Still, there was a place. Besides, she had no other choice.
She had been to the herb woman's shack but twice, and only in the light of day with other young women. Before the crone their laughter had subsided to sporadic bursts of nervous giggles, but the fear had been part of the fun. Her muteness made them wonder what thoughts passed unvoiced behind those cloudy eyes and whether she really gave them the concoctions they asked for, or another magicked combination for some secret purpose of her own.
Elzin had gone to her for the herbs that would prevent her from becoming pregnant. She thought wryly that the old woman, when she saw her, might believe that she had come to get her money back.
Might not she remain safely hidden in that place so long overlooked by men?
o0o
They had abandoned the empty lamp. In the feeble, deceptive light, Castandra had stepped once off the trail. The mud consumed her to her knees before she could call for help. Since then, Elzin had taken her companion by the hand. They must keep to the path. They must stay together.
Elzin stopped again to rest, for the pangs came quickly now and with greater urgency. With this last cramp she felt a warm, wet rush. She moaned as hot tears burned her cheeks. They would not make it through the marsh. Soon she would lie down: down, down, to sink into the soft, devouring mud, to be cradled in coolness, hidden from pain.
Magnified by her tears, the stars threw out long arms of light. They seemed so near--especially one golden star, beckoning low on the horizon.
She rubbed her eyes, and then knew the star for what it really was, not a heavenly, but an earthly glimmer.
"There it is, Castandra! Hurry!" Soon she could make out the hut on its small hill of solid ground.
"Oh, gods curse it! The tide's in!" Water glistened before it in the pale starlight, transforming the low peninsula to an island. "I'll never make it," Elzin wailed.
A splash, a slosh, a hollow thump. A narrow ghost appeared before her. A boat rocked gently beneath one pale hand.
"Is there time?" it asked.
Elzin numbly stared.
"Is there time," Castandra repeated, water waist-deep on her wet, white shift, "to push you across before the baby comes?"
"We have to try." The sorceress steadied the boat as she clambered in. "Get in and row," Elzin gasped, wracked again by her pangs. "Hurry!"
"I don't know how. I'll have to push." She shoved the boat deeper into the water, then grasped the stern and began to kick.
Curled in the bottom of the boat, Elzin prayed to Telriss for more time; she begged to her child to wait. But the only answers to her pleas were increasingly powerful contractions. "Faster, Castandra!" she whined. "He's coming!"
The boat's bow bumped the soft shore. Water pelted her: Castandra's dogs, vigorously shaking their long coats.
"Here! Here!" urged the sorceress. Elzin cursed as the girl nearly upset the boat in her rush to help her out. Castandra pulled the dress she had abandoned from the bottom of the skiff and spread it on the sand. "Crouch over this; it's dry at least. I'll bring back help."
Elzin's voice rose to a shriek. "No! Please! Don't leave me! Help me go with you! I can make it -- just a little farther. Please!"
"Gods! Do you want to drop it on the sand while you walk, like an animal? Stay here!"
Again and again the pains came, each one more urgent than the last. Elzin gritted her teeth and tried hard not to push… not yet. Worn down by distress and exhaustion, she could no longer fight off her dreadful memories: the impact as Caldan slung her against the wall, the jacket twisted cruelly about her neck. What if Caldan had killed her child? What if her struggle had been for nothing?
Two pairs of running feet pattered against the wet sand. A face thrust into her own. The herb woman. Elzin was confused by her nearly toothless grin. Why was she smiling?
Elzin gave in now to the urge to push with each contraction. Soon she forgot about the old woman with her strange smile. An immense snake, thick as a sapling and nearly as long, slithered past her to glide noiselessly into the water, but she scarcely noticed. Instead she whimpered softly, too tired even to scream in protest at her travail, and gave one final, powerful push.
The crone laughed soundlessly and supported the squirming infant in her hands. With a short, sharp knife, her gnarled hands deftly cut the cord. Dark blood splashed to the sand and disappeared. The child wailed.
