The Door Into Shadow

(I'm here. I feel it also.) (Come on.)
Seven
"You are cruel," Efmaer said. "More cruel than any legend has ever told."
"No more cruel than humans to themselves, who keep hope as a precious jewel."
Then the Shadow vanished, and Efmaer filled the air where lit had been with curses, and rode away after the soul of her loved..
(Efmaer's Ride, traditional: part
the Second)
Segnbora unsheathed Charriselm and went off eastward through the standing hay. Another hedge loomed up before her, without stile or hedge-gate. With Charriselm she cut an opening, making certain that it would be too small for a cow to escape through in the morning, and squeezed through.
The sour mind-stench she had smelled got stronger by the second, becoming so terrible that Segnbora wondered how she could have missed it from fifty miles away, let alone from the town. At the edge of the field the ground under her feet seemed to be burning with it. Her inner hearing buzzed and roared as if two powerful hands were choking her. She stopped and held still, forcing herself not to gag. The
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stench was coming from beneath an old yew with peeling bark and drooping branches.
She walked under the tree and went to her knees. The fallow ground had been plowed almost up to the tree trunk. The furrows lay neat and seemingly undisturbed, yet when Segnbora thrust her hands into the still soft ground and turned it over, she sat back on her heels, sick to her stomach and sicker at heart. There is no mistaking the smell of a grave, especially a shallow one.
Nor was it the only grave. When she found strength to stand again, the death-taint led her to four others scattered around the edges of the field. All were deeper and better concealed, and all were older: the oldest perhaps three months old, the newest about three weeks. So much for Eftgan's messenger, Segnbora thought, standing over the last grave. From the intelligencer's grave and three others, the souls were long flown, despite the brutality of their
deaths. But from the one under the yew tree came a sensation of vague, scattered, helpless loss. There were two souls trapped there, shattered by their murder, trying to coalesce in time to find the Door into Starlight before the strength to pass it was lost. Segnbora swore bitterly, torn with pity for the struggling dead and her own inability to do anything for them. Sorcery has no power over the opening or closing of that final Door. She knew the protocols for the laying of the dead, but without Fire they were useless to her. But Herewiss, or Eftgan—
She headed back for town at a run, pausing outside the postern gate to remove the sticktights and hay blades from her clothes. The inn's
common room was, if possible, noisier than it had been. There were perhaps one hundred people there, laughing, joking,
singing — Segnbora's hair stood up at the thought that any one of them might be a murderer several times over.
She found Freelorn relieving the barmaid of another bottle of potato wine, and swung him aside. "Lorn, where's Here-wiss gone?"
"He's still out talking to—" Lorn stopped short of saying the Queen's name, then looked more closely at Segnbora. "You're shaking!"
"Lorn, never mind. Smile! There's something very wrong and we're not supposed to know about it. Take your time but find Herewiss—"
"— so if the others agree, we'll go to Barachael," Herewiss's voice said suddenly as he came up behind Freelorn from the other side. "It's as
good a place to hide as any, and it's a lot closer to Arlen than we are now. . What's wrong?" he said, looking at Segnbora. His
underhearing brought him an an-swer that made his eyes go wide with shock. "Show us," he said. "Lorn, go out the front way. I'll take the
side. By the postern gate?"
Segnbora nodded and went out the way she had come, doing her best to take her time. Lorn and Herewiss were through the postern and into the hay ahead of her. She tied up her gown again and hurried after. "Eftgan's gone to readjust her Door," Herewiss said when
she reached them. "It may take her a little while — seven peo-ple, six horses, and Sunspark are a larger group than usually uses that gateway." He lowered his voice. "I think she's ready to back Lorn against Cillmod, openly. She'll give us the de-tails tomorrow, at Barachael."
"That's wonderful," Segnbora said, "but with the problems she's been having she's hardly in a position to leave Barachael for a campaign in Arlen."
"True. However, I believe I can help her, and thus free her to help us in return. You see, the Reavers are pouring through Chaelonde Pass, and it's a simple enough matter to close that avenue—"
"But the Queen's Rodmis tresses have been doing illusion-wreakings there for years," Segnbora objected. "They're no longer strong enough. People have been dying in that pass for centuries, and the built-up negative energies are enough to ruin even the best Rodmis

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tress's work."
"Oh, I'm not planning mere illusions. I'm planning some-thing more powerful, and less subtle: a sealing."
"You mean physically closing the pass?'* Freelorn said, stunned. "Shaking down a few mountains?" "That's right." "You call that simple?"
