The Door Into Shadow

Her throne was wrought of crystal, like everything else in the place, but it reflected nothing from its long sheer surfaces. The one enthroned upon it seemed caught at that particular moment when adolescence first turns toward womanhood, and both woman and child live in the eyes. She was clothed in changelessness and invulnerability as with the robe of woven twilight She wore, and Her slender maiden's hands seemed able, if they chose, to sow stars like grain, or pluck the Moon like a silver flowr er. Yet very still those hands lay on the arms of the throne, and Segnbora found herself trembling with fear to see them so idle.
Her quiet, beautiful face lay half in shadow as the Lady's gaze dwelt on Freelorn. For a long while there was no motion but that of Her long braid, the color of night before the stars were made, rising and falling slightly with Her breathing. Then slowly She looked up, and met Segnbora's eyes.
"Little sister," the Maiden said, * 'you're welcome." Segnbora sank to her knees., staggered with awe and love. This was her Lady, the aspect of the Goddess she had always loved best: the Maker, the Builder, the Mistress of Fire, She Who created the worlds and creates them still, Giver of Power and glory. Not even that night in the Ferry' Tavern had she been stricken down like this, with such terror and desire. 'The Maiden gazed at her, and Segnbora had to look down, blinded by the divine splendor.

She gasped for breath and tried to think. It was hard, through the trembling, yet it was the fact that she trembled at all that disturbed her, Even as the Dark.Lady, walking the
night in Her moondark aspect, She did not inspire fear. Something was wrong. Segnbora lifted her head for another look, and was once more heartblinded by Her untempered glory. Segnbora hid her eyes as if from the Sun, and began to tremble in earnest.
Within her Hasai bent his head low, and spread his wings upward in a bow. (She's not as you showed me, within you. Nor is She like the
Immanence. Its experience, too, is always one of infinite power, but the power is tempered—)
(It's—) The words seemed impossible, a wild lie in the face of deity, but she thought them anyway. (It's not Her.)
Segnbora cut herself off. She had a suspicion of what was wrong with this Maiden. She also believed she now knew Who was maintaining the great wreaking that had built the Sky-bridge, and Who was keeping the Glasscastle-trap inviolate. Only an aspect of the Goddess could do such things. . Segnbora got up, anxious to be out of Glasscastle before she discovered whether her suspicion wr as correct — and was very surprised to find herself still kneeling where she was. With a flash of anger she met the Maiden's eyes again. They poured powr er at her, a flood of chill strength, knowledge, potency. The look went straight through Segn-bora like a blade. Once before, long ago, those hands had wrought her soul, those eyes had critically examined the Maker's handiwork. Now they did so again, a look enough to paralyze any mortal creature, as flaws and strengths together were coolly assessed by the One Who put them there. But Segnbora's soul was a little less mortal now than it had been when first created. There were Dragons among the mdei-hm who had had direct experiences of the Immanence on more than one occasion. The judgment of ultimate power didn't frighten them; they were prepared to meet the infinite eye to eye, and judge right, back,
/am what I am, Segnbora thought, reaching back toward the Dragons' strength and staring into those beautiful, daunting eyes.. She would not be judged and found wanting with her work incomplete, her Name still unknown!
Suddenly she was standing, surprised that she could. She expected to be struck with lightning for her temerity, but
nothing happened. Segnbora kept her eyes on the fair, still face, and saw, past the virulent blaze of glory, something she had missed
earlier. The Maiden's eyes had a dazzlement about them, as if She too were blinded.
"My Lady," Segnbora managed to say, "I beg Your pardon, but we have to leave."
"No one comes here," the Maiden said gently, "who wants to leave. I have ordained it so."
The terrible power of Her voice filled the air, making the words true past contradiction. Segnbora shook her head, wincing in pain at the effort of maintaining her purpose against that onslaught of will. "But Freelorn is the Lion's Child," she said. "He has things to do—" "He came here of his own free will," the Maiden said. She moved for the first time, reaching out one of Her empty hands to Freelorn. He leaned nearer with a sigh, and She stroked his hair, gazing down at him. "And now he has his heart's desire. No more flight for the Lion's Child, no more striving after an empty throne and a lost sword. Only peace, and the twilight. He has earned them."
The Maiden half-sang the words as She looked at Freelorn, and Her merciless glory grew more blinding yet. Segnbora shook her head, for something was missing. Whatever lived in those eyes, it wasn't love. And more than Her glory, it was Her love — of creating, and what she created — that Segnbora had worshiped— (Sdaha, be swift!)
(Right—) She reached out to grab Freelorn and pull him away from the Maiden's lulling touch, but as she moved, the Maiden did too — locking eyes with Segnbora, striking her still.
"You also, little sister," She said, "you have earned your peace. Here you shall stay."
"No, oh no," Segnbora whispered, struggling again to find the will to move. But, dark aspect or not, this was the God-dess, Who knew
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Segnbora's heart better than she did.
The Maiden spoke from within that heart now, with Segn-bora's own thoughts, her own voice, as the Goddess often speaks. … I'm tired, my mum and da are dead; there are months,
maybe years of travel and fighting ahead of us — and even if I bring Lorn out of here, he'll probably just be killed. Isn't this better for him than
painful death? And isn't it better for me, toof No death in ice and darkness, just peace for all eternity. Peace in the twilight, with Her. .
The song of the mdeihei seemed very far away. She couldn't hear what Hasai was saying to her, and somehow it didn't matter. The cool of
the surrounding twilight curled into her like rising water. Soon it would rise high enough to drown her life, abolish both pain and desire.
The Maiden was seated no longer. Calm as a moonrise, She stood before Segnbora, reaching out to her. "There's nothing to fear/' She
said. "Nothing fails here, nothing is lost, no hearts break or are broken. I have wrought a place outside of time and ruin—"
The gentle hands touched Segnbora's face. All through her, muscles went lax as her body yielded itself to its Creator. Her mind swelled
with a desire to be still; to forget the world and its concerns and rest in Her touch forever.
"Then it's true," she whispered as if in a dream. "There's no death here …"
"There is no death anywhere," the Maiden said, serene, utterly certain.
The relief that washed through Segnbora was indescriba-ble. The one thing that had been wrong with the world was vanquished at last. Impenmanence, loss, bereavement. . the Universe was perfect, as it should have been from the begin-ning. There was nothing to fear anymore. .
.. though it was curious that one dim image surfaced, and would not go away. In languid curiosity she regarded it, though her indifference kept her from truly seeing it for a long time, It was a tree, and a dark field, and brightness in the field. Night smells— —smells?
There were smells that had little to do with night. Ground-damp. Mold. Wetness, where her hands turned over dirt, and jerked back in shock. Wetness, and the liqyid gleam of dulled eyes in Flameligtit. And 'the carrion smell of death— In a wash of horror, the dream broke. Segnbora knew who
she was again, and Who held her. The Maiden had made the worlds, true enough, and in the ecstasy of creation had forgot-ten about Death and let It in. But She had never denied Death's existence, or Her mistake, in any of Her aspects. Segnbora tried to move away from the hands that held her, and couldn't. Her body felt half-dead.
She settled for moving just one hand: the right one, the swordhand that had saved her so many times before. Her own horror helped her, for she realized now that she was in the presence of a legend: the One with Still Hands, that Maiden Who has stopped creating and holds all who fall into Her power in a terrible thrall. This was a dark aspect of the true Maiden, one Who had embraced forgetfulness, and Who had taken Glasscastle as Her demesne, Her prison. (Hasai!)
Struggling to raise her hand, she called him, and to her shock got no answer. Twilight had fallen in the back of her mind, and she could feel no Dragonfire there. She would have to raise her swordhand alone, even though the Maiden's cool hands on her face made it almost impossible to concen-trate.
Sweat sprang out with the effort. The hand moved an inch. She would not be left here! She would not leave her mdaha stuck in an eternity of not— doing! She would not walk past Lang and Freelorn and Herewiss a thousand times without seeing them. .! Another inch. Another. The hand felt
THE DOOR INTO SHADOW
as if it were made of lead, but she moved further into herself, finding strength.
In the twilight, something else moved. Down inside her memory, in the cavern — not her own secret place, but the cave at the Morrowfane — stones grated beneath Hasai's plating, scoring the dulled gems of his flanks as he rolled over to be still from the convulsions at last. Horrified, Segnbora discov-ered that the One with Still Hands was there as well. Dark as a moonless night, she was soothing Hasai's worst pain, offer-ing him a mdahaih state that would never diminish him to a faint voice in the background, but would leave him one strong voice among many. But her promise was a lie.
(Mdaha! Move! She can't do it. She'll trap you in here, and we'll both be alive and rdahaih forever!)
He could not move. Desperately, Segnbora reached all the way back inside, climbed into his body and took over — wore his wings, lashed his tail, lifted his head, forced one immense taloned foot to move forward, then another, then another. Together they crawled to the mouth of the cave, Hasai gasp-ing without fire as they went.
(Sdaha, have mercy! Let me go!) he begged, agonized. She ignored him, pushing his head out the cave entrance into the clear night. The entrance was too small for his shoul-ders and barrel. She pushed, ramming muscles with thought and cave wall with gemmed hide, steel bones. (Now!) she cried, and they crashed into the rock together. It trembled, but held. (Now!) Stones rattled and fell about them. The mountain shook and threatened to come down — but stone was their element, they were unafraid.
Hasai began to assist her, living in his own body again, remembering life, refinding his strength. (Now!) They jammed shoulders through the stone; wings smote the rock like lightning, burst free into the night. Segnbora's arm knocked away with one sweeping gesture the hands that held her. In rage and pity, and a desire to see something other than slack peace in those beautiful eyes, her hand swept back again. She struck the Maiden backhanded across the face.
