Wanderer: The Moondark Saga, Books 4-6 (The Moondark Saga Boxed Sets Book 2)

by Don McQuinn

  “I’ve seen how alone you are.” She cut a hard look at him, and he took it without flinching. “I think you’ve been hurt. I thought you were afraid. That was wrong.”

  She smiled, knew how wan it must look, and turned away. He said nothing. When she faced him again, his expression was one she knew full well. It was male, acquisitive, aroused. It attracted her. She wanted to be consoled, reassured, to relax in another’s strength. Just for a moment.

  Nalatan. His face swam in her inner vision, a troubling image that had no constant form, but accused, nevertheless.

  He had no right. He held back things he could have told her. He was the one who backed away.

  He cared, though. Truly cared.

  Nalatan.

  Canis Minor leaned closer. His hand grasped her thigh. She was amazed at how brightly blue his eyes gleamed. The ruddy glow of his face suggested a light burning under the flesh.

  She leaned back, braced by her hands on the horse’s haunches. Eyes closed, she retreated. Surrendered.

  The smell of the horses. The brittle tang of pines, of scorched, thirsty grass. Heat. Baking rock, earth.

  His breath. On her cheek, her throat. Hands on her jawline, neck.

  The heat of the Dry was inside her. Dazed, weak, she filled with pleasure, with want. Muscles strained as she arched her back. Sun beat down on her face, touched her open mouth, drew breath from her in sharp, taut inhalations. Her breasts, bared to the sky. Canis Minor, stroking. She looked. He stared at her, eyes slitted, face suffused.

  The horse, unused to Tate, reacted violently when she dug her heels into its flanks. It bucked forward. Tate’s knee was driven under Canis Minor’s. The momentum of the leap forced his leg upward. Off balance, he gave a startled yell and tumbled backward out of the saddle.

  Tate controlled her horse with one hand, hurriedly buttoning her blouse. She continued to look off into the piñons for a moment, breathing deeply, settling herself. When she turned, Canis Minor was walking toward her. He had a puzzled, angry look. More than that, he still carried the lust on his face, and in his hunched, bearlike posture.

  Holding up a hand Tate backed her horse. “I’m sorry. I can’t. I didn’t want anything to happen. It just did.”

  His chin tucked closer to his chest. He peered up at her from under a ridged, animal’s brow.

  Frightened, Tate turned her horse broadside to his advance and called, “Tanno. Ready.” The hound leapt to stand between her and the oncoming man. Legs spread, head down, Tanno growled. Bared teeth gleamed warning.

  Canis Minor stopped. Hand on his sword, he considered. When he looked up to Tate, she had the wipe resting on her thighs, muzzle pointed at him. She said, “Listen. Nothing happened. Understand?”

  Slowly, he straightened. His eyes lost their fixed stare. Finally, he smiled. It was weak, self-conscious. He said, “I’m not used to women who act the way you do. You’d better be careful with Starwatch men. None of us will ‘understand,’ as you put it.”

  “There won’t be another time.”

  Canis Minor’s smile was glaringly false. “We should go back now. People will wonder.” He spoke with a teasing lilt. Its edge of anger worried Tate. The affability, the comradeship, of the earlier talk was completely gone. Anxiously, Tate wondered if any of it had been honest.

  All the way down the hillside, she couldn’t stop thinking about Nalatan. Half the time she was hoping he’d never hear any stories of this foolishness. The other half, she blamed it all on his lack of commitment.

  Chapter 19

  Lanta wept.

  Alone in the tent, pinned to the surrounding darkness by the shaft of light streaming through the ventilation vent at the crown, she rocked in silent misery. The absence of any sound lent her sadness an eerie, premonitory quality.

  Initially, she cried out of feelings of inadequacy. Here, in calmer surroundings, with time to finally think, her mind turned on her viciously. She envisioned herself alienating Conway. Even when the rational part of her mind insisted she’d done nothing to antagonize him, much less earn his brutality, a part of it wallowed in guilt, insisted she’d done something to deserve such treatment.

  Emotionally, she was destroying herself. Logic was incapable of stopping her.

  Her mind seethed with rejection, with belittlement.

  Tee.

