Segnbora came down from her room the next morning and made her way to the breakfast hall only to find it empty. There was not even a single platter or cup on the table. The great inner court, when she passed through it, however, was lively as a wasps’ nest is after it’s been kicked. People and horses in the courtyard clattered and shouted so loud she could barely hear Hasai’s comments inside her, and the mdeihei were drowned out entirely. Tack was being burnished, weapons readied, and the silver chains of officers were everywhere.

(What goes?) Hasai inquired, as loudly as was polite.

(How the Dark should I know?) she said.

Up the stairs to the battlements she went, three at a time, Charriselm’s scabbard bouncing at her side, its every bump a reminder of the black non-weight that was sheathed in it now. The place where her sword had been felt like the socket of a lost tooth. She was grateful when she reached the top, but not reassured at all by the sight of Freelorn and Lang and Moris and Dritt and Torve leaning on their elbows, looking over the battlements, calm of face but tense of stance.

As she came up to them, something went rap! through the bright morning air, a sharp sound that raised goosebumps on her arms.

“What is it?” she said, joining them at the battlement. None of them answered her, so she looked for herself. Down in the valley, looking remote, a dark blot surrounded the star-shaped walls of Barachael town. The blot heaved and moved oddly, separated into smaller pieces, consolidated again. One part of the darkness moved rhythmically backward and then forward again, toward the town’s big brass-studded gates. The forward movement arrested suddenly, and after several seconds the faint rapping boom of the battering ram came floating across the air.

“Damn, oh damn,” Segnbora said, and out of reflex reached for Charriselm’s hilt in frustration. She snatched her hand away as it fell to the not-hot-not-cold smoothness of Skadhwe’s end.

Torve, beside her, raised his eyebrows idly at Segnbora’s swearing. “It’s silly, really,” he said. “The people are all inside khas-Barachael, so there’s no reason for the Reavers to force the gates—if they can. I just hope they don’t decide to fire the fields. It’s late for putting in another crop of wheat ... “

There was really nowhere else to put her hand. After a couple seconds of hooking it uncomfortably in her belt, Segnbora sighed and let it fall to Skadhwe’s hilt. It was an odd feeling, neutral, like touching one’s own skin. “The Reavers arrived last night?” she said.

Torve nodded. “Through the pass. I dare say the Queen is wishing she had had Herewiss seal the pass before taking on Glasscastle ...”

“Where is the Queen?”

“Upstairs with Herewiss,” Freelorn said, giving Segnbora a sidewise glance meant to be disciplinary. “If you’d get up earlier, you wouldn’t miss so much.”

Segnbora made a face at her liege and leaned on the battlement like the others, elbows-down, staring at the Reavers’ futile work in the valley. “More are coming?” she said. It was a rhetorical question. There were always more coming.

“Here and elsewhere,” Lang said, not looking at her, in that way he had when he was worried and didn’t care to let his eyes betray it.

“What happened at Orsvier?”

“She won.”

“You said ‘elsewhere’ just now,” she remarked, puzzled. “Where’s the new incursion?”

Lang wouldn’t answer her. She looked past him at Dritt. “Bluepeak,” Dritt said.

Segnbora’s stomach began to churn, and inside her the mdeihei sang their own unease in response to hers. Herewiss’s dream was starting to come true, then. Of all the places in the world where the Shadow’s sleeping influence shouldn’t be disturbed, Bluepeak was the foremost.

“How many Reavers?”

“Her scrying would not come clear on that point,” Torve said. “Maybe three thousand. People, a large supply convoy, beasts ... and Fyrd.”

“Fyrd?” she whispered. Allied with humans? The idea shocked her. Not even in the ancient days of terror, between the Catastrophe and the Worldwinning, had Fyrd ever gone so far as to join forces with humans, whom they regarded as prey.

These must be the thinking kind, then; the species they had fought en route to the Morrowfane. The Lion and the Eagle had supposedly vanquished them at Bluepeak long ago, but now they were back. No doubt they were thirsting for vengeance for the times before they had gained intelligence; times when humankind preyed on them.

“Looks like Bluepeak will be our job,” Moris muttered.

“Looks that way,” Torve said with his usual calm. He turned his eyes back to the Reavers in the valley, who—having had no luck with the town gates—were sitting down to a late breakfast.

