Dark Moon Defender (Twelve Houses)

by Sharon Shinn

  The irony, of course, was that she had known the minute she arrived at the Gisseltess house that there was nothing she could do. Death had come for serra Paulina, was perched on the headboard, calmly waiting. Ellynor had touched the old woman’s throat and chest, chasing away the pain, but there was nothing she could do to extend that frail life by even another day.

  She had not been able to save serra Paulina and she would not be able to save herself.

  She had never been so cold in her life.

  Biting back a little moan, she pushed herself up off the floor, just enough to crawl toward the fireplace. There, a tiny flame was darting around a single heavy log, as if seeking, with its flimsy strength, to dislodge the wood. Ellynor knew that fire was not her friend; she knew that in a few hours she would be screaming in agony as a blaze roared around her. But right now she was freezing. She lifted her trembling hands and held them over the grate, as close to the log as she dared.

  Her fingers were so cold that they put the fire out.

  Whimpering, Ellynor dropped to the icy stone floor, cradled her head in her hands, and wept.

  THE first time the door opened, she looked up, stabbed by a sudden unreasonable hope. Which turned immediately to bewilderment as three—four—five novices stepped into the room, their hands clasped before them, their eyes cast down. Shavell entered briskly behind them, her violet robe a dark contrast to their vivid white.

  “Look upon this wretched woman and know that she is evil,” Shavell intoned, and all five novices obediently lifted their eyes and gravely inspected Ellynor. “She is a mystic, a dabbler in the dark arts, a heretic who worships false gods. What is the only fit punishment for a mystic?”

  “She must die,” the girls replied in unison.

  “She must die,” Shavell repeated. “Tonight.”

  Ellynor was still staring at them speechlessly when Shavell herded her charges back out the door and locked it resoundingly behind her once more.

  Half an hour later, another set of novices stepped inside— eight of them this time, crowding as close to the door as they could, supervised by Darris. “A mystic,” Darris said, repeating the list of crimes, but unable to replicate Shavell’s venom. She sounded, instead, sorrowful and a little afraid, and she couldn’t bring herself to look directly at Ellynor. “She will die tonight.”

  The third group to arrive was led by her cousin Rosurie. This time Ellynor was prepared for them. She couldn’t find the strength to get up off the floor, but she had pulled herself together somewhat. She was sitting cross-legged before the dead fire, her bound hands folded in her lap, her tears dry on her face, her expression remote. Still, she almost gaped when Rosurie stepped through the door, wearing a proselyte’s green robe and supervising a set of much younger girls. There was Lia, crying and turning her head away; there were three novices just arrived at the convent this fall, wide-eyed and uneasy. Ellynor supposed they hadn’t expected anything like this when they begged their fathers to send them to live with the Daughters.

  “Here sits the woman who has betrayed the goddess,” Rosurie said in an utterly calm voice. Her hair had started to grow back a little, but it was only about a half inch long and did little to disguise the hard, distinctive shape of Rosurie’s skull. She looked so foreign to Ellynor, so angular and other-worldly. Not kin at all.

  “There stands the woman who betrayed me,” Ellynor shot back. Lia gasped and one of the other girls covered her mouth with her hand. Clearly they had not expected the miscreant to speak up on her own behalf.

  Rosurie ignored her. “She claimed to love the Silver Lady when instead she worshipped a lesser goddess—”

  “A goddess you have prayed to in your father’s house!”

  “She used magic inside a consecrated place. She sought to destroy the Lestra and all her work.”

  “Which is worse, Rosurie?” Ellynor demanded. “Healing a sick child or condemning a member of your family to death? Which is the true crime?”

  “What is the only fit punishment for a mystic?” Rosurie asked.

  “She must die,” the novices murmured, but none of them looked convinced. Lia was sobbing openly now, and she wiped her nose on the sleeve of her white robe.

  “She must die,” Rosurie repeated with satisfaction. “Tonight.”

  Ellynor thought that little interlude was as bad as it could get, but she was wrong. A half hour later another small delegation strode into her room: Shavell again, two proselytes, a novice or two—and the Lestra.

  Ellynor was so shocked to see Coralinda Gisseltess that at first she did not realize who else had arrived. She just had a blurred impression of many different colors as the other women arranged themselves behind the black-robed Lestra. No doubt Ellynor was supposed to rise, or bow, or clasp her hands and plead, but she could not bring herself to behave as though she thought this woman was splendid and powerful. So she sat there, sullen and silent, staring up at these new trespassers, hating all of them, fearing all of them equally.

  “So,” the Lestra said in that magnificent, sonorous voice. “This is the woman who has tarnished the face of the Silver Lady.”

  Ellynor made no reply.

