And when the Great Bridge abruptly fell down into the Arlid, Herewiss would be there conversing with the guests, obviously nowhere near the scene of the crime. It might fool no one who knew anything about the Fire; but it might also give Cillmod pause, that a man could fuel such a wreaking and still sip his wine and chat with the guests unimpaired. Rian, Herewiss thought, will be shown not to be the only one who can pull off such a trick. And as for the man himself—
He put that thought aside for the moment, and bowed to Sowan. “You’re welcome,” he said; “the wines are over on the right.” Sowan looked at Herewiss, went pale, said a few hurried words of conventional greeting, and almost bolted past him. Herewiss smiled.
Cillmod arrived, without any flourish of trumpets or other sign, since this was not a state occasion. Various of his ministers of state were about him, with members of their families: and Herewiss particularly noted Rian at the back of the group, looking jovial and relaxed. How does the man do it, he thought in disgusted wonder, knowing perfectly well that that quiet presence had been dogging his every move, the past week, leaning against everything he did with the Fire to test the strength of it, the amount of energy being put forth, the permanence of Herewiss’s barriers. Well, later for him. But his heart was running harder than usual, and the feeling of excitement down in the pit of his stomach was getting more pronounced. Not much later....
“Sir,” Herewiss said, and bowed to Cillmod, just so low as to be polite, and no more.
“Prince,” Cillmod said, giving Herewiss his proper title, as Herewiss would not give him the one he claimed. But he smiled. “Thank you for the invitation.”
The courtesy was rather hollow. Cillmod knew perfectly well why he was here, and would have been within his rights to refuse, or plead other business... like the marshalling of an army. But other minds and hands were managing that business: Herewiss noticed that Meveld, the Commander-general, was nowhere to be seen, nor were Daik and Ilwin, his deputy commanders. Herewiss’s guess was that the three of them and their horses were either waist-deep in Arlid, at Daharba or Anish, cursing their reluctant mercenary forces into crossing: or else already over on the far side, lashing the troops on ahead to get at least some of them far enough down the Kings’ Road to keep the Darthenes from coming straight and unopposed to the Arlid, and forcing an engagement there.
Herewiss smiled back, knowing that all this was on Cillmod’s mind as well. He looked slightly drawn, like a man who has been having sleepless nights. But that look on him, as on Lorn, had a sharpness to it that made him seem marginally more dangerous. Herewiss said, “It seemed the only way to obtain your company, sir. Unfortunately, my duties here have kept me busy.”
“So I’ve heard,” Cillmod said. “More of that later, I’m sure. Meanwhile let me go make my guest’s duty to the lady Andaethen.”
Herewiss bowed again, that precise bow, and watched him go. The resemblance to Lorn was really rather unnerving: and his unwilling liking for the man kept getting between Herewiss and his knowledge of what was going to have to happen to him after this war was over. Exile, at best. He hoped Cillmod commanded enough loyalty among his private troops to take a few of them with him into exile, if he survived that long: for there would be enough people out in the world who would find it opportune to kill him if they found him—if only to curry favor with the Throne, and the man who would then be sitting in it.
“And this is Prince Herewiss,” said the kindly voice from behind him. Herewiss turned to see Rian in his tasteful clothes, a rich tunic of dark-saffron colored sendal this time. A tall handsome woman leaned on his arm, smiling at Herewiss from under black brows: and her hair was an astonishment, a sheer sleek fall of black a cubit and a half long over her deep blue gown, and bound with a light filigree fillet of silver flowers about her brows. “Prince, the lady Olaiste, my wife.”
“Madam,” Herewiss said, and bowed deep. She looked at him out of cheerful eyes, an expression of cool wonder filling them as she got a look at Khávrinen.
“Your highness,” she said. “I heard the stories, but I didn’t quite believe them. I do now. You’ve got a marvel there!”
“Not ‘highness’ yet, madam,” Herewiss said. “It’ll be awhile yet, I hope, before I wear the prince-regnant’s title. ‘Sir’, if anything. But my name will do.”
“It’s all burning,” said another voice from behind Herewiss, “but it’s not eating the scabbard or anything.”
“Paka, don’t be rude,” Olaiste said, in a voice more loving than chiding: and Rian said, “You little monster, come out in front of the host to be greeted properly!” Both their voices were full of barely-controlled laughter.
