Fall From the Moon (A Bánalfar Novel Book 1)

by CS Hale

  “You don’t need it,” he whispered in my ear. “And the necklace was much more painful than the arms.”

  “Hmm. Pain and spoilage of the bosom that made the Sapir hand over R’Kesh’s steel.”

  “What!” Valemar’s arms tightened around me.

  “Didn’t Reina tell you? Daria made sure my assets were on view for the dinner with Tanic Ilahni. She told me the R’Keshans enjoy a good bosom.”

  “Your bosom is mine, wife!”

  I leaned my head against him. “Are you saying you wouldn’t have had me distract him if you’d been there?”

  Valemar growled, then turned me around and proved that I was his. It was the last bit of play we had. With the reports that came in the next morning, plans were made for Heymond and me to attempt contact the following night.

  The Hormani ship was in a valley a three hour ride southwest of Rock Dorach. Scouts usually had only two to three hours of observation time before the heichdar blood wore off. That they were even able to slip into the camp and observe astounded me. That meant the Hormani weren’t using thermal scans, which gave the crazy plan at least somewhat of a chance. At least in contacting the Shororato. Those scans would no doubt change once my transmission was detected.

  “Are you sure you want to send Heymond with me?” I asked Valemar. “Are you prepared to lose us both?”

  He grimaced and pulled me to him. “There’s no one else I’d trust with you,” he said. So I let it go. And truth be told, I knew Heymond would be the one who would do everything to ensure that I made it back from the Hormani ship.

  It was still hard, and my stomach stayed twisted in knots. I forced myself to eat, knowing that the next day, after drinking the heichdar blood, I wouldn’t be able to. Erris and I went out as usual, but I couldn’t play the game. My limbs shook and my stomach churned, so we found a quiet, out of the way spot and spent the day with our backs against a tree, swapping stories. He was fascinated by mine, and it comforted me that he, at least, knew what was coming and was excited by the idea of being visited by people from beyond the stars.

  “It doesn’t frighten you?” I asked.

  Genuine shock appeared on his face. “Why would it? You’re not frightening,” he said, which made me laugh. And his simple stories of growing up in Bánalfar reminded me why I was doing this. To keep the peace. To keep the moon children from marching off to war. I had thought it would be hard to grow up without a mother or father, but as a moon child, everyone had been mother and father to Erris. He was valuable. He was a gift from the Mother and Father, and so he was loved. And respected.

  “Who would have taught you them things if I hadn’t been?” Erris asked. “I’d have been stuck learning a trade.”

  “You do realize,” I said, “that soldiering is a trade.”

  “Best one there is,” he said. “And only moon children get to do it. Well, and the king. We’re what enables the rest of them to have a life. It doesn’t get any more important than that.”

  “No,” I agreed. “It doesn’t.”

  That night I took Valemar into my arms and poured out all my love. Filled myself with the feel and touch and smell of him. It could very well be the last time I’d hold my husband, and I wanted the night to be able to sustain me for a lifetime.

  “Astrid,” Valemar said when I began yet again. “You have a job to do tomorrow. You need sleep.” And I couldn’t tell him of my fears, so I resigned myself to simply laying spooned with him the rest of the night. And some time later, with my husband’s breath warm on the back of my neck, I fell asleep.

  THE HYDRATING BEGAN at dawn. “You do realize that at this rate I’ll be peeing the entire way to the encampment,” I warned Valemar.

  “Not if you produce enough spit first,” he replied, which reminded me that I’d need to, like a cat, lick my palms and cover my braid and my boots.

  I dressed in a tight, long-sleeved tunic that hit the tops of my hips and a pair of trousers that were more like leggings. Butter-soft boots skimmed the tops of my calves.

  “Why not ankle boots?” I asked Valemar. “There’d be less to cover.” The wax produced by my skin would soak through light fabric but heavier material, such as the boots, would need to be covered by hand.

  “They’re high to offer protection from the grasses of Fairfada and the rocks of the Archjarn,” he explained, and so I acquiesced. Valemar checked me over, caressed my face, kissed me, and then accompanied me down to the dungeon.

