The Door Into Shadow by Diane Duane
How old was I? Segnbora wondered, though wondering was vain. Very small, she’d been—small enough to still be wearing a shift instead of a kilt, but large enough to push open the front door of the old house at Asfahaeg and escape at bedtime. She’d gone out into the dark, unsure just what she was looking for—then had glanced up and found something, a marvel. Not just sunset, or dusk, or dark, but a sky burning with lights, every one solitary and glorious; and she knew, small as she was, that somehow or other she and those lights were intimately connected.
Now Segnbora knew them as stars, knew their names, knew about the Dragons who had come from among them, and about the Goddess Who had made them. But the wonder had never left her: that desire to get closer to those lights that called her—and, eventually, closer to the One Who had made the stars. When the Rodmistresses tested her at the age of three and found the Fire, she’d been overjoyed. Everybody knew that when you had the Flame, you got to talk to Her more often than most.
But years of study had failed her. School after school had been unable to provide her with a focus strong enough to channel the huge outflow of her Power—and so there had been no breakthrough, and no truedreams in which the Goddess walked. After much bitter time Segnbora had admitted the truth to herself, that she was never going to focus. She might as well give up sorcery and lore and Flame and all the other timewasting for something useful, as her father had always said.
And, having given up, so it was that she’d met the Goddess at last. She was good enough with Charriselm to go looking for a job as a guard. She found one, in a little Steldene town called Madeil—and found Freelorn in the mucky alley behind the tavern there. Later, fleeing from an old keep in which the aroused Steldenes had besieged them, the group had come across a little fieldstone inn on the border between Steldin and the Waste. It had seemed strange at the time that there should have been an inn out there at the very edge of human habitation, but the innkeeper had put them all at ease. Finding that they were short of money, she offered to share herself with one of Freelorn’s people to settle the scot. A common enough arrangement, and Segnbora had won the draw for the privilege.
It had been a sweet evening. The innkeeper had been fair, but there was more to her beauty than that. A long while they sat together by the window of Segnbora’s little room, she and a white-shifted shadow veiled in hair like the night, talking and breathing the apple-blossom scent while the full Moon went softly up the sky. The talk drifted gradually to matters that Segnbora usually kept deeply hidden—old joys, old pains —while the brown-and-beige-banded pottery cup went back and forth between them, filled with a wine like summer wind running sweet under starlight.
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 filled it once.
She looked across at the other, then, and realized Who had come to share Herself with her, as She comes to every man and woman born, 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 Segnbora loved best—Maiden about to be Bride, Creatress about to create something 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, incalculably.
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 brims over 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 Segnbora 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.
Segnbora glanced across the lake, at the Fane standing silent, watching her, under the constellations of early summer. He’ll be ready soon, she thought. Somewhere to northward the wolves started 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 shook her head 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—’”
Lang nodded. “How crazy are you?”
His tone was uneasy. Segnbora’s stomach knotted, hearing in his words a reflection of the nervousness she’d been trying to ignore. Worse, she didn’t feel like talking. Segnbora wished for the thousandth time that Lang wasn’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.
Segnbora felt 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 the Queen’s sister of Darthen, wasn’t she?”
Segnbora nodded. “I’m related to quite a few people who’ve been up that hill. Béorgan, and Béaneth, the doomed Queens. Raela Way-Opener. Efmaer d’Seldun. Gereth Dragonheart…” She trailed off. After a while she said, “To be where they were. . . I don’t know how I can pass the Fane by—”
Lang slouched further down against the tree. His face was calm, but his heart was shouting, Yes, and look what happened to them! Béorgan and Béaneth dead of the Shadow or of sorrow, Raela gone off through some door and never heard of again, Efmaer dead in the mountains, or worse, in Glasscastle—
Segnbora twitched, resettling her back against the rowan’s trunk. She heartily wished there was something else left to try, but over twenty years she had exhausted the talents of instructors all over the Kingdoms. This was a last chance: if she failed this, she could finally rest.
“I thought I might talk you out of it,” Lang said, very low. “I like you the way you are.”
“I don’t.”
“But if you go up there there’s no telling what’ll happen to you—”
“I know. That’s the idea!”
Lang drew back, pained.
“Look,” Segnbora said, regretting his distress. “Twenty years of training, and I’m Fire-trained without Fire, I’m a sorcerer who doesn’t care for sorcery and a trained bard who’s too depressed to tell stories. It’s time to be something else. Anything.”
“But, ‘Berend—”
The use of the old nickname, which Eftgan had coined so long ago, poked her in a suddenly sensitive spot. She laid her hand on Lang’s, startling him out of his frightened annoyance. “You remember the first time we met? You tried to talk me out of joining up with Lorn, remember?”
