Read Online The Door into Sunset by Diane Duane - Free Book Online Page A

the parapet was their lovers’-cup, the grain of its plain turned wood showing silver in the moonlight, the carved leaf-pattern around the edge indistinct and shadowy. Freelorn was surprised. “All these other times we’ve traveled, you usually carry it... “
    “All these other times, I haven’t been anyone particular. Things have changed....”
    I know, Lorn thought, remembering that odd look a week ago at the table, and wondering for the hundredth time what to do about it. “But what are you going to drink out of?”
    Herewiss shook his head. “Better you keep it. It would be remarked on... and the less attention is drawn to you while I’m in Arlen, the better. Don’t you think?” And he laughed once more, just a breath of sound this time. “Lorn, don’t look that way. Do you think there’s any cup I drink out of, that I don’t think of you?”
    Freelorn shook his head slowly. “It’s the same here,” he said, and the roughness down in his throat surprised him as his voice caught on it. “Anything in that?”
    Herewiss handed the cup to him. “Brightwood white,” he said. “My last for a while. My father won’t send it to Arlen any more.”
    “That’s a shame,” Lorn said.
    “It’s your fault,” Herewiss said. “He stopped trading with them right after he found out that Cillmod was trying to have you killed.”
    Freelorn was astonished. “He did that for me?”
    Herewiss looked at him in affectionate scorn. “He loves you, you idiot. After all these years, haven’t you got it through your head?”
    Freelorn lifted the cup and poured out a quick libation to the Goddess over the edge of the parapet. “Well, here’s to him, then. And Her.” He drank.
    Herewiss peered over the edge. “Better hope She wasn’t standing under that.”
    “And you,” Lorn said, his voice catching on that rough spot again as his eyes met Herewiss’s in the dark. He drank again, and handed his loved the cup.
    “Lorn,” Herewiss said, and drank. The underhearing spilled over again: the cool fire of the wine, held in the mouth for a moment, savored, to catch that flint-touch of sharpness that always reminded the taster of the scent of green leaves just after rain... but the taster wasn’t Freelorn. All this came mixed with a trembling along the limbs, as Herewiss thought of leaving Lorn tomorrow, leaving him all alone, watching him head toward Arlen and not being able to do anything to protect him. Not wanting to need to protect him, truly. But still, one wanted to make sure that things went right— And overlaying all this, a dull mourning, a feeling of simply missing Lorn, missing him even though he wasn’t gone yet: the premonition of the ache that would set in as it had in separations before—the silence on the far side of many a conversation, the empty spot in the next saddle, in the next place at table, in the curve of his own arm; the emptiness in the dark....
    It was too hard to bear, the other’s pain and his own both at once. Don’t make it worse for him, something said inside Lorn. “Dusty,” he said, and Herewiss only drank again and looked south.
    Lorn said that other Name, too softly for anyone but Herewiss and the one Other Who knew it to hear.
    Herewiss looked at him, bowed his head. “Yes,” he said.
    “You never told me the Fire was going to rub off,” said Lorn.
    Herewiss turned the cup around and around on the parapet. “You might have suspected it would,” he said. “I wasn’t sure, so I didn’t say anything. But you know they do it on purpose, in the Precincts.”
    Lorn nodded. “Eftgan and Segnbora were paired that way for a while, weren’t they? So that when they shared together, Eftgan’s Fire would wake Segnbora’s up.”
    “That’s right. Didn’t work, of course.” Herewiss drank. “Too deep a blockage, and too much power, in Segnbora’s case. But normally it works.” He shrugged. “Theoretically, anyone with the threshold amount of Fire, more than that