7

Memory is a mirror—but even the clearest mirror reverses right to left.

When frogs fell all around them out of the clear hot sky, smacking into the dust and sand with understandable grunts and squeaks, the party was surprised, but not too much so. When it hailed real stones, instead of ice, they covered their heads with helms or shields and made small jokes about the quality of the weather in this part of the Waste. When, while climbing a rise, they noticed that the rocks dislodged by their horses’ hooves were rolling up the hill after them, they shrugged and kept on riding.

“There it is,” Herewiss said. He pointed through the blown dustclouds at a low gray shape on the horizon.

“Are you sure it’s there?” Freelorn said. “Look how it wobbles.”

“That’s heat, and this damn dust. We’ll be there in an hour or so, I would say.”

“What are those?” Lang muttered, shielding his eyes. “Towers?”

“Hard to tell from here. We’ll see when we get closer.”

They cantered on across the desert. Herewiss was in high good spirits, expectant as a little boy at Opening Night waiting for the fireworks to start. To some extent it was infectious. Most of Freelorn’s people were joking and straining their eyes ahead in anticipation; Segnbora was rigidly upright in the saddle, her sword loose in its sheath. Sunspark was requiring constant reminders to maintain contact with the ground. But Freelorn was frowning, resolutely refusing to get excited.

“Well,” he said, “we haven’t been eaten alive yet. But I reserve judgement until we leave.”

“We? Lorn, if the place is safe, I’m staying.”

“Not for long, surely.”

“For as long as I have to.”

“You don’t mean you’re planning to live there for any length of time!”

“Uh-huh.”

“You,” Freelorn said with frank irritation. “are a crazy person.”

“You know us Brightwood people,” Herewiss said. “the only sure thing about us—”

“Is that you’re all nuts,” Freelorn said, refusing to finish the quote. “Let’s see what the place is like before you make up your mind.”

“Who’s that?” Harald yelled. His eyesight was better than anyone else’s, and for a moment they all squinted through the dust at the faint figure ahead of them.

“No horse,” Segnbora said. “No tent, nothing—”

“No-one lives out here!” Moris said.

“Not for long, anyway, without a horse or a water supply,” Herewiss said. “Let’s see who it is—could be they need help—”

(He’s not there.)

Sunspark’s thought was so sudden and shaken that Herewiss gulped involuntarily.

(He’s not there. Or—he appears to be, but he’s not an illusion; he’s real. And yet he’s not—)

(Make sense, Spark! Is this something you’ve encountered before?)

(No. It’s as if he were not wholly present, somehow—his thoughts are bent on us, but his body isn’t here enough for his soul to be—)

(Where’s his soul, then?)

(Ahead—)

They rode closer. The figure stood there with its arms folded, watching them approach. It didn’t move.

“He looks familiar,” Moris said, rising up in the stirrups to stare ahead.

“Yeah—” Freelorn squinted. “Damn this dust anyway—”

They approached the waiting man, came close enough to see his face—

Freelorn’s mouth fell open. Herewiss was struck still as stone, and Sunspark danced backward a few paces in amazement. Segnbora spoke softly in Nhàired, drawing a sign in the air.

Dritt sat on his horse, his eyes wide, and looked at himself; the same elaborately tooled boots, the same dark tunic and light breeches, the same long silver-hiked sword, the same sandy hair—

Dritt stood there in the dust and looked at himself. He put out a hand to one side, as if to steady himself against something. “Sweet Goddess,” he said, just loudly enough for them to hear, “oh no!”

And he turned away, and was gone—

—with a soft sharp sound like hands clapped together, and a swirl of stirred-up dust—

Dritt swayed a bit in the saddle, and Moris was beside him in a moment, putting a hand on his arm. “Take it easy,” he said, “you’re here, and that’s what matters. No telling what kind of a sending that was—”

“That was me,” Dritt said with conviction. “Not a sending. Not a premonition, or an illusion, or anything like that. Me. I could feel it.”

Freelorn turned to Herewiss, almost in triumph. “There. You want to live in a place where things like that happen?”

“Lorn, we’re not even there yet.”

“I know. I know.”

They sat on their horses in a tight little group before the place, and stared at it.

It was built all of shining gray stone that looked like granite, sparkling with deeply buried highlights. The outer wall, perfectly square and at least forty feet high, completely surrounded the inner buildings, an assortment of keeps and towers, some leaning at crazy angles as if half-toppled by an earthquake. Some were seemingly unfinished, having great gaps in them. Some were shorn off oddly at the top, as if the stone had been sliced by giant knives. Nowhere were seams or jointures apparent at all; the place seemed to have been carved from single blocks of stone. And though there were windows in the inner buildings, there was no opening in the outer wall anywhere. It towered up before them, slick and unscalable as glass.

“Well,” Freelorn said with scarcely disguised satisfaction, “now what?”

