The Door into Sunset (17 page)

“Right enough. Let’s settle up and go.”

The inn was in a town called Iriv, and was one of the larger ones Herewiss had ever stayed in, since it was a major staging-point for Prydon, only a day’s ride away, and on the Road. Or rather, as Moris said, it had been an important place once, before money started getting scarce and the relationship between Darthen and Arlen had begun to deteriorate, decreasing the number of travelers who passed that way. At any rate, the inn was big enough that none of the people who ran it were anywhere to be found when you wanted one... though it might seem that the rest of the neighborhood was in the common room, drinking in a silence that indicated they knew one another entirely too well. Herewiss and Moris stood at the bottom of the creaky stairs, looking around slightly helplessly at the muttering locals. There was not a friendly look among them. This was another of the things Herewiss was having trouble getting used to. They had seen the Fire flowing about Khávrinen when he came in last night. He had expected astonishment, pleasure, welcome: not this suspicious hostility.
It’s possible,
he had begun thinking, and thought again now,
that they see me not as a solution, but as another problem
.... He wasn’t sure he liked the feeling.

There was no sign of the innkeeper, a tall thin greying man with a stoop. The only one in the room who paid any attention to them at all was the cat on the courtyard windowsill, a big black creature with white markings like a herald’s tabard, and surprised-looking white patches over its eyes.

Herewiss sighed and went over to it to try his luck. “Sir,” he said, ignoring the suspicious or amused looks of the people who were sitting around drinking, “have you seen the master of the house?”

The cat looked sidelong at Herewiss and tucked its paws up, so that it made a black-and-white loaf shape. It said nothing, and Herewiss was turning away when the small raspy voice said, “He was out rating himself for not having stolen your saddle last night.”

Herewiss turned back, smiling slightly. “Back soon, do you think?”

The cat flicked one ear, a sort of shrug, and looked away.

Herewiss reached into his pouch and came up with a four-penny bit. “This should take care of what we owe,” he said, and slipped it deftly underneath the cat.

It looked at him and let its eyes half-close in amusement, for it knew as well as he did the proverb about the man who pays the cat, and what he gets for his money. It smiled slightly. “Go well, prince,” it said. “It’s a wicked place you’re going to.”

“It’s not wicked here, with saddle thieves and all?” Herewiss said. But he smiled too.

“Go with Her,” the cat said, and closed its eyes, apparently intent on going to sleep.

“And you,” Herewiss said, and headed out the door. Moris had gone ahead of him, making for the stable, and was busy getting the horses. Herewiss looked around at the scorchmarks on the walls of Sunspark’s stable, and the ashes mixed with the straw on the floor. Sunspark was standing there looking innocent: as innocent, anyway, as something that will counterfeit being the Phoenix when it’s not being a horse, or one of a hundred other things. “Oh, come on, I didn’t burn right through... “

“Let’s be away,” Herewiss said, swinging his saddle up onto Sunspark’s back. “We’ll be in Prydon tonight....”

*

“Coming and going... “ Herewiss said to Moris, that afternoon, as they rode into the declining light streaming through broken clouds in the west. “I thought I would be coming back here, all right, but not like this.”

Moris shook his head. “Last time I was glad enough to be going,” he said. “The whole place looked nasty to me. Everybody chasing after Lorn and all... “ He chewed his lip and looked around at the townslands with an expression of profound distrust. “And I doubt it’ll change.”

“It’ll change,” Herewiss said. “Soon enough.” He let the reins slacken. “Spark,” he said, “see that hill there? Just the other side.”

Sunspark laughed softly. It had taken to doing that when in horse-form—speaking with a human voice, laughing human laughter, with who knew what throat. But there was always an edge on it, a slight whinny, and also a sense of parody: something pretending it was a horse pretending to talk like a human being, and inside, laughing at both. “Which set of walls?” it said.

“Pardon?”

“How many walls will they have gone through?” said Sunspark. “When I was here last, there were only two. The inside one, where the keep was, and the outer one, around the hall and the new palace they were building.”

Moris stared. Herewiss swallowed. Twelve hundred years and more it had been since Lionhall and Kynall Castle were built by Héalhra’s descendants, to supplement the old inner keep. “You hadn’t mentioned you’d been through here,” Herewiss said, as calmly as he could.

