The Door Into Shadow

Nine

THE DOOR INTO SHADOW

"It's dangerous to invoke the Goddess as you conceive Her to be," said lav. "and more dangerous still to invoke Her as She truly is."

"Right enough," said Airru. "Breathing is dangerous too. But necessary.. "

fates from the South, x, 118

Herewiss's anguished shout came back as echoes, but had no effect on the small dark silhouette that hurried purposefully up the bridge. Herewiss swung Khavrinen up two-handed, pointing at Freelorn, and the sword spat a blinding line of Fire that ran upward toward him — but whatever wreaking he had in mind came unraveled before it ever touched Lorn. Many feet short of the bridge, the Fire hit some unseen bar-rier and splashed in all directions like water thrown at a wall. Freelorn kept walking. Another twenty paces would see him up onto the phantom portion of the span. Herewiss wasn't waiting; he ran up the bridge after his loved, swearing fright-fully in an ancient Arlene dialect, Khavrinen streaming frantic Fire behind him. Sunspark went galloping up after, unable to leave his loved.

"Damn!" Lang said, and followed. "Torve, wait here!" Segnbora said, unsheathing Char-riselm as she headed after Lang. "Are you joking? The Queen would. ." Torve began to say as he followed her and the others onto the bridge. They didn't run long — the altitude saw to that. Only Torve could run fast enough to catch up with Herewiss. In addition, the bridge was longer than it looked: an eighth mile, perhaps, to the point where it truly became sky. Far ahead of them, Freelorn's small figure slowed in its stride, hesitating only briefly. He put one foot on the phantom bridge, found it would support him, and went on as before, in a confident but hurried walk.

Damn! Segnbora thought as she ran. She clutched Char-riselm harder than necessary, for her hands and face were

numb from the chill. That other, more inward cold was pour-ing down more bitterly than before, yet she didn't suffer much from it. Something was blunting its effects; something inside her, burning— (Hasai!) she said as she caught up with Herewiss and Sun-spark and Torve. (Is that you?) (Sdaha, against the great cold of the outer darknesses, this is nothing. We have learned to deal with cold.) (I'm glad!) she said silently.

Herewiss and Torve had paused at the edge of the phantom span, and behind them Sunspark stood, looking downright dubious. The Fire— wrought part of the bridge was as thick and wide as the railless metal span, but clear and as fragile as air. Herewiss knelt to brush his fingers across it and straightened quickly, as if burnt.

"Whoever did this wreaking," he gasped, "they've got more Power than I have — and they're up there now, fueling it!" He got to his feet and stepped out onto the crystalline part of the bridge, realized that the footing was secure, and took off after Freelorn again at a run.

Torve and the others went after, Sunspark hammering be-hind them at a gallop, the bridge under its feet ringing like struck crystal. Segnbora followed, stepping out onto the bridge. Maybe I shouldn't, she thought as she looked down. But to her surprise, the vista of shadows and creeping fog that veiled the south— face glacier half a mile below didn't much trouble her. Hasai's Dragofire was strong in her, getting stronger as she headed after the others. Lady grant it holds, she thought, beginning to run.

At the Skybridge's end, between the two huge crystal doors that lay open there, a tiny figure passed into the dimness beyond and was lost to sight.

The group ahead of her slowed and came to a stop at the end of the bridge, gazing up at the chill clear grace of towers and keeps, at the awful tallness and thickness of the doors. Segnbora caught up with them, feeling their nervousness. Sai Ebassren, the place was called in Darthene: the House of No Return. What lay within, no legend told. The only certainty

was that when the three Lights were gone, the place would vanish, and anyone trapped within would never emerge.

Herewiss did not pause for long. Sending a great defiant glory of the Flame down Khavrinen's length, he walked through the doors. The twilight within swallowed him as it had Freelorn. For an instant Khavrinen flickered like a star seen through fog, and then its light vanished. Sunspark hesitated at the doors, though only for a moment. It was trembling in body, a sight that astounded Segnbora. "Firechild—"

(I'm bound,) it said in terror. (I can't burn. I can't change—)

She reached out to it in mind, perplexed, and felt Sunspark drowning in a cold more deadly than the lost gulfs between stars that Hasai had mentioned; a cold that could kill thought and motion and change of any kind. Hasai had been shielding her. (Maybe you should stay outside,) she said.

It turned hard eyes on her. (I will not let him come to harm in there,) it said, and turned away from her to walk shaking through the doors. The dimness folded around its burning inane and tail, and Sunspark vanished.

"That's done it," Lang said, genial and terrified. "Damned if I'll be outdone by a walking campfire—" He unsheathed his sword and went after, Torve close after him.

There Segnbora stood, left alone on the threshold, trem-bling nearly as hard as Sunspark had. No return.

She swore at herself and hurried in behind the others.

She was in a great hall, all walled in sheer unfigured crystal, through which Adine and the peaks beyond it showed clear. The air was thick with a blue dusk, like smoke. She barely had time to see these things, though, before the terrible thought-numbing cold she had experienced through Sunspark came crowding in close around her, ten times worse than it had been outside.

From within her came an answering flare, Hasai and the mdeihei calling up old memories of warmth and daylight to fight the cold. She regained a bit of composure, looked

around for the others. They were nowhere in sight. Deep in the twilight she could see vague forms moving far away, but somehow she knew that none of them were those with whom she had entered. Her companions were all lost in the blue-ness, with Freelorn.

(Herewiss!) she called silently. (Sunspark!) But no reply came back, and her under speech fell into a mental silence as thick as if she had shouted into a heavily curtained room. Thought was blocked here, then.

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"Herewiss!" she shouted aloud. The curling twilight soaked up the sound of her voice like a heavy fog. She set off into the blueness, hurrying.

For all her fearfulness, the sheer greatness of the wreaking that had made this place astonished her. Even at first entrance the place had seemed as big as Earneselle or the Queens' Hall in Prydon. But now, as she walked across the vast glassy floor, the walls grew remote and the ceiling seemed to become a firmament that not even a soaring Dragon could reach. Mir-rored in walls, galleries, and crystalline arches, she saw vague intimations of other rooms: up-reaching towers and balco-nies, parlors and courts, an infinity of glass reflected dimly in glass, too huge to ever search or know completely.

That terrible chill was part of the wreaking too, though here inside the castle it seemed not to be biting so viciously at the bones. It was becoming a quality of the mind: a cool lassitude, a twilight that ran in the veins and curled shadowy in the heart, smothering fear and veiling the desire to be out of there. She could feel that cold rising in her, but the presence of the mdeihei was a match for it. Ancient sunfire burned the twilight out of her blood as fast as it grew. Dragonfire, painful and bright at the bottom of her lungs, burned the sad resigna-tion away. Frightened by the constant assault, but reassured by the Dragon's presence, Segnbora headed deeper into the shadowy blue. The dead and those who had abandoned life slowly became evident around her. There' were many, but none of them were walking together. Young men and old women she passed; foreigners and countrymen, maidens and lords. Here and there she recognized a surcoat— device, but afterward she was

time to impending tears. This woman had been one of the great powers of her time: vital, powerful, quick to laugh or fight or love. She was the woman who had fought Death and won. Yet now she was like all the others here, her spirit emp-tied out on the crystal floor. "Queen," Segnbora said at last, "I'm no dream, unless I stay here too long. Have you seen a man go by here, one of the living? He was wearing the arms of Arlen."

Efmaer turned slowly, and her eyes dwelt on Segnbora's surcoat and her lioncelle passant regardant in blood and gold. "I know that charge," Efmaer said, showing for the first time a wrinkle of expression, a faint frown of lost memory. "My sister—" "Enra," Segnbora said. "I'm of her line. You are my … my aunt, Queen."

"How many generations removed?" Efmaer said, and for a second the bronze in her voice went bright.

Segnbora could not answer her. "That many,"said the Queen. "She is dust, then. She walks the Shore …"

Efmaer's voice drifted away as she started to lose herself again in the undercurrents of Glasscastle's sorrow. Segnbora gulped. There was something nagging at the back of her mind, something that would mean a great deal to this woman. If only she could remember— "Queen," Segnbora said, "if you haven't seen him, I can't wait. I have to find him."

"I could not find the one I sought, either," Efmaer said in that same half-dreaming voice. "I looked and looked for Sefeden, while the Moon went down and the Evenstar set. We must have passed one another half a hundred times, and never known it. Hear me: The Firework sustaining this place is greater than any mortal wreaking, and the place keeps its own. You will not leave …" "My friends and I will get out," Segnbora said, hoping she was speaking the truth. "Come with us—" Efmaer shook her head. "Only the living can leave this place …" "Are you dead then, Eagle's daughter?" s

For the first time, Efmaer looked straight at Segnbora. Emotion was in those eyes now, but it was an utter hopeless-ness that made Segnbora shudder. "Do I look dead? Would that I were. Not Skadhwe itself could kill me here!" "Skadhwe is here?"

"Somewhere," the Queen said. "Once the doors closed, I lost it, the way I lost everything else. Yet even while the doors were open, it did me no good." She closed her eyes, and with a great effort made another expression: pain. "I fought, but I could not kill myself, and so I am less than dead … "

Pity and horror wrung Segnbora, but she couldn't stay. "Queen, I have to go hunting."

"He will be with her," Efmaer said. "Far in, at the place where your heart breaks. But be out before moonset …" The woman didn't speak or move again. Segnbora paused only long enough to take one of those pale, pliant hands and lift it, kissing the palm in the farewell of kinsfolk of the Forty Houses. Then she turned and hurried away.

Hall after hall opened before her, all alike, huge prisms full of silence and the reflections of empty eyes. Corridor like corridor, gallery like

gallery, and nowhere any face she knew. She ran harder. Through the walls she saw the treacherous Moon hanging exactly where it had

been when she entered. Likewise the sunset appeared about to grow dimmer, but had not changed. Inside Glasscastle there was eternal

sunset, she realized. Without, who knew how much time had passed? The three Lights could be about to vanish, for all she knew.

The thought of the others still unfound, of the awful way back to the main hall, of Efmaer's ghastly placidity, all wound together in her brain

and sang such horror to her that for a few seconds she went literally blind. Trying to turn a corner in that state, she missed her footing and

skidded to her knees. Desperately she tried to rise, but could not. Her leg muscles had cramped.

There Segnbora crouched, gasping, sick with shame and

rage. The awareness of the huge head bowing over her, great

wings stretching upward, was small consolation.

(Sdaha.)

(Yes, I know, just a—) (Sdaha. Here's our lost Lion—)

She pushed herself up on her hands and looked. There was Freelorn, not more than ten or fifteen feet away from her. He was kneeling on the crystal floor, very still, his head bowed. The sight flooded her with intense relief.

"Lorn," she whispered, and scrabbled back to her feet again, ignoring the protests of abused muscles. "Lorn. Thank the—"

Her throne was wrought of crystal, like everything else in the place, but it reflected nothing from its long sheer surfaces. The one enthroned upon it seemed caught at that particular moment when adolescence first turns toward womanhood, and both woman and child live in the eyes. She was clothed in changelessness and invulnerability as with the robe of woven twilight She wore, and Her slender maiden's hands seemed able, if they chose, to sow stars like grain, or pluck the Moon like a silver flowr er. Yet very still those hands lay on the arms of the throne, and Segnbora found herself trembling with fear to see them so idle.

Her quiet, beautiful face lay half in shadow as the Lady's gaze dwelt on Freelorn. For a long while there was no motion but that of Her long braid, the color of night before the stars were made, rising and falling slightly with Her breathing. Then slowly She looked up, and met Segnbora's eyes.

"Little sister," the Maiden said, * 'you're welcome." Segnbora sank to her knees., staggered with awe and love. This was her Lady, the aspect of the Goddess she had always loved best: the Maker, the Builder, the Mistress of Fire, She Who created the worlds and creates them still, Giver of Power and glory. Not even that night in the Ferry' Tavern had she been stricken down like this, with such terror and desire. 'The Maiden gazed at her, and Segnbora had to look down, blinded by the divine splendor.

She gasped for breath and tried to think. It was hard, through the trembling, yet it was the fact that she trembled at all that disturbed her, Even as the Dark.Lady, walking the

night in Her moondark aspect, She did not inspire fear. Something was wrong. Segnbora lifted her head for another look, and was once more heartblinded by Her untempered glory. Segnbora hid her eyes as if from the Sun, and began to tremble in earnest.

Within her Hasai bent his head low, and spread his wings upward in a bow. (She's not as you showed me, within you. Nor is She like the

Immanence. Its experience, too, is always one of infinite power, but the power is tempered—)

(It's—) The words seemed impossible, a wild lie in the face of deity, but she thought them anyway. (It's not Her.)

Segnbora cut herself off. She had a suspicion of what was wrong with this Maiden. She also believed she now knew Who was maintaining the great wreaking that had built the Sky-bridge, and Who was keeping the Glasscastle-trap inviolate. Only an aspect of the Goddess could do such things. . Segnbora got up, anxious to be out of Glasscastle before she discovered whether her suspicion wr as correct — and was very surprised to find herself still kneeling where she was. With a flash of anger she met the Maiden's eyes again. They poured powr er at her, a flood of chill strength, knowledge, potency. The look went straight through Segn-bora like a blade. Once before, long ago, those hands had wrought her soul, those eyes had critically examined the Maker's handiwork. Now they did so again, a look enough to paralyze any mortal creature, as flaws and strengths together were coolly assessed by the One Who put them there. But Segnbora's soul was a little less mortal now than it had been when first created. There were Dragons among the mdei-hm who had had direct experiences of the Immanence on more than one occasion. The judgment of ultimate power didn't frighten them; they were prepared to meet the infinite eye to eye, and judge right, back,

/am what I am, Segnbora thought, reaching back toward the Dragons' strength and staring into those beautiful, daunting eyes.. She would not be judged and found wanting with her work incomplete, her Name still unknown!

Suddenly she was standing, surprised that she could. She expected to be struck with lightning for her temerity, but

nothing happened. Segnbora kept her eyes on the fair, still face, and saw, past the virulent blaze of glory, something she had missed

earlier. The Maiden's eyes had a dazzlement about them, as if She too were blinded.

"My Lady," Segnbora managed to say, "I beg Your pardon, but we have to leave."

"No one comes here," the Maiden said gently, "who wants to leave. I have ordained it so."

The terrible power of Her voice filled the air, making the words true past contradiction. Segnbora shook her head, wincing in pain at the effort of maintaining her purpose against that onslaught of will. "But Freelorn is the Lion's Child," she said. "He has things to do—" "He came here of his own free will," the Maiden said. She moved for the first time, reaching out one of Her empty hands to Freelorn. He leaned nearer with a sigh, and She stroked his hair, gazing down at him. "And now he has his heart's desire. No more flight for the Lion's Child, no more striving after an empty throne and a lost sword. Only peace, and the twilight. He has earned them."

The Maiden half-sang the words as She looked at Freelorn, and Her merciless glory grew more blinding yet. Segnbora shook her head, for something was missing. Whatever lived in those eyes, it wasn't love. And more than Her glory, it was Her love — of creating, and what she created — that Segnbora had worshiped— (Sdaha, be swift!)

(Right—) She reached out to grab Freelorn and pull him away from the Maiden's lulling touch, but as she moved, the Maiden did too — locking eyes with Segnbora, striking her still.

"You also, little sister," She said, "you have earned your peace. Here you shall stay."

"No, oh no," Segnbora whispered, struggling again to find the will to move. But, dark aspect or not, this was the God-dess, Who knew

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Segnbora's heart better than she did.

The Maiden spoke from within that heart now, with Segn-bora's own thoughts, her own voice, as the Goddess often speaks. … I'm tired, my mum and da are dead; there are months,

maybe years of travel and fighting ahead of us — and even if I bring Lorn out of here, he'll probably just be killed. Isn't this better for him than

painful death? And isn't it better for me, toof No death in ice and darkness, just peace for all eternity. Peace in the twilight, with Her. .

The song of the mdeihei seemed very far away. She couldn't hear what Hasai was saying to her, and somehow it didn't matter. The cool of

the surrounding twilight curled into her like rising water. Soon it would rise high enough to drown her life, abolish both pain and desire.

The Maiden was seated no longer. Calm as a moonrise, She stood before Segnbora, reaching out to her. "There's nothing to fear/' She

said. "Nothing fails here, nothing is lost, no hearts break or are broken. I have wrought a place outside of time and ruin—"

The gentle hands touched Segnbora's face. All through her, muscles went lax as her body yielded itself to its Creator. Her mind swelled

with a desire to be still; to forget the world and its concerns and rest in Her touch forever.

"Then it's true," she whispered as if in a dream. "There's no death here …"

"There is no death anywhere," the Maiden said, serene, utterly certain.

The relief that washed through Segnbora was indescriba-ble. The one thing that had been wrong with the world was vanquished at last. Impenmanence, loss, bereavement. . the Universe was perfect, as it should have been from the begin-ning. There was nothing to fear anymore. .

.. though it was curious that one dim image surfaced, and would not go away. In languid curiosity she regarded it, though her indifference kept her from truly seeing it for a long time, It was a tree, and a dark field, and brightness in the field. Night smells— —smells?

There were smells that had little to do with night. Ground-damp. Mold. Wetness, where her hands turned over dirt, and jerked back in shock. Wetness, and the liqyid gleam of dulled eyes in Flameligtit. And 'the carrion smell of death— In a wash of horror, the dream broke. Segnbora knew who

she was again, and Who held her. The Maiden had made the worlds, true enough, and in the ecstasy of creation had forgot-ten about Death and let It in. But She had never denied Death's existence, or Her mistake, in any of Her aspects. Segnbora tried to move away from the hands that held her, and couldn't. Her body felt half-dead.

She settled for moving just one hand: the right one, the swordhand that had saved her so many times before. Her own horror helped her, for she realized now that she was in the presence of a legend: the One with Still Hands, that Maiden Who has stopped creating and holds all who fall into Her power in a terrible thrall. This was a dark aspect of the true Maiden, one Who had embraced forgetfulness, and Who had taken Glasscastle as Her demesne, Her prison. (Hasai!)

Struggling to raise her hand, she called him, and to her shock got no answer. Twilight had fallen in the back of her mind, and she could feel no Dragonfire there. She would have to raise her swordhand alone, even though the Maiden's cool hands on her face made it almost impossible to concen-trate.

Sweat sprang out with the effort. The hand moved an inch. She would not be left here! She would not leave her mdaha stuck in an eternity of not— doing! She would not walk past Lang and Freelorn and Herewiss a thousand times without seeing them. .! Another inch. Another. The hand felt

THE DOOR INTO SHADOW

as if it were made of lead, but she moved further into herself, finding strength.

In the twilight, something else moved. Down inside her memory, in the cavern — not her own secret place, but the cave at the Morrowfane — stones grated beneath Hasai's plating, scoring the dulled gems of his flanks as he rolled over to be still from the convulsions at last. Horrified, Segnbora discov-ered that the One with Still Hands was there as well. Dark as a moonless night, she was soothing Hasai's worst pain, offer-ing him a mdahaih state that would never diminish him to a faint voice in the background, but would leave him one strong voice among many. But her promise was a lie.

(Mdaha! Move! She can't do it. She'll trap you in here, and we'll both be alive and rdahaih forever!)

He could not move. Desperately, Segnbora reached all the way back inside, climbed into his body and took over — wore his wings, lashed his tail, lifted his head, forced one immense taloned foot to move forward, then another, then another. Together they crawled to the mouth of the cave, Hasai gasp-ing without fire as they went.

