The Door Into Shadow

— stone shattered and melted. Don't suffer, don't let it come true again! Break the link! the darkness sang to her, consoling, se-ductive. The memory became more real. A green afternoon, under the tree. . No, what's he doing here? What's he — no! No! Break the link! (I can'!.) Then live in the horror, without respite, forever. The last stone was torn away from the memory. In such anguish that she couldn't even scream, Segnbora flung her-self utterly into the Dracon-self, into Herewiss, into her own self and her own death. Fire blazed; the terrible stresses Here-wiss had been applying to the fault-block gripped, took, pulled it up out of its socket—

The gameboard rumbled and leaned upward as if a hand had tipped it over, Pieces tried to slide off every which way. Lost in the pain of contact with that memory, Segnbora could nevertheless sense Mount Adine's shuddering as the ground at the end of the khas-Barachael spur began to rise, first bulging, then cracking like a snapped stick.

Sai khas-Barachael danced and jittered on its ridge like a knife on a pounded tabletop, held secure only by Herewiss's Fire and will The earth on either side of the lateral fault

thrust up, then slammed together like a closing door. The fault expended its energies in a noise like the thunderstorms of a thousand summers. Hills crumbled and landslides large and small crawled downward all the length of the Chaelonde valley. The river itself tilted crazily out of its bed and rushed down into a new one as the block Herewiss had triggered shoved its way above ground, making a seedling mountain, a new spur for Adine.

Behind them, the Houndstooth peak of Aulys seemed to stand up in surprise, look over Adine's shoulder, and then fall back in a dead faint. The terrible thundering crash of its fall went on for many minutes, a sound so huge it obliterated every other sound and was felt more than heard. It was a sound never to be forgotten: the sound of the pass between Eisargir and Aulys being sealed by the Houndstooth's ruin.

Hours later, it seemed, the singing roar that encompassed the world began to die down. Segnbora found herself still alive, and was amazed at that. Herewiss was nowhere to be felt in her mind. She was on hands and knees on the floor of her cavern. Slowly, aching all over, she levered herself up and found herself looking at Hasai.

He was droop-winged and weary-looking, dim of eye, crouching in the middle of a badly torn-up and melted stone floor. Behind him, lurking shameful in the shadows, she could just make out the dark forms of the mdeihei. Many eyes watched her, but their voices for once were still as they waited to see what she would do.

"O sdaha," Hasai said, singing slow and sorrowful, "we betrayed you." He made no excuse, offered no explanation, merely accepted the responsibility.

She breathed in, breathed out, as weary as the Dragon before her. The mdeihei waited.

There were thousands of things she felt like saying to them, but what she said was, "Ae mdeihei, Nht'e'lhhw'ae. " We are for-given.

The shadowy forms drew away. Segnbora laid a hand for a moment on one of Hasai's bright talons. There were great talon-furrowed rents in the floor. They had slag piled all

around them that smoked ominously like pools of magma. "Will you clean this mess up, mdaha?"

He looked at her as if he wanted very much to say some-thing more. At last, he said only, "Sdaha, we will do that." "Sehe'rae, then—" She turned her back on him and stepped back up into the outer world.

The room still jittered with little aftershocks left over from the quake, and echoed with the voices of all Freelorn's band. Herewiss leaned wearily by the window, with Freelorn sup-porting him on one side and Sunspark on the other. Eftgan was in front of him, and all four were talking at a great rate. Segnbora pushed herself up off the floor and rubbed her eyes, looking out the window.

Her normal sight was now clear enough to show her a Chaelonde valley much broken and changed, but with Bara-chael still mostly intact. The darkened Moon wore a fuzzy line of silver at its edge, first sign of the eclipse's end. The air that came in the window was astonishingly sweet to the under-senses, as if many years' worth of trapped death and pain had been finally released.

Leaning against the windowsill, she looked at Herewiss. He was drawn and tired, and all the Fire was gone from about Khavrinen for the moment. For the first time she could remember, it was simply gray steel with an odd blue sheen. But Herewiss's eyes were alive with a satisfaction too big for all of Barachael valley to have contained — the look of a man who finds out he is what he's always believed himself to be.

Seeing her, he reached out a hand. Across the open window they clasped forearms in the gesture of warriors after a battle well fought.