eftgan said. "Herewiss?" A breath's worth of silence sufficed for Herewiss to show Eftgan what Segnbora had found, what he had done for her parents, and the dream-wreaking he had woven and im-planted in the innkeeper, and afterward in his wife.

"Can we get out of here now?" he said, sounding deadly tired. Sunspark paced to him in its stallion shape, and Herewiss leaned on it, sagging like a man near exhaustion. It looked at him in concern.

"Done," said the Queen, and gestured with her Rod at the ground where she stood. The wreaking she had been main-taining until they arrived leaped upward from the stone and wove itself on the air, a warp and weft of blue Fire that out-lined a small squarish doorway. The doorway flashed com-pletely blue for a moment and then blacked out — but the black was that of a different night, a long way off. The Door sucked in air. On the other side they could see smooth paving, a better road than that of the damp cobbles of Chavi. "Hurry up," Eftgan said. "It's a strain to hold it for this many, and the Kings' Door is unpredictable."

One by one they went through, each leading a horse. Eftgan stood to one side of the Door, Flame running down her Rod and keeping the lintels alight. Lang stepped through before Segnbora, his eyes on her, looking worried. Numb, she fol-lowed him. The one step took her from the wet lowland air of Chavi, air stinking of death, into air colder, purer, but not entirely clean of the taste. Her ears popped painfully. The night was perhaps an hour further along here; the stars had shifted, in one part of the sky they were missing entirely. She looked around the paved courtyard where Freelorn's people milled, among horses and men and women in the midnight blue of Darthen. Over the low northward wall she could see faintly, in the starshine, the valley where she had sometimes lived as a child, with the braided Chaelonde run-ning through it. Many a time she had stood down there look-ing up at the place where she stood now — Sai khas-Barachael Fortress, the black sentinel perched on an outthrust root of one of the Highpeaks.

Dully, she looked southward to where the stars were blocked from the sky. Looming over khas-Barachael, shadowy dark below and pale with starlight above, the snows of Mount Adine brooded, impassive and cruel.

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"It's late," Freelorn was saying. "We'll meet in the morn-ing, all of us. Meanwhile, does the Queen's hospitality extend to a drink?" Segnbora saw to Steelsheen's stabling and made sure her

corncrib was full, then followed Lang (who seemed to be beside her every time she turned around) to a warmly lit room faced in black stone. There was hot wine, and she drank a great deal of it. The explanations went on and on around her, but she was never as dead to them as she wanted to be.

Snatches of conversation and random thoughts faded in and out of hearing, as they had when she had first come down from the Morrowfane. She would have welcomed Hasai's darkness to flee to again, but she couldn't find it. He and the mdeihei were, for once, too remote. They wanted nothing to do with her, the mdeihei. She was too familiar with the kind of death to which they couldn't admit. She was carrier of a conta-gion of terror and impossibility. The more she tried to ap-proach, the more they fled her, afraid of any death in which one could lose oneself.

Somehow she found her way off to the tower room they had given her, and to bed. Lang was there too. He held her, and she clutched him, but she found no comfort in his presence. Her thoughts were full of graves, bare dirt, eyes that looked right through her. Her mind talked constantly, again and again making the most terrible admission a sensitive could make: / never felt you die. I never felt it. Tears were a long time coming, but they found her at last; and Lang, more hero than she had ever been, held her and bore the brunt of her blows and cries and impotent rage. Bitterness and a shameful desire for vengeance; they were all still tangled in her at the end, but she knew at least she would be able to sleep. For tonight.

Over the bed and the room and the fortress, like a great weight, loomed the thought of Adme, and a line from the old family rede, which now might have a chance to come true: There will come a time of ice and darkness, and then the last of the tai-Enraesi will die. Flee the fate as you may, you shall know no peace until the blade Jinds your own heart, and lets the darkness in. …

Darkness. That was the key. One Whose sign and chosen hiding place was darkness was coming after Herewiss and Freelorn. She had chosen to ride with them, and to defy It. And It hated defiance, and never failed to reward it with pain of one kind or another.

She could leave Lorn now, and her troubles would cease, or she could stay with him, and they would almost certainly get worse. The Dark One obviously had it in for her. But what could be worse than a head full of Dragons, and to suddenly find oneself orphaned, she couldn't imagine.

Beside her, Lang turned over and started to snore. She lay there for a long time with the tears running down the sides of her face into her ears. And chose again.

Shadow, she thought at last, it's war between us from now on. I'll die soon enough. But You won't get Lorn — or anybody else, if I can help it. The darkness about her teemed with silent, derisive laugh-ter. She turned her back on it and went to sleep.

Eight

Kings build the bridges from earth to heaven. But it is their subjects' decision whether or not to cross — and if they do, there is no guaranteeing the nature of the result. On tfre Royal Priesthood, Arien d'Lhared

'Iff-1

People who live in the Highpeaks find it easy to believe the old story that the Maiden creates the World anew, every day, for the sheer joy of it. Astonishing dawns come there. Later, the face of a mountain changes as the shadows swing across it, revealing a new countenance every quarter hour. Still later come sunsets that run blood down cornices of snow, or light a whole range as if from within, until it all seems one great burning opal. Then twilight dissolves everything, leaving only shadows where peaks have been; cut-out patches on the sky, from which the mischievous Maiden has removed the moun-tains so She can rework them for the next day.

Huddled in her cloak, Segnbora leaned on her elbows on a battlement of Sai khas-Barachael at dawn, watching the mountains come back. The Sun was up, though not yet visible past the eastern peaks. Beneath her Barachael valley was still hidden in shadow and morning mist. The valley was nearly circular. The walls broke only at the far northern end, where a quarter-arc of the circle was missing and the land

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sloped down northward toward the rest of Darthen. Khas-Barachael fortress stood on the northernmost spur of high ground, on the western side of the break, commanding a view of both the Darthene plains and the valley.

Segnbora gazed across the gap, though which the little braided Chaelonde River ran down from its glacier, toward the mountains that reached long spurs to each other and made the rest of the ring. First came Aulys, right across the gap, like an eagle with bowed head and drooping wings. South and west of it Houndstooth reared, smooth and pol-ished-looking, and armed with avalanches. West of Hounds —

tooth, between it and the next mountain, was a shadowy spot — the north end of the Eisargir Pass, through which Reavers lad been raiding for food and metal since time immemorial. Tien Eisargir himself, like a great stone rose unfolding with lis down-spiraling spurs. Westward again lay a low col or [saddle between mountains, over which looked red Tamien. Tien came rising ground that grew into the long northeast— jointing Adine massif.

Segnbora looked over her shoulder, scanning the long crest line. It was scarred on both sides with old glacial cirques; jscraped-out bowls of stone. One such bowl was still full: the [South Face cirque beneath the lesser, southern peak of Adine. lice spilled over from it to feed the glacial lake which in turn fed the Chaelonde. Every now and then the morning stillness ld be broken by a remote groan or a huge crashing snap, lade tiny by distance, as the glacier calved off an iceberg into [the lake.

Above the glacier, and above the eminence of Sai khas-larachael two thousand feet above the valley floor, Mount idine loomed like a crooked, ruined tower. Its greater peak fstood two miles higher than khas-Barachael and a sheer league above town in the valley's depths. Segnbora shud-lered, though whether from morning's cold or a feeling of threat she didn't know. A breath later, the Sun rose through the gap between Aulys and Houndstooth and touched on the lesser Adine summit. There, tiny and sharp, a line of some-thing silvery glittered; the Skybridge, bright even against the)linding white of the peak on which it stood.

