Six

If you’ll walk with kings and queens, well; but take care. For the Shadow aims ever at them—and though It often misses, It doesn’t scorn to hit the person standing closest.

—Askrythen, 14, xi

 

It was an odd riding that someone standing on the old diked road to Chavi would have seen approaching through the evening. Indeed, maybe it was better that no one was there to witness it.

Between the tall hawthorn hedges in the fading light came, first, two men in country clothes, one on a sorrel, one on a bay. Their horses flinched and shied occasionally, for their riders were juggling stones, and dropping them frequently. A third man on a black palfrey was repeatedly plucking a single string on a lute, trying to elicit the same note twice in a row from his tone-deaf companion. Then came a young slim woman in a worn brown surcoat, riding a Steldene steeldust mare. She spoke occasionally to the empty air, like a madwoman, with a hoarse voice; and frequently raised a hand to brush back hair that was oddly pale at its roots and part.

Behind her, bringing up the rear, rode a tall dark man on a blood-bay stallion and a short dark man on a black-maned chestnut. The small man was waving his arms and arguing about something; his tall companion nodded gravely at most of what he said, glancing occasionally over to his left, where a hundredweight boulder was floating along beside him in the air.

“Look at them. Look at them! They’ll never manage a juggling act with people watching them.! Dusty, I love them, but they can’t juggle air!”

“They’ll do all right. They’re just out of practice. It’s been seven years since they juggled for a living, after all.”

“Yes, but—”

‘“Lorn, they’ll do all right. So will you, and so will Moris and Dritt and the rest. Most of the entertainers on the road are only mediocre anyway. And it’s not as if gleemen’s immunity depended on whether we’re good or not. No one’s going to suspect anything. This is the middle of nowhere.”

“Mmmmf ....”

(Hah!) Sunspark said suddenly from beneath Herewiss. (For one lousy penny I’m supposed to cut off my legs?)

Segnbora tried to put her head under her wing in token of mild exasperation, and found she couldn’t. She made a face. “The punch line usually comes at the end of the joke,” she said.

(Oh. Well, there’s this beggar—)

“That one won’t work now. We know the ending. Start another..”

(All right.) It thought a moment, and Segnbora shook her head, bemused.

While she had been busy with Hasai, Dritt had made the mistake one day of trying to make friends with Sunspark by telling it a joke. Since then it had decided that joking was a vital part of human experience, and had been demanding everyone to teach it the art, on pain of burning them when Herewiss wasn’t looking. As soon as she was in the saddle again, Sunspark had accosted Segnbora. In no mood for joking, she had suggested that it tell her jokes, and thus learn by doing. She’d had no peace since.

(—So there are these two women, they go into an inn and the innkeeper comes to their table, and one of the women says, ‘Bring us the best red wine you have, and be sure the cups are clean!’ So the innkeeper goes off, and comes back with a tray, and says, ‘Two red wines. And which one asked for the clean cup?’)

Herewiss closed his eyes and laughed. “Not bad.”

(I made it up,) said Sunspark, all childish pride. It did a quick capriole out of sheer pleasure, and almost unseated Herewiss.

“Oof! Watch that, you. On second thought, maybe we should increase your part in the act. We could use another jester.”

“Mnk’qalasihiw, Hkir—” Segnbora, cleared her throat. The Dracon language was beginning to fascinate her, and her desire to master it sometimes caused it to get out of her mouth before Darthene did. “I mean, Herewiss, there’s only one problem with that. What happens if an audience doesn’t laugh?”

Sunspark threw a merry glance at its rider. (If they don’t laugh, we get rid of them and bring in a new audience.) The thought “get rid of them” was attached to plans for the same sudden-death fire that had been the end of the deathjaw.

Freelorn glanced up at the sky, no doubt to invoke the Goddess’s protection on their next audience. Herewiss looked hard at his mount.

Sunspark laid back its ears and showed all its teeth around the bit, then subsided somewhat. (They will come back,) it said, sulkiness showing in the thought, (you told me so!)

“They will. But there’s no reason to hurry people out of this life.”

“Don’t be hard on it,” Segnbora said. “It learns quickly. Another few months and I dare say the audiences will be safe.”

Freelorn and Herewiss exchanged unconvinced, humorous glances, but Segnbora didn’t notice.

She was feeling hot—but then, these days, she felt hot most of the time. She closed her eyes to glance back, in mind, at Hasai. Through this day and the day before he had been stretched at ease in the seaside cave, looking out of her eyes, silent for the most part. He stayed out of her thoughts except to ask an occasional question. The rest of the time the rumble of his private thought blended with the bass chorus of the mdeihei, a sound Segnbora found she could now start to ignore, like the seashore when one lives nearby.

