The Door Into Shadow totf-2 Page 7

As politely as she could, Segnbora undid the tailspine from her surcoat's embroider)', where it had snagged. She was wrestling with an unease that was no longer vague. She had noticed before, while fumbling for words, that in Dragon language there seemed to be several extra tenses for verbs. Now they all. became clear. 'They were precognitive tenses— future possible, future probable, future definite. Dragons, she realized, remember ahead as well as back. She shuddered, wanting to reject the possibility of ever doing that herself.

  "We're not buUt to remember everything that happens to us," she said then to Hasai, resentfully. "Not consciously, anyway. Listen…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. I

  can feel the mdeilm back there remember-ing everything that ever happened to them, every sunset and conversation and breath of wind. We don't do that."

  "It makes seo.se that you would reject ahead-memory," Hasai said. "'You do not have it, the warders tell us. You even have trouble dealing with what is. But to reject our past-memories as well—"

  Segnbora shrugged, "What good, are fifty generations of Dragon memories to a. human.?*''

  "But you're not a human," Hasai said calmly. "Not totally. Not anymore." He looked, away from her, a Dragon shrug, matching hers, "Sooner or later you will look and see. Doubt-less not. soon."

  Segnbora went narrow-eyed with anger at the Dragon's cool dare — and at the realization that this situation, was com-pletely out. of her

  control. "'Show me now," she said.

  Hasai bent, his head, down beside her and dropped his jaw slightly in an expression of mild amusement. His action gave

  Segnbora a frightfully clear view of diamond fangs as long and sharp as scythes, and of the three-forked smelling-tongue in its recess beneath the blunt one used for speech. Worst of all, she could see the fulminous magma-glow of the back of the throat, where Dragonfire seethed blindingly. "Well," Hasai said, watching her calmly as a sleepy volcano, "will you put your hand in the Dragon's mouth willingly this time?" "Why not," Segnbora said, nervous, and irritated for being so. "Here, take the whole arm—"

  Without giving herself time to hesitate, she went over to his great toothy table of a lower jaw and thrust her arm up to the shoulder between two huge forefangs, resting the forearm on the dry hot tongue. Slowly and carefully Hasai closed his mouth, holding Segnbora" s arm immobile but not hurting it.

  (Comfortable?) he said wordlessly, his inner voice sound-ing, if possible, bigger than his outer one, "Yes, thank you." (Well, then. .)

  Without warning, Segnbora found that her body felt won-derful. Her eyes could suddenly see colors she had been miss-ing: the black reds, the white violets. She felt for the first time the curves and planes of the energy flows that were as much a Dragon's medium as the currents and flows of atmosphere. Her muscles slid lithe and warm beneath gemmed skin. Her eyes held light within them as well as beholding it without. An old, yet delightful burning banished the cold from her throat and insides. Power was there, and strength. — the dangerous grace of limb and talon and tail. She felt reborn. She also felt hungry.

  (We'll eat,) she heard one of her selves suggest, Agreeing, she crouched and coiled her way over to the door of the cavern, folded her wings carefully and slipped out.

  (Wa.it a moment — that door's only a few feet wide!) (That, was your memory,) said one of the mda.heit a strong voice, fairly recently alive. (This is mine.) Out they went into the brilliant light, of noon at, Onoli. (This isn't my beach, either!) (No, my old one.)

  Immediately she spread her wings right out to their fullest, to feel the sunfire soak into the hungry membranes and run through her like white-hot wine. She basked, drinking her fill of the light, lazing while the strange-familiar thoughts of a Dragon's day-to-day life flowed through her.

  The mdeihei rumbled lazy assent, a placid rush of low voices blending with the sound of the waves. She got up after a while, raising her wings, feeling with them the flows of all the forces that Dragons manipulated and took for granted, as fish accept water or birds the air. It was an old delight: the chief joy of the Dragonkind, dearer even than, speech. (What else are we for?)

  The wings were hands. She grasped the currents she felt moving about her, pulled herself upward, sprang and flew.

  The first, leap took her high over the shore, and she watched with amazement and delight as she gained altitude. Boulders dwindled to

  pebbles and the huge crash of the breakers shrank to a soft-spoken crawl.