Herewiss made an irritated face, but Sunspark laughed privately, unconcerned. (I think,) the elemental said, (it is time to disabuse them of the idea that I am a horse.)

(What? You’re going to jump it?)

(No, nothing like that. Just inside the wall I can sense a courtyard. I will take part of the wall away.)

(Can you do that?)

(It’d be silly to suggest it if I couldn’t,) Sunspark said, amused. (Get off and take everyone back a good ways, a quarter of a mile or so. I’m going to have to exert myself a little, but the stretch will do me good.)

Herewiss dismounted. “Lorn,” he said, “let me up behind you, will you? We’re going to have to back off a little.”

“Uh, look,” Freelorn said, sounding a little alarmed, “I don’t want you to strain yourself—”

“Let’s go.”

Herewiss put his foot in Blackmane’s stirrup and swung up behind Freelorn. He was aware of Segnbora regarding him with a small and secret smile; he winked at her. “Back the way we came,” he said to Freelorn, “a quarter mile or so.”

“But your horse—!”

“Sunspark is going to take part of the wall away,” Herewiss said. “We’d better back off.”

“Sunspark is—”

With Freelorn in the lead, shaking his head, the group rode back into the desert. After a while Herewiss stopped them.

“Far enough,” he said. “Now then.” (Are you ready, Spark?)

(Yes.)

(Will it be all right for us to look?)

(Mmm—yes, I’ll damp the light a little. You’ll probably feel the heat, though.)

“It’s going to be hot,” Herewiss said. “and bright. Be warned.”

(Go ahead,) he told Sunspark.

For a few seconds there was nothing, only the sight of the high towers peering over the wall, and the small red-brown horse-shape standing before the stone. Then Sunspark reared.

—Searing brightness like a sunseed fallen to earth and exploding into flower! A hard stabbing brilliance like a knife through the eyes! And a crack of thunder like being hit in the face, followed by a wave of stinging hot wind—

By the time they got their horses back under control again, the light and the heat were gone. There was only the little red horse-shape, standing before a huge gap in the wall.

Freelorn turned to look over his shoulder at Herewiss. “You were riding that?”

Herewiss smiled at him. “Let’s go see what the inside of the place looks like.” They rode back to the wall, and dismounted, looking at it in wonder. About a hundred feet of the wall’s four-hundred-foot length was gone. The edges of the sudden opening were perfectly smooth, though slightly duller than the slick polished stone of the wall’s outer surfaces; the seared stone was crackling as it cooled.

Sunsparks walked over to Herewiss, its eyes glittering with pleasure. (That was fun.)

(The stone, Spark, where did it go?)

(I consumed it. Anything’ll burn if you heat it enough. It made a nice meal.)

(But stone—?)

Sunspark smiled at Herewiss in its mind. (I have to eat sometimes.)

“Lorn?” Herewiss said.

“Yeah, what?” Freelorn was gazing in through the opening at the courtyard. It was paved in the same shining gray stone, and at the other side of it was a low, oblong structure like a great hall.

“Let’s have a look.”

“You first,” Freelorn said.

“All right, me first—”

Herewiss walked cautiously through the opening. Immediately it was much quieter; the sound of the wind seemed muted and far away. There was no dust on the pavement at all, and like the walls it stretched without a seam or crack from one side of the courtyard to the other. Sunspark’s hooves clattered loudly on it as it followed him in.

Freelorn and his people came close behind Herewiss. No-one spoke. Though the place was quieter than the surrounding desert, that was not what was oppressing them. The sheer stone walls and the crazily tilted towers rising above the central hall seemed to be ignoring them somehow—as if nothing human beings could do there would ever make a difference, as if the suddenly breached wall were a matter of no consequence at all. The place had an aura about it as of impassiveness and unconcern—as if it were alive itself, in some way, and did not recognize them as living things.

“This paving,” Lang said softly, “it isn’t level.”

“Yes it is,” Harald said, almost whispering. “You can see that it is—”

“It doesn’t feel that way.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Herewiss said, very loudly. “And why are we whispering?”

A ripple of nervous laughter went through the group.

“There’s something about this place,” Segnbora said. “Some of these towers, the—the perspective of them seems wrong somehow. They’re off. That one over the big square building, it should look closer than the other one behind it, tilting off to the left—but it doesn’t.”

“Let’s see what the inside is like.” Herewiss headed toward the opening in the building before them, wide and dark.

They left the horses hobbled in the courtyard and followed him in. It wasn’t as dark inside as they had expected. They stood at one side of a great square room, with a huge opening in the stone of the ceiling, like a skylight; it was positioned directly over what appeared to be a firepit raised some feet above the floor on a platform. Around the walls of the hall were doors opening onto vaguely lit passageways. Through one of these they could see a flight of stairs leading upward. The stairs were uneven, one broad one being staggered with two steep narrow ones as far up as they could see.

“Well,” Herewiss said, “if this is the dining hall, I wonder what the bedrooms are like? Let’s look.”

