Door Into Light

Pete commented that I posted the first scene of Door Into Light some time ago. True! But it was a while ago, so here again are the first five pages, for those of you who may not recall. This has changed just a little, but the fundamental scene is still the same.

Three weeks before the spring
solstice, one week after the door to Kalches had first appeared in this whimsical,
unpredictable, willful house where he had lived for the past month and more,
Taudde stood before that door, his hand on the knob, recruiting his nerve to
open it.

The door to Kalches, land of music
and sorcery and the high winds that both cut like knives and sang like harps, stood
in the long hallway of the house, between two high, narrow windows. Brilliant
sunlight blazed through the nearer of the two; silver moonlight glimmered
through the other. Between day and dark stood this door: solid, weathered, and
ordinary, exactly as though it was a normal door and had always waited there
for a hand to fling it wide. Though it did not match any other door in the
house, somehow it did not look out of place. Its frame had been hewn roughly
out of granite. The door itself was of common pine, the wood neither stained
nor painted nor carved with any decorative figures nor even planed entirely smooth.
When Taudde opened that door . . . when he opened it, he knew exactly the wind,
fragrant with pine forests and the cold, clean scent of lingering winter, that
would skirl out of the distant mountains and into this house.

He did not mean to step through the
door, not yet. But this afternoon, weather permitting, he would finally step
from this house into Kalches, crossing all the intervening miles in an instant.

He was not looking forward to that
at all. Or he was, of course, in a way. He had been so long away; no matter how
bitterly he would miss Lonne and the sea, he couldn’t help but anticipate his
return to the stark, cold country that was his home. But his homecoming would
certainly be . . . fraught. Taudde did not at all relish the thought of facing
his grandfather and explaining everything that had happened. Or, really, anything
that had happened.

Still, he dared not leave his
return too late. Three weeks was little enough time.

He had asked leave from the prince
of Lirionne to step through that door and into Kalches. Tepres had granted it,
of course, exactly as he had promised. At noon today, Taudde would formally ask
leave from the king of Lirionne himself, Geriodde Nerenne ken Seriantes. The
king would also grant it. Taudde had very little doubt of that. Then he would
open this door for the third time, and step through, from the spring of Lonne,
the Pearl of the West, into the high, stark winter of Kalches.

With Leilis, so that was something,
at least; no matter how little Taudde expected to enjoy his own interview with
his grandfather, he did expect to
enjoy witnessing the meeting between that stiff old man and Seathrift of
Cloisonné House, which was the name Leilis went by when she put on the robes
and manners of a keiso. He wanted to watch the old man try the edge of his
tongue against her wit and unshakable composure. She would render his
grandfather absolutely speechless, which was not something many people could
do, but Taudde had no doubt she would do it. He looked forward to that very
much.

But though he was resolved to go
through, he thought he had better see how the weather lay on the other side of
this door. This door opened into the mountains above the town of Kedres, not
into the town itself, and storms were common in those mountains as winter
turned to early spring. If the weather looked too difficult, well, that would
be reason enough to put off his homecoming at least another day.

“Well? Will you open it, or do you
merely mean to admire it as it stands?” inquired a light, quick voice at his
shoulder. It was a voice that, to Taudde, was unmistakably underlain with an
echo of the dragon’s voice. When ordinary men called Prince Tepres the Dragon’s
heir, they were generally thinking merely of the king, the infamous Dragon of
Lirionne. But ordinary men did not know of the true dragon beneath the
mountain, and ordinary men did not possess Taudde’s trained ear.

Karah, Moonflower of Cloisonné
House, the newest and youngest keiso in all of Lonne, stood beside the prince,
her fingers twined with his. Though she had come to this house this morning
ostensibly to visit her younger sister, Taudde’s student Nemienne, the romance
between Prince Tepres and the beautiful young keiso was a very, very open
secret throughout Lonne. Karah was far too honest to hide her feelings for the
prince, and as his father did not disapprove, Prince Tepres also openly
acknowledged his infatuation with her. Everyone looked forward to an eventual
flower wedding. This gave the city a charming, pretty subject for speculation
and gossip and helped take everyone’s mind off the coming solstice. Taudde was
perfectly certain the king had thought of that, and would not have been
surprised to discover that Prince Tepres was deliberately making certain public
gestures of favor for the same reason.

Jeres Geliadde, the prince’s
companion and bodyguard, stood behind them both. Nemienne hovered to one side,
most of her attention on the door. She had long since accepted her sister’s
romance with the prince and wasn’t much concerned with that; she was much more
interested in doors and windows and the whims of the house. And in Kalches.
Taudde had not yet decided whether he would permit her to accompany him to his
home. He was almost certain it would be safe enough for her to come, but . . .
he wasn’t entirely certain. None of them could be entirely certain about anything of the kind until the solstice came
and went and did not give way to a summer of iron and blood and fire.

Prince Tepres said drily, “If you
are not inclined to open it, Taudde, I might lay my hand to it.”

