HM02 House of Moons (21 page)

His mouth hung open and his heart froze in mid-beat. He shook his head as the apparition reached out a glimmering blue hand clutching an equally blue latteh. Scuttling backward, he tripped and fell, bloodying his palms on the frozen gravel. “Go away!” His voice rang past the ruined house and across the yawning chasm into which Brann Chee had once thrown their mother. “Go away!” He felt that if she touched him, he would be lost with her in the nexus, with no more life than a ghost.

Her blue lips moved again, and he heard his name, faintly, as if someone were whispering it from incredibly far away. “Diren!” Her eyes crawled with the awful blueness. “Diren, please!”

He hunched on the rough gravel, pressing his bleeding hands over his ears, closing his eyes against the ghastliness that had once been his sister. He would not hear her, would not see her. She—was—not—there!

The breath sobbed in his chest as he willed her to go away, to die, to do anything but pull him into that mind-stopping hell of scintillating blueness with her. The wind gusted, sharp and bitter against his face, and, when he finally worked up the courage to open his eyes, he was alone again in the vast, snowy wasteland of the Chee’ayn grounds.

* * *

The echoing shout drew both Kisa and Haemas to the window in time to see a ghostly blue figure reaching its hand out to Chee as he cowered away from it.

“It’s that light again,” Kisa said. Awe permeated her words. “It was here before and it looks just like a lady, but Father said it wasn’t really.” She looked up at Haemas with puzzled eyes. “Do you think it’s
the
Light? Should we ask Father Orcado to come?”

“No.” Haemas fought to keep the trembling out of her voice. “It’s—just someone who is traveling, like using the ilsera crystals, but she can’t quite get here. That’s all. She’s a real person, not a ghost or a spirit.” Then she folded the shivering child into her arms and pressed the small head to her breast

Kisa’s lips moved against her shoulder. “Shouldn’t we help her, then?” Her arms stole tentatively around Haemas’s waist. “I mean, if I was lost, I would want someone to come for me.”

“I’m going to help her.” The child’s thick tangled hair gleamed red-gold under Haemas’s hand in the candlelight. “As soon as I can. I won’t leave her like that. I promise.”

She looked around the small, ill-kept room; it was musty and dirty as well as cluttered with moldering piles of wall hangings and rags, certainly not the room of a beloved child. Smoothing the hair away from Kisa’s puzzled eyes, she looked down at the small face. “Get your things,” she told her. “I’m taking you back with me.”

“I don’t have any things.” Kisa rubbed her eyes. “Sanna took my clothes away when I went to bed. All I have is the cloak Father made me wear, and it’s too big.”

“Then bring that. It’s very cold outside.” Haemas glanced anxiously out the window, but the snowy path was deserted now. “We have to hurry.” As she bundled Kisa into the patched cloak, she wondered if Chee had already removed the ilsera crystals from the portal. If so, she would be trapped here with him—and the latteh.

She snuffed the candle so Chee wouldn’t see the light, then opened the door to the adjoining room, sending the shadowfoot out first to lead the way through the dark house. “Lay your hand on its neck,” she told the child. “It sees in the dark much better than we do.” Then she buried her own freezing hand in the warm fur and followed the silsha into the hall. The darkness seemed to press in on her, almost vibrating, and the plaster crumbled beneath her free hand every time she tripped and caught herself against the wall.

“Shield your mind,” she whispered to Kisa as they inched down the dark hall. “Don’t let him know we’re here.”

“But he’s my father.” Doubt colored Kisa’s young voice. “He’s supposed to know where I am.”

“We’ll tell him later,” Haemas lied as they came to the steps, feeling her face go hot. “He wouldn’t understand.” She felt Kisa’s hand slide off the shadowfoot’s neck; the beast stopped, its breath whuffing in the intense silence of the stairwell.

“You want to go with the shadowfoot, don’t you?” Haemas reached through the darkness and touched the child’s face; it was cold and wet with tears.

“Yes, but—” Kisa hesitated. “He didn’t come for me for so long. What if he gets mad? What if he doesn’t want me back?”

“Please, it will be all right.” Haemas tried to hide the desperation in her voice. “We have to go!”

“Oh, I wouldn’t be in such a hurry as all that, Lady Haemas.” The cold tones of Diren Chee’s voice echoed up the stairwell from below and she saw the faint glimmer of a light at the bottom. “You and I haven’t even gotten to chat yet.”

Catching Haemas’s alarm, the silsha stiffened and snarled.
Not yet,
she told it.
Wait.

“Kisa, come down here!” Chee’s voice cracked at them. “At once!”

