Диана Дуэйн - The Door Into Fire

hoping that he would remember it tomorrow, through the headache.
Lorn is waiting for me, he thought at last, and so are my other guests, all of them, past the Door. I perhaps slighted them a little earlier. Let me make up for that now. Downstairs—
He exerted himself, and was there, standing in the midst of the silent main hall. Nearly all the people were asleep now, curled in dark silent bundles or stretched out beneath their cloaks. Dritt and Moris were still awake, unmoving, caring about each other in the darkness. Herewiss could feel the texture of their waking thoughts moving softly between them, as they rested in the twilit borderland between love and sleep. Herewiss smiled at them. Later, he thought, he might ask to share himself with them.
He looked around, identifying Freelorn's people one by one. Most of them were dreaming, in some cases quite vividly, so that faint images of their minds' wanderings were apparent. Segnbora lay curled in one corner, dreaming more loudly than the rest, her dream towered against the ceiling, some huge gossamer creature under a firefly sun. Herewiss was intrigued, and went to where she lay.
He knelt beside her, studying her for a moment before he would enter the dream. A clear sight like that of the last drug experience was on him again, but this time it was a more intimate and kindly vision, informed with compassion, very unlike the coldly clinical evaluation of the last time. Segnbora's hand lay out on her cloak, and he looked at it and shook his head sadly. Under the frail casing of the skin, such a violence and potency of untapped Power raged that it should have burned her out from within. But he also saw the barrier that sealed it away from her use, a wall of old frozen fears that all the inner
fires couldn't melt. And the rules forbade him to tell her what to do about it. He sighed, and entered in.
There was the smell of salty spray, and black pockmarked rocks worn smooth by the sea, and a hot white midsummer sun, and Segnbora sat atop a boulder festooned with clambering strands of kelp. A sea ouzel was building a nest in a cranny of the boulder, and Segnbora was watching it intently. So was the Dragon that towered over her, a huge one, at its full growth but still young – no more than six or seven hundred years old. They watched the bird fly down to the surf line of the black beach to pick up pieces of dead seaweed. Another ouzel appeared, carrying something in its beak that was not seaweed. Segnbora clucked to it, and with a whirring of wings the bird went up to where she sat. It alighted on her outstretched hand, dropping the object in her palm. Herewiss, standing next to the Dragon, looked at the thing. It was a gem, like a diamond but more golden, finely cut into a sparkling oval.
'It'll take a while to hatch,' Segnbora said to the ouzel. 'Do what you can, though.' The bird picked up the jewel and flew down to the nest with it.
'But it's a stone!' Herewiss objected.
'Strange things won't happen,' Segnbora said, 'unless you give them a chance.'
'I'm trying,' Herewiss said.
'Yes, I see that. You're past the Door. The drug?' 'Yes.'
'Oh well,' Segnbora said, 'a short life, but a merry one.'
The Dragon bent its great head down toward Herewiss, regarding him. He bowed low, feeling that this creature was worthy of his respect. It was apparently one of the Oldest Line of Dragons, the children of Dahiric World-finder, to judge by its star-emerald scales and topaz spines.
It spoke to him in deep-voiced song, but the words were strange and he could not understand them. There was warning in its voice.
'What?' Herewiss said.
'You don't speak Dracon?' asked Segnbora. 'I could never find anyone to teach me.'
'Well, she greets you by me, and says that something is trying to happen, and you should beware of it.'
'That's what I thought,' Herewiss said. 'But to beware of it? . . . I don't understand.'
'Neither does she. She says to look to your sword.' 'But I don't have a … well, I suppose I do … '
'I don't think much more will fit in there,' Segnbora said to the first ouzel, which had come back with a piece of kelp nearly twice its size. It was trying valiantly to stuff it in the crevice, and failing. Herewiss felt suddenly that there was no more to be found or shared in this dream. He bowed again to the Dragon, and waved to Segnbora, and came forth.
Herewiss stood up, wondering a little, and went over to where Freelorn lay, curled up in a ball as usual. He spent a moment or two just looking at his loved. Sleep was the only time when Lorn lost his eternal look of calculation, and Herewiss loved to watch
him sleeping, even when he snored.
