The Door into Shadow (40 page)

“
Come out and meet us if you dare!” she cried. The song winding around the words held in it the ultimate challenge: inescapable love. Behind her the
mdeihei
echoed the song in perilous harmonies, unimpressed by the darkness, unafraid.

Trembling, Segnbora stood there while the Shadow gathered Itself up into that terrible crushing wave she had seen before, full of screams and blood and ancient death. It rose higher and higher above her. She lifted up Skádhwë’s flaming length and stood her ground, letting her eyes sink into the Shadow’s darkness, becoming It, accepting It for her own, her dark side, Her other Shadow.

It trembled toward her—then gathered Itself down into a shuddering ball of fear and thwarted hatred, and vanished.

The wind died abruptly, and the sky began to clear. Four thousand Darthenes stood in an empty field with no one left to fight.

Segnbora took a last gasp of breath and walked back onto the cliff, beginning to feel mortal again for the first time since she had turned Skádhwë against herself. Behind a rock Eftgan lay breathing shallowly. Beside her, two forms struggled to sit up, helping each other. One of them had an arrow in him, but it didn’t seem to be paining him much. As Segnbora came up to them, the taller of the two reached out to his loved and touched the arrow’s protruding shaft. It vanished in a flicker of Fire, as did the place where it had gone in.

She knelt beside them and laid Skádhwë over her knees— a burning shadow, a piece of the night set on Fire. They stared at it.

“
You did it,” Freelorn whispered.
“You did it!”

She smiled at him. “All your fault, my liege.”

“
But what did you
do?”
Herewiss was looking at her with such a mixture of joy and perplexity that she could have both laughed and cried at once. “I saw what you did to yourself,” he said. “Why aren’t you dead? And where did Cillmod and all those Reavers go?”

“
I sent them home, for the time being.” She looked down at her surcoat, brushed at it. There was a neat tear where Skadhwë had gone in through cloth and mail, but that was all. The scar was a faint white seam just to one side of the nightmare’s bite.

“
I told you,” said a great voice above her. “Dragons are quick to heal.”

Silver-blue light fell about her as someone else bent low to look curiously at the place where the shadowblade had gone in. She gazed up at him—her shadow casting a shadow of his own now—and at last, the tears came. She reached up to the tremendous jaw as it dropped open, and very gently laid her hand in the Dragon’s mouth, as she had feared to do, as she would never fear to do again. The jaws closed, and self joined with self.

“
Now what,
sda’sithesssch?”

“
Now,
mda’sithesssch,”
she said, gathering him close and laughing through the tears that fell on the sapphire hide, “there’s a King to escort to his throne. Let’s get busy!”

***

Some gifts are so great that the only way the recipient can express his gratitude is to immediately give the gift to someone else. A dangerous business, this, among fickle humankind, who often see such generosity as indicative of a thoughtless heart. But in such a matter, do as your heart directs you. In the last reckoning, She is both giver and receiver, acting both parts to increase the joy of both – and if humankind doesn’t understand, She does.

(
Charestics,
118)

They leaned on the broad stone wall and looked down into the dark streets of Darthis. No light burned anywhere—not so much as a hearthfire or candle or lamp. Below them the city dreamed in a silver pallor of moonlight, though there was a shifting and stirring in the Square under the walls of the Black Palace.

A few thousand people stood down there, quiet or murmuring, waiting for the Queen to strike the first sparks of the Midsummer needfire and distribute it among them. Most of those waiting were only concerned with their part in the festival—lighting the candles and lamps they carried from the new fire and racing through the city with it, spreading luck and laughter. But a few looked up toward the palace walls and stared fascinated at something strange.

Blue Fire flickered there, dancing about a long slender shape that seemed to be too dark to be a Rod. And there was other light there from a pair of silver-blue globes that looked uncannily like eyes staring downward. The more perceptive in the crowd had even noticed that the moonlight wasn’t falling on them—blocked away from the crowd by a huge winged shape that seemed there when one looked away from it, and not there when one looked at it straight.

Whatever they saw, no one seemed particularly bothered by any of these peculiarities. This was, after all, Midsummer’s Eve, when magic was loose in the world.

