Changer's Moon

by Clayton, Jo;

  There was no answer. The face in the stone was a stone face, the chisel marks still harsh on the planes and curves of it. She quieted, the futility of what she was doing like a lump of ice in her stomach. Her own hands had shaped the face. Shaped it well. An intense satisfaction warmed her, smothered for the moment the other emotions. It was good, that carving. She knew it. And knew then, above and beyond whatever being Keeper required of her, she’d found her proper work. With a little laugh, a rueful grimace, she pushed sweaty strands of fine brown hair off her thin face, then went to fix herself some lunch.

  For the rest of the afternoon, she puttered about, unable to settle at anything. Her first joy, her contentment—these were shattered. Her relationship with Her of the tower was so much more limited than she’d hoped; like everything else she touched, this too crumbled away and left nothing. For the first time she realized just how much she’d been hoping for … for love … for a felt love, and instead of that she was a tool in the hands of Her, as much as the chisel was a tool in her own hands.

  The old poisons came seeping into her blood again, the anger, frustration, resentment, envy, self-hate, rancor, outrage. She recognized them all, old friends they were, they’d sung her to sleep many a night. Now and then she felt herself welcoming them, cursing the forces that had driven her from the comfortable sense of righteousness that had spread through her and sustained her in the first days of Soäreh’s ascendancy. At the same time she couldn’t avoid seeing the ugliness of what she’d been and of what she’d helped to create. Anything was better than that, even the desolation that filled her when she thought of the years ahead of her, the unending empty years.

  Late in the afternoon she went back into the Maiden Chamber and stood looking at the carving. The lowering sun painted new shadows on Her face and it seemed to Nilis that She looked at her and smiled, but she soon dismissed that as more dreaming. She gazed at the face a long time, then looked down at her hands. The quiet came back into her, her own quiet. The years might be long, but they wouldn’t be empty. She had a lot to do, a lot to learn. It wasn’t what she’d hoped, but it was a lot more than nothing.

  As the days turned on the spindle, offerings began to appear beneath the Face. More robes. Sandals. Food. Candles. Flasks of scented oil. A beautiful Book of Hours, something someone had saved at great risk from Soäreh’s Purge. Reed mats. Bedding. Tapestry canvas. Packets of colored wools. Wool needles. And what delighted her most because it answered her greatest need, another book saved from the Purge—The Order of the Year that named the passages and the fêtes, the meditations and the rites proper to each fête.

  In the evenings she sat in the kitchen sipping cha and studying the Order. Her days she began to organize about the Hours of Praise. She needed the order this ritual gave to her life, especially since the long drive to clean the shrine had come to an end. Between the chants and meditation she did what she could in the Court of Columns, but it was too cold to stay out long. She scraped at the paint she could reach, what was under the snow would have to wait for spring. When she couldn’t stay out any longer, she sat in the Maiden Chamber and worked over the tapestry canvas, sketching the design she wanted, then beginning to fill in the areas with the wools, no longer impatient and fretting, working until she was tired of it, moving into the kitchen and trying again to bake a successful loaf of bread, spending some time in the schoolroom, cleaning out the thick layer of muck and rotting leaves, the drifts of snow. The door was off its hinges, thrown into the room. She struggled with that, got it outside, managed to rehang it, though it dragged against the floor and had to be lifted and muscled about before the latch would catch. She put the room in order, piled the broken furniture neatly after looking it over to see if she could somehow repair it. She shut the door and left that too for the coming of spring.

  A girl came one night. For her bridal vigil. She smiled shyly at Nilis, then went into the room, still bare except for a maiden face and the mats on the floor, lit a candle she’d brought with her and settled herself comfortably crosslegged on the mats. Much later, when Nilis came to bring her a cup of cha, the girl had a happy dreamy look on her face. Nilis left, wrestled a little with envy, then went to sleep, content with herself and what was happening.

