Changer's Moon

by Clayton, Jo;

  “Ah, Drishha-mi,” she murmured. She set the mallet and chisel on the floor and settled herself on the chair. “Do what you must, but don’t worry about it. I can’t go back with you. Gradintar isn’t my home anymore. You’re still my brother, dearest, you’re always welcome here whenever you are free to come. Curse me if you must.” She found herself laughing, a low warm chuckle that utterly surprised her, so much so that she lost track of what she was saying. She blinked, hesitated, finished, “I won’t take any notice of it.”

  A soft hissing from the Agli. She ignored it, a little afraid now, but not as afraid as she’d expected to be. And glad her robe was clean and fresh, her hair and body were clean and fresh. It gave her a confidence she felt she could trust more than the mysterious sureness she felt in herself, a sureness that was a gift of the Maiden and because of this might vanish as inexplicably as it had come.

  Dris’s face twisted again. She could see the silent pressure the Agli was putting on him, a pressure he was trying to put on her now. She sat quietly as the boy began stammering out his lesson, watching him and listening with sadness and a little impatience.

  “O thou follower of vileness,” Dris shrilled at her. “Thou whore and betrayer. Thou apostate. May thy nights be given to torment, the demons of the lower worlds torment thee in body and mind. May thy days be given to torment, desires that fill thee and whimper in thee; and may no man be tempted to fulfill thee. May worms dwell within thee and eat at thee until thou art rotten and oozing with rot, until thou are corruption itself. May all this be done to thee unless thou renounce the Hag, renounce this rebellion against thy proper role, against those created to be thy guides and protectors. Renounce the Hag and return to thy proper place, Nilis Gradindaughter.” Dris finished his memorized speech, gave a little sigh of relief that he’d got it right. She read in his eyes horror at what he was saying and at the same time a certain satisfaction at his daring to talk like that to her.

  The Agli was looking smug. She saw in him-what she’d never seen before. He hated and feared women. All women, but especially those he couldn’t dominate or control. They were alien creatures who nonetheless could wake feelings in him he was helpless to resist. It was strange to see so clearly, having looked into her own real face, strange and painful because it meant she no longer had the option of pursuing her own goals without fully understanding the pain and distress her acts caused those around her; yet there were things she had to do, so she must take on her shoulders the responsibility for that pain. And with that came the first real understanding of what She had meant when She said the task was hard enough. Not the physical labor, that was easy. Forgive yourself. Yes. She saw the greed and fear and uncertainty and unlovely triumph and need and silly sad stupid blindness in the man standing before her and a part of her—the part that was sustained by the Maiden’s Gift—understood and loved all these unlovely things while the other part of her was angry at Dris and the Agli for disturbing her serenity, for blocking off the thing she felt burgeoning in her, angry at the Agli for driving that baby into pronouncing that curse, a little afraid, but not much, of the curse itself. And even as she sat musing over these things, considering her answer, that other part of her cleared into laughter, laughter that bubbled through her and out of her before she could stop it. She saw the Agli’s face pinch together and laughed yet more, but stopped laughing when she saw it troubled Dris too much.

  “You did well, Drishha brother,” she said. “You learned your lesson well. Clever boy. Not to worry, though, you’ve done no harm.” She turned to the Agli, all desire to laugh draining from her. Words came to her. She spoke through her. “Agli, you act on the assumption that yours will win this encounter and you will not be called to account for the damage you do to those in your care. But I tell you this, you will be called to account for all the hate and all the destruction and all the upheaval you and yours have visited upon the people of the mijloc and the children of the mijloc. I look on you and see that you are sure of your power, sure of your victory, sure that you possess the only truth there is and must win because of this. And I say to you that you should think well what you are doing. If you cannot even shift an unfledged Keeper from her shrine, how will yours shift me from where I dwell?” Nilis blinked but added nothing of her own to what had spoken through her. She sat with her hands folded in her lap, waiting for what must come next.

