THE DOOR INTO SHADOWTHE DOOR INTO SHADOW
DIANE DUANE
 
 
The Wound is healed 
by the sword that deals it;
 
the heart is knit
by the pain that breaks it;
the life is made whole 
by the death that starts it;
the death is made whole 
by the life that ends it.   
(Hamartics, 186)
Four lands hemmed in by mountain and waste and the Seathose were the Middle 
Kingdoms: and the greatest of them, Arlen and Darthen, were in peril of 
destruction. For seven years Arlen's throne had been empty of the royalty needed 
to keep the land fertile and the people at peace. And Darthen suffered as a 
result of Arlen's lack, for the Two Lands were bound together by oaths of 
friendship and by joint maintenance of the royal sorceries that kept their lands 
safe from the ever-present menace of the Shadow.
In those days there appeared a man with the blue Firenot just the spark of 
Flame that every man and woman possesses, but enough to channel and use to 
change the world around him. His lover was the child of Arlen's last king, heir 
to his usurped throne. In the Firebearer's relationship to Freelorn, King 
Ferrant's son, many later saw the Goddess's hand. She had been working quietly, 
so as not to alarm Her old adversary the Shadow.
Her hand seemed visible elsewhere too. Freelorn had taken companions with him 
into his exile. They lived as outlaws and bandits, stealing what they needed 
when they had tothough none of their hearts were in it. One of them in 
particular would certainly have been elsewhere, if she had had a choice. 
Swordswoman and sorceress, trained in the Silent Precincts and in every other 
place in the Kingdoms that dealt in the use and mastery of the blue Fire that 
some women bear, Segnbora d'Welcaen tai-Enraesi was a spectacular and expensive 
failure. She had the Fire in prodigious quantity, and couldn't focus it. On her 
way home from one more school that couldn't do anything for her, chance threw 
her together with Free-lorn's people one night. Bitterly frustrated with what 
seemed a wasted life, desperately needing something useful to do, Segnbora swore 
fealty that night to the rightful heir of the Arlene throne, and fled with him 
and his people into the eastern Waste where Free-lorn's loved, Herewiss, awaited 
him.


The children of House tai-Enraesi traditionally had a talent for getting 
themselves into dangerous situations. There in the Waste, in an ancient pile 
built by no human handa fortress rising gray and bizarre out of the empty land, 
skewed and blind-walled and ominousshe started wondering whether even the 
tai-Enraesi luck would do her any good. There were stories about this place, 
about soul-eating monsters that guarded innumerable doors into Otherwheres.  
Even  the mildest of the stories were gruesome.  Fear gripped her, but her oath 
gripped her harder. She stayed with Freelorn and his people.
And there in the Hold, fulfilling her fears, the stories she had heard came 
trueeven the one of how nothing good would come out of this terrible place 
until (ridiculous improbability) a male should focus his Fire.
On the night Herewiss declared his intention to use his newly gained Fire to 
replace Freelorn on his throne, Segnbora lay in the darkness and considered the 
old rede that spoke of her family's luck. That luck would run out some day, when 
the last of her line died by his or her own hand, in a time of ice and darkness. 
But that hardly had anything to do with her. She wasn't the last of the 
tai-Enraesi, and anyway her luck was holding splendidly. She would be riding out 
of here with three good friends, a sometime lover, a prince about to retake his 
throne, a fire elemental, and the first man in a thousand years to focus his 
Fire. So maybe, maybe just this once, everything was going to turn out all 
right. . . .
 
 
One
Sirronde stared at the Goddess. "Are You saying, then, that You were wrong to 
make heroes?"
"Indeed not," She said. "But I should have warned them if you save the world 
too often, it starts to expect it."
Tales of the Darthene South, book iv, 29
       



When she was studying in the Silent Precincts, the Rodmis-tresses had warned 
her: If you're going to look for meaning in a dream, first make sure it's your 
own. Any sensitive is most sensitive in her sleep; and others' dreams can draw 
you in and fool you. Now, therefore, Segnbora held quite still in her sleep so 
as not to disturb whoever else was dreaming the landscape into which she had 
stumbled. It wasn't often, after all, that one was privileged to see the 
Universe being created. The Maiden was working, as She always is, while the 
other two Persons of the Goddess, the Mother and the Eldest, looked on. Young 
and fair and preoccupied was the Maiden, as She worked elbow-deep in stars and 
flesh and dirt. She was so delighted with the wild diversity of Her creation 
that She never noticed the Mother and the Eldest desperately trying to get Her 
attention. They saw what she did not: the shapeless, lurking hunger that hid in 
the darkness at the Universe's borders.
Finally the Maiden, satisfied that Her world was complete, cried out the 
irrevocable Word that started life running on its own and sealed the Universe 
against any subtractions. And the instant She had done so, Death stood up from 
where it had been hiding, and laughed at Her.
She had locked the doors of the world, and had locked Death in. Slowly it would 
suck the Universe dry of life, and She could not prevent it. Nor could She 
prevent Death's darkness from casting shadows sideways from Her lightrogue 
aspects of Her, darksides, bent on destroying more swiftly what was already 
doomed. The Maiden was grief-stricken, and took counsel with Her otherselves to 
find some way to


combat death. Among Them, They invented first the heart's love, and then the 
body'slying down together in the manner of woman with woman, and becoming with 
child.
The Maiden, becoming the Mother now, brought forth twinssons, or daughters, or 
daughter and son; the ambivalence of the dream made the Firstborn seem all of 
these at once. Swiftly They grew, and discovered Love in Their Mother's 
armsthen turned to one another and discovered it anew. But in the midst of 
Their bliss, surrounded by the blue Fire that was Their Mother's gift and Their 
pride, the Death stood up again. It entered one of the Lovers and taught that 
one jealousy.
The shadowed Lover slew the innocent Oneand in the same act destroyed Its own 
Fire, which had been bound by love to the Other's. Cursing, the Dark Lover fled 
in a rage into the outer darkness, where It would reenact Its murder and loss 
and bereavement for as long as the Universe should last. It was not a Lover 
anymore, but the Shadow.
In the dream Segnbora wept, knowing all along what was going to happen. She knew 
that mortals would be reenacting this tragedy in their own lives forever. The 
dream broke, then, and gradually re-formed as an image in water does when a 
stone is. thrown in,.
She saw a scene skewed sideways, as if her head rested on someone's shoulder. 
Much of the great room where she stood was dark, but in her handwhich had 
become a man's hand she held a core of blinding white light, wreathed all about 
with flames as blue as summer sky. Herewiss, she realized. Last night.
His weariness was so terrible he could barely stand. He had banished the 
hralcins, the soul-eaters,, yet he was too tired to exult in. the focus he had 
forged,the unfinished sword he would call Khavrinen. He was the first man in a 
thousand years to focus the Fire, and, he knew what, difficulties lay ahead. The 
Shadow would, not long tolerate him, or any man who enjoyed the Power It, had 
cast. away. It would deal with him quickly; before the Goddess had time, through 
him, to consolidate newly regained, ground.
We must move man quickly, then, the dream said. For look wha
the Shadow has planned. Segnbora shuddered in her sleep at the sight of a whole 
valley suddenly buried under mountains that had formerly stood above it. Dead, a 
voice said soundlessly. She's dead. Snow whirled wildly down onto a battlefield, 
turning red as soon as it fell. Monsters gnawed the dead. Elsewhere a wave of 
blackness came rolling down out of murky heights, crashed down onto a leaping, 
threatening fire, and smothered it.
The air was thick with the feel of ancient sorceries falling apart, fraying. 
Grass forgot how to grow. Grain rotted on the stalk and fruit on the bough. 
Plague downed beasts and people alike, leaving their blackened corpses to lie 
splitting in the sun. Even the scavenger birds sickened and died of what they   
  ate. It was happening. The royal magics were failing. If they weakened enough 
to let the Shadow fully into this world, into Bluepeak, this was what would 
happen.
The soundless voice of the dream spoke urgently. Freelorn must see to the Royal 
Bindings quickly. This is his job, he's the Lion's Child and heir to Arlen. Go 
with him, Herewiss, in the full of your Power. Use the Fire to the utmost. He'll 
need assistance.
But I just got the Fire, Herewiss said, terrified. It takes time to master it.
There is no time. What must be done needs doing now. The Other is coming.
And she could feel it, that throbbing of hatred in the background, getting 
stronger by the minute. As she watched, the sky grew dark. The snow blasted 
about them, in that place to which they would have to go to reinforce the Royal 
Bindings. Herewiss's Fire, for so long a blaze within him, was now faint under a 
blanket of oppressive power. Just in front of him, Freelorn started to stand up. 
The whole dream focused then on the sight of Freelorn's back, with a 
three-barbed, razor-sharp Reaver arrow standing out of it.
Sagging, Lorn sunk back slowly against Herewiss. Then there was a deeper 
darkness, and the two of them stood together before a Door in which burned the 
stars that would never go out. Freelorn, his face in shadow, was pulling his 
hand gently out of Herewiss's grasp, turning away toward death's Door . . .
No!
Do what you must to come to the full of your Power. There's no time! Her voice 
was almost frightened. Herewiss had never believed She could sound that way.
But if I doand we get therethen Lorn
It must not be prevented.
But
You must not attempt to prevent it!
/
Hurry!
NO!!
The scream tore through her throat as she sat bolt upright in the bedroll, 
sweatingstill seeing against the darkness the long ruinous fall of an entire 
mountain, still hearing the crash of it, first note in a song of disaster.
In the great main hall of the old Hold, people fumbled frantically for their 
swordsthe memory of the hralcins' sudden arrival the night before was very 
fresh. The fire in the firepit rose up too, putting several broad curves of 
flame over the edge and leaning anxiously out to see what was the matter. As a 
fire elemental, Sunspark had not had much experience with fear, but after last 
night it was apparently taking no chances.
Segnbora lifted a hand to her pounding head and found that she was holding her 
sword, Charriselm. Evidently she had drawn it while she was still half-sleeping. 
Beside her in the bedroll, blond Lang was still blanket-wrapped, but 
nevertheless he had found his graceknife in a hurry. Lying propped on one elbow 
with the knife in one ham of a hand, he blinked at her like an anxious owl. A 
few feet away, big swarthy Dritt and lanky Moris were sitting up back to back, 
looking as panicked as Segnbora felt. On the other side of the firepit, Harald 
was attempting simultaneously to string his bow and brush the brown hair out of 
his eyes. All of these looked at Segnbora as if they thought she was crazy.
"A bad dream?" Lang said.
She nodded, sliding Charriselm back into its sheath and looking across the room 
toward the firepit and the bedrolls laid down there.


       



 


Herewiss was sitting up, bracing himself with one hand, rubbing his eyes with 
the other. He took the hand away from his face, and Segnbora was shocked to see 
his terrified expression. Lorn was holding Herewiss tight and peering worriedly 
into his face. Under other circumstances it could have been a touching and 
humorous sight  the little, dark-mustachioed, fierce-eyed man comforting 
someone who, judged by his slim hard build and shoulder musculature, might have 
been the village blacksmith.
"Are you all right? What happened?" "It was a dream," Herewiss said, his voice 
anguished. "Shh, it's all right."
"No,  it's  not."  Herewiss  rubbed  his  eyes again,  then glanced  around  him 
 with  frightened  determination.   He started searching in the blankets for his 
clothes. "We've got to go." "What?"
"We have to hurry."
Herewiss grabbed one bunched-up blanket and impatiently shook it. A sword fell 
out and clattered to the floor  a hand-and-a-half broadsword of gray steel that 
would have seemed of ordinary make except for the odd blue sheen about it. He 
reached out for it, and at his touch his Power ran down the blade: blinding blue 
Fire, twisting and flurrying about as if in bright reflection of his distress.
"It was  there was  the mountain fell down, just like that. And there were 
thousands of Fyrd, and bigger monsters too  and a wave came down over 
everything, and Sunspark went out  " (I did not!)
"Loved, slow down so I can understand what the Dark you're talking about  "
"So much for a whole night's sleep," Lang muttered under his breath. Putting his 
knife away under the rolled-up cloak
that was serving them as pillow, he lay down again. "Wake me up when they're 
finished?"
"If necessary," Segnbora said, rubbing his shoulder absently. The gesture was 
more for her comfort than for his.
Her underhearing was wide awake, bringing her the hot cop-


pery blood-taste of Herewiss's fright as if it were her own. Herewiss was 
talking fast. He had yanked a shirt out of the
blankets and was struggling into it, while in his lap Kh^vrinen kept on blazing 
like a torch.
"It's angry as anything," he was saying. "And It's going to work the worst 
mischief It can, by putting pressure on the Royal Bindings that have been 
keeping It in check." He started feeling around for his britches. "For seven 
years no one's reinforced the Arlene half of those Bindings, and they're wearing 
thin"
Freelorn glanced away from Herewiss. Segnbora put her hands behind her and 
leaned back, closing her eyes and bracing herself against the gut-punch of 
grief and anger she knew would come from Lorn. When his father had died on the 
throne, and the Minister of the Exchequer, Cillmod, had taken the opportunity to 
seize power, Freelorn had fled for his life with a price on his head. Now Lorn 
would wonder again whether staying in Arlen to see to the bindings, and possibly 
getting killed as a result, might not have been the more noble course.
It was an old midnight pain that Segnbora had come to know as well as the 
arthritis in Harald's right knee, or Drill's self-consciousness about his 
weight. Indeed, no Precinct-trained sensitive could have helped underhearing her 
surroundings as Segnbora did. It was the gift she would have been happiest to 
lose when she gave up her studies. She had enough trouble dealing with her own 
pains. Those of others were an unwelcome burden.
"Lorn, enough," Herewiss said, catching Freelorn's anguish himself. "The fact 
remains that if the Shadow leans Its full strength against the Bluepeak 
bindings, we're done for. The Kingdoms will founder. I saw the southern passes 
full of Reaver armies. And the plains full of Fyrd. There were storms and 
earthquakes, and where the earth opened a whole town fell in. And that cliff at 
Bluepeak" Herewiss broke off.
Freelorn, still holding him close, looked puzzled. "But it was just a dream!*''
"Oh no," Herewiss said, shaking his head emphalically. "I saw."
"He's dreaming true," Segnbora said quietly. Freelorn's frightened eyes flicked 
to her.
"He's focused now," she said hurriedly. "It's to be expected."
"What about the cliff?" Freelorn said to Herewiss. Herewiss closed his eyes and 
sagged back on his heels, looking tired. "It was snowing"
"A month and a half before Midsummer's? You call that dreaming true?"
Segnbora held her face still as Herewiss saw again that image of Freelorn 
turning away from him, away from love and life toward death.
"Lorn," Herewiss said. "I was shown a lot of things. I don't know what they all 
meant. I don't think most of them have happened yet. But some of them will, 
unless they're prevented." He swallowed hard. "I have to assist in the process. 
I was given all this Power. Now it has to be used, fully, and I won't be able to 
to take my time about its mastery, either."
Freelorn looked askance at his loved, getting an idea and not liking it. "But 
what other way is there, but to work into your Power slowly?"
"The Morrowfane, Lorn."
Freelorn looked grim. "I've done a little reading on the subject," he said.
It was a great understatement, for among the responsibilities of a throne 
prince of Arlen was the curatorship of rr'Virendir, the Arlene royal library, 
and that meant intimate knowledge of nearly every extant writing dealing with 
both mundane sorcery and more elevated matters of Power.
"All the sources say you can't go up there without coming down changed"
(What's the problem with that?) Sunspark said from the firepit. The reaction was 
understandable; change was a fire elemental's chief delight. (Just yesterday 
Herewiss changed quite a bitand you didn't mind.)
Lorn glanced with annoyance at Sunspark, and the elemental threw back a smug 
feeling. During the time Herewiss had spent in the Hold forging Kheivrinen, 
Sunspark had come to .
be his loved too. Lorn, not yet at peace with the situation, was still subject 
to occasional twinges of jealousy.
"I don't mean shapechanges," Lorn said with exaggerated patience. "Soul-changes. 
Great alterations in personality. Madness and other brands of sanity that human 
beings don't usually survive."
"The change needn't be harmful," Herewiss put in. "Remember, the place is a 
great repository of Flame. All the legends agree on that. Those who climb the 
Fane are given what's needed to do what they must do in a life."
"Then why do so few people go up it?"
"For one thing, you need focused Fire, and enough of it to keep the Power of the 
place from blasting you," Herewiss explained. "For another, very few people want 
what they need. . . . Lorn, listen. This is necessary. It's part of getting you 
back on your throne. If we don't get to Bluepeak by Midyear's Eve, so that you 
can aid in restoring the bindings, there won't be a country left for you to 
rule."
"But I was never Initiated into the Mysteries. If I had been, we wouldn't have 
these problemsI'd be King, and that slimy bastard Cillmod would be out looking 
for a situation."
"True, but you know the royal rites, don't you? You have to do it."
"Who says?"
"Whom do you think?" Herewiss said, very gently. "When you dream true, Whom do 
you think sends the dream?"
Lorn held very still, and most of the fierceness faded out of his eyes. "There's 
another problem. You know the money I removed from the Arlene treasury in Osta? 
Well, Bluepeak's in Arlen too. Cillmod's probably pretty annoyed about that 
missing money, and if we go back to Arlen so soon, and he hears about it. ..."
Herewiss said nothing.
After a moment or two, Freelorn shrugged. "Oh, what the Dark! If the Reavers and 
the Shadow are going to come down on Arlen, Cillmod hardly matters. I suppose I 
have no choice anyway. I swore that damn Oath when I was little. 'Darthen's 
House and Arlen's Hall' "
" 'share  their feast and  share  their fall,' "  Herewiss
finished. "If Arlen goes, so does Darthen. And after them Steldin, North Arlen, 
the Brightwood. ..."
Freelorn laughed, but without merriment. "Why am I even worried about Cillmod at 
all? The Shadow is a far greater danger. It can't afford to leave you alive now, 
can It? You're the embodiment of the old days before the Catastrophe, when males 
had the Power. The time of Its decline. . . ."
Herewiss shook his head and smiled, an expression more of grim agreement than of 
reassurance. "We'll both be careful," he said. "That is, if you're coming with 
me? . . ."
Reaching down, Freelorn gently freed one of Herewiss's hands from Khavrinen's 
hilt, and held the hand between his own. "No more dividing our forces," he said. 
"From now .until it's done, we go together."
Herewiss held his peace and didn't change expression. Segnbora had to drop her 
eyes, seeing again that image of one hand that let go of another's, the face 
that turned away.
All at once Freelorn was thumping on the floor for attention. "Listen, people"
Segnbora nudged Lang. He rolled over under his covers. "Whatever you say, Lorn, 
I'll do it," he said, and pulled the blanket back over his head.
"There's a man who follows his liege oaths too well," Free-lorn said with a 
grimace of affectionate disgust. "On his own head be it. But for the rest of 
youI can't in good conscience ask you to go on this trip. The Shadow"
"The Shadow can go swive with sheep for all I care," Moris said with one of his 
slow grins. "I haven't come this far with you to stop now."
"Me either," Harald said, stubbornly folding his huge bear's arms.
"You're not listening," Freelorn said, in great earnest. "Your oaths are a 
matter of friendship and I love you for them. But it's not just Cillmod we're 
playing with now. It's the Shadow. Your souls are at stake"
"The things that were in here last night ate souls too," Dritt said calmly, 
putting his chin down on his arms. "Herewiss did for them all right."
(I helped,) said the voiceless voice from the firepit. Eyes
looked out of the flames at the company, then came to rest with calm interest on 
Freelorn. (I'm coming too.)
The building rumble of irritation in the room, combined with so much unspoken 
affection, was making Segnbora's head ache; the walls of this place, opaque to 
thought, bounced the emotions back and forth until the undersenses were 
deafened by echoes.
"Look," she said, shaking free of her own blankets. "If we've got to get an 
early start in the morning" She glanced at Herewiss. "it can wait until 
morning?"
"I suppose so," he said.
"Good. Then I want some sleep. But if this argument keeps up any longer I'll 
have to sleep outside." She went over to Freelorn in her shift and offered him 
Charriselm hilt-first, about an inch from his nose. "Do you seriously want your 
oath back?" she said. "That whole 
'my-lordship-shall-be-between-you-and-the-Shadow-while-in-my-service' 
business?"
Lorn glared up at her, fierce eyes going fiercer. 'Wo/ Are you crazy? What makes 
you think I'd"
"What makes you think we would?"
Freelorn held absolutely still. His anger churned wildly for a moment, then fell 
off, leaving reluctant acceptance in its place.
"Good night, Lorn," Segnbora said, and went back to her bedroll. She was careful 
not to smile until her back was turned.
Sunspark pulled itself back down into the firepit, and soon the darkness of the 
hall held no sound but Harald's cloak-muffled snoring.
It took Segnbora a little while to get enough of the blankets unwrapped from 
around Lang to cover herself. That done, she lay on her back for a long while, 
gazing up at the smoke-shaft in the ceiling, through which a few unfamiliar 
stars shone. Her underhearing, sharpened by all the excitement, brought her the 
faint dream-touched emotions of those falling asleep, and the physical 
sensations of those asleep already breathing, the slide of muscles, muted 
pulse-thunder.
It 5 a gift, she told herself for the thousandth time. Truth,
however, reared its head. It was a nuisance. If her Fire was focused, as 
Herewiss's was, she wouldn't be having this problem. . . . If. She exhaled 
sharply at her useless obsession with what she couldn't have. It wasn't focused. 
It would never be. She had given up. Other things had become more important now. 
Oaths, for example . . .
It had been a long time ago. All of a month, she thought a busy month full of 
desperate rides, escapes, sorcery, terror, wonder. All started by a chance 
meeting in a smelly alley, when she had stumbled on a dark fierce little man 
losing a swordfight to the crude but powerful axework of a Royal Steldene guard. 
The small man looked as if he was about to be split like kindling. She had 
intervened. The guardsman never saw the shadow who stepped in from behind.
Over the course of the evening, she found she had rescued family; though the 
tai-Enraesi were only a small poor cadet branch of the Darthene royal line, and 
strangers to court, the Oath of Lion and Eagle was binding on them too, and a 
king's son of Arlen was therefore a brother.
The relationship got more complex with time, however. On the road Segnbora had 
shared herself with Freelorn, as she sometimes did with the others, for delight 
or consolation. But before that, more importantly, came friendship and the 
oaths. Before Maiden and Bride and Mother I swear it, before the Lovers in Their 
power, and in the Dark One's despite: My sword will be between you and the 
Shadow until you pass the Door into Starlight. She exhaled quietly. Her 
determination was set. There has to be a way. There has to. You 're not going to 
get him. . . .
After a while, as she lay at last near the brink of sleep, Segnbora sensed 
something shining. She opened one eye. Across the room sat a form sculpted of 
darkness and deep blue radianceHerewiss, cross-legged, shoulders hunched 
wearily as he gazed down at the sleeping Freelorn. Across his lap lay his sword, 
wrapped about with curling flames the color of a twilight burning low.
She  lay  unmoving,  and  regarded  him.   Eventually  the
thought came, tasting as if it had been soaked in tears and
wrung out.
(You know, don't you.)
(Yes.) She felt sorrow still, and now a touch of embarrassment. (Sorry. You 
know how it is with dreams.)
(No matter. I've been in a few others' dreams myself.)
(The scales are even, then.)
He nodded. Herewiss didn't look up, but his attention was fixed so intensely 
upon her that no stare could have been more discomfiting.
(You understand what you're getting into?) he said. (It may not be just Lorn 
heading for that Door. Probably me too. Maybe all of us will have to die so the 
Kingdoms can go on living.)
(Those who defeat the Shadow,) Segnbora said silently, (usually die of it. It's 
in all the stories.)
(Defeat!) Now he raised his head. His look was pained at first, then 
incredulous.
(I love him too,) she said.
(You're as crazy as the rest of us,) Herewiss said. The
thought was sour, but there was a thread of amusement on it
like the bright edge of a knife.                                                 
       ,{
He threw her a quick image of herself as she had been the night before, when the 
air in the hall had been full of the stink of hralcins. As the monsters had come 
shambling across the floor toward them she had stood, driven to the brink of 
panic, unable to do even the smallest sorcery. Hands upheld, shaking all over, 
she cowered before the advancing, screaming horrors and made blinding lighta 
byproduct of her blocked Fireuntil even that guttered out and left her 
exhausted.
Segnbora bit the inside of her cheek, annoyed even though Herewiss had been 
compassionate afterward.
(What we're facing,) he said with gentle sarcasm, (is the father of those 
things, and worsethe Maker of Enmities, the engenderer of the shadows at the 
bottoms of our hearts, Who can overturn the world in fire and storm. You have 
some new defense that you've come up with since last night? A strategy 
sufficient to stop a being so powerful that to be rid of it the Goddess Herself 
can only let the Universe run down and die?)


       



 


(I plan to win,) she said. (What are you going to do?)
He looked across the room at her for a while, still not moving. (I'm glad you're 
here,) he said finally. (I can't tell Aim about this) A quick thought, a 
flicker of the shape of an arrowhead, passed between them. (I hope you won't 
either.)
(Of course not.)
He straightened, laid Khavrinen aside. Away from its source, the Fire in the 
blade died down to the merest glow. Only in his hands did a little Flame remain 
burning. Looking down at Freelorn, Herewiss absently began to pour it from hand 
to hand. Like burning water it flowed, the essence of life, the stuff of 
shapechanges and mastery of elements and magics of the heart, the Goddess's gift 
to the Lovers and to humankind, the Power that founded the world, that the 
Shadow had lost and caused men to lose.
And there's nothing It hafrs more, Segnbora thought to herself. Though love 
probably comes close.
She closed her eyes to the light of Herewiss*s hands, shuddered, and went to 
sleep.


TWO
... ere the Dark could spredde so far as to kyll all Powre and thought... there 
fled to Lake Rilthor that was holie, the men and wQimyn gretest of Fire att that 
time. And of theyre greate might and Powyre, that those whoo came after the 
Darke should learn agayn the wrekings of those auncient daies, those Wommen and 
Men did drive their Flame down intoo the mount at the talk's heart; and all dyed 
there, that Fyre might bee spared from the Danrk for those to comm after. 
Therefore it ys called Morrow-fane, . . .
(Of the Dayes of Travaile, ms. xix, in rr'Virendir, Prydon)


       



 


In the long west-reaching shadow of the glittering gray walls that rose a 
hundred fathoms high, fourteen figures stood: seven riders, and six horses, and 
a creature that looked like a blood-bay stallion, but wasn't. Dawn was barely 
over, and the morning was still cool. The vast expanses of the Waste all 
aroundsand and rubble and salt panswas sharp and bright in the crisp air. But 
behind them the Hold from which they had departed wavered and shimmered 
uncannily, as if in the heat of noon.
"Be glad to be out of here," Lang muttered from beside Segnbora.
She nodded, yanking absently at her mare Steelsheen's reins to keep her from 
biting Lang's dapplegray, Gyrfalcon. The Hold unnerved her too. The Old People 
from whom the humans of the Middle Kingdoms were descended had wrought with 
their Fire on an awesome scale. Within those slick and jointless towering walls, 
odd buildings reared up: skewed towers, blind of windows; stairs that started in 
midair and went nowhere; steps staggered in such a way as to suggest that the 
builders had more legs than humans; more rooms inside the inner buildings than 
their outer walls could possibly contain.
And worst of all, or best, the place was full of doors entrances into other 
worlds. Likewise, there were entrances to other places in this world, and doors 
into areas not even classifiable as worlds or places. People could go out those 
doors and return. People, or things, could come in them, as the hralcins had. 
Segnbora shuddered.
"You sure you can pull this off?" Freelorn was saying nervously to Herewiss.


"Mmmph," Herewiss said. He was standing with Khavrinen unsheathed, and seemed to 
be minutely examining a patch of empty air three feet in front of him. The Fire 
that ran down from his hand flooded the length of Khavrinen, leaping out from it 
in quick tongues that stretched out and snapped back, reflecting his 
concentration.
Behind Herewiss, Sunspark extended its magnificent head to nibble teasingly at 
the sleeve of Freelorn's surcoat, leaving singed places where it bit. (You have 
to be careful, doing worldgating inside a world,) it said, sounding smug. (Don't 
distract him.)
Freelorn smacked the elemental's pose away and got a scorched hand for his 
pains. "He could have used one of the doors in the Hold. Now he's got to use his 
Flame"
(It's simpler doing it yourself,) Sunspark said. It knew about such things, 
having been a traveller among worlds before love had bound it to Herewiss's 
service. (Those doors are complex; it would have taken quite a while to figure 
them out. Don't complain.)
"I'm not."
Segnbora felt like laughing, but restrained herself. Sun-spark had done perhaps 
more than any of them to save their lives two nights before, holding the 
hralcins off until Herewiss could break through into his Flame. It had done so 
specifically because it knew Herewiss loved Freelorn and would have been in 
anguish if he died. But Sunspark seemed determined not to admit his motives to 
Lornand Freelorn, if he knew, was at best ambivalent about them.
Herewiss was now scowling at the air he had been examining, or whatever lay 
beyond it. It was dangerous, this business of opening doors to go from one place 
to another. Gates, when opened, tended to tear as wide as they could. A person 
doing a wreaking had to maintain complete control, or risk ending up in a world 
that looked exactly like the one he wanted to journey in, but with minor 
differencesa differing past or future, say, or familiar people missing.
Segnbora was not happy that one man was trying to pull off a gating by himself, 
and in such an unprotected place. All her previous experiences with worldgates 
had been in the Silent Precincts, where safe-wreakings bound every leaf


       



 


about the Forest Altars. Always there had been ten or twenty senior 
Rodmistresses on call to assist if there was trouble, and never had a gate been 
held open long enough for so many to pass through. She hoped Herewiss knew what 
he was doing . . .
Herewiss didn't move, but from where Khavrinen's point rested against the 
ground, a sudden runnel of blue Fire uncoiled like a snake and shot out across 
the sand. It put down swift roots to anchor itself, then leaped upward into the 
air. The atmosphere prickled with ruthlessly constrained Power as the line of 
blue light described a large doorway as tall as Herewiss and equally as wide. 
When the frame was complete the Fire ran back along its doorsill and reached 
upward again, this time branching out like ivy on an unseen trellis, filling the 
doorway with a network that steadily grew more complex. In a few breaths' time 
the door became one solid, pulsing panel of blue.
Sweat stood on Herewiss's face. "Now," he said, still un-moving.
The blue winked out, all but the outline. From beyond the door a wet-smelling 
wind struck out and smote them all in the face. Lake Rilthor, their destination, 
lay in the lowlands, a thousand feet closer to sea level than the Waste. Through 
the door Segnbora saw green grass, and a soft rolling meadow leading down toward 
a silver-hazed lake, within which a hill was half-hidden.
"Go on," Herewiss said, and his voice sounded strained. "Don't take all day."
They led their horses through as quickly as they could, though not as quickly as 
they wanted to, for without exception the horses tried to put their heads down 
to graze as soon as they passed the doorway, and had to be pulled onward to let 
the others through. At last Segnbora was able to pull through the reluctant 
Steelsheen. She was followed closely by Herewiss and Sunspark, behind whom the 
door winked out with a very audible slam of sealed-in air.
Segnbora turned to compliment Herewiss and found him half-collapsed over 
Sunspark's back, with Freelorn supporting him anxiously from one side. He 
looked like a man who


had just run a race; his breath went in and out in great racking gasps, and his 
face was nearly gray.
"I thought there would be no more backlash once you got your Fire!" Freelorn 
said.
Herewiss rolled his head from side to side on the saddle, unable for several 
moments to find enough breath with which to reply. "Different," he said, 
"different problem," and began to cough.
Freelorn pounded his back ineffectually while Segnbora and the others looked on.
When the coughing subsided, Herewiss rested his head on the saddle again, still 
gasping, "open too wide," he said.
"What? The gate?"
"No. Me."
Confused, Freelorn looked at Segnbora. "Do you know what he's talking about?"
She nodded. '*In a worldgating, the gate isn't really the physical shape you 
see. The gate is in your mindthe 'door' shape is just a physical expression of 
it. When you open a gate, you're actually throwing your soul wide open. Anything 
can get. out. And anything can get in. It's not pleasant."
"*I can't hear anything,'1' Dritt muttered, wondering what all the discussion 
was about.
"Swallow," Herewiss said. "Your ears'11 pop." At last, his strength returning, 
he looked around with satisfaction. "You're better than I am with distances, 
Lorn. How far from Lake Rilthor would you say we are?"
Freelorn shaded his eyes, looking first at the Sun to orient himself. "It's 
lower"
"Of course. We're sixty leagues west."
Freelorn looked southwest toward the lake, and to the mist-girdled peak rising 
from its waters. "Four miles, I'd say."
"That's about what I wanted," Herewiss said, pleased. "Not bad for a first 
gating."'
"It's so quiet," Harald said,,, looking around suspiciously.
"It's a holy place/'' said Moris, unruffled and matter-of-fact as always.
Segnbora looked around at the silent green country, agreeing, opening out her 
undersemes to the affect of this place.


       



 


Like most fanes or groves or great altars, Morrowfane had a feeling as if 
Someone was watchingSomeone who would only speak using the heart's own voice. 
Yet the feeling was less personified, more awesome, than any she had 
experienced before. Above everything hung a waiting silence like the one when 
the hawk sails high and no bird sings. Below the silence was a slow, steady 
throbbing of incalculable power, as if the world's heart beat nearby. A ruthless 
benevolence slept at the center of Lake Rilthor, she sensed, and slept lightly. 
It was no wonder that there wasn't a town or a farm or even a sheepfold for 
miles around.
It was not a smell, or a feeling, or a vision precisely, that started to creep 
up on her. Segnbora stood up straight, glancing around at the others. None of 
them sensed what she had. Herewiss and Freelorn were leaning against Lorn's dun, 
Blackmane, together, speaking quietly; Moris and Dritt had walked off a little 
way to look southwest at the Fane; Lang was rubbing down the perpetually sweaty 
Gyrfalcon; Harald was seeing to yellow-coated Swallow's cinches. Sunspark had 
disappeared on some mysterious errand of its own.
She turned and looked east, her hand unconsciously dropping to Charriselm's 
hilt. There it was again, another flash of sightvague and odd, focus bizarrely 
rounded, colors all awry. And smell too, acrid, terrible, enraging. That's 
familiar, I know thatThen the memory found her: that one time in the Precincts 
when the novices, carefully supervised, were allowed to shapechange and feel 
what a beast's body was like.
"Herewiss!" she said, turning to him in alarm.
He put his head up to the wind, gazing eastward as she had, but saw nothing.
"You just did a wreaking," she said. "You may still be overloaded. Taste it!"
The fear in her voice brought unease to his eyes. He closed them and reached out 
his undersenses. She did too, standing swaying in the long grass, and caught the 
impression again, stronger this time. Now there was something even more 
unnerving added to the flash of skewed viewpoint: thought, stunted and twisted 
and bizarre, but thought. And it was all of hate.


The mind she touched bounded above the whipping grass for a moment. It saw forms 
on the horizon, the source of a maddening stench.
She heard a cough, opened her eyes to see Herewiss choking briefly. His empathy 
must have been more profound than hers, for the remembered shape of the runner's 
throat was not letting his words out.
"Fyrd!" he managed to croak, and pushed away from Black-mane, unsheathing 
Khavrinen hurriedly.
The word took Segnbora by surprise. "But that was thinking! Fyrd are 
Shadow-twisted, but they're just of dumb animal stock. They don't think!" She 
let the rest of her protest drop then. There was no mistaking what she had felt.
"My move was anticipated," Herewiss said bitterly. He swung Khavrinen sideways, 
whipping a great brilliance of Fire angrily down the blade. "It's a step ahead 
of meand mocking me, too."
Segnbora understood. At Bluepeak, long ago, the Shadow had driven down that 
first terrible breed of thinking Fyrd into the Kingdoms. Far more dangerous than 
the noxious things It had twisted out of the beasts of ancient days, these Fyrd 
had the cunning of warriors. It had taken the Transformation, in which Earn and 
Healhra burned away their very forms and their mortality, to exterminate that 
breed. And now, for Herewiss, here they were again
Steel scraped out of sheaths all around as movement became visible in the high 
grass to the east. Segnbora's undersenses brought her more and more clearly the 
experience of their hungry rage. They knew their quarry was human, and they 
hated them. They had come to murder.
"Dammit," Herewiss muttered, "Sunspark, where are you when I need you?!" But no 
answering thought came, and Herewiss hefted Khavrinen grimly. Only two days 
forged, and already the sword would be tasting blood.
There was little time to prepare. One moment the dark backs were jolting through 
the tall grass and the next, with a wave of grunts and screeches, the Fyrd were 
upon them. Segnbora found herself holding her blade too high to guard against a 
maw that was suddenly springing at her throat. She


       



 


threw herself sideways. Jaws went mick! above her, in the air where she had 
been. She hit the ground, rolled, found her footing and sprang up again. The maw 
hit the turf where she had been. For a moment it tore the ground with teeth and 
talons, its hunched back to her. That was all she needed. Chosing her spot she 
swung Charriselm up, sliced through thick flesh to the shock of bone. The maw 
writhed and screamed once, as its half-severed head flopped into the grass. She 
paid it no more heed, simply whipped the blood off Charriselm and swung around 
to find another foe. There were certain to be plenty
More maws, five or six of them, broad and round with piggish, wicked eyes; 
several keplian, horse-looking things with carnivores' teeth and three razory 
toes on each forefoot; other shapes less identifiable. The standard Fyrd 
varieties had been twisted further away from the animals they had anciently 
been. She forgot about specifics and dove away from the spring of one maw, took 
another one across the chest with a two-handed stroke and was knocked down by 
its momentum. Move, move, as long as you 're moving you 're safe! she remembered 
her old sword-instructor Shihan shouting at her.
Off to her left she heard Steelsheen scream in defiance and crash into a Fyrd, 
followed by the flat brittle sound of a skull being crushed by hooves. At the 
same time she got a pinwheeling glimpse of Khavrinen, Herewiss's sword, being 
jerked up after a downstroke. Then a half-seen form came at her low and 
sidewaysshe chopped at it, a poorly aimed blow that slid off hard smooth 
plates. Hissing, the nadder's gigantic serpent-head rose up before her, then 
struck; she danced desperately aside and chopped off the head at the neck.
Segnbora turned away and looked around. Khavrinen was striking downward again, 
and as it struck both Herewiss and the keplian he had killed moaned aloud. The 
Fire wavering about those parts of the blade not yet obscured illuminated 
Herewiss's face. Crying? Segnbora thought, surprised, but not too much so. 
Khavrinen was more of a symbol than a weapon. Herewiss was no killer
Steelsheen trampled another maw, and Moris nailed the


last one to the ground with a two-handed straight-down thrust. Finally everyone 
was standing still, panting, sagging, wiping blood out of their eyes.
"More coming!" Segnbora said, groaning aloud at the feeling of yet another of 
those hot, hating minds heading their way.
She looked northward. It was a hundred yards away, and it showed much more of 
itself above the grass than had the other Fyrd. Segnbora's heart constricted in 
terror as she recognized it. She had never seen one of these, but if the stories 
of the creatures* endurance were true, this one could afford to take its time.
"Oh Goddess," whispered Freelorn from beside her. "A deathjaw!"
"With the Fire," Herewiss said between gasps, "possibly  " He lifted Khavrinen 
again, but there was. no great hope in the gesture.
Deathjaws were so fearsome that there was only one way to successfully hunt 
them: stake out a human being as bait, and hide a Rodmistress close by to do a 
brainburn when the thing got close enough. We've got plenty of bait, but he 
doesn't know the protocol for a brainburn. If he did, he would be doing it.
The shambling form came closer.
"Run for it," Herewiss said, sounding very calm.
Everyone hesitated.
"I mean it'!"'
Lang turned, and Moris, and Harald, but they were slow about retreating. 
Freelorn didn't move from beside Herewiss.
"Lorn  "
"Big, isn't it," Freelorn said. His eyes were wide with fear, but his voice was 
as steady as if he was discussing a draft horse.
'"'Shut up. Dusty," Freelorn said. "Do whatever you're going to do to that 
thing. I'll watch your back."
Segnbora stepped up behind them as they set themselves. "I don't know how to 
burn it," Herewiss said to her. "The eye, though, that's possible  "
 Pul a langsword into that little eye, and hope to hit the brain?


Segnbora thought, and didn't laugh at the idea. The deathjaw was 
closeshaggy-coated, brindled, the size of three Dar-thene lions. Shiny black 
talons gleamed on its great catlike paws. The deathjaw opened its mouth just a 
little, showing two of its three lines of fangs above and below. Then it began 
to run, its face wrinkling into a horrible mask.
Herewiss swung Khavrinen up vrith elbows locked and let it chargehis only 
option, for running was as hopeless as a slash-and-cut duel would be. The blade 
into the eye, she heard him thinking, and Fire down the blade, enough to blast 
the brain dead.
He never used his plan. While still twenty feet away the deathjaw screamed 
horribly as fire suddenly bloomed about it, eating inward through flesh and 
muscle and sinew quick as a gasp. The still-moving skeleton burned incandescent 
for a moment more before the swirling flames blasted bone to powder, then ate 
that too. The deathjaw was gone before its death shrieks died.
And Sunspark appeareda brief bright coalescence like a meteor changing its mind 
in mide*plosionand paced casually over to the three. It was exuding a feeling 
of great pleasure, its mane and tail burning merrily as holiday bonfires. (You 
called for me?) it said to Herewiss, who was breathing hard now with delayed 
terror.
"I believe I did," he said.
Sunspark looked at Freelorn with an expression of good-natured wickedness and 
said nothing.
"Thank you," Freelorn said, courteous enough; but there was a touch of grudge in 
his voice.
Sunspark snorted. (Gratitude! Next time I'll choose my moment with more care ... 
a little later.)
"Choose the moment!"
(So that you'll appreciate me.)
"You mean you watched those things attack us and you didn't!"
"Lorn, enough," Herewiss said. "It doesn't think the way you do. Luckily for us. 
Loved," he said to the elemental, "did you notice any other wildlife in these 
parts while you were having breakfast?"
 
(Singers,) it said, looking to the northwest. (The ones with fur.)
"Wolves? Perfect." Herewiss glanced down at Khavrinen, which blazed just long 
enough to burn the blood off itself. "We won't be climbing the Fane until 
sunset, since a Summoning there works best at twilight. But damned if I'm going 
to put up with any more Fyrd, in the meantime. I'll go have a word with the 
wolves and see if I can work something out. Now, how do I manage this"
He frowned, closed his eyes. Fire swirled outward from Khavrinen, hiding both 
sword and wielder. The pillar of brilliance shrank as it swirled, and sank 
close to the ground. When the blue Flame died away it left behind a handsome 
cream-white wolf with orange-brown points and downturned blue eyes.
(Not bad,) Sunspark remarked, (for a beginner.) (Hmp!) Herewiss said, grinning a 
wolf-grin. (Stay close till I get back, loved, just in case the Fyrd try again. 
I won't be long.)
The wolf bounded away through the long grass. Watching him go, Segnbora dug down 
in her belt-pouch for a square of soft paper, with which she began cleaning off 
Charriselm's blade. When she had finished, she looked thoughtfully at the Fane. 
It seemed to gaze back, calm and blind and patient, waiting for something. Fyrd 
so close to this placethat's unheard of. All ike rate are changing. After this 
nothing is going to be the way it was.. Not even me,
She shook her head uneasily, not entirely understanding the thought,,
"You going to stand there all day?" someone shouted at her. Freelorn and the 
others were in the saddle, getting ready to ride down to the Fane. Segnbora 
swung up into Steel-sheen's saddle and went, after them,.
She sat underneath an old rowan tree near the lakeshore,
her 'back, against its trunk,,, and watched the long shadows of men, horses, and 
trees drown in slow dusk. The Fane, a half mile away across Rilthor's water,, 
shone golden as a legend where its heights still caught the sunset. The 
mirroring water


       



 


lay still in the breathless evening, ihe mountain's burning image broken only by 
the wakes of the gray songswans gliding
by. Truly it's not so impressive, she thought, stretching. The Fane's mountain 
was a little one, no more than a half mile wide at the base, broad at the bottom 
and flat at the top, stippled roughly with brush and scrub pine.
But for all the seeming plainness of the landscape, their camp that day had been 
abnormally quiet. Freelorn had been pacing and frowning most of the afternoon. 
Herewiss had come back from his parley with the wolves, reporting success
and a sore throat from much howling. Now he sat under an alder with Khavrinen 
flaming in his lap, meditating; for hours he hadn't moved, gazing across at the 
Fane with an expression that was half wonder and half fear. Harald and Moris had 
been keeping so close to one another that one might have thought they had been 
lovers for only a week or so, rather than several years. Dritt and Lang had 
become almost obsessive about caring for their horses, and the otherwise 
fearless Lang had been looking over his shoulder a great deal. Even Sunspark, 
while in its horse-shape, had been cribbing quietly at an elm tree, leaving 
small scorched places bitten out of the bark.
She laughed at herself then, a mere breath of merriment. And me. All this time 
on the trail, all this time I've been a hunted womanlook what kind of watch I'm 
keeping. My back turned to open country, where Goddess knows what could be 
coming up from behind
and me sitting here staring at this silly kill as if it's going to jump out of 
the water and come after me! Yet that silent benevolence kept watching her, kept 
waiting.
She shivered with expectation. Practically at the same moment, a clear 
melodious sound like the night Ending its voice rose up in the distancethen was 
joined in the long note by another voice wavering downward a third, and yet 
another, higher by a fourth. The unsettling harmony sent a delighted shiver down 
her spine. The wolves were on post as their rearguard, singing to while away the 
watch.
The Goddess's dogs, she thought, the old affectionate name for themvotaries who 
sang to Her mirror, the Moon, through all its phases, silent only when She was 
dark and dangerous. Where is the Moon tonight, Segnbora wondered,


glancing upward. It had not yet risen. But she was distracted, as always, with 
the sight of the first few stars pointing through the twilight, and the memory 
they always recalled. How old was I? she wondered, but wondering was vain. Very 
small, she had beensmall enough to still be wearing a shift instead of a kilt, 
but large enough to push open the front door of the old house at Asfahaeg and 
escape at bedtime.
She had gone out into the dark, unsure just what she was looking for, then had 
glanced up and found something, a marvel. Not just sunset, or dusk, or dark, but 
a sky burning with lights, every one solitary and glorious; and she knew, small 
as she was, that somehow or other she and those lights were intimately 
connected.
Now she knew them as stars, knew their names, knew about the Dragons that had 
come from among them, and about the Goddess Who had made them. But the wonder 
had never left Segnbora: that desire to get closer to those lights that called 
herand, eventually, closer to the One Who had made the stars. When the 
Rodmistresses tested her at the age of three and found the Fire, she had been 
overjoyed. Everybody knew that when you had the Flame, you often got to talk to 
Her.
But years of study had failed her; school after school had been unable to 
provide her with a focus strong enough to channel the huge outflow of her 
Powerand so there had been no breakthrough, and no truedreams in which She 
walked. After much bitter time she had admitted the truth to herself, that she 
was one of those who was never going to focus. She might as well give up sorcery 
and lore and Flame and all the other timewasting for something useful, as her 
father had always said.
So it was that she had met the Goddess at. last. She was good with Charriselm; 
she went looking for a job as a guard in a little Steldene town called 
Madeiland found Freelorn in the mucky alley behind a tavern. Later, fleeing 
from an old keep in which the aroused Steldenes had laid siege to them, the 
group had come across a little fieldstone inn on the border between Steldin and 
the Waste. It was strange that there should, have been an inn out there at the 
very edge of human habitation, but the innkeeper had put them all at ease. Find-


       



 


ing that they were short of money, she offered to share herself with one of them 
to settle the scot. A common enough arrangement, and Segnbora had won the draw 
for the privilege. It had been a sweet evening. The innkeeper had been fair, but 
there was more to her beauty than that. A long while they sat together by the 
window of Segnbora's little room, she and a white-shifted shadow veiled in hair 
like the night, talking and breathing the apple-blossom scent while the full 
Moon went softly up the sky. The talk drifted gradually to matters that Segnbora 
usually kept deeply hiddenold joys, old pains
while the brown-and-beige-banded pottery cup went back and forth between them, 
filled with a wine like summer wind running sweet under starlight.
I'm talking a great deal, Segnbora had thought, not so much frightened by the 
intimacy as bemused. The wine But the wine was not intoxicating her; she was 
seeing and feeling, if anything, more clearly than usual. Shivering with delight 
at the feeling of magic in the air, she drank deep of the cup, deeply enough to 
drain it... and found it still three-quarters full. Two hours we've been 
drinking from this cup, she realized, and she only Jilled it once.
She looked across at the other, then, and realized Who had come to share Herself 
with her, as She conies to every man and woman bom, once before they die. Not 
Mother now, as she had been at dinner, feeding them all and gossiping about the 
Kingdoms, but the aspect of the Goddess she loved best
Maiden about to be Bride, Creatress about to create something as beautiful as 
the multitude of stars. Back and forth a few more times that cup went, while 
Segnbora drank deep of building joy and anticipation, and named the Other's 
name, and saw her joy reflected a hundredfold, a thousandfold, incalculably.
Then she went to bed. And was joined by warmth that enfolded, and lips that 
spoke her name as if she was the only thing in creation. She was intensely 
loved; and was given to drink of that other cup that briins ovei forever, the 
endless source. She drowned, eternally it seemed, in the deep slow bliss of her 
own deity, and the Other's. . . .
The bark against her back was hard as she blinked, glanced down from the sky. 
Oh, again, she thought, someday again.


. Though the odds of that were slight. Once in a lifetime in that manner, one 
might expect the Goddess. Otherwise,
only at birth did one see Her, in one's own motherquickly forgotten, that 
sightand at death, when the Silent Mother, the Winnower, came to open the last 
Door.
She glanced across the lake, at the Fane standing silent, watching her, 
surrounded by the constellations of early summer. He'll be ready soon, she 
thought. Somewhere to northward the wolves began singing again.
Someone came lurching along toward her in the darkness, walking loud and heavy 
as usual. Oh, Lady, not now, she thought with affectionate annoyance, as Lang 
plopped down next to her. "Are we waiting for Moonrise?" he said.
He smelled of unwashed horse and unwashed self, and Segnbora wrinkled her nose 
in the darkthen wrinkled it more, at herself, for she had no call to be 
throwing stones on that account.
"Just full nightfall," she said. "I guess the theory is, if you're crazy enough 
to climb the Fane, then exercise your madness in the dark, as the Maiden did. 
'Out of darkness, light; out of madness, wisdom' "
Larig nodded. "How crazy are you?"'
His tone was very uneasy. Her stomach knotted, hearing in his words a reflection 
of the nervousness she had been trying to ignore. Worse, she didn't feel like 
talking. Segnbora wished for the thousandth time that Lang weren't thought-deaf.
She plucked a blade of grass from beside her and began running it back and forth 
between her fingers. "I think I told you about my family, a little,''* she said.
She could feel his confusion, typical of him when she chose to come at a 
question sideways. Lang rarely understood any approach but the head-on kind. 
"Tai-Enraesi," he said. "Enra was a 'Queen's sister of Darthen, wasn't she?"
Segnbora nodded. *Tm related to a lot of people who've been up that hill. 
Beorgan, and Beaneth, the doomed Queens. Raela Way-Opener. Efhiaer d'Seldun. 
Gereth Drag-onheart . . . " She trailed off. Then, after a while, "To be where 
they were . , . I don't know how I can pass the Fane by"""
Lang slouched further down against the tree, his face calm,


       



but his heart shouting, Yes, and look what happened to them! Beorgan and Beaneth 
dead of the Shadow or of sorrow, Raela gone off through some door and never 
heard of again, Efmaer dead in the mountains or worse in Glasscastle
Segnbora twitched uneasily, resettling her back against the rowan's trunk. She 
heartily wished there was something else to try, but over twenty years she had 
exhausted the talents of instructors all over the Kingdoms.
"I thought I might talk you out of it," Lang said, very low. "I like you the way 
you are."
The words came a breath too late. She had chosen. "I don't," she said.
"But if you go up there there's no telling what'll happen to you"
"I know. That's the idea!"
Lang pulled back, pained.
"Look," she said. "Twenty years of training, and I'm Fire-trained without Fire, 
Fin a sorcerer who doesn't care for sorcery and a trained bard who's too 
depressed to tell stories. It's time to be something else. Anything."
4'But, 'Berend"
The use of the old nickname, which Eftgan had coined so long ago, poked her in a 
suddenly sensitive spot. She laid her hand on Lang's, startling him out of his 
frightened annoyance. "You remember the first time we met? You tried to talk me 
out of joining up with Lorn, remember?"
"Stubborn," Lang muttered, "you were stubborn. I couldn't stand you."
She glanced at him humorously. "Maybe change isn't such a bad thing, then?"
They traded gentle looks through the dark, and he squeezed her hand. "Care to 
share afterwards? If you haven't turned into a giant toadstool or some such, of 
course."
Her heart turned over inside her. When Lang made such offers, there was always 
more love in his voice than she could answer with, and the inequity troubled 
her. It had been a long time since her ability to share had been rooted in 
anything deeper than friendship. "Yes," she said, hoping desperately he would be 
able to lighten up a little. "You


disturb me, though. You have a prejudice against toadstools? ..."
Lang chuckled.
"You two ready?" said another voice, and they both looked up, Herewiss was 
standing beside them with Khavrinen sheathed and slung over his shoulder. 
Freelorn was with him, arms folded and looking nervous.
"What do you mean 'you two'?" Lang said. "I prefer to die in bed, thanks."
Segnbora squeezed his hand back and got up, brushing herself off. "You found the 
raft, I take it."
"It was hidden in the reeds," Freelorn said. "In fact, the reeds were growing 
through it in places. Evidently not many people come this way."
"Just the three of us are climbing, then." Herewiss said. "Still, it's probably 
better that we all go acrossin case any Fyrd get by our rearguard."
Lang nodded and got up, and the four of them went off to join the others by the 
lakeshore. Dritt and Harald and Moris were standing at a respectable distance 
from the raft, for Sunspark was inspecting it suspiciously.
(You really want me to get on this thing?) it said to Herewiss as he came up. 
(That water's deep, If I fell in there) It shuddered, at the thought.
"So fly over," Herewiss said, stepping onto the raft from the bank.
Sunspark gazed across at the Fane, its mane and tail burning low. (There's a 
Power there, and in the water,) it said. (I'm not sure I want to attract Its 
attention. . . . )
"Then come on."


Three
The Goddess's courtesy is a terrible thing. To the mortal asker She will give 
what is asked for, without stinting, without fail. Nor will She stop giving 
until the gift's reciptent, like the gift, becomes perfect. Let the asker 
beware. . ..
(Charesttcs, 45)


      35



      THE DOOR INTO SHADOW



 


They all climbed onto the raft. Sunspark came last, picking its way onto the 
mossy planks with the exaggerated delicacy of a cat. But it stood quite still in 
the midst of them as Herewiss and Freelorn poled the raft. No one broke the 
silence. On the water the feeling of being watched was stronger than ever.
The raft grounded, scraping and crunching on a rough beach of pale pebbles, 
Herewiss stepped off, Freelorn behind him, and each of the others in turn. 
Everyone winced at the sound of their footsteps. Segnbora, second-to-last off, 
thought she had never heard anything so loud as her light step on the gravel. 
Sunspark, behind her, got off and made no sound at all. It was carefully walking 
a handspan above the ground.
They were not only watched, they were felt. There was no mistaking it. There was 
no threat in the sensation; the regard running through them was patient, 
passive. But whatever fueled it was immeasurably old, and huge. The others 
looked at one another wondering, as the Power reached up into them, and found 
old companions suddenly strange.
Segnbora, feeling what they felt, understood the sensation as most of her 
companions couldn't. The Fire within her, that had dwindled over the years and 
was now nearly dead because of her lack of focus, was suddenly leaping up as 
wildly in her as if a wind had blown through her soul The Power pushed at her, 
urging her upward toward the mountain. At the same time it looked through her at 
the others, and looked through them at her,, determining what changes, would be 
made
Oh Goddess, she thought, this is what I'm needed. 'There' was no mistaking the 
Source of what stirred here, though this


half-slumbering immensity of calling Flame was only the least
tithe of Her Power.
And I'm terrified
Herewiss and Freelorn were standing transfixed, keeping very close to each 
other. She could not see their faces, but Freelorn's arms were unwound from 
around Herewiss for the first time since the morning. Khavrinen in its 
back-sheath was blue-while with Fire. Its light shone through seams in the 
scabbard, and the hilt blazed like a torch. "There's the trail," Freelom said 
quietly, looking upward.
"Til race you," Segnbora said, just as quietly. She slipped past them and 
started climbing.
The trail wasn't too difficult. Part of it followed old gullies or slide-paths; 
part of it seemed to have been cut into the hillside, but only lightly, so that 
rockfall or deadwood frequently blocked the way. The hill was no more than five 
hundred feet high, but in the starlight it was hard to see where to put one's 
feet. Each of them fell and slid at least once. By the time they reached the 
flattened hilltop, they were all bruised, and breathing hard.
But the gasping for breath didn't last. It was replaced almost immediately by a 
sensation of being anchored, centered, secured past, any dislodging. Freelorn 
and. Herewiss stood as still as Segnbora, feeling their pulses become tranquil, 
their breath come more gently. The three of them, stood poised at the apex, of 
the world's Heart. The Universe swrung around them,, slow and silent, waiting. 
After a few moments Segnbora sank to one knee, bending to touch the gullied 
ground with one hand, the ground where Raela and Efmaer and Beorgan had stood. 
She could feel the Power, bound, waiting, alive. Her own .Fire strained downward 
to reach it, and, unfocused, could not. But that seemed unimportant as she knelt 
there, feeling the ages run through her. This place was more important than the 
needs of any one human being.
Freelorn. turned to Herewiss, "Loved," he said, his voice uncertain,, 
"'something's strange inside me"
"Of course there is." Herewiss reached out to Freelorn and drew him close, not 
so much in compassion as in, exultation. "It's your Fire. You have a spark of it 
like everyone else; here


       



 


at the heart of Fire, how could you not feel it? The Fane is reaching up to 
you."
"I thought so." Freelorn sounded almost in pain. "It wants me. But I don't know 
what to do."
"Listen to what it has to say to you," Herewiss said. "Just feel it. Few enough 
people ever do."
Herewiss let go of Freelorn with his right arm, then stretched slowly upward and 
felt behind him for Khavrinen's hilt. He drew the sword from the back-scabbard 
slowly, with relish and ease and much tenderness, as he might have drawn himself 
from his loved after passion spent. The sword swept effortlessly over his head 
and downward before him, Fire trailing behind the blade. Even now, before the 
wreaking had begun, the Flame was too bright to look at direct-ly.
"So much," Lorn said, soft-voiced, blinking and tearing in the light. "You can 
do anything now. ..."
"Yes. For the moment." Herewiss laughed gently at Free-lorn's puzzled look. 
"Lorn, how did you think 1 was able to destroy those hralcins? Under normal 
circumstances twenty Rodmistresses, fifty, couldn't have done it. I was in 
'breakthrough,' as they call it in the Precincts, and I will be for maybe 
another tenday or so. After that the Power begins to drop to more normal levels. 
That's surely why She wants me to hurry."
He gazed down at the Flame-flowing sword in his hand.
"I'll give back some of what was given to me," he said, resting Khavrinen's 
point on the ground. The Flame about the blade burned brighter, lighting the 
hilltop more brilliantly with every breath he took, "It's going to cost me, 
Lorn. But it will be worth it."
His words failed him, then, but his Fire did not. The light was becoming like an 
otherworldly Sun now, a blaze of determination and joy that dazzled the mind as 
much as it did the eyes, transfiguring what it touched.
Segnbora had a brief vision through the brilliance of a young god raising His 
arms, offering His loved, across His two hands, the thunderbolt He wielded... In 
.her vision the other, blasted by the overpowering magnificence into another


shape, yet somehow still unchanged, reached out hands to lay them, fearless, in 
the Fire
For long seconds Segnbora did not move, could not. Once not too long ago, when 
Herewiss had been away and Lorn had seemed to need consoling, she had entered a 
little way into the relationship between these twosharing herself with Lorn, 
offering her friendship. At the time she had thought her motives benevolent 
enough. But recent events had made her suspect that, in fact, she had been the 
one in need of consoling. Now, by this light, in which any untruth withered and 
fell away, she clearly saw the shape of her own loneliness and sorrow. Likewise 
she saw the essential twoness of Herewiss and Freelornsomething even Sunspark 
had perceived more clearly than she did. No more interference, she thought. 
There was no sadness about it. The decision came almost triumphantly, with a 
feeling of celebration and release.
This was Herewiss's moment, and Lorn's, not hers. Unsteadilyfor the forces 
being freed on the hilltop had made her a bit light-headedSegnbora turned her 
back on the ferocious glory raging there. By the time one of the Lovers began 
speaking Nhaired in invocation"Ae, hn'Hldfede, irun-taje Lai'"'she was 
descending from the hilltop, sliding and stumbling down the path.
Dear Goddess, Segnbora thought as she reached the end of the steepest part of 
the path. The first wreaking he tries is the Naming of Names? I wish I had his 
faith. Ifsonu dark power should slip close enough to hear
The possibility so unnerved her that Segnbora lost her balance. She had to grab 
at brush to catch herself. An inner Name was a powerful commodity even after its 
owner's death, useful to lend power to various spells and wreakings. The Names 
of great Rodmistresses, for instance, were passed down through, generations. In 
Segnbora's own family, Queen Efmaer's ancient Name was. preserved,, though the 
Queen herself was long lost.
Segnbora exhaled in sudden arn.usem.ent at the notion that someday sorcerers and 
Rodmistresses. would probably pay great treasures for the true Name of one 
Herewissa slim


       



dark young man with a tendency toward creative swearing in dead languages
The path went right out from under her. It was not her own clumsiness this time, 
but the Morrowfane itself trembling under her feet. Segnbora looked up. The 
blaze on the hilltop, hidden till now by the bulk of the hill, was hidden no 
longer. A narrow, sword-shaped core of blue-white Fire swung up into view, and 
then a light of impossible brilliance broke the night open from end to end. Like 
lightning burning in steel, it turned the dark into sudden day and 
extinguished the stars. The Fane shook to its roots as outpoured Firelight 
smote into everything, illuminating every leaf and tree trunk and stone with 
fierce clarity. On the surface of the shivering lake, the light shattered into 
countless knives and splinters of dazzle.
Blinded, Segnbora turned away and rubbed her eyes. When they saw clearly again, 
she started once more down the trail. She had no trouble finding her way; the 
Fane was lit like midrnorning. At one point she paused for breath, looked 
around, and saw something she had missed in the dimness on the way upa huge 
crevasse or cavern around on the southern face of the hillside, an opening into 
darkness that even Herwiss's Fire didn't illumine. How about that The World's 
Heart has a secret in it
Above her Herewiss's Flame dimmed and faded, leaving her looking at where the 
cave entrance had been. He's taking a rest, I suppose. I bet I could have a 
closer look at that before he starts shaking things again Once piqued, 
Segnbora's curiosity would never give her peace until it was satisfied, and she 
knew it so she gave in. Scrabbling up off the trail, she used scrubby bushes and 
trees to climb toward the area she had seen. It took, a few minutes to climb up 
a ravine that ran down between, two folds, but finally the cave opening loomed 
huge before her, dark as uncertainty. There Segnbora halted, uneasy. Her 
undersenses were still blunted from, the onslaught of Power and. joy at the top 
of the hill, but not so much so that she couldn't catch an odd mental flavor 
that grew stronger the closer she came to the cave-mouth. Something hot. Metal? 
Slow?
She drew Charriselm with a whisper of steel that suddenly


sounded very loud indeed. Very carefully she stepped over and around the 
boulders that lay about the great cave entrance, and slipped a few feet inside 
where she paused to listen again.
Nothing. I must have been imagining that feeling. Cautiously, keeping her left 
hand against the cave wall, she took another step in. The faint crunch of her 
footstep echoed away into the dark. She took another step. This one echoed too. 
The place was huge, filling most of the mountain from the sound of it. Another
A voice spoke, and Segnbora froze, clenching Charriselm. Her heart pounded. For 
a moment she thought the cave was about to fall in on her. The voice was huge, 
and incredibly deep. It thundered, rumbling, shaking the air; yet there was 
music in it, a slow and terrible song of pain. Hair stood up all over Segnbora. 
She could make nothing of the words the voice seemed to be speaking. At the end 
of the sentence, the silence that fell was waiting for her answer.
She swallowed hard. "I don't know that language," she said, her1 voice .sounding 
amazingly small despite all the echoes it awoke. "Do you. speak, Arlene or 
Darthene?"
There was a long pause; then the voice spoke once more. It, used Darthene, but 
the timbre was that of a storm on the Sea. "You were a long time corning," it 
said. "But you're thrice welcome nevertheless.'""
Segnbora leaned against, the wall of the cave, bewildered. Her eyes were getting 
used to the darkness, and in, the faint starlight from the doorway she could 
make out a, great lumpy mass lying on the floor of the cave before her. The hot 
stone smell she had noticed before was coming from it, though there was little 
actual warmth in the place. "I don't understand," she said. "What are you?"
"""Lkhw'ae," the voice said, a rumbling growl and, a sigh.
Segnbora gripped Charriselm even tighter, for that word of the strange language 
she did understand. A Dragon
The voice' began to speak again, and was suddenly choked off. Rocks cracked, and 
rattled, about in the cave, rolling, shattering, The Dragon had abruptly 
started thrashing around. Segnbora leaped, for the doorway, as afraid of being 
attacked as of a cave-in; but after a, few moments the uncontrolled


       



 


motion subsided and the immense half-seen bulk of the Dragon lay quiet again. 
She stared at it fearfully.
"I am about to lose this body," the Dragon said, an anguished-sounding melody 
winding about the words. "That is the cause of my seizures."
"You're dying?" Segnbora said, and then had to grab for balance once more as 
another convulsion threw rocks in all directions. When the Dragon had settled 
again, she saw that it was looking at her from great round eyes, each of which 
was at least four feet across, globed and pupilless. Segnbora shuddered as she 
realized how big the rest of the beast must be, and was glad she couldn't see 
it.
"Going rdaheih." The Dragon whispered the word, but even its whisper sounded 
like a thunderstorm. "My time came upon me."
The pain in its voice confused Segnbora. No one but Marchwardersthe humans who 
lived with Dragons in their high placesknew much about Dragons, but the one 
thing everybody said about them was that they never died. Even more confusing 
was the undercurrent of joy that ran under the Dragon's pain, growing stronger 
by the moment. "No matter." it said. "You are here. At last, what was, is" The 
words had an ominous sound to them. For an instant she considered running away, 
but did not. She had been curious about Dragons ever since the first and only 
time she had seen one, at the age of seven, soaring over the blue Darthene Gulf. 
Now that old curiosity was raging, and it overcame her fear.
Slowly Segnbora sheathed Charriselm, then began to pick her way toward the 
Dragon's head among the fallen stones, watching carefully in case another 
seizure should occur. Lying flat on the rubble, the head from lower jaw to upper 
faceplate was twice her height. Above it, the spine in which the shielding 
faceplate terminated speared up into the gloom for another ten or fifteen feet. 
Segnbora reached out gingerly and touched the edge of the plate between nose and 
eyes,. It was hard and rough as stone, and warm.. The eye on that side regarded 
her steadily, but she couldn't read its expression. It looked dimmer than it 
had.


