•
The Brightwood is the most ancient and most honored of the principalities of Darthen. It was the first of the new settlements established after the Worldwinning, by people who came down out of the eastern Highpeaks and found the quiet woodlands to their liking after their long travels. It took them many years to free the Wood and its environs from the Fyrd that infested it, but while many other peoples were still living in caves in the mountains, the Brightwood people were already building the Woodward in the great clearing at its center.
Though the Woodward is held by outsiders to be at the Wood’s heart, the Brightwood people know that its real heart—or hearts, for there are several—lie elsewhere, in the Silent Precincts, secret, holy places where few people not born in the Wood or trained to the usages of the Power have ever walked. There, upon the Forest Altars hidden within the Precincts, the Goddess was first worshipped again as She used to be before the Catastrophe—invoked in Her three forms as Maiden and Mother and Wise Woman. There too Her Lovers are worshipped, those parts of Herself which rise and fall in Her favor, eternally replacing one another as Her consorts. Even the Lovers’ Shadow is worshipped there, though with cautious and propitiatory rites enacted at the dark of the Moon. Other places of the worship of the Pentad there may be, but there are none older or more revered except the Morrowfane, which is the Heart of the World and so takes precedence.
Night with its stars spread over the Wood, and the pure silver moonlight made vague and doubtful patterns on the grass as it shone through the branches. Spring was well underway; the night was full of the smell of growing things, and the chill wind laced itself through the new leaves with a hissing sound.
In the center of the little clearing, before the slab of moon-white marble set into the ground, Herewiss knelt shivering. An indefinite dappling of moonshine and shadow shifted and blurred on his bare body and gleamed dully from the sword he held before him. It was beaten flatter than it had been that morning, and had some pretense of an edge on it; but it was not finished yet. Herewiss had learned better than to waste time putting hilts and finishing on these swords before he tried them with this final test.
The dappled horse tethered at the edge of the clearing stamped and snorted softly, indignant over having to be up at this ridiculous hour. But right now Herewiss had no sympathy for him, and he shut the sound out as he prayed desperately. This had to work. It had to. He had done a good day’s spelling, a good piece of work, though he had paid dear for it, both in backlash and in the pain cutting away part of his self had cost him. But it might work. No, it had to. This was the Great Altar, the Altar of the Flame, the one most amenable to what he was doing, the one with the most bound-up power. And this sword felt better than any of the others he had tried; more alive. Maybe he had managed to fool the steel into thinking it lived. And if he had fooled it, then it would conduct the Power. His focus, his focus at last—
O Three, he said within himself, for no word may be spoken in those places, Virgin and Mother and Mistress of Power, oh let this be the last time. Goddess, You’re never cruel without a reason. You wouldn’t give me the seed of Fire and then let it die in bondage. Let the Power of this place enter into me and kindle the spark into full Flame. And let that Flame flow down through this my sword as it would through a Rod, were I a woman. Oh, please, my Goddess, my Mother, my Bride, please. Let it work. In Your name, Who are our beginnings and our endings—
He bowed his head, and then looked up again, shuddering with cold and anxiety, and also with weakness left over from that morning’s sorcery. If only it would work. It would be marvelous to go riding off to Freelorn’s rescue with a sword ablaze with the blue Fire. To strike the whole besieging army stiff and helpless with the Flame, and break the walls of the keep in the fullness of his Power, and bring Freelorn out of there. To strike terror into the army just by being what he was—the first man to bear Flame since the days of Lion and Eagle! And the look in Freelorn’s eyes. It would be so—
Herewiss sighed. I never learn, do I. Let’s see what happens.
Delicately, carefully, he set the sword’s point on the white stone of the altar, and took hold of the rough hilt with both hands. Herewiss became aware of a change, a stirring; something in the air around him moved, waited expectantly. His underhearing, that inner sensitivity that anyone experienced in sorcery develops, whispered that the Power of the place was moving about him, surrounding him, watching. His own Power rose up in him, a cold restless burning all through his body, demanding to be let out.