  The Agli’s face twisted, went hot and red. He pushed Dris roughly aside, not meaning the roughness but in too much haste to do otherwise. Muttering a warding rite, he grabbed at her arm, meaning to jerk her off the chair and drag her out the door. With a shriek that echoed eerily about the room, he wrenched his hand away as if her flesh had seared his. Staring at her, he began backing toward the door, Dris forgotten, everything forgotten except the pain in his withered hand and arm.

  “Your body lives,” she said and could not be sure who spoke. “All things that live lie in the Maiden’s hand and reach.” There was a touch too much satisfaction for her comfort in those words, she hoped it wasn’t dredged up out of her but put that aside for later thought and sat watching him.

  He continued to back away, crouched and sidling sideways like a crab, his dark eyes bulging and madder than anything she’d seen before.

  “Remember, Oh man, you will be called to account for what you do.”

  He turned and ran, vanishing in a step, black robe fluttering about his heels.

  Dris stood forlorn and afraid in the middle of the room, trying not to cry, his world crumbled about him.

  “Drishha,” she said, putting all the patience and gentleness she could find within herself into the words she spoke. “Go home, little brother. Do the best you can to be a good boy so Father will be proud of you when he comes home.” She watched the contradictory emotions play across his half-formed face. He wouldn’t like giving up his autonomy, his power, his sense of bigness, but he did love Tesc and Annie and Tuli and Teras and missed them very much, especially in the middle of the night; she knew that well enough, having tried to comfort him more than once when his loneliness grew too much for him. Now he’d have no one at all except an Agli he’d just seen humiliated. And he knew, without being able to put it in words or even images, that the Agli would be angry at him for being a witness to that humiliation and would punish him for it even though he hadn’t wanted to be there, had whined and wheedled and tried his best to be left behind. It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t right, but that was the way with adults sometimes, they made you do things and when the things went wrong blamed you for doing them and there was no use calling on right or fair. “I hate you,” he shouted at Nilis, then burst into tears and ran out of the room.

  She sat there for some time, too tired to move, too tired even to think, just sat there, hands folded in her lap, staring at the open empty door.

  After a while she thought about the door being open, about the gate to the court of columns being off its hinges. Anyone can walk in on me any time. She twisted her hands together and her mind ran on wheels as she tried to think of a way to bar the door; the hooks had been torn from the wall when the rest of the damage was done; the bar had vanished. Then she remembered the Agli’s face as he touched her, as he tore his hand away. This is Her place, she’ll protect it, protect me. She rubbed at her thighs. But the first Agli, mine, the clown doll—he got the other Keeper out and no one’s seen her since. She didn’t protect her. She was afraid again—and found herself on her feet, glaring across the room. Then she thought, I’ll wedge the bedroom door so I’ll be able to sleep without starting awake at every sound in the night. If anyone tries to break in, that will give me warning enough to put on a robe and comb my hair. She smiled. Face the world clothed and neat.

  Nervous, she wandered through the sacred rooms, looking about, remembering the place as it once was—and would be again if she had any say. She lingered in the meditation room, a small cubicle, bare and cold now. Tapestries worked by tardaughters and Keepers in warm, bright wools used to han
g from the walls, scenes from the chants, lively with flower and beast. The flags had been covered with rush matting, thick and resilient, woven in the Cymbank pattern, complicated but beautiful. Her memory added the faded gold of the dried rushes, catching the light and changing hue as the pattern of the weave changed direction, as the sun changed position outside the small round window set with clear though wavery glass. Scented berrywax candles had filled the room with tart green sweetness. Like village girls and tie-girls, she’d made vigil here when her menses started and here crossed the line from girl to maid. Here she might have made her marriage vigil too, that was a dream as empty now as then, though for other reasons. Looking at the room with remembering eyes she acknowledged her love of it as it was, sighed for the familiar beauty now ashes enriching the earth of the grove.

