The Night Holds the Moon

by Roberts, Parke; Thompson, Colleen

  Whoever the contractor, what was his purpose? Did he hope to use the instrument himself? Not likely. Those outside of Lhant considered the Saireflute little more than an amusing, albeit exotic, toy. But what about the effect on Lhant's people if the Flute were lost? Saire and Saireflute had so long been isolated from common folk that their disappearance would have little impact. The Council of Lords would continue their incompetence and indecision, the monarch her deranged exploits, and few, except those nobles who would miss the weekly chance to flaunt their finest garments, would even think about the Saire and Saireflute, because… because they were not needed.

  But what if they were? What if they were needed, or the populace believed they were? What if Lhant were threatened, and the invulnerability that the Saireflute by legend conferred on the isle was suddenly perceived to be lost?

  Did he correctly read the attack's intention? He could only imagine one purpose behind such a bold action--an almost inconceivable purpose. Too much. Too much to base such a conclusion on a coin and a book. Still, he must be prepared.

  So deep were his thoughts that when Horwinn, the elite guard's healer, tapped him on the shoulder, he started.

  "The Great Lady has a cut above her eye that doesn't require stitches, and a goose-egg on the side of her head. Nothing serious, though she'll have some dandy bruises and the areas will be tender for a while. We'll ride back to the town so she can get some rest. We can travel tomorrow morning as planned."

  "I will be ready in a moment."

  o0o

  She did not see when he crouched in front of her. She did not hear if he spoke her name. Only when he gently raised her chin did Castandra look up from the unmoving dogs.

  His anguished expression shattered her denial.

  "No," she moaned. "How can they be gone over her? Gone, over that useless, empty-headed trollop."

  She did not feel it when he slapped her. She only felt his strength as he lifted her, his tenderness as he embraced her, and how long he lingered before he turned her from him so he could kneel beside his beloved hounds.

  Chapter Ten

  Ships bucked against the savage sea

  Like small coins they were tossed

  King Sheldwinn's sails were tested

  And many men were lost.

  But the wicked waves were bested

  By those who passed the storm

  And the sailors lost beneath the grey

  Still cry in seagull form.

  --Lhantian Song

  Elzin fumed in her clean, simple room. How dare that snotty sorceress insinuate her life was not worth the sacrifice of two good dogs! And those insults! Certainly she had been called useless before, and trollop--or worse--had also been applied, but empty-headed was by far the most unfair description. Why, she could read and write and do ciphers better than any girl she knew and better than many of the boys she had been schooled with as well. So what if some people, dull prudes just like Castandra, decried her for ignoring their moldy old rules? Her rebellion only made her independent, not stupid. After all, she knew which rules she broke.

  And then, to make matters worse, during the ride to the inn Superior Gage also criticized her behavior. With patronizing detail he described how difficult she made it for the elite to protect her. As if she were a child, he lectured her for an hour on today's valuable lesson about the dangers of this expedition.

  Elzin checked the looking-glass again. She imagined the dark bruise on the side of her face to have the same shape as her assailant's boot. Despite the pain-killing herbs, it throbbed relentlessly. But at least she lived. She thought of the quick death of the hounds and wondered why she had been spared the same. Surely, the assassin could have killed her just as swiftly. Or did he somehow know, as she instinctively knew, that without the Flute, her life ended anyway?

  Perhaps he hadn't had the chance to kill her. How little remained of the thief had left her dumbfounded. What power it must have taken to destroy like that! Elzin shuddered. He'd have killed her, one way or the other, but she could not suppress a feeling of revulsion for his fate. She had helped the Flute to take a life. She, who hated death, and who had always promised herself that she would never be a party to it.

  Elzin left her chair and sat down on the bed, still littered with the many gifts from well-wishers in today's crowd. She could not suppress a smile as she recalled the cheers when she finally stood. Those people, not the nobility, were her kind: largely uneducated, largely unwashed, but completely enthralled by the enchantments of a slim, silver instrument in the hands of a pregnant nineteen year-old. When she walked among them, clasping their hands and speaking, she overheard their comments: "Our Saire, she's just like one o' us," or, "There's not a bit o' snobbery about that one." Compliments, offered with pride. Not one of them had called her useless or trollop or empty-headed.