“Idiots,” Harald said under his breath. “Torve, couldn’t you sent out a sortie?”

“Without orders? The Queen would take my officers’ chain and use it to hang me by my privates,” he answered, only half-joking. “Besides, they’re out of bowshot.”

Wings whistled overhead. Segnbora and the others glanced up and saw what looked like fire flying. Feathers burning like embers, eyes like live coals, a tail like flame streaming back from a torch ... They flinched back from the parapet as the brightness landed there. It stood still long enough to smooth a couple of smoldering feathers back into place, then ruffled itself up in a flurry of red-hot brilliance.

(Levies,) it said, (strategy and tactics, forced marches, that’s all your soldiers can talk about. I’m bored.)

Segnbora raised an eyebrow at the form Sunspark had adopted. “Shame, Firechild! There’s only one Phoenix!”

(What’s shame?) Sunspark said. (As for the Phoenix—if it’s so fond of this shape, let it come try a couple of falls with me. If it wins, I’ll let it keep the form.) It peered over the battlement at the Reavers below, interested. (Are they with us?)

Segnbora gazed at Sunspark with idle affection. Its tail-feathers were like those of a peacock, but red-golden and bearing eyes like coals. They were searing the stone against which they lay. She started to get an idea. “No,” she said.

The elemental turned its fiery eyes on her, glowing even hotter. The others moved down the battlement, all but Torve, who stood his ground. She felt Sunspark examining her state of mind with hot impatient interest. (This is a new kind of joke, perhaps?)

(Yes. And no. Better than a joke.)

(Something for Herewiss? Something to make him glad?)

(Yes.) She considered her thought carefully before sharing it. (Before I tell you, consider this: When he finds out about it, will he be angry, will he be in pain? If he won’t ... ) She let the thought rest.

Sunspark looked down at the Reavers, considering carefully. For all its power, it knew it had much to learn yet about being human. (What are they doing?) it said, audible to the others.

Torve looked at it as calmly as if it had been one of his own people. “Breaking the gates of the town,” he said, “to get inside and kill the people, or take their belongings at least.”

Sunspark didn’t look up from the valley. Segnbora caught its thoughts: Herewiss doesn’t care for killing, or for robbing either. He tries to prevent them whenever possible. (And when they’ve done that? What then?)

“They’ll come here and try to kill us, so that no one can stop them from doing as they please in this part of the country,” Torve said.

(That’s done it!) Sunspark said.

Leaping from the battlement in a swift flash of fire, it sent them all staggering back. Segnbora felt her singed face to find out if her eyebrows were still there. Once certain that they were, she looked around hurriedly. Sunspark had vanished. But Harald and Dritt were pointing down at the valley and laughing. Far down in the depths of air, the group around the battering ram suddenly began to break up. One person after another jumped up to beat frantically at smoldering clothes, their yelps of consternation trailing tardily through the air.

“Can it manage a whole army, though?” Lang asked uncertainly.

Then it was Segnbora’s turn to point and laugh, as a bloom of light erupted before the gates, followed by the sound of screaming. The ram—a lopped monarch pine, full of pitch as monarchs are—literally exploded in red-hot splinters and clouds of burning gas. People and ponies were flung in all directions. Then from the explosion site something like a serpent of flame went pouring over the scorched ground. It lengthened and wound right around the walls of Barachael, met its tail and kept on going, coiling around, reaching upward. In moments the town was lost behind burning walls, and the huge head of a coiled fire-serpent wavered lazily above Barachael. The confused shrieks and yells of the routed Reavers mingled with the screaming of their ponies. People and animals ran every which way. A roar of amazed laughter and applause went up from the walls of khas-Barachael.

In response the Reavers, who had moved away from Barachael town and toward the keep, raised a chorus of war shouts. But their shouts had a half-hearted sound to them, as if they had other matters in mind. Sunspark was looking down at them with innocent malice, its fiery head swaying like that of a sleepy viper deciding whether to strike.

“What the—!” someone said from a higher parapet. Segnbora glanced up and saw Eftgan and Herewiss looking over the rail at Barachael town, very surprised. “Your idea?” Eftgan said to Herewiss. “No!” he said, grinning down at Sunspark. It stretched up its flame-hooded head and blinked at him good-naturedly. (They had torches,) it said, (and might have burned the town. However, if anybody’s going to do any burning around here, it’s going to be me.)