"Are you sure you're not just ill?" Segnbora said.
"T know my time," said the Dragon. "I welcome it. I always
have."
She shook her head. With her hands on the Dragon, she
could feel its wear)' sorrow as if it were her ownbut also that perplexing joy, 
both sober and expectant at once.
"Is there anything I can do for you?" she said.
The Dragon's eyes flared brighter, and a tremor ran up and down its body. 
"Arke-sta rdakeh q'ae hfyn 'tsa!" the Dragon whispered in a great rush of 
fulfillment, as if its last fear had been lifted from it. "If you truly ask/' it 
said in Darthene, "don't let medieuncompanioned. *'
Segnbora shivered, having misgivings. Again she considered running away, but 
only briefly. "I'll stay with you."
"Yes," the Dragon said. The light of its eye ebbed again. "You always did."
That was when the last, and worst, convulsion happened. Walls shook. Stone chips 
and splinters rained from the ceiling. The floor danced. There was nothing for 
Segnbora to grab for support but the Dragon's head. A brief feeling of hot 
stone
and the next moment, her head burst open from the inside. Segnbora knew how it 
felt to share her mind with another consciousness, but this was nothing like her 
experiences in the Precincts; those decorous, sliding melds of one 
Rodmistress-novice with another, each always wary of disturbing the delicately 
balanced economy of the other's mind. This was like a boulder dropping into a 
bucketa brutal invasion that smashed her against the borders of her self and 
threatened to .smother her.
Strangling, agonized, she flailed about inside for room to think. There was 
none. Her inner spaces, were crowded with otherness, a multitude of ruthless 
presences straining and seething in intolerable confinementminds that beat at 
her, 'buffeting' her like wings; thoughts that gnawed at her like alien jaws; 
strange memories that stalked through, her past, promising her a horrifying and 
incomprehensible future. The Dra-Igon's imminent death AW Segnbora screamed. 
She pushed desperately away


       



 


without knowing for sure what she was pushing back from, but ready to do 
anything, even die, to avoid it. She fell and fell, yet the images followed her 
inexorably as a doom, becoming more and more real. / don 't want to remember! 
she screamed, but the words wouldn't even come out right. Instead, a white-hot 
burning and a strange language took her by the throat, twisting the plea into a 
wracking curse: ste, taueh-sta 'ae mnek-kej, mnek!
A roar of condemnation went up in he stifling, crowded darkness; the damp cold 
dirt rushed toward her face. Then mercifully the fall ended in a pain-colored 
flash that killed the presences, and the memories, and, Segnbora hoped, her too. 
. . .


Four
"Are you going to kill meT" said the child to the Dragon.
"Kill your?" The Dragon smiled at him. "Certainly not until we have been 
introduced."
fates for Opening Night, Nia d'Eleth


       



 


The darkness tears wide, splitting as hewn skin does when the sword strikes.
This is Etachne field, all one gloomy sodden mass of miser)' lead-gray above 
with clouds that have been pouring rain for three days now, dun and black and 
red below with the scattered bodies of the slain. The stench is incredible. 
Those who fight do so with their faces wrapped, and fall as often to the sick 
miasma of the air as to Reaver arrows. Fyrd are harrying the fringes of the 
battlefield, devouring the dead. A few hundred feet away, a maw and a horwolf 
and a nadder are busily dismembering a fallen woman. Her surcoat was once 
Dar-thene midnight blue. Now it is mostly red-brown.
She gulps down sourness for the hundredth time and stares across the misty 
valley. Somewhere over there the Reavers have retreated into cover, regrouping 
for the next attack, There are only about a thousand of them left, but those are 
more than enough to break the Darthene defense at the other end of the valley 
and let them out into the open lands, Once that happens they'll begin pillaging 
at Etachne and leave the country burning behind them as far as Wend wen. Around 
her the Darthenes holding the gap are huddled, soaked through, hungry, 
outnumbered, waiting.
The Rodmistress is dead, so they have no idea when reinforcements may be 
coming. Segnbora is the only sorcerer left, and over the past few days her 
sorceries have been going progressively flattera starved sorcerer is good for 
very little. It was all she could do yesterday to stop the miserable rain for a 
little while; today her head still aches with the backlash. OA, food, she 
thinks. Just oatcakes and milk She stops herself, does a brief mind-exercise to 
calm down.


It doesn't work. Her partner Eftgan has been gone for three days now, ridden off 
for the reinforcements; and the Goddess only knows whether she lives or not, for 
there's a great silence where her mind used to be. Oh, Tegdne, loved, be all 
right, please She winces away from the painful thought, opening her eyes on the 
Fyrd again. The sickness comes up in her throat as she sees them tugging at the 
limbs of the woman in Darthene blue. Then sickness turns to rage and she throws 
her sodden cloak off savagely and stands up in the rain, fists clenched.
"Ira maehsta in? aehsta," she whispers, as within, so without, and begins a 
bitter poem in Nhaired, shaping in her mind a construct. Anger-fueled sorcery is 
dangerous, she knows, but anger and terror are all she has left. Her desperation 
fuels the sorcery, scansion shapes its skeleton, meter sets the beast-shape, 
filling it out. Words link in sliding musculature, the hot pelt of intent furs 
it over, angry purpose glares like eyes beneath a shaggy mane of verse.
Uncaring of the backlash to come, she grips the shape of words and wraps it 
round her like a cloakthen drops to all fours in the rain, and leaps roaring at 
the Fyrd
and the darkness falls.
(they all do that, we've watched them do that since we first came. Yet while 
they feel for one member of their kind, they still do murder on
others, Sttiuh-std annikh'S)
(We don't understand* it either. What about this one)
Here's the last rise before home, with the little rutted track that serves for 
road. Steelsheen quickens her pace a bit, sensing road's end. The air is full 
of the smell of salt: beach-grass hisses incessantly on either side of the 
track. She makes the top of the riseand there it is, spread out blue and 
wrinkled, glittering and lovely, the Darthene Gulf. "The Sun is beginning to 
pierce through from a silver sky; the black beach glistens as the waves slide 
back; sandpipers dance daintily after them, poking for whelks in the bubbling 
crevices and tide pools. She looks across at the lonely stone manor-house built 
on the headlandHome!
Steelsheen breaks into a canter, They 'II be so proud. My master


       



 


has never before given live steel to anyone so young. And Tegdne has spoken for 
me to see if I can be in the royal household. To live in Darthisf in a town with 
walls f And Sheen, Father mil be so proud when he sees her. A real Steldene, a 
silverdust Steldene, and I broke her myself with all the tricks he taught me!
She punches the inare into a gallop and rides into the demesne, under the old 
stone arch with the tai-Enraesi arms, lioncelle, passant regardant, sword 
upraised in the dexter paw. Chickens scatter in all directions. Dogs scramble to 
their feet and bounce around her, barking, as she rides in to the dooryard with 
a great clatter of hooves. She dismounts. A yellow cat on the doorstep opens one 
eye at the noise, says a rude word and closes the eye again.
Segnbora laughs as she pulls offSleelsheen's saddle, drops it on the ground, 
fends off various dogs with pats and scratches, and bends to chuck the rat under 
the chin. Three weeks she has been on the road from Darthis. Three weeks of 
lousy weather, an attack by bandits and a case of the flux. One cat, however 
grumpy, isn't going to spoil this splendid homecoming.
''Mother, Father, I'm back!" she shouts, shoving open the front door and 
swaggering in.
She walks through the little main hall with its benches and carvings and 
hangings and firepit. Secretly she's a little shocked by the shabbiness of the 
place; it never looked this run down before she went to the city, Her father's 
old complaints about failed crops and the sorry state of family finances 
suddenly begin to disturb her
"Mama?"
No answer. She's in the kitchen, then. Through the hall and out into the big 
stone-paved kitchen and pantry. Her mother is just stepping in the far door with 
a string of onions from the buttery shed outside. Close behind is her father, 
who carries a newly dispatched chicken.
"Hi!" she shouts.
'" 'Rerend!" says her mother, and ""'Don't shout,,'" says her father, both at 
once.
She trots over, embraces them both in a huge hog, and pulls her sheathed sword 
out of her belt to show them. "Mama, look, I named it Gharri"


"How is your Fire coming, dear?" her mother interrupts. Her father says nothing, 
waiting for the answer, holding himself aloof.
And suddenly it's all wrong. Don't they think if I had finally focused, I'd have 
come in here streaming blue Fire from every orifice? Why d&n*t they
"Mother," she says, "can't you ever ask me about something else?"
Her mother looks surprised. "What else is there?" she says; and, "Don't talk to 
your mother in that tone of voice," her father says.
"I have to rub down my horse, excuse me." She bites the inside of her cheek hard 
to keep from saying anything else, and walks out the way she came
and then darkness again.
She staggers about, lost in the darkness of her self, and begins to tmderstand 
madness.
(Stihe'h, stikeh-std annikh'S-!) rumbles the voice of storm again. It's joined 
by more voices, all intoning the same rushing phrase, a litany of
incomprehension and curiosity. They won't go away. They bump and jostle her 
roughly when she stumbles into them in the dark, feeling for a way out
The p'lace where she walks is walled and domed and floored in adamant,, built 
that way long ago to protect her inner verities. There her1 memories are stored. 
Some have been buried by accident, some she's seated in stone on purpose; many 
stand about smooth and polished from much 'handling,
It's the buried ones that chiefiy interest her invaders. Stone means nothing to 
them, it 'being one. of their elements. Cruel claws slice down effortlessly. 
White fire bums and melts. Delicate talons turn over exposed thoughtsold joys 
like polished jewels, razory fragments of pain.
(Khai"rae todwt? Sshir'stihe'-khai'?)
(No, this moment's fairer far. Look. ! hadn't thought they sang)
it's quite dark, but she needs no light to know that the slab of marble is a 
handspan from her nose. The sound of her breathing is loud beneath it, and the 
condensation from her
breath drips 'maddeningly onto her face'. The sarcophagus-


 


shaped Testing Bath is full of icy water, and Segnbora, naked as a fish, is 
submerged in it up to her face. Her hands are bound to her sides. On her chest 
rests a ten-pound stone. Above her is the three-inch-thick lid of the Bath, open 
only at the end behind her head, just enough to let in air and Saris's voice.
This is the final test of a loremistress-Bard, which will determine whether 
three years of training will desert her under extreme stress. There's no telling 
which of the Four Hundred Tales she'll be required to recite faultlessly 
tonight, or what song, or poem, or legend. When the lid is removed in the 
morning, she'll be expected to take up the kithara and extemporize a poem in 
tragic-epic meter on the forging of F6rlennh BrokenBlade.
"Sunset to sunrise?" she had said to Eftgan this morning, before the last of 
the orals. "I can do that, standing on my head."
Now she's not so sure. She feels like she's been in this cold, wet tomb forever. 
She suspects it's more like two hours.
"The Lost Queen's Ballad," Saris says from outside the Bath.
Segnbora closes her eyes, hunting for the memory-tag she uses to remember that 
ballad, and finds it. She sings softly, in a minor key:
"Oh, when Darthen's Queen went riding out of Barachael that day, she rode up the 
empty corrie and she sang a rondelay;
and the three Lights shone upon her as on Skadhwe's bitter blade, and she fared 
on up that awful trail and little of it made;
She stood laughing on the peak-snows with the new Moon in her hair, and she 
smiled and set. her foot upon, the Bridge that isn't There;


She took the road right gladly
to the Castle in the Sky,
and Darthen's sorrel steed came back,
but the Queen stayed there for aye. ..."
She lies there expecting to be asked for the rest of the historythe suicide of 
Queen Efmaer's loved, and her journey up to Glasscastle, where suicides go, to 
get her inner Name back from him. But no, that would be too easy.
"Jarrin's Debt," says Saris.
Segnbora sighs. "As long ago as your last night's dreams, and as far away as 
tonight's," she begins, "the Battle of Blue-peak befell. ..."
and the darkness in the Bath is suddenly the darkness inside her mind.
Damn you! Damn you all to Darkness! Get out of here!
the courtyard is fairly large, but its size is no help; there's nowhere to hide 
from Shihan's sword, which is everywhere at once.
She dances back and swings her wooden practice sword up in a desperate blocka 
mistake, for no conscious act can possibly counter one of Shihan's moves. He 
strikes the practice sword aside with a single scornful sweep of Clothespole, 
then smacks her in the head with the flat in an elegant backhanda blow painful 
enough to let her know she's in disgrace. Segnbora sits down hard with the 
shock of it, saying hello to the hard paving of the practice yard for the 
millionth time.
"Idiot," Shfhan growls. He is a Steldene, black-haired, dark-skinned, with a 
broad-nosed face, a bristly mustache, and fierce brown, eyes. He stands right 
over hera great brown cat of a man; lithe, muscular, and dangerous-looking. He 
is utterly contemptuous.
"'When will you learn to stop thinking!" He glares at her. "Save thinking for 
your bardcraft and your sorcery and the Fire you keep chasing, but don't bring 
it here! Sweet Lady of


       



 


the Forges, why do I waste my time on walking butchers' meat?"
She gets up, slowly, resheathes the practice sword in her belt and settles into 
a ready stance: one hand gripping the imaginary sheath, the other at her side, 
relaxed. She's seething, for the other advanced students, starting to eat their 
nunch, are watching from the sides of the courtyard. Maryn, around whom she 
danced with insulting ease this morning, is snickering, damn him.
Even as her eyes flick away from Maryn, she sees Shihan drawing. She draws too, 
spins out of reach as she does so, comes around at him from his momentarily 
undefended side and hits himnot a hard blow, but so focused that his whole 
chest cavity seems to jump away from it.
Quite suddenly, to her absolute amazement, Shihan is on his left side on the 
ground, with the point of her practice sword leaning delicately against his 
ribs. Shihan's eyes close with hers like steel touching steel, and bind there, a 
bladed glance. All around the courtyard people have stopped chewing. No one in 
her class has ever downed Shihan. Segnbora starts to tremble.
"Good," Shihan says in a voice that all the others can hear. "And wrong," he 
adds more quietly, for her alone. "Come and eat."
They step off to the far side of the courtyard, apart from the other students, 
and settle under the plane-tree where Shihan's nunch-meal lies 
readyblue-streaked sheepVmilk cheese, crumbly biscuits, sour beer. Shihan 
silently casts a few crumbs off to one side and spills a few drops of beer as 
libation to the Goddess, then starts eating.
"Was it your anger at Maryn that caused you to stop thinking?" Shihan asks.
"Yes, sir."
"Feeling when you strike is all right," says her master. "First time I've seen 
you do that. There may be hope for you yet. Provided," and he glances up with a 
frown, "that it's the right kind of feeling."
She sits quiet while he eats.
"Listen," Shihan says. "Don't try to figure this out: just


hear it, let it in. When you strike another, especially to kill, you're striking 
yourself. When you kill, the other takes a little part of you with them, past 
the Door. If you do it in anger, what they take is the part of you that feels." 
Shihan wipes his mouth on his sleeve. His eyes burn with the intensity of one 
imparting a sacred mystery to a fellow initiate. "Kill in anger often enough and 
your aliveness starts running out too. Soon there's nothing left but a husk that 
walks and speaks and does skillful murder. Were you angry at me?" He shoots the 
question at her sudden as a dart.
"Master! No."
"But I'm the one that anger struck down. See how easily it used you?"
Segnbora stares at. the ground, her face burning.
"Shihan, I didn't think"
"I noticed," he says, for the first time smiling. "Keep that up.*"
She shakes her head, confused. "Master, in killing in war or in self-defense, if 
I'm not supposed to feel angrywhat should I be feeling?"
He looks at her. "Compassion," he says, gruff-voiced. "Anguish. What else, when 
you've just killed yourself?"
(-ae"wnh khai-pfaaa ur'ts'shatiineh rahiw?)
(I dm "t know for certain; all I fell there before was a memory of cold dirt. It 
must be something interesting. See how thick the stone is over it? Several of us 
wiU be needed)
OH NO YOU DON'T!
maybe it was the momentary burst of outrage that let her briefly out into the 
light again.
Whatever the reason, suddenly the world was bright and clear, though it seemed, 
very small, and the creatures that moved through it were earthbound and crippled 
of mind.
She was not in the Morrowfane country anymore. This was some twilit camp under 
the lee of a hill. She could feel the warmth of a fire against her side. She lay 
on her back, her limbs aching so much that she couldn't move.
To her left sat Lang, warm in the firelight, gazing down at;


       



 


her with a bleak, helpless expression. Her distress at her immobility fell away 
at the sight of him. Lang mattered: He was stability, normalcy, all embodied in 
one stocky blond shape.
In all her life before this terror she had never cried for help but once, and 
that time help had been refused. She had never asked since. But now she had lost 
her mind, and surely there was nothing else to lose. Oh Lang, she tried to cry, 
I'm crazy, I'm scared, I can't find my way out, but I'm here
But the words caught on a blazing place in her throat, got twisted out of shape 
and came out hoarse and strange. "R'mdahe, au'Lang, irikhe', stihe-sta 'ae 
vehhy't-kej, ssih haa-ht" Not far away Herewiss and Freelorn lay together with 
their backs against a rock, holding weary conversation with the campfire that 
burned between them and the place where she lay.
(indeed not,) the campfire was saying. Sunspark's eyes, ember-bright in the 
flickering fire, threw a glance of mild interest in her direction. (There aren't 
that many things in this bland little corner of the Pattern that can bother my 
kind. But we used to come across other travellers among the worlds, and some of 
them told of being unseated in heart or mind after coming to a world loo strange 
for them to understand. They lost their languages, some of them)
"Did they get better?" Freelorn said. His tone indicated that he desperately 
wanted to hear that they did.
"Lorn," Herewiss said gently, putting his arm around his loved and hugging him, 
"we're going to have to leave her somewhere safe. She can't ride, she can't 
talk, she can't take care of herself. The arrow-shot she got from that last 
batch of bandits would have been the end of her if I hadn't been to the Fane 
first and learned what to do." Freelorn didn't answer.
"I went as deep as I could last night," Herewiss said. "I couldn't hear anything 
but a confusion of voices, and if I can't reach her there's nothing more we can 
do. Look, tomorrow afternoontomorrow night, maybewe'll be riding through Chavi 
to get the news. We can leave her there; they'll be glad to have her. She'll 
take her time, get better, and follow us


when she can. Face it, Lorn, the Shadow's after us. We can't care for an invalid 
from here to Bluepeak."
"She saved my life," Freelorn said, his voice breaking harshly out of him. He 
wasn't angry at his loved, but at the unfairness of the Morrowfane, which had 
done this to her and left him untouched. "Several times . . ."
"She knew what she was doing, all those times," Herewiss said. "She knew what 
she was doing when she went up the Morrowfane. Lang told us so. And shell know 
why we're doing what we're doing, and understand."
But there was little hope in his voice
the blackness swallowed her again. AU around her the rush and
swell of inhuman voices was beginning, faintly, as if for the first time the 
sources of the swnd were at some distance from her. But soon enough they would 
drown her resistance beneath their implacable song, close in on thai one 
untouchable 'memory, rip it untimely from beneath the rock
and make it come as real as the others.
She shuddered violently. No, oh no. And in any case I won't be left behind at 
the next inn as if I were a lamed horse!
Her bruised and battered pride got up one more time from the hard floor to which 
it had 'been knocked, and made itself useful. I am a tai-Enraiesi. If my 
ancestors could see me they would laugh
roe to scorn! And I'm a sensitive trained in the ways of the inner mind, Fire or 
no Fire. I won't stand inside here and do
nothing!
Off to one side, distantly, she could still hear Freelorn and Herewiss
talking. Gulping with terror,, Segnbora turned her back on them, concentrated 
as best s'he could, and began making her way toward the huge
voices, deeper into the dark . . .


Five
Offer an enemy a fatse show of hospitality in order to damn him. and the fires 
will fall on your head, not his. Give him the truth with his meat and drink, and 
trust it not to sour the wine. . . ,
s'Jheren, Advice unasked, 199


       



 


It was a long walk, full of halts, hesitations, and confusions, for the voices 
seemed to grow no nearer as she walked. Then abruptly she discovered that she 
had a seeming-body again, by walking into a wall, hard. She staggered back from 
it, momentarily seeing white with painthen stepped forward with arms 
outstretched, and bashed her fingertips into the wall. She pushed close to it, 
spreading her arms wide, embracing the familiar roughness; she laid her face 
against it and squeezed her eyes shut against tears of vast relief. At last this 
place was beginning to behave as it should.
Any trained sorcerer has an inner milieu into which he or she retreats for 
contemplation or preparation of sorceries. This, at last, was hersnot an 
abstraction of blackness and things buried, but the old cavern a mile down the 
seacoast from the house at Asfahaeg, her favorite secret place as a child.
Long ago the coast dwellers had broken a thirty-foot hole through the cavern's 
high, domed ceiling, turning it into a rude temple where they performed 
wreakings and weather-sorceries to the sound of the waves crashing just outside. 
As an adult sorcerer Segnbora had made its image part of her, a great airy cave 
full of sunlight or moonlight and the smell of the ocean.
She opened her eyes again, pushed back cautiously from the wall and looked up, 
trying to find the shaft-hole in the ceiling. After a moment she located it, 
though the shaft was
distinguishable from the rest of the ceiling only by two or three faint stars 
that shone through. Odd. The cavern had
never been this dark before . . . She turned and looked the


other way, trying to get herself oriented somehow. The faint rumble of the Sea 
bounced all around her, difficult to localize, but at last she thought she 
detected a slight difference in sound right across from her, a deadness that 
might mean the cave's opening onto the beach. She stepped cautiously away from 
the wall, then started to walk.
She touched something, It wasn't the wall. It was smooth, and dry, and hot. In 
her shock she stumbled forward instead of jerking back, and the something 
clamped down on her outstretched right hand, hard.
She cried out wordlessly in rage and horror at the frightening violation.
"It seems rude to put your hand in the Dragon's mouth and then scream before you 
know whether you've been injured," said a huge, slow, deep bass viol of a voice, 
from right in front of her.
Whatever had been holding her hand released it. Segnbora backed away and stood 
there rubbing the hand, which had been held tightly but not hurt. She was 
bitterly angry at herself for having shown fear, "What the Dark are you doing 
in here?" she yelled,
"We were invited," said the voice, puzzled. "Your accent is poor," it added. 
"Speak more slowly."
"Accent" She stopped and realized that she hadn't been speaking Darthene, or 
any human language, but the odd and terrible one that the voices in the darkness 
had been using. "'Never mind that! You can't be in here, this is me!"
"'What is *me"?" the voice said without curiosity. "Rather, say "We are here/ "
There was a pause.
'"'May we ask why you keep it so dark in here? Were you keeping it so because 
the place where we met was dark?"
"I can remedy that," Segnbora said, annoyed. She lifted a hand,, called up a 
memory of noon sunlight pouring in through the shaft
and nothing happened.
"""'You are leaving us out of the reckoning," said the deep, slow voice as 
calmly as before.
"Perhaps you would assist me then," Segnbora, said, an-


 
noyed and uneasy. She concentrated again. "Sunlight ..."
This time the light came, streaming down through the shaft from a sky that 
seemed bluer and deeper than usual. Segn-bora looked down and away from the 
blinding lightand was blinded instead by the intruder.
The rough dark textures of the face she had touched in the Fane were dark no 
longer. The sunlight spilling down from above shattered and rainbowed from 
scales like black sapphires, every one with its shifting star. The Dragon 
blazed and glittered like a queen's ransom, his every breath and movement 
creating a shower of dazzle around him.
Now, Segnbora thought in wonder, / begin to understand that old story about 
Dragons spending their time lying on piles of jewels. . . .
His head hung above and before her, no longer an inert, half-perceived shape as 
it had been in the Morrowfane cave. It was an elongated head: sleeker and more 
slender than a snake's. Its mouth was a beak, like that of a snapping turtle. It 
was the point of the beak, at the very end of the immense serrated jaw, that had 
closed on her hand.
Her gaze travelled upward. From the beak to the place where the jaw met the neck 
was twenty feet at least The eyes were great pupilless globes filled with liquid 
fire, blazing a brilliant white even in the full sunlight. In the iron braziers 
of the nostrils the same light glowed though not so brightly
The Dragon was watching her with no less interest. "Casting one's skin for the 
last time is always a nuisance," it said, "but it's still one of the more 
pleasant things about going mdahaih. You like this body better than the one you 
saw in the cave?"
"No!" Segnbora started to say, but the thought snagged on the new language 
living in her throat, and wouldn't move. The Dracon tongue, she realized then, 
put a great emphasis on accuracy of expression, and her one, bald, angry word 
was therefore insufficient.
"You look absolutely beautiful," she said at last, "and I wish to the Dark you'd 
go away."
"It wasn't my idea to become mdahaih in a human, believe me," the Dragon said. 
"Nor was it that, of the rest of the mdeihei. They've been making a great deal 
of noise about it."
She had never heard the words before, and she understood them instantly. 
Mdahaih: indwelling within a host body and mind. Mdeihei: the indwellers, the 
souls of linear ancestors, the thousand-voiced consensus, the eternal 
companions.
The thought made Segnbora's hair stand up. She realized then that the sound she 
had been hearing in the background was not the Sea. It was other voices, like 
that of the Dragon. It's a pleasant enough sound, she thought. A single Dragon 
sounded like a bass viol talking to itselfa deep breathy voice full of hisses 
and rumbles and vocal bow-scrapes. But Dragons in a group seemed to prefer 
speaking together, and had been doing just that ever since she walked back into 
her cavern. The result was a constant quiet mutter of seemingly sourceless 
voices: scores of them, maybe hundreds, coiling together words and 
meaning-melodies in decorous, dissonant musics.
Now they were growing louder, They didn't approve of Segnbora, of her clumsy 
gropings and, her rudeness to them in the darkness into which they had been 
thrust. Nor did they approve of the abnormal singleness of her mind, and they 
said so, in a dark-hued melody that sounded like a consort of bass instruments 
upbraiding its audience.
"I don't much care whose idea this whole thing was," Segnbora. said,, "But 
won't you, creatures please" She fumbled for the right word,, but there was no 
word for undoing the mdahaik relationship. "Won't you just go away?" she said 
finally, feeling uneasy about, the vagueness of the term.
'"'Where?" the Dragon, said, puzzled.
"Out of us!" She stopped, then, annoyed. In this language there seemed to be no 
singular pronouns. The only singular forms in the language were for1 inanimate 
objects, and human beings, and other such crippled, single-minded, entities.
"That is impossible," the Dragon explained patiently. It had. lowered its voice 
into its deepest register,, the one used for addressing the very young. "You are 
mdeihei, and will be until you die,.'*'*
The word it used was res *uu>: lose-the-old-body-and-move-into-a-new-one. 
Segnbora rubbed at her aching head in bewil-deimenl.


"Listen," the Dragon said, "if you were one of us, you'd bring about hatchlings 
in time, and the soulbond between you and them would be established once they 
broke shell The bond would grow stronger in them as they grew, and weaker in you 
as you became old. Finally, when you left your body, you would be drawn into 
them: become mdahaih. And so it would be with their hatchlings, on through the 
generations, forever ..."
"Forever," Segnbora whispered, feeling weak. "But all those voicesthey can't 
all be your ancestors.... we wouldn't be able to hear for the noise!"
"The ones furthest back are hardest to hear. They fade out in timewhich may be 
as well. The mddhm are for advice, among other things, and what kind of advice 
can someone gone mdahaih fifty generations ago give to the sdaha, the 
out-dweller? The strongest voices are the newest, the first four generations or 
so."
Segnbora sat down on the floor, miserable. The great head inclined slightly to 
watch her, causing another brief storm of rainbows.
"What happens," she said eventually, "if I die, and there are no children, and 
no one is close by to accept the linkage, the soulbond, as I seem to have done 
for you?"
She could see no change of expression in the iron-and-diamond face, but the 
Dragon's tone went grave. "A few have died and gone rdahaih," he said: not 
"indwelling" or "out-dwelling," but "und welling." "They are lost. They and 
their mdeihei vanished completely, and from the mdnhei of every Dragon 
everywhere. They cease to be . . ."
Segnbora shuddered.
The Dragon's wings rustled in its own unease. "Your people have a word," he 
said. "A Marchwarder taught it to us: 'immortality.'' He said that humans desire 
it the way we desire doing-and-being. We have '"immortality' already; only 
rarely do we lose it. Had you not come to the Fane, we would have gone rdahaih. 
Mercifully the Immanance at the heart of what-was-and-is saw to it that you were 
there."
I'll never get married, then, Segnbora thought, heavy-hearted. Humans had a 
Responsibility: They had to reproduce tfaem-


 
 
selves at least once, and until the Responsibility was fulfilled she was not 
free to marry any man or woman or group. She couldn't take the chance of passing 
this curse along to a child. She couldn't! It was going to be hard to die 
without knowing whether she would see the Shore
"O sdaha," the Dragon said quietly, "since we're going to be together for a long 
timeregardless of your plans for hatchlingsperhaps we might know your name?"
She stared upward, angry again in the midst of her pain. "I don't remember 
asking you to listen to me think!"
"Among sda'tdae, there's no use in asking for permission or refusing it," the 
Dragon said. "One hears. You'll find there's little I will hide from you. Nor do 
I understand why so many of your memories are lying here sealed in stone, though 
doubtless, answers will become plain in time."
The pattern of notes the Dragon wove around them said plainly that he considered 
her something of a disappointment. Still, there was compassion in the song 
behind the words, and amusement mixed with wry distaste at the situation he 
found himself in.
Segnbora rose slowly, She was finding it difficult to be angry for long with 
someone so relentlessly politeespecially when, he was. so large. She was also 
getting the uneasy feeling that all the courtesy and precision built into the 
Dra-con language was there to control a potential for terrible savagery.
"Segnbora d'Welcaen tai-Enraesi," she said, giving him the eyes-up half bow due 
a peer.
"Hasai s'Vheress d'Naen s'Dithe d'Rr'nojh d'Karalh mes'-en-Dhaa'lhhw'ae," the 
Dragon said, giving his name only to the nearest five generations.
The named ancestors sang quiet acknowledgment from the shadows beyond the 
sunlight. Hasai lowered his head almost to the floor' and raised his wings in 
greeting, spreading them fully upward and outward in an awesome double canopy. 
Membranes, like polished onyx stretched between batlike finger-struts, and the 
sunlight was blocked suddenly away.
Her breath went out of her again, in sheer amazement. "Oh, my," she said., awed, 
"you are big. May I look at you?"


       



 


"Certainly."
Segnbora walked around to her left, putting some fifteen yards between herself 
and Hasai so she could see more of him at once. Fifty feet of jeweled neck led 
down to two immense double shoulders, from which sprang both the backward-bent 
forelimbs, now folded underneath Hasai, and the first * "upper arm" strut of the 
wings. Each of these struts ended at the first bend of the wing in a curved 
crystalline spur, as sharp as the diamond talons on each forelimb's four claws, 
but much longer.
Segnbora walked the length of the Dragon, out of the shadow of his wings, past 
the great corded hindlimbs, which were taloned as the forelimbs were. Slowly she 
walked along the crystal-spined tail, scaled in sapphires above, crusted in 
diamond belowand walked, and walked, and walked. Finally she came to the end of 
it, where the sapphires were small enough to be set in an arm-ring, and the last 
crystalline barb, sharp as a sword, lanced out ten feet or so from the 
foot-thick tailtip.
She looked back up the length of the body between the wings. It was like looking 
at a hill wrought of gems and black metal. Even supine on the stony floor, the 
slenderest part of Hasai's body, his abdomen, was at least fifteen feet high and 
perhaps forty around. His upper shoulders were at least thirty feet across. 
There was just too much of him.
"I can't understand how you fly," Segnbora said, starting back up the other 
side.
"The proper frame' of mind," Hasai said, arching his head backwards to watch 
her. "After all, our people aren't built like the flying things you have here. 
We are light. Observe." Hasai lifted up the last ten feet of his tail and 
dropped it on her. Reflexively, knowing she was about to be crushed, Segnbora 
threw her arms up to ward the tail awayand found herself supporting it on her 
hands. It was very heavy, but not at all the crushing weight she had expected.
"See?" Hasai said, flicking the tail away to lie at rest again.. Segnbora shook 
her head in wonder. The rough under-crusting looked like diamond, the' scales, 
looked like sapphire "What are you made of?" she said, starting' to walk 
again.


"Flesh, bone, hide. And you?" Segnbora blinked. "About the same. ..."
"You're not quite as tough, however," the Dragon said, sounding mildly rueful. 
"1 remember the beast you will be riding, biting you there" The glittering tail 
snaked up at Segnbora again, prodding her delicately in the chest. "You will be 
bleeding, and wishing for hide more like mine, that the beast would have broken 
its teeth on"
As politely as she could, Segnbora undid the tailspine from her surcoat's 
embroider)', where it had snagged. She was wrestling with an unease that was no 
longer vague. She had noticed before, while fumbling for words, that in Dragon 
language there seemed to be several extra tenses for verbs. Now they all. became 
clear. 'They were precognitive tenses future possible, future probable, future 
definite. Dragons, she realized, remember ahead as well as back.
She shuddered, wanting to reject the possibility of ever doing that herself.
"We're not buUt to remember everything that happens to us," she said then to 
Hasai, resentfully. "Not consciously, anyway. Listen .. ... I can feel the 
mdeilm back there remembering everything that ever happened to them, every 
sunset and conversation and breath of wind. We don't do that."
"It makes seo.se that you would reject ahead-memory," Hasai said. "'You do not 
have it, the warders tell us. You even have trouble dealing with what is. But to 
reject our past-memories as well"
Segnbora shrugged, "What good, are fifty generations of Dragon memories to a. 
human.?*''
"But you're not a human," Hasai said calmly. "Not totally. Not anymore." He 
looked, away from her, a Dragon shrug, matching hers, "Sooner or later you will 
look and see. Doubtless not. soon."
Segnbora went narrow-eyed with anger at the Dragon's cool dareand at the 
realization that this situation, was completely out. of her control.
"'Show me now," she said.
Hasai bent, his head, down beside her and dropped his jaw slightly in an 
expression of mild amusement. His action gave


       



 


Segnbora a frightfully clear view of diamond fangs as long and sharp as scythes, 
and of the three-forked smelling-tongue in its recess beneath the blunt one used 
for speech. Worst of all, she could see the fulminous magma-glow of the back of 
the throat, where Dragonfire seethed blindingly.
"Well," Hasai said, watching her calmly as a sleepy volcano, "will you put your 
hand in the Dragon's mouth willingly this time?"
"Why not," Segnbora said, nervous, and irritated for being so. "Here, take the 
whole arm"
Without giving herself time to hesitate, she went over to his great toothy table 
of a lower jaw and thrust her arm up to the shoulder between two huge forefangs, 
resting the forearm on the dry hot tongue. Slowly and carefully Hasai closed his 
mouth, holding Segnbora"s arm immobile but not hurting it.
(Comfortable?) he said wordlessly, his inner voice sounding, if possible, 
bigger than his outer one,
"Yes, thank you."
(Well, then . . . )
Without warning, Segnbora found that her body felt wonderful. Her eyes could 
suddenly see colors she had been missing: the black reds, the white violets. 
She felt for the first time the curves and planes of the energy flows that were 
as much a Dragon's medium as the currents and flows of atmosphere. Her muscles 
slid lithe and warm beneath gemmed skin. Her eyes held light within them as well 
as beholding it without. An old, yet delightful burning banished the cold from 
her throat and insides. Power was there, and strength.the dangerous grace of 
limb and talon and tail. She felt reborn. She also felt hungry.
(We'll eat,) she heard one of her selves suggest,.
Agreeing, she crouched and coiled her way over to the door of the cavern, folded 
her wings carefully and slipped out.
(Wa.it a momentthat door's only a few feet wide!)
(That, was your memory,) said one of the mda.heit a strong voice, fairly 
recently alive. (This is mine.)
Out they went into the brilliant light, of noon at, Onoli. (This isn't my beach, 
either!)
(No, my old one.)


Immediately she spread her wings right out to their fullest, to feel the sunfire 
soak into the hungry membranes and run through her like white-hot wine. She 
basked, drinking her fill of the light, lazing while the strange-familiar 
thoughts of a
Dragon's day-to-day life flowed through her.
The mdeihei rumbled lazy assent, a placid rush of low voices blending with the 
sound of the waves. She got up after a while, raising her wings, feeling with 
them the flows of all the forces that Dragons manipulated and took for granted, 
as fish accept water or birds the air. It was an old delight: the chief joy of 
the Dragonkind, dearer even than, speech.
(What else are we for?)
The wings were hands. She grasped the currents she felt moving about her, pulled 
herself upward, sprang and flew.
The first, leap took her high over the shore, and she watched with amazement and 
delight as she gained altitude. Boulders dwindled to pebbles and the huge crash 
of the breakers shrank to a soft-spoken crawl.
(Inland,, perhaps?) said the mdaha who had spoken, her song' calm with her own 
joy.
(Oh, please!)
She' wheeled, catching currents of air and fields of force with her wings and, 
her mind, gaining more altitude and speed as she soared south and west, over 
northern Darthen. Below them, the sunlit headlands of Sionan and Rul Tyn lay 
patched and quilted, with small field-squares. There were threads of brown 
road,, and, toy houses like a child's carved playthings. Southward stretched 
wilder, emptier lands, tree-stippled hills, forests like green shadows on, the 
fields.
She leaned up toward the sky and gained, more height, watching the sunlight 
flash, on, a river-strung series of little lakes.. Upward still she dove, 
through a furry fog of cloud-cover, and saw the Darst below go pewter-shadowed. 
More distant lakes and. rivers seem to hover unsupported in the haze below. She 
dipped one wing, stretched the other up and out in a bank. Over her the 
patterned sky turned as if on a pivot.,, wheeled like a, starry night about her 
center . . .
The higher and farther she went,,, the lovelier it all became. Thick, clouds as 
white as drifting snow rose up before her,


       



 


balzing in the sunlight. Bounded by these mountains of the sky, drowned far down 
in the depths of air, the land lay dim and still. Pacing her above the silence, 
the white Sun rode, swimming soundlessly in an unfathomable eternity of blue.
Still higher she climbed. Above her the sky went royal blue, then violet. Her 
wings lost the wind entirely and began to stiffen in the great cold above the 
air. She stopped beating them and fixed them at full soaring extension. Her mind 
was doing all the work now, manipulating fields and flows, triggering the 
shutdown of some body functions, the initiation of others which would protect 
her in the utter cold of the Emptiness.
The sky went black, and the stars came out, the winter stars that summer 
daylight hid, burning steady as beacons. In the same sky with them hung the 
ravening Sun, unshielded now by the thick cloak of the world's air. It was a 
searing agony on her membranes but an ecstatic heat within. Quite suddenly the 
mdaha whose memory this was flipped forward, tumbling end for end
Had she been breathing, breath would have gone out of her. Below her, she saw an 
impossibility. The flat world was curved. The black depths of the Mother's night 
rested against that curvature, holding it as if in a careful hand. The whole 
great expanse of the Middle Kingdoms, from Arlen in the west to the Waste in the 
east, could be seen in a single glance. Beyond them were unknown lands, unsailed 
seasthe whole of human experience and possibility held under a fragile crystal 
skin of air.
Awed, she spread wings and bowed her head to the wonder. Surely this was the way 
the Dragons had seen, the world on the day they came falling out of the airless 
depths: a jewel, a treasure, life
(Perhaps you understand now,)' Hasai said,, his voice hushed with old love, old 
pain,, (why we decided to stand and fight for a home.)
She hung there, unmoving in the silence beyond all silences, and understood.
(Not that we've forgotten what we left,) said the other mdaha. (Torn and see)


Something happened to the Sun hanging behind her back. It fell suddenly strange, 
but welcome, like the touch of a friend corning up from behind. She turned and 
found that it
had changed, was bigger, hotter, pinker. Close beneath her hung the memory of 
the ancient Homework!, red-brown and dry; a harsh place, a birthplace, dear and 
dead.
A great mournful love for the lost lands where her kind was born rose up in her 
at the sight. But the mournfulness turned to something deeper and more piercing 
as she looked off to one side. Suspended there, seeming to cover half the 
endless night, was a great swirled pattern of stars. They seemed frozen in 
midturna whirlpool spraying drops and gemlets of rainbow fire, its arcs sinuous 
and splendid as the curve of a tail, its heart ablaze like the memory of the Day 
of Dawning, when, the World's Heart beat its first.
Oh, My Maidm, my Queen, they know You too
She could find no other thought. Thinking was driven out of her by the 
immensities. After a while she realized she was leaning against Hasai's face, 
her cheek resting on the great sapphired one, her left arm holding the Dragon 
close and her right in his mouth, up to the shoulder. And her face was wet. She 
straightened up, abashed.
Hasai let her arm loose, and Segnbora spent a few moments brushing herself off 
and trying to find some composure. Hasai watched her gravely, wailing.
"It felt real!"
'"And so1 it was."
"But that happened a, long time ago!"
''""Certainly. And, it happened again, right, then."'
"But it was a, memory," Segnbora said, confused. "If I had tried to change what 
was happening, I couldn't have."
""'Of course you, could have changed, it," Hasai said, politely. "We wondered 
that you, didn't try."
She shook, her head again. Perhaps she was just not thinking well in this 
language yet.
"It was. very beautiful,," she said after a pause.
"''We thank 'you, sdaha." There was nothing in Dragon life more important than 
memories, and the sharing of them. "It's well that you find value in who we 
were, and are, for we cannot


       



 


leave. Henceforward, you will have to deal with us as we are as we shall deal 
with you."
Segnbora looked up in sudden anger at the immense face above her. "Who are you 
to dictate terms to me in my own mind?" she cried.
"You say 'your own mind'," Hasai said. "You imply ownershipor at least 
control. Prove your claim. Leave this 'mind* and then come back. Or better 
still, remove us."
There was a long silence, during which Hasai watched her, and neither of them 
moved.
"We cannot leave, either," said Hasai. Baffled, Segnbora shook her head. "Now 
what?" she said finally.
"Now," Hasai said, "we sue for pardon of wrongs done in haste."
He bowed to her, his wings going up again, and his great head sinking low; lower 
than ever, this time, till it almost touched the floor. Those eyes as tall as 
her body were below her own.
"I amsorryabout the mdeihei. " The words came out of him oddly; to a Dragon 
this was like apologizing for breathing. "They were trying to find out what 
kind of place they were in. That can be very important. We are large as your 
kind reckons size, true enough; and well armed, and long-lived. But we have our 
fears too."
Segnbora became conscious that the rustling in the shadows had stopped, and 
that many eyes were gazing out of it at her with a frightening and alien 
directness.
"I am aware of your dislike for others delving in your memories. I will keep the 
mdeihei out of your pastthough you are of course welcome to ours. But I don't 
know what I can do about your future"
"Neither do I," Segnbora said, with a rueful laugh. "The present is giving me 
enough problems already." Suddenly she was thinking about Lorn, and Lang, and 
the others. Had they left her in Chavi as planned? She had to get out and see 
where she was . . .
"Since you are us now," Hasai said, sensing both the joy and danger her liege 
represented, "you must be more consci-


entious in safeguarding your body. There is more than just one of you to go 
rdahaih if you're careless."
"And you of course will take care of me for the same reason"
"We would take care of you anyway, shared mindspace or no," Hasai said. "Life is 
the Immanence's gift, not to be thoughtlessly cast away even when it is alienor 
angry."
Segnbora bit the inside of her lip, ashamed of herself. / did ask for a change 
at the Fane, she thought after a moment. The request has certainly been granted! 
But it's just like the old stories: If you don't specify what you want when you 
wish for something, you may get a surprise. . . .
"I must go." Segnbora turned and headed for the little low door of the cavern.
"Sehe'rae, sdaha," said the huge viol-voice from behind her: Go well, 
outdweller.
Segnbora paused. "Sehe'rae" she said, and tasted the next word. "mdaha. " 
Mindmate.
The mdeihei, pacified at last, settled back into the song of the ages, the 
litany of all their memories, all their lives. Segnbora threw a last glance at 
Hasai, burning in iron and diamond in the light from the shaft. Then she turned 
and ducked through the door
to stare at the dawn from her blanket-roll. The Sun hadn't yet climbed over the 
edge of the world, and gray mist lay low over the grassy lea in which the camp 
was set. Off to one side the horses stood together, stamping and quietly 
snorting their way toward wakefulness; three or four feet in front of her, the 
campfire was down to ashes and embers.
"Thank You, Goddess," she tried to say; but her throat, after some days of 
disuse, refused to do anything but squeak like the sparrows trying their voices 
all around. She was about to try clearing her throat a bit when the fire before 
her flared up wildly.
(Took you long enough!) it shouted, annoyed and delighted. (Herewiss!)
From behind her came hurried rustling: blankets being thrown aside, wet grass 
whispering as someone came quickly


 
through it. Then Herewiss was down on his knees in front of her, staring at her.
"Are you sure? The last time it was just a coughing spell"
Segnbora looked up at Herewiss and very distinctly croaked a rude word in the 
oldest of the dead Darthene dialects, a word having to do with one of the less 
sanitary habits of sheep.
"Now I'll cough/' she said, and she did.
A thump occurred during the coughing spell, and Freelorn was beside Herewiss. He 
grabbed Segnbora by the shoulders and shook her. "Are you all right? Are you?"
"I will be when you stop that. . . ." she gasped. As Lorn helped her sit up, she 
looked around at the approaching morning with appreciation too great for words. 
"Can I have a drink?"
Herewiss got water for her and sat with Freelorn staring at her while she drank, 
as if at someone returned from the dead. "How long was I out?" she said between 
sips.
"Six days," Herewiss said. "We thought we'd have to leave you in"
"I know. I heard you. I would have done the same thing.**
Freelorn and Herewiss glanced at one another in relief. To the sound of more 
rustling, Lang dropped to the grass beside them. He stared at Segnbora and said 
nothing; but her under-hearing woke up as if it had been kicked, bringing her a 
flood of worry, not nearly as relieved as that of the others.
She took another drink to gather her composure, and then looked at Lang and said 
quietly, "You told me so. ..."
He shrugged and looked away.
"Here," Freelorn said, "you ought to see'" He got. up, went off and rummaged 
around in his bags for a moment, then came back with a small square of polished 
steel, a mirror,
Segnbora looked at herself. The same old faceprominent nose, pointed chin, 
deep-set eyes with circles smudged a bit darker than usual. But her hair wasn't 
the same: It was coming in shockingly silver-white at the roots, "Oh dear," she 
said, and couldn't find anything else to say.
Lang got up abruptly and went away.
Segnbora handed Freelorn back his mirror and looked at
 
Herewiss. "I had quite a night. Can I sleep a little more? Then
I'll be able to ride/"                                                           
  ...       -      j
Herewiss nodded. "Rest," he said. "Chavi is still a day away, and we're not in 
such a hurry that you can't recuperate
, .  *
* She nodded back, suddenly very weary, and lay down, gratefully wrapping her 
blankets around her. Some time after she closed her eyes, she realized that 
neither her liege-lord nor his loved had moved, but were still watching her, 
wonder-
flr
" 'Berend," Freelorn said very quietly, "the thing that hap-
pened to you at the Fane What was it?"
"Not   'it',"   she   sighed,    without   opening   her   eyes.
"'Them.'"
This time the darkness was only sleep, and she embraced
it.


Six
If you'll walk with kings and queens, well; but take care. For the Shadow aims 
ever at themand though It often misses, It doesn't scorn to hit the person 
standing closest.
Askrythen, 14, xi


It was an odd riding that someone standing on the old diked road to Chavi would 
have seen approaching through the evening. Indeed, maybe it was better that no 
one was there to witness it.
Between the tall hawthorn hedges in the fading light came, first, two men in 
country clothes, one on a sorrel, one on a bay. Their horses flinched and shied 
occasionally, for their riders were juggling stones, and dropping them 
frequently. A third man on a black palfrey was repeatedly plucking a single 
string on a lute, trying to elicit the same note twice in a row from his 
tone-deaf companion. Then came a young slim woman in a worn brown surcoat, 
riding a Steldene steeldust mare. She spoke occasionally to the empty air, like 
a. madwoman, with a hoarse voice; and frequently raised a hand to brush back 
hair that was oddly pale at its roots and part,
Behind her, bringing up the rear, rode a tall dark man on a blood-bay stallion 
and a short dark man on a black-maned chestnut. The small man was waving his 
arms and arguing about something; his tall companion nodded gravely at most of 
what he said, glancing occasionally over to his. left, where' a hundredweight 
boulder was floating along beside him in the
air.
"Look at them. Look at them! They'll never manage a juggling act with people 
watching them.! Dusty, I love them,, but they can't juggle air!"
* 'They 11 do all right. They're just out of practice. It's been seven years 
since they juggled for a living, after all."
"Yes, but"
'"Lorn, they'll do all right. So will you, and so will Moris and


Dritt and the rest. Most of the entertainers on the road are only mediocre 
anyway. And it's not as if gleemen's immunity depended on whether we're good or 
not. No one's going to suspect anything. This is the middle of nowhere."
"Mmmmf. . . ."
(Hah!) Sunspark said suddenly from beneath Herewiss. (For one lousy penny I'm 
supposed to cut off my legs?)
Segnbora tried to put her head under her wing in token of mild exasperation, and 
found she couldn't. She made a face. "The punch line usually conies at the end 
of the joke," she said.
(Oh. Well, there's this beggar)
"That one won't work now. We know the ending. Start another.."
(All right.) It thought a moment, and Segnbora shook her head, bemused.
While she had been busy with Hasai, Dritt had made the mistake one day of trying 
to make friends with Sunspark by telling it a joke. Since then it had decided 
that joking was a vital part of human experience, and had been demanding 
everyone to teach it the art, on pain of burning them when Herewiss wasn't 
looking. As soon as she was in the saddle again, Sunspark had accosted Segnbora. 
In no mood for joking, she had suggested that it tell her jokes, and thus learn 
by doing. She'd had no peace since,.
(SO' there are these two women, they go into an inn and the innkeeper conies to 
their table, and one of the women says,,, 'Bring us the best red wine you have, 
and. be sure the cups are clean!* So the innkeeper goes off, and comes back with 
a tray, and says, "Two red wines. And which, one asked for the' clean cup?1*)
Herewiss closed his eyes and laughed. "Not. bad."
(I made it up,) said Sunspark, all childish pride. It did a quick, capriole out 
of sheer pleasure, and almost unseated Herewiss.
"Oof! Watch that, you. On second thought, maybe we should increase your part, in 
the act. We could use another jester."
"Mnk'qalasihiw, Hkir"' Segnbora, cleared her throat. The
                                                                                 
                          
Dracon language was beginning to fascinate her, and her desire to master it 
sometimes caused it to get out of her mouth before Darthene did. "I mean, 
Herewiss, there's only one problem with that. What happens if an audience 
doesn't laugh?"
Sunspark threw a merry glance at its rider. (If they don't laugh, we get rid of 
them and bring in a new audience.) The thought "get rid of them" was attached to 
plans for the same sudden-death fire that had been the end of the deathjaw.
Freelorn glanced up at the sky, no doubt to invoke the Goddess's protection on 
their next audience. Herewiss looked hard at his mount.
Sunspark laid back its ears and showed all its teeth around the bit, then 
subsided somewhat. (They will come back,) it said, sulkiness showing in the 
thought, (you told me so!)
"They will. But there's no reason to hurry people out of this life."
"Don't be hard on it," Segnbora said. "It learns quickly. Another few months and 
I dare say the audiences will be safe."
Freelom and Herewiss exchanged unconvinced, humorous glances, but Segnbora 
didn't noticed
She was feeling hotbut then, these days, she felt hot most of the time. She 
closed her eyes to glance back, in mind, at Hasai. Through this day and the day 
before he had been stretched at ease in the seaside cave, looking out of her 
eyes, silent for the most part. He stayed out of her thoughts except to ask an 
occasional question. The rest of the time the rumble of his private thought 
blended with the bass chorus of the mdeihei, a sound Segnbora found she could 
now start to ignore, like the seashore when one lives nearby.
She looked down into herself now and saw Hasai sunning himself in the noon light 
that splashed down through the cave's shaft. His wings were spread out flat like 
a butterfly's, lying easy on the floor; his neck was curled so1 that his head 
lay under one of them in the position. Segnbora had tried to achieve before.
"That one is insolent," Hasai said, referring to Sunspark. "Is it not?"


In Dracon the question was rhetorical, and Segnbora had no answer for it. She 
turned away from Hasai without further thought and opened her eyes again on the 
evening. There was a sweet sharp hawthorn scent in the air.
*' 'Berend, did you hear me?" Freelorn said.
"No, Lorn, I was talking to my lodger." She reached out and picked a white 
blossom off the hedge past which they were riding, held it to her nose.
"Oh. Sorry. What are you. going to do tonight? Pass the purse?"
"She can sing/* Herewiss said.
"You can? Well, that's news! You know many songs?"
"A few/* Segnbora said. She reined Steelsheen back to ride abreast of Herewiss 
and Freelorn, suddenly feeling the need for company more normal than that she 
carried inside her. "I'm best with a kithara, but I'll do all right with the 
lute."
Herewiss was still being paced by that boulder. It was easily half Sunspark's 
size, but he showed no sign of strain, and at the same time was keeping 
Khavrinen from showing so much as a flicker of Fire. His control was improving 
rapidly.
"You won't have any trouble with your part of the act, that's plain," Segnbora 
said.
Herewiss shrugged, waving the rock away with one hand. It soared up over the 
hedge like a blown feather and dropped out of sight, hitting the ground in the 
field on the other side with an, appalling thud.
"It's easy," Herewiss said. "Even the ecstatic part of the Fireflowthose 
overwhelming' sensations of pleasure you experience during a wreakingare under 
control since we dimbed the Fane/"
Freelorn looked, thoughtful, "''You know, I wonder whether the Goddess installed 
that ecstatic aspect of the Fire on purpose,, to keep people from doing large 
wreakings casually; as a sort, of control"
'"'More likely as a, reward,, to make sure the Power's used. But in either case, 
I'm as free of the ecstatic part of the flow as I desire/" He paused, then went 
on nervously. "It's a little dangerous, though. The .first time I picked up that 
rock, I had to be careful that the whole field didn't come with it . . ."


