by Dave Duncan
— William Motherwell, Jeanie Morrison
SEVEN
Come by moonlight
1
Thaile was still tidying away the dirty dishes and the remains of supper when she Felt anxiety approaching. Mist’s distinctive emotions were familiar to her by now, and so was the sudden starting and ending of Feeling caused by the sorcery of the Wayhad he been coming by any mundane road, she would have detected him hours ago. Peeking around a corner of a drape, she saw a lantern flicker in the trees.
Then came hesitation. He had followed her to make sure she was all right, that she had reached home safely. Now he could see the light in her window. She did not want to talk with Mist any more that night; she needed time to think before she talked with anyone. She marched across the room, letting her shadow traverse the curtain. She Felt his relief … regret … resignation. A few minutes’ indecision, and then he turned for home. His emotions were abruptly cut off by the Way. When she looked again, his light had gone. Poor Mist! He meant well, even if a hailstorm was more considerate.
But the day would not end. She washed the dishes; she washed herself. She turned out the lights, shed the last of her garments. She sank into that cloud-soft featherbed. And the day would not end.
Yesterday? She had no yesterday. She had no memory of her journey, or her arrival at the College. She could remember going to the Wide Place, to visit Sheep. She could not recall returning home. Had she just run away? By herself ? That seemed very unlikely.
Almost a year had been stolen from her life-of that she was certain. She was plumper than she remembered herself, and fat took time. Hair took time, too-she climbed out of bed, turned on the light, and inspected her neck in the mirror again. Maybe … she could not be sure. Everyone tended to grow a little paler in the rainy season and darker in the dry season. The neck evidence, she admitted, was weak. It might be only imagination, or the rainy season. She could hardly accost Sorcerer Jain, point at her neck, and demand an explanation.
She turned out the light and floated down into the bed again. It was much too soft, but she knew she would not sleep, even if she lay on the floor. She had never felt more awake in her life. Too soft … and empty.
Why did an empty bed feel so wrong when she had always had a bed to herself ? Ferns or feathers-a bed was a bed. She thought about praying, but almost all the prayers she had ever learned were addressed to the Keeper, and here she was in the Keeper’s lair. Even the Gods might not heed a prayer from within the College itself.
Almost a year of her life. She might be able to live with that loss. Whom do we serve? asked the catechism. The Keeper and the College, of course. She had been taught those words by her parents, as all pixies always were and always had been. If she had truly run away, disobeying the recorder’s edict that she present herself at the College, then she had sinned. Crime deserved punishment. Perhaps that dark void was her punishment.
But who had lived within that void? A boy with a kind smile whom she had loved? A man, perhaps, who had built a Place of bamboo and wicker? Who had taught her to cook fish? A lover? A man of her own?
Loss of life she might accept, but loss of love was unforgivable. She must know! She must find more evidence and be sure. She trembled as she followed her logic to its conclusions.
If she had learned to cook fish, then she might have learned other things as well.
Thaile arose and pulled a dress at random from the closet. She wrapped herself in a cloak. She did not need shoes to walk in -the forest, nor any other garment for what she planned. She stepped out into the moonlight and set off along the Way, shivering a little-partly from the cold, but mostly from shame.
“I promise! Oh, I promise!” He pushed the door closed and wrapped her quickly in his arms. “I do love you!”
There was still light showing in the Mist Place. For a moment she hovered nervously on the stoop, sensing the boredom and worry and loneliness within. A pixie, lonely? Poor Mist! She could not imagine Mist as a sorcerer. Easier than picking cotton, he had said. Easier still to see the devious, sinister Jain as a sorcerer and the placid, easygoing Mist pulling weeds or just dipping a paddle into sunlit water …
The frogs were louder than they had been earlier, yet why could he not hear the beating of her heart? Her Feeling gave little sense of direction, but she was fairly sure that he was in bed, or at least in his bedroom. A faint undertone of disgust suggested that he might even be trying to tidy up the Place so that Novice Thaile would not be upset when she saw it again tomorrow.
