Nine

“It’s dangerous to invoke the Goddess as you conceive Her to be,” said Iav. “and more dangerous still to invoke Her as She truly is.”

“Right enough,” said Airru. “Breathing is dangerous too. But necessary ... “

—Fates from the South, x, 118

 

Herewiss’s anguished shout came back as echoes, but had no effect on the small dark silhouette that hurried purposefully up the bridge. Herewiss swung Khavrinen up two-handed, pointing at Freelorn, and the sword spat a blinding line of Fire that ran upward toward him—but whatever wreaking he had in mind came unraveled before it ever touched Lorn. Many feet short of the bridge, the Fire hit some unseen barrier and splashed in all directions like water thrown at a wall. Freelorn kept walking. Another twenty paces would see him up onto the phantom portion of the span. Herewiss wasn’t waiting; he ran up the bridge after his loved, swearing frightfully in an ancient Arlene dialect, Khavrinen streaming frantic Fire behind him. Sunspark went galloping up after, unable to leave his loved.

“Damn!” Lang said, and followed.

“Torve, wait here!” Segnbora said, unsheathing Charriselm as she headed after Lang.

“Are you joking? The Queen would ...” Torve began to say as he followed her and the others onto the bridge.

They didn’t run long—the altitude saw to that. Only Torve could run fast enough to catch up with Herewiss. In addition, the bridge was longer than it looked: an eighth mile, perhaps, to the point where it truly became sky. Far ahead of them, Freelorn’s small figure slowed in its stride, hesitating only briefly. He put one foot on the phantom bridge, found it would support him, and went on as before, in a confident but hurried walk.

Damn! Segnbora thought as she ran. She clutched Charriselm harder than necessary, for her hands and face were numb from the chill. That other, more inward cold was pouring down more bitterly than before, yet she didn’t suffer much from it. Something was blunting its effects; something inside her, burning—

(Hasai!) she said as she caught up with Herewiss and Sun-spark and Torve. (Is that you?)

(Sdaha, against the great cold of the outer darknesses, this is nothing. We have learned to deal with cold.)

(I’m glad!) she said silently.

Herewiss and Torve had paused at the edge of the phantom span, and behind them Sunspark stood, looking downright dubious. The Fire-wrought part of the bridge was as thick and wide as the railless metal span, but clear and as fragile as air. Herewiss knelt to brush his fingers across it and straightened quickly, as if burnt.

“Whoever did this wreaking,” he gasped, “they’ve got more Power than I have—and they’re up there now, fueling it!” He got to his feet and stepped out onto the crystalline part of the bridge, realized that the footing was secure, and took off after Freelorn again at a run.

Torve and the others went after, Sunspark hammering behind them at a gallop, the bridge under its feet ringing like struck crystal.

Segnbora followed, stepping out onto the bridge. Maybe I shouldn’t, she thought as she looked down. But to her surprise, the vista of shadows and creeping fog that veiled the south-face glacier half a mile below didn’t much trouble her. Hasai’s Dragonfire was strong in her, getting stronger as she headed after the others. Lady grant it holds, she thought, beginning to run.

At the Skybridge’s end, between the two huge crystal doors that lay open there, a tiny figure passed into the dimness beyond and was lost to sight.

The group ahead of her slowed and came to a stop at the end of the bridge, gazing up at the chill clear grace of towers and keeps, at the awful tallness and thickness of the doors. Segnbora caught up with them, feeling their nervousness. Sai Ebassren, the place was called in Darthene: the House of No Return. What lay within, no legend told. The only certainty was that when the three Lights were gone, the place would vanish, and anyone trapped within would never emerge.

Herewiss did not pause for long. Sending a great defiant glory of the Flame down Khavrinen’s length, he walked through the doors. The twilight within swallowed him as it had Freelorn. For an instant Khavrinen flickered like a star seen through fog, and then its light vanished.

Sunspark hesitated at the doors, though only for a moment. It was trembling in body, a sight that astounded Segnbora.

“Firechild—”

(I’m bound,) it said in terror. (I can’t burn. I can’t change—)

She reached out to it in mind, perplexed, and felt Sunspark drowning in a cold more deadly than the lost gulfs between stars that Hasai had mentioned; a cold that could kill thought and motion and change of any kind. Hasai had been shielding her. (Maybe you should stay outside,) she said.

It turned hard eyes on her. (I will not let him come to harm in there,) it said, and turned away from her to walk shaking through the doors. The dimness folded around its burning inane and tail, and Sunspark vanished.

“That’s done it,” Lang said, genial and terrified. “Damned if I’ll be outdone by a walking campfire—” He unsheathed his sword and went after, Torve close after him.

There Segnbora stood, left alone on the threshold, trembling nearly as hard as Sunspark had.

No return.

She swore at herself and hurried in behind the others.

She was in a great hall, all walled in sheer unfigured crystal, through which Adine and the peaks beyond it showed clear. The air was thick with a blue dusk, like smoke. She barely had time to see these things, though, before the terrible thought-numbing cold she had experienced through Sunspark came crowding in close around her, ten times worse than it had been outside.

From within her came an answering flare, Hasai and the mdeihei calling up old memories of warmth and daylight to fight the cold. She regained a bit of composure, looked around for the others. They were nowhere in sight. Deep in the twilight she could see vague forms moving far away, but somehow she knew that none of them were those with whom she had entered. Her companions were all lost in the blueness, with Freelorn.

