The Door Into Shadow

by Diane Duane

  (You mean—) Eftgan’s reaction swung from embarrassment to incredulity. (Then that uproar in the Power we all felt last week was someone donating to the Fane! And that story I got from the Brightwood people about a man focusing—)

  (It’s true,) Segnbora said, and leaned back against the wall, weak from the backwash of Eftgan’s excitement.

  Moris and Dritt finished their juggling, amid much applause. There was no opportunity to go to Eftgan, however, for at that moment Herewiss walked in through the door from the stable yard and took his place by the hearth. The room quieted.

  Herewiss didn’t bother with the lengthy introduction that some sorcerers used to assure that their illusions would take root in the spectators’ minds. Nor did he bother with spells. He just sat back in the chair, one arm leaning casually on his long sheathed sword. “My gentlemen, my ladies,” he said, “a little sorcery.”

  It was a great deal more than that, but since no Fire showed there was no way for the audience to tell. They chuckled appreciatively when tankards and plates engaged in a stately aerial sarabande in the middle of the room. They clapped when one empty table shook itself like a sleepy dog, got up and began stumping around the room on its legs. They hooted with pleased derision when the big rough fieldstones in the fireplace all suddenly grew mouths and began talking noisily about the things they had seen in their time, some of which made for very choice gossip.

  When finally all the flames in the rooms shot up suddenly, swirled together in the empty air and coalesced into a bright-feathered bird that hung upside down by one foot from the chandelier and croaked, “I’ve got it! The Goddess is walking down the street and She meets this duck…” the storm of laughter and applause became deafening.

  Not even Eftgan’s composure remained in place. “My Goddess,” she whispered, and from clear across the room Segnbora could feel her restraining the Flame that was trying to leap from her Rod in response to the Fireflow Herewiss was letting loose.

  A good sorcerer would have had no trouble producing such effects by illusion; but these were actual objects moving around, briefly alive and self-willed. Normally it would have taken two or three Rodmistresses working in consort to produce even one of the transformations taking place—but there sat Herewiss all by himself, looking like a child enjoying a new toy.

  The table had sneaked up behind one tall woman and was nibbling curiously at her tunic, like a browsing goat. The stones had begun singing rounds. Sunspark had forgotten by now that it ought to have been holding onto the chandelier, and was simply suspended upside down in midair, getting laughs for jokes without punch lines attached. (How is he doing that?) Eftgan said.

  (Most of these things were alive once,) Herewiss said silently, not moving or looking up. (It’s just a matter of reminding them how it was. Mistress, I can taste your Fire but I can’t place you—though there’s something familiar about your pattern. You know my loved, perhaps?)

  (The pattern might be familiar, prince,) the small woman said, as two chairs put their arms about each other and begin dancing in a corner, muttering creaky endearments, (because you and I have met. At Lidika field, you jumped in front of a Reaver with a crossbow and took the quarrel for me while I was having trouble with a swordfight—)

  The hearthstone snorted as if in great surprise, then settled into a bout of ratchety snoring. (Eftgan! The Queen’s grace might have given me warning!)

  (I didn’t want to disturb your concentration, prince, though it appears I needn’t have worried. But pardon me if I leave off complimenting you for the moment. I have business here, and you’re part of it, I’ve been told. If I rework the wreaking on the Kings’ Door, can you come with me to Barachael tonight?)

  (Depends on Freelorn, madam.) All the candles on tables and in sconces tied themselves in knots and kept on burning. (We’re on business of our own, and I have oaths in hand that may even supersede the oaths of the Brightwood line to Darthen.)

  (Oh, that business. I think yours and mine will go well enough together.)

  (Then we’ll talk when I’ve finished.)

  At that Lorn headed across the common room, ostensibly to get another drink, and “noticed” Eftgan in what appeared to be the fashion of one potential bed-partner noticing another. He paused beside her, bent toward the pretty woman, and with a smile that any onlooker would have found unmistakable, said in her ear, “Since it’s my throne we’re talking about, madam, and my country, I’d best be there too. Don’t you think?”

  Eftgan smiled back, the same smile. “Sir,” she whispered, “that sounds good to me.”