Elzin, too, wept. But this time, her tears were tears of joy.
o0o
In the dim, early morning light, Elzin could make out the shapes of plants hung suspended by their roots above her. Below, the floor was piled deep in fresh, sweet-smelling grasses. The strange smells would have been overpowering were it not for the warm, salt breeze that entered through the open windows. Where was this place, and where were her attendants?
The warped, wooden door opened noisily, and the herb woman placed a tiny, squirming bundle in her arms. A child. Her child. The sight of him jarred Elzin to the present, to memories of the night: Heratinn, too still, Castandra bent weeping above him, Caldan, crumpled nearby, the frightful escape through the marsh.
The old woman laid a wrinkled hand on Elzin's shoulder. Elzin peered into the wizened, pink face of her son and smiled in wonder. How had such beauty sprung forth in the wake of such horror?
The newborn's restlessness interrupted her euphoria. As he fussed, the blonde looked quizzically at the old woman, unsure of what she should do. The woman chuckled silently, her gums gleaming in the morning light, and tugged at the front of the Saire's stained shift.
Elzin blushed. Oh, that. She wasn't sure she knew how, but, obviously, the child would need feeding. The herb woman seemed to understand the new mother’s discomfort. With strong, but gentle hands, she helped Elzin to sit up on the pallet and arrange herself more comfortably. Fortunately, the infant knew exactly what to do.
As her son nursed, she worried over what she would do next. She was safe for the moment, but where could she go from here?
"Where's Castandra?" Had the sorceress abandoned her?
The highlander had to stoop to enter. In her ruined shift, head lowered and hair simply braided, she looked like nothing so much as a strangely tall and gawky child.
"I don't know what to say," said Elzin softly. "Except, thank you. I wanted to tell you that, and I wanted to say how sorry… how very, very sorry…"
"Yes," said Castandra. "I know."
The infant stirred sleepily and continued feeding.
"I'm naming him Venwinn, like the constellation."
"It is a good name."
They listened for a time to the sound of Venwinn's lusty suckling.
"Castandra. I have to go back."
"No."
"I left the Saireflute there, Castandra. I don't have any choice."
"Leave it, Elzin. You have a child to think of now."
Sudden tears sprang to Elzin's eyes. "You don't understand. I don't want to leave Venwinn. But I have to. I need the Saireflute. I have to play on its day. If I don't, I'll--I'll--"
"You'll what?"
"Go back!"
"Go back where, Elzin? You aren't making any sense."
"Go back -- back into the mist. I can't go there again! I won't! It isn't time!"
"Gods! What nonsense!" Castandra put hands to narrow hips. "We are talking about your life, Elzin. Your life! Forget that wretched instrument. You have a son to live for."
"Listen to me, Castandra! Have you ever heard of a retired Saire, or one who quit? There's only one way out -- to die. There's no life for a Saire without the Flute. It's changed me, and I can't live, not even for my son, if I don't honor it on Saire.
"The worst part is your father knows I'll come. He knows I have to play to live. All he needs to do is wait."
As if in sympathy, Venwinn began to wail. Elzin laid his head on her shoulder awkwardly and rubbed his back to soothe him.
"How do you know you'll die? Can't you at least try?"
"No," sai
d Elzin in exasperation. "You'll have to trust me, Castandra. I'm Saire. There are a few things I just know. I have to go back for the Saireflute. Do you really think I would if I didn't have to? Do you really think I want to just walk into the lair of that murderer?"
Castandra dropped beside her and put her head in her hands.
Elzin rocked her child until he quieted. "I'm sorry, Castandra. I didn't mean to hurt you. I won't go back right now. Not 'til Saire. I need to rest, to think, to get to know my son a little. I don't want to die. Maybe I'll think of way out of this mess."
She laid a hand on Castandra's shoulder. "What will you do now?"
"Wait," the highlander answered. "I don't know what else to do. Except wait."
The old woman strode into the hut, a large fish hoisted triumphantly above her head. It thrashed vigorously as she pressed it to the table with one hand while the other nimbly drew a thin knife from a cocoon of oiled rags. Elzin watched in fascination as the blade severed the fish's spine as cleanly and with as little effort as a seamstress's shears parted ribbon.
