Fifteen

Mn ‘An’dzat kchren “rae ehwiss thaa’ seth:

Stihe tw-stihe.

Stihti he-stihe.

Whm’thae najh’stih&h.

Ousskh’thae najh’stih&h.

Mda’t’dae bvh-sda’t’dae mnok-A

Rui’i’rae-sta foaa’aei

Full night, when it came, was starless. A heavy overcast hung like a roof just above the highest peaks: Nornion and Kerana. In that stifling silent darkness, a long column of riders picked its way to the foot of Britfell’s northern slope and came to a halt.

The prospect was daunting. Sheer walls of cracked cliff-face rose up uninvitingly. Around them were strewn rubble and boulders brought down by the annual flux of heat and cold. Eftgan, on her tall bay gelding Scoundrel, shook her head as she looked upward.

“Lorn, if the road isn’t still there—”

“Then we’re no worse off than you were before,” Lorn said.

Ahead of Segnbora and the others, he, Herewiss, and the Queen were shadows among shadows. Everyone in that riding had made sure there was nothing bright about their gear; faces and hands and buckles and swordhilts were smeared with a mixture of grease and soot. Even so, Segnbora’s Dragon-sharpened vision saw movements and expressions clearly enough.

Freelorn pulled up Blackmane’s head and headed him off to the left. “Let’s take the adventure the Goddess sends us,” he said, “and go as far as we can.”

He urged his dun straight at the cliffside. Blackmane snorted mild protest but went where his rider directed him, climbing a slope of talus and scree and not stopping until they reached a narrow ledge fifty feet or so above the cliffs foot. “This way,” Lorn called softly to the riders waiting below, and put his heels to Blackmane again. The horse took him leftward past a rounded outcropping of stone, and out of sight.

“This is crazy,” Lang said, beside Segnbora.

“Maiden’s madness, I hope,” Eftgan said, and shook Scoundrel’s reins. He stalled, snorting, until Eftgan laid her crop gently below his left ear and touched him with heels again. Up Scoundrel went in a nervous rush, scattering pebbles and small stones. One by one they followed him, reining their horses in to keep them stepping lightly and minimize the damage done to the path.

The ride was like something out of an old tale or a bad dream, full of long terrifying pauses during which Freelorn lost the way and found it again, dismounted to heave fallen boulders off the narrow track or to lead Blackmane where he thought it too dangerous to burden a horse with a rider’s weight-The path, if it could be dignified with such a name, wound back and forth along the face of the cliff, switching back at wildly irregular intervals, the switches often barely enough for one horse to negotiate. Always there were heartstopping drops below.

Segnbora kept her elbows in as she rode, once again very glad of Steelsheen’s breed. Steldenes were bred in mountainous country and were frequently accused of being part goat. The mare picked her way delicately along ledges of rotten, sliding stone with only an occasional snort of protest at the poor quality of the trail. Other horses behind, flatland breeds, weren’t doing as well. The sound of whispered swearing came drifting up from riders down below.

As they climbed, the night got blacker, if that were possible. A feeling began to grow among the riders that Something with no good intent was watching the silent climb. Tense minutes stretched into an hour, then two and three. Segnbora began to feel as if she had been climbing up this miserable wall forever, as if her whole life had been spent fighting with eggshell-fragile stone, squinting at it, terrified of every step.

At the same time, she had to admit that this feat would be sung of for years, if any of them finished the climb and survived the battle that waited just the other side of Britfell. She maneuvered Steelsheen cautiously around another treacherous, switchback, not looking down. Inside her, in their own darkness that now seemed bright by comparison, Hasai and the mdeiha hissed laughter at her fear of heights, and then began singing (in sixteen-part harmony of the kind Dragons used when feeling playful) their memory of the ballad which the bards would indeed later write for Freelorn:

When Fyrd came over the Darthene border,

and Reavers moved at the Shadow’s order ...

Segnbora almost felt like smiling, until she remembered that just because her mdeihei had a memory of the ballad, that was still no guarantee that any of them would survive this venture.

One of Sheen’s hooves slipped, and Segnbora’s heart seized as she leaned with the mare so she could regain her balance. For an instant they came close to a perilous drop, but Steelsheen recovered and went on, sweating and trembling, but knowing what her mistress wanted. Unconcerned, the mdeihei were singing in unison now, a calm chorus.

They climbed the Fell and they crossed the water,

the Lion’s Son and the Eagle’s Daughter—

Several hours before dawn it began to snow, The wind rose, and became a howling blast. Snow that grew blizzard-fine drove stinging into faces, numbing hands on the reins. The horses whickered in complaint and tried to walk with eyes averted toward the cliff, which only caused them to miss their footing all the more. Forewarned, their riders muffled themselves up as best they could. Even in Midsummer snow often fell in the high South, though usually more lightly than this. The sky got infinitesimally lighter as day broke above the storm, though not enough to lighten anyone’s spirits.

There’s will behind this weather, Herewiss had said. That will could be felt watching them more strongly every minute. The head of the column was fairly close to the top of the fell now, but that was no comfort. The thought of having to take a similar path downhill, on an icy trail, was on everyone’s mind, The storm was blowing from the south, and had been abated somewhat by striking the fell and having to pour over it, Matters would be much worse on the other side.

The trail leveled so abruptly that Segnbora was taken completely by surprise. It led westward here, going around the edge of a west-pointing backbone of the fell A pause to look west would have been pleasant, but there was no time for it—the column was still coming up the far side of the fell, and there was little standing room. Besides, they had entered the cloud cover, and visibility was low. Even so, Eftgan dismounted long enough to stretch her cramped arms and legs and look ahead hopefully.

Herewiss, beside her, looked unhappy. “Can you feel anything?” he said.

Eftgan shook her head. “I can hardly hear myself think in this wind, let alone anyone else. That one”—she glanced upward at the slate-dark cloud cover—”has settled Itself down snug. It’s muffling all thought but Its own. The main force is going to have to rely on riders for messages, and there’ll be no way for us to know what’s going on until we rejoin it.”

“Sunspark can assist,” Herewiss said. But he sounded uncertain,. “When will they move?”

“Noon. We should be well finished with our business at the Heugh by then, and they can go ahead and have a battle without worrying about what it might raise.” She bit her lip, a sign of hidden fright that Segnbora recognized.

Segnbora had no time to indulge her own nervousness, however. There was barely enough time to dismount and feed Steelsheen some grain. By the time she got back in the saddle, Lorn was already picking his way down the trail on the other side, with Eftgan in back of him and Herewiss behind her.

“Let’s move, slowcoach,” Lang said as he nudged his dapplegray, Gyrfalcon, past her. “Going to lose your place up front.”

