Диана Дуэйн - The Door Into Fire

He heard Sunspark scream.

(You can afford to be generous,) Sunspark said grumpily. (I've
never lost a match before. Shows you what comes of being fair.)
(Sometimes,) Herewiss agreed. (Come on, Sunspark, let's go; the rain's stopped.)
They walked out of the shrine. Above them the clouds were moving eastward before a brisk wind. (One thing I will require of you,) Sunspark said, (and that is that you keep water off me.)
(That's easily done; there are spells—)
Dapple was grazing again; as Herewiss approached him he looked up placidly, as if to ask what would happen now.
(Hmm. Sunspark, will you mind if I ride you?)
(It's a binding of energies, is it not? It seems appropriate.)
He transferred his gear to Sunspark's back, piece by piece, and finally took the bridle off Dapple and rubbed the horse's nose. 'It's a long way back home for you,' he said, 'but you can't help but find your way there. Though they might be confused to see you without me. Here—'
He put the bridle on Sunspark and then went to rummage in the saddlebag, finally finding the little steel message-capsule from Freelorn's pigeon, along with the scrap of parchment it had contained. Inkstick and brush were further down in the bag. Herewiss wet the brush from his mouth, scrabbled it against the inkstick, and paused for a moment. Should I—? Oh, why the Dark not, he loves riddles!
'From Herewiss Hearn's son to his sire,' he wrote, 'Your son's making good on his hire— He sends you your horse (and regards, Lord, of course)
and the news that the prince rides with Fire.'
Then he enclosed the note in the capsule and tied it around Dapple's neck with some cord from the saddlebag.
'Have a safe trip home,' he said. 'And thanks.'
Dapple nuzzled him in the chest, turned, and trotted off.
Herewiss swung up into the saddle, intrigued to feel Sunspark's heat seeping up through it. (I hope the leather doesn't crack,) he said. (We're heading south. The place
where Freelorn is stuck is about a five days' ride from here—)
(For a horse,) Sunspark said with an inward smile. (We'll go faster; I'm curious to see this 'loved' of yours. You'd better hold on tight.)
Several times that night and the next day, the country people of southern Darthen and northern Steldin pointed and wondered at the sudden meteor that blazed across their skies and did not strike the ground anywhere.
4
'Are you a sorcerer?' said Ferrigan curiously.
'Dear me, no!' the Pooka said, shocked. 'Who wants to be a sorcerer? You spend five days of a week recovering from one day's spelling; and if you die in the middle of a spell, it takes three months before the headache goes away.'
'Tale of Ferrigan and the Pooka,' from Tales of Northern Darthen, ed. Hearn, ch. 8
The place was old enough to have been built in the first wave of Darthen's colonization. It was hardly more than a crude castle keep built of fieldstone. For outworks it had nothing more than an earthern dike, surrounded by a ditch that had once been full of
sharpened stakes. They had long since rotted away, the place having been abandoned for some newer, more defensible castle of hewn stone.
But the keep was still quite solid, thick-walled enough so that an earthquake could hardly have brought it down. There were no windows but arrowslits, the tower top was deeply crenellated, and the door was of iron a foot thick, judging by the fact that it had not rusted away in all the intervening years. Time had been kind to the place. Its mortar had grown stronger with age, and only here or there was any stone shattered by frost. It was a redoubt worthy of the name, and it stood there at the center of the cuplike vale with stolid rocky patience, frowning at the surrounding hills, antique and indomitable.
Herewiss leaned wearily on Sunspark's crupper and frowned back at the keep from where they stood, about two miles away, atop one of the long bare surrounding ridges. The keep was surrounded by a fairly large force, disposed around it for the siege in the usual Steldene fashion. The troops were about half a mile or so from the walls, separated into four large camps, each oriented to one of the compass points. Herewiss agreed with
Freelorn's estimate; there were about a thousand of them, and maybe more.
'For five people!' he said aloud, putting his head down on his folded arms. 'Steldin must be awfully nervous.'
