Dark is the Moon

by Ian Irvine

  “From there I was able to gain access to the space inside. I clambered in, creeping along beams of metal and timber until I judged that I was above the dais. It was dark inside the roof, but not pitch dark.

  “The ceiling of the hall was made of metal panels, pressed into intricate patterns. I prised up the edge of one with the knife and put my eye to the sliver of light.

  “The judging seemed to be nearly complete; there were only a handful of Charon on the near side. But I was some distance from where I needed to be.

  “Suddenly the pain was back, a terrible desperate pain that would not allow me to think. It went, then it came back again. I could not even remember who I was.

  “By the time it receded I was too weak to crawl the few paces that I needed. My boot had filled with fresh blood. Inspiration took me! I tore off the boot.

  “I poured the blood onto the panel. It made a small pool there, about as much as a full tea bowl. I forced a corner of the metal down and the blood began to drip through the ceiling, right onto the table, the papers and the presiding Aachim.

  “I did not look down, but the sudden silence, and the tumult that followed, told me what I needed to know. Later I learned the sensation that the blood had caused—a symbol of doom and disaster. The diversion gave me the minute’s rest that I needed.

  “I dragged myself along until I was directly above the spot that I wanted. The panels were soldered with lead. I sawed it away from three sides.

  “I judged the fall once more. It was a long way, five or six spans at least. Wounded as I was, the fall might well kill me. Certainly I would break bones.

  “I swung myself up above the panel and clung there. My side wailed in agony; my head swam; my stomach heaved. I spewed there on the beam. No time to rest; they were hurrying through the judging, upset by the omen.

  “I dropped, crashed through the panel and fell like a stone, down and down, onto the center of the long table. It split beneath me and the legs at one end collapsed. I felt the most shocking pain that I have ever felt, and looked down to see the shattered ends of my thigh bone protruding through the flesh. The golden stitches along my side burst open; red foam sprayed across the table. I wept bloody tears. The two venerable Aachim stared at the gruesome wreck before them. They were too shocked to move. With the last vestige of will my body could summon, I swept them into one arm and put my knife to their throats.

  “The Aachim were staring all, their agony seemingly as great as my own. My eyes picked out a single face in the crowd, the red-haired woman who had wounded me that morning. Her eyes were sunken as craters; her face as blanched as the white of an egg. I had obliterated her house. Elienor! I pity her now. I spat blood on the floor and spoke to her, to all the Aachim. My voice was a whisper, but that was enough.

  “‘Throw down your arms!’ I cried. ‘The Charon have come to Aachan, and it is ours.”

  “To my surprise they made no resistance. The rest took only a minute, and then—blessed oblivion.”

  Rulke came back to himself slowly. He looked to Llian. “So it was that a hundred captured a world. The Hundred! So the Charon survived. That is my tale. Every word of it is truth.’

  47

  * * *

  THE REPLY

  Llian bowed to Rulke. His face was austere, but inside he was exultant. Rulke’s had been a masterly tale, a barbaric splendor, and none who heard it were unmoved. But for all that, it was a simple tale, a performance. A tale told too well, too truthfully, and to his challenger rather than his audience. Or rather, he had told his tale as if the audience was Llian, perhaps unconsciously seeking to impress the great teller. And he had, but watching the faces of the Whelm, Llian had noticed that they were shocked and disturbed by something Rulke had described.

  I know what moves them, Llian thought. It was Rulke’s selfindulgence that had put the Charon in such a dire extreme, necessitating his heroic acts, and this jarred against the rigid codes that were everything to the Ghâshâd. To them duty was all, but Rulke had failed that duty. He had put his lust, his glory, his honor before the survival of the Charon, and his reckless courage had not redeemed him in their eyes.

  Llian threw out the tale he had been mentally rehearsing and began to construct another. At the same time he worked to suppress his personality as much as possible. The Ghâshâd were an ascetic, sober folk who frowned on pleasure and frivolity. The message, not the telling! No rhetoric, just a plain tale with a meaning that they could not fail to understand.

