The Door Into Fire totf-1 Page 5

  beside the Maiden, trying to console Her; but for some things there is no consolation.

  The following panel showed the Maiden's solution for Her own grief and guilt. She knew Her other selves in the manner of woman with woman, and became with child. Now she sat on the birthing-stool, and was no more Maiden, but Mother. The children She bore were twin sons, and She suckled Them one at each breast with a smile of maternal joy. The pane! below showed the Twins grown already, beautiful young men, Her Lovers, and She stood between Them and They all three embraced one another. Then came the New Love, and the Lovers knew Each Other and found yet another joy. In the painting, Their mouths touched with almost ritual solemnity, even as Their strong arms strained about each other and They strove to be one.

  But then the great Death entered in, casting the Shadow over the Lovers, filling Them with jealousy, each desiring to alone know the other Lover to the Mother's exclusion. The Lovers' hands went about each other's throats, and They choked the lives out of each other. The Triad stood above them in sorrow, and together They lifted up the dead, and with Them entered into that Sea of which the Starlight is a faint intimation, therein to be renewed and reborn, to close the circle and make all things whole again.

  The last panel, near the door, showed why the shrine had been built. There was a sorrowing mother with her four dead children in her arms, three little girls and a boy; and the inscription, My Children. The Plague Came in the Night. Having Pronounced, She Sets Free. May I Meet Them on the Shore.

  Herewiss stopped there, leaning on the broom, saddened. He thought

  how it must have been for that poor mother, building this place with her own two hands, most

  likely, hard by that little hill which probably housed her children's bodies; painting those scenes, slowly and with care, and trying to find some sense in the deaths of her little ones. Probably there wasn't any; but at least she had left something beautiful behind in their memory, and it may have been that having something to do had brought her at least partway through her grief.

  He swept the last of the leaves out the door. The sparrow chittered faintly in its nest, and Herewiss looked at it with affection. Another mother, and her children, safe and comfortable. The nameless lady who built this place would probably be pleased.

  He went out to where Dapple stood grazing, and rummaged around in the left-hand saddlebag until he found what he wanted, his lovers'– cup. Herelaf had made it for him, a long time ago. It was of white oak, simply carved and stained, with a border of leaves running around the outside just under the lip, and Herewiss's name scratched under the foot. He could remember watching Herelaf carve it. 'When it's finished,' his brother had said, 'take good care of it and it'll last you a long time—'

  It certainly had. Fourteen years. Herelaf had been dead for twelve of them.

  Herewiss took a waterbag out of the pannier, and filled the cup with it. Carefully, so as not to spill any, he carried the old brown cup into the shrine, and set it on the altar.

  'Mother of Days,' he said softly, looking for the right words, 'Mother of Stars – bless the lady who built this place, and her children, whether they're reborn or not — may she find love again, and may they too. Take care of the people who pass here; keep the Fyrd off them, and the terrors of night, and save them from loneliness. And take care of Freelorn for me, until I get there, and afterwards too.' He paused, swallowed the lump that was filling his

  throat. The hurt was twelve years gone, it was silly to be still crying about it. 'And take care of Herelaf – let him come out of the Sea and find joy—'

  He picked up the cup, drank quickly. It was harder to cry with his head tilted back and his eyes squeezed shut. By the time he had drained the cup, he was back in control again.

  '—and help me find my Power when I get back home,' he said. 'In Your name, Who are our beginnings and our endings—'

  He went out of there in a hurry. Dapple had stopped grazing, and was looking at him inquisitively. It had begun to rain. 'Let's go,' Herewiss said. 'Freelorn is waiting.' He undid his rolled-up cloak from the back of his saddle and swung it around him. The rain began in earnest then, pelting down hard. Herewiss made as if to mount, and to his utter surprise Dapple reared up and danced away from him, whickering.

  'What?' he said. 'What's the matter?'

  The horse's eyes were calm, but when Herewiss reached for the reins, Dapple backed away again. 'What, then?' said Herewiss. 'Am I supposed to stay here?'