Herewiss lifted the sword away from the stone, and held it straight up before him, point upward, watching moonlight and shadow tremble along the length of the blade with the trembling of his hands. And he reached down inside him, where the Flame was running hot now, molten, seething like silver in the crucible, and he channeled it up through his chest and down through his arms and out through his hands—
The sound was terrible, a thunderous silent shout of frustration and screaming anger as the blue Fire, the essence of life, smote against something that had never lived, had never even been fooled into thinking that it lived. A silly idea, Herewiss thought in the terribly attenuated moment between the awful unsound and the sword’s destruction. As if plain sorcery could ever mix successfully with the Flame. Stupid idea.
And the sword blew apart. Fragments and flying splinters shot up and out with frightening force, gleamed sporadically as they flew through light and shadow, ripping leaves off branches, burying themselves in the grass. One of them struck itself into Herewiss’s upper arm, and another into his leg just above the knee, though not too deeply. A third went by his ear like the whisper of death. He held in his cry of terror, remembering where he was, and dropped the hilt-end of the shattered sword in the grass.
He plucked the metal fragment out of his arm and threw it into the grass, grimacing. For a long while Herewiss knelt there, bent over, hugging himself as much against the bitter disappointment as against the cold. I was so sure it would work this time. So sure.
Finally he regained some of his composure, and finished picking the splinters out of himself, and turned to make farewell obeisance to the Altar. It seemed to crouch there against the ground, cold white stone, ignoring him.
He forgot about the obeisance. He went straight over to Dapple and got dressed, and rode away from there.
It was several minutes before he passed the marker that indicated the end of the Silent Precincts. Just the other side of it he paused, looking up through the leaves at the starlit sky. “Dammit,” he yelled at the top of his lungs, “what am I doing wrong? Why won’t You tell me? What am I doing wrong?”
The stars looked down at him, cold-eyed and uncaring, and the wind laughed at him.
He kicked Dapple harder than necessary, and rode out of the Wood to Freelorn’s rescue.
•
TWO
If the cat who shares your house will not speak to you, remember first that cats, like the Goddess their Mother, never speak unless there is something worth saying, and someone who needs to hear it.
Darthene Homilies , Book 3, 581
They were called the Middle Kingdoms because they were in the middle of the world as men then knew it. To the north was the great Sea, of which little was known. Ships had gone out into it many times, seeking for the Isles of the North mentioned in tale and rumor, but if those Isles existed, no ship had found them and returned to tell the tale. To the west, beyond the far western border of Arlen, a great impassable range of mountains reared up. Legend said that the demons’ country of Hreth lay beyond them, but no one particularly cared to brave the terrible snow-choked passes to find out. Southward lay more mountains, the Highpeaks or Southpeaks, depending on whether you were speaking Arlene or Darthene; no one had even ventured far enough into them to find out if they ever ended, though there were stories of the Five Meres hidden among them. Eastward, past the river Stel, the eastern border of Steldin and Darthen and civilized lands in general, the land stretc
hed away into great empty desert wastes. Many had tried to cross them; most came back defeated, and the rest never came back at all. Those who did come back would occasionally speak of uncanny happenings, but most of the time they flatly refused to discuss the Waste. The Dragons might have known more about what went on there, or in the lands over the mountains — but Dragons would only talk to the human Marchwarders who are sometimes their companions, and the Marchwarders, when asked, would only smile and shake their heads.
The Kingdoms were four: Arlen, Darthen, Steldin, and North Arlen. Through them were scattered various small independent cities and principalities. The Brightwood was one of these, though like most of the smaller autonomies it had joined itself to a larger Kingdom, Darthen, for purposes of trade and protection. Arlen and Darthen were the two oldest Kingdoms, and the greatest; between them they stretched straight across all the known lands, from the mountains to the Waste Unclaimed, slightly more than three hundred leagues. The border between them was defined by the river Arlid, which flows from the Highpeaks to the Sea, south to north, a hundred leagues or so. It was not a guarded border, for the two lands had been bound by oaths of peace and friendship for hundreds of years. That, however, might change shortly….
