The Door Into Fire (4 page)

“Nice,” he said. “A fork, please?”

“Hmm?” She in her turn was being very interested in Herewiss.

“A fork?”

“Oh. Yes, certainly—” She reached into her pocket and brought one out for him. Herewiss took it, wiped it off, and hurriedly dug into the pie.

“Ahh, listen,” she said, bending down again, and Herewiss began an intensive study of a piece of potato, “are you busy this evening?”

Herewiss did his best to look up at her with profound sorrow. She really wasn’t his type, and there was a mercenary look in her eye that sent him hurriedly to the excuse box in the back of his head. “If you’re thinking what I think you are,” he said, “I’m sorry, but I’m under vows of chastity.”

“You don’t look like you’re in an Order,” she said.

“Perpetual chastity,” Herewiss said. “Or until the Lion comes back. Sorry.”

The girl stood up. “Well,” she said, “if you change your mind, ask the lady in the kitchen where I am. I’m her daughter.”

Herewiss nodded, and she went away into the kitchen. He sagged slightly as the door closed behind her, and settled back against the wall.

That was a bit panicky of me,
Herewiss thought as he began to eat.
I wonder what it is about her that bothers me so—

He put the thought aside and concentrated on the hot-spiced food and the heavy ale. The common room began slowly to fill up while Herewiss ate, as the local clientele came in from the fields and houses to enjoy each other’s company. Soon the big table nearest him was occupied by a noisy, cheerful group of farmers from the Arian landholdings, nine or ten brawny men and lithe ladies, all deeply tanned and smelling strongly of honest work. They called loudly for food and drink, and hailed Herewiss like a brother when they spotted him in his corner. He smiled back at them, and before long they were exchanging crude jokes and bad puns, and laughing like a lot of fools.

When their table and Herewiss’s were being cleared of emptied plates, and tankards were being refilled, the inn’s cat came strolling by. It was greeted politely by the farmers, and offered little pieces of leftover meat or game. The cat accepted some of these, declined others graciously and in silence, and went on by, making its rounds. As it passed it looked hard at Herewiss, as if it recognized him. He nodded at it; the cat looked away as if unconcerned, and moved on.

As the ale flowed and the evening flowered, the storytelling and singing began in earnest. Most of the stories were ones already known to everyone there, but no one seemed to care much about that—Kingdoms people have a love of stories, as long as the story wears a different face each time. Someone began with the old one about what Ealor the Prince of Darthen had done with the fireplace poker, which was later named Sarsweng and had its haft encrusted with diamonds. Then someone else got up and told about something more recent, news only a hundred and five years old, how the lady Faran Fersca’s daughter had gone out with her twelve ships to look for the Isles of the North, and how only one ship had come back after a year, and what tale its captain told. The story was related in an unusual fashion, sung to an antique rhyme-form by a little old lady with a surprisingly strong soprano. There was a great deal of stamping and cheering and applause when she finished; and several people, judging correctly that the lady was quite young inside, whatever her apparent age, propositioned her immediately. She said yes to one of the propositions, and she and the gentleman went upstairs immediately to more applause.

In the commotion, the lute was passed around to the farmers’ table and one of them started to sing the song about the Brindle Cat of Aes Arädh, how it carried away the chief bard of a Steldene king on its back because of an insulting song he had sung before the Four Hundred of Arlen, and what the bard saw in the Otherworld to which the cat took him. Herewiss joined in on the choruses, and one of the ladies at the farmers’ table noticed the quality of his voice and called to him, “You’re next!” He shook his head, but when the man with the lute was finished, it was passed back to him. He looked at it with resignation, and then smiled at a sudden memory.

“All right,” he said, pushed his chair back, and perched himself on the edge of the farmers’ table, pausing a moment to tune one of the strings that had gone a quarter-tone flat. The room quieted down; he strummed a chord and began to sing.

