HM02 House of Moons (11 page)

Haemas twisted the light ebari-wool blanket in her hands. “We—” she began, and then could not finish. Somewhere in the past few days, she had forgotten how to trust. “We’ve never—met.” She started to sit up, then flinched as her head began to pound mercilessly.

You must lie still
. His mind tried to flow soothingly over hers, but, afraid that he would glimpse her secrets, she held her shields tight and shut him out.

He took her hand between both of his and tried to let his goodwill reassure her.
Relax and let me dampen the pain.

“No!” She lay back, holding her breath until the ache dulled. “Thank you.”

Ellirt sat back in the chair. “The aftereffects of a latteh of that size can be rather severe, especially set at such a high level. It’s wonder you didn’t die.” He stared over her head out the window. “That crystal was three times the size of any latteh I’ve ever seen. I’ve fought their misuse all my life, and yet I’ve never seen one bigger than my little finger. At least tell me what House is responsible for it, and who that woman is.”

“Axia!” She had almost forgotten. “Is she ...?”

“No, no.” He reached across and drew the light blanket over her shoulders. “She’s fine. Rather more than fine, I’m afraid. Kicking and screaming is a more accurate description.”

Haemas sagged back into the pillow. “What has she told you?”

“Little, except that we are to return the latteh or we’ll all regret it.” He hesitated. “We could take the information from her, of course, but the very spirit of Shael’donn is absolutely opposed to such practices.”

“Shael’donn?” she whispered. “This is Shael’donn?”

“Didn’t you know?” He shifted his weight. “I thought that was why you came to us.”

“I think I was drawn here because I once knew someone very like you, who helped me when no one else could.” She stopped, feeling lost. While she tarried here in this Otherwhen, Diren Chee was still loose back in her own time line, no doubt with more lattehs at his disposal. If she returned without Axia, there was nothing to keep him from coming after her again, or someone else, and he would be doubly furious at the loss of his sister. She didn’t know what to do.

“I would be glad to help you, too, if you would tell me what you need,” Ellirt said gently. “Shael’donn is a place of peace and refuge. We offer nothing but healing here.”

Her throat dry and aching, Haemas nodded. “What I need most is to learn how to fight the latteh.”

“Such knowledge is dangerous in the wrong hands, my dear.” He gazed down at her, so like the Ellirt forever lost to her that tears welled in her eyes. “But perhaps, later, when we have built some trust between us, there may be much that we can teach one another.” A faint smile crinkled his face. “Still, it is strange. I have glimpsed myself in your mind, and you do seem familiar.” He cocked his head. “You have the Killian coloring.”

Killians! Haemas closed her eyes. If the House of her maternal grandfather existed here in this Otherwhen, then perhaps Tal’ayn did, too. But the thought of her father’s disapproving face only gave her headache renewed vigor. She felt the old man’s worn palm touch her forehead. The bright circle of his mind hovered close.

Why don’t you sleep?
he murmured. Soothed by his familiar presence, this time she did not resist.

* * *

Enissa stood before the low stone wall at the edge of the withered kitchen garden and watched the dark, scudding clouds overhead. The bitterly cold air was dank with leaf mold and the musty smell of decaying vegetation. She couldn’t think inside with the girls nattering on about the Dynd Naming and who would have the prettiest gown or who would actually dance with Arrich Dynd. The list of their preoccupations was endless—and hopelessly banal.

She huddled against the chill gray stone as the savage wind blasted at her. First had come the shock of Myriel Lenhe’s death, then Haemas’s baffling disappearance, and now Kevisson’s bizarre, uncharacteristic attack on Riklin Senn; the world seemed determined to turn itself inside out.

Under normal circumstances, Kevisson would never have throttled Senn, no matter what the provocation, but no one knew better than she that he was still weak and disoriented. Just two days ago, that disastrous Search had almost killed him.

Then she realized what must have happened. It was as plain as Riklin Senn’s haughty face: Someone had been at Kevisson’s mind while he was weak. They had sent her away from his bedside, then planted a trigger and deliberately set it off. They wanted Kevisson to look like an out-of-control man capable of murdering Myriel Lenhe in an argument. Then he would be convicted and Shael’donn would be rid of him permanently.

But how could Enissa prove it? She had wanted to transport Myriel’s body back to the Highlands for examination at Shael’donn, since she had no idea of how the poor woman had actually died, but Father Orcado had insisted she be sent on to the Light with her son, saying it was important for the Lenhe girls not to drag the tragedy out any longer than absolutely necessary.

