The Door Into Shadow totf-2 Read online

  — It was not a smell, or a feeling, or a vision precisely, that started to creep up on her. Segnbora stood up straight, glanc-ing around at the others. None of them sensed what she had. Herewiss and Freelorn were leaning against Lorn's dun, Blackmane, together, speaking quietly; Moris and Dritt had walked off a little way to look southwest at the Fane; Lang was rubbing down the perpetually sweaty Gyrfalcon; Harald was seeing to yellow-coated Swallow's cinches. Sunspark had dis-appeared on some mysterious errand of its own. She turned and looked east, her hand unconsciously drop-ping to Charriselm's hilt. There it was again, another flash of sight — vague and odd, focus bizarrely rounded, colors all awry. And smell too, acrid, terrible, enraging. That's familiar, I know that — Then the memory found her: that one time in the Precincts when the novices, carefully supervised, were al-lowed to shapechange and feel what a beast's body was like.

  "Herewiss!" she said, turning to him in alarm. He put his head up to the wind, gazing eastward as she had, but saw nothing. "You just did a wreaking," she said. "You may still be overloaded. Taste it!"

  The fear in her voice brought unease to his eyes. He closed them and reached out his undersenses. She did too, standing swaying in the long grass, and caught the impression again, stronger this time. Now there was something even more un-nerving added to the flash of skewed viewpoint: thought, stunted and twisted and bizarre, but thought. And it was all of hate.

  The mind she touched bounded above the whipping grass for a moment. It saw forms on the horizon, the source of a maddening stench.

  She heard a cough, opened her eyes to see Herewiss chok-ing briefly. His empathy must have been more profound than hers, for the

  remembered shape of the runner's throat was not letting his words out.

  "Fyrd!" he managed to croak, and pushed away from Black-mane, unsheathing Khavrinen hurriedly.

  The word took Segnbora by surprise. "But that was think-ing! Fyrd are Shadow-twisted, but they're just of dumb animal stock. They don't think!" She let the rest of her protest drop then. There was no mistaking what she had felt.

  "My move was anticipated," Herewiss said bitterly. He swung Khavrinen sideways, whipping a great brilliance of Fire angrily down the blade. "It's a step ahead of me — and mock-ing me, too."

  Segnbora understood. At Bluepeak, long ago, the Shadow had driven down that first terrible breed of thinking Fyrd into the Kingdoms. Far more dangerous than the noxious things It had twisted out of the beasts of ancient days, these Fyrd had the cunning of warriors. It had taken the Transformation, in which Earn and Healhra burned away their very forms and their mortality, to exterminate that breed. And now, for Here-wiss, here they were again—

  Steel scraped out of sheaths all around as movement be-came visible in the high grass to the east. Segnbora's under-senses brought her more and more clearly the experience of their hungry rage. They knew their quarry was human, and they hated them. They had come to murder.

  "Dammit," Herewiss muttered, "Sunspark, where are you when I need you?!" But no answering thought came, and Herewiss hefted Khavrinen grimly. Only two days forged, and already the sword would be tasting blood.

  There was little time to prepare. One moment the dark backs were jolting through the tall grass and the next, with a wave of grunts and screeches, the Fyrd were upon them. Segnbora found herself holding her blade too high to guard against a maw that was suddenly springing at her throat. She

  threw herself sideways. Jaws went mick! above her, in the air where she had been. She hit the ground, rolled, found her footing and sprang up again. The maw hit the turf where she had been. For a moment it tore the ground with teeth and talons, its hunched back to her. That was all she needed. Chosing her spot she swung Charriselm up, sliced through thick flesh to the shock of bone. The maw writhed and screamed once, as its half-severed head flopped into the grass. She paid it no more heed, simply whipped the blood off Charriselm and swung around to find another foe. There were certain to be plenty—

  — More maws, five or six of them, broad and round with piggish, wicked eyes; several keplian, horse-looking things with carnivores' teeth and three razory toes on each forefoot; other shapes less identifiable. The standard Fyrd varieties had been twisted further away from the animals they had anciently been. She forgot about specifics and dove away from the spring of one maw, took another one across the chest with a two-handed stroke and was knocked down by its momentum. Move, move, as long as you 're moving you 're safe! she remembered her old sword-instructor Shihan shouting at her.

