It was like a castle in an old story, a place built for pleasure rather than defense, fanciful and wide-windowed and fair. Sharp-roofed halls and high towers pierced the upper air; slender spires were bound together by curving bridges and buttresses. Everything, from the wide-flung gates at the end of the bridge to the highest needle spire, was built of the same airy crystal as the bridge; and the evening sky could plainly be seen through the walls and towers. The fading hues of sunset—rose, gold, and deepening royal blue—reflected from them, pale and ghostly. Yet there was nothing fragile about the place. Glasscastle stood as immovably founded on the air as if on rock, reflecting the sunset, the Moon’s icy light, and even the frozen gleam of the Evenstar, but casting no shadow.
“Not a moment too soon,” Herewiss said, his voice hushed, as Sunspark stepped up to the peak again, completing their circuit of the mountaintop. All around the barrel of the peak burned a line of blue, the circle within which the spell would be confined. Herewiss dismounted and stood for a moment with Khávrinen in his hand, gazing up at the crystalline apparition.
“Beautiful,” he said. “But from now on, that’s all it’s going to be.” He struck Khávrinen’s point down into the snow at the foot of the bridge, and looked up the curve of metal, raising his arms—
—and stopped, squinting upward. “Who’s that?” he said. Everyone looked. Segnbora’s stomach constricted at the sight of the lone dark figure approaching the end of the metal part of the span, a tiny shadow against the twilight.
“I don’t believe it,” Herewiss said, in the voice of someone who does believe it, and wishes he were wrong. “I don’t— LORN!”
***
NINE
“It’s dangerous to invoke the Goddess as you conceive Her to be,” said Tav, “and more dangerous still to invoke Her as She truly is.”
“Right enough,” said Airru. “Breathing is dangerous too. But necessary...”
Tales from the South, x, 118
Herewiss’s anguished shout came back as echoes, but had no effect on the small dark silhouette walking purposefully up the bridge. “What the D -- What possessed him? Lorn!” Herewiss shouted again, and swung Khávrinen up two-handed, pointing it at Freelorn. The sword spat a blinding line of Fire that ran upward toward Freelorn—but whatever wreaking HerewisseHe had in mind came unraveled before it ever touched his loved. Many feet short of the bridge, the Fire hit some unseen barrier and splashed in all directions like water thrown at a wall.
Freelorn kept walking. Another twenty paces would see him up onto the phantom portion of the span. Herewiss ran up the bridge after his loved, swearing frightfully in ancient Arlene, with Khávrinen streaming frantic Fire behind him. Sunspark went galloping up after him.
“Damn!” Lang said, and followed.
“Torve, wait here!” Segnbora said, unsheathing Charriselm as she headed after Lang.
“Are you joking? Do you know what the Queen would do to me?” Torve said, following her and the others onto the bridge.
They didn’t run long—the altitude saw to that. Only Torve could run fast enough to catch up with Herewiss. In addition, the bridge was longer than it looked: an eighth mile, perhaps, to the point where it truly became sky. Far ahead of them, Freelorn’s small figure slowed in its stride, hesitating only briefly. He put one foot on the phantom bridge, found it would support him, and went on as before, in a confident but hurried walk.
Damn! Segnbora thought as she ran. She clutched Charriselm harder than necessary, for her hands and face were numb from the chill. That other, more inward cold was pouring down more bitterly than before, yet she didn’t suffer much from it. Something was blunting its effects; something inside her, burning—
(Hasai!) she said silently as she caught up with Herewiss and Sunspark and Torve. (Is that you?)
(Sdaha, against the great cold of the outer darknesses, this is . We’ve learned to cope with cold.)
(I’m glad!)
Herewiss and Torve had paused at the edge of the phantom span, and behind them Sunspark stood, looking downright dubious. The Fire-wrought part of the bridge was as thick and wide as the railless metal span, but clear and as fragile as air. Herewiss knelt to brush his fingers across it and straightened quickly, as if burnt.