Herewiss sat down beside him, the sweet sorrow of the moment passing through him like the pain of imminent tears. This could very well be the last time in this life — and if the hralcin got him, as seemed likely, in any life at all. Mother, he said softly, I give You this night, as you gave me one of Yours. Whatever else happened or didn't happen in this life, Lorn loved me – loves me; and that's as great a blessing as the Fire would be, and possibly more than I deserve. Take this night, Mother, and remember me. You understood me-a little better than most …
He reached out to touch Freelorn's cheek, brushed it gently. I'm going to try to give you all the parts of me I never dared to, he said. I hope I can give you all the joy you deserve.
Herewiss entered in.
There were clouds of haze, lit by a light as indefinite as dawn on a cloudy day, and vague soft sounds wove through them. He found Freelorn moving quietly through the mists, looking for something. Herewiss fell in beside him, and they paced together through the haze.
'Where are we, Lorn?'
'A long time ago,' Freelorn said softly, 'I used to come here alone. I was really young, and I would come talk to the Lion and ask Him for help with my lessons. I mean, I didn't know that you're not supposed to ask God for help with things like that. So I just asked. And it always seemed that I got help. Maybe I can get some here.'
The mist was clearing a little. All around them was a stately hall with walls of plain white marble. Tall deep windows were cut into those walls, and lamps burned golden in the fists of iron arms that struck outward from the walls at intervals. There was no furniture in the hall of any kind.
At the end of the room was a flight of steps, three of them, and
atop the steps a huge pedestal, and on the pedestal a statue of a mighty white Lion couchant, regal and beautiful. Herewiss knew where they were. This was Lionhall in the royal palace in Prydon; the holiest place in Arlen, where none but the kings and their children might walk without mishap befalling them. Though Herewiss had never seen it before, in Freelorn's dream the place was part of his longed-for home, one which he had never thought to see again. And the Lion was not merely another aspect of the Goddess's Lover, but the founder of Freelorn's ancient line, and so family. Herewiss and
Freelorn walked to the steps together, and stopped there, and felt welcomed.
'Lord,' Freelorn said, 'I promised I would come back, and here I am. Where is my father?'
It was a little strange to see them facing each other; Freelorn, small and uncertain, but with a great dignity about him, and the Lion, terrible and venerable, but with a serene joy in His eyes. 'He's gone on,' the Lion said gravely. 'He's one of Mine now.'
'But where is he? I can't find his sword, and it's supposed to be mine, and I must have it. I can't be king without his sword.'
'He's gone on,' the Lion said, and He smiled on them out of His golden eyes. 'You must go after him if you want Hergotha.'
'I'll do that,' Freelorn said. 'Uh, Lord—'
'Ask on.'
'You are my Father, and the head of our Line?'
'You are My child,' the Lion said, bending His head in assent. 'Make no doubt of it.'
'Lord, I need a miracle."
The Lion stretched, a long comfortable cat-gesture, and the
terrible steel-silver talons winked on His paws for a second's space. 'I don't do miracles much any more, son. You're as much the Lion as I am. You do it.'
'It's not for me, Healhra my Father; it's for Herewiss here.'
Herewiss looked up, meeting the gaze of the golden eyes and feeling a tremor of recognition, remembering how his illusion had looked at him even after it was gone from the field at Madeil. 'Son of Mine,' the Lion said then, shifting his eyes back to Freelorn, 'his Father the Eagle and I managed Our own miracles for the most part. I have faith in you, and in him.'
Freelorn nodded.
'Go down to the Arlid, then,' the Lion said, 'and follow it till it comes to the Sea. Your father is in the place to which his desire has taken him, but to get there you'll have to go down to the Shore first. Your friend will go with you.'
They bowed down, together, and were suddenly out by the river Arlid, which flowed through the palace grounds. It was night, and the water flowed silverly by under a westering Moon.
'The Sea is a long way off,' Herewiss said. Even as he said it, he perceived something wrong with him. He was being swept away with this dream, losing control. Too much drug! something in him cried, thrilling with horror. But the fearful voice was faint, and though it cried again, Down by the Sea is the land of the dead! still he walked with Freelorn by the riverbank, through the green reeds, toward the seashore.
'It's not that far,' Freelorn said. 'Only a hundred miles or so.' 'It's a long way to walk,' Herewiss insisted. 'So we'll let the water take us. Come on.'
