The Door into Sunset (9 page)

Lorn was sitting up in bed, panting. The room was dim, but the Moon was long since gone; the light coming in the window was the beginning of dawn, all rose and gray. Herewiss was not in bed, and all the covers were wrapped around Lorn for once. He couldn’t think of any time when he had ever wanted them less. In left-over loathing he struggled out of them, kicked them away, and sat there in the bed naked and shivering.

The door opened hastily, and Herewiss came back in, in his robe, dripping. “You shouted!” he said, and hurriedly sat down on the bed and reached out to Freelorn. “Are you all right?”

“No.”

“That dream again.”

“Yes.”

Herewiss sat silent for a moment. Then he said, “You’re overwrought. We’re
all
overwrought. That’s all.”

“Tell me about it,” Freelorn said softly.

Herewiss reached out to him and held him, held him hard. “I don’t want to leave you either,” he said into Lorn’s shoulder.

Freelorn hugged him back. “Let’s not start again. They’re going to be waiting downstairs for you before too long, and I need to say goodbye to them. And we need to be brave and strong and certain for them, and all the rest of the idiocy.”

And who’s brave for you?
he quite clearly heard Herewiss’s heart cry out.
Oh, Lorn, I can’t do it just now, yet you need me—

It would have been too easy to agree with that. But he thought of Sunspark, and watched what he did. “Come on,” he said, thumping Herewiss’s shoulder, and then reached down to hold up one sodden sleeve. “One last bath, huh?”

“It’s a long way to Prydon,” Herewiss said, sounding rueful.

Lorn pushed him out of the bed, and got up himself, looking for something to wrap around him. “Go on. I’ll catch up.”

Freelorn found his own robe and his razor, and started to go after—then paused for a moment, juggling the razor case thoughtfully.

“Are you coming?” Herewiss shouted from down the hall. Freelorn considered and discarded several possible responses. “Coming?” he finally shouted back. “I’m not even breathing hard.”

He headed out, following the laughter.

*

Breakfast was a comradely but hasty affair. The Queen had appointments in the South that afternoon, and she needed time to prepare the sorceries of the Kings’ Door, the single permanent worldgate in the human part of the Middle Kingdoms, for the single step that would take her and her assistants a thousand miles. There were also other considerations. For those heading west to Arlen, they needed an early start to make sure that they would be at the Red Lion, the first staging inn along the Kings’ Road, by nightfall. Freelorn would not be able to see them on their way, for the Queen didn’t want him going out of Blackcastle without her.

“We are going to encourage some misconception about your whereabouts,” Eftgan had said to Freelorn the day before. “Since you’re going out of here disguised, I am going to do a shapechange on one of my own people and have it seem as if you’re still here after you’re gone. It won’t fool the worst of the powers we’re dealing with, or not for long. But it’ll create confusion in Arlen, and that’s all to the good.”

So Freelorn came down to breakfast, rather behind Herewiss. Their farewells were made, in private as usual. Now Lorn was ready for the rest of them... but nervous on other counts. Herewiss would be taking Moris with him to Prydon as an “equerry” and eyes-behind, but no one else except, of course, Sunspark. Segnbora was going her own way alone with Hasai, for quicker movement; Dritt and Harald were riding out south and east with messages to the nearest of the Darthene lords on whom levies were being settled. Lorn hated to see his people split up so. They were used to working together and covering for one another. But they would manage well enough.

At the top of the stairs that led down to the small side hall where breakfast was laid out, Lorn paused. There they were, his little group, finishing their meal. He headed down the stairs. One by one his people caught the sound of his step, and looked up to greet him: and stared.

Herewiss looked at him in shock. “What have you done with your mustache?!”

Lorn stared back. “It fell in love with a passing caterpillar and ran off. What do you think? I
shaved
it, for pity’s sake.”

He looked at Eftgan, who was gazing at him over a cup of cold mint tea with a sort of a cockeyed approval. “And I wouldn’t mind finding a barber and having my hair cut shorter, later on.”

“That was wisely done,” Eftgan said, and everyone looked at her. “Well,” she said to them all, “I’m going to be putting a shapechange on him. I had thought I would make it a cleanshaven seeming anyway, to confuse matters as much as possible. But not even the best shapechange would be any good if someone happened to touch his face and find a caterpillar there.”

