Circle of the Moon

by Barbara Hambly

  “Thank you.” She turned to stride back toward her palace quarters, then paused and said a little shyly, “I may be too proud and unruly for a woman, but I’m not stupid, you know.”

  Jethan pulled off his helmet and smiled at her from beneath the sweat-soaked mop of his hair. It changed the whole of his face. “I never thought you were.”

  THIRTY-THREE

  Though the last daylight had barely faded from the sky the house of Ahure was dark. As Shaldis turned her horse toward it, from the wider track toward the necropoli deep in the hills, she wondered in a whisper how many clients Ahure got in the summer’s heat. “I mean, Cattail’s patrons have the option of visiting in the early hours of the morning or in the evenings when it’s cool enough to be out but the streets are still crowded.”

  “If he’s making amulets for Noyad,” objected Jethan, narrowing his eyes against the shadowy distance, “surely Noyad would insist he not work for others.”

  Shaldis grinned. “Ahure pass up a chance to impress someone with his greatness?”

  And Jethan let out a crack of laughter. “I had an uncle like that. He—”

  Then something rustled sharply in one of the clumps of sagebrush that dotted the hillslope before the house: “Jackal,” said Shaldis. “After the garbage.” By the smell of it there was garbage in plenty, and none of it buried or burned.

  Her horse snorted and shied, and Jethan said, “No, it’s too—” And there was a sudden, murderous whine in the air between them. Jethan’s horse reared and twisted aside with a scream.

  Shaldis saw blood on its shoulder, a long rake, like a knife slash. The same instant her own horse leaped sideways, and Shaldis kicked her feet clear of the stirrups as she was pitched out of the saddle, curling her shoulder to take the impact of the ground. She heard Jethan curse, and the thud of an arrow hitting the sand near her. She lunged for the nearest clump of sagebrush and something moved in it: the glitter of eyes under a teyn’s overhanging brow.

  Then it was gone, and between Jethan’s cursing and the pummel of her horse’s fleeing hooves on the earth, she couldn’t tell where. When she rolled into the sagebrush and sat up, she glimpsed another teyn darting from cover a dozen yards away, heard men’s voices shouting from the house. Ahure’s, shrill and harsh, cried, “Kill them, I tell you!”

  Shaldis cried, “Ahure, no! It’s Raeshaldis!”

  “I knew it!” the Blood Mage screamed. “He sent her! Kill them both!”

  Jethan dropped from the saddle beside her, keeping firm hold of the reins of his thrashing mount. Despite his efforts to pull her out of arrow range—and the men with Ahure must be using longbows, thought Shaldis, they were too far for crossbows—she called out, “Ahure, my grandfather didn’t send me!”

  An arrow buried itself in the ground a few feet away. Jethan hooked an arm around her waist and dragged her back down the rise on which that small brown adobe stood. Ahure could be heard howling something, and Shaldis whispered the other half of the ward-and-retrieve spell she’d taken the precaution of putting on her mount. As she and Jethan retreated toward the main road the brown-and-white gelding came trotting back through the starlit sagebrush, reins trailing.

  “He was watching for us,” panted Jethan as they cantered away in the direction of the faint sprinkling of the Yellow City’s lights. “Or watching for someone.”

  Shaldis muttered, “Damn my grandfather,” and summoned the wards of a Gray Cloak around them, as soon as she judged they were too far to be seen clearly in the starlight. Then she drew rein. “He’s afraid of something.”

  “I’m afraid of something,” retorted Jethan. “I’m afraid of being shot by a madman.”

  “Why, Jethan!” Shaldis gave him her most dazzling smile. “I thought the king’s guards weren’t afraid of anything.” And she drew her horse near his—he’d stopped a few feet farther down the road than she—and signaled to him to lower his voice. “Sometimes mages can still hear at a great distance, if they go into trance,” she whispered. “That’s why I think we need to go on foot.” And she slipped down from her gelding again.

  “Go on foot where?” He did remember to whisper. “There were teyn circling that house—I saw three of them. Whoever was controlling the teyn out near Three Wells must have sent them against Ahure as well. The place is isolated enough.”