She looked down into herself now and saw Hasai sunning himself in the noon light that splashed down through the cave’s shaft. His wings were spread out flat like a butterfly’s, lying easy on the floor; his neck was curled so that his head lay under one of them in the position Segnbora had tried to achieve before.

“That one is insolent,” Hasai said, referring to Sunspark. “Is it not?”

In Dracon the question was rhetorical, and Segnbora had no answer for it. She turned away from Hasai without further thought and opened her eyes again on the evening. There was a sweet sharp hawthorn scent in the air.

“’Berend, did you hear me?” Freelorn said.

“No, Lorn, I was talking to my lodger.” She reached out and picked a white blossom off the hedge past which they were riding, held it to her nose.

“Oh. Sorry. What are you going to do tonight? Pass the purse?”

“She can sing,” Herewiss said.

“You can? Well, that’s news! You know many songs?”

“A few,” Segnbora said. She reined Steelsheen back to ride abreast of Herewiss and Freelorn, suddenly feeling the need for company more normal than that she carried inside her. “I’m best with a kithara, but I’ll do all right with the lute.”

Herewiss was still being paced by that boulder. It was easily half Sunspark’s size, but he showed no sign of strain, and at the same time was keeping Khavrinen from showing so much as a flicker of Fire. His control was improving rapidly.

“You won’t have any trouble with your part of the act, that’s plain,” Segnbora said.

Herewiss shrugged, waving the rock away with one hand. It soared up over the hedge like a blown feather and dropped out of sight, hitting the ground in the field on the other side with an, appalling thud.

“It’s easy,” Herewiss said. “Even the ecstatic part of the Fireflow—those overwhelming sensations of pleasure you experience during a wreaking—are under control since we climbed the Fane.”

Freelorn looked thoughtful, “You know, I wonder whether the Goddess installed that ecstatic aspect of the Fire on purpose, to keep people from doing large wreakings casually; as a sort of control—”

“More likely as a reward, to make sure the Power’s used. But in either case, I’m as free of the ecstatic part of the flow as I desire,” He paused, then went on nervously. “It’s a little dangerous, though. The first time I picked up that rock, I had to be careful that the whole field didn’t come with it ...”

Lorn laughed, and reached out to squeeze the hand of his loved.

After a while, at a turn in the road, they could make out a low huddle of squared-off silhouettes against the horizon. Lamps burned like yellow stars in each window.

“Your guest—” Freelorn said abruptly to Segnbora. “You said ‘they’ before ...”

“Hh’rae nt’sseh,” she said, and corrected herself with a smile. “It is they. But it’s also he. Mostly he.”

Freelorn’s expression was impossible to read. “Are you—still you?”

Oh Goddess, Lorn, if I only knew! she wanted to cry; but she kept her voice calm. “I’m not sure. Oh, Lorn, let it lie ... when we have time, I’ll take you and Herewiss inside and introduce you. I’m me enough to function, at least.”

Freelorn hastily cast around for something else to talk about. The lane had widened into a road of a size to drive cattle down, and was well tracked and rutted. “Been a lot of traffic here, I’d say.”

“For this time of year, yes.” Segnbora gazed up at the town. “How many days in Spring this year?”

“Ninety-three,” Herewiss said. “A Moon and a day till Midsummer. Why?”

“Just wondering .... Used to be my mother and father would start up for Darthis now, to do Midsummer’s in the city with the rest of the Houses. We used to pass this way. But we haven’t done the trip since they built the inn at Chavi. My father started having trouble with his legs. It was arthritis, and he couldn’t take the long rides anymore.” Suddenly she missed him terribly, in spite of the poor understanding he’d had of her.

“You know this place, then,” Herewiss was saying. “That’s a help.”

She nodded, blinking back unexpected tears. “They’ll be glad to see players. Not many come down here, especially after the bad weather sets in. They probably haven’t been entertained since last summer.” She glanced at Freelorn. “If things are as bad in Arlen as they are here .... don’t overcharge them, okay? From the look of the fields, this year’s harvest isn’t going to be any better than the last.” Freelorn nodded. Good harvests were a king’s responsibility. Bad ones were a sign of trouble—like the empty throne in Arlen.

“I’ll see to it,” he said.

Segnbora nodded, pleased. Lorn was changing. In most respects he was still the same brash, adventure-hungry prince whom she loved so dearly, but increasingly he was overcome by thoughtful silences. When he spoke, there was a new sobriety in his tone.

She could sense why. The land through which they traveled was his by right, and its plight was desperate. The fields were dry and dusty; the people, over-taxed, were in rags. What prince could see this and fail to feel his heart swell with outrage, fail to feel his sword-hand itch for justice? There was a cause growing in Freelorn’s mind, and it excited her.

Nevertheless, they were a long way from restoring him to his throne. They were so few, after all, and had been away so long ...

