The Door Into Fire totf-1 Read online

  Someone blocked the light, and he looked up – a girl, maybe eighteen years old or so, with a droopy halo of frizzing black hair. She bent in front of Herewiss, putting his steak pie and ale on the old scarred table. Herewiss took brief notice of the view down her blouse, but he was more interested in the steak pie.

  'Nice,' he said. 'A fork, please?'

  'Hmm?' She in her turn was being very interested in Herewiss. 'A fork?'

  'Oh. Yes, certainly—' She reached into her pocket and brought one out for him. Herewiss took it, wiped it off, and dove almost desperately into the pie.

  'Ahh, listen,' she said, bending down again, and Herewiss began an intensive study of a piece of potato, 'are you busy this evening?'

  Herewiss did his best to look at her with profound sorrow. She really wasn't his type, and there was a mercenary look in her eye that sent him hurriedly to the excuse box in the back of his head. 'If you're thinking what I think you are,' he said, 'I'm sorry, but I'm under vows of chastity.'

  'You don't look like you're in an Order,' she said.

  'Perpetual chastity,' Herewiss said. 'Or until the Eagle comes back. Sorry.'

  The girl stood up. 'Well,' she said, 'if you change your mind, ask the lady in the kitchen where I am. I'm her daughter.'

  Herewiss nodded, and she went away into the kitchen. He sagged a little as the door closed behind her, and settled back against the wall.

  That was a bit panicky of me, Herewiss thought as he began to eat. I wonder what it is about her that bothers me so—

  He put the thought aside and concentrated on the hot-spiced food and the heavy ale. The common room began slowly to fill up as he ate; the local clientele was coming in from the fields and houses to enjoy each other's company. The big table nearest him was occupied by a noisy, cheerful group of farmers from the Arian landholdings, nine or ten brawny men and lithe ladies, all deeply tanned and smelling strongly of honest work. They called loudly for food and drink, and hailed Herewiss like a brother when they spotted him in his corner. He smiled back at

  them, and before long they were exchanging crude jokes and bad puns, and laughing like a lot of fools.

  When the inn's cat strolled by, it was greeted politely by the farmers, and offered little pieces of meat or game. It declined all these graciously and in silence, and went on by, making its rounds. As it passed it looked hard at Herewiss, as if it recognized him. He nodded at it; the cat looked away as if unconcerned, and moved on.

  As the ale flowed and the evening flowered, the storytelling and singing began in earnest. Most of the stories were ones already known to everyone there, but no-one seemed to care much about that – Kingdoms people have a love of stories, as long as the story wears a different face each time. Someone began with the old one about what Ealor the Prince of Darthen had done with the fireplace poker, which was later named Sarsweng and had its haft encrusted with diamonds. Then someone else got up and told about something more recent, news only a hundred and five years old, how the lady Faran Fersca's daughter had gone out with her twelve ships to look for the Isles of the North, and how only one ship had come back after a year, and what had happened to it. This was told in an unusual fashion, sung to an antique rhyme-form by a little old lady with a surprisingly strong soprano. There was a great deal of stamping and cheering and applause when she finished; and several people, judging correctly that the lady was quite young inside, whatever her apparent age, propositioned her immediately. She said yes to one of the propositions, and she and the gentleman went upstairs immediately to more applause.

  In the commotion, the lute was passed around to the farmers' table and one of them started to sing the song about the Brindle Cat of Aes Aradh, how it carried away the chief bard of a Steldene king on its back because of an

  insulting song he had sung before the Four Hundred of Arlen, and what the bard saw in the Otherworld to which the cat took him. Herewiss joined in on the choruses, and one of the ladies at the farmers' table noticed the quality of his voice and called to him, 'You're next!' He shook his head, but when the man with the lute was finished, it was passed back to him. He looked at it with resignation, and then smiled a little at a sudden memory.

  'All right,' he said, pushed his chair back, and perched himself on the edge of the farmers' table, pausing a moment to tune one of the strings that had gone a quarter-tone flat. The room quieted down; he strummed a chord and began to sing.

