Dark of the Moon

by P. C. Hodgell

  By dint of practically getting behind his troops and pushing, Lord Danior got them into second place behind the rathorn banner. He and his guard rode ahead with Torisen. Ardeth's full moon followed Danior's wolf standard, but Adric stayed with his people, Kindrie riding pale and silent beside him. The token forces from Kraggen and Kestrie followed, then Jaran, Randir, Brandan, and finally Caineron. Caldane's troops had already marched nearly one hundred and twenty-five miles over the past forty-eight hours and had arrived the night before in a state of collapse. Several hours of dwar sleep had nearly repaired the damage, but not quite. That night at Omiroth, everyone slept deep, and in the morning the order of march was confirmed. That day the Edirr and Coman forces joined the column. Early that afternoon, on the tenth of Winter, the Host marched out of the Riverland, nearly fifty thousand strong.

  Chapter 7

  A Rage of Rathorns

  The Anarchies: 11th-12th of Winter

  THE BLACK BAND crossed the step-back stones into the Anarchies after a brief but confused battle that left several men injured and one dead. The half-dozen brigands originally from the hunting clans refused to cross at all. The rest had caught the scent of blood, however, and pressed on, all the more eagerly because of the reward that Bortis had first offered in Peshtar. The blind bandit chief himself led the way with his Grindark tracker. When he thought about what he would do to the fugitives, especially to Jame, he drooled a bit and lashed at the bound, hobbled Grindark to make him go faster.

  The woods took the brigands by surprise. They were used to the evergreen forests of the Ebonbane, but the expanse and quality of the silence under these green leaves awed them. Bortis didn't have to tell them to move quietly. Only once was the silence broken, when they heard the crash of a tree falling somewhere in the distance.

  "It's them!" exclaimed one man excitedly, and the next moment went down with a grunt under Bortis's hammerlike fist.

  "Quiet, you half-wit. D'you think they've taken up lumbering to pass the time?"

  They continued, foraging as they went. One man handy with a sling had already brought down a number of gray birds. Now another bandit saw what appeared to be a giant puff-ball mushroom, but when he reached for it, the fungus cap turned itself inside out around his hand. His cry of surprise turned to one of pain. The others cut it away to reveal a hand covered with small punctures like wasp stings, but ringed with orange-tinged flesh. The fingers had already begun to swell.

  By dusk, it was fairly clear to everyone but Bortis that they were lost. Their only hope lay in the tracker, who still seemed to have some intermittent idea of where he was going. At nightfall, they built a large fire and roasted the birds on spits. Then they tore down boughs and uprooted ferns from a nearby hillock to make their beds.

  All slept deep that night, including those assigned to keep guard. Through all their dreams ran the steady sound of munching.

  In the morning, several men could not be awakened, and the four who had lain down against the denuded hillock were simply gone. That reduced the Black Band to fourteen men, including the one who had been attacked by the puff-ball. The others found him already awake, staring with rapt, almost greedy attention at his hand. The fingers now were so swollen that they seemed to merge. The skin was puffy and orange. He backed away from the other brigands, holding his bloated hand against his chest.

  "You can't have it! I found it. It's mine, mine!"

  He sank his teeth into the spongy mass and tore off a strip.

  "It's mine!" he muttered again, chewing furiously. "Find your own!" With that, he darted off into the woods with his prize. The others didn't follow.

  "Up!" said Bortis harshly to the Grindark, jerking him to his feet.

  "But what about them?" protested one man, indicating the half-dozen brigands who slept on as if drugged.

  "Leave them. They're no good to me like that."

  "Yeah?" said another brigand. "And what good will that reward of yours be to any of us if we never get out of here to claim it? I say turn back, and if you won't," he finished, belligerently, glancing at the others, "we will."

  "Oh, will you?" Bortis gave a nasty laugh. "Then go. I can't stop you. I can't even see you. But you know who can, and what he'll do to you if you break faith with me."

  To a man, the bandits glanced up with apprehension at the canopy of leaves that hid the sky. They hadn't seen the changer since the previous day, but not one of them doubted that he was up there somewhere or that he would deal with them as viciously as he had with others in the past who had challenged Bortis's orders.

  The brigand chief waited, a growing sneer on his lips. "What, no more debate? Then come on, you gallows-bait. Just think how rich you'll be when we catch that Kencyr brat, and how well entertained."

  * * *

  AFTER A NIGHT of dark dreams, Jame woke to find the woods swept clean of shadows, aglow with golden light. It must be near dawn. Marc and Jorin slept on, both snoring faintly. The ounce lay stretched out on his back, head cushioned on the Kendar's arm, paws curled over his chest. When Jame put her hand on the warm cream-colored fur of his stomach, his respiration changed into a sleepy purr, but he didn't wake. She lay back, wondering at her own uneasiness. It seemed to her that in her dreams she had been warned, but by whom and against what? Here with Marc, she felt quite safe, but then he often had that effect on her, as if there was some innate quality in the big man that shielded him from evil. Even the Earth Wife had sensed it. But she couldn't spend her life in his shadow. Even now, thirst made her slip away from him and rise. Now, where was that brook?