Of the many stories concerning the usage of the blue Fire, probably the most tragic is that of Queen Béaneth of Darthen and her lover Astrin. Astrin was taken by the Shadow’s Hunting one Opening Night, and Béaneth went to her rescue. That rescue seemed a certain thing, for Béaneth was a Rodmistress, one of the great powers of her time. But the price demanded of her for Astrin’s release was that Béaneth must mate with the Shadow, and take into herself whatever evil He would choose for her to bear. Béaneth, knowing that the evil to grow within her would warp her Power to its own use, lay down with the Shadow indeed, but killed herself at the climax of the act, thereby keeping her bargain and obtaining her loved’s release.

Her little daughter Béorgan was five years old when all this happened. Béorgan made the decision early to avenge her mother, and determined that she would meet the Shadow on His own ground and destroy Him. She trained, and grew great in Power—and also in obsession—waiting and preparing for Nineteen-Years’ Night, that night when it is both Opening Night and full Moon. All the Kingdoms know how the story ends—how Béorgan went down to the Morrowfane on that night, being then twenty-four years of age, and opened the Morrowfane Gate beneath the waters of Lake Rilthor, and passed through into the Otherworlds. There she met the Shadow, and there she slew Him, on one of the only nights this may be done, when the Goddess’s power conjoins with the returning Sun past midnight. Béorgan’s triumph was shortlived, though, and so was she. She had never planned her life past that night, and in a short time wasted away and died. Even her victory was hollow, for however bright the Lover may be, still he casts the Shadow: seven years after He died, He was back again, leading the Hunting as always.

Freelorn had always loved the story, and some years back had composed a verse form of it, and a musical setting that Herewiss had liked. At the time, though, Freelorn’s voice had been changing, and Herewiss had had to restrain himself from laughing as his loved sang that greatest of tragedies in a voice that cracked crazily every verse or so. He had even refrained from singing it himself for the longest while, for the sound of his pure, clear, already-changed tenor had made Freelorn twice as self-conscious as he usually was.

He sang the setting now, letting his voice go as he would have liked to all those years ago, pausing between verses to insert the last dialogue between Béaneth and Astrin, and later the farewell of Béorgan to her husband Ánmod, who later became King of both Arlen and Darthen because of her death. Herewiss forgot about the hot, smoky room, forgot about time and pain and the systematic destruction of swords, and just sang, feeling very young again for the first time in ever so long.

At the end of it he received tremendous applause, and he bowed shyly and handed the lute to someone else, going back to his table and his ale. There Herewiss sat for a few minutes, recovering. Someone began singing something else almost immediately, but the farmers started talking quietly among themselves. The contrast between the sung verses of terrible tragedy beyond the boundaries of the world and the homely talk of the farmers was abrupt, but pleasant; they had slow, musical voices, and Herewiss dawdled over his ale, listening alternately to the words and the sound of them. One of the farmers started telling a long, drawn-out story of a loved of his who had gone traveling. “All the way to Dra’Mincarrath she went,” he said in a drawl, “aye, all that way south, and then east again into the Waste she went, not knowing where she was going. North she went, but ‘twas the wrong way; no way out of the Waste Unclaimed from there. And she came in sight of that hold in the Waste, indeed, and—”

“Ssh!” said several of the other farmers, looking upset. “She came out again,” said one of them, seemingly the eldest. “Count her lucky; that place is bad to talk of, even here. Leave it for now. Where did she go afterwards?…”

Herewiss sat nursing his ale, curious at the sudden and vehement response.
Hold in the Waste—? What could that be? No one lives out there—

His thought was broken by the underheard feeling that someone was looking at him with unkindly intent. He glanced up and saw the innkeeper’s daughter. She was across the room, serving someone else, but he could feel her eyes on him. Herewiss looked down at his ale again quickly, not particularly wanting to see her bend over again.

There was a sudden motion to his right. He looked, and saw the cat, a big gray tabby with blue eyes, balancing itself on the table edge after its leap. It lay down, tucking its forepaws beneath its chest so that it looked like a broody hen, and half-closed its eyes.

“Well, hello,” Herewiss said, putting down his mug to scratch under the cat’s chin. It squeezed its eyes shut altogether and stretched its neck out all the way, purring like a gray-furred thunderstorm.

