Sunspark went molten and flowed down the hall like a hot wind. A few minutes later he returned, a young red-haired man with hot bright eyes and a tunic the color of fire, carrying the book. Herewiss reached out and took it, unsealed the pages and began riffling through them.
'Damn,' he said after a moment. 'Nothing is going to -well, no, maybe this unbinding — no, that's too concrete, it's for regular doors. This one — no — Dammit.'
He paused a moment, then started running through the pages again. 'This one. Yes. It's a very generalized unbinding, and if I change it here — and here—'
(I thought Freelorn said that it took Flame to open a door.)
'Yes, he did, and he was probably right, dammit, since doors are more or less alive. But this is an unbinding for inanimate objects, and if I make a few changes in the formula, it might work. I have to try something.'
(Will you need me?)
'Just to stand guard.' Herewiss sat down cross-legged against the wall again, breathed deeply and started to compose his mind. It took him a while; his excitement was interfering with his concentration. Finally he achieved the proper state, and turned his eyes downward to read from the grimoire.
'M'herie nai naridh veg baminedrian a phroi,' he began, concentrating on building an infrastructure of openness and nonrestriction, a house made out of holes. The words were slippery and the concepts kept trying to become concrete instead of abstract, but Herewiss kept at it, weaving a cage turned inside out, its bars made of winds that sighed and died as he emplaced them. It was both more delicate a sorcery and more dangerous a one than that which he had worked outside of Madeil. There the formulae had been fairly straightforward, and the changes introduced had been quantitative ones rather than the major qualitative shifts he was employing here. But he persevered, and took the last piece away from the sorcery, an act that should have started it functioning.
It sat there and stared at him, and did nothing.
He looked it over, what there 'was' of it. It should have worked: it was 'complete,' as far as such a word could be applied to such a not-structure. Maybe I didn't push it hard enough against the door, he thought. Well—
He gave it a mighty shove inside his head. It lunged at him and hit him in the back of the inside of his mind, giving an immediate headache.
Dammit-to-Darkness, what did I — did I put a spin on it somehow? The shift could have done that, I guess. Well, then.
He pulled at it, and immediately it slid toward the doorway and partway through it. The sorcery came to a halt, then, and sat there twitching. Nothing came out of the door.
Maybe if I wait a moment, he thought.
He waited. The sorcery stopped twitching and fell into a sullen stillness.
Herewiss lost his temper. (Dark!) he swore, and lashed out at the sorcery, backhanding it across the broad part of the nonstructure instead of disassembling it piece by piece, slowly, as he should have. It fell apart, nothingness collapsing into a higher state of nonexistence—
Something came out the door.
He opened his eyes, and just enough of the Othersight was functioning to give him a horrible dual vision of what was happening. The door itself was still dark to his normal sight; but the Othersight showed him something more tenebrous, more frightening, a hideous murky knotted emptiness, the whole purpose of which was containment and repression. It was a prison. And the prisoner was coming through the door right then; a huge awful bulk that couldn't possibly be fitting through that door, but was: a botched-looking thing, a horrible haphazard combination of bloated bulk and waving, snatching claws, with an uncolored knobby hide that the filtered afternoon light somehow refused to touch. Herewiss caught a brief frozen glimpse of teeth like knives in a place that should not have been a mouth, but was; then the Othersight confused itself with his vision again, and he was perceiving the thing as it was, the embodiment of unsatisfied hungers, a thing that would eat a soul any chance it got, and the attached body as an hors d'oeuvre. He underheard a feeling like the taste at the back of the throat after vomiting, a taste like rust and acid.
Through the confusion of perceptions, one thought made itself coldly clear: Well, this is it. I tried, and I did wrong, and now I'm going to pay the price. The sorcery had already backlashed, leaving him wobbly and weak, and he watched helplessly as the thing leaned out of the door over him and examined him, assessing the edibility of his self as an epicure looks over a dinner presented him—
Something grabbed him. Herewiss commended his soul to the Goddess, hoping that it would manage to get to Her in the first place, before he realized that Sunspark had him and was running.
'Where—' he said weakly.
(Anywhere, but out of here! I have seen those things before, and there is no containing them—)
'But it was contained. Spark, what is it?'
(The name I heard applied to it was 'hralcin.' If you desire to stay in this body, we had better get you away from here quickly. They eat selves—)
'Your kind too?'
(No-one knows. None of my people have ever had a confrontation with one of the things, as far as I know, and I would rather not be the first.)
Herewiss realized that Sunspark was still in the human form, running with him down the stairs and into the main hall. Behind them there was a great noise of roaring and crashing.
'Do you think it could kill you?'
(I don't know. I don't think so. But I have heard of those things taking souls, and the souls never came back, not that anyone had ever heard in the places where I've traveled. They say that one or two of those can depopulate a whole world, one soul at a time. We could go through one of the doors until it goes elsewhere—) 'Sunspark, put me down.' (What??) 'Let me go.'
Sunspark put Herewiss down on the floor of the main hall and turned into a tower of white fire, stretching from, floor to ceiling. Herewiss wobbled to his feet.
'I don't know how I managed to call it—'
(You said that the spell you were using was originally for inanimate objects?)
'Yes, but—'
(There's your answer. The thing is not alive. Why do you think it eats souls? When it has gotten enough of them, it gains life—)
'We've got to get it back in there.'
(You are a madman,) Sunspark said. (There is no containing the things within anything short of a world-wall.)
'But it was contained! If it was in there, and bound, it can be gotten in there again, and rebound—'
(Whoever put it in there knew more about it than we do, certainly. This much I know, they don't like light much. I can keep it away from us, I think. But it's only a matter of time until it leaves this place and gets out among your poor fellow men — and then there will be trouble.)
'It mustn't happen. They don't like light?' (No.)
'Maybe we can drive it back in through that doorway. Then I could bind it back in again—'
(But it takes you forever!) Sunspark's flames were trembling; the crashing was coming down the stairs. (And the thing would make a quick meal of you. It's got your scent, and once these things smell soul they pursue it until they catch it—)
Herewiss was sucking in great gulps of air, desperately fighting off the backlash. 'I can decoy it back into the doorway.
It'll follow me. Then I'll come out again, and you will hold it in with your fires until I can weave the necessary spell—'
Sunspark looked at Herewiss, a long moment's regard .flavored with unease and amazement. (I can hold it off from you—)
'Sunspark, Sunspark, if that thing can empty whole worlds of people, what will it do to the Kingdoms? Come on. We'll let it into the hall, and I'll duck back up behind it, and you drive it up behind me. Then up, and through the door, and you can hold it in—'