Sunspark stood beside him in the red roan form, idly switching flies with its long glittering tail. It looked at the besieging army with supreme disdain, and snorted softly. (It hardly matters. Give me half an hour and I will bring the fire down on them and leave not a one alive.)
'Sunspark, I don't want to kill, there's no need. Restraint is considered a virtue in these parts.'
The elemental snorted again, flicking its tail at a nonexistent fly and fetching Herewiss a stinging blow across the back.
'Behave yourself or I'll make it rain on you again.'
(That's no mastery, there are rainclouds coming in anyway; it'll be pouring after nightfall. You keep me dry, now!)
'I keep my promises. You'll be fine. Look, it's getting on towards sundown – I want you to take a message to Freelorn for me.'
(What am I – a pigeon?)
'Spark—'
(All right, all right.)
'Get in there any way you like, so long as it's unobtrusive. Say to Freelorn that I'm waiting for nightfall to make my move. Tell him that he should try not to be too bothered by what he sees – I'm going to try to go past the bounds of battle-sorcery he's seen in the past. Tell him how to find this spot – or better still, after I'm finished, go and meet them and bring them here. There are times when Lorn needs a map to find his own head.'
(Shall I tell him that too?)
'No, I've told him enough times myself. When you
finish with that, get back here. This place is wild enough so that there might be a few Fyrd wandering around. I don't want to get eaten while I'm trying to concentrate on my spelling.'
(Tell Freelorn this. And tell Freelorn that. There are five people in there, oh Master mine. What does he look like?)
Herewiss sighed. 'Look for a small man, about a span short of my height, with longish dark hair and a long mustache, and a sense of humor like yours. Chances are that he'll have on a surcoat with the White Lion on it. Is that enough for you?'
(If there are only five people in there, then I think I can manage.)
'Then get going.'
Sunspark's horse-shape wavered and turned molten, gathered itself together and swirled about with a blast of oven-heat, became a bright amorphous form that put out wings and rose against the sky, cooling and darkening. A moment later a red desert hawk spiraled up a thermal partly of its own making.
Herewiss sat down, making a face at the smell of scorched grass, and considered what he was going to do. It wasn't going to be easy to dispose of an army this large. There weren't too many of the Steldene regulars among the forces; most of them were conscript peasantry, ununiformed and hurriedly armed. That would be a help. But the regulars and their commanders would have seen real battle– sorcery before. They would be familiar with the tricks of the trade, and unafraid of illusion. Herewiss did have some advantages; he had a great deal of native power, and access to references and methods about which most sorcerers knew nothing. Also, the fact that there was no other army attacking them in concert with the illusions
would confuse the Steldenes somewhat. By the time any of them realized what was happening and tried to mobilize a force to stop him, it would be too late. He hoped.
A thousand men. Herewiss shook his head. The King of Steldin must have been worried about the possibility of the Arlene countryside rising against his people when they brought Freelorn home – or the possibility of Freelorn getting away, and the Arlene army moving into Steldene lands in retaliation. If the Oath of Lion and Eagle wasn't protecting Darthen from Cillmod's incursions, the King of Steldin had good reason to worry.
Sighing, Herewiss looked at the thunderheads massing on the northern horizon. The storm would make a fine cover for their escape. He disliked the prospect of leaving over wet ground that would take their trail. But speed, and fear, and the direction in which he would lead his friends, would confound the pursuit. Now he had to concern himself with the sorceries he would need.
Herewiss spent at least half an hour leafing through the grimoires, memorizing pertinent passages and wishing he weren't so ethical. To frighten a thousand men into flight was more difficult than killing them. It would have been simplicity itself to turn Sunspark loose. The elemental's methods were swift and brutally efficient, and its conscience would be clean afterwards. To Sunspark death was nothing more than a change from one form to another. Or Herewiss himself could have laid warfetter on the lot of them, leaving the whole army deaf and blind and stripped of their other senses, fighting nothing but their own terror, and probably dying of it. But his conscience was not as accommodating as Sunspark's. The last time he had slain was one time too many, and even if that had not been the case, there was still sorcerer's backlash to consider. To lay warfetter on so many people was to open the way for a
huge cumulative backlash to strike him, one which would certainly leave him either dead or insane.
