The Door into Sunset (31 page)

For his own part, Herewiss had taken to guarding his thoughts even more vigilantly before. He was spending his strength, as well, extending the Fire’s protection to Andaethen and several of her staff. It was wearing him out.

He went over to the door, shutting it gently. Moris was out in town somewhere this evening, having his own business to do for Andaethen; he would not try to come in this door when he saw it closed. But just for safety’s sake, Herewiss touched the lintel, and the door, leaving between them an unseen thread of the Flame that would hold like steel, but also reveal afterwards who had touched the door, and what their thought was at that moment.

That done, he looked around the room, found another chair that he could lean back in without tipping it over—not an antique, this time—and pulled it to the middle of the room, near the writing table. Then slowly Herewiss walked around them both, describing a careful circle on the marble floor with Khávrinen’s point. When he was done, he sat down in the chair, with the sword laid across his lap, and in his mind held a spark of intention to the circle, like a flame to the wick of a lamp.

Immediately the blue Fire sprang up all around, along the path he had traced. He sat and waited for a moment, steadying his breathing and throwing extraneous thoughts and concerns out of his mind. Also, he listened, with all the senses now available to him. Since he started doing these afternoon or evening work sessions, he had felt something, not exactly pressing against the barrier of Fire, but leaning against it. Not an attack—merely an assessment, a feeling that someone was not only trying to find out how strongly his barriers were held, but whether Herewiss perceived the “leaning” presence at all. Herewiss made no response to these efforts. Better that whoever “leaned”—surely either Rian or one of his under-sorcerers, of which he had several—would feel that Herewiss didn’t know that he was being tested.

This time, the “leaning” feeling wasn’t there. Herewiss shrugged, then closed his eyes and slipped down into the part of him where his Fire lived. It was no longer, as it had been, a single forlorn spark, buried at the core of him. Now his whole insides seemed lighted with it, like an open-windowed house full of sunshine. But he had made himself, as many adepts do, a place in which to work, something more congenial and less abstract than the sheer perception of light. Now Herewiss opened the door to it and stepped inside.

It had changed, of late. Originally it had looked like his old forge back in the Brightwood: a clutter of crowbars and anvils and swordblanks, a scatter of good metal and bad, ready to be made into whatever he needed. But now it looked more like the old Hold in the far eastern Waste—the plain black stone of the walls and floors and ceilings, and the many, many doors. He would walk among them, these days, looking in each one for the answer to the problem he was posing at the moment, or the source of the repose he needed.

He wandered down the hallway, looking in the open doorways to see what he might see. Herewiss had long since learned that he found out, on the average, more interesting things when he wandered than when he went looking a-purpose. And you’re lazy, he thought, chiding and amused. It was true: most sorcerers and Rodmistresses were. He could have done any number of specific spells to take him directly into the minds of the ones he sought. But at this point, a whole two months into his usage of Fire, he was already getting tired of the mechanics of the business, and was coming to be more fond of the functionality of the Fire than of the ceremony often associated with it, and the ability of his mind to find whatever he sent it after. It might take a while, but sooner or later it would turn up. Meanwhile, he wandered the halls.

He paused by one doorway that was dark, recognizing it for what it was: an aspect of one of his worst fears, some old threat sealed away, forgotten—it was hard to tell which without piercing the barrier. No need, or curiosity, for that at the moment. Herewiss passed that door by: passed by a doorway on a wide, white sea, white beach, silver sky, one he hadn’t seen before. He paused a moment, interested, then moved on. There was no use attempting to mark the positions of these worlds behind the many doors; they moved around at whim, or in response to motions in the great Pattern in which they coexisted with all the other worlds. No use marking any one world, anyway: if he truly wanted it, later, it would make itself available. The old Hold was nothing if not obliging in these matters... though occasionally he wondered what its own purposes were, and whether he was fulfilling its desires, or his own...

Eventually he came to Segnbora’s door, the gateway that led onto her own physical and mental realities. The doorway smelled to his othersenses of salt water, and also of hot stone, a faint scorched smell—the clean, mineral reek of Dragons.