If she could go back in the time lines to see what had happened after Kevisson left Myriel alone, that might have helped, but her recent experience in walking two lines in the same When had convinced her that it wasn’t possible for her. As bad as those few moments at Kevisson’s side had been, she’d had only a short wait for the bewildering doubling to end. If she returned to the night of Myriel’s death, she would have to live through three days to catch up to herself. Her mind would never be able to stand the strain, and she would be of no use to Kevisson if she came out of the experience a gibbering idiot.

The back door opened and the chierra cook emerged, bending her head into the fierce wind as she carried out a pail of meat scraps for the silshas. Enissa watched the chunky servant make her way to the stone trough out at the far edge of the trees.

Over on the other side of the grounds, Shael’donn had no servants. Its advanced training in the mindarts was so sought after that each boy who came to study was expected to take his turn at the chores necessary to run the school. The House of Moons, however, had been unable to implement a similar policy. Having no particular desire to educate their daughters, the great Kashi families refused to enroll them if they were required to do the work of menials. Haemas had been forced to acquire chierra servants, thereby increasing the school’s financial burden and losing the opportunity to match the cheerful, self-sufficient atmosphere of Shael’donn.

A low snarl echoed through the trees and the servant glanced about fearfully as she dumped the meat scraps, then scurried back to the house. Servants, Enissa thought as something nagged at the back of her mind. Then, as the door banged shut behind the cook, she realized what it was.

She
couldn’t return to the moment of Myriel’s death, but someone had been there, right outside the door: the elderly servant Kevisson had left to make sure Myriel stayed in her bedchamber. If she went back to Lenhe’ayn and questioned that woman, perhaps the answer to what had happened could be uncovered after all.

KISA LENHE GATHERED
the folds of the borrowed, too-large cloak in her hands as she walked down the crushed gravel path. Night had descended, but Sedja, the largest of the three moons, had risen and she could see the moon-silvered outline of the portal up ahead, set halfway between the two schools.

Somewhere in the bordering thickets of brush, a silsha snarled. Kisa glanced around, then ran along the twisting gravel path that glittered ice-bright under the moonlight. Even if the silshas ate her, she would not go back! The girls at the House of Moons seemed to think of nothing but festivals and dresses and—her mouth straightened—
boys
. Compared to the deaths of her mother and brother, such silliness made her long to scream and push them all away. She couldn’t bear it for another second. She was going home.

Leaving the path, she crunched across the dead grass. Her younger sister, Adrina, was content to sit at the older girls’ feet while they prattled on about, of all things, Arrich Dynd’s
eyes
. She tried to tell herself that perhaps Adrina was just too young to understand that their lives were never going to be the same, but she knew it wasn’t true. Adrina took after their mother—only slightly Talented, lighthearted, content with the moment—whereas she, as her mother had told her often enough, was serious-natured and restless, more like their unnamed father.

Kisa frowned. Why had their father never come to see them, not even once? No matter what had happened between him and her mother, Kisa and Adrina were of his House. His absence was something she had never been able to understand—or forgive.

She remembered how their brother’s father, a tall imposing golden-haired man by the name of Padrik Iliim, had come once to shake Lat’s hand and pronounce him a credit to the Line. But of the man who had fathered both her and Adrina, nothing had ever been explained.

Easing around a stiff, thorny bush, Kisa caught the murmur of low voices carrying across the stillness. Crouching low to the frozen ground, she crept along, shielding her thoughts as best she could so that no one would sense her.

“I’m coming with you!” The man’s voice, although soft, was angry. “I have every right to know what happened down there!”

“Kevisson, you should be in bed this very minute. If you don’t get some rest and let your mind heal, you’ll only be a danger to yourself as well as me.” The other voice was that of an older woman, calm and determined. “Look at your hands shake—you’re close to collapse.”

Kisa edged nearer. The inside of the portal was bathed in dim yellow light from a small lantern. Two dark figures were silhouetted against the white-painted wood, one tall and square-shouldered, the other short and round. Kisa looked closer. Wasn’t that Master Monmart, the man who had helped her at the funeral pyre?

“I’m fine,” he said tersely.

“And I suppose trying to choke the life out of Riklin Senn was your own idea?” The woman was Healer Saxbury, the healer who had come too late to save Kisa’s mother.

