The Door Into Fire (2 page)

“That’s what I said.”

“Not in front of Hal, I hope.”

“Father, please.”

“So,” Hearn said, “you’re surprised?”

Herewiss laughed, a short rueful sound. “No, not really.”

“And so you’re going riding off to get him out of whatever he’s gotten himself into.”

“May I?”

“You’re asking me?”

“You’re the Lord.”

Hearn chuckled and took a seedling out of the cup of water beside him. Herewiss noted with amusement that it was one of the ceremonial cups for Opening Night, the rubies flaring in the sunlight and making bright dots of reflection in the mud. “Could I stop you? Could the Queen of Darthen stop you? Could our Father the Eagle stop you if He showed up? Go on. But when you see that idiot, tell him from me that he’d better not sign himself as King of Arlen unless he’s willing to do something about it.”

“I had that in mind.”

“You’d never say it, though, you’re too damn kind. You tell him I said it. Will you be needing men?”

“I’m sorcerer enough to handle this myself, I think. And the less people involved, the better. If Cillmod hears that Brightwood people were involved, it could be excuse enough for him to break the Oath again and move in on Darthen.”

Hearn planted the seed. “There speaks my wise son,” he said.

“And besides—I don’t want any Wood people getting killed because of this. And neither do you—but you’d never say it—because you’re too damn kind.”

Hearn laughed softly. “My wise son. But don’t let it stop you from bringing him back here if he needs a place to stay. No one will hear about it from us.”

Herewiss nodded and stood up.

“Take what you need,” Hearn said. “Take Dapple, if you think he’d help. And Herewiss—”

Hearn turned back to his work, his strong hands moving the soil. “Be careful. I’m short of sons.”

Herewiss stood there looking at his father’s back for a moment, and then turned and headed back into the Woodward to start preparing for a journey.

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The Brightwood is the most ancient and most honored of the principalities of Darthen. It was the first of the new settlements established after the Worldwinning, by people who came down out of the eastern Highpeaks and found the quiet woodlands to their liking after their long travels. It took them many years to free the Wood and its environs from the Fyrd that infested it, but while many other peoples were still living in caves in the mountains, the Brightwood people were already building the Woodward in the great clearing at its center.

Though the Woodward is held by outsiders to be at the Wood’s heart, the Brightwood people know that its real heart—or hearts, for there are several—lie elsewhere, in the Silent Precincts, secret, holy places where few people not born in the Wood or trained to the usages of the Power have ever walked. There, upon the Forest Altars hidden within the Precincts, the Goddess was first worshipped again as She used to be before the Catastrophe—invoked in Her three forms as Maiden and Mother and Wise Woman. There too Her Lovers are worshipped, those parts of Herself which rise and fall in Her favor, eternally replacing one another as Her consorts. Even the Lovers’ Shadow is worshipped there, though with cautious and propitiatory rites enacted at the dark of the Moon. Other places of the worship of the Pentad there may be, but there are none older or more revered except the Morrowfane, which is the Heart of the World and so takes precedence.

Night with its stars spread over the Wood, and the pure silver moonlight made vague and doubtful patterns on the grass as it shone through the branches. Spring was well underway; the night was full of the smell of growing things, and the chill wind laced itself through the new leaves with a hissing sound.

In the center of the little clearing, before the slab of moon-white marble set into the ground, Herewiss knelt shivering. An indefinite dappling of moonshine and shadow shifted and blurred on his bare body and gleamed dully from the sword he held before him. It was beaten flatter than it had been that morning, and had some pretense of an edge on it; but it was not finished yet. Herewiss had learned better than to waste time putting hilts and finishing on these swords before he tried them with this final test.