  “My tale begins long afterwards,” he said in a soft, neutral voice, “almost at the time of the Forbidding. And the subject of my story is an entirely different people: not great, not proud. Their vision had a smaller compass. Theirs was to serve. Duty, loyalty, honor that was what their lives were made for. And they were called Myrmide, a word which in their tongue meant to serve and to obey without question.

  “Where they came from, no one knows. They settled in the southeast of Lauralin, beyond the land of Ogur and the Black Sea. A small, slender, black-haired people they were, and at first the cold troubled them terribly, for the place they had been driven to was under snow for six months of the year, and the sea covered in ice for four. The Ghâsh Peninsula, that place was called, and still is.”

  Rulke sat bolt upright on his stool, frowning. He knows what I’m up to, Llian thought. I’m not going to get away with this.

  “The full name was Ghâsh-ad-Nâsh, that is to say, fume-and-fire, for the long extension of that land into the Kara Nâshâl (the Smoking Sea) was dotted with vents from which liquid rock flowed, and steam, smoke and ash blasted into the sky. But later they found this place much to their liking, for there were secret valleys where the springs stayed hot even when the sun had set for the long winter and the ground froze as hard as iron.

  “One peculiarity these Myrmide had, and that was this: they must have a master and a purpose, else they were nothing. Their whole lives, pride and worth were invested in such service. Their master at the time of my tale was Bandiar, a minor necromanter but an important person on the peninsula though the world would never have heard of him if it had not been for Shuthdar.

  “After Shuthdar fled to Santhenar with the stolen flute,” Llian glanced at Rulke, who was watching him keenly, “he was ever hunted. Eventually he fled to backward places where the people were uncouth and spoke strange languages, but the result was always the same. Toward the end he ended up in the Ghâsh Peninsula, and even there he was harried. Shuthdar was old, tired and crippled now. His life had been one bitterness piled on another until he came to hate all things, including life. The only thing in his life was his beautiful flute.”

  “My flute,” said Rulke, almost inaudibly.

  “He took refuge in a cave on that frozen shore, where one day Bandiar found him and brought him back to his fastness. Why did Bandiar do so? He too lusted after the flute, though he was clever enough not to show it. If he treated Shuthdar kindly, asking nothing of him, Shuthdar would in the end come to rely on him utterly.

  “But Shuthdar, though decrepit beyond imagining, had a mind as mad and sharp as a pin. In his life he had known many kinds of people, but they had all wanted the one thing. He knew that Bandiar was no different.

  “From the moment Shuthdar arrived he caused trouble. He was paranoid and cunning, wicked and malicious; a creature of perverse and deadly lusts. In the dark corners of the castle none was safe from him: neither girl nor crone, old man nor boy, nor beast neither. Though he was crippled and moved with a crabwise scuttle, when hot in his lusts he could scuttle with frightening speed, and those withered arms were strong as spring steel.

  “But Bandiar would not stay Shuthdar in any way. He excused all these crimes as the small failings of a genius, so that Shuthdar took delight in each new and sordid escapade that went unchecked. His excesses became marvels of theater and exhibitionism, and soon all learned to keep clear of the dreadful thing.”

  Llian saw on the faces of the judges only contempt for such
a master, for as the servants had a duty to the master, so the master’s duty was equally sacred. Now to draw the next link.

  “The Myrmide were a people inclined to melancholy. Outside duty their only pleasure was music. Their music was beautiful but doleful, like dry wind among ruins; like tapping on icicles. Apart from music they wanted but one thing: to meet their master’s purpose as best they could, and never question it, not even when it became clear that the one Bandiar fawned upon was a malicious creature who considered nothing but his own desires; who took all and gave nothing.

  “Time wore on and still Shuthdar stayed, for Bandiar had power to protect him from the wolves that had tormented him in every other place, and wealth to gratify even his most sordid whims. But the absence of any check and the gratification of every whim gave Shuthdar license to think of excesses so abominable that eventually not even the most degraded would come to him.