So Herewiss chose illusions as his weaponry. He would have to alter the formulae to accommodate so many people, and the backlash would hit him proportionately –he would be unconscious for a couple of days. As he went through the book, making his final choices in the fading light, Sunspark dropped out of the sky on to his shoulder.
'Loosen up a little with the talons, please,' Herewiss said. 'Did you find him?'
The hawk snapped its beak with impatience. (Of course. He's waiting for you.)
'Was there a message?'
(Your friend greets you by me,) Sunspark said, (and says, 'Get me the Dark out of here.' He also says that you should make your preparations for six people. Evidently he has picked up a stray somewhere.)
'That's Lorn. Sunspark, I'm going to need a good while to get ready for this. You'll have to stand guard while I meditate. Also I'll need your services during the sorcery.'
(As you say.) Sunspark whirled and dissolved in heat again, reappearing in the blood-bay persona.
'You really do like that shape, don't you.'
The elemental curved its neck, looked around to admire its shining self. (It does have a certain elegance, I must admit—)
'You're vain, firechild, vain,' said Herewiss, smiling. He walked off a little distance and unlaced his fly to relieve himself before the long sorcery; Sunspark followed, regarding the process with interest.
(You are really strange,) it said. (Why bother drinking water if you're just going to throw it away again? And what is this 'vain' business? I'm gorgeous, you've said so. I don't
understand why you can tell me that I'm beautiful, but I can't tell myself—)
'Spark, shut up, please.'
Sunspark strolled away a few paces and began cropping the grass in silence, leaving little scorched places where it had bitten through. Herewiss settled himself comfortably on the ground and began to compose himself for the evening's work.
Sorcery, like all the other arts, is primarily involved with the satisfaction of one's own needs. Though a sorcerer may mend a pot or raise a storm or set a king on his throne with someone else's benefit in mind, still he is first serving his own needs, his own joys or fears or sorrows. To work successful sorcery one must first know with great certainty what he wants, and why. Otherwise the dark secretive depths of his mind may take the unleashed forces and use them for something rather different than what he
thinks he wants.
In addition, sorcery is affected by how completely the sorcerer's needs are filled before he begins – whether he's hungry or tired, secure in his place in life, whether he is loved or has someone to love. It's easy for a hungry sorcerer to find food by his art, since the need fuels his skill. But it's much harder for that same starving sorcerer to, say, open death's Door and sojourn in the places past it. And only the mightiest of sorcerers could manage to conjure powers or potentialities if he hadn't eaten for a week, or felt that his life was in danger for some reason. Sorcery is ridiculously easy to sabotage. Beat your sorcerer, frighten him, deprive him of food, ruin his love life – destroy one of his fulfillments, and he'll be lucky to be able to dowse for water.
So Herewiss sat there in the grass, as the Sun went down and the thunderclouds rolled in, and strove to shut out all
external things and evaluate his inner self. A brief flicker of thought went across his mind like lightning, a white line of discomfort and irritation: if I had the Flame, I wouldn't need to go through this rigmarole. Will alone is enough to fuel the blue Fire, you think a thing and it's done. But he put the thought aside. Freelorn was waiting for him.
Herewiss sounded himself. He was well-fed, not thirsty or cold or tired. He was the Lord's son of the Brightwood, as usual, had a home and family and people that he could call his own. Love – there was his father, and Freelorn of course — the knowledge of their feelings for him was a warm steady support at the back of his mind.
