After a few moments Segnbora let out a long breath of resignation. “I supposed they do. Now what?”
“Now,” Hasai said, “we ask pardon for wrongs done in haste.”
He bowed to her, his wings going up again, and his great head sinking low; lower than ever, this time, till it almost touched the floor. Those eyes half as high as her body were now below her own.
“I am—sorry—about the mdeihei.” The words came out of him oddly; it occurred to Segnbora that to a Dragon this was probably like apologizing for breathing. “They were trying to find out what kind of place they were in. That is very important to us. We are large as your kind reckons size, true enough; and well armed, and long-lived. But we have our fears too.” As Hasai spoke, Segnbora became conscious that the rustling in the shadows had stopped, and that many eyes were gazing out of it at her with an alien directness that was as much frightened as frightening.
Hasai caught the sense of her realization, and bent his head toward her, seemingly relieved. “I feel your dislike of others delving in your memories. I will keep the mdeihei out of your past—though you are of course welcome to ours. But I don’t know what can be done about your future—”
“Neither do I!” Segnbora said, with a rueful laugh. “The present is giving me enough problems already.” Suddenly she thought of Lorn, and Lang, and all the others. Had they left her in Chavi as planned? She had to get out and see where she was…
“Since you are us now,” Hasai said, sensing both the joy and danger her liege represented, “you must be more conscientious in safeguarding your body. There is more than just one of you to go rdahaih if you’re careless.”
“And you of course will take care of me for the same reason—”
“We would take care of you anyway, shared mindspace or no,” Hasai said. “Life is the Immanence’s gift, not to be thoughtlessly cast away even when it is alien—or angry.”
Segnbora nodded, feeling ashamed of her initial reaction. I did ask for a change at the Fane, she thought. The request’s certainly been granted! But it’s just like the old stories: if you don’t specify what you want when you wish for something, you may get a surprise…
“I have to go,” Segnbora said. “The others will be worrying. ” She turned and headed for the little low door of the cavern.
“Sehe’rae, sdaha,” said the huge viol-voice from behind her: Go well, outdweller.
Segnbora paused. “Sehe’rae—” she said, and tasted the next word. “—mdaha.” Mindmate.
The mdeihei, pacified at last, settled back into the song of the ages, the litany of all their memories, all their lives. Segnbora threw a last glance at Hasai, burning in iron and diamond in the light from the shaft. Then she turned and ducked through the door—
***
—to stare at the dawn from her blanket-roll. The Sun hadn’t yet climbed over the edge of the world, and gray mist lay low over the grassy lea in which the camp was set. Off to one side the horses stood together, stamping and quietly snorting their way toward wakefulness; three or four feet in front of her, the campfire was down to ashes and embers.
“Oh, thank You, Goddess,” she tried to say; but her throat, after some days of disuse, refused to do anything but squawk like the rooks trying their voices all around. She was about to try clearing her throat a bit when the fire before her flared up wildly.
(Took you long enough!) it shouted, annoyed and delighted. (Herewiss!)
From behind her came hurried rustling: blankets being thrown aside, wet grass whispering as someone came quickly through it. Then Herewiss was down on his knees in front of her, staring at her. “Are you sure? The last time it was just a coughing spell—”
Segnbora looked up at Herewiss and very distinctly croaked a rude word in the oldest of the dead Darthene dialects, a word having to do with one of the less sanitary habits of sheep. “Now I’ll cough,” she said, and she did.
During the coughing spell, Freelorn thumped down beside Herewiss. He grabbed Segnbora by the shoulders and shook her. “You had us worried sick! Are you all right? ”
“I will be—when you stop that—!” she gasped. As Lorn helped her sit up, she looked around at the blessedly mundane morning with tremendous appreciation. “Can I have a drink?”
Herewiss got water for her, then sat down with Freelorn, staring at Segnbora while she drank as if at someone returned from the dead. “How long was I out?” she said between sips.