He peered through the doorway into the gloom. It was fairly dim in there. There was a light like sunshine from a low doorway off to one side: not much else. All he could see was stone—stone floor, stone walls, the up-arching emptiness of a stone ceiling above. “Anyone home?” he said, and heard his voice echo from the rock far above.

“Herewiss is here!” someone said: Segnbora’s voice, and sounding singular for a change. “Come in, do,” she said.

He stepped in, making his way through the darkness toward that doorway. It was a long walk—a Dragon would fit through it with ease, and it was at least a quarter mile away. Herewiss went quietly across the stone, looking occasionally at the many eyes that gazed at him out of the darkness. He waved casually to them, and kept going.

Herewiss came out onto a beach—the black sand of the western Darthene coast, in brilliant hot sunshine. The crash of surf came from some distance away: the tide was far out, over a mile of flats. Right in front of him, Hasai was there, lying flat on his back with his wings laid out on the sand at full extension. Lying all around were scraps and sheets of something black and glittering, twisted and stiff. Off to one side, Segnbora sat on the sand, half-naked for the heat, and leaned up against the huge wall of Hasai’s neck while she worked at a sheet of the black stuff, picking at it delicately. “Well met,” she said. “It’s been some days.”

“It has, that, but—” He stopped short, staring at her.

Segnbora was not entirely there: he could see Hasai through her, though dimly. He looked down at the sand, saw her shadow lying there, light black on dark: a human shadow again. He didn’t know whether or not he should be alarmed by that. The tenuous look of her was alarming enough.

“Are you all right?” Herewiss said, to both of them. “When did this happen?”

Segnbora’s face fell a bit, watching his reaction. ‘Well,” she said, “it seems to have happened after we went to the Eorlhowe. And I may be wrong, but—” she held up a hand and turned it over, looking at it front and back, “it seems to be getting more pronounced, the last day or two. If this goes on much longer—” She shrugged.

“If it goes on much longer,
what
?”

“I don’t know!” said Segnbora. “This has never happened to me before... so I’m short of clues as to the whys and wherefores. But I’m all right otherwise.”

It was just like her to add something like that: as if any “otherwise” could be enough to offset the fact that she was fading away. “What brings you out this way,
rhhw’Hhir’hwisss?”
Hasai said.

“Newsgathering. I’m going to talk to the Queen shortly; I thought I’d see what you had to say.”

“Well, we see that the Arlene mercenaries have been called in,” Segnbora said, turning over the sheet of black stuff she had dropped on her lap, and beginning to work on it again. It was gemmed in great shining cabochons, black and gray and white, though more palely than Hasai, and the stones of it didn’t have the same somehow-living look to them as his hide did. Segnbora followed his glance and then laughed. “Oh, this! Herewiss, even Dragons cast their skins.”

“But not after ‘the last time’, I thought.”

“You remember that, do you,” she said. Far down the length of his neck, Hasai’s eye shifted: he and Segnbora looked sidewise at one another. “Usually,” she said, “they don’t. But he felt the urge come on him suddenly—”

“After you went to the Eorlhowe?....”

Hasai gave his neck a half-turn so that his head came to rest right-side up, some feet from Herewiss. “It is unusual,” he said. He glanced down the length of himself with mild satisfaction. “It looks fine, I must say. A new hide always does. But I cannot say what it means.”

“And meanwhile, I think something can be made of this,” Segnbora said, shaking out the sheet of cast skin that she held. “Once all the connective fibers are out of it, anyway. But the mercenaries.” She picked a fiber out from under a nail. “Ouch. We’ve seen several groups from the west of the country, and two from the south, moving north and east and joining with others as they go. I would make it no more than three thousand at the moment. A better count would mean getting closer—a Dragon’s eyes are as good as an eagle’s, but not that good—and we’ve been at some pains to keep ourselves secret.”

“How about your other business?”

“With the DragonChief?” Segnbora laughed, a slightly bitter sound. “We failed in that, I’m afraid. She’ll give us no help, nor will the other Dragons. But—” She looked again at her half-transparent hand, let it drop and leaned against Hasai again. “We were given something else—I just wish I knew what it was, and what to do with it.”