Then after a moment he reached out and took hold of the thought he would have liked to banish, the lack of Flame, the lack of completion. Oh, he was so empty in that one place inside of him. It should have been full of blue Fire and prowess and shouting joy. Instead it ached with emptiness, as parts of him sometimes did after lovemaking. It was a vast stony cavern that echoed coldly when he walked there. Nothing but a faint flicker illuminated it, a single tongue of blue.
Herewiss turned wholly inward, walked in the still, dry air of that place, listened to the sound of his passage as it bounced back from the walls, a distant, hollow step. He went toward the little blue Fire, crouched down beside it where it sprang from a crack in the bare rough rock. Though there was no wind passing through the darkness, the Flame trembled. It was a sad fire, afraid of dying before it was unleashed to burn through the rest of him, terrified of going out forever. Herewiss was surprised, and pierced with sorrow. He had never really pictured the Flame as anything but a possession of his, no more emotional than an arm or leg. Yet here it was, frightened of endings as he himself was, lonely in the dark.
He spent a little time there, trying to comfort it with his presence, and finally stood up again and gazed down at the tiny tongue of cold fire. If it would die some day, then that was the Goddess's will. It was better to have treasured the wonder this long than never to have had it in him at all.
Herewiss turned his back on the Flame and went out of that dark place, looking for Freelorn's image inside him. Besides need, sorcery was also fueled by emotion. He would summon up his emotions as a smith might beat out iron, slowly, with care and skill and calculated brutality. Then he would turn it loose, take it in hand like the weapon it was and scatter an army with it.
He didn't have to walk far. The path to where Freelorn dwelt was a wide one, one that Herewiss traveled often when his friend was gone. It was a bright place. A lot of the memory looked like the halls of Kynall castle in Prydon, where they had lived together for a while, all white marble and sunlit colonnades – very different from the dark, carven walls of the Woodward. Some of it looked like Freelorn's old room in the castle, cream-colored walls veined in green, Freelorn's old teak four-poster bed with the hack– marks in it from Suthan, armor and clothes scattered around in adolescent disorder. They had had good times there together, lounging around and tossing off horns full of red Archantid as they talked about the things that the future might hold.
But there was a lot of the memory that looked like the Brightwood, too, and it was there that Herewiss finally found him. The image of a dead spring day was there, all sun on green leaves, and there was Lorn; newly arrived with his father King Ferrant on a visit of state. Herewiss, of course, was both within that memory and without it. From the outside he looked at Freelorn and marveled that he had ever really been that young. Lorn didn't even have
a mustache yet, and he looked laughably unfinished without it. And he was little, so very small for his age.
Freelorn was as nervous as a new-manned hawk, trying to look in all directions at once. He hung on to the golden-hilted sword at his belt with one white-knuckled hand, and spurred his sorrel charger till it danced, meanwhile staring around him trying to see if any of the Wood people had clothes as grand as his, or such a sword, or such a father. From within the memory Herewiss, fourteen years old, looked with mixed disdain and jealousy at the newcomer. He was loud and flashy and arrogant, the way Herewiss had imagined a city princeling would probably be. He had disliked Freelorn immediately, and he saw himself frown and turn away from Hearn's side to stalk back into the Woodward, fuming quietly at this foreign invasion.
Then suddenly the scene changed, faded into darkness and stars seen through leaves and branches. The Moon sifted down through silvered limbs to pattern the smooth grass around one of the Forest Altars, and shone full and clear on the altar stone in the midst of the clearing. On the low slab of polished white marble Freelorn sat, huddled up with his head on his knees, shaking as if with cold. Beneath the trees at the edge of the clearing Herewiss stood very still, confused, wondering why the prince was crying. At the same time he was resisting the urge to laugh; the idea of the Prince of Arlen sitting on one of the Forest Altars and weeping was ludicrous. But disturbing –it wasn't right for a prince to be seen crying, and Herewiss wanted him to stop . . .