“Six days,” Herewiss said. “We thought we’d have to leave you in—”
“I know. I heard you. I would have done the same thing.” Freelorn and Herewiss glanced at one another in relief.
To the sound of more rustling, Lang dropped to the grass beside them. He stared at Segnbora and said nothing; but her under-hearing woke up as if it had been kicked, bringing her a flood of worry, not nearly as relieved as that of the others.
She took another drink to gather her composure, and then looked at Lang and said quietly, “You told me so….”
He shrugged and looked away.
“Here,” Freelorn said, “you ought to see—” He got up, went off and rummaged around in his bags for a moment, then came back with a small square of polished steel, a mirror.
Segnbora looked at herself. The same old face—prominent nose, pointed chin, deep-set eyes with circles smudged a bit darker than usual. But her hair wasn’t the same. It was coming in shockingly silver-white at the roots. “Oh dear,” she said, and couldn’t find anything else to say.
Lang got up abruptly and went away.
Segnbora handed Freelorn back his mirror and looked at Herewiss. “I had quite a night. Can I sleep a little more? Then I’ll be able to ride.”
Herewiss nodded. “Rest,” he said. “Chavi is still a day away, and we’re not in such a hurry that you can’t recuperate a bit.”
She nodded back, suddenly very weary, and lay down, gratefully wrapping her blankets around her. Some time after she closed her eyes, she realized that neither her liege-lord nor his loved had moved, but were still watching her, wondering.
“‘Berend,” Freelorn said very quietly, “the thing that happened to you at the Fane— What was it?”
“Not ‘it,’” she sighed, without opening her eyes. “‘Them. ’”
This time the darkness was only sleep, and she embraced it .
***
SIX
If you’ll walk with kings and queens, well; but take care. For the Shadow aims ever at them – and though it often misses, it doesn’t scorn to hit the person standing closest.
Askrythen, 14, xi
It was an odd riding that someone standing on the old diked road to Chavi would have seen approaching through the evening haze. Possibly it was just as well that no one was there to witness it.
Between the tall hawthorn hedges in the fading light came first two men in country clothes, one on a sorrel, one on a bay. Their horses flinched and shied occasionally, for their riders were juggling stones, and dropping them frequently. A third man on a black palfrey was repeatedly plucking a single string on a lute, trying to elicit the same note twice in a row from his tone-deaf companion. Then came a young slim woman in a worn brown surcoat, riding a Steldene steeldust mare. She spoke occasionally to the empty air, like a madwoman, with a hoarse voice, frequently raising a hand to brush back hair going very pale at its part.
Close behind her, bringing up the rear, rode a tall dark man on a blood-bay stallion and a short dark man on a black-maned chestnut. The small man was waving his arms and complaining about something; his tall companion nodded gravely at most of what he said, glancing occasionally over to his left, where a hundredweight boulder was floating, pacing him as he rode.
“Look at them. Look at them! They’ll never manage a juggling act with people watching them! Dusty, I love them, but they can’t juggle air!”
“They’ll do all right. They’re just out of practice. After all, it’s been years since they juggled for a living.”
“Yes, but—”
“Lorn, they’ll do all right! So will you, and so will Moris and Dritt and the rest. Most of the entertainers on the road are only mediocre anyway. And it’s not as if gleemen’s immunity depended on whether we’re good or not. No one’s going to suspect anything. This is the middle of nowhere.”
“I don’t know…”
(Hah!) Sunspark said suddenly from beneath Herewiss. (For one lousy penny I’m supposed to cut off my legs?)
The remark was directed at Segnbora, She tried to put her head under her wing in token of mild exasperation, and was nearly as exasperated to find she couldn’t. “The punch line usually comes at the end of the joke,” Segnbora said.
(Oh. Well, there’s this beggar—)
“That one won’t work now. We know the ending. Try another.”
(All right.) Sunspark’s expression became one of intense concentration, an interesting one for a horse.
