HM02 House of Moons (22 page)

Enissa—dead. The enormity of it stunned him—and where in the blazes was Haemas? He paced almost blindly around the dim room. Had she left Shael’donn, believing he’d killed Enissa? He could make no sense of any of this. He had to get out, breathe fresh air, find some room to think things through. Stopping at the door, he leaned against the wood and listened, both with his ears and his mind. It was time for the boys to be in class and the hall seemed to be deserted. He fumbled at the unlocked latch.

* * *

The nexus was filled with coruscating blue motes of light that danced and sparkled, obscuring the ends of the shifting timelines, and nowhere was there any sign of the woman or the girl. One hand pressed to her aching ribs, Haemas shaded her eyes with the other, squinting as she scanned the lines that led to everywhere and every When. The light had a violent, over bright quality she had never seen in this place before, continually phasing from bright blue into a hellish purple-white more akin to lightning.

After long minutes of anxious searching, she caught a glimmer of Axia’s mindpresence along one writhing temporal pathway, partially hidden by the wildly gyrating energies. Concentrating, she matched her foot to the erratic line. It thrummed with an angry energy she’d never experienced in the nexus before—an odd, heavy, throbbing rhythm that threw her off balance.

Fighting to keep her feet, she glimpsed golden hair amid the actinic flashes of light ahead. It disappeared, and abruptly the pathway calmed. The energies wound down, leaving only the usual background crystalline vibration, almost silent in comparison. She could make out the scene at the end of this particular line now—a night of dark, low-hanging clouds with occasional lightning and the faraway figure of a man carrying a lantern.

She stepped on the line a second time, and the scene sharpened. A golden-haired man and woman were talking, perhaps arguing. His heavy-browed face was furious, hers, thin, fragile-boned, afraid. The pair of them seemed somehow familiar, yet the woman wasn’t Axia, and Kisa was nowhere in sight. Haemas took the third and final step—

—into sharp-bladed, rain-soaked grass. The clouds were scudding overhead and the wind smelled of rain. She took a shallow breath of the oppressively hot, humid air.

“You’re not going anywhere!” Downslope from her, the man held a leaded-glass lamp high in one hand while he twisted the woman’s arm with the other. He was tall and broad-shouldered, but soft around the middle and jowls. The yellow light threw the over-padded folds of his face and neck into harsh relief.

“For the love of Light, Brann,
let me go!”
The woman’s piercing cry reverberated through the night. “I will not be treated this way!”

Although she didn’t see Axia, Haemas felt her presence there. She turned slowly, trying to locate her before the arguing man and woman took notice of her. High above, incandescent lightning split the dark roiling clouds. A heartbeat later, thunder cracked like a huge tree being broken. She glanced reflexively over her shoulder—and saw the unique stand of immense, arrow-shaped pines, and beyond, the crumbling portico of a once-proud house.

The woman shrieked, and Haemas’s nails dug into her palms. She now knew where—and When—Axia had brought her. Against all odds, the Chee woman had somehow found her way to this crucial and terrifying moment from her past.

“Leave me, will you?” the man snarled.

Sweat trickled down Haemas’s face as Brann Chee dragged the struggling woman through the mud, past the tumbled rocks, all the way to the cliff’s edge, every detail the same as it had been when Axia had branded them into Haemas’s mind through a blood-chilling nightmare.

But this time, it was real.

Knowing what was to come, she blanched at having to witness the playing out of this old tragedy. Nothing could prevent Brann Chee from doing exactly what he had done all those years ago. In accordance with the rules of the temporal nexus, even if she prevented him from murdering his wife, this When would merely split, creating an Otherwhen, while the Truewhen leading to her own time would remain the same.

In her When, and Axia’s, Nells Cassidae would always die at the hand of Brann Chee.

Nells had fallen to her knees now, flailing weakly at his hands clenched in her hair, her face tear-streaked and dirty, too winded to cry out again. A jagged gash was bleeding from her right temple. Haemas’s heart thumped painfully against her ribs, and she suddenly knew that she could not stand by and watch this, no matter how meaningless her interference ultimately was.

“Stop!” She slogged down the muddy path toward Chee.

