Dark of the Moon

by P. C. Hodgell

  The big man hesitated. Then he advanced slowly and went down on one knee.

  "You're the Wolver, I think," he said, pitching his voice almost to a whisper because of the echoes. "I heard you were about somewhere. Forgotten yourself a bit, have you? There, there, gently. . . ." He reached slowly toward the still form the wolf guarded, but stopped as the beast held his ground, white fangs bared.

  "Well, this is a bit of an impasse, isn't it? I'm Marcarn, Marc to my friends, and that's one of them there. Friend. Do you understand?"

  The wolf snarled.

  "Oh dear. We came to Hurlen together, the lass, this kitten, and I. I was captured by Lord Caineron. Ah, that's a name you remember. Enemy, eh? Anyway, the battle began, and then suddenly everyone in camp charged out of it, my guards included. I found the kitten, and we went looking for our friend there in the thick of things, where she usually is. No luck. It wasn't until the battle was over that it occurred to me to look for her here. That was rather slow of me, because this is obviously just the sort of place she would end up. Now, if you'll just let me have a look . . ."

  He spoke in a low, soothing voice, counterpointed by Jorin, who practically stood on his shoulders, singing defiance. When he reached out again, the Wolver went back a step, then suddenly lunged. His jaws closed on Marc's wrist. Kendar and wolf stared at each other.

  "There, there," said Marc gently. "You don't really mean it, do you?"

  The Wolver, if anything, looked embarrassed. He let go. His fangs had barely dented the other's skin.

  "Now let's see." Marc parted the fronds. "Hmm. Still breathing, no obvious wounds . . . what's this?" He picked up something white by Jame's hand. It was the Ivory Knife. The Wolver growled at it. "I agree, but then the lass always did favor odd toys. It wouldn't do to leave this one here." He slipped it into her boot sheath, "Now, let's get out of here." He picked Jame up and carried her out of the hollow with Jorin bounding ahead and the Wolver trotting at his heels. By the time he crossed the threshold, a shaggy young man followed him, looking sheepish.

  "Sorry about that," he said as Marc put Jame down. "I got a bit lost in there."

  "So I suspected. Ah."

  Jame had started to revive the moment she was out of the hollow. Now she sat up abruptly with a sharp cry.

  "Where are they? Where . . . oh, Marc! Ancestors be praised. What a foul dream I was having, or at least I think it was a dream. W-was there anyone else in there besides the changers?"

  "No, lass. Who else should there be?"

  "Those . . . those men. They came when the scream ended, almost as if they were answering it. I couldn't see them very well. They seemed to be wearing leather collars hung with glowing stones and nothing else. They were very squat. I-I could see their mouths move as if they were chanting, but I couldn't hear anything. Then they started to do . . . things to the changers. Terrible things. You were there," she said, turning suddenly to the Wolver. "You saw."

  "I saw, but I hadn't the wits to make sense of it then, and now it's all slipping away."

  Jame shivered. "I wish I could forget as easily. At first all eight darklings were there as well as Tori and that man in blue. There was a . . . a sort of dome of light around Tori and the other, centered on that gem Tori was wearing. The shadow people wouldn't come anywhere near it. Come to think of it, it looked like the stones they were wearing, only polished and bound to that silver collar with Builders' runes. Then, somehow, Tori, the other, and all but three of the changers were gone. The shadow people went on torturing the two changers who were still alive. I think they would have killed them outright if they had been strong enough. That would have been kinder. But they weren't kind. They made me watch, and wait. Maybe they were saving me for last, or maybe it was the worst they could do to me because you were there, wolf, guarding."

  The Wolver was staring back into the hollow, ears flat, half cowering. "I couldn't have held them off long, not if they were the people of rock and stone who built this place. There are more kinds of ghosts on Rathillien than one. Now can we please get out of here? This place makes my teeth ache."