Indeed, it was months since they had heard any news of the kingdom. The usurper’s authority would be well established by now. It was for that reason that Lorn had chosen the inconspicuous town of Chavi for their first real foray into civilization. Here, disguised as entertainers, they could gather intelligence without arousing suspicion.

(How about this?) Sunspark said. (The Goddess is walking down, the road and She sees a duck—)

They rode up to the town’s rough fieldstone-and-mortar walls and were readily admitted. Chavi was much as Segnbora remembered it. The town’s central square was stone-paved, surrounded by earth and fieldstone houses with soundly thatched roofs. A few, though, still had turf roofs, with here and there a scamp flower growing. Men drying their hands on dishtowels and young women with floury hands came to the windows, attracted by the sound of hooves on cobbles.

Up at the front of the line of riders, Dritt unslung his timbrel and began banging it earnestly, calling their wares: “Songs and stories, tall tales! Shivers and chuckles, sleepless nights, horrors and heartthrobs, deaths and delights! Mimicry, musicry, tragedy, comedy—”

A small crowd began to gather. Dritt began juggling two knives and a lemon, breaking the rhythm occasionally by catching the lemon in his mouth, and making puckery faces when he let go of it. Harald was strumming changes on Segnbora’s lute, and angling it so the torchlight from the cressets by the inn door would catch the mother-of-pearl inlay.

Herewiss dismounted, pulled the saddle off Sunspark, and snapped his fingers. The stallion disappeared, replaced by a great white hound of the kind that runs with the Maiden’s Hunting. The fayhound danced once about Herewiss on its hind legs—bringing ooohs and aaaahs from the audience, for upright it stood two feet taller than he did—then, at his clap, it sat up most prettily and begged. At another clap it bowed to the audience, grinning with its huge jaws. At a fourth clap it changed to a tree that creaked and groaned as if a wild wind tore at it; then to a huge serpent that coiled around Herewiss and tried to squeeze the life out of him, and finally to a buck unicorn.

A delighted cheer went up from the crowd, the kerchiefed ladies and dusty-britched men applauding such illusion as they had only heard of before. Man and unicorn held their tableau, while Moris turned handsprings on the stones, and Freelorn went inside to dicker with the innkeeper for the night’s room and board.

Not long afterward Lorn emerged, and gestured to the crowd for silence. He was wearing the very slight crease of frown that was all he allowed himself when disturbed in public. “Kind gentlemen, good ladies,” he said, “we’ll begin our evening’s entertainment an hour after sunset. Please join us, one and all.”

The crowd in the street, murmuring appreciations,, began to disperse. Herewiss stood up and dusted himself off.

“Everything all right?” he said to Freelorn, noticing that faint crease of worry.

“Yes,” Freelorn said, in the same tone of voice he would have used to say “no.” “The innkeeper worries me, though.”

“He’s stingy?”

“No. We hardly had to bargain, he gave right in. It’s something about his manner—”

“Maybe he was busy.”

Freelorn shrugged. “Could be—the place is lively inside. Come on, I want a bath before dinner.”

They stabled the horses, including Sunspark, who wanted to indulge its fondness for oats but promised to follow later.

The inn itself, the “Yale and Fetlock,” was a long, low, battered-looking place of fieldstone with a weedy turf roof and a rammed dirt floor. The main room was smoky and full of people, all in the linens and woolens of townsmen. Some sat eating at long rough tables starred with rushlights. Others stood eating at sideboards, sat drinking in the middle of the room, or simply milled around. All were talking at the top of their lungs.

(Sweet Immanence,) Hasai said, sitting up in alarm behind Segnbora’s eyes and looking out at the jostly drinkers’ dance, (what’s being decided here?)

(What?)

A memory now surfaced, but of a sight she had never seen. In a stony deserted vale Dragons, a great crowd of them, moved among one another in a precise and graceful pattern. It was nn’s’raihle, Convocation—sport and ceremony and family fight and celebration all at once, the form of disagreement and resolution that Dragons found the most elegant and, delightful.

(Oh,) Segnbora said, seeing the likeness to nn’s’raihle in the tense movement in the room. (No, mdaha, this is social. They’ll talk about whatever’s happening, but they won’t be making any decisions here.)

(How can they all abrogate their responsibility like that?) Hasai said, uneasy. (You, all live here; how can you not act to run the world?)

(Uh—) Segnbora stalled, watching Freelorn. He had somehow already found a mug of ale, and was shouting in an old roan’s ear, “Ei, grand’ser, what’s all the pother for?”

“Reavers!” the gaffer shouted back, and started telling of incursions to the south in Wasten and Nestekhai.

(Well?)

She breathed out, wondering what to say. (Uh. Hasai, most humans are empowered only to make decisions regarding themselves—or those close to them. They don’t sit down, have an argument about something and then make a decision by which all humans will be bound. They would never all agree—)

(Then how do you get this world to work? How do you get anything accomplished?) Hasai said, bewildered.

