The Door Into Fire

The scene shifted again, ever so slightly, and Herewiss was sitting next to his friend-to-be, trying to help, his arm around him; and Freelorn put his head against Herewiss and cried as if his world was ending. 'No-one likes me,'

Freelorn was saying, in choked sobs, 'and I don't, don't know why—'

They began to see through each other that night. Herewiss had been playing cold and silent and mature, and Freelorn merry and uncaring and free; that night they began coming to the conclusion that there was at least one more person with whom the games and false faces were unnecessary. The next morning they looked at one another shyly, each studying the other's weak places as he himself knew he was being studied, and decided that there would be no attack. They spent the next month teaching each other things, and savoring that special joy that comes of having someone to listen, and care. Their friendship became a settled thing.

Herewiss gave the scene a nudge of adjustment. They were in rr'Virendir, the King's Archive in Prydon castle, sitting with their backs against one of the huge shelves filled with rune rolls and musty tomes. It was dark and cool, and the air was laced with the dry dusty smell of a great old library. The summer sun burned down outside, and the Archive was one of the few comfortable places to be. The assistant keeper was snoring softly in his little office down at one end of the long room; Freelorn, who due to a hereditary title was the Keeper of the Archive, was hunched up against the very last row of shelves with Herewiss.

'I don't want to learn all this stuff,' he was saying. 'I'll never learn it all. I'm a slow reader anyway, it would take me the rest of my life.'

'Lorn, you've got to.' Herewiss was fifteen now, and feeling terribly broadened by his travels; this was his first trip to Prydon, and the first time he had ever been more than ten miles from the Wood.

'I don't need it!' Freelorn said, scowling at a pile of parchments that lay on the ground next to him. 'Look at all this stuff. Half of it is so rotted away I can hardly read it, and the rest of it is in some obscure dialect so full of thees and thous that I can't make sense of it.'

'Lorn,' Herewiss said with infinite patience, 'that one on top is a rede that has been copied over more times than either of us know, because no-one knows what it means, and it's tied to the history of your Line somehow. It's Lion business, Lorn. That makes it your business. This whole place is your business. That's why you're its Keeper.'

'Dammit, Dusty, I love my family's history. Descent from the Lion is something to be proud of. But I don't want to sit around reading when I could be out doing great things!'

'What did you have in mind?'

'Are you making fun of me?'

'No.'

Freelorn made an irritated face. 'I don't know what kind of great things. But they're there, waiting for me to get to them, I know it! I want to see the Kingdoms. I want to take ship for the Isles of the North, and talk to Dragons. I want to climb in the Highspeaks and see what the lands beyond the mountains look like. I want to go into Hreth and kill Fyrd. I want to find out what the Hildimarrin countries are like, I want to — oh, Dark, everything! And you know what I get to do?'

'You get to stay home and be prince for a while. Listen, Lorn, it's not that long ago you were in the Wood with me. That's not traveling? Almost two hundred leagues away? What about the mare's nest we saw on the way back? That's not adventure? You wanted the nightmare, maybe? She would have had you for breakfast. We saw three wind demons and a unicorn, and heard the Shadow's Hunting to overhead, and you want more? Goddess, Lorn, what's it take to make you happy?'

'Danger. Intrigue. Hopeless quests. Last stands. Heroism! Courage against all odds! Valor in defeat!'

'You remember when we used to play Lion and Eagle?' 'Yes, but — Dusty, what's that got to do with this?' 'How many times did we stage Bluepeak out behind the Ward?' 'Every day for a month at least, but—'

'Did you notice something interesting? We always got up again afterwards. Earn and Healhra didn't.'

'Yes, they did. They come back once every five hundred years—'

'—and the last two times no-one recognized Them for years, because They didn't come back as Lion and Eagle. That's not important here, though. Lorn, I'm not — oh, Dark.' Herewiss reached over and took Freelorn's hand, slowly, shyly.

'My father,' he went on, looking at his boots, 'keeps saying, "A king is made for fame and not for long life." Which is all right as long as it's some other king — but Lorn, it's going to be you some day, and I'm not sure I want to see you die. No matter how damn heroic your last stand is.' He closed his eyes. 'I'm probably going to go the same way; Brightwood people never die in bed. They vanish, or get eaten by Fyrd, or get turned into rocks, or something weird like that. All the old ballads make my ancestors sound just wonderful, but they have to be divorcing the emotion from the reality in places. I don't want to find out how it feels to vanish.'

Freelorn nodded. 'I don't really want to end up bleeding somewhere either — but on the other hand, it'd be neat to be a robber baron, putting down the oppressor and giving money to the common people. Or to be a wandering sorcerer, doing good deeds and slipping away unnoticed—'

Herewiss sighed, and a wild impulse compounded of both daring and humor rose up in him. 'All right,' he said.

'Hopeless quests are what you want? Valiant absurdity? Something that the Goddess would approve of?'

'What the Dark are you talking about?'

'Lorn, I'm on a quest.'

'Say what?'

Herewiss grinned at the sudden confusion in Freelorn's face. He considered and discarded several possible ways of explaining things, and finally simply held out his hands. Usually he had to close his eyes when he made the little tongue of external Flame that was all he could manage. But he strained twice as hard as usual this time for the sake of keeping his eyes open. He didn't want to miss the look on Freelorn's face.

It was an amazing thing. It was so amazing that Herewiss broke out laughing like a fool, and lost his concentration and the Flame both a moment later. He laughed so hard that he had to hold his stomach against the pain, and all the while Freelorn stared at him in utter amazement.

Finally Herewiss calmed down a little, caught his breath, wiped his eyes.

'You have it,' Freelorn said softly. 'You have it.' 'It looks that way.' 'You have it! Dusty!!' That's me.'

'MY GODDESS, YOU HAVE IT!!!'

'Ssh, you'll wake up Berlic.'

'But you have it!' Freelorn whispered.

'Yeah.'

And then Freelorn looked at Herewiss, and the joy in his eyes dimmed and flickered low.

'But a focus—'

'I tried. Can't use a Rod.'

There was a long silence.

'Lorn,' Herewiss said. 'This is my secret. And yours, now. My mother taught me a lot of sorcery when I was younger, but there was always something else I could feel in the background that I knew wasn't anything to do with that. I didn't know what it was until last year — I made Flame accidentally in the middle of a scry ing-spell. I thought it might have been a fluke, but it's not, it's there, and it's getting stronger. If I can channel it, I can use it. And the Goddess only knows what I'm going to use for a focus. Will this do for a hopeless quest?'

Freelorn was silent for a little while.

Then he looked at Herewiss again.

'I am the Keeper of the Archive,' he said solemnly, as if he were summoning Powers to hear him. 'There must be something in here that would help you. I'm going to start looking. And when I find it—'

Herewiss smiled a little. 'When you find it,' he said. They hugged each other, stirring up dust.