HM02 House of Moons (27 page)

A cool cloth bathed her forehead, her cheek, her throat ... She felt herself losing focus, leaving Enissa’s mind, going back, but it was so far, like trying to wake up after a long and over deep sleep. She couldn’t seem to make her body answer her.

That’s right.
A warm hand smoothed her hair back from her face.
Open your eyes now.

But she was floating somewhere beyond bodies or voices ... so tired ... she couldn’t ...

Yes, you can. Open your eyes.

And there was just enough of a command in that mindvoice that some part of her responded. Her eyelids flickered, and then she could feel her eyes again, could make them work. She blinked up into Kevisson’s worry-lined face.

Clutching her to his chest with his good arm, he buried his face in her tumbled hair, his relief fierce and overflowing. Slowly she reached up and touched his cheek.

“Are—are you—all right?” she asked.

“Me?” He tried to smile, but didn’t quite make it.

Haemas saw Kisa’s cool green eyes peering over his shoulder. “And Enissa?” she asked.

“Sleeping,” he said. “There may be some residual damage, but Lising and Nevarr think she has a good chance to recover. And Kisa is doing fine. It’s you that we’ve been worried about.”

“Me? She tried to sit up in the chair, but her muscles were made of lead.

“It’s been two days.” He reached for a mug and held it to her lips. “You have to get some of this down. The healers say you’re half starved.”

She swallowed the rich meat broth, letting it roll down her parched throat like the finest of wines. Then she looked across the bed at Enissa’s sleeping, pink-cheeked face and finally believed.

* * *

The five-cornered funeral pyre reared high over Haemas’s head, a deep, impenetrable blackness against the lighter, cloud covered night sky. Hugging Kisa’s slender body closer, she thought again of those green eyes and knew she was no longer the same child, perhaps not even strictly human anymore.

Kisa and Adrina’s father had finally been named. The Karoli family, who held a sweep of rich farmland on the far western edge of the Lowlands, had finally come forward and said that one of their younger sons had registered paternity of the girls in the family records before dying in a hunting accident four years earlier. Karoli’ayn had since presented a claim for Adrina that would have to be ruled upon by the Council; but taking Kisa, so altered by the ilseri, was out of the question. Even the Castillans, Myriel’s maternal line, had come to examine the child, then dissolved their claim.

The forest of torches hammered into the frozen ground cast crazy, shifting shadows over the silent, stricken host of Kashi who had come to pay their respects to the dead of the many Houses that shared this pyre. Their colorless faces stared from the fringes of the torchlight, stunned, weary, each one struggling with pain, both physical and emotional. Father Orcado paused before the wooden mountain, gazing at the multitude of silken shrouds that billowed with each twist in the wind, then began his slow, halting steps through the trampled snow, winding his way around the pyre the first of the traditional five times. The tang of freshly cut wood filled the air.

She had urged Kisa to stay inside with Jayna, but although she didn’t speak or cry or do any of the things a normal child should, the girl still refused to be separated from her, even for a second. Actually, Haemas would have forgone this somber spectacle herself, but the body of her father lay on the pyre, as well as that of his bitter young wife, Alyssa. Stacked up there, too, like so much wood, were the bodies of everyone who had been outside when Frostvine came, except for herself and Kisa. More than two-thirds of those who had been in the House had survived, but a great many of the unfortunate guests had perished—as well as the ten High Lords who had been used to augment Chee’s power.

Diren Chee shared this pyre, too, laid out in his silver-trimmed black tunic, the last of his House, his face appearing in death curiously young and peaceful. Had he ever understood the nature of the doom that he had called to himself? Haemas thought not. No one here but she, and perhaps Kisa in some measure, understood Chee’s part in all this, and she could not tell yet how much Kisa actually remembered. To protect both the Kashi and ilseri, the rest of Highlands must never know what he had done.

Father Orcado passed before her a second time, the torchlight glinting off his gold-and-yellow brocade, his frostbitten lips moving in a silent invocation.

So many dead, so many she would never see again ... Master Ellirt, her father ... Haemas stared at the wood heaped before her, feeling the eyes of the survivors as they waited for her to step forward and enact the ancient ritual of Leave-taking and make them all feel as if there was some sort of structure to life—that, despite all their losses, there would be a meaningful tomorrow after all.

But would there be? Her fingers tightened on Kisa’s shoulders. Tal’ayn was badly damaged, while at Brint’ayn and Dynd’ayn, the first two estates to suffer Frostvine’s wrath, there had been no survivors at all.

Only a few minutes before, one of her father’s friends had come to her and confirmed that Tal’ayn had indeed passed into her hands; Chee had been right about that. For some reason, her father had never changed his will. Her eyes sought the top of the pyre where an hour or so earlier the chierra servants had struggled to place the old Tal’s bier at the very top. She felt the hot salt sting of tears. Perhaps Dervlin Tal had finally forgiven her for shaping her life to her own pattern after all, at least as much as he was able.

But she didn’t want Tal’ayn. She had renounced it long ago. What use was a huge estate that would require a firm and vigilant hand in the coming years if it was to be properly rebuilt? It would take her total concentration, and if the next Council allowed her to reopen the House of Moons, she would not have time to run both it and Tal’ayn.

Her mind turned again to her old dream of a school where Kashi daughters could come to be trained in the mindarts, where they could realize the full potential of their Talents as so few of them were ever allowed. Even though it had cost him his life, Chee had still managed to destroy that. Her throat knotted as she thought of the endless hours of negotiation and capitulation and undignified downright haggling that had gone into building and funding her school, now all scattered to the winter winds. If Master Ellirt had not been there to back her before, the High Lords would never have listened to her.

And Ellirt was dead.

Orcado passed her a third time, glancing aside at her and Kisa with eyes that were only two dark-shadowed holes in the twisting torchlight. Even though he was trying to shield it, she was Talented enough to read his disapproval of her, disapproval and disdain of anyone who defied tradition, who wanted to think for herself and did what she thought was right instead of the proper, accepted thing.

But she knew as well as she knew her own name that she would never be a proper Kashi daughter or a proper anything else. And there must be others like Enissa and Meryet Alimn who wanted something more out of life, something that their fathers and brothers and husbands did not understand. She might be able to provide that, if only she had an adequate setting and the funds.

The chill wind gusted, bending the yellow torch flames double. She shivered as she looked over her shoulder at Tal’ayn rising up behind them. It was a vast estate, the biggest in the Highlands, as well as the richest. It was too bad that her father had not sired seven children to share it, as his counterpart had in Ellirt’s Otherwhen. It ought to have had whole families living in its vast wings, children to play in the nasai groves and the thermal gardens, laughter ringing down from the great bridging towers.

Perhaps she should ask her father’s cousins, the Kentnals, to oversee the reconstruction while she went back and tried to reopen the House of Moons. Perhaps it would even be best to cede Tal’ayn over to them and put the past behind her forever.

Jayna opened the main doors and hurried down the steps toward them, carrying several thick cloaks over her arm. Haemas had to smile. No doubt Jayna, who had taken care of her as a child, would like to have more children to look after, youngsters to fill this bitter, staid old house and make it live again with love.

Children like Kisa, the back of her mind whispered, and she looked down at the silent girl’s red-gold head. What if, she thought suddenly, the House of Moons were located
here
, instead of in that small dreary building constructed in the shadow of Shael’donn? It was so obvious. If she brought her students here, not only would she have all the funds she needed, but the Council of Twelve would never be able to dictate to her again.

And perhaps there were other children like Kisa and her sister, Adrina, who had no one and needed a home. She could begin by opening Tal’ayn to other orphans of this disaster whom no one wanted.

Even boys?

Haemas turned back to see Kevisson’s tall, broad-shouldered frame pushing through the crowd of spectators from the other side of the pyre, his right arm in a sling.

His lean, tan face smiled slightly as he caught her eye.
Or doesn’t your generosity extend to the opposite sex?

Father Orcado plodded around the corner again, now swinging a tiny pierced-metal censer to spread the smoldering scent of spicy incense in wide arcs through the frigid air.

But boys can always go to Shael’donn
, she answered after the priest had passed.

I didn’t expect you—of all people—to hold that against them.
Kevisson’s mindvoice was heavy with mock surprise.
And besides, do you really think Shael’donn will be the same now with Riklin Senn running it?

But—boys?
she replied lamely.

Actually, they’re remarkably like girls.
His tone was thoughtful.
And almost as Talented.

For a second, she just stared at him, seeing how his golden-brown hair caught the flickering torchlight. Then she smiled back.
And just exactly who would teach these Talented boys?

I might be willing to give it a try.
He slipped into place at her side and pulled her close.

Male and female, she thought, working together instead of separately. It was a different vision from any she had ever had, and yet it sounded promising.

Father Orcado came around for the fifth and last time and stopped before her. “Haemas Sennay Tal, you are the last surviving kin of Dervlin Kentnal Tal?”

The lightness and hope she had felt bantering with Kevisson melted, and her eyes returned to the top of the pyre, to her father and all the rest who had suffered because she had not found the strength and wisdom to stop Chee until it was too late. She nodded, fighting the sudden tears that threatened.

“Then it falls to you to Light his way, as well as that of his guests, into the next world.” Orcado pushed an unlit torch into her hands.

She felt the crowd’s eyes as they waited for her to generate the first spark. Her fingers tightened on the coarse wood. Even after this huge pyre had burned down to the snow-covered ground and guttered out in the ashes, it would all still be with her, the pain, the loss, the failures.

And the successes,
Kevisson whispered into her mind,
and the love.

She felt his left hand slip under her cloak to rest against the bare skin of her neck, ready to lend her his strength.

Light the spark,
he said.
Send the past on its way and make a new tomorrow.

Hesitantly she clasped the dark torch in one hand and stretched the other toward it as she began the ancient ritual in her mind.
Fire is the first aspect of the Light ...

Attuned to Kevisson as she was, she heard him echoing the litany, participating with her. The flames blazed up in her mind, bright and golden, shot through with orange highlights like the center of the sun, warming her inside as well as out. She caught a whiff of pungent wood smoke in the chill air. The spark leaped from her outstretched hand to the waiting wood and blazed up there for the crowd to see, bright and strong.

Orcado took the torch, turned back to the pyre, and put the flames to the heaped wood. “So do we all return to the Light.”

Kisa shuddered, pressing back against Haemas, and Kevisson added his hand to the child’s shoulder, radiating comfort. “It’s not just an ending this time,” he told her softly. “It’s a beginning.”

Haemas leaned against the steady warmth of Kevisson’s side and watched the flames creep up the pyre while heavy gray smoke curled into the cloud-ridden night sky. Perhaps all endings carried within them the seeds for something better, she thought, if you could find the strength to see it.

Above the pyre the clouds parted, and she caught a fleeting glimpse of all three Desalayan moons riding high in the sky—silvery, serene Sedja, pale-gold Lydriat, and tiny blue Mishva, the most rarely seen of all.

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