Finished, it was beautiful, even with the scaffolding still up, a graceful curve binding the two sides of the river and the road together. But Sirronde’s mind was more on those people—old and young, men and women and children, who, if she was not very careful, might be killed over the course of the next half hour or so. She tried to keep a smile on her face as she walked steadily among them, on the dusty road, and through and past them, up to the bridge-pillars on her side. There she paused, looking at the carved figures, handsome and serene.
“Go on,” someone whispered from behind her. “She’s ready.”
Sirronde went up onto the bridge.
Its paving stones had purposely been left rough, to give good purchase for carts, and Sirronde stumbled once on the way up the curve. It was less steep than it looked. The white limestone blocks of its side walls gleamed dully in the growing light. And suddenly Sirronde found herself looking across the remainder of the span at Dyla, climbing toward her.
Instantly the Fire rose up inside her and ran down inside all her limbs in a shock of recognition, as Sirronde looked across the beautiful finished span, at the tall and handsome woman approaching her, and knew the presence of her Enemy.
And who else would it have been? Sirronde thought. Who else has been making the bridge fall down, all this time? Who can do such a thing more simply than the builder? Or, rather, the little sliver of the Shadow that lived down at the bottom of Dyla’s soul, as it lived buried in every human being. Not that Dyla would have been conscious of it, any more than most people are conscious of the ways they ruin their own lives. In this case, a miscalculated stress here, a block fractionally too small there, and the setup had unrolled itself before poor Adri without fault. Again and again the bridge failed, and the Builder’s terrible rage and frustration could indeed have been partially founded in the equally unconscious realization that she herself was somehow to blame.
And now, one way or another, it ends.
The two advanced toward one another, and at the crest of the bridge, its highest point, paused. Smiling, the Master-builder held her arms out gladly. Sirronde, in Adri’s body, put her own arms around Dyla, and held the other fast.
And dawn gave way instantly to darkness.
*
Something reached into her like pincers, digging in cruelly and pulling Sirronde out of herself with horrible suddenness. Everything around her was filled with a smothering, gloating sense of satisfaction and amusement, unbreathable as smoke. Mine! cried a great, furious, laughing voice into the darkness. One more of Your precious creatures, one more that You will never have again—
—and then an abrupt screech of shock as the Fire, enraged at close contact with the One who had turned it to evil purpose long ago, blazed up like a star falling on the landscape.
Not that there was a landscape in this anteroom of reality, only an endless pale plain reaching away on all sides into infinity. Directly in front of Sirronde, a knotted formless darkness writhed in the blinding brilliance of the Fire. Sirronde leapt forward and threw her arms around Him. His icy rage at His betrayal struck straight into her bones. Your bargain’s kept, she cried into the emptiness. You’ve won, and lost. But now You have another problem!
Darkness tried to spread and blot everything out again. With a thought Sirronde clenched it tight to her and banished it. Even just outside of reality, there were some rules. She had moved first, and there would be no grappling in darkness. She would be able to see His shapes, and all she had to do was hold on long enough to give Him a good push past reality and out the other side. In her arms the Shadow twisted and pushed and screamed—
—and changed. Huge, a strangling thing, a serpent, throwing lightning-quick coils around her throat. The Fire coiled around too, noosed around the serpent’s neck, drew tight.
A great hiss, then a rush of water, icy cold and tasting of limestone flour. Sirronde knew how to hold a river: be the banks. She gathered the Fire around her, wrapped it through her, and together she and it went broad and deep enough to hold any amount of river rushing. The water leapt in the banks, roaring, crashing, and down the watercourse came huge boulders, leaping, falling to crush the banks and let the river out.
Sirronde felt the boulders as they crashed down for the tiny force, multiplied uncountable times, which held a rock together and kept a stone stone. She knew the word to release that force. She cried it now, and the stones went all to flour, as pulverized as if the glacier had ground them down—
The great mass of ice suddenly loomed over her, not moving at inches per year but all at once, another kind of serpent, burning cold and crushing down on her, grinding her under. Sirronde’s breath went out of her; she would have screamed with the pain but could not. The ice crushed her bones. The fury of Her enemy, whom she had dared to deceive, came down on her, pressing her into nothing—
—but her thought could still move, just. And under the ice, far under the cold stone of the mountain on which the glacier pressed, there still lived something which could stop it. Fire, the hot blood of the earth, moving, shouldering upward in a slow burning irresistible flood, shattering the stone, the cone of the building volcano starting to break the back of the glacier, its power breaking upward into the light of day—molten stone running down the mountainside from the newly outflung arms of stone, the newest lava still burning blue. Sirronde pushed herself up, half sitting, still clutching her Enemy, not letting go—
But here is something you will let go of. As she pushed to her feet again, suddenly she was back in her body once more, and it was herself she now was holding, a dark shape, but Sirronde’s own. It drew her to it with a terrible empty smile. And inside it, inside her as it pressed her close, suddenly Sirronde felt the thing growing, alien, unwanted. This is what you fought for, her own voice said, thick with loathing and contempt. This mindless growth inside you, which would have taken over your life, if you were to have any more life. But you will have none. You have thrown yourself away for nothing...
