The Door Into Fire (23 page)

“I’m not, usually.” She smiled in the dark, leaned her head back against the stone, looking up. “But it’s a good excuse. No one goes outside
just
to look at the stars, you know. So I take the lute with me some times.”

Herewiss chuckled, jerked a thumb at the sky. “You noticed.”

“How not? But what do you think I’d do, run in and shout, ‘Hey, look, everybody, the stars are all wrong’? Lorn would love
that
.” She laughed too. “I was going to tell you before we left, in case you hadn’t seen it already.” She touched the lute strings again, tickling them into a brief bright spill of notes like laughter, a half-scale in the Hakrinian mode.

Herewiss settled back against the wall, and looked at the sky once more, regarding the bright eyes of the elsewhere night as they regarded him. “So what else aren’t you,” he said, “besides a lutenist?”

The scale modulated into the chords Herewiss had heard while peeking around the corner. “I’m not a poet,” Segnbora said, “and not a singer, and not a dancer, and not a loremistress….” She laughed softly. “Better not to be too many things at once: it scares people. Besides, in the case of the dancing, better they shouldn’t see. I love to dance, but I’m afraid I’ll look funny—so I don’t, unless I’m very drunk ... and then in, the morning, I don’t remember it anyway….”

She keeps laughing,
Herewiss thought.
As if she has to convince herself it’s funny. But it’s not working...
Aloud he said, “So how’s your dancing when you’re drunk?”

“No one else remembers,” she said. “They’re all drunk too.”

“Then it doesn’t matter, does it?”

“No, I guess it doesn’t.” She smiled at him, a more relaxed look, almost a benediction. “You do understand.”

“I’d better,” he said. “I’m about singing the way you are about dancing. Goddess knows why—they tell me I have a good voice—but I’m just shy.... What was that you were singing before? I didn’t recognize it.”

“Huh? Oh. ‘Efmaer’s Ride.’ It’s south Darthene, came north with my mother’s side of the family. We were related to Efmaer, remotely.” Again the chords, soft and sad for all that they were in a major key.

“Wasn’t she the queen who disappeared?”

“Well, according to the song, she didn’t just disappear. You know the stories about Sai Ebássren in the mountains, south of Barachael?”

“Sounds familiar. Maybe it has another name I know it by—”

“In Darthen they call it Méni Auärdhem.”

“Glasscastle, yes. The place in the sky that appears every so often—”

“Not very often, really. There are Moon phases and lighting conditions involved, it’s very complicated. But anyway, Efmaer’s loved killed himself, and since suicides go to Glasscastle, Efmaer went to get her Name back from him. She took the sword Shadow with her— Skádhwë, it was called then—”

“How much of this is true?”

Segnbora shrugged. “It was a long time ago. But we know that Shadow existed, and the queen went missing. It’s a nice song, anyway—”

“Does it have a happy ending?”

“It depends,” Segnbora said. “See, here’s the last verse – “ The lute whispered the sorrowing chords, and Segnbora’s voice was hardly louder—

“‘She stood laughing on the peak-snows

with the new Moon in her hair,

and she smiled and set her foot upon

the Bridge that isn’t There:

She took the road right gladly

to the Castle in the sky,

and Darthen’s sorrel steed came back,

but the Queen stayed there for aye...’”

“So,” Segnbora said, modulating out of the last chord into a minor arpeggio, “who knows? No one came back to tell whether Efmaer found what she was looking for, or whether she was happy…”

“Glasscastle is where you go when you’re tired of trying, isn’t it? I remember hearing something like that.” Herewiss sighed.

Segnbora looked at him sharply. “Don’t you dare even think of it,” she said. The anger in her voice caught Herewiss by surprise, and Segnbora too, after a moment. More gently she said, “You’ll get where you’re going, prince. They’ll be singing about you for centuries.”