  Off to her left she heard Steelsheen scream in defiance and crash into a Fyrd, followed by the flat brittle sound of a skull being crushed by hooves. At the same time she got a pinwheeling glimpse of Khavrinen, Herewiss's sword, being jerked up after a downstroke. Then a half-seen form came at her low and sideways — she chopped at it, a poorly aimed blow that slid off hard smooth plates. Hissing, the nadder's gigantic serpent-head rose up before her, then struck; she danced desperately aside and chopped off the head at the neck.

  Segnbora turned away and looked around. Khavrinen was striking downward again, and as it struck both Herewiss and the keplian he had killed moaned aloud. The Fire wavering about those parts of the blade not yet obscured illuminated Herewiss's face. Crying? Segnbora thought, surprised, but not too much so. Khavrinen was more of a symbol than a weapon. Herewiss was no killer— Steelsheen trampled another maw, and Moris nailed the

  last one to the ground with a two-handed straight-down thrust. Finally everyone was standing still, panting, sagging, wiping blood out of their eyes.

  "More coming!" Segnbora said, groaning aloud at the feel-ing of yet another of those hot, hating minds heading their way.

  She looked northward. It was a hundred yards away, and it showed much more of itself above the grass than had the other Fyrd.

  Segnbora's heart constricted in terror as she recognized it. She had never seen one of these, but if the stories of the creatures* endurance

  were true, this one could afford to take its time.

  "Oh Goddess," whispered Freelorn from beside her. "A deathjaw!"

  "With the Fire,"Herewiss said between gasps, "possibly — " He lifted Khavrinen again, but there was. no great hope in the gesture. Deathjaws were so fearsome that there was only one way to successfully hunt them: stake out a human being as bait, and hide a Rodmistress close by to do a brainburn when the thing got close enough. We've got plenty of bait, but he doesn't know the protocol for a brainburn. If he did, he would be doing it. The shambling form came closer. "Run for it," Herewiss said, sounding very calm. Everyone hesitated. "I mean it'!"'

  Lang turned, and Moris, and Harald, but they were slow about retreating. Freelorn didn't move from beside Herewiss. "Lorn — "

  "Big, isn't it," Freelorn said. His eyes were wide with fear, but his voice was as steady as if he was discussing a draft horse. '"'Shut up. Dusty," Freelorn said. "Do whatever you're going to do to that thing. I'll watch your back."

  Segnbora stepped up behind them as they set themselves. "I don't know how to burn it," Herewiss said to her. "The eye, though, that's possible — "

  — Pul a langsword into that little eye, and hope to hit the brain?

  Segnbora thought, and didn't laugh at the idea. The deathjaw was close — shaggy-coated, brindled, the size of three Dar-thene lions. Shiny black talons gleamed on its great catlike paws. The deathjaw opened its mouth just a little, showing two of its three lines of fangs above and below. Then it began to run, its face wrinkling into a horrible mask.

  Herewiss swung Khavrinen up vrith elbows locked and let it charge — his only option, for running was as hopeless as a slash-and-cut duel would be. The blade into the eye, she heard him thinking, and Fire down the blade, enough to blast the brain dead. He never used his plan. While still twenty feet away the deathjaw screamed horribly as fire suddenly bloomed about it, eating inward through flesh and muscle and sinew quick as a gasp. The still-moving skeleton burned incandescent for a moment more before the
swirling flames blasted bone to powder, then ate that too. The deathjaw was gone before its death shrieks died.

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  And Sunspark appeared — a brief bright coalescence like a meteor changing its mind in mide*plosion — and paced casu-ally over to the three. It was exuding a feeling of great pleas-ure, its mane and tail burning merrily as holiday bonfires. (You called for me?) it said to Herewiss, who was breathing hard now with delayed terror.