Dubious honor that it is, she thought, swinging up into the saddle and following him.

Now the pace of the climb slowed to an agonized creep, for the stone was not only iced, it was rotten. Rock crumbled maddeningly under foot, and the horses rebelled—shaking their heads, snorting, testing the footing at every step. The blinding cold snow turned the world into a featureless gray room, through which vaguely seen, figures led the way. The ordeal was endless.

In front of her, Gyrfalcon shied, and then Steelsheen did too. Segnbora had another of those terrifying long looks down. Ice and darkness. Oh, damn! The mare recovered her balance. Segnbora squinted at Lang’s shadowy back and then squeezed her eyes shut for just a moment, looking down among the mdeihei for an answer to her growing terror.

The cave was full of memories, much easier of access than they had been before the evening with the nightmare. Overlaid on her perception of the trail as it was now she saw Bluepeak valley as it would look from Britfell on a clear day toward sunset.

The season was fall, not summer, and some of the fields below, yellow with wheat, stirred in the south wind. Other fields burned, and the black smoke was carried north, occasionally obscuring the bodies of the slain, and the trampled, bloody ground.

High in the surrounding peaks, on scarps and steeples of rock, winged figures watched, frozen with horror, as the frightful dark shape of the Gnorn went tottering about the battlefield, killing with Its look, Scrabbling Fyrd came after It in hungry terror to devour the dead. Behind It, Bluepeak town was burning. And westward on a lone height at Britfell’s far end, two men with drawn swords stood watching the terror with tears running down their faces. A Dragon’s eyes, keener than any hawk’s, could make them out plainly: One man was huge and broad as a bear, with a shaggy mane of fair hair, hazel eyes, and Freelorn’s prominent nose. The other was tall and angular, with dark hair threaded with silver, and kind downturned eyes as blue as Herewiss’s, blue as Fire.

She saw them throw down their swords at practically the same moment, desperately making the Choice; saw them take hands there, while the Gnorn came weaving toward them through the screams and death of Bluepeak; saw them give up what they had been and gaze into one another’s eyes to find out what they could be—

—and she fell out of that memory and into another one: this time, the memory of some nameless mdaha in the ancient time on the Homeworld, one who sat perched on a dark red stone in a violet twilight with another, while the starpool came up over the horizon. The Dragon turned to look into the other’s eyes, which were silver fire set in a hide of turquoise and lapis. The Dragon fell a great depth into those eyes, into a timeless, merciless, fathomless love which held the whole Universe within it as a person awake holds the memory of a dream—

Our line often soared with the Immanence, she remembered Hasai saying. One gets used to It. But no Dragon ever got used to the Other’s regard. The more one looked into that Other’s eyes, the more powerful, and the more unbearable, the experience became.

In a blinding moment of realization, Segnbora understood what she had seen in Hasai’s eyes on the night of unearthed memories. She understood, too, why she always averted her gaze after looking too long into the eyes of another human being—

The agonized joy of the discovery threw her out into the world again, back into whirling snow, ice and darkness. But the cold didn’t matter anymore. Not even her own exhaustion, nor Steelsheen’s panic, bothered her now. All she needed was a moment to put it into words, and the secret would be hers forever ... Ahead of her, hearing Steelsheen’s hooves scrape and clatter on the slippery rock, Lang twisted around in the saddle to look at her.

“’Berend?” he called anxiously through the screaming wind.

Their eyes met.

She saw him ... saw Her. Lang looked no different. His voice still came out in a drawl. She could still underhear his mind lurching back and forth between indecision and placid acceptance. He still hated some things without reason, and loved others unreasonably. He still judged and criticized by provincial standards. He still smelled from not washing enough ... yet he was She, The One. And when Segnbora looked ahead at Herewiss or Eftgan, or back at any of the nameless five hundred following behind, or even at their horses, the result was the same, All of them, everyone who lives. Every one: the Goddess—

“Lang,” she said. It was almost a whisper, for she had little breath to spare in the grip of this painful ecstasy, This was the man whom she had used with casual cruelty, to whom she had refused intimacy when she felt disinclined to it. Yet there within him the Goddess looked out at her—not judging, as She certainly had the right to do, and not angry, either—simply loving her totally, without hesitation. She had always known that the Goddess indwelt in every man and woman, but experiencing it this way, now, was something else again.

Joy, laced with bitterness at her years of callous disregard of the One she loved, rose until it choked her. Tears spilled over and froze on her face in the icy wind. Her voice wouldn’t work anymore. Knowing it was useless, and driven by an overwhelming need to communicate somehow, she bespoke him. (Lang!)

He stared at her in sheer disbelief. “’Berend?” He had heard her!

The pain fell away from her joy like a cast-off cloak. Segnbora sobbed, sagging in her saddle, and drew in a long breath. She had a great deal to tell him. (Loved—)

—and Gyrfalcon missed his footing, going down on his knees on a patch of ice. His hindquarters slipped off the path to the left, and the rest of him followed. Segnbora had a quick glimpse of Lang reaching for the ledge, more surprised than frightened, and that was all. “LANG!” she screamed.

Almost before the scream had left her throat, Sunspark had leaped away from the ledge and sunk down into the snow-swirling emptiness like a thunderbolt, streaming fire. The line of riders behind her halted as she, like Freelorn and Eftgan in front of her, peered down into the whiteness, dumb with shock. A long time they waited there for the bloom of fire through the snow. Then, slowly, the brightness came walking up through the air and stood again before the ledge. Herewiss was alone on Sunspark’s back,

(’Berend,) Herewiss said, and had to pause. She could feel his eyes filling. (It was quick. I share your grief.)

All behind her, starting with Dritt, Moris, Harald, and the foremost of the Darthene riders, she could feel sorrow and fear spreading like ripples in a pool. She was numb, having fallen from such a height to such a depth so quickly. Yet still she could see Who consoled her as she looked at Herewiss.

(May our sorrow soon pass,) she said silently. A knife turned slowly within her at the memory of the last time she had said those words.

Herewiss broke their gaze. With a thoughtful look, he reined Sunspark about and took the path again.

It took two more hours to complete the rest of the ride down. The slope grew gradually less steep, and the ledges a bit wider, but the snow continued. Lang was not the only rider who was lost. Just minutes after his death, another horse and rider came plummeting down past Segnbora. The falling rider’s glance locked with Segnbora’s in the second of her passing. Still weeping, Segnbora could do nothing but pour herself into the look, see Who was falling, and aid Her in accepting what was happening. In that second, the woman’s fear-twisted face calmed. Then she was gone.

