Диана Дуэйн - The Door Into Shadow

With terrible abruptness, both attacks ceased. Segnbora reeled.
(Pull yourself together!) Herewiss shouted at her instantly. (It can't get us to trigger the fault, but It'll be glad to do that Itself!)
So It was doing. Segnbora could see all Its power, all Its hate, flowing back into the lateral fault — concentrating, burn-ing, stinging the stone
into the beginnings of movement. A low rumble spread through the strata. There was one spot in
particular, a thousand feet or so south of Barachael, that was almost ready to fracture. In a matter of seconds its stone would reduce itself to powder with explosive force, releasing the vertical faults on either side of it.
(There!) she cried, and as she did the Shadow poured Itself fully into that spot, an irresistible blast of destruction—

unshatterable by Goddess or Shadow — for the moment.
(I'll hold it!) he said, the thought tasting of gritted teeth. (You distract It!)
With what? she thought, fumbling desperately for an idea. Distant as if one of the mdeihei sang it, seemingly irrelevant, a scrap of verse spoke itself in her. No shadow so deep that light cannot sound it, no hatred so hard that love cannot loose it— Beor-gan's old ballad, the alliterative one. It told how she had taken the Shadow within herself, and her courage had defeated It. She had drained Its power so that her daughter could chal-lenge the Shadow in her turn and slay It. And that gave Segn-bora a mad, dangerous idea. .
Though still wearing her Dracon-self, Segnbora brought her human nature to bear as strongly as she could, and began exposing her dark
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sides to the Shadow's influence. Intent on Herewiss, It perceived only an augmentation of Its power in the area, and therefore let her darknesses gather from It and grow, becoming small likenesses of Itself. Sensing a chance to turn her vulnerabilities into weapons, she missed not a one of them: hatreds, petty jealousies, desires gone sour, procrasti-nations; laziness that would let others languish in pain while she lay idle; envy that smiled at the misfortunes of her peers. It was a disgusting collection, but in itself presented no dan-ger. Loss of a sense of sickness — acceptance of the state — that was to be feared. And that was creeping up on her fast. .
As swiftly as she dared, Segnbora slipped close to the Shadow and let loose her tarnished parts. They melded with It, becoming part of Its substance. Terrible power rushed through them and back into her. She dared not fight it, lest she betray her presence.
As she had become Dracon, and as Dracon had become stone, she now became the Shadow.
Mortal, and therefore limited even out of her body, Segn-bora could contain only a small part of Its being in herself. . but it was enough. In a sickening flash she experienced the incalculable rage of One Who had possessed Godhead and for jealousy's sake had then thrown it away. She also experienced pain: an anguish deeply colored with blame for the Goddess Who had let the pain happen—
There was no time to look further. Segnbora didn't speak, didn't even truly think, but merely held her control as best she could and looked at the painful memories, living inside the old story, wordlessly recreating it with a Dragon's immediacy and a storyteller's skill. It was an easy story to tell. She knew it by heart. It was the same story she had dreamed that night in the old Hold: the story of the Maiden, of Death, and of Her children, the Two, Who had loved one another.
The hatred that was the rest of herself still strove without pause to destroy Herewiss — but It did so a little less vehe-mently. It was distracted by old memories. Gradually, the story changed, becoming less a narrative and more an invita-tion.
Do You remember how it was? The two of You loving outside the constraints of existence, taking eons to learn and love one another's infinite depths? Do You remember the divine passion A how Your loving invented time and space — a place to love and explore together, in all the bodies that ever lived? Do You remember the Loved, and how there was always One Who understood? Your sister, Your brother, Your beloved … 0 remember!
It was in Nhaired she sang now, as if weaving a spell, silently recalling the Song of the Lost. Normally that Song was never voiced except during the Dreadnights, in the depths of the Silent Precincts, to beseech the Shadow to remember Its an-cient joy and be merciful to the world. Segnbora sang it now without the fearful intonations the Rodmistresses used, but winding poignant Dracon motifs of compassion and forgive-ness around the words. She was calling to herself as much as to the other. Vile though her darknesses were, they were rooted in light, just as the Shadow's malice was founded in the pain of Its ancient loss, the memory of love discarded forever. If it could not be saved, neither could she. .