  Dapple took a step backward and gazed at him.

  'Dammit, when Dareth made your family smart, I wish she'd made you a little more verbal! All right, let's see what I can find—'

  Herewiss pulled his cloak more tightly around him and slipped the hood over his head, then leaned up against the wall of the shrine and closed his eyes. He tried to put his underhearing out around him like a net. It was a fickle talent, one which often refused to manifest itself when it was needed, and for a moment or so he couldn't find it at all. He concentrated, and tried to listen—

  —tried—

  Warmth?

  —he listened harder—

  Very faint warmth. A banked fire. No, more like a fire being rained on, going out gradually. The first drops splattering into the flames, and the fire in panic, seeing its own destruction.

  What in the world is that? Not a human reading, no-one I ever read felt anything like this. It feels so dry, and I can hear the heat—

  Fire in the rain. The fire in terror, the flames being beaten down, steam rising—

  Somewhere over to the west—

  —coming this way—

  Herewiss opened his eyes and looked westward. The rain was making it difficult to see clearly. It was coming down hard, a silver– white rushing wall, the typical spring cloudburst that seemed to beat the air right into the ground. If there was something out there, it would have to come a lot closer before he would be able to see it.

  Fire, dwindling, dying out— Whatever it was, the source of the feeling was coming closer: the image had intruded on Herewiss's underhearing that time without his having to listen for it—

  Herewiss pulled his hood further down over his face and took a few steps into the rain, following the feeling. It wavered, grew a little stronger. Possibly it was sensing him too. Herewiss squished along for several minutes, shivering as the rain soaked through his cloak.

  A shadow loomed suddenly behind the gray rain curtain, and Herewiss slowed down a little. It was bigger than he was—

  (—fire in the rain—)

  He went closer to it.

  A horse?

  It staggered toward him. A horse indeed; but a miserable sickly– looking thing, wobbling along on spindly legs. Its mane and tail were plastered to it, skin scalloped deep beneath its ribs, drawn drum-tight over its sunken belly. The horse's eyes bulged out of their sockets, staring horribly. It looked as if it had been starved and abused by a whole town full of people, one after another. It looked ready to die.

  Herewiss reached out with his underhearing again, to make certain. He got the same feeling: a fire, going out, almost too tired and weak now to be afraid any more. Steam rising, flames dying – and indeed there was steam wavering about the horse's hide, as if it had been ridden hard on a cold day.

  He went over to the poor stumbling thing, took its head and stopped it. It regarded him dully from glazed eyes, taking a long long moment to realize what he was. And a feeling stirred in his head. The horse was bespeaking him.

  (Help . . .) it said. (dry . . .)

  It collapsed to its knees.

  Herewiss was utterly amazed. No-one had ever bespoken him but his mother, who had had the talent as a result of her training in the Fire; they had used it so commonly between them while she was alive that some of his more remote relatives in the Ward used to accuse him of disliking her, since when together they rarely spoke aloud. But after her death he had hardly ever used the talent again. There were no others in the Wood who had it, not even Herelaf
; and after numerous disagreements with the Wardresses of the Forest Altars, Herewiss had little to say to them.

  But a horse?

  Then again, something in a horse's shape could very well have the bespeaking ability. Rodmistresses sometimes took beast-shapes. If that was the case, though, why the

  distress – and why the strange underheard reading like none he had ever experienced?

  (Dry!) the horse-thing said again, more weakly.

  Herewiss bent over and grabbed the horse by the nose. Had it been in any better shape, it would certainly have bitten him; but now as he pulled at it the horse moaned pitifully and struggled to its feet again. Herewiss pulled it, step by trembling step, back toward the shrine.

  (It hurts,) the creature said, bespeaking him piteously. (It hurts!)

  'I know. Come on.'

  This close to it, touching it, Herewiss's underhearing was coming much more fiercely alive. He could feel the creature's terror as if it were his own, and moreover he could feel its agony, for with every drop of rain that touched it the horse was seared as if by hot iron. Abruptly it collapsed in front of him, and then screamed, both out loud and within, trying to flinch away from the wet ground on which it had fallen.

