THE DOOR INTO SHADOW (The Five Truths, terrible and joyous:
What is, is. What was, is. Matter is an illusion. Meaning is an illusion. The Door opens both ways. Believe none of these!)
Ehh'ne IhhwTae (What Dragons Say), vii, 14
257
THE DOOR INTO SHADOW
Full night, when it came, was starless. A heavy overcast hung like a roof just above the highest peaks: Nornion and Kerana. In that stifling silent darkness, a long column of riders picked its way to the foot of Britfell's northern slope and came to a halt.
The prospect was daunting. Sheer walls of cracked cliff-face rose up uninvitingly. Around them were strewn rubble and boulders brought down by the annual flux of heat and cold. Eftgan, on her tall bay gelding Scoundrel, shook her head as she looked upward. "Lorn, if the road isn't still there—" "Then we're no worse off than you were before," Lorn said. Ahead of Segnbora and the others, he, Herewiss, and the Queen were shadows among shadows. Everyone in that riding had made sure there was nothing bright about their gear; faces and hands and buckles and swordhilts were smeared with a mixture of grease and soot. Even so, Segnbora's Drag-on-sharpened vision saw movements and expressions clearly enough.
Freelorn pulled up Blackmane's head and headed him off to the left. "Let's take the adventure the Goddess sends us," he said, "and go as far as we can."
He urged his dun straight at the cliffside. Blackmane snorted mild protest but went where his rider directed him, climbing a slope of talus and scree and not stopping until they reached a narrow ledge fifty feet or so above the cliffs foot. "This way," Lorn called softly to the riders waiting below, and put his heels to Blackmane again. The horse took him left-ward past a rounded outcropping of stone, and out of sight.
"This is crazy," Lang said, beside Segnbora.
"Maiden's madness, I hope," Eftgan said, and shook Scoundrel's reins. He stalled, snorting, until Eftgan laid her crop gently below his left ear and touched him with heels again. Up Scoundrel went in a nervous rush, scattering peb-bles and small stones. One by one they followed him, reining their horses in to keep them stepping lightly and minimize the damage done to the path.