The Door Into Shadow by Diane Duane
I give him into your hands, her heart said to her. Do with him what you will.
The great silence on this side of the Door surrounded her.
Even he didn’t kill me, she thought.
She lifted her eyes to Balen again. Trembling, he shot her a terrified glance. In that blunt and brutal face, she saw again what she had seen in Lang, and Herewiss, and Freelorn, and even the Fyrd.
Her.
HerSelf.
Segnbora tossed Skádhwë away.
Very slowly, even with fear, she went to the man, reached out to touch his shoulders. He winced at the touch, as if gentleness burned him.
“Goddess,” she said. “Shadow. I know Who You are.”
Balen looked at her face, and then looked away again in anguish. Segnbora couldn’t bear such terror. She reached out to take his face in her hands.
“Balen,” she said, speaking the name aloud for the first time in her life.
He blinked in confusion.
“I seem to be getting a lot of practice at being others, these days,” she said. “First Dragons... then Myself. I see that this is what the practice was for. To see You for what You are. Just Her, in another suit. A tool to make me what I am, no less than the beautiful face and the ever-filled cup were tools. You were a little rougher on me than you might have been, perhaps. You were the sword. But my hand was on the hilt. I destroy. And I create...” She gulped, feeling tears start. “Time I got started. I’ve bound you into my life all this time, my poor rapist. Enough of it. Go free.”
He squinted at her in terrified disbelief.
“Beloved,” she said. “Go free.”
Drawing him close, shaking all over, she laid her lips on his, once and gently. Then she hugged him tight. When she opened her arms, he was gone.
Weak from the sudden release of so much emotion, Segnbora sat down hard on the invisible surface and wiped her eyes, then realized that the wetness on her hands was more than tears. The weakness, too, probably had something to do with her heart’s blood running down her surcoat.
Oh Goddess, I forgot, she thought, getting dizzier by the moment. Blood loss. I have to get back there. Where’s Skádhwë? I can’t leave it…
Fumbling, falling to hands and knees again, she began feeling around for the blade. Against the dark floor, this was like looking for clear glass in water. The dizziness got worse. She reeled; her sight forsook her. Perhaps she was starting to die.
The sudden pain, an infinitesimally thin line of it, told her she had found Skádhwë again. Grateful for the hint, she grabbed it hard, using the pain to shock herself awake, although she was half dead already.
She pushed herself upright...
***
…on the cold snow, and opened her eyes. All around her men and women were covering their faces in horror of something that was coming. She had to get up. Where was Skádhwë?. . . still sheathed. Good.
Left-handed she fumbled for something with which to support herself, and found a stone. She levered herself up to her knees and managed to stand, though a wobbly stance it was, and probably very temporary. She drew Skádhwë, and saw with dismay that it was covered with blood. Shíhan, were he here, would be scandalized! If you must die, do it with a clean blade, he’d always said. She whipped the blood off the blade in a quick downward slash, third move of the edelle maneuver—
—and Fire whipped down after it.
I am dead, she thought in absolute disbelief, and lifted the sword to stare at it. Fire, raging blue and as impossible to look at as sunlight, trickled down Skádhwë’s black edge. Just a double-thread at first, and then more. It grew quickly, a torch’s worth of Fire, a Firebrand’s worth, a lightningbolt in her hands, burning like a star, throwing her shadow long and black against the cliff.
I have it! she thought in fierce joy, for that one mad moment not caring that she was about to die. She stared backwards at her shadow, the proof of the light—shortlegged, long of neck, wings where she had arms. I’m whole, she thought, and laughed, raising the hand that held Skádhwë. The right wing stretched upward, huge. No! We’re whole! The left arm up now; the wing reached up in response. We may die, sithesssch, but we’ll do it together!
