The Door into Sunset (44 page)

“No point in going that way,” Dritt said. “There’ve been regulars there in force for three days.”

“Where does the other end go?”

“Come see,” Freelorn said, and headed down the tunnel.

They walked for some minutes, sometimes up small flights of steps, sometimes down, always more or less eastward. “Thank the Goddess for my nervous ancestors,” Freelorn said softly. “If they hadn’t been so certain the Steldenes were going to invade, we wouldn’t have had any of this.”

“It may not help,” Herewiss said. “Lorn, I’m sure we were seen.”

“Even if we were, it’ll take a while for the news to travel.”

“Don’t bet on it,” Herewiss said. The whole city had a feeling over it, stronger than ever, of a chilly, watchful consciousness, dipping down into unprotected minds at its leisure and using their senses for its own purposes. It was a kind of casual mind-rape that horrified Herewiss, but would not bother the spider at the center of the web even slightly: and Lorn’s side might suffer because none of those with him were willing to use such tactics.
Or capable,
said one of the more tactless and ruthless parts of Herewiss’s mind.
And what about that? What do we do when the battle starts in earnest, and Cillmod’s sorcerers drop warfetter on half the Darthenes, not caring about the ethics of it, not even caring that they themselves will die of the backlash?
But there was no using such sorceries on the Goddess’s business: that would be to play directly into the Shadow’s hands. Lorn and Eftgan would just have to find a way to be cleverer, or at least faster—

They came to a steep narrow stairway. “Here’s the tricky part,” Freelorn said. “Up at the top is where we have to come out. Put yourself up there and see what you ‘hear’.”

“Where are we?”

“I told you, Kynall. Go on.”

Herewiss softfooted it up the stairs, put himself against the wall, closed his eyes, and listened.

Rian!
was the first thing he heard: that particular bland-sharp taste of mind, unmistakeably shadowed, the darkness hanging over it—but bizarrely unconcerned, as if a bird should nest in the snake’s coils and sit there singing. Herewiss shuddered all over, but a gingerly touch here and there told him that the other’s mind was preoccupied, bound up in the business going on out in the fields across Arlid. Rian’s mind was all business—purposeful, almost cheerful, untroubled by ructions in the city. There was a sense of great satisfaction with one of them, in fact. Herewiss’s jaw clenched: he suspected he knew which one.

But other minds were more Herewiss’s business now. He felt about him, the Fire glancing off stone, wood, questing up and down and about, until in his mind he had made a shadowy diagram of walls and floors, and moving in it, the bright sparks of minds attached to bodies.

“No one nearby on this level,” he said to Freelorn. “About ten on the next floor above, and seventeen on the floor below. How long will we be exposed when we come out?”

“Just a couple of minutes. There’s another doorway I have to find.”

Freelorn pushed past him. Herewiss touched him in passing: not so much in reassurance as to quietly attach a spark of Fire to him. To Herewiss’s sight it wove a quick webwork about Freelorn, disguising somewhat the specific and unmistakeable signature of his mind, blurring it into an impression of vague excitement. It was the best Herewiss could do for him at the moment.

“Now?” Lorn said. Herewiss nodded, now being as good a time as any. Lorn reached up, touched something on the blank black wall.

The panel slipped inward again, leaving more leeway this time. Herewiss damped down Khávrinen’s light, and slipped through after Lorn, into blackness: but not total now. A faint square of moonlight glowed on the polished floor in the middle of the huge room, then faded again as the cloud covered the Moon over.

They were off to one side of the Queens’ Hall. Lorn spared the Throne only a glance: then he was off to one side, heading for the corridor that led away rightward. Sunspark bounded silently after him.

Herewiss followed them, keeping off to the far side of the room, moving silently: the others came after.
Now what is he—
he thought, as Lorn headed up the long stairway that led up to the old living quarters.

Up the stairs they went after him, a pause there to look around the corner, down the long hallway: Herewiss’s othersenses were ahead of him, questing about for any life—but there was none, at least at the moment, all breathing and thinking being done in rooms further down in the wing. The sense of Rian about his business hung over everything, though, and the sweat broke out all over Herewiss as they made their way down the hall, past the old wooden presses and tapestries. And that door off to the right, one he knew well—

Freelorn paused, looked at Herewiss: Herewiss felt about ever so gingerly with the Fire, and nodded. Lorn pushed the door open. It opened silently—if there was one technique Lorn had ever mastered, it was getting that door to open without the squeak that happened when any other human being moved it. He vanished into the darkness of the room, and Herewiss followed him, slowly, into Freelorn’s old bedroom.

