Tears were so much easier to conceal.
o0o
No light shone beneath her door, and the hallway had been silent for hours. Satisfied at last, Castandra pulled on her darkest clothes and warmest cloak. Boots in hand, she slipped swiftly down the stairs in her stockinged feet.
The larder yielded dried meat and even some bread. She filled her pockets and crept into the stable yard, coursers at her heels.
The stable door opened and closed on well-oiled hinges. She eschewed the lamp for the light of a single candle, whose guttering flame cast weird shadows against the broad back of her restless mare.
"Hush now, Tempest," the sorceress crooned. The grey tossed her head and rolled white-rimmed eyes at the saddle in her mistress's arms. Even the dogs seemed nervous. She understood why when her stalker spoke.
"Leaving so soon, darling of our father?"
Castandra whirled on her younger brother. "Andor! I might have guessed that you would be skulking about in the barn at night with the rest of the vermin."
"And what does that make you, dear sister?"
She scowled at him, hands on hips. "What do you want?"
"The question is, what do you want? Why--you are saddling your horse! Are you riding to a secret rendezvous with your handsome lover, the duke? I've been ever so curious--tell me, how does he manage to get to you around that huge belly of his? Either he is built like a horse, or he must nearly crush your skinny--."
She backhanded him, and he threw her up against the wall so hard that she saw black.
"I've grown a lot in two years, Sister. I'm bigger now, and stronger. I can make you pay for striking me."
Cornered, she spat, and he seized her shoulder with one hand, his fingers digging into her like talons, pinioning her as if she were no more than a mouse. She wanted to struggle, and a part of her mind screamed out for her limbs to move, move, but instead all she could do was stare, mesmerized, as with slow deliberation Andor wiped the spittle from his face. Horrified, she watched as each slow stroke of his hand seemed to strip away a mask, more of it, and more, scraping it away, until her brother was gone and in his place was the thing that had taken him, something ruined and depraved and content no longer to emerge for just a few foul words and brief stormy rages. She flattened her back against the wall, feeling along it for an avenue of escape, yet hopelessly impaled by those black, black eyes that came closer and closer; filled her world; became it.
Upon her throat, she felt the tread of tiny spiders. No. No spiders--his fingers. So delicate, their touch. So tenderly they settled about her throat…
The door banged open, and in that same instant his hands flew away. Dimly, as if through some endless corridor, she recognized the voice of her father. "Andor, you will go to your room and wait for me there."
For the tiniest part of an instant, Castandra thought that even her father's command could not banish whatever had taken her brother, and that it would finish her as her sire watched, as a hound finished a hare.
"Now," added their sire softly.
The beast slid back. Castandra's pent up breath hissed from her aching lungs as her brother coolly shrugged his shoulders. "It's a bad night for her to be riding. I just thought she should be told."
Dagger and Arrow watched him out of sight, but Castandra's father attended only her.
"Well?"
Defeated, she did not even consider a lie. He would know. He always knew.
"I was going to see Unc - Duke Everfast."
"In the middle of the night, without an escort?"
She dropped her eyes and looked away.
"I see. Castandra, you are no longer a child."
"Why? Why does it have to be this way?"
"Because that is the way of our world."
"Then the world should change," she choked hoarsely through her tears.
Her father gathered her in his arms and she leaned against him, her thin body racked with sobs.
"Castandra, the world changes for no one person. Your suitors could not be fended off forever. I did the best that I could for you and Tarska. You must understand."
"Oh, please, Father, I beg of you. Please don't make me do this abominable thing." She tried to slip to her knees, but her father held her tightly so she could not. "I'll do anything else you want. Anything."
"It is too late. Even were we to consider nothing else, I have already given my consent to Lowinn." He let her go, and she sank to the floor as he turned his back to her. But he did not leave, and in a moment, he spoke.
"There is only one way, and you must make a pact with me."
She raised her head, her breath still coming in jagged hitches.
