by Judith Tarr
“Not,” said Vanyi, “if I can help it.”
Estarion barely heard her. He seized Korusan’s hand, caught another—Sarevadin’s, fire-hot, fire-strong—and sprang.
“You blazing idiot!” Vanyi’s voice, stripped to raw panic. Her hand, locking on his belt. They plunged into the maelstrom that was the new-made Gate.
o0o
He was drowning. Stones dragged him down—Korusan, Sarevadin, Vanyi, the ul-cub with claws sunk in his leg. He struck out with the one leg that was free, and with arms—wings—something—some untrammeled part of him that beat against the surging of the flood.
Wings, then, improbable as they were. And if he was winged, then this was not sea but storm-wild air, this turmoil the boiling of clouds, this tumult the thunder rolling in his blood. The winds that tore at him were worldwinds, sweeping him through the chaos of the Gates.
Small things rode him, clinging like grim death. He roared laughter, soared, swooped, soared again, riding the storm.
It was mighty, but only in resistance. It was terrible, but only in battle. If he eased to it, yielded to its buffeting, it lost its power to destroy. It bore up his wings. It carried him from cloud to cloud, each cloud a world, each levin-bolt the fire of a Gate.
One of those who rode him crawled to his ear, shrieking into it. He would not have heeded anything so shrill, but the words forced themselves through the exultation of his flight. “Stop! Damn you, stop! You’ll lose us in the worldwinds!”
He would not. But he had let himself forget why he flew here.
While he paused, struck with remembrance, Vanyi flung a bridle on him. He reared against it, but the bit was burning cold in his mouth, the reins implacable, drawing him about. Like a rebellious stallion he fought her; like a strong rider she turned his battle upon itself. And still the worldwinds bore them all.
A new hand took the reins. A new voice spoke in his ear. “Such a senel you make; and such wit, to gift yourself with wings. Tame yourself now and fly.”
Sarevadin wore a new shape here, one that he had known in portraits since he was a child: northern face, copper-bright hair. But whether it was she or he, woman or man, he could not tell. Now it was the one, now the other. The smile was the same in both, white and wild, and the bright dark eyes.
“I know the way,” said the Twiceborn, shifting, woman to man to woman. “Gates wrought me. Power is woven in me. I’ll bring us to the Heart of the World.”
Not the Tower of the Sun? Estarion wondered. But he did not speak. The bit forbade him, and the grip on the reins, and the legs clamped to his sides, driving him on.
The storm was above him. Road rang beneath his feet—his sharp cloven hooves, for he had willed this shape, and it was so. Worlds sped past him, but the road was outside of them. Magic quivered in it, on it. Magic rode him, nor could he turn aside.
He was pursued. How he knew it, at first he was not certain. Then his ears, straining back, caught the sound of feet; his nostrils, flaring, caught a scent like blood and burning.
“Mages,” said Sarevadin, settling briefly to woman’s shape.
And Vanyi behind her, holding to her, turning to peer past a pair of golden-eyed shadows: “We’re warded against them.”
“Not here,” Sarevadin said. “Wards are no use on the mageroad.” She—he—dug heels into Estarion’s sides. “On, young one. On!”
He ran. Four legs were swifter far than two. Wings, he had lost or forgotten; no time now to win them back again. The burden he bore was light, though there were three of it; the fourth ran at his heels, darkness golden-eyed. It had been born amid the worldwinds, in the silence between Gates. It had come from Gates with the child of the Sunborn, to bind its soul to the Sunborn’s heir. Here it was not so young as it seemed in the world beyond the Gates, nor so small, but it remained an ul-cat, with magic in its blood.
He stretched his stride. The ul-cub matched it; danced, even, laughing as a cat will, batting at his heels with half-sheathed claws. He started, bucked, learned at last what swiftness was.
o0o
Vanyi clung for dear life to an impossibility: a senel who was Estarion, and a shifting shape that was indubitably Sarevadin. The Olenyas clung to her with the rigidity of perfect terror. The worlds whirled past. Some were dark and some were light, some green and some bleakly brown, some full of water and some full of air, and all strange, all alien.