  (Inland, perhaps?) said the mdaha who had spoken, her song' calm with her own joy.

  (Oh, please!)

  She' wheeled, catching currents of air and fields of force with her wings and, her mind, gaining more altitude and speed as she soared south and west, over northern Darthen. Below them, the sunlit headlands of Sionan and Rul Tyn lay patched and quilted, with small field— squares. There were threads of brown road, and, toy houses like a child's carved playthings. Southward stretched wilder, emptier lands, tree-stippled hills, forests like green shadows on, the fields.

  She leaned up toward the sky and gained, more height, watching the sunlight flash, on, a river-strung series of little lakes.. Upward still she dove, through a furry fog of cloud-cover, and saw the Darst below go pewter-shadowed. More distant lakes and. rivers seem to hover unsupported in the haze below. She dipped one wing, stretched the other up and out in a bank. Over her the patterned sky turned as if on a pivot., wheeled like a, starry night about her center. .

  The higher and farther she went,, the lovelier it all became. Thick, clouds as white as drifting snow rose up before her,

  balzing in the sunlight. Bounded by these mountains of the sky, drowned far down in the depths of air, the land lay dim and still. Pacing her above the silence, the white Sun rode, swimming soundlessly in an unfathomable eternity of blue.

  Still higher she climbed. Above her the sky went royal blue, then violet. Her wings lost the wind entirely and began to stiffen in the great cold above the air. She stopped beating them and fixed them at full soaring extension. Her mind was doing all the work now, manipulating fields and flows, trigger-ing the shutdown of some body functions, the initiation of others which would protect her in the utter cold of the Empti-ness.

  The sky went black, and the stars came out, the winter stars that summer daylight hid, burning steady as beacons. In the same sky with them hung the ravening Sun, unshielded now by the thick cloak of the world's air. It was a searing agony on her membranes but an ecstatic heat within. Quite suddenly the mdaha whose memory this was flipped forward, tumbling end for end—

  Had she been breathing, breath would have gone out of her. Below her, she saw an impossibility. The flat world was curved. The black depths of the Mother's night rested against that curvature, holding it as if in a careful hand. The whole great expanse of the Middle Kingdoms, from Arlen in the west to the Waste in the east, could be seen in a single glance. Beyond them were unknown lands, unsailed seas — the whole of human experience and possibility held under a fragile crys-tal skin of air.

  Awed, she spread wings and bowed her head to the wonder. Surely this was the way the Dragons had seen, the world on the day they came falling out of the airless depths: a jewel, a treasure, life—

  (Perhaps you understand now,)' Hasai said, his voice hushed with old love, old pain, (why we decided to stand and fight for a home.) She hung there, unmoving in the silence beyond all si-lences, and understood. (Not that we've forgotten what we left,) said the other mdaha. (Torn and see—)

  Something happened to the Sun hanging behind her back. It fell suddenly strange, but welcome, like the touch of a friend corning up from behind. She turned and found that it

  had changed, was bigger, hotter, pinker. Close beneath her hung the memory of the ancient Homework! red-brown and dry; a harsh place, a birthplace, dear and dead.

  A great mournful love for the lost lands where her kind wa
s born rose up in her at the sight. But the mournfulness turned to something deeper and more piercing as she looked off to one side. Suspended there, seeming to cover half the endless night, was a great swirled pattern of stars. They seemed fro-zen in midturn — a whirlpool spraying drops and gemlets of rainbow fire, its arcs sinuous and splendid as the curve of a tail, its heart ablaze like the memory of the Day of Dawning, when, the World's Heart beat its first.

  Oh, My Maidm, my Queen, they know You too— She could find no other thought. Thinking was driven out of her by the immensities. After a while she realized she was leaning against Hasai's face, her cheek resting on the great sapphired one, her left arm holding the Dragon close and her right in his mouth, up to the shoulder. And her face was wet. She straightened up, abashed.

  Hasai let her arm loose, and Segnbora spent a few moments brushing herself off and trying to find some composure. Hasai watched her gravely, wailing. "It felt real!" '"And so1 it was."

