HM02 House of Moons (24 page)

Kisa shrank back from Jayna’s chierra hand. Haemas bent down and stroked her tangled red-gold hair.
It’s all right. Jayna will take good care of you. She looked after me when I was growing up here at Tal’ayn.

Jayna smiled an encouraging gap-toothed smile, crinkling her face into a maze of wrinkles. “Now, lass, you just come with old Jayna and she’ll see you’re looked after proper like.”

Kisa stared at Jayna’s hand for another few seconds, then took it reluctantly. “But what about my father?”

“We’ll talk about him later.” Haemas caught a flicker of interest from Father Orcado. “Go with Jayna.”

Hesitantly Kisa allowed the old chierra servant to lead her past Orcado’s narrowed eyes.

“What was that all about?” The priest drew Haemas away from the bier as Jayna shepherded the child through the rows of polished hardwood benches. His brows knotted. “No one has come forward to declare himself father to either Lenhe girl, and the Council has been deliberating on their disposition.”

“I—can’t talk about that right now.” Haemas flinched as the doors settled back into place with a solid thunk. She rubbed her cold arms and gazed up into the shadowed eaves, feeling shut-in, buried in this dimly lit place.

“No, I suppose not.” Orcado turned to the bier, his heavily brocaded robes rustling. His face looked an unhealthy gray-white in flickering blue chispa-fire. “Has the pyre been completed yet?”

“The pyre?” she echoed hollowly.

Orcado glanced sharply over his shoulder at her. “The funeral pyre—for your father. To send him on to the Light.”

Her father ... involuntarily, her eyes went back to the stern face, blurred by the silken veil, so still that he might have been carved from the same wood as the bier. She had wanted so badly for him to love her all these years, something he had never been able to do. Now ... her empty hands clenched. Now they would never make peace with one another.

With a wrench, she pulled herself back to the present. If the funeral was to be soon, she didn’t have time to stay. She had to return the latteh to the pool and she had lingered here too long already. Frostvine had insisted the nascent ilseri had very little time left before it lost its ability to enter the Change. If she stayed for the ceremony, it might be too late and everything she had labored to build between the Kashi and the ilseri would be lost.

She touched the hard shape of the crystal inside her mud-caked tunic. “I can’t stay,” she heard herself say absently to Orcado. “I have something—important—to do.”

“Something important?” Orcado’s voice rang out and the mind-conjured chispa-fire in the urns lining the walls flared at his intensity. “More important than seeing your father on into the Light?” He seized her wrist. “More important than doing your duty?”

She felt his pompous mind pushing at her shields, demanding to know what led her to deny this last of all family duties, and suddenly she was filled with outrage. What right did he have to judge her? He had no idea of what was at stake here or what she had suffered to come this far. She jerked her wrist, but he only tightened his grip, his fingers digging painfully into her flesh, his flat golden eyes glowering at her. Furious, she shoved him back against a long wooden bench. He stumbled, releasing her to catch himself, then lost his balance and sprawled facedown across the flagstones.

She backed away and reached inside her pocket to cup the latteh in her palm, assessing the energy patterns that flickered within it. Was it her imagination, or were they waning?

Without warning, the chapel doors flew inward, hitting the inside walls with a dull, reverberating clang. A narrow-faced man stepped into the open threshold, his dark-clothed body framed in thin wintery sunlight. “Well, my dear, this
is
fortunate. I had very much hoped to be able to pay my respects to you as well as your departed father.”

Haemas’s fingers tightened around the dying crystal.

It was Diren Chee.

* * *

As Frostvine’s diffuse mass rode the morning’s warming air currents up over the rugged mountains, she watched the striated gray rocks and stunted trees below for some sign of human habitation, but there was none on this side of the great mountain. Halfway up, she passed a barrier of crystal-generated energies that she could easily surmount. Still, she perceived that the humans of the lower regions who were without mindstrength would not have been able to do so, and saw that this must be how they were kept out of the mountains.

It made her realize there were many mysteries left in this world that she would like to know and understand. She felt reluctance to leave this plane of existence, and yet it was clearly her time. She had spent portions of the long Interims of her life studying the puzzling pale-skinned invaders, and instinct insisted that now was the moment when the future would be made. Long ago, when the humans had nearly eradicated her kind, she had been very young and her older sisters had lacked the understanding of how to take action, but this time was different. She had come into her final strength and the ilseri would prevail.