  She drifted back to the Maiden Chamber, stood looking at the oval emptiness, remembering with a clarity almost painful the face of Her she’d seen in the tower. She closed her eyes and began exploring her own face with her fingers, trying to feel how eye was set beneath the brow, how cheek was flat and curved at once, how it made a sudden turn on a line slanting down from the outer corner of her eye past the corner of her mouth. She explored the complex curves of nose and mouth, touched herself and tried to visualize what touch told her about plane and curve and distance and groped toward a slow comprehension of the bites she was going to make in the stone.

  She picked up the mallet and chisel, balanced them uncertainly in deeply uncertain hands, then got heavily up on the chair seat. She stared at the stone, then ran the fingers of the hand holding the chisel back and forth across the hollow she’d smoothed as best she could. She was afraid. She couldn’t do it. She’d only make a mess of it like the mess she’d made of her life. She tried to fix in her mind the face she remembered. For a shaky moment she remembered nothing, not even her own face. Then the image came back, strong as the feel of the stone under her fingers. She set the chisel against the stone; trembling until she didn’t know if she could control it, she lifted the mallet. Steadying into a kind of desperation, she struck the first blow.

  The light was gone and she was trembling with fatigue when she surfaced. She felt dizzy and uncertain as if every movement had to be made slo-ow-ly, slo-ow-ly, or she would shatter. She shivered. The Maiden Chamber was very cold, the fire was gray ash, the last tints of red had left the little bit of light coming through the tinted glass rounds. She stepped very carefully down from the chair, her hand pressed hard against the wall to give her some sense of balance. She sat heavily, staring down at the mallet and chisel in her lap. After a moment she uncramped her fingers, wincing as the chisel rang musically against the tiles of the mosaic. It was no way to treat tools but she couldn’t think much now, just react. After a minute, she gathered herself and grunted up onto her feet and went slowly back into her living quarters.

  Morning light poured with lively vigor through the stained-glass window, the lead strips holding the glass rounds painting a lacy tracery on the stone. She knelt by the fireplace and scraped the ashes into one of the gift bowls then laid wood across the dogs and used the striker to start a new fire. It was very early and very cold in the room, her breath bloomed before her and took a long time to fade. The cold struck up from the mosaic floor, up through her knees, her thighs, her soft and quivering insides. Without looking at what she’d done the past day, she went back into the kitchen for hot cha then shoved her feet in the old slippers she’d brought with her, entirely disreputable but warm.

  Cha mug clasped between her hands, she went back to the Maiden Chamber, walking with her eyes fixed determinedly on the floor until she stood before the chair, then she forced herself to look up.

  Five hours of hard cautious work, much of it done blindly, trusting the feel in her fingers and what the stone told her hands as its vibrations came up the chisel at her. Five hours’ work gazed back at her. The face she’d seen in the tower, blocked into the stone, carved simply but with great power, all the fussy little touches melded into strong simple lines. A woman’s face with an inhuman beauty, slightly smiling. It wasn’t finished, there was a need here and there to take away a jarring bit of roughness, the hair to be shaped out of the rough mass she’d left for that, the last polishing and oiling to bring out the grain and beauty of the stone. She looked at what she’d done and almost burst with joy. Gulping at the cha, she tried to calm herself but could not. She strode away from the face, paced back and forth across the room taking large mouthfuls of the cha until there was no more left, set the mug down, scooped up the chisel, impatient to get started on the finishing.

  But when she looked at the battered blunt end of the chisel, she swore and nearly threw it at the wall. She tried to pull herself together. She was shaking, driven, but she forced herself to calm enough to set the chisel on the chair and walk away from it, going out of the room to fetch the hone from the pantry.

  She sat on the floor in front of the fire, her robe hiked up to mid-thigh, and began the tedious process of repointing the chisel, working slowly and carefully, not stopping until she had perfection greater than she started with, knowing she must have the discipline this took or any touch she gave the face would be the start of ruin; slowly she began to take pleasure in the stroking of the stone across the metal. Stone over the steel, caressing it, wearing it away. Stroke and stroke and stroke, touches of loving care. As she worked, she sang softly a Maiden Chant, the calm on the face she’d carved growing within her.