Are you sure this is what you want to do? whispered a tiny voice within her.
I must know, she replied, and rapped knuckles on the planks. Wild alarm within … The floor creaked.
“Who’s there?” Mist demanded from the other side of the door, deep and threatening.
“Thaile. Let me in.”
Relief and delight … “Wait a minute, then. I haven’t anyI mean, I’m not respectable.”
“Doesn’t matter.”
Incredulity … excitement …
The door opened a crack, and two eyes peered out below a tangle of hair, all silver pale in the moonlight.
She said, “Are you going to keep me here shivering all night?”
Excitement became tinged with embarrassment-and shame. “But I … I haven’t any clothes on.”
She pushed the door, and Felt his disbelief and wildly mounting joy as it creaked slowly open. He retreated behind it, peering around the edge incredulously. She entered, blinking in the lamplight. She could still see nothing of him except his eyes, yellow again now and stretched impossibly wide.
Her mouth was dry. “Promise me you’ll be gentle?” she whispered.
2
Faint lichens of moonlight clung to darkness on the cottage walls. Frogs croaked far away. Mist snored softly at Thaile’s side, facedown, one heavy arm across her. The performance was over: the heaving, the sweating, the gasps and cries andyes, admit it!-the heart-stopping surges of rapture.
Over. She felt soiled and guilty, as if she had done something sinful. She also felt used, although it had been she who had tried to use Mist for some insane, nonsensical purpose. What in the world had she hoped to achieve? And what had she in fact achieved, apart from a sort of all-over pummeled feeling, as if she had been rolled down a long hill?
More sorrow, that was what. She knew now that she had not come to this man’s bed as a trembling virgin. There had been no surprises there. Her body had known what to do, how to respond to his and encourage it. It was probably a lot more experienced than Mist’s was.
She shivered as her sweaty skin cooled. He stirred. She Felt his sleep fade into a drowsy smugness.
“I did good, didn’t I?” he muttered.
She countered, “You mean that’s all?” and at once scolded herself for being catty. Ungrateful, even. A girl ought to appreciate a man willing to exert himself so hard and long.
Mist’s satisfaction was proof against teasing. He chuckled silently. “Sure is all! Try me again in the morning.”
She was not going to be here in the morning, that was certain. Her pulse rate had returned to a bearable level. A long cold walk lay between her and that wonderful bathtub waiting at her own Place. As-she was about to remove Mist’s sticky hand, though, he seemed to rouse a little more. “Who’s Leeb?”
Her heart began to hammer again. ““moo? >
Mist yawned, and stretched sensuously. “That last time. You got kinda wild. Kept calling me Leeb.”
Leeb? It sounded like someone’s name, but she knew nobody called Leeb. “You heard wrong. “
“Nawp! It was Leeb, Leeb, Leeb … Leeb this, Leeb that. Well, I did everything you wanted, honey, and then some. One last kiss … Hey! Where’yu going?”
“Bathtub.” She slid her feet to the garment-strewn floor. Mist grunted and rolled over, sinking down into sleep even as he did so. She pulled a cover over him and went out into the front room. She managed to locate her cloak near the outer door.
Curiously reluctant to call for lights, she decided to leave her dress wherever Mist had thrown it; doubtless he would keep it as a souvenir. She left the cottage, closing the door quietly.
The moon was low in the sky, the forest cooler and dark. There was no rain. Thaile Place she thought firmly as she reached the shimmering paleness of the Way, and its grittiness was pleasantly familiar under her feet.
Leeb? The word meant nothing. A man? A place? A river, perhaps. But she had called it out at the ultimate moment of ecstasy, the moment-so an old song said-when the God of Love caressed the soul.
Most of a year missing from her life, nine or ten months at least. Almost long enough to … No, that was absurd. She wouldn’t think about that. But now she was sure. Certainly that had not been the first time a man had made love to her. Leeb? Who else?
Gods, but she was tired! Kneaded! Mist was heavy.
Leeb! She had a name for him now, at least, if not a face yet. Now what? All her life she had been taught to revere the Gods, the Keeper, the College.
