The Door Into Fire

Herewiss made a face.

'That's how I felt,' Segnbora said. 'Well, what could I do? I gave it a chance, stuffed myself with more theory than most Rodmistresses would ever have use for. It was better than facing the truth, I suppose. And eventually I got to be eighteen, and they took me to the Forest Altars in the Brightwood, and I spent a year there in really advanced study — or so they called it. You know the Altars?'

'I live in the Brightwood,' Herewiss said dryly. And a lot of good it did me! 'Go on.'

'Yes. Well, when I turned nineteen, and Maiden's Day came around, I swore the Oath, and they took me into the Silent Precincts, and they brought out the Rod they had made for me. They were really proud of it, it came from Earn's Blackstave in the Grove of the Eagle, it'd been cut in the full of the Moon with the silver knife and left on the Flame Altar for a month. And they gave it to me and I channeled Flame through it—'

'—and you broke it.'

'Splinters everywhere, the Chief Wardress ducked and turned around and took one right in the rear. Oh, such embarrassment you haven't seen anywhere. The Wardress claimed I did it on purpose — she and I had had a few minor disagreements on matters of theory—'

'Kerim is a disagreement looking for a place to happen.'

'Yes,' Segnbora said tiredly, 'indeed she is. Well. They went down the whole Dark-be-damned list of trees, and I broke oak Rods and ash and willow and blackthorn and rowan and you name it. Finally the Wardresses who were there shrugged and said they'd never seen anything like it, but they couldn't help me. So here I am, so full of Power that sometimes it crawls out my skin at night and changes the ground where I lie — but I can't control so much of it as to heal a cut finger, or bring a drop of rain.' She sighed. 'A whole life wasted in the pursuit of the one art I can't master.'

Herewiss sat there and felt an odd twisted kind of pleasure. So I'm not the only one like this! Well, well— But then he pushed it aside, ashamed of it.

'Precisely,' Segnbora said, her voice tight, and Herewiss blushed fiercely. 'Oh,' she said, and smiled again, 'they really push you at Nhairedi; my underhearing got awfully good.'

'I'm sorry—'

'Don't be. I must confess feeling a moment's satisfaction when I realized what your problem was. I'm sorry, too.'

Herewiss sighed. 'You're a long way from the Forest Altars.'

She shrugged. 'How long can a person keep trying? I spent three more years in the Precincts, fasting and praying and trying to beat my body into submission — I thought I could tame the Power that way.' She snorted. 'It was a silly idea. I ended up half- wrecked, with the Fire almost dead in me from the abuse. I had to let it rest for a long time before it would come back. Then after a while I said, 'What the Dark!' and just went off to travel. The Power's going to wither up in me soon enough, but there's no reason to be bored while it does. I made Freelorn's acquaintance in Madeil; and traveling in company is more interesting than being alone. Especially with him.' She chuckled.

'But you still have a lot going for you,' Herewiss said, though the empty place in him realized how such a statement might feel to her. 'You studied at Nhairedi, you certainly got enough sorcery from them to make yourself a living by it—'

Segnbora shrugged again. 'True. But I have better things to do with my life than spell broken cartwheels back together or divine for well-diggers or mix potions to make men potent. Or thought I had. I spent all those years cultivating the wreaking ability — and then nothing came up. I was going to reach inside minds and really understand motivations — not just make do with the little blurred glimpses you get from underhearing, all content and no context. I was going to untwist the hurt places in people, and heal wounds with something better than herbs and waiting. To really hear what goes on in the world around, to talk to thunderstorms and soar in a bird's body and run down with some river to the Sea. I was going to move the forces of the world, to command the elements, and be them when I chose. To give life, to give Power back to the Mother. To sing the songs that the stars sing, and hear them sing back. And they told me I'd do all that, and I believed them. And it was all for nothing.'

She looked out into nothing as she spoke, and her voice drifted remotely through the descending dusk as if she were telling a bedtime story to a drowsy child. From the quiet set of her face, it might have been a story laid in some past age, all the loves and strivings in it long since resolved. But the pain in her eyes was here-and-now, and Herewiss's underhearing caught the sound of a child, awake and alone in the darkness, crying softly.

He sat there and knew the sound too well; he'd heard it in himself, in the middles of more nights than he cared to count. 'If you had it, you know,' he said, trying to find a crumb of comfort for her, 'you'd probably just die early.'

He had tried to make a joke of it, an acknowledgement of shared pain. But she turned to him, and looked at him, and his heart sank. 'Who cares if you die early,' she said very quietly, 'as long as you've lived.'

He dropped his eyes and nodded.

They sat and gazed at the sunset for a little while.

'I'm sorry,' Segnbora said eventually, pulling her knees up to her chest and wrapping her arms around them. 'The problem is much with me these days; it's dying, you see. But it must be worse for you. At least for me there's hope—'

'There's hope,' Herewiss said harshly, 'just fewer people to believe in me. A lot fewer.'

'That's what I meant,' she said, and to his surprise, he believed her. 'That jolt you gave me when we touched -you certainly have enough to use. If you live in the Brightwood, you must have tried the Altars too—'

'Yes.'

'And?'

'They turned me away.' 'They did what?' 'I couldn't use a Rod.'

'Well, of course you couldn't! It's a woman's symbol, your undermind would interfere with it. What were they thinking of?'

She was all indignation now, and Herewiss, feeling it was genuine, warmed to her a little. 'You're a man, what did they expect? And just because you couldn't use a Rod, they gave up on you?'

'Yes.'

Segnbora frowned at Herewiss, and he leaned back a little, stricken by the angry intensity of the expression. 'There are few enough women since the Catastrophe who have the Power,' she said, 'less than a tenth of us — and no men at all — Do they think there are enough people running around using Flame that they can afford to throw one away? A male, no less.' She shook her head. 'They must have been crazy.'

'I thought so at the time.'

'What did they say?'

Herewiss shrugged. 'I asked for help in finding something else to use as a focus. I thought that, since the sword is very symbolic of the Power for me, that I might use one as focus. They said it was hopeless, that the Power was a thing of flesh and blood and the lightning that runs along the nerves, and that it could never flow through anything that hadn't been alive, like wood. Well, I said, how about a sword made of wood or ivory? Oh, no, they said to me, the sword in concept and design is an instrument of death, and unalterably opposed to the principles of the Power. They just wouldn't help me at all. I guess I didn't fit their image of how a male with the Power would act, when one finally showed up. So I left, and went my own ways to study.'