Segnbora shook her head. “Done” didn’t translate well; “do” and “be” seemed to be the same word in Dracon—stihl. (That will take time to explain ... )

(Never mind, then. I see that there are more important matters to be concerned with. These incursions by the Reavers ... are they close by, do you think?)

Segnbora made a face. (Too close. I wish we were farther north. But we dare not be; we would arouse too much curiosity there. Excuse me, Hasai. I’ve got to get ready for our show—)

(Certainly.)

She found the innkeeper. He was a knifeblade of a man, all grin and nervous energy. Segnbora could see that he would have made a quick business of the dickering. She got a mug of rough cider from him, and went to her bath.

Scrubbed and dressed in her worn but serviceable black gown with the tai-Enraesi crest on one shoulder, she went back to the common room and began talking to the patrons, assessing their mood, asking for requests. Just the sound of their voices gave her pleasure. They spoke in the old reassuring South Darthene accent that had been her mother’s. It was a rich speech, slow, broad and full of archaisms. “Maistress,” the slow-smiling, staid-faced townsfolk called her. “Aye, gaffer, tha’st hit it,” she would drawl back, and they would laugh together.

She found Freelorn and Herewiss and the others at the best table by the central hearth, and sat down with them to a meal of aggressively garlicked lamb and buttered turnips, baked bannocks, and a soft, sharp sheep’s-milk cheese to spread on them.

Freelorn, reviling the vintage of the cool white potato wine that had been brought up for them from the ice-cellar, nevertheless drank off three cups one after another, and by mistake almost drank the Goddess’s cup as well. Lang gave Segnbora a nudge, and they traded glances. Freelorn had been in a mood like this the night he had gotten them all chased out of Madeil, the night Segnbora ran across him.

“It’s all right, I think,” she whispered.

Herewiss took the wineflask gently away from his loved and forestalled his protests by saying, “Who’s performing first?”

This started the predictable argument, punctuated with exclamations of, “I need more practice!”; “You are too in good voice, I heard you in the outhouse!”; “Oh, don’t be a coward!”; “I’m a coward, huh, then you go first!”

Segnbora groped under the table for the lute, causing more exclamations. She winked at Lang and pulled her chair over by the hearth. Behind her, as she tuned the lute’s slack ela-string, the fire leaped, roaring up the chimney. There was a momentary hush close to the hearth, then intrigued whispers. The fire had acquired eyes.

“Thank you,” she said, stroking the lute. “This is how it was,” she said. That had been the storyteller’s opening line from time immemorial. The quiet spread far back in the room. “There was a queen who would not die—”

It was a relative’s story, and an old favorite of hers: the tale of Efmaer d’Seldun tai-Earnesi, the first woman to be both Queen of Darthen and a Rodmistress.

In the fourth year of Efmaer’s reign came an outbreak of lunglock fever. Efmaer did what she could to treat those of the royal household who were ill, but the Fire was of no avail. Soon she caught the malady herself. There was bitter mourning then, for under Efmaer’s rule the land had prospered as never before. When finally she fell into the unconsciousness that precedes death, her attendants stole weeping from her rooms, leaving her to die peacefully in the night.

But none of them knew their Queen’s determination. It wasn’t yet her time to die. When she suddenly found herself standing before the open Door into Starlight, and felt the forces at her back pushing her toward it, Efmaer rebelled. She caught at the black doorsills and hung over the starry abyss by ten straining fingers. Peace and the last Shore awaited her at the bottom of the darkness, but Efmaer would have none of them. She hung on.

When her tearful attendants slipped into her bedchamber in the morning to prepare her body for the pyre, they found her not dead, but sleeping. She looked drawn and fever-wasted, but the sickness was broken. In her hand, clutched tight, was a long sharp splinter of darkness—a broken-off piece of the Door.

Later, when Efmaer was well again, she wrought the splinter into a sword. Skadhwe, it was called in Darthene, “Dark-harm”.  It would cut anything, stone or steel or soul, and many were Efmaer’s deeds with it across the breadth of Darthen and down the length of her reign. And if anyone spoke in fear to Efmaer because she had cheated Death at its own Door, the Queen would laugh, unworried, certain the Shadow would never bother avenging so small a slight.

Whether she was right no one could surely say, for Efmaer’s loved, Sefeden, killed himself, and his soul passed into Meni Auardhem, into Glasscastle, to which go suicides and those weary of life.

Then Efmaer grew frightened, for Sefeden knew her inner Name; and therefore his soul could bind her to this world when it was time to pass onward and be reborn. In haste Efmaer rode to Barachael, and climbed Mount Adine, above which Glasscastle appeared at times of sunset and crescent Moon and Evenstar.

