Sorcerer's Moon

by Julian May

  Both Beynor and the Salka planned to use moonstone sigils, instruments of sorcery empowered by the supernatural Beaconfolk, to bring about the reconquest. The auroral Beacons, who were also called the Great Lights, comprised two opposing factions that were embroiled in a mysterious New Conflict of their own. I had been drawn into it against my will – as had numbers of other humans who are also part of this Boreal Moon Tale – but by the end of the mission involving Princess Maudrayne and her son, I mistakenly believed I had escaped the Lights’ thrall.

  The mission itself was both a success and a failure. With the help of loyal companions – and my reluctant employment of two moonstone sigils, which the ‘good’ Light called the Source had compelled me to accept – I rescued Maudrayne and her child Dyfrig from a strange captivity. I was able to convince the princess to recant her spiteful revelation of Conrig’s secret to the Sealords of Tarn. In turn, the High King agreed that young Dyfrig might be placed third in the Cathran royal succession, behind his twin sons Orrion and Corodon, born of his marriage to Risalla of Didion. The boy was to become the adopted son of Earl Marshal Parlian Beorbrook, a Cathran peer of uncompromising honesty. To assure the child’s loyalty to the Sovereign, Dyfrig would never see or communicate with his mother again.

  Unknown to me, Ironcrown was too cynical to trust his former wife’s promise not to publicly reaffirm his secret talent. After having agreed that Maudrayne would be allowed to live in quiet exile with her Tarnian relatives, he arranged for her murder by poison, which was passed off as suicide. I was so disillusioned by the king’s perfidy that I left his service without permission. I fled to a remote region of western Tarn, accompanied by a young woman named Induna of Barking Sands, an apprentice shaman-healer who had earlier saved my life and also assisted in the rescue of Maudrayne and her son. For a few months I lived with Induna and her mother in a tiny village near Northkeep.

  In the best of romantic endings I should have married Induna and made a new life for myself, secure from the Sovereignty’s tumult and intrigues as well as from the more subtle machinations of the Beaconfolk.

  The reality was messier.

  Shortly after my abrupt resignation from the intelligencer post, I sent a message to Conrig via his elder brother Vra-Stergos, Cathra’s Royal Alchymist, who had been friendly toward me during my years of service to the king. In it I apologized for my affront to the regal dignity (but gave no reason for my dereliction of duty), swore that I intended to continue guarding Conrig’s secret with my life, and said that I wanted only to be left in peace. I also returned the considerable sum of money vouchsafed to me by the Crown when I was granted knighthood.

  There was no reply to my message, and none of my later attempts to windspeak Lord Stergos were successful. He and Conrig were occupied with more urgent matters. The king’s domestic enemies, Cathra’s Lords of the Southern Shore, had demanded that he defend himself against persistent Tarnian accusations that he possessed magical talent, was thus not the legitimate High King of Cathra, and therefore was unworthy of Tarn’s fealty.

  The official inquiry was as brief as it was dramatic. No member of Cathra’s Mystical Order of Zeth could swear that they detected talent in the king. (The scrupulously honest Vra-Stergos was saved from having to condemn his brother because of the precise wording of the oath, even though he knew well enough that the accusation was true.) Maudrayne was believed dead and unable to renew her denunciation, and I was shielded by sorcery and refused to testify. Since there were no other witnesses against Conrig who had status under Cathran law, he won his case easily.

  The Sealords of Tarn cursed all lawyers and grudgingly continued to pay the heavy taxes imposed by the Sovereignty. The wealthy Lords of the Southern Shore did the same, thwarted in their attempt to put Duke Feribor Blackhorse, their ringleader, on the Cathran throne in place of Conrig.

  In the devastated little kingdom of Moss, far from the tranquil cottage on the edge of the Western Ocean where I dwelt with Induna and her mother, the Salka hunkered down in the lands they had overrun and pondered the next big step in the reconquest of ‘their’ island. They owned numbers of minor moonstone sigils which they had already successfully used as weapons, and hatched plans to obtain others that were more potent. Conjure-Queen Ullanoth, who had ruled Moss before the Salka invasion, was believed by most people to have perished through imprudent use of her sigils. Her scheming younger brother Beynor had dropped out of sight after quarreling with the victorious monsters, his former secret allies. No one knew (or cared) what had become of him.