"Simple, yes. And dangerous, too. It will require much Power, but then it's also less likely that something will go wrong …"
They slowed as they approached the spot Segnbora had sensed before. Herewiss looked at her as he let drop what he had been saying. A long moment passed.
"How long have the people in the grave been dead?" he asked her. "Grave?"
"A week or so, I think. They're weak. They were getting along in years, I believe, and the shock of their death was considerable. You have the protocols—" "I have them."
"Protocols, what protocols?" Freelom said. "For raising the dead,'"' Herewiss said. "Stay dose, Lorn, I'm going to need you. . Oh, sweet Mother," he added as
the sour smell of murder hit him. Segnbora was already tear-ing — the psychic residue of violence became not easier, but harder to handle with exposure.
"Goddess, what 15 that," Freelom said, and coughed. Both Segnbora and Herewiss looked at him, surprised. "You smell something?" Herewiss said. "Don't you? Like a channel pit." Freelom coughed again. Herewiss looked most thoughtful, for the graves were cov-ered and the night air was sweet even here; the stench was purely a matter of the undersenses.
They came to the yew tree, and stopped. Quickly, for the smell was now overwhelming, Herewiss reached over his shoulder and drew Khavrinen. Its Fire, suppressed all through the evening, now flared up, a hot blue-white. Concerned, Segnbora threw a look over her shoulder at the walls of Chavi.
"Only our own people and Eftgan will be able to see the Fire," Herewiss said, quiet-voiced, slipping into the calm he would need for his wreaking. "Now then. ."
The wavering of Flame about Khavrinen grew less hurried as its master calmed, yet there was still a great tension in every curl and curve of the Flame. With the tip of the sword, Here-wiss drew a circle around the tree, the graves, Freelorn, and Segnbora. Where Kh&vrinen's point cut the fallow ground, Fire remained, until at the circle's end it flowed into itself, a seamless circle of blue Flame that licked and wreathed up-ward. Finally, when the three of them had stepped inside the circle, Herewiss thrust Khavrinen span-deep into the soft dirt, laid his hands, one over the other, on the sword's fiery hilt, and began the wreaking. "Erhn tot 'mis kuithen, dstehae sschur; nsven kes uibrm—"
The words were in a more ancient dialect of Nhaired than any Segnbora had been taught. Even in Nhaired, which held within it many odd rhythms, the scansion of this wreaking-rhyrne was bizarre. Freelorn was fidgeting, watching his loved with unease as Herewiss reassured the trembling yew and the murder-stained earth that he was about to end their pain, not niake it worse. He stood and called the Power up out of him, sweating. The circle's Fire reached higher, twisting, wreathing, matching the interlock of word with word, of thought with rhyme—
Herewiss poured out the words, poured out the Flame, profligate. Power built and built in the circle until it numbed the mind, until the eyes
saw nothing anywhere but blue Fire, and a man-shaped shadow at the heart of it, the summoner.
Segnbora was overwhelmed. She did the only thing safe to do — turned around inside herself and fled down to the dark place in search of Hasai. His Power, he has too much! No one can have that much! she thought. Once in her own depths she could see nothing but burning blue light, but at last she stumbled into Hasai and flung her arms around a hot, stony talon. Concerned, the Dragon lowered his head protectively over her.
Outside, after what seemed an eternity of blueness, tension ebbed. Segnbora dared to look out of herself again and saw the pillar of Fire that wreathed about Herewiss diminish slightly as he released his wreaking to seek outside the circle for the fragments of the murdered people's souls. He spoke on, in a different rhythm now, low and insistent, urging out-ward the unseen web the Fire had woven of itself, moving it as an ebb tide pushes a thrown net away from shore. When the web had drifted across the entire field, he reversed the meter of his poetry and began pulling it in again.
Segnbora swallowed hard. Light followed the blue-glitter-ing weave; dusts and motes and sparkles drifted inward, small coalescing clouds of pallid light. They drifted inward faster now, coiling into two separate sources; they grew brighter and brighter, tightening to cores of light that pulsed in time with Herewiss's verse. A last sharp word from Herewiss, a last burst of blue light, dazzling— The Fire of the circle died down to a twilight shimmer, though about Herewiss and Khavrineti, Flame still twined bright. Segnbora found herself looking at two solid-seeming people — a man, shorter than herself, middle-aged, stocky, with a blunt, worn face; a woman of about the same age, still shorter, but more slender for her height. They both looked weary and confused. Segnbora gazed at them pityingly in that first second or so, seeing strangers—