The Door Into Fire

4

The place was old enough to have been built in the first wave of Darthen's colonization. It was hardly more than a crude castle keep built of fieldstone. For outworks it had nothing more than an earthern dike, surrounded by a ditch that had once been full of sharpened stakes. They had long since rotted away, the place having been abandoned for some newer, more defensible castle of hewn stone.

But the keep was still quite solid, thick-walled enough so that an earthquake could hardly have brought it down. There were no windows but arrowslits, the tower top was deeply crenellated, and the door was of iron a foot thick, judging by the fact that it had not rusted away in all the intervening years. Time had been kind to the place. Its mortar had grown stronger with age, and only here or there was any stone shattered by frost. It was a redoubt worthy of the name, and it stood there at the center of the cuplike vale with stolid rocky patience, frowning at the surrounding hills, antique and indomitable.

Herewiss leaned wearily on Sunspark's crupper and frowned back at the keep from where they stood, about two miles away, atop one of the long bare surrounding ridges. The keep was surrounded by a fairly large force, disposed around it for the siege in the usual Steldene fashion. The troops were about half a mile or so from the walls, separated into four large camps, each oriented to one of the compass points. Herewiss agreed with Freelorn's estimate; there were about a thousand of them, and maybe more.

'For five people!' he said aloud, putting his head down on his folded arms. 'Steldin must be awfully nervous.'

Sunspark stood beside him in the red roan form, idly switching flies with its long glittering tail. It looked at the besieging army with supreme disdain, and snorted softly. (It hardly matters. Give me half an hour and I will bring the fire down on them and leave not a one alive.)

'Sunspark, I don't want to kill, there's no need. Restraint is considered a virtue in these parts.'

The elemental snorted again, flicking its tail at a nonexistent fly and fetching Herewiss a stinging blow across the back.

'Behave yourself or I'll make it rain on you again.'

(That's no mastery, there are rainclouds coming in anyway; it'll be pouring after nightfall. You keep me dry, now!)

'I keep my promises. You'll be fine. Look, it's getting on towards sundown — I want you to take a message to Freelorn for me.'

(What am I — a pigeon?)

'Spark—'

(All right, all right.)

'Get in there any way you like, so long as it's unobtrusive. Say to Freelorn that I'm waiting for nightfall to make my move. Tell him that he should try not to be too bothered by what he sees — I'm going to try to go past the bounds of battle-sorcery he's seen in the past. Tell him how to find this spot — or better still, after I'm finished, go and meet them and bring them here. There are times when Lorn needs a map to find his own head.'

(Shall I tell him that too?)

'No, I've told him enough times myself. When you finish with that, get back here. This place is wild enough so that there might be a few Fyrd wandering around. I don't want to get eaten while I'm trying to concentrate on my spelling.'

(Tell Freelorn this. And tell Freelorn that. There are five people in there, oh Master mine. What does he look like?)

Herewiss sighed. 'Look for a small man, about a span short of my height, with longish dark hair and a long mustache, and a sense of humor like yours. Chances are that he'll have on a surcoat with the White Lion on it. Is that enough for you?'

(If there are only five people in there, then I think I can manage.)

'Then get going.'

Sunspark's horse-shape wavered and turned molten, gathered itself together and swirled about with a blast of oven-heat, became a bright amorphous form that put out wings and rose against the sky, cooling and darkening. A moment later a red desert hawk spiraled up a thermal partly of its own making.

Herewiss sat down, making a face at the smell of scorched grass, and considered what he was going to do. It wasn't going to be easy to dispose of an army this large. There weren't too many of the Steldene regulars among the forces; most of them were conscript peasantry, ununiformed and hurriedly armed. That would be a help. But the regulars and their commanders would have seen real battle- sorcery before. They would be familiar with the tricks of the trade, and unafraid of illusion. Herewiss did have some advantages; he had a great deal of native power, and access to references and methods about which most sorcerers knew nothing. Also, the fact that there was no other army attacking them in concert with the illusions would confuse the Steldenes somewhat. By the time any of them realized what was happening and tried to mobilize a force to stop him, it would be too late. He hoped.

A thousand men. Herewiss shook his head. The King of Steldin must have been worried about the possibility of the Arlene countryside rising against his people when they brought Freelorn home — or the possibility of Freelorn getting away, and the Arlene army moving into Steldene lands in retaliation. If the Oath of Lion and Eagle wasn't protecting Darthen from Cillmod's incursions, the King of Steldin had good reason to worry.

Sighing, Herewiss looked at the thunderheads massing on the northern horizon. The storm would make a fine cover for their escape. He disliked the prospect of leaving over wet ground that would take their trail. But speed, and fear, and the direction in which he would lead his friends, would confound the pursuit. Now he had to concern himself with the sorceries he would need.

Herewiss spent at least half an hour leafing through the grimoires, memorizing pertinent passages and wishing he weren't so ethical. To frighten a thousand men into flight was more difficult than killing them. It would have been simplicity itself to turn Sunspark loose. The elemental's methods were swift and brutally efficient, and its conscience would be clean afterwards. To Sunspark death was nothing more than a change from one form to another. Or Herewiss himself could have laid warfetter on the lot of them, leaving the whole army deaf and blind and stripped of their other senses, fighting nothing but their own terror, and probably dying of it. But his conscience was not as accommodating as Sunspark's. The last time he had slain was one time too many, and even if that had not been the case, there was still sorcerer's backlash to consider. To lay warfetter on so many people was to open the way for a huge cumulative backlash to strike him, one which would certainly leave him either dead or insane.

So Herewiss chose illusions as his weaponry. He would have to alter the formulae to accommodate so many people, and the backlash would hit him proportionately -he would be unconscious for a couple of days. As he went through the book, making his final choices in the fading light, Sunspark dropped out of the sky on to his shoulder.

