“Lorn, it’s sunset,” Herewiss said. “We’d never get past her boundaries before nightfall.”
Freelorn stared at Herewiss as if he had taken leave of his senses. “Loved, that’s a busted Rod there! Fire obviously doesn’t do much good against a nightmare – “
“There are other defenses,” Herewiss said absently. It was as if he were reading about the problem from a book rather than seeing it in front of him. He looked up at Segnbora. “How about it?”
Segnbora walked around to the other side of the spinney as if to examine where the nest had been, waiting until the tree hid her before she swallowed, hard. Nightmares—minor demonic aspects of the Goddess’s dark side—typically nested in barren places like this. They fell upon travelers, sucked them dry of the spark of Power they possessed, then fed the dead flesh to their fledgling nightfoals. Since they were Shadowbred, Fire was food and drink to them. They could only be killed with one’s bare hands, and only if those hands were a woman’s.
Segnbora walked around to face the others. “It’s getting toward Midsummer,” she said, amazed at how calmly her voice came out. “Her brood will be gone now, and she’ll have eaten the nightstallion—”
Freelorn’s face twisted. “They—eat their—”
“They are the Devourer,” Segnbora said, very low. “That aspect of the Dark One trusts nothing She hasn’t consumed.” She glanced over at Herewiss. “Well, I broke Steelsheen with my bare hands. I think I can manage this.”
Behind Herewiss, Lang’s face was white with shock. She refused to look at him after that first glance. “I’ll make a circle,” Herewiss said. “You’ll have warning. What else will you want?”
Last rites, probably. “A fire,” she said.
Herewiss smiled slightly. “I think I know where to get some. Sunspark!”
Segnbora walked toward the sudden campfire, wishing there were such a thing as luck, so she could curse it.
***
For once, night came down too suddenly for her taste. Segnbora sat with the others near Sunspark’s blazing self, looking out toward the stony darkness. Here and there, maybe at a hundred yards’ distance, a flicker of Herewiss’s Fire showed blue between the boulders, indicating the ward-circle he had laid down. Firelight danced on the face of the cliff as Segnbora sat near a gnarled little rowan bush and tended to herself in the huge silence, which even the horses, hobbled and tethered inside the circle, didn’t break.
She was running out of things to do in order to get ready, having gone through all the small personal bindings that a sorcerer would perform to further the larger binding she intended. Her swordbelt’s hanging end was tucked in. Her hair, too short to braid, she had tied with a thong into a stubby tail and bound close to her head. Her sleeves were rolled up. The buckles on her boots and her mailshirt were tight. Segnbora would have tied Skádhwë into its sheath, but it had no peace-strings such as Charriselm had had, and all her attempts to bind the shadowblade with cord had been useless; it cut them all. Finally she’d just taken Skádhwë out of the scabbard and stuck it into a handy rock.
Now she thought of one more binding to add. Rummaging around in her belt-pouch for a bit of thread, she bound it around her left thumb nine times: the soul-cord that would keep her soul within her body until a pyre’s blaze freed it. She tied the ninefold knot, and glanced up as she bit it off. Freelorn was holding a cup for her. It was of light wood, with a design of leaves carved around it below the lip. She recognized it: his and Herewiss’s lovers’-cup.
“Hot wine,” Lorn said, sitting down with his back against a nearby boulder. Warmed by the gesture, she took it and drank, hoping the shaking of her hands wouldn’t show too much.
“It shows. Forget it,” Herewiss said, sitting down beside Freelorn.
She extended the cup to him, leaning back against the knobby little rowan as Herewiss drank in turn. Afterward, he poured some wine into the fire, which had acquired eyes, and then passed the cup back to Freelorn.
Lorn leaned back against the boulder, and Herewiss leaned back too, resting his head against Lorn’s chest. “You sure there’s nothing you can do?” Freelorn said, sounding sorrowful.
Herewiss glanced up at him. “Swords don’t bite on nightmares, loved. I’m sorry.”
