The Door into Sunset (40 page)

“
No,”
Lorn said. “No swords... it might confuse the issue. Dritt, don’t you still have that bow you were so fond of?”

Dritt smiled a sanguine smile, reached into the bag, and came out with the little Steldene horn-and-sinew recurve bow. It was brown ivex horn, laminated in several layers, and no more than two feet long. It looked like a child’s bow... until you tried to string it, or draw it. Freelorn strung it now, with a grunt, and took the short arrows Dritt gave him, sticking them in his belt. “Let’s go.”

They pounded down the stairs: Herewiss first, Sunspark, Freelorn and Dritt, Segnbora last. The horses were screaming in the stable, probably terrified by the monster-scent from the things clambering about the walls of the rooming house. Segnbora clutched at the walls of the stairwell as they went down—she was shaking harder and harder, so that it was beginning to interfere with her balance.
Mdaha
—!

Coming, he said, but he still sounded remote. Far off behind his voice, she could hear the
mdeihei
singing a high frantic chorus of distress; she had never heard the like from them in all the weeks she and they had been cohabiting in her mind.
But we’ve been in this kind of position before. They didn’t sound like this at Barachael, or Lionheugh—

The stairway ended in a middle hall: one door out to the front yard and the street, one out to the courtyard in the back. The cold was seeping down here as well, and getting worse by the second. “We can’t stay in here more than a few minutes,” Herewiss said. “We need some help.
Where’s Hasai?!”

Au,
mdaha
, she heard the voice, from still too far away.
There is—a barrier—

She was shaking all over now. Herewiss looked at her with astonishment. “‘Berend—”

“No, it’s all right,” she managed to gasp. Even speaking was hard. But what was shaking her didn’t entirely come from inside: she was growing more able to understand it by the second. She was caught precisely between two forces. One was clearly the Shadow, for it tasted of self-preservation and terror—not informed, but blind. The other one --

—she recognized the trying-to-happen feeling that had been teasing her at the Eorlhowe Gate: but many times stronger, now. Something wanting to happen, needing to, almost pleading with her to do it and make it so—

But do what?

She gasped again, scrubbed at her eyes, steadied herself against the wall. As she did so her glance caught her shadow thrown against the wall by the dim light of the rushlight in its clamp by the other doorway. The shadow was winged, and struggling --

Skádhwë was in her hand. Segnbora stared at the shadow. Far back in her mind the
mdeihei
keened, but Hasai was silent. Segnbora leaned there, as the cold grew around them, and icicles formed, and the air became like knives to breathe. And something was weighing down on her: a force—no, more than one—utterly silent, making no move to suggest or restrain.

That shadow. Not hers. Not
her
.

A hunch,
she thought.
No more.

There’s nothing else to go on, anyway.
Mdaha—

She felt about in her mind for him, and found that though he had been silent, his mind was no more still than hers was. He balanced too, on what he perceived as the “fulcrum”, the wind that blew through her—hovering as perfectly as a Dragon could: afraid, but at the same time eager. The “something” was trying to happen to him too.

Do it,
sdaha
,
he said.
Do it!

She turned to Herewiss, and frost sifted down off her. “Light,” she said, all her attention turned inward. “I need light!”

“Which way?”

“Behind me. Out the back door. Dritt, pull it open when I say.”

Herewiss stepped behind her and lifted Khávrinen. The balance in the forces bearing down on her and Hasai shifted: the terror grew. Segnbora faced the door, and lifted Skádhwë, ready.

“Now, Dusty,” she said. Behind her, Herewiss lifted Khávrinen, and the lightning broke loose inside the front hall, but lingering, terrible, a light too bright to see anything by. Her shadow leapt out utterly black against the door.
NO!
screamed the back of her mind.

“Now!” she said to Moris. He pulled the door open. Her shadow struck out through it to lie on the cobbles, long and razory, black as space against the oblong of searing light, and the wings spread from the shadow as it lay there, beating desperately. Segnbora took a great breath, a gasp of air like the last one before a dive, and struck down with Skádhwë, cutting the flagstones of the floor, but also her shadow.