Segnbora rode on, trembling. She turned a switchback and suddenly found herself at the top of a long skirt of scree and rough stones, which lead down to a slope carpeted in snow-covered grass. Glancing at the sky, Segnbora knew the storm wasn’t going to let up. In front of her, Eftgan was checking her saddlebags to make sure the Regalia were safe. Herewiss had drawn Khavrinen and was pointing at the snow. There were prints in it: the big splayed tracks of a horwolf, and a keplian’s pad-and-claw set. Both trails were only minutes old. Both led to the cliffs foot and away again, westward.

“We’re expected,” Herewiss said. “I’m done with being circumspect, Queen.” Fire flowed down Khavrinen’s blade in defiant brilliance. “We’ve got to stay alive. Meantime, we had better get to the Heugh fast. The Bindings are slipping from the pressure of so many beings in this area.”

Eftgan nodded. “Can you shore up the Bindings until we complete the ritual?”

“I can,” Herewiss said. “I’ve been doing it for several hours. But it’s tiring. How long I can hold out, I’ve no idea.”

“Once we begin, the blood-binding won’t take long,” Eftgan reassured him. Thumping Scoundrel’s sides, she wheeled westward. “The ground between here and the Heugh is smooth. Let’s make time.”

They had to go slowly at first, so that the Darthene riders still on the slope would have time to catch up. It was about fifteen minutes into this process that the first cohort of Fyrd found them. There were only twenty or thirty: horwolves and keplian who had been patrolling the heights and thought it wise to attack before the main force was down off the Fell. It was a mistake. Like lightning dancing a death-dance, Khavrinen rose and fell in the forefront of the skirmish. What its blade didn’t slay, Herewiss’s Fire did. Sunspark was incensed; any Fyrd at which it looked became ashes in seconds, Forlennh and Suthan flickered red and blue in Firelight and flamelight. Segnbora swept Skadhwe’s blackness about her in an utter calm that felt very strange. Shortly, nothing moved but Darthenes and the wind. Drifts began forming around the bodies in the snow.

The Darthenes had a few wounded, none seriously, and none lost—a small miracle for which everyone was thankful. “What’s the time?” Freelorn said.

“Three hours past noon.” Eftgan looked around and saw the last of her riders coming down off Britfell. “Wyn will be moving the forces forward at four. Let’s get up that Heugh.” It was only a mile to Lionheugh, but they bought every furlong of the distance dearly. The fourth cohort of Fyrd was the biggest, some three hundred of the creatures. There were not many nadders, because of the coldness of the weather, There were, unfortunately, many maws and keplian, the worst Fyrd breeds for riders to handle. There were also four death-jaws, three of which Herewiss dealt with, and one of which Eftgan destroyed with an astonishing blast of blue Fire.

By the time this attack was over, no one was quite as lively as they had been. Nearly everyone had a wound of one type or another. Eftgan and Freelorn were unhurt, but Herewiss had a long set of slashes from, a keplian’s claws, and Moris and Dritt and Harald all had maw bites. But no Fyrd had been allowed to get away and warn others of what had happened.

“You and I were lucky,” Freelorn said to Eftgan.

“Luck has nothing to do with it. If our blood falls on this land and we have the brains to do a binding right away, that One would lose a great deal of its Power.” Eftgan whipped blood off Forlennh. “Herewiss?”

He was sitting astride Sunspark with a look on his face that was either annoyance or strain. Khavrinen in his hand was flaring with a wild glory of Fire as he healed himself. “It’s putting on pressure,” he said. “Things are trying to return to the way they were before the Binding, and this Fyrd blood isn’t helping matters.”

“Let’s go. ’Berend?” She glanced at Segnbora as they began to move through the blinding snow. “You all right?”

“Fine.” Segnbora held Skadhwe over her knee at the ready.

“You always used to be so noisy in battles! I keep looking around to see if something got you.”

“My lodgers are doing my hollering for me,” she said. The Dragons didn’t care for Fyrd, and her mdeihei had been singing martial musics laced with Dragonfire ever since she came down from Britfell. Battlecries seemed superfluous with that inner thunder going on.

Eftgan met her glance with an odd expression, as if seeing some stranger who was Segnbora’s twin. “’Berend, you’ve become more than your lodgers, somehow. What happened up there?”

It was a poor time to explain. “I’m not sure,” Segnbora said. “Nothing of the Dark One’s doing, that’s certain.” She knew it to be true as she said it.

If there was anything the Shadow didn’t want mortals to know, it was what Segnbora had learned. Once one knew Who one was, It lost Its power over that person. She shook her head and kicked Steelsheen into a gallop, getting Skadhwe ready. The realizations were coming too close together. The hugeness of them was dazzling her. She needed something concrete upon, which to fasten her mind ...

Unfortunately, she got it. To their right, the crest of Britfell had been getting lower as they headed west. With little warning the fell simply stopped in a sheer cliff. Out of the falling snow their destination loomed: Lionheugh.

To the west, not even the snow could muffle a great confused roaring—shouts and battlecries, the bray of Reaver war-horns and the thin silver cries of trumpets. As they drew rein under the shadow of the Heugh, Eftgan waved Torve over, putting up Forlennh and unsheathing her Rod.

“Leave me fifty,” she said. “Take the rest and hit them hard wherever it seems best. My compliments to my Consort when you see him, and tell Wyn I’m sorry we’re late, but we were detained. Ride!”

“Madam!” Torve said, and rode off hard with four hundred fifty of the Darthene cavalry behind him. The snow swallowed them.

Freelorn rode up to join the Queen, with Moris and Dritt and Harald close behind.

“I have to do something about this weather, even if it’s only temporary,” said Eftgan, shaking the Fire down her Rod. “Then we’ll do our business. Herewiss, how are you doing?” He was holding Khavrinen before him in both hands, his eyes fixed on it. A frightening brilliance of Fire streamed about man and sword. “I’ll hold,” he said, but there was strain in his voice, and the feeling of malicious intent in the air hung closer than it had before. “The Shadow’s pressing, though. There’s much bloodshed going on and It’s feeding on that. I daren’t be distracted long—”

“Up with us,” Eftgan said.

Punching Scoundrel, she rode at a gallop up the path to the Heugh. No one was surprised by the Fyrd waiting for them there. They dropped from rocks and leaped up under the horses’ hooves. Eftgan’s Rod crackled with Fire as she laid it about her like a whip. Whatever she struck didn’t move again. Segnbora and Freelorn galloped behind her, watching the Queen’s back, slicing down with Skadhwe and Suthan. Behind them came Herewiss, with Moris and Dritt and Harald about him as guard.