Herewiss and Eftgan came down to the battlement together and leaned on the parapet with Freelorn’s followers. “I wish that sealing the pass was going to be as simple,” Eftgan said.

Freelorn glanced at her. “It really can be done, then?”

Herewiss nodded. “It took me a while to work out the exact method, and it’ll take some hours to attune to the mountain properly ... but, yes, I can do it.”

“And survive?”

Herewiss’s glance crossed with Freelorn’s, gently mocking. “That’s with Her, of course,” he said, “but I have a few things to do yet before I go willingly to death’s Door. I believe I’ll live.”

“It’s risky, though,” Eftgan said, as if resuming an argument with herself. “The earth always moves better on a night when the Moon’s full, but the next time that happens there’s an eclipse. The Shadow will be very strong then—”

There was a silence. Segnbora bit her lip. In a place as bitterly contested as Barachael, where the land was soaked with centuries of blood and violent death, even the simplest wreaking could be warped by the built-up negative forces. An eclipse was no help at all. And to attempt a wreaking that involved unconsciousness of the upper mind, as this one surely would—

“I’m strong too,” Herewiss said.

The complete assurance in his voice made Segnbora shudder. She had heard such assurance before, and disaster had followed.

“The wreaking itself doesn’t worry me; I received more than enough Power to handle it at the Morrowfane. The tricky part will be the survey of the land. That’ll have to be done out-of-body, and it’ll take at least a day. Moreover, it must be done today, or tomorrow at the latest, in order for me to be properly rested up for the long wreaking.”

Lang raised his eyebrows. ‘“Survey?”

Herewiss nodded and leaned on the parapet. “Can’t seal the pass without checking the valley to see how its stone lies—strata, faults, underground water. Touch the wrong part of a landscape and the whole thing could be destroyed.”

“This area’s quite unstable,” someone said, and heads turned toward Segnbora, confusing her terribly until she realized that it was she who had spoken. “There are two major faults under the valley,” she heard herself go on in a voice that sounded like hers but was somehow odd. “Eight minor vertical faults run east-west between Adine and Aulys, and one runs across the lower Eisargir Pass. One major vertical fault crosses the valley mouth from Swaleback to Aulys’s southern spur—”

(Mdaha? What are you—)

(If he will work with stone, here, he must learn this, sdaha!) said the great dark voice inside her. She held her peace and let him use her throat.

“Then beneath those is a lateral fault that runs down the Eisargir Pass from the foot of Mirit into the valley, past the town, and out into the plain. It’s very treacherous. We made no Marchward here because of it. To touch it wrongly will cause it to discharge and fold the valley in upon itself. The mountains might come down too. Especially Adine, whose support-spurs are rooted close to the lateral.”

The others stared at her, particularly Herewiss. He opened his mouth, but paused a moment, unsure how to begin. “Sir—”

“I greet you, Hearn’s son,” she said, and approximated Hasai’s slight bow.

“Sir, how do you know all this?”

The mdeihei were laughing indulgently, as one laughs at a child. “We are Dracon,” Hasai said, very gently. “We know. Stone is our element.”

“Sir,” Herewiss said, “I’d like to trust what you say, it’d save me a great deal of time, but—”

“—but you don’t understand,” Hasai said, patient. Segnbora was surprised to hear the overtones of his inner song, calm and measured, coming out in her own voice.

“What you ask us is a great mystery. Even we aren’t sure how stone became our element. But in the world from which we came, we were born in the stone, and dwelt in it. These are the very earliest times of which we speak. When food and drink failed us, stone and starlight were all we had left. We learned to use them. Those who didn’t understand stone—how it could be moved to make shelter or melted with Dragonfire to help one find more starlight in dim times—those didn’t survive. Those of us who lived to become as we are now, are born knowing the structure and movement of rock as we know how to use our fire to shape it. We experience stone as if it were part of us. Indeed, we are the foundations, the roots of the world.”

Herewiss and Freelorn looked at each other. No one on the parapet spoke.

From down in Barachael valley, the hot eyes of the blazing serpent that encircled the town looked up with interest. (You’re good with fire, are you?) Sunspark said, its voice lazy but full of challenge.

