The Door into Shadow (11 page)

(Oh. Well, there’s this beggar—)

“
That one won’t work now. We know the ending. Try another.”

(All right.) Sunspark’s expression became one of intense concentration, an interesting one for a horse.

Segnbora shook her head, bemused. While she’d been busy with Hasai, Dritt had one day made the mistake of trying to make friends with Sunspark by telling it a joke. Since then it had decided that joking was a vital part of human experience, and had been demanding everyone to teach it the art, on pain of burning them when Herewiss wasn’t looking. As soon as she was in the saddle again, Sunspark had accosted Segnbora. In no mood for joking, she had suggested that it tell
her
jokes, and thus learn by doing. She’d had no peace since.

(Try this. So there are these two women, they go into an inn and the innkeeper comes to their table, and one of the women says, ‘Bring us the best red wine you have, and be sure the cups are clean!’ So the innkeeper goes off, and comes back with a tray, and says, ‘Two red wines. And which one asked for the clean cup?’)

Herewiss laughed. “Not bad.”

(I made it up,) said Sunspark, all childish pride. It did a quick capriole out of sheer pleasure, and almost unseated Herewiss.

“
Hey, watch that, you! Though on second thought, maybe we should increase your part in the act. We could use another jester.”

“
Mnh ‘qalasihiw, HhIr—” Segnbora cleared her throat. The Dracon language was beginning to fascinate her, though she couldn’t yet sing even the simplest of the emotion-intonations that went with the words; and her desire to master the tongue sometimes caused it to get out of her mouth before Darthene did. At least she hoped that was the reason. “I mean, Herewiss, there’s only one problem with that. What happens if an audience doesn’t laugh?”

Sunspark threw a cheerful glance at its rider. (If they don’t laugh, we get rid of them and bring in a new audience.) Theconcept “get rid of them” was attached to plans for the same sudden-death fire that had been the end of the deathjaw.

Freelorn glanced up at the sky, no doubt to invoke the Goddess’s protection on their next audience. Herewiss said nothing, just looked hard at his mount.

Sunspark laid back its ears and showed all its teeth around the bit, then subsided somewhat. (They
will
come back,) it said, sulkiness showing in the thought, (you
told
me so!)

“
They will. But there’s no reason to hurry people out of this life. Let the Goddess handle the timing.”

“
It does learn quickly, though,” Segnbora said. “Another few months and I dare say the audiences will be safe.”

Freelorn and Herewiss exchanged unconvinced, humorous glances, which Sunspark ignored. (She makes me understand the rules,) it said. (And a good thing, too. Otherwise—) Its thought carried an amused undertone of threat, like a bright edge of smoulder threading along the edge of one leaf on a dry tree, thin and potentially dangerous.

Segnbora said nothing.
Respond to a threat, and an elemental will get the idea that you’re threatened.
A bad idea to give it.
But without warning the huge dark form in the cave at the bottom of her thoughts reared halfway up and breathed a withering blast of white fire at the little line of red.

Sunspark blinked and drew away, annoyed. (Not another one! It’s getting so there’s no one left around here to scare.)

Segnbora loosened her collar, feeling hot, and closed her eyes to “look” at Hasai. Through this day and the day before he had been stretched at ease in the seaside cave, looking out of her eyes, silent for the most part. He stayed out of her thoughts except to ask an occasional question. The rest of the time the rumble of his private thought blended with the bass chorus of the
mdeihei,
a sound Segnbora found she could now start to ignore, like the seashore when one lives nearby.

Hasai was presently sunning himself in the noon light burning down through the cave’s shaft. His wings were spread out flat like a butterfly’s, lying easy on the floor as he settled himself again. As Segnbora watched, he curled his neck around and slipped his head under the left wing in the position she’d tried to achieve before. “That one’s impudent,” Hasai said.

“
I could have handled it,” Segnbora said.

“
You did. Are we not
mdaha
and
sdaha
, and am I not you?”

In Dracon the question was rhetorical, and Segnbora had no answer for it. She turned away from Hasai without further thought and opened her eyes again on the evening, breathing in the sweet sharp hawthorn scent in the air. “‘Berend, did you hear me?” Freelorn said.