“Whoever did this wreaking,” he gasped, “they’ve got more Power than I have—and they’re up there now, fueling it!” He got to his feet and stepped out onto the crystalline part of the bridge, assured himself that the footing was secure, and took off after Freelorn again at a run. Torve and the others went after, Sunspark hammering along behind them at a gallop, the bridge under its feet ringing like struck crystal.
Segnbora followed, stepping out onto the bridge. Reflexively she started to look down, then thought Maybe I shouldn’t... But to her surprise, the vista of shadows and creeping fog that veiled the south-face glacier half a mile below wasn’t much troubling her. Hasai’s Dragonfire was strong in her at the moment, getting stronger as she headed after the others. Lady grant it holds, she thought, beginning to run.
Away up at the Skybridge’s end, between the two huge crystal doors that lay open there, a tiny figure passed into the dimness beyond and was lost to sight. The group ahead of Segnbora slowed and came to a stop at the end of the bridge, gazing up at the chill clear grace of towers and keeps and the awful height and thickness of the doors before them. Segnbora caught up with them, feeling their fear almost as clearly as her own. Sai Ebássren, the place was called in Darthene: the House of No Return. What lay within, no legend told. The only certainty was that when the three Lights vanished, so would Glasscastle, and anyone trapped inside would never come out again.
Herewiss did not pause for long. Pushing a great defiant glory of the Flame down Khávrinen’s length, he stepped through the doors, and the twilight within swallowed him as it had Freelorn. For an instant Khávrinen glimmered like a star seen through fog; then its light vanished.
Sunspark hesitated at the doors, though only for a moment. It was trembling in body, a sight that astounded Segnbora. “Firechild?”
(I’m bound,) it said in terror. (I can’t burn! I can’t change—)
She reached out to it in mind, perplexed, and felt Sunspark drowning in a cold more deadly than the lost gulfs between stars that Hasai had mentioned... a cold that could kill thought and motion and change of any kind, and from which Hasai had been shielding her. (Maybe you should stay outside,) she said.
Sunspark turned hard eyes on her. (I will not let him come to harm in there,) it said, and turned away to walk shaking through the doors. The dimness folded around its burning mane and tail, and Sunspark vanished.
“That’s done it,” Lang said, genial and terrified. “Damned if I’ll be outdone by a walking campfire—” He unsheathed his sword and went after, Torve close behind him.
There Segnbora stood, left alone on the threshold, trembling nearly as hard as Sunspark had.
No return...
She swore and hurried in behind the others.
***
She was in a great hall, all walled in sheer unfigured crystal, through which Adínë and the peaks beyond it showed clear. The air was thick with a blue dusk, like smoke. Segnbora barely had time to glance around her, though, before the terrible thought-numbing cold she had experienced through Sunspark came crowding in close around her, ten times worse than it had been outside.
From within her came an answering flare, Hasai and the mdeihei calling up old memories of warmth and daylight to fight the cold. Segnbora regained a little composure, looked around for the others. They were nowhere in sight. Deep in the twilight she saw vague forms moving, but somehow she knew that none of them were those with whom she’d entered. Her companions were all lost in the blueness, with Freelorn.
(Herewiss!) she called silently. (Sunspark!) But no reply came back, and her underspeech fell into a mental silence as thick as if she had shouted into a heavily curtained room.
“Herewiss!” she shouted aloud. The curli
ng twilight soaked up the sound of her voice like heavy fog. She hurried off into the blueness to try to find him or Freelorn.
For all her terror, the sheer scale of the wreaking that had made this place astonished Segnbora. Even at first entrance the place had seemed as big as Earneselle, or the Queens’ Hall in Prydon. But as she walked across the vast glassy floor, the walls grew remote, and the ceiling seemed to become a firmament that not even a soaring Dragon could reach. Mirrored in walls, galleries and crystalline arches, Segnbora could glimpse vague intimations of other rooms: up-reaching towers and balconies, parlors and courts, an infinity of glass reflected dimly in glass, too huge to ever know or search completely.