Segnbora shook her head, bemused. While she’d been busy with Hasai, Dritt had one day made the mistake of trying to make friends with Sunspark by telling it a joke. Since then it had decided that joking was a vital part of human experience, and had been demanding everyone to teach it the art, on pain of burning them when Herewiss wasn’t looking. As soon as she was in the saddle again, Sunspark had accosted Segnbora. In no mood for joking, she had suggested that it tell her jokes, and thus learn by doing. She’d had no peace since.
(Try this. So there are these two women, they go into an inn and the innkeeper comes to their table, and one of the women says, ‘Bring us the best red wine you have, and be sure the cups are clean!’ So the innkeeper goes off, and comes back with a tray, and says, ‘Two red wines. And which one asked for the clean cup?’)
Herewiss laughed. “Not bad.”
(I made it up,) said Sunspark, all childish pride. It did a quick capriole out of sheer pleasure, and almost unseated Herewiss.
“Hey, watch that, you! Though on second thought, maybe we should increase your part in the act. We could use another jester.”
“Mnh ‘qalasihiw, HhIr—” Segnbora cleared her throat. The Dracon language was beginning to fascinate her, though she couldn’t yet sing even the simplest of the emotion-intonations that went with the words; and her desire to master the tongue sometimes caused it to get out of her mouth before Darthene did. At least she hoped that was the reason. “I mean, Herewiss, there’s only one problem with that. What happens if an audience doesn’t laugh?”
Sunspark threw a cheerful glance at its rider. (If they don’t laugh, we get rid of them and bring in a new audience.) Theconcept “get rid of them” was attached to plans for the same sudden-death fire that had been the end of the deathjaw.
Freelorn glanced up at the sky, no doubt to invoke the Goddess’s protection on their next audience. Herewiss said nothing, just looked hard at his mount.
Sunspark laid back its ears and showed all its teeth around the bit, then subsided somewhat. (They will come back,) it said, sulkiness showing in the thought, (you told me so!)
“They will. But there’s no reason to hurry people out of this life. Let the Goddess handle the timing.”
“It does learn quickly, though,” Segnbora said. “Another few months and I dare say the audiences will be safe.”
Freelorn and Herewiss exchanged unconvinced, humorous glances, which Sunspark ignored. (She makes me understand the rules,) it said. (And a good thing, too. Otherwise—) Its thought carried an amused undertone of threat, like a bright edge of smoulder threading along the edge of one leaf on a dry tree, thin and potentially dangerous.
Segnbora said nothing. Respond to a threat, and an elemental will get the idea that you’re threatened. A bad idea to give it. But without warning the huge dark form in the cave at the bottom of her thoughts reared halfway up and breathed a withering blast of white fire at the little line of red.
Sunspark blinked and drew away, annoyed. (Not another one! It’s getting so there’s no one left around here to scare.)
Segnbora loosened her collar, feeling hot, and closed her eyes to “look” at Hasai. Through this day and the day before he had been stretched at ease in the seaside cave, looking out of her eyes, silent for the most part. He stayed out of her thoughts except to ask an occasional question. The rest of the time the rumble of his private thought blended with the bass chorus of the mdeihei, a sound Segnbora found she could now start to ignore, like the seashore when one lives nearby.
Hasai was presently sunning himself in the noon light burning down through the cave’s shaft. His wings were spread out flat like a butterfly’s, lying easy on the floor as he settled himself again. As Segnbora watched, he curled his neck around and slipped his head under the left wing in the position she’d tried to achieve before. “That one’s impudent,” Hasai said.
“I could have handled it,” Segnbora said.
“You did. Are we not mdaha and sdaha, and am I not you?”
In Dracon the question was rhetorical, and Segnbora had no answer for it. She turned away from Hasai without further thought and opened her eyes again on the evening, breathing in the sweet sharp hawthorn scent in the air. “‘Berend, did you hear me?” Freelorn said.
“No, Lorn, I was talking to my lodger.” She reached out and picked a white blossom off the hedge past which they were riding, held it to her nose.
“Oh. Sorry. What are you going to do tonight? Pass the purse?”
“She can sing,” Herewiss said.