Together they stepped down through the sedges on the bank and on to the surface of the water. The Arlid was a placid river, smooth– flowing, and bore their weight without complaint. Its current hurried them past little clusters of houses, and moss-grown docks, and flocks of grazing sheep, at a speed which would normally have surprised them but which they both now accepted unquestioningly. Once or twice they walked a little, to help things along, but mostly they stood in silence and let the river flow.
'You really think your father has the sword?' Herewiss said.
'He has to.' Freelorn's voice was fierce. 'They never found it after he died. He must have taken Hergotha with him.'
Herewiss looked at Freelorn and was sad for him, driven as he was even while dreaming. 'It takes more than a sword to make a king,' he said, and then was shocked at the words that had fallen out of his mouth.
Freelorn looked back at him, and his eyes were sad too. 'That's usually true,' he said, 'but it's going to take at least Hergotha to make a king out of me, I'm afraid. I'm not enough myself yet to do it alone.'
For a while neither of them spoke. The river was branching out now, the marshes of the Arlid delta reaching out northward before them, toward the Sea. Freelorn and Herewiss picked their way from stream to stream as along a winding path, stepping carefully so as not to upset the fish,
'I've never been this way before,' Herewiss said, very quietly. He felt afraid.
'Maybe it's time,' Freelorn said. 'I was here once, when I was very young. Don't be scared. I won't leave you alone.'
The river bottom was getting shallower and sandier. The stream that bore them turned a bend, past a little spinney of stunted willow trees, and suddenly there it was, the Shore.
Herewiss looked out past the beach and was so torn between terror and awe that he could hardly think. Under the dark sky the Sea
stretched away forever, and it was a sea of light, not water. It was as liquidly dazzling as the noon Sun seen through some clear mountain cataract. But there was no Sun, no Moon, no stars even; only the long vista of pure brilliant light, brighter than any other light that ever was. Herewiss began to understand how the
Starlight could only be a faint intimation of this last Sea, for stars are mortal, and bound with the laws and ties of materiality. This was a place that time would never touch, and mere matter was too fragile, too ephemeral, to survive it.
The waves of white fire came curling in, their troughs as bright as their crests, and broke in foaming radiance on the silver beach, and were drawn in sheets of light back into the Sea. But all silently. There was no sound of combers crashing and tumbling, no hiss of exhausted waves climbing far up the sand: nothing at all. Along the shore there walked or stood many vague forms, shadows passing by in as deep a silence as the waves. Herewiss was very afraid. The fear held his chest in its hand and squeezed, so that the breath couldn't come in. He thought suddenly of the choking darkness behind the door in the hold, where the hralcin waited and hungered for him, and the fear squeezed harder. But Freelorn stepped from the water, and held out his hand; and Herewiss took that hand and went with him.
They went down the Shore together, slowly, looking at each of the shadows they passed, but recognizing none. There were men and women of every age, and many young children walking around or playing quietly in the sand. There were couples, some of them young lovers, and some of them old, and some couples where one person ravaged by time walked with one hardly touched by it, but walked all the same with interlaced arms and gentle looks. Freelorn would stop every now and then and question one or another of the people they passed. They always answered quietly, with grave, kindly words, but also with an air of preoccupation.
Herewiss was not paying attention to either questions or answers. His fear was too much with him. All he perceived
with any clarity was the rise and fall of the quiet voices, which arose from the silence and slipped back to become part of it again when the speakers were finished. He began to feel that if he spoke again, the words and the thoughts behind them would be lost forever in that silence, a part of himself gone irretrievably. But no-one asked him to speak, and Freelorn led him down the sand as if he had a sure idea of which way they were headed.
'Are we going the right way?' Herewiss said finally, watching carefully to see if the thought behind the question became lost.
'I think so. This place will come around on itself, if we give it enough time.'
They walked, and their feet made no sound on the sand. They passed more people than Herewiss had ever seen or known, some of them looking out over the gently moving brilliance of the Sea, or standing rapt in contemplation of the sand, or of something less obvious. When someone turned to watch them pass, it was with a look of mild, unhurried wonder, a wonder which soon slipped away again. The fear was beginning to ebb out of Herewiss, little by little, when suddenly he saw someone making straight for them across the strand, not quickly, but with purpose.