Shocked, sickened by the violence she had done, Segnbora waited for the lightning … or at least for her own handprint to appear on Her face. Nothing came, though. No flicker of the eyes, no change in the mouth. Slowly the Maiden turned Her back on Segnbora, went back to Her throne, seated Her-self. She said nothing. Segnbora found herself free. (Sdaha—)
(I know, mdaha, time!)
Segnbora shook Freelorn by the shoulder. There was no answering movement — he seemed asleep, or tranced. Well, dammit, if I have to carry him— She reached down and took him under the shoulders, heaving hard. Freelorn made a sound, then. It was a bitter moan; a sound of pain and mourning as if some sweet dream had broken.
"Come on, Lorn," she said, wanting more to swear than to coax. Moonset couldn't be more than a quarter-hour away. "Come on, you Lioncub, you idiot, come on—!"
Turning, she got him up — then blinked in shock. They were all there, drifting in. Lang, looking peaceful. Dritt, Moris, Torve, Harald, all the life gone out of their movements. Sun-spark, quenched in the twilight like a Firebrand dropped in water. Herewiss, his light eyes dark with Glasscastle's dusk, and no flicker of Fire showing about Khavrinen.
Despair and anger shook her. She didn't have time to go into each mind separately and break the Maiden's grip. She doubted she had the strength, anyhow. Not even the Fire, had she been able to focus it, would help her now, though sor-cery. .
She paused, considering. Perhaps there was a way to break them all free at once. It shamed her deeply to consider it, but then she had no leisure for shame. (Mdaha!)
THE DOOR INTO SHADOW
(Do what you must,) Hasai said, placid. (I'll lend you strength if you need it.)
She gulped, and began the sorcery. It was a simple one, and vile. These people were her friends. She had fought alongside them, guarded their backs, eaten and drunk and starved with them, lain down in loneliness and merriment to share herself with them. Their friendship gave her just enough knowledge of their inner Names with which to weave a spell of compul-sion.
It was almost too easy, in fact. Their own wills were al-most wholly abolished. The images of loneliness, loss of Power, and midnight fear that she employed were more than adequate. She knew less about Herewiss and Sunspark than about Freelorn and the others, but could guess enough about their natures to make them head out the door. Torve was hardest — a name and a wry flicker of his eyes was all she had. Yet she was terrified for this innocent, and her fear fueled his part of the sorcery, making up for her lack of knowledge.
As she gasped oul the last few syllables of the spell, Segn-bora began carefully making her way out of the construct in
her mind. She slipped sideways through the final fold of the sorcery, scoring herself with sharp words in only a few places, thankful for
once that she was so slim. Once out, she bound
the sorcery into a self-maintaining configuration that would give her time to fight off the inevitable backlash and follow the others out.
One by one, her companions began drifting away from the Maiden's throne, out toward the great gates. She sagged a moment, feeling
weary and soiled, watching them go.
Inside her, wings like the night sheltered her and fed her strength. (Sdaha, don't dally—) (No.)
She looked one last time at the throne, where the Maiden sat silent, watching the others go, dispassionate as a statute in a shrine. O my Queen, Segnbora thought. Surely somewhere the Maiden dwelt in saner aspects, whole and alive and forever creating. But to see even a minor aspect of Godhead so twisted was too bitter for a mortal to bear for long. Hurry-ing, Segnbora turned away to follow the others. They were far ahead of her, unerringly following the way out that she had set for them. The sorcery was holding sur-prisingly well, considering bow long it had been since she had used sorcery to as much as mend a pot or start a fire. She went quickly, trotting, even though physical activity would bring on the backlash with a vengeance. It felt wonderful to move again. (Mdaha, you all right?)
(My head hurts,) he said, surprised. The mdeihei rarely ex-perienced pain for which there was no memory.
(It's the effect of the sorcery; you're getting it from me.) Somehow she couldn't bring herself to be very solicitous: There were still too many things that could go wrong. They could come to the doors and find them closed. Or, if they were open, the bridge could be gone. Or—
Something moved close by, a figure approaching Sgenbora from one side. It was not one of her own people, she knew. Her hand went to Charriselm's hilt.
Suoimersky opals winked at her as Efmaer came up beside her and 'walked with her, quickly but without animation. "You are leaving," the Queen said. "Yes. Come with us—r >
Efmaer shook her head. "Gladly would I come. . but I never found Sefeden to get my Name back, and without it I cannot leave …"
"But you know your Name." "I have forgotten it," said the Queen. Segnbora's insides clenched with pity. . and suddenly the memory she hadn't been able to pin down appeared in her pain-darkened mind.Urgently, she stopped and took the Queen by the shoulders. She had half expected to find herself holding a ghost, or something hard and cold, but there was life and warmth in the body, and an old supple strength that spoke of years spent swinging F6rlennh and Skadhwe in the wars against the Fyrd.

"Efmaer. Enra gave the secret to her daughter, and it passed into the lore of our line. I know your Name."
Undead, the Queen still managed to show shock and dis-may that a stranger knew her greatest secret, the word that described who she was. But her distress lasted hardly a breath. "Tell me quickly."
Segnbora swallowed, looked Efmaer in the eye and whis-pered it — one long, cadenced, beautiful word in very ancient Darthene. Efmaer's eyes filled with it, filled with life, and tears.
"Kinswoman," she choked, the word carrying a great weight of thanks and wild hope. "Go. Don't stay for me. I'll meet you by the doors if I can. I have to see about something before I go."
Off Efmaer went into the unchanging dusk. Segnbora turned and ran after her friends. They were almost out of sight, near the outwalls, where the twilight was thickest. (Mdaha, what's the time?) (There's a little left yet.)
She ran, harder than before, somehow feeling relieved of a great burden. She could feel the backlash of her sorcery creeping up on her, a hammering in her head and a weakness in the limbs. But her sorcery was holding, the others were still bound by her will. She caught sight of them now, not too far ahead, right up against—
"Oh Dark!" she said in complete despair, not caring what the swearing might invoke.
The great doors were shut. The faint light of the lying Moon shone high as before, but its light looked dimmer somehow. Freelorn and Herewiss were standing there look-ing dully up at the doors with the others. There was someone else there too, backed up against the entrance.
She pushed passed Herewiss and stopped sharp. If her heart hadn't withered already, it would have done so now.
There was more energy bound up in that waiting figure than in anyone else she had seen in Glasscastle. It was some-one slender, a blade of a woman with about as much curve; someone with a slight curvature of the back that made for an odd stance, balanced forward as if perpetually about to lunge; someone with a sword like the sharpened edge of the young Moon, and short straight hair shockingly white at the roots; someone wearing a surcoat with Enra's lioncelle on it, passant regardant in blood and gold. Her dark eyes had a dazzlement about them, a terrible placidity. The One with Still Hands looked out of them. She was not defeated yet.
'Wo," Segnbora whispered. Her otherself gazed at her with eyes tranquil and deadly, and hefted another Charriselm, making sure of her grip.
"You're not leaving," her own voice said. Segnbora stepped closer, fascinated by the sight of herself. The other watched her unperturbed, wearing the aura of calm that Shihan had taught her was better than armor. (Mdaha, you suppose she has you too?) (As far as I can tell, I'm only here once. Is she truly you?) Segnbora took another step forward. "Save yourself some trouble," said the Segnbora who guarded the door, "and don't bother."
(I think so,) she said to Hasai, recognizing the line. Queasi-ness started to rise inside her. The backlash was starting, and that meant she would soon be unable to hold together the sorcery. The others would start to drift away. Her otherself took a step forward. There was no question about her purpose. Segnbora raised Charriselm to guard, two-handed, and for the first time eyed her own stance as other opponents must have eyed it, seeking a weakness to exploit for the kill. It terrified her. All those who had attempted what she must now attempt were all dead. They
started to circle one another.
"What I don't understand," the other said in a calm, rea-sonable voice, "is why you're trying to leave." "I have my reasons," Segnbora said, shuddering at the strangeness of answering her own voice. "And I have my oaths—" "Your oaths are vain," said her otherself, edging closer in that particular sideways fashion that was Segnbora's favorite for closing inconspicuously with an enemy. "Who'll notice if you break them?" "She will—"
"Oh, indeed. And what has She done for you lately, besides graciously allowing you a night in bed with Her? You know, don't you, that it was only Her sneaky way of telling you that you're about to die? You don't?" The other looked scornful. "Oaths! The way Freelorn's behaving, he'll never make it anywhere near Prydon, you at least know that! He'll get him-self killed, along with the rest of you, on that cold dark ledge. Ice and darkness, that's what oaths get you—"
Segnbora slid closer, trembling. It was hard to think of this as just another fight. The necessary immersion in the other's eyes — that act of becoming the opponent in order to counter her moves before they happened — was impossible when those eyes had the mad Maiden's dreadful stillness in them. Her every glance made Segnbora afraid she would drown in their blank dazzle, drop Charriselm and surrender. To make matters worse, the backlash was hitting her harder now — not by accident, she suspected.
(Let us fight for you!) Hasai said suddenly. Segnbora blinked at this, and her otherself moved in fast, striking high at her head with Charriselm's twin. Segnbora whirled out of range toward the other's right, taking advan— * tage of her own slightly weak backhand recovery, and came about again. There was a stir of movement among the silent) v watchers. For a moment her will to keep them in one place wavered, and they started drifting back toward Glasscastle's center, where the Maiden waited.
(Don't answer, sdaha. The mdeihei and I have been here long enough to be able to work your body; and your memories of your training are now for us. Tend to the sorcery. We will deal with this other you.)
The other Segnbora was inching in again, waiting an un-guarded moment — evidently Shihan's injunctions about not wasting time on showy but ineffective swordplay were binding on her too.
Segnbora didn't much want to give her body to the mdeihei, but even now the sorcery was unraveling. (Mdaha, you get me killed—!)