Lorn laughed, and reached out to squeeze the hand of his loved.
After a while, at a turn in the road, they could make out a low huddle of 
squared-off silhouettes against the horizon. Lamps burned like yellow stars in 
each window.
"Your guest" Freelorn said abruptly to Segnbora. "You said 'they' before . . ."
"Hh'rae nt'sseh," she said, and corrected herself with a smile. "It is they. But 
it's also he. Mostly he."
Freelorn's expression was impossible to read. "Are you still you?"
Oh Goddess, Lorn, if I only knew! she wanted to cry; but she kept her voice 
calm. "I'm not sure. Oh, Lorn, let it lie ... when we have time, I'll take you 
and Herewiss inside and introduce you. I'm me enough to function, at least."
Freelorn hastily cast around for something else to talk about. The lane had 
widened into a road of a size to drive cattle down, and was well tracked and 
rutted. "Been a lot of traffic here, I'd say."
"For this time of year, yes." Segnbora gazed up at the town. "How many days in 
Spring this year?"
"Ninety-three," Herewiss said. "A Moon and a day till Midsummer. Why?"
"Just wondering. . . . Used to be my mother and father would start up for 
Darthis now, to do Midsummer's in the city with the rest of the Houses. We used 
to pass this way. But we haven't done the trip since they built the inn at 
Chavi. My father started having trouble with his legs. It was arthritis, and he 
couldn't take the long rides anymore," Suddenly she' missed him terribly, in 
spite of the poor understanding he'd had of her.
"You know this place, then," Herewiss was saying. '"That's a help."
She nodded, blinking back unexpected tears. "They'll be glad to see players. Not 
many come' down here, especially after the bad weather sets in. They probably 
haven't been entertained since last summer."* She1 glanced! at Freelorn. "If 
things are as bad in Arlen as they are here. . .. don't overcharge them, okay? 
From the look of the fields,
this year's harvest isn't going to be any better than the last." Freelorn 
nodded. Good harvests were a king's responsibility. Bad ones were a sign of 
troublelike the empty throne
in Arlen.
"I'll see to it," he said.
Segnbora nodded, pleased. Lorn was changing. In most respects he was still the 
same brash, adventure-hungry prince whom she loved so dearly, but increasingly 
he was overcome by thoughtful silences. When he spoke, there was a new sobriety 
in his tone.
She could sense why. The land through which they travelled was his by right, 
and its plight was desperate. The fields were dry and dusty; the people, 
over-taxed, were in rags. What prince could see this and fail to feel his heart 
swell with outrage, fail to feel his sword-hand itch for justice? There was a 
cause growing in Freelorn*s mind, and it excited her.
Nevertheless, they were a long way from restoring him to his throne. They were 
so few, after all, and had been away so long. , .
Indeed, it was months since they had heard any news of the kingdom. The 
usurper's authority would be well established by now. It was for that reason 
that Lorn had chosen the inconspicuous town of Chavi for their first real foray 
into civilization. Here, disguised as entertainers, they could gather 
intelligence without arousing suspicion.
(How about this?) Sunspark said. (The Goddess is walking down, the road and She 
sees a duck)
They rode up to the town's rough fieldstone-and-mortar
walls and were readily admitted. Chavi was much as Segnbora remembered it. The 
town's central square was stone-paved, surrounded by earth and fieldstone houses 
with
soundly thatched roofs. A few, though, still had turf roofs, with here and there 
a scamp flower growing. Men drying
their hands on dishtowels and young women with floury hands came' to the 
windows, attracted by the sound of hooves on, cobbles.
Up at the front of the line of riders, Dritt unslung his dm-


       



 


brel and began banging it earnestly, calling their wares: "Songs and stories, 
tall tales! Shivers and chuckles, sleepless nights, horrors and heartthrobs, 
deaths and delights! Mimicry, musicry, tragedy, comedy"
A small crowd began to gather. Dritt began juggling two knives and a lemon, 
breaking the rhythm occasionally by catching the lemon in his mouth, and making 
puckery faces when he let go of it. Harald was strumming changes on Segn-bora's 
lute, and angling it so the torchlight from the cressets by the inndoor would 
catch the mother-of-pearl inlay.
Herewiss dismounted, pulled the saddle off Sunspark, and snapped his fingers. 
The stallion disappeared, replaced by a great white hound of the kind that runs 
with the Maiden's Hunting. The fayhound danced once about Herewiss on its hind 
legsbringing ooohs and aaaahs from the audience, for upright it stood two feet 
taller than he didthen, at his clap, it sat up most prettily and begged. At 
another clap it bowed to the audience, grinning with its huge jaws. At a fourth 
clap it changed to a tree that creaked and groaned as if a wild wind tore at it; 
then to a huge serpent that coiled around Herewiss and tried to squeeze the life 
out of him, and finally to a buck unicorn.
A delighted cheer went up from the crowd, the kerchiefed ladies and 
dusty-britched men applauding such illusion as they had only heard of before. 
Man and unicorn held their tableau, while Moris turned handsprings on the 
stones, and Freelorn went inside to dicker with the innkeeper for the night's 
room and board.
Not long afterward Lorn emerged, and gestured to the crowd for silence. He was 
wearing the very slight crease of frown that was all he allowed himself when 
disturbed in public. "Kind gentlemen, good ladies," he said, "we'll begin our 
evening's entertainment an hour after sunset. Please join us,. one and all."
The crowd in the street, murmuring appreciations,,, began to disperse. Herewiss 
stood up and dusted himself off.
"Everything all right?" he said to Freelorn, noticing that faint crease of 
worry.
"Yes," Freelorn said, in the same tone of voice he would have used to say "no." 
"The innkeeper worries me, though."


"He's stingy?"
"No. We hardly had to bargain, he gave right in. It's something about his 
manner"
"Maybe he was busy."
Freelorn shrugged. "Could bethe place is lively inside. Come on, I want a bath 
before dinner."
They stabled the horses, including Sunspark, who wanted to indulge its fondness 
for oats but promised to follow later.
The inn itself, the "Yale and Fetlock," was a long, low, battered-looking place 
of fieldstone with a weedy turf roof and a rammed dirt floor. The main room was 
smoky and full of people, all in the linens and woolens of townsmen. Some sat 
eating at long rough tables starred with rushlights. Others stood eating at 
sideboards, sat drinking in the middle of the room, or simply milled around. All 
were talking at the top of their lungs.
(Sweet Immanence,) Hasai said, sitting up in alarm behind Segnbora's eyes and 
looking out at the jostly drinkers' dance, (what's being decided here?)
(What?)
Amemory now surfaced, but of a sight she had never seen. In a stony deserted 
vale. Dragons, a great crowd of them, moved among one another in a precise and 
graceful pattern. It was nn's'raihle, Convocationsport and ceremony and family 
fight and celebration all. at once, the form of disagreement and resolution 
that Dragons found the most elegant and, delightful.
(Oh,) Segnbora said, seeing the likeness to nnYraihle in the tense movement in 
the room. (No1, mdaha, this is social. 'They'll talk about whatever's happening, 
but they won't be making any decisions here.)
(How can they all abrogate their responsibility like that?) Hasai said,, uneasy. 
(You, all live here; how can you not act to nin the world?)
(lib) Segnbora stalled, watching Freelorn. He had somehow already found a mug 
of ale, and was shouting in an old roan's ear, "Ei, grand'ser, what's all the 
pother for?"
"Reavers!" the gaffer shouted back, and started telling of mcursions to the 
south in Was ten and Nestekhai.
(Well?)


 
She breathed out, wondering what to say. (Uh. Hasai, most humans are empowered 
only to make decisions regarding themselvesor those close to them. They don't 
sit down, have an argument about something and then make a decision by which all 
humans will be bound. They would never all agree)
(Then how do you get this world to work? How do you get anything accomplished?) 
Hasai said, bewildered.
Segnbora shook her head. "Done" didn't translate well; "do" and "be" seemed to 
be the same word in Draconstihl. (That will take time to explain . . . )
(Never mind, then. I see that there are more important matters to be concerned 
with. These incursions by the Reavers . . . are they close by, do you think?)
Segnbora made a face. (Too close. I wish we were farther north. But we dare not 
be; we would arouse too much curiosity there. Excuse me, Hasai. I've got to get 
ready for our show) (Certainly.)
She found the innkeeper. He was a knifeblade of a man, all grin and nervous 
energy. Segnbora could see that he would have made a quick business of the 
dickering. She got a mug of rough cider from him, and went to her bath.
Scrubbed and dressed in her worn but serviceable black gown with the tai-Enraesi 
crest on one shoulder, she went back to the common room and began talking to the 
patrons, assessing their mood, asking for requests. Just the sound of their 
voices gave her pleasure. They spoke in the old reassuring South Darthene 
accent that had been her mother's. It was a rich speech, slow, broad and full of 
archaisms. "Maistress," the slow-smiling, staid-faced townsfolk called her. 
"Aye, gaffer, tha'st hit it," she would drawl back, and they would laugh 
together.
She found Freelorn and Herewiss and the others at the best table by the central 
hearth, and sat down with them to a meal of aggressively garlicked lamb and 
buttered turnips, baked bannocks, and a soft, sharp sheep's-milk cheese to 
spread on them.
Freelorn, reviling the vintage of the cool white potato wine that had been 
brought up for them from the ice-cellar, never-


 
 
theless drank off three cups one after another, and by mistake almost drank the 
Goddess's cup as well. Lang gave Segnbora a nudge, and they traded glances. 
Freelorn had been in a mood like this the night he had gotten them all chased 
out of Madeil, the night Segnbora ran across him.
"It's all right, I think," she whispered.
Herewiss took the wineflask gently away from his loved and forestalled his 
protests by saying, "Who's performing first?"
This started the predictable argument, punctuated with exclamations of, "I need 
more practice!"; "You are too in good voice, I heard you in the outhouse!"; "Oh, 
don't be a coward!"; "I'm a coward, huh, then you go first!"
Segnbora groped under the table for the lute, causing more exclamations. She 
winked at Lang and pulled her chair over by the hearth. Behind her, as she tuned 
the lute's slack ela-string, the fire leaped, roaring up the chimney. There was 
a momentary hush close to the hearth, then intrigued whispers. The fire had 
acquired eyes.
"Thank you," she said, stroking the lute. "This is how it was," she said. That 
had been the storyteller's opening line from time immemorial. The quiet spread 
far back in the room. "There was a queen who would not die"
It was a relative's story, and an old favorite of hers: the tale of Efmaer 
d'Seldun tai-Earn6si, the first woman to be both Queen of Darthen and a 
Rodmistress.
In the fourth year of Efmaer's reign came an outbreak of lunglock fever. Efmaer 
did what she could to treat those of the royal household who were ill, but the 
Fire was of no avail. Soon she caught the malady herself. There was bitter 
mourning then, for under Efmaer's rule the land had prospered as never before. 
When finally she fell into the unconsciousness that precedes death, her 
attendants stole weeping from her rooms, leaving her to die peacefully in the 
night.
But none of them knew their Queen's determination. It wasn't yet her time to 
die. When she suddenly found herself standing before the open Door into 
Starlight, and felt the forces at her back pushing her toward it, Efmaer 
rebelled. She caught at the black doorsills and hung over the starry abyss by 
ten straining fingers. Peace and the last Shore awaited her


 
at the bottom of the darkness, but Efmaer would have none of them. She hung on.
When her tearful attendants slipped into her bedchamber in the morning to 
prepare her body for the pyre, they found her not dead, but sleeping. She looked 
drawn and fever-wasted, but the sickness was broken. In her hand, clutched 
tight, was a long sharp splinter of darknessa broken-off piece of the Door.
Later, when Efmaer was well again, she wrought the splinter into a sword. 
Skadhwe, it was called in Darthene, "Dark-harm." It would cut anything, stone or 
steel or soul, and many were Efmaer's deeds with it across the breadth of 
Darthen and down the length of her reign. And if anyone spoke in fear to Efmaer 
because she had cheated Death at its own Door, the Queen would laugh, unworried, 
certain the Shadow would never bother avenging so small a slight.
Whether she was right no one could surely say, for Efmaer's loved, Sefeden, 
killed himself, and his soul passed into Meni Auardhem, into Glasscastle, to 
which go suicides and those weary of life.
Then Efmaer grew frightened, for Sefeden knew her inner Name; and therefore his 
soul could bind her to this world when it was time to pass onward and be reborn. 
In haste Efmaer rode to Barachael, and climbed Mount Adine, above which 
Glasscastle appeared at times of sunset and crescent Moon and Evenstar.
There was at that time no way for one still in the body to cross to the castle. 
The souls of the dead and the minds of the mad found their way across with no 
need of a physical road. It would have been easy for Efmaer to attempt the 
crossing to Glasscastle in a bird's shape, or as a disembodied soul, but she was 
no fool. The terrible magics of the place would have warped her own wreaking out 
of shape and killed her. Yet she had to get into Glasscastle; yet she could not 
get into Glasscastle.
For some people this would have been a problem. But Efmaer waited for the time 
of three Lights, when the castle faded into being. When it was fully there, she 
drew Skadhwe and smote the stone of Adine with it, opening a great rent in
the mountain, like a wound. With her Fire, Efmaer brought about the chief 
wreaking of her lifetime, singing the mountain's blood out of its wound, 
drawing out the incomparable iron of the great Eisargir lodes, tempering it in 
Flame and passion, hammering it with ruthless song into a blue-steel bridge that 
arched up to the Castle, fit road for a mortal's feet.
When had she wrought the bridge, she climbed it. She came to the crystal doors 
of Glasscastle and passed them, searching for Sefeden to get her Name back from 
him. But she did not come out. And at nightfall Glasscastle vanished into its 
eternal twilight, until the next time of three Lights in the world . . .
"And from that day to this," she said at last, unnerved to feel the tears 
coming, "no one has been so bold as to say they have seen Efmaer d'Seldun among 
the living or the dead. With her, Skadhwe passed out of life and into legend; 
and in the years since the Queen's disappearance, cheating Death has gone out of 
style. . . ."
The applause embarrassed her, as usual. She was glad to get out of what was now 
a very hot chair, and give place to Dritt and Moris and their juggling. Someone 
pushed a cup of cold wine into her hand. She took it gratefully and made her way 
to the back of the room, wiping her eyes as surreptitiously as she could.
"Smoke," she said to Lang as she came up beside him.
"Mmm-hmm."
Together they held up the wall awhile, leaning on one another's shoulder and 
watching Moris and Dritt juggle objects the audience gave them: beerpots, 
platters, clay pipes, truncheons, rushlight holders. Nothing fell, nothing at 
all.
"I can't believe it!" Lang whispered. "Did all that practicing actually pay 
off?"
"Not a chance," Segnbora whispered back. "I smell Fire. Herewiss threw a 
wreaking over them. I doubt they'll be able to drop even a hint until it 
breaks."
Freelorn came toward them through the crowd, with another cup of wine in his 
hand.
"Lorn," Segnbora said softly as he joined them, "just you watch it. Don't get 
sozzled."


 
"Yes, mother."
Segnbora settled back against the wall again and went back to watching the 
jugglers, particularly poor Moris, who had just been handed a full winejug to 
add to the other objects being juggled. He was giving it a look such as the King 
gave the Maiden when he had come to beg one of the hares She was herding. 
Glancing back at Lorn to see his reaction, Segnbora saw that he wasn't paying 
attention. He was watching someone off to one side, out of the hearthlight, eyes 
wide with admiration.
A blocky man moved and Segnbora could see over his shoulder. Past him, there, a 
small figure slipped out of her cloak, accepted a cup from the passing barmaid 
and raised it to her lip, looking over the rim in Freelorn's direction. She was 
a short woman with close-cropped hair of a very fair blonde, small bright eyes 
like a bird's, a mouth that quirked up at one corner
Segnbora froze for a breath, two breaths, watching the light from a wall-cresset 
catch in the butter-blonde hair, giving its owner a halo. (Teg&ne,) she said 
silently, fighting hard to keep her delight off her face. Her loved from those 
long-ago days at the Precinctshere! (You're a long way from home: is Wyn 
keeping supper hot for you?)
("Berendf Are you here!) The face across the room didn't change a bit, but 
Segnbora heard the old familiar laughter, sounding all the more real for being 
silent. (Now I see! 'Be-rend, you.')
(Me what? What are you doing here?) She bowed her head over her cup, needing the 
darkness to hide the smile that wouldn't stay in.
(I was told to come. I dreamed true last night. She told me, *I knowr your 
troubles and your questions. Go quickly to Chavi and you'll find answers.' I 
used the Kings' Door, and a mile away I smelled so much Fire thatoh 'Berend, 
I'm so glad for you!)
{Not me, Tegane.) She flicked a mind-glance at Freelom. (It's this one's loved.)
(You mean) Eftgan's emotions swung rapidly from embarrassment to incredulity. 
(Then that uproar in the Power we
 
all felt last week was someone donating to the Fane! And that story I got from 
the Bright wood people about a man focusing)
(It's true,) Segnbora said, and leaned back against the wall, weak from the 
backwash of Eftgan's excitement.
Moris and Drill finished their juggling, amid much applause. There was no 
opportunity to go to Eftgan, however, for at that moment Herewiss walked in 
through the door from the stabieyard and took his place by the hearth. The room 
quieted.
Herewiss didn't bother with the lengthy introduction that some sorcerers used to 
assure that their illusions would take root in the spectators' minds. Nor did he 
bother with spells. He just sat back in the chair, one arm leaning casually on 
his long sheathed sword. "My gentlemen, my ladies," he said, "a little sorcery."
It was a great deal more than that, but since no Fire showed there was no way 
for the audience to tell. They chuckled appreciatively when tankards and plates 
engaged in a slately aerial sarabande in the middle of the room. They clapped 
when one empty table shook itself like a sleepy dog, got up and began stumping 
around the room on its legs. They hooted with pleased derision when the big 
rough fieldstones in the fireplace all suddenly grew mouths and began talking 
noisily about the things they had seen in their time, some of which made for 
very choice gossip.
When finally all the flames in the rooms shot up suddenly, swirled together in 
the empty air and coalesced into a bright-feathered bird that hung upside down 
by one foot from the chandelier and croaked, "Tve got it! The Goddess is walking 
down, the street and She meets this duck . . ." the storm of laughter and 
applause became' deafening.
Not even Eftgan's composure remained unshattered. "My Goddess," she whispered, 
and from clear across the room Segnbora could feel her smothering down the Flame 
that was trying to leap from, her Ro>d in response to the FireBow Here-wiss was 
letting loose.
A good sorcerer would have had no trouble producing such effects by illusion; 
but these were actual objects moving


around, briefly alive and self-willed. Normally it would have taken two or three 
Rodmistresses working in consort to produce even one of the transformations 
taking placebut there sat Herewiss all by himself, looking like a child 
enjoying a new toy.
The table had sneaked up behind one tall woman and was nibbling curiously at her 
tunic, like a browsing goat. The stones had begun singing rounds, Sunspai k had 
forgotten by now that it ought to have been holding onto the chandelier, and was 
simply suspended upside down in midair, getting laughs for jokes without punch 
lines attached.
(How is he doing that?!) Eftgan said, bespeaking Segnbora very quietly, so as 
not to distract Herewiss.
(Most of these things were alive once,) Herewiss said silently, not moving or 
looking up. (It's just a matter of reminding them how it was. Mistress, I can 
taste your Fire but I can't place youthough there's something familiar about 
your pattern. You know my loved, perhaps?)
(The pattern might be familiar prince) the small woman said, as two chairs put 
their arms about each other and begin dancing in a corner, muttering creaky 
endearments, (because you and 1 have met. At Lidika fields you jumped in front 
of a Reaver with a crossbow and took the quarrel for me while I was having 
trouble with a swordfight)
The hearthstone snorted as if in great surprise, then settled into a bout of 
ratchety snoring. (Eftgan! The Queen's grace might have given me warning!)
(I didn't want to disturb your concentration, prince, though
it appears I worried for nought. But pardon me if I leaveoff
complimenting you for the moment. I have business here, and
you're part of it, I've been told. If I rework the wreaking on
the Kings' Door, can you come with me to Barachael tonight?)
(Depends on Freelorn, madam,,) All the candles on tables
and in sconces tied themselves in knots and kept on burning.
(We're on business of our own, and 1 have oaths in hand that
may even supersede the oaths of the Brightwood line to
Darthen.)
(Oh, that business. I think your business and mine will go well enough 
together.)
(Then we'll talk when I've finished.)
At that Lorn quietly left the shadow of his doorway, heading across the common 
roomostensibly to get another drink and "noticed" Eftgan in what appeared to 
be the fashion of one potential bed-partner noticing another. He paused beside 
her, bent toward the pretty woman, and with a smile that any onlooker would have 
found unmistakable, said in her ear, "Since it's my throne we're talking about, 
madam, and my country, I'd best be there too. Don't you think?"
Eftgan smiled back, the same smile. "Sir," she whispered, "that sounds good to 
me."
The room had become such a merry hurly-burly of laughter and clapping that 
saying anything and having it heard was becoming impossible. Freelorn went off 
for his drink, leaving Eftgan to say silently, and with some diffidence, 
('Berend, have you taken a mind-hurt recently? There's a darkness down there 
that didn't used to be. Is there anything I can do?)
(Dear heart, I don't think so,) she said silently. (I'm told the change is 
permanent.)
(You mean She)
(No. Well, not directly. If you want to take a look . . . )
(Yes.)
Across the room, their eyes caught and held, then dropped again as their minds 
fell together in that companionable meld that had always come so easily.
Segnbora saw and felt,, in a few breaths" space, a rush of images, that were 
Eftgan's surface memories of the past four years. Initiation into the royal 
priesthood, her brother's death, and her own investiture as Queen. The hot 
morning spent hammering out her crown, in the great square of Dar-ttiis, alone 
and unguarded, wondering whether someone would come out of the gathered crowd to 
kill her, as was her people's right if they felt her reign would not be 
prosperous. Worries about Arlen and, the usurper who sat in power there, making 
raids on her borders. Marriage to her loved, Wyn s'Heleth. Childbirth, midnight 
feedings, Narnings, ceremonies, the rites of life, all tumbled together with 
the lesser and greater drudgeries of queenship: mornings in court-justice, 
evenings spent in the difficult wreakings that were necessary


to buy her land temporary reprieve from the hunger and death creeping toward its 
borders.
There was more. Border problems. Reavers gathering in ever greater numbers on 
the far side of the mountain passes, pouring through them almost as if in 
migration. The loss of communications with numerous villages in the far south 
suggesting that their Rodmistresses were dead. The loss of one of her best 
intelligencers here in Chavi, some weeks back. The sudden, urgent true-dream 
that showed Eftgan plainly the reason for all the Reaver movements of late. This 
last discovery had been more shocking than anything the Queen had been willing 
to imagine.
She had been so shocked, in fact, that she had not once, but several times, 
opened and used the Kings* Door, the dangerous worldgate in the Black Palace at 
Darthis. She had done so tonight, and so here she sat in faded woolens and 
patched cloak and embroidered white shirt, like any countrywoman with a pot of 
beer. Yet her eyes were open for trouble, and for the answers she had been 
promised. Her Rod was sheathed and ready at her side.
Segnbora touched lightly on all these things, meanwhile letting Eftgan do what 
she didn't trust the mdeihei to do: turn over her memories one by one. When they 
were done, Segnbora saw Eftgan stare down inside her at a shape burning in iron 
and diamond. Hasai stared back up, bowed his head and lifted his wings in calm 
greeting, then went back about his own concerns, singing something low and 
solemn to the rest of the mdeikei.
When their glances rested in one another's eyes again, Segnbora and Eftgan both 
breathed a sigh of relief at the end of the exertion.
(He's very big,) Eftgan said. (And how many others are in there?)
(Maybe a couple hundred. I tried counting and had to give up. They don't count 
the way we do, and I could never get
our tallies to agree. Tegane, what's bringing all these Reavers down on us? You 
saw something)
(I did.) Eftgan was profoundly disturbed inside, (Part of the reason is storms. 
Their weather Is worsening. It was never very good to begin with, and now the 
Reaver tribes farthest south are faced with a choice. Either they move north or 
freeze even at Midsummer. The tribes already close to us are feeling the 
pressure. There are more people hunting those lands than the available game can 
support. Thinking Fyrd are driving them too. But worse than that)
(What could be worse!)
(Cillmod is in league with them,) Eftgan said, sour-faced, (and the Shadow is 
directing them all.)
Segnbora stared, then took a long drink to hide her nervousness.
(There's worse yet to come,) the Queen said. (My Lady tells me that a great 
shifting and unbalancing of Powers is about to occur in the area around 
Barachael during the dark of the next Moon. On one hand, Reavers are gathering 
on the far side of the Barachael Pass, as if for a great incursion. On the 
other) The Queen took a drink. (On the other, we're due for a eight of three 
Lights shortly. And that means that Glass-castle will appear. Now, what might, 
go into Glasscastle doesn't concern me. What might come out of it does. Unhu-man 
things, monsters, have been summoned out of there before by sorcerers of foul 
intent)
(But who in the Kingdoms would do something like that? That whole area is soaked 
with old blood! Nine chances out of ten, a sorcery would go askew)
(No one' in the Kingdoms would attempt such a thing,) Eftgan said. (But I have 
other news. The dying thought of a certain Rodrnistress managed to reach me, 
even though her bones had just been turned to flour inside her,)
"What!" Segnbora said aloud, in utter shock. She drank again to silence herself.
(The Reavers have got sorcerers now. Apparently someone has gotten a few of them 
over their fear of magic. It is that individual, who surely has no knowledge or 
concern for sor-cerous balances, who worries me. Think what horrors he wight, 
call forth from Glasscastle! He could easily protect the Reaver incursion, and 
destroy our defensewhat, then?)
Segnbora thought of Herewiss's dream, of mountains falling on mountains,, .and 
blood on the Moon, and said, nothing.
(I need him,) said Eftgan, catching the images, which were in agreement with 
those in her own true-dream. (I can't be in all the places I must be, just now. 
One of my other spies tells me that Cillmod and some of his mercenaries are 
about to attack my granaries at Orsvier. I must be there to lead the defense. 
But Glasscastle and Barachael also have to be protected, and it will take Fire 
of an extraordinary level to manage that. Up until now, I thought I was the 
only one in Darthen who had achieved that level. Now) She looked over toward 
where Herewiss stood by the hearth, grinning at the applause he was receiving 
for his "sorcery." (I can't tell you how glad I am to be surpassed,) Eftgan 
said. (Especially at a time like this, when everything seems to be happening at 
once.)
(Queen,) Segnbora said, (you say that everything's happening at once . . . 
well, he's one of the reasons.)
Eftgan nodded, understanding. Then, as Herewiss stepped away from the hearth, 
she crossed glances with him, a "let's-talk" look.
(I'll see you later, Tegne,) Segnbora said, putting her drink aside, and headed 
for the door that gave onto the back of the inn.
Lang was hurrying in as she stepped out. "You on now?" Segnbora said. "Uh-huh. 
Wish me luck."
"You won't need it. Except maybe to keep yourself from being knocked unconscious 
by the money they'll throw."
Lang smiled. "Where're you headed? Oh, my Goddess," he said. Before Segnbora 
could say anything about either the Queen or her own increasingly urgent need to 
find a friendly bush, Lang had spotted Eftgan. "She's here? After seven years, 
she finally tracked down poor Dritt and Moris!"
"Ssssh. Tell the two of them to keep mum; something's on the spit, I'm not sure 
what yet."
Lang said nothing, only touched her shoulder gently as she went past, out into 
the alley and the cool air.
A shiver went down her back. It was more than just a reaction to the coolness 
outside, after the heat and smoke of the inn. Cillmod in league with the Shadow? 
She drew up her gown to keep it off the wet ground, and went down the alley 
behind
the inn, looking for a drier spot to take care of her business. The alley ended 
in a cobbled street that led to the town's fields through an unguarded postern 
gate.
Quietly Segnbora walked down the street, patting Char-riselm once to make sure 
it was loose in the sheath, unbarred the gate, and slipped out. She relieved 
herself in the shadow of one of the ubiquitous hawthorn hedges, then stood 
stretching awhile, listening to the night and letting herself calm down. Far 
behind her, the sound of Lang's baritone escaped through the inn's back door, 
following the lighter notes of the lute through the reflective minor chords of 
"The Goddess's Riding":
"... But if I speak with yon Lady bright, I wis my heart will bryst in three; 
Now shall I go with all my might Her for to meet beneath Her tree. . . ."
"Tegane," Segnbora whispered, smiling. Moon-bright, the nickname said in 
Darthene. Eftgan had liked it; she had never been terribly fond of her right 
name. In fact, she had returned the favor, turning segnbora, "standard-bearer," 
into 'berend, a verb. It meant "swift-rushing": impetuous, always in a hurry, 
sometimes too much of oneas when the Maiden had let Death into the worlds by 
accident.
And as their names, so they had been together while they were in love: Eftgan 
swinging slow and steady through her moods, like the Moon, waxing and waning, 
giving and withholding; Segnbora pushing, hurrying, urging, not sure what she 
wanted but not willing to wait long for it.
The senior Rodmistresses had paired them off to work together in hopes that 
Eftgan's Fire, unusually intense for a sixteen year old, might influence 
Segnbora's enough to make her focus. They expected the play-sharing that usually 
took place between work partners to make the two novices' patterns match more 
closely. No one, however, had expected these two, who were so unlikeone a tall, 
loud, spindly daughter of hedge-nobility, the other a small, compact, quiet 
daughter of the Eagleto fall in love. . . .
Segnbora thought of the day Eftgan had had to leave the
Precincts. It was sudden. Her brother Bryn had been killed by Fyrd while 
hunting.
"They're going to make me be Queen," Eftgan had said, bitter, standing in the 
green shade with her face averted from Segnbora. She had been trying not to cry.
Tegane
" 'Berend, you can't do anything for me. Any more than I've been able to do 
anything for you, all this while. Perhaps its better that I'm leaving now. You 
can't focus, and I can't be happy around you using the Fire and watching you 
suffer while I do wreakings. If this kept on much longer, we'd be hating each 
other."
This was the truth, and it reduced anything Segnbora could have said in reply to 
a meaningless noise. The two of them stood in the shade, hardly able to look at 
one another, and made their good-byes. Each laid a kiss in the palm of the 
other's hand, the restrained and formal farewell between kinsfolk of the Forty 
Houses.
Then Eftgan turned away and vanished among the green leaves of the outer 
Precincts; and Segnbora went in deeper, and didn't come out till her soul was 
cried dry, a matter of some days. . . .
Now Segnbora stood bemused for a moment, then realized that a dark head seemed 
to loom just over her shoulder, though of course there was nothing between her 
and the stars of late spring.
(When you forget me, when you let us be one, it can be this way,) Hasai said, 
dispassionately. (Do you prefer discomfort, apartness?)
She almost said yes, but held her peace. "It was a very private memory," she 
said quietly.
(Sdaha, you still don't understand. You must be who you have been to be who you 
are.)
Segnbora shook her head, weary. Every time I think I understand the mdeihei, I 
find I don't at all. . . . She looked out across the field into which she had 
ducked when she came through the hedge. It was tall with green hay that 
whispered in the starlight. On an impulse she tucked her robe up into her 
swordbelt and started across it, wading waist-deep, enjoying
the sensations: the rasp and itch of the hay against her legs, the darkness, the 
cool wind.
Hasai said nothing, his mind resting alongside hers, tasting the night as she 
did
She stopped short in the middle of the field. Something teased at her 
undersenses, a whiff of wrongness that was out of tune with the clean night. She 
stood there with eyes closed to "see" better
and there, sharp as a cymbal-clash, came the clear perception of a place just 
to the east that felt like an unhealed wound. A hidden thing meant to stay that 
way, and failing.
(Hasai?)
(I'm here. I feel it also.)
(Come on.)


Seven
"You are cruel," Efmaer said. "More cruel than any legend has ever told."
"No more cruel than humans to themselves, who keep hope
as a precious jewel."
Then the Shadow vanished, and Efmaer filled the air where lit had been with 
curses, and rode away after the soul of her
loved .. .
(Efmaer's Ride, traditional: part
the Second)


Segnbora unsheathed Charriselm and went off eastward through the standing hay. 
Another hedge loomed up before her, without stile or hedge-gate. With Charriselm 
she cut an opening, making certain that it would be too small for a cow to 
escape through in the morning, and squeezed through.
The sour mind-stench she had smelled got stronger by the second, becoming so 
terrible that Segnbora wondered how she could have missed it from fifty miles 
away, let alone from the town. At the edge of the field the ground under her 
feet seemed to be burning with it. Her inner hearing buzzed and roared as if two 
powerful hands were choking her. She stopped and held still, forcing herself not 
to gag. The stench was coming from beneath an old yew with peeling bark and 
drooping branches.
She walked under the tree and went to her knees. The fallow ground had been 
plowed almost up to the tree trunk. The furrows lay neat and seemingly 
undisturbed, yet when Segnbora thrust her hands into the still soft ground and 
turned it over, she sat back on her heels, sick to her stomach and sicker at 
heart. There is no mistaking the smell of a grave, especially a shallow one.
Nor was it the only grave. When she found strength to stand again, the 
death-taint led her to four others scattered around the edges of the field. All 
were deeper and better concealed, and all were older: the oldest perhaps three 
months old, the newest about three weeks.
So much for Eftgan's messenger, Segnbora thought, standing over the last grave. 
From the intelligencer's grave and three others, the souls were long flown, 
despite the brutality of their
deaths. But from the one under the yew tree came a sensation of vague, 
scattered, helpless loss. There were two souls trapped there, shattered by their 
murder, trying to coalesce in time to find the Door into Starlight before the 
strength to pass it was lost.
Segnbora swore bitterly, torn with pity for the struggling dead and her own 
inability to do anything for them. Sorcery has no power over the opening or 
closing of that final Door. She knew the protocols for the laying of the dead, 
but without Fire they were useless to her. But Herewiss, or Eftgan
She headed back for town at a run, pausing outside the postern gate to remove 
the sticktights and hay blades from her clothes. The inn's common room was, if 
possible, noisier than it had been. There were perhaps one hundred people there, 
laughing, joking, singingSegnbora's hair stood up at the thought that any one 
of them might be a murderer several times over.
She found Freelorn relieving the barmaid of another bottle of potato wine, and 
swung him aside. "Lorn, where's Herewiss gone?"
"He's still out talking to" Lorn stopped short of saying the Queen's name, then 
looked more closely at Segnbora. "You're shaking!"
"Lorn, never mind. Smile! There's something very wrong and we're not supposed to 
know about it. Take your time but find Herewiss"
"so if the others agree, we'll go to Barachael," Herewiss's voice said suddenly 
as he came up behind Freelorn from the other side. "It's as good a place to hide 
as any, and it's a lot closer to Arlen than we are now . . . What's wrong?" he 
said, looking at Segnbora. His underhearing brought him an answer that made his 
eyes go wide with shock. "Show us," he said. "Lorn, go out the front way. I'll 
take the side. By the postern gate?"
Segnbora nodded and went out the way she had come, doing her best to take her 
time. Lorn and Herewiss were through the postern and into the hay ahead of her. 
She tied up her gown again and hurried after.
"Eftgan's gone to readjust her Door," Herewiss said when
she reached them. "It may take her a little whileseven people, six horses, and 
Sunspark are a larger group than usually uses that gateway." He lowered his 
voice. "I think she's ready to back Lorn against Cillmod, openly. She'll give us 
the details tomorrow, at Barachael."
"That's wonderful," Segnbora said, "but with the problems
she's been having she's hardly in a position to leave Barachael
for a campaign in Arlen."
"True. However, I believe I can help her, and thus free her
to help us in return. You see, the Reavers are pouring through
Chaelonde Pass, and it's a simple enough matter to close that
avenue"
"But the Queen's Rodmis tresses have been doing illusion-wreakings there for 
years," Segnbora objected. "They're no longer strong enough. People have been 
dying in that pass for centuries, and the built-up negative energies are enough 
to ruin even the best Rodmis tress's work."
"Oh, I'm not planning mere illusions. I'm planning something more powerful, and 
less subtle: a sealing."
"You mean physically closing the pass?'* Freelorn said, stunned. "Shaking down a 
few mountains?" "That's right." "You call that simple?"
"Simple, yes. And dangerous, too. It will require much Power, but then it's also 
less likely that something will go wrong ..."
They slowed as they approached the spot Segnbora had sensed before. Herewiss 
looked at her as he let drop what he had been saying. A long moment passed.
"How long have the people in the grave been dead?" he asked her.
"Grave?"
"A week or so, I think. They're weak. They were getting along in years, I 
believe, and the shock of their death was considerable. You have the protocols"
"I have them."
"Protocols, what protocols?" Freelom said.
"For raising the dead,'"' Herewiss said. "Stay dose,. Lorn, I'm going to need 
you . . . Oh, sweet Mother," he added as
the sour smell of murder hit him. Segnbora was already tearingthe psychic 
residue of violence became not easier, but harder to handle with exposure.
"Goddess, what 15 that," Freelom said, and coughed.
Both Segnbora and Herewiss looked at him, surprised.
"You smell something?" Herewiss said.
"Don't you? Like a channel pit." Freelom coughed again.
Herewiss looked most thoughtful, for the graves were covered and the night air 
was sweet even here; the stench was purely a matter of the undersenses.
They came to the yew tree, and stopped. Quickly, for the smell was now 
overwhelming, Herewiss reached over his shoulder and drew Khavrinen. Its Fire, 
suppressed all through the evening, now flared up, a hot blue-white.
Concerned, Segnbora threw a look over her shoulder at the walls of Chavi.
"Only our own people and Eftgan will be able to see the Fire," Herewiss said, 
quiet-voiced, slipping into the calm he would need for his wreaking. "Now then . 
. ."
The wavering of Flame about Khavrinen grew less hurried as its master calmed, 
yet there was still a great tension in every curl and curve of the Flame. With 
the tip of the sword, Herewiss drew a circle around the tree, the graves, 
Freelorn, and Segnbora. Where Kh&vrinen's point cut the fallow ground, Fire 
remained, until at the circle's end it flowed into itself, a seamless circle of 
blue Flame that licked and wreathed upward. Finally, when the three of them had 
stepped inside the circle, Herewiss thrust Khavrinen span-deep into the soft 
dirt, laid his hands, one over the other, on the sword's fiery hilt, and began 
the wreaking. "Erhn tot 'mis kuithen, dstehae sschur; nsven kes uibrm"
The words were in a more ancient dialect of Nhaired than any Segnbora had been 
taught. Even in Nhaired, which held within it many odd rhythms, the scansion of 
this wreaking-rhyrne was bizarre. Freelorn was fidgeting, watching his loved 
with unease as Herewiss reassured the trembling yew and the murder-stained earth 
that he was about to end their pain, not niake it worse. He stood and called the 
Power up out of him, sweating. The circle's Fire reached higher, twisting, 
wreath-
ing, matching the interlock of word with word, of thought with rhyme
Herewiss poured out the words, poured out the Flame, profligate. Power built and 
built in the circle until it numbed the mind, until the eyes saw nothing 
anywhere but blue Fire, and a man-shaped shadow at the heart of it, the 
summoner.
Segnbora was overwhelmed. She did the only thing safe to doturned around inside 
herself and fled down to the dark place in search of Hasai. His Power, he has 
too much! No one can have that much! she thought. Once in her own depths she 
could see nothing but burning blue light, but at last she stumbled into Hasai 
and flung her arms around a hot, stony talon. Concerned, the Dragon lowered his 
head protectively over her.
Outside, after what seemed an eternity of blueness, tension ebbed. Segnbora 
dared to look out of herself again and saw the pillar of Fire that wreathed 
about Herewiss diminish slightly as he released his wreaking to seek outside the 
circle for the fragments of the murdered people's souls. He spoke on, in a 
different rhythm now, low and insistent, urging outward the unseen web the Fire 
had woven of itself, moving it as an ebb tide pushes a thrown net away from 
shore. When the web had drifted across the entire field, he reversed the meter 
of his poetry and began pulling it in again.
Segnbora swallowed hard. Light followed the blue-glittering weave; dusts and 
motes and sparkles drifted inward, small coalescing clouds of pallid light. They 
drifted inward faster now, coiling into two separate sources; they grew brighter 
and brighter, tightening to cores of light that pulsed in time with Herewiss's 
verse. A last sharp word from Herewiss, a last burst of blue light, dazzling
The Fire of the circle died down to a twilight shimmer, though about Herewiss 
and Khavrineti, Flame still twined bright. Segnbora found herself looking at two 
solid-seeming peoplea man, shorter than herself, middle-aged, stocky, with a 
blunt, worn face; a woman of about the same age, still shorter, but more slender 
for her height. They both looked weary and confused. Segnbora gazed at them 
pityingly in that first second or so, seeing strangers
and then knew them.
She could not move. " 'Kani, what happened? We were in bed . . ." the man said, 
looking at the woman with distress.
His voice, the voice that had frightened her, praised her, laughed with her. The 
woman turned to him. Her face. The sight of it made Segnbora weak behind the 
knees, as if struck by a deadly blow.
"Mother," she whispered.
"Hoi, no," Welcaen said. "The innkeeper woke us up, he said the horses were 
loose" She broke off, horrified by the memory. Segnbora was stunned. That 
beautiful, sharp, lively voice was dulled now, like that of anyone who died by 
violence. "They tricked us into coming out here," the voice continued, finally. 
"He had an axe. His wife had"
Her husband's eyes hardened, a flash of life left. "Why did they bother with 
such illusions? Wre have no money"
Herewiss stood without moving, although through her shock Segnbora saw him 
swallow four times before he could get his voice to work. "Sir," he said, "madam 
... It was no illusion that was wrought upon you."
"Hoi," Segnbora's mother said, stepping forward to get a better look at 
Herewiss. She moved like a sleepwalker. "Hoi, this isn't one of them"
Holmaern looked not at Herewiss's face, but at his sword. "That's impossible. 
Men don't have Fire!" The words came with a flash of disbelief and scorn. 
Segnbora remembered too well his bitterness over the fact that, despite all the 
money he had spent, she had never focused.
"Tins man has it," her mother said, a touch of wonder piercing the sleepy sound 
of her voice. "Sir, did you save us?"
"Lady Welcaen," Herewiss said. "I didn't save you. Of your courtesy, tell me 
what brought you to the inn here."
"Reavers," she said, dreamy voiced, as if telling of a threat years and miles 
gone. "They came down through the mountains at Onther looking for food, and 
overran the farmsteads. We and a few of our neighbors had warning. Wre got away 
north before the burnings, and told our news here, to the innkeeper, so he could 
spread it among those of this town. And tonight he woke us up"' . '.vm' 
Holmaern turned to his wife, slow realization changing his expression to a 
different kind of dullness. " 'Kani," he said. He reached out to touch her, but 
it was plain from his expression that she didn't feel as he expected her to. " 
'Kani, we're dead."
Segnbora saw her mother's eyes go terrible with the truth. "Oh . . . but then . 
. . where is the last Shore?"
Herewiss stared down at Khavrinen, and Segnbora felt him calling up the Power 
again, a great wash of it. This time it took a strange and frightening shape, 
one she didn't know.
"I am the way," he said, speaking another's words for Her.
He let go of Khavrinen and lifted his arms, opening them to her mother and 
father. They gazed at him in wonder. Freelorn, across the circle, went pale. 
Segnbora trembled at the sight of him. Herewiss was still there as much as any 
of them, but within the outlines of his body the stars blazed, more brilliant 
than they had been even in Hasai's memory of the gulf between worlds.
Herewiss trembled too, but his voice was steady. "Who will be first?" he said.
Holmaern held Welcaen close. "Can't we go together?"
Herewiss shook his head sorrowfully. "I'm too narrow a Door," he said. "Besides, 
even at the usual Door, everyone goes through alone. ..."
Husband and wife looked at one another. "We have a daughter," her mother said 
after a moment. She glanced around the field, but saw nothing. "Will you send 
her word?"
Segnbora's heart turned over and broke inside her.
"Segnbora d'Welcaen tai-Enraesi is her name," her father said, and even through 
the dullness it came out proudly. "She was eastaway in Steldin last we heard. 
Please tell her . . . tell her that we love her."
"Come on, Hoi," her mother said then. "We've got time to go-"
Herewiss opened his arms. Welcaen moved into them, throwing a last glance at her 
husband on the threshold of true death. "I'll wait for you," she said.
Herewiss embraced her, and she was gone.     r; ^aie? h?;y
Next Holmaern stepped slowly forward. When he was still one pace away, however, 
he paused, a last glimmer of earthly concern showing in his eyes. He spoke to 
Herewiss. "Sir, you will tell her, won't you? She is my daughter, and although I 
have been slow to say so, she is very dear to me."
"Your message has already reached her," Herewiss assured
him.
Holmaern looked relieved. With a nod of thanks, he gathered Herewiss close, 
passed through, and was gone.
Khavrinen's Fire went out, and the circle faded to a blue smolder and died. 
Beside his now-dark sword Herewiss went slowly to his knees, and sobbed once, 
bitterly.
"That's not the way it is supposed to be." He gasped again. "Lorn, it was 
supposed to be life I give"
Freelorn went to him, and held him close. "And what kind of life would they have 
had, dead and on the wrong side of the Door?"
Segnbora stood still, seeing behind her eyes, with the immediacy that came of 
Hasai's presence, old lost times: summer mornings in Asfahaeg, rich with the 
smell of sunlight and the Sea; winter nights by the old hearthside in Darthis; 
afternoons weaving with her father, riding with her mother; laughter, anger, 
argument, joy, the sounds of life. She turned and walked away, back toward town.
The purpose behind her stride caught up with her at about the same time that 
Freelorn and Herewiss did, in the middle of the hayfield. They stopped her, 
looked at her as if expecting her to lapse again into a state of madness like 
that she had experienced after the Fane.
"Well? What's the problem?" she asked, her anger hot and quick.
"What are you going to do?" Freelorn asked warily.
Charriselm's grip was sweaty in her hand as she thought of the 
innkeeperhurried, merry, sharp-faced, with eyes that wouldn't meet hers. "I'm 
going to kill someone," she said, and shook out of their grasp.
" 'Berend" Freelorn said.
She ignored him, hurrying off through the hay. Didn't he realize that it wasn't 
only because of her parents that she had


 


to do this? Lorn's people might easily have been the next victims, bringingas 
might be thoughtnews from the South. She at least would have to be killed, 
since she wore the same arms as two others who were silenced, and was thus 
probably in search of them.
Behind her she could feel Fire stirring again. Herewiss had begun another 
wreaking. She understood why. He was a strategist. He would count it folly to 
kill a spy, and thus alert the spy's superiors to the fact that that someone had 
discovered the game they played. He was building around the innkeeper a 
wreaking that would later cause the man to believe he had murdered those whom he 
was duty-bound to murder, when in fact they would go on their way, unnoticed and 
unharmed. It was all perfectly sensible, and Segnbora despised the idea.
(My way is more efficient,) she said, silent and bitter. (He won't know what's 
happened to him until a second after I hit him, when he tries to move and falls 
over in two pieces. And as for his wife)
She went quietly through the postern, expecting an empty street. Instead, Moris 
and Dritt were there. So was Harald, standing about silently with their horses. 
Lang had just joined them, along with Eftgan, who had her cloak about her 
shoulders and her unsheathed white Rod in her hand.
Segnbora would have brushed past the Queen to take care of her unfinished 
business in the inn, but Eftgan's hand on her arm, together with her look of 
deepening concern at the taste of Segnbora's mind, stopped Segnbora as if she 
had walked into a wall.
" 'Berend? What happened?"
Segnbora looked down at Eftgan's brown eyes, so like her mother's, and flinched 
away, unable to bear it.
"Oh, my Goddess," Eftgan said. "Herewiss?"
A breath's worth of silence sufficed for Herewiss to show Eftgan what Segnbora 
had found, what he had done for her parents, and the dream-wreaking he had woven 
and implanted in the innkeeper, and afterward in his wife.
"Can we get out of here now?" he said, sounding deadly tired. Sunspark paced to 
him in its stallion shape, and Herewiss leaned on it, sagging like a man near 
exhaustion. It looked at him in concern.
"Done," said the Queen, and gestured with her Rod at the ground where she stood. 
The wreaking she had been maintaining until they arrived leaped upward from the 
stone and wove itself on the air, a warp and weft of blue Fire that outlined a 
small squarish doorway. The doorway flashed completely blue for a moment and 
then blacked outbut the black was that of a different night, a long way off. 
The Door sucked in air. On the other side they could see smooth paving, a better 
road than that of the damp cobbles of Chavi.
"Hurry up," Eftgan said. "It's a strain to hold it for this many, and the Kings' 
Door is unpredictable."
One by one they went through, each leading a horse. Eftgan stood to one side of 
the Door, Flame running down her Rod and keeping the lintels alight. Lang 
stepped through before Segnbora, his eyes on her, looking worried. Numb, she 
followed him. The one step took her from the wet lowland air of Chavi, air 
stinking of death, into air colder, purer, but not entirely clean of the taste. 
Her ears popped painfully.
The night was perhaps an hour further along here; the stars had shifted, in one 
part of the sky they were missing entirely. She looked around the paved 
courtyard where Freelorn's people milled, among horses and men and women in the 
midnight blue of Darthen. Over the low northward wall she could see faintly, in 
the starshine, the valley where she had sometimes lived as a child, with the 
braided Chaelonde running through it. Many a time she had stood down there 
looking up at the place where she stood nowSai khas-Barachael Fortress, the 
black sentinel perched on an outthrust root of one of the Highpeaks.
Dully, she looked southward to where the stars were blocked from the sky. 
Looming over khas-Barachael, shadowy dark below and pale with starlight above, 
the snows of Mount Adine brooded, impassive and cruel.
"It's late," Freelorn was saying. "We'll meet in the morning, all of us. 
Meanwhile, does the Queen's hospitality extend to a drink?"
Segnbora saw to Steelsheen's stabling and made sure her
corncrib was full, then followed Lang (who seemed to be beside her every time 
she turned around) to a warmly lit room faced in black stone. There was hot 
wine, and she drank a great deal of it. The explanations went on and on around 
her, but she was never as dead to them as she wanted to be.
Snatches of conversation and random thoughts faded in and out of hearing, as 
they had when she had first come down from the Morrowfane. She would have 
welcomed Hasai's darkness to flee to again, but she couldn't find it. He and the 
mdeihei were, for once, too remote. They wanted nothing to do with her, the 
mdeihei. She was too familiar with the kind of death to which they couldn't 
admit. She was carrier of a contagion of terror and impossibility. The more she 
tried to approach, the more they fled her, afraid of any death in which one 
could lose oneself.
Somehow she found her way off to the tower room they had given her, and to bed. 
Lang was there too. He held her, and she clutched him, but she found no comfort 
in his presence. Her thoughts were full of graves, bare dirt, eyes that looked 
right through her. Her mind talked constantly, again and again making the most 
terrible admission a sensitive could make: / never felt you die. I never felt 
it.
Tears were a long time coming, but they found her at last; and Lang, more hero 
than she had ever been, held her and bore the brunt of her blows and cries and 
impotent rage. Bitterness and a shameful desire for vengeance; they were all 
still tangled in her at the end, but she knew at least she would be able to 
sleep. For tonight.
Over the bed and the room and the fortress, like a great weight, loomed the 
thought of Adme, and a line from the old family rede, which now might have a 
chance to come true: There will come a time of ice and darkness, and then the 
last of the tai-Enraesi will die. Flee the fate as you may, you shall know no 
peace until the blade Jinds your own heart, and lets the darkness in. ...
Darkness. That was the key. One Whose sign and chosen hiding place was darkness 
was coming after Herewiss and Freelorn. She had chosen to ride with them, and to 
defy It. And It hated defiance, and never failed to reward it with pain of one 
kind or another.
She could leave Lorn now, and her troubles would cease, or she could stay with 
him, and they would almost certainly get worse. The Dark One obviously had it in 
for her. But what could be worse than a head full of Dragons, and to suddenly 
find oneself orphaned, she couldn't imagine.
Beside her, Lang turned over and started to snore.
She lay there for a long time with the tears running down the sides of her face 
into her ears. And chose again.
Shadow, she thought at last, it's war between us from now on. I'll die soon 
enough. But You won't get Lornor anybody else, if I can help it.
The darkness about her teemed with silent, derisive laughter. She turned her 
back on it and went to sleep.


Eight
Kings build the bridges from earth to heaven. But it is their subjects' decision 
whether or not to crossand if they do, there is no guaranteeing the nature of 
the result.
On tfre Royal Priesthood, Arien d'Lhared
'"Iff-1


       



 


People who live in the Highpeaks find it easy to believe the old story that the 
Maiden creates the World anew, every day, for the sheer joy of it. Astonishing 
dawns come there. Later, the face of a mountain changes as the shadows swing 
across it, revealing a new countenance every quarter hour. Still later come 
sunsets that run blood down cornices of snow, or light a whole range as if from 
within, until it all seems one great burning opal. Then twilight dissolves 
everything, leaving only shadows where peaks have been; cut-out patches on the 
sky, from which the mischievous Maiden has removed the mountains so She can 
rework them for the next day.
Huddled in her cloak, Segnbora leaned on her elbows on a battlement of Sai 
khas-Barachael at dawn, watching the mountains come back. The Sun was up, though 
not yet visible past the eastern peaks. Beneath her Barachael valley was still 
hidden in shadow and morning mist. The valley was nearly circular. The walls 
broke only at the far northern end, where a quarter-arc of the circle was 
missing and the land sloped down northward toward the rest of Darthen. 
Khas-Barachael fortress stood on the northernmost spur of high ground, on the 
western side of the break, commanding a view of both the Darthene plains and the 
valley.
Segnbora gazed across the gap, though which the little braided Chaelonde River 
ran down from its glacier, toward the mountains that reached long spurs to each 
other and made the rest of the ring. First came Aulys, right across the gap, 
like an eagle with bowed head and drooping wings. South and west of it 
Houndstooth reared, smooth and polished-looking, and armed with avalanches. 
West of Hounds-


tooth, between it and the next mountain, was a shadowy spot -the north end of 
the Eisargir Pass, through which Reavers lad been raiding for food and metal 
since time immemorial. Tien Eisargir himself, like a great stone rose unfolding 
with lis down-spiraling spurs. Westward again lay a low col or [saddle between 
mountains, over which looked red Tamien. Tien came rising ground that grew into 
the long northeast-jointing Adine massif.
Segnbora looked over her shoulder, scanning the long crest line. It was scarred 
on both sides with old glacial cirques; jscraped-out bowls of stone. One such 
bowl was still full: the [South Face cirque beneath the lesser, southern peak of 
Adine. lice spilled over from it to feed the glacial lake which in turn fed the 
Chaelonde. Every now and then the morning stillness ld be broken by a remote 
groan or a huge crashing snap, lade tiny by distance, as the glacier calved off 
an iceberg into [the lake.
Above the glacier, and above the eminence of Sai khas-larachael two thousand 
feet above the valley floor, Mount idine loomed like a crooked, ruined tower. 
Its greater peak fstood two miles higher than khas-Barachael and a sheer league 
above town in the valley's depths. Segnbora shud-lered, though whether from 
morning's cold or a feeling of threat she didn't know. A breath later, the Sun 
rose through the gap between Aulys and Houndstooth and touched on the lesser 
Adine summit. There, tiny and sharp, a line of something silvery glittered; the 
Skybridge, bright even against the )linding white of the peak on which it stood.
Segnbora shuddered again, this time knowing why. Uncon-:erned, Hasai said from 
inside her, (We thought about living there, once . . . )
(Under the bridge? I thought Dragons didn't care to live fhere the shadowed 
powers are.)
(We don't. When we saw what happened at certain times of ('ear, we abandoned 
plans to make a Marchward there. Also there are weaknesses in the valley, and we 
were afraid we fould disrupt the land if we worked as deep into that main lassif 
as we normally would.) (This was how long ago?)


