Segnbora had her hands very full of Reavers and Fyrd for a few wild minutes, until slowly they began to give her breath. Their first charge was exhausted. But the Reavers had also started to stay clear of Skádhwë’s uncanny blade, as wary of its sorcery as of the madwoman wielding it while her face streaming calm tears.
“‘Berend!” Freelorn shouted at her.
Segnbora took a moment before answering to look with her sharpened vision at the battlefield. The sight was a shock. More forces were pouring into the valley’s mouth from behind the Spine—not Reavers, and not Darthenes, certainly. They were falling on the Darthene right flank and crushing it as easily as a stone falling on an egg.
“Damn him!” she cried, and turned away from the hill-crest, running for Steelsheen and the others. The Queen’s scrying had been accurate after all. Cillmod had gotten wind of the upcoming battle, and had evidently decided that this was an expeditious time to both distract the Darthenes from retaliation on his borders and exterminate their fighting force as well. There were none of the Royal Arlene army down there. Such loyal Regulars might have been persuaded to turn against Cillmod since Freelorn was in the field. All these were mercenaries.
Flinging herself into Steelsheen’s saddle, Segnbora rode down the trail to clear a path for Freelorn, swearing all the way. It was very obvious now why there were so few unattached mercenaries for hire in the Kingdoms. The Darthenes down there were badly outnumbered.
Behind Segnbora, Sunspark was doing some swearing of its own. (What’s the matter with him? Did they hurt him somehow?) It danced a little as it cantered down the trail, obviously wanting very badly to let its fire loose. (If he doesn’t come out of this shortly, the whole lot of them are going to make a very nice cloud of smoke!)
Freelorn, holding the bleeding Eftgan in front of him on Blackmane, looked as haggard as if he had been shot himself. Remembering Herewiss’s true-dream, the thought made Segnbora’s heart turn over. “Firechild,” she said, “he’s all right, he’s just keeping things from getting much worse. For the love of him, save it for later!”
The Power Herewiss was pouring out was astonishing. It frightened Segnbora. She had witnessed great wreakings in the Precincts in which fifty or more Rodmistresses had worked in consort, and all of them together hadn’t let out a flood of Fire like this. Khávrinen struck razor-sharp shadows from everything its light touched, and Herewiss’s flesh burned transparent as an imminent dawn. Some of the Reavers were turning away from them even now, frightened by the sight of the statue-still rider with the thunderbolt in his hands. One Reaver though got up the nerve to fire an arrow. The instant it touched the writhing aura of Flame winding upward about Herewiss, it flared to ashes and blew away.
“Can you gallop without dropping him?” Freelorn shouted at Sunspark as they made down off the Heugh onto the plain again.
It bared its teeth at him in scorn. (Gallop! Is that all? Where do you want him?)
Freelorn looked from west to east, and got a look of sudden recognition on his face. He flung out an arm, pointing. “There!”
East and a little south of the Heugh, one of the spurs of Kerana came down in a little scraped-away scarp, sheer on all sides except for one shallow approach where riders could go up. It could be defended without too much trouble.
(Done!) Sunspark said. It leaped cat-smooth into the air, shooting southeast so fast the air behind it thundered in shock.
Freelorn and his band and the Darthenes went after at full gallop, not sparing the horses. They couldn’t: if they didn’t make it up that scarp, there would be no later to save them for. They had a mile or so to cover, across snowy ground, and they had hardly been galloping more than a half minute before they lost the sunlight and the clouds closed up again. With unnatural swiftness it began to snow once more. The wind scaled back up to a scream, and darkness began to fall. It was the darkness Segnbora feared most, for above it and within it the voice of the Shadow could be heard, howling with enmity.
On the scarp a mile off, a light shone as if a star had fallen there, bright enough to cast shadows at even this distance. But the brilliance of Herewiss’s Fire was no great comfort. A fresh group of Fyrd and Reaver riders were hot behind them, perhaps a half mile back. Eftgan, clutching Blackmane’s saddle and hanging on as best she could, looked back at their pursuers and moaned softly. Freelorn’s face was grim.