  She followed its sound, moving in quite a different direction from the previous night. Then too, it was—or seemed—farther away. Perhaps she was simply approaching it at a different point. She scrambled down to it through the bushes and knelt on the grassy bank about a foot above the water. As she leaned over to scoop up a handful, the ground suddenly gave way under her.

  Jame surfaced, sputtering. The water was only chest deep, but shockingly cold, and the current made it hard to stand. Of all the clumsy, fumble-footed accidents. . . . She clutched at the bank. It crumbled away. Downstream a few steps, a bush overhung the water. Jame let herself be carried down to it and grabbed a branch, only to let go immediately with a startled exclamation. Blood from a deep puncture stained the thumb of her glove. She saw then that each branch ended in a blunt, blind head, green barked, with thorns instead of fangs. Every head was turned toward her. Downstream, similar bushes on both banks closed over the water . . . and upstream, too. Surely those hadn't been there before, nor the ones surrounding her now. She felt a chill that had nothing to do with the icy waters. They were closing in.

  Jame backed into midstream, bracing herself against the current.

  "Marc!" The name came out in a croak, but loud enough, surely, to wake the Kendar. "Marc!" No answer. Then she remembered his deep, slow breathing. Somehow, dwar sleep or something very similar had claimed him. He would not hear her now, even if she screamed.

  The branches were closer now, rustling. They would arch over her, press down. She would tear her hands to bloody rags on them, then drown beneath their slight weight.

  A gray bird landed on a nearby tree branch and spread its wings. The two feathered eyes regarded her unblinkingly, as if the entire forest were watching. The Anarchies had tried and condemned her, Jame thought wildly. But why? She had played by the rules, harming nothing. It could only be because she really was a darkling, as the Arrin-ken had said, and the Anarchies hated anything with the darkling taint. Marc couldn't help her now. Her own god wouldn't even if, as she half doubted, his power did extend to this strange place. But did that deprive her all protection?

  Slowly she reached underwater and drew the imu medallion out of her pocket. She held it up to the feathered eyes of the gray bird.

  "I-I have the Earth Wife's favor."

  The wings beat once, eyes blinking, then again and again. The bird soared off between the trees. The bush's nearest blind he
ad took the medallion from Jame's hand. It was passed back through the bush from mouth to mouth, and the branches withdrew in its wake. She scrambled back onto the bank. On the far side, a green head offered the medallion back to her. She took it. There was blood on the imu's lips again—her blood this time from her thorn-stabbed finger. She collapsed on the grass, shaking first with cold and then with helpless laughter. Saved by a pun! She wondered what the Earth Wife had done to her imp when she discovered that the medallion was missing. Finally getting a grip on herself, she rose and went back to the ring of diamantine stones.

  Marc and Jorin still slept. Jame changed into dry clothes, then paused, looking down at them. Perhaps the Kendar had somehow fallen into dwar sleep, but the ounce, too? Frightened now, she shook them and called their names. They woke, slowly, reluctantly. Marc stretched.

  "Ah, lass, you should have gotten me up sooner. We had better eat our breakfast on the move." He rose and looked about, in a puzzled way. "That's odd. I could have sworn that group of trees was over there. Everything seems to be turned around. Hello, what's that?" He turned sharply, then shook his head, even more perplexed. "Gone."

  "What is?"

  "Something gray. I only saw it out of the corner of my eye. A bird, maybe. Now, which way did we come?"

  They couldn't tell. Nothing seemed to be where it had been the night before, and the mist so diffused the morning light that they couldn't even be sure in which direction the sun rose. Jorin was confused, too. Jame circled the clearing with him, and as far as the ounce's keen nose could tell, they had never entered the ring of stones at all.

  "So much for Bortis's tracker too, I hope," she said, then turned abruptly. "There, again, by that larch! No, it's gone." Or was it? When she looked directly at the tree, nothing was there, but at the edge of her field of vision she saw . . . what?

  "A figure, wearing a gray hooded cloak," said Marc. He had caught the trick, too. "Why, it's no bigger than a child."

  "And it's beckoning to us. I think it wants us to follow. Should we?"

  Marc considered this briefly, then nodded. "Maybe it can lead us out of here. It's worth a try, anyway."

  They collected their gear and followed, with no idea if their spectral guide was conducting them out of the Anarchies or farther in. It wasn't even easy to keep that gray figure in sight.

  "I've lost him again," said Jame, for the third time in half an hour. "This undergrowth is too dense."

  In fact, they had gotten into a real thicket now, flourishing under the arched boughs of the trees. Dark leaves surrounded them, edged here and there with the rose and hectic red of autumn, hung with berries bright as drops of blood. A breeze rustled through the dense foliage. Like all sounds in this strange place, it seemed to come from every direction at once in a flurry of crosscurrents. Jorin stiffened, his nose twitching. The fur down his back slowly rose. Then Jame caught a sharp, tangy scent that made her own nose itch and startled a host of fragmentary, fleeting images.

  "What is it?" Marc asked in a low voice.

  "I . . . don't know. Something very close, very wild . . ."

