The Door into Shadow (20 page)

Sunspark hesitated at the doors, though only for a moment. It was trembling in body, a sight that astounded Segnbora. “Firechild?”

(I’m bound,) it said in terror. (I can’t burn! I can’t change—)

She reached out to it in mind, perplexed, and felt Sunspark drowning in a cold more deadly than the lost gulfs between stars that Hasai had mentioned... a cold that could kill thought and motion and change of any kind, and from which Hasai had been shielding her. (Maybe you should stay outside,) she said.

Sunspark turned hard eyes on her. (I will not let him come to harm in there,) it said, and turned away to walk shaking through the doors. The dimness folded around its burning mane and tail, and Sunspark vanished.

“
That’s done it,” Lang said, genial and terrified. “Damned if I’ll be outdone by a walking campfire—” He unsheathed his sword and went after, Torve close behind him.

There Segnbora stood, left alone on the threshold, trembling nearly as hard as Sunspark had.

No return...

She swore and hurried in behind the others.

***

She was in a great hall, all walled in sheer unfigured crystal, through which Adínë and the peaks beyond it showed clear. The air was thick with a blue dusk, like smoke. Segnbora barely had time to glance around her, though, before the terrible thought-numbing cold she had experienced through Sunspark came crowding in close around her, ten times worse than it had been outside.

From within her came an answering flare, Hasai and the
mdeihei
calling up old memories of warmth and daylight to fight the cold. Segnbora regained a little composure, looked around for the others. They were nowhere in sight. Deep in the twilight she saw vague forms moving, but somehow she knew that none of them were those with whom she’d entered. Her companions were all lost in the blueness, with Freelorn.

(Herewiss!) she called silently. (Sunspark!) But no reply came back, and her underspeech fell into a mental silence as thick as if she had shouted into a heavily curtained room.

“
Herewiss!” she shouted aloud. The curling twilight soaked up the sound of her voice like heavy fog. She hurried off into the blueness to try to find him or Freelorn.

For all her terror, the sheer scale of the wreaking that had made this place astonished Segnbora. Even at first entrance the place had seemed as big as Earneselle, or the Queens’ Hall in Prydon. But as she walked across the vast glassy floor, the walls grew remote, and the ceiling seemed to become a firmament that not even a soaring Dragon could reach. Mirrored in walls, galleries and crystalline arches, Segnbora could glimpse vague intimations of other rooms: up-reaching towers and balconies, parlors and courts, an infinity of glass reflected dimly in glass, too huge to ever know or search completely.

That terrible chill was part of the wreaking too, though here inside the castle seemed not to bite so viciously at the bones. It was becoming a quality of the mind: a cool lassitude, a twilight that ran in the veins and curled shadowy in the heart, smothering fear and veiling the desire to be out of there. She could feel that cold rising in her, but the presence of Hasai and the
mdeihei
was a match for ; their ancient sunfire burned the twilight out of her blood as fast as it grew. A weary melancholy, a desire to leave off striving and surrender to the dim stillness of the place forever, came in with every breath – but there was Dragonfire at the bottom of her lungs, painful and bright, burning the sad resignation away. Frightened by the constant assault, but reassured by the Dragons’ presence, Segnbora headed deeper into the shadowy blue.

The dead and those who had abandoned life gradually became evident around her. They were many, but none of them walked together. Young men and old women she passed; foreigners and countrymen, maidens and lords, and none of them took the slightest notice of her as they walked slowly, aimlessly through the blue—languid, uncaring, lost.

The place was a terrible parody of the last Shore by that Sea of which the Starlight is a faint intimation. The dead who walked there were at least aware. Here and there Segnbora caught sight of a surcoat-device she recognized, but afterward she was generally sorry she had looked. The dead wandered through the blue with ancient wounds in plain sight, neither bleeding nor healed...and the eyes of the wounded were oblivious, as if the injuries belonged to someone else.

Through halls and galleries and passages Segnbora made her way in increasing haste, up and down stairs, while Glasscastle’s inhabitants drifted around her, unaware, unconcerned. The feeling of sorrow in the air crushed in harder now, as if sensing Segnbora’s resistance. Every breath she drew seemed to have a catch in it, as if tears were about to follow.