She had lost control of this venture before it was fairly begun. It was different to be in a Gate than to be outside of it, standing guard on it. Here all laws were broken, all sureties undone.
Yet, once she had looked fear in the face and given it its name, she knew a strange delight. She was here, riding the mageroad. She was alive to know it, and strong in her power, and the Gate that had brought them here was hers.
Pursuit was gaining, though Estarion outran the worldwind. The watchers wore any shape they chose, but now, as if to honor Estarion’s own choice of shape, they ran as direwolves. Magelore had it that they were empty of intelligence; they existed simply to catch trespassers on the worldroad and dispose of them. But the eyes in the lean grey heads were bright with malice, and the teeth were bared in wide wolf-grins. They were hungry for manflesh, senelflesh, even—maybe—catflesh.
The first of the watchers drew level with the ul-cub. He slashed sidewise with dagger-fangs, and raked with claws. The watcher howled and tumbled from the road, bleeding fire. The others neither wavered nor slowed.
One of the arms deathlocked about Vanyi’s waist let go. Steel hissed from sheath. Korusan held the longer of his swords poised along his thigh.
She undertook not to shrink from that keen-honed blade hovering a handspan from her leg. If he was truly a traitor, he would plunge it into Estarion’s straining flank and kill them all. And she would not be able to stop him.
A watcher sprang. The sword swept down.
Sarevadin bent forward over Estarion’s neck, pulling Vanyi with her—him—both, neither. Hair the color of new copper lashed Vanyi’s face.
She gasped, blinded, and felt teeth close on her foot. There was no pain at first, simply the knowledge that pain would come, and the thought, dim and almost wry, that if Estarion bucked at the slash of teeth in his heels, Korusan’s sword might cut off her foot. Would she bleed power then, or plain blood?
She kicked as hard as she could. The teeth tore free.
She would not feel the pain. She must focus on holding to her rocking, heaving seat and keeping out of the way of the Olenyas’ sword.
He was an artist with it. He wasted no movement, indulged in no flourishes. Every cut found flesh, or what passed for flesh.
If these had been true wolves, they would have given up the chase long ago, even if they were starving. These would not pause until they downed their prey. Were there more of them? Or did each that fell give space to another, so that their number never varied?
Sarevadin muttered a curse. There was a long rent in the trousers, blood bright against dark skin. The face that half-turned was as male as Estarion’s when Estarion was not wearing a stallion’s horns, and as keenly carved, red-bearded, black-eyed, furious.
“This will get us killed,” he said. She. Shifting again, impervious to her own strangeness. She flung herself from Estarion’s back, so sudden that Vanyi toppled bruisingly forward, locking arms about the straining neck.
She struggled to look back. The watchers had paused, but not to devour Sarevadin. She—he—ran in the midst of them, slapping them with a bare and burning hand, kicking those that lunged to snap at his unprotected throat.
Vanyi hauled back on the reins. Estarion jibbed. “I’ll be polite later,” she snapped at him. “Slow down, damn you!”
He plunged to a halt that nearly flung her over his head. Before she was properly settled, he wheeled. And changed.
The road was hard. She got up stiffly, nursing a bruised tailbone. Estarion took no notice of her. He was running in his own shape toward the pack of direwolves, dagger in
hand, shouting something indistinct.
Sarevadin shouted back. In man-form he was a little smaller than Estarion, a little narrower, and no less hot-tempered.
“Gods,” said the Olenyas. “How like they are.”
So they were, even when, again, Sarevadin was a woman, shoulder-high to Estarion, glaring down her nose at him. The watchers crouched whining at her feet. She laid her hand on the head of the one that had led the pack, and said distinctly, echoing in that eerie place, “What did you stop for? We’re almost there.”
“What in the hells did you stop for?” Estarion shot back.
Her direwolf leered at Estarion’s ul-cat. The cub crouched low and snarled.
Sarevadin quelled them both with a glance. “This was getting out of hand. It’s one thing to teach you how to run. It’s entirely another to kill more watchers than can restore themselves.”
“But these—things—the mages—”
“These are watchers,” she said with taut-strung patience. “They won’t harm you; they’re only here to guard the road.”