“You can? Well, that’s news! You know many songs?”
“A few,” Segnbora said. She reined Steelsheen back to ride abreast of Herewiss and Freelorn, suddenly feeling the need for company more normal than that she carried inside her. “I’m best with a kithara, but I’ll do all right with the lute.”
Herewiss was still being paced by that boulder. It was easily half Sunspark’s size, but Herewiss showed no sign of strain, and at the same time he was keeping Khávrinen from showing so much as a flicker of Fire. His control was improving rapidly.
“You won’t have any trouble with your part of the act, that’s plain,” Segnbora said.
Herewiss shrugged, waving the rock away with one hand. It soared up over the hedge like a blown feather and dropped out of sight, hitting the ground in the field on the other side with an appalling thud.
“It’s easy,” Herewiss said. “Even the ecstatic part of the Fireflow is under control since we climbed the Fane. Which is good; I was starting to have trouble with it.”
Freelorn shot Herewiss an ironic look. “No, really,” Herewiss said. “The body gets confused, mistakes one kind of pleasure for another… It’s distracting. That’s why, in group wreakings, usually the Rodmistresses tell off one of the group to handle all of that herself, so that the others are more free to concentrate as much as possible of their Power on the work at hand.”
“Sounds like nice work if you can get it,” Freelorn said. “But now I wonder. Did the Goddess install that aspect of the Fire on purpose, to keep people from doing large wreakings casually? As a control?”
“You could argue it both ways. It might just as easily be a reward, to make sure the Power’s used.” Herewiss shrugged. “Anyway, at the moment I’m as free of the ecstatic part of the flow as I need to be. But it’s a mixed blessing. The first time I picked up that rock, I had to be careful that the whole field didn’t come with it.”
He sounded nervous. Lorn laughed, and reached out to squeeze Herewiss’s hand. “You’ll do all right…”
They rode on through the evening, and a short while later, at a turn in the road, a low huddle of squared-off silhouettes appeared against the horizon. Lamps burned like yellow stars in some of the houses’ windows.
“Your guest—” Freelorn said abruptly to Segnbora.
(A rude sort,) Sunspark said.
“He’s not,” Segnbora said, unsure exactly why she was defending the intruder in her mind. “You started that, firechild.”
“You said ‘they’ before,” Freelorn
said.
“Hh ‘rae nt’ssëh,” Segnbora said, then corrected herself with a smile. “It is they. But it’s also he. Mostly he.”
Freelorn’s expression was impossible to read. “Are you— still you?”
Oh Goddess, Lorn, if I only knew! she wanted to cry; but she kept her voice calm. “I’m not sure. Lorn, let it lie…when we have time, I’ll take you and Herewiss inside and introduce you. I’m me enough to function, at least.”
Freelorn hastily cast around for something else to talk about. The lane had widened into a road of a size to drive cattle down, and was well tracked and rutted. “Been a lot of traffic here, I’d say.”
“For this time of year, yes.” Segnbora gazed up at the town. “What day of Spring is it?”
“The fifty-eighth,” Herewiss said. “A Moon and two days till Midsummer. Why?”
“Just wondering… Used to be my mother and father would start for Darthis now, to do Midsummer’s in the city with the rest of the Houses. We used to pass this way. But we haven’t done the trip since they built the inn at Chavi. My father started having trouble with his legs. It was arthritis, and he couldn’t take the long rides any more…”
I don’t know why we’re paying all this good money for you to waste your time studying something that doesn’t work, she remembered him saying– and then, without warning, was in the memory as much as in her body. Holmaern was hobbling to the gate outside the house, and she was walking with him, as slowly as she dared: too slowly and he would notice. At the time, she’d heard nothing in his words but disappointment at her. But now, impossibly, Segnbora could underhear his frustration and pain, his determination to keep control of himself in the face of the ailment that even their local Rodmistress’s expertise could do no more than slow down. From down in the darkness inside her, great eyes that burned low studied the memory, and her reaction to it; and the shape that owned the eyes said nothing.