Very quickly, it seemed, they made the top of the Heugh and gathered there on the level ground, the Queen’s riders and Freelorn’s followers circling around in case any more Fyrd should attack uphill.

“No Reavers yet, and none of Cillmod’s people,” Eftgan said, dismounting hurriedly and raising her Rod. “That’s a mercy; maybe they don’t know we’re here. E’kstirre na lai’tehen dndrastiw vhai!” Eftgan cried into the wind in Nhaired, lifting her Rod two-handed and pointing it at the roiling sky. She sighted along the Rod’s length as if along the stock of a crossbow. At the last word of her wreaking, another piercing line of blue Fire lanced upward and struck into the underbelly of the cloud above them.

The wind screamed, the cloud tore away from the ravening Fire like flesh from a wound. It tore, and tore—ripping backward and dissolving, revealing blue sky and afternoon sunlight. The snow stopped as the clouds retreated, until a great patch of sky the width of Bluepeak valley was clear.

Standing on that height, for the first time they could see what was happening. The Reavers and the main Darthene force were locked in battle in the pass, and the Darthenes were already well ahead of the position at which Eftgan had intended them to start. Even as they watched, the Reavers lost some ground, pushed uphill by heartened Darthenes who knew why the weather had suddenly cleared up. A sudden blot of darkness from the east—the riders who had followed Eftgan over the fell—smote into the Reavers’ uneven right flank and scattered it.

“The clearing won’t last,” Eftgan said, breathing hard and leaning against Scoundrel. “I have to save some Power for the binding. Lorn, the Regalia, quickly!”

Freelorn had already undone Eftgan’s saddle-roll, and now unrolled it before her. It contained an odd assortment: an old knife of very plain make, black of hilt and blade, and a rough circlet of gold that looked as if it had been hammered out by an amateur. It had, Segnbora knew, for this was Dekorsir, the Queen’s Gold—the crown that each Darthene ruler hammered out unguarded in the open marketplace, once a year, to give the people a chance to dispose of an unfit ruler if there was need. There was also another circlet, this one of exquisite workmanship, woven as it was of strands of linked and braided silver.

Freelorn lifted the circlet up with a blaze of angry delight in his eyes. It was Laeran’s Band, the crown of the kings and queens of Arlen. “Where did you get this!”

“1 had it stolen several days ago,”‘ Eftgan said, kneeling down beside the saddle-roll, “In the middle of last week, when Cillmod took it out of Lionhall.”

Freelorn stopped still as death and stared at Eftgan. “When he what ... ?” he said.

His voice failed him. No one but the members of the royal line of Arlen could set foot in Lionhall and come out alive. And Freelorn was an only child. Or had thought he was.

“It occurs to me that your father may have had a sharing-child he didn’t know about,” Eftgan said, setting Dekorsir on her head. “Or one he didn’t care to legitimize. No matter right now. I’m just sorry we couldn’t find Hergotha.”

Freelorn turned the supple strip of metal over in his hands. “The thought of Cillmod wearing this—”

“I couldn’t stand it either. Shut up and put it on, Lorn. Herewiss can’t hold the Binding by himself much longer.” It was true. Herewiss had dismounted from Sunspark, unable to spare even the small amount of concentration needed to stay astride, and was sitting with his back against a rock. Khavrinen lay across his lap, clutched in both hands. He had begun to shine, growing almost translucent, as he had at Barachael, and the stones of the Heugh sang with the Power that was poured out of him. He was holding his own, but just barely. Segnbora looked around her and found that underhearing was no longer necessary to feel the strain in the earth and the air.

Eftgan’s riders and Freelorn’s followers were all looking over their shoulders, hunting the source of the strange feelings inside them. Herewiss’s will could clearly be felt battling with the One that poured Its rage into the valley. He was keeping away the ancient reality, as if he had his back braced against a closed door. But the pounding on the other side, the rhythmic throb of rage and hatred, was getting stronger—

“We are the land,” Eftgan and Freelorn were saying in unison. They knelt before one another, knee to knee, holding the black knife together, Lorn wearing the strip of silver, Eftgan the circlet of gold. Their joined voices—Freelorn speaking the ritual in Arlene and Eftgan in Darthene—made an uncanny music. The hair on Segnbora’s neck rose at it, hearing in human voices an echo of the mdeihei. “Its earth is our flesh; its water our blood; its well-being our joy; its illness our pain ...”

The ritual continued, speaking of mysteries particular to the royal priesthood. Many of the riders turned away, trying not to listen to a ceremony that no one of common blood had heard since the founding of the Kingdoms. Segnbora stood by with Skadhwe in her hand and listened fearlessly, in wonder, hearing once again the Goddess speaking to Herself: one Lover speaking to the Other in solemn celebration of Their eternal relationship.

She saw Lorn take the knife and cut Eftgan’s upheld left wrist with it, crosswise and careful. Both of them paused a moment, trembling. At the stroke of the ritual wounding the hammering of hatred in the air grew more savage. It was almost physically perceptible. Eftgan took the knife from Freelorn and reached for his left wrist—

—the Fyrd came up the hill in a wave, horwolves and maws together. Behind them came two-legged forms in rough skins and crude metal and leather corsets, bearing leaf-shaped bronze swords and bows of horn, howling like the beasts they followed.

Eftgan pitched forward gasping from a black-fletched Reaver arrow lodged between her shoulder and throat. Horror-struck, Segnbora watched helplessly as Lorn sat her up straight, breaking the fletching off the arrow and pulling the point end out of the wound with brutal efficiency. He snatched up the black blade and something else—then there was a Reaver in front of Segnbora, blocking her view.

She met the man’s brown eyes, sank into them as Shihan had taught her, felt the move he was about to make. A second later, Skadhwe had countered and sliced the man’s chest through from side to side. As he died she didn’t break that gaze. She knew Who she had killed, and let the Other know Who had killed him. She grieved for his death and accepted it as her own, completely. Then she looked up at her next opponent—a madder this time—saw Her there too, and killed again, out of necessity, in love.

She killed again, And again. And again.

The Darthene riders encircling the hill knew immediately what Segnbora didn’t have leisure to notice for some time: there were too many Reavers and Fyrd. If they attempted to hold this position, they’d be killed off slowly. Most of the riders had pushed to the side where the worst attack was coming from, the west side, so that behind them Eftgan and Freelorn and Herewiss could get away.

Freelorn shoved Eftgan up into Blackmane’s saddle and fastened Scoundrel’s reins to the stirrups. Rushing over to Herewiss next, he literally picked him up from where he sat, snapping orders at Sunspark. The shocked elemental knelt to take Herewiss on his back.