(Herewiss!) she called silently. (Sunspark!) But no reply came back, and her under speech fell into a mental silence as thick as if she had shouted into a heavily curtained room. Thought was blocked here, then.

“Herewiss!” she shouted aloud. The curling twilight soaked up the sound of her voice like a heavy fog. She set off into the blueness, hurrying.

For all her fearfulness, the sheer greatness of the wreaking that had made this place astonished her. Even at first entrance the place had seemed as big as Earneselle or the Queens’ Hall in Prydon. But now, as she walked across the vast glassy floor, the walls grew remote and the ceiling seemed to become a firmament that not even a soaring Dragon could reach. Mirrored in walls, galleries, and crystalline arches, she saw vague intimations of other rooms: up-reaching towers and balconies, parlors and courts, an infinity of glass reflected dimly in glass, too huge to ever search or know completely.

That terrible chill was part of the wreaking too, though here inside the castle it seemed not to be biting so viciously at the bones. It was becoming a quality of the mind: a cool lassitude, a twilight that ran in the veins and curled shadowy in the heart, smothering fear and veiling the desire to be out of there. She could feel that cold rising in her, but the presence of the mdeihei was a match for it. Ancient sunfire burned the twilight out of her blood as fast as it grew. Dragonfire, painful and bright at the bottom of her lungs, burned the sad resignation away. Frightened by the constant assault, but reassured by the Dragon’s presence, Segnbora headed deeper into the shadowy blue.

The dead and those who had abandoned life slowly became evident around her. There were many, but none of them were walking together. Young men and old women she passed; foreigners and countrymen, maidens and lords. Here and there she recognized a surcoat-device, but afterward she was

 time to impending tears. This woman had been one of the great powers of her time: vital, powerful, quick to laugh or fight or love. She was the woman who had fought Death and won. Yet now she was like all the others here, her spirit emptied out on the crystal floor.

“Queen,” Segnbora said at last, “I’m no dream, unless I stay here too long. Have you seen a man go by here, one of the living? He was wearing the arms of Arlen.”

Efmaer turned slowly, and her eyes dwelt on Segnbora’s surcoat and her lioncelle passant regardant in blood and gold. “I know that charge,” Efmaer said, showing for the first time a wrinkle of expression, a faint frown of lost memory. “My sister—”

“Enra,” Segnbora said. “I’m of her line. You are my ... my aunt, Queen.”

“How many generations removed?” Efmaer said, and for a second the bronze in her voice went bright.

Segnbora could not answer her.

“That many,” said the Queen. “She is dust, then. She walks the Shore ...”

Efmaer’s voice drifted away as she started to lose herself again in the undercurrents of Glasscastle’s sorrow. Segnbora gulped. There was something nagging at the back of her mind, something that would mean a great deal to this woman. If only she could remember—

“Queen,” Segnbora said, “if you haven’t seen him, I can’t wait. I have to find him.”

“I could not find the one I sought, either,” Efmaer said in that same half-dreaming voice. “I looked and looked for Sefeden, while the Moon went down and the Evenstar set. We must have passed one another half a hundred times, and never known it. Hear me: The Firework sustaining this place is greater than any mortal wreaking, and the place keeps its own. You will not leave ...”

“My friends and I will get out,” Segnbora said, hoping she was speaking the truth. “Come with us—”

Efmaer shook her head. “Only the living can leave this place ...”

“Are you dead then, Eagle’s daughter?”

For the first time, Efmaer looked straight at Segnbora. Emotion was in those eyes now, but it was an utter hopelessness that made Segnbora shudder. “Do I look dead? Would that I were. Not Skadhwe itself could kill me here!”

“Skadhwe is here?”

“Somewhere,” the Queen said. “Once the doors closed, I lost it, the way I lost everything else. Yet even while the doors were open, it did me no good.” She closed her eyes, and with a great effort made another expression: pain. “I fought, but I could not kill myself, and so I am less than dead ...”

Pity and horror wrung Segnbora, but she couldn’t stay. “Queen, I have to go hunting.”

“He will be with her,” Efmaer said. “Far in, at the place where your heart breaks. But be out before moonset ...” The woman didn’t speak or move again. Segnbora paused only long enough to take one of those pale, pliant hands and lift it, kissing the palm in the farewell of kinsfolk of the Forty Houses. Then she turned and hurried away.

Hall after hall opened before her, all alike, huge prisms full of silence and the reflections of empty eyes. Corridor like corridor, gallery like gallery, and nowhere any face she knew. She ran harder. Through the walls she saw the treacherous Moon hanging exactly where it had been when she entered. Likewise the sunset appeared about to grow dimmer, but had not changed. Inside Glasscastle there was eternal sunset, she realized. Without, who knew how much time had passed? The three Lights could be about to vanish, for all she knew.

The thought of the others still unfound, of the awful way back to the main hall, of Efmaer’s ghastly placidity, all wound together in her brain and sang such horror to her that for a few seconds she went literally blind. Trying to turn a corner in that state, she missed her footing and skidded to her knees. Desperately she tried to rise, but could not. Her leg muscles had cramped.

There Segnbora crouched, gasping, sick with shame and
rage. The awareness of the huge head bowing over her, great
wings stretching upward, was small consolation.

(Sdaha.)