(Killed? Here?) Hasai said, gently ironic. The other leaped in to the attack again. While she was still in midair Segnbora felt other muscles, other wills, strike through her body and wear it as she had worn Hasai's earlier. Without her volition she saw Charriselm twist up and slash out in the ha'denh move, the edge-on stroke and backstroke that opens the ekier sequence.
Normally, the feint of the first stroke and the vicious back-hand cut of the second would have been enough to disem-bowel her opponent, but Segnbora's sword met its mate half-way through the first cut. The two swords together sang a tormented note like a bell having its tongue cut out. Char-riselm glanced down and out of the bind, and white Darthene steel sliced air where Segnbora would have been, had not the mdeihei twisted her impossibly sideways. (Ow! My back!)
(You still live, don't you? Tend to the sorcery!) There was no more time for discussion. In the back of her mind the hard-stressed words of the sorcery were turning on one another, blades cutting blades, striving to undo them-selves from her constraints. Ignoring her roiling insides, she shoved words back into place, reinforced them, threatened them, cajoled them in heartfelt Nhaired. It was like carrying water in a sieve, for all the while the power of the wreaking wore away at her outer mind, letting the twilight seep in again. While she stopped up hole after hole of the sieve to keep her sorcery from running out, she watched the mdeihei inside her skin using her to turn and cut and thrust, attacking high and low, using all— out routines like sadekh and ariud. Nothing came of it. Every time, Charriselm met its otherself in her twin's hand and the steel cried out. Every time she felt her own leverages, her own moves, being used against her. Again and again the mdeihei saved her life with dives and dodges that nearly snapped her spine, but the situation got no better.
(I had — no idea you were so — difficult in a fight, sdaha,) Hasai said, breathing hard from Segnbora's exertion. He lunged her forward in the dangerous hilt-first "mutiny" ma-neuver, but her otherself twisted nimbly away.
(Neither did I.) Segnbora pushed a couple of words franti-cally back into the weave of the spell. As she did, she remem-bered something Efmaer had said. I could not kill myself, and so I am less than dead. Was this what had happened to her? Had she fought herself here at the gates and lost?
Hasai backed her up a step, raised Charriselm and stood poised in her body like a dancer, waiting for imprudence to tempt her adversary within range. The other Segnbora took the bait, stepping in suddenly and swinging — the edelk slash that could open Segnbora up like an oyster if it connected.
The Dragon sucked her stomach in and struck downward with Charriselm to stop the edeUe, then whirled the blade up in a blur to strike at the other's unprotected throat. But her otherself came up to block, and Segnbora's stroke was slightly off angle. The two swords met, and this time there was no scrape, but rather a sudden snap that went right to the pit of Segnbora's stomach. A handsbreadth above the hilt, Char-riselm broke in two. The blade-shard went spinning away through the air to fall ringing on the crystal floor.
'Wo/" she cried, staring in anguish at the broken-off stump that had once been whole and beautiful. Before the doors, her otherself relaxed into guard, knowing Segnbora would think three times about trying a passage armed with only half a sword. At the back of her mind, words began falling away from one another—
A quick motion off to one side brought her around. It was Efmaer. The Queen came to her with her hands extended, and nothing in them … or not quite nothing. She held a long
slim darkness, like a slice of the utter darkness beyond the world, like a splinter of night made solid—
"You gave me my Name," Efmaer said, urgent. "This is all I have to give you. Take it!"
Only for a second Segnbora hesitated as she stared at the uncanny thing. It was impossible to focus upon it despite its razor-sharp outline. Then she seized it out of Efmaer's hands, by the end that was slightly thicker, and swung it up. There was no weight of hilt or blade; no feeling of actually holding anything, not even coolness or warmth or resistance to the air. (Hasai—)
(Trust us, we will do well enough.) "Kinswoman, be warned," Efmaer said, "it'll demand a life of you some day — it did of me!"
Segnbora nodded absently. She was already busy with the sorcery again, shoring it up. Her otherself dropped once more into a wary crouch, waiting, watching Skadhwe. Hasai saw his advantage and moved in on the other, not waiting.
"So," said the other, "now you'll kill me—" Segnbora wrought a long word in Nhaired and wove it into a spot in the sorcery that was going bare.
"You're in my way,"she said, remotely feeling the strange heft of the sword as Hasai lifted it. Legend said it would cut anything, but would it
work here, inside another legend?
"That's only part of it," her otherself said. "You like to kill."
She couldn't help looking into the other's eyes then and seeing there the placid regard of the Maiden. The power that had almost drowned

her before stirred again.
Hasai danced in close, striking with Skadhwe. (I can't—) Segnbora whispered in mind. Her resistance made the mdeihei guiding her body miss the stroke. Her other-self slipped out of range, whirling to come at her on her weak side. The mdeikei spun Segnbora about too, so that the face-off stood again as it had. Down in Segnbora's mind a word unraveled itself from her sorcery and slithered away like a serpent of light, followed by another, and another. Herewiss turned away, and Freelorn, and. Lang— (Sdahaf)
"Yes!" she said aloud. This wasn't her Maiden, not the Lady of the White Hunt, defender of life and growth. This was just her own body occupied by an indweller as committed to stag-nation as Hasai was to doing and being.
The mdeihei felt her resolve and leaped again. The other Segnbora, perhaps thinking Segnbora wouldn't kill or hurt her, was slow about
retreating. A second later she danced back with a cry. Red showed high up on her arm, pumping fast.
Segnbora flinched. She had felt nothing, no bite of sword into flesh at all.
"If you kill Me, you're killing part of yourself!" the other cried, sounding afraid for the first time.
Hasai pressed in, following his advantage. Segnbora felt tears coming, but didn't argue as she patched the spell again. Only a moment later did she realize what she was going to have to do. It would have been easiest to let Hasai win the fight, but she refused to allow him sole responsibility for that. The spell would hold for a second. She moaned out loud, took back her muscles, slid in and struck with Skadhwe at the Charriselm being raised against her.
With no more feeling than if it had been cutting air, the shadowblade sheared effortlessly through Charriselm and then downward to take off her otherself s arm at the elbow. The thick sound that the arm made in striking the floor, like so much dead meat, turned Segnbora's stomach. The agony in the other's eyes was beyond words.
Segnbora would gladly have dropped Skadhwe, but it seemed to be holding her hand closed about it. Her otherself struggled to her feet, and reached down to work the broken Charriselm out of the severed hand. She lifted the useless sword left-handed, and faced Segnbora with tears streaming down her face.
"Why couldn't you have stayed?" the other Segnbora screamed at her. "Why couldn't you just let it happen! You always wanted—" Segnbora swung Skadhwe again, and felt nothing as her otherself s head — so much silver in its hair! — went rolling away across the crystal floor, trailing red. The slender trunk
dropped, pumping out what seemed too much blood for so slight a frame. One more body. That's all it is. One more body. Oh, Goddess help me—!
Time was short. The sorcery was unraveling, assaulted by her revulsion at what she had done.
Quickly Segnbora lurched toward the doors, aware of Ef-maer off to one side, of Herewiss and Freelorn drifting away. The doors were sheer, without any latch, and fitted so closely together that a thin knifeblade couldn't have been pushed between them. There was no hope of swinging open their massive weight. Unless, perhaps. .
She raised Skadhwe over her head and struck down, a great hewing blow. The sword sank half its depth into the crys-tal, as if into air. Again she struck, and a shard of the thick glass peeled away and shattered on the floor. Again, and again—
A great prism-slice the size of an ordinary doorway leaned out toward her, slow as a dream, and fell. It smashed thunder-ously right at her
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feet.
"Come on, get out!" she shouted at the others, yanking in her mind at the compulsion-sorcery.
Like hounds on leashes they all came stumbling after her, Freelorn and Herewiss, Lang and Dritt and Moris, Harald and Torve and Sunspark, out the jagged hole into the true twi-light. The Moon was telling the truth again, and frightening truth it was. Its lower curve had dipped behind the wall of the Adine glacier's cirque. Only the crescent's two horns still showed in the sky. West of the Moon, the Evenstar balanced precariously on the ridge of the cirque, a trembling, narrow-ing eye of light.
Behind Segnbora, Herewiss shook his head as the wind hit him, and glanced around like a man roused from reverie. Then he glanced up at where the Moon should have been, and wasn't. "My Goddess, it's almost gone, the bridge—!" Segnbora stood poised by the door, peering in desperately. "Efmaer!" she cried. Just inside the door stood Efmaer. She was looking over her
shoulder, trying to catch a last glimpse of her loved through the twilight. "Efmaer!"
The Queen turned to Segnbora, reached out a hand. Segn-bora took it and pulled, and Efmaer stepped through the jagged portal — She did not have time to look surprised. She simply stopped in midmotion, and went to dust: the dust of a woman five hundred years dead. Within seconds the relentless wind came howling down from the mountain, took her, and whirled her away. Segnbora stared stupidly at her empty hand, then turned and ran through the group, who stood watching her with confusion and fear on their faces.
"Come on," she yelled through her sobs, "the wind is back, the bridge is going to vanish! You want to try standing on air?"
She ran out onto the phantom part of the Skybridge, half-hoping it would give way under her. The memory of Efmaer's hand turning to dust
in hers was sickening.
Footsteps pounded close behind her. The Moon's horns looked across the cirque ridge at her, far apart, growing shorter. The Evenstar wavered. Segnbora ran, gasping and terrified. Running had never been one of her strong points. Freelorn came pounding past her, showing off his sprinter's stride to good advantage. Hard behind him came Herewiss, with Khavrinen once more afire on his back. Then came Sunspark, streaming fire like a runner's torch from rnane and tail. Torve and Lang and Harald and Moris and Dritt passed her too, wheezing. Segnbora saw them all make the solid part of the bridge just at the moment the Moon pulled its horns completely beneath the ridge, and the Evenstar closed its eye and went out. With ten yards to go, the bridge of air dissolved beneath her, and she began to fall. . Then Hasai was doing something, The fall simple went no farther, as if she had wings. In the moment of time he bought her, hands grabbed at her frantically and pulled her up onto the steel.