  Just then, a branch snapped close by in the woods. The Wolver spun about with a squawk, but instead of the squat men whom he most feared, Kendar warriors silently emerged from the trees all around to ring them in. Just the same, his relief was short-lived.

  "Ah, here you are," said Caineron to Jame, stepping forward with a bland smile. "You've led me quite a chase, my dear, but now I really think you will accept my hospitality at last."

  * * *

  THE LIGHT OF A SUN just barely up showed the middle and lower meadows strewn with battle debris, much of it human. Because most of the houses had kept their people fairly well together despite the confusion, each now had its own area to search for its fallen. The dead had to be gathered for the pyre, the wounded sorted according to who was likely to live and who to die. Highborn did much of the culling since, oddly enough, many of them had a better instinct for such work than all but the best-trained Kendar. Then, too, it brought more honor to the mortally stricken to be dispatched by the White Knife of a Highborn. Those with lesser injuries were either treated on the spot or sent back to the surgeons' tent in camp.

  There were, of course, a great many Wasters still on the field. Most were dead. Searchers dealt summarily with the survivors when they found them.

  There were also scavengers. Torisen came on a clutch of them stripping a dead Kendar, and a moment later was nearly trampled by the Coman's war-guard charging down on them. The scavengers bolted. One of them ran between the horses straight into Torisen's arms and struggled in his grasp, scratching and biting. It was only a child, one of Hurlen's tower waifs. So were the others.

  "Names of God," said Korey, staring at his captives. "And what am I supposed to do with this lot?"

  "Take them back to the city," said Torisen, carrying his prisoner in among the riders and dumping it with the other cowering children. "You'd better leave a ten-command guarding the bridge and another at the ferry or we'll be overrun."

  "And who in Perimal's name . . . oh, Highlord!"

  "The same, getting underfoot and frightening the horses as usual. See to Hurlen, won't you—and Korey, I understand that your people were among the last to retreat when the battle line broke. Good work."

  Korey glowered and blushed at the same time. "Thank you, Highlord. I'll tend to Hurlen." He wheeled and rode off with his guard.

  I really have been wearing black too long if no one can recognize me in anything else, Torisen thought ruefully, and went on.

  Torisen found his own people not much farther on, the last to give way when the line broke. Now the lines of the dead seemed incredibly long. All those stiffening hands and still faces, most painfully familiar. Nearly three hundred dead, Harn's second-in-command reported, and perhaps a hundred more still missing. Even if all of the latter turned up, Torisen would still lead back to Gothregor a force more than decimated.

  "Still, at sixty to one odds, it might have been worse," said the second-in-command dryly.

  Torisen sighed. "I suppose so." He did what he could there, and then went on down into the lower meadow to look for the missing Kendar.

  The dead and wounded of all nine houses lay here where the vanguard's initial charge had rolled over them. Searchers moved among them, identifying, classifying. Torisen recognized Ashe. At a distance, she looked unchanged, but as he approached, she turned to look at him, and he stopped short, aghast at her pale face and lifeless eyes.

  "Do I . . . frighten you, lord?" Her voice was a husky, halting whisper.

  "Yes. I didn't know haunts could speak."

  "Most of us . . . probably have nothing . . . to say. And yet your father . . . spoke to you in the White Hills."

  Torisen looked quickly around, but no one was within earshot. "How do you know that?"

  "I find . . . that the dead know . . . what concerns the dead. It's the concerns . . . of the living that we forget . . . bit by bit."


  He came closer, drawn despite himself by curiosity. "What is it like, being dead?"

  "I . . . hardly know yet. It's like . . . a new language, heard for the first time. It will take awhile to learn . . . the words, and then they may have no cognates . . . in the speech . . . of the living. At least, for the first time in forty years . . . my leg doesn't hurt."

  "Ashe, I'm very sorry that this happened. Maybe Kindrie can help. Ardeth tells me that he's a powerful healer."