They slipped, one after another, into the room, and Lorn shut the door behind them, silently again. And to Herewiss he whispered, “Look at it all. Just look. Guess whose room this is now.”

Herewiss allowed the faintest possible trickle of Flame to run down Khávrinen’s blade, for there was no other light: the window was all covered by a hanging. The old sword-hacked four-poster bed was gone. Big tables lined the walls, and on them— He frowned with distaste. Books, many of them from rr’Virendir, the Palace’s archive—some of them he recognized, having consulted them himself. But some of them were obviously grimoires, with old mouldering bindings. Their looks were unpleasant enough, but the feel they made against the air, against the fabric of things, was more vile. The room had become a sorcerer’s workshop. The usual paints and chalks were stocked on one of the tables, in neat pots: a wand, knife, cup, brazier for fire, were laid off to one side, all tidy—no unclean substances, no eldritch mess. All the same, the feeling of what works had been done there recently, now floated in the atmosphere the way the sewer-stink had in the alleys. Herewiss fought a desire to sneeze.

Freelorn was off to one side, fumbling with the paneling over the stone. “Now what the—” He stopped himself in time. “Ah.” A faint grating noise—

The panel slipped back, revealing darkness. “Come on,” Herewiss said, getting an itchy feeling that boded no good. “Hurry!” He practically pushed Dritt through the opening ahead of him: Sunspark went after. Harald followed. Herewiss glanced around, and saw Segnbora moving around the room, peering into corners, lifting hangings aside. He was puzzled: her manner was somewhat urgent. “‘Berend—!” he hissed.

“Patience,” she said. “This is important. There’s something here I have to—” She took in breath. “
Here
it is,” she said. “I knew I saw it—!” She reached into a dark corner, pushing a tapestry aside, and seized something. A long pole— Herewiss stared at her as she swung past him, smiling in the darkness.

“What—”

“Come
on
,” she said softly, and vanished through the secret doorway.

Herewiss went after her, and almost tripped on the first step, as he had always almost tripped on it. This tunnel he knew: it connected with several others under Kynall, but its main purpose was to lead outward, with its exit on the far side of the river. He tapped the lever that sent the panel back on its tracks again, and followed the others down, pacing himself by Skádhwë’s soft light bobbing ahead of him. Cast shadows bobbed all down the hallway—from Lorn leading the way, from Sunspark, trotting along low and smooth, from Dritt and Harald following it, from the pole Segnbora carried. But not from Segnbora—

They came to that long, long flight of stairs Herewiss remembered: twenty steps down and a landing, another twenty and a landing, on and on and on. Then the tunnel bottomed out, and went ahead straight and level for a long way. The air grew cold; the walls grew damp, and the silence grew profound and oppressive. Herewiss had always thought, when they came down here, that you should be able to hear the river above you, running over its stones: but there was never anything but this silence.
If nothing else,
he thought,
at least that “watched” feeling is less.
He tested, extending the Fire within him against the fabric of the world, in what would have been the first move toward attempting a gating. The world gave under the pressure most satisfactorily. It was as he thought—even Rian couldn’t suppress gating for miles all around. Especially not if the battle had started, and he had other things to concentrate on—

The stairs began again, going up this time. Dritt looked at them and moaned out loud. “Won’t need that diet now, will you,” Harald said cheerfully, and started up the stairs, with Dritt behind him puffing to keep up.

They climbed and climbed for what seemed an hour. At the tenth landing, the second-to-last one, they paused. “You’re relatives,” Herewiss said to Segnbora. “Can you hear Eftgan?”

She nodded. “Hard to make out distances, but I would say she’s perhaps ten miles or so east of us. I don’t get a sense of motion from her—whatever else may be happening, the force she’s with is encamped.”

“Ten miles,” Freelorn said, looking over at Herewiss. “Somewhere around Memith, that would make it.”

