HM01 Moonspeaker

by K. D. Wentworth

  She felt the cool green brush of the ilseri’s touch against her thoughts, oddly soothing, somehow not intrusive. A long silence passed, filled with only the creak of limbs swaying in the wind.

  In your mind, he both is and is not, Summerstone said finally. I cannot explain.

  Then, no matter what Summerstone had said before, she didn’t really know. The breath caught in Haemas’s chest. He probably was dead, had gone to his funeral pyre days ago while she wandered the Lowlands in a guilty daze. Flames leapt up behind her eyes, bringing the acrid smell of smoke. She clenched her hands until her nails pierced her palms, until her vision was only a white buzz and pain all she had left to hold onto.

  No, you cannot throw yourself away. Windsign flooded her mind with a cool green strength that left no room for anything else. You are needed here. She felt a barrier being set up, energy diverted. The fire faded into gray ashes. A sudden, strange quiet pervaded. Dimly, she still sensed her fear and guilt, but they were outside somewhere, held at bay like a hungry bavval circling a campfire. She drew a long, shaky breath.

  So, said the other mindvoice, now we begin.

  She heard the faint tinkle of crystal.

  We shall teach you to walk the pathways of When as only a sister may.

  The crystalline vibration increased, shrill almost to the point of pain.

  You must attune your thoughts.

  Haemas felt the ilseri nudge her brain; the sound diminished until it was bearable again, more like the crystalline music on the wind that had lured her from Kevisson’s campsite. She closed her eyes, sensing currents of force flowing around her, their source the same crystals used by the Kashi for travel since the beginning, but this was a different frequency. Her heart pounded. Had this power always been there, waiting to be unlocked, and she just hadn’t known how to look?

  Focus on the pathways, Summerstone said softly. Match the energy of your thoughts to them.

  In her mind, it seemed she stood in the center of a vast circle of dancing blue lines radiating outward into infinity.

  If you look carefully around the nexus, you will find the lines of truewhen.

  Her heart beating faster, she opened her eyes. The writhing lines all seemed the same, although they led to a thousand scenes, each one varying in some degree from the ones on either side.

  Think of where you wish to go, whom you wish to see.

  Home, Haemas thought, and the scenes shifted. Now some lines led to a wall of silver-gray rock softened by greenery. She recognized a familiar ummit-shaped geyser spraying hot water and steam up into the frost-edged air . . . the thermal garden at Tal’ayn.

  At the end of one pathway, she saw a tall willowy woman strolling with a chubby-legged girl-child of about two. The air was frosty and their breath puffed white. Their cheeks were pink with the cold and exercise—and they both had hair of an unusual pale gold. She started down that line, drawn to the woman’s serene face.

  No, small sister, that—

  She took a second step, and then her boot trod on the fine crushed gravel of the Tal’ayn garden walkways.

  The woman, dressed in an ankle-length dark-blue tunic over soft flowing breeches, had her hair braided loosely down her back. She glanced over her shoulder. “I didn’t know we had company.” She slipped an arm around the wide-eyed child at her side. “Look, Haemas, we have a visitor.”

  The little girl clasped her mother’s hand with small delicate fingers, gazing at Haemas with eyes the color of spun honey.

  The woman’s oval-shaped face smiled. “Are you a Killian? You certainly have the look of one.”

  Haemas stepped forward, taking a deep breath of the faintly sulfuric air emitted by the geyser and thermal pools. “Yes . . .” It seemed that she had to force the words to come from far away. “. . . on my mother’s side.”

  “I’m Anyah Killian Sennay, although I suppose you already know that.” The woman scooped her daughter up into her arms. “You must sit down and tell me the news. My husband receives so little company at Tal’ayn these days.”

  “The—news, my Lady?” Haemas looked at the wriggling child nestled inside Anyah’s arms, perhaps the child she might have been.

  Anyah motioned to a seat on the bench and settled next to it with her small daughter balanced in her lap. “Well, those do look like traveling clothes.”

