HM01 Moonspeaker

by K. D. Wentworth

  Sweat beaded out on Jarid’s forehead as he glanced at Alyssa through slitted eyes. “Will you—shut her up?”

  What was Jarid trying to force him to do? Supporting herself with numb hands on the table edge, she stumbled toward her father.

  “And just what do you think you’re going to do?” Alyssa reached across and shoved Haemas to the floor.

  “No!” Dervlin’s eyes forced themselves back open and he gasped for air. “Never! . . . Tal’ayn will . . . never . . . to a Killian . . . bastard!”

  “Think again, old man!” A vein bulged in his forehead as Jarid leaned over the old man. “Acknowledge me as your heir or die, it’s all the same to me. I’ll just eliminate my poor backwards cousin, whom no one will miss anyway, and then I’ll be the only possible Tal left. Either way, I will have what I want.”

  Haemas pushed herself up to her knees, seeing Pascar glide out of the shadows toward Jarid’s back, holding something low next to his side that reflected the candlelight.

  Shoving her father back against the chair, Jarid seized his hair and forced the lolling head up. “Cede Tal’ayn over to me! I am more of a Tal than that sniveling brat will ever be!”

  The old man’s eyes rolled sideways, looking up into Jarid’s enraged face, and he laughed with a terrible chest-rasping wheeze. “You’re nothing . . . but a . . . bloody Killian bas . . . tard. . . . the whole world knows . . . that!”

  Then die, you old fool!

  Feeling the strength of Jarid’s gathering blow, Haemas threw her mind at his, knowing full well she was no match for him. No! she cried, seeking to thrust herself between him and her father. I won’t let you!

  The room dissolved into a reddish-gray haze of pain as Jarid struck her down. She heard him laughing from some place far away. “So the skivit has teeth? Who would have thought?” A booted toe prodded her ribs. “Don’t be in such a bloody hurry. Your turn will come.”

  Through her pain, she could still feel her father’s drugged mind shielding weakly against her cousin, his life force ebbing with each passing second.

  “Will you hurry up?” Alyssa’s voice demanded. “You said it would be easy!”

  Haemas summoned the strength to open her eyes, and blinked foggily up from the floor at the still forms of the two men, the young gilt-haired one and the old gray-haired one, as they wrestled, mind against mind. The air around them crawled with psionic energies.

  Huddled next to the massive dining room door, Alyssa watched the struggle with over-bright eyes, her hands knotted into the green silk of her skirt.

  Haemas forced herself to her knees, then gasped as the room spun again, twisting her stomach into knots. Her father was straining now to resist, his reserve strength nearly burned away. An irregular black shadow appeared behind over Jarid’s shoulder, and she squinted up at it, trying to make it out.

  It was Pascar.

  “Danih . . . should have let me feed you to the stream.” Her father stiffened with pain. “I told . . .” His voice was only a whisper. “She . . . begged me . . . My fault . . . I gave . . . in.”

  Shut up, old man! Jarid’s rage thundered through Haemas’s mind.

  She saw the gleam in Pascar’s hand as it rose over Jarid’s golden head, then flashed downwards in the same instant as Alyssa’s scream rang through the room. Her cousin looked up and redirected his mental attack to the old chierra servant.

  The carving knife dropped from Pascar’s hand, and he crumpled to the floor, already dead as he fell.

  “You fool!” Jarid turned to Alyssa. “Now the whole House will come!”

  Haemas stretched out a hand and touched her father’s cold cheek, feeling the small spark that still burned deep within his mind.

  “Kill her, then!” Alyssa’s normally well-bred voice came out in a screech. “Kill her before they come! What could they do but let you inherit?”

  Jarid glanced down at Haemas and let a thin smile play across his lips. “No,” he said, “I have something better in mind.”

  He leaned closer and twisted her wrist in a cruel grip. Imagine that? His triumph saturated her drug-weakened shields. Killing your own father—whatever will the Council say?

  His jeering face faded into a white-hot haze of pain.

