The Door into Sunset (53 page)

All who could looked up in that silence. The darkness was washing away, and the Beast’s body, lying half-concealed in it, was beginning to be washed away by the dark mist as it retreated—the stuff of a bad dream, half evaporated already. The Eagle took wing and perched on Vintner’s Hill, taking a moment to ruffle feathers back in order: then looked at the Lion, called one last time, and faded away, like the Moon going behind a cloud.

The White Lion stood looking at His city. Moonlight was bright on it again; but not as bright as His glory, reflected in the walls, and the waters of the Arlid. He turned then, already fading, and looked at Herewiss; and huge and fiery though they were, His eyes were Freelorn’s. The look was a King’s look, a conqueror’s look: noble, benign, remote.

Loved—
Herewiss thought, a last desperate cry of the mind.

No answer. The eyes closed, and the great form faded, became a ghost of itself in the moonlight: was gone.

*

It was a good while before anyone moved. Herewiss was one of the first to manage it. With Sunspark’s help, he staggered out into the open space where the Beast had been. The mist had cleared away on a breath of chill wind that was coming down from the northern side of the Road, toward the Sea. Of the soul-killing thing that had fought there, there was no sign. Only one thing Herewiss found, and he and Sunspark stared down at it for a good while—the body of a tall, handsome man, with only one wound on him, where a sword had pierced his heart. He was otherwise unmarked, but there was a burnt, used look to him, and he was stiff already, as if he had been dead for a good while. His face in the moonlight wore a look that was difficult to decipher. It might have been doubt.

Segnbora came along after a while, with Hasai behind her. Hasai’s eyes were aflame again, and so was Skádhwë. Herewiss was glad to see this, but himself, he had no heart to look at Khávrinen. Together they looked down at Rian’s body in silence. Finally Segnbora said, “What will we do with his body?”

“Take it back to Prydon,” Herewiss said dully, “and give it the usual rites. He was a minister of the Throne, after all. And his wife and child have a right to their grief.” He didn’t say it aloud, but he might as well have, that his own grief would not even have that slight balm brought by the ceremonies with which a loved one is sent onwards. There would be nothing left to burn, as there had been nothing left of Héalhra. Herewiss knew as well as Freelorn had the price that had been required of the Lion.

And there all his self-control deserted him, and he turned away from Segnbora and Hasai, and buried his head against Sunspark’s flank. It twitched at his tears, but didn’t move.
Lorn!
he cried.
Oh, Lorn—

“I wish you wouldn’t do that,” Freelorn said from behind him, just a little crossly. “My head hurts enough as it is.”

The shock was like being hit by a spent arrow, but much worse. He staggered around, and put his arms out as much to hold his loved as to keep himself from falling over. “But you—”

Freelorn, though, was looking at him strangely. “Wait a minute. What are you doing here? Weren’t you the Eagle?”

Herewiss blinked and wiped his eyes. The feeling of some ancient power, rooted in the earth and finally mastered, flowed off Lorn and left Herewiss feeling delighted and confused. But right now the confusion was winning. “Me? Are you off your head? Why would I be?”

“I don’t know—I just always thought that you would—I mean, when we played—and you are of His line—”

Hasai lifted his head and looked northward. “If you are looking for the Eagle, then I believe she’s walking down Vintners’ Hill just now. And she’s cursing, because on the way down she’s found some kind of insect that’s eating the vines’ roots.”

Herewiss laughed, though it came with difficulty: his throat was still choked with his emotion. “The descent in her line was direct, Lorn. The Brightwood people are just a cadet branch. Don’t I have enough, with this, to keep me busy?” And he hefted Khávrinen, and didn’t mind seeing its Fire now. Then he shook his head, and dropped the sword, and just held Freelorn again. “Let her be the Eagle all she likes. What I don’t understand is how
you
—how you
didn’t—”

Freelorn slipped his arms around Herewiss. “It seems,” he whispered, “that She doesn’t care to repeat Herself—so She won’t ask the same price twice. Or rather... She asks.” He smiled against Herewiss’s neck, and said, “It seems it’s possible to bargain from a position of strength....”

