She turned her face away; Herewiss could feel her filling up with tears. “To have Her slide into bed behind me,” Segnbora said quietly, “and put Her arms around me, and hold my breasts in Her warm hands, and then slip down and kiss the lonely place between my shoulderblades that always wanted a kiss, and never got one. And without asking…”
She smiled, and let the tears fall.
Freelorn looked up at Herewiss again, and he was smiling too. “It was like that,” he said. “Funny, though, I wasn’t expecting it so soon.”
“She never comes to share Herself when you expect Her,” Herewiss said. “That’s half the joy right there.”
Freelorn nodded.
“How She must love us,” Herewiss said. “To share with us all, to give us so very much—I can’t understand it. Just for my own part, even. What incredible thing have I done, or will I do, to earn—to deserve such, such blessing, so much love…”
“You’re reason enough,” Freelorn said, very quietly. “And, besides, She cherishes what’s returned. What could we possibly give the Mother that She couldn’t make better Herself, except love? She could make us love Her—but it wouldn’t be the same.”
Herewiss reached out and took Freelorn’s hand. “I was thinking mostly in terms of you, Lorn.”
Freelorn chuckled, squeezed Herewiss’s hand hard. “And anyway,” he added after a moment, “She can afford to be generous. They say that most of the time She drives a hard bargain.”
Herewiss looked down at his front saddlebag, and at the slight bulge in it.
“That’s what I hear,” he said.
•
SEVEN
Memory is a mirror – but even the clearest mirror
reverses right to left.
Gnomics, 418
When frogs fell all around them out of the clear hot sky, smacking into the dust and sand with understandable grunts and squeaks, the party was surprised, but not too much so. When it hailed real stones, instead of ice, they covered their heads with helms or shields and made small jokes about the quality of the weather in this part of the Waste. When, while climbing a rise, they noticed that the rocks dislodged by their horses’ hooves were rolling up the hill after them, they shrugged and kept on riding. They knew stranger things were to come.
•
“There it is,” Herewiss said. He pointed through the blown dustclouds at a low gray shape on the horizon.
“Are you sure it’s there?” Freelorn said. “Look how it wobbles.”
“That’s heat, and this damn dust. We’ll be there in an hour or so, I would say.”
“What are those?” Lang muttered, shielding his eyes. “Towers?”
“Hard to tell from here. We’ll see when we get closer.”
They cantered on across the desert. Herewiss was in high good spirits, expectant as a little boy at Opening Night waiting for the fireworks to start. To some extent the attitude was infectious. Most of Freelorn’s people were joking and straining their eyes ahead in anticipation; Segnbora was rigidly upright in the saddle, her sword loose in its sheath. Sunspark was requiring constant reminders to maintain contact with the ground. But Freelorn was frowning, resolutely refusing to get excited.
“Well,” he said, “we haven’t been eaten alive yet. But I reserve judgment until we leave.”
“We? Lorn, if the place is safe, I’m staying.”
“Not for long, surely.”
“For as long as I have to.”
“You don’t mean you’re planning to live there for any length of time!”
“Uh-huh.”
“You,” Freelorn said with frank irritation, “are a crazy person.”
“You know us Brightwood people,” Herewiss said, “the only sure thing about us—”
“Is that insanity runs in the family,” Freelorn said. “Let’s see what the place is like before you make up your mind.”
“Who’s that?” Harald yelled. His eyesight was better than anyone else’s, and for a moment they all squinted through the dust at the faint figure ahead of them.
“No horse,” Segnbora said. “No tent, nothing—”
“No one lives out here!” Moris said.
“Not for long, anyway, without a horse or a water supply,” Herewiss said. “Let’s see who it is—could be they need help—”
(He’s not there.)
Sunspark’s thought was so sudden and shaken that Herewiss gulped involuntarily.
(He’s not there. Or—he appears to be, but he’s not an illusion; he’s real. And yet he’s not—)
(Make sense, Spark! Is this something you’ve encountered before?)
