One

Sirronde stared at the Goddess. “Are You saying, then, that You were wrong to make heroes?”

“Indeed not,” She said. “But I should have warned them—If you save the world too often, it starts to expect it.”

—Tales of the Darthene South, Book iv, 29

When she was studying in the Silent Precincts, the Rodmistresses had warned her: If you’re going to look for meaning in a dream, first make sure it’s your own. Any sensitive is most sensitive in her sleep; and others’ dreams can draw you in and fool you. Now, therefore, Segnbora held quite still in her sleep so as not to disturb whoever else was dreaming the landscape into which she had stumbled. It wasn’t often, after all, that one was privileged to see the Universe being created. The Maiden was working, as She always is, while the other two Persons of the Goddess, the Mother and the Eldest, looked on. Young and fair and preoccupied was the Maiden, as She worked elbow-deep in stars and flesh and dirt. She was so delighted with the wild diversity of Her creation that She never noticed the Mother and the Eldest desperately trying to get Her attention. They saw what she did not: the shapeless, lurking hunger that hid in the darkness at the Universe’s borders.

Finally the Maiden, satisfied that Her world was complete, cried out the irrevocable Word that started life running on its own and sealed the Universe against any subtractions. And the instant She had done so, Death stood up from where it had been hiding, and laughed at Her.

She had locked the doors of the world, and had locked Death in. Slowly it would suck the Universe dry of life, and She could not prevent it. Nor could She prevent Death’s darkness from casting shadows sideways from Her light—rogue aspects of Her, darksides, bent on destroying more swiftly what was already doomed. The Maiden was grief-stricken, and took counsel with Her otherselves to find some way to combat death. Among Them, They invented first the heart’s love, and then the body’s—lying down together in the manner of woman with woman, and becoming with child.

The Maiden, becoming the Mother now, brought forth twins—sons, or daughters, or daughter and son; the ambivalence of the dream made the Firstborn seem all of these at once. Swiftly They grew, and discovered Love in Their Mother’s arms—then turned to one another and discovered it anew. But in the midst of Their bliss, surrounded by the blue Fire that was Their Mother’s gift and Their pride, the Death stood up again. It entered one of the Lovers and taught that one jealousy.

The shadowed Lover slew the innocent One—and in the same act destroyed Its own Fire, which had been bound by love to the Other’s. Cursing, the Dark Lover fled in a rage into the outer darkness, where It would reenact Its murder and loss and bereavement for as long as the Universe should last. It was not a Lover anymore, but the Shadow.

In the dream Segnbora wept, knowing all along what was going to happen. She knew that mortals would be reenacting this tragedy in their own lives forever. The dream broke, then, and gradually re-formed as an image in water does when a stone is thrown in,.

She saw a scene skewed sideways, as if her head rested on someone’s shoulder. Much of the great room where she stood was dark, but in her hand—which had become a man’s hand—she held a core of blinding white light, wreathed all about with flames as blue as summer sky. Herewiss, she realized. Last night.

His weariness was so terrible he could barely stand. He had banished the hralcins, the soul-eaters, yet he was too tired to exult in the focus he had forged—the unfinished sword he would call Khavrinen. He was the first man in a thousand years to focus the Fire, and, he knew what difficulties lay ahead. The Shadow would not long tolerate him, or any man who enjoyed the Power It had cast away. It would deal with him quickly, before the Goddess had time, through him, to consolidate newly regained, ground.

We must move more quickly, then, the dream said. For look what the Shadow has planned. Segnbora shuddered in her sleep at the sight of a whole valley suddenly buried under mountains that had formerly stood above it. Dead, a voice said soundlessly. She’s dead. Snow whirled wildly down onto a battlefield, turning red as soon as it fell. Monsters gnawed the dead. Elsewhere a wave of blackness came rolling down out of murky heights, crashed down onto a leaping, threatening fire, and smothered it.

The air was thick with the feel of ancient sorceries falling apart, fraying. Grass forgot how to grow. Grain rotted on the stalk and fruit on the bough. Plague downed beasts and people alike, leaving their blackened corpses to lie splitting in the sun. Even the scavenger birds sickened and died of what they ate. It was happening. The royal magics were failing. If they weakened enough to let the Shadow fully into this world, into Bluepeak, this was what would happen.

The soundless voice of the dream spoke urgently. Freelorn must see to the Royal Bindings quickly. This is his job, he’s the Lion’s Child and heir to Arlen. Go with him, Herewiss, in the full of your Power. Use the Fire to the utmost. He’ll need assistance.