Freelorn nodded, still looking uneasy. “This business of the Lady’s ‘dark side,’” he said, “I’ve never really understood how She can have a dark side…”
“It is this way,” Segnbora started, mostly out of reflex, and then stopped herself. Embarrassed, she took the cup back and drank again.
“No, go ahead,” Herewiss said, with a wry look. “If you’re going to become something’s dinner tonight, we might as well get one more story out of you. Tell it as they tell it at Nháiredi. I’ve never heard their version.”
She sighed, suddenly amused by the surroundings – no cozy inn or palace hall, but the huge and empty night of waste country; and here she sat playing to an audience of kings-by-courtesy, part-time princes, and outlaws. And you too, she thought, as from down in the darkness within her an interested rumbling floated up – the mdeihei, eager to hear a memory, even a made-up one.
“It’s this way,” she said. “Because the Goddess bound Herself at the Making into everything She had made, the great Death became bound into Her too, and She into It. Though She’d brought It life, the Shadow still hated Her and did Her all the harm It could, causing each of Her fair aspects to cast a dark shadow of its own. Therefore the Devourer exists, and the One with Still Hands…” She shivered. “…and the Pale Winnower. Their Power is terrible, and the Goddess cannot banish them; in this Making, They are part of Her.
“But in the south of Steldin, people explain our Lady’s dark side differently. They tell how, on the plain north of Mincar, there lived an austringer and her wife. The austringer was a placid woman, easily pleased and as calm as one of her hawks after a feeding. The austringer’s wife, on the other hand, was never content with anything, and sharpened her tongue continually on her spouse.
“There came a day when the austringer took a good catch of pheasant and barwing. The next morning she set out for Mincar market to sell the game.
“Now, on her way to the market square, as she passed through the wealthy part of town, the austringer saw a sight stranger and more lovely than any she had ever seen. Tied to a reining-post was a great, tall silver-white steed, shining in the morning. When she drew near to it, it turned its head to gaze at her with eyes as dark as the missing half of the Moon. It was tethered with a bridle of woven silver.
“She recognized it then. It was one of the Moonsteeds, aspects of the Maiden that mirror the Moon in its changes, and which cannot be caught by any means except with a bridle that is wrought of noon-forged silver in such a fashion as to have no beginning and no end. Some lord or lady had caused the bridle to be made, and had managed to catch the Steed. And as the austringer stood there and pitied the poor creature, free from time’s beginning and now bound, it lowered its head and said to her, ‘Free me, and I’ll do you a good turn when I may.’
“So she cut the bridle with her knife, and the Moonsteed reared and pawed the air and said, ‘If you want for anything, go out into the fields and call me, and I will be with you.’ And it vanished.
“The austringer thought it well to vanish from the area herself. She went to market and sold her birds, and then went home in a hurry in order to tell her wife what she had seen. That was a mistake. ‘Surely,’ her wife said, ‘the Steed will grant you anything you want. Go out and ask it to make us rich.’
“She nagged the austringer unmercifully until at last she gave in and went out into the night, under the first-quarter Moon, to call the Steed. It came, saying ‘What can I do for you?’
“‘My wife wants to be rich. Wants us to be rich, rather,’ said the austringer.
“‘The first was closer to the truth, I think,’ the Steed said, ‘but go home, it has happened already.’ And the austringer went home to find her wi
fe happily running her fingers through bags of Moon-white silver, chuckling to herself about the fine robes and elegant food she would soon have in place of her brown homespun and coarse bread.
“For about a week things went well. But folk nearby began to ask questions, and then the tax collectors arrived, leaving with more silver than pleased the austringer’s wife. ‘This isn’t working,’ she said to the austringer. ‘Go ask the Steed to make me the tax collector. And I want a house befitting my station.’
“‘No one will talk to us any more!’ the austringer said. But her wife gave her no peace, and sent her off to the fields at nightfall.
“The austringer called the Moonsteed, and there it came in a white blaze of light, for the Moon was near to full. ‘What can I do for you?’ it asked. ‘Though I have a feeling I know.’
“‘My wife wants to be a tax collector, and have a tax collector’s fine house,’ the austringer said.