(Sdaha, have mercy! Let me go!) he begged, agonized. She ignored him, pushing his head out the cave entrance into the clear night. The entrance was too small for his shoul-ders and barrel. She pushed, ramming muscles with thought and cave wall with gemmed hide, steel bones. (Now!) she cried, and they crashed into the rock together. It trembled, but held. (Now!) Stones rattled and fell about them. The mountain shook and threatened to come down — but stone was their element, they were unafraid.

Hasai began to assist her, living in his own body again, remembering life, refinding his strength. (Now!) They jammed shoulders through the stone; wings smote the rock like lightning, burst free into the night. Segnbora's arm knocked away with one sweeping gesture the hands that held her. In rage and pity, and a desire to see something other than slack peace in those beautiful eyes, her hand swept back again. She struck the Maiden backhanded across the face.

Shocked, sickened by the violence she had done, Segnbora waited for the lightning … or at least for her own handprint to appear on Her face. Nothing came, though. No flicker of the eyes, no change in the mouth. Slowly the Maiden turned Her back on Segnbora, went back to Her throne, seated Her-self. She said nothing. Segnbora found herself free. (Sdaha—)

(I know, mdaha, time!)

Segnbora shook Freelorn by the shoulder. There was no answering movement — he seemed asleep, or tranced. Well, dammit, if I have to carry him— She reached down and took him under the shoulders, heaving hard. Freelorn made a sound, then. It was a bitter moan; a sound of pain and mourning as if some sweet dream had broken.

"Come on, Lorn," she said, wanting more to swear than to coax. Moonset couldn't be more than a quarter-hour away. "Come on, you Lioncub, you idiot, come on—!"

Turning, she got him up — then blinked in shock. They were all there, drifting in. Lang, looking peaceful. Dritt, Moris, Torve, Harald, all the life gone out of their movements. Sun-spark, quenched in the twilight like a Firebrand dropped in water. Herewiss, his light eyes dark with Glasscastle's dusk, and no flicker of Fire showing about Khavrinen.

Despair and anger shook her. She didn't have time to go into each mind separately and break the Maiden's grip. She doubted she had the strength, anyhow. Not even the Fire, had she been able to focus it, would help her now, though sor-cery. .

She paused, considering. Perhaps there was a way to break them all free at once. It shamed her deeply to consider it, but then she had no leisure for shame. (Mdaha!)

THE DOOR INTO SHADOW

(Do what you must,) Hasai said, placid. (I'll lend you strength if you need it.)

She gulped, and began the sorcery. It was a simple one, and vile. These people were her friends. She had fought alongside them, guarded their backs, eaten and drunk and starved with them, lain down in loneliness and merriment to share herself with them. Their friendship gave her just enough knowledge of their inner Names with which to weave a spell of compul-sion.

It was almost too easy, in fact. Their own wills were al-most wholly abolished. The images of loneliness, loss of Power, and midnight fear that she employed were more than adequate. She knew less about Herewiss and Sunspark than about Freelorn and the others, but could guess enough about their natures to make them head out the door. Torve was hardest — a name and a wry flicker of his eyes was all she had. Yet she was terrified for this innocent, and her fear fueled his part of the sorcery, making up for her lack of knowledge.

As she gasped oul the last few syllables of the spell, Segn-bora began carefully making her way out of the construct in

her mind. She slipped sideways through the final fold of the sorcery, scoring herself with sharp words in only a few places, thankful for

once that she was so slim. Once out, she bound

the sorcery into a self-maintaining configuration that would give her time to fight off the inevitable backlash and follow the others out.

One by one, her companions began drifting away from the Maiden's throne, out toward the great gates. She sagged a moment, feeling

weary and soiled, watching them go.

Inside her, wings like the night sheltered her and fed her strength. (Sdaha, don't dally—) (No.)

She looked one last time at the throne, where the Maiden sat silent, watching the others go, dispassionate as a statute in a shrine. O my Queen, Segnbora thought. Surely somewhere the Maiden dwelt in saner aspects, whole and alive and forever creating. But to see even a minor aspect of Godhead so twisted was too bitter for a mortal to bear for long. Hurry-ing, Segnbora turned away to follow the others. They were far ahead of her, unerringly following the way out that she had set for them. The sorcery was holding sur-prisingly well, considering bow long it had been since she had used sorcery to as much as mend a pot or start a fire. She went quickly, trotting, even though physical activity would bring on the backlash with a vengeance. It felt wonderful to move again. (Mdaha, you all right?)

(My head hurts,) he said, surprised. The mdeihei rarely ex-perienced pain for which there was no memory.

(It's the effect of the sorcery; you're getting it from me.) Somehow she couldn't bring herself to be very solicitous: There were still too many things that could go wrong. They could come to the doors and find them closed. Or, if they were open, the bridge could be gone. Or—

Something moved close by, a figure approaching Sgenbora from one side. It was not one of her own people, she knew. Her hand went to Charriselm's hilt.

Suoimersky opals winked at her as Efmaer came up beside her and 'walked with her, quickly but without animation. "You are leaving," the Queen said. "Yes. Come with us—r >

Efmaer shook her head. "Gladly would I come. . but I never found Sefeden to get my Name back, and without it I cannot leave …"

"But you know your Name." "I have forgotten it," said the Queen. Segnbora's insides clenched with pity. . and suddenly the memory she hadn't been able to pin down appeared in her pain-darkened mind.Urgently, she stopped and took the Queen by the shoulders. She had half expected to find herself holding a ghost, or something hard and cold, but there was life and warmth in the body, and an old supple strength that spoke of years spent swinging F6rlennh and Skadhwe in the wars against the Fyrd.

"Efmaer. Enra gave the secret to her daughter, and it passed into the lore of our line. I know your Name."

Undead, the Queen still managed to show shock and dis-may that a stranger knew her greatest secret, the word that described who she was. But her distress lasted hardly a breath. "Tell me quickly."

Segnbora swallowed, looked Efmaer in the eye and whis-pered it — one long, cadenced, beautiful word in very ancient Darthene. Efmaer's eyes filled with it, filled with life, and tears.

"Kinswoman," she choked, the word carrying a great weight of thanks and wild hope. "Go. Don't stay for me. I'll meet you by the doors if I can. I have to see about something before I go."

Off Efmaer went into the unchanging dusk. Segnbora turned and ran after her friends. They were almost out of sight, near the outwalls, where the twilight was thickest. (Mdaha, what's the time?) (There's a little left yet.)

She ran, harder than before, somehow feeling relieved of a great burden. She could feel the backlash of her sorcery creeping up on her, a hammering in her head and a weakness in the limbs. But her sorcery was holding, the others were still bound by her will. She caught sight of them now, not too far ahead, right up against—

"Oh Dark!" she said in complete despair, not caring what the swearing might invoke.

The great doors were shut. The faint light of the lying Moon shone high as before, but its light looked dimmer somehow. Freelorn and Herewiss were standing there look-ing dully up at the doors with the others. There was someone else there too, backed up against the entrance.

She pushed passed Herewiss and stopped sharp. If her heart hadn't withered already, it would have done so now.

There was more energy bound up in that waiting figure than in anyone else she had seen in Glasscastle. It was some-one slender, a blade of a woman with about as much curve; someone with a slight curvature of the back that made for an odd stance, balanced forward as if perpetually about to lunge; someone with a sword like the sharpened edge of the young Moon, and short straight hair shockingly white at the roots; someone wearing a surcoat with Enra's lioncelle on it, passant regardant in blood and gold. Her dark eyes had a dazzlement about them, a terrible placidity. The One with Still Hands looked out of them. She was not defeated yet.

'Wo," Segnbora whispered. Her otherself gazed at her with eyes tranquil and deadly, and hefted another Charriselm, making sure of her grip.

"You're not leaving," her own voice said. Segnbora stepped closer, fascinated by the sight of herself. The other watched her unperturbed, wearing the aura of calm that Shihan had taught her was better than armor. (Mdaha, you suppose she has you too?) (As far as I can tell, I'm only here once. Is she truly you?) Segnbora took another step forward. "Save yourself some trouble," said the Segnbora who guarded the door, "and don't bother."

(I think so,) she said to Hasai, recognizing the line. Queasi-ness started to rise inside her. The backlash was starting, and that meant she would soon be unable to hold together the sorcery. The others would start to drift away. Her otherself took a step forward. There was no question about her purpose. Segnbora raised Charriselm to guard, two-handed, and for the first time eyed her own stance as other opponents must have eyed it, seeking a weakness to exploit for the kill. It terrified her. All those who had attempted what she must now attempt were all dead. They

started to circle one another.

"What I don't understand," the other said in a calm, rea-sonable voice, "is why you're trying to leave." "I have my reasons," Segnbora said, shuddering at the strangeness of answering her own voice. "And I have my oaths—" "Your oaths are vain," said her otherself, edging closer in that particular sideways fashion that was Segnbora's favorite for closing inconspicuously with an enemy. "Who'll notice if you break them?" "She will—"

"Oh, indeed. And what has She done for you lately, besides graciously allowing you a night in bed with Her? You know, don't you, that it was only Her sneaky way of telling you that you're about to die? You don't?" The other looked scornful. "Oaths! The way Freelorn's behaving, he'll never make it anywhere near Prydon, you at least know that! He'll get him-self killed, along with the rest of you, on that cold dark ledge. Ice and darkness, that's what oaths get you—"

Segnbora slid closer, trembling. It was hard to think of this as just another fight. The necessary immersion in the other's eyes — that act of becoming the opponent in order to counter her moves before they happened — was impossible when those eyes had the mad Maiden's dreadful stillness in them. Her every glance made Segnbora afraid she would drown in their blank dazzle, drop Charriselm and surrender. To make matters worse, the backlash was hitting her harder now — not by accident, she suspected.

(Let us fight for you!) Hasai said suddenly. Segnbora blinked at this, and her otherself moved in fast, striking high at her head with Charriselm's twin. Segnbora whirled out of range toward the other's right, taking advan— * tage of her own slightly weak backhand recovery, and came about again. There was a stir of movement among the silent) v watchers. For a moment her will to keep them in one place wavered, and they started drifting back toward Glasscastle's center, where the Maiden waited.

(Don't answer, sdaha. The mdeihei and I have been here long enough to be able to work your body; and your memories of your training are now for us. Tend to the sorcery. We will deal with this other you.)

The other Segnbora was inching in again, waiting an un-guarded moment — evidently Shihan's injunctions about not wasting time on showy but ineffective swordplay were binding on her too.

Segnbora didn't much want to give her body to the mdeihei, but even now the sorcery was unraveling. (Mdaha, you get me killed—!)

(Killed? Here?) Hasai said, gently ironic. The other leaped in to the attack again. While she was still in midair Segnbora felt other muscles, other wills, strike through her body and wear it as she had worn Hasai's earlier. Without her volition she saw Charriselm twist up and slash out in the ha'denh move, the edge-on stroke and backstroke that opens the ekier sequence.

Normally, the feint of the first stroke and the vicious back-hand cut of the second would have been enough to disem-bowel her opponent, but Segnbora's sword met its mate half-way through the first cut. The two swords together sang a tormented note like a bell having its tongue cut out. Char-riselm glanced down and out of the bind, and white Darthene steel sliced air where Segnbora would have been, had not the mdeihei twisted her impossibly sideways. (Ow! My back!)

(You still live, don't you? Tend to the sorcery!) There was no more time for discussion. In the back of her mind the hard-stressed words of the sorcery were turning on one another, blades cutting blades, striving to undo them-selves from her constraints. Ignoring her roiling insides, she shoved words back into place, reinforced them, threatened them, cajoled them in heartfelt Nhaired. It was like carrying water in a sieve, for all the while the power of the wreaking wore away at her outer mind, letting the twilight seep in again. While she stopped up hole after hole of the sieve to keep her sorcery from running out, she watched the mdeihei inside her skin using her to turn and cut and thrust, attacking high and low, using all— out routines like sadekh and ariud. Nothing came of it. Every time, Charriselm met its otherself in her twin's hand and the steel cried out. Every time she felt her own leverages, her own moves, being used against her. Again and again the mdeihei saved her life with dives and dodges that nearly snapped her spine, but the situation got no better.

(I had — no idea you were so — difficult in a fight, sdaha,) Hasai said, breathing hard from Segnbora's exertion. He lunged her forward in the dangerous hilt-first "mutiny" ma-neuver, but her otherself twisted nimbly away.

(Neither did I.) Segnbora pushed a couple of words franti-cally back into the weave of the spell. As she did, she remem-bered something Efmaer had said. I could not kill myself, and so I am less than dead. Was this what had happened to her? Had she fought herself here at the gates and lost?

Hasai backed her up a step, raised Charriselm and stood poised in her body like a dancer, waiting for imprudence to tempt her adversary within range. The other Segnbora took the bait, stepping in suddenly and swinging — the edelk slash that could open Segnbora up like an oyster if it connected.

The Dragon sucked her stomach in and struck downward with Charriselm to stop the edeUe, then whirled the blade up in a blur to strike at the other's unprotected throat. But her otherself came up to block, and Segnbora's stroke was slightly off angle. The two swords met, and this time there was no scrape, but rather a sudden snap that went right to the pit of Segnbora's stomach. A handsbreadth above the hilt, Char-riselm broke in two. The blade-shard went spinning away through the air to fall ringing on the crystal floor.

'Wo/" she cried, staring in anguish at the broken-off stump that had once been whole and beautiful. Before the doors, her otherself relaxed into guard, knowing Segnbora would think three times about trying a passage armed with only half a sword. At the back of her mind, words began falling away from one another—

A quick motion off to one side brought her around. It was Efmaer. The Queen came to her with her hands extended, and nothing in them … or not quite nothing. She held a long

slim darkness, like a slice of the utter darkness beyond the world, like a splinter of night made solid—

"You gave me my Name," Efmaer said, urgent. "This is all I have to give you. Take it!"

Only for a second Segnbora hesitated as she stared at the uncanny thing. It was impossible to focus upon it despite its razor-sharp outline. Then she seized it out of Efmaer's hands, by the end that was slightly thicker, and swung it up. There was no weight of hilt or blade; no feeling of actually holding anything, not even coolness or warmth or resistance to the air. (Hasai—)

(Trust us, we will do well enough.) "Kinswoman, be warned," Efmaer said, "it'll demand a life of you some day — it did of me!"

Segnbora nodded absently. She was already busy with the sorcery again, shoring it up. Her otherself dropped once more into a wary crouch, waiting, watching Skadhwe. Hasai saw his advantage and moved in on the other, not waiting.

"So," said the other, "now you'll kill me—" Segnbora wrought a long word in Nhaired and wove it into a spot in the sorcery that was going bare.

"You're in my way,"she said, remotely feeling the strange heft of the sword as Hasai lifted it. Legend said it would cut anything, but would it

work here, inside another legend?

"That's only part of it," her otherself said. "You like to kill."

She couldn't help looking into the other's eyes then and seeing there the placid regard of the Maiden. The power that had almost drowned

her before stirred again.

Hasai danced in close, striking with Skadhwe. (I can't—) Segnbora whispered in mind. Her resistance made the mdeihei guiding her body miss the stroke. Her other-self slipped out of range, whirling to come at her on her weak side. The mdeikei spun Segnbora about too, so that the face-off stood again as it had. Down in Segnbora's mind a word unraveled itself from her sorcery and slithered away like a serpent of light, followed by another, and another. Herewiss turned away, and Freelorn, and. Lang— (Sdahaf)

"Yes!" she said aloud. This wasn't her Maiden, not the Lady of the White Hunt, defender of life and growth. This was just her own body occupied by an indweller as committed to stag-nation as Hasai was to doing and being.

The mdeihei felt her resolve and leaped again. The other Segnbora, perhaps thinking Segnbora wouldn't kill or hurt her, was slow about

retreating. A second later she danced back with a cry. Red showed high up on her arm, pumping fast.

Segnbora flinched. She had felt nothing, no bite of sword into flesh at all.

"If you kill Me, you're killing part of yourself!" the other cried, sounding afraid for the first time.

Hasai pressed in, following his advantage. Segnbora felt tears coming, but didn't argue as she patched the spell again. Only a moment later did she realize what she was going to have to do. It would have been easiest to let Hasai win the fight, but she refused to allow him sole responsibility for that. The spell would hold for a second. She moaned out loud, took back her muscles, slid in and struck with Skadhwe at the Charriselm being raised against her.

With no more feeling than if it had been cutting air, the shadowblade sheared effortlessly through Charriselm and then downward to take off her otherself s arm at the elbow. The thick sound that the arm made in striking the floor, like so much dead meat, turned Segnbora's stomach. The agony in the other's eyes was beyond words.

Segnbora would gladly have dropped Skadhwe, but it seemed to be holding her hand closed about it. Her otherself struggled to her feet, and reached down to work the broken Charriselm out of the severed hand. She lifted the useless sword left-handed, and faced Segnbora with tears streaming down her face.

"Why couldn't you have stayed?" the other Segnbora screamed at her. "Why couldn't you just let it happen! You always wanted—" Segnbora swung Skadhwe again, and felt nothing as her otherself s head — so much silver in its hair! — went rolling away across the crystal floor, trailing red. The slender trunk

dropped, pumping out what seemed too much blood for so slight a frame. One more body. That's all it is. One more body. Oh, Goddess help me—!

Time was short. The sorcery was unraveling, assaulted by her revulsion at what she had done.

Quickly Segnbora lurched toward the doors, aware of Ef-maer off to one side, of Herewiss and Freelorn drifting away. The doors were sheer, without any latch, and fitted so closely together that a thin knifeblade couldn't have been pushed between them. There was no hope of swinging open their massive weight. Unless, perhaps. .

She raised Skadhwe over her head and struck down, a great hewing blow. The sword sank half its depth into the crys-tal, as if into air. Again she struck, and a shard of the thick glass peeled away and shattered on the floor. Again, and again—

A great prism-slice the size of an ordinary doorway leaned out toward her, slow as a dream, and fell. It smashed thunder-ously right at her

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feet.

"Come on, get out!" she shouted at the others, yanking in her mind at the compulsion-sorcery.

Like hounds on leashes they all came stumbling after her, Freelorn and Herewiss, Lang and Dritt and Moris, Harald and Torve and Sunspark, out the jagged hole into the true twi-light. The Moon was telling the truth again, and frightening truth it was. Its lower curve had dipped behind the wall of the Adine glacier's cirque. Only the crescent's two horns still showed in the sky. West of the Moon, the Evenstar balanced precariously on the ridge of the cirque, a trembling, narrow-ing eye of light.

Behind Segnbora, Herewiss shook his head as the wind hit him, and glanced around like a man roused from reverie. Then he glanced up at where the Moon should have been, and wasn't. "My Goddess, it's almost gone, the bridge—!" Segnbora stood poised by the door, peering in desperately. "Efmaer!" she cried. Just inside the door stood Efmaer. She was looking over her

shoulder, trying to catch a last glimpse of her loved through the twilight. "Efmaer!"

The Queen turned to Segnbora, reached out a hand. Segn-bora took it and pulled, and Efmaer stepped through the jagged portal — She did not have time to look surprised. She simply stopped in midmotion, and went to dust: the dust of a woman five hundred years dead. Within seconds the relentless wind came howling down from the mountain, took her, and whirled her away. Segnbora stared stupidly at her empty hand, then turned and ran through the group, who stood watching her with confusion and fear on their faces.

"Come on," she yelled through her sobs, "the wind is back, the bridge is going to vanish! You want to try standing on air?"

She ran out onto the phantom part of the Skybridge, half-hoping it would give way under her. The memory of Efmaer's hand turning to dust

in hers was sickening.

