Диана Дуэйн - The Door Into Shadow

Torve and the others went after, Sunspark hammering be-hind them at a gallop, the bridge under its feet ringing like struck crystal. Segnbora followed, stepping out onto the bridge. Maybe I shouldn't, she thought as she looked down. But to her surprise, the vista of shadows and creeping fog that veiled the south— face glacier half a mile below didn't much trouble her. Hasai's Dragofire was strong in her, getting stronger as she headed after the others. Lady grant it holds, she thought, beginning to run.
At the Skybridge's end, between the two huge crystal doors that lay open there, a tiny figure passed into the dimness beyond and was lost to sight.
The group ahead of her slowed and came to a stop at the end of the bridge, gazing up at the chill clear grace of towers and keeps, at the awful tallness and thickness of the doors. Segnbora caught up with them, feeling their nervousness. Sai Ebassren, the place was called in Darthene: the House of No Return. What lay within, no legend told. The only certainty
was that when the three Lights were gone, the place would vanish, and anyone trapped within would never emerge.
Herewiss did not pause for long. Sending a great defiant glory of the Flame down Khavrinen's length, he walked through the doors. The twilight within swallowed him as it had Freelorn. For an instant Khavrinen flickered like a star seen through fog, and then its light vanished. Sunspark hesitated at the doors, though only for a moment. It was trembling in body, a sight that astounded Segnbora. "Firechild—"
(I'm bound,) it said in terror. (I can't burn. I can't change—)
She reached out to it in mind, perplexed, and felt Sunspark drowning in a cold more deadly than the lost gulfs between stars that Hasai had mentioned; a cold that could kill thought and motion and change of any kind. Hasai had been shielding her. (Maybe you should stay outside,) she said.
It turned hard eyes on her. (I will not let him come to harm in there,) it said, and turned away from her to walk shaking through the doors. The dimness folded around its burning inane and tail, and Sunspark vanished.
"That's done it," Lang said, genial and terrified. "Damned if I'll be outdone by a walking campfire—" He unsheathed his sword and went after, Torve close after him.
There Segnbora stood, left alone on the threshold, trem-bling nearly as hard as Sunspark had. No return.
She swore at herself and hurried in behind the others.
She was in a great hall, all walled in sheer unfigured crystal, through which Adine and the peaks beyond it showed clear. The air was thick with a blue dusk, like smoke. She barely had time to see these things, though, before the terrible thought-numbing cold she had experienced through Sunspark came crowding in close around her, ten times worse than it had been outside.
From within her came an answering flare, Hasai and the mdeihei calling up old memories of warmth and daylight to fight the cold. She regained a bit of composure, looked
around for the others. They were nowhere in sight. Deep in the twilight she could see vague forms moving far away, but somehow she knew that none of them were those with whom she had entered. Her companions were all lost in the blue-ness, with Freelorn.
(Herewiss!) she called silently. (Sunspark!) But no reply came back, and her under speech fell into a mental silence as thick as if she had shouted into a heavily curtained room. Thought was blocked here, then.
file:///G|/rah/Diane%20Duane%20-%20Tales%20Of%20The%20Five%2002%20-%20The%20Door%20Into%20Shadow.htm (76 of 155) note 10 Note10 2/13/2004 11:52:50 PM

"Herewiss!" she shouted aloud. The curling twilight soaked up the sound of her voice like a heavy fog. She set off into the blueness, hurrying.
For all her fearfulness, the sheer greatness of the wreaking that had made this place astonished her. Even at first entrance the place had seemed as big as Earneselle or the Queens' Hall in Prydon. But now, as she walked across the vast glassy floor, the walls grew remote and the ceiling seemed to become a firmament that not even a soaring Dragon could reach. Mir-rored in walls, galleries, and crystalline arches, she saw vague intimations of other rooms: up-reaching towers and balco-nies, parlors and courts, an infinity of glass reflected dimly in glass, too huge to ever search or know completely.
