He hesitated a moment longer, waist-deep in the stars, like a swimmer wondering whether to come out of a warm sea. Oh, well, he thought after a moment, Sunspark was right—I was awfully tired. I shouldn’t stay out much longer; I could die of it. But I could take a little more time. I’ll walk home.
He reached sideways, found the world he was looking for, and stepped into it, passing out of the starstrewn night into a place of endless soft golden mists. Other people also moved through the fog, but they were only faintly perceived shadows going by. He could have conversed with them, but chose not to; he preferred them as silent company on the walk home, reassuring but unintrusive.
After a while the gray stone of the hold appeared through the haze. This surprised Herewiss , for he had expected to be able to find it only by feel—the place affected the worlds into which it reached, making a clearly perceptible bending in the stuff of space, something like the swirl-funnel that forms in stirred water. But the hold itself was manifesting here, and not merely the combined effect of its many doors.
It bulked clearer through the mist as Herewiss approached it. The stone was more silvery than gray, and it glittered and flashed softly with buried highlights, though there was nothing in the even golden mist to make it do so. And somehow the many odd angles and curves of its structure did not look as wrong here as they did in the “real” world. There was a logic to them, a unity of construction and purpose that he had occasionally sensed, but never really seen. Even the hole left when Sunspark had destroyed the outer wall somehow entered the logic of the design and made sense; it was as if it had been a planned addition, which had been predicted and taken into account during the building of the place. Indeed, now that he concentrated on it, Herewiss could perceive changes that were to come later: a tower missing here, a wing added there, a whole section slated to unfold within the heart of the building, protruding partly into an adjoining world…all planned, all accounted for. The hold sang with inevitability like a great piece of music, and Herewiss stood there for a while and admired it for the work of art it was.
Finally he sighed and walked through the gate and across the great hall, heading for the stairs that would take him back up to the worktower and his waiting body. He looked through the doorways as he passed them, and was slightly amused to find that they showed only empty rooms, with windows looking out into the nighttime Waste. Of course, some of the rooms that could not have such views on the desert had them anyway, despite the fact that they should have looked down into the center court of the hold. Herewiss laughed softly; the place had a sense of humor that he appreciated. He trailed his hand along the wall as he went up the stairs, saying an affectionate hello, and the warm stone pushed back against his hand like a cat.
And here was the tower room at last, his tools and materials somewhat vague and hard to see on this plane, and his body sitting phantomlike in the chair, seemingly asleep—
—and standing close by it, as if guarding it—
—sweet Goddess, what was that?
To categorize it, to describe it, was to do it a disservice—that much he realized even as he tried to do so. Comparisons were unfair to it. It shook and burned with uniqueness, a hymn of piercing singularity; it was a poem wrought of glass and fire and the sudden taste of blood, an impossibility trying to become possible. Something that had never been, trying to be. Birth and death both happening at once in the middle of an existence, the pain and loneliness of both assaulting something that had invited them both willingly, though both were outside its experience— (Sunspark?)
It turned and faced him. The comparison Herewiss had been trying to make suddenly made itself. He had perceived Freelorn and Segnbora in their totality, and himself partially, and had been amazed by the complexities he had found. Now he perceived Sunspark in its totality, for the first time. The experience at Madeil had been pallid and misleading compared to this.
Sunspark was a oneness. Not a tangle of warring motivations, not divided against itself…but one. A single, driving, driven force, an eternal constant, a being, an IS! And a tightly encapsulated one it had been, wound around and through itself, dwelling within itself completely, needing none other. Of course its kind had no need for love or companionship in any form. They were themselves, gloriously self-contained, solitary as stars. When they finally grew tired of themselves—to that extent the great Death could affect them—they found another in the same state and conjoined, united in an ecstasy of renewal, were lost in it forever and both reborn as new identities, a blend of parts of the two that formed them.
But Sunspark—
Sunspark had become unique.
Sunspark was changing. Daring to change. Trying to change.
It had managed to conceive of something totally outside of its needs. It had come to understand love, and it was daring to experience it, flying with doomed valor into the face of something that could only cause it infinite pain. But daring it nonetheless, for the sake of the dare, for the possibility of learning something new, of becoming something it had never been or known. Reaching out into the darkness outside of itself, as Herewiss had turned himself outward and sought to grow into the Universe. None of its kind had ever dared so. It knew as much, and trembled with fear even as it bent over Herewiss’s stiff body and feared for him, loved him. It broke the laws that the Universe had set up for its kind; and it knew what it did, and it feared—but it loved—
Sunspark faced Herewiss, and perceived him. It feared him; feared that he would inflict pain upon it—pain, that amazing newness, all the more terrible for Sunspark’s inexperience with it. The elemental’s complete horror of pain rippled through its changing fires, plain to see.
Yet it welcomed him—
—and reached out to him—
—and dared to love him—
Herewiss stood there, torn, daunted, amazed, yet exalted by its courage— (Sunspark—)
(Herewiss,) it said, and its use of his name was wound about with fire and gentleness both. (Thy body—it weakens.)