“But—”
“Watchers watch and guard, and keep young idiots moving. Guildmages close in ahead and behind, from the thresholds of their Gates. You have to be in control of yourself when you meet them, or they’ll devour you whole.”
“You’ve led us into a trap,” Estarion said, flat and cold.
“It’s easy to think so, isn’t it? You can’t stay here. You can’t go back—the watchers will stop you. Now will you run?”
Estarion looked as if he would have argued, but the ul-cub had his wrist in its jaws and was pulling him about. One of the watchers nipped at his heels. He kicked like the senel he had briefly been, spat a curse, and bolted.
He swept Vanyi in his wake, and Korusan with not-blood dripping still from his sword. The pack ran behind, and Sarevadin among them.
They were warding, Vanyi realized almost too late. Protecting their erstwhile prey from enemies behind and, as some of them edged ahead, from danger before.
The worlds spun faster. Too fast. She struggled to stop, but the road had her. She could not slow or turn, or alter any moment of it.
Estarion veered. She cried out. And fell.
o0o
Quiet.
She half-sat, half-lay on stone. Stone arched over her. Fire burned, blessed warmth after cold she had not even known she suffered.
“The Heart of the World.” Sarevadin’s voice, no longer shifting, and her face as Vanyi had known it in Asanion, pared clean with age. She stood by the fire that seemed so simple and was so great a mystery, for it was no mortal dame but the light of power that ruled the worlds. She warmed her hands above it.
Estarion circled the wide bare hall with its walls that seemed painted or hung with tapestries, until they shifted and changed and showed themselves for Worldgates. They, like the fire, were simplicity to the eye, mystery to the mind.
He made as if to touch one that showed a place of water and green things; it changed to a hell of fire. He drew back carefully and turned. “Why are we here? Is this a betrayal?”
“All who would master the Gates must begin here,” said Sarevadin. “All roads of the Gates lead to this place.”
“That may be true,” said a cool bitter voice, “but I smell death here.”
The Olenyas had found himself a shadow to be part of, and the ul-cub to share it. He had sheathed his sword but kept his hand on it.
He moved from his chosen shadow into Estarion’s. “If you have led us ill, you will answer to my sword.”
“Gladly,” said Sarevadin. She beckoned with her scarred hand. “Come, children. We’re dead if we linger. They know we’re here; they’ll be moving to close the Gates.”
Vanyi, stretching her bruised power, gasped. The quiet here was illusion, the stillness a mask. Below that frail semblance was naked chaos.
The Heart of the World, that core of magic in all the myriad worlds, hung on the thin edge of ruin. Was it their coming that had done it?
Even as she shaped the thought, the Heartfire roared to the ceiling, then sank almost to embers; blinding bright, then blind dark.
“Swiftly!” cried Sarevadin. “Take my hands!”
Estarion had her right hand, the Olenyas her left. Vanyi, slowest to move, hesitated between Estarion and his guardsman, yearning toward the one, shrinking from the other. Hating herself for both.
That moment cost her dearly. The fire roared up again. The worldwalls throbbed, flickering dizzily from world to world.
She lunged toward Estarion, just as he sprang into the fire. Her hand caught his; tore loose.
She stumbled and fell to her knees. The floor heaved and rocked. Worldwind howled over her.
Mages were in it. Watching. Waiting. Listening. They wanted—something.
The Tower. The magic that was in it. The advantage that they reckoned to gain, somehow, from Estarion’s healing. Or, and more likely, his death.
She clung to stones that surged like the flesh of a living thing. Shadows danced in the fire. One of them had a voice. “Can’t move us through. Can’t—move—”
Sarevadin. And Estarion, breathless, tight with what might have been pain. “Can’t move back, either. You may be made of fire, but I’m half flesh. And my guardsman is all human. Get us out of here. It’s killing him!”
Vanyi crawled across a floor turned treacherous, clinging where she could cling, slipping where it fluxed and slid. Her power was as bruised as she, and as helpless. She set her teeth and struggled on.
The fire was a sheet of blinding heat from floor to heaving, quivering vault of roof. Vanyi, well outside of it still, felt the heat of it on her face, searing her hair, crisping the flesh on her bones.