Footsteps pounded close behind her. The Moon's horns looked across the cirque ridge at her, far apart, growing shorter. The Evenstar wavered. Segnbora ran, gasping and terrified. Running had never been one of her strong points. Freelorn came pounding past her, showing off his sprinter's stride to good advantage. Hard behind him came Herewiss, with Khavrinen once more afire on his back. Then came Sunspark, streaming fire like a runner's torch from rnane and tail. Torve and Lang and Harald and Moris and Dritt passed her too, wheezing. Segnbora saw them all make the solid part of the bridge just at the moment the Moon pulled its horns completely beneath the ridge, and the Evenstar closed its eye and went out. With ten yards to go, the bridge of air dissolved beneath her, and she began to fall. . Then Hasai was doing something, The fall simple went no farther, as if she had wings. In the moment of time he bought her, hands grabbed at her frantically and pulled her up onto the steel.

She shook them off and headed down the bridge, fast, only slowing when the angle of the arch made footing difficult. Tears blinded her, burning coldly in the icy wind. She shook them out of her eyes. Raging at heart, she plunged down to the end of the span, down to rock and snow. There she ducked down around to one side of the Skybridge, and slid on her rear end toward one of the huge supports rooted in the mountainside. The others were out of sight. Above her she heard them calling her, confused, frightened, relieved; and she ignored them. Poor crippled One, I pity You — but You'll have no more company in Your exile. Nor am I going to let Herewiss give yp a piece of his life to bind this grave closed. Enough life's, been wasted here. I have a better way—

She came up hard against the leftmost support, a pillar of Fire-wrought steel easily as thick as Healhra's Tree in Ors-mernin grove. Even in the dark it shimmered a ghostly blue.

"Segnbora." Herewiss's voice floated down to her from above. "'What are you doing?"

Segnbora didn't answer. Instead, she raised Skadhwe and with a great swashing blow sliced right through the steel sup-port. The others had had enough time to get off safely.

The Fire in the steel was no hindrance. The pillar cracked and buckled backward, groaning, peeling apart from itself like a wound in metal flesh. Segnbora sliced at it again. The groan grew terrible as the upper part of the pillar came away from the lower, and the span of the bridge began to lean away from the mountainside.

She scrabbled across rock and snow to the second support and hewed that too. Far above, the groan grew to a scream of tortured metal. Smiling grimly, taking ferocious pleasure in the sound, Segnbora made her way to the last support, swung Ska'dhwe back, and struck. The slim shadow of its blade flicked through the metal and out the other side. The im-mense shadow of the Skybridge above her, shifting, leaned faster and faster and suddenly gave way to the deepening violet of the evening sky.

The screaming stopped. Silently as a flower petal — and as slowly, as gracefully — the huge strip of steel floated down into

the abyss of blue air. Then with a crash that shook all Adine, it struck the south-face glacier halfway down its slope, shatter-ing it. Up and out the broken bridge rebounded, falling again. The air was littered with small, lazily turning splinters of ice and steel. The bridge came to rest beyond her line of vision. She heard it though, and when the far-off noise subsided there was only the sound of her gasping, coming through tears of an-guish and triumph.

There was a long silence from above, broken after a while by Herewiss's subdued voice. "Well," he said, "that's one thing less Eftgan has to worry about …"

Ten

Fear hissed at me and struck from beneath a stone. I crushed its head with a rock. Though dead, it still squirmed.

(Darthene Rubrics, xxiii)

167

THE DOOR INTO SHADOW

Segnbora came down from her room the next morning and made her way to the breakfast hall only to find it empty. There was not even a single platter or cup on the table. The great inner court, when she passed through it, however, was lively as a wasps' nest is after it's been kicked. People and horses in the courtyard clattered and shouted so loud she could barely hear Hasai's comments inside her, and the mcteihei were drowned out entirely. Tack was being burnished, weapons readied, and the silver chains of officers were everywhere. (What goes?) Hasai inquired, as loudly as was polite. (How the Dark should I know?) she said. Up the stairs to the battlements she went, three at a time, Charriselm's scabbard bouncing at her side, its every bump a reminder of the black non-weight that was sheathed in it now. The place where her sword had been felt like the socket of a lost tooth. She was grateful when she reached the top, but not reassured at all by the sight of Freelorn and Lang and Moris and Dritt and Torve leaning on their elbows, looking over the battlements, calm of face but tense of stance.

As she came up to them, something went rap! through the bright morning air, a sharp sound that raised goosebumps on her arms. "What is it?" she said, joining them at the battlement. None of them answered her, so she looked for herself. Down in the valley, looking remote, a dark blot surrounded the star-shaped walls of Barachael town. The blot heaved and moved oddly, separated into smaller pieces, consolidated again. One part of the darkness moved rhythmically backward and then forward again, toward the town's big brass-studded gates.

The forward movement arrested suddenly, and after several seconds the faint rapping boom of the battering ram came floating across the air.

"Damn, oh damn," Segnbora said, and out of reflex reached for Charriselm's hilt in frustration. She snatched her hand away as it fell to the not-hot-not-cold smoothness of Skadhwe's end.

Torve, beside her, raised his eyebrows idly at Segnbora's swearing. "It's silly, really," he said. "The people are all in-side khas-Barachael, so there's no reason for the Reavers to force the gates — if they can. I just hope they don't decide to fire the fields. It's late for putting in another crop of wheat. . "

There was really nowhere else to put her hand. After a couple seconds of hooking it uncomfortably in her belt, Segn-bora sighed and let it fall to Skadhwe's hilt. It was an odd feeling, neutral, like touching one's own skin. "The Reavers arrived last night?" she said. Torve nodded. "Through the pass. I dare say the Queen is wishing she had had Herewiss seal the pass before taking on Glas seas tie., " "Where is the Queen?"

"Upstairs with Herewiss,"Freelorn said, giving Segnbora a sidewise glance meant to be disciplinary. "If you'd get up earlier, you wouldn't miss so much."

Segnbora made a face at her liege and leaned on the battle-ment like the others, elbows-down, staring at the Reavers' futile work in the valley. "More are coming?" she said. It was a rhetorical question. There were always more coming.

"Here and elsewhere," Lang said, not looking at her, in that way he had when he was worried and didn't care to let his eyes betray it. "What happened at Orsvier?" "She won,"

"You said 'elsewhere/ just now," she remarked, puzzled. *" Where "s the new incursion?" Lang wouldn't answer her. She looked past him at Dritt. "Bluepeak," Dritt said. Segnbora's stomach began to churn, and inside her the

mdeihei sang their own unease in response to hers. Herewiss's dream was starting to come true, then. Of all the places in the world where the Shadow's sleeping influence shouldn't be disturbed, Bluepeak was the foremost. "How many Reavers?"

"Her scrying would not come clear on that point," Torve said. "Maybe three thousand. People, a large supply convoy, beasts. . and Fyrd." "Fyrd?" she whispered. Allied with humans? The idea shocked her. Not even in the ancient days of terror, between the Catastrophe and the Worldwinning, had Fyrd ever gone so far as to join forces with humans, whom they regarded as prey.

These must be the thinking kind, then; the species they had fought en route to the Morrowfane. The Lion and the Eagle had supposedly vanquished them at Bluepeak long ago, but now they were back. No doubt they were thirsting for ven-geance for the times before they had gained intelligence; times when humankind preyed on them.

"Looks like Bluepeak will be our job," Moris muttered. "Looks that way," Torve said with his usual calm. He turned his eyes back to the Reavers in the valley, who — having had no luck with the town gates — were sitting down to a late breakfast.

"Idiots," Harald said under his breath. "Torve, couldn't you sent out a sortie?"

"Without orders? The Queen would take my officers' chain and use it to hang me by my privates," he answered, only half-joking. "Besides, they're out of bowshot."

Wings whistled overhead. Segnbora and the others glanced up and saw what looked like fire flying. Feathers burning like embers, eyes like live coals, a tail like flame streaming back from a torch … They flinched back from the parapet as the brightness landed there. It stood still long enough to smooth a couple of smoldering feathers back into place, then ruffled itself up in a flurry of red-hot brilliance. (Levies,) it said, (strategy and tactics, forced marches, that's all your soldiers can talk about. I'm bored.) Segnbora raised an eyebrow at the form Sunspark had adopted. "Shame, Firechild! There's only one Phoenix!"

(What's shame?) Sunspark said. (As for the Phoenix — if it's so fond of this shape, let it come try a couple of falls with me. If it wins, I'll let it keep the form.) It peered over the battle-ment at the Reavers below, interested. (Are they with us?)

Segnbora gazed at Sunspark with idle affection. Its tail-feathers were like those of a peacock, but red-golden and bearing eyes like coals. They were searing the stone against which they lay. She started to get an idea. "No," she said.

The elemental turned its fiery eyes on her, glowing even hotter. The others moved down the battlement, all but Torve, who stood his ground. She felt Sunspark examining her state of mind with hot impatient interest. (This is a new kind of joke, perhaps?) (Yes. And no. Better than a joke.)

THE DOOR INTO SHADOW

(Something for Herewiss? Something to make him glad?) (Yes.) She considered her thought carefully before sharing it. (Before I tell you, consider this: When he finds out about it, will he be angry, will he be in pain? If he won't. .) She let the thought rest.

Sunspark looked down at the Reavers, considering care-fully. For all its power, it knew it had much to learn yet about being human. (What are they doing?) it said, audible to the others.

Torve looked at it as calmly as if it had been one of his own people. "Breaking the gates of the town," he said, "to get inside and kill the people, or take their belongings at least."

Sunspark didn't look up from the valley. Segnbora caught its thoughts: Herewiss doesn't care for killing, or for robbing either. He tries to prevent them whenever possible. (And when they've done that? What then?)

"They'll come here and try to kill us, so that no one can stop them from doing as they please in this part of the coun-try," Torve said. (That's done it!) Sunspark said.

Leaping from the battlement in a swift flash of fire, it sent them all staggering back. Segnbora felt her singed face to find out if her eyebrows were still there. Once certain that they were, she looked around hurriedly. Sunspark had vanished. But Harald and Dritt were pointing down at the valley and laughing.

Far down in the depths of air, the group around the batter-ing ram suddenly began to break up. One person after an-other jumped up to beat frantically at smoldering clothes, their yelps of consternation trailing tardily through the air. "Can it manage a whole army, though?" Lang asked uncer-tainly.

Then it was Segnbora's turn to point and laugh, as a bloom of light erupted before the gates, followed by the sound of screaming. The ram — a lopped monarch pine, full of pitch as monarchs are — literally exploded in red-hot splinters and clouds of burning gas. People and ponies were flung in all directions. Then from the explosion site something like a serpent of flame went pouring over the scorched ground. It lengthened and wound right around the walls of Barachael, met its tail and kept on going, coiling around, reaching up-ward. In moments the town was lost behind burning walls, and the huge head of a coiled fire-serpent wavered lazily above Barachael. The confused shrieks and yells of the routed Reavers mingled with the screaming of their ponies. People and animals ran every which way. A roar of amazed laughter and applause went up from the

walls of khas-Barachael.

In response the Reavers, who had moved away from Bara-chael town and toward the keep, raised a chorus of war shouts. But their shouts had a half-hearted sound to them, as if they had other matters in mind. Sunspark was looking down at them with innocent malice, its fiery head swaying like that of a sleepy viper deciding whether to strike.

"What the—!" someone said from a higher parapet. Segnbora glanced up and saw Eftgan and Herewiss looking over the rail at Barachael town, very surprised. "Your idea?" Eftgan said to Herewiss. "No!" he said, grinning down at Sunspark. It stretched up its flame-hooded head and blinked at him good-naturedly. (They had torches,) it said, (and might have burned the town. However, if anybody's going to do any burning around here, it's going to be me.)

Herewiss and Eftgan came down to the battlement together and leaned on the parapet with Freelorn's followers. "I wish that sealing the pass was going to be as simple," Eftgan said.

Freelorn glanced at her. "It really ran be done, then?" Herewiss nodded. "It took me a while to work out the exact method, and it'll take some hours to attune to the mountain properly. . but, yes, I can do it." "And survive?"

Herewiss's glance crossed with Freelorn's, gently mocking. "That's with Her, of course," he said, "but I have a few things to do yet before I go willingly to death's Door. I believe I'll live."

"It's risky, though," Eftgan said, as if resuming an argu-ment with herself. "The earth always moves better on a night when the Moon's full, but the next time that happens there's an eclipse. The Shadow will be very strong then—"

There was a silence. Segnbora bit her lip. In a place as bitterly contested as Barachael, where the land was soaked with centuries of blood and violent death, even the simplest wreaking could be warped by the built-up negative forces. An eclipse was no help at all. And to attempt a wreaking that involved unconsciousness of the upper mind, as this one surely would— "I'm strong too," Herewiss said.

The complete assurance in his voice made Segnbora shud-der. She had heard such assurance before, and disaster had followed. "The wreaking itself doesn't worry me; I received more than enough Power to handle it at the Morrowfane. The tricky part will be the survey of the land. That'll have to be done out-of-body, and it'll take at least a day. Moreover, it must be done today, or tomorrow at the latest, in order for me to be properly rested up for the long wreaking."

Lang raised his eyebrows. '"Survey?" Herewiss nodded and leaned on the parapet. "Can't seal the pass without checking the valley to see how its stone lies — strata, faults, underground water. Touch the wrong part of a landscape and the whole thing could be destroyed."

"This area's quite unstable," someone said, and heads turned toward Segnbora, confusing her terribly until she real-ized that it was she who had spoken. "There are two major faults under the valley," she heard herself go on in a voice that

sounded like hers but was somehow odd. "Eight minor verti-cal faults run east-west between Adine and Aulys, and one runs across the lower Eisargir Pass. One major vertical fault crosses the valley mouth from Swaleback to Aulys's southern spur—" (Mdaha? What are you—)

(If he will work with stone, here, he must learn this, sdaha!) said the great dark voice inside her. She held her peace and let him use her throat.

"Then beneath those is a lateral fault that runs down the Eisargir Pass from the foot of Mirit into the valley, past the town, and out into the plain. It's very treacherous. We made no Marchward here because of it. To touch it wrongly will cause it to discharge and fold the valley in upon itself. The mountains might come down too. Especially Adine, whose support-spurs are rooted close to the lateral." The others stared at her, particularly Herewiss. He opened his mouth, but paused a moment, unsure how to begin. "Sir—" "I greet you, Hearn's son," she said, and approximated Hasai's slight bow. "Sir, how do you know all this?"

The mdeihei were laughing indulgently, as one laughs at a child. "We are Dracon," Hasai said, very gently. "We know. Stone is our element."

"Sir," Herewiss said, "I'd like to trust what you say, it'd save me a great deal of time, but—"

"— but you don't understand," Hasai said, patient. Segn-bora was surprised to hear the overtones of his inner song, calm and measured, coming out in her own voice.

"What you ask us is a great mystery. Even we aren't sure how stone became our element. But in the world from which we came, we were born in the stone, and dwelt in it. These are the very earliest times of which we speak. When food and drink failed us, stone and starlight were all we had left. We learned to use them. Those who didn't understand stone— how it could be moved to make shelter or melted with Dra-gonfire to help one find more starlight in dim times — those didn't survive. Those of us who lived to become as we are

now, are born knowing the structure and movement of rock as we know how to use our fire to shape it. We experience stone as if it were part of us. Indeed, we are the foundations, the roots of the world."

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Herewiss and Freelorn looked at each other. No one on the parapet spoke.

From down in Barachael valley, the hot eyes of the blazing serpent that encircled the town looked up with interest. (You're good with fire, are you?) Sunspark said, its voice lazy but full of challenge.

Segnbora gulped. But Hasai turned her head and look-ed down at the elemental calmly. "We know something of fire."

Sunspark glanced at Herewiss, as if considering the agree-ments that bound it, and then back at Segnbora. "Some day," it said formally, "we'll

match our power, you and I, and see which is greater."

"Some day," Hasai said calmly, "we shall." The words made Segnbora squeeze her eyes shut against a sudden blind-ing headache, for they were in future definite tense, describ-ing something that had not yet come to pass.

When the memories passed, and the sight of common day-light came back to her, Hasai lifted her head again. "Hearn's son," he said, "do you desire our aid?"

Herewiss looked at Segnbora as if trying to see past Hasai's voice. " 'Berend, what do you say?" She coughed and cleared her throat, getting control back. "I say, if Hasai offers you aid, take it."

"In that case," Herewiss replied slowly, "I'd like to check his assessment of the faults—" He stopped, unwilling to com-plete his suggestion. " — in my mind?" she guessed. "Yes."

Segnbora considered the idea. "You're welcome to look in," she said finally. "When?" "As close as possible to the hour that we begin the wreak-ing. Tomorrow night?" "Wait a minute!" Segnbora said, panic rising. "We?" Herewiss shrugged. "I'll need ongoing information during

the wreaking itself. I could probably do it alone, but why stretch myself thin when there's assistance offered?"

Segnbora hesitated. To participale in the wreaking itself would mean becoming involved with Herewiss's Fire. And the Fire was something she had sworn she would never touch again; she had suffered too many frustrations on its account. Besides, being unable to focus, she might become a danger to the proceedings. .

Herewiss picked up her last thought. " 'Berend, you came out of the Precincts with everything they had to teach, less one," he said. "I doubt you'll foul a wreaking in progress. Goddess knows how many of them they put you through!"

Most of them, Segnbora thought sourly, for all the good it did. She had no excuse. "All right," she said. "Tomorrow night, then."

"We'll move mountains together," Hasai added in a rare show of humor. There was starlight in the cave, and behind him ran the slow quiet

laughter of the mdeikei.

Herewiss nodded to Segnbora, and then turned to Eftgan. "Madam,"he said, "we have to finish discussing the Bluepeak business." He started back up the stairs to the tower, taking them two at a time, Khavrinen bouncing at his back and trailing blue Flame. Eftgan gave Segnbora a curious look and followed.

What have I got myself into! Segnbora thought. She put her head down onto her hands and gazed across the valley at Barachael, memories of the Precincts, and her unsuccessful attempts to focus tearing at her.

Below, the fire-serpent folded its hood and looked at her with innocent wickedness. (Tell me a joke?) it said. Segnbora groaned.

The next day it began to seem as if Eftgan's glum assess-ment of the Shadow's ability to direct the Reavers was correct. It certainly seemed as if they knew the incursion route down the Eisargir Pass was threatened. They came pouring out of the valley in a disorderly but

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constant stream. Skin tents sprouted everywhere, and thousands of shaggy Reaver ponies cropped the green corn down to stubble. The old silence of

the valley was replaced by a low, malicious whispering, like the Sea's when a storm is brewing. Dusk brought no peace, either. All the valley glittered with the sparks of campfires, around which war songs were being sung, and swords shar-pened.

Segnbora sat atop an embrasure in the northeastern battle-ment as twilight settled in, looking down at the press of Reaver tents and people gathered around the lower switch-back of the approach to khas-Barachael gates. Hasai looked with her, undisturbed. (This place is well built, for something made by your kind,) he said. (It won't fall to such as these.)

"Maybe not. But this is the strongest fortress in this part of the south, and they don't dare march away from here and leave it unconquered at their backs. Even if Herewiss seals the pass successfully, these three thousand will just sit at the gates and hold the siege." (You're troubled, sdaha. And it's not the prospect of battle that's causing it.)

With a sigh, Segnbora swung down from her perch on the wall and sat on the stone bench inside the embrasure, leaning back against the cool wall. (I'm not delighted about this busi-ness of being involved in a wreaking,) she said silently. (Espe-cially this one. And you got me into it.)

The dusky melody of Hasai's laughter rumbled inside her. (I think not. Who spoke the words, who told the Firebearer he was welcome? Did. you lie to him, then?)