He could hear his heart begin hammering in his ears again. 'Your father?' he said.
Freelorn shook his head. 'My father was a bigger man — is.'
Herewiss stopped, still holding Freelorn's hand. He knew that shadowed form, knew the way it walked, the loose, easy stride. 'Oh Goddess,' he whispered into the eternal silence. 'Goddess no.'
Freelorn looked at him with compassion, and said nothing.
Herewiss stood there, frozen in the extremity of terror. The world was about to end in ice and bitterness, and he would welcome it. He deserved no better. He waited for it to happen.
And out of the darkness and fixity to which he thought he had completely surrendered himself, a voice spoke; his own voice, not angry or defiant, but matter-of-fact and calm, speaking a truth: If this is the worst thing in the world about to happen, we won't just stand here and wait. We'll go meet it.
He stepped forward, pulling Freelorn with him, and the strain of taking the first step shook him straight through, like a convulsion. His bones, his flesh rebelled. But he kept going. The shadowy form approached them steadily, and they walked to meet it. Fear battered Herewiss like a stormwind. He wanted to flee, to hide, anything, but he pushed himself into the teeth of the wind, into the face of his fear. He had been struggling against it, walking into it head down. Now he raised his head, and opened his eyes again. The wind smote tears into his eyes, and he looked up at his brother.
He was as he had been the day he died. Tall and dark-haired, like most of the Brightwood line, with the droopy eyes that ran in Herewiss's family, he came and stood before them. His eyes smiled, and his face smiled, and the blood welled softly from the place where Herewiss's sword had struck him through, an eternity ago.
'Hello, Herelaf,' Freelorn said.
Herewiss let go of Freelorn's hand and sank down to his knees in the sand, trembling with terror and grief. He hid his face in his hands, and began to weep. All the things he had wanted to say to his brother after he died, all the apologies, all the guilt, everything that he had decided to say when they met after his own death, now froze in his
throat. And the worst of it was that he felt quite willing to let the tears take him. Anything was better than trying to deal with the person who stood before him.
But there were hands on his hands, and they pulled gently downward until Herewiss had no choice but to squeeze his eyes shut and turn his head away. 'Dusty,' his brother's voice said, 'don't you have anything to say to me?'
The old name, so rarely used, so much missed, pierced Herewiss
with more pain than he had thought possible to stand without dying – but then, how could he die on these shores? He sobbed and coughed and caught his breath, and finally dared to look up again into his brother's face. There was no anger there, no hatred, not even any sorrow. Herelaf was glad to see him.
'Why are you so surprised that I'm here?' his brother said. 'You know how the drug works. I'm as likely to turn up in your realm as you are in mine. And if you walk here, you're more than likely to run into me.'
'I—' Herewiss choked, cleared his throat. 'I suppose I knew it. But I was so sure that I wouldn't, wouldn't lose control—'
'—and run into me. Yes, I can imagine.' Herelaf held Herewiss's hands in his, and the touch was warm. 'I'm glad you came.'
'But – but I killed you—!' The words were too much for him, despite all the thousand times he had whispered and moaned and cried them into the darkness in the past. He crumpled back into tears. Freelorn was crouched down beside him, holding him again, and his brother's hands touched his face to wipe the tears away.
'Herewiss.' The voice was still young, but there was power in it, and Herewiss was startled out of his weeping. 'You didn't kill me. We were drunk, and messing with
swords in a dark room, and you made one of those grand gestures with your sword, and I lost my balance and fell on it, and I died. You didn't kill me.'
'But I should have been more careful – I shouldn't have encouraged you—'
'Herewiss, I started it.' 'But—'
'Dusty, I started it. Listen, little brother mine, did I ever tell you a lie? Ever? Doesn't it strike you a little funny that I'd start trying to lie to you here, where there can be neither lying nor deception?'
Herewiss scrubbed at his eyes and looked up again. 'You're still bleeding,' he said.
'So are you, and that's why. This is a peaceful place, there's healing to be had here before we go on. But the thoughts of the living have power over those who've gone on, just as the dead have some influence over the lives and ways of the living.'
'But you're not really dead!' Herewiss cried. 'You live, you're here—'
'I'm here. But alive? Not the same way you are. I finished what I had to do.'