  With the security of the Sovereignty now his primary concern, Conrig garrisoned troops at crucial points along the Dismal Heights from Rainy Pass to Riptide Bay, supposedly making a land invasion of Didion by the Salka impossible. At the same time the formidable Joint Fleet of the Sovereignty, equipped with tarnblaze cannons, patrolled the waters off the island’s eastern coast in a show of strength designed to keep the amphibians in check. In spite of the blockade, the monsters made several waterborne forays against coastal settlements of Didion and Cathra. But finally, in a single decisive battle, the Salka stronghold in the Dawntide Isles was completely destroyed by the Sovereignty, and an interval of peace settled over High Blenholme.

  As for myself, Induna and her mother Maris, a much-admired shaman in Tarn’s coastal Stormlands, had invited me to stay with them indefinitely in order to learn the healer’s art, since I no longer had any taste for spying. Using part of the fortune she had inherited from her late grandsire, the renegade wizard Blind Bozuk, Induna purchased a fine manorhouse and lands that lay in a pleasant place called Deep Creek Cove, backed by grasslands. For my sake the manor was fortified with ingenious magical defenses. Rumors persisted that High King Conrig still thought I was even more of a threat to his Iron Crown than Maudrayne had ever been. Induna and I both feared he’d eventually send someone to eliminate me, and we resolved to be ready.

  Maris was a kind person endowed with singular wisdom, who helped me to a deeper understanding of my uncanny abilities. (Up until then, I had been entirely self-taught in magic.) She also gave me valuable advice concerning the two moonstone sigils, Concealer and Subtle Gateway, that were still in my possession. I yearned to cast those soul-destroying tools of the Beaconfolk into the deep sea so I’d never again be tempted to use them; but Maris counseled against it. In one of her trances, she’d had a puzzling vision concerning me and the stones and an enigmatic black creature bound with sapphire chains who dwelt beneath the icecap of the Barren Lands. Maris had no notion of the dark thing’s identity – although I had! – but she was certain that my destiny involved both the creature and the two sigils. When Induna added her pleas to those of her mother, I finally agreed to keep the moonstones.

  Induna…

  She later admitted that she had loved me almost as soon as she first saw me lying senseless in a rock shelter on the Desolation Coast, at the point of death after having rashly used the Subtle Gateway sigil to transport me and my companions and all our gear to the place where Maudrayne and Dyfrig were imprisoned. Induna realized at once that my mortal illness was the result of Beaconfolk sorcery. The terrible beings of the Sky Realm were feeding on my pain, and no groundling remedy could heal me.

  So she shared with me a small portion of her own soul, in a manner that only northland shamans are capable of. It left her diminished even as it cured me. Later, she performed the same mystical operation once again, shortly before I decided to renounce my fealty to King Conrig. Her selfless acts of generosity did not immediately inspire my love. On the contrary, I was left with vague feelings of discomfort and indebtedness that only melted away during the long months when we worked together and began to really know one another.

  I was amazed when it finally occurred to me that life without her would be unthinkable. The emotion I felt toward Induna at that time was no overwhelming passion: I was then, as I am now, a man plagued by an aloof and calculating nature. But she was my best friend, my teacher, and my comforter
, and if I did not yet love her as wholeheartedly as she loved me, I still wanted none other for my wife.

  We were solemnly betrothed according to Tarnian custom, and planned to marry in the summer of 1134, in Blossom Moon, when I was one-and-twenty years of age and Induna was eighteen. But the Cathran warship arrived in the waters off Deep Creek Cove three weeks before that, and our happy plans came to nothing.

  Commanded by Tinnis Catclaw, the same debonair but unscupulous Lord Constable who had agreed to murder Princess Maudrayne on Conrig’s orders, the vessel carried a coven of mercenary Didionite wizards. Six of the disguised magickers came stealthily ashore and combined their talents to overpower Induna and Maris while they were beyond our home’s magical defenses, visiting the byre of a local small-holder to attend the difficult birth of a foal. I myself had been working with them, until I was sent back to the manorhouse to fetch a special physick to soothe the suffering mare. I was there when the wizards announced their ultimatum.