"Tell me what it is."
o0o
Three. Four. Five. Six. Six paces to the wall. The soles of Elzin's boots hissed like snakes against cold stone as she wearily turned about and began her count anew.
How long to the dawn? Would it ever come? She was sure she had shuffled here, back and forth, for an eternity already, so long that her feet must have worn a track into the granite. A darker trench in the dark stone of Hawkshold; mute testimony to the despair she must not show.
Andor had manipulated her so easily. And she, blind with desire, had fallen right into his trap.
She should have known Caldan would not come to her so soon; he had told her he would not risk harming her unborn babe. His last words to her, only that evening, had been to remind her of her duty to protect that child. Hours and a lifetime ago…
She longed for forgetfulness, and groaned to remember the contents of the mug fallen beside the bed. Drunkenness did not excuse her. Thoughtless, reckless, she had been the wanton slut that Castandra had named her. And now it had come to this.
Tell, have Andor punished, and lose Caldan forever. Or suffer in silence, and always fear what her tormenter might steal from her next.
She stopped, eyes downcast to judge how deep her pacing had carved her impression.
Beneath her feet, the black stone of Hawkshold remained unmarked.
Chapter Seventeen
Stars, sun,
endlessly circling,
endlessly swirling 'round the earth
Sink to sea,
endlessly failing
to quench the great, eternal thirst.
--seaman's rhyme, origin unknown
Brittle dawn held Hawkshold as Elzin descended the steps into the courtyard. In the crook of one elbow she cradled the Saireflute's case. But the horses were not yet readied, and Elzin realized that her agonizing night had accomplished what Kezwann's gentle proddings never could. She was early.
Awkwardly so. She looked for Caldan; and found him, surrounded as always. Heratinn, both captains of the guards, the highlander she assumed was his steward, Tyrmiskai. And Andor. Revulsion knotted her insides as the young heir to Hawkshold tilted his head just a little from the conclave, just enough to give her the same satisfied smile that the cat must save for the fallen nestling. She swallowed drily and looked away.
By some miracle nothing more violent than a breeze blew from the north; beyond the open gate the voice of the sea beckoned. Goddess, how she missed the healing ocean! She could no longer bear the brooding walls of Hawkshold, its black stone bowels and the even blacker acts that had come to pass within.
"I need a walk. By myself, this time," she told her guards. They followed her anyway as she strode resolutely from the hold.
It seemed she could not fill her lungs with enough of the cold salt air as she picked her way along the perilous cliffs, close to the edge as she dared. Far below, the waves still hurled themselves heedlessly against the rocks. Even the ocean was ugly and joyless here, black rock and grey water. She longed for summer in Sheldwinn; the beaches--warm, golden sand between her toes, an azure sky and aquamarine sea. Summer. Was it ever summer here?
Behind her, the castle crouched, dark maw agape like the jaws of a famished beast. Elzin lengthened her strides. But each step seemed to follow too slow after th
e other, and before she knew it she had begun to run. It felt good to get away, to move, to move herself instead of being moved like some pawn by others. Head lowered, she watched only the ground before her feet, which tripped goat-nimble over the rocky surface as if they had conceived some destination all their own. Not until she stopped, throat raw from the bitter air, did she feel the tears on her cheeks.
She was tired of tears! Defiantly, she threw back her head, only to stagger backward in surprise.
White. So white. Whiter than snow. Whiter than ermine. Aching and inconceivably white, almost too much for her eyes.
She slitted them to see the thing. Polished and perfect and seamless it curved, far taller than Caldan, like the fang of a beast whose dimensions dwarfed the warships and castles her mind conjured up as sanctuary. Its alien symmetry disturbed her, yet that same strangeness mesmerized and drew her closer.
She made a careful orbit of the thing, contemplating its placement, its purpose. How could it be so, so perfect? No moss or fungus stained it; no scratch or pit marred its unearthly finish. No snow settled anywhere upon it. It looked new. And yet every nerve and instinct screamed the thing was ancient.
