He bowed his head, and then looked up again, shuddering with cold and anxiety, and also with weakness left over from that morning's sorcery. If only it would work. It would be marvelous to go riding off to Freelorn's rescue with a sword ablaze with the blue Fire. To strike the whole besieging army stiff and helpless with the Flame, and break the walls of the keep in the fulness of his Power, and bring Freelorn out of there. To strike terror into the army just by being what he was — the first man to bear Flame since the days of Lion and Eagle! And the look in Freelorn's eyes. It would be so—
Herewiss sighed. I never learn, do I. Let's see what happens.
Delicately, carefully, he set the sword's point on the white stone of the altar, and took hold of the rough hilt with both hands. There was a change — a stirring — something in the air around him moved, waited expectantly; he could catch the feeling ever so faintly in his underhearing, that inner sensitivity that anyone experienced in sorcery develops. The Power of the place was alive, moving around him, surrounding him, watching. His own Power rose up in him, a cold restless burning all through his body, demanding to be let out.
He lifted the sword away from the stone, and held it straight up before him, point upward, watching moonlight and shadow tremble along the length of the blade with the trembling of his hands. And he reached down inside him, where the Flame was running hot now, molten, seething like silver in the crucible, and he channeled it up through his chest and down through his arms and out through his hands—
The sound was terrible, a thunderous silent shout of frustration and screaming anger as the blue Fire, the essence of life, smote against something that had never lived, had never even been fooled into thinking that it lived. A silly idea, Herewiss thought in the terribly attenuated moment between the awful unsound and the sword's destruction. As if plain sorcery could ever mix successfully with the Flame. Stupid idea.
And the sword blew apart. Fragments and flying splinters shot up and out with frightening force, gleamed sporadically as they flew through light and shadow, ripping leaves off branches, burying themselves in the grass. One of them struck itself into Herewiss's upper arm, and another into his leg just above the knee, though not too deeply. A third went by his ear like the whisper of death. He held in his cry of terror, remembering where he was, and dropped the shattered sword hilt in the grass.
He plucked the metal fragment out of his arm and threw it into the grass, grimacing. For a long while Herewiss knelt there, bent over, hugging himself as much against the bitter disappointment as against the cold. I was so sure-it would work this time. So sure .
Finally he regained some of his composure, and finished picking the splinters out of himself, and turned to make farewell obeisance to the Altar. It seemed to crouch there against the ground, cold white stone, ignoring him. He forgot about the obeisance. He went straight over to Dapple and got dressed, and rode away from there.
It was several minutes before he passed the marker that indicated the end of the Silent Precincts. Just the other side of it he paused, looking up through the leaves at the starlit sky. 'Dammit,' he yelled at the top of his lungs, 'what am I doing wrong? Why won't You tell me? What am I doing wrong?'
The stars looked down at him, cold-eyed and uncaring, and the wind laughed at him.
He kicked Dapple harder than necessary, and rode out of the Wood to Freelorn's rescue.
2
If the cat who shares your house will not speak to you, remember first that cats, like the Goddess their Mother, never speak unless there is something worth saying, and someone who needs to hear it.
They were called the Middle Kingdoms because they were in the middle of the world as men then knew it. To the north was the great Sea, of which little was known. Ships had gone out into it many times, seeking for the Isles of the North mentioned in tale and rumor, but if those Isles existed, no ship had come back to tell about them. To the west, on the far western border of Arlen, was a great impassable range of mountains. Legend said that the demons' country of Hreth lay beyond them, but no-one particularly cared to brave the terrible snow-choked passes and find out. Southward there were more mountains, the Highpeaks or Southpeaks, depending on whether you were speaking Arlene or Darthene; no-one had even ventured far enough into them to find out if they ever ended, though there were stories of the Five Meres hidden among them. Eastward, past the river Stel, the eastern border of Steldin and Darthen and civilized lands in general, the lands stretched into great empty desert wastes. Many had tried to cross them; most came back defeated, and the rest never came back at all. Those who did come back would occasionally speak of uncanny happenings, but most of the time they flatly refused to discuss the Waste. The Dragons might have known more about what went on there, or in the lands over the mountains; but Dragons only talk to the human March- warders who are sometimes their companions, and the Marchwarders, when asked, would smile and shake their heads.
The Kingdoms were four: Arlen, Darthen, Steldin, and North Arlen. Through them were scattered various small independent cities and principalities. The Brightwood was one of these, though like most of the smaller autonomies it had joined itself to a larger Kingdom, Darthen, for purposes of trade and protection. Arlen and Darthen were the two oldest Kingdoms, and the greatest; between them they stretched straight across all the known lands, from the mountains to the Waste Unclaimed, slightly more than three hundred leagues. The border between them was defined by the river Arlid, which flows from the High-peaks to the Sea, south to north, a hundred leagues or so. It was not a guarded border, for the two lands had been bound by oaths of peace and friendship for hundreds of years. That, however, might change shortly . . .
Herewiss rode along through the sparsely wooded, hilly country three days' journey south of the Brightwood, and thought about politics. It seemed that there was nothing in the world that could be depended upon. The Oath of Lion and Eagle had been sworn for the first time nearly twelve hundred years ago, and sworn again every time a king or queen came to the throne in either country — until now. When Freelorn's father King Ferrant had died on the throne six years past, Freelorn had been in Darthen; but it might not have been possible for Freelorn to claim the kingship even if he had been in Prydon city when it happened. Ferrant had not yet held the ceremony of affirmation in which the White Stave was passed on to his son, and Freelorn's status was therefore in question. Power had been seized shortly thereafter by a group of the king's former counsellors, backed by mercenary forces hired by the former Chancellor of the Exchequer; and this lord, a man named Cillmod, had declared Freelorn outlawed.
These occurrences, though personally outrageous to Herewiss, were not beyond belief. Such things had happened before. But six months ago, armed forces, both mercenaries and Arlene regulars, had moved into Darthen and taken land on the east side of the Arlid. Though the Oath had not been sworn again by the ruling junta, that did not make it any less binding on them. In all the years since its first swearing at the completion of the Great Road, neither country had ever attacked the other. Herewiss was nervous; he felt as if lightning were overdue to strike.
'Listen,' his father had said to him, leaning on the doorpost of Herewiss's room three days before, 'are you sure you don't want some people to take with you?'
'I'm sure.' Herewiss had been packing; he was standing before his bookshelf, choosing the grimoires he would take with him. 'Notice would be taken — there would be reprisals later. The situation would only get worse. And even with the biggest force we could muster, we wouldn't have a third enough people to crack a siege that size. Besides, our people need to be here, putting in crops.' Herewiss took down a thick leatherbound book, filled with notes and spells of illusion.