The Door Into Shadow

The gameboard rumbled and leaned upward as if a hand had tipped it over, Pieces tried to slide off every which way. Lost in the pain of contact with that memory, Segnbora could nevertheless sense Mount Adine's shuddering as the ground at the end of the khas-Barachael spur began to rise, first bulging, then cracking like a snapped stick.

Sai khas-Barachael danced and jittered on its ridge like a knife on a pounded tabletop, held secure only by Herewiss's Fire and will The earth on either side of the lateral fault

thrust up, then slammed together like a closing door. The fault expended its energies in a noise like the thunderstorms of a thousand summers. Hills crumbled and landslides large and small crawled downward all the length of the Chaelonde valley. The river itself tilted crazily out of its bed and rushed down into a new one as the block Herewiss had triggered shoved its way above ground, making a seedling mountain, a new spur for Adine.

Behind them, the Houndstooth peak of Aulys seemed to stand up in surprise, look over Adine's shoulder, and then fall back in a dead faint. The terrible thundering crash of its fall went on for many minutes, a sound so huge it obliterated every other sound and was felt more than heard. It was a sound never to be forgotten: the sound of the pass between Eisargir and Aulys being sealed by the Houndstooth's ruin.

Hours later, it seemed, the singing roar that encompassed the world began to die down. Segnbora found herself still alive, and was amazed at that. Herewiss was nowhere to be felt in her mind. She was on hands and knees on the floor of her cavern. Slowly, aching all over, she levered herself up and found herself looking at Hasai.

He was droop-winged and weary-looking, dim of eye, crouching in the middle of a badly torn-up and melted stone floor. Behind him, lurking shameful in the shadows, she could just make out the dark forms of the mdeihei. Many eyes watched her, but their voices for once were still as they waited to see what she would do.

"O sdaha," Hasai said, singing slow and sorrowful, "we betrayed you." He made no excuse, offered no explanation, merely accepted the responsibility.

She breathed in, breathed out, as weary as the Dragon before her. The mdeihei waited.

There were thousands of things she felt like saying to them, but what she said was, "Ae mdeihei, Nht'e'lhhw'ae. " We are for-given.

The shadowy forms drew away. Segnbora laid a hand for a moment on one of Hasai's bright talons. There were great talon-furrowed rents in the floor. They had slag piled all

around them that smoked ominously like pools of magma. "Will you clean this mess up, mdaha?"

He looked at her as if he wanted very much to say some-thing more. At last, he said only, "Sdaha, we will do that." "Sehe'rae, then—" She turned her back on him and stepped back up into the outer world.

The room still jittered with little aftershocks left over from the quake, and echoed with the voices of all Freelorn's band. Herewiss leaned wearily by the window, with Freelorn sup-porting him on one side and Sunspark on the other. Eftgan was in front of him, and all four were talking at a great rate. Segnbora pushed herself up off the floor and rubbed her eyes, looking out the window.

Her normal sight was now clear enough to show her a Chaelonde valley much broken and changed, but with Bara-chael still mostly intact. The darkened Moon wore a fuzzy line of silver at its edge, first sign of the eclipse's end. The air that came in the window was astonishingly sweet to the under-senses, as if many years' worth of trapped death and pain had been finally released.

Leaning against the windowsill, she looked at Herewiss. He was drawn and tired, and all the Fire was gone from about Khavrinen for the moment. For the first time she could remember, it was simply gray steel with an odd blue sheen. But Herewiss's eyes were alive with a satisfaction too big for all of Barachael valley to have contained — the look of a man who finds out he is what he's always believed himself to be.

Seeing her, he reached out a hand. Across the open window they clasped forearms in the gesture of warriors after a battle well fought.

"What was it you said?" Segnbora said, thinking back to the old Hold in the Waste, and the night her sleep was inter-rupted. " 'There was blood on the Moon, and the mountain was falling'—?"

Dog-tired as he was, Herewiss's eyes glittered with the thought that his true-dream might not prove as disastrous as he had believed, particularly for the man who stood beside him. "Got it right, didn't I?"

Twelve She nodded, put an arm out and was unsurprised to find Lang there, wary ofSkadhwe but ready to support her. "Only one problem, prince—" "What's that?"
She grinned. "After this, people are going to say you'll do anything to avoid a fight. ."
Laughter in death's shadow fools no one who understands death.
But if you're moved to it, be assured that the Goddess will smile at the joke.

— found scratched on the wall in the dungeon of the King of Steldin, area 1200 p.a.d.

"I hate — letting them think they're driving us," Herewiss said between gasps. "But it's better this way."

He stood in the midst of carnage, the burned and hacked bodies of fifty or sixty Fyrd. Here and there in the rocky field of this latest ambush, Freelorn's band stood cleaning swords, leaning on one another, nr rubbing down sweating horses and swearing quietly. Segnbora leaned gasping against Steelsheen's flank, unwill-ing yet to sheathe Skadhwe. The last Fyrd to come at her had been one of the new breed of keplian, bigger than the usual sort, with clawed forelimbs and those wickedly intelligent eyes that were becoming too familiar these days.
She had had no trouble immersing herself in the other's eyes to effect its killing. The problem had been getting out again afterward. She felt soiled, as if she had stepped in a pile of hatred that would have to be scraped off her boots. "How many times is this?" Lang said, coming up beside her.
"Seventeen, eighteen maybe—" "I don't know about you, but / feel driven." Segnbora nodded. Fifteen days ago they had ridden out of Barachael, and had had nothing for their pains ever since but constant harrying by ever-increasing bands of Fyrd. All had come from the southwest, where Something clearly didn't want them to venture. Freelorn had suggested world-gating straight to Bluepeak, where they would meet the Queen; but Herewiss, unwilling to tempt the Shadow into direct intervention by too much use of Fire, had vetoed the idea.
So they rode, and were harried. Herewiss always took them north, out of the way, after an attack such as today's. In day-light, anyway. In darkness they turned again and tacked southwest, toward Bluepeak. They were losing time with these detours, and knew it. Everyone's temper was short, and getting shorter.
"Let's go," Herewiss said, sheathing Khavrinen and turn-ing Sunspark's head northward as he mounted.
There was annoyed muttering among Freelorn's band, and heads turned toward Lorn in appeal. But Lorn, already up on Blackmane, looked wearily after his loved and shook his head. "Come on," he said, and rode off after Herewiss.
They rode a brutal trail through country made of the stuff of a rider's nightmares. They had long since left behind the green plains of southern Darthen. Presently they were cross-ing the uninhabited rock-tumble of Arlen's Southpeak coun-try. Glaciers had retreated over this land when the Peaks were born, leaving bizarrely shaped boulders scattered across scant, stony soil. Acres of coarse gravel with a few brave weeds growing out of it might be all one would see from morning 'til night.