There was at that time no way for one still in the body to cross to the castle. The souls of the dead and the minds of the mad found their way across with no need of a physical road. It would have been easy for Efmaer to attempt the crossing to Glasscastle in a bird’s shape, or as a disembodied soul, but she was no fool. The terrible magics of the place would have warped her own wreaking out of shape and killed her. Yet she had to get into Glasscastle; yet she could not get into Glasscastle.

For some people this would have been a problem. But Efmaer waited for the time of three Lights, when the castle faded into being. When it was fully there, she drew Skadhwe and smote the stone of Adine with it, opening a great rent in the mountain, like a wound. With her Fire, Efmaer brought about the chief wreaking of her lifetime, singing the mountain’s blood out of its wound, drawing out the incomparable iron of the great Eisargir lodes, tempering it in Flame and passion, hammering it with ruthless song into a blue-steel bridge that arched up to the Castle, fit road for a mortal’s feet.

When had she wrought the bridge, she climbed it. She came to the crystal doors of Glasscastle and passed them, searching for Sefeden to get her Name back from him. But she did not come out. And at nightfall Glasscastle vanished into its eternal twilight, until the next time of three Lights in the world ...

“And from that day to this,” she said at last, unnerved to feel the tears coming, “no one has been so bold as to say they have seen Efmaer d’Seldun among the living or the dead. With her, Skadhwe passed out of life and into legend; and in the years since the Queen’s disappearance, cheating Death has gone out of style ....”

The applause embarrassed her, as usual. She was glad to get out of what was now a very hot chair, and give place to Dritt and Moris and their juggling. Someone pushed a cup of cold wine into her hand. She took it gratefully and made her way to the back of the room, wiping her eyes as surreptitiously as she could.

“Smoke,” she said to Lang as she came up beside him.

“Mmm-hmm.”

Together they held up the wall awhile, leaning on one another’s shoulder and watching Moris and Dritt juggle objects the audience gave them: beerpots, platters, clay pipes, truncheons, rushlight holders. Nothing fell, nothing at all.

“I can’t believe it!” Lang whispered. “Did all that practicing actually pay off?”

“Not a chance,” Segnbora whispered back. “I smell Fire. Herewiss threw a wreaking over them. I doubt they’ll be able to drop even a hint until it breaks.”

Freelorn came toward them through the crowd, with another cup of wine in his hand.

“Lorn,” Segnbora said softly as he joined them, “just you watch it. Don’t get sozzled.”

“Yes, mother.”

Segnbora settled back against the wall again and went back to watching the jugglers, particularly poor Moris, who had just been handed a full winejug to add to the other objects being juggled. He was giving it a look such as the King gave the Maiden when he had come to beg one of the hares She was herding. Glancing back at Lorn to see his reaction, Segnbora saw that he wasn’t paying attention. He was watching someone off to one side, out of the hearthlight, eyes wide with admiration.

A blocky man moved and Segnbora could see over his shoulder. Past him, there, a small figure slipped out of her cloak, accepted a cup from the passing barmaid and raised it to her lip, looking over the rim in Freelorn’s direction. She was a short woman with close-cropped hair of a very fair blonde, small bright eyes like a bird’s, a mouth that quirked up at one corner—

Segnbora froze for a breath, two breaths, watching the light from a wall-cresset catch in the butter-blonde hair, giving its owner a halo. (Tegane,) she said silently, fighting hard to keep her delight off her face. Her loved from those long-ago days at the Precincts—here! (You’re a long way from home: is Wyn keeping supper hot for you?)

(“’Berend! Are you here!) The face across the room didn’t change a bit, but Segnbora heard the old familiar laughter, sounding all the more real for being silent. (Now I see! ’Berend, you—)

(Me what? What are you doing here?) She bowed her head over her cup, needing the darkness to hide the smile that wouldn’t stay in.

(I was told to come. I dreamed true last night. She told me, ‘I know your troubles and your questions. Go quickly to Chavi and you’ll find answers.’ I used the Kings’ Door, and a mile away I smelled so much Fire that—oh ’Berend, I’m so glad for you!)

{Not me, Tegane.) She flicked a mind-glance at Freelorn. (It’s this one’s loved.)

(You mean—) Eftgan’s emotions swung rapidly from embarrassment to incredulity. (Then that uproar in the Power we all felt last week was someone donating to the Fane! And that story I got from the Brightwood people about a man focusing—)

(It’s true,) Segnbora said, and leaned back against the wall, weak from the backwash of Eftgan’s excitement.

Moris and Drill finished their juggling, amid much applause. There was no opportunity to go to Eftgan, however, for at that moment Herewiss walked in through the door from the stableyard and took his place by the hearth. The room quieted.