  “Unless it’s Ahure who’s doing the controlling,” replied Shaldis softly. “And if it is, I think we’d better find that out.”

  Soth Silverlord heard the harp playing in the Summer Pavilion as he returned across the gardens from bidding Moth and Pomegranate good night at the gate of the Marvelous Tower; the music filled the air like the sweetness of jasmine and roses. Lamplight glimmered through the trees, though the hour was very late. He nodded to the eunuch guard in the little kiosk where the pathway curved, climbed the blue-and-gold-tiled stair to the upper chamber, where the king sat playing, and the woman Pebble swayed in a trance over the Sigil of the River of Life, chalked on the floor beside the bed. As Soth reached the top of the stair the song concluded, and he heard Pebble say, “Thank you, Your Majesty. That was beautiful.”

  “Yes,” replied Oryn gravely, “all my courtiers agree that I’m the premier harpist of the land.” And Pebble—as Oryn no doubt intended she should—dissolved into giggles. Oryn chuckled, too, but his face sobered as he saw Soth step around the lattice screen. As if he read Soth’s expression he inquired, “More good chickens perished for naught?”

  Soth took Oryn gently by the elbow, led him out onto the garden terrace. “You should get some sleep.” Oryn had promised to do so when he’d walked Soth back to his quarters behind the palace library at noon. By the look of him he hadn’t.

  “Why, do you think my dreams are going to be that entertaining?”

  Soth said nothing.

  “I’m sorry,” said the king immediately. “It’s just that . . . I’m sorry.”

  And Soth squeezed the surprisingly muscular arm that he held. “Moth tells me the four of them are going to combine their powers tomorrow morning, to try to bring Summerchild out of her coma,” he said. “It may be indeed that spells that do not work with three enchantresses may work with four. If we can try the same some evening with these warding spells—”

  “I won’t have Summerchild left alone.”

  Not even to save your own life? Looking into his former pupil’s eyes, Soth didn’t say it; in the naked glance he already read the answer.

  The true answer, not the one Oryn knew he must make for the sake of the realm.

  The next moment Oryn looked away, the muscles clenching suddenly in the heavy jaw. In an almost inaudible voice, the king said, “Yes, I know you’re right.” He took a deep breath, looked back at Soth with weary resignation. “Tell me, dear friend, were there any kings who didn’t survive the tests of their consecration? Or who refused, when it came time to pass through the renewal of their relationship with the gods at the jubilee?”

  “There are only ten kings, in all the records of the Later Hosh and Durshen dynasties, whose reigns lasted forty-nine years.” Soth settled himself on a bench beside the pool, where the fat crescent of the waning moon’s reflection floated on the water. “Before that, the records are incomplete—mostly because the Hosh made a practice of burning anything that didn’t agree with their version of history. As far as I can make out, in the time of the Zali kings, the entities whom we know as the Veiled Gods were the only deities of this land—only then, as now, they weren’t exactly gods. And in putting himself into the hands of the priests of each temple in turn, the king gave each of the local groups the power of veto in his ascension. Only when the kings of the House of Hosh aligned themselves with the Sun Mages—who did start out as a priesthood themselves—were the kings able to supersede the lesser magic of the Veiled Priests and break themselves free of their control.”

  “And I don’t suppose there’s a chance the magic of the Veiled Priests is still active, is there? I didn’t think so.” The king s
ighed and plucked a strand of jasmine to trail across the moon’s reflection in the water. “It was just a thought. Where did you learn all that, Soth? It wasn’t part of the histories that you taught me as a child.”

  “Ironically, in this past year I’ve been able to study the inscriptions in the Zali tombs and on the jewelry that’s been taken from them. And a great deal of it has been showing up on the market lately.”

  “I know.” Oryn shook his head wearily. “The thieves aren’t even bothering to melt it down anymore. Yet another thing my successor will have to deal with.”

  “And it’s all quite common magic.” Soth kept his tone matter-of-fact, as Oryn had kept his when, in years past, Soth had been in the grip of his own demons. “Once the curses and wards ceased to work one can go in and out with impunity. Even the inscriptions we don’t understand—the precursors to those standard formulae you still find in tombs about ‘corpse walkers’ and ‘dream eaters’—are sourced the way ordinary magic was, for all the years of its history, from the earth or the sun or whatever.”