Who defends us from the demons? The Keeper and the College. Whom do we serve?
The Keeper and the College. Who never sleeps?
The Keeper.
But now the Keeper and the College had stolen away a year of her life and the love of her life. They had brought her here against her will. They expected her cooperation, yet they had coerced her, and tricked her. Could anything demons might do be worse than that?
Leeb? Who was Leeb?
To serve the Keeper and the College-to serve the Gods … But the Gods Themselves must seek to aid the Good. The Gods, the College, the Keeper, and humble little Thaile-they all should follow that highest loyalty. She could see little evidence that any of them had been doing so.
The wind was rising, stirring the trees, and she hugged her cloak tight against the chill. Her feet were frozen. The moon was low behind her, throwing her shadow far ahead along the Way, amid the many writhing shadows of branches.
Was there any escape from the College? If she and Mist were correct, then the College was no single place at all. There were bits of it scattered all over Thume. Her own cottage stood in woods familiar to her, among trees like the trees that grew near her birthplace. The Mist Place was familiar to Mist. It made sense. It was very convenient. Nice magic.
What would happen, then, if she just left her cottage in the morning and headed west, say, or south-or any direction except along the Way? Would she emerge from the sorcery of the College and find herself in the foothills of the Progiste Mountains, close to her parents’ Place? That seemed very unlikely. There must be sorcery to stop strangers blundering in. There would be sorcery to keep the inmates from blundering out.
It might be worth a try, though.
But even if she could escape from the College, it was certain that Jain and his friends could find her again before she ever discovered Leeb. She did not know where to look.
She did not even know what he looked like.
His memories of her might have been destroyed as utterly as her memories of him. And perhaps he did not exist at all. Leeb. Leeb? The name meant nothing except her own romantic delusion.
The trees were wrong! She stopped, feeling a jolt of childish alarm before she could remind herself that she was safe in the care of the Keeper. The College would certainly not go to all the trouble of bringing her here and then let her be hurt.
The Way ran on ahead along a hillside, a faint glimmer in the dark. The ground sloped down to her right and in that direction she could see dark branches waving against dark sky and a few silvery shreds of cloud. A distant ridge marked the far side of the valley, dark, also, and anonymous. To her left the forest rose steeply, scrubby grass and trunks cutting off her view. Moonlight danced through waving pines behind her. The air smelled of pine, not of the familiar woods around her cabin.
She listened, hearing only the wind in the trees and a hint of water far below. And the beating of her heart.
Gods preserve me!
She had been walking far too long anyway, she realized, and this was certainly not the Way she wanted to go. It was new to her. It was not the Way to anywhere she had been taken in the College. Shivering, she tried to work it out. Could this be the Way to the Gate? Perhaps her desire to escape from the College had unconsciously led her the wrong Way, just as Mist’s romantic hopes had caused him to take her to his Place when he had not deliberately planned to. Sometimes, obviously, the Way heard the heart and not the head.
But Mist had said you could only follow the Way to somewhere you knew already, so her chances of arriving at the Gate must be slim. Yet if she did not keep moving, she would freeze. She was wearing nothing under her cloak except a triple layer of goose bumps. Sternly repeating to herself Jain’s statement that she could be in no danger within the College, she decided to carry on and see where this Way led.
As she limped along, weary muscles stiffening in the cold, some other, nastier, possibilities came to mind. She had gone to Mist’s Place and accepted his seed. In the ways of the pixies, she had bound herself to him for life. True, neither of them had made any promises. She had intended none and was quite certain he had not, either, but it was the acceptance that counted. By strict reckoning she was now Thaile of the Mist Place, forever. So perhaps this Way led nowhere at all, and the Thaile Place no longer existed. She would have to turn back and go home to that big parasitic canoeist.
Which might be what the foul scheming Jain had intended. He had deliberately thrown her into Mist’s company. How strong was Mist’s talent? If her suspicions were correct, friend Mist inspired other people to care for him. She had cooked his supper and very nearly volunteered to clean out his filthy den. She had gone to his bed of her own free will, she had thought. Believing that she was using him for her own purposes, she might have been serving his. God of Mercy!