Horrified, Sirronde started to push herself away—then angrily stopped. You’ll have to do better than that, she thought. If I’ve no life any more, nor the child, yet it and I will go to Her unsullied— And then she laughed, and grappled the dark image of herself harder to her. And it’s not even in me at the moment, except in soul! Your last throw, lost Son of our Mother: are you ready? For now it ends—
Sirronde drew all her Power together and readied the attack which would push this scrap of Him out of the world. He struggled to impose His vision on her, tried to make Sirronde see herself as He did, a little contemptible scrap of mortal muck, impotent against the One for Whom the blue Fire had been originally intended. The Flame rose up at His bidding, and Sirronde staggered back before it in helplessness and terror as the darkness finally found the form she had been denying it—the Dark Loved in His splendor, the Murderer, deadly but still inhumanly beautiful. Those burning black eyes dwelt on her, devouring Sirronde’s will, pushing her down to kneel and worship. Who am I to dare to resist Him? Slowly, still clutching at the arms, the burning hands, she sank to her knees, helpless and worthless, a tool already shattered. Sirronde fought for the light, losing it as one of those great hands went about her throat and began to squeeze. Her Fire, His Fire, began to strangle her, and Sirronde gazed up into the merciless dark eyes which promised nothing but death. And which now began to pale—
In the swiftly falling darkness a wet, slobbery breathing began, the awful sound of something trying to breathe with a beast’s lungs through a monstrous half-human face. Its eyes glowed, the terrible blankly luminous eyes which men chisel out and call mantichore sapphires after the beast itself has been turned by light to stone. The moment all this was over, this darkness would burst outward through the door she had been unable to defend, and the mantichores would come after it and come real—the terrible children of the darkest night, which was now about to fall. Nothing would survive in Dalthant, not the people or the bridge. Through her dimming vision she could
just see the door opening onto reality, the bridge over the Sen faint in dawn light, the dawn about to be drowned in darkness—
One of Sirronde’s hands still clutched His, at her throat. The other she released, and reached up into the darkness falling inside her for the wreaking she had left faintly flickering and ready there—seized the structure of it, like a handful of thorns, gripped it desperately until she bled fresh Power, and thrust it up into His changing, half-beast face.
With a roar the blue-white column of lightning came streaking down from the lowering darkness above, and struck them both. Burning, blinded, Sirronde was blasted backwards, thinking, in a last moment of irrational satisfaction, If I must die, at least I didn’t let go until then. I win! Gasping for air, she pushed herself up to her hands and knees in just enough time to see the deepest blackness, caught halfway between man’s and mantichore’s shape, struggling helpless in the blast of light. Screaming in frustration and fury He went, as the lightning, having come in a flash into the world, in a flash went out of it again...and took Him with it.
Sirronde staggered, and suddenly found herself looking at Dyla. For no more than a second—then the other wreaking which she had left in place took effect.
She blinked, and had to rub her eyes before she could see properly. She was in bed in her room up at Leni’s, and from about a mile away, she could hear a sound of cheering and clapping, and the bombard being played again, badly, so that the cattle out in the fields began moooing in distress.
Sirronde let out a long, exhausted breath, and smiled.
*
It was another half hour before anyone noticed she had not been at the bridge. When Leni came into the commonroom to start setting out the first of the food for the celebration, she looked at Sirronde with surprise, sitting there pale and shaky-looking by the window. “Are you all right?”
“I don’t feel very well,” Sirronde said: “I could have had too much to drink last night. How did it go?”
“Why, very well,” said Leni, going to the hatch-window at the back to find Sirronde a cup and a pitcher of barleydraft, “though a lot of folk think perhaps poor Adri was up late pining for his lady.” She threw Sirronde a look inviting her to support or deny this statement. “He stumbled after they hugged each other.”
