The Door into Sunset (3 page)

“You’re talking Dracon again,” said Lorn, as Herewiss came in behind him and shut the door. “Say it in Darthene. And how can you wash in the dark like this?”

“I said, Yes, I’m decent, but come in anyway. And it’s not dark here,” said the contralto voice. “Not to me, anyway.”

“Well, it is to us,” Herewiss said. “Lighten it up, or we won’t be able to see the dirt! Good morning,
lhhw’
Hasai. Lorn, which tub?”

“
Yl’thienh, rhhw’Hhirhwaehs; u rhhw’Fvhr’ielhrnn.”

“Oh, right, ‘morning, Hasai. —That one, Dusty. Here’s the bathflannels.”

Laughter filled the room, not all of it human. “Dirt? On you? The six-bath-a-day man?”

“Ssha, ‘Berend, or I’ll turn you into something vile.”

“I’ll do it myself and save you time. Can’t be late for the Hammering.”

“What are you wearing?” Freelorn said.

Water splashed. “A bath flannel.”

“No, to the Hammering, you dolt!”

“All you ever think about is clothes,” said Segnbora, with infinite, affectionate scorn. The shadows thinned and she came out from behind the screen, wrapped in a flannel big enough for a blanket, and dripping. There was almost more of the flannel than there was of her, Lorn thought. She was a slender thing, wiry, narrow as a swordblade and with about as much curve; delicately featured, with deep-set eyes in a face with a sharp look about it. Her hair was slicked down from the bath, and even the wet couldn’t hide how it was coming in silver at the roots.

Lorn had to turn his head and smile as she sat down on a nearby bench, holding the flannel most carefully around her. On the trail Segnbora had been all business, never caring whether anyone saw her undressed, or whether she saw anyone else that way; there were more important things to worry about. But evidently old habits reasserted themselves when she came back to civilization. She reached under the bench for another flannel and began to dry her hair. “The full kit,” she said. “Formal surcoat, and Skádhwë. My presence there may confuse some people... and this morning, it may be wise to cause all the confusion we can.”

“And Hasai?” Herewiss reached for the soap-ball and knocked it into the bath. He began to fish for it.

“We shall be there if we’re needed,” said the chief of the many voices that had been speaking out of the shadows. Eyes as wide as a man is tall looked at them from the remaining darkness, burning with cool silver fire. “Now that we are becoming human, it would be pity to miss our first bout of your kind of
nn’s’raihle
.”

“Give me that soap. He keeps using that word,” Freelorn said to Segnbora, “and you keep giving me different meanings for it. A dance, a family argument, a word game— Which is it this time?”

Segnbora shrugged and scrubbed at her hair with the flannel. “It can be any of those for a Dragon,” she said. “It’s choice; but there’s a whole family of ways they make choices, and to them the way we do it looks similar a lot of the time. Though the motivations are different. We’re choosing a Queen—or rather, she’s allowing her people to exercise their option to get rid of her. We can dance with her, as it were, or else get rid of her and find another partner. But to we
lhhw’hei,
the important thing is the dance itself. The changing of partners is incidental; the choice matters. Not what it is, just making it.”

Freelorn’s gut turned over inside him. Last month Segnbora had been a new but trusted friend, a perfectly normal failed Rodmistress and sometime sorceress. Just another person. Now suddenly she had an extra shadow, and an invisible escort of what might be thousands, and odd overtones to her voice that had never been there before.
We
llhw’hei...

“Anyway, I’m worried.” Segnbora threw the small flannel away, shaking her hair out and running her fingers through it. “Someone is going to try something this morning.”

Herewiss, his hair full of lather, stopped scrubbing for a moment and looked at her. “Foreseeing? Or just a bad feeling?”

“Foreseeing. And underhearing. Careful, that soap’s going to get in your eyes. —Someone out there is thinking very bad thoughts about the Queen. And even though I’m in breakthrough now, and I can hear people thinking from here to Arlen, I still can’t hear details in this mind at all, or even identify the source.” She looked in bemusement at a straggle of her wet hair, and flicked it up with a finger. For a moment Segnbora had a curling halo of blue Fire. Then it went away, and her hair was dry. “Do you hear anything?”

Herewiss frowned a moment, then shook his head. “Not even the bad feelings. If it’s on the fringes of even your ability to perceive at the moment, that argues some powerful shielding. A sorcerer of considerable ability....”