That terrible chill was part of the wreaking too, though here inside the castle it seemed not to be biting so viciously at the bones. It was becoming a quality of the mind: a cool lassitude, a twilight that ran in the veins and curled shadowy in the heart, smothering fear and veiling the desire to be out of there. She could feel that cold rising in her, but the presence of the mdeihei was a match for it. Ancient sunfire burned the twilight out of her blood as fast as it grew. Dragonfire, painful and bright at the bottom of her lungs, burned the sad resigna-tion away. Frightened by the constant assault, but reassured by the Dragon's presence, Segnbora headed deeper into the shadowy blue. The dead and those who had abandoned life slowly became evident around her. There' were many, but none of them were walking together. Young men and old women she passed; foreigners and countrymen, maidens and lords. Here and there she recognized a surcoat— device, but afterward she was
time to impending tears. This woman had been one of the great powers of her time: vital, powerful, quick to laugh or fight or love. She was the woman who had fought Death and won. Yet now she was like all the others here, her spirit emp-tied out on the crystal floor. "Queen," Segnbora said at last, "I'm no dream, unless I stay here too long. Have you seen a man go by here, one of the living? He was wearing the arms of Arlen."
Efmaer turned slowly, and her eyes dwelt on Segnbora's surcoat and her lioncelle passant regardant in blood and gold. "I know that charge," Efmaer said, showing for the first time a wrinkle of expression, a faint frown of lost memory. "My sister—" "Enra," Segnbora said. "I'm of her line. You are my … my aunt, Queen."
"How many generations removed?" Efmaer said, and for a second the bronze in her voice went bright.
Segnbora could not answer her. "That many,"said the Queen. "She is dust, then. She walks the Shore …"
Efmaer's voice drifted away as she started to lose herself again in the undercurrents of Glasscastle's sorrow. Segnbora gulped. There was something nagging at the back of her mind, something that would mean a great deal to this woman. If only she could remember— "Queen," Segnbora said, "if you haven't seen him, I can't wait. I have to find him."
"I could not find the one I sought, either," Efmaer said in that same half-dreaming voice. "I looked and looked for Sefeden, while the Moon went down and the Evenstar set. We must have passed one another half a hundred times, and never known it. Hear me: The Firework sustaining this place is greater than any mortal wreaking, and the place keeps its own. You will not leave …" "My friends and I will get out," Segnbora said, hoping she was speaking the truth. "Come with us—" Efmaer shook her head. "Only the living can leave this place …" "Are you dead then, Eagle's daughter?" s
For the first time, Efmaer looked straight at Segnbora. Emotion was in those eyes now, but it was an utter hopeless-ness that made Segnbora shudder. "Do I look dead? Would that I were. Not Skadhwe itself could kill me here!" "Skadhwe is here?"
"Somewhere," the Queen said. "Once the doors closed, I lost it, the way I lost everything else. Yet even while the doors were open, it did me no good." She closed her eyes, and with a great effort made another expression: pain. "I fought, but I could not kill myself, and so I am less than dead … "
Pity and horror wrung Segnbora, but she couldn't stay. "Queen, I have to go hunting."
"He will be with her," Efmaer said. "Far in, at the place where your heart breaks. But be out before moonset …" The woman didn't speak or move again. Segnbora paused only long enough to take one of those pale, pliant hands and lift it, kissing the palm in the farewell of kinsfolk of the Forty Houses. Then she turned and hurried away.
Hall after hall opened before her, all alike, huge prisms full of silence and the reflections of empty eyes. Corridor like corridor, gallery like
gallery, and nowhere any face she knew. She ran harder. Through the walls she saw the treacherous Moon hanging exactly where it had
been when she entered. Likewise the sunset appeared about to grow dimmer, but had not changed. Inside Glasscastle there was eternal
sunset, she realized. Without, who knew how much time had passed? The three Lights could be about to vanish, for all she knew.
The thought of the others still unfound, of the awful way back to the main hall, of Efmaer's ghastly placidity, all wound together in her brain
and sang such horror to her that for a few seconds she went literally blind. Trying to turn a corner in that state, she missed her footing and
skidded to her knees. Desperately she tried to rise, but could not. Her leg muscles had cramped.
There Segnbora crouched, gasping, sick with shame and
rage. The awareness of the huge head bowing over her, great
wings stretching upward, was small consolation.
(Sdaha.)
(Yes, I know, just a—) (Sdaha. Here's our lost Lion—)
She pushed herself up on her hands and looked. There was Freelorn, not more than ten or fifteen feet away from her. He was kneeling on the crystal floor, very still, his head bowed. The sight flooded her with intense relief.
"Lorn," she whispered, and scrabbled back to her feet again, ignoring the protests of abused muscles. "Lorn. Thank the—"