Диана Дуэйн - The Door Into Shadow

constant stream. Skin tents sprouted everywhere, and thousands of shaggy Reaver ponies cropped the green corn down to stubble. The old silence of
the valley was replaced by a low, malicious whispering, like the Sea's when a storm is brewing. Dusk brought no peace, either. All the valley glittered with the sparks of campfires, around which war songs were being sung, and swords shar-pened.
Segnbora sat atop an embrasure in the northeastern battle-ment as twilight settled in, looking down at the press of Reaver tents and people gathered around the lower switch-back of the approach to khas-Barachael gates. Hasai looked with her, undisturbed. (This place is well built, for something made by your kind,) he said. (It won't fall to such as these.)
"Maybe not. But this is the strongest fortress in this part of the south, and they don't dare march away from here and leave it unconquered at their backs. Even if Herewiss seals the pass successfully, these three thousand will just sit at the gates and hold the siege." (You're troubled, sdaha. And it's not the prospect of battle that's causing it.)
With a sigh, Segnbora swung down from her perch on the wall and sat on the stone bench inside the embrasure, leaning back against the cool wall. (I'm not delighted about this busi-ness of being involved in a wreaking,) she said silently. (Espe-cially this one. And you got me into it.)
The dusky melody of Hasai's laughter rumbled inside her. (I think not. Who spoke the words, who told the Firebearer he was welcome? Did. you lie to him, then?)
Exasperated, Segnbora closed her eyes and slid down into herself. Above the cave within her, it was twilight too. Stars were coming out one by one in the shaft that opened on the sky. Hasai lay at ease on the stone, his eyes silver fire, his tail twitching slightly like that of an amused cat. Segnbora walked over to him and sat down by one of his front talons, leaning her back against it and craning her neck back to see him.
The Dragon was a shadow, winged like the night, only his face glittering in the cool light of his eyes. "Very funny," she said. "Mdaha, I didn't
lie. But I'm afraid of him depending on me. I might fail him."
"Ejsn 'All. Vuudo," Hasai chided. "When will you accept what you are?"
"Be patient, will you? It took me long enough to find out what I'm not."
"Part of you is me," the Dragon said. "I will not fail so simple a task as examining the stone in this valley. If you wore my body more often, you would know that."
The melody of the bass viols in his voice became grave. Behind him the mdeihei matched his song in cadences of calm regret.
"Your memories are buried deeper under you mind's stone than ever. We are at your foundations, and still you try to keep us out. It would be so
easy to become one," he said, lifting his head. "Look…"
In a flash of memory, Hasai showed her the building of the Eorlhowe in North Arlen — a whole mountain that had been uprooted from a remote range in west Arlen as casually as a man might pluck a flower for his hair. The mountain was taken to the tip of the North Arlene Cape, laid there upon the body of the slain Worldfinder, and melted down upon him with Dragonfire until it was only half the size it had been. Then its remains were talon-carved and tunneled and re-worked into the residence of the DragonChief, the Dweller-at-the-Howe. Segnbora shuddered at the thought of the pal-try skin of stone that had been "protecting" her inner mind from Hasai and the mdeihei.
"Your fear cripples you," Hasai said more gently. "You fear what we are. Even our joys are terrible to you. Matings, births, deaths, the Immanence that isn't your Lady but is nonetheless real— You must give up the fear, come to terms with these and all the other things from which you cannot run away. Cease hiding yourself from yourself, be who we are!"
"It's not that easy," she said, taking a last glance at that distressing memory of the Howe. As she watched, storm-clouds clustered about it, hiding
the Howe's rounded peak. Dragons flashed in and out of the clouds like lightning, their roars deafening the thunder. Whether this was ahead— mem-ory, or past-memory, she had no idea.
(Hallo the heart!) came a voice from a long way up. It was Herewiss's voice, tentative but cheerful. "Damn," Segnbora muttered.
Hasai lowered his head toward her. "Later, sdaha?"
"Later for sure," she said, disgruntled. She was not ready for this, but nevertheless she called up to the stars, "Come on in!"
"I brought a friend," Herewiss said, slipping sideways out of nothing as if through a narrow door. Khavrinen was laid casually over his shoulder.
Fire flowed from it and caught in Freelorn's eyes as he appeared behind his loved.
"Nice place you've got here. Where's your lodger? Lorn wanted to—"
Segnbora watched in amused approval as Herewiss stopped in midsentence and looked up … and up, and up. Freelorn halted beside him and did the same, his eyes going wide. When Segnbora had first come in, Hasai had been indistinct, a looming dark presence. But now the gems of his scales caught the light of Herewiss's Fire and threw it back in a dazzle of blue sparks. He lowered his head to thirty or forty feet above Freelorn and Herewiss, tilting his head to look first at one of them, then at the other.
"I see the resemblance remains," he said, very low, rum-bling a major chord of approval. Following the words came Dragonfire, a slow and luxuriant spill of blinding white radi-ance that poured from his mouth to the floor and pooled there, burning. "Greetings, Lion's Child. And to you and your Flame, greetings also, Hearn's son."