'Loosen up a little with the talons, please,' Herewiss said. 'Did you find him?'

The hawk snapped its beak with impatience. (Of course. He's waiting for you.)

'Was there a message?'

(Your friend greets you by me,) Sunspark said, (and says, 'Get me the Dark out of here.' He also says that you should make your preparations for six people. Evidently he has picked up a stray somewhere.)

'That's Lorn. Sunspark, I'm going to need a good while to get ready for this. You'll have to stand guard while I meditate. Also I'll need your services during the sorcery.'

(As you say.) Sunspark whirled and dissolved in heat again, reappearing in the blood-bay persona.

'You really do like that shape, don't you.'

The elemental curved its neck, looked around to admire its shining self. (It does have a certain elegance, I must admit—)

'You're vain, firechild, vain,' said Herewiss, smiling. He walked off a little distance and unlaced his fly to relieve himself before the long sorcery; Sunspark followed, regarding the process with interest.

(You are really strange,) it said. (Why bother drinking water if you're just going to throw it away again? And what is this 'vain' business? I'm gorgeous, you've said so. I don't understand why you can tell me that I'm beautiful, but I can't tell myself—)

'Spark, shut up, please.'

Sunspark strolled away a few paces and began cropping the grass in silence, leaving little scorched places where it had bitten through. Herewiss settled himself comfortably on the ground and began to compose himself for the evening's work.

Sorcery, like all the other arts, is primarily involved with the satisfaction of one's own needs. Though a sorcerer may mend a pot or raise a storm or set a king on his throne with someone else's benefit in mind, still he is first serving his own needs, his own joys or fears or sorrows. To work successful sorcery one must first know with great certainty what he wants, and why. Otherwise the dark secretive depths of his mind may take the unleashed forces and use them for something rather different than what he thinks he wants.

In addition, sorcery is affected by how completely the sorcerer's needs are filled before he begins — whether he's hungry or tired, secure in his place in life, whether he is loved or has someone to love. It's easy for a hungry sorcerer to find food by his art, since the need fuels his skill. But it's much harder for that same starving sorcerer to, say, open death's Door and sojourn in the places past it. And only the mightiest of sorcerers could manage to conjure powers or potentialities if he hadn't eaten for a week, or felt that his life was in danger for some reason. Sorcery is ridiculously easy to sabotage. Beat your sorcerer, frighten him, deprive him of food, ruin his love life — destroy one of his fulfillments, and he'll be lucky to be able to dowse for water.

So Herewiss sat there in the grass, as the Sun went down and the thunderclouds rolled in, and strove to shut out all external things and evaluate his inner self. A brief flicker of thought went across his mind like lightning, a white line of discomfort and irritation: if I had the Flame, I wouldn't need to go through this rigmarole. Will alone is enough to fuel the blue Fire, you think a thing and it's done. But he put the thought aside. Freelorn was waiting for him.

Herewiss sounded himself. He was well-fed, not thirsty or cold or tired. He was the Lord's son of the Brightwood, as usual, had a home and family and people that he could call his own. Love — there was his father, and Freelorn of course — the knowledge of their feelings for him was a warm steady support at the back of his mind.

Then after a moment he reached out and took hold of the thought he would have liked to banish, the lack of Flame, the lack of completion. Oh, he was so empty in that one place inside of him. It should have been full of blue Fire and prowess and shouting joy. Instead it ached with emptiness, as parts of him sometimes did after lovemaking. It was a vast stony cavern that echoed coldly when he walked there. Nothing but a faint flicker illuminated it, a single tongue of blue.

Herewiss turned wholly inward, walked in the still, dry air of that place, listened to the sound of his passage as it bounced back from the walls, a distant, hollow step. He went toward the little blue Fire, crouched down beside it where it sprang from a crack in the bare rough rock. Though there was no wind passing through the darkness, the Flame trembled. It was a sad fire, afraid of dying before it was unleashed to burn through the rest of him, terrified of going out forever. Herewiss was surprised, and pierced with sorrow. He had never really pictured the Flame as anything but a possession of his, no more emotional than an arm or leg. Yet here it was, frightened of endings as he himself was, lonely in the dark.

He spent a little time there, trying to comfort it with his presence, and finally stood up again and gazed down at the tiny tongue of cold fire. If it would die some day, then that was the Goddess's will. It was better to have treasured the wonder this long than never to have had it in him at all.

Herewiss turned his back on the Flame and went out of that dark place, looking for Freelorn's image inside him. Besides need, sorcery was also fueled by emotion. He would summon up his emotions as a smith might beat out iron, slowly, with care and skill and calculated brutality. Then he would turn it loose, take it in hand like the weapon it was and scatter an army with it.

He didn't have to walk far. The path to where Freelorn dwelt was a wide one, one that Herewiss traveled often when his friend was gone. It was a bright place. A lot of the memory looked like the halls of Kynall castle in Prydon, where they had lived together for a while, all white marble and sunlit colonnades — very different from the dark, carven walls of the Woodward. Some of it looked like Freelorn's old room in the castle, cream-colored walls veined in green, Freelorn's old teak four-poster bed with the hack- marks in it from Suthan, armor and clothes scattered around in adolescent disorder. They had had good times there together, lounging around and tossing off horns full of red Archantid as they talked about the things that the future might hold.

But there was a lot of the memory that looked like the Brightwood, too, and it was there that Herewiss finally found him. The image of a dead spring day was there, all sun on green leaves, and there was Lorn; newly arrived with his father King Ferrant on a visit of state. Herewiss, of course, was both within that memory and without it. From the outside he looked at Freelorn and marveled that he had ever really been that young. Lorn didn't even have a mustache yet, and he looked laughably unfinished without it. And he was little, so very small for his age.

