The countess rolled her eyes at her friend, long familiar with her bizarre questions. "You would not fly. You would fall like a rock."
"How long would the rock fall, then?"
Castandra sighed resignedly and looked over the edge. "About one-hundred and fifty feet down," she mused to herself, "three-hundred. Divide by acceleration, nine-point-three-seven-five. Square root . . . Three-point-oh-six-one-eight-six-two-one-seven-eight seconds," she concluded triumphantly.
"Really?" said Tavari. "One-thousand-and-one--"
And she turned and ran off the edge.
o0o
In the thin light of morning, her eyelids fluttered. Where…? Then the last twenty-four hours overtook her like a crushing spring avalanche. The rape, her flight, the leap from the cliff, the marrow-icing cold of the Elder, her dogs, steaming so close to the fire. She was alive! Alive!
"Alive!" she had long ago exclaimed. Tavari, then, had her head thrown back as she howled with laughter.
"How could you do this!" She wanted to kick the wretched girl. She had thought her dead!
"It was easy!" Tavari chortled as she tossed her a chunk of roasted meat. Castandra had ridden all day and part of the next morning to reach the bottom of the waterfall. "Weeks ago I swam to the bottom to make sure it was deep enough. I stored everything in the den, there."
"No! I mean how could you do this to me? I was mad with grief, and you--you were below, dining on rabbit!"
"Targg's tits, Casti, it was just a joke!"
"It was cruel."
There remained ever after some rift between them. And now Tavari's wretched joke had saved her life. What would the nightwender think to hear that?
She would think me very foolish to sit daydreaming while I am still in danger.
But where would she find sanctuary?
Chapter Twenty-One
The sorcery of the Saireflute
On a grassy, windswept hill
Brought to each the gift of healing
And banished every ill.
--Summer Festival song, 811
Elzin felt tremendous power gathering, like a great horse before a leap. The air seemed to shiver with it; even the tall grasses trembled as if in anticipation of her Playing. Eagerly, the blonde's eyes swept the vast sea of pale pink petals, the upturned faces of the crowd that had been gathering, following the party, for weeks. She smiled in anticipation and began the welcome spiral into ancient memory.
Shagril's voice jarred her back to her own body.
"Trodriam," ordered the superior, "intercept that rider. Make certain that…"
Pain. A insistent throbbing in her head, behind her eyes. Irritation. Who would dare detain her from honoring the goddess?
Caldan's voice, tense and quiet. "Wait. Castandra…? Yes. Can you see the dogs, now? That rider is my daughter."
"I thought she was to stay at Hawkshold."
"She was," the count said ominously. "Something is terribly wrong."
o0o
Her hounds at the fore to clear the way, she split the crowd as the prow of a ship parts the waves. Bareback and astride, her ebony hair billowing behind her like a cloak, the sorceress rode boldly up the hill to leap off her horse and kneel directly in front of the Saire.
The pose looked servile enough, but there was no subservience in the highlander's barely audible demand.
"Tell them to get back, all of them. What I have to say is for your ears alone."
Elzin looked through her, beyond her, to the crowd. "I can't. I have to play now," she said dreamily.
"Bitch!"
Startled back to herself, Elzin flushed crimson. How dare that snotty sorceress suddenly reappear to spoil her Playing? It was outrageous! It was blasphemy! She was about to order the girl dragged from her sight, and damn the consequences, but then she noticed that—why--Castandra was dirty, her face smudged and sweat-streaked, her flawless complexion crosshatched with red scratches. What had once been a white shift, now torn and streaked with grime, was stuffed into leather breeches in the fashion of a man's shirt. No rings glowed against the slender fingers, and what nails remained were ragged crescents, black with debris. She looked wild and foreign and, for all her rags and her posture of supplication, strangely exultant.
Curious, even through the pounding in her skull, Elzin signaled for the guards to move away.
"I said all."
Elzin looked anxiously behind herself, and without a word Caldan, too, backed away.