He hesitated at the edge of the cliff, his feral face surprised. Then his lips twisted in a fierce grimace and he looked down at his feebly struggling wife. “Sent for reinforcements, have you? Well, it’s too damn late!” His words echoed downward against the sides of the yawning chasm as his shoulders heaved to cast his wife over the edge and onto the jagged rocks below.

Haemas seized his arm, lowering her shields in the same second, and struck him with the full power of her Talent. His shields deflected the worst of the blow, but he stumbled backward, dazed, and sat down hard in the wet grass. His foot dislodged a fist-size rock that careened crazily down the cliff, ricocheting from side to side. Haemas knelt in the mud and drew the exhausted woman back from the edge, holding the thin shoulders tightly.

“Mother!” A voice rang out from the pines, then Axia drifted toward them like a blue-tinged ghost, followed by a smaller shadow, the Lenhe child.

The woman stiffened in Haemas’s hands. “Lord of Light!” she said hoarsely. “What’s wrong with her face?”

“It’s—an effect of the ilsera crystals,” Haemas said. “It will fade.”

Nells rubbed her abraded throat, then touched her bleeding temple. Her hand came away dark with blood, and she stared down at it in the dim light without surprise. She sighed finally. “Thank you, whoever you are.” She looked up into Haemas’s face with Diren’s and Axia’s dark-flecked eyes. “He would have done anything to keep me from taking the children. I’m afraid he’s quite mad.”

Axia halted a few feet away, her hands clenched at her sides. The side of her face glowed eerily blue in the darkness. “Mother,” she said again, “it
is
you.”

Thunder cracked in the distance. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Nells put a trembling hand to the mass of hair that had come loose and fallen around her face in sweat-soaked strings. “My daughter’s just a bit of a thing yet, barely able to sit at table with us.” She wavered to her feet and wiped her muddy, bloodstained hands on her skirt. “Now, I must find my children and leave before Brann recovers his wits. He’s unstable. When he get these temper fits, r never know where it will end.” She glanced down at the torn sleeve of her tunic, soaked with blood from her scrapes and scratches. “My father will be furious when I show up, of course, but I can’t think about that. I have to do what’s best for my children.”

“You—were going to take them?” Still glimmering with the blue of the nexus, Axia’s eyes followed her, drinking in her every move. “That’s why he was so angry?”

Nells nodded, then retreated out of reach as her dazed husband tried to stand. “Chee stock is notoriously unstable. There are rumors, of course, and none of the High Houses will marry into this Line anymore, but my father made me come to Brann. He wanted a High House for his grandchildren.” She bent to the rock-littered ground to pick up the discarded lamp. “Well, at least I have two fine children from this marriage. I will come away with something.”

Wearily, she lowered her head and trudged back up the slope toward the house and the children who must be hiding within earshot, since Axia had seen this as a child in her own When.

“No!” Axia’s agonized voice rang out in the darkness. “Don’t leave me here with him again!”

A warm raindrop spattered Haemas’s cheek. “She’s not.” She tried to make Axia meet her eyes. “Not in this When, at least. She’s taking you and Diren back to the Lowlands to live a better life.”

“But I’m
here,
not up there!” Axia took two stiff steps after the retreating figure of Nells Cassidae.

“You can’t go with her.” Two more fat raindrops splashed the back of Haemas’s neck. She felt the energies gathering in the clouds above, the interplay of humidity and temperature differential, wind and static electricity. Any minute, the storm would sweep back down across this corner of the Highlands.

Axia grimaced. “Leave me alone.” Her eyes still radiated a faint, luminescent blue.

“Where’s the latteh?” Haemas asked.

“I made the brat take it,” Axia said in a flat voice. She gazed stonily at the speck of yellow light that was Nells and the children returning to the house. “I had to get rid of the damn thing before it tore my mind apart, and now I can’t get near it.”

Haemas’s heart raced as she turned to the silent child and held out her hand. “Kisa?” But the girl didn’t speak, didn’t move. Since the crystal had been triggered by Axia, who had been the first to touch it after it had been set, it couldn’t be affecting Kisa. Axia must be controlling the girl’s untrained mind. Worried, she moved wearily toward her, the soaked grass clinging to her legs. “Kisa, we have to go back now.”

