The Door Into Fire (33 page)

But there were hands on his hands, and they pulled gently downward until Herewiss had no choice but to squeeze his eyes shut and turn his head away. “Dusty,” his brother’s voice said, “don’t you have
anything
to say to me?”

The old name, so rarely used, so much missed, pierced Herewiss with more pain than he had thought possible to stand without dying—but then, how could he die on these shores? He sobbed and coughed and caught his breath, and finally dared to look up again into his brother’s face. There was no anger there, no hatred, not even any sorrow. Herelaf was glad to see him.

“Why are you so surprised to see me?” his brother said. “You know how the drug works. I’m as likely to turn up in your realm as you are in mine. And if you walk here, you’re more than likely to run into me.”

“I—” Herewiss choked, cleared his throat. “I suppose I knew it. But I was so sure that I wouldn’t, wouldn’t lose control—”

“—and run into me. Yes, I can imagine.” Herelaf held Herewiss’s hands in his, and the touch was warm. “It doesn’t matter. I’m glad you came.”

“But—
but I killed you—!”
The words were too much for him, despite all the thousand times he had whispered and moaned and cried them into the darkness in the past. He crumpled back into tears. Freelorn was crouched down beside him, holding him again, and his brother’s hands touched his face to wipe the tears away.

“Herewiss.” The voice was still young, but there was power in it, and Herewiss was startled out of his weeping. “You didn’t kill me. We were drunk, and messing with swords in a dark room, and you made one of those grand gestures with your sword, and I lost my balance and fell on it, and I died. You didn’t kill me.”

“But I should have been more careful—I shouldn’t have encouraged you—”

“Herewiss, I started it.”

“But—”

“Dusty, I
started
it. Listen, little brother mine, did I ever tell you a lie? Ever? Doesn’t it strike you as strange that I’d start trying to lie to you
here
, where there can be neither lying nor deception?”

Herewiss scrubbed at his eyes and looked up again. “You’re still bleeding,” he said.

“So are you, and that’s why. This is a peaceful place, there’s healing to be had here before we go on. But the thoughts of the living have power over those who’ve gone on, just as the dead have some influence over the lives and ways of the living.”

“But you’re not really dead!” Herewiss cried. “You live, you’re here—”

“I’m here. But living? Not the same way you are. I finished what I had to do.”

“But it was so senseless—you were young, and strong, and in line for the Lordship—” The tears broke through again. Herelaf shook his head.

“Little brother,” he said, and he held Herewiss’s hands hard, “I was all of that. And we loved each other greatly, and I loved my life, and when I first got here I raged and screamed and tried to get back into the poor broken body. But knowledge comes with silence here, and soon I found that it wasn’t senseless. What sense there is to it may seem evil to us, but that’s because we haven’t yet learned all the fact, or recalled them.”

“I wish I could believe that—”

“Herewiss, I
know
this. I did what I was there to do while I was there, and then I came here, and when it’s time, I’ll go on to something else. That’s the way things are.”

“But—I don’t understand. What did you
do?”

Herelaf smiled at him. “That, like the matter of Names, is between me and the Mother. Besides, I may not be finished yet.”

“I—oh, what the Dark! Herelaf, I wish I could stay here with you—I’ve failed so miserably with the Flame—”

Herelaf laughed, and the mingled pain and joy that the sound struck into Herewiss was amazing to feel. “Goddess, Dusty, what a crazy idea. You don’t even know what you’re
for
yet, and already you want to abandon the battlefield! Idiot. So tell me. If you can tell me, you might be able to stay.”

“I never really gave it much thought—”

“A lot of people don’t.
I
certainly never did.”

Herewiss frowned in irritation. “I,” he said, “am the first man in a thousand years to have enough of the Flame to use, and know it.”

“That’s what you are, or what you have been—not what you’re
for
. You just have to go back and find out the answer. Allow yourself to be what you can, and that will point you toward what you’re for like a compass needle seeking north.”