Herewiss looked from one to the other of them. “We know what it was,
sdaha
,” Hasai said. “It was the Draconid Name.”

“Well, so you say. I wouldn’t know the Name if it came up and bit me.”

“And so it has,” Hasai said. “See the result!”

Herewiss looked from one to the other of them. “Who gave—”

“I don’t know!” Segnbora said. “I saw the Eorlhowe Gate. Or it saw us—and it passed me—this. This knowledge, this—” She shook her head. “It’s immense, it’s—”

“It is difficult to describe,” Hasai said, with gentle irony. “It is the inner Name of every Dragon ever born. And much else, I suspect.”

“You told me that only the DragonChief knows that Name,” Herewiss said.

“So she does, as a rule. But I am not sure that the Name she was told is the same one we were.”

“But what’s it mean to us? And why should you be given it?” said Herewiss. She shook her head. “You know as well as I do that something like this never happens without a reason. It scares me. We’re obviously meant to use it in some way—we could use it to compel the Dragons, some of them anyway, to our will. But that would be playing right into the Shadow’s hands, that kind of force. So, I supposed we’re meant to become something as a result of the Name. But what?” She looked at her hands, and laughed, a shaky laugh. “Except perhaps more abstract than I’ve been previously....”

“If you get any idea of what this means, you’ll let me know.... Meanwhile, I should be glad if you were in the close neighborhood of Prydon about a tenday from now. The Queen will have her people in place somewhere around the eighty-sixth of summer: she won’t want to leave it much longer than that. I’ll give you more when I know more.”

“Right enough.” Segnbora looked at him. “Have you heard any news of Lorn?”

Herewiss shook his head. “No, and I don’t dare go looking, even in mind. You or I or Eftgan can protect our end of a conversation, but he can’t, and at this range, I couldn’t protect him either. And anyone who can find his mind, can find him, soon enough. He’s just going to have to get along by himself.” And how the fear went through him, like a spear, when he said it.

“Well, if you should hear anything, tell him the child is well....”

Herewiss looked at her. “I was going to mention. There are rumors in the court that they’re looking for a child of Lorn’s line. To make a regency for, they say.”

Segnbora snorted. “As if any child would survive that.”

“No, but that’s not my main concern at the moment. It seems that there’s—an unnatural level of interest in the subject. They want a royal child for something else... I don’t know what. Keep an eye on your child!”

Segnbora nodded. “As for the other, we’ll be where you need us, and when.”

“Just in case,” he said, “if you find it comfortable to be in the city near the time, there’s a house—” He showed it to her in mind. It was a private rooming-house near the outer wall, one that had a lot of Darthene travelers staying there in normal times. “You shouldn’t be noticed there.”

“If I can solidify myself a bit, I may do that,” she said, “and a bit sooner. Living on light and air gets boring after a while: I want to get into the marketplace and taste bread and cheese again.”

“Ah now
sdaha
, what could be better than the good sun, like wine—”

“You haven’t had enough wine to make a judgment,” she said, poking him, “and neither have I, of late—!”

Herewiss knew an argument starting when he saw one, especially one so affectionate. He raised a hand in farewell and made his way back, stepping out through the doorway waiting for him, into the cool stone dimness of the old Hold in his mind.

He wandered a few doors further down, looking through them as he passed them; strange landscapes filled with fiery mountains, barren places burnt by their suns, seas with no shore. At last he came to the doorway that looked into that quiet closet at the back of Eftgan’s rooms in Blackcastle. He seemed to be looking through the opening that should have been the Kings’ Door. But it was his own door for the moment: he stepped through.

The Queen was sitting there in her nightshift, brushing her hair in a reflective way—not that she had a great deal of it to brush. She looked to Herewiss after glancing at his reflection in her mirror, and said, “Take the seat there.—What news?” she said.

He handed her first the letter Andaethen had given him. Eftgan took it, glanced at it, set it aside along with the many other pieces of parchment or paper that lay there. “Nothing I hadn’t expected,” she said. “How goes your work?”

“Slowly. There’s a fair amount of support for Lorn among the Four Hundred, but most are afraid to speak.”

“Where will they be when the war starts?” said the Queen.