Exasperated, Segnbora closed her eyes and slid down into herself. Above the cave within her, it was twilight too. Stars were coming out one by one in the shaft that opened on the sky. Hasai lay at ease on the stone, his eyes silver fire, his tail twitching slightly like that of an amused cat. Segnbora walked over to him and sat down by one of his front talons, leaning her back against it and craning her neck back to see him.

The Dragon was a shadow, winged like the night, only his face glittering in the cool light of his eyes. "Very funny," she said. "Mdaha, I didn't

lie. But I'm afraid of him depending on me. I might fail him."

"Ejsn 'All. Vuudo," Hasai chided. "When will you accept what you are?"

"Be patient, will you? It took me long enough to find out what I'm not."

"Part of you is me," the Dragon said. "I will not fail so simple a task as examining the stone in this valley. If you wore my body more often, you would know that."

The melody of the bass viols in his voice became grave. Behind him the mdeihei matched his song in cadences of calm regret.

"Your memories are buried deeper under you mind's stone than ever. We are at your foundations, and still you try to keep us out. It would be so

easy to become one," he said, lifting his head. "Look…"

In a flash of memory, Hasai showed her the building of the Eorlhowe in North Arlen — a whole mountain that had been uprooted from a remote range in west Arlen as casually as a man might pluck a flower for his hair. The mountain was taken to the tip of the North Arlene Cape, laid there upon the body of the slain Worldfinder, and melted down upon him with Dragonfire until it was only half the size it had been. Then its remains were talon-carved and tunneled and re-worked into the residence of the DragonChief, the Dweller-at-the-Howe. Segnbora shuddered at the thought of the pal-try skin of stone that had been "protecting" her inner mind from Hasai and the mdeihei.

"Your fear cripples you," Hasai said more gently. "You fear what we are. Even our joys are terrible to you. Matings, births, deaths, the Immanence that isn't your Lady but is nonetheless real— You must give up the fear, come to terms with these and all the other things from which you cannot run away. Cease hiding yourself from yourself, be who we are!"

"It's not that easy," she said, taking a last glance at that distressing memory of the Howe. As she watched, storm-clouds clustered about it, hiding

the Howe's rounded peak. Dragons flashed in and out of the clouds like lightning, their roars deafening the thunder. Whether this was ahead— mem-ory, or past-memory, she had no idea.

(Hallo the heart!) came a voice from a long way up. It was Herewiss's voice, tentative but cheerful. "Damn," Segnbora muttered.

Hasai lowered his head toward her. "Later, sdaha?"

"Later for sure," she said, disgruntled. She was not ready for this, but nevertheless she called up to the stars, "Come on in!"

"I brought a friend," Herewiss said, slipping sideways out of nothing as if through a narrow door. Khavrinen was laid casually over his shoulder.

Fire flowed from it and caught in Freelorn's eyes as he appeared behind his loved.

"Nice place you've got here. Where's your lodger? Lorn wanted to—"

Segnbora watched in amused approval as Herewiss stopped in midsentence and looked up … and up, and up. Freelorn halted beside him and did the same, his eyes going wide. When Segnbora had first come in, Hasai had been indistinct, a looming dark presence. But now the gems of his scales caught the light of Herewiss's Fire and threw it back in a dazzle of blue sparks. He lowered his head to thirty or forty feet above Freelorn and Herewiss, tilting his head to look first at one of them, then at the other.

"I see the resemblance remains," he said, very low, rum-bling a major chord of approval. Following the words came Dragonfire, a slow and luxuriant spill of blinding white radi-ance that poured from his mouth to the floor and pooled there, burning. "Greetings, Lion's Child. And to you and your Flame, greetings also, Hearn's son."

From the darkness beyond Hasai the mdeihei joined the greeting, recognizing the sons of two lines worthy of notice even as Dragons reckoned time. The huge cavern filled with a thunder of concerting voices, a harmony that shook the walls.

Herewiss bowed very low. Freelorn glanced around him in amazement at the noise, and then down at the spill of Dra-gonfire, under which the stone floor had melted and be-gun to bubble. Finally he tilted his head back up to look at Hasai. "Resemblance?" he said in a small voice. "To Healhra,"Hasai said calmly. Freelorn's mouth fell open.

"I was at Bluepeak March ward some years before the Bat —

tie," Hasai said. "I saw him when he was a little younger than you. You have his nose."

"I, uh. ." Freelorn said, and closed his mouth. He looked over at Segnbora.

She shrugged. "He's been around awhile, Lorn. Mdaha, what do we have to do for Herewiss?"

"Come deeper inside us, sdaha. He will see what he needs to see when you do."

Hasai dropped his head down to Segnbora's level, his jaws opening slightly to receive her hand. Dragonfire still seethed in his mouth, so that the floor hissed and smoked where drops of it fell. For a split second she hesitated. Then, recognizing a challenge, she rolled up the sleeve of her shirt and thrust her arm into the fire. This was happening in her mind, after all. How badly could it hurt? She found out. Jaws closed and held her trapped in the essence of burning, a heat so terrible that it transcended pain. Her control broke. She opened her mouth to scream, feeling the heat more completely than anything she had ever felt in her life. But to her utter amazement, without the sensation stopping, the pain vanished—

She felt the stone. There was no way she could not feel it. The sensation was like a fencer's when balance at last becomes perfect and power flows up from the earth. Connec-tions formerly hidden suddenly became clear and specific: her body seated on stone, the bench; the beech's placement on the stone of the upper-battlement paving; the positions and junctures of the blocks of khas-Barachael's walls; the massive piers and columns of its foundation-roots in Adine's southern spur.

She felt the whole mountain, a complex of upthrust blocks and minor stresses pushing against one another and easing again as Adine's roots met those of its neighboring peaks. Her perception widened and spread around the valley to include Eisargir and Houndstooth and Aulys, mountains leaning on or striving against one another. The valley, too, filled with her until she felt the faults and stresses there, a surface unease like a vast itch. She felt the transverse vertical faults, lying fairly quiet now that mountain-building in the area was largely

finished. She felt the lateral fault, stretching from head to foot of the valley and holding dangerously still.

Farther down, heat grew in the stone. Its structure and its temper changed as her perception slid down through the fragile skin on which continents rode and jostled. Weight and pressure grew by such terrible strides that there was no telling anymore whether the stone was liquid or solid: it simply burned darkly, raging to be free, yet having nowhere to go.

Down farther still, it was too hot, too dense, for stone. Molten metal seethed and roasted in eternal night, swirling with the planet's turning, breeding forces for which Segnbora had no words but which the Dragons understood. These were some of the forces they manipulated while flying, and finding their way.

(Enough!) Herewiss said, his voice seeming to come from a long way off. (Sir, I see your point.)

(Look here, then,) Hasai said, redirecting Segnbora's atten-tion to the very top of the paper)' layer where mountains were rooted and the valley lay. (You see the danger of the lateral fault. Trigger it and the vertical faults will likely collapse the valley, bringing down the mountains. Yet the pass you pro-pose to close has the lateral running right down it, and direct intervention there will definitely set off the fault.)

(There's also the problem of the negative energies,) Segn-bora said. (See how they're gathered along the lateral fault. It's ready to have a quake. Evidently that's an option the Shadow's been considering for a while.)

(Fve been thinking about it too,) Herewiss said, sounding grim. (The question is, what do I do about it? There's only one possibility. .) He trailed off, sounding dubious. (What's your thought, Fire-bearer?) Hasai said. Herewiss indicated one of the eastern roots of Hounds-tooth, a colossal pier of granite and marble set a half mile deep in the crust. (Positive and negative attract,) he said. (If I strike there with my Fire and cause that root to move, the negative should flow away from the lateral fault and attack my positive Power. But before that happens and the forces cancel out, the root itself

will move upward enough to knock the Houndstooth peak down into the pass and block it permanently—) He broke off, looking at Hasai's perception as if seeing something wrong. (Yes, you've found the problem with your plan,) Hasai said. (Watch.) As he spoke, the perception moved and changed in response to Herewiss's suggestion. They felt, rather than saw, the smooth peak of Houndstooth rear up and collapse west-ward into the Eisargir Pass. A few seconds later the lateral fault came violently alive. Half of Barachael valley slid south with a jerk, while the rest jumped north. Every vertical fault went wild, one after another, some blocks thrusting hundreds of feet upward in a matter of minutes, some sinking fathoms deep. Mount Adine fell on Barachael. Eisargir collapsed on itself and buried the priceless ironlodes forever. When it was all over, nothing was left but a broken, uninhabitable wilderness.

Herewiss grimaced. (The psychic energy canceled out all right,) he said, (but I had no idea there was so much move-ment-energy in that lateral fault. Damn!)

(Don't berate yourself,) Hasai said. (The move was well made for one so new at the game. Come, Firebearer, try it again. There is always a solution.)

THE DOOR INTO SHADOW

(Well then, how about this. .)

For a long while afterward Segnbora's mind was filled with the feeling of rock shifting and grinding and mountains fall-ing over in various disastrous combinations. She got very bored. The game Hasai and Herewiss were engrossed in was like an extremely complicated variation of checks — and though Segnbora enjoyed playing for the delight of crossing wits with another player, her inability to think more than three or four moves ahead usually kept the game short and its ending predictable. Freelorn, to her intense irritation, looked over Herewiss's shoulder in fascination, understanding every-thing.

(That'll do it!) she heard Herewiss say at last. Focusing her attention fully on the scene she was feeling, she found, to her amazement, a Barachael valley still relatively intact, with both town and fortress unhurt, and the Eisargir Pass successfully sealed. Some distance away in her mind, she

could feel Herewiss grinning like a child who had beaten a master.

(That was an elegant solution,) Hasai said. (And as I under-stand the Shadow from my sdaha, It would have to intervene Itself to foul the situation any further, which It's reluctant to do, not so? It fears risking defeat.)

(That's right,) Herewiss said. (There's one move that still bothers me, though. The next-to-last. That one root of Aulys, the one that's split up the middle—)

(Move it as a whole, and you'll be safe.) Hasai's perception of the valley winked out, leaving them standing in her cave again. Segnbora took her hand out of Hasai's mouth and looked at it closely. There were no burns or blisters. Her mdaha rumbled at her in amiable mockery. "Hearn's son," he said, "when this business is over, I'd be delighted to play with you again. There are some stresses in the volcanic country in west Arlen that might stretch you a little."

Herewiss nodded. "With 'Berend's cooperation, abso-lutely." He turned to her. "I'll be starting the wreaking at sunset tomorrow. Lorn and Sunspark will be keeping an eye on our bodies while we're out of them, and Lorn will be tied partially into the wreaking to keep us in touch with what's happening in real time. Are you still with us?"

She felt like telling him no, but Hasai, gazing silently down at her, felt about in her memories and brought one in particu-lar: night outside the old Hold, and her voice saying to Here-wiss, "You'll find your Power, prince. . I'll help if I can." "Yes," she said. "Dark, it's been years since I last moved a mountain."

Herewiss, hand in hand with Freelorn, gave her an approv-ing look. "Later, then," he said. Fire from Khavrinen blazed up and swirled about them. They vanished.

Segnbora folded her arms and looked up at the silver eyes gazing placidly down on her. "You're up to something," she said.

Hasai flicked his wings open, a humorous gesture that made cool wind a second later. "When one knows what's going to be," he said, "one

tends to make it happen that way."

"So what's going to happen?" Hasai slowly dropped his jaw at her. "Live, sdaha, and find out."

He vanished into a memory. Segnbora sat for a moment on the bench, listening to the amused song of the mdeihei — then grinned with anticipation, felt her way out of the embrasure, and went to bed.

"How are the stars?" Herewiss said from behind her.

"Almost right," said Freelorn. He was beside her, leaning on the sill of the tower window. "Another quarter-hour and the Moon'11 be in the Sword." "Great. I'm almost done."

The Moon, just past its first quarter and standing nearly at the zenith, looked down on a valley that flickered with campfires and the minute shiftings of Reavers going to and fro. Around Barachael's walls, a lazy ring of fire smoldered, flaring up every now and then when some skeptical Reaver got too close. Segnbora, feeling a touch naked without sur-coat and mail, turned her back on the valley vista and watched Herewiss at work.

The tower room had been emptied of everything but two narrow pallets and a chair. Around these, in what had been the empty air in the middle of the room, Herewiss was build-ing his wreaking — the support web that would both protect him and Segnbora and slow their perception of time long enough for his Fire to do its work. He stood in britches and shirt, as Segnbora did, with one hand on his hip. With the other hand he wielded Khavrinen as lightly as an artist's sty-lus, adding line after delicate line of blue Flame to what had become a dome of pulsing webwork with him at its center.

The completeness of his concentration, and the economy and elegance of the structure itself, delighted Segnbora. Lady, he's good, she thought, admiring the perfect match between the inner symmetry-ratios of the wreaking and the meter of the spell-poem he was reciting under his breath. It had been foolishness to dismiss him from the Precincts simply because he was male. "If you leave my pulse running that fast," she said, noticing

the brilliance of the last lifeline Herewiss had drawn, "I'll be in bad shape when we get back."

"Nervous, huh?" he said, glancing at her and lifting Khav-rinen away from the description of a parabola. He touched the sword's tip to the pulse line, draining it of some Fire. "Bet-ter?" "Yes."

"Good. Sunspark?"

Hot light flowered in one corner of the room and con-solidated into a slim red-haired young woman with merry golden eyes. (They're impatient down there, loved,) she said, pleased. (They keep testing me.)

"Fine, just so long as they don't get too interested in khas-Barachael. You know what to do?"

(This being the fourth time you've asked me,) Sunspark said, folding her arms in good-natured annoyance, (I dare say I do. None of them will leave the valley. They'll find the way into the plains barred, just as Barachael town is barred to them. On the night of full Moon, immediately before the eclipse starts, I'll begin driving the lot of them back up the pass. None will die.)

Herewiss nodded, narrow-eyed, completing the intercon-nection of several lines. "I hate to admit it," he said, "but there's a possibility that something'll go wrong with all this. If the pass fails to seal properly, and I've exhausted myself, and they get down into the valley again—" (Loved,) Sunspark said, (in that case I'll be very quick with them. Their bodies will be consumed before the pain has a chance to start.) Herewiss looked gratefully at the elemental from inside the shimmering blue web of the wreaking. "Thanks, loved. I'll do my best to make it unnecessary." He rested Khavrinen point-down on the floor and gazed around at the finished spellweb. "Lorn?" "The Moon's right," Freelorn said, turning away from the window. "Let's go."

Trembling a bit with excitement, Segnbora unbuckled her swordbelt, drew Skadhwe from it, and tossed the belt in one corner. Herewiss walked out through the web and then

turned inward to face, from the outside, the part of it specifi-cally concerned with his body.

"A little to the left, 'Berend," he said as she moved into position. "Lorn, you're fine." They each stood at one corner of an equilateral triangle. "All together: step—"

Segnbora walked through the part of the Fireweb sympa-thetic to her, feeling it crackle with charge as it brushed against her face and hands. The hair stood up all over her as the spell passed through her body and rooted in flesh and bone. At the same time came an astonishing wave of lethargy. Hurriedly Segnbora lay down on the left-hand pallet, settling herself as comfortably as she could. She laid SkadhwЈ down the length of her, folded both hands about its hilt at heart level, and began relaxing muscles one by one. Across the circle, Herewiss was settling himself with Khav-rinen, while Freelorn bent over him. "My head aches," Lorn said. "Is it supposed to do that?"

"That's the part of your mind that's slowing down to keep up with us," Herewiss explained drowsily as the wreaking took hold of him too. His eyes lingered on Freelorn for a moment.

"Don't even think it," Lorn said, and bent lower to kiss Herewiss good night. Herewiss's eyebrows went up for a sec-ond, then down again as his eyes closed.

(Mdaha,) Segnbora said to her inner depths, closing her own eyes, (see you when I'm out of the body!)

(I think not,) the answer came back, faint, amused. (What?) She tried to hold off the wreaking long enough for Hasai to explain, but it was no use.

Briefly, the spell fought with her lungs, then conquered them and slowed her breathing. That done, the Firework wound deeper into her brain, altering her thought rhythms toward the profound unconsciousness of wreaking suspen-sion. For a second of mindless panic Segnbora fought that too, like a drowning swimmer, but then everything, even Hasai and the mdeihei, fell away. .

Eleven

"Choose," She said to the cruel king. "For I am bound by My own law, and what you desire shall be given yoy, until you shall ask Me for something beyond My power to grant." He told her his desires, and she granted them all — until at last, alone, desolate King of an empty city, he cried out to Her in anguish, "Change my heart:!"

"I shall leave you now," the Godd>ess said, "for you have asked a boon past My power. Only one has the power to fulfill that wish. . and you are doing so."

from "The King Who Caught the Goddess," in Tales of old Steidin, ed. s'Lange, n-'Viirendir, 1055 p.a.dL

Segnbora was wide awake. She swung her feet off the pallet and stood up with Skadhwe in her hand. The room around her was foggy and hard to see — Herewiss's spellweb had al-ready slowed her time sense considerably. Dust and convec-tion currents moved around her at what seemed many times their normal speed. Her othersenses were wide awake too, and showed her strange blurs going swiftly about the room: one yellow-bright as fire, one dark with an odd tangle of potential at its heart: Sunspark and Freelorn.

Herewiss still lay in his body, the blue-white core that was his soul struggling yet with the shell that surrounded it. Tense with the sensation of his difficulty, Segnbora turned away from him to gaze down at herself where she lay on her pallet.

(Mdaha?) she said. No answer came back; evidently the mdeihei were tied to her body, and must stay there, silenced, when she left it. Sorrowful and nostalgic, she looked down at her still form, drowned in a repose deeper than any sleep. It had been a long time since the Precincts, when she had last been out-of-body and able to see herself so clearly. A lot had changed since then. There was a wincing fierceness about the corners of the eyes now that hadn't been there when she was younger. There was also a tension in her posture, as if her body was prepared to move in a hurry. Too much time alone, she thought, with the curious soulwalker's objectivity. Too much time on tht run.

(It's not that bad,) Herewiss said from behind her. She turned, and in sheer appreciation didn't move or speak for a few thoughts' time. In general, Herewiss still looked like his body. He was still

lean and tall, wearing the no-nonsense musculature of a smith: hands both powerful and delicate; a fine-featured face made handsome by sleepy, gentle eyes. But in his wreaking form shone a child's innocent joy in life. Fire, with its incred-ible potential for creation and destruction, blazed in him like the Sun held captive in a crystal. He was dangerous, and utterly magnificent. (Well met,) she said, and meant it. (You speak for me too,) Herewiss said. Segnbora realized how oddly he was looking at her, and wondered what he saw. (We're short of time,) he said. (But for the moment, look at that!)

He pointed at something behind her. Segnbora looked over her shoulder, away from the quick-flickering light of the Fire-web. Laid out along the floor, long and dark behind her, was her shadow.

(That's impossible!) she said in momentary indignation, turning to see it better. (You can't have a shadow out of the body!) Yet there the darkness lay, stretching to the wall and right through it, blandly contradicting what had been taught to her in the Precincts. Experimentally Segnbora raised an arm, and was dumbfounded to see the serrated shape of a Dragon's wing lift away from the shadow-body.

Behind her she felt Herewiss restraining his laughter. (My mdaha is truly becoming part of me,) she said, amused in spite of herself. (Where is he? I thought he'd be here with us.) (So did I. He's with my body, it looks like.) Herewiss felt dubious for a moment. (How are you going to tell me what's happening in the stone, then? If he's not here—) She started to lean on Skadhwe, then aborted the gesture as the sword's point began to pierce the stone they stood on. (Well, I have my memories of what it's like to be one of the mdeihei. All I have to do is live in them completely enough and we'll be fine.) She wished she was as certain of that as she made it sound. (Now, where do we have to go?) Herewiss nodded at the room's north wall, laying Khavrinen over his shoulder. Segnbora did the same with Skadhwe, and together they walked through the wall and into the clear air over Barachael. The stars wheeled visibly in the paling sky above them, moving a little faster each moment as Herewiss's wreaking further slowed their time sense.

