look green."
Freelorn shrugged, not looking at her. "The change in altitude," he said. "It didn't agree with me. I had a bad night." He was lying, she knew. His eyes were fixed on Adine, and on the lesser peak, where a tiny glitter of silver bridgespan caught the morning Sun. Freelorn said nothing more aloud, but she caught his thought: If only my dreams weren't so bad! And behind the thought lay the sure conviction that something he had recently seen in dream was no baseless vision, but a foreknowledge of reality. A reality that he could avoid if he chose—
Freelorn swung around and leaned on the table. "Are you going to sit there drinking all day," he said to Herewiss, "or are you going to get
up and get Eftganf s business out of the way so1 we can tend to our own?"
Herewiss*s glance was much like Freelorn's — all mockery
above, and love below. . and underneath that, a breath of
fear very much suppressed. "Hark to the early riser," he said,
"who pulled me back into bed twice this morning when I
would have gotten up. Come on, you can help correct my
scansion. This wreaking tonight is going to be difficult …"
Their easy laughter faded down the stairs behind them. Segnbora sat down on the windowsill, gazing up in turn at the terrible blind walls and cruel precipices of Adine. The moun-tain cared nothing for human life. With such an audience before her, and the empty room behind, Segnbora took what was likely to be her last opportunity for a while, laid her head against the windowframe, and mourned the dead.
An hour or so before sunset, the seven of them took to horse at khas-Barachael gate to begin the ascent of Adine.
While they were saddling up, Torve came out of the stables leading a little rusty Steldene gelding. "Of your courtesy," he said to Herewiss,
"perhaps you'd take me as guide. I've rid-den this trail a number of times, and climbed to the summit too."
Herewiss looked at the young man, suppressing a smile. There was no need to read Torve's thought, for it was plain enough: He was staring at Khavrinen, which was slung over Herewiss's shoulder, like a small child staring at what the Goddess had left him on New Year's morning.
"With all these other spectators," Herewiss said, glancing around at Freelorn's band, most of whom were along only for the ride, "certainly we can use one person who'll earn his keep on the way. Come and welcome."
They headed out over the half-bridge that reached out from Barachael, on its two-thousand-foot pier of stone, across to the spur of Adine proper. The sorcerer-architects who built the place had carved a hundred foot gap right through the spur, so that with the drawbridge up the fortress stood unas-sailable, one great corner-shoulder turned to the spur.
Once across, a causey wide enough for ten horsemen abreast wound downward through several switchbacks. On both sides the road was overshadowed by cliffs, the shattered faces of which made it obvious that invaders had occasionally tried to come up that way against the defenders' wishes, and had had large rocks dropped on them for their trouble.
"They've tried a few times to shuck this oyster," Torve said cheerfully, "but even Reaver horses can't charge straight up." At its bottom the paved road gave out onto a narrow sad —
die-corridor between khas-Barachael rock and Swaleback, a flattened, marshy little spur of Adine. Torve led them east-ward and out into the valley proper, then southwestward along the skirts of the Adine massif. Past two minor spurs they went. The ground was rocky, and every now
file:///G|/rah/Diane%20Duane%20-%20Tales%20Of%20The%20Five%2002%20-%20The%20Door%20Into%20Shadow.htm (71 of 155) note 8