Kisa, no!
Haemas groped for the girl’s arm, but missed, then heard muffled footsteps as the barefoot child felt her way through the darkness down the steps. She sank back against the peeling wall; this was worse than anything she’d imagined. Chee stood down there, blocking her, and she knew of no other way out of this tower.

“Come down, Lady.” Chee’s tone turned jovial. “We’ll have a drink to celebrate my good luck. I thought I would have to go looking for you, and now here you are, all wrapped up like a Naming Day present and delivered right to my door.”

Her fingers clenched in the silsha’s fur. “And shall we drink to
Axia’s
good fortune, too?”

“I would not mention that name if I were you.” The humor drained from his voice. “What you did to her is abominable.” He hesitated, and then his voice went smooth as silk again. “But do come down. I have something for you, in honor of our coming matrimonial.”

Her heart withered as she recognized the gnawing, buzzing sensation that accompanied a latteh set for control, the feeling of power thrown out of balance. Her hands trembled as she bent to peer into the shadowfoot’s yellow eyes, almost invisible in the darkness.
Guard,
she told it.
Don’t let him touch me, even if you have to kill him.

Snarling in assent, the shadowfoot surged down the steps. She braced her free hand on the outer wall, trying not to slip as it bounded downward, making her descend much faster than prudence indicated. When they rounded the final corner, she saw Chee waiting at the bottom, holding up a lamp, his golden eyes glittering. His free arm was across Kisa’s shoulder, holding her in front of him like a shield. Her eyes were white-rimmed and staring.

Still charging, the silsha laid back its tufted ears and roared a full-throated challenge at the man blocking their way. The muscles rippled under its black hide as it gathered itself to spring.

Chee smiled, then glanced down at the child. Kisa stiffened and threw her small hands out in denial. “No!” she cried at the angry silsha. “Don’t hurt my father!”

THE ATTACKING
shadowfoot twisted in midair, its curved claws missing Diren Chee’s nose by a whisper. Chee stumbled backward, his laughter echoing from the crumbling walls as Haemas watched, dumbfounded. Landing with a thump in the inky shadows beyond, the silsha scrambled around to face the man in black, its claws shredding the rotting carpet and raising a cloud of dust. Its ears were flattened to its skull and every hair on its huge body stood on end.
Guard!
She told it.
Don’t let him hurt me!

Oh, surely you don’t think that I’ll have to do anything as crude as actually hurt you, do you?
The latteh’s buzzing intensified, and Chee’s mindvoice took on the same harsh quality,
That sounds like far too much work.

Haemas fought to stop shaking. As long as she could remember, fear had been her greatest enemy. All those years ago, she had let fear take over and make her decisions for her, but she couldn’t give in to it this time. She had to consider Kisa and the helpless First One clutched in Chee’s hand, and beyond that, the future of the entire Highlands. She shrugged the heavy cloak off to move more freely. With a tremendous leap, the shadowfoot bounded back up the steps to shield her from the waiting man. She placed a trembling hand on its bristling neck and looked down at the girl’s pale, anxious face. “Kisa, I want you to come back with me. No matter what he’s told you, I doubt he is really your father, and even if he is, he should wait until the Council of Twelve recognizes his claim. He had no right to steal you away.”

Kisa frowned, then twisted around to stare up at Chee. He set the lamp aside and touched splayed fingers to the child’s temple. Kisa’s eyelids fluttered, then her eyes lost their focus.

“You’ll have to try harder than that, Lady.” He smiled lazily. “Come into my study and we’ll drink to our coming matrimonial.”
Perhaps we could start the festivities early.
Stroking Kisa’s cheek, he winked and projected an image at Haemas: a statuesque woman surrounded by a cloud of glittering pale gold hair, turning slowly, her long-fingered hand extended to him in invitation, candlelight gleaming on the silken curves of her naked white body—

“You’re not fit to raise a child!” Strengthening her shields, she shut him out, but the image left her shaken. Beneath her hand, the shadowfoot quivered with restrained rage, but in spite of her urging, it would not attack. Chee was safe unless he raised a hand to her, and he was not fool enough to do that. His shadowed face gazed up the steps at her, his golden eyes reflecting what little light there was and burning at her through the gloom. She read his message as plainly as if he’d spoken: Once the latteh touched her bare skin, she would either succumb to his will, or die fighting it. Her mouth tightened. Death, she thought bleakly, would be so much cleaner.

“Come, Lady.” Chee sounded as if he were flirting with her at a Midwinter’s Festival. “Why drag this out all night?”

