“There wasn’t. It looked like dirt. In fact, I thought it was dirt.”
Herewiss grinned wryly. “Wonderful.”
“Well, you and dirt were never far apart,” Freelorn said. “Farm boy.”
“City brat,” Herewiss said in a poor imitation of a thirteen year-old’s scorn. “You might like dirt too if you touched it occasionally.”
They both burst out laughing, and Lorn slipped an arm around Herewiss’s waist as Herewiss dropped one about his shoulders and hugged him. “I was packing,” Herewiss said. “What do I do with this?”
He nodded off to his right. Lorn glanced over. Sitting on the parapet was their lovers’-cup, the grain of its plain turned wood showing silver in the moonlight, the carved leaf-pattern around the edge indistinct and shadowy. Freelorn was surprised. “All these other times we’ve traveled, you usually carry it... “
“All these other times, I haven’t been anyone particular. Things have changed....”
I know, Lorn thought, remembering that odd look a week ago at the table, and wondering for the hundredth time what to do about it. “But what are you going to drink out of?”
Herewiss shook his head. “Better you keep it. It would be remarked on... and the less attention is drawn to you while I’m in Arlen, the better. Don’t you think?” And he laughed once more, just a breath of sound this time. “Lorn, don’t look that way. Do you think there’s any cup I drink out of, that I don’t think of you?”
Freelorn shook his head slowly. “It’s the same here,” he said, and the roughness down in his throat surprised him as his voice caught on it. “Anything in that?”
Herewiss handed the cup to him. “Brightwood white,” he said. “My last for a while. My father won’t send it to Arlen any more.”
“That’s a shame,” Lorn said.
“It’s your fault,” Herewiss said. “He stopped trading with them right after he found out that Cillmod was trying to have you killed.”
Freelorn was astonished. “He did that for me?”
Herewiss looked at him in affectionate scorn. “He loves you, you idiot. After all these years, haven’t you got it through your head?”
Freelorn lifted the cup and poured out a quick libation to the Goddess over the edge of the parapet. “Well, here’s to him, then. And Her.” He drank.
Herewiss peered over the edge. “Better hope She wasn’t standing under that.”
“And you,” Lorn said, his voice catching on that rough spot again as his eyes met Herewiss’s in the dark. He drank again, and handed his loved the cup.
“Lorn,” Herewiss said, and drank. The underhearing spilled over again: the cool fire of the wine, held in the mouth for a moment, savored, to catch that flint-touch of sharpness that always reminded the taster of the scent of green leaves just after rain... but the taster wasn’t Freelorn. All this came mixed with a trembling along the limbs, as Herewiss thought of leaving Lorn tomorrow, leaving him all alone, watching him head toward Arlen and not being able to do anything to protect him. Not wanting to need to protect him, truly. But still, one wanted to make sure that things went right— And overlaying all this, a dull mourning, a feeling of simply missing Lorn, missing him even though he wasn’t gone yet: the premonition of the ache that would set in as it had in separations before—the silence on the far side of many a conversation, the empty spot in the next saddle, in the next place at table, in the curve of his own arm; the emptiness in the dark....
It was too hard to bear, the other’s pain and his own both at once. Don’t make it worse for him, something said inside Lorn. “Dusty,” he said, and Herewiss only drank again and looked south.
Lorn said that other Name, too softly for anyone but Herewiss and the one Other Who knew it to hear.
Herewiss looked at him, bowed his head. “Yes,” he said.
“You never told me the Fire was going to rub off,” said Lorn.
Herewiss turned the cup around and around on the parapet. “You might have suspected it would,” he said. “I wasn’t sure, so I didn’t say anything. But you know they do it on purpose, in the Precincts.”
Lorn nodded. “Eftgan and Segnbora were paired that way for a while, weren’t they? So that when they shared together, Eftgan’s Fire would wake Segnbora’s up.”
