He threw her a quick image of herself as she had been the night before, when the air in the hall had been full of the stink of hralcins. As the monsters had come shambling across the floor toward them she had stood, driven to the brink of panic, unable to do even the smallest sorcery. Hands upheld, shak-ing all over, she cowered before the advancing, screaming horrors and made blinding light — a byproduct of her blocked Fire — until even that guttered out and left her exhausted.Segnbora bit the inside of her cheek, annoyed even though Herewiss had been compassionate afterward.(What we're facing,) he said with gentle sarcasm, (is the father of those things, and worse — the Maker of Enmities, the engenderer of the shadows at the bottoms of our hearts, Who can overturn the world in fire and storm. You have some new defense that you've come up with since last night? A strategy sufficient to stop a being so powerful that to be rid of it the Goddess Herself can only let the Universe run down and die?)(I plan to win,) she said. (What are you going to do?) He looked across the room at her for a while, still not moving. (I'm glad you're here,) he said finally. (I can't tell Aim about this—) A quick thought, a flicker of the shape of an arrowhead, passed between them. (I hope you won't either.) (Of course not.)He straightened, laid Khavrinen aside. Away from its source, the Fire in the blade died down to the merest glow. Only in his hands did a little Flame remain burning. Looking down at Freelorn, Herewiss absently began to pour it from hand to hand. Like burning water it flowed, the essence of life, the stuff of shapechanges and mastery of elements and magics of the heart, the Goddess's gift to the Lovers and to human-kind, the Power that founded the world, that the Shadow had lost and caused men to lose.