Freelorn was as nervous as a new-manned hawk, trying to look in all directions at once. He hung on to the golden-hilted sword at his belt with one white-knuckled hand, and spurred his sorrel charger till it danced, meanwhile staring around him trying to see if any of the Wood people had clothes as grand as his, or such a sword, or such a father. From within the memory Herewiss, fourteen years old, looked with mixed disdain and jealousy at the newcomer. He was loud and flashy and arrogant, the way Herewiss had imagined a city princeling would probably be. He had disliked Freelorn immediately, and he saw himself frown and turn away from Hearn's side to stalk back into the Woodward, fuming quietly at this foreign invasion.

Then suddenly the scene changed, faded into darkness and stars seen through leaves and branches. The Moon sifted down through silvered limbs to pattern the smooth grass around one of the Forest Altars, and shone full and clear on the altar stone in the midst of the clearing. On the low slab of polished white marble Freelorn sat, huddled up with his head on his knees, shaking as if with cold. Beneath the trees at the edge of the clearing Herewiss stood very still, confused, wondering why the prince was crying. At the same time he was resisting the urge to laugh; the idea of the Prince of Arlen sitting on one of the Forest Altars and weeping was ludicrous. But disturbing -it wasn't right for a prince to be seen crying, and Herewiss wanted him to stop . . .

The scene shifted again, ever so slightly, and Herewiss was sitting next to his friend-to-be, trying to help, his arm around him; and Freelorn put his head against Herewiss and cried as if his world was ending. 'No-one likes me,'

Freelorn was saying, in choked sobs, 'and I don't, don't know why—'

They began to see through each other that night. Herewiss had been playing cold and silent and mature, and Freelorn merry and uncaring and free; that night they began coming to the conclusion that there was at least one more person with whom the games and false faces were unnecessary. The next morning they looked at one another shyly, each studying the other's weak places as he himself knew he was being studied, and decided that there would be no attack. They spent the next month teaching each other things, and savoring that special joy that comes of having someone to listen, and care. Their friendship became a settled thing.

Herewiss gave the scene a nudge of adjustment. They were in rr'Virendir, the King's Archive in Prydon castle, sitting with their backs against one of the huge shelves filled with rune rolls and musty tomes. It was dark and cool, and the air was laced with the dry dusty smell of a great old library. The summer sun burned down outside, and the Archive was one of the few comfortable places to be. The assistant keeper was snoring softly in his little office down at one end of the long room; Freelorn, who due to a hereditary title was the Keeper of the Archive, was hunched up against the very last row of shelves with Herewiss.

'I don't want to learn all this stuff,' he was saying. 'I'll never learn it all. I'm a slow reader anyway, it would take me the rest of my life.'

'Lorn, you've got to.' Herewiss was fifteen now, and feeling terribly broadened by his travels; this was his first trip to Prydon, and the first time he had ever been more than ten miles from the Wood.

'I don't need it!' Freelorn said, scowling at a pile of parchments that lay on the ground next to him. 'Look at all this stuff. Half of it is so rotted away I can hardly read it, and the rest of it is in some obscure dialect so full of thees and thous that I can't make sense of it.'

'Lorn,' Herewiss said with infinite patience, 'that one on top is a rede that has been copied over more times than either of us know, because no-one knows what it means, and it's tied to the history of your Line somehow. It's Lion business, Lorn. That makes it your business. This whole place is your business. That's why you're its Keeper.'

'Dammit, Dusty, I love my family's history. Descent from the Lion is something to be proud of. But I don't want to sit around reading when I could be out doing great things!'

'What did you have in mind?'

'Are you making fun of me?'

'No.'

Freelorn made an irritated face. 'I don't know what kind of great things. But they're there, waiting for me to get to them, I know it! I want to see the Kingdoms. I want to take ship for the Isles of the North, and talk to Dragons. I want to climb in the Highspeaks and see what the lands beyond the mountains look like. I want to go into Hreth and kill Fyrd. I want to find out what the Hildimarrin countries are like, I want to — oh, Dark, everything! And you know what I get to do?'

'You get to stay home and be prince for a while. Listen, Lorn, it's not that long ago you were in the Wood with me. That's not traveling? Almost two hundred leagues away? What about the mare's nest we saw on the way back? That's not adventure? You wanted the nightmare, maybe? She would have had you for breakfast. We saw three wind demons and a unicorn, and heard the Shadow's Hunting to overhead, and you want more? Goddess, Lorn, what's it take to make you happy?'

'Danger. Intrigue. Hopeless quests. Last stands. Heroism! Courage against all odds! Valor in defeat!'

'You remember when we used to play Lion and Eagle?' 'Yes, but — Dusty, what's that got to do with this?' 'How many times did we stage Bluepeak out behind the Ward?' 'Every day for a month at least, but—'

'Did you notice something interesting? We always got up again afterwards. Earn and Healhra didn't.'

'Yes, they did. They come back once every five hundred years—'

'—and the last two times no-one recognized Them for years, because They didn't come back as Lion and Eagle. That's not important here, though. Lorn, I'm not — oh, Dark.' Herewiss reached over and took Freelorn's hand, slowly, shyly.

'My father,' he went on, looking at his boots, 'keeps saying, "A king is made for fame and not for long life." Which is all right as long as it's some other king — but Lorn, it's going to be you some day, and I'm not sure I want to see you die. No matter how damn heroic your last stand is.' He closed his eyes. 'I'm probably going to go the same way; Brightwood people never die in bed. They vanish, or get eaten by Fyrd, or get turned into rocks, or something weird like that. All the old ballads make my ancestors sound just wonderful, but they have to be divorcing the emotion from the reality in places. I don't want to find out how it feels to vanish.'