Laughter broke out, and Lorn went to the table and helped himself to a small trencherbread and a stoup of cider with cinnamon in it. Herewiss, picking up seconds of fried bread beside him, looked closely at Lorn and then laughed and said, “You look really strange.”

“Well, thanks kindly.”

“No, I just meant I’m not used to seeing your upper lip....” He looked curiously at Lorn. “You look older.”

“I thought it would go the other way.”

Segnbora came up beside them with the remains of a plate full of cold cucumber and melon in lemon pickle, and looked at Lorn. “It’s pale,” she said. “It’ll look better after it tans.”

“I hope so. I hope I can get used to how it feels. Naked.” He rubbed it.

She smiled, in the offhand manner of someone who has something else on her mind. “Lorn, I’m glad you came down before we had to leave: I have to tell you something. No, Herewiss, stay. Lorn, listen—”

“He’s pregnant,” Freelorn said suddenly.

“No, I’m pregnant, but—” She stopped. “What??”

Both she and Herewiss stared at Freelorn. He sighed. “Sorry. I think I overheard you. Underheard you. Hasai is pregnant, right?”

Segnbora looked at Herewiss. “What have you been doing to him?!”

“Nothing unusual,” Herewiss said. “It’s just crossover.
You
of all people might have expected it.” And then he blinked. “What do you mean ‘no,
you’re
pregnant’??”

“Uh, I am. That’s why I wanted to talk to you, Lorn. You’re definitely her father. She’s almost two months—”

“‘
Her?’
A girl?”

“I’d be a pretty poor hand with the Fire if I couldn’t tell that much, even this early,” Segnbora said. “I would have said something earlier, but I wasn’t sure. Before I broke through, I thought the stresses of picking up Hasai and the
mdeihei
had just thrown my flowering off schedule. Then these past few days, I was too busy to notice the ‘strangeness’ right off... I’ve gotten so used to having other lives inside. But now I know.” She smiled.

“A little girl!”

Segnbora smiled.

“Wait a minute,” Herewiss said. “Hasai is
male!”

Segnbora glanced at him, a helpless comic look. “They don’t handle these things the way we do,” she said. “If the
sdahaih
part of a Dragon is pregnant, the rest of them are likely to get broody too, if many more of them are female than male. Most of my
mdeihei
are female... Hasai’s line is famous for it. It falls most intensely on those most recently
mdahaih
. That’s Hasai.”

“Where are they all this morning?” Freelorn said, looking around as if expecting the breakfast room to go suddenly dark.

”They’re off discussing it. And teasing Hasai, I’m afraid. I’m going to have to have a few thousand words with them.”

Herewiss looked closely at her. “Are you all right? Can you ride?”

“Ride?” She laughed. “I intend to
fly
. But I suspect the Dracon parts of me are going to affect this pregnancy. It may be a while before I come to childbed. Even now she’s not as far along as a two-month’s child would normally be.”

“A little girl!” Lorn said softly.

Segnbora put her plate down, pulled him close and hugged him. “I just wanted to make sure you knew that I’ll be taking good care of her,” she said. And in his ear she said, “Not every day I get to cart a princess of Arlen around the countryside, after all.”

Freelorn was becoming more confused than he had ever been in his life. “Look,” he said, “whatever—just take care of yourself, all right?” He put out a hand to touch Segnbora’s face.

“I will,” she said, her eyes gentle. “My liege and my dear friend... you do that too. None of your famous last stands while you’re traveling, hear? We need you alive.”

Lorn nodded. “And you too,” she said to Herewiss. “Don’t start playing to the groundlings for no reason. Save your Power; you’re going to need it.”

Herewiss smiled, took her hands, kissed them. “They’re getting ready to go,” she said, squeezing his hands, and turned away.

Freelorn looked at Herewiss. “I hate these goodbyes.” “The hello will be long,” said Herewiss, “as usual.”

After a few minutes they went out into the courtyard outside the hall. It was mostly empty, so early in the morning: a breeze was rising, so that the Blackstave’s leaves showed mostly their silver undersides against a sky of perfect blue. Freelorn went from horse to horse, saying goodbye to Dritt and Harald and Moris.

Finally he stopped by Sunspark. It was saddled and bridled, but the bridle was for show: the elemental could have munched up any bit ever made if the notion took it. Lorn patted its neck, and Sunspark looked at him out of eyes that were fierce, but not afire.

