by Диана Дуэйн
Freelorn and his people came close behind Herewiss. No-one spoke. Though the place was quieter than the surrounding desert, that was not what was oppressing them. The sheer stone walls and the crazily tilted towers rising above the central hall seemed to be ignoring them somehow – as if nothing human beings could do there would ever make a difference, as if the suddenly breached wall were a matter of no consequence at all. The place had an aura
about it as of impassiveness and unconcern – as if it were alive itself, in some way, and did not recognize them as living things.
'This paving,' Lang said softly,
'Yes it is,' Harald said, almost is—'
'it isn't level.'
whispering. 'You can see that it
'It doesn't feel that way.'
'No, it doesn't,' Herewiss said, very loudly. 'And why are we whispering?'
A ripple of nervous laughter went through the group.
'There's something about this place,' Segnbora said. 'Some of these towers, the – the perspective of them seems wrong somehow. They're off. That one over the big square building, it should look closer than the other one behind it, tilting off to the left – but it doesn't.'
'Let's see what the inside is like.' Herewiss headed toward the opening in the building before them, wide and dark.
They left the horses hobbled in the courtyard and followed him in. It wasn't as dark inside as they had expected. They stood at one side of a great square room, with a huge opening in the stone of the ceiling, like a skylight; it was positioned directly over what appeared to be a firepit raised some feet above the floor on a platform. Around the walls of the hall were doors opening on to vaguely lit passageways. Through one of these they could
see a flight of stairs leading upward. The stairs were uneven, one broad one being staggered with two steep narrow ones as far up as they could see.
'Well,' Herewiss said, 'if this is the dining hall, I wonder what the bedrooms are like? Let's look.'
The group went slowly across the hall, clustered together. 'I keep expecting something to jump out of one of those doors,' Freelorn said, as they started up the stairs.
'Well, I doubt it would be one of the original inhabitants,' Herewiss answered. 'The lack of furniture makes me think they moved out permanently – unless they have very severe tastes in decor.'
At the top of the stairs they paused for a moment. There was nothing to be seen but a long, long corridor full of open doorways into dark empty rooms. One door, the fourth or fifth one down on the left, must have opened to a room with a window; sunlight poured out through it and on to the opposite wall.
'We could look at the view,' Herewiss said, and started down the hall. He looked into the first door he passed—
—and halted in midstep. Freelorn bumped into him, and Lang into Freelorn, and Segnbora into Lang, and they all looked—
There was no room behind the door. The stone of the doorsill was there, hard and solid under their hands as they reached out to reassure themselves of it: but through the opening cut in the glittering gray they saw a mighty mountain promontory rearing upward from a sea the color of blood. Pink foam crashed upward from the breaking waves and fell on the rose-and-opal beaches; the wind, blowing in from the sea, stirred trees with leaves the color of wine, showing the leaves' flesh-colored undersides. The mountain was forested in deep purples and mauves; a cloud of morning mist lay about its shoulders.
Herewiss reached out, very very slowly, and put his hand through the doorway. After a moment he withdrew it, rubbing his fingers together.
'It's cooler there,' he said, 'and damp. Lorn, this is it. Doors into Otherwheres—'
They moved on slowly to the next door.
It showed them sand, endless reaches of it: butter-colored sand, carved by relentless winds into rippled dunes with crests like knives, stretching from one horizon to the other in perfect straight lines. A corrugated desert, showing not one sign of life, not the tiniest plant or creature. The sky was such a deep pure blue violet as one sometimes sees in the depths of a lake at evening.
'If you cut our sky with a knife,' Segnbora whispered, 'it would bleed that color.'
'Come on—'
The next doorway opened on a hallway of gray stone, crowded with seven people who looked through a doorway at a hallway of gray stone, crowded with seven people who looked through a doorway at a hallway—
'Dear Goddess!' Freelorn said, and spun to look behind him. There was nothing there but another doorway, this one showing a volcano erupting with terrible, silent violence against a night sky. A flying rock fell close to the door as he watched. He flinched back and Herewiss reached out to steady him.
