The White Road of the Moon

by Rachel Neumeier

  “My dear!” Maraift said warmly. “You healed Jihiy, not to mention any number of the men, and from what Jaift tells us, you saved poor Niniol from being enslaved by that awful witch. The least we can do is arrange for an advocate, which won’t be so terribly expensive, I’m sure. And a decent inn, of course, and letters of introduction where they’re likely to do the most good—Derren already wrote them; Tiranas has them. You’ll quite like Tiranas, I’m sure. You healed a dreadful gash across his face, you know. He insists he be permitted to escort you to Riam.”

  “Oh,” Meridy managed, overcome by this organized flood of plans and assurances, almost as much as by the unexpected kindness of the Gehliy family and their whole company.

  “You may ride on ahead in the morning,” Derren told her. “I’d rather you’d woken earlier, but there, we have outriders keeping an eye out in all directions, and everything’s fine and peaceful. We’ll post a proper guard tonight, you may be sure!”

  Meridy had no doubt of that. She looked around at the quiet hills through which they were traveling. The sinking sun spun heavy gold across the woods and gilded the dust stirred up by the wagon wheels and the horses’ hooves. The air lay hot and quiet across the caravan. High overhead, a hawk turned in slow circles. It was hard to believe the ancient malice of witch-kings or sorcerers could still cause trouble in the world in the face of all this measureless peace.

  Jaift had made her way back to the front of the wagon, carrying a packet of dried fish and a larger packet of dried apples, plus one of the hard rounds of travel bread. “The fish would be better cooked into a chowder, with cream and dill,” she told Meridy a touch apologetically. “But this will do, I suppose. Come on, Mery, it’s crowded up here.” Tucking the food into the pockets of her traveling skirt, Jaift jumped from the wagon and held up her hands to help Meridy get down.

  Meridy was glad of Jaift’s steadying hands. She hadn’t realized quite how hungry she was until just this moment, and now she felt shaky and insecure. Although maybe that was nervousness from talking to Jaift’s parents. Yet she felt so much better, now that she’d been handed a reasonable plan and knew she would have help. She gave Derren and Maraift Gehliy each an awkward nod, hoping she looked grateful and not too stupid. Derren nodded back, smiling, and Maraift said comfortably, “Have a nice snack, dear, and we’ll try a chowder when we get to Riam, if the milk comes with decent cream on top. You can’t ever tell. I remember when— But never mind, go on, go on, I know you’re starving.”

  Jaift pressed the packet of fish into Meridy’s hands. “I left the flask of tea in the other wagon, but the wagon will come up in a minute and we can get up or just collect the tea and walk alongside, whatever you like.”

  Meridy opened the packet, not really listening. She wasn’t sure what chowder was, other than it must contain fish and cream, but she was more than willing to try the fish plain. She wasn’t sure she’d ever had dried fish before in her life, and she certainly hadn’t ever had a chance to get tired of it, as she gathered people must in Tamar. It smelled interesting—strong but not bad, like smoke and salt and what she imagined must be the sea. It tasted interesting, too. Like fish, but not like ordinary fish. Stronger, and just…different. She ate another piece, trying to decide if she liked it. She’d never heard of anyone smoking the trout they caught from the streams near Tikiy. If you smoked trout, would it taste like this?

  Iëhiy trotted up, his head cocked meaningfully to one side, his eyes on the packet, and Jaift laughed out loud. “He’s so big, but sometimes he acts like just like a puppy, doesn’t he?” She gave Meridy a shy look. “I’ve never been able to talk to anybody about…you know. Except my uncle sometimes. I mean, about seeing…you know.”

  Meridy met the other girl’s gaze. She did know. She felt she might understand Jaift after all, at least a little bit, even though they were so different. “I could talk to my mother. But then she took the White Road. After that, there was no one. Except ghosts, and that’s not the same.”

  “Were there a lot of ghosts in Tikiy? The priests in Tamar always send the quick dead on their way if anger or regret or love makes them linger. I mean, they do it in case a witch might bind a ghost, which I suppose is only good sense, but I’ve hardly ever even met a ghost. I didn’t know animals could stay quick at all. You call him Iëhiy? Is that Viënè?”