(How about that, it works,) Herewiss said, pausing. (A mo-ment. Lorn?)

The answer came not in words, but in swift-passing impres-sion of concern, relief, encouragement. All was well in the tower, though Freelorn wondered why Herewiss had waited so long to check in with him. Hours had passed.

(We're all right, loved,) Herewiss said. (The pauses may get pretty long, but don't worry about us unless the web fails.) He broke contact and walked down the air toward Barachael val-ley. Segnbora followed.

Their othersight was stimulated by the wreaking, and the Chaelonde valley bubbled like a cauldron with normally un-seen influences. The Reavers' emotions were clearly visible, a stew of frustrated violence and fear. Barachael town crouched cold and desolate behind the invaders. As the low threshold of her underhearing dropped lower still, Segnbora heard the slow bitter dirge of the town's bereaved stones, which were certain that once more the children of their ma-sons had been slaughtered. The other lives of the valley, birds and beasts, showed themselves only as cautious sparks of life, aware of an ingathering of Power and lying low in order not to attract attention. The sky to the east went paler by the moment. The Moon slid down the sky and faded in the face of day, looking almost glad to do it. While they watched, the Sun leapt into the sky too quickly, as if it wanted to put distance between itself and the ground.

The ground was a problem. Dark negative energies seethed within it the way thoughts of revenge seethe within an angry mind. Though the faults weren't yet very clear, it was plain that these negative energies ran down most of them, draining toward the foundations of the valley, where they collected in a great pool of ancient, festering hatred. (We have to get into empathy with that!) Segnbora said, revolted.

(I'd sooner sit in a swamp, myself,) Herewiss said, and he strode down the air toward the reeking morass. (Still, the sooner we do it, the sooner we can get out and get clean again. Come on, down here. .)

He led the way around toward the base of the easternmost spur of Adine. There one of the vertical faults followed the spur's contour, a remnant of a day long before when the earth had shrugged that particular jagged block of stone above the surface. The fetid swirling of emotion in the valley broke against the spur as a wave breaks, flowing around it and up the pass. Herewiss stepped carefully down onto a high ridge of the spur and waited there for Segnbora. She arrived shortly after him, and they both paused to watch the way the shadows in the valley shrank and changed. The few moments' walk down from Sai khas-Barachael had begun at sunrise, and now it was nearly noon. (Now what?)

Herewiss lifted Khavrinen. Fire ran down from it and sur-rounded him until he blazed like someone drenched with oil and set alight. (In,) he said, and glanced down at the ridge he stood on.

Without further ado he stepped down into the earth as if walking down stairs.

(Show-off,) Segnbora thought affectionately. She walked down the outer surface of the ridge, seeking the way into the mountain that would best suit her. Turning, she saw her in-congruous shadow against the ridgewall behind her. Reach-ing behind her with both hands, she grasped it and pulled it forward about her shoulders like a cloak, becoming what she couldn't be.

It was astonishingly easy. There was fire in her throat again, and she had wings to feel the air, one of which was barbed not with a claw of white diamond but with a sliver of night made solid. She dug her talons into the naked stone1. Without mov-ing, Segnbora knew what lay beneath her. The deep, slow, scarce-moving selfness of the rock, the secret burning at the roofs, the earth's heavy veins running with the mountain's blood. . they were her veins, her blood, her life.

It was hard to think, immersed, in the ancient nonconscious musings of stone. Ttte transience of thought, or any concern

for the insignificant doings of the ephemerals at the outer edge of Being, seemed pointless.

Internal affairs were much more important. Leisurely, the conflict between the black flowing fires of the Inside, and the cold nothing of the Outside, was played out upon the board of the world. The player Outside blanketed the board close, wearing away its opponent with wind and rain; grinding it down with glaciers; cracking its coastlines with the pressure of the hungry seas. The Inside raised up lands and threw them down; tore continents apart; broke the seabottoms and made new ones; hunched up fanged mountain ranges to bite at the wind, and be bitten in return.

This particular range had hardly been in the game long enough to prove its worth as a move. Understandably, the huge nonconsciousness wondered idly — as the Sun went down again — why this area was suddenly such a cause for concern. .

Segnbora breathed stone deeply and strove to remember herself. There was something lulling for a Dragon in this perception of stone, as there was for humans in the presence of the Sea: It was both the call of an ancient birthplace and the restful comfort of the last Shore. (Herewiss?) she said, singing a chord of quandary around his name. (Here,) his answer came back, darkness answering dark-ness.

She couldn't feel him except indirectly. He had chosen to leave his physical imagery behind for the time being, and was manifesting himself only as a mobile but greatly restrained stress in the stone, staying quite still until he got his bearings. Khavrinen was evident too, seeming like the potential energy which that stress would release when it moved. (I feel you. Aren't you coming in?)

(I am in,) she sang, delighted by the truth of it. (I'm outside, too. Both at once. I can feel you inside me; you're like a muscle strain. And I can feel the other side of the world from here. What do you feel?)

(Granite, mostly. Marble. Iron — that's the mines.) He paused to feel around. (They haven't come near the great

lodes, even after centuries of work. I'll have to tell Eftgan where the good metal is. .) He trailed off, sounding uneasy. Segnbora felt what Herewiss felt and found everything much as it had been when Hasai had done the first survey; but the assessment didn't satisfy her. (I need more precision. I'm going to narrow down a good deal and make this perception clearer. Will the valley and ten miles on all sides be suffi-cient?)

(Those were the boundaries that Hasai was using. Yes.) She felt closely into the valley floor itself for ten or twelve miles down, absorbing and including into herself the sensa-tions of pressures and unreleased strains, strata trying to shear upward or sink down.

Whole mountains she embraced as if with encircling wings: Aulys, Houndstooth, Eisargir and Adine, then east to White-stack, Esa and Mirit, south to Ela and Fyfel, west to Mesthyn, Teleist and the Orakhmene range. They were a restless arm-ful. Rooted they might be, but they were alive as trees— shifting, trembling, pushing.

The whole Highpeak region, far into the unnamed south, was shivering, about to bolt like a nervous horse. The cause of its nervousness was at the heart of her perception. With ruthless diligence she absorbed it all, missing no detail: the vertical faults lying stitched across the valley in a row, south to north, angry and frightened. The treacherous lateral fault, its line running from the pass between Adine and Eisargir into the valley, through Barachael and out the narrow gate to lower land. And under it all, the old dark sink of negative energies. (I see it,) Herewiss said, his thought thick with revulsion. She caught a quick taste of his perception. It was rather differ-ent from hers, and primarily concerned with the Shadow's influence. He felt it everywhere, particularly in the lateral fault, where the accumulated hatred made it appear to crouch and glare like a cornered rat. It knew who he was, what he had come for, and the whole valley trembled with its malice. Segnbora trembled too, revolted and suddenly afraid. They were fools to try to tamper with this dynamism, so delicately balanced that a talon's weight applied to the wrong spot might bring down mountains. The Dweller-at-the-Howe had been wise to forbid the Dragons from delving here. Worse, she could feel the murky sink of hatred swell, growing aware of their presence.

(Herewiss!) she said. He didn't answer, and she began to grow angry, the Fire burning hotter in her throat. He was so damn sure of himself! (Herewiss!) (What do you want?) he snapped.

Her othersenses told her that he was as angry as she was, and the knowledge enraged her further. (Don't meddle!) he said. {I'm in the middle of a wreaking, and if you distract rne—)

Typically, he was paying no attention to her; he was sunk in his own concerns. (Your wreaking has barely begun. I'm not distracting and you know it. Listen, I'm Precinct-trained, and—)

(They don't know everything in the Precincts,) he said, bitter and superior. There was a touch of jealousy in his mind, too, which caused her to start. Jealousy. . didn't that mean something specific in this situation?

She brushed away the irrelevant thought — doubtless it was the maundering of some mdaha long dead and out of touch with life. Herewiss had slighted her, and her patience was wearing thin.

(Do you want my aid or not?) she demanded. (Not particularly, no! I have more than enough Power to handle this business myself, and you know it! I thought you might have appreciated the kindness I was doing you by let-ting you come along on a wreaking, but I see it was wasted.) He was a stress in the darkness, one1 close to release, spite-ful and certain of his own utter potency. The burning began to swell in her throat, and sweet it was to let the passions rise. She had been patient long enough.

The forefingers of her wings — the terrible black diamond razors that could tear even Dragonmail — cocked forward and down at him. (Little man,) she said, (it's time you found out what you have been toying with!)

Slowly she bent down, waiting for him, to attack, her. She savored, the moments, wondering how she would finish him.

A quick slash? A forepaw brought smashing down? A breath of her fire? But he wasn't physical now. He dwelt in the stone as she did, and the stress he wore as form began to warp and change. He was lifting up Khavrinen to kill her. Let him try, the fool! she thought.

The mdaha who had spoken before now cried out again. . something unintelligible about not seeing, about a pres-ence creeping up from behind, about an ambush.. Segnbora snarled at the interruption, a sound that woke rumblings in the stone. She arched herself upward to come crashing down on the pitiful little weapon raised against her—

With terrible abruptness, both attacks ceased. Segnbora reeled.

(Pull yourself together!) Herewiss shouted at her instantly. (It can't get us to trigger the fault, but It'll be glad to do that Itself!)

So It was doing. Segnbora could see all Its power, all Its hate, flowing back into the lateral fault — concentrating, burn-ing, stinging the stone

into the beginnings of movement. A low rumble spread through the strata. There was one spot in

particular, a thousand feet or so south of Barachael, that was almost ready to fracture. In a matter of seconds its stone would reduce itself to powder with explosive force, releasing the vertical faults on either side of it.

(There!) she cried, and as she did the Shadow poured Itself fully into that spot, an irresistible blast of destruction—

unshatterable by Goddess or Shadow — for the moment.

(I'll hold it!) he said, the thought tasting of gritted teeth. (You distract It!)

With what? she thought, fumbling desperately for an idea. Distant as if one of the mdeihei sang it, seemingly irrelevant, a scrap of verse spoke itself in her. No shadow so deep that light cannot sound it, no hatred so hard that love cannot loose it— Beor-gan's old ballad, the alliterative one. It told how she had taken the Shadow within herself, and her courage had defeated It. She had drained Its power so that her daughter could chal-lenge the Shadow in her turn and slay It. And that gave Segn-bora a mad, dangerous idea. .

Though still wearing her Dracon-self, Segnbora brought her human nature to bear as strongly as she could, and began exposing her dark

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sides to the Shadow's influence. Intent on Herewiss, It perceived only an augmentation of Its power in the area, and therefore let her darknesses gather from It and grow, becoming small likenesses of Itself. Sensing a chance to turn her vulnerabilities into weapons, she missed not a one of them: hatreds, petty jealousies, desires gone sour, procrasti-nations; laziness that would let others languish in pain while she lay idle; envy that smiled at the misfortunes of her peers. It was a disgusting collection, but in itself presented no dan-ger. Loss of a sense of sickness — acceptance of the state — that was to be feared. And that was creeping up on her fast. .

As swiftly as she dared, Segnbora slipped close to the Shadow and let loose her tarnished parts. They melded with It, becoming part of Its substance. Terrible power rushed through them and back into her. She dared not fight it, lest she betray her presence.

As she had become Dracon, and as Dracon had become stone, she now became the Shadow.

Mortal, and therefore limited even out of her body, Segn-bora could contain only a small part of Its being in herself. . but it was enough. In a sickening flash she experienced the incalculable rage of One Who had possessed Godhead and for jealousy's sake had then thrown it away. She also experienced pain: an anguish deeply colored with blame for the Goddess Who had let the pain happen—

There was no time to look further. Segnbora didn't speak, didn't even truly think, but merely held her control as best she could and looked at the painful memories, living inside the old story, wordlessly recreating it with a Dragon's immediacy and a storyteller's skill. It was an easy story to tell. She knew it by heart. It was the same story she had dreamed that night in the old Hold: the story of the Maiden, of Death, and of Her children, the Two, Who had loved one another.

The hatred that was the rest of herself still strove without pause to destroy Herewiss — but It did so a little less vehe-mently. It was distracted by old memories. Gradually, the story changed, becoming less a narrative and more an invita-tion.

Do You remember how it was? The two of You loving outside the constraints of existence, taking eons to learn and love one another's infinite depths? Do You remember the divine passionA how Your loving invented time and space — a place to love and explore together, in all the bodies that ever lived? Do You remember the Loved, and how there was always One Who understood? Your sister, Your brother, Your beloved … 0 remember!

It was in Nhaired she sang now, as if weaving a spell, silently recalling the Song of the Lost. Normally that Song was never voiced except during the Dreadnights, in the depths of the Silent Precincts, to beseech the Shadow to remember Its an-cient joy and be merciful to the world. Segnbora sang it now without the fearful intonations the Rodmistresses used, but winding poignant Dracon motifs of compassion and forgive-ness around the words. She was calling to herself as much as to the other. Vile though her darknesses were, they were rooted in light, just as the Shadow's malice was founded in the pain of Its ancient loss, the memory of love discarded forever. If it could not be saved, neither could she. .

The Shadow held still in the stone, Its malice wavering, half forgotten. A hasty flicker of perception stolen through It showed Herewiss, hanging on in the stone, shuddering with pity and also with fear for her. No one had ever before been so foolhardy as to sing the Song of the Lost in first person, and tempt the Shadow. But he didn't waste more than one shudder. He began examining the strata around him, and found the spot where the Shadow's consciousness had rooted Itself most concretely into the stone.

But yet will come that time when Time is done, the world begun again, aright, she sang, pouring herself into the promise. And once again We shall be as We were—

She drew away, singing. The Shadow surrounded her, tow-ering above, about to drown her in deadly consummation. Without warning Khavrinen's essence flicked through the earth like a white-hot thought burning through a brain. In-stantly it severed the linkage of the Shadow's consciousness to the stone.

There was only one wild shriek of rage and betrayal before the dark presence faded, temporarily banished, but that cry

was enough. All around Herewiss an unstoppable tremor stirred in the stone. As if that weren't enough, an ominous copper)' feeling with

an aftertaste of blood began sliding through Segnbora1 s self. The Moon was eclipsing.

(Goddess! Herewiss, get out of there. We have to get back to our bodies or you won't be able to control this!)

(Right,) Herewiss said, sounding abstracted. Khavrinen swept again and again through the bedrock, and its unseen Fire wavered with Herewiss''s alarm as he tried to cut himself loose from, his empathy with the stone. (I seem to have gotten kind of attached, you go ahead—)

(Are you crazy? This is your wreaking and I'm stuck in it!) Precious seconds were slipping1 by. Herewiss laid about harder and harder' with Khavrinen, and didn't move. (Dam-mit! My own Fire won't cut my own Fire—)

(Watch out!) Segnbora said. Furiously, she whipped down one wing at the stone, a wing lipped with the black razor —

diamond that was Skadhwe. Through fathoms of marble and granite it sliced, the shadow of a shadow, until it reached the rock under Herewiss.

He shot upward and out of the strata, free. Shrugging off her Dracon-self, she followed him up and out of the empa-thy— They broke the surface of the valley, gasped for the dear familiarity of breath like swimmers down too long, and began running up the air in frantic haste. The Moon's face, full now, was stained half red against the early evening sky. The stain grew larger as they raced for the tower window with the light in it. Under them, red fire dove and swooped about the valley, driving massed darknesses before it. They

spared the sight hardly a glance and dove through the tower wall. Segnbora threw herself down on the cot where her body lay— and hit

her head.

No, that's just the usual headache. Up, get up! Freelorn was shaking her, worsening the agony of pins and needles that transfixed every bone and muscle she owned.

Herewiss was already up, sagging against the window. With Freelorn's help, she staggered over to join him. Segnbora was temporarily blind, but the othersight was working. Above the valley the Moon's whiteness had diminished to a thin desper-ate sliver, struggling with the creeping darkness as if with a poison, and foredoomed to lose.

The corroded copper taste was as hot in Segnbora's mouth as if she had been struck there. The Chaelonde seemed to run with blood. Below them the lateral fault burned through stone and earth, moving. Sai khas-Barachael began to shake beneath their feet.

"Put your scales on," Herewiss whispered, grabbing one of her hands in a grip like a vise, and with the other drawing Khavrinen. Segnbora stumbled and fell down into herself, into the cave where Hasai waited with wings outspread in alarm. There was no time for the usual courtesies. Segnbora matched him size for size, flung his wings about her as she had wrapped herself in his shadow before, and became him.

As the sensation of the stone in the valley became plain again, the mdeihei cried out in a song of terrible alarm. "Shut

up, the lot of you!" she shouted in Dracon, and once more gathered the whole valley within the span of her wings, feeling it all. The pain struck her immediately as the lateral fault came alive inside her, a black-hot line of agony running from chest to shoulder and up her left wing like a heart seizure. Her outer body gasped and clutched at the sill, missed it, and thumped down to her knees with a jolt. Inside, no less clearly, she felt the heave and stutter of the faults as they tried to move, attempting to foul Herewiss's game before it was

fairly started.

Fortunately, Herewiss had not lost his grip on her hand. Half crouched over and supported desperately by Freelorn, he was beginning to shine like a vision as his soul settled more firmly into the spirit-to-body connection necessary for full Power flow. In his free hand, Khavrinen blazed like chained lightning, impossible to look at with the eyes of either body or mind. Herewiss struck deeper into his Power, tapping what seemed an inexhaustible source, and straightened with re-found strength. Then he was inside Segnbora's perception, as Dracon as she.

The Fire burning in her throat was suddenly blue, an awe-some counterpoint to the dark burning of the faults, and the rage of the frustrated Shadow. Stirred by Its influence, the player on the Inside made a move. But it was a poorly rea-soned move, born of fury and the hope of a quick win. The lateral fault jumped an inch north and south.

Segnbora felt Herewiss smile the satisfied smile of a player whose opponent has fallen into a trap. The burning blue upflow of his Fire seared through her perception and poured in a great flood down into the valley's stone, binding together three of the vertical faults. Like diverted lightning, the released energy of the lateral fault stitched whiplash-quick through the strata in several diff-erent directions. But Herewiss was quicker. Fire streaked through the strata too, sending fault-blocks up or down, blocking and absorbing forces, setting up piece by piece the final checkmate that would freeze the lateral forever and seal the Eisargir Pass. Two more moves and he would have it!

Bent over double by the fault-pain, which was harder to handle now than while she had been out-of-body, Segnbora heard someone a long way off shouting in thought. She couldn't make out concepts, though.

"They're not?" Freelorn said, much closer, and very alarmed. "Dusty! They're not all clear of the pass yet. Sun-spark says you have to hold off if you don't want all those Reavers dead—"

Herewiss said nothing aloud, but Segnbora could feel his resolve. No one dies of this, not even them, Yet the position he had set up in the stone was delicate and couldn't be maintained for long.

The Shadow, sensing Herewiss's hesitation, immediately called the attention of the foiled, blocked forces in the stone to the weakest spot in Herewiss's game: the root of Aulys that was split in two. Pressure played about it like lightning. Half of the massive root twitched, about to shift. .

(Hold your position,) Segnbora said. Both inside and outside the stone at once, she anchored herself with rear talons and barbed tail, and reached out to sink diamond fangs into the trembling root. It struggled and tried to tear away from her, vibrating so violently that she was certain she was going to lose teeth. But a Dragon never lets go except by its own decision.