A child came slipping around Herewiss’s left side, and peered up at him. She was about nine years old, and had her mother’s hair, though in a curly cloud, and her father’s unnervingly light eyes, and she stared at Herewiss. “Now Pakelnë,” Olaiste said, “make your duty to the Prince like a good girl.”
“It looks like fire, all right,” she said, “but I put my finger in it, and it wasn’t hot.”
“I felt you do that, my lady,” Herewiss said. “It generally doesn’t burn unless I ask it, or else if I’m working hard at something and it gets hot accidentally.”
“Oh. And there’s the kitty. Nice kitty,” Pakelnë said, and calmly reached out in front of him to begin stroking Sunspark.
Herewiss’s eyes widened, but he had no time to move before Sunspark, having appeared silently from behind him, pushed its huge hunting-cat’s head under the small hand. It purred like a thunderstorm being tickled under the chin, but all the while its eyes were on Rian, and its eyes were fire: hungry, deadly, and impersonal. Rian had the good sense to look nervous.
“She has nothing to be afraid of,” Herewiss said, meaning it. “Ladies, I hope you haven’t eaten dinner. Or for that matter nunch, or breakfast. There’s a fair amount of hospitality here to do justice to.”
“What would you recommend?” Olaiste said, looking away from Sunspark with difficulty.
“I want an ice,” said Pakelnë.
“What, before dinner?” Herewiss said, while her mother said, “Paka, your manners!” and Rian said, “‘I want an ice’ what?”
They looked at one another, and Olaiste laughed out loud, and Rian raised his eyebrows, the expression of a doting father, helpless against his first child; and Herewiss smiled, though the smile felt a bit thin from inside it. Goddess, he said to Her, aggrieved, why can’t this be easier for me? Can You not afford the luxury to allow me to hate my enemy straightforwardly? Must the picture be complicated by these innocents?
But then, Hers was...
“‘I want an ice’, prince,” Pakelnë said, with the air of someone much put-upon.
“You remind me of a friend of mine,” Herewiss said, “who always wanted the ices first. Never understood it myself, but it doesn’t seem to have done him any harm. If your parents approve—”
They both nodded. “Come on then, madam,” Herewiss said. “Lady Olaiste, do you like fish, or fowl, or meat of the chase?—it’s all here....”
He played the host to Rian’s wife and daughter for a while, then saw Andaethen beckoning him, and stepped away. Sunspark sat next to Pakelnë while she ate her fourth ice, washing its face as if bored with everything: but Herewiss noticed that it never quite left off looking at Rian.
I could save you a trouble, it said.
You behave yourself!
You are going to have to kill him.
Herewiss made no answer to that at the moment. He went over to Andaethen, who leaned over and whispered, “Do you need rescuing from them?”
“Who? Rian’s wife and child? Not them. They’re charming.” He said it rather sourly.
Andaethen looked at him. “Well, you know best.”
“I wonder,” Herewiss said, and sighed, and headed back into the crowd. His nerves were playing him up, though; the place seemed hot. Sunspark’s eyes were on him.
Herewiss t
ook a cup of iced wine, drank it off, found no relief. After a few minutes he went out on the terrace, half hoping to find Cillmod there.
Instead he found Rian, thoughtfully touching one of the white roses that grew in the great stone jars arranged down the length of the garden terrace. Herewiss, reluctant, would have gone inside again: but Rian looked up at him and said, “It was kind of you to make my wife and daughter so welcome.”
“Why should they deserve otherwise?” Herewiss said.
Rian smiled to himself, turning his attention back to the rose. “Indeed. But you certainly seemed to be enjoying yourself, showing off the food. For a man so fond of the pleasures of the table,” Rian said, “you’re lean.”
Herewiss smiled slightly. “I burn it off,” he said. “It’s always been so.”
Rian smiled again, just a bit more broadly. “Somehow I would not have thought you would have much in the way of a sense of humor,” he said. “The first man to have the Fire—certainly a very determined man, very focused. Without much time for other interests, I would have thought.”
“Like other human beings?” Herewiss said. “You could hardly be said to be human yourself, without at least that.”