—and abruptly, with a deathpain that shot down her right arm to her heart, that wing-shadow tore away from the cliff, casting a shadow of its own, impossibly coming real –
The second wing tore free, another pain. She saw webs that gleamed like polished onyx and struts rough with black sapphires. Then came the terrible length of tail, the deadly spine at the end of it whipping free, lashing outward, poised above her to protect. And after the tail, the taloned forelimbs, the diamond talons flashing in the blinding Firelight. A neck, the great head, glowing eyes burning not silver now but blue, leaning down over her and glaring past her with impartial challenge at Reavers and Fyrd and the dark something that approached—
“Hhn’ ae mrin’hen,” said the voice of wind and storm from right above her. “Whole at last, yes!”
She stared up at Hasai, so torn between wonder and terror that she couldn’t tell anymore whether her weakness came from impending death or sheer astonishment. Her mdaha gazed down at her, tilting his head in a gesture of greeting, and turned his attention again to the field and the forces attacking the scarp.
She had heard Dragons roar in her mind. But in the open it was something else. Rocks fell down from the cliff, and the ground shook almost as hard as it had before. Not just one voice roared, but two, ten, a score, a hundred. The mdeihei were there too, not as solidly as Hasai, but present enough to be a host of shifting wings and deadly razor-barbs and glowing, glaring eyes, all looking down at the attackers. They sang of a solution to this problem, one that was, for them, not a solution to be feared—a roaring chorus of frightening harmonies and dissonances: death, death, death!
Hasai reared his head back, bared the diamond fangs that few had ever survived seeing, and flamed.
The Reavers fled, panicked. Hasai’s blast of Dragonfire melted the ground where they had been standing. Even the slow-stalking shadow at the southern edge of the field halted at that, as if stunned. Fyrd scattered in all directions but eastward, where the Sun seemed to be coming up.
The scarp was fenced with fire again, but this time the consuming white of Dragonfire, with a tinge of blue to it; and inside the circle a tremendous shape with wings like thunderclouds was rearing up against the cliff, burning in iron and diamond, ineluctably real. And down by one of his hind talons, hanging onto it for support, a tiny figure bleeding Fire from a wound in the heart stared up and up at what had been, and now was.
Segnbora looked with grim, delighted purpose out at the field, at the fleeing Reavers and Fyrd, and down at the thing in her hand that burned with Fire. “Sithesssch’tdae,” she sang to Hasai and the other mdeihei who stirred in shadow along the ledge, “untidy to leave them running around like this, don’t you think?”
The mdeihei sang angry assent in a thunder that echoed from the surrounding mountains, causing a bass obbligato of avalanches to follow.
“Must we send them rdahaih?” Hasai sang.
Segnbora stepped forward to the edge of the shelf where they stood, only partially aware of Herewiss’s and Freelorn’s prone forms. Breathing or not, they’d have to wait until later. “I don’t know,” she said, and raised Skádhwë, thinking hard.
It can’t be done, they say—a gating for more than fifty. However—
She closed her eyes, not needing the physical ones to see at the moment, and drew up a great flood of Power from the tremendous supply they had always told her she’d have. In mind she saw them, every Fyrd in the valley and for miles around. She hated them, and loved them, and did what was necessary. She poured the Flame out of her as if opening a floodgate, until the valley was awash with it.
It was simple to gather up the minds of every Fyrd in the area and hold them all under the surface of that Flame until they drowned. Stop showing off, she told herself severely. You may drop
The Reavers and the Arlene mercenaries at the other side of the field were fleeing, and she stared across at them, angry and pleased. She could easily kill them all, but she knew Someone Who would prefer it otherwise, if at all possible.
So, she thought, and reached out in heart to feel them all, every last one, mind and soul together. The Rodmistresses had said it was impossible, but behind her she had a supporting multitude who would testify otherwise if she asked them to. She was that multitude. She could contain universes.
Immersing herself in the minds of her enemies, she became them. Before they had a chance to recover from being her, she stepped to the cliff’s edge and lifted Skádhwë. With it she drew four great slashing lines of Flame that fell onto the darkened field, and grew, and grew—
Suddenly the ground within the lines was missing, replaced by five thousand different images blurred together—some of them of the Arlene countryside, or of Prydon city, some of them of the strange cold country beyond the mountains from which the Reavers came. Into the crammed-together vistas fell men and women who cried out in terror and were gone. She closed the door behind them with a word and a sweep of Skádhwë, and glanced up in thanks at the glowing eyes that hung over her. Then she turned south.