  “I grieve so deeply when I realize how much I loved you,” the Lestra said, and indeed her voice sounded full of woe and sorrow. “You were my Dark Moon Daughter! You were the one who understood all the deepest secrets of the night! But your secrets were even blacker than I knew. No gentle light, no blazing moon, can illuminate your soul. You are given over to darkness.”

  “I have done nothing wrong,” Ellynor said.

  The Lestra appeared astonished. “Nothing wrong! You have cast spells! You have worked magic! You have practiced the evil arts that the Silver Lady most abhors! But her round eye sees everything, including your treachery. She has discoveredyou and laid bare your soul. You must be cleansed of evil through the crucible of fire. The Pale Mother will gather you up in her arms and make you anew in a brighter, purer image.”

  “I don’t want to die,” Ellynor whispered.

  The Lestra came a step closer, and for a moment Ellynor actually thought the older woman would lay a hand upon her cheek. “You will be reunited with the goddess,” she said in a comforting voice. “It will not be death, it will be glory.”

  “It will be murder, and it will be by fire,” Ellynor retorted.

  The Lestra made an equivocal motion with her hands. “The Silver Lady has room in her heart for penitents,” she said.

  Ellynor felt a cruel, bitter twist of hope. “How could I show you I repent?” she breathed.

  “First you must renounce that false goddess you worship so wrongly.”

  Deny the Great Mother who was so generous with her power, who had shielded Ellynor from danger and lavished her with gifts? Ellynor was not sure she would be able to force the words out. And yet she had a suspicion the Dark Watcher would urge her to take the counterfeit pledge, swear the sham oath. The Black Mother understood when a lie was necessary, when it was best to conceal the truth.

  But that was only the first step? “What else would you require?” Ellynor asked through stiff lips.

  The Lestra’s lovely voice dropped to a soft, inviting pitch. “It is common, I know, for those who hold contrary beliefs to seek each other out. To band together. To whisper their secrets to each other. Only tell me who else among my novices believes as you do. Are there other mystics among us? Girls who question their faith and disobey the convent laws? Tell me their names. Help me to purify this place and keep it sacred for the goddess.”

  It was at that exact moment that Ellynor realized Astira was part of the delegation. Perhaps the other woman moved— flinched—at the Lestra’s speech. Perhaps the Great Mother chose that moment to put her hand on Ellynor’s chin and turn her head in Astira’s direction. At any rate, suddenly Ellynor was staring at the rangy blond girl with the elegant features, her face almost as white as her novice’s robe.

  Astira had confided in her. Told Ellynor about takin
g the guard Daken as her lover. Not as heinous as practicing magic, but a crime, nonetheless, in the Lestra’s eyes. A sin. Something she would want to know about—and destroy. The look on Astira’s face showed terror and supplication in equal parts, both overlaid with hopelessness.

  Astira would have told, if she was in this position, Ellynor realized. Astira would have supplied any number of names, repeated whispered conversations, careless words she’d overheard in the hall. Astira would have said anything to save herself.

  “I know of no one else who has sinned,” Ellynor said.

  The Lestra frowned. “That cannot be true. Women are weak and easily tempted. There must be one or two among the Daughters who have strayed from the dictates of the Pale Mother.”

  “That might be so,” Ellynor replied, “but they haven’t told their stories to me.”

  The Lestra stepped back with a swirl of black skirts, anger and contempt in every line of her body. “You are lying or you are unlucky,” she said with something of a snarl. “There is nothing you can do to redeem yourself.”

  Ellynor felt cold fear lance through her. “Not even if I say—if I renounce the Black Mother?”

  The Lestra appeared to consider. A small motion caught Ellynor’s attention and she looked over the Lestra’s shoulder to see Astira shaking her head in short, jerky motions. As if to say, Such a sacrifice will not save you. You are condemned to death even if you repulse your goddess. Astira’s face was still bloodless and strained, but her expression had loosened. She looked dazed with relief.

  “And are you willing to give her up?” the Lestra demanded. “Give yourself over to the care of the Silver Lady?”

  Ellynor bowed her head. “I love the Pale Mother,” she said in a quiet voice. “I love her in her laughing moods and her proud silences. She is girlish and sweet one day, harsh and unforgiving the next. She is changeable and beautiful and curious, and I hope she believes that I have served her well.” She lifted her head and met the Lestra’s eyes. “But I am bound to the Black Mother, who loves me as much as she loves her own daughter. It is she who has given me magic, and she I will worship till I die.”

  “Which will be tonight,” the Lestra snapped.

  Ellynor dropped her head again. She was so tired. She was so cold. She was completely without hope. “Yes,” she said very softly. “It will be tonight.”