She shook them off and headed down the bridge, fast, only slowing when the angle of the arch made footing difficult. Tears blinded her, burning coldly in the icy wind. She shook them out of her eyes. Raging at heart, she plunged down to the end of the span, down to rock and snow. There she ducked down around to one side of the Skybridge, and slid on her rear end toward one of the huge supports rooted in the mountainside. The others were out of sight. Above her she heard them calling her, confused, frightened, relieved; and she ignored them. Poor crippled One, I pity You — but You'll have no more company in Your exile. Nor am I going to let Herewiss give yp a piece of his life to bind this grave closed. Enough life's, been wasted here. I have a better way—
She came up hard against the leftmost support, a pillar of Fire-wrought steel easily as thick as Healhra's Tree in Ors-mernin grove. Even in the dark it shimmered a ghostly blue.
"Segnbora." Herewiss's voice floated down to her from above. "'What are you doing?"
Segnbora didn't answer. Instead, she raised Skadhwe and with a great swashing blow sliced right through the steel sup-port. The others had had enough time to get off safely.
The Fire in the steel was no hindrance. The pillar cracked and buckled backward, groaning, peeling apart from itself like a wound in metal flesh. Segnbora sliced at it again. The groan grew terrible as the upper part of the pillar came away from the lower, and the span of the bridge began to lean away from the mountainside.
She scrabbled across rock and snow to the second support and hewed that too. Far above, the groan grew to a scream of tortured metal. Smiling grimly, taking ferocious pleasure in the sound, Segnbora made her way to the last support, swung Ska'dhwe back, and struck. The slim shadow of its blade flicked through the metal and out the other side. The im-mense shadow of the Skybridge above her, shifting, leaned faster and faster and suddenly gave way to the deepening violet of the evening sky.
The screaming stopped. Silently as a flower petal — and as slowly, as gracefully — the huge strip of steel floated down into
the abyss of blue air. Then with a crash that shook all Adine, it struck the south-face glacier halfway down its slope, shatter-ing it. Up and out the broken bridge rebounded, falling again. The air was littered with small, lazily turning splinters of ice and steel. The bridge came to rest beyond her line of vision. She heard it though, and when the far-off noise subsided there was only the sound of her gasping, coming through tears of an-guish and triumph.
There was a long silence from above, broken after a while by Herewiss's subdued voice. "Well," he said, "that's one thing less Eftgan has to worry about …"
Ten
Fear hissed at me and struck from beneath a stone. I crushed its head with a rock. Though dead, it still squirmed.
(Darthene Rubrics, xxiii)
167
THE DOOR INTO SHADOW
Segnbora came down from her room the next morning and made her way to the breakfast hall only to find it empty. There was not even a single platter or cup on the table. The great inner court, when she passed through it, however, was lively as a wasps' nest is after it's been kicked. People and horses in the courtyard clattered and shouted so loud she could barely hear Hasai's comments inside her, and the mcteihei were drowned out entirely. Tack was being burnished, weapons readied, and the silver chains of officers were everywhere. (What goes?) Hasai inquired, as loudly as was polite. (How the Dark should I know?) she said. Up the stairs to the battlements she went, three at a time, Charriselm's scabbard bouncing at her side, its every bump a reminder of the black non-weight that was sheathed in it now. The place where her sword had been felt like the socket of a lost tooth. She was grateful when she reached the top, but not reassured at all by the sight of Freelorn and Lang and Moris and Dritt and Torve leaning on their elbows, looking over the battlements, calm of face but tense of stance.
As she came up to them, something went rap! through the bright morning air, a sharp sound that raised goosebumps on her arms. "What is it?" she said, joining them at the battlement. None of them answered her, so she looked for herself. Down in the valley, looking remote, a dark blot surrounded the star-shaped walls of Barachael town. The blot heaved and moved oddly, separated into smaller pieces, consolidated again. One part of the darkness moved rhythmically backward and then forward again, toward the town's big brass-studded gates.
The forward movement arrested suddenly, and after several seconds the faint rapping boom of the battering ram came floating across the air.
"Damn, oh damn," Segnbora said, and out of reflex reached for Charriselm's hilt in frustration. She snatched her hand away as it fell to the not-hot-not-cold smoothness of Skadhwe's end.
Torve, beside her, raised his eyebrows idly at Segnbora's swearing. "It's silly, really," he said. "The people are all in-side khas-Barachael, so there's no reason for the Reavers to force the gates — if they can. I just hope they don't decide to fire the fields. It's late for putting in another crop of wheat. . "
There was really nowhere else to put her hand. After a couple seconds of hooking it uncomfortably in her belt, Segn-bora sighed and let it fall to Skadhwe's hilt. It was an odd feeling, neutral, like touching one's own skin. "The Reavers arrived last night?" she said. Torve nodded. "Through the pass. I dare say the Queen is wishing she had had Herewiss seal the pass before taking on Glas seas tie., " "Where is the Queen?"
"Upstairs with Herewiss,"Freelorn said, giving Segnbora a sidewise glance meant to be disciplinary. "If you'd get up earlier, you wouldn't miss so much."
Segnbora made a face at her liege and leaned on the battle-ment like the others, elbows-down, staring at the Reavers' futile work in the valley. "More are coming?" she said. It was a rhetorical question. There were always more coming.
"Here and elsewhere," Lang said, not looking at her, in that way he had when he was worried and didn't care to let his eyes betray it. "What happened at Orsvier?" "She won,"
"You said 'elsewhere/ just now," she remarked, puzzled. *" Where "s the new incursion?" Lang wouldn't answer her. She looked past him at Dritt. "Bluepeak," Dritt said. Segnbora's stomach began to churn, and inside her the
mdeihei sang their own unease in response to hers. Herewiss's dream was starting to come true, then. Of all the places in the world where the Shadow's sleeping influence shouldn't be disturbed, Bluepeak was the foremost. "How many Reavers?"
"Her scrying would not come clear on that point," Torve said. "Maybe three thousand. People, a large supply convoy, beasts. . and Fyrd." "Fyrd?" she whispered. Allied with humans? The idea shocked her. Not even in the ancient days of terror, between the Catastrophe and the Worldwinning, had Fyrd ever gone so far as to join forces with humans, whom they regarded as prey.
These must be the thinking kind, then; the species they had fought en route to the Morrowfane. The Lion and the Eagle had supposedly vanquished them at Bluepeak long ago, but now they were back. No doubt they were thirsting for ven-geance for the times before they had gained intelligence; times when humankind preyed on them.
"Looks like Bluepeak will be our job," Moris muttered. "Looks that way," Torve said with his usual calm. He turned his eyes back to the Reavers in the valley, who — having had no luck with the town gates — were sitting down to a late breakfast.
"Idiots," Harald said under his breath. "Torve, couldn't you sent out a sortie?"
"Without orders? The Queen would take my officers' chain and use it to hang me by my privates," he answered, only half-joking. "Besides, they're out of bowshot."
Wings whistled overhead. Segnbora and the others glanced up and saw what looked like fire flying. Feathers burning like embers, eyes like live coals, a tail like flame streaming back from a torch … They flinched back from the parapet as the brightness landed there. It stood still long enough to smooth a couple of smoldering feathers back into place, then ruffled itself up in a flurry of red-hot brilliance. (Levies,) it said, (strategy and tactics, forced marches, that's all your soldiers can talk about. I'm bored.) Segnbora raised an eyebrow at the form Sunspark had adopted. "Shame, Firechild! There's only one Phoenix!"
(What's shame?) Sunspark said. (As for the Phoenix — if it's so fond of this shape, let it come try a couple of falls with me. If it wins, I'll let it keep the form.) It peered over the battle-ment at the Reavers below, interested. (Are they with us?)
Segnbora gazed at Sunspark with idle affection. Its tail-feathers were like those of a peacock, but red-golden and bearing eyes like coals. They were searing the stone against which they lay. She started to get an idea. "No," she said.
The elemental turned its fiery eyes on her, glowing even hotter. The others moved down the battlement, all but Torve, who stood his ground. She felt Sunspark examining her state of mind with hot impatient interest. (This is a new kind of joke, perhaps?) (Yes. And no. Better than a joke.)

THE DOOR INTO SHADOW
(Something for Herewiss? Something to make him glad?) (Yes.) She considered her thought carefully before sharing it. (Before I tell you, consider this: When he finds out about it, will he be angry, will he be in pain? If he won't. .) She let the thought rest.
Sunspark looked down at the Reavers, considering care-fully. For all its power, it knew it had much to learn yet about being human. (What are they doing?) it said, audible to the others.
Torve looked at it as calmly as if it had been one of his own people. "Breaking the gates of the town," he said, "to get inside and kill the people, or take their belongings at least."
Sunspark didn't look up from the valley. Segnbora caught its thoughts: Herewiss doesn't care for killing, or for robbing either. He tries to prevent them whenever possible. (And when they've done that? What then?)
"They'll come here and try to kill us, so that no one can stop them from doing as they please in this part of the coun-try," Torve said. (That's done it!) Sunspark said.
Leaping from the battlement in a swift flash of fire, it sent them all staggering back. Segnbora felt her singed face to find out if her eyebrows were still there. Once certain that they were, she looked around hurriedly. Sunspark had vanished. But Harald and Dritt were pointing down at the valley and laughing.
Far down in the depths of air, the group around the batter-ing ram suddenly began to break up. One person after an-other jumped up to beat frantically at smoldering clothes, their yelps of consternation trailing tardily through the air. "Can it manage a whole army, though?" Lang asked uncer-tainly.