But I just got the Fire, Herewiss said, terrified. It takes time to master it.

There is no time. What must be done needs doing now. The Other is coming.

And she could feel it, that throbbing of hatred in the background, getting stronger by the minute. As she watched, the sky grew dark. The snow blasted about them, in that place to which they would have to go to reinforce the Royal Bindings. Herewiss’s Fire, for so long a blaze within him, was now faint under a blanket of oppressive power. Just in front of him, Freelorn started to stand up. The whole dream focused then on the sight of Freelorn’s back, with a three-barbed, razor-sharp Reaver arrow standing out of it.

Sagging, Lorn sunk back slowly against Herewiss. Then there was a deeper darkness, and the two of them stood together before a Door in which burned the stars that would never go out. Freelorn, his face in shadow, was pulling his hand gently out of Herewiss’s grasp, turning away toward death’s Door ...

No!

Do what you must to come to the full of your Power. There’s no time! Her voice was almost frightened. Herewiss had never believed She could sound that way.

But if I do—and we get there—then Lorn—

It must not be prevented.

But—

You must not attempt to prevent it!

I—

Hurry!

NO!!

The scream tore through her throat as she sat bolt upright in the bedroll, sweating—still seeing against the darkness the long ruinous fall of an entire mountain, still hearing the crash of it, first note in a song of disaster.

In the great main hall of the old Hold, people fumbled frantically for their swords—the memory of the hralcins’ sudden arrival the night before was very fresh. The fire in the firepit rose up too, putting several broad curves of flame over the edge and leaning anxiously out to see what was the matter. As a fire elemental, Sunspark had not had much experience with fear, but after last night it was apparently taking no chances.

Segnbora lifted a hand to her pounding head and found that she was holding her sword, Charriselm. Evidently she had drawn it while she was still half-sleeping. Beside her in the bedroll, blond Lang was still blanket-wrapped, but nevertheless he had found his graceknife in a hurry. Lying propped on one elbow with the knife in one ham of a hand, he blinked at her like an anxious owl. A few feet away, big swarthy Dritt and lanky Moris were sitting up back to back, looking as panicked as Segnbora felt. On the other side of the firepit, Harald was attempting simultaneously to string his bow and brush the brown hair out of his eyes. All of these looked at Segnbora as if they thought she was crazy.

“A bad dream?” Lang said.

She nodded, sliding Charriselm back into its sheath and looking across the room toward the firepit and the bedrolls laid down there. Herewiss was sitting up, bracing himself with one hand, rubbing his eyes with the other. He took the hand away from his face, and Segnbora was shocked to see his terrified expression. Lorn was holding Herewiss tight and peering worriedly into his face. Under other circumstances it could have been a touching and humorous sight—the little, dark-mustachioed, fierce-eyed man comforting someone who, judged by his slim hard build and shoulder musculature, might have been the village blacksmith.

“Are you all right? What happened?”

“It was a dream,” Herewiss said, his voice anguished.

“Shh, it’s all right.”

“No,  it’s  not.” Herewiss  rubbed  his  eyes again,  then glanced  around  him  with  frightened  determination.   He started searching in the blankets for his clothes. “We’ve got to go.”

“What?”

“We have to hurry.”

Herewiss grabbed one bunched-up blanket and impatiently shook it. A sword fell out and clattered to the floor—a hand-and-a-half broadsword of gray steel that would have seemed of ordinary make except for the odd blue sheen about it. He reached out for it, and at his touch his Power ran down the blade: blinding blue Fire, twisting and flurrying about as if in bright reflection of his distress.

“It was—there was—the mountain fell down, just like that. And there were thousands of Fyrd, and bigger monsters too—and a wave came down over everything, and Sunspark went out—”

(I did not!)

“Loved, slow down so I can understand what the Dark you’re talking about—”

“So much for a whole night’s sleep,” Lang muttered under his breath. Putting his knife away under the rolled-up cloak that was serving them as pillow, he lay down again. “Wake me up when they’re finished?”

“If necessary,” Segnbora said, rubbing his shoulder absently. The gesture was more for her comfort than for his.

Her underhearing was wide awake, bringing her the hot coppery blood-taste of Herewiss’s fright as if it were her own. Herewiss was talking fast. He had yanked a shirt out of the blankets and was struggling into it, while in his lap Khavrinen kept on blazing like a torch.

