The Door Into Fire totf-1 Page 10

  'Good evening,' someone said to him.

  He didn't recognize the voice, a deep, gentle one. Then as he turned his head, the memories snapped back into place. The new person, the woman. This must be her.

  Looking up at her, Herewiss's first impression was of large, deep– set hazel eyes that lingered on him in leisurely appraisal, and didn't shift away when he returned the glance. And hands: long, strong-fingered hands, prominently veined, incongruously attached to little fragile bird-boned wrists and too-slender arms. She was very slim and long-limbed, wearing with faint unease a body that didn't seem to have finished adolescence yet. But her muscles looked taut and hard from assiduous training. She sat cross-legged on the ground by Herewiss's head, those strong hands resting quietly on her knees, seemingly relaxed. But his underhearing, hypersensitive from the large sorcery he had worked, gave him an immediate feeling of impatience, an impression that beneath the imposed external calm seethed something that had to be done and couldn't. Her dark hair was cut just above the

  shoulders; Herewiss looked at it and smiled. She wants to make sure they know she's a woman, he thought, but she doesn't have the patience for braids . . .

  'Good evening to you,' he said, propping himself up on one elbow and then frowning – he had forgotten how sore he was. 'I'm sorry I missed your name when we were on the way out—' 'You were hardly in a condition to remember it if you'd heard it,' she said, reaching out to touch hands with him. 'Segnbora, Welcaen's daughter.'

  'Herewiss, Hearn's son,' he said, touching her hand, and then flinching. No matter how fordone he might be, there was no mistaking the feel of Flame. And she was full of it, spilling over with it. It had sparked between their hands, faint blue like dry– lightning, as if trying to fill the empty place in him. Something very like envy whirled through Herewiss's mind, to be replaced immediately by confusion. With power like that, what was she doing here?

  She was rubbing her hands together thoughtfully, and still looking at him, her curiosity more open. But at the same time she read the look in his eyes, and her expression was rueful. 'You felt right,' she said softly. 'The funny thing is, I think I did too . . .'

  For a few moments more they regarded each other. Then Segnbora dropped her eyes, reaching down with one hand to play with the peace-strings of her sword, sheathed on the ground beside her.

  'That was some sorcery you worked,' she said, and looked up again. Her face was all admiration, masking whatever else was in her mind. 'You were out for two days.'

  'Where are we now?'

  'About fifteen miles from the border of the Waste. We only have to cross the Stel. Freelorn will be glad you're awake. He was worried about you.'

  'Don't know why,' Herewiss said, and sat himself up with a little effort. 'He knows I always take the backlash hard.'

  'I'm sure. But he never saw anything like that display before. Some of the effects were—'

  'Unexpected.'

  'Yes. Especially that business with the fire.' 'Where is he?' Herewiss said hurriedly.

  'Out hunting. They left me here to watch you. This is safe country, too empty for Fyrd, I think. They'll be lucky to find anything. Dritt is here too.'

  He looked around and located Dritt sitting atop a boulder, a big stocky silhouette against the sunset. He was munching something, and Herewiss became immediately aware of the emptiness of his stomach.

  Segnbora was rummaging in a pouch. 'Here,' she said, handing him an undistinguished-looking lump of something crumbly.

  'Waybread?'

  'Yes.'

  It looked terrible, like a lump of pale dirt with rocks in it. He bit into it, and almost broke a tooth.

  'Goddess above,' he said, after managing to get the first bite down, 'this is awful.'

  'And what waybread isn't?'

  'Worse than most, I mean.'

  'It's also more sustaining than most.'

  'I think I'd rather eat sagebrush.'

  'You may, if they don't find anything out there. Eat up.'

  She took a piece too, and they sat for a few minutes in silence, passing Segnbora's waterskin back and forth at intervals.

  'The fire,' Segnbora said suddenly. 'And your messengers – the hawk, that ball of flame that met us when we

  came out – those really interested me. Those were no illusions – those were real.'

