The White Road of the Moon

by Rachel Neumeier

  Then the realms slid apart from one another, and High King and fire horse were both gone. All around, the tumult began to subside. It was over.

  “A buried city for a grave marker,” Meridy observed, gazing down upon the rubble that covered Cora Diorr. “I don’t know whether that seems a fitting cenotaph for Tai-Enchar, or whether it seems…indecent.”

  “It seems appalling, to me,” Niniol said. He was standing behind her, leaning his hip against a ridge of stone, looking precisely as always: practical, stolid, reassuring, and unimpressed by anything, even broken mountains and buried cities and the defeat of immortal sorcerer-kings.

  “The theology addressing this situation seems ambiguous,” murmured Roann Mahonis.

  His brother, Lord Perann, rolled his eyes.

  They were all sitting on the edge of the cliffs where so recently half the mountains had sheared away and toppled down into the valley upon the City of Spires. The whole valley had become a mass of broken stone and torn earth. Eventually, Meridy supposed, seasons would turn and turn again, and all the tormented valley would smooth out into level meadows, and young trees would spring up and grow, and all this devastated land would look…ordinary. She could not quite imagine anyone trying to plant orchards or fields over that buried city, though, no matter how many years passed. She thought that even in a hundred years, or a thousand, any fruit grown there would surely taste of bitterness and grief.

  Diöllin was sitting beside Lord Roann, leaning against him. She hadn’t gone so far, yet, as to rest her head on his shoulder, but his arm was around her waist and she seemed quite comfortable to have it there.

  Diöllin, like all of them, looked drawn and weary, but she was alive. She owned her own body again, she and no one else, and it was a living body, as though her soul had never been cast adrift. That was one good thing to come out of these terrible days. Meridy didn’t think it was enough, but…it was something.

  The princess said, “It is appalling. That’s what makes it a fitting grave marker. What would you use, flowers? Broken stones and broken bones are more fitting.”

  “Too many broken bones,” said Niniol. “Too much death.”

  “Some did live,” Meridy said quietly. “Because of what Jaift did. She was just going to meet that boy and get married, and now…”

  Niniol shook his head, his expression somber. “Jaift never had a chance. Not once the witch-king took her.”

  “She did have a chance,” Meridy answered. “And she took it. She opened the way.” She rubbed a hand across her mouth. After a moment, she went on, “Jaift opened the White Road for me. Without her, I would never have been able to make a way for all those people to get out of Cora Diorr. So many got out.”

  “So many didn’t.”

  “Without a flood of the dead to carry the witch-king away with them, who knows whether he might still be down there?” said Roann.

  Perann added, “It was a high price to pay, but if it was the last of the price, we can be grateful for that.”

  “Yes. But I’ll have to tell her mother,” said Meridy. “How will I ever tell her mother?” She bent her head, not weeping because she was too spent and sad for tears.

  Niniol laid a half-visible hand on her shoulder. “Her uncle is a priest. He’ll understand. Maybe he’ll be able to explain it to them.”

  Meridy shook her head. “Maybe he’ll be able to explain it to me. And what about Herren? That’s not fair either.”

  Everyone glanced beyond Meridy, to where Herren’s body lay, cool and waxen in the tentative, hazy sunlight. He looked even smaller and younger like this than he had when he’d been alive. Meridy didn’t look at him herself. She stared steadfastly down at the buried city because she couldn’t bear to look at the body of the young prince. She had carried him out of Cora Diorr, but what did that matter? He was still dead.

  The eastern faces of the mountains were now broken cliffs, which made the undamaged road leading away westward and the smooth, sweeping fields all across the western flanks of the hills seem all the more peculiar. Hundreds—thousands—tens of thousands of people, maybe—wandered across those fields or were already making their way west along that road. A few, braver or more reckless, were slowly picking their way down the eastern cliffs to investigate the shattered rubble that covered the remains of Cora Diorr.

  Meridy would not have ventured into that valley for anything. If she turned her head and looked sideways into the valley, she was certain the sunlight fell at an odd angle across the buried city. To her, it seemed that the very dust settling slowly through the air sparkled with glittering traces of sorcery.