“Stubborn,” Lang muttered, “you were stubborn. I couldn’t stand you.”
She gave him a humorous look. “Maybe change isn’t such a bad thing, then?”
After a moment he squeezed her hand. “Care to share afterwards? If you haven’t turned into a giant toadstool or some such, of course.”
Her heart turned over inside her. When Lang made such offers, there was always more love in his voice
Lang chuckled.
“You two ready?” said another voice, and they both looked up. Herewiss was standing beside them with Khávrinen sheathed and slung over his shoulder. Freelorn was with him, arms folded and looking nervous.
“What do you mean ‘you two’?” Lang said. “I prefer to die in bed, thanks.”
Segnbora squeezed his hand and got up, brushing herself off. “You found the raft, I take it.”
“Hidden in the reeds,” Freelorn said. “In fact, the reeds were growing through it in places. Evidently not many people come this way.”
“Just the three of us are climbing, then.” Herewiss said. “Still, it’s probably better that we all go across—in case any Fyrd get by our rearguard.”
Lang got up, and the four of them went off to join the others by the lakeshore. Dritt and Harald and Moris were standing at a respectable distance from the raft, for Sunspark was inspecting it suspiciously.
(You really want me to get on this thing?) it said to Herewiss as he came up. (That water’s deep. If I fell in there—) It shuddered at the thought.
“So fly over,” Herewiss said, stepping onto the raft from the bank.
Sunspark gazed across at the Fane, its mane and tail burning low. (There’s a Power there, and in the water,) it said. (I’m not sure I want to attract Its attention quite so blatantly…)
“Then come on.”
***
THREE
The Goddess’s courtesy is a terrible thing. To the mortal asker she will give what is asked for, without stinting, without fail. Nor will She stop giving until the gift’s recipient, like the gift, becomes perfect. Let the asker beware…
(Charestics, 45)
They all climbed onto the raft. Sunspark came last, picking its way onto the mossy planks with the exaggerated delicacy of a cat. But it stood quite still in the midst of them as Herewiss and Freelorn poled the raft. No one broke the silence. Out on the water the feeling of being watched was stronger than ever.
At last the raft grounded, scraping and crunching on a rough beach of pale pebbles. Herewiss stepped off, Freelorn behind him, and each of the others in turn. Everyone winced at the seeming loudness of their footsteps. Segnbora, second-to-last off, thought she had never heard anything so deafening as her light step on the gravel. Sunspark, behind her, got off and made no sound at all. It was carefully walking a handspan above the shore.
They were not only watched, they were felt. There was no mistaking it. There was no threat in the sensation; the regard running through them was patient, passive. But whatever fueled it was immeasurably old, and huge. As the Power reached up into them, the others looked at one another, wondering, finding old companions suddenly somehow strange.
Segnbora understood the sensation as most of her companions couldn’t. The Fire within her, dwindled to nearly nothing because of years of lack of focus, now suddenly leapt up as wildly within her as if a wind blew through her soul. The Power pushed at her, urging her toward the mountain. At the same time it looked through her at the others, and looked through them at her, determining what changes would be made—
Oh Goddess, she thought, this is what I’ve needed. There was no mistaking the Source of what stirred here, though this half-slumbering immensity of calling Flame was only the least tithe of Her Power. And I’m terrified—
Herewiss and Freelorn stood transfixed, keeping very close to each other. She couldn’t see their faces, but Freelorn had stopped nervously hugging himself for the first time since the morning. Khávrinen in its back-sheath was blue-white with Fire: its light shone through seams in its scabbard, and the hilt blazed like a torch. “There’s the trail,” Freelorn said quietly, looking upward.
“I’ll race you,” Segnbora said as quietly. She slipped past them and started climbing.
The trail wasn’t too difficult. Part of it followed old gullies or slide-paths; part of it seemed to have been cut into the hillside, but only lightly, so that rockfall or deadwood frequently blocked the way. In the starlight it was hard to see where to put one’s feet. Each of them fell and slid at least once. By the time they reached the flattened hilltop five hundred feet above the lakeshore, they were all bruised, and breathing hard.
But the gasping for breath didn’t last. It was replaced almost immediately by a sensation of being anchored, centered, secured past any dislodging. Freelorn and Herewiss stood as still as Segnbora, feeling their pulses become tranquil, their breath come more gently. The three of them stood poised at the apex of the world’s Heart. The Universe swung around them, slow and silent, waiting. After a few moments Segnbora sank to one knee, bending to touch the gullied ground with one hand, the ground where Raela and Efmaer and Béorgan had stood. She could feel the Power, bound, waiting, alive. Her own Fire strained downward to reach it, and, unfocused, could not. But that seemed unimportant as she knelt there, feeling the ages run through her. This place was more important than the needs of any one human being.
