The Door Into Fire by Diane Duane Page A

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 lying on a battlefield bleeding, either—but on the other hand, it’d be great to be a hero. Even a common robber baron, putting down oppressors and giving money to the common people. Or 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.”
    “ 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, 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!!!”
    “Sssh, 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, 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 scrying 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 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 . “When you find it,” he said.
    They hugged each other, stirring up dust.
    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