The Door Into Shadow

He stood in the midst of carnage, the burned and hacked bodies of fifty or sixty Fyrd. Here and there in the rocky field of this latest ambush, Freelorn's band stood cleaning swords, leaning on one another, nr rubbing down sweating horses and swearing quietly. Segnbora leaned gasping against Steelsheen's flank, unwill-ing yet to sheathe Skadhwe. The last Fyrd to come at her had been one of the new breed of keplian, bigger than the usual sort, with clawed forelimbs and those wickedly intelligent eyes that were becoming too familiar these days.
She had had no trouble immersing herself in the other's eyes to effect its killing. The problem had been getting out again afterward. She felt soiled, as if she had stepped in a pile of hatred that would have to be scraped off her boots. "How many times is this?" Lang said, coming up beside her.
"Seventeen, eighteen maybe—" "I don't know about you, but / feel driven." Segnbora nodded. Fifteen days ago they had ridden out of Barachael, and had had nothing for their pains ever since but constant harrying by ever-increasing bands of Fyrd. All had come from the southwest, where Something clearly didn't want them to venture. Freelorn had suggested world-gating straight to Bluepeak, where they would meet the Queen; but Herewiss, unwilling to tempt the Shadow into direct intervention by too much use of Fire, had vetoed the idea.
So they rode, and were harried. Herewiss always took them north, out of the way, after an attack such as today's. In day-light, anyway. In darkness they turned again and tacked southwest, toward Bluepeak. They were losing time with these detours, and knew it. Everyone's temper was short, and getting shorter.
"Let's go," Herewiss said, sheathing Khavrinen and turn-ing Sunspark's head northward as he mounted.
There was annoyed muttering among Freelorn's band, and heads turned toward Lorn in appeal. But Lorn, already up on Blackmane, looked wearily after his loved and shook his head. "Come on," he said, and rode off after Herewiss.
They rode a brutal trail through country made of the stuff of a rider's nightmares. They had long since left behind the green plains of southern Darthen. Presently they were cross-ing the uninhabited rock-tumble of Arlen's Southpeak coun-try. Glaciers had retreated over this land when the Peaks were born, leaving bizarrely shaped boulders scattered across scant, stony soil. Acres of coarse gravel with a few brave weeds growing out of it might be all one would see from morning 'til night.
The horses were footsore from being kept at flight-pace on such miserable ground. The grazing was poor, too. After the well-filled mangers of Barachael's stables, it was hardly sur-prising that the horses were in no better mood than their riders. Though no one lived in this barren country, it would be only a matter of time before they ran into Reavers, or Arlene regulars in Cillmod's pay. If not them, there would certainly be Fyrd.
"This is all your fault," Freelorn grumbled at Segnbora as Steelsheen picked her way along beside Blackmane.
Segnbora looked up in surprise from her contemplation of Skadhwe, which lay ready across the saddlebow. "Huh?. . Oh, well, in a way it is. I caused the Battle of Bluepeak, too. Ask me about it sometime."
He glowered at her, and nodded toward Herewiss. "All he did was seal up the Shadow's favorite avenue into the King-doms. What do you do but start making love to It… and then jilt It!"
She started to disagree with Freelorn, and then thought better of it. "So I did." "You're probably in worse trouble with It now than Here-wiss is."
Segnbora frowned at the exaggeration, though it was typi-cal of her liege. "Oh? What do you know about it?"
At that moment Herewiss dropped back to join them, and said, "Considering that he's read the entire royal Arlene li-brary collection on matters of Power, he probably knows more about it than either of us. Face it, "Berend. The Shadow already knew of the threat that I posed, but at Barachael It became aware of you, too. And as they say, your newest hatred is the most interesting. "True," Freelorn added, becoming serious now. "No doubt It believes you're Its deadliest foe at the moment—" "Ha! Some foe …" she said, thinking of her still-unfocused Fire.
The wreaking she had performed with Herewiss had been successful, but now she was almost sorry she had agreed to participate. Ever since, she had not been able to stop brood-ing about her Fire. Over and over again, Hasai's words had run through her mind: Your fear cripples you. You must give it up,
Recognizing an old hurt about which they could do noth-ing, Herewiss and Freelorn fell silent.
Annoyed both at herself and at them, Segnbora took the lead for a while, riding apart and letting the quiet conversa-tion of the others fade beneath her awareness of the sur-rounding country. Skadhwe's reassuring blackness soaked up light at her saddlebow. Its weightlessness, at first unsettling, had become second nature. It was very useful in a fight… And certainly no other sword was all edge and no flat. Likewise, no other sword would, cut anything but, the hand of its mis-tress, as Freelorn had discovered while handling it one morn-ing— Skadhwe seemed not to care for being used by anyone else'. It was delicate, but very definite, about drawing Lorn's blood. Of her, it had demanded nothing so far, and Segnbora thought of Efmaer's words with unease, wondering when the weird would take hold.
Unease seemed to have overtaken everybody these days. No longer were they simply fugitives on the run from Gill-mod's mercenaries; the Shadow was after them now, too, and the knowledge that their souls were in peril had them all on edge.
Segnbora could feel the Shadow working on them even now, driving the group apart, subtly sapping its effectiveness. Even Herewiss was short of conversation these days. He had drawn closer to Lorn, pulling away from the others. As for Freelorn, although every step toward Bluepeak brought the reality of his true-dream closer, he had a haunted look. His followers turned to him for answers, but as often as not came away with a strong sense of his inner distress. At this rate, she thought morosely, they'd never make it to their rendezvous with the Darthenes, at the place where they were massing to take the Shadow's attack.
The afternoon dragged the Sun down to eye level and turned the western horizon into a blinding nuisance. (Sdaha,) Hasai said from way down, (we smell water.) (You've been quiet today. Where?) (West and south. A league as the Dragon flies.) She nodded and thumped Steelsheen's sides, bringing her about in order to inform Herewiss of a place to camp. Hasai had been quiet much of the time since Barachael — a sentient silence with satisfaction at its bottom. . and something else she couldn't quite underhear. (You're finally becoming properly sdahaih,) he had said one evening as she drifted off'toward, sleep. (Anything can happen now.) There had been an ominous overtone to his musing. (What do you see, mdaha?) she had asked sleepily.
But he and the mdtihei had turned their attention away from her, singing wordless foreboding with strange joy woven through, it. They're crazy, she had thought, and gone to sleep. Dragons were always ambivalent about their foreseeings, as if they couldn't — or wouldn't — decide what was good, or bad.
The camp they found three leagues ahead was in a stony, scrubby canyon: shattered, green-white cliffs above, and dry watercourse below. Scant rains kept alive the brush and sev —
eral little spinneys of warped ash and blackthorn, but nothing else. "Where's the water?" Herewiss said to Segnbora, an-noyed. "There," she said, speaking Hasai's words for him, and gestured at the face of the cliff. Herewiss gave her a look and dismounted from Sunspark. "No rest for the weary," he said, and advanced on the cliff with eyes closed, checking her perception. Then he opened his eyes, picked a spot, and brought Khavrinen around in a roundhouse swing. Splintered stone shot in various direc-tions, trailing Fire. Water followed it, bursting from the rock in a momentary release of pressure and then subsiding to a steady stream down the cliffs face.