Haemas gauged the space at the foot of the stairwell; perhaps if she kept the shadowfoot between them, she could slip past him and escape down the hall—but that would leave Kisa and the First One behind. Cursing herself for not having the foresight to bring a dagger or some sort of weapon, she edged down the remaining steps, sliding her back along the wall and keeping the silsha’s massive body between them. Its lips were wrinkled in a snarl, and she felt the frustrated anger boiling through its mind.

Chee smiled and slipped his gloved hand out of his pocket. His gaunt face was confident as he held the dull-green latteh out to her as if it were a present. “Not as large as the other.” His tone was light. “Still, it seems to be effective. At least, it was with your father earlier tonight.”

Fear and guilt stabbed through her—
lying dead at her feet, her father’s face white and empty, his outflung hand grazing her boot.
She faltered, her heart hammering against her ribs.

“The poor fellow wasn’t up to it, but it wasn’t a total loss.” Chee angled up the bottom step toward her and the silsha. “Just before he died, he admitted that he had never changed his will. That makes you a very wealthy Lady now.”

“I don’t believe you,” she said in a surprisingly even voice. “You’d never get the better of him. My father’s Talent would make ten of yours.” In her mind, her cousin arched a golden eyebrow.
“You killed him, of course. I always knew it would come to this.”
Haemas bit her lip. He was—not—dead! Shaking, she forced the hateful false memory aside and descended the rickety steps, her back pressed hard against the wall.

“That might have been true, without the latteh.” He inched closer, then flinched as the shadowfoot bared its four-inch fangs in an ear-rattling snarl. Reaching back, Chee jerked Kisa in front of him, then pressed forward again, using the small body as a shield and reaching for Haemas with the crystal.

She dodged under his arm, twisting to avoid the latteh—and slipped. The steps caught her across the diaphragm as she fell, slamming the breath out of her lungs. She sprawled headfirst, gasping, a red-hot band of pain constricting her ribs. The silsha’s momentum carried it on down the steps.

Chee moved in, the harsh planes of his face triumphant, the latteh glowing dully in his outstretched palm. “Here, let me help—”

A shimmering light erupted in the dim hallway behind his head and spread outward. Haemas stared past his hand as the unnerving brilliant blue of the temporal nexus spilled through the old house.

“Diren?” The faint voice crackled with overstressed energies. Chee spun around, his face ashen. His fingers tightened around the latteh and he thumped back into the opposite wall. On the steps, Haemas struggled for breath as an outline formed in the blueness, flickering from haze to solidity, then haze again, all within the space of a second.

“Help—me!” Axia stood several feet above the floor, her blue hair swirling around her face, blown by some wind unfelt in this dimension. “Diren, for the love of Light, help me!”

Beyond her, Haemas glimpsed other places, faces, events, then, with a chill, the churning dark blue of the maelstrom, the end result of disrupted time. She stretched her arm out to the apparition. “Axia!” Her voice was wispy for lack of breath. “Follow the sound of my voice!”

The air began to stir, cold and dank, electric. Axia’s eyes wandered the hall, focused on her cowering brother. “Diren, it’s so cold here. I—can’t think.”

“Reach out to her!” Still half stunned, Haemas braced her throbbing ribs and levered herself up against the wall. “Look behind her—at the whirling dark-blue mass—that’s not normal! It’s a sign of time disruption!”

Chee suddenly came back to himself and yanked Kisa before him, scuttling away from his sister’s reaching fingers.

Haemas transferred her weight to the shadowfoot, fighting the pain in her ribs to breathe. “She doesn’t see anyone but you. Call to her before it’s too late. The latteh must be causing a temporal disruption. Everyone in this When could die!”

“No!” Chee’s white-rimmed eyes were staring at the apparition. “Keep it away from me!”

Haemas edged toward the blue woman whose hair glowed around her head like a constellation of blue stars.
Axia, open your mind to me.

Axia’s haunted blue eyes looked straight through her.

Axia, there must be a blue line under your feet. Look down and walk along it.

“Diren.” Axia’s face contorted. “Father is here. I keep finding him, just when he’s—he’s—” Her reaching fingers strained toward him. “Diren, please!” The eerie blue face drifted closer; another second and her fingers would graze his cheek.

“No! Leave me alone!” Chee shoved Kisa at his sister, then ran down the hall, his footsteps echoing behind him.

Horrified, Haemas watched Axia’s fingers touch Kisa’s hair and transform the tumbled red-gold to blue. “No!” she called. “Axia, no!” But the other woman drew the unresisting child up to her breast and hung there above the floor, the two of them suspended in fountaining blue. Any second, Haemas knew Axia would lose this line—she did not seem capable of completing the final step that would lead her back into this When—and then Kisa would be lost, as well.