Segnbora looked disturbed, and Herewiss did too, as he ducked to rinse the soap out of his hair. “I can’t see why, though,” Segnbora said. “Surely any sorcerer now knows that we’re at open war with the Shadow... if not yet with anyone else. Working against the Queen and her forces in that war can only ensure everything going to pieces sooner or later. Famine everywhere, whole nations dying.... “

“If that’s the case,” Herewiss said, wiping his hair back and the water out of his face, “whoever has chosen the Shadow’s side has to have been offered something that makes the chance of starving to death with the rest of the country, or being hanged and drawn and nailed up as a traitor, and possibly even rejected by the Goddess after death, look worth taking. That scares me.” He reached for a sponge. “What was the foreseeing?”

“I saw light down in the Square. A flicker of it, very fast. Two flickers. A still one, golden light; and then a quick one, more silver, I think. Lots of people standing around, but none of them reacting to anything in particular. They might not have seen anything, if it was an arrow or a crossbow bolt... or perhaps it was symbolic. You know how foretellings are, sometimes the message is abstract even though the image seems concrete.”

“And the gold was the Queen’s Gold?”

“Truly I couldn’t tell. Though—” Segnbora looked up over her shoulder. “
Mdaha
?”

“Your foreseeing is not like our remembering-ahead,” said the Dragon, in a slow uncertain basso scrape of song... one voice alone, not the usual chord. “We see the you-who-are-part-of-us... not the others associated with you. At least, not usually. We—” He paused, that single voice slipping into silence for a moment. “I see you in the sun, with your talon drawn. You stand quiet. Suddenly there is a movement from behind you, someone pushes you aside—” Another pause. “Nothing more,” Hasai said.

“So someone’s going to attempt Eftgan’s life this morning,” Freelorn said. “At least we have warning. But what can we do?”

Herewiss finished scrubbing, dunked again. “Keep it from happening... “

Freelorn looked at him. “Oh? You can’t do anything, you’re Darthene nobility... and you count as a guard, under that ruling, when was it? Sometime in the 1400’s. You’re one too, by that rule,” he said, looking at Segnbora. “If either of you move to help her, she has to give up the throne by default.” He paused. “That leaves me....”

“And how if this whole business is a blind to get you out in the open so that someone can send you to the Shadow?” said Segnbora. “Lorn, there are some methods of killing too quick for even the Fire to prevent. You were fortunate, yesterday... or rather, the Goddess seems to want you alive for something. I wouldn’t do Her the discourtesy of throwing Her gifts away.” Segnbora stood up. “Besides, there are a few others of us... eh,
mdaha
?”

Those silver eyes looked grave. “
Sdaha
, we are Dracon... we cannot become involved in the business of humans.”

“Oh really? The way you refused to become involved at Bluepeak last night? You melted a hole half the size of Darthis into the valley, getting those Reavers off our backs.”

“We were protecting our
sdaha
. No such situation obtains here. Besides, by virtue of the
sdahaih
relationship we are you... so we would not be allowed to intervene on Eftgan’s behalf anyway, if you are honoring the intent of this law as well as its letter.”

“Dammit,” Segnbora said, knotting her flannel around her, “we are. And a lot of good it’ll do us, Dracon or human, if we wind up with a dead Queen.”

Herewiss got up out of the bath, dripping and scowling, while Freelorn scrubbed meditatively. “What time is it?”

“Half eleven,” Segnbora said. “The forging’s at noon.” She headed for the door. With her, around her, a rumbling uneasy darkness moved, half hiding her.

“See you downstairs,” Segnbora said. The door thumped shut, and the narrow bars of sunlight on the floor reasserted themselves. Freelorn watched Herewiss towel himself off, still scowling.

“
Can
we stop it?”

“We’ll find out,” Herewiss said.

*

The Great Square in Darthis might have been great when the town was young. These days, as the center of ceremony for a city of ten thousand souls, it was inadequate... especially when three quarters of them tried to squeeze into it at once, as they had today. It was hot, too, on such a summer day, the morning after Midsummer. The only shade was under the huge old blackstave tree in the center of the Square. But no one stood there, even though there seemed no one to keep them away from it. Cool in the shade, in a level spot among the great humped roots and cracked paving blocks, nothing stood but a small flat anvil and a stool. No one went near the spot. Sweetsellers and roast meat-sellers and ice-sellers and people with chilled wine and new whey and barley-water and buttermilk went about hawking these to the sweating crowd, and there were plenty of buyers; but no food or drink kept anyone’s attention for long. All eyes returned at last to the anvil, and the stool, and the tree.

It was of course not just any blackstave tree, but the Blackstave, the Heart-Tree of Darthen, own brother-tree to Berlémetir Silverstock which stood in the Kings’ Grove near Prydon, and from which the White Stave of Arlen had been made. Queens and Kings had been crowned under the Blackstave—both Arlene and Darthene, in the older days when no kingship was complete that had not been solemnized in both countries. Kings had occasionally also been hung from it—once, in the Fell Reign fifteen hundred years ago, and then again three hundred years later: at which time the new King of Darthen, Bron, had made a vow that no such thing should ever happen again. “If a king is a bad one,” said Bron, “then his people should have a chance to do something about it before any more blood is shed than his own.”