She held. Eyes squeezed closed, every muscle pulled taut as a rope, her tail desperately tightening its anchor around a lower stratum as she felt her fore-talons slipping. She held, using her mind, feeling the rock as a whole.

"They're out! They're out of the pass! Dusty/" Canny and desperate, the Shadow kicked two of the remot-est vertical faults as a distraction. Herewiss was having none of it. Using Segnbora's Dracon-self as she had, he descended deeper into the stone, deep enough to set his jaws around his last move, a great marble fault-block half a mile south of Barachael. This was the key to the puzzle. Diamond fangs set hard into the stone. He heaved— The blow came at her, not at him, and took them both off-guard. Preoccupied with the immensities, neither of them expected the sudden choking darkness at their back in the place where the mdeiha dwelt. A song of madness swept the mdeihei, controlled them, sent them tearing at the floor of Segnbora's cave. Razor talons and ruthless blasts of Dra-goniire ate and sliced down through the stone of her memory, to lay it bare and make it real. For one memory in particular they searched. .

(No!) she screamed at them, but they paid her no heed. Stone crumbled away like curd. Even now the memory was coming to birth, coming true: darkness, gravel grinding against her face, that old anguish … There was no way to stop it, except by breaking the empathy, leaving Hasai,

THE DOOR INTO SHADOW

halting the wreaking—

Herewiss held the block of stone in jaws that ran with blue Fire, but he couldn't move it without her. He strained at it, tapping deeper into his Fire and deeper yet, not giving up. Vet without her link to the Dracon perception, he could not go further.

Twelve

She nodded, put an arm out and was unsurprised to find Lang there, wary ofSkadhwe but ready to support her. "Only one problem, prince—" "What's that?"

She grinned. "After this, people are going to say you'll do anything to avoid a fight. ."

Laughter in death's shadow fools no one who understands death.

But if you're moved to it, be assured that the Goddess will smile at the joke.

He stood in the midst of carnage, the burned and hacked bodies of fifty or sixty Fyrd. Here and there in the rocky field of this latest ambush, Freelorn's band stood cleaning swords, leaning on one another, nr rubbing down sweating horses and swearing quietly. Segnbora leaned gasping against Steelsheen's flank, unwill-ing yet to sheathe Skadhwe. The last Fyrd to come at her had been one of the new breed of keplian, bigger than the usual sort, with clawed forelimbs and those wickedly intelligent eyes that were becoming too familiar these days.

She had had no trouble immersing herself in the other's eyes to effect its killing. The problem had been getting out again afterward. She felt soiled, as if she had stepped in a pile of hatred that would have to be scraped off her boots. "How many times is this?" Lang said, coming up beside her.

"Seventeen, eighteen maybe—" "I don't know about you, but / feel driven." Segnbora nodded. Fifteen days ago they had ridden out of Barachael, and had had nothing for their pains ever since but constant harrying by ever-increasing bands of Fyrd. All had come from the southwest, where Something clearly didn't want them to venture. Freelorn had suggested world-gating straight to Bluepeak, where they would meet the Queen; but Herewiss, unwilling to tempt the Shadow into direct intervention by too much use of Fire, had vetoed the idea.

So they rode, and were harried. Herewiss always took them north, out of the way, after an attack such as today's. In day-light, anyway. In darkness they turned again and tacked southwest, toward Bluepeak. They were losing time with these detours, and knew it. Everyone's temper was short, and getting shorter.

"Let's go," Herewiss said, sheathing Khavrinen and turn-ing Sunspark's head northward as he mounted.

There was annoyed muttering among Freelorn's band, and heads turned toward Lorn in appeal. But Lorn, already up on Blackmane, looked wearily after his loved and shook his head. "Come on," he said, and rode off after Herewiss.

They rode a brutal trail through country made of the stuff of a rider's nightmares. They had long since left behind the green plains of southern Darthen. Presently they were cross-ing the uninhabited rock-tumble of Arlen's Southpeak coun-try. Glaciers had retreated over this land when the Peaks were born, leaving bizarrely shaped boulders scattered across scant, stony soil. Acres of coarse gravel with a few brave weeds growing out of it might be all one would see from morning 'til night.

The horses were footsore from being kept at flight-pace on such miserable ground. The grazing was poor, too. After the well-filled mangers of Barachael's stables, it was hardly sur-prising that the horses were in no better mood than their riders. Though no one lived in this barren country, it would be only a matter of time before they ran into Reavers, or Arlene regulars in Cillmod's pay. If not them, there would certainly be Fyrd.

"This is all your fault," Freelorn grumbled at Segnbora as Steelsheen picked her way along beside Blackmane.

Segnbora looked up in surprise from her contemplation of Skadhwe, which lay ready across the saddlebow. "Huh?. . Oh, well, in a way it is. I caused the Battle of Bluepeak, too. Ask me about it sometime."

He glowered at her, and nodded toward Herewiss. "All he did was seal up the Shadow's favorite avenue into the King-doms. What do you do but start making love to It… and then jilt It!"

She started to disagree with Freelorn, and then thought better of it. "So I did." "You're probably in worse trouble with It now than Here-wiss is."

Segnbora frowned at the exaggeration, though it was typi-cal of her liege. "Oh? What do you know about it?"

At that moment Herewiss dropped back to join them, and said, "Considering that he's read the entire royal Arlene li-brary collection on matters of Power, he probably knows more about it than either of us. Face it, "Berend. The Shadow already knew of the threat that I posed, but at Barachael It became aware of you, too. And as they say, your newest hatred is the most interesting. "True," Freelorn added, becoming serious now. "No doubt It believes you're Its deadliest foe at the moment—" "Ha! Some foe …" she said, thinking of her still-unfocused Fire.

The wreaking she had performed with Herewiss had been successful, but now she was almost sorry she had agreed to participate. Ever since, she had not been able to stop brood-ing about her Fire. Over and over again, Hasai's words had run through her mind: Your fear cripples you. You must give it up,

Recognizing an old hurt about which they could do noth-ing, Herewiss and Freelorn fell silent.

Annoyed both at herself and at them, Segnbora took the lead for a while, riding apart and letting the quiet conversa-tion of the others fade beneath her awareness of the sur-rounding country. Skadhwe's reassuring blackness soaked up light at her saddlebow. Its weightlessness, at first unsettling, had become second nature. It was very useful in a fight… And certainly no other sword was all edge and no flat. Likewise, no other sword would, cut anything but, the hand of its mis-tress, as Freelorn had discovered while handling it one morn-ing— Skadhwe seemed not to care for being used by anyone else'. It was delicate, but very definite, about drawing Lorn's blood. Of her, it had demanded nothing so far, and Segnbora thought of Efmaer's words with unease, wondering when the weird would take hold.

Unease seemed to have overtaken everybody these days. No longer were they simply fugitives on the run from Gill-mod's mercenaries; the Shadow was after them now, too, and the knowledge that their souls were in peril had them all on edge.

Segnbora could feel the Shadow working on them even now, driving the group apart, subtly sapping its effectiveness. Even Herewiss was short of conversation these days. He had drawn closer to Lorn, pulling away from the others. As for Freelorn, although every step toward Bluepeak brought the reality of his true-dream closer, he had a haunted look. His followers turned to him for answers, but as often as not came away with a strong sense of his inner distress. At this rate, she thought morosely, they'd never make it to their rendezvous with the Darthenes, at the place where they were massing to take the Shadow's attack.

The afternoon dragged the Sun down to eye level and turned the western horizon into a blinding nuisance. (Sdaha,) Hasai said from way down, (we smell water.) (You've been quiet today. Where?) (West and south. A league as the Dragon flies.) She nodded and thumped Steelsheen's sides, bringing her about in order to inform Herewiss of a place to camp. Hasai had been quiet much of the time since Barachael — a sentient silence with satisfaction at its bottom. . and something else she couldn't quite underhear. (You're finally becoming properly sdahaih,) he had said one evening as she drifted off'toward, sleep. (Anything can happen now.) There had been an ominous overtone to his musing. (What do you see, mdaha?) she had asked sleepily.

But he and the mdtihei had turned their attention away from her, singing wordless foreboding with strange joy woven through, it. They're crazy, she had thought, and gone to sleep. Dragons were always ambivalent about their foreseeings, as if they couldn't — or wouldn't — decide what was good, or bad.

The camp they found three leagues ahead was in a stony, scrubby canyon: shattered, green-white cliffs above, and dry watercourse below. Scant rains kept alive the brush and sev —

eral little spinneys of warped ash and blackthorn, but nothing else. "Where's the water?" Herewiss said to Segnbora, an-noyed. "There," she said, speaking Hasai's words for him, and gestured at the face of the cliff. Herewiss gave her a look and dismounted from Sunspark. "No rest for the weary," he said, and advanced on the cliff with eyes closed, checking her perception. Then he opened his eyes, picked a spot, and brought Khavrinen around in a roundhouse swing. Splintered stone shot in various direc-tions, trailing Fire. Water followed it, bursting from the rock in a momentary release of pressure and then subsiding to a steady stream down the cliffs face.

They watered and fed the horses while Herewiss stood gazing around with a wary look, as if expecting trouble. Segn-bora went away feeling thoughtful herself, and led Steelsheen to the most distant of the ash spinneys. This place has a bad feeling about it, she thought, and then realized why.

The trees were warped and bent, as if by the wind. But the real cause was something less healthy, a something snarled among the ashes' branches. She threw the reins over Steel-sheen's head so that the mare would stand, and pulled some of the stuff out. The long strands were white and soft as spun silk, though as unbreakably strong as any rope when she pulled it between her hands—

From behind her, Herewiss reached in and pulled down the main mass of the material. As the white stuff came away from the tree, a whole mort of things came tumbling out to thump or clatter to the ground.

"Look at that,"he said conversationally, bending down to poke with Khavrinen at something jutting from the white swathing. "The point-shard of a sword. Darthene Master-forge steel, see, Lorn? Look at the lines in the metal."

"It takes a lot to break a sword like that," Freelorn said from beside his loved, but sounding nowhere near as com-posed.

Why now? Why now! Segnbora thought, as Herewiss bent to pick something else out of the whiteness. He came up holding a piece of pale wood,

badly warped: It was smoothly rounded

at one end, broken off jaggedly at the other. "A Rod," Here-wiss said. "Or it used to be."

Dritt and Moris had come up and were staring nervously at this spectacle. "I thought the only thing that could break a Rod was the Rodmistress's death." Moris said.

Without looking up, Herewiss nodded. He used Khav-rinen's point to turn over other oddments tangled in the haphazard white weave: bits of broken jewelry, tatters of what might have been brocade. A bone from a human forearm poked out of the mass, ivory-yellow and scored by tooth-marks. It had been cracked for the marrow, and sucked clean.

"Mare's nest," Herewiss sad, turning to the others and glancing at them one after another. "And recent. We're prob-ably right at the heart of her territory." "Then this is no place for us," Freelorn said. He turned to go take the hobbles off Blackmane, but Herewiss didn't follow him. Freelorn looked back over his shoulder, confused.

"Lorn, it's sunset," Herewiss said. "We'd never make it past her boundaries before nightfall without giving away our position to the Shadow with our noise."

Freelorn stared at Herewiss as if he had taken leave of his senses. "Loved, that's a busted Rod there! Fire obviously doesn't do much good against a nightmare!"

"There are other defenses," Herewiss said absently. It was as if he were reading about the problem from a book rather than seeing it in front of him. He looked up at Segnbora. "How about it?"

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Segnbora walked around to the other side of the spinney as if to examine the whole nest, waiting until the tree hid her before she swallowed, hard. Nightmares — minor demonic as-pects of the Goddess's dark side — typically nested in barren places like this. They fell upon travellers, sucked them dry of the spark of Power they possessed, then fed the dead flesh to their fledgling nightfoals. Since they were Shadowbred, Fire was food and drink to them. A Rodmistress's Rod was thus useless against them. They could only be killed with bare hands, and then only if those hands were a woman's.

Segnbora walked around to face the others. "It's getting toward Midsummer," she said, amazed at how calmly her

voice came out. "Her brood will be gone now, and she'll have eaten the nightstallion—" Freelorn's face twisted. "They — eat their—!" "They are the Devourer," Segnbora said, very low. "That aspect of the Dark One trusts nothing She hasn't consumed." She glanced over at Herewiss, forbidding herself to tremble. "Well, I broke Steelsteen with my bare hands. I think I can manage this."

Behind Herewiss, Lang's face was white with shock. She refused to watch it after that first glance. "I'll make a circle," Herewiss said. "You'll have warning. What else will you want?"

Last rites, probably. "A fire," she said. Herewiss smiled slightly. "I think 1 know where to get some. Sunspark!" Segnbora walked toward the sudden campfire, wishing there were such a thing as luck, so she could curse it.

For once, night came down too suddenly for her taste. Segnbora sat with the others beside Sun-spark's blazing self, looking out toward the stony darkness. Here and there, at a hundred yards' distance, a flicker of Herewiss*s Fire showed blue between the boulders, indicating the ward-circle he had laid down. Firelight danced on the face of the cliff. Under a gnarled little rowan bush Segnbora sat and tended to herself in the huge silence, which even the horses, hobbled and teth-ered inside the circle, didn't break.

Segnbora was running out of things to do in order to get ready. She had gone through all the small personal bindings that a sorcerer would perform to further the larger binding she intended. Her swordbelt's hanging end was tucked in. Her hair, too short to braid, she had tied with a thong into a stubby tail and bound close to her head. Her sleeves were rolled up. The buckles on her boots and her mailshirt were tight. She would have tied Skadhwe into its sheath, but it had no peace-strings as Charriselm had had, and all her attempts to bind the shadowblade with cord had been useless. It cut them ail. Finally she had just taken it out of the scabbard and stuck it into a handy rock.

Now she thought of one more binding to add. Rummaging around in her belt-pouch for a bit of thread, she bound it around her left thumb nine times, thus forming a soul-cord that would keep her soul within her body until a pyre's blaze freed it. She tied the ninefold knot and glanced up as she bit it off. Freelorn was holding a cup for her. It was of light wood, with a design of leaves carved around it below the lip. She recognized it: his and Herewiss's lovers'-cup.

"Hot wine," Lorn said, sitting down. Wanned by the ges-ture, she took it and drank, hoping the shaking of her hands wouldn't show too much.

"It shows. Forget it," Herewiss said, sitting down beside Freelorn. She extended the cup to him, leaning back against the knobby little rowan as Herewiss drank in turn. Afterward, he poured some wine into the fire, which had acquired eyes, and then passed the cup back to Freelorn.

Lorn leaned back against a rock, and Herewiss leaned back too, resting his head against Lorn's chest. "You sure there's nothing you can do?" Freelorn said, sounding sorrowful.

Herewiss glanced yp at him. "Swords don't bite on night-mares, loved. I'm sorry."

Freelorn nodded, still looking uneasy. "This business of the Lady's "dark side,' " he said, "I've never really understood how She can have a dark side. .,"

"It is this way," Segnbora started, mostly out of reflex, and then stopped herself. Embarrassed, she took the cup back and drank again.

"No, go ahead," Herewiss said, with a wry look. "If you're going to become something's dinner tonight, we might as well get one more story out of you. Tell it as they tell it at Nhaire'di. I've never heard their version."

She sighed, suddenly amused by the surroundings. This was no cozy inn or palace hall, for once, but rather a huge night in waste country. Who'd have thought she'd ever play to an audience of kings-by-couitesy, part-time princes, and outlaws?

*'It is this way,*' she said. "Because the Goddess bound Herself at the Making into everything She had made, the great Death became bound into Her too, and She into It. Though

She had brought It life, the Shadow still hated Her and did Her all the harm It could, causing each of Her fair aspects to cast a dark shadow of its own. Therefore the Devourer exists, and the One with Still Hands. ." She shivered.". . and the Pale Winnower. Their Power is terrible, and the Goddess cannot banish them; in this Making, They are part of Her.

"But in the south of Steldin, people explain our Lady's dark side differently. They tell how, on the plain north of Mincar, there lived an austringer and her wife. The austringer was a placid woman, easily pleased and as calm as one of her hawks after a feeding. The austringer's wife, on the other hand, was never content with anything, and sharpened her tongue con-tinually on her spouse. "There came a day when the austringer took a good catch of pheasant and barwing. The next morning she set out for Mincar market to sell the game.

"Now, while on her way to the market, passing through the wealthy part of town, the austringer saw a sight that was stranger and more lovely than any she had ever seen.Tied to the reining-post was a great, tall silver-white steed, shining in the morning. When she drew near to it, it turned its head to gaze at her with eyes as dark as the missing half of the Moon. It was tethered with a bridle of woven silver. "She recognized it then. It was one of the Moonsteeds, aspects of the Maiden that mirror the Moon in its changes, and which cannot be caught by any means except with a bridle that is wrought of noon-forged silver in such a fashion as to have no beginning and no end. Some lord or lady had caused the bridle to be made, and had managed to catch the Steed. And as the austringer stood there and pitied the poor crea-ture, once free from time's beginning and now bound, it lowered its head and said to her, 'Free me, and I'll do you a good turn when I may.'

"So she cut the bridle with her knife, and the Moonsteed reared and pawed the air and said, 'If you want for anything, go out into the fields and call me and I will be with you.' And it vanished.

"The austringer thought it well to vanish from the area herself. She went to market and sold her birds, and then went

home in a hurry in order to tell her wife what she had seen. That was a mistake. 'Surely,' her wife said, 'the Steed will grant you anything

you want. Go out and ask it to make us

rich.'

"She nagged the austringer unmercifully until at last she gave in and went out into the night, under the first-quarter Moon, to call the Steed.

It came, saying 'What can I do for

you?'

" 'My wife wants to be rich. Wants us to be rich, rather,'said the austringer. 'The first was closer to the truth, I think,' the Steed said, 'but go home, it has happened already.' And the austringer went home to find her wife happily running her fingers through bags of Moon-white silver, chuckling to her-self about the fine robes and elegant food she would soon have in place of her brown homespun and coarse bread. "For about a week things went well. But folk nearby began to ask questions, and then the tax collectors arrived, leaving with more silver than pleased the austringer's wife. 'This isn't working,' she said to the austringer. 'Go ask the Steed to make me the tax collector. And I want a house befitting my station.'

" 'No one will talk to us anymore!' the austringer objected. Her wife gave her no peace, however, and sent her off to the fields at nightfall.

The austringer called the Moonsteed, and there it came in a white blaze of light, for the Moon was near to full. 'What can I do for you?' it asked. 'Though I have a feeling I know.'

" 'My wife wants to be a tax collector, and have a tax collec-tor's fine house,' the austringer said.

" 'Go home, it's done,' said the Steed. And the austringer went home and found their thatched cottage changed to a tall house of rr'Harich marble; and her wife was twenty times as rich as she had been before.

"After that things went as you might imagine. A week later the austringer's wife wanted to be mayor, and so she was. Afterward she became bailiff, and Dame, and Head of House, one after another. Her house became golden-pillared and roofed with crystal, filled with rich stuffs and things out of legend — feather-hames and charmed weapons and even the silver chair that later belonged to the Cat of Acs Aradh — but

none of it gave her joy for more than a day. Each night she sent the austringer out to ask for another boon, and the au-stringer grew sad and pale, seeing that her wife loved her possessions more than she loved her.

"And as the days passed the aspect of the Moonsteed grew darker, for the old Moon was waning. White-silver the Steed had been at first, like moonlight on snow. Now it waxed darker each night, and frightened the austringer.

"The boons grew greater and greater. Head of the Ten High Houses, the austringer's wife became; then Chief of them, then High Minister, then Priestess-Consort. And still she wanted more.

"Finally the night came of the dark of the Moon—" Segnbora broke off for a moment, fumbling for the wine cup. Her mouth had gone suddenly dry. It was only three nights from Moondark now, that time when a nightmare would be strongest.

