Dark of the Moon

by P. C. Hodgell

  Those Kencyr priests obliged to serve at the Karkinaroth temple were the honored guests of the Agontiri. Odalian had recently gone one step beyond his status as host, though, by marrying the only Highborn lady even permitted to form an alliance outside the Kencyrath. Torisen suspected that the Prince would gladly become a Kencyr himself if that were possible. Well, there was no accounting for taste. He would answer the letter when he got back to Gothregor.

  Next came a bundle of documents, claim and counterclaim. This was more serious business. Lord Coman of Kraggen Keep had recently died without designating a successor. It was customary in such instances as this for the oldest son to become the new head of the household. This would have suited Torisen well enough in one sense because Demoth, the son in question, was half an Ardeth and had virtually promised to follow his lead in all High Council votes. But he had his doubts about Demoth's ability to command. So, apparently, did most of the elders of Demoth's own family, who supported a younger son named Korey. Unfortunately, Korey's mother was a Caineron, and to give that family any more influence could prove fatal to the Highlord's own power.

  The whole business made Torisen's head ache. How was he supposed to make a fair choice between the Coman's interests and his own, which might be considered those of the Kencyrath as a whole? This was the sort of problem that really needed the impartial judgment of the Arrin-ken; but in the great cats' absence, the other Highborn had accepted him as Highlord so that he might judge such cases and stave off the cataclysmic civil war that had seemed only one more blood feud away. Caineron must really have been desperate to have accepted such a check to his ambition, or maybe he had thought that he could easily dispose of Torisen when the time was right. All the lords must have felt equally endangered to have accepted on his word alone, without ring or sword, that he was Ganth Gray Lord's son. Even Ardeth must have had his doubts at first. Of course, he had wanted reports while Torisen fought under his standard with the Southern Host, and Burr had had to supply them. It was unfair, almost irrational, to hold that against Burr, but he still did.

  Torisen recoiled from the thought. That was how it began, the slow slide down into madness. It ran in the Knorth blood. Ganth had died insane, screaming curses at the silent warriors out of Perimal Darkling who had broken into his keep, ravaging, slaughtering. Torisen had gone more than two weeks without a normal night's sleep trying to stave off the horrible dream that had shown him his father's death. That had been just after he came of age three years ago and couldn't decide whether or not to claim the Highlord's seat. His intolerable restlessness had finally driven him from the Southern Host and into the Wastes, where he had taken refuge in one of the vast, ruined cities whose bones littered the desert. But the nightmare had come anyway. They always did. Did he believe them? No, of course not. To far-see, even in dreams, was a Shanir trait and he— ancestors be praised—was no Shanir. But he had believed that dream enough to claim his father's power, and the other Highborn had given it to him.

  The flames ran together before his eyes, close, much too close. The papers had caught fire. He threw them into the pit, cursing. Obviously he wasn't going to stay awake if he just sat here thinking. Dwar sleep? Six hours of its healing oblivion would certainly help, but what if this time the dreams followed him even there? To be trapped, unable to awake. . . . He rose and began to pace restlessly about the room.

  Burr had stretched out on the landing in front of the upper chamber's door. He woke abruptly as someone stepped over him and, without thinking, grabbed the other's foot.

  "Now, Burr," said Torisen's voice softly above him in the darkness. "D'you really want me to fall down these stairs head first?"

  Burr let go and sprang up. "My lord, where are you going?"

  "Out."

  Burr swore under his breath. He knew only too well Torisen's habit of wandering about at night unescorted when he didn't want to sleep. In fact, that was why Burr was here now. "Those wretched boys and their bone-hunting stories . . ."

  "Kithorn? Now there's an idea. Much obliged to you, Burr. Now go back to sleep."

  "No. I can't stop you, my lord, but if I raise my voice, others will."

  "And you will no longer be in my service—which, on the whole, would be a pity. All right, we compromise. How do you fancy a moonlight ride to Kithorn, Burr?"

  The Kendar sighed. "I'll get the horses, my lord."

  * * *

  AND NOW THEY WERE almost there. Above them on its bluff, the fortress hunched sullenly against the mountains' darkness. Its outer ward was surrounded by overgrown cloud-of-thorn bushes whose berries hung like drops of dark blood in a lacework of three-inch spikes. Burr noticed something black on one of the bushes. It was a bat, upside down with its wings spread, impaled on a thorn. There was another on the next bush, and another and another, all with charm beads hung around their necks, all in various stages of decomposition. Burr slowed instinctively, feeling his scalp prickle. What were they doing here? This land no longer belonged to the Kencyrath—if, indeed, it ever really had. It didn't want them here now.

  But what was that? He stopped short, straining to hear. Drums? The nearest Merikit village was only half a mile upstream. Then the wind veered, taking the distant throb with it.

  If Torisen had also heard, he gave no sign. Burr hurried after him. They had come now to the ruined gatehouse, covered with vines. Wild grape leaves rattled down on them as they passed under its shadow and began to climb the steep road to the outer shell of the keep.