  She was sitting, her legs drawn up, close by the edge of the cliff. Iëhiy lay beside her, panting as though he had actually felt the effort of leading all those people out of Cora Diorr. She was glad that he, at least, had not taken the White Road. Glad that he had found her again. She sat with one hand resting on his insubstantial shoulders.

  She had been the last person, the very last, to make it out of the city before the mountains had fallen. She had no idea how many people had been left behind. Hundreds, or thousands, or tens of thousands; she did not know. It looked like so many, cast homeless out onto the lands beyond Cora Diorr’s encircling mountains. But Niniol was right: there must have been so many left. They had all had a chance to get out; Meridy had done that much—Jaift’s sacrifice had let her do that much. It did not seem like enough.

  Lord Roann had made no comment when she’d staggered off the White Road and come back into the real in this place, carrying Herren in her arms. But the seneschal’s eyes had looked bruised with worry and sorrow. He’d touched her shoulder in wordless sympathy and taken Herren’s body himself, to lay out in the shade of the broken stones that now stood along the edge of the new cliffs. Meridy had let him do it. He had been Prince Diöllonuor’s seneschal and Diöllin’s lover and no doubt loyal to Herren. And besides all that, he was a priest. He had the right.

  Besides, Meridy couldn’t have borne to do it.

  Behind her, another voice whispered Herren’s name.

  Meridy turned.

  Princess-regent Tiamanaith stood there, looking drawn and ill but also determined. Her gaze went from Diöllin to Herren’s body, and then she didn’t seem able to look away.

  Diöllin gazed up at her mother, her expression studiously blank. Lord Roann got to his feet, straightened his shoulders, and set one hand protectively on Diöllin’s shoulder. Niniol crossed his arms, frowning, but even he didn’t say a word.

  The princess-regent didn’t meet anyone’s eyes. She only walked past them all and knelt, slowly, as though she were an old woman, beside her dead son.

  Meridy shifted back to give her room. She knew that everything that had happened—or at least, a lot that had happened—was Tiamanaith’s fault. Yet Meridy couldn’t hate her. Tiamanaith simply looked too blankly devastated. It was Diöllin’s place to protest, surely, if it was anyone’s, and Diöllin did not seem inclined to hurl bitter accusations at her mother. At least not at this moment.

  It wasn’t fair that Tiamanaith would never have a chance to make peace with her son. Herren was the one who had loved his mother; Meridy was certain of that. Herren had loved her and tried to help her even after what she’d done, even after what she’d let happen, and now he was dead and his mother was alive.

  Meridy rubbed Iëhiy’s ears and sighed. If they had won, she would have liked to feel their victory.

  “I tried so hard,” Diöllin said quietly, accepting Lord Roann’s hand to rise. She moved to stand beside her mother. “We all tried so hard. And it wasn’t enough.”

  “You were with him all the time,” Tiamanaith said, her tone only weary. “I betrayed him, I betrayed you both, though I swear I never meant it so. But you were always with him. I’m glad for that, at least.”

  Meridy looked away, swallowing. Though she had briefly anchored Herren’s ghost, she knew that he was now gone far beyond her reach. If only she were a trained sorceres
s, she might do something useful even so. She might stretch out her hand and wake the boy as though he were merely sleeping….She blinked.

  Then she reached up to her hair and let her fingers shape the heavy, nodding form of the rose she found there. When she touched it, the rose fell into her hand, ethereal, without weight or heft, but beautiful for all that: a rose out of memory and dreams. Its petals were silken soft against her fingers, and the thorns of its stem pricked her hand.

  She held it out, mutely.

  “But it’s not real,” whispered Diöllin. “And it’s not…it’s not true life that the fragrance of a rose may recall….”

