Диана Дуэйн - The Door Into Shadow

look green."
Freelorn shrugged, not looking at her. "The change in altitude," he said. "It didn't agree with me. I had a bad night." He was lying, she knew. His eyes were fixed on Adine, and on the lesser peak, where a tiny glitter of silver bridgespan caught the morning Sun. Freelorn said nothing more aloud, but she caught his thought: If only my dreams weren't so bad! And behind the thought lay the sure conviction that something he had recently seen in dream was no baseless vision, but a foreknowledge of reality. A reality that he could avoid if he chose—
Freelorn swung around and leaned on the table. "Are you going to sit there drinking all day," he said to Herewiss, "or are you going to get
up and get Eftgan f s business out of the way so 1 we can tend to our own?"
Herewiss*s glance was much like Freelorn's — all mockery
above, and love below. . and underneath that, a breath of
fear very much suppressed. "Hark to the early riser," he said,
"who pulled me back into bed twice this morning when I
would have gotten up. Come on, you can help correct my
scansion. This wreaking tonight is going to be difficult …"
Their easy laughter faded down the stairs behind them. Segnbora sat down on the windowsill, gazing up in turn at the terrible blind walls and cruel precipices of Adine. The moun-tain cared nothing for human life. With such an audience before her, and the empty room behind, Segnbora took what was likely to be her last opportunity for a while, laid her head against the windowframe, and mourned the dead.
An hour or so before sunset, the seven of them took to horse at khas-Barachael gate to begin the ascent of Adine.
While they were saddling up, Torve came out of the stables leading a little rusty Steldene gelding. "Of your courtesy," he said to Herewiss,
"perhaps you'd take me as guide. I've rid-den this trail a number of times, and climbed to the summit too."
Herewiss looked at the young man, suppressing a smile. There was no need to read Torve's thought, for it was plain enough: He was staring at Khavrinen, which was slung over Herewiss's shoulder, like a small child staring at what the Goddess had left him on New Year's morning.
"With all these other spectators," Herewiss said, glancing around at Freelorn's band, most of whom were along only for the ride, "certainly we can use one person who'll earn his keep on the way. Come and welcome."
They headed out over the half-bridge that reached out from Barachael, on its two-thousand-foot pier of stone, across to the spur of Adine proper. The sorcerer-architects who built the place had carved a hundred foot gap right through the spur, so that with the drawbridge up the fortress stood unas-sailable, one great corner-shoulder turned to the spur.
Once across, a causey wide enough for ten horsemen abreast wound downward through several switchbacks. On both sides the road was overshadowed by cliffs, the shattered faces of which made it obvious that invaders had occasionally tried to come up that way against the defenders' wishes, and had had large rocks dropped on them for their trouble.
"They've tried a few times to shuck this oyster," Torve said cheerfully, "but even Reaver horses can't charge straight up." At its bottom the paved road gave out onto a narrow sad —
die-corridor between khas-Barachael rock and Swaleback, a flattened, marshy little spur of Adine. Torve led them east-ward and out into the valley proper, then southwestward along the skirts of the Adine massif. Past two minor spurs they went. The ground was rocky, and every now
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and then the mountain, cooling from the warmth of the day, would let a little reddish scree slide down at them.
Under Adine" s lengthening shadow they turned due west-ward into a long shallow rampway scoured out by an ancient glacier, and picked their way carefully among the boulders that lay scattered about. Some fifteen hundred feet up the mountain's flank, the ascent became too steep for horses.
"We'll leave them here," Torve said, dismounting. (Not all of them,) Sunspark said mildly. Torve glanced up in great surprise from the hobbling of his gelding, and noticed that Herewiss's mount was calmly stand-ing a foot above the ground. "Sir," he said, addressing Sun-spark with the slight bow due a fellow officer, "we haven't been introduced."
"Torve, this is Sunspark," Herewiss said, dismounting. "Firechild, be good to him, he's on our side. Torve, if you ever need a fortress reduced on short notice, Sunspark is the one to talk to. He eats stone for breakfast."
Torve nodded. Having seen a man with the Fire he looked as if he was now ready to believe anything. "Up this way," he said, and led them up the side of the cirque to a trail that led along its top, under the shadow of the great Adine summit.
They rounded the east-pointing scarp, moving quietly under the great out-handing cornice of snow that loomed a thousand feet above them, and so came to face the north side of the lesser summit ridge. The ridge stood up sheer as a wall, overhung in places, itself at least seven hundred feet high.
"Don't worry, it's not an expert-level climb," Torve said, looking up the walls of rock and ice with relish. "Beginners could handle it—" Freelorn, who had done extensive climbing in the High-peaks of Arlen as a child, made a wry face. Herewiss gazed up the cliff. "This trail is exactly as the song
describes it," he said. " 'Awful.' Torve, I hope you won't tell the Queen's grace on me, but I'm no climber. Maybe we Brightwood people have been down from the mountains too long. Sunspark?"
(Who'll go first?) Sunspark said, with an anticipatory grin. Freelorn's band blanched and began deferring to one an-other.
It took Herewiss and Freelorn and Torve first, managing the thousand-foot ascent to the summit ridge in a single leap. When Segnbora swung herself up into the saddle, Sunspark looked around at her with a naughty light in its eye. (Ner-vous?)
She gave it a threatening look in return and said nothing, while inside Hasai laughed at her. (Afraid of heights! Oh, Immanence within us, what kind of sdaha—) (Well enough for you to laugh. You've got wings. .) Hasai continued laughing, a deep rough hiss. Segnbora did her best to ignore him and made very sure of her seat. A moment later she was glad of her care, for Sunspark shot up to the summit, trailing bright fire like a newborn comet and going at least twice as fast as it had the first time. It came down fast, too, landing on the snow with a hiss of steam and an incongruously light impact. Shaky-kneed, Segnbora scrambled down. (Well, that was probably the high point of your day,) Sun-spark said, genially malicious.
"Mmmnh," Segnbora said, slapping it familiarly on the flank, and burning herself. "The others are waiting." It gave her a final look, walked off the precipice and plunged down out of sight.
She picked up a fistful of snow to cool the burned hand and walked over to join the others. They stood around the base of the Skybridge where it rooted into the stone, some thirty feet broad. The bridge had no look of a made thing about it, for there were no rivets, no marks of tools anywhere to be seen. Drawn from the mountain's heart by Fire, the metal had the light uprising grace of a growing thing about it, as if Adfne had put up stem and flower. There were actually a number of stems — three lower ones, anchoring the main spans to consecutively lower points on the side of the peak. The angle of the bridge itself wasn't steep: It gained perhaps a foot in height for each three of length. Herewiss held Khavrinen out and touched the bright silvery metal of the bridge with the point — then jerked his arm back quickly as a blue