  Inside, all was ruin.

  They stood in the middle of the inner courtyard beside the well, looking about. The tumbled ruins of the armory, bakehouse, and granary lined the inner wall. Ahead loomed the tower keep. This had been the stronghold of a very old but minor house, already well on its way to extinction when the Merikit had wiped it out.

  Torisen could see it all too clearly: the hall-guest creeping out in the dead of night, cutting the guard's throat, opening the main gate, the silent tribesmen pouring into the courtyard. . . . A spark of fire, and there went the hall's thatch, roaring up into the night. The Kendar tried to get out, but the doors were blocked. They threw wet blankets over their children and started to hack at the walls. Some cut their way out, only to die in the open, fighting, with shrieks from the tower echoing around them . . .

  Now leafless vines hung over the walls, and saplings grew in the blackened ruins. Torisen shook his head to clear it. For a moment, he had almost plunged into the dream-memory of his own home's fall, had almost thought he heard small bare feet running, running, with fire and death behind them. Jame? No, of course not. She had been driven out of their father's keep long before the end; he should have left too, before the old man's madness had reached out for him.

  "So they all died," he said, and hardly knew which keep he meant.

  "Not quite all, lord. There was one survivor, a Kendar boy named Marcarn, who was out hunting by himself when all this happened. Afterward, he hunted the Merikit and killed one for each member of his lord's family and his own to pay the blood price. Of course, he only did what he had to, but because of him, the hills have been closed to us ever since."

  "He must have been a great warrior," said Torisen rather absently.

  "Oh yes, and a thumping big man too, when he was full grown. Like a siege tower walking. But for all that, I don't think he was very fond of bloodshed." Burr smiled. "He used to feign berserker fits in battle to scare off the enemy. It worked so well that some of our own lads went straight up the nearest tree the first time they saw it. I nearly did myself. But that was thirty years ago and more. Good old Marc. I wonder where he is now."

  Torisen was no longer listening. He had crossed over to the far wall to look at something. Behind the vines was the crude image of a face, gap-mouthed and eyeless, drawn in dark lines on the pale stone. Beside it was another and another, all down the length of the wall. They were imus, symbols of a power so ancient that all but the name had been lost—or so most civilized men believed
. Torisen touched one of the lines. It came away in brown flakes on his fingertips.

  "Dried blood," he said, sniffing it. "Human, I think. Burr, you were right: we don't belong here." Suddenly he stiffened. "There, again!"

  "Lord?"

  "Don't you hear it? The patter of small feet running, running . . . I didn't imagine it!"

  Burr wasn't so sure. His own senses weren't as keen as Torisen's, but then sleep-starved men often heard and saw things that weren't there. Then Burr did hear something, all too clearly.

  "Drums," he said.

  Torisen was already halfway up the crumbling stair that led to the battlement. Moonlight gleamed on the river as it twisted northward through the dark hills into the darker mountains. About half a mile upstream in the Merikit village, a great fire burned. Figures shuffled around it to the beat of a drum, while their chanting, borne southward by a freshening wind, grew louder and louder. Burr leaned forward over the parapet, straining to hear.

  " 'Come, Burnt Man. Come, Burning Ones,' " he translated. " 'We mark him and cast him out, now hunt, hunt . . .' Trinity!"

  A scream had cut across the chant, shrill as a woman in pain, but from no woman's throat. A dead silence followed. Then, from far up in the hills, came the booming answer, hoarse, wordless, inhuman. The men around the fire scattered. The flames flared up once, then sank, dying away altogether within seconds. In the darkness that followed, a distant yelping began, far, far away, but getting rapidly nearer.

  "I take it we picked a bad night to visit."

  Burr grunted. "You might say that, lord. The Merikit have driven out a kin-killer—probably a parricide—and called the damned down out of the hills to claim him, if he doesn't outrun them to the border."

  "That, I suppose, puts us directly in his path, and theirs. Time to make for home, old friend."

  They descended to the inner courtyard. At the foot of the stair, Torisen suddenly caught Burr's arm. "There!" he said. "Running, running . . . look!"

  Burr saw the shadow sweep across the flagstones toward the keep and glanced upward for the night-bird that must have cast it. There was none. When he looked back, Torisen was halfway across the courtyard, darting after the shadow. Burr ran after him, shouting.

  "Lord, the keep floor is rotten! Don't go—"

  But the Highlord had already raced up the steps and through the keep's door. There was a splintering crash. Burr paused on the threshold, blinded by the darkness within.

  "Oh God. Tori . . ."

  "Mind your step," said Torisen's voice, apparently from under the earth.

  Steel struck flint, and a flicker of firelight outlined the jagged hole in the floor from underneath.

  "Burr, you'd better come down here. I've found her."

  Her?