  Of the many stories concerning the usage of the blue Fire, probably the most tragic is that of Queen Beaneth of Darthen and her lover Astrin. Astrin was taken by the Shadow's Hunting one

  Opening Night, and Beaneth went to her rescue. That rescue seemed a certain thing, for Beaneth was a Rodmistress, one of the great powers of her time. But the price demanded of her for Astrin's release was that Beaneth must mate with the Shadow, and take into herself whatever evil He would choose for her to bear. Beaneth, knowing that the evil to grow within her would warp her Power to its own use, lay down with the Shadow indeed, but killed herself at the climax of the act, thereby keeping her bargain and obtaining her loved's release.

  Her little daughter Beorgan was five years old when all this happened. Beorgan made the decision early to avenge her mother, and determined that she would meet the Shadow on His own ground and destroy Him. She trained, and grew great in Power – and also in obsession – waiting and preparing for Nineteen-Years' Night, that night when it is both Opening Night and Full Moon. All the Kingdoms know how the story ends – how Beorgan went

  down to the Morrowfane on that night, being then twenty-four years of age, and opened the Morrowfane Gate beneath the waters of Lake Rilthor, and passed through into the Otherworlds. There she met the Shadow, and there she slew Him, on one of the only nights this may be done, when the Goddess's power conjoins with the returning Sun past midnight. Beorgan's triumph was shortlived, though, and so was she. She had never planned her life past that night, and in a short time wasted away and died. Even her victory was hollow, for however bright the Lover may be, still he casts the Shadow: seven years after He died, He was back again, leading the Hunting as always.

  Freelorn had always loved the story, and some years back had composed a verse form of it, and a musical setting that Herewiss had liked. At the time, though, Freelorn's voice had been changing, and Herewiss had had to restrain himself from laughing as his loved sang that greatest of tragedies in a voice that cracked crazily every verse or so. He had even refrained from singing it himself for the longest while, for the sound of his pure, deep, already-changed tenor had made Freelorn twice as self– conscious as he usually was.

  He sang the setting now, letting his voice go as he would have liked to all those years ago, pausing between verses to insert the last dialogue between Beaneath and Astrin, and later the farewell of Beorgan to her husband Anmod, who later became King of both Arlen and Darthen because of her death. He forgot about the hot, smoky room, forgot about time and pain and the systematic destruction of swords, and just sang, feeling very young again for the first time in ever so long.

  At the end of it he received tremendous applause, and he bowed shyly and handed the lute to someone else, going

  back to his table and his ale. There he sat for a few minutes, recovering. Someone began singing almost immediately, but the farmers started talking quietly among themselves. The contrast between the sung verses of terrible tragedy beyond the boundaries of the world and the homely talk of the farmers was abrupt, but pleasant; they had slow, musical voices, and Herewiss dawdled over his ale, listening alternately to the words and the sound of them. One of the farmers started telling a long, drawn-out story of a loved of his who had gone traveling. 'All the way to Dra'Mincarrath she went,' he said in a drawl, 'aye, all that way south, and then east again into the Waste she went, not knowing where she was going, on account of being lost. Right into the Waste Unclaimed, and north she turned after a little, on account of being lost again. And came in sight of that hold in the Waste, indeed, and—'<
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  'Ssh!' said several of the other farmers, looking upset, and 'She came out again,' said one of them, seemingly the eldest. 'Count her lucky; that place is bad to talk of, even here. Then where did she go? . . .'

  Herewiss sat nursing his ale, a little curious at the sudden and vehement response. Hold in the Waste—? What could that be? No-one lived out there—

  His thought was broken by the underheard feeling that someone was looking at him with unkindly intent. He glanced up and saw the innkeeper's daughter. She was across the room, serving someone else, but he could feel her eyes on him. He looked down at his ale again quickly, not particularly wanting to see her bend over again.