  A VOICE drew her out of the beguiling blackness . . . comforting . . . familiar.

  Haemas . . .

  She let it guide her back to the sensations of her own body . . . a strong arm supporting her shoulders . . . the air cool against her face . . . the warm tracks of tears down her cheeks.

  “That’s better,” the voice said beside her ear, still familiar, though spoken rather than thought.

  Her eyes fluttered and she blinked up into Master Ellirt’s worried face. He removed his palm from her forehead.

  “It was Jarid who attacked my father,” she whispered, the ugly scene fresh in her memory now. “And Pascar who saved him.” Guilt washed over her. It had been old Pascar who had lain pale and dead at her feet all this time, Pascar who had given his life to save her father—as she should have done.

  Dervlin Tal grimaced and turned away, his eyes bleak.

  Ellirt braced her so she could sit up. “What of Jarid Tal Ketral?” he asked the onlookers in a businesslike tone. “Is he here?”

  Her father glanced over to Alyssa’s drained face. “Well? Where is he?”

  Her stepmother’s small fingers knotted together. “You can’t possibly believe her!” She backed away, her chin quivering, her green-gold eyes wide with shock.

  Seizing her wrist, Dervlin stared down at her colorless face. “Where is this damn Killian bavval I’ve been fostering all these years?”

  “I don’t know where he went!” Tears spilled down her face as she tried to pull away from him. “He wouldn’t tell me!”

  The pale-eyed man, who had earlier claimed a contract for Haemas, stepped forward. “He’s attending the Temporal Transference Conclave at Senn’ayn this morning in your place.”

  “That’s impossible!” Dervlin thrust Alyssa roughly into a pair of gaping chierra musicians and glared at the other man. “They wouldn’t dare replace me with that Houseless bastard!”

  “They already have.” A faint amusement glimmered in the cool amber eyes. “It’s a well-known fact that the Lord of Tal’ayn has not been the same since his—accident.”

  Temporal Transference? Haemas blanched. Jarid was involved with the timelines too? She leaned her forehead against her knees, still dizzy, and worried—the priest, her father, Master Ellirt, Alyssa, the strange pale-eyed man, none of them would exist much longer if the conclave at Senn’ayn penetrated the timeways again, but . . .

  She tried to swallow around the icy lump in her throat. Jarid had nearly killed both her and her father, then played with her memory like she was nothing more than a servant girl. He’d bested her at every turn. What would he do to her now if she followed him to Senn’ayn and tried to stop the conclave?

  You don’t have to do that. Master Ellirt’s thought reached out to her, warm and comforting. We’ll alert the Council members at Senn’ayn. That should end the Conclave for today, and they can take the young wretch into custody there.

  Across the courtyard, the faint musical hum from the crystals sharpened and her head snapped up. It was too late—they were starting again! Struggling to her feet, she stumbled down the steps and fought through the baffled onlookers. The air rasped through her lungs, black dots danced behind her eyes as she tried to reach the portal before the vibrations distorted beyond use.

  As she stepped into the open housing, she glanced back at the Naming stand. Everyone was watching her, astonishment written on their faces. Only one figure moved, a small shapely woman wearing a white gown embroidered with silver, advancing toward Dervlin Tal’s unprotected back with a glittering koral-hafted dagger clasped in both hands.

  Father! Haemas re
ached for her father’s mind, but the dissonance climbed another note and it was impossible to focus her mental cry. Any second now it would be too late to transfer and then everything would be lost. She closed her eyes, throwing what strength she had left into one more frantic attempt. Father! Look behind you—Alyssa!

  Dervlin Tal stiffened, then turned around as the knife flashed in the sunlight and descended.

  Heart pounding, Haemas concentrated, altering the vibrations to shift her to the portal at Senn’ayn. The familiar tingle washed through her, then faded, while the terrible crystalline dissonance remained.

  She swayed and caught herself against the black grill-work of the Senn’ayn portal.

