The Door Into Fire totf-1 Page 8

  parchments that lay on the ground next to him. 'Look at all this stuff. Half of it is so rotted away I can hardly read it, and the rest of it is in some obscure dialect so full of thees and thous that I can't make sense of it.'

  'Lorn,' Herewiss said with infinite patience, 'that one on top is a rede that has been copied over more times than either of us know, because no-one knows what it means, and it's tied to the history of your Line somehow. It's Lion business, Lorn. That makes it your business. This whole place is your business. That's why you're its Keeper.'

  'Dammit, Dusty, I love my family's history. Descent from the Lion is something to be proud of. But I don't want to sit around reading when I could be out doing great things!'

  'What did you have in mind?'

  'Are you making fun of me?'

  'No.'

  Freelorn made an irritated face. 'I don't know what kind of great things. But they're there, waiting for me to get to them, I know it! I want to see the Kingdoms. I want to take ship for the Isles of the North, and talk to Dragons. I want to climb in the Highspeaks and see what the lands beyond the mountains look like. I want to go into Hreth and kill Fyrd. I want to find out what the Hildimarrin countries are like, I want to – oh, Dark, everything! And you know what I get to do?'

  'You get to stay home and be prince for a while. Listen, Lorn, it's not that long ago you were in the Wood with me. That's not traveling? Almost two hundred leagues away? What about the mare's nest we saw on the way back? That's not adventure? You wanted the nightmare, maybe? She would have had you for breakfast. We saw three wind demons and a unicorn, and heard the Shadow's Hunting to overhead, and you want more? Goddess, Lorn, what's it take to make you happy?'

  'Danger. Intrigue. Hopeless quests. Last stands. Heroism! Courage against all odds! Valor in defeat!'

  'You remember when we used to play Lion and Eagle?' 'Yes, but – Dusty, what's that got to do with this?' 'How many times did we stage Bluepeak out behind the Ward?' 'Every day for a month at least, but—'

  'Did you notice something interesting? We always got up again afterwards. Earn and Healhra didn't.'

  'Yes, they did. They come back once every five hundred years—'

  '—and the last two times no-one recognized Them for years, because They didn't come back as Lion and Eagle. That's not important here, though. Lorn, I'm not – oh, Dark.' Herewiss reached over and took Freelorn's hand, slowly, shyly.

  'My father,' he went on, looking at his boots, 'keeps saying, "A king is made for fame and not for long life." Which is all right as long as it's some other king – but Lorn, it's going to be you some day, and I'm not sure I want to see you die. No matter how damn heroic your last stand is.' He closed his eyes. 'I'm probably going to go the same way; Brightwood people never die in bed. They vanish, or get eaten by Fyrd, or get turned into rocks, or something weird like that. All the old ballads make my ancestors sound just wonderful, but they have to be divorcing the emotion from the reality in places. I don't want to find out how it feels to vanish.'

  Freelorn nodded. 'I don't really want to end up bleeding somewhere either – but on the other hand, it'd be neat to be a robber baron, putting down the oppressor and giving money to the common people. Or to be a wandering sorcerer, doing good deeds and slipping away unnoticed—'

  Herewiss sighed, and a wild impulse compounded of

  both daring and humor rose up in him. 'All right,' he said.

  'Hopeless quests are what you want? Valiant absurdity? Something that the Goddess would approve of?'

  'What the Dark are you talking about?'

  'Lorn, I'm on a quest.'

  'Say what?'

  Herewiss grinned at the sudden confusion in Freelorn's face. He considered and discarded several possible ways of explaining things, and finally simply held out his hands. Usually he had to close his eyes when he made the little tongue of external Flame that was all he could manage. But he strained twice as hard as usual this time for the sake of keeping his eyes open. He didn't want to miss the look on Freelorn's face.

  It was an amazing thing. It was so amazing that Herewiss broke out laughing like a fool, and lost his concentration and the Flame both a moment later. He laughed so hard that he had to hold his stomach against the pain, and all the while Freelorn stared at him in utter amazement.

  Finally Herewiss calmed down a little, caught his breath, wiped his eyes.

  'You have it,' Freelorn said softly. 'You have it.' 'It looks that way.' 'You have it! Dusty!!' That's me.'