Freelorn nodded. 'I don't really want to end up bleeding somewhere either — but on the other hand, it'd be neat to be a robber baron, putting down the oppressor and giving money to the common people. Or to be a wandering sorcerer, doing good deeds and slipping away unnoticed—'

Herewiss sighed, and a wild impulse compounded of both daring and humor rose up in him. 'All right,' he said.

'Hopeless quests are what you want? Valiant absurdity? Something that the Goddess would approve of?'

'What the Dark are you talking about?'

'Lorn, I'm on a quest.'

'Say what?'

Herewiss grinned at the sudden confusion in Freelorn's face. He considered and discarded several possible ways of explaining things, and finally simply held out his hands. Usually he had to close his eyes when he made the little tongue of external Flame that was all he could manage. But he strained twice as hard as usual this time for the sake of keeping his eyes open. He didn't want to miss the look on Freelorn's face.

It was an amazing thing. It was so amazing that Herewiss broke out laughing like a fool, and lost his concentration and the Flame both a moment later. He laughed so hard that he had to hold his stomach against the pain, and all the while Freelorn stared at him in utter amazement.

Finally Herewiss calmed down a little, caught his breath, wiped his eyes.

'You have it,' Freelorn said softly. 'You have it.' 'It looks that way.' 'You have it! Dusty!!' That's me.'

'MY GODDESS, YOU HAVE IT!!!'

'Ssh, you'll wake up Berlic.'

'But you have it!' Freelorn whispered.

'Yeah.'

And then Freelorn looked at Herewiss, and the joy in his eyes dimmed and flickered low.

'But a focus—'

'I tried. Can't use a Rod.'

There was a long silence.

'Lorn,' Herewiss said. 'This is my secret. And yours, now. My mother taught me a lot of sorcery when I was younger, but there was always something else I could feel in the background that I knew wasn't anything to do with that. I didn't know what it was until last year — I made Flame accidentally in the middle of a scry ing-spell. I thought it might have been a fluke, but it's not, it's there, and it's getting stronger. If I can channel it, I can use it. And the Goddess only knows what I'm going to use for a focus. Will this do for a hopeless quest?'

Freelorn was silent for a little while.

Then he looked at Herewiss again.

'I am the Keeper of the Archive,' he said solemnly, as if he were summoning Powers to hear him. 'There must be something in here that would help you. I'm going to start looking. And when I find it—'

Herewiss smiled a little. 'When you find it,' he said. They hugged each other, stirring up dust.

The memories were making Herewiss feel warm inside. The analytical parts of him approved: he was heading in the right direction. The warmth was building, washing through him—

He shifted the scene again, and it was night out in the eastern Darthene wastelands, a hundred miles or so from the Arlene border.

They were on their way to Prydon again after a trip to the Wood, and the day's riding had left them exhausted — Freelorn was anxious to get home, and they had spared neither themselves nor the horses. It was cold, for Opening Night was approaching, and they lay close to their little fire and shivered. The stars were beginning to fall thickly, as they do at Midwinter when the Goddess is angriest, when She remembers Her own thoughtlessness at the Creation, and flings stars burning across the night in defiance of the great Death. Herewiss lay on his back gazing up at the sky, watching the distant firebrands trace their silent paths out of the heart of the Sword — the constellation that stands high on winter nights. Freelorn lay curled up in a tight bundle next to him, facing west.

'Dusty—'

Herewiss turned his head to him. 'You want to share?'

Within the memory, Herewiss, now sixteen, went both warm with surprise and pleasure, and cold with fear. It was a thought that had occurred to him more than once. But Freelorn was younger than he was inside, and easily frightened. He wouldn't want to scare Lorn, ever—

—yet no-one in the world knew him as well as Lorn did, no-one else cared as much about all the little things in Herewiss's life and how he felt about them. He could share things with Lorn that he would never dare say to anyone else, and never be afraid of the consequences. And Lorn mattered so much to him. His loved. Yes. And he was beautiful outside, too, small and strong and fine to look at—

I paid off the Responsibility long ago. I can love whom I please—

'You want to?' he said aloud.

'Yeah.'

Herewiss felt at the knot of fear inside him, wondering what to do about it. If Lorn wanted to—

But—

'I had to think about it for a while before I could say it,' Freelorn said quietly, from inside the blankets. 'If you don't want to, it's all right.'

'No, it's not that—'

Freelorn chuckled a little, so adult a sound coming out of him that it startled Herewiss. He identified it as one of Ferrant's laughs, which Freelorn had borrowed. 'I should have asked,' Freelorn said. 'Your first time?'

'No! — I mean, yes. With a man.'

They were quiet for a little. Freelorn turned over on his back and looked up at the sky, watching a particularly bright star blaze out of the Sword and clear across the night to the Moonsteed before it went out. 'There's not much difference,' he said, 'except that, instead of being different, we're alike. Some things are easier — some are harder—'

The voice was still suspiciously adult, and Herewiss looked at Freelorn for a moment and then smiled. 'Your first time too, huh?'

Freelorn's face went shocked, then irritated, and finally sheepishly smiling. 'Yeah.'

Herewiss laughed softly to himself, and reached out to hug Freelorn to him. 'You twit!' he said, laughing into Freelorn's blankets until the tears came.

They held each other for a long time, and then drew closer. Outside the memory, Herewiss looked on with quiet amusement, and with reverence, feeling as if he was watching an enactment of some old legend being staged by well-meaning amateurs. In a way, of course, he was: the Goddess's Lovers always discover Each Other after being initiated by Her — one of the things which makes for the tragedy of Opening Night, when the Lovers, male or female as the avatar dictates, destroy One Another in Their rivalry. But this was an enactment of the birth of that new relationship, and the freshness and innocence of it easily compensated for whatever ineptitude there may have been as well.