  Haemas glanced down at the torn and stained tunic she wore, realizing how many days it had been since Kevisson had tossed it at her in Dorbin.

  “I’ve embarrassed you, haven’t I?” Anyah’s face fell. “Dervlin is always telling me I talk too much.”

  Male voices erupted from behind the garden wall, then grew louder. A younger, more golden-haired Dervlin Tal than the one she knew burst into the garden, followed by another man.

  “Damnation, Anyah, I’ve told you not to bring the girl down here so much! I don’t think it’s healthy—” His voice broke off as he caught sight of Haemas. “And who in the hell is this? Another one of your endless Killian cousins? I told you I don’t want them here.”

  “Dervlin, please.” Anyah rose, her face a frozen mask, and set the child on the gravel path behind her. “There’s no reason to be rude.”

  The pathways, Haemas thought numbly, she had to find the pathway back to the grove and Summerstone and Windsign. She opened her mind to listen for the vibrations again, but met only the probing thoughts of Dervlin Tal.

  Why are you sniffing around here? his mind thundered at her. Has she been complaining again?

  Without thinking, Haemas threw her shields up against his relentless pressure and backed away. He followed, his face creased in concentration, then the probing abruptly ceased.

  Dervlin mopped his brow. “It’s that damned Killian blood. Looks as frail as a house of sticks, but you can’t beat it for sheer power.”

  “That’s most complimentary, Dervlin.” Scarlet heightened Anyah’s graceful cheekbones as she regarded her husband with a frosty stare. “I’m sure I don’t need any reminders why you accepted me.”

  Now! Haemas thought. She had to find the way back. She opened her mind again cautiously and sensed the glimmering of a path.

  Dervlin’s golden eyes narrowed. “What’s going on here?”

  She listened, catching the crystalline music of the way back. She took one step on the shining path that opened up before her.

  “Where do you think you’re going!”

  Glancing over her shoulder, Haemas saw Dervlin Tal reaching for her arm. Breathing deeply, she focused her thoughts, setting each foot directly on the shimmering blue line of power.

  Yes, small sister.

  She took a third step, then looked down. At her feet lay the pool and the five glowing ilsera crystals fading back into quiescence.

  * * *

  “Go ahead and kill me. I’m not going another step.” Kevisson collapsed on a fallen tree trunk and stretched out his weary legs. The late afternoon sunlight slanted down through the canopy of leaves, dappling the ground with orange-gold light.

  The ummit saddle creaked as Cale leaned forward. “How much farther?”

  “Too far to get there before sundown.” For the tenth time that day, Kevisson reached out to get a foothold in the other’s mind and failed. What in the bloody Darkness was wrong with him? It was like trying to seize a fistful of water. He shut his eyes and rubbed the aching spot in the middle of his forehead.

  Cale slid his leg over the ummit’s hump and slid down its shaggy side. “Well, I guess we might as well make camp. At least we be close to water here.”

  Kevisson gathered an awkward armful of dead, parchment-like leaves with his bound hands, then dumped them on the grass under a large-leafed spine-wood tree. Settling down into the crackling leaves, he sighed; one lingering aftereffect of his overdoing was the need for extra sleep. A few minutes, he told himself, then he would jump
the chierra when he was off-guard.

  He closed his eyes and listened to the afternoon breeze ruffling the leaves overhead, the chittering of a tree barret . . . even the slight shifts on the log made by the other man. Just a few min . . .

  A faint crystalline tinkling invaded his mind as he drifted, just the slightest hint of wind chimes. He found himself listening for something more in that sound, something meant especially for him. It seemed that he sat up and looked around.

  The girl’s face appeared before him on the breeze, smiling as the breeze swirled long light-gold hair around her moonlight eyes. The image startled him even as it faded. She had smiled, he thought numbly. He realized that he had never once seen her smile. It had made her seem older, hinted at the dazzling woman she would become.