The Shadow held still in the stone, Its malice wavering, half forgotten. A hasty flicker of perception stolen through It showed Herewiss, hanging on in the stone, shuddering with pity and also with fear for her. No one had ever before been so foolhardy as to sing the Song of the Lost in first person, and tempt the Shadow. But he didn't waste more than one shudder. He began examining the strata around him, and found the spot where the Shadow's consciousness had rooted Itself most concretely into the stone.
But yet will come that time when Time is done, the world begun again, aright, she sang, pouring herself into the promise. And once again We shall be as We were—
She drew away, singing. The Shadow surrounded her, tow-ering above, about to drown her in deadly consummation. Without warning Khavrinen's essence flicked through the earth like a white-hot thought burning through a brain. In-stantly it severed the linkage of the Shadow's consciousness to the stone.
There was only one wild shriek of rage and betrayal before the dark presence faded, temporarily banished, but that cry
was enough. All around Herewiss an unstoppable tremor stirred in the stone. As if that weren't enough, an ominous copper)' feeling with
an aftertaste of blood began sliding through Segnbora 1 s self. The Moon was eclipsing.
(Goddess! Herewiss, get out of there. We have to get back to our bodies or you won't be able to control this!)
(Right,) Herewiss said, sounding abstracted. Khavrinen swept again and again through the bedrock, and its unseen Fire wavered with Herewiss''s alarm as he tried to cut himself loose from, his empathy with the stone. (I seem to have gotten kind of attached, you go ahead—)
(Are you crazy? This is your wreaking and I'm stuck in it!) Precious seconds were slipping 1 by. Herewiss laid about harder and harder' with Khavrinen, and didn't move. (Dam-mit! My own Fire won't cut my own Fire—)
(Watch out!) Segnbora said. Furiously, she whipped down one wing at the stone, a wing lipped with the black razor —
diamond that was Skadhwe. Through fathoms of marble and granite it sliced, the shadow of a shadow, until it reached the rock under Herewiss.
He shot upward and out of the strata, free. Shrugging off her Dracon-self, she followed him up and out of the empa-thy— They broke the surface of the valley, gasped for the dear familiarity of breath like swimmers down too long, and began running up the air in frantic haste. The Moon's face, full now, was stained half red against the early evening sky. The stain grew larger as they raced for the tower window with the light in it. Under them, red fire dove and swooped about the valley, driving massed darknesses before it. They
spared the sight hardly a glance and dove through the tower wall. Segnbora threw herself down on the cot where her body lay— and hit
her head.
No, that's just the usual headache. Up, get up! Freelorn was shaking her, worsening the agony of pins and needles that transfixed every bone and muscle she owned.
Herewiss was already up, sagging against the window. With Freelorn's help, she staggered over to join him. Segnbora was temporarily blind, but the othersight was working. Above the valley the Moon's whiteness had diminished to a thin desper-ate sliver, struggling with the creeping darkness as if with a poison, and foredoomed to lose.
The corroded copper taste was as hot in Segnbora's mouth as if she had been struck there. The Chaelonde seemed to run with blood. Below them the lateral fault burned through stone and earth, moving. Sai khas-Barachael began to shake beneath their feet.
"Put your scales on," Herewiss whispered, grabbing one of her hands in a grip like a vise, and with the other drawing Khavrinen. Segnbora stumbled and fell down into herself, into the cave where Hasai waited with wings outspread in alarm. There was no time for the usual courtesies. Segnbora matched him size for size, flung his wings about her as she had wrapped herself in his shadow before, and became him.