“It’s angry as anything,” he was saying. “And It’s going to work the worst mischief It can, by putting pressure on the Royal Bindings that have been keeping It in check.” He started feeling around for his britches. “For seven years no one’s reinforced the Arlene half of those Bindings, and they’re wearing thin—”

Freelorn glanced away from Herewiss. Segnbora put her hands behind her and leaned back, closing her eyes and bracing herself against the gut-punch of grief and anger she knew would come from Lorn. When his father had died on the throne, and the Minister of the Exchequer, Cillmod, had taken the opportunity to seize power, Freelorn had fled for his life with a price on his head. Now Lorn would wonder again whether staying in Arlen to see to the bindings, and possibly getting killed as a result, might not have been the more noble course.

It was an old midnight pain that Segnbora had come to know as well as the arthritis in Harald’s right knee, or Drill’s self-consciousness about his weight. Indeed, no Precinct-trained sensitive could have helped underhearing her surroundings as Segnbora did. It was the gift she would have been happiest to lose when she gave up her studies. She had enough trouble dealing with her own pains. Those of others were an unwelcome burden.

“Lorn, enough,” Herewiss said, catching Freelorn’s anguish himself. “The fact remains that if the Shadow leans Its full strength against the Bluepeak bindings, we’re done for. The Kingdoms will founder. I saw the southern passes full of Reaver armies. And the plains full of Fyrd. There were storms and earthquakes, and where the earth opened a whole town fell in. And that cliff at Bluepeak—” Herewiss broke off.

Freelorn, still holding him close, looked puzzled. “But it was just a dream!”

“Oh no,” Herewiss said, shaking his head emphatically. “I saw.”

“He’s dreaming true,” Segnbora said quietly. Freelorn’s frightened eyes flicked to her.

“He’s focused now,” she said hurriedly. “It’s to be expected.”

“What about the cliff?” Freelorn said to Herewiss. Herewiss closed his eyes and sagged back on his heels, looking tired. “It was snowing—”

“A month and a half before Midsummer’s? You call that dreaming true?”

Segnbora held her face still as Herewiss saw again that image of Freelorn turning away from him, away from love and life toward death.

“Lorn,” Herewiss said. “I was shown a lot of things. I don’t know what they all meant. I don’t think most of them have happened yet. But some of them will, unless they’re prevented.” He swallowed hard. “I have to assist in the process. I was given all this Power. Now it has to be used, fully, and I won’t be able to take my time about its mastery, either.”

Freelorn looked askance at his loved, getting an idea and not liking it. “But what other way is there, but to work into your Power slowly?”

“The Morrowfane, Lorn.”

Freelorn looked grim. “I’ve done a little reading on the subject,” he said.

It was a great understatement, for among the responsibilities of a throne prince of Arlen was the curatorship of rr’Virendir, the Arlene royal library, and that meant intimate knowledge of nearly every extant writing dealing with both mundane sorcery and more elevated matters of Power.

“All the sources say you can’t go up there without coming down changed—”

(What’s the problem with that?) Sunspark said from the firepit. The reaction was understandable; change was a fire elemental’s chief delight. (Just yesterday Herewiss changed—quite a bit—and you didn’t mind.)

Lorn glanced with annoyance at Sunspark, and the elemental threw back a smug feeling. During the time Herewiss had spent in the Hold forging Khavrinen, Sunspark had come to be his loved too. Lorn, not yet at peace with the situation, was still subject to occasional twinges of jealousy.

“I don’t mean shapechanges,” Lorn said with exaggerated patience. “Soul-changes. Great alterations in personality. Madness and other brands of sanity that human beings don’t usually survive.”

“The change needn’t be harmful,” Herewiss put in. “Remember, the place is a great repository of Flame. All the legends agree on that. Those who climb the Fane are given what’s needed to do what they must do in a life.”

“Then why do so few people go up it?”

“For one thing, you need focused Fire, and enough of it to keep the Power of the place from blasting you,” Herewiss explained. “For another, very few people want what they need .... Lorn, listen. This is necessary. It’s part of getting you back on your throne. If we don’t get to Bluepeak by Midyear’s Eve, so that you can aid in restoring the bindings, there won’t be a country left for you to rule.”

“But I was never Initiated into the Mysteries. If I had been, we wouldn’t have these problems—I’d be King, and that slimy bastard Cillmod would be out looking for a situation.”

“True, but you know the royal rites, don’t you? You have to do it.”

“Who says?”