  'MY GODDESS, YOU HAVE IT!!!'

  'Ssh, you'll wake up Berlic.'

  'But you have it!' Freelorn whispered.

  'Yeah.'

  And then Freelorn looked at Herewiss, and the joy in his eyes dimmed and flickered low.

  'But a focus—'

  'I tried. Can't use a Rod.'

  There was a long silence.

  'Lorn,' Herewiss said. 'This is my secret. And yours, now. My mother taught me a lot of sorcery when I was younger, but there was always something else I could feel in the background that I knew wasn't anything to do with that. I didn't know what it was until last year – I made Flame accidentally in the middle of a scry ing-spell. I thought it might have been a fluke, but it's not, it's there, and it's getting stronger. If I can channel it, I can use it. And the Goddess only knows what I'm going to use for a focus. Will this do for a hopeless quest?'

  Freelorn was silent for a little while.

  Then he looked at Herewiss again.

  'I am the Keeper of the Archive,' he said solemnly, as if he were summoning Powers to hear him. 'There must be something in here that would help you. I'm going to start looking. And when I find it—'

  Herewiss smiled a little. 'When you find it,' he said. They hugged each other, stirring up dust.

  The memories were making Herewiss feel warm inside. The analytical parts of him approved: he was heading in the right direction. The warmth was building, washing through him—

  He shifted the scene again, and it was night out in the eastern Darthene wastelands, a hundred miles or so from the Arlene border.

  They were on their way to Prydon again after a trip to the Wood, and the day's riding had left them exhausted – Freelorn was anxious to get home, and they had spared neither themselves nor the horses. It was cold, for Opening Night was approaching, and they lay close to their little fire and shivered. The stars were beginning to fall thickly, as they do at Midwinter when the Goddess is angriest, when She remembers Her own thoughtlessness at the Creation, and flings stars burning

  across the night in defiance of the great Death. Herewiss lay on his back gazing up at the sky, watching the distant firebrands trace their silent paths out of the heart of the Sword – the constellation that stands high on winter nights. Freelorn lay curled up in a tight bundle next to him, facing west.

  'Dusty—'

  Herewiss turned his head to him. 'You want to share?'

  Within the memory, Herewiss, now sixteen, went both warm with surprise and pleasure, and cold with fear. It was a thought that had occurred to him more than once. But Freelorn was younger than he was inside, and easily frightened. He wouldn't want to scare Lorn, ever—

  —yet no-one in the world knew him as well as Lorn did, no-one else cared as much about all the little things in Herewiss's life and how he felt about them. He could share things with Lorn that he would never dare say to anyone else, and never be afraid of the consequences. And Lorn mattered so much to him. His loved. Yes. And he was beautiful outside, too, small and strong and fine to look at—

  I paid off the Responsibility long ago. I can love whom I please—

  'You want to?' he said aloud.

  'Yeah.'

  Herewiss felt at the knot of fear inside him, wondering what to do about it. If Lorn wanted to—

  But—

  'I had to think about it for a while before I could say it,' Freelorn said quietly, from inside the blankets. 'If you don't want to, it's all right.'

  'No,
it's not that—'

  Freelorn chuckled a little, so adult a sound coming out

  of him that it startled Herewiss. He identified it as one of Ferrant's laughs, which Freelorn had borrowed. 'I should have asked,' Freelorn said. 'Your first time?'

  'No! – I mean, yes. With a man.'

  They were quiet for a little. Freelorn turned over on his back and looked up at the sky, watching a particularly bright star blaze out of the Sword and clear across the night to the Moonsteed before it went out. 'There's not much difference,' he said, 'except that, instead of being different, we're alike. Some things are easier – some are harder—'

  The voice was still suspiciously adult, and Herewiss looked at Freelorn for a moment and then smiled. 'Your first time too, huh?'

  Freelorn's face went shocked, then irritated, and finally sheepishly smiling. 'Yeah.'

  Herewiss laughed softly to himself, and reached out to hug Freelorn to him. 'You twit!' he said, laughing into Freelorn's blankets until the tears came.

