Moontide 03 - Unholy War

by David Hair

  And now this …

  It wouldn’t have looked like much to someone who did not know the gnosis: it was, after all, just four things floating in a circle above his hand: a stone, a drop of water, a tongue of flame and a swirl of air like a mini-tornado.

  Earth, Fire, Water and Air.

  Sitting cross-legged across the room from him, also dressed like a Zain novice, Ramita mirrored his moves, juggling the four elements at once. According to Arcanum tutors, what they were doing was impossible, yet here they were.

  The first thing all magi were taught was that they had affinities and blind spots: things they could do, and things they couldn’t. That went for all magi, from the Ascendants to the lowliest sixteenth-blood mage. There were a few relative generalists: because their affinities were weak, they had a slightly wider range of skills at the price of weaker usage. To some extent his Auntie Elena was like that. But he’d never, ever, heard of a mage doing what he and Ramita were doing now.

  Their minds were linked by a thread of Mysticism. He attuned it to her as he let the flame wink out, the wind die and the stone and water-drop fall into his palm. But with his gnostic sight, he could see tendrils – like the four arms of the Sivraman statue – holding the essence of each element, awaiting his need for them. At his core, his gnosis was pure energy, not filtered through any affinity at all. He saw the same in Ramita’s aura: a pure core upon which lesser powers danced attendance.

  Master Puravai clapped his hands gently. ‘Well done, Brother Longlegs, Sister Ramita. Very well done indeed. Now show me the Hermetic.’

  The mystic link pulsed as he and Ramita reached for different powers. Her aura was so strong, it felt like he was playing catch with a giant, but for now they both still needed that link, for she had the raw power and he the Arcanum-ingrained knowledge. Together they fed energy into the tiny motes of gnostic light circling them: different shades of emerald and brown light in the aether mixed with crimson and flesh tones, separating into nodes of energy. He reached for the deep emerald and kindled it to light, then used it persuade the twig before him to sprout leaves. Sylvan-gnosis. Ramita did the same, more awkwardly, but when she channelled her gnosis, the twig before her grew to a branch. Then they both called birds to their hands then sent them away, changed their left hands to wolf-claws and back, then made and healed cuts on their own arms.

  Alaron released the connection, sagging a little.

  ‘Magnificent!’ Puravai applauded. ‘Well done indeed.’

  Alaron looked at Ramita, breathing heavily. It was more tiring and much slower than when his core was Fire-infused, but the variety of things he could do was unprecedented … except no doubt for Antonin Meiros, of course.

  Ramita’s late husband was like a ghost, haunting them both. Alaron could feel the bond between him and Ramita growing, but always he was conscious that she was the widow of the greatest mage the world had ever known. It gnawed at him, to be so close to her but unable to get closer. He’d spent years fixated upon Cym and minutes infatuated with Anise, but this felt deeper and more real, despite their many differences.

  ‘I suppose Lord Meiros did it better,’ he said, consciously being humble because otherwise he might run around screaming for joy.

  Master Puravai smiled a little. ‘Actually, no. He acknowledged that the theory was good, and he most certainly gained a wider access to the gnosis, but he was too old to reach his full potential. The centuries had calcified his gnosis so that he was never able to fully expand his palette as you two have. Some things in life are only possible for the young and malleable.’

  ‘Kore’s Blood—! You mean this has never been done before?’ Alaron closed his eyes. Let me just bask in that for a while …

  When he opened them again, he saw that Ramita was staring at his face while tears rolled down her cheeks and he knew, with a level of intuition he’d never before attained in his life, that she felt exactly for him what he felt for her, but for reasons of duty nothing would ever come of it. And that it was breaking her heart too.

  His good mood crumbled.

  ‘I think we both have to start learning how to do this alone now,’ he said aloud, while he severed their Mysticism-link. It felt like taking a knife to his heart-strings. ‘Otherwise we won’t be able to function on our own.’

  Puravai said gravely, ‘I think you are right.’

  Ramita stared glassily into space while he got up and walked away.

