'Loosen up a little with the talons, please,' Herewiss said. 'Did you find him?'
The hawk snapped its beak with impatience. (Of course. He's waiting for you.)
'Was there a message?'
(Your friend greets you by me,) Sunspark said, (and says, 'Get me the Dark out of here.' He also says that you should make your preparations for six people. Evidently he has picked up a stray somewhere.)
'That's Lorn. Sunspark, I'm going to need a good while to get ready for this. You'll have to stand guard while I meditate. Also I'll need your services during the sorcery.'
(As you say.) Sunspark whirled and dissolved in heat again, reappearing in the blood-bay persona.
'You really do like that shape, don't you.'
The elemental curved its neck, looked around to admire its shining self. (It does have a certain elegance, I must admit—)
'You're vain, firechild, vain,' said Herewiss, smiling. He walked off a little distance and unlaced his fly to relieve himself before the long sorcery; Sunspark followed, regarding the process with interest.
(You are really strange,) it said. (Why bother drinking water if you're just going to throw it away again? And what is this 'vain' business? I'm gorgeous, you've said so. I don't understand why you can tell me that I'm beautiful, but I can't tell myself—)
'Spark, shut up, please.'
Sunspark strolled away a few paces and began cropping the grass in silence, leaving little scorched places where it had bitten through. Herewiss settled himself comfortably on the ground and began to compose himself for the evening's work.
Sorcery, like all the other arts, is primarily involved with the satisfaction of one's own needs. Though a sorcerer may mend a pot or raise a storm or set a king on his throne with someone else's benefit in mind, still he is first serving his own needs, his own joys or fears or sorrows. To work successful sorcery one must first know with great certainty what he wants, and why. Otherwise the dark secretive depths of his mind may take the unleashed forces and use them for something rather different than what he thinks he wants.
In addition, sorcery is affected by how completely the sorcerer's needs are filled before he begins — whether he's hungry or tired, secure in his place in life, whether he is loved or has someone to love. It's easy for a hungry sorcerer to find food by his art, since the need fuels his skill. But it's much harder for that same starving sorcerer to, say, open death's Door and sojourn in the places past it. And only the mightiest of sorcerers could manage to conjure powers or potentialities if he hadn't eaten for a week, or felt that his life was in danger for some reason. Sorcery is ridiculously easy to sabotage. Beat your sorcerer, frighten him, deprive him of food, ruin his love life — destroy one of his fulfillments, and he'll be lucky to be able to dowse for water.
So Herewiss sat there in the grass, as the Sun went down and the thunderclouds rolled in, and strove to shut out all external things and evaluate his inner self. A brief flicker of thought went across his mind like lightning, a white line of discomfort and irritation: if I had the Flame, I wouldn't need to go through this rigmarole. Will alone is enough to fuel the blue Fire, you think a thing and it's done. But he put the thought aside. Freelorn was waiting for him.
Herewiss sounded himself. He was well-fed, not thirsty or cold or tired. He was the Lord's son of the Brightwood, as usual, had a home and family and people that he could call his own. Love — there was his father, and Freelorn of course — the knowledge of their feelings for him was a warm steady support at the back of his mind.
Then after a moment he reached out and took hold of the thought he would have liked to banish, the lack of Flame, the lack of completion. Oh, he was so empty in that one place inside of him. It should have been full of blue Fire and prowess and shouting joy. Instead it ached with emptiness, as parts of him sometimes did after lovemaking. It was a vast stony cavern that echoed coldly when he walked there. Nothing but a faint flicker illuminated it, a single tongue of blue.
Herewiss turned wholly inward, walked in the still, dry air of that place, listened to the sound of his passage as it bounced back from the walls, a distant, hollow step. He went toward the little blue Fire, crouched down beside it where it sprang from a crack in the bare rough rock. Though there was no wind passing through the darkness, the Flame trembled. It was a sad fire, afraid of dying before it was unleashed to burn through the rest of him, terrified of going out forever. Herewiss was surprised, and pierced with sorrow. He had never really pictured the Flame as anything but a possession of his, no more emotional than an arm or leg. Yet here it was, frightened of endings as he himself was, lonely in the dark.
He spent a little time there, trying to comfort it with his presence, and finally stood up again and gazed down at the tiny tongue of cold fire. If it would die some day, then that was the Goddess's will. It was better to have treasured the wonder this long than never to have had it in him at all.
Herewiss turned his back on the Flame and went out of that dark place, looking for Freelorn's image inside him. Besides need, sorcery was also fueled by emotion. He would summon up his emotions as a smith might beat out iron, slowly, with care and skill and calculated brutality. Then he would turn it loose, take it in hand like the weapon it was and scatter an army with it.
He didn't have to walk far. The path to where Freelorn dwelt was a wide one, one that Herewiss traveled often when his friend was gone. It was a bright place. A lot of the memory looked like the halls of Kynall castle in Prydon, where they had lived together for a while, all white marble and sunlit colonnades — very different from the dark, carven walls of the Woodward. Some of it looked like Freelorn's old room in the castle, cream-colored walls veined in green, Freelorn's old teak four-poster bed with the hack- marks in it from Suthan, armor and clothes scattered around in adolescent disorder. They had had good times there together, lounging around and tossing off horns full of red Archantid as they talked about the things that the future might hold.
But there was a lot of the memory that looked like the Brightwood, too, and it was there that Herewiss finally found him. The image of a dead spring day was there, all sun on green leaves, and there was Lorn; newly arrived with his father King Ferrant on a visit of state. Herewiss, of course, was both within that memory and without it. From the outside he looked at Freelorn and marveled that he had ever really been that young. Lorn didn't even have a mustache yet, and he looked laughably unfinished without it. And he was little, so very small for his age.
Freelorn was as nervous as a new-manned hawk, trying to look in all directions at once. He hung on to the golden-hilted sword at his belt with one white-knuckled hand, and spurred his sorrel charger till it danced, meanwhile staring around him trying to see if any of the Wood people had clothes as grand as his, or such a sword, or such a father. From within the memory Herewiss, fourteen years old, looked with mixed disdain and jealousy at the newcomer. He was loud and flashy and arrogant, the way Herewiss had imagined a city princeling would probably be. He had disliked Freelorn immediately, and he saw himself frown and turn away from Hearn's side to stalk back into the Woodward, fuming quietly at this foreign invasion.
Then suddenly the scene changed, faded into darkness and stars seen through leaves and branches. The Moon sifted down through silvered limbs to pattern the smooth grass around one of the Forest Altars, and shone full and clear on the altar stone in the midst of the clearing. On the low slab of polished white marble Freelorn sat, huddled up with his head on his knees, shaking as if with cold. Beneath the trees at the edge of the clearing Herewiss stood very still, confused, wondering why the prince was crying. At the same time he was resisting the urge to laugh; the idea of the Prince of Arlen sitting on one of the Forest Altars and weeping was ludicrous. But disturbing -it wasn't right for a prince to be seen crying, and Herewiss wanted him to stop . . .