       



 


Hasai looked at his memories and counted the passing suns backward in his mind. 
(Fifteen hundred years or so.)
(That long . . . )
Segnbora moved away from the wall and walked along it, southward, to a corner 
where she could better see the Eisargir Pass. The increasing light was already 
revealing the reddish tinge to the rocks where they were bare of snow. There 
under Eisargir lay the oldest mines in Darthen. From them came the finest iron 
in the Kingdoms; iron from which the people of Barachael made the matchless 
Masterforge steel. Goddess only knew how many times Barachael had been raided, 
burned, and razed by the Reavers, who came down the Eisargir Pass again and 
again on their forays into the Kingdoms.
Those forays had been one of the deadlier aspects of life in the South for a 
long, long time. No one knew much about the Reavers; their language was utterly 
different from any spoken in the Kingdoms. But prisoners taken in battle had 
revealed a little of their lives. The countries overmountain were short of iron. 
Indeed, one had merely to examine the Reaver bodies on any battlefield to see 
that: Their weapons were largely flint-tipped spears and arrows. Some were not 
tipped at all, but were mere sharpened sticks blackened and hardened in fire. 
Because of their lack of metal the overmountain tribes were small and poor. In 
the high cold South few crops grew and little game could flourish. So it had 
been until twelve or thirteen hundred years before, when some desperately 
hungry Reaver tribe had followed a game migration northward instead of 
southward ... and had discovered the Eisargir Pass, and Darthen, and steel.
Those first Reavers were no fools. They saw that the richness of the farmland 
below them was not all to the credit of the warmer climate. They discovered the 
plow and the sword. They stole as many of both as possible, and fled back 
over-mountain with them to change their world.
The tribes that followed grew swiftly in, power, becoming more successful as 
both hunters and warriors. In no time the old balance of power was upset. Tribes 
skirmished, merged, conquered, or dominated one another, grew more numerous, 
extended their hunting grounds. Game became scarce as they
overhunted their lands. Their agriculture languished, as it usually does in 
lands where war has become a profitable pastime.
Already a nomadic people during their short summer, the Reavers took 
wholeheartedly to a raiding lifestyle in order to survive in their unbalanced 
world. When the weather broke in the spring and the passes opened, they would 
raid northward, spending the spring and summer raiding for loot and cattle, but 
most of all for steel to use in their endless tribal quarrels. Time and again 
Barachael was attacked, looted, and burned
Again and again the town was rebuilt, too. Neither the stubborn smith-sorcerers 
who lived there, nor the Darthene crown that ruled them, would give up the 
Eisargir mines. Sai khas-Barachael was built on the northernmost Adine spur to 
keep an eye on the Eisargir incursion route, but even its formidable presence 
did not deter the Reavers. They continued to raid, though more circumspectly, 
and in greater numbers, so that the battle for the Chaelonde valley was never 
over. Only Bluepeak had ever seen more blood shed on its behalf.
The thought of battle, of blood, was not a welcome one that morning. Segnbora 
turned her back on the southern prospect and walked north along the wall. But 
that view held no comfort for her either. Northward the highlands fell away to 
the green and golden plains. On the plains, far out of sight but clear in her 
mind, was Darthis, her family's formal home, and the only one remaining, now 
that Asfahaeg was sold and Wasten Beeches sacked by Reavers.
There in Darthis, on Potboilers' Street just outside the old second wall, stood 
the little stone house with doors and windows shuttered blind, and the 
tai-Enraesi lioncelle carved over the passage to the horseyard. Her mother 
wouldn't be singing in the armory anymore, her father wouldn't be re-hanging the 
bedroom shutter that was always falling down. There was only one person left to 
carry the lioncelle; and how long even that one would survive she couldn't tell. 
Ice and darkness. . . .
(Those who sired you?) Hasai said diffidently, (is that ques-
tion what concerns you? Since last night there's been a I don't know what you 
would call itan opening in the depths)
She blinked back sudden tears, and her mouth was grim. (Mdaha, forget it, 
they're rdahaih. They're gone and I'll never see them again, not till I pass the 
last Door. Maybe not even then.)
She felt him turn his head away, a gesture of shock and sorrow at her hard words 
and her pain. (Their souls live yet, don't they?)
(They do. It might have been otherwise if we hadn't found them in time.) Her 
rage at the murdering innkeeper, which had been gnawing at her like an ulcer all 
the night before, flared up hot again. She turned her back to the wall, to the 
wind.
After a long time Hasai said, (We didn't understand this businessor believe 
it.) In his voice there was distress. Far back in her inner darkness, the 
mdeihei were singing a mournful bass cadence, both dirge and apology. (You 
humans throw yourselves so willingly into strifes and dangers that we thought 
surely you must go mdahaih somehow. Otherwise it seemed a madness)
(We don't get the same life twice. Or know the same people twice. So in this 
life we fight for what matters. Herewiss fights for Lorn, and Lorn for his 
kingship. All of us fight for our own happiness, as best we can. Once past the 
Door, it's done forever.)
Hasai fell silent again. The same fear, of not-being, and not-remembering, was 
at the heart of the terror of going rdahaih, and nothing could frighten a Dragon 
more. She heard Hasai wondering what would become of him and the mdeihei when 
her time came to change bodies. Perhaps this human death would be more final and 
terrible, in its way, than going rdahaih. Segnbora's pain turned to sorrow for 
the fear she had planted in him.
(Mdaha,) she said, (I'm sorry. But you and I, we're an experiment, it seems. If 
it'll make you feel better, I intend to put off my death as long as possible.)
His low rumbling sigh of agreement mingled with the sound of steps on stone. 
Segnbora looked southward along
the wall. Eftgan was coming, not in country clothes, this morning, but dressed 
for battle: boots and britches, jerkin and mailshirt, and the Darthene midnight 
blue surcoat blazoned with the undifferenced royal armsthe White Eagle in 
trian aspect, wings spread, striking. Eftgan's sheathed Rod still bumped at her 
side, but she was carrying another weapon over her shoulder. It was F6rlennh 
BrokenBlade, Earn's sword, without which no Darthene ruler went to war.
Eftgan was a fair sight, and even a little funny, bumping down the parapet 
toward Segnbora with a sword over her shoulder that was almost as long as she 
was. Segnbora remembered the days when Eftgan had been her wreaking-partner in 
the Precincts. Back then she had refused to wear any gear more complicated than 
a belt for her tunic, or maybe a ribbon in her hair. Evidently queenship had 
brought some changes. Segnbora smiled, and wiped her nose as Eftgan came up and 
leaned on the parapet beside her.
"Fair morn, your grace."
"Oh, don't be formal," Eftgan said, making a sour face. "I have enough problems 
today. Your friends are looking for you, 'Berend."
"I dare say. I needed to get away from their watchful eyes for a while."
Eftgan looked somber. "I didn't say it last nightyou were getting drunk and I 
didn't want to interferebut I share your grief, dear."
"May our pain soon be healed," Segnbora said. They were words she had thought 
she wouldn't have to say for years yet. She sighed and gazed down at Barachael 
town with its moat and ditches and star fortifications. "Where are you off to?"
"Orsvier, as soon as I'm finished here. A force of Reavers and mercenaries is 
forming there to raid the granaries. There will be a thousand or more gathered 
by nightfall. They'll attack tonight, or tomorrow morning perhaps."
"Goddess," said Segnbora, disturbed. "More mercenaries. . . . Where is Cillmod 
getting them all?"
"Most of them are Steldenes. Some are even Steldene regulars; evidently King 
Dariw sold their services to Cillmod at a discount to make up for letting 
Freelorn get away."
Segnbora went cold at the thought of what might have
happened had she not stepped into a certain alley in Madeil one night. She shook 
her head. "How do you stand?"
"A thousand foot, five hundred horse, thirty sorcerers, and the right is on our 
side. Whether that'll be enough, I don't know." Eftgan let out a tired breath 
and fell silent.
Segnbora thought of Herewiss standing on the Morrow-fane, an open challenge to 
the Shadow. Obviously It had taken up the challenge. These latest incursions by 
the Reavers were too well timed, and too well organized, to be coincidence.
"Have any suggestions for me?" Eftgan said.
Segnbora put an eyebrow up. "The Queen's grace hardly needs to discuss battle 
tactics with an outlaw."
"With an outlaw, no. But with the head of one of the Forty Houses"
Segnbora winced.
" 'Berend, I'm sorry," Eftgan said, "but you had better face up to it. You're 
now the tai-Enraesi, and I have the right to require your advice as such."
"For what it's worth."
"Your present position makes it worth more than old Arian's, say, sitting up 
north on his moneybags. Stop thinking of yourself as 'landless' and 
'poverty-stricken,' and tell me what I should do about Freelorn."
"You should ask him that," said Segnbora. "Or Herewiss."
"I have. And they've been very cautious and polite. But that doesn't tell me 
what to do, really. Consider my position . . . even if we put down the present 
incursion, Darthen is still suffering worse and worse harvests, things are 
coming over the borders of the Waste that shouldn't be, Arlen is yapping at my 
western border, the Oath that made those borders safe is in pieces, and the 
Reavers are coming out of every bolt hole like rats out of a burning granary." 
Eftgan sighed.
"Arlen needs someone on that throne who'll enact the royal rites again, and 
restore one of the Two Lands to normal. And, lo, here's the Lion's Child, 
sitting right in my lap, wanting his throne back. The question is, if I spend 
Darthene blood to put him on his throne, will he fulfill his responsibili-
 
ties as King, or just sit there collecting taxes and parading around in silks 
and furs, looking royal?"
Segnbora looked her old loved in the eye, reluctant. "I've known him for all of 
a month"
"You have underhearing. Better underhearing than mine, if things are the same as 
they used to be. You know them." She poked Segnbora in the ribs, not entirely 
out of humor. "The Queen requires your advice, tai-Enraesi. Stop stalling."
She wanted no responsibility for advising Eftgan on such a decision. But she had 
no choice. "I think Lorn will make a good king," she said. "Better than some 
who've had long quiet reigns and never been in trouble. He loves his land, and 
he loves his people . . . perhaps too much."
"What do you mean?"
"If you made him King one week and halfway through the next told him that the 
royal sacrifice was necessary, he'd tie himself up in the fivefold bond and tell 
you to hurry with the knife. He has an unfortunate fondness for death and glory 
stands, you see. Luckily, he's got Herewiss to advise him. He's as conservative 
as they come."
Eftgan looked at her squarely. "Does 'Berend, the 'swift-rusher,' say this?" she 
said. "Or does the tai-Enraesi?"
Segnbora shook her head. "Tegane, after just a month I could tell you endless 
stories of the noble things he's done. But they'd be just thatstories. What I 
know about Lorn is that although I could have hired my sword to any number of 
high-paying rulers in the Four Kingdoms, he has something that moved me to swear 
liege-oath to him."
Eftgan simply kept looking at her. "Loyalty can be blind," she said.
"So can love," Segnbora said, "or so I hear. Tegane, what else can I tell you? 
I'm fresh out of proofs. But the truth is that he's my liege, and my friend, and 
once or twice a bit more. And if I go to my death in his service, that's as good 
a death as any other I'm likely to find." She swallowed. "Segnbora says that, 
Queen. The standard-bearer. His standard-bearer, for the moment. Will that 
answer your question?"
Eftgan looked away from her, gazing down the vale, northward toward the rest of 
Darthen. She let out a quiet breath of


       



 


decision. "Yes," she said. "So be it. And we'll hope that the famous tai-Enraesi 
luck will stick to him too, just this once. Now, shall we have breakfast?"
"Absolutely."
They went together from the wall to the great inner court. Halfway down the 
stairs, Segnbora suddenly lost her footing and brought up hard against the wall 
to the left. "Sorry!" she said, and then realized that the wall itself was 
jittering, and all around them a low mutter of vibration ran through the 
fortress. It subsided after a few seconds.
Eftgan let go of the wall, which she also had been holding for support. "Just a 
little shake," she said.
Segnbora gulped as they continued down the rest of the stairs.
"Does it do that often?"
"Two or three times a week, they tell me. Better a lot of little quakes, though, 
than a big one that would bring the mountains down on the valley. ..."
They went across the huge paved court, where men and women in Darthene blue were 
grooming horses and practicing at the sword or bow or lance. The court, like 
the walls that surrounded it, lay in a square around khas-Barachael's central 
tower. Eftgan led the way in, through a high-roofed hall and up a stair that 
climbed along one wall. In a smaller room on the next story a table was set 
under the south-facing windows. Freelorn, Herewiss, Lang, and the others sat 
there breaking their fast with several of Eftgan's officers.
"Sit here," Eftgan said, and pulled out a chair for her between Lang and a 
Darthene officer.
Segnbora sat down and reached for an empty cup, glancing up and down the table. 
To her surprise and slight discomfort, she saw that around Lang's left arm, and 
Dritt's and Moris's and Harald's and Freelorn's, and even Herewiss's, was bound 
the white cord of mourning. All up and down the table, eyes rested on her with 
concern. She swallowed hard.
"Wine?" Lang said, reaching for her cup.
Her head throbbed at the thought. "Dear Lady, no. Is there barley-water with 
mint in it, perhaps?"
There was; Harald passed it up.


"Segnbora," Eftgan said, "you haven't met Torve, I think. He was raised here."
She turned to the man on her right. He was young, of middle height and build, 
with dark hair and beard and a slightly reticent smile. His downturned gray 
eyes, however, smiled even when his lips did not.
"Torve s'Keruer," Eftgan said as the two of them touched hands in greeting, "the 
Chastellain-major. He runs this place."
"You were raised here?" Segnbora said.
Torve nodded. "My mother was the last Chastellain. But she got tired of the long 
winters and retired to the lowlands. The Queen was good enough to confirm me in 
her place."
"Anything you need, he'll give you," Eftgan said.
"Thank you, Queen."
"Pardon," Dritt said, and reached across the Queen for the butter.
Eftgan raised a tolerant eyebrow. "His manners haven't improved any," she said, 
looking with wry amusement at her former court musician. "He used to do that at 
court too. My father thought sending him to Arlen might put some polish on his 
manners. But then what does he do but leave his post there, and not send word 
for seven years...." There was mild chuckling over that. "Of course," Eftgan 
said, "his liege seems to have done the same thing, and taken the long way home 
as well."
The laughter was more subdued this time; Lorn shot Eftgan a quick look. Herewiss 
was suddenly very busy with his porridge.
"Freelorn," the Queen said, helping herself to bread and holding out a hand for 
Dritt to return the butter plate, "we've already talked a great deal since last 
night, but I still have a few questions to ask you."
"Ask," Freelorn said, sounding unconcerned.
"What on earth do you want to be a king for?"
He looked at her in shock. He took brief refuge in his mulled wine, then said, 
"It's what I was raised to be."
"Rubbish," Eftgan said merrily but with force. "That's like saying that a 
slopman's child should spend his life carting slops because his father before 
him did."


 
Freelorn stared at Eftgan, his shock growing greater by the moment.
"Look at this," the Queen said, gesturing around the room. It was comfortable 
enough, on a bright summer morning, but definitely not luxurious. "If I'd had 
the sense to marry out of the royal line young, I could be spending my day 
sitting on silken cushions in some mansion in Darthis, eating roast ortolan and 
botargoes on toast, taking lovers, going to the races in the daytime and to 
parties at night. But instead I let them make me Queen."
Segnbora took a long drink of her barley-water, to hide her rueful smile.
"I had to be Queen," Eftgan said again, "and now look what I've got for my 
troubles. Battlefield food and soldier's quarters, five days out of the ten. 
Back home in Darthis are three children I hardly ever see, because by the time 
I'm finished meeting with my ministers all morning, presiding over court-justice 
all afternoon, and receiving visitsI should say, 'complaints'from the various 
members of the Forty Houses all evening, it's long past the children's bedtimes. 
I say nothing of my bedtime. My husband has to have a separate bedroom so that 
my reading won't keep him awake all night. In the daytime he has to throw people 
out of his wineshop because they don't want to buy his wine, they want to buy 
appointments with me. Even he aches at the end of the day." Freelorn had at this 
point just gotten around to closing his mouth.
"So do I," Eftgan said. "Sometimes I do more than ache. I get wounds, too. A 
Queen has to be first in every charge and ' last in every retreat. ..." She 
pulled aside the shoulder of her surcoat, looking under it with a momentarily 
abstracted air. "I was knifed here, once No, of course you remember that; you 
were there. Herewiss stopped the crossbow quarrel, but I got the knife of the 
Reaver before that one." She pulled the surcoat back in place and spent a moment 
looking around her plate to find the butterknife. "Bad enough to have to put up 
with that kind of thing from your enemies. But sooner or later it comes from 
your own people ... in Darthen, at least. One , day when you're hammering out 
your crown in the Square,
somebody whose crops failed last year comes out of the crowd and runs you 
through. Or worse, the rains won't come, and all the wreakings and all the royal 
magics refuse to work. Then there's only one thing that will save the land from 
famine." She looked down and began slowly buttering her bread. "So you take the 
knife, and call the person who loves you best in the world to witness the 
ceremony; and pierce the sky's heart by piercing yours, and cause it to shed 
rain by shedding blood, and bring the breath of the stormwind by breathing out 
your last. . . ."
Eftgan's tone all this while had been light, almost matter-of-fact. Now she 
looked up at Freelorn and, in the profound silence that had fallen around the 
table, said, "This is a stupid job to go hunting for, Lorn. You were smart to 
stay away from it as long as you have."
Segnbora listened hard and could have sworn that people were holding their 
breaths. Only Lorn looked at all normal. The amazement had worn off him; his 
face was set.
"Eftgan," he said, "I ran away from Arlen because I was afraid of being tortured 
to death. I still am. But I notice that I'm not running in the opposite 
direction."
At that Eftgan paused to bite into her bread. She chewed reflectively, and 
swallowed. "You've had a lot of help."
"I have," he said, with only the swiftest glance to one side at Herewiss. "What 
is it they always say about lovers? That they usually know your mind better than 
you do." It was Freelorn's turn to pause now, looking around the table for honey 
for his porridge. He pointed, and Lang passed it to him. "Herewiss always knew 
what I wantedwhat I really wantedbetter than I did. It's a good thing, too. If 
he had been one of those spineless anything-you-say-dear types, I'd probably be 
peacefully dead in a ditch somewhere now. Instead I'm here, with Fyrd and 
Reavers on three sides and the Shadow on the fourth."
That got a smile out of Eftgan.
"You're right to question my motives and intent." Freelorn ate a spoonful of 
porridge. "Yes, Herewiss called the tune. And yes, I followed his lead toward 
kingship because it was convenient, and I was confused. But the confusion isn't 
so


 


much of a problem now." He took another spoonful, throwing a quick glance out 
the window at the great silent mass of Adine. "Dusty will probably still be the 
strategist of this group's business, the brains. But I'm this group's heart. 
I've forgotten that, once or twice, I know. A prince gets used to having things 
done for him. But in the past couple of weeks I've seen my loved almost die for 
mefor my cause, rather three times. I suspect I'm done being a prince. It's my 
turn to be a king." Lorn took a long drink of mulled wine. "And as for you, 
Eftgan . . . if you don't like your job, you should abdicate. Maybe afterward 
you could take up carting slops."
Eftgan, who was also drinking at that moment, spluttered and chokedthen, when 
she had finished choking, began to whoop with laughter. "Oh Goddess!" was all 
she managed to say for a while. When she was calmer, she wiped tears of 
merriment out of her eyes. "I guess I left myself open for that. Freelorn, your 
hand! Keep this sort of thing up, and we'll do very well together."
They reached across the length of the table to touch hands.
"Truth," Lorn said, sounding rueful, as if the speech had cost him something, 
"and beauty. A perfect match."
"Flatterer."
"Now, what about that news about the Reavers that you promised us?"
"Well . . . let's take this in order. There's more news than just of Reavers. 
When you left Arlen, Lorn, what was your understanding of the way things stood 
with the Lords-Householders, the Four Hundred, concerning your succession to 
the throne?"
"Mixed. There would've been no question of the succession if I had been 
Initiated, taken by my father into the Lion-hall on the Nightwalk. But he put 
off the ceremony, until finally it was too late. When he died, the Four Hundred 
split on the issue. I had been spending a lot of time out of the country, 
helling around, and there was some question about whether I'd be a fit ruler. 
The army split on the issue too, and with Arlene regulars assigned to each 
household the situation quickly became volatile, as you can imagine. No one 
wanted a civil war, so the Householders hesitated . . . which gave


Cillmod time to step in with his mercenaries and make the whole question moot."
"Yes, and when he made you an outlaw, you and Herewiss and the rest fled the 
country." Eftgan sat back in her chair.
Segnbora knew much of the rest of the story, and listened with only half an ear 
as Eftgan filled in details for Freelorn. Cillmod had done well enough for 
several years. He took the throne and bore Stave, though he didn't go into 
Lionhall. Likewise, he reaffirmed the Oath with Eftgan's father, who was still 
alive and ruling then. It was around the middle of his fourth year that the crop 
failures began. The next year the crops were worse, and the next year worse 
still. Then the failures began spreading into Darthen as well. The royal 
sorceries, and the Great Bindings, were wearing thin.
Eftgan's father had been unwilling to help Cillmod beyond the reaffirmation of 
the Oath: He was among those who hoped that an uprising would eventually bring 
Freelorn back. But by the time of Eftgan's first crowning the situation was 
unbearable. Unaware of Freelorn's whereabouts, Eftgan wrote to Cillmod and 
offered to repair the Royal Bindings herself. Amazingly, he refused.
Segnbora looked up from her food in surprise at that, as did the rest of 
Freelorn's company.
"He said that inquiries were being made in Arlen for a surviving heir to the 
Lion's Line," Eftgan explained. "He had put about the story that you had died, 
did you know that?"
"No!"
"Later there was even proof of it: a mangled head sent from the torture chambers 
of Dariw of Steldin, whom you eluded at Madeil."
"Hmmm ... Do ghosts eat? No? Then there must have been a mistake."
"Must have been. Anyway, Cillmod was apparently unsuccessful in finding any 
other children in the Lion's Line. Which is fortunate, since I'm sure he would 
have killed any that he found. Another question, Lorn: Do you have any children 
outside of Arlen?"
Freelorn shook his head sadly. "I only fulfilled the Responsibility once," he 
said. "My daughter died in infancy."
"Well enough." Eftgan chewed some bacon. "I ask because Cillmod's search for an 
heir took some strange turns. For example, some of the searches were conducted 
by large groups of mercenaries who crossed the Darthene borders and went after 
our granaries. It was the only way Cillmod could forestall a revolt by the Four 
Hundred and their starving tenant-farmers. Anyway, to continue: There were also 
reports for some time of sorcerers and Rodmistresses visiting Prydon. More 
sorcerers than Rodmistresses, of course. There's one sorcerer in particular"
"Someone who either claimed to be of Lion's Line," Free-lorn guessed, "or who 
claimed he could get Cillmod into Lionhall without dying of it, and show him how 
to reinforce the Bindings."
"Exactly. The second was what this sorcerer claimed. Rian, his name is. But then 
something peculiar happened. The man never went into Lionhall at all, as far as 
my spies can tell. Neither did Cillmod. Nevertheless, starting about a year ago 
Rian became a fixture at what now passes for the Arlene court." Eftgan took a 
drink of barley-water. "Other odd thingsthe Four Hundred have become very quiet 
recently. When you robbed the treasury at Osta, for example, it became apparent 
then that you weren't dead after all. Naturally there was a clamor for your 
return. But it died down very quickly."
"Why?"
"I believe because the families who called loudest for your crowning were 
suddenly beset by Fyrdthe thinking variety."
Mutters of distaste were heard round the table. "Rian," Segnbora said, very 
quietly to herself.
The Queen nodded. "I have no doubt that we're dealing here with a person whom 
the Shadow occasionally inhabits and controls. The man has a past and a family 
just as he should, but he's the center of too many odd occurrences. Where his 
influence appears, Cillmod's neglect usually breaks out into full-fledged 
malice."
Lorn, who had finished his porridge, set down his spoon. "What else has friend 
Rianor rather, the Shadowbeen up to?"
"You know the problems the Reavers have been having with the weather, their 
crops, and their game? How they are being forced northward? That's obviously the 
Shadow's work. There's something else, too. Starting about six months ago, it 
seems that emissariesmostly mercenary captainswere sent over the mountains in 
to Reaver country to strike a bargain. In return for making incursions into the 
Kingdoms when ordered, some of the hardest-pressed Reaver clans were promised 
loot, cattle . . . and land in Arlen in which to settle."
All around the table, there was silence.
"The Shadow's purpose is apparently to keep Darthen busy with war until 
something special happens," Eftgan said. "My guess is that 'something' is the 
collapse of the Royal Bindings."
The silence in the room erupted into cries of disbelief. The end of the Royal 
Bindings was unthinkable. Such a calamity would turn the Shadow loose in the 
Kingdoms as It hadn't been loose in centuries, since the Lion and the Eagle 
first bound It.
Lang looked at Freelorn. "I can't believe anyone would knowingly do this to his 
own country! Can it be Cillmod doesn't know what the failure of the Bindings 
will mean?"
"Could be," Lorn said. "After all, he's not trained in the royal sorceries. 
Perhaps the true nature of the destruction that would follow is being hidden 
from him somehow. In any case, if this is the Shadow's purpose, it must not be 
allowed."
The firmness of his resolve sent a dart of sharp pride through Segnbora. The 
others, equally moved, quieted. Eftgan nodded her approval.
"First of all, what are we doing about the Reavers locally?" Freelorn asked.
"I've spoken to Herewiss about the possibility of closing off the Chaelonde 
incursion route with a sealing," the Queen said. "That would cause the Reavers a 
great deal of trouble right away. Without it, they'd have to go as far east as 
Araveyn or as far west as Bluepeak itself to get into the Kingdoms. Araveyn is 
practically in the Waste; they wouldn't bother. And Bluepeak is in Arlen, 
meaning that Cillmod would have to march Reavers all the way through his own 
country to attack




       

Freelorn stared at Eftgan, his shock growing greater by the moment.
"Look at this," the Queen said, gesturing around the room. It was comfortable 
enough, on a bright summer morning, but definitely not luxurious. "If I'd had 
the sense to marry out of the royal line young, I could be spending my day 
sitting on silken cushions in some mansion in Darthis, eating roast ortolan and 
botargoes on toast, taking lovers, going to the races in the daytime and to 
parties at night. But instead I let them make me Queen."
Segnbora took a long drink of her barley-water, to hide her rueful smile.
"I had to be Queen," Eftgan said again, "and now look what I've got for my 
troubles. Battlefield food and soldier's quarters, five days out of the ten. 
Back home in Darthis are three children I hardly ever see, because by the time 
I'm finished meeting with my ministers all morning, presiding over court-justice 
all afternoon, and receiving visitsI should say, 'complaints'from the various 
members of the Forty Houses all evening, it's long past the children's bedtimes. 
I say nothing of my bedtime. My husband has to have a separate bedroom so that 
my reading won't keep him awake all night. In the daytime he has to throw people 
out of his wineshop because they don't want to buy his wine, they want to buy 
appointments with me. Even he aches at the end of the day."
Freelorn had at this point just gotten around to closing his mouth.
"So do I," Eftgan said. "Sometimes I do more than ache. I get wounds, too. A 
Queen has to be first in every charge and last in every retreat. . . ." She 
pulled aside the shoulder of her surcoat, looking under it with a momentarily 
abstracted air. "I was knifed here, once No, of course you remember that; you 
were there. Herewiss stopped the crossbow quarrel, but I got the knife of the 
Reaver before that one." She pulled the surcoat back in place and spent a moment 
looking around her plate to find the butterknife. "Bad enough to have to put up 
with that kind of thing from your enemies. But sooner or later it comes from 
your own people ... in Darthen, at least. One day when you're hammering out your 
crown in the Square,


somebody whose crops failed last year comes out of the crowd and runs you 
through. Or worse, the rains won't come, and all the wreakings and all the royal 
magics refuse to work. Then there's only one thing that will save the land from 
famine." She looked down and began slowly buttering her bread. "So you take the 
knife, and call the person who loves you best in the world to witness the 
ceremony; and pierce the sky's heart by piercing yours, and cause it to shed 
rain by shedding blood, and bring the breath of the stormwind by breathing out 
your last. . . ."
Eftgan's tone all this while had been light, almost matter-of-fact. Now she 
looked up at Freelorn and, in the profound silence that had fallen around the 
table, said, "This is a stupid job to go hunting for, Lorn. You were smart to 
stay away from it as long as you have."
Segnbora listened hard and could have sworn that people were holding their 
breaths. Only Lorn looked at all normal. The amazement had worn off him; his 
face was set.
"Eftgan," he said, "I ran away from Arlen because I was afraid of being tortured 
to death. I still am. But I notice that I'm not running in the opposite 
direction."
At that Eftgan paused to bite into her bread. She chewed 'eflectively, and 
swallowed. "You've had a lot of help."
"I have," he said, with only the swiftest glance to one side t Herewiss. "What 
is it they always say about lovers? That they usually know your mind better than 
you do." It was Freelorn's turn to pause now, looking around the table for honey 
for his porridge. He pointed, and Lang passed it to him. "Herewiss always knew 
what I wantedwhat I really wantedbetter than I did. It's a good thing, too. If 
he had been one of those spineless anything-you-say-dear types, I'd probably be 
peacefully dead in a ditch somewhere now. Instead I'm here, with Fyrd and 
Reavers on three sides and the Shadow on the fourth."
That got a smile out of Eftgan.
"You're right to question my motives and intent." Freelorn ate a spoonful of 
porridge. "Yes, Herewiss called the tune. And yes, I followed his lead toward 
kingship because it was convenient, and I was confused. But the confusion isn't 
so


       



 


much of a problem now." He took another spoonful, throwing a quick glance out 
the window at the great silent mass of Adine. "Dusty will probably still be the 
strategist of this group's business, the brains. But I'm this group's heart. 
I've forgotten that, once or twice, I know. A prince gets used to having things 
done for him. But in the past couple of weeks I've seen my loved almost die for 
mefor my cause, rather three times. I suspect I'm done being a prince. It's my 
turn to be a king." Lorn took a long drink of mulled wine. "And as for you, 
Eftgan . . . if you don't like your job, you should abdicate. Maybe afterward 
you could take up carting slops."
Eftgan, who was also drinking at that moment, spluttered and chokedthen, when 
she had finished choking, began to whoop with laughter. "Oh Goddess!" was all 
she managed to say for a while. When she was calmer, she wiped tears of 
merriment out of her eyes. "I guess I left myself open for that. Freelorn, your 
hand! Keep this sort of thing up, and we'll do very well together."
They reached across the length of the table to touch hands.
"Truth," Lorn said, sounding rueful, as if the speech had cost him something, 
"and beauty. A perfect match."
"Flatterer."
"Now, what about that news about the Reavers that you promised us?"
"Well . . . let's take this in order. There's more news than just of Reavers. 
When you left Arlen, Lorn, what was your understanding of the way things stood 
with the Lords-Householders, the Four Hundred, concerning your succession to 
the throne?"
"Mixed. There would've been no question of the succession if I had been 
Initiated, taken by my father into the Lion-hall on the Nightwalk. But he put 
off the ceremony, until finally it was too late. When he died, the Four Hundred 
split on the issue. I had been spending a lot of time out of the country, 
helling around, and there was some question about whether I'd be a fit ruler. 
The army split 011 the issue too, and with Arlene regulars assigned to each 
household the situation quickly became volatile, as you can imagine. No one 
wanted a civil war, so the Householders hesitated . . . which gave


Cillmod time to step in with his mercenaries and make the whole question moot."
"Yes, and when he made you an outlaw, you and Herewiss |and the rest fled the 
country." Eftgan sat back in her chair.
Segnbora knew much of the rest of the story, and listened jwith only half an ear 
as Eftgan filled in details for Freelorn. Cillmod had done well enough for 
several years. He took the throne and bore Stave, though he didn't go into 
Lionhall. Likewise, he reaffirmed the Oath with Eftgan's father, who was still 
alive and ruling then. It was around the middle of his fourth year that the crop 
failures began. The next year the crops were worse, and the next year worse 
still. Then the failures began spreading into Darthen as well. The royal 
sorceries, and the Great Bindings, were wearing thin.
Eftgan's father had been unwilling to help Cillmod beyond the reaffirmation of 
the Oath: He was among those who hoped that an uprising would eventually bring 
Freelorn back. But by the time of Eftgan's first crowning the situation was 
unbearable. Unaware of Freelorn's whereabouts, Eftgan wrote to Cillmod and 
offered to repair the Royal Bindings herself. Amazingly, he refused.
Segnbora looked up from her food in surprise at that, as did the rest of 
Freelorn's company.
"He said that inquiries were being made in Arlen for a surviving heir to the 
Lion's Line," Eftgan explained. "He had put about the story that you had died, 
did you know that?"
"No!"
"Later there was even proof of it: a mangled head sent from the torture chambers 
of Dariw of Steldin, whom you eluded at Madeil."
"Hmmm . . . Do ghosts eat? No? Then there must have been a mistake."
"Must have been. Anyway, Cillmod was apparently unsuccessful in finding any 
other children in the Lion's Line. Which is fortunate, since I'm sure he would 
have killed any that he found. Another question, Lorn: Do you have any children 
outside of Arlen?"
Freelorn shook his head sadly. "I only fulfilled the Responsibility once," he 
said. "My daughter died in infancy."
 
"Well enough." Eftgan chewed some bacon. "I ask because Cillmod's search for an 
heir took some strange turns. For example, some of the searches were conducted 
by large j      groups of mercenaries who crossed the Darthene borders and went 
after our granaries. It was the only way Cillmod could v    forestall a revolt 
by the Four Hundred and their starving tenant-farmers. Anyway, to continue: 
There were also reports for some time of sorcerers and Rodmistresses visiting 
Prydon. More sorcerers than Rodmistresses, of course. There's one sorcerer in 
particular"
"Someone who either claimed to be of Lion's Line," Free-lorn guessed, "or who 
claimed he could get Cillmod into Lionhall without dying of it, and show him how 
to reinforce the Bindings."
"Exactly.  The second was what this  sorcerer claimed. Rian, his name is. But 
then something peculiar happened. The man never went into Lionhall at all, as 
far as my spies can tell. Neither did Cillmod. Nevertheless, starting about a 
year ago Rian became a fixture at what now passes for the Arlene court." Eftgan 
took a drink of barley-water. "Other odd thingsthe Four Hundred have become 
very quiet recently. When you robbed the treasury at Osta, for example, it 
became apparent then that you weren't dead after all. Naturally there was a 
clamor for your return. But it died down very quickly." "Why?"
"I believe because the families who called loudest for your crowning were 
suddenly beset by Fyrdthe thinking variety."
Mutters of distaste were heard round the table. "Rian," Segnbora said, very 
quietly to herself.
The Queen nodded. "I have no doubt that we're dealing here with a person whom 
the Shadow occasionally inhabits and controls. The man has a past and a family 
just as he should, but he's the center of too many odd occurrences. Where his 
influence appears, Cillmod's neglect usually breaks out into full-fledged 
malice."
Lorn, who had finished his porridge, set down his spoon. "What else has friend 
Rianor rather, the Shadowbeen up to?"
"You know the problems the Reavers have been having with the weather, their 
crops, and their game? How they are being forced northward? That's obviously the 
Shadow's work. There's something else, too. Starting about six months ago, it 
seems that emissariesmostly mercenary captainswere sent over the mountains in 
to Reaver country to strike a bargain. In return for making incursions into the 
Kingdoms when ordered, some of the hardest-pressed Reaver clans were promised 
loot, cattle . . . and land in Arlen in which to settle."
AH around the table, there was silence.
"The Shadow's purpose is apparently to keep Darthen busy with war until 
something special happens," Eftgan said. "My guess is that 'something' is the 
collapse of the Royal Bindings."
The silence in the room erupted into cries of disbelief. The end of the Royal 
Bindings was unthinkable. Such a calamity would turn the Shadow loose in the 
Kingdoms as It hadn't been loose in centuries, since the Lion and the Eagle 
first bound It.
Lang looked at Freelorn. "I can't believe anyone would knowingly do this to his 
own country! Can it be Cillmod doesn't know what the failure of the Bindings 
will mean?"
"Could be," Lorn said. "After all, he's not trained in the royal sorceries. 
Perhaps the true nature of the destruction that would follow is being hidden 
from him somehow. In any case, if this is the Shadow's purpose, it must not be 
allowed."
The firmness of his resolve sent a dart of sharp pride through Segnbora. The 
others, equally moved, quieted. Eftgan nodded her approval.
"First of all, what are we doing about the Reavers locally?" Freelorn asked.
"I've spoken to Herewiss about the possibility of closing off the Chaelonde 
incursion route with a sealing," the Queen said. "That would cause the Reavers a 
great deal of trouble right away. Without it, they'd have to go as far east as 
Araveyn or as far west as Bluepeak itself to get into the Kingdoms. Araveyn is 
practically in the Waste; they wouldn't bother. And Bluepeak is in Arlen, 
meaning that Cillmod would have to march Reavers all the way through his own 
country to attack


Darthen. Tactically, a sealing is a good idea. The question is whether it can be 
done."
"It can," Herewiss said. "But right now the timing's bad. I wouldn't dare try it 
with Glasscastle imminent; we'll have to wait until it passes. Which brings us 
to another problem sealing off the peak of Adine so that no sorcery of the 
Shadow's, or anyone else's, can bring anything down out of Glasscastle onto our 
heads. That, too, I can do; and I'll do it tonight. My only fear is that the 
sudden removal of access to a place where our mortal world and another world 
touch might cause Power imbalances. In a place as delicately balanced as 
Barachael is, with its years of warfare and piled-up negative energies, that can 
be dangerous."
"I know," Eftgan said. "But it can't be helped. My true-dream made it plain that 
the next time someone passed into or out of Glasscastle, so great a disturbance 
would follow that the Kingdoms might not survive."
Herewiss looked gravely at Lorn, and then back at the Queen again. "I'll do what 
I can, madam," he said. "I hope it'll suffice."
"It's more than I could have done, that's for sure...." Eftgan pushed her chair 
back from the table. "I leave the matter in your capable hands. I should be back 
from Orsvier tomorrow, and we can worry about sealing the pass itself then. As 
for you, Arlen" She fixed Freelorn with a hard, smiling look. "I stand on the 
Oath. As soon as I get this unfought army off my right flank, and yours, then 
it's 'the Eagle for Arlen and the Lion at i bay/ I trust you two will be willing 
to deal with this flank, . should it become necessary today."
"Darthen," he said, returning Eftgan's look without the smile, "you know how my 
loved has been handling this so far. And I agree with him. I'd prefer not to 
shed blood, Arlene or Darthene."
"Cillmod's had no such compunctions," Eftgan said. "Neither have the Reavers, 
and right now there are Reavers corning here, and Reavers at Orsvier. You two 
clear this flank, I'll clear the other. Then we'll have leisure to consider what 
to do about Arlen. When we campaign, there I'll be guided by your judgment; you 
know your land best."
Freelorn nodded, looking solemn. Eftgan turned to the corner and picked up 
something that stood against the wall a big old iron fireplace poker, its haft 
studded with rough white diamonds. It was Sarsweng, the battle-standard of the 
Darthenes. "I have to get my work done," the little fair woman said. "My husband 
hates it when I get home late. The Lady be with you all 'til I get back"
"And with you," those at the table said.
Eftgan shouldered Sarsweng and strode out, the sunlight \
flashing on the poker's gemmed haft as she passed through     \,
a bar of light falling down the stairs.                                          
         \
At breakfast's end Harald, Moris, Dritt, and Lang went off with the Darthene 
officers to look the place over. Herewiss sat quietly in his chair, drinking 
spiced wine and looking thoughtful, while Freelorn stared out the window at the 
towering Adine massif.
On her way to the stairs, Segnbora stopped beside him. Her underhearing was 
prickling with his unease. "You all right?" she said. "You look green."
Freelorn shrugged, not looking at her. "The change in altitude," he said. "It 
didn't agree with me. I had a bad night."
He was lying, she knew. His eyes were fixed on Adine, and on the lesser peak, 
where a tiny glitter of silver bridgespan caught the morning Sun. Freelorn said 
nothing more aloud, but she caught his thought: If only my dreams weren 't so 
bad! And behind the thought lay the sure conviction that something he had 
recently seen in dream was no baseless vision, but a foreknowledge of reality. A 
reality that he could avoid if he chose
Freelorn swung around and leaned on the table. "Are you going to sit there 
drinking all day," he said to Herewiss, "or are you going to get up and get 
Eftganfs business out of the way so1 we can tend to our own?"
Herewiss*s glance was much like Freelorn'sall mockery
above, and love below . . . and underneath that, a breath of
fear very much suppressed. "Hark to the early riser," he said,
"who pulled me back into bed twice this morning when I
would have gotten up. Come on, you can help correct my
scansion. This wreaking tonight is going to be difficult ..."


       



 


Their easy laughter faded down the stairs behind them. Segnbora sat down on the 
windowsill, gazing up in turn at the terrible blind walls and cruel precipices 
of Adine. The mountain cared nothing for human life. With such an audience 
before her, and the empty room behind, Segnbora took what was likely to be her 
last opportunity for a while, laid her head against the windowframe, and mourned 
the dead.
An hour or so before sunset, the seven of them took to horse at khas-Barachael 
gate to begin the ascent of Adine.
While they were saddling up, Torve came out of the stables leading a little 
rusty Steldene gelding. "Of your courtesy," he said to Herewiss, "perhaps you'd 
take me as guide. I've ridden this trail a number of times, and climbed to the 
summit too."
Herewiss looked at the young man, suppressing a smile. There was no need to read 
Torve's thought, for it was plain enough: He was staring at Khavrinen, which was 
slung over Herewiss's shoulder, like a small child staring at what the Goddess 
had left him on New Year's morning.
"With all these other spectators," Herewiss said, glancing around at Freelorn's 
band, most of whom were along only for the ride, "certainly we can use one 
person who'll earn his keep on the way. Come and welcome."
They headed out over the half-bridge that reached out from Barachael, on its 
two-thousand-foot pier of stone, across to the spur of Adine proper. The 
sorcerer-architects who built the place had carved a hundred foot gap right 
through the spur, so that with the drawbridge up the fortress stood 
unassailable, one great corner-shoulder turned to the spur.
Once across, a causey wide enough for ten horsemen abreast wound downward 
through several switchbacks. On both sides the road was overshadowed by cliffs, 
the shattered faces of which made it obvious that invaders had occasionally 
tried to come up that way against the defenders' wishes, and had had large rocks 
dropped on them for their trouble.
"They've tried a few times to shuck this oyster," Torve said cheerfully, "but 
even Reaver horses can't charge straight up."
At its bottom the paved road gave out onto a narrow sad-


die-corridor between khas-Barachael rock and Swaleback, a flattened, marshy 
little spur of Adine. Torve led them eastward and out into the valley proper, 
then southwestward along the skirts of the Adine massif. Past two minor spurs 
they went. The ground was rocky, and every now and then the mountain, cooling 
from the warmth of the day, would let a little reddish scree slide down at them.
Under Adine"s lengthening shadow they turned due westward into a long shallow 
rampway scoured out by an ancient glacier, and picked their way carefully among 
the boulders that lay scattered about. Some fifteen hundred feet up the 
mountain's flank, the ascent became too steep for horses.
"We'll leave them here," Torve said, dismounting.
(Not all of them,) Sunspark said mildly.
Torve glanced up in great surprise from the hobbling of his gelding, and noticed 
that Herewiss's mount was calmly standing a foot above the ground. "Sir," he 
said, addressing Sun-spark with the slight bow due a fellow officer, "we haven't 
been introduced."
"Torve, this is Sunspark," Herewiss said, dismounting. "Firechild, be good to 
him, he's on our side. Torve, if you ever need a fortress reduced on short 
notice, Sunspark is the one to talk to. He eats stone for breakfast."
Torve nodded. Having seen a man with the Fire he looked as if he was now ready 
to believe anything. "Up this way," he said, and led them up the side of the 
cirque to a trail that led along its top, under the shadow of the great Adine 
summit.
They rounded the east-pointing scarp, moving quietly under the great out-handing 
cornice of snow that loomed a thousand feet above them, and so came to face the 
north side of the lesser summit ridge. The ridge stood up sheer as a wall, 
overhung in places, itself at least seven hundred feet high.
"Don't worry, it's not an expert-level climb," Torve said, looking up the walls 
of rock and ice with relish. "Beginners could handle it"
Freelorn, who had done extensive climbing in the High-peaks of Arlen as a child, 
made a wry face.
Herewiss gazed up the cliff. "This trail is exactly as the song


       

describes it," he said. " 'Awful.' Torve, I hope you won't tell the Queen's 
grace on me, but I'm no climber. Maybe we Brightwood people have been down from 
the mountains too long. Sunspark?"
(Who'll go first?) Sunspark said, with an anticipatory grin. Freelorn's band 
blanched and began deferring to one another.
It took Herewiss and Freelorn and Torve first, managing the thousand-foot ascent 
to the summit ridge in a single leap. When Segnbora swung herself up into the 
saddle, Sunspark looked around at her with a naughty light in its eye. 
(Nervous?)
She gave it a threatening look in return and said nothing, while inside Hasai 
laughed at her. (Afraid of heights! Oh, Immanence within us, what kind of 
sdaha) (Well enough for you to laugh. You've got wings . . . ) Hasai continued 
laughing, a deep rough hiss. Segnbora did her best to ignore him and made very 
sure of her seat. A moment later she was glad of her care, for Sunspark shot up 
to the summit, trailing bright fire like a newborn comet and going at least 
twice as fast as it had the first time. It came down fast, too, landing on the 
snow with a hiss of steam and an incongruously light impact. Shaky-kneed, 
Segnbora scrambled down. (Well, that was probably the high point of your day,) 
Sun-spark said, genially malicious.
"Mmmnh," Segnbora said, slapping it familiarly on the flank, and burning 
herself. "The others are waiting."
It gave her a final look, walked off the precipice and plunged down out of 
sight.
She picked up a fistful of snow to cool the burned hand and walked over to join 
the others. They stood around the base of the Skybridge where it rooted into the 
stone, some thirty feet broad. The bridge had no look of a made thing about it, 
for there were no rivets, no marks of tools anywhere to be seen. Drawn from the 
mountain's heart by Fire, the metal had the light uprising grace of a growing 
thing about it, as if Adfne had put up stem and flower. There were actually a 
number of stemsthree lower ones, anchoring the main spans to consecutively 
lower points on the side of the peak. The angle of the bridge itself wasn't 
steep: It gained perhaps a foot in height for each three of length.
Herewiss held Khavrinen out and touched the bright silvery metal of the bridge 
with the pointthen jerked his arm back quickly as a blue spark jumped from 
bridge to sword. "Firework, all right," he said, rubbing his arm as if it 
stung. "And a life-wreaking. No wonder poor Efmaer never came back. She either 
died of this wreaking or didn't recover enough Power to fight her way out again 
before Glasscastle vanished and took her away forever."
"You're going to have to do a life-wreaking too, to seal it off." Freelorn 
looked uneasy.
Herewiss stood with one hand on his hip, staring at the bridge the way a 
carpenter stares at a tree he must fell. "Well, the sealing has to be done 
whether I survive it or not. Don't worry, though, Lorn. Merely sealing it won't 
cost me the kind of effort building it cost Efmaer. I'll lose a month or two of 
life, and my head'll hurt tonight, but that's all."
Sunspark came up with Moris, whose great bulk left no room for other passengers, 
and then with Harald, Dritt, and Lang. Finally it paced over to Herewiss, 
peering over his shoulder at the bridge. Herewiss reached around its neck, 
patted it, then turned as if he had noticed something disturbing. "You all 
right, loved?"
(It's cold up there,) Sunspark said.
Herewiss looked shocked. The others glanced at one another: they'd never heard 
the elemental say anything like that before. It pawed the ground uneasily, 
melting snow.
(All this water,) it said. (It's uncomfortable. And there's something else . . . 
)
Segnbora turned her face away and considered what she felt coming from Sunspark: 
a cold that had nothing to do with the bone-chilling wind whispering about the 
summit. Up near the end of the bridge, something was pouring down a cold of the 
spirit that grew stronger as twilight grew deeper and the mountains less 
distinct. All of them were shivering, but the looks of foreboding and concern on 
their faces were far more disturbing.


 
Herewiss stroked Sunspark's neck. "We'll be down soon enough, loved. This won't 
take long. Shall we?"
It turned, offering him the stirrup. Herewiss mounted and sat looking at the 
bridge for a moment. It was a dark silhouette against the crystalline clarity 
of the golden mountain sunset. Abruptly he sent Fire down Khavrinen, lighting 
the whole mountaintop, and nudged Sunspark with his heels. The elemental walked 
off the cliff on the east side and stood on the empty air two thousand feet 
above the southface cirque.
"Down a bit," Herewiss said. Sunspark sank leisurely through the air, as if 
sliding down a stairway banister. "Torve," Herewiss called up to the peak, 
"where are the usual accesses?"
"East face," Torve said, "and northwest. But a climber with stepping-spikes and 
a rope could go up about anywhere. As for the suicides, the Queen said they find 
themselves on the summit without climbing."
"Thanks," Herewiss said. "It's got to be the whole thing, then." He reined 
Sunspark close to the sheer cliff that fell down from the summit, and touched 
the ice and snow with Khavrinen. Despite her trouble with heights, Segnbora 
crowded close to the edge with Torve and the others to watch the wreaking.
Blue Fire lanced from Khavrinen's point, melting snow and striking into the bare 
red rock of the mountain, which heated from red- to yellow- to white-hot and 
finally to an azure incandescence. Flame leaped up from the kindled stone, 
though the tongues were small and sluggish, like those of an ordinary fire upon 
wet wood.
Sunspark moved around the peak, staying within arm's reach, and as elemental and 
rider progressed the bright line of blue melted itself into the stone behind 
them. Around the southeast spur they went, and out of sight. Most of Freelorn's 
band went around to watch the work on that side, but Torve stood by the 
cirque-facing cliff with Lang and Segnbora, shaking his head.
"This is a marvel," he said. "And strange. He's not what I expected a man with 
the Fire to be ..."
"The Rodmistresses in the Precincts agreed with you, I'm afraid," Segnbora said 
absently. For the moment her mind wasn't on Herewiss. For all her uneasiness 
with heights, something different was stirring in her now: a desire to lift 
wings and fall out into that glorious gulf of darkening blue air beneath her. A 
smile crossed her face at the realization that Dragons, like any of the more 
common soaring creatures of the world, preferred to drop from a height rather 
than to work for altitude.
(And why not,) Hasai said, stretching wings lazily inside her and admiring the 
view himself. (Why waste energy, or manipulate field, when you don't have to? 
This is a fine height. Not as high as the Eorlhowe, to be sure, but a 
respectable height)
"There it is," Torve said, his voice very quiet. Segnbora glanced up from the 
glacier.
High to the west, above the vista of Adine peak behind them, past Esa and Mirit 
and the long sleek flank of White-stack, had risen a slim crescent of Moon. To 
its right, and lower, a point of light glittered: the Evenstar. Quickly 
Segnbora looked upward along the silver-blue curve of the Sky-bridge . . . and 
forgot to breathe.
It had come out as silently and suddenly as the Moon. The Skybridge, half of a 
curve before, was whole now. The new part of the span did look to be made of the 
skycerulean blue, transparent, yet very much there. And at the span's end rose 
Glasscastle.
It was like a castle in an old story, a place built for pleasure rather than 
defense, fanciful and wide-windowed and fair. Halls and high towers pierced the 
upper air; slender spires were bound together by curving bridges and fairy 
buttresses. Everything, from the wide-flung gates at the end of the bridge to 
the highest needle spire, was built of the same airy crystal as the bridge.
The evening sky could plainly be seen through walls and towers. The fading hues 
of the sunsetrose, gold, and deepening royal bluewere reflected from them, 
pale and ghostly. Yet there was nothing fragile about the place. Glasscastle 
stood as immovably founded on the air as if on rock. It reflected the sunset 
colors, the icy light of the Moon,


       



 


and even the frozen gleam of the Evenstar, but cast no shadow.
"Not a moment too soon," Herewiss said, his voice hushed, as Sunspark stepped up 
to the peak again, completing their circuit of the mountaintop. All around the 
barrel of the peak burned a line of blue, the circle within which the spell 
would be confined. Herewiss dismounted and stood for a moment with Khavrinen in 
his hand, gazing up at the crystalline apparition.
"Beautiful," he said. "But from now on, that's all it's going to be." He struck 
Khavrinen,'s point down into the snow at the foot of the bridge, and looked up 
the curve of metal, raising his arms
and stopped, squinting upwrard. "Who's that?" he said.
Everyone looked. Segnbora's stomach constricted at the sight of the lone dark 
figure approaching the end of the metal part of the span, a tiny shadow against 
the twilight.
"I don't believe it," Herewiss said, in the voice of someone
who does believe it, and wishes he were wrong. "I don'tLORN!"


Nine
"It's dangerous to invoke the Goddess as you conceive Her to be," said lav. "and 
more dangerous still to invoke Her as She truly is."
"Right enough," said Airru. "Breathing is dangerous too. But necessary . .. "
fates from the South, x, 118


 


Herewiss's anguished shout came back as echoes, but had no effect on the small 
dark silhouette that hurried purposefully up the bridge. Herewiss swung 
Khavrinen up two-handed, pointing at Freelorn, and the sword spat a blinding 
line of Fire that ran upward toward himbut whatever wreaking he had in mind 
came unraveled before it ever touched Lorn. Many feet short of the bridge, the 
Fire hit some unseen barrier and splashed in all directions like water thrown 
at a wall. Freelorn kept walking. Another twenty paces would see him up onto the 
phantom portion of the span. Herewiss wasn't waiting; he ran up the bridge after 
his loved, swearing frightfully in an ancient Arlene dialect, Khavrinen 
streaming frantic Fire behind him. Sunspark went galloping up after, unable to 
leave his loved.
"Damn!" Lang said, and followed.
"Torve, wait here!" Segnbora said, unsheathing Char-riselm as she headed after 
Lang.
"Are you joking? The Queen would . . ." Torve began to say as he followed her 
and the others onto the bridge.
They didn't run longthe altitude saw to that. Only Torve could run fast enough 
to catch up with Herewiss. In addition, the bridge was longer than it looked: an 
eighth mile, perhaps, to the point where it truly became sky. Far ahead of them, 
Freelorn's small figure slowed in its stride, hesitating only briefly. He put 
one foot on the phantom bridge, found it would support him, and went on as 
before, in a confident but hurried walk.
Damn! Segnbora thought as she ran. She clutched Char-riselm harder than 
necessary, for her hands and face were


numb from the chill. That other, more inward cold was pouring down more 
bitterly than before, yet she didn't suffer much from it. Something was blunting 
its effects; something inside her, burning
(Hasai!) she said as she caught up with Herewiss and Sun-spark and Torve. (Is 
that you?)
(Sdaha, against the great cold of the outer darknesses, this is nothing. We have 
learned to deal with cold.)
(I'm glad!) she said silently.
Herewiss and Torve had paused at the edge of the phantom span, and behind them 
Sunspark stood, looking downright dubious. The Fire-wrought part of the bridge 
was as thick and wide as the railless metal span, but clear and as fragile as 
air. Herewiss knelt to brush his fingers across it and straightened quickly, as 
if burnt.
"Whoever did this wreaking," he gasped, "they've got more Power than I haveand 
they're up there now, fueling it!" He got to his feet and stepped out onto the 
crystalline part of the bridge, realized that the footing was secure, and took 
off after Freelorn again at a run.
Torve and the others went after, Sunspark hammering behind them at a gallop, 
the bridge under its feet ringing like struck crystal.
Segnbora followed, stepping out onto the bridge. Maybe I shouldn't, she thought 
as she looked down. But to her surprise, the vista of shadows and creeping fog 
that veiled the south face glacier half a mile below didn't much trouble her. 
Hasai's Dragofire was strong in her, getting stronger as she headed after the 
others. Lady grant it holds, she thought, beginning to
run.
At the Skybridge's end, between the two huge crystal doors that lay open there, 
a tiny figure passed into the dimness beyond and was lost to sight.
The group ahead of her slowed and came to a stop at the end of the bridge, 
gazing up at the chill clear grace of towers and keeps, at the awful tallness 
and thickness of the doors. Segnbora caught up with them, feeling their 
nervousness. Sai Ebassren, the place was called in Darthene: the House of No 
Return. What lay within, no legend told. The only certainty


       



 


was that when the three Lights were gone, the place would vanish, and anyone 
trapped within would never emerge.
Herewiss did not pause for long. Sending a great defiant glory of the Flame down 
Khavrinen's length, he walked through the doors. The twilight within swallowed 
him as it had Freelorn. For an instant Khavrinen flickered like a star seen 
through fog, and then its light vanished.
Sunspark hesitated at the doors, though only for a moment. It was trembling in 
body, a sight that astounded Segnbora.
"Firechild"
(I'm bound,) it said in terror. (I can't burn. I can't change)
She reached out to it in mind, perplexed, and felt Sunspark drowning in a cold 
more deadly than the lost gulfs between stars that Hasai had mentioned; a cold 
that could kill thought and motion and change of any kind. Hasai had been 
shielding her. (Maybe you should stay outside,) she said.
It turned hard eyes on her. (I will not let him come to harm in there,) it said, 
and turned away from her to walk shaking through the doors. The dimness folded 
around its burning inane and tail, and Sunspark vanished.
"That's done it," Lang said, genial and terrified. "Damned if I'll be outdone by 
a walking campfire" He unsheathed his sword and went after, Torve close after 
him.
There Segnbora stood, left alone on the threshold, trembling nearly as hard as 
Sunspark had.
No return.
She swore at herself and hurried in behind the others.
She was in a great hall, all walled in sheer unfigured crystal, through which 
Adine and the peaks beyond it showed clear. The air was thick with a blue dusk, 
like smoke. She barely had time to see these things, though, before the terrible 
thought-numbing cold she had experienced through Sunspark came crowding in close 
around her, ten times worse than it had been outside.
From within her came an answering flare, Hasai and the mdeihei calling up old 
memories of warmth and daylight to fight the cold. She regained a bit of 
composure, looked


around for the others. They were nowhere in sight. Deep in the twilight she 
could see vague forms moving far away, but somehow she knew that none of them 
were those with whom she had entered. Her companions were all lost in the 
blue-ness, with Freelorn.
(Herewiss!) she called silently. (Sunspark!) But no reply came back, and her 
under speech fell into a mental silence as thick as if she had shouted into a 
heavily curtained room. Thought was blocked here, then.
"Herewiss!" she shouted aloud. The curling twilight soaked up the sound of her 
voice like a heavy fog. She set off into the blueness, hurrying.
For all her fearfulness, the sheer greatness of the wreaking that had made this 
place astonished her. Even at first entrance the place had seemed as big as 
Earneselle or the Queens' Hall in Prydon. But now, as she walked across the vast 
glassy floor, the walls grew remote and the ceiling seemed to become a firmament 
that not even a soaring Dragon could reach. Mirrored in walls, galleries, and 
crystalline arches, she saw vague intimations of other rooms: up-reaching towers 
and balconies, parlors and courts, an infinity of glass reflected dimly in 
glass, too huge to ever search or know completely.
That terrible chill was part of the wreaking too, though here inside the castle 
it seemed not to be biting so viciously at the bones. It was becoming a quality 
of the mind: a cool lassitude, a twilight that ran in the veins and curled 
shadowy in the heart, smothering fear and veiling the desire to be out of there. 
She could feel that cold rising in her, but the presence of the mdeihei was a 
match for it. Ancient sunfire burned the twilight out of her blood as fast as it 
grew. Dragonfire, painful and bright at the bottom of her lungs, burned the sad 
resignation away. Frightened by the constant assault, but reassured by the 
Dragon's presence, Segnbora headed deeper into the shadowy blue.
The dead and those who had abandoned life slowly became evident around her. 
There' were many, but none of them were walking together. Young men and old 
women she passed; foreigners and countrymen, maidens and lords. Here and there 
she recognized a surcoat-device, but afterward she was


       



 


time to impending tears. This woman had been one of the great powers of her 
time: vital, powerful, quick to laugh or fight or love. She was the woman who 
had fought Death and won. Yet now she was like all the others here, her spirit 
emptied out on the crystal floor.
"Queen," Segnbora said at last, "I'm no dream, unless I stay here too long. Have 
you seen a man go by here, one of the living? He was wearing the arms of Arlen."
Efmaer turned slowly, and her eyes dwelt on Segnbora's surcoat and her lioncelle 
passant regardant in blood and gold. "I know that charge," Efmaer said, showing 
for the first time a wrinkle of expression, a faint frown of lost memory. "My 
sister"
"Enra," Segnbora said. "I'm of her line. You are my ... my aunt, Queen."
"How many generations removed?" Efmaer said, and for a second the bronze in her 
voice went bright.
Segnbora could not answer her.
"That many," said the Queen. "She is dust, then. She walks the Shore ..."
Efmaer's voice drifted away as she started to lose herself again in the 
undercurrents of Glasscastle's sorrow. Segnbora gulped. There was something 
nagging at the back of her mind, something that would mean a great deal to this 
woman. If only she could remember
"Queen," Segnbora said, "if you haven't seen him, I can't wait. I have to find 
him."
"I could not find the one I sought, either," Efmaer said in that same 
half-dreaming voice. "I looked and looked for Sefeden, while the Moon went down 
and the Evenstar set. We must have passed one another half a hundred times, and 
never known it. Hear me: The Firework sustaining this place is greater than any 
mortal wreaking, and the place keeps its own. You will not leave ..."
"My friends and I will get out," Segnbora said, hoping she was speaking the 
truth. "Come with us"
Efmaer shook her head. "Only the living can leave this place ..."
"Are you dead then, Eagle's daughter?"                             s


For the first time, Efmaer looked straight at Segnbora. Emotion was in those 
eyes now, but it was an utter hopelessness that made Segnbora shudder. "Do I 
look dead? Would that I were. Not Skadhwe itself could kill me here!" "Skadhwe 
is here?"
"Somewhere," the Queen said. "Once the doors closed, I lost it, the way I lost 
everything else. Yet even while the doors were open, it did me no good." She 
closed her eyes, and with a great effort made another expression: pain. "I 
fought, but I could not kill myself, and so I am less than dead ..."
Pity and horror wrung Segnbora, but she couldn't stay. "Queen, I have to go 
hunting."
"He will be with her," Efmaer said. "Far in, at the place where your heart 
breaks. But be out before moonset ..." The woman didn't speak or move again. 
Segnbora paused only long enough to take one of those pale, pliant hands and 
lift it, kissing the palm in the farewell of kinsfolk of the Forty Houses. Then 
she turned and hurried away.
Hall after hall opened before her, all alike, huge prisms full of silence and 
the reflections of empty eyes. Corridor like corridor, gallery like gallery, and 
nowhere any face she knew. She ran harder. Through the walls she saw the 
treacherous Moon hanging exactly where it had been when she entered. Likewise 
the sunset appeared about to grow dimmer, but had not changed. Inside 
Glasscastle there was eternal sunset, she realized. Without, who knew how much 
time had passed? The three Lights could be about to vanish, for all she knew.
The thought of the others still unfound, of the awful way back to the main hall, 
of Efmaer's ghastly placidity, all wound together in her brain and sang such 
horror to her that for a few seconds she went literally blind. Trying to turn a 
corner in that state, she missed her footing and skidded to her knees. 
Desperately she tried to rise, but could not. Her leg muscles had cramped.
There Segnbora crouched, gasping, sick with shame and
rage. The awareness of the huge head bowing over her, great
wings stretching upward, was small consolation.
(Sdaha.)
(Yes, I know, just a)               


 
(Sdaha. Here's our lost Lion)
She pushed herself up on her hands and looked. There was Freelorn, not more than 
ten or fifteen feet away from her. He was kneeling on the crystal floor, very 
still, his head bowed. The sight flooded her with intense relief.
"Lorn," she whispered, and scrabbled back to her feet again, ignoring the 
protests of abused muscles. "Lorn. Thank the"
and she saw
"Goddess.*' Her voice left her throat, taking her breath with it.
Her throne was wrought of crystal, like everything else in the place, but it 
reflected nothing from its long sheer surfaces. The one enthroned upon it seemed 
caught at that particular moment when adolescence first turns toward womanhood, 
and both woman and child live in the eyes. She was clothed in changelessness and 
invulnerability as with the robe of woven twilight She wore, and Her slender 
maiden's hands seemed able, if they chose, to sow stars like grain, or pluck the 
Moon like a silver flowrer. Yet very still those hands lay on the arms of the 
throne, and Segnbora found herself trembling with fear to see them so idle.
Her quiet, beautiful face lay half in shadow as the Lady's gaze dwelt on 
Freelorn. For a long while there was no motion but that of Her long braid, the 
color of night before the stars were made, rising and falling slightly with Her 
breathing. Then slowly She looked up, and met Segnbora's eyes.
"Little sister," the Maiden said, * 'you're welcome."
Segnbora sank to her knees., staggered with awe and love. This was her Lady, the 
aspect of the Goddess she had always loved best: the Maker, the Builder, the 
Mistress of Fire, She Who created the worlds and creates them still, Giver of 
Power and glory. Not even that night in the Ferry' Tavern had she been stricken 
down like this, with such terror and desire. 'The Maiden gazed at her, and 
Segnbora had to look down, blinded by the divine splendor.
She gasped for breath and tried to think. It was hard, through the trembling, 
yet it was the fact that she trembled at all that disturbed her,. Even as the 
Dark .Lady, walking the
night in Her moondark aspect, She did not inspire fear. Something was wrong. 
Segnbora lifted her head for another look, and was once more heartblinded by Her 
untempered glory. Segnbora hid her eyes as if from the Sun, and began to tremble 
in earnest.
Within her Hasai bent his head low, and spread his wings upward in a bow. (She's 
not as you showed me, within you. Nor is She like the Immanence. Its experience, 
too, is always one of infinite power, but the power is tempered)
(It's) The words seemed impossible, a wild lie in the face of deity, but she 
thought them anyway. (It's not Her.)
Segnbora cut herself off. She had a suspicion of what was wrong with this 
Maiden. She also believed she now knew Who was maintaining the great wreaking 
that had built the Sky-bridge, and Who was keeping the Glasscastle-trap 
inviolate. Only an aspect of the Goddess could do such things . . . Segnbora got 
up, anxious to be out of Glasscastle before she discovered whether her suspicion 
wras correct
and was very surprised to find herself still kneeling where she was. With a 
flash of anger she met the Maiden's eyes again. They poured powrer at her, a 
flood of chill strength, knowledge, potency. The look went straight through 
Segnbora like a blade. Once before, long ago, those hands had wrought her soul, 
those eyes had critically examined the Maker's handiwork. Now they did so again, 
a look enough to paralyze any mortal creature, as flaws and strengths together 
were coolly assessed by the One Who put them there.
But Segnbora's soul was a little less mortal now than it had been when first 
created. There were Dragons among the mdei-hm who had had direct experiences of 
the Immanence on more than one occasion. The judgment of ultimate power didn't 
frighten them; they were prepared to meet the infinite eye to eye, and judge 
right, back,
/ am what I am, Segnbora thought, reaching back toward the Dragons' strength and 
staring into those beautiful, daunting eyes.. She would not be judged and found 
wanting with her work incomplete, her Name still unknown!
Suddenly she was standing, surprised that she could. She expected to be struck 
with lightning for her temerity, but
       



 


nothing happened. Segnbora kept her eyes on the fair, still face, and saw, past 
the virulent blaze of glory, something she had missed earlier. The Maiden's eyes 
had a dazzlement about them, as if She too were blinded.
"My Lady," Segnbora managed to say, "I beg Your pardon, but we have to leave."
"No one comes here," the Maiden said gently, "who wants to leave. I have 
ordained it so."
The terrible power of Her voice filled the air, making the words true past 
contradiction. Segnbora shook her head, wincing in pain at the effort of 
maintaining her purpose against that onslaught of will. "But Freelorn is the 
Lion's Child," she said. "He has things to do"
"He came here of his own free will," the Maiden said. She moved for the first 
time, reaching out one of Her empty hands to Freelorn. He leaned nearer with a 
sigh, and She stroked his hair, gazing down at him. "And now he has his heart's 
desire. No more flight for the Lion's Child, no more striving after an empty 
throne and a lost sword. Only peace, and the twilight. He has earned them."
The Maiden half-sang the words as She looked at Freelorn, and Her merciless 
glory grew more blinding yet. Segnbora shook her head, for something was 
missing. Whatever lived in those eyes, it wasn't love. And more than Her glory, 
it was Her loveof creating, and what she createdthat Segnbora had worshiped
(Sdaha, be swift!)
(Right) She reached out to grab Freelorn and pull him away from the Maiden's 
lulling touch, but as she moved, the Maiden did toolocking eyes with Segnbora, 
striking her still.
"You also, little sister," She said, "you have earned your peace. Here you shall 
stay."
"No, oh no," Segnbora whispered, struggling again to find the will to move. But, 
dark aspect or not, this was the Goddess, Who knew Segnbora's heart better than 
she did.
The Maiden spoke from within that heart now, with Segnbora's own thoughts, her 
own voice, as the Goddess often speaks . ... I'm tired, my mum and da are dead; 
there are months,


maybe years of travel and fighting ahead of usand even if I bring Lorn out of 
here, he'll probably just be killed. Isn't this better for him than painful 
death? And isn't it better for me, toof No death in ice and darkness, just peace 
for all eternity. Peace in the twilight, with Her . . .
The song of the mdeihei seemed very far away. She couldn't hear what Hasai was 
saying to her, and somehow it didn't matter. The cool of the surrounding 
twilight curled into her like rising water. Soon it would rise high enough to 
drown her life, abolish both pain and desire.
The Maiden was seated no longer. Calm as a moonrise, She stood before Segnbora, 
reaching out to her. "There's nothing to fear/' She said. "Nothing fails here, 
nothing is lost, no hearts break or are broken. I have wrought a place outside 
of time and ruin"
The gentle hands touched Segnbora's face. All through her, muscles went lax as 
her body yielded itself to its Creator. Her mind swelled with a desire to be 
still; to forget the world and its concerns and rest in Her touch forever.
"Then it's true," she whispered as if in a dream. "There's no death here ..."
"There is no death anywhere," the Maiden said, serene, utterly certain.
The relief that washed through Segnbora was indescribable. The one thing that 
had been wrong with the world was vanquished at last. Impenmanence, loss, 
bereavement. . . the Universe was perfect, as it should have been from the 
beginning. There was nothing to fear anymore . . .
. .. though it was curious that one dim image surfaced, and would not go away. 
In languid curiosity she regarded it, though her indifference kept her from 
truly seeing it for a long time, It was a tree, and a dark field, and brightness 
in the field. Night smells
smells ?
There were smells that had little to do with night. Ground-damp. Mold. Wetness, 
where her hands turned over dirt, and jerked back in shock. Wetness, and the 
liqyid gleam of dulled eyes in Flameligtit. And 'the carrion smell of death
In a wash of horror, the dream broke. Segnbora knew who


       



 


she was again, and Who held her. The Maiden had made the worlds, true enough, 
and in the ecstasy of creation had forgotten about Death and let It in. But She 
had never denied Death's existence, or Her mistake, in any of Her aspects. 
Segnbora tried to move away from the hands that held her, and couldn't. Her body 
felt half-dead.
She settled for moving just one hand: the right one, the swordhand that had 
saved her so many times before. Her own horror helped her, for she realized now 
that she was in the presence of a legend: the One with Still Hands, that Maiden 
Who has stopped creating and holds all who fall into Her power in a terrible 
thrall. This was a dark aspect of the true Maiden, one Who had embraced 
forgetfulness, and Who had taken Glasscastle as Her demesne, Her prison.
(Hasai!)
Struggling to raise her hand, she called him, and to her shock got no answer. 
Twilight had fallen in the back of her mind, and she could feel no Dragonfire 
there. She would have to raise her swordhand alone, even though the Maiden's 
cool hands on her face made it almost impossible to concentrate.
Sweat sprang out with the effort. The hand moved an inch. She would not be left 
here! She would not leave her mdaha stuck in an eternity of not-doing! She would 
not walk past Lang and Freelorn and Herewiss a thousand times without seeing 
them . . . ! Another inch. Another. The hand felt as if it were made of lead, 
but she moved further into herself, finding strength.
In the twilight, something else moved. Down inside her memory, in the cavernnot 
her own secret place, but the cave at the Morrowfanestones grated beneath 
Hasai's plating, scoring the dulled gems of his flanks as he rolled over to be 
still from the convulsions at last. Horrified, Segnbora discovered that the One 
with Still Hands was there as well. Dark as a moonless night, she was soothing 
Hasai's worst pain, offering him a mdahaih state that would never diminish him 
to a faint voice in the background, but would leave him one strong voice among 
many. But her promise was a lie.
(Mdaha! Move! She can't do it. She'll trap you in here, and we'll both be alive 
and rdahaih forever!)