  "He would have to be . . . to resurrect the dead. No, Highlord. And don't . . . be sorry. Look."

  He had noted the gashes in her jacket without paying much attention to them because there was no blood. Now he realized that they really did correspond to wounds, some very deep. Of course: The dead don't bleed.

  "I got these . . . defending Harn's back. He never remembers to . . . when one of his fits comes on . . . which is why I followed him. Any one of them . . . might have killed me—if I hadn't already been dead. I have time . . . before me now . . . that I would have lost forever."

  "But not an eternity," Torisen said sharply. "I grew up in the Haunted Lands, Ashe. I saw how haunts change. You belong to the shadows now. Sooner or later, they will consume you."

  "Ah . . . but before then . . . what songs I will sing!"

  Torisen shivered. "I wonder if the living will be able to bear them. But I'm not fool enough to interfere with a singer. What else can I do for you, Ashe? I owe you for Harn's life."

  "Then give me . . . the child. Her brother . . . is with the Host now. She should go to him . . . and then . . . to the pyre. This half-life isn't for one so young . . . so defenseless."

  "I know. I've been selfish. But I-I seemed to need her."

  "You did. You don't now. Did you know," she said, with apparent irrelevancy, "that during the battle you were seen repeatedly . . . both riding a white horse . . . and on foot with a sword?"

  "So I've heard. I don't know what to make of it."

  "Neither do I . . . but it has something to do . . . with why you no longer need the child. Let her go."

  Torisen still hesitated and wondered why. What was he really giving up with such reluctance—the bones and shadow of a Kendar child whom he had never known or, in some confused way, the ghost of his own sister, of the child she had been when he had stood by and watched their mad father drive her out into the Haunted Lands? He had let her go then and had felt guilty ever since. He didn't want to lose her again. But, damnit, this wasn't Jame. This was some stranger child with her own path, and he had selfishly kept her from it too long already.

  "Yes, yes, of course," he said, impatient with his own weakness. "Let her go."

  "Good." Death-glazed eyes regarded him with deceptive blankness. "Highlord, this is going . . . to sound strange coming from me . . . but you look awful."

  He gave a sudden snort of laughter. "So everyone keeps telling me. Let's just say I'm tougher than I look. It's a family trait. And don't tell me I should rest. I think I'll see what I can do down here to help. After all," he concluded more bleakly, looking around, "this was my party."

  * * *

  THE SUN WAS UP well above the east bank bluffs now. It would be a hot day. Already heat waves rippled above the lookout's stony point on the escarpment. Torisen brushed insects away from an injured Kendar's face. She was unconscious—a good thing, given the severity of her wounds—but as far as he could tell she was also on the edge of dwar sleep and so likely to recover.

  "Another one for the surgeons' tent," he said to the stretcher-bearers who accompanied him. They carried her away.

  Torisen rose stiffly. Despite Harn's prediction, he hadn't keeled over yet; but he was beginning to feel distinctly lightheaded. In a way, he welcomed that. It took the edge off his perceptions, made the suffering around him easier to bear. The pain, especially of his own mortally stricken Kendar, seemed to draw him. Perhaps it was their collective suffering that had pulled him all the way here from his own camp, as if part of him lay dying on this hot field. Torisen shook his head impatiently. Leave fantasies like that to the Shanir, he thought. He didn't ask himself how he knew that all the dying Kendar personally bound to him had now been found.

  Somewhere not far off, someone was whimpering in pain. That didn't sound like a Kencyr. Sure enough, in a fold of the meadow Torisen found a Karkinoran soldier curled up on the ground, arms wrapped around his lower abdomen. Half of his bowels had already spilled out on the grass. Someone in Karkinoran field buff bent over him. Torisen saw with surprise that it was Odalian. The Prince looked up as Torisen approached and shook his head. He drew a knife. The soldier saw and began to scream. He fought them both with a strength born of terror until Torisen pinned his hands, and Odalian delivered a heart thrust.