  There was a sudden motion to his right. He looked, and saw the cat, a big gray tabby with blue eyes, balancing itself on the table edge after its leap. It lay down, tucking its forepaws beneath its chest so that it looked like a broody hen, and half– closed its eyes.

  'Well, hello,' Herewiss said, putting down his mug to scratch under the cat's chin. It squeezed its eyes shut altogether and stretched its neck out all the way, purring like a gray-furred thunderstorm.

  Herewiss went back to the contemplation of his ale, rubbing under the cat's chin automatically for a few minutes. Then suddenly the cat opened up its round blue eyes. 'Prince,' it said in its soft raspy voice, 'mind the innkeeper's daughter.'

  He laughed a little under his breath. 'No-one keeps a secret from a cat,' he quoted. 'May I ask what you're called?'

  'M'ssssai,' it said. 'That is my inner Name, prince: the outer doesn't matter.'

  'I'll keep your secret,' Herewiss said in ritual response, and then added, 'but I have none to give you in return. I don't know it yet.'

  'Well enough. Time will come, and then you can come back and tell me.'

  'Forgive me,' Herewiss said, 'but how did you know who I am?' 'I've been in your saddlebag.' 'It had a binding on it.'

  The cat smiled, and after a moment Herewiss smiled back at it.

  Cats, the legend said, had been created second after men, and had a Flame of their own, one which they had never lost.

  'The very fact of a binding,' M'ssssai said, 'made me slightly suspicious. I could smell it from down here, and know you for its author. And the contents of the bags settled the matter. Only two men alive wear that surcoat, and you're too young to be one of them, so you must be the other.'

  'Granted.'

  'What are you doing with those grimoires in your bags?'

  Herewiss made a face. 'Isn't it said of my Line that there's no accounting for us? I'm a sorcerer. A part-time sorcerer, out seeing the world.'

  M'ssssai half-closed his eyes again. 'Sorcerers usually stay at home unless they have something in hand. And you're more than just a sorcerer, prince. I know the smell of Flame.'

  'I have no Focus,' Herewiss said, very softly, 'and no control. I can't use a Rod.'

  'The innkeeper's daughter,' said the cat, 'is a dabbler; she has just enough Flame to be able to smell it herself, though she has no focus either, and no control. But she's looking for a way to free her Power, and I dare say she's noticed at least part of what you are. If I were you, I'd keep the shields up around your bags tonight, or else sleep lightly. She's a brewer of semi-effective love potions, and she throws her curses crooked. She has a most undisciplined mind. Not to mention that she'd probably try to drain you—'

  'A vampire?'

  'In the bedsheets; she's acquired a taste for it. I see too many people going out of here looking lost and drained in the morning.'

  'M'ssssai, I thank you.' Herewiss scratched behind the cat's ears.

  'But why are you telling me all this?' The cat smiled. 'You have good hands.'

  M'ssssai stood up, stretched, arching his back, his tail straight up in the air. 'Mind her, now,' he said, and jumped down from the table, vanishing into the forest of trestles and benches.

  Herewiss looked up cautiously. The innkeeper's daughter had just come down from upstairs, and was going through the kitchen door. He took his opportunity and

  eased out from behind the table, heading hurriedly for the protection of the shadows of the stairway. He took the stairs two at a time, sloshing ale in all directions, pausing at the top of the stairs to get his bearings; it was quite dark up there. Then he headed softly down the hail, trying to keep the floor from creaking under him, his breath going up before him like pale smoke in the chill air.

  His room door was ajar. He listened at it, but heard nothing. A swift cold draft was whispering through the crack. Gently he put his weight against the door; it opened with a low tired groan. There was no-one inside.

  He went in, still moving carefully, and bent down by the window to check his bags. The surcoat was ever so slightly mussed, unfolded just enough to clearly show the Phoenix charged on it; and the lockshield around the bags was parted cleanly in one place, an invisible incision right through the spell, big enough for a cat to put a paw through.

