'Dammit, Herewiss—!'
He almost never calls me by name. Sweet Goddess, he's mad. But so am I— 'Shut up, Lorn! And don't come mouthing to me about deathguilt, because yours has nothing on mine, and even if it did, it's fairly obvious that you wouldn't be handling it any better. At least I'm trying to deal with mine—'
Freelorn's mouth worked, and nothing came out. Herewiss stopped, his satisfaction at Freelorn's anger suddenly draining out of him. This is a thing I never knew about us, he thought in shock. We resent each other. My Goddess. Can love and resentment like this live in the same person at the same time and not kill each other?
'What are you going to do?' Freelorn said, his voice tight.
'I'm going to stay here.' Herewiss made his voice noncommittal, unemotional. He was trembling.
'Then I'm going to Osta. And I'll see you when I see you. Good night.' Freelorn got up and went to the corner where his bedroll was laid out; he wrapped himself up in his cloak and lay down with his face to the wall and his back to Herewiss.
Oh, Dark. Herewiss thought, we've had fights before . . . But he couldn't stop shaking, and something inside him told him that this had been no normal fight. 'Died by your sword,' Freelorn's voice said, again and again, echoing like the cold howls of the Shadow's Hunting through midwinter skies. He never said anything like that to me before. Never—
He sat there a long time, unmoving, staring at Freelorn's turned back, or at the lover's-cup, half-full of wine, sitting on the floor beside him. Sunspark burned low at his back, watching in silence.
(Spark—) he said.
(Do you do that often?) it said very softly. (Uh-no. Not really.)
(It is a considerable discharge of energies.) (It-uh-is that.)
(Such random discharges,) the elemental said, (usually preclude the possibility of union—)
(Yes.) Herewiss said. (They do.) (He is — no longer your mate?)
The elemental's thought made it plain that such an occurrence was quite nearly the end of the world; and Herewiss, beginning to sink downward into his pain, was inclined to agree. (I don't know,) he said. (Oh, I don't -No, I really don't know . . .)
He got up, went over to where Freelorn lay, reached down and touched him. 'Lorn—'
Nothing. He might as well have touched the gray stone of the hold and asked it for an answer.
He lay down, wrapping himself up in his cloak too and stretching out beside Freelorn. But he did not need his underhearing to perceive the wall of hostility that lay between them like a sword thrown in the middle of the bedroll. There was a stranger on the other side of the wall, a stranger who wanted fiercely to be left alone, who would strike out if bothered—
It was like trying to lie still on hot coals. Herewiss got up and went away, back to the firepit. He sat on the edge of it and stared into the shifting flames. Bright eyes looked out at him.
(He doesn't want to talk to me. Maybe he will in the morning. Sleep heals a great many ills, including unfinished quarrels, sometimes—)
(I would not know. I don't sleep.)
(Tonight, I doubt if I will, either.) Herewiss sighed. (I'm going outside for a bit, Spark.)
It flickered acquiescence at him and cuddled down into the coals, pulling a sheet of fire over itself.
Herewiss paused, looking over his shoulder at Freelorn. His loved lay still unmoving, but Herewiss could feel the space around him prickling with anger and frustration.
Oh, hell, he told himself. Let be. You know how Lorn is. He does a two-day sulk and then everything's all right again.
But we never fought like this—
He walked to the front doorway of the hold and looked out. The gray walls of the courtyard were walls of shadow now, hardly to be seen at all except where their tops occluded the sky. Herewiss leaned against the doorsill, sighed again, folded his arms and gazed up at the stars. His brain was jangling like windchimes in a storm of fears and fragmented thoughts; it took him a long few moments to calm down and greet the blazing desert stars, the Mother's sky, as it deserved to be greeted. It took him a few minutes more to realize that the constellations with which he was familiar were nowhere to be seen.
Uhh — wait a moment—!
Very quietly, so as not to disturb Lorn or anyone else who might have been trying to sleep, Herewiss stepped across the courtyard, past the dozing horses, to the doorway which Sunspark had opened. As he passed through it, the sound of the solano, the relentless spring wind of the Waste, reasserted itself; somewhere to his left he heard the squeaks and chirrups of a colony of bounce-mice going about their nightly business. He looked up at the cold-burning sky. Dragon, Spearman, Maiden, Crown, all the constellations of spring shone unperturbed high in the clear air.
How about that, Herewiss thought. He went back into the courtyard, and looked up. Within the walls, the sky glittered again with alien stars, strange eyes looking down on him from a nameless night.
This is the place, all right, he thought as he headed back toward the hall. He sighed again. Part of him was indulging itself in a delicious shivering excitement at the prospect of where he was. The rest of him was weighed down with the aching feeling of the angry, untouchable presence on the other side of the bedroll. He slowed down.
I don't really want to go back in there —
—oh, Goddess, yes, I do—
—but—
He stopped still in his indecision, and as he listened to the odd silence that prevailed within the walls, he heard something more. Someone was outside, playing a lute. The individual notes stitched through the quiet like needles through dark velvet, bright, precise; but the pattern they were embroidering was random. There was a pause as Herewiss listened; and then a chord strung itself in silvery lines across the still air, and another after it, gently mournful, though in a major key. When a voice joined the chords, singing in a light contralto, Herewiss was able to localize the sounds better. Whoever it was was somewhere to the left, around the corner of the building.
The tone of the singing, though he could not make out words, had touched Herewiss at the heart of his mood -night-ridden, melancholy. He went quietly over to the corner of the hall, leaned against the warm gray stone, peered around. Segnbora was there; sitting on the smooth paving with her back against the wall, her cloak folded behind her to lean on, a wineskin by her side. Her head was tilted back against the stone, relaxed, and the lute rested easily on her lap. If she noticed Herewiss, she gave no sign of it, but kept on serenading night and stars like a lover beneath some dark window.
'—and she fared on up that awful trail and little of it made: She stood laughing on the peak-snows with the new Moon in her hair—'
Herewiss listened with interest. With her deep voice, who'd suspect she had a high register? Needs a little work on her vibrato, but otherwise she sounds lovely—