The Door Into Fire

Silence is the door between Love and Fear; and on Fear’s side, there is no latch.

Gnomics, 33

Sunset was glowing behind his back when Herewiss woke up. He opened his eyes on a wide barren vista of earth and scattered brush, streaked with crimson light and long shadows. He stretched, and found that he ached all over. It wasn’t all backlash; some of it was the pain of having been tied in the saddle and taken a great distance at speed.

He didn’t recognize the voice, a deep, gentle one. Then as he turned his head, the memories snapped back into place. The new person, the woman. This must be her.

Looking up at her, Herewiss’ first impression was of large, deep-set hazel eyes that lingered on him in leisurely appraisal, and didn’t shift away when he returned the glance. And hands: long, strong-fingered hands, prominently veined, incongruously attached to little fragile bird-boned wrists and too-slender arms. She was very slim and long-limbed, wearing with faint unease a body that didn’t seem to have finished adolescence yet. But her muscles looked taut and hard from assiduous training. She sat cross-legged on the ground by Herewiss’ head, those strong hands resting quietly on her knees, seemingly relaxed. But his underhearing, hypersensitive from the large sorcery he had worked, gave him an immediate feeling of impatience, an impression that beneath the imposed external calm seethed something that had to be done and couldn’t. Her dark hair was cut just above the shoulders; Herewiss looked at it and smiled. She wants to make sure they know she’s a woman, he thought, but she doesn’t have the patience for braids . . .

“Good evening to you,” he said, propping himself up on one elbow and then frowning—he had forgotten how sore he was. “I’m sorry I missed your name when we were on the way out—”

“You were hardly in a condition to remember it if you’d heard it,” she said, reaching out to touch hands with him. “Segnbora, Welcaen’s-daughter.”

“Herewiss, Hearn’s-son,” he said, touching her hand, and then flinching. No matter how fordone he might be, there was no mistaking the feel of Flame. And she was full of it, spilling over with it. It had sparked between their hands, faint blue like dry-lightning, as if trying to fill the empty place in him. Something very like envy whirled through Herewiss’ mind, to be replaced immediately by confusion. With power like that, what was she doing here?

She was rubbing her hands together thoughtfully, and still looking at him, her curiosity more open. But at the same time she read the look in his eyes, and her expression was rueful. “You felt right,” she said softly. “The funny thing is, I think I did too . . . ”

For a few moments more they regarded each other. Then Segnbora dropped her eyes, reaching down with one hand to play with the peace-strings of her sword, sheathed on the ground beside her.

“That was some sorcery you worked,” she said, and looked up again. Her face was all admiration, masking whatever else was in her mind. “You were out for two days.”

“About fifteen miles from the border of the Waste. We only have to cross the Stel. Freelorn will be glad you’re awake. He was worried about you.”

“Don’t know why,” Herewiss said, and sat himself up with a little effort. “He knows I always take the backlash hard.”

“I’m sure. But he never saw anything like that display before. Some of the effects were—”

“Out hunting. They left me here to watch you. This is safe country, too empty for Fyrd, I think. They’ll be lucky to find anything. Dritt is here too.”

He looked around and located Dritt sitting atop a boulder, a big stocky silhouette against the sunset. He was munching something, and Herewiss became immediately aware of the emptiness of his stomach.

Segnbora was rummaging in a pouch. “Here,” she said, handing him an undistinguished-looking lump of something crumbly.

It looked terrible, like a lump of pale dirt with rocks in it. He bit into it, and almost broke a tooth.

“Goddess above,” he said, after managing to get the first bite down, “this is awful.”

She took a piece too, and they sat for a few minutes in silence, passing Segnbora’s waterskin back and forth at intervals.

“The fire,” Segnbora said suddenly. “And your messengers—the hawk, that ball of flame that met us when we came out—those really interested me. Those were no illusions—those were real.”

He studied her uneasily, not responding, trying to understand what she was up to. She was looking thoughtfully over his shoulder at something fairly close by. Herewiss put his mind out behind him and felt around. Sunspark was some yards behind him with the other horses, once again a vague blunt warmth wrapped in the stallion-form, grazing unconcernedly.

Sunspark waved its tail, making a feeling like a shrug. (That’s well for her. I am worth seeing . . . )

Herewiss returned his attention to Segnbora. She continued to gaze past him for a moment. Remotely he could sense Sunspark lifting its head, returning her look.

(Another relative,) it said. (This world seems to be full of my second cousins.)