  *

  Ramita put her hands behind the back of her head, gritted her teeth and slowly peeled her back from the floor and curled up to touch her elbows to her knees. Sweat beaded her forehead and soaked her tunic in ugly patches under her arms and between her breasts. She gasped for air, wincing as her tortured stomach muscles clenched unwillingly.

  What made this harder was that the ‘floor’ was actually halfway up the wall of the training room, and her feet were touching the ceiling. She was pinned to the wall by Earth-gnosis, and just to make it harder, Master Puravai had been making her juggle oranges with telekinetic gnosis while she exercised.

  Her belly was now as flat as if she’d never given birth, and she had never felt so strong or supple. The vain part of her enjoyed looking in mirrors when no one was around, admiring the changes. Puravai had been suggesting she should learn to fight with a Zain kon-staff, but she’d been resisting that; her mother would have been horrified at the thought of any daughter of hers learning how to fight.

  Training alone was nowhere near as fun as with Alaron, but it was necessary, she agreed. Before my stupid heart leads me into something foolish. She crossly banished Alaron from her thoughts, flipped and landed on the floor. She visualised an open eye in the middle of her forehead, with a mutable iris; this time she imagined it as a skull and used it to kindle purple light in her hand and hurl it at a plant in the corner of the room.

  It crumpled to a withered husk in three seconds.

  It was a hideous power, but one of many she’d been learning. She still needed Alaron to tell her what was possible in Sorcery and Theurgy, so that she knew what to attempt, but once she was on the right path, he would step away and let her work on it alone. That was fine, because she’d been his guide in Hermetic gnosis. But being with him was getting so hard to endure; he looked very fine now, handsome and strong, and with an air of confidence about him, of mastery, as if he now felt himself capable of dealing with everything in the world – except her. Perhaps because Lord Meiros had been white she didn’t mind Alaron’s pallid skin colour – it had become no more significant to her than his eye colour. He was a good person, and fun to be with, but there was too much at stake for dalliance. It was still his hands she imagined on her body on sleepless nights. If self-pleasure was a sin, she suspected she would be going straight to Shaitan’s pit. And she knew – the mystic links were a little too intimate at times – that he was similarly afflicted.

  Both threw themselves into other matters to stay busy: she added yogic exercise when she wasn’t caring for her infants; Alaron pushed his weapons training. And they both continued investigating the Scytale.

  It was Ramita who made the next breakthrough on that project.

  She had readied the twins for sleep, before eating and resting herself, and after a great deal of thought, she decided it was time to remove her widow’s whites: she could not go to the mughal’s court dressed as a widow, after all.

  Alaron noticed instantly when he came in to join her for dinner. He didn’t mention it, but his smile was a little more solemn.

  She cocked her head towards the twins. ‘I need to feed them before I put them down to sleep.’

  Alaron coloured and got up to leave – he was always shy when she fed her babies – but she wanted his company, because she’d had an idea about the Scytale and it was pressing on her mind. As she began to unbutton her smock, she asked, ‘How does your research come along?’ She put Nasatya to her nipple, wincing at the pleasure-pain of the infant’s mouth.

  Alaron was trapped:
still blushing furiously, but too polite to leave a lady in mid-conversation, he reluctantly sat down again, carefully looking the other way.

  The Scytale project had also been progressing steadily. Of the eight variables, they had they identified five: age, eye colour, elemental affinity, gnostic affinity and gender – though, oddly, the gender options were four, two male and two female. They had puzzled over that, until Ramita suggested that it might have something to do with the gender one was attracted to as well as one’s own: she knew several heejara – men who lived as women – in Aruna Nagar, so the concept was known and seemed to fit. The last three variables took longer, until eventually Alaron realised the sixth was related to the cycles of the moon, in particular the position of the moon on a person’s birthday – most people knew theirs, as it was recorded for birth-auguries. And that very morning he had solved another bit of the mystery, thanks to a treatise left at the monastery by the Ordo Costruo on examining types of blood.

  ‘The book was the most boring thing I’ve ever read,’ he told her, ‘but I recognised the four runes on the Scytale in it. I’ve no idea how I’m supposed to determine a person’s blood-type, though. Who even knew that blood could be different?’

