The Door Into Fire Read Free

journey.

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    The Brightwood is the most ancient and most honored of the principalities of Darthen. It was the first of the new settlements established after the Worldwinning, by people who came down out of the eastern Highpeaks and found the quiet woodlands to their liking after their long travels. It took them many years to free the Wood and its environs from the Fyrd that infested it, but while many other peoples were still living in caves in the mountains, the Brightwood people were already building the Woodward in the great clearing at its center.
    Though the Woodward is held by outsiders to be at the Wood’s heart, the Brightwood people know that its real heart—or hearts, for there are several—lie elsewhere, in the Silent Precincts, secret, holy places where few people not born in the Wood or trained to the usages of the Power have ever walked. There, upon the Forest Altars hidden within the Precincts, the Goddess was first worshipped again as She used to be before the Catastrophe—invoked in Her three forms as Maiden and Mother and Wise Woman. There too Her Lovers are worshipped, those parts of Herself which rise and fall in Her favor, eternally replacing one another as Her consorts. Even the Lovers’ Shadow is worshipped there, though with cautious and propitiatory rites enacted at the dark of the Moon. Other places of the worship of the Pentad there may be, but there are none older or more revered except the Morrowfane, which is the Heart of the World and so takes precedence.
    Night with its stars spread over the Wood, and the pure silver moonlight made vague and doubtful patterns on the grass as it shone through the branches. Spring was well underway; the night was full of the smell of growing things, and the chill wind laced itself through the new leaves with a hissing sound.
    In the center of the little clearing, before the slab of moon-white marble set into the ground, Herewiss knelt shivering. An indefinite dappling of moonshine and shadow shifted and blurred on his bare body and gleamed dully from the sword he held before him. It was beaten flatter than it had been that morning, and had some pretense of an edge on it; but it was not finished yet. Herewiss had learned better than to waste time putting hilts and finishing on these swords before he tried them with this final test.
    The dappled horse tethered at the edge of the clearing stamped and snorted softly, indignant over having to be up at this ridiculous hour. But right now Herewiss had no sympathy for him, and he shut the sound out as he prayed desperately. This had to work. It had to. He had done a good day’s spelling, a good piece of work, though he had paid dear for it, both in backlash and in the pain cutting away part of his self had cost him. But it might work. No, it had to. This was the Great Altar, the Altar of the Flame, the one most amenable to what he was doing, the one with the most bound-up power. And this sword felt better than any of the others he had tried; more alive. Maybe he had managed to fool the steel into thinking it lived. And if he had fooled it, then it would conduct the Power. His focus, his focus at last—
    O Three, he said within himself, for no word may be spoken in those places, Virgin and Mother and Mistress of Power, oh let this be the last time. Goddess, You’re never cruel without a reason. You wouldn’t give me the seed of Fire and then let it die in bondage. Let the Power of this place enter into me and kindle the spark into full Flame. And let that Flame flow down through this my sword as it would through a Rod, were I a woman. Oh, please, my Goddess, my Mother, my Bride, please. Let it work. In Your name, Who are our beginnings and our endings—
    He bowed his head, and then looked up again, shuddering with cold and anxiety, and also with weakness left over from that morning’s sorcery. If only it would work. It would be marvelous to go riding off to Freelorn’s rescue with a sword ablaze with the