From the Flute, a single note began to swell. Elzin froze, hands still clutching the fallen crown. The hall hushed.
Eerily, the pitch soared higher. To Elzin’s horror, thin tendrils of pulsing pink light began to twist and rise, like snakes from each of the Flute's small holes, snakes pink as sunset, pink as her gown. The beams danced dreamily about her: swaying, circling, weaving.
They wove her a cocoon. The note's pitch rose until she could no longer hear it, but the web of light remained. Moaning, Elzin dropped the crown and backed crablike to the limit of her confines. The pale pink radiance of the ghostly web produced a gauzy veil against the crowd, but nothing could veil the malice which smoldered in the fat Queen's eyes.
The handmaid wrung her hands. "No! I didn't mean it! A mistake!"
Dulcet and sweet, the Saireflute wove another spell, this one of sound, not light--a lullaby of long ago. But Elzin wanted only escape. Trapped in her net of shimmering light, before her the hideous face of the Queen, behind her the staring, suspicious crowd, Elzin fled the only way she might. She fainted.
Light and song ceased. Pandemonium rose roaring like a volcano from the ashes of the earlier hush. "Unworthy!" "Untrained!" Elzin was no candidate – and certainly no virgin!
She stirred, rousing as the bedlam shook six generations of dust from the buttressed ceiling. Onto the dais sprinted a tall, slender man, twin, jet hounds bounding after. He took her hand as the enormous dogs seated themselves protectively in unison.
"You must rise," he said. "You are the Chosen."
She did, not knowing what else to do, and his smile was radiant, as if she had performed something miraculous, just for him. The jewels in the dogs' collars exploded with the early afternoon sunlight, and she realized that she now looked down, that he knelt to her. "No! Wait!" In confusion, she dropped to her own knees. "The Queen--I'm afraid--"
"All power has its perils," he told her, so softly she barely heard. "But to let another take what is yours is to be forever diminished. Stand on your own now. I will be there if you need help."
Before the dazed handmaid could reply, he was gone.
o0o
Ah! You have gotten too far above yourself this time, my dearest Count, thought Duke Gold. Her Majesty despises the slut; how stupid of you not to know better. I could have told you so, had you the sense to ally yourself with me. The crown -- he should retrieve it. Shador curse it, why hadn't he done so while Val Torska made a spectacle of himself on the dais? Too late now; the crafty savage had already scooped the treasure up.
Oh, very pretty. See how he kneels as he offers the crown, lower, far lower than he knelt for Elzin. Gods! Is he touching his forehead to the floor? Surely the Queen would not be taken in by some fawning display of flexibility?
"One head here alone is fit to bear this," said Val Torska, loud enough for all to hear. "Let it be restored."
Ambitious savage with his ambiguous words -- he probably meant his own head and not hers. Still, the fury in the regent's porcine eyes had been snuffed as easily as the flame of a candle. Another look replaced it, one much more foreign to Her Majesty. One which Gold had long wished to kindle for himself.
How does that foul weasel manage, Gold wondered as the Queen lifted the crown from the Tarskan's slender hands and placed it on her own head. The thought distracted him so that Duke Oakfellow seized the initiative and was first to applaud his approval of the monarch's impromptu re-coronation.
Enough! The highlander had enjoyed his way too many times of late, and as for Elzin, he had another score to settle with her. Squeezing past the two Royal Physicians, Gold elbowed aside the remaining ladies in waiting, and slipped, slick as new grease, into his favorite niche behind the Queen's shoulder.
"That slut can't believe she deserves the Saireflute," he hissed into the monarch's ear as the clamor died down.
"If you have something to say, Gold," snapped the Queen, "just say it. Don't creep up from behind and whine in my ear like an insect." She wriggled her hams more deeply into the cushions of her throne and favored Val Torska with a contemplative nod. The well-trained crowd took its cue and renewed their applause.
"Besides, Gold, I'll deal with the girl. Her brother is what should concern you. What have you discovered?"
Duke Gold cringed, fearful of reporting his failure, but more frightened still of delivering a discernable lie. "No trace, Your Majesty."