  Meridy gestured assent. “It means things that are lifted by fire to the God. Sparks, or smoke, or souls. Dogs belong to the God, you know, and they love life, so I think they come and go as they like. Iëhiy…” But Meridy had no idea how to explain about the ghost boy or how the wolfhound was really his. About how she’d only met either of them a week ago. Or about Carad Mereth, who said he wasn’t a sorcerer but surely must be.

  It all seemed too complicated. She asked instead, “Didn’t you say your uncle turned your eyes blue? How? Is it something anybody could do? Wait, are your uncle’s eyes blue?”

  Jaift shook her head. “I don’t know how he did it, but he doesn’t mind having black eyes, he says. He says people don’t mind a witch if he’s also a priest, and anyway, I think maybe it has to be done when you’re a baby, before your nameday, or people would notice, don’t you think?”

  Meridy agreed, to be polite, but she thought that, really, if you walked out of your village and never went back, who would ever know what color your eyes had been when you’d been younger? She wished Jaift’s uncle were handy. Maybe if she stayed with the Gehliy family until they went back to Tamar, she could meet him and find out how he’d done it.

  If Jaift’s parents didn’t mind her staying with them that long. Maybe she could make herself useful. Somehow.

  She ate another piece of fish and started to say something to Jaift, something about eyes or uncles or usefulness. But Iëhiy suddenly turned his elegant head toward the rocky hillsides falling away from the road, toward the west and the setting sun. His ears pricked alertly, then flattened as he showed his teeth in a silent, uneasy snarl. Both Meridy and Jaift stared at him, and Meridy realized, despite the sudden sharp dread that ran through her, how different and strange and pleasant it was to have another girl see the same things she saw herself.

  Then the ghost boy flickered into view. He stepped forward, scanning the hills alertly, and laid his insubstantial hand on the hound’s neck. Iëhiy, tail waving in welcome, turned his head and licked the boy’s hand. Jaift stared at the newcomer, fascinated, but Meridy felt a sense of tightening dread.

  The boy told her, breathless and severe, “You are yet in this company? Fool girl! Did I not say Tai-Enchar would find you? Another of his servitors is all but upon you, and you stroll the road at the pace of the stolid cart horses!”

  Meridy looked around quickly, but she saw nothing out of the ordinary, not yet. She snapped, furious, “And what should I—we—do about it? Is it brigands again, or just the servitor alone this time? Can’t you explain right out like a normal person, in time to actually help? What are these servitors? Is your enemy really Tai-Enchar himself? What’s actually going on, and who’s Carad Mereth, and why did he involve me? None of this makes sense!”

  “Our enemy is indeed Tai-Enchar, the treacherous witch-king himself, and none other.” The ghost boy flicked a mistrustful glance around the surrounding hills and empty road as though half expecting Tai-Enchar to step directly out of some old story and strike him down—or bind him, as Tai-Enchar was said to have bound many, many ghosts, for he had been the greatest of witches and a sorcerer besides.

  But nothing happened. The dusty road stretched out before and behind them, and the nearest wagon creaked past. The muffled thud of the horses’ hooves and the creak of the wagon wheels only accented the quiet peace of the afternoon. Iëhiy’s head was still cocked and alert, but the hound looked to Meridy as though he were trying to pin down a threat he wasn’t quite sure was truly out there.

  After a moment, the boy said curtly, “Walk a little aside, then; let us three have some space around us. There is nothing else
to do now save step a little apart and wait.” He led Meridy and Jaift at an angle away from the wagons, but just before Meridy exclaimed with impatience he went on abruptly. “Would you know of Tai-Enchar, of his servitors and his servants and his allies? Listen, then. Men served him in my father’s day, shortsighted and prideful, and such men serve him still, some aware of what they do and more in ignorance. You wish to know what is afoot today? Then listen: Diöllonuor, prince of Cora Tal, served the enemy no less than any and more deliberately than some, for power is difficult for any prince to let lie, and the witch-king deploys many subtle designs to trap the ambitious.”

  “Prince Diöllonuor is dead, though,” Jaift objected. “I’m sure we heard he died—wasn’t he killed by a fall from a horse or something?”