“All the same... an exacting art, if what I hear is true. Demanding... leaving scant energy for other things. I would think sorcery would be much preferable. It’s far more understandable, more manageable, doesn’t kill the user... “
“Does it not?” Herewiss said gently. “I remember one in the Square at Blackcastle, on Midsummer’s Day, who found it fatal enough.”
Rian paled slightly. He remembers the pain, at least, Herewiss thought, with satisfaction. Backlash may not touch him directly when he works through another sorcerer’s enslaved soul, but the laws of sorcery can’t be entirely flouted: the pain reaches him. “It is, though,” Rian said after a moment, “altogether more amenable to the needs of man. Unlike the blue Flame of Power, as they call it, which everyone knows eats up the life, and kills the best and brightest of our young....”
“Some people find it worth having, even so,” Herewiss said. “It’s not as if the gift can’t be refused.”
“As you refused it,” said Rian, and laughed, a soft breath of a sound. “Tell the truth. It drove you halfway across the world, for fear of its dying. It nearly killed you in achieving it. And now you use it, and fear it, and wonder why you ever sought it at all.”
Herewiss said nothing to this. Hearing his silence, Rian chuckled. “Yes indeed: the bitch-Goddess leads another of the poor hounds howling on Her scent, and all for nothing. And you wonder why some people seek service elsewhere.”
Herewiss’s eyes narrowed. “How dare you name Her so... !”
“Why do you bother naming Her at all? She doesn’t care. Call on Her, and She won’t answer. While my Master—” he smiled again— “is only too glad to do so. But as for Her, why fear Her anger, or anything else about Her? It isn’t a very powerful force, surely, that creates uncounted souls only to get them to do its work for it. And bribes them with this children’s story of reward, this feeble hope held out, of peace on a last Shore.” Rian shook his head in unbelief at the gullibility of human beings. “What kind of reward for a virtuous life is an eternity of peace, of doing nothing? Living, striving, surely that would be a better reward. Not this timeless prison that we’re told waits for us. A forever of walking up and down the beach.” He laughed.
“There is rather more to it than that,” Herewiss said softly.
“Oh, I’m sure you feel you’ve been there.” Rian nodded thoughtfully. “Wishful thinking, at best: the mind’s last desperate struggles as it perceives great danger or death approaching....”
Herewiss stood there, stunned at the man’s cool debunking. He remembered the blessed silence of the Shore, the long curving waves of pure light that washed up there on the far side of existence, the Sea of purification and oblivion awaiting those ready to be reborn: and the sound of his brother Herelaf’s voice in that silence, the grip of his hands, forgiving, and challenging, and real. He knew what he knew, regardless of Rian’s ideas. All the same, my Goddess, Herewiss thought, have You ever shared Yourself with this man? And did he believe it afterwards? How did he come to this horrible cold-minded state? Except that he thought he knew. The Shadow had been at Rian for a long time, gnawing gently at the borders of a mind that otherwise could have been a great power for good. It was always the Shadow’s preferred tactic to subvert virtue, when possible, before it became firmly esconced: and to turn high powers in the Goddess’s service to Its own use—the higher, the better, for that way the blow at Her was more bitter. If the Goddess had ever shared Herself with Rian, doubtless he had long since reduced the memory to the status of a dream, a pretty fantasy...
“I accept things as She has made them,” Herewiss said. “Which seems wise, for one in Her service.”
“But what do you get for it?” Rian was saying. “Service is supposed to be paid for in coin that you can spend. Even admitting... that place... “—and he smiled tolerantly— “what are you given that’s of any worth? A life of difficult service, of self-denial and pain—and then you die young... for what? The sake of Her thin-blooded ‘good’? A world you’ll never see again? A loved you’ll never see grow old? What will have been the point of all your work, then, if you never get anything in return for it but the chance to be reborn?”
“She has Her reasons,” Herewiss said, “which may seem opaque to me now... but will doubtless be clearer, later on.”
Rian shook his head. “A healthy man would look for a way to live, and change the world: not leave it early, not slink away like a coward, muttering about the unfathomable will of Divinity. ‘Reasons that we cannot know.’ Excuses, you mean....”
Herewiss found himself getting angry, as if someone were insulting his mother. And so he is, he thought. But he pushed the reaction down. “Rian,” he said, “your ‘Master’ has deluded you badly.”
