The Door Into Shadow

Herewiss still lay in his body, the blue-white core that was his soul struggling yet with the shell that surrounded it. Tense with the sensation of his difficulty, Segnbora turned away from him to gaze down at herself where she lay on her pallet.
(Mdaha?) she said. No answer came back; evidently the mdeihei were tied to her body, and must stay there, silenced, when she left it. Sorrowful and nostalgic, she looked down at her still form, drowned in a repose deeper than any sleep. It had been a long time since the Precincts, when she had last been out-of-body and able to see herself so clearly. A lot had changed since then. There was a wincing fierceness about the corners of the eyes now that hadn't been there when she was younger. There was also a tension in her posture, as if her body was prepared to move in a hurry. Too much time alone, she thought, with the curious soulwalker's objectivity. Too much time on tht run.
(It's not that bad,) Herewiss said from behind her. She turned, and in sheer appreciation didn't move or speak for a few thoughts' time. In general, Herewiss still looked like his body. He was still
lean and tall, wearing the no-nonsense musculature of a smith: hands both powerful and delicate; a fine-featured face made handsome by sleepy, gentle eyes. But in his wreaking form shone a child's innocent joy in life. Fire, with its incred-ible potential for creation and destruction, blazed in him like the Sun held captive in a crystal. He was dangerous, and utterly magnificent. (Well met,) she said, and meant it. (You speak for me too,) Herewiss said. Segnbora realized how oddly he was looking at her, and wondered what he saw. (We're short of time,) he said. (But for the moment, look at that!)
He pointed at something behind her. Segnbora looked over her shoulder, away from the quick-flickering light of the Fire-web. Laid out along the floor, long and dark behind her, was her shadow.
(That's impossible!) she said in momentary indignation, turning to see it better. (You can't have a shadow out of the body!) Yet there the darkness lay, stretching to the wall and right through it, blandly contradicting what had been taught to her in the Precincts. Experimentally Segnbora raised an arm, and was dumbfounded to see the serrated shape of a Dragon's wing lift away from the shadow-body.
Behind her she felt Herewiss restraining his laughter. (My mdaha is truly becoming part of me,) she said, amused in spite of herself. (Where is he? I thought he'd be here with us.) (So did I. He's with my body, it looks like.) Herewiss felt dubious for a moment. (How are you going to tell me what's happening in the stone, then? If he's not here—) She started to lean on Skadhwe, then aborted the gesture as the sword's point began to pierce the stone they stood on. (Well, I have my memories of what it's like to be one of the mdeihei. All I have to do is live in them completely enough and we'll be fine.) She wished she was as certain of that as she made it sound. (Now, where do we have to go?) Herewiss nodded at the room's north wall, laying Khavrinen over his shoulder. Segnbora did the same with Skadhwe, and together they walked through the wall and into the clear air over Barachael. The stars wheeled visibly in the paling sky above them, moving a little faster each moment as Herewiss's wreaking further slowed their time sense.
(How about that, it works,) Herewiss said, pausing. (A mo-ment. Lorn?)
The answer came not in words, but in swift-passing impres-sion of concern, relief, encouragement. All was well in the tower, though Freelorn wondered why Herewiss had waited so long to check in with him. Hours had passed.
(We're all right, loved,) Herewiss said. (The pauses may get pretty long, but don't worry about us unless the web fails.) He broke contact and walked down the air toward Barachael val-ley. Segnbora followed.
Their othersight was stimulated by the wreaking, and the Chaelonde valley bubbled like a cauldron with normally un-seen influences. The Reavers' emotions were clearly visible, a stew of frustrated violence and fear. Barachael town crouched cold and desolate behind the invaders. As the low threshold of her underhearing dropped lower still, Segnbora heard the slow bitter dirge of the town's bereaved stones, which were certain that once more the children of their ma-sons had been slaughtered. The other lives of the valley, birds and beasts, showed themselves only as cautious sparks of life, aware of an ingathering of Power and lying low in order not to attract attention. The sky to the east went paler by the moment. The Moon slid down the sky and faded in the face of day, looking almost glad to do it. While they watched, the Sun leapt into the sky too quickly, as if it wanted to put distance between itself and the ground.