Then it was Segnbora's turn to point and laugh, as a bloom of light erupted before the gates, followed by the sound of screaming. The ram — a lopped monarch pine, full of pitch as monarchs are — literally exploded in red-hot splinters and clouds of burning gas. People and ponies were flung in all directions. Then from the explosion site something like a serpent of flame went pouring over the scorched ground. It lengthened and wound right around the walls of Barachael, met its tail and kept on going, coiling around, reaching up-ward. In moments the town was lost behind burning walls, and the huge head of a coiled fire-serpent wavered lazily above Barachael. The confused shrieks and yells of the routed Reavers mingled with the screaming of their ponies. People and animals ran every which way. A roar of amazed laughter and applause went up from the
walls of khas-Barachael.
In response the Reavers, who had moved away from Bara-chael town and toward the keep, raised a chorus of war shouts. But their shouts had a half-hearted sound to them, as if they had other matters in mind. Sunspark was looking down at them with innocent malice, its fiery head swaying like that of a sleepy viper deciding whether to strike.
"What the—!" someone said from a higher parapet. Segnbora glanced up and saw Eftgan and Herewiss looking over the rail at Barachael town, very surprised. "Your idea?" Eftgan said to Herewiss. "No!" he said, grinning down at Sunspark. It stretched up its flame-hooded head and blinked at him good-naturedly. (They had torches,) it said, (and might have burned the town. However, if anybody's going to do any burning around here, it's going to be me.)
Herewiss and Eftgan came down to the battlement together and leaned on the parapet with Freelorn's followers. "I wish that sealing the pass was going to be as simple," Eftgan said.
Freelorn glanced at her. "It really ran be done, then?" Herewiss nodded. "It took me a while to work out the exact method, and it'll take some hours to attune to the mountain properly. . but, yes, I can do it." "And survive?"

Herewiss's glance crossed with Freelorn's, gently mocking. "That's with Her, of course," he said, "but I have a few things to do yet before I go willingly to death's Door. I believe I'll live."
"It's risky, though," Eftgan said, as if resuming an argu-ment with herself. "The earth always moves better on a night when the Moon's full, but the next time that happens there's an eclipse. The Shadow will be very strong then—"
There was a silence. Segnbora bit her lip. In a place as bitterly contested as Barachael, where the land was soaked with centuries of blood and violent death, even the simplest wreaking could be warped by the built-up negative forces. An eclipse was no help at all. And to attempt a wreaking that involved unconsciousness of the upper mind, as this one surely would— "I'm strong too," Herewiss said.
The complete assurance in his voice made Segnbora shud-der. She had heard such assurance before, and disaster had followed. "The wreaking itself doesn't worry me; I received more than enough Power to handle it at the Morrowfane. The tricky part will be the survey of the land. That'll have to be done out-of-body, and it'll take at least a day. Moreover, it must be done today, or tomorrow at the latest, in order for me to be properly rested up for the long wreaking."
Lang raised his eyebrows. '"Survey?" Herewiss nodded and leaned on the parapet. "Can't seal the pass without checking the valley to see how its stone lies — strata, faults, underground water. Touch the wrong part of a landscape and the whole thing could be destroyed."
"This area's quite unstable," someone said, and heads turned toward Segnbora, confusing her terribly until she real-ized that it was she who had spoken. "There are two major faults under the valley," she heard herself go on in a voice that
sounded like hers but was somehow odd. "Eight minor verti-cal faults run east-west between Adine and Aulys, and one runs across the lower Eisargir Pass. One major vertical fault crosses the valley mouth from Swaleback to Aulys's southern spur—" (Mdaha? What are you—)
(If he will work with stone, here, he must learn this, sdaha!) said the great dark voice inside her. She held her peace and let him use her throat.
"Then beneath those is a lateral fault that runs down the Eisargir Pass from the foot of Mirit into the valley, past the town, and out into the plain. It's very treacherous. We made no Marchward here because of it. To touch it wrongly will cause it to discharge and fold the valley in upon itself. The mountains might come down too. Especially Adine, whose support-spurs are rooted close to the lateral." The others stared at her, particularly Herewiss. He opened his mouth, but paused a moment, unsure how to begin. "Sir—" "I greet you, Hearn's son," she said, and approximated Hasai's slight bow. "Sir, how do you know all this?"
The mdeihei were laughing indulgently, as one laughs at a child. "We are Dracon," Hasai said, very gently. "We know. Stone is our element."
"Sir," Herewiss said, "I'd like to trust what you say, it'd save me a great deal of time, but—"
"— but you don't understand," Hasai said, patient. Segn-bora was surprised to hear the overtones of his inner song, calm and measured, coming out in her own voice.
"What you ask us is a great mystery. Even we aren't sure how stone became our element. But in the world from which we came, we were born in the stone, and dwelt in it. These are the very earliest times of which we speak. When food and drink failed us, stone and starlight were all we had left. We learned to use them. Those who didn't understand stone— how it could be moved to make shelter or melted with Dra-gonfire to help one find more starlight in dim times — those didn't survive. Those of us who lived to become as we are
now, are born knowing the structure and movement of rock as we know how to use our fire to shape it. We experience stone as if it were part of us. Indeed, we are the foundations, the roots of the world."
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Herewiss and Freelorn looked at each other. No one on the parapet spoke.
From down in Barachael valley, the hot eyes of the blazing serpent that encircled the town looked up with interest. (You're good with fire, are you?) Sunspark said, its voice lazy but full of challenge.
Segnbora gulped. But Hasai turned her head and look-ed down at the elemental calmly. "We know something of fire."
Sunspark glanced at Herewiss, as if considering the agree-ments that bound it, and then back at Segnbora. "Some day," it said formally, "we'll
match our power, you and I, and see which is greater."
"Some day," Hasai said calmly, "we shall." The words made Segnbora squeeze her eyes shut against a sudden blind-ing headache, for they were in future definite tense, describ-ing something that had not yet come to pass.
When the memories passed, and the sight of common day-light came back to her, Hasai lifted her head again. "Hearn's son," he said, "do you desire our aid?"
Herewiss looked at Segnbora as if trying to see past Hasai's voice. " 'Berend, what do you say?" She coughed and cleared her throat, getting control back. "I say, if Hasai offers you aid, take it."
"In that case," Herewiss replied slowly, "I'd like to check his assessment of the faults—" He stopped, unwilling to com-plete his suggestion. " — in my mind?" she guessed. "Yes."
Segnbora considered the idea. "You're welcome to look in," she said finally. "When?" "As close as possible to the hour that we begin the wreak-ing. Tomorrow night?" "Wait a minute!" Segnbora said, panic rising. "We?" Herewiss shrugged. "I'll need ongoing information during
the wreaking itself. I could probably do it alone, but why stretch myself thin when there's assistance offered?"
Segnbora hesitated. To participale in the wreaking itself would mean becoming involved with Herewiss's Fire. And the Fire was something she had sworn she would never touch again; she had suffered too many frustrations on its account. Besides, being unable to focus, she might become a danger to the proceedings. .
Herewiss picked up her last thought. " 'Berend, you came out of the Precincts with everything they had to teach, less one," he said. "I doubt you'll foul a wreaking in progress. Goddess knows how many of them they put you through!"
Most of them, Segnbora thought sourly, for all the good it did. She had no excuse. "All right," she said. "Tomorrow night, then."
"We'll move mountains together," Hasai added in a rare show of humor. There was starlight in the cave, and behind him ran the slow quiet
laughter of the mdeikei.
Herewiss nodded to Segnbora, and then turned to Eftgan. "Madam,"he said, "we have to finish discussing the Bluepeak business." He started back up the stairs to the tower, taking them two at a time, Khavrinen bouncing at his back and trailing blue Flame. Eftgan gave Segnbora a curious look and followed.
What have I got myself into! Segnbora thought. She put her head down onto her hands and gazed across the valley at Barachael, memories of the Precincts, and her unsuccessful attempts to focus tearing at her.
Below, the fire-serpent folded its hood and looked at her with innocent wickedness. (Tell me a joke?) it said. Segnbora groaned.
The next day it began to seem as if Eftgan's glum assess-ment of the Shadow's ability to direct the Reavers was correct. It certainly seemed as if they knew the incursion route down the Eisargir Pass was threatened. They came pouring out of the valley in a disorderly but
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constant stream. Skin tents sprouted everywhere, and thousands of shaggy Reaver ponies cropped the green corn down to stubble. The old silence of
the valley was replaced by a low, malicious whispering, like the Sea's when a storm is brewing. Dusk brought no peace, either. All the valley glittered with the sparks of campfires, around which war songs were being sung, and swords shar-pened.
Segnbora sat atop an embrasure in the northeastern battle-ment as twilight settled in, looking down at the press of Reaver tents and people gathered around the lower switch-back of the approach to khas-Barachael gates. Hasai looked with her, undisturbed. (This place is well built, for something made by your kind,) he said. (It won't fall to such as these.)
"Maybe not. But this is the strongest fortress in this part of the south, and they don't dare march away from here and leave it unconquered at their backs. Even if Herewiss seals the pass successfully, these three thousand will just sit at the gates and hold the siege." (You're troubled, sdaha. And it's not the prospect of battle that's causing it.)
With a sigh, Segnbora swung down from her perch on the wall and sat on the stone bench inside the embrasure, leaning back against the cool wall. (I'm not delighted about this busi-ness of being involved in a wreaking,) she said silently. (Espe-cially this one. And you got me into it.)
The dusky melody of Hasai's laughter rumbled inside her. (I think not. Who spoke the words, who told the Firebearer he was welcome? Did. you lie to him, then?)