"Listen well, Great Lady." The girl sneered the honorific into insult. "You will promise to protect me. You will allow no one to even so much as speak to me against my will. You will do this, or now, from this very hillside, I will begin to shout the news of the bastard you carry."
Elzin stiffened as though struck. How…?
Caldan. Only Caldan knew of her child; only he could have told. She nearly staggered beneath the weight of her suspicion. No--impossible! Not Caldan. He would never betray her!
The dull throb within her skull increased. The Saireflute could not be long denied, not before this restless crowd, who had gathered just to hear it. To hear and to bring tales from this hill, tales for children and grandchildren yet unborn.
"If that’s what you want," she snapped, then raised her voice, "Lady Val Torska is under my protection. Don't bother her. Don't talk to her. No one come near her." Hesitantly, her eyes met the count's. "No one."
The Flute seemed to lift itself to her lips then; she turned her gaze outward and the first note carried awareness away.
o0o
Castandra still knelt, immobile as rock and as heavy. Heavy her limbs and bowed head; heavy all the hurts she brought with her in her nightmare flight across the isle.
Our people tell of your ride across Lhant, my father. They tell it with pride of how swiftly you rode, with so little rest, and not one horse killed or lamed.
I killed a horse--a bright sorrel mare that I stole from a barnyard. Lathered and tired, she stepped wrong in a wheelrut; her bone cracked with a sound like the slap of your hand. I clubbed her and clubbed her, though my first blow was mortal, because of my envy. Because that mare, pushed too hard, had the good sense to die.
I doubt they'll tell my tale; I doubt they will know it. I doubt that I rode near as swiftly as you. But then, look where we rode to: you, to the arms of your people. And me, to the hateful sanctuary of the lowlands and their Saire.
o0o
She tried to roll over, away from the hand that gently shook her, but grip upon her was firm.
"Castandra. Lady." Strangely musical and compelling, that voice. And yet, familiar…
Hers. The sorceress's face twisted with revulsion. She thrust away the Saire's hand and sat up. All around, as far as she could see, bodies lay in the soft, spring grass of the pasture. Some were draped across each other. Others lay curled up with their cloaks drawn over them.
The blonde sat down companionably beside her and sighed. "It's been like this for hours. They're all asleep, like you were. I was so bored, I started shaking people."
Elzin frowned. "It's not like you were my first choice. But no one else woke up, and then I started wondering about what you'd done today. And why. And why you hurt so badly. I felt it when I touched you, but it wouldn't go away."
Only then did Castandra notice Elzin's hands. The lowlander had always waved them about expressively while she spoke, but now she held them pressed together in an attitude of prayer. They were raw, red, oozing with open sores and blisters, as if they had been badly scalded, but it appeared she felt no pain.
"The Great Lady wishes to know who hurt me," said the girl flatly. The highlander's grey eyes seemed huge in the pale oval of her face, and she bit her pink lip so hard that a tiny pearl of blood welled up around one white, perfect tooth. Castandra turned very quickly away then, and the Saire thought that she might be crying until she answered.
"Why do you want to know?" the sorceress asked hoarsely. "Will you present the culprits with a me
dal? Bless them with a song from the exalted Saireflute, or perhaps a romp in your bed? All suitable rewards for a job well done. All right. I will tell you. I don't care who knows -- not even you. You call me Lady, but you are wrong. I am a duchess now, the Duchess Everfast. The ceremony was nothing to speak of, but the marriage has been consummated, and that is the main thing, isn't it? Now I am lowland, just like you."
She did weep now, although all Elzin could see was the glorious curtain of her hair, iridescent in the sunlight. "Just like you. It's really quite funny when you think of it. Well, go turn cartwheels of joy. Is it not what you’d like to do?"
Elzin sat quietly beside her for a time and stared down at her hands. They were paling now, the wounds receding rapidly into apparent health.
"Castandra, I've been wandering 'round and 'round for hours. The Saireflute did something to my hands; I touched people and wounds closed and severed limbs grew back and I could even feel the Saireflute heal things deep inside, things I couldn't even see. I touched your father." She smiled unknowingly. "I ran my finger along his scar and it's as if it never was. I touched you. Your scratches are gone; even your nails grew back. But I can't fix that other hurt, Castandra.