As the sensation of the stone in the valley became plain again, the mdeihei cried out in a song of terrible alarm. "Shut
up, the lot of you!" she shouted in Dracon, and once more gathered the whole valley within the span of her wings, feeling it all. The pain struck her immediately as the lateral fault came alive inside her, a black-hot line of agony running from chest to shoulder and up her left wing like a heart seizure. Her outer body gasped and clutched at the sill, missed it, and thumped down to her knees with a jolt. Inside, no less clearly, she felt the heave and stutter of the faults as they tried to move, attempting to foul Herewiss's game before it was
fairly started.
Fortunately, Herewiss had not lost his grip on her hand. Half crouched over and supported desperately by Freelorn, he was beginning to shine like a vision as his soul settled more firmly into the spirit-to-body connection necessary for full Power flow. In his free hand, Khavrinen blazed like chained lightning, impossible to look at with the eyes of either body or mind. Herewiss struck deeper into his Power, tapping what seemed an inexhaustible source, and straightened with re-found strength. Then he was inside Segnbora's perception, as Dracon as she.
The Fire burning in her throat was suddenly blue, an awe-some counterpoint to the dark burning of the faults, and the rage of the frustrated Shadow. Stirred by Its influence, the player on the Inside made a move. But it was a poorly rea-soned move, born of fury and the hope of a quick win. The lateral fault jumped an inch north and south.
Segnbora felt Herewiss smile the satisfied smile of a player whose opponent has fallen into a trap. The burning blue upflow of his Fire seared through her perception and poured in a great flood down into the valley's stone, binding together three of the vertical faults. Like diverted lightning, the released energy of the lateral fault stitched whiplash-quick through the strata in several diff-erent directions. But Herewiss was quicker. Fire streaked through the strata too, sending fault-blocks up or down, blocking and absorbing forces, setting up piece by piece the final checkmate that would freeze the lateral forever and seal the Eisargir Pass. Two more moves and he would have it!
Bent over double by the fault-pain, which was harder to handle now than while she had been out-of-body, Segnbora heard someone a long way off shouting in thought. She couldn't make out concepts, though.
"They're not?" Freelorn said, much closer, and very alarmed. "Dusty! They're not all clear of the pass yet. Sun-spark says you have to hold off if you don't want all those Reavers dead—"
Herewiss said nothing aloud, but Segnbora could feel his resolve. No one dies of this, not even them, Yet the position he had set up in the stone was delicate and couldn't be maintained for long.
The Shadow, sensing Herewiss's hesitation, immediately called the attention of the foiled, blocked forces in the stone to the weakest spot in Herewiss's game: the root of Aulys that was split in two. Pressure played about it like lightning. Half of the massive root twitched, about to shift. .
(Hold your position,) Segnbora said. Both inside and outside the stone at once, she anchored herself with rear talons and barbed tail, and reached out to sink diamond fangs into the trembling root. It struggled and tried to tear away from her, vibrating so violently that she was certain she was going to lose teeth. But a Dragon never lets go except by its own decision.
She held. Eyes squeezed closed, every muscle pulled taut as a rope, her tail desperately tightening its anchor around a lower stratum as she felt her fore-talons slipping. She held, using her mind, feeling the rock as a whole.
"They're out! They're out of the pass! Dusty/" Canny and desperate, the Shadow kicked two of the remot-est vertical faults as a distraction. Herewiss was having none of it. Using Segnbora's Dracon-self as she had, he descended deeper into the stone, deep enough to set his jaws around his last move, a great marble fault-block half a mile south of Barachael. This was the key to the puzzle. Diamond fangs set hard into the stone. He heaved— The blow came at her, not at him, and took them both off-guard. Preoccupied with the immensities, neither of them expected the sudden choking darkness at their back in the place where the mdeiha dwelt. A song of madness swept the mdeihei, controlled them, sent them tearing at the floor of Segnbora's cave. Razor talons and ruthless blasts of Dra-goniire ate and sliced down through the stone of her memory, to lay it bare and make it real. For one memory in particular they searched. .
(No!) she screamed at them, but they paid her no heed. Stone crumbled away like curd. Even now the memory was coming to birth, coming true: darkness, gravel grinding against her face, that old anguish … There was no way to stop it, except by breaking the empathy, leaving Hasai,