Segnbora gulped. But Hasai turned her head and looked down at the elemental calmly. “We know something of fire.”

Sunspark glanced at Herewiss, as if considering the agreements that bound it, and then back at Segnbora. “Some day,” it said formally, “we’ll match our power, you and I, and see which is greater.”

“Some day,” Hasai said calmly, “we shall.” The words made Segnbora squeeze her eyes shut against a sudden blinding headache, for they were in future definite tense, describing something that had not yet come to pass.

When the memories passed, and the sight of common daylight came back to her, Hasai lifted her head again. “Hearn’s son,” he said, “do you desire our aid?”

Herewiss looked at Segnbora as if trying to see past Hasai’s voice. “’Berend, what do you say?”

She coughed and cleared her throat, getting control back. “I say, if Hasai offers you aid, take it.”

“In that case,” Herewiss replied slowly, “I’d like to check his assessment of the faults—” He stopped, unwilling to complete his suggestion.

“—in my mind?” she guessed.

“Yes.”

Segnbora considered the idea. “You’re welcome to look in,” she said finally. “When?”

“As close as possible to the hour that we begin the wreaking. Tomorrow night?”

“Wait a minute!” Segnbora said, panic rising. “We?”

Herewiss shrugged. “I’ll need ongoing information during the wreaking itself. I could probably do it alone, but why stretch myself thin when there’s assistance offered?”

Segnbora hesitated. To participate in the wreaking itself would mean becoming involved with Herewiss’s Fire. And the Fire was something she had sworn she would never touch again; she had suffered too many frustrations on its account. Besides, being unable to focus, she might become a danger to the proceedings ...

Herewiss picked up her last thought. “’Berend, you came out of the Precincts with everything they had to teach, less one,” he said. “I doubt you’ll foul a wreaking in progress. Goddess knows how many of them they put you through!”

Most of them, Segnbora thought sourly, for all the good it did. She had no excuse. “All right,” she said. “Tomorrow night, then.”

“We’ll move mountains together,” Hasai added in a rare show of humor. There was starlight in the cave, and behind him ran the slow quiet laughter of the mdeihei.

Herewiss nodded to Segnbora, and then turned to Eftgan. “Madam,” he said, “we have to finish discussing the Bluepeak business.”

He started back up the stairs to the tower, taking them two at a time, Khavrinen bouncing at his back and trailing blue Flame. Eftgan gave Segnbora a curious look and followed.

What have I got myself into! Segnbora thought. She put her head down onto her hands and gazed across the valley at Barachael, memories of the Precincts, and her unsuccessful attempts to focus tearing at her.

Below, the fire-serpent folded its hood and looked at her with innocent wickedness. (Tell me a joke?) it said.

Segnbora groaned.

 

The next day it began to seem as if Eftgan’s glum assessment of the Shadow’s ability to direct the Reavers was correct. It certainly seemed as if they knew the incursion route down the Eisargir Pass was threatened. They came pouring out of the valley in a disorderly but constant stream. Skin tents sprouted everywhere, and thousands of shaggy Reaver ponies cropped the green corn down to stubble. The old silence of the valley was replaced by a low, malicious whispering, like the Sea’s when a storm is brewing. Dusk brought no peace, either. All the valley glittered with the sparks of campfires, around which war songs were being sung, and swords sharpened.

Segnbora sat atop an embrasure in the northeastern battlement as twilight settled in, looking down at the press of Reaver tents and people gathered around the lower switchback of the approach to khas-Barachael gates. Hasai looked with her, undisturbed. (This place is well built, for something made by your kind,) he said. (It won’t fall to such as these.)

“Maybe not. But this is the strongest fortress in this part of the south, and they don’t dare march away from here and leave it unconquered at their backs. Even if Herewiss seals the pass successfully, these three thousand will just sit at the gates and hold the siege.”

(You’re troubled, sdaha. And it’s not the prospect of battle that’s causing it.)

With a sigh, Segnbora swung down from her perch on the wall and sat on the stone bench inside the embrasure, leaning back against the cool wall. (I’m not delighted about this business of being involved in a wreaking,) she said silently. (Especially this one. And you got me into it.)

