The Fire-Moon

by Isabel Pelech

  He wears a mask. And that, too, had the feeling of a tale. A prince whose face was cursed. In a tale, of course, the spell would be broken by a young maiden, one who had the courage to see past the dark magic to the man’s inner nobility. But he needed six of us, so that can’t be it.

  They came out upon the flat top of the hill, and Teshar realized that they must have been walking up a man-made path; this was a manmade place. It seemed to be a sort of outdoor temple, a circular courtyard with an altar near the center. Or perhaps—looking at the six irregular pillars that bordered the place—it was an ancient ruin. And things are preserved in the desert. If this is a ruin, it has to be almost as old as Khemtesh itself. Perhaps even from the time Oseros ruled the land of the living.

  Without a word, but with those feather touches from his golden hand, Lord Utsepekt guided each child to stand in front of a pillar. Teshar noticed in passing that Uncle Beket hadn’t accompanied them. Maybe he’d mess up the magic, she thought, and wondered why she felt so lightheaded.

  The “floor” was native stone, but carved in sinuous patterns that Teshar could not quite follow. Lord Utsepekt paced slowly across the temple and stood before the low, rectangular altar. He raised his hands and the light spilled straight down through his spread fingers.

  And one of the children screamed. “The moon! Look at the moon!”

  Teshar jumped and looked straight up, thinking, what—why am I here? What’s going on?

  And then she thought for a moment that she would vomit from fear, because the moon was bleeding.

  The discoloration began at one edge, but Teshar became certain as she stared that the stain was growing, creeping across its face. It was the color of red desert stones, the color of half-dried blood or of jasper. It was also the worst of bad-luck colors, for it represented the desert and the desert’s god, Sutekh the Destroyer. Still with the sense of being caught in a tale, Teshar remembered that Sutekh had actually murdered Oseros, had laughed in his blood and scattered his body, ending the world’s most blessed age. She thought, oh, gods, he’s going after Khenensu Moon-god now, watch out!

  Teshar wasn’t sure how long she stared at the sky like a terrified rabbit before she wondered what Lord Utsepekt was doing.

  His attention was also directed upward, but from his posture he was not terrified, not like the children were. Rather, he appeared to be praying to the bloody moon for some blessing. As Teshar watched, she almost thought that she could almost hear a chant, but it was as if the prince’s voice was too high to hear, or too low, or some other way mismatched to her ears, so that she could make out nothing. At length he folded his hands and bowed deeply, and then approached the boy to her right, Reyateb.

  Reyateb looked like he was going to ask a question, or demand an explanation, but then he looked up into Utsepekt’s face. Teshar saw him jerk back and tremble, but nevertheless he obeyed the glittering gesture and walked to the center of the circle. In the increasingly strange light, Utsepekt’s hands looked sheathed in bronze.

  This time Reyateb stood nearest to the altar but faced away from it, toward Teshar and the advancing figure of Lord Utsepekt. His face was very clear to Teshar in that instant: a fear-mask, a distorted expression that under the safe light of day might have been funny. His mouth was clenched shut so that he couldn’t scream, but his throat was clearly straining to do so.

  Teshar wasn’t sure where he had got it from, but Utsepekt had a curved bronze sword in his hand. As Reyateb stood there, and Teshar thought run run run gods-take-it ruuun! he brought the sword around in a killing arc.

  All the children jerked in unison.

  For Teshar, at least, that was when she discovered that she could not move her legs. Or her arms, or anything except her head. Her body seemed to react normally to her fear, and it carried on breathing and blinking and doing the things a body is supposed to do, but when she thought about running, that was all she was doing—thinking about it. She summoned up all her will and all her terror, and her body just stood there.

  And after a brief interlude of silent chanting, the prince—the evil sorcerer, rather, Utsepekt—turned away from the altar again, and strode toward the boy to the right of the now-empty pillar.

  He was going around the circle. They were all going to die, and Teshar was last in line. And while she would have normally appreciated being last in line for death, it didn’t seem like such a blessing now—now, as she stood helpless and watched it coming.