  “But maybe it’s not yet true death that’s taken Herren, either,” said Meridy. “We don’t know. The White Road is everywhere, after all. Maybe…maybe it might run both ways for a little while longer, for a little boy who never had a chance to live his own life.” She wished she thought it might for Jaift but knew it wasn’t possible; Jaift had taken the White Road all the way to the God’s realm; nothing else could have let them do what they had done. But maybe…for Herren…

  “Try it!” Diöllin said urgently. “You must at least try!”

  Lord Roann said huskily, “It’s in the hand of the God.”

  “And we’ve all seen that the God can be generous,” Perann agreed.

  Meridy shook her head, but she laid the rose down on Herren’s chest. If there was any fragrance, she couldn’t tell. It was too faint, or perhaps too ethereal, too much a thing of memory or dreams. But she waited, leaning forward, holding her breath.

  “It’s not going to work—” moaned Tiamanaith.

  “You give up far too easily,” snapped Diöllin. “You always have! That’s the whole trouble!”

  Tiamanaith winced and looked down, but though Meridy wanted to agree with Diöllin, she thought Tiamanaith was probably right. She could see not the faintest flicker of an eyelash…not the slightest movement of a breath….

  Then Herren drew a long, slow breath after all, and put a hand to his chest, his fingers curving around the heavy blossom. The ethereal petals shattered and melted at his touch, and his lips moved, and he opened his eyes.

  Tiamanaith cried out, but Meridy caught her breath. Herren’s eyes were black.

  “Well done!” cried a quick, half-mocking voice behind them.

  Meridy jerked upright, astonished. “Carad Mereth!”

  “Of course!” said the sorcerer, smiling at her. He looked younger now, as though he had been reborn in the cataclysm that had struck Cora Diorr. But his manner had not changed. He said cheerfully, “Carad Mereth, come as always at the very tail of time! Well done, I say, you and all these others, but you particularly, of course, my rose child all thorns! I thought I might have to make another rose for you, but you seem to have made one of your own. Well done, and we shall assuredly make a sorceress of you yet!”

  “Inmanuàr made the rose,” Meridy said, confused. “But anyway, look! It’s not Herren at all! His eyes are black! I thought Tai-Enchar was gone!”

  “Ah! But Tai-Enchar is gone, you know. Never fear; the young prince is well enough. Only the White Road carried him nearly to the God’s realm. One doesn’t return unchanged from such a journey, you know.” Carad Mereth held a hand down toward Herren, offering it to the boy, and Herren blinked again, shook his head, and accepted the sorcerer’s help.

  “And you are mistaken twice,” Carad Mereth added to Meridy absentmindedly. “The rose Inmanuàr gave you was for me, and grateful I was to have it, believe me. But even had you not used up its virtue to wake me from dreams, it would not have done for the young prince. No, you made this one yourself.”

  Meridy stared at him. It was true. She had used Inmanuàr’s rose to free Carad Mereth. She must have made this one herself, only without quite realizing it.

  “And not before time,” Inmanuàr agreed, flicking into visibility beside Carad Mereth. Iëhiy leaped up and went to lean against him, and he stroked the dog’s head, smiling, the tension running out of him like water. He said to Meridy, “I can’t always be making such little trifles for you, you know.”

  Meridy couldn’t help but exclaim, “I thought you were gone!”

  “I was delayed merely,” Inmanuàr said gravely. “Nor have I yet been freed.” He glanced sidelong at Carad Mereth. “Now that all long plans have finally come to fruition, perhaps that may change.”

  “Yes; that’s another reason I thought I’d better seek you out before the day grew much older,” Carad Mereth said to Meridy. He smiled at her with a pleased expression, like a particularly self-satisfied cat. “Tai-Enchar is gone at last—gone, or bound beyond any hope of escape, which is satisfactory either way. Cora Diorr has fallen, but Moran Diorr has risen up out of the bitter waters, all its shining walls and graceful towers brilliant in the sun! That, even I did not expect to see, not in this age nor the next. Listen! You may hear the ten thousand bells ringing even from here!”

  Meridy opened her mouth to declare that this was nonsense but shut it again without saying a word, because in the moment of stillness that followed this declaration, she almost thought she could hear the faint echo of ten thousand bells.