The dusky melody of Hasai’s laughter rumbled inside her. (I think not. Who spoke the words, who told the Firebearer he was welcome? Did you lie to him, then?)

Exasperated, Segnbora closed her eyes and slid down into herself. Above the cave within her, it was twilight too. Stars were coming out one by one in the shaft that opened on the sky. Hasai lay at ease on the stone, his eyes silver fire, his tail twitching slightly like that of an amused cat. Segnbora walked over to him and sat down by one of his front talons, leaning her back against it and craning her neck back to see him.

The Dragon was a shadow, winged like the night, only his face glittering in the cool light of his eyes. “Very funny,” she said. “Mdaha, I didn’t lie. But I’m afraid of him depending on me. I might fail him.”

“E’jsn ‘All. Vuudo,” Hasai chided. “When will you accept what you are?”

“Be patient, will you? It took me long enough to find out what I’m not.”

“Part of you is me,” the Dragon said. “I will not fail so simple a task as examining the stone in this valley. If you wore my body more often, you would know that.”

The melody of the bass viols in his voice became grave. Behind him the mdeihei matched his song in cadences of calm regret.

“Your memories are buried deeper under you mind’s stone than ever. We are at your foundations, and still you try to keep us out. It would be so easy to become one,” he said, lifting his head. “Look ...”

In a flash of memory, Hasai showed her the building of the Eorlhowe in North Arlen—a whole mountain that had been uprooted from a remote range in west Arlen as casually as a man might pluck a flower for his hair. The mountain was taken to the tip of the North Arlene Cape, laid there upon the body of the slain Worldfinder, and melted down upon him with Dragonfire until it was only half the size it had been. Then its remains were talon-carved and tunneled and reworked into the residence of the DragonChief, the Dweller-at-the-Howe. Segnbora shuddered at the thought of the paltry skin of stone that had been “protecting” her inner mind from Hasai and the mdeihei.

“Your fear cripples you,” Hasai said more gently. “You fear what we are. Even our joys are terrible to you. Matings, births, deaths, the Immanence that isn’t your Lady but is nonetheless real—You must give up the fear, come to terms with these and all the other things from which you cannot run away. Cease hiding yourself from yourself, be who we are!”

“It’s not that easy,” she said, taking a last glance at that distressing memory of the Howe. As she watched, storm-clouds clustered about it, hiding the Howe’s rounded peak. Dragons flashed in and out of the clouds like lightning, their roars deafening the thunder. Whether this was ahead-memory, or past-memory, she had no idea.

(Hallo the heart!) came a voice from a long way up. It was Herewiss’s voice, tentative but cheerful.

“Damn,” Segnbora muttered.

Hasai lowered his head toward her. “Later, sdaha?”

“Later for sure,” she said, disgruntled. She was not ready for this, but nevertheless she called up to the stars, “Come on in!”

“I brought a friend,” Herewiss said, slipping sideways out of nothing as if through a narrow door. Khavrinen was laid casually over his shoulder. Fire flowed from it and caught in Freelorn’s eyes as he appeared behind his loved.

“Nice place you’ve got here. Where’s your lodger? Lorn wanted to—”

Segnbora watched in amused approval as Herewiss stopped in midsentence and looked up ... and up, and up. Freelorn halted beside him and did the same, his eyes going wide. When Segnbora had first come in, Hasai had been indistinct, a looming dark presence. But now the gems of his scales caught the light of Herewiss’s Fire and threw it back in a dazzle of blue sparks. He lowered his head to thirty or forty feet above Freelorn and Herewiss, tilting his head to look first at one of them, then at the other.

“I see the resemblance remains,” he said, very low, rumbling a major chord of approval. Following the words came Dragonfire, a slow and luxuriant spill of blinding white radiance that poured from his mouth to the floor and pooled there, burning. “Greetings, Lion’s Child. And to you and your Flame, greetings also, Hearn’s son.”

From the darkness beyond Hasai the mdeihei joined the greeting, recognizing the sons of two lines worthy of notice even as Dragons reckoned time. The huge cavern filled with a thunder of concerting voices, a harmony that shook the walls.

Herewiss bowed very low. Freelorn glanced around him in amazement at the noise, and then down at the spill of Dragonfire, under which the stone floor had melted and begun to bubble. Finally he tilted his head back up to look at Hasai.

