The Door into Sunset (43 page)

“Father,” he whispered, “what do I do?”

No answer came back. But his own mind said to him,
You had better stop this, before someone wins.

Freelorn grimaced, and let up, pulling Hergótha out of Cillmod’s hands and standing up again. As he backed away a few steps, he put his foot on something round that rolled: the stick Cillmod had been using to choke him with. Freelorn bent and picked it up... and drew in breath as he recognized the feel of it in his hand, and the metal filigree—silver, he knew—all up and down the shaft.

“I don’t think any ruler of Arlen has ever used the White Stave as a weapon,” he said, his voice shaking, but still fairly conversational, “and I don’t plan to start. What you do, of course, is your own business. What were you doing here?”

There was a shuffling on the floor, and a choking noise. “Seeking my Initiation,” said Cillmod.

“You will not find it,” Freelorn said. “There is an Initiate.” And somewhat to Lorn’s horror, the triumph that he felt at finally being able to say the words was alloyed with pity for the man.

“I thought,” Cillmod said, “that if there were an Initiate, the armies wouldn’t fight: there would be no reason. If this could be stopped—” He coughed. “But now it can’t. Initiate you may be, but they still won’t accept you as King.”

Freelorn stood quiet in the dark for a moment. “As regards that,” he said, “we’ll have to see. But in the meantime—” He guessed at direction, from that last cough, and threw the Stave gently toward where he thought Cillmod was. It clattered on the stone. Then Hergótha scraped as he drew it from the scabbard. Freelorn heard Cillmod’s gasp of fear, and was well satisfied with it, and was instantly ashamed of the satisfaction. “You have nothing to fear from me,” he said, “at least, not right this minute. But the battlefield is another matter. If you live through the battles, come see me when I’m King, and we’ll resolve what to do with that. If I haven’t already taken it from you.”

He turned and headed for the door.

*

Herewiss sat with his back to the pedestal of the Lion’s statue, trying to avoid listening to the cries outside
.
He leaned his head back against the stone. It was an hour past midnight: five hours, at least, since Freelorn went into Lionhall. All that time his heart had been hammering terror in his ears, and Herewiss had been trying to ignore it. Now, though, he had found the measure of his own bravery, and it was bitter to him. They had killed four of of the sorcerers outside now, and Herewiss doubted that any more would be wasted; they would be wanted for the battle. He had been efficient in dealing with them, but there was no satisfaction in it, for they didn’t really frighten him, didn’t really matter. What mattered was that—

—
door,
he thought, stricken, as he saw it open.

Lorn came out. He was soaking wet, which was extremely strange. But he had a sword in his hand, the hilt massy and golden, with its beautiful carving, and the blade with that familiar, bizarre mirror-polish gleam, a sword that had refused to scratch or wear since it first left the smith’s hands at Bluepeak. The mantichore sapphire caught the Firelight and glanced back blinding purple; the blade caught the light, blinding too, as if on Fire itself. Herewiss’s heart leapt in relief, and great joy: and strangely, terror.

The peculiar part of it all was that Lorn paid almost no attention to Hergótha, or Herewiss, or anything else. He stopped, some steps out of the doorway, and his face went first blank, then alarmed. Then he glanced at Herewiss and Segnbora, and said to them both, “Get us out of here.
Now.”

All relief and reaction and question were driven out of Herewiss by the plain naked tone of command in Freelorn’s voice.
Gating’s still blocked,
he started to protest, but Segnbora had already lifted Skádhwë with the expression of a woman who had suddenly decided not to take no for an answer. “What’s breakthrough for, otherwise?” she said, and pushed Fire down into her focus.