(Yes, I know, just a—)    

(Sdaha. Here’s our lost Lion—)

She pushed herself up on her hands and looked. There was Freelorn, not more than ten or fifteen feet away from her. He was kneeling on the crystal floor, very still, his head bowed. The sight flooded her with intense relief.

“Lorn,” she whispered, and scrabbled back to her feet again, ignoring the protests of abused muscles. “Lorn. Thank the—”

—and she saw—

“—Goddess.” Her voice left her throat, taking her breath with it.

Her throne was wrought of crystal, like everything else in the place, but it reflected nothing from its long sheer surfaces. The one enthroned upon it seemed caught at that particular moment when adolescence first turns toward womanhood, and both woman and child live in the eyes. She was clothed in changelessness and invulnerability as with the robe of woven twilight She wore, and Her slender maiden’s hands seemed able, if they chose, to sow stars like grain, or pluck the Moon like a silver flower. Yet very still those hands lay on the arms of the throne, and Segnbora found herself trembling with fear to see them so idle.

Her quiet, beautiful face lay half in shadow as the Lady’s gaze dwelt on Freelorn. For a long while there was no motion but that of Her long braid, the color of night before the stars were made, rising and falling slightly with Her breathing. Then slowly She looked up, and met Segnbora’s eyes.

“Little sister,” the Maiden said, “you’re welcome.”

Segnbora sank to her knees., staggered with awe and love. This was her Lady, the aspect of the Goddess she had always loved best: the Maker, the Builder, the Mistress of Fire, She Who created the worlds and creates them still, Giver of Power and glory. Not even that night in the Ferry Tavern had she been stricken down like this, with such terror and desire. The Maiden gazed at her, and Segnbora had to look down, blinded by the divine splendor.

She gasped for breath and tried to think. It was hard, through the trembling, yet it was the fact that she trembled at all that disturbed her. Even as the Dark Lady, walking the night in Her moondark aspect, She did not inspire fear. Something was wrong. Segnbora lifted her head for another look, and was once more heartblinded by Her untempered glory. Segnbora hid her eyes as if from the Sun, and began to tremble in earnest.

Within her Hasai bent his head low, and spread his wings upward in a bow. (She’s not as you showed me, within you. Nor is She like the Immanence. Its experience, too, is always one of infinite power, but the power is tempered—)

(It’s—) The words seemed impossible, a wild lie in the face of deity, but she thought them anyway. (It’s not Her.)

Segnbora cut herself off. She had a suspicion of what was wrong with this Maiden. She also believed she now knew Who was maintaining the great wreaking that had built the Sky-bridge, and Who was keeping the Glasscastle-trap inviolate. Only an aspect of the Goddess could do such things ... Segnbora got up, anxious to be out of Glasscastle before she discovered whether her suspicion was correct—

—and was very surprised to find herself still kneeling where she was. With a flash of anger she met the Maiden’s eyes again. They poured power at her, a flood of chill strength, knowledge, potency. The look went straight through Segnbora like a blade. Once before, long ago, those hands had wrought her soul, those eyes had critically examined the Maker’s handiwork. Now they did so again, a look enough to paralyze any mortal creature, as flaws and strengths together were coolly assessed by the One Who put them there.

But Segnbora’s soul was a little less mortal now than it had been when first created. There were Dragons among the mdeihei who had had direct experiences of the Immanence on more than one occasion. The judgment of ultimate power didn’t frighten them; they were prepared to meet the infinite eye to eye, and judge right back,

I am what I am, Segnbora thought, reaching back toward the Dragons’ strength and staring into those beautiful, daunting eyes. She would not be judged and found wanting with her work incomplete, her Name still unknown!

Suddenly she was standing, surprised that she could. She expected to be struck with lightning for her temerity, but nothing happened. Segnbora kept her eyes on the fair, still face, and saw, past the virulent blaze of glory, something she had missed earlier. The Maiden’s eyes had a dazzlement about them, as if She too were blinded.

“My Lady,” Segnbora managed to say, “I beg Your pardon, but we have to leave.”

“No one comes here,” the Maiden said gently, “who wants to leave. I have ordained it so.”

The terrible power of Her voice filled the air, making the words true past contradiction. Segnbora shook her head, wincing in pain at the effort of maintaining her purpose against that onslaught of will. “But Freelorn is the Lion’s Child,” she said. “He has things to do—”

“He came here of his own free will,” the Maiden said. She moved for the first time, reaching out one of Her empty hands to Freelorn. He leaned nearer with a sigh, and She stroked his hair, gazing down at him. “And now he has his heart’s desire. No more flight for the Lion’s Child, no more striving after an empty throne and a lost sword. Only peace, and the twilight. He has earned them.”

The Maiden half-sang the words as She looked at Freelorn, and Her merciless glory grew more blinding yet. Segnbora shook her head, for something was missing. Whatever lived in those eyes, it wasn’t love. And more than Her glory, it was Her love—of creating, and what she created—that Segnbora had worshipped—

(Sdaha, be swift!)

(Right—) She reached out to grab Freelorn and pull him away from the Maiden’s lulling touch, but as she moved, the Maiden did too—locking eyes with Segnbora, striking her still.

“You also, little sister,” She said, “you have earned your peace. Here you shall stay.”

“No, oh no,” Segnbora whispered, struggling again to find the will to move. But, dark aspect or not, this was the Goddess, Who knew Segnbora’s heart better than she did.