  "I believe I did,"he said. Sunspark looked at Freelorn with an expression of good-natured wickedness and said nothing. "Thank you," Freelorn said, courteous enough; but there was a touch of grudge in his voice. Sunspark snorted. (Gratitude! Next time I'll choose my moment with more care … a little later.) "Choose the moment—!" (So that you'll appreciate me.) "You mean you watched those things attack us and you didn't—!"

  "Lorn, enough," Herewiss said. "It doesn't think the way you do. Luckily for us. Loved," he said to the elemental, "did you notice any other wildlife in these parts while you were having breakfast?"

  (Singers,) it said, looking to the northwest. (The ones with fur.)

  "Wolves? Perfect." Herewiss glanced down at Khavrinen, which blazed just long enough to burn the blood off itself. "We won't be climbing the Fane until sunset, since a Sum-moning there works best at twilight. But damned if I'm going to put up with any more Fyrd, in the meantime. I'll go have a word with the wolves and see if I can work something out. Now, how do I manage this—" He frowned, closed his eyes. Fire swirled outward from Khavrinen, hiding both sword and wielder. The pillar of bril-liance shrank as it swirled, and sank close to the ground. When the blue Flame died away it left behind a handsome cream-white wolf with orange-brown points and downturned blue eyes.

  (Not bad,) Sunspark remarked, (for a beginner.) (Hmp!) Herewiss said, grinning a wolf-grin. (Stay close till I get back, loved, just in case the Fyrd try again. I won't be long.)

  The wolf bounded away through the long grass. Watching him go, Segnbora dug down in her belt-pouch for a square of soft paper, with which she began cleaning off Charriselm's blade. When she had finished, she looked thoughtfully at the Fane. It seemed to gaze back, calm and blind and patient, waiting for something. Fyrd so close to this place — that's unheard of. All ike rate are changing. After this nothing is going to be the way it was.. Not even me, She shook her head uneasily, not entirely understanding the thought,

  "You going to stand there all day?" someone shouted at her. Freelorn and the others were in the saddle, getting ready to ride down to the Fane. Segnbora swung up into Steel-sheen's saddle and went, after them,

  She sat underneath an old rowan tree near the lakeshore, her 'back, against its trunk,, and watched the long shadows of men, horses, and trees drown in slow dusk. The Fane, a half mile away across Rilthor's water, shone golden as a legend where its heights still caught the sunset. The mirroring water

  lay still in the breathless evening, ihe mountain's burning image broken only by the wakes of the gray songswans gliding

  by. Truly it's not so impressive, she thought, stretching. The Fane's mountain was a little one, no more than a half mile wide at the base, broad at

  the bottom and flat at the top, stippled roughly with brush and scrub pine.

  But for all the seeming plainness of the landscape, their camp that day had been abnormally quiet. Freelorn had been pacing and frowning most of the afternoon. Herewiss had come back from his parley with the wolves, reporting success

  — and a sore throat from much howling. Now he sat under an alder with Khavrinen flaming in his lap, meditating; for hours he hadn't moved, gazing across at the Fane with an expression that was half wonder and half fear. Harald and Moris had been keeping so close to one another that one might have thought they had been lovers for only a week or so, rather than several years. Dritt and Lang had become almost obsessive about caring for their horses, and the otherwise fearless Lang had been looking over his shoulder a great deal. Even Sunspark, while in its horse-shape, had been cribbing quietly at an elm tree, leaving small scorched places bitten out of the bark.

  She laughed at herself then, a mere breath of merriment. And me. All this time on the trail, all this time I've been a hunted woman — look what kind of watch I'm keeping. My back turned to open country, where Goddess knows what could be coming up from behind — and me sitting here staring at this silly kill as if it's going to jump out of the water and come after me! Yet that silent benevolence kept watching her, kept waiting.

