Ahead of her, hearing Steelsheen’s hooves scrape and clatter on the slippery rock, Lang twisted around in the saddle to look at her. “‘Berend?” he called anxiously through the screaming wind.
Their eyes met.
She saw him—saw Her. Lang looked no different. His voice still came out in a drawl. She could still underhear his mind lurching back and forth between indecision and placid acceptance. He still hated some things without reason, and loved others unreasonably. He still judged and criticized by provincial standards. He still smelled from not washing enough . . . yet he was She. The One. And when Segnbora looked ahead at Herewiss or Eftgan, or back at any of the nameless five hundred following behind, or even at their horses, the result was the same. All of them, everyone who lives. Every one the Goddess—
“Lang,” she said. It was almost a whisper, for she had little breath to spare in the grip of this painful ecstasy. This was the man to whom she’d too often behaved with casual callousness, refusing intimacy just because she felt like it. Yet there within him the Goddess looked out at her—not judging, as She certainly had the right to do, and not angry, either— simply loving her totally, without hesitation. She had always known that the Goddess indwelt in every man and woman, but experiencing it this way, now, was something else again.
Joy, laced with bitterness at her years of disregard of the One she loved, rose until it choked her. Tears spilled over and froze on her face in the icy wind. Her voice wouldn’t work anymore. Knowing it was useless, but driven by an overwhelming need to communicate what was happening to her somehow, she bespoke him. (Lang!)
He stared at her in sheer disbelief. “‘Berend?”
He had heard her!
The pain fell away from her joy like a cast-off cloak. Segnbora sobbed, sagging in her saddle, and drew in a long breath. She had a great deal to tell him. (Loved—)
—and Gyrfalcon missed his footing, going down on his knees on a patch of ice. His hindquarters slipped off the path to the left, and the rest of him followed. Segnbora had a quick glimpse of Lang reaching for the ledge, more surprised than frightened, and that was all.
“LANG!” she screamed.
Almost before the scream had left her throat, Sunspark had leaped away from the ledge and plunged down into the snow-swirling emptiness like a thunderbolt, streaming fire. The line of riders behind her halted as she, like Freelorn and Eftgan in front of her, peered down into the whiteness, dumb with shock. A long time they waited there for the bloom of fire through the snow. Then, slowly, the brightness came walking up through the air and stood again before the ledge. Herewiss was alone on Sunspark’s back.
(‘Berend,) Herewiss said, and had to pause. She could feel his eyes filling. (He’s… It was quick. I share your grief.)
All behind her, starting with Dritt, Moris, Harald, and the foremost of the Darthene riders, she could feel sorrow and fear spreading like ripples in a pool. She was numb, having fallen from such a height to such a depth so quickly. Yet still she could see Who consoled her as she looked at Herewiss.
(May our sorrow soon pass,) she said silently. A knife turned slowly within her at the memory of the last time she had said those words.
Herewiss broke their gaze. (We’ll come back for him as soon as we can,) he said. Looking thoughtful as well as grieved, he reined Sunspark about and took the path again.
It took two more hours to complete the rest of the ride down. The slope grew gradually less steep, and the ledges a bit wider, but the snow continued. Lang was not the only rider who was lost. Just minutes after his death, one of another horse and rider, of Eftgan’s troop, came plummeting down past Segnbora. The falling rider’s glance locked with Segnbora’s in the second of her passing. Still weeping, Segnbora could do nothing but pour herself into the look, see Who was falling, and aid Her in accepting what was happening. In that second, the woman’s fear-twisted face calmed. Then she was gone.
Segnbora rode on, trembling. She turned a switchback and found herself at the top of a long skirt of scree and rough stones, which lead down to a slope carpeted in snow-covered grass. Glancing at the sky, Segnbora knew the storm wasn’t going to let up. In front of her, Eftgan was checking her saddlebags to make sure the Regalia were safe. Herewiss had drawn Khávrinen and was pointing at the snow. There were prints in it: the big splayed tracks of a horwolf, and a keplian’s pad-and-claw set. Both trails were only minutes old. Both led to the cliff’s foot and away again, westward.
