Dark of the Moon

by P. C. Hodgell

  Someone was unlacing the door flap. A moment later, a guard held it open as Caineron entered smiling, resplendent in a white coat embroidered with sunflowers and marigolds across the shoulders. In the golden light of the room, he seemed to glow. The guard laced up the flap again after him.

  "My apologies for having left you on your own for so long, my dear. Have you been comfortable?"

  "Why are you keeping me a prisoner?"

  He made a slight face, as if silently deploring her lack of manners. "A prisoner? Oh no. An honored guest. But I see you haven't touched the refreshments my guard left you. Let me pour you some wine." He crossed to the table.

  "Where is my brother?"

  "Somewhere in the lower meadow, I believe, ostensibly helping to cull the wounded. The Prince is there, too. Soon their paths will no doubt cross. How delightful for both of them."

  He was playing with her. He knew she knew about the changer, because Graykin had told him, but he didn't know that she knew that he knew. Damn these games anyway. There wasn't time.

  "Torisen presumably has friends among the Highborn, if not on the Council," she said. "What will they say when they find out you've allowed him to be trapped by a changer impersonating the Prince?"

  He turned and looked at her. "Ah. And who will tell them? You?"

  Jame stiffened at his tone. "No one has ever questioned my word or honor."

  "Honor doesn't come into it," he said coolly. "Not with the unbalanced. My dear, just look at yourself. No Highborn in her right mind would dress like that or disport herself as you have. Lyra has told me about some of your little escapades at Karkinaroth, and I've seen others for myself here at the Cataracts. You're patently unhinged, my dear. There's not a chance that anyone will take you seriously. Then too, you forget that eventually your brother or more likely something very similar to him will come back from the lower meadow. Who will the Council believe then, you or him? But do have some wine, my dear. It would be much better if you didn't repulse my hospitality."

  He held the glass out to her. Under the circumstances, it would be an insult to refuse; but Jame remembered all too clearly that last time someone had offered her wine. That in turn gave her an idea. She accepted the glass.

  Caineron beamed at her. "That's better. Now we can be more comfortable. You know, my dear, it would interest me very much to know where you've been keeping yourself these past fifteen or so years, and how you came by such an odd weapon as this."

  He was wearing the Ivory Knife sheathed at his ample waist. How like the man simply to appropriate it, just as he had Jorin—twice now, presumably.

  "It has a very sharp edge," said Jame, hoping he would try it and find out for himself.

  "I daresay. But you haven't answered my question."

  Jame had turned her back. Keep him talking. "First tell me what you mean to do with me."

  She heard him sigh behind her. "I really must teach you the meaning of obedience, my dear. In fact, it will be a pleasure . . . perhaps for you, too. At least, I think you'll be pleased with the plans I have for you. It isn't every girl who is honored with an alliance with the first blood of such a powerful house as mine." He went on, happily describing the advantages of such a match, most of which sounded extremely trivial to Jame. At a time like this, he was trying to bribe her with toys, confident that they would delight her. She made noncommittal noises, her back still turned. Deftly, she unsealed the inner pocket that held the crystals from the Builder's house. If the river water had gotten at them . . . but no. She had taken them thinking that someday she might find someone to test them on. Well, no time like the present. She dropped a pinch into her wine. The crystals dissolved immediately, leaving no visible trace. As for a smell . . .

  "What are you doing, my dear?"

  She turned, the glass still raised to her nose. "There's something in my wine. A potion? Was this what you meant by hospitality, my lord?"

  "Nonsense," said Caineron sharply. "Give me that." He took the glass, sniffed, drank. "There, you see? Next time, perhaps you'll trust . . . hic! . . . me."

  For a moment, he looked uncertain, but it wasn't in his nature to doubt himself long on any point. He went on talking about the glories of his house, sipping absentmindedly from the glass, which he had forgotten to return, and hiccupping whenever he least expected it. Torisen's presumption figured in his discourse too; but now he seemed contemptuously amused by it rather than angered.

