Read Online The Door Into Fire by Diane Duane - Free Book Online Page B

this is “here,” where’s “there?” )
    It showed him, and he had to hold his head in his hands for fear it would burst open from the immensities it suddenly contained. “There,” it seemed, was the totality of existence. Not the little world he had always known, bounded by mountains and the Sea; but his world and all the others that were, all of them at once, a frightful complexity of being and emptiness, and other conditions that he could not classify.
    Herewiss knew there were other planes of existence—everyone knew that—but he tended to think of them as being separated from the world of the Kingdoms by distance as well as by worldwalls, and accessible only by special doors such as the ones he was looking for. Sunspark, though, had more than an abstract conception. He had breached those walls under his own power, had made his own doors and walked among the worlds. Herewiss, seeing as if through Sunspark’s mind, could actually perceive the way they were arranged.
    The worlds all overlapped somehow, each of them coexisting in some impossible fashion with every other, a myriad of planes arranged on the apparent surface of a sphere that could not possibly be real, since all of its points were coterminous with all of the others. Still, all the countless places held distinct positions in relation to one another. Each of them was a thread in the pattern—a Pattern past his understanding, or anyone’s, actually, though some few by much travel might get to know small parts of it, or might come to understand the spatial relationships on a limited scale. It could be traveled, but the order and position of the worlds within it changed constantly, from moment to moment. The important thing was to know what the Pattern was going to do next.
    During the brief flickering moment when Herewiss tried to perceive the thought in its entirety, he knew with miserable certainty that he stood, or sat, right then, upon an uncountable number of locked doors. If he only had the key, he could step through and be anywhere, anywhen he could possibly imagine. Sunspark had the key.
    The hope and jealousy that ran through Herewiss in that one bare moment were terrible, but they didn’t last long; they dwindled and fragmented as the thought did when Sunspark finally pulled away from the contact.
    Herewiss found himself left with a few pallid shreds of the original concept. I’m not big enough of soul to hold so much at once… (That’s where you come from?) he said to Sunspark.
    (Somewhere there. I’ve forgotten exactly where. I’ve been so many places.)
    (Can you take other people into those—those places?)
    (No. It’s a skill each must learn for himself.)
    (Oh...) Herewiss sighed, shook his head. (Well. You are a fire elemental, aren’t you?)
    (I am fire, certainly,) it said.
    (How did it happen that you got caught out in the rain?)
    (I was eating,) it said, and Herewiss thought of the distant brushfire he had seen. (I was careless, perhaps—I knew the storm was coming, but I thought I could elude it just before it started to rain. However, the rain came very suddenly, and very hard, so that the shock weakened me—and then it wouldn’t let up. I thought I would go mad or mindless—we do that when too much water touches us. It is a terrible thing.)
    Herewiss nodded.
    (You saved me,) the elemental said, almost reluctantly, and there was something in its tone that made Herewiss regard it with sudden suspicion. (I—) It cut itself off. Herewiss’s underhearing caught a faint overtone of concealment, fear, artifice. (—thank you,) it finished, a little lamely.
    The hesitation told Herewiss what he needed to know. The old tales he’d unearthed in his studies claimed that elementals and creatures from other planes respected nothing in the worlds but their own ethic. That ethic, the “Pact,” stated that travelers-between-worlds must help one another when need arose, and return favor for favor, lest the overwhelming strangenesses