The ground was a problem. Dark negative energies seethed within it the way thoughts of revenge seethe within an angry mind. Though the faults weren't yet very clear, it was plain that these negative energies ran down most of them, draining toward the foundations of the valley, where they collected in a great pool of ancient, festering hatred. (We have to get into empathy with that!) Segnbora said, revolted.
(I'd sooner sit in a swamp, myself,) Herewiss said, and he strode down the air toward the reeking morass. (Still, the sooner we do it, the sooner we can get out and get clean again. Come on, down here. .)
He led the way around toward the base of the easternmost spur of Adine. There one of the vertical faults followed the spur's contour, a remnant of a day long before when the earth had shrugged that particular jagged block of stone above the surface. The fetid swirling of emotion in the valley broke against the spur as a wave breaks, flowing around it and up the pass. Herewiss stepped carefully down onto a high ridge of the spur and waited there for Segnbora. She arrived shortly after him, and they both paused to watch the way the shadows in the valley shrank and changed. The few moments' walk down from Sai khas-Barachael had begun at sunrise, and now it was nearly noon. (Now what?)
Herewiss lifted Khavrinen. Fire ran down from it and sur-rounded him until he blazed like someone drenched with oil and set alight. (In,) he said, and glanced down at the ridge he stood on.
Without further ado he stepped down into the earth as if walking down stairs.
(Show-off,) Segnbora thought affectionately. She walked down the outer surface of the ridge, seeking the way into the mountain that would best suit her. Turning, she saw her in-congruous shadow against the ridgewall behind her. Reach-ing behind her with both hands, she grasped it and pulled it forward about her shoulders like a cloak, becoming what she couldn't be.
It was astonishingly easy. There was fire in her throat again, and she had wings to feel the air, one of which was barbed not with a claw of white diamond but with a sliver of night made solid. She dug her talons into the naked stone1. Without mov-ing, Segnbora knew what lay beneath her. The deep, slow, scarce-moving selfness of the rock, the secret burning at the roofs, the earth's heavy veins running with the mountain's blood. . they were her veins, her blood, her life.
It was hard to think, immersed, in the ancient nonconscious musings of stone. Ttte transience of thought, or any concern
for the insignificant doings of the ephemerals at the outer edge of Being, seemed pointless.
Internal affairs were much more important. Leisurely, the conflict between the black flowing fires of the Inside, and the cold nothing of the Outside, was played out upon the board of the world. The player Outside blanketed the board close, wearing away its opponent with wind and rain; grinding it down with glaciers; cracking its coastlines with the pressure of the hungry seas. The Inside raised up lands and threw them down; tore continents apart; broke the seabottoms and made new ones; hunched up fanged mountain ranges to bite at the wind, and be bitten in return.
This particular range had hardly been in the game long enough to prove its worth as a move. Understandably, the huge nonconsciousness wondered idly — as the Sun went down again — why this area was suddenly such a cause for concern. .
Segnbora breathed stone deeply and strove to remember herself. There was something lulling for a Dragon in this perception of stone, as there was for humans in the presence of the Sea: It was both the call of an ancient birthplace and the restful comfort of the last Shore. (Herewiss?) she said, singing a chord of quandary around his name. (Here,) his answer came back, darkness answering dark-ness.
She couldn't feel him except indirectly. He had chosen to leave his physical imagery behind for the time being, and was manifesting himself only as a mobile but greatly restrained stress in the stone, staying quite still until he got his bearings. Khavrinen was evident too, seeming like the potential energy which that stress would release when it moved. (I feel you. Aren't you coming in?)
(I am in,) she sang, delighted by the truth of it. (I'm outside, too. Both at once. I can feel you inside me; you're like a muscle strain. And I can feel the other side of the world from here. What do you feel?)
