The Door into Sunset (49 page)

They were still rolling, and Hasai was just holding Dithra away from him: she was mostly kicking air, and her song was reduced to a choked hissing thunder of rage and fear. Scraps of star-emerald and black sapphire and diamond lay about the stones—lost scales, torn bits of hide: some of those kicks were beginning to reach their target. Hasai planted his hind legs hard in Dithra’s gut and pushed her away, all the time holding on, holding like grim death to her jaws, still clamped in his own.
Now,
sdaha
,
he said in Segnbora’s mind,
very shortly now—

Segnbora still had no idea what he wanted from her, and was rather shocked as well by the tone of his mind, all merriment and anticipation. He had no answer for her, though, and no time to answer. They rolled again, almost to her feet, and Segnbora backed up hurriedly to avoid one of Dithra’s wing-barbs coming down on top of her: it split a boulder, flailed away again.

Now,
Hasai thought again; and then he lost his grip on Dithra’s jaws. They opened, and Dragonfire burst out with awful force, real as’rien such as Hasai had used on the ice elemental; the air exploded out of its path, thunder followed it. The stream of it went over Hasai’s shoulder, moving as they still rolled, and Dragons scattered so as not to be caught in the traveling stream of it.

Then Hasai caught Dithra’s head again, with a coil of his tail, and began pulling it slowly back and back, away from him. He was on the bottom of the tangle at the moment, his talons well dug into the stones, Dithra abruptly upside-down on top of him. Segnbora’s breath went out of her in a rush as she saw the awful dead-white scorch where Dithra’s Dragonfire had caught him under the breast and at the wing-root, and Hasai’s
ehhath
was pained now, but the cheer was still there, and his looped tail threw another loop around Dithra’s neck and pulled her head down and down as if on a rope. Fire came raging out of her again and again, in that terrible destroying stream, but it hit nothing but air, or the stones, both of which burned away to nothing.

Then Hasai snaked his head around behind Dithra’s. A final flare of terror in the eyes, a final wild struggle, all her body writhing now, Dragonfire spewing out with desperate violence: but to no effect. Hasai’s jaws clamped down with great accuracy, just behind the spine of her face-shield, and bit her in the brain.

Her body started to go limp: her thrashing began to slow.
Sdaha
! Hasai said.

Segnbora came forward slowly, looking at the twitching body, but mostly at the eyes, dimming now, the fire going out from behind them: and that, at least, she found quite familiar. She put Skádhwë away. Now she understood Hasai’s fear, earlier. It was not himself he had been afraid for.

Segnbora remembered how it had been, that first time. The outrage, the violation of having a crowd of Dragons poured into one’s head. She had gotten used to it. But could she get used to
this
—the whole species sharing soul-space with her? Could she bear it and not go mad? More—could she survive it?

She looked up at Hasai as she stood by Dithra’s huge head. He looked down at her, and said nothing, just waited, while the light in Dithra’s eyes pulsed feebly, dimmer with every pulse.

Well, rahiw’sheh,
he said finally. He did not say the rest of it:
let us see how far your Advocacy goes.

She nodded and reached down to touch Dithra, stroking the head-shield. “DragonChief,” she said, “you have no one to go
mdahaih
to. No one but me.”

Those eyes dwelt on her, fading. Rage was still in them, and now grief as well, and the wounded pride they had seen earlier. Dithra tried to open her mouth, but there was no song left in her, and thought as well was fading fast.

You can be right,
Segnbora said to her, stroking her still.
You can win. And kill all Dragonkind doing it. Or lose.
Au
, Dweller, for the Immanence’s sake if not theirs! —

A long pause. The last twitches of the limbs became still. Dithra’s eyes grew dark.

And the last thought came, faint.

For theirs, then—

The crack in her mind opened, was shouldered wide. Segnbora knew it of old, knew the pain that would follow, and braced herself. It was useless. Compared to pains she had felt earlier, this new one was like the pain the Goddess felt in giving birth to the worlds, though reversed: inexpressible masses of something living that came thrusting inward, not out. The pain was as much to be resisted or prepared for as one might resist an avalanche or a landslide with one’s bare hands. Minds and minds and minds came crowding into Segnbora’s. Not merely Dithra’s, not just those of her
mdeihei
, but also the minds of every Dragon alive, which were part of Dithra’s as well—the concrete reality of which the Draconid Name itself was only an abbreviation. All the Dragons’ lives, thoughts, emotions, desires, fears, and the business of all their bodies, hunger and weariness and age: all those poured down into Segnbora’s self, and she could not even scream for the pain of it. All she could do was make room for them inside her, and she did that, and did it, and did it, for ever and ever, it seemed....

