'Are you a seeress?' he asked.
She shrugged at him. 'In a way. But I don't use the drug. It fell into my hands, and I've been looking for someone to whom I might responsibly give it.'
For a bare second Herewiss's mind reeled and soared, dreaming of what he could do with a dose of the Soulflight drug. Walk the past and the future, pass through men's minds and understand their innermost thoughts, walk between worlds, command the Powers and Potentialities and speak to the dead—
But it was a dream, and though dreams are free, real things have their price. 'How much do you have?'
'A little bottle, about half a pint.'
Herewiss laughed at her. 'I would have to sell you the Brightwood whole and entire with all its people for that much Soulflight,' he said. 'I'm only the Lord's son, not the Queen of Darthen, madam.' 'I'm not asking for money,' she said.
'What then? How many times do I have to sleep with you?'
She broke out laughing, and after a moment he joined her. 'Now that,' she said, 'is a gallant idea, but unless you have the talisman of the prince who shared himself with the thousand virgins, I doubt you could manage it. Not to mention that I'd be furrowed like the fields in March, and I wouldn't be able to walk for a month. How would I run the place?'
Herewiss, smiling, looked again at her cloak. The fire had died down somewhat, and he could see the stars more clearly — countless brilliantly blazing fires, burning silver-cold. He also perceived more clearly that there was a tremendous depth to the cloak, endless reaches of cool darkness going back away from him forever, though the cloak plainly ended at the back of the chair where the lady leaned on it.
He looked at her, dark hair, green eyes like the shadowed places about the Forest Altars, wearing the night. He knew with certainty who She was. Awe stirred in him, and joy as well.
'What's the price, madam?' he said, opening himself to the surges building inside him.
'I'll give you the drug,' she said, 'if you will swear to me that, when you find out your inner Name, you'll tell it to me.'
Herewiss considered the woman stretched out in the old tattered chair. 'Why do you want to know it?'
She eased herself a little downward, looking into the fire again, and smiled. After a little silence she said, 'I guess you could call me a patroness of sorts. Wouldn't it be to my everlasting glory to have helped bring the first male in all these empty years into his Power? And as all good deeds come back to the doer eventually, sooner or later, I'd reap reward for it.'
Herewiss laughed softly. 'That's not all you're thinking of.'
'No, it's not, I suppose,' said the innkeeper. 'Look, Herewiss; power, in all its forms, is a strange thing. Most of the power that exists is bound up, trapped, and though it tries to be free, usually it can't manage it by itself. The world is full of potential Power of all kinds, yes?'
He nodded.
'But at the same time, loss of power, the death of things, is a process that not even the Goddess can stop. Eventually even the worlds will die.'
'So they say.'
Her face was profoundly sorrowful, her eyes shadowed as if with guilt. 'The death is inevitable. But we have one power, all men and beasts and creatures of other planes. We can slow down the Death, we can die hard, and help all the worlds die hard. To that purpose it behooves us to let loose all the power we can. To live with vigor, to love powerfully and without caring whether we're loved back, to let loose building and teaching and healing and all the arts that try to slow down the great Death. Especially joy, just joy itself. A joy flares bright and goes out like the stars that fall, but the little flare it makes slows down the great Death ever so slightly. That's a triumph, that it can be slowed down at all, and by such a simple thing.'
'And you want to let me loose.' 'Don't you want to be loose?'
'Of course! But, madam, forgive me, I still don't understand. What's in it for you?'
The lady smiled ruefully, as if she had been caught in an omission, but still admired Herewiss for catching her. 'If I were the Goddess,' she said, 'and I am, for all of us are, whether we admit it to ourselves or not — if I were She, I would look at you as She looks at all men, who are all Her lovers at one time or another. And I would say to Myself, "If I raise up that Power, free the Fire in him, then when the time comes at last that we share ourselves with one another, in life or after it, I will draw that strength of his into Me, and the Worlds and I will be the greater for it." And certainly it would be a great thing to know the Name of the first male to come into his Power, lending power in turn to me, so that I would be so much the greater for it . . .'
Herewiss sat and looked for a moment at the remote white fires of the stars within the cloak. They seemed to gaze back at him, unblinking, uncompromising, as relentlessly themselves as the lady seemed to be.
'How do I know that you won't use my Name against me if I ever do find it out?' he said, still playing the game.
The lady smiled at him gently. 'It's simple enough to guard against, Herewiss,' she said. 'You have only to use the drug to find out Mine.'
The look of incalculable power and utter vulnerability that dwelt in her eyes in that moment struck straight through him, inflicting both amazement and pain upon him. Tears started suddenly to his eyes, and he blinked them back with great difficulty. Full of sorrow, he reached out and took her hand.
'None of us have any protection against that last Death, have we,' he said.
'None of us,' said the innkeeper. 'Not even She. Her pain is greatest; She must survive it, and watch all Her creation die.'
Herewiss held her hand in his, and shared the pain, and at last managed to smile through it.
'If I find my Name, I will tell you,' he said. 'I swear life by the Altars, and by Earn my Father, and by my breath and life, I'll pay the price.'
She smiled at him. 'That's good,' she said. 'I'll give you the drug to take with you tomorrow morning.'
A silence rested between them for a few minutes; they rested within it.
'And if I should in my travels come across your Name,' Herewiss said, 'well, it'll be my secret.'
'I never doubted it,' she said, still smiling. 'Thank you.'
For a while more they sat in silence, and both of them gazed into the fire, relaxed. Finally the lady stretched a bit, arching her back against the chair. The shimmer of starlight moved with her as she did so, endless silent volumes of stars shifting with her slight motion. She looked over at Herewiss with an expression that was speculative, and a little shy. He looked back at her, almost stealing the glance, feeling terribly young and adventurous, and nervous too.
'Let's pretend,' he said, very softly, 'that you're the Goddess—' '—and you're My Lover—?' 'Why not?'
'Why not indeed? After all, You are—' '—and You are—' —and for a long time, They were.
Something awoke Herewiss in the middle night. He turned softly over on his side, reaching out an arm, and found only a warm place on the bed where She had been. Slowly and a little sadly he moved his face to where Hers had lain on the pillow, and breathed in the faint fragrance he found there. It was sweet and musky, woman- scent with a little sharpness to it; a subtle note of green things growing in some patterned place of running waters, sun-dappled beneath birdsong. He closed his eyes and savored the moment through his loneliness; felt the warmth beneath the covers, heard the soft pop of a cooling ember, breathed out a long tired sigh of surrender to the sweet exhaustion of having filled another with himself. And despite the empty place beneath his arm, that She in turn had filled so completely with Herself, still he smiled, and loved Her. With all the men and women in the world to love, both living and yet unborn, She could hardly spend much time in one place, or seem to.