  He stared after her and saw a towering winterberry tree standing over a crystal clear pond ringed with white stone, and then the currents of sleep swept him away.

  * * *

  “Isn’t it time you found a wife, young man?” Lord Senn settled back from his desk and looked Jarid over like a prize saddle beast. “Some biddable young thing with a large dowry, and perhaps true-gold eyes to counter that damnable Killian pallidness.”

  Jarid let a self-assured smile flow over his lips, but inside his shields, he burned. He would see a day, and soon, when no man would dare mention that name to his face.

  Lord Senn’s own eyes, burnished gold flecked with gray, blinked. “Well, enough of that. I asked you here to see if you would help with our temporal experimentation.” He turned back to his desk and rustled through a stack of papers. “I thought I saw your name listed on the attendance at several conclaves last year.”

  A tingle jolted through Jarid’s spine. At last! he thought. “Yes, my Lord.” He forced his face to remain impassive. “My uncle took me along several times last winter.”

  The old lord found the list he was looking for. “And I see you assisted in the power relay the second time. Very good.” He pushed his throne-like chair away from the low desk. “We have need of some new blood in the circle, now that Dervlin is—” He broke off, looking embarrassed.

  Jarid allowed a note of sadness to escape his shields. “The healers insist this is just a temporary set back,” he said with intentional insincerity.

  “Well, of course!” Senn looked shocked. “I never meant to suggest otherwise, but in the meantime, would you like to join us in his place?”

  “I would be honored.”

  “It would be better if you just observe again today.” Senn put his hands behind his back and gazed at the fire in the hearth. “I’m sure you realize there is a certain amount of risk.”

  Risk for you, old man, Jarid thought exultantly, and for the rest of the Council. Once he’d unlocked the secret of temporal transfer for himself, he would travel the timeways on his own and arrange things to suit himself . . . starting with the long overdue demise of Uncle Dervlin and the transfer of Tal’ayn into his own deserving hands.

  “Rest assured, Lord,” Jarid said gravely, “you can count on me.”

  * * *

  Windsign floated above the unaware child, anchoring herself in the grove by the tip of one finger against a twig. She did not discriminate Truewhen from Otherwhen.

  But she found her own way back this time. Summerstone still felt hopeful. It is a beginning.

  Windsign sent the image of thick gray fog muffling the forest. If this small one cannot do better, we will have to find another.

  There is no time left to try again.

  A shudder suddenly rippled through the grove, writhing through soil, trees, pool, and air. The light-haired girl below looked wildly around and clutched the grass. “Summerstone?”

  A feeling of—violation passed through Summerstone. The crystalline vibration coarsened into painful discord, and a second shudder gripped the grove.

  Is it already too late for this when? Summerstone looked to her sister.

  Below them, the human child had thrown herself against the ground, holding fast to the grass with knotted fists. She stared at the pool with horrified eyes. “What is it?”

  Summerstone gazed down the shimmering pathways generated by the ilsera nexus. Visible at the end of most pathways now lay the maelstrom of time disruption, a yawning blue whirlpool crackling with the breached energies of When.

  She increased her mass, sliding between the frightened child and the vision of Whens to come, pulling the child’s white face to her own pale-green breast.

  Feeling the child’s shaking body, so curiously solid, Summerstone remembered her own long distant time of childbearing and sons. At this density, she could even feel the girl’s warm breath on her skin. Do not look, she told her. Those Whens may never come to be.

  A last temporal shudder ran through the grove and the clanging discord slowly faded . . . The child drew a long ragged breath. “What was it?”

  Summerstone ran her fingers over the girl’s silky hair. The males of your tribe attempt the pathways again. The child raised a face tracked with wetness to look for the first time at the ilseri. Male-energy cannot align with the pathways. If it is weak, the pathways will disrupt it.

  “And if it is not weak?”