“I’m sorry—I didn’t mean to change the subject. But I’d been meaning to ask you about that.”

Herewiss felt outrage beginning to grow in him, and a voice spoke up in his memory, the scornful voice of some Darthene regular way back during the war. (‘Spears and arrows are a boy’s weapon! Afraid to get up close to a Reaver? . . . A man isn’t a boar to be hunted with a lance. A man takes on another man blade to blade . . . Earn’s blood must be running thin in the Wood . . . ’)

Oh, Dark, I thought I got over this a long time ago! Herewiss took a deep breath and pushed the anger down. “It may be none of your business,” he told Segnbora, as gently as he could.

“Then why are you so obvious about it? You wouldn’t be wearing that around if you didn’t want to attract attention to it. Freelorn’s people think it’s something to do with a family feud and they won’t mention it for fear you’ll take offense. But there’s something else there—”

“Freelorn knows. And he doesn’t speak of it either,” Herewiss said, trying to frighten her away from the subject with a sudden knife-edge of anger in his voice.

“Maybe someone should,” she said, so very softly that he sat back in confusion. “I saw how he looks at that scabbard. He looks at it, but he doesn’t look at it—as if it was a maimed limb. He hurts so much for you. I didn’t know why—but now—It’s a matter of Flame, isn’t it?”

“Listen,” Herewiss said, “why should I discuss it with you? We’ve barely met.”

Segnbora smiled at him, that dry, rueful smile again. “Fair enough,” she said. “Let me tell you who I am, and perhaps you’ll understand. I come of fey stock from a long way back—generations of Rodmistresses and sorcerers. The male line has descent from Gereth Dragonheart, who was Marchwarder with M’athwinn d’Dháriss when the Dragons were fighting for the Éorlhowe. The female line comes down from Enra the Queen’s sister of Darthen. Two terribly eminent families . . . and I’m something of an embarrassment to both of them.”

She chuckled softly. “We usually come into our Power early, if it’s there. They took me to be tested when I was three years old, and they weren’t disappointed. The Flame that was in me shattered all the rods and rings and broke the blocks that they gave me to hold, and the testers got really excited. They said to my mother and father, ‘This one is a great power, or will be when she grows up—you should have her trained by the best people you can find. Anything less would be a terrible waste.’ So they did. And I studied with Harandh, and Saris Elerik’s daughter, and the people at the Nhàirëdi Institute in Darthis, and I did a year with Eilen—”

“You know her. Yes. And others too numerous to mention. I hardly spent more than a year or two in the same place.”

“It’s not very good policy to change teachers so often,” Herewiss said. “I wouldn’t think there would be time to build up a good relationship—”

“You’re right, it’s not, and there wasn’t,” Segnbora said. “There was this little problem, you see. I had too much Flame. I kept breaking the Rods they gave me to work with; they would just blow right up, boom, like that—” She waved her arms in the air—“any time I tried to channel through them. And all my teachers said, ‘It’s all right, you’ll grow out of it, it’s just adolescent surge.’ Or, ‘Well, it’s puberty, it’ll be all right after your breasts grow.’ ” She chuckled. “Well, they grew all right, but that wasn’t the problem. I began wondering after a while why each teacher kept referring me to another one, supposedly more experienced or more advanced—once or twice I made so bold as to ask, and got long lectures on why I should let older and wiser heads decide what was best for me. Or else I got these short shamefaced speeches on how I needed more theory, but everything would be all right eventually.”

“That’s how I felt,” Segnbora said. “Well, what could I do? I gave it a chance, stuffed myself with more theory than most Rodmistresses would ever have use for. It was better than facing the truth, I suppose. And eventually I got to be eighteen, and they took me to the Forest Altars in the Brightwood, and I spent a year there in really advanced study—or so they called it. You know the Altars?”

“I live in the Brightwood,” Herewiss said dryly. And a lot of good it did me! “Go on.”

“Yes. Well, when I turned nineteen, and Maiden’s Day came around, I swore the Oath, and they took me into the Silent Precincts, and they brought out the Rod they had made for me. They were really proud of it, it came from Earn’s Blackstave in the Grove of the Eagle, it’d been cut in the full of the Moon with the silver knife and left on the Flame Altar for a month. And they gave it to me and I channeled Flame through it—”

“Splinters everywhere, the Chief Wardress ducked and turned around and took one right in the rear. Oh, such embarrassment you haven’t seen anywhere. The Wardress claimed I did it on purpose—she and I had had a few minor disagreements on matters of theory—”

“Yes,” Segnbora said tiredly, “indeed she is. Well. They went down the whole Dark-be-damned list of trees, and I broke oak Rods and ash and willow and blackthorn and rowan and you name it. Finally the Wardresses who were there shrugged and said they’d never seen anything like it, but they couldn’t help me. So here I am, so full of Power that sometimes it crawls out my skin at night and changes the ground where I lie—but I can’t control so much of it as to heal a cut finger, or bring a drop of rain.” She sighed. “A whole life wasted in the pursuit of the one art I can’t master.”

