Диана Дуэйн - The Door Into Shadow

THE DOOR INTO SHADOW
Segnbora walked around to the other side of the spinney as if to examine the whole nest, waiting until the tree hid her before she swallowed, hard. Nightmares — minor demonic as-pects of the Goddess's dark side — typically nested in barren places like this. They fell upon travellers, sucked them dry of the spark of Power they possessed, then fed the dead flesh to their fledgling nightfoals. Since they were Shadowbred, Fire was food and drink to them. A Rodmistress's Rod was thus useless against them. They could only be killed with bare hands, and then only if those hands were a woman's.
Segnbora walked around to face the others. "It's getting toward Midsummer," she said, amazed at how calmly her
voice came out. "Her brood will be gone now, and she'll have eaten the nightstallion—" Freelorn's face twisted. "They — eat their—!" "They are the Devourer," Segnbora said, very low. "That aspect of the Dark One trusts nothing She hasn't consumed." She glanced over at Herewiss, forbidding herself to tremble. "Well, I broke Steelsteen with my bare hands. I think I can manage this."
Behind Herewiss, Lang's face was white with shock. She refused to watch it after that first glance. "I'll make a circle," Herewiss said. "You'll have warning. What else will you want?"
Last rites, probably. "A fire," she said. Herewiss smiled slightly. "I think 1 know where to get some. Sunspark!" Segnbora walked toward the sudden campfire, wishing there were such a thing as luck, so she could curse it.
For once, night came down too suddenly for her taste. Segnbora sat with the others beside Sun-spark's blazing self, looking out toward the stony darkness. Here and there, at a hundred yards' distance, a flicker of Herewiss*s Fire showed blue between the boulders, indicating the ward-circle he had laid down. Firelight danced on the face of the cliff. Under a gnarled little rowan bush Segnbora sat and tended to herself in the huge silence, which even the horses, hobbled and teth-ered inside the circle, didn't break.
Segnbora was running out of things to do in order to get ready. She had gone through all the small personal bindings that a sorcerer would perform to further the larger binding she intended. Her swordbelt's hanging end was tucked in. Her hair, too short to braid, she had tied with a thong into a stubby tail and bound close to her head. Her sleeves were rolled up. The buckles on her boots and her mailshirt were tight. She would have tied Skadhwe into its sheath, but it had no peace-strings as Charriselm had had, and all her attempts to bind the shadowblade with cord had been useless. It cut them ail. Finally she had just taken it out of the scabbard and stuck it into a handy rock.
Now she thought of one more binding to add. Rummaging around in her belt-pouch for a bit of thread, she bound it around her left thumb nine times, thus forming a soul-cord that would keep her soul within her body until a pyre's blaze freed it. She tied the ninefold knot and glanced up as she bit it off. Freelorn was holding a cup for her. It was of light wood, with a design of leaves carved around it below the lip. She recognized it: his and Herewiss's lovers'-cup.
"Hot wine," Lorn said, sitting down. Wanned by the ges-ture, she took it and drank, hoping the shaking of her hands wouldn't show too much.
"It shows. Forget it," Herewiss said, sitting down beside Freelorn. She extended the cup to him, leaning back against the knobby little rowan as Herewiss drank in turn. Afterward, he poured some wine into the fire, which had acquired eyes, and then passed the cup back to Freelorn.
Lorn leaned back against a rock, and Herewiss leaned back too, resting his head against Lorn's chest. "You sure there's nothing you can do?" Freelorn said, sounding sorrowful.
Herewiss glanced yp at him. "Swords don't bite on night-mares, loved. I'm sorry."
Freelorn nodded, still looking uneasy. "This business of the Lady's "dark side,' " he said, "I've never really understood how She can have a dark side. .,"
"It is this way," Segnbora started, mostly out of reflex, and then stopped herself. Embarrassed, she took the cup back and drank again.
"No, go ahead," Herewiss said, with a wry look. "If you're going to become something's dinner tonight, we might as well get one more story out of you. Tell it as they tell it at Nhaire'di. I've never heard their version."
She sighed, suddenly amused by the surroundings. This was no cozy inn or palace hall, for once, but rather a huge night in waste country. Who'd have thought she'd ever play to an audience of kings-by-couitesy, part-time princes, and outlaws?
*'It is this way,*' she said. "Because the Goddess bound Herself at the Making into everything She had made, the great Death became bound into Her too, and She into It. Though
She had brought It life, the Shadow still hated Her and did Her all the harm It could, causing each of Her fair aspects to cast a dark shadow of its own. Therefore the Devourer exists, and the One with Still Hands. ." She shivered.". . and the Pale Winnower. Their Power is terrible, and the Goddess cannot banish them; in this Making, They are part of Her.
"But in the south of Steldin, people explain our Lady's dark side differently. They tell how, on the plain north of Mincar, there lived an austringer and her wife. The austringer was a placid woman, easily pleased and as calm as one of her hawks after a feeding. The austringer's wife, on the other hand, was never content with anything, and sharpened her tongue con-tinually on her spouse. "There came a day when the austringer took a good catch of pheasant and barwing. The next morning she set out for Mincar market to sell the game.
"Now, while on her way to the market, passing through the wealthy part of town, the austringer saw a sight that was stranger and more lovely than any she had ever seen.Tied to the reining-post was a great, tall silver-white steed, shining in the morning. When she drew near to it, it turned its head to gaze at her with eyes as dark as the missing half of the Moon. It was tethered with a bridle of woven silver. "She recognized it then. It was one of the Moonsteeds, aspects of the Maiden that mirror the Moon in its changes, and which cannot be caught by any means except with a bridle that is wrought of noon-forged silver in such a fashion as to have no beginning and no end. Some lord or lady had caused the bridle to be made, and had managed to catch the Steed. And as the austringer stood there and pitied the poor crea-ture, once free from time's beginning and now bound, it lowered its head and said to her, 'Free me, and I'll do you a good turn when I may.'
"So she cut the bridle with her knife, and the Moonsteed reared and pawed the air and said, 'If you want for anything, go out into the fields and call me and I will be with you.' And it vanished.
"The austringer thought it well to vanish from the area herself. She went to market and sold her birds, and then went
home in a hurry in order to tell her wife what she had seen. That was a mistake. 'Surely,' her wife said, 'the Steed will grant you anything
you want. Go out and ask it to make us
rich.'
"She nagged the austringer unmercifully until at last she gave in and went out into the night, under the first-quarter Moon, to call the Steed.
It came, saying 'What can I do for
you?'
" 'My wife wants to be rich. Wants us to be rich, rather,'said the austringer. 'The first was closer to the truth, I think,' the Steed said, 'but go home, it has happened already.' And the austringer went home to find her wife happily running her fingers through bags of Moon-white silver, chuckling to her-self about the fine robes and elegant food she would soon have in place of her brown homespun and coarse bread. "For about a week things went well. But folk nearby began to ask questions, and then the tax collectors arrived, leaving with more silver than pleased the austringer's wife. 'This isn't working,' she said to the austringer. 'Go ask the Steed to make me the tax collector. And I want a house befitting my station.'
" 'No one will talk to us anymore!' the austringer objected. Her wife gave her no peace, however, and sent her off to the fields at nightfall.