They said little to one another for a long while. Finally, Segnbora said, “Well, Lorn, are we going to stand here all night? What do we do now?”

“Go home for dinner?” Freelorn said, and looked across the river to Prydon, shining under the Moon.

“A timely marriage”: one made before your children start nagging you about the subject.

(s’Dathael, Definitions: 
c. 1870 p.a.d.)

They watched the King of Arlen come home, that night, from the gates of Prydon, though at first they didn’t know it. The guards at the gates, and the people on the walls, saw a group of people came walking and riding down the Road in the dark, up to the end of the old Bridge, where it had been broken. There they stood looking at it briefly, and then, carefully, took their way down the path that led to the small pier from which people went down to fish. One of them let himself down then, and the people on the walls thought that perhaps there was a boat there, and the people would come across that way. But the single figure, indistinct in the bright moonlight, simply walked out across the water. No one quite understood why he stopped by one of the broken piers of the bridge, and leaned against it. Some of the sharper-eyed people said that he was hugging it. No one argued with them. Stranger things had happened tonight, as everyone knew who had been up on the walls—nearly half the city, as it turned out. Nor had any of them needed sharp eyes to see what was happening.

The others who had come down with that single figure walked across on a line of blue Fire that spread itself across the water for them. While they did, up out of the East came a huge dark shape, its wings wide, and soared up to perch on one of the two towers that overlooked the great gates. The sky had been full of those wheeling shapes for some while now, and various others of them settled on the walls or the higher towers, looking down curiously at the people, who looked back as curiously. Many lights had been put out for fear of attracting Something’s attention, earlier that evening: now, encouraged possibly by the interested gaze of many huge eyes like lamps, the torches in the streets and the candles in the windows of the city began to be lighted again.The single figure who had walked across the water rejoined his friends on the far bank, and all together they walked down the Road to the gates. The others fell back as they all came to the gate itself, and the twelve guards there stood and looked at the young man who came up to them with Hergótha the Great in his hand. He paused for a moment, seemingly waiting for one of them to say something. None of them did. They knew what they saw, but what they
felt
was something that shone, something about thirty cubits long and ten high, Someone with solemn, amused eyes... and with claws.

“Well,” Freelorn said, “I’m back.”

They stepped aside to let him in. He nodded to them, and walked on through, swinging Hergótha up so that the blade rested over his shoulder. The great red mantichore sapphire in the pommel shone like an eye in the torchlight. Up the dark street he went, looking from side to side, taking note of a lampstandard broken here, a paving-stone loose there: a man coming home after a long trip, noticing things that need to be fixed. His friends came after him, and the guards watched them go, seeing all the Flame pass them by, murmuring at the sight of the Rods and the strange weapons. But what drew their eyes again, until he was out of sight, was the indistinct form carrying the glint of red with it, the hint of moonlight on a pale form, sauntering along the street that led up toward Kynall, home at last.

*

Kingship in Arlen passes without much ceremony, as a rule. Once there’s an Initiate, and the Stave comes to her or him, either simply as a gift from the ruling parent or by taking it from where they left it before they died, then Arlen has a ruler again. Herewiss had his suspicions as to where it might be found, and a little searching in Freelorn’s old room upstairs turned it up. The next morning, after Freelorn had gone down to the kitchens and confirmed all the cooks in their positions, and breakfast had been laid out, he took a while to sit in the Throne again. Segnbora brought the Lion banner, and put it in its old accustomed place behind the Throne: and Freelorn sat in the old white chair, looking down the length of the bright room, and smiled, just once, briefly. Then something caught his sleeve when he moved his arm. Freelorn looked down at the arm of the Throne and said to Herewiss, “What the Dark are these scratchmarks?”

Sunspark, back in one of its human-shapes again, that handsome red-haired young woman, abruptly became interested in something up the stairs, and headed that way. Herewiss chuckled.

“You’d better get up now and go somewhere else,” Herewiss said, “if you don’t want trouble.”

“What?” Freelorn stared at him. “What kind of trouble could I get into here? This is where I belong.”