Herewiss sat there and felt an odd twisted kind of pleasure. So I’m not the only one like this! Well, well—But then he pushed it aside, ashamed of it.

“Precisely,” Segnbora said, her voice tight, and Herewiss blushed fiercely. “Oh,” she said, and smiled again, “they really push you at Nhàirëdi; my underhearing got awfully good.”

“Don’t be. I must confess feeling a moment’s satisfaction when I realized what your problem was. I’m sorry, too.”

She shrugged. “How long can a person keep trying? I spent three more years in the Precincts, fasting and praying and trying to beat my body into submission—I thought I could tame the Power that way.” She snorted. “It was a silly idea. I ended up half-wrecked, with the Fire almost dead in me from the abuse. I had to let it rest for a long time before it would come back. Then after a while I said, ‘What the Dark!’ and just went off to travel. The Power’s going to wither up in me soon enough, but there’s no reason to be bored while it does. I made Freelorn’s acquaintance in Madeil; and traveling in company is more interesting than being alone. Especially with him.” She chuckled.

“But you still have a lot going for you,” Herewiss said, though the empty place in him realized how such a statement might feel to her. “You studied at Nhàirëdi, you certainly got enough sorcery from them to make yourself a living by it—”

Segnbora shrugged again. “True. But I have better things to do with my life than spell broken cartwheels back together or divine for well-diggers or mix potions to make men potent. Or thought I had. I spent all those years cultivating the wreaking ability—and then nothing came up. I was going to reach inside minds and really understand motivations—not just make do with the little blurred glimpses you get from underhearing, all content and no context. I was going to untwist the hurt places in people, and heal wounds with something better than herbs and waiting. To really hear what goes on in the world around, to talk to thunderstorms and soar in a bird’s body and run down with some river to the Sea. I was going to move the forces of the world, to command the elements, and be them when I chose. To give life, to give Power back to the Mother. To sing the songs that the stars sing, and hear them sing back. And they told me I’d do all that, and I believed them. And it was all for nothing.”

She looked out into nothing as she spoke, and her voice drifted remotely through the descending dusk as if she were telling a bedtime story to a drowsy child. From the quiet set of her face, it might have been a story laid in some past age, all the loves and strivings in it long since resolved. But the pain in her eyes was here-and-now, and Herewiss’ underhearing caught the sound of a child, awake and alone in the darkness, crying softly.

He sat there and knew the sound too well; he’d heard it in himself, in the middles of more nights than he cared to count. “If you had it, you know,” he said, trying to find a crumb of comfort for her, “you’d probably just die early.”

He had tried to make a joke of it, an acknowledgement of shared pain. But she turned to him, and looked at him, and his heart sank. “Who cares if you die early,” she said very quietly, “as long as you’ve lived.”

“I’m sorry,” Segnbora said eventually, pulling her knees up to her chest and wrapping her arms around them. “The problem is much with me these days; it’s dying, you see. But it must be worse for you. At least for me there’s hope—”

“There’s hope,” Herewiss said harshly, “just fewer people to believe in me. A lot fewer.”

“That’s what I meant,” she said, and to his surprise, he believed her. “That jolt you gave me when we touched—you certainly have enough to use. If you live in the Brightwood, you must have tried the Altars too—”

“Well, of course you couldn’t! It’s a woman’s symbol, your undermind would interfere with it. What were they thinking of?” She was all indignation now, and Herewiss, feeling it was genuine, warmed to her a little. “You’re a man, what did they expect? And just because you couldn’t use a Rod, they gave up on you?”

Segnbora frowned at Herewiss, and he leaned back a little, stricken by the angry intensity of the expression. “There are few enough women since the Catastrophe who have the Power,” she said, “less than a tenth of us—and no men at all—Do they think there are enough people running around using Flame that they can afford to throw one away? A male, no less.” She shook her head. “They must have been crazy.”

