The Door Into Fire

The memories were making Herewiss feel warm inside. The analytical parts of him approved: he was heading in the right direction. The warmth was building, washing through him—

He shifted the scene again, and it was night out in the eastern Darthene wastelands, a hundred miles or so from the Arlene border.

They were on their way to Prydon again after a trip to the Wood, and the day's riding had left them exhausted — Freelorn was anxious to get home, and they had spared neither themselves nor the horses. It was cold, for Opening Night was approaching, and they lay close to their little fire and shivered. The stars were beginning to fall thickly, as they do at Midwinter when the Goddess is angriest, when She remembers Her own thoughtlessness at the Creation, and flings stars burning across the night in defiance of the great Death. Herewiss lay on his back gazing up at the sky, watching the distant firebrands trace their silent paths out of the heart of the Sword — the constellation that stands high on winter nights. Freelorn lay curled up in a tight bundle next to him, facing west.

'Dusty—'

Herewiss turned his head to him. 'You want to share?'

Within the memory, Herewiss, now sixteen, went both warm with surprise and pleasure, and cold with fear. It was a thought that had occurred to him more than once. But Freelorn was younger than he was inside, and easily frightened. He wouldn't want to scare Lorn, ever—

—yet no-one in the world knew him as well as Lorn did, no-one else cared as much about all the little things in Herewiss's life and how he felt about them. He could share things with Lorn that he would never dare say to anyone else, and never be afraid of the consequences. And Lorn mattered so much to him. His loved. Yes. And he was beautiful outside, too, small and strong and fine to look at—

I paid off the Responsibility long ago. I can love whom I please—

'You want to?' he said aloud.

'Yeah.'

Herewiss felt at the knot of fear inside him, wondering what to do about it. If Lorn wanted to—

But—

'I had to think about it for a while before I could say it,' Freelorn said quietly, from inside the blankets. 'If you don't want to, it's all right.'

'No, it's not that—'

Freelorn chuckled a little, so adult a sound coming out of him that it startled Herewiss. He identified it as one of Ferrant's laughs, which Freelorn had borrowed. 'I should have asked,' Freelorn said. 'Your first time?'

'No! — I mean, yes. With a man.'

They were quiet for a little. Freelorn turned over on his back and looked up at the sky, watching a particularly bright star blaze out of the Sword and clear across the night to the Moonsteed before it went out. 'There's not much difference,' he said, 'except that, instead of being different, we're alike. Some things are easier — some are harder—'

The voice was still suspiciously adult, and Herewiss looked at Freelorn for a moment and then smiled. 'Your first time too, huh?'

Freelorn's face went shocked, then irritated, and finally sheepishly smiling. 'Yeah.'

Herewiss laughed softly to himself, and reached out to hug Freelorn to him. 'You twit!' he said, laughing into Freelorn's blankets until the tears came.

They held each other for a long time, and then drew closer. Outside the memory, Herewiss looked on with quiet amusement, and with reverence, feeling as if he was watching an enactment of some old legend being staged by well-meaning amateurs. In a way, of course, he was: the Goddess's Lovers always discover Each Other after being initiated by Her — one of the things which makes for the tragedy of Opening Night, when the Lovers, male or female as the avatar dictates, destroy One Another in Their rivalry. But this was an enactment of the birth of that new relationship, and the freshness and innocence of it easily compensated for whatever ineptitude there may have been as well.

'Oops—'

'Huh? Did it hurt?'

'Yeah, a little.'

'Well, let's try this instead—'

'Ohhh . . .'

'Hmmm?'

'No, no, don't stop. It feels so good.'

Silence, and further joinings: warm hands, warm mouths, growing comfort, trust flowing. A slow climb on smooth wings, easing into the upper reaches, then gliding into the updraft, soaring, daring, higher, higher—

—sudden and not to be denied, the brilliance that is not light, the dissolution of barriers that cannot possibly break—

—a brief silence.

'Oh, Dark, I'm sorry. I hurried you.'

'Oh, no, don't be. It was-it was-oh, my . . .'

'I saw your face.' A warm arm reaches around to pillow Herewiss's head; gentle fingers stroke his jawline, his lips, his closed eyes. 'You looked — so happy. I was glad I could make you feel that way.'

'I felt . . . so cherished.'

'It was something I always wished somebody would . . . do for me . '

'You mean you haven't. . . ?' 'No.'

'Oh, my dear loved. — Can I call you that?' 'Why not? It's true — oh, Dusty—!'

'Lorn, you're crying—? Are you all right, did I say something wrong—'

'No, no — it's just — nobody ever called me their loved before — and it's -I always wanted — I'm happy—!'

'Oh, Lorn. Come here. No, come on, if we're going to share ourselves with each other, that means the tears too. My loved, my Lorn, it's all right, you're happy—'

'But, but my face gets — gets funny when I cry—'

'So does mine. Who cares? You're beautiful. I love you, Lorn—'

'Oh, Goddess, Dusty, I love you too. I was just scared -I didn't see how someone as gorgeous as you could ever want to share with me—'

'Me? Gorgeous? Oh, Lorn—'

'But you are, you are, don't you see it? And inside, too.' A chuckle through passing tears. 'It's almost unfair that anyone should be so beautiful as you are inside. But it makes me so happy — Am I making sense?'

'Yes. Oh, Lorn, I want you to feel what I felt, I want to give you the joy — you deserve it so much . . . and it makes me so happy to make you happy . . .'

—and again the slow dance, stately circlings on wings of light— —and much later, the long drift down. Silence, and falling stars. Outside the memory, Herewiss wept.

Inside the memory, Freelorn held Herewiss, and Herewiss held Freelorn, and their hearts slowed.

'Again?'

'I don't know if I could ... " A chuckle. 'Neither do I.' Another silence.

'Hey, maybe we should get married some day.'

'Are you thinking of us, or of marriage alliances?'

'It could be good both ways. Hasn't been an alliance between our two Houses since the days of Beorgan.'

'And you know how that turned out. I don't want to be history, Lorn, I just want to be me.'

'Yeah.'

'So think about us, then, and leave politics out of it.' 'Can we?'

Herewiss thought about it. 'At least until our fathers leave us their lands. I'm tired, Lorn.'

'Yeah. We've got a long ride tomorrow.'

'Yeah.'

They held each other against the cold, and fell asleep.

Herewiss dwelt on the scene for a little while, and then reluctantly changed it again. Another night, another place out in the cold. The battlefield where they fought the Reaver incursion, far to the south of the Wood. The night after the battle, and Herewiss wounded in the shoulder with the blow that he took for the king's daughter of Darthen. Later on that blow had gotten him awarded the WhiteMantle. But at this point Herewiss lay huddled on the ground, wrapped in his own tattered campaigning cloak, innocent of honors and just trying to get some sleep. He was cold and tired, and in pain from the wound. The hurt of it kept waking him up every time he drifted off. During one hazy time of almost- sleep, a figure came softly toward him in the dark, and Herewiss didn't move, didn't particularly care who it was—