The scream from above them brought every head up. Herewiss had only a confused image of motion up above, something leaping—and then a flash of fire, another screech, ash falling in air. The second shape that came arching toward them sprouted an arrow from Dritt’s bow through its eye, and its corpse came crashing down on top of them, so that they had to huddle themselves against the sides of the narrow stair, and Lorn almost got knocked down a flight of stairs by the thing regardless. Herewiss looked down at the shape, still struggling feebly as it died—the long clawed legs, the horrible face, half horse, half bear. More came down, and one by one they killed them: but about the tenth corpse, Segnbora turned to Herewiss and shouted, “We’re just being held for something worse that’s on its way. Do that gating now!”

He opened his mouth to argue with her, and a bolt of her Fire killed another of the keplian. The stair was beginning to be choked with their corpses: and from a few landings up, he could hear a horrendous roaring noise.

Herewiss fixed in his mind the picture Segnbora had given him—a tent among many others, hills arranged around it so, and nearby—what was its name? —Valinye, the closest hill, with that strange flattened top. He felt for Lorn’s mind, Segnbora’s, Dritt’s and Harald’s and Sunspark’s. Gripped them, whirled Fire about them, showed them how to be, not here, but
there
. With minds convinced, the bodies had no choice but to follow. The slam of air rushing into where they had been—

—and exploding out and away from them, shattering the quiet night. At least it was quiet here—off on the horizon, westward beyond the last hills, an uneasy light flickered: burning thatch or sorcery, there was no way to tell which.

“Say your names,” a calm voice said from nearby, “or be quickly dead.” Herewiss looked off to one side, and saw, against the shadow of a tent, a shadow with a Rod in its hand.

“Eftgan,” he said, and held Khávrinen out for her to see.

After a moment, stifled laughter came. “
Your
name, not mine, twit!” the Queen said. “It’s right what they say: you Brightwood people are thick as planks.”

“Now then, Queen,” said the low, drawly voice from behind her, “you might at least wait till our backs are turned....”

“Father!” Herewiss cried, and leapt at him. For some moments nothing else happened but hugging: Herewiss had not seen Hearn since the spring. His father finally pushed him back, gazing down thoughtfully at Khávrinen, and looked over at Eftgan.

“Changes,” he said.

“Indeed,” said the Queen. “I see you brought my people back safe. Dritt, I swear, you need dieting again. Must you do your best work for me in cookshops?... ‘Berend.” The Queen’s eye rested momentarily on the long pole Segnbora was carrying, then swung away. “Lorn—”

She looked at him for a long moment, and then came the smile: slight, satisfied, and openly admiring. “Sire,” she said.

“Not yet, madam,” said Freelorn. “There’s a piece of woodwork I intend to have given back to me by the man who’s got it. But for the moment—” He drew Hergótha, and Herewiss’s heart leapt again, in delight and fear, as the blade and the gem in the pommel flashed red fire in the light from the torches Eftgan’s people were bringing.

“And also, I saw myself finding this,” Segnbora said, “so when we were passing through where it was to be found, I picked it up.” She was unwinding something wrapped around the far end of the pole. In the torchlight, for a moment it looked like a piece of night unfurling itself—a great swallow-tailed width of black silk, with one figure done on it in white: a Lion, passant regardant, bearing in the dexter paw a great golden-hilted sword. The design was more intricate than the one on the present Arlene livery, the silk of the black field diapered with smooth-and-rough work, and the Lion’s shape flamboyantly drawn, claws and tongue and teeth showing, all tinctured, the tail heraldically tufted, the mane a mass of tongues like flame. His eyes were cabochon ruby: the silver and gold of Hergótha were real, in tissue and wire embroidery.

Segnbora looked up at the standard, then over at Lorn, with mild amusement. “Sticks, I think I said once: and stones. We had plenty of the one, tonight—so there was no escaping the other.”

Freelorn stared at the standard as it moved slightly in the wind. “That’s the oldest one surviving,” he said. “Anmód carried it at Coldfields. Only my father knew where it was kept. How Rian should manage to lay hands on it—” He swallowed, fighting for control: then Herewiss saw his face change as a thought occurred to him. “And so you earn your name,” he said: for in the Darthene, segnbora meant “standard-bearer”.

Segnbora leaned on the standard-pole. “I’ll try to make it last me a while. Meanwhile—” She yawned. “Eftgan, you know me. I could never sit up late. When are you planning to move?”