  The ghost boy jerked his head impatiently. “Dead, yes, and gone to the God. In the end he would not bend his head to Tai-Enchar, yet he had compromised far enough to make himself vulnerable. He would not forbear to speak with the witch-king, and thus he opened the way for the woman who now stands in the place of his wife.”

  Meridy shook her head, trying to get this all straight. It sounded terribly confusing to her.

  Jaift at least knew the names of all these people, because she asked, startled, “His wife? You mean Prince Diöllonuor’s wife, Princess Tiamanaith?”

  “So she was,” agreed the ghost boy. “Tiamanaith was a fool. A fine daughter she had borne already, an heir for the throne, yet she would have a son as well, a living son, though her body was no longer fit for bearing. When her babe began to quiet in her womb, she bargained with powers she did not understand—with a long-dead sorceress, Aseraiëth, who had been and still was Tai-Enchar’s ally. Tiamanaith did not think to ask why her babe, hers in particular, might draw such powers to bargain, or what price would be demanded in return for his life.”

  “She was a fool, then!” Jaift, exclaimed.

  Meridy had to agree. She could hardly believe any woman would be so stupid. Everyone knew better than to bargain with the long dead. Surely Princess Tiamanaith’s own mother must have told her those cradle stories, the ones every child heard. Even her cousins raised by Aunt Tarana would have known better—even they knew those stories.

  The ghost boy answered Jaift impatiently. “As I say, yes. Heartsick for her unborn son, and so a fool. She promised Aseraiëth what the sorceress asked, yet for a price surely more dear than Tiamanaith would willingly have paid: a living daughter in exchange for a living son. Thus I surmise,” the ghost boy added. “But I am near certain something much of that kind must have passed between them.”

  “Yes, but surely not?” Jaift hesitated, plainly trying to wrap her mind around this. “A living daughter? She was willing to give up her own daughter to this dead sorceress?”

  “I do surmise she did not understand what bargain she had made,” the boy told her, almost gently. “But then Prince Diöllonuor died, and his daughter, Diöllin, died also, and this I much doubt was anyone’s intention—her death confounded us all, I believe, not merely Aseraiëth.”

  “Wait,” said Meridy. “Diöllin? But I met a ghost named that!”

  The ghost boy gave her an impatient nod: Of course you did. “When she might have lost herself, I guided her to you. She will lead you to her brother. It is Prince Herren who now stands at the cusp of every ambition.” He went on with fierce urgency: “You’ve interfered in no small way with Tai-Enchar’s intentions, but you must do so again, for above all you must find and protect the young prince. But first you must protect yourself! You killed Tai-Enchar’s servitor last time; this time, I warn you, his witch-servant won’t be so easily defeated. You have dawdled here in the sun like a spring lamb waiting for the blooding knife! It is too late now to evade the servitor’s sight, so you must be ready to take another path out of his reach.”

  “Well, but—” Meridy began.

  Lifting a hand, the boy went on forcefully, “The witch-king may come himself, in the body of his servitor. You daren’t face him directly; this is not the moment or the place, nor have all the pieces yet fallen upon the board as they must. You’re helpless if you stay in the real. Step sideways when you see your moment, but you daren’t linger in the realms of dream, or you’ll find no way out save the witch-king’s path or the God’s Road, and the first would be dire and the second taken far too soon and for too little gain. Hold hard to the real world, do you hear? Don’t approach the tower, and don’t follow the White Road.”

  “Who are you?” demanded Jaift. “You’re not like any of the lingering dead I ever met or heard of, not like any ghost my uncle ever described. Meridy, who is this?”

  The ghost boy said impatiently, ignoring Jaift, “Your road lies north, girl, but take your witch-bred friend with you, blue eyes or no. Take her with you all the way. If it goes ill, you may yet have need of her.”

  Iëhiy growled, the fur along his back rising, individual hairs sparkling in the sunlight. It was a voiceless growl, rumbling below the level of hearing, but a sense of threat rose up to choke Meridy. The boy’s hard, too-adult gaze flicked to the dog, and he said sharply to Meridy, “He is all but here! I can’t protect you! I least of all! Remember, step sideways as you see the chance, but don’t linger in the realms of dream, and hold with all your strength to the real world!” Then a soundless concussion seemed to shake the world, and the boy jerked around, eyes narrowing, and was gone, as suddenly as a blown-out candle flame.