“That’s right. Didn’t work, of course.” Herewiss drank. “Too deep a blockage, and too much power, in Segnbora’s case. But normally it works.” He shrugged. “Theoretically, anyone with the threshold amount of Fire, more than that spark that everyone has, can have it awakened by someone else already focused. Now here I am... and one of the things She told me was that I was to be a catalyst, to start to spread Her Fire around again, and among men as well as women.” He breathed out, hard. “Apparently it’s working, even with just that slight spark. I don’t know why I was surprised. She knows what She’s doing.”
“Dusty,” Freelorn said, with great feeling, “I don’t want the Fire. I don’t even want the underhearing, particularly. It makes me walk into things when it hits.”
Herewiss looked for help at the sky. “Nine-tenths of the human race prays to have the Fire restored to it, and you don’t want it—”
“The other tenth are all Rodmistresses,” Freelorn said, “and sometimes they don’t want it either! I can’t control this, I don’t have time to learn how, and if it gets me in trouble—”
“I can’t block it,” said Herewiss. “It’s involved with the parts of your mind where intuition and hunches live, and if I tried meddling with those, I might just as well chop off your arms and legs and send you to Arlen in a cart: you’d have as much chance of surviving the next couple of months.”
Freelorn took the cup back. “I know, I know.” He drank about half of the wine at once.
“And the only way to stop the Power waking up any further—”
Herewiss fell silent. Freelorn looked at him. “We won’t be doing much of that for the next couple of months, anyway,” he whispered.
“Don’t remind me.”
There was silence for a few minutes, as they passed the cup back and forth.
“I wish you could come with me.”
“Even if it meant—”
“Dusty, it’s just, just that... I don’t want to be a god.” Freelorn looked south. It was easy to fantasize the presence of mountain peaks white in the shimmer of moonlight on the edge of the horizon, even though Bluepeak was hundreds of miles too far away. “Everybody I know is turning into one, all of a sudden. I always wanted you to have your Fire, you worked and suffered and struggled so hard for it, you couldn’t be you without it... but I thought everything else would stay ordinary. Now your Power’s slopping over on everything it touches. And there’s so much of it. The mountains down south aren’t shaped the way they used to be, because of you.” He laughed. “A month around you and Segnbora picks up Skádhwë, four thousand Dragons and enough fire for any fifty Rodmistresses. Pretty soon Dritt and Moris and Wyn and everybody else are going to break through and catch Fire just from breathing your used air.” The laugh had a slightly desperate sound about it this time. “And where does it all leave me, when I want to stay the way I am? Can the you that you are now, love a mere mortal?”
Herewiss looked at him for a few seconds in silence, and then lifted the cup and looked at him over the rim.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Let’s find out.” And he drank, and held the cup out to Freelorn.
Lorn took it and finished it. “I have to finish packing,” Herewiss said. “Come to bed?”
“In a while.”
Herewiss nodded, hugged him one-armed, and headed down the stairs.
*
Lorn leaned there and looked southward for some time, while his mind settled out of turmoil. He had been looking for words to tell Herewiss what was bothering him for days and days; now he wasn’t at all sure that the words he’d found had been the right ones. Underhearing didn’t do you much good when it only went one way. It would be nice if loving was wh
at he had thought it would be when he was young and stupid: perfect understanding, perfect union, effortlessly arrived at. But there was only one lover from whom that could be expected....
His gaze dropped again to that white road, running eastward into night. Nearly four months ago, it had been. He and his people and Herewiss had been hot on the trail of the old Hold in the western Waste, a place surrounded by disquieting legends, but nonetheless a place of which Herewiss had had great hopes. It had been mildly surprising, but not specifically unusual, to find a small inn on the river Stel, at the borders of the Waste. After days out in the wild, they had been grateful to stop there for a night. As often enough happened in Lorn’s travels, they were all short of money, and they wound up striking a typical travelers’ arrangement with the innkeeper. One of them would share with her, that evening, by way of settling the scot. There had been some argument over who would get to do this... for the innkeeper was utterly beautiful; dark-haired, green-eyed, a tall queenly woman full of wit and merriment. Segnbora had finally won the draw, and had gone upstairs after dinner, grinning faintly, to the genial hooting and encouragement of the rest.