“Resemblance?” he said in a small voice.

“To Healhra,” Hasai said calmly.

Freelorn’s mouth fell open.

“I was at Bluepeak Marchward some years before the Battle,” Hasai said. “I saw him when he was a little younger than you. You have his nose.”

“I, uh ...” Freelorn said, and closed his mouth. He looked over at Segnbora.

She shrugged. “He’s been around awhile, Lorn. Mdaha, what do we have to do for Herewiss?”

“Come deeper inside us, sdaha. He will see what he needs to see when you do.”

Hasai dropped his head down to Segnbora’s level, his jaws opening slightly to receive her hand. Dragonfire still seethed in his mouth, so that the floor hissed and smoked where drops of it fell. For a split second she hesitated. Then, recognizing a challenge, she rolled up the sleeve of her shirt and thrust her arm into the fire. This was happening in her mind, after all. How badly could it hurt?

She found out. Jaws closed and held her trapped in the essence of burning, a heat so terrible that it transcended pain. Her control broke. She opened her mouth to scream, feeling the heat more completely than anything she had ever felt in her life. But to her utter amazement, without the sensation stopping, the pain vanished—

She felt the stone. There was no way she could not feel it. The sensation was like a fencer’s when balance at last becomes perfect and power flows up from the earth. Connections formerly hidden suddenly became clear and specific: her body seated on stone, the bench; the bench’s placement on the stone of the upper-battlement paving; the positions and junctures of the blocks of khas-Barachael’s walls; the massive piers and columns of its foundation-roots in Adine’s southern spur.

She felt the whole mountain, a complex of upthrust blocks and minor stresses pushing against one another and easing again as Adine’s roots met those of its neighboring peaks. Her perception widened and spread around the valley to include Eisargir and Houndstooth and Aulys, mountains leaning on or striving against one another. The valley, too, filled with her until she felt the faults and stresses there, a surface unease like a vast itch. She felt the transverse vertical faults, lying fairly quiet now that mountain-building in the area was largely finished. She felt the lateral fault, stretching from head to foot of the valley and holding dangerously still.

Farther down, heat grew in the stone. Its structure and its temper changed as her perception slid down through the fragile skin on which continents rode and jostled. Weight and pressure grew by such terrible strides that there was no telling anymore whether the stone was liquid or solid: it simply burned darkly, raging to be free, yet having nowhere to go.

Down farther still, it was too hot, too dense, for stone. Molten metal seethed and roasted in eternal night, swirling with the planet’s turning, breeding forces for which Segnbora had no words but which the Dragons understood. These were some of the forces they manipulated while flying, and finding their way.

(Enough!) Herewiss said, his voice seeming to come from a long way off. (Sir, I see your point.)

(Look here, then,) Hasai said, redirecting Segnbora’s attention to the very top of the paper layer where mountains were rooted and the valley lay. (You see the danger of the lateral fault. Trigger it and the vertical faults will likely collapse the valley, bringing down the mountains. Yet the pass you propose to close has the lateral running right down it, and direct intervention there will definitely set off the fault.)

(There’s also the problem of the negative energies,) Segnbora said. (See how they’re gathered along the lateral fault. It’s ready to have a quake. Evidently that’s an option the Shadow’s been considering for a while.)

(I’ve been thinking about it too,) Herewiss said, sounding grim. (The question is, what do I do about it? There’s only one possibility ... )

He trailed off, sounding dubious.

(What’s your thought, Fire-bearer?) Hasai said.

Herewiss indicated one of the eastern roots of Houndstooth, a colossal pier of granite and marble set a half mile deep in the crust.

(Positive and negative attract,) he said. (If I strike there with my Fire and cause that root to move, the negative should flow away from the lateral fault and attack my positive Power. But before that happens and the forces cancel out, the root itself will move upward enough to knock the Houndstooth peak down into the pass and block it permanently—) He broke off, looking at Hasai’s perception as if seeing something wrong.