  The room had become such a hurly-burly of laughter and clapping that saying anything and having it heard was becoming impossible. Freelorn went off across the room, leaving Eftgan to say silently, and with some diffidence, (‘Berend, have you taken a mind-hurt recently? There’s a darkness down deep that wasn’t there before. Is there anything I can do?)

  (Dear heart, I don’t think so,) Segnbora said silently. (I’m told the change is permanent.)

  (You mean She—)

  (No. Well, not directly. If you want to take a look. . .)

  (Yes.)

  Across the room, their eyes caught and held, then dropped again as their minds fell together in that companionable meld that had always come so easily.

  Segnbora saw and felt, in a few breaths’ space, a rush of images that were Eftgan’s surface memories of the past four years. Initiation into the royal priesthood, her brother’s death, and her own investiture as Queen. The hot morning spent hammering out her crown in the great square of Darthis, alone and unguarded, wondering whether someone would come out of the gathered crowd to kill her, as was her people’s right if they felt her reign would not be prosperous. Worries about Arlen and the usurper who sat in power there, making raids on her borders. Marriage to her loved, Wyn s’Heleth. Childbirth, midnight feedings, Namings, ceremonies; the rites of life all tumbled together with the lesser and greater drudgeries of queen ship—mornings in court-justice, evenings spent in the difficult wreakings that were necessary to buy her land temporary reprieve from the hunger and death creeping toward its borders.

  There was more. Border problems—Reavers gathering in ever greater numbers on the far side of the mountain passes, pouring through them almost as if in migration. The loss of communications with numerous villages in the far south—suggesting that their Rodmistresses were dead. The loss of one of her best intelligencers here in Chavi, some weeks back. The sudden, urgent true-dream that showed Eftgan plainly the reason for all the Reaver movements of late. This last discovery had been more shocking than anything the Queen had been willing to imagine.

  She had been so shocked, in fact, that she had not once, but several times, opened and used the Kings’ Door, the dangerous worldgate in the Black Palace at Darthis, to find out more. She’d done so tonight, and now here she sat in faded woolens and patched cloak and embroidered white shirt, like any countrywoman with a pot of beer. Yet her eyes were open for trouble, and for the answers she had been promised. Her Rod was sheathed and ready at her side.

  Segnbora touched lightly on all these things, meanwhile letting Eftgan do what she didn’t trust the mdeihei to do: turn over her memories one by one —the keep at Madeil, the Ferry Tavern, the old Hold, the Morrowfane. Finally she saw Eftgan gaze down inside her, incredulous, at a shape burning in iron and diamond. Hasai stared back up, bowed his head and lifted his wings in calm greeting, then went back about his own concerns, singing something low and somber to the rest of the mdeihei.

  When their glances rested in one another’s eyes again, Segnbora and Eftgan both breathed a sigh of relief at the end of the exertion. (He’s very big,) Eftgan said. (And how many others are in there?)

  (Maybe a couple hundred. I tried counting and had to give up. They don’t count the way we do, and I could never get our tallies to agree. Tegánë, what’s bringing all these Reavers down on us? You saw something—)

  (I did.) Eftgan sounded profoundly distur
bed by what she’d discovered. (Part of the reason is storms. Their weather is worsening. It was never very good to begin with, and now the Reaver tribes farthest south are faced with a choice. Either they move north or freeze even at Midsummer. The tribes already close to us are feeling the pressure. There are more people hunting those lands than the available game can support. Thinking Fyrd are driving them too. But worse than that—)

  (What could be worse!)

  (Cillmod is in league with them,) Eftgan said, sour-faced, (and the Shadow is directing them all.)

  Segnbora stared, then took a long drink to hide her nervousness.