“Me!” And Rian laughed at him, kindly. It was not an attempt to infuriate: he genuinely thought that Herewiss was amusing, and pathetic. “How can you not see how you’re being had? What kind of excuse is She for a god? Everything is ruined, from the beginnings on! The universe is broken, through Her negligence in letting the great Death into it, and there’s nothing to be done about it, we’re told, but wait for everything to run down. The next time, She’ll get it right.” Rian laughed again. “And what about the other excuse we hear—propagated by Her, of course? That our purpose in the world is to mend it?” He looked at Herewiss with amused outrage. “To clean up Her mess? A poor sort of ruler for the Universe, She’s been. A better one is available.” He smiled, and looked at Herewiss with subdued excitement, with pleasure. “And some of us have begun working for Him. We will take Her at Her word, this time. We will clean up Her mess, indeed. Let this Universe run down? Indeed not. Why spend so much pain, so many lives, for an uncertain ending? We’ll end it now. And then rebuild, and do it properly. We will not waste time mending the marred. We’ll dispose of it, and then build aright. There will be no more pain, or sorrow, and no more death.” His face shone, transfigured with the vision.
Herewiss simply looked at him. “And in the meantime,” Rian said, “we will draw together the resources we need to hasten the Change. Sorcery will not be enough, of course. Fire, eventually—some use will have to be made of that.” He looked at Herewiss with compunction. “It’s rather a poor tool, of course, the Flame. Yet we’ll turn Her weapon in Her hand, turn it against her: a sweet justice there. But after we get what use we can out of the Fire, it will be allowed to die out. No point in keeping around a tool that kills its wielders so young.”
“You know I will not permit any such thing to happen,” Herewiss said.
“I know you have to try to stop me,” Rian said. “Poor dupe that you are: you would have to say that. The Fire She’s kindled in you drives you to it—even makes you certain that you’re right. How is a man to argue with the feelings in his bod
y when he has no control over them—that whip of pleasure, and righteousness, that She wields so mercilessly?” Rian looked at him with pity, and compassion. “You’re merely a weapon in Her hand, forged to Her purpose, which is to keep this poor ailing world in Her grip. That being the case, I fear I must break you, so that I can get on with the rest of my work. It’s a shame, in a way. You’re a man I could have liked. Would have liked to have on my side—but it does seem impossible.” Rian sighed. “I heard you the other night. That act of defiance, with the keplian. Not that it will ever make a difference... the world won’t be in its present state long enough for the changes you made to matter. That kind of spirit and ingenuity would have been be useful to me, and to the One I serve. I’d hoped you might see sense, if we had a chance to talk. However—” He shrugged.
This is it, then, Herewiss thought. The excitement began to rise in him. “I can’t let you live either,” he said, trembling with anger and pity of his own. “You’ve bought the Shadow’s story of a world that needs recreating, but you can’t see Its real intent, which is to recreate nothing, to destroy everything that is, to leave nothing but a void filled with Itself and bloated with Its hate and triumph.” He shook his head. “The only question becomes: when shall we have it out?”
Right now will do, the voice said, abruptly, from inside his head; and the force came crashing down.
It came so suddenly that for a moment Herewiss stood paralyzed, his tongue cleaving to the roof of his mouth, the breath stopped in his lungs. There was another power in his head with him, groping for control, feeling at his mind’s connection to his Fire, and his Fire’s connection to the Firework outside him, the distant but clearly perceived image of the Great Bridge, all its joints and mortar perfused with a webwork of blue Flame. The other power ran down the conduits of his Fire like some burning spirit down a resisting throat, scalding as it went.
Idiot, Herewiss thought, as he did his best to bear up against the invasion of himself. Your courtesy will be the end of you. Sunspark was right— He bore up, bore up, like a man bearing the whole huge weight of a mountain on his shoulders. That weight was familiar to Herewiss, and the burdens he had borne before were much more solidly set than what attacked him now—one man’s mind, with a great weight of evil behind it, yes, but manageable, to someone who had shifted a whole massif at its roots not too long ago. Slowly he forced that resisting, tearing presence up out of his mind, back to the surface again. Khávrinen flamed ferociously at his back, while Rian resisted being pushed out, and tore and ripped at Herewiss’s connection to his Firework at the bridge. Once it was pried loose, Herewiss knew, the other would be able to set such sorceries there as would make even the Fire ineffective against the bridge for some days. But not if I can help it—