  She shivered with expectation. Practically at the same mo-ment, a clear melodious sound like the night Ending its voice rose up in the distance — then was joined in the long note by another voice wavering downward a third, and yet another, higher by a fourth. The unsettling harmony sent a delighted shiver down her spine. The wolves were on post as their rearguard, singing to while away the watch. The Goddess's dogs, she thought, the old affectionate name for them — votaries who sang to Her mirror, the Moon, through all its phases, silent only when She was dark and dangerous. Where is the Moon tonight, Segnbora wondered,

  glancing upward. It had not yet risen. But she was distracted, as always, with the sight of the first few stars pointing through the twilight, and the memory they always recalled. How old was I? she wondered, but wondering was vain. Very small, she had been — small enough to still be wearing a shift instead of a kilt, but large enough to push open the front door of the old house at Asfahaeg and escape at bedtime. She had gone out into the dark, unsure just what she was looking for, then had glanced up and found something, a marvel. Not just sunset, or dusk, or dark, but a sky burning with lights, every one solitary and glorious; and she knew, small as she was, that somehow or other she and those lights were intimately connected.

  Now she knew them as stars, knew their names, knew about the Dragons that had come from among them, and about the Goddess Who had made them. But the wonder had never left Segnbora: that desire to get closer to those lights that called her — and, eventually, closer to the One Who had made the stars. When the Rodmistresses tested her at the age of three and found the Fire, she had been overjoyed. Everybody knew that when you had the Flame, you often got to talk to Her.

  But years of study had failed her; school after school had been unable to provide her with a focus strong enough to channel the huge outflow of her Power — and so there had been no breakthrough, and no truedreams in which She walked. After much bitter time she had admitted the truth to herself, that she was one of those who was never going to focus. She might as well give up sorcery and lore and Flame and all the other timewasting for something useful, as her father had always said.

  So it was that she had met the Goddess at. last. She was good with Charriselm; she went looking for a job as a guard in a little Steldene town called Madeil — and found Freelorn in the mucky alley behind a tavern. Later, fleeing from an old keep in which the aroused Steldenes had laid siege to them, the group had come across a little fieldstone inn on the border between Steldin and the Waste. It was strange that there should, have been an inn out there at the very edge of human habitation, but the innkeeper had put them all at ease. Find

  ing that they were short of money, she offered to share herself with one of them to settle the scot. A common enough ar-rangement, and

  Segnbora had won the draw for the privilege. It had been a sweet evening. The innkeeper had been fair, but there was more to her beauty than that. A long while they sat together by the window of Segnbora's little room, she and a white-shifted shadow veiled in hair like the night, talking and breathing the apple-blossom scent while the full Moon went softly up the sky. The talk drifted gradually to matters that Segnbora usually kept deeply hidden — old joys, old pains

  — while the brown-and-beige-banded pottery cup went back and forth between them, filled with a wine like summer wind running sweet under starlight.

  I'm talking a great deal, Segnbora h
ad thought, not so much frightened by the intimacy as bemused. The wine— But the wine was not intoxicating her; she was seeing and feeling, if anything, more clearly than usual. Shivering with delight at the feeling of magic in the air, she drank deep of the cup, deeply enough to drain it… and found it still three-quarters full. Two hours we've been drinking from this cup, she realized, and she only Jilled it once.

  She looked across at the other, then, and realized Who had come to share Herself with her, as She conies to every man and woman bom, once before they die. Not Mother now, as she had been at dinner, feeding them all and gossiping about the Kingdoms, but the aspect of the Goddess she loved best

  — Maiden about to be Bride, Creatress about to create some-thing as beautiful as the multitude of stars. Back and forth a few more times that cup went, while Segnbora drank deep of building joy and anticipation, and named the Other's name, and saw her joy reflected a hundredfold, a thousandfold, in-calculably.

  Then she went to bed. And was joined by warmth that enfolded, and lips that spoke her name as if she was the only thing in creation. She was intensely loved; and was given to drink of that other cup that briins ovei forever, the endless source. She drowned, eternally it seemed, in the deep slow bliss of her own deity, and the Other's. .

  The bark against her back was hard as she blinked, glanced down from the sky. Oh, again, she thought, someday again. Though the odds of that were slight. Once in a lifetime in that manner, one might expect the Goddess. Otherwise,

  only at birth did one see Her, in one's own mother — quickly forgotten, that sight — and at death, when the Silent Mother, the Winnower, came to open the last Door.