“In a while. I have some things to take care of first. Wait for me?”
“I’m not going anywhere. Except,” and Freelorn wobbled to his feet, “to sleep.”
“Later, then.”
Freelorn made his way around the firepit, nudging his people one by one. “Come on,” he said, “everybody get up and go to bed…”
Herewiss got carefully to his feet and crossed the hall to the uneven stairs. As he went up them he noticed two doors that hadn’t been there earlier in the day. He paused only long enough to note that one of them looked out on some green place with a river running through it, and the other on a waste of cold water beneath a bleak gray sky.
Coming up to the tower room, he dissolved the appearance of solid wall that camouflaged its doorway, passed through, and sealed it behind him. Sunspark was waiting for him on the furs and cushions in the corner, stretched out, lush and warmly beautiful in the silvery moonlight from the open window. Light from the two great candlesticks on Herewiss’s worktable caught in her red hair and touched it with coppery sparks and glitters.
(You took a long time,) she said.
“It’s been a while since Freelorn was here. We had a lot to talk about.”
(I would imagine.) The sudden flicker of jealousy again, like bared swords in the moonlight; but not as strong as the last time.
“Spark, relax,” Herewiss said. He went to the window and looked out. The Moon was gibbous, waxing toward the full, and from the walls of the hold to the horizon, the desert shone silver and black. The midnight stars struggled feebly with the moonlight, cold and pale and mocking, faint as the Flame within him.
(I didn’t mean it,) Sunspark said. (Ah, Herewiss, it’s hard to do, this loving—)
“You mean it,” said Herewiss. “And, yes, this loving is hard. There is nothing harder, which is probably the way it should be, for there’s also nothing more precious, I think. Spark, please, don’t be afraid of me. I love you well as you are.” He leaned on the windowsill, wondering whether the wine was the source of the strange feeling inside him—a feeling like something trying to happen.
(Something’s bothering you—) Sunspark got up and came to him, slipped warm arms around him from behind.
“No more than usual. Maybe I should go away for a while, though, walk around in the world, get away from all these damn doors for a while—”
He stroked one of Sunspark’s arms absently. “Maybe. Sunspark, I’m sorry, I’m just not in the mood tonight.”
(Oh? How’s this, then? You liked it before.) The elemental shimmered momentarily, and when the wavering died down he stood there, a lithe young man, arms still around Herewiss.
“No, loved,” Herewiss chuckled, turning around and hugging him back, “that’s not what I meant. I have some things to do, a feeling I want to follow up. That’s all.”
(Well enough, then. I’m going to tend to that brush. Whatever this is about, though—be careful!)
“I will.”
Sunspark dissolved into flame, then went out altogether.
Herewiss stood at the window long enough to notice the faint radiance spring into life on the horizon. He turned away, then, went to a chest on one side of the room, opened it and rummaged around. He found the bottle of Soulflight, went over to the pile of cushions by the window, and sat down wearily.
He could feel time fast flowing over him, taking little pieces of him with it as a stream whirls flotsam unresisting down its current. There was no more time. He was being worn away steadily by the days, and raggedly by his fears—Sunspark had been quite right about that. The image of the hralcin, ravening silently at the dark door, wanting him with an implacable hunger, moved again in the back of his mind. The sight of Freelorn and the sound of his voice hadn’t driven it away—merely startled it into stillness, like the bright fierce glance of a hawk. Now the vague dark shape stirred, restless, and looked at him with deadly patience—
Herewiss cursed his overactive imagination, wishing that the hralcin would just go away and leave him alone. But no achievement is without price, he reminded himself, most especially the dark ones—
He looked at the little stone bottle, wondering if this risk was going to be worth it. After he came down in the morning, things would be no different. The hralcin would still be behind the door, hungering for him, and the Power would be no more his than it was now.