  "Imagine that . . . hic! . . . man, thinking he can disguise himself simply by putting on a red coat, sneaking . . . hic! . . . off without his war-guard to the lower meadow. Why? All so he and the Prince can confirm a pact without the Council's . . . hic! . . . approval. Ardeth is going to spit blood when he finds out. He still thinks Torisen only jumps when he pulls the strings. Well, we'll see after this who jumps, and why. Hic!"

  He poured himself more wine. His feet, Jame suddenly noticed, were no longer quite touching the canvas floor. Caineron also noticed. He tentatively felt downward with one elegant boot, then cleared his throat and put down the glass.

  "This is a rather potent vintage," he said carefully. "Luckily, I have a very strong head for wine . . . hic!"

  He went up another inch and began to look rather alarmed, but much more so when Jame darted in and whipped the Ivory Knife from his sheath. She jumped back. He began to shout.

  "Guard, guard! Assassin! Sorcery! Hic!"

  The guard could be heard frantically unlacing the door. Jame slashed at the rear canvas wall. The tough fabric ripped, half cut, half rotted by the Knife's cold edge. She wriggled out through the slit into a canvas corridor. Which way now? More guards were coming. She cut through the opposite wall, and emerged in a silk-draped bower. Lyra sprang up, shrieking.

  "Just passing through," Jame said hastily, and did so by the next wall.

  Another corridor, another wall—Trinity, how big was this tent?—another room, and a guard spinning around to face her. He went down with a grunt under Marc's fist.

  "I thought you'd be along sooner or later," said the big Kendar tranquilly while Jorin rubbed against her knee and the Wolver yelped questions from the next compartment. She slit the wall to let him out.

  "Look, I'm in a bit of a hurry. Can you two cause some confusion to cover my escape?"

  "I'd say you've been doing pretty well on your own," said Marc, listening to the shrieks, bellows, and shouts that followed in Jame's wake. "But certainly. Our pleasure."

  "And hang onto Jorin again."

  She heard the ounce's protesting wail as she slashed into and dove through the far wall. Poor Jorin, always getting left. Two more canvas barriers, each brighter than the one before, and at last the open air of a sunny, hot morning.

  People had begun to gather around the tent, listening with amazement to the uproar within. One of them, a Kendar girl, led a tall gray war horse. Jame seized the reins.

  "But this is Commander Sheth's horse!" protested the girl, hanging on.

  "And I need it. Understand?"

  The other met her eyes and let go, gulping. "U-understood, Highborn."

  Jame scrambled up onto the stallion's bare back. Trinity, but the ground looked a long way down from up here. She had played tag-you're-dead on the roofs of three-story buildings and felt more secure. Behind, part of the tent collapsed to the sound of outraged shouts from within. Marc and the Wolver were evidently enjoying themselves. If they could just manage to breach the roof, maybe Caineron would float away, sunflowers, marigolds, and all.

  Jame clamped heels to her mount and nearly shot off over his tail as he bolted. If she survived the day, she thought, clinging desperately, she simply had to learn how to ride. They thundered down through the camp, over the Lower Hurdles (fortunately, at a low point), and across the middle field. Searchers leaped out of the way and shouted angrily after them. The ground seemed paved with bodies, but this time she had a mount who knew where to put his hooves. They burst through the bottleneck between the woods and river into the lowe
r meadow.

  "Where is Torisen?" Jame shouted to a pair of stretcher-bearers, reining in as much as she dared. The stallion curveted, as if to test her none-too-secure seat. "He's wearing a red coat."

  "Red? That was the Highlord? Then he's gone to the lookout's point, Highborn. The Prince was with him."

  Jame galloped on. She was below the battlefield now with no more bodies underfoot. The upper cataract roared below her in its gorge. Ahead some five hundred feet the world seemed to end at the edge of the escarpment with nothing beyond but sky. On the point stood two figures. One wore Karkinoran field buff; the other, a dark red coat. The man in buff knelt. The other gave him his hands.

  "Tori, no! Don't . . . !"

