Shadow Moon

by Chris Claremont

  “And what am I? But there’s more to life, there should be more to our lives.”

  “I hate the way the King’s household looks at me. They want to make me something I’m not and resent me for resisting.”

  “Can’t you find a middle ground? I think you look lovely in a gown.”

  “Funny, based on our first meeting, I thought much the same of you.”

  The wine was a rough red, tasteful but merciless, especially when it went down the wrong way. Willow coughed and choked and nearly drowned at the memory of that wild afternoon and Madmartigan’s impromptu disguise as a village wench. He almost got away with it, too, until one of the soldiery made an improper advance.

  Tactfully, Madmartigan chose to change the subject.

  “I thought you weren’t coming,” he said to Willow.

  “I’m not coming. I’m not here.” The two Daikini exchanged deadpan looks, choosing to take the Nelwyn at his word. “But I will say, I can’t remember when I’ve had a more wild dream.”

  “How’d you make the trip?”

  “On the back of a dragon.”

  “Sounds like a dream to me.” Sorsha smiled, only to burst into a riotous set of giggles as Madmartigan swept her into his arms and down a flight of steps in another impromptu pirouette. This time she didn’t hit him, or push away, but tried to match herself to the melodies of the fiddles, uillean pipes, and tiompan gaily holding forth below.

  “I’ll wear a gown tonight, if you’ll do the same tomorrow,” she challenged.

  “Hmm,” he considered. “Scandalous thought. Only men are supposed to show the shape of their legs.”

  “Probably because they’re afraid of the competition.”

  “I don’t understand you Daikini,” Willow grumped aloud, because for the most part he truly didn’t. “Sorsha wears pants every time she rides to battle, the shape of her legs are plain for all the world to see. Where’s the blessed scandal?”

  “That’s practicality, Willow,” Madmartigan explained. “Wearing trousers in a fight. She’s a warrior, not a woman.”

  “At last he comprehends,” she applauded.

  “But at court, at a ball—I suppose you could say it’s a whole different kind of battle, with its own set of rules. Men play peacock and display their charms for their ladies. Women…” Words failed him, which was a rarity.

  “Men choose, women are chosen, that’s the polite way of putting it,” Sorsha finished for him, making plain her dissatisfaction with such an arrangement.

  “In Tir Asleen, my sweet, a courteous guest lives by Tir Asleen’s rules.”

  It was clear this discussion wouldn’t reach its end tonight, if ever.

  “As long as I’m here,” Willow announced, “I’ll look in on Elora Danan.”

  “You always call her by name, Drumheller,” Sorsha said. “To most everyone else here, she’s ‘Her Royal Highness the Sacred Princess.’ ”

  “To me, Elora Danan is who she is. I changed her wrappings too often to consider her a ‘Sacred Princess’ anything—what did you call me, Sorsha?”

  “Drumheller. A warrior term my father taught me, before Bavmorda did away with him.” A sadness swept across her fine features, like a squall line over a smooth-surfaced lake, gone as quickly as it had arrived, helped on its way by the comforting grasp of Madmartigan’s arm across her shoulders. “Part pathfinder, part stalking horse, he—or she—is the warrior sent ahead of all the rest to charm an ambush out of hiding.”

  “How wonderful for him. Or her.”

  “It’s a job only the best of the best can do, Willow,” said Madmartigan.

  “You speak from experience?”

  “Sorsha and I, we have that in common.”

  “You think I’m such a one, Sorsha? One of us has had too much wine.”

  “This is a dream, remember? Wine doesn’t enter into it, only truth.”

  “If we’re to talk nothing but truth, past time I was awake.”

  “Forgive me, Willow, it’s how I’ve come to think of you. Showing the rest of us the way, whether we like it or not.”

  “Your thoughts, then, are more generous than mine.”

  “Damn but you’re a thorny bugger sometimes, Willow,” and Madmartigan clapped him gently on the shoulder for emphasis.

