Free The Door into Sunset by Diane Duane Page B

and wound up as cinders. And what about you? Will you have a pet? Or be loved freely by something dangerous? You may die of it, but you won’t mind the death, not afterwards, when the love is a hundred times greater.”
    Freelorn began to shake. It was hard to tell whether Sunspark was speaking allegorically, since its kind didn’t handle life and death as humans did. Herewiss had had problems of this sort with Sunspark before, and had taken a long time to convince it not to simply kill people who were bothering him. “You sound sure of yourself,” Freelorn said at last.
    “I know what worked for me, and for Herewiss. It should work for other humans, but Herewiss keeps complicating it with explanations.” It laughed gently. “If I come to understand why our loving works for him, that will be enough for me. And the sooner, the better. No use wasting time.”
    “Why not?” Lorn said. “You won’t die any time soon.”
    “ He will,” said Sunspark.
    Lorn was shaken. “And what was it that worked for you?”
    Its voice was soft, and even puzzled, as if even now it didn’t understand the answer. “Fight with all your power, to the death, and lose the battles, first. Learn defeat. Then you get everything. Win, and lose it all.” It shook its head slowly, and sat up, stretching fore and aft, cat-fashion. “If I had won,” Sunspark said, reflective, “he would be ashes on some south wind, and I would have been free... of this.” It gazed down over the parapet, toward the lower towers, in one of which Herewiss lay. “Free of him, of love, and fear, and death... free of you mad creatures.” To Freelorn’s amazement, it turned and bumped his head against his shoulder, and the touch was warm. “Mastery is better,” it said, muffled, “even if I’m on the wrong side of it.”
    Very slowly Lorn put a hand up to stroke the burning pelt. It was like hot velvet to the touch, and Sunspark shivered in response. “Maybe it’s unlikely,” he said to it, rubbing the good place behind the ears, “but it might be interesting anyway, to try to master you, and find out firsthand what the Dark you’re talking about.”
    One eye opened and looked at him. “So it might be at that,” it said, sounding amused. Then it straightened up. “He’s waiting for you,” it said, and leaped off the parapet, dissolving into a streak of fire that struck outward into the night.
    What have I gotten myself into? Lorn thought, and sighed, and went down to bed. In the morning, he would ride for Arlen.

FOUR

    They who say we are made in the Goddess’s image, they say true. For She made the world, yet in the heat of Her creation forgot the Shadow of Death that lurked, waiting Its chance: and unthinking She bound it into the world, and now rues Her doing. And we, like Her, make works that we fancy shall last for ever, but leave this or that great matter out of our reckoning; and then rue the mistake after. Here, though, we come at last by Her mercy to differ. For the mistakes we make, we can set right: She, never. All the hosts of man must come to the Last Shore before She may end the world and begin anew. Yet though we may set our mistakesaright... how often do we so? And in this the Shadow’s laughter may be heard. In our pride and blindness is Its only hope... and the means by which the likeness between us and Her is made complete.

    (s’Lehren, Commentaries on the Hamartics )

    Dead tired, wrung out, held safe and close, he would have thought that this once he was safe from the dream. He found out otherwise. It started as innocently as they tended to—one of those strange, slightly frantic, funny dreams in which good friends and people you’ve never seen before all rush around on bizarre missions that make perfect sense while you’re dreaming, and none whatsoever when you wake. He remembered wading a muddy river in company with Herewiss and Lang. Where the rest of his people were, he couldn’t imagine. A while