  (And worse things even than that are coming,) the Queen said. (My Lady tells me that a great shifting and unbalancing of Powers is about to occur in the area around Barachael during the dark of the next Moon. On one hand, Reavers are gathering on the far side of the Barachael Pass, as if for a great incursion. On the other—) The Queen took a drink. (We’re due for a night of three Lights shortly. And that means Glasscastle will appear. Now, what might go into Glasscastle doesn’t concern me, but what might come out of it does. Inhuman things, monsters, have been summoned out of there before by sorcerers of foul intent—)

  (But who would do something like that? That whole area’s soaked with old blood! Nine chances out of ten, a sorcery would go askew—)

  (Someone new to the art might not know,) Eftgan said. (And the Rodmistress who died here not long ago spent her life to tell me who. The Reavers have sorcerers now.)

  Segnbora had to turn to the wall to conceal her shock. (Apparently someone’s gotten a few of them over their fear of magic,) Eftgan said. (It’s that individual, who has no concern for sorcerous balances, who worries me. I need Herewiss! If anyone can keep matters down south from going to pieces while I have to be elsewhere, he can.) She frowned. (But that’s the rest of the news. Another of my spies has told me that some of Cillmod’s mercenaries are about to attack my granaries at Orsvier. I have to be there to lead the defense. Why does everything have to happen at once?)

  (There’s your reason, I’ll wager,) Segnbora said, glancing toward the hearth, where Herewiss stood smiling, accepting the applause for his completed “sorcery.” He leaned there on Khávrinen, looking casual; but for one with enough sensitivity, the air around him smelled as if lightning had just struck him, or was about to. Segnbora would not mention the Shadow, looking at him… and Eftgan simply nodded. As Herewiss stepped away from the hearth, she crossed glances with him, a “let’s-talk” look.

  (I’ll see you later, Tegánë,) Segnbora said. She put her drink aside and headed for the door that gave onto the back of the inn.

  Lang was hurrying in as she stepped out. “You on now?” Segnbora said.

  “Uh-huh. Wish me luck.”

  “You won’t need it. Except maybe to keep yourself from being knocked unconscious by the money they’ll throw.”

  Lang smiled. “Where’re you headed? —Oh, my Goddess,” he said, looking past her. “I don’t believe it. She’s here? After seven years, she’s finally tracked down Dritt and Moris!”

  “I think something more important’s on her mind. Tell them to keep mum; something’s on the spit, I’m not sure what yet.”

  Lang nodded, touched Segnbora’s shoulder gently as she went past, out into the alley and the cool air.

  A shiver went down her back as she went out. It was more than just a reaction to the coolness outside, after the heat and smoke of the inn. Cillmod in league with the Shadow?...

  She drew up her gown to keep it off the wet ground, and went down the alley behind the inn, looking for a drier spot to take care of her business. The alley ended in a cobbled street that led to the town’s fields through an unguarded postern gate.

  Quietly Segnbora walked down the street, patting Charriselm once to make sure it was loose in the sheath. She unbarred the gate and slipped out. In the shadow of one of the ubiquitous hawthorn hedges she relieved herself, then put herself back in order and just stood awhile, listening to the night and letting herself calm down. Far behind her, the sound of Lang’s baritone escaped through the inn’s back door, following the lighter notes of the lute through the reflective minor chords of “The Goddess’s Riding”:

  “…But if I speak with yon Lady bright,

  I wis my heart will bryst in three;

  Now shall I go with all my might

  Her for to meet beneath Her tree…”

  “Tegánë,” Segnbora whispered, smiling. Moon-bright, the nickname said in Darthene. Eftgan had liked it; she had never been terribly fond of her right name, which tradition forced to begin with either the eat-rune or the bay-rune like all the other Darthene royal names. She had returned the favor, turning segnbora, “standard-bearer,” into ‘berend, a verb, and one usually used in old tales about the Maiden: “swift-rushing”, impetuous, always in a hurry, sometimes too much of one—as when the Maiden had let Death into the worlds by accident. And as their names, so they had been together while they were in love: Eftgan swinging slow and steady through her moods, like the Moon, waxing and waning, giving and withholding, Segnbora pushing, urging, not sure what she wanted but not willing to wait long for .