The scene shifted again, ever so slightly, and Herewiss was sitting next to his friend-to-be, trying to help, his arm around him; and Freelorn put his head against Herewiss and cried as if his world was ending. 'No-one likes me,'
Freelorn was saying, in choked sobs, 'and I don't, don't know why—'
They began to see through each other that night. Herewiss had been playing cold and silent and mature, and Freelorn merry and uncaring and free; that night they began coming to the conclusion that there was at least one more person with whom the games and false faces were unnecessary. The next morning they looked at one another shyly, each studying the other's weak places as he himself knew he was being studied, and decided that there would be no attack. They spent the next month teaching each other things, and savoring that special joy that comes of having someone to listen, and care. Their friendship became a settled thing.
Herewiss gave the scene a nudge of adjustment. They were in rr'Virendir, the King's Archive in Prydon castle, sitting with their backs against one of the huge shelves filled with rune rolls and musty tomes. It was dark and cool, and the air was laced with the dry dusty smell of a great old library. The summer sun burned down outside, and the Archive was one of the few comfortable places to be. The assistant keeper was snoring softly in his little office down at one end of the long room; Freelorn, who due to a hereditary title was the Keeper of the Archive, was hunched up against the very last row of shelves with Herewiss.
'I don't want to learn all this stuff,' he was saying. 'I'll never learn it all. I'm a slow reader anyway, it would take me the rest of my life.'
'Lorn, you've got to.' Herewiss was fifteen now, and feeling terribly broadened by his travels; this was his first trip to Prydon, and the first time he had ever been more than ten miles from the Wood.
'I don't need it!' Freelorn said, scowling at a pile of
parchments that lay on the ground next to him. 'Look at all this stuff. Half of it is so rotted away I can hardly read it, and the rest of it is in some obscure dialect so full of thees and thous that I can't make sense of it.'
'Lorn,' Herewiss said with infinite patience, 'that one on top is a rede that has been copied over more times than either of us know, because no-one knows what it means, and it's tied to the history of your Line somehow. It's Lion business, Lorn. That makes it your business. This whole place is your business. That's why you're its Keeper.'
'Dammit, Dusty, I love my family's history. Descent from the Lion is something to be proud of. But I don't want to sit around reading when I could be out doing great things!'
'What did you have in mind?'
'Are you making fun of me?'
'No.'
Freelorn made an irritated face. 'I don't know what kind of great things. But they're there, waiting for me to get to them, I know it! I want to see the Kingdoms. I want to take ship for the Isles of the North, and talk to Dragons. I want to climb in the Highspeaks and see what the lands beyond the mountains look like. I want to go into Hreth and kill Fyrd. I want to find out what the Hildimarrin countries are like, I want to – oh, Dark, everything! And you know what I get to do?'
'You get to stay home and be prince for a while. Listen, Lorn, it's not that long ago you were in the Wood with me. That's not traveling? Almost two hundred leagues away? What about the mare's nest we saw on the way back? That's not adventure? You wanted the nightmare, maybe? She would have had you for breakfast. We saw three wind demons and a unicorn, and heard the Shadow's Hunting to overhead, and you want more? Goddess, Lorn, what's it take to make you happy?'
'Danger. Intrigue. Hopeless quests. Last stands. Heroism! Courage against all odds! Valor in defeat!'
'You remember when we used to play Lion and Eagle?' 'Yes, but – Dusty, what's that got to do with this?' 'How many times did we stage Bluepeak out behind the Ward?' 'Every day for a month at least, but—'
'Did you notice something interesting? We always got up again afterwards. Earn and Healhra didn't.'
'Yes, they did. They come back once every five hundred years—'
'—and the last two times no-one recognized Them for years, because They didn't come back as Lion and Eagle. That's not important here, though. Lorn, I'm not – oh, Dark.' Herewiss reached over and took Freelorn's hand, slowly, shyly.
'My father,' he went on, looking at his boots, 'keeps saying, "A king is made for fame and not for long life." Which is all right as long as it's some other king – but Lorn, it's going to be you some day, and I'm not sure I want to see you die. No matter how damn heroic your last stand is.' He closed his eyes. 'I'm probably going to go the same way; Brightwood people never die in bed. They vanish, or get eaten by Fyrd, or get turned into rocks, or something weird like that. All the old ballads make my ancestors sound just wonderful, but they have to be divorcing the emotion from the reality in places. I don't want to find out how it feels to vanish.'