Segnbora had her hands very full of Reavers and Fyrd for a few wild minutes, until slowly they began to give her breath. Their first charge was exhausted. In addition the Reavers, ever wary of sorcery, had begun to stay clear of Skadhwe’s uncanny blade. There was a madwoman wielding it, her face streaming calm tears.

“’Berend!” Freelorn shouted at her. Segnbora took a moment before answering to look with her sharpened vision at the battlefield. The sight was a shock. More forces were pouring into the valley’s mouth from behind the Spine—not Reavers, and not Darthenes, certainly. They were falling on the Darthene right flank and crushing it as easily as a stone falling on an egg.

“Damn him!” she cried, and turned away from the hill-crest, running for Steelsheen and the others. The Queen’s scrying had been accurate after all. Cillmod had gotten wind of the upcoming battle, and had evidently decided that this was an expeditious time to both distract the Darthenes from retaliation on his borders and exterminate their fighting force as well. There were none of the Royal Arlene army down there. Such loyal Regulars might have been persuaded to turn against Cillmod since Freelorn was in the field. All these were mercenaries.

Flinging herself into Steelsheen’s saddle, Segnbora rode down the trail to clear a path for Freelorn, swearing all the way. It was very obvious now why there were so few unattached mercenaries for hire in the Kingdoms. The Darthenes down there were badly outnumbered.

Behind Segnbora, Sunspark was doing some swearing of its own. (What’s the matter with him? Did they hurt him somehow?) It danced a little as it cantered down the trail, obviously wanting very badly to let its fire loose. (If he doesn’t come out of this shortly, the whole lot of them are going to make a very nice cloud of smoke!)

Freelorn, holding the bleeding Eftgan in front of him on Blackmane, looked as haggard as if he had been shot himself. Remembering Herewiss’s true-dream, the thought made Segnbora’s heart turn over. “Firechild,” she said, “he’s all right, he’s just keeping things from getting much worse. For the love of him, save it for later!”

The Power Herewiss was pouring out was astonishing. It frightened Segnbora. She had witnessed great wreakings in the Precincts in which fifty or more Rodmistresses had worked in consort, and all of them together hadn’t let out a flood of Fire like this.

Khavrinen struck razor-sharp shadows from everything its light touched, and Herewiss’s flesh burned transparent as an imminent dawn. Some of the Reavers were turning away from them even now, frightened by the sight of the statue-still rider with the thunderbolt in his hands. One Reaver, though, got up the nerve to fire an arrow. The instant it touched the writhing aura of Flame that wound about Herewiss, it flared and fell away in ashes.

“Can you gallop without dropping him?” Freelorn shouted at Sunspark as they made it down off the Heugh onto the plain again.

It bared its teeth at him in scorn. (Gallop! Is that all? Where do you want him?)

Freelorn looked from west to east, and got a look of sudden recognition on his face. He flung out an arm, pointing. “There!”

East and a little south of the Heugh, one of the spurs of Kerana came down in a little scraped-away scarp, sheer on all sides except for one shallow approach where riders could go up. It could, be defended, without too much trouble.

(Done!) Sunspark said. It leaped cat-smooth into the air, shooting southeast so fast the air behind it thundered in shock.

Freelorn and his band and the Darthenes went after at full gallop, not sparing the horses. They couldn’t. If they didn’t make it up that scarp, there would be no later to save them for. They had a mile or so to cover, across snowy ground, and they had hardly been galloping more than a half minute before they lost the sunlight and the clouds closed up again. With unnatural swiftness it began to snow again. The wind rose to a scream once more, and darkness began to fall. It was the darkness Segnbora feared most, for above it and within it the voice of the Shadow could be heard, howling with enmity.

On the scarp a mile off, a light shone as if a star had fallen there, bright enough to cast shadows at even this distance. But the brilliance of Herewiss’s Fire was no great comfort. A fresh group of Fyrd and Reaver riders were hot behind them, perhaps a half mile back. Eftgan, clutching Blackmane’s saddle and hanging on as best she could, looked back at their pursuers and moaned softly. Freelorn’s face was grim.

“They’re catching up, Lorn,” Segnbora shouted.

The group rode like hunters, whipping their horses into a lather. Onward they rode into the screaming, stinging night. The scarp was right before them, lit with a pillar of blue Fire that flickered eerily on the cloud-bottoms and turned the wind-whipped snow to a blizzard of blue sparks.

The riders went up the scarp like a breaking wave, the horses stumbling, foundering, finding the path by luck or Goddess’s love. The way up was none too wide and could easily be kept clean of Reavers—for a while. Behind Freelorn and the Queen, the others closed ranks. Overhead, the daunting blows of the Shadow’s hatred, became suddenly audible, There was thunder in the snow clouds, and the wind shrieked, furiously around the steeples of the cliff-wall behind them..

Freelorn threw himself out of the saddle, pulled Eftgan, down and helped her over to shelter behind a rock, at the foot of the cliff. He pulled, out the knife, put it into her clutching, shaking hand. Crying with the effort, she braced herself against the stone and reached up to cut—

Shouts and the clash of steel rang out on the plain, where some of the Darthenes were holding the approach to the path up the cliff. Sunspark, who had been bending over Herewiss in concern, jerked its head up and stared down at the Reavers and Fyrd in rage.

(This is your fault!) it cried in a thought that not even the smothering darkness could muffle.

It leaped like a skyrocket down to the foot of the scarp, reared, and brought down its forefeet with a crash that split stones. Wildfire burst up from where its hooves struck, and ran madly to either side in front of the scarp. The fire ignored the Darthenes, but any Reaver or Fyrd it touched blazed like tinder and was blown away across the snow, ashes, a breath later. The Reavers drew back in panic from the apparition that suddenly stood between them and the scarp: a huge, crouching cat of swirling fire that stalked forward with blazing eyes, pausing to raise one flaming paw.

—the blood ran down Freelorn’s arm, and he pressed it to Eftgan’s wound. “And we who are One—come on, Eftgan!—One and not-One say to the land which is us, and of us, be not—’“

The earth began to tremble. From the south, visible in this unnatural black as something blacker yet, a great wave of dark Power rose and rose above the mountains, leaned, and fell with a crash that couldn’t be heard, only felt. Like death, like drowning, it rolled over them, past them, and in that wave’s wake ten or twelve Darthenes dropped and Sunspark’s fire went out.

Even Herewiss’s blaze dimmed and shrank, failing like a candle placed under a cup. But he did not surrender. When the snuffed-out stallion clambered up the rocks to his side, it found him clutching Khavrinen. He was forcing it to burn, pouring out everything he had. It was not enough. In the darkness where the blade’s Firelight didn’t reach, forms moved and grew solid. Eagerly they lifted long-rusted swords, bared long-rotted fangs, and looked hungrily up toward the little shelf where the Darthenes stood.

