The Tale of the Five Omnibus

by Diane Duane

He looked across the room at her for a while, still not moving. (I’m glad you’re here,) he said finally. (I can’t tell him about this—) A quick thought, a flicker of the shape of an arrowhead, passed between them. (I hope you won’t either.)

  Segnbora shook her head.

  Herewiss straightened, laid Khávrinen aside. Away from its source, the Fire in the blade died down to the merest glow. Only in his hands did a little Flame remain burning. Looking down at Freelorn, Herewiss absently began to pour it from hand to hand. Like burning water it flowed, the essence of life, the stuff of shapechanges and mastery of elements and magics of the heart, the Goddess’s gift to the Lovers and to humankind: the Power that founded the world, that the Shadow had lost and caused men to lose.

  And there’s nothing It hates more, Segnbora thought to herself. Though love probably comes close.

  She closed her eyes to the light of Herewiss’s hands, shuddered, and went to sleep.

  TWO

  …ere the Dark could spredde so far as to kyll all Powre and thought… there fled to Lake Rilthor that was holie, the men and womyn gretest of Fire aft that time. And of theyre greate might and Powyre, that those whoo came after the Darke should learn agayn the wrekings of those auncient daies, those Wommen and Men did drive their Flame down intoo the mount at the Lak’s heart; and all dyed there, that Fyre might bee spared from the Darrk for those to comm after. Therefore it ys called Morrow-fane.

  (Of the Dayes of Travaile, ms. xix, in rr’Virendir, Prydon)

  …they say that after the Error, there the Maiden lay down in love with Her other Selves, celebrating the Great Marriage. In the joy of that sharing, the Fire with which She creates flowed forth and sank deep in earth and stone, so that to this day the Fane burns with it. And those who dare to climb the Fane share in that first Sharing themselves, becoming Her Lovers as well: and as in that first sharing, their need is filled, and new life is given them…

  Book of Places of Power, ch. 3

  It is the Heart of the World: there is no other.

  (d’Elthed, Reflections in the Silent Precincts, 6)

  In the long west-reaching shadow of the glittering gray walls that rose a hundred fathoms high, fourteen figures stood: seven riders, and six horses, and a creature that looked like a blood-bay stallion, but wasn’t. Dawn was barely over, and the morning was still cool. The vast expanse of the Waste all around—sand and rubble and salt pans—was sharp and bright in the crisp air. But behind them the Hold from which they had departed wavered and shimmered uncannily, as if in the heat of noon.

  “Be glad to be out of here,” Lang muttered from beside Segnbora.

  She nodded, yanking absently at her mare Steelsheen’s reins to keep her from biting Lang’s dapple-gray, Gyrfalcon. The Hold unnerved Segnbora too. The Old People from whom the humans of the Middle Kingdoms were said to be descended had wrought with their Fire on an awesome scale. Within those slick and jointless towering walls, odd buildings reared up—skewed towers, blind of windows; stairs that started in midair and went nowhere; steps staggered in such a way as to suggest that the builders, or those who used the building, had more legs than humans; more rooms inside the inner buildings than their outer walls could possibly contain.

  And worst of all, or best, the place was full of doors—entrances into other worlds. There were also gateways to other places in this world, and doors into areas not even classifiable as worlds or places. People could go out those doors and return. People, or things, could come in them, as the hralcins had. Segnbora shivered.

  “You sure you can pull this off?” Freelorn was saying nervously to Herewiss.

  “Mmmph,” Herewiss said. He was standing with Khávrinen unsheathed, and seemed to be minutely examining a patch of empty air three feet in front of him. The Fire that ran down from his hand flooded the length of Khávrinen, leaping out from it in quick tongues that stretched out and snapped back, reflecting his concentration.

  Behind Herewiss, Sunspark extended its magnificent head to nibble teasingly at the sleeve of Freelorn’s surcoat, leaving singed places where it bit. (You have to be careful, doing worldgating inside a world,) it said, sounding smug. (Don’t distract him.)

  Freelorn smacked the elemental’s nose away and got a scorched hand for his pains. “He could have used one of the doors in the Hold. Now he’s got to use his Flame—”

  (It’s simpler doing it yourself,) Sunspark said. It knew about such things, having been a traveler among worlds before love had bound it to Herewiss’s service. (And more reliable. Those doors are complex…it would have taken quite a while to figure them out. Don’t complain.)