Eventually the pouring stopped. Sight came back to her slowly. Hasai’s head hung over her; she half-knelt, half-slumped against the body of a dead Dragon, dull now, the life gone out of the gems of the hide, the eyes mere clouded yellow stones. The clamor in the back of her mind was frightening. She felt near dying herself: her Fire was going out, pressed down and away from her use by the presence and weight of so many other souls in one body.

She knew she had little time. Even Dragons had died of this malady, of having too many others become
mdahaih
to them too suddenly, when the Dark attacked them at the end of the Crossing. Segnbora reached up and clutched at Hasai’s face for help in getting up. He pulled her carefully to her feet. All around them, Dragons looked on, frozen in fear and wonder. Segnbora’s shadow stretched out long and black from her in the late afternoon sunshine. She lifted an arm, and watched the dark shape of a Dragon’s wing reach out across the stones in response. Her shadow was a Dragon’s, now, and much bigger than it had been before.

“Yes,” she said. And she drew Skádhwë, and lifted it carefully, for her aim was wobbly, and she cut the shadow free.

Then she collapsed to her knees again, feeling the pressure from within her suddenly ebb, and her Fire begin to spring up and recover, like a light that has had a glass removed from over it. A great silence came, filled with nothing but the breathing of the Sea against the shore; and a shadow came between Segnbora and the sun. She looked up. It was not Hasai. It was Dithra, in her green and gold, unstained, younger, her
ehhath
astonished as she looked down on her old body—the “cast skin” that suddenly she wore again. At the sight of her, the something in Segnbora that had been holding its breath all this while—that feeling of something tremendous about to happen if only, against all hope, things went right—let itself go at last, and the joy of it flooded her. She scrambled to her feet and looked down the mountainside.

Her old shadow was flowing down the slope like a live thing, and spreading, swallowing every Dragon’s shadow up in itself: a carpet of darkness, but darkness with movement hidden in it, like the Eorlhowe Gate. Perhaps the same movement—for shapes began to rear up out of it, cloaked in the shadow’s dimness, and then shook it off them like dark water in the low reddening light of the sun. They flung wings out that had not felt air since the Homeworld lost its own, reared up glittering in liveries that had not seen light since their wearers were lost two hundred centuries before, in the empty places between the stars. Hundreds of them reared up, thousands, shaking off the darkness,
mdahaih
no longer, but their own Dragons, and alive; the air filled and darkened with them, the shore and the inland hills rustled with them, and the song of their speech went up in a mighty concord like all the horns and viols of a world gathered in one place—a music with its confusions and dissonances, but oh, what music—

Segnbora looked up at Hasai. He and Dithra were gazing at one another with an odd sort of understanding. “So that is what
hr’sdahhad
is like,” Dithra said.

Hasai dropped his jaw in agreement. “Au, Dweller.”

She wreathed her tail in negation. “I am not,” she said. “That title has passed now to you—or you and your
hr’sdaha
, however you like—for to hold so many in-mind would kill me, and I am not suicidal. There must be five times as many of them as there were—”

“Six,” Segnbora said, “at least.”

“We’ll count later,” Hasai said. He stretched his head up and emitted a sound that could be called a roar only by virtue of its volume. It sounded like a chorus of many trumpets blowing to the charge, and Segnbora had to cover her ears at the sound of it; a few rocks scattered around burst like holiday fireworks, startling even Dragons. The silence took a while falling, but succeeded at last.

“We are home,” Hasai said, the song coming down on the last note in a great chord of satisfaction. “But we have one last bout of
nn’s’raihle
to enact yet, with the One That gave us such trouble long ago. It killed our homeworld, and drove us out: it killed many a one of you, as you know in your own flesh: it killed Dahiric—” Many heads turned at that. “No,” Hasai said, “he is not here as you are. I have no reasons for you now: maybe we will have some before the end. But That One walks the fields not too far from here, and our human kin—our hosts once, but we must learn to think differently—fight against It to keep It from killing this world as well. I go to argue our case with It. Who comes with me?”