(No. It’s as if he were not wholly present, somehow— his thoughts are bent on us, but his body isn’t here enough for his soul to be—)
(Where’s his soul, then?)
(Ahead—)
They rode closer. The figure stood there with its arms folded, watching them approach. It didn’t move.
“He looks familiar,” Moris said, rising up in the stirrups to stare ahead.
“Yeah.” Freelorn squinted. “Damn this dust anyway—”
They approached the waiting man, came close enough to see his face—
Freelorn’s mouth fell open. Herewiss was struck still as stone, and Sunspark danced backward a few paces in amazement. Segnbora spoke softly in Nhàired, drawing a sign in the air.
Dritt sat on his horse, his eyes wide, and looked at himself; the same elaborately tooled boots, the same dark tunic and light breeches, the same long silver-hilted sword, the same sandy hair—
Dritt stood there in the dust and looked at himself. He put out a hand to one side, as if to steady himself against something. “Sweet Goddess,” he said, just loudly enough for them to hear, “oh no!”
And he turned away, and was gone, with a soft sharp sound like hands clapped together, and a swirl of stirred-up dust—
Dritt swayed a bit in the saddle, and Moris was beside him in a moment, putting a hand on his arm. “Take it easy,” he said, “you’re here, and that’s what matters. No telling what kind of a sending that was—”
“That was me,” Dritt said with conviction. “Not a sending. Not a premonition, or an illusion, or anything like that. Me. I could feel it.”
Freelorn turned to Herewiss, almost in triumph. “There. You want to live in a place where things like that happen?”
“Lorn, we’re not even there yet.”
“I know. I know.”
•
At last they sat on their horses in a tight little group before the place, and stared at it.
It was built all of shining gray stone that looked like granite, sparkling with deeply buried highlights. The outer wall, perfectly square and at least forty feet high, completely surrounded the inner buildings, an assortment of keeps and towers, some leaning at crazy angles as if half-toppled by an earthquake. Some seemed unfinished, having great gaps in them. Some were shorn off oddly at the top, as if sliced by giant knives. Nowhere were seams or jointures apparent at all; the place seemed to have been carved from single blocks of stone. And though there were windows in the inner buildings, there was no opening in the outer wall anywhere. It towered up before them, slick and unscalable as glass.
“Well,” Freelorn said with scarcely disguised satisfaction, “now what?”
Herewiss made an irritated face, but Sunspark laughed privately, unconcerned. (I think,) the elemental said, (it’s time to disabuse them of the idea that I am a horse.)
(What? You’re going to jump it?)
(No, nothing like that. Just inside the wall I can sense a courtyard. I’ll take part of the wall away.)
(Can you do that?)
(It’d be silly to suggest it if I couldn’t,) Sunspark said, amused. (Get off and take everyone back a quarter of a mile or so. I’m going to have to exert myself somewhat, but the stretch will do me good.)
Herewiss dismounted. “Lorn,” he said, “let me up behind you, will you? We’re going to have to back off a
ways.”
“Uh, look,” Freelorn said, sounding alarmed, “I don’t want you to strain yourself—”
“Let’s go.”
Herewiss put his foot in Blackmane’s stirrup and swung up behind Freelorn. He was aware of Segnbora regarding him with a small and secret smile; he winked at her. “Back the way we came,” he said to Freelorn, “a quarter mile or so.”
“But your horse—!”
“Sunspark is going to take part of the wall away,” Herewiss said.
“Sunspark is—”
With Freelorn in the lead, shaking his head, the group rode back into the desert. After a while Herewiss stopped them.
“Far enough,” he said. “Now then.” (Are you ready, Spark?)
(Yes.)
(Will it be all right for us to look?)
(Mmm—yes, I’ll damp the light . You’ll probably feel the heat, though.)
“It’s going to be hot,” Herewiss said, “and bright. Be warned.”
(Go ahead,) he told Sunspark.
For a few seconds there was nothing, only the sight of the high towers peering over the wall, and the small red-brown horse-shape standing before the stone. Then Sunspark reared.