“Loved,” Freelorn said to Herewiss, his voice uncertain, “something’s strange inside me—”
“Of course there is.” Herewiss reached out to Freelorn and drew him close, not so much in compassion as in exultation. “It’s your Fire. You have a spark of it like everyone else; here at the heart of Fire, how could you not feel it? The Fane is reaching up to you.”
“I thought so.” Freelorn sounded almost in pain. “It wants me. But I don’t know what to do.”
“Listen to what it has to say to you,” Herewiss said. “Just feel it. Few enough people ever do.”
Herewiss let go of Freelorn with his right arm, then reached around behind to let Khávrinen’s scabbard down from the back-sling. He drew the sword slowly, with relish and ease and much tenderness, as he might have drawn himself from his loved after passion spent. The sword swept out and down before him, Fire trailing behind the blade. Even now, before the wreaking had begun, the Flame was too bright to look at directly.
“So much,” Lorn said, soft-voiced, blinking and tearing in the light. “You can do anything now…”
“For the moment.” Freelorn looked puzzled: Herewiss laughed gently. “Lorn, just how did you think I was able to destroy those hralcins? Under normal circumstances twenty Rodmistresses, fifty, couldn’t have done it. I was in ‘breakthrough,’ as they call it in the Precincts, and I will be for maybe another tenday or so. After that the Power begins to drop to more normal levels. That’s why She wants me to hurry.”
He gazed down at the Flame-flowing sword in his hand. “I’ll give back what was given to me,” he said, resting Khávrinen’s point on the ground. “As much as I can. Standing where we stand, every power for good between the mountains and the Sea will feel this happening, and know me for an ally.”
“The Shadow and the dark things will hear you too,” Freelorn said, “and know you for an enemy. They hate defiance….”
“They hate me already. Let them. I have something better.” The Flame about the blade burned brighter, lighting the hilltop more brilliantly with every breath Herewiss took. “The Shadow’s had Its way in the Kingdoms long enough. Its child the Dark strangled the Fire in half the human race—but that’s done now. I’m the proof. And It’s had Its way too long in Arlen, killing the land slowly with blight and famine and a usurper on the throne. That’s done too, Lorn, I promise you—”
The light was becoming like an otherworldly Sun now, a blaze of determination and joy that dazzled the mind as much as it did the eyes, transfiguring what it touched. Segnbora had a brief vision through the brilliance of a young god raising His arms, offering His loved, across His two hands, the thunderbolt He wielded. In her vision the other, blasted by the overpowering magnificence into another shape, ye
For long seconds Segnbora could not move. Once not long ago, when Herewiss had been away and Lorn had seemed to need consoling, she had entered a little way into the relationship between these two—sharing herself with Lorn, offering her friendship. At the time she’d thought her motives benevolent enough. But recent events had made her suspect that, in fact, she had been the one in need of consoling. Now, by this light in which any untruth withered and fell away, she clearly saw the shape of her own loneliness and sorrow. Likewise she saw the essential twoness of Herewiss and Freelorn—something even Sunspark had perceived more clearly than she did. They are their own, thought. They don’t need me. There was no sadness about the realization: it came almost triumphantly.
Unsteadily—for the forces being freed on the hilltop had made her a bit light-headed—Segnbora turned her back on the ferocious glory raging there. By the time one of the Lovers began speaking Nhàired in invocation, she was descending from the hilltop, sliding and stumbling down the path. “Ae, hn’Hláfedë, ir úntaye Lai –”
Sweet Mother of Everything, Segnbora thought as she reached the end of the steepest part of the path, the first wreaking he tries is the Naming of Names? I wish I had his faith. If some dark power should slip close enough to hear—
The possibility briefly so unnerved her that Segnbora lost her balance, and she had to grab at nearby branches of brush to steady herself. An inner Name was a powerful commodity even after its owner’s death, useful to lend power to various spells and wreakings, and the Name of one who worked with Fire even more so. Great Rodmistresses’ names were passed down through generations; in Segnbora’s own family, Efmaer d’Seldun’s Name was preserved, though the Queen herself was long lost. Now Segnbora exhaled in sudden amusement at the notion that someday sorcerers and Rodmistresses would pay great treasures for the true Name of one Herewiss, a slim dark young man with a tendency toward creative swearing in dead languages. And other tendencies that will matter far more—