Herewiss felt his mind gripped by her wreaking, and knew better than to resist. Khávrinen struggled to assert itself, as might have been expected, but Herewiss told it to be passive for the moment, as he felt, through her, the straining of her Fire with space and the webwork of forces, sorcerous and otherwise, that surrounded Lionhall. There was an unnerving undercurrent trembling in the stone underfoot that he hadn’t felt before, but Segnbora was sensitive to it, and frightened by it. He felt her Power strive with the force that tried to make piercing the worldwalls impossible. It resisted, but Segnbora stood there with that stubborn look on her face, and Skádhwë clutched in her hands like a sliver of night set on Fire, and the light burned away the resistance she strove against. The whole place whited out. And then the thunderclap—

Herewiss shook his head. They were two streets away, around the corner from the square, all half-deafened by the noise. Segnbora was leaning against the fieldstone wall, gasping for air, Skádhwë now dimmed to a blackness outlined in pallid blue. Another thunderclap came from behind them—

Herewiss made for the corner, with Lorn beside him and Sunspark just behind. As they ran, the screaming started ahead of them, and they glanced at each other uncomfortably. Together they reached the corner, peered around it.

They were just in time to see the great crack that had stitched its way across the square, as it yawned further open. Lionhall was sagging over to one side, and uneasy groaning noises were coming from its stones.

Then the lightning struck for real; a huge bolt that came arcing down from the cloudy sky and struck the dome full on. It fell in ruin, but not so quickly that the two of them could fail to see the roof of the great foreporch fall in, and one huge slab of marble-faced granite crash down on the Lion’s statue, and shatter it. Only a glimpse of that noble head, cracked over sideways, sliding down to crash on the steps of the pedestal—then the rest of the roof followed after.

Herewiss looked over at Freelorn. His gaze lingered on Lionhall for a moment: then he looked over at Herewiss and said, “I think the battle’s started in earnest. We’d better get out of the city.”

The others had caught up with them from behind: Harald was helping Segnbora, who could barely walk at the moment. “—be all right,” she gasped. “Felt the earthquake coming, that was all. I think I ruined his calculations, just this once. Better get out!”

“How?” Harald said. “All the gates are held. And somehow I think you can’t do that again.”

Segnbora nodded weakly, but Freelorn frowned at her. “You’re off your head,” he said. “Save yourself for later.” And he grinned at Herewiss. “Besides, there are other ways.”

Herewiss looked at Freelorn blankly. Then he heard what Lorn was thinking. “Oh, Lorn,” he said. “No!”

“Why not? We know the way in. And we know the private ways out. What else were they put there for?”

“Lorn,” Dritt said, and poked him in the back with his bow. “What’re you thinking of?”

“An easy way out of the city.”

“Easy!!” Herewiss protested.

“Kynall,” Freelorn said. “There are ‘private’ ways in that only the family knows. And ways out.”

“The place is going to be crawling with Cillmod’s people!” Herewiss said. “Possibly even Rian—”

“Good,” Harald said. “A chance to put an arrow through him, then.”

Or light a fire under him when he’s not prepared for it,
Sunspark said, baring its teeth.

“It has the advantage of being unexpected,” Dritt said, pushing his hair back out of the way. “Who would be crazy enough to do something like that?”

Herewiss opened his mouth, but Segnbora said, “Have you got a better idea? No? Then we’d better move, because that square right there alone has about fifty Arlene regulars still alive and moving in it, and if we don’t get out of here before they recover themselves—”

“This way,” Lorn said, and began threading his way into the dimness of the surrounding streets.

Along with the others, Herewiss followed him, shaking his head.

*

It has really started, hasn’t it?
Segnbora said to him, some minutes later. They were leaning against the darker wall of a tiny alley, while Harald silently worked his way up to where it intersected with another. Behind him, Sunspark stalked along, all its fires damped down, its coat now black as a quenched coal.

There are sorcerers working in force out there,
Segnbora said.
I can feel their backlash even from here.
She paused: Harald had vanished from sight.
But it’s not dissipating. It’s being—absorbed—

Herewiss nodded.
You’ve been feeling it too, then.

Harald’s hand came back into view, waved them forward.
Like something trying to be born,
Segnbora said, as the group headed toward him.
Something dark.