“But—”

“Shut up. You always were a great one for butting around, looking for holes in what you didn’t want to hear. That hasn’t changed, at least. Listen to me, Dusty. I’m only a ghost. No, look at me—” Herewiss had turned his face away, but Herelaf took both his brother’s hands in one of his, while with the other he took Herewiss’s face and turned it to him. “I’m only a ghost, Dusty. I can’t hurt you any more, unless you make me. Since I fell onto your sword, you haven’t been able to use one, not even to fight with—I guess because of me, or what you think you did to me. But the time’s coming when you’re going to need a sword. And you won’t feel right with one, it won’t do you any good, it’ll turn in your hand unless you acquit yourself of my ‘murder.’
You have things to do.
Better things than sitting around sorrowing for me. And I have better things to do than walk this shore and bleed.”

Herewiss knelt there on the sand, and felt Freelorn’s arms around him, and his brother’s eyes upon him, and he shook. He didn’t know what to think, or what to say.

“I’m not angry, Dusty,” Herelaf said softly. “There’s no anger here after one comes to understand things. I was set free at the appropriate time. How could I be angry about that? But we’re in bondage, both of us, and you can free us both. Turn me loose. Turn yourself loose.
You didn’t kill me.”

“I—” Herewiss looked at his brother, and at the truth in his eyes, and for the first time began to feel something strange and cold curling in his gut. It was doubt, doubt of the crenellated certainties he had walled into his mind, and the doubt twined upward, curling around his heart and squeezing it hard. “I—”

PAIN. Sudden, terrible, and Herewiss foundering in darkness, the shore and the Sea’s light and Freelorn and his brother’s gentle voice all gone at once, lost, no light, no sound, only an awful tearing pain through his head and his heart and the place where his soul usually slept. Tearing, gnawing, and then just aching, and still the darkness, but there was a floor under him now—at least he thought there was, yes, his hands were against it, that was a pillow, and ohh his head hurt, spun and throbbed—and dear Goddess, what was that noise?

A howling. A sick ugly howling like an axe being sharpened too long, and mixed with it other sounds, human voices crying out in terror, the sound of scrabbling claws and—

Herewiss tried to stand up. The binding spell. Broken. A pack of hralcins; the one had gone back for reinforcements. A touch too much stress on the binding somehow. The spell broken, and now all of them loose, hunting. Hunting
him
. But he hadn’t been in his body. So they couldn’t find him. But they had found something else to hold them until he returned. Freelorn. Freelorn’s people. Downstairs. Defenseless.

He tried to stand again, and it didn’t work. Too much drug. Out of it too suddenly. His body disobeyed him, and responded to his commands with vengeful stabs of pain. The screaming was louder, voices terrified beyond understanding. He refused to let his body’s punishments stop him. There was a little light now, sickly, the light of the Moon almost gone down. Against the wall was a dim gray blot, the only thing he could really see. He made a hand go out, despite shrieking protests from his head and arm and aching torso, and took hold of the thing. It swayed in his grasp. The other hand, now. He gripped the object hard, and wrenched himself to a sitting position next to it.

If his voice could have found his throat, he would have screamed. It was the sword, sharpened that morning, and it cut into his hands in icy lines of pain, and the blood flowed. But he had no time, no time for the pain, and he struggled to stand, using the sword as a prop. He moved his hands feebly to the unsharpened tang, where the hilt would go, and pushed himself up, and somehow managed to stand. His legs wobbled under him as if they belonged to a body he had owned in a former life. He made his feet move. He went to the door.

