The Door Into Fire

  “What about public opinion?”

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

  “Granted.”

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

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

  “‘share their feast and share their fall—

  Fórlennh’s and Hergótha’s blade

  are of the same metal made,

  and the Oath they sealed shall bind

  both their dest’nies intertwined—’”

  Herewiss finished,

  “‘Till the end of countries, when

  Lion and Eagle come again.’

  “You always did like that one.”

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

  “They’ll manage, I think. But after you went south, what?”

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

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

  “—and left them in our dust—What’s the matter?”

  Getting cold?”

  “No, Lorn, it was just a shudder. The Goddess spoke my Name, most likely.”

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

  “Your good one, I suppose.”

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

  “Thank you.”

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

  “Oh. You see Him regularly?”

  “Shut up! You know what I mean. But are you all right?”

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

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

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

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

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

  Herewiss laughed. “No, not really. Though Meren and I did come of age at the same time, and since we’d always been playmates, we decided to relieve one another of the Responsibility as soon as we could. She had twins—they’ll be coming to the Ward for fostering soon, since Mother left no love-children behind her. Goddess, I miss them—they’re nine now: though Halwerd never fails to remind me that he’s a quarter-hour older than Holmaern. He helps me with the forging sometimes, working the bellows. I put a forge together up in the north tower, and he watches me working the metal, and asks a thousand questions about tensile strength and temper and edge. He has a blacksmith’s heart, that one, and instead of apprenticing himself to Darg’s son when Darg retires, he’s going to have to be Lord of the Brightwood after me. I don’t think Hal’s entirely happy about it.”

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

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

  “You’ll find a way.”

  “I wish I had your faith in me.”

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

  “I’m heading east.”

  “From here?”

  “From here.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “You could be right.”

  “And—what?”

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

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

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

  “Herewiss, you’re not seeing what you’re getting into—”

  “Lorn, are you scared for me?”

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

  “Then why don’t you just say so.”

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

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

  “Tension. I’m still nervous from two nights ago.”

  “Fear. You’re afraid for me.”

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

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

  “Petrified.”

  “And how would you feel if our positions were reversed?”

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

  “Yeah. But I have to go.”

  Freelorn nodded. “You have gotten a little too big to sit on.”

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

  “I have,” Herewiss said, setting the memory aside with a sigh.

  “Well, then, I’m coming with.”

  “Of course,” Herewiss said.

  Freelorn’s eyebrows went up. “You sneaky bastard—”

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

  Freelorn grinned back. “I’m still coming with you.”

  “And the rest?”

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

  “Yes, it is.”

  (And what am I, then?) Sunspark said indignantly.

  (An elemental, Spark. But people need people.)

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

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

  “I don’t want to see any ‘things.’”

  “Lorn, please.”

  “Did you talk to Segnbora?”

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

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

  “I could see where you might, yes.”

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

  Herewiss raised his eyebrows, amused. “Why did she do it?”

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

  “I get the feeling you can.”

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

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

  “I’d—uhh.”

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

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

  “Come on,” he said, “let’s give them a hand with dinner.”

  •

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

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

  A soft chuckle in the darkness.

  “Lorn, you remember that first time we shared at your place?”

  “That was a long time ago.”

  “It seems that way.”

  “—and my father yelled up the stairs, ‘What are you dooooooooing?’

  “—and you yelled back, ‘We’re fuckinnnnnnnnnnng!’”

  “—and it was quiet for so long—”

  “—and then he started laughing—”

  “Yeah.”

  A silence.

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

  Silence.

  “Lorn—one way or another, I’m going to see you on your throne.”

  “Get your Power first.”

/>   “Yeah. But then we get your throne back for you. I think I owe him that.”

  “Your Power first. He was concerned about that.”

  “Yes… he would have been. Well, we’ll see.”

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

  “Dusty?”

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

  “What?”

  “After I’m king—what will you do?”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea.”

  “Really?”

  “I haven’t thought about it much. I don’t let myself.

  —Heal the sick, I guess, talk to Dragons—make it rain when it’s dry—travel around, walk the Otherworlds—”

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

  “Dusty— Don’t forget me.”

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

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

  “From what?”

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

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

  “Again?”

  “Why not? The night is young.”

  “And so are we.”

  SIX

  Whatever may be said of the Goddess, this much is certain: She enjoys a good joke. For proof of this, examine yourself or any other member of the human race closely—and then laugh along with Her.

  Deeds of the Heroes, 18, vi

  “I thought you said it was just another fifteen miles.”

  “Well, I thought it was…”