Herewiss shrugged. “I asked for help in finding something else to use as a focus. I thought that, since the sword is very symbolic of the Power for me, that I might use one as focus. They said it was hopeless, that the Power was a thing of flesh and blood and the lightning that runs along the nerves, and that it could never flow through anything that hadn’t been alive, like wood. Well, I said, how about a sword made of wood or ivory? Oh, no, they said to me, the sword in concept and design is an instrument of death, and unalterably opposed to the principles of the Power. They just wouldn’t help me at all. I guess I didn’t fit their image of how a male with the Power would act, when one finally showed up. So I left, and went my own ways to study.”

He stretched a little, making an irritated face. “Well, for whichever of the reasons they gave me, they’ve been right so far. I tried using various sorceries to condition the metal of a sword to the conduction of Flame—that was silly, the Power and the mundane sorceries are two entirely different disciplines. But I tried it. I tried swords of wood, and ivory, and horn, and bone, but those didn’t work. I finally started forging my own swords and using my blood at various stages—melding it with the metal, tempering the sword with it, writing runes on the blade with it.”

“Well, not quite. Once, the business with the runes, that began to feel as if it would work—almost. Not quite, though. There was a stirring—something was starting to happen—but the sword still felt wrong. They all do. It could be they’re right about the dichotomy between swords and life.”

Herewiss went stiff for a moment, feeling threatened by the subject. The matter of Names wasn’t usually mentioned in casual conversation, and certainly not between two people who had just met. But Segnbora’s tone was noncommittal, and her expression reserved. She shifted her eyes away as he looked at her. Herewiss relaxed a little.

“Maybe,” he said, looking away himself, his fingers playing idly with the empty scabbard. “But I don’t know how to find it. I mean, I’m not all that sure who I’m supposed to be. I have ideas—but it’s like water in a sieve. I pour myself into them, into this role, or that identity, and they won’t hold me. I’m a passable sorcerer—”

“Yes, well—but that’s not what I want to be. Sorcery is an imposition on the environment, a forcing, a rape. The Power is a meshing, a cooperation, like love. You don’t make it rain: you ask it to, and usually it will, if you ask it nicely. You know that. I have no desire to be just a very talented rapist, when I have the potential to be a lover, even a clumsy one. So. I’m all right as a warrior, but I don’t have a sword; and I don’t want to kill anyone anyway. I’m a good scholar, I know six dead Darthene dialects and four Arlene ones, I can read runes a thousand years old. But there’s more to life than sitting around translating rotting manuscripts. I’m not much of a prince—”

Segnbora’s eyebrows went up. “My Goddess. You’re that Hearn’s son? I didn’t make the connection—that’s a fairly common name up north.”

“Well, there’s not much to say about it, really. I don’t know—I’m so many people, and no one of them is all of me—”

“There was a while when I was giving the problem a lot of thought: I said to myself, ‘Well, maybe the Power will follow if the Name is there.’ So I tried all the ways I could think of to find out. Fasting—yes, you know how that is—and a lot of time spent in meditation. Too much. Once I sat down and turned everything inward, everything, and what happened was that I got stuck inside and couldn’t find my way out again. I rattled around in the dark and struck out at the walls, but they seemed to be mirrored—and I found myself thinking that if I hit the walls, I would hurt the inside of me—and there were voices in the dark, some of them seemed to belong to my parents, or to people I knew; some of them were kind, but some were ugly and twisted—I got out eventually, but I’ll never go that way again. I might not be so lucky the next time.”

Segnbora stretched her arms over her head and let them drop to encircle her knees again. “I heard it said once,” she said, so softly that Herewiss had to strain to hear her, “—oh, a long time back—that to find your Name, you have to turn the mind and heart, not inward, but outward rather; that you have to pay no attention to the voices in the dark—or, rather, accept them for what they are, but take their advice only when it pleases you, and don’t allow yourself to be driven by them. Look always forward and outward, not back and in.”

“Nice,” Herewiss said. “I understand that not at all. How can you get to know yourself by looking out? Who other than yourself can tell you what you are, or what you’re going to be?”

They sat there in depressed and companionable silence for a while. Then Herewiss looked up and grinned at Segnbora. “Well,” he said. “Maybe I can’t command wind and wave, but I can do this much—”

He cupped his hands before him, and beside him Segnbora leaned close to watch. Herewiss closed his eyes, reached down inside him, found the flicker of Flame within him, breathed softly on the little light, encouraged it, cherished it, and then willed—

It flowered there in his outstretched hands, a tiny wavering bloom of fire that grew and bent in the wind of his will: as vividly blue as a little child’s eyes, with a hot white core like a newsprung star, but gently warm in his hands—

It went out, and he folded his hands together and strove to thank the Power in him, rather than cursing at it for being so feeble. He looked at Segnbora. “Can you?”