They watered and fed the horses while Herewiss stood gazing around with a wary look, as if expecting trouble. Segn-bora went away feeling thoughtful herself, and led Steelsheen to the most distant of the ash spinneys. This place has a bad feeling about it, she thought, and then realized why.
The trees were warped and bent, as if by the wind. But the real cause was something less healthy, a something snarled among the ashes' branches. She threw the reins over Steel-sheen's head so that the mare would stand, and pulled some of the stuff out. The long strands were white and soft as spun silk, though as unbreakably strong as any rope when she pulled it between her hands—
From behind her, Herewiss reached in and pulled down the main mass of the material. As the white stuff came away from the tree, a whole mort of things came tumbling out to thump or clatter to the ground.
"Look at that,"he said conversationally, bending down to poke with Khavrinen at something jutting from the white swathing. "The point-shard of a sword. Darthene Master-forge steel, see, Lorn? Look at the lines in the metal."
"It takes a lot to break a sword like that," Freelorn said from beside his loved, but sounding nowhere near as com-posed.
Why now? Why now! Segnbora thought, as Herewiss bent to pick something else out of the whiteness. He came up holding a piece of pale wood,
badly warped: It was smoothly rounded
at one end, broken off jaggedly at the other. "A Rod," Here-wiss said. "Or it used to be."
Dritt and Moris had come up and were staring nervously at this spectacle. "I thought the only thing that could break a Rod was the Rodmistress's death." Moris said.
Without looking up, Herewiss nodded. He used Khav-rinen's point to turn over other oddments tangled in the haphazard white weave: bits of broken jewelry, tatters of what might have been brocade. A bone from a human forearm poked out of the mass, ivory-yellow and scored by tooth-marks. It had been cracked for the marrow, and sucked clean.
"Mare's nest," Herewiss sad, turning to the others and glancing at them one after another. "And recent. We're prob-ably right at the heart of her territory." "Then this is no place for us," Freelorn said. He turned to go take the hobbles off Blackmane, but Herewiss didn't follow him. Freelorn looked back over his shoulder, confused.
"Lorn, it's sunset," Herewiss said. "We'd never make it past her boundaries before nightfall without giving away our position to the Shadow with our noise."
Freelorn stared at Herewiss as if he had taken leave of his senses. "Loved, that's a busted Rod there! Fire obviously doesn't do much good against a nightmare!"
"There are other defenses," Herewiss said absently. It was as if he were reading about the problem from a book rather than seeing it in front of him. He looked up at Segnbora. "How about it?"

THE DOOR INTO SHADOW
Segnbora walked around to the other side of the spinney as if to examine the whole nest, waiting until the tree hid her before she swallowed, hard. Nightmares — minor demonic as-pects of the Goddess's dark side — typically nested in barren places like this. They fell upon travellers, sucked them dry of the spark of Power they possessed, then fed the dead flesh to their fledgling nightfoals. Since they were Shadowbred, Fire was food and drink to them. A Rodmistress's Rod was thus useless against them. They could only be killed with bare hands, and then only if those hands were a woman's.
Segnbora walked around to face the others. "It's getting toward Midsummer," she said, amazed at how calmly her
voice came out. "Her brood will be gone now, and she'll have eaten the nightstallion—" Freelorn's face twisted. "They — eat their—!" "They are the Devourer," Segnbora said, very low. "That aspect of the Dark One trusts nothing She hasn't consumed." She glanced over at Herewiss, forbidding herself to tremble. "Well, I broke Steelsteen with my bare hands. I think I can manage this."
Behind Herewiss, Lang's face was white with shock. She refused to watch it after that first glance. "I'll make a circle," Herewiss said. "You'll have warning. What else will you want?"
Last rites, probably. "A fire," she said. Herewiss smiled slightly. "I think 1 know where to get some. Sunspark!" Segnbora walked toward the sudden campfire, wishing there were such a thing as luck, so she could curse it.
For once, night came down too suddenly for her taste. Segnbora sat with the others beside Sun-spark's blazing self, looking out toward the stony darkness. Here and there, at a hundred yards' distance, a flicker of Herewiss*s Fire showed blue between the boulders, indicating the ward-circle he had laid down. Firelight danced on the face of the cliff. Under a gnarled little rowan bush Segnbora sat and tended to herself in the huge silence, which even the horses, hobbled and teth-ered inside the circle, didn't break.
Segnbora was running out of things to do in order to get ready. She had gone through all the small personal bindings that a sorcerer would perform to further the larger binding she intended. Her swordbelt's hanging end was tucked in. Her hair, too short to braid, she had tied with a thong into a stubby tail and bound close to her head. Her sleeves were rolled up. The buckles on her boots and her mailshirt were tight. She would have tied Skadhwe into its sheath, but it had no peace-strings as Charriselm had had, and all her attempts to bind the shadowblade with cord had been useless. It cut them ail. Finally she had just taken it out of the scabbard and stuck it into a handy rock.
Now she thought of one more binding to add. Rummaging around in her belt-pouch for a bit of thread, she bound it around her left thumb nine times, thus forming a soul-cord that would keep her soul within her body until a pyre's blaze freed it. She tied the ninefold knot and glanced up as she bit it off. Freelorn was holding a cup for her. It was of light wood, with a design of leaves carved around it below the lip. She recognized it: his and Herewiss's lovers'-cup.
"Hot wine," Lorn said, sitting down. Wanned by the ges-ture, she took it and drank, hoping the shaking of her hands wouldn't show too much.
"It shows. Forget it," Herewiss said, sitting down beside Freelorn. She extended the cup to him, leaning back against the knobby little rowan as Herewiss drank in turn. Afterward, he poured some wine into the fire, which had acquired eyes, and then passed the cup back to Freelorn.
Lorn leaned back against a rock, and Herewiss leaned back too, resting his head against Lorn's chest. "You sure there's nothing you can do?" Freelorn said, sounding sorrowful.
Herewiss glanced yp at him. "Swords don't bite on night-mares, loved. I'm sorry."
Freelorn nodded, still looking uneasy. "This business of the Lady's "dark side,' " he said, "I've never really understood how She can have a dark side. .,"
"It is this way," Segnbora started, mostly out of reflex, and then stopped herself. Embarrassed, she took the cup back and drank again.
"No, go ahead," Herewiss said, with a wry look. "If you're going to become something's dinner tonight, we might as well get one more story out of you. Tell it as they tell it at Nhaire'di. I've never heard their version."
She sighed, suddenly amused by the surroundings. This was no cozy inn or palace hall, for once, but rather a huge night in waste country. Who'd have thought she'd ever play to an audience of kings-by-couitesy, part-time princes, and outlaws?
*'It is this way,*' she said. "Because the Goddess bound Herself at the Making into everything She had made, the great Death became bound into Her too, and She into It. Though
She had brought It life, the Shadow still hated Her and did Her all the harm It could, causing each of Her fair aspects to cast a dark shadow of its own. Therefore the Devourer exists, and the One with Still Hands. ." She shivered.". . and the Pale Winnower. Their Power is terrible, and the Goddess cannot banish them; in this Making, They are part of Her.
"But in the south of Steldin, people explain our Lady's dark side differently. They tell how, on the plain north of Mincar, there lived an austringer and her wife. The austringer was a placid woman, easily pleased and as calm as one of her hawks after a feeding. The austringer's wife, on the other hand, was never content with anything, and sharpened her tongue con-tinually on her spouse. "There came a day when the austringer took a good catch of pheasant and barwing. The next morning she set out for Mincar market to sell the game.