Exasperated, Segnbora closed her eyes and slid down into herself. Above the cave within her, it was twilight too. Stars were coming out one by one in the shaft that opened on the sky. Hasai lay at ease on the stone, his eyes silver fire, his tail twitching slightly like that of an amused cat. Segnbora walked over to him and sat down by one of his front talons, leaning her back against it and craning her neck back to see him.
The Dragon was a shadow, winged like the night, only his face glittering in the cool light of his eyes. "Very funny," she said. "Mdaha, I didn't
lie. But I'm afraid of him depending on me. I might fail him."
"Ejsn 'All. Vuudo," Hasai chided. "When will you accept what you are?"
"Be patient, will you? It took me long enough to find out what I'm not."
"Part of you is me," the Dragon said. "I will not fail so simple a task as examining the stone in this valley. If you wore my body more often, you would know that."
The melody of the bass viols in his voice became grave. Behind him the mdeihei matched his song in cadences of calm regret.
"Your memories are buried deeper under you mind's stone than ever. We are at your foundations, and still you try to keep us out. It would be so
easy to become one," he said, lifting his head. "Look…"
In a flash of memory, Hasai showed her the building of the Eorlhowe in North Arlen — a whole mountain that had been uprooted from a remote range in west Arlen as casually as a man might pluck a flower for his hair. The mountain was taken to the tip of the North Arlene Cape, laid there upon the body of the slain Worldfinder, and melted down upon him with Dragonfire until it was only half the size it had been. Then its remains were talon-carved and tunneled and re-worked into the residence of the DragonChief, the Dweller-at-the-Howe. Segnbora shuddered at the thought of the pal-try skin of stone that had been "protecting" her inner mind from Hasai and the mdeihei.
"Your fear cripples you," Hasai said more gently. "You fear what we are. Even our joys are terrible to you. Matings, births, deaths, the Immanence that isn't your Lady but is nonetheless real— You must give up the fear, come to terms with these and all the other things from which you cannot run away. Cease hiding yourself from yourself, be who we are!"
"It's not that easy," she said, taking a last glance at that distressing memory of the Howe. As she watched, storm-clouds clustered about it, hiding
the Howe's rounded peak. Dragons flashed in and out of the clouds like lightning, their roars deafening the thunder. Whether this was ahead— mem-ory, or past-memory, she had no idea.
(Hallo the heart!) came a voice from a long way up. It was Herewiss's voice, tentative but cheerful. "Damn," Segnbora muttered.
Hasai lowered his head toward her. "Later, sdaha?"
"Later for sure," she said, disgruntled. She was not ready for this, but nevertheless she called up to the stars, "Come on in!"
"I brought a friend," Herewiss said, slipping sideways out of nothing as if through a narrow door. Khavrinen was laid casually over his shoulder.
Fire flowed from it and caught in Freelorn's eyes as he appeared behind his loved.
"Nice place you've got here. Where's your lodger? Lorn wanted to—"
Segnbora watched in amused approval as Herewiss stopped in midsentence and looked up … and up, and up. Freelorn halted beside him and did the same, his eyes going wide. When Segnbora had first come in, Hasai had been indistinct, a looming dark presence. But now the gems of his scales caught the light of Herewiss's Fire and threw it back in a dazzle of blue sparks. He lowered his head to thirty or forty feet above Freelorn and Herewiss, tilting his head to look first at one of them, then at the other.
"I see the resemblance remains," he said, very low, rum-bling a major chord of approval. Following the words came Dragonfire, a slow and luxuriant spill of blinding white radi-ance that poured from his mouth to the floor and pooled there, burning. "Greetings, Lion's Child. And to you and your Flame, greetings also, Hearn's son."
From the darkness beyond Hasai the mdeihei joined the greeting, recognizing the sons of two lines worthy of notice even as Dragons reckoned time. The huge cavern filled with a thunder of concerting voices, a harmony that shook the walls.
Herewiss bowed very low. Freelorn glanced around him in amazement at the noise, and then down at the spill of Dra-gonfire, under which the stone floor had melted and be-gun to bubble. Finally he tilted his head back up to look at Hasai. "Resemblance?" he said in a small voice. "To Healhra,"Hasai said calmly. Freelorn's mouth fell open.
"I was at Bluepeak March ward some years before the Bat —
tie," Hasai said. "I saw him when he was a little younger than you. You have his nose."
"I, uh. ." Freelorn said, and closed his mouth. He looked over at Segnbora.
She shrugged. "He's been around awhile, Lorn. Mdaha, what do we have to do for Herewiss?"
"Come deeper inside us, sdaha. He will see what he needs to see when you do."
Hasai dropped his head down to Segnbora's level, his jaws opening slightly to receive her hand. Dragonfire still seethed in his mouth, so that the floor hissed and smoked where drops of it fell. For a split second she hesitated. Then, recognizing a challenge, she rolled up the sleeve of her shirt and thrust her arm into the fire. This was happening in her mind, after all. How badly could it hurt? She found out. Jaws closed and held her trapped in the essence of burning, a heat so terrible that it transcended pain. Her control broke. She opened her mouth to scream, feeling the heat more completely than anything she had ever felt in her life. But to her utter amazement, without the sensation stopping, the pain vanished—
She felt the stone. There was no way she could not feel it. The sensation was like a fencer's when balance at last becomes perfect and power flows up from the earth. Connec-tions formerly hidden suddenly became clear and specific: her body seated on stone, the bench; the beech's placement on the stone of the upper-battlement paving; the positions and junctures of the blocks of khas-Barachael's walls; the massive piers and columns of its foundation-roots in Adine's southern spur.
She felt the whole mountain, a complex of upthrust blocks and minor stresses pushing against one another and easing again as Adine's roots met those of its neighboring peaks. Her perception widened and spread around the valley to include Eisargir and Houndstooth and Aulys, mountains leaning on or striving against one another. The valley, too, filled with her until she felt the faults and stresses there, a surface unease like a vast itch. She felt the transverse vertical faults, lying fairly quiet now that mountain-building in the area was largely
finished. She felt the lateral fault, stretching from head to foot of the valley and holding dangerously still.
Farther down, heat grew in the stone. Its structure and its temper changed as her perception slid down through the fragile skin on which continents rode and jostled. Weight and pressure grew by such terrible strides that there was no telling anymore whether the stone was liquid or solid: it simply burned darkly, raging to be free, yet having nowhere to go.
Down farther still, it was too hot, too dense, for stone. Molten metal seethed and roasted in eternal night, swirling with the planet's turning, breeding forces for which Segnbora had no words but which the Dragons understood. These were some of the forces they manipulated while flying, and finding their way.
(Enough!) Herewiss said, his voice seeming to come from a long way off. (Sir, I see your point.)
(Look here, then,) Hasai said, redirecting Segnbora's atten-tion to the very top of the paper)' layer where mountains were rooted and the valley lay. (You see the danger of the lateral fault. Trigger it and the vertical faults will likely collapse the valley, bringing down the mountains. Yet the pass you pro-pose to close has the lateral running right down it, and direct intervention there will definitely set off the fault.)
(There's also the problem of the negative energies,) Segn-bora said. (See how they're gathered along the lateral fault. It's ready to have a quake. Evidently that's an option the Shadow's been considering for a while.)
(Fve been thinking about it too,) Herewiss said, sounding grim. (The question is, what do I do about it? There's only one possibility. .) He trailed off, sounding dubious. (What's your thought, Fire-bearer?) Hasai said. Herewiss indicated one of the eastern roots of Hounds-tooth, a colossal pier of granite and marble set a half mile deep in the crust. (Positive and negative attract,) he said. (If I strike there with my Fire and cause that root to move, the negative should flow away from the lateral fault and attack my positive Power. But before that happens and the forces cancel out, the root itself
will move upward enough to knock the Houndstooth peak down into the pass and block it permanently—) He broke off, looking at Hasai's perception as if seeing something wrong. (Yes, you've found the problem with your plan,) Hasai said. (Watch.) As he spoke, the perception moved and changed in response to Herewiss's suggestion. They felt, rather than saw, the smooth peak of Houndstooth rear up and collapse west-ward into the Eisargir Pass. A few seconds later the lateral fault came violently alive. Half of Barachael valley slid south with a jerk, while the rest jumped north. Every vertical fault went wild, one after another, some blocks thrusting hundreds of feet upward in a matter of minutes, some sinking fathoms deep. Mount Adine fell on Barachael. Eisargir collapsed on itself and buried the priceless ironlodes forever. When it was all over, nothing was left but a broken, uninhabitable wilderness.
Herewiss grimaced. (The psychic energy canceled out all right,) he said, (but I had no idea there was so much move-ment-energy in that lateral fault. Damn!)
(Don't berate yourself,) Hasai said. (The move was well made for one so new at the game. Come, Firebearer, try it again. There is always a solution.)

THE DOOR INTO SHADOW
(Well then, how about this. .)
For a long while afterward Segnbora's mind was filled with the feeling of rock shifting and grinding and mountains fall-ing over in various disastrous combinations. She got very bored. The game Hasai and Herewiss were engrossed in was like an extremely complicated variation of checks — and though Segnbora enjoyed playing for the delight of crossing wits with another player, her inability to think more than three or four moves ahead usually kept the game short and its ending predictable. Freelorn, to her intense irritation, looked over Herewiss's shoulder in fascination, understanding every-thing.
(That'll do it!) she heard Herewiss say at last. Focusing her attention fully on the scene she was feeling, she found, to her amazement, a Barachael valley still relatively intact, with both town and fortress unhurt, and the Eisargir Pass successfully sealed. Some distance away in her mind, she
could feel Herewiss grinning like a child who had beaten a master.
(That was an elegant solution,) Hasai said. (And as I under-stand the Shadow from my sdaha, It would have to intervene Itself to foul the situation any further, which It's reluctant to do, not so? It fears risking defeat.)
