The Door Into Shadow

I'm talking a great deal, Segnbora had thought, not so much frightened by the intimacy as bemused. The wine— But the wine was not intoxicating her; she was seeing and feeling, if anything, more clearly than usual. Shivering with delight at the feeling of magic in the air, she drank deep of the cup, deeply enough to drain it… and found it still three-quarters full. Two hours we've been drinking from this cup, she realized, and she only Jilled it once.

She looked across at the other, then, and realized Who had come to share Herself with her, as She conies to every man and woman bom, once before they die. Not Mother now, as she had been at dinner, feeding them all and gossiping about the Kingdoms, but the aspect of the Goddess she loved best

— Maiden about to be Bride, Creatress about to create some-thing as beautiful as the multitude of stars. Back and forth a few more times that cup went, while Segnbora drank deep of building joy and anticipation, and named the Other's name, and saw her joy reflected a hundredfold, a thousandfold, in-calculably.

Then she went to bed. And was joined by warmth that enfolded, and lips that spoke her name as if she was the only thing in creation. She was intensely loved; and was given to drink of that other cup that briins ovei forever, the endless source. She drowned, eternally it seemed, in the deep slow bliss of her own deity, and the Other's. .

The bark against her back was hard as she blinked, glanced down from the sky. Oh, again, she thought, someday again. Though the odds of that were slight. Once in a lifetime in that manner, one might expect the Goddess. Otherwise,

only at birth did one see Her, in one's own mother — quickly forgotten, that sight — and at death, when the Silent Mother, the Winnower, came to open the last Door.

She glanced across the lake, at the Fane standing silent, watching her, surrounded by the constellations of early sum-mer. He'll be ready soon, she thought. Somewhere to northward the wolves began singing again.

Someone came lurching along toward her in the darkness, walking loud and heavy as usual. Oh, Lady, not now, she thought with affectionate annoyance, as Lang plopped down next to her. "Are we waiting for Moonrise?" he said.

He smelled of unwashed horse and unwashed self, and Segnbora wrinkled her nose in the dark — then wrinkled it more, at herself, for she had no call to be throwing stones on that account.

"Just full nightfall," she said. "I guess the theory is, if you're crazy enough to climb the Fane, then exercise your madness in the dark, as the Maiden did. 'Out of darkness, light; out of madness, wisdom—' "

Larig nodded. "How crazy are you?"' His tone was very uneasy. Her stomach knotted, hearing in his words a reflection of the nervousness she had been trying to ignore. Worse, she didn't feel like talking. Segnbora wished for the thousandth time that Lang weren't thought-deaf.

She plucked a blade of grass from beside her and began running it back and forth between her fingers. "I think I told you about my family, a little,''* she said.

She could feel his confusion, typical of him when she chose to come at a question sideways. Lang rarely understood any approach but the head— on kind. "Tai-Enraesi," he said. "Enra was a 'Queen's sister of Darthen, wasn't she?"

Segnbora nodded. *Tm related to a lot of people who've been up that hill. Beorgan, and Beaneth, the doomed Queens. Raela Way-Opener. Efhiaer d'Seldun. Gereth Drag-onheart. . " She trailed off. Then, after a while, "To be where they were., I don't know how I can pass the Fane by—"""