  Yasmaleeya’s insistence that Sylah deliver Jessak, rather than herself.

  Now Tate was helping Sylah pry out information concerning the Door. Again, Lanta was a nothing, doing nothing.

  Matt Conway was the dream that was going to change that. Being loved by one she loved would be identity. To be important to someone, not as a freak who read riddles about the future, or as a practitioner of mysterious medical arts, but as a person full of hopes and fears and everyday worries. That was to be alive.

  Wife to Matt Conway. One of a couple.

  She wished she could have remained a young, innocent Chosen forever. That, at least, was anonymity. Times of contentment. Children had their spites and meannesses, but nothing compared with the cruelty of seeing adult dreams trampled into filth.

  The fear in Lanta’s heart flickered to life when she considered how long since she’d experienced the Seeing. Had time healed the loss?

  Seeing could help Sylah more than potentially dangerous questioning. What if it revealed the Harvester’s plans? The Chair’s goals?

  Conway. Would she See him?

  She still shuddered at every memory of him amidst those alien, terrible scenes of death and destruction.

  Having used the Seeing wrongly once, what further punishment did Church hold for her if she did it again? How many times could she be thrown into the torments of the Land Under?

  Could that place offer more unhappiness than this one?

  Unbidden, the words of her chant crept into her mind, imposed themselves on the rhythm of her swaying. Muscle by muscle, nerve by nerve, she relaxed. She felt herself slowing inside. The arc of her rocking movement dwindled.

  The sun moved. She sat in darkness. The oval impact of the light was a dazzling pool directly in front of her. Half-closed eyes fixed on its center. Mental vision replaced the shabby, unsatisfactory world. The pool became an abyss of molten metal. Things moved there. Dim, shifting shapes. She understood they meant to frighten. She dismissed them with a cool nonchalance.

  Calm claimed her, excluded everything else.

  This wasn’t her normal refuge. This was violence surrounding confidence.

  A mountaintop. All snow and ice. The wind roared like all the raging rivers of the world. But Lanta was warm. Steady. She stood on the very edge of a precipice, reveled in the endless waves of sun-brushed mountains stretching away from her.

  The Seeing came.

  The old way. Swift, total blackness. Words in golden flames.

  You and you alone are to know the Flower did not grow without nurturing. She was brought to bloom by her mentor, not entrusted to the uncertainties of nature. Know, also, the Flower may yet fail. Her victory, the triumph of the black and the white, born of man-darkness and man-fire, awaits. Nor will her victory, if it comes, stop the struggle for peace and equality. Sweetest victories bring bitterest envy. Doors are not endings, but beginnings. There are more tests to come. Even the most wicked, she who suborns Church herself, must be appeased, if it is necessary so the Flower may succeed. In the end the Flower that nourishes all feeds on that which nurtures and benefits the Flower. One will sacrifice, one will bear the unbearable that the Flower may succeed. Yet, of what purpose the Flower, but to bear the seeds? And having borne, what Flower remains as before? Lanta is chosen from all to know the music that shall sing the glory of Church forevermore.

  The golden letters coalesced, melted together in one huge, fiery ball that grew, grew, then hurtled at her. Engulfed her. She screamed. Burned.

  Opening her eyes, she couldn’t remember where she was. Her first cogent awareness was of heat. She lay on her side, face pressed to the pounded earth.
Forcing herself to all fours, she realized she was in the sunbeam. Sweat soaked her underclothes, her robe. Sticky, dank hair clung to her head. Strength returned gradually. She moved out of the light into the dark, struggled to her feet.

  The villagers watched in awe, hands flashing in three-signs, as the small black-clad figure trudged to the women’s baths for the second time in one morning. Many remarked on the wetness of her robe, the shining moisture on her face, barely visible inside her voluminous hood. Others commented on the strangeness of her eyes. When a boy laughed and remarked to his mother that she looked like someone looking at a ghost, she cuffed him. Then made another three-sign.

  * * *

  Sylah walked with Orion on the riverbank. She noticed Lanta’s passage on her way to the bath and wondered at the second trip. She had no time to dwell on it. Orion was saying, “No one from Church has ever studied our legends. I’ve often wondered if other tribes have any similar to ours. So much was lost to us. The people of the beginning…” He paused, shook his head. “They left us nothing. Some names, some skills. How ignorant they must have been. If our siah hadn’t come to them, they’d have perished.”