He could not move. Desperately, Segnbora reached all the way back inside, 
climbed into his body and took overwore his wings, lashed his tail, lifted his 
head, forced one immense taloned foot to move forward, then another, then 
another. Together they crawled to the mouth of the cave, Hasai gasping without 
fire as they went.
(Sdaha, have mercy! Let me go!) he begged, agonized.
She ignored him, pushing his head out the cave entrance into the clear night. 
The entrance was too small for his shoulders and barrel. She pushed, ramming 
muscles with thought and cave wall with gemmed hide, steel bones. (Now!) she 
cried, and they crashed into the rock together. It trembled, but held. (Now!) 
Stones rattled and fell about them. The mountain shook and threatened to come 
downbut stone was their element, they were unafraid.
Hasai began to assist her, living in his own body again, remembering life, 
refinding his strength. (Now!) They jammed shoulders through the stone; wings 
smote the rock like lightning, burst free into the night. Segnbora's arm knocked 
away with one sweeping gesture the hands that held her. In rage and pity, and a 
desire to see something other than slack peace in those beautiful eyes, her hand 
swept back again. She struck the Maiden backhanded across the face.
Shocked, sickened by the violence she had done, Segnbora waited for the 
lightning ... or at least for her own handprint to appear on Her face. Nothing 
came, though. No flicker of the eyes, no change in the mouth. Slowly the Maiden 
turned Her back on Segnbora, went back to Her throne, seated Herself. She said 
nothing. Segnbora found herself free.
(Sdaha)
(I know, mdaha, time!)
Segnbora shook Freelorn by the shoulder. There was no answering movementhe 
seemed asleep, or tranced. Well, dammit, if I have to carry him She reached 
down and took him under the shoulders, heaving hard. Freelorn made a sound, 
then. It was a bitter moan; a sound of pain and mourning as if some sweet dream 
had broken.
"Come on, Lorn," she said, wanting more to swear than to coax. Moonset couldn't 
be more than a quarter-hour away. "Come on, you Lioncub, you idiot, come on!"


 
Turning, she got him upthen blinked in shock. They were all there, drifting in. 
Lang, looking peaceful. Dritt, Moris, Torve, Harald, all the life gone out of 
their movements. Sun-spark, quenched in the twilight like a Firebrand dropped in 
water. Herewiss, his light eyes dark with Glasscastle's dusk, and no flicker of 
Fire showing about Khavrinen.
Despair and anger shook her. She didn't have time to go into each mind 
separately and break the Maiden's grip. She doubted she had the strength, 
anyhow. Not even the Fire, had she been able to focus it, would help her now, 
though sorcery . . .
She paused, considering. Perhaps there was a way to break them all free at once. 
It shamed her deeply to consider it, but then she had no leisure for shame.
(Mdaha!)
(Do what you must,) Hasai said, placid. (I'll lend you strength if you need it.)
She gulped, and began the sorcery. It was a simple one, and vile. These people 
were her friends. She had fought alongside them, guarded their backs, eaten and 
drunk and starved with them, lain down in loneliness and merriment to share 
herself with them. Their friendship gave her just enough knowledge of their 
inner Names with which to weave a spell of compulsion.
It was almost too easy, in fact. Their own wills were almost wholly abolished. 
The images of loneliness, loss of Power, and midnight fear that she employed 
were more than adequate. She knew less about Herewiss and Sunspark than about 
Freelorn and the others, but could guess enough about their natures to make them 
head out the door. Torve was hardesta name and a wry flicker of his eyes was 
all she had. Yet she was terrified for this innocent, and her fear fueled his 
part of the sorcery, making up for her lack of knowledge.
As she gasped oul the last few syllables of the spell, Segn-bora began carefully 
making her way out of the construct in
her mind. She slipped sideways through the final fold of the sorcery, scoring 
herself with sharp words in only a few places, thankful for once that she was so 
slim. Once out, she bound
the sorcery into a self-maintaining configuration that would give her time to 
fight off the inevitable backlash and follow the others out.
One by one, her companions began drifting away from the Maiden's throne, out 
toward the great gates. She sagged a moment, feeling weary and soiled, watching 
them go.
Inside her, wings like the night sheltered her and fed her strength. (Sdaha, 
don't dally)
(No.)
She looked one last time at the throne, where the Maiden sat silent, watching 
the others go, dispassionate as a statute in a shrine. O my Queen, Segnbora 
thought. Surely somewhere the Maiden dwelt in saner aspects, whole and alive and 
forever creating. But to see even a minor aspect of Godhead so twisted was too 
bitter for a mortal to bear for long. Hurrying, Segnbora turned away to follow 
the others.
They were far ahead of her, unerringly following the way out that she had set 
for them. The sorcery was holding surprisingly well, considering bow long it 
had been since she had used sorcery to as much as mend a pot or start a fire. 
She went quickly, trotting, even though physical activity would bring on the 
backlash with a vengeance. It felt wonderful to move again.
(Mdaha, you all right?)
(My head hurts,) he said, surprised. The mdeihei rarely experienced pain for 
which there was no memory.
(It's the effect of the sorcery; you're getting it from me.)
Somehow she couldn't bring herself to be very solicitous: There were still too 
many things that could go wrong. They could come to the doors and find them 
closed. Or, if they were open, the bridge could be gone. Or
Something moved close by, a figure approaching Sgenbora from one side. It was 
not one of her own people, she knew. Her hand went to Charriselm's hilt.
Suoimersky opals winked at her as Efmaer came up beside her and 'walked with 
her, quickly but without animation. "You are leaving," the Queen said.
"Yes. Come with usr>
Efmaer shook her head. "Gladly would I come . . . but I


never found Sefeden to get my Name back, and without it I cannot leave ..."
"But you know your Name." "I have forgotten it," said the Queen. Segnbora's 
insides clenched with pity . . . and suddenly the memory she hadn't been able to 
pin down appeared in her pain-darkened  mind.Urgently,  she stopped and  took 
the Queen by the shoulders. She had half expected to find herself holding a 
ghost, or something hard and cold, but there was life and warmth in the body, 
and an old supple strength that spoke of years spent swinging F6rlennh and 
Skadhwe in the wars against the Fyrd.
"Efmaer. Enra gave the secret to her daughter, and it passed into the lore of 
our line. I know your Name."
Undead, the Queen still managed to show shock and dismay that a stranger knew 
her greatest secret, the word that described who she was. But her distress 
lasted hardly a breath.
"Tell me quickly."
Segnbora swallowed, looked Efmaer in the eye and whispered itone long, 
cadenced, beautiful word in very ancient Darthene. Efmaer's eyes filled with it, 
filled with life, and tears.
"Kinswoman," she choked, the word carrying a great weight of thanks and wild 
hope. "Go. Don't stay for me. I'll meet you by the doors if I can. I have to see 
about something before I go."
Off Efmaer went into the unchanging dusk. Segnbora turned and ran after her 
friends. They were almost out of sight, near the outwalls, where the twilight 
was thickest.
(Mdaha, what's the time?)
(There's a little left yet.)
She ran, harder than before, somehow feeling relieved of a great burden. She 
could feel the backlash of her sorcery creeping up on her, a hammering in her 
head and a weakness in the limbs. But her sorcery was holding, the others were 
still bound by her will. She caught sight of them now, not too far ahead, right 
up against
"Oh Dark!" she said in complete despair, not caring what the swearing might 
invoke.
The great doors were shut. The faint light of the lying Moon shone high as 
before, but its light looked dimmer somehow. Freelorn and Herewiss were standing 
there looking dully up at the doors with the others. There was someone else 
there too, backed up against the entrance.
She pushed passed Herewiss and stopped sharp. If her heart hadn't withered 
already, it would have done so now.
There was more energy bound up in that waiting figure than in anyone else she 
had seen in Glasscastle. It was someone slender, a blade of a woman with about 
as much curve; someone with a slight curvature of the back that made for an odd 
stance, balanced forward as if perpetually about to lunge; someone with a sword 
like the sharpened edge of the young Moon, and short straight hair shockingly 
white at the roots; someone wearing a surcoat with Enra's lioncelle on it, 
passant regardant in blood and gold. Her dark eyes had a dazzlement about them, 
a terrible placidity. The One with Still Hands looked out of them. She was not 
defeated yet.
'Wo," Segnbora whispered. Her otherself gazed at her with eyes tranquil and 
deadly, and hefted another Charriselm, making sure of her grip.
"You're not leaving," her own voice said.
Segnbora stepped closer, fascinated by the sight of herself. The other watched 
her unperturbed, wearing the aura of calm that Shihan had taught her was better 
than armor.
(Mdaha, you suppose she has you too?)
(As far as I can tell, I'm only here once. Is she truly you?)
Segnbora took another step forward.
"Save yourself some trouble," said the Segnbora who guarded the door, "and don't 
bother."
(I think so,) she said to Hasai, recognizing the line. Queasi-ness started to 
rise inside her. The backlash was starting, and that meant she would soon be 
unable to hold together the sorcery. The others would start to drift away. Her 
otherself took a step forward. There was no question about her pur-


pose. Segnbora raised Charriselm to guard, two-handed, and for the first time 
eyed her own stance as other opponents must have eyed it, seeking a weakness to 
exploit for the kill. It terrified her. All those who had attempted what she 
must now attempt were all dead. They started to circle one another.
"What I don't understand," the other said in a calm, reasonable voice, "is why 
you're trying to leave."
"I have my reasons," Segnbora said, shuddering at the strangeness of answering 
her own voice. "And I have my oaths"
"Your oaths are vain," said her otherself, edging closer in that particular 
sideways fashion that was Segnbora's favorite for closing inconspicuously with 
an enemy. "Who'll notice if you break them?" "She will"
"Oh, indeed. And what has She done for you lately, besides graciously allowing 
you a night in bed with Her? You know, don't you, that it was only Her sneaky 
way of telling you that you're about to die? You don't?" The other looked 
scornful. "Oaths! The way Freelorn's behaving, he'll never make it anywhere near 
Prydon, you at least know that! He'll get himself killed, along with the rest 
of you, on that cold dark ledge. Ice and darkness, that's what oaths get you"
Segnbora slid closer, trembling. It was hard to think of this as just another 
fight. The necessary immersion in the other's eyesthat act of becoming the 
opponent in order to counter her moves before they happenedwas impossible when 
those eyes had the mad Maiden's dreadful stillness in them. Her every glance 
made Segnbora afraid she would drown in their blank dazzle, drop Charriselm and 
surrender. To make matters worse, the backlash was hitting her harder nownot by 
accident, she suspected.
(Let us fight for you!) Hasai said suddenly. Segnbora blinked at this, and her 
otherself moved in fast, striking high at her head with Charriselm's twin. 
Segnbora whirled out of range toward the other's right, taking advan-  * tage of 
her own slightly weak backhand recovery, and came about again. There was a stir 
of movement among the silent) v watchers. For a moment her will to keep them in 
one place
wavered, and they started drifting back toward Glasscastle's center, where the 
Maiden waited.
(Don't answer, sdaha. The mdeihei and I have been here long enough to be able to 
work your body; and your memories of your training are now for us. Tend to the 
sorcery. We will deal with this other you.)
The other Segnbora was inching in again, waiting an unguarded momentevidently 
Shihan's injunctions about not wasting time on showy but ineffective swordplay 
were binding on her too.
Segnbora didn't much want to give her body to the mdeihei, but even now the 
sorcery was unraveling. (Mdaha, you get me killed!)
(Killed? Here?) Hasai said, gently ironic.
The other leaped in to the attack again. While she was still in midair Segnbora 
felt other muscles, other wills, strike through her body and wear it as she had 
worn Hasai's earlier. Without her volition she saw Charriselm twist up and slash 
out in the ha'denh move, the edge-on stroke and backstroke that opens the ekier 
sequence.
Normally, the feint of the first stroke and the vicious backhand cut of the 
second would have been enough to disembowel her opponent, but Segnbora's sword 
met its mate halfway through the first cut. The two swords together sang a 
tormented note like a bell having its tongue cut out. Charriselm glanced down 
and out of the bind, and white Darthene steel sliced air where Segnbora would 
have been, had not the mdeihei twisted her impossibly sideways.
(Ow! My back!)
(You still live, don't you? Tend to the sorcery!)
There was no more time for discussion. In the back of her mind the hard-stressed 
words of the sorcery were turning on one another, blades cutting blades, 
striving to undo themselves from her constraints. Ignoring her roiling insides, 
she shoved words back into place, reinforced them, threatened them, cajoled them 
in heartfelt Nhaired. It was like carrying water in a sieve, for all the while 
the power of the wreaking wore away at her outer mind, letting the twilight seep 
in again.
While she stopped up hole after hole of the sieve to keep


       



 


her sorcery from running out, she watched the mdeihei inside her skin using her 
to turn and cut and thrust, attacking high and low, using all-out routines like 
sadekh and ariud. Nothing came of it. Every time, Charriselm met its otherself 
in her twin's hand and the steel cried out. Every time she felt her own 
leverages, her own moves, being used against her. Again and again the mdeihei 
saved her life with dives and dodges that nearly snapped her spine, but the 
situation got no better.
(I hadno idea you were sodifficult in a fight, sdaha,) Hasai said, breathing 
hard from Segnbora's exertion. He lunged her forward in the dangerous hilt-first 
"mutiny" maneuver, but her otherself twisted nimbly away.
(Neither did I.) Segnbora pushed a couple of words frantically back into the 
weave of the spell. As she did, she remembered something Efmaer had said. I 
could not kill myself, and so I am less than dead. Was this what had happened to 
her? Had she fought herself here at the gates and lost?
Hasai backed her up a step, raised Charriselm and stood poised in her body like 
a dancer, waiting for imprudence to tempt her adversary within range. The other 
Segnbora took the bait, stepping in suddenly and swingingthe edelk slash that 
could open Segnbora up like an oyster if it connected.
The Dragon sucked her stomach in and struck downward with Charriselm to stop the 
edeUe, then whirled the blade up in a blur to strike at the other's unprotected 
throat. But her otherself came up to block, and Segnbora's stroke was slightly 
off angle. The two swords met, and this time there was no scrape, but rather a 
sudden snap that went right to the pit of Segnbora's stomach. A handsbreadth 
above the hilt, Charriselm broke in two. The blade-shard went spinning away 
through the air to fall ringing on the crystal floor.
'Wo/" she cried, staring in anguish at the broken-off stump that had once been 
whole and beautiful. Before the doors, her otherself relaxed into guard, knowing 
Segnbora would think three times about trying a passage armed with only half a 
sword. At the back of her mind, words began falling away from one another
A quick motion off to one side brought her around. It was Efmaer. The Queen came 
to her with her hands extended, and nothing in them ... or not quite nothing. 
She held a long


slim darkness, like a slice of the utter darkness beyond the
world, like a splinter of night made solid
"You gave me my Name," Efmaer said, urgent. "This is all I have to give you. 
Take it!"
Only for a second Segnbora hesitated as she stared at the uncanny thing. It was 
impossible to focus upon it despite its razor-sharp outline. Then she seized it 
out of Efmaer's hands, by the end that was slightly thicker, and swung it up. 
There was no weight of hilt or blade; no feeling of actually holding anything, 
not even coolness or warmth or resistance to the air.
(Hasai)
(Trust us, we will do well enough.)
"Kinswoman, be warned," Efmaer said, "it'll demand a life of you some dayit did 
of me!"
Segnbora nodded absently. She was already busy with the sorcery again, shoring 
it up. Her otherself dropped once more into a wary crouch, waiting, watching 
Skadhwe. Hasai saw his advantage and moved in on the other, not waiting.
"So," said the other, "now you'll kill me"
Segnbora wrought a long word in Nhaired and wove it into a spot in the sorcery 
that was going bare.
"You're in my way," she said, remotely feeling the strange heft of the sword as 
Hasai lifted it. Legend said it would cut anything, but would it work here, 
inside another legend?
"That's only part of it," her otherself said. "You like to kill."
She couldn't help looking into the other's eyes then and seeing there the placid 
regard of the Maiden. The power that had almost drowned her before stirred 
again.
Hasai danced in close, striking with Skadhwe.
(I can't) Segnbora whispered in mind. Her resistance made the mdeihei guiding 
her body miss the stroke. Her other-self slipped out of range, whirling to come 
at her on her weak side. The mdeikei spun Segnbora about too, so that the 
face-off stood again as it had.
Down in Segnbora's mind a word unraveled itself from her sorcery and slithered 
away like a serpent of light, followed by another, and another. Herewiss turned 
away, and Freelorn, and. Lang
(Sdahaf)


       



 


"Yes!" she said aloud. This wasn't her Maiden, not the Lady of the White Hunt, 
defender of life and growth. This was just her own body occupied by an indweller 
as committed to stagnation as Hasai was to doing and being.
The mdeihei felt her resolve and leaped again. The other Segnbora, perhaps 
thinking Segnbora wouldn't kill or hurt her, was slow about retreating. A second 
later she danced back with a cry. Red showed high up on her arm, pumping fast.
Segnbora flinched. She had felt nothing, no bite of sword into flesh at all.
"If you kill Me, you're killing part of yourself!" the other cried, sounding 
afraid for the first time.
Hasai pressed in, following his advantage. Segnbora felt tears coming, but 
didn't argue as she patched the spell again. Only a moment later did she realize 
what she was going to have to do. It would have been easiest to let Hasai win 
the fight, but she refused to allow him sole responsibility for that. The spell 
would hold for a second. She moaned out loud, took back her muscles, slid in and 
struck with Skadhwe at the Charriselm being raised against her.
With no more feeling than if it had been cutting air, the shadowblade sheared 
effortlessly through Charriselm and then downward to take off her otherself s 
arm at the elbow. The thick sound that the arm made in striking the floor, like 
so much dead meat, turned Segnbora's stomach. The agony in the other's eyes was 
beyond words.
Segnbora would gladly have dropped Skadhwe, but it seemed to be holding her hand 
closed about it. Her otherself struggled to her feet, and reached down to work 
the broken Charriselm out of the severed hand. She lifted the useless sword 
left-handed, and faced Segnbora with tears streaming down her face.
"Why couldn 't you have stayed?" the other Segnbora screamed at her. "Why 
couldn't you just let it happen! You always wanted"
Segnbora swung Skadhwe again, and felt nothing as her otherself s headso much 
silver in its hair!went rolling away across the crystal floor, trailing red. 
The slender trunk


dropped, pumping out what seemed too much blood for so slight a frame.
One more body. That's all it is. One more body. Oh, Goddess help me!
Time was short. The sorcery was unraveling, assaulted by her revulsion at what 
she had done.
Quickly Segnbora lurched toward the doors, aware of Ef-maer off to one side, of 
Herewiss and Freelorn drifting away. The doors were sheer, without any latch, 
and fitted so closely together that a thin knifeblade couldn't have been pushed 
between them. There was no hope of swinging open their massive weight.
Unless, perhaps . . .
She raised Skadhwe over her head and struck down, a great hewing blow. The sword 
sank half its depth into the crystal, as if into air. Again she struck, and a 
shard of the thick glass peeled away and shattered on the floor. Again, and 
again
A great prism-slice the size of an ordinary doorway leaned out toward her, slow 
as a dream, and fell. It smashed thunderously right at her feet.
"Come on, get out!" she shouted at the others, yanking in her mind at the 
compulsion-sorcery.
Like hounds on leashes they all came stumbling after her, Freelorn and Herewiss, 
Lang and Dritt and Moris, Harald and Torve and Sunspark, out the jagged hole 
into the true twilight. The Moon was telling the truth again, and frightening 
truth it was. Its lower curve had dipped behind the wall of the Adine glacier's 
cirque. Only the crescent's two horns still showed in the sky. West of the Moon, 
the Evenstar balanced precariously on the ridge of the cirque, a trembling, 
narrowing eye of light.
Behind Segnbora, Herewiss shook his head as the wind hit him, and glanced around 
like a man roused from reverie. Then he glanced up at where the Moon should have 
been, and wasn't. "My Goddess, it's almost gone, the bridge!"
Segnbora stood poised by the door, peering in desperately. "Efmaer!" she cried.
Just inside the door stood Efmaer. She was looking over her


       



 


shoulder, trying to catch a last glimpse of her loved through the twilight.
"Efmaer!"
The Queen turned to Segnbora, reached out a hand. Segn-bora took it and pulled, 
and Efmaer stepped through the jagged portal
She did not have time to look surprised. She simply stopped in midmotion, and 
went to dust: the dust of a woman five hundred years dead. Within seconds the 
relentless wind came howling down from the mountain, took her, and whirled her 
away.
Segnbora stared stupidly at her empty hand, then turned and ran through the 
group, who stood watching her with confusion and fear on their faces.
"Come on," she yelled through her sobs, "the wind is back, the bridge is going 
to vanish! You want to try standing on air?"
She ran out onto the phantom part of the Skybridge, half-hoping it would give 
way under her. The memory of Efmaer's hand turning to dust in hers was 
sickening.
Footsteps pounded close behind her. The Moon's horns looked across the cirque 
ridge at her, far apart, growing shorter. The Evenstar wavered. Segnbora ran, 
gasping and terrified. Running had never been one of her strong points. Freelorn 
came pounding past her, showing off his sprinter's stride to good advantage. 
Hard behind him came Herewiss, with Khavrinen once more afire on his back. Then 
came Sun-spark, streaming fire like a runner's torch from rnane and tail. Torve 
and Lang and Harald and Moris and Dritt passed her too, wheezing.
Segnbora saw them all make the solid part of the bridge just at the moment the 
Moon pulled its horns completely beneath the ridge, and the Evenstar closed its 
eye and went out. With ten yards to go, the bridge of air dissolved beneath her, 
and she began to fall . . .
Then Hasai was doing something, The fall simple went no farther, as if she had 
wings. In the moment of time he bought her, hands grabbed at her frantically and 
pulled her up onto the steel.


She shook them off and headed down the bridge, fast, only slowing when the angle 
of the arch made footing difficult. Tears blinded her, burning coldly in the icy 
wind. She shook them out of her eyes. Raging at heart, she plunged down to the 
end of the span, down to rock and snow. There she ducked down around to one side 
of the Skybridge, and slid on her rear end toward one of the huge supports 
rooted in the mountainside.
The others were out of sight. Above her she heard them calling her, confused, 
frightened, relieved; and she ignored them. Poor crippled One, I pity Youbut 
You'll have no more company in Your exile. Nor am I going to let Herewiss give 
yp a piece of his life to bind this grave closed. Enough life's, been wasted 
here. I have a better way
She came up hard against the leftmost support, a pillar of Fire-wrought steel 
easily as thick as Healhra's Tree in Ors-mernin grove. Even in the dark it 
shimmered a ghostly blue.
"Segnbora." Herewiss's voice floated down to her from above. "'What are you 
doing?"
Segnbora didn't answer. Instead, she raised Skadhwe and with a great swashing 
blow sliced right through the steel support. The others had had enough time to 
get off safely.
The Fire in the steel was no hindrance. The pillar cracked and buckled backward, 
groaning, peeling apart from itself like a wound in metal flesh. Segnbora sliced 
at it again. The groan grew terrible as the upper part of the pillar came away 
from the lower, and the span of the bridge began to lean away from the 
mountainside.
She scrabbled across rock and snow to the second support and hewed that too. Far 
above, the groan grew to a scream of tortured metal. Smiling grimly, taking 
ferocious pleasure in the sound, Segnbora made her way to the last support, 
swung Ska'dhwe back, and struck. The slim shadow of its blade flicked through 
the metal and out the other side. The immense shadow of the Skybridge above 
her, shifting, leaned faster and faster and suddenly gave way to the deepening 
violet of the evening sky.
The screaming stopped. Silently as a flower petaland as slowly, as 
gracefullythe huge strip of steel floated down into


       



 


      the abyss of blue air. Then with a crash that shook all Adine, it struck 
      the south-face glacier halfway down its slope, shattering it. Up and out 
      the broken bridge rebounded, falling again. The air was littered with 
      small, lazily turning splinters of ice and steel.
      The bridge came to rest beyond her line of vision. She heard it though, 
      and when the far-off noise subsided there was only the sound of her 
      gasping, coming through tears of anguish and triumph.
      There was a long silence from above, broken after a while by Herewiss's 
      subdued voice.
      "Well," he said, "that's one thing less Eftgan has to worry about ..."



      Ten



      Fear hissed at me and struck from beneath a stone.
      I crushed its head with a rock. Though dead, it still squirmed.



      (Darthene Rubrics, xxiii)



 


      167



      THE DOOR INTO SHADOW



 


Segnbora came down from her room the next morning and made her way to the 
breakfast hall only to find it empty. There was not even a single platter or cup 
on the table. The great inner court, when she passed through it, however, was 
lively as a wasps' nest is after it's been kicked. People and horses in the 
courtyard clattered and shouted so loud she could barely hear Hasai's comments 
inside her, and the mcteihei were drowned out entirely. Tack was being 
burnished, weapons readied, and the silver chains of officers were everywhere.
(What goes?) Hasai inquired, as loudly as was polite.
(How the Dark should I know?) she said.
Up the stairs to the battlements she went, three at a time, Charriselm's 
scabbard bouncing at her side, its every bump a reminder of the black non-weight 
that was sheathed in it now. The place where her sword had been felt like the 
socket of a lost tooth. She was grateful when she reached the top, but not 
reassured at all by the sight of Freelorn and Lang and Moris and Dritt and Torve 
leaning on their elbows, looking over the battlements, calm of face but tense of 
stance.
As she came up to them, something went rap! through the bright morning air, a 
sharp sound that raised goosebumps on her arms.
"What is it?" she said, joining them at the battlement. None of them answered 
her, so she looked for herself. Down in the valley, looking remote, a dark blot 
surrounded the star-shaped walls of Barachael town. The blot heaved and moved 
oddly, separated into smaller pieces, consolidated again. One part of the 
darkness moved rhythmically backward and then forward again, toward the town's 
big brass-studded gates.


The forward movement arrested suddenly, and after several seconds the faint 
rapping boom of the battering ram came floating across the air.
"Damn, oh damn," Segnbora said, and out of reflex reached for Charriselm's hilt 
in frustration. She snatched her hand away as it fell to the not-hot-not-cold 
smoothness of Skadhwe's end.
Torve, beside her, raised his eyebrows idly at Segnbora's swearing. "It's silly, 
really," he said. "The people are all inside khas-Barachael, so there's no 
reason for the Reavers to force the gatesif they can. I just hope they don't 
decide to fire the fields. It's late for putting in another crop of wheat . . . 
"
There was really nowhere else to put her hand. After a couple seconds of hooking 
it uncomfortably in her belt, Segnbora sighed and let it fall to Skadhwe's 
hilt. It was an odd feeling, neutral, like touching one's own skin. "The Reavers 
arrived last night?" she said.
Torve nodded. "Through the pass. I dare say the Queen is wishing she had had 
Herewiss seal the pass before taking on Glas seas tie . , . "
"Where is the Queen?"
"Upstairs with Herewiss," Freelorn said, giving Segnbora a sidewise glance meant 
to be disciplinary. "If you'd get up earlier,, you wouldn't miss so much."
Segnbora made a face at her liege and leaned on the battlement like the others, 
elbows-down, staring at the Reavers' futile work in the valley. "More are 
coming?" she said. It was a rhetorical question. There were always more coming.
"Here and elsewhere," Lang said, not looking at her, in that way he had when he 
was worried and didn't care to let his eyes betray it.
"What happened at Orsvier?"
"She won,."
"You said 'elsewhere/ just now," she remarked, puzzled. *" Where "s the new 
incursion?"
Lang wouldn't answer her. She looked past him at Dritt. "Bluepeak," Dritt said.
Segnbora's stomach began to churn, and inside her the


       



 


mdeihei sang their own unease in response to hers. Herewiss's dream was starting 
to come true, then. Of all the places in the world where the Shadow's sleeping 
influence shouldn't be disturbed, Bluepeak was the foremost.
"How many Reavers?"
"Her scrying would not come clear on that point," Torve said. "Maybe three 
thousand. People, a large supply convoy, beasts . . . and Fyrd."
"Fyrd?" she whispered. Allied with humans? The idea shocked her. Not even in the 
ancient days of terror, between the Catastrophe and the Worldwinning, had Fyrd 
ever gone so far as to join forces with humans, whom they regarded as prey.
These must be the thinking kind, then; the species they had fought en route to 
the Morrowfane. The Lion and the Eagle had supposedly vanquished them at 
Bluepeak long ago, but now they were back. No doubt they were thirsting for 
vengeance for the times before they had gained intelligence; times when 
humankind preyed on them.
"Looks like Bluepeak will be our job," Moris muttered.
"Looks that way," Torve said with his usual calm. He turned his eyes back to the 
Reavers in the valley, whohaving had no luck with the town gateswere sitting 
down to a late breakfast.
"Idiots," Harald said under his breath. "Torve, couldn't you sent out a sortie?"
"Without orders? The Queen would take my officers' chain and use it to hang me 
by my privates," he answered, only half-joking. "Besides, they're out of 
bowshot."
Wings whistled overhead. Segnbora and the others glanced up and saw what looked 
like fire flying. Feathers burning like embers, eyes like live coals, a tail 
like flame streaming back from a torch . . . They flinched back from the parapet 
as the brightness landed there. It stood still long enough to smooth a couple of 
smoldering feathers back into place, then ruffled itself up in a flurry of 
red-hot brilliance.
(Levies,) it said, (strategy and tactics, forced marches, that's all your 
soldiers can talk about. I'm bored.)
Segnbora raised an eyebrow at the form Sunspark had adopted. "Shame, Firechild! 
There's only one Phoenix!"


(What's shame?) Sunspark said. (As for the Phoenixif it's so fond of this 
shape, let it come try a couple of falls with me. If it wins, I'll let it keep 
the form.) It peered over the battlement at the Reavers below, interested. (Are 
they with us?)
Segnbora gazed at Sunspark with idle affection. Its tail-feathers were like 
those of a peacock, but red-golden and bearing eyes like coals. They were 
searing the stone against which they lay. She started to get an idea. "No," she 
said.
The elemental turned its fiery eyes on her, glowing even hotter. The others 
moved down the battlement, all but Torve, who stood his ground. She felt 
Sunspark examining her state of mind with hot impatient interest. (This is a new 
kind of joke, perhaps?)
(Yes. And no. Better than a joke.)
(Something for Herewiss? Something to make him glad?)
(Yes.) She considered her thought carefully before sharing it. (Before I tell 
you, consider this: When he finds out about it, will he be angry, will he be in 
pain? If he won't . . . ) She let the thought rest.
Sunspark looked down at the Reavers, considering carefully. For all its power, 
it knew it had much to learn yet about being human. (What are they doing?) it 
said, audible to the others.
Torve looked at it as calmly as if it had been one of his own people. "Breaking 
the gates of the town," he said, "to get inside and kill the people, or take 
their belongings at least."
Sunspark didn't look up from the valley. Segnbora caught its thoughts: Herewiss 
doesn't care for killing, or for robbing either. He tries to prevent them 
whenever possible. (And when they've done that? What then?)
"They'll come here and try to kill us, so that no one can stop them from doing 
as they please in this part of the country," Torve said.
(That's done it!) Sunspark said.
Leaping from the battlement in a swift flash of fire, it sent them all 
staggering back. Segnbora felt her singed face to find out if her eyebrows were 
still there. Once certain that they were, she looked around hurriedly. Sunspark 
had vanished. But Harald and Dritt were pointing down at the valley and 
laughing.


 
Far down in the depths of air, the group around the battering ram suddenly 
began to break up. One person after another jumped up to beat frantically at 
smoldering clothes, their yelps of consternation trailing tardily through the 
air.
"Can it manage a whole army, though?" Lang asked uncertainly.
Then it was Segnbora's turn to point and laugh, as a bloom of light erupted 
before the gates, followed by the sound of screaming. The rama lopped monarch 
pine, full of pitch as monarchs areliterally exploded in red-hot splinters and 
clouds of burning gas. People and ponies were flung in all directions. Then from 
the explosion site something like a serpent of flame went pouring over the 
scorched ground. It lengthened and wound right around the walls of Barachael, 
met its tail and kept on going, coiling around, reaching upward. In moments the 
town was lost behind burning walls, and the huge head of a coiled fire-serpent 
wavered lazily above Barachael. The confused shrieks and yells of the routed 
Reavers mingled with the screaming of their ponies. People and animals ran every 
which way. A roar of amazed laughter and applause went up from the walls of 
khas-Barachael.
In response the Reavers, who had moved away from Barachael town and toward the 
keep, raised a chorus of war shouts. But their shouts had a half-hearted sound 
to them, as if they had other matters in mind. Sunspark was looking down at them 
with innocent malice, its fiery head swaying like that of a sleepy viper 
deciding whether to strike.
"What the!" someone said from a higher parapet. Segnbora glanced up and saw 
Eftgan and Herewiss looking over the rail at Barachael town, very surprised. 
"Your idea?" Eftgan said to Herewiss. "No!" he said, grinning down at Sunspark. 
It stretched up its flame-hooded head and blinked at him good-naturedly. (They 
had torches,) it said, (and might have burned the town. However, if anybody's 
going to do any burning around here, it's going to be me.)
Herewiss and Eftgan came down to the battlement together and leaned on the 
parapet with Freelorn's followers. "I wish that sealing the pass was going to be 
as simple," Eftgan said.
Freelorn glanced at her. "It really ran be done, then?"
Herewiss nodded. "It took me a while to work out the exact method, and it'll 
take some hours to attune to the mountain properly . . . but, yes, I can do it."
"And survive?"
Herewiss's glance crossed with Freelorn's, gently mocking. "That's with Her, of 
course," he said, "but I have a few things to do yet before I go willingly to 
death's Door. I believe I'll live."
"It's risky, though," Eftgan said, as if resuming an argument with herself. 
"The earth always moves better on a night when the Moon's full, but the next 
time that happens there's an eclipse. The Shadow will be very strong then"
There was a silence. Segnbora bit her lip. In a place as bitterly contested as 
Barachael, where the land was soaked with centuries of blood and violent death, 
even the simplest wreaking could be warped by the built-up negative forces. An 
eclipse was no help at all. And to attempt a wreaking that involved 
unconsciousness of the upper mind, as this one surely would
"I'm strong too," Herewiss said.
The complete assurance in his voice made Segnbora shudder. She had heard such 
assurance before, and disaster had followed.
"The wreaking itself doesn't worry me; I received more than enough Power to 
handle it at the Morrowfane. The tricky part will be the survey of the land. 
That'll have to be done out-of-body, and it'll take at least a day. Moreover, it 
must be done today, or tomorrow at the latest, in order for me to be properly 
rested up for the long wreaking."
Lang raised his eyebrows. '"Survey?"
Herewiss nodded and leaned on the parapet. "Can't seal the pass without checking 
the valley to see how its stone lies strata, faults, underground water. Touch 
the wrong part of a landscape and the whole thing could be destroyed."
"This area's quite unstable," someone said, and heads turned toward Segnbora, 
confusing her terribly until she realized that it was she who had spoken. 
"There are two major faults under the valley," she heard herself go on in a 
voice that
sounded like hers but was somehow odd. "Eight minor vertical faults run 
east-west between Adine and Aulys, and one runs across the lower Eisargir Pass. 
One major vertical fault crosses the valley mouth from Swaleback to Aulys's 
southern spur"
(Mdaha? What are you)
(If he will work with stone, here, he must learn this, sdaha!) said the great 
dark voice inside her. She held her peace and let him use her throat.
"Then beneath those is a lateral fault that runs down the Eisargir Pass from the 
foot of Mirit into the valley, past the town, and out into the plain. It's very 
treacherous. We made no Marchward here because of it. To touch it wrongly will 
cause it to discharge and fold the valley in upon itself. The mountains might 
come down too. Especially Adine, whose support-spurs are rooted close to the 
lateral."
The others stared at her, particularly Herewiss. He opened his mouth, but paused 
a moment, unsure how to begin. "Sir"
"I greet you, Hearn's son," she said, and approximated Hasai's slight bow.
"Sir, how do you know all this?"
The mdeihei were laughing indulgently, as one laughs at a child. "We are 
Dracon," Hasai said, very gently. "We know. Stone is our element."
"Sir," Herewiss said, "I'd like to trust what you say, it'd save me a great deal 
of time, but"
"but you don't understand," Hasai said, patient. Segn-bora was surprised to 
hear the overtones of his inner song, calm and measured, coming out in her own 
voice.
"What you ask us is a great mystery. Even we aren't sure how stone became our 
element. But in the world from which we came, we were born in the stone, and 
dwelt in it. These are the very earliest times of which we speak. When food and 
drink failed us, stone and starlight were all we had left. We learned to use 
them. Those who didn't understand stone how it could be moved to make shelter 
or melted with Dra-gonfire to help one find more starlight in dim timesthose 
didn't survive. Those of us who lived to become as we are
now, are born knowing the structure and movement of rock as we know how to use 
our fire to shape it. We experience stone as if it were part of us. Indeed, we 
are the foundations, the roots of the world."
Herewiss and Freelorn looked at each other. No one on the parapet spoke.
From down in Barachael valley, the hot eyes of the blazing serpent that 
encircled the town looked up with interest. (You're good with fire, are you?) 
Sunspark said, its voice lazy but full of challenge.
Segnbora gulped. But Hasai turned her head and looked down at the elemental 
calmly. "We know something of fire."
Sunspark glanced at Herewiss, as if considering the agreements that bound it, 
and then back at Segnbora. "Some day," it said formally, "we'll match our power, 
you and I, and see which is greater."
"Some day," Hasai said calmly, "we shall." The words made Segnbora squeeze her 
eyes shut against a sudden blinding headache, for they were in future definite 
tense, describing something that had not yet come to pass.
When the memories passed, and the sight of common daylight came back to her, 
Hasai lifted her head again. "Hearn's son," he said, "do you desire our aid?"
Herewiss looked at Segnbora as if trying to see past Hasai's voice. " 'Berend, 
what do you say?"
She coughed and cleared her throat, getting control back. "I say, if Hasai 
offers you aid, take it."
"In that case," Herewiss replied slowly, "I'd like to check his assessment of 
the faults" He stopped, unwilling to complete his suggestion.
"in my mind?" she guessed.
"Yes."
Segnbora considered the idea. "You're welcome to look in," she said finally. 
"When?"
"As close as possible to the hour that we begin the wreaking. Tomorrow night?"
"Wait a minute!" Segnbora said, panic rising. "We?"
Herewiss shrugged. "I'll need ongoing information during
       

the wreaking itself. I could probably do it alone, but why stretch myself thin 
when there's assistance offered?"
Segnbora hesitated. To participale in the wreaking itself would mean becoming 
involved with Herewiss's Fire. And the Fire was something she had sworn she 
would never touch again; she had suffered too many frustrations on its account. 
Besides, being unable to focus, she might become a danger to the proceedings . . 
.
Herewiss picked up her last thought. " 'Berend, you came out of the Precincts 
with everything they had to teach, less one," he said. "I doubt you'll foul a 
wreaking in progress. Goddess knows how many of them they put you through!"
Most of them, Segnbora thought sourly, for all the good it did. She had no 
excuse. "All right," she said. "Tomorrow night, then."
"We'll move mountains together," Hasai added in a rare show of humor. There was 
starlight in the cave, and behind him ran the slow quiet laughter of the 
mdeikei.
Herewiss nodded to Segnbora, and then turned to Eftgan. "Madam," he said, "we 
have to finish discussing the Bluepeak business."
He started back up the stairs to the tower, taking them two at a time, Khavrinen 
bouncing at his back and trailing blue Flame. Eftgan gave Segnbora a curious 
look and followed.
What have I got myself into! Segnbora thought. She put her head down onto her 
hands and gazed across the valley at Barachael, memories of the Precincts, and 
her unsuccessful attempts to focus tearing at her.
Below, the fire-serpent folded its hood and looked at her with innocent 
wickedness. (Tell me a joke?) it said.
Segnbora groaned.
The next day it began to seem as if Eftgan's glum assessment of the Shadow's 
ability to direct the Reavers was correct. It certainly seemed as if they knew 
the incursion route down the Eisargir Pass was threatened. They came pouring out 
of the valley in a disorderly but constant stream. Skin tents sprouted 
everywhere, and thousands of shaggy Reaver ponies cropped the green corn down to 
stubble. The old silence of
the valley was replaced by a low, malicious whispering, like the Sea's when a 
storm is brewing. Dusk brought no peace, either. All the valley glittered with 
the sparks of campfires, around which war songs were being sung, and swords 
sharpened.
Segnbora sat atop an embrasure in the northeastern battlement as twilight 
settled in, looking down at the press of Reaver tents and people gathered around 
the lower switchback of the approach to khas-Barachael gates. Hasai looked with 
her, undisturbed. (This place is well built, for something made by your kind,) 
he said. (It won't fall to such as these.)
"Maybe not. But this is the strongest fortress in this part of the south, and 
they don't dare march away from here and leave it unconquered at their backs. 
Even if Herewiss seals the pass successfully, these three thousand will just sit 
at the gates and hold the siege."
(You're troubled, sdaha. And it's not the prospect of battle that's causing it.)
With a sigh, Segnbora swung down from her perch on the wall and sat on the stone 
bench inside the embrasure, leaning back against the cool wall. (I'm not 
delighted about this business of being involved in a wreaking,) she said 
silently. (Especially this one. And you got me into it.)
The dusky melody of Hasai's laughter rumbled inside her. (I think not. Who spoke 
the words, who told the Firebearer he was welcome? Did. you lie to him, then?)
Exasperated, Segnbora closed her eyes and slid down into herself. Above the cave 
within her, it was twilight too. Stars were coming out one by one in the shaft 
that opened on the sky. Hasai lay at ease on the stone, his eyes silver fire, 
his tail twitching slightly like that of an amused cat. Segnbora walked over to 
him and sat down by one of his front talons, leaning her back against it and 
craning her neck back to see him.
The Dragon was a shadow, winged like the night, only his face glittering in the 
cool light of his eyes. "Very funny," she said. "Mdaha, I didn't lie. But I'm 
afraid of him depending on me. I might fail him."
"E'jsn 'All. Vuudo," Hasai chided. "When will you accept what you are?"


 
"Be patient, will you? It took me long enough to find out what I'm not."
"Part of you is me," the Dragon said. "I will not fail so simple a task as 
examining the stone in this valley. If you wore my body more often, you would 
know that."
The melody of the bass viols in his voice became grave. Behind him the mdeihei 
matched his song in cadences of calm regret.
"Your memories are buried deeper under you mind's stone than ever. We are at 
your foundations, and still you try to keep us out. It would be so easy to 
become one," he said, lifting his head. "Look . . ."
In a flash of memory, Hasai showed her the building of the Eorlhowe in North 
Arlena whole mountain that had been uprooted from a remote range in west Arlen 
as casually as a man might pluck a flower for his hair. The mountain was taken 
to the tip of the North Arlene Cape, laid there upon the body of the slain 
Worldfinder, and melted down upon him with Dragonfire until it was only half the 
size it had been. Then its remains were talon-carved and tunneled and reworked 
into the residence of the DragonChief, the Dweller-at-the-Howe. Segnbora 
shuddered at the thought of the paltry skin of stone that had been "protecting" 
her inner mind from Hasai and the mdeihei.
"Your fear cripples you," Hasai said more gently. "You fear what we are. Even 
our joys are terrible to you. Matings, births, deaths, the Immanence that isn't 
your Lady but is nonetheless real You must give up the fear, come to terms with 
these and all the other things from which you cannot run away. Cease hiding 
yourself from yourself, be who we are!"
"It's not that easy," she said, taking a last glance at that distressing memory 
of the Howe. As she watched, storm-clouds clustered about it, hiding the Howe's 
rounded peak. Dragons flashed in and out of the clouds like lightning, their 
roars deafening the thunder. Whether this was ahead-memory, or past-memory, she 
had no idea.
(Hallo the heart!) came a voice from a long way up. It was Herewiss's voice, 
tentative but cheerful.
"Damn," Segnbora muttered.


Hasai lowered his head toward her. "Later, sdaha?"
"Later for sure," she said, disgruntled. She was not ready for this, but 
nevertheless she called up to the stars, "Come on in!"
"I brought a friend," Herewiss said, slipping sideways out of nothing as if 
through a narrow door. Khavrinen was laid casually over his shoulder. Fire 
flowed from it and caught in Freelorn's eyes as he appeared behind his loved.
"Nice place you've got here. Where's your lodger? Lorn wanted to"
Segnbora watched in amused approval as Herewiss stopped in midsentence and 
looked up ... and up, and up. Freelorn halted beside him and did the same, his 
eyes going wide. When Segnbora had first come in, Hasai had been indistinct, a 
looming dark presence. But now the gems of his scales caught the light of 
Herewiss's Fire and threw it back in a dazzle of blue sparks. He lowered his 
head to thirty or forty feet above Freelorn and Herewiss, tilting his head to 
look first at one of them, then at the other.
"I see the resemblance remains," he said, very low, rumbling a major chord of 
approval. Following the words came Dragonfire, a slow and luxuriant spill of 
blinding white radiance that poured from his mouth to the floor and pooled 
there, burning. "Greetings, Lion's Child. And to you and your Flame, greetings 
also, Hearn's son."
From the darkness beyond Hasai the mdeihei joined the greeting, recognizing the 
sons of two lines worthy of notice even as Dragons reckoned time. The huge 
cavern filled with a thunder of concerting voices, a harmony that shook the 
walls.
Herewiss bowed very low. Freelorn glanced around him in amazement at the noise, 
and then down at the spill of Dragonfire, under which the stone floor had 
melted and begun to bubble. Finally he tilted his head back up to look at 
Hasai.
"Resemblance?" he said in a small voice.
"To Healhra," Hasai said calmly.
Freelorn's mouth fell open.
"I was at Bluepeak March ward some years before the Bat-




tie," Hasai said. "I saw him when he was a little younger than you. You have his 
nose."
"I, uh . . ." Freelorn said, and closed his mouth. He looked over at Segnbora.
She shrugged. "He's been around awhile, Lorn. Mdaha, what do we have to do for 
Herewiss?"
"Come deeper inside us, sdaha. He will see what he needs to see when you do."
Hasai dropped his head down to Segnbora's level, his jaws opening slightly to 
receive her hand. Dragonfire still seethed in his mouth, so that the floor 
hissed and smoked where drops of it fell. For a split second she hesitated. 
Then, recognizing a challenge, she rolled up the sleeve of her shirt and thrust 
her arm into the fire. This was happening in her mind, after all. How badly 
could it hurt?
She found out. Jaws closed and held her trapped in the essence of burning, a 
heat so terrible that it transcended pain. Her control broke. She opened her 
mouth to scream, feeling the heat more completely than anything she had ever 
felt in her life. But to her utter amazement, without the sensation stopping, 
the pain vanished
She felt the stone. There was no way she could not feel it. The sensation was 
like a fencer's when balance at last becomes perfect and power flows up from the 
earth. Connections formerly hidden suddenly became clear and specific: her body 
seated on stone, the bench; the beech's placement on the stone of the 
upper-battlement paving; the positions and junctures of the blocks of 
khas-Barachael's walls; the massive piers and columns of its foundation-roots in 
Adine's southern spur.
She felt the whole mountain, a complex of upthrust blocks and minor stresses 
pushing against one another and easing again as Adine's roots met those of its 
neighboring peaks. Her perception widened and spread around the valley to 
include Eisargir and Houndstooth and Aulys, mountains leaning on or striving 
against one another. The valley, too, filled with her until she felt the faults 
and stresses there, a surface unease like a vast itch. She felt the transverse 
vertical faults, lying fairly quiet now that mountain-building in the area was 
largely


finished. She felt the lateral fault, stretching from head to foot of the valley 
and holding dangerously still.
Farther down, heat grew in the stone. Its structure and its temper changed as 
her perception slid down through the fragile skin on which continents rode and 
jostled. Weight and pressure grew by such terrible strides that there was no 
telling anymore whether the stone was liquid or solid: it simply burned darkly, 
raging to be free, yet having nowhere to go.
Down farther still, it was too hot, too dense, for stone. Molten metal seethed 
and roasted in eternal night, swirling with the planet's turning, breeding 
forces for which Segnbora had no words but which the Dragons understood. These 
were some of the forces they manipulated while flying, and finding their way.
(Enough!) Herewiss said, his voice seeming to come from a long way off. (Sir, I 
see your point.)
(Look here, then,) Hasai said, redirecting Segnbora's attention to the very top 
of the paper)' layer where mountains were rooted and the valley lay. (You see 
the danger of the lateral fault. Trigger it and the vertical faults will likely 
collapse the valley, bringing down the mountains. Yet the pass you propose to 
close has the lateral running right down it, and direct intervention there will 
definitely set off the fault.)
(There's also the problem of the negative energies,) Segnbora said. (See how 
they're gathered along the lateral fault. It's ready to have a quake. Evidently 
that's an option the Shadow's been considering for a while.)
(Fve been thinking about it too,) Herewiss said, sounding grim. (The question 
is, what do I do about it? There's only one possibility . . . )
He trailed off, sounding dubious.
(What's your thought,, Fire-bearer?) Hasai said.
Herewiss indicated one of the eastern roots of Hounds-tooth, a colossal pier of 
granite and marble set a half mile deep in the crust.
(Positive and negative attract,) he said. (If I strike there with my Fire and 
cause that root to move, the negative should flow away from the lateral fault 
and attack my positive Power. But before that happens and the forces cancel out, 
the root itself


       



 


will move upward enough to knock the Houndstooth peak down into the pass and 
block it permanently) He broke off, looking at Hasai's perception as if seeing 
something wrong. (Yes, you've found the problem with your plan,) Hasai said. 
(Watch.) As he spoke, the perception moved and changed in response to Herewiss's 
suggestion. They felt, rather than saw, the smooth peak of Houndstooth rear up 
and collapse westward into the Eisargir Pass. A few seconds later the lateral 
fault came violently alive. Half of Barachael valley slid south with a jerk, 
while the rest jumped north. Every vertical fault went wild, one after another, 
some blocks thrusting hundreds of feet upward in a matter of minutes, some 
sinking fathoms deep. Mount Adine fell on Barachael. Eisargir collapsed on 
itself and buried the priceless ironlodes forever. When it was all over, nothing 
was left but a broken, uninhabitable wilder-
ness.
Herewiss grimaced. (The psychic energy canceled out all right,) he said, (but I 
had no idea there was so much movement-energy in that lateral fault. Damn!)
(Don't berate yourself,) Hasai said. (The move was well made for one so new at 
the game. Come, Firebearer, try it again. There is always a solution.)
(Well then, how about this . . . )
For a long while afterward Segnbora's mind was filled with the feeling of rock 
shifting and grinding and mountains falling over in various disastrous 
combinations. She got very bored. The game Hasai and Herewiss were engrossed in 
was like an extremely complicated variation of checksand though Segnbora 
enjoyed playing for the delight of crossing wits with another player, her 
inability to think more than three or four moves ahead usually kept the game 
short and its ending predictable. Freelorn, to her intense irritation, looked 
over Herewiss's shoulder in fascination, understanding everything.
(That'll do it!) she heard Herewiss say at last.
Focusing her attention fully on the scene she was feeling, she found, to her 
amazement, a Barachael valley still relatively intact, with both town and 
fortress unhurt, and the Eisargir Pass successfully sealed. Some distance away 
in her mind, she


could feel Herewiss grinning like a child who had beaten a master.
(That was an elegant solution,) Hasai said. (And as I understand the Shadow 
from my sdaha, It would have to intervene Itself to foul the situation any 
further, which It's reluctant to do, not so? It fears risking defeat.)
(That's right,) Herewiss said. (There's one move that still bothers me, though. 
The next-to-last. That one root of Aulys, the one that's split up the middle)
(Move it as a whole, and you'll be safe.)
Hasai's perception of the valley winked out, leaving them standing in her cave 
again. Segnbora took her hand out of Hasai's mouth and looked at it closely. 
There were no burns or blisters. Her mdaha rumbled at her in amiable mockery. 
"Hearn's son," he said, "when this business is over, I'd be delighted to play 
with you again. There are some stresses in the volcanic country in west Arlen 
that might stretch you a little."
Herewiss nodded. "With 'Berend's cooperation, absolutely." He turned to her. 
"I'll be starting the wreaking at sunset tomorrow. Lorn and Sunspark will be 
keeping an eye on our bodies while we're out of them, and Lorn will be tied 
partially into the wreaking to keep us in touch with what's happening in real 
time. Are you still with us?"
She felt like telling him no, but Hasai, gazing silently down at her, felt about 
in her memories and brought one in particular: night outside the old Hold, and 
her voice saying to Herewiss, "You'll find your Power, prince . . . I'll help 
if I can."
"Yes," she said. "Dark, it's been years since I last moved a mountain."
Herewiss, hand in hand with Freelorn, gave her an approving look. "Later, 
then," he said. Fire from Khavrinen blazed up and swirled about them. They 
vanished.
Segnbora folded her arms and looked up at the silver eyes gazing placidly down 
on her. "You're up to something," she said.
Hasai flicked his wings open, a humorous gesture that made cool wind a second 
later. "When one knows what's going to be," he said, "one tends to make it 
happen that way."