  The senior Rodmistresses had paired them off to work together in hopes that Eftgan’s Fire, unusually intense for a sixteen year old, might influence Segnbora’s enough to make her focus. They expected the play-sharing that usually took place between work partners to make the two novices’ patterns match more closely, and break the stuck one loose. No one, however had expected two who were so unlike—the tall, loud, spindly daughter of hedge-nobility, and the small, compact, quiet daughter of the Eagle—to fall in love…

  “He kneeléd down upon his knee,

  underneath that greenwood spray,

  Saying, Lovely Lady, ha’ pity on me,

  Queen of Heaven, as well Thou may!…”

  The distant muffled music twined itself with the memory of the day Eftgan had suddenly had to leave the Precincts. Her brother Bryn had been killed by Fyrd while hunting. “They’re going to make me be Queen,” she’d said, bitter, standing in the green shade with her face averted from Segnbora. She had been trying not to cry.

  “Tegánë—”

  “‘Berend, you can’t do anything for me. Any more than I’ve been able to do anything for you, all this while. Perhaps it’s better that I’m leaving now. You can’t focus, and I can’t be happy around you while you can’t. If this kept on much longer, we’d start hating each other.”

  This was true, and it reduced anything Segnbora could have said in reply to a meaningless noise. The two of them stood in the shade, hardly able to look at one another. Finally each of them laid a kiss in the palm of the other’s hand, the restrained and formal farewell between kinsfolk of the Forty Houses. Then Eftgan turned away and vanished among the green leaves of the outer Precincts; and Segnbora went in deeper, and didn’t come out till her soul was cried dry, a matter of some days…

  Now Segnbora stood bemused for a moment as a dark head seemed to loom just over her shoulder, though of course there was nothing between her and the stars of late spring. (When you forget to struggle, when you let us be one, it can be this way,) Hasai said, dispassionately. (Do you prefer discomfort, apartness?)

  She almost said yes. “It was a very private memory,” Segnbora said.

  (Sdaha, you still don’t understand. You must be who you have been to be who you are.)

  Segnbora shook her head, weary. Every time I think I understand the mdeihei, I find I don’t at all… She looked out across the field into which she had ducked when she came through the hedge. It was tall with green hay that whispered in the starlight. On an impulse she tucked her robe up into her swordbelt and started across it, wading waist-deep, enjoying the sensations: the rasp and itch of the hay against her legs, the darkness, the cool wind. Hasai said nothing, his mind resting alongside hers, tasting the night as she did—

  Segnbora stopped short in the middle of the field. Something was teasi
ng at her undersenses, a whiff of wrongness that was out of tune with the clean night. She stood there with eyes closed to “see” better—

  —and there, sharp as a jab with a spear, came the clear perception of a place just to the east that felt like an unhealed wound. A hidden thing meant to stay that way, and failing.

  (Hasai?)

  (I’m here. I feel it also.)

  (Come on.)

  ***

  SEVEN

  “You are cruel beyond belief,” Efmaer said. “As cruel as the legends tell.”

  “But legends are made by humans,” the Shadow said. “And humans, who make a precious jewel of hope and hoard it past its use, are themselves more cruel to themselves than ever I could be.”

  Then the Shadow vanished, and Efmaer filled the air where It had been with curses, and rode away after the soul of her loved…

  (Efmaer’s Ride, traditional: part the Second)

  Segnbora unsheathed Charriselm and went off eastward through the standing hay. Another hedge loomed up before her, without stile or hedge-gate. With Charriselm she cut an opening, making certain that it would be too small for a cow to escape through in the morning, and squeezed through.

  The sour mind-stench she had smelled got stronger by the second, becoming so terrible that Segnbora wondered how she could have missed it from fifty miles away, let alone from the town. How could I have been so distracted? At the edge of the field the ground under her feet seemed to be burning with it. Her inner hearing buzzed and roared as if two powerful hands were choking her. She stopped and held still, trying not to gag. The stench was coming from beneath an old yew with peeling bark and drooping branches.

  She walked under the tree and went to her knees. The fallow ground had been plowed almost up to the tree trunk. The furrows lay neat and seemingly undisturbed, yet when Segnbora thrust her hands into the still soft ground and turned it over, she sat back on her heels, sick to her stomach and sicker at heart. There is no mistaking the smell of a grave, especially a shallow one.