The group went slowly across the hall, clustered together. “I keep expecting something to jump out of one of those doors,” Freelorn said, as they started up the stairs.

“Well, I doubt it would be one of the original inhabitants,” Herewiss answered. “The lack of furniture makes me think they moved out permanently—unless they have very severe tastes in decor.”

At the top of the stairs they paused for a moment. There was nothing to be seen but a long, long corridor full of open doorways into dark empty rooms. One door, the fourth or fifth one down on the left, must have opened to a room with a window; sunlight poured out through it and on to the opposite wall.

“We could look at the view,” Herewiss said, and started down the hall. He looked into the first door he passed—

—and halted in midstep. Freelorn bumped into him, and Lang into Freelorn, and Segnbora into Lang, and they all looked—

There was no room behind the door. The stone of the doorsill was there, hard and solid under their hands as they reached out to reassure themselves of it: but through the opening cut in the glittering gray they saw a mighty mountain promontory rearing upward from a sea the color of blood. Pink foam crashed upward from the breaking waves and fell on the rose-and-opal beaches; the wind, blowing in from the sea, stirred trees with leaves the color of wine, showing the leaves’ flesh-colored undersides. The mountain was forested in deep purples and mauves; a cloud of morning mist lay about its shoulders.

Herewiss reached out, very very slowly, and put his hand through the doorway. After a moment he withdrew it, rubbing his fingers together.

“It’s cooler there,” he said, “and damp. Lorn, this is it. Doors into Otherwheres—”

They moved on slowly to the next door.

It showed them sand, endless reaches of it: butter-colored sand, carved by relentless winds into rippled dunes with crests like knives, stretching from one horizon to the other in perfect straight lines. A corrugated desert, showing not one sign of life, not the tiniest plant or creature. The sky was such a deep pure blue violet as one sometimes sees in the depths of a lake at evening.

“If you cut our sky with a knife,” Segnbora whispered, “it would bleed that color.”

“Come on—”

The next doorway opened on a hallway of gray stone, crowded with seven people who looked through a doorway at a hallway of gray stone, crowded with seven people who looked through a doorway at a hallway—

“Dear Goddess!” Freelorn said, and spun to look behind him. There was nothing there but another doorway, this one showing a volcano erupting with terrible, silent violence against a night sky. A flying rock fell close to the door as he watched. He flinched back and Herewiss reached out to steady him.

“It’s all right. Let’s go on.”

“What if that had come through?”

“I don’t know if it can—though it does seem likely. Look at the sun coming out of this one—”

They gathered before the next door. “Suns, you mean,” Dritt said. They looked down on a placid seashore. Out over the dark water, one small red sun was going down in a fury of crimson clouds; another one, larger and fiercely blue, shone higher in the sky.

“Two suns.” Moris’s voice, usually loud and abrasive, was hushed. “Two suns! What kind of place is that?”

“Goddess only knows. Look at this one—”

The group relaxed a little, broke slightly apart as each person went looking through a separate doorway, looking for a wonder of their own.

“—blue trees?”

“What the Dark is this??”

“Look, it’s our country. Moris, isn’t that the Éorlhowe? And the North Arlene peninsula—”

“This one is underwater—look, there goes a fish!”

“I didn’t know the Goddess made birds that big.”

“It’s snowing here, I can’t see a thing.”

Herewiss was standing before a doorway that showed nothing—nothing at all, a vague blurry darkness. Not the darkness of night, but an absence, an absence of anything at all. He looked at it, and his heart was beating fast. An unused door? Maybe—

Freelorn came to him from further up the hall, took Herewiss’ arm and began to pull him along. “What? What?” Herewiss said, but Lorn wouldn’t answer him. He pulled Herewiss in front of one door. “Look,” he said.

The door showed them a view from a high place, looking down into a landscape afire with a sunset the color of new love. Below and before them stretched a fantastic growth of crystalline forms, islanded between two rivers; jutting upward against the extravagant sky like prisms of quartz or amethyst or polished amber, but scored and carved and patterned, dappled with sunset light. They grew in all sizes and shapes, a forest of gigantic gems, spears of opal and dark jade and towers of obsidian. They caught the light of day’s end and reflected it back from a thousand different planes and angles, golden, red, orange, pink, smoky twilight blue; a barbaric and magnificent display of a god’s crown-jewels, the diadem of Day set down between the crimson rivers as the Sun retired. One spire reached higher than all the others around it, a masterwork of crystal set in gray stone and topped with a spearing crown of silver steel. On the crown’s peak a single ruby flared, pulsing like a Dragon’s eye, and rays of light struck up from the circlet like pale swords against the deepening blue. In the silences of the upper sky, a crescent Moon smiled at the evening star that flowered beside it.

Beside Herewiss, Freelorn moved softly, as if afraid to break a dream. “What is it?” he whispered. “Is it real?”

“Somewhere it is.”

“Is it really what it looks like, a city? How did they build it? Or did it grow? And is that glass? How did they make it that way—?”