'But it was so senseless – you were young, and strong, and in line for the Lordship—' The tears broke through again. Herelaf shook his head.
'Little brother,' he said, and he held Herewiss's hands hard, 'I was all of that. And we loved each other greatly, and I loved my life, and when I first got here I raged and screamed and tried to get back into the poor broken body. But knowledge comes with silence here, and soon I found that it wasn't senseless. What sense there is to it may seem evil to us, but that's because it's past our understanding.'
'I wish I could believe that—'
'Herewiss, I know this. I did what I was there to do
while I was there, and then I came here, and when it's time, I'll go on to something else. That's the way things are.'
'But –I don't understand. What did you do?'
Herelaf smiled at him. 'That, like the matter of Names, is between me and the Mother. Besides, I may not be finished yet.' 'I – oh, what the Dark! Herelaf, I wish I could stay here with you –I failed so miserably with the Flame—'
Herelaf laughed, and the mingled pain and joy that the sound struck into Herewiss was amazing to feel. 'Goddess, Dusty, what a crazy idea. You don't even know what you're for yet, and already you want to abandon the battlefield! Idiot. So tell me. If you can tell me, you might be able to stay.'
'I never really gave it much thought—'
'A lot of people don't. I certainly never did.'
Herewiss frowned in irritation. 'I,' he said, 'am the first man in a thousand years to have enough of the Flame to use, and know it.'
'That's what you are, or what you have been – not what you're for. You just have to go back and find out the answer. Allow yourself to be what you can, and that will point you toward what you're for like a compass needle seeking north.'
'But—'
'Shut up. You always were a great one for butting around, looking for holes in what you didn't want to hear. That hasn't changed, at least. Listen to me, Dusty. I'm only a ghost. No, look at me—' Herewiss had turned his face away, but Herelaf took both his brother's hands in one of his, while with the other he took Herewiss's face and turned it to him. 'I'm only a ghost, Dusty. I can't hurt you any more, unless you make me. Since I fell on to your
sword, you haven't been able to use one, not even to fight with –I guess because of me, or what you think you did to me. But the time's coming when you're going to need a sword. And you won't feel right with one, it won't do you any good, it'll turn in your hand unless you acquit yourself of my "murder." You have things to do. Better things than sitting around sorrowing for me. And I have better things to do than walk this shore and bleed.'
Herewiss knelt there on the sand, and felt Freelorn's arms around him, and his brother's eyes upon him, and he shook. He didn't know what to think, or what to say.
'I'm not angry, Dusty,' Herelaf said softly. 'There's no anger here after one comes to understand things. I was set free at the appropriate time. How could I be angry about that? But we're in bondage, both of us, and you can free us both. Turn me loose. Turn yourself loose. You didn't kill me.'
'I—' Herewiss looked at his brother, and at the truth in his eyes, and for the first time began to feel something strange and cold curling in his gut. It was doubt, doubt of the crenellated certainties he had walled into his mind, and the doubt twined upward, curling around his heart and squeezing it hard. 'I—'
PAIN. Sudden, terrible, and Herewiss foundering in darkness, the shore and the Sea's light and Freelorn and his brother's gentle voice all gone at once, lost, no light, no sound, only an awful tearing pain through his head and his heart and the place where his soul usually slept. Tearing, gnawing, and then just aching, and still the darkness, but there was a floor under him now – at least he thought there was, yes, his hands were against it, that was a pillow, and ohh his head hurt, spun and throbbed – and dear Goddess, what was that noise?
A howling. A sick ugly howling like an axe being
sharpened too long, and mixed with it other sounds, human voices crying out in terror, the sound of scrabbling claws and—
Herewiss tried to stand up. The binding spell. Broken. A pack of hralcins; the one had gone back for reinforcements. A touch too much stress on the binding somehow. The spell broken, and now all of them loose, hunting. Hunting him. But he hadn't been in his body. So they couldn't find him. But they had found something else to hold them until he returned. Freelorn. Freelorn's people. Downstairs. Defenseless.
He tried to stand again, and it didn't work. Too much drug. Out of it too suddenly. His body disobeyed him, and responded to his commands with vengeful stabs of pain. The screaming was louder, voices terrified beyond understanding. He refused to let his body's punishments stop him. There was a little light now, sickly, the light of the Moon almost gone down. Against the wall was a dim gray blot, the only thing he could really see. He made a hand go out, despite shrieking protests from his head and arm and aching torso, and took hold of the thing. It swayed in his grasp. The other hand, now. He gripped the object hard, and wrenched himself to a sitting position next to it.