That terrible chill was part of the wreaking too, though here inside the castle seemed not to bite so viciously at the bones. It was becoming a quality of the mind: a cool lassitude, a twilight that ran in the veins and curled shadowy in the heart, smothering fear and veiling the desire to be out of there. She could feel that cold rising in her, but the presence of Hasai and the mdeihei was a match for ; their ancient sunfire burned the twilight out of her blood as fast as it grew. A weary melancholy, a desire to leave off striving and surrender to the dim stillness of the place forever, came in with every breath – but there was Dragonfire at the bottom of her lungs, painful and bright, burning the sad resignation away. Frightened by the constant assault, but reassured by the Dragons’ presence, Segnbora headed deeper into the shadowy blue.
The dead and those who had abandoned life gradually became evident around her. They were many, but none of them walked together. Young men and old women she passed; foreigners and countrymen, maidens and lords, and none of them took the slightest notice of her as they walked slowly, aimlessly through the blue—languid, uncaring, lost.
The place was a terrible parody of the last Shore by that Sea of which the Starlight is a faint intimation. The dead who walked there were at least aware. Here and there Segnbora caught sight of a surcoat-device she recognized, but afterward she was generally sorry she had looked. The dead wandered through the blue with ancient wounds in plain sight, neither bleeding nor healed...and the eyes of the wounded were oblivious, as if the injuries belonged to someone else.
Through halls and galleries and passages Segnbora made her way in increasing haste, up and down stairs, while Glasscastle’s inhabitants drifted around her, unaware, unconcerned. The feeling of sorrow in the air crushed in harder now, as if sensing Segnbora’s resistance. Every breath she drew seemed to have a catch in it, as if tears were about to follow.
But against the shadowy sorrow Hasai and the mdeihei blazed within her, the white of their Dragonfire burning and glittering from scales of many colors. The defiance and dismay of the mdeihei at so many beings who had given up being burned them... burned her. Their appalled song, a heart-shaking weave of deep notes like the ocean speaking in outrage, fought with the song of melancholy that whispered from Glasscastle’s walls.
Terrified that she might fall victim to the inward-stealing sorrow, Segnbora began breathing the litany of life and pain along with the mdeihei as she sought around her in mind for any feeling of Freelorn or Herewiss. The effort was in vain—the wreaking seemed to have shut down her underhearing almost completely. Finally she paused at a meeting-place of three long halls, and, in midbreath of a long phrase of Dracon song, felt a shadow looming over her.
She didn’t look up. That would have broken the illusion of the great head hanging over her, the mighty body burning in its iron and diamond, defying the cool darkness. But she put out a hand behind her to touch the sapphire hide. The hand was taken, ever so carefully, between great jaws. The heat fighting the encroaching cold flared higher. (Have I told you recently that I’m glad you’re here?) Segnbora said.
(Yesterday,) Hasai said, (I remember you telling me now. What’s that?)
She looked where he did. From among indistinct, wandering forms came a flash of light—faint, but still bright enough to be noticed in this blue gloom. (I don’t know, but let’s see—)
The path ahead was dark. She reached up a hand, simultaneously reaching down inside her for her little dying spark of Fire. Forcefully, she willed the one thing she had always been able to manage: a brief flash of light. For once it would be enough.
(What!) she thought a second later, amazed. Nothing had come; her Power source was blocked from her.
She tried again. Nothing happened. “Damn,” Segnbora said under her breath, perplexed, for it was supposed to take death to separate one from one’s Power, however feeble. There wasn’t time to puzzle over it now, however. And what if Herewiss is having the same problem? It was imperative that she find the others as quickly as possible.
The light glittered again, closer: a faint shimmer, there and gone. She headed toward the place where it had been—
—then, seeing the source, froze briefly in shock. Not far away an outwall rose, a giddy frameless window on the evening sky and the upper peak of Adínë. And there against crystal and dying sunset stood silhouetted a small slender woman in a midnight blue surcoat.