  “I’m not.”

  Segnbora restrained an urge toward amusement. Sunspark had done perhaps more than any of them to save all their lives two nights before, holding the hralcins off until Herewiss could break through into his Flame. It had done so specifically because it knew Herewiss loved Freelorn, and would have been in anguish if he died. But Sunspark seemed determined not to admit its motives to Lorn—from caution, or for the sake of sheer devilry, it was impossible to tell.

  Herewiss stood scowling at the air he had been examining, or whatever lay beyond it. It was dangerous, this business of opening doors to go from one place to another. Gates, when opened, tended to tear as wide as they could. A person doing a wreaking had to maintain complete control, or risk ending up in a world that looked exactly like the one he wanted to journey in, but with minor differences—a differing past or future, say, or familiar people missing.

  Segnbora was not happy that one man was trying to pull off a gating by himself, and in such an unprotected place. All her previous experiences with worldgates had been in the Silent Precincts, where safe-wreakings bound every leaf or blade of grass about the Forest Altars. Always there had been ten or twenty senior Rodmistresses on call to assist if there was trouble, and never had a gate been held open long enough for so many to pass through. She hoped Herewiss knew what he was doing.

  Herewiss didn’t move, but from where Khávrinen’s point rested against the ground, a sudden runnel of blue Fire uncoiled like a snake and shot out across the sand. It put down swift roots to anchor itself, then leaped upward into the air. The atmosphere prickled with ruthlessly constrained Power as the line of blue light described a doorway as tall as Herewiss and twice as wide. When the frame was complete the Fire ran back along its doorsill and reached upward again, this time branching out like ivy on an unseen trellis, filling the doorway with a network that steadily grew more complex. In a few breaths’ time the door became one solid, pulsing panel of blue.

  Sweat stood on Herewiss’s face. “Now,” he said, still unmoving.

  The blue winked out, all but the outline. From beyond the door a wet-smelling wind struck out and smote them all in the face. Lake Rilthor, their destination, lay in the lowlands, a thousand feet closer to sea level than the Waste. Through the door Segnbora saw green grass, and a soft rolling meadow leading down toward a silver-hazed lake, within which a hill was half-hidden.

  “Go on,” Herewiss said, and his voice sounded strained. “Don’t take all day.”

  They led their horses through as quickly as they could, though not as quickly as they wanted to, for without exception the horses tried to put their heads down to graze as soon as they passed the doorway, and had to be pulled onward to let the others through. At last Segnbora was able to pull the reluctant Steelsheen through after the others. She was followed closely by Herewiss and Sunspark, behind whom the door winked out with a very audible slam of sealed-in air.

  Segnbora turned to compliment Herewiss and found him half-collapsed over Sunspark’s back, with Freelorn supporting him anxiously from one side. He looked like a man who had just run a race; his breath went in and out in great racking gasps, and his face was going gray.

  “I thought there’d be no more backlash once you got your Fire!” Freelorn said.

  Herewiss rolled his head from side to side on the saddle, unable for several moments to find eno
ugh breath to reply. “Different,” he said, “different problem,” and started to cough.

  Freelorn pounded his back ineffectually while Segnbora and the others looked on. When the coughing subsided, Herewiss rested his head on the saddle again, still gasping. “—open too wide,” he said.

  “What? The gate?”

  “No. Me.”

  Confused, Freelorn looked at Segnbora. “Do you know what he’s talking about?”

  She nodded. “In a worldgating, the gate isn’t really the physical shape you see. The gate is in your mind—the ‘door’ shape is just a physical expression of When you open a gate, you’re actually throwing your soul wide open. Anything can get out. And anything can get in. It’s not pleasant.”

  “I don’t know about you people, but I can hardly hear,” Dritt said rather loudly.

  “Swallow,” Herewiss said. “Your ears’ll pop.” At last, his strength returning, he looked around with satisfaction. “You’re better than I am with distances, Lorn. How far from Lake Rilthor would you say we are?”

  Freelorn shaded his eyes, looking first at the Sun to orient himself. “It’s a little higher—”

  “Of course. We’re sixty leagues west.”