Herewiss shook his head, and out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of Segnbora moving slowly and silently toward the door, like one entranced. He reached out and caught her by the arm, and she pulled at him a little, wanting to be let go.

“No,” he said. “Segnbora—look at the view. The door opens out on to somewhere very high. There may be ground under it, but there may not be. You could step out on to nothing. And it would be a short flight for someone who doesn’t have wings.”

She stared out the doorway with longing, the colors of the softening sunset catching in her eyes. “It might be worth it,” she said.

“Come on—”

The next doorway was dark, but not as the one Herewiss had seen. In the endless depths of its darkness, stars were suspended. Not the remote cold stars of night in the desert, but great flaming swarms of them, hot and beautiful, cast carelessly across the boundless black reaches of eternity. And close, so close you could surely put your hand out and pluck one like an apple. They spun outward from a blazing common core, burning like the sudden fiery realization of joy—

Freelorn took a step toward the doorway. “This is the real Door,” he said, very softly, “the last Door—”

Alarm stirred in Herewiss, drowning his appreciation of the beauty in sudden concern for Freelorn. “Not the Door into Starlight, no,” he said. “You can’t see that until you’re dead, Lorn, or have the Flame—and you’re in neither condition—”

“But my father—”

“That’s not where he is.” Herewiss took Freelorn by his shoulders, as much from compassion as from fear that he might cast himself through. “Your father is past that other Door—down by the Sea of which the Starlight is a faint intimation. They’re lovely, but these are just stars. Not the final Sea.”

Freelorn turned away, but Herewiss was troubled: there had been no feeling of release, of giving up the vision, no feeling of Freelorn accepting what was. “Lorn—”

“Let me be.” Freelorn walked away from him, walked down the stairs, oblivious to the wondering comments of his people as they peered through one door or another.

Herewiss stared after him, worrying. He was distracted after a moment by a touch on his arm; Segnbora looked up at him. There was concern in her eyes. “Are we staying the night?” she asked.

“I think so.”

She turned to look through the starry door, and sighed. “That’s been much on his mind lately,” she said.

“It’s always on his mind,” Herewiss said sadly. “As you’ll find when you’ve known him as long as I have.”

Segnbora nodded and went off to look through another door.

Damn, Herewiss thought, there’s going to be crying tonight . . . 

That night they camped in the great hall around the firepit. There was no need to gather firewood, for Sunspark decided to inhabit the deep-set hearth, and burned there the night long. Freelorn and his people made much of it, and Sunspark flamed in unlikely shapes and colors for quite a while, showing off. But Herewiss was vaguely uneasy about something, and found himself bothered by the occasional perception of bright eyes in the fire, watching him with an odd considering look.

They ate hugely that night, and went to sleep early. Dritt and Harald went off to investigate one or another of the doors before they slept. After being gone for not more than a few minutes Dritt came down the stairs again, looking slightly dazed.

Freelorn and Herewiss were sitting with their backs to the firepit, working at a skin of Brightwood that Freelorn had liberated from the Ferry Tavern; the lovers’-cup was halfway through its fifth refill, and both of them looked up at Dritt with slightly addled concern as he went by.

“It was me,” he said. “May I?” He gestured at the cup.

“Sure,” Freelorn said.

Dritt reached down and took a long, long drink. “This morning,” he said, “that was me, just now. I went upstairs, and it was daytime in one of the doors, and there were people coming—the first people that any door showed—and I got a little excited and walked through it to have a look.”

“What was it like,” Herewiss said, “going through?”

“Like nothing. Like going through a door.” Dritt put the cup down. “Thanks. So I waited there for a while—and of course, it was us. Of course. It shook me a little at the time, and I stepped back, and then I couldn’t see me any more—”

“Which of you couldn’t see you?”

“Hell,” Dritt said, a little bemused. “I’m not feeling terribly picky about the details right now. I’m going to bed.”

“G’night.”

“Yeah, good night . . . ”

Dritt wandered away toward Moris’s bedroll, and Herewiss picked up the cup and finished it. “How much more of this is there?” he said.

“There’s another skin.”

“Lorn, you amaze me. What else did you take out of there that wasn’t nailed down?”

“No, no, I was a good boy. Only took the wine. I knew you’d like it, and I don’t think the lady minded.”

“No,” Herewiss said. He chuckled then. “Lorn, this has been some month for me . . . ”

“How?”

“Just the strange things happening—and then seeing you again. It’s good to have you close.” He put an arm around Lorn, hugged him tight.

“Yeah, it’s good to be with you too . . . Listen, what are you going to do now?”

“Stay here.”

Freelorn was quiet for a long moment.

“Lorn, I have to. I need this place. You saw the doors, you know what they can do. I have to try to find one that’ll do what I want it to.” Herewiss put out his hand to the lovers’-cup and played with it a little, turning it around and around. Please, he was thinking. Please, Lorn, don’t start this—not now—

“I wish you wouldn’t stay,” Freelorn said.

Herewiss didn’t answer.

“If you cared,” Freelorn said. “If you did care, about how I feel, the way you say you do, you wouldn’t worry me by staying here. This place isn’t natural—”

“Neither am I, Lorn.” Damn, I know that phrasing. He’s going to cry. And then I’ll start crying. And he’ll get anything out of me he wants to, just like he always does—

“But you’ll be all alone here—”

“Sunspark will be here. You saw what it did to the outer wall. I don’t have much to be afraid of with a watchdog like that.”

“Herewiss. Listen to me.” Freelorn looked at him, earnestly, his face full of pain and hard-held restraint and the need to make Herewiss understand. Herewiss’ insides went wrench at the sound of the tears rising in Freelorn’s voice. “This place—there’s too much power here for other forces not to have taken notice of it. What is it you told me once, that as soon as you came into your Power, or started to, that would be the time to watch out, because new Powers are always noticed? And as soon as they come into being, the old Powers come to challenge them, to test them and see where they fit into the overall pattern?”

“Yes, but—”

“—and here’s this place, there must be incredible power bottled up in it to make it do the things it does. And you’ll sit here, merrily forging swords, and getting stronger and stronger, and Sunspark staying with you, a Power in its own right certainly—you think you won’t attract notice? Doors open both ways, you know. Things can come in those doors as well as go out. If you needed proof, Dritt just gave it to you. Suppose something comes in while your back is turned?”

“Lorn—” Listen to him fighting the tears. Oh, Goddess, how can I refuse him? I don’t want to hurt him but I have to stay here—

“—listen, you could stay here a few days, a week, two maybe; we’d stay with you. And then you could come with us when we raid the Treasury at Osta, and get the money we need to hire mercenaries—”

“Lorn, that whole Osta thing is crazy. I don’t want you messing with it. Besides, mercenaries may not be the way to handle this. I would prefer to pull it off without shedding blood.”

“You’re awfully careful with other people’s blood,” Freelorn said, a touch of anger beginning to creep into his voice now. “And not enough with your own. Is that it? You figure that since Herelaf died by your sword, you should too? Something out of Goddess-knows-where should come up on you while you’re busy working on the one sword that will redeem you, and kill you then? Atonement? Blood shed for blood shed? There is a certain poetic justice to it—”

“Lorn, stop it.” He’s goading me on purpose, now. He must be so very afraid. But I never thought he would hurt me like this—Is he so afraid that he can’t give in a little, let me have my own way? The danger isn’t that great—

“If you die under conditions like that,” Freelorn said, his anger growing, “your death will mean nothing. Herelaf would shake his head at you, and he’d say, ‘Dad was right, your head is made of wood, just like everything else in this place—’ ”

I won’t yell at him. I won’t. He’s my loved—“Lorn, I never thought that you—”

“—but you’re determined to die before you forge that sword and reach your Power, because success would mean giving up your guilt—and you haven’t really worked on anything else since Herelaf died. It’s sharper than any sword, by now. You stick it into yourself every chance you get, and bleed a little more of your life and your power away, so that every time there’s a little less of you left to pursue the search, a little less chance that you’ll succeed. Now, though, you’re getting close to success, and so you have to risk your life even more wildly by messing with places like this alone—”

“Lorn, shut up! Who brought me this journey, anyway? I would likely never have heard about this place if I hadn’t been coming to get you out of that damn keep. And as for nursing guilts, how about you? Maybe it is easier to make love than to make Kings, but it’s also easier to talk about being a King than it is to be one! You’ve never forgiven yourself for being out of the country when your father died, instead of by his side to do the whole heroic last-stand thing that you always wanted; and you were too damn guilty about it to go back and try to take his throne, because you didn’t think you deserved it! Idiot! Or coward! Which? You could have gone back and tried to make a stand, tried to take the Stave. Maybe you would have died! But is this life? Living in exile, mooching off poor Bort until he died? At least you had the sense to get out of Darthen until Eftgan’s reign was settled, and she remembers the favor; she likes you as much as Bort did, it would seem. Lucky for you—otherwise it’d have been all over with you by now. Lately you couldn’t lie your way out of an open field—”

“Dammit, Herewiss—!”

He almost never calls me by name. Sweet Goddess, he’s mad. But so am I—“Shut up, Lorn! And don’t come mouthing to me about deathguilt, because yours has nothing on mine, and even if it did, it’s fairly obvious that you wouldn’t be handling it any better. At least I’m trying to deal with mine—”

Freelorn’s mouth worked, and nothing came out. Herewiss stopped, his satisfaction at Freelorn’s anger suddenly draining out of him. This is a thing I never knew about us, he thought in shock. We resent each other. My Goddess. Can love and resentment like this live in the same person at the same time and not kill each other?

“What are you going to do?” Freelorn said, his voice tight.