'Oops—'

'Huh? Did it hurt?'

'Yeah, a little.'

'Well, let's try this instead—'

'Ohhh . . .'

'Hmmm?'

'No, no, don't stop. It feels so good.'

Silence, and further joinings: warm hands, warm mouths, growing comfort, trust flowing. A slow climb on smooth wings, easing into the upper reaches, then gliding into the updraft, soaring, daring, higher, higher—

—sudden and not to be denied, the brilliance that is not light, the dissolution of barriers that cannot possibly break—

—a brief silence.

'Oh, Dark, I'm sorry. I hurried you.'

'Oh, no, don't be. It was-it was-oh, my . . .'

'I saw your face.' A warm arm reaches around to pillow Herewiss's head; gentle fingers stroke his jawline, his lips, his closed eyes. 'You looked — so happy. I was glad I could make you feel that way.'

'I felt . . . so cherished.'

'It was something I always wished somebody would . . . do for me . '

'You mean you haven't. . . ?' 'No.'

'Oh, my dear loved. — Can I call you that?' 'Why not? It's true — oh, Dusty—!'

'Lorn, you're crying—? Are you all right, did I say something wrong—'

'No, no — it's just — nobody ever called me their loved before — and it's -I always wanted — I'm happy—!'

'Oh, Lorn. Come here. No, come on, if we're going to share ourselves with each other, that means the tears too. My loved, my Lorn, it's all right, you're happy—'

'But, but my face gets — gets funny when I cry—'

'So does mine. Who cares? You're beautiful. I love you, Lorn—'

'Oh, Goddess, Dusty, I love you too. I was just scared -I didn't see how someone as gorgeous as you could ever want to share with me—'

'Me? Gorgeous? Oh, Lorn—'

'But you are, you are, don't you see it? And inside, too.' A chuckle through passing tears. 'It's almost unfair that anyone should be so beautiful as you are inside. But it makes me so happy — Am I making sense?'

'Yes. Oh, Lorn, I want you to feel what I felt, I want to give you the joy — you deserve it so much . . . and it makes me so happy to make you happy . . .'

—and again the slow dance, stately circlings on wings of light— —and much later, the long drift down. Silence, and falling stars. Outside the memory, Herewiss wept.

Inside the memory, Freelorn held Herewiss, and Herewiss held Freelorn, and their hearts slowed.

'Again?'

'I don't know if I could ... " A chuckle. 'Neither do I.' Another silence.

'Hey, maybe we should get married some day.'

'Are you thinking of us, or of marriage alliances?'

'It could be good both ways. Hasn't been an alliance between our two Houses since the days of Beorgan.'

'And you know how that turned out. I don't want to be history, Lorn, I just want to be me.'

'Yeah.'

'So think about us, then, and leave politics out of it.' 'Can we?'

Herewiss thought about it. 'At least until our fathers leave us their lands. I'm tired, Lorn.'

'Yeah. We've got a long ride tomorrow.'

'Yeah.'

They held each other against the cold, and fell asleep.

Herewiss dwelt on the scene for a little while, and then reluctantly changed it again. Another night, another place out in the cold. The battlefield where they fought the Reaver incursion, far to the south of the Wood. The night after the battle, and Herewiss wounded in the shoulder with the blow that he took for the king's daughter of Darthen. Later on that blow had gotten him awarded the WhiteMantle. But at this point Herewiss lay huddled on the ground, wrapped in his own tattered campaigning cloak, innocent of honors and just trying to get some sleep. He was cold and tired, and in pain from the wound. The hurt of it kept waking him up every time he drifted off. During one hazy time of almost- sleep, a figure came softly toward him in the dark, and Herewiss didn't move, didn't particularly care who it was—

'Dusty?'

He tried to get up, and Freelorn was down beside him, helping him. 'Quiet, quiet — do you know how long I've been looking for you?' His voice was frightened.

'No.'

'I couldn't find you. I thought you were—'

'I'm not, obviously. I heard you were all right and so I just found a spot out of the way where I could get some sleep.'

'That's interesting,' Freelorn hissed. 'Because you're behind the lines. Do you mind coming with me before they find out who we are and carve the blood-eagle on us?'

'Behind the lines?' 'The Reaver lines! It's obvious you're being saved for something besides dying in battle. If you haven't managed it by now-Oh, Dusty, come on!!'

'I lost a lot of blood. I think I need a horse. Oh, poor old Socks, he got killed right out from under me—'

'Blackmane is here, I brought him. Come on, for Goddess's sake—'

The next while was a nightmare, an interminable period of jouncing and wincing and almost falling out of the saddle. The wound reopened, and Herewiss bit back his moans with great difficulty. Blackmane was stepping softly; he seemed to have something tied around his feet. Herewiss later found out they had been pieces of Freelorn's best clothes — his Lion surcoat, the one embroidered in silver and satin, that he had loved so well. But in the midst of the hurt and the fresh bleeding, as they passed through the enemy lines and slipped past the guards, Herewiss heard himself thinking, like a chant to put distance between one and one's pain, He really must care about me. He really must—

The slow wave of love that had been building in Herewiss was coming to a crest. He let it grow, let it build power. He would need it. Holding himself still in the twilight inside him, he reached out a tendril of thought to Sunspark.

(What?) it said. Its voice seemed distant, and he could perceive no more of the elemental than a vague sensation of warmth.

(Warn away anything that approaches. Don't hurt it, just keep it away.)

(It would be easier to kill.)

(It would disturb the influences I'm working with. Take care of me, Spark. If I have to drop what I'm doing suddenly, the backlash may catch you as well.) (Whatever.)