“The question is, will they be happy songs? ...And besides, even when you’re in the middle of a song, you don’t always feel like singing. I don’t right now…”

She reached out a hand and touched his where they lay folded in his lap. “He’ll come through it,” she said. “He’s in love with you, that’s all.”

“Then why can’t he see why I need to be here?!” Herewiss said, surprised again by anger, this time his own. More softly he added, “He knows how much the Fire means to me—”

“He’s in love with
you,”
Segnbora said again, almost too softly to be heard.

Herewiss held very still. Not even the lute broke the silence.

“Yes,” he said. “I see what you mean.”

“If I were you,” Segnbora said, “I’d get some sleep.”

Herewiss nodded, stood up, stretched. “Thanks for the wine,” he said.

He headed back toward the courtyard and the hall. Her voice stopped him.

“Brother—” she said.

Herewiss turned to look back at her. She was a shadowy shape, dark against the dark wall, surprisingly bright where starlight touched her— sword hilt, belt buckle, finger-ring, cloak clasp, and the half-seen eyes. In the stillness he felt the air go suddenly thick and sharp with power, mostly hers, partly his. She was having a surge, hormonal or not, and it had touched his own Fire, roused it—

—his precognition came alive, as it had once or twice before. The image was blurred and vague, and out of context, strange-feeling. Darkness, and cold; somewhere a bright light, but bound up, concealed; and over all, a looming shadow, eyed with silver fire—

She’s hiding,
something in him told him suddenly.
But why? From what?

The feeling ebbed, drained away, leaving the air just air again, and Segnbora was just a young woman sitting against a wall, not a numinous shadow-wrapt figure gazing at him through darkness and silence She looked back and shuddered all over. Herewiss wondered what she had seen.

“It doesn’t matter,” she said. “I didn’t see anything clearly. That wasn’t what I was going to say. Prince, you
will
do it. I’ll help any way I can.”

She cares a little,
he thought in quiet surprise.
More than a little.

Well, she would
.

He bowed to her, the deep bow of greeting or farewell from one veteran of the Silent Precincts to another. “Sister,” he said; and there was nothing else to say. He went around the corner and back inside.

Nothing had changed. Lorn’s people were all asleep, and Lorn was still rolled up in his cloak, in a tight angry-looking ball. He was snoring.

Herewiss stopped by the firepit, sank down wearily into his chair. The flames flurried momentarily higher, and Sunspark was looking at him again.

(So how is the night?)

(Strange,) Herewiss said, (but then that could be expected.) He sat there for a while and avoided looking in Freelorn’s direction.

(I’m never going to get to sleep by myself,) he said eventually. (Maybe I should take something—)

He stopped short. (The Soulflight drug—)

(?)

(The innkeeper at the Ferry Tavern gave it to me. If I took a little, I could probably drop right off into pleasant dreams—though with the smaller doses you sometimes don’t remember what happens to you—)

(You could probably use some pleasant dreams tonight,) Sunspark said.

Herewiss went and got the little bottle out of his saddlebag, then sat down by the firepit again and regarded it. He unstoppered it and put his nose to the opening. There was a faint sweet odor, like honey. He stuck his finger in, took a little and licked it off.

The taste was extremely bitter; he choked as he put the stopper back in the bottle and set it aside.
Well,
he thought,
let’s see what happens—
He leaned back and closed his eyes, and waited.

•

—an easy, drifting passage into—

CRASH!!

—and he looked around him, terribly shaken. All was still, nothing was wrong anywhere that he could see. It had been one of those falling-dreams that slams one suddenly into the wall between sleep and waking, and out the other side.

False alarm. One more time—

—drifting easily downward into empty lightless places, filled with uncaring as if with smoke; spiraling down, sailing on wings feathered with fear, and now suddenly the—

WHAT?! NO!!