“You didn’t ask.” Sunspark ambled along, switching its tail at flies, incinerating them with an unsettling fizzing noise when one or another fire-golden hair made contact. “Enough of us who walk the worlds were around,” he said. “Power draws power. There was power here then, fresh and new. Some of us thought we would come test it. Some did.”

It got silent. “And?” Herewiss said.

Sunspark flicked its tail again, left scorchmarks on Herewiss’s boot. “Some of us were bound,” it said. “Some got away. Some just watched, and went elsewhere afterwards. There’s always elsewhere.”

Moris was looking at Sunspark more strangely than usual. “‘Elsewhere’—”

“It must be odd for you,” Sunspark said, ambling along, musing. “Living under just one sky, on just one earth. Don’t the walls close in, sometimes?... “

Herewiss shook his head as Sunspark fell silent. Moris was still staring. “Its people move through worlds that way,” Herewiss said to him, disquieted himself, “the way we move from one room, one house, to another.... Not all moves are possible, all the time. There’s a Pattern, and it shifts, making some rooms accessible, others not. But beings travel through it—they spend all their lives travelling, some of them. They pass through hundreds of worlds, thousands... and sometimes stop in some backwater to look around and see the sights....”

“And are bound,” Sunspark said. Its voice was noncommittal.

Herewiss sat silent as he rode. Hearing Sunspark speak this way reminded him of his own desires—to walk the worlds, to see the things on the other side of the sky: to burn himself out in glory, if he had to be burnt. And he did. These days, Firebearers had little choice in the matter. Since the Catastrophe, human flesh had forgotten what it was like to coexist for a long lifetime with full-blown Fire: that was why using it now cost its users hours and days of life. Herewiss was meant to be about the business of changing that, he knew. But he also wanted some time to himself, to pass through the doors to those other places. And here he was, tied to a dusty road and an uncompleted errand—in the full of his Power, after all these years, but unable to indulge himself—

Moris was still bemused. “But what kind of creatures are these?” he said. “Or ‘people’—”

Sunspark laughed, that slightly sarcastic sound again. “Make no doubt of their intelligence,” it said. “But little worlds like this, all tight and snug, do strange things to minds used to larger places. One of them—” It sounded slightly disturbed itself, now. “One of them went to ground not too far from here. In a river.” Sunspark laughed, the unease in its voice scraping around the joke. “A creature that had frozen the hearts of stars in its time, and knew about waiting, and cold, more than any other creature alive: it went all to scales and icicles, and froze the river, and took a spear in its heart, and died because it believed it ought to. From such a pinprick.”

“The Coldwyrm,” Moris said.

Herewiss nodded. Anmod King of Arlen had killed the Wyrm, about a thousand years ago now. “An ice elemental,” Herewiss said.

Sunspark laughed again, more sadly. “As I’m one of fire, yes,” it said. “And as much colder than the ice you know as I’m hotter than any fire this poor place can support. Do you know how long it’s been since I was warm? Or dared try to be?”

Herewiss thought about that as they came over the crest of the hill, and paused there.

The roadbuilders had no doubt counted on this sort of thing happening, for there were pausing-places built on both sides of the Road. Otherwise the usual hexagonal basalt blocks ran side-to-side down the hill in easy curves, not to make life difficult for wain-drivers or others with heavy or carefully balanced loads. Down there before them, on the far side of the Arlid valley and across the old Bridge, there lay Prydon among its townlands. Houses with roofs of tile or thatch lay clustered about the city walls, spreading far out into what had been the fields, and right across the bridge to the eastern side. Five hundred years of peace had made the need to huddle inside walls seem remote. Now, though, Herewiss thought with some pain, a lot of those snug-looking houses with their market gardens were going to have their roofs burnt off them. Unless some other solution could be found—

He put the thought aside for the moment and nudged Sunspark. They started down the hill. Prydon had four sets of walls. The inner, the oldest, had long since been torn down, but its outlines were still visible in the way the streets lay around the old town and the area where the old keep had been. The second, the one against which Lionhall on one side of the circle and Kynall on the other were built, had been cut through in numerous places, as had the third wall, built nearly as wide again as the diameter of the second. And then there was the fourth wall, latest built, in good condition—a more than adequate defense, easily two miles around, which could nonetheless be held by no more than a few hundred men.