Segnbora prudently used the Fire to make herself deaf. It didn’t work entirely: the song of defiance and eager challenge that went up could be felt through the ground, and in the air, on the skin and in the body. More rocks shattered.

“Well enough,” Hasai said. “
Sdaha
, you had better put your wings on: we must make speed.”

With the others, she rose and flew.

Even the Goddess cannot change the past. But human

beings can: and to that purpose created She them.

Charestics,
190

“Is this close enough?” Sunspark said as they came down on the hilltop.

“It’ll do,” Herewiss said, dismounting hurriedly. They stood together among the stones of Vintner’s Rise, the hill just across the river from Prydon. All down the slopes were many straggling lines and ranks of vinestocks of the green Jaraldit grape. Down at the bottom of the hill was the main Arlene army, three thousand strong, surging forward now to take the Darthenes while the warfetter still affected them. “At least here I don’t have to waste energy overcoming mere distance,” Herewiss said. He drew Khávrinen and sat down on the stones, trying to compose himself. It was difficult, through his fear: the part of him that usually could feel how things were with Lorn was frighteningly dark and silent.
Just warfetter—
he thought, trying to reassure himself. But that could be deadly even in short times, if the mind resisting it was vulnerable—

He gulped and started trying to calm his breathing. “All I need to do is disturb him and break the sorcery,” Herewiss said. “If I’m not conscious within a few minutes, move me well back from here: he might have a grip on me, but distance will break his, too.”

Sunspark looked at Herewiss, its expression still. “Go well,” it said.

I love you, too,
Herewiss said to it, and closed his eyes, letting the Fire surround him.

*

It was dangerous, walking out of body with so little protection, but he was out of options, and out of time. Herewiss waited a moment to let the otherworld settle itself around him, and then looked around. To some extent, as usual, it mirrored the living world, but not entirely. A murky fog lay over everything, expressing a sorcery in action. And between Herewiss and the river, at the bottom of the dark fog, lay a long patch of forested country that was not there in the real world. He thought of his dream of the scythe, and the grim forest in it.... Herewiss willed himself down to the fringes of that forest.

The Road ran straight into it, vanishing in its shadows. Gloom lay under the branches of those trees, mostly ancient pines, tall, huge-trunked. It reminded Herewiss of the woods east and west of Barachael in the high south, below the snow line—except that those forests gave him none of the feeling of unease that this one did. There was a sense of enmity in these shadows, of old unexpressed angers. And, which he had expected, there was a sense of being watched. He knew who the watcher was, though. Herewiss held Khávrinen ready, and walked under the eaves of the forest.

He found as he headed inward that the trees were encroaching on the Road itself, shouldering the massive hexagonal paving-stones aside, cracking them with their roots. The surface grew humped and treacherous: the Road grew narrower. Yards ahead of Herewiss it pinched down to three feet wide or so, barely a track, and further ahead yet it seemed to end altogether—or it might still go on through the dark, but the trees crowded so closely together that there was no getting at it, no way to proceed but by squeezing between the trunks.

Some ways ahead of him there was a hint of paleness, where light came in: a clearing, possibly. Herewiss made for it, coming to the end of the Road and passing it, working his way slowly between the trunks of the huge, silent trees. It was hard going: the harsh bark scraped at him like teeth, his clothes caught on spines and snags, low branches whipped him in the face till his eyes smarted with it. All the while the gloom got deeper, despite the fact that he drew nearer to the light: and the gloom itself seemed to throb, a slow steady rhythm like a pulse. He could see a lightening of the air, up there ahead of him: a clearing it was, but no light came to it from above—even from here he could tell that the canopy of thickly wrestling branches was unbroken. The light came from within the clearing itself.

Herewiss worked his way through the trees with increasing difficulty. This was a symbol, he knew, of the sorcerous barriers that Rian had erected around his working: but there was nothing symbolic about the way the trees seemed to press more closely together when he was stuck between two of them, pushing the air out of his lungs and trying to trap him there. He kept having to drag himself out, gasping, tearing his clothes or his skin. And the temptation was constant:
use the Fire on them, wither a few of them where they stand!
But the impulse made him suspicious, and Herewiss restrained himself.