Herewiss rode along through the sparsely wooded, hilly country three days’ journey south of the Brightwood, and thought about politics. It seemed that there was nothing in the world that could be depended upon. The Oath of Lion and Eagle had been sworn for the first time nearly twelve hundred years ago, and sworn again every time a king or queen came to the throne in either country—until now. When Freelorn’s father King Ferrant had died on the throne six years past, Freelorn had been in Darthen; but it might not have been possible for Freelorn to claim the kingship even if he had been in Prydon city when it happened. Ferrant had not yet held the ceremony of affirmation in which the White Stave was passed on to his son, and Freelorn’s status was therefore in question. Power had been seized shortly thereafter by a group of the king’s former counselors, backed by mercenary forces hired by the former Chancellor of the Exchequer; and this lord, a man named Cillmod, had declared Freelorn outlawed.
These occurrences, though personally outrageous to Herewiss, were not beyond belief. Such things had happened before. But six months ago, armed forces, both mercenaries and Arlene regulars, had moved into Darthen and taken land on the east side of the Arlid. Though the Oath had not been sworn again by Arlen’s new rulers, that did not make it any less binding on them. In all the years since its first swearing at the completion of the Great Road, neither country had ever attacked the other. Herewiss was nervous; he felt as if lightning were overdue to strike.
“Listen,” his father had said to him, leaning on the doorpost of Herewiss’s room three days before, “are you sure you don’t want some people to take with you?”
“I’m sure.” Herewiss had been packing; he stood before his bookshelf, choosing the grimoires he would take with him. “Notice would be taken—there would be reprisals later. The situation would only get worse. And even with the biggest force we could muster, we wouldn’t have a third enough people to crack a siege that size. Besides, our people need to be here, putting in crops.” Herewiss took down a thick leather-bound book, filled with notes and spells of illusion.
“That’s so… Have you got food?”
“Plenty.” Herewiss dropped the book in his saddlebag, along with another that already lay on the bed. The ornate carving of bed and paneling and windows was lost in evening dark, and only an occasional warm highlight showed in the light of the single oil lamp on the bedside table. “I cleaned out the pantry. I have enough trail food to last me through four years of famine, and I ate a big dinner.” He went over to a chest, lifted the lid and took out a white surcoat emblazoned with the arms of the Brightwood: golden Phoenix rising from red flame, the third-oldest arms in the Kingdoms. “Should I take this, do you think?”
“Is there some formal occasion out in the wilds that you’re planning to attend?”
“No. But if I need to exert political pull, it might come in handy.”
“You could take my signet.”
“What if I lost it? That’s almost the oldest thing in the Wood; I’d never forgive myself if something happened to it. No, hang on to it. The surcoat should be enough—the device could be counterfeited, but the gold in the embroidery’s real.” He folded up the surcoat, stowed it in the saddlebag.
“Do you want some mail?”
“No. I’m going to travel light so I can move fast. Besides, why bother giving anyone the idea that I might be worth robbing? I’ve got that damn turtle-shell of a leather corselet, and I have plenty of padding, and that nice light Masterforge knife you gave me last Opening Night. And the spear; and the cloak is good and thick— Anybody who gets past all that probably deserves to kill me…and if they do, it’ll prove that you and Mard were wasting your talents on me these sixteen years.” Herewiss stood up straight from checking his bags. “Besides, I inherited your iron britches. Don’t worry so much.”