  Freelorn looked southwest toward the lake, and to the mist-girdled peak rising from its waters. “Four miles, I’d say.”

  “That’s about what I wanted,” Herewiss said, pleased. “Not bad for a first gating.”

  “It’s so quiet,” Harald said, looking around suspiciously.

  “It’s a holy place,” said Moris, unruffled and matter-of-fact as always.

  Segnbora looked around at the silent green country, agreeing, opening out her undersenses to the affect of this place. Like most fanes or groves or great altars, the Morrowfane made you feel that Someone was watching—Someone who would only speak using the heart’s own voice. Yet the feeling here was less personified, more remote, than any she’d experienced before. Above everything hung a waiting silence, as when the hawk sails high and no bird sings. Below the silence was a slow, steady throbbing of incalculable power, as if the world’s heart beat nearby. A ruthless inturned benevolence slept at the center of Lake Rilthor, and slept lightly. It was no wonder that there wasn’t a town or a farm or even a sheepfold for miles around.

  —It was not a smell, or a feeling, or a vision precisely, that started to creep up on her. Segnbora stood up straight, glancing around at the others. None of them sensed what she had. Herewiss and Freelorn were leaning against Lorn’s dun, Blackmane, together, speaking quietly; Moris and Dritt had walked off a little way to look southwest at the Fane; Lang was rubbing down the perpetually sweaty Gyrfalcon; Harald was seeing to yellow-coated Swallow’s cinches. Sunspark had disappeared on some mysterious errand of its own.

  She turned and looked east, her hand dropping to Charriselm’s hilt. There it was again, another flash of othersight—vague and odd, focus bizarrely rounded, colors all awry. And smell too, acrid, terrible, enraging. That’s familiar, I know that—

  Then the memory found her: that one time in the Precincts when the novices, carefully supervised, were allowed to shapechange and feel what a beast’s body was like. “Herewiss!” Segnbora said, turning to him in alarm.

  He put his head up to the wind, gazing eastward as she had, but saw nothing.

  “You just did a wreaking,” she said. “You may still be overloaded. Taste it!”

  Herewiss closed his eyes and reached out his undersenses. Segnbora did too, standing swaying in the long grass, and caught the impression again, stronger this time. Now there was something even more unnerving added to the flash of skewed viewpoint: thought, stunted and twisted and bizarre, but thought. And it was all of hate.

  The mind she touched bounded above the whipping grass for a moment. It saw forms on the horizon, the source of a maddening stench.

  She heard a cough, opened her eyes to see Herewiss choking as he tried to speak. His empathy must have been more profound than hers, for the remembered shape of the runner’s throat was keeping the words from getting out. “Fyrd!” he croaked at last, and pushed away from Blackmane, hurriedly unsheathing Khávrinen.

  Segnbora’s eyes widened. “But that was thinking! Fyrd are Shadow-twisted, but they’re just beasts. They don’t think!”

  “My move’s been anticipated,” Herewiss said bitterly. He swung Khávrinen sideways, whipping a great brilliance of Fire angrily down the blade. “Our enemy’s a step ahead of me. And mocking us!”

  Segnbora understood. At Bluepeak, long ago, the Shadow had driven that first terrible breed of thinking Fyrd down from the mountain country into the Kingdoms. Far more dangerous than the first noxious things It had twisted out of the beasts of ancient days, these Fyrd had the cunning of warriors. It had taken the Transformation, in which Earn and Healhra burned away their very forms and their mortality, to exterminate that breed. And now, for Herewiss’s sake, here they were again—

  Steel scraped out of sheaths all around as movement became visible in the high grass to the east. Segnbora’s under-senses brought her more and more clearly the experience of their hungry rage. The hunters knew their quarry was human, and hated them for it. They were coming to do murder.