  On the last day of the Decadra Passage the Decsel marched into the Maiden Chamber, his belongings in a shoulder roll, a large sack of food under one arm. He set the sack down, drew his sword and laid it at Nilis’s feet. “I wish to serve Her,” he said.

  He took the schoolroom as his quarters, rehung the door, cleared out the old furniture, cobbled a bed for himself and turned the bare room into a comfortable place, being experienced at doing for himself, neat-handed, and skillful at all sorts of work. He took over the work in the Court of Columns, scraping the paint from the columns and Maiden faces, digging the snow and debris from the choked fountain, clearing the paint from that. He worried over what he could do with the painted pavement until Nilis told him she could paint it again once he’d got the smears off.

  They worked alone, saw each other seldom, sometimes shared meals, sometimes a day or two would pass before they met again, settled into a peace with each other that never completely left them.

  Shimar began. The Cymbankers grew bolder. Girls and maids came for vigils, young men trickled in for meditation and for their own vigils. A furtive group came into the Maiden Chamber for a minor rite, the Ciderblessing, defying the Agli and the new Decsel. Villagers, ties and even tarfamilies came more openly as each day passed. There were more floggings, more folk dragged to the House of Repentance, more muttering against Floarin because of this, more folk coming to the Shrine. And Nilis began preparing for the Turnfest, her first major fête as Keeper.

  THE MAGIC CHILD

  Rane, on Sel-ma-Carth: Nearly fifty years back the governing elders of Sel-ma-Carth hired a stone-working norit to punch new drains through the granite not far below the soil the city was built on; the old drains had been adequate for the old city, but they’d just finished a new wall enclosing a much greater area. (A chuckle and a quick aside to Tuli: You’ve never lived in a city, Moth. Drains may make dull conversation but they’re more important than bread for health and comfort. And this does have a point to it besides general information, so get that look off your face and listen.) The city sits at the meeting of two rivers. The intake of the sewer is upstream and just enough uphill to ensure a strong flow to carry away the refuse and sewage. By the way, you don’t want to drink out of the river for some distance below the city. The old drains were abandoned and more or less forgotten. Even the cuts in the wall are forgotten. That’s how we’re going to get into the city. Don’t make faces, Moth, the stink’s dried by now. Maiden bless the Followers with boils on their butts. Tuli, Sel-ma-Carth never closed its gates, you could ride in and out as you pleased whenever you pleased and no one cared or was afraid you’d do him something. That’s all changed now. If we showed up at the gates, they’d shove us into the nearest House of Repentance. Maybe I ought to leave you outside. I have to see someone, find out the state of things inside the walls, no need for you to walk into that mess. Oh, all right, come if you want. Be glad of your company.

  At sundown on the sixth day of riding they topped a slight rise and saw Sel-ma-Carth, its gate towers losing their caps in the low clouds, a walled city nestling in the foothills where the Vachhorns met the Bones (a barren stony range of mountains rich in iron, gold, silver, opal, jade, a thousand other gemstones), at the border between the mijloc and the pehiiri uplands. The mines made the city rich, but were only one of its assets. It also sat on the main caravan route joining the east coast with the west.

  Carthise were contentious and untrustworthy, automatically joining to cheat outsiders though they were scrupulously honest with their own. It was said of them you could leave a pile of gold in a street, come back a year later and find it where you left it. It was said of them that they took more pleasure in putting over a sharp deal for a copper uncset than they wou
ld in an honest deal that netted them thousands. It was said of them a man could come and live among them for fifty years and die a stranger and an outsider and his son after him, but his grandson would be Carthise.

  They were the finest stonemasons and sculptors known, hired away from their city for years at a time, they were famous artisans and metalsmiths, gem cutters and polishers. One family had a secret of making a very fine steel, tough and springy, taking an edge that could split a hair lengthwise. The family made few swords but those were always named blades and famous—and exorbitantly expensive. The Biserica bought knives from them, as did the Sleykynin, until a daughter of the House eloped to the Biserica before she was married to a cousin she despised, bringing the family secret with her. Carthise were leatherworkers, weavers, dyers, merchants, thieves and smugglers. But no woodworkers. The hills close by were brown and barren and wood brought premium prices. A well-shaped wooden bowl could fetch a higher price than a silver goblet.