Segnbora shuddered again, this time knowing why. Uncon-:erned, Hasai said from inside her, (We thought about living there, once. .) (Under the bridge? I thought Dragons didn't care to live fhere the shadowed powers are.)

(We don't. When we saw what happened at certain times of ('ear, we abandoned plans to make a Marchward there. Also there are weaknesses in the valley, and we were afraid we fould disrupt the land if we worked as deep into that main lassif as we normally would.) (This was how long ago?)

Hasai looked at his memories and counted the passing suns backward in his mind. (Fifteen hundred years or so.) (That long. .)

Segnbora moved away from the wall and walked along it, southward, to a corner where she could better see the Eisargir Pass. The increasing light was already revealing the reddish tinge to the rocks where they were bare of snow. There under Eisargir lay the oldest mines in Darthen. From them came the finest iron in the Kingdoms; iron from which the people of Barachael made the matchless Masterforge steel. Goddess only knew how many times Barachael had been raided, burned, and razed by the Reavers, who came down the Eisargir Pass again and again on their forays into the Kingdoms.

Those forays had been one of the deadlier aspects of life in the South for a long, long time. No one knew much about the Reavers; their language was utterly different from any spoken in the Kingdoms. But prisoners taken in battle had revealed a little of their lives. The countries overmountain were short of iron. Indeed, one had merely to examine the Reaver bodies on any battlefield to see that: Their weapons were largely flint-tipped spears and arrows. Some were not tipped at all, but were mere sharpened sticks blackened and hardened in fire. Because of their lack of metal the overmountain tribes were small and poor. In the high cold South few crops grew and little game

could flourish. So it had been until twelve or thirteen hundred years before, when some desperately hun-gry Reaver tribe had followed a

game migration northward instead of southward … and had discovered the Eisargir Pass, and Darthen, and steel.

Those first Reavers were no fools. They saw that the rich-ness of the farmland below them was not all to the credit of the warmer climate.

They discovered the plow and the sword. They stole as many of both as possible, and fled back over-mountain with them to change their

world.

The tribes that followed grew swiftly in, power, becoming more successful as both hunters and warriors. In no time the old balance of power was upset. Tribes skirmished, merged, conquered, or dominated one another, grew more numerous, extended their hunting grounds. Game became scarce as they

overhunted their lands. Their agriculture languished, as it usually does in lands where war has become a profitable pas-time. Already a nomadic people during their short summer, the Reavers took wholeheartedly to a raiding lifestyle in order to survive in their unbalanced world. When the weather broke in the spring and the passes opened, they would raid north-ward, spending the spring and summer raiding for loot and cattle, but most of all for steel to use in their endless tribal quarrels. Time and again Barachael was attacked, looted, and burned— Again and again the town was rebuilt, too. Neither the stubborn smith-sorcerers who lived there, nor the Darthene crown that ruled them, would give up the Eisargir mines. Sai khas-Barachael was built on the northernmost Adine spur to keep an eye on the Eisargir incursion route, but even its formidable presence did not deter the Reavers. They con-tinued to raid, though more circumspectly, and in greater numbers, so that the battle for the Chaelonde valley was never over. Only Bluepeak had ever seen more blood shed on its behalf.

The thought of battle, of blood, was not a welcome one that morning. Segnbora turned her back on the southern prospect and walked north along the wall. But that view held no com-fort for her either. Northward the highlands fell away to the green and golden plains. On the plains, far out of sight but clear in her mind, was Darthis, her family's formal home, and the only one remaining, now that Asfahaeg was sold and Wasten Beeches sacked by Reavers.

There in Darthis, on Potboilers' Street just outside the old second wall, stood the little stone house with doors and win-dows shuttered blind, and the tai-Enraesi lioncelle carved over the passage to the horseyard. Her mother wouldn't be singing in the armory anymore, her father wouldn't be re-hanging the bedroom shutter that was always falling down. There was only one person left to carry the lioncelle; and how long even that one would survive she couldn't tell. Ice and darkness. . (Those who sired you?) Hasai said diffidently, (is that question what concerns you? Since last night there's been a— I don't know what you would call it — an opening in the depths—)

She blinked back sudden tears, and her mouth was grim. (Mdaha, forget it, they're rdahaih. They're gone and I'll never see them again, not till I pass the last Door. Maybe not even then.)

She felt him turn his head away, a gesture of shock and sorrow at her hard words and her pain. (Their souls live yet, don't they?)

(They do. It might have been otherwise if we hadn't found them in time.) Her rage at the murdering innkeeper, which had been gnawing at her like an ulcer all the night before, flared up hot again. She turned her back to the wall, to the wind.

After a long time Hasai said, (We didn't understand this business — or believe it.) In his voice there was distress. Far back in her inner darkness, the mdeihei were singing a mourn-ful bass cadence, both dirge and apology. (You humans throw yourselves so willingly into strifes and dangers that we thought surely you must go mdahaih somehow. Otherwise it seemed a madness—)

(We don't get the same life twice. Or know the same people twice. So in this life we fight for what matters. Herewiss fights for Lorn, and Lorn for his kingship. All of us fight for our own happiness, as best we can. Once past the Door, it's done forever.) Hasai fell silent again. The same fear, of not-being, and not-remembering, was at the heart of the terror of going rdahaih, and nothing could frighten a Dragon more. She heard Hasai wondering what would become of him and the mdeihei when her time came to change bodies. Perhaps this human death would be more final and terrible, in its way, than going rdahaih. Segnbora's pain turned to sorrow for

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the fear she had planted in him.

(Mdaha,) she said, (I'm sorry. But you and I, we're an exper-iment, it seems. If it'll make you feel better, I intend to put off my death as long as possible.)

His low rumbling sigh of agreement mingled with the sound of steps on stone. Segnbora looked southward along

the wall. Eftgan was coming, not in country clothes, this morning, but dressed for battle: boots and britches, jerkin and mailshirt, and the Darthene midnight blue surcoat bla-zoned with the undifferenced royal arms — the White Eagle in trian aspect, wings spread, striking. Eftgan's sheathed Rod still bumped at her side, but she was carrying another weapon over her shoulder. It was F6rlennh BrokenBlade, Earn's sword, without which no Darthene ruler went to war.

Eftgan was a fair sight, and even a little funny, bumping down the parapet toward Segnbora with a sword over her shoulder that was almost as long as she was. Segnbora remembered the days when Eftgan had been her wreaking-partner in the Precincts. Back then she had refused to wear any gear more complicated than a belt for her tunic, or maybe a ribbon in her hair. Evidently queenship had brought some changes. Segnbora smiled, and wiped her nose as Eftgan came up and leaned on the parapet beside her. "Fair morn, your grace."

"Oh, don't be formal," Eftgan said, making a sour face. "I have enough problems today. Your friends are looking for you, 'Berend." "I dare say. I needed to get away from their watchful eyes for a while."

Eftgan looked somber. "I didn't say it last night — you were getting drunk and I didn't want to interfere — but I share your grief, dear." "May our pain soon be healed," Segnbora said. They were words she had thought she wouldn't have to say for years yet. She sighed and gazed down at Barachael town with its moat and ditches and star fortifications. "Where are you off to?"