Herewiss didn’t bother with the lengthy introduction that some sorcerers used to assure that their illusions would take root in the spectators’ minds. Nor did he bother with spells. He just sat back in the chair, one arm leaning casually on his long sheathed sword. “My gentlemen, my ladies,” he said, “a little sorcery.”

It was a great deal more than that, but since no Fire showed there was no way for the audience to tell. They chuckled appreciatively when tankards and plates engaged in a stately aerial sarabande in the middle of the room. They clapped when one empty table shook itself like a sleepy dog, got up and began stumping around the room on its legs. They hooted with pleased derision when the big rough fieldstones in the fireplace all suddenly grew mouths and began talking noisily about the things they had seen in their time, some of which made for very choice gossip.

When finally all the flames in the rooms shot up suddenly, swirled together in the empty air and coalesced into a bright-feathered bird that hung upside down by one foot from the chandelier and croaked, “I’ve got it! The Goddess is walking down, the street and She meets this duck ...” the storm of laughter and applause became’ deafening.

Not even Eftgan’s composure remained unshattered. “My Goddess,” she whispered, and from clear across the room Segnbora could feel her smothering down the Flame that was trying to leap from, her Rod in response to the Fireflow Herewiss was letting loose.

A good sorcerer would have had no trouble producing such effects by illusion; but these were actual objects moving around, briefly alive and self-willed. Normally it would have taken two or three Rodmistresses working in consort to produce even one of the transformations taking place—but there sat Herewiss all by himself, looking like a child enjoying a new toy.

The table had sneaked up behind one tall woman and was nibbling curiously at her tunic, like a browsing goat. The stones had begun singing rounds, Sunspark had forgotten by now that it ought to have been holding onto the chandelier, and was simply suspended upside down in midair, getting laughs for jokes without punch lines attached.

(How is he doing that?!) Eftgan said, bespeaking Segnbora very quietly, so as not to distract Herewiss.

(Most of these things were alive once,) Herewiss said silently, not moving or looking up. (It’s just a matter of reminding them how it was. Mistress, I can taste your Fire but I can’t place you—though there’s something familiar about your pattern. You know my loved, perhaps?)

(The pattern might be familiar, prince) the small woman said, as two chairs put their arms about each other and begin dancing in a corner, muttering creaky endearments, (because you and I have met. At Lidika fields you jumped in front of a Reaver with a crossbow and took the quarrel for me while I was having trouble with a swordfight—)

The hearthstone snorted as if in great surprise, then settled into a bout of ratchety snoring. (Eftgan! The Queen’s grace might have given me warning!)

(I didn’t want to disturb your concentration, prince, though it appears I worried for nought. But pardon me if I leave off complimenting you for the moment. I have business here, and you’re part of it, I’ve been told. If I rework the wreaking on the Kings’ Door, can you come with me to Barachael tonight?)

(Depends on Freelorn, madam,) All the candles on tables and in sconces tied themselves in knots and kept on burning. (We’re on business of our own, and 1 have oaths in hand that may even supersede the oaths of the Brightwood line to Darthen.)

(Oh, that business. I think your business and mine will go well enough together.)

(Then we’ll talk when I’ve finished.)

At that Lorn quietly left the shadow of his doorway, heading across the common room—ostensibly to get another drink—and “noticed” Eftgan in what appeared to be the fashion of one potential bed-partner noticing another. He paused beside her, bent toward the pretty woman, and with a smile that any onlooker would have found unmistakable, said in her ear, “Since it’s my throne we’re talking about, madam, and my country, I’d best be there too. Don’t you think?”

Eftgan smiled back, the same smile. “Sir,” she whispered, “that sounds good to me.”

The room had become such a merry hurly-burly of laughter and clapping that saying anything and having it heard was becoming impossible. Freelorn went off for his drink, leaving Eftgan to say silently, and with some diffidence, (’Berend, have you taken a mind-hurt recently? There’s a darkness down there that didn’t used to be. Is there anything I can do?)

(Dear heart, I don’t think so,) she said silently. (I’m told the change is permanent.)

(You mean She—)

(No. Well, not directly. If you want to take a look ... )

(Yes.)

Across the room, their eyes caught and held, then dropped again as their minds fell together in that companionable meld that had always come so easily.

Segnbora saw and felt, in a few breaths’ space, a rush of images that were Eftgan’s surface memories of the past four years. Initiation into the royal priesthood, her brother’s death, and her own investiture as Queen. The hot morning spent hammering out her crown, in the great square of Darthis, alone and unguarded, wondering whether someone would come out of the gathered crowd to kill her, as was her people’s right if they felt her reign would not be prosperous. Worries about Arlen and, the usurper who sat in power there, making raids on her borders. Marriage to her loved, Wyn s’Heleth. Childbirth, midnight feedings, Namings, ceremonies, the rites of life, all tumbled together with the lesser and greater drudgeries of queenship: mornings in court-justice, evenings spent in the difficult wreakings that were necessary to buy her land temporary reprieve from the hunger and death creeping toward its borders.