“I’m going to stay here.” Herewiss made his voice noncommittal, unemotional. He was trembling.

“Then I’m going to Osta. And I’ll see you when I see you. Good night.” Freelorn got up and went to the corner where his bedroll was laid out; he wrapped himself up in his cloak and lay down with his face to the wall and his back to Herewiss.

Oh, Dark, Herewiss thought, we’ve had fights before . . . But he couldn’t stop shaking, and something inside him told him that this had been no normal fight. ‘Died by your sword,’ Freelorn’s voice said, again and again, echoing like the cold howls of the Shadow’s Hunting through midwinter skies. He never said anything like that to me before. Never—

He sat there a long time, unmoving, staring at Freelorn’s turned back, or at the lover’s-cup, half-full of wine, sitting on the floor beside him. Sunspark burned low at his back, watching in silence.

(Spark—) he said.

(Do you do that often?) it said very softly.

(Uh—no. Not really.)

(It is a considerable discharge of energies.)

(It—uh—is that.)

(Such random discharges,) the elemental said, (usually preclude the possibility of union—)

(Yes.) Herewiss said. (They do.)

(He is—no longer your mate?)

The elemental’s thought made it plain that such an occurrence was quite nearly the end of the world; and Herewiss, beginning to sink downward into his pain, was inclined to agree. (I don’t know,) he said. (Oh, I don’t—No, I really don’t know . . . )

He got up, went over to where Freelorn lay, reached down and touched him. “Lorn—”

Nothing. He might as well have touched the gray stone of the hold and asked it for an answer.

He lay down, wrapping himself up in his cloak too and stretching out beside Freelorn. But he did not need his underhearing to perceive the wall of hostility that lay between them like a sword thrown in the middle of the bedroll. There was a stranger on the other side of the wall, a stranger who wanted fiercely to be left alone, who would strike out if bothered—

It was like trying to lie still on hot coals. Herewiss got up and went away, back to the firepit. He sat on the edge of it and stared into the shifting flames. Bright eyes looked out at him.

(He doesn’t want to talk to me. Maybe he will in the morning. Sleep heals a great many ills, including unfinished quarrels, sometimes—)

(I would not know. I don’t sleep.)

(Tonight, I doubt if I will, either.) Herewiss sighed. (I’m going outside for a bit, Spark.)

It flickered acquiescence at him and cuddled down into the coals, pulling a sheet of fire over itself.

Herewiss paused, looking over his shoulder at Freelorn. His loved lay still unmoving, but Herewiss could feel the space around him prickling with anger and frustration.

Oh, hell, he told himself. Let be. You know how Lorn is. He does a two-day sulk and then everything’s all right again.

But we never fought like this—

He walked to the front doorway of the hold and looked out. The gray walls of the courtyard were walls of shadow now, hardly to be seen at all except where their tops occluded the sky. Herewiss leaned against the doorsill, sighed again, folded his arms and gazed up at the stars. His brain was jangling like windchimes in a storm of fears and fragmented thoughts; it took him a long few moments to calm down and greet the blazing desert stars, the Mother’s sky, as it deserved to be greeted. It took him a few minutes more to realize that the constellations with which he was familiar were nowhere to be seen.

Uhh—wait a moment—!

Very quietly, so as not to disturb Lorn or anyone else who might have been trying to sleep, Herewiss stepped across the courtyard, past the dozing horses, to the doorway which Sunspark had opened. As he passed through it, the sound of the solano, the relentless spring wind of the Waste, reasserted itself; somewhere to his left he heard the squeaks and chirrups of a colony of bounce-mice going about their nightly business. He looked up at the cold-burning sky. Dragon, Spearman, Maiden, Crown, all the constellations of spring shone unperturbed high in the clear air.

How about that, Herewiss thought. He went back into the courtyard, and looked up. Within the walls, the sky glittered again with alien stars, strange eyes looking down on him from a nameless night.

This is the place, all right, he thought as he headed back toward the hall. He sighed again. Part of him was indulging itself in a delicious shivering excitement at the prospect of where he was. The rest of him was weighed down with the aching feeling of the angry, untouchable presence on the other side of the bedroll. He slowed down. I don’t really want to go back in there—

—oh, Goddess, yes, I do—

—but—

He stopped still in his indecision, and as he listened to the odd silence that prevailed within the walls, he heard something more. Someone was outside, playing a lute. The individual notes stitched through the quiet like needles through dark velvet, bright, precise; but the pattern they were embroidering was random. There was a pause as Herewiss listened; and then a chord strung itself in silvery lines across the still air, and another after it, gently mournful, though in a major key. When a voice joined the chords, singing in a light contralto, Herewiss was able to localize the sounds better. Whoever it was was somewhere to the left, around the corner of the building.