       



 


"So what's going to happen?"
Hasai slowly dropped his jaw at her. "Live, sdaha, and find out."
He vanished into a memory. Segnbora sat for a moment on the bench, listening to 
the amused song of the mdeiheithen grinned with anticipation, felt her way out 
of the embrasure, and went to bed.
"How are the stars?" Herewiss said from behind her.
"Almost right," said Freelorn. He was beside her, leaning on the sill of the 
tower window. "Another quarter-hour and the Moon'11 be in the Sword."
"Great. I'm almost done."
The Moon, just past its first quarter and standing nearly at the zenith, looked 
down on a valley that flickered with campfires and the minute shiftings of 
Reavers going to and fro. Around Barachael's walls, a lazy ring of fire 
smoldered, flaring up every now and then when some skeptical Reaver got too 
close. Segnbora, feeling a touch naked without sur-coat and mail, turned her 
back on the valley vista and watched Herewiss at work.
The tower room had been emptied of everything but two narrow pallets and a 
chair. Around these, in what had been the empty air in the middle of the room, 
Herewiss was building his wreakingthe support web that would both protect him 
and Segnbora and slow their perception of time long enough for his Fire to do 
its work. He stood in britches and shirt, as Segnbora did, with one hand on his 
hip. With the other hand he wielded Khavrinen as lightly as an artist's stylus, 
adding line after delicate line of blue Flame to what had become a dome of 
pulsing webwork with him at its center.
The completeness of his concentration, and the economy and elegance of the 
structure itself, delighted Segnbora. Lady, he's good, she thought, admiring the 
perfect match between the inner symmetry-ratios of the wreaking and the meter of 
the spell-poem he was reciting under his breath. It had been foolishness to 
dismiss him from the Precincts simply because he was male.
"If you leave my pulse running that fast," she said, noticing


the brilliance of the last lifeline Herewiss had drawn, "I'll be in bad shape 
when we get back."
"Nervous, huh?" he said, glancing at her and lifting Khavrinen away from the 
description of a parabola. He touched the sword's tip to the pulse line, 
draining it of some Fire. "Better?"
"Yes."
"Good. Sunspark?"
Hot light flowered in one corner of the room and consolidated into a slim 
red-haired young woman with merry golden eyes. (They're impatient down there, 
loved,) she said, pleased. (They keep testing me.)
"Fine, just so long as they don't get too interested in khas-Barachael. You know 
what to do?"
(This being the fourth time you've asked me,) Sunspark said, folding her arms in 
good-natured annoyance, (I dare say I do. None of them will leave the valley. 
They'll find the way into the plains barred, just as Barachael town is barred to 
them. On the night of full Moon, immediately before the eclipse starts, I'll 
begin driving the lot of them back up the pass. None will die.)
Herewiss nodded, narrow-eyed, completing the interconnection of several lines. 
"I hate to admit it," he said, "but there's a possibility that something'll go 
wrong with all this. If the pass fails to seal properly, and I've exhausted 
myself, and they get down into the valley again"
(Loved,) Sunspark said, (in that case I'll be very quick with them. Their bodies 
will be consumed before the pain has a chance to start.)
Herewiss looked gratefully at the elemental from inside the shimmering blue web 
of the wreaking. "Thanks, loved. I'll do my best to make it unnecessary." He 
rested Khavrinen point-down on the floor and gazed around at the finished 
spellweb. "Lorn?"
"The Moon's right," Freelorn said, turning away from the window. "Let's go."
Trembling a bit with excitement, Segnbora unbuckled her swordbelt, drew Skadhwe 
from it, and tossed the belt in one corner. Herewiss walked out through the web 
and then


       



 


turned inward to face, from the outside, the part of it specifically concerned 
with his body.
"A little to the left, 'Berend," he said as she moved into position. "Lorn, 
you're fine." They each stood at one corner of an equilateral triangle. "All 
together: step"
Segnbora walked through the part of the Fireweb sympathetic to her, feeling it 
crackle with charge as it brushed against her face and hands. The hair stood up 
all over her as the spell passed through her body and rooted in flesh and bone. 
At the same time came an astonishing wave of lethargy. Hurriedly Segnbora lay 
down on the left-hand pallet, settling herself as comfortably as she could. She 
laid Skadhw down the length of her, folded both hands about its hilt at heart 
level, and began relaxing muscles one by one.
Across the circle, Herewiss was settling himself with Khav-rinen, while Freelorn 
bent over him. "My head aches," Lorn said. "Is it supposed to do that?"
"That's the part of your mind that's slowing down to keep up with us," Herewiss 
explained drowsily as the wreaking took hold of him too. His eyes lingered on 
Freelorn for a moment.
"Don't even think it," Lorn said, and bent lower to kiss Herewiss good night. 
Herewiss's eyebrows went up for a second, then down again as his eyes closed.
(Mdaha,) Segnbora said to her inner depths, closing her own eyes, (see you when 
I'm out of the body!)
(I think not,) the answer came back, faint, amused.
(What?) She tried to hold off the wreaking long enough for Hasai to explain, but 
it was no use.
Briefly, the spell fought with her lungs, then conquered them and slowed her 
breathing. That done, the Firework wound deeper into her brain, altering her 
thought rhythms toward the profound unconsciousness of wreaking suspension. For 
a second of mindless panic Segnbora fought that too, like a drowning swimmer, 
but then everything, even Hasai and the mdeihei, fell away . . .


Eleven
"Choose," She said to the cruel king. "For I am bound by My own law, and what 
you desire shall be given yoy, until you shall ask Me for something beyond My 
power to grant." He told her his desires, and she granted them alluntil at 
last, alone, desolate King of an empty city, he cried out to Her in anguish, 
"Change my heart:!"
"I shall leave you now," the Godd>ess said, "for you have asked a boon past My 
power. Only one has the power to fulfill that wish . . . and you are doing so."
from "The King Who Caught the Goddess," in Tales of old Steidin, ed. s'Lange,
n-'Viirendir, 1055 p.a.dL


       



 


Segnbora was wide awake. She swung her feet off the pallet and stood up with 
Skadhwe in her hand. The room around her was foggy and hard to seeHerewiss's 
spellweb had already slowed her time sense considerably. Dust and convection 
currents moved around her at what seemed many times their normal speed. Her 
othersenses were wide awake too, and showed her strange blurs going swiftly 
about the room: one yellow-bright as fire, one dark with an odd tangle of 
potential at its heart: Sunspark and Freelorn.
Herewiss still lay in his body, the blue-white core that was his soul struggling 
yet with the shell that surrounded it. Tense with the sensation of his 
difficulty, Segnbora turned away from him to gaze down at herself where she lay 
on her pallet.
(Mdaha?) she said. No answer came back; evidently the mdeihei were tied to her 
body, and must stay there, silenced, when she left it.
Sorrowful and nostalgic, she looked down at her still form, drowned in a repose 
deeper than any sleep. It had been a long time since the Precincts, when she had 
last been out-of-body and able to see herself so clearly. A lot had changed 
since then. There was a wincing fierceness about the corners of the eyes now 
that hadn't been there when she was younger. There was also a tension in her 
posture, as if her body was prepared to move in a hurry. Too much time alone, 
she thought, with the curious soulwalker's objectivity. Too much time on tht 
run.
(It's not that bad,) Herewiss said from behind her. She turned, and in sheer 
appreciation didn't move or speak for a few thoughts' time.
In general, Herewiss still looked like his body. He was still


lean and tall, wearing the no-nonsense musculature of a smith: hands both 
powerful and delicate; a fine-featured face made handsome by sleepy, gentle 
eyes. But in his wreaking form shone a child's innocent joy in life. Fire, with 
its incredible potential for creation and destruction, blazed in him like the 
Sun held captive in a crystal. He was dangerous, and utterly magnificent.
(Well met,) she said, and meant it.
(You speak for me too,) Herewiss said.
Segnbora realized how oddly he was looking at her, and wondered what he saw.
(We're short of time,) he said. (But for the moment, look at that!)
He pointed at something behind her. Segnbora looked over her shoulder, away from 
the quick-flickering light of the Fire-web. Laid out along the floor, long and 
dark behind her, was her shadow.
(That's impossible!) she said in momentary indignation, turning to see it 
better. (You can't have a shadow out of the body!) Yet there the darkness lay, 
stretching to the wall and right through it, blandly contradicting what had been 
taught to her in the Precincts. Experimentally Segnbora raised an arm, and was 
dumbfounded to see the serrated shape of a Dragon's wing lift away from the 
shadow-body.
Behind her she felt Herewiss restraining his laughter.
(My mdaha is truly becoming part of me,) she said, amused in spite of herself.
(Where is he? I thought he'd be here with us.)
(So did I. He's with my body, it looks like.)
Herewiss felt dubious for a moment. (How are you going to tell me what's 
happening in the stone, then? If he's not here)
She started to lean on Skadhwe, then aborted the gesture as the sword's point 
began to pierce the stone they stood on.
(Well, I have my memories of what it's like to be one of the mdeihei. All I have 
to do is live in them completely enough and we'll be fine.) She wished she was 
as certain of that as she made it sound. (Now, where do we have to go?)
Herewiss nodded at the room's north wall, laying Khavrinen over his shoulder. 
Segnbora did the same with Skadhwe, and together they walked through the wall 
and into the clear air over Barachael. The stars wheeled visibly in the paling 
sky above them, moving a little faster each moment as Herewiss's wreaking 
further slowed their time sense.
(How about that, it works,) Herewiss said, pausing. (A moment. Lorn?)
The answer came not in words, but in swift-passing impression of concern, 
relief, encouragement. All was well in the tower, though Freelorn wondered why 
Herewiss had waited so long to check in with him. Hours had passed.
(We're all right, loved,) Herewiss said. (The pauses may get pretty long, but 
don't worry about us unless the web fails.) He broke contact and walked down the 
air toward Barachael valley. Segnbora followed.
Their othersight was stimulated by the wreaking, and the Chaelonde valley 
bubbled like a cauldron with normally unseen influences. The Reavers' emotions 
were clearly visible, a stew of frustrated violence and fear. Barachael town 
crouched cold and desolate behind the invaders. As the low threshold of her 
underhearing dropped lower still, Segnbora heard the slow bitter dirge of the 
town's bereaved stones, which were certain that once more the children of their 
masons had been slaughtered. The other lives of the valley, birds and beasts, 
showed themselves only as cautious sparks of life, aware of an ingathering of 
Power and lying low in order not to attract attention.
The sky to the east went paler by the moment. The Moon slid down the sky and 
faded in the face of day, looking almost glad to do it. While they watched, the 
Sun leapt into the sky too quickly, as if it wanted to put distance between 
itself and the ground.
The ground was a problem. Dark negative energies seethed within it the way 
thoughts of revenge seethe within an angry mind. Though the faults weren't yet 
very clear, it was plain that these negative energies ran down most of them, 
draining toward the foundations of the valley, where they collected in a great 
pool of ancient, festering hatred.
(We have to get into empathy with that!) Segnbora said, revolted.
(I'd sooner sit in a swamp, myself,) Herewiss said, and he strode down the air 
toward the reeking morass. (Still, the sooner we do it, the sooner we can get 
out and get clean again. Come on, down here . . . )
He led the way around toward the base of the easternmost spur of Adine. There 
one of the vertical faults followed the spur's contour, a remnant of a day long 
before when the earth had shrugged that particular jagged block of stone above 
the surface. The fetid swirling of emotion in the valley broke against the spur 
as a wave breaks, flowing around it and up the pass. Herewiss stepped carefully 
down onto a high ridge of the spur and waited there for Segnbora. She arrived 
shortly after him, and they both paused to watch the way the shadows in the 
valley shrank and changed. The few moments' walk down from Sai khas-Barachael 
had begun at sunrise, and now it was nearly noon.
(Now what?)
Herewiss lifted Khavrinen. Fire ran down from it and surrounded him until he 
blazed like someone drenched with oil and set alight. (In,) he said, and glanced 
down at the ridge he stood on.
Without further ado he stepped down into the earth as if walking down stairs.
(Show-off,) Segnbora thought affectionately. She walked down the outer surface 
of the ridge, seeking the way into the mountain that would best suit her. 
Turning, she saw her incongruous shadow against the ridgewall behind her. 
Reaching behind her with both hands, she grasped it and pulled it forward about 
her shoulders like a cloak, becoming what she couldn't be.
It was astonishingly easy. There was fire in her throat again, and she had wings 
to feel the air, one of which was barbed not with a claw of white diamond but 
with a sliver of night made solid. She dug her talons into the naked stone1. 
Without moving, Segnbora knew what lay beneath her. The deep, slow, 
scarce-moving selfness of the rock, the secret burning at the roofs, the earth's 
heavy veins running with the mountain's blood . . . they were her veins, her 
blood, her life.
It was hard to think,, immersed, in the ancient nonconscious musings of stone. 
Ttte transience of thought, or any concern


       



 


for the insignificant doings of the ephemerals at the outer edge of Being, 
seemed pointless.
Internal affairs were much more important. Leisurely, the conflict between the 
black flowing fires of the Inside, and the cold nothing of the Outside, was 
played out upon the board of the world. The player Outside blanketed the board 
close, wearing away its opponent with wind and rain; grinding it down with 
glaciers; cracking its coastlines with the pressure of the hungry seas. The 
Inside raised up lands and threw them down; tore continents apart; broke the 
seabottoms and made new ones; hunched up fanged mountain ranges to bite at the 
wind, and be bitten in return.
This particular range had hardly been in the game long enough to prove its worth 
as a move. Understandably, the huge nonconsciousness wondered idlyas the Sun 
went down againwhy this area was suddenly such a cause for concern . . .
Segnbora breathed stone deeply and strove to remember herself. There was 
something lulling for a Dragon in this perception of stone, as there was for 
humans in the presence of the Sea: It was both the call of an ancient birthplace 
and the restful comfort of the last Shore.
(Herewiss?) she said, singing a chord of quandary around his name.
(Here,) his answer came back, darkness answering darkness.
She couldn't feel him except indirectly. He had chosen to leave his physical 
imagery behind for the time being, and was manifesting himself only as a mobile 
but greatly restrained stress in the stone, staying quite still until he got his 
bearings. Khavrinen was evident too, seeming like the potential energy which 
that stress would release when it moved.
(I feel you. Aren't you coming in?)
(I am in,) she sang, delighted by the truth of it. (I'm outside, too. Both at 
once. I can feel you inside me; you're like a muscle strain. And I can feel the 
other side of the world from here. What do you feel?)
(Granite, mostly. Marble. Ironthat's the mines.) He paused to feel around. 
(They haven't come near the great


lodes, even after centuries of work. I'll have to tell Eftgan where the good 
metal is . . .) He trailed off, sounding uneasy.
Segnbora felt what Herewiss felt and found everything much as it had been when 
Hasai had done the first survey; but the assessment didn't satisfy her. (I need 
more precision. I'm going to narrow down a good deal and make this perception 
clearer. Will the valley and ten miles on all sides be sufficient?)
(Those were the boundaries that Hasai was using. Yes.)
She felt closely into the valley floor itself for ten or twelve miles down, 
absorbing and including into herself the sensations of pressures and unreleased 
strains, strata trying to shear upward or sink down.
Whole mountains she embraced as if with encircling wings: Aulys, Houndstooth, 
Eisargir and Adine, then east to White-stack, Esa and Mirit, south to Ela and 
Fyfel, west to Mesthyn, Teleist and the Orakhmene range. They were a restless 
armful. Rooted they might be, but they were alive as trees shifting, 
trembling, pushing.
The whole Highpeak region, far into the unnamed south, was shivering, about to 
bolt like a nervous horse. The cause of its nervousness was at the heart of her 
perception. With ruthless diligence she absorbed it all, missing no detail: the 
vertical faults lying stitched across the valley in a row, south to north, angry 
and frightened. The treacherous lateral fault, its line running from the pass 
between Adine and Eisargir into the valley, through Barachael and out the narrow 
gate to lower land. And under it all, the old dark sink of negative energies.
(I see it,) Herewiss said, his thought thick with revulsion. She caught a quick 
taste of his perception. It was rather different from hers, and primarily 
concerned with the Shadow's influence. He felt it everywhere, particularly in 
the lateral fault, where the accumulated hatred made it appear to crouch and 
glare like a cornered rat. It knew who he was, what he had come for, and the 
whole valley trembled with its malice.
Segnbora trembled too, revolted and suddenly afraid. They were fools to try to 
tamper with this dynamism, so delicately balanced that a talon's weight applied 
to the wrong spot


       



 


might bring down mountains. The Dweller-at-the-Howe had been wise to forbid the 
Dragons from delving here. Worse, she could feel the murky sink of hatred swell, 
growing aware of their presence.
(Herewiss!) she said. He didn't answer, and she began to grow angry, the Fire 
burning hotter in her throat. He was so damn sure of himself! (Herewiss!) (What 
do you want?) he snapped.
Her othersenses told her that he was as angry as she was, and the knowledge 
enraged her further.
(Don't meddle!) he said. {I'm in the middle of a wreaking, and if you distract 
rne)
Typically, he was paying no attention to her; he was sunk in his own concerns. 
(Your wreaking has barely begun. I'm not distracting and you know it. Listen, 
I'm Precinct-trained, and)
(They don't know everything in the Precincts,) he said, bitter and superior. 
There was a touch of jealousy in his mind, too, which caused her to start. 
Jealousy . . . didn't that mean something specific in this situation?
She brushed away the irrelevant thoughtdoubtless it was the maundering of some 
mdaha long dead and out of touch with life. Herewiss had slighted her, and her 
patience was wearing thin.
(Do you want my aid or not?) she demanded. (Not particularly, no! I have more 
than enough Power to handle this business myself, and you know it! I thought you 
might have appreciated the kindness I was doing you by letting you come along 
on a wreaking, but I see it was wasted.) He was a stress in the darkness, one1 
close to release,, spiteful and certain of his own utter potency. The burning 
began to swell in her throat, and sweet it was to let the passions rise. She had 
been patient long enough.
The forefingers of her wingsthe terrible black diamond razors that could tear 
even Dragonmailcocked forward and down at him. (Little man,) she said, (it's 
time you found out what you have been toying with!)
Slowly she bent down, waiting for him, to attack, her. She savored, the moments, 
wondering how she would finish him.


A quick slash? A forepaw brought smashing down? A breath of her fire? But he 
wasn't physical now. He dwelt in the stone as she did, and the stress he wore as 
form began to warp and change. He was lifting up Khavrinen to kill her.
Let him try, the fool! she thought.
The mdaha who had spoken before now cried out again . . . something 
unintelligible about not seeing, about a presence creeping up from behind, 
about an ambush .. . Segnbora snarled at the interruption, a sound that woke 
rumblings in the stone. She arched herself upward to come crashing down on the 
pitiful little weapon raised against her
and then she understood, she saw,
As she watched in horror, the darkness in the stone drew together to one spot. 
At the lateral fault it stood, staring at her. Dracon though she wasimmense, 
terribleshe abandoned her pounce and crouched down like a bird under a 
serpent's eye.
The Shadow smiled at her, baleful, and waited.
Herewiss didn't waste his opportunity. Swollen with rage, he towered over her in 
the stone with Khavrinen upraised, ready to destroy her. (Come on!) he cried in 
an ecstasy of fury. (Stop me, if you're such a power! Try to stop me!)
Segnbora didn't answer. It was impossible to look away from the one Whose 
essence lay concentrated in the fault, waiting for Herewiss to strike and bring 
the valley down around their ears.
Herewiss's rage didn't diminish. He merely lowered Khavrinen a bit to savor her 
fear, to prolong the sweet conflict and in that moment abruptly felt what she 
did. Immediately his tone changed. (Beware! We have company!)
It flowed out into the stone again, surrounding him, unwilling to give up such 
a splendid tool. Segnbora felt Herewiss founder and go down, and couldn't stir 
so much as a thought to help him. The Shadow was after her too, flowing into the 
dark, places in, her soul that had belonged to It since she was very small. 
Relentlessly, It inflamed them all: her anger at a life that, didn't go exactly 
as she wished; her old feelings of impotence and insignificance ., . .
She fought, back. If she lei It, it would, enter her and cause


       



 


her to trigger the fault, which in turn would bury the valley, killing her 
friends and enemies alike. That couldn't be allowed. Desperately, she thought 
of Lang, of Eftganlovers who had taught her laughter. She pictured Freelorn, 
beautiful Freelorn, who demanded so much and gave so much in return . . . She 
wasn't alone!
The realization was dangerous. Her opponent changed its tactics from persuasion 
to direct attack: a blast of hatred and pain that would have killed her in a 
second had she been in her own body. Fortunately, she was not. She pulled her 
Dra-con-self closer about her, wearing it like mail. Hatred, even the vast 
hatred of an embittered God, meant little to a Dragon who had experienced the 
Immanence from the inside, with all its joys and rages regarding all things 
mortal and divine.
And as for the pain, Segnbora simply opened herself to it as a Dragon would. She 
spread her wings wide and took it all, drank it like Sunfire, made it hers as 
she had made the stone and the mountains hers. She was not its tool.
(Herewiss!)
A tide of blackness was almost all she could perceive of Its attack against him. 
Within it, however, she saw something movinga disembodied force, the essence of 
Khavrinen and the Power it focused, slashing the dark into ribbons. Always the 
Shadow resealed Itself, but always the fierce blueness pushed It aside again, 
widening the breach for the man who fought his way upward out of the Shadow's 
heart.
I'm Hers, not Yours! he gasped, forcing the darkness aside and pushing himself 
higher into the stone. And even for Her, I'm not a thing to be used! ('Berend?)
(Here!)
With terrible abruptness, both attacks ceased. Segnbora reeled.
(Pull yourself together!) Herewiss shouted at her instantly. (It can't get us to 
trigger the fault, but It'll be glad to do that Itself!)
So It was doing. Segnbora could see all Its power, all Its hate, flowing back 
into the lateral faultconcentrating, burning, stinging the stone into the 
beginnings of movement. A low rumble spread through the strata. There was one 
spot in


particular, a thousand feet or so south of Barachael, that was almost ready to 
fracture. In a matter of seconds its stone would reduce itself to powder with 
explosive force, releasing the vertical faults on either side of it.
(There!) she cried, and as she did the Shadow poured Itself fully into that 
spot, an irresistible blast of destruction
but Herewiss was already there, dwelling in the stone, being it, holding it 
together. It was granite and marble, but he was diamond, unshatterable by 
Goddess or Shadowfor the moment.
(I'll hold it!) he said, the thought tasting of gritted teeth. (You distract 
It!)
With what? she thought, fumbling desperately for an idea.
Distant as if one of the mdeihei sang it, seemingly irrelevant, a scrap of verse 
spoke itself in her. No shadow so deep that light cannot sound it, no hatred so 
hard that love cannot loose it Beor-gan's old ballad, the alliterative one. It 
told how she had taken the Shadow within herself, and her courage had defeated 
It. She had drained Its power so that her daughter could challenge the Shadow 
in her turn and slay It. And that gave Segnbora a mad, dangerous idea . . .
Though still wearing her Dracon-self, Segnbora brought her human nature to bear 
as strongly as she could, and began exposing her dark sides to the Shadow's 
influence. Intent on Herewiss, It perceived only an augmentation of Its power in 
the area, and therefore let her darknesses gather from It and grow, becoming 
small likenesses of Itself. Sensing a chance to turn her vulnerabilities into 
weapons, she missed not a one of them: hatreds, petty jealousies, desires gone 
sour, procrastinations; laziness that would let others languish in pain while 
she lay idle; envy that smiled at the misfortunes of her peers. It was a 
disgusting collection, but in itself presented no danger. Loss of a sense of 
sicknessacceptance of the statethat was to be feared. And that was creeping up 
on her fast . . .
As swiftly as she dared, Segnbora slipped close to the Shadow and let loose her 
tarnished parts. They melded with It, becoming part of Its substance. Terrible 
power rushed through them and back into her. She dared not fight it, lest she 
betray her presence.


As she had become Dracon, and as Dracon had become stone, she now became the 
Shadow.
Mortal, and therefore limited even out of her body, Segn-bora could contain only 
a small part of Its being in herself . . . but it was enough. In a sickening 
flash she experienced the incalculable rage of One Who had possessed Godhead and 
for jealousy's sake had then thrown it away. She also experienced pain: an 
anguish deeply colored with blame for the Goddess Who had let the pain happen
There was no time to look further. Segnbora didn't speak, didn't even truly 
think, but merely held her control as best she could and looked at the painful 
memories, living inside the old story, wordlessly recreating it with a Dragon's 
immediacy and a storyteller's skill. It was an easy story to tell. She knew it 
by heart. It was the same story she had dreamed that night in the old Hold: the 
story of the Maiden, of Death, and of Her children, the Two, Who had loved one 
another.
The hatred that was the rest of herself still strove without pause to destroy 
Herewissbut It did so a little less vehemently. It was distracted by old 
memories. Gradually, the story changed, becoming less a narrative and more an 
invitation.
Do You remember how it was? The two of You loving outside the constraints of 
existence, taking eons to learn and love one another's infinite depths ? Do You 
remember the divine passion^ how Your loving invented time and spacea place to 
love and explore together, in all the bodies that ever lived? Do You remember 
the Loved, and how there was always One Who understood? Your sister, Your 
brother, Your beloved ... 0 remember!
It was in Nhaired she sang now, as if weaving a spell, silently recalling the 
Song of the Lost. Normally that Song was never voiced except during the 
Dreadnights, in the depths of the Silent Precincts, to beseech the Shadow to 
remember Its ancient joy and be merciful to the world. Segnbora sang it now 
without the fearful intonations the Rodmistresses used, but winding poignant 
Dracon motifs of compassion and forgiveness around the words. She was calling 
to herself as much as to the other. Vile though her darknesses were, they were 
rooted in light, just as the Shadow's malice was founded in the
pain of Its ancient loss, the memory of love discarded forever. If it could not 
be saved, neither could she . . .
The Shadow held still in the stone, Its malice wavering, half forgotten. A hasty 
flicker of perception stolen through It showed Herewiss, hanging on in the 
stone, shuddering with pity and also with fear for her. No one had ever before 
been so foolhardy as to sing the Song of the Lost in first person, and tempt the 
Shadow. But he didn't waste more than one shudder. He began examining the strata 
around him, and found the spot where the Shadow's consciousness had rooted 
Itself most concretely into the stone.
But yet will come that time when Time is done, the world begun again, aright, 
she sang, pouring herself into the promise. And once again We shall be as We 
were
She drew away, singing. The Shadow surrounded her, towering above, about to 
drown her in deadly consummation. Without warning Khavrinen's essence flicked 
through the earth like a white-hot thought burning through a brain. Instantly 
it severed the linkage of the Shadow's consciousness to the stone.
There was only one wild shriek of rage and betrayal before the dark presence 
faded, temporarily banished, but that cry
was enough. All around Herewiss an unstoppable tremor stirred in the stone. As 
if that weren't enough, an ominous copper)' feeling with an aftertaste of blood 
began sliding through Segnbora1 s self. The Moon was eclipsing.
(Goddess! Herewiss, get out of there. We have to get back to our bodies or you 
won't be able to control this!)
(Right,) Herewiss said, sounding abstracted. Khavrinen swept again and again 
through the bedrock, and its unseen Fire wavered with Herewiss''s alarm as he 
tried to cut himself loose from, his empathy with the stone. (I seem to have 
gotten kind of attached, you go ahead)
(Are you crazy? This is your wreaking and I'm stuck in it!)
Precious seconds were slipping1 by. Herewiss laid about harder and harder' with 
Khavrinen, and didn't move. (Dammit! My own Fire won't cut my own Fire)
(Watch out!) Segnbora said. Furiously, she whipped down one wing at the stone, a 
wing lipped with the black razor-


       



diamond that was Skadhwe. Through fathoms of marble and granite it sliced, the 
shadow of a shadow, until it reached the rock under Herewiss.
He shot upward and out of the strata, free. Shrugging off her Dracon-self, she 
followed him up and out of the empathy
They broke the surface of the valley, gasped for the dear familiarity of breath 
like swimmers down too long, and began running up the air in frantic haste. The 
Moon's face, full now, was stained half red against the early evening sky. The 
stain grew larger as they raced for the tower window with the light in it. Under 
them, red fire dove and swooped about the valley, driving massed darknesses 
before it. They spared the sight hardly a glance and dove through the tower 
wall. Segnbora threw herself down on the cot where her body lay and hit her 
head.
No, that's just the usual headache. Up, get up! Freelorn was shaking her, 
worsening the agony of pins and needles that transfixed every bone and muscle 
she owned.
Herewiss was already up, sagging against the window. With Freelorn's help, she 
staggered over to join him. Segnbora was temporarily blind, but the othersight 
was working. Above the valley the Moon's whiteness had diminished to a thin 
desperate sliver, struggling with the creeping darkness as if with a poison, 
and foredoomed to lose.
The corroded copper taste was as hot in Segnbora's mouth as if she had been 
struck there. The Chaelonde seemed to run with blood. Below them the lateral 
fault burned through stone and earth, moving. Sai khas-Barachael began to shake 
beneath their feet.
"Put your scales on," Herewiss whispered, grabbing one of her hands in a grip 
like a vise, and with the other drawing Khavrinen. Segnbora stumbled and fell 
down into herself, into the cave where Hasai waited with wings outspread in 
alarm. There was no time for the usual courtesies. Segnbora matched him size for 
size, flung his wings about her as she had wrapped herself in his shadow before, 
and became him.
As the sensation of the stone in the valley became plain again, the mdeihei 
cried out in a song of terrible alarm. "Shut


up, the lot of you!" she shouted in Dracon, and once more gathered the whole 
valley within the span of her wings, feeling it all.
The pain struck her immediately as the lateral fault came alive inside her, a 
black-hot line of agony running from chest to shoulder and up her left wing like 
a heart seizure. Her outer body gasped and clutched at the sill, missed it, and 
thumped down to her knees with a jolt. Inside, no less clearly, she felt the 
heave and stutter of the faults as they tried to move, attempting to foul 
Herewiss's game before it was fairly started.
Fortunately, Herewiss had not lost his grip on her hand. Half crouched over and 
supported desperately by Freelorn, he was beginning to shine like a vision as 
his soul settled more firmly into the spirit-to-body connection necessary for 
full Power flow. In his free hand, Khavrinen blazed like chained lightning, 
impossible to look at with the eyes of either body or mind. Herewiss struck 
deeper into his Power, tapping what seemed an inexhaustible source, and 
straightened with re-found strength. Then he was inside Segnbora's perception, 
as Dracon as she.
The Fire burning in her throat was suddenly blue, an awesome counterpoint to 
the dark burning of the faults, and the rage of the frustrated Shadow. Stirred 
by Its influence, the player on the Inside made a move. But it was a poorly 
reasoned move, born of fury and the hope of a quick win. The lateral fault 
jumped an inch north and south.
Segnbora felt Herewiss smile the satisfied smile of a player whose opponent has 
fallen into a trap. The burning blue upflow of his Fire seared through her 
perception and poured in a great flood down into the valley's stone, binding 
together three of the vertical faults.
Like diverted lightning, the released energy of the lateral fault stitched 
whiplash-quick through the strata in several different directions. But Herewiss 
was quicker. Fire streaked through the strata too, sending fault-blocks up or 
down, blocking and absorbing forces, setting up piece by piece the final 
checkmate that would freeze the lateral forever and seal the Eisargir Pass. Two 
more moves and he would have it!


Bent over double by the fault-pain, which was harder to handle now than while 
she had been out-of-body, Segnbora heard someone a long way off shouting in 
thought. She couldn't make out concepts, though.
"They're not?" Freelorn said, much closer, and very alarmed. "Dusty! They're not 
all clear of the pass yet. Sun-spark says you have to hold off if you don't want 
all those Reavers dead"
Herewiss said nothing aloud, but Segnbora could feel his resolve. No one dies of 
this, not even them, Yet the position he had set up in the stone was delicate 
and couldn't be maintained for long.
The Shadow, sensing Herewiss's hesitation, immediately called the attention of 
the foiled, blocked forces in the stone to the weakest spot in Herewiss's game: 
the root of Aulys that was split in two. Pressure played about it like 
lightning. Half of the massive root twitched, about to shift . . .
(Hold your position,) Segnbora said.
Both inside and outside the stone at once, she anchored herself with rear talons 
and barbed tail, and reached out to sink diamond fangs into the trembling root. 
It struggled and tried to tear away from her, vibrating so violently that she 
was certain she was going to lose teeth. But a Dragon never lets go except by 
its own decision.
She held. Eyes squeezed closed, every muscle pulled taut as a rope, her tail 
desperately tightening its anchor around a lower stratum as she felt her 
fore-talons slipping. She held, using her mind, feeling the rock as a whole.
"They're out! They're out of the pass! Dusty/"
Canny and desperate, the Shadow kicked two of the remotest vertical faults as a 
distraction. Herewiss was having none of it. Using Segnbora's Dracon-self as she 
had, he descended deeper into the stone, deep enough to set his jaws around his 
last move, a great marble fault-block half a mile south of Barachael. This was 
the key to the puzzle. Diamond fangs set hard into the stone. He heaved
The blow came at her, not at him, and took them both off-guard. Preoccupied with 
the immensities, neither of them expected the sudden choking darkness at their 
back in the place where the mdeiha dwelt. A song of madness swept the mdeihei, 
controlled them, sent them tearing at the floor of Segnbora's cave. Razor talons 
and ruthless blasts of Dra-goniire ate and sliced down through the stone of her 
memory, to lay it bare and make it real. For one memory in particular they 
searched . . .
(No!) she screamed at them, but they paid her no heed. Stone crumbled away like 
curd. Even now the memory was coming to birth, coming true: darkness, gravel 
grinding against her face, that old anguish ... There was no way to stop it, 
except by breaking the empathy, leaving Hasai, halting the wreaking
Herewiss held the block of stone in jaws that ran with blue Fire, but he 
couldn't move it without her. He strained at it, tapping deeper into his Fire 
and deeper yet, not giving up. Vet without her link to the Dracon perception, he 
could not go further.
stone shattered and melted. Don't suffer, don't let it come true again! Break 
the link! the darkness sang to her, consoling, seductive. The memory became 
more real. A green afternoon, under the tree . . . No, what's he doing here? 
What's heno! No! Break the link! (I can'!.)
Then live in the horror, without respite, forever. The last stone was torn away 
from the memory. In such anguish that she couldn't even scream, Segnbora flung 
herself utterly into the Dracon-self, into Herewiss, into her own self and her 
own death. Fire blazed; the terrible stresses Herewiss had been applying to the 
fault-block gripped, took, pulled it up out of its socket
The gameboard rumbled and leaned upward as if a hand had tipped it over, Pieces 
tried to slide off every which way. Lost in the pain of contact with that 
memory, Segnbora could nevertheless sense Mount Adine's shuddering as the ground 
at the end of the khas-Barachael spur began to rise, first bulging, then 
cracking like a snapped stick.
Sai khas-Barachael danced and jittered on its ridge like a knife on a pounded 
tabletop, held secure only by Herewiss's Fire and will The earth on either side 
of the lateral fault


 
thrust up, then slammed together like a closing door. The fault expended its 
energies in a noise like the thunderstorms of a thousand summers. Hills crumbled 
and landslides large and small crawled downward all the length of the Chaelonde 
valley. The river itself tilted crazily out of its bed and rushed down into a 
new one as the block Herewiss had triggered shoved its way above ground, making 
a seedling mountain, a new spur for Adine.
Behind them, the Houndstooth peak of Aulys seemed to stand up in surprise, look 
over Adine's shoulder, and then fall back in a dead faint. The terrible 
thundering crash of its fall went on for many minutes, a sound so huge it 
obliterated every other sound and was felt more than heard. It was a sound never 
to be forgotten: the sound of the pass between Eisargir and Aulys being sealed 
by the Houndstooth's ruin.
Hours later, it seemed, the singing roar that encompassed the world began to die 
down. Segnbora found herself still alive, and was amazed at that. Herewiss was 
nowhere to be felt in her mind. She was on hands and knees on the floor of her 
cavern. Slowly, aching all over, she levered herself up and found herself 
looking at Hasai.
He was droop-winged and weary-looking, dim of eye, crouching in the middle of a 
badly torn-up and melted stone floor. Behind him, lurking shameful in the 
shadows, she could just make out the dark forms of the mdeihei. Many eyes 
watched her, but their voices for once were still as they waited to see what she 
would do.
"O sdaha," Hasai said, singing slow and sorrowful, "we betrayed you." He made no 
excuse, offered no explanation, merely accepted the responsibility.
She breathed in, breathed out, as weary as the Dragon before her. The mdeihei 
waited.
There were thousands of things she felt like saying to them, but what she said 
was, "Ae mdeihei, Nht'e'lhhw'ae. " We are forgiven.
The shadowy forms drew away. Segnbora laid a hand for a moment on one of Hasai's 
bright talons. There were great talon-furrowed rents in the floor. They had slag 
piled all


 
around them that smoked ominously like pools of magma. "Will you clean this mess 
up, mdaha?"
He looked at her as if he wanted very much to say something more. At last, he 
said only, "Sdaha, we will do that." "Sehe'rae, then" She turned her back on 
him and stepped back up into the outer world.
The room still jittered with little aftershocks left over from the quake, and 
echoed with the voices of all Freelorn's band. Herewiss leaned wearily by the 
window, with Freelorn supporting him on one side and Sunspark on the other. 
Eftgan was in front of him, and all four were talking at a great rate. Segnbora 
pushed herself up off the floor and rubbed her eyes, looking out the window.
Her normal sight was now clear enough to show her a Chaelonde valley much broken 
and changed, but with Bara-chael still mostly intact. The darkened Moon wore a 
fuzzy line of silver at its edge, first sign of the eclipse's end. The air that 
came in the window was astonishingly sweet to the under-senses, as if many 
years' worth of trapped death and pain had been finally released.
Leaning against the windowsill, she looked at Herewiss. He was drawn and tired, 
and all the Fire was gone from about Khavrinen for the moment. For the first 
time she could remember, it was simply gray steel with an odd blue sheen. But 
Herewiss's eyes were alive with a satisfaction too big for all of Barachael 
valley to have containedthe look of a man who finds out he is what he's always 
believed himself to be.
Seeing her, he reached out a hand. Across the open window they clasped forearms 
in the gesture of warriors after a battle well fought.
"What was it you said?" Segnbora said, thinking back to the old Hold in the 
Waste, and the night her sleep was interrupted. " 'There was blood on the Moon, 
and the mountain was falling'?"
Dog-tired as he was, Herewiss's eyes glittered with the thought that his 
true-dream might not prove as disastrous as he had believed, particularly for 
the man who stood beside him. "Got it right, didn't I?"


       



 


      Twelve



She nodded, put an arm out and was unsurprised to find Lang there, wary 
ofSkadhwe but ready to support her. "Only one problem, prince"
"What's that?"
She grinned. "After this, people are going to say you'll do anything to avoid a 
fight . . ."


Laughter in death's shadow fools no one who understands death. 
But if you're moved to it, be assured that the Goddess will smile at the joke.
found scratched on the wall in the dungeon 
of the King of Steldin, area 1200 p.a.d.


       



 


"I hateletting them think they're driving us," Herewiss said between gasps. 
"But it's better this way."
He stood in the midst of carnage, the burned and hacked bodies of fifty or sixty 
Fyrd. Here and there in the rocky field of this latest ambush, Freelorn's band 
stood cleaning swords, leaning on one another, nr rubbing down sweating horses 
and swearing quietly.
Segnbora leaned gasping against Steelsheen's flank, unwilling yet to sheathe 
Skadhwe. The last Fyrd to come at her had been one of the new breed of keplian, 
bigger than the usual sort, with clawed forelimbs and those wickedly intelligent 
eyes that were becoming too familiar these days.
She had had no trouble immersing herself in the other's eyes to effect its 
killing. The problem had been getting out again afterward. She felt soiled, as 
if she had stepped in a pile of hatred that would have to be scraped off her 
boots.
"How many times is this?" Lang said, coming up beside her.
"Seventeen, eighteen maybe" "I don't know about you, but / feel driven." 
Segnbora nodded. Fifteen days ago they had ridden out of Barachael, and had had 
nothing for their pains ever since but constant harrying by ever-increasing 
bands of Fyrd. All had come from the southwest, where Something clearly didn't 
want them to venture. Freelorn had suggested world-gating straight to Bluepeak, 
where they would meet the Queen; but Herewiss, unwilling to tempt the Shadow 
into direct intervention by too much use of Fire, had vetoed the idea.


So they rode, and were harried. Herewiss always took them north, out of the way, 
after an attack such as today's. In daylight, anyway. In darkness they turned 
again and tacked southwest, toward Bluepeak. They were losing time with these 
detours, and knew it. Everyone's temper was short, and getting shorter.
"Let's go," Herewiss said, sheathing Khavrinen and turning Sunspark's head 
northward as he mounted.
There was annoyed muttering among Freelorn's band, and heads turned toward Lorn 
in appeal. But Lorn, already up on Blackmane, looked wearily after his loved and 
shook his head. "Come on," he said, and rode off after Herewiss.
They rode a brutal trail through country made of the stuff of a rider's 
nightmares. They had long since left behind the green plains of southern 
Darthen. Presently they were crossing the uninhabited rock-tumble of Arlen's 
Southpeak country. Glaciers had retreated over this land when the Peaks were 
born, leaving bizarrely shaped boulders scattered across scant, stony soil. 
Acres of coarse gravel with a few brave weeds growing out of it might be all one 
would see from morning 'til night.
The horses were footsore from being kept at flight-pace on such miserable 
ground. The grazing was poor, too. After the well-filled mangers of Barachael's 
stables, it was hardly surprising that the horses were in no better mood than 
their riders. Though no one lived in this barren country, it would be only a 
matter of time before they ran into Reavers, or Arlene regulars in Cillmod's 
pay. If not them, there would certainly be Fyrd.
"This is all your fault," Freelorn grumbled at Segnbora as Steelsheen picked her 
way along beside Blackmane.
Segnbora looked up in surprise from her contemplation of Skadhwe, which lay 
ready across the saddlebow. "Huh? . . . Oh, well, in a way it is. I caused the 
Battle of Bluepeak, too. Ask me about it sometime."
He glowered at her, and nodded toward Herewiss. "All he did was seal up the 
Shadow's favorite avenue into the Kingdoms. What do you do but start making 
love to It... and then jilt It!"


       



 


She started to disagree with Freelorn, and then thought better of it. "So I 
did."
"You're probably in worse trouble with It now than Here-wiss is."
Segnbora frowned at the exaggeration, though it was typical of her liege. "Oh? 
What do you know about it?"
At that moment Herewiss dropped back to join them, and said, "Considering that 
he's read the entire royal Arlene library collection on matters of Power, he 
probably knows more about it than either of us. Face it, "Berend. The Shadow 
already knew of the threat that I posed, but at Barachael It became aware of 
you, too. And as they say, your newest hatred is the most interesting.
"True," Freelorn added, becoming serious now. "No doubt It believes you're Its 
deadliest foe at the moment"
"Ha! Some foe ..." she said, thinking of her still-unfocused Fire.
The wreaking she had performed with Herewiss had been successful, but now she 
was almost sorry she had agreed to participate. Ever since, she had not been 
able to stop brooding about her Fire. Over and over again, Hasai's words had 
run through her mind: Your fear cripples you. You must give it up,
Recognizing an old hurt about which they could do nothing, Herewiss and 
Freelorn fell silent.
Annoyed both at herself and at them, Segnbora took the lead for a while, riding 
apart and letting the quiet conversation of the others fade beneath her 
awareness of the surrounding country. Skadhwe's reassuring blackness soaked up 
light at her saddlebow. Its weightlessness, at first unsettling, had become 
second nature. It was very useful in a fight... And certainly no other sword was 
all edge and no flat. Likewise, no other sword would, cut anything but, the hand 
of its mistress, as Freelorn had discovered while handling it one morning-
Skadhwe seemed not to care for being used by anyone else'. It was delicate, but 
very definite, about drawing Lorn's blood. Of her, it had demanded nothing so 
far, and Segnbora thought of Efmaer's words with unease,, wondering when the 
weird would take hold.


Unease seemed to have overtaken everybody these days. No longer were they simply 
fugitives on the run from Gill-mod's mercenaries; the Shadow was after them now, 
too, and the knowledge that their souls were in peril had them all on edge.
Segnbora could feel the Shadow working on them even now, driving the group 
apart, subtly sapping its effectiveness. Even Herewiss was short of conversation 
these days. He had drawn closer to Lorn, pulling away from the others. As for 
Freelorn, although every step toward Bluepeak brought the reality of his 
true-dream closer, he had a haunted look. His followers turned to him for 
answers, but as often as not came away with a strong sense of his inner 
distress. At this rate, she thought morosely, they'd never make it to their 
rendezvous with the Darthenes, at the place where they were massing to take the 
Shadow's attack.
The afternoon dragged the Sun down to eye level and turned the western horizon 
into a blinding nuisance.
(Sdaha,) Hasai said from way down, (we smell water.)
(You've been quiet today. Where?)
(West and south. A league as the Dragon flies.)
She nodded and thumped Steelsheen's sides, bringing her about in order to inform 
Herewiss of a place to camp. Hasai had been quiet much of the time since 
Barachaela sentient silence with satisfaction at its bottom . . . and something 
else she couldn't quite underhear.
(You're finally becoming properly sdahaih,) he had said one evening as she 
drifted off'toward, sleep. (Anything can happen now.)
There had been an ominous overtone to his musing. (What do you see, mdaha?) she 
had asked sleepily.
But he and the mdtihei had turned their attention away from her, singing 
wordless foreboding with strange joy woven through, it. They're crazy, she had 
thought, and gone to sleep. Dragons were always ambivalent about their 
foreseeings, as if they couldn'tor wouldn'tdecide what was good, or bad.
The camp they found three leagues ahead was in a stony, scrubby canyon: 
shattered, green-white cliffs above, and dry watercourse below. Scant rains kept 
alive the brush and sev-


       



 


eral little spinneys of warped ash and blackthorn, but nothing else. "Where's 
the water?" Herewiss said to Segnbora, annoyed.
"There," she said, speaking Hasai's words for him, and gestured at the face of 
the cliff. Herewiss gave her a look and dismounted from Sunspark.
"No rest for the weary," he said, and advanced on the cliff with eyes closed, 
checking her perception. Then he opened his eyes, picked a spot, and brought 
Khavrinen around in a roundhouse swing. Splintered stone shot in various 
directions, trailing Fire. Water followed it, bursting from the rock in a 
momentary release of pressure and then subsiding to a steady stream down the 
cliffs face.
They watered and fed the horses while Herewiss stood gazing around with a wary 
look, as if expecting trouble. Segnbora went away feeling thoughtful herself, 
and led Steelsheen to the most distant of the ash spinneys. This place has a bad 
feeling about it, she thought, and then realized why.
The trees were warped and bent, as if by the wind. But the real cause was 
something less healthy, a something snarled among the ashes' branches. She threw 
the reins over Steel-sheen's head so that the mare would stand, and pulled some 
of the stuff out. The long strands were white and soft as spun silk, though as 
unbreakably strong as any rope when she pulled it between her hands
From behind her, Herewiss reached in and pulled down the main mass of the 
material. As the white stuff came away from the tree, a whole mort of things 
came tumbling out to thump or clatter to the ground.
"Look at that," he said conversationally, bending down to poke with Khavrinen at 
something jutting from the white swathing. "The point-shard of a sword. Darthene 
Master-forge steel, see, Lorn? Look at the lines in the metal."
"It takes a lot to break a sword like that," Freelorn said from beside his 
loved, but sounding nowhere near as composed.
Why now? Why now! Segnbora thought, as Herewiss bent to pick something else out 
of the whiteness. He came up holding a piece of pale wood, badly warped: It was 
smoothly rounded


at one end, broken off jaggedly at the other. "A Rod," Herewiss said. "Or it 
used to be."
Dritt and Moris had come up and were staring nervously at this spectacle. "I 
thought the only thing that could break a Rod was the Rodmistress's death." 
Moris said.
Without looking up, Herewiss nodded. He used Khav-rinen's point to turn over 
other oddments tangled in the haphazard white weave: bits of broken jewelry, 
tatters of what might have been brocade. A bone from a human forearm poked out 
of the mass, ivory-yellow and scored by tooth-marks. It had been cracked for the 
marrow, and sucked clean.
"Mare's nest," Herewiss sad, turning to the others and glancing at them one 
after another. "And recent. We're probably right at the heart of her 
territory."
"Then this is no place for us," Freelorn said. He turned to go take the hobbles 
off Blackmane, but Herewiss didn't follow him. Freelorn looked back over his 
shoulder, confused.
"Lorn, it's sunset," Herewiss said. "We'd never make it past her boundaries 
before nightfall without giving away our position to the Shadow with our noise."
Freelorn stared at Herewiss as if he had taken leave of his senses. "Loved, 
that's a busted Rod there! Fire obviously doesn't do much good against a 
nightmare!"
"There are other defenses," Herewiss said absently. It was as if he were reading 
about the problem from a book rather than seeing it in front of him. He looked 
up at Segnbora. "How about it?"
Segnbora walked around to the other side of the spinney as if to examine the 
whole nest, waiting until the tree hid her before she swallowed, hard. 
Nightmaresminor demonic aspects of the Goddess's dark sidetypically nested in 
barren places like this. They fell upon travellers, sucked them dry of the spark 
of Power they possessed, then fed the dead flesh to their fledgling nightfoals. 
Since they were Shadowbred, Fire was food and drink to them. A Rodmistress's Rod 
was thus useless against them. They could only be killed with bare hands, and 
then only if those hands were a woman's.
Segnbora walked around to face the others. "It's getting toward Midsummer," she 
said, amazed at how calmly her


voice came out. "Her brood will be gone now, and she'll have eaten the 
nightstallion" Freelorn's face twisted. "Theyeat their!" "They are the 
Devourer," Segnbora said, very low. "That aspect of the Dark One trusts nothing 
She hasn't consumed." She glanced over at Herewiss, forbidding herself to 
tremble. "Well, I broke Steelsteen with my bare hands. I think I can manage 
this."
Behind Herewiss, Lang's face was white with shock. She refused to watch it after 
that first glance. "I'll make a circle," Herewiss said. "You'll have warning. 
What else will you want?"
Last rites, probably. "A fire," she said. Herewiss smiled slightly. "I think 1 
know where to get some. Sunspark!"
Segnbora walked toward the sudden campfire, wishing there were such a thing as 
luck, so she could curse it.
For once, night came down too suddenly for her taste. Segnbora sat with the 
others beside Sun-spark's blazing self, looking out toward the stony darkness. 
Here and there, at a hundred yards' distance, a flicker of Herewiss*s Fire 
showed blue between the boulders, indicating the ward-circle he had laid down. 
Firelight danced on the face of the cliff. Under a gnarled little rowan bush 
Segnbora sat and tended to herself in the huge silence, which even the horses, 
hobbled and tethered inside the circle, didn't break.
Segnbora was running out of things to do in order to get ready. She had gone 
through all the small personal bindings that a sorcerer would perform to further 
the larger binding she intended. Her swordbelt's hanging end was tucked in. Her 
hair, too short to braid, she had tied with a thong into a stubby tail and bound 
close to her head. Her sleeves were rolled up. The buckles on her boots and her 
mailshirt were tight. She would have tied Skadhwe into its sheath, but it had no 
peace-strings as Charriselm had had, and all her attempts to bind the 
shadowblade with cord had been useless. It cut them ail. Finally she had just 
taken it out of the scabbard and stuck it into a handy rock.
Now she thought of one more binding to add. Rummaging around in her belt-pouch 
for a bit of thread, she bound it around her left thumb nine times, thus forming 
a soul-cord that would keep her soul within her body until a pyre's blaze freed 
it. She tied the ninefold knot and glanced up as she bit it off. Freelorn was 
holding a cup for her. It was of light wood, with a design of leaves carved 
around it below the lip. She recognized it: his and Herewiss's lovers'-cup.
"Hot wine," Lorn said, sitting down. Wanned by the gesture, she took it and 
drank, hoping the shaking of her hands wouldn't show too much.
"It shows. Forget it," Herewiss said, sitting down beside Freelorn. She extended 
the cup to him, leaning back against the knobby little rowan as Herewiss drank 
in turn. Afterward, he poured some wine into the fire, which had acquired eyes, 
and then passed the cup back to Freelorn.
Lorn leaned back against a rock, and Herewiss leaned back too, resting his head 
against Lorn's chest. "You sure there's nothing you can do?" Freelorn said, 
sounding sorrowful.
Herewiss glanced yp at him. "Swords don't bite on nightmares, loved. I'm 
sorry."
Freelorn nodded, still looking uneasy. "This business of the Lady's "dark side,' 
" he said, "I've never really understood how She can have a dark side . . .,"
"It is this way," Segnbora started, mostly out of reflex, and then stopped 
herself. Embarrassed, she took the cup back and drank again.
"No, go ahead," Herewiss said, with a wry look. "If you're going to become 
something's dinner tonight, we might as well get one more story out of you. Tell 
it as they tell it at Nhaire'di. I've never heard their version."
She sighed, suddenly amused by the surroundings. This was no cozy inn or palace 
hall, for once, but rather a huge night in waste country. Who'd have thought 
she'd ever play to an audience of kings-by-couitesy, part-time princes, and 
outlaws?
*'It is this way,*' she said. "Because the Goddess bound Herself at the Making 
into everything She had made, the great Death became bound into Her too, and She 
into It. Though


She had brought It life, the Shadow still hated Her and did Her all the harm It 
could, causing each of Her fair aspects to cast a dark shadow of its own. 
Therefore the Devourer exists, and the One with Still Hands . . ." She shivered. 
". . . and the Pale Winnower. Their Power is terrible, and the Goddess cannot 
banish them; in this Making, They are part of Her.
"But in the south of Steldin, people explain our Lady's dark side differently. 
They tell how, on the plain north of Mincar, there lived an austringer and her 
wife. The austringer was a placid woman, easily pleased and as calm as one of 
her hawks after a feeding. The austringer's wife, on the other hand, was never 
content with anything, and sharpened her tongue continually on her spouse.
"There came a day when the austringer took a good catch of pheasant and barwing. 
The next morning she set out for Mincar market to sell the game.
"Now, while on her way to the market, passing through the wealthy part of town, 
the austringer saw a sight that was stranger and more lovely than any she had 
ever seen.Tied to the reining-post was a great, tall silver-white steed, shining 
in the morning. When she drew near to it, it turned its head to gaze at her with 
eyes as dark as the missing half of the Moon. It was tethered with a bridle of 
woven silver.
"She recognized it then. It was one of the Moonsteeds, aspects of the Maiden 
that mirror the Moon in its changes, and which cannot be caught by any means 
except with a bridle that is wrought of noon-forged silver in such a fashion as 
to have no beginning and no end. Some lord or lady had caused the bridle to be 
made, and had managed to catch the Steed. And as the austringer stood there and 
pitied the poor creature, once free from time's beginning and now bound, it 
lowered its head and said to her, 'Free me, and I'll do you a good turn when I 
may.'
"So she cut the bridle with her knife, and the Moonsteed reared and pawed the 
air and said, 'If you want for anything, go out into the fields and call me and 
I will be with you.' And it vanished.
"The austringer thought it well to vanish from the area herself. She went to 
market and sold her birds, and then went
home in a hurry in order to tell her wife what she had seen. That was a mistake. 
'Surely,' her wife said, 'the Steed will grant you anything you want. Go out and 
ask it to make us
rich.'
"She nagged the austringer unmercifully until at last she gave in and went out 
into the night, under the first-quarter Moon, to call the Steed. It came, saying 
'What can I do for
you?'
" 'My wife wants to be rich. Wants us to be rich, rather,' said the austringer. 
'The first was closer to the truth, I think,' the Steed said, 'but go home, it 
has happened already.' And the austringer went home to find her wife happily 
running her fingers through bags of Moon-white silver, chuckling to herself 
about the fine robes and elegant food she would soon have in place of her brown 
homespun and coarse bread.
"For about a week things went well. But folk nearby began to ask questions, and 
then the tax collectors arrived, leaving with more silver than pleased the 
austringer's wife. 'This isn't working,' she said to the austringer. 'Go ask the 
Steed to make me the tax collector. And I want a house befitting my station.'
" 'No one will talk to us anymore!' the austringer objected. Her wife gave her 
no peace, however, and sent her off to the fields at nightfall. The austringer 
called the Moonsteed, and there it came in a white blaze of light, for the Moon 
was near to full. 'What can I do for you?' it asked. 'Though I have a feeling I 
know.'
" 'My wife wants to be a tax collector, and have a tax collector's fine house,' 
the austringer said.
" 'Go home, it's done,' said the Steed. And the austringer went home and found 
their thatched cottage changed to a tall house of rr'Harich marble; and her wife 
was twenty times as rich as she had been before.
"After that things went as you might imagine. A week later the austringer's wife 
wanted to be mayor, and so she was. Afterward she became bailiff, and Dame, and 
Head of House, one after another. Her house became golden-pillared and roofed 
with crystal, filled with rich stuffs and things out of legendfeather-hames and 
charmed weapons and even the silver chair that later belonged to the Cat of Acs 
Aradhbut


none of it gave her joy for more than a day. Each night she sent the austringer 
out to ask for another boon, and the au-stringer grew sad and pale, seeing that 
her wife loved her possessions more than she loved her.
"And as the days passed the aspect of the Moonsteed grew darker, for the old 
Moon was waning. White-silver the Steed had been at first, like moonlight on 
snow. Now it waxed darker each night, and frightened the austringer.
"The boons grew greater and greater. Head of the Ten High Houses, the 
austringer's wife became; then Chief of them, then High Minister, then 
Priestess-Consort. And still she wanted more.
"Finally the night came of the dark of the Moon" Segnbora broke off for a 
moment, fumbling for the wine cup. Her mouth had gone suddenly dry. It was only 
three nights from Moondark now, that time when a nightmare would be strongest.
"the dark of the Moon, and the austringer went out to the fields to call on the 
Moonsteed for the last time. It came, burning with awful dark splendor and 
wrath, and said in its gentle voice, 'What is it now? Your wife has asked, and I 
have granted, even to the last times when she asked to be Queen of Steldin, and 
then High Queen of all the Kingdoms. What more might she want?'
"The austringer trembled, and said, 'She wants to rule the Universe.' "
Segnbora lifted the cup again and finished the wine.
There was silence. Freelorn glanced down expectantly at Herewiss, whose eyes 
were turned away, then back at Segnbora. "So?"
"So She does. " She handed back the empty cup. "Now you tell one."
Suddenly Blackmane screamed. Herewiss jerked upright as if he had been kicked. 
All around the camp heads turned out toward the darkness.
The nightmare stood for a moment among the boulders that had fallen from the 
cliff, and then stepped forward delicately. It was small: the size of a 
seven-months* filly. Its silken mane and tail hung to the ground. Slim-legged 
and clean of
line, it seemed at first as elegant and graceful as a unicorn. But its eyes were 
evil: red and bottomless, full of old cruelties and insatiable hunger. From a 
coat the color of the rolled-up whites of a dead man's eyes, it cast a faint 
yellowish corpse-light that illuminated nothing.
Segnbora got up, dry-mouthed again. She took a few steps forward and folded her 
arms, staring right into those ancient, burning eyes.
"Be thou warned," she said in the formal manner reserved for the laying of 
dooms, "that I am well informed of thee and thy ways, of thy comings and goings, 
thy wreakings and undoings; and that it is my intent to bind thee utterly to my 
will, and confine thee to the dark from which thou canie'st at the birth of 
days. So unless thou wish to try thy strength with me, and be compelled by the 
binding I shall work upon thee, then get thee hence and have no more to do with 
me and mine."
She held very still. The nightmare now had the option to retreat. It could also 
answer ritually, or it could attack.
"How should I fear you?" the nightmare said, lifting its head to taunt her 
sweetly. The voice it used was that of Segnbora's slain otherself, not piteous 
as it had been during those last moments in Glasscastle, but mocking and cruel. 
"Rodmis-tresses in the full of their Power have passed this way, and you see 
what has happened to them. You, however, have retired from sorcery, afraid of 
failure."'
"Silence!" Segnbora said in a voice like a whipcrack. But no power was behind 
the order, and the nightmare laughed at her,, a sound ugly with knowledge.
"You make a fine noise," it said, flicking its tail insolently. '"But all your 
years"' studies have left you with little but knowledge. Mere spells and tales 
and sayings. You have no Power. Or rather, what Power you possess you are afraid 
to focus."
Burning with shame, Segnbora clenched her fists and took a step forward, then 
another, seeking control. (Hasai!)
"Oh, call up your ghost," the nightmare said, stepping forward too. "You don't 
dare give him the Power he needs, either. You walk on water, and complain that 
you can't find anything to drink! Face it, you will never find what you seek. 
You are too afraid. You are dead!"


 
Behind her Segnbora could feel Freelorn getting ready to move, and Herewiss 
holding him still with that same vise-grip in which he had held her at 
Barachael. The others were frozen, eyes glittering, muscles bound still. Even 
Sunspark's flames flowed more slowly than usual.
"Some heroine you are!" the chill voice taunted. "Dead on your feet. A rotting 
corpse. You are a Devourer, like me." Her head jerked in surprise.
"You don't believe me? Then look at your slug of a lover there!" The bitter eyes 
dwelt on Lang with vast amusement. "He no more dares open himself to you than 
you do to him. He knows that what you call 'love' is mere need. If permitted, 
you'll suck him dry of his own Power, his own love, and he knows it! Eftgan knew 
that too ..."
Humiliation seared Segnbora, and terror. She had no problem holding her peace. 
Her mouth refused to work.
The nightmare chuckled maliciously, enjoying her growing victory. "No wonder 
you're such a good storyteller. Everything that comes out of your mouth is a 
story, especially when you speak of yourself. You haven't really opened to 
another person since that day when you became big enough to be taken out in back 
of the chicken house"
Segnbora took another slow step forward, drowning in the bitter truth, hanging 
onto the ritual for dear life. "I may warn thee againget hence, lest I lay such 
strictures about thee that from age to age thou shall lie bound in the 
never-lightening gulfs"
"Say the words of the sorcery," the nightmare said, baring her yellow teeth in 
scorn. "They'll do no good. You cannot control another aspect of the Devourer, 
being one yourself! Consider what lies hidden under stone in your heart . . . 
you hate the one who plundered you, and that hate poisons every act of 'love' 
you attempt. You will never properly be able to employ your Power!"
She shook her head, but the awful words of truth would not go away.
"Listen to what I say; to what you know to be fact. Even your friends pity you. 
Freelorn, for example. He found out what happens to someone who gets closer to 
you than a
sword's length. You stabbed his heart with something sharper than a knife. No 
wonder that when you were once faced with yourself, you killed"
Segnbora leaped at the nightmare head-on, grabbing great handfuls of its mane. 
Desperately, she attempted to hold its head away from her, but the nightmare 
plunged, reared and fastened its teeth into Segnbora's mailshirt, cracking the 
links like dry twigs and driving them excruciatingly through padding and 
breastband, into the soft tissue of her breast beneath. Jaws locked, it shook 
her viciously from side to side, as a dog shakes a rat.
With every jerk of its head Segnbora cried out in pain, yet she managed to hold 
on for some seconds. Finally, in agony, she released her right hand and grabbed 
the nightmare's nose, digging her thumbnail deep into the nostril. Now it was 
the nightmare's turn to screamonce as she let Segnbora fall, and once again as 
a great handful of its silken mane came away in Segnbora's hand.
Segnbora scrambled to her feet. Her pain was awesome, but she concentrated on 
twisting the long hank of mane into a rough cord between her hands. The 
opponents began to circle one another again.
"It was foolish to hold me so close for so long," she said, gasping. "I know how 
to bind you, child of our Mother. I know how to make an end of you, Power or 
not. Shortly you're going to be seeing more of the dark places than you'll 
like"
She sprang again, this time for the nightmare's flank. It danced hurriedly to 
one side, but with a second leap Segnbora found herself astride the nightmare's 
back.
The nightmare bucked, kicked, and reared, leaping in the air and coming down 
with all four feet together, as a horse does to kill a snake. But Segnbora hung 
on, legs locked, hands twined in the long mane. She got one hand down over the 
nightmare's nose again, and stabbed it in the nostril. It screamed, and as it 
did she whipped the corded length of mane down and into its mouth. Quickly she 
brought the ends under its chin and up around its muzzle, and knotted them 
tight, binding its mouth closed.