  “What can Bandiar have thought each time Shuthdar came whining and accusing him? Let us be charitable and imagine that he thought: ‘Just this once will I indulge him, and surely he will give me what I want.’ Whatever, events took a nasty new turn. Young people began to disappear, taken by force. At first they turned up again afterwards, after a day; a week; or a month. Some told tales of unspeakable degradation, but others could not speak at all.

  “Bandiar’s subjects beat on the great doors of the stronghold, demanding Shuthdar’s head. Bandiar refused them, coldly. The Myrmide, who were servants, soldiers, spies all, remained loyal to their master. They drove the peasants away with fire and terror, out into the snow. Even little children they struck down, for this showed best how committed they were to their master’s purpose.

  “Then the people did the only thing they could. All power and wealth resided with Bandiar, while they had none. They would not risk their children any more. Weeping and wailing they abandoned their lands and homes and withdrew into the mountains, and many died there in the winter. But theirs is another tale.

  “Now the Myrmide began to feel an agonizing doubt—that the master they served so loyally was a fool who was made a fool of. But this doubt, this disloyalty, they suppressed.”

  Llian paused to grasp a mug of water. The trials of the past week were catching up. He barely had the strength to stay on his feet. What was worse, he could feel his control of the tale going. He crashed the mug down, then continued.

  “All Bandiar’s ends were now directed to getting the flute, or the secret of it, from Shuthdar, and in this Shuthdar played with him most cunningly, and took much amusement from his game. Every now and again he would give Bandiar a clue—a word, a scroll, once a lengthy book full of strange diagrams and descriptions of alarming or abstract processes. But the clues only led into a maze of intersecting puzzles and paradoxes, for Shuthdar had made them all up. When Bandiar complained, Shuthdar would insult him or mock him for being a fool, and then, apparently relenting after days or weeks, would give another teasing clue that seemed to offer a resolution of the puzzle, but in fact led ever deeper into the morass.

  “The Myrmide were caught up in their master’s great project. They saw the researches, the collaboration (as they thought) with Shuthdar, the steady accumulation of work, the ever more intricate models and devices that Bandiar made, all having the appearance of working, with parts that moved and even the production of strange though transitory effects. But in the end—nothing!

  “Then in their innermost minds a little germ of doubt flowered—that they were made fools of. And this led to a heretical thought, that it was not right to use such means to gain his end; that Bandiar was corrupt. But after all he was their master, and without him they were nothing. And he had a good and noble purpose, this secret of the flute, worth any sacrifice. They put aside their doubts and continued to serve.”

  Llian looked to his three judges. Jark-un’s face was hard as stone. Clearly he thought the whole business was a nonsense. Llian knew that he would never sway him. Yetchah had a mobile face for a Ghâshâd, reacting each time he highlighted the Myrmide’s dilemma. What could he say to play upon her sensitivity? And Idlis—he looked as though he had been put on the rack, but Llian judged that it would take a most exceptional tale for him to go against his master. So be it.

  “Now among the Myrmide was one called Nassi, a young woman, and she was accounted the least of them, for she was neglectful of her duty, and this brought shame on her and on all the Myrmide. She was not wicked, though they said that of her; nor lazy—they accused her of that too. She tried to be a good Myrmide, a good servant, but her work was never done for dreaming, or fretting about right and wrong, or just sitting in a warm hidey-hole reading the stories of other lands and other peoples.

  “She had a ready smile and a warm heart; she was generous and laughed a lot. In short, a thoroughly wicked, wilful and unpleasant Myrmide. The others set a better example: they were very stern. Occasionally one or other of them would smile a thin smile but they never laughed. Yet they had a duty to her too, and they never tired of beating her, to teach her her duty. This went on even after she became a woman taller than many of them. But she was big and plump, with a cheerful round open face, and though the beatings hurt her they did not curb her spirit.