If his voice could have found his throat, he would have screamed. It was the sword, sharpened that morning, and it cut into his hands in icy lines of pain, and the blood flowed. But he had no time, no time for the pain, and he struggled to stand, using the sword as a prop. He moved his hands feebly to the unsharpened tang, where the hilt would go, and pushed himself up, and somehow managed to stand. His legs wobbled under him as if they belonged to a body he had owned in a former life. He made his feet move. He went to the door.
The stairs were dark, and Herewiss fell and stumbled
down them, using the sword as a cane, caroming off the walls with force enough to bruise bones — though he couldn't feel the blows much through the shell which the drug had made of his body. The cries of men in terror were closer now. They mingled with that awful lusting hunger-howl and were nearly lost in it, faint against it as against the laughter of Death. As Herewiss came to the landing at the foot of the stairs, very faintly he could see some kind of light coming from the main hall, a fitful light, coming in stuttered and flashes. With every flash the hralcins screeched louder in frustration and rage. Segnbora! He thought, She's holding them off with the light until I can get there. But what can I do? Nothing but Flame would do anything—
He reeled against the wall to rest his blazing body for a second, and the answer spoke itself to him in his brother's voice: 'It'll turn in your hand unless you acquit yourself of my "murder".'
He stumbled away from the wall and went on again, shuffling, hurrying, pushing himself through the pain. The light before him grew brighter as he approached the hall, but the flashes were becoming shorter and shorter. Segnbora spoke of choosing when to listen to the voices of the dead – and when you can choose freely, and not be driven by them, you're free to find out who you really are—
And the voice spoke again in the back of his mind, saying, 'There's neither lying nor deception, back of the Door—'
He couldn't lie, Herewiss thought through the effort of making his body work. He was telling the truth. He was! I didn't—
He came to the doorway of the hall, and stood there, trembling with fear and effort, taking in the scene. There was little sound from the people in the hall now. They
were crowded together in one corner, huddled together with closed or averted eyes. Before them stood Segnbora, arms upraised, shaking terribly, but with a look of final commitment on her face as she summoned the Flame from the depths of her, brilliant and impotent. As Herewiss watched, supporting himself on the bloody sword, she called the light out of herself again. But this time there was no starflower, no burst of blue: only a rather bright light, quickly gone.
In that light he could see the huge things she was holding off, as they backed away a bit. They reached out with twisted limbs, black talons raked the air like the combed claws of insects. Even through their banshee wail the sound of sheathed fangs moving hungrily in hidden mouths could still be heard. The light seemed to refuse to touch them, sliding away from hide the color of night with no stars – though there were baleful glitters from where their eyes could have been, reflections the color of gray-green stormlight on polished ice. The air in the room was bitter cold, and smelled of rust and acid.
The light flickered out, and the hralcins moved in again for their meal.
Herewiss staggered in, into the thick darkness. Well, maybe this was what he was for. The hralcins had come after him: he would give himself to them, and they would feed on his soul and go away, satisfied. His friends would escape. He found himself suddenly glad of those few precious moments with his brother, however painful they had been. After the hralcins were through with him, there would be nothing. No silent shore, no Sea of light, no rebirth ever; only terrible pain, and then the end of things. But if this was going to be the last expression of his existence, he would do it right. He drew himself up straight, though it hurt, and lifted up the sword. Almost
he smiled: it was so good to face his fears at last—!
'Here I am, you sons of bitches!' he yelled. 'Come and get me!'
The howling paused for a moment, as if in confusion –and then, to Herewiss's utter horror, resumed again. They were not interested. They had found other game; they would take the souls of Freelorn and his people, and then later have Herewiss at their leisure.
'No,' he breathed. 'No—'
'Herewiss!' two voices cried at once, and there was the light again, but only a shadow of itself, pallid and exhausted. Segnbora held up her arms with fists clenched, as if she were trying to hold on to the light by main force, while her eyes searched the shadows for Herewiss. Freelorn stood apart from her, grim-faced and terrified. His sword was naked in his hand: a useless gesture, but one that described him in full. That man walked the land of the dead with me unafraid, Herewiss thought, and here he is facing down things that'll drink him up, blood and soul together, and he's afraid, and still he defies—!