Herewiss went back to the contemplation of his ale, rubbing under the cat’s chin automatically for a few minutes. Then suddenly the cat opened up its round blue eyes. “Prince,” it said in its soft raspy voice, “mind the innkeeper’s daughter.”

He laughed under his breath. “No one keeps a secret from a cat,” he quoted. “May I ask what you’re called?”

“M’ssssai,” it said. “That’s my inner Name, prince: the outer doesn’t matter.”

Herewiss blinked in surprise. “I’ll keep your secret,” he said in ritual response. “But I fear I have none to give you in return. I don’t know mine yet.”

“Well enough. Time will come, and then you can come back and tell me.”

“Forgive me,” Herewiss said, “but how did you know who I am?”

“I’ve been in your saddlebag.”

“It had a binding on it.”

The cat smiled, and after a moment Herewiss smiled back at it. Cats, the legend said, had been created second after men, and had a Flame of their own, one which they had never lost.

“The very fact of a binding,” M’ssssai said, “made me slightly suspicious. I could smell it from down here, and know you for its author. And the contents of the bags settled the matter. Only two men alive wear that surcoat, and you’re too young to be one of them, so you must be the other.”

“Granted.”

“What are you doing with those grimoires in your bags?”

Herewiss made a face. “Isn’t it said of my line that there’s no accounting for us? I’m a part-time sorcerer, out seeing the world.”

M’ssssai half-closed his eyes again. “Sorcerers usually stay home unless they have something in hand. And you’re more than just a sorcerer, prince. I know the smell of Flame.”

“I have no focus,” Herewiss said, very softly, “and no control. I can’t use a Rod.”

“The innkeeper’s daughter,” said the cat, “is a dabbler; she has just enough Flame to be able to smell it herself, though she has no control or focus either. But she’s looking for a way to free her Power, and I dare say she’s noticed at least part of what you are. If I were you, I’d keep the shields up around your bags tonight, or else sleep lightly. She’s a brewer of semi-effective love potions, and she throws her curses crooked. She has a most undisciplined mind. Not to mention that she’d probably try to drain you—”

“A vampire?”

“Only between the bedsheets; unfortunately she’s acquired a taste for that kind of thing. I see too many people going out of here looking lost and drained in the morning.”

“M’ssssai, I thank you.” Herewiss scratched behind the cat’s ears. “But why are you telling me all this?”

The cat put its whiskers forward, amused. “You have good hands.”

M’ssssai stood up, stretched, arching his back, his tail straight up in the air. “Mind her, now,” he said, and jumped down from the table, vanishing into the forest of trestles and benches.

Herewiss looked up cautiously. The innkeeper’s daughter had just come down from upstairs, and was going through the kitchen door. He took his opportunity and eased out from behind the table, heading hurriedly for the protection of the shadows of the stairway. He took the stairs two at a time, sloshing ale in all directions, pausing at the top of the stairs to get his bearings; it was dark up there. Then Herewiss headed softly down the hall, trying to keep the floor from creaking under him, his breath going up before him like pale smoke in the chill air.

His room door was ajar. He listened at it, but heard nothing. A swift cold draft was whispering through the crack. Gently he put his weight against the door; it opened with a low tired groan. There was no one inside.

He went in, still moving carefully, and bent down by the window to check his bags. The surcoat was ever so slightly mussed, unfolded just enough to clearly show the Phoenix charged on it; and the lockshield around the bags was parted cleanly in one place, an invisible incision right through the spell, big enough for a cat to put a paw through.

Herewiss laughed and got up. With flint and steel he lit the room’s one candle, a stub of tallow in a smoky, cracked glass by the big four-poster bed. Even in the glass, the flame bent and bobbled wildly until Herewiss closed the shutters at the window. For a few seconds he regarded the worm-holed old door.

“All right,” he said softly. “Let her think I had a bit too much to drink.” He crossed to the door and closed it without shooting the bolt, then flicked a word and a gesture back at the bags and dissolved the lockshield.