  Late in the afternoon, when she was putting the last touches on the flaring waves of hair framing the serene face like ripples of running water, she heard the tramp of boots, the clatter of metal against metal. Another visitation. She sighed, put her tools on the floor, then seated herself on the chair, knees together, robe pulled decorously down to hide her scruffy slippers. Her hands folded, she waited, tense and frightened though she hoped she didn’t show it.

  The Decsel marched in, his men following and fanning into an arc on either side of him as if she were some unpredictable and thus very dangerous beast. She waited until he stopped in the middle of the room, his face uninterested, indifferent. She’d never seen that face change much, not when he’d taken her mother and sisters and Teras to the House of Repentance, not when he’d overseen the cleansing of Gradintar of all Maiden symbols, not when he’d handled the culling of the ties or read the proclamation of Floarin declaring Tesc Gradin anathema and outlaw. He obeyed his orders punctiliously and scamped on nothing, finding his pride in doing well whatever he attempted though she’d never thought him especially devoted to Soäreh.

  “Nilis Gradindaughter,” he said.

  “Nilis Keeper,” she said. “She has left the tar and severed her connections with Gradintar and Gradinblood.”

  “Nilis Gradindaughter. The Agli Brell and the Center of Cymbank demand you leave this place and return to the House of Gradintar. If you fail to heed this most serious demand we are required to remove you by force and confine you in the House of Repentance.” His speech finished, the formal words gabbled with as little expression as if he were calling the roll at payday, he stood at ease in his leather and metal, a big blocky man, worn and scarred and so closed in the limits of his profession that he was inaccessible to her or anything outside it, or so she thought as she listened to him speak.

  When he finished, she answered him with as much formality. “No, I will not come.” This was ritual, not conversation.

  The Decsel accepted her words, nodded his bony head as if this were a thing he’d expected, as if he were used to this sort of lack of reason from those who did not have his clearly drawn map of possible actions. He took a step toward her, a look of astonishment on his leathery face, a clown’s gape almost, ludicrous almost, in contrast with the strength and hard-worn look of the rest of him. He shifted back a little, felt at the air in front of him with large knuckled hands. It was as if he swept them over a sheet of glass. He backed off farther, sent one of his men forward with a brief quick
turn of his hand. The guard charged at Nilis, rebounded from the barrier, hitting it hard enough to knock himself off his feet. Another sharp-edged, economical gesture. The man unclipped his sword, saluted his decsel, dropped into a crouch and drove the sword’s point against the barrier with all the strength of his body. There was no sound but the point struck the barrier and went skating up it as if he’d jammed it against a slightly curved wall of greased glass. The guard stumbled and would have fallen, but the decsel caught the shoulderstrap of his leather cuirasse, dragged him onto his feet and shoved him back at the rest of the men.

  Long spatulate thumb pressed against his lips, fisted fingers tight beneath his chin, the decsel stood contemplating her. He dropped his hand. “There is no way we can reach you, Nilis Keeper?”

  “I don’t know. I suspect not.” She was as astonished as he was by the events just past.

  He gazed at her a moment longer, his face as impassive as before, then he raised his hand in an abrupt, unexpected salute, wheeled and strode out. His men saluted her, each in his turn, and followed him out.

  When the rhythmic stumping of their feet had died away, she began shaking. Her mouth flooded with bile. She swallowed, swallowed again, pushed herself onto her feet, hitched up the robe so it didn’t drag along the floor or trip her. She started shaking again, not from reaction or cold (an icy blast was pouring through the open door), but from a sudden consuming anger. She stared up at the face, unable to speak for a moment, then she gathered herself. “Why?” she shouted at the face. “Why?” she repeated more calmly. “Why let me go through all.… Why let me betray.…” She stumbled over the word, but bitterly acknowledged the justice of it. “Betray my own blood. If you can do that,” she waved a hand behind her, sketching out the wall that had protected her, “if you can come to me and show me what you did, if you can chase off the Agli and the guards, why why why is all this necessary, this death and misery, the battle that’s coming, more death, more useless, wasteful.… Why? You could have stopped it. Why did you let it happen?”