“Whom do you think?” Herewiss said, very gently. “When you dream true, Whom do you think sends the dream?”

Lorn held very still, and most of the fierceness faded out of his eyes. “There’s another problem. You know the money I removed from the Arlene treasury in Osta? Well, Bluepeak’s in Arlen too. Cillmod’s probably pretty annoyed about that missing money, and if we go back to Arlen so soon, and he hears about it ....”

Herewiss said nothing.

After a moment or two, Freelorn shrugged. “Oh, what the Dark! If the Reavers and the Shadow are going to come down on Arlen, Cillmod hardly matters. I suppose I have no choice anyway. I swore that damn Oath when I was little. ‘Darthen’s House and Arlen’s Hall—’”

“‘—share  their feast and  share  their fall,’”  Herewiss finished. “If Arlen goes, so does Darthen. And after them Steldin, North Arlen, the Brightwood ....”

Freelorn laughed, but without merriment. “Why am I even worried about Cillmod at all? The Shadow is a far greater danger. It can’t afford to leave you alive now, can It? You’re the embodiment of the old days before the Catastrophe, when males had the Power. The time of Its decline ....”

Herewiss shook his head and smiled, an expression more of grim agreement than of reassurance. “We’ll both be careful,” he said. “That is, if you’re coming with me? ...”

Reaching down, Freelorn gently freed one of Herewiss’s hands from Khavrinen’s hilt, and held the hand between his own. “No more dividing our forces,” he said. “From now until it’s done, we go together.”

Herewiss held his peace and didn’t change expression. Segnbora had to drop her eyes, seeing again that image of one hand that let go of another’s, the face that turned away.

All at once Freelorn was thumping on the floor for attention. “Listen, people—”

Segnbora nudged Lang. He rolled over under his covers. “Whatever you say, Lorn, I’ll do it,” he said, and pulled the blanket back over his head.

“There’s a man who follows his liege oaths too well,” Freelorn said with a grimace of affectionate disgust. “On his own head be it. But for the rest of you—I can’t in good conscience ask you to go on this trip. The Shadow—”

“The Shadow can go swive with sheep for all I care,” Moris said with one of his slow grins. “I haven’t come this far with you to stop now.”

“Me either,” Harald said, stubbornly folding his huge bear’s arms.

“You’re not listening,” Freelorn said, in great earnest. “Your oaths are a matter of friendship and I love you for them. But it’s not just Cillmod we’re playing with now. It’s the Shadow. Your souls are at stake—”

“The things that were in here last night ate souls too,” Dritt said calmly, putting his chin down on his arms. “Herewiss did for them all right.”

(I helped,) said the voiceless voice from the firepit. Eyes looked out of the flames at the company, then came to rest with calm interest on Freelorn. (I’m coming too.)

The building rumble of irritation in the room, combined with so much unspoken affection, was making Segnbora’s head ache; the walls of this place, opaque to thought, bounced the emotions back and forth until the undersenses were deafened by echoes.

“Look,” she said, shaking free of her own blankets. “If we’ve got to get an early start in the morning—” She glanced at Herewiss. “—it can wait until morning?”

“I suppose so,” he said.

“Good. Then I want some sleep. But if this argument keeps up any longer I’ll have to sleep outside.” She went over to Freelorn in her shift and offered him Charriselm hilt-first, about an inch from his nose. “Do you seriously want your oath back?” she said. “That whole ‘my-lordship-shall-be-between-you-and-the-Shadow-while-in-my-service’ business?”

Lorn glared up at her, fierce eyes going fiercer. “No! Are you crazy? What makes you think I’d—”

“What makes you think we would?”

Freelorn held absolutely still. His anger churned wildly for a moment, then fell off, leaving reluctant acceptance in its place.

“Good night, Lorn,” Segnbora said, and went back to her bedroll. She was careful not to smile until her back was turned.

Sunspark pulled itself back down into the firepit, and soon the darkness of the hall held no sound but Harald’s cloak-muffled snoring.

It took Segnbora a little while to get enough of the blankets unwrapped from around Lang to cover herself. That done, she lay on her back for a long while, gazing up at the smoke-shaft in the ceiling, through which a few unfamiliar stars shone. Her underhearing, sharpened by all the excitement, brought her the faint dream-touched emotions of those falling asleep, and the physical sensations of those asleep already—breathing, the slide of muscles, muted pulse-thunder.