  The Kendar edged cautiously up to the hole, hearing timbers groan underfoot, then jumped down into the keep's still room. The chamber was surprisingly undisturbed, considering the destruction above. Jars of preserves lined the walls, the seals still intact on those that hadn't long since exploded. Under them were jugs, their remaining contents unrecognizable under a five inch fur of dust. The corners of the room were buried as deep.

  Torisen had set fire to a heap of wooden utensils on a side table and now crouched by the still's boiler, looking at something on the floor behind it. As Burr peered over his shoulder, he carefully folded back the tattered blanket. Under it was a huddled pile of bones, pathetically small and defenseless without even a scrap of cloth or flesh to cover them.

  "There are no bloodstains on this," Burr said, examining the blanket.

  "No. She must have fled here on the night of the massacre and died of shock and starvation, in the midst of all these provisions. A child's soul, trapped in these ruins for eighty years. . . . Burr, we've got to take her home."

  The Kendar grunted, almost with amusement. "What else? But quickly, my lord. The hell hunt will be snapping at our heels as it is."

  Torisen spread the blanket on the floor and hastily piled the bones on it while Burr held up a burning wooden spoon to light the work. Then the Highborn ran his fingers through the dust in a final check, knotted together the corners of the blanket, and rose. By now, the side table was also on fire. The preserves behind it began to explode with the heat.

  "Right," said Torisen, ducking a spray of sticky glass. "Now we leave at a dead run before the wine cellar below this goes. Oh lord," he said, seeing Burr's expression. "You mean there actually is one? Climb, man. You first."

  The Kendar scrambled up out of the hole, getting splinters under his nails, and turned barely in time to catch the blanket bundle as Torisen tossed it up to him. The Highlord swung himself up. At the keep door, however, he stopped suddenly, a hand thrown back in warning.

  A man had come staggering into the courtyard through the main gate. He was dressed in the usual Merikit leathers and furs. His coarse black hair should have been braided, one plait on the right side for each son sired, one on the left for each man killed, but the right hand braids had been hacked off and the ones on the left apparently burned away. He looked wildly about, panting, then lurched toward the tower keep.

  "Take the child and run," said Torisen without looking around. "Use the back way." He stepped forward over the threshold.

  The Merikit stopped by the well, staring at him. Then he came on, his hands held out as if in supplication, making formless sounds. Torisen saw that his tongue had been cut out.

  "Parricide," he said softly.

  The yelping was very close now, just beyond the gatehouse. "Wha? Wha? Wha?" belled the pursuers. Where? Where? Where? Here! They were coming up the road to the main gate.

  The Merikit turned at bay.

  The hunting cry died as the Burning Ones swarmed into the courtyard. They were men, or once had been. Now they ran on all fours, or on wrist bones and knees for those whose hands or feet had dropped off. As they moved, their charred skin cracked open in fissures ember red and glowing like those on a half-burnt log. With them came the stench of burning flesh and a continual sizzling.

  They played the Merikit back and forth across the courtyard as he bolted in yammering panic first one way and then another. Where they touched him, his clothes smoldered. Then he tripped. Hissing, they swarmed over his thrashing body and began to feed.

  Burr pulled Torisen back inside the tower and slammed the door. "Those are only the hounds. D'you want to meet the Hunt-Master?"

  "I told you to leave by the back way."

  "There isn't one."

  At that moment, the fire at last reached the wine cellar and a pillar of spirit-fed flame came roaring up through the hole in the floor. The two Kencyr backed away, scorched by the heat.

  "Climb!" Torisen shouted over the uproar, pointing to a mural stair. They scrambled up to the second level. Even there, the air was rapidly growing hot and a lurid glare came up between the cracks in the floor boards. Torisen went to a south window.

  "Too far to jump," he said, eyeing the shell's curtain wall some twenty feet away. "Pry up a plank."

  They freed one of the long floor boards, its underside already smoldering, and shoved it out the window. It barely reached to the wall-walk.

  Burr regarded it apprehensively. "You first, lord. I weigh half again as much as you do."

  "And would rather burn than walk it. I remember how you are about heights. No, you first, Burr, if you don't want me to roast up here, too."

  The Kendar swallowed. The very thought of putting a foot on that board made him feel sick. "Some people would be ashamed to take advantage of a man's weakness," he muttered, and stepped up. Eyes screwed shut, he began to edge out over the void.

  "After nearly fifteen years, you should know me better than that," said Torisen's voice behind him. "Nothing is sacred but honor. Anyway, why so glum? I got you out of Urakarn. Trinity willing, I'll get you clear of this, too."

  "Me glum? You're the one who's only happy when someone's trying to kill you."

  The board groaned and s
agged under his feet. He froze, gasping.

  "In three seconds, I'm coming out there," said Torisen behind him. "One, two . . ."

  The Kendar bolted forward, eyes still closed, and almost went over the battlement between two merlons. Behind him, he heard the board crack. Spinning around, he made a wild grab, caught Torisen's arm, and pulled him up onto the wall-walk. The other was still clutching the blanket full of bones.

  "So far, so good," he said, rather breathlessly. "Now, how to get down?"