She smiled at him. “Watch,” she said, and reached out before her as if to support something that Herewiss could not see, hanging in the air. It came before he was ready for it, sudden, brilliant, so bluely brilliant that it outraged his eyes and left dancing violet afterimages: a lightning flash, a starflower, a little sun, hanging in the air between her hands. For a moment there was an odd blue day in the desert, and everything had two shadows, sharp short black ones laid over long dull streaks of red-purple light and darkness. Then the light went out, and Segnbora let her hands fall. “As you see,” she said. “I can’t maintain it. Maybe I can find work as a lighthouse beacon.”

Herewiss looked up at Dritt, who still sat on his rock, unconcerned, eating; he had spared them no more than a curious look. “Do you do this often?” Herewiss said.

“Every now and then, in dark places. They’ve seen it before, they think it’s an illusion-charm. None of them but Freelorn would know real wreaking from sorcery if it walked up and bit them; and Freelorn never says anything about it . . . And speak of the Shadow, here he comes.”

They stood up, and Herewiss wobbled for a moment, the world darkening in front of him and then brightening as the dizziness passed. He made a mental note to be careful of the backlash for the next couple of days. Four forms on horseback were approaching slowly, and the horse in the lead had a young desert deer slung over its withers.

Herewiss stood there, his hands on his hips, and watched the figure in the saddle of the lead horse. Their eyes met while the riders were still a ways off, and Herewiss watched the smile spread over Freelorn’s face, and felt his own grow to match it. The horse ambled along toward the camp, and Freelorn made no attempt to hurry it. An old memory spoke up in Freelorn’s voice. “I hate long goodbyes,” it said, looking over a cup of wine drained some years before, “but I love long hellos . . . ”

The group drew rein and dismounted, and Herewiss glanced at them only briefly. They all looked about the same as they had when he had last seen them. Lang, a great golden bear of a man, slid down out of his saddle like a sack of meal, grinned and winked at Herewiss, and then went over to hug Segnbora; when the hug broke, the two of them got busy starting a fire in the lee of the boulder. Tall, skinny, cold-eyed Moris with his beaky nose swung down from his horse, nodded to Herewiss and spoke a word of greeting; but his eyes were mostly for big Dritt, still up on the rock, and for him Moris’s eyes warmed as he climbed up to sit beside him. Harald, a short round sparse-bearded man, staggered past with the deer over his shoulder. He waved a hand at Herewiss and hurried past him, puffing.

And then Freelorn eased himself out of the saddle. Herewiss went slowly and calmly to meet his friend—

—and was hugging him hard before he knew what happened, his face crunched down against Freelorn’s shoulder, and much to his own surprise, tears burning hot and sudden in his eyes as Freelorn hugged him back. Five-in-Heaven, did I really miss him that much? I guess I did . . .

(Sunspark, what within the walls of the world are you talking about?) Herewiss said, prolonging the hug.

(That wasn’t union? I thought you had changed your mind and decided to go ahead. You give off discharges like that just for greeting each other? Isn’t that wasteful?)

They held each other away, and Freelorn was laughing, and sniffling a little too. “Goddess Mother of us all, look at you!” he said. “You’re bigger than you were. You cheat, dammit!”

“That was the idea, for a while. Look at the arms on you! That’s what it is. What the Shadow have you been doing?”

“I’m a swordsmith,” Herewiss said. “I hammer a lot. If you want to look like this, you can, but it’ll take you a year or so. That’s how long I’ve been at it. Lorn, you twit, what’s the use of trying to look like a Steldene if you’re going to wear that around?” He nodded at Freelorn’s black surcoat, charged with the Arlene arms, the white Lion passant guardant uplifting His great silver blade.

“No—my other one got stolen out of my saddlebag. Let me tell you what happened—”

“I can imagine. For such an accomplished thief, you get stolen from awfully easily. How many times have I—oh, never mind, come on, sit down and tell me. Tell me everything. We haven’t talked since—Goddess!—since not last Opening Night, but the one before. When you came to the Wood.”