She had walked into this fire when first she mastered Gates. It held no power to harm a mage. Yet now it was worse than deadly, and they were in it, trapped in it. She could just discern their shapes: Sarevadin still unscathed but seeming helpless, Estarion clutching a writhing body to his breast, crying, “Get us out of here!”
Vanyi thrust a dart of power at the fire’s heart. It sprang back, piercing her with agony.
“No one can get us out,” said Sarevadin to Estarion. “Except you.”
“I can’t,” he gasped. “I don’t know how.”
“What does knowing have to do with it? Open the Gate!”
“What Gate?”
“This!” The shadow that was Sarevadin wrenched his shadow-hand from the shadow-Olenyas and held it up. Vanyi shielded her eyes against a blaze that made the fire seem a dim and lifeless thing. “This, that opens all doors. That is itself a door.”
“Open your own!”
“Mine is broken.” She hauled him about within the fire. “Open it!”
“I don’t—I can’t—”
Vanyi touched the fire. Her fingers blistered and charred. She bit her lip until it bled, and pushed against the pain.
She could see them through the veil of it. Estarion held Korusan as if he had been a child; the boy’s head was buried in the hollow of his shoulder.
He raised his branded hand. His power flared more wildly even than the fire in which he stood.
He must control it. Master it. And when he had done that, walk through the Gate that he had made.
She could do nothing. The fire was too strong. He was bred of it, and he could scarcely endure it. She could not imagine what torments racked the Olenyas.
She raged until she wept, beat on the fire with fists of power, gained nothing but blistered hands.
He raised the Kasar above his head. His hand trembled; he steadied it. He drew it down the fiery air.
The fire parted, folded away before that fire which was hotter than it could ever be, shrank and cooled and dimmed until it was simple Heartfire once more. A Gate opened in the midst of it, and Sarevadin set foot on the threshold.
Estarion paused. “Vanyi!”
“Go!” she screamed at him in anger that came from everywhere and nowhere. “Yo
u don’t need me now. Go!”
“Vanyi—”
She would have plunged into the fire, whatever it did to her, and pushed him through the Gate. But Sarevadin, poised in the Gate, caught hold of him and flung him through.
50
Vanyi was lost. Korusan was unconscious or worse, a slack weight on Estarion’s shoulder. And where they stood was nothing like the worldroad. It seemed a perfect void, save that something held him up beneath his feet, and something else tugged him onward.
Sight grew slowly. There was little to see but the shape that led him. Its hair was copper-bright again, its gender indistinct. That maybe was the truth of the Twiceborn; what she—he—was in the world of the flesh was but a shadow.
Warmth pressed against his leg. The ul-cub had followed him yet again, moving easily through these Gates that racked human flesh and drove human minds mad. So led, so guided, he passed out of the darkness and into light.
He stood inside a vast jewel: flat beneath his feet, faceted about and above him, everywhere netted and veined with splendor. No lamp had ever burned here, nor ever would. The stone burned with its own white light.
Carefully he lowered Korusan to the floor. The boy struggled suddenly, all but oversetting him. He found himself crouching and Korusan standing over him, gripping his shoulders with terrible strength. White rimmed the golden eyes. The face was the color of bone.
Korusan let go. Estarion straightened slowly. The boy seemed to have forgotten him, sliding through the shadowless light, veering wide round the ul-cub and the motionless, voiceless Sarevadin, toward what lay in the jewel’s heart.
Black stone like an altar, or like the slab of a tomb. A sweep of white and gold: cloak of leather and fur undimmed by the years. And laid upon it, clad as a northern king, the sleeper.
He was asleep, truly: not dead. The fire of his life was banked low, the pulse of his heart slowed to the beat of the ages, the wind of his breath stilled to the faintest of whispers. And yet he lived, and living, dreamed.
Estarion knew that face. It met him in every mirror. Though all the portraits showed Mirain clean-shaven, his beard had grown with the slowness of his sleep. It was a little longer than Estarion’s, curling in the same fashion. His hair was plaited along his side, his hands folded on his breast. He would not be a tall man, standing; somewhat taller than Korusan, maybe, compact and smooth-muscled, with a warrior’s strength, perceptible even as he slept.