Three

The Goddess’s courtesy is a terrible thing. To the mortal asker She will give what is asked for, without stinting, without fail. Nor will She stop giving until the gift’s recipient, like the gift, becomes perfect. Let the asker beware ....

They all climbed onto the raft. Sunspark came last, picking its way onto the mossy planks with the exaggerated delicacy of a cat. But it stood quite still in the midst of them as Herewiss and Freelorn poled the raft. No one broke the silence. On the water the feeling of being watched was stronger than ever.

The raft grounded, scraping and crunching on a rough beach of pale pebbles, Herewiss stepped off, Freelorn behind him, and each of the others in turn. Everyone winced at the sound of their footsteps. Segnbora, second-to-last off, thought she had never heard anything so loud as her light step on the gravel. Sunspark, behind her, got off and made no sound at all. It was carefully walking a handspan above the ground.

They were not only watched, they were felt. There was no mistaking it. There was no threat in the sensation; the regard running through them was patient, passive. But whatever fueled it was immeasurably old, and huge. The others looked at one another wondering, as the Power reached up into them, and found old companions suddenly strange.

Segnbora, feeling what they felt, understood the sensation as most of her companions couldn’t. The Fire within her, that had dwindled over the years and was now nearly dead because of her lack of focus, was suddenly leaping up as wildly in her as if a wind had blown through her soul The Power pushed at her, urging her upward toward the mountain. At the same time it looked through her at the others, and looked through them at her, determining what changes, would be made—

Oh Goddess, she thought, this is what I’ve needed. There was no mistaking the Source of what stirred here, though this half-slumbering immensity of calling Flame was only the least tithe of Her Power.

And I’m terrified—

Herewiss and Freelorn were standing transfixed, keeping very close to each other. She could not see their faces, but Freelorn’s arms were unwound from around Herewiss for the first time since the morning. Khavrinen in its back-sheath was blue-while with Fire. Its light shone through seams in the scabbard, and the hilt blazed like a torch. “There’s the trail,” Freelorn said quietly, looking upward.

“I’ll race you,” Segnbora said, just as quietly. She slipped past them and started climbing.

The trail wasn’t too difficult. Part of it followed old gullies or slide-paths; part of it seemed to have been cut into the hillside, but only lightly, so that rockfall or deadwood frequently blocked the way. The hill was no more than five hundred feet high, but in the starlight it was hard to see where to put one’s feet. Each of them fell and slid at least once. By the time they reached the flattened hilltop, they were all bruised, and breathing hard.

But the gasping for breath didn’t last. It was replaced almost immediately by a sensation of being anchored, centered, secured past, any dislodging. Freelorn and. Herewiss stood as still as Segnbora, feeling their pulses become tranquil, their breath come more gently. The three of them, stood poised at the apex, of the world’s Heart. The Universe swung around them, slow and silent, waiting. After a few moments Segnbora sank to one knee, bending to touch the gullied ground with one hand, the ground where Raela and Efmaer and Beorgan had stood. She could feel the Power, bound, waiting, alive. Her own .Fire strained downward to reach it, and, unfocused, could not. But that seemed unimportant as she knelt there, feeling the ages run through her. This place was more important than the needs of any one human being.

Freelorn turned to Herewiss, “Loved,” he said, his voice uncertain, “‘something’s strange inside me—”

“Of course there is.” Herewiss reached out to Freelorn and drew him close, not so much in compassion as in, exultation. “It’s your Fire. You have a spark of it like everyone else; here at the heart of Fire, how could you not feel it? The Fane is reaching up to you.”

“I thought so.” Freelorn sounded almost in pain. “It wants me. But I don’t know what to do.”

“Listen to what it has to say to you,” Herewiss said. “Just feel it. Few enough people ever do.”

Herewiss let go of Freelorn with his right arm, then stretched slowly upward and felt behind him for Khavrinen’s hilt. He drew the sword from the back-scabbard slowly, with relish and ease and much tenderness, as he might have drawn himself from his loved after passion spent. The sword swept effortlessly over his head and downward before him, Fire trailing behind the blade. Even now, before the wreaking had begun, the Flame was too bright to look at directly.

“So much,” Lorn said, soft-voiced, blinking and tearing in the light. “You can do anything now ....”

“Yes. For the moment.” Herewiss laughed gently at Freelorn’s puzzled look. “Lorn, how did you think 1 was able to destroy those hralcins? Under normal circumstances twenty Rodmistresses, fifty, couldn’t have done it. I was in ‘breakthrough,’ as they call it in the Precincts, and I will be for maybe another tenday or so. After that the Power begins to drop to more normal levels. That’s surely why She wants me to hurry.”

He gazed down at the Flame-flowing sword in his hand.

“I’ll give back some of what was given to me,” he said, resting Khavrinen’s point on the ground. The Flame about the blade burned brighter, lighting the hilltop more brilliantly with every breath he took, “It’s going to cost me, Lorn. But it will be worth it.”

His words failed him, then, but his Fire did not. The light was becoming like an otherworldly Sun now, a blaze of determination and joy that dazzled the mind as much as it did the eyes, transfiguring what it touched.