  * * *

  This time, Jarid promised himself, he would master the secrets of temporal travel. Despite the indifference and disdain of his uncle and everyone else, he would become the most powerful man among the great Houses, the Highlands, perhaps even all of Desalaya.

  Lord Senn rapped his knuckle on the satiny dark-red wood of the table. “Brothers.” His silver eyebrows arched. “It’s time to try again.”

  The small groups of men sitting and standing around the library drifted back to the oblong table. Jarid slid back into his place at Senn’s left, his eyes on the box of Old oak and its seven perfect crystals.

  Senn laid his hands reverently on the carved container. “This time we will manage enough power to send you to a place of your own choosing. I’m sure of it.” Removing the lid, he cradled each pale-blue crystal in his lined palm, then passed it down the table to be laid in the precise pattern. When the last one was positioned, he drew himself up, his gray-gold eyes confident. “Now, brothers, we will remake our own history.”

  Each member in the power relay threw his mind open to the crystals, matching the strangely pitched frequencies they emitted in this pattern. Jarid lowered his shields, drawing the power into his mind like a whirlpool. Already the faint, telltale blue shimmer radiated outward from the crystals. If the Council’s theory was correct, the times and places available for transference depended upon the person at the focus. He should be able to choose.

  It was the future he wanted to see, what would become of him and Tal’ayn and even that mindless bauble, Alyssa. Pushing back his chair, he stood, the vibrations shrilling through his mind. Sweat beaded on his forehead as he struggled to shunt the rising pain aside and concentrate, seeking the line that would take him into tomorrow. Then he caught a mist-shrouded glimpse of the twin crags of Tal’ayn and the arching bridge between them. In all the Highlands and Lowlands put together, no other structure matched them.

  Behind the gray stone, the setting sun was painting the sky a brilliant red-orange. And at the foot of the holdings he could see a mature orchard—no doubt his Old apple grove, planted just these few weeks past!

  Straining to channel the psionic energies, he set one foot on the blue line that led to that scene, then another, and then . . .

  * * *

  The Senn’ayn servants in their gaudy red-and-black livery gaped at Haemas as she ran through the House, but the color of her hair and eyes guaranteed her passage. The crystals’ agony drew her upward through the branching halls. Her breath was coming in shallow, chest-straining gasps when she pounded past a massive door attended by a single liveried servant. The middle-aged man gave her a startled glance with his dark chierra eyes as she passed.

  Then she realized the dissonant thread had eased slightly; the conclave must be in progress inside that room. She turned and went back, gasping for breath, her weary feet sinking into the plush rug.

  The servant blocked the door. “I be sorry, Lady, but the old Lord, hisself, bid me let none pass until he called.”

  The overstressed crystals shrieked through her mind, making it hard to hear anything else. She pressed her fingertips against her throbbing temples and tried to shut them out. “You must let me in! They’re all going to die!”

  The servant’s square chin lifted. “I has my orders. No one gets into this room without Lord Senn’s say so.”

  Haemas reached for the door latch, but he seized her arms in his large-knuckled hands and pushed her firmly back. Inside the locked room, she could feel the crystals’ painful crescendo climbing higher and higher. Her head spun, and she stared at the man in frustration. He was too big; she’d never get past him, unless—

  She closed her slim fingers around his wrist and at the same time reached for his unshielded mind. You must let me pass. Lord Senn is calling for me. Can’t you hear him?

  His brown eyes widened. “Begging your pardon, your Ladyship!” His heavy face went red as he fumbled at his belt for the key. “I swear I didn’t hear him before!”

  The door swung open, and he flinched back from the hellish, coruscating blue energies as she shoved past him. None of the straining, pain-lined faces at the table gave any sign they were aware of her; they had all turned inward, concentrating their psionic energies into a single source, from which someone was powering an attempt to broach the time pathways. Jarid was nowhere to be seen.