Thaile of the Mist Place? Now there was a revolting prospect! The valley was narrowing, and the trees thinning out. She could hear a mountain torrent below quite clearly now and discern the bare ridge across the valley-silver grass in the moon light, with only a few stunted trees casting long shadows. The moon was near to setting and dawn was hours away.
She must be very high, up near the timberline. She would not be at all surprised to see snow soon, and the wind felt fresh from mountain crags. Wandering unknown hills in the middle of a winter’s night? This was madness!
She spun around and headed back, with the moon in her eyes. “The Thaile Place!” she said aloud. “Take me to the Thaile Place!” She called up a clear mental picture, and hurried. She would accept the Mist Place, of course, if that was to be her only choice. To climb into bed beside that big lunk and lay her icy feet against his back would be purest bliss.
Don’t think about the Mist Place! Thaile Place!
The Way was curving more than she expected. She did not remember so many bends. She was not back into the forest yetin fact, trees seemed to be even scarcer.
With the valley on her left now, and the moon temporarily slid around to her right, she came to deep shadow, where the Way’s pale trace skirted a high buttress of rock. She had not seen this before!
Nor had she crossed a bridge, and yet the Way ahead quite clearly swung away from the vertical face and crossed to the far side by a narrow stone bridge. It was old, its parapets half fallen away, and it glimmered with the same spooky pallor as the Way itself. She had most certainly not seen it, or crossed it, earlier.
Whimpering with cold and fear, she sat down on the path and chafed her feet while she considered the prospect.
Obviously the sorcerous Way changed all the time; it just had not changed quite so blatantly before. Also obviously, if she crossed that bridge, she would again have the valley on her right and the hill on her left. And the valley itself bent out of sightto the left, of course-so she would then have the moon behind her again. Obviously.
The Way was taking her somewhere, whether she wanted to go there or not. Her retreat had been cut of
f, and both directions led to the same place. She had two choices-go where the Way led, or stay where she was and freeze.
She could not even be sure of the second alternative. If she shut her eyes for a minute, the landscape might start changing on its own.
Evil take it! “Can’t fight the weather,” Gaib would sayusually under his breath when her mother was laying down the law. Here was an excellent example of weather not to be fought. Groaning with stiffness and weariness, Thaile clambered to her feet and hobbled across the bridge.
As she had expected, she soon found herself going the same Way as before, trudging along a hillside with the gorge to her right and the moon behind her. The wind was really whistling along the valley now, the noise of the stream much louder. She must just hope that wherever she was being taken had a roaring fire and something steaming hot to drink. And a bed. With no men in it.
She had sinned, of course. Virtuous women did not go to strange men’s Places and seduce them; but the Gods rarely dispensed punishment so candidly. Her brother-in-law, Wide, was a libertine, but his philandering did not attract divine retribution, so far as she knew. A couple of her childhood friends had told her stories they would never have told their parents.
Perhaps … Just maybe …
Could the Gods have taken pity on her? Could it be that this so-willful Way was taking her to Leeb, whoever he was?
She did not dare to hope for that, but she decided she had better do some praying. Not to the Keeper, though, just to the Gods. She began muttering prayers, making them up as she went along.
The valley became a gorge, the wind buffeting at her with icy fists, trying to hurl her from the narrow path, down into the shadowed chasm on her right. On her left, the rock rose almost sheer. Moonlight glowed on racing clouds overhead, but did not penetrate this sinister cleft in the hills. She had only the spectral gleam of the Way itself to guide her.
And then a final bend brought her to what had to be her destination. A single shaft of moonlight fell on white masonry ahead, closing off the ravine. Ragged and undoubtedly ancient, a single arch spanned both the Way and the chasm, the stonework springing out from the steep rock on either side. Once the arch had supported a gatehouse, for she could see remains of windows in the ruins above, and trees growing there. Water roared in the unseen depths, sending up a faint odor of spray. Old-and evil. It was gloating at her in the moonlight.