"Now, while on her way to the market, passing through the wealthy part of town, the austringer saw a sight that was stranger and more lovely than any she had ever seen.Tied to the reining-post was a great, tall silver-white steed, shining in the morning. When she drew near to it, it turned its head to gaze at her with eyes as dark as the missing half of the Moon. It was tethered with a bridle of woven silver. "She recognized it then. It was one of the Moonsteeds, aspects of the Maiden that mirror the Moon in its changes, and which cannot be caught by any means except with a bridle that is wrought of noon-forged silver in such a fashion as to have no beginning and no end. Some lord or lady had caused the bridle to be made, and had managed to catch the Steed. And as the austringer stood there and pitied the poor crea-ture, once free from time's beginning and now bound, it lowered its head and said to her, 'Free me, and I'll do you a good turn when I may.'
"So she cut the bridle with her knife, and the Moonsteed reared and pawed the air and said, 'If you want for anything, go out into the fields and call me and I will be with you.' And it vanished.
"The austringer thought it well to vanish from the area herself. She went to market and sold her birds, and then went
home in a hurry in order to tell her wife what she had seen. That was a mistake. 'Surely,' her wife said, 'the Steed will grant you anything
you want. Go out and ask it to make us
rich.'
"She nagged the austringer unmercifully until at last she gave in and went out into the night, under the first-quarter Moon, to call the Steed.
It came, saying 'What can I do for
you?'
" 'My wife wants to be rich. Wants us to be rich, rather,'said the austringer. 'The first was closer to the truth, I think,' the Steed said, 'but go home, it has happened already.' And the austringer went home to find her wife happily running her fingers through bags of Moon-white silver, chuckling to her-self about the fine robes and elegant food she would soon have in place of her brown homespun and coarse bread. "For about a week things went well. But folk nearby began to ask questions, and then the tax collectors arrived, leaving with more silver than pleased the austringer's wife. 'This isn't working,' she said to the austringer. 'Go ask the Steed to make me the tax collector. And I want a house befitting my station.'
" 'No one will talk to us anymore!' the austringer objected. Her wife gave her no peace, however, and sent her off to the fields at nightfall.

The austringer called the Moonsteed, and there it came in a white blaze of light, for the Moon was near to full. 'What can I do for you?' it asked. 'Though I have a feeling I know.'
" 'My wife wants to be a tax collector, and have a tax collec-tor's fine house,' the austringer said.
" 'Go home, it's done,' said the Steed. And the austringer went home and found their thatched cottage changed to a tall house of rr'Harich marble; and her wife was twenty times as rich as she had been before.
"After that things went as you might imagine. A week later the austringer's wife wanted to be mayor, and so she was. Afterward she became bailiff, and Dame, and Head of House, one after another. Her house became golden-pillared and roofed with crystal, filled with rich stuffs and things out of legend — feather-hames and charmed weapons and even the silver chair that later belonged to the Cat of Acs Aradh — but
none of it gave her joy for more than a day. Each night she sent the austringer out to ask for another boon, and the au-stringer grew sad and pale, seeing that her wife loved her possessions more than she loved her.
"And as the days passed the aspect of the Moonsteed grew darker, for the old Moon was waning. White-silver the Steed had been at first, like moonlight on snow. Now it waxed darker each night, and frightened the austringer.
"The boons grew greater and greater. Head of the Ten High Houses, the austringer's wife became; then Chief of them, then High Minister, then Priestess-Consort. And still she wanted more.
"Finally the night came of the dark of the Moon—" Segnbora broke off for a moment, fumbling for the wine cup. Her mouth had gone suddenly dry. It was only three nights from Moondark now, that time when a nightmare would be strongest.
"— the dark of the Moon, and the austringer went out to the fields to call on the Moonsteed for the last time. It came, burning with awful dark splendor and wrath, and said in its gentle voice, 'What is it now? Your wife has asked, and I have granted, even to the last times when she asked to be Queen of Steldin, and then High Queen of all the Kingdoms. What more might she want?'
"The austringer trembled, and said, 'She wants to rule the Universe.'"
Segnbora lifted the cup again and finished the wine. There was silence. Freelorn glanced down expectantly at Herewiss, whose eyes were turned away, then back at Segn-bora. "So?"
"So She does. " She handed back the empty cup. "Nowyou tell one."
Suddenly Blackmane screamed. Herewiss jerked upright as if he had been kicked. All around the camp heads turned out toward the darkness.
The nightmare stood for a moment among the boulders that had fallen from the cliff, and then stepped forward deli-cately. It was small: the size of a seven-months* filly. Its silken mane and tail hung to the ground. Slim-legged and clean of
line, it seemed at first as elegant and graceful as a unicorn. But its eyes were evil: red and bottomless, full of old cruelties and insatiable hunger. From a coat the color of the rolled-up whites of a dead man's eyes, it cast a faint yellowish corpse-light that illuminated nothing. Segnbora got up, dry-mouthed again. She took a few steps forward and folded her arms, staring right into those ancient, burning eyes. "Be thou warned," she said in the formal manner reserved for the laying of dooms, "that I am well informed of thee and thy ways, of thy comings and goings, thy wreakings and undo-ings; and that it is my intent to bind thee utterly to my will, and confine thee to the dark from which thou canie'st at the birth of days. So unless thou wish to try thy strength with me, and be compelled by the binding I shall work upon thee, then get thee hence and have no more to do with me and mine."
She held very still. The nightmare now had the option to retreat. It could also answer ritually, or it could attack.
"How should I fear you?" the nightmare said, lifting its head to taunt her sweetly. The voice it used was that of Segn-bora's slain otherself, not piteous as it had been during those last moments in Glasscastle, but mocking and cruel. "Rodmis-tresses in the full of their Power have
THE DOOR INTO SHADOW
passed this way, and you see what has happened to them. You, however, have retired from sorcery, afraid of failure."'
"Silence!" Segnbora said in a voice like a whipcrack. But no power was behind the order, and the nightmare laughed at her, a sound ugly
with knowledge.
"You make a fine noise," it said, flicking its tail insolently. '"But all your years"' studies have left you with little but knowl-edge. Mere spells
and tales and sayings. You have no Power. Or rather, what Power you possess you are afraid to focus."
Burning with shame, Segnbora clenched her fists and took a step forward, then another, seeking control. (Hasai—!)
"Oh, call up your ghost," the nightmare said, stepping forward too. "You don't dare give him the Power he needs, either. You walk on water,
and complain that you can't find anything to drink! Face it, you will never find what you seek. You are too afraid. You are dead!"
Behind her Segnbora could feel Freelorn getting ready to move, and Herewiss holding him still with that same vise-grip in which he had held her at Barachael. The others were fro-zen, eyes glittering, muscles bound still. Even Sunspark's flames flowed more slowly than usual.
"Some heroine you are!" the chill voice taunted. "Dead on your feet. A rotting corpse. You are a Devourer, like me." Her head jerked in surprise.
"You don't believe me? Then look at your slug of a lover there!" The bitter eyes dwelt on Lang with vast amusement. "He no more dares open himself to you than you do to him. He knows that what you call 'love' is mere need. If permitted, you'll suck him dry of his own Power, his own love, and he knows it! Eftgan knew that too …"
Humiliation seared Segnbora, and terror. She had no prob-lem holding her peace. Her mouth refused to work.