Beside it she went warily to her knees. Here the rock was fractured and overturned; thrust aside by forces too powerful for her to imagine, thrust away as an erupting seedling thrusts away clumps of dirt as it bursts forth to reach the sun. But this was not nourishing, well-turned soil; it was solid, sterile stone. Still, deep within the jagged fissures, Elzin caught the glimmer of a white too white for snow.
She rose numbly to her feet. "What are you?" she asked, and raised a hand to touch its flawless surface. "Who made--?"
o0o
Listlessly, Castandra wove the last comb into her hair. She felt all too like her hunting falcon, kept hooded until she might serve another's purpose. Her father should have told her all the reasons for this sudden betrothal to Everfast. Not until after her flight from Hawkshold had been thwarted did she learn of the Queen's dispatch -- and even then, the news had come from another. Poor, sad Tyrmiskai, supposedly come to comfort her. He had looked more in need of comfort himself.
She was somehow missing her hand mirror, but the sorceress needed no reflection to know that her face was still puffy, her eyes red from weeping. Yes, her father should have told her about the Queen's command to return, but even without that knowledge, she should have guessed that he might have had a more selfless agenda. One such as protecting his daughter. Each avaricious motive she had despised her father for last night returned to accuse her. She had wronged him grievously, and had acted like a child while he tried to spare her even the worry over his fate.
As if sensing her need for comfort, Omen and Talisman pressed their noses into her hands. She closed her fingers lightly around their muzzles, caressing the fur there, velvety as rose petals. "If only I might be as faithful as you."
Violently, they pulled away. The tips of her fingers, reflexively gripping, slipped beneath the velvet and slid slick along rows of polished teeth.
The look of them! The look! Eyes gone wide and blank, dark tunnels drilled through their skulls. Emptiness. All empty.
"No…" she heard someone moan; her own voice, but she no longer knew it. The hounds twisted to their feet as if hauled up by strings.
"Stop—please--stop " Heedless, the coursers flung themselves headlong at the bolted door. The dull impact of their bodies resounded in the hollows of her chest. The hounds reeled, but rose up again on hind legs against the barrier. "Wait!" she cried. Seizing the latch, Castandra pulled against it with all her weight, but they clawed at the wood like prisoners buried alive, pushing against her pull, mindlessly working against their own release.
Abruptly, Omen dropped to all fours. His head swiveled unevenly until his long nose lined up with the window like the tip of an arrow aimed by an archer. The window, four stories up and unbarred. Castandra groaned and jackknifed her body backward. Once. Twice. Then Talisman, too, dropped, and the door flew open with such violence that only her grip upon the latch saved her from a fall.
The coursers delayed not a moment. They spilled into the hallway, skittering into the wall and each other as they fought for purchase on the smooth floor. They leaped for the stairwell. Vanished.
She ran after them, numb with fear. Only her father could call her hounds from her side. What evil had befallen him, here in his own land, that he would call them now?
Bounding down the last of the steps, she dodged her way past panicked horses and the handful of shouting, confused elite they dragged by their tethers. Her father was nowhere in sight, but a monochrome stream poured through the high kennel window: the rest of the hounds. Awkwardly, they tumbled to the floor, scrambled to their feet, eyes wide and vacant, empty as space.
Like a cataract, the coursers boiled through the open gate. Skirts clutched in both hands, Castandra pumped her legs harder.
Beyond the gate hard angles of broken rock gouged the soles of her slippered feet. Her run broke down into awkward leaps, each bound carrying her from island to island of larger talus. Still, too often, the treacherous scree rolled and shifted beneath her weight like a choppy stone sea; she tottered then, arms wheeling, only to lunge and spring again like a deer.
It was a dangerous place to run headlong, and infinitely more so in unwieldy lowland garb. Still, it felt so strange to fall, so strange, though her knees she remembered to save at the price of her out-thrust hands. She felt nothing, no pain, and rose again running, heedless of the bright blood which splashed from her torn palms to the sterile black stone at her feet.