Jeres Geliadde cleared his throat.

“Or, then, perhaps not,” the prince
conceded, tilting a straw-pale eyebrow at Jeres. He did not touch the door, but
half turned to give his bodyguard an ironic look. The prince’s thin, arrogant
mouth seemed made for irony. He bent that look on Taudde. “Someone needs to,
however.”

Taudde eyed Prince Tepres with
resignation.

“Of course my father will give you
leave to go, Taudde. Surely you don’t doubt it.”

Taudde steadied himself with an effort of will. “No. I don’t doubt your father’s generosity.”

“Your own grandfather’s, then?” the
prince asked, more gently than was his habit.

A sudden hammering on the door interrupted
Taudde’s attempt to frame an acceptable answer.

It wasn’t the door to Kalches; that
would have been far beyond merely
startling. This was merely the ordinary door that simply opened out onto the
Lane of Shadows. Men did come to that door from time to time: mages who came to
study bardic sorcery or the occasional tradesman daring enough to seek custom
among the mages who lived along this lane. Prince Tepres, of course, or one or
another of the young men who were his companions. Now and again, on a few
memorable occasions, the king himself.

None of them had a knock quite of this
sort. There was a disconcerting urgency to it.

Prince Tepres, quirking a pale
eyebrow at the intrusion, stepped forward to answer that hammering. It was not
his place to do so, but he might have meant to reprimand whomever was there for
so rude a summons. Certainly whoever pounded roughly on the door would be
embarrassed to find he had disturbed not a mere foreigner but the Dragon’s own
heir.

Taudde, moved by an alarm he did
not entirely understand, said sharply, “Wait!” just as the prince reached the
door.

The prince, startled, turned his
head, to look back at Taudde.

Jeres Geliadde, responding perhaps
to the alarm in Taudde’s voice, thrust himself past Karah and Nemienne and strode
suddenly forward, his hand dropping to the hilt of his sword.

The prince’s hand fell on the latch.
The latch dropped and turned under the pressure of that touch.

The door slammed open.

For a heartbeat, that was all. There
were men there, poised on the weathered gray stone of the porch, a crowd of
men: a few in the black of the King’s Own and a handful in the flat red and
gray of the army; two men in the black and white robes of mages, and, most
fraught of all, three men wearing robes embroidered at cuffs and collar with
the saffron-gold that no one in Lonne but those of royal blood had any right to
wear. The one in the forefront was a man nearing middle years, heavyset and
hard-featured, powerful and angry. The man a step behind was younger and more
elegant, with a narrow mouth and small chin; his angular eyes cold with bitter
triumph. The third was a younger man, well back, surrounded by soliders.

Taudde had never met the left-hand
princes of Lirionne, but he knew at once who they must be: the youngest must be
Prince Geradde, of whom he knew nothing but the name. The cold, elegant man
must be Prince Telis, whom the folk of Lonne called Sa-Telis, the serpent, even
to his face. He had a serpent’s look to him: a cold look. He was said to be
mage-gifted and clever and dangerous to cross.

And the one in front had to be Prince
Sehonnes, eldest of the king’s sons, but keiso-born and thus not his father’s
heir.

Not the king’s heir so long as
Prince Tepres lived.

Taudde’s flute, recently carved of
driftwood he had gathered himself from the broken shore below the Laodd, was in
his hand. It had come there as automatically as Jeres Geliadde had drawn his
own sword. But it was not the same as his old flute, which Taudde missed
suddenly and acutely.

But for a long, reverberating
moment, no one moved or spoke. Jeres would have leaped forward, he had his hand
on his prince’s arm, ready to snatch him back from danger. But Prince Tepres had
flung up a hand to check him and by that seemed to check them all, so the
moment drew out, tension singing in the air until it became all but audible.

Prince Sehonnes, too, held up his
hand. He, as Tepres, might have meant to restrain his men. But there was
something else in the gesture. Something ostentatious, something that was meant
for display: Look at me, like a vain
boy showing off a new and expensive bauble to his friends.

Prince Tepres was staring at Sehonnes,
at his hand . . . at the ring he wore: a heavy iron ring in the shape of a dragon,
with twin rubies for eyes. Their father’s ring. The ring of the Dragon of
Lirionne. Tepres had paled. His thin mouth set hard and stern, and he put his
shoulders back and stood very straight. He looked, in that moment, very like
his father.

“Brother,” said Prince Sehonnes,
grimly, and Sa-Telis added, sharp and urgent, “I want the sorcerer alive!”

Tepres tried to swing the door
closed. The heavy gauntleted hand of one of the soldiers caught it, a booted
foot came down to brace it open, a sword went up . . . Jeres jerked his prince
back and caught that descending blade with his own shorter sword, closing with
the other man to counteract the soldier’s advantage of reach, shoving the man
back out onto the porch with his weight and the sheer force of his will. But
Jeres was only one man, and the door was still open.

Tepres, unarmed, reached after a
sword he did not have.