"He has only one use to me now, Gold. Find him; he must be made an example. As for our sweet slut --" She stood and clapped her hands twice for attention.
The hall grew hushed. "I find it necessary, under the unorthodox circumstances, to take counsel on this matter of a successor to our late and venerable Saire. Count Val Torska, Duke Gold, and Viscount Riverweal of the Council of Lords, together with Mother Kanzal, Keeper of the Virgins, will join me in my chambers immediately."
o0o
The Saireflute must have turned her invisible. Those the Queen had summoned followed Her Majesty in a grim, silent procession. The Candidates, too, filed out behind the stone-faced priestesses. The crowd's uncomfortable stillness slowly fragmented: nervous tittering in one corner, muted conversation, and finally full-blown discourse as the hall began to clear.
No one spoke to Elzin. Desperately, she glanced toward eyes that would not meet hers, eyes of lords and ladies, eyes of guards and handmaids, eyes of former lovers. Perhaps she had dissolved, thought the blonde as she stared down at the Saireflute resting innocuously on its velvet cushion.
"Take it." Startled, Elzin spun to face a Candidate, a youngster no older than the brink of her teens.
"The Saireflute has chosen; even a heathen can see. I will not turn my back. Take what is yours, Great Lady." The girl lifted her chin proudly, though it trembled. "I am not afraid."
Although the child stiffened when the handmaid first touched it, the Flute felt ordinary enough, cool and solid as she hefted it in her hands.
To her astonishment, the red-haired girl had dropped to the floor. Sweet Telriss! Would she spend the rest of her life looking at the top of people's heads?
"You are Saire," the girl said. "And I am Shelvann, your servant forever."
o0o
Behind the knot of the also-summoned, Count Caldan Val Torska strode, his tall hounds attentive at his heel and his eyes on the wide, retreating back of the Queen. The lord councilor narrowly avoided a smile as Gold tried to take Her Majesty's arm and was instantly rebuffed.
His choice would have been to stay with Elzin, but he had already nosed the limit of his liberties. The Queen had said immediately; he would linger for the girl's sake at the risk of his own. Elzin's cause might be best addressed in the Queen's chambers anyway.
Provided, of course, the Queen demanded only counsel.
Why this meeting, though? The Queen's antipathy toward Elzin was known to him, as was Gold's, and that hatred had only escalated since the "abduction" of Elzin's brother, the captain of the Prince Royal's elite. Had Hulgmal's madness progressed so far she would openly challenge the Saireflute? If her passions were now all that ruled her, any alliance could be overturned in an instant. Yet, the Queen's gambit could have its uses…
He stopped as familiar footfalls called his attention to a woman ushered through the last pair of guards in the hall. Emerald-studded combs held in place an elaborate coiffure of ermine hair, the thin and pallid figure beneath clothed in forest green. High-necked, long-sleeved, simple and severe; the cut of a matron's gown, not a maiden's. Yet, maiden she was, despite her wintry hair. Castandra, his daughter, only seventeen. Magic had bleached her hair white; it was the brand all magicians bore, impervious to every dye.
After the girl trotted two silver-grey hounds; their silver collars winked in the torchlight of the windowless hall. As her hair marked her calling, so the hounds marked her breeding. By royal decree, a brace of Tarskan coursers might accompany the Val Torskas even into the chambers of the regents themselves.
Although they had begun with h
is own grandfather, Caldan himself did not know the origin of the hounds. He only knew what anyone might: that seventy-five years before, when the Queen's great-grandfather ruled, Chadar had presented the king the pack of sixteen. Rangy, elegant, with pricked, tufted ears, satin pelts and sad, sagacious eyes, the hounds would have been instant favorites in any kennel. But King Nedritinn was a hunter, and the hounds had more than beauty to commend them. In the chase they knew no equal; relentless, fearless, tireless, the trail they put their nose to they never lost. They did not bark, or whine, or howl, but when they closed upon their quarry their eerie baying could be heard for miles.