The Maiden spoke from within that heart now, with Segnbora’s own thoughts, her own voice, as the Goddess often speaks .... I’m tired, my mum and da are dead; there are months, maybe years of travel and fighting ahead of us—and even if I bring Lorn out of here, he’ll probably just be killed. Isn’t this better for him than painful death? And isn’t it better for me, too? No death in ice and darkness, just peace for all eternity. Peace in the twilight, with Her ...

The song of the mdeihei seemed very far away. She couldn’t hear what Hasai was saying to her, and somehow it didn’t matter. The cool of the surrounding twilight curled into her like rising water. Soon it would rise high enough to drown her life, abolish both pain and desire.

The Maiden was seated no longer. Calm as a moonrise, She stood before Segnbora, reaching out to her. “There’s nothing to fear,” She said. “Nothing fails here, nothing is lost, no hearts break or are broken. I have wrought a place outside of time and ruin—”

The gentle hands touched Segnbora’s face. All through her, muscles went lax as her body yielded itself to its Creator. Her mind swelled with a desire to be still; to forget the world and its concerns and rest in Her touch forever.

“Then it’s true,” she whispered as if in a dream. “There’s no death here ...”

“There is no death anywhere,” the Maiden said, serene, utterly certain.

The relief that washed through Segnbora was indescribable. The one thing that had been wrong with the world was vanquished at last. Impermanence, loss, bereavement ... the Universe was perfect, as it should have been from the beginning. There was nothing to fear anymore ...

... though it was curious that one dim image surfaced, and would not go away. In languid curiosity she regarded it, though her indifference kept her from truly seeing it for a long time, It was a tree, and a dark field, and brightness in the field. Night smells—

—smells ?

There were smells that had little to do with night. Ground-damp. Mold. Wetness, where her hands turned over dirt, and jerked back in shock. Wetness, and the liquid gleam of dulled eyes in Flamelight. And the carrion smell of death—

In a wash of horror, the dream broke. Segnbora knew who she was again, and Who held her. The Maiden had made the worlds, true enough, and in the ecstasy of creation had forgotten about Death and let It in. But She had never denied Death’s existence, or Her mistake, in any of Her aspects. Segnbora tried to move away from the hands that held her, and couldn’t. Her body felt half-dead.

She settled for moving just one hand: the right one, the swordhand that had saved her so many times before. Her own horror helped her, for she realized now that she was in the presence of a legend: the One with Still Hands, that Maiden Who has stopped creating and holds all who fall into Her power in a terrible thrall. This was a dark aspect of the true Maiden, one Who had embraced forgetfulness, and Who had taken Glasscastle as Her demesne, Her prison.

(Hasai!)

Struggling to raise her hand, she called him, and to her shock got no answer. Twilight had fallen in the back of her mind, and she could feel no Dragonfire there. She would have to raise her swordhand alone, even though the Maiden’s cool hands on her face made it almost impossible to concentrate.

Sweat sprang out with the effort. The hand moved an inch. She would not be left here! She would not leave her mdaha stuck in an eternity of not-doing! She would not walk past Lang and Freelorn and Herewiss a thousand times without seeing them ... ! Another inch. Another. The hand felt as if it were made of lead, but she moved further into herself, finding strength.

In the twilight, something else moved. Down inside her memory, in the cavern—not her own secret place, but the cave at the Morrowfane—stones grated beneath Hasai’s plating, scoring the dulled gems of his flanks as he rolled over to be still from the convulsions at last. Horrified, Segnbora discovered that the One with Still Hands was there as well. Dark as a moonless night, she was soothing Hasai’s worst pain, offering him a mdahaih state that would never diminish him to a faint voice in the background, but would leave him one strong voice among many. But her promise was a lie.

(Mdaha! Move! She can’t do it. She’ll trap you in here, and we’ll both be alive and rdahaih forever!)

He could not move. Desperately, Segnbora reached all the way back inside, climbed into his body and took over—wore his wings, lashed his tail, lifted his head, forced one immense taloned foot to move forward, then another, then another. Together they crawled to the mouth of the cave, Hasai gasping without fire as they went.

(Sdaha, have mercy! Let me go!) he begged, agonized.

She ignored him, pushing his head out the cave entrance into the clear night. The entrance was too small for his shoulders and barrel. She pushed, ramming muscles with thought and cave wall with gemmed hide, steel bones. (Now!) she cried, and they crashed into the rock together. It trembled, but held. (Now!) Stones rattled and fell about them. The mountain shook and threatened to come down—but stone was their element, they were unafraid.

Hasai began to assist her, living in his own body again, remembering life, refinding his strength. (Now!) They jammed shoulders through the stone; wings smote the rock like lightning, burst free into the night. Segnbora’s arm knocked away with one sweeping gesture the hands that held her. In rage and pity, and a desire to see something other than slack peace in those beautiful eyes, her hand swept back again. She struck the Maiden backhanded across the face.

Shocked, sickened by the violence she had done, Segnbora waited for the lightning ... or at least for her own handprint to appear on Her face. Nothing came, though. No flicker of the eyes, no change in the mouth. Slowly the Maiden turned Her back on Segnbora, went back to Her throne, seated Herself. She said nothing. Segnbora found herself free.

(Sdaha—)

(I know, mdaha, time!)

Segnbora shook Freelorn by the shoulder. There was no answering movement—he seemed asleep, or tranced. Well, dammit, if I have to carry him—She reached down and took him under the shoulders, heaving hard. Freelorn made a sound, then. It was a bitter moan; a sound of pain and mourning as if some sweet dream had broken.