The tone of the singing, though he could not make out words, had touched Herewiss at the heart of his mood—night-ridden, melancholy. He went quietly over to the corner of the hall, leaned against the warm gray stone, peered around. Segnbora was there; sitting on the smooth paving with her back against the wall, her cloak folded behind her to lean on, a wineskin by her side. Her head was tilted back against the stone, relaxed, and the lute rested easily on her lap. If she noticed Herewiss, she gave no sign of it, but kept on serenading night and stars like a lover beneath some dark window.

Herewiss listened with interest. With her deep voice, who’d suspect she had a high register? Needs a little work on her vibrato, but otherwise she sounds lovely—

“Thank you!” said the deep voice, with laughter. The strumming continued as Segnbora looked over at him and smiled. “You going to stand there all night, or will you sit down and have a little wine?”

“Um,” Herewiss said, as he went over to sit against the wall beside her. “I may have had more than I should already.”

She raised an eyebrow at him, at the same time squeezing the lute’s neck and wringing a tortured dissonant chord from it. “That bad, huh?”

“You underheard what went on in there?”

She shook her head. “These walls are good insulators. But once you came outside, it felt like someone was trying to beat a dent out of a big pot with a sledge-hammer. Noisy.”

“Sorry,” Herewiss said.

“For what? A lot of it was the walls, anyway; they make even a fourth-level ideation echo as if it were being shouted in a cave.” She stroked the lute again, and it purred in minor sevenths. “I take it he doesn’t approve of your staying here.”

“No.”

“I can’t say that I would, either, if I were in his place—but you have to stay. There’s too much possibility here—”

Herewiss looked at her. (You would understand,) he said, bespeaking her.

“I’d better. Please, prince, the mindtouch—let’s not and say we did. With these walls all around, the echo is really bad.”

“That’s why you came outside?”

She nodded. “Partly. Every time someone subvocalized, my head felt like a gong being struck.”

“I didn’t feel much of anything. You have sensitivity problems?”

Segnbora chuckled. “Normally—if that’s the word for it—I hear everything from fourth level up. Sometimes, if I’m drunk enough, or tired enough, I’ll only pick up subvocals. But this place—” She sighed in exasperation, shook her head. “Or maybe it’s because of my period. Though usually I don’t have that problem with the hormonal surge. But I was getting tired of hearing people’s bladders yelling to be emptied, and stomachs complaining that they weren’t full enough, and neural leakage rattling like gravel in a cup. All multiplied by six . . . ”

“I used to wish I had that kind of sensitivity—”

“Don’t. Unless you also wish to be able to turn it off. I can’t. And it’s awful. I’m tired of hearing Dritt’s conscience chastising him about his weight problem, and Moris wondering if Dritt really loves him when he’s so skinny, and Harald’s arthritis crunching in his knee, and Lorn wanting Hergótha every night when he cleans Súthan, and Lang thinking . . . I’m just tired.” She closed her eyes, rubbed the bridge of her nose as if a headache was coming on.

“I’m sorry,” she said then lifting her head. “I hear good things, too: I don’t mean to whine.” She reached down for the wineskin.

—But even the good things make me feel so lonely, Herewiss underheard her finish the thought. He closed his eyes in pain.

Segnbora looked at him quickly; her eyes were worried, and then in a tick of time they went regretful. “I leak, too,” she said sadly. “I should have mentioned. Wine?”

“What kind?”

“Blood wine.”

“Which region?” Herewiss asked, interested. The grapes were only grown along the North Arlene coast, where a combination of capricious climate and daily beatings of the vines produced an odd wrinkled grape, and eventually a sweet red liqueur with a hint of salty aftertaste—hence the name.

“Peridëu. My family has a connection with the vintners—one of my great-aunts cured their vines of white rot, oh, years back. They keep sending us the stuff every year or so.”

“I might have a sip of that.”

Segnbora passed Herewiss the wineskin, and he drank a couple of swallows’ worth and restoppered it. “I didn’t know you were a lutenist,” he said.

“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, come running in yelling, ‘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, and they laughed together. “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.

“So,” she 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 little 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 a little 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.

“Don’t do anything stupid,” he says. “I expect you to stay right here and get things straight. You’re going to be the heir now. You have a lot to learn. Don’t run out on Da.”

And you nod, the pain becoming even worse as you realize that this is a lie. There is nothing that will keep you here after Herelaf dies, not pleas nor threats nor even Hearn’s need. You have a worse one; punishment of the deathguilt, and getting it attended to as quickly as possible, before the deed starts to rot and smell up the Wood. You know you’ll try to go after Herelaf, to achieve whatever justice is meted out on that last Shore to those who murder their brothers.

Lying to your brother on his deathbed. You are worthless.

He flicks a tired, tired glance at the bandage around his middle, and at the stain spreading on it. “Wasn’t your fault,” he says wearily. How that voice used to sing in the evenings; now it can barely speak. Herelaf looks up at something, Someone on the other side of the bed. He smiles faintly. “Mother,” he says.

And then is still.

And you get up, and wander away.

Into the gray places where nothing matters.