  Let Shagril lecture until his face turned black as his spit-polish boots! She would not stop mingling with her own. She loved to talk to them and learn a little of their lives. She treasured the idea that each one would remember the few words they'd shared and recount them proudly to their children and their children's children. It thrilled her to give them so much happiness. It made her feel proud and cherished and truly loved. Any risk was worth the chance to feel that way again.

  o0o

  Count Caldan Val Torska gave each of the unfeeling heads a final stroke, careful to let his long, supple fingers follow the curve around the back of the dogs' ears in the manner that had seemed to bring them such pleasure while they lived. Twilight had robbed the clearing, taking with it even color. The place appeared deserted, but the councilor was practiced at uncovering deception. Not all of the villagers had gone to their homes or to wait outside the inn to see their Saire off in the morning. To have Lhantian nobility borrow a heavy axe and not the back to swing it was more than enough to pique their curiosity. His sharp eyes caught their furtive movements as they watched him remove his jacket and roll up the sleeves of his linen shirt.

  He had cut and carried wood until the sun set, alternately sweating and drying in the cool breeze. In two long years he had not held an axe--long, because in them he had not been home, not since his last turn on his tax crew. His arms and back ached; he imagined they would remind him even more insistently tomorrow that he was not as young a man as once he was.

  He was thirty-eight, but only two years older than the treasured companions for whom he had labored. Tarskan coursers, strange dogs who could live at least a man's lifespan, unerring trackers, born in pairs that always died within a heartbeat of one another, born two in a litter--identical except for their sexes, always opposite. The Kyr called them wizard hounds, but not even the Dreamer that had named them so knew why.

  Side by side, as they had so often been in life, he laid the dogs atop the pyre; for it was that which he had labored over, all the afternoon and evening. We do not leave our dead in the lowlands. Caldan kindled the carefully stacked wood. And I will not leave you here, for you are as much highlander, as much Kyr, as I. The drier wood toward the bottom caught quickly, urged on by a steady breeze, and soon the tower of timber became a tower of flame. The black smoke mounted the sky and raced away on the wind; not one errant breath caused a tendril of smoke to curl back in his direction.

  It was his second pyre in the lowlands. The first had been his father's. This one, as the other, he had built well. It blazed hot and high and fast, fell in upon itself and consumed… everything.

  It was deep night by the time the pyre burned down. Thunder did not stray far and came quickly to a whistle, whickering in anticipation of a late dinner. In the yard of the inn, Olkor waited for him with a lantern. Wordlessly, the count gave him the axe and his stallion's reins. No surprise to find his friend waiting patiently for his return; no surprise the hot bath in his room. Doubtless a huge puddle sat beneath the window where Olkor would have bailed water from the tub to make room for each new boiling potful. Beside the steaming bath a small table had been set with a
pitcher of cool water, a basket of bread and cheeses, cold meat and preserved fruits. Hunger sank deep its insistent fangs, but he denied it, glad for the distraction.

  He set the night and the pyre behind him. There were many important things to consider as he allowed the hot water to relax his abused muscles: the attempted theft of the Flute; who had ordered it and their motives; the new Saire, Elzin. No Saire since the first had ever coaxed such consistently powerful magic from the erratic instrument. Naturally, he would have to report this anomaly to the Queen. She was bound to learn of it anyway, but he would keep from the monarch other things.

  What about the untutored girl caused the Flute to become so potent in her hands? Was it the child she carried? Elzin herself? Or could it be something else, circumstances outside the Saireflute that might affect it? Circumstances like his discovery today? He started from his thoughts when, after a quick tap on his door, the object of his musings walked in.

  "Oh!" said Elzin. "Excuse me!" Her grin belied her apology. She was very slow to turn around.

