The Door into Shadow Read Free Page B

already: breathing, the slide of muscles, muted pulse-thunder.
    It’s a gift , she told herself for the thousandth time. Appreciate it. Truth, however, reared its head. The talent was a nuisance. If her Fire was focused, as Herewiss’s was, she wouldn’t be having this problem. …If. Segnbora exhaled sharply at her useless obsession with what she couldn’t have. Her Flame wasn’t focused. It never would be, and she had given up. Other things had become more important now. Oaths, for example.
    It seemed like a long time ago. All of a month, she thought—a busy month full of desperate rides, escapes, sorcery, terror, wonder. All started by a chance meeting in a smelly alley, when she had stumbled on a dark fierce little man losing a swordfight to the crude but powerful axework of a Royal Steldene guard. The small man looked as if he was about to be split like kindling. She had intervened. The guardsman never saw the shadow who stepped in from behind.
    Over the course of the evening, she found she had rescued family; though the tai-Enraesi were only a small poor cadet branch of the Darthene royal line, and strangers to court, the Oath of Lion and Eagle was binding on them too, and a king’s son of Arlen was therefore a brother.
    The relationship got more complex with time, however. On the road Segnbora had shared herself with Freelorn, as she sometimes did with the others, for delight or consolation. But before that, more importantly, came friendship, and the oaths. Before Maiden and Bride and Mother I swear it, before the Lovers in Their power, and in the Dark One’s despite: My sword will be between you and the Shadow until you pass the Door into Starlight.
    She exhaled quietly. Her determination was set.
    There has to be a way.
    There has to.
    You’re not going to get him…
     
    ***
     
    After a while, as she lay at last near the brink of sleep, Segnbora sensed something shining. She opened one eye. Across the room sat a form sculpted of darkness and deep blue radiance—Herewiss, cross-legged, shoulders hunched wearily as he gazed down at the sleeping Freelorn. Across his lap lay his sword, wrapped about with curling flames the color of a twilight burning low.
    She lay unmoving, regarding him. Eventually the thought came, tasting as if it had been soaked in tears and wrung out. (You know, don’t you.)
    (Yes.) She felt sorrow still, and now a touch of embarrassment. (Sorry. You know how it is with dreams.)
    (No matter. I’ve been in a few others’ dreams myself.)
    (The scales are even, then.)
    He nodded. Herewiss didn’t look up, but his attention was fixed so intensely upon her that no stare could have been more discomfiting.
    (You understand what you’re getting into?) he said. (It may not be just Lorn heading for that Door. Probably me too. Maybe all of us will have to die so the Kingdoms can go on living.)
    (Those who defeat the Shadow,) Segnbora said silently, (usually die of it. It’s in all the stories.)
    (Defeat!) Now he raised his head. His look was pained at first, then incredulous.
    (I love him too,) she said.
    (You’re as crazy as the rest of us,) Herewiss said. The thought was sour, but there was a thread of amusement on it like the bright edge of a knife. He threw her a quick image of herself as she had been the night before, when the air in the hall had been full of the stink of hralcins. As the monsters had come shambling across the floor toward them she had stood frozen on the brink of panic, unable to do even the smallest sorcery. All she’d been able to do was stand shaking before the advance of the screaming horrors, and make blinding light—a byproduct of her blocked Fire—until even that guttered out, exhausted.
    Segnbora bit the inside of her cheek, pained by the image regardless of the compassion of Herewiss’s viewpoint. (What we’re facing,) he said, (is the father of those things, and worse—the Maker of Enmities, the engenderer of the shadows at the bottoms of our hearts, Who