“Oh, you can forget that.” Distaste radiated from Axia’s mind. She laughed and the cold empty sound of it reverberated in the gaping black chasm. “We’re never going back.”

THE AIR AT THE
edge of the cliff had gone still and heavy, and the night was mind-numbingly silent. The impending storm hovered overhead like a great weight about to break loose. Haemas turned back to Axia and forced her voice to reasonableness. “There’s no reason for you to stay here.” She glanced over Axia’s shoulder at the child standing far too quietly under the emerald-black pines. “You have no place in this timeline, no friends, no one who will ever recognize you as family. I’m not even sure you
can
stay indefinitely without disrupting time.”

Lightning flickered overhead, crooked as a bavval’s tongue, illuminating the low roiling mass of clouds. Thunder answered almost immediately in a low rumble that shook the ground.

Axia’s head turned restlessly, as if seeking something. “I’ll go to Cassidae’ayn and stay with my mother.” The unnatural blue glow in her eyes guttered, flared, then finally faded away.

“You saw how she was when you approached her a few minutes ago. If you follow her to the Lowlands, she’ll think you’re insane.” A wave of weariness rushed over Haemas and her knees sagged. She straightened again only with great effort. Her reserves were spent; it had taken the last ounce of her strength to stop Brann Chee from killing Nells. She passed a shaky hand over her sweat-dampened face. “And what about your brother?”

“Diren wants his precious latteh back, but he doesn’t care a damn thing about me.” Axia crossed to where Brann Chee still sat in the wet grass, his round face dazed and staring out into the chasm’s black emptiness. “Isn’t that so,
Father?
Diren only cares about himself. Isn’t that what you always taught us—take care of yourself first and let Darkness have the rest?”

He glanced at her with baffled eyes, then his hand shot up and anchored itself in the hem of her gown. “Leave me, will you?” His voice was slurred, his features contorted into a snarl. “You think you’re too damn good for Chee’ayn?” He lurched onto his feet and began to manhandle her through the grass and rocks toward the edge of the cliff.

No!
Haemas shouted into his clouded mind.
That’s not Nells!
She stumbled after the struggling pair.

“You will not shame Chee’ayn by running back to that Lowlands hovel!” He slipped in the mud, then struggled upright, never loosening his hold. “And I will not have my children brought up by some ragtag, chierra-tainted Line!”

“Father, no, it’s
me,
Axia!” Axia fought like a wild creature, kicking and scratching, but he was a massive man, at least double her weight. Inch by inch, he forced her toward the edge.

Haemas wrenched at his hands, but he backhanded her to the muddy ground, then renewed his efforts to cast his daughter into the chasm. Axia screamed as he forced first her head over the sheer edge of the cliff, then her right shoulder. The straining muscles stood out in his clenched jaw.

Her cheek throbbing, Haemas scrambled back up and seized his arm.
Look at her!
she commanded.
It’s not Nells! It’s not!
The white-heat of his unreasoning, unshielded fury burned across the link created by the contact of her flesh on his—he didn’t understand, didn’t want to understand. He wanted only to hurt the world back, make it pay for all the pain and disappointments he had suffered.
You can’t do this!
She hauled back on his arm with all her might.
Let—her—go!
From somewhere deep inside, she summoned enough energy to buckle his still shaky shields, then slumped to her knees. His locked hands fell away, and he stared down at them numbly, as if they belonged to a stranger.

Axia rolled over, then staggered upright. Her tangled hair covered her face and her gown was soaked through with mud.

“Everything—
every
thing always had to be done your way, didn’t it?” She stiff-armed the unresisting man backward. He stumbled, dangerously close to the cliff’s edge. “You never listened to anyone! Well, it’s not going to be that way, not anymore!” Her voice spiraled into a thin shriek.

“Axia, don’t!” Haemas tried to get up, but her legs gave way. She found herself on her hands and knees, struggling to see through the haze behind her eyes. “It won’t change anything!”