“Of course not.” The man’s voice was low, defeated. “But I didn’t kill Myriel!”

Kisa eased aside the brambles of a leafless bush. Why were they talking about her mother?

The healer laid a hand on the man’s shoulder. “I know that, but we need proof, and it has to come from Lenhe’ayn.”

“So go, but I’m coming, too.” A note of stubbornness crept back into the man’s tone.

“What if Haemas returns?” Healer Saxbury asked. “Shouldn’t one of us be here to tell her what happened?”

He hesitated. “We won’t be gone that long, and I have to know!”

The healer lifted the lantern up to Master Monmart’s face. He looked tired, Kisa thought, as if he hadn’t slept for days and days. The healer sighed. “All right, but you’d better do as I say, or I’ll pack you off to Monmart’ayn, unconscious if need be, and let your mother deal with you.”

“That’ll be a warm day,” he muttered. The two figures stepped onto the platform together, paused, and then disappeared in a flash of blue light.

The lantern had gone with them and the portal lay in ink-black shadow again as Kisa crossed the last few yards. She could already hear the transport crystals humming in her mind, singing their preset pattern that always said, “Shael’donn” to anyone who knew how to listen. Her fingers trembled as she slid her hand over the painted wood and stepped onto the staging platform. She remembered Lenhe’ayn’s signature pattern, but she had never traveled alone between portals. It wasn’t that hard, she told herself; people did it all the time, dumb or smart. Her mother had traveled that way often enough, and by her own admission she had barely been Talented at all.

She lowered her shields in preparation, then was startled by a rattling snarl. She jerked around as a huge silsha padded up to the portal’s lowest step, moonlight gleaming on its black velvet coat. Its hot yellow eyes studied her as she backed against the railing. Shivering, she remembered the other students saying that the silshas roaming the grounds were pets, symbolic of Haemas Tal’s time in the Lowlands and her bond with the ilseri. But Haemas Tal had been missing for days now, and the silshas were strangely agitated, shadowing everyone who came and went from the House of Moons, hunting their own prey instead of eating the scraps put out for them, then tearing it to bloody bits right underneath the windows. Kisa flinched as the beast flicked a tufted ear at her, then settled on its haunches an arm’s length away, a study in midnight grace.

What did it want? Kisa tried to swallow, but fear had closed her throat. It was so—big!

The silsha cocked its head at her. She felt a wave of ... need. It wanted something ... no,
someone
, not her, someone else, important ...
necessary
.

“Who?” she whispered, but of course it couldn’t answer. The air eased back into her lungs as she studied the long sharp-muzzled face, the glittering yellow eyes. She felt its warm breath on her freezing face, smelled the clean musk of its coat. It was quite beautiful, really. She’d never thought about an animal that way before. They regarded one another for a dozen more breaths; then it rose and prowled unhurriedly into the surrounding thicket of trees, its black hide merging with the darkness.

With a start, Kisa remembered why she was there. The healer and Master Monmart should be far enough away from the portal by now not to notice her arriving behind them. She concentrated on the ilsera crystals above her head humming their inaudible song. As the singing tone became clear in her mind again, Kisa reached for the more familiar vibrational signature of Lenhe’ayn. An instant of chill overwhelmed her, and then she opened her eyes and looked out at the moonlit fields and buildings of her home.

* * *

Nestled as she was in the brushy hollow of a small side valley, Frostvine almost did not hear the distraught ilseri when they found her. She had spread the fabric of her great body into the copses of trees and the meadows and the wind-washed boulders, even down into the murmuring green-voiced river in order to contemplate the slow, compelling rhythm of the bedrock below—a fascinating, somewhat irregular beat whose meaning she was only beginning to comprehend.

The highly mobile Third Ones flitted about her, solid enough to actually see, teasing at her awareness, their mindvoices faint, annoying chirps. At this density, she could not make any sense of what they wanted, and yet she was loath to be disturbed. Ilserlara and ilseri had little in common, for all that they were two forms of the same species. This precious end-time was hers, to discover and cherish what truths she could before her final moment came and she lost her atoms to the winds.

Grumbling, she increased her density to a point where she could perceive what they were trying to say.

—pool!
Her ilseri sisters fluttered around her like so many senseless avians.
Our pool has been plundered!

A tremor shuddered through Frostvine’s vast, nebulous body. She coalesced with unseemly haste into the densest form she could now manage, filling only half the valley.
Who has dared?