“‘Go home, it’s done,’ said the Steed. And the austringer went home and found their thatched cottage changed to a tall house of rr’Harich marble; and her wife was twenty times as rich as she had been before.
“After that things went as you might imagine. A week later the austringer’s wife wanted to be mayor, and so she was. Afterward she became bailiff, and Dame, and Head of House, one after another. Her house became golden-pillared and roofed with crystal, filled with rich stuffs and things out of legend—feather-hames and charmed weapons and even the silver chair that later belonged to the Cat of Aes Aradh—but none of it gave her joy for more than a day. Each night she sent the austringer out to ask for another boon, and the austringer grew sad and pale, seeing that her wife loved her possessions more than she loved her.
“And as the days passed the aspect of the Moonsteed grew darker, for the old Moon was waning. White-silver the Steed had been at first, like moonlight on snow. Now it waxed darker each night, and frightened the austringer.
“The boons grew greater and greater. Head of the Ten High Houses, the austringer’s wife became; then Chief of them, then High Minister, then Priestess-Consort. And still she wanted more.
“Finally the night came of the dark of the Moon—”
Segnbora broke off for a moment, fumbling for the wine cup. Her mouth had gone suddenly dry. It was only three nights from Moondark now, that time when a nightmare would be strongest.
“—the dark of the Moon, and the austringer went out to the fields to call on the Moonsteed for the last time. It came, burning with awful dark splendor and wrath, and said in its gentle voice, ‘What is it now? Your wife has asked, and I have granted, even to the last times when she asked to be Queen of Steldin, and then High Queen of all the Kingdoms. What more might she want?’
“The austringer trembled, and said, ‘She wants to rule the Universe.’”
Segnbora lifted the cup again and finished the wine.
There was silence. Freelorn glanced down expectantly at Herewiss, whose eyes were turned away, then back at Segnbora. “So?”
“So She does.” She handed back the empty cup. “Now you tell one.”
Behind them, Blackmane screamed. Herewiss jerked upright as if he had been kicked. All around the camp heads turned out toward the darkness.
The nightmare stood for a moment among the boulders that had fallen from the cliff, and then stepped forward delicately. It was small, no bigger than a seven-months’ filly. Its silken mane and tail hung to the ground. Slim-legged and clean of line, seemed at first as elegant and graceful as a unicorn. But Its eyes were evil, red and bottomless, full of old cruelties and insatiable hunger. From a coat the color of the rolled-up whites of a dead man’s eyes, the nightmare cast a faint yellowish corpse-light that illuminated nothing.
Segnbora got up, dry-mouthed again. She took a few steps forward and folded her arms, staring into those ancient, burning eyes. It’s just like Nhàirëdi, with that demon they caught. No different. Hold the eyes—
“Be thou warned,” Segnbora said in the formal manner reserved for the laying of dooms, “that I am well informed of thee and thy ways, of thy comings and goings, thy wreakings and undoings; and that my intent is to bind thee utterly to my will, and confine thee to the dark from which thou cam’st at the birth of days. So unless thou wish to try thy strength with me, and be compelled by the binding I shall work upon thee, then get thee hence and have no more to do with me and mine.”
She held very still. The nightmare now had the option to retreat. It could also answer ritually, or could attack –
“How should I fear you?” the nightmare said, sweetly taunting – and its voice was that of Segnbora’s slain otherself, not piteous as during those last moments in Glasscastle, but mocking and cruel. “Rodmistresses in the full of their Power have tried conclusions with me, and you see what happened to them. Fear you?—not even focused, and retired from sorcery lest you fail at that too?” It laughed, a sound like bells and poison.
“Be still!” Segnbora said in a voice like a whipcrack. But no power was behind the order, and the nightmare laughed at her, a sound ugly with knowledge.
“You make a fine noise,” it said, flicking its tail insolently. “But all your years’ studies have left you with nothing but knowledge. Spells and tales and sayings – but no Power. Or Power enough – if you dared to use it. Which you don’t!”
She clenched her fists and took a step forward, then stopped, desperately seeking control. (Hasai—!)