"I can't fix it, but I won't laugh about it either." Elzin shrugged. "Maybe it's easier for you to think that I'm some monster. Maybe that makes it simpler for you to hate me, or to threaten me. You didn't have to use blackmail, Castandra. All you had to do was ask."
She stood and overlooked the sleepers, then offered a hand to Castandra to help her to her feet. "They're starting to wake up. What should I tell your father?"
Still looking at the ground, the sorceress smoothed non-existent skirts. "Nothing. I don't know how to tell him yet, but I want him to hear it from me."
Castandra's soot-colored lashes flung away tears as she tilted back her head to the sky. "I thought if I could only make it this far, make you give me sanctuary, all would be resolved. But it isn't. He," she gestured at her father, though she did not turn her eyes to him, "he straddles both worlds, fears nothing in either of them, belongs to both. I'm not like him. I don't know where I belong, only that I don't belong to either, and that I have not for a long time. There is no sanctuary for me." She paused for a moment, thoughtful, as if what she had said surprised her. "Just make everyone leave me alone; that is all I want. I just want to be left in peace."
o0o
"My son can walk! My crippled son is walking!"
Elzin turned her head toward the jubilant cry and smiled.
"My hands! My burned hands have been healed! Saire Elzin healed my hands!"
Elzin's smile faded. She wanted to protest. That's not it at all. It was the Saireflute, the Goddess, the magic. Not me. Not me! A clamor grew as revelation followed revelation. A clamor, a cheering, and then…
"Elzin! Elzin! Elzin!"
They had turned her name into a mantra. She backed away, into Jenir, but the chant grew louder, stronger, more rhythmic. Telriss, no!
But wasn't this what she had wanted all along? Why else had she ridden across Lhant if not to gain the worship of the island's people? The question rose against their chant accusingly, and she could not deny the truth of it. Why, then, did she feel such an aching in her chest? What made her wish that she were there among the crowd, joining in with their cries instead of standing here like some lifeless icon?
Stiffly, she nodded toward the people. Not here the reserved, traditional bow. Instead, a roar rose up, so loud the hill trembled with it. The chanting subsided as the multitude strained to hear her words if she might speak. But Elzin only asked a guard to bring her horse so she could return to the inn. She needed time and privacy to think about what had happened here today -- and what to tell Caldan about his daughter.
o0o
Elzin secured her a room and a bath, both of which Castandra accepted with gratitude. Now, she sat on the edge of the straw mattress, wrapped in a blanket, and used one of Lowinn’s jeweled combs to untangle her wet tresses as she waited for her clothes to dry. She would need to get some decent garments soon; there was scandalously little left of the shift, and no lowland woman ever wore breeches.
Both dogs pricked their ears and raised their heads. Talisman jumped to her feet. With a soft cry of alarm, Castandra tackled her, but the courser adroitly slipped from her grasp and leaped between the open shutters. By the time the sorceress ran to the window, Talisman was gone.
She fingered the silver collars in her pouch. Useless. If her father called Omen as well, no leash she could make would hold him. She wrapped her arms around Omen's neck, savoring the spicy scent of his soft fur as he nuzzled her. She waited.
Thump, then scratch of nails on wood. Talisman: returned. Within the small pouch around her neck was a note. Her father's hand; there was no mistaking that excruciatingly precise script.
'Explain.' That was all it said.
Well, she could be as concise as he. She answered on his own parchment, allowing Talisman a sniff before she returned it to the pouch at the hound's throat. "Seek him," she said. Talisman bounded between the shutters and streaked to the north.
o0o
Caldan crumpled his daughter's simple message, stunned by both the content and its implications. His son had done this. Why? What had possessed Andor to do such a thing?