Her dark head was bent. Her arms were folded in front of her as she gazed out into the sorrowing twilight: her back was turned. The summersky opals set as the eyes of the eagle on the back of her surcoat now grasped and knitted together what little light there was, flashing it back at Segnbora. The eagle was white, in trian aspect, silver wings and blue Fire for eyes—the undifferenced Darthene arms, worn only by Queens and Kings. Segnbora had seen those same arms this morning on Eftgan’s back. But these were worked in an antique style, in embroidery that looked new—
“Efmaer,” Segnbora whispered.
Slowly she went to the unmoving woman, and stood beside her. Efmaer took no notice, just went on staring down into the pathless air. Her face was young, and frighteningly still. Her pale gray eyes had given up their color to the twilight and taken on its violet shimmer.
Segnbora had to swallow twice before she could speak. “Queen,” she said, “you’re a long time away from Darthis.”
The gray-violet eyes opened a touch wider. Disbelief danced in them for just a moment, and then began to fade again, sinking back into vague sorrow. The Queen didn’t move.
“Efmaer,” Segnbora said, louder. In the incredible silence, her own soft voice seemed to rattle her bones.
The Queen’s eyes shifted just a little toward Segnbora. “Since I came here,” Efmaer said, hardly above a whisper, “not one soul has spoken to me.” She said it gently, absently…but that voice was not meant to be a gentle one. It had the rasp of bronze in it, but the bronze was blunted by time and disuse. “I dream,” Efmaer said, “and the dreams grow vocal.”
It isn’t fair! Segnbora thought, losing her voice again, this time to impending tears. This woman had been one of the great powers of her time: vital, powerful, quick to laugh or fight or love. She was the woman who had fought Death and won. Yet now she was like all the others here, her spirit emptied out on the crystal floor.
“Queen,” Segnbora said at last, “I’m no dream, unless I stay here too long. Have you seen a man go by here, one of the living? He was wearing the arms of Arlen.”
Efmaer turned slowly, and her eyes dwelt on Segnbora’s surcoat and her lioncelle passant regardant in blood and gold. “I know that charge,” Efmaer said, showing for the first time a wrinkle of expression, a faint frown of lost memory. “My sister—”
“Enra,” Segnbora said. “I’m of her line. You are my…my aunt, Queen.”
“How many generations removed?” Efmaer said, and just for a second the bronze in her voice went bright.
Segnbora could not answer her.
“That many,” said the Queen. “She is dust, then. She walks the Shore…”
Efmaer’s voice drifted away as she started to lose herself again in the undertow of Glasscastle’s sorrow. Segnbora winced. There was something nagging at the back of her mind, something that would mean a great deal to this woman. If only she could remember—
&nb
sp; “Queen,” Segnbora said, “if you haven’t seen him, I can’t wait. I have to find him.”
“I could not find the one I sought, either,” Efmaer said in that same half-dreaming voice. “I looked and looked for Sefeden, while the Moon went down and the Evenstar set. We must have passed one another half a hundred times, and never known it…but the Firework sustaining this place is greater than any mortal wreaking, and the place keeps its own. You will not leave...”
“My friends and I will get out,” Segnbora said, hoping she was speaking the truth. “Come with us—”
Efmaer shook her head. “Only the living can leave this place.”
“Are you dead then, Eagle’s daughter?”
For the first time, Efmaer looked straight at Segnbora. Emotion was in those eyes now, but it was an utter hopelessness that made Segnbora shudder. “Do I look dead? Would that I were. Not Skádhwë itself could kill me here!”
“Skádhwë is here?”
“Somewhere,” the Queen said. “Once the doors closed, I lost it, the way I lost everything else. Yet even while the doors were open, it did me no good.” She closed her eyes, and with a great effort made another expression: pain. “I fought, but I could not kill myself, and so I am less than dead…”
Pity and horror wrung Segnbora, but she couldn’t stay. “Queen—I must go hunting.”
“He will be with her,” Efmaer said, still holding onto that look of pain like a banner of pride. “Far in, at the place where your heart breaks. But be out before moonset…”
She did not move or speak again. Segnbora paused only long enough to take one of those pale, pliant hands and lift it, kissing the palm in the farewell of kinsfolk of the Forty Houses. Then she turned and hurried away.