“We’re expected,” Herewiss said. “I’m done with being circumspect, Queen.” Fire flowed down Khávrinen’s blade in defiant brilliance. “We’ve got to stay alive. Meantime, we had better get to the Heugh fast. The Bindings are slipping from the pressure of so many beings in this area.”
Eftgan nodded. “Can you shore up the Bindings until we complete the ritual?”
“I can,” Herewiss said. “I’ve been doing it for several hours. But it’s tiring. How long I can hold out, I’ve no idea.”
“Once we begin, the blood-binding won’t take long,” Eftgan reassured him. Thumping Scoundrel’s sides, she wheeled westward. “The ground between here and the Heugh is smooth. Let’s make time.”
They had to go slowly at first, so that the Darthene riders still on the slope would have time to catch up. It was about fifteen minutes into this process that the first cohort of Fyrd found them. There were only twenty or thirty—horwolves and keplian who had been patrolling the heights and thought it wise to attack before the main force was down off the Fell.
It was a mistake. Like lightning dancing a death-dance, Khávrinen rose and fell in the forefront of the skirmish. What its blade didn’t slay, Herewiss’s Fire did. Sunspark was incensed; any Fyrd it looked at became ashes in seconds. Fórlennh and Süthan flickered red and blue in Firelight and flamelight. Segnbora swept Skádhwë’s blackness about her in an utter calm that felt very strange. Shortly, nothing moved but Darthenes and the wind. Drifts began forming around the bodies in the snow.
The Darthenes had a few wounded, none seriously, and none had been lost—a small miracle for which everyone was thankful. “What’s the time?” Freelorn said.
“Three hours past noon.” Eftgan looked around and saw the last of her riders coming down off Britfell. “Wyn will be moving the forces forward at four. Let’s get up that Heugh.”
It was only a mile to Lionheugh, but they bought every furlong of the distance dearly. The fourth cohort of Fyrd was the biggest, some three hundred of the creatures. There were not many nadders, because of the coldness of the weather. There were, unfortunately, many maws and keplian, the worst Fyrd breeds for riders to handle. There were also four deathjaws, three of which Herewiss dealt with, and one of which Eftgan destroyed with an astonishing blast of blue Fire.
By the time this attack was over, no one was quite as lively as they had been. Nearly everyone had a wound of one type or another. Eftgan and Freelorn were unhurt, but Herewiss had a long set of slashes from a keplian’s claws, and Moris and Dritt and Harald all had maw bites. But no Fyrd had been allowed to get away and warn others of what had happened.
“You and I were lucky,” Freelorn said to Eftgan.
“Luck has nothing to do with it. If our blood falls on this land and we have the brains to do a binding right away, that One would lose a great deal of its Power.” Eftgan whipped blood off Fórlennh. “Herewiss?”
He was sitting astride Sunspark with a look on his face that was either annoyance or strain. Khávrinen in his hand was flaring with a wild glory of Fire as he healed himself. “It’s putting on pressure,” he said. “Things are trying to return to the way they were before the Binding, and this Fyrd blood isn’t helping matters.”
“Let’s go. ‘Berend?” She glanced at Segnbora as they began to move through the blinding snow. “You all right?”
“Fine.” Segnbora held Skádhwë over her knee at the ready. “You always used to be so noisy in battles! I keep looking around to see if something got you.”
?
??My lodgers are doing my hollering for me,” she said. The Dragons didn’t care for Fyrd, and her mdeihei had been singing martial musics laced with Dragonfire ever since she came down from Britfell. Battlecries seemed superfluous with that inner thunder going on.
Eftgan met her glance with an odd expression, as if seeing some stranger who was Segnbora’s twin. “‘Berend, you’ve become more than your lodgers, somehow. What happened up there?”
It was a poor time to explain. “I’m not sure,” Segnbora said. “Nothing of the Dark One’s doing, that’s certain.” For if there was anything the Shadow didn’t want mortals to know, it was what Segnbora had learned. Once one knew Who one was, It started losing its power over that person. But It’ll keep arguing the point for a while...
Segnbora let out a breath and kicked Steelsheen into a gallop, getting Skadhwë ready. The realizations were coming too close together: the hugeness of them was dazzling her. She needed something concrete on which to fasten her mind.
Unfortunately, she got it. To their right, the crest of Britfell had been getting lower as they headed west. With little warning the fell simply stopped in a sheer cliff. Out of the falling snow their destination loomed: Lionheugh.