  They held each other for a long time, and then drew closer. Outside the memory, Herewiss looked on with quiet amusement, and with reverence, feeling as if he was watching an enactment of some old legend being staged by well-meaning amateurs. In a way, of course, he was: the Goddess's Lovers always discover Each Other after being initiated by Her – one of the things which makes for the tragedy of Opening Night, when the Lovers, male or female as the avatar dictates, destroy One Another in Their rivalry. But this was an enactment of the birth of that new relationship, and the freshness and innocence of it easily compensated for whatever ineptitude there may have been as well.

  'Oops—'

  'Huh? Did it hurt?'

  'Yeah, a little.'

  'Well, let's try this instead—'

  'Ohhh . . .'

  'Hmmm?'

  'No, no, don't stop. It feels so good.'

  Silence, and further joinings: warm hands, warm mouths, growing comfort, trust flowing. A slow climb on smooth wings, easing into the upper reaches, then gliding into the updraft, soaring, daring, higher, higher—

  —sudden and not to be denied, the brilliance that is not light, the dissolution of barriers that cannot possibly break—

  —a brief silence.

  'Oh, Dark, I'm sorry. I hurried you.'

  'Oh, no, don't be. It was-it was-oh, my . . .'

  'I saw your face.' A warm arm reaches around to pillow Herewiss's head; gentle fingers stroke his jawline, his lips, his closed eyes. 'You looked – so happy. I was glad I could make you feel that way.'

  'I felt . . . so cherished.'

  'It was something I always wished somebody would . . . do for me . '

  'You mean you haven't. . . ?' 'No.'

  'Oh, my dear loved. – Can I call you that?' 'Why not? It's true – oh, Dusty—!'

  'Lorn, you're crying—? Are you all right, did I say something wrong—'

  'No, no – it's just – nobody ever called me their loved before – and it's –I always wanted – I'm happy—!'

  'Oh, Lorn. Come here. No, come on, if we're going to share ourselves with each other, that means the tears too. My loved, my Lorn, it's all right, you're happy—'

  'But, but my face gets – gets funny when I cry—'

  'So does mine. Who cares? You're beautiful. I love you, Lorn—'

  'Oh, Goddess, Dusty, I love you too. I was just scared –I didn't see how someone as gorgeous as you could ever want to share with me—'

  'Me? Gorgeous? Oh, Lorn—'

  'But you are, you are, don't you see it? And inside, too.' A chuckle through passing tears. 'It's almost unfair that anyone should be so beautiful as you are inside. But it makes me so happy – Am I making sense?'

  'Yes. Oh, Lorn, I want you to feel what I felt, I want to give you the joy – you deserve it so much . . . and it makes me so happy to make you happy . . .'

  —and again the slow dance, stately circlings on wings of light— —and much later, the long drift down. Silence, and falling stars. Outside the memory, Herewiss wept.

  Inside the memory, Freelorn held Herewiss, and Herewiss held Freelorn, and their hearts slowed.

  'Again?'

  'I don't know if I could … " A chuckle. 'Neither do I.' Another silence.

  'Hey, maybe we should get married some day.'

  'Are you thinking of us, or of marriage alliances?'

  'It could be good both ways. Hasn't been an alliance between our two Houses since the days of Beorgan.'

  'And you know how that turned out. I don't want to be history, Lorn, I just want to be me.'

  'Yeah.'

  'So think about us, then, and leave politics out of it.' 'Can we?'

  Herewiss thought about it. 'At least until our fathers leave us

  their lands. I'm tired, Lorn.'

  'Yeah. We've got a long ride tomorrow.'

  'Yeah.'

  They held each other against the cold, and fell asleep.

  Herewiss dwelt on the scene for a little while, and then reluctantly changed it again. Another night, another place out in the cold. The battlefield where they fought the Reaver incursion, far to the south of the Wood. The night after the battle, and Herewiss wounded in the shoulder with the blow that he took for the king's daughter of Darthen. Later on that blow had gotten him awarded the WhiteMantle. But at this point Herewiss lay huddled on the ground, wrapped in his own tattered campaigning cloak, innocent of honors and just trying to get some sleep. He was cold and tired, and in pain from the wound. The hurt of it kept waking him up every time he drifted off. During one hazy time of almost– sleep, a figure came softly toward him in the dark, and Herewiss didn't move, didn't particularly care who it was—

  'Dusty?'

  He tried to get up, and Freelorn was down beside him, helping him. 'Quiet, quiet – do you know how long I've been looking for you?' His voice was frightened.

