Диана Дуэйн - The Door Into Shadow

file:///G|/rah/Diane%20Duane%20-%20Tales%20Of%20The%20Five%2002%20-%20The%20Door%20Into%20Shadow.htm (49 of 155) note 6 Note6 2/13/2004 11:52:50 PM postern gate.
Quietly Segnbora walked down the street, patting Char-riselm once to make sure it was loose in the sheath, unbarred the gate, and slipped out. She relieved herself in the shadow of one of the ubiquitous hawthorn hedges, then stood stretch-ing awhile, listening to the night and letting herself calm down. Far behind her, the sound of Lang's baritone escaped through the inn's back door, following the lighter notes of the lute through the reflective minor chords of "The Goddess's Riding":
"… But if I speak with yon Lady bright, I wis my heart will bryst in three; Now shall I go with all my might Her for to meet beneath Her tree "
"Tegane," Segnbora whispered, smiling. Moon-bright, the nickname said in Darthene. Eftgan had liked it; she had never been terribly fond of her right name. In fact, she had returned the favor, turning segnbora, "standard-bearer," into 'berend, a verb. It meant "swift-rushing": impetuous, always in a hurry, sometimes too much of one — as when the Maiden had let Death into the worlds by accident.
And as their names, so they had been together while they were in love: Eftgan swinging slow and steady through her moods, like the Moon, waxing and waning, giving and with-holding; Segnbora pushing, hurrying, urging, not sure what she wanted but not willing to wait long for it. The senior Rodmistresses had paired them off to work to-gether in hopes that Eftgan's Fire, unusually intense for a sixteen year old, might influence Segnbora's enough to make her focus. They expected the play-sharing that usually took place between work partners to make the two novices' pat-terns match more closely. No one, however, had expected these two, who were so unlike — one a tall, loud, spindly daughter of hedge— nobility, the other a small, compact, quiet daughter of the Eagle — to fall in love. . Segnbora thought of the day Eftgan had had to leave the
Precincts. It was sudden. Her brother Bryn had been killed by Fyrd while hunting.
"They're going to make me be Queen," Eftgan had said, bitter, standing in the green shade with her face averted from Segnbora. She had been trying not to cry. Tegane—
" 'Berend, you can't do anything for me. Any more than I've been able to do anything for you, all this while. Perhaps its better that I'm leaving now. You can't focus, and I can't be happy around you using the Fire and watching you suffer while I do wreakings. If this kept on much longer, we'd be hating each other."
This was the truth, and it reduced anything Segnbora could have said in reply to a meaningless noise. The two of them stood in the shade, hardly able to look at one another, and made their good-byes. Each laid a kiss in the palm of the other's hand, the restrained and formal farewell between kinsfolk of the Forty Houses.
Then Eftgan turned away and vanished among the green leaves of the outer Precincts; and Segnbora went in deeper, and didn't come out till her soul was cried dry, a matter of some days. .
Now Segnbora stood bemused for a moment, then realized that a dark head seemed to loom just over her shoulder, though of course there was nothing between her and the stars of late spring.
(When you forget me, when you let us be one, it can be this way,) Hasai said, dispassionately. (Do you prefer discomfort, apartness?) She almost said yes, but held her peace. "It was a very private memory," she said quietly. (Sdaha, you still don't understand. You must be who you have been to be who you are.)
Segnbora shook her head, weary. Every time I think I under-stand the mdeihei, I find I don't at all. . She looked out across the field into which she had ducked when she came through the hedge. It was tall with green hay that whispered in the starlight. On an impulse she
THE DOOR INTO SHADOW
tucked her robe up into her swordbelt and started across it, wading waist-deep, enjoying
the sensations: the rasp and itch of the hay against her legs, the darkness, the cool wind. Hasai said nothing, his mind resting alongside hers, tasting the night as she did—
She stopped short in the middle of the field. Something teased at her undersenses, a whiff of wrongness that was out of tune with the clean night. She stood there with eyes closed to "see" better—

(I'm here. I feel it also.) (Come on.)
Seven
"You are cruel," Efmaer said. "More cruel than any legend has ever told."