The light died out, for the last time. The hralcins howled, and moved in—
The hall exploded into fire, an awful blaze of white-hot outrage.
Freelorn and Segnbora and the others crowded further back into the corner as Sunspark flowered between them and the hralcins, its fires raging upward in a terrible blinding column until they reached the ceiling and turned back on themselves, the down– hanging branches of a tree of flames. The hralcins backed away again.
'Sunspark,' Herewiss cried, the sound of his shout hurting his head. 'Spark, no, don't—'
The hralcins were already sliding closer again. (Herewiss,) it said, lashing out at them with great gouts of fire, (he loves you. And you love him, more than you do me, I
dare say. How shall I stand by and allow him to be taken from you? And then afterwards these things would take you too—) Its thoughts were casual on the surface, almost humorous, but beneath them Herewiss could hear its terror for him.
'Spark—'
It went up in so unbearable a glare that Herewiss had to close his eyes, but before he did he saw that the hralcins were still moving closer. (They don't seem to be responding as well as before to this,) it said conversationally, while beneath the thought all its self sang with fear. (I think—)
There was a sudden shocked silence. Herewiss opened his eyes again to see one of the hralcins reach out and somehow tear the pillar of fire in two, hug a great tattered blaze of light to itself with its misshapen forelimbs, suck it dry, kill the light. The other hralcins moved in for the rest, tore at the light, fed, consumed it, darkness fell—
'SUNSPAAAAAARK!'
The hralcins howled like the Shadow's hounds, and moved in again. And through the howling, Herewiss heard Freelorn scream.
The scream entered into Herewiss and burned behind his eyes, ran through his veins in a storm of fire and filled him as the drug had filled him with himself. He needed his Name. There was no time any more. He threw the door open, and looked. Time froze in him. No, he froze it—
All his life he had thought of time as being flat.. like a plane. It was the world that was three-dimensional. A moment had seemed to have an edge sharp enough to slice a finger on, and by the time he summoned up the self-awareness and desire to try balancing on such a razor's edge, the moment was past already, and he was teetering on the next one.
Now, though, he found himself poised there, effort­lessly, in the exact middle of a moment. And since he was truly still for the first time in his life, he perceived his Name. He looked sideways down it, or along it, or into it –there were no words to properly express the spatial relationships implicit within its structure. Its strands stretched outward forever, and inward forever, flung out to eternity and yet curling back and meeting themselves again, making a whole. A scintillating, dazzling latticework of moments past and moments future, of Herewiss-that-was and Herewiss-that-would-be, all entwined, all coexisting; a timeweb, a selfweb, himself at its heart.
He looked up and down its length, and saw. Down there, root and heart and anchor-point of the weave, the night of his conception. Elinadren his mother, and Hearn his father, tangled sweetly together in the act of love. After some time of sleeping together for the sheer fun of the sharing, they were making an amazing discovery; that each of them was finding the other's delight more joyous than his or her own – and not just while in bed. The long comfortable friendship of the Lord's son and the Rod-mistress who worked with him had come to fruition; they had become lovers; and now that they were in love indeed, their Names were beginning to match in places. He could see the two brilliant Name-weaves tangling through one another, and where they touched and met and melded, they blazed white-hot with joy. It was as if someone had cast out a net of silver and drawn in a catch of stars. Herewiss's soul, existing in timelessness, saw that bright network and was entranced by it; the joystars were beacons that drew him in. He wanted that kind of joy, of love, wanted to be part of it, to share the joy with someone else that way. And as he watched, Elinadren exploded in ecstatic fulfillment, and her Fire ran searing through the glittering weave, igniting the joystars into unbearable
blinding brilliance, setting free for a bare few moments the spark of Hearn's suppressed Flame, which swept down like wildfire to meet hers. Their two commingled souls burned starblue, and Herewiss, overwhelmed by an ecstasy of light and promised joy, dove inward and blazed into oneness with them as they were one; started to be born again . . .