  “At my size, words have to serve as well as knives for weapons. Unlike you Daikini, it’s not so easy for us to impose our will on others. Or physically defend ourselves when things go wrong. We have to try persuasion. And diplomacy. To talk our way out of a mess.”

  “To charm,” Sorsha repeated and, with a grace that matched her mate’s, took Willow by the hands and drew him gently along the skybridge. She led the dance, because that was her nature, but imposed her will with such gentle ease that he had no problem following. She matched her steps to his, in tune to the music, letting words flow with movement as though they were all part of the same song. “The ambush out of hiding.”

  “You’re getting too damn good at this,” Willow groused in reply, but he couldn’t help a wide grin of his own as she raised his arm to pass him through a full turn; a moment after, the grin was an outright laugh on all their parts as she spun herself down into a crouch so that the Nelwyn could turn her. It was all improvised, every step, yet to anyone watching it appeared as though they’d been dancing together all their lives.

  They passed the wine again, exchanged some gossip, spoke a little of the world.

  “Not so easy for us, either, sometimes—that imposing the will you spoke of—” Madmartigan noted, as seriously as Sorsha would allow, “—especially where it concerns the Veil Folk and the Realms Beyond. The sharpest steel is no match for spells that can change a man to stone or swallow him whole.”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Willow conceded. “That dragon I rode could smash this castle to rubble with a swipe of its tail. Nobody stands alone in the world, that’s what he told me. There’s always someone bigger, some force greater, as there are those beneath you in the scale of things.”

  “Conversations like this, my lad, it strikes me Willow’s not the name for you. Bends too easily.”

  “All Nelwyns bend, Madmartigan, in part that’s how we survive. And don’t call me ‘lad,’ I’m older than you and a father.”

  “Explains why you’re turning stodgy on us.”

  “Am not. I’m no different now than ever I was!”

  But then he thought about what he just said, and noted the stifled giggles of his friends, and sighed surrender. Of that point, only.

  “Whatever.” Madmartigan was oh so gracious in victory, Willow wanted to stomp him on his big toe. “But anyone fool enough to take a hand to you, I’ll wager it comes away bloody. You’re not a good Willow, my friend, or a good Nelwyn, there’s way too much steel in your soul.”

  Tone and eyes didn’t match for that last thought; the one was jocular, the other—belying it totally—in deadly earnest, striking a sudden resonance in Willow that sobered him instantly.

  “I have it,” Sorsha announced, “for the duration of this dream then…”

  “Sorsha,” Willow pleaded, “have a little mercy.”

  “Suffer, Elora’s Champion. I’m Princess, Royal-born, entitled to my flights of whimsy. With the rank and privilege to enforce my royal decrees.” Her voice lowered in tone, deep and rich, and she mock-solemnly intoned, “Nelwyn you may appear in form, but in substance you are something far more formidable, deserving of a title to match.”

  “This is ridiculous.”

  “For the duration of this dream—no, better yet, until We,” she deliberately applied the Royal pronoun, and rolled her voice to match the court chamberlain’s sonorous tones when announcing the Honors List, “deign to release you—” the music below was building to a wild crescendo, so infectious a rhythm that Willow was hard put to stay still. Yet the force of Sorsha’s eyes, the strength of her voice, held h
im fast, commanding him with the same power she applied in battle, directing her troops over the helter-skelter clash of arms. “—shall you henceforth be known, with all rights and responsibilities due the name—”

  “Between us only,” Madmartigan interjected conspiratorially, “elsewise everyone will get confused. Kings don’t tend to like that.”

  “—as Thorn Drumheller.”

  Faster than Willow could follow, she drew her sword. With each of those three words, she tapped him on his shoulder with the flat of her blade. Right, left, right, same as for a knightly investiture.

  “You’re both demented,” Willow told them.

  “Takes one to know,” was Madmartigan’s riposte.

  These two fenced as fiercely with words as blades, with a skill that put even their brownie companions to shame—and that was no mean feat. In such verbal jousts, they rarely gave quarter and while Willow tried his best to match them—even holding his own on occasion—sometimes his only recourse was to simply disengage.