  “Hern always had a twisty struggle collecting the city-tithe,” Rane said. “Once he even had to threaten to close the Mouth and turn the trade caravans north to the Kuzepo Pass before they discovered they had the money after all.”

  “Then they’re not going to take very well to Floarin’s ordering them about or to the Aglis.”

  “That’s the trouble, Moth. No one’s got in or out recently enough to say what it’s like in there. Even Hal didn’t know much. However.…” She started away from the road into the low hills. When they were hidden from the watchtowers, she went on. “However, I think you’re probably right.”

  When the shifting colors of the dying day touched the low rolling hillocks of snow on snow, they rode across a rising wind that blew short streamers of snow from the tops of the hillocks, snow that sang against them, stinging faces and hands and crawling into any crevice available. Tuli glanced back and was pleased to see the greater part of their trace blown over. By morning the broken trail o would be built back into a uniform blanket. That was one problem about spying after a snowstorm, a blind idiot could follow where you’d been. She stared thoughtfully at the bobbing head of her macai. Three days, no wind at all. But the moment wind was needed to kick snow into their backtrail—she laughed at herself for imagining things.

  Rane wound through the hillocks moving gradually behind the city, then left the city behind and started up into the hills toward the pehiiri uplands.

  A smallish hut stood backed into the steep slope of a hillside, its stone beautifully dressed, the posts and lintel of the doorway delicately carved with vine and leaf. To one side was a stone corral with the eaves of a stable also dug into the slope visible over the top. The whole neat little steading was hidden in a thick stand of stunted trees, canthas still heavy with nuts, spikulim and a solitary zubyadin, its thorns glittering like glass.

  Rane stopped her macai in the center of the small cleared space before the door. She waited without dismounting or saying anything until the door opened and a large chini stood there, broad-shouldered, blunt-muzzled, ears like triangles of jet above a russet head, a black mask about dark amber eyes, alert but not yet ready to attack.

  Tuli dipped into a pocket, found a stone and settled it into the pouch of her sling. She might not have time at the chini’s first charge to whirl the sling, but she trusted Rane to hold the beast off long enough to let her get set.

  “Ajjin Turriy,” Rane yelled, her deep voice singing the words over the whine of the wind. “Friends call.”

  The beast withdrew into the room and a broad squat old woman appeared in the doorway a moment later, not smiling but not sour either. She wore a heavy jacket and enough skirts to make her wide as the door. “Who is you said?”

  “Rane.”

  “Ah.” She stepped back. “Be welcome, friend.”

  Rane turned to Tuli. “Wait,” she said. She dismounted, tramped through the snow to the doorway, and stood outlined by light as the dog had been. Whatever she said, the wind carried away her words before they reached Tuli. After a few moments, Rane nodded briskly, came wading back to the macain. She mounted and rode toward the corral.

  Tuli slipped the stone and sling back in her pocket, feeling foolish and a bit angry. She was as tired and hungry as the macain were and too irritable to want to ask the questions whirling through her head. And she knew if she made any fuss Rane would leave her behind, was more than half inclined to do so anyway.

  With Tuli silently helping her Rane stripped the macain, spread straw in two of the smallish stalls, put out the last of the grain. The gear and the packs they piled in a corner of the stable. Rane took two pairs of snowshoes from those pegged up on one wall. “We can’t take the beasts into the city,” she said. “We’ll have to walk back.”

  “We aren’t staying here?”

  “Not tonight. Ever used snowshoes?”

  Tuli nodded.

  “Good.” She handed one set to Tuli and knelt to lace the crude webbed ovals onto her low-heeled riding boots with the fur linings that Hal had provided.

  To take her mind off the ache in her legs and the empty ache in her belly, Tuli hurried up and got closer to Rane. “Why couldn’t we take the macain into Sel-ma-Carth?”