His emotions were burning through him now like fire themselves. (I was so lonely,) Herewiss said, (and I never knew—never understood that you were like this—the bravery—Sunspark, I’m sorry!)
It grew, its fires swelling, towering with love, terror, pain—(Oh my loved, don’t be—don’t be—just get back quickly before you die!)
The courage. The sheer daring. He was swept up, carried past his fear and through to the other side—
—he loved too—
(For this little while,) Herewiss said, exultant, euphoric—loving—(it can wait.)
He reached out. (Shall I dare less than you?) said Herewiss.
Sunspark came to him.
(—embracing the heart of a star, and being embraced by it: part of that fire, lost in it, burning in nonambivalent brilliance forever and forever; being and not-being, victory, surrender, death and birth lying in one another’s arms at last, after long estrangement; the loneliness filled; the insatiable fires satisfied—)
In the morning, Sunspark learned how to cry, and Herewiss remembered how again.
NINE
“Now indeed may it be seen,” said Earn, “that our life’s days are ended.” “That were ill seen,” Healhra made answer. “Wherefore,” said Earn, “seeing that we shall meet again by the shore of that Sea of which the Starlight is but a faint intimation?” “’S truth,” said Healhra, “my loved; yet though our Mother waiteth on that Shore, still here would I remain with thee. For life and breath are sweet. And also, She loveth not well those who let Life and Love, Her gifts, slip away through a grip made loose by resignation. Dearly She bought those gifts for us, and dearly shall the children of Night purchase them from me in turn. Well the Goddess loveth the driver of a hard bargain.”
Battle of Bluepeak, tr. Erard, ch. 16
Herewiss woke up hounded by small urgent voices in the back of his brain, voices that told him to hurry, that gave him just time enough to relieve himself before steering him back
in to work, that pushed him so that he found himself at the anvil before he was even fully awake. The day began with a sleep-blurred image of his hands holding the tongs, and the tongs resting on the anvil with nothing held between them, and Herewiss standing there, staring with fuzzy expectant confusion at the pores and dents in the anvil’s metal. What am I doing here? he thought, and reached for a sword blank, and called for Sunspark to come dwell in the firepit.
•
The morning fell away in chunks and half-glimpsed pieces, casualties of the insistent rhythms of hammering. Each stroke rang a second away, and every second was just like every other. There was the swing of the hammer, the bunching of muscles, the jolt and clang of the metal ringing and rebounding away from itself, the sword jumping away from the anvil and the hammer from the sword, again and again and again, the old familiar beat renewing itself with the dogged persistence of some hard heart. Again and again and again. A brief pause here when the pressure of his bladder became too much; another moment stolen there when the rawness in his throat made him stop to drink; and always the impatient voice of his fear rustling softly just under his proper hearing, like rats in the walls of his self. Herewiss was slightly aware of Sunspark watching him from the forge, of bright eyes in the fire, looking at him with concern. But he dared not let himself respond to the look; to do so would have been to waste precious time. He let the hammering take him and use him for its own purposes. It was rather pleasant to not think at all, just to be arms at the end of a hammer—
(Herewiss.)
He dared not stop. He kept on hammering.
(Herewiss. You asked me to let you know about that binding at intervals.)
“Mmph.” Again and again and—
(It’s holding well—under the circumstances, that is. But you’re going to have to try to control your fear a little better. When you discharge so strongly, the binding weakens.)
“I’ll remember.”
(But Herewiss—how can you expect to control yourself properly with as little sleep as you’ve been getting? An hour here, two there—)
“Spark,” he said, pacing his thoughts between the hammer-blows. “My loved. I haven’t time. Something is happening. The Fire’s going out. I have to hurry—”
(Your fear is killing it,) the elemental said softly. (I couldn’t have understood that before. Now I know. Freelorn has gone off to Osta without you, and there’s been no word all this month and more. You fear for him. I hear the terror singing while you sleep; it runs from you like blood. And you feel that you should be with him, though if you were, you couldn’t be working—)
“Some things are even more important than Flame.”
Sunspark was silent for a moment. (And the hralcin,) it said, (the matter of its unbinding that troubles you so. That fear is killing your Power too. I hear the sound of it every now and then: ‘If I had the Fire,’ you think, ‘what kinds of things would I be letting loose by my carelessness?’ You are working against yourself, my loved—)
“Sometimes, Sunspark, you hear too much for your own good.” The thought was a slap of anger, and Sunspark shrank away, out of Herewiss’s mind entirely, dwindling down to a few uncertain tongues of fire shivering among the coals. Herewiss sighed then, ashamed of himself, looking at the elemental in the firepit and realizing that it was the first thing he had really seen all day.
“Spark,” he said as gently as he could. “Love, I’m sorry. Oh, come out of there.” He put the hammer down on the anvil, atop the blank he had just finished.
(You are angry at me.) Its voice was subdued and fearful.