"Orsvier, as soon as I'm finished here. A force of Reavers and mercenaries is forming there to raid the granaries. There will be a thousand

or more gathered by nightfall. They'll attack tonight, or tomorrow morning perhaps."

"Goddess," said Segnbora, disturbed. "More mercenaries. . Where is Cillmod getting them all?"

"Most of them are Steldenes. Some are even Steldene regu-lars; evidently King Dariw sold their services to Cillmod at a discount to make up for letting Freelorn get away."

Segnbora went cold at the thought of what might have happened had she not stepped into a certain alley in Madeil one night. She shook her head. "How do you stand?" "A thousand foot, five hundred horse, thirty sorcerers, and the right is on our side. Whether that'll be enough, I don't know." Eftgan let out a tired breath and fell silent.

Segnbora thought of Herewiss standing on the Morrow-fane, an open challenge to the Shadow. Obviously It had taken up the challenge. These latest incursions by the Reavers were too well timed, and too well organized, to be coinci-dence.

"Have any suggestions for me?" Eftgan said. Segnbora put an eyebrow up. "The Queen's grace hardly needs to discuss battle tactics with an outlaw." "With an outlaw, no. But with the head of one of the Forty Houses—" Segnbora winced.

" 'Berend, I'm sorry," Eftgan said, "but you had better face up to it. You're now the tai-Enraesi, and I have the right to require your advice as such." "For what it's worth."

"Your present position makes it worth more than old Arian's, say, sitting up north on his moneybags. Stop thinking of yourself as 'landless' and 'poverty-stricken,' and tell me what I should do about Freelorn." "You should ask him that," said Segnbora. "Or Herewiss."

"I have. And they've been very cautious and polite. But that doesn't tell me what to do, really. Consider my position. . even if we put down the present incursion, Darthen is still suffering worse and worse harvests, things are coming over the borders of the Waste that shouldn't be, Arlen is yapping at my western border, the Oath that made those borders safe is in pieces, and the Reavers are coming out of every bolt hole like rats out of a burning granary." Eftgan sighed.

"Arlen needs someone on that throne who'll enact the royal rites again, and restore one of the Two Lands to normal. And, lo, here's the Lion's Child, sitting right in my lap, want-ing his throne back. The question is, if I spend Darthene blood to put him on his throne, will he fulfill his responsibilities as King, or just sit there collecting taxes and parading around in silks and furs, looking royal?" Segnbora looked her old loved in the eye, reluctant. "I've known him for all of a month—"

"You have underhearing. Better underhearing than mine, if things are the same as they used to be. You know them." She poked Segnbora in the ribs, not entirely out of humor. "The Queen requires your advice, tai-Enraesi. Stop stalling."

She wanted no responsibility for advising Eftgan on such a decision. But she had no choice. "I think Lorn will make a good king," she said. "Better than some who've had long quiet reigns and never been in trouble. He loves his land, and he loves his people. . perhaps too much." "What do you mean?"

"If you made him King one week and halfway through the next told him that the royal sacrifice was necessary, he'd tie himself up in the fivefold bond and tell you to hurry with the knife. He has an unfortunate fondness for death and glory stands, you see. Luckily, he's got Herewiss to advise him. He's as conservative as they come."

Eftgan looked at her squarely. "Does 'Berend, the 'swift-rusher,' say this?" she said. "Or does the tai-Enraesi?"

Segnbora shook her head. "Tegane, after just a month I could tell you endless stories of the noble things he's done. But they'd be just

that — stories. What I know about Lorn is that although I could have hired my sword to any number of high-paying rulers in the Four

Kingdoms, he has something that moved me to swear liege-oath to him."

Eftgan simply kept looking at her. "Loyalty can be blind," she said.

"So can love," Segnbora said, "or so I hear. Tegane, what else can I tell you? I'm fresh out of proofs. But the truth is that he's my liege, and my friend, and once or twice a bit more. And if I go to my death in his service, that's as good a death as any other I'm likely to find." She swallowed. "Segnbora says that, Queen. The standard-bearer. His standard-bearer, for the moment. Will that answer your question?" Eftgan looked away from her, gazing down the vale, north-ward toward the rest of Darthen. She let out a quiet breath of

decision. "Yes," she said. "So be it. And we'll hope that the famous tai-Enraesi luck will stick to him too, just this once. Now, shall we have breakfast?" "Absolutely."

They went together from the wall to the great inner court. Halfway down the stairs, Segnbora suddenly lost her footing and brought up hard against the wall to the left. "Sorry!" she said, and then realized that the wall itself was jittering, and all around them a low mutter of vibration ran through the for-tress. It subsided after a few seconds.

Eftgan let go of the wall, which she also had been holding for support. "Just a little shake," she said. Segnbora gulped as they continued down the rest of the stairs.

"Does it do that often?"

"Two or three times a week, they tell me. Better a lot of little quakes, though, than a big one that would bring the mountains down on the valley. …" They went across the huge paved court, where men and women in Darthene blue were grooming horses and practic-ing at the sword or bow or lance. The court, like the walls that surrounded it, lay in a square around khas-Barachael's central tower. Eftgan led the way in, through a high— roofed hall and up a stair that climbed along one wall. In a smaller room on the next story a table was set under the south-facing windows. Freelorn, Herewiss, Lang, and the others sat there breaking their fast with several of Eftgan's officers. "Sit here," Eftgan said, and pulled out a chair for her be-tween Lang and a Darthene officer.

Segnbora sat down and reached for an empty cup, glancing up and down the table. To her surprise and slight discomfort, she saw that around Lang's left arm, and Dritt's and Moris's and Harald's and Freelorn's, and even Herewiss's, was bound the white cord of mourning. All up and down the table, eyes rested on her with concern. She swallowed hard.

"Wine?" Lang said, reaching for her cup. Her head throbbed at the thought. "Dear Lady, no. Is there barley-water with mint in it, perhaps?" There was; Harald passed it up.

"Segnbora," Eftgan said, "you haven't met Torve, I think. He was raised here."

She turned to the man on her right. He was young, of middle height and build, with dark hair and beard and a slightly reticent smile. His downturned gray eyes, however, smiled even when his lips did not.

"Torve s'Keruer," Eftgan said as the two of them touched hands in greeting, "the Chastellain-major. He runs this place."

"You were raised here?" Segnbora said. Torve nodded. "My mother was the last Chastellain. But she got tired of the long winters and retired to the lowlands. The Queen was good enough to confirm me in her place."

"Anything you need, he'll give you,"Eftgan said. "Thankyou, Queen." "Pardon," Dritt said, and reached across the Queen for the butter.

Eftgan raised a tolerant eyebrow. "His manners haven't improved any," she said, looking with wry amusement at her former court musician. "He used to do that at court too. My father thought sending him to Arlen might put some polish on his manners. But then what does he do but leave his post there, and not send word for seven years…." There was mild chuckling over that. "Of course," Eftgan said, "his liege seems to have done the same thing, and taken the long way home as well."

The laughter was more subdued this time; Lorn shot Eftgan a quick look. Herewiss was suddenly very busy with his por-ridge. "Freelorn," the Queen said, helping herself to bread and holding out a hand for Dritt to return the butter plate, "we've already talked a great deal since last night, but I still have a few questions to ask you." "Ask,"Freelorn said, sounding unconcerned. "What on earth do you want to be a king for?" He looked at her in shock. He took brief refuge in his mulled wine, then said, "It's what I was raised to be."