“Come on, Lorn,” she said, wanting more to swear than to coax. Moonset couldn’t be more than a quarter-hour away. “Come on, you Lioncub, you idiot, come on—!”

Turning, she got him up—then blinked in shock. They were all there, drifting in. Lang, looking peaceful. Dritt, Moris, Torve, Harald, all the life gone out of their movements. Sunspark, quenched in the twilight like a Firebrand dropped in water. Herewiss, his light eyes dark with Glasscastle’s dusk, and no flicker of Fire showing about Khavrinen.

Despair and anger shook her. She didn’t have time to go into each mind separately and break the Maiden’s grip. She doubted she had the strength, anyhow. Not even the Fire, had she been able to focus it, would help her now, though sorcery ...

She paused, considering. Perhaps there was a way to break them all free at once. It shamed her deeply to consider it, but then she had no leisure for shame.

(Mdaha!)

(Do what you must,) Hasai said, placid. (I’ll lend you strength if you need it.)

She gulped, and began the sorcery. It was a simple one, and vile. These people were her friends. She had fought alongside them, guarded their backs, eaten and drunk and starved with them, lain down in loneliness and merriment to share herself with them. Their friendship gave her just enough knowledge of their inner Names with which to weave a spell of compulsion.

It was almost too easy, in fact. Their own wills were almost wholly abolished. The images of loneliness, loss of Power, and midnight fear that she employed were more than adequate. She knew less about Herewiss and Sunspark than about Freelorn and the others, but could guess enough about their natures to make them head out the door. Torve was hardest—a name and a wry flicker of his eyes was all she had. Yet she was terrified for this innocent, and her fear fueled his part of the sorcery, making up for her lack of knowledge.

As she gasped out the last few syllables of the spell, Segnbora began carefully making her way out of the construct in her mind. She slipped sideways through the final fold of the sorcery, scoring herself with sharp words in only a few places, thankful for once that she was so slim. Once out, she bound the sorcery into a self-maintaining configuration that would give her time to fight off the inevitable backlash and follow the others out.

One by one, her companions began drifting away from the Maiden’s throne, out toward the great gates. She sagged a moment, feeling weary and soiled, watching them go.

Inside her, wings like the night sheltered her and fed her strength. (Sdaha, don’t dally—)

(No.)

She looked one last time at the throne, where the Maiden sat silent, watching the others go, dispassionate as a statute in a shrine. O my Queen, Segnbora thought. Surely somewhere the Maiden dwelt in saner aspects, whole and alive and forever creating. But to see even a minor aspect of Godhead so twisted was too bitter for a mortal to bear for long. Hurrying, Segnbora turned away to follow the others.

They were far ahead of her, unerringly following the way out that she had set for them. The sorcery was holding surprisingly well, considering how long it had been since she had used sorcery to as much as mend a pot or start a fire. She went quickly, trotting, even though physical activity would bring on the backlash with a vengeance. It felt wonderful to move again.

(Mdaha, you all right?)

(My head hurts,) he said, surprised. The mdeihei rarely experienced pain for which there was no memory.

(It’s the effect of the sorcery; you’re getting it from me.)

Somehow she couldn’t bring herself to be very solicitous: There were still too many things that could go wrong. They could come to the doors and find them closed. Or, if they were open, the bridge could be gone. Or—

Something moved close by, a figure approaching Segnbora from one side. It was not one of her own people, she knew. Her hand went to Charriselm’s hilt.

Suoimersky opals winked at her as Efmaer came up beside her and walked with her, quickly but without animation. “You are leaving,” the Queen said.

“Yes. Come with us—

Efmaer shook her head. “Gladly would I come ... but I never found Sefeden to get my Name back, and without it I cannot leave ...”

“But you know your Name.”

“I have forgotten it,” said the Queen.

Segnbora’s insides clenched with pity ... and suddenly the memory she hadn’t been able to pin down appeared in her pain-darkened  mind. Urgently,  she stopped and  took the Queen by the shoulders. She had half expected to find herself holding a ghost, or something hard and cold, but there was life and warmth in the body, and an old supple strength that spoke of years spent swinging Forlennh and Skadhwe in the wars against the Fyrd.

“Efmaer. Enra gave the secret to her daughter, and it passed into the lore of our line. I know your Name.”

Undead, the Queen still managed to show shock and dismay that a stranger knew her greatest secret, the word that described who she was. But her distress lasted hardly a breath.

“Tell me quickly.”

Segnbora swallowed, looked Efmaer in the eye and whispered it—one long, cadenced, beautiful word in very ancient Darthene. Efmaer’s eyes filled with it, filled with life, and tears.

“Kinswoman,” she choked, the word carrying a great weight of thanks and wild hope. “Go. Don’t stay for me. I’ll meet you by the doors if I can. I have to see about something before I go.”

Off Efmaer went into the unchanging dusk. Segnbora turned and ran after her friends. They were almost out of sight, near the outwalls, where the twilight was thickest.

(Mdaha, what’s the time?)

(There’s a little left yet.)

She ran, harder than before, somehow feeling relieved of a great burden. She could feel the backlash of her sorcery creeping up on her, a hammering in her head and a weakness in the limbs. But her sorcery was holding, the others were still bound by her will. She caught sight of them now, not too far ahead, right up against—

“Oh Dark!” she said in complete despair, not caring what the swearing might invoke.