“
No, Lorn, I was talking to my lodger.” She reached out and picked a white blossom off the hedge past which they were riding, held it to her nose.

“
Oh. Sorry. What are
you
going to do tonight? Pass the purse?”

“
She can sing,” Herewiss said.

“
You can? Well, that’s news! You know many songs?”

“
A few,” Segnbora said. She reined Steelsheen back to ride abreast of Herewiss and Freelorn, suddenly feeling the need for company more normal than that she carried inside her. “I’m best with a kithara, but I’ll do all right with the lute.”

Herewiss was still being paced by that boulder. It was easily half Sunspark’s size, but Herewiss showed no sign of strain, and at the same time he was keeping Khávrinen from showing so much as a flicker of Fire. His control was improving rapidly.

“
You won’t have any trouble with your part of the act, that’s plain,” Segnbora said.

Herewiss shrugged, waving the rock away with one hand. It soared up over the hedge like a blown feather and dropped out of sight, hitting the ground in the field on the other side with an appalling thud.

“
It’s easy,” Herewiss said. “Even the ecstatic part of the Fireflow is under control since we climbed the Fane. Which is good; I was starting to have trouble with it.”

Freelorn shot Herewiss an ironic look. “No, really,” Herewiss said. “The body gets confused, mistakes one kind of pleasure for another… It’s distracting. That’s why, in group wreakings, usually the Rodmistresses tell off one of the group to handle all of that herself, so that the others are more free to concentrate as much as possible of their Power on the work at hand.”

“
Sounds like nice work if you can get it,” Freelorn said. “But now I wonder. Did the Goddess install that aspect of the Fire on purpose, to keep people from doing large wreakings casually? As a control?”

“
You could argue it both ways. It might just as easily be a reward, to make sure the Power’s used.” Herewiss shrugged. “Anyway, at the moment I’m as free of the ecstatic part of the flow as I need to be. But it’s a mixed blessing. The first time I picked up that rock, I had to be careful that the whole field didn’t come with it.”

He sounded nervous. Lorn laughed, and reached out to squeeze Herewiss’s hand. “You’ll do all right…”

They rode on through the evening, and a short while later, at a turn in the road, a low huddle of squared-off silhouettes appeared against the horizon. Lamps burned like yellow stars in some of the houses’ windows.

“
Your guest—” Freelorn said abruptly to Segnbora.

(A rude sort,) Sunspark said.

“
He’s not,” Segnbora said, unsure exactly why she was defending the intruder in her mind. “You started that, firechild.”

“
You said ‘they’ before,” Freelorn said.

“
Hh ‘rae nt’ssëh,” Segnbora said, then corrected herself with a smile. “It
is
they. But it’s also he. Mostly he.”

Freelorn’s expression was impossible to read. “Are you— still you?”

Oh Goddess, Lorn,
if
I only knew!
she wanted to cry; but she kept her voice calm. “I’m not sure. Lorn, let it lie…when we have time, I’ll take you and Herewiss inside and introduce you. I’m me enough to function, at least.”

Freelorn hastily cast around for something else to talk about. The lane had widened into a road of a size to drive cattle down, and was well tracked and rutted. “Been a lot of traffic here, I’d say.”

“
For this time of year, yes.” Segnbora gazed up at the town. “What day of Spring is it?”

“
The fifty-eighth,” Herewiss said. “A Moon and two days till Midsummer. Why?”

“
Just wondering… Used to be my mother and father would start for Darthis now, to do Midsummer’s in the city with the rest of the Houses. We used to pass this way. But we haven’t done the trip since they built the inn at Chavi. My father started having trouble with his legs. It was arthritis, and he couldn’t take the long rides any more…”

I don’t know why we’re paying all this good money for you to waste your time studying something that doesn’t work,
she remembered him saying– and then, without warning, was in the memory as much as in her body. Holmaern was hobbling to the gate outside the house, and she was walking with him, as slowly as she dared: too slowly and he would notice. At the time, she’d heard nothing in his words but disappointment at her. But now, impossibly, Segnbora could underhear his frustration and pain, his determination to keep control of himself in the face of the ailment that even their local Rodmistress’s expertise could do no more than slow down. From down in the darkness inside her, great eyes that burned low studied the memory, and her reaction to it; and the shape that owned the eyes said nothing.