"— the dark of the Moon, and the austringer went out to the fields to call on the Moonsteed for the last time. It came, burning with awful dark splendor and wrath, and said in its gentle voice, 'What is it now? Your wife has asked, and I have granted, even to the last times when she asked to be Queen of Steldin, and then High Queen of all the Kingdoms. What more might she want?'

"The austringer trembled, and said, 'She wants to rule the Universe.'"

Segnbora lifted the cup again and finished the wine. There was silence. Freelorn glanced down expectantly at Herewiss, whose eyes were turned away, then back at Segn-bora. "So?"

"So She does. " She handed back the empty cup. "Nowyou tell one."

Suddenly Blackmane screamed. Herewiss jerked upright as if he had been kicked. All around the camp heads turned out toward the darkness.

The nightmare stood for a moment among the boulders that had fallen from the cliff, and then stepped forward deli-cately. It was small: the size of a seven-months* filly. Its silken mane and tail hung to the ground. Slim-legged and clean of

line, it seemed at first as elegant and graceful as a unicorn. But its eyes were evil: red and bottomless, full of old cruelties and insatiable hunger. From a coat the color of the rolled-up whites of a dead man's eyes, it cast a faint yellowish corpse-light that illuminated nothing. Segnbora got up, dry-mouthed again. She took a few steps forward and folded her arms, staring right into those ancient, burning eyes. "Be thou warned," she said in the formal manner reserved for the laying of dooms, "that I am well informed of thee and thy ways, of thy comings and goings, thy wreakings and undo-ings; and that it is my intent to bind thee utterly to my will, and confine thee to the dark from which thou canie'st at the birth of days. So unless thou wish to try thy strength with me, and be compelled by the binding I shall work upon thee, then get thee hence and have no more to do with me and mine."

She held very still. The nightmare now had the option to retreat. It could also answer ritually, or it could attack.

"How should I fear you?" the nightmare said, lifting its head to taunt her sweetly. The voice it used was that of Segn-bora's slain otherself, not piteous as it had been during those last moments in Glasscastle, but mocking and cruel. "Rodmis-tresses in the full of their Power have

THE DOOR INTO SHADOW

passed this way, and you see what has happened to them. You, however, have retired from sorcery, afraid of failure."'

"Silence!" Segnbora said in a voice like a whipcrack. But no power was behind the order, and the nightmare laughed at her, a sound ugly

with knowledge.

"You make a fine noise," it said, flicking its tail insolently. '"But all your years"' studies have left you with little but knowl-edge. Mere spells

and tales and sayings. You have no Power. Or rather, what Power you possess you are afraid to focus."

Burning with shame, Segnbora clenched her fists and took a step forward, then another, seeking control. (Hasai—!)

"Oh, call up your ghost," the nightmare said, stepping forward too. "You don't dare give him the Power he needs, either. You walk on water,

and complain that you can't find anything to drink! Face it, you will never find what you seek. You are too afraid. You are dead!"

Behind her Segnbora could feel Freelorn getting ready to move, and Herewiss holding him still with that same vise-grip in which he had held her at Barachael. The others were fro-zen, eyes glittering, muscles bound still. Even Sunspark's flames flowed more slowly than usual.

"Some heroine you are!" the chill voice taunted. "Dead on your feet. A rotting corpse. You are a Devourer, like me." Her head jerked in surprise.

"You don't believe me? Then look at your slug of a lover there!" The bitter eyes dwelt on Lang with vast amusement. "He no more dares open himself to you than you do to him. He knows that what you call 'love' is mere need. If permitted, you'll suck him dry of his own Power, his own love, and he knows it! Eftgan knew that too …"

Humiliation seared Segnbora, and terror. She had no prob-lem holding her peace. Her mouth refused to work.

The nightmare chuckled maliciously, enjoying her growing victory. "No wonder you're such a good storyteller. Every-thing that comes out of your mouth is a story, especially when you speak of yourself. You haven't really opened to another person since that day when you became big enough to be taken out in back of the chicken house—"

Segnbora took another slow step forward, drowning in the bitter truth, hanging onto the ritual for dear life. "I may warn thee again — get hence, lest I lay such strictures about thee that from age to age thou shall lie bound in the never-lighten-ing gulfs—" "Say the words of the sorcery," the nightmare said, baring her yellow teeth in scorn. "They'll do no good. You cannot control another aspect of the Devourer, being one yourself! Consider what lies hidden under stone in your heart. . you hate the one who plundered you, and that hate poisons every act of 'love' you attempt. You will never properly be able to employ your Power!"

She shook her head, but the awful words of truth would not go away.

"Listen to what I say; to what you know to be fact. Even your friends pity you. Freelorn, for example. He found out what happens to someone who gets closer to you than a

sword's length. You stabbed his heart with something sharper than a knife. No wonder that when you were once faced with yourself, you killed—"

Segnbora leaped at the nightmare head-on, grabbing great handfuls of its mane. Desperately, she attempted to hold its head away from her, but the nightmare plunged, reared and fastened its teeth into Segnbora's mailshirt, cracking the links like dry twigs and driving them excruciatingly through pad-ding and breastband, into the soft tissue of her breast be-neath. Jaws locked, it shook her viciously from side to side, as a dog shakes a rat.

With every jerk of its head Segnbora cried out in pain, yet she managed to hold on for some seconds. Finally, in agony, she released her right hand and grabbed the nightmare's nose, digging her thumbnail deep into the nostril. Now it was the nightmare's turn to scream — once as she let Segnbora fall, and once again as a great handful of its silken mane came away in Segnbora's hand.

Segnbora scrambled to her feet. Her pain was awesome, but she concentrated on twisting the long hank of mane into a rough cord between her hands. The opponents began to circle one another again.

"It was foolish to hold me so close for so long," she said, gasping. "I know how to bind you, child of our Mother. I know how to make an end of you, Power or not. Shortly you're going to be seeing more of the dark places than you'll like—"

She sprang again, this time for the nightmare's flank. It danced hurriedly to one side, but with a second leap Segnbora found herself astride the nightmare's back.

The nightmare bucked, kicked, and reared, leaping in the air and coming down with all four feet together, as a horse does to kill a snake. But Segnbora hung on, legs locked, hands twined in the long mane. She got one hand down over the nightmare's nose again, and stabbed it in the nostril. It screamed, and as it did she whipped the corded length of mane down and into its mouth. Quickly she brought the ends under its chin and up around its muzzle, and knotted them tight, binding its mouth closed.

The nightmare made a horrendous strangled sound that would have been a scream. It turned and raced headlong toward the jagged face of the cliff, intending to buck Segnbora off against the stone. The onlookers scattered out of the way, and Segnbora jumped from its back, rolled, and was on her feet again before it had time to realize what had happened. Turning to face her again, it reared, menacing her with its hooves. Segnbora ducked to one side and fastened her hands in its mane, pulling. The nightmare grunted and, as she had hoped, pulled away. Segnbora fell down on the ground again, but this time with her hands full of mane.

The nightmare turned and reared. By the time its hooves hit ground, Segnbora had rolled out from under them, and was afoot again. Her breath came hard, and beneath her mail-shirt her breast was bleeding freely, white-hot with pain. But her fear was gone. Nothing was left but wild anger, and the urge to destroy.

"I told you," she said, winding the length of mane between her fists like a garrote. "First the binding—"

The nightmare turned to flee, but as it turned tail Segnbora vaulted up over its rump and onto its back. Frenzied, the nightmare bucked wildly, but it was no use. This time the cord went around its throat and was pulled mercilessly tight. It plunged and slewed from side to side and tossed its head violently, trying to breathe.

Segnbora hung on, and twisted the cord tighter. The night-mare began to stagger, its eyes bulging out in anguish. Its forelegs gave way, next, so that it knelt choking and swollen-tongued on the ground. Segnbora held her seat even at that crazy angle, and pulled the cord tighter still. Finally the rear legs gave, and the nightmare fell on its side. Segnbora slipped free, never easing her stranglehold. The nightmare moved feebly a few times, then lay still.

Holding that cord tight became the whole world, more important even than the agony of her torn breast or the hot blurring of her eyes that she had thought at first was confu-sion and now proved to be tears. She blinked and gasped and hung on as Herewiss and Freelorn and the others ran up and kneeled around her.

Lang reached out to her, but Herewiss stopped the gesture. "Is it dead?"

"I don't know. Probably not." She could still feel a pulse thrumming feebly through the cord.

"Are you all right?" That was Lang with the same stupid question, as usual.

"No. Let me be." The nightmare's pulse was irregular now, leaping and struggling in its throat like a bird in a snare. How can they look at me, she wondered? It's all true. How can they bear to—

One last convulsive flutter ran through the nightmare's veins. Then there was stillness under her hands. Slowly and carefully she stood up, shrinking away from any hand that tried to help her. The pain in her breast was intense, yet she barely felt it.

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She walked away, then, and her companions stared after her. Their eyes on her retreating back were as unbearable as sun on blistered skin, but still she ignored them. The darkness beyond the camp began to swallow her.

(A nightmare has no weapon to use but your own darkness.) Herewiss's thought burst into her mind, cold and passionless as a knife. (Resist, and it only cuts deeper.) She kept walking.

(One night, 'Berend,) he ordered. (One night's pain is all we can spare you. We've lost too much time already. Be finished by dawn, or we won't wait.)

She shut him out and went off into the cool night, looking for an end.

Thirteen

"Well," the Goddess said, "your heart didn't heal straight the last time it broke. So we'll break it again and reset it so it heals straight this time."

Children's Tales of North Arien, ed. s'Lange

How long she walked, she had no idea. The stony valley all looked the same. Eventually, she simply sat down and began to weep for life wasted.

Sometime later, the rocky night turned into the night that lay inside her, with stars showing through the great shaft in the roof of her cavern, and the much-muted song of the mdei-hei rumbling in the shadows. She didn't care about them in the slightest, or about the starlight, or the sound of the Sea, or the huge obscure shape of Hasai towering over her in the darkness. She sat hunched up and waited for life to go away.

It wouldn't, annoyance that it was. A solution occurred to her, but she had no energy for it. And anyway, everything she had ever done, she had botched — surely she'd mess up a suicide too. A life of study without use, learning without wis-dom, action without satisfaction, Power without focus, lust without love: What use was it? She sat there and tried to bleed to death through the wound above her heart. "You will not achieve death for some days yet," said the subdued voice of the Dragon above her, using the precogni-tive tense. Annoyed, she leaned back against the great forelimb gin-gerly, careful not to disturb the blood clotting on her breast. She closed her eyes, squeezing out useless hot tears. "Drop dead," she said. "We have done so."

"Try it again. You missed something the first time."

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"Speak for yourself, sdaha," the voice of thunder said. It had her own annoyance in it. Tonight, as occasionally happened, she didn't have to look

up at Hasai in order to see him. His eyes burned silver, but they burned low. His talons clenched the stone floor in a painful gesture that made her remember the cave at the Morrowfane.

"The nightmare spoke some truth," he said. "As with your Lovers, you will not permit us to have what we need, so that we, in turn, may give you what you need. You believe you must do everything yourself. But there is no such thing as perfect self-sufficiency, even among humans."

She shook her head, confused, thinking of what her father used to tell her: You'll never be able to depend on others, if you can't first depend on yourself.

Hasai winced at her in Dracon disagreement. "You cannot depend on yourself if you cannot first trust others." Segnbora sat still, trying to understand, but the words made no sense. Hasai gazed down without moving for a long while, and at last shuffled one huge forelimb back and forth along the floor. "We are you," he said with terrible intensity. "If you cannot trust us, your trust of yourself will be betrayed every time. Sdaha, hear me!" It was no use. It made no sense.

"Sdaha, " Hasai said, so low it could have passed for a whis-per. "What lies beneath your stone that you dare not lay open? What terrifies you so much that the Shadow would resurrect the memory in the hope that you would die of it?"

That got her attention. "It brought forth that memory be-cause it sees me as a threat. In a way that's good, I suppose. It means I may be able to do it some real harm at Bluepeak."

She leaned sideways and put one hand upon the stone at the bottom of her mind. It burned hot as flesh beneath a half-healed wound, warning her off. Her insides flinched at the touch of it, and she began to tremble.

Pain experienced stops hurting, she knew. The mdeihei had taught her that. There was another reason to look below the stone, too: The Shadow had found her weak spot. If she didn't deal with it now, it would strike her there again, perhaps at Bluepeak. And how could she betray Lorn at a moment when he would need her the most? She couldn't. She couldn't see

her friends' lives lost, her liege-oath broken, the Kingdoms foundering for lack of the Royal Bindings. . She smashed one fist down on the stone. Damn! Damn! "Taueh-sta 'ae mnek kej!"

"Mdaha," she said, shaking all over. Slowly, she leaned forward until she was on her hands and knees over the stone. "Mdeihei— " They leaned in close, the huge form above her, the many indistinct forms in the shadows. She reached behind her, to-> ward Hasai. Wings reached down to shelter her, but it wasn't shelter she was interested in. Her hand found the burning mouth, and jaws closed over it. She pulled those wings down around her, into her, wore them and their body and their heart.

Under the stone, darkness burned. She cocked forward the terrible diamond razors of the wings' forefingers, intent on the place where her deepest anguish lay. "My mdeihei, this is what you wanted. And what I want now. If we die of it. ."

A roar of defiance and challenge went up from the gathered generations. "Mnek-6, " she whispered, / remember. Her talons raked down and laid her soul bare at last. Stone peeled away, and her control went with it. Night fell. .

Her nuncle, of course. Nuncle Bal was in and out of the old house at Asfahaeg all the time, busy around the land — gar-dening, cutting trees, planting new ones. She had watched him about his business often enough, and sometimes she had noticed him looking at her for a long time.

She wondered sometimes whether he was lonely and wanted to play, but she never quite got around to making friends with him. There was too much else to do.

She had the Fire, a lot of it, and pretty soon they were going to send her away to a real school where you learned to do magic with it, instead of just simple body-fixings and under-speech, which were all the Rodmistress down in town would teach her. At the school they'd make her a Rod of her own, and she'd be able to do all kinds of things.

In the meantime, there were lessons and exercises to make the Fire grow, and she was busy with those. In fact, she had

stumbled by herself on one special exercise that gave her the same tingling excitement that the Fire did, though in a slightly different way. When she showed her new method to Welcaen, her mother had laughed and praised her and told her it was fine to enhance the Fire thus, but that she shouldn't forget to be private when she did it. The most private spot she could think of was the hiding place behind the old chicken house, where the willows' branches hung down all around, making a dusky green cave. And that was where she had spent most of that warm spring day, delightedly touching herself in that special secret place — until Nuncle Bal came brushing through the downhanging branches and stopped in surprise, and stood there staring at her. .

Her mother had told her that usually it was not polite to be naked with someone unless you had agreed on it beforehand. Not knowing how Nuncle Bal felt about it, she pulled her smock back down and smiled at him. "Hi," she said.

He smiled back, and all of a sudden she felt really cold inside, because there was something wrong with the way he was smiling. Confused, she put out her underhearing and listened.

What she heard made her so scared that she couldn't pull it back again, couldn't even move. She never heard anything like this before. Her mother and father when they shared. . she knew that feeling. It was warm: a filling-and-being-filled feeling. She wasn't sure what they were doing, exactly, but it wasn't this. The feeling that went with this was cold: a wanting, and wanting-to-be-in-something. It was hungry, just hungry enough to take—

He was letting the rake fall against the willow truck, and she was getting really scared now, so that she started to jump up and run away. But he was right in front of her already, and he grabbed her hard around the throat with one hand, and cov-ered her mouth with the other. She couldn't breathe. She tried to scream, to cry, but there wasn't any air. Her ears started to ring and everything went red in front of her. Nuncle Bal seemed to be saying something, but she couldn't tell what it was through the red, the black, the roar

ing. She fell backward into the darkness, silently begging oh please, let it be a bad dream. Let mi wake up, please!

After a while the roaring went away some. It was a dream, she began to think, and then heard his voice, thick, low and hun-gry. "You want

it," he said. Her eyes came open. She saw his twisted smile, shuddered, and squeezed them shut again. "You want it. Sure you want it."

He was doing something to her smock. What was he— "Mamaaaaa!" she started to scream, tears starting to her eyes. But before she could get the scream out that hand came down on her throat again. The red, the roaring, ok no, pleeeeeeeease. .

. . her back was cold. She was on the ground again, and her smock was off. So were Nuncle Bal's britches, and she squirmed and fought but couldn't get out from under his hands. His breath was on her face and he leaned in and pushed her legs far apart, too far. It hurt, and what was tie doing, he was rubbing her secret place, the wrong way! And what, what— NOOOOOO!

The scream wouldn't come out. of her throat. It was all inside her head, a shrieking pain, but not as bad as how he was hurting her down

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there. He was in her secret place that was supposed to be for her to share with her loved some day, and he was pushing himself inside. There was a horrible burning pain, again, and again, until she fell herself being torn open. There was a white-hot line of relief, then, and new agony stitching itself through the rest of the burning. It was sicken-ing. She wanted to retch but couldn't, his hand—

Tears rolled down the sides of her face, into her hair. After a while she couldn't feel them or anything else, it hurt so bad— Inside she yelled and yelled for help, but no help came. They weren't sensitives and they couldn't hear her, any of them! He was pushing it in and out, hard, It hurt worse and worse, and he was breathing fast and hot right in her face. She was breathing his wet stale breath and that made her want to be sick too — and it hurt, it hurt, somebody make it stop! Somebody, Mama, Daddy, Goddess, please., please — make it slop!

He slumped forward,, and she thought she felt something

shoot inside her, but she wasn't sure because of the pain, the way it burned, her secret place that had always felt so nice. Broken, torn, she'd never be able to use it again. No one would love her, ever, hers was broken — and the Fire, when he hurt her, it came out, it was in the pain, no more, never, it hurt, horrible—

She lay there and sobbed for air, all the screams in her stifled by horror; and when he came around and knelt over her face and pushed the hard thing, all bloody, into her slack mouth, and rubbed it in and out, she let him. At least he wasn't hurting her anymore. But when he turned her over and started to put it against that other place, she realized that he was going to hurt her even worse this time. No one was going to come help her now, either. She pushed her face down against the cold harsh dirt and tried with all her might to die.

It didn't work. When her first scream broke free, he stran-gled it. again. The terrible strength of his hand turned the world red and then black once more. The last thing she heard as she pitched forward into blackness was, very remote, the sound of some little girl screaming as the size of him tore her open the other1 way, too. .

Eventually her hearing came back. She heard him pick up his rake and hurry away, pushing the rustling branches aside. Some while later, lying as she was with her face on the hard ground, she felt-heard hoofbeats, cantering, then galloping. He was gone. Very slowly she got up. It hurt, especially be-tween her legs, when she moved them at all. She pulled down her smock and scrubbed at her face to try to get the dirt off: Her father didn't like her to be dirty.

That roaring stayed with her all that day, as confusion and rage sounded all around her1… It was her thoughts now, dazed, shocked, going around and around in her head and coming hack again to that which she had felt tangled with the agony —the Fire.

When they finally put her to bed, full of some bitter herbal potion the Rodmistress had — made her drink so she'd sleep, her head still roared, behind the steady flow of her tears. Only wter, after she had been staring for hours at the vague circles the candles made on the ceiling, did the tears flow more

slowly. Gradually, the pain between her legs began to feel far away. The roar died to a whisper. But the whisper said the same thing she had been hearing all day. . No more. Never again.

And there was a quieter whisper beneath that. One so soft that she hadn't heard it then, never heard it afterward; only heard it now with a Dragon's impossibly sharp underhearing — a seed of rage, taking root in blood and battered flesh, burning dark with hate: Some day, when I'm big, I'll kill him.