       



 


The nightmare made a horrendous strangled sound that would have been a scream. 
It turned and raced headlong toward the jagged face of the cliff, intending to 
buck Segnbora off against the stone. The onlookers scattered out of the way, and 
Segnbora jumped from its back, rolled, and was on her feet again before it had 
time to realize what had happened. Turning to face her again, it reared, 
menacing her with its hooves. Segnbora ducked to one side and fastened her hands 
in its mane, pulling. The nightmare grunted and, as she had hoped, pulled away. 
Segnbora fell down on the ground again, but this time with her hands full of 
mane.
The nightmare turned and reared. By the time its hooves hit ground, Segnbora had 
rolled out from under them, and was afoot again. Her breath came hard, and 
beneath her mail-shirt her breast was bleeding freely, white-hot with pain. But 
her fear was gone. Nothing was left but wild anger, and the urge to destroy.
"I told you," she said, winding the length of mane between her fists like a 
garrote. "First the binding"
The nightmare turned to flee, but as it turned tail Segnbora vaulted up over its 
rump and onto its back. Frenzied, the nightmare bucked wildly, but it was no 
use. This time the cord went around its throat and was pulled mercilessly tight. 
It plunged and slewed from side to side and tossed its head violently, trying to 
breathe.
Segnbora hung on, and twisted the cord tighter. The nightmare began to stagger, 
its eyes bulging out in anguish. Its forelegs gave way, next, so that it knelt 
choking and swollen-tongued on the ground. Segnbora held her seat even at that 
crazy angle, and pulled the cord tighter still. Finally the rear legs gave, and 
the nightmare fell on its side. Segnbora slipped free, never easing her 
stranglehold. The nightmare moved feebly a few times, then lay still.
Holding that cord tight became the whole world, more important even than the 
agony of her torn breast or the hot blurring of her eyes that she had thought at 
first was confusion and now proved to be tears. She blinked and gasped and hung 
on as Herewiss and Freelorn and the others ran up and kneeled around her.


Lang reached out to her, but Herewiss stopped the gesture. "Is it dead?"
"I don't know. Probably not." She could still feel a pulse thrumming feebly 
through the cord.
"Are you all right?" That was Lang with the same stupid question, as usual.
"No. Let me be." The nightmare's pulse was irregular now, leaping and struggling 
in its throat like a bird in a snare. How can they look at me, she wondered? 
It's all true. How can they bear to
One last convulsive flutter ran through the nightmare's veins. Then there was 
stillness under her hands. Slowly and carefully she stood up, shrinking away 
from any hand that tried to help her. The pain in her breast was intense, yet 
she barely felt it.
She walked away, then, and her companions stared after her. Their eyes on her 
retreating back were as unbearable as sun on blistered skin, but still she 
ignored them. The darkness beyond the camp began to swallow her.
(A nightmare has no weapon to use but your own darkness.) Herewiss's thought 
burst into her mind, cold and passionless as a knife. (Resist, and it only cuts 
deeper.)
She kept walking.
(One night, 'Berend,) he ordered. (One night's pain is all we can spare you. 
We've lost too much time already. Be finished by dawn, or we won't wait.)
She shut him out and went off into the cool night, looking for an end.


Thirteen
"Well," the Goddess said, "your heart didn't heal straight the last time it 
broke. So we'll break it again and reset it so it heals straight this time."
Children's Tales of North Arien, ed. s'Lange




How long she walked, she had no idea. The stony valley all looked the same. 
Eventually, she simply sat down and began to weep for life wasted.
Sometime later, the rocky night turned into the night that lay inside her, with 
stars showing through the great shaft in the roof of her cavern, and the 
much-muted song of the mdei-hei rumbling in the shadows. She didn't care about 
them in the slightest, or about the starlight, or the sound of the Sea, or the 
huge obscure shape of Hasai towering over her in the darkness. She sat hunched 
up and waited for life to go away.
It wouldn't, annoyance that it was. A solution occurred to her, but she had no 
energy for it. And anyway, everything she had ever done, she had botchedsurely 
she'd mess up a suicide too. A life of study without use, learning without 
wisdom, action without satisfaction, Power without focus, lust without love: 
What use was it? She sat there and tried to bleed to death through the wound 
above her heart.
"You will not achieve death for some days yet," said the subdued voice of the 
Dragon above her, using the precogni-tive tense.
Annoyed, she leaned back against the great forelimb gingerly, careful not to 
disturb the blood clotting on her breast. She closed her eyes, squeezing out 
useless hot tears. "Drop dead," she said.
"We have done so."
"Try it again. You missed something the first time."
"Speak for yourself, sdaha," the voice of thunder said. It had her own annoyance 
in it.
Tonight, as occasionally happened, she didn't have to look


up at Hasai in order to see him. His eyes burned silver, but they burned low. 
His talons clenched the stone floor in a painful gesture that made her remember 
the cave at the Mor-
rowfane.
"The nightmare spoke some truth," he said. "As with your Lovers, you will not 
permit us to have what we need, so that we, in turn, may give you what you need. 
You believe you must do everything yourself. But there is no such thing as 
perfect self-sufficiency, even among humans."
She shook her head, confused, thinking of what her father used to tell her: 
You'll never be able to depend on others, if you can't first depend on yourself.
Hasai winced at her in Dracon disagreement. "You cannot depend on yourself if 
you cannot first trust others."
Segnbora sat still, trying to understand, but the words made no sense. Hasai 
gazed down without moving for a long while, and at last shuffled one huge 
forelimb back and forth along the floor. "We are you," he said with terrible 
intensity. "If you cannot trust us, your trust of yourself will be betrayed 
every time. Sdaha, hear me!"
It was no use. It made no sense.
"Sdaha, " Hasai said, so low it could have passed for a whisper. "What lies 
beneath your stone that you dare not lay open? What terrifies you so much that 
the Shadow would resurrect the memory in the hope that you would die of it?"
That got her attention. "It brought forth that memory because it sees me as a 
threat. In a way that's good, I suppose. It means I may be able to do it some 
real harm at Bluepeak."
She leaned sideways and put one hand upon the stone at the bottom of her mind. 
It burned hot as flesh beneath a half-healed wound, warning her off. Her insides 
flinched at the touch of it, and she began to tremble.
Pain experienced stops hurting, she knew. The mdeihei had taught her that. There 
was another reason to look below the stone, too: The Shadow had found her weak 
spot. If she didn't deal with it now, it would strike her there again, perhaps 
at Bluepeak. And how could she betray Lorn at a moment when he would need her 
the most? She couldn't. She couldn't see


her friends' lives lost, her liege-oath broken, the Kingdoms foundering for lack 
of the Royal Bindings . . .
She smashed one fist down on the stone. Damn! Damn!
"Taueh-sta 'ae mnek kej!"
"Mdaha," she said, shaking all over. Slowly, she leaned forward until she was on 
her hands and knees over the stone. "Mdeihei "
They leaned in close, the huge form above her, the many indistinct forms in the 
shadows. She reached behind her, to-> ward Hasai. Wings reached down to shelter 
her, but it wasn't shelter she was interested in. Her hand found the burning 
mouth, and jaws closed over it. She pulled those wings down around her, into 
her, wore them and their body and their heart.
Under the stone, darkness burned. She cocked forward the terrible diamond razors 
of the wings' forefingers, intent on the place where her deepest anguish lay. 
"My mdeihei, this is what you wanted. And what I want now. If we die of it . . 
."
A roar of defiance and challenge went up from the gathered generations. "Mnek-6, 
" she whispered, / remember. Her talons raked down and laid her soul bare at 
last. Stone peeled away, and her control went with it. Night fell . . .
Her nuncle, of course. Nuncle Bal was in and out of the old house at Asfahaeg 
all the time, busy around the landgardening, cutting trees, planting new ones. 
She had watched him about his business often enough, and sometimes she had 
noticed him looking at her for a long time. She wondered sometimes whether he 
was lonely and wanted to play, but she never quite got around to making friends 
with him. There was too much else to do.
She had the Fire, a lot of it, and pretty soon they were going to send her away 
to a real school where you learned to do magic with it, instead of just simple 
body-fixings and under-speech, which were all the Rodmistress down in town would 
teach her. At the school they'd make her a Rod of her own, and she'd be able to 
do all kinds of things.
In the meantime, there were lessons and exercises to make the Fire grow, and she 
was busy with those. In fact, she had


stumbled by herself on one special exercise that gave her the same tingling 
excitement that the Fire did, though in a slightly different way. When she 
showed her new method to Welcaen, her mother had laughed and praised her and 
told her it was fine to enhance the Fire thus, but that she shouldn't forget to 
be private when she did it. The most private spot she could think of was the 
hiding place behind the old chicken house, where the willows' branches hung down 
all around, making a dusky green cave. And that was where she had spent most of 
that warm spring day, delightedly touching herself in that special secret 
placeuntil Nuncle Bal came brushing through the downhanging branches and 
stopped in surprise, and stood there staring at her . . .
Her mother had told her that usually it was not polite to be naked with someone 
unless you had agreed on it beforehand. Not knowing how Nuncle Bal felt about 
it, she pulled her smock back down and smiled at him.
"Hi," she said.
He smiled back, and all of a sudden she felt really cold inside, because there 
was something wrong with the way he was smiling. Confused, she put out her 
underhearing and listened.
What she heard made her so scared that she couldn't pull it back again, couldn't 
even move. She never heard anything like this before. Her mother and father when 
they shared . . . she knew that feeling. It was warm: a filling-and-being-filled 
feeling. She wasn't sure what they were doing, exactly, but it wasn't this. The 
feeling that went with this was cold: a wanting, and wanting-to-be-in-something. 
It was hungry, just hungry enough to take
He was letting the rake fall against the willow truck, and she was getting 
really scared now, so that she started to jump up and run away. But he was right 
in front of her already, and he grabbed her hard around the throat with one 
hand, and covered her mouth with the other. She couldn't breathe. She tried to 
scream, to cry, but there wasn't any air. Her ears started to ring and 
everything went red in front of her.
Nuncle Bal seemed to be saying something, but she couldn't tell what it was 
through the red, the black, the roar-


       



 


ing. She fell backward into the darkness, silently begging oh please, let it be 
a bad dream. Let mi wake up, please!
After a while the roaring went away some. It was a dream, she began to think, 
and then heard his voice, thick, low and hungry. "You want it," he said. Her 
eyes came open. She saw his twisted smile, shuddered, and squeezed them shut 
again. "You want it. Sure you want it."
He was doing something to her smock. What was he
"Mamaaaaa!" she started to scream, tears starting to her eyes. But before she 
could get the scream out that hand came down on her throat again. The red, the 
roaring, ok no, pleeeeeeeease . . .
. . . her back was cold. She was on the ground again, and her smock was off. So 
were Nuncle Bal's britches, and she squirmed and fought but couldn't get out 
from under his hands. His breath was on her face and he leaned in and pushed her 
legs far apart, too far. It hurt, and what was tie doing, he was rubbing her 
secret place, the wrong way! And what, what
NOOOOOO!
The scream wouldn't come out. of her throat. It was all inside her head, a 
shrieking pain, but not as bad as how he was hurting her down there. He was in 
her secret place that was supposed to be for her to share with her loved some 
day, and he was pushing himself inside. There was a horrible burning pain, 
again, and again, until she fell herself being torn open. There was a white-hot 
line of relief, then, and new agony stitching itself through the rest of the 
burning. It was sickening. She wanted to retch but couldn't, his hand
Tears rolled down the sides of her face, into her hair. After
a while she couldn't feel them or anything else, it hurt so
bad Inside she yelled and yelled for help, but no help came.
They weren't sensitives and they couldn't hear her, any of
them! He was pushing it in and out, hard, It hurt worse and
worse, and he was breathing fast and hot right in her face. She
was breathing his wet stale breath and that made her want to
be sick tooand it hurt, it hurt, somebody make it stop!
Somebody, Mama, Daddy, Goddess, please., please -make it slop!
He slumped forward,,, and she thought she felt something


shoot inside her, but she wasn't sure because of the pain, the way it burned, 
her secret place that had always felt so nice. Broken, torn, she'd never be able 
to use it again. No one would love her, ever, hers was brokenand the Fire, when 
he hurt her, it came out, it was in the pain, no more, never, it hurt, horrible
She lay there and sobbed for air, all the screams in her stifled by horror; and 
when he came around and knelt over her face and pushed the hard thing, all 
bloody, into her slack mouth, and rubbed it in and out, she let him. At least he 
wasn't hurting her anymore. But when he turned her over and started to put it 
against that other place, she realized that he was going to hurt her even worse 
this time. No one was going to come help her now, either. She pushed her face 
down against the cold harsh dirt and tried with all her might to die.
It didn't work. When her first scream broke free, he strangled it. again. The 
terrible strength of his hand turned the world red and then black once more. The 
last thing she heard as she pitched forward into blackness was, very remote, the 
sound of some little girl screaming as the size of him tore her open the other1 
way,, too . . .
Eventually her hearing came back. She heard him pick up his rake and hurry away, 
pushing the rustling branches aside. Some while later, lying as she was with her 
face on the hard ground, she felt-heard hoofbeats, cantering, then galloping. He 
was gone. Very slowly she got up. It hurt, especially between her legs, when 
she moved them at all. She pulled down her smock and scrubbed at her face to try 
to get the dirt off: Her father didn't like her to be dirty.
That roaring stayed with her all that day, as confusion and rage sounded all 
around her1,.. It was her thoughts now, dazed, shocked, going around and around 
in her head and coming hack again to that which she had felt tangled with the 
agony the Fire.
When they finally put her to bed, full of some bitter herbal potion the 
Rodmistress had -made her drink so she'd sleep, her head still roared, behind 
the steady flow of her tears. Only wter, after she had been staring for hours at 
the vague circles the candles made on the ceiling, did the tears flow more


 
slowly. Gradually, the pain between her legs began to feel far away. The roar 
died to a whisper. But the whisper said the same thing she had been hearing all 
day . . . No more. Never again.
And there was a quieter whisper beneath that. One so soft that she hadn't heard 
it then, never heard it afterward; only heard it now with a Dragon's impossibly 
sharp underhearing a seed of rage, taking root in blood and battered flesh, 
burning dark with hate: Some day, when I'm big, I'll kill him.
The pain, experienced at last, fell away and left her among her mdeihei with the 
fiery tears running down her face. They held their silence, waiting to hear what 
she would sing before beginning to weave counterpoint or dissonance about it.
She was exhausted. It was fifteen years since that afternoon under the willow. 
Fifteen years since she had shown herself any more than Balen's terrible smile, 
or thought of the experience as more than "the rape." She had thought she was 
over it, past it all.
What idiocy.
As she grew, she had quickly given up thinking much about sharing her body with 
others. Her agemates indulged in all the delightful anticipation of 
adolescencethe feeling that something magical awaited them when sharing began. 
But when the time carne she had plunged into an experience1 that had about it 
nothing of magic. Instead, every sharing had a touch of the sordid about it, a 
taste of fear which made her want to have it finished quickly. Afterwards, she 
would inevitably plunge into another sharing, in search of what had been 
missing. She never found it. Nor, as she got close to the brink of focusing, had 
she ever managed that, either. How could she, when sharing felt so much like 
Fire?
Slowly Segnbora lifted her gemmed head, and sang relief and grief and wear)' 
regret at the walls. From the shadows her mdeihei took up the dark melody and 
shared it with her in compassionate plainsong. "Oh Immanence," she sang, "I'm 
full of Power, and in danger of running forever dry; I've shared a hundred 
times, and I'm virgin still; I walk on water, and yet thirst ..."
She brought her wings down against the floor in a gesture of bitterness.
"And tlie nightmare was right, too. I'm a killer. The Shadow has merely to touch 
that memory ever so lightly, and I kill one more time. Is this my destiny, then? 
To be a clockwork toy that can be set to kilting by any fool who happens to 
find the key?"
Gentle and ruthless, her mdeihei answered her in one long note that shook the 
cave. "Fes.'"
"Or so it seems," Hasai said kindly.
She looked over at her mdaha, catching for the first time the unease that had 
always been in his voice. She had never before been Dracon enough to hear it. 
He gazed back, gentle-eyed, huge, terrible as a thundercloud with wings. And 
yet, to Dracon eyes, he was also frightened, crippled, shadowed.
"Mdaha," she said, bending her head down close to his. "Your discomfort bears 
looking at, for haven't you often told me that the mdeihei, and you, are me?"
"Often."
"That being the case," she said, "it comes time now to deal with your stone, 
sithess&ch." He looked at her almost sadly, knowingas he had always knownthat 
it was true. "For you are me, and at Bluepeak the Shadow will strike at you too. 
If you succumb, I will too. Then Lorn dies, and the Kingdoms founder, and I'm 
forsworn. And more than that: The green place you fought for, the world you 
treasure so, will fall under the Shadow's domination, and not even Dragons will 
be safe."
Hasai was still as stone, except for his tail, which lashed nervously. Segnbora 
leaned closer, flipped her own tail around to pinion it and hold it down. The 
sight of her tail briefly surprised her. It wasn't like Hasai's. It was scaled 
in star-emeralds as fiery green as new spring growth. It was spined in yellow 
diamond.
"It has to do with rue somehow, doesn't it?" she said. "With going mdahaih in a 
humanand with something older than that, even- Hasai, it must be settled, or 
the Shadow will settle it for us!"
He started to draw downward, away from her touch. 'There is yet time"
       



 


"No there's not!"
Hasai lashed free of her tail, began to rise slowly from his crouch, wings 
lifting, the diamond sabers of the forefingers coming around to threaten her.
Segnbora gazing up, unmoved. "I am you, sitkesmh," she said. Beloved.
Hasai moved not a muscle. As the momentary anger slowly ran out of him, his eyes 
changed. They were no less afraid, but now there appeared in them room for 
something else.
"Now," Segnbora whispered. "Quickly."
The fluid, black-glittering splendor of him made itself into a curve, a pounce, 
a terrible striking downward, a living knife. Stone sliced open like parting 
flesh, the blood was memory, it leaped
Their Sun ate their world. They saw it happen. They had had warningboth 
ahead-memory of the actual incident, and years of wild starstorms, during which 
the Sun's light was too intense to drink without dying, and every Dragon had to 
leave the Homeworld for a time, and wait far out in the cold for the Sun's fire 
to die down.
Shell-parents grew infertile, and eggs that should have hatched roasted in the 
stone instead. At last came the final storm they had dreaded. In haste, all of 
Dragonkind streamed off their red-brown world and hung helpless in space, 
watching their star swell to a hundred times its size and devour their 
Homeworld.
They were orphans.
But they weren't homeless.. Wisely, ihe older Dragons had looked to the youngest 
Dragoncels to see what they ahead-remembered of their own going mdahaih. What 
they had found was the place they'd know as mdeiheian odd, cool little world, 
greener than theirs, covered with a strangeness called water and inhabited by 
life of bizarre and fascinating kinds,
One Dragoncel, however, remembered more than the others. He knew the way, and 
would die upon reaching their goal. His name was Dahiric, The Dragons gave him. 
another name: Worldfinder. They put him at their head and he led. them out into 
the Great Dark.
How long they travelled there, none of the Dragons were


ever sure. Many died along the waystarved for Sunfire in the empty wastesbut 
Dahiric, a doomed and purposeful green-golden glimmer at the head of ten 
thousand others, never veered from the memory he followed. Born only to die, and 
to make this journey, he was determined to succeed. Finally, after what might 
have been ages as humans reckon time, they found the place. It was all that the 
mdeihei- to-be had seen: strange-colored, but alive; a home at last; stone to 
sink their claws into. They dropped down toward it
and found what Dahiric, and many more, were to die of. From the dark side of 
the world, where it had been hiding, a black foul air came boiling out toward 
them. It was blacker than the space in which they hung, and it was alive. It 
hated thought and light and any kind of life but its own. It was also vast 
enough to swallow the bright little planet whole: a project on which it had been 
working for eons. It didn't relish the Dragons' interruption.
Dahiric knew his duty. Gripping a double wingful of the little planet's field of 
forces, he dove down into the roiling blackness, flaming. The Dark drew back, 
and the Dragons saw Dahiric drive a long tunnel down into it. At the tunnel's 
bottom his light blazed like a falling star. But Dahiric was young. His fire 
was limited by his immaturity. His flame went out, and the Dark closed behind 
him. After a little while he came floating out of the boiling blackness, dead.
Had there been air to carry the baltlecry the Dragons raised, stone would have 
shattered across the world. Ten thousand strong, they dove at the Dark from 
every angle, flaming as best they could. Their fire was in short supply, 
however, since they had been out in the night so long, and ten thousand Dragons 
were not enough. The Dark opened before them, swallowed them, spat back the 
dead.
Soon there were nine thousand, seven thousand, fewer. Many had no offspring yet 
and went rdahaih in a second, without time to make their peace with the Universe 
from which they were departing. Some went, mad from the strain of having so many 
relatives become mdahaih in them in so short a time. Others so afflicted flung 
themselves into the Dark and. were lost too.
A. few simply fled, and lived.


       



 


One of these was the youngest of the Homeworld's Dragon-eels. He had never been 
quite normal. When he had become fully sdahaih at last, and his shell-parents 
and relatives had asked him when and where he would go mdahaih, his answer 
frightened them all. What he foresaw was darkness and cold and terrible pain; 
and then the odd, crippled body of an alien . . . one who was certain she would 
go rdahaih and take with her all the mdeihei. It was a terrifying vision, and 
all rejected it.
He grew, and yet the vision did not change. Therefore, he slowly became resigned 
to being a curiosity among his own kind. As befitted a Dragon, he came to make 
light of the difference, submerging it in placidity. But he did not realize that 
the way he did thisby learning to stand a little aloof, even from his 
mdeiheialso encouraged other Dragons to stand aloof from him as well.
Hasai became estranged from his own kind. He took no mate. He held his peace. He 
flew alone. And when he finally found himself facing that same awful blackness 
that in minutes had killed half his race, Hasai failed. With no comrade who 
would admit to fear, and so support him toward courage, he became nearly blind 
with terror. He fled.
The rest of Dragonkind, fortunately, had not exhausted their options. There in 
empty space they convened in body and mind, and held Assemblagethe last full 
Assemblage that would be held for a generation or two, until the Advocate 
summoned them again two thousand years later. They paid the price of 
Assemblagethe lives of the DragonChief and the Eldestand then all those left 
alive turned their hearts inward and gave their will and power over to the 
Immanence.
Few of them saw where the Messenger came from. She was a Dragon in shape, but 
even the webs of Her wings burned intolerably bright. Her every scale was a 
star, a point of power so terrible it could be felt through Dragonhide. The 
Messenger wheeled and dropped through the massed Dragons, scattering themthen 
halted above the raging, boiling immensity of the Dark. Through their 
othersenses, the Dragons could feel the Dark's alarm as it reached up to snuff 
out this troublesome intruder. Likewise, they heard its silent scream of pain


as the Messenger flamed, letting loose a torrent of Dragonfire as potent as a 
star's breathing.
The Dark writhed convulsively, ripped away from the world with a jerk and a 
soundless howl of rage. It streamed toward the Messenger to engulf Her utterly, 
but the Messenger only spread wings and claws and seized it. Working at the 
forces in space with fiery wings, She drew the Dark away from the world, 
screaming and struggling. Together they dwindled, drawing farther away from the 
little blue world, until all that could be seen of them was a light like a 
dwindling star. Those who dared to follow came back and reported that the 
Messenger had plunged, together with the Dark, into the heart of the nearby 
yellow Sun. Neither came out again.
Later, the survivors found Dahiric's body among those of the slain. The others 
they burned in Dragonfire, as was the custom on the old Homeworld, but Dahiric 
they bore down to the surface of the new world. There they found a fair place at 
the endpoint of a great spur of land, where water washed it. They uprooted a 
mountain, as had been done on the Homeworld for Phyiril and Saen and others of 
the Parents, and they laid it over him, melted it around him, and made a 
dwelling there for the new DragonChief. Thereafter, the Dragons settled into 
their new young world, and watched humankind come slowly out of the caves into 
which the baleful influence of the Dark had driven them . . .
. . . and behind the rest of the Dragons, a silver-and-black Dragoncel drifted 
to earth like the last leaf of autumn. His shame at his cowardice gripped him 
like the pain of giving-up-the-body, and would not leave. True, no other Drago'n 
accused him of fear, but no one comforted him, either. He was alone, as always. 
Alone with a new shame, and with the old hidden terror of the day he would go 
mdahaih in a human.
All these burdens he buried under layers of Dracon placid-rty. The centuries 
went by. He maintained his dignity, flew alone, and kept silent. Then finally 
his life became reduced to waiting for the stars to assume the proper 
configurations. This they did. At last, his luster dimming, Hasai spiraled down 
to the Morrowfane by night and crept into a cave there, to wait for the 
seizures, and to wait for the one who would come .


       



 


*   *   *
He looked across the cavern at her now, head held high, waiting for her to 
disapprove of him and pronounce a sentence worse than death: eternal 
imprisonment with a sdaha whose opinion of him was not passive placidity, but 
active scorn.
Behind him, the mdeihei were strangely silent.
"You ran," Segnbora sang.
He said nothing.
"And you are of value nonetheless," she said, weaving around the words a melody 
that attributed importance to her words. "You did what you did, and here you 
are. And here am I, too ... or should I say, here are we."
Hasai looked at her in amazement. She sighed a little fire and unfolded one 
emerald-strutted wing, laying it over his back in a gesture of affection.
"So where do we go from here?" she asked.                       i*
He opened his mouth, and nothing came out for a moment^
" 'Sithesssch,' you said," he sang in dubious tones.                             
          Nf
She flipped her tail in agreement.                                         *|.
"Then only one matter still troubles me ..."             <H
"What?"                                                                          
                                    -'>
"The mdeihei, and their opinion. As you know, they do not judge, but merely 
advise. Still, I would like to know that they are not ashamed."
Segnbora considered the matter, listening to the utter silence in the 
background where the mdeihei usually sang. "Mdaha, don't worry. If they are 
truly of the Immanence, as they claim, they will understand."
The doubt fell out of his voice, but Hasai still looked at her strangely. 
"You're truly sdahaih at last," he said. "It's very odd."
"How so? You knew how it would be."
He dropped his jaw, smiling. "Sometimes, for the sake of surprise, we forget a 
little."
Segnbora spread both wings high and curved her neck around to look at them. 
"Well, I certainly feel sdahaih. Shall we go test it?"
"There's more to being sdahaih, and Dracon, than flight,"


Hasai said, and his song trembled with the joy of one who's found something long 
lost. "Memory. And its transformation."
She shook too, thinking of all the painful experiences she could accept, or 
remake if she wished. Now that she was sdahaih, the ever-living past was as 
malleable as the present. There were some things she wouldn't change, 
experiences that had made her what she was now. Balen, she thought. He stays. 
There's unfinished business there, somehow. But as for other matters
For the first time since that afternoon under the willow, her love was cleanand 
now more than ever before she wanted to give it away. "I remember a place," she 
sang quietly, looking at Hasai, "where stars swirl in the sky like a frozen 
whirlpool, and the Sun is red and the stone is as warm as your eyes"
He met her glance with eyes that blazed. "Toe mnek-e"," he sang. We remember.
Wings lifted and beat downward, and the cave was empty.
The soaring began at the Homeworld, and never quite ended. They made the 
Crossing all over again, together this time. Other Dragons looked curiously at 
the one who in fore-memories had been alone, but who now went companioned by 
some child of the Worldfinder's line, green-scaled and golden-spined, with eyes 
the fiery yellow of the little star to which they journeyed.
They saw the Winning again, not with guilt this time, but simply as one of the 
events that would eventually bring them together. Afterwards, they fell to earth 
like bright leaves drifting, and lay basking in the Sun. They glided together 
through long afternoons, taking their time so that the people below would have 
something to marvel at. They matched speed for speed in the high air, and tore 
it to tatters of thunder. They went bathing in the valleys of the Sun, and 
chased the twilight around the world for sport. He made her a present of the 
sunset, and she made him one of the dawn, and they both drank them to the dregs 
until the fire of their throats was stained the red of the vintage.


They lived in fledgling and Dragoncel and Dragon, in child and girl and 
womanfound memories that were lost, discovered past and future. Gazing into 
one another for centuries, they also found completion. And at the bottom of 
that, they found Another gazing back. One Who became them as They became It. 
Goddess-Immanence and peers, Made and Maker, the two Firstborn, They flowed 
together. Not merely One, not simply the same. They were.
For that, even in Dracon, there were no words.
Eventually they remembered the way home, andliving in itwere there. Segnbora, 
leaning back against the immense forelimb from which she had not moved all 
night, looked up at her mdaha's silver eyes.
"I have to be getting back," she said. "They'll be wondering where I am."
"Best hurry and tell them. Sehf'rae, sdaha."
"Seht ..."
Halfway out the entrance to the cave, she paused, touching her breast in 
confusion. In the place where the nightmare had bitten her, there was nothing 
but a pale, crescent-shaped scar.
"Dragons heal fast," Hasai said from behind her.
A quiet joy like nothing she had ever heard sang around his words. She knew how 
he felt.
"Sehe'rae, mdaha," she said, and went out.
rf
She opened her eyes on a dawn she could taste as well as see. When she stood up 
to stretch, she saw the Moon, three days past third quarter, the phase under 
which she had been born, hanging halfway up the water-blue sky like a smile with 
a secret behind it.
Picking her way back toward the camp, she came across someone waiting for her 
with his back to the rising Sun. His long black shadow stretched out toward her, 
the stones within it outlined brightly by the Fire of the sword he leaned upon.
"Welcome back," Herewiss said as she approached.
Skadhwe was struck into a nearby rock. She raised a ques
tioning eyebrow at Herewiss as she plucked it out and re-
sheathed it.                                                                     
          '
"I didn't touch Skadhwe," he said. "I asked it politely, and we reached an 
accommodation."
"Thank you," she said. She glanced down at the cracked and broken links of her 
chammail. "This whole thing was a setup- You knew the nightmare was here. You 
knew twenty miles away. You couldn't no! have known."
He caught the merriment in her voice and grinned. "I'm on other business than 
just Lom's and Eftgan's," he said. "There's all kinds of power in this world, 
looking to be freed. I do what I can."
"I could have died," she said, "of what it said to me. I understood it, it spoke 
the truth, and yet I killed it anyway. The despair could have finished me."
"I know," Herewiss replied. "My decision was not made lightly. If you hadn't 
been strong enough . . . yes, you would have died. And I would have laken 
responsibility for it."
She looked at him, pitying and loving him, both at once. "'Thanks," she said.
*'I didn't do much of anything," he said, half-bowing graciously. "You seem to 
have found your own solutions."
He looked past Segnbora with great interest. Turning, she was just as interested 
to see the long-necked, long-bodied, short-legged Dracon shadow that lay behind 
her. It was positioned as if the creature that cast it were standing on her 
hind legs. Experimentally she pointed a finger, and saw the shadow of the 
forewing barb cock outward.
"Is it true," Herewiss asked with a gentle simile, "what they say about Dragons 
and maidens?"
She turned back and shrugged slightly. '"You'll have to ask someone who'd know," 
she said. "I'm not a maiden anymore , . ./*
She started back toward camp to saddle Steelsheen and
hummed a chord.


Fourteen
... the Goddess could not spend all Her time persuading the Kings and Queens of 
the world of the idiocy of war. Therefore She invented tacticians . ..
(source unknown)


As they topped the crest of yet another line of foothills they paused, silent in 
the dusk, and looked down upon ancient history. Forest patches lay on the 
wrinkled fells and hollows of the land below. Although it was just two nights 
before Midsummer, the wind ran chill over the land, rustling trees and grass so 
that the earth seemed to shudder like the flank of a troubled beast.
South of their position the foothills became rougher, their bare stones turning 
brown, red, and hot gray in the fading light. Farther south still rose the 
Highpeaks. Off into the crimson distance they marched, mountain after mountain. 
At their forefront, frozen like a white wave of stone about to break, stood 
Mount Ndniion, which overshadowed Bluepeak.
"The weather's changing," Freelorn said.
He was looking uneasily at the filmy banner of windblown snow that stretched 
southward over the Peaks from N6mion's major summit. It had a distinct downward 
curve to it that indicated it was a south wind fighting to get past the 
mountains and slide under the wanner northland air.
"Storm tomorrow, loved. Can't you do something?''
Herewiss's eyes were elsewheresearching the country west of them for any sign 
of the Darthenes. Eftgan's last message had said that she and her troops would 
bivouac a league-and-a-half west of the mouth of Bluepeak valley two nights 
before Midsummer, well out of the sight of the Reavers encamped in Britfell 
fields around the town. But the land beneath them had a trampled look, and was 
empty.
"I could," Herewiss said, reaching over his shoulder for Khavrinen to better 
sense what had been happening there. "It
would be unwise, though. Eftgan may already have done something."
"Or Someone else might have," Segnbora said. She was as troubled as Lorn, for 
different reasons. Her undersenses clearly brought her a feeling of haste and 
disruption from the land below, as if plans had gone awry and many minds down 
there had recently been in turmoil. Worse were Hasai's memories, and those of 
some of the mdeihei who knew this area well. Something dark and threatening 
lurked under this land, and was ready to rise up in menace.
She shuddered, as did the mdeihei inside her. Herewiss was sitting still with 
Khavrinen flaming in his lap, its Fire subdued.
"Someone else has been meddling, I think," he said, glancing over at Freelorn. 
"There's will behind this weather, and I'd sooner not probe it more closely than 
that, since I'd be leaving myself open to be probed back. Better to stay low for 
the moment." He looked down at the Bluepeak highlands. "Eftgan came at this site 
from the north a day and a half ago"
"Were they driven back by Arlenes?" Freelorn said, anxious. Cillmod had been 
raiding across the Arlene-Darthene border for nearly a year now, in violation of 
the Oath. It was unlikely that he would allow a Darthene incursion into his 
territory to go unchallenged.
"No. Reaversand they were here first. Eftgan had a skirmish with them and went 
north again. The Reavers went west. No sign of Arlenes; they must not have 
received word that Eftgan's in the vicinity."
Dritt looked confused. "Eftgan's a Rodmistress, though. Shouldn't she have been 
able to sense that the Reavers were here, and avoid them?"
Herewiss nodded.
There was uneasy shifting among Freelorn's followers. Lorn himself was 
bewildered. "How can a Rodmistress's scrying go wrong?1"'
Herewiss swung down from Sunspark and began loosening the girths of its saddle. 
"The same way mine can, I imagine," he said. Segnbora could feel the great 
effort he was making lo conceal the trouble in his mind. "1 can't feel where she 
is


my range has been steadily diminishing for the past day. Something's settling 
down over this whole area. Power."
No one had to ask Whose power.
Sunspark looked sideways at Herewiss. (I'll find her,) it said. There was unease 
in its thought over Herewiss's sudden anxiety.
Herewiss laid a hand on its burning shoulder, where the fiery mane hung down. 
"Go, loved. But burn low. Don't advertise us."
It tossed its head and was gone in an oven-breath of wind, leaving only wisps of 
smoke to mark where it had stood.
Segnbora dismounted from Steelsheen in silence, thinking that the tai-Enraesi 
house luck was certainly working as usual. Of all the places she had never 
wanted to be in a battle, this led the list! Since Earn and Healhra had first 
set the bindings here a thousand years before, this land had slept uneasily. It 
was steeped in Powernot beneficent power like the Mor-rowfane's, but a 
dangerous potency that could be manipulated easily by whatever lesser force 
moved there. Sorcerers and those with the Fire stayed away from Bluepeak, afraid 
to trigger unwelcome influences. Yet here they were, merrily riding into this 
unstable land with the clear intention of arousing those influences in order to 
bind them. Segnbora would sooner have kicked a sleeping lion awake, then tried 
to tie it up.
"How far from N6mion would you say we are?" Herewiss asked his loved.
"Eight miles, maybe." Freelorn was chewing his mustache absently, an old nervous 
mannerism. "We'll be there by tonight if we push the horses a little."
They stood together, Herewiss playing with Khavrinen's hilt, Freelorn looking 
out over the darkening land toward a remote ridge that stood away from the 
foothills in front of N6mion. That ridge was Britfell, the White Height, which 
partially hid the mouth of Bluepeak valley.
There was nothing white about the fell this time of year. Its barren curved 
ridge was a brown wave rising over the green land below it. Here and there it 
was dotted with blackthorn that had managed to take root in its sheer stones.
On the hidden southern side of that wave, within Bluepeak
valley, the tiny combined force of the Arlenes and Darthenes nad_one thousand 
years beforebeen hunted up against the cliffs of Britfell's inner side by Fyrd. 
Seeing them trapped there, the Shadow had taken a hand, climbing down out of the 
Peaks in the shape of the Gnorn, a form so fearsome that just the sight of it 
would kill.
Earn and Healhra, trapped together on a height near Brit-fell's end, faced with 
the slaughter of all their people, took the option offered them by the Goddess. 
They sacrificed their mortality to undergo that Transformation by which mortals 
become gods. Together, as White Eagle and White Lion, they attacked the Gnorn 
and destroyed itslaying the Shadow and being slain, and leaving their people 
free to move north and found Arlen and Darthen.
There was hardly a child in the Kingdoms who hadn't played at Lion-and-Eagle and 
fought that battle in dusty village streets or empty fields. Segnbora had done 
it herself, usually insisting (for loyalty's sake) on being the Eagle to someone 
else's Lion. For Freelorn and Herewiss it must have been a little different, of 
course. The inventors of the game < had been the founders of their houses; their 
Fathers many times removed.
"Goddess help us if the Reavers are holding the mouth of the valley!" Freelorn 
said.
"Probably they are."
He looked sidewise at his loved. "You should have let me buy those mercenaries, 
dammit."
"Lorn, the point of this excursion is winning back your throne, not having 
battles. And buying yourself mercenaries guarantees you'll have battles. 
Everybody in the neighborhood assumes you're going to start something with them, 
and so they start something first. Besides," he said, smiling wryly at 
Freelorn's exasperated look, "it seems there aren't enough mercenaries available 
right now to make a difference. Someone else has been hiring. Cillmod."
Freelorn shrugged, still chewing his mustache. "You miss my point. What I mean 
is, I'm going to have a hard time getting into the valley to do the Royal 
Binding; that is, unless we try something obvious, like using Sunspark."
"Where did you have in mind to do it?"


"Lionheugh."
That was the little island-height at the end of BritfelFs curve, well inside the 
valley's mouth,
"Since the Transformation took place there, it's favorable ground. Every place 
else has too much blood."
Herewiss looked grimly amused. "So all we have to do is get you past a whole 
army of Reavers, and probably Fyrd," he said. And keep you alive afterward.
Segnbora caught his worried thought, but Freelom merely raised his eyebrows.
"Problems?"
"I think we'll work something out," Herewiss said in his lazy northern drawl. 
Under his hands Khavrinen swirled momentarily with a confident brilliance of 
Flame, then died down again.
A hot whirlpool of air set dried grass smoldering on the ridge. The vortex 
darkened as if with smoke, spread horizontally and solidified into Sunspark's 
blood-roan shape. Herewiss reached up to lay a hand against its cheek.
"Well?"
(I found Eftgan's soldiers busy with more of those Reaver-folk we had trouble 
with at Barachael,) it said, pawing the ground modestly, and leaving a scorched 
place. (They're busy no more. I drove them back down into the valley to play 
with the rest of their people.)
"Oh, no!" Herewiss covered his face with one hand. "Loved, I thought I told you 
to be circumspect!"
Its burning eyes were merry. (So I was. I don't need to show fire to burn 
something. Things just became, should I say, too hot for them?)
Segnbora couldn't suppress a chuckle, at which Sunspark beamed.
"Don't encourage him," Herewiss said as he bent to pick up the saddle again.
(I did have a little trouble,) Sunspark added, in a tone of thought that said it 
was making light of the problem. (For some reason I wasn't able to make things 
burn as easily as usual. Something there was slowing one clown.)
Herewiss nodded, and kept his voice equally light. "We'll
keep an eye on it. Well done, loved. Did the Queen have any word for me?"
(Yes indeed,) Sunspark replied, and said one.
Segnbora exchanged amused glances with Lang, who stood beside her. It was not a 
word one usually associated with Queens.
Herewiss  looked  sternly  at  Sunspark.   "Did  you  burn
her?"
(Oh . . . just a little . . . )
Fastening the girths of the saddle, Herewiss kneed the elemental good-naturedly 
in the belly. It developed a surprised look, then a searing hot breath went out 
of itwhoof! Herewiss pulled the girth tight.
"You and I," he said, "are going to have a talk later. Meanwhile," he mounted 
up, "let's join Eftgan before the Reavers figure out that the, ah, heat's off. . 
. "
The camp seen from above looked like any other bivouac that Segnbora had ever 
seen: squares set out with tents at their centers, picket lines of horses 
tethered nearby, men and women sprawled around campfires tending to their 
weapons
or their dinners.
Britfell rose up a mile south, a looming blackness from which the occasional 
hunting owl came floating down in search of small game disturbed by the activity 
thereabouts. The owls weren't getting much business, though. It was a quieter 
camp than most Segnbora remembered. Evidently the Darthenesi, too, realized that 
there were forces about that it would be better not to disturb.
They passed the outer sentries and shortly thereafter were met by a dark-haired 
rider on a Steldene dun gelding, bearing a torch, the light of which danced off 
the bright chain of a .major,
"Torve!" Freelom said, pleasantly surprised. "Well met. You seem to have made 
better time than we did from Barachael."
"Barachaet's secure," Torve said with his usual calm cheerfulness. "The Queen's 
grace wanted me here, so here I am. She asked me to bring' you in."


       



 


"She felt us coming?" Herewiss said, sounding somewhat relieved.
"You were close," Torve said, his unassailable calm strained a little. "There 
have been problems with scrying of late."
"We noticed."
The Queen's tent was little different from those that the rest of the army 
usedslightly larger, perhaps, but of the same patched canvas. All that 
identified it as hers was the Eagle banner on its pole outside the door. On the 
other side of the doorway, however, the diamond-studded haft of Sar-sweng was 
thrust into the ground up to its hook. Its diamonds glittered restlessly in the 
torchlight. Eftgan was sitting in shirt and britches on a low folding chair, 
surrounded by a scatter of maps and parchments and papers. She was tapping one 
map idly with her Rod while talking to a man who squatted beside her chair.
She rose to greet Herewiss and Freelorn and the others, tossing her Rod aside. 
"I'm glad to see you," she said, sounding as if she meant it. "Come in and be 
comfortable. Everybody, this is my husband Wyn"
The group murmured greetings. Segnbora caught Wyn's eye and traded smiles with 
him. It had been ten years since she had last seen him, and (as she had 
suspected) the years had left no sign of their passing. Short and compact, Wyn 
s'Heleth was in his early fifties and looked perhaps thirty. His face was like a 
handsome hawk's. His eyes were so merrily threatening it was sometimes a strain 
to meet them.
Segnbora had herself introduced Wyn to Eftgan back in Darthis, when the old King 
had been looking for a wine merchant who wouldn't charge him exorbitant prices. 
Not too long thereafter the Darthene Court had found itself with not only good 
wine at reasonable prices, but with a future Prince Consort. Connoisseurs were 
still talking about the rare vintages that had been uncorked for Eftgan's 
wedding.
"There's stew in the pot and dishes beside it," the Queen said, sitting down. 
"Wine and water in the jugs. Sit, friends. We have trouble." She dug about in 
the welter of maps and pulled out a large one of the whole Bluepeak area.


Trouble's a gentle word for it, Segnbora thought as Eftgan talked and pointed. 
The Reavers had a considerable start on the Darthenes, and there had been 
nothing the Queen could do about it. Worldgating would have been impossible, 
when so many people were involved. Eftgan had therefore been forced to march 
westward from Orsvier slowly enough to allow for musters and pick-up levies 
along the way. The Reavers seemed to have handled all such matters a long time 
before, on the other side of the mountains, for here they were, four thousand 
strong, arrayed in siege around Bluepeak town and holding the mouth of the 
valley from Nomion's flank to Britfell's outer curve. Lionheugh, as Freelorn had 
feared, was well inside their lines.
"They have three thousand foot and a thousand horse," Eftgan said, "and the fact 
that they got here first gives them the advantage of the ground, too. They've 
taken stand on both sides of the Arlid, and to dislodge them we're going to have 
to attack uphill. I don't like that ..."
"How do you stand?" Herewiss said.
"Fifteen hundred horse and four thousand foot," Wyn said in his sharp voice. 
"Eighty sorcerers, fourteen Rodmistress-es"
"Fifteen," Eftgan said. "You always forget to count me. However, sorcery hasn't 
worked since yesterdayor, when it does work, you don't want to be anywhere near 
the consequences. As ranking Mistress here, I've advised my sisters to keep 
their Fire to themselves unless Ior you, Herewiss order otherwise. By the by, 
have you heard anything from the Precincts?"
"No."
"Neither have I. It's disturbing. I asked them for advice on this matter two 
weeks ago, while it was still possible to bespeak as far as the Brightwood. I 
suppose the Wardresses started debating the subject and are taking too long 
about it, as usual." She sighed. "It's too late now; we'll have to make do with 
our own advice. Meanwhile," she said to Freelorn, "there's the business of the 
Royal Bindings to consider. I brought the Regalia."
Freelorn nodded. "I know the ritual. But the Arlene Regalia


is in Prydon ... all of it but Herg6tha, anyway." He looked annoyed as he said 
it. Herg6tha the GreatHealhra's ancient swordhad been missing since Freelorn's 
father died. If there was anything Lorn wanted back as much as the Arlene 
kingship, it was that sword. "And I remind you, I'm not an Initiate. My father 
never took me on the Nightwalk into Lion-hall."
Eftgan nodded. "We'll take our chances, Lorn. You're the Lion's Child, and 
Healhra's blood is what's required here. The problem is," and she pushed at the 
map of Bluepeak with one booted toe, "I'm reluctant to do even so minor a Gating 
as would put us down on the Heughthat was the spot you were thinking of, wasn't 
it? The Shadow's influence is building by the minute. Any use of Power from now 
on could be terribly warped." She frowned. "Did I tell you that the valley is 
crawling with Fyrd? A new kind" "Thinkers?" Dritt guessed. The Queen looked at 
him glumly. "Yes." Freelorn reached for the map and pulled it closer to where he 
sat cross-legged on the floor. He studied it for a few breaths, then indicated 
the mouth of the valley. "The Reavers are drawn up here, under several of 
Cillmod's mercenary-captains."
"A little more north," Wyn said. "About a quarter-mile north of the Heugh, 
stretching right across to the Spine." "Uh-huh. They're on the other side of the 
Spine too?" "It seems a safe assumption, though we haven't confirmed it. They've 
got a small force at the Spine's northern end; we've left it alone."
Freelorn nodded, leaning over the map. "I doubt they're paying much attention to 
their rear, then, since the besieging force is holding it secure, and the Fyrd 
are back there too. I suspect no one will notice if we go in the pantry door 
instead of the great-hall entrance." He pointed at Britfell, indicating a spot 
near where the fell joined the northern massif of Kemana. "Here."
Now it was Wyn's turn to look shocked. "You're crazy! There's no going up 
Britfell, it's too sheer! Maybe a climber could do it in a day or so, if there 
were time ..."
Herewiss was looking at Freelorn with an expression compounded of worry and 
dawning hope. For once, Segnbora thought, anticipation rising in her, maybe one 
of Freelorn's crazy strategies is going to pay off
"I've done it on horseback," Freelorn said. "With my father. There's a path. We 
went up the north side and down the south in about six hours, coming out on the 
far side of the curve about a half mile north of the Heugh. And if two people 
did it, so can ten." He glanced around at his own group. "Or a hundred," he said 
to the Queen. "Or five hundred."
"That path must not be very visible from either side," Eftgan said, sounding 
uncertain, "which suggests it will be rough to ride."
"If the Shadow had built it, it could hardly be worse. But it's a way over. And 
everybody, even the Reavers, knows there's no way over the fell. That's what 
brought our ancestors to grief." Freelorn tapped the map again. "So. We take a 
few hundred of your horseWhy be stingy? Make it five hundredand go over." He 
scrunched up his forehead in thought. "Allow sixteen hours for the whole 
passage. You order your main force to draw up north of the valley's mouth. The 
Reavers won't move; they're not such idiots as to attack downhill and give up 
the advantage of the ground. If they draw back and try to tempt your forces to 
come after them, fine. Meanwhile, you and I and five hundred horse are here" he 
tapped the inside of Britfell's curve"where we can't possibly be. We come down 
around the Heugh and do our binding there, while the cavalry takes the Reavers 
in their unsuspecting flank and rear, attacking downhill and driving them 
against your main force to the south. Hammer and anvil." He grinned.
Wyn was beginning to look interested despite his doubts. "That still leaves the 
cavalry with an unfought force at its back: the besieging force. If they leave 
the city and come down on you"
"How many are holding the siege?"
"About a thousand foot."
Freelorn shrugged. "If they send enough people to make a difference, won't the 
garrison inside try a sally?"


"So they've said," Eftgan said. "That'll make no difference to the cavalry, 
though."
"So." Freelorn tapped the Spine. "Once your main force engages the Reaver force, 
you send a good-sized party to secure the ground between the Spine and N6mion 
and clear the Reavers off that side of the river. There's our bolt-hole. We ford 
the river and go up behind the Spine, then rejoin the main force."
Eftgan sat silent for a little while, studying the map. "We're fifty-five 
hundred to their four thousand," she said at last. "I don't have the leisure for 
strategic victories. I need conclusive ones. This at least gives us a chance to 
do what we have to without using Power and risking a disaster. And the surprise 
of taking them from the rear would be tremendous. It should disorganize them 
wonderfully. And, since organization was never their strong point anyway ..."
Eftgan glanced over at Wyn for his opinion. He nodded at her. She paused to give 
the map one more long look.
"The last scrying I managed," she said, "gave a hint of something that might be 
coming from the northwest, from upper Arlen. Help or hindrance, I couldn't tell. 
And I don't dare delay to find out. The Bindings must be reinforced soon. A 
delay could turn loose forces I don't care to contemplate."
Standing, she bent to pick up her Rod from among the papers on the floor. "No 
matter. We'll work with what information we have. Freelorn, I'll ride with you 
regardless of the uncertainty. Wyn will handle the main force in my absence. 
Meanwhile"
The tent flap was thrust aside. In peered a tall, rawboned woman in the Darthene 
royal blue, with somewhat disordered dark hair and a captain's chain around her 
neck. "Ma'am," she said, breathless, "the Reavers are attacking the north side 
of the camp again. Maybe a hundred or so."
"Oh, damn," the Queen said. She tossed her Rod away and reached to the side of 
the tent, where F6rlennh BrokenBlade lay sheathed. "They love trying to draw us 
out," she said, buckling on the scabbard. "Any trouble handling it, Kesri?"
"Not really."
"Good. Of your courtesy, go call the other captains and the
captains-major. I have something to tell them." The captain vanished and the 
tentflap fell. Eftgan turned to Freelorn and Herewiss. "Midnight's coming on. 
We'll start an hour after midnight, and give the Reavers a surprise tomorrow 
afternoon."
Lorn and his people began heading out of the tent to see to the horses and to 
their own bedrolls. Eftgan flicked a wry glance at Segnbora, an outward 
indication of mixed concern and anticipation. "Just like old times, 'Berend."
Segnbora thought of Etachne and other such fields that lay behind the two of 
them, victories and defeats equally frightful. "Not just like, I hope."
"No," Eftgan said, looking thoughtfully at Skadhwe in its scabbard, and at 
Segnbora's odd shadow on the floor. "I suppose it won't be."


       



 


      Fifteen



 


      Mn 'An'dzat kchren "rae ehwiss thaa' seth:
      Stihe tw-stihe. Stihti he-stihe. Whm'thae najh'stih&h. Ousskh'thae 
      najh'stih&h. Mda't'dae bvh-sda't'dae mnok-A
      Rui'i'rae-sta foaa'aei



      (The Five Truths, terrible and joyous:
      What is, is. What was, is. Matter is an illusion. Meaning is an illusion. 
      The Door opens both ways.
      Believe none of these!)
      Ehh'ne  IhhwTae   (What   Dragons Say), vii, 14



 


      257



      THE DOOR INTO SHADOW



 


Full night, when it came, was starless. A heavy overcast hung like a roof just 
above the highest peaks: Nornion and Kerana. In that stifling silent darkness, a 
long column of riders picked its way to the foot of Britfell's northern slope 
and came to a halt.
The prospect was daunting. Sheer walls of cracked cliff-face rose up 
uninvitingly. Around them were strewn rubble and boulders brought down by the 
annual flux of heat and cold. Eftgan, on her tall bay gelding Scoundrel, shook 
her head as she looked upward.
"Lorn, if the road isn't still there"
"Then we're no worse off than you were before," Lorn said.
Ahead of Segnbora and the others, he, Herewiss, and the Queen were shadows among 
shadows. Everyone in that riding had made sure there was nothing bright about 
their gear; faces and hands and buckles and swordhilts were smeared with a 
mixture of grease and soot. Even so, Segnbora's Dragon-sharpened vision saw 
movements and expressions clearly enough.
Freelorn pulled up Blackmane's head and headed him off to the left. "Let's take 
the adventure the Goddess sends us," he said, "and go as far as we can."
He urged his dun straight at the cliffside. Blackmane snorted mild protest but 
went where his rider directed him, climbing a slope of talus and scree and not 
stopping until they reached a narrow ledge fifty feet or so above the cliffs 
foot. "This way," Lorn called softly to the riders waiting below, and put his 
heels to Blackmane again. The horse took him leftward past a rounded 
outcropping of stone, and out of sight.


"This is crazy," Lang said, beside Segnbora.
"Maiden's madness, I hope," Eftgan said, and shook Scoundrel's reins. He 
stalled, snorting, until Eftgan laid her crop gently below his left ear and 
touched him with heels again. Up Scoundrel went in a nervous rush, scattering 
pebbles and small stones. One by one they followed him, reining their horses in 
to keep them stepping lightly and minimize the damage done to the path.
The ride was like something out of an old tale or a bad dream, full of long 
terrifying pauses during which Freelorn lost the way and found it again, 
dismounted to heave fallen boulders off the narrow track or to lead Blackmane 
where he thought it too dangerous to burden a horse with a rider's weight-The 
path, if it could be dignified with such a name, wound back and forth along the 
face of the cliff, switching back at wildly irregular intervals, the switches 
often barely enough for one horse to negotiate. Always there were heartstopping 
drops below.
Segnbora kept her elbows in as she rode, once again very glad of Steelsheen's 
breed. Steldenes were bred in mountainous country and were frequently accused 
of being part goat. The mare picked her way delicately along ledges of rotten, 
sliding stone with only an occasional snort of protest at the poor quality of 
the trail. Other horses behind, flatland breeds, weren't doing as well. The 
sound of whispered swearing came drifting up from riders down below.
As they climbed, the night got blacker, if that were possible. A feeling began 
to grow among the riders that Something with no good intent was watching the 
silent climb. Tense minutes stretched into an hour, then two and three. Segnbora 
began to feel as if she had been climbing up this miserable wall forever, as if 
her whole life had been spent fighting with eggshell-fragile stone, squinting at 
it, terrified of every step.
At the same time, she had to admit that this feat would be sung of for years, if 
any of them finished the climb and survived the battle that waited just the 
other side of Britfell. She maneuvered Steelsheen cautiously around another 
treacherous, switchback, not looking down,


       



 


Inside her, in their own darkness that now seemed bright by comparison, Hasai 
and the mdeiha hissed laughter at her fear of heights, and then began singing 
(in sixteen-part harmony of the kind Dragons used when feeling playful) their 
memory of the ballad which the bards would indeed later write for Freelorn: When 
Fyrd came over the Darthme border / and Reavers moved at the Shadow's order. . . 
Segnbora almost felt like smiling, until she remembered that just because her 
mddhm had a memory of the ballad, that was still no guarantee that any of them 
would survive this venture.
One of Sheen's hooves slipped, and Segnbora's heart seized as she leaned with 
the mare so she could regain her balance. For an instant they came close to a 
perilous drop, but Steelsheen recovered and went on, sweating and trembling, but 
knowing what her mistress wanted. Unconcerned, the mdeihei were singing in 
unison now, a calm chorus. They climbed the Fell and they crossed the water, the 
Lion's Son and the Eagle's Daughter
Several hours before dawn it began to snow, The wind rose, and became a howling 
blast. Snow that grew blizzard-fine drove stinging into faces, numbing hands on 
the reins. The horses whickered in complaint and tried to walk with eyes averted 
toward the cliff, which only caused them to miss their footing all the more. 
Forewarned, their riders muffled themselves up as best they could. Even in 
Midsummer snow often fell in the high South, though usually more lightly than 
this. The sky got infinitesimally lighter as day broke above the storm, though 
not enough to lighten anyone's spirits.
There's will behind this weather, Herewiss had said. That will could be felt 
watching them more strongly every minute. The head of the column was fairly 
close to the top of the fell now, but that was no comfort. The thought of having 
to take a similar path downhill, on an icy trail, was on everyone's mind, The 
storm was blowing from the south, and had been abated somewhat by striking the 
fell and having to pour over it, Matters would be much worse on the other side.
The trail leveled so abruptly that Segnbora was taken completely by surprise. 
It led westward here, going around the edge of a west-pointing backbone of the 
fell A pause to look


west would have been pleasant, but there was no time for it the column was 
still coming up the far side of the fell, and there was little standing room. 
Besides, they had entered the cloud cover, and visibility was low. Even so, 
Eftgan dismounted long enough to stretch her cramped arms and legs and look 
ahead hopefully.
Herewiss, beside her, looked unhappy. "Can you feel anything?" he said.
Eftgan shook her head. "I can hardly hear myself think in this wind, let alone 
anyone else. That one"she glanced upward at the slate-dark cloud cover"has 
settled Itself down snug. It's muffling all thought but Its owrn. The main force 
is going to have to rely on riders for messages, and there'll be no way for us 
to know what's going on until we rejoin it."
"Sunspark can assist," Herewiss said. But he sounded uncertain,. "When will 
they move?"
"Noon. We should be well finished with our business at the Heugh by then, and 
they can go ahead and have a battle without worrying about what it might raise." 
She bit her lip, a sign of hidden fright that Segnbora recognized.
Segnbora had no time to indulge her own nervousness, however. There was barely 
enough time to dismount and feed Steelsheen some grain. By the time she got back 
in the saddle, Lorn was already picking his way down the trail on the other 
side, with Eftgan in back of him and Herewiss behind her.
"Let's move, slowcoach," Lang said as he nudged his dap-plegray, Gyrfalcon, past 
her. "Going to lose your place up front,,"'
Dubious honor that it is, she thought, swinging up into the saddle and following 
him.
Now the pace of the climb slowed to an agonized creep, for the stone was not 
only iced, it was rotten. Rock crumbled maddeningly under foot, and the horses 
rebelledshaking their heads,, snorting, testing the footing at every step. The 
blinding cold snow turned the world into a featureless gray room, through which 
vaguely seen, figures led the way. The ordeal was endless.
In front of her, Gyrfalcon shied, and then Steelsheen did


       



 


too. Segnbora had another of those terrifying long looks down. Ice and darkness. 
Oh, damn! The mare recovered her balance. Segnbora squinted at Lang's shadowy 
back and then squeezed her eyes shut for just a moment, looking down among the 
mdeihei for an answer to her growing terror.
The cave was full of memories, much easier of access than they had been before 
the evening with the nightmare. Overlaid on her perception of the trail as it 
was now she saw Bluepeak valley as it would look from Britfell on a clear day 
toward sunset.
The season was fall, not summer, and some of the fields below, yellow with 
wheat, stirred in the south wind. Other fields burned, and the black smoke was 
carried north, occasionally obscuring the bodies of the slain, and the 
trampled, bloody ground.
High in the surrounding peaks, on scarps and steeples of rock, winged figures 
watched, frozen with horror, as the frightful dark shape of the Gnorn went 
tottering about the battlefield, killing with Its look, Scrabbling Fyrd came 
after It in hungry terror to devour the dead. Behind It, Bluepeak town was 
burning. And westward on a lone height at Britfell's far end, two men with drawn 
swords stood watching the terror with tears running down their faces. A Dragon's 
eyes, keener than any hawk's, could make them out plainly: One man was huge and 
broad as a bear, with a shaggy mane of fair hair, hazel eyes, and Freelorn's 
prominent nose. The other was tall and angular, with dark hair threaded with 
silver, and kind downturned eyes as blue as Herewiss's, blue as Fire.
She saw them throw down their swords at practically the same moment, desperately 
making the Choice; saw them take hands there, while the Gnorn came weaving 
toward them through the screams and death of Bluepeak; saw them give up what 
they had been and gaze into one another's eyes to find out what they could be
and she fell out of that memory and into another one: this time, the memory of 
some nameless mdaha in the ancient time on the Homeworld, one who sat perched on 
a dark red stone in a violet twilight with another, while the starpool came up 
over the horizon. The Dragon turned to look into the other's


eyes, which were silver fire set in a hide of turquoise and lapis. The Dragon 
fell a great depth into those eyes, into a timeless, merciless, fathomless love 
which held the whole Universe within it as a person awake holds the memory of a 
dream
Our line often soared with the Immanence, she remembered Hasai saying. One gets 
used to It. But no Dragon ever got used to the Other's regard. The more one 
looked into that Other's eyes, the more powerful, and the more unbearable, the 
experience became.
In a blinding moment of realization, Segnbora understood what she had seen in 
Hasai's eyes on the night of unearthed memories. She understood, too, why she 
always averted her gaze after looking too long into the eyes of another human 
being
The agonized joy of the discovery threw her out into the world again, back into 
whirling snow, ice and darkness. But the cold didn't matter anymore. Not even 
her own exhaustion, nor Steelsheen's panic, bothered her now. All she needed 
was a moment to put it into words, and the secret would be hers forever . . . 
Ahead of her, hearing Steelsheen's hooves scrape and clatter on the slippery 
rock, Lang twisted around in the saddle to look at her.
*' 'Berend?" he called anxiously through the screaming wind.
Their eyes met.
She saw him . . . saw Her. Lang looked no different. His voice still came out in 
a drawl. She could still underhear his mind lurching back and forth between 
indecision and placid acceptance. He still hated some things without reason, and 
loved others unreasonably. He still judged and criticized by provincial 
standards. He still smelled from not washing enough . . . yet he was She, The 
One. And when Segnbora looked ahead at Herewiss or Eftgan, or back at any of the 
nameless five hundred following behind, or even at their horses, the result was 
the same, All &f them, everyone who lives. Every one: the Goddess
"Lang," she said. It was almost a whisper, for she had little breath to spare' 
in. the grip of this painful ecstasy, This was the man whom she had used with 
casual cruelty, to whom she had


refused intimacy when she felt disinclined to it. Yet there within him the 
Goddess looked out at hernot judging, as She certainly had the right to do, and 
not angry, either simply loving her totally, without hesitation. She had always 
known that the Goddess indwelt io every man and woman, but experiencing it this 
way, now, was something else again.
Joy, laced with bitterness at her years of callous disregard of the One she 
loved, rose until it choked her. Tears spilled over and froze on her face in the 
icy wind. Her voice wouldn't work anymore. Knowing it was useless, and driven by 
an overwhelming need to communicate somehow, she bespoke him. (Lang!)
He stared at her in sheer disbelief. "'* 'Berend?" He had heard her!
The pain fell away from her joy like a cast-off cloak. Segn-bora sobbed, sagging 
in her saddle, and drew in a long breath. She had a great deal to tell him. 
(Loved)
and Gyrfalcon missed his footing, going down on his knees on a patch of ice. 
His hindquarters slipped off the path to the left, and the rest of him followed. 
Segnbora had a quick glimpse of Lang reaching for the ledge, more surprised than 
frightened, and that was all. "LANG!" she screamed.
Almost before the scream had left her throat, Sunspark had leaped away from the 
ledge and sunk down into the snow-swirling emptiness like a thunderbolt, 
streaming fire. The line of riders behind her halted as she, like Freelorn and 
Eftgan in front of her, peered down into the whiteness, dumb with shock. A long 
time they waited there for the bloom of fire through the snow. Then, slowly, the 
brightness came walking up through the air and stood again before the ledge. 
Herewiss was alone on Sunspark's back,
('Berend,) Herewiss said, and had to pause. She could feel his eyes filling. (It 
was quick. I share your grief.)
All behind her, starting with Dritt, Mods, Harald, and the foremost of the 
Darthene riders, she could feel sorrow and fear spreading like ripples in a 
pool. She was numb, having fallen from such a height to such a depth so quickly. 
Yet still she could see Who consoled her as she looked at Herewiss.