Taudde lifted his flute, meaning to
get those men off his porch and sweep the left-hand princes after them –
perhaps he would fling them all into the dark under the mountain; he thought he
could and was frightened and angry enough to try. But the mages blocked him, Sa-Telis
stepping to the side to get a clear view of Taudde. Of course the mage-prince
and his allies had known Taudde would be here. Both those mages had actually
studied with him – he recognized them now – they knew very little sorcery and pretended
to scorn what little they knew, but they knew him a little, and they had
plainly come prepared to counter his sorcery.

And Taudde, who had devoted
considerable thought during the past winter to ways in which a bardic sorcerer
might avoid being caught in a magecrafted net of silence, found himself, in the
moment in which it mattered, unprepared to meet them. He had more or less
trusted the Dragon of Lirionne; he had
not expected the door of this house to open onto enemies and sudden battle.

So he was not quick enough to answer
the attack when the mageworking set itself against him, binding him into
silence so that his flute uttered no sound, so that his shout of frustration
fell into silence and was utterly lost. Taudde found himself unable to unravel that
mageworking as fast and as powerfully as the two mages set it.

Out on the porch men struggled, but
Taudde, caught by a web of magecrafted silence, could not hear them. Jeres had
killed one man. Another of his attackers, slashed across the belly, folded
slowly down over his terrible wound. The man’s mouth was open, but if he was
screaming, Taudde could not hear him, either. Prince Sehonnes’ mouth was open
as well, but he seemed to be shouting rather than screaming. He was pressing straight
forward through the melee, toward Prince Tepres. One soldier had gotten around
Jeres – there were too many men, far too many, they were getting in each
other’s way, but that wouldn’t last and anyone could see how this particular
battle must end.

Tepres, unarmed save for a short
belt knife, gestured urgently for Karah and Nemienne to get back and himself
stepped forward to face his attackers. Nemienne was trying to pull her sister
away, but Karah was clearly refusing to go without Tepres – the girl wasn’t
actually wrong, the prince absolutely could not be allowed to sacrifice himself
– Taudde started forward, meaning to grab the prince’s arm and haul him bodily
back farther into the house, which after all was not an ordinary house – there
was no need, even now, for heroic last stands, but with the silence on him he
could not even say so.

Jeres Geliadde faced two more armed
men, but another man, behind him, kicked him behind the knee, and Jeres
collapsed to one knee. The man drew back his sword for a killing thrust . . .
and Jeres, his face blank, lunged upward and sideways and whirled his sword
around in a short, vicious arc. Prince Sehonnes’ hand leaped away from his arm,
seemingly of its own accord, blood spraying across the gray stone. The
left-hand prince staggered, his expression one of disbelief and anger rather
than pain. At the same time, the man behind Jeres completed his thrust, and
Jeres, his body fully extended in his own smooth attack, could not even attempt
to counter that blow. He did not counter it, and the sword slid into him,
stabbing from back to front so that several inches of the blade emerged from his
chest.

Despite that terrible blow, Jeres,
in a smooth continuation of his own movements, as though stepping through the
choreographed movements of a dance, caught Sehonnes’ amputated hand as it
descended and flung it with deadly accuracy past half a dozen startled soldiers
and through the door of the house. Where Prince Tepres, as though the move had
been practiced in advance, put up his own hand and caught it.

For a moment that seemed frozen in
time, everyone stopped.  Prince Sehonnes,
face twisted, clutched at his maimed arm. Even the serpent-prince hesitated,
his dark eyes narrowed, to all appearances unmoved, but his attention
momentarily fixed on his stricken brother.

Taudde, feeling as though he had
been somehow caught in a play, was seized now by a wild desire to laugh. He seized
Tepres’ arm in a hard grip and pulled him, resist though he would, back down
the hall, sweeping the girls with them, and the pause shattered. In perfect
silence their enemies came after them, rushing forward – too many and too well
armed and nothing to laugh at, so that Prince Tepres yielded at last and backed
up willingly, shoving Karah behind him, but it was impossible, anyone could see
they would not be able to get clear. The soldiers rushed forward, and in that
instant, without thought, Taudde seized the knob he found ready under his hand,
flung open the door, and snatched Prince Tepres and Karah sideways out of the
house and out of Lonne entirely, into sudden dazzling cold. The mage-prince strode
forward, his mouth open in an inaudible shout, but Taudde slammed the door shut
between them, staggering with the force of that motion and with footing gone
suddenly uncertain.

Prince Tepres, staggering also,
jerked himself free of Taudde’s grip, shoved Karah away toward safety, and
whirled back toward the door to face his brothers, lifting Sehonnes’ amputated
hand as though he might fling it at their faces in a macabre gesture of
defiance.

Only the door was not there. Where
it should have stood was only brilliant light pouring down a steep knife-edged
ridge and into the empty gulf beyond, light glittering off an equally steep
cliff rising on the other side: light and naked stone, empty air and blowing snow,
here in the heights where snow would linger all through the short northern
summer.

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