'It's all right. Let's go on.'
'What if that had come through?'
'I don't know if it can – though it does seem likely. Look at the sun coming out of this one—'
They gathered before the next door. 'Suns, you mean,' Dritt said. They looked down on a placid seashore. Out over the dark water, one small red sun was going down in a
fury of crimson clouds; another one, larger and fiercely blue, shone higher in the sky.
'Two suns.' Moris's voice, usually loud and abrasive, was hushed. 'Two suns! What kind of place is that?'
'Goddess only knows. Look at this one—'
The group relaxed a little, broke slightly apart as each person went looking through a separate doorway, looking for a wonder of their own.
'—blue trees?'
'What the Dark is this??'
'Look, it's our country. Moris, isn't that the Eorlhowe? And the North Arlene peninsula—'
'This one is underwater – look, there goes a fish!' 'I didn't know the Goddess made birds that big.' 'It's snowing here, I can't see a thing.'
Herewiss was standing before a doorway that showed nothing – nothing at all, a vague blurry darkness. Not the darkness of night, but an absence, an absence of anything at all. He looked at it, and his heart was beating fast. An unused door? Maybe—
Freelorn came to him from further up the hall, took Herewiss's arm and began to pull him along. 'What? What?' Herewiss said, but Lorn wouldn't answer him. He pulled Herewiss in front of one door. 'Look,' he said.
The door showed them a view from a high place, looking down into a landscape afire with a sunset the color of new love. Below and before them stretched a fantastic growth of crystalline forms, islanded between two rivers; jutting upward against the extravagant sky like prisms of quartz or amethyst or polished amber, but scored and carved and patterned, dappled with sunset light. They grew in all sizes and shapes, a forest of gigantic gems, spears of opal and dark jade and towers of obsidian. They caught the light of day's end and reflected it back from a thousand different planes and angles, golden, red, orange, pink, smoky twilight blue; a barbaric and magnificent display of a god's crown-jewels, the diadem of Day set down between the crimson rivers as the Sun retired. One spire reached higher than all the others around it, a masterwork of crystal set in gray stone and topped with a spearing crown of silver steel. On the crown's peak a single ruby flared, pulsing like a Dragon's eye, and rays of light struck up from the circlet like pale swords against the deepening blue. In the silences of the upper sky, a crescent Moon smiled at the evening star that flowered beside it.
Beside Herewiss, Freelorn moved softly, as if afraid to break a dream. 'What is it?' he whispered. 'Is it real?'
'Somewhere it is.'
'Is it really what it looks like, a city? How did they build it? Or did it grow? And is that glass? How did they make it that way—?'
Herewiss shook his head, and out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of Segnbora moving slowly and silently toward the door, like one entranced. He reached out and caught her by the arm, and she pulled at him a little, wanting to be let go.
'No,' he said. 'Segnbora – look at the view. The door opens out on to somewhere very high. There may be ground under it, but there may not be. You could step out on to nothing. And it would be a shor
t flight for someone who doesn't have wings.'
She stared out the doorway with longing, the colors of the softening sunset catching in her eyes. 'It might be worth it,' she said.
'Come on—'
The next doorway was dark, but not as the one Herewiss had seen. In the endless depths of its darkness, stars were suspended. Not the remote cold stars of night in the desert, but great flaming swarms of them, hot and beautiful, cast carelessly across the boundless black reaches of eternity. And close, so close you could surely put your hand out and pluck one like an apple. They spun outward from a blazing common core, burning like the sudden fiery realization of joy—
Freelorn took a step toward the doorway. 'This is the real Door,' he said, very softly, 'the last Door—'
Alarm stirred in Herewiss, drowning his appreciation of the beauty in sudden concern for Freelorn. 'Not the Door into Starlight, no,' he said. 'You can't see that until you're dead, Lorn, or have the Flame – and you're in neither condition—'
'But my father—'
'That's not where he is.' Herewiss took Freelorn by his shoulders, as much from compassion as from fear that he might cast himself through. 'Your father is past that other Door – down by the Sea of which the Starlight is a faint intimation. They're lovely, but these are just stars. Not the final Sea.'