—Searing brightness like a sunseed fallen to earth and exploding into flower! A hard stabbing brilliance like a knife through the eyes! And a crack of thunder like being hit in the face, followed by a wave of stinging hot wind—
By the time they got their horses back under control again, the light and the heat were gone. There was only the little red horse-shape, standing before a huge gap in the wall.
Freelorn turned to look over his shoulder at Herewiss. “You were riding that?”
Herewiss smiled at him. “Let’s go see what the inside of the place looks like.”
They rode back to the wall, and dismounted, looking at it in wonder. About a hundred feet of the wall’s four-hundred-foot length was gone. The edges of the sudden opening were perfectly smooth, though slightly duller than the slick polished stone of the wall’s outer surfaces; the seared stone was crackling as it cooled.
Sunspark walked over to Herewiss, its eyes glittering with pleasure. (That was fun.)
(The stone, Spark, where did it go?)
(I consumed it. Anything’ll burn if you heat it enough. It made a nice meal.)
(But stone—?)
Sunspark smiled at Herewiss in its mind. (I have to eat sometimes.)
“Lorn?” Herewiss said.
“Yeah, what?” Freelorn was gazing in through the opening at the courtyard. It was paved in the same shining gray stone, and at the other side of it was a low, oblong structure like a great hall.
“Let’s have a look.”
“You first,” Freelorn said.
“All right, me first—”
Herewiss walked cautiously through the opening. Immediately it was much quieter; the sound of the wind seemed muted and far away. There was no dust on the pavement at all, and like the walls, the paving stretched without a seam or crack from one side of the courtyard to the other. Sunspark’s hooves clattered loudly on it as it followed him in.
Freelorn and his people came close behind Herewiss. No one spoke. Though the place was quieter than the surrounding desert, that was not what was oppressing them. The sheer stone walls and the crazily tilted towers rising above the central hall seemed to be ignoring them somehow—as if nothing human beings could do there would ever make a difference, as if the suddenly breached wall was a matter of no consequence. The place had an aura about it as of impassiveness and unconcern—as if it were alive itself, in some way, and did not recognize them as living things.
“This paving,” Lang said softly, “it isn’t level.”
“Yes it is,” Harald said, almost whispering. “You can see that it is—”
“It doesn’t feel that way.”
“No, it doesn’t,” Herewiss said, very loudly. “And why are we whispering?”
A ripple of nervous laughter went through the group.
“There’s something about this place,” Segnbora said. “Some of these towers, the—the perspective of them seems wrong somehow. They’re off. That one over the big square building, it should look closer than the other one behind it, tilting off to the left—but it doesn’t.”
“Let’s see what the inside is like.” Herewiss headed toward the opening in the building before them, wide and dark.
They left the horses hobbled in the courtyard and followed him in. It wasn’t as dark inside as they had expected. They stood at one side of a great square room, with a huge opening in the stone of the ceiling, like a skylight; it was positioned directly over what appeared to be a firepit raised some feet above the floor on a platform. Around the walls of the hall were doors opening onto vaguely lit passageways. Through one of these they could see a flight of stairs leading upward. The stairs were uneven, one broad one being staggered with two steep narrow ones as far up as they could see.
“Well,” Herewiss said, “if this is the dining hall, I wonder what the bedrooms are like? Let’s look.”
The group went slowly across the hall, clustered together. “I keep expecting something to jump out of one of those doors,” Freelorn said, as they started up the stairs.
“Well, I doubt it would be one of the original inhabitants,” Herewiss answered. “The lack of furniture makes me think they moved out permanently—unless they have very severe tastes in decorating.”
At the top of the stairs they all paused for a moment. Nothing was to be seen but a long, long corridor full of open doorways into dark empty rooms. One door, the fourth or fifth one down on the left, must have opened to a room with a window; sunlight poured out through it and onto the opposite wall.