Harald and Lang had stayed up a while by the fire to drink, but Lorn had preferred to go straight upstairs to that astonishing luxury, a room of his own, there to revel in a bed with no one in it, especially no one with more legs than he had. Later, of course, he would sneak into Herewiss’s room, or the other way around. But sometimes when you had been traveling with other people for a long time, it was a great joy to slip away and listen to the silence for a while, and watch the moon come up, and not have to worry that the pursuit would find you more easily because of it.
He did that. A soft spring Moon, full and golden, outside the diamond-paned window; the wind in the apple trees, snowing their petals gently on the ground and drifting them about in a kindly mockery of the season past; a jar of wine that he had appropriated from the kitchen after helping with the dishes—and the innkeeper had scowled at him as if he was a naughty boy, and then winked and gestured him out; a chair and table by the window, with one warm rushlight burning like a star in the dim room, and the good bed with its clean linen, inviting him—not just now, but later, when he was just tired enough—it all conspired to produce such a perfect peace as Lorn had not felt in years.
And then there she was, in the doorway, gowned in white and dark-robed as if about to retire, and leaning in to peer at him like a mother checking on a child staying up late. Lorn had left the door open for the breeze, and at the sight of her he was glad he had. She came in and sat with him by the window, and they began to talk.
To this day he remembered so little of what was said. They talked about everything under the Sun—histories and how they part from the truth; and old legends and stories told to children in Arlen, and how they differ from those told eastward in Darthen or south along the Stel; what to do about clubroot in a cabbage field, or about a cavalry charge; —endless other things. And whatever she spoke of, she did so with such knowledge, and such love... and sometimes with great sadness in her face, as if she felt herself somehow responsible for a famine here or an unhappy ending there, so that Lorn would have done anything to ease her sorrow if he could. But it always passed into other talk, into memory, or merriment, or sweet or sober joy. And it was not until long after the rushlight had burnt out, and the Moon had slid softly up over the roof and out of sight, that Lorn realized that the moonlight had not left her, but still rested on her, golden, when everything else lay in starlight or shadow.
Then, at last, his heart thundering in his ears, he knew Her. Then he understood clearly how poor a word “queenly” had been, yet a word that would have to do, for the One in Whose name all kings and queens ruled—the One Who comes to every man and woman born, once before they die, to share Herself with them and have them know that they are loved. She pushed aside the cup that they had finished between them, and reached out and took his hand, and lifted it to Her lips.
“Dearest son of Mine,” she said. And the voice was his mother’s.
A long time, She held him through the weeping. And when it was done, and She was Mother no longer, but Bride—
“You’re up late,” said a voice right by his ear.
Freelorn jerked upright and slapped his left hip with his right hand, uselessly, for Súthan was not there any more, and it was a good question whether it ever would be again. The Darthene mastersmiths said its metal was probably too old to successfully reforge. He glared at the source of the interruption. Beside him on the parapet was a North Arlene hunting cat—or at least it would have been, if hunting cats had pelts that glowed a dull grey-dusted orange like coals in a banked fire, and black-irised eyes with pupils that were slits of molten yellow.
“Is there something I can do for you,” Freelorn said, breathing slow to quiet his heart, which was now pounding for different reasons, “or are you just looking for something to burn, as usual?”
“Herewiss is wondering where you are,” said Sunspark.
“Mmf,” Freelorn said. His feelings about Sunspark were mixed at best. But this much he knew, that he didn’t want a fire elemental as a go-between... especially when that fire elemental was sometimes Herewiss’s loved. Not that he was precisely jealous, of course, but— “Tell him I’ll be down in a few minutes.”
“He didn’t send me,” Sunspark said, tucking itself down in a housecat-by-the-hearth position on the parapet. Only its tail hung down over the edge behind, and the tip of it smoldered as if thinking about bursting into flame. “And as for yourself, do your own errands, mortal man. I have one master only, and you’re not he.”