Herewiss smiled, and Freelorn soon found out what he meant... as the old ministers of the Throne began arriving, all excuses and praise, to greet the new King and (they desperately hoped) to be reconfirmed in their offices. Herewiss turned and started to leave. “Don’t you go anywhere!” Freelorn said, rather sharply. Everyone in the room—ministers and their assistants, mostly—shivered slightly, as they heard the echo of a growl run down their nerves.

But Herewiss turned around, completely untroubled, though smiling wryly. “It was worth a try,” he said, and went up to lounge on the steps leading up to the Throne.

*

They spent the rest of the day there, and at the end of it Lorn heartily wished he had taken Herewiss’s advice
. That’ll teach you to listen to your counsellors,
said Herewiss’s amused thought to him privately. There had been a few good moments—especially when first Moris, then Dritt and Harald, turned up, having made their way to Kynall from their various postings. There were embraces then, and healths drunk, while ministers stood and looked nervously on people whose loyalties had been with Freelorn when no one else’s were. But the rest of the day was a long list of hirings and firings, shuffling people (with Herewiss’s advice) into positions better befitting their talents, or out of offices they had mishandled, or into ones where they could be politically useful but otherwise harmless. Mere loyalty to Cillmod was not a criterion for dismissal, as the ministers found to their relief and confusion. They were also surprised to find that Lorn would speak of him easily, when they were afraid to.

“Find him,” he said several times. “He has nothing to fear from me. If he’s dead, he’ll be honorably sent onward. If he’s alive, I want to see him.”

No one seemed able to do anything about this, and finally Segnbora went out to see what could be found. Freelorn sat back and went about his business, only once finding himself stymied: when Herewiss refused to be his chief minister. “You’re off your head,” Herewiss said. “You are not my master, nor are you going to be. But I do have a Mistress—and Her business to attend to. Find someone else.”

Freelorn put his eyebrows up at this, but knew the sound of Herewiss’s mind being made up, and turned his attention to other matters, such as the army. The forces that had been defending the fords at Daharba and Anish had not themselves seen the Lion, but word had spread to them from other groups of regulars who had survived the last awful hour in Laeran’s Ridings. Their commanders had come in to offer their surrender. Freelorn had burst out laughing. “You can’t surrender to me,” he said. “You’re on my side! Aren’t you?... “

The commanders hastily agreed. After a while, reassured by Freelorn that the troops’ pay would not be affected by the last week’s work, they went away, relieved both to still have their jobs, and to get out of Kynall. The sense of something large, amused and white, watching them, was much with them all.

It was getting on toward evening when Freelorn stood up and said, “No more of it. Tomorrow, ladies and gentlemen. Till then, good night.”

There were mutters from people who had unfinished business, but Lorn merely looked at them, and they left hurriedly, feeling other eyes than his resting on them, with less amusement than previously. Freelorn sat back in the Throne, rubbing his eyes wearily, and said to Herewiss, “Is it always going to be like this, do you think?”

“You mean the work? You watched your father—you should know that better than me.”

“No, I mean—this.” Freelorn gestured over his shoulder with his thumb at the presence that hung about him, and which he suspected Herewiss could see perfectly clearly, Fire-gifted as he was. “Not that I object, mind you,” he said hurriedly: for him, the Lion was Héalhra, as much a father figure as his own blood-father. “It’s just—”

“Oh. No, Lorn, I doubt it. I think you’re in something like breakthrough—since this power that lives in you has to do with the Fire, though it’s not the same in discipline or manifestation: as you said, She doesn’t care to repeat Herself. I think it’ll get less... noticeable after a while, even for you: certainly for other people. But He’ll always be there when you need Him.” And Herewiss chuckled. “We won’t be three in a bed, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“I was meaning to talk to you about that—” Freelorn said.

Lorn,
Segnbora said in their minds.
Lionhall, quickly. I’ve found him.

*

It was only a few minutes’ walk away, through the quietening streets. The city had come back to life today, at least partly. There had been a sense of holiday, people standing in doors talking about what they had seen the night before, a buzz of excitement, relief, and sorrow for those who had fallen. It was quieting again now, but there were still a lot of people standing around in the streets as if waiting for something: and they watched Freelorn pass by, and greeted him the way he remembered people in the old days having greeted his father: “Good evening, King.” The offhand sound of it was meat and drink to him.