“But he’s all right?”
“Oh, he’s fine. Laughing like a child with joy. You’d think he’d built that bridge, not her.” Leni put the cup down, poured for her. “Though I must say she was looking at him oddly afterwards...” She shrugged. “You’d think she’d be happy when it didn’t fall down again.”
Sirronde drank, keeping her thoughts to herself. Leni didn’t get a chance to say much more, for the crowd had come down the street all together and now filled the place, demanding food and drink. In amongst them came Dyla and Adri, who sat down and suddenly found themselves in front of more drink than they could have managed in a tenday. The press and crowding of happy people hid them from view, but not before Sirronde managed to catch Adri’s eye, and nod once.
He did not have to smile outwardly. She could feel it right across the room.
Sirronde drank her draft, musing, untroubled by the noise and celebration around her. When a shadow fell over the table, she knew who it was before looking up. Dyla’s face was oddly set.
“I wonder,” the Master-Builder said.
“So do we all,” Sirronde said. Ever since arising from the bed, she had been dealing with the first physical intimations of that new something inside her. It was a marvel, and not even Dyla’s presence could distract her much from it. My daughter...
“I wonder what Adri was doing last night,” Dyla said, her frown growing blacker.
“Building bridges...?” Sirronde said, and laughed softly. “For what’s a life but a span? And a brand new one, too...”
Dyla looked offended. “Don’t think to hide the truth from me by riddling. It’s well we’re leaving shortly, or I’d soon make you mind your own business.”
Sirronde was looking idly at the hand that had last bled Fire in the darkness. She clenched it closed, glanced at Dyla...and up on the mountain, from inside some passing, drifting cloud, thunder softly rolled.
“I think,” Sirronde said, “I prefer minding Hers.” Even when it’s frightening: even when it takes me down a road I never thought to walk...
Dyla gave her a cold look and went away, leaving Sirronde sitting alone, wearing an obscure and joyous smile.
*
The next day, as the scaffolding was being taken down, Sirronde stood at the Dalthant side of the bridge. She had leaned there a good while, not doing anything obvious. But her hand rested on her Rod, and the Fire ran down invisibly into the earth and through it to the bridge, questing through the structure of it. There were no concealed weaknesses, no misplaced stresses. It would stand. It was not that she did not trust her Enemy to keep His word...but there was no harm in being sure.
“It truly is beautiful,” she said aloud then, having felt Adri come up behind her.
“It is,” he said. They both looked over at where Dyla was supervising the removal of the scaffolding, oblivious to them.
“Any problems?” Sirronde said.
“She’s furious with me.” He gave her a wry look. “And I’m alive to be furious at...”
“What will she do, do you think?”
Adri let out a long tired sigh. “Probably make my life difficult for a long while,” he said. “But she’s been doing that even when she’s not furious.”
Sirronde breathed out, a sound of slight amusement. “So you’ll be heading back up to Prydon in a couple more days. What will you do?”
“Stay with her,” Adri said. “After nearly paying a price like that for love of her... I intend to take long enough to see if it was really worth it. ...And what willyou do now?”
“Maybe go home,” Sirronde said. “Well, I have the better part of six months before getting around will really be a problem. I can do a lot of work between then and now. And then...” She shrugged. “I’ll name our daughter.”
The smile he turned on her was very small, but utterly astonished and delighted. “You know already?”
“When you have the Fire, it’s hard not to know.”
His smile faded somewhat. “Life with Dyla being what it is,” he said, somber, “I may not be able to come to see her. But if you would tell her who her father is—tell her about me.”
“I will. I’ll find a way to send you word privately.”
“Thank you. I always—”
“I know,” Sirronde said, and turned away.
He swallowed. “I wish I didn’t have to—”
“Stop,” Sirronde said. “Your loved is your loved. All this that happened here was for love of her. Don’t make it worth less. Dyla may not know how lucky she is... but Someone else does. And eventually, when She comes to share Herself with you, as with every man and woman alive, She’ll tell you so.”
“Excuse me—”
Sirronde looked at him.
“I think She already has,” said Adri.
Sirronde was silent. Then she touched his cheek, just once: and as quickly as she decently could, went up the bridge and over it, northward, and into the next nine months before the rest of her life.
***
Diane Duane, Sirronde's World 1: The Span
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