Drawing her son even closer, Elzin nestled further into the ragged pillow and quickly fell asleep.
o0o
Elzin passed her sleeping son into the herb woman's waiting arms. Laying one hand on his leg, she watched, entranced, as his small mouth worked at dreamtime feeding. Would she ever return to nurse her son again? Or would she, like her brother Elzmere, lie anonymous in some makeshift, unmarked grave?
A thin trickle of blood ran from her nose, and she swiped at it thoughtlessly with the already-caked back of her sleeve. The bleeding was a nuisance, but not the worst of it. The worst was the longing, like a drunkard's desperate thirst, for the flow of power from Saire to Flute and back again. She envisioned herself, standing with the gleaming, silver Saireflute, felt it, cool and soothing, in her grasp. Refrain after refrain repeated endlessly inside her head, until she thought she would go mad with music. She could stand to wait no longer; she must go to Sheldwinn now.
Gingerly, so as not to wake her child, Elzin hugged the old woman. "I'll come back for him," she promised.
The old crone nodded gravely and patted the pocket of Elzin's heavy robe. Within, wrapped in rags, was the old woman's borrowed knife.
She imagined Caldan's laughter as he disarmed her of the simple fisher's blade. It was the best defense she had to offer, but even in her own mind she was already defeated. With a hopeless sigh, she untied the skiff and bent to grasp an oar.
"Wait!" Hounds beside her, arms full of phosphorescent moss, Castandra ran from the marsh, sure-footed as any deer in the now-familiar terrain. Elzin had wondered over the sorceress's fascination with the herb woman. Mostly she suspected Castandra's gathering expeditions to be an excuse to avoid her.
Castandra dropped the moss at her feet, where Omen and Talisman sniffed it curiously. "I will go with you."
Elzin shook her head, and a dark rivulet ran from her ear to trace the curve of her jaw. "Stay here, Castandra. You've been hurt enough already. I'll come back, I promise."
"No. I want to go. I have to see it through."
"You have to stay here, Castandra. If something happens to me, someone should know the truth."
"The herb woman will know it."
"The herb woman. She does know, doesn't she? All right, then. To be honest, I'll be glad of the company. But promise me this: if Caldan--that is--if I don't make it, you have to tell him my son is dead. My child never drew a breath. Please, promise me, Castandra."
"Elzin! I would not harm your child."
"But he might. Venwinn is dead, Castandra, somewhere in the marshes. Do that much for me if I die. Promise me you will."
The thin starlight could not hide the Tarskan's look of anguish. "Your child is safe. I will not tell one soul. Not even him."
Chapter Thirty-One
When the hare besets the lion
And day yields not to night
When spiders fail to cast their nets
Then all will be set right.
--Hymns of Shador
Elzin's earliest memory was of learning how to swim, of being tossed into foaming surf, and the way her father's shouted orders had grown muted as seawater filled her ears. She had been no more than three then, and she shouldn't have remembered it at all, except for the wave that crashed unexpectedly over her head and sent her tumbling after it, groping frantically for the strong legs standing close beside her.
Her father's legs, which bent as his burly arms scooped her up and held her until she finished coughing. Tonight she coughed again, salty blood instead of water. Wave after wave of fear crashed over her, but this time, who would lift her from the surf?
The Saire gazed out over the smooth, moonlit fingers of water that stretched languidly across the marsh. There was little danger of losing the path this evening; the tides had been with her and the lantern they borrowed lit their path. Still, she glanced at Castandra frequently, half-afraid the girl would vanish like an early autumn fog touched by sun.
Despite her rising terror, despite the blood that flowed sluggishly from ears and nose and mouth, Elzin felt no pain. She had expected agony, and, perversely, she now thought she would have welcomed it, or anything, as a distraction from the frenzied notes that throbbed inside her head. The discord swelled and boomed, music gone gibberish, corrupted, tangled, and endlessly, torturously repeating. Over the dissonant bedlam, a toneless, tireless chant beat relentlessly: Moon sets at dawn! Moon sets and so do you!
