So there could be no mighty last stand, no glorious battle in which blue Fire blasts across the landscape like a star fallen from the sky. Sirronde smiled with brief scorn at the adolescent fantasy.
Then the smile faded. She still had no idea what to do, and time was running out. Sirronde thought of the storm rumbling across the landscape of her dream, ominous with its freight of lightnings, leisurely but unstoppable...and, very slowly, she walked back to the village.
The morning of the second day before the opening of the bridge came, and the village was already working itself into festival mood. Sirronde had no taste for it and still kept out of town, still trying to work out some kind of plan. Only late in the evening did she return, after the commonroom was mostly empty.
Adri stumbled in after a while, and Sirronde was shocked at the look of him. He looked bleary and tired, which she would have expected, but he was also many drinks drunk. He sat down by himself in a corner and started to work on one of the pitchers of wine left on the tables for the evening trade.
Bringing her empty cup with her, Sirronde went to sit beside Adri. He looked up at her blearily, absorbed her disapproving glance, and waved one hand sadly. “This helps me sleep.”
“I could have helped with that.”
“Don’t want to be trouble.”
She reached out to take the wine pitcher away from him. Adri resisted.
“All right, be greedy as well as drunken,” Sirronde said, and got up.
Adri pulled her back into the seat and poured out for her. Most of it went in the cup. “So you have any ideas?”
“Do I look like I have? Do you think I wouldn’t have come to tell you if I had?”
“I thought maybe not.” Adri looked guilty. “If she got the idea that I was up to something with you, something about the bridge—”
“Never mind,” Sirronde said, not wanting him to say any more. Dyla’s pride and possessiveness were beginning to annoy her—especially the latter: as if one could try to own one’s loved like a prize cow!—and she wondered more than once how such a gentle soul as Adri had become entangled with her. Sirronde had seen enough relationships where a couple caused one another pain, but usually there were other aspects which offset the suffering, and always, each side of the partnering had something that the other one needed or wanted.
“Sorry, sorry,” Adri said, and drank. “Oh, I am sorry.”
A gust of laughter came from the one occupied table in the back: mercifully, no one there was paying the two of them any attention. “A sorry case altogether. I can’t believe how easily I said it. ‘I would give the soul out of my body,’ I said, and He said, ‘Would you?’ and I said ‘Yes.’ Oh, why did I say ‘yes’?”
Sirronde sighed in pity for Adri’s distress, reached for her cup... and then stopped.
“Would you say that again?” Sirronde said.
“And he said, ‘That might work...’” Adri stopped. “What?”
There is always a loophole. “Say that again. What you said.”
Adri blinked. “I said, ‘I would give the soul out of my body if she could just get that bridge done.’”
Sirronde swallowed. “Are you sure you said just that? Those words?”
“That’s what I said. Are you deaf?”
No, but He might have been—! Sirronde wanted to laugh out loud, and didn’t dare. It was still too serious, too dangerous. She was having enough trouble keeping any smile off her face.
“All right,” she said. “Adri, listen to me now, and think carefully. What if your body crosses that bridge—but it’s not your soul in it?”
A long pause. “You can’t do that!”
“Yes I can,” Sirronde said. “It’s been done before. Not often—it’s dangerous for both parties. And bodies don’t much like having their souls shifted.”
“How do you do it?”
She was about to say “There are two ways—” —and then stopped, for the simplest of the two methods was no good. The Shadow would know immediately if she simply removed a soul from its place by force and substituted her own. The second way, the subtler way, was the only one which would be undetectable until it was too late. “Your soul is emplaced in my body for a while,” she said. “For storage, as it were. And mine in yours. But yours still seems to be there, so—”
Adri was looking at her wide-eyed. “How do you do it?”
“Sharing.”
“You mean like in—”
“Bed,” Sirronde said, “yes.”
Adri looked nervous. “Is it the only way?”
“For our purposes, yes.”
A pause. “I don’t know how she’d be likely to take this.”
“What?”
“Me sharing. With someone else.”
“You mean Dyla’s...”
“Jealous.” He whispered it.
So he must bear this burden too, along with the rest of it. She was sorry for his embarrassment, but she couldn’t take time to deal with it now. “Are you willing?” Sirronde said.
There was a long silence. “What if she finds out?”
“Is she likely to ask?”
“She suspects us already,” Adri said, and stared at the hearthstones again.
Sirronde took a breath in sheer surprise...then smiled ironically. “Might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb, then. But, Adri, if she asks me once the deed’s done, I can’t lie to her.”
“She’ll be furious with me!”
“You’ll be alive to be furious at,” Sirronde said. “A great improvement on your present prospects. As for me, I’ve been screamed at before, and so far it hasn’t been fatal.” She was still bemused by this strange tangle. “But, Adri, before...was there cause for her to suspect?”
“Never,” Adri said, vehement. He paused. “But you’re saying...you and I will have to be...together.”
Sirronde nodded.
Adri’s expression was oddly immobile, as if he was trying to keep his face from doing something. Sirronde glanced down at the table and reached out with her underhearing, for this was important.