  Herewiss laughed and got up. With flint and steel he lit the room's one candle, a stub of tallow in a smoky, cracked glass by the big four-poster bed. Even in the glass, the flame bent and bobbled wildly until Herewiss closed the shutters at the window. For a few seconds he regarded the worm-holed old door.

  'All right,' he said softly. 'Let her think I had a bit too much to drink.' He crossed to the door and closed it without shooting

  the bolt, then flicked a word and a gesture back at the bags and dissolved the lockshield.

  Herewiss pulled back the faded, patched coverlet and sat down on the bed. Immediately there was a sudden sharp feeling in the back of his head, a nagging feeling like a splinter, or the dull hurt of a burn. He got up again hurriedly, stripping the covers all the way back and feeling about the sheets. When he lifted up the pillow, there it was

  – a little muslin bag, with runes of the Nhairedi sorcerer's– speech crudely stitched on it, and a brown stain that was probably blood.

  Herewiss took his knife from the sheath at his belt and lifted the little bag on its blade, carrying it over to the table where the candle sat. It took him a little while to poke a large enough hole in it without touching it directly, but when he did, and shook out the contents, he nodded. Asafetida; crumbs of choke-pard and wyverns-tooth; a leaf of moonwort, the black-veined kind picked in Moon's decline; and also a little lump of something soft – a bit of potato from his plate at dinner. He scowled. Elements of sleep– charm and love-charm, mixed together – with the moonwort to befuddle the mind and bind the sleeper to someone else's wishes.

  What does she think I am? She must not know I'm a sorcerer or she wouldn't try something so ridiculously simple—

  Shaking his head, Herewiss laid the steel knife down on the little pile of herbs. 'Ehrenie haladh seresh,' he said, and spat on the blade. When he picked it up again, the moonwort had shriveled into a tight black ball, and the warning pain in the back of his head was gone.

  He set the cloth bag afire with the candle flame, and carried it still burning to the window, opening the shutter and throwing the bag out along with the bits of herbs. Then he went back and stretched out on the bed, reaching for the mug. The ale was getting warm. He made a face, put the mug aside, and lay back against the headboard, crossing his arms and sighing. It was going to be a long wait.

  At sometime past one in the morning Herewiss was listening wearily to the sound of some patron of the inn wobbling about in the courtyard, singing (if that was the

  word) the old song about the King of Darthen's lover. The inn's good ale seemed to have completely removed any fears the drunk had ever had of high notes, and he was squeaking and warbling through the choruses in a falsetto fit to give any listener a headache. Herewiss had one.

  The man had just gotten to the verse about the goats when Herewiss heard the door grunt a little, and saw it scrape inward a bit. He lay back quickly, peeking out from beneath lowered lids. There was another soft scraping sound, and in stepped the innkeeper's daughter, wrapped in a blanket against the cold
. She looked long and hard at him, and it was all Herewiss could do to keep from grinning. After a few moments, satisfied that he was asleep, she smiled and crossed the room quietly to where his bags lay.

  The one she peered into first was the one with the surcoat. Slowly and carefully she pulled it out and spread it wide to look at the device. There was no light in the room but the pale moonlight seeping in through one half-open shutter, and the dim glow of the torches down in the courtyard. It took her a while to make out the Phoenix in Flames, but when she did she bit her lip, then smiled again, and folded up the surcoat.

  Deeper down in the bag she found the book bound in red leather, the unsealed one, and drew it out carefully. The innkeeper's daughter sat down on her heels and muttered something under her breath. A weak reddish light grew and glowed about her hands, clinging to the book's pages as she turned them. For a few minutes she went through the book, turning the leaves over in cautious silence. Then suddenly she stopped, and across the room Herewiss could hear her take in breath sharply. He watched her as she traced down one page with a finger, moving her lips slowly as she read.

  That's a bad habit, Herewiss thought. Let's see if I can't break you of it.

  The girl was holding the book closer to her eyes, and speaking softly. 'Neskhaired ol jomeire kal stoi, arveya khad—'