Here’s a window. That’s as good as anything else.

Someone is stopping you. It’s Freelorn.

Damn him anyway.

You pull yourself gradually out of his grip and wander off into the gray places again. Where nothing matters.

You emerge occasionally to try to make an end of yourself. They stop you. You wander off into the gray again.

Nothing matters.

Nothing.

It’s all gray.

THANK GODDESS THAT’S OVER. HOW DO I GET OUT OF THIS?

Gray mist, cold. There are voices, remote, speaking words in other languages; other wanderers lost in the gray country. You ignore them.

And someone singing. Freelorn? Yes. The voice is changing, and cracks ludicrously every other verse.

You shake your head sadly. Freelorn’s song, to be sure, redolent as usual of last stands and heroism past the confines of time and expectation. But all Béorgan’s heroism couldn’t change the fact that Shadow was stronger than she, immortal, more permanent than death. What use is anything, anyhow—all hearts chill, and all loves die, and maybe the time has come for yours too—there in the mist, beckoning, waits the dark shape with the heart of iron and the eyes of ice, and all you have to do is despair; He’ll do the rest—

Oh, Mother. No.

You summon your strength, and go away from there quickly, before the cold eyes see you and mark you for their own. Here, now, the mist is thick, and a little warmer. Faintly you can sense a body passing by, not far away—

—a quiet voice, unfamiliar, singing a fragment of something to itself. It passes through the gray and is gone again. Follow it, if you can: it might show you the way out—

Suddenly in the grayness a tall form appears before you, vague through the fog. You press closer to it to ask for directions. Even if it can’t tell you the way out, company would be welcome.

It’s company, all right.

It’s you.

Now you know how Dritt felt this morning. This is the you that you have seen in clear pools and mirrors; but changed. He’s about three inches taller than you are, more regal of carriage. He moves with easy unthinking grace, whereas you just kind of bump along. He doesn’t have those ten extraneous pounds on the front of his belly, where you have them; his eyes are bluer; his muscles are lithe under the smooth skin. He doesn’t have any of your moles, and his face is unlined where your frown has long since indented itself; he doesn’t have the little scar just above the right eye where Herelaf hit you with the fireplace poker when you were three and he was five. His face is serene, wise, joyous. You look at him with awe, reach out to him—and your hand goes through him. He’s a dream-Herewiss. You might have suspected as much. I never looked that good, you think.

He doesn’t really see you; he is interacting with someone else who isn’t there. Someone who is dreaming about you. Well, if you follow him, you may get back to the real world again.

He moves away through the mist, and you go along with him, feeling a little unnerved to be in the company of such perfection—even if he is you.

Eventually the fog begins to clear a little, and you find yourself back in the hold again. Your body is sitting over by the firepit. You glance at it and look away quickly. Two of you at once is a bit much, and three, especially when the third has all the imperfections, is almost more than you can bear. The dream-Herewiss is conversing with a dream-Freelorn over in the corner. Their eyes are warm as they look at one another, and their faces smile as they speak words of love. Freelorn is curled up in his usual ball again, snoring noisily. You might have known it was his dream of you—he never could see those little imperfections of yours, even when you pointed them out. Goddess love him.

You’re tired, and sad, and you want to call it a night, so you ease yourself back over toward yourself and melt down into the body, pulling it up and around you like the familiar covers of your own bed—

He woke up with a terrible taste in his mouth, and a raging headache.

Freelorn was gone.

Freelorn’s people were all in such a state of embarrassment that Herewiss found it difficult to be in the same room with them, and he went away into other parts of the hold, wandering around, until he heard their horses’ hooves clatter out of the courtyard into the Waste. When he came downstairs, though, he found one of them still there. Segnbora was puttering around the hall, checking Herewiss’ supplies to make sure he had enough of everything.

“He just left,” she said from the other side of the hall, not stopping what she was doing. “Very early this morning, he got dressed, saddled Blackmane, and rode out. I don’t think he even stopped to pee. His trail will be easy enough to follow.”

Herewiss nodded.

Segnbora stood up, hands on hips, surveying the supplies. “That should do it. I should go after them, now; he’ll miss me, and get mad—”

“I wouldn’t want that to happen,” Herewiss said.

Segnbora looked at him with deep compassion. “He’ll get over it.”

“I hope so.”

She went out to the courtyard and spent a few silent minutes saddling Steelsheen. Herewiss followed her outside listlessly. When she was ready, she gave the saddle a final tug of adjustment, then went very quickly to Herewiss; she took his hands in hers, and squeezed them, and standing way up on tiptoe kissed him once lightly on the mouth. “I’ll give it to him for you,” she said. “He’ll be all right; we’ll take care of him. Good luck, Herewiss. And your Power to you—”

Then she was up in the saddle and away, pelting off after the others, leaving nothing behind but a small cloud of dust and a brief taste of warmth.

Herewiss watched her go, then turned back. The hold swallowed him like a mouth.