There, something dark stirred in its mantle of blackness and glared utter hatred at her. She looked back at It calmly, having loved It before, and unafraid to do once more what was necessary. She reached out to grasp the forces that Dragons could manipulate, and took one more step forward, right off the edge of the cliff. There she stood on empty air.
“Come out and meet us if you dare!” she cried. The song winding around the words held in it the ultimate challenge: inescapable love. Behind her the mdeihei echoed the song in perilous harmonies, unimpressed by the darkness, unafraid.
Trembling, Segnbora stood there while the Shadow gathered Itself up into that terrible crushing wave she had seen before, full of screams and blood and ancient death. It rose higher and higher above her. She lifted up Skádhwë’s flaming length and stood her ground, letting her eyes sink into the Shadow’s darkness, becoming It, accepting It for her own, her dark side, Her other Shadow.
It trembled toward her—then gathered Itself down into a shuddering ball of fear and thwarted hatred, and vanished.
The wind died abruptly, and the sky began to clear. Four thousand Darthenes stood in an empty field with no one left to fight.
Segnbora took a last gasp of breath and walked back onto the cliff, beginning to feel mortal again for the first time since she had turned Skádhwë against herself. Behind a rock Eftgan lay breathing shallowly. Beside her, two forms struggled to sit up, helping each other. One of them had an arrow in him, but it didn’t seem to be paining him much. As Segnbora came up to them, the taller of the two reached out to his loved and touched the arrow’s protruding shaft. It vanished in a flicker of Fire, as did the place where it had gone in.
She knelt beside them and laid Skádhwë over her knees— a burning shadow, a piece of the night set on Fire. They stared at it.
“You did it,” Freelorn whispered. “You did it!”
She smiled at him. “All your fault, my liege.”
“But what did you do?” Herewiss was looking at her with such a mixture of joy and perplexity that she could have both laughed and cried at once. “I saw what you did to yourself,” he said. “Why aren’t you dead? And where did Cillmod and all those Reavers go?”
“I sent them home, for the time being.” She looked down at her surcoat, brushed at it. There was a neat tear where Skadhwë had gone in through cloth and mail, but that was all. The scar was a faint white seam just to one side of the nightmare’s bite.
“I told you,” said a great voice above her. “Dragons are quick to heal.”
Silver-blue light fell about her as someone else bent low to look curiously at the place where the shadowblade had gone in. She gazed up at him—her shadow casting a shadow of his own now—and at last, the tears came. She reached up to the tremendous jaw as it dropped open, and very gently laid her hand in the Dragon’s mouth, as she had feared to do, as she would never fear to do again. The jaws closed, and self joined with self.
“Now what, sda’sithesssch?”
“Now, mda’sithesssch,” she said, gathering him close and laughing through the tears that fell on the sapphire hide, “there’s a King to escort to his throne. Let’s get busy!”
***
SIXTEEN
Some gifts are so great that the only way the recipient can express his gratitude is to immediately give the gift to someone else. A dangerous business, this, among fickle humankind, who often see such generosity as indicative of a thoughtless heart. But in such a matter, do as your heart directs you. In the last reckoning, She is both giver and receiver, acting both parts to increase the joy of both – and if humankind doesn’t understand, She does.
(Charestics, 118)
They leaned on the broad stone wall and looked down into the dark streets of Darthis. No light burned anywhere—not so much as a hearthfire or candle or lamp. Below them the city dreamed in a silver pallor of moonlight, though there was a shifting and stirring in the Square under the walls of the Black Palace.