The great doors were shut. The faint light of the lying Moon shone high as before, but its light looked dimmer somehow. Freelorn and Herewiss were standing there looking dully up at the doors with the others. There was someone else there too, backed up against the entrance.

She pushed passed Herewiss and stopped sharp. If her heart hadn’t withered already, it would have done so now.

There was more energy bound up in that waiting figure than in anyone else she had seen in Glasscastle. It was someone slender, a blade of a woman with about as much curve; someone with a slight curvature of the back that made for an odd stance, balanced forward as if perpetually about to lunge; someone with a sword like the sharpened edge of the young Moon, and short straight hair shockingly white at the roots; someone wearing a surcoat with Enra’s lioncelle on it, passant regardant in blood and gold. Her dark eyes had a dazzlement about them, a terrible placidity. The One with Still Hands looked out of them. She was not defeated yet.

“No,” Segnbora whispered. Her otherself gazed at her with eyes tranquil and deadly, and hefted another Charriselm, making sure of her grip.

“You’re not leaving,” her own voice said.

Segnbora stepped closer, fascinated by the sight of herself. The other watched her unperturbed, wearing the aura of calm that Shihan had taught her was better than armor.

(Mdaha, you suppose she has you too?)

(As far as I can tell, I’m only here once. Is she truly you?)

Segnbora took another step forward.

“Save yourself some trouble,” said the Segnbora who guarded the door, “and don’t bother.”

(I think so,) she said to Hasai, recognizing the line. Queasiness started to rise inside her. The backlash was starting, and that meant she would soon be unable to hold together the sorcery. The others would start to drift away. Her otherself took a step forward. There was no question about her purpose. Segnbora raised Charriselm to guard, two-handed, and for the first time eyed her own stance as other opponents must have eyed it, seeking a weakness to exploit for the kill. It terrified her. All those who had attempted what she must now attempt were all dead. They started to circle one another.

“What I don’t understand,” the other said in a calm, reasonable voice, “is why you’re trying to leave.”

“I have my reasons,” Segnbora said, shuddering at the strangeness of answering her own voice. “And I have my oaths—”

“Your oaths are vain,” said her otherself, edging closer in that particular sideways fashion that was Segnbora’s favorite for closing inconspicuously with an enemy. “Who’ll notice if you break them?”

“She will—”

“Oh, indeed. And what has She done for you lately, besides graciously allowing you a night in bed with Her? You know, don’t you, that it was only Her sneaky way of telling you that you’re about to die? You don’t?” The other looked scornful. “Oaths! The way Freelorn’s behaving, he’ll never make it anywhere near Prydon, you at least know that! He’ll get himself killed, along with the rest of you, on that cold dark ledge. Ice and darkness, that’s what oaths get you—”

Segnbora slid closer, trembling. It was hard to think of this as just another fight. The necessary immersion in the other’s eyes—that act of becoming the opponent in order to counter her moves before they happened—was impossible when those eyes had the mad Maiden’s dreadful stillness in them. Her every glance made Segnbora afraid she would drown in their blank dazzle, drop Charriselm and surrender. To make matters worse, the backlash was hitting her harder now—not by accident, she suspected.

(Let us fight for you!) Hasai said suddenly. Segnbora blinked at this, and her otherself moved in fast, striking high at her head with Charriselm’s twin. Segnbora whirled out of range toward the other’s right, taking advantage of her own slightly weak backhand recovery, and came about again. There was a stir of movement among the silent watchers. For a moment her will to keep them in one place wavered, and they started drifting back toward Glasscastle’s center, where the Maiden waited.

(Don’t answer, sdaha. The mdeihei and I have been here long enough to be able to work your body; and your memories of your training are now for us. Tend to the sorcery. We will deal with this other you.)

The other Segnbora was inching in again, waiting an unguarded moment—evidently Shihan’s injunctions about not wasting time on showy but ineffective swordplay were binding on her too.

Segnbora didn’t much want to give her body to the mdeihei, but even now the sorcery was unraveling. (Mdaha, you get me killed—!)

(Killed? Here?) Hasai said, gently ironic.

The other leaped in to the attack again. While she was still in midair Segnbora felt other muscles, other wills, strike through her body and wear it as she had worn Hasai’s earlier. Without her volition she saw Charriselm twist up and slash out in the ha’denh move, the edge-on stroke and backstroke that opens the ekier sequence.

Normally, the feint of the first stroke and the vicious backhand cut of the second would have been enough to disembowel her opponent, but Segnbora’s sword met its mate halfway through the first cut. The two swords together sang a tormented note like a bell having its tongue cut out. Charriselm glanced down and out of the bind, and white Darthene steel sliced air where Segnbora would have been, had not the mdeihei twisted her impossibly sideways.

(Ow! My back!)

(You still live, don’t you? Tend to the sorcery!)

There was no more time for discussion. In the back of her mind the hard-stressed words of the sorcery were turning on one another, blades cutting blades, striving to undo themselves from her constraints. Ignoring her roiling insides, she shoved words back into place, reinforced them, threatened them, cajoled them in heartfelt Nhaired. It was like carrying water in a sieve, for all the while the power of the wreaking wore away at her outer mind, letting the twilight seep in again.