“Look,” Freelorn said, upset by the coolness in its voice, and unsure why he was upset, “wait a moment. I’m sorry. You startled me, that’s all; sometimes people are rude when they’re startled.”
Sunspark blinked slowly. “The way we burn things when we’re startled?”
“I guess so.”
“Well enough. But you people do about fifty other things when you’re startled, as well; I wish you would make your minds up.” And it sighed, so genuinely human a sound that Freelorn felt for it. Sunspark was studying to be human. Sometimes this was funny, but sometimes one came away after a lot of time spent “helping” with one’s hair singed for the trouble.
“Different reactions from different people,” Freelorn said. “We’re all one people, but not one kind, like elementals. —I take it you just heard him, then. Underheard him.”
“I always hear him. How not? He’s my loved.”
“There’s more to love than just hearing.”
“I know,” it said. “Compassion. He is teaching me.”
If the look in Sunspark’s burning eyes was affection, it was of a dangerous sort, and Lorn wasn’t sure he wanted anything to do with it. Something else slightly out of the ordinary, he thought. I’m in a threesome with a brushfire....
“You’re not, indeed,” Sunspark said, and lazily stretched out a paw, flexing the claws; they burned white-hot. “You’re interesting in your own way, but you’re most unlikely to master me as he did. And I doubt I’ll ever give love save where I’m mastered. This much I’ll say, though, for your sake, since he loves you: I would not have him in pain. Please watch what you do.”
“I’m trying,” Freelorn said, surprised. He had never heard Sunspark say “please” before.
Sunspark gazed out over the town, calm, or not noting the look. “So I heard. It’s well; for otherwise, king or no king, I would certainly have you for nunch.” It tucked the stretched paw back in again, serene. “Most of all, I won’t have him tamed; so watch your heart, for it was trying, just then.”
“What?” He looked at it, too alarmed even to be angry for the moment.
“Oh, you’re trying to tame him, all right,” it said. “Who should know the symptoms better?” It regarded him with dry amusement. “Many another has tried it with me, and wound up as cinders. And what about you? Will you have a pet? Or be loved fre
ely by something dangerous? You may die of it, but you won’t mind the death, not afterwards, when the love is a hundred times greater.”
Freelorn began to shake. It was hard to tell whether Sunspark was speaking allegorically, since its kind didn’t handle life and death as humans did. Herewiss had had problems of this sort with Sunspark before, and had taken a long time to convince it not to simply kill people who were bothering him. “You sound sure of yourself,” Freelorn said at last.
“I know what worked for me, and for Herewiss. It should work for other humans, but Herewiss keeps complicating it with explanations.” It laughed gently. “If I come to understand why our loving works for him, that will be enough for me. And the sooner, the better. No use wasting time.”
“Why not?” Lorn said. “You won’t die any time soon.”
“He will,” said Sunspark.
Lorn was shaken. “And what was it that worked for you?”
Its voice was soft, and even puzzled, as if even now it didn’t understand the answer. “Fight with all your power, to the death, and lose the battles, first. Learn defeat. Then you get everything. Win, and lose it all.” It shook its head slowly, and sat up, stretching fore and aft, cat-fashion. “If I had won,” Sunspark said, reflective, “he would be ashes on some south wind, and I would have been free... of this.” It gazed down over the parapet, toward the lower towers, in one of which Herewiss lay. “Free of him, of love, and fear, and death... free of you mad creatures.” To Freelorn’s amazement, it turned and bumped his head against his shoulder, and the touch was warm. “Mastery is better,” it said, muffled, “even if I’m on the wrong side of it.”
Very slowly Lorn put a hand up to stroke the burning pelt. It was like hot velvet to the touch, and Sunspark shivered in response. “Maybe it’s unlikely,” he said to it, rubbing the good place behind the ears, “but it might be interesting anyway, to try to master you, and find out firsthand what the Dark you’re talking about.”
One eye opened and looked at him. “So it might be at that,” it said, sounding amused. Then it straightened up. “He’s waiting for you,” it said, and leaped off the parapet, dissolving into a streak of fire that struck outward into the night.