For two years the King had thrown his best hounds against the fabled snow lions of the Wyrmfang mountains, and each attempt had ended fruitlessly; at best with the confusion of his pack, most often with truncated yelps and empty, bloodstained pockets in the snow. The years and the loss of his best dogs had never given Nedritinn so much as a glimpse of his quarry; all he ever saw of the snow lions was their gruesome handiwork and the impressions of their platter-sized pawprints in the snow.
Yet the coursers on their maiden hunt brought him within arm's length. Although unable to take the great cat on that day or any other, the King had not been disappointed. Through every trick and trap devised by the unnatural beast, the coursers had led him unerringly on. Twice when the lion ambushed him, the hounds drove the creature off. And, three days later, when a party of highlanders rescued him from the sudden blizzard that had trapped him fireless and far from shelter, it was discovered that the hounds had saved him yet again, piling over and under him to share their body heat.
When the King recovered, he declared Chadar the first Count Val Torska and gave him rulership of his birthplace, the mountainous lands in the northernmost part of Lhant, where until Nedritinn only one other of the lowlands had freely entered. He named the province Tarska, and the hounds Tarskan coursers.
Names and titles meant nothing in the mountains. The decreed boundaries were the same that they had for centuries forced interlopers to respect. But the decrees did give them access to the court, and a voice in the choosing of the Council of Lords--even the chance to become one of those makers of law. And that had proved a very great gift indeed.
o0o
Were she home, she might be sewing her leggings from the hide of a deer brought down by her own hand. Instead, Chadar's great-granddaughter disguised her hurry with a deportment that chafed her more nobly bred contemporaries. Neither she nor her father ever forgot they were the only Tarskans at court -- that they, and the three in their company, were the only known highlanders outside of the mountains of Tarska.
Savages must be careful of their decorum. He waited as she caught up.
"I thought you might have need of me," she said.
"Indeed," he agreed, taking her arm. "I suspect a number of us will speak of things we would not care to have repeated."
"Gold has the ears of a fox, and a secret is as safe with him as a duckling with a weasel. I'll never understand why the Queen favors him."
"She favors him," her father replied very softly, "for just those reasons. Remember Baronet Standard."
Though the incident had taken place weeks before, the memory still caused the sorceress to blanch. According to Gold, Standard had been overheard in the wine cellar, accusing the Queen's excesses of alarming the people and causing certain unnamed countries to lick their chops in Lhant's direction. Gold instantly told the Queen. As a lesson to "all such traitors", she had caused Standard to be thrown alive into a caldron of boiling oil. The hideous public display had caused more than one noble stomach to betray its owner.
Banished from their usual place beside the Queen, the two Royal Physicians consoled themselves with a bottle of the kingdom's finest liqueur. The highlanders stepped past them into the Queen's chambers. Just inside the door, Castandra stopped, her head and eyes demurely lowered.
"My Lord Gold, I would never allow you to serve me," said Val Torska as he deftly relieved the duke of his burden of wine and goblets. Gold sputtered a protest. Riverweal daintily covered his lips with a forefinger to bar the escape of a laugh, only to have the Tarskan’s eloquently raised eyebrow ruin his composure and send him snorting into the palms of his hands.
Caldan whisked the tray to the Queen.
"With Your Majesty's permission?" he asked. He awaited her consent to pour as the pugs in her lap squirmed and snorted like furry piglets at the teats of a sow.
The Queen chuckled darkly. "Yes, pour then. Mine, and then Duke Gold's. He will be drinking first."
"Of course, Your Majesty." The pugs lapped at the air below his wrist as he placed the goblet in her hands.
"My dogs like you, Count."
"I get on well with animals."
Gold snorted derisively.
"Most animals," Caldan corrected, smoothly pouring four more cups. "May I suggest my daughter's spell be used to ensure our privacy?"
"She may proceed."
Castandra curtsied into a puddle of dark green. "I am honored, Your Majesty."
Though everyone in the room had seen her perform this spell before in the chambers of the Council of Lords, they still watched the sorceress make her preparations. Magic demanded years of training; lifetimes were often spent developing a single spell, which could be cast but once from midnight to midnight. The spells were always benign, like the warning spell that the Queen's Royal Magician cast each morning to cause all weapons brought into Her Majesty's presence to hum. Numerous sorcerers had attempted more aggressive spells, spells to cause pain, or damage, or death. All had failed, their brains literally burned out when the raw, retrieved power did not form to their will.