  Meridy took a step back, though no threat was yet perceptible. Iëhiy began to bark: deep and aggressive.

  In front of the wolfhound, not nearly far enough away, the light folded back. The drying grasses and rocky earth there turned all to powder, and a curving swath of air and soil and rocks and all blew away on a dry wind that hissed with emptiness and smelled of hot metal and of dust.

  A man stepped through the folded light and rippling air. This was a bigger man than the other servitor, and much older, his face deeply lined and his hair quite white, including his eyebrows, which were thick and striking over his black, black eyes. But he stood very straight and held his head with the arrogance of a man who knows he is the superior of everyone he sees.

  Except for his hair and his eyes and his attitude, the old man looked like anyone. Or anyone of pure northern blood. He looked perfectly ordinary. But he cast two shadows, one normal and one that trailed at an odd angle, wavering like heat haze in the summer. It was as though the man walked under the ordinary sun and at the same time some other sun from some realm of dreams.

  Then he looked straight across the road and met Meridy’s eyes, and she saw that he was not ordinary at all. Whatever looked at her out of his eyes, it was terrible. Meridy thought maybe she was actually dreaming, maybe she’d never woken from the deep sleep after healing the wounded men. Maybe she’d never healed anyone; maybe everything since she’d left Tikiy was a dream. She felt exactly like she was in a dream: like she was frozen in place, unable to even back away. She wanted to be asleep and dreaming, because this was too awful and she wanted to wake up.

  But she knew she was awake. She wasn’t the one who was dreaming. The man had stepped out of the ethereal into the real, and now he was right here. Behind her, Jaift made a little sound, not a scream, but a kind of shrill gasp, yet Meridy still could not move.

  Then Jaift stepped in front of Meridy, her chin up in determination, and Meridy suddenly found she could move after all, for sheer shame at Jaift’s courage and her own cowardice. Stooping, she gathered a handful of dust, though she could hardly see how she could face a terrible man like this with nothing but dust—

  Niniol threw himself right through the nearest wagon and ran toward them, an ethereal sword naked in his hand.

  The double-shadowed man swept up an empty hand, and Niniol cried out and stumbled abruptly to one knee, wavering around the edges as though the sunlight might burn him away like mist. Meridy took a step toward him, trying to gather him up as he frayed away into memory. She flung her handful of dust
over Niniol, and caught him and pulled him into the real. Gaining solidity, Niniol began to push himself back to his feet, but he also snapped over his shoulder, grimly, “Fool girls, run!”

  Ignoring Niniol, the man met Meridy’s eyes once more, and his were black, black, black, and she knew that if he touched her, she would die, or do something worse than die.

  But then Iëhiy hurled himself forward with a snarl and the man turned, lifting a warding arm. In that moment, Jaift seized Meridy’s hand and dragged her, not away, but forward, dodging right around the black-eyed man. Meridy understood almost at once, and ran with Jaift toward the patch of folded light. Past that gap in the real lay no ordinary rolling hills: Meridy could see now, as through a pane of rippled glass, a wide desolate plain, with one stark white tower spearing up out of the plain, far in the distance. Don’t approach the tower, the ghost boy had warned. She had absolutely no desire to approach that tower, but there wasn’t any other way to get clear, not out here surrounded by nothing but hills and empty country, blameless men who would try to protect her, Derren Gehliy and friendly, voluble Maraift and all the children.

  Step sideways, the ghost boy had commanded. And something like You daren’t linger in the ethereal. Hold hard to the real world. Meridy hoped she understood what he’d meant—she’d better understand, or both Jaift and she herself might be lost in that realm beyond the real world. The idea was terrifying.

  Then somewhere one of the little girls screamed, and Maraift called out incoherently. Meridy didn’t understand her, but Jaift threw a look that way and dragged Meridy along with her, straight out of the real world, straight into the ethereal realms. Meridy bent at the last second to snatch up another handful of dust, though dust seemed a poor weapon to meet whatever might wait beyond the real. Light folded around them and folded back…