  He studied her uneasily, not responding, trying to understand what she was up to. She was looking thoughtfully over his shoulder at something fairly close by. Herewiss put his mind out behind him and felt around. Sunspark was some yards behind him with the other horses, once again a vague blunt warmth wrapped in the stallion– form, grazing unconcernedly.

  (Yes?) it said.

  (Our friend here—) Herewiss indicated Segnbora. (So?)

  (I think she sees you for what you are.)

  Sunspark waved its tail, making a feeling like a shrug. (That's well for her. I am worth seeing . . .)

  Herewiss returned his attention to Segnbora. She continued to gaze past him for a moment. Remotely he could sense Sunspark lifting its head, returning her look.

  (Another relative,) it said. (This world seems to be full of my second cousins.)

  'An elemental?' Segnbora said, turning her eyes back to Herewiss. 'Yes. Why?'

  'You have no sword.' She gestured at his empty scabbard. 'I beg your pardon?' Herewiss said, shocked.

  'I'm sorry –I didn't mean to change the subject. But I'd been meaning to ask you about that.'

  Herewiss felt outrage beginning to grow in him, and a voice spoke up in his memory, the scornful voice of some Darthene regular way back during the war. ('Spears and arrows are a boy's weapon! Afraid to get up close to a Reaver? … A man isn't a boar to be hunted with a lance. A man takes on another man blade to blade . . . Earn's

  blood must be running thin in the Wood . . .')

  Oh, Dark, I thought I got over this a long time ago! Herewiss took a deep breath and pushed the anger down. 'It may be none of your business,' he told Segnbora, as gently as he could.

  'Then why are you so obvious about it? You wouldn't be wearing that around if you didn't want to attract attention to it. Freelorn's people think it's something to do with a family feud and they won't mention it for fear you'll take offense. But there's something else there—'

  'Freelorn knows. And he doesn't speak of it either,' Herewiss said, trying to frighten her away from the subject with a sudden knife-edge of anger in his voice.

  'Maybe someone should,' she said, so very softly that he sat back in confusion. 'I saw how he looks at that scabbard. He looks at it, but he doesn't look at it — as if it was a maimed limb. He hurts so much for you. I didn't know why – but now – It's a matter of Flame, isn't it?'

  'Listen,' Herewiss said, 'why should I discuss it with you? We've barely met.'

  Segnbora smiled at him, that dry, rueful smile again. 'Fair enough,' she said. 'Let me tell you who I am, and perhaps you'll understand. I come of fey stock from a long way back – generations of Rodmistresses and sorcerers. The male line has descent from Gereth Dragonheart, who was Marchwarder with M'athwinn d'Dhariss when the Dragons were fighting for the Eorlhowe. The female line comes down from Enra the Queen's sister of Darthen. Two terribly eminent families . . . and I'm something of an embarrassment to both of them.'

  She chuckled softly. 'We usually come into our Power early, if it's there. They took me to be tested when I was three years old, and they weren't disappointed. The Flame that was in me shattered all the rods and rings and broke

  the blocks that they gave me to hold, and the testers got really excited. They said to my mother and father, "This one is a great power, or will be when she grows up – you should have her trained by the best people you can find. Anything less would be a terrible waste." So they did. And I studied with Harandh, and Saris Elerik's daughter, and the people at the Nhairedi Institute in Darthis, and I did a year with Eilen—'

  That old prune?'

  'You know her. Yes. And others
too numerous to mention. I hardly spent more than a year or two in the same place.'

  'It's not very good policy to change teachers so often,' Herewiss said. 'I wouldn't think there would be time to build up a good relationship—'

  'You're right, it's not, and there wasn't,' Segnbora said. 'There was this little problem, you see. I had too much Flame. I kept breaking the Rods they gave me to work with; they would just blow right up, boom, like that—' She waved her arms in the air – 'any time I tried to channel through them. And all my teachers said, "It's all right, you'll grow out of it, it's just adolescent surge." Or, "Well, it's puberty, it'll be all right after your breasts grow."' She chuckled. 'Well, they grew all right, but that wasn't the problem. I began wondering after a while why each teacher kept referring me to another one, supposedly more experienced or more advanced – once or twice I made so bold as to ask, and got long lectures on why I should let older and wiser heads decide what was best for me. Or else I got these short shamefaced speeches on how I needed more theory, but everything would be all right eventually.'