  My nerves skittered with both fear and excitement as he removed the heavy key from his pocket and unlocked the door that led to the heichdar lab. Alill and Heymond were already there when Valemar and I entered. For one brief moment, I wondered if there was a second key, but then things got down to business.

  “Heymond will start first, Astrid, and then you,” Valemar said. “You’ll trade off drinking.”

  “Why is Alill here?” I asked.

  “So he can help Heymond with the final animal while I see to you.”

  My stomach flipped. “Okay.”

  The wrangler put on the leather gloves and retrieved the first animal. He painted it, inserted the needle, and gave the end to Heymond. I watched as Heymond shuddered with every swallow. The needle was removed, and Heymond slowly made his way over to the cushioned bench. Then it was my turn.

  My heart and stomach both began to hop inside me as I watched the wrangler retrieve the animal. It still looked like his hand closed around nothing. “How will I see Heymond if we’re both invisible?” I asked.

  “You’ll appear as a gray mist to each other.” Valemar put a hand on my shoulder as the wrangler approached.

  “Please don’t,” I said. I hadn’t even begun to drink the blood and I was already shaking. “I’m going to need to concentrate.”

  Valemar removed his hand. I didn’t look to see if I’d hurt his feelings for the wrangler was already painting the heichdar with chalk. All too soon the needle was inserted and the end of the tube handed to me. I put it between my lips, braced my stomach and mind, and sucked.

  It didn’t taste like blood. It tasted like fire. Not the fire of the curries I’d had on Jauzara Four that hit your tongue and threatened to boil off its skin. This was more like strong a smoked chili sauce on a shredded pork or goat tilla. Rich, salty, yet with fingers of flame that first moved across the roof of my mouth, then my tongue, then down my throat as I swallowed. I shuddered as the feeling spread, then swallowed again. And again. And again.

  Fingers pried the tube from my hand and led me over to the bench. It shifted as Heymond rose to take his turn. “Astrid?” Valemar’s voice asked, but I merely shook my head. I couldn’t speak. My mind scrambled to process the changes that rippled through my body. Tears welled up in my eyes. Heavy tears that I thought would glue my eyes shut if they were shed. My lungs began to shake as fluid traced its way through them and I concentrated on breathing, fighting off the terrible sensation that I could drown.

  And then Valemar took my hand and pulled me off the bench. I sensed more than saw when Heymond and I passed each other, trading places again. My fingers were curled around the tube and, again, I drank. Every swallow filled my limbs with fluid. Every mouthful added weight to my lungs. It became difficult to breathe. The heavy, waxy tears slipped down my face. I let them fall, vaguely aware that they would help my camouflage.

  My hand shook as the tube was taken from it. Valemar half carried me back to the bench. My teeth began to chatter. Goosebumps rose on my arms and legs as cold began to curl across my skin and sink into my muscles. I heard Heymond moan and then the sound of a body being dragged across the floor.

  “Last one, Astrid.” Valemar raised me up and moved me over to the table. I whimpered as the tube was put into my mouth. “Swallow.” I did, knowing that Valemar would just force the blood into my mouth and then make me swallow. I only managed two before I began to truly cry.

  Something was wrong. Something was wrong with my body. Then the fire filled my mouth again. My c
hin was tipped back and a hand stroked my throat. I gagged and gravity took the blood down. My knees gave way but Valemar got under me before I hit the floor. I sagged across him, and the fire filled my mouth again. “Two more,” he whispered in my ear.

  But I didn’t want two more. I wanted the cold comfort of the flagstone floor. I wanted to lay my cheek against the stone and die. And then my chin was raised and another swallow forced upon me.

  “How’s she doing?” Heymond’s voice asked. At least he sounded normal. At least he’d survived.

  “She’s already turning,” Valemar replied as yet another dose filled my mouth. I whimpered. I was human. My chemistry different from the Alfari. What if the heichdar blood killed me instead?

  There was a gurgle as I choked on the last one. “All finished,” Valemar said, and lowered me the short remaining distance to the floor. My muscles started to spasm. I flopped against the flagstones like a fish out of water.