She bared her mind to the opening Axia had created. For a second the nexus of glowing lines was superimposed over the shadowy hallway; then Chee’ayn faded from her awareness.

* * *

Kevisson awoke with a start. He had been dreaming of moonlight-pale hair and mysterious white-gold eyes that hinted at something just beyond his reach. She had kissed him, held him as a woman holds a man, and then, just before he’d awoken, she’d spoken to him, but now the thread of her words unraveled and he could not remember what she had said.

His heart thumping, he glanced in puzzlement around the narrow room with its single barred window, then remembered—he was locked up in the depths of the old North Wing of Shael’donn by order of Riklin Senn, where he could do nothing and no one any good, not even himself.

His hair was damp and plastered to his head, as if he had been feverish, but the decent meal and a night’s sleep had helped. He felt much more himself. Squinting up at the wan sunlight filtering in from the window, he tried to remember what day this was. How long had it been since Haemas had found him among the ilserin and brought him somehow back to Shael’donn? Had that really been only yesterday?

The door swung inward with a creak and a tow-headed youngster peeked around the edge. “Master Monmart? I’ve come with your breakfast.”

“Thank you ...?” Kevisson squinted at the young face.

“It’s Emayle, sir, Emayle Ferah.” The boy carried a tray over to a rough table beside the bed and set it down. The rich smell of hot buttered porridge and steaming tea filled the room. “You tutored me last year.”

“Yes, Emayle.” Kevisson sat up and massaged his temples. “I appreciate—”

The solid spine-wood door banged back against the stone wall. Kevisson blinked at the velvet-clad expanse of Riklin Senn crowding the doorway, resplendent this morning in a tunic of burnt umber.

“Who in the name of Darkness authorized this?” The words came out in a bellow suitable to a bull-ummit in full rut.

“No—no one, my Lord,” the boy stammered, his fingers clutching at the linen napkin he’d been about to hand to Kevisson. “I—I just th-thought Master Monmart would be—hungry.”

“It was not your place to think!” Senn planted a fist on his hip and glared from underneath bristling eyebrows. “Now take that sop and get out of here!”

Kevisson swung his legs over the edge of the cot while the boy struggled with the tray.

“I suppose you coerced him.” Senn slammed the door behind the boy’s departing back. “You don’t care how you abuse your Talent or flout Shael’donn’s traditions, do you? First Myriel Lenhe, then the Saxbury woman, and now even your own students! You’re a disgrace!”

Kevisson couldn’t grasp what Senn was talking about. He rubbed the itchy, unshaved bristles on his chin and blearily studied the other’s florid face; how strange to think that only a ten-day or so ago, it had seemed he would be Lord High Master of Shael’donn in accordance with Ellirt’s last wishes and stand here in Senn’s place.

Ellirt ... what would Kniel Ellirt have done at a moment like this? The wily Andiine Master had never let anything throw him off his stride, not blindness, misfortune, or, especially, fools. Kevisson pictured the cheerful old man with the ready smile that had always twinkled, no matter what the occasion. Kniel Ellirt would have laughed in this posturing idiot’s face, even if he were about to die.

Kevisson looked up into the fierce little eyes that reminded him of an enraged tree barret—and smiled.

A twinge of doubt leaked from Senn’s mind before he could damp it. “I see.” He strained the velvet down over his chest. “Several Council members have already been hinting about your disposition; after your Talent has been burned out, they’ll remand you to a Lowlands farm where you’ll serve as the meanest chierra for the rest of your days.” He flicked an invisible mote of dust on his sleeve. “However, I would prefer not to have Shael’donn’s honor stained with this matter. I will leave this door unlocked when I go, and I expect you to be gone when I come back—forever.” He paused with his hand on the latch. “Have I made myself clear?”

Kevisson rose. “You can’t be serious. As soon as Enissa recovers some of her strength, she’ll clear me. I did not hurt her.”

“As you didn’t half-kill me that day before the Council?” Senn’s lip curled disdainfully. “Unfortunately, the Saxbury woman will not be ‘recovering,’ as you put it. You did a far better job on her than you did on me. She died last night.”

Kevisson’s head reeled; Enissa couldn’t be dead! Surely he would have felt her passing? He reached for the feisty healer’s presence in the West Wing, but felt no trace of her. He shivered and his eyes darted helplessly around the bare walls.

“I blame myself, of course.” Senn opened the door, then hesitated on the threshold. “I should have set a guard to protect her. I, better than anyone else, should have known exactly how much violence you were capable of. Do all of Shael’donn a favor, as well as yourself. Leave before the Council gets around to passing sentence on you. Don’t force your former students to watch what’s coming to you.” Then the door clicked shut behind him.