Excitement. No: joy. A muddled flash of imageries. Holding. Being held.
And there it was: what Dyra would never give Adri no matter how often they shared, simply not being the type. She doesn’t mother, Sirronde had said. Now she saw that she had been entirely too acute in this regard....
Sirronde schooled her face to show nothing of how sorry for him she felt. “And I really have no choice,” Adri said.
“Not if you want to save your soul, no.”
A long silence followed.
“When must we do it?” Adri said.
Sirronde swallowed, her mouth going dry now that she had finally come to cold hard planning. “The night before, no sooner. The less time I have to pretend to be you, the better. Do you think you’re likely to share a bed the night before?”
Adri shook his head. “We won’t be this time. If you’re doing the Lovers, you normally spend the night apart, for luck. We’re not supposed to meet until dawn, on the bridge. I’ll be staying down at Hatch’s house.”
“All right. Come here after Leni closes everything up: the fourth hour after midnight. I’ll wait for you outside. Then—”
Sirronde fell silent. Another gust of laughter came from the table in the back.
“Will it work?” Adri whispered.
“He’ll take the soul out of the body that meets Him on the bridge,” Sirronde said. “Whether He’ll be able to keep it—that’s another story.”
“But what if He does...?”
Sirronde swallowed. “Then you get to live out the rest of your life in a Rodmistress’s body,” she said, “and if I were you, I’d take it straight back to the Silent Precincts, for you have no training, and you’ll need it.”
“But what would happen to you?”
“That’s my business,” Sirronde said, trying to sound resolute, “and Hers. If I were you—” And so I will be, she thought, and laughed painfully. ?
??I’d get out of here, get to bed. Act normally until tomorrow night, if you can. And I’ll see you four hours after midnight, the night before.”
Adri got up and left. Sirronde looked after him, her mouth dry, then drained her cup, and sat for a long time looking into the fire.
*
The next day she went up the pass road to do her heartwork, getting ready for that night’s wreaking.
Between those who shared, however casually, something passed which left each party forever changed. The vulnerable few seconds when one loved or both were lost in the ecstatic release of the body were also those during which that indefinable force passed free between the participants—tangling in a confusion of energies and chemistries, making lover and loved, however briefly, one being on various levels. That was the connection which Sirronde would be freezing in place, until the Shadow, deceived, reached into Adri’s body to take what He thought He had won. Once He had pulled the soul out of that body, the Shadow would have both fulfilled the bargain and lost what He had bargained for. Then, if she was quick and strong enough, Sirronde could push this particular incarnation of the Shadow straight out of physicality...for a while. That was all even the Goddess could manage. If I’m not quick enough, of course, He’ll probably leave the whole valley a pile of smoking rubble.
I’d better be quick.
The main problem remaining was that Sirronde did not know in what form It would attack if her first “push” failed. She spent the rest of the day constructing various offensive and defensive wreakings against the Shadow’s second attack: delicate prickly structures of words and intent, assembled in the dark place inside her where the Flame dwelt, ready to have a syllable or a structure of Fire inserted for quick activation. But she was all too aware that such general work tended to come apart under stress, and she would not be placing much reliance on them to do what needed doing. In the end, this would be a matter of will, speed, and sheer Power.
Sirronde came down the mountain at dinnertime, noticing the reflected scarlet glory of sunset on the snowy peaks behind her, but not able to summon much appreciation of it as she descended into the valley. The sound of song met her. Various of the people of Dalthant were singing and dancing in the street, so many of them that even the pigs had left because of the racket of bombards and curlhorns. Trying not to look too depressed, Sirronde went in to have dinner.
There was no sign of Dyla or Adri—apparently tonight they were keeping to the house where they had been put up, preparing for the next day’s formalities. This suited Sirronde. She spent the rest of the evening wheedling old stories of the Sender Valley out of the most ancient residents. The area was as haunted as mountains tended to be, with voices that screamed down the winds, hungry mantichores hunting on nights of no star or moon, various kinds of Fyrd and other “goblin” beasts, and endless other horrors and monsters bred out of the long winter nights. The mantichores were most on her mind. They were known to haunt high mountain places; if they had been here once, they could be here again, and the Shadow could use the memory of them. There were defenses against that—she would see to it.
At last, unable to find out anything else useful, Sirronde went upstairs. There was no chance of her getting any sleep, both because of her increasingly nervous state and because the commonroom was going to be busy until well after midnight tonight. But she could at least rest, even through the cheerful noise coming up through the floorboards.
She had plenty of time to go over her planning as the hours went by, and she minutely adjusted the wreaking which would strike any physical form the Shadow tried to take. Finally, three hours after midnight, she tried to force herself to relax, but it was impossible. Her nerves were tuning up for what she was about to do, intent as if the whole world rested on this one problem...
Though of course, for one person, it did. And naturally I have to treat the problem as if it were my whole world. And not just the end of it. The beginning of it is important enough. For poor Adri to share under circumstances like this...with someone who only days ago was a stranger...and he doesn’t know what the consequences might be; why, what if I—
Sirronde’s eyes widened.