There was more. Border problems. Reavers gathering in ever greater numbers on the far side of the mountain passes, pouring through them almost as if in migration. The loss of communications with numerous villages in the far south—suggesting that their Rodmistresses were dead. The loss of one of her best intelligencers here in Chavi, some weeks back. The sudden, urgent true-dream that showed Eftgan plainly the reason for all the Reaver movements of late. This last discovery had been more shocking than anything the Queen had been willing to imagine.

She had been so shocked, in fact, that she had not once, but several times, opened and used the Kings’ Door, the dangerous worldgate in the Black Palace at Darthis. She had done so tonight, and so here she sat in faded woolens and patched cloak and embroidered white shirt, like any countrywoman with a pot of beer. Yet her eyes were open for trouble, and for the answers she had been promised. Her Rod was sheathed and ready at her side.

Segnbora touched lightly on all these things, meanwhile letting Eftgan do what she didn’t trust the mdeihei to do: turn over her memories one by one. When they were done, Segnbora saw Eftgan stare down inside her at a shape burning in iron and diamond. Hasai stared back up, bowed his head and lifted his wings in calm greeting, then went back about his own concerns, singing something low and solemn to the rest of the mdeihei.

When their glances rested in one another’s eyes again, Segnbora and Eftgan both breathed a sigh of relief at the end of the exertion.

(He’s very big,) Eftgan said. (And how many others are in there?)

(Maybe a couple hundred. I tried counting and had to give up. They don’t count the way we do, and I could never get our tallies to agree. Tegane, what’s bringing all these Reavers down on us? You saw something—)

(I did.) Eftgan was profoundly disturbed inside, (Part of the reason is storms. Their weather Is worsening. It was never very good to begin with, and now the Reaver tribes farthest south are faced with a choice. Either they move north or freeze even at Midsummer. The tribes already close to us are feeling the pressure. There are more people hunting those lands than the available game can support. Thinking Fyrd are driving them too. But worse than that—)

(What could be worse!)

(Cillmod is in league with them,) Eftgan said, sour-faced, (and the Shadow is directing them all.)

Segnbora stared, then took a long drink to hide her nervousness.

(There’s worse yet to come,) the Queen said. (My Lady tells me that a great shifting and unbalancing of Powers is about to occur in the area around Barachael during the dark of the next Moon. On one hand, Reavers are gathering on the far side of the Barachael Pass, as if for a great incursion. On the other—) The Queen took a drink. (On the other, we’re due for a eight of three Lights shortly. And that means that Glasscastle will appear. Now, what might go into Glasscastle doesn’t concern me. What might come out of it does. Unhuman things, monsters, have been summoned out of there before by sorcerers of foul intent—)

(But who in the Kingdoms would do something like that? That whole area is soaked with old blood! Nine chances out of ten, a sorcery would go askew—)

(No one in the Kingdoms would attempt such a thing,) Eftgan said. (But I have other news. The dying thought of a certain Rodmistress managed to reach me, even though her bones had just been turned to flour inside her,)

“What!” Segnbora said aloud, in utter shock. She drank again to silence herself.

(The Reavers have got sorcerers now. Apparently someone has gotten a few of them over their fear of magic. It is that individual, who surely has no knowledge or concern for sorcerous balances, who worries me. Think what horrors he might call forth from Glasscastle! He could easily protect the Reaver incursion, and destroy our defense—what, then?)

Segnbora thought of Herewiss’s dream, of mountains falling on mountains, and blood on the Moon, and said nothing.

(I need him,) said Eftgan, catching the images, which were in agreement with those in her own true-dream. (I can’t be in all the places I must be, just now. One of my other spies tells me that Cillmod and some of his mercenaries are about to attack my granaries at Orsvier. I must be there to lead the defense. But Glasscastle and Barachael also have to be protected, and it will take Fire of an extraordinary level to manage that. Up until now, I thought I was the only one in Darthen who had achieved that level. Now—) She looked over toward where Herewiss stood by the hearth, grinning at the applause he was receiving for his “sorcery.” (I can’t tell you how glad I am to be surpassed,) Eftgan said. (Especially at a time like this, when everything seems to be happening at once.)

(Queen,) Segnbora said, (you say that everything’s happening at once ... well, he’s one of the reasons.)

Eftgan nodded, understanding. Then, as Herewiss stepped away from the hearth, she crossed glances with him, a “let’s-talk” look.

(I’ll see you later, Tegane,) Segnbora said, putting her drink aside, and headed for the door that gave onto the back of the inn.

Lang was hurrying in as she stepped out. “You on now?” Segnbora said.

“Uh-huh. Wish me luck.”