  Ramita hadn’t known either. ‘And the last one?’ she asked.

  ‘I’ve not seen those runes before either. There are twelve of them in a kind of descending spiral at the bottom of the Scytale, just above the gnostic affinity symbols on the base. So I don’t know if it is even one set or three, and—’

  ‘Birth month,’ Ramita said absently.

  He stopped talking and knocked his head against the wall. ‘Why can’t I see these things? Of course!’

  Feeling extremely pleased with herself, she removed Nas and put Das to her other breast, aware that Alaron was trying very hard not to peek. I know I’m teasing him unfairly, but it’s nice to feel desired, even if I know it cannot become anything more. ‘So, that must be it, yes? All eight variables identified!’

  His face lit up. ‘I think so, yes. Those twelve month-runes must be Lantric – the month names we used are derived from Lantric.’ He looked like he wanted to gallop about like a colt that has just learned to run. ‘We’ve done it! We’ve solved the Scytale. Except,’ he added, sobering up, ‘that we don’t know what any of the chemical compounds are. We just know what type of person gets which set of symbols.’

  She stroked Das’ head as he suckled, blissfully unaware of the matters of huge import being discussed over his head. ‘Then that is the next step. How many are unknown?’

  ‘Too many of them,’ he admitted ruefully. ‘But I recognise aspects of at least half. What I don’t know is whether the Scytale contains the whole recipe or just additives to a base mixture.’

  ‘You will work it out,’ she said confidently. ‘But I have an idea. When my mother is cooking something new, she tests her recipes on friends and family, to make sure the food tastes good. Why don’t you do the same here?’

  Alaron frowned. ‘But I don’t know the ingredients— Oh! You mean using the eight characteristics?’ He looked excitedly at her. ‘Why not? We need to test our theories somehow. I’ll ask Puravai’s permission to interview all the young monks so I can practise using the Scytale on real people. If I can get an idea of the variables in a normal group of people, it will help in interpreting the results when we do it for real.’

  ‘I think you will learn a lot from doing so,’ she said. ‘Real people are complex.’

  He smiled sadly. ‘Yeah. If there’s one thing I know for certain, it’s that.’

  *

  Now that they had begun to think of leaving, Julsep rushed by. Alaron had been given permission to interview the monks, which was an interesting and unique experience. After morning training, he would talk to the novices – it was entirely voluntary, but there was always a stream of young men queuing in the courtyard he was using. Most of the questions were obvious, but the one about gender and sexuality was awkward. They couldn’t very well ask a young monk if he prefered boys or girls, so they needed to sneak up on the subject obliquely. Ramita had suggested: ‘If you could choose again, would you still become a monk, or would you rather marry?’ But as most of the young men claimed they still wanted to be monks, that suggested this wasn’t the right question to determine sexuality. And they still had no idea how to determine blood-type. He had tracked down one scroll on the subject that linked blood-type to personality types, but someone had annotated it with such scathing criticism that he doubted its usefulness.

  By the end of the second week Alaron had catalogued most of the novices, and a few of the initiated monks, who had approached him out of curiosity. He even used the information of people he knew, like Cym, Ramon and even his father. It didn’t provide any great revelations, but it helped with creating hypotheses.

  All the while, his own gnostic reach was increasing. He began to feel like he was inhabiting that statue of Sivraman, with four ‘ghost arms’ holding his conjured Fire, Earth, Water and Air; his aura had a sorcerous eye on his brow and a lion’s cloak slung over his shoulder representing Hermetic gnosis. He struggled with his Theurgy symbolism until settling on the four women who meant the most to him to represent each study. Ramita was Mysticism, because he felt so linked to her. Cym he chose for Illusion, because he never felt like he’d known the real her. His mother Tesla was Spiritualism, because she was now a spirit; and Anise’s lovely eyes made him think of Mesmerism. At the Arcanum they’d had to learn about all the studies, even those they couldn’t use, so they could protect themselves. Now, as he explored, those lessons came back to him and he made new gains every day … which meant that by the end of Julsep they had no more excuses to delay their departure. The time had come to leave this haven and seek Vizier Hanook.