While she stopped up hole after hole of the sieve to keep her sorcery from running out, she watched the mdeihei inside her skin using her to turn and cut and thrust, attacking high and low, using all-out routines like sadekh and ariud. Nothing came of it. Every time, Charriselm met its otherself in her twin’s hand and the steel cried out. Every time she felt her own leverages, her own moves, being used against her. Again and again the mdeihei saved her life with dives and dodges that nearly snapped her spine, but the situation got no better.

(I had—no idea you were so—difficult in a fight, sdaha,) Hasai said, breathing hard from Segnbora’s exertion. He lunged her forward in the dangerous hilt-first “mutiny” maneuver, but her otherself twisted nimbly away.

(Neither did I.) Segnbora pushed a couple of words frantically back into the weave of the spell. As she did, she remembered something Efmaer had said. I could not kill myself, and so I am less than dead. Was this what had happened to her? Had she fought herself here at the gates and lost?

Hasai backed her up a step, raised Charriselm and stood poised in her body like a dancer, waiting for imprudence to tempt her adversary within range. The other Segnbora took the bait, stepping in suddenly and swinging—the edelle slash that could open Segnbora up like an oyster if it connected.

The Dragon sucked her stomach in and struck downward with Charriselm to stop the edelle, then whirled the blade up in a blur to strike at the other’s unprotected throat. But her otherself came up to block, and Segnbora’s stroke was slightly off angle. The two swords met, and this time there was no scrape, but rather a sudden snap that went right to the pit of Segnbora’s stomach. A handsbreadth above the hilt, Charriselm broke in two. The blade-shard went spinning away through the air to fall ringing on the crystal floor.

“No,” she cried, staring in anguish at the broken-off stump that had once been whole and beautiful. Before the doors, her otherself relaxed into guard, knowing Segnbora would think three times about trying a passage armed with only half a sword. At the back of her mind, words began falling away from one another—

A quick motion off to one side brought her around. It was Efmaer. The Queen came to her with her hands extended, and nothing in them ... or not quite nothing. She held a long slim darkness, like a slice of the utter darkness beyond the world, like a splinter of night made solid—

“You gave me my Name,” Efmaer said, urgent. “This is all I have to give you. Take it!”

Only for a second Segnbora hesitated as she stared at the uncanny thing. It was impossible to focus upon it despite its razor-sharp outline. Then she seized it out of Efmaer’s hands, by the end that was slightly thicker, and swung it up. There was no weight of hilt or blade; no feeling of actually holding anything, not even coolness or warmth or resistance to the air.

(Hasai—)

(Trust us, we will do well enough.)

“Kinswoman, be warned,” Efmaer said, “it’ll demand a life of you some day—it did of me!”

Segnbora nodded absently. She was already busy with the sorcery again, shoring it up. Her otherself dropped once more into a wary crouch, waiting, watching Skadhwe. Hasai saw his advantage and moved in on the other, not waiting.

“So,” said the other, “now you’ll kill me—”

Segnbora wrought a long word in Nhaired and wove it into a spot in the sorcery that was going bare.

“You’re in my way,” she said, remotely feeling the strange heft of the sword as Hasai lifted it. Legend said it would cut anything, but would it work here, inside another legend?

“That’s only part of it,” her otherself said. “You like to kill.”

She couldn’t help looking into the other’s eyes then and seeing there the placid regard of the Maiden. The power that had almost drowned her before stirred again.

Hasai danced in close, striking with Skadhwe.

(I can’t—) Segnbora whispered in mind. Her resistance made the mdeihei guiding her body miss the stroke. Her other-self slipped out of range, whirling to come at her on her weak side. The mdeihei spun Segnbora about too, so that the face-off stood again as it had.

Down in Segnbora’s mind a word unraveled itself from her sorcery and slithered away like a serpent of light, followed by another, and another. Herewiss turned away, and Freelorn, and. Lang—

(Sdaha!)

“Yes!” she said aloud. This wasn’t her Maiden, not the Lady of the White Hunt, defender of life and growth. This was just her own body occupied by an indweller as committed to stagnation as Hasai was to doing and being.

The mdeihei felt her resolve and leaped again. The other Segnbora, perhaps thinking Segnbora wouldn’t kill or hurt her, was slow about retreating. A second later she danced back with a cry. Red showed high up on her arm, pumping fast.

Segnbora flinched. She had felt nothing, no bite of sword into flesh at all.

“If you kill Me, you’re killing part of yourself!” the other cried, sounding afraid for the first time.

Hasai pressed in, following his advantage. Segnbora felt tears coming, but didn’t argue as she patched the spell again. Only a moment later did she realize what she was going to have to do. It would have been easiest to let Hasai win the fight, but she refused to allow him sole responsibility for that. The spell would hold for a second. She moaned out loud, took back her muscles, slid in and struck with Skadhwe at the Charriselm being raised against her.

With no more feeling than if it had been cutting air, the shadowblade sheared effortlessly through Charriselm and then downward to take off her otherself s arm at the elbow. The thick sound that the arm made in striking the floor, like so much dead meat, turned Segnbora’s stomach. The agony in the other’s eyes was beyond words.

Segnbora would gladly have dropped Skadhwe, but it seemed to be holding her hand closed about it. Her otherself struggled to her feet, and reached down to work the broken Charriselm out of the severed hand. She lifted the useless sword left-handed, and faced Segnbora with tears streaming down her face.