“Yeah.” They sat down by a chair-sized boulder and put their backs on it. Herewiss slid an arm around Freelorn’s shoulders. “Let’s see, let’s see—” Freelorn chewed his mustache a bit. “After we left the Wood, we went west a ways—stayed in the empty country north of Darthis until spring came. And then south. We made a big wide detour around Darthis, didn’t even cross the Darst until Hiriden or so—”

“No. That was the interesting thing, though. One Darthene patrol stopped us and I was sure they knew who I really was. I lied splendidly about everything, though, and they let us go. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

Herewiss laughed softly. “Oddly enough, I would. My father has been exchanging letters with Eftgan recently, and the queen is not happy with Cillmod and the cabal in Arlen. Not at all. She told Hearn in one letter that she considers the real Arlene government to be in exile. Right now she doesn’t dare openly support or recognize you; she’s so new to the throne, and the Four Hundred are still unsure of her. But because of the Oath of Lion and Eagle she feels obligated to do something for you. Those guards may or may not have known who you were—but if they did, they had orders to let you pass unhindered. You’re safe in Darthen, so long as you don’t make yourself so visible that they have no choice but to notice you.”

“I think that may have influenced her a little. Most of Darthen is in outrage over Cillmod having the gall to break Oath. Especially the country around Hadremark, where a lot of people went homeless after the burning, and all the crops were ruined. But Eftgan’s hands are tied. She can’t really move against Arlen, or she’d be breaking Oath herself. She’s strengthened the garrisons on the Arlid border, but there are ways to sneak past those. She even went so far as to ask the human Marchwarders in Darthen to talk to the Dragons, ask their help—but the answer is pretty likely to be the same as usual. The Dragons won’t get involved.”

“So in a way, you’re her best hope. The story running in Darthen seems to be that you’re alive and traveling around to raise force so that you can get Arlen back. The people seem to approve. They want the Lion’s child back on the throne again, as much for their own welfare as for yours.”

Freelorn nodded. “ ‘Darthen’s House and Arlen’s Hall,’ ” he recited,

“ ‘share their feast and share their fall—
Fórlennh’s and Hergótha’s blade
are of the same metal made,
and the Oath they sealed shall bind
both their dest’nies intertwined—’ ”

Herewiss finished, “ ‘Till the end of countries, when Lion and Eagle come again.’ You always did like that one.”

“I recite it nightly,” Freelorn said with a somewhat sour expression, “and hope that both our countries live through this interregnum.”

“We went a little more to the west, nearly to the Arlene border—” Freelorn went on, telling of a close encounter with a large group of bandits, but Herewiss wasn’t really listening. He nodded and mm-hmmed in the appropriate places, but most of his mind was too full of the sight and nearness of Freelorn—the compactness of him, the quick brilliant eyes and fiery temperament, the bright sharp voice, the ability to care about a whole country as warmly as he could about one man.

Herewiss suddenly recalled one of those long golden afternoons in Prydon castle. He had been stretched out on Freelorn’s bed, staring absently at the ceiling, and Freelorn sat by the window, picking at the strings of his lute and trying to get control of his newly changed voice. He was singing the Oath poem with a kind of quiet exultation, looking forward to the time when he would be king and help to keep it true; and the soft promising melody wound upward through the warm air. Herewiss, relaxed and drifting easily toward sleep, was deep in a daydream of his own—of a future day brightly lit by the blue sun of his own released Flame. Then suddenly he was startled awake again by a shudder of foreboding, a cold touch of prescience trailing down his spine. A brief flicker-vision of this moment, lit by a fading sunset instead of the brilliance of mid-afternoon. The same poem, but not sung; the same Freelorn, but not king; the same Herewiss, but not—

“Yeah. So, anyway, we left the south-east and came back this way. Stopped at Madeil, and that’s where my surcoat got stolen.”

“Yeah. I don’t seem to have much luck with them, do I? They’ve probably sold it for the silver by now. But word of whose it was got out, and evidently the Steldenes have been feeling the weight of Cillmod’s threats, since they sent all those people after us. I didn’t believe it. I said to myself, when they came piling up outside that old keep, I said, ‘Time to call in help.’ Which I did. Goddess, what a display that was.”

“Are you all right? I mean, that messenger, and the fireball, and the Lion—oh, the Lion! That was beautiful. Beautiful. Just the way He always looks to me.”

“Just a touch wobbly—it’ll pass in a couple of days. I never did anything on that scale before. In fact, I didn’t know I had it in me. I guess I found out . . . ”

Freelorn laughed softly. “I dare say. But listen: what have you been doing?”