“It passed. Spark, you have to learn that around these parts it’s possible for two partners in a union to be angry with one another without the union being destroyed. Come out of there—”
It put up a few cautious tongues of fire and then flowed over the edge, a bright firefall that pooled and rose upward to envelop him. Silently the elemental wrapped its warmth around and through Herewiss, filling all his cold empty places with its glowing self. They were joined for a few minutes, and Herewiss looking inward saw all his fears flare into incandescence. He could see the shapes of them clearly now, and while the union persisted they were not fears any more. He saw them as Sunspark perceived them, as energies bound into strange fanciful shapes that meant little against the larger scale of things. The sensation was pleasant, and Herewiss stood there for a long while, eyes closed, letting himself be cared about and reassured.
“You matter, Spark,” he said softly. “You matter very much.”
It pulsed warm within him, a deep silent flare of fulfillment.
“But I have to work…”
It unwrapped itself, slowly, regretfully. (Let us work that sword to red heat again, so you can quench it, and I’ll go watch the binding.)
“That sounds fine. Back in the pit then…” Herewiss tried to chuckle, but the sound came out wrong. All the places that Sunspark had filled and warmed so thoroughly with itself were bleak and cold again, and his fears were back, all the more shadowy for having been so bright.
He laid the blade of the sixty-third sword in the forge and turned away, wishing that Sunspark would melt it accidentally.
•
The grindstone was useful for times when Herewiss didn’t want to think. The noise of it rasped on his nerves, and the vibration rattled so far down his spine that any session with it left him in a state of profound and unfocused irritation. For this reason he usually didn’t use it, preferring to blow up the sword before putting a good edge on it. Today, however, anything that would shut out thoughts of the hralcin was welcome.
He sat there behind the stone, pumping away at the pedals until his legs threatened to cramp (which diversion he would also have welcomed). The irritation fed on itself, making him pump faster and press the sword harder against the turning stone, until sparks sprayed from it, and again and again it grew too hot to handle. By the end of a couple of hours, the sword had an edge on it that was much better than it needed, and in some places had become wire-edged and would have to be stropped.
(Herewiss?)
“Mmm?” He was working at it with the horsehide strop now, holding the sword between his knees as he worked and taking a certain cranky pride in the quality of his work. The blade would need some finishing work with oil and smoothing stone, but the edges had already acquired that particular silvery sheen that swordsmiths strive for, the mark of a blade that will cut air and leave it in pieces.
(We have company.)
He looked up from his work. “Who?”
(From the feel of them, Freelorn and his people. They are in high good spirits. No one else would be feeling that way out here, if the Waste is as ill-omened as you say.)
Herewiss frowned, and then smiled. “He has a talent for showing up when I have a piece of work in hand.)
(But then you’re always working, loved. How could it be otherwise?)
“Hmph. True, I guess…” And Herewiss became cold with fear. “But, Spark, that binding…!”
The elemental shrugged. (I’m watching it. So far none of the conditions you described to me has changed. The hralcin hasn’t bothered testing it in a while.)
“That could be good—and then again—”
(Probably it will be all right if you don’t get in another fight with Freelorn. The extra stress of having more people around might wear it a little, but you can reinforce now and again.)
“Yes…”
(So keep things subdued. I for my part will do the same. There’s a stand of brush to the north of here that could use a fire, and I could use a meal. Maybe I’ll be away for the night; that might decrease the stresses.)
“It’s a thought. How close are they, Spark?”
(Some miles. You have time to finish that, at least.)
“All right. Watch that door…“
(Oh,) Sunspark said dryly, (if anything comes out of it, you’ll know shortly…)
Herewiss thought of slime and the smell of burning, and stro
pped harder.
•
The polished outer walls of the hold had a walkway recessed into the top surface, a double noncrenellated battlement, accessible by a long flight of those oddly staggered steps which led up from the inner courtyard. Herewiss leaned on the outer battlement and watched Freelorn and his people approaching. Sunspark, beside him, wavered palely in the sunlight like heat-shimmer above a pavement in summer.
“Look at all those mules. I wonder who he stole them from?”
Sunspark made a don’t-know-don’t-care feeling. (There’s something,) it said, (something that I couldn’t catch while they were further away—can you hear it?)
Herewiss reached out with his underhearing. Because of his fatigue, all he got was a faint confused impression of a number of emotional systems going about their business, and a fainter one of two specific systems somewhat at odds with themselves.
“Slight unease,” he said to Sunspark. “I’m a bit off today, and I don’t usually do too well anyhow unless I’m at close range. They’re half a mile away.”
Sunspark shrugged. (Freelorn,) it said, (and Segnbora, I think.)
Herewiss nodded slowly. “It didn’t take long for what I saw to start happening, alas. This isn’t good, Spark, their negative emotions are going to fray at the binding—”
(Work on Freelorn, then,) Sunspark said. (You would anyway—)
Herewiss caught a sudden pang of jealousy, a flurry of angry, swift-moving brilliances like swords flashing in sunlight. Sunspark was trying to conceal it, and Herewiss laughed softly.
“I bet you’d like to burn him.”
The elemental flinched away in chagrin. (I would,) it admitted.
“I think I’d have been suspicious if you hadn’t wanted to. We all do as our natures dictate, Spark. I know it’s hard for you to understand how I can love you both, but believe me, I can, and I love neither of you the less for loving the other more—”