A few thousand people stood down there, quiet or murmuring, waiting for the Queen to strike the first sparks of the Midsummer needfire and distribute it among them. Most of those waiting were only concerned with their part in the festival—lighting the candles and lamps they carried from the new fire and racing through the city with it, spreading luck and laughter. But a few looked up toward the palace walls and stared fascinated at something strange.
Blue Fire flickered there, dancing about a long slender shape that seemed to be too dark to be a Rod. And there was other light there from a pair of silver-blue globes that looked uncannily like eyes staring downward. The more perceptive in the crowd had even noticed that the moonlight wasn’t falling on them—blocked away from the crowd by a huge winged shape that seemed there when one looked away from it, and not there when one looked at it straight.
Whatever they saw, no one seemed particularly bothered by any of these peculiarities. This was, after all, Midsummer’s Eve, when magic was loose in the world.
Down in the square, flint struck steel, and a spark nested in tinder and began to grow into flames. The cheering began. Viols and trumpets and kettledrums struck up a jubilant music that echoed off the walls, effectively drowning out a deeper music several stories up. “Hn ‘aa ‘se sithesssch mnek-kej-sta untühe au ‘lhhw’t’dae,” the music said, a voice like a trio of bass instruments playing a lazy, cheerful processional.
“Ae, mdaha’esssch,” sang a softer voice, in a raspy alto. “We may as well enjoy the rest while we can . . .“
“There won’t be much of it,” Hasai said, unfolding and folding his wings in resignation. He spoke in precognitive tense, but with good humor; the melody woven about his words said plainly that he preferred action to peace and quiet. “Arlen will be astir like thunderstorm air for months. If Cillmod doesn’t already know who was responsible for what happened at Bluepeak, he will very shortly. The war with Darthen will soon open.”
“And the Queen forges her new crown tomorrow.” Segnbora groaned: a formal occasion first thing in the morning was the last thing she needed. “All I want is to sleep late.”
“You may, if you please. I will teach you how, now that you have a sdaha’s proper timesense. Will a month or so be enough, sithesssch?”
The footsteps now approaching them on the battlement came as no surprise. Two hours ago Segnbora had remembered hearing them, and she had been waiting for them ever since. “If he did know,” the shorter of the two approaching men said on reaching the top of the stairs, ?
“To keep an eye on him?”
“Sounds like something my father might have done. This also explains how he managed to get the backing of the High Houses. But even if he can go into Lionhall, he doesn’t know the Ritual, he’s no Initiate—or if he is, he’s botching it. Arlen is ready for me now.”
Freelorn and Herewiss looked strange out of surcoats and mail. They leaned on the wall, one on either side of Segnbora, in softboots and britches and light-colored shirts. Herewiss looked up at the dark shape that blocked-but-didn’t-block the Moon away. “How much are you there, lhhw’Hasai?”
“As much as my sdaha needs me to be. Or as I need to be. Since we’re one, there’s little difference…”
“Where were you an hour or so ago?” Herewiss said to Segnbora. “Eftgan was looking for you. Wanted your help with the needfire, or something.”
“I was flying,” Segnbora said, nodding at the sky.
Herewiss nodded soberly. She shared a gentle look with him, understanding now from her own experience how complete his underhearing must be, reaching even to others’ most private thoughts. “I have to thank you,” she said.
“You don’t have to anything. You did it yourself.”
“So I did. And you mediated some of that doing with me, saw me into the situations I’d need to get where I am.” She gave him a dry look. “You had little reason to give me such a gift, either. I tried to move in between you and your loved, a while back... and surely you noticed.”
Herewiss nodded, looking grave. But not too much so. “These days, I don’t let old reasons interfere with what I want to do. And maybe, even when I was angriest at you, maybe I saw something…”
“Who I was?” she said.
“Yes. A liaison. There’s a whole race sharing the Kingdoms with us that not even the human Marchwarders understand properly—they have the language, but not the body that forms it. But there was more. You were a catalyst. And will continue to be. Things will be happening that need me— things I couldn’t do without you and your Dragons. Likewise there are things you couldn’t manage without me. I’m part of a solution. And more…”