“Why couldn’t you have stayed?” the other Segnbora screamed at her. “Why couldn’t you just let it happen! You always wanted—”

Segnbora swung Skadhwe again, and felt nothing as her otherself s head—so much silver in its hair!—went rolling away across the crystal floor, trailing red. The slender trunk dropped, pumping out what seemed too much blood for so slight a frame.

One more body. That’s all it is. One more body. Oh, Goddess help me—!

Time was short. The sorcery was unraveling, assaulted by her revulsion at what she had done.

Quickly Segnbora lurched toward the doors, aware of Efmaer off to one side, of Herewiss and Freelorn drifting away. The doors were sheer, without any latch, and fitted so closely together that a thin knifeblade couldn’t have been pushed between them. There was no hope of swinging open their massive weight.

Unless, perhaps ...

She raised Skadhwe over her head and struck down, a great hewing blow. The sword sank half its depth into the crystal, as if into air. Again she struck, and a shard of the thick glass peeled away and shattered on the floor. Again, and again—

A great prism-slice the size of an ordinary doorway leaned out toward her, slow as a dream, and fell. It smashed thunderously right at her feet.

“Come on, get out!” she shouted at the others, yanking in her mind at the compulsion-sorcery.

Like hounds on leashes they all came stumbling after her, Freelorn and Herewiss, Lang and Dritt and Moris, Harald and Torve and Sunspark, out the jagged hole into the true twilight. The Moon was telling the truth again, and frightening truth it was. Its lower curve had dipped behind the wall of the Adine glacier’s cirque. Only the crescent’s two horns still showed in the sky. West of the Moon, the Evenstar balanced precariously on the ridge of the cirque, a trembling, narrowing eye of light.

Behind Segnbora, Herewiss shook his head as the wind hit him, and glanced around like a man roused from reverie. Then he glanced up at where the Moon should have been, and wasn’t. “My Goddess, it’s almost gone, the bridge—!”

Segnbora stood poised by the door, peering in desperately. “Efmaer!” she cried.

Just inside the door stood Efmaer. She was looking over her shoulder, trying to catch a last glimpse of her loved through the twilight.

“Efmaer!”

The Queen turned to Segnbora, reached out a hand. Segnbora took it and pulled, and Efmaer stepped through the jagged portal—

—She did not have time to look surprised. She simply stopped in midmotion, and went to dust: the dust of a woman five hundred years dead. Within seconds the relentless wind came howling down from the mountain, took her, and whirled her away.

Segnbora stared stupidly at her empty hand, then turned and ran through the group, who stood watching her with confusion and fear on their faces.

“Come on,” she yelled through her sobs, “the wind is back, the bridge is going to vanish! You want to try standing on air?”

She ran out onto the phantom part of the Skybridge, half-hoping it would give way under her. The memory of Efmaer’s hand turning to dust in hers was sickening.

Footsteps pounded close behind her. The Moon’s horns looked across the cirque ridge at her, far apart, growing shorter. The Evenstar wavered. Segnbora ran, gasping and terrified. Running had never been one of her strong points. Freelorn came pounding past her, showing off his sprinter’s stride to good advantage. Hard behind him came Herewiss, with Khavrinen once more afire on his back. Then came Sunspark, streaming fire like a runner’s torch from mane and tail. Torve and Lang and Harald and Moris and Dritt passed her too, wheezing.

Segnbora saw them all make the solid part of the bridge just at the moment the Moon pulled its horns completely beneath the ridge, and the Evenstar closed its eye and went out. With ten yards to go, the bridge of air dissolved beneath her, and she began to fall ...

Then Hasai was doing something, The fall simply went no farther, as if she had wings. In the moment of time he bought her, hands grabbed at her frantically and pulled her up onto the steel. She shook them off and headed down the bridge, fast, only slowing when the angle of the arch made footing difficult. Tears blinded her, burning coldly in the icy wind. She shook them out of her eyes. Raging at heart, she plunged down to the end of the span, down to rock and snow. There she ducked down around to one side of the Skybridge, and slid on her rear end toward one of the huge supports rooted in the mountainside.

The others were out of sight. Above her she heard them calling her, confused, frightened, relieved; and she ignored them. Poor crippled One, I pity You—but You’ll have no more company in Your exile. Nor am I going to let Herewiss give up a piece of his life to bind this grave closed. Enough life’s been wasted here. I have a better way—

She came up hard against the leftmost support, a pillar of Fire-wrought steel easily as thick as Healhra’s Tree in Orsmernin grove. Even in the dark it shimmered a ghostly blue.

“Segnbora.” Herewiss’s voice floated down to her from above. “What are you doing?”

Segnbora didn’t answer. Instead, she raised Skadhwe and with a great swashing blow sliced right through the steel support. The others had had enough time to get off safely.

The Fire in the steel was no hindrance. The pillar cracked and buckled backward, groaning, peeling apart from itself like a wound in metal flesh. Segnbora sliced at it again. The groan grew terrible as the upper part of the pillar came away from the lower, and the span of the bridge began to lean away from the mountainside.

She scrabbled across rock and snow to the second support and hewed that too. Far above, the groan grew to a scream of tortured metal. Smiling grimly, taking ferocious pleasure in the sound, Segnbora made her way to the last support, swung Skadhwe back, and struck. The slim shadow of its blade flicked through the metal and out the other side. The immense shadow of the Skybridge above her, shifting, leaned faster and faster and suddenly gave way to the deepening violet of the evening sky.