  TWO more groups of novices came through in the next hour. Ellynor was beginning to think that the Lestra intended every single soul who lived in the convent to parade by and view the condemned mystic. But the sun was sliding down toward late afternoon, she thought tiredly. Surely there would not be enough time for the more than five hundred novices to come by and stare and whisper. Perhaps this honor had been reserved for only the flightiest girls, the ones who could not absolutely be trusted, the ones who would most profit from such a stern lesson.

  It would be dark in less than two hours, Ellynor judged. She came somewhat shakily to her feet, not sure if it was the hunger or the fear or the lingering effects of healing Justin that had left her so unsteady. She was still cold, but by now her bones had turned to ice; she was so numb she almost couldn’t tell how miserable she was. The sounds of chopping and construction no longer drifted up from the courtyard. The bonfire must be ready by now, she supposed. All that was left to wait for was sunset.

  No need to wait for moonrise. This was the night without a moon.

  Ellynor wanted to experience the daylight while she could. The window was too high to see out of, but it admitted a patch of sun that was moving slowly up the wall as the hours passed. Right now it was just about at face-height. She closed her eyes and stepped directly into it, absorbing its brightness on her cheekbones, her eyelids, tilting her chin so that the light ran down her neck. Senneth’s goddess was the sun, so Justin had told her. Maybe the Bright Mother had dropped in to offer Ellynor what comfort she could.

  A chittering, clicking sound, closer to hand than the distant courtyard, caused Ellynor to reluctantly open her eyes. Two birds were perched right outside the window, pecking at the glass as if trying to break through it. The sight was so unexpected that Ellynor actually smiled. They looked to be spring hawks, lighter and smaller than the common variety, built for speed and agility. They were normally northern creatures; she wondered what they were doing so far south.

  One, the smaller of the two, ruffled with impatience and pecked at the window again. Or—no—how odd. The hawk rested its sharp beak against the clear pane the way Ellynor might press her nose against a window if there was something inside that she wanted.

  With a faint sizzle of mist, the glass simply vanished.

  Ellynor stared, dumbstruck, and watched the birds fly inside. The smaller one landed right at her feet; the larger one circled her head as if inspecting her for flaws or damage. Or perhaps it was looking for a place to land. Marveling—but unable, on this day, to summon any more disbelief—she held her bound hands out, and it promptly settled in her cupped palms. It regarded her from its bright yellow eyes and loosed a cackling stream of chatter that sounded so earnest and determined it might have been trying to communicate with her in human patterns of speech.

  Bemused, Ellynor glanced down at the hawk on the floor. Which was no longer a hawk—which was a growing, stretching, blurred, and fantastical creature of skin and feathers and golden hair. Now she gasped; now her heart really did squeeze in wonder.

  It was only a moment before her gaping turned to galloping, painful hope, because it was only a moment before the transformation was complete. Kirra Danalustrous stood before her.

  CHAPTER 38

  “I SEE by your expression you’re not used to watching a shiftling change shapes,” Kirra said, throwing her arms around Ellynor and causing the other bird to squawk with indignation. “I can’t tell you how relieved I am to see you still alive, though by the stake and the pile of wood they’ve got laid out in the courtyard, I would say the time of your execution is imminent.”

  It was this long before Ellynor could find her voice. “Kirra! What are you doing here? How did you know what happened to me? Oh, is there anything you can do to get me out of this place?”

  “Yes, but we don’t have much time,” Kirra replied. “We’ve been here almost two hours, but every time we thought it was safe to come in, someone else came bursting through the door to point fingers and call you dreadful names. I’m guessing that pattern will continue for the rest of the day, wouldn’t you think?”

  “It seems likely. They seem very eager to have all the novices look on the face of evil.”

  Kirra nodded. “Then we can’t risk just taking you out of the room. Before we crossed the courtyard, someone would be sure to come in looking for you, and if you were missing, the alarm would be raised before we could get out the gate.”

  The hawk in Ellynor’s hands danced on its spindly feet and loosed an urgent stream of incomprehensible sounds in Kirra’s direction.

  “Oh, hush,” the mystic responded.

  Ellynor glanced down at the restless body nestled in her hands. “What did he say?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Is it Donnal?”

  “No. Justin.”

  Ellynor almost dropped him to the floor. “Justin? But he— he’s not a mystic! Is he?”

  “No. I changed him. He insisted on coming.” Kirra was watching her with those divine blue eyes. “To save you.”

  Now Ellynor cradled the hawk in her hands and brought him up to her face, almost crooning to him. “Justin. I can’t believe you came for me—well, of course, I can believe it, it’s just like you, but you’re not strong enough! How could you try something like this when you’re so weak yourself—”