And other occurrences, later ones. Being held in his father's arms, carried home half-asleep after his presentation at the Forest Altars: three years old. 'Oh,' Hearn's voice whispering to Elinadren, who walked beside them with her arm through Hearn's, moving quietly through green twilight, 'oh, Eli, he's going to be something special.'
And another one over there, watching his mother make it rain to stave off what seemed an incipient dry spell. He was six years old. Watching her stand there in the field, garlanded with meadowsweet to invoke the Mother of Rains, seeing her uplift a Rod burning with the Fire and call the rainclouds to her with Flame and poetry. He watched the sky darken into curdled contrasts, clouds violet and orange and stormgreen, watched her bring the lightning-licked water thundering down, and a great desire to control the things of the world rose up in him. He got up from the grass, soaking wet, and went to hold on to Elinadren's skirts, and said, 'Mommy, I'll do that when I grow up too.'
And yet another, when he was out camping in the grasslands east of the Wood, and he woke up and stretched in the morning to find the grass-snake coiled in the blankets with him, and heard its warning hiss: eleven years old. He knew it could kill him; and he knew he could probably kill it, for his knife was close to hand and he was fast. But he remembered Hearn saying, 'Don't ever kill unless you must!' – and he lifted up the blankets slowly and then rolled out, and from beneath them the grass-snake streaked out like a bright green lash laid over the ground, and was gone, as frightened of him as he had been of it. I guess you can do without killing, he thought. Always, from now on, I'll try—
There were thousands more moments like that, each one of which had made him part of what he was, each linked to all the moments before and all the moments after, making the bright complete framework that was his Name. And each act or decision had a shadow, a phantom link behind it — sprung from his deeds, yet independent of them somehow – another Name, shadowing itself in multiple reflections, reaching out into depths he could not fully comprehend—
Her Name. The Goddess's. Of course.
No wonder She wanted to free me. And no wonder She wanted my Name. Not power, nothing so simple. It is part of Hers. Her Name is the sound of all Names everywhere. And with the knowledge of my Name, She will win ever so slight a victory against the Death. There will be more of Her than there was; the sure knowledge of what I am at this moment in time will make me immortal in a way that will surpass and outlast even the cycles of death and rebirth, even the great Death of everything that is.
If I accept myself—
Herewiss stood there in the midst of the blazing brilliance of the weave, hearing words long forgotten as well as ones that had never been spoken, tasting joys he had ceased to allow himself and pains he had shut away, and also feeling with wonder the textures of things that hadn't happened yet, silks and thorns and winds laden with sunheat like molten silver— Whether the drug was still working in him, he wasn't sure; but futures spun out
ahead of him from the base-framework of his Name, numberless probabilities. Some of them were so faint and unlikely that he could hardly perceive them at all; some were almost as clear as things that had become actuality. Some of these were dark with his
death, and some almost as dark with his life; one burned blue with the Fire, and he looked closely at it, saw himself almost lost in light, rippling with Flame that streamed from him like a cloak in the wind. And that future was ready to start in the next moment, when he let time start happening again. But there was still a gap in the information, he didn't know how to get there from here—
Yes I do.
Herewiss looked forward along all the futures, and back down his past, weighing the brights and darks of them, and accepted them for his.
And knew his Name.
And knew the Name of his fear.
His Flame, of course. There it lay, dying indeed, but still the strongest thing about him, the strongest part of him. How long, now, had he been trying to control it, to use it like a hammer on the anvil of the world? The blue Flame was not something to be used in that fashion. He had been trying to keep it apart from him, where it would not be a threat to his control of himself. If he wanted it, really wanted it, he was going to have to take hold of it and merge himself with the Fire, give up the control, yield himself wholly and for ever.
It was going to hurt. The fires of the forge, of a star's core, of an elemental's heart would be nothing compared to this.
So be it. There's no more time. I've got to do it.
He had been trying to make it his.
He reached out and embraced it, and made it him.
Pain, incredible pain for which the anguished screaming of a whole dying world seemed insufficient expression. He hung on, grasped, held, was fire – and then time began to reassert itself, the pain mixing with the sound of Freelorn's scream, feeding on it,
blending, changing, anger, incandescent blue anger, raging like the Goddess's wrath — hands, surely burned off, eyes transfixed by spears of blue-white fury, too much, too much power, has to go somewhere, forward, moments moving, forward, terror, rage, forward, Freelorn—!