A Rising Moon
Page 20
“Still awake?” Sorcha whispered sleepily in the dark.
“Sorry. I keep thinking about my meeting with Eideard today.”
“Oh.” The reply was flat, the inflection telling. Silence. A breath. “He wants you to be . . .” Another breath. “. . . like your mother and his uncle.”
“Yes.”
“Is that what you want, too?”
Orla closed her eyes. “I don’t know what I want.” Then she realized what Sorcha had implied, and her eyes opened again, searching for the curve of Sorcha’s body in the darkness. “Sorcha, my mother and Maol Iosa were never lovers, and I don’t want Eideard Iosa that way either. Never. You don’t have to worry.”
Sorcha’s hand found hers, their fingers intertwining though neither of them spoke again. The touch was comfort enough. Orla heard Sorcha’s breath begin to deepen and slow, her fingers relaxing. Orla slid her hand from Sorcha’s and rose from their makeshift bed, pulling on a woolen robe and tying it around her, slipping her feet into leather sandals. She opened the tent flap and went out; her anamacha glided alongside her but not close enough for her to hear their voices. She made her way between the tents to the perimeter of the encampment. The guard on watch stiffened and grabbed his pike as she approached, then relaxed as the torc around her neck reflected the light of the torch alongside him.
“Draoi Orla. You’re up early. It’s a hand of stripes yet till dawn.”
“I needed to walk,” she told him.
“It may not be safe outside the encampment.”
“You don’t have to be concerned. The Moonshadow walks with me,” she told him. She saw his gaze search the air around her, seeing nothing, even though she could feel the chill of the anamacha at her left side and see their ghostly faces appearing and vanishing again, her mother’s among them.
The guard relaxed and moved aside. “Don’t go far,” he told her. “Stay where we can hear you and respond quickly if you call.”
“I will,” she told him. “Don’t worry.”
She went out into the moonlit landscape, the grass wet around her feet and ankles. She found a fallen tree overlooking a creek running down toward the Meadham. The stream’s water was loud in the night, rivulets splashing white around the rocks of its bed. The torches of the camp were a glow just uphill as she sat. The voices of others were falling stars in the night, ephemeral and fleeting as she recalled their words.
Ceiteag: “I see two paths for you . . .”
Magaidh: “It’s too soon. She’s not ready.”
Eideard: “Altan Savas killed your mother. He killed my uncle. How can we not hate him for that? . . . Now Savas sits in Muras like an obstinate turtle, and we sit here. We have no sense of what he intends to do. . . .”
A winter snow pressed against her back, sending the thoughts scattering.
“I know. I told Eideard that you didn’t hate Savas,” she whispered into the night.
“You only tried once?”
“Then show me,” Orla said.
She found herself in Magh da Chèo, its storm-wracked landscape a darkness interrupted by fitful blue lightning. The ghost of her mam was already there, separated from the other draoi and standing before her. The sight of her face made Orla yearn to clasp her in her arms, but there would be no warmth, no body to embrace. Her mam was a shade of light and shadow, no more—as I will be one day, she reminded herself. She faced her mother.
Orla nodded.
Voada lifted her hands to the sky, but no lightning sliced down from the storm clouds to her fingertips. Instead her mam seemed to grasp the lowering clouds themselves. Orla moved her hands in the pattern she’d been taught, chanting the words to bind the net and pull the energy from her mam to herself. This was different from the other spells, though. The spells she’d cast in the past had been designed for battle; they were harsh and furious, snarling against the spell cage. This spell was more like trying to hold seal oil: slippery, cold, and draining through her fingers. Softer. Quieter.
When the cage she’d woven seemed full, Voada whispered the release words in Orla’s head: “Bruidhinn nam fhochair.” Speak in my presence.
Orla repeated the words, and the world changed around her once more.
Magh da Chèo had vanished, but she was no longer in the night meadow outside the encampment. She was . . . honestly, she wasn’t sure where she was. In a house, it seemed, on an upper floor; from the open window, she could look out westward over Muras toward the quay where she’d burned the ships, the river shimmering in the moonlight. There were lanterns lit on the wharves, and men moved through the light, carrying timber and tools. She could hear the faint sounds of hammers and saws and the quiet commands of the shipwrights as they directed the work. At least two ships appeared to be nearly ready to sail again. They’re rebuilding what we destroyed, Orla realized. That’s why Savas hasn’t moved his army . . .
There was the sound of a sword sliding from its scabbard behind her, and Orla turned to see a half-naked older man sitting up in his bed, the sword in his hand and the blankets pooled around his waist. His chest hair was graying along with that on his head, the body still retaining the shadow of what once had been a muscular, toned one, now crisscrossed with scars. There was a younger man asleep in the same bed, but he didn’t wake—Orla wondered if that was part of the spell. The man with the sword was staring directly at her; she wondered what he saw.