Segnbora had a brief vision through the brilliance of a young god raising His arms, offering His loved, across His two hands, the thunderbolt He wielded ... In her vision the other, blasted by the overpowering magnificence into another shape, yet somehow still unchanged, reached out hands to lay them, fearless, in the Fire—

For long seconds Segnbora did not move, could not. Once not too long ago, when Herewiss had been away and Lorn had seemed to need consoling, she had entered a little way into the relationship between these two—sharing herself with Lorn, offering her friendship. At the time she had thought her motives benevolent enough. But recent events had made her suspect that, in fact, she had been the one in need of consoling. Now, by this light, in which any untruth withered and fell away, she clearly saw the shape of her own loneliness and sorrow. Likewise she saw the essential twoness of Herewiss and Freelorn—something even Sunspark had perceived more clearly than she did. No more interference, she thought. There was no sadness about it. The decision came almost triumphantly, with a feeling of celebration and release.

This was Herewiss’s moment, and Lorn’s, not hers. Unsteadily—for the forces being freed on the hilltop had made her a bit light-headed—Segnbora turned her back on the ferocious glory raging there. By the time one of the Lovers began speaking Nhaired in invocation—“Ae, hn’Hldfede, irun-taje Lai—” she was descending from the hilltop, sliding and stumbling down the path.

Dear Goddess, Segnbora thought as she reached the end of the steepest part of the path. The first wreaking he tries is the Naming of Names? I wish I had his faith. If some dark power should slip close enough to hear—

The possibility so unnerved her that Segnbora lost her balance. She had to grab at brush to catch herself. An inner Name was a powerful commodity even after its owner’s death, useful to lend power to various spells and wreakings. The Names of great Rodmistresses, for instance, were passed down through, generations. In Segnbora’s own family, Queen Efmaer’s ancient Name was preserved, though the Queen herself was long lost.

Segnbora exhaled in sudden amusement at the notion that someday sorcerers and Rodmistresses would probably pay great treasures for the true Name of one Herewiss—a slim dark young man with a tendency toward creative swearing in dead languages—

The path went right out from under her. It was not her own clumsiness this time, but the Morrowfane itself trembling under her feet. Segnbora looked up. The blaze on the hilltop, hidden till now by the bulk of the hill, was hidden no longer. A narrow, sword-shaped core of blue-white Fire swung up into view, and then a light of impossible brilliance broke the night open from end to end. Like lightning burning in steel, it turned the dark into sudden day and extinguished the stars. The Fane shook to its roots as outpoured Firelight smote into everything, illuminating every leaf and tree trunk and stone with fierce clarity. On the surface of the shivering lake, the light shattered into countless knives and splinters of dazzle.

Blinded, Segnbora turned away and rubbed her eyes. When they saw clearly again, she started once more down the trail. She had no trouble finding her way; the Fane was lit like midmorning. At one point she paused for breath, looked around, and saw something she had missed in the dimness on the way up—a huge crevasse or cavern around on the southern face of the hillside, an opening into darkness that even Herwiss’s Fire didn’t illumine. How about that. The World’s Heart has a secret in it—

Above her Herewiss’s Flame dimmed and faded, leaving her looking at where the cave entrance had been. He’s taking a rest, I suppose. I bet I could have a closer look at that before he starts shaking things again—Once piqued, Segnbora’s curiosity would never give her peace until it was satisfied, and she knew it so she gave in. Scrabbling up off the trail, she used scrubby bushes and trees to climb toward the area she had seen. It took, a few minutes to climb up a ravine that ran down between two folds, but finally the cave opening loomed huge before her, dark as uncertainty. There Segnbora halted, uneasy. Her undersenses were still blunted from, the onslaught of Power and joy at the top of the hill, but not so much so that she couldn’t catch an odd mental flavor that grew stronger the closer she came to the cave-mouth. Something hot. Metal? Slow?

She drew Charriselm with a whisper of steel that suddenly sounded very loud indeed. Very carefully she stepped over and around the boulders that lay about the great cave entrance, and slipped a few feet inside where she paused to listen again.

Nothing. I must have been imagining that feeling. Cautiously, keeping her left hand against the cave wall, she took another step in. The faint crunch of her footstep echoed away into the dark. She took another step. This one echoed too. The place was huge, filling most of the mountain from the sound of it. Another—

A voice spoke, and Segnbora froze, clenching Charriselm. Her heart pounded. For a moment she thought the cave was about to fall in on her. The voice was huge, and incredibly deep. It thundered, rumbling, shaking the air; yet there was music in it, a slow and terrible song of pain. Hair stood up all over Segnbora. She could make nothing of the words the voice seemed to be speaking. At the end of the sentence, the silence that fell was waiting for her answer.

She swallowed hard. “I don’t know that language,” she said, her voice sounding amazingly small despite all the echoes it awoke. “Do you speak, Arlene or Darthene?”

There was a long pause; then the voice spoke once more. It used Darthene, but the timbre was that of a storm on the Sea. “You were a long time corning,” it said. “But you’re thrice welcome nevertheless.”