All doors and windows tightly shut and bolted, Castandra began: eyes closed, mind open.
First, the Needle: her will, condensed and shaped. When it was finished, she commanded it forth.
Behind the Needle she forged the Conduit, seeing it solid from the anchor of her living self up through the void to the Godsrealm. There was no time here, no hurry; she constructed well and carefully. When she reached the barrier she paused to inspect her handiwork. The silvery cable glimmered across the unbound stretch of utter blackness, and Castandra admired it with the singular pride of the creator. Each line, each curve, each angle was her design alone, the mold to transform raw power to the spell of her desire.
She had told no one of what she also saw, glistening beyond.
The most dangerous phase now lay before her. She prepared herself for that dreadful race each sorcerer must brave, and finding herself ready, pierced the Godsrealm.
The Needle disintegrated in the face of the unknowable forces it had unleashed. Down her own Conduit Castandra fled, the power a horrible pressure behind her, shaped even as it destroyed the Conduit through which it passed.
Impact! Consciousness collided with self, but the power, changed now, passed through. She gasped and opened her eyes. A faint blue light fluoresced from the walls of the room.
Her father pressed the soft, pliable wax firmly into her ears. The nature of spells held that each must have its undoing, and for Castandra's, this meant she could not leave; should she cross any of the portals of the room, the spell would be broken. Others could enter or exit the room without affecting the spell, but once they left the glowing, blue walls of the chamber, none could hear what was said within. No sort of listening hole or device enabled anyone to break the privacy of the room; not even entrance would open the ears of those not ensorcelled.
Duke Gold, as always, insisted on checking her ears to make certain that the wax was firmly in place. She endured his inspection and waited for the heat of her body to soften the wax.
"… and so, of course, I am in complete agreement with your most Gracious and Wise Majesty that this wanton wench should not be Saire. Imagine the gossip! 'Lhant's strumpet, I wonder whose flute she is playing tonight?'"
"Yes, Gold, I am aware of your feelings towards the girl--all of them. I have you here only t
o remind you of what sort of gossip you should be concerned with. Do not fail me, Gold; you are nothing without my favor. Find that wretched brother of hers before someone else does."
"Yes, Your Majesty"
"And fetch me Riverweal."
"Yes, Your Majesty."
Eyes closed, her face a cool, impassive mask, Lady Val Torska listened carefully through the Viscount's and the Mother's counsel. Her father would expect her to recall every word.
Once again the door opened, then shut. Castandra would have recognized the confident footfalls even without the telltale tick of the hounds' nails that accompanied them. A soft scrape, the sound of something heavy being gently settled; her father moving a chair companionably close to the Queen.
"My congratulations, Your Majesty."
"And why is that, Count?"
"Grant me some presence of mind, Your Majesty. You require no counsel; you never have. As ever, your mind has been made up from the first. It is only the theatrics you require, all to impress a certain commoner in waiting?"
“You are perceptive, Count. Do go on.”
"The Saireflute chooses its own; perhaps not always wisely, but that is the Flute's affair. How unfortunate that Elzin is untutored, unable to take advantage of the political power that a Saire might command. I assume that when you inform her of your decision, she will be made to feel suitably indebted for Your Majesty's tolerance and generosity?"
The Queen chuckled wickedly.
"Well, my dear Count. You just have to wait and see."
o0o
The Queen sat solitary over her dining table, one fat fist supporting her head. The last traces of her immense meal had just been cleared away. Pondering important decisions always gave her an appetite; unfortunately, she had made many such decisions, and her waistline was not what it had been. In fact, she thought dismally, it was not even what it had been over twenty years before, in the last stages of her final pregnancy. But her announcement had been put off far too long. Tomorrow was Saire; there would have to be either a new Saire or another attempt for Mother Kanzal's virgins.
The Night Holds the Moon Page 2