Topping the last ice-crowned peak, Frostvine rode the cold air currents, sinking down to a great sweeping plateau that would have been lush with trees and vegetation in the warm season. High overhead, the orange sun gleamed in the cloudless green sky, seeding its energy over the human domains. Spinning herself thinner and thinner, she soaked the free heat energy up, drawing it all into herself to starve the land and its denizens below.

The temperature beneath her plummeted, creating an area of cold so absolute that no living thing, large or small, could continue to exist. Then she seeped toward a human habitation that lay ahead. As she passed, the tree limbs below froze, then shattered into crystalline shards at the slightest gust of breeze.

She knew the absorption of so much energy would incinerate her like a leaf that had blundered into flame, but before the end she would have traversed the entire area of this high plateau and made this world safe again for her kind.

Several horned beasts looked up from the snow below where they were foraging for dried vegetation, their shaggy blue-gray fur almost hiding their bright-black eyes. Sensing the approaching cold-death, they spun on their haunches to flee, then staggered as she passed over them and stole the life-sustaining warmth from their flesh. Their bodies broke with a brittle crash as they hit the hard-frozen ground, scattering across the snow in icy splinters.

WEDGED BETWEEN A
storage shed and the courtyard wall, Kevisson shivered and tugged his collar up. Even though he could see little of what was going on, he could hear the ring of the ax down at ground level as the chierra staff cut wood. Between the activities below and the number of incoming guests, there was no mistaking that preparations were being made for a funeral pyre—but whose?

Hugging his arms around his body for warmth in the frost-laden air, he tried to convince himself that these preparations weren’t for Haemas. Surely the ilserin would have told him if she was dead. Tilting his head back, he squinted at the winter sun’s pale-orange disk riding above him in the green sky. It was probably somewhere around the Twelfth Hour, although it was hard to be sure. The enticing smell of fresh-baked bread drifted from the Tal’ayn kitchens over on the far side of the house, no doubt being prepared for the huge influx of mourners.

Blue flashed in the ornate Tal’ayn portal in the middle of the courtyard, and he hastily reinforced his shields as another incoming party of richly garbed Kashi arrived. He leaned against the freezing stone wall, fighting his impatience. Where was Haemas, and why had she come
here,
of all places? He wanted to reach out to her and tell her that he was there, but with so many trained Kashi roaming about, he was afraid of being detected. If he hadn’t been a wanted man, he would have eavesdropped on some of the lesser-Talented Kashi minds arriving for the ceremony, but if he was going to be of any help to Haemas, he had to stay free to move about.

He heard shouts from the ground below, and then the squeals of harnessed ebari pulling chopped wood up in large sleds from the groves that surrounded the main house. His hands felt like blocks of ice as he beat them against his sides to restore circulation, and he suddenly knew that if he stayed out there in the courtyard one more minute, he would go insane. He didn’t care if someone from Shael’donn or the Council apprehended him right away. He had to find out whose pyre was being laid.

Because if Haemas wasn’t safe, nothing else mattered.

* * *

Stepping into the dim, quiet recesses of the Tal’ayn chapel, Diren savored the startled feel of Haemas Tal’s mind before him, worn and weary like a rock barret run to ground after a long and grueling chase. He glanced at the priest sprawled against one of the benches. “Why, Father Orcado, I believe they were just looking for you at the pyre.” He reached down and helped the older man to his feet, then shoved the bench back into place. “Go on ahead and I’ll bring Lady Haemas in a few minutes.”

Orcado tugged his brocaded cassock back into place, his eyes furious. “I’m afraid Lady Haemas says she has more
important
things to do than attend to her father’s pyre.”

Diren cocked his head. “She’s distraught,” he said smoothly, “as she has every right to be, under the circumstances.” He glanced at the flower-strewn bier and folded his bands. “I’ll speak to her after you leave. I’m sure she’ll see reason.”

Orcado sniffed, then lowered his head and bulled through the chapel doors. A gust of chill air stirred the stuffy room as they clanged shut behind him.