  And overhead, more and more of the moon was stained the color of blood.

  By the time Utsepekt came around the circle to her, the moon seemed entirely jasper, an eerie, darker brother to its usual self. Teshar had been crying, so that her face was smeared both from her tears and from a runny nose that she could not wipe. She had cried for all the other children, but most of all, guiltily, for the girl on her left. Because now she was all alone, and now he was walking toward her.

  She looked despairingly at the sorcerer. In the red moonlight, his hands and his robes both looked red, but she was not fooled; the dark, shadowy spatters down his front were the truly unlucky color. And then I get to see what all the others saw when they looked into his face, and then I come . . .

  Wait.

  He’s going to make me come toward him, isn’t he? I wonder . . . I wonder if the spell controls how fast I come toward him?

  He was nearly to her. Teshar took a very deep breath and looked up into his eyes.

  Or, rather, looked at where his eyes should be. The bronze mask was shaped more or less like a face, although it was narrow and pointed and seemed to wrinkle in where Teshar was sure a face should wrinkle outward. But it had no eye holes. No mouth hole. Not even the tiniest hole to breathe through.

  I was wrong again. He’s not a sorcerer. He’s some sort of evil spirit.

  This time, even though Teshar’s ears were still wrong for Utsepekt’s voice, some part of her body and mind still heard the word —Come.—

  She wasn’t sure her last-minute, feeble plan would work on an evil spirit, or even an evil sorcerer, but it was all she had. Teshar put her head down and charged forward.

  She hit him, skull-first, right in the stomach.

  His body was curiously yielding. Teshar wondered, for a split second, whether he had a body at all, or whether she was only fighting cloth. And she was fighting, now, without skill but with all four limbs and all the energy in her. She tore the cloth as much as untangled it, kicked frantically at Utsepekt’s grasping hand, and felt as much as heard a strange crunching sound from it, followed by the tinkle of metal on stone. And then she was free of him, and running, running faster than she ever had in her life, vaulting downhill at a speed that would surely break bones if she landed wrong. Teshar reached the bottom of the hill ahead of the rocks that her footsteps had dislodged and saw, with a heartsick wrench but no real surprise, that her beloved Uncle Beket had not waited with his cart to bring the children back.

  And then something screamed soundlessly above her, a noise like, she imagined, a hawk in a killing rage, and Teshar discovered that she hadn’t been running as fast as she could after all, or at least, that she could go even faster on a flat surface.

  She was so intent on it that she didn’t even think to look for the wagon’s route or the wagon’s tracks.

  After that, things got a bit confused.

  For one thing, Teshar had never really understood what stories meant when they said, “He ran until he could run no more.” Until she could run no more did not mean until she was merely tired. Until she could run no more meant until she had stumbled and fallen, and crawled onwards, and tried to get up but found that her legs were shaking too badly with fatigue to let her stand, so that she pitched forward onto her face and got a mouthful of sand. But mostly, until she could run no more meant until she really, really, really hurt.

  Some time during the night, she had left the rocky part of the desert. When she first noticed, she was glad, because the stone hills were his domain, and
the smooth sameness would make even a scorpion stand out. She hoped.

  In her exhausted state, she was not particularly observant. In fact, it was only when she pitched into the sand that last time, and rolled over thinking, all right, maybe I’ll lie here for a while, that she realized the moon had gone white again. It was only a hand’s length from the western horizon, and with a full moon, sunrise would come shortly after moonset.

  Teshar blinked at it. Glad you’re all right, friend . . . After walking through dreams and nightmares, it did not seem odd to think of the moon-god as a friend. I wish I know what happened to you, though. Was it Sutekh after all, or him? For it seemed very unlucky to even think Utsepekt’s name too loudly. Surely even an evil spirit can’t alter the sky.

  A god could. Earlier in the night, that thought might have sent Teshar back to her feet and sent her running again. Now, though, her body felt almost as immovable with tiredness as it had under Utsepekt’s spell, and she had apparently used up her fear for the night. No, she decided, after thinking it through, no, I don’t think you can get away from a god by ramming him in the stomach. So he wasn’t that. I suppose he could have been calling upon one, though . . . praying, or trying to get the god to . . . how do you get the attention of a god? Other than being in the right place at the right time. Could a really, really powerful sorcerer magic one up?