"Rubbish," Eftgan said merrily but with force. "That's like saying that a slopman's child should spend his life carting slops because his father before him did."

Freelorn stared at Eftgan, his shock growing greater by the moment.

"Look at this," the Queen said, gesturing around the room. It was comfortable enough, on a bright summer morning, but definitely not luxurious. "If I'd had the sense to marry out of the royal line young, I could be spending my day sitting on silken cushions in some mansion in Darthis, eating roast orto-lan and botargoes on toast, taking lovers, going to the races in the daytime and to parties at night. But instead I let them make me Queen."

Segnbora took a long drink of her barley-water, to hide her rueful smile.

"I had to be Queen," Eftgan said again, "and now look what I've got for my troubles. Battlefield food and soldier's quarters, five days out of the ten. Back home in Darthis are three children I hardly ever see, because by the time I'm finished meeting with my ministers all morning, presiding over court-justice all afternoon, and receiving visits — I should say, 'complaints'—from the various members of the Forty Houses all evening, it's long past the children's bedtimes. I say nothing of my bedtime. My husband has to have a separate bedroom so that my reading won't keep him awake all night. In the daytime he has to throw people out of his wineshop because they don't want to buy his wine, they want to buy appointments with me. Even he aches at the end of the day." Freelorn had at this point just gotten around to closing his mouth.

"So do I," Eftgan said. "Sometimes I do more than ache. I get wounds, too. A Queen has to be first in every charge and ' last in every retreat. …" She pulled aside the shoulder of her surcoat, looking under it with a momentarily abstracted air. "I was knifed here, once— No, of course you remember that; you were there. Herewiss stopped the crossbow quarrel, but I got the knife of the Reaver before that one." She pulled the surcoat back in place and spent a moment looking around her plate to find the butterknife. "Bad enough to have to put up with that kind of thing from your enemies. But sooner or later it comes from your own people … in Darthen, at least. One , day when you're hammering out your crown in the Square,

somebody whose crops failed last year comes out of the crowd and runs you through. Or worse, the rains won't come, and all the wreakings and all the royal magics refuse to work. Then there's only one thing that will save the land from famine." She looked down and began slowly buttering her bread. "So you take the knife, and call the person who loves you best in the world to witness the ceremony; and pierce the sky's heart by piercing yours, and cause it to shed rain by shedding blood, and bring the breath of the stormwind by breathing out your last. . " Eftgan's tone all this while had been light, almost matter-of-fact. Now she looked up at Freelorn and, in the profound silence that had fallen around the table, said, "This is a stupid job to go hunting for, Lorn. You were smart to stay away from it as long as you have."

Segnbora listened hard and could have sworn that people were holding their breaths. Only Lorn looked at all normal. The amazement had worn off him; his face was set.

"Eftgan," he said, "I ran away from Arlen because I was afraid of being tortured to death. I still am. But I notice that I'm not running in the opposite direction."

At that Eftgan paused to bite into her bread. She chewed reflectively, and swallowed. "You've had a lot of help."

"I have," he said, with only the swiftest glance to one side at Herewiss. "What is it they always say about lovers? That they usually know your mind better than you do." It was Freelorn's turn to pause now, looking around the table for honey for his porridge. He pointed, and Lang passed it to him. "Herewiss always knew what I wanted — what I really wanted — better than I did. It's a good thing, too. If he had been one of those spineless anything-you-say-dear types, I'd probably be peacefully dead in a ditch somewhere now. In-stead I'm here, with Fyrd and Reavers on three sides and the Shadow on the fourth." That got a smile out of Eftgan.

"You're right to question my motives and intent." Freelorn ate a spoonful of porridge. "Yes, Herewiss called the tune. And yes, I followed his lead toward kingship because it was convenient, and I was confused. But the confusion isn't so

much of a problem now." He took another spoonful, throw-ing a quick glance out the window at the great silent mass of Adine. "Dusty will probably still be the strategist of this group's business, the brains. But I'm this group's heart. I've forgotten that, once or twice, I know. A prince gets used to

having things done for him. But in the past couple of weeks I've seen my loved almost die for me — for my cause, rather — three times. I suspect I'm done being a prince. It's my turn to be a king." Lorn took a long drink of mulled wine. "And as for you, Eftgan. . if you don't like your job, you should abdicate. Maybe afterward you could take up carting slops."

Eftgan, who was also drinking at that moment, spluttered and choked — then, when she had finished choking, began to whoop with laughter. "Oh Goddess!" was all she managed to say for a while. When she was calmer, she wiped tears of merriment out of her eyes. "I guess I left myself open for that. Freelorn, your hand! Keep this sort of thing up, and we'll do very well together."

They reached across the length of the table to touch hands. "Truth," Lorn said, sounding rueful, as if the speech had cost him something, "and beauty. A perfect match." "Flatterer."

"Now, what about that news about the Reavers that you promised us?"

"Well. . let's take this in order. There's more news than just of Reavers. When you left Arlen, Lorn, what was your understanding of the way things stood with the Lords-Householders, the Four Hundred, concerning your succes-sion to the throne?"

"Mixed. There would've been no question of the succes-sion if I had been Initiated, taken by my father into the Lion-hall on the Nightwalk. But he put off the ceremony, until finally it was too late. When he died, the Four Hundred split on the issue. I had been spending a lot of time out of the country, helling around, and there was some question about whether I'd be a fit ruler. The army split on the issue too, and with Arlene regulars assigned to each household the situation quickly became volatile, as you can imagine. No one wanted a civil war, so the Householders hesitated. . which gave

Cillmod time to step in with his mercenaries and make the whole question moot."

"Yes, and when he made you an outlaw, you and Herewiss and the rest fled the country." Eftgan sat back in her chair. Segnbora knew much of the rest of the story, and listened with only half an ear as Eftgan filled in details for Freelorn. Cillmod had done well enough for several years. He took the throne and bore Stave, though he didn't go into Lionhall. Likewise, he reaffirmed the Oath with Eftgan's father, who was still alive and ruling then. It was around the middle of his fourth year that the crop failures began. The next year the crops were worse, and the next year worse still. Then the failures began spreading into Darthen as well. The royal sor-ceries, and the Great Bindings, were wearing thin.

Eftgan's father had been unwilling to help Cillmod beyond the reaffirmation of the Oath: He was among those who hoped that an uprising would eventually bring Freelorn back. But by the time of Eftgan's first crowning the situation was unbearable. Unaware of Freelorn's whereabouts, Eftgan wrote to Cillmod and offered to repair the Royal Bindings herself. Amazingly, he refused. Segnbora looked up from her food in surprise at that, as did the rest of Freelorn's company.

"He said that inquiries were being made in Arlen for a surviving heir to the Lion's Line," Eftgan explained. "He had put about the story that you had died, did you know that?" "No!"

"Later there was even proof of it: a mangled head sent from the torture chambers of Dariw of Steldin, whom you eluded at Madeil." "Hmmm … Do ghosts eat? No? Then there must have been a mistake."

"Must have been. Anyway, Cillmod was apparently unsuc-cessful in finding any other children in the Lion's Line. Which is fortunate, since I'm sure he would have killed any that he found. Another question, Lorn: Do you have any children outside of Arlen?" Freelorn shook his head sadly. "I only fulfilled the Responsibility once," he said. "My daughter died in infancy."