Cold dusk, a gray evening, no sunset pouring crimson-gold through treetops and touching the Woodward with fire; torches quarreling weakly with the evening mist; and silence, deadly silence. No children running and playing, though even on chill evenings they would be out this late, resisting their mothers’ attempts to get them back inside. Little sound, little movement. Walk quietly up to the great carven door, pass silently through it. Greet the Rooftree with reserve, and go by; up the stairway, left at the top of the stairs and down through the east gallery, but softly, softly. Someone is dying. Turn right into the north corridor, one of the more richly carven ones, and keep going. There on the walls is carved the story of Ferrigan, your ancestress, and the panels show her rebuilding the Woodward after its burning, with the help of creatures not wholly human. You always loved her story, that of a person who mastered her own powers and went her own way, disappearing into the Silent Precincts one day, never to be seen again. Herelaf liked that one too. But very shortly now Herelaf will be past liking anything at all, at least in this life. Walk softly, and go on in: last room on the right, the corner room, the room that is the heir’s by tradition.

There is the bed, there is Herelaf, the sword out of him, now; your father standing there, not looking at either of you, not daring to. For fear that he will see one of you die, and the other of you live. Oh, he loves you well enough, that much is certain. But right now Hearn is finding it hard to love you at all, who were so stupid as to play with swords while drunk.

Herelaf is lying very still, looking very pale. How strange. He was always the darkest one in the family; you used to tease him about it sometimes, saying that there must be Steldene blood in him somewhere; and he would grin and say, “Mother never told us half of what she did while she was out Rodmistressing. You can sleep with some strange sorts in that business. Maybe something rubbed off.” That was the way he always was: big, gentle, inoffensive, easygoing; no one had a bad word for him, not a single person anywhere, most especially not the many people he called loved. There were enough of them in the Wood, men and women both, and people used to marvel that he never took one loved with an eye to marriage. “I like to spread myself around,” he would always say. “So far there’s nobody that special that I’d want to give all of me to just them. But maybe…”

Forget
that
. He’s going to die tonight, and all the chances close down forever. You did that to him. Yes you did. Don’t try to deny it.

DAMMIT LET ME OUT OF HERE!!!

Hearn stands there, looking like he wishes he were anywhere else than this—facing down the Shadow Himself,
anywhere
but here. But he cannot desert either of you; he knows that you both need him now, both of you need him there desperately, and Hearn was always brave. Maybe not prudent; certainly if he were prudent he would go out of here. But brave.

Herelaf lies there, drained dry, waiting for the Mother to come for him. She can’t be far; his body has a castoff look about it already—or maybe it is his closeness to the Door that is apparent, and the light from that Sea of which the Starlight is a faint intimation is shining through him, as if he were a doorway himself. The gray light makes everything in the room look unreal, except Herelaf—and he will be unreal soon enough.

You go over to him, kneel sidewise by the bed, take his hands in yours. They are chill, and this shakes you more terribly than anything else; his hands were always warm, even in wintertime when you always went clammy and stiff with the cold. Herelaf, now, with those big warm hands of his—big even for a Brightwood man—getting cold; getting dead. You did it. Oh yes.

NOT THIS AGAIN!! PLEASE, NO!!

Oh yes. “Dusty,” he says, his beautiful soft deep voice gone all cracked and dry and shallow with pain. “Little brother mine. It wasn’t your fault.”

The words go into your head, but they make no particular sense. At least they didn’t then. They do now, and it hurts at least twice as much, because you know it was your fault. Then, though, you bury your face in those cold hands, punishing yourself with the terror of what is going to happen. The Mother is kind, but inexorable; when She comes, there’s no turning Her back. And you know She’s coming.

“Dusty, are you listening to me? Look at me.” He turns your face up to him, and you try to look away, but it’s no good; even dying those hands have all their strength.

You look at him: dark curly hair like yours, big around the shoulders the way you got to be eventually; the droopy sleepy eyes, the smile that never comes off. Even dying, there’s a ghost of it apparent, a slight curling-at-the-corners smile. He loves you. That’s the worst part of it all, really.