So Bron went out in the summer morning and sat down under the Blackstave, unarmed, without any guard, and proceeded to hammer out his own crown out of soft gold; and his people watched him in astonishment, having heard the proclamation that the King had caused to be published. From now on, once a year—the date became Midsummer later on, adding more excuse for celebration to the holiday—every Queen or King of Darthen must forge their crown anew in public. They might bring no guard with them, nor might any subject make to protect them save with his or her own body. And anyone who had a grievance against the King or Queen might make it good on the ruler’s body, right then. The ruler might protect himself, but only with his own body. No revenge might be taken on any attacker, directly or indirectly. If a King died, his successor took up the forging... and hoped to survive it. If a Queen lived, then she was Queen for another year, and no assassin or plotter might expect to survive any attempt on her royalty; they had had their chance. A ruler who broke the rules forfeited the throne. One who tried to forego the Forging was exiled.

No one killed Bron, but then he early showed signs of being a good king, and his children kept to the tradition he had started. Since that time, three Kings and two Queens had been killed by angry subjects, and some nine or ten had been roughed up and given a good talking to. All the other Queens and Kings had beaten out their crowns, and gone inside Blackcastle afterwards, and heaved long sighs of relief. One never knew, on that warm morning, what past sin, or real or imagined slight to a person or political faction, might walk out of the crowd with a drawn bow. Freelorn, looking out his room’s window at that crowd, felt an itching between his shoulders at the thought. There had been some talk in Arlen, a few hundred years back, that the same custom should be adopted there. It had never happened, and he was relieved. He had enough trouble working his courage up to the point where his knees no longer knocked before a straightforward battle, where there were clearly marked enemies and some specific issue to fight over.

He tightened his belt around his surcoat, looking down into the mass of sweaty, noisy people, crying children, hawkers, silent shapes on horseback, and the glint of weapons in the crowd—a spear or two, a few slung bows, a few swords, many knives. All casually worn, to be sure. Many people wore such on their daily business, even in town, for pride and looks and fondness of the weapons themselves as much as for protection. But those people on horseback.... He recognized clearly several faces of lords prominent among the Forty Houses, the Darthene lower cabinet. Hiliard, in the tenné velvet: how could anyone wear velvet on a day like this?—and over there, a blue surcoat semée of white martlets; Nerris of Devenish, from Arrhen-Devenish up in the north. She had reason enough to be annoyed with the Queen, what with the public reprimand about the taxes. And several other people, escorted or just quietly standing in the crowd, all of that party in the Houses that had been most critical of the Queen lately for her actions.
What should she be doing, for pity’s sake?
Lorn thought, hitching his belt up and fastening the loops to it from Súthan’s sheath.
Sitting still while Cillmod raids her granaries and her western borders? They’re so afraid of war they’ll do anything to avoid it, even unbuckle their belts for that damn usurper
....

Lorn turned to hunt through the mess of clothes at the end of the bed, and after a moment came up with the knife tossed in among them. He had been holding it for the day until Eftgan should ask for it back; it was the One Knife from the Regalia of the Two Lands, the razory black-bladed knife with which Eftgan’s blood and his had been shed yesterday. He paused to do something that he doubted had been done to most sacred implements: balanced it across one finger to check how far forward the knife’s balance-point was.
Not too bad. Two full turns, probably, depending on the range.
...
Up the sleeve, I think.
He hunted about one of his jerkins for the broken leather thong that was in its pocket, and used the thong to snug the knife in place well above his elbow and out of sight.
Good
.... He took a moment for the mirror, a plate of polished steel fastened to the wall. Freelorn made a wry face, looking at his clothes. This Lion surcoat had gotten him in trouble every time he’d worn it recently. But Eftgan was going out on a limb for his sake; he had to do the same for her. He brushed a last bit of lint out of the folds. Black surcoat, white Lion passant regardant, standing and looking at you stern and patient, with the silver Sword held up in the dexter paw.
Lionchild,
he thought, uneasy as always... then smiled a bit, grimly, determined to like it for once. This surcoat was getting tight: or maybe he was putting on some size across the shoulders.
Unusual. Wonder if there’s enough seam to let it out a bit
.... And Súthan shifted softly in the scabbard as he moved. He glanced down at it with a habitual mixture of great love and great annoyance
. We’ve been a long way, we two. But why,
why
aren’t you Hergótha?! I’d trade you for Hergótha like a dented pot if I had half a chance.