  *

  ‘So, Alaron Mercer, you are leaving us,’ said Puravai in his gravely melodic voice. Alaron and Ramita had gone to the master’s office together to tell him of their intentions. The master showed not a whit of surprise. ‘I had hopes that you might join us and become “Brother Longlegs” in truth.’

  Alaron wasn’t sure if the master was serious or just being polite. ‘We have to go to the mughal’s court.’

  ‘Indeed, and I fully support that plan. I knew the vizier, as I told you: man is a social being and Hanook always was destined for the outside world. That is why we have city-based monasteries as well as sanctuaries far from the hustle and bustle of the world.’ He clapped his hands and Yash walked in. His steps were light and eager, but his face worried. ‘Brother Yash has asked to accompany you to Teshwallabad, en route to his new life in a monastery there.’

  ‘I know Teshwallabad,’ Yash said eagerly. ‘I’ve lived there before, and I have asked to be transferred.’

  ‘We would welcome the company,’ Ramita said, after some consideration. ‘Provided the windskiff can carry three.’

  Alaron smiled. ‘It’ll be cosy, but we should manage. Only … the babies?’ They’d discussed that matter over the previous evenings, inconclusively.

  Ramita lifted her chin. ‘Master Puravai, Al’Rhon and I have talked much about this. Al’Rhon would have me leave the children here with a wet-nurse, but I cannot be without them. I cannot. And so they will come with us.’ She looked at Alaron defiantly. ‘That is my decision.’

  ‘The court is a perilous place, Lady,’ Puravai said.

  ‘I will not be separated from my children,’ Ramita said firmly. ‘This is not to be debated.’

  *

  The new moon signalled the beginning of Augeite. In the outside world there would great celebrations among Amteh-worshippers, for Julsep – Rajab in Ahmedhassa –was the Amteh holy month, a time of austerity and prayer. The new moon of Augeite heralded the end of thirty days of privation, in the festival of Eyeed. But the day was barely marked at the monastery and Alaron and Ramita spent their final days there preparing the windskiff, provisioning it with dried lentils and other stores and poring over maps. They intended flying a
t night, to avoid alarming the local people; the journey would take about a week.

  Leaving was surprisingly hard. Alaron was touched to be given a new kon-staff, decorated with gaudy friendship cords from each of the three dozen novices with whom he’d been training. He knew them all well now, from their mannerisms and the way they fought to the raw data from his Scytale research: ages and birthdates, the colours of eyes, and all the other categorisations. I’m going to miss them, he realised. The monastery itself too. It’s like a second home.

  They left without ceremony the day after Eyeed. Luna’s brilliant face lit the mountains in silver, set the snowy peaks aglow and carved the valley and slopes into light and shadow. Their breath frosted as they took to the air. Only Puravai had come to watch their departure. Ramita was wrapped in blankets, the children asleep in her lap. Yash was anxious to be away quickly, as if he feared Puravai might change his mind and make him stay.

  Puravai slipped an envelope into Alaron’s hands. ‘Give this to Hanook in greeting,’ he murmured. ‘Do not open it, or damage the seal.’

  Alaron slipped the envelope into his coat. He was wearing his Rondian clothes again, and his swordbelt. He laid his kon-staff against the keel of the skiff, alongside Yash’s, then he and Ramita fed an extra burst of gnosis energy into the keel and he called the wind as they rose. In seconds the monastery was a dark huddle below. Puravai shrank to a saffron dot, and then the folds of the land blocked everything out.

  Alaron set their course through the upper valley, heading for a pass into the east.

  ‘Praise be to all the gods,’ Yash breathed. ‘I am flying!’

  *

  It wasn’t a homecoming, but crossing northern Lakh stirred Ramita’s heart. Most nights they flew for five to six hours, averaging thirty miles each hour, or so Alaron estimated as he compared the countryside below to landmarks on the map. They began covering up to a hundred and fifty miles in a night, and still the land below crawled past, as they crossed the featureless Sithardha Desert, its dunes like the waves of the ocean rendered in sand.