Диана Дуэйн - The Door Into Shadow

THE DOOR INTO SHADOW (The Five Truths, terrible and joyous:
What is, is. What was, is. Matter is an illusion. Meaning is an illusion. The Door opens both ways. Believe none of these!)
Ehh'ne IhhwTae (What Dragons Say), vii, 14
257
THE DOOR INTO SHADOW
Full night, when it came, was starless. A heavy overcast hung like a roof just above the highest peaks: Nornion and Kerana. In that stifling silent darkness, a long column of riders picked its way to the foot of Britfell's northern slope and came to a halt.
The prospect was daunting. Sheer walls of cracked cliff-face rose up uninvitingly. Around them were strewn rubble and boulders brought down by the annual flux of heat and cold. Eftgan, on her tall bay gelding Scoundrel, shook her head as she looked upward. "Lorn, if the road isn't still there—" "Then we're no worse off than you were before," Lorn said. Ahead of Segnbora and the others, he, Herewiss, and the Queen were shadows among shadows. Everyone in that riding had made sure there was nothing bright about their gear; faces and hands and buckles and swordhilts were smeared with a mixture of grease and soot. Even so, Segnbora's Drag-on-sharpened vision saw movements and expressions clearly enough.
Freelorn pulled up Blackmane's head and headed him off to the left. "Let's take the adventure the Goddess sends us," he said, "and go as far as we can."
He urged his dun straight at the cliffside. Blackmane snorted mild protest but went where his rider directed him, climbing a slope of talus and scree and not stopping until they reached a narrow ledge fifty feet or so above the cliffs foot. "This way," Lorn called softly to the riders waiting below, and put his heels to Blackmane again. The horse took him left-ward past a rounded outcropping of stone, and out of sight.
"This is crazy," Lang said, beside Segnbora.
"Maiden's madness, I hope," Eftgan said, and shook Scoundrel's reins. He stalled, snorting, until Eftgan laid her crop gently below his left ear and touched him with heels again. Up Scoundrel went in a nervous rush, scattering peb-bles and small stones. One by one they followed him, reining their horses in to keep them stepping lightly and minimize the damage done to the path.
The ride was like something out of an old tale or a bad dream, full of long terrifying pauses during which Freelorn lost the way and found it again, dismounted to heave fallen boulders off the narrow track or to lead Blackmane where he thought it too dangerous to burden a horse with a rider's weight-The path, if it could be dignified with such a name, wound back and forth along the face of the cliff, switching back at wildly irregular intervals, the switches often barely enough for one horse to negotiate. Always there were heartstopping drops below. Segnbora kept her elbows in as she rode, once again very glad of Steelsheen's breed. Steldenes were bred in mountain-ous country and were frequently accused of being part goat. The mare picked her way delicately along ledges of rotten, sliding stone with only an occasional snort of protest at the poor quality of the trail. Other horses behind, flatland breeds, weren't doing as well. The sound of whispered swearing came drifting up from riders down below.
As they climbed, the night got blacker, if that were possible. A feeling began to grow among the riders that Something with no good intent was watching the silent climb. Tense minutes stretched into an hour, then two and three. Segnbora began to feel as if she had been climbing up this miserable wall forever, as if her whole life had been spent fighting with eggshell-fragile stone, squinting at it, terrified of every step.
At the same time, she had to admit that this feat would be sung of for years, if any of them finished the climb and sur-vived the battle that waited just the other side of Britfell. She maneuvered Steelsheen cautiously around another treacher-ous, switchback, not looking down,
Inside her, in their own darkness that now seemed bright by comparison, Hasai and the mdeiha hissed laughter at her fear of heights, and then began singing (in sixteen-part har-mony of the kind Dragons used when feeling playful) their memory of the ballad which the bards would indeed later write for Freelorn: When Fyrd came over the Darthme border / and Reavers moved at the Shadow's order. . Segnbora almost felt like smiling, until she remembered that just because her mddhm had a memory of the ballad, that was still no guarantee that any of them would survive this venture.