But against the shadowy sorrow Hasai and the
mdeihei
blazed within her, the white of their Dragonfire burning and glittering from scales of many colors. The defiance and dismay of the
mdeihei
at so many beings who had given up
being
burned them... burned her. Their appalled song, a heart-shaking weave of deep notes like the ocean speaking in outrage, fought with the song of melancholy that whispered from Glasscastle’s walls.

Terrified that she might fall victim to the inward-stealing sorrow, Segnbora began breathing the litany of life and pain along with the
mdeihei
as she sought around her in mind for any feeling of Freelorn or Herewiss. The effort was in vain—the wreaking seemed to have shut down her underhearing almost completely. Finally she paused at a meeting-place of three long halls, and, in midbreath of a long phrase of Dracon song, felt a shadow looming over her.

She didn’t look up. That would have broken the illusion of the great head hanging over her, the mighty body burning in its iron and diamond, defying the cool darkness. But she put out a hand behind her to touch the sapphire hide. The hand was taken, ever so carefully, between great jaws. The heat fighting the encroaching cold flared higher. (Have I told you recently that I’m glad you’re here?) Segnbora said.

(Yesterday,) Hasai said, (I remember you telling me now. What’s that?)

She looked where he did. From among indistinct, wandering forms came a flash of light—faint, but still bright enough to be noticed in this blue gloom. (I don’t know, but let’s see—)

The path ahead was dark. She reached up a hand, simultaneously reaching down inside her for her little dying spark of Fire. Forcefully, she willed the one thing she had always been able to manage: a brief flash of light. For once it would be enough.

(What!) she thought a second later, amazed. Nothing had come; her Power source was blocked from her.

She tried again. Nothing happened. “Damn,” Segnbora said under her breath, perplexed, for it was supposed to take death to separate one from one’s Power, however feeble. There wasn’t time to puzzle over it now, however.
And what if Herewiss is having the same problem?
It was imperative that she find the others as quickly as possible.

The light glittered again, closer: a faint shimmer, there and gone. She headed toward the place where it had been—

—
then, seeing the source, froze briefly in shock. Not far away an outwall rose, a giddy frameless window on the evening sky and the upper peak of Adínë. And there against crystal and dying sunset stood silhouetted a small slender woman in a midnight blue surcoat.

Her dark head was bent. Her arms were folded in front of her as she gazed out into the sorrowing twilight: her back was turned. The summersky opals set as the eyes of the eagle on the back of her surcoat now grasped and knitted together what little light there was, flashing it back at Segnbora. The eagle was white, in trian aspect, silver wings and blue Fire for eyes—the undifferenced Darthene arms, worn only by Queens and Kings. Segnbora had seen those same arms this morning on Eftgan’s back. But these were worked in an antique style, in embroidery that looked new—

“
Efmaer,” Segnbora whispered.

Slowly she went to the unmoving woman, and stood beside her. Efmaer took no notice, just went on staring down into the pathless air. Her face was young, and frighteningly still. Her pale gray eyes had given up their color to the twilight and taken on its violet shimmer.

Segnbora had to swallow twice before she could speak. “Queen,” she said, “you’re a long time away from Darthis.”

The gray-violet eyes opened a touch wider. Disbelief danced in them for just a moment, and then began to fade again, sinking back into vague sorrow. The Queen didn’t move.

“
Efmaer,” Segnbora said, louder. In the incredible silence, her own soft voice seemed to rattle her bones.

The Queen’s eyes shifted just a little toward Segnbora. “Since I came here,” Efmaer said, hardly above a whisper, “not one soul has spoken to me.” She said it gently, absently…but that voice was not meant to be a gentle one. It had the rasp of bronze in it, but the bronze was blunted by time and disuse. “I dream,” Efmaer said, “and the dreams grow vocal.”

It isn’t fair!
Segnbora thought, losing her voice again, this time to impending tears. This woman had been one of the great powers of her time: vital, powerful, quick to laugh or fight or love. She was the woman who had fought Death and won. Yet now she was like all the others here, her spirit emptied out on the crystal floor.

“
Queen,” Segnbora said at last, “I’m no dream, unless I stay here too long. Have you seen a man go by here, one of the living? He was wearing the arms of Arlen.”

