The Door Into Shadow

There, something dark stirred in its mantle of blackness and glared utter hatred at her. She looked back at It calmly, having loved It before, and unafraid to do once more what was necessary, She reached out to grasp the forces that Drag-ons could manipulate, and took one more step forward, right off the edge of the cliff. There she stood on empty air. "Come out and mmt us t/" you dare!" she cried, The song
winding around the words held in it the ultimate challenge: inescapable love. Behind her the mdeihei echoed the song in perilous harmonies. Trembling, Segnbora stood there while the darkness gathered Itself up into that terrible crushing wave she had seen before, full of screams and blood and ancient death. It rose higher and higher above her. She lifted up Skadhwe" s flaming length and stood her ground, letting her eyes sink into the Shadow's darkness, becoming It, accepting It for her own, her dark side, Her other Shadow. It trembled toward her — then gathered Itself down into a shuddering ball of fear and thwarted hatred, and vanished. The wind died abruptly, and the sky began to clear. Four thousand Darthenes stood in an empty field with no one left to fight. Segnbora took a last gasp of breath and walked back onto the cliff, beginning to feel mortal again for the first time since she had turned Skadhwe against herself. Behind a rock Eftgan lay breathing shallowly. Beside her, two forms struggled to sit up, helping each other. One of them had an arrow in him, but it didn't seem to be paining him much. As Segnbora came up to them, the taller of the two reached out to his loved and touched the arrow's protruding shaft. It vanished in a flicker of Fire, as did the place where it had gone in. She knelt beside them and laid Skadhwe over her knees— a burning shadow, a piece of the night set on Fire. They stared at it. "You did it," Freelorn whispered. "You did it!" She smiled at him. "All your fault, my liege." "But what did you do?" Herewiss was looking at her with such a mixture of joy and perplexity that she could have both laughed and cried at once. "I saw what you did to yourself," he said. "Why aren't you dead? And where did Cillmod and all those Reavers go?" "I sent them home, for the time being." She looked down at her surcoat, brushed at it. There was a neat tear where Skadhwe had gone in through cloth and mail, but that was all. The scar was a faint white seam just to one side of the night-mare's bite.
"I told you," said a great voice above her. "Dragons are quick to heal"
Silver-blue light fell about her as someone else bent low to look curiously at the place where the shadowblade had gone in. She gazed up at him — her shadow casting a shadow of his own now — and at last, the tears came. She reached up to the tremendous jaw as it dropped open, and very gently laid her hand in the Dragon's mouth, as she had feared to do, as she would never fear to do again. The jaws closed, and self joined with self.
"Now what, sda'sithesssck?"
"Now, mda'stihesssck," she said, gathering him close and laughing through the tears that fell on the sapphire hide, "there's a King to escort to his throne. Let's get busy!"
Sixteen
Some gilts are so great that the only way the recipient can express his gratitude is to immediately give the gift to some-one else. A dangerous business, this, among fickle human-kind, who often see such generosity as indicative of a
thoughtless heart. But in such a matter, do as your heart directs you. In the last reckoning, She is both giver and re-ceiver, acting both parts to increase the joy of both — and if humankind doesn't understand, She does.
(Charestics, 118)
They leaned on the walls and looked down into the dark streets of Darthis. No light burned anywhere — not so much as a hearthfire or candle or lamp. Below them the city dreamed in a silver pallor of moonlight, though there was a shifting and stirring in the Square under the walls of the Black Palace.
A few thousand people stood down there, quiet or murmur-ing, waiting for the Queen to strike the first sparks of the Midsummer needfire and distribute it among them. Most of those waiting were only concerned with their part in the festi-val — lighting the candles and lamps they carried from the new fire and racing through the city with it, spreading luck and laughter. But a few looked up toward the palace walls and stared fascinated at something strange.
Blue Fire flickered there, dancing about a long slender shape that seemed to be too dark to be a Rod. And there was another light there, a pair of silver-blue globes that looked uncannily like eyes staring downward. The more perceptive in the crowd had even noticed that the moonlight didn't fall on them. It was blocked away by a huge winged shape that seemed there when one looked away from it, and not there when one looked at it straight.
Whatever they saw, no one seemed particularly bothered by any of these oddnesses. This was, after all, Midsummer's Eve, when magic was loose in the world.
Down in the square, flint struck steel, and a spark nested in tinder and began to grow into flames. The cheering began. Viols and trumpets and kettledrums struck up a jubilant music that echoed off the walls, and effectively drowned out a
deeper music several stories up. "Hn'aa'se sithesssch mnek-kej-std untuhe au'lkhw't'dae," the music said, a voice like a trio of bass instruments playing a lazy, cheerful processional.
"Ae, mdaka'esssch," sang a softer voice, in a raspy alto. "We may as well enjoy the rest while we can. ."
"There won't be much of it," Hasai said, unfolding and folding his wings in resignation. He spoke in precognitive tense, but with good humor; the melody woven about his words said plainly that he preferred action to peace and quiet. "Arlen will be astir like thunderstorm air for months. If Gill— mod doesn't already know who was responsible for what hap-pened at Bluepeak, he will very shortly. The war with Darthen will soon open." "And the Queen forges her new crown tomorrow," Segn-bora groaned. A formal occasion first thing in the morning was the last thing she needed. "All I want is to sleep late."
"You may, if you please. I will teach you how, now that you have a sdaha's proper timesense. Will a month or so be enough, sitkesssch? *' The steps on the battlement were no surprise. Two hours ago Segnbora had remembered hearing them, and she had been waiting for them ever since. "If he did know," the shorter of the two approaching men said on reaching the top of the stairs, "it explains why he made the bastard Chancellor of the Exchequer." "To keep an eye on him?"
"Sounds like something my father might have done. This also explains how he managed to get the backing of the High Houses. But even if he can go into Lionhall, he doesn't know the Ritual, he's no Initiate — or if he is, he's messing up. Arlen is ready for rue now." Freelom and Herewiss looked strange out of surcoats and mail They leaned on the wall, one on either side of her, in softboots and britches and shirts. Herewiss looked up at the dark shape that blocked-but-didn't-block the Moon away. "How much are you there, Ihhw'Hasai?" "As much as my sdaha needs me to be. Or as I need to be. Since we're one, there's little difference. ."
"Where were you an hour or so ago?" Herewiss said to Segnbora. "Eftgan was looking for you. Wanted your help with the needfire, or something."
"I was flying," Segnbora said, nodding at the sky, Herewiss nodded soberly. She shared a gentle look with him, understanding now from her own experience how com-plete his underhearing must be, reaching even to others' most private thoughts. "I have to thank you," she said.
"You don't have to anything. You did it yourself." "So I did. And you mediated some of that doing with me, saw me into the situations I'd need to get where I am. You had little reason to give me such a gift, either," Segnbora said. "I tried to move in between you and your loved, a while back. You must have noticed." Herewiss nodded, looking grave. But not too much so, "These days, I don't let old reasons interfere with what I want to do. And maybe, even when I was angriest at you, maybe I saw something. ." "Who I was?" she said.
"Yes. A liaison. There's a whole race sharing the Kingdoms with us that not even the human Marchwarders understand properly — they have the language, but not the body that forms it. But there was more. You were a catalyst. And will continue to be. Things will be happening that need me— things I couldn't do without you and your Dragons. Likewise there are things you couldn't manage without me. I'm part of a solution. And more—"
She fell silent, nodding, already having hints of what the "more" was. This was a small problem. Sometimes the ahead-memories came too