(I can’t change, I can’t burn,) Sunspark cried in anguish, (what do I do now?)

Segnbora could feel it straining mightily, trying even to trigger that last burning in which a fire elemental ends its existence as an individual ... anything to hold the threat away from its loved. He can’t hold off the Shadow alone, Segnbora thought, almost choking with the sheer hate that filled the air. There was nothing the Shadow hated so much as the Fire, except perhaps those who wielded it. Herewiss couldn’t last forever, and when his reserves gave out, he would simply be dead.

The first man in a thousand years to have the Fire, the Queen of Darthen, the rightful King of Arlen, most of the forces that Darthen could field—all dead at once. The Shadow, imagining a world all to Itself, darkened.

Inside Segnbora the mdeiha were rumbling deadly threats that seemed absolutely empty to her. What can they do? They’re dead!

DeathFire—

When someone with the Fire died, regardless of whether they had ever been focused during their life, their death focused the Fire for one final moment. Even those with just the spark of Flame that most men and women have managed to focus then. That was what gave one’s deathword its power.

Segnbora stared with sudden cold purpose at the rising tide of dark malice. Suddenly she understood why Lang had died when he did, and why her parents were murdered. The Shadow had wanted to stop her before this moment, this realization. She held up Skadhwe and looked at it. One life it will demand of you, Efmaer had said, and now Segnbora was sure which life the dead Queen had meant. The Shadow was betting she wouldn’t dare kill herself.

A lethal wound would be enough. She could add enough Fire to what Herewiss had to aid him in holding the Shadow off until the Binding was done. And afterward, he’d heal her—

—or not—

It was a terrible chance she’d be taking. She didn’t want to die. But if the Fire she had trapped inside her could be of use here, then ...

Behind her Freelorn held up one bleeding arm and with his free hand reached into the unwrapped saddle-roll for what she had seen him grab before: a fistful of stones and dirt from Lionheugh. He held it to Eftgan’s arm; her blood trickled down.

A crash like sudden thunder rocked the scarp and sent men and horses sprawling. Freelorn and the Queen fell apart. Herewiss pitched forward on his face, his Fire all but darkened. More than just hatred pressed down on them from the darkness now. The Shadow was invoking the worst fears of Its enemies, and on all sides men and women screamed and cowered from painful deaths suddenly lived in their own flesh, losses of loved ones, shames that formed darkly in the influence-ridden air. The Dark One still didn’t walk among them openly, but was having no trouble driving the defenders to death or madness, one by one.

Out in the darkness, Segnbora saw the hralcins rear up. Ugly unearthly shapes lurched across the scarp at her, singing hungrily and reaching out at her as they had in the Hold. Crabbed claws sought to tear, but Segnbora’s screams were frozen in her throat. Only escape was left. Frantically, looking around for a route, she saw Freelorn stand up, cursing with fear and shaking his wounded arm. It wasn’t wounded anymore: the cut made by the sacral knife was just a white seam of scar. The Shadow could heal for Its own purposes.

Leaving Eftgan, Lorn stumbled over to Herewiss and shook him conscious with savage efficiency. Segnbora stared at him, confused. He wasn’t the same Lorn. There was purpose in those eyes. When she met them, Segnbora saw Her in them as she had been seeing Her in everything today. But there was a difference. There was knowledge, foresight. Freelorn knew now what Herewiss had dreamed in the Hold. He had seen the arrow in his back, and had seen himself turn toward death’s Door ....

The terrible pressure of hatred grew suddenly much less as the Royal Binding took hold on the land, quieting the unquiet ghosts, banishing the phantoms of Fyrd and slain Reavers and hralcins. Herewiss’s Fire blazed up again as if someone had taken the cup off the candle. But now his mind wasn’t on the battle.

“LORN!!” Herewiss cried, and without hesitation went limp and fell over again. He had gone out-of-body, gone after his loved to catch him at the last Door, and to prevent him from passing it.

Off on the southern horizon, another darkness began to take shape. This was a more solid one, a heaving black shape that Segnbora had seen before, but didn’t dare look upon now, being in a human body. The Shadow had become enraged enough to take on a physical shape and come after them Itself. And It had adopted a form It knew, from past history, to be very effective.

“Don’t look!!” she cried to the Darthenes.

They hardly needed the warning. Those still alive and conscious after the assault by their worst fears were already hiding their faces from the hideous prospect.

No time to wait for Herewiss to come back, Segnbora thought, shaking all over. Just have to do it myself—Hurriedly she knelt and took Skadhwe two-handed, resting the point a shade to the left of her breastbone. Mdaha, she said, and in that moment was informed by her ahead-memory that Herewiss was not going to be healing her ...

Oh wonderful! Sithess’ch!

Sdaha—

Sehe’rae!

She pushed the sword in, hard. The greedy shadowblade slid into her with shocking ease. At last she found out what it was like to be run through, and tried to scream past the terrible feeling of her heart fibrillating around the intruding blade, trying to beat, trying to beat, failing. All that came out of her throat was a choked cough. Inside, she felt her Fire leap together with her heart’s blood and burst outward. Blind with pain, she groped for support, willing herself to stand and do what she had to. But she found no support. The darkness went red, and then black, and she fell forward ...

... a long fall, the longest one, but it had an end. There was a voice crying Get up! Get up!, the voice of someone familiar. Her mother perhaps, or Eftgan. Had she overslept again?

The Wardress would be furious—

She was lying on something hard. She rolled over to push herself up on her hands and knees, feeling the sword in her fist. Probably one of those rocks the Dragon’s thrashing had dislodged had hit her in the head. She felt weak and stumbly. She pushed upward, shook her head to clear the daze out of it, looked up.

A pang of terror twisted in her heart like a knife of ice. This was no cave. True, there was empty darkness all around, but before her stood two doorposts blacker than any night, going up and up forever, out of sight. Between them stars blazed. Endless depths of them, a patient silent glory she had seen before in dreams and visions, but never for real. This was the last Door, the Door into Starlight.

No, I’m not ready! she cried, staggering to her feet. But her protests made no difference to the insistent forces shoving at her back. They were stronger than she. They impelled her, whispering to her that it was over, that her struggles were done.

The Shore, she thought with longing. Mother and Father. Lang! Tears rose at the thought of him, at the image of his last confused grab for the ledge. Loved, I have a great deal to tell you. Maybe it’s not too late.

There was a great silence in her mind that shouldn’t have been there.

“Hasai?” she said, letting herself be pushed toward the Door as she searched in mind for him. You’re dead. Are you there too?

No answer.