The nightmare chuckled maliciously, enjoying her growing victory. "No wonder you're such a good storyteller. Every-thing that comes out of your mouth is a story, especially when you speak of yourself. You haven't really opened to another person since that day when you became big enough to be taken out in back of the chicken house—"
Segnbora took another slow step forward, drowning in the bitter truth, hanging onto the ritual for dear life. "I may warn thee again — get hence, lest I lay such strictures about thee that from age to age thou shall lie bound in the never-lighten-ing gulfs—" "Say the words of the sorcery," the nightmare said, baring her yellow teeth in scorn. "They'll do no good. You cannot control another aspect of the Devourer, being one yourself! Consider what lies hidden under stone in your heart. . you hate the one who plundered you, and that hate poisons every act of 'love' you attempt. You will never properly be able to employ your Power!"
She shook her head, but the awful words of truth would not go away.
"Listen to what I say; to what you know to be fact. Even your friends pity you. Freelorn, for example. He found out what happens to someone who gets closer to you than a
sword's length. You stabbed his heart with something sharper than a knife. No wonder that when you were once faced with yourself, you killed—"
Segnbora leaped at the nightmare head-on, grabbing great handfuls of its mane. Desperately, she attempted to hold its head away from her, but the nightmare plunged, reared and fastened its teeth into Segnbora's mailshirt, cracking the links like dry twigs and driving them excruciatingly through pad-ding and breastband, into the soft tissue of her breast be-neath. Jaws locked, it shook her viciously from side to side, as a dog shakes a rat.
With every jerk of its head Segnbora cried out in pain, yet she managed to hold on for some seconds. Finally, in agony, she released her right hand and grabbed the nightmare's nose, digging her thumbnail deep into the nostril. Now it was the nightmare's turn to scream — once as she let Segnbora fall, and once again as a great handful of its silken mane came away in Segnbora's hand.
Segnbora scrambled to her feet. Her pain was awesome, but she concentrated on twisting the long hank of mane into a rough cord between her hands. The opponents began to circle one another again.
"It was foolish to hold me so close for so long," she said, gasping. "I know how to bind you, child of our Mother. I know how to make an end of you, Power or not. Shortly you're going to be seeing more of the dark places than you'll like—"
She sprang again, this time for the nightmare's flank. It danced hurriedly to one side, but with a second leap Segnbora found herself astride the nightmare's back.
The nightmare bucked, kicked, and reared, leaping in the air and coming down with all four feet together, as a horse does to kill a snake. But Segnbora hung on, legs locked, hands twined in the long mane. She got one hand down over the nightmare's nose again, and stabbed it in the nostril. It screamed, and as it did she whipped the corded length of mane down and into its mouth. Quickly she brought the ends under its chin and up around its muzzle, and knotted them tight, binding its mouth closed.
The nightmare made a horrendous strangled sound that would have been a scream. It turned and raced headlong toward the jagged face of the cliff, intending to buck Segnbora off against the stone. The onlookers scattered out of the way, and Segnbora jumped from its back, rolled, and was on her feet again before it had time to realize what had happened. Turning to face her again, it reared, menacing her with its hooves. Segnbora ducked to one side and fastened her hands in its mane, pulling. The nightmare grunted and, as she had hoped, pulled away. Segnbora fell down on the ground again, but this time with her hands full of mane.
The nightmare turned and reared. By the time its hooves hit ground, Segnbora had rolled out from under them, and was afoot again. Her breath came hard, and beneath her mail-shirt her breast was bleeding freely, white-hot with pain. But her fear was gone. Nothing was left but wild anger, and the urge to destroy.
"I told you," she said, winding the length of mane between her fists like a garrote. "First the binding—"
The nightmare turned to flee, but as it turned tail Segnbora vaulted up over its rump and onto its back. Frenzied, the nightmare bucked wildly, but it was no use. This time the cord went around its throat and was pulled mercilessly tight. It plunged and slewed from side to side and tossed its head violently, trying to breathe.
Segnbora hung on, and twisted the cord tighter. The night-mare began to stagger, its eyes bulging out in anguish. Its forelegs gave way, next, so that it knelt choking and swollen-tongued on the ground. Segnbora held her seat even at that crazy angle, and pulled the cord tighter still. Finally the rear legs gave, and the nightmare fell on its side. Segnbora slipped free, never easing her stranglehold. The nightmare moved feebly a few times, then lay still.
Holding that cord tight became the whole world, more important even than the agony of her torn breast or the hot blurring of her eyes that she had thought at first was confu-sion and now proved to be tears. She blinked and gasped and hung on as Herewiss and Freelorn and the others ran up and kneeled around her.
Lang reached out to her, but Herewiss stopped the gesture. "Is it dead?"
"I don't know. Probably not." She could still feel a pulse thrumming feebly through the cord.
"Are you all right?" That was Lang with the same stupid question, as usual.
"No. Let me be." The nightmare's pulse was irregular now, leaping and struggling in its throat like a bird in a snare. How can they look at me, she wondered? It's all true. How can they bear to—
One last convulsive flutter ran through the nightmare's veins. Then there was stillness under her hands. Slowly and carefully she stood up, shrinking away from any hand that tried to help her. The pain in her breast was intense, yet she barely felt it.

THE DOOR INTO SHADOW
She walked away, then, and her companions stared after her. Their eyes on her retreating back were as unbearable as sun on blistered skin, but still she ignored them. The darkness beyond the camp began to swallow her.
(A nightmare has no weapon to use but your own darkness.) Herewiss's thought burst into her mind, cold and passionless as a knife. (Resist, and it only cuts deeper.) She kept walking.
(One night, 'Berend,) he ordered. (One night's pain is all we can spare you. We've lost too much time already. Be finished by dawn, or we won't wait.)
She shut him out and went off into the cool night, looking for an end.
Thirteen
"Well," the Goddess said, "your heart didn't heal straight the last time it broke. So we'll break it again and reset it so it heals straight this time."
Children's Tales of North Arien, ed. s'Lange
How long she walked, she had no idea. The stony valley all looked the same. Eventually, she simply sat down and began to weep for life wasted.
Sometime later, the rocky night turned into the night that lay inside her, with stars showing through the great shaft in the roof of her cavern, and the much-muted song of the mdei-hei rumbling in the shadows. She didn't care about them in the slightest, or about the starlight, or the sound of the Sea, or the huge obscure shape of Hasai towering over her in the darkness. She sat hunched up and waited for life to go away.
It wouldn't, annoyance that it was. A solution occurred to her, but she had no energy for it. And anyway, everything she had ever done, she had botched — surely she'd mess up a suicide too. A life of study without use, learning without wis-dom, action without satisfaction, Power without focus, lust without love: What use was it? She sat there and tried to bleed to death through the wound above her heart. "You will not achieve death for some days yet," said the subdued voice of the Dragon above her, using the precogni-tive tense. Annoyed, she leaned back against the great forelimb gin-gerly, careful not to disturb the blood clotting on her breast. She closed her eyes, squeezing out useless hot tears. "Drop dead," she said. "We have done so."
"Try it again. You missed something the first time."