Down in the square, flint struck steel, and a spark nested in tinder and began to grow into flames. The cheering began. Viols and trumpets and kettledrums struck up a jubilant music that echoed off the walls, effectively drowning out a deeper music several stories up.
“Hn ‘aa ‘se sithesssch mnek-kej-sta untühe au ‘lhhw’t’dae,”
the music said, a voice like a trio of bass instruments playing a lazy, cheerful processional.

“
Ae, mdaha’esssch,” sang a softer voice, in a raspy alto. “We may as well enjoy the rest while we can . . .“

“
There won’t be much of it,” Hasai said, unfolding and folding his wings in resignation. He spoke in precognitive tense, but with good humor; the melody woven about his words said plainly that he preferred action to peace and quiet. “Arlen will be astir like thunderstorm air for months. If Cillmod doesn’t already know who was responsible for what happened at Bluepeak, he will very shortly. The war with Darthen will soon open.”

“
And the Queen forges her new crown tomorrow.” Segnbora groaned: a formal occasion first thing in the morning was the last thing she needed. “All I want is to sleep late.”

“
You may, if you please. I will teach you how, now that you have a
sdaha’s
proper timesense. Will a month or so be enough,
sithesssch?”

The footsteps now approaching them on the battlement came as no surprise. Two hours ago Segnbora had remembered hearing them, and she had been waiting for them ever since. “If he
did
know,” the shorter of the two approaching men said on reaching the top of the stairs, “it explains why he made the bastard Chancellor of the Exchequer.”

“
To keep an eye on him?”

“
Sounds like something my father might have done. This also explains how he managed to get the backing of the High Houses. But even if he can go into Lionhall, he doesn’t know the Ritual, he’s no Initiate—or if he is, he’s botching it. Arlen is ready for me now.”

Freelorn and Herewiss looked strange out of surcoats and mail. They leaned on the wall, one on either side of Segnbora, in softboots and britches and light-colored shirts. Herewiss looked up at the dark shape that blocked-but-didn’t-block the Moon away. “How much are you there,
lhhw’Hasai?”

“
As much as my
sdaha
needs me to be. Or as I need to be. Since we’re one, there’s little difference…”

“
Where were you an hour or so ago?” Herewiss said to Segnbora. “Eftgan was looking for you. Wanted your help with the needfire, or something.”

“
I was flying,” Segnbora said, nodding at the sky.

Herewiss nodded soberly. She shared a gentle look with him, understanding now from her own experience how complete his underhearing must be, reaching even to others’ most private thoughts. “I have to thank you,” she said.

“
You don’t have to anything. You did it yourself.”

“
So I did. And you mediated some of that doing with me, saw me into the situations I’d need to get where I am.” She gave him a dry look. “You had little reason to give me such a gift, either. I tried to move in between you and your loved, a while back... and surely you noticed.”

Herewiss nodded, looking grave. But not too much so. “These days, I don’t let old reasons interfere with what I want to do. And maybe, even when I was angriest at you, maybe I saw something…”

“
Who I was?” she said.

“
Yes. A liaison. There’s a whole race sharing the Kingdoms with us that not even the human Marchwarders understand properly—they have the language, but not the body that forms it. But there was more. You were a catalyst. And will continue to be. Things will be happening that need me— things I couldn’t do without you and your Dragons. Likewise there are things you couldn’t manage without
me.
I’m part of a solution. And more…”

She fell silent, nodding, already having hints of what the “more” was. This was a small problem. Sometimes the ahead-memories came too fast, and she had trouble deciding what to share, what to keep to herself.

Segnbora shrugged. The future was merely another kind of present to a Dragon, malleable as the past, part of the game. What mattered was what the player intended to be.

In one word, her newfound Name, she told them.

“
We’ll keep your secret,” Freelorn said just above a whisper.

Segnbora smiled at them, knowing that the One she meant to hear her Name had heard it through them; then waved good night, and headed for the stairs.

Along the upper parapet, Hasai lazily put out a single forefoot—all he needed to do to keep up with her. “No more words?” he said.

“
What should I say?”

Hasai lowered his head to gaze back down the parapet. Segnbora followed his glance, seeing Freelorn take back from Herewiss the lovers’ cup she had left them, drain it—and find it still full.