  "I'm sorry about barging in, but I just had to see you, to tell you how badly I feel about what I said today. I should have known that you were thinking only of my best interests. After all, I have no better friend than you." Here she turned again and met his eye, but this time in earnest. "I feel terrible about what I said, and I feel awful about your dogs, too. I'm sorry, Caldan."

  The count looked both amused and uncomfortable.

  "Since I seem to be at your mercy, I accept your apology."

  Elzin grinned and then turned back to face the door. "I'm glad. Castandra seemed awfully angry with me, and I was worried you might be, too."

  "No, I am not angry with you. The Saireflute will work what magic it chooses; not even its Chosen may command or deny it. Nor are Arrow and Dagger your fault. I should never have left you unattended for an instant, not even for my daughter."

  "Humph," snorted Elzin. "Don't you dare try to change my apology to you into an apology to me. Of course you had to go and see to your daughter. You're her father, after all, and any father worth his salt would break out in hives thinking of his daughter having all that fun in the flowers."

  She sighed. "All those flowers. They're still there, you know. What a shame, though, that their magic has all gone."

  "That so much as the blooms endure is more power than the Flute has shown any Saire except the first," said Caldan.

  o0o

  "Why, I guess I never really thought about it that way," said Elzin. To be honest, despite her history lessons, she knew little of the Chosen of the Saireflute. Only Caldan's explanation made her realize that Saire Welmiann's Playing never resulted in such strong, strange magic as her own. Nothing had ever stayed behind, either, after Welmiann's music had ended. And then there was the necklace. What of that?

  "What do you think it means?" she asked Caldan.

  "The truth?" He lowered his voice so that Elzin could just make out his answer, "An upheaval such as Lhant has not seen in over eight hundred years. War? A coup? Who knows? But I have no doubt that we will need the Flute."

  He chuckled. "Such ominous words from a naked old man in a tepid bath. I wonder if you would mind--"

  He was interrupted by a knock at the door.

  "My Lord?"

  "Come in, Olkor."

  The look on the valet's face was priceless, decided Elzin.

  The count covered his eyes with one hand. "Oh, the scandal," he sighed. "Do come the rest of the way in and close the door, Olkor, and we shall all three be scandalous together."

  Elzin snickered into her hands. "Why don't you come and see me when you're--uh, able?"

  She smiled at Caldan's grim manservant. She nearly asked him if the flowers had done him any good, but Olkor's bleak look not only dissuaded her but answered her question as well.

  With one last wink at the count, she slipped from the room.

  o0o

  Olkor firmly barred the door. The councilor stepped out of the bath, which had indeed begun to grow cool.

  "Miska and Tacha?" he asked.

  "Untouched," Olkor said grimly.

  Caldan made no comment, having no wish to reopen old wounds. If his friend cared to tell him more, he would; the important thing was that Olkor's granddaughters were unmolested. No doubt his own daughter would have succumbed had it not been for Omen and Talisman. When he found Castandra, still gliding dreamily through the crowd, the tiny crimson pearls of blood glistening about the hounds' silver throats told him volumes.

  Just as had Elzin's intrusion. He had left the door unlocked, and without Dagger and Arrow to guard it, she was able simply to walk in. Anyone could have. He had done more than become attached to the hounds, he had come to depend on them. Perhaps, as the assassin showed him today, too much.

  He dressed quickly and simply, and went to Castandra's room. Miska opened the door, clutching her nightclothes about herself, eyes wide but sleepy.

  "Oh! Master, come in! I'll fetch the mistress right away."

  Tacha jumped out of the bed she and her sister shared and stood respectfully while Miska passed behind the blankets hung to separate Castandra's quarters from their own. The twins slept long and lightly, as their father must have slept, whichever one he'd been. Castandra, of course, was still awake and fully dressed. She immediately answered his summons.

  Her gaze fell unthinkingly to where his two hounds should have been, and her troubled, sad expression, framed by her now coal-black hair, reminded him so much of her mother it took a moment for him to speak.

  "Come with me."