“You won’t need it. Except maybe to keep yourself from being knocked unconscious by the money they’ll throw.”

Lang smiled. “Where’re you headed?—Oh, my Goddess,” he said. Before Segnbora could say anything about either the Queen or her own increasingly urgent need to find a friendly bush, Lang had spotted Eftgan. “She’s here? After seven years, she finally tracked down poor Dritt and Moris!”

“Ssssh. Tell the two of them to keep mum; something’s on the spit, I’m not sure what yet.”

Lang said nothing, only touched her shoulder gently as she went past, out into the alley and the cool air.

A shiver went down her back. It was more than just a reaction to the coolness outside, after the heat and smoke of the inn. Cillmod in league with the Shadow? She drew up her gown to keep it off the wet ground, and went down the alley behind the inn, looking for a drier spot to take care of her business. The alley ended in a cobbled street that led to the town’s fields through an unguarded postern gate.

Quietly Segnbora walked down the street, patting Charriselm once to make sure it was loose in the sheath, unbarred the gate, and slipped out. She relieved herself in the shadow of one of the ubiquitous hawthorn hedges, then stood stretching awhile, listening to the night and letting herself calm down. Far behind her, the sound of Lang’s baritone escaped through the inn’s back door, following the lighter notes of the lute through the reflective minor chords of “The Goddess’s Riding”:

“... But if I speak with yon Lady bright,

I wis my heart will bryst in three;

Now shall I go with all my might

Her for to meet beneath Her tree ....”

“Tegane,” Segnbora whispered, smiling. Moon-bright, the nickname said in Darthene. Eftgan had liked it; she had never been terribly fond of her right name. In fact, she had returned the favor, turning segnbora, “standard-bearer,” into ’berend, a verb. It meant “swift-rushing”: impetuous, always in a hurry, sometimes too much of one—as when the Maiden had let Death into the worlds by accident.

And as their names, so they had been together while they were in love: Eftgan swinging slow and steady through her moods, like the Moon, waxing and waning, giving and withholding; Segnbora pushing, hurrying, urging, not sure what she wanted but not willing to wait long for it.

The senior Rodmistresses had paired them off to work together in hopes that Eftgan’s Fire, unusually intense for a sixteen year old, might influence Segnbora’s enough to make her focus. They expected the play-sharing that usually took place between work partners to make the two novices’ patterns match more closely. No one, however, had expected these two, who were so unlike—one a tall, loud, spindly daughter of hedge-nobility, the other a small, compact, quiet daughter of the Eagle—to fall in love ....

Segnbora thought of the day Eftgan had had to leave the Precincts. It was sudden. Her brother Bryn had been killed by Fyrd while hunting.

“They’re going to make me be Queen,” Eftgan had said, bitter, standing in the green shade with her face averted from Segnbora. She had been trying not to cry.

Tegane—

“’Berend, you can’t do anything for me. Any more than I’ve been able to do anything for you, all this while. Perhaps it’s better that I’m leaving now. You can’t focus, and I can’t be happy around you using the Fire and watching you suffer while I do wreakings. If this kept on much longer, we’d be hating each other.”

This was the truth, and it reduced anything Segnbora could have said in reply to a meaningless noise. The two of them stood in the shade, hardly able to look at one another, and made their good-byes. Each laid a kiss in the palm of the other’s hand, the restrained and formal farewell between kinsfolk of the Forty Houses.

Then Eftgan turned away and vanished among the green leaves of the outer Precincts; and Segnbora went in deeper, and didn’t come out till her soul was cried dry, a matter of some days ....

Now Segnbora stood bemused for a moment, then realized that a dark head seemed to loom just over her shoulder, though of course there was nothing between her and the stars of late spring.

(When you forget me, when you let us be one, it can be this way,) Hasai said, dispassionately. (Do you prefer discomfort, apartness?)

She almost said yes, but held her peace. “It was a very private memory,” she said quietly.

(Sdaha, you still don’t understand. You must be who you have been to be who you are.)

Segnbora shook her head, weary. Every time I think I understand the mdeihei, I find I don’t at all .... She looked out across the field into which she had ducked when she came through the hedge. It was tall with green hay that whispered in the starlight. On an impulse she tucked her robe up into her swordbelt and started across it, wading waist-deep, enjoying the sensations: the rasp and itch of the hay against her legs, the darkness, the cool wind.

Hasai said nothing, his mind resting alongside hers, tasting the night as she did—

She stopped short in the middle of the field. Something teased at her undersenses, a whiff of wrongness that was out of tune with the clean night. She stood there with eyes closed to “see” better—

—and there, sharp as a cymbal-clash, came the clear perception of a place just to the east that felt like an unhealed wound. A hidden thing meant to stay that way, and failing.

(Hasai?)

(I’m here. I feel it also.)

(Come on.)