  “Dammit,” Herewiss muttered, “Sunspark, where are you when I need you?!” But no answering thought came, and Herewiss hefted Khávrinen grimly. Only two days forged, and already the sword would be tasting blood

  There was little time to prepare. One moment the dark backs were jolting closer and closer through the tall grass; the next, with a wave of grunts and screeches, the Fyrd were upon them. Segnbora found herself holding her blade too high to guard against a maw that was suddenly springing at her throat. She threw herself sideways. Jaws went snick! the air above where she had been. She hit the ground, rolled, found her footing, sprang up again. The maw hit the turf where she’d rolled. For a moment it tore the ground with teeth and talons, its hunched back to her. That was all she needed. Choosing her spot Segnbora swung Charriselm up, sliced down through thick flesh to the shock of bone. The maw writhed and screamed once, its half-severed head flopping into the grass. She paid it no more heed, simply whipped the blood off Charriselm and swung around to find another foe. There were certain to be plenty—

  —More maws, five or six of them, broad and round with piggish, wicked eyes; several keplian, horse-looking things with carnivores’ teeth and three razory toes on each forefoot; other shapes less identifiable. The standard Fyrd varieties had been twisted yet further away from the animals they had anciently been. Segnbora forgot about specifics and dove away from the spring of one maw, took another one across the chest with a two-handed stroke and was knocked down by its momentum. Move, move, as long as you’re moving you’re safe! she could hear her old sword-instructor Shíhan shouting at her as she scrambled back to her feet.

  Off to her left she heard Steelsheen scream in defiance and crash into a Fyrd; a skull crunched, crushed by hooves. At the same time Segnbora got a pinwheeling glimpse of Khávrinen jerking up in Herewiss’s hands after a downstroke. A half-seen form came at her low and sideways—Segnbora chopped at it, a poorly aimed blow that slid off hard smooth plates. Hissing, the nadder’s gigantic serpent-head rose up before her, then struck. She danced desperately aside, swung scythe-style at it and chopped off the head at the neck.

  Segnbora turned away and looked around. Khávrinen struck downward again, and as it struck both Herewiss and the keplian he had killed moaned aloud. The Fire wavering about those parts of the blade not yet obscured illuminated Herewiss’s face. Tears? Segnbora thought, though not entirely in surprise. Khávrinen was more of a symbol than a weapon, and Herewiss was no killer—

  Steelsheen trampled another maw, and Moris nailed the last one to the ground with a two-handed straight-down thrust. Finally everyone was standing still, panting, sagging, wiping blood out of their eyes.

  “More coming!” Segnbora said, wanting to moan out loud at the feeling of yet another of those hot, hating minds
heading their way from the north. The source was still a hundred yards away, but showing much more of itself above the grass than had the other Fyrd. Segnbora recognized it, and her heart constricted in terror. She’d never seen one of these, but if the stories of the creatures’ endurance were true, this one could afford to take its time.

  “Oh Goddess,” whispered Freelorn from beside her. “A deathjaw!”

  “With the Fire,” Herewiss said between gasps, “possibly—” He lifted Khávrinen again, but there was no great hope in the gesture. Deathjaws were so fearsome that there was only one way to successfully hunt them: stake out a human being as bait, and hide a Rodmistress close by to do a brainburn when the thing got close enough. We’ve got plenty of bait, thought, but he doesn’t know how to do a brainburn, or he’d have done it by now.

  The shambling form was closer. “Run for it,” Herewiss said, sounding very calm.

  Everyone hesitated. “I mean it,” Herewiss shouted, “what are you waiting for? ”

  Lang turned, and Moris, and Harald, but they were slow about retreating. Freelorn didn’t move from beside Herewiss. Herewiss’s glance darted sidewise to him. “Lorn—!”

  “Big, isn’t it,” Freelorn said. His eyes were wide with fear, but his voice was as steady as if he was discussing a draft horse.

  “Lorn—!”

  “Shut up, Dusty,” Freelorn said. “Do whatever you’re going to do to that thing. I’ll watch your back”

  Segnbora stepped up behind them as they set themselves. “I don’t know how to burn ,” Herewiss said to Segnbora, without looking at her. “The eye, though, that’s possible—“

  —Put a longsword into that little eye and hope to hit the brain? Segnbora didn’t dare laugh at the idea. The deathjaw was close—shaggy-coated, brindled, the size of three Darthene lions. Shiny black talons gleamed on its great catlike paws. The deathjaw opened its mouth just a little, showing two of its three lines of fangs above and below. Then it finally began to run, its face wrinkling into a horrible mask.