Hearn looked with concern at his son. Clothed in dark tunic and breeches and riding boots, cloaked in brown, Herewiss seemed one more shadow of the many in the room. The lamplight reflected from his eyes, and from the metal fittings of the empty scabbard hanging from his belt. “Son,” Hearn said, “I’m not too worried about you. But the pattern that’s been forming bothers me. I worry about Freelorn. Not so much the fact that he’s been running around the Kingdoms like a crazy person for the past six years, staying at petty kings’ courts until someone finds out he’s there and tries to poison him. He’s pretty alert about such things, usually. Or the business of his running around with his little swordtail and stealing for a living. He seems to steal from people who need it. But lately he’s been coming to grief a bit too often, just missing getting caught—and you’ve been having to go and get him out of these scrapes. And now this; here he is, stuck in this old keep with a thousand Steldenes waiting to starve him out—and you’re going to go get him out of it. Alone. Herewiss, it’s not really safe.”
“I’ll manage,” Herewiss said. “What are you thinking, father?”
“This. What happens when he gets into something that you can’t get him out of?”
“By then I hope I’ll have my Power…”
“But you don’t have it yet, and if you get killed for Freelorn’s sake, you never will. Son of mine—” and Herewiss’s underhearing brought him a sudden wash of his father’s sorrow, a feeling like eyes filling with tears— “I’ve long since reconciled myself to the fact that you’re going to die young—by use of the Flame, or more slowly by all this sorcery. Yet I want you to be what you can. Here you are, the first male in an age and a half to have even the small amount of Fire you have—the first sign that the Kingdoms are getting back to the way things were before the Catastrophe. But you have to live to be what you can. At least for a little longer. And Freelorn is endangering you.”
“Father,” Herewiss said very softly, “what good is the Power to me if Lorn dies? He’s the only thing I need as much as the Flame. Life would be empty without him; the Fire would mean nothing to me. There are priorities.”
“Is your life one of them?”
Herewiss reached out, took his father’s hands in his. “Da, listen. I won’t follow Lorn into any of his famous last stands or impossible charges. I’ll try not to let him get into them. I’d like to see him king, yes—but I won’t let him drag me into some crazy scheme that has a dead Dragon’s chance against the Dark of succeeding. However, I also won’t let him get killed if there’s any way I can help it—and if my life is the price of his continuing, well, there it is. I can’t help how I feel.”
Hearn sighed softly. “You’re a lot like your brother,” he said, “and just as hard to reason with. I gave you the oak as your tree at your birth, my son, and sometimes I think your head is made of it…”
“It was a good choice,” Herewiss said, smiling faintly. “Lightning strikes o
ak trees more than any other kind. And I have to be crazy sometimes: I have a reputation to uphold. ‘The only thing sure about the Lords’ line of the Wood—’”
“‘—is that there’s nothing sure about them,’” his father finished, smiling too. “Fool.”
“They told Earn our Father that He was a fool at Bluepeak, and look what happened to Him.”
“I would sooner be father to a live son,” Hearn said, “than to a dead legend.”
“I’ll be careful,” said Herewiss.
“Have a safe journey, then. And good hunting.”
•
So Herewiss had taken his leave of his other relatives and friends in the Woodward, and had said good-bye to the Rooftree, and then had stopped in the stable to choose a horse. He had originally been of a mind to take Darrafed, his little thoroughbred Arlene mare, a present from Freelorn—or perhaps Shag, his father’s curly-coated bay warhorse. But as he had walked down the aisle between the stalls, Dapple had put his head out over his stall’s half-door and looked at Herewiss as if he knew something. Herewiss was not one to ignore a sign when it presented itself.
The horse moved comfortably through the low hill country. As long as he kept to a steady southward course, Herewiss let Dapple have his head. The horse was a wise one. About a hundred years before, a Rodmistress had put her deathword on one of Dapple’s ancestors and had decreed that the horses of that line would always have a talent for being in the right place at the right time. The talent had seemed to do their riders good as well. One horse, the third generation down, had carried an unsuspecting lady to the arms of the lover who had searched the Middle Kingdoms for her for twelve years. Another had led its thirteen-year-old mistress to the place where the royal Darthene sword, Fórlennh BrokenBlade, had been hidden during the Reavers’ invasion of Darthis City. Having Dapple along, Herewiss reasoned, would make his father worry less—and might incidentally ease his way as he worked on getting Freelorn out of that keep.