  I was ordered to row out to the warship lurking just beyond the cove’s northern headland and surrender to the Lord Constable, who carried the Sovereign’s warrant for my arrest…or else scry my womenfolk as they were burnt alive in a tarnblaze holocaust that would leave behind nothing but a heap of charred bones.

  The horrific tarnblaze chymical was impervious to any sorcerous intervention I might have attempted, nor had I any hope of reaching Induna and Maris before it could be ignited. I had no choice but to comply.

  I left the place that had become my only true home and allowed myself to be shackled and hauled aboard the Cathran man o’ war. Lord Catclaw awaited me on deck, an oddly apologetic expression on his handsome countenance and his long blond hair tied in a tail. Two armed seamen gripped me. He ordered a third to slice off my clothing and footgear with a keen varg sword, using great caution. When I stood stark naked, the constable smiled in satisfaction as he saw the moonstone sigil called Concealer hanging on a thin chain around my neck. Properly conjured, it would render me invisible. Conrig knew about it, of course. I had used it in his service.

  ‘Don’t think to call upon your devilish Beaconfolk amulet,’ Catclaw warned me, ‘or I’ll have this fellow here bespeak the other wizards on shore to ignite the tarnblaze.’ He beckoned to a black-robed magicker standing nearby, who held a golden goblet and a pair of nippers. ‘You! Get the sigil off him. I’ve been told it cannot be conjured unless it’s next to his skin. Be very careful not to handle it yourself, except with the cup and tool. The High King himself has warned me of its perils.’

  The wizard eased the translucent small pendant into the goblet, then severed its chain. Had he touched the moonstone with his own bare flesh, he would have been hideously burned. Concealer was bonded to me, and no one else could use it or even handle it with impunity.

  ‘Where is the second sigil?’ Catclaw demanded. ‘The one called Subtle Gateway, which transports a person instantly from place to place? I have been commanded by the King’s Grace to seize both amulets from you and bring them back to him.’

  In spite of all my warnings, sigil sorcery obviously still held an unhealthy fascination for Conrig.

  I responded in a near-whisper, which was all I was capable of without betraying myself. ‘I threw the thing into deep water months ago. His Grace knows full well how much I abominate moonstone magic. Concealer is a minor sort that causes only insignificant discomfort to the user, but Gateway was one of the so-called Great Stones. Conjuring it induced an appalling agony and put my very soul in peril to the pain-eating Beaconfolk. When I rescued Princess Maudrayne and completed my mission, I had no more need of it. I was glad to get rid of the thing.’

  I was lying. But Catclaw was not about to find that out until I learned what he planned to do with me – along with Induna and Maris.

  One of the ship’s officers stepped forward. ‘Shall we go ashore and search for the stone in his house, my lord?’

  ‘Why bother?’ I told the Lord Constable. ‘The sigils are worthless to the High King, whether he realizes it or not. When I die – and I presume my fate is sealed – any sigil owned by me becomes inactive: a worthless piece of rock. I learned how to use them only by a lucky accident. No one knows how to bond them to a new owner save the Salka who made them in the first place. Once, Queen Ullanoth of Moss and her lunatic brother Beynor also knew the secret. But she’s dead and he has disappeared.’

  Tinnis Catclaw frowned and appeared to be considering the matter.

  Emboldened, I asked the all-important question. ‘Do you now intend to kill my betrothed and her mother as well as me?’

  The constable waved a dismissive hand. ‘The threat was only a bluff, a ploy to bring about your capture. Not even the Sovereign would dare harm a well-known shaman-healer such as Maris of Barking Sands, nor her daughter – who is an anointed Sealady of Tarn, albeit one of minimal rank. Such deeds might provoke the touchy Tarnian leaders beyond endurance. At this moment the girl and her mother are harmlessly sleeping off their enchantment, lying in the straw beside a mare and her newborn colt. The hireling wizards have followed my orders and scattered to the four winds. All they care about is how they’ll spend their bags of Cathran gold.’

  I sighed in relief. The only persons that I had ever taken to my heart would be safe now from Conrig’s revenge…but only if I abandoned them.

  ‘How do you intend to dispose of me?’ I asked.