Freelorn nodded. 'I don't really want to end up bleeding somewhere either – but on the other hand, it'd be neat to be a robber baron, putting down the oppressor and giving money to the common people. Or to be a wandering sorcerer, doing good deeds and slipping away unnoticed—'
Herewiss sighed, and a wild impulse compounded of
both daring and humor rose up in him. 'All right,' he said.
'Hopeless quests are what you want? Valiant absurdity? Something that the Goddess would approve of?'
'What the Dark are you talking about?'
'Lorn, I'm on a quest.'
'Say what?'
Herewiss grinned at the sudden confusion in Freelorn's face. He considered and discarded several possible ways of explaining things, and finally simply held out his hands. Usually he had to close his eyes when he made the little tongue of external Flame that was all he could manage. But he strained twice as hard as usual this time for the sake of keeping his eyes open. He didn't want to miss the look on Freelorn's face.
It was an amazing thing. It was so amazing that Herewiss broke out laughing like a fool, and lost his concentration and the Flame both a moment later. He laughed so hard that he had to hold his stomach against the pain, and all the while Freelorn stared at him in utter amazement.
Finally Herewiss calmed down a little, caught his breath, wiped his eyes.
'You have it,' Freelorn said softly. 'You have it.' 'It looks that way.' 'You have it! Dusty!!' That's me.'
'MY GODDESS, YOU HAVE IT!!!'
'Ssh, you'll wake up Berlic.'
'But you have it!' Freelorn whispered.
'Yeah.'
And then Freelorn looked at Herewiss, and the joy in his eyes dimmed and flickered low.
'But a focus—'
'I tried. Can't use a Rod.'
There was a long silence.
'Lorn,' Herewiss said. 'This is my secret. And yours, now. My mother taught me a lot of sorcery when I was younger, but there was always something else I could feel in the background that I knew wasn't anything to do with that. I didn't know what it was until last year – I made Flame accidentally in the middle of a scry ing-spell. I thought it might have been a fluke, but it's not, it's there, and it's getting stronger. If I can channel it, I can use it. And the Goddess only knows what I'm going to use for a focus. Will this do for a hopeless quest?'
Freelorn was silent for a little while.
Then he looked at Herewiss again.
'I am the Keeper of the Archive,' he said solemnly, as if he were summoning Powers to hear him. 'There must be something in here that would help you. I'm going to start looking. And when I find it—'
Herewiss smiled a little. 'When you find it,' he said. They hugged each other, stirring up dust.
The memories were making Herewiss feel warm inside. The analytical parts of him approved: he was heading in the right direction. The warmth was building, washing through him—
He shifted the scene again, and it was night out in the eastern Darthene wastelands, a hundred miles or so from the Arlene border.
They were on their way to Prydon again after a trip to the Wood, and the day's riding had left them exhausted – Freelorn was anxious to get home, and they had spared neither themselves nor the horses. It was cold, for Opening Night was approaching, and they lay close to their little fire and shivered. The stars were beginning to fall thickly, as they do at Midwinter when the Goddess is angriest, when She remembers Her own thoughtlessness at the Creation, and flings stars burning
across the night in defiance of the great Death. Herewiss lay on his back gazing up at the sky, watching the distant firebrands trace their silent paths out of the heart of the Sword – the constellation that stands high on winter nights. Freelorn lay curled up in a tight bundle next to him, facing west.
'Dusty—'
Herewiss turned his head to him. 'You want to share?'
Within the memory, Herewiss, now sixteen, went both warm with surprise and pleasure, and cold with fear. It was a thought that had occurred to him more than once. But Freelorn was younger than he was inside, and easily frightened. He wouldn't want to scare Lorn, ever—