“They’re catching up, Lorn,” Segnbora shouted.
The group rode like hunters, whipping their horses to a lather as they rode into the screaming, stinging night. The scarp was right before them, lit with a pillar of blue Fire that flickered eerily on the cloud-bottoms and turned the wind-whipped snow to a blizzard of blue sparks.
The riders went up the scarp like a breaking wave, the horses stumbling, foundering, finding the path by luck or Goddess’s love. The way up was none too wide and could easily be kept clean of Reavers—for a while. Behind Freelorn and the Queen, the others closed ranks. Overhead, the daunting blows of the Shadow’s hatred became suddenly audible. There was thunder in the snow-clouds, and the wind shrieked furiously around the steeples of the cliff-wall behind them.
Freelorn threw himself out of the saddle, pulled Eftgan down and helped her over to shelter behind a rock at the foot of the cliff. He pulled out the knife, put it into her clutching, shaking hand. Crying with the effort, she braced herself against the stone and reached up to cut—
Shouts and the clash of steel rang out on the plain, where some of the Darthenes were holding the approach to the path up the cliff. Sunspark, who had been bending over Herewiss in concern, jerked its head up and stared down at the Reavers and Fyrd in rage.
(This is your fault!!) it cried in a thought that not even the smothering darkness could muffle. It leaped like a skyrocket down to the foot of the scarp, reared, and brought down its forefeet with a crash that split stones. Wildfire burst up from where its hooves struck, and ran madly to either side in front of the scarp. The fire ignored the Darthenes, but any Reaver or Fyrd it touched blazed like tinder and was blown away across the snow as ashes a breath later. The Reavers drew back in panic from the apparition that suddenly stood between them and the scarp: a huge, crouching cat of swirling fire that stalked forward with blazing eyes, pausing to raise one flaming paw.
—the blood ran down Freelorn’s arm, and he pressed it to Eftgan’s wound. “And we who are One—come on, Eftgan!—One and not-One say to the land which is us, and of us, be not—”
The earth began to tremble. From the south, visible in this unnatural black as something blacker yet, a great wave of dark Power rose and rose above the mountains, leaned, and fell with a crash that couldn’t be heard, only felt. Like death, like drowning, it rolled over them, past them, and in that wave’s wake ten or twelve Darthenes fell, and Sunspark’s fire went out.
Even Herewiss’s blaze dimmed and shrank, failing like a candle placed under a cup. But he did not surrender. When the snuffed-out stallion clambered up the rocks to his side, it found him clutching Khávrinen. He was forcing the sword to burn, pouring out everything he had. It was not enough. In the darkness where the blade’s Firelight didn’t reach, forms moved and grew solid. Eagerly they lifted long-rusted swords, bared long-rotted fangs, and looked hungrily up toward the little shelf where the Darthenes stood.
(I can’t change, I can’t burn,) Sunspark cried in anguish, (what do I do now?)
Segnbora could feel it straining mightily, trying even to trigger that last burning in which a fire elemental ends its existence as an individual…anything to hold the threat away from its loved. He can’t hold off the Shadow alone, Segnbora thought, almost choking with the sheer hate that filled the air. There was nothing the Shadow hated so much as the Fire, except perhaps those who wielded it. Herewiss couldn’t last forever, and when his reserves gave out, he would simply be dead. The first man in a thousand years to have the Fire, the Queen of Darthen, the rightful King of Arlen, most of the forces that Darthen could field—all dead at once.
The Shadow around them, perhaps foreseeing a world all to Itself, darkened. But inside Segnbora the mdeihei were rumbling deadly threats that seemed absolutely empty to her. What can they do? They’re dead!
Wait a moment. Dead?
DeathFire—!
When someone with the Fire died, regardless of whether that person had ever been focused during life, the moment of death itself focused the Fire for one final moment. Even those with just the spark of Flame that most men and women have managed to focus then. That was what gave one’s deathword its power.