  Herewiss made a face.

  'That's how I felt,' Segnbora said. 'Well, what could I do? I gave it a chance, stuffed myself with more theory

  than most Rodmistresses would ever have use for. It was better than facing the truth, I suppose. And eventually I got to be eighteen, and they took me to the Forest Altars in the Brightwood, and I spent a year there in really advanced study – or so they called it. You know the Altars?'

  'I live in the Brightwood,' Herewiss said dryly. And a lot of good it did me! 'Go on.'

  'Yes. Well, when I turned nineteen, and Maiden's Day came around, I swore the Oath, and they took me into the Silent Precincts, and they brought out the Rod they had made for me. They were really proud of it, it came from Earn's Blackstave in the Grove of the Eagle, it'd been cut in the full of the Moon with the silver knife and left on the Flame Altar for a month. And they gave it to me and I channeled Flame through it—'

  '—and you broke it.'

  'Splinters everywhere, the Chief Wardress ducked and turned around and took one right in the rear. Oh, such embarrassment you haven't seen anywhere. The Wardress claimed I did it on purpose – she and I had had a few minor disagreements on matters of theory—'

  'Kerim is a disagreement looking for a place to happen.'

  'Yes,' Segnbora said tiredly, 'indeed she is. Well. They went down the whole Dark-be-damned list of trees, and I broke oak Rods and ash and willow and blackthorn and rowan and you name it. Finally the Wardresses who were there shrugged and said they'd never seen anything like it, but they couldn't help me. So here I am, so full of Power that sometimes it crawls out my skin at night and changes the ground where I lie – but I can't control so much of it as to

  heal a cut finger, or bring a drop of rain.' She sighed. 'A whole life wasted in the pursuit of the one art I can't master.'

  Herewiss sat there and felt an odd twisted kind of pleasure. So I'm not the only one like this! Well, well— But then he pushed it aside, ashamed of it.

  'Precisely,' Segnbora said, her voice tight, and Herewiss blushed fiercely. 'Oh,' she said, and smiled again, 'they really push you at Nhairedi; my underhearing got awfully good.'

  'I'm sorry—'

  'Don't be. I must confess feeling a moment's satisfaction when I realized what your problem was. I'm sorry, too.'

  Herewiss sighed. 'You're a long way from the Forest Altars.'

  She shrugged. 'How long can a person keep trying? I spent three more years in the Precincts, fasting and praying and trying to beat my body into submission – I thought I could tame the Power that way.' She snorted. 'It was a silly idea. I ended up half– wrecked, with the Fire almost dead in me from the abuse. I had to let it rest for a long time before it would come back. Then after a while I said, 'What the Dark!' and just went off to travel. The Power's going to wither up in me soon enough, but there's no reason to be bored while it does. I made Freelorn's acquaintance in Madeil; and traveling in company is more interesting than being alone. Especially with him.' She chuckled.

  'But you still have a lot going for you,' Herewiss said, though the empty place in him realized how such a statement might feel to her. 'You studied at Nhairedi, you certainly got enough sorcery from them to make yourself a living by it—'

  Segnbora shrugged again. 'True. But I have better things to do with my life than spell broken cartwheels back together or divine for well-diggers or mix potions to make

  men potent. Or thought I had. I spent all those years cultivating the wreaking ability – and then nothing came up. I was going to reach inside minds and really understand motivations — not just make do with the little blurred glimpses you get from underhearing, all content and no context. I was going to untwist the hurt places in people, and heal wounds with something better than herbs and waiting. To really hear what goes on in the world around, to talk to thunderstorms and soar in a bird's body and run down with some river to the Sea. I was going to move the forces of the world, to command the elements, and be them when I chose. To give life, to give Power back to the Mother. To sing the songs that the stars sing, and hear them sing back. And they told me I'd do all that, and I believed them. And it was all for nothing.'