“We could look at the view,” Herewiss said, and started down the hall. He looked into the first door he passed—
—and halted in midstep. Freelorn bumped into him, and Lang into Freelorn, and Segnbora into Lang, and they all looked—
There was no room behind the door. The stone of the doorsill was there, hard and solid under their hands as they reached out to reassure themselves of it; but through the opening cut in the glittering gray they saw a mighty mountain promontory rearing upward from a sea the color of blood. Pink foam crashed upward from the breaking waves and fell on the rose-and-opal beaches; the wind, blowing in from the sea, stirred trees with leaves the color of wine, showing the leaves’ flesh-colored undersides. The mountain was forested in deep purples and mauves, a cloud of morning mist lying about its shoulders.
Herewiss reached out, very slowly, and put his hand through the doorway. After a moment he withdrew it, rubbing his fingers together.
“It’s cooler there,” he said, “and damp. Lorn, this is it. Doors into Otherwheres—”
They moved on slowly to the next door.
It showed them sand, endless butter-colored sand carved by relentless winds into rippled dunes with crests like knives, stretching from one horizon to the other in perfect straight lines…a corrugated desert, showing not one sign of life, not the tiniest plant or creature. The sky was such a deep pure blue-violet as one sometimes sees in the depths of a lake at evening.
“If you cut our sky with a knife,” Segnbora whispered, “it would bleed that color.”
“Come on—”
The next doorway opened on a hallway of gray stone, crowded with seven people who looked through a doorway at a hallway of gray stone, crowded with seven people who looked through a doorway at a hallway—
“Dear Goddess!” Freelorn said, and spun to look behind him. There was nothing there but another doorway, this one showing a volcano erupting with terrible, silent violence against a night sky. A flying rock fell close to the door as he watched. He flinched back and Herewiss reached out to steady him.
“It’s all right. Let’s go on.”
“What if that had come through?”
“I don’t know if it can. Look at the sun coming out of this one—”
They gathered bef
ore the next door. “Suns, you mean,” Dritt said. They looked down on a placid seashore. Out over the dark water, one small red sun was going down in a fury of crimson clouds; another one, larger and fiercely blue, shone higher in the sky.
“Two suns.” Moris’s voice, usually loud and abrasive, was hushed. “Two suns! What kind of place is that?”
“Goddess only knows. Look at this one—”
The group relaxed , broke slightly apart as each person went looking through a separate doorway, looking for a wonder of their own.
“—blue trees?”
“What the Dark is this??”
“Look, it’s our country. Moris, isn’t that the Eorlhowe? And the North Arlene peninsula—”
“This one is underwater—look, there goes a fish!”
“I didn’t know the Goddess made birds that big.”
“It’s snowing here, I can’t see a thing.”
Herewiss was standing before a doorway that showed nothing—nothing at all, a vague blurry darkness. Not the darkness of night, but an absence, an absence of anything at all. He looked at it, and his heart was beating fast. An unused door? Maybe—
Freelorn came to him from further up the hall, took Herewiss’s arm and began to pull him along. “What? What?” Herewiss said, but Lorn wouldn’t answer him.
He pulled Herewiss in front of one door. “Look,” he said.
The door showed them a view from a high place, looking down into a landscape afire with a sunset the color of new love. Below and before them stretched a fantastic growth of crystalline forms, islanded between two rivers; jutting upward against the extravagant sky like prisms of quartz or amethyst or polished amber, but scored and carved and patterned, stark in the sunset light. They grew in all sizes and shapes, a forest of gigantic gems, spears of opal and dark jade and towers of obsidian. They caught the light of day’s end and reflected it back from a thousand different planes and angles, golden, red, orange, pink, smoky twilight blue; a barbaric and magnificent display of a god’s crown-jewels, the diadem of Day set down between the crimson rivers as the Sun retired. One spire reached higher than all the others around it, a masterwork of crystal set in gray stone and topped with a spearing crown of silver steel. On the crown’s peak a single ruby flared, pulsing like a Dragon’s eye, and rays of light struck up from the circlet like pale swords against the deepening blue. In the silences of the upper sky, a crescent Moon smiled at the evening star that flowered beside it.