The Door Into Fire by Diane Duane Read Free Book Online

being both cautious and courteous by nature, treated his illusions as if they were both. “And while you’re out there, please take that man down there and bed him down in the stable or something. If I hear that part about the goats again, I may turn him into one.”
    The dark shape waded slowly through the air, trailing streams of black smoke behind it, and climbed over the windowsill into the night. It drifted down silently into the courtyard.
    “Would you like to be a goat?” Herewiss said, going back to look at the girl from behind, so that she could see him. “Or an owl might be better—you seem to like being up in the middle of the night.”
    He was bluffing outrageously, for no mere sorcery could do such things. She seemed not to know that, though. She stared at Herewiss wide-eyed, the terror frozen in her face. Outside, a voice broke off its singing. “Boy, izh really dark out here,” it said, woozily surprised.
    “Or maybe you’d like to bed down with my friend out there,” Herewiss said, adding another layer of bluff still more outrageous, “since you do seem to be so eager, with that love-charm and all. I should tell you, though, he is a bit cold—and you might have a baby afterwards, and I couldn’t guarantee what it would look like.”
    He made a small adjustment in his mind and snapped his fingers, freeing her upper half but keeping her legs bound tight. She sagged and turned her face away from him quickly. “Tell me what you were after,” Herewiss said.
    “I—” She shuddered. “I don’t want to share with that —”
    “Then be quick and answer me.”
    She stared sullenly at the floor. “I smelled the Power,” she said. “You have it. I want to know how. If a man can have it, then there has to be a way for me to bring mine out.” She looked up, glared at him. “How did you do it?” she demanded, bitter. “Who did you pact with?”
    “My my,” Herewiss said. “You are a dabbler. Everyone has the Power, dear, didn’t you know that? Men and women both, everyone born has the spark. But all too few have enough to do anything with. And Goddess knows there’s more to it than just having enough Flame. What was the bag for, by the way?”
    She scowled at the floor again, and would not answer him.
    “A little draining to amuse yourself? The Bride doesn’t look kindly on such things. Draining away your lovers’ potency is likely to make you less of a woman, not more. And anyway, who taught you your Nhàired? Two of the words on the bag were misspelled, and there was too much asafetida. If you’d left that there much longer, it would have recoiled, and half the place would probably have tried to rape you. Try draining that .”
    She answered him not a word, and Herewiss sighed. “You’re not being very open with me,” he said. “I’m in a quandary as to what to do with you. Maybe you really do want to be a goat.” He went over to the bag on the floor and took out the other book, the one with the seals on it. Softly he said the word to undo the seals, and the second word that spoke the pages apart, and then went through the book slowly, looking for the right page.
    The innkeeper’s daughter was beginning to worry now. “Please,” she said, “please, no—I’ll do anything—”
    She squirmed her torso at him, and Herewiss shook his head in mild amazement. “I’m not interested in that kind of anything,” he said. “I might consider information, though. —Tonight at dinner some people were talking, and someone mentioned a place called the ‘hold in the Waste,’ and everyone else hushed them up. What is that? Why won’t they talk about it?”
    Fresh fear went across the girl’s face like a shadow. “I don’t know—”
    Herewiss’s underhearing jabbed him hard under one rib, like the pain one gets from running too hard, and he knew she was lying. “Then I guess I’ll have to turn you into a goat,” he said, wondering how in the world he was going to make the