He returned fully to the awareness of his inner self, and watched with approval as his building emotion began to shade toward anger. He encouraged it. This is my friend: my loved: a part of me; this is who they want to take and kill! Will it happen? Will it? Will it?

The answer was building itself like a thunderhead, piling threateningly high. He turned his attention away from the building storm of emotion and started to work on the sorcery proper. The spell had to be built, word by cautious word, each word placed delicately against another, stressed and counterstressed, pronunciations clean and careful, intentions plain. The words were sharp as knives, and could cut deeper than any sword if they were mishandled. A word here, and another one there: this one placed with care atop two others, taking care always to keep the whole structure in mind — too much attention to one part could collapse others. Here a jagged word like cutting crystal, faceted, many- syllabled, with a history to it — don't pause too long to admire the glitter of it, the others will resent the partiality and turn on you. There a word fragile as a butterfly's wing; indeed, the word has lineal ties with the Steldene word for butterfly -but don't think of that now, this winged word has teeth too. Now the next—

Herewiss was doing what only a very few sorcerers of his time, or any other, could do: building a spell without reference to the actual words written in the grimoire. It requires a good memory, and great courage. The mind has a way of shaping words to its liking, and that can be fatal to a sorcery and the one who works it. But keeping himself conscious enough to actually read the words from his books would have meant a diversion of needed power, and Herewiss was worried enough to forgo the safer method. He was making no passes, drawing no diagrams to help him; those measures would have cost him energy too. The greatest sorceries are always those done without recourse to anything but the words themselves, and the effect they have on the minds of the user and the hearer. But Herewiss didn't think about that. It would have scared him too much.

He built with the words, making a structure both like and unlike the towering concentration of love and anger within him. The structure had to be big enough to let the emotions flow freely, strong enough to contain them — but it also had to be small enough not to scrape the barriers of Herewiss's self and damage him, and light enough for him to break easily if the sorcery got out of hand. It was a perilous balance to maintain, and once or twice he almost lost it as a word shifted under another's weight. Another one turned on the word next to it — they were too much alike — and savaged it before Herewiss could remove the offender and put another, less violent, but also less effective, in its place. He had to make up for the loss of power elsewhere, at the top of the structure. He wasn't sure whether it would stand up to the strain or not, and the whole crystalline framework swayed uncertainly for a moment, chiming like frozen bells in the wind, like icy branches, brittle, metallic—

It held, and he surveyed it for a moment to be sure that nothing was left out. Satisfied, he took a long moment's rest.

(Sunspark?)

(Yes?)

(Almost ready.)

(It's getting ready to rain.)

(In here, too. Hang on.)

He composed himself and examined the structure one last time. It was ready; all it was missing was the tide of emotion that had to be imprisoned inside of it, and the last three words that were the keys, the starting-words. He had them ready to hand, and the emotion had built to the point that it rolled like a red-golden haze all about the insides of his self, looking for an outlet. He began to direct it into the structure. It was hard work; it wanted to expand, to dissipate, as is the way of most emotion. But he forced it in, packed it tighter. It billowed and churned within the caging words, blood-color, sun-color, alive with frustration. He took two of the words of control in his hands. One of them was simple, smooth and opaque, though of a shape that could not exist in the outer world without help. He tucked it into the structure at an appropriate point, and then placed the other near it, a yellow word with a confused etymology and a lot of legs.

The third one was one in his hands, ready; the gold-and-red storm seethed, rumbling to be let out. Now all that remained was for him to become conscious enough to direct the course of the sorcery, while remaining unconscious enough to set it working. Herewiss shifted about in his mind, found the proper balance point. Then with one hand he took the last word and shoved it into the structure. With the other he grabbed hold of his outer self and pulled his mind behind his eyes again. He looked out.

The Othersight, the perception of the hidden aspects of things, is a side effect of most large sorceries, caused by the intense concentration involved. It was on Herewiss now; he looked out of himself and saw things transfigured. The old keep was made of the bones of the earth, and a sort of life throbbed in it still, a deep gray light like the glow behind closed eyelids on a cloudy day. All around it the men and women of the Steldene army shone, a myriad of colors from boredom to fear — mostly weighted toward the blues and greens, smoky shades of people who wished themselves somewhere else. Many of them also showed the furry outlines of those who are willing to let others do their thinking for them. Well, army types, after all, Herewiss thought. Now for it.

Behind him, in the back of his mind, the pressure was becoming alarming. He let it build just a little longer, the red haze beating within the glittering framework like a second heart, throbbing, pulsing—

Go free! he thought, and the sorcery flowed away and outward from him, sliding down the hill. He could see it now with the Othersight, instead of just sensing it as a construct inside him. Though it flowed like water, it still bore the marks of his structuring, faint traceries of words and phrases gleaming through it like stars through stormswept clouds. The sorcery rolled down and away, expanding, slipping slowly and silently over the besieging forces, over the hold and the surrounding land. Finally it slowed, finding the boundaries that Herewiss had set for it in the spell. It stopped and waited, moving restlessly. To Herewiss's eyes the whole valley was filled like a cauldron with slowly boiling mist, and the men and the hold shone faintly through it.

All right, he thought. First, boundaries that they can see—

In a wide ring around the keep, the air began to darken. Within a short time a wall of cloud half a league in diameter surrounded the hold and the Steldene forces, a threatening roiling cloud that walled away the last of the sunset, leaving the field illuminated only by the lurid choked light at the bases of the thunderheads. Herewiss looked down at the cloudwall, watched it pulse and curl in time with his heartbeat.

A little tighter, he thought. The ring drew inward until it was about a mile across. The men and women within it looked around them and became very uneasy. Herewiss could see the drab greens and blues start to shade down through murky violet as they knew the cloud for something unnatural. There were dark-bright flickers as swords were unsheathed, the brutalized metal living ever so slightly where hands touched it and charged it with disquiet.