From the darkness beyond Hasai the mdeihei joined the greeting, recognizing the sons of two lines worthy of notice even as Dragons reckoned time. The huge cavern filled with a thunder of concerting voices, a harmony that shook the walls.
Herewiss bowed very low. Freelorn glanced around him in amazement at the noise, and then down at the spill of Dra-gonfire, under which the stone floor had melted and be-gun to bubble. Finally he tilted his head back up to look at Hasai. "Resemblance?" he said in a small voice. "To Healhra,"Hasai said calmly. Freelorn's mouth fell open.
"I was at Bluepeak March ward some years before the Bat —
tie," Hasai said. "I saw him when he was a little younger than you. You have his nose."
"I, uh. ." Freelorn said, and closed his mouth. He looked over at Segnbora.
She shrugged. "He's been around awhile, Lorn. Mdaha, what do we have to do for Herewiss?"
"Come deeper inside us, sdaha. He will see what he needs to see when you do."
Hasai dropped his head down to Segnbora's level, his jaws opening slightly to receive her hand. Dragonfire still seethed in his mouth, so that the floor hissed and smoked where drops of it fell. For a split second she hesitated. Then, recognizing a challenge, she rolled up the sleeve of her shirt and thrust her arm into the fire. This was happening in her mind, after all. How badly could it hurt? She found out. Jaws closed and held her trapped in the essence of burning, a heat so terrible that it transcended pain. Her control broke. She opened her mouth to scream, feeling the heat more completely than anything she had ever felt in her life. But to her utter amazement, without the sensation stopping, the pain vanished—
She felt the stone. There was no way she could not feel it. The sensation was like a fencer's when balance at last becomes perfect and power flows up from the earth. Connec-tions formerly hidden suddenly became clear and specific: her body seated on stone, the bench; the beech's placement on the stone of the upper-battlement paving; the positions and junctures of the blocks of khas-Barachael's walls; the massive piers and columns of its foundation-roots in Adine's southern spur.
She felt the whole mountain, a complex of upthrust blocks and minor stresses pushing against one another and easing again as Adine's roots met those of its neighboring peaks. Her perception widened and spread around the valley to include Eisargir and Houndstooth and Aulys, mountains leaning on or striving against one another. The valley, too, filled with her until she felt the faults and stresses there, a surface unease like a vast itch. She felt the transverse vertical faults, lying fairly quiet now that mountain-building in the area was largely
finished. She felt the lateral fault, stretching from head to foot of the valley and holding dangerously still.
Farther down, heat grew in the stone. Its structure and its temper changed as her perception slid down through the fragile skin on which continents rode and jostled. Weight and pressure grew by such terrible strides that there was no telling anymore whether the stone was liquid or solid: it simply burned darkly, raging to be free, yet having nowhere to go.
Down farther still, it was too hot, too dense, for stone. Molten metal seethed and roasted in eternal night, swirling with the planet's turning, breeding forces for which Segnbora had no words but which the Dragons understood. These were some of the forces they manipulated while flying, and finding their way.
(Enough!) Herewiss said, his voice seeming to come from a long way off. (Sir, I see your point.)
(Look here, then,) Hasai said, redirecting Segnbora's atten-tion to the very top of the paper)' layer where mountains were rooted and the valley lay. (You see the danger of the lateral fault. Trigger it and the vertical faults will likely collapse the valley, bringing down the mountains. Yet the pass you pro-pose to close has the lateral running right down it, and direct intervention there will definitely set off the fault.)
(There's also the problem of the negative energies,) Segn-bora said. (See how they're gathered along the lateral fault. It's ready to have a quake. Evidently that's an option the Shadow's been considering for a while.)
(Fve been thinking about it too,) Herewiss said, sounding grim. (The question is, what do I do about it? There's only one possibility. .) He trailed off, sounding dubious. (What's your thought, Fire-bearer?) Hasai said. Herewiss indicated one of the eastern roots of Hounds-tooth, a colossal pier of granite and marble set a half mile deep in the crust. (Positive and negative attract,) he said. (If I strike there with my Fire and cause that root to move, the negative should flow away from the lateral fault and attack my positive Power. But before that happens and the forces cancel out, the root itself
will move upward enough to knock the Houndstooth peak down into the pass and block it permanently—) He broke off, looking at Hasai's perception as if seeing something wrong. (Yes, you've found the problem with your plan,) Hasai said. (Watch.) As he spoke, the perception moved and changed in response to Herewiss's suggestion. They felt, rather than saw, the smooth peak of Houndstooth rear up and collapse west-ward into the Eisargir Pass. A few seconds later the lateral fault came violently alive. Half of Barachael valley slid south with a jerk, while the rest jumped north. Every vertical fault went wild, one after another, some blocks thrusting hundreds of feet upward in a matter of minutes, some sinking fathoms deep. Mount Adine fell on Barachael. Eisargir collapsed on itself and buried the priceless ironlodes forever. When it was all over, nothing was left but a broken, uninhabitable wilderness.
Herewiss grimaced. (The psychic energy canceled out all right,) he said, (but I had no idea there was so much move-ment-energy in that lateral fault. Damn!)
(Don't berate yourself,) Hasai said. (The move was well made for one so new at the game. Come, Firebearer, try it again. There is always a solution.)