Herewiss, examining that wall for the first time with an invader’s eye, swore inwardly at Freolger who had built it. Mad that king might have been, but paranoia had its uses. The river ran close to it, but not close enough to be of use for attack: stone buffers ran up from the banks there, the stones of them leaning outward and making climbing the riverward slope impossible. And the wall itself was too damned thick, and too tall. Siege engines would make fairly short work of them, although all but the heaviest catapult-shot would be wasted on the rest of the wall. After that, towers and ladders—

He swore again. Siege engines were not normally the kind of thing Herewiss thought about
. I will not bring Lorn home to a ruin,
he told himself. But at the same time, if they couldn’t achieve a substantive victory out on the open ground, it might well come to that after all...

They made their way down the hillside and onto the almost-level ground near the bridge. Even here the valley had not quite bottomed out; there was a long, straight, impressive sweep of black road to the bridge, and across it, to the gates in the white walls. The gates were blackstave wood bound with iron, each leaf thirty feet wide, each counterpoised to drop shut quickly if there was need.
Damn you, Freolger,
Herewiss thought again; then breathed out and stopped damning the poor crazy dead. There were other ways into Prydon, and other ways out. He knew where they were, and if he had to make new ones, he would find ways.

Houses began to crowd close to the Road as they rode nearer to the city. Chickens came out and scratched at the Road’s borders, or huddled down cheerfully in the dust and had dust-baths; cats sat on fences and gazed at the passersby, birds shouted territorial threats from roof-thatch on both sides. Young men and old women looked out through open windows, into the summer morning, bored by the sight of yet another pair of dusty travellers on their horses. Very nice horses, though, especially that big blood roan, look at the mane on him, you’d think it was on fire—

Herewiss smiled drily at the comments, spoken and unspoken, of the people leaning on their windowsills. He reached over his shoulder and drew Khávrinen, laying it across his lap as he rode. Moris edged away, eyeing the point of the sword. Khávrinen was burning blue as usual, but rather more emphatically than was normal.

The faces looking out the windows got surprised, and mouths opened and closed and opened, and eyes got wide.

Herewiss schooled his smile to stay small. There was no question that he found this enjoyable—the astonishment, even the discomfort, that other people felt on sight of him. But enjoying it too much was a danger. He knew quite well that pride was the great downfall of many a Rodmistress: and no surprise, since the Goddess’s intention was for Her whole world to recover the Power it had lost, and distraction from that cause—or attempts to keep the Power exclusive to a few—led inevitably straight to the Shadow and Its works.

All the same, it was hard to avoid feeling ever so slightly pleased to be someone so unexpected, such a shock—There was a straggly crowd stringing out behind them now, people from the townland-houses standing in the road and staring, or following, slowly, as they crossed the Bridge. A few minutes’ more riding brought them to the gates. Herewiss glanced at Moris as they came to them, and paused.

There were guards there, of course; but Herewiss could never remember there having been so many. They were wearing the black and white of Arlene regulars, the White Lion badge embroidered small on their jerkins. Some of them were looking bored, and some looked panicked, and some just quietly wary. Herewiss nodded to the closest of them, and said, “Gentlemen, perhaps you would direct me and my friend to the Darthene Embassy. We’re expected.”

Naturally he knew perfectly well where the Embassy was, but it seemed polite to ask, to acknowledge their presence and give them something to do. There was some milling and staring among the guards. Then one of them, one of the ones with the bored faces, edged out of a group of others and walked toward Herewiss.

“And what’s your business there?” he said. His voice was bored too, but the swagger in his gait said that, Fire or no Fire, he wasn’t impressed by this pampered-looking city boy. It was insolence, of course, and frightened insolence at that, in the face of the WhiteCloak. He reached up as he spoke to take Sunspark by the headstall.

A second later he snatched back a burnt hand, and just as well; Sunspark’s head lashed out, its teeth snapped and missed—just. “Gently,” Herewiss said. “Sir, my name is Herewiss s’Hearn. The Queen of Darthen has sent me. That would be business enough, I would think. Considering that you see my token.”