"Well enough." Eftgan chewed some bacon. "I ask because Cillmod's search for an heir took some strange turns. For example, some of the searches were conducted by large groups of mercenaries who crossed the Darthene borders and went after our granaries. It was the only

way Cillmod could forestall a revolt by the Four Hundred and their starving tenant-farmers. Anyway, to continue: There were also reports for some time of sorcerers and Rodmistresses visiting Prydon. More sorcerers than Rodmistresses, of course. There's one sorcerer in particular—"

"Someone who either claimed to be of Lion's Line," Free-lorn guessed, "or who claimed he could get Cillmod into Lionhall without dying of it, and show him how to reinforce the Bindings."

"Exactly. The second was what this sorcerer claimed. Rian, his name is. But then something peculiar happened. The man never went into Lionhall at all, as far as my spies can tell. Neither did Cillmod. Nevertheless, starting about a year ago Rian became a fixture at what now passes for the Arlene court." Eftgan took a drink of barley-water. "Other odd things — the Four Hundred have become very quiet re-cently. When you robbed the treasury at Osta, for example, it became apparent then that you weren't dead after all. Nat-urally there was a clamor for your return. But it died down very quickly." "Why?"

"I believe because the families who called loudest for your crowning were suddenly beset by Fyrd — the thinking variety." Mutters of distaste were heard round the table. "Rian," Segnbora said, very quietly to herself.

The Queen nodded. "I have no doubt that we're dealing here with a person whom the Shadow occasionally inhabits and controls. The man has a past and a family just as he should, but he's the center of too many odd occurrences. Where his influence appears, Cillmod's neglect usually breaks out into full-fledged malice."

Lorn, who had finished his porridge, set down his spoon. "What else has friend Rian — or rather, the Shadow — been up to?"

"You know the problems the Reavers have been having with the weather, their crops, and their game? How they are being forced northward? That's obviously the Shadow's work. There's something else, too. Starting about six months ago, it seems that emissaries — mostly mercenary captains — were sent over the mountains in to Reaver country to strike a bar-gain. In return for making incursions into the Kingdoms when ordered, some of the hardest-pressed Reaver clans were pro-mised loot, cattle. . and land in Arlen in which to settle."

All around the table, there was silence. "The Shadow's purpose is apparently to keep Darthen busy with war until something special happens," Eftgan said. "My guess is that 'something' is the collapse of the Royal Bind-ings."

The silence in the room erupted into cries of disbelief. The end of the Royal Bindings was unthinkable. Such a calamity would turn the Shadow loose in the Kingdoms as It hadn't been loose in centuries, since the Lion and the Eagle first bound It.

Lang looked at Freelorn. "I can't believe anyone would knowingly do this to his own country! Can it be Cillmod doesn't know what the failure of the Bindings will mean?"

"Could be," Lorn said. "After all, he's not trained in the royal sorceries. Perhaps the true nature of the destruction that would follow is being hidden from him somehow. In any case, if this is the Shadow's purpose, it must not be allowed."

The firmness of his resolve sent a dart of sharp pride through Segnbora. The others, equally moved, quieted. Eft-gan nodded her approval. "First of all, what are we doing about the Reavers locally?" Freelorn asked.

"I've spoken to Herewiss about the possibility of closing off the Chaelonde incursion route with a sealing," the Queen said. "That would cause the Reavers a great deal of trouble right away. Without it, they'd have to go as far east as Araveyn or as far west as Bluepeak itself to get into the Kingdoms. Araveyn is practically in the Waste; they wouldn't bother. And Bluepeak is in Arlen, meaning that Cillmod would have to march Reavers all the way through his own country to attack

Freelorn stared at Eftgan, his shock growing greater by the moment.

"Look at this," the Queen said, gesturing around the room. It was comfortable enough, on a bright summer morning, but definitely not luxurious. "If I'd had the sense to marry out of the royal line young, I could be spending my day sitting on silken cushions in some mansion in Darthis, eating roast orto-lan and botargoes on toast, taking lovers, going to the races in the daytime and to parties at night. But instead I let them make me Queen."

Segnbora took a long drink of her barley-water, to hide her rueful smile.

"I had to be Queen," Eftgan said again, "and now look what I've got for my troubles. Battlefield food and soldier's quarters, five days out of the ten. Back home in Darthis are three children I hardly ever see, because by the time I'm finished meeting with my ministers all morning, presiding over court-justice all afternoon, and receiving visits — I should say, 'complaints'—from the various members of the Forty Houses all evening, it's long past the children's bedtimes. I say nothing of my bedtime. My husband has to have a separate bedroom so that my reading won't keep him awake all night. In the daytime he has to throw people out of his wineshop because they don't want to buy his wine, they want to buy appointments with me. Even he aches at the end of the day." Freelorn had at this point just gotten around to closing his mouth.

"So do I," Eftgan said. "Sometimes I do more than ache. I get wounds, too. A Queen has to be first in every charge and last in every retreat. . " She pulled aside the shoulder of her surcoat, looking under it with a momentarily abstracted air. "I was knifed here, once— No, of course you remember that; you were there. Herewiss stopped the crossbow quarrel, but I got the knife of the Reaver before that one." She pulled the surcoat back in place and spent a moment looking around her plate to find the butterknife. "Bad enough to have to put up with that kind of thing from your enemies. But sooner or later it comes from your own people … in Darthen, at least. One day when you're hammering out your crown in the Square,

somebody whose crops failed last year comes out of the crowd and runs you through. Or worse, the rains won't come, and all the wreakings and all the royal magics refuse to work. Then there's only one thing that will save the land from famine." She looked down and began slowly buttering her bread. "So you take the knife, and call the person who loves you best in the world to witness the ceremony; and pierce the sky's heart by piercing yours, and cause it to shed rain by shedding blood, and bring the breath of the stormwind by breathing out your last. . "

Eftgan's tone all this while had been light, almost matter-of-fact. Now she looked up at Freelorn and, in the profound silence that had fallen around the table, said, "This is a stupid job to go hunting for, Lorn. You were smart to stay away from it as long as you have." Segnbora listened hard and could have sworn that people were holding their breaths. Only Lorn looked at all normal. The amazement had worn off him; his face was set.

"Eftgan," he said, "I ran away from Arlen because I was afraid of being tortured to death. I still am. But I notice that I'm not running in the opposite direction."

At that Eftgan paused to bite into her bread. She chewed 'eflectively, and swallowed. "You've had a lot of help."

"I have," he said, with only the swiftest glance to one side t Herewiss. "What is it they always say about lovers? That they usually know your mind better than you do." It was Freelorn's turn to pause now, looking around the table for honey for his porridge. He pointed, and Lang passed it to him. "Herewiss always knew what I wanted — what I really wanted — better than I did. It's a good thing, too. If he had been one of those spineless anything-you-say-dear types, I'd probably be peacefully dead in a ditch somewhere now. In-stead I'm here, with Fyrd and Reavers on three sides and the Shadow on the fourth." That got a smile out of Eftgan.

"You're right to question my motives and intent." Freelorn ate a spoonful of porridge. "Yes, Herewiss called the tune. And yes, I followed his lead toward kingship because it was convenient, and I was confused. But the confusion isn't so

much of a problem now." He took another spoonful, throw-ing a quick glance out the window at the great silent mass of Adine. "Dusty will probably still be the strategist of this group's business, the brains. But I'm this group's heart. I've forgotten that, once or twice, I know. A prince gets used to having things done for him. But in the past couple of weeks I've seen my loved almost die for me — for my cause, rather — three times. I suspect I'm done being a prince. It's my turn to be a king." Lorn took a long drink of mulled wine. "And as for you, Eftgan. . if you don't like your job, you should abdicate. Maybe afterward you could take up carting slops."