(Yes, you’ve found the problem with your plan,) Hasai said. (Watch.) As he spoke, the perception moved and changed in response to Herewiss’s suggestion. They felt, rather than saw, the smooth peak of Houndstooth rear up and collapse westward into the Eisargir Pass. A few seconds later the lateral fault came violently alive. Half of Barachael valley slid south with a jerk, while the rest jumped north. Every vertical fault went wild, one after another, some blocks thrusting hundreds of feet upward in a matter of minutes, some sinking fathoms deep. Mount Adine fell on Barachael. Eisargir collapsed on itself and buried the priceless ironlodes forever. When it was all over, nothing was left but a broken, uninhabitable wilderness.

Herewiss grimaced. (The psychic energy canceled out all right,) he said, (but I had no idea there was so much movement-energy in that lateral fault. Damn!)

(Don’t berate yourself,) Hasai said. (The move was well made for one so new at the game. Come, Firebearer, try it again. There is always a solution.)

(Well then, how about this ... )

For a long while afterward Segnbora’s mind was filled with the feeling of rock shifting and grinding and mountains falling over in various disastrous combinations. She got very bored. The game Hasai and Herewiss were engrossed in was like an extremely complicated variation of checks—and though Segnbora enjoyed playing for the delight of crossing wits with another player, her inability to think more than three or four moves ahead usually kept the game short and its ending predictable. Freelorn, to her intense irritation, looked over Herewiss’s shoulder in fascination, understanding everything.

(That’ll do it!) she heard Herewiss say at last.

Focusing her attention fully on the scene she was feeling, she found, to her amazement, a Barachael valley still relatively intact, with both town and fortress unhurt, and the Eisargir Pass successfully sealed. Some distance away in her mind, she could feel Herewiss grinning like a child who had beaten a master.

(That was an elegant solution,) Hasai said. (And as I understand the Shadow from my sdaha, It would have to intervene Itself to foul the situation any further, which It’s reluctant to do, not so? It fears risking defeat.)

(That’s right,) Herewiss said. (There’s one move that still bothers me, though. The next-to-last. That one root of Aulys, the one that’s split up the middle—)

(Move it as a whole, and you’ll be safe.)

Hasai’s perception of the valley winked out, leaving them standing in her cave again. Segnbora took her hand out of Hasai’s mouth and looked at it closely. There were no burns or blisters. Her mdaha rumbled at her in amiable mockery.

 “Hearn’s son,” he said, “when this business is over, I’d be delighted to play with you again. There are some stresses in the volcanic country in west Arlen that might stretch you a little.”

Herewiss nodded. “With ’Berend’s cooperation, absolutely.” He turned to her. “I’ll be starting the wreaking at sunset tomorrow. Lorn and Sunspark will be keeping an eye on our bodies while we’re out of them, and Lorn will be tied partially into the wreaking to keep us in touch with what’s happening in real time. Are you still with us?”

She felt like telling him no, but Hasai, gazing silently down at her, felt about in her memories and brought one in particular: night outside the old Hold, and her voice saying to Herewiss, “You’ll find your Power, prince ... I’ll help if I can.”

“Yes,” she said. “Dark, it’s been years since I last moved a mountain.”

Herewiss, hand in hand with Freelorn, gave her an approving look. “Later, then,” he said. Fire from Khavrinen blazed up and swirled about them. They vanished.

Segnbora folded her arms and looked up at the silver eyes gazing placidly down on her. “You’re up to something,” she said.

Hasai flicked his wings open, a humorous gesture that made cool wind a second later. “When one knows what’s going to be,” he said, “one tends to make it happen that way.”

“So what’s going to happen?”

Hasai slowly dropped his jaw at her. “Live, sdaha, and find out.”

He vanished into a memory. Segnbora sat for a moment on the bench, listening to the amused song of the mdeihei—then grinned with anticipation, felt her way out of the embrasure, and went to bed.

 

“How are the stars?” Herewiss said from behind her.

“Almost right,” said Freelorn. He was beside her, leaning on the sill of the tower window. “Another quarter-hour and the Moon’ll be in the Sword.”

“Great. I’m almost done.”

The Moon, just past its first quarter and standing nearly at the zenith, looked down on a valley that flickered with campfires and the minute shiftings of Reavers going to and fro. Around Barachael’s walls, a lazy ring of fire smoldered, flaring up every now and then when some skeptical Reaver got too close. Segnbora, feeling a touch naked without surcoat and mail, turned her back on the valley vista and watched Herewiss at work.

