The Tale of the Five Omnibus

  Herelaf lies there, drained dry, waiting for the Mother to come for him. She can’t be far; his body has a castoff look about it already—or maybe it is his closeness to the Door that is apparent, and the light from that Sea of which the Starlight is a faint intimation is shining through him, as if he were a doorway himself. The gray light makes everything in the room look unreal, except Herelaf—and he will be unreal soon enough.

  You go over to him, kneel sidewise by the bed, take his hands in yours. They are chill, and this shakes you more terribly than anything else; his hands were always warm, even in wintertime when you always went clammy and stiff with the cold. Herelaf, now, with those big warm hands of his—big even for a Brightwood man—getting cold; getting dead. You did it. Oh yes.

  NOT THIS AGAIN!! PLEASE, NO!!

  Oh yes. “Dusty,” he says, his beautiful soft deep voice gone all cracked and dry and shallow with pain. “Little brother mine. It wasn’t your fault.”

  The words go into your head, but they make no particular sense. At least they didn’t then. They do now, and it hurts at least twice as much, because you know it was your fault. Then, though, you bury your face in those cold hands, punishing yourself with the terror of what is going to happen. The Mother is kind, but inexorable; when She comes, there’s no turning Her back. And you know She’s coming.

  “Dusty, are you listening to me? Look at me.” He turns your face up to him, and you try to look away, but it’s no good; even dying those hands have all their strength.

  You look at him: dark curly hair like yours, big around the shoulders the way you got to be eventually; the droopy sleepy eyes, the smile that never comes off. Even dying, there’s a ghost of it apparent, a slight curling-at-the-corners smile. He loves you. That’s the worst part of it all, really.

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

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

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

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

  And then is still.

  And you get up, and wander away.

  Into the gray places where nothing matters.

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

  Someone is stopping you. It’s Freelorn.

  Damn him anyway.

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

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

  Nothing matters.

  Nothing.

  It’s all gray.

  Thank Goddess that’s over. How do I get out of this?

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

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

  “On the Lion’s Day,

  When the Moon was high,

  then the queen went to the Fane

  for her loved to die,

  On that Night of dread,

  opened up the deeps,

  and she knew the Shadow there,

  and in Rilthor forever she sleeps,

  And her daughter wept,

  vengeance in her heart,

  and swore herself as vow

  to take her mother’s part,

  bating love and breath

  till the Shadow’s death.

  And she laid Him dead,

  and herself she died,

  never dreaming all the while

  that in His death, He lied…”

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

  (Oh, Mother. No.)

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

  “—to bring the lightning down,

  one a shadow, one a fire,

  one a sun and one a sire,

  one who’s dead—”

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

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

  It’s company, all right.

  It’s you.

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

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

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

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

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

  ***

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

  Freelorn was gone.

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

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

  Herewiss nodded.

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

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

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

  “I hope so.”

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

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

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

  EIGHT

  It is perhaps one of life’s more interesting ironies that, of the many who beseech the Goddess to send them love, so few will accept it when it comes, because it has come in what they consider the wrong shape, or the wrong size, or at the wrong time. Against our prejudices, even the Goddess strives in vain.

  Hamartics, s’Berenh, ch. 6

  “Sunspark?”

  (?)

  “What do you make of this?”

  (Just a moment.)

  Herewiss sat cross-legged before one of the doors, making notes with a stylus on a tablet of wax. Visible through the door was an unbroken vista of golden-green hills, reaching away into unguessable distances and met at the mist-veiled horizon by a violet sky. The brilliant sun hanging over the landscape etched Herewiss’s shadow sharply behind him, and struck gray glitters from the wall against which he leaned.

  Sunspark padded over to him in the shape of a golden North Arlene hunting cat, the kind kept to course wild pig and the smaller Fyrd varieties on the moor. It peered through the door, its tail twitching. (Grass. So?)

  “That’s not the point. I’ve been by this door five times today, and that sun hasn’t moved.”

  (It could be a slow one. You remember that one yesterday that went by so fast, three or four times an hour. There’s no reason this one couldn’t be slow.)

  “Yes, but there’s something else wrong. That grass is bent as if there’s wind blowing, but none of it moves.”

  (That might just be the way it grows. There are a lot of strange things in the worlds, Herewiss—) It stepped closer to the door. (Then again—Look high in the doorway. Is there something in the sky there?) It craned its neck (By the top of the left post)

  Herewiss squinted “Hard to tell, with the sun so close—no, wait a moment. Does that have wings?”

  (I think so. And it s just hanging there, frozen.) Sunspark waved its tail in a feline shrug. (That could be your answer. This door may be frozen on one moment—or if it’s not, it’s moving that moment so slowly that we can’t perceive it.)

  Herewiss put down the tablet of wax in its wooden frame, and stretched. “Well, that’s something new. What was that one you were looking at?”

  (Nothing but empty sea, with four suns, all small and red. They were clustered close together, not spaced apart as most of them have been when they’re multiple. And there was something around them, a cloud, that moved with them and glowed. The cloud was all of thin filaments, as if they had spun a web around themselves.)