  “Enough of this foolishness and enough of you,” he said with finality. “I am going to Elora Danan and then I am going home and if I never see the pair of you again I swear it’ll be too soon!”

  He didn’t mean it, of course, but that’s the trouble with words spoken in haste and in heat, they come back to haunt you.

  * * *

  —

  Elora’s apartments were located in the Royal tower, the core of the castle, about which all its component fortifications were arrayed, in an expanding set of rough circles. The rooms were sumptuously appointed, but it was still impossible to disguise the fact that Tir Asleen was first and foremost a military stronghold. In most cases, the walls were thicker than a Daikini was tall, the doors massive constructs of wood and iron, windows few and far between and placed more for the convenience of snipers than their view.

  Elora, Madmartigan, and Sorsha shared an entire floor, right below the Royal suites, their bedroom next to hers.

  “Halt, stand and deliver,” he heard as he stepped across the threshold. A moment later, for emphasis, he felt the sting of a brownie arrow in his backside.

  “That’s not nice,” he said, as sternly yet softly as he dared, because he didn’t want to wake Elora. The room was a clutter, though most of the toys and bric-a-brac were for show, since she was still far too young to use them. At last report, she’d just about mastered the art of walking. Her bed appeared far too large for her, the child almost lost beneath the jumbled mounds of her down comforter and pillows and stuffed animals. There was an unusual amount of light, so much so that Willow’s MageSight was unnecessary, some of it was cast by the heaped embers in the hearth behind the fireplace screen; the rest came from stars and moon above, shining through a large, circular glass skylight that had been cut into the ceiling to give the chamber the airy aspect of a solar. Willow didn’t see much in the way of furniture, but the floor bore a number of plush rugs; a sensible arrangement where a toddler was concerned, nothing to run into and a fair cushion beneath her whenever she fell.

  To the casual eye, the room was otherwise empty and unguarded. The challenge and his sore backside most eloquently proved different.

  “Careless big fella, heh,” said a tiny voice from behind, and Rool strode stiff-legged into view, the whole of the brownie’s body nearly masked by the weave of the carpet.

  “In a rowdy humor tonight, are we?” Willow wondered.

  “Looks same as always,” offered another voice, this from a brownie wearing the helm and cloak of a slain mouse. “Talks different, though. Putting on airs, like some dandy from Court, looking to better himself by making nice with Elora Danan. Could be an impostor.”

  Willow decided he’d just reached the end of his patience with this dream. He snapped his fingers and was rewarded by a pair of outraged squawks from the brownies as a pair of fiery sparks burst beneath them, leaving tiny pops of thunder in their wake and the smell of burning air, as a stroke of lightning does in a summer thunderstorm.

  “Trust me,” he told them, in a tone that made clear he wasn’t joking anymore, “I’m me.”

  “Could have simply said so,” came from Rool.

  “I’m tired. It’s late. I’d like my spirit to be back home with the rest of me, enjoying a good night’s sleep, is that so much to ask?”

  The brownies looked at each other as though he was talking crazy, and said as much, altogether to themselves, ignoring him completely. Rool’s approach was pragmatic; the posturing was left to Franjean.

  Willow took advantage of their disputations to cross to the bed for a closer look at his goddaughter. In many ways, she was still one of the most beautiful things he’d ever seen, on a par with his own children. Her hair was spun gold, shot through with strands of fire that might well have come from Sorsha’s own head. She was plump, but babies were supposed to be so at her age, giving the impression that her body was little more than an arrangement of circles pinned together. Round head, round belly, round arms, round legs. There was an air of peace about her, of an innocence and freshness that had nothing to do with her age. She was someone whose natural state was a smile, of delight and wonder at the world arrayed before her. It was a warm and welcoming room, the kind where it would be easy to spend some time; by her sheer presence, Elora Danan made this ancient fortress a happier place. And all within, better folk.