I’m not going! Segnbora thought, on the very threshold. But she had no way to stop herself. She was being pushed too hard, and she was holding something in one of her hands. A darkness ...

Swift as thought she used the last-chance block that Shihan had taught her was for emergency use only. One hand on the hilt, the other bracing the steel from behind.

She screamed with agony in that eternal silence as Skadhwe, ramming against the impermeable blackness from which it had been torn, sliced deep into her hands. The darkness shoving at her back was merciless, and cared nothing about her anguish. Through her sick pain, Segnbora realized who was pushing her closer to the Door. She fought back, feeling her blood flow from hands and heart. There was something she needed to remember. Something—

I am Who I am. And knowing that, It has no power over me.

Dismay ran through the force that urged her forward. She forced it back, and back, arching herself, and then fell backwards, gasping. Skadhwe fell soundlessly to the invisible floor. Slowly and painfully, she got to her knees, picked Skadhwe up, and stood. It might indeed be her fate to die after she had finished what she had to do.

She turned. Had she been breathing, the breath would have caught in her throat. He was huge, looming above her, dressed in the old clothes he wore while gardening. The big hard hands stained with leaf-mold and rough with calluses reached out to her.

“No!” she whispered, and almost turned to flee. But there was only one way to run—through the Door and out of life.

That terrible smile leaned closer.

“No!” she said. It was a squeaked word. A little girl’s voice, terrified, but still defiant.

The smile lost some of its assuredness.

“No,” she said again, more strongly, her voice sounding strange in the utter silence. She raised her head, met those hungry eyes, held them ... held them ...

He was not as large as he had been. Certainly he was no larger than any other man. He was smaller, in fact, than many she had killed at one time or another.

Raising Skadhwe, she took a step forward and watched the fear spread across his face. Balen had used brute strength to overwhelm the child she had been, but she was a child no longer. He was unarmed, and she was armed with a weapon against which there was no defense. Another step she took, and he backed away. She almost took the final step, but paused. It would be easy to kill him, yes. Possibly enjoyable.

But for how long? Would this be just another form of running away? If she—should she instead accept him—

Kill him! her heart said to her.

I give him into your hands, her heart said to her. Do with him what you will.

The great silence on this side of the Door surrounded her.

Even he didn’t kill me, she thought.

She lifted her eyes to Balen again. Trembling, he shot her a terrified glance. In that blunt and brutal face, she saw again what she had seen in Lang, and Herewiss, and Freelorn, and even the Fyrd. Her. HerSelf.

She tossed Skadhwe away.

Very slowly, even with fear, she went to the man, reached out to touch his shoulders. He winced at the touch, as if gentleness burned him.

“Goddess,” she said. “Shadow. I know Who You are.”

Balen looked at her face, and then looked away again in anguish. Segnbora couldn’t bear such terror. She reached out to take his face in her hands.

“Balen,” she said, speaking the name aloud for the first time in her life.

He blinked in confusion.

“I seem to be getting a lot of practice at being others, these days,” she said. “First Dragons. Then ... Myself. I see that this is what the practice was for. To see You for what You are. Just Her, in another suit. A tool to make me what I am, no less than the beautiful face and the ever-filled cup were tools. You were a little rougher on me than you might have been, perhaps. You were the sword. But my hand was on the hilt. I destroy. And I create ...” She gulped, feeling tears start. “Time I got started. I’ve bound you into my life all this time, my poor ‘rapist.’ Enough of it. Go free.”

He squinted at her in terrified disbelief.

“Beloved,” she said. “Go free.”

Drawing him close, shaking all over, she laid her lips on his, once and gently. Then she hugged him tight. When she opened her arms, he was gone.

Weak from the sudden release of so much emotion, she sat down hard on the invisible surface and wiped her eyes, then realized that the wetness on her hands was more than tears. The weakness, too, probably had something to do with her heart’s blood running down her surcoat.

Oh Goddess, I forgot, she thought, getting dizzier by the moment. Blood loss. I have to get back there. Where’s Skadhwe, I can’t leave it ...

Fumbling, falling to hands and knees again, she began feeling around for the blade. Against the dark floor, this was rather like looking for clear glass in water. The dizziness got worse. She reeled; her sight forsook her. Perhaps she was starting to die.

The sudden pain, an infinitesimally thin line of it, told her she had found Skadhwe again. Grateful for the hint, she grabbed it hard, using the pain to shock herself awake, although she was half dead already. She pushed herself upright ...

... on the cold snow, and opened her eyes. All around her men and women were covering their faces in horror of something that was coming. She had to get up. Where was Skadhwe? ... still sheathed. Good.

Left-handed she fumbled for something with which to support herself, and found a stone. She levered herself up to her knees and managed to stand, though a wobbly stance it was, and probably very temporary. She drew Skadhwe, and saw with dismay that it was covered with blood. Shihan, were he here, would be scandalized! Never go out with an unclean blade, he had taught her. She whipped the blood off the blade in a quick downward slash, third move of the edelle maneuver—

—and Fire whipped down after it.

I am dead, she thought in absolute disbelief, and lifted the sword to stare at it. Fire, raging blue and as impossible to look at as sunlight, trickled down Skadhwe’s black edge. Just a double-thread at first, and then more. It grew quickly, a torch’s worth of Fire, a Firebrand’s worth, a lightningbolt in her hands, burning like a star, throwing her shadow long and black against the cliff.

I have it! she thought in fierce joy, for that one mad moment not caring that she was about to die. She stared backwards at her shadow, the proof of the light—shortlegged, long of neck, wings where she had arms. I’m whole, she thought, and laughed, raising the hand that held Skadhwe. The right wing stretched upward, huge. No! We’re whole! The left arm up now; the wing reached up in response. sithess’ch, we’ll die, but we’ll do it together!

—and abruptly, with a deathpain that shot down her right arm to her heart, that wing-shadow tore away from the cliff, casting a shadow of its own, impossibly coming real.

The second wing tore free, another pain. She saw webs that gleamed like polished onyx and struts rough with black sapphires. Then came the terrible length of tail, the deadly spine at the end of it whipping free, lashing outward, poised above her to protect. And after the tail, the taloned forelimbs, their diamonds flashing in the blinding Firelight. A neck, the great head, glowing eyes burning not silver now but blue, leaning down over her and glaring past her with impartial challenge at Reavers and Fyrd and the dark something that approached—

“Hhn ae mrin’hen,” said the voice of wind and storm from right above her. “Whole at last, yes!”

She stared up at Hasai, so torn between wonder and terror that she couldn’t tell anymore whether her weakness came from impending death or sheer astonishment. Her mdaha gazed down at her, lifting his head in a gesture of greeting, and turned his attention again to the field and the forces attacking the scarp.