  “Corpse walkers I understand.” As Soth had hoped, his former pupil’s shoulders straightened a little at the prospect of a puzzle of scholarship. “At least, according to Raeshaldis, when the djinni began to lose their magic they apparently did take refuge in corpses, some of them, to keep from dissolving completely, the gods only know where they are now. If they did that in times past, no wonder the old priests put spells on tombs to keep it from happening.”

  “I think it likelier,” said Soth, “that some of those formulae were written to prevent the mages of the Black Cult from sourcing power from the energies released from human minds at death. Which, whether we like it or not, was a very strong source—for those who could manage to use it without going mad.”

  The king raised his gaze from the reflection of the moon in the water, the half circle whose inner edge showed the faintest concavity, and met Soth’s eyes. The question hovered for a moment between them, palpable and deadly: Would it work?

  Not to save his own life, thought Soth, but to save Summerchild’s.

  Instead he shook his head. “Well, let’s hope Mohrvine’s frightful mother doesn’t think of that one. She’s dangerous enough sane. And thank goodness all records of the Black Cults were destroyed. What were dream eaters supposed to be?”

  Soth removed his spectacles, polished them on the end of one of the sun veils looped around his neck. He was dressed and booted for riding; if the two men listened, they could hear the far-off sounds of horses being assembled in the Golden Court for the ride to Three Wells. “Mortuary spells have been almost standard for thousands of years,” he said. “The formulae written in Zali tombs are almost exactly what you’ll find today, allowing for the change in the style of the runes. I know along the northwestern shores of the Great Lake there’s a belief that the dead continue to dream—that your dreams are the world to which your soul returns after death.”

  “I can see why the idea of Ean’s paradise superseded that one.” Oryn shivered. “Or even the transmigration of souls, if Tsocha’s followers are to be believed. On the other hand—” He smiled a little, as if recalling the more delightful dreams of his childhood. “I suppose if one generally dreamed of the happier parts of one’s life, one would be a bit peeved if something came into the tomb like a maggot and chewed them all away, leaving you with . . . what? Continually reading and rereading the rest of the mortuary formulae written on the inside of your coffin? How ghastly dull! You’ll see to it that there’s something more interesting pasted in mine, won’t you, Soth? A good novel or a couple of volumes of poems?”

  “Since the point of all our work tonight is for you to outlive me,” retorted the librarian, “I’m not going to answer that.” He got to his feet. “According to Bax, his riders will be ready to accompany me to Three Wells at midnight. It’s nearly that now.”

  “You don’t mind? What a silly thing to ask; of course you mind, you’ve just journeyed five hundred miles after slaying a truly fearsome lake monster, or at least convincing it to stay in its lake. Speaking of problems my successor is going to have to cope with. But truly, I’ll feel a great deal better when a trained observer has had a look, not only at Three Wells but at the aqueduct camp as well.” Oryn got to his feet, walked a short distance into the scented shrubbery of the terrace garden. “It’s growing harder and harder to keep provisions moving out to the camp, you know. Everyone keeps asking me what’s the use? And I must say I’m becoming quite offended by the universal assumption that I’m going to be eaten. I understand the wagering on the subject has reached proportions previously reserved for theoretical mathematics. I do hope Raeshaldis is investing the Sun Mages’ money thus.”

  “I hope so, too,” replied the tutor mildly. “Since without your support, those three old men up at the Citadel are certainly going to starve.” Above the cobalt stillness, the jewellike lamps of the palace, the chimes began to sound from the Marvelous Tower, bronze voices and silver mingling.

  The king held out his hand in farewell. “Make sure everything’s all right out there, Soth,” he said quietly. “I daresay it’s a foolish hope, but if I am going to die, I should like to do what I can to make sure everyone else in the realm isn’t going to die with me.”

