The Door into Sunset (2 page)

His father gazed at him, and shook his head.

I’ll deal with you later,
Freelorn said, and turned away.

Yes,
his father said
, you will.
And he was gone.

Freelorn rubbed his eyes briefly, then turned back to Herewiss and found him gazing at him with an expression anguished and helpless. Immediately he went to him and took Herewiss’s hands.
Come on. You didn’t really think I was going to leave you, did you?

Wordless, Herewiss pulled him close and simply held him for a moment.
We’ve got a lot of work to do, and not enough time to do it in, and no way to tell how it’s to be done,
Freelorn said.
So let’s get to it.

Together they turned away from death’s Door, back toward the battlefield.

*

Lorn rose up to find that a miracle had happened. Not so much that he was still alive. If you’re willing to live, and your loved is the first man in a thousand years to control the blue Flame of Power, dying of a mere arrow through the heart is difficult business. As they came back to consciousness of the world again and helped each other sit up in the snow, Herewiss merely reached out and touched the arrow; and shaft and barbed point and the place where they had gone in all vanished together in a flicker of Flame. Lorn spent a long moment looking down at his chest, still somehow expecting to see feathers.

Then someone else crunched over to kneel in the snow beside them, and they looked up. It was Segnbora. She was mail-clad still, though the mail had a great rent in it, with a healed wound at the bottom. If she had before been alone on the cliff’s edge, she wasn’t any longer. Over her loomed a huge thunder-winged shape, burning in iron and diamond. And as for the long sharp shadow in her hand, now it was a shadow set on Fire; it streamed and burned like a windblown torch with the blue Flame she had pursued so long. The suddenly empty battlefield made it plain she had done something that had saved all their lives. But her expression, that of someone who has found her heart’s desire, made such an undertaking seem prosaic and small.

“You’ve got it,” Freelorn said. “You’ve got it!”

Much babbling followed—explanations, and cries of delight as Lorn’s other friends, his little personal army, five strong, came out of their hiding-places in the rocks and rejoiced. Only half an hour ago hope had been dead: Herewiss’s Power crippled, all of them doomed to quick deaths on the stricken field or slow ones by torture. Now it was all changed. Even the Queen of Darthen was sitting up again, healed in an instant of her own wounds by knife and arrow: and the low midsummer sun was coming out again, leaning golden toward evening. At such a time, anything seemed possible. The seven were already speaking of the throne of Arlen as if it was a thing achieved. And in the middle of them all, silent, there sat Lorn: one small mustachioed man, now suddenly brother to Queens, companion to Dragons, and the most wanted man in the Middle Kingdoms... wanted primarily by the Power that had taught all Creation death. Freelorn thought wistfully of the days when he could have died with a clean conscience... then got up, brushed the melting snow off him, and once again started to work on becoming what he had been trained to be, a king. He did it reluctantly. Sooner or later kingship would kill him, as it had killed all his line from Healhra down to Ferrant.

It now only remained to see how long he could make it take.

“It hath more the look of a collar than of a

crown,” said one who looked on.

“Ay,” quoth the young King, “but if a collar,

‘tis for my throat, not thine.”

Darthene Tales
: “Of Bron the Young”

The morning after the second Battle of Bluepeak, Freelorn found himself suddenly awake in bed, gazing up at the ceiling with the feeling that the past seven years had never happened, were all a dream. Under the covers, he was as warm as he might have been on any of those early days, in his bed strewn with furs and velvets. Outside the room’s unseen windows were sunlight, and city noises, and on the sill, brown sparrows chattering. This was Prydon, certainly. His father was the King, and he himself the Prince, and everything at peace. A very odd, very bad dream, it had been. He lay there purposely not remembering it.

Then he noticed that there was a crack in the ceiling; and though his bedroom ceiling had a crack in it, it wasn’t this crack. Regretfully he closed his eyes so as not to see: but it was too late, the crack was in his mind as well, and widening. For one thing, he was in bed, a real bed with a mattress, and good lawn sheets, and no bugs. How many years now had it been since he had been safe in any place with a bed? Hundreds of nights spent in the wet, in the cold, with only stars or clouds for ceiling, remembered themselves to him. No, it had all happened. Especially the bugs.