THE DOOR INTO SHADOW
"Speak for yourself, sdaha," the voice of thunder said. It had her own annoyance in it. Tonight, as occasionally happened, she didn't have to look
up at Hasai in order to see him. His eyes burned silver, but they burned low. His talons clenched the stone floor in a painful gesture that made her remember the cave at the Morrowfane.
"The nightmare spoke some truth," he said. "As with your Lovers, you will not permit us to have what we need, so that we, in turn, may give you what you need. You believe you must do everything yourself. But there is no such thing as perfect self-sufficiency, even among humans."
She shook her head, confused, thinking of what her father used to tell her: You'll never be able to depend on others, if you can't first depend on yourself.
Hasai winced at her in Dracon disagreement. "You cannot depend on yourself if you cannot first trust others." Segnbora sat still, trying to understand, but the words made no sense. Hasai gazed down without moving for a long while, and at last shuffled one huge forelimb back and forth along the floor. "We are you," he said with terrible intensity. "If you cannot trust us, your trust of yourself will be betrayed every time. Sdaha, hear me!" It was no use. It made no sense.
"Sdaha, " Hasai said, so low it could have passed for a whis-per. "What lies beneath your stone that you dare not lay open? What terrifies you so much that the Shadow would resurrect the memory in the hope that you would die of it?"
That got her attention. "It brought forth that memory be-cause it sees me as a threat. In a way that's good, I suppose. It means I may be able to do it some real harm at Bluepeak."
She leaned sideways and put one hand upon the stone at the bottom of her mind. It burned hot as flesh beneath a half-healed wound, warning her off. Her insides flinched at the touch of it, and she began to tremble.
Pain experienced stops hurting, she knew. The mdeihei had taught her that. There was another reason to look below the stone, too: The Shadow had found her weak spot. If she didn't deal with it now, it would strike her there again, perhaps at Bluepeak. And how could she betray Lorn at a moment when he would need her the most? She couldn't. She couldn't see
her friends' lives lost, her liege-oath broken, the Kingdoms foundering for lack of the Royal Bindings. . She smashed one fist down on the stone. Damn! Damn! "Taueh-sta 'ae mnek kej!"
"Mdaha," she said, shaking all over. Slowly, she leaned forward until she was on her hands and knees over the stone. "Mdeihei— " They leaned in close, the huge form above her, the many indistinct forms in the shadows. She reached behind her, to-> ward Hasai. Wings reached down to shelter her, but it wasn't shelter she was interested in. Her hand found the burning mouth, and jaws closed over it. She pulled those wings down around her, into her, wore them and their body and their heart.
Under the stone, darkness burned. She cocked forward the terrible diamond razors of the wings' forefingers, intent on the place where her deepest anguish lay. "My mdeihei, this is what you wanted. And what I want now. If we die of it. ."
A roar of defiance and challenge went up from the gathered generations. "Mnek-6, " she whispered, / remember. Her talons raked down and laid her soul bare at last. Stone peeled away, and her control went with it. Night fell. .
Her nuncle, of course. Nuncle Bal was in and out of the old house at Asfahaeg all the time, busy around the land — gar-dening, cutting trees, planting new ones. She had watched him about his business often enough, and sometimes she had noticed him looking at her for a long time.

She wondered sometimes whether he was lonely and wanted to play, but she never quite got around to making friends with him. There was too much else to do.
She had the Fire, a lot of it, and pretty soon they were going to send her away to a real school where you learned to do magic with it, instead of just simple body-fixings and under-speech, which were all the Rodmistress down in town would teach her. At the school they'd make her a Rod of her own, and she'd be able to do all kinds of things.
In the meantime, there were lessons and exercises to make the Fire grow, and she was busy with those. In fact, she had
stumbled by herself on one special exercise that gave her the same tingling excitement that the Fire did, though in a slightly different way. When she showed her new method to Welcaen, her mother had laughed and praised her and told her it was fine to enhance the Fire thus, but that she shouldn't forget to be private when she did it. The most private spot she could think of was the hiding place behind the old chicken house, where the willows' branches hung down all around, making a dusky green cave. And that was where she had spent most of that warm spring day, delightedly touching herself in that special secret place — until Nuncle Bal came brushing through the downhanging branches and stopped in surprise, and stood there staring at her. .
Her mother had told her that usually it was not polite to be naked with someone unless you had agreed on it beforehand. Not knowing how Nuncle Bal felt about it, she pulled her smock back down and smiled at him. "Hi," she said.
He smiled back, and all of a sudden she felt really cold inside, because there was something wrong with the way he was smiling. Confused, she put out her underhearing and listened.
What she heard made her so scared that she couldn't pull it back again, couldn't even move. She never heard anything like this before. Her mother and father when they shared. . she knew that feeling. It was warm: a filling-and-being-filled feeling. She wasn't sure what they were doing, exactly, but it wasn't this. The feeling that went with this was cold: a wanting, and wanting-to-be-in-something. It was hungry, just hungry enough to take—
He was letting the rake fall against the willow truck, and she was getting really scared now, so that she started to jump up and run away. But he was right in front of her already, and he grabbed her hard around the throat with one hand, and cov-ered her mouth with the other. She couldn't breathe. She tried to scream, to cry, but there wasn't any air. Her ears started to ring and everything went red in front of her. Nuncle Bal seemed to be saying something, but she couldn't tell what it was through the red, the black, the roar
ing. She fell backward into the darkness, silently begging oh please, let it be a bad dream. Let mi wake up, please!
After a while the roaring went away some. It was a dream, she began to think, and then heard his voice, thick, low and hun-gry. "You want
it," he said. Her eyes came open. She saw his twisted smile, shuddered, and squeezed them shut again. "You want it. Sure you want it."
He was doing something to her smock. What was he— "Mamaaaaa!" she started to scream, tears starting to her eyes. But before she could get the scream out that hand came down on her throat again. The red, the roaring, ok no, pleeeeeeeease. .
. . her back was cold. She was on the ground again, and her smock was off. So were Nuncle Bal's britches, and she squirmed and fought but couldn't get out from under his hands. His breath was on her face and he leaned in and pushed her legs far apart, too far. It hurt, and what was tie doing, he was rubbing her secret place, the wrong way! And what, what— NOOOOOO!
The scream wouldn't come out. of her throat. It was all inside her head, a shrieking pain, but not as bad as how he was hurting her down
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there. He was in her secret place that was supposed to be for her to share with her loved some day, and he was pushing himself inside. There was a horrible burning pain, again, and again, until she fell herself being torn open. There was a white-hot line of relief, then, and new agony stitching itself through the rest of the burning. It was sicken-ing. She wanted to retch but couldn't, his hand—
Tears rolled down the sides of her face, into her hair. After a while she couldn't feel them or anything else, it hurt so bad— Inside she yelled and yelled for help, but no help came. They weren't sensitives and they couldn't hear her, any of them! He was pushing it in and out, hard, It hurt worse and worse, and he was breathing fast and hot right in her face. She was breathing his wet stale breath and that made her want to be sick too — and it hurt, it hurt, somebody make it stop! Somebody, Mama, Daddy, Goddess, please., please — make it slop!