Eftgan, who was also drinking at that moment, spluttered and choked — then, when she had finished choking, began to whoop with laughter. "Oh Goddess!" was all she managed to say for a while. When she was calmer, she wiped tears of merriment out of her eyes. "I guess I left myself open for that. Freelorn, your hand! Keep this sort of thing up, and we'll do very well together."

They reached across the length of the table to touch hands. "Truth," Lorn said, sounding rueful, as if the speech had cost him something, "and beauty. A perfect match." "Flatterer."

"Now, what about that news about the Reavers that you promised us?"

"Well. . let's take this in order. There's more news than just of Reavers. When you left Arlen, Lorn, what was your understanding of the way things stood with the Lords-Householders, the Four Hundred, concerning your succes-sion to the throne?"

"Mixed. There would've been no question of the succes-sion if I had been Initiated, taken by my father into the Lion-hall on the Nightwalk. But he put off the ceremony, until finally it was too late. When he died, the Four Hundred split on the issue. I had been spending a lot of time out of the country, helling around, and there was some question about whether I'd be a fit ruler. The army split 011 the issue too, and with Arlene regulars assigned to each household the situation quickly became volatile, as you can imagine. No one wanted a civil war, so the Householders hesitated. . which gave

Cillmod time to step in with his mercenaries and make the whole question moot."

"Yes, and when he made you an outlaw, you and Herewiss \and the rest fled the country." Eftgan sat back in her chair. Segnbora knew much of the rest of the story, and listened jwith only half an ear as Eftgan filled in details for Freelorn. Cillmod had done well enough for several years. He took the throne and bore Stave, though he didn't go into Lionhall. Likewise, he reaffirmed the Oath with Eftgan's father, who was still alive and ruling then. It was around the middle of his fourth year that the crop failures began. The next year the crops were worse, and the next year worse still. Then the failures began spreading into Darthen as well. The royal sor-ceries, and the Great Bindings, were wearing thin.

Eftgan's father had been unwilling to help Cillmod beyond the reaffirmation of the Oath: He was among those who hoped that an uprising

would eventually bring Freelorn back. But by the time of Eftgan's first crowning the situation was unbearable. Unaware of Freelorn's whereabouts, Eftgan wrote to Cillmod and offered to repair the Royal Bindings herself. Amazingly, he refused. Segnbora looked up from her food in surprise at that, as did the rest of Freelorn's company.

"He said that inquiries were being made in Arlen for a surviving heir to the Lion's Line," Eftgan explained. "He had put about the story that you had died, did you know that?" "No!"

"Later there was even proof of it: a mangled head sent from the torture chambers of Dariw of Steldin, whom you eluded at Madeil." "Hmmm. . Do ghosts eat? No? Then there must have been a mistake."

"Must have been. Anyway, Cillmod was apparently unsuc-cessful in finding any other children in the Lion's Line. Which is fortunate, since I'm sure he would have killed any that he found. Another question, Lorn: Do you have any children outside of Arlen?" Freelorn shook his head sadly. "I only fulfilled the Responsibility once," he said. "My daughter died in infancy."

"Well enough." Eftgan chewed some bacon. "I ask because Cillmod's search for an heir took some strange turns. For example, some of the searches were conducted by large j groups of mercenaries who crossed the Darthene borders and went after our granaries. It was the only way Cillmod could v forestall a revolt by the Four Hundred and their starving tenant-farmers. Anyway, to continue: There were also reports for some time of sorcerers and Rodmistresses visiting Prydon. More sorcerers than Rodmistresses, of course. There's one sorcerer in particular—"

"Someone who either claimed to be of Lion's Line," Free-lorn guessed, "or who claimed he could get Cillmod into Lionhall without dying of it, and show him how to reinforce the Bindings."

"Exactly. The second was what this sorcerer claimed. Rian, his name is. But then something peculiar happened. The man never went into Lionhall at all, as far as my spies can tell. Neither did Cillmod. Nevertheless, starting about a year ago Rian became a fixture at what now passes for the Arlene court." Eftgan took a drink of barley-water. "Other odd things — the Four Hundred have become very quiet re-cently. When you robbed the treasury at Osta, for example, it became apparent then that you weren't dead after all. Nat-urally there was a clamor for your return. But it died down very quickly." "Why?"

"I believe because the families who called loudest for your crowning were suddenly beset by Fyrd — the thinking variety." Mutters of distaste were heard round the table. "Rian," Segnbora said, very quietly to herself.

The Queen nodded. "I have no doubt that we're dealing here with a person whom the Shadow occasionally inhabits and controls. The man has a past and a family just as he should, but he's the center of too many odd occurrences. Where his influence appears, Cillmod's neglect usually breaks out into full-fledged malice."

Lorn, who had finished his porridge, set down his spoon. "What else has friend Rian — or rather, the Shadow — been up to?" "You know the problems the Reavers have been having with the weather, their crops, and their game? How they are being forced northward? That's obviously the Shadow's work. There's something else, too. Starting about six months ago, it seems that emissaries — mostly mercenary captains — were sent over the mountains in to Reaver country to strike a bar-gain. In return for making incursions into the Kingdoms when ordered, some of the hardest-pressed Reaver clans were pro-mised loot, cattle. . and land in Arlen in which to settle."

AH around the table, there was silence. "The Shadow's purpose is apparently to keep Darthen busy with war until something special happens," Eftgan said. "My guess is that 'something' is the collapse of the Royal Bind-ings."

The silence in the room erupted into cries of disbelief. The end of the Royal Bindings was unthinkable. Such a calamity would turn the Shadow loose in the Kingdoms as It hadn't been loose in centuries, since the Lion and the Eagle first bound It.

Lang looked at Freelorn. "I can't believe anyone would knowingly do this to his own country! Can it be Cillmod doesn't know what the failure of the Bindings will mean?"

"Could be," Lorn said. "After all, he's not trained in the royal sorceries. Perhaps the true nature of the destruction that would follow is being hidden from him somehow. In any case, if this is the Shadow's purpose, it must not be allowed."

The firmness of his resolve sent a dart of sharp pride through Segnbora. The others, equally moved, quieted. Eft-gan nodded her approval. "First of all, what are we doing about the Reavers locally?" Freelorn asked.

"I've spoken to Herewiss about the possibility of closing off the Chaelonde incursion route with a sealing," the Queen said. "That would cause the Reavers a great deal of trouble right away. Without it, they'd have to go as far east as Araveyn or as far west as Bluepeak itself to get into the Kingdoms. Araveyn is practically in the Waste; they wouldn't bother. And Bluepeak is in Arlen, meaning that Cillmod would have to march Reavers all the way through his own country to attack

Darthen. Tactically, a sealing is a good idea. The question is whether it can be done."

"It can," Herewiss said. "But right now the timing's bad. I wouldn't dare try it with Glasscastle imminent; we'll have to wait until it passes. Which brings us to another problem— sealing off the peak of Adine so that no sorcery of the Shadow's, or anyone else's, can bring anything down out of Glasscastle onto our heads. That, too, I can do; and I'll do it tonight. My only fear is that the sudden removal of access to a place where our mortal world and another world touch might cause Power imbalances. In a place as delicately bal-anced as Barachael is, with its years of warfare and piled-up negative energies, that can be dangerous."

