Диана Дуэйн - The Door Into Fire

– a little muslin bag, with runes of the Nhairedi sorcerer's– speech crudely stitched on it, and a brown stain that was probably blood.

Herewiss took his knife from the sheath at his belt and lifted the little bag on its blade, carrying it over to the table where the candle sat. It took him a little while to poke a large enough hole in it without touching it directly, but when he did, and shook out the contents, he nodded. Asafetida; crumbs of choke-pard and wyverns-tooth; a leaf of moonwort, the black-veined kind picked in Moon's decline; and also a little lump of something soft – a bit of potato from his plate at dinner. He scowled. Elements of sleep– charm and love-charm, mixed together – with the moonwort to befuddle the mind and bind the sleeper to someone else's wishes.

What does she think I am? She must not know I'm a sorcerer or she wouldn't try something so ridiculously simple—

Shaking his head, Herewiss laid the steel knife down on the little pile of herbs. 'Ehrenie haladh seresh,' he said, and spat on the blade. When he picked it up again, the moonwort had shriveled into a tight black ball, and the warning pain in the back of his head was gone.

He set the cloth bag afire with the candle flame, and carried it still burning to the window, opening the shutter and throwing the bag out along with the bits of herbs. Then he went back and stretched out on the bed, reaching for the mug. The ale was getting warm. He made a face, put the mug aside, and lay back against the headboard, crossing his arms and sighing. It was going to be a long wait.

At sometime past one in the morning Herewiss was listening wearily to the sound of some patron of the inn wobbling about in the courtyard, singing (if that was the

word) the old song about the King of Darthen's lover. The inn's good ale seemed to have completely removed any fears the drunk had ever had of high notes, and he was squeaking and warbling through the choruses in a falsetto fit to give any listener a headache. Herewiss had one.

The man had just gotten to the verse about the goats when Herewiss heard the door grunt a little, and saw it scrape inward a bit. He lay back quickly, peeking out from beneath lowered lids. There was another soft scraping sound, and in stepped the innkeeper's daughter, wrapped in a blanket against the cold. She looked long and hard at him, and it was all Herewiss could do to keep from grinning. After a few moments, satisfied that he was asleep, she smiled and crossed the room quietly to where his bags lay.

The one she peered into first was the one with the surcoat. Slowly and carefully she pulled it out and spread it wide to look at the device. There was no light in the room but the pale moonlight seeping in through one half-open shutter, and the dim glow of the torches down in the courtyard. It took her a while to make out the Phoenix in Flames, but when she did she bit her lip, then smiled again, and folded up the surcoat.

Deeper down in the bag she found the book bound in red leather, the unsealed one, and drew it out carefully. The innkeeper's daughter sat down on her heels and muttered something under her breath. A weak reddish light grew and glowed about her hands, clinging to the book's pages as she turned them. For a few minutes she went through the book, turning the leaves over in cautious silence. Then suddenly she stopped, and across the room Herewiss could hear her take in breath sharply. He watched her as she traced down one page with a finger, moving her lips slowly as she read.

That's a bad habit, Herewiss thought. Let's see if I can't break you of it.

The girl was holding the book closer to her eyes, and speaking softly. 'Neskhaired ol jomeire kal stoi, arveya khad—'

Herewiss breathed out in irritation. I might have known. Doesn't she know it's all illusion-spells? She can't know much about what real sorcery is, or what it does. And Goddess knows she would pick that one. She needs a lot more to be beautiful on the inside than she does on the outside. It's not going to work, of course. She's not making any passes, and she's set up no framework inside her head. Dark! I'll teach her to mess with things she doesn't understand—

Herewiss cleared his mind and began to think of another incantation, on another page. He had long since ceased to need to draw diagrams or make passes while conjuring. Constant practice had taught him to build viable spell-structures in his head, without external aids. He built one now, a fairly simple one that he had used many times to entertain Halwerd, an illusion-spell that required minimal energy and provided surprisingly sophisticated results. It went up quickly, in large chunks, taking form and bulking huge and restless — it was one of those sorceries that has to be used quickly before it goes stale. He completed the structure, checking once to make sure that it was complete, and thought the word that set it free to work.

The girl, intent on her reading, did not notice the air behind her thickening and growing dark. Something darker and more tenacious than smoke curled and roiled within a huge man-shaped space in the air, until at last it stood complete behind her – a little tenuous at the edges, where its stuff wisped and drifted into the still air, but dark as starless midnight at its heart. The innkeeper's daughter finished reading the spell and raised one hand to

feel at her face. In that moment the great dark shape put out a hand and brushed the back of her neck lightly.

She slapped absently at what she thought was an insect, and felt her hand go through something cold and damp. Her eyes went wide with startlement; she turned. She saw, and opened her mouth to scream. But Herewiss was ready. Since freeing the illusion, he had been readying another spell, and as she drew breath he said the word of control and struck her dumb and stiff. There she knelt, her mouth ridiculously open, head turned to look over her shoulder –probably a most uncomfortable position. Herewiss smiled, and got up out of the bed, praying that the backlash would hold off for a few minutes.

'Do you always go through your guests' bags at one in the morning?' he said, bending down to take the book away from her and toss it on to the bed. 'And do all the rooms come equipped with that charming little addition under the pillow?'

She could not even move her eyes to follow him as he went to open the window wide. 'Would you excuse us?' he said to the smoke– creature. There had always been controversy over whether illusion– creatures were alive and thinking in any sense of the words, but Herewiss, being both cautious and courteous by nature, treated his illusions as if they were both. 'And while you're out there, please take that man down there and bed him down in the stable or something. If I hear that part about the goats again, I may turn him into one.'

The dark shape waded slowly through the air, trailing streams of black smoke behind it, and climbed over the windowsill into the night. It drifted down silently into the courtyard.

'Would you like to be a goat?' Herewiss said, going back to look at the girl from behind, so that she could see him.

'Or an owl might be better – you seem to like being up in the middle of the night.'

He was bluffing outrageously, for no mere sorcery could do such things. She seemed not to know this, though. She stared at Herewiss wide-eyed, the terror frozen in her face. Outside, a voice broke off its singing. 'Boy, izh really dark out here,' it said, woozily surprised.

'Or maybe you'd like to bed down with my friend out there,' Herewiss said, 'since you do seem to be so eager, with that love– charm and all. I should tell you, though, he is a little cold, and you might have a baby afterwards, and I couldn't guarantee what it would look like.'

He made a small adjustment in his mind and snapped his fingers, freeing her upper half but keeping her legs bound tight. She sagged and turned her face away from him quickly. 'Tell me what you were after,' Herewiss said.