“
You know this place, then,” Herewiss was saying. “That’s a help.”

She found herself blinking back unexpected tears. “They’ll be glad to see players. Not many come down here, especially after the bad weather sets in. They probably haven’t been entertained since last summer.” She glanced at Freelorn. “If things are as bad in Arlen as they are here… don’t overcharge them, Lorn. From the look of the fields, this year’s harvest won't be any better than the last.”

Freelorn nodded. Good harvests were a king’s responsibility. Bad ones were a sign of trouble—like the empty throne in Arlen. “I’ll see to it,” he said.

Segnbora nodded. Inwardly she felt a twinge of satisfaction, for Lorn was changing. In many respects he was still the same brash, adventurous prince she loved so dearly, but increasingly he was overcome by thoughtful silences…which was as it should have been. The land through which they traveled was his by right, and its plight was desperate. The crops in the fields were poor; the people they’d seen of late, over-taxed, had a threadbare look. What prince could see this and fail to feel his heart swell with outrage? A cause was growing in Freelorn’s mind, not some self-centered desire to get back what should have been his, but something more worthy, something with other people’s needs at its heart.
Did She find it there when She spoke to him in the Ferry Tavern? Or was it born of that conversation?
That was between him and Her. One way or another, the shift was there. But they were all still a long way from restoring Lorn to his throne. They were so few, and he’d been away so long...

Indeed, it was months since they had heard any reliable news from Arlen. The usurper Cillmod’s authority had been well established for some time, but now they needed to discover whether support for him was still so solid as it had been. Chavi, inconspicuous, far off at the edge of things, had been Lorn’s choice for a first foray after the news they needed; out here, no one would be surprised by traveling entertainers asking for it.

At least, we hope no one will…

(How about this?) Sunspark said. (The Goddess is walking down the road and She sees a duck—)

***

They rode up to the town’s rough fieldstone-and-mortar walls and were readily admitted. Chavi was much as Segnbora remembered it. The town’s central square was stone-paved, surrounded by earth and fieldstone houses with soundly thatched roofs. A few, though, still had turf roofs, with here and there a scamp flower growing. Men drying their hands on dishtowels and young women with floury hands came to the windows, attracted by the sound of hooves on cobbles

Up at the front of the line of riders, Dritt unslung his timbrel and began banging it earnestly, calling their wares: “Songs and stories, tall tales! Shivers and chuckles, sleepless nights, horrors and heartthrobs, deaths and delights! Mimicry, musicry, tragedy, comedy—”

A small crowd began to gather. Dritt began juggling two knives and a lemon, breaking the rhythm occasionally by catching the lemon in his mouth, and making puckery faces when he let go of it. Harald was strumming changes on Segnbora’s lute, and angling it so the torchlight from the cressets by the inn door would catch the mother-of-pearl inlay.

Herewiss dismounted, pulled the saddle off Sunspark, and snapped his fingers. The stallion disappeared, replaced by a great white hound of the kind that runs with the Maiden’s Hunting. The fayhound danced once about Herewiss on its hind legs—bringing
oooh
s and
aaaah
s from the audience, for upright it stood two feet taller than he did—then, at his clap, it sat up most prettily and begged. At another clap it bowed to the audience, grinning with its huge jaws – and at a fourth clap, without warning, it turned and sprang at Herewiss’s throat.

The crowd gasped as man and hound struggled on the cobbled street, then gasped again as the fayhound turned to a tree that creaked and groaned on top of Herewiss as if a wild wind tore at it, then to a huge serpent that coiled around Herewiss and tried to squeeze the life out of him, and after that to a buck unicorn that Herewiss barely kept from goring him by wrestling its head down to the ground by the deadly horn. Finally there they lay in the street again, man and fayhound once more; but the fayhound lay on its back with its eyes starting and its tongue hanging out, and Herewiss was kneeling on its chest, gripping it by its throat.

A delighted cheer went up from the crowd, the kerchiefed ladies and dusty-britched men applauding such illusion as they had only heard of before. Man and hound held their tableau for a few seconds, then rose up as man and horse again, while Moris turned handsprings on the stones, and Freelorn went inside to dicker with the innkeeper for the night’s room and board.