  Herewiss was shaken to the heart by the sound of its terror. I can't carry it or drag it—

  It screamed again, thrashing helplessly on the ground.

  Oh, damn, damn, dammit to Darkness! Herewiss thought. He bent down, put his arms around the barrel of its ribs just behind the forelegs, and began to pull. It was terribly heavy, but nowhere near as heavy as a real horse would have been, even one as emaciated as this creature seemed to be. It was wheezing with pain as he got its forequarters a little way clear of the wet grass and dragged it along.

  Herewiss wanted desperately to drop the horse, just for a moment's rest, but he was also deadly afraid of hearing that terrible lost scream again. He kept pulling, pulling, cast a look over his shoulder. The shrine was a dark

  shadow through the rain, not too far away. And another shadow was approaching with a sound of wet squishing footfalls. Dapple came up through the rain, looked at Herewiss, and then turned sideways to him, facing him with the saddlebag in which the rope was coiled.

  'Thanks!' Herewiss said, reaching up with one arm to get the rope out. He uncoiled it, wound a bight around the strange horse's chest behind the legs, knotted it, and tied the other end to Dapple's saddlehorn. Dapple began backing steadily toward the shrine, and with Herewiss holding the horse partly clear of the ground, they got it to the door of the shrine quickly. There was a slight problem with getting the horse through the door – Herewiss had to drop the horse on the floor halfway in and go around to push its hind legs inside. When he had managed that, he undid the rope, coiled it, stowed it, and went back into the shrine. He dropped to his knees beside the horse's head, gasping for breath and rubbing at his outraged abdominal muscles.

  'Well,' he said. 'Now what?'

  The horse lay there with its sides still heaving, its breath rasping in and out, harsh with pain, as if it had been ridden to the point of foundering. Herewiss looked at it through the odd detachment that sometimes accompanies great exertion. In color the horse was a brilliant bay, almost blood-color, and its stringy, wet mane and tail were pale enough to be golden when they were dry. Under the taut-drawn skin, it had a beautiful head, fine– boned like that of a racehorse.

  But racehorses don't bespeak people, Herewiss thought. And the way the rain was hurting it. Water . . . Could this be a fire elemental, then? People meet them so rarely, the stories say. But the reading I got from it—

  Herewiss closed his eyes and listened again. A feeling

  like fire, still, but not being rained on any more. Gathering strength, burning a little hotter, growing—

  He bespoke it, making the thoughts as clear as he could. (What happened?)

  (Don't shout,) it answered faintly. (Sorry. What happened?)

  Its thought was weak, but had an ironic tone. (I didn't know enough to come in out of the rain. Get out of me for a little, will you?)

  Herewiss did, and pushed himself over to where he could lean against the wall. The horse was still steaming slightly. He reached out a hand to touch one of its legs, and then jerked it away again, sucking in breath between his teeth. His fingers were scalded.

  A fire elemental. I'm in trouble.

  The legends were fairly explicit about elementals of any kind being capricious, dangerous, tricky. Some elementals were death just to see. Flame would be a protection, but a lot of good that did him. Sorcery was almost useless. Herewiss's Great-great-great– great-aunt Ferrigan was supposed to have had dealings with some of them, water and air elementals mostly, and she had survived to tell about it, but no-one was sure how . . .

  Herewiss looked at the horse with apprehension. Its breathing was slowing, and it looked less emaciated than it had before. Herewiss shrugged his cloak back, and then realized that the air in the shrine was getting much warmer. And the blood-bay 'horse' seemed to be drying out as he watched. In fact, it was becoming better fleshed out. The horse lay there, growing sleek, growing whole—

  (What are you called?) Herewiss asked.