The pain hit her, terrible and unfair-seeming, as always when you cut yourself. Her shadow fell away from her, and ripped itself free of the stones of the courtyard, and began to stand up whole: wings, tail, the gemmed length of body and neck, growing as they had at Bluepeak: but much more solid, much more real. Herewiss’s Fire blazed rainbows from the black star-sapphires of Hasai’s hide as he coiled the great mass of himself together, and the walls on the far side of the courtyard cracked and slumped outward. The spear-long spine at the end of his tail lifted, and the wing-barbs cocked out, and Hasai lifted his head, and bared every diamond fang, and hissed thunder at something out of sight, up on the roof.

Segnbora had slumped to her knees as the screaming began in her head. The
mdeihei
sounded like they were dying, but she had no time to spare for them. She had done something, but she didn’t know what, and it was terrible, terrible for good; that she was sure of. And now her trembling was genuinely from fear.
What have I turned loose on the world?....

“Come on,” Freelorn said, and helped her up. Together they lurched out the door after the others. Segnbora looked around the courtyard and saw the black creatures clinging to the walls of the old house, and also saw what was on the roof.

It clutched the roofslates with claws of ice, and gazed down on them with milky eyes that seemed frozen blind: a lizard-thing, an ugly parody of a Dragon, wingless, all its blue-white scales knobbed with ice and frosted with rime. It smoked with cold in the warm summer-night’s air, and it opened its pallid mouth and hissed threat at Hasai.

“
Au rhhu’h,”
he sang, scornful:
oh, indeed?
He reared himself up, the black wings spreading wide, and his jaw dropped.

Segnbora, who knew what was coming, had the sense to squint. The others staggered and almost fell, taken by surprise by what few humans had seen before: Dragonfire at full force—not the controlled sort used to merely melt stone, but
as’rien,
sunbreath, which they use on each other. It was less like fire than lightning, but lightning that ran in a stream, like water, and thunder crashed around it as the violent heat of its passage simply destroyed the air between Hasai and its target. The ice-elemental screamed and writhed and struck out through the stream of Dragonfire that splashed over it. The front half of the boarding house simply vanished in that light, not even having time to catch fire, and numerous of the black four-limbed creatures went with it. The ice elemental fell as the house did, and Hasai arched his head down, following its movement, destroying everything around it. It scrambled up out of the molten pit his breath was rapidly digging for it, and astonishingly came on toward them, still hissing.

Segnbora suspected what would happen next, and wavered away from Lorn, raising Skádhwë. A wall of Fire, a dome of it, grew around her and Lorn and Dritt; Herewiss, off across the courtyard, had already started something similar for himself and Sunspark. It was just as well, for Hasai paused, as if for breath. The air went abruptly like iron with the cold: all around them, the buildings sheeted over with ice, the very moisture in the air froze out of it and started sifting down as snow; stones in the walls and the gravel on the ground began to pop and crack with the frost --

Hasai glanced over at Sunspark. “I mentioned that we would have a chance to compare technique,” he said. His eyes narrowed; Hasai drew himself up, and flamed again, in earnest this time.

Everything went absolutely white. That violent light washed out everything but a faint greyish shape at the center of it, which screamed and writhed, and rose up.

And suddenly was not there any more.

The light faded. The gravel all around the circles that Segnbora and Herewiss had made, had scorched away like sawdust. The five of them stood on two round pedestals of stone; everywhere else in what remained of the courtyard, except for the stables-area behind them that had been shielded by Hasai’s wings, the stone of the hill had burnt away. Some feet down, what was left of it bubbled uneasily. Sunspark was looking around it with an approving expression, its tail twitching thoughtfully. Segnbora breathed out, and then froze—something was missing, something inside her. She glanced up and around. “
Mdaha
?”

He was nowhere to be seen.

“You’re solid again,” Lorn said to her.

Segnbora glanced down at the hand holding Skádhwë. “Yes,” she said. But somehow she wasn’t relieved.

“Where did he go?”

She listened briefly to the back of her mind. “He’s not inside. The
mdeihei
are there, but they’re not saying anything. Which is the first time that’s happened,” Segnbora said, and smiled slightly, despite herself.

“It might be wise,” Herewiss said, “to get out of here.”

“Can you gate?” Dritt said.

Herewiss shook his head. “No, that’s still with us, I’m afraid.”

“But the force that was oppressing me is gone,” Sunspark said. It lashed its tail, fire swirled about it; a moment later, it was standing in horse-form. “I can bring you where you need to go.”