  “That’s true of all tribes. Some, like the Mountain People of the north, divided when the siah left. It makes for a very confused history.”

  Orion agreed. He glanced around, then leaned closer to Sylah. “I sometimes wonder about what we accept as truth. We watch the stars, because we know someday the giants must come back. If giants could go to the stars, why can’t I fly? Just across the river?” Straightening, he cleared his throat, frowned. “Of course, I don’t disbelieve, understand. It’s just that I don’t understand. One wonders how it was done.”

  “Of course.” Sylah was happy to let the matter slide. Questions like that weren’t unique to Orion, she thought wryly, and she already had a glut of them. “That’s why I’m interested. If Church can learn everyone’s legends, perhaps we can establish a unity, a common link between some tribes. Even all of them.”

  Orion smiled, patronizing. “Leave it to Church to want to bring everyone under one roof. That’s a stranger dream than men flying. And an unhealthy one, child. Tell a Starwatch man he’s related to the animals from Long Sky, or the Salts, or the Hents, and you’ll hear language Church shouldn’t know about.”

  “The next time I take an arrowhead out of a man, you come listen; there aren’t any words I haven’t heard.”

  He chuckled. “You’re deceptive. Like good leather, soft and handsome, but strong. Flexible. I’m not surprised you got away from Kos. I wish you could have kept the child. You’d raise him better than those fools in Church Home.”

  “I wish we could have, too. We were afraid he’d die. He thrived. Hardly ever cried. Amazing.” She sighed. “Now I’ll probably never see him again. Poor little Jessak; lost his mother, then his trio of self-appointed aunts.”

  “Who?”

  Orion was behind her, stopped. His voice told her something was wrong. Apprehensive, she turned. His eyes were wide, unbelieving. Sylah said, “The baby? His name? It’s Jessak. Why?”

  “You named him that?”

  Sylah laughed. It was an attempt to dispel his distress, but sounded nervous, nevertheless. Helstar’s words returned to her. She said, “His mother named him, of course. The last thing she shouted at us as we fled. You know the name? I was told it was—inauspicious.”

  Orion watched her closely, tugging on his beard. At last, having come to a decision, he started to walk again, taking her arm as he came abreast of her. Together, they continued on. He said, “The child is a lever, Sylah. Whoever has him can bargain very effectively with the Chair. You should have thought more seriously about that. The Harvester did. You’ve strengthened her position regarding the Sister Mother contest. On the other hand, you’ve endangered her greatly. Some would say.”

  The last phrase had the ring of afterthought. Orion paused, considering his next words, then forged ahead. He took on a speculative, calculating manner. “The name is old in Kos. A legend, central to their tribal beliefs. You know Kos as a Church stronghold and ally. There are other beliefs, however. Not a religion, exactly, but beliefs in other things. Spirits. Ghosts. Animals that men identify with.”

  “Sharks.” Sylah remembered the jaws on the walls and the mystical appearance of the creatures even before the wallkiller’s victim fell into the sea.

  Sharks came when Jessak was endangered.

  “Yes. Sharks,” Orion said. “The man who told me the legend of Jessak drew a picture of one. Horrible thing. I’ll never travel to the Great Ocean; if I did, I wouldn’t get near it. At least a man can see a tiger or a snake.” He shivered. “They believe sharks are the agents of a Demon King, who lives under the sea. His magic bow shoots flaming arrows. One can burn a whole village. The sharks protect the king, you see, so they’re sacred to the Chair, as well. Sometimes the Demon King comes to the land. To sire a son. If the child grows to maturity, he’s destined to kill his parents, who don’t know he’s the demon’s son, of course. The child is beautiful. So wonderful, in fact, many hate him. And well they should, because under all the beauty and friendliness is foulest evil. Occasionally, the evil breaks through; the boy’s life is jeopardized. Anyone who helps him, without knowing his true identity, will be greatly rewarded. Anyone who knows who he is, or suspects, and uses him or deceives him, expecting to benefit, earns his undying wrath.”