  The horse shied. Jame lost her grip and tumbled off. Earth and sky blurred together as she rolled over and over in the thick grass. Her cap flew off. Long, black hair whipped in her eyes. Then she had stumbled to her feet and was running. Ahead, the buff-coated figure seemed to be on the ground, and her brother was bending over him. What had happened? She was still a good hundred yards away, her shadow leaping on before her. Her shadow? But the sun rose in the east, not the north. Something very bright was coming up fast behind her. Even as she turned to look, it shot overhead, blazing. Sweet Trinity, the Dream-Weaver. What in Perimal's name was going on?

  Torisen asked himself the same thing. The proper words had been spoken, the cuts made, and the Prince had gone down on one knee to drink the blood welling up in the Highlord's cupped hands that would symbolically bind Odalian to their conditional oath.

  "There. That's done," Torisen had said, relieved; and the Prince had looked up at him with an odd expression.

  "Yes. It's done."

  Then a tremor had gone through the Karkinoran as if the very flesh rippled on his bones. His look had turned inward in astonishment and growing dismay. Another tremor had shaken him.

  "Odalian? Your Highness? What's wrong?"

  But the Prince didn't answer. He was huddled on the ground now, hands over his face. His fingers seemed impossibly long and thin, stretching up over his eyes into his hair like the bars of a helmet, but the thing that he fought was inside.

  A blinding light passed overhead. Torisen stared after it, bewildered. It arced out over the plain, shining like a comet as it crossed the blackness of the retreating stormclouds. The afterimage of a woman's form burned in his mind's eye. Something about her made him catch his breath. Who was that?

  The Prince gave a ragged laugh. When Torisen looked sharply back, a girl was crouching opposite him, panting as if after a hard run, her dark hair tumbling down about her to the ground. Surely he knew her too, but it couldn't be . . .

  "Binder," gasped the Prince through his hands. "Joke's . . . on me."

  Jame stared at him. Then her eyes snapped up to her brother. Binder? Blood-binder? Tori, a Shanir?

  He was staring back at her with growing incredulity. "Who in Perimal's name are . . . oh no. Don't tell me."

  "I'm afraid so. Hello, brother." Growing light made her look sharply southward. "Sweet Trinity. Here she comes again."

  "Here who comes? Who is that woman?"

  The light was almost on top of them now. Jame sprang up without answering, shielding her eyes against the brilliance. The Prince caught at her, but it wasn't the Prince anymore. This creature's face rippled like a reflection on stagnant pond water. "Don't!" it croaked. "Don't get in her way, either of you! One touch, and she'll reap your souls. She can't help herself!"

  The light slowed, hovered just beyond the escarpment's edge. Its brightness hurt the eye. Torisen saw nothing staring directly into it, but when he turned away, eyes watering, the woman's image danced before him. Her shadow stood between her and the false prince. It held a white knife.

  "Leave him alone, damnit!"

  Jame's voice sounded shrill even to her. What on earth was she doing, coming between two creatures of legend? The Master had sent the Mistress to bring back his faithful servant, apparently not realizing what a subtle, double game the changer had played. What was that to her . . . except that if it were not for Tirandys, she would never have learned the meaning of honor.

  "Let him die in peace!"

  She had spoken Master Runes more than once. For the first time, she heard threads of their power weave through her voice, but not enough of them. Never mind. She had the Ivory Knife. She could defend herself and the other two if . . . if . . .

  The Dream-Weaver's beautiful face was still tranquil, almost masklike, and, this time, startlingly familiar. Jame glanced from it to the pommel of the Knife and back again in amazement. Yes, of the three faces carved there—maiden, lady, hag— the Mistress's was the second. But no ivory could catch the silver sheen of those eyes or the impossible black of their pupils, like the void between the stars.