"No!" Her own cry, born a whisper, rose to a howl and reverberated like thunder in her skull. Castandra whirled to stare, then turned her eyes away as if embarrassed.
With her shout, calm replaced clamor so abruptly Elzin feared she had burst her own eardrums. Gradually, though, the small, ordinary noises of her passage through the marshland returned to reassure her: the suckle of mud against her boots, the rhythmic songs of hundreds of insects, the eerie cry of a nightfisher and an almost simultaneous splash not far behind her. She had stopped the awful din. She had stopped it by herself.
She prayed she had it in her power to stop Caldan as well.
o0o
To Castandra's relief the open wetlands gradually gave way to a sickly, stunted wood. With the thin, blue moonlight mercifully diffused by the ragged canopy above, blood became nothing more than shadow, and her companion's heavy, halting footfalls merely lowland lack of grace.
She imagined many things. She imagined she returned to him, alone.
All by herself. The last week had never happened. She had gone for a walk, was all; fallen asleep outside her cycle and awakened, remembering strange dreams. Elzin's child still slept unborn, safely curled within his mother's womb. And though Heratinn's troubles were grave, he lived, and soon she would speak to her father of him, and her father, in turn, would approach the Elders. He would make everything right. Her father always made everything right.
Except, this time, something had gone wrong. Heratinn was no more. And Elzin…
If Elzin made it back to Castle Sheldwinn alive, if her tale was told, it would be the end of everything.
She had to act. To let Elzin return would be the gravest betrayal: of her father, of her people, of herself and what she was. She must be strong. She must be Kyr. She must remember.
Here, in the darkness, all the old hates seemed so plausible. Abysmally stupid, fecund as vermin, weak and misshapen both physically and morally, the lowlanders' faults were legion. They did not care to understand, only to master. Worse still, they came to master not with skill, or strength, but by the same undeserving fortune by which a shiftless beggar might stumble upon a coin.
The Flute. That hateful agent of their subjugation. If Elzin died, if the thing went unplayed, might the cycle not be broken?
Elzin cried out, stumbling over a hidden root. Quicker than thought, Castandra's hand caught her elbow and steadied her.
"You must get tired," said Elzin, "of rescuing me all the time." When she didn't reply, the blond
e lifted her lamp.
"Castandra?"
It was too much. Too much to expect that she could live among those lowland and feel nothing for them. Too much to watch, as Elzin's pale hair drew up dark blood like a lantern's wick.
She forced her eyes ahead and walked.
The thorns plucked at her sleeves and tugged at her skirts, a thousand persistent children, demanding her attention. When? When will you do what you must? We're almost there, you know. Almost there. The Saire left the main trail to thread her way through a maze of false paths, most of which vanished into thick colonies of porcupine bramble or itchy moonberry. Through caverns of bramble, on a thin and twisting track, they pushed on until the barbs closed tight around them, like a noose.
Elzin stamped once, then stooped to brush aside leaves and dirt. To Castandra's amazement, she lifted the iron ring as easily as if she pulled aside a veil and not a solid, mastwood door.
The lamp flickered, hungry for oil. Elzin fed it from a tiny flask, while the sorceress folded her knees to sit at the top of the cool stone steps that lead downward into utter blackness. Beside her, Omen and Talisman pricked their ears. The tips of their feathered tails waved.
She need do nothing. Elzin had been right.
Her father waited.
He would kill her. There was no other way. He would kill the Saire, and continue to use whatever explanation he had concocted to explain her disappearance. If he did not, he would lose his life--worse, the throne. Castandra crossed arms over knees and laid her forehead on them. Just one life, just the life of one lowland woman, and her father could keep all that had been eight hundred years in the winning. Look how much good he had done already: the mad queen destroyed, the yoke of the nobles broken, the lives beyond counting all saved by his warning against Buktoz and his swift rally of Lhant's defense.
And what of her own people? Her father was all that stood between them at their twilight and the overwhelming expansion of the lowlanders. He was their last defense. Would she throw it all away for the life of one promiscuous girl?
The Night Holds the Moon Page 43