She had heard Dragons roar in her mind. But in the open it was something else. Rocks fell down from the cliff, and the ground shook almost as hard as it had before. Not just one voice roared, but two, ten, a score, a hundred. The mdeihei were there too, not as solidly as Hasai, but present enough to be a host of shifting wings and deadly razor-barbs and glowing, glaring eyes, all looking down at the attackers. They sang of a solution to this problem, one that was not to be feared. Death. Death. Death. Hasai reared his head back, bared the diamond fangs that few had ever survived seeing, and flamed.

The Reavers fled, panicked. Hasai’s blast of Dragonfire melted the ground where they had been standing. Even the slow-stalking shadow at the southern edge of the field halted at that, as if stunned. Fyrd scattered in all directions but eastward, where the Sun seemed to be coming up.

The scarp was fenced with fire again, but this time the consuming white of Dragonfire, with a tinge of blue to it; and inside the circle a tremendous shape with wings like thunderclouds was rearing up against the cliff, burning in iron and diamond, ineluctably real. And down by one of his hind talons, hanging onto it for support, a tiny figure bleeding Fire from a wound in the heart stared up and up at what had been, and now was.

Segnbora thanked him politely for her defense—then she turned to look with grim, delighted purpose out at the field, at the fleeing Reavers and Fyrd, and down at the thing in her hand that burned with Fire.

“Sithess’ch ‘tdae,” she sang to Hasai and the other mdeihei who stirred in shadow along the ledge, “untidy to leave them running around like this, don’t you think?”

The mdeihei sang angry assent in a thunder that echoed from the surrounding mountains, causing a bass obbligato of avalanches to follow.

“Must we send them rdahaih?” Hasai said in an ominous baritone solo.

Segnbora stepped forward to the edge of the shelf where they stood, only partially aware of Herewiss’s and Freelorn’s prone forms. Breathing or not, they’d have to wait until later. “I don’t know,” she said, and raised Skadhwe, thinking hard.

It can’t be done, they say—a gating for more than fifty. However ... She closed her eyes, not needing the physical ones to see at the moment, and drew up a great flood of Power from the tremendous supply they had always told her she’d have. In mind she saw them, every Fyrd, in the valley and for miles around. She hated them, and loved them, and did what was necessary. She poured the Flame out of her as if opening a floodgate, until the valley was awash with it.

It was simple to gather up the minds of every Fyrd in the area and hold them all under the surface of that Flame until they drowned. Stop showing off, she told herself severely. You may drop dead in a moment, and there’s business to be done here. Yet she laughed in pleasure as she thought it, and Hasai and the mdeihei went off in a thunderous accompaniment of hissing Dracon laughter. Whether she lived or died, she was going to enjoy this. She had waited a lifetime for it.

The Reavers and the Arlene mercenaries at the other side of the field were fleeing, and she stared across at them, angry and pleased. She could easily kill them all, but she knew Someone Who would prefer it otherwise, if at all possible.

So; she thought, and reached out in heart to feel them all, every last one, mind and soul together. The Rodmistresses had said it was impossible, but behind her she had a supporting multitude who would testify otherwise if she asked them to. She was that multitude. She could contain universes.

Immersing herself in the minds of her enemies, she became them. Before they had a chance to recover from being her, she stepped to the cliff’s edge and lifted Skadhwe. With it she drew four great slashing lines of Flame that fell onto the darkened field, and grew, and grew—

Suddenly the ground within the lines was missing, replaced by five thousand different images blurred together—some of them of the Arlene countryside, or of Prydon city, some of them of the strange cold country beyond the mountains from which the Reavers came. Into the crammed-together vistas fell men and women who cried out in terror and were gone. She closed the door behind them with a word and a sweep of Skadhwe, and glanced up in thanks at the glowing eyes that hung over her. Then she turned south.

There, something dark stirred in its mantle of blackness and glared utter hatred at her. She looked back at It calmly, having loved It before, and unafraid to do once more what was necessary, She reached out to grasp the forces that Dragons could manipulate, and took one more step forward, right off the edge of the cliff. There she stood on empty air.

“Come out and meet us if you dare!” she cried, The song winding around the words held in it the ultimate challenge: inescapable love. Behind her the mdeihei echoed the song in perilous harmonies. Trembling, Segnbora stood there while the darkness gathered Itself up into that terrible crushing wave she had seen before, full of screams and blood and ancient death. It rose higher and higher above her. She lifted up Skadhwe’s flaming length and stood her ground, letting her eyes sink into the Shadow’s darkness, becoming It, accepting It for her own, her dark side, Her other Shadow.

It trembled toward her—then gathered Itself down into a shuddering ball of fear and thwarted hatred, and vanished.

The wind died abruptly, and the sky began to clear. Four thousand Darthenes stood in an empty field with no one left to fight.

Segnbora took a last gasp of breath and walked back onto the cliff, beginning to feel mortal again for the first time since she had turned Skadhwe against herself. Behind a rock Eftgan lay breathing shallowly. Beside her, two forms struggled to sit up, helping each other. One of them had an arrow in him, but it didn’t seem to be paining him much. As Segnbora came up to them, the taller of the two reached out to his loved and touched the arrow’s protruding shaft. It vanished in a flicker of Fire, as did the place where it had gone in.

She knelt beside them and laid Skadhwe over her knees—a burning shadow, a piece of the night set on Fire. They stared at it.

“You did it,” Freelorn whispered. “You did it!”

She smiled at him. “All your fault, my liege.”

“But what did you do?” Herewiss was looking at her with such a mixture of joy and perplexity that she could have both laughed and cried at once. “I saw what you did to yourself,” he said. “Why aren’t you dead? And where did Cillmod and all those Reavers go?”

“I sent them home, for the time being.” She looked down at her surcoat, brushed at it. There was a neat tear where Skadhwe had gone in through cloth and mail, but that was all. The scar was a faint white seam just to one side of the nightmare’s bite.

“I told you,” said a great voice above her. “Dragons are quick to heal.”

Silver-blue light fell about her as someone else bent low to look curiously at the place where the shadowblade had gone in. She gazed up at him—her shadow casting a shadow of his own now—and at last, the tears came. She reached up to the tremendous jaw as it dropped open, and very gently laid her hand in the Dragon’s mouth, as she had feared to do, as she would never fear to do again. The jaws closed, and self joined with self.

“Now what, sda’sithesss’ch?”

“Now, mda’sithess’ch,” she said, gathering him close and laughing through the tears that fell on the sapphire hide, “there’s a King to escort to his throne. Let’s get busy!”