Diren pulled a black leather glove from his belt, then thrust his hand into it, taking care to snug each finger down. Haemas backed away from him, her face thinned by weariness and grief, her eyes haunted. Diren smiled. “Why do you fear me, Lady? You must know by now that I bear you no malice.”

After drawing the other glove, he donned it, too, then flexed his fingers several times, studying her out of the corner of his eye. Her face was smudged, her hair loosened across her shoulders, her tunic torn, yet the exotic pale eyes stared at him so fiercely that they seemed to be illuminated by an inner light. He could feel the air crackle around her. She was more than magnificent—along with the latteh, she was the key to his future, a prize beyond price.

He drew the incense-laden air deep into his lungs. “If I didn’t care for you, I would not have selected you as Lady of Chee’ayn.” He let his gaze drift past her to the bier. “And you would be dead.”

Her white-gold eyes glittered in the suddenly flaring chispa-fire. She shifted, trembling and poised for flight.

Her fear and indecision intoxicated him like a heady perfume; soon, yes,
soon
she, and everything she represented, would be his. He drew the new latteh from his pocket and held it up. The irregular facets glimmered dull green in the blue glow of the chispa-fire. “Really, I should be quite vexed with you.” He turned the crystal over in his gloved hand and watched the light play across it. “You have no idea how much trouble it was to obtain this.”

She stiffened. “Is that how you—killed my father?” Her voice was low.

He caught at the edges of something unexpected in her mind, an emotion so strong that, for a second, it shimmered white-hot through her shields. He held his breath, standing absolutely still so that he could read the faint, already-receding traces of ... guilt.

A thin smile twisted his lips.
Yes,
he whispered forcefully into her mind,
I would not have come to him if you had accepted me. Why didn’t you just give me what I asked for? I wasn’t unreasonable; it is a Kashi daughter’s first obligation to marry and produce children. It’s your fault that Tal lies there cold and dead, food for the flames.

Her high-cheekboned face had gone as pale as that of her dead father. Diren strolled toward her, his boots loud on the flagstones, the latteh extended in his gloved hand, already set for control.
Aren’t you tired of fighting?
He schooled his tone to reasonableness, then, letting his desire for her wash outward like a warm tide, he stretched out his other hand.
Accept me and I’ll take care of you. We will rule the Highlands together.

Unexpectedly, the despair in her mind lashed out, raw and aching, battering his shields, but it was not nearly as powerful as he would have expected. With a laugh to hide his exertion, he sloughed it off. “Is
that
how you got rid of Axia? You’ll have to do better than that with me.”

More guilt surged up in her mind. Then, with an effort, she shielded it, but not before he caught the echo of a shrill scream in her mind. He slipped around the flower-strewn bier, narrowing the distance between them.

She held her ground, hands clenched at her sides, jaw set. “Don’t you want to know where she is?”

“No,” he said glibly, and with a shock, realized he really didn’t. “She obviously bungled things, as usual, but I don’t have to put up with fools anymore.” He edged closer.

“She died at the hands of your father!” She backed away from him until she tripped and caught herself against the far wall.

“Don’t be ridiculous. Our father died years ago.” Diren dodged around the bier and angled to cut her off from the door.

“She went back without me—after she took Kisa.” Her eyes flickered to the right as she realized he now stood between her and the only way out. “She found that last night with your mother—”

“You’re just playing for time.” A muscle jumped under his eye. “That’s the last place she would have gone.”

“It was an Otherwhen.” She passed a grimy hand over her face and straightened her shoulders. Pain glimmered in her eyes. “I stopped him, but it made no difference here.”

“What do you mean—‘you stopped him’?” His fingers tightened until the latteh’s facets bit through the glove’s soft leather.

“I couldn’t let him kill her.” Slowly she reached into the pocket of her torn tunic and pulled out an oblong shape. “So now, in that timeline, Nells survives to take her children back to the Lowlands and raise them at her father’s house.”

She was holding the other latteh, he realized suddenly—the one that Axia had carried into the temporal nexus on that ill-fated expedition. He took an involuntary step back. Then he saw her eyes drop to the latteh crystal cradled in her hands; even as the two of them watched, its color was fading visibly from dull green to gray.

“What have you done to it?” He leaped forward and wrenched her wrist in his free hand.