"No more cruel than humans to themselves, who keep hope as a precious jewel."
Then the Shadow vanished, and Efmaer filled the air where lit had been with curses, and rode away after the soul of her loved..
(Efmaer's Ride, traditional: part
the Second)
Segnbora unsheathed Charriselm and went off eastward through the standing hay. Another hedge loomed up before her, without stile or hedge-gate. With Charriselm she cut an opening, making certain that it would be too small for a cow to escape through in the morning, and squeezed through.
The sour mind-stench she had smelled got stronger by the second, becoming so terrible that Segnbora wondered how she could have missed it from fifty miles away, let alone from the town. At the edge of the field the ground under her feet seemed to be burning with it. Her inner hearing buzzed and roared as if two powerful hands were choking her. She stopped and held still, forcing herself not to gag. The
THE DOOR INTO SHADOW
stench was coming from beneath an old yew with peeling bark and drooping branches.
She walked under the tree and went to her knees. The fallow ground had been plowed almost up to the tree trunk. The furrows lay neat and seemingly undisturbed, yet when Segnbora thrust her hands into the still soft ground and turned it over, she sat back on her heels, sick to her stomach and sicker at heart. There is no mistaking the smell of a grave, especially a shallow one.
Nor was it the only grave. When she found strength to stand again, the death-taint led her to four others scattered around the edges of the field. All were deeper and better concealed, and all were older: the oldest perhaps three months old, the newest about three weeks. So much for Eftgan's messenger, Segnbora thought, standing over the last grave. From the intelligencer's grave and three others, the souls were long flown, despite the brutality of their
deaths. But from the one under the yew tree came a sensation of vague, scattered, helpless loss. There were two souls trapped there, shattered by their murder, trying to coalesce in time to find the Door into Starlight before the strength to pass it was lost. Segnbora swore bitterly, torn with pity for the struggling dead and her own inability to do anything for them. Sorcery has no power over the opening or closing of that final Door. She knew the protocols for the laying of the dead, but without Fire they were useless to her. But Herewiss, or Eftgan—
She headed back for town at a run, pausing outside the postern gate to remove the sticktights and hay blades from her clothes. The inn's
common room was, if possible, noisier than it had been. There were perhaps one hundred people there, laughing, joking,
singing — Segnbora's hair stood up at the thought that any one of them might be a murderer several times over.
She found Freelorn relieving the barmaid of another bottle of potato wine, and swung him aside. "Lorn, where's Here-wiss gone?"
"He's still out talking to—" Lorn stopped short of saying the Queen's name, then looked more closely at Segnbora. "You're shaking!"
"Lorn, never mind. Smile! There's something very wrong and we're not supposed to know about it. Take your time but find Herewiss—"
"— so if the others agree, we'll go to Barachael," Herewiss's voice said suddenly as he came up behind Freelorn from the other side. "It's as
good a place to hide as any, and it's a lot closer to Arlen than we are now. . What's wrong?" he said, looking at Segnbora. His
underhearing brought him an an-swer that made his eyes go wide with shock. "Show us," he said. "Lorn, go out the front way. I'll take the
side. By the postern gate?"
Segnbora nodded and went out the way she had come, doing her best to take her time. Lorn and Herewiss were through the postern and into the hay ahead of her. She tied up her gown again and hurried after. "Eftgan's gone to readjust her Door," Herewiss said when
she reached them. "It may take her a little while — seven peo-ple, six horses, and Sunspark are a larger group than usually uses that gateway." He lowered his voice. "I think she's ready to back Lorn against Cillmod, openly. She'll give us the de-tails tomorrow, at Barachael."
"That's wonderful," Segnbora said, "but with the problems she's been having she's hardly in a position to leave Barachael for a campaign in Arlen."
"True. However, I believe I can help her, and thus free her to help us in return. You see, the Reavers are pouring through Chaelonde Pass, and it's a simple enough matter to close that avenue—"
"But the Queen's Rodmis tresses have been doing illusion-wreakings there for years," Segnbora objected. "They're no longer strong enough. People have been dying in that pass for centuries, and the built-up negative energies are enough to ruin even the best Rodmis