  Catclaw pulled himself up in a dignified huff. ‘Your just punishment will be meted out strictly according to Cathran law. Once this warship rides the high seas, you’ll be tried for treason. Your disavowal of fealty meets the legal criterion. As Lord Constable, I have the judicial authority to order your summary execution. You’ll hang from a yardarm.’

  ‘But do you solemnly swear to me that Induna and Maris will be spared?’

  ‘I’ve already said so,’ Catclaw retorted testily, ‘and I’m a man of honor.’

  ‘Oh, yes?’ I hissed. ‘Did Princess Maudrayne find you honorable?’

  His face drained of color. He gave a sharp command to the seamen who held and surrounded me. ‘All of you – move away from the prisoner! Draw your swords and stand ready, but step back. Farther yet! If he stirs, slay him where he stands.’

  The astonished men retreated a good eight feet away. Catclaw stood very close to me and his voice would have been inaudible to the others.

  ‘Since you are to die within the hour, I’ll tell you how I dealt with Princess Maude. I was indeed commanded to kill her. I confess that I wrote her suicide note. It stated that she could not bear to live if she would never be allowed to see her son Dyfrig again, as the High King had decreed. I offered her poison…but gave her instead a potion that rendered her senseless and slowed her heart. She lay cold and still as a dead woman on the deck of my frigate, which was docked at Donorvale Quay, ready to return to Cathra with the boy. The Tarnian authorities bore witness to the sudden and tragic demise of the princess. Her body was placed in a lead coffin and kept in my own cabin, covered with a blanket of roses, until it could be buried at sea. This was High King Conrig’s command, following my own suggestion. Poor little Dyfrig was devastated by his mother’s suicide and could not bear to watch the ceremony. But the coffin my crew consigned to the depths of the Western Ocean was empty.’

  I nearly choked upon that which I held inside my cheek. ‘Alive?’ I gasped.

  ‘She was the most beautiful woman I’d ever known,’ Tinnis Catclaw said. ‘Conrig Ironcrown cast her off when it seemed she could not bear him a son. He declared her an archenemy of the Sovereignty and commanded her death. But I had long loved her from afar. I still do – even though I am now able to visit her only on rare occasions in my hunting lodge north of Swan Lake, where she willingly remains hidden for the sake of Prince Dyfrig. Maude is a proud and spirited soul. But she is…kind to me. And kings do not live forever.’

  ‘Great God,’ I murmured. ‘You are as much a traitor as I.’

  He smiled. ‘And yet, I don’t be
lieve you’ll use your windspeech to reveal my secret before you die.’

  ‘No,’ I agreed. It was the farthest thing from my mind. ‘Conduct your trial, my lord. Prepare the rope. But I ask a favor, as one turncoat to another. Dress me in decent clothing beforehand, restore my knight’s belt and purse, and forgo shackles. I swear I’ll behave with dignity. And as I go to my death, let your wizard stand a few ells away holding the chalice with my sigil. It would give me a melancholy comfort to have it near me.’

  He agreed.

  Later, while the great ship sliced the waves on its southerly course, and those members of the crew who were not on watch gathered in solemn ranks to witness my dispatch, I mounted the improvised scaffold unfettered.

  ‘Do you have any last words?’ the Lord Constable asked me.

  ‘My lord, I bear you and the King’s Grace no malice,’ I told him. Tell Conrig that. And now, farewell.’

  He stepped back to accommodate the hangman. I lifted my arm and cried out, ‘Concealer – to me!’

  The sigil flew out of the cup and into my waiting hand. A roar of surprise rose from the astounded crew. But before a man of them could move, I intoned the brief spell that conjured the tiny door-shaped carving called Subtle Gateway, hardly larger than a thumbnail, which had been concealed in my mouth since I quit the manorhouse.

  Agony smote me like a thunderclap. I knew that it was going to last for a long time, disabling me profoundly – perhaps even fatally – and this time there’d be no respite vouchsafed by Induna. The Great Lights would eat their fill of my pain without hindrance.

  But if I survived, I’d open my eyes in the southernmost region of the continental nation of Andradh, over two thousand leagues away, far beyond the reach of Conrig Ironcrown, Sovereign of High Blenholme Island, and perhaps even beyond that of the Beaconfolk themselves.