  She slipped away through the bushes without waiting for an answer, hardly knowing if she fled this unknown thing or sought it. Branches closed about her. The breeze made them dip and sway, surrounding her with shifting planes of green. For a moment Jame hesitated, completely disoriented. The wind died. She forged ahead, suddenly emerging on the edge of a small glade. Across it, beside a small hillock from which most of the greenery had been stripped, stood a rathorn.

  Jame's first impression was of a black stallion wearing elaborate ivory armor, and then of some fantastic cross between a horse and a dragon. The creature was tall and finely made, with slender legs and a broad chest tapering back to powerful hindquarters. His arched, almost serpentine neck supported a small head encased in an ivory mask, out of which grew the nasal tusk and curved horn of a rathorn stallion. Ivory plates curved around his neck, chest, and abdomen. More ivory sheathed his forelegs like a pair of greaves. His white mane and tail hung against his ebony coat like falls of heavy silk. He stood absolutely motionless, staring at her. She stared back, only dimly aware that the four mares of his rage were behind him with their heads up, also watching her. A man lay in the grass at one of the mare's feet. His belly had been ripped open. In all that glade, the only movement was of his blood slowly spiraling down the mare's tusk.

  The rathorn scent hung heavy as incense in the still air, numbing the mind, making the senses hum. It drew Jame forward one halting step, then another. Under its hypnotic lure, she felt a hunger for young meat, fresh meat, that was not her own.

  Then, from everywhere and nowhere, came a moaning cry. It rose, faltered, sank into a series of deep sobs. A shriller voice echoed it, note for despairing note.

  The rathorns' armored heads turned as one. Between one blink and the next, the mares had disappeared in a blur of ivory and ebony. The stallion backed away, ears flat in their mask grooves, then pivoted in one supple, flowing motion and sprang after his rage.

  "That was close," said Marc's voice behind her.

  Jame drew a deep, shaky breath. The world seemed to redefine itself around her. "Yes. But what on earth would frighten a rathorn like that? Marc, there's a body in the grass. Several of them." She started forward, but he caught her arm.

  "Wait a minute."

  They waited. When the terrible cry wasn't repeated, they went cautiously out into the clearing.

  "Why, these are some of Bortis's brigands," said Jame, crouching beside one while Jorin sniffed at him warily. "This man seems to be asleep."

  "These, too." Marc shook one bandit, then another and another, without result. Jame remembered how deep in sleep she had found her friend earlier and shuddered.

  "There must be something in the air."

  "Phew!" said the Kendar, straightening. "There certainly is. What's that stink?"

  They circled the hillock. On the far side were three skeletons jumbled together, covered with green slimy mold. The hill made a sound that was half rumble, half gurgle, and excreted a fourth skeleton from a foul-smelling hole hidden under a fringe of its few remaining ferns. Jame backed away, holding her nose.

  "What a charming place. D'you suppose our friend in gray brought us here on purpose?"

  "A trap, you mean? It could be and yet, somehow, I don't think so. Do you?"

  "Somehow, no. Trinity!"

  The cry had come again, closer, double-noted. It wasn't a sound so much to inspire fear, Jame decided, as utter, hopeless misery. The wretchedness of it was almost contagious. For a moment, curiosity tugged at her, but then that terrible moan sounded a third time, almost in her ear, and nearby leaves began to wither on the bough.

  "I have an idea," she said to Marc. "Let's go someplace else."

  Since their gray guide was still nowhere in sight, they followed the path beaten through the thicket by the rathorns. They had just gotten clear of the bushes when the sound of other cries and then of screams reached them, apparently from ahead.

  "Trouble," said the big Kendar tersely. He unslung his war-axe and loped off between the trees toward the source of the commotion. Jame and Jorin ran after him.

  "Marc, wait! What if it's the Black Band?"

  It was the Band, but by the time the two Kencyr reached it, none of its members was in a position to do them any harm. The slashed, trampled bodies lay on ground soggy with blood, among white flowers slowly turning pink, then red. The rathorns' trail led through this carnage and beyond.

  "So much for that," said Jame.

  Marc looked slightly surprised at hearing her dismiss a dozen lives so casually. All he said, though, was, "Not necessarily. Bortis isn't here, and neither is the Grindark."

  "Perhaps they didn't make it this far."

  "Perhaps. But then there's still the changer, and our mist cover is beginning to wear thin in patches."

  As if on cue, sunlight brightened around them, startling a flash of white beyond the nearby
trees.

  "That looks like a building," said Jame. "What on earth is one doing here?"

  Marc shook his head. "I can't imagine."

  They went toward it through the trees, still following the rathorns' trampled path. More white showed through the leaves, resolving itself into a low, vine-draped wall, which stretched about one hundred yards in either direction. Beyond, rose a jumble of white buildings, the tallest of them barely over fifteen feet high. The rathorns had apparently leaped the wall. Jame, Marc, and Jorin followed until they came to a postern so low and narrow that the Kendar almost got stuck as he squeezed through it.

  Inside, an equally narrow lane zigzagged back between the buildings. Crosswalks spanned it here and there, connecting second or third stories. Only Jorin could walk under the former without ducking. Overhead, circular windows glazed with crystal and rimmed with decorative motifs faced each other across the way.