But Soulflight was good for walking the future as well as the past. He could go forward, look down the course of his life from its end and see if there was some way to forge the sword he needed. Or a way to stop the hralcin, to kill it—
No, no. When you use Soulflight to look forward, it shows you options, chances, pathways—there’s no way to tell which is actually going to happen. And even with the drug there are usually gaps in the pathways, variables that can’t be predicted—
He rolled the bottle slowly between his hands. And as far as the hralcin goes, I doubt that I could avail myself of any art I might learn. I’m so tired, I couldn’t turn the sky dark at nightfall. And by the time I’m strong enough to try something useful, that thing will probably come back and break the binding down. No, that’s no good.
Herewiss gripped the bottle hard. No matter how I approach this mess, the answer keeps coming up the same—I’m not going to live out the week. Well, so be it. I plowed this crooked furrow and now I must sow in it. But by the Goddess, if I’m going to die, I’ll die knowing my Name!
He took the lovers’-cup, filled it with the last half-cup or so of the Narchaerid, and poured a dollop of the drug into it from the little bottle. It fell slowly, in a clear ribboning stream like honey, and he watched the bubbles in it as he poured. I’ll have to look at my Name before this night is over. But first I’ll make my peace with myself, with Lorn—let him understand what’s been happening, why I’m doing what I am. Maybe the understanding will help him handle my loss. Oh, Mother, I wish I didn’t have to die, I wish I’d let that door alone, it’s going to hurt Lorn so much when I’m gone—
He rubbed his eyes briefly. Enough of that. I have to leave him in love and with joy, otherwise it’ll be worse for him. And the others deserve my best, too. Their dreams will take them past the Door, I’ll meet them there—and then go on. No shying away from the truth this time. Oops, better stop here— and he pulled the bottle away, twirled it free of a last drop that clung to the lip. He stoppered the bottle and set it aside carefully. I do want to come back.
He swirled the cup to mix the drug with the wine. And something else I could do. If I’ve got to die, then I will share myself with Lorn tonight, as those beyond the door share, wholly, in that union which transcends the ecstasies of the flesh. One last sharing, one last best gift before that damn hralcin gets me—
He drank the wine down, a long draft that made him choke. There was a burning at the back of his throat, but it passed. Herewiss reached over for another jug of red wine—not Narchaerid, but an ordinary quaffing wine from up north—poured a cupful, and sat down to wait for the drug to work.
He watched the moonlight move ever so slightly across the floor, and the silence of the desert night sank deeply into him. For a moment his eyes rested on this morning’s sword, which lay up against the wall a few feet away…nothing more than a long dead piece of steel, carven with no runes, untreated, untried in any way. He tried for a moment to think of something new to do with it, but could see nothing in his mind but the depressing sight of a fine sword, beaten out of strong tempered steel, shattering itself to splinters at the touch of the Power.
The image made Herewiss cringe, unwanted harbinger of reality that it was. The fragrance of the wine crept up his nose, fruity and sweet, and glad of the distraction he drank again.
As he did, a moth came flickering in the window. It fluttered around in confusion, bouncing and wobbling around the square of moonlight on the floor, until it saw one of the candlesticks. It flew straight toward the flame, and with a directness that surprised Herewiss, circled it twice, three
times, and dove headlong into the flame. With a fizzing sound, the candle flame burned low for a moment, then sprang up again.
Herewiss sat there and felt the drug begin to work. He laughed, but the sound didn’t seem to be coming from his own throat, though he could hear it plainly enough. The detachment extended itself to his thoughts as well. Part of him was sad for the moth, but the rest was uninvolved, though alert and observant. A small thing, a small thing, it seemed to be singing to itself, though in a minor key.
Disorientation came quickly. There was a spinning, a confusion, everything was subtly wrong, and Herewiss struggled to his feet, or tried to. He had a bad time of it; his muscles didn’t work, he seemed tied down to something. Then, with an abrupt slight rending sensation, he found himself no longer tied to anything. He rose up. He stretched, and though there was no feeling of moving muscles, his mind slipped outward and filled his form. He was himself, totally.