  “Now, lass,” Willow muttered, “if your charms can only work as well on the stiff-necked, stone-skulled rulers of the Realms Beyond, there may well be some hope for the world.”

  His foot bumped something on the floor and he reached down to recover a ball. It fit comfortably in his hand, and on an impulse, he gave it a spin, balancing it on his outstretched forefinger, thinking while it turned of what the dragon had told him. He could still feel the aftertaste of the terror of those moments, but it was fast fading before his growing fascination with this new way of looking at the world. He stopped the ball, arbitrarily labeling the place where his fingertip rested as Tir Asleen. Then he turned the ball right around in his grasp to the point opposite; he put his thumb there and called it Angwyn, and yearned to journey from one to the other.

  Never happen, of course. Not anywhile soon. Too many responsibilities at home. Yet Nelwyns were a long-lived people, and in next to no time, the children would be grown. Perhaps then.

  “Thought you weren’t coming, big fella.” Rool again, having scrambled lithely to a perch on Elora’s bedstead.

  “Everyone says that,” he noted as he set the ball aside, with its fellows.

  “Seems sensible enough, since here you are.”

  “It’s a dream. I’m at home, Rool, asleep in my own bed. Trust me on that.”

  “If you say so.”

  “Me,” Franjean said, “I say it’s guilt!” He would have emphasized the word with a shout, had not a stern “shush” from Rool and Willow both not dampened the volume in the barest nick of time. “Elora’s celebration, it is, a year tomorrow since she came to Tir Asleen. Is Willow—her savior, her godfather—coming to be part of the festivities? He says not, he has to tend to his precious fields.”

  “I don’t plant now, my family doesn’t eat later.”

  “You’re a wizard, Willow,” said Rool, “you’ll manage.”

  “Does he at least send a present for the little lovely,” Franjean continued remorselessly, without missing a beat. “I don’t see one!”

  “That,” agreed the other brownie, “is shameful.”

  “I have a present.”

  “With you?” From both of them in perfect unison.

  He was about to say no when some inspiration prompted his hand toward the traveling pouch on his left hip. These were one of his earliest successes in learning the art and craft of magic; the apparent size of the bag bore no relationship whatsoever to the volume within, or how much it could carry. Food would stay fresh, water wouldn’t spill; if something fit through t
he drawstring opening, it could be carried inside. All he had to do was think about what he needed and reach in; if it had been packed away, his hand would instantly find it.

  Which is what happened. He thought of the bear and there it was.

  Oddly enough, since his last recollection of the bear was leaving it on the table of his workshop. He took this as proof positive he was dreaming.

  “She sleeping all right?” he asked as he smoothed the hair on the bear’s head.

  “Like a baby,” said Rool.

  “Dolt,” said Franjean, “what d’you expect? She is a baby!”

  “Why do you ask, Willow?”

  “No reason, Rool.” He held the bear up before him and looked it square in its crystal eyes. “Well, here we are, you and I, about to part company. Perhaps that’s the purpose of these meanderings, to deliver in dreams what I’ll fail to in flesh. Forgive me for that, Elora Danan,” he said to the girl. “I don’t know why I waited. No doubt because, since this gift came from my hands, I wanted it to come to you from my hands. No strangers between us. No distance.

  “Let my bear stand in my stead, will that be acceptable, Highness? All that I would be, were I here, let him represent.”

  “Willow.”

  “Yes, Rool.”

  “Do you know what you’re doing?”

  “Yes, Rool.”

  “I don’t think so. Look at yourself, wizard, you’re glowing!”

  “Bless my soul, so I am.”

  “You’re not supposed to cast spells in here.”

  “Death Dog’s fangs,” hissed Franjean, “you’re not supposed to be able to cast spells in here. There are protective wards set around this room thicker than the damnable walls!”

  “Not my doing, not my power,” was Willow’s reply. “It’s a resonance, a reflection of Elora’s.”

  “Impressive.”

  “Very, actually, Rool.”

  “Since when is she a sorceress,” Franjean said, with more than a pinch of outrage, as if he should have been the very first to know.