Good. Now just a few minutes more—

The last of the sunset light faded from the stormclouds. Now there were no stars, and no Moon, not even a horizon any more. Fear built in the camps below Herewiss until all the swirling mist was churning dusk-purple in his sight, and people were moving about in increasing agitation.

Good. Now for the real work.

He put forth his will, and shapes began to issue from the wall of cloud. They were vague at first, but as his control and concentration sharpened, so did they, gaining detail and the appearance of reality.

He started small. Fyrd began to slip out of the dark mist, moving down on the besiegers with slow malice. Great gray-white horwolves snarling softly in their throats, nadders coiling sinuously down toward the hold, spitting venom and shriveling the grass as they went. There were dark keplian, almost horse-shaped, but clawed and fanged like beasts of prey; destreth dragging scalded bodies along the ground, lathfliers beating heavily along on webbed wings and cawing like huge, misshapen battle-crows. Herewiss made sure that his creations were evenly distributed around the army. In a flicker of black humor he added a few beasts that had lurked in his bedroom shadows when he was young, turning them loose to creep down toward the campfires on all those many-jointed legs of theirs.

The temper of the army was shading swiftly darker, the deep purple turning into the black of panic in places.

There were still spots, though, where the commanders stood and knew that this was illusion-sorcery. They showed pale against the darkness of their fellows, suspicious green or nervous murky blue as they tried to rally their people.

They're holding too well. Fyrd are too real, maybe. Legends, then—

A gigantic ravaged figure came tottering through the cloud, a look of ugly rage fixed on his face. It was the Scorning Lover, of whom Arath's old poem sings. Attracted by his beauty and brilliance, the Goddess had come to him and offered what She always offers, Her self, until the Rival comes to take the Lover's place. But this young man had had a calculating streak, and as price for sharing himself had asked eternal youth and eternal life. The Bride tried to warn him that not even She could completely defeat Death in this universe, and told him he was foolish to try. He would not listen, and She gave him the gifts he asked and left him, for the Goddess cannot love one who loves life more than Her. And indeed as the centuries passed, the Lover did not die — nor did he grow, frozen as he was in the throes of an eternal adolescence. Time and time again he tried to kill himself, but to no avail; immortality is just that. And after all that time, all thought and hope had died in him, leaving him a demon, a terror of waste places, killing all who fell into his hands while bitterly envying their deaths. He stumbled toward the army now, raging with pain from the thousand self-inflicted wounds that can never heal, and never kill him, his clawing hands clutched full of gobbets of his own immortal flesh—

The forces on the eastern side, from which he approached, gave way hurriedly, consolidating with those to the north and south.

Herewiss smiled with grim satisfaction, and went out of the cloud to the north summoned the seeming of the Coldwyrm of Arlid-ford, which doomed Beorgan had killed with the help of her husband Anmod, Freelorn's ancestor. The thing crawled down the slope, an ugly unwinged caricature of the pure hot beauty of a Dragon. The Wyrm was scaled and plated, but in a thick fishbelly blue-white rather than any Dracon green or gold or red. A smell of cold corruption blew from it, like fetid marshes in the winter, and the ground froze with its stinking slime-ice where it crawled. The Wyrm's pale blue tongue flickered out, tasting the fear in the air, and the cold black chasms of its eyes dwelt on the huddling troops before it with malice and hungry pleasure.

The commanders were trying hard not to believe in what they saw. But the campfires were too faint to show whether any of the stalking shapes had shadows or not. The army was collecting into a frightened mass of men and women at the south-east side of the keep.

Just a little more pressure, Herewiss thought, and they'll be ready for Sunspark. Something that'll be sure to panic them all... Dark, I could — it's almost blasphemy, and no battle-sorcerer in his right mind would ever try it. That fact alone might do it. And, anyway, it is for Freelorn's sake, and I don't think his Father would mind the use of His seeming—

Herewiss hesitated. It's for love, he decided. I just hope Lorn's watching.

From the south, as might have been expected, pacing slowly out of the cloud, came a great form that cast its own silver-white light about it. It was a Lion, one of the white Arlene breed, longer of mane and tail than the tan Darthene lions which run in prides. But this Lion was twenty times the size of any ordinary one; it towered as tall as the keep. And its eyes held what no earthly lion's ever had — intelligence, frightening power, towering wrath. It was Healhra Whitemane, in the shape that He took upon himself at Bluepeak, where the Fyrd were broken and scattered . . . the Father of the Arlene kings, and one of the two males ever to have use of the Power. Herewiss halted his other creations where they stood, banished the Fyrd altogether, and poured all his power into making this one illusion as real as it had been in his boyhood dreams. Earn Silverwing should have been there too, the White Eagle companioning the Lion as They had always been together in life. But Herewiss doubted he could handle it and do Them both justice. He poured himself out, and the Lion approached in His majesty, His growl rumbling softly in the air like the thunder waiting in the clouds above. He drew to a halt no more than three or four spearcasts from the tightly clustered army, and looked down at them, towering over them — shining, silvery, His eyes grim and golden—

In the Othersight the army was a black blot of leashed panic, terror with nowhere to run. Now, while they could not move to prevent the damage—

Herewiss gave the sorcery an extra boost, a push of power to keep it alive while he turned his attention away from it. Then he turned to Sunspark, looking at him with the Othersight—

—and was amazed. Sunspark burned beside him, almost intolerable even to his changed and heightened vision — burned as flaming- white as the pain at the bottom of a new wound. Its outline was that of a stallion still, but confined within that outline was the straining heart of a star, an inexpressible conflagration of consuming fires. Now Herewiss began for the first time to understand what an elemental was. This was one note of the song the Goddess sang at the beginning, when She was young and did not know about the great Death. One pure unbearable note of the song, a note to break the brain open through the ears and the burnt eyes. A chained potency looking for a place to happen, a spark of the Sun indeed, whose only purpose was to burn itself out, recklessly, gloriously. One more falling star, one more firebrand flung against the night by the Creatress in Her defiance.