“Good. Just don’t stream fire all over the place the way you like to do. We need to be inconspicuous. ‘Berend, let Harald know we’re coming. Where is he?”

“North side of the square,” Segnbora said, “about two streets up and one over to the right—I don’t know the name of it. You know, Lorn—the one that has the fish stall right next to the tavern with the bay window.”

“Drover’s Entry,” Lorn said to Herewiss.

“Spark, see it in my mind? Right. Let’s go.”

*

Five minutes later they all stood in the alley, glancing around them in concern that they weren’t inconspicuous enough. We might have saved our time, Segnbora thought, tempted to laugh.
Everyone in this part of town heard the racket Hasai just made, and no one wants to come out for fear of finding out what it is....

One sound was audible: someone pounding down the stairs in the tavern with the bay window. A bolt was heard being pushed back, thrown, and Harald came out the door—which was then slammed behind him and hastily rebolted. “You’re late!” he said to Freelorn.

“Too damn nearly,” Lorn said. “You ready?”

“For some years now,” said Harald.

They headed down the street. No one was to be seen anywhere, not even at the windows, many of which were shuttered... odd, for one of the pleasantest times of day. Herewiss, pausing at the corner, looked around it and said, “All right. I can’t gate away the guards that will be around the place. I can hold some of them frozen in place, and so can Segnbora, but I doubt we can hold all of them. We’re just going to have to kill any of them who resist. How did Hasai say the guards were dressed?” he said to Segnbora.

“They’re regulars.”

“They would be. All right: shoot anything in Arlene livery that moves, until Lorn gets inside the Hall proper. Or burn it,” Herewiss said to Sunspark, “and don’t let them suffer. All we have to do after that is keep the Arlenes out of the place until Lorn’s finished.”

“Then break out again, and get out of the city, through the Arlene lines, and out to the Darthene army,” Dritt said. “Nothing to it.”

There were rueful smiles all around. “Lorn, how long are you planning to take?” Harald said. Freelorn shook his head. “No way to tell. The stories say that some queens and kings have taken about an hour... but some have taken all night.”

“I knew I should have eaten a bigger nunch,” Dritt muttered.

Herewiss said nothing. He was leaning against the wall, his eyes closed. Segnbora could feel him hunting about in mind for the bodies of the Arlene regulars around Lionhall. She slipped into communion with him.
Which ones for me?
she said.

How many can you handle?

I’ve still got about twice the reach I ought to have. Give me those twenty there, the group strung around the east side.

Herewiss agreed, marking the ones he would take.
Those ten. Maybe a few more of the group around the back. It’s the archers I want to make sure are helpless.

She nodded. That left mostly the soldiers around the front of Lionhall, on the side facing the square. “About fifteen people in front,” she said to Lorn and Dritt and Harald. “Half of them are nearer the door: the others are spread out toward the sides, a few out in the square. The ones on the sides, we can hold. The ones in back and on the far side of the wall won’t be a problem until we’re inside and more defensible.”

Herewiss opened his eyes. “Sunspark,” he said, “straight into the front of the Hall with you. Anyone in there, clean them out. Be quick. Afterwards, when we’re in, head out again and burn any weapons you find.”

“Not the arrows!” Dritt said. “Can you collect those?”

If you want them, certainly.

“Ready?” Herewiss said. “Fine. Right around the corner, next left, and you’re out in the square.”

And he went around the corner, taking his time, while he set up the wreaking that would freeze the soldiers he had chosen in their tracks. The others followed, Segnbora last, while she felt about in her own soldiers’ minds for the spot in the bottom of each one’s brain through which voluntary motion channeled—the connection to the “striped” muscles rather than the “pale” ones that managed breath and other visceral matters. In each one she found it and made sure of her hold, though there was no avoiding brushing past the people’s thoughts in the process:
could really use a drink... —old bugger, why doesn’t he... —half an hour, then we can go off duty and... —eat something tonight, maybe....
Segnbora swallowed in sympathy: that soldier was pregnant, and suffering badly from morning sickness. She touched the child’s tiny, slumbering mind in greeting, made sure her intervention would do it no harm, and had a word with the one nerve connection to the stomach that was frequently at fault in such cases—