It’s a gift, she told herself for the thousandth time. Truth however, reared its head. It was a nuisance. If her Fire was focused, as Herewiss’s was, she wouldn’t be having this problem .... If. She exhaled sharply at her useless obsession with what she couldn’t have. It wasn’t focused. It would never be. She had given up. Other things had become more important now. Oaths, for example ...

It had been a long time ago. All of a month, she thought—a busy month full of desperate rides, escapes, sorcery, terror, wonder. All started by a chance meeting in a smelly alley, when she had stumbled on a dark fierce little man losing a swordfight to the crude but powerful axework of a Royal Steldene guard. The small man looked as if he was about to be split like kindling. She had intervened. The guardsman never saw the shadow who stepped in from behind.

Over the course of the evening, she found she had rescued family; though the tai-Enraesi were only a small poor cadet branch of the Darthene royal line, and strangers to court, the Oath of Lion and Eagle was binding on them too, and a king’s son of Arlen was therefore a brother.

The relationship got more complex with time, however. On the road Segnbora had shared herself with Freelorn, as she sometimes did with the others, for delight or consolation. But before that, more importantly, came friendship and the oaths. Before Maiden and Bride and Mother I swear it, before the Lovers in Their power, and in the Dark One’s despite: My sword will be between you and the Shadow until you pass the Door into Starlight. She exhaled quietly. Her determination was set. There has to be a way. There has to. You’re not going to get him ....

After a while, as she lay at last near the brink of sleep, Segnbora sensed something shining. She opened one eye. Across the room sat a form sculpted of darkness and deep blue radiance—Herewiss, cross-legged, shoulders hunched wearily as he gazed down at the sleeping Freelorn. Across his lap lay his sword, wrapped about with curling flames the color of a twilight burning low.

She  lay  unmoving,  and  regarded  him.   Eventually  the thought came, tasting as if it had been soaked in tears and wrung out.

(You know, don’t you.)

(Yes.) She felt sorrow still, and now a touch of embarrassment. (Sorry. You know how it is with dreams.)

(No matter. I’ve been in a few others’ dreams myself.)

(The scales are even, then.)

He nodded. Herewiss didn’t look up, but his attention was fixed so intensely upon her that no stare could have been more discomfiting.

(You understand what you’re getting into?) he said. (It may not be just Lorn heading for that Door. Probably me too. Maybe all of us will have to die so the Kingdoms can go on living.)

(Those who defeat the Shadow,) Segnbora said silently, (usually die of it. It’s in all the stories.)

(Defeat!) Now he raised his head. His look was pained at first, then incredulous.

(I love him too,) she said.

(You’re as crazy as the rest of us,) Herewiss said. The
thought was sour, but there was a thread of amusement on it
like the bright edge of a knife.

He threw her a quick image of herself as she had been the night before, when the air in the hall had been full of the stink of hralcins. As the monsters had come shambling across the floor toward them she had stood, driven to the brink of panic, unable to do even the smallest sorcery. Hands upheld, shaking all over, she cowered before the advancing, screaming horrors and made blinding light—a byproduct of her blocked Fire—until even that guttered out and left her exhausted.

Segnbora bit the inside of her cheek, annoyed even though Herewiss had been compassionate afterward.

(What we’re facing,) he said with gentle sarcasm, (is the father of those things, and worse—the Maker of Enmities, the engenderer of the shadows at the bottoms of our hearts, Who can overturn the world in fire and storm. You have some new defense that you’ve come up with since last night? A strategy sufficient to stop a being so powerful that to be rid of it the Goddess Herself can only let the Universe run down and die?)

(I plan to win,) she said. (What are you going to do?)

He looked across the room at her for a while, still not moving. (I’m glad you’re here,) he said finally. (I can’t tell Lorn about this—) A quick thought, a flicker of the shape of an arrowhead, passed between them. (I hope you won’t either.)

(Of course not.)

He straightened, laid Khavrinen aside. Away from its source, the Fire in the blade died down to the merest glow. Only in his hands did a little Flame remain burning. Looking down at Freelorn, Herewiss absently began to pour it from hand to hand. Like burning water it flowed, the essence of life, the stuff of shapechanges and mastery of elements and magics of the heart, the Goddess’s gift to the Lovers and to humankind, the Power that founded the world, that the Shadow had lost and caused men to lose.

And there’s nothing It hates more, Segnbora thought to herself. Though love probably comes close.

She closed her eyes to the light of Herewiss's hands, shuddered, and went to sleep.