  “Did I get all of my hair?” Heymond asked.

  “You still need … there,” Alill said.

  Alill was going to need to be the one to go with Heymond for I was going to die. But Alill couldn’t read Hormani. There was no way for him to send the transmission.

  “Astrid?”

  The soft patter of boots approached me. A hand took mine. “Let it do its work, my queen. Don’t fight it.”

  I gave up then, gave myself over to the fire and cold that licked at my body, to the hot fluid that filled my veins and my lungs. Someone took my shoulders and raised me to sitting. A hand began to sweep across my face, collecting the tears and wiping them into my hair.

  Somehow, I didn’t die. “I’m never doing that again,” I weakly told the room and watched the gray blur of a hand approach my face. It was Heymond I was braced against and who was helping to conceal me. It was a good thing that he was invisible, for Valemar would have hated to see how I was nestled against him.

  I brought a shaking hand to my mouth, licked it, and started in on my boots. “How are you feeling, Astrid?” Valemar asked.

  “Like Muirbrook has walked all over me,” I said. Laughter filled the room.

  “She’s not recovering like the others,” Valemar said to the wrangler.

  The wrangler shrugged. “She’s not Alfari. At least she’s invisible.”

  Heymond took my hand. “You still need here,” he said, placing it on the back of my head, under my braid. I licked it and rubbed in the saliva.

  “I’ve been reduced to a cat,” I muttered.

  “What’s a cat?” asked more than one voice.

  “I’ll tell you later.”

  Slowly, I began to feel that I could at least function. I did one last check of my boots and Heymond helped me to my feet. “Here we go.”

  Alill and Valemar led the way out of the room. Their heads bent in whispered discussion all the way through the belly of the High, up and out into the courtyard. Heymond lifted me up and placed me behind the saddle of a darana that Orin stood by, holding the bridle. The darana shifted nervously as my weight settled on its rump. Orin spoke to it in soothing tones as Heymond climbed up the mounting block and took a seat behind Conmel on another darana. Heymond’s arms went around him.

  Alill took the reins from Orin mounted up. I placed my arms around him. “Until tomorrow,” Valemar said.

  As Alill turned his mount’s head toward the open gate, I saw Erris melt into the shadows, and then my concentration became engrossed in the task of simply hanging on. Both men urged their darana through the Low at a quick trot then broke into a run once they were clear of Aedenfal’s main gates.

  “It’s eighteen hours from here to the camp,” Alill said to me as we flew down the road. “We’ll collect fresh mounts in four hours at the edge of Fairfada, so just try to hold on until then.”

  We never traveled slower than a trot. Aedenfal was usually a six-hour ride from the grassy sea, but I had never made the journey at that leisurely a pace. My thighs burned and my bum ached. I was sure my bruises had bruises. And I had to stop so I could pee.

  Alill reined in when I told him, and I slipped from the darana and wandered away from the road. Heymond lifted me back on, mounted Conmel’s darana, then slid to the back so Conmel could remount. Our carriers clucked to their mounts, and we raced down the road again, making up the time I’d lost them. But with all the fluid Valemar had had me drink first thing this morning, my bladder couldn’t take being both overfull and pounded.

  We changed animals at a small paddock not far off the road from the edge of the grassy sea. They say the plains on Earth were once like this — the American prairie, the African Serengeti, and the Russian steppes. Only Mongolia still has the open grasslands, where tourists go to travel with the nomads, stay in yurts, and learn the horsemanship that spread across the planet thousands of years ago.

  Here on Crenfor, it was wide and open, free of permanent settlements. Only shepherds and their flocks of anapali lived there. It would take us twelve hours to cross it. Twelve hours before the Archjarn rose and the land became rocky and barren for hundreds of miles to the north and south, all the way from the Aelon Sea until the mountains met up with the Skargorn range that held Snow Reach and Verlun.