Freelorn turned away, but Herewiss was troubled: there had been no feeling of release, of giving up the vision, no feeling of Freelorn accepting what was. 'Lorn—'
'Let me be.' Freelorn walked away from him, walked down the stairs, oblivious to the wondering comments of his people as they peered through one door or another.
Herewiss stared after him, worrying. He was distracted after a moment by a touch on his arm; Segnbora looked up at him. There was concern in her eyes. 'Are we staying the night?' she asked.
'I think so.'
She turned to look through the starry door, and sighed. 'That's been much on his mind lately,' she said.
'It's always on his mind,' Herewiss said sadly. 'As you'll
find when you've known him as long as I have.' Segnbora nodded and went off to look through another
door. Damn, Herewiss thought, there's going to be crying tonight . . .
That night they camped in the great hall around the firepit. There was no need to gather firewood, for Sunspark decided to inhabit the deep-set hearth, and burned there the night long. Freelorn and his people made much of it, and Sunspark flamed in unlikely shapes and colors for quite a while, showing off. But Herewiss was vaguely uneasy about something, and found himself bothered by the occasional perception of bright eyes in the fire, watching him with an odd considering look.
They ate hugely that night, and went to sleep early. Dritt and Harald went off to investigate one of another of the doors before they slept. After being gone for not more than a few minutes Dritt came down the stairs again, looking slightly dazed.
Freelorn and Herewiss were sitting with their backs to the firepit, working at a skin of Brightwood that Freelorn had liberated from the Ferry Tavern; the lovers'-cup was halfway through its fifth refill, and both of them looked up at Dritt with slightly addled concern as he went by.
'It was me,' he said. 'May I?' He gestured at the cup. 'Sure,' Freelorn said.
Dritt reached down and took a long, long drink. 'This morning,' he said, 'that was me, just now. I went upstairs, and it was daytime in one of the doors, and there were people coming – the first people that any door showed –and I got a little excited and walked through it to have a look.'
'What was it like,' Herewiss said, 'going through?' 'Like nothing. Like going through a door.' Dritt put the cup down. 'Thanks. So I waited there for a while – and of course, it was us. Of course. It shook me a little at the tune, and I stepped back, and then I couldn't see me any more—'
'Which of you couldn't see you?'
'Hell,' Dritt said, a little bemused, 'I'm not feeling terribly picky about the details right now. I'm going to bed.'
'G'night.'
'Yeah, good night . . .'
Dritt wandered away toward Moris's bedroll, and Herewiss picked up the cup and finished it. 'How much more of this is there?' he said.
'There's another skin.'
'Lorn, you amaze me. What else did you take out of there that wasn't nailed down?'
'No, no, I was a good boy. Only took the wine. I knew you'd like it, and I don't think the lady minded.'
'No,' Herewiss said. He chuckled then. 'Lorn, this has been some month for me . . .'
'How?'
'Just the strange things happening– and then seeing you again. It's good to have you close.' He put an arm around Lorn, hugged him tight.
'Yeah, it's good to be with you too . . . Listen, what are you going to do now?'
'Stay here.'
Freelorn was quiet for a long moment.
'Lorn, I have to. I need this place. You saw the doors, you know what they can do. I have to try to find one that'll do what I want it to.' Herewiss put out his hand to the lovers'-cup and played with it a little, turning it around and around. Please, he was thinking. Please, Lorn, don't start this – not now—
'I wish you wouldn't stay,' Freelorn said.
Herewiss didn't answer.