Herewiss looked down at his body, where it lay among the pillows. There was no sickening feeling of entrapment, this time, nor was there the limitless rapture he had felt with the second use of the drug, a feeling of being free of a decrepit prison. He looked down now and felt satisfaction, and an odd kind of tenderness. Unfulfilled and incomplete he might be in many ways, but he had a fine body: slim and long and graceful, with the muscles corded hard in it from the strain of his disciplines and the forging of swords. It lay there, eyes closed, one arm outstretched toward the wine cup. It looked relaxed and innocent, and beautiful in a angular kind of way. I always knew that a person’s personality imprints itself to some extent on the body he wears, he thought, but I never thought to look at myself in that light—or if I did, I refused to believe what I saw. I am beautiful, and Lorn and Sunspark have been right when they’ve told me so. How curious it is that I never felt that way when I’ve been awake and in it. Must be a matter of viewpoint…
He turned away and looked around him. The walls of the room glowed softly with a subdued rose-golden radiance. It seemed that his guesses were right, that some kind of life did sleep in the stone. The sword lay up against the wall near him, a long dark oblong blot against the light. Herewiss held up his hands before him. In shape they were the same as always, but there was a difference about them, a subtle transparency, and below that the muted glow of suppressed Flame. The moonlight had an added piquancy to it, a feeling like the cold taste of bitten metal, and Herewiss marveled as he breathed it in.
He looked down at the wine cup. The wine left within it was a molten blaze of red, an expression of all the sunlight that had become part of the grapes. Faintly he could hear the cries of ecstatic agony uttered by the vines as their burden was ripped from them, and he felt at a distance the silver touch of rain. He caught the languorous thoughts of one of the young girls who had helped to press out the vintage, and he felt how it had been for her, the night before, under the pomegranate trees with her lover. All that experience was too much for Herewiss to leave untasted. He knelt down by the shell of himself, took up the essence of the cup and drank off the joy and sorrow and time within it at one draft. The tangled, vivid selfhoods of bees and vintners and young girls flowed down his throat like cinnamon fire, and left an aftertaste like a summer dawn. I will never call a wine “ordinary” again, he thought. Never—
Herewiss looked over his shoulder at the candle, and got up and went to it, amused and curious. The candle flame was an intricate web of bright energies, an entangled tracery of heat and light in constant motion. Wobbling in earnest circles around and around it was the moth, a soft golden flicker, like a little flame itself. Apparently it had not noticed that it had died. Herewiss put out his hands and caught it carefully. It fluttered within his caging fingers, leaving here and there a wing scale like pale golddust, and finally sat on one of his fingers and looked up at him with confused dark eyes.
He carried it to the window and opened his hands, offering it to the night. The moth sat bewildered for a moment or so. Then it caught sight of the flood of silver light pouring in the window, and fluttered out of Herewiss’s hands, bobbling upward into the night, straight for the transfigured Moon.
He smiled up at the moth, wishing it well, and looked out at the night and the stars. They blazed, blue and brilliant, as if seen through one of the doors down the hall. The world seemed to be hanging breathless in the midst of a clustered cloud of them. Their light was not cold, now, nor were they mocking him. They were singing, a song almost too high for him to hear, like the song of the bat. The song had words, but the multitude of voices drowned out the meaning in a million blended assonances. Herewiss contented himself with a few minutes of standing there in that inexpressible glory of sound and light, taking it all in, hoping that he would remember it tomorrow, through the headache.
Lorn is waiting for me, he thought at last, and so are my other guests, all of them, past the Door. I perhaps slighted them earlier. Let me make up for that now. Downstairs—
He exerted himself, and was there, standing in the midst of the silent main hall. Nearly all the people were asleep now, curled in dark silent bundles or stretched out beneath their cloaks. Dritt and Moris were still awake, unmoving, caring about each other in the darkness. Herewiss could feel the texture of their waking thoughts moving softly between them, as they rested in the twilit borderland between love and sleep. Herewiss smiled at them. Later, he thought, he might ask to share himself with them.
