The Door Into Shadow

— It was not a smell, or a feeling, or a vision precisely, that started to creep up on her. Segnbora stood up straight, glanc-ing around at the others. None of them sensed what she had. Herewiss and Freelorn were leaning against Lorn's dun, Blackmane, together, speaking quietly; Moris and Dritt had walked off a little way to look southwest at the Fane; Lang was rubbing down the perpetually sweaty Gyrfalcon; Harald was seeing to yellow-coated Swallow's cinches. Sunspark had dis-appeared on some mysterious errand of its own. She turned and looked east, her hand unconsciously drop-ping to Charriselm's hilt. There it was again, another flash of sight — vague and odd, focus bizarrely rounded, colors all awry. And smell too, acrid, terrible, enraging. That's familiar, I know that — Then the memory found her: that one time in the Precincts when the novices, carefully supervised, were al-lowed to shapechange and feel what a beast's body was like.

"Herewiss!" she said, turning to him in alarm. He put his head up to the wind, gazing eastward as she had, but saw nothing. "You just did a wreaking," she said. "You may still be overloaded. Taste it!"

The fear in her voice brought unease to his eyes. He closed them and reached out his undersenses. She did too, standing swaying in the long grass, and caught the impression again, stronger this time. Now there was something even more un-nerving added to the flash of skewed viewpoint: thought, stunted and twisted and bizarre, but thought. And it was all of hate.

The mind she touched bounded above the whipping grass for a moment. It saw forms on the horizon, the source of a maddening stench.

She heard a cough, opened her eyes to see Herewiss chok-ing briefly. His empathy must have been more profound than hers, for the