Herewiss slipped warily into Sunspark's mind, confining himself to the narrow dark bridge that represented his control over it, a sword's-width of safety arching over unfathomed fires. (Sunspark. Go, take their tents, their wagons, everything, and burn them. I don't want us being followed.)

(And the men?) Its inward voice was no longer a thing of concepts, but of currents of heat and tangles of light.

(Don't kill!!)

It resisted him, testing, defying his control, and in his heart Herewiss shuddered. He had not really understood what a terror he had chosen to bind. Its fires ravened around him, barely constrained by its given word. Nothing more than its sense of honor kept him from being consumed, but at the same time it was not above trying to frighten him into releasing it. And it did not understand his scruples at all. (What is death?) it sang, its up- leaping fires dancing and weaving through the timbre of its thought. (Why do you fear? They would come back. So would you. The dance goes on forever, and the fire—)

(Maybe for you. But they have no such assurances, and as for me, you know my reasons. Go do what I told you.)

It laughed at him, mocking his uncertainty, and the flames of its self wreathed up around Herewiss, licking, testing, prying at the cracks in his mind. It was without malice, he realized; it was only trying to make him understand, trying to make him one with it, though that oneness would destroy him. He held his barriers steadfastly, though in some deep part of him there was a touch of longing to be part of that fire, lost in it, burning in non-ambivalent brilliance for one bare second before he was no more. The greater part of him, though, respected death too much, and refused the urge.

(Go,) he said again, and withdrew himself. Sunspark gathered itself up, leaped, streamed across the sky like a meteor, a trail of fire cracking behind it and lighting the lowering clouds as if with a sudden disastrous dawn. The men before the keep, frozen in their silent regard of the Lion, saw Sunspark coming and knew it for something perhaps more real than they were. The few minds still bright with disbelief bent awry and went dark as if blown out by a cold wind. Herewiss, though shaken, turned his thought back to his sorcery, and as Sunspark swept down among the tents of the soldiers, the Lion roared, a sound that seemed to shake the earth clear back to where Herewiss sat.

It was too much. The army broke, scattering this way and that in wild disorder, screaming. Sunspark flitted from place to place in the first camp, the one on the eastern side, leaving explosions of white fire behind it. The flames spread with unnatural speed, leaping from tent to wagon as if of their own volition. Herewiss opened a door in the encircling cloud, parting it to the northward, and people began to flee through it. Sunspark saw this and hurried the process. It dove into the southern camp like a meteor and ignited it all at once into a terrible pillar of flame, driving the stampeding army around the west side of the keep and toward the opening in the cloudwall. They fled, officers and men together, with their screaming horses. Sunspark came behind them, though not too closely, spitting gledes and rockets of fire with joyous abandon.

Herewiss sighed and dissolved his remaining illusions, the Lion last of all. The great white head turned to regard him solemnly for a moment. Herewiss gazed back at it, seeing his own weary satisfaction mirrored in the golden eyes, himself looking at himself through his sorcery; then he withdrew his power from it with a sad smile. The image went out like a blown candle, but Herewiss imagined that those eyes lingered on him for a moment even after they were gone . . .

He shook his head to clear it. The backlash was getting him already.

(Sunspark?)

It paused and looked back at him, a tiny intense core of light far down in the field.

(Are they all out?)

(Nearly.)

(Good. Look, the keep door is opening — it's all fire there, go and part it for Lorn and his people and bring them through.)

(As you say.)

Slowly, hesitantly, six faintly glowing figures rode out of the keep and paused before the flaming eastern camp. The bright blaze that was Sunspark joined them there, and they all headed toward the fire, which ebbed suddenly.

The Othersight departed without warning, in the space of a breath. The sorcery dwindled and died away, the wall of cloud evaporated, emotion dissipating before the wind of relief. Herewiss sagged, feeling empty and drained. The fragile spell-structure swayed and fell and shattered inside him, the bright crystalline fragments littering the floor of his mind, sharp splinters of light hurting the backs of his eyes. Backlash. He put his hands behind him and braced himself against the ground, fighting the backlash off. There was one more thing he had to do.

The pain in his head was like hammers on anvils — he laughed at the thought, and found that it hurt to laugh, so he stopped — but he held himself awake and aware by main force, waiting. It was hard. Presently there were hands on him, helping him up. Herewiss opened his eyes and knew the face that bent over him, even in a night of impending storm and no stars.

'Lorn,' he whispered, reaching out, clinging to him.

'Herewiss. Oh Goddess. Are you all right?' The voice was terrified.

'Yes. No. Get me up, Lorn, I have something to do. When I finish, tie me on Sunspark here—'

'Fine. Up, then, do it, you've got to rest.' 'You're telling me. Where's Sunspark?'

'The horse, he means. Dritt, give me a hand. Segnbora, help us—'

'Right.' A new voice. Female. Where did she come from? Oh — the sixth one . . . Strong hands stood him up, guided him to Sunspark.

He put out his hands, braced himself against the stallion's shoulder. 'N'stai llan astrev—', he began, spilling out the simple water-deflecting spell as fast as he could, for the darkness was reaching up to take him—

He finished it, and sagged back into the supporting arms. 'East,' he said, but his voice didn't seem to be working properly, and he had to push the words out again harder,'—straight east—'

Darkness deeper than the stormy night enfolded him, and as he drowned beneath the black sea roaring in his ears, he felt the rain begin.