The tower room had been emptied of everything but two narrow pallets and a chair. Around these, in what had been the empty air in the middle of the room, Herewiss was building his wreaking—the support web that would both protect him and Segnbora and slow their perception of time long enough for his Fire to do its work. He stood in britches and shirt, as Segnbora did, with one hand on his hip. With the other hand he wielded Khavrinen as lightly as an artist’s stylus, adding line after delicate line of blue Flame to what had become a dome of pulsing webwork with him at its center.

The completeness of his concentration, and the economy and elegance of the structure itself, delighted Segnbora. Lady, he’s good, she thought, admiring the perfect match between the inner symmetry-ratios of the wreaking and the meter of the spell-poem he was reciting under his breath. It had been foolishness to dismiss him from the Precincts simply because he was male.

“If you leave my pulse running that fast,” she said, noticing the brilliance of the last lifeline Herewiss had drawn, “I’ll be in bad shape when we get back.”

“Nervous, huh?” he said, glancing at her and lifting Khavrinen away from the description of a parabola. He touched the sword’s tip to the pulse line, draining it of some Fire. “Better?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Sunspark?”

Hot light flowered in one corner of the room and consolidated into a slim red-haired young woman with merry golden eyes. (They’re impatient down there, loved,) she said, pleased. (They keep testing me.)

“Fine, just so long as they don’t get too interested in khas-Barachael. You know what to do?”

(This being the fourth time you’ve asked me,) Sunspark said, folding her arms in good-natured annoyance, (I dare say I do. None of them will leave the valley. They’ll find the way into the plains barred, just as Barachael town is barred to them. On the night of full Moon, immediately before the eclipse starts, I’ll begin driving the lot of them back up the pass. None will die.)

Herewiss nodded, narrow-eyed, completing the interconnection of several lines. “I hate to admit it,” he said, “but there’s a possibility that something’ll go wrong with all this. If the pass fails to seal properly, and I’ve exhausted myself, and they get down into the valley again—”

(Loved,) Sunspark said, (in that case I’ll be very quick with them. Their bodies will be consumed before the pain has a chance to start.)

Herewiss looked gratefully at the elemental from inside the shimmering blue web of the wreaking. “Thanks, loved. I’ll do my best to make it unnecessary.” He rested Khavrinen point-down on the floor and gazed around at the finished spellweb. “Lorn?”

“The Moon’s right,” Freelorn said, turning away from the window. “Let’s go.”

Trembling a bit with excitement, Segnbora unbuckled her swordbelt, drew Skadhwe from it, and tossed the belt in one corner. Herewiss walked out through the web and then turned inward to face, from the outside, the part of it specifically concerned with his body.

“A little to the left, ’Berend,” he said as she moved into position. “Lorn, you’re fine.” They each stood at one corner of an equilateral triangle. “All together: step—”

Segnbora walked through the part of the Fireweb sympathetic to her, feeling it crackle with charge as it brushed against her face and hands. The hair stood up all over her as the spell passed through her body and rooted in flesh and bone. At the same time came an astonishing wave of lethargy. Hurriedly Segnbora lay down on the left-hand pallet, settling herself as comfortably as she could. She laid Skadhwe down the length of her, folded both hands about its hilt at heart level, and began relaxing muscles one by one.

Across the circle, Herewiss was settling himself with Khavrinen, while Freelorn bent over him. “My head aches,” Lorn said. “Is it supposed to do that?”

“That’s the part of your mind that’s slowing down to keep up with us,” Herewiss explained drowsily as the wreaking took hold of him too. His eyes lingered on Freelorn for a moment.

“Don’t even think it,” Lorn said, and bent lower to kiss Herewiss good night. Herewiss’s eyebrows went up for a second, then down again as his eyes closed.

(Mdaha,) Segnbora said to her inner depths, closing her own eyes, (see you when I’m out of the body!)

(I think not,) the answer came back, faint, amused.

(What?) She tried to hold off the wreaking long enough for Hasai to explain, but it was no use.

Briefly, the spell fought with her lungs, then conquered them and slowed her breathing. That done, the Firework wound deeper into her brain, altering her thought rhythms toward the profound unconsciousness of wreaking suspension. For a second of mindless panic Segnbora fought that too, like a drowning swimmer, but then everything, even Hasai and the mdeihei, fell away ...