What if I get pregnant...?!
Within moments she dismissed the idea. For a Firebearer, it was the matter of a minute’s work to convince one’s body that it was already pregnant, and unable to become more so.
But that wreaking required attention to hold it in place, and Sirronde was going to need all her concentration for another wreaking far more important. If that one slipped somehow, both she and Adri might die., or something worse might go wrong.
Well, forget the wreaking then. There’s always fillbane. It grew up here as it grew all over the Kingdoms.
...But fillbane tea left the user woozy for the better part of a day after taking a sufficient dose, and taking it the morning after would be of no use. Dare I risk it?
She started shaking, realizing that she did not. And there was the memory of the Woman with the backache, no longer Bride but Mother, who had said to her, You’ll want to ask yourself whether you’re ready to take on this burden...
This burden.
Sirronde sat bolt upright in the bed. The shivering was turning from fear to anger. I’m too young for this! I’ve just gotten started! Don’t I even get a few years of freedom?
So new out of the Precincts, so young in the practice of the art, Sirronde had not thought she would need to be concerned about the fulfillment of the Responsibility for years yet. Eventually, of course, she would have turned her attention to that basic understanding of men and women in this world with the Goddess: that, once at least, twice if possible, you should offer yourself for the bearing or begetting of a child. With that Responsibility fulfilled, you might do as you pleased, find the kind of love that brought you the best joy—the freedom of many sharings, the security of a few beloved, or one—and settle in to live your life accordingly.
It’s not fair! This isn’t what I want! It’s not supposed to be this way, it’s supposed to be with your loved—
But there was another problem. Think of Adri. Sirronde had perceived very clearly his longing for fatherhood, and how he looked at Dyla and saw no chance of the longing being fulfilled.
Sirronde sat there sweating as if she had been climbing the Sender Pass all over again. She got up and paced back and forth between the bed and the little table by the open window.
Think of his joy...to finally fulfill his own Responsibility. He will certainly attempt that fulfillment with no one else. You see how his own fidelity to his loved keeps him trapped. Now this strange circumstance has suddenly given him a chance to both free himself of his guilt and pain and to escape this great danger which he entered into thinking only of her, of his loved.
She paused by the window, looking out at the crescent Moon, setting late. Even if she agreed to this, there would still be a price to pay. Not just time off her life, the price every Rodmistress or Fireworker knew she or he must pay for every single wreaking. Now, Sirronde suspected, if she was so proud as to take on the Shadow directly, she would pay the price the Goddess had first paid. Creation. Birth.
And I was condemning Dyla for pride, Sirronde thought, and ground her fists against the table, and her forehead against her fists. Now see what’s come of it.
Outside, the maiden Moon slipped behind the mountains to the west, and things went dark as the fourth hour after midnight crept over the sill: the vulnerable time when sick people die, and when even those without the Fire dream true dreams of death and life. Down in the silent street, Sirronde heard a footstep. Very quietly she got up and went downstairs to meet Adri, and bring him up.
*
An hour later she stood up, with some difficulty, and looked down at her body, which slept. She had built the wreaking to keep Adri’s soul asleep and out of trouble inside her until the bridge was opened. If all went well, he would wake up in his own body as soon as the opening was over. The structure of the wreaking, once
released, would immediately return each soul to its proper place. And not a moment too soon, Sirronde thought, for this body fit her soul oddly, like a pair of breeches cut too tight. Indeed the breeches were a problem, for the equipment inside them felt very peculiar, and she couldn’t tell whether this was due to her own unfamiliarity with it, or to Adri’s need for a better tailor.
She let out a breath and looked down at “herself” asleep in the bed. Just a small robust fair young woman with oddly barbered hair (good barbers being sometimes hard to find in the Waste). But very odd it was to see herself there, clearly, not in the muddled reflection of a puddle or some piece of polished metal. Nonetheless, it had all gone better than she had expected. She lifted a hand to the cheek where Adri had touched her, with surprising tenderness, when he had first come in. Well, not to that cheek...
The confusions were only going to multiply until she got this over with. She picked up the Rod laid aside on the table, then changed her mind. I’ll leave it here. The Shadow might notice it, and in any case, she would not need it for what she would do today. Sirronde slipped the Rod under the pillow and went quietly out into the gray light before dawn.
High in these narrow hemmed-in valleys, daybreak was when the rays of the Sun could start to be seen streaming up through the mist hanging about the nearest peaks. As Sirronde, in Adri’s body, walked alone down the dusty street toward the river, she heard the sound of talk and laughter ahead of her and judged that the whole town must be down there already, except for a few children running past her in that direction. Someone down by the river was blowing experimental notes on a bombard, and annoyed cows bellowed in response to the strangled hoots.
Sirronde didn’t hurry, mostly because Adri’s body didn’t walk the way hers did, and going slowly was the only way to keep her own soul and mind from so successfully asserting their own preferences that she fell down in the street. She swallowed. Even that felt strange. And then she swallowed again, for as she came around the curve of the road, there they were, the whole of the village, maybe two hundred people, waiting by the riverbank, at the foot of the bridge.