Lorn opened his eyes again. The walls were tan instead of white, and there were hangings where bare marble should have showed, and black wood bedposts instead of his own teak, and a light quilted cotton coverlet instead of his velvet one. Well, it was Midsummer after all. But most of the coverlet was on the other side of the bed. He turned his head to that side. There was a man-size, man-shaped lump on the other side of the bed, wrapped in eight-tenths of the covers as if in a cocoon. He’s done it again, Freelorn thought, resigned.

Herewiss was snoring. Freelorn turned over on his side and looked at what he could see of his bedmate. Precious little: the top of that curly dark head, and closed eyes, and a nose. The coverlet was wrapped tight around everything else. It was the old story: you could nail a blanket to the bed, but by morning Herewiss would have all of it.
How does he do it?
Lorn thought. It was an old pleasant habitual thought, meant to keep him from thinking something else.

Like the crack, the thought asserted itself anyway.
This man,
Lorn thought,
last night this man took on the greatest created power known, and held his own against It. For hours. This snoring lump, this blanket thief, this bit of flesh and bone and blood. My loved. Herewiss.

“Herewiss,” he said quietly. No response; when his loved slept, he slept sound... and certainly today he had excuse. “Dusty,” he said, the old nickname—when they had played together, years ago, Herewiss had seemed to think that the way a prince got to be one with the land was by carrying as much of it as possible on his person. “Nnff,” Herewiss said, shifted position slightly, and snored louder.

There was another name, of course. Freelorn did not feel quite comfortable with it yet, though it was his alone to speak. Herewiss had found that Name with his Fire. All his Power was bound up in that one word, all his intent, his destiny, his whole self: that much Lorn knew from his own old studies. It made him nervous. Names, some ways, were their owners. And this name was a dangerous one, too great for a man. Even for a hero in an old story, such a name would have raised its wearer to glory, and then doomed him.

Unfortunately, this was no old story, but a new one. Asleep beside him, snoring, lay the vessel of a magic that had been busily making the impossible old legends come true for several months, and showed no sign of stopping.

Lorn let out a breath. His own names, his outer ones, were no safer or easier to live with. Lately he was feeling as if they followed him around and tugged at him for attention. “Freelorn stareln Ferrant stai-Héalhrästi”, said the one: so that there stood both his blood-father and line-Father, looking over his own name’s shoulder, reminding him of royal descent and royal responsibilities—neither of which he had handled well for the last seven years. Or “Freelorn of Arlen”, the short form, even more annoying because he was not enough “of Arlen” right now to set foot there without an army at his back. And worst of all, what Eftgan called him: “Lionchild”. It was a courteous, affectionate nickname, recalling her Line’s old kinship to his. Eftgan was very courteous. Lorn wished to the Goddess she would stop it.

And the name “Freelorn” itself....

He propped himself up on one elbow, looking at Herewiss. Herewiss snored on. Freelorn took a breath and whispered that other Name that made him so uncomfortable. It was short, but it made a silence around it. The snoring stopped. Blue eyes looked at him, suddenly wide awake. Then they smiled. “Lorn,” said Herewiss, muffled, half his face still under the covers.

“Morning.”

“Thank you for not saying ‘good’.” Herewiss stretched, and pulled the coverlet over his head. “Why do you always have to wake up so early? We had a battle all day yesterday, can’t you sleep in just for once?”

Freelorn was rescued by a knock on the door. “The Queen’s compliments to you, gentlemen,” said a voice outside, sounding entirely too cheerful; one of the chamberlains, no doubt. “Her Grace is fasting this morning, but breakfast is being served downstairs.”

“I want a bath,” Herewiss muttered from underneath the covers.

“Our regards to the Queen,” Freelorn shouted at the door, “and we’ll be down as soon as his highness here has had his first bath of the day. —Come on, get up.” He started laboriously to pull the covers off Herewiss. “I want one too. I refuse to be the only one who smells bad at this coronation.”

“My Goddess, I forgot.” Suddenly the covers were everywhere except around Herewiss, and he was fumbling for a robe. “Where’s Khávrinen??”

“Under your clothes, as usual.... You do this oh-Heaven-where-is-it business every morning. Sometimes I think you should sleep with that sword.”

Herewiss looked sidewise at Freelorn with the expression that meant some terrible joke was being smothered, and then went back to searching. “Under that tunic, the white one,” Lorn said.