(That's right,) Herewiss said. (There's one move that still bothers me, though. The next-to-last. That one root of Aulys, the one that's split up the middle—)
(Move it as a whole, and you'll be safe.) Hasai's perception of the valley winked out, leaving them standing in her cave again. Segnbora took her hand out of Hasai's mouth and looked at it closely. There were no burns or blisters. Her mdaha rumbled at her in amiable mockery. "Hearn's son," he said, "when this business is over, I'd be delighted to play with you again. There are some stresses in the volcanic country in west Arlen that might stretch you a little."
Herewiss nodded. "With 'Berend's cooperation, abso-lutely." He turned to her. "I'll be starting the wreaking at sunset tomorrow. Lorn and Sunspark will be keeping an eye on our bodies while we're out of them, and Lorn will be tied partially into the wreaking to keep us in touch with what's happening in real time. Are you still with us?"
She felt like telling him no, but Hasai, gazing silently down at her, felt about in her memories and brought one in particu-lar: night outside the old Hold, and her voice saying to Here-wiss, "You'll find your Power, prince. . I'll help if I can." "Yes," she said. "Dark, it's been years since I last moved a mountain."
Herewiss, hand in hand with Freelorn, gave her an approv-ing look. "Later, then," he said. Fire from Khavrinen blazed up and swirled about them. They vanished.
Segnbora folded her arms and looked up at the silver eyes gazing placidly down on her. "You're up to something," she said.
Hasai flicked his wings open, a humorous gesture that made cool wind a second later. "When one knows what's going to be," he said, "one
tends to make it happen that way."
"So what's going to happen?" Hasai slowly dropped his jaw at her. "Live, sdaha, and find out."
He vanished into a memory. Segnbora sat for a moment on the bench, listening to the amused song of the mdeihei — then grinned with anticipation, felt her way out of the embrasure, and went to bed.
"How are the stars?" Herewiss said from behind her.
"Almost right," said Freelorn. He was beside her, leaning on the sill of the tower window. "Another quarter-hour and the Moon'11 be in the Sword." "Great. I'm almost done."
The Moon, just past its first quarter and standing nearly at the zenith, looked down on a valley that flickered with campfires and the minute shiftings of Reavers going to and fro. Around Barachael's walls, a lazy ring of fire smoldered, flaring up every now and then when some skeptical Reaver got too close. Segnbora, feeling a touch naked without sur-coat and mail, turned her back on the valley vista and watched Herewiss at work.
The tower room had been emptied of everything but two narrow pallets and a chair. Around these, in what had been the empty air in the middle of the room, Herewiss was build-ing his wreaking — the support web that would both protect him and Segnbora and slow their perception of time long enough for his Fire to do its work. He stood in britches and shirt, as Segnbora did, with one hand on his hip. With the other hand he wielded Khavrinen as lightly as an artist's sty-lus, adding line after delicate line of blue Flame to what had become a dome of pulsing webwork with him at its center.
The completeness of his concentration, and the economy and elegance of the structure itself, delighted Segnbora. Lady, he's good, she thought, admiring the perfect match between the inner symmetry-ratios of the wreaking and the meter of the spell-poem he was reciting under his breath. It had been foolishness to dismiss him from the Precincts simply because he was male. "If you leave my pulse running that fast," she said, noticing
the brilliance of the last lifeline Herewiss had drawn, "I'll be in bad shape when we get back."
"Nervous, huh?" he said, glancing at her and lifting Khav-rinen away from the description of a parabola. He touched the sword's tip to the pulse line, draining it of some Fire. "Bet-ter?" "Yes."
"Good. Sunspark?"
Hot light flowered in one corner of the room and con-solidated into a slim red-haired young woman with merry golden eyes. (They're impatient down there, loved,) she said, pleased. (They keep testing me.)
"Fine, just so long as they don't get too interested in khas-Barachael. You know what to do?"
(This being the fourth time you've asked me,) Sunspark said, folding her arms in good-natured annoyance, (I dare say I do. None of them will leave the valley. They'll find the way into the plains barred, just as Barachael town is barred to them. On the night of full Moon, immediately before the eclipse starts, I'll begin driving the lot of them back up the pass. None will die.)
Herewiss nodded, narrow-eyed, completing the intercon-nection of several lines. "I hate to admit it," he said, "but there's a possibility that something'll go wrong with all this. If the pass fails to seal properly, and I've exhausted myself, and they get down into the valley again—" (Loved,) Sunspark said, (in that case I'll be very quick with them. Their bodies will be consumed before the pain has a chance to start.) Herewiss looked gratefully at the elemental from inside the shimmering blue web of the wreaking. "Thanks, loved. I'll do my best to make it unnecessary." He rested Khavrinen point-down on the floor and gazed around at the finished spellweb. "Lorn?" "The Moon's right," Freelorn said, turning away from the window. "Let's go."
Trembling a bit with excitement, Segnbora unbuckled her swordbelt, drew Skadhwe from it, and tossed the belt in one corner. Herewiss walked out through the web and then
turned inward to face, from the outside, the part of it specifi-cally concerned with his body.
"A little to the left, 'Berend," he said as she moved into position. "Lorn, you're fine." They each stood at one corner of an equilateral triangle. "All together: step—"
Segnbora walked through the part of the Fireweb sympa-thetic to her, feeling it crackle with charge as it brushed against her face and hands. The hair stood up all over her as the spell passed through her body and rooted in flesh and bone. At the same time came an astonishing wave of lethargy. Hurriedly Segnbora lay down on the left-hand pallet, settling herself as comfortably as she could. She laid SkadhwЈ down the length of her, folded both hands about its hilt at heart level, and began relaxing muscles one by one. Across the circle, Herewiss was settling himself with Khav-rinen, while Freelorn bent over him. "My head aches," Lorn said. "Is it supposed to do that?"
"That's the part of your mind that's slowing down to keep up with us," Herewiss explained drowsily as the wreaking took hold of him too. His eyes lingered on Freelorn for a moment.
"Don't even think it," Lorn said, and bent lower to kiss Herewiss good night. Herewiss's eyebrows went up for a sec-ond, then down again as his eyes closed.
(Mdaha,) Segnbora said to her inner depths, closing her own eyes, (see you when I'm out of the body!)
(I think not,) the answer came back, faint, amused. (What?) She tried to hold off the wreaking long enough for Hasai to explain, but it was no use.
Briefly, the spell fought with her lungs, then conquered them and slowed her breathing. That done, the Firework wound deeper into her brain, altering her thought rhythms toward the profound unconsciousness of wreaking suspen-sion. For a second of mindless panic Segnbora fought that too, like a drowning swimmer, but then everything, even Hasai and the mdeihei, fell away. .
Eleven
"Choose," She said to the cruel king. "For I am bound by My own law, and what you desire shall be given yoy, until you shall ask Me for something beyond My power to grant." He told her his desires, and she granted them all — until at last, alone, desolate King of an empty city, he cried out to Her in anguish, "Change my heart:!"
"I shall leave you now," the Godd>ess said, "for you have asked a boon past My power. Only one has the power to fulfill that wish. . and you are doing so."
from "The King Who Caught the Goddess," in Tales of old Steidin, ed. s'Lange, n-'Viirendir, 1055 p.a.dL
Segnbora was wide awake. She swung her feet off the pallet and stood up with Skadhwe in her hand. The room around her was foggy and hard to see — Herewiss's spellweb had al-ready slowed her time sense considerably. Dust and convec-tion currents moved around her at what seemed many times their normal speed. Her othersenses were wide awake too, and showed her strange blurs going swiftly about the room: one yellow-bright as fire, one dark with an odd tangle of potential at its heart: Sunspark and Freelorn.
Herewiss still lay in his body, the blue-white core that was his soul struggling yet with the shell that surrounded it. Tense with the sensation of his difficulty, Segnbora turned away from him to gaze down at herself where she lay on her pallet.
(Mdaha?) she said. No answer came back; evidently the mdeihei were tied to her body, and must stay there, silenced, when she left it. Sorrowful and nostalgic, she looked down at her still form, drowned in a repose deeper than any sleep. It had been a long time since the Precincts, when she had last been out-of-body and able to see herself so clearly. A lot had changed since then. There was a wincing fierceness about the corners of the eyes now that hadn't been there when she was younger. There was also a tension in her posture, as if her body was prepared to move in a hurry. Too much time alone, she thought, with the curious soulwalker's objectivity. Too much time on tht run.
(It's not that bad,) Herewiss said from behind her. She turned, and in sheer appreciation didn't move or speak for a few thoughts' time. In general, Herewiss still looked like his body. He was still
lean and tall, wearing the no-nonsense musculature of a smith: hands both powerful and delicate; a fine-featured face made handsome by sleepy, gentle eyes. But in his wreaking form shone a child's innocent joy in life. Fire, with its incred-ible potential for creation and destruction, blazed in him like the Sun held captive in a crystal. He was dangerous, and utterly magnificent. (Well met,) she said, and meant it. (You speak for me too,) Herewiss said. Segnbora realized how oddly he was looking at her, and wondered what he saw. (We're short of time,) he said. (But for the moment, look at that!)
He pointed at something behind her. Segnbora looked over her shoulder, away from the quick-flickering light of the Fire-web. Laid out along the floor, long and dark behind her, was her shadow.
(That's impossible!) she said in momentary indignation, turning to see it better. (You can't have a shadow out of the body!) Yet there the darkness lay, stretching to the wall and right through it, blandly contradicting what had been taught to her in the Precincts. Experimentally Segnbora raised an arm, and was dumbfounded to see the serrated shape of a Dragon's wing lift away from the shadow-body.