  As in the Ebonbane, Jame felt that darkness tug at her. She was falling into it, down, down. . . . But at the same time she felt the stones of the escarpment under her feet and sunlight hot on her left cheek. What she saw, though, was darkness, and an arch of rock spanning the unmade chaos that gaped at the very core of the Dream-Weaver's being. Winds howled into it. Jame could almost feel them. She had heard of the soul-metaphors used by healers and knew that this was the other's soulscape; but if the bridge was a metaphor, the gaping emptiness beneath it wasn't. Through the abuse of her Shanir powers, the first Jamethiel had opened this breach into the void beyond the Chain of Creation, just as the Arrin-ken had said. Now the souls of those whom she touched fell shrieking into it, as Jame's would too if her namesake touched her.

  But where was the Dream-Weaver? She had been scarcely ten feet away, just beyond the cliff's edge. Jame stepped hesitantly out onto the arch. She felt the grass between the stones of the escarpment brush against her legs and knew that she was walking toward the brink.

  Light glimmered ahead. A figure danced on the arch over the void, tracing with single-minded concentration the kantirs of the Senetha, which helped her to keep her precarious balance. In outward aspect, she had been a beautiful lady clad in dazzling white. Here at the center of her being, though, the garments of her soul had faded to the color of bone, with a glow that barely touched the surrounding darkness. Her long hair was also white, and her pale features bore a likeness more to the third than the second face on the Ivory Knife's pommel. Some shreds of beauty remained, however, saved from ruin by an underlying innocence that not even this personal hell had thus far managed to destroy. Jame took another hesitant step toward her.

  "Mother?"

  The woman turned. They were very close to each other now. Without thinking, Jame almost touched the other's pale cheek and saw that in a mirror gesture the Dream-Weaver was almost touching hers.

  "Daughter?"

  Jame stared at her. "I-I hardly remember you," she stammered. "It's been so very, very long. Why did you leave us?"

  "Because I could no longer touch you."

  There was so much more to say, so many questions and answers needed to span the years of separation that lay between them; but time had run out. The Dream-Weaver tottered, her eyes widening in sudden horror. She had stopped dancing. The rock beneath them had begun to crumble. Jame also staggered. She hardly knew if she felt the escarpment underfoot now or the metaphoric bridge; but whatever it was, it wouldn't be there long. If the other touched her now, she would surely fall; but the Dream-Weaver just might regain her balance. She saw the other's panic-stricken indecision. The Mistress had reaped souls before as if in a dream. To take one now, knowing what she did, would be the end of innocence, the true fall from honor, but it might also mean survival.

  A sudden smile lit the Dream-Weaver's worn features. Her hand passed Jame's face in a phantom caress, and the span of rock on which she stood gave way. Jame gave a sharp cry and lunged forward to catch her, but missed. Sprawling on the edge of the broken arch, she saw the other's soul plummet away, white hair streaming, into the void. Pieces of stone fell after her. The bridge was disintegrating. Jame clung to
it, too afraid to move, even though she knew instinctively that the brink of the escarpment was also giving way beneath her. Behind her, someone was shouting her name over the winds' howl:

  "Jamie, give me your hand! Do you hear me? Answer!"

  "I hear you, Senethari," she whispered. One of her hands released its grip on the crumbling rock and groped blindly behind her as if of its own accord, impelled by a childish trust she had thought long since dead.

  Another hand closed on hers. Even as the arch gave way under her, she was wrenched back out of darkness into blinding light and fell face down on the hot stones of the escarpment.

  The roar of wind seemed to fill the world. Jame felt the rushing air try to suck her off the ground, but something held her down. She could hear the trees of Eldest Island bend, groaning, and a great whoosh as tear-of-silver leaves rose in a glistening sheet from the gorge. What was happening? Even with eyes squeezed shut, she was half stunned by the light, as if the sun had come to rest just beyond the escarpment and everything was falling into the darkness at its heart. While the Dream-Weaver's soul had kept its uncertain balance, only other souls had plunged through the portal of her body into that void. Now her soul had followed the others, and all matter seemed to be rushing after it. By sacrificing herself, Jamethiel had saved both her daughter and her long-compromised honor, but had she also doomed all of Rathillien? For a moment, that seemed all too likely, but then the winds faltered and began to die.