  Rane slowed her swinging stride a little, held up a gloved finger. “One,” she said. “The grain levy hit them extra hard. There are no riding beasts of any sort left in the city.” She held up another finger. “Two. Ever tried to be inconspicuous on a beast that big and noisy?” Another finger. “Three. They wouldn’t fit through the old sewer outfall.”

  Tuli was silent after that, concentrating on maintaining the looping lope that kept her from kicking herself in her ankle or falling on her face. Rane’s long legs seemed tireless, eating up the distance smoothly. Tuli took two strides to her one and still had trouble keeping up. She began gulping air in through her mouth until both mouth and lungs were burning.

  She stumbled, the front of the shoe catching against a hummock. Rane caught her, clucked her tongue. “You’re sweating.”

  Tuli panted, unable to speak for the moment.

  “You should have said something.”

  “Huh?”

  “It’s cold, Moth.”

  “I … uh … noticed … uh.…” She began breathing more easily. The black spots that swam like watersprites before her eyes were drifting off. Her head still ached, her legs still shook, but she could talk again.

  “Damn,” Rane said. The city was partially visible—the tops of some buildings, the gate towers. The wind blew snow streamers about them, the ice particles scowering their faces. With a shiver, Rane said, “We can’t stay here. But don’t play the fool again, Moth. If I go too fast, yell. Sweat will chill you worse than just about anything. Chill you, kill you. Don’t forget. Let’s go.”

  The remainder of the trip to the city walls was a cold, dark struggle, a nightmare Tuli knew she’d never quite forget. Rane was grim and steel-hard, with a harsh patience that grated against Tuli, but prodded her into going on. Once again Rane circled away from the Gate, then angled toward the place where the bulge of the wall blocked the view of the Gate tower.

  There was a low arched opening in the wall over a ditch that might have been a dry creekbed, just a hint of the arch showing over the glowing white snow. Rane unlashed her snowshoes, tucked them under her arm, went cautiously down the bank. At her touch, or so it seemed to Tuli, the grate that covered the opening swung inward, a whisper of metallic rattle, a gentle scraping as it shoved aside a smallish drift of snow. Rane stooped and disappeared inside, legs first, head ducking down and vanishing.

  Tuli followed. Inside the low tunnel she saw Rane’s snowshoes leaning against the bricks, their shapes picked out by the starlight reflecting off the snow. She set her snowshoes beside them, pushed the grate back in place, and stood, the top of her knitted cap just brushing against the bricks at the center of the arch. About a half a body-length in, the damp smelly darkness was so thick she couldn’t see a thing.

  Rane’s voice
came back to her. “Make sure the latch has caught.”

  Tuli turned, shook the grate. “It’s caught.”

  “Come on, then.”

  After a few turns it was almost warm in the abandoned sewer. The round topped hole moved in what felt like a gentle arc, though it was hard to tell direction down here. After what seemed a small eternity she bumped into Rane, stepped hastily back with a muttered apology. A whisper came to her. “Wait.” She waited, heard a soft scraping and saw a smallish square of pale gray light bloom in the brick roof of the tunnel. She heard the rasp of Rane’s breathing, saw her body wriggle up through the opening, heard soft shufflings and some dull hollow thumps. A moment later Rane’s head came back through the opening, absurdly reversed. “Come.”

  Tuli pulled herself up. When she was on her feet again, she was standing in a closet hardly large enough to contain the two of them.

  “Don’t talk,” Rane whispered. “And follow close.” She hauled on a lever. Pressed up against her Tuli could feel her tension. The wall moved finally, with a squeal of rusted metal that was shockingly loud in the hush. Rane cursed under her breath. Tuli heard the staccato hisses, but couldn’t make out the words. She grinned into the darkness. Though her father would be profoundly shocked, maybe Rane too, she had a very good notion of what the words were and what they meant, having listened on her night rambles to tie-men working with the stock when they didn’t know she was around. Rane eased through the narrow opening. Tuli slid out after her.