"I know," Eftgan said. "But it can't be helped. My true-dream made it plain that the next time someone passed into or out of Glasscastle, so great a disturbance would follow that the Kingdoms might not survive."

Herewiss looked gravely at Lorn, and then back at the Queen again. "I'll do what I can, madam," he said. "I hope it'll suffice."

"It's more than I could have done, that's for sure…." Eftgan pushed her chair back from the table. "I leave the matter in your capable hands. I should be back from Orsvier tomorrow, and we can worry about sealing the pass itself then. As for you, Arlen—" She fixed Freelorn with a hard, smiling look. "I stand on the Oath. As soon as I get this unfought army off my right flank, and yours, then it's 'the Eagle for Arlen and the Lion at i bay/ I trust you two will be willing to deal with this flank, should it become necessary today."

"Darthen," he said, returning Eftgan's look without the smile, "you know how my loved has been handling this so far. And I agree with him. I'd prefer not to shed blood, Arlene or Darthene."

"Cillmod's had no such compunctions," Eftgan said. "Nei-ther have the Reavers, and right now there are Reavers corn-ing here, and Reavers at Orsvier. You two clear this flank, I'll clear the other. Then we'll have leisure to consider what to do about Arlen. When we campaign, there I'll be guided by your judgment; you know your land best."

Freelorn nodded, looking solemn. Eftgan turned to the corner and picked up something that stood against the wall — a big old iron fireplace poker, its haft studded with rough white diamonds. It was Sarsweng, the battle-standard of the Darthenes. "I have to get my work done," the little fair woman said. "My husband hates it when I get home late. The Lady be with you all 'til I get back—"

"And with you," those at the table said. Eftgan shouldered Sarsweng and strode out, the sunlight \ flashing on the poker's gemmed haft as she passed through \, a bar of light falling down the stairs. \

At breakfast's end Harald, Moris, Dritt, and Lang went off with the Darthene officers to look the place over. Herewiss sat quietly in his chair,

drinking spiced wine and looking thought-ful, while Freelorn stared out the window at the towering Adine massif.

On her way to the stairs, Segnbora stopped beside him. Her underhearing was prickling with his unease. "You all right?" she said. "You

look green."

Freelorn shrugged, not looking at her. "The change in altitude," he said. "It didn't agree with me. I had a bad night." He was lying, she knew. His eyes were fixed on Adine, and on the lesser peak, where a tiny glitter of silver bridgespan caught the morning Sun. Freelorn said nothing more aloud, but she caught his thought: If only my dreams weren't so bad! And behind the thought lay the sure conviction that something he had recently seen in dream was no baseless vision, but a foreknowledge of reality. A reality that he could avoid if he chose—

Freelorn swung around and leaned on the table. "Are you going to sit there drinking all day," he said to Herewiss, "or are you going to get

up and get Eftganf s business out of the way so1 we can tend to our own?"

Herewiss*s glance was much like Freelorn's — all mockery

above, and love below. . and underneath that, a breath of

fear very much suppressed. "Hark to the early riser," he said,

"who pulled me back into bed twice this morning when I

would have gotten up. Come on, you can help correct my

scansion. This wreaking tonight is going to be difficult …"

Their easy laughter faded down the stairs behind them. Segnbora sat down on the windowsill, gazing up in turn at the terrible blind walls and cruel precipices of Adine. The moun-tain cared nothing for human life. With such an audience before her, and the empty room behind, Segnbora took what was likely to be her last opportunity for a while, laid her head against the windowframe, and mourned the dead.

An hour or so before sunset, the seven of them took to horse at khas-Barachael gate to begin the ascent of Adine.

While they were saddling up, Torve came out of the stables leading a little rusty Steldene gelding. "Of your courtesy," he said to Herewiss,

"perhaps you'd take me as guide. I've rid-den this trail a number of times, and climbed to the summit too."

Herewiss looked at the young man, suppressing a smile. There was no need to read Torve's thought, for it was plain enough: He was staring at Khavrinen, which was slung over Herewiss's shoulder, like a small child staring at what the Goddess had left him on New Year's morning.

"With all these other spectators," Herewiss said, glancing around at Freelorn's band, most of whom were along only for the ride, "certainly we can use one person who'll earn his keep on the way. Come and welcome."

They headed out over the half-bridge that reached out from Barachael, on its two-thousand-foot pier of stone, across to the spur of Adine proper. The sorcerer-architects who built the place had carved a hundred foot gap right through the spur, so that with the drawbridge up the fortress stood unas-sailable, one great corner-shoulder turned to the spur.

Once across, a causey wide enough for ten horsemen abreast wound downward through several switchbacks. On both sides the road was overshadowed by cliffs, the shattered faces of which made it obvious that invaders had occasionally tried to come up that way against the defenders' wishes, and had had large rocks dropped on them for their trouble.

"They've tried a few times to shuck this oyster," Torve said cheerfully, "but even Reaver horses can't charge straight up." At its bottom the paved road gave out onto a narrow sad —

die-corridor between khas-Barachael rock and Swaleback, a flattened, marshy little spur of Adine. Torve led them east-ward and out into the valley proper, then southwestward along the skirts of the Adine massif. Past two minor spurs they went. The ground was rocky, and every now

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and then the mountain, cooling from the warmth of the day, would let a little reddish scree slide down at them.

Under Adine" s lengthening shadow they turned due west-ward into a long shallow rampway scoured out by an ancient glacier, and picked their way carefully among the boulders that lay scattered about. Some fifteen hundred feet up the mountain's flank, the ascent became too steep for horses.

"We'll leave them here," Torve said, dismounting. (Not all of them,) Sunspark said mildly. Torve glanced up in great surprise from the hobbling of his gelding, and noticed that Herewiss's mount was calmly stand-ing a foot above the ground. "Sir," he said, addressing Sun-spark with the slight bow due a fellow officer, "we haven't been introduced."

"Torve, this is Sunspark," Herewiss said, dismounting. "Firechild, be good to him, he's on our side. Torve, if you ever need a fortress reduced on short notice, Sunspark is the one to talk to. He eats stone for breakfast."

Torve nodded. Having seen a man with the Fire he looked as if he was now ready to believe anything. "Up this way," he said, and led them up the side of the cirque to a trail that led along its top, under the shadow of the great Adine summit.

They rounded the east-pointing scarp, moving quietly under the great out-handing cornice of snow that loomed a thousand feet above them, and so came to face the north side of the lesser summit ridge. The ridge stood up sheer as a wall, overhung in places, itself at least seven hundred feet high.

"Don't worry, it's not an expert-level climb," Torve said, looking up the walls of rock and ice with relish. "Beginners could handle it—" Freelorn, who had done extensive climbing in the High-peaks of Arlen as a child, made a wry face. Herewiss gazed up the cliff. "This trail is exactly as the song

describes it," he said. " 'Awful.' Torve, I hope you won't tell the Queen's grace on me, but I'm no climber. Maybe we Brightwood people have been down from the mountains too long. Sunspark?"

(Who'll go first?) Sunspark said, with an anticipatory grin. Freelorn's band blanched and began deferring to one an-other.