He slumped forward,, and she thought she felt something
shoot inside her, but she wasn't sure because of the pain, the way it burned, her secret place that had always felt so nice. Broken, torn, she'd never be able to use it again. No one would love her, ever, hers was broken — and the Fire, when he hurt her, it came out, it was in the pain, no more, never, it hurt, horrible—
She lay there and sobbed for air, all the screams in her stifled by horror; and when he came around and knelt over her face and pushed the hard thing, all bloody, into her slack mouth, and rubbed it in and out, she let him. At least he wasn't hurting her anymore. But when he turned her over and started to put it against that other place, she realized that he was going to hurt her even worse this time. No one was going to come help her now, either. She pushed her face down against the cold harsh dirt and tried with all her might to die.
It didn't work. When her first scream broke free, he stran-gled it. again. The terrible strength of his hand turned the world red and then black once more. The last thing she heard as she pitched forward into blackness was, very remote, the sound of some little girl screaming as the size of him tore her open the other1 way, too. .
Eventually her hearing came back. She heard him pick up his rake and hurry away, pushing the rustling branches aside. Some while later, lying as she was with her face on the hard ground, she felt-heard hoofbeats, cantering, then galloping. He was gone. Very slowly she got up. It hurt, especially be-tween her legs, when she moved them at all. She pulled down her smock and scrubbed at her face to try to get the dirt off: Her father didn't like her to be dirty.
That roaring stayed with her all that day, as confusion and rage sounded all around her1… It was her thoughts now, dazed, shocked, going around and around in her head and coming hack again to that which she had felt tangled with the agony —the Fire.
When they finally put her to bed, full of some bitter herbal potion the Rodmistress had — made her drink so she'd sleep, her head still roared, behind the steady flow of her tears. Only wter, after she had been staring for hours at the vague circles the candles made on the ceiling, did the tears flow more
slowly. Gradually, the pain between her legs began to feel far away. The roar died to a whisper. But the whisper said the same thing she had been hearing all day. . No more. Never again.
And there was a quieter whisper beneath that. One so soft that she hadn't heard it then, never heard it afterward; only heard it now with a Dragon's impossibly sharp underhearing — a seed of rage, taking root in blood and battered flesh, burning dark with hate: Some day, when I'm big, I'll kill him.
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The pain, experienced at last, fell away and left her among her mdeihei with the fiery tears running down her face. They held their silence, waiting to hear what she would sing before beginning to weave counterpoint or dissonance about it.
She was exhausted. It was fifteen years since that afternoon under the willow. Fifteen years since she had shown herself any more than Balen's terrible smile, or thought of the experi-ence as more than "the rape." She had thought she was over it, past it all. What idiocy.
As she grew, she had quickly given up thinking much about sharing her body with others. Her agemates indulged in all the delightful anticipation of adolescence — the feeling that something magical awaited them when sharing began. But when the time carne she had plunged into an experience1 that had about it nothing of magic. Instead, every sharing had a touch of the sordid about it, a taste of fear which made her want to have it finished quickly. Afterwards, she would inevi-tably plunge into another sharing, in search of what had been missing. She never found it. Nor, as she got close to the brink of focusing, had she ever managed that, either. How could she, when sharing felt so much like Fire?
Slowly Segnbora lifted her gemmed head, and sang relief and grief and wear)' regret at the walls. From the shadows her mdeihei took up the dark melody and shared it with her in compassionate plainsong. "Oh Immanence," she sang, "I'm full of Power, and in danger of running forever dry; I've shared a hundred times, and I'm virgin still; I walk on water, and yet thirst …" She brought her wings down against the floor in a gesture of bitterness.
"And tlie nightmare was right, too. I'm a killer. The Shadow has merely to touch that memory ever so lightly, and I kill one more time. Is this my destiny, then? To be a clock-work toy that can be set to kilting by any fool who happens to find the key?" Gentle and ruthless, her mdeihei answered her in one long note that shook the cave. "Fes.'"
"Or so it seems," Hasai said kindly. She looked over at her mdaha, catching for the first time the unease that had always been in his voice. She had never be-fore been Dracon enough to hear it. He gazed back, gentle-eyed, huge, terrible as a thundercloud with wings. And yet, to Dracon eyes, he was also frightened, crippled, shadowed.
"Mdaha," she said, bending her head down close to his. "Your discomfort bears looking at, for haven't you often told me that the mdeihei, and you, are me?" "Often."
"That being the case," she said, "it comes time now to deal with your stone, sithess&ch." He looked at her almost sadly, knowing — as he had always known — that it was true. "For you are me, and at Bluepeak the Shadow will strike at you too. If you succumb, I will too. Then Lorn dies, and the Kingdoms founder, and I'm forsworn. And more than that: The green place you fought for, the world you treasure so, will fall under the Shadow's domination, and not even Dragons will be safe."
Hasai was still as stone, except for his tail, which lashed nervously. Segnbora leaned closer, flipped her own tail around to pinion it and hold it down. The sight of her tail briefly surprised her. It wasn't like Hasai's. It was scaled in star-emeralds as fiery green as new spring growth. It was spined in yellow diamond.
"It has to do with rue somehow, doesn't it?" she said. "With going mdahaih in a human — and with something older than that, even— Hasai, it
must be settled, or the Shadow will settle it for us!"
He started to draw downward, away from her touch. 'There is yet time—"
"No there's not!"
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Hasai lashed free of her tail, began to rise slowly from his crouch, wings lifting, the diamond sabers of the forefingers coming around to threaten her.
Segnbora gazing up, unmoved. "I am you, sitkesmh," she said. Beloved.
Hasai moved not a muscle. As the momentary anger slowly ran out of him, his eyes changed. They were no less afraid, but now there appeared in them room for something else.
"Now," Segnbora whispered. "Quickly." The fluid, black-glittering splendor of him made itself into a curve, a pounce, a terrible striking downward, a living knife. Stone sliced open like parting flesh, the blood was memory, it leaped—
Their Sun ate their world. They saw it happen. They had had warning — both ahead-memory of the actual incident, and years of wild starstorms, during which the Sun's light was too intense to drink without dying, and every Dragon had to leave the Homeworld for a time, and wait far out in the cold for the Sun's fire to die down.
Shell-parents grew infertile, and eggs that should have hatched roasted in the stone instead. At last came the final storm they had dreaded. In haste, all of Dragonkind streamed off their red-brown world and hung helpless in space, watch-ing their star swell to a hundred times its size and devour their Homeworld.
They were orphans.
But they weren't homeless.. Wisely, ihe older Dragons had looked to the youngest Dragoncels to see what they ahead-remembered of their own going mdahaih. What they had found was the place they'd know as mdeihei — an odd, cool little world, greener than theirs, covered with a strangeness called water and inhabited by life of bizarre and fascinating kinds,
One Dragoncel, however, remembered more than the oth-ers. He knew the way, and would die upon reaching their goal. His name was Dahiric, The Dragons gave him. another name: Worldfinder. They put him at their head and he led. them out into the Great Dark. How long they travelled there, none of the Dragons were
ever sure. Many died along the way — starved for Sunfire in the empty wastes — but Dahiric, a doomed and purposeful green-golden glimmer at the head of ten thousand others, never veered from the memory he followed. Born only to die, and to make this journey, he was determined to succeed. Finally, after what might have been ages as humans reckon time, they found the place. It was all that the mdeihei— to-be had seen: strange-colored, but alive; a home at last; stone to sink their claws into. They dropped down toward it — and found what Dahiric, and many more, were to die of. From the dark side of the world, where it had been hiding, a black foul air came boiling out toward them. It was blacker than the space in which they hung, and it was alive. It hated thought and light and any kind of life but its own. It was also vast enough to swallow the bright little planet whole: a project on which it had been working for eons. It didn't relish the Dragons' interruption.