(May our sorrow soon pass,) she said silently. A knife turned slowly within her 
at the memory of the last time she had said those words.
Herewiss broke their gaze. With a thoughtful look, he reined Sunspark about and 
took the path again.
It took two more hours to complete the rest of the ride down. The slope grew 
gradually less steep, and the ledges a bit wider, but the snow continued. Lang 
was not the only rider who was lost. Just minutes after his death, another horse 
and rider came plummeting down past Segnbora. The falling rider's glance locked 
with Segnbora1 s in the second of her passing. Still weeping,, Segnbora could do 
nothing but pour herself into the look, see Who was falling, and aid Her in 
accepting what was happening. In that second, the woman's fear-twisted face 
calmed. Then she was gone.
Segnbora rode on, trembling. She turned a switchback and suddenly found herself 
at the top of a long skirt of scree and rough stones, which lead down to a slope 
carpeted in snow-covered grass. Glancing at the sky, Segnbora knew the storm 
wasn't going to let up. In front of her, Eftgan was checking her saddlebags to 
make sure the Regalia were safe. Herewiss had drawn Khavrinen and was pointing 
at the snow. There were prints in it: the big splayed tracks of a horwolf, and a 
keplian's pad-and-claw set. Both trails were only minutes old. Both led to the 
cliffs foot and away again, westward.
"We're expected," Herewiss said. "I'm done with being circumspect, Queen." Fire 
flowed down Khavrinen's blade in defiant brilliance. "We've got to stay alive. 
Meantime, we had better get to the Heugh fast. The Bindings are slipping from 
the pressure of so many beings in this area."
Eftgan nodded. ""Can you shore up the Bindings until we complete the ritual?"
"I can," Herewiss said. "I've been doing it for several hours. But its* tiring. 
How long I can hold out, I've no idea." "Once we begin, the blood-binding won't 
take long," Eftgan reassured him. Thumping Scoundrel's sides, she wheeled 
westward. "The ground between here and the Heugh is smooth. Let's 'make time."
They had to go slowly at first, so that the Darthene riders


still on the slope would have time to catch up. It was about fifteen minutes 
into this process thai the first cohort of Fyrd found them. There were only 
twenty or thirty: horwolves and keplian who had been patrolling the heights and 
thought it wise to attack before the main force was down off the Fell. It was a 
mistake. Like lightning dancing a death-dance, Khavrinen rose and fell in the 
forefront of the skirmish. What its blade didn't slay, Herewiss's Fire did. 
Sunspark was incensed; any Fyrd at which it looked became ashes in seconds, 
F6rlennh and Suthan flickered red and blue in Firelight and flamelight. Segnbora 
swept Skadhwe's blackness about her in an utter calm that felt very strange. 
Shortly, nothing moved but Darthenes and the wind. Drifts began forming around 
the bodies in the snow.
The Darthenes had a few wounded, none seriously, and none losta small miracle 
for which everyone was thankful. "What's the time?" Freelorn said.
"Three hours past noon.*' Eftgan looked around and saw the last of her riders 
corning down off Britfell. " Wyn will be moving the forces forward at four. 
Let's get up that Heugh." It was only a mile to Lionheugh, but they bought every 
furlong of the distance dearly. The fourth cohort of Fyrd was the biggest, some 
three hundred of the creatures. There were not many nadders, because of the 
coldness of the weather, There were, unfortunately, many maws and keplian, the 
worst Fyrd breeds for riders to handle. There were also four death-jaws, three 
of which Herewiss dealt with, and one of which Eftgan destroyed with an 
astonishing blast of blue Fire.
By the time this attack was over, no one was quite as lively as they had been. 
Nearly everyone had a, wound of one type or another. Eftgan and Freelorn were 
unhurt, but Herewiss had a long set of slashes from, a keplian *s claws, and 
Mods and Dritt and Harald all had maw bites. But no Fyrd had been allowed to get 
away and warn others of what had happened. "You and I were lucky," Freelorn said 
to Eftgan. "Luck has nothing to do with it. If our blood falls on this land and 
we have the brains to do a binding right away, that One would lose a great deal 
of its Power." Eftgan. whipped blood off Forlennh. "Herewiss?"
He was sitting astride Sunspark with a look on his face that was either 
annoyance or strain. Khavrinen in his hand was flaring with a wild glory of Fire 
as he healed himself. "It's putting on pressure," he said. "Things are trying to 
return to the way they were before the Binding, and this Fyrd blood isn't 
helping matters."
"Let's go. 'Berend?" She glanced at Segnbora as they began to move through the 
blinding snow. "You all right?"
"Fine." Segnbora held Skadhwe over her knee at the ready.
"You always used to be so noisy in battles! I keep looking around to see if 
something got you."
"My lodgers are doing my hollering for me," she said. The Dragons didn't care 
for Fyrd, and her mdeihei had been singing martial musics laced with Dragonfire 
ever since she came down from Britfell. Battlecries seemed superfluous with that 
inner thunder going on.
Eftgan met her glance with an odd expression, as if seeing some stranger who was 
Segnbora's twin. " 'Berend, you've become more than your lodgers, somehow. What 
happened up there?"
It was a poor time to explain. "I'm not sure," Segnbora said. "Nothing of the 
Dark One's doing, that's certain." She knew it to be true as she said it.
If there was anything the Shadow didn't want mortals to know, it was what 
Segnbora had learned. Once one knew Who one was, It lost Its power over that 
person. She shook her head and kicked Steels been into a gallop, getting Skadhwe 
ready. The realizations were coming too close together. The hugeness of them was 
dazzling her. She needed something concrete upon, which to fasten her mind . . .
Unfortunately, she got it. To their right, the crest of Britfell had been 
getting lower as they headed west. With little warning the fell simply stopped 
in a sheer cliff. Out of the falling snow their destination loomed: Lionheugh.
To the west, not even the snow could muffle a great confused roaringshouts and 
battlecries, the bray of Reaver war-horns and the thin silver cries of trumpets. 
As they drew rein under the shadow of the Heugh, Eftgan waved Torve over, 
putting up Forlennh and unsheathing her Rod.


       



 


"Leave me fifty," she said. "Take the rest and hit them hard wherever it seems 
best. My compliments to my Consort when you see him, and tell Wyn I'm sorry 
we're late, but we were detained. Ride!"
"Madam!" Torve said, and rode offhard with four hundred fifty of the Darthene 
cavalry behind him. The snow swallowed them.
Freelorn rode up to join the Queen, with Moris and Dritt and Harald close 
behind.
"I have to do something about this weather, even if it's only temporary," said 
Eftgan, shaking the Fire down her Rod. "Then we'll do our business. Herewiss, 
how are you doing?" He was holding Khavrinen before him in both hands, his eyes 
fixed on it. A frightening brilliance of Fire streamed about man and sword. 
"I'll hold/' he said, but there was strain in his voice, and the feeling of 
malicious intent in the air hung closer than it had before. "The Shadow's 
pressing, though. There's much bloodshed going on and It's feeding on that. I 
daren't be distracted long" "Up with us," Eftgan said.
Punching Scoundrel, she rode at a gallop up the path to the Heugh. No one was 
surprised by the Fyrd, waiting for them there. They dropped from rocks and 
leaped up under the horses' hooves. Eftgan's Rod crackled with Fire as she laid 
it about her like a whip. Whatever she struck didn't move again. Segnbora and 
Freelorn galloped behind her, watching the Queen's back, slicing down with 
Skadhwe and Suthan. Behind them came Herewiss, with Moris and Dritt and Harald 
about him as guard.
Very quickly, it seemed, they made the top of the Heugh and gathered there on 
the level ground, the Queen's riders and Freelorn's followers circling around in 
case any more Fyrd should attack uphill.
"No Reavers yet, and none of Cillmod's people," Eftgan said, dismounting 
hurriedly and raising her Rod. "That's a mercy; maybe they don't know we're 
here. E'kstirre na lai'tehen dndrastiw vhai!"
Eftgan cried into the wind in Nhaired, lifting her Rod. two-handed and pointing 
it at the roiling sky. She sighted along


the Rod's length as if along the stock of a crossbow. At the last word of her 
wreaking, another piercing line of blue Fire lanced upward and struck into the 
underbelly of the cloud above them.
The wind screamed, the cloud tore away from the ravening Fire like flesh from a 
wound. It tore, and toreripping backward and dissolving, revealing blue sky 
and afternoon sunlight. The snow stopped as the clouds retreated, until a great 
patch of sky the width of Bluepeak valley was clear.
Standing on that height, for the first time they could see what was happening. 
The Reavers and the main Darthene force were locked in battle in the pass, and 
the Darthenes were already well ahead of the position at which Eftgan had 
intended them to start. Even as they watched, the Reavers lost some ground, 
pushed uphill by heartened Darthenes who knew why the weather had suddenly 
cleared up. A sudden blot of darkness from the eastthe riders who had followed 
Eftgan over the fellsmote into the Reavers' uneven right flank and scattered 
it.
"The clearing won't last," Eftgan said, breathing hard and leaning against 
Scoundrel. "I have to save some Power for the binding. Lorn, the Regalia, 
quickly!"
Freelorn had already undone Eftgan's saddle-roll, and now unrolled it before 
her. It contained an odd assortment: an old knife of very plain make, black of 
hilt and blade, and a rough circlet of gold that looked as if it had been 
hammered out by an amateur. It had, Segnbora knew, for this was Dekorsir, the 
Queen's Goldthe crown that each Darthene ruler hammered out unguarded in the 
open marketplace, once a year, to give the people a. chance to dispose of an 
unfit ruler if there was need. There was also another circlet, this one of 
exquisite workmanship, woven as it was of strands of linked and braided silver.
Freelorn lifted the circlet up with a blaze of angry delight in his eyes. It was 
Laeran's Band, the crown of the kings and queens of Arlen. "Where did you get 
this!"
"1 had it stolen several days ago,"' Eftgan said, kneeling down beside the 
saddle-roll, "In the middle of last week, when. Citlmod took it out of 
Lionhall."


Freelorn stopped still as death and stared at Eftgan. "When he what ... ?" he 
said.
His voice failed him. No one but the members of the royal line of Arlen could 
set foot in Lionhall and come out alive. And Freelorn was an only child. Or had 
thought he was.
"It occurs to me that your father may have had a sharing-child he didn't know 
about," Eftgan said, setting Dek6rsir on her head. "Or one he didn't care to 
legitimize. No matter right now. I'm just sorry we couldn't find Herg6tha."
Freelorn turned the supple strip of metal over in his hands. "The thought of 
Cillmod wearing this"
"I couldn't stand it either. Shut up and put it on, Lorn. Herewiss can't hold 
the Binding by himself much longer." It was true. Herewiss had dismounted from 
Sunspark, unable to spare even the small amount of concentration needed to stay 
astride, and was sitting with his back against a rock. Khvrinen lay across his 
lap, clutched in both hands. He had begun to shine, growing almost translucent, 
as he had at Barachael, and the stones of the Heugh sang with the Power that was 
poured out of him. He was holding his own, but just barely. Segnbora looked 
around her and found that under-hearing was no longer necessary to feel the 
strain in the earth and the air.
Eftgan's riders and Freelorn's followers were all looking over their shoulders, 
hunting the source of the strange feelings inside them. Herewiss's will could 
clearly be felt battling with the One that poured Its rage into the valley. He 
was keeping away the ancient reality, as if he had his back braced against a 
closed door. But the pounding on the other side, the rhythmic throb of rage and 
hatred, was getting stronger
"We are the land," Eftgan and Freelorn were saying in unison. They knelt before 
one another, knee to knee, holding the black knife together, Lorn wearing the 
strip of silver, Eftgan the circlet of gold. Their joined voicesFreelorn 
speaking the ritual in Arlene and Eftgan in Darthenemade an uncanny music. The 
hair on Segnbora*s neck rose at it, hearing in human voices an echo of the 
mdeikri. "Its earth is our flesh; its water our blood; its well-being our joy; 
its illness our pain ..."
The ritual continued, speaking of mysteries particular to the royal priesthood. 
Many of the riders turned away, trying not to listen to a ceremony that no one 
of common blood had heard since the founding of the Kingdoms. Segnbora stood by 
with Skadhwe in her hand and listened fearlessly, in wonder, hearing once again 
the Goddess speaking to Herself: one Lover speaking to the Other in solemn 
celebration of Their eternal relationship.
She saw Lorn take the knife and cut Eftgan's upheld left wrist with it, 
crosswise and careful. Both of them paused a moment, trembling. At the stroke of 
the ritual wounding the hammering of hatred in the air grew more savage. It was 
almost physically perceptible. Eftgan took the knife from Freelorn and reached 
for his left wrist
the Fyrd came up the hill in a wave, horwolves and maws together. Behind them 
came two-legged forms in rough skins and crude metal and leather corsets, 
bearing leaf-shaped bronze swords and bows of horn, howling like the beasts they 
followed.
Eftgan pitched forward gasping from a black-fletched Reaver arrow lodged between 
her shoulder and throat. Hor-rorstruck, Segnbora watched helplessly as Lorn sat 
her up straight, breaking the fletching off the arrow and pulling the point end 
out of the wound with brutal efficiency. He snatched up the black blade and 
something elsethen there was a Reaver in front of Segnbora, blocking her view.
She met the man's brown eyes, sank into them as Shihan had taught her, felt the 
move he was about to make. A second later, Skadhwe had countered and sliced the 
man's chest through from side to side. As he died she didn't break that gaze. 
She' knew Who she had killed, and let the Other know Who had killed him. She 
grieved for his death and accepted it as 'her own,, completely. Thee she looked 
up at her next opponenta madder this timesaw Her there too, and killed again, 
out of necessity, in love.
She killed again, And again. And again.
The' Darthene riders encircling the hill knew immediately what Segnbora didn't 
have leisure to notice for some time: there were too many Reavers and Fyrd. If 
they attempted to


hold this position, they'd be killed off slowly. Most of the riders had pushed 
to the side where the worst attack was coming from, the west side, so that 
behind them Eftgan and Freelorn and Herewiss could get away.
Freelorn shoved Eftgan up into Blackmane's saddle and fastened Scoundrel's reins 
to the stirrups. Rushing over to Herewiss next, he literally picked him up from 
where he sat, snapping orders at Sunspark. The shocked elemental knelt to take 
Herewiss on his back.
Segnbora had her hands very full of Reavers and Fyrd for a few wild minutes, 
until slowly they began to give her breath. Their first charge was exhausted. In 
addition the Reavers, ever wary of sorcery, had begun to stay clear of Skadhwe's 
uncanny blade. There was a madwoman wielding it, her face streaming calm tears.
" 'Berend!" Freelorn houted at her. Segnbora took a moment before answering to 
look with her sharpened vision at the battlefield. The sight was a shock. More 
forces were pouring into the valley's mouth from behind the Spinenot Reavers, 
and not Darthenes, certainly. They were falling on the Darthene right flank and 
crushing it as easily as a stone falling on an egg.
"Damn him!" she cried, and turned away from the hill-crest, running for 
Steelsheen and the others. The Queen's scrying had been accurate after all. 
Cillmod had gotten wind of the upcoming battle, and had evidently decided that 
this was an expeditious time to both distract the Darthenes from retaliation on 
his borders and exterminate their fighting force as well. There were none of the 
Royal Arlene army down there. Such loyal Regulars might have been persuaded to 
turn against Cillmod since Freelorn was in the field. All these were 
mercenaries.
Flinging herself into Steelshcen's saddle, Segnbora rode down the trail to clear 
a path for Freelorn, swearing all the way. It was very obvious now why there 
were so few unattached mercenaries for hire in the Kingdoms. The Darthenes down 
there were badly outnumbered.
Behind Segnbora, Sunspark was doing some swearing of its own. (What's the matter 
with him? Did they hurt him some-
how?) It danced a little as it cantered down the trail, obviously wanting very 
badly to let its fire loose. (If he doesn't come out of this shortly, the whole 
lot of them are going to make a very nice cloud of smoke!)
Freelorn, holding the bleeding Eftgan in front of him on Blackmane, looked as 
haggard as if he had been shot himself. Remembering Herewiss*s true-dream, the 
thought made Segnbora's heart turn over. "Firechild," she said, "he's all right, 
he's just keeping things from getting much worse. For the love of him, save it 
for later!"
The Power Herewiss was pouring out was astonishing. It frightened Segnbora. She 
had witnessed great wreakings in the Precincts in which fifty or more 
Rodniistresses had worked in consort, and all of them together hadn't let out a 
flood of Fire like this.
Khavrinen struck razor-sharp shadows from everything its light touched, and 
Herewiss's flesh burned transparent as an imminent dawn. Some of the Reavers 
were turning away from them even now, frightened by the sight of the 
statue-still rider with the thunderbolt in his hands. One Reaver, though, got up 
the nerve to fire an arrow. The instant it touched the writhing aura of Flame 
that wound about Herewiss, it flared and fell away in ashes.
"Can you gallop without dropping him?" Freelorn shouted at Sunspark as they made 
it down off the Heugh onto the plain again.
It bared its teeth at him in scorn. (Gallop! Is that all? Where do' you want 
him?)
Freelorn looked from west to east, and got a look of sudden recognition on his 
face. He flung out an arm, pointing. "There!""
East and a little south of the Heugh, one of the spurs of Kerana came down in a 
little scraped-away scarp, sheer on all sides except for one shallow approach 
where riders could go up. It could, be defended, without too much trouble.
(Done!) Sunspark said. It leaped cat-smooth into the air, shooting southeast so 
fast the air behind it thundered in shock.
Freelorn and his band and the Darthenes went after at full


       



 


gallop, not sparing the horses. They couldn't: If they didn't make it up that 
scarp, there would be no later to save them for. They had a mile or so to cover, 
across snowy ground, and they had hardly been galloping more than a half minute 
before they lost the sunlight and the clouds closed up again. With unnatural 
swiftness it began to snow again. The wind rose to a scream once more, and 
darkness began to fall. It was the darkness Segnbora feared most, for above it 
and within it the voice of the Shadow could be heard, howling with enmity.
On the scarp a mile off, a light shone as if a star had fallen there, bright 
enough to cast shadows at even this distance. But the brilliance of Herewiss's 
Fire was no great comfort. A fresh group of Fyrd and Reaver riders were hot 
behind them, perhaps a half mile back. Eftgan, clutching Blackmane's saddle and 
hanging on as best she could, looked back at their pursuers and moaned softly. 
Freelorn's face was grim.
"They're catching up, Lorn," Segnbora shouted.
The group rode like hunters, whipping their horses into a lather. Onward they 
rode into the screaming, stinging night. The scarp was right before them, lit 
with a pillar of blue Fire that flickered eerily on the cloud-bottoms and turned 
the wind-whipped snow to a blizzard of blue sparks.
The riders went up the scarp like a breaking wave, the horses stumbling, 
foundering, finding the path by luck or Goddess's love. The way up was none too1 
wide and could easily be kept clean of Reaversfor a while. Behind Freelorn and 
the Queen, the others closed ranks. Overhead, the daunting blows of the 
Shadow's hatred, became1 suddenly audible, There was thunder in the snow clouds, 
and the wind shrieked, furiously around the steeples of the cliff-wall behind 
them..
Freelorn threw himself out of the saddle, pulled Eftgan, down and helped her 
over to shelter behind a rock, at the foot of the cliff. He pulled, out the 
knife, put it into her clutching, shaking hand. Crying with the effort, she 
braced herself against the stone and reached up to cut
Shouts and the clash of steel rang out on the plain,, where some of the 
Darthenes were holding the approach to the path up the cliff. Sunspark, who had 
been bending over Herewiss


in concern, jerked its head up and stared down at the Reavers and Fyrd in rage.
(This is your fault!!) it cried in a thought that not even the smothering 
darkness could muffle.
It leaped like a skyrocket down to the foot of the scarp, reared, and brought 
down its forefeet with a crash that split stones. Wildfire burst up from where 
its hooves struck, and ran madly to either side in front of the scarp. The fire 
ignored the Darthenes, but any Reaver or Fyrd it touched blazed like tinder and 
was blown away across the snow, ashes, a breath later. The Reavers drew back in 
panic from the apparition that suddenly stood between them and the scarp: a 
huge, crouching cat of swirling fire that stalked forward with blazing eyes, 
pausing to raise one flaming paw.
the blood ran down Freelorn's arm, and he pressed it to Eftgan's wound. "And we 
who are Onecome on, Eftgan! One and not-One say to the land which is us, and 
of us, be not'"
The earth began to tremble. From the south, visible in this unnatural black as 
something blacker yet, a great wave of dark Power rose and rose above the 
mountains, leaned, and fell with a crash that couldn't be heard, only felt. Like 
death, like drowning, it rolled over them, past them, and in that wave's wake 
ten or twelve Darthenes dropped and Sunspark's fire went. out.
Even Herewiss's blaze dimmed and shrank, failing like a candle placed under a 
cup. But he did not surrender. When the snuffed-out stallion clambered up the 
rocks to his side, it found him clutching Khavrinen. He was forcing it to burn, 
pouring out everything he had. It was not enough. In the darkness where the 
blade's Firelight didn't reach, forms moved and grew solid. Eagerly they lifted 
long-rusted swords, bared long-rotted fangs, and looked hungrily up toward the 
little shelf where the Darthenes stood.
(I can't change, I can't burn,) Sunspark cried in anguish, (what do I do now?)
Segnbora could feel it straining mightily, trying even to trigger that last 
burning in which a fire elemental ends its


existence as an individual. .. anything to hold the threat away from its loved. 
He can't hold off the Shadow alone, Segnbora thought, almost choking with the 
sheer hate that filled the air. There was nothing the Shadow hated so much as 
the Fire, except perhaps those who wielded it. Herewiss couldn't last forever, 
and when his reserves gave out, he would simply be dead.
The first rnan in a thousand years to have the Fire, the Queen of Darthen, the 
rightful King of Arlen, most of the forces that Darthen could fieldall dead at 
once. The Shadow, imagining a world all to Itself, darkened.
Inside Segnbora the mdeiha were rumbling deadly threats that seemed absolutely 
empty to her. What can they do? They 're dead!
DeathFire
When someone with the Fire died, regardless of whether they had ever been 
focused during their life, their death focused the Fire for one final moment. 
Even those with just the spark of Flame that most men and women have managed to 
focus then. That was what gave one's deathword its power.
Segnbora stared with sudden cold purpose at the rising tide of dark malice. 
Suddenly she understood why Lang had died when he did, and why her parents were 
murdered. The Shadow had wanted to stop her before this moment, this 
realization. She held up Skadhwe and looked at it. One life it will demand of 
you, Efmaer had said, and now Segnbora was sure which life the dead Queen had 
meant. The Shadow was betting she wouldn't dare kill herself.
A lethal wound would be enough. She could add enough Fire to what Herewiss had 
to aid him. in holding the Shadow off until the Binding was done1. And 
afterward, he'd heal her
or not-
It was a terrible chance she'd be taking. She' didn't want to die. But if the 
Fire she' had trapped inside .her could be ofu.se here, then . . .
Behind her Freelorn held up one' bleeding arm and with his free hand reached 
into the unwrapped saddle-roll for what
she had seen him grab before: a fistful of stones and dirt from Lionheugh. He 
held it to Eftgan's arm; her blood trickled down.
A crash like sudden thunder rocked the scarp and sent men and horses sprawling. 
Freelorn and the Queen fell apart. Herewiss pitched forward on his face, his 
Fire all but darkened. More than just hatred pressed down on them from the 
darkness now. The Shadow was invoking the worst fears of Its enemies, and on all 
sides men and women screamed and cowered from painful deaths suddenly lived in 
their own flesh, losses of loved ones, shames that formed darkly in the 
influence-ridden air. The Dark One still didn't walk among them openly, but was 
having no trouble driving the defenders to death or madness, one by one.
Out in the darkness, Segnbora saw the hralcins rear up. Ugly unearthly shapes 
lurched across the scarp at her, singing hungrily and reaching out at her as 
they had in the Hold. Crabbed claws sought to tear, but Segnbora's screams were 
frozen in her throat. Only escape was left. Frantically, looking around for a 
route, she saw Freelorn stand up, cursing with fear and shaking his wounded arm. 
It wasn't wrounded anymore: the cut made by the sacral knife was just a white 
seam of scar. The Shadow could heal for Its own purposes.
Leaving Eftgan, Lorn stumbled over to Herewiss and shook him conscious with 
savage efficiency. Segnbora stared at him, confused. He wasn't the same Lorn. 
There was purpose in those eyes. When she met them, Segnbora saw Her in them as 
she had been seeing Her in everything today. But there was a difference. There 
was knowledge, foresight. Freelorn knew now what Herewiss had dreamed in the 
Hold. He had seen the arrow in his back, and had seen himself turn toward 
death's Door .. .. ,
Stunned, Segnbora watched him turn away from her with awesome1 purpose; watched 
him turn, away from the gasping, shaken Herewiss, and rise out of his crouch. 
The hiss of an arrow whispered through the screaming wind. Slowly, slowly 
Freelorn sat down with the barbed Reaver shaft standing out from behind his 
right lung, and pressed a fistful of dirt already


      276

DIANE D'UANE
stained with Eftgan's blood to the entry point. Then he fell back against 
Herewiss, and slapped the blood and dirt against the ground
The terrible pressure of hatred grew suddenly much less as the Royal Binding 
took hold on the land, quieting the unquiet ghosts, banishing the phantoms of 
Fyrd and slain Reavers and hralcins. Herewiss's Fire blazed up again as if 
someone had taken the cup off the candle. But now his mind wasn't on the battle.
"LORN!!" Herewiss cried, and without hesitation went limp and fell over again. 
He had gone out-of-body, gone after his loved to catch him at the last Door, and 
to prevent him from passing it.
Off on the southern horizon, another darkness began to take shape. This was a 
more solid one, a heaving black shape that Segnbora had seen before, but didn't 
dare look upon now, being in a human body. The Shadow had become enraged enough 
to take on a physical shape and come after them Itself. And It had adopted a 
form It knew, from past history, to be very effective.
"Don't look!!" she cried to the Darthenes.
They hardly needed the warning. Those still alive and conscious after the 
assault by their worst fears were already hiding their faces from the hideous 
prospect.
No time to wait for Herewiss to come back, Segnbora thought, shaking all over. 
Just have to do it myself Hurriedly she knelt and took Skadhwe two-handed, 
resting the point a shade to the left of her breastbone. Mda'ha, she said, and 
in that moment was informed by her ahead-memory that Herewiss was not going to 
be healing her . . .
Oh wonderful! Sithes&sch!
Sdaha
Sehe'rae!
She pushed the sword in, hard. The' greedy shadowblade slid into her with 
shocking' ease. At last she found out what. it was like to be run through, and 
tried to scream past the terrible feeling of her heart fibrillaiing around the 
intruding blade, trying to beat, trying to beat, failing.. All that came' out of 
her throat was a choked cough.


 
Inside, she felt her Fire leap together with her heart's blood and burst 
outward. Blind with pain, she groped for support, willing herself to stand and 
do what she had to. But she found no support. The darkness went red, and then 
black, and she fell forward . . .
... a long fall, the longest one, but it had an end. There was a voice crying 
Get up! Get up!, the voice of someone familiar. Her mother perhaps, or Eftgan. 
Had she overslept again?
The Wardress would be furious
She was lying on something hard. She rolled over to push herself up on her hands 
and knees, feeling the sword in her fist. Probably one of those rocks the 
Dragon's thrashing had dislodged had hit her in the head. She felt weak and 
stumbly. She pushed upward, shook her head to clear the daze out of it, looked 
up.
A pang of terror twisted in her heart like a knife of ice. This was no cave. 
True, there was empty darkness all around, but before her stood two doorposts 
blacker than any night, going up and up forever, out of sight. Between them 
stars blazed. Endless depths of them, a patient silent glory she had seen before 
in dreams and visions, but never for real. This was the last Door, the Door into 
Starlight.
No, I'm not ready! she cried, staggering to her feet. But her protests made no 
difference to the insistent forces shoving at her back. They were stronger than 
she. They impelled her, whispering to her that it was over, that her struggles 
were done.
Thi Store/ she thought with longing. Mother and Father. Lang! Tears rose at the 
thought of him, at the image of his last confused grab for the ledge, Loved, I 
have a great deal to tell you. Maybe it's no!' too tote.
There was a great silence in her mind that shouldn't have been there.
"Hasm?" she said, letting herself be pushed toward the Door as she searched in 
mind for him. You're dead. Are you there too?
No answer.
I'm not going! Segnbora thought, on the very threshold. But


 


she had no way to stop herself. She was being pushed too hard, and she was 
holding something in one of her hands. A darkness . . .
Swift as thought she used the last-chance block that Shihan had taught her was 
for emergency use only. One hand on the hilt, the other bracing the steel from 
behind.
She screamed with agony in that eternal silence as Skadhwe, ramming against the 
impermeable blackness from which it had been torn, sliced deep into her hands. 
The darkness shoving at her back was merciless, and cared nothing about her 
anguish. Through her sick pain, Segnbora realized who was pushing her closer to 
the Door. She fought back, feeling her blood flow from hands and heart. There 
was something she needed to remember. Something
/ am Who I am. And knowing that, It has no power over me.
Dismay ran through the force that urged her forward. She forced it back, and 
back, arching herself, and then fell backwards, gasping. Skadhwe fell 
soundlessly to the invisible floor. Slowly and painfully, she got to her knees, 
picked Skadhwe up, and stood. It might indeed be her fate to die after she had 
finished what she had to do.
She turned. Had she been breathing, the breath would have caught in her throat. 
He was huge, looming above her, dressed in the old clothes he wore while 
gardening. The big hard hands stained with leaf-mold and rough with calluses 
reached out to her.
"No!" she whispered, and almost turned to flee. But there was only one way to 
runthrough the Door and out of life.
That terrible smile leaned closer.
"No!" she said. It was a squeaked word. A little girl's voice, terrified, but 
still defiant.
The smile lost some of its assuredness.
"No," she said again, more strongly, her voice sounding strange in the utter 
silence. She raised her head, met those hungry eyes, held them . . . held them . 
. .
He was not as large as he had been. Certainly he was no larger than any other 
man. He was smaller, in fact, than many she had killed at one time or another.
Raising Skadhwe, she took a step forward and watched the


fear spread across his face. Balen had used brute strength to overwhelm the 
child she had been, but she was a child no longer. He was unarmed, and she was 
armed with a weapon against which there was no defense. Another step she took, 
and he backed away. She almost took the final step, but paused. It would be easy 
to kill him, yes. Possibly enjoyable.
But for how long? Would this be just another form of running away? If she 
should she instead accept him
Kill him! her heart said to her.
/ give him into your hands, her heart said to her. Do with him what you will.
The great silence on this side of the Door surrounded her.
Even he didn't kill me, she thought.
She lifted her eyes to Balen again. Trembling, he shot her a terrified glance. 
In that blunt and brutal face, she saw again what she had seen in Lang, and 
Herewiss, and Freelorn, and even the Fyrd. Her. HerSelf.
She tossed Skadhwe" away.
Very slowly, even with fear, she went to the man, reached out to touch his 
shoulders. He winced at the touch, as if gentleness burned him.
"Goddess," she said. "Shadow. I know Who You are."
Balen looked at her face, and then looked away again in anguish. Segnbora 
couldn't bear such terror. She reached out to take his face in her hands.
"Balen," she said, speaking the name aloud for the first time' in her life.
He blinked in confusion.
"I seem to be getting a lot of practice at being others, these days," she said. 
"First Dragons. Then . . . Myself. I see that this is what the practice was for. 
To see You for what You are. Just Her, in another suit. A tool to make me what I 
am, no less than the beautiful face and the ever-filled cup were tools. You were 
a little rougher on me than you might have been, perhaps. You were the sword. 
But my hand was on the hilt. / destroy. And I create . . ." She gulped, feeling 
tears start. "Time I got started. I've bound you into my life all this time, my 
poor 'rapist.' Enough of it. Go free."
He squinted at her in terrified disbelief.


 
"Beloved," she said. "Go free."
Drawing him close, shaking all over, she laid her lips on his, once and gently. 
Then she hugged him tight. When she opened her arms, he was gone.
Weak from the sudden release of so much emotion, she sat down hard on the 
invisible surface and wiped her eyes, then realized that the wetness on her 
hands was more than tears. The weakness, too, probably had something to do with 
her heart's blood running down her surcoat.
Oh Goddess, I forgot, she thought, getting dizzier by the moment. Blood loss. I 
have to get back there. Where's Skadhwe, I can't leave it . . .
Fumbling, falling to hands and knees again, she began feeling around for the 
blade. Against the dark floor, this was rather like looking for clear glass in 
water. The dizziness got worse. She reeled; her sight forsook her. Perhaps she 
was starting to die.
The sudden pain, an infinitesimally thin line of it, told her she had found 
Skadhwe again. Grateful for the hint, she grabbed it hard, using the pain to 
shock herself awake, although she was half dead already. She pushed herself 
upright . . .
... on the cold snow, and opened her eyes. All around her men and women were 
covering their faces in horror of something that was coming. She had to get up. 
Where was Skadhwe? . . . still sheathed. Good.
Left-handed she fumbled for something with which to support herself, and found 
a stone. She levered herself up to her knees and managed to stand, though a 
wobbly stance it was, and probably very temporary. She drew Skadhwe, and saw 
with dismay that it was covered with blood. Shihan, were he here, would be 
scandalized! Never go out with an unclean blade, he had taught her. She whipped 
the blood off the blade in a quick downward slash, third move of the edelle 
maneuver
and Fire whipped down after it.
/ am dead, she thought in absolute disbelief, and lifted the sword to stare at 
it. Fire, raging blue and as impossible to look at as sunlight, trickled down 
Skadhwe's black edge. Just a


double-thread at first, and then more. It grew quickly, a torch's worth of Fire, 
a Firebrand's worth, a lightningbolt in her hands, burning like a star, throwing 
her shadow long and black against the cliff.
/ have it! she thought in fierce joy, for that one mad moment not caring that 
she was about to die. She stared backwards at her shadow, the proof of the 
lightshortlegged, long of neck, wings where she had arms. 7*m whole, she 
thought, and laughed, raising the hand that held Skadhwe. The right wing 
stretched upward, huge. No! We're whole! The left arm up now; the wing reached 
up in response. Sithessch, we'll die, but we'll do it together!
and abruptly, with a deathpain that shot down her right arm to her heart, that 
wing-shadow tore away from the cliff, casting a shadow of its own, impossibly 
coming real. 
The second wing tore free, another pain. She saw webs that gleamed like polished 
onyx and struts rough with black sapphires. Then came the terrible length of 
tail, the deadly spine at the end of it whipping free, lashing outward, poised 
above her to protect. And after the tail, the taloned forelimbs, their diamonds 
flashing in the blinding Firelight. A neck, the great head, glowing eyes burning 
not silver now but blue, leaning down over her and glaring past her with 
impartial challenge at Reavers and Fyrd and the dark something that 
approached
"Hhnr ae mrin'hen," said the voice of wind and storm from right above her. 
"Whole at last, yes!"
She stared up at Hasai, so torn between wonder and terror that she couldn't tell 
anymore whether her weakness came from impending death or sheer astonishment. 
Her mdaha gazed down at her, lilting his head in a gesture of greeting, and 
turned his attention again to the field and the forces attacking the scarp.
She had heard Dragons roar In her mind. But in the open it was something else. 
Rocks fell down from the cliff, and the ground shook almost as hard as It had 
before. Not just one voice roared, but two, ten, a score, a hundred. The mdeihei 
were there too, not as solidly as Hasai, but present enough to be a host of 
shifting wings and deadly razor-barbs and


 
glowing, glaring eyes, ail looking down at the attackers. They sang of a 
solution to this problem, one that was not to be feared. Death. Death. Death. 
Hasai reared his head back, bared the diamond fangs that few had ever survived 
seeing, and flamed.
The Reavers fled, panicked. Hasai's blast of Dragonfire melted the ground where 
they had been standing. Even the slow-stalking shadow at the southern edge of 
the field halted at that, as if stunned. Fyrd scattered in all directions but 
eastward, where the Sun seemed to be coming up.
The scarp was fenced with fire again, but this time the consuming white of 
Dragonfire, with a tinge of blue to it; and inside the circle a tremendous shape 
with wings like thunderclouds was rearing up against the cliff, burning in iron 
and diamond, ineluctably real. And down by one of his hind talons, hanging onto 
it for support, a tiny figure bleeding Fire from a wound in the heart stared up 
and up at what had been, and now was.
Segnbora thanked him politely for her defensethen she turned to look with grim, 
delighted purpose out at the field, at the fleeing Reavers and Fyrd, and down at 
the thing in her hand that burned with Fire.
"Sithessch 'tdae," she sang to Hasai and the other mdeihei who stirred in shadow 
along the ledge, "untidy to leave them running around like this, don't you 
think?"
The mdeihei sang angry assent in a thunder thai echoed from the surrounding 
mountains, causing a bass obbligato of avalanches to follow.
"Must we send them rdahaihf" Hasai said in an ominous baritone solo.
Segnbora stepped forward to the edge of the shelf where they stood, only 
partially aware of Herewiss's and Freelorn's prone forms. Breathing or not, 
they'd have to wait until later. "I don't know," she said, and raised Skadhwe*, 
thinking hard.
It can't be done, they saya gating for more than fifty. However . . . She 
closed her eyes, not needing the physical ones to see at the moment, and drew up 
a. great flood of Power from the tremendous supply they had always told her 
she'd have. In mind she saw them, every Fyrd, in the valley and for miles 
around. She hated them, and loved them,, and did what, was
necessary. She poured the Flame out of her as if opening a floodgate, until the 
valley was awash with it.
It was simple to gather up the minds of every Fyrd in the area and hold them all 
under the surface of that Flame until they drowned. Stop showing off, she told 
herself severely. You may drop dead in a moment, and there's business to be done 
here. Yet she laughed in pleasure as she thought it, and Hasai and the mdeihei 
went off in a thunderous accompaniment of hissing Dracon laughter. Whether she 
lived or died, she was going to enjoy this. She had waited a lifetime for it.
The Reavers and the Arlene mercenaries at the other side of the field were 
fleeing, and she stared across at them, angry and pleased. She could easily kill 
them all, but she knew Someone Who would prefer it otherwise, if at all 
possible.
So; she thought, and reached out in heart to feel them all, every last one, mind 
and soul together. The Rodmistresses had said it was impossible, but behind her 
she had a supporting multitude who would testify otherwise if she asked them 
to. She was that multitude. She could contain universes.
Immersing herself in the minds of her enemies, she became them. Before they had 
a chance to recover from being her, she stepped to the cliff's edge and lifted 
Skadhwe. With it she drew four great slashing lines of Flame that fell onto the 
darkened field, and grew, and grew
Suddenly the ground within the lines was missing, replaced by five thousand 
different images blurred togethersome of them of the Arlene countryside, or of 
Prydon city, some of them of the strange cold country beyond the mountains from 
which the Reavers came. Into the crammed-together vistas fell men and women who 
cried out in terror and were gone. She closed the door behind them with a word 
and a sweep of Skadhwe, and glanced up in thanks at the glowing eyes that hung 
over her. Then she turned south.
There, something dark stirred in its mantle of blackness and glared utter hatred 
at her. She looked back at It calmly, having loved It before, and unafraid to do 
once more what was necessary, She reached out to grasp the forces that Dragons 
could manipulate, and took one more step forward, right off the edge of the 
cliff. There she stood on empty air.
"Come out and mmt us t/" you dare!" she cried, The song


 
winding around the words held in it the ultimate challenge: inescapable love. 
Behind her the mdeihei echoed the song in perilous harmonies. Trembling, 
Segnbora stood there while the darkness gathered Itself up into that terrible 
crushing wave she had seen before, full of screams and blood and ancient death. 
It rose higher and higher above her. She lifted up Skadhwe" s flaming length and 
stood her ground, letting her eyes sink into the Shadow's darkness, becoming It, 
accepting It for her own, her dark side, Her other Shadow.
It trembled toward herthen gathered Itself down into a shuddering ball of fear 
and thwarted hatred, and vanished.
The wind died abruptly, and the sky began to clear. Four thousand Darthenes 
stood in an empty field with no one left to fight.
Segnbora took a last gasp of breath and walked back onto the cliff, beginning to 
feel mortal again for the first time since she had turned Skadhwe against 
herself. Behind a rock Eftgan lay breathing shallowly. Beside her, two forms 
struggled to sit up, helping each other. One of them had an arrow in him, but it 
didn't seem to be paining him much. As Segnbora came up to them, the taller of 
the two reached out to his loved and touched the arrow's protruding shaft. It 
vanished in a flicker of Fire, as did the place where it had gone in.
She knelt beside them and laid Skadhwe over her knees a burning shadow, a piece 
of the night set on Fire. They stared at it.
"You did it," Freelorn whispered. "You did it!"
She smiled at him. "All your fault, my liege."
"But what did you do?" Herewiss was looking at her with such a mixture of joy 
and perplexity that she could have both laughed and cried at once. "I saw what 
you did to yourself," he said. "Why aren't you dead? And where did Cillmod and 
all those Reavers go?"
"I sent them home, for the time being." She looked down at her surcoat, brushed 
at it. There was a neat tear where Skadhwe had gone in through cloth and mail, 
but that was all. The scar was a faint white seam just to one side of the 
nightmare's bite.
"I told you," said a great voice above her. "Dragons are quick to heal"
Silver-blue light fell about her as someone else bent low to look curiously at 
the place where the shadowblade had gone in. She gazed up at himher shadow 
casting a shadow of his own nowand at last, the tears came. She reached up to 
the tremendous jaw as it dropped open, and very gently laid her hand in the 
Dragon's mouth, as she had feared to do, as she would never fear to do again. 
The jaws closed, and self joined with self.
"Now what, sda'sithesssck?"
"Now, mda'stihesssck," she said, gathering him close and laughing through the 
tears that fell on the sapphire hide, "there's a King to escort to his throne. 
Let's get busy!"


       



Sixteen
Some gilts are so great that the only way the recipient can express his 
gratitude is to immediately give the gift to someone else. A dangerous 
business, this, among fickle humankind, who often see such generosity as 
indicative of a
thoughtless heart. But in such a matter, do as your heart directs you. In the 
last reckoning, She is both giver and receiver, acting both parts to increase 
the joy of bothand if humankind doesn't understand, She does.
(Charestics, 118)


       



 


They leaned on the walls and looked down into the dark streets of Darthis. No 
light burned anywherenot so much as a hearthfire or candle or lamp. Below them 
the city dreamed in a silver pallor of moonlight, though there was a shifting 
and stirring in the Square under the walls of the Black Palace.
A few thousand people stood down there, quiet or murmuring, waiting for the 
Queen to strike the first sparks of the Midsummer needfire and distribute it 
among them. Most of those waiting were only concerned with their part in the 
festivallighting the candles and lamps they carried from the new fire and 
racing through the city with it, spreading luck and laughter. But a few looked 
up toward the palace walls and stared fascinated at something strange.
Blue Fire flickered there, dancing about a long slender shape that seemed to be 
too dark to be a Rod. And there was another light there, a pair of silver-blue 
globes that looked uncannily like eyes staring downward. The more perceptive in 
the crowd had even noticed that the moonlight didn't fall on them. It was 
blocked away by a huge winged shape that seemed there when one looked away from 
it, and not there when one looked at it straight.
Whatever they saw, no one seemed particularly bothered by any of these 
oddnesses. This was, after all, Midsummer's Eve, when magic was loose in the 
world.
Down in the square, flint struck steel, and a spark nested in tinder and began 
to grow into flames. The cheering began. Viols and trumpets and kettledrums 
struck up a jubilant music that echoed off the walls, and effectively drowned 
out a


deeper music several stories up. "Hn'aa'se sithesssch mnek-kej-std untuhe 
au'lkhw't'dae," the music said, a voice like a trio of bass instruments playing 
a lazy, cheerful processional.
"Ae, mdaka'esssch," sang a softer voice, in a raspy alto. "We may as well enjoy 
the rest while we can . . ."
"There won't be much of it," Hasai said, unfolding and folding his wings in 
resignation. He spoke in precognitive tense, but with good humor; the melody 
woven about his words said plainly that he preferred action to peace and quiet. 
"Arlen will be astir like thunderstorm air for months. If Gill-mod doesn't 
already know who was responsible for what happened at Bluepeak, he will very 
shortly. The war with Darthen will soon open."
"And the Queen forges her new crown tomorrow," Segn-bora groaned. A formal 
occasion first thing in the morning was the last thing she needed. "All I want 
is to sleep late."
"You may, if you please. I will teach you how, now that you have a sdaha's 
proper timesense. Will a month or so be enough, sitkesssch ? *'
The steps on the battlement were no surprise. Two hours ago Segnbora had 
remembered hearing them, and she had been waiting for them ever since. "If he 
did know," the shorter of the two approaching men said on reaching the top of 
the stairs, "it explains why he made the bastard Chancellor of the Exchequer."
"To keep an eye on him?"
"Sounds like something my father might have done. This also explains how he 
managed to get the backing of the High Houses. But even if he can go into 
Lionhall, he doesn't know the Ritual, he's no Initiateor if he is, he's messing 
up. Arlen is ready for rue now."
Freelom and Herewiss looked strange out of surcoats and mail They leaned on the 
wall, one on either side of her, in softboots and britches and shirts. Herewiss 
looked up at the dark shape that blocked-but-didn't-block the Moon away. "How 
much are you there, Ihhw'Hasai?"
"As much as my sdaha needs me to be. Or as I need to be. Since we're one, 
there's little difference . . ."


"Where were you an hour or so ago?" Herewiss said to Segnbora. "Eftgan was 
looking for you. Wanted your help with the needfire, or something."
"I was flying," Segnbora said, nodding at the sky,
Herewiss nodded soberly. She shared a gentle look with him, understanding now 
from her own experience how complete his underhearing must be, reaching even to 
others' most private thoughts. "I have to thank you," she said.
"You don't have to anything. You did it yourself."
"So I did. And you mediated some of that doing with me, saw me into the 
situations I'd need to get where I am. You had little reason to give me such a 
gift, either," Segnbora said. "I tried to move in between you and your loved, a 
while back. You must have noticed."
Herewiss nodded, looking grave. But not too much so, "These days, I don't let 
old reasons interfere with what I want to do. And maybe, even when I was 
angriest at you, maybe I saw something . . ."
"Who I was?" she said.
"Yes. A liaison. There's a whole race sharing the Kingdoms with us that not even 
the human Marchwarders understand properlythey have the language, but not the 
body that forms it. But there was more. You were a catalyst. And will continue 
to be. Things will be happening that need me things I couldn't do without you 
and your Dragons. Likewise there are things you couldn't manage without me. I'm 
part of a solution. And more"
She fell silent, nodding, already having hints of what the "more" was. This was 
a small problem. Sometimes the ahead-memories came too fast, and she had trouble 
deciding what to share, what to keep to herself.
She shrugged. The future was merely another kind of present to a Dragon, 
malleable as the past, part of the game. What mattered was what the player 
intended to be.
In one word, her newfound Name, she told them,
"We'll keep your secret," Freelorn said just above a whisper.
Segnbora smiled at them, knowing that the One she meant to hear her Name had 
heard it through them, then waved
ffood night, and headed for the stairs. Along the upper parapet, Hasai lazily 
put out a single forefootall he needed to do to keep up with her.
"No more words?" he said.
"What should I say?"
Slowly Segnbora lowered her head to gaze back down the parapet; where Freelorn 
took back from Herewiss the lovers cup she had left them, and drained it-and 
found it still full.
"That," Hasai said. "Forever."
Lost between laughter and tears of joy, Segnbora nodded, reached out to her 
mdaha, and led him off into their future, and to bed.


T/ME, CALENDARS, AND RELATED SUBJECTS


       



moftorw o/ i/i Middle Kingdoms' world around its Sun match those of Earth 
around Sol (except for negligible variations, such as those caused by sister 
planets missing in their solar system and present in ours). Their year is 
therefore the same length as ours365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, 48-odd seconds. 
Though in Segnbora's time clocks still have only hour hands, the astronomers of 
the Kingdoms have evolved their own methods of handling the year, and the little 
pieces of it that tend to pile up as time passes and throw calendars out of 
alignment with the seasons.
Both Arlen and Darthen use a 360-day "year" of four 90-day "seasons" that 
correspond to our winter, spring, summer, and fall. Days are counted straight 
through each season, and spoken of as "the fifth of Winter," ''the thirty-eighth 
of Summer, " and so forth. In addition, the First of each season is always a 
major holiday, tied to solstice or equinoxOpening Night for Winter (the only 
one of the holidays that doesn't fall directly on solstice or equinox), Maiden's 
Day for Spring, Midyear's Day for Summer, and the Harvest Festival (either 
Lion's Day or Eagle's Day) for Fall. The five remaining days are intercalated 
and belong to no season: they are placed between the end of Fall and the 
beginning of Winter, and during these cold days at the bottom of the year, the 
Dreadnights as they 're called, no enterprise is begun, no childnaming or 
marriage celebrated. They are the Shadow's nights, and unlucky. Every fourth 
year a sixth intercalary day (in Arlen Endethne, "Lady's Day," in Darthen 
Aerrudj, "the Goddess 'Joke") is added between the Dreadnights and Opening 
Night, to deal with the need for a leap-year day.
However, this still leaves a significant fraction of time out of the reckoning. 
The addition of the leap-day to compensate for the 5h-48m-48s leftover at year's 
end is in fact an overcompensation. If left uncorrected, each year will be 11.2 
minutes short. This may not sound like much, but in our world in the past has 
led to awful misalignment of the calendar year with the seasonsthe fint day of 
spring falling in December, for example. But this backward drift of dates is 
preventable by any number of methods. The astronomers of the Kingdoms found that 
the eleven-minute deficit will amount to a full day's error


in 128y-208d-13h-38m-21.125s. Therefore, once every 128 years, that 208th day 
(which by our calendar would be July 19th) is dropped from the year entirely, or 
rather converted to July 20th; that date in turn becomes the 29th of Summer 
rather than the 28th, and is called the Festival of the Lost Day. (Thefestival 
is devoted to pranks, pratfalls, drinking sprees, and attempts to lose things, 
usually unwanted ones. There are also lying contests, with prizes for the best 
explanation of where the Lost Day went.) This system of adjustment runs 
independently of that for leap-year days. Though it would probably be more 
efficient to combine the adjustment systems, as our culture does, the Kingdoms' 
astronomers are quick to point out that this would mean one less holiday.
It is quite true that even this adjustment is not totally sufficient to keep the 
calendar in line with the seasons and the Sun. There is still an unadjusted 
error that makes the year too long 631 0.0003 day, which will pile up to three 
days in each 10,000 years. However, in the words of Talia d' Calath, the Grand 
Royal Astronomer to King Berad ofDarthen, "It is possible to worry too much, too 
far in advance. " The Dragons have promised to remind human beings to insert 
another one-day intercalary day every 3300 yearsthough there is still 
disagreement over why they laughed so hard when they promised.
There are of course many minor local holidays not mentioned here. But neither 
Arlene nor Darthene calendars include anything like weeks or months. One may 
indicate a given day by season and number: or say "four days ago," or ' 'six 
days from now," or "a month and three days,'' etc. ' 'Months'' (actually the 
word is isten in both languages, very like the Greek Af Kafiacr which we 
translate as "lichtgang" or "Moonreturn") are sometimes broken down to 29 days 
for counting purposes, but this is rare. Mostly a month is reckoned from a phase 
of the Moon to its next occurrence, most frequently full to full. This might be 
expected in a largely agrarian culture, where the times of planting are 
important. But to the people of the Kingdoms, the Moon is the living vigil of 
the Goddess, mirroring Her changes in its own as it slides from Maiden's slim 
crescent to Bride's and Mother's white full to Crone's waning sickle to 
Moon-dark perilous and hidden; and for the most part people have a fondness for 
the Moon and enjoy reckoning by it, without resource to numbers.
Astronomersand, of course, sorcerers and people with the blue Fireare 
cognizant of such lunar functions as node crossings and regression of nodes, 
apogee and perigee and advance of the perigee point, librations and nutations, 
and eclipses both lunar and solar, such being important to their work. But (and 
very sensibly) no one has ever particularly cared about what the lunar calendar 
does in relation to the solar one. The only real notice taken of alignment 
between the two is in mention of Nineteen-Years' Night, when the Moon is full on 
Opening Night and wreaking with sorcery or Fire is particularly potent.
There is a tendency for Moon cycles to be referred to by name, the names
j fiering from area to area. For example, the first full Moon of Spring, and
the days following it from waning to dark to new crescent to full again, is
ually called the "Song Moon" in Arlen, while some Darthenes call it the
^Unicorn's Moon," and some others, the "Maiden's Moon" or the "Mad
Moon " Special note is taken of the Harvest Moon in most places, both because
fthe shortening of its rising time and in memory of the bloody harvest cut at
Bluepeak during one of its risings an age ago; the full Moon that follows the
Harvest Moon is always the Lion's or Eagle's Moon, in Earn's and Healhra 's
memory.
Since the memory of the times before the Catastrophe has largely been lost, 
years are counted from the coming of the Dragons and the destruction of the 
Dark, and noted by number and the abbreviation for pai Ajnedare deruwin, "after 
the Arrival." Example: Segnbora's birthday is Spring the 57th, 2098 p.a.d.


ON DRAGON ANATOMY AND PHYSIOLOGY
The Dragons are perhaps purposely vague about their very beginnings. "Thinking 
about a time before their own consciousness," d 'Welcaen reports, "makes them 
nervous." But the earliest Dracon memories recall a time when the Homeworld was 
populated by plant-analogs and other life forms. There was a food chain, and 
Dragons had use for the internal organs which now exist only in extremely 
debased vestigial forms.
Somewhere along the linepossibly due to changes in the Homeworld's orbit, or in 
its star's characteristicsthe planet's seas began to evaporate, and its 
atmosphere to strip off. The Dragons report this as taking many thousands of 
their lifetimes. Converting this time to human standards is difficult, and gives 
answers ranging from one to six million years. This may seem like quite a while, 
but it isn 't really, for an organism whose average generation is from four to 
six thousand years. The Dragons had to adapt in a hurry to the changes in
their environment.
Already silicon-boron basedand what their atmosphere and "seas" consisted of 
is still a matter for conjecturethe Dragons' evolution went in the most 
efficient possible direction. Their anatomy began adjusting itself toward 
extreme lightness, for maximum efficiency in soaring in search of food. As food 
got scarcer due to increased irradiation, wild mutations got more 
commonincluding one that became most successful: the alteration of silane 
rings in the black wing-membranes, so that they became in effect giant solar 
cells, using the already-existing neural pathways for conduction of generated 
bioelectricity. Dragons born with this mutation, needing no normal food, thrived 
and multiplied, and soared further and further sunward for food. The increased 
irradiation induced more gene changes and mutations in brain physiology, so that 
the "highflyers" found themselves able to manipulate "force"magnetic fields, 
gravity wave-Jields, and other instrumentalities less classifiable to humans. 
Organs used for digestion, respiration, and elimination slowly went vestigial, 
until finally the "late model" Dragon was left an efficient, flying 
energy-storage machine, spaceworthy, tolerant of extreme high and low 
temperatures (as had become commonplace on the Homeworld),


       



 


and able to express that energy as Dragon/ire and use it as tool and weapon.
The reasons for that particular manifestation are debatable, but dWelcaen 
suggests that Dragons feel about their mouths as humans feel about their hands. 
Dracon psychology says that language is the primary means of effective 
survival: which perhaps explains why, even after their development of 
under-speech, the Dragons never gave up communication by way of vocal speech. 
Even their tongues still work after all these centuriesthough they're not 
necessary: Dracon sound generation long ago went over to non-acoustic 
mechanisms like those of whales. Fluid-Jilled or stressed-solid-Jilled cavities 
stimulated by "muscle" contraction, or catalytic chemical reactions, or 
neural/membrane synergies, or all three, allow Dragons to communicate with 
precision and stunning variation in almost any medium except empty space, and 
also permit the super-prolonged hisses, three- to eighteen-tone chords, and 
choral-verbal speech for which they 're best known.
Dragonfire, according to dWelcaen, is strictly a "psi" phenomenon allied to 
"manipulation of force, " and as complicated for a Dragon as breathing for a 
humana Dragonet can flame before it can talk. The skill is almost wholly a 
constructive one these days; the times when a Dragon would have to melt several 
tons of lead-bearing stone over itself to protect it from a stars term, or blast 
its way out of the covering again, are long past. A. Dracon name for the Sun 
that shines on the Middle Kingdoms is hfa-Aass'te're, "the Shallows" a pale, 
cozy little star, tame and safe compared to the mad fire of the Homestar in its 
last days. These days Drag&nfire is for show, and for nn's'hraile, in a 
particularly heated argument; for imilding; and, when words fail at last, for 
mating fights, when hottest Jire decides who will reproduce, and who will go 
very suddenly mdahaih.