“I’ll see you in Darkness!” Axia shoved him again, her face triumphant. “You’ll never—”

Losing his footing, Brann flailed, his hands clutching as if the air could hold him up above the soulless black emptiness below. He caught at the hem of Axia’s gown, then toppled over the edge. Haemas heard the green velvet give with a sickening rip, watched him tumble backward into the waiting abyss. His hoarse scream echoed against the sheer rock cliffs.

Thrown off balance, Axia teetered, her face terrified. Haemas made a desperate lunge for her legs, but her hands came up empty as the other woman slipped over the edge. Axia’s cry, more the wail of a scavenging lrael than a human, reverberated from the sides of the chasm. Frozen on her bruised knees, her empty hands clenched, Haemas stared down into the blackness. She felt Brann strike the jagged rocks first, then, a full second later, Axia, their minds flaring lightning-bright, then shattering in crimson star-bursts of pain.

A few drops of rain spattered her hair. Her chest heaved as if she had run for miles and she felt as empty as the two lifeless bodies below. She couldn’t move—indeed, she might never find the energy to move again.

Something touched her shoulder and she jumped. A small, forlorn face blinked at her through the darkness. “Lady?” Kisa rubbed at her eyes with the back of one hand. “Can we go now? I’m hungry.”

Tears threatened Haemas’s eyes, but she wiped them away along with the warm rain. After levering herself up from the ground, she took Kisa’s small hand in hers, and felt the cool, hard shape of the latteh crystal inside the child’s fist.

* * *

Staring out his study window at the pine grove, Diren narrowed his eyes, outraged. After turning his sister into some sort of ghost, Haemas Tal had actually dared invade Chee’ayn, coming and going at will apparently, and even attempting to steal Kisa from him. A muscle twitched in his jaw as he remembered how she had threatened him with a silsha on the stairwell. And now, even though she had disappeared with Axia, the damn beast was still prowling the grounds. He had watched through the window earlier as it nosed around the portal.

He snatched up his cloak and settled the worn wool around his shoulders. Well, she wasn’t going to spoil his plans! The latteh was the key to everything, and even she could not stand against it. He had seen the naked fear in her pale-gold eyes last night when he had come within a hairsbreadth of touching it to her cheek. It was only a matter of time before she was his again, and they both knew it. Tomorrow a funeral pyre would burn at Tal’ayn to see the old Tal into the Light. She would have to come then. And Diren would be there—waiting.

He ordered a chierra servant armed with a crossbow to follow him and watch for the silsha, then exited the main doors, heading into a winter wind out of the east so intense that his face was numb before he’d gone two steps. Snow had fallen sometime in the early-morning hours and was ankle-deep now as he and the servant crunched through the icy top layer.

He replaced the ilsera crystals, then activated each in the proper sequence. The cold flash of betweenness enveloped him—and he opened his eyes on the ancient grillwork of Senn’ayn. A thin smile twisted his lips.

Since Dervlin Tal, the Head of the Council of Twelve, had passed from this life into Darkness, the next in line for leadership was Seffram Senn, current Lord of Senn’ayn and a fitting candidate to meet the latteh nestled inside Diren’s shirt.

* * *

Kevisson blinked up at the clearest green sky he’d seen in days as he retraced the snow-covered path down to the portal. The breeze was feather-light against his face, but so cold that it snatched his breath away. He lowered his head and blew on his reddening hands as he walked. Ahead of him, the House of Moons loomed, silent and empty. Without hope, he reached within it for Haemas, but she wasn’t there. As far as he could tell, she wasn’t anywhere in the Highlands now, and the implications of that concerned him more than Riklin Senn and the Council put together.

He abandoned his shields and called to her, baring his mind until the slightest answer would have been deafening.
Haemas? Are you all right? Where are you?

Somewhere behind the thickly interwoven trees, a hungry barret chittered, and on the other side of Shael’donn he heard the faint cries of boys at play—nothing else. Had that supercilious Council bastard Chee gone after her again? Worry and anger boiled through him. He stopped in the middle of the path and closed his eyes, his head thrown back, and sent his awareness surging across the Highlands to Chee’ayn, straining to find her, reaching ...
reaching
...