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The pain, experienced at last, fell away and left her among her mdeihei with the fiery tears running down her face. They held their silence, waiting to hear what she would sing before beginning to weave counterpoint or dissonance about it.

She was exhausted. It was fifteen years since that afternoon under the willow. Fifteen years since she had shown herself any more than Balen's terrible smile, or thought of the experi-ence as more than "the rape." She had thought she was over it, past it all. What idiocy.

As she grew, she had quickly given up thinking much about sharing her body with others. Her agemates indulged in all the delightful anticipation of adolescence — the feeling that something magical awaited them when sharing began. But when the time carne she had plunged into an experience1 that had about it nothing of magic. Instead, every sharing had a touch of the sordid about it, a taste of fear which made her want to have it finished quickly. Afterwards, she would inevi-tably plunge into another sharing, in search of what had been missing. She never found it. Nor, as she got close to the brink of focusing, had she ever managed that, either. How could she, when sharing felt so much like Fire?

Slowly Segnbora lifted her gemmed head, and sang relief and grief and wear)' regret at the walls. From the shadows her mdeihei took up the dark melody and shared it with her in compassionate plainsong. "Oh Immanence," she sang, "I'm full of Power, and in danger of running forever dry; I've shared a hundred times, and I'm virgin still; I walk on water, and yet thirst …" She brought her wings down against the floor in a gesture of bitterness.

"And tlie nightmare was right, too. I'm a killer. The Shadow has merely to touch that memory ever so lightly, and I kill one more time. Is this my destiny, then? To be a clock-work toy that can be set to kilting by any fool who happens to find the key?" Gentle and ruthless, her mdeihei answered her in one long note that shook the cave. "Fes.'"

"Or so it seems," Hasai said kindly. She looked over at her mdaha, catching for the first time the unease that had always been in his voice. She had never be-fore been Dracon enough to hear it. He gazed back, gentle-eyed, huge, terrible as a thundercloud with wings. And yet, to Dracon eyes, he was also frightened, crippled, shadowed.

"Mdaha," she said, bending her head down close to his. "Your discomfort bears looking at, for haven't you often told me that the mdeihei, and you, are me?" "Often."

"That being the case," she said, "it comes time now to deal with your stone, sithess&ch." He looked at her almost sadly, knowing — as he had always known — that it was true. "For you are me, and at Bluepeak the Shadow will strike at you too. If you succumb, I will too. Then Lorn dies, and the Kingdoms founder, and I'm forsworn. And more than that: The green place you fought for, the world you treasure so, will fall under the Shadow's domination, and not even Dragons will be safe."

Hasai was still as stone, except for his tail, which lashed nervously. Segnbora leaned closer, flipped her own tail around to pinion it and hold it down. The sight of her tail briefly surprised her. It wasn't like Hasai's. It was scaled in star-emeralds as fiery green as new spring growth. It was spined in yellow diamond.

"It has to do with rue somehow, doesn't it?" she said. "With going mdahaih in a human — and with something older than that, even— Hasai, it

must be settled, or the Shadow will settle it for us!"

He started to draw downward, away from her touch. 'There is yet time—"

"No there's not!"

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Hasai lashed free of her tail, began to rise slowly from his crouch, wings lifting, the diamond sabers of the forefingers coming around to threaten her.

Segnbora gazing up, unmoved. "I am you, sitkesmh," she said. Beloved.

Hasai moved not a muscle. As the momentary anger slowly ran out of him, his eyes changed. They were no less afraid, but now there appeared in them room for something else.

"Now," Segnbora whispered. "Quickly." The fluid, black-glittering splendor of him made itself into a curve, a pounce, a terrible striking downward, a living knife. Stone sliced open like parting flesh, the blood was memory, it leaped—

Their Sun ate their world. They saw it happen. They had had warning — both ahead-memory of the actual incident, and years of wild starstorms, during which the Sun's light was too intense to drink without dying, and every Dragon had to leave the Homeworld for a time, and wait far out in the cold for the Sun's fire to die down.

Shell-parents grew infertile, and eggs that should have hatched roasted in the stone instead. At last came the final storm they had dreaded. In haste, all of Dragonkind streamed off their red-brown world and hung helpless in space, watch-ing their star swell to a hundred times its size and devour their Homeworld.

They were orphans.

But they weren't homeless.. Wisely, ihe older Dragons had looked to the youngest Dragoncels to see what they ahead-remembered of their own going mdahaih. What they had found was the place they'd know as mdeihei — an odd, cool little world, greener than theirs, covered with a strangeness called water and inhabited by life of bizarre and fascinating kinds,

One Dragoncel, however, remembered more than the oth-ers. He knew the way, and would die upon reaching their goal. His name was Dahiric, The Dragons gave him. another name: Worldfinder. They put him at their head and he led. them out into the Great Dark. How long they travelled there, none of the Dragons were

ever sure. Many died along the way — starved for Sunfire in the empty wastes — but Dahiric, a doomed and purposeful green-golden glimmer at the head of ten thousand others, never veered from the memory he followed. Born only to die, and to make this journey, he was determined to succeed. Finally, after what might have been ages as humans reckon time, they found the place. It was all that the mdeihei— to-be had seen: strange-colored, but alive; a home at last; stone to sink their claws into. They dropped down toward it — and found what Dahiric, and many more, were to die of. From the dark side of the world, where it had been hiding, a black foul air came boiling out toward them. It was blacker than the space in which they hung, and it was alive. It hated thought and light and any kind of life but its own. It was also vast enough to swallow the bright little planet whole: a project on which it had been working for eons. It didn't relish the Dragons' interruption.

Dahiric knew his duty. Gripping a double wingful of the little planet's field of forces, he dove down into the roiling blackness, flaming. The Dark drew back, and the Dragons saw Dahiric drive a long tunnel down into it. At the tunnel's bot-tom his light blazed like a falling star. But Dahiric was young. His fire was limited by his immaturity. His flame went out, and the Dark closed behind him. After a little while he came float-ing out of the boiling blackness, dead.

Had there been air to carry the baltlecry the Dragons raised, stone would have shattered across the world. Ten thousand strong, they dove at the Dark from every angle, flaming as best they could. Their fire was in short supply, however, since they had been out in the night so long, and ten thousand Dragons were not enough. The Dark opened before them, swallowed them, spat back the dead. Soon there were nine thousand, seven thousand, fewer. Many had no offspring yet and went rdahaih in a second, without time to make their peace with the Universe from which they were departing. Some went, mad from the strain of having so many relatives become mdahaih in them in so short a time. Others so afflicted flung themselves into the Dark and. were lost too.

THE DOOR INTO SHADOW

A. few simply fled, and lived.

One of these was the youngest of the Homeworld's Dragon-eels. He had never been quite normal. When he had become fully sdahaih at last, and his shell-parents and relatives had asked him when and where he would go mdahaih, his answer frightened them all. What he foresaw was darkness and cold and terrible pain; and then the odd, crippled body of an alien. . one who was certain she would go rdahaih and take with her all the mdeihei. It was a terrifying vision, and all rejected it.

He grew, and yet the vision did not change. Therefore, he slowly became resigned to being a curiosity among his own kind. As befitted a Dragon, he came to make light of the difference, submerging it in placidity. But he did not realize that the way he did this — by learning to stand a little aloof, even from his mdeihei — also encouraged other Dragons to stand aloof from him as well.

Hasai became estranged from his own kind. He took no mate. He held his peace. He flew alone. And when he finally found himself facing that same awful blackness that in min-utes had killed half his race, Hasai failed. With no comrade who would admit to fear, and so support him toward courage, he became nearly blind with terror. He fled.

The rest of Dragonkind, fortunately, had not exhausted their options. There in empty space they convened in body and mind, and held Assemblage — the last full Assemblage that would be held for a generation or two, until the Advo-cate summoned them again two thousand years later. They paid the price of Assemblage — the lives of the DragonChief and the Eldest — and then all those left alive turned their hearts inward and gave their will and power over to the Im-manence.

Few of them saw where the Messenger came from. She was a Dragon in shape, but even the webs of Her wings burned intolerably bright. Her every scale was a star, a point of power so terrible it could be felt through Dragonhide. The Messen-ger wheeled and dropped through the massed Dragons, scat-tering them — then halted above the raging, boiling immensity of the Dark. Through their othersenses, the Dragons could feel the Dark's alarm as it reached up to snuff out this trouble-some intruder. Likewise, they heard its silent scream of pain

as the Messenger flamed, letting loose a torrent of Dragonfire as potent as a star's breathing.

The Dark writhed convulsively, ripped away from the world with a jerk and a soundless howl of rage. It streamed toward the Messenger to engulf Her utterly, but the Messenger only spread wings and claws and seized it. Working at the forces in space with fiery wings, She drew the Dark away from the world, screaming and struggling. Together they dwindled, drawing farther away from the little blue world, until all that could be seen of them was a light like a dwindling star. Those who dared to follow came back and reported that the Messen-ger had plunged, together with the Dark, into the heart of the nearby yellow Sun. Neither came out again.

Later, the survivors found Dahiric's body among those of the slain. The others they burned in Dragonfire, as was the custom on the old Homeworld, but Dahiric they bore down to the surface of the new world. There they found a fair place at the endpoint of a great spur of land, where water washed it. They uprooted a mountain, as had been done on the Homeworld for Phyiril and Saen and others of the Parents, and they laid it over him, melted it around him, and made a dwelling there for the new DragonChief. Thereafter, the Dragons settled into their new young world, and watched humankind come slowly out of the caves into which the bale-ful influence of the Dark had driven them. . . and behind the rest of the Dragons, a silver-and-black Dragoncel drifted to earth like the last leaf of autumn. His shame at his cowardice gripped him like the pain of giving-up-the-body, and would not leave. True, no other Drago'n ac-cused him of fear, but no one comforted him, either. He was alone, as always. Alone with a new shame, and with the old hidden terror of the day he would go mdahaih in a human. All these burdens he buried under layers of Dracon placid-rty. The centuries went by. He maintained his dignity, flew alone, and kept silent. Then finally his life became reduced to waiting for the stars to assume the proper configurations. This they did. At last, his luster dimming, Hasai spiraled down to the Morrowfane by night and crept into a cave there, to wait for the seizures, and to wait for the one who would

come.

He looked across the cavern at her now, head held high, waiting for her to disapprove of him and pronounce a sen-tence worse than death: eternal imprisonment with a sdaha whose opinion of him was not passive placidity, but active scorn. Behind him, the mdeihei were strangely silent. "You ran," Segnbora sang. He said nothing.

"And you are of value nonetheless," she said, weaving around the words a melody that attributed importance to her words. "You did what you did, and here you are. And here am I, too … or should I say, here are we."

Hasai looked at her in amazement. She sighed a little fire and unfolded one emerald-strutted wing, laying it over his back in a gesture of affection.

TOC \o "1–3" \h \z "So where do we go from here?" she asked. i*

He opened his mouth, and nothing came out for a momentA " 'Sithesssch,'you said,"he sang in dubious tones. Nf

She flipped her tail in agreement. *\.

"Then only one matter still troubles me …"

"What?" — >

"The mdeihei, and their opinion. As you know, they do not judge, but merely advise. Still, I would like to know that they are not ashamed." Segnbora considered the matter, listening to the utter si-lence in the background where the mdeihei usually sang. "Mdaha, don't worry. If they are truly of the Immanence, as they claim, they will understand."

The doubt fell out of his voice, but Hasai still looked at her strangely. "You're truly sdahaih at last," he said. "It's very odd."

"How so? You knew how it would be." He dropped his jaw, smiling. "Sometimes, for the sake of surprise, we forget a little."

Segnbora spread both wings high and curved her neck around to look at them. "Well, I certainly feel sdahaih. Shall we go test it?" "There's more to being sdahaih, and Dracon, than flight,"

Hasai said, and his song trembled with the joy of one who's found something long lost. "Memory. And its transforma-tion." She shook too, thinking of all the painful experiences she could accept, or remake if she wished. Now that she was sdahaih, the ever-living past was as malleable as the present. There were some things she wouldn't change, experiences that had made her what she was now. Balen, she thought. He stays. There's unfinished business there, somehow. But as for other matters—

For the first time since that afternoon under the willow, her love was clean — and now more than ever before she wanted to give it away. "I remember a place," she sang quietly, look-ing at Hasai, "where stars swirl in the sky like a frozen whirl-pool, and the Sun is red and the stone is as warm as your eyes—"

He met her glance with eyes that blazed. "Toe mnek-e"," he sang. We remember. Wings lifted and beat downward, and the cave was empty.

The soaring began at the Homeworld, and never quite ended. They made the Crossing all over again, together this time. Other Dragons

looked curiously at the one who in fore-memories had been alone, but who now went companioned by some child of the Worldfinder's line, green-scaled and golden-spined, with eyes the fiery yellow of the little star to which they journeyed.

They saw the Winning again, not with guilt this time, but simply as one of the events that would eventually bring them together. Afterwards, they fell to earth like bright leaves drift-ing, and lay basking in the Sun. They glided together through long afternoons, taking their time so that the people below would have something to marvel at. They matched speed for speed in the high air, and tore it to tatters of thunder. They went bathing in the valleys of the Sun, and chased the twilight around the world for sport. He made her a present of the sunset, and she made him one of the dawn, and they both drank them to the dregs until the fire of their throats was stained the red of the vintage.

They lived in fledgling and Dragoncel and Dragon, in child and girl and woman — found memories that were lost, discov-ered past and future. Gazing into one another for centuries, they also found completion. And at the bottom of that, they found Another gazing back. One Who became them as They became It. Goddess-Immanence and peers, Made and Maker, the two Firstborn, They flowed together. Not merely One, not simply the same. They were. For that, even in Dracon, there were no words.

Eventually they remembered the way home, and — living in it — were there. Segnbora, leaning back against the immense forelimb from which she had not moved all night, looked up at her mdaha's silver eyes. "I have to be getting back," she said. "They'll be wonder-ing where I am." "Best hurry and tell them. Sehf'rae, sdaha." "Seht …"

Halfway out the entrance to the cave, she paused, touching her breast in confusion. In the place where the nightmare had bitten her, there was nothing but a pale, crescent-shaped scar.

"Dragons heal fast," Hasai said from behind her. A quiet joy like nothing she had ever heard sang around his words. She knew how he felt. "Sehe'rae, mdaha," she said, and went out.

rf

She opened her eyes on a dawn she could taste as well as see. When she stood up to stretch, she saw the Moon, three days past third quarter, the phase under which she had been born, hanging halfway up the water-blue sky like a smile with a secret behind it. Picking her way back toward the camp, she came across someone waiting for her with his back to the rising Sun. His long black shadow stretched out toward her, the stones within it outlined brightly by the Fire of the sword he leaned upon.

"Welcome back," Herewiss said as she approached. Skadhwe was struck into a nearby rock. She raised a questioning eyebrow at Herewiss as she plucked it out and re— sheathed it. '

"I didn't touch Skadhwe," he said. "I asked it politely, and we reached an accommodation."

"Thank you," she said. She glanced down at the cracked and broken links of her chammail. "This whole thing was a setup— You knew the nightmare was here. You knew twenty miles away. You couldn't no! have known."

He caught the merriment in her voice and grinned. "I'm on other business than just Lom's and Eftgan's," he said. "There's all kinds of power in this world, looking to be freed. I do what I can."

"I could have died," she said, "of what it said to me. I understood it, it spoke the truth, and yet I killed it anyway. The despair could have finished me."

THE DOOR INTO SHADOW

"I know," Herewiss replied. "My decision was not made lightly. If you hadn't been strong enough. . yes, you would have died. And I would have laken responsibility for it."

She looked at him, pitying and loving him, both at once. "'Thanks," she said.

*'I didn't do much of anything," he said, half-bowing gra-ciously. "You seem to have found your own solutions."

He looked past Segnbora with great interest. Turning, she was just as interested to see the long-necked, long-bodied, short-legged Dracon shadow that lay behind her. It was posi-tioned as if the creature that cast it were standing on her hind legs. Experimentally she pointed a finger, and saw the shadow of the forewing barb cock outward.

"Is it true," Herewiss asked with a gentle simile, "what they say about Dragons and maidens?"

She turned back and shrugged slightly. '"You'll have to ask someone who'd know," she said. "I'm not a maiden any-more, ./* She started back toward camp to saddle Steelsheen and hummed a chord.

Fourteen

… the Goddess could not spend all Her time persuading the Kings and Queens of the world of the idiocy of war. Therefore She invented tacticians..

(source unknown)

As they topped the crest of yet another line of foothills they paused, silent in the dusk, and looked down upon ancient history. Forest patches lay on the wrinkled fells and hollows of the land below. Although it was just two nights before Midsummer, the wind ran chill over the land, rustling trees and grass so that the earth seemed to shudder like the flank of a troubled beast.

South of their position the foothills became rougher, their bare stones turning brown, red, and hot gray in the fading light. Farther south still rose the Highpeaks. Off into the crimson distance they marched, mountain after mountain. At their forefront, frozen like a white wave of stone about to break, stood Mount Ndniion, which overshadowed Bluepeak.

"The weather's changing," Freelorn said. He was looking uneasily at the filmy banner of windblown snow that stretched southward over the Peaks from N6mion's major summit. It had a distinct downward curve to it that indicated it was a south wind fighting to get past the moun-tains and slide under the wanner northland air.

"Storm tomorrow, loved. Can't you do something?'' Herewiss's eyes were elsewhere — searching the country west of them for any sign of the Darthenes. Eftgan's last message had said that she and her troops would bivouac a league-and-a-half west of the mouth of Bluepeak valley two nights before Midsummer, well out of the sight of the Reavers encamped in Britfell fields around the town. But the land beneath them had a trampled look, and was empty. "I could," Herewiss said, reaching over his shoulder for Khavrinen to better sense what had been happening there. "It

would be unwise, though. Eftgan may already have done something."

"Or Someone else might have," Segnbora said. She was as troubled as Lorn, for different reasons. Her undersenses clearly brought her a feeling of haste and disruption from the land below, as if plans had gone awry and many minds down there had recently been in turmoil. Worse were Hasai's memories, and those of some of the mdeihei who knew this area well. Something dark and threatening lurked under this land, and was ready to rise up in menace.

She shuddered, as did the mdeihei inside her. Herewiss was sitting still with Khavrinen flaming in his lap, its Fire subdued. "Someone else has been meddling, I think,"he said, glanc-ing over at Freelorn. "There's will behind this weather, and I'd sooner not probe it more closely than that, since I'd be leaving myself open to be probed back. Better to stay low for the moment." He looked down at the Bluepeak highlands. "Eftgan came at this site from the north a day and a half ago—"

"Were they driven back by Arlenes?" Freelorn said, anx-ious. Cillmod had been raiding across the Arlene-Darthene border for nearly a year now, in violation of the Oath. It was unlikely that he would allow a Darthene incursion into his territory to go unchallenged. "No. Reavers — and they were here first. Eftgan had a skir-mish with them and went north again. The Reavers went west. No sign of Arlenes; they must not have received word that Eftgan's in the vicinity."

Dritt looked confused. "Eftgan's a Rodmistress, though. Shouldn't she have been able to sense that the Reavers were here, and avoid them?" Herewiss nodded.

There was uneasy shifting among Freelorn's followers. Lorn himself was bewildered. "How can a Rodmistress's scry-ing go wrong?1 "' Herewiss swung down from Sunspark and began loosening the girths of its saddle. "The same way mine can, I imagine," he said. Segnbora could feel the great effort he was making lo conceal the trouble in his mind. "1 can't feel where she is