One of Sheen's hooves slipped, and Segnbora's heart seized as she leaned with the mare so she could regain her balance. For an instant they came close to a perilous drop, but Steelsheen recovered and went on, sweating and trembling, but knowing what her mistress wanted. Unconcerned, the mdeihei were singing in unison now, a calm chorus. They climbed the Fell and they crossed the water, the Lion's Son and the Eagle's Daughter—
Several hours before dawn it began to snow, The wind rose, and became a howling blast. Snow that grew blizzard-fine drove stinging into faces, numbing hands on the reins. The horses whickered in complaint and tried to walk with eyes averted toward the cliff, which only caused them to miss their footing all the more. Forewarned, their riders muffled them-selves up as best they could. Even in Midsummer snow often fell in the high South, though usually more lightly than this. The sky got infinitesimally lighter as day broke above the storm, though not enough to lighten anyone's spirits.
There's will behind this weather, Herewiss had said. That will could be felt watching them more strongly every minute. The head of the column was fairly close to the top of the fell now, but that was no comfort. The thought of having to take a similar path downhill, on an icy trail, was on everyone's mind, The storm was blowing from the south, and had been abated somewhat by striking the fell and having to pour over it, Matters would be much worse on the other side.
The trail leveled so abruptly that Segnbora was taken com-pletely by surprise. It led westward here, going around the edge of a west— pointing backbone of the fell A pause to look
west would have been pleasant, but there was no time for it — the column was still coming up the far side of the fell, and there was little standing room. Besides, they had entered the cloud cover, and visibility was low. Even so, Eftgan dis-mounted long enough to stretch her cramped arms and legs and look ahead hopefully.
Herewiss, beside her, looked unhappy. "Can you feel any-thing?" he said.
Eftgan shook her head. "I can hardly hear myself think in this wind, let alone anyone else. That one" — she glanced upward at the slate-dark cloud cover—"has settled Itself down snug. It's muffling all thought but Its ow r n. The main force is going to have to rely on riders for messages, and there'll be no way for us to know what's going on until we rejoin it." "Sunspark can assist,"Herewiss said. But he sounded un-certain, "When will they move?"
"Noon. We should be well finished with our business at the Heugh by then, and they can go ahead and have a battle without worrying about what it might raise." She bit her lip, a sign of hidden fright that Segnbora recognized.
Segnbora had no time to indulge her own nervousness, however. There was barely enough time to dismount and feed Steelsheen some grain. By the time she got back in the saddle, Lorn was already picking his way down the trail on the other side, with Eftgan in back of him and Herewiss behind her.
"Let's move, slowcoach,"Lang said as he nudged his dap-plegray, Gyrfalcon, past her. "Going to lose your place up front,"' Dubious honor that it is, she thought, swinging up into the saddle and following him.
Now the pace of the climb slowed to an agonized creep, for the stone was not only iced, it was rotten. Rock crumbled maddeningly under foot, and the horses rebelled — shaking their heads, snorting, testing the footing at every step. The blinding cold snow turned the world into a featureless gray room, through which vaguely seen, figures led the way. The ordeal was endless. In front of her, Gyrfalcon shied, and then Steelsheen did
too. Segnbora had another of those terrifying long looks down. Ice and darkness. Oh, damn! The mare recovered her balance. Segnbora squinted at Lang's shadowy back and then squeezed her eyes shut for just a moment, looking down among the mdeihei for an answer to her growing terror.
The cave was full of memories, much easier of access than they had been before the evening with the nightmare. Over-laid on her perception of the trail as it was now she saw Bluepeak valley as it would look from Britfell on a clear day toward sunset. The season was fall, not summer, and some of the fields below, yellow with wheat, stirred in the south wind. Other fields burned, and the black smoke was carried north, occa-sionally obscuring the bodies of the slain, and the trampled, bloody ground.
High in the surrounding peaks, on scarps and steeples of rock, winged figures watched, frozen with horror, as the frightful dark shape of the Gnorn went tottering about the battlefield, killing with Its look, Scrabbling Fyrd came after It in hungry terror to devour the dead. Behind It, Bluepeak town was burning. And westward on a lone height at Britfell's far end, two men with drawn swords stood watching the terror with tears running down their faces. A Dragon's eyes, keener than any hawk's, could make them out plainly: One man was huge and broad as a bear, with a shaggy mane of fair hair, hazel eyes, and Freelorn's prominent nose. The other was tall and angular, with dark hair threaded with silver, and kind downturned eyes as blue as Herewiss's, blue as Fire.
She saw them throw down their swords at practically the same moment, desperately making the Choice; saw them take hands there, while the Gnorn came weaving toward them through the screams and death of Bluepeak; saw them give up what they had been and gaze into one another's eyes to find out what they could be—