“
That,” Hasai said. “Forever.”

Lost between laughter and tears of joy, Segnbora nodded, reached out to her
mdaha,
and led him off into their future, and to bed.

***

The motions of the Middle Kingdoms’ world around its Sun match those of Earth around Sol (except for negligible variations, such as those caused by sister planets missing in their solar system and present in ours). Their year is therefore the same length as ours—365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, 48-odd seconds. Though in Segnbora’s time clocks still have only hour hands, the astronomers of the Kingdoms have evolved their own methods of handling the year, and the little pieces of it that tend to pile up as time passes and throw calendars out of alignment with the seasons.

Both Arlen and Darthen use a 360-day year of four 90-day “seasons” that correspond to our winter, spring, summer, and fall. Days are counted straight through each season, and spoken of as “the fifth of Winter,” “the thirty-eighth of Summer,” and so forth. In addition, the First of each season is always a major holiday, tied to solstice or equinox—Opening Night for Winter (the only one of the holidays that doesn’t fall directly on solstice or equinox), Maiden’s Day for Spring, Midyear’s Day for Summer, and the Harvest Festival (either Lion’s Day or Eagle’s Day) for Fall. The five remaining days are intercalated and belong to no season: they are placed between the end of Fall and the beginning of Winter, and during these cold days at the bottom of the year, the Dreadnights as they’re called, no enterprise is begun, no childnaming or marriage celebrated. They are the Shadow’s nights, and unlucky. Every fourth year a sixth intercalary day (in Arlen
Endethne
, “Lady’s Day,” in Darthen
Aerrudej
, “the Goddess’s Joke”) is added between the Dreadnights and Opening Night, to deal with the need for a leap-year day.

However, this still leaves a significant fraction of time out of the reckoning. The addition of the leap-day to compensate for the 5h-48m-48s leftover at year’s end is in fact an overcompensation. If left uncorrected, each year will be 11.2 minutes short. This may not sound like much, but in our world in the past has led to awful of the calendar year with the seasons—the first day of spring falling in December, for example. But this backward drift of dates is preventable by any number of methods. The astronomers of the Kingdoms found that the eleven-minute deficit will amount to a full day’s error in 128y-208d-13h-38m-21.125s. Therefore, once every 128 years, that 208th day (which by our calendar would be July 19th) is dropped from the year entirely, or rather converted to July 20th. That date in turn becomes the 29th of Summer rather than the 28th, and is called the Festival of the Lost Day. (The festival is devoted to pranks, pratfalls, drinking sprees, and attempts to lose things, usually unwanted ones. There are also lying contests, often with prizes for the best explanation of where the Lost Day went.) This system of adjustment runs independently of that for leap-year days. Though it would probably be more efficient to combine the adjustment systems, as our culture does, the Kingdoms’ astronomers are quick to point out that this would mean one less holiday.

It is quite true that even this adjustment is not totally sufficient to keep the calendar in line with the seasons and the Sun. There is still an unadjusted error that makes the year too long by 0.0003 day, which will pile up to three days in each 10,000 years. However, in the words of Talia d’ Calath, the Grand RoyalAstronomer to King Berad of Darthen, “it is possible to worry too much, too far in advance.” The Dragons have promised to remind human beings to insert another one-day intercalary day every 3300 years—though there is still disagreement over why they laughed so hard when they promised.

There are of course many minor local holidays not mentioned here. But neither Arlene nor Darthene calendars include anything like weeks or months. One may indicate a given day by season and number: or say “four days ago,” or “six days from now, “or “a month and three days,” etc. “Months”(actually the word is
isten
in both languages, very like the ancient Greek

,
which we translate as “lichtgang” or “Moonreturn”) are sometimes broken down to 29 days for counting purposes, but this is rare. Mostly a month is reckoned from a phase of the Moon to its next occurrence, most frequently full to full. This might be expected in a largely agrarian culture, where the times of planting are important. But to the people of the Kingdoms, the Moon is the living sigil of the Goddess, mirroring Her changes in its own as it slides from Maiden’s slim crescent to Bride’s and Mother’s white full to Crone’s waning sickle to Moondark perilous and hidden; and for the most part people have a fondness for the Moon and enjoy reckoning by it, without resource to numbers.