Herewiss nodded, came to the corner, looked around, down at the other two streets intersecting, and the one Harald was leading them down, with Sunspark padding after. This was a street he and Lorn had staggered down once or twice in their youth: but this time of night, before, it had always been had other people in it, doing the same. No one seemed to have had much heart for going out drinking tonight, or out of doors at all.... No one had lit any of the lamps fixed to the walls, either, and the street was as dark as the inside of a cat; if not for the dim flickers of Fire from Skádhwë and Khávrinen, they all would have been walking into walls half the time. Even with good memory of the way the streets were laid out, a night like this ruined your sense of direction: the Moon hidden above clouds, and no stars, or ones that showed only fitfully between the blowing darknesses in the sky. Here and there a patch of light showed where some cloud thinned and hinted at the Moon one day off her full, standing high now, but almost always hidden.
The weather-change,
Herewiss thought,
is his somehow. Of all times to not need rain, this is it.

Dritt had taken point now and was waving them still again. Herewiss put his back in a handy doorway, leaned his head out just far enough to watch: Segnbora, behind him, found another across the narrow street, and watched the way they had come. He felt the alarm flare in her mind as she saw something move, back down the street: her Fire towered up inside her like a hastily-lit beacon, mind-blinding, and struck out, invisible but direct and deadly as a crossbow bolt. The shape at the intersection of streets crumpled down into darkness.
Dritt,
she said, broadening the thought out far enough so that the rest could hear it,
that was just a regular behind us. There are about ten more coming: he was an advance. They’ll be along in about three minutes, if I hear their minds correctly.

“Down there,” Freelorn whispered, pointing from behind Dritt. “Down that alley, then left.”

That’s the direction our friends will be coming from, Lorn.

“Can’t be helped,” Freelorn said softly. “That’s where the entrance is.”

Down the tiny street they went, a pause at the corner to see that all was clear: then rightward, down the alley Lorn had indicated. There were no doors in it, or windows even; just blind walls. From up in front came an abrupt scrabbling noise, and what sounded like a loud sigh. Herewiss looked down with regret at the source as he passed it: a man in Arlene livery who had had, from the looks of him, had a thin knife put into him just above where the heart-nerves meet and knot. To the othersenses, a thin cloud of radiance hovered about the body: undifferentiated soul, in shock, not knowing it was dead yet. In passing, Herewiss reached out in mind and snuffed out the sputtering glitter of nerve-fire in the brain, the true “silver cord” that bound soul to body, and wished the man well on his way to the Shore.

“Here,” he heard Freelorn say to Dritt. They paused before a blank space of wall, and Herewiss and Segnbora caught up with Lorn and the others, and looked at it doubtfully.

“Are you sure, Lorn?” Herewiss said.

Freelorn ran his hands up the wall. A narrow section of it, one which had looked like a six-foot-high pillar of square-hewn stone, slid abruptly inward.

“Can I have a week to diet myself first?” said Dritt, eyeing it unhappily. The opening was no more than a foot wide. Freelorn turned sideways, and squeezed in: it took him a moment. “Breathe out first,” he said, and his voice echoed slightly. “Come on!”

Segnbora slipped in after him, and after her, Sunspark, flowing through effortlessly. “All very well for you,” Harald muttered, but went after, grunting. Herewiss stood and watched the street, up and down: there was a sound of footsteps somewhere not too far off, and with the twisting and turning of alleys and the reflection of sound by walls in all directions, no way to tell where it came from.

Dritt squeezed in, having trouble. Herewiss waited, forcing himself to calm, though all his mind was shouting,
Come on, come on—
And then the first of them came around the corner and saw him. Before the man could understand what he was seeing, and pass that information all unwitting to whatever mind looked through his, Herewiss put a bolt of Fire straight into the soldier’s brain. He was dead before he finished falling. And Herewiss did the same for the second, who was following close on the first man’s heels, and then the third; behind them, in the next street, outcry broke out as their bodies fell. With a last gasp, Dritt made it through the gap, and Herewiss, swearing at having had to kill, went after him, and had trouble getting himself through that gap as the fourth man came around the corner. In anguish Herewiss killed him too, pushed through the opening, and staggered forward into a small shadowy space.

Behind him, the stone thumped into its former place. “All right,” Lorn said, and light flared from Skádhwë, showing a narrow stair cut downwards into the grey stone. He led the way down it. At the bottom was a long hallway, with rough-hewn walls, reaching away in both directions.

“You never showed me this tunnel,” Herewiss said.

“I never had time. My father only showed it to me about half a year before he died.” Lorn looked thoughtful. “That end goes down to the north rivergate.”