Herewiss shrugged, trying to think of some way to put a cheerful face on a year’s worth of broken swords, wasted time, and pain. He couldn’t, and anyway, Freelorn would have caught him at it.

“Forging swords,” he said. “I got tired of breaking old ones. At one point Hearn offered me Fánderë—he thought that since the legend says that Earn forged it, it might be a little more amenable to the Power—but I just couldn’t. That sword is older than the first Woodward, and I knew I would destroy it. It was just as dead to the touch as all the others. So finally I apprenticed myself to old Darg the blacksmith. You remember Darg—”

“I certainly do. The old one-eyed gent with the lovely daughter. I think you had ulterior motives.”

Herewiss laughed. “No, not really. Méren got married a while after we relieved one another of the Responsibility. The twins will be coming to the Ward for fostering soon, since Mother left no love-children behind her. Goddess, I miss them—they’re nine now: though Halwerd always reminds me that he’s a quarter-hour older than Holmaern. He helps me with the forging sometimes, working the bellows. I put a forge together up in the north tower, and he watches me working the metal, and asks a thousand questions about tensile strength and temper and edge. He has a blacksmith’s heart, that one, and he’s going to have to be Lord of the Brightwood after me. I don’t think he really approves.”

“The business with swords made of griffin-bone and ivory and such—I take it that didn’t work.”

“No. What use is a sword of ivory? It seems that it has to be a working sword. Yet a real sword is an instrument of death—and to make it carry life—”

Freelorn stretched a little, discomfort and concern flickering across his face. “Well, whatever—you’ll keep trying. Where are you going now? Back home?”

“But Herewiss—listen, it was a brilliant idea to head this far east—even if they’d had their supplies intact, they wouldn’t follow us this close to the Waste. But another fifteen miles or so will take you right up to the Stel—”

“I don’t intend to stop there, Lorn. On the way down here I came by some interesting information—” Briefly he told of his encounter with the innkeeper’s daughter, and what she had told him. Freelorn nodded.

“There’s an Old Place like that down by Bluepeak in Arlen, just under the mountains,” he said, “though it must not be as haunted, or whatever—the Dragons took it as a Marchward some years ago, and there are human Marchwarders there too. This place, though—if the Dragons won’t go near it, I don’t like the idea of your going there. What do you want it for, anyway?”

“There are supposed to be doors, Lorn. It could be that I could use one of them to go across into a Middle Kingdom where males have Flame, and train there. Or if there’s no door that goes there already, I might be able to make one of them do it—”

“How?” Freelorn said, all skepticism. “Worldgates are supposed to be a Flame-related manifestation, since they’re partly alive, aren’t they? I mean, you need wreaking to open them. When Béaneth went to Rilthor, even though it was Opening Night and a Full Moon, she still needed Fire for the Morrowfane Gate. And there’s that story about the Hilarwit, and Raela Way-opener, and it’s always Flame—”

Herewiss listened patiently. He had had this argument with himself more than once. “So?”

“So! I don’t think you can do it like that! You need control of Flame, and you haven’t got it—”

“What you’re saying is true, Lorn, for as far as we know. According to the old stories, which usually have truth in them. But each instance is different. And if you’re going to quote examples, well, what about Béorgan? Despite her expertise and her power and all the information she had access to, she still couldn’t have had all the facts. Why else would she have bothered trying to kill the Lover’s Shadow, when He was just going to come back?”

“She was driven,” Freelorn said, “by her desire for vengeance. It blinded her.”

“Maybe. That’s not the point. The point is that I have to try. There’s no telling till I do. It may be that those doors are set to turn to the use of whatever mind or power comes along. And it may not. But it’s a place of the Old wreaking, which was always Flame-based, and damned if I’m not going to try tapping it.”

Freelorn, who had been warming to the prospect of a good argument, opened his mouth, shut it, and scowled at Herewiss, a dark stabbing look from beneath his bushy eyebrows. “Yes, dammit,” he said at last.

Freelorn made a face. “All right. But I spent a lot of time in the Archives, and I know more about Flame and its uses from my reading than most Rodmistresses do—”

“Reading about it and having it are two different things. No, Lorn, don’t start getting mad. Do you think I don’t appreciate all the research you did? But theory and practice are different, and I’m not a usual case. And look at us: half an hour together, after almost a year apart, and already we’re fighting.”

“Yes! You want to go poking around in some bloody pile of stones in the middle of nowhere and nothing, a place that was there since before the Dragons came, for Goddess’ sake!—and which they won’t go near because it’s too dangerous. Damn right I’m afraid! How would you feel if our positions were reversed?”

