'This is lovely stuff,' Herewiss said. 'How are you getting it all the way down here from the Brightwood?'
The lady smiled. 'I have my sources,' she said.
She lowered her cup and held it in her lap, staring into the fire. The wine was working strongly in Herewiss now, so that his mind wandered a little and he looked out the window. The Moon was all risen above the peaks now, and the two dark eyes were joined by a mouth making an V of astonishment. He wondered what the Moon saw that shocked her so.
'Herewiss,' the lady said, and he turned back to look at her. The expression she wore was odd. Her face was sober, maybe a little sad, but her eyes were bright and testing, as if there was an answer she wanted from him.
'Madam?'
'Herewiss,' she said, 'how many swords have you broken now?'
Alarm ran through him, but it was dulled; by the wine, and by the look on her face — not threatening, not even curious, but only weary. It looked like Freelorn's face when he asked the same question, and the voice sounded like Freelorn's voice. Tired, pitying, maybe a bit impatient.
'Fifty-four,' he said, 'about thirty or thirty-five of my own forging. I broke the last one the day I left the Wood.'
'And the Forest Altars were no help to you.'
'None. I've also spoken with Rodmistresses who don't hold with the ways of the Forest Orders or the Wardresses of the Precincts, but there was nothing they could do for me either. But, madam, how do you know about this? No-one knew except for my father, and Lorn—'
He looked at her in sudden horror. Had Lorn been so indiscreet as to mention the blue Fire—
She shook her head at him, smiling, and was silent. For a while she gazed into the fire, and then said, 'And how old are you now?'
'Twenty-eight,' he said, shortly, like an unhappy child.
The lady rubbed her nose and leaned back in her chair until her pose almost matched Herewiss's. 'You feel your time growing short, I take it.'
'Even if I had control of the Power right now,' Herewiss said, 'it would be starting to wane. I'd have, oh, ten years to use it if I didn't overextend myself. Which I would,' he added, smiling a little at himself. 'Oh, I would.'
'How so?' She was looking at him again, a little intrigued, a little bemused.
Herewiss drained his cup and stared into the fire. 'Really! If I came into my Power, there I'd be, the first male since Earn and Healhra to bear Flame. That is, if the first use didn't kill me. Think of the fame! Think of the fortune!' He laughed a little. 'And think of the wreaking,' he said, more gently, his face softening, 'think of the storms I could still, the lives I could save, the roads I could walk. The roads . . .'
He poured himself another cup of wine. 'The roads in the sky, and past it,' he said. 'The roads the Dragons know. The ways between the Stars. Ten years would be too high an estimate. Better make it seven, or five. I'd burn myself out like a levinbolt.' He drank deeply, and set the cup down again. 'But what a way to go.'
The lady watched him, her head propped on her hand, considering.
'What price would you be willing to pay for your Power?' she asked.
The question sounded rhetorical, and Herewiss, dreamy with wine and warmth, treated it as such. 'Price? The Moon on a silver platter! A necklace of stars! One of the Steeds of the Day—'
'No, I meant really.'
'Really. Well, right now I'm paying all my waking hours, just about; or I was, before I had to get Freelorn out of the badger- hole he got himself stuck in. What more do I have to give?'
He looked at her, and was surprised to see her face serious again. Something else he noticed; there was an oddness about the inside of her cloak. ... He had thought it as black within as without, but it wasn't. As he strained his eyes in the firelight, there seemed to be some kind of light in its folds, some kind of motion, but faint, faint — He blinked, and didn't see it, and dismissed the notion; and then on his next look he saw it again. A faint light, glittering—
No, — it must have been the wine. He rejected the image.
The lady's eyes were intent on him, and he noticed how very green they were, a warm green like sunlit summer fields. 'Herewiss,' she said, her voice going very low, 'your Name, would you give that for your Power?'
Of all the strange things he had heard so far, that startled him badly, and the wine went out in him as if someone had poured water on the small fire it had lit. 'Madam, I don't know my Name,' he said, and wondered suddenly what he had gotten himself into, wondered what kind of woman kept an inn out here on the borders of human habitation, all alone—
He looked again at the cloak, with eyes grown wary. It was no different. In the black black depths of it something shone, tiny points of an intense silvery light, infinite in number as if the cloak had been strewn with jeweldust, or the faint innumerable stars of Healhra's Road. Stars—?
She looked at him, earnest, sincere; but the testing look was also in her eyes, the look that awaited an answer, and the right one. A look that dared him to dare.
'If you knew it,' she said, 'would you pay that price for your Power?'
'My Name?' he said slowly. Certainly there was no higher price that he could pay. His inner Name, his own hard-won knowledge of himself, of all the things he could be-But he didn't know it. And even if he had, the thought of giving his inner Name to another person was frightening. It was to give your whole self, totally, unreservedly; a surrender of life, breath and soul into other hands. To tell a friend your Name, that was one thing. Friends usually had a fairly good idea of what you were to begin with, and the fact that they didn't use it against you was earnest of their trustworthiness. But to sell your Name to a stranger-to pay it, as a price for something — the thought was awful. Once a person had your Name, they could do anything to you — bind you to their will, take that Name from you and leave you an empty thing, a shell in which blood flowed and breath moved, but no life was. Or bind you into some terrible place that was not of this world. Or, horrible thought, into another body that wasn't yours; man or beast or Fyrd or demon, it wouldn't much matter. Madness would follow shortly. The possibilities for the misuse of a Name were as extensive as the ingenuity of malice.
But—
—to have the Power.
To have that blue Fire flower full and bright through some kind of focus, any kind. To heal, and build, and travel about the Kingdoms being needed. To talk to the storm, and understand the thoughts of Dragons, and feel with the growing earth, and run down with the rivers to the Sea. To walk the roads between the Stars. To be trusted by all, and worthy of that trust. To be whole.
Even as he sat and thought, Herewiss could feel the Power down inside him; feeble, stunted, struggling in the empty cavern of his self like a pale tired bird of fire. It fluttered and beat itself vainly against the cage-bars of his ribs every time his heart beat. Soon it wouldn't even be able to do that; it would drop to the center of him and lie there dead, poor pallid unborn Otherlife. Whenever he looked into himself after that, he would see nothing but death and ashes and endings. And then soon enough he would probably make an end of himself as well—
'If I knew it,' he said, and his voice sounded strange and thick to him, fear and hope fighting in it, 'I would. I would pay it. But it's useless.'
He looked at the innkeeper and was faintly pleased to see satisfaction in her eyes. 'Well then,' she said, pushing herself a little straighter in the chair, 'I think I have a commodity that would interest you.'
'What?' Herewiss was more interested in her cloak. 'Soulflight.'
He stared at her, amazed, and forgot about the cloak. 'How — where did you get it?'
'I have my sources,' she said, with a tiny twist of smile. She was watching him intently, studying his reactions, and for the moment Herewiss didn't care whether she was seeing what she wanted to or not.