  “And now the young prince has also been raised up,” Carad Mereth added, smiling at Herren. “And with eyes that see all the layers of the world! As I say, no one comes back from that far shore unchanged, and that’s just as well, for any king does best when he can see beyond the mortal realm.”

  “Any king?” Tiamanaith protested. “Is that yours to decide?”

  “It’s mine, surely,” Inmanuàr told her acerbically.

  Tiamanaith opened her mouth but closed it again, saying nothing.

  Carad Mereth, still smiling, said to Herren, “It is just as well, you know. Moran Diorr was never meant to be merely the capital of any minor principality. This new age cries out for a new High King, and here you are! You gave yourself willingly unto death to save your Kingdom and then, by the grace of the God, stepped again from the White Road into the world of men! Very soon all men will know it, for word of Cora Diorr’s destruction and Moran Diorr’s rise will spread. Who would challenge your right now?”

  Herren turned slowly to look down into the ruined valley. Roann offered him a hand, his mother reached out both her hands to him, but he ignored them both and moved another step closer to the edge of the new cliff. Diöllin, ignoring her brother’s silence, went to him, but she only stood beside him silently. Herren glanced up at her and drew a slow breath. Turning, he asked, in a voice that was very nearly steady, “Inmanuàr?”

  Inmanuàr inclined his head. “You will do well,” he said. “I think you may trust my judgment in these matters.”

  “You should…I meant to…I didn’t…”

  “I know,” Inmanuàr said gently. “But it’s not for me. I have been too long dead, and anyway, it would not be right. I thank you for your trust. But I am glad to be able to set back into your hands the gift you gave to me.”

  “I’m glad to take at least my life, then,” Herren said, and smiled at last.

  “Good. You should be glad of life, for it is a gift of the God. And I think you will do well with your life, and with my city and my Kingdom.”

  “So!” cried Carad Mereth. “As that’s settled! I will ask you, Inmanuàr: will you now go to the God? Or will you linger to look over the shoulder of your heir? He has a generous heart and a brave spirit, but he might not thank you for it.”

  “I suspect you’re right,” the ghost boy answered drily. “Ready to go to the God? I’ve been ready these hundred years past and more. Will you release me?” He ran his hand down Iëhiy’s neck and added, “And my good dog?”

  Meridy caught her breath.

  Carad Mereth held out his hands and did the thing a priest does to release a bound ghost, and Inmanuàr threw back his head and blazed up brilliantly, and went out, like a snuffed candle.

  But Iëhiy—Tai-Ruòl—did not. The great wolfhound whined, and paced to Meridy’s side, and sat
down on her foot. Surprised, she touched his head, delicately, the way one had to touch ethereal things, and the hound leaned his head against her thigh and panted happily up at her.

  “He’s yours, then,” Carad Mereth said cheerfully. “Do you know, I thought he might choose to stay with you. He’s been quick a long, long time, but often dogs love life too well to understand death.”

  Meridy looked up at him without speaking and stroked the barely tangible ears of her hound.

  “You—” said Herren. “How much of all this was your doing?”

  Carad Mereth smiled at the young prince—the young High King—utterly unruffled. “Not as much of it as you might think,” he said lightly. “A great deal of it was your doing, you know, and most of the rest you owe to one another’s efforts. As always, I was in the hand of the God.”

  “Is there anyone who is not?” Roann asked, his tone wry.

  The smile became an outright laugh, full of joy, and Carad Mereth said, “No, indeed. We are all in the hand of the God.” He offered Herren, who regarded him warily, a bow that was only a little mocking. “Cora Diorr has fallen, but Moran Diorr has risen again! And here you are, the High King’s heir. You will do very well by that bright city, and by all this land. Will you take the throne Inmanuàr grants you? Will you claim your city and your heritage and your title? It is your right, and besides, the dispossessed folk of Cora Diorr will need shelter.”

  Herren didn’t say yes, but he asked, as though he were already thinking of them all as his people, “Is there room for them?”