The Door into Sunset Read Online Free PDF Page B

of deep twilight at their hearts.
    Segnbora pushed her silvering hair back out of her face, where a breeze had blown it, and paused just out of the Blackstave’s shade. One hand in her pocket, she leaned casually on the Shadowblade... and then looked down in understated surprise as the needle point of the shadow calmly slipped downward into the cobble it rested on, as if she had chosen to lean on a cheese.
    Segnbora pulled the sword out of the stone and stood straight with it, looking around the crowd in cool assessment. So did the larger pair of eyes in the darkness about and above her, silver with a cast of blue.
    I think we have their attention, Segnbora said, and her amused bespeaking seemed to Freelorn so loud in the silence that the whole crowd should have been able to hear it.
    No agreeing answer came—just another movement over by another of the gates, the south gate that led out into the marketplace. There was less motion in the crowd this time, but more sound; a gasp that turned into a whisper that became a murmur, and then a cry that many voices took up, unbelieving, astonished: “Fire!” And so it was: for here, sauntering casually, nodding and smiling at people, came a tall broadshouldered man all in white—the white of the Brightwood surcoat, with its Phoenix in flames, and the white Cloak of the Wood’s ancient livery, now only given to lords of the Brightwood line, or the Queen’s own knights. The man had a hand-and-a-half broadsword resting on his shoulder, and the Flame of Power wound and wreathed about it and streamed away behind, harsh, hot-colored and clear, the pure fierce blue of a midsummer noon or a Steldene cat’s eyes. “Fire,” they shouted after him, unbelieving, astonished, delighted, “Fire!” Millenia, it had been, since anyone but women had wielded the Fire. And the last two men to wield it, more than two thousand years ago, had had to become gods to do so, and died of it. If the Goddess Herself had walked in from the market square, it would probably have caused less amazement. After all, everyone saw Her at least once before they died. But this—!
    Lorn watched the crowd push back and forth and reel and shout at the miracle that walked through them. Herewiss slipped free of the crowd, about halfway between Freelorn and Segnbora, and slid Khávrinen off his shoulder and set it point down on the cobbles before him, folding his hands about the hilts. His glance flicked left to Segnbora; she tilted her head at him, the slightest nod.
    Do you ever stop eating? Freelorn underheard her ask Herewiss silently, in that moment’s look. You’ve got sausage smutch on your face.
    Which side?
    Just under the left cheekbone.
    Herewiss turned to Freelorn, gave him that slight nod, binding them all together into a united front, a gesture to whomever or Whatever watched. Freelorn returned the nod. If you’d get up at a decent hour, he said inside, experimentally, you wouldn’t need to be scrounging snacks in the marketplace.
    Herewiss put one eyebrow up. When I do wake up early, someone who shall remain unnamed rarely lets me get up. He circumspectly wiped his face. Loud today, are we? Must be nerves.
    Dusty, I’ve been meaning to ask you— But Freelorn was jolted out of concentration as the trumpets on the walls sounded a sennet. The Queen came out.
    She came in a plain shirt and breeches of bleached linen, and wearing boots, like any other countrywoman with a morning’s yardwork to do in hot weather. The shouting in the crowd quieted at the sight of her. Eftgan d’Arienn, like her husband, was short, though no one under any circumstances could have called her small: an oval-faced woman, with a sweet expression and short-cropped blond hair. Her close-set blue eyes and sharp nose sometimes made her look to Freelorn rather like a small, inquisitive bird, a chirper like the wren. But her voice always broke the illusion. It was the pure North Darthene drawl, like Herewiss’s, reflective and