Almost as he had heard the voices, Savas spoke. “Voada?” His voice was husky and low with sleep. The man alongside him didn’t stir.
“No,” Orla told him. “I’m Orla, Voada’s daughter.”
Savas blinked heavily. “Yes, the face . . . you have some of her appearance, but younger. I saw you in the chariot with the Clan Iosa banner, and I knew I’d felt that draoi’s power in the past. You nearly killed my sub-commander Ilkur. Why are you troubling my sleep, phantom?”
“I’m not a phantom,” Orla told him. “My mam said she spoke to you this way once before, when you were both on Onglse.”
Savas’ eyes narrowed at that, and he lifted the sword, pointing it toward her though he didn’t move from the bed. “I’d almost forgotten that. Her appearance startled me so much that I cut her with this sword, and the blade only passed through her like smoke. I thought her a strange and lucid dream, talking of peace and truce, especially since she never came to me again. That truly was her?”
Orla nodded. “It was. She was no dream. Neither am I. And your weapon is unnecessary. You already know you can’t touch me, but neither can I touch you.”
Savas placed the sword across his lap, though his hand didn’t leave the weapon. He glanced at the man sleeping next to him. Orla recognized the stubbled face—the driver of Savas’ chariot. Were they lovers? The Mundoa Orla had known considered such relationships at best shameful and at worst an abomination, and the Cateni were generally the same. Neither cul
ture admitted openly that some people might be attracted to their own gender. Do we share that affliction, Savas and I? Do we both keep the same secret?
“Maybe my sword can’t touch you . . . or maybe it can,” Savas was saying to her. “What does Voada’s daughter want that she’d haunt my sleep? Revenge?”
“That’s a good trait for someone in command, but dream or real, you look rather young to be ceanndraoi. Or are you telling me that the Red-Hand’s been deposed at last?”
His voice held a strange inflection she couldn’t quite understand, and his eyes narrowed as he said the words, as if the idea that Greum might no longer be the ceanndraoi worried him.
“No,” she answered, but Orla’s voice lacked force. Yes, her mam—or rather the anamacha as a whole—wanted her to hold the title. The Moonshadow wasn’t content being a mere draoi under another’s command. She wondered if that was why her mother had made the decision to leave Onglse and attack the south on her own without consulting Greum Red-Hand, if the Moonshadow and those within the anamacha had known that by doing so they would become ceanndraoi by default—and so they’d forced their will on Voada.
“I’m almost surprised at that,” Savas was saying.
“Why?” Orla asked, then stopped, the word only half spoken as she looked at his face. “No, I know why. You feel you would have lost the battle had Ceanndraoi Greum not sounded the retreat. That’s why you didn’t pursue us, and that’s why you thought Greum would lose his title.”
Savas lifted an eyebrow. “Perhaps, Dream,” he said, but the way he said the word made her wonder if she’d spoken the truth or if there were some other reason she was missing. Surely Savas hadn’t known how exhausted Orla had been or that Magaidh and the other draoi had felt the same. He couldn’t have realized how many of the Cateni warriors had already fallen, that there were no reserves waiting, that the Cateni had staked all they had on that battle. Had Greum Red-Hand stayed, had he not fled, it might have been Savas who called for retreat. “However, battles can’t be refought,” Savas continued. “Every battle is a new one, even when on the same ground with the same opponents. You may tell Greum Red-Hand that we’re prepared for him if he wants to try us again.”
“You don’t intend the battle to be here,” Orla told him, gesturing to the window. “You’re rebuilding the ships we destroyed. You, the Great-Voice, and Emperor Pashtuk want Onglse. You want it because of what taking the island would represent to the clans, the draoi, and all Cateni.”
Now both Savas’ eyebrows were raised, and his fingers tightened around the leather-wrapped grip of his sword, then slowly relaxed. He yawned. With one hand he nudged his bed companion, who still didn’t wake. Savas looked back to Orla. “So we both dream . . . Why are we talking, Dream Orla? If you want to know your enemy, you already do.”
“Perhaps we shouldn’t be enemies.”
“Yet we are. I told your mam this when she came to me as you have: I’m a simple man, a soldier who obeys his orders. Nothing more.”
“My mam didn’t agree with that. She thought you clever—and dangerous, yes, but also someone she respected, even as an enemy. She hoped there might be a way to find peace.”
“If there was, I didn’t see it then, and I don’t see it now. So tell me, Dream Orla: are you like your mam?”
“I don’t know,” she answered honestly.
“Do you think you can defeat your enemy where your mam failed?”
“I don’t know that either.”