Unknown!
The agitated sister stared up at her from the ground, garbed in wispy white, her solid body as lithe and green as Frostvine had once been, many Interims ago.
What can we do?

That same agonizing question had been asked in her youth, but the answer had never been found. A terrible anger blossomed inside Frostvine, a raw, red flower of renewed impotence and rage. As oldest of the ilserlara, she was the last who actually remembered those bleak times, and she had thought them finished forever. She recalled the searing sense of helplessness in the face of so much loss, how they had all—ilserin, ilseri, and ilserlara alike—stood by and suffered because they could find no proper shapes in their minds that would end the threat

It could not come to that again. She, Frostvine, could not bear this agony and do nothing, as her kind always had before. This time, she would find a way to end it.

* * *

An argument raged, the voices rising and falling like an angry tide, but Haemas could not distinguish the individual words. She eased out of bed, taking great care to be quiet. Father would be furious if he caught her eavesdropping again. She cracked open the door, overwhelmed by the sense of an old, old pattern being played out as she peered down a hall lit dimly by dripping candles in tarnished brass sconces. Everything was familiar and yet utterly strange.

The voices came more clearly now, a man and a woman, by turns strident, harsh, demanding. She slid her hand along the crumbling plaster and inched toward them, bare feet padding silently over the carpet’s worn nap. Outside, wind howled through the pines, and rain hammered on the roof. At the end of the hall lay an open sitting room with a hearth fire crackling somewhere out of her line of sight. The spidery black shadows of a man and woman paced back and forth on the far wall, arms waving, voices still arguing vehemently.

“I won’t stand for it!” It was Father, she realized, his voice slurred with heavy drink. Then she was puzzled. It wasn’t Dervlin Tal’s voice, and yet she recognized it.

“I’m taking the children to Cassidae’ayn,” the woman returned angrily. “Even the Lowlands is better than this hole of Darkness!”

“You’ll never leave me!” the man cried harshly. Footsteps scuffled across the floor.

“Brann, no—!” The woman broke off in a terrible shriek. Something heavy toppled.

Frozen in terror, Haemas shivered against the wall, wanting to intervene, yet knowing somehow how violent Brann Chee was when he was full of drink. Her knees ached with the strain of remaining still. She heard a muffled thump, then heavy boots crossing the floor. Without even looking, she knew what she would see: her mother, Nells Cassidae, weeping, lying where she had been thrown, her head cracked open and bleeding, while Brann Chee loomed over her hunched body, gazing into the flickering flames, and drank and drank and—

But these people were no relation to her. Haemas struggled to free herself.
Her
father was Dervlin Tal and her mother had been Anyah Sennay.

Unsteady footsteps clumped toward the hall and her hiding place that provided no cover at all. In another second he would be upon her. Then she was running down the hall, barefoot, heart bursting. She found a barred door and wrenched at the crossbar with all her strength.

My lady, you mustn’t!
Hands reached around and caught her wrists.

With a start, Haemas found herself standing before a heavily barred door in an unfamiliar passage, rose-tinted sunlight streaming through a row of small windows set high into the wall. She drew a deep shuddering breath, that other time and place still very strong, then strained against the anonymous arms that held her back. “He’s going to kill her!”

Her captor released her wrists, then moved into view. It was Master Ellirt. He peered into her eyes, his brow furrowed. “Kill who, my dear?”

Her heart raced as the image of Brann Chee’s brutal face and the woman dying at his feet flickered in—out—in, alternating with the reality of the tranquil hallway. She stretched out a trembling hand to touch the door and see if it was real. Inside her head, she still heard the storm pounding Chee’ayn. If she looked over her shoulder, she would find Chee standing over his bleeding wife.

No, you’re safe here. This is Shael’donn.
Master Ellirt braced his hands against her temples and a warm thoughtpresence cocooned her.
I see—she used your dreams to slip into your mind.
Energy surged across a light link, bolstering her shields. A wave of calm reassurance swept through her and the steadying hands lowered to her shoulders.

The nightmarish images of Chee’ayn dissolved. Haemas blinked hard and her vision cleared. “What—?” she began.

Master Ellirt drew her away from the door. “You were going to unbar the door. She must have been after you all night, knowing you were exhausted from fighting the latteh.” His face tightened. “I shouldn’t have left you alone, but it never occurred to me that she would try something like this.” Several other white robed masters ran up behind him, but he waved them away.