  She looked out into nothing as she spoke, and her voice drifted remotely through the descending dusk as if she were telling a bedtime story to a drowsy child. From the quiet set of her face, it might have been a story laid in some past age, all the loves and strivings in it long since resolved. But the pain in her eyes was here-and-now, and Herewiss's underhearing caught the sound of a child, awake and alone in the darkness, crying softly.

  He sat there and knew the sound too well; he'd heard it in himself, in the middles of more nights than he cared to count. 'If you had it, you know,' he said, trying to find a crumb of comfort for her, 'you'd probably just die early.'

  He had tried to make a joke of it, an acknowledgement of shared pain. But she turned to him, and looked at him, and his heart sank. 'Who cares if you die early,' she said very quietly, 'as long as you've lived.'

  He dropped his eyes and nodded.

  They sat and gazed at the sunset for a little while.

  'I'm sorry,' Segnbora said eventually, pulling her knees

  up to her chest and wrapping her arms around them. 'The problem is much with me these days; it's dying, you see. But it must be worse for you. At least for me there's hope—'

  'There's hope,' Herewiss said harshly, 'just fewer people to believe in me. A lot fewer.'

  'That's what I meant,' she said, and to his surprise, he believed her. 'That jolt you gave me when we touched –you certainly have enough to use. If you live in the Brightwood, you must have tried the Altars too—'

  'Yes.'

  'And?'

  'They turned me away.' 'They did what?' 'I couldn't use a Rod.'

  'Well, of course you couldn't! It's a woman's symbol, your undermind would interfere with it. What were they thinking of?'

  She was all indignation now, and Herewiss, feeling it was genuine, warmed to her a little. 'You're a man, what did they expect? And just because you couldn't use a Rod, they gave up on you?'

  'Yes.'

  Segnbora frowned at Herewiss, and he leaned back a little, stricken by the angry intensity of the expression. 'There are few enough women since the Catastrophe who have the Power,' she said, 'less than a tenth of us – and no men at all – Do they think there are enough people running around using Flame that they can afford to throw one away? A male, no less.' She shook her head. 'They must have been crazy.'

  'I thought so at the time.'

  'What did they say?'

  Herewiss shrugged. 'I asked for help in finding some­thing else to use as a focus. I thought that, since the sword is very symbolic of the Power for me, that I might use one as focus. They said it was hopeless, that the Power was a thing of flesh and blood and the lightning that runs along the nerves, and that it could never flow through anything that hadn't been aliv
e, like wood. Well, I said, how about a sword made of wood or ivory? Oh, no, they said to me, the sword in concept and design is an instrument of death, and unalterably opposed to the principles of the Power. They just wouldn't help me at all. I guess I didn't fit their image of how a male with the Power would act, when one finally showed up. So I left, and went my own ways to study.'

  He stretched a little, making an irritated face. 'Well, for whichever of the reasons they gave me, they've been right so far. I tried using various sorceries to condition the metal of a sword to the conduction of Flame – that was silly, the Power and the mundane sorceries are two entirely different disciplines. But I tried it. I tried swords of wood, and ivory, and horn, and bone, but those didn't work. I finally started forging my own swords and using my blood at various stages – melding it with the metal, tempering the sword with it, writing runes on the blade with it.'

  'Nothing, though.'

  'Well, not quite. Once, the business with the runes, that began to feel as if it would work – almost. Not quite, though. There was a stirring – something was starting to happen – but the sword still felt wrong. They all do. It could be they're right about the dichotomy between swords and life.'

  'Maybe you need to know your Name,' Segnbora said.

  Herewiss went stiff for a moment, feeling threatened by the subject. The matter of Names wasn't usually mentioned in casual conversation, and certainly not between

  two people who had just met. But Segnbora's tone was noncommittal, and her expression reserved. She shifted her eyes away as he looked at her. Herewiss relaxed a little.

  'Maybe,' he said, looking away himself, his fingers playing idly with the empty scabbard. 'But I don't know how to find it. I mean, I'm not all that sure who I'm supposed to be. I have ideas – but it's like water in a sieve. I pour myself into them, into this role, or that identity, and they won't hold me. I'm a passable sorcerer—'

  'A little more than passable.'