The stairs were dark, and Herewiss fell and stumbled down them, using the sword as a cane, caroming off the walls with force enough to bruise bones—though he couldn’t feel the blows much through the shell which the drug had made of his body. The cries of men in terror were closer now. They mingled with that awful lusting hunger-howl and were nearly lost in it, faint against it as against the laughter of Death. As Herewiss came to the landing at the foot of the stairs, very faintly he could see some kind of light coming from the main hall, a fitful light, coming in stuttered and flashes. With every flash the hralcins screeched louder in frustration and rage.
Segnbora!
he thought.
She’s holding them off with the light until I can get there. But what can I do? Nothing but Flame would do anything—

He reeled against the wall to rest his blazing body for a second, and the answer spoke itself to him in his brother’s voice: “It’ll turn in your hand unless you acquit yourself of my ‘murder.’”

He stumbled away from the wall and went on again, shuffling, hurrying, pushing himself through the pain. The light before him grew brighter as he approached the hall, but the flashes were becoming shorter and shorter.
Segnbora spoke of choosing when to listen to the voices of the dead—and when you can choose freely, and not be driven by them, you’re free to find out who you really are—
And the voice spoke again in the back of his mind, saying, “There’s neither lying nor deception, back of the Door—”

He
couldn’t
lie,
Herewiss thought through the effort of making his body work.
He was telling the truth. He
was!
I
didn’t—

He came to the doorway of the hall, and stood there, trembling with fear and effort, taking in the scene. There was little sound from the people in the hall now. They were crowded together in one corner, huddled together with closed or averted eyes. Before them stood Segnbora, arms upraised, shaking terribly, but with a look of final commitment on her face as she summoned the Flame from the depths of her, brilliant and impotent. As Herewiss watched, supporting himself on the bloody sword, she called the light out of herself again. But this time there was no starflower, no burst of blue: only a rather bright light, quickly gone.

In that light he could see the huge things she was holding off, as they backed away a bit. They reached out with twisted limbs, black talons raked the air like the combed claws of insects. Even through their banshee wail the sound of sheathed fangs moving hungrily in hidden mouths could still be heard. The light seemed to refuse to touch them, sliding away from hide the color of night with no stars—though there were baleful glitters from where their eyes could have been, reflections the color of gray-green stormlight on polished ice. The air in the room was bitter cold, and smelled of rust and acid.

The light flickered out, and the hralcins moved in again for their meal.

Herewiss staggered in, into the thick darkness. Well, maybe
this
was what he was for. The hralcins had come after him: he would give himself to them, and they would feed on his soul and go away, satisfied. His friends would escape. He found himself suddenly glad of those few precious moments with his brother, however painful they had been. After the hralcins were through with him, there would be nothing. No silent shore, no Sea of light, no rebirth ever; only terrible pain, and then the end of things. But if this was going to be the last expression of his existence, he would do it
right
. He drew himself up straight, though it hurt, and lifted up the sword. Almost he smiled: it was so good to face his fears at last—!

“Here I am, you sons of bitches!” he yelled. “Come and get me!”

The howling paused for a moment, as if in confusion—and then, to Herewiss’s utter horror, resumed again. They were not interested. They had found other game; they would take the souls of Freelorn and his people, and then later have Herewiss at their leisure.

“No,” he breathed.
“No—”

“Herewiss!” two voices cried at once, and there was the light again, but only a shadow of itself, pallid and exhausted. Segnbora held up her arms with fists clenched, as if she were trying to hold onto the light by main force, while her eyes searched the shadows for Herewiss. Freelorn stood apart from her, grim-faced and terrified. His sword was naked in his hand: a useless gesture, but one that described him in full.
That man walked the land of the dead with me unafraid,
Herewiss thought,
and here he is facing down things that’ll drink him up, blood and soul together, and he’s afraid, and
still
he defies—!

The light died out, for the last time. The hralcins howled, and moved in—

The hall exploded into fire, an awful blaze of white-hot outrage. Freelorn and Segnbora and the others crowded further back into the corner as Sunspark flowered between them and the hralcins, its fires raging upward in a terrible blinding column until they smote the ceiling and turned back on themselves, the down-hanging branches of a tree of flames. The hralcins backed away again.