Herewiss gave the thought its due, and did his best to put himself in Freelorn’s place for a moment. “Scared, I guess.”

Freelorn sighed and let his hunched-up shoulders sag. “Scared too, I suppose.”

Freelorn nodded. “You have gotten a little too big to sit on.” The sudden bittersweet memory rose up in Herewiss: the day after Herelaf died, and Herewiss drowning in a dark sea of pain and self-hatred, wanting desperately to kill himself. Trying and trying to do it, first with the sword that had killed Herelaf, then with anything that came to hand—knives, open windows. Freelorn, filled to overflowing with exasperation, fear for Herewiss, and his own pain, finally knocked Herewiss down and sat on him until the tears broke loose in both of them and they wept to exhaustion, clutching at each other.

Herewiss grinned. “It was a good way to make sure you realized what you were getting into before you said yes.”

“They’re with me. We couldn’t stop them from coming along. This is better—much better than you going alone.”

(I don’t understand that. But if you say so . . . ) It went back to its grazing.

“And besides,” Herewiss added, “I can use someone else who’s well-read in matters of Flame and such—you may see things about the place that I wouldn’t.”

“Yes. Very interesting person. She should be of great help to us too. How did she happen to join up with you? She didn’t mention.”

“Oh, it was in Madeil. It was how I found out that my surcoat had gone. We were in this inn, drinking quietly and minding our own business, when in come a bunch of king’s guardsmen looking for me! Well, the lot of us got out of there, with the guards chasing us in five different directions. I went down a dead end, though, and the one who’d followed me cornered me there. I was pretty hard pressed, he was a lot bigger than I was, and just a little faster. And all of a sudden this shadow with a sword in its hands just melts out of the alley wall, and fft! the guy sprouts a hand’s length of sword under the breastbone. It was her; she’d followed me from the inn. There she stands, and she bows a little. ‘King’s son of Arlen,’ she says, ‘well met, but if we don’t hurry out of here you’re going to be neck-deep in dungeon, with King Dariw’s torturer dancing on your head.’ It seemed a good point.”

“So off we went, back to the inn again. Up she went, cool as you please, got our things from our rooms. The innkeeper sees her, and he says, ‘Madam, if you please, where are you going with those?’ and Segnbora smiles at him and says, ‘Sir, if you want every skin of wine or tun of ale in your place to get the rot, ask on. Otherwise—’ and out the door she goes, gets the horses from the stables and rides off. We met her a few streets away and got out of there in a hurry.”

“I asked her. Evidently she’s related to one of the Forty Noble Houses, and she said something about ‘They may not hold by the Oath, but I do, by Goddess—’ I believe her.”

Freelorn smiled a little. “Well, this venture will be safer with all of us along. Damn, I hope you’re right about the doors! Suppose there was one into another Arlen where I’m king—”

“You’d be there already. And how would you feel if you were king, and another Freelorn popped out of nowhere to contest your claim to the throne?”

“—kill the bastard? Very good. Better stay here and do what you can with this world.”

Freelorn looked at Herewiss and smiled again, but this time his eyes were grave.

Stars shone on them again; this time the warm constellations of spring: Dolphin and Maiden and Flamesteed and Stave. The Lion stood near the zenith, the red star of its heart glittering softly through the still air.

They held one another close, and closer yet, and found to their delight that nothing seemed to have changed between them.

“You know, he really loved you. He always wanted another son. He always used to say that now he had one . . . ”

A pause. A desert owl floated silently overhead and away, like a wandering ghost.

Herewiss started a little. No-one had called him by that name since Herelaf’s death.

“I haven’t thought about it much. I don’t let myself.—Heal the sick, I guess, talk to Dragons—make it rain when it’s dry—travel around—walk the Otherworlds—”

There was a sinking silence under the blankets; suddenly disappointment and fear flavored the air like smoke. Herewiss was confused by the perception. His underhearing sometimes manifested itself at odd moments, but never without reason.

“Forget you? Forget you! How do I forget my loved? Lorn, put it out of your mind. How could I forget you? If only fr—”

Herewiss cut himself off, shocked, hearing the thought complete itself inside his head: “—from all the trouble you’ve caused me—”

My Goddess. How can I think such things? What’s the matter with me!! “—from all the distance I’ve had to travel to get into your bed . . . ”

Freelorn made a small sound in his throat, a brief quiet sigh of acceptance. “I’m glad you did,” he said.

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