The Door into Shadow Read Free Page A

worried about Cillmod? The Shadow’s a far greater danger. It can’t afford to leave you alive now. You’re the embodiment of the old days before the Catastrophe, when males had the Power. The time of Its decline…”
    Herewiss shook his head and smiled, an expression more of grim agreement than of reassurance. “We’ll both be careful,” he said. “That is, if you’re coming with me?”
    Reaching down, Freelorn gently freed one of Herewiss’s hands from Khávrinen’s hilt, and held the hand between his own. “No more dividing our forces,” he said. “From now until it’s done, we go together.”
    Herewiss held his peace and didn’t change expression. Segnbora had to drop her eyes, seeing again that image of one hand that let go of another’s, the face that turned away.
    All at once Freelorn was thumping on the floor for attention. “Listen, people—”
    Segnbora nudged Lang. He rolled over under his covers. “Whatever you say, Lorn, I’ll do it,” he said, and pulled the blanket back over his head.
    “ There’s a man who takes his oaths a little too seriously,” Freelorn said with a grimace of affectionate disgust. “On his own head be it. But for the rest of you—I can’t in good conscience ask you to go on this trip. The Shadow—”
    “ The Shadow can go swive with sheep for all I care,” Moris said with one of his slow grins. “I haven’t come this far with you to stop now.”
    “ Me either,” Harald said, stubbornly folding his huge bear’s arms.
    “ You’re not listening,” Freelorn said, in great earnest. “Your oaths are a matter of friendship and I love you for them. But it’s not just Cillmod we’re playing with now. It’s the Shadow. Your souls are at stake—”
    “ The things that were in here last night ate souls too,” Dritt said calmly, putting his chin down on his arms. “Herewiss did for them all right.”
    (I helped,) said the voiceless voice from the firepit. Eyes looked out of the flames at the company, then came to rest with calm interest on Freelorn. (I’m coming too.)
    The building rumble of irritation in the room, combined with so much unspoken affection, was making Segnbora’s head ache; the walls of this place, opaque to thought, bounced the emotions back and forth until the undersenses were deafened by echoes.
    “ Look,” she said, shaking free of her own blankets. “If we’ve got to get an early start in the morning—” She glanced at Herewiss. “—it can wait until morning?”
    “ I suppose so,” he said.
    “ Good. Then I want some sleep.” She went over to Freelorn in her shift, drawing Charriselm again as she came, and offered him the blade’s hilt about an inch from his nose, while giving Lorn a look suggesting that perhaps that was where she meant to insert it. “You swore on this, on all our blades, that your lordship would be between us and the Shadow while we wielded them in your service. You want to take that oath back?”
    Lorn glared up at her, fierce eyes going fiercer, “No! Are you crazy? What makes you think I’d—”
    “ What makes you think we would?”
    Freelorn held absolutely still. His anger churned wildly for a moment, then fell off, leaving reluctant acceptance in its place.
    Segnbora shoved Charriselm back into its sheath. “Good night, Lorn,” she said, and padded back to her bedroll, taking care not to smile until her back was turned.
    Sunspark pulled itself back down into the firepit as people settled themselves again. Soon the darkness of the hall held no sound but Harald’s cloak-muffled snoring.
    It took Segnbora a little while to get enough of the blankets unwrapped from around Lang to cover herself. That done, she lay on her back for a long while, gazing up at the smoke-shaft in the ceiling, through which a few unfamiliar stars shone. Her underhearing, sharpened by all the excitement, brought her the faint dream-touched emotions of those falling asleep, and the physical sensations of those asleep