  Or was the red moon something else? Maybe it was an omen for someone important, the Emperor or someone, and somehow he knew it was going to happen and timed his prayers for . . . what?

  Teshar was too tired to work it out. Perhaps it was exhaustion or perhaps it was all these lofty thoughts of gods, but the desert and the sky seemed to spin around her in a way that was almost soothing. Bye bye, Khenensu, she thought, baby-like, to the setting moon. See you tomorrow night. With painful effort, she turned her head toward the east. And there’s the morning star. Good morning, Bastet. Always liked you . . . always liked cats, and you’re the lady of the cats, aren’t you? Plus bringing back the sun . . . and all kinds of . . . important . . . things . . .

  But even though she fell asleep peacefully, Teshar had worrying dreams—worrying, god-filled dreams—including one in which Bastet did not help the sun defeat the forces of darkness because she wanted to give her tail a good wash. So instead of the sun, the red moon rose again; this time, Teshar could make out flickers of fire around its edges. She couldn’t move, and the moon loomed closer and closer, and hotter and hotter, until finally, with great effort she managed to turn her head. And the goddess Nekaba, who Teshar thought was extremely ugly indeed, said, “If you don’t move that hand I’m going to take a peck at it.”

  Teshar woke up.

  The redness in her eyes was not moonfire, it was glaring sunlight seen through closed eyelids. The baking heat, likewise, was from the sun. And instead of a vulture goddess addressing her, there was an ordinary vulture sitting near her left arm and eyeing her with disdain. It was, Teshar thought, much the sort of look humans reserved for long-dead meat, and she imagined the bird thinking, awww . . . you moved. That’s cheating!

  She pushed herself upward, or tried to, and let out an involuntary cry. The vulture’s expression, or at least its posture, went from disgust to alarm, and it hurried away from her, lurching into the air with a couple of heavy hops. Teshar fell back again, wobbled back and forth on her back, and finally resorted to rolling over so that she could get up using both hands and knees. She felt as if she had been fried without enough oil and had stuck to the skillet. Boneless. Painful.

  Very, very thirsty.

  Also very, very lost.

  She knew that if she went east far enough, she was bound to run into civilization. Even if she didn’t find Hasmahi, she wasn’t likely to miss Lake Shirez entirely. And if she missed Lake Shirez, there was always the rest of Khemtesh, the wide ribbon of green, watered land that followed the River. The problem was not what to do, but how to do it.

  Teshar emptied one flask immediately. It tasted wonderful, despite its temperature and the inevitable leathery aftertaste from being bottled too long. A person in the desert needed a lot of water, Teshar’s mother had once told her, and inexperienced travelers had been found dead with a measure of water still in their bottles, because they were afraid to waste it and ignored their body’s warning. “If you save it, you won’t be needing it,” the B’dou said.

  It was already midmorning when Teshar woke up. Noon made it impossible to tell direction, but she didn’t quite dare lie down for a rest, not after that vulture was so obviously intrigued by her. The dunes made it difficult for Teshar to tell direction by looking back at her own tracks. Under the intense glare, the far parts of the desert shimmered, so Teshar could almost imagine that she was on the single island of hot sand in the middle of a cool, world-spanning sea. An island that moved maliciously beneath her, to keep her from reaching its beaches. Teshar shook her head sharply every time this notion occurred to her. Her mother had warned her about the “falsewater” that desert light created, and how hazardous it could prove to travelers who were even slightly sun-touched. A desperate man would see greenery around the falsewater, even tall, bending palm trees laden with coconuts, either because the desert spirits were malicious or because humans had a way of seeing what they thought hardest about. So, of course, the poor man would run toward the supposed oasis, only to find himself still in the middle of nothingness. When he was mad enough to try to drink the sand, the desert would claim his bones. The thing to do, Teshar’s mother had said, was to rely on your camel. Camels could be very stupid about a great many things, but they were never, ever wrong about water.