The dappled horse tethered at the edge of the clearing stamped and snorted softly, indignant over having to be up at this ridiculous hour. But right now Herewiss had no sympathy for him, and he shut the sound out as he prayed desperately. This had to work. It had to. He had done a good day’s spelling, a good piece of work, though he had paid dear for it, both in backlash and in the pain cutting away part of his self had cost him. But it might work. No, it
had
to. This was the Great Altar, the Altar of the Flame, the one most amenable to what he was doing, the one with the most bound-up power. And this sword felt better than any of the others he had tried; more alive. Maybe he had managed to fool the steel into thinking it lived. And if he had fooled it, then it would conduct the Power. His focus, his focus at last—

O Three,
he said within himself,
for no word may be spoken in those places, Virgin and Mother and Mistress of Power, oh let this be the last time. Goddess, You’re never cruel without a reason. You wouldn’t give me the seed of Fire and then let it die in bondage. Let the Power of this place enter into me and kindle the spark into full Flame. And let that Flame flow down through this my sword as it would through a Rod, were I a woman. Oh, please, my Goddess, my Mother, my Bride, please. Let it work. In Your name, Who are our beginnings and our endings—

He bowed his head, and then looked up again, shuddering with cold and anxiety, and also with weakness left over from that morning’s sorcery. If only it would work. It would be marvelous to go riding off to Freelorn’s rescue with a sword ablaze with the blue Fire. To strike the whole besieging army stiff and helpless with the Flame, and break the walls of the keep in the fullness of his Power, and bring Freelorn out of there. To strike terror into the army just by being what he was—the first man to bear Flame since the days of Lion and Eagle! And the look in Freelorn’s eyes. It would be so—

Herewiss sighed. I never learn, do I. Let’s see what happens.

Delicately, carefully, he set the sword’s point on the white stone of the altar, and took hold of the rough hilt with both hands. Herewiss became aware of a change, a stirring; something in the air around him moved, waited expectantly. His underhearing, that inner sensitivity that anyone experienced in sorcery develops, whispered that the Power of the place was moving about him, surrounding him, watching. His own Power rose up in him, a cold restless burning all through his body, demanding to be let out.

Herewiss lifted the sword away from the stone, and held it straight up before him, point upward, watching moonlight and shadow tremble along the length of the blade with the trembling of his hands. And he reached down inside him, where the Flame was running hot now, molten, seething like silver in the crucible, and he channeled it up through his chest and down through his arms and out through his hands—

The sound was terrible, a thunderous silent shout of frustration and screaming anger as the blue Fire, the essence of life, smote against something that had never lived, had never even been fooled into thinking that it lived.
A silly idea,
Herewiss thought in the terribly attenuated moment between the awful unsound and the sword’s destruction.
As if plain sorcery could ever mix successfully with the Flame.
Stupid
idea.

And the sword blew apart. Fragments and flying splinters shot up and out with frightening force, gleamed sporadically as they flew through light and shadow, ripping leaves off branches, burying themselves in the grass. One of them struck itself into Herewiss’s upper arm, and another into his leg just above the knee, though not too deeply. A third went by his ear like the whisper of death. He held in his cry of terror, remembering where he was, and dropped the hilt-end of the shattered sword in the grass.

He plucked the metal fragment out of his arm and threw it into the grass, grimacing. For a long while Herewiss knelt there, bent over, hugging himself as much against the bitter disappointment as against the cold.
I was so sure it would work this time. So sure.

Finally he regained some of his composure, and finished picking the splinters out of himself, and turned to make farewell obeisance to the Altar. It seemed to crouch there against the ground, cold white stone, ignoring him.

He forgot about the obeisance. He went straight over to Dapple and got dressed, and rode away from there.

It was several minutes before he passed the marker that indicated the end of the Silent Precincts. Just the other side of it he paused, looking up through the leaves at the starlit sky. “Dammit,” he yelled at the top of his lungs, “what am I doing wrong? Why won’t You tell me?
What am I doing wrong?”

The stars looked down at him, cold-eyed and uncaring, and the wind laughed at him.

He kicked Dapple harder than necessary, and rode out of the Wood to Freelorn’s rescue.

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