Segnbora stared with sudden cold purpose at the rising tide of dark malice. Suddenly she understood why Lang had died when he did, and why her parents were murdered. The Shadow had wanted to stop her before this moment, this realization. She held up Skádhwë and looked at it. It will demand a life of you someday, Efmaer had said, and now Segnbora was sure which life the dead Queen had meant. The Shadow was betting she wouldn’t dare kill herself.
A lethal wound would be enough. She could add enough Fire to what Herewiss had to aid him in holding the Shadow off until the Binding was done. And afterward, he’d heal her—
—or not—
It was a terrible chance she’d be taking. She didn’t want to die. But if the Fire she had trapped inside her could be of use here, then…
Behind her Freelorn held up one bleeding arm, and with his free hand reached into the unwrapped saddle-roll for what she had seen him grab before: a fistful of stones and dirt from Lionheugh. He held it to Eftgan’s arm; her blood trickled down.
A crash like sudden thunder rocked the scarp and sent men and horses sprawling. Freelorn and the Queen fell apart. Herewiss pitched forward on his face, his Fire all but darkened. More than just hatred pressed down on them from the darkness now. The Shadow was invoking the worst fears of Its enemies, and on all sides men and women screamed and cowered from painful deaths suddenly lived in their own flesh, losses of loved ones, shames that formed darkly in the influence-ridden air. The Dark One still didn’t walk among them openly, but was having no trouble driving the defenders to death or madness, one by one.
Out in the darkness, Segnbora saw the hralcins rear up. Ugly unearthly shapes lurched across the scarp at her, singing hungrily and reaching out at her as they had in the Hold. Crabbed claws sought to tear, but Segnbora’s screams were frozen in her throat. Only escape was left. Frantically, looking around for a route, she saw Freelorn stand up, cursing with fear and shaking his wounded arm. It wasn’t wounded anymore: the cut made by the sacral knife was just a white seam of scar. The Shadow could heal for Its own purposes.
Leaving Eftgan, Lorn stumbled over to Herewiss and shook him conscious with savage efficiency. Segnbora stared at him, confused. This wasn’t the usual Freelorn. There was terrible purpose in those eyes. When she met them, Segnbora saw Her in them as she had been seeing Her in everything today. But what she saw in Lorn was different: here was knowledge, foresight. Freelorn knew now what Herewiss had dreamed in the Hold. He had seen the arrow in his back, seen himself turn toward death’s Door…
Stunned, Segnbora watched him turn away from her, turn away from the gasping, shaken Herewiss, and rise up out of his crouch. The hiss of an arrow whispered through the screaming wind. Slowly, slowly Freelorn sat down with the barbed Reaver shaft standing out from behind his right lung, and pressed a fistful of dirt already stained with Eftgan’s blood to the entry point. Then he fell back against Herewiss, and slapped the blood and dirt against the ground—
The terrible pressure of hatred grew suddenly much less as the Royal Binding took hold on the land, quieting the unquiet ghosts, banishing the phantoms of Fyrd and slain Reavers and hralcins. Herewiss’s Fire blazed up again as if someone had taken the cup off the candle.
But now his mind wasn’t on the battle. “LORN!!” Herewiss cried, and without hesitation went limp and fell over again. He had gone out-of-body, gone after his loved to catch him at the last Door and prevent him from passing it.
Off on the southern horizon, another darkness began to take shape. This was a more solid one, a heaving black shape that Segnbora had seen before, but didn’t dare look upon now, being in a human body. The Shadow had become enraged enough to take on a physical shape and come after them Itself. And It had adopted a form It knew, from past history, to be very effective.
“Don’t look!!” she cried to the Darthenes.
They hardly needed the warning. Those still alive and conscious after the assault by their worst fears were already hiding their faces from the hideous prospect.
No time to wait for Herewiss to come back, Segnbora thought, shaking all over. Just have to do it myself—
Hurriedly she knelt and took Skádhwë two-handed, resting the point a shade to the left of her breastbone. Mdaha, she said, and in that moment was informed by her ahead-memory that Herewiss was not going to be healing her...
Oh wonderful! Sithesssch!
Sdaha—
Sehe’rae!