Segnbora leaned against the wall of the cave, bewildered. Her eyes were getting used to the darkness, and in the faint starlight from the doorway she could make out a great lumpy mass lying on the floor of the cave before her. The hot stone smell she had noticed before was coming from it, though there was little actual warmth in the place. “I don’t understand,” she said. “What are you?”

“Lkhw’ae,” the voice said, a rumbling growl and a sigh.

Segnbora gripped Charriselm even tighter, for that word of the strange language she did understand. A Dragon—

The voice began to speak again, and was suddenly choked off. Rocks cracked, and rattled, about in the cave, rolling, shattering, The Dragon had abruptly started thrashing around. Segnbora leaped, for the doorway, as afraid of being attacked as of a cave-in; but after a few moments the uncontrolled motion subsided and the immense half-seen bulk of the Dragon lay quiet again. She stared at it fearfully.

“I am about to lose this body,” the Dragon said, an anguished-sounding melody winding about the words. “That is the cause of my seizures.”

“You’re dying?” Segnbora said, and then had to grab for balance once more as another convulsion threw rocks in all directions. When the Dragon had settled again, she saw that it was looking at her from great round eyes, each of which was at least four feet across, globed and pupilless. Segnbora shuddered as she realized how big the rest of the beast must be, and was glad she couldn’t see it.

“Going rdaheih.” The Dragon whispered the word, but even its whisper sounded like a thunderstorm. “My time came upon me.”

The pain in its voice confused Segnbora. No one but Marchwarders—the humans who lived with Dragons in their high places—knew much about Dragons, but the one thing everybody said about them was that they never died. Even more confusing was the undercurrent of joy that ran under the Dragon’s pain, growing stronger by the moment.

“No matter,” it said. “You are here. At last, what was, is—” The words had an ominous sound to them. For an instant she considered running away, but did not. She had been curious about Dragons ever since the first and only time she had seen one, at the age of seven, soaring over the blue Darthene Gulf. Now that old curiosity was raging, and it overcame her fear.

Slowly Segnbora sheathed Charriselm, then began to pick her way toward the Dragon’s head among the fallen stones, watching carefully in case another seizure should occur. Lying flat on the rubble, the head from lower jaw to upper faceplate was twice her height. Above it, the spine in which the shielding faceplate terminated speared up into the gloom for another ten or fifteen feet. Segnbora reached out gingerly and touched the edge of the plate between nose and eyes,. It was hard and rough as stone, and warm. The eye on that side regarded her steadily, but she couldn’t read its expression. It looked dimmer than it had.

“Are you sure you’re not just ill?” Segnbora said.

“I know my time,” said the Dragon. “I welcome it. I always have.”

She shook her head. With her hands on the Dragon, she could feel its weary sorrow as if it were her own—but also that perplexing joy, both sober and expectant at once.

“Is there anything I can do for you?” she said.

The Dragon’s eyes flared brighter, and a tremor ran up and down its body. “Arke-sta rdakeh q’ae hfyn‘tsa!” the Dragon whispered in a great rush of fulfillment, as if its last fear had been lifted from it. “If you truly ask,” it said in Darthene, “don’t let me—die—uncompanioned.”

Segnbora shivered, having misgivings. Again she considered running away, but only briefly. “I’ll stay with you.”

“Yes,” the Dragon said. The light of its eye ebbed again. “You always did.”

That was when the last, and worst, convulsion happened. Walls shook. Stone chips and splinters rained from the ceiling. The floor danced. There was nothing for Segnbora to grab for support but the Dragon’s head. A brief feeling of hot stone—

—and the next moment, her head burst open from the inside. Segnbora knew how it felt to share her mind with another consciousness, but this was nothing like her experiences in the Precincts; those decorous, sliding melds of one Rodmistress-novice with another, each always wary of disturbing the delicately balanced economy of the other’s mind. This was like a boulder dropping into a bucket—a brutal invasion that smashed her against the borders of her self and threatened to smother her.

Strangling, agonized, she flailed about inside for room to think. There was none. Her inner spaces were crowded with otherness, a multitude of ruthless presences straining and seething in intolerable confinement—minds that beat at her, buffeting her like wings; thoughts that gnawed at her like alien jaws; strange memories that stalked through, her past, promising her a horrifying and incomprehensible future. The Dragon’s imminent death—

Segnbora screamed. She pushed desperately away without knowing for sure what she was pushing back from, but ready to do anything, even die, to avoid it. She fell and fell, yet the images followed her inexorably as a doom, becoming more and more real. I don’t want to remember! she screamed, but the words wouldn’t even come out right. Instead, a white-hot burning and a strange language took her by the throat, twisting the plea into a wracking curse: ste, taueh-sta‘ae mnek-kej, mnek—!

A roar of condemnation went up in he stifling, crowded darkness; the damp cold dirt rushed toward her face. Then mercifully the fall ended in a pain-colored flash that killed the presences, and the memories, and, Segnbora hoped, her too ....