  “So…” Herewiss picked up the tablet again. “That’s the nineteenth one with more than one sun, and the eighty-ninth one with water. More than half of these doors have shown lakes or seas or rivers. Who knows…the Morrowfane itself might be through one of these doors. Did you see any people?”

  (No.)

  “No surprise there… people have been much in the minority so far. Maybe whoever built this place was more interested in other places than other people.”

  (What you would call people, anyway.) Sunspark chuckled inside. (Would you call me ‘people’?)

  Herewiss looked at the elemental. Its cat-face was inscrutable, but his underhearing gave him a sudden impression of hopefulness, wistfulness. “I think so,” he said. “You’re good company, anyway.”

  (Well, ‘company’ is something I have not had much practice being. There is usually no need for it—)

  “Among your kind, maybe. We need it a lot.”

  (It appears to be the way your folk were built. It seems strange, to want another’s company before it comes time for renewal, for the final union.)

  “It has its advantages.”

  (In the binding of energies, yes—)

  “More than that. There’s more than binding. Sharing.”

  (I have trouble with that word. Giving away energy willingly, is it?)

  “Yes.”

  (It seems mad.)

  “Sometimes, yes. But you usually get it back.”

  (Such a gamble.)

  “Yes,” Herewiss said, “it is that.”

  (What happens when you don’t get it back?)

  “Then you’ve lost energy, obviously. It hurts a little.”

  (It should hurt more than a little. Your own substance is riven from you; part of your self—)

  “Depends how much of yourself you give away. Most of the time, it’s nothing fatal.”

  (Well, how could it be?)

  “It happens, among our kind. People have given too much, and died of it; but mostly because they had convinced themselves that they were going to. In the end it’s their own decision.”

  (Mad, completely mad. The contract-conflict is safer, I think.)

  “Probably. But it doesn’t pay off the way sharing does when it turns out right.”

  (I don’t understand.)

  “It’s the dare. The gamble, taking the chance. When sharing comes back, it’s—an elevation. It makes you want to do it again—”

  (—and if it fails the next time, you’ll feel worse. A madness.) It shrugged. (Well, there are patterns within the Pattern, and no way to understand them all. How many doors have we counted now?)

  Herewiss looked at the tablet. “A hundred and fifty-six. Five of the lower halls and half this upper hall. Then there’s that east gallery, and the hallways leading from it—”

  Sunspark’s tone of thought was uneasy. (You know, there is no way that all these rooms can possibly be contained within this structure as we beheld it from outside. There’s no room, it’s just too small.)

  “Yes, I know—but they’re all here. What about that row of rooms between the great hall downstairs and the back wall? They couldn’t have been there, either. Of course it was all right; after a few days they weren’t. Four doors went missing from this hall alone earlier this week, but here they are again—”

  (The next one along was one of the ones that vanished. Let’s see what it looks like now…)

  Herewiss got up, and they walked together down to the next doorway. It showed them nighttime in a valley embraced by high hills; behind the hills was a golden glow like the onset of some immense Moonrise. The valley floor was patterned with brilliant lights of all colors, laid out in an orderly fashion like a gridwork. Down from the gemmed heights wound a river of white fire, pouring itself blazing down the hillsides into the softly hazed splendor of the valley’s floor. There were no stars.

  (Now those may
be people,) Sunspark said after a moment, (but not my kind, or yours, I dare say. What do you say to a white light?)

  “I don’t know. What do you say to a horse, or a pillar of fire?” Herewiss grinned, and made a note on his tablet. “This next one was gone too. Let’s look—”

  They moved a few steps farther down the hall, and stopped. The door showed them nothing. Nothing at all.

  “Sweet Goddess, it came back,” Herewiss said. “I was wondering what this one might be, and I had a thought—it could be a door that was never set to show anything before the builders left. An unused blank. It appears and disappears like all the other doors in the place, but it doesn’t show anything.”

  (I don’t know.) Sunspark looked at the door dubiously. (It gives me an odd feeling—)

  “Well, let’s see.”

  Herewiss blanked everything out, slowed his breathing, and strained his underhearing toward the door, past the door—

  —strained—

  “Nothing,” he said, and opened his eyes again. “Can’t get into it the way I can some of the others. Spark, would you do a favor and get my grimoire for me? The one with the sealed pages.”

  (You’re going to try to open this now?)

  “Is there a better time? I had a good night’s sleep. I ate a big breakfast. Let’s try.”

  Sunspark went molten and flowed down the hall like a hot wind. A few minutes later he returned, a young red-haired man with hot bright eyes and a tunic the color of fire, carrying the book. Herewiss reached out and took it, unsealed the pages and began riffling through them.

  “Damn,” he said after a moment. “Nothing is going to—well, no, maybe this unbinding—no, that’s too concrete, it’s for regular doors. This one—no… Dammit.”

  He paused a moment, then started running through the pages again. “This one. Yes. It’s a very generalized unbinding, and if I change it here—and here—”