To the west, not even the snow could muffle a great confused roaring—shouts and battlecries, the bray of Reaver war horns and the thin silver cries of trumpets. As they drew rein under the shadow of the Heugh, Eftgan waved Torve over, putting up Fórlennh and unsheathing her Rod.
“Leave me fifty,” she said. “Take the rest and hit them hard wherever it seems best. My compliments to my Consort when you see him, and tell Wyn I’m sorry we’re late, but we were detained. Ride!”
“Madam!” Torve said, and rode off hard with four hundred fifty of the Darthene cavalry behind him. The snow swallowed them.
Freelorn rode up to join the Queen, with Moris and Dritt and Harald close behind. “I have to do something about this weather, even if it’s only temporary,” said Eftgan, shaking the Fire down her Rod. “Then we’ll do our business. Herewiss, how are you doing?”
He was holding Khávrinen before him in both hands, his eyes fixed on it. A frightening brilliance of Fire streamed about man and sword. “I’ll hold,” he said, but there was strain in his voice, and the feeling of malicious intent in the air hung closer than it had before. “The Shadow’s pressing, though. There’s so much bloodshed going on, and It’s feeding on that. I daren’t be distracted long—”
“Up with us,” Eftgan said.
Punching Scoundrel, she rode at a gallop up the path to the Heugh. No one was surprised by the Fyrd waiting for them there. They dropped from rocks and leaped up under the horses’ hooves. Eftgan’s Rod crackled with Fire as she laid it about her like a whip. Whatever she struck didn’t move again. Segnbora and Freelorn galloped behind her, watching the Queen’s back, slicing down with Skadhwë and Süthan. Behind them came Herewiss, with Moris and Dritt and Harald about him as guard.
Very quickly, it seemed, they made the top of the Heugh and gathered there on the level ground, the Queen’s riders and Freelorn’s followers circling around in case any more Fyrd should attack uphill.
“No Reavers yet, and none of Cillmod’s people,” Eftgan said, dismounting hurriedly and raising her Rod. “That’s a mercy; maybe they don’t know we’re here. E’hstirre na lai’tehen ándrastiw vhai!” Eftgan cried into the wind in Nhàired, lifting her Rod two-handed and pointing it at the roiling sky. She sighted along the Rod’s length as if along the stock of a crossbow.
At the last word of her wreaking, another piercing line of blue Fire lanced upward and struck into the underbelly of the cloud above them. The wind screamed, the cloud tore away from the ravening Fire like flesh from a wound. It tore, and tore—ripping backward and dissolving, revealing blue sky and afternoon sunlight. The snow stopped as the clouds retreated, until a great patch of sky the width of Bluepeak valley was clear.
Standing on that height, for the first time they could see what was happening. The Reavers and the main Darthene force were locked in battle in the pass, and the Darthenes were already well ahead of the position at which Eftgan had intended them to start. Even as they watched, the Reavers lost some ground, pushed uphill by heartened Darthenes who knew why the weather had suddenly cleared up. A sudden blot of darkness from the east—the riders who had followed Eftgan over the fell—smote into the Reavers’ uneven right flank and scattered it.
“The clearing won’t last,” Eftgan said, breathing hard and leaning against Scoundrel. “I have to save some Power for the binding. Lorn, the Regalia, quickly!”
Freelorn had already undone Eftgan’s saddle-roll, and now unrolled it before her. It contained an odd assortment: an old knife of very plain make, black of hilt and blade, and a rough circlet of gold that looked as if it had been hammered out by an amateur. It had, Segnbora knew, for this was Dekórsir, the Queen’s Gold—the crown that each Darthene ruler hammered out unguarded in the open marketplace, once a year, to give the people a chance to dispose of an unfit ruler if there was need. There was also another circlet, this one of exquisite workmanship, woven as it was of strands of linked and braided silver.
Freelorn lifted the circlet up with a blaze of angry delight in his eyes. It was Laeran’s Band, the ancient crown of the kings and queens of Arlen. “Where did you get this?!”
“I had it stolen several days ago,” Eftgan said, kneeling down beside the saddle-roll. “In the middle of last week, when Cillmod took it out of Lionhall.”