  "Messy," said Torisen as they walked away.

  "What did you expect?" said the other with a sort of suppressed violence. "They don't have dwar sleep, or Senethar techniques to control pain, or even a practical attitude toward death. They're like children, waking up in a slaughterhouse."

  Torisen shot him a surprised look. And you're so much older? At that moment, it seemed true. "You hardly sound as if you think of yourself as one of them," he said. "For that matter, just now you're behaving more like a Kencyr Highborn."

  This time, Odalian looked surprised. "How so?"

  "Well, here you are—in common clothes, without your retinue, helping to cull the wounded . . ."

  "Just like you."

  "Yes, I suppose so." He looked around, shivering. "So many dead. It wasn't this bad when I led the Southern Host, before anyone was bound to me personally. This was my first major battle as Highlord. And you?"

  "My first—as prince." The other's face indeed bore no lines of experience, but his silver-gray eyes looked old and sick. "I didn't know they would suffer so much; but that happens in war, doesn't it?" Abruptly, the naive young man in Odalian was back —voice, face, eyes. "Actually, I came down here looking for you. Have you thought any more about subject ally status for Karkinor?"

  "I've hardly had a chance," said Torisen, thrown off-balance by the other's sudden change both of subject and manner. For a moment, he could have sworn that he was walking beside quite a different person. More fantasies, he told himself, and dismissed them. "You're still serious about that, Highness?"

  "More than ever."

  "It isn't something I can just bestow on my own, you know," he said, hedging. "In theory, yes, as Highlord, but the rest of the Council would be furious, with good reason. I'll have to consult their wishes."

  "Yes, I can see that," the other replied with quiet persistence. "You said before, though, that it might impress them if I showed I was willing to undergo the full rites. What if I were to blood-bind myself to you now, as an act of good faith?"

  The idea at first startled Torisen and then made him very uneasy. He had mimicked blood-binding many times before, as with Harn at Tentir, but never gone so far as actually to make the cuts. The blood itself didn't bother him or the scars. What, then? Because Odalian wanted him to play the Shanir in such explicit terms? Yes. He could feel all his mental defenses rise at the very thought. But should he let that prevent a just decision? No, of course not. But . . . but . . . but . . .

  "Damnation," he said, disgusted with himself. "Your people fought beside us and many of them died. We owe Karkinor something for that. Whether the Council will go so far as to grant ally status of any sort I don't know, but at least I can give you the chance to put your request in the strongest possible terms. If they say 'no,' I'll release you and no harm done. That, at least, is something no true blood-binder could do."

  "You'll go through with the rites?" The Prince's voice was eager. It must have been imagination that for an instant his eyes looked so bleak. "Here? Now?"

  "In the middle of a field with stretcher-bearers tripping over us? No. I suggest the lookout's point on the escarpment. At least there with the sentinel withdrawn we'll have some privacy."

  "That," said the Prince
, "will be perfect."

  * * *

  JAME CIRCLED THE ROOM one more time, looking for some way out. Actually, "room" was probably the wrong word for it. It was an inner compartment of Lord Caineron's tent, which was the largest, most intricate of its kind that Jame had ever seen. She had been brought here in the midst of Caineron's war-guard nearly two hours ago. Marc, Jorin, and the Wolver were presumably prisoners, too. She didn't think Caineron would hurt any of them, but precious time was passing, and Tori was still unwarned.

  The walls were made of strong canvas dyed yellow and orange. She might have cut her way out, if Caineron hadn't taken the Knife. She tried again to pick a seam, but her claws were too sore now even to extend. Attack the guard? Fine, if she could get at him. The room was laced shut on the outside, an arrangement that made her wonder if it had been used as a prison before, probably without that delicate table in the corner with glasses and a carafe of wine on it or these pillows scattered about its canvas floor. Jame kicked one in sheer frustration. Damn, damn, damn . . .