  It bespoke its Name to him, and Herewiss reflexively started back and shielded his eyes. The elemental showed him a terrible blazing globe of fire – the Sun close up, it

  seemed to be saying – and out of that blinding disc a sudden immense fountain of flame leaped up, streamed outward like a burning veil blown in a fierce wind. Then it bent back on itself with an awful arching grace, and fell or was drawn back into the vast sphere of flame below. That single pillar of fire would have been sufficient to burn away all the forests of the world in a moment; but the creature bespoke the concept casually, as a small everyday kind of thing, not a terribly special Name. And – he shuddered – it made free with its inner Name as if it had nothing to fear from anything—

  (Sunspark,) Herewiss said. (Would that be it?)

  (That's fairly close.) It looked up at him from the floor. Its voice was sharp and bright, and currents of humor wafted around it as if the elemental balanced eternally on the edge of a joke. (What's your name?)

  (I'm called Herewiss, Hearn's son.)

  (That's not your Name,) it said, both slightly amused and slightly scornful. (That's just a calling, a use-name. What is your Name?)

  (You mean my inner Name?) Herewiss said, shocked and terrified.

  The elemental was confused by his fear. ('Inner'? How can a Name be 'inner' or 'outer'? You are what you are, and there's no concealing it. Don't you know what you are?)

  (No . . .)

  More confusion. (They told me this was a strange place! How can you be alive, and thinking, and able to talk to me, and not know?)

  (How can you be so sure?) Herewiss said. (And if this is 'here', where's 'there'?)

  It showed him, and he had to hold his head in his hands for fear it would burst open from the immensities it

  suddenly contained. 'There', it seemed, was the totality of existence. Not the little world he had always known, bounded by mountains and the Sea; but his world and all the others that were, all of them at once, a frightful complexity of being and emptiness, and other conditions that he could not classify.

  Herewiss knew that there were other planes of existence – everyone knew that – but he tended to think of them as being separated from the world of the Kingdoms by distance as well as by worldwalls, and accessible only by special doors such as the ones he was looking for. Sunspark, though, had more than an abstract conception. He had breached those walls under his own power, had made his own doors and walked among the worlds. Herewiss, seeing as if through Sunspark's mind, could actually perceive the way they were arranged.

  The worlds all overlapped somehow, each of them coexisting in some impossible fashion with every other one, a myriad of planes arranged on the apparent surface of a sphere that could not possibly be real, since all of its points were coterminous with all of
the others. Still, all the countless places held distinct positions in relation to one another. Each of them was a thread in the pattern – a Pattern past his understanding, or anyone's, actually, though some few by much travel might get to know small parts of it, or might come to understand the spatial relationships on a limited scale. It could be traveled, but the order and position of the worlds within it changed constantly, from moment to moment. The important thing was to know what the Pattern was going to do next.

  During the brief flickering moment when Herewiss tried to perceive the thought in its entirety, he knew with miserable certainty that he stood, or sat, right then, upon an uncountable number of locked doors. If he only had the

  key, he could step through and be anywhere, anywhere he could possibly imagine. Sunspark had the key.

  The hope and jealousy that ran through Herewiss in that one bare moment were terrible, but they didn't last long; they dwindled and fragmented as the thought did when Sunspark finally pulled away from the contact. Herewiss found himself left with a few pallid shreds of the original concept. I'm not big enough of soul to hold so much at once, he said to himself when he could think clearly again.

  (That's where you come from?) he said.

  (Somewhere there. I've forgotten exactly where. I've been so many places.)

  (Can you take other people into those – those places?)

  (No. It's a skill that each must learn for himself.)

  (Oh . . .) Herewiss sighed, shook his head. (Well. You're a fire elemental, aren't you?)

  (I am fire, certainly,) it said.

  (How did it happen that you got caught out in the rain?)

  (I was eating,) it said, and Herewiss thought of the distant brushfire he had seen. (I was careless, perhaps –I knew the storm was coming, but I thought I could elude it just before it started to rain. However, the rain came very suddenly, and very hard, so that the shock weakened me –and then it wouldn't let up. I thought I would go mad or mindless – we do that when too much water touches us. It is a terrible thing.)