“Take care of him,” Lorn said, under his breath.

“I shall,” it said as softly: “I shall indeed.” And it nipped him in the shoulder. Without thinking, Lorn punched Sunspark as casually in the nose, and as hard as he would have punched his own Blackmane. Sunspark started straight up, came down again in a great clatter of hooves, showing eye-white and with ears laid back flat. It started to rear... and then settled down, putting its ears up again. “There really may be some interest in this,” it muttered to him as Herewiss came over and mounted up.

“I should hope so,” Lorn said. He looked up at Herewiss, said nothing.

Herewiss smiled back at him, and said the same nothing.

Eftgan turned away from her own farewells to Moris and Dritt and Harald. “Our Lady go with you, my dears,” she said. “Look for us about a thirty miles west of Prydon on the eighty-sixth of Summer. I’ll keep in touch with you as I may.”

“May She ride with you too,” Herewiss said, and nudged Sunspark, and rode out of Blackcastle’s courtyard, down toward the winding streets of the town. The others followed, some of them leading pack-horses, and last of all came Segnbora, walking, with Skádhwë slung at her side. She punched Lorn cheerfully in the shoulder, and followed the others’ echoes down into the mist and quiet of morning.

*

Lorn went up to the tower room to finish his own packing—so he told himself—but paused a long while at the window to watch them out of sight: the little party with their pack horses, heading west on the Road, and the single small figure that walked straight south from the Road into the fields. The pack horses vanished first in the mist, which was just now lifting.

He sighed and shifted his glance to that one small figure out in the green. In the middle of a field that shape paused a moment, and something seemed to happen to the light about it. The tiny shape grew taller, spread arms that grew to be black-webbed wings, leaned forward to let the great expanse of tail balance the huge head and length of neck. The rearing shape, burning golden and green even in the misty light, acquired a shadow that streamed out behind it and then reared up as well, a black shape, paling to silvery gray beneath. Both of them spread wings and rose up, without even flapping—simply soared up through the mist, almost to the tower’s level, where they broke out into the sun and blazed together in topaz and emerald and the dark glitter of black sapphire. Together they leaned upward, folded their wings back from the great hawk-spread to a narrower dart-shape like that of a stooping falcon, and shot out of sight, upward and westward, like the wind.

A little girl
.... Lorn thought.

“So we keep hearing,” said Eftgan, in the doorway. “Lorn, are you about done here? The barber’s waiting for you, and we’re needed down south fairly soon.”

Lorn nodded and went with her. “I had a thought,” he said, “of a way you might be able to help me.”

Eftgan looked at him with her eyebrows up. “You mean besides the armies?”

He smiled crookedly. “I would like some pots, please.”

“Pots.” Eftgan burst out laughing. “Herewiss told me you like to cook, but truly, Lorn, the urge comes over you at the strangest moments.”

“A good assortment of pots, some of them used and some new,” Freelorn said, refusing to rise to the bait. “And a pack horse to carry them.”

Eftgan nodded thoughtfully as they walked. “True,” she said, “a man on a horse, alone, with no reason to be wandering around in the country, is likely enough to cause comment. But who pays attention to one more traveling tinker?.... You’ll want some tools, as well.” Then she burst out laughing again. “But, Lorn, do you know anything about mending pots?”

Now it was Freelorn’s turn to laugh. “A friend of mine taught me a thing or two. Herewiss didn’t do only swords, you know. In fact I think he would have achieved Khávrinen sooner, if the Brightwood people hadn’t kept nagging him to weld their pan handles back on, and whatnot.”

“Well enough, then,” the Queen said. “I’ll see what I can find.” She sighed. “The kitchen staff probably won’t mind losing some of their old pots, since they’re always nagging the Chief Steward for new ones.... And I’ll speak to the stablemaster about a pack horse.”

She glanced out a window at the morning as they went down a flight of stairs. “It’ll probably be pleasant for you, seeing the old haunts,” she said. “Your fostering-country. I had heard that you had had another daughter, down that way, when you were younger.”

“She died right after she was born,” Lorn said. The pain was so old that he could almost be casual about it. “There was something wrong with her heart, I was told. That’s all I really know about it.... I was a long way away when it happened.”