Dahiric knew his duty. Gripping a double wingful of the little planet's field of forces, he dove down into the roiling blackness, flaming. The Dark drew back, and the Dragons saw Dahiric drive a long tunnel down into it. At the tunnel's bot-tom his light blazed like a falling star. But Dahiric was young. His fire was limited by his immaturity. His flame went out, and the Dark closed behind him. After a little while he came float-ing out of the boiling blackness, dead.
Had there been air to carry the baltlecry the Dragons raised, stone would have shattered across the world. Ten thousand strong, they dove at the Dark from every angle, flaming as best they could. Their fire was in short supply, however, since they had been out in the night so long, and ten thousand Dragons were not enough. The Dark opened before them, swallowed them, spat back the dead. Soon there were nine thousand, seven thousand, fewer. Many had no offspring yet and went rdahaih in a second, without time to make their peace with the Universe from which they were departing. Some went, mad from the strain of having so many relatives become mdahaih in them in so short a time. Others so afflicted flung themselves into the Dark and. were lost too.
THE DOOR INTO SHADOW
A. few simply fled, and lived.
One of these was the youngest of the Homeworld's Dragon-eels. He had never been quite normal. When he had become fully sdahaih at last, and his shell-parents and relatives had asked him when and where he would go mdahaih, his answer frightened them all. What he foresaw was darkness and cold and terrible pain; and then the odd, crippled body of an alien. . one who was certain she would go rdahaih and take with her all the mdeihei. It was a terrifying vision, and all rejected it.
He grew, and yet the vision did not change. Therefore, he slowly became resigned to being a curiosity among his own kind. As befitted a Dragon, he came to make light of the difference, submerging it in placidity. But he did not realize that the way he did this — by learning to stand a little aloof, even from his mdeihei — also encouraged other Dragons to stand aloof from him as well.
Hasai became estranged from his own kind. He took no mate. He held his peace. He flew alone. And when he finally found himself facing that same awful blackness that in min-utes had killed half his race, Hasai failed. With no comrade who would admit to fear, and so support him toward courage, he became nearly blind with terror. He fled.
The rest of Dragonkind, fortunately, had not exhausted their options. There in empty space they convened in body and mind, and held Assemblage — the last full Assemblage that would be held for a generation or two, until the Advo-cate summoned them again two thousand years later. They paid the price of Assemblage — the lives of the DragonChief and the Eldest — and then all those left alive turned their hearts inward and gave their will and power over to the Im-manence.
Few of them saw where the Messenger came from. She was a Dragon in shape, but even the webs of Her wings burned intolerably bright. Her every scale was a star, a point of power so terrible it could be felt through Dragonhide. The Messen-ger wheeled and dropped through the massed Dragons, scat-tering them — then halted above the raging, boiling immensity of the Dark. Through their othersenses, the Dragons could feel the Dark's alarm as it reached up to snuff out this trouble-some intruder. Likewise, they heard its silent scream of pain
as the Messenger flamed, letting loose a torrent of Dragonfire as potent as a star's breathing.
The Dark writhed convulsively, ripped away from the world with a jerk and a soundless howl of rage. It streamed toward the Messenger to engulf Her utterly, but the Messenger only spread wings and claws and seized it. Working at the forces in space with fiery wings, She drew the Dark away from the world, screaming and struggling. Together they dwindled, drawing farther away from the little blue world, until all that could be seen of them was a light like a dwindling star. Those who dared to follow came back and reported that the Messen-ger had plunged, together with the Dark, into the heart of the nearby yellow Sun. Neither came out again.
Later, the survivors found Dahiric's body among those of the slain. The others they burned in Dragonfire, as was the custom on the old Homeworld, but Dahiric they bore down to the surface of the new world. There they found a fair place at the endpoint of a great spur of land, where water washed it. They uprooted a mountain, as had been done on the Homeworld for Phyiril and Saen and others of the Parents, and they laid it over him, melted it around him, and made a dwelling there for the new DragonChief. Thereafter, the Dragons settled into their new young world, and watched humankind come slowly out of the caves into which the bale-ful influence of the Dark had driven them. . . and behind the rest of the Dragons, a silver-and-black Dragoncel drifted to earth like the last leaf of autumn. His shame at his cowardice gripped him like the pain of giving-up-the-body, and would not leave. True, no other Drago'n ac-cused him of fear, but no one comforted him, either. He was alone, as always. Alone with a new shame, and with the old hidden terror of the day he would go mdahaih in a human. All these burdens he buried under layers of Dracon placid-rty. The centuries went by. He maintained his dignity, flew alone, and kept silent. Then finally his life became reduced to waiting for the stars to assume the proper configurations. This they did. At last, his luster dimming, Hasai spiraled down to the Morrowfane by night and crept into a cave there, to wait for the seizures, and to wait for the one who would

come.
He looked across the cavern at her now, head held high, waiting for her to disapprove of him and pronounce a sen-tence worse than death: eternal imprisonment with a sdaha whose opinion of him was not passive placidity, but active scorn. Behind him, the mdeihei were strangely silent. "You ran," Segnbora sang. He said nothing.
"And you are of value nonetheless," she said, weaving around the words a melody that attributed importance to her words. "You did what you did, and here you are. And here am I, too … or should I say, here are we."
Hasai looked at her in amazement. She sighed a little fire and unfolded one emerald-strutted wing, laying it over his back in a gesture of affection.
TOC \o "1–3" \h \z "So where do we go from here?" she asked. i*
He opened his mouth, and nothing came out for a momentA " 'Sithesssch,'you said,"he sang in dubious tones. Nf
She flipped her tail in agreement. *\.
"Then only one matter still troubles me …" "What?" — >
"The mdeihei, and their opinion. As you know, they do not judge, but merely advise. Still, I would like to know that they are not ashamed." Segnbora considered the matter, listening to the utter si-lence in the background where the mdeihei usually sang. "Mdaha, don't worry. If they are truly of the Immanence, as they claim, they will understand."
The doubt fell out of his voice, but Hasai still looked at her strangely. "You're truly sdahaih at last," he said. "It's very odd."
"How so? You knew how it would be." He dropped his jaw, smiling. "Sometimes, for the sake of surprise, we forget a little."
Segnbora spread both wings high and curved her neck around to look at them. "Well, I certainly feel sdahaih. Shall we go test it?" "There's more to being sdahaih, and Dracon, than flight,"
Hasai said, and his song trembled with the joy of one who's found something long lost. "Memory. And its transforma-tion." She shook too, thinking of all the painful experiences she could accept, or remake if she wished. Now that she was sdahaih, the ever-living past was as malleable as the present. There were some things she wouldn't change, experiences that had made her what she was now. Balen, she thought. He stays. There's unfinished business there, somehow. But as for other matters—
For the first time since that afternoon under the willow, her love was clean — and now more than ever before she wanted to give it away. "I remember a place," she sang quietly, look-ing at Hasai, "where stars swirl in the sky like a frozen whirl-pool, and the Sun is red and the stone is as warm as your eyes—"
He met her glance with eyes that blazed. "Toe mnek-e"," he sang. We remember. Wings lifted and beat downward, and the cave was empty.
