The Tale of the Five Omnibus

by Diane Duane

  Later, when Efmaer was well again, with Fire and craft she wrought the splinter into a sword. Skádhwë, it was called in Darthene, “Dark-harm.” It would cut anything, stone or steel or soul, and many were Efmaer’s deeds with it across the breadth of Darthen and down the length of her reign. If anyone spoke in fear to Efmaer because she had cheated Death at its own Door, the Queen would laugh, unworried, certain the Shadow would never bother avenging so small a slight. Yet perhaps It did: for one day Efmaer’s loved, Sefeden, killed himself, and his soul passed into Méni Auärdhem, into Glasscastle, to which go suicides and those weary of life.

  In her grief Efmaer grew frightened, for Sefeden knew her inner Name; she feared his captive soul could hold hers captive too, trapped in this world, when it came her time to pass onward and be reborn. In haste Efmaer rode to Barachael, and climbed Mount Adínë, above which Glasscastle appeared at times of sunset and crescent Moon and Evenstar.

  There was no way for one still in the body to cross to the castle; the souls of the dead and the minds of the mad had no need of a physical road to make their way there. Efmaer might have attempted the crossing in a bird’s shape, or as a disembodied soul, but she knew the terrible magics of the place would warp her wreaking out of shape and kill her. Nor did she dare open a door to bring her there; such a wreaking could let the deadly twilight of that place free in the sunlit world.

  But Efmaer had a plan. She waited for the time of three Lights, when the castle faded into being. When it was fully there, she drew Skádhwë and smote the stone of Adínë with it, opening a great rent or wound in the mountain. With her Fire, Efmaer wrought the greatest wreaking of her lifetime, singing the mountain’s blood out of its wound, drawing out the incomparable iron of the great Eisargir lodes, tempering it in Flame and passion and forging it with ruthless song into a blue-steel bridge that arched up to the Castle, fit road for a mortal’s feet.

  When had she wrought the bridge, she climbed it. Efmaer came to Glasscastle’s crystal doors and passed them, seeking for Sefeden, to get her Name back. But she did not come out again. At nightfall Glasscastle vanished into its eternal twilight, until the next time of three Lights in the world…

  “And from that day to this,” Segnbora said at last, unnerved as always to feel the tears coming, “no one has been so bold as to say they have seen Efmaer d’Seldun among the living or the dead. With her, Skadhwë passed out of life and into legend; and in the years since the Queen’s disappearance, cheating Death has gone out of style…”

  The applause embarrassed her, as usual. She was glad to get out of what was now a very hot chair, and give place to Dritt and Moris and their juggling. Someone pushed a cup of cold wine into her hand. She took it gratefully and made her way to the back of the room, wiping her eyes as surreptitiously as she could.

  “Smoke,” she said to Lang as she came up beside him.

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  Together they held up the wall awhile, leaning on one another’s shoulder and watching Moris and Dritt juggle objects the audience gave them: beerpots, platters, clay pipes, truncheons, rushlight holders. Nothing fell, nothing at all.

  “I can’t believe it!” Lang whispered. “Did all that practicing actually pay off?”

  “Not a chance,” Segnbora whispered back. “I smell Fire. Herewiss has to have thrown a wreaking over them. I doubt they’ll even be able to drop a hint until he shuts it down.”

  Freelorn came toward them through the crowd, with another cup of wine in his hand.

  “Lorn,” Segnbora said softly as he joined them, “just you watch it.”

  “Yes, mother.”

  Segnbora settled back against the wall again and went back to watching the jugglers, particularly poor Moris, who had just been handed a full wine jug to add to the other objects being juggled. He was giving it a look such as the King gave the Maiden when he’d come to beg one of the hares She was herding. Glancing back at Lorn to see his reaction, Segnbora saw that he wasn’t paying attention. He was watching someone off to one side, out of the hearth light, eyes wide with what looked like admiration.

  A blocky man moved, and Segnbora could see over his shoulder. Past him, there, a small figure slipped out of her cloak, accepted a cup from the passing barmaid and raised it to her lips, looking over the rim in Freelorn’s direction. She was a short woman with close-cropped hair of a very fair blonde, small bright eyes like a bird’s, a mouth that quirked up at one corner—

  Segnbora froze for a breath, two breaths, watching the light from a wall-cresset catch in the butter-blonde hair, giving its owner a halo. (Tegánë,) she said silently, fighting hard to keep her delight off her face. The Precincts seemed a hundred years ago, sometimes, yet here was her old loved, unchanged, as if their days apart were only a matter of a hundred days. (You’re a long way from home: is Wyn keeping supper hot for you?)

  (‘Berend? Are you here?!) The face across the room didn’t change a bit, but Segnbora heard the old familiar laughter, sounding all the more real for being silent. (Now I see! ‘Berend, you—!)

  (Me what? What are you doing here?) She bowed her head over her cup, needing the darkness to hide the smile that wouldn’t stay in.

  (I was told to come! I dreamed true last night. She told me, ‘I know your troubles, and your questions. Go quickly to Chavi and you’ll find answers.’ I used the Kings’ Door, and a mile away I smelled so much Fire that—oh, ‘Berend, I’m so glad for you!)

  (Not me, Tegánë.) She flicked a mind-glance at Freelorn. (It’s this one’s loved.)

  (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. Suns
park 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 disturbed 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”: