HM02 House of Moons (7 page)

Finally he loosed his mind into the gray betweenness, seeking the bit of brightness that would signal his quarry. Time passed unnoticed as he spread himself over the Highlands like a sheet of water, growing thinner and thinner until his energy reserves began to fail and he knew he would have to either give up or face the consequences of overextending himself.

He wondered if she had gone to the Lowlands, perhaps to visit the ilseri, in which case he would have to follow her over the mountains in order to find her.

Then he caught something, the barest whisper against his mind, a faint glimmer of her familiar silvery presence, but muted or altered in some way. Something was wrong. He concentrated on following that slight contact through the grayness, holding on as if it were his own life-force.

She
was
there, still in the Highlands, but off in a remote corner, far away from the House of Moons and Shael’donn. Holding on to the tenuous line, he gathered the shreds of his remaining energy and emerged from the nebulousness of Search. For a split second, he had the impression of a tall house, crumbling gray stone, and fear mingled with mocking laughter, then a bolt of lightning flashed, shearing the precarious link. Suddenly adrift, he cried out, then spun off helplessly into blackness.

* * *

“I won’t go!” Axia rubbed her arms, then knelt to shove another log onto the guttering fire. “If you want this information so damn badly, go yourself!”

Diren tipped the heavy mug up and drained the last of the mead, then held the pewter up in the firelight to examine it more closely. “Such fine work,” he murmured. “What do you suppose it cost?”

“More than we’ll ever have!” Axia grimaced at her younger brother’s strange expression, remembering another golden-haired man who had sat in that same seat and stared off in much the same bewildering manner; sometimes Diren reminded her too much of their late father for comfort.

“Not after tomorrow.” Diren nodded at the flames dancing over the logs. The light played on his fair hair. “Not after you go back and learn more about the latteh.” His eyes left the fire and glanced up at her. “When I have power like that, we’ll have everything we ever wanted—gold, servants, respect. Chee’ayn will be rich again and every eligible male in the Highlands will be clamoring for your hand. You’ll have your pick of Houses.”

“Don’t be stupid!” Knotting her fingers, Axia pulled up a chair and sat down beside him, trying to make him look at her. “It didn’t work on Haemas Tal. You almost killed her with it, but you never really controlled her mind.” She put a tentative hand on his shoulder. “The first time you trot that little trinket out and try it on a Council member, you’ll get caught and that will be the end of this House.”

“Shut up!” Jerking to his feet, he dashed the pewter mug to the floor. It clattered into the wall, then spun back against her foot. “I just don’t know enough about it yet to make it work right on the Tal woman. I have to learn more, and that’s where you come in.” His eyes burned down at her. “You’ll do as you’re damn well told tomorrow, or I’ll use it on
you!
”

He swept up the mug, then ran his fingers over the embossed Chee crest. “Anyway, I’ve already tried it—on Himret Rald himself, practically in front of the entire Council.” Setting the mug on the mantel over the hearth, he stepped back, then centered it. “Worked far better than prayer, I must say.”

That nasty, snide edge in his voice was the same one Axia had often heard from their father, usually just before he succumbed to another violent mood swing. Although she had thought her life hardly worth living already, hearing her younger brother speak in those manic tones stole what little comfort remained.

She stared down at her folded hands, seeing how the blue veins showed through the skin. She was almost forty; no one was going to contract for her now, wealthy or not, but Diren didn’t seem to understand that.

“After you come back, we’ll make another trip down to Lenhe’ayn.” Diren settled back into the worn chair and propped his boots up on the hearth. “There should be more crystals where we found the first one.”

“What do you need more for?” She blinked in surprise. “Besides, that Lenhe woman was suspicious enough when she saw us heading for the woods last time. What if we run into her again?”

“Don’t worry about her.” Folding his arms behind his head, he leaned back and stretched until his bones popped. “Both she and that brat of hers are dead. One of those doddering Rald cousins has moved in until final disposition of the property is made, but he doesn’t worry me. Even the old Lord himself couldn’t withstand my little toy.”

The top log shifted, showering red sparks up the chimney. Axia watched them swirl into the darkness, thinking they were just like dreams she used to have. When she and Diren had been younger, it had seemed as if anything was possible. Now they were down to depending on this crystal to make their dreams come true—a thing so forbidden that death was the sole penalty for using one.

“What about the Tal woman?” she asked finally. “Since the latteh doesn’t really work on her, how long do you think you can keep this up? She’s supposed to be a Plus-Eleven.”

“You don’t believe that nonsense, do you?” A sneer twisted Diren’s lips. “And it wouldn’t make any difference if she were. You saw what happened when she fought the latteh. It turns your own strength back against you. The damn thing nearly killed her.”

Axia went cold again, remembering the paleness of the woman’s face when Diren had emerged from the Chee’ayn portal the night before. For a moment, she had thought Haemas Tal was dead. She ran her tongue over her dry lips. “What’s to keep her from leaving me in the past once we’re away from the latteh?”

“That’s the easiest part of all.” He reached into his tunic and drew out the dull-green crystal. “You just take it with you.”

* * *

With a feeling of panic, Haemas saw the seneschal, Pascar, waiting for her before the dining room. He glanced pointedly at the door, his old chierra face disapproving. Late again, she thought, and then knew with an icy certainty when and where she was.

Somewhere in the back of her mind, she knew she didn’t have to do this anymore, didn’t have to repeat this endless pattern of guilt and shame. She started to turn away, but Pascar opened the doors for her, revealing the long table set only for four.

Her stepmother, Alyssa Alimn Senn, and her cousin, Jarid Tal Ketral, looked up from their plates with amused eyes.

But Jarid was dead. He had died at Haemas’s feet after trying one last time to kill her over twelve years ago.

Seeming to hear her thoughts, he ran a careless hand back over the bright-gold of his hair and laughed. “Once a skivit, always a skivit, isn’t that right, Cousin?”

She flinched at the hated nickname. She didn’t deserve that anymore; she was no longer the same timid, frightened girl. She watched as he poured dark-red tchallit wine into green crystal goblets. Her hand reached for the goblet even as she remembered how Jarid had drugged it on that long-ago night.

She looked up at the self-satisfied smirk on Jarid’s suddenly indistinct face, blinked, and then, like wind-blown sand, his features shifted. It wasn’t Jarid at all—it was Diren Chee. Her hand jerked away from the goblet as if it had burned her.

“You never learn, do you?” Chee smiled at her with predatory sharp white teeth. “I find it quite disappointing that after all this time you’re still so stupid.”

Laughter began then, manic laughter echoing off the walls until it deafened her. The woman sitting beside Diren Chee took her hand away from her mouth and revealed the thin-featured face of Axia Chee. The Chee woman threw back her head and laughed louder and louder until Haemas thought she would scream.

“Go ahead.” Diren Chee nodded at her. “No one will hear you, of course.”

Haemas bolted up, feeling as if she were drowning in the shrieking, mirthless laughter, as if she would die if she didn’t get away that very second—

“Die?” Diren Chee reached into his pocket. “I suppose we can arrange that.” He held his open hand out. “If you insist.” A glowing green crystal lay in his palm, buzzing with deadly energy.

She backed away, knocking over a chair. It clattered on the floor and blocked her way.

“If you insist.” Chee leaned across the table. “If you—”

“No!” Haemas sat bolt upright on the narrow cot in the Chee’ayn tower and threw off the worn blanket. Breath rasped in her chest as if she had run halfway across the windswept Highlands. She glanced around in a panic, but no one was there. The only door was closed and the sparse fire had burned down to sullen red-gray coals.

Jarid was dead; she knew that, yet somehow it seemed he was with her tonight in this terrible place, laughing as she tried not to lose everything she had struggled to build since his death. She had been his victim during the hard bitter years of her childhood, the object of his envy over her place as Heir to Tal’ayn, and the instrument of his revenge against her father. But no more!

She had cast all that away when she had finally broken the false memory Jarid had inflicted upon her. Then she had renounced her inheritance, seeking instead to found a Shael’donn for Kashi daughters where they could come and freely learn the mindarts and understand that they had choices in life that went beyond marriage and childbearing. She was not going to be anyone’s victim again, not now or in the future.

There had to be a way out of this. Rising from the cot, she found a chipped basin in the far corner of the room and dashed tepid water over her hot face.

Diren Chee would not get away with this. No one was ever going to use her again.

DIREN GAZED DOWN
from the third-floor windows at the pine grove and mused that, in this one particular place, Desalaya might have passed for Old Earth itself. The green sky was hazy this morning, and when he squinted, it looked almost blue. A sense of pride suffused him; Chee’ayn might be unkempt and wind-worn, but it was still the only place in the Highlands where pine could be grown freely without having to mix in Old soil. At one point in time, the gardens had flowed out to the horizon, a panorama of flower beds and hedges and pools, spectacular even in a society of similarly vast estates.

His fingers caressed the cool oblong shape of the latteh in his pocket. Soon Kashi would flock here again to see Chee’ayn’s restored beauty--and then remain to kneel at his feet.

He turned the crystal and watched the sun glint on its irregular facets. “I assume you’ve thought about what I asked.”

“You
asked
for nothing.” There was a new hint of fire in Haemas’s voice that made him glance around in spite of himself. “You
demanded
.” Her face was freshly washed; tendrils of damp hair curled around her ears. She was as pale as new fallen snow, but composed, and her white-gold eyes were impenetrable.

“Obviously you’ve recovered, if you can find the energy to quibble over a few unimportant words.” He almost activated the crystal to subdue her, but then changed his mind and damped it completely. He needed her will intact, along with her judgment and skills. If he used the latteh to obtain full control, he would have to override those faculties in her, and he might never get what he wanted most: her timeways craft. Pocketing the crystal, he turned to face her. She met him with a lift of her chin.

Taken aback by the determination in her face, he sent a tendril of thought to probe at the shields enclosing her mind and was rebuffed by a distressingly solid, resistant surface. “I’ve been studying the notes of the last Temporal Conclave.” He pulled out a rickety chair and motioned for her to sit down. “They’re quite interesting.”

Folding her long-fingered hands, she ignored him and walked instead to the window, putting the huge desk between them. “One-fourth of the men who attempted to broach the timeways that day died, and half of those who survived were permanently mindburned.” The early sunlight fired the single plait of her hair into spun white-gold as she turned her back on him and gazed down onto the snow-dusted Chee’ayn grounds.

Noticing suddenly that Axia had dressed her in a castoff gown that barely came to her ankles, he frowned. It was typical of his older sister’s sharp-edged personality to be so mean-minded. No wonder he had been unable to secure a Highlands match for her worthy of her status as a daughter of the House of Chee.

Still, the light-blue velvet flattered Haemas Tal’s fair coloring in a way that the gray uniforms habitually worn at the House of Moons never had. His fingers burned suddenly to stroke the ivory curve of her cheek—and he wondered at himself. Over the years, the parade of second-rate tutors his father had provided had always blathered on at him about “having not being so satisfying a thing as wanting.” In this moment, he knew finally that wasn’t true. Indisputably, he had her at last, and yet he ached for her more fiercely now than at any other time since he had first seen her appear before the Council of Twelve.

On that day she had worn gray, yet she outshone every woman present, her slender figure standing straight and tall as she met the eyes of all those disapproving, stiff-necked old Lords, giving them back measure for measure what they gave her. He’d wanted her then, without even knowing who or what she was.

But then someone had explained to him that she was the old Tal’s daughter, the one who had run away to the Lowlands and mysteriously reappeared, versed in the timeways craft of the almost mythical ilseri.

And it was then, after he understood the opportunity that she represented, that he had finally known how to shape his ambition: Using the latteh crystal, he would bend this woman to his will as one bent a young tree. And then, when he had the strength of her knowledge and Talent behind him, along with the very power of Time itself, they would all bow down before him—every High House and miserable Lowlands farm, and the rest of Desalaya, as well. Kashi and chierra alike, they would push their faces into the dirt and pay Chee’ayn the homage it had always deserved.

He forced a deep steadying breath into his lungs, clenching his hands into fists with the effort of not touching her.
That
would come later, once she had given him the edge he required. “Someone was Searching for you last night.” He held his voice to casualness. “Did you feel it?”

Her eyes flicked toward him, then returned to the frosty view outside.

So she had. He moved close enough to gaze over her shoulder and breathe warmly on the nape of her neck. “I think I was able to break the link without killing him, but whoever it was may not be so lucky next time.”

Gliding away, she pulled the single braid of hair over her shoulder, automatically smoothing the stray wisps. “Perhaps
he
will kill you instead.”

Diren jogged the latteh into activity and her fingers jumped as if she’d been stung. “I doubt that very much,
Lady
.” He threaded a deadly softness through his voice, then seized her arm. She flinched at his touch; her skin was covered in chill-bumps, as cold beneath his fingers as the glass in the window. “Make up your mind to it,” he said. “Shortly we will meet my sister down at the courtyard portal, which you will use to take her back with you to a time when the latteh was common. I want to know everything about how they were used and what they can do.”

She jerked at her arm. “And if I don’t?”

“Then we will proceed with our matrimonial.” He pulled her hard against his chest and pinned her arms. His breathing deepened as she struggled to free herself and the sensuous pressure of her body against his made itself known. Her cool skin burned like fire beneath his fingers. He soaked in the feel of her, the subtle fragrance of her hair and skin, his at last to do with as he pleased. Now and forever. Freeing one hand, he caressed the silken white-gold hair that hung, even braided, to her waist.

She shuddered, then her jaw stiffened and she looked away. “I have never been very far back into the past.” Red circles danced in her cheeks. “I don’t know if it’s even possible to go that far.”

Releasing her, he reached for the heavy, leather-bound book lying open on his desk. He thumbed through the fragile pages until he found what he wanted, then thrust the volume at her. “I want you to go back into the period known as the Ivram Despots, although I doubt they thought of themselves in that way.”

“I don’t know anything about that time.” Laying the dusty volume back on the desk, she traced a finger down the page, a furrow appearing between her brows. “How could I possibly recognize that period even if I found it?”

“You had best study this book and pray that you find what I’m after, because if you cannot, I will have some use out of you, one way or another.” He bent his head and nuzzled the soft hollow of her neck.

Then she did sink onto the chair that he pulled out for her, and he was pleased to see her long fingers tremble when she turned the page.

* * *

The chierra cook set the steaming bowl in front of Enissa, then returned to mixing pie dough on the pastry block at the far corner of the kitchen. The air was filled with the aroma of baking cinnamon tarts. Enissa took a bite of the zeli porridge. It slid down her throat in a warm but thoroughly unappetizing lump. She kneaded her forehead and told herself to be practical. Even if she was too worried about Haemas to have any appetite, she had to eat. She couldn’t afford to behave like some high-strung, overbred Lady who got the vapors every time the cook burned the roast. With Haemas missing, a million things needed looking after here at the House of Moons, not to mention the coming wrangle with the Council over the disposition of the Lenhe children.

Since they had no close family left, she wished the girls could remain here to be trained in the mindarts, but some House, most likely Castillan’ayn, as they were Castillan grandchildren, would see their potential marriageability and demand their custody.

She spooned up another bite of porridge, then changed her mind and shoved the bowl across the scrubbed kitchen worktable. No matter that her head was telling her to be sensible, her stomach just couldn’t manage. Perhaps later, if Kevisson had good news from his Search, she would be able to force something down.

“Lady Enissa?”

She jumped as a hand touched her shoulder. She twisted around to see one of the gray-uniformed older students. “Yes, what is it, Saatha?”

The short, wistful-looking girl curtseyed. “Healer Nevarr is waiting in the front room to see you about something urgent—he wouldn’t say what—and Father Orcado came in just behind him.”

An odd pairing, Enissa told herself as she rose from her stool. “Tell them I’ll be along directly,” she said, then patted her hastily pinned up hair, trying to remember if she’d worn this tunic yesterday or not.

The girl turned to go, then hesitated, indecision spilling through her half-trained shields in waves.

Enissa glanced up. “Was there something else?”

“It’s—it’s just that everyone’s been wondering.” Saatha hesitated. “About Lady Haemas—has there been any word?”

“No, Saatha. Now run along.”

Clad in the long, full skirts that many of the girls preferred to tunics and pants these days, Saatha took up a double handful of material, then dashed out the door, her slippers echoing down the long hall. Enissa sighed and checked her gray tunic for stains. It never failed---every time she ran into another healer, she looked like something one of the silshas had killed and dragged through the mud. The male clique that comprised the Highlands healers had little enough regard for her without adding fuel to that particular fire.

After another moment, satisfied that she was at least presentable, she followed Saatha to the communal room often used at night for gatherings. She could feel the dark weight of disapproving impatience long before she actually laid eyes on the visitors.

Stopping in the doorway, she appraised the two men, each trouble in his own particular way. “Father Orcado.” She nodded stiffly at the priest of the Light. He was a barrel-chested man in his forties, clad in traditional yellow-and-gold brocades. Clearly this was to be a formal visit. Enissa sighed inwardly and stood a little taller.

“And Healer Nevarr.” She managed another nod, even more curt, at the sandy-haired Shael’donn healer. He was from a distant Lowlands House unfamiliar to her, and rather young for a full-fledged healer. She knew Master Ellirt had taken him on at Shael’donn, hoping experience might eventually season the youngster’s arrogant confidence, but for now, Nevarr opposed her practice as a healer at every opportunity. She studied him. “How can I be of service?”

“I haven’t got time for pleasantries, Saxbury.” The healer tossed aside the leather-bound text he had been leafing through. Tension was written in the lines of his jaw and shoulders.

“Well, then, tell me what you do have time for, Nevarr.” She smiled faintly as he flushed over her own pointed omission of his title.

“Master Monmart has been—injured somehow. I don’t even know how it happened, but both of the other Healing Masters, Feraa and Lising, have been called out to the other side of the Highlands, and I have been able to do nothing for him.” He stared at her hotly, as if it were somehow her fault. “It’s—beyond my training.”

Enissa felt a prickle of dread. She had never known this brash young man to admit such a thing before, no matter what the circumstances. Then she turned to the priest. “And you, Father Orcado? Is your business equally pressing?”

The priest studied her with indifferent eyes. “A request has come up before the Council concerning the Lenhe children. I am to take them before this afternoon’s session.”

Enissa thought of Kisa and Adrina as she had left them upstairs, listless and pale, only going through the motions of taking class with the younger students. “By the Blessed Light itself, Orcado, they’re still in mourning! Surely Castillan’ayn can spare them a few more days.”

“I think not.” He smiled thinly as if privy to secrets at which she could only guess. “As you might imagine, Sillner Castillan is unused to waiting.” He adjusted his gold embroidered overtunic.

Abruptly she made up her mind. “Well, they cannot come today.” She picked up the book that Nevarr had cast aside and carefully replaced it on the shelf. “And I speak as the one in charge of their health. Check with me tomorrow—or even better, in a few days.”

“The Council will not be pleased,” Orcado said.

“The Council!” Enissa forced herself to draw a deep, even breath. “The Council can check with me again at their convenience. Good day, Father Orcado.”

She felt his anger threatening to boil over, but he managed to contain it. “I will be back tomorrow.” Without another look, he brushed past her elbow and left.

Nevarr stared after him. “Was that wise?”