It took Herewiss and Freelorn and Torve first, managing the thousand-foot ascent to the summit ridge in a single leap. When Segnbora swung herself up into the saddle, Sunspark looked around at her with a naughty light in its eye. (Ner-vous?)

She gave it a threatening look in return and said nothing, while inside Hasai laughed at her. (Afraid of heights! Oh, Immanence within us, what kind of sdaha—) (Well enough for you to laugh. You've got wings. .) Hasai continued laughing, a deep rough hiss. Segnbora did her best to ignore him and made very sure of her seat. A moment later she was glad of her care, for Sunspark shot up to the summit, trailing bright fire like a newborn comet and going at least twice as fast as it had the first time. It came down fast, too, landing on the snow with a hiss of steam and an incongruously light impact. Shaky-kneed, Segnbora scrambled down. (Well, that was probably the high point of your day,) Sun-spark said, genially malicious.

"Mmmnh," Segnbora said, slapping it familiarly on the flank, and burning herself. "The others are waiting." It gave her a final look, walked off the precipice and plunged down out of sight.

She picked up a fistful of snow to cool the burned hand and walked over to join the others. They stood around the base of the Skybridge where it rooted into the stone, some thirty feet broad. The bridge had no look of a made thing about it, for there were no rivets, no marks of tools anywhere to be seen. Drawn from the mountain's heart by Fire, the metal had the light uprising grace of a growing thing about it, as if Adfne had put up stem and flower. There were actually a number of stems — three lower ones, anchoring the main spans to consecutively lower points on the side of the peak. The angle of the bridge itself wasn't steep: It gained perhaps a foot in height for each three of length. Herewiss held Khavrinen out and touched the bright silvery metal of the bridge with the point — then jerked his arm back quickly as a blue

spark jumped from bridge to sword. "Fire-work, all right," he said, rubbing his arm as if it stung. "And a life-wreaking. No wonder poor Efmaer never came back. She either died of this wreaking or didn't recover enough Power to fight her way out again before Glasscastle vanished and took her away forever."

"You're going to have to do a life-wreaking too, to seal it off." Freelorn looked uneasy.

Herewiss stood with one hand on his hip, staring at the bridge the way a carpenter stares at a tree he must fell. "Well, the sealing has to be done whether I survive it or not. Don't worry, though, Lorn. Merely sealing it won't cost me the kind of effort building it cost Efmaer. I'll lose a month or two of life, and my head'll hurt tonight, but that's all."

Sunspark came up with Moris, whose great bulk left no room for other passengers, and then with Harald, Dritt, and Lang. Finally it paced over to Herewiss, peering over his shoulder at the bridge. Herewiss reached around its neck, patted it, then turned as if he had noticed something disturb-ing. "You all right, loved?" (It's cold up there,) Sunspark said.

Herewiss looked shocked. The others glanced at one an-other: they'd never heard the elemental say anything like that before. It pawed the ground uneasily, melting snow.

(All this water,) it said. (It's uncomfortable. And there's something else. .)

Segnbora turned her face away and considered what she felt coming from Sunspark: a cold that had nothing to do with the bone-chilling wind whispering about the summit. Up near the end of the bridge, something was pouring down a cold of the spirit that grew stronger as twilight grew deeper and the mountains less distinct. All of them were shivering, but the looks of foreboding and concern on their faces were far more disturbing.

Herewiss stroked Sunspark's neck. "We'll be down soon enough, loved. This won't take long. Shall we?"

It turned, offering him the stirrup. Herewiss mounted and sat looking at the bridge for a moment. It was a dark silhou-ette against the crystalline clarity of the golden mountain sunset. Abruptly he sent Fire down Khavrinen, lighting the whole mountaintop, and nudged Sunspark with his heels. The elemental walked off the cliff on the east side and stood on the empty air two thousand feet above the southface cirque.

"Down a bit," Herewiss said. Sunspark sank leisurely through the air, as if sliding down a stairway banister. "Torve," Herewiss called up to the peak, "where are the usual accesses?"

"East face," Torve said, "and northwest. But a climber with stepping-spikes and a rope could go up about anywhere. As for the suicides, the Queen said they find themselves on the summit without climbing."

"Thanks," Herewiss said. "It's got to be the whole thing, then." He reined Sunspark close to the sheer cliff that fell down from the summit, and touched the ice and snow with Khavrinen. Despite her trouble with heights, Segnbora crowded close to the edge with Torve and the others to watch the wreaking.

Blue Fire lanced from Khavrinen's point, melting snow and striking into the bare red rock of the mountain, which heated from red— to yellow— to white-hot and finally to an azure incan-descence. Flame leaped up from the kindled stone, though the tongues were small and sluggish, like those of an ordinary fire upon wet wood.

Sunspark moved around the peak, staying within arm's reach, and as elemental and rider progressed the bright line of blue melted itself into the stone behind them. Around the southeast spur they went, and out of sight. Most of Freelorn's band went around to watch the work on that side, but Torve stood by the cirque-facing cliff with Lang and Segnbora, shak-ing his head.

"This is a marvel," he said. "And strange. He's not what I expected a man with the Fire to be …" "The Rodmistresses in the Precincts agreed with you, I'm afraid," Segnbora said absently. For the moment her mind wasn't on Herewiss.

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For all her uneasiness with heights, something different was stirring in her now: a desire to lift wings and fall out into that glorious gulf of darkening blue air beneath her. A smile crossed her face at the realization that Dragons, like any of the more common soaring creatures of the world, preferred to drop from a height rather than to work for altitude. (And why not,) Hasai said, stretching wings lazily inside her and admiring the view himself. (Why waste energy, or man-ipulate field, when you don't have to? This is a fine height. Not as high as the Eorlhowe, to be sure, but a respectable height—) "There it is," Torve said, his voice very quiet. Segnbora glanced up from the glacier.

High to the west, above the vista of Adine peak behind them, past Esa and Mirit and the long sleek flank of White-stack, had risen a slim crescent of Moon. To its right, and lower, a point of light glittered: the Evenstar. Quickly Segn-bora looked upward along the silver-blue curve of the Sky-bridge. . and forgot to breathe.

It had come out as silently and suddenly as the Moon. The Skybridge, half of a curve before, was whole now. The new part of the span did look to be made of the sky — cerulean blue, transparent, yet very much there. And at the span's end rose Glasscastle. It was like a castle in an old story, a place built for pleasure rather than defense, fanciful and wide-windowed and fair. Halls and high towers pierced the upper air; slender spires were bound together by curving bridges and fairy buttresses. Everything, from the wide-flung gates at the end of the bridge to the highest needle spire, was built of the same airy crystal as the bridge.

The evening sky could plainly be seen through walls and towers. The fading hues of the sunset — rose, gold, and deepening royal blue — were reflected from them, pale and ghostly. Yet there was nothing fragile about the place. Glasscastle stood as immovably founded on the air as if on rock. It reflected the sunset colors, the icy light of the Moon,

and even the frozen gleam of the Evenstar, but cast no shadow.

"Not a moment too soon," Herewiss said, his voice hushed, as Sunspark stepped up to the peak again, completing their circuit of the mountaintop. All around the barrel of the peak burned a line of blue, the circle within which the spell would be confined. Herewiss dismounted and stood for a moment with Khavrinen in his hand, gazing up at the crystalline appa-rition.

"Beautiful," he said. "But from now on, that's all it's going to be." He struck Khavrinen,'s point down into the snow at the foot of the bridge, and looked up the curve of metal, raising his arms—