“Oh, by all means call up your ghost,” the nightmare said, stepping forward too, and laughing with the cold merriment of a damned thing. “You don’t dare accept what he has to offer, either. There you are, walking on water, complaining that there’s nothing to drink! And you can’t even make use of what little power you do have. Battles and wars and wreakings pass over you, the earth moves, Glasscastle falls about your ears, and none of it is enough to free you. You’re dead!”
Behind her Segnbora could feel Freelorn wanting to move, and Herewiss holding him still with that same vise-grip in which he had held her at Barachael. The others were frozen, eyes glittering, muscles bound still. Even Sunspark’s flames flowed more slowly than usual. “What a heroine you are,” said the scornful voice. “And dead past all denying. Life gives life. You devour as surely as I do! Just look at your slug of a leman there.”
The malicious black eyes dwelt on Lang with vast amusement. “He no more dares open himself to you than you do to him. He knows what Eftgan knew: that what you call ‘love’ is nothing but shrieking need. He knows that if he once let down his guard, you’d eat him down to the bones like a starving beggar at a banquet and come away unsatisfied, moaning for more.” The nightmare chuckled, the red eyes burning with amusement. “And any hopes he might have of you are vain, for you haven’t opened up to another human being since you were big enough to be stumbled over out in back of the chicken house. Everything that comes out of your mouth is storytelling—everyone’s story but your own. You don’t trust anybody. You don’t trust yourself. And especially you don’t trust yourself with that—what feels like the Fire, and isn’t—”
Humiliation and rage seared through her. Segnbora took another slow step forward, hanging onto the words of the ritual for dear life and not daring to look at Lang. “I may warn thee again: get hence, lest I lay such strictures about thee that from age to age shalt thou lie bound in the never-lightened gulfs—”
“Oh, say the words of the sorcery, for all the good they’ll do,” the nightmare said, baring her yellow teeth in scorn. “As if you of all people could control another aspect of the Devourer! You can’t even manage what lies under the stone at the bottom of your self, festering at the bottom of all your ‘loves’, hating the one who plundered you, taking revenge on anyone else who tries to get in. Freelorn there, he found out what happens to someone who gets closer to you than a sword’s length. There are sharper things to stab a heart with than knives. Why, you even ran across yourself, and didn’t speak six sentences to her before you killed yourself.
Pity it didn’t take. There would have been celebrations.” It grinned. “No matter. Shortly there will be—”
Segnbora leaped at the nightmare head-on, grabbing great handfuls of its mane and trying to hold its head away from her. The nightmare plunged and reared, and after a second fastened its teeth into Segnbora’s mailshirt, cracking the links like dry twigs and driving them excruciatingly through padding and breastband, into the breast beneath. It shook her viciously from side to side, as a dog shakes a rat.
With every jerk of its head Segnbora cried out in pain, yet she managed to hold on for some seconds—then let go her right hand’s hold in the mane and grabbed the nightmare’s nose instead, digging her thumbnail deep into the nostril. Now it was the nightmare’s turn to scream: once as she let Segnbora fall, and once again as its backward plunge tore out a great handful of its silken mane.
Segnbora scrambled to her feet, tearing with the pain, doing her best to concentrate on twisting the long hank of mane into a rough cord between her hands. “Are you—so sure?” she gasped as she and the nightmare began to circle one another. “Foolish—letting me get so close. I know how to bind you, child of our Mother. And know how to make an end of you, Power or not. Shortly you’re going to be seeing more of the dark places than you’ll like—”
She sprang again, this time for the nightmare’s flank. It danced hurriedly to one side, but with the second leap Segnbora got astride the nightmare’s back. The nightmare bucked and kicked and reared, leaping in the air and coming down with all four feet together, as a horse does to kill a snake. But Segnbora hung on, legs locked, hands twined in the long mane.
She got one hand down over the nightmare’s nose again, and dug her nails once more into the nostrils. The nightmare screamed, and as it did Segnbora whipped the corded length of mane down and into its mouth. Quickly she brought the ends under its chin and up around its muzzle, and knotted them tight, binding its mouth closed.