  "But that happened a, long time ago!" """Certainly. And, it happened again, right, then."' "But it was a, memory," Segnbora said, confused. "If I had tried to change what was happening, I couldn't have." ""'Of course you, could have changed, it," Hasai said, politely. "We wondered that you, didn't try." She shook, her head again. Perhaps she was just not think-ing well in this language yet.

  "It was. very beautiful," she said after a pause. ""We thank 'you, sdaha." There was nothing in Dragon life more important than memories, and the sharing of them. "It's well that you find value in who we were, and are, for we cannot

  leave. Henceforward, you will have to deal with us as we are — as we shall deal with you."

  Segnbora looked up in sudden anger at the immense face above her. "Who are you to dictate terms to me in my own mind?" she cried. "You say 'your own mind'," Hasai said. "You imply owner-ship — or at least control. Prove your claim. Leave this 'mind* and then come back. Or better still, remove us."

  There was a long silence, during which Hasai watched her, and neither of them moved.

  "We cannot leave, either," said Hasai. Baffled, Segnbora shook her head. "Now what?" she said finally. "Now," Hasai said, "we sue for pardon of wrongs done in haste."

  He bowed to her, his wings going up again, and his great head sinking low; lower than ever, this time, till it almost touched the floor. Those eyes as tall as her body were below her own.

  "I am — sorry — about the mdeihei. " The words came out of him oddly; to a Dragon this was like apologizing for breath-ing. "They were trying to find out what kind of place they were in. That can be very important. We are large as your kind reckons size, true enough; and well armed, and long-lived. But we have our fears too."

  Segnbora became conscious that the rustling in the shad-ows had stopped, and that many eyes were gazing out of it at her with a frightening and alien directness.

  "I am aware of your dislike for others delving in your memories. I will keep the mdeihei out of your past — though you are of course welcome to ours. But I don't know what I can do about your future—"

  "Neither do I," Segnbora said, with a rueful laugh. "The present is giving me enough problems already." Suddenly she was thinking about Lorn, and Lang, and the others. Had they left her in Chavi as planned? She had to get out and see where she was. . "Since you are us now," Hasai said, sensing both the joy and danger her liege represented, "you must be more conscientious in safeguarding your body. There is more than just one of you to go rdahaih if you're careless."

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  "And you of course will take care of me for the same rea-son—"

  "We would take care of you anyway, shared mindspace or no," Hasai said. "Life is the Immanence's gift, not to be thoughtlessly cast away even when it is alien — or angry."

  Segnbora bit the inside of her lip, ashamed of herself. / did ask for a change at the Fane, she thought after a moment. The request has certainly been granted! But it's just like the old stories: If you don't specify what you want when you wish for something, you may get a surprise. .

  "I must go." Segnbora turned and headed for the little low door of the cavern. "Sehe'rae, sdaha," said the huge viol-voice from behind her: Go well, outdweller. Segnbora paused. "Sehe'rae—" she said, and tasted the next word. " — mdaha. " Mindmate.

  The mdeihei, pacified at last, settled back into the song of the ages, the litany of all their memories, all their lives. Segnbora threw a last glance at Hasai, burning in iron and diamond in the light from the shaft. Then she turned and ducked through the door—

  — to stare at the dawn from her blanket-roll. The Sun hadn't yet climbed over the edge of the world, and gray mist lay low over the grassy lea in which the camp was set. Off to one side the horses stood together, stamping and quietly snorting their way toward wakefulness; three or four feet in front of her, the campfire was down to ashes and embers.

  "Thank You, Goddess," she tried to say; but her throat, after some days of disuse, refused to do anything but squeak like the sparrows trying their voices all around. She was about to try clearing her throat a bit when the fire before her flared up wildly. (Took you long enough!) it shouted, annoyed and de-lighted. (Herewiss!)

  From behind her came hurried rustling: blankets being thrown aside, wet grass whispering as someone came quickly

  through it. Then Herewiss was down on his knees in front of her, staring at her.

  "Are you sure? The last time it was just a coughing spell—" Segnbora looked up at Herewiss and very distinctly croaked a rude word in the oldest of the dead Darthene dialects, a word having to do with one of the less sanitary habits of sheep.

