The Door Into Fire

Lorn took a swallow of wine. 'I think he suspected who I was. He asked if I would bless him. I did, and he died. Right there . . . Then I found out he was twenty-two. I'd thought he was those people's father. He was their son. How many days, weeks, had he been dying? ... '

'Oh, Lorn . . .'

'No,' Freelorn said, looking up at Herewiss through the tears. 'Don't try to make it better. It can never be better.' He stared at his cup again. 'And I don't want it to be. How many other deaths like that am I going to have to make good to the Goddess after I die? I'm the Lion's Child. Their deaths are mine. And there was what She said to me at the Tavern ... '

Herewiss kept silent. After a few breaths, shaking his head, Lorn said, 'No more running. No more. All the other reasons, the Arlene lords getting restless and wanting a real king again, Cillmod botching his relations with Darthen, the queen being in trouble, her armies getting demolished by Reavers down Geraithe way, and her nobles becoming willing to support me — none of it matters. None of it matters but that man's head in my lap. The poor cracked voice saying, "The King is back."'

Freelorn was quiet for a few seconds. 'That was mostly why I came back so quickly,' he said. 'There were other places we could have hidden all this money. Darthen, in particular. But I had to come back and tell you: I can't stay here with you. I have to turn around and go back. Even if I die of it. Which I may. No, let me finish. Cillmod's forces have been overrunning the borders of Darthen, raiding for food. He may be ignoring the Oath of Lion and Eagle, but I can't. I have to move to defend Darthen. Even if I have to do it by myself.' He smiled, wistfully, and with pain. 'It's what a king would do. Though I'm not sure where to go from there ... '

Herewiss reached out, took Freelorn's hand and held it. 'I just wanted to say that I missed you,' he said. 'And I'm sorry we fought. And sorrier that I didn't give you the benefit of the doubt when you said you could pull off the Osta business. But seeing you now, hearing you ... I can't say I'm sorry about that.'

Freelorn looked at Herewiss and smiled. 'Nor I,' he said. 'It's all right.' And he handed Herewiss the lovers'-cup. 'We're one, loved.'

'So may it be.' Herewiss drank off the cup in three or four swift draughts and looked at it with satisfaction. 'Let's get high,' he said, 'and I'll tell you my news after dinner.'

'You mean I'm going to have to be drunk to believe it?'

Herewiss chuckled and poured more wine.

A long while later Herewiss and Freelorn and all his following sat around the fire pit, in various states of repletion. The stripped- down carcass of the desert deer was still on the spit. The fire in the pit had died down to a soft glow of embers, with only an occasional tongue of flame showing. Most of Freelorn's people were half-dozing in their chairs, except for Segnbora, who had pled time-of-moon pains and retired early. Herewiss and Freelorn sat together, a little apart from the others, cups in hand.

'A hundred and eighty-four doors,' Herewiss was saying wearily. 'Permanent ones, that is. I gave up trying to count the ones that are here one day and gone the next; and a lot of them move around, whole new wings of the building appear and disappear. There are more doors at night than during the daytime, and more than half the doors at any one time show water; but outside of that . . .' He trailed off.

'And none of them was what you were looking for.'

'I can't make them change,' Herewiss said. 'And the closest I've come is something that doesn't bear discussing.'

'No?'

Herewiss considered the wine in the lovers'-cup, breathed in, breathed out, a long moment of decision. 'No,' he said. 'If there's a somewhere that men have Flame, I wish them joy of it and good weather, 'cause I'm never going to get there. Not at this rate.'

'No luck with the swords?'

'I break them,' Herewiss said, fumbling around for the wine-jug and refilling the cup. 'I should start a business: HEREWISS S'HEARN. SWORDS BROKEN. NO JOB TOO LARGE OR TOO SMALL.'

Freelorn gazed at him sadly, and Herewiss shook his head and took another drink. 'Lorn,' he said softly, 'what happened while you were gone?'

'Huh?'

'With Segnbora.'

'That's one of the problems with having a sorcerer for a loved,' Freelorn said in a resigned voice. 'Let me have some of that.'

'Surely. No, Lorn, it's just the way you looked when you came in, and the way she looked at you . . . I'm not blind.'

Freelorn drank some wine, held the cup in his lap. He looked suddenly very tired. 'We — were in comfort with each other — it was nice. I fell a little in love with her, I guess. I needed to talk, especially after I left here so mad -though this had been going on to some extent while we were escaping from Madell, before we got trapped. She was always there to listen, and what I thought seemed to matter to her, really did. So we — got close — but I began to notice that she never told me anything back, not that it says anywhere that you have to, but she never seemed to tell anything about herself. She would listen, but never give — or never really share.'

He drank again. 'Well, when I got lonely, I asked her to sleep with me, and she said yes. I guess I thought it might have been different there. But it wasn't. She still couldn't share.' His voice grew lower, and the pain of the words scraped it raw. 'She was good — she was very good — the way she was very good at listening. But she still couldn't, didn't share. Not that she wasn't responsive, or warm, but there was no—' He gestured with the cup, looking for the right words. Finally he held the cup out to Herewiss to be refilled, and took a long moment's refuge in the wine. 'She couldn't — I don't know. She couldn't let go. Couldn't trust me. I wanted so much for her to ... but she didn't dare . . .'

Herewiss sat there and let the silence grow again. And now he uses the pain to punish himself for what he knows to be his part in it, he thought. 'Was it your fault, Lorn? You sound guilty somehow.'

'No ... I don't know.' Freelorn drank again. 'I think maybe I slept with her because I missed you. Instead of you, as it were. Does that make sense?'

'It does. Though, Lorn, don't sell her short; there are enough good things about her that I'm sure she's worth sleeping with on her own ... '

They sat there in silence for a few moments. Freelorn looked around at the polished gray walls, dim in the faint firelight.

'I wish there was something I could do for you,' he said mournfully.

'Lorn, you're my loved, you're my friend. I can live without the Power, but not without friends. And I may have to get used to living without the Power pretty soon -it doesn't have long to run in me without focus.'

'What we need,' Freelorn said solemnly, 'is a miracle.'

Herewiss began to laugh, the kind of laughter that is a breath away from tears.

'No, I mean it,' said Freelorn. 'I'm the King's son of Arlen, descended in right line from Healhra Whitemane, and by the Goddess if there's anyone who has a right to ask the Lion for a miracle, it's me.'

Herewiss laughed until he was weak and his sides hurt, though some small corner of his mind was surprised that he could laugh so hard over something so painful and serious.

'Me,' Freelorn was saying, 'I'll do it. I will.' He finished his cup of wine, and held it out to Herewiss again.

'Haven't you had enough?' Herewiss said as soon as he gained control of his laughter.