Nothing, not the faintest trace of her mindpresence. He shivered and cracked his eyes open, squinting at the play of sunlight on the reflective snow. Although Haemas had told him very little down by the falls, she had mentioned that Chee wanted access to the timeways. Perhaps she had gone through the nexus where no man could follow and was far beyond anyone’s reach at the moment. He would have given anything to know she was all right.

So, he told himself as he flapped his arms in an effort to keep warm, what should he do now? Nobody had paid him any heed as he left Shael’donn, so he was apparently free until the Council noticed his absence. Senn had released him only so he would flee the Highlands and disappear, leaving Senn and his Lord uncle to mold Shael’donn in any way they chose, but Kevisson had no intention of going anywhere that Haemas couldn’t follow, even if staying here cost him his freedom, his mindsenses, his very life. Whether he was worthy of her or not, he understood now that he needed her in his life on whatever basis she would allow—friend, lover, wife.

He stared across the diamond-topped snow. To have any sort of future among the Kashi, he had to prove his innocence, and the elderly servant, Dorria, was the key. If someone had come to Myriel on the night that she died, Dorria must have seen him, and, since Enissa had been attacked in the very same room, Dorria might have witnessed that, too. He had to—

A low rattling snarl made him look at the surrounding trees; a pair of massive black silshas bounded through the snow toward him, tufted ears flattened to their skulls and fangs gleaming bone-white in the sun. He blanched. There wasn’t even a decent-size rock readily to hand, and the Shael’donn portal lay a good fifty feet away.

He bolted anyway, his boots slipping in the wet snow. The silshas flanked him easily, black fur bristling, their hot yellow eyes pinning him between them. Throwing open his shields, he reached for the mind of the closest, knowing even as he tried that it wouldn’t work. These beasts had been protected in some way by the ilseri before they had been sent to the Highlands. Everyone knew their minds were inviolable, and they answered only to Haemas Tal.

The black-furred beast regarded him with whiskered disdain while he probed, but he found no sense of what it wanted from him, no emotions or simple animal thoughts, just the frustrating blankness that protected it far better than the shields of any Kashi protected a human mind from meddling.

It padded closer and nosed his leg. When Kevisson stiffened, its ears flattened and it nipped his thigh. Startled, he jumped forward. The beast snarled and nudged him again. Relief flooded through him as he realized they weren’t going to tear him into bloody bits; for some reason they wanted him to go with them.

He traipsed across the snow, herded by the two beasts, then stopped before the portal housing, puzzled. The silsha on the left batted him with a huge velvet paw and he darted up the steps. They flowed onto the platform with him, closing off his escape. Kevisson stood in the center and took a deep breath. Well, it would be relatively easy to leave them behind if he traveled by crystal. He had only to pick a suitable destination.

Lowering his shields, he tried to remember the vibrational signature for Lenhe’ayn, a difficult proposition with two snarling silshas breathing hotly in his face. Before he could summon the proper pattern to mind, he felt the crystals’ energies surge. Someone was using another portal to reach this one. The silshas turned and darted out of the portal housing into the night and he tried to follow, but it was too late. An unfamiliar mental touch, rife with odd harmonics, aligned the crystals’ vibrations with that other portal, and Kevisson fell into gray betweenness, the place that was no place at all, colder than a thousand Highland winters. Then, just as suddenly, he was blinking under a canopy of long, bare tree limbs interwoven high above his head.

An upside-down, green-complected face dropped abruptly in front of him, staring with Leafcurl’s unblinking bright-black eyes.
Male-brother, the mothers want to know where Moonspeaker has gone.

* * *

“Of all the bloody nerve!” Seffram Senn stirred restlessly in his favorite overstuffed chair before the roaring hearth. How dare that Chee upstart show up without so much as the slightest hint of a summons! He scowled, hoping Chee wasn’t there to discuss that little deal they had made to promote his nephew’s installation as Lord High Master of Shael’donn. He had no idea how Rald had been persuaded to withdraw his candidate, but it was probably more prudent not to know. He had paid off the debt in full the next day, and such things were better off never being mentioned again. It was an old adage that the less one had to do with Chee’ayn, the better. Everyone knew it was just a matter of time until those crazy damn Chees bred themselves out of existence. That Line had been notoriously wild and unstable for over five generations.