The dogs were all she could think of: that where they were she must be also; that what they knew she must know, too. Something vital. Something dreadful.
Something about her father.
This is our place--our place! How could something happen to him here?
She nearly cried out when at last she saw it. The Starsinger. And Elzin, ugly lowland Elzin with her hand upon it!
o0o
Sixteen dogs, eight braces, each brace a matched pair, born together, brother, sister. They surrounded her in a perfect circle, each one opposite its twin, gazes like invisible links, boring blindly through her. Every muscle on their bodies rigid, they stood, muzzles open in unvoiced howls. Still. Silent. Waiting, it seemed.
Waiting--for what? Elzin, the prisoner, could not even groan.
"Caldan… Caldan… Help me…" She fought with all her will to say it, thought she felt her numb lips move, but no sound came to her ears.
All the world had frozen and everything in it--all sound, all sight, all feeling. There was something… a void… a missing piece… a key that needed to be turned. A sense of incompletion hung over her like a pall. Something was not yet whole; she feared until it was, she would be trapped forever, hub to this bizarre, living wheel and its terrible spokes of power.
Would she die here? Could she die? The thing she touched. What if, once, it too had been alive. Or was still.
"Elzin."
She heard it as if from far away. A voice. Caldan's. "Elzin. Your hand."
Her hand? Yes, the Flute, still tight within her grasp. But how could she let go the thing that had become her very life? She would die without it, and she did not want to die. No, not yet. It wasn't time.
"Elzin. Hear me. Take your hand from the stone."
The stone. The thing. The idea at first seemed incomprehensible; her hand felt as if it had been fused. Take it? Move it? How could that be done?
Yet, when she turned her concentration there, she found the surface of the thing slicker than a piece of melting ice against her tongue. She moved, barely, and her hand skated swiftly away, as if pushed. Her arm flopped numb and boneless to her side.
The hounds dropped to their hindquarters, expressions bewildered. Elzin took one step back, then another, watching the white thing that curved above her as if she feared that it might reach out and yank her back. And then she fled, straight between the coursers, s
traight into Caldan's arms.
"I want to go home," she sobbed into his chest. "I want to go home right now."
He picked her up as easily as if she weighed no more than a child. "Home. Of course. Better for us all, were we home."
o0o
Andor suppressed a smirk as Shagril Gage unconsciously fingered his sword's hilt. Go ahead, Superior. Try your weapon against the Starsinger. He doubted whether anything could mar that glistening white surface, but the resulting interchange might prove entertaining.
He was disappointed when the elite turned his attention to his father. "Have you figured it out yet, My Lord? What happened with that… thing?"
"No."
Really, Father! That's it? Just, "No"? Events certainly must have unnerved you if that's the best that you can do.
"It's dangerous, I'll warrant. I want my charge away from it without further delay."
"Of course. Just allow me a moment alone, to say my good-byes."
"Yes," said Gage. He had the grace to look abashed. It clashed with his uniform. "I'm sorry. You will want to do that, certainly. I'll take a minute to be sure the men have their watch orders straight."
The superior's coarse sympathy seemed to empty the air from Castandra's lungs like a good solid blow. It was a decided pleasure to have her speechless, and Andor quickly took advantage of his good fortune.
"I feel I'm always saying goodbye to you, Father," he said. "You're finally here and then gone again too soon."
"I have little choice," his father answered.
"I know. It's only that I wish I had more time. With you, that is." He gave his father his best I-believe-in-you smile and clasped his forearms tightly. "I want to see you again soon. Very soon."
"That may not be possible. The Queen--"
"The Queen can be manipulated. I know she can. You'll see, Father, I promise."
His father, the fool, embraced him. Could it be the old monster might actually have for him some smidgen of real affection? "Such optimism," said his sire. "I am encouraged. Your sister may need an escort south in a few months. Perhaps then."
The Night Holds the Moon Page 25