(Granite, mostly. Marble. Iron — that's the mines.) He paused to feel around. (They haven't come near the great
lodes, even after centuries of work. I'll have to tell Eftgan where the good metal is. .) He trailed off, sounding uneasy. Segnbora felt what Herewiss felt and found everything much as it had been when Hasai had done the first survey; but the assessment didn't satisfy her. (I need more precision. I'm going to narrow down a good deal and make this perception clearer. Will the valley and ten miles on all sides be suffi-cient?)
(Those were the boundaries that Hasai was using. Yes.) She felt closely into the valley floor itself for ten or twelve miles down, absorbing and including into herself the sensa-tions of pressures and unreleased strains, strata trying to shear upward or sink down.
Whole mountains she embraced as if with encircling wings: Aulys, Houndstooth, Eisargir and Adine, then east to White-stack, Esa and Mirit, south to Ela and Fyfel, west to Mesthyn, Teleist and the Orakhmene range. They were a restless arm-ful. Rooted they might be, but they were alive as trees— shifting, trembling, pushing.
The whole Highpeak region, far into the unnamed south, was shivering, about to bolt like a nervous horse. The cause of its nervousness was at the heart of her perception. With ruthless diligence she absorbed it all, missing no detaiclass="underline" the vertical faults lying stitched across the valley in a row, south to north, angry and frightened. The treacherous lateral fault, its line running from the pass between Adine and Eisargir into the valley, through Barachael and out the narrow gate to lower land. And under it all, the old dark sink of negative energies. (I see it,) Herewiss said, his thought thick with revulsion. She caught a quick taste of his perception. It was rather differ-ent from hers, and primarily concerned with the Shadow's influence. He felt it everywhere, particularly in the lateral fault, where the accumulated hatred made it appear to crouch and glare like a cornered rat. It knew who he was, what he had come for, and the whole valley trembled with its malice. Segnbora trembled too, revolted and suddenly afraid. They were fools to try to tamper with this dynamism, so delicately balanced that a talon's weight applied to the wrong spot might bring down mountains. The Dweller-at-the-Howe had been wise to forbid the Dragons from delving here. Worse, she could feel the murky sink of hatred swell, growing aware of their presence.
(Herewiss!) she said. He didn't answer, and she began to grow angry, the Fire burning hotter in her throat. He was so damn sure of himself! (Herewiss!) (What do you want?) he snapped.
Her othersenses told her that he was as angry as she was, and the knowledge enraged her further. (Don't meddle!) he said. {I'm in the middle of a wreaking, and if you distract rne—)
Typically, he was paying no attention to her; he was sunk in his own concerns. (Your wreaking has barely begun. I'm not distracting and you know it. Listen, I'm Precinct-trained, and—)
(They don't know everything in the Precincts,) he said, bitter and superior. There was a touch of jealousy in his mind, too, which caused her to start. Jealousy. . didn't that mean something specific in this situation?
She brushed away the irrelevant thought — doubtless it was the maundering of some mdaha long dead and out of touch with life. Herewiss had slighted her, and her patience was wearing thin.
(Do you want my aid or not?) she demanded. (Not particularly, no! I have more than enough Power to handle this business myself, and you know it! I thought you might have appreciated the kindness I was doing you by let-ting you come along on a wreaking, but I see it was wasted.) He was a stress in the darkness, one1 close to release, spite-ful and certain of his own utter potency. The burning began to swell in her throat, and sweet it was to let the passions rise. She had been patient long enough.
The forefingers of her wings — the terrible black diamond razors that could tear even Dragonmail — cocked forward and down at him. (Little man,) she said, (it's time you found out what you have been toying with!)
Slowly she bent down, waiting for him, to attack, her. She savored, the moments, wondering how she would finish him.
A quick slash? A forepaw brought smashing down? A breath of her fire? But he wasn't physical now. He dwelt in the stone as she did, and the stress he wore as form began to warp and change. He was lifting up Khavrinen to kill her. Let him try, the fool! she thought.
The mdaha who had spoken before now cried out again. . something unintelligible about not seeing, about a pres-ence creeping up from behind, about an ambush.. Segnbora snarled at the interruption, a sound that woke rumblings in the stone. She arched herself upward to come crashing down on the pitiful little weapon raised against her—