  “There’s no way that you can do that,” replied Soth. In the scented darkness he remembered his own pain, the hideous sense of helplessness when he’d first realized his magic was failing. It still came over him, that awful darkness that even the strongest sherab would not lighten. It was like a dagger in his heart, that the man he’d met as a curly-haired child, this tall, fat, sybaritic harpist whom he loved as a son, had to face that dark alone. “But I’ll certainly do what I can.”

  Oryn frowned a little, straining his eyes at some movement among the reeds and mud of the lakeshore visible from the terrace. “What is that?” he asked. “That greenish light. It’s gone now, but it was there a moment ago. See? I’ve seen it before: sometimes it looks like a light and sometimes like a mist.”

  “I’ve seen it before, too,” agreed Soth, and his quiet voice was grim. “Twice, recently, as we came down from the Lake of Reeds. And it glimmered over the lakeshore tonight when we were testing spells, Pebble and Moth and I, about where you see it now. A glowing mist among the dead papyrus, maybe a thousand feet?—fifteen hundred?—to the north of where we stood. Since there were about a thousand crocodiles in that space I still didn’t get a good look at it, though it’s the closest I’ve ever seen it.”

  He glanced at Oryn, and in the moonlight his thin face was grave. “It used to be I’d only see it in the desert. This is the closest it’s come to the walls of the city.”

  “That we know of,” said Oryn. “So far.”

  He turned and walked back to the golden lights of the pavilion, where Pomegranate waited for him beside Summerchild’s bed.

  THIRTY-FOUR

  Shaldis kept herself from saying I thought so out loud, and simply pointed to the line of ruined pillar stumps, barely visible among the tangle of camel thorn and mesquite along the sides of a flat rectangle of land below the hills. Though Jethan had not a mage’s night-seeing eyes, he’d been following her in the clear desert starlight for long enough that now, with the waning moon just showing over the hill’s rim above them, he nodded and signed to her that he understood.

  Logically, if this level ground had been the rear court of a mortuary temple, it would have connected by tunnel to the main temple on the other side of the hill—on which Ahure’s house now stood. Shaldis could see where a niche had been carved into the red rock of the hill itself, and though the niche was choked now with the more stubborn varieties of rangeland foliage, she could see the beam holes where a second floor had been.

  The entrance to the tunnel was covered with a curtain of interwoven tumbleweeds and, behind that, a door that looked new. When Shaldis probed at the latch with her mind she encountered not only the usual levers and tumblers but also a wire connected to a b
ell. This she stilled as she moved the mechanisms of the lock.

  Interestingly, it was in the niche near the tunnel entrance that she found the slight trace of magic on the stone. It was so faint that it didn’t even feel entirely like that which she’d detected near her grandfather’s house, but it certainly was similar.

  She touched Jethan’s hand, signing him to follow.

  There were three more booby traps in the tunnel, none of them serious, warning bells only. A Crafty—man or woman—could see and avoid them in the dark. The last, on the narrow stairway up to what Shaldis guessed was the house itself, she felt as she passed it: a ward sign.

  Cattail’s.

  She heard a bell ring somewhere in the dark at the top of the stair.

  “Curse,” she said. “Come on, fast. . . .”

  She heard footsteps approaching the door at the top of the steps as she dragged Jethan behind her by the hand. Probed with her mind at the bolt and slammed it open, shoved against the door as a man’s stride reached it and a man’s weight tried to slam it shut against her.

  Jethan heaved on the rough planks and thrust them back. After the moonlight and darkness, even the dim orange flicker of a grease lamp in the room beyond seemed bright.

  “My grandfather didn’t send me!” shouted Shaldis as she slithered past Jethan into the room. “We’re here for advice!” She stumbled a step or two, then realized it wasn’t Ahure who stood with his shoulder to the door but a wiry little bald man in rough clothes whom she did not know and two young men whom she vaguely recognized as the two men who’d come calling on Melon the harlot at Rosemallow’s place in Greasy Yard.

  “Damn, I tried to tell him that, miss.” The wiry little man shook his head. “I got my orders from Noyad, ‘Do as he says, Ghru’; and teyn is one thing, but, bless it, teyn don’t ride horses.” He spit. “Mad, he is. Lord Ahure, I mean, though these days Noyad— Was he always mad?”