  This close to the power relay, unrelenting pain burned along her nerves, a demanding, hungry thing, and she could feel the violence of the maelstrom. It was very near this timeline now, over-close. She caught sight of a tall back disappearing into the shimmering blue mist at the end of one writhing line. She saw the crystals on table and started to remove one, but realized if she broke the pattern, she would only trap the dissonant energies within the timelines. The only answer was to force him out before maelstrom took them all—even though that man must be Jarid.

  She struggled to follow him as the line swerved before her, then whipped back across the room. She heard her own breathing, harsh and irregular, as she managed one step, then a second. She squinted desperately against the eye-searing glow, then finally found the line and took the third and last step.

  The blueness under her bare feet faded into the stringy yellow of winter-blasted grass. The frost-laden air took her breath away. She blinked up at the red-orange glow of the setting sun. Ahead of her rose the twin crags of Tal’ayn, black against the brilliant sunset. Inside her head, the stressed crystals still shrieked their agonized song.

  “No!” An anguished cry rose from the low path leading to Tal’ayn just below the rocky bluff where Haemas stood. Dropping to her knees, she looked down and saw two figures leave the house. A man with bright-golden hair ate up the path with long, purposeful strides. A slighter figure, the same shade of gold in her hair, rushed after him. “Dervlin, no!” She caught up and clawed at his arm.

  The man, carrying something wrapped in a blanket, elbowed her away. “Go back to the house!”

  The voice froze Haemas’s nerves; it was her father as a much younger man. But what was he doing, and where was Jarid? Turning around, she hurriedly picked her way down the rocky path to the rolling plain where the two walked. If they were here, then surely Jarid was close by.

  “Dervlin, you can say he’s yours!” the woman cried. “Anyah is ready to swear it!”

  Haemas flattened herself against the gray rock as the pair passed just below and entered a callyt orchard, now leafless in early winter. Then she hurried after them.

  “I won’t pass a Houseless bastard off as my own son!” The bitter wind whipped her father’s angry voice back to her.

  “Then I’ll take him.” Defeat colored the woman’s voice. “We’ll go away. No one will ever know.”

  They sounded much nearer. Haemas thought they must have stopped, but there was still no sign of Jarid. Pain skittered along her nerves with the effort of walking this When; it hurt to breathe, to hear, even to see. How long could Jarid remain here before everything disrupted?

  “I’ll know!” Her father’s voice was grim. “Go back to the house, Danih, and stay in your room. I’ll deal with you and that Killian son-of-a-bitch later.”

  The thin wail of a baby split the air.
Haemas peered through the spiny brown branches, trying to see.

  “I won’t let you!” The woman’s voice had a shrill, desperate edge to it.

  “Damn you, get out of the way! You should have thought about this before you dishonored your husband and your family!”

  The baby’s crying rose another octave. “And what were you thinking of when you gave me to Ersal Ketral?” the woman flung back. “You had to know what a filthy beast he was!”

  “You just weren’t enough of a woman for him!”

  Haemas crept closer through the stiff dry grass, using the trees for cover. At the edge of the orchard, her father and the unfamiliar woman struggled for the wailing, blanket-swathed bundle in his arms. Just beyond them ran the mountain-fed stream that supplied Tal’ayn, glimmering red-orange under the last rays of the setting sun.

  Hair spilled over the woman’s shoulders like molten gold as she fought for the child. Haemas remembered the old stories Jayna had told her down in the kitchens without her father’s knowledge—Danih had been her father’s sister, now long dead.

  Her aunt—and Jarid’s mother.

  “Dervlin, you can’t!” Danih threw her body over the child and clasped it convulsively to her breast. “You know the law! He’s Kashi! With both Tal and Killian blood, he’s bound to be strongly Talented! Give him to the Brothers at Shael’donn, if you must!”

  “I’ll give the little bastard to the lraels!”

  Haemas glanced up through the winter-bare limbs and saw the scavenging flyers already circling overhead, their leathery black wings slicing through the crisp air.

  A twig snapped to her left. She reached out with her mind and met Jarid’s white-hot anger. Recoiling, she clung to a trunk for support.

  “As our mother should have given you, then!” Danih turned smoldering golden eyes up to Dervlin.