And she pushed the sword in, hard.
The greedy shadowblade slid into her with shocking ease. At last Segnbora found out what it was like to be run through, and tried to scream past the terrible feeling of her heart shuddering around the intruding blade, trying to beat, trying to beat, failing. All that came out of her throat was a choked cough.
Inside, she felt her Fire leap together with her heart’s blood and burst outward. Blind with pain, she groped for support, willing herself to stand and do what she had to. But she found no support. The darkness went red, and then black, and she fell forward….
***
…a long fall, the longest one, but it had an end. There was a voice crying Get up! Get up!, the voice of someone familiar. Her mother perhaps, or Eftgan. Had she overslept again? The Wardress would be furious—
She was lying on something hard. She rolled over to push herself up on her hands and knees, feeling the sword in her fist. Probably one of those rocks the Dragon’s thrashing had dislodged had hit her in the head. She felt weak and stumbly. She pushed upward, shook her head to clear the daze out of it, looked up.
A pang of terror twisted in her heart like a knife of ice. This was no cave. True, there was empty darkness all around, but before her stood two doorposts blacker than any night, going up and up forever, out of sight. Between them stars blazed—endless depths of them, a patient silent glory she had seen before in dreams and visions, but never for real. This was the last Door, the Door into Starlight.
No, I’m not ready! she cried, staggering to her feet. But her protests made no difference to the insistent forces shoving at her back. They were stronger than she. They impelled her, whispering to her that it was over, that her struggles were done.
The Shore! she thought with longing. Mother and Father. Lang! Tears rose at the thought of him, at the image of his last confused grab for the ledge. Loved, I have a great deal to tell you. Maybe it’s not too late.
But something was wrong. There was a great silence in her mind that shouldn’t have been there.
Hasai? she said, letting herself be pushed toward the Door as she searched in mind for him. You’re dead. Are you there too?
No answer.
I’m not going! Segnbora thought, on the very threshold. But she had no way to stop herself. She was being pushed too hard, and she was holding something in one of her hands. A darkness….
Swift as thought she used the last-chance block that Shíhan had taught her was for emergency use only. One hand on the hilt, the other bracing the steel from behind.
Segnbora screamed with agony in that eternal silence as Skádhwë, ramming against the impermeable blackness from which it had been torn, sliced deep into her hands. The darkness shoving at her back was merciless, and cared nothing about her anguish. Through her sick pain, Segnbora realized who was pushing her closer to the Door. She fought back, feeling her blood flow from hands and heart. There was something she needed to remember. Something—
I am Who I am. And kno
wing that, It has no power over me.
Dismay ran through the force that urged her forward. She forced it back and back, arching herself, and then fell backwards, gasping. Skádhwë fell soundlessly to the invisible floor. Slowly and painfully, she got to her knees, picked Skádhwë up, and stood. It might indeed be her fate to die after she had finished what she had to do. But we’ll deal with this first, she thought, and turned.
Had she been breathing, the breath would have caught in her throat. He was huge, looming above her, dressed in the old clothes he wore while gardening. The big hard hands, stained with leaf-mold and rough with calluses, reached out to her.
“No!” she whispered, and almost turned to flee. But there was only one way to run—through the Door and out of life.
That terrible smile leaned closer.
“No!” she said. It was a squeaked word. A little girl’s voice, terrified, but still defiant.
The smile lost some of its certainty.
“No,” she said again, more strongly, her voice sounding strange in the utter silence. She raised her head, met those hungry eyes, held them…held them.
He was not as large as he had been. Certainly he was no larger than any other man. He was smaller, in fact, than many she had killed at one time or another.
Raising Skádhwë, she took a step forward and watched the fear spread across his face. Balen had used brute strength to overwhelm the child she had been, but she was a child no longer. He was unarmed, and she was armed with a weapon against which there was no defense. Another step she took, and he backed away. She almost took the final step, but paused. It would be easy to kill him, yes. Possibly enjoyable.
But for how long? Would this be just another form of running away? If she should instead accept him—
Kill him! her heart said to her.