Freelorn stopped still as death and stared at Eftgan. “When he what…?” His voice failed him. No one but the members of the royal line of Arlen could set foot in Lionhall and come out alive. And Freelorn was an only child…or had thought he was.
“It occurs to me that your father may have had a sharing-child he didn’t know about,” Eftgan said, setting Dekórsir on her head. “Or one he didn’t care to legitimize. No matter right now. I’m just sorry we couldn’t find Hergótha.”
Freelorn turned the supple strip of metal over in his hands. “The thought of Cillmod wearing this—”
“I couldn’t stand it either. Shut up and put it on, Lorn. Herewiss can’t brace the Binding by himself much longer.”
It was true. Herewiss had dismounted from Sunspark, unable to spare even the small amount of concentration needed to stay astride, and was sitting with his back against a rock. Khávrinen lay across his lap, clutched in both hands. He had begun to shine, growing almost translucent, as he had at Barachael, and the stones of the Heugh sang with the Power that was pouring out of him. He was holding his own, but just barely. Segnbora looked around and found that underhearing was no longer necessary to feel the strain in the earth and the air.
Eftgan’s riders and Freelorn’s followers were all looking over their shoulders, hunting the source of the strange feelings inside them. Herewiss’s will could clearly be felt battling with the One that poured Its rage into the valley. He was keeping away the ancient reality, as if he had his back braced against a closed door. But the pounding on the other side, the rhythmic throb of rage and hatred, was getting stronger—
“We are the land,” Eftgan and Freelorn were saying in unison. They knelt before one another, knee to knee, holding the black knife together, Lorn wearing the strip of silver, Eftgan the circlet of gold. Their joined voices—Freelorn speaking the ritual in Arlene and Eftgan in Darthene—made an uncanny music. The hair on Segnbora’s neck rose at it, hearing in human voices an echo of the mdeihei. “Its earth is our flesh; its water our blood; its weal our joy; its illness our pain…”
The ritual continued, speaking of mysteries particular to the royal priesthood. Many of the riders turned away, trying not to listen to a ceremony that no one not of royal blood had heard since the founding of the Kingdoms. Segnbora stood by with Skadhwë in her hand and listened fearlessly, in wonder, hearing once again the Goddess speaking to Herself: one Lover speaking to the Other in solemn celebration of Their eternal relationship.
&n
bsp; She saw Lorn take the knife and cut Eftgan’s upheld left wrist with it, crosswise and careful. Both of them paused a moment, trembling. At the stroke of the ritual wounding the hammering of hatred in the air grew more savage. It was almost physically perceptible. Eftgan took the knife from Freelorn and reached for his left wrist—
—the Fyrd came up the hill in a wave, horwolves and maws together. Behind them came two-legged forms in rough skins and crude metal and leather corselets, bearing leaf-shaped bronze swords and bows of horn, howling like the beasts they followed.
Eftgan pitched forward gasping from a black-fletched Reaver arrow lodged between her shoulder and throat. Horrorstruck, Segnbora watched helplessly as Lorn sat her up straight, breaking the fletching off the arrow and pulling the point end out of the wound with brutal efficiency. He snatched up the black blade and something else—then there was a Reaver in front of Segnbora, blocking her view.
She met the man’s brown eyes, sank into them as Shíhan had taught her, felt the move he was about to make. A second later, Skadhwë had countered and sliced the man’s chest through from side to side. As he died she didn’t break that gaze. She knew Who she had killed, and let the Other know Who had killed him. She grieved for his death and accepted it as her own, completely. Then she looked up at her next opponent—a nadder this time—saw Her there too, and killed again, out of necessity, in love.
And then did it again. And again. And again.
The Darthene riders encircling the hill knew immediately what Segnbora didn’t have leisure to notice for some time: there were too many Reavers and Fyrd. If they attempted to hold this position, they’d be killed off slowly. Most of the riders had pushed to the side from which the worst attack was coming, the west side, so that behind them Eftgan and Freelorn and Herewiss could get away.
Freelorn shoved Eftgan up into Blackmane’s saddle and fastened Scoundrel’s reins to the stirrups. Rushing over to Herewiss next, he literally picked him up from where he sat, snapping orders at Sunspark. The shocked elemental knelt to take Herewiss on his back.