That seemed to amuse Savas. She thought he nearly laughed. “Somehow I suspect we’re to find out.”
“Perhaps we will,” she told him. Orla could feel the spell fading, the room growing fainter around her. She didn’t try to hold it but instead let the vision fall away entirely. She found herself still standing in the moonlit meadow, the grass dew-wet around her feet. The fires of the camp were yellow stars at the top of the hill behind her.
She turned and began walking toward them.
* * *
After the Dream Orla vanished—no, she couldn’t have been a dream, for Altan was as awake now as he’d been when Orla had been standing like a glimmering specter at the foot of his bed—Altan placed the sword back in its scabbard and put it alongside the bed. He shook Tolga’s arm again, and this time the younger man blinked and yawned, a hand over his mouth.
“Altan?” Tolga grumbled. “It’s not morning yet. Is something the matter? Can’t you sleep?”
“A strange dream woke me,” Altan said.
Tolga ran his hand down Altan’s chest and lower. “A good one, I hope.”
Altan grabbed Tolga’s hand and brought it back up. “I was talking to the dream—to Orla, Voada’s daughter, the draoi with the Moonshadow. You heard nothing?”
Tolga shook his head. “Nothing. She was here?” He looked around as if expecting to see her ghost lingering in the corner of the room. “She didn’t . . .”
“. . . try to kill me?” Altan finished for him. “No. I don’t think she could. But I also think that wasn’t what she wanted.”
“What did she want, then?”
Altan laughed. “To see if there was another way to end the war, evidently,” he said musingly. “Her mother made much the same offer to me once. But unfortunately, that was something I couldn’t give Voada at the time. Now her daughter has arrived and muddied the waters again.” Altan sighed. “It’s been three hands of days now. The Red-Hand has had his time to keep our bargain. We’ve waited long enough.”
17
Confronting the Moon
“SHE’S NOT READY.” MAGAIDH’S VOICE.
“Just like you, your mam was certain of the shape of things. And just as wrong,” Ceiteag seemed to answer in her head. Then Eideard’s voice drowned them both out.
“Your mother was ceanndraoi; you could claim the same title. That’s what Greum Red-Hand is afraid of.”
And last came Savas’ comment: “Why are we talking, Dream Orla? . . . So tell me, Dream Orla: are you like your mam?”
The statements, questions, and opinions echoed and danced and argued inside Orla’s head, but she could neither refute nor answer them. Orla stared at her anamacha. The features of the draoi captured inside flitted across its face: male, female, old, young, smiling, scowling, furious, and sympathetic. All of the spirits who were once alive, once just like her. She didn’t know most of their names—she’d never called them to her, had never heard their stories. Their voices were simply part of the hidden chorus.
She feared she would soon be just another of them, her own name and life forgotten. Not like Leagsaidh herself. Not like Iomhar. Not like your mam. Their names will always be remembered because of what they accomplished.
On her return to the camp, Orla had told Eideard what she’d gleaned from Savas. Eideard had immediately gone to Greum Red-Hand; he was still with him, as far as Orla knew. Orla had wandered outside the camp again, out to the ring of oak trees under a sky that mirrored her gloom. She hadn’t spoken to Sorcha, to Magaidh, to Ceiteag, but their voices were with her.
“Sometimes you’re not given a choice,” Magaidh’s memory whispered to her.
Choices. “How can I choose when I don’t know enough?” Orla said to the air.
“Then learn what it is you need to know.” The voice sounded like Sorcha’s, enough that Orla turned around to see if she was there. But there were only the oaks, the grass, and the songs of the birds.
And her anamacha, barely visible under the canopy of an oak tree, star
ing at her. Waiting. The anamacha wore a single face, not multiple fleeting ones. A woman. Orla knew immediately who it was: Leagsaidh Moonshadow.
Impulsively, Orla opened her arms. “Come to me,” she said. The anamacha obediently—and eagerly, too eagerly—glided forward, sliding into Orla’s body and bringing with it the noise and clamor of the Otherworld it inhabited. The shades within the anamacha crowded around her, their voices shrill.
She saw Iomhar, who only shook his head sadly at her. Then the shades scattered like frightened birds as her mam strode through the crowd of them, her ghostly face stern.
“Mam,” she began, “I have to know what I can do. I need to know if I’m strong enough.”
The chorus returned, agreeing.
“Mam, it’s useless for me to hold the Moonshadow if I can never dare to use her.”
Her mam’s face became more solid for a moment, more clear, and Orla saw the deep sadness in her eyes and caught the glint of remembered emerald in the irises. The eyes shimmered, but there were no tears; Orla wondered if it were even possible for a taibhse to cry. Voada’s hands stretched toward her, and Orla grasped for them, but it was as impossible as holding smoke.