Herewiss straightened up, clutching a nightrobe around him. The free hand held Khávrinen. Superficially the sword looked like just another hand-and-a-half broadsword, obviously amateur work though of good material... gray steel with an odd blue sheen. But in the hand of the man who had forged it in terror and blue Fire and his own blood, it blazed—the blade burning inwardly like iron at white heat in the forge, while blue Flame wrapped up and down the length of the sword from point to hilt, about the hand that gripped it and the arm that wielded it. Right now that Fire licked and wreathed leisurely as weed in water, mirroring Herewiss’s calm state of mind. But Freelorn had seen it when Herewiss was angry, or exerting himself. Then lightning came to mind, young gods wielding thunderbolts against the powers of darkness, defeating them—or being defeated. Freelorn swallowed, thinking again of the impossible becoming possible. It had been a close business, yesterday. The Shadow, the darkness cast sideways from the Goddess’s light, was surely annoyed with them all... and especially with this bit of flesh and blood that leaned Khávrinen safe against the wall, and yawned and rubbed his eyes.

“Come on,” Herewiss said. “The Queen may have to fast, but we don’t. Are you going to lie there all day?”

Freelorn got up, put a robe on and went out after his loved.

They went down the hall together and found even the palace living quarters unusually noisy. Children, the princes and princesses indistinguishable from the many other children of the household, were running in all directions, squealing, chasing pets, chasing one another; harried-looking chamberlains were chasing some of the children with clothes, or carrying bundles, messages, laundry. At the corner of their own hall, where it turned right, there were several children, all dressed in hose and buskins and tunics of dark-blue linen, clustered together and staring around the corner at something. Freelorn looked at Herewiss. Herewiss shrugged, sneaked up behind the children, and peered around the corner with them. Lorn followed suit.

Down at the end of the hall was this floor’s bathroom, and no one was waiting to use it... most likely because of the darkness lingering like a fog around the hallway’s end, half-hiding the bathroom door in a tangle of shadows that smelled of hot stone or metal. Looking straight at the darkness, one saw nothing; but avert the eyes slightly, and in the shadows something moved and glittered smokily, massive and indistinct.

One of the children, perhaps six years old, pert-faced and blond, looked up at Herewiss and Freelorn with an expression half annoyance and half great interest. “What’s that?” he said.

Herewiss shook his head. “Nothing... just magic.” He looked down, noting the shade of the child’s hair, and the White Eagle stitched small above the heart of the midnight-blue tunic. “One of your royal mother’s relatives. We’ll get her out of there. Shouldn’t you be having breakfast?”

“I have to go first.”

“You want to get in there and play with the plumbing,” Herewiss said. “If you have to go, prince, then use the privy. The other way. Hurry up or you’ll wind up standing behind all the tall people and not see any of the Hammering.”

The prince groaned loudly, and looked over at Freelorn in a bid for sympathy, but Lorn shook his head. Sighing, the princeling went off with his two friends.

“Some things never change,” Lorn said.

“Seems that way. Come on.”

They headed for the bathroom. From inside the door, as they approached it, came sounds of singing; a single strong contralto, nasal but true, and surrounding it, a chorus of approximately fifty voices from highest soprano to profoundest bass. Freelorn recognized the tune as a Darthene drinking song, but the words were in no language he knew. The smell of burning stone was strong around them as he knocked on the door and shouted, “Are you decent?”

The singing stopped, and the contralto voice laughed.
“Eh’ae-he,”
it said, “
ssih esdhhoui’rae ohaiiw!”

Freelorn sighed and pushed the door open. The bathrooms in Blackcastle were justly famous for their spring-fed plumbing, a masterwork of engineering, sorcery, and blue Fire. The water came up from the ground naturally hot, and not even sulfurous; pipes guided it where it was wanted and spilled it out into tubs huge enough for any king, or any eight of his friends. The walls were decorated with bas-reliefs depicting the Goddess creating the sea-creatures, the windows were cunningly baffled to prevent drafts even in winter, and the floors were impossible to slip on. It was a dream of a place. The tub closest to the northern windows had a carved screen pulled in front of it... not that this was really necessary, for there the shadows were thick as night, and among them lay the very end of a massive tail scaled in what looked like black star-sapphires above and rough gray diamond below. The tail twitched like a thoughtful cat’s, and fierce rainbow flickers slid up and down in the spear-length, double-curved diamond spine at its end.