  If the male-energy is strong enough, it will disrupt the pathways after a short time and bring instead the disruption of this When.

  “WHAT if I went back into the past,” Haemas asked, “and changed something?”

  Summarizations calm green presence flowed through her mind. Like your mother’s death.

  Haemas remembered Anyah’s arm curled protectively around her small shy daughter, her soft, abashed expression when she’d thought she had inadvertently embarrassed a guest. Haemas would have given everything to grow up under her gentle guidance, but Anyah had died giving her birth, a difficult fate to remedy. Perhaps if an additional healer had been called, or a better one . . .

  She sighed, then glanced at the tall, green-skinned ilseri reclining beside her in the grass. The Old Ones were curiously like humankind, having two arms and two legs and a round head covered with vaguely hair-like green tendrils, but much taller, and no human could ever have risen into the breeze and floated away as Summerstone frequently did.

  Amusement emanated from the ilseri, although her facial expression never changed.

  “So,” Haemas said, “what if I could prevent Anyah’s death? What would happen to now—this When?”

  The one you altered would become an Otherwhen while this reality and its past would remain the same.

  Haemas watched a winterberry leaf nearly as green as Summerstone’s skin fall into the still waters of the pool and skim the surface. “You mean she can never be saved?”

  She is well and happy in a number of Otherwhens.

  Turning away from the pool, Haemas sighed. “Then what good are the pathways?”

  The pathways exist for themselves like the sun and the stars. They were not made for ilseri or humans.

  The dark, knobby tree trunks appeared through the wispy, white drapings over Summerstone’s green body as the ilseri dispersed her mass and allowed the breeze to lift her.

  Haemas stood, head tilted back, squinting up into the sunlight after her. “Then why should I learn to walk the pathways if nothing can be changed?”

  Summerstone’s body grew more diffuse until Haemas could see the outline of every limb and blue-green leaf through it. They must be guarded from disruption.

  Haemas thought of the maelstrom whirling at the end of the timelines. A cold, sick feeling washed over her.

  Even now the males of your tribe work to unravel the secrets of When.

  She turned around, but Summerstone had drifted out of sight. “If they can’t change anything, what does it matter if they succeed?”

  When your species first came to this world, we offered the crystal for travel from Where to Where. We
ilseri are born male and remain so only to a very young age. Consequently, our males lack the power to enter the timelines. Your curious species, however, exists in either one form or the other, and some of your males develop mindpower of an impressive degree. Male energy cannot align with the pathways.

  “And if they enter . . .?” Haemas whispered.

  If they succeed in entering the pathways with enough strength to resist disruption, then they will disrupt the timeways instead and bring the maelstrom into this When.

  “But I don’t see how I can stop them. They aren’t going to listen to me.”

  You must control the nexus. Summerstone paused, then Haemas heard her call to the crystals. They responded, singing like a chorus of tightly-tuned lute strings. The submerged ilsera crystals around the pool shimmered with blue fire and the circle of lines sprang into being. Try again. Seek out the mountain males who would tamper with the energies of When.

  Haemas closed her eyes, reached out with her mindsenses, trying to sense the correct line out of what had to be thousands. They writhed like lightning, flickering, coiling, never still for a second, terrifying in their instability and fragility.

  Like this, Summerstone said and Haemas sensed the ilseri sorting through the possibilities for some undefinable quality.

  Haemas dropped her shields and followed, mentally reaching for it too, not even able to say what it was. At the end of the line to which the ilseri led her, she felt a presence, many men gathered together, a few of them vaguely familiar, and a searing buildup of psionic energy.

  There, said Summerstone.

  Haemas opened her eyes and saw an assortment of bowed gold and gray heads, a circle of crystals spread before them. The details were obscured by the crackling blue fire of the nexus, but she could almost make out their strained faces. The song of the crystals sharpened into painful screeching. One white-haired man stood, his lined face contorted, then stumbled toward her. No! Haemas cried. You can’t do this! Stay out!