'If you cared,' Freelorn said. 'If you did care, about how I feel, the way you say you do, you wouldn't worry me by staying here. This place isn't natural—'
'Neither am I, Lorn.' Damn, I know that phrasing. He's going to cry. And then I'll start crying. And he'll get anything out of me he wants to, just like he always does—
'But you'll be all alone here—'
'Sunspark will be here. You saw what it did to the outer wall. I don't have much to be afraid of with a watchdog like that.'
'Herewiss. Listen to me.' Freelorn looked at him, earnestly, his face full of pain and hard-held restraint and the need to make Herewiss understand. Herewiss's insides went wrench at the sound of the tears rising in Freelorn's voice. 'This place — there's too much power here for other forces not to have taken notice of it. What is it you told me once, that as soon as you came into your Power, or started to, that would be the time to watch out, because new Powers are always noticed? And as soon as they come into being, the old Powers come to challenge them, to test them and see where they fit into the overall pattern?'
'Yes, but—'
'—and here's this place, there must be incredible power bottled up in it to make it do the things it does. And you'll sit here, merrily forging swords, and getting stronger and stronger, and Sunspark staying with you, a Power in its own right certainly — you think you won't attract notice? Doors open both ways, you know. Things can come in those doors as well as go out. If you needed proof, Dritt just gave it to you. Suppose something comes in while your back is turned?'
'Lorn—' Listen to him fighting the tears. Oh, Goddess,
how can I refuse him? I don't want to hurt him but I have to stay here—
'—listen, you could stay here a few days, a week, two maybe; we'd stay with you. And then you could come with us when we raid the Treasury at Osta, and get the money we need to hire mercenaries—'
'Lorn, that whole Osta thing is crazy. I don't want you messing with it. Besides, mercenaries may not be the way to handle this. I would prefer to pull it off without shedding blood.'
'You're awfully careful with other people's blood,' Freelorn said, a touch of anger beginning to creep into his voice now. 'And not enough with your own. Is that it? You figure that since Herelaf died by your sword, you should too? Something out of Goddess-knows– where should come up on you while you're busy working on the one sword that will redeem you, and kill you then? Atonement? Blood shed for blood shed? There is a certain poetic justice to it—'
'Lorn, stop it.' He's goading me on purpose, now. He must be so very afraid. But I never thought he would hurt me like this— Is he so afraid that he can't give in a little, let me have my own way? The danger isn't that great—
'If you die under conditi
ons like that,' Freelorn said, his anger growing, 'your death will mean nothing. Herelaf would shake his head at you, and he'd say, "Dad was right, your head is made of wood, just like everything else in this place—"'
I won't yell at him. I won't. He's my loved— 'Lorn, I never thought that you—'
'—but you're determined to die before you forge that sword and reach your Power, because success would mean giving up your guilt – and you haven't really worked on anything else since Herelaf died. It's sharper than any
sword, by now. You stick it into yourself every chance you get, and bleed a little more of your life and your power away, so that every time there's a little less of you left to pursue the search, a little less chance that you'll succeed. Now, though, you're getting close to success, and so you have to risk your life even more wildly by messing with places like this alone—'
'Lorn, shut up! Who brought me this journey, anyway? I would likely never have heard about this place if I hadn't been coming to get you out of that damn keep. And as for nursing guilts, how about you? Maybe it is easier to make love than to make kings, but it's also easier to talk about being a king than it is to be one! You've never forgiven yourself for being out of the country when your father died, instead of by his side to do the whole heroic last-stand thing that you always wanted; and you were too damn guilty about it to go back and try to take his throne, because you didn't think you deserved it! Idiot! Or coward! Which? You could have gone back and tried to make a stand, tried to take the Stave. Maybe you would have died! But is this life? Living in exile, mooching off poor Bort until he died? At least you had the sense to get out of Darthen until Eftgan's reign was settled, and she remembers the favor; she likes you as much as Bort did, it would seem. Lucky for you – otherwise it'd have been all over with you by now. Lately you couldn't lie your way out of an open field—'