The soaring began at the Homeworld, and never quite ended. They made the Crossing all over again, together this time. Other Dragons
looked curiously at the one who in fore-memories had been alone, but who now went companioned by some child of the Worldfinder's line, green-scaled and golden-spined, with eyes the fiery yellow of the little star to which they journeyed.
They saw the Winning again, not with guilt this time, but simply as one of the events that would eventually bring them together. Afterwards, they fell to earth like bright leaves drift-ing, and lay basking in the Sun. They glided together through long afternoons, taking their time so that the people below would have something to marvel at. They matched speed for speed in the high air, and tore it to tatters of thunder. They went bathing in the valleys of the Sun, and chased the twilight around the world for sport. He made her a present of the sunset, and she made him one of the dawn, and they both drank them to the dregs until the fire of their throats was stained the red of the vintage.
They lived in fledgling and Dragoncel and Dragon, in child and girl and woman — found memories that were lost, discov-ered past and future. Gazing into one another for centuries, they also found completion. And at the bottom of that, they found Another gazing back. One Who became them as They became It. Goddess-Immanence and peers, Made and Maker, the two Firstborn, They flowed together. Not merely One, not simply the same. They were. For that, even in Dracon, there were no words.
Eventually they remembered the way home, and — living in it — were there. Segnbora, leaning back against the immense forelimb from which she had not moved all night, looked up at her mdaha's silver eyes. "I have to be getting back," she said. "They'll be wonder-ing where I am." "Best hurry and tell them. Sehf'rae, sdaha." "Seht …"
Halfway out the entrance to the cave, she paused, touching her breast in confusion. In the place where the nightmare had bitten her, there was nothing but a pale, crescent-shaped scar.
"Dragons heal fast," Hasai said from behind her. A quiet joy like nothing she had ever heard sang around his words. She knew how he felt. "Sehe'rae, mdaha," she said, and went out.
rf
She opened her eyes on a dawn she could taste as well as see. When she stood up to stretch, she saw the Moon, three days past third quarter, the phase under which she had been born, hanging halfway up the water-blue sky like a smile with a secret behind it. Picking her way back toward the camp, she came across someone waiting for her with his back to the rising Sun. His long black shadow stretched out toward her, the stones within it outlined brightly by the Fire of the sword he leaned upon.
"Welcome back," Herewiss said as she approached. Skadhwe was struck into a nearby rock. She raised a questioning eyebrow at Herewiss as she plucked it out and re— sheathed it. '
"I didn't touch Skadhwe," he said. "I asked it politely, and we reached an accommodation."
"Thank you," she said. She glanced down at the cracked and broken links of her chammail. "This whole thing was a setup— You knew the nightmare was here. You knew twenty miles away. You couldn't no! have known."
He caught the merriment in her voice and grinned. "I'm on other business than just Lom's and Eftgan's," he said. "There's all kinds of power in this world, looking to be freed. I do what I can."
"I could have died," she said, "of what it said to me. I understood it, it spoke the truth, and yet I killed it anyway. The despair could have finished me."

THE DOOR INTO SHADOW
"I know," Herewiss replied. "My decision was not made lightly. If you hadn't been strong enough. . yes, you would have died. And I would have laken responsibility for it."
She looked at him, pitying and loving him, both at once. "'Thanks," she said.
*'I didn't do much of anything," he said, half-bowing gra-ciously. "You seem to have found your own solutions."
He looked past Segnbora with great interest. Turning, she was just as interested to see the long-necked, long-bodied, short-legged Dracon shadow that lay behind her. It was posi-tioned as if the creature that cast it were standing on her hind legs. Experimentally she pointed a finger, and saw the shadow of the forewing barb cock outward.
"Is it true," Herewiss asked with a gentle simile, "what they say about Dragons and maidens?"
She turned back and shrugged slightly. '"You'll have to ask someone who'd know," she said. "I'm not a maiden any-more, ./* She started back toward camp to saddle Steelsheen and hummed a chord.
Fourteen
… the Goddess could not spend all Her time persuading the Kings and Queens of the world of the idiocy of war. Therefore She invented tacticians..
(source unknown)
As they topped the crest of yet another line of foothills they paused, silent in the dusk, and looked down upon ancient history. Forest patches lay on the wrinkled fells and hollows of the land below. Although it was just two nights before Midsummer, the wind ran chill over the land, rustling trees and grass so that the earth seemed to shudder like the flank of a troubled beast.
South of their position the foothills became rougher, their bare stones turning brown, red, and hot gray in the fading light. Farther south still rose the Highpeaks. Off into the crimson distance they marched, mountain after mountain. At their forefront, frozen like a white wave of stone about to break, stood Mount Ndniion, which overshadowed Bluepeak.
"The weather's changing," Freelorn said. He was looking uneasily at the filmy banner of windblown snow that stretched southward over the Peaks from N6mion's major summit. It had a distinct downward curve to it that indicated it was a south wind fighting to get past the moun-tains and slide under the wanner northland air.
"Storm tomorrow, loved. Can't you do something?'' Herewiss's eyes were elsewhere — searching the country west of them for any sign of the Darthenes. Eftgan's last message had said that she and her troops would bivouac a league-and-a-half west of the mouth of Bluepeak valley two nights before Midsummer, well out of the sight of the Reavers encamped in Britfell fields around the town. But the land beneath them had a trampled look, and was empty. "I could," Herewiss said, reaching over his shoulder for Khavrinen to better sense what had been happening there. "It
would be unwise, though. Eftgan may already have done something."
"Or Someone else might have," Segnbora said. She was as troubled as Lorn, for different reasons. Her undersenses clearly brought her a feeling of haste and disruption from the land below, as if plans had gone awry and many minds down there had recently been in turmoil. Worse were Hasai's memories, and those of some of the mdeihei who knew this area well. Something dark and threatening lurked under this land, and was ready to rise up in menace.
She shuddered, as did the mdeihei inside her. Herewiss was sitting still with Khavrinen flaming in his lap, its Fire subdued. "Someone else has been meddling, I think,"he said, glanc-ing over at Freelorn. "There's will behind this weather, and I'd sooner not probe it more closely than that, since I'd be leaving myself open to be probed back. Better to stay low for the moment." He looked down at the Bluepeak highlands. "Eftgan came at this site from the north a day and a half ago—"
"Were they driven back by Arlenes?" Freelorn said, anx-ious. Cillmod had been raiding across the Arlene-Darthene border for nearly a year now, in violation of the Oath. It was unlikely that he would allow a Darthene incursion into his territory to go unchallenged. "No. Reavers — and they were here first. Eftgan had a skir-mish with them and went north again. The Reavers went west. No sign of Arlenes; they must not have received word that Eftgan's in the vicinity."
Dritt looked confused. "Eftgan's a Rodmistress, though. Shouldn't she have been able to sense that the Reavers were here, and avoid them?" Herewiss nodded.
There was uneasy shifting among Freelorn's followers. Lorn himself was bewildered. "How can a Rodmistress's scry-ing go wrong?1 "' Herewiss swung down from Sunspark and began loosening the girths of its saddle. "The same way mine can, I imagine," he said. Segnbora could feel the great effort he was making lo conceal the trouble in his mind. "1 can't feel where she is