  She did not ask why, or where, but simply put the opalescent stone she held into the bodice of her dress and followed him out.

  o0o

  Kezwann had Elzin's full attention. A small, plump brunette of middle age, the handmaid had been cast off by her husband because their marriage had been childless. Elzin had long been made uncomfortable by her servant's despondent, apathetic air, but today Kezwann had been transformed. She chattered animatedly as she described the music and butterflies and flowers, and the unrestrained joy after. She blushed and talked more quietly of her own exciting encounter with a strong young villager. Elzin was so enrapt in the description that the knock at her door didn't register until Kezwann interrupted herself to answer it.

  "It's My Lord and Lady Val Torska, Great Lady," she announced, and before Kezwann excused herself Elzin could not help but notice how her maidservant's quick, dark eyes glanced rapidly from Caldan to herself. She's wondering if we were so lucky this afternoon, the Saire thought with a sigh.

  "I took the liberty of bringing my daughter to secure the room," said the councilor. "If, of course, that is agreeable?"

  About as agreeable as slugs in my tea, Elzin thought as she forced a consenting smile. Bringing anyone was bad enough, but bringing that pompous witch was almost more than she could bear. The girl refused even to look at her, her gaze instead passed beyond as if she were a soldier at attention. While Caldan bolted the door, Elzin crossed her eyes at Castandra, just to test the girl's indifference. If she saw, she gave no indication, but it made Elzin feel better.

  After the sorceress had worked her spell, her father led her to a chair several feet from the wall and pressed wax into her ears. Castandra's hounds reclined at her feet and watched.

  "Just before you fell from that big, lonely pedestal Olkor keeps you on," said Elzin, "you were trying to tell me something about the Saireflute. I don't understand. How could it cause a war? What did you mean about needing the Flute?"

  "I did not mean to imply that the Flute would cause a war; quite the contrary, it is my belief that the Saireflute would try to prevent it. Before I explain, tell me what you know of the history of the Flute."

  Elzin thought back to Master Pierzil's boring lessons on history. Now was her chance to show Caldan she wasn't stupid at all, but had learned her lessons well.

  "Long ago," she recited, "Lhant was many kingdoms, and all of them were poor. Only o
ne king, King Sheldwinn, was wise enough to envision a united Lhant. The highlanders responded to Sheldwinn's offers of friendship by attacking the more civilized south. They were so vicious and barbaric that they roasted babies, women, and even their own men to feed their enormous hordes. The highland army surrounded that of good King Sheldwinn, and he feared that his dream of unity would die with him.

  "In his time of need, however, appeared his youngest daughter, Saire. She brought with her a magical flute. The wonders it created when she played frightened the highlanders so badly that the well-trained forces of King Sheldwinn easily defeated them.

  "But more was never learned about the strange Flute, for after that day young Saire spoke only in the tongue of the gods, and there were none in the world pure enough to understand her."

  "Hmmm, yes," said the councilor thoughtfully. "To the victor, the spoils--the writing of the history books not the least among them. I wonder if you will indulge me for a minute while I tell you another version.

  "Long, long ago, Lhant was peopled by many tribes. Because they warred endlessly with one another for arable land, very little time remained for farming. Those few that managed were often robbed of their crops and went hungry anyway for their trouble. The most prosperous places were those by the sea; it supplied food enough to support large numbers of people. These people then built fortified cities and were able to protect their crops, which gave them more food to support even more people. Small kingdoms emerged.

  "Sheldwinn ruled one of those kingdoms. He was a brilliant and ambitious man, a navigator without peer, and a shipbuilder with an ingenious idea. He decided to build a huge ship, with tall poles in the center. From these tall poles he would hang great sheets of cloth to harness the winds to push his ships to the corners of the world. It was crude at first, but it worked, and soon he perfected his design and carried cargo between lands never before imagined. He wisely kept the charts of his navigators' journeys secret, and sold his ships or their designs to no other nation. His wealth, power, and influence grew, and soon he felt ready to unite the island of Lhant under his rule.