  'No.'

  'I couldn't find you. I thought you were—'

  'I'm not, obviously. I heard you were all right and so I just found a spot out of the way where I could get some sleep.'

  'That's interesting,' Freelorn hissed. 'Because you're behind the lines. Do you mind coming with me before they find out who we are and carve the blood-eagle on us?'

  'Behind the lines?' 'The Reaver lines! It's obvious you're being saved for

  something besides dying in battle. If you haven't managed it by now-Oh, Dusty, come on!!'

  'I lost a lot of blood. I think I need a horse. Oh, poor old Socks, he got killed right out from under me—'

  'Blackmane is here, I brought him. Come on, for Goddess's sake—'

  The next while was a nightmare, an interminable period of jouncing and wincing and almost falling out of the saddle. The wound reopened, and Herewiss bit back his moans with great difficulty. Blackmane was stepping softly; he seemed to have something tied around his feet. Herewiss later found out they had been pieces of Freelorn's best clothes – his Lion surcoat, the one embroidered in silver and satin, that he had loved so well. But in the midst of the hurt and the fresh bleeding, as they passed through the enemy lines and slipped past the guards, Herewiss heard himself thinking, like a chant to put distance between one and one's pain, He really must care about me. He really must—

  The slow wave of love that had been building in Herewiss was coming to a crest. He let it grow, let it build power. He would need it. Holding himself still in the twilight inside him, he reached out a tendril of thought to Sunspark.

  (What?) it said. Its voice seemed distant, and he could perceive no more of the elemental than a vague sensation of warmth.

  (Warn away anything that approaches. Don't hurt it, just keep it away.)

  (It would be easier to kill.)

  (It would disturb the influences I'm working with. Take care of me, Spark. If I have to drop what I'm doing suddenly, the backlash may catch you as well.) (Whatever.)

  He returned fully to the awareness of his inner self, and watched with approval as his building emotion began
to shade toward anger. He encouraged it. This is my friend: my loved: a part of me; this is who they want to take and kill! Will it happen? Will it? Will it?

  The answer was building itself like a thunderhead, piling threateningly high. He turned his attention away from the building storm of emotion and started to work on the sorcery proper. The spell had to be built, word by cautious word, each word placed delicately against another, stressed and counterstressed, pronunciations clean and careful, intentions plain. The words were sharp as knives, and could cut deeper than any sword if they were mishandled. A word here, and another one there: this one placed with care atop two others, taking care always to keep the whole structure in mind — too much attention to one part could collapse others. Here a jagged word like cutting crystal, faceted, many– syllabled, with a history to it – don't pause too long to admire the glitter of it, the others will resent the partiality and turn on you. There a word fragile as a butterfly's wing; indeed, the word has lineal ties with the Steldene word for butterfly –but don't think of that now, this winged word has teeth too. Now the next—

  Herewiss was doing what only a very few sorcerers of his time, or any other, could do: building a spell without reference to the actual words written in the grimoire. It requires a good memory, and great courage. The mind has a way of shaping words to its liking, and that can be fatal to a sorcery and the one who works it. But keeping himself conscious enough to actually read the words from his books would have meant a diversion of needed power, and Herewiss was worried enough to forgo the safer method. He was making no passes, drawing no diagrams to help

  him; those measures would have cost him energy too. The greatest sorceries are always those done without recourse to anything but the words themselves, and the effect they have on the minds of the user and the hearer. But Herewiss didn't think about that. It would have scared him too much.

  He built with the words, making a structure both like and unlike the towering concentration of love and anger within him. The structure had to be big enough to let the emotions flow freely, strong enough to contain them – but it also had to be small enough not to scrape the barriers of Herewiss's self and damage him, and light enough for him to break easily if the sorcery got out of hand. It was a perilous balance to maintain, and once or twice he almost lost it as a word shifted under another's weight. Another one turned on the word next to it – they were too much alike – and savaged it before Herewiss could remove the offender and put another, less violent, but also less effective, in its place. He had to make up for the loss of power elsewhere, at the top of the structure. He wasn't sure whether it would stand up to the strain or not, and the whole crystalline framework swayed uncertainly for a moment, chiming like frozen bells in the wind, like icy branches, brittle, metallic—