  Heymond and I sat away from Alill and Conmel in an attempt to at least try to keep our stomachs from rumbling while they rapidly ate their lunch. It was the thirst that bothered me the most. My throat was parched and burning, but it would be hours until I could have anything to drink. Not until my task was done and we’d made our way back to the drop off point. At least I was thinking “when” and not “if.” There was every possibility that I’d already taken my last drink. And that had been of blood.

  We bumped along on the backs of the darana, all day long and into the night. I began to think I should have spent more time teaching my legs to dangle and my thighs to accept the pounding of something other than my husband. My arms grew tired and I wondered how I’d ever manage two hours walking through the mountains to the camp.

  The moon was high overhead when Conmel and Alill reined in. Heymond slipped from his darana and came around to catch me as I more or less fell off. The two King’s Guard clucked to their mounts and turned south — appearing to be a border patrol, nothing more. Heymond took my hand and we moved off into the night.

  MY EYES WERE really not made to see at night. Especially semi mountain climbing at night with only a faint red glow from the moon to illuminate the nonexistent path. After about half an hour of my stumbling along behind him making all the noise in the world, Heymond gave up and carried me piggyback for the next hour and a half.

  My fingers twitched and sometimes even tapped out on Heymond’s chest the message I’d been practicing now for days (possibly even weeks), building muscle memory so that I could get in and get out as fast as possible, no matter what happened.

  I’d spent much of the day in thought. Hours of it, as my needed silence eliminated conversation. Mine and Heymond’s at least, though Conmel and Alill had been fairly silent, too. And I had come to the decision that I needed to survive this for I needed to make sure Heymond returned to Valemar. With what was coming, Valemar was going to need the support of his closest friend. I needed to do this job as fast as possible and get Heymond and myself the hell away from there.

  When I wasn’t tapping out the message on Heymond’s chest, my eyes were drawn to the blanket of stars above. Crenfor had its own Milky Way, its own view of the center of the galaxy. Somewhere out there were Finn and Amy and my Mum and Dad. At this point, they would have determined that something had happened and decided that I’d perished. Agçay would have dispatched another ship. The Rovar silk would have been purchased. Even the Addunka tin that had kept me in my room when the plasma leaked would have been negotiated for, delivered, and sold. And in just a few days, ships carrying the Shororato would travel through those stars, land, and change this world.

  Heymond would give my legs a squeeze, as if he knew I’d fallen pensive, and I’d go back to
running the scenarios and ignore the way the mountains framed the stars.

  I knew we were close when Heymond set me down. Then even I could see the dim glow of the red lights of the Hormani ship in night mode. As we got closer, I could make it out — a class D intersystem mini-freighter. Small for a freighter, which meant there was probably a mother ship in orbit. Or at least a C-size ship.

  Crew of five, my mental file pulled up.

  At this time of night, four of them should be asleep. Unless they were total idiots, and I was counting on them not to be. Four would be asleep and one would be on watch. If they were total idiots, five would be asleep and the door would be locked.

  Then I saw a faint orange glow like a solitary firefly. It moved upward, brightened, then lowered again. One guard on the perimeter, smoking.

  I tapped Heymond on the shoulder and gestured for him to carry me to the edge of the ship. We didn’t need me tripping and alerting the guard that something was out there. Even though he would probably think it was an animal, he’d be on heightened alert and more likely to notice the door opening.

  Heymond put me down by the nose of the ship. I mentally counted to ten then cautiously picked my way to the door. The latch button glowed red. Red for danger. Though I knew that wasn’t the case. I said a little prayer — both to the God I’d grown up with and to the Mother and Father — and pushed the button.

  Would the inside lights have been dimmed to night mode or would the door fly open, bathing the area in light, and inform the guard that a much smarter thing than an animal was out there?

  I closed my eyes and waited.

  The door whispered open. Black continued to register behind my eyelids. I breathed a shallow sigh of relief. I opened my eyes and stepped in, just catching the blur of Heymond over my shoulder as he inched closer to watch the door. It slid shut behind me.

  I’d been on mini-freighters like this one a few times. The safest panel location would be back by the hold. It wasn’t the closest, but should someone be up and happen to notice that a comm link had been opened, a cargo check, even in the middle of the night, wouldn’t be out of the ordinary.