He looked around, identifying Freelorn’s people one by one. Most of them were dreaming, in some cases quite vividly, so that faint images of their minds’ wanderings were apparent. Segnbora lay curled in one corner, dreaming more loudly than the rest; her dream towered against the ceiling, some huge gossamer creature under a firefly sun. Herewiss was intrigued, and went to where she lay.
He knelt beside her, studying her for a moment before he would enter the dream. A clear sight like that of the last drug experience was on him again, but this time it was a more intimate and kindly vision, informed with compassion, very unlike the chill and distanced evaluation of the last time. Segnbora’s hand lay out on her cloak, and he looked at it and shook his head sadly. Under the frail casing of the skin, such a violence and potency of untapped Power raged that it should have burned her out from within. But he also saw the barrier that sealed it away from her use, a wall of old frozen fears that all the inner fires couldn’t melt. And the rules forbade him to tell her what to do about it. He sighed, and entered in.
There was the smell of salt spray, and black pockmarked rocks worn smooth by the sea, and a hot white midsummer sun, and Segnbora sat atop a boulder festooned with clambering strands of kelp. A sea ouzel was building a nest in a cranny of the boulder, and Segnbora was watching it intently. So was the Dragon that towered over her, a huge one, at its full growth but still young—no more than a thousand and a half years old. The three of them watched the bird fly down to the surf line of the black beach to pick up pieces of dead seaweed. Another ouzel appeared, carrying something in its beak that was not seaweed. Segnbora clucked to it, and with a whirring of wings the bird flew up to where she sat. It alighted on her outstretched hand, dropping the object in her palm. Herewiss, standing next to the Dragon’s massive forefoot, looked at the thing. It was a gem, like a diamond but more golden, finely cut into a sparkling oval.
“It’ll take a while to hatch,” Segnbora said to the ouzel. “Do what you can, though.” The bird picked up the jewel and flew down to the nest with it.
“But it’s a stone!” Herewiss objected.
“Strange things won’t happen,” Segnbora said, “unless you give them a chance.”
“I’m trying,” Herewiss said.
“Yes, I see that. You’re past the Door. The drug?”
“Yes.”
“Oh well,” Segnbora said, “a short life, but a merry one.”
The Dragon bent its great head down toward Herewiss, regarding him. He bowed, feeling that this creature was worthy of his respect. It was apparently one of the oldest
Line of Dragons, the children of Dahiric Worldfinder, to judge by its star-emerald scales and topaz spines. It spoke to him in deep-voiced song, but the words were strange and he could not understand them. There was warning in its voice.
“What?” Herewiss said.
“You don’t speak Dracon?” asked Segnbora.
“I could never find anyone to teach me.”
“Well, she greets you by me, and says that something is trying to happen, and you should beware of it.”
“That’s what I thought,” Herewiss said. “But to beware of it? …I don’t understand.”
“Neither does she. She says to look to your sword.”
“But I don’t have a…well, I suppose I do…”
“I don’t think much more will fit in there,” Segnbora said to the first ouzel, which had come back with a piece of kelp nearly twice its size. It was trying valiantly to stuff it in the crevice, and failing. Herewiss felt suddenly that there was no more to be found or shared in this dream. He bowed again to the Dragon, and waved to Segnbora, and came forth.
Herewiss stood up, wondering, and went over to where Freelorn lay, curled up in a ball as usual. He spent a moment or two just looking at his loved. Sleep was the only time when Lorn lost his eternal look of calculation, and Herewiss loved to watch him sleeping, even when he snored.
Herewiss sat down beside him, the sweet sorrow of the moment passing through him like the pain of imminent tears. This could very well be the last time in this life—and if the hralcin got him, as seemed likely, in any life at all. Mother, he said softly, I give You this night, as You gave me one of Yours. Whatever else happened or didn’t happen in this life, Lorn loved me—loves me; and that’s as great a blessing as the Fire would be, and possibly more than I deserve. Take this night, Mother, and remember me. You understood me—better than most.
He reached out to touch Freelorn’s cheek, brushed it gently. I’m going to try to give you all the parts of me I never dared to, he said. I hope I can give you all the joy you deserve.