  “One task she did well, and that was maintaining Bandiar’s workrooms, though there she found an interest in his work that went beyond the duty of a servant. The Myrmide rebuked her for this; then, realizing that Bandiar was pleased to have her help and liked her for her good humor, they saw that it was, on the whole, a good thing. Bandiar often talked about his project to her with barely a hint of condescension, for she had a quick mind.

  “As time went by the two became closer than may be wise between servant and master. Nassi came to revere her master, yet she would never share his bed. The Myrmide took her aside again. Was there nothing she could do right? She treated Bandiar as a friend, and that was wrong, but when he wished her to do her duty in his bed she refused. There were more beatings, which Nassi endured with good grace, and life went back to what it had been before.”

  Llian knew that in his weariness he was losing his train of thought. The tale was rambling. He forced it back on track.

  “Shuthdar disliked Nassi, for she was the one person he could not fool, and his suggestions to Bandiar that he be given her had been curtly rejected. Even Bandiar would not agree to that. Shuthdar began to lurk in dark passages through which she might pass, hoping to waylay her, but after her first escape she kept to the lighted ways and took great care of herself.

  “There came a time when Bandiar had to go away for a month, and as Nassi by now had few other duties, she spent most of that time in his workrooms, for he had asked her to put in order all the papers related to his great project. Nassi first read enough of each to understand where it belonged, but she began to see a different pattern to the one Bandiar had derived. Doubtless she had made a mistake. She was just a Myrmide, and a lazy one at that.

  “Nassi went over the collection again, carefully, sitting by the fire in Bandiar’s study, a big jar of his sweetmeats beside her, or a box of pastries lifted from the kitchen during the night. Days of reading and eating went by and still it would not fit together the way Bandiar wanted. But it began to fit all too well another way.

  “She lay in the darkness of her room, unable to sleep, turning the pieces of the puzzle over in her mind. More days passed, in which she scarcely slept, pulling the models and machines apart and remaking them in new arrangements. Finally there was no doubt. The purpose that had sustained Bandiar for years, into which he had put his labor and intellect, and most of his wealth, that he had pursued at the expense of his subjects, the Myrmide and all honor and decency, was revealed to be a cruel hoax whose only purpose was to expose his folly.

  “Nassi was struck to the core. Her life and the lives of all the Myrmide were undermined. They had corrupted themselves for nothing. Like Bandiar, they were nothing; a hollow people!”

  Llian looked into the eyes of the ju
dges, one by one. Had Idlis taken the point? He couldn’t tell, but Rulke had. He was scowling fiercely at Llian, his fingers tearing paper into tiny strips, then across. The floor around his stool was littered with confetti.

  Llian scanned the judges once more. Yetchah was turning, he was sure of it. But the other two, still against him. Well, at least Idlis would be forced to cast his vote. Was there anything that would move him?

  “Nassi called the Myrmide to a meet and told them what she had discovered. The Myrmide were shocked, for what she said found an echo in their own fears. But they were outraged too, and humiliated. They stopped their ears against her words, beating her for the betrayal of their master’s honor, the dereliction of her own duty, and her meddling, and threw her into a dank cell at the bottom of the stronghold until Bandiar’s return.

  “These dungeons were a place much to Shuthdar’s liking. He often came down to cling to the bars and cackle at her, for though she discomforted him with her clear sight, he was secretly delighted that someone had seen his joke. She seemed more worthy of his heritage than any other he had met. She understood the complex dimensions and secrets that his mind encompassed, yet she wanted none of them. Perhaps he could corrupt her too.

  “He came night after night, whispering the dark secrets of his trade to her, hoping to make more mischief between her and her master. This place wearied him now.

  “At last Bandiar returned and called the Myrmide to account. Nassi’s crime was so unspeakable that the Myrmide would not tell of it, only pleaded for her death. Bandiar, however, called another meet and bade her say what she had done.

  “She told her story again. The papers were brought down; the models too. Nassi showed the way Bandiar had put them together, how she had changed them, what they did now. She drew it all together, revealed the plan and the malicious joke that it showed. Their master, their whole lives and purpose: nothing!