  "Now I'll cough/' she said, and she did. A thump occurred during the coughing spell, and Freelorn was beside Herewiss. He grabbed Segnbora by the shoulders and shook her. "Are you all right? Are you?"

  "I will be when you stop that. . " she gasped. As Lorn helped her sit up, she looked around at the approaching morning with appreciation too great for words. "Can I have a drink?"

  Herewiss got water for her and sat with Freelorn staring at her while she drank, as if at someone returned from the dead. "How long was I out?" she said between sips.

  "Six days," Herewiss said. "We thought we'd have to leave you in—"

  "I know. I heard you. I would have done the same thing.** Freelorn and Herewiss glanced at one another in relief. To the sound of more rustling, Lang dropped to the grass beside them. He stared at Segnbora and said nothing; but her under-hearing woke up as if it had been kicked, bringing her a flood of worry, not nearly as relieved as that of the others.

  She took another drink to gather her composure, and then looked at Lang and said quietly, "You told me so. …" He shrugged and looked away.

  THE DOOR INTO SHADOW

  "Here," Freelorn said, "you ought to see'—" He got. up, went off and rummaged around in his bags for a moment, then came back with a small square of polished steel, a mirror,

  Segnbora looked at herself. The same old face — prominent nose, pointed chin, deep-set eyes with circles smudged a bit darker than usual. But her hair wasn't the same: It was coming in shockingly silver-white at the roots, "Oh dear," she said, and couldn't find anything else to say.

  Lang got up abruptly and went away.

  Segnbora handed Freelorn back his mirror and looked at

  Herewiss. "I had quite a night. Can I sleep a little more? Then I'll be able to ride/" … — „j

  Herewiss nodded. "Rest," he said. "Chavi is still a day away, and we're not in such a hurry that you can't recuperate

  , *»

  * She nodded back, suddenly very weary, and lay down, gratefully wrapping her blankets around her. Some time after she closed her eyes, she realized that neither her liege-lord nor his loved had moved, but were still watching her, wonder —

  flr

  " Berend," Freelorn said very quietly, "the thing that happened to you at the Fane— What was it?"


  "Not 'it'," she sighed, without opening her eyes. "'Them.'"

  This time the darkness was only sleep, and she embraced

  it.

  Six

  If you'll walk with kings and queens, well; but take care. For the Shadow aims ever at them — and though It often misses, It doesn't scorn to hit the person standing closest.

  Askrythen, 14, xi

  It was an odd riding that someone standing on the old diked road to Chavi would have seen approaching through the eve-ning. Indeed, maybe it was better that no one was there to witness it.

  Between the tall hawthorn hedges in the fading light came, first, two men in country clothes, one on a sorrel, one on a bay. Their horses

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  flinched and shied occasionally, for their riders were juggling stones, and dropping them frequently. A third man on a black palfrey was repeatedly plucking a single string on a lute, trying to elicit the same note twice in a row from his tone-deaf companion. Then came a young slim woman in a worn brown surcoat, riding a Steldene steeldust mare. She spoke occasionally to the empty air, like a. mad-woman, with a hoarse voice; and frequently raised a hand to brush back hair that was oddly pale at its roots and part,

  Behind her, bringing up the rear, rode a tall dark man on a blood-bay stallion and a short dark man on a black-maned chestnut. The small man was waving his arms and arguing about something; his tall companion nodded gravely at most of what he said, glancing occasionally over to his. left, where' a hundredweight boulder was floating along beside him in the

  air.

  "Look at them. Look at them! They'll never manage a jug-gling act with people watching them.! Dusty, I love them, but they can't juggle air!"

  * 'They 11 do all right. They're just out of practice. It's been seven years since they juggled for a living, after all." "Yes, but—"

  '"Lorn, they'll do all right. So will you, and so will Moris and

  Dritt and the rest. Most of the entertainers on the road are only mediocre anyway. And it's not as if gleemen's immunity depended on whether we're good or not. No one's going to suspect anything. This is the middle of nowhere." "Mmmmf. . "