  Sylah tossed her head. “I’m safe, then. I didn’t know the poor babe was part of a legend, and my faith in Church is too strong to accept demons and witched children.”

  “Ahh.” Orion lifted a warning finger. “There’s some truth in all the old tales. We have to be clever enough to catch it. Sometimes I think that’s how the One in All sees our efforts to understand the world: like children chasing butterflies. Look at yourself. You believe a prophecy, a Church legend.”

  “Admitted. I’m near it, Orion. I don’t know why I know, but I do.”

  The man pulled at his beard again, his smile enigmatic. “Many have heard the same legend, Sylah. None have found anything. Some have disappeared while searching; did you know that?”

  “No.” Sylah made the admission with a tingle of fear. The Abbess never mentioned anything about disappearances. She continued. “No one found the Door because I’m the one who shall. I’m the Flower, Orion. I am.”

  “Some have said so.” He laughed quietly at her surprise, adding, “The Seer of Seers predicted the Flower would come soon. To gain glory through the black and white. Traveling with the ones called White Thunder and Black Lightning has added much to your argument.”

  “I never heard of the black and white. I swear it. How do you know of the Seer of Seer’s visions?”

  “We have close contact with the brotherhoods that protect Church Home. We exchange news.”

  They were at a swooping bend of the river. Across from them, a marsh backed away from the water’s edge, hoarding what it could glean of the passing flow. Blackbirds rose and fell in sharp explosions of black and yellow. Unimpressed, a huge, scraggly, blue-gray heron stalked the shallows. Tall reeds swayed in a steady breeze. A few feet out from the near shore, a boy stood with a small fish spear. Unmoving as stone, he waited. The crystalline current built dancing whirlpools behind his slim legs. Spinning lazily, they drifted downstream to be reclaimed by the more sedate movement of the river.

  Sylah said, “My friends and I will leave here soon. We’ll look east. Over there.” She gestured weakly, knowing how vague she sounded.

  Orion was concerned. “Be careful. There’s forbidden country that way. No one lives there. Never has. A place even few animals inhabit. Terrible cliffs. Our legends tell of monsters and canyons so deep and narrow the sun never reaches the bottom. Fanciful tales, but as I said, there’s some truth in all the old stories. I advise you to avoid that area. If you go, I beg you to be careful.”

  Pulse racing, Sylah warned herself to give no sign of heightened interest. She tried to read him, s
aw genuine concern in him, but it was so admixed with such potent agitation that she was more confused than informed.

  There was deceit. She was certain of it.

  Why? About what?

  On the return to the village, she saw Tate and Canis Minor returning from a ride. Nalatan approached them from the opposite direction. Even at this distance, there was a stiffness in the warrior monk’s posture that touched off prickling at the back of Sylah’s neck.

  Chapter 20

  Tate refused to acknowledge Nalatan’s repressed anger. Canis Minor, on the other hand, bristled with hostility. Tate flinched at greeting. “Nalatan. What luck did you have?” The accent was on the word “you.”

  Suddenly, everything was still. Tate tasted metal.

  Swatting her horse, she angled forward between the two men. Her tight grin felt grotesque. She chattered, hearing the words, brittle, shallow. “You should see the view from up there, Nalatan. The houses are like little toys.”

  Nalatan looked through her, at Canis Minor. “We killed two wildcows. And a coyote. You know how they grin and sneak around in the brush while you’re butchering, hoping to grab something when men aren’t looking.”

  Canis Minor paled. His smile withered. “Boys kill wildcows. Smaller boys kill coyotes.”

  Tate said, “I’ve seen some beautiful capes made of coyote fur. The Dog people wear them all the time.”

  Nalatan flashed her an absent glance. When he looked to Canis Minor again, he appeared sleepy. Tate could think of no other word for the deceptively heavy-lidded features. She heeled her horse, making for her tent. Over her shoulder, she called to the men, neither of whom had moved. “I’m going home. Is either of you coming with me?”

  Without a word, both men wheeled to follow.

  It was a weird procession. Nalatan rode to Tate’s left. Canis Minor on the right. Other riders saw the trio coming and made way. A few younger men, contemporaries of Canis Minor’s, turned to trail behind. He spoke to them all. His attention remained on Nalatan.