Behind her she felt Herewiss restraining his laughter. (My mdaha is truly becoming part of me,) she said, amused in spite of herself. (Where is he? I thought he'd be here with us.) (So did I. He's with my body, it looks like.) Herewiss felt dubious for a moment. (How are you going to tell me what's happening in the stone, then? If he's not here—) She started to lean on Skadhwe, then aborted the gesture as the sword's point began to pierce the stone they stood on. (Well, I have my memories of what it's like to be one of the mdeihei. All I have to do is live in them completely enough and we'll be fine.) She wished she was as certain of that as she made it sound. (Now, where do we have to go?) Herewiss nodded at the room's north wall, laying Khavrinen over his shoulder. Segnbora did the same with Skadhwe, and together they walked through the wall and into the clear air over Barachael. The stars wheeled visibly in the paling sky above them, moving a little faster each moment as Herewiss's wreaking further slowed their time sense.
(How about that, it works,) Herewiss said, pausing. (A mo-ment. Lorn?)
The answer came not in words, but in swift-passing impres-sion of concern, relief, encouragement. All was well in the tower, though Freelorn wondered why Herewiss had waited so long to check in with him. Hours had passed.
(We're all right, loved,) Herewiss said. (The pauses may get pretty long, but don't worry about us unless the web fails.) He broke contact and walked down the air toward Barachael val-ley. Segnbora followed.
Their othersight was stimulated by the wreaking, and the Chaelonde valley bubbled like a cauldron with normally un-seen influences. The Reavers' emotions were clearly visible, a stew of frustrated violence and fear. Barachael town crouched cold and desolate behind the invaders. As the low threshold of her underhearing dropped lower still, Segnbora heard the slow bitter dirge of the town's bereaved stones, which were certain that once more the children of their ma-sons had been slaughtered. The other lives of the valley, birds and beasts, showed themselves only as cautious sparks of life, aware of an ingathering of Power and lying low in order not to attract attention. The sky to the east went paler by the moment. The Moon slid down the sky and faded in the face of day, looking almost glad to do it. While they watched, the Sun leapt into the sky too quickly, as if it wanted to put distance between itself and the ground.
The ground was a problem. Dark negative energies seethed within it the way thoughts of revenge seethe within an angry mind. Though the faults weren't yet very clear, it was plain that these negative energies ran down most of them, draining toward the foundations of the valley, where they collected in a great pool of ancient, festering hatred. (We have to get into empathy with that!) Segnbora said, revolted.
(I'd sooner sit in a swamp, myself,) Herewiss said, and he strode down the air toward the reeking morass. (Still, the sooner we do it, the sooner we can get out and get clean again. Come on, down here. .)
He led the way around toward the base of the easternmost spur of Adine. There one of the vertical faults followed the spur's contour, a remnant of a day long before when the earth had shrugged that particular jagged block of stone above the surface. The fetid swirling of emotion in the valley broke against the spur as a wave breaks, flowing around it and up the pass. Herewiss stepped carefully down onto a high ridge of the spur and waited there for Segnbora. She arrived shortly after him, and they both paused to watch the way the shadows in the valley shrank and changed. The few moments' walk down from Sai khas-Barachael had begun at sunrise, and now it was nearly noon. (Now what?)
Herewiss lifted Khavrinen. Fire ran down from it and sur-rounded him until he blazed like someone drenched with oil and set alight. (In,) he said, and glanced down at the ridge he stood on.
Without further ado he stepped down into the earth as if walking down stairs.
(Show-off,) Segnbora thought affectionately. She walked down the outer surface of the ridge, seeking the way into the mountain that would best suit her. Turning, she saw her in-congruous shadow against the ridgewall behind her. Reach-ing behind her with both hands, she grasped it and pulled it forward about her shoulders like a cloak, becoming what she couldn't be.
It was astonishingly easy. There was fire in her throat again, and she had wings to feel the air, one of which was barbed not with a claw of white diamond but with a sliver of night made solid. She dug her talons into the naked stone1. Without mov-ing, Segnbora knew what lay beneath her. The deep, slow, scarce-moving selfness of the rock, the secret burning at the roofs, the earth's heavy veins running with the mountain's blood. . they were her veins, her blood, her life.
It was hard to think, immersed, in the ancient nonconscious musings of stone. Ttte transience of thought, or any concern
for the insignificant doings of the ephemerals at the outer edge of Being, seemed pointless.
Internal affairs were much more important. Leisurely, the conflict between the black flowing fires of the Inside, and the cold nothing of the Outside, was played out upon the board of the world. The player Outside blanketed the board close, wearing away its opponent with wind and rain; grinding it down with glaciers; cracking its coastlines with the pressure of the hungry seas. The Inside raised up lands and threw them down; tore continents apart; broke the seabottoms and made new ones; hunched up fanged mountain ranges to bite at the wind, and be bitten in return.
This particular range had hardly been in the game long enough to prove its worth as a move. Understandably, the huge nonconsciousness wondered idly — as the Sun went down again — why this area was suddenly such a cause for concern. .
Segnbora breathed stone deeply and strove to remember herself. There was something lulling for a Dragon in this perception of stone, as there was for humans in the presence of the Sea: It was both the call of an ancient birthplace and the restful comfort of the last Shore. (Herewiss?) she said, singing a chord of quandary around his name. (Here,) his answer came back, darkness answering dark-ness.
She couldn't feel him except indirectly. He had chosen to leave his physical imagery behind for the time being, and was manifesting himself only as a mobile but greatly restrained stress in the stone, staying quite still until he got his bearings. Khavrinen was evident too, seeming like the potential energy which that stress would release when it moved. (I feel you. Aren't you coming in?)
(I am in,) she sang, delighted by the truth of it. (I'm outside, too. Both at once. I can feel you inside me; you're like a muscle strain. And I can feel the other side of the world from here. What do you feel?)
(Granite, mostly. Marble. Iron — that's the mines.) He paused to feel around. (They haven't come near the great
lodes, even after centuries of work. I'll have to tell Eftgan where the good metal is. .) He trailed off, sounding uneasy. Segnbora felt what Herewiss felt and found everything much as it had been when Hasai had done the first survey; but the assessment didn't satisfy her. (I need more precision. I'm going to narrow down a good deal and make this perception clearer. Will the valley and ten miles on all sides be suffi-cient?)
(Those were the boundaries that Hasai was using. Yes.) She felt closely into the valley floor itself for ten or twelve miles down, absorbing and including into herself the sensa-tions of pressures and unreleased strains, strata trying to shear upward or sink down.
Whole mountains she embraced as if with encircling wings: Aulys, Houndstooth, Eisargir and Adine, then east to White-stack, Esa and Mirit, south to Ela and Fyfel, west to Mesthyn, Teleist and the Orakhmene range. They were a restless arm-ful. Rooted they might be, but they were alive as trees— shifting, trembling, pushing.
The whole Highpeak region, far into the unnamed south, was shivering, about to bolt like a nervous horse. The cause of its nervousness was at the heart of her perception. With ruthless diligence she absorbed it all, missing no detail: the vertical faults lying stitched across the valley in a row, south to north, angry and frightened. The treacherous lateral fault, its line running from the pass between Adine and Eisargir into the valley, through Barachael and out the narrow gate to lower land. And under it all, the old dark sink of negative energies. (I see it,) Herewiss said, his thought thick with revulsion. She caught a quick taste of his perception. It was rather differ-ent from hers, and primarily concerned with the Shadow's influence. He felt it everywhere, particularly in the lateral fault, where the accumulated hatred made it appear to crouch and glare like a cornered rat. It knew who he was, what he had come for, and the whole valley trembled with its malice. Segnbora trembled too, revolted and suddenly afraid. They were fools to try to tamper with this dynamism, so delicately balanced that a talon's weight applied to the wrong spot might bring down mountains. The Dweller-at-the-Howe had been wise to forbid the Dragons from delving here. Worse, she could feel the murky sink of hatred swell, growing aware of their presence.
(Herewiss!) she said. He didn't answer, and she began to grow angry, the Fire burning hotter in her throat. He was so damn sure of himself! (Herewiss!) (What do you want?) he snapped.
Her othersenses told her that he was as angry as she was, and the knowledge enraged her further. (Don't meddle!) he said. {I'm in the middle of a wreaking, and if you distract rne—)
Typically, he was paying no attention to her; he was sunk in his own concerns. (Your wreaking has barely begun. I'm not distracting and you know it. Listen, I'm Precinct-trained, and—)
(They don't know everything in the Precincts,) he said, bitter and superior. There was a touch of jealousy in his mind, too, which caused her to start. Jealousy. . didn't that mean something specific in this situation?
She brushed away the irrelevant thought — doubtless it was the maundering of some mdaha long dead and out of touch with life. Herewiss had slighted her, and her patience was wearing thin.
(Do you want my aid or not?) she demanded. (Not particularly, no! I have more than enough Power to handle this business myself, and you know it! I thought you might have appreciated the kindness I was doing you by let-ting you come along on a wreaking, but I see it was wasted.) He was a stress in the darkness, one1 close to release, spite-ful and certain of his own utter potency. The burning began to swell in her throat, and sweet it was to let the passions rise. She had been patient long enough.
The forefingers of her wings — the terrible black diamond razors that could tear even Dragonmail — cocked forward and down at him. (Little man,) she said, (it's time you found out what you have been toying with!)
Slowly she bent down, waiting for him, to attack, her. She savored, the moments, wondering how she would finish him.
A quick slash? A forepaw brought smashing down? A breath of her fire? But he wasn't physical now. He dwelt in the stone as she did, and the stress he wore as form began to warp and change. He was lifting up Khavrinen to kill her. Let him try, the fool! she thought.
The mdaha who had spoken before now cried out again. . something unintelligible about not seeing, about a pres-ence creeping up from behind, about an ambush.. Segnbora snarled at the interruption, a sound that woke rumblings in the stone. She arched herself upward to come crashing down on the pitiful little weapon raised against her—