  Teshar stumbled on, completely camel-less.

  She also suspected she was getting a sunburn. She hadn’t had one since she was a toddler; Teshar had moderately dark skin. Out here, she suspected that moderately dark skin was not going to help her for much longer. She felt puffy and stinging, as well as tired, bruised and thirsty. Very very thirsty. Very, very . . .

  She used up her second bottle before nightfall.

  The sun set. Teshar said, “Good riddance. No offense, Reih,” and was surprised at how her voice sounded.

  And then she panicked for a moment, because she had been walking toward the setting sun, toward the west. She had been thinking about going toward the sun all morning, after all, and at some point, she must have gotten disoriented and started doing it again. How long ago? How long had she spent walking away from water and civilization?

  She turned herself around—it seemed a greater effort even than walking, to break her momentum that way—and wandered into the growing dark. It might not be water, but it was at least cooler. It would be almost pleasant, at least until the desert night got truly cold.

  Teshar wondered, during her long trek, if it were possible to wander so far out into the desert that time got left behind just like everything else in the world. It sometimes seemed just as possible as the other explanation, which was that she had gotten thoroughly sun-touched. She wasn’t sure if it were her first night, or the second, or tenth, when she found herself scolding the still-full moon in much the same tone that first-mother used for Teshar’s younger brothers. “Hot, cold, hot, cold, why can’t you gods just make up your minds?” During the day, she pleaded piteously for water to all the gods she could think of, but gave up after getting stuck on Jehoti for the third (or fifth, or tenth) time. One day, she noticed that Nekaba’s totem birds were giving her a ceremonial escort from the sky, and felt quite flattered.

  And then, some unmeasured time later, she fell down a sand dune and lay there, under the noon sun, in great confusion, because once again her legs would not work for her. Didn’t I do this part already? Haven’t I been here before?

  Nekaba landed beside her in a storm of black feathers. “Well, not exactly,” she said. “The first time, it was magic. The second time, exhaustion. This time it’s just death, youngling. Much easier to deal with.”

  But what if I don’t want to?

&nb
sp; At the top of the dune, Reih looked over the edge of his sun-boat, glorious and remote and unsympathetic. “The law is the law. The law says that if a girl does not drink a certain measure of water, she will die. The law does not consider her wishes.”

  But I still don’t want to!

  Above Teshar, something eclipsed Reih, something dark enough to fall into. It was quiet and cool, that blessed temperature between roasting day and shivering night, and Teshar’s skin luxuriated in the feeling of its shadow. It had, she thought, pointed ears. And, deep in the darkness, golden-green eyes.

  “If you have come to this place,” Anhyr the jackal said gently, “there is nothing left but me. Do not fear me, my child. I am he who walks beside you in the shadowed places, and he who guides you to the new country. I have borne away the suffering of nations and Emperors. Yours is no greater burden, although, for such a little one, it must seem very little less.”

  In the dream-space she was in, looking at Anhyr’s soft darker-than-black fur was almost the same as touching it. “I’m not afraid of you,” Teshar said, and realized it was true. “I just—I want so much—” She couldn’t even tell what she wanted, but she was certain it was the strongest feeling she had ever had.

  Anhyr closed his green eyes and turned away.

  Teshar tried to stretch out her hand, half-wanting to call him back, and realized she couldn’t.

  Her limbs were roasting, her eyes were full of sand, and there were no gods anywhere. I was dreaming again . . .

  But there was a shadow.

  It came down the dune as gracefully as unattainable water, and padded toward her.

  Not a jackal. A lioness, lean as starvation but burning with visible vitality, an energy as potent as the sun. She glowed, gold where the sun struck her, hot molten bronze in the shadow. Teshar met the animal’s eyes and felt the remaining breath go out of her in a gasp; there was joy there, enough to make a mere human dance herself to death, but also fury enough to tear apart a world. Lust, hunger, thirst, hatred, love, all present in soul-destroying intensity—the eyes of madness and glory.