Efmaer turned slowly, and her eyes dwelt on Segnbora’s surcoat and her lioncelle passant regardant in blood and gold. “I know that charge,” Efmaer said, showing for the first time a wrinkle of expression, a faint frown of lost memory. “My sister—”

“
Enra,” Segnbora said. “I’m of her line. You are my…my aunt, Queen.”

“
How many generations removed?” Efmaer said, and just for a second the bronze in her voice went bright.

Segnbora could not answer her.

“
That many,” said the Queen. “She is dust, then. She walks the Shore…”

Efmaer’s voice drifted away as she started to lose herself again in the undertow of Glasscastle’s sorrow. Segnbora winced. There was something nagging at the back of her mind, something that would mean a great deal to this woman. If only she could remember—

“
Queen,” Segnbora said, “if you haven’t seen him, I can’t wait. I have to find him.”

“
I could not find the one I sought, either,” Efmaer said in that same half-dreaming voice. “I looked and looked for Sefeden, while the Moon went down and the Evenstar set. We must have passed one another half a hundred times, and never known it…but the Firework sustaining this place is greater than any mortal wreaking, and the place keeps its own. You will not leave...”

“
My friends and I will get out,” Segnbora said, hoping she was speaking the truth. “Come with us—”

Efmaer shook her head. “Only the living can leave this place.”

“
Are you dead then, Eagle’s daughter?”

For the first time, Efmaer looked straight at Segnbora. Emotion was in those eyes now, but it was an utter hopelessness that made Segnbora shudder. “Do I look dead? Would that I were. Not Skádhwë itself could kill me here!”

“
Skádhwë is here?”

“
Somewhere,” the Queen said. “Once the doors closed, I lost it, the way I lost everything else. Yet even while the doors were open, it did me no good.” She closed her eyes, and with a great effort made another expression: pain. “I fought, but I could not kill myself, and so I am less than dead…”

Pity and horror wrung Segnbora, but she couldn’t stay. “Queen—I must go hunting.”

“
He will be with her,” Efmaer said, still holding onto that look of pain like a banner of pride. “Far in, at the place where your heart breaks. But be out before moonset…”

She did not move or speak again. Segnbora paused only long enough to take one of those pale, pliant hands and lift it, kissing the palm in the farewell of kinsfolk of the Forty Houses. Then she turned and hurried away.

Hall after hall opened before her, all alike, huge prisms full of silence and the reflections of empty eyes: corridor like corridor, gallery like gallery, and nowhere any face she knew. Segnbora ran harder. Through the walls she saw the treacherous Moon hanging exactly where had been when she entered. Likewise, the sunset appeared about to grow dimmer, but had not changed. Inside Glasscastle, she realized, there was eternal sunset. Outside, who knew how much time had passed? The three Lights could be about to vanish, for all she knew—

The thought of the others still unfound, of the awful way back to the main hall, of Efmaer’s ghastly placidity, all wound together in her brain and sang such horror to Segnbora that for a few seconds she went literally blind. Trying to turn a corner in that state, she missed her footing and skidded to her knees. Desperately she tried to rise but could not. Her leg muscles had cramped.

There Segnbora crouched, gasping, sick with shame and rage. The awareness of the huge head bowing over her, great wings stretching upward, was small consolation.

(Sdaha.)

(Yes, I know, just a—)

(Sdaha.
Here’s our lost Lion—)

She pushed herself up on her hands and looked. There was Freelorn, not more than ten or fifteen feet away from her. He was kneeling on the crystal floor, very still, his head bowed. The sight flooded her with intense relief.

“
Lorn,” she whispered, and scrabbled back to her feet again, ignoring the protests of abused muscles. “Lorn. Thank the—”

—
and she
saw—

“—
Goddess...” Segnbora’s voice deserted her, taking her breath with it.

The throne was wrought of crystal, like everything else in the place, but reflected nothing from its long sheer surfaces. The one enthroned upon it seemed caught at that particular moment when adolescence first turns toward womanhood, and both woman and child live in the eyes. She was clothed in changelessness and invulnerability as with the robe of woven twilight She wore, and Her slender maiden’s hands seemed able, if they chose, to sow stars like grain, or pluck the Moon like a silver flower. Yet very still those hands lay on the arms of the throne, and Segnbora found herself trembling with fear to see them so idle.