The boy had seemed strange while they were in Hawkshold last. He hadn't had time to think about it during that single, hectic night, but now… So many instances; the way that he had neatly maneuvered Elzin into Lyrvahn's room, his confrontation with Castandra in the stable, his game with Tyrmiskai. Curious, Caldan had spared a moment to examine the four-tiered chasti board to see how his son fared against his friend. He fared very well indeed. Too well. The game should have been long since over, Tyrmiskai's situation had been hopeless. Instead, Andor appeared to be toying with his opponent, as a cat torments a mouse.
He felt half a moment of vertigo as it all sunk in. He had always been so busy, always so intently involved in so many other affairs that something far more important had escaped his notice. But there were safeguards against such neglect. Others should have seen; others, he realized ruefully, that had spent a great deal more time with his son than he. What had gone wrong?
"Olkor?"
His valet, sitting in the grass with both horses' reins in his lap, looked up stoically. "Yes, Lord?"
"No; I will not have that farce--not now. We are alone. Listen to me. What is it with my son?"
It was both question and accusation, and Olkor averted his eyes.
Caldan sat on his heels before his old friend and took his hand. "Olkor! Why was it you did not tell me? How could you, of all people, do this? You know the law."
"Caldan, I have been with you in the lowlands all of this time. I heard things, but I could not speak to you on the basis of hearsay."
"What about the others? Someone should have spoken." He stood up then, pacing. "Tyrmiskai confronted me about the Saire. Why would he not speak to me of Andor? He, or someone else."
"We all came to the conclusion that you must see: that there must be some hidden reason why you let him go on; that you would tell us when you were ready, as you always do. Andor was subtle; they were unsure about him. They chose to let you decide. We never imagined his difference might escape your notice."
"It did, and you would be astounded at the grief it has caused. This is the reason for the law, to protect us from such blindness. How could they excuse me from the law like that?"
"They have excused you from the law before, you and me."
Yes, thought Caldan. And each time, it had ended unhappily. The exception he had asked for and was granted, Castandra's marriage to Duke Everfast, had combined with his people's misguided acceptance of Andor to produce a catastrophe. And before, there had been Olkor's granddaughters, Miska and Tacha.
Rape there, too, between lowlander and Kyr. Olkor's daughter Korcha, on the crew that delivered the mastwood for Tarska's taxes that year, had been caught off guard.
It had never occurred to the two lowlanders that a woman might be part of the crew. They had thought that she was the highland version of what they called a "camp follower"--a whore that lowland work gangs brought along to pleasure their men so they would not seek such elsewhere. "A misunderstanding," the tax collector had explained. Korcha could point the men out and they would be flogged in the morning.
But they were not flogged in the morning. They disappeared; their guards knocked unconscious. "Escaped," the highland spokesman had stated firmly, but the tax collector was no fool and sensed that "taken" might have been more accurate. He let it go, however. The two men had been miscreants, unemployed sailors that no one would miss, and he could pocket their pay himself.
And so for a day, the Kyr had been precisely the savages that the lowlanders imagined them. However, what they did to the two criminals could not change what had happened to Korcha. She became pregnant, and the timing was such that they could not determine if the father had been her mate, or one of the two lowlanders. Korcha decided to let nature take its course, but it was a stressful, anguished pregnancy, and an eternity seemed to pass before the twins were born.
Two girls with black hair and black eyes; they looked like any other Kyr newborns. Almost. But somehow, something was indescribably wrong. Everyone saw it, or felt it, or used whatever sense served to discern it. The children were not theirs, were not Kyr. Korcha sensed it too, and when the babies had been taken to the elders so their fate might be decided, she had asked for a moment alone. And a moment was all that she needed to slide the sharp point of a dagger through eye to brain.
Olkor had been frantic with grief over the loss of his daughter. Despite their alieness, the twins were all that he had left of his family; they were precious to him, as Korcha had been precious. Certain that it would be decided that the newborns must be culled, Olkor had gone to Caldan for help. He begged the youngest elder to speak on behalf of the infants, and Caldan, still reeling from the loss of his wife and sympathetic to the man that had been his father's close friend, had agreed.
The Night Holds the Moon Page 29