Read The Door Into Fire for Free Online Page A

door; it opened with a low tired groan. There was no one inside.
    He went in, still moving carefully, and bent down by the window to check his bags. The surcoat was ever so slightly mussed, unfolded just enough to clearly show the Phoenix charged on it; and the lockshield around the bags was parted cleanly in one place, an invisible incision right through the spell, big enough for a cat to put a paw through.
    Herewiss laughed and got up. With flint and steel he lit the room’s one candle, a stub of tallow in a smoky, cracked glass by the big four-poster bed. Even in the glass, the flame bent and bobbled wildly until Herewiss closed the shutters at the window. For a few seconds he regarded the worm-holed old door.
    “All right,” he said softly. “Let her think I had a bit too much to drink.” He crossed to the door and closed it without shooting the bolt, then flicked a word and a gesture back at the bags and dissolved the lockshield.
    Herewiss pulled back the faded, patched coverlet and sat down on the bed. Immediately there was a sudden sharp feeling in the back of his head, a nagging feeling like a splinter, or the dull hurt of a burn. He got up again hurriedly, stripping the covers all the way back and feeling about the sheets. When he lifted up the pillow, there it was—a small muslin bag, with runes of the Nhàiredi sorcerer’s-speech crudely stitched on it, and a brown stain that was probably blood.
    Herewiss took his knife from the sheath at his belt and lifted the little bag on its blade, carrying it over to the table where the candle sat. It took him a while to poke a large enough hole in it without touching it directly, but when he did, and shook out the contents, he nodded. Asafetida; crumbs of choke-pard and wyverns-tooth; a leaf of moonwort, the black-veined kind picked in Moon’s decline; and also a small lump of something soft—a bit of potato from his plate at dinner. He scowled. Elements of sleep-charm and love-charm, mixed together—with the moonwort to befuddle the mind and bind the sleeper to someone else’s wishes.
    What does she think I am? She must not know I’m a sorcerer, or she wouldn’t try something so ridiculously simple— Shaking his head, Herewiss laid the steel knife down on the little pile of herbs. “Ehrénie haladh seresh,” he said, and spat on the blade. When he picked it up again, the moonwort had shriveled into a tight black ball, and the warning pain in the back of his head was gone.
    He set the cloth bag afire with the candle flame, and carried it still burning to the window, opening the shutter and throwing the bag out along with the bits of herbs. Then he went back and stretched out on the bed, reaching for the mug. The ale was getting warm. Herewiss made a face, put the mug aside, and lay back against the headboard, crossing his arms and sighing. It was going to be a long wait.
    •

    At sometime past one in the morning Herewiss was listening wearily to the sound of some patron of the inn wobbling about in the courtyard, singing (if that was the word) the old song about the King of Darthen’s lover. The inn’s good ale seemed to have completely removed any fears the drunk had ever had of high notes, and he was squeaking and warbling through the choruses in a falsetto fit to give any listener a headache. Herewiss certainly had one.
    The man had just gotten to the verse about the goats when Herewiss heard the door grunt softly, and saw it scrape inward a bit. He lay back quickly, peeking out from beneath lowered lids. There was another soft scraping sound, and in stepped the innkeeper’s daughter, wrapped in a blanket against the cold. She looked long and hard at him, and it was all Herewiss could do to keep from grinning. After a few moments, satisfied that he was asleep, she smiled and crossed the room quietly to where his bags lay.
    The one she peered into first was the one with the surcoat. Slowly and carefully she pulled it out and spread it wide to look at the