Alarmed, she jerked back, but couldn’t break free. “It’s dying!” Her words came out in a rush as she struggled against his grip. “I have to take it back to the pool!”

“How in the name of Darkness do you know about the pool?” He tightened his fingers and dragged her toward him, bringing up the primed latteh in his other hand.

Her eyes widened until they seemed to make up half her face as he brought the latteh closer. “No, it has to go back to the pool before it’s too late!”

Lightning blazed through his hand where he touched her; then the tiled floor rose up to smack him from behind. He sprawled there, his ears roaring and his vision obscured by a white haze. Dimly he made out the figure of Haemas Tal as she staggered into a glittering whorl of blue that disappeared as suddenly as it had come.

* * *

Obliged to slow as she came to the first widespread human habitation, Frostvine continued to bleed the warmth out of each field and orchard and herd beast as she passed. It grieved her to be responsible for the ending of so much blameless life, yet it was the nature of these human-things to exploit the land and the creatures that thrived upon it. Nothing must be left, not the tiniest beast, nor the least blade of vegetation—nothing that they could live upon if she died before killing the last of their prolific kind.

The structure rising up before her had been constructed of the heavy gray stone native to this region and was very dense on the outside. Flowing around it, she lingered, letting her tenuous body seep through the most minute of cracks until she filled the building and drew out the last bit of life-sustaining energy. Inside, the humans lay scattered on the floor, their frozen bodies broken into icy shards by the impact of their falls.

Heat energy seethed within her like a lightning-laden storm. Never had she been so full, yet she had barely begun. The path of destruction she was weaving would take all of a day and perhaps part of the night, if she could hold together that long.

Withdrawing from the stone building, she surged onward, continuing to snuff out each spark of life below with her death-dealing shadow.

* * *

Haemas felt the latteh failing as she fled into the sheltering blueness of the nexus. Dropping her shields, she stripped her mind bare to its need, funneling her own life energy into its waning core. Her knees melted and she had to fight to keep her feet, to go on thinking and breathing.

The dim green pulses flickered on the edge of extinction, then steadied and held at a critically low level. She cradled the latteh in her hand and searched for the temporal line that would take her back to an ilseri pool in her own When. Blood pounded in her ears as she tried to calm herself. If she focused correctly, the exit had to be here; she had only to find it, but her eyes kept blurring and she was so tired, so achingly cold.

Moonspeaker ...

Her head jerked around.
Summerstone?

There is not much time.

Haemas studied the glittering array of lines, each leading to a scene that sometimes varied from the one beside it in only the slightest of details—a scaly tree branch that grew to the right instead of the left, a cloud marginally bigger or whiter or wispier than the one in the adjacent scene. It was the same old problem: so many Otherwhens mixed in with the Truewhen she had to find.

She spread her fingers protectively over the failing crystal, feeling its need increase.
Which is the Truewhen?

Empty your mind, then choose,
the ilseri bade her.
Truewhen is a thing beyond mere knowing; it must be felt.

Empty her mind.
They always said that to her, and though she tried, understanding never came. She suspected it was a basic difference in the way ilseri and human minds were put together. Human minds simply could not reliably distinguish between Truewhen and Otherwhen.

And yet she must.

Closing her eyes, she pressed the latteh crystal to her heart, trying to let everything go: pain ... anguish ... guilt ... trying to float in a bright-blue sea of light where nothing intruded, not even hope. In the recesses of her mind, something stirred. Without thinking, she took a step and felt the temporal line humming beneath her foot.

She opened her eyes and studied the scene at the end of the line: a forest glade in winter—and a half-frozen pool. With two more steps, she emerged from awesome blue brilliance of the nexus into the chill gray bite of a Lowlands winter day.

A green shape appeared behind a sheltering tree trunk.
Hurry, small sister!

She passed the fading latteh into Summerstone’s four-fingered hands, then watched the ilseri plunge into the freezing water to place it beneath the surface.

“Is it too late?” Haemas hovered anxiously at the edge of the ice-rimmed pool, seeing herself reflected like a rippled ghost on the water’s surface.

It is very weak.
Summerstone’s head surged out of the water. Her impassive alien eyes riveted Haemas as she climbed up the smooth white stone steps, shedding icy droplets.