Nightrunners 03 - Traitor's Moon

by Lynn Flewelling

  Perhaps tonight he would learn his own truth.

  He and Seregil saw Klia home, then turned their horses for the Nha'mahat.

  The Haunted City was deserted tonight, and Alec found himself starting at shadows, certain he saw movement in the empty windows or heard the whisper of voices in the sighing of the breeze.

  "What do you think will happen?" he asked at last, unable to bear the silence any longer.

  "I wish I could tell you, tali," Seregil replied. "My experience wasn't the ordinary sort. I believe it's like the Temple of Illior; people come for visions, dreams—the rhui'auros are said to be strange guides."

  I remember that house, that street, Seregil thought, amazed at the power of memory.

  He'd avoided this section of the city since their arrival, but he'd come here often as a child. In those days the Nha'mahat had been an

  enticingly mysterious place only adults were allowed to enter, and the rhui'auros just eccentric folk who might offer sweets, stories, or a colorful spell or two if you loitered long enough between the arches of the arcade. That perception had been shattered along with his childhood when he'd finally entered the tower.

  The fragmented memories of what followed had haunted the farthest reaches of his dreams ever since, like hungry wolves hovering just outside the safe circle of a campfire's glow.

  The black cavern.

  The stifling heat inside the tiny dhima.

  The probing magicks stripping him, turning him inside out, flaying him with every doubt, vanity, and banality of his adolescent self as the rhui'auros sought the truth behind the killing of the unfortunate Haman.

  Alec rode beside him cloaked in that special silence of his, happy, full of anticipation. Some part of Seregil longed to warn him, tell him—

  He gripped the reins so tightly that his knuckles ached. No, never speak of that night, not even to you. Tonight I enter the tower a free man, of my own will.

  At the command of a rhui'auros, an inner voice reminded him, whispering from among the gaunt wolves of memory.

  Reaching the Nha'mahat at last, they dismounted and led their horses to the main door. A woman emerged from the darkened arcade and took the reins for them.

  Still Alec said nothing. No questions. No probing looks.

  Bless you, tali.

  A rhui'auros answered their knock. The silver mask covering his face was like those worn at the Temple of Illior: smooth, serene, featureless.

  "Welcome," a deep male voice greeted them from behind it.

  The tattoo on his palm was similar to those of the priests of Illior. And why not? It was the Aurenfaie who'd taught the ways of Aura to the Tir. For the first time since his arrival, it struck him how deeply intertwined the Skalans and 'faie still were, whether they realized it or not. There had been years enough for the Tir to forget, perhaps, but his own people? Not likely. Why then did some of the clans fear reclaiming the old ties?

  The man gave them masks and led them into a meditation chamber, a low, windowless room lit by niche lamps. At least a dozen people lay naked on pallets there, their dreaming faces hidden by silver masks. The damp air was heavy with thick clouds of fragrant smoke from a brazier near the center of the room. Just beyond it, a

  broad, circular stairway spiraled down out of sight. Wisps of steam curled up from the cavern below.

  "Wait here," their guide told Seregil, pointing to an empty pallet against the far wall. "Someone will come for you. Elesarit waits upstairs for Alec i Amasa."

  Alec brushed the back of Seregil's hand with his own, then followed the man up a narrow staircase at the back of the chamber.

  Seregil walked across to his assigned pallet. This took him past the round stairway, and his chest tightened. He knew where it led.

  Alec resisted a look back at Seregil. When the rhui'auros had told him to bring Seregil, he'd assumed they would make their visit together.

  They climbed three flights of stairs in silence, meeting no one in the dark corridors. On the third floor they followed a short hallway to a small chamber. A clay lamp flickered in one corner, and by its wavering light Alec saw that the room was empty except for an ornate metal brazier by the far wall. Not knowing what was expected of him, he turned to ask his guide, but he was already gone.

  Strange folk, indeed, he thought, yet they held the key that could unlock his past. Too excited to sit still, Alec paced the little chamber, listening anxiously for the sound of approaching footsteps.

  They came at last. The rhui'auros who entered wore no mask, and Alec recognized him as the old man he'd met at the tavern. Striding over to Alec, he dropped the leather sack he carried and clasped hands warmly.

  "So you have come at last, little brother. Seeking your past, I think?"

  "Yes, Honored One. And I—I want to know what it means to be Hazadrielfaie."

  "Good, good! Sit down."

  Alec settled cross-legged where the man indicated, in the center of the room.

  Elesarit dragged the brazier to the center of the room, summoned fire there, then took two handfuls of what looked like a mix of ash and small seeds from the sack and cast them into the flames. Sharp, choking smoke curled up, making Alec's eyes water.

  Elesarit pulled his robe over his head and threw it into a corner. Naked except for the tattooed whorls covering his hands and feet, he began to slowly circle Alec, bare soles whispering across the floor as he moved. Thin and wizened as he was, he moved gracefully, weaving his patterned hands and thin body through the

  smoke. Alec felt goose flesh break out on his arms and knew at once that, like the dances of the Khaladi he'd watched earlier, these movements were a form of magic. Faint music, strange and distant, hovered at the edge of his perception, perhaps magic, perhaps only memory.

  It was unnerving, this ceremony: the old man's silence, the shapes that twisted themselves from the smoke and dissolved before he could quite make them out, the heady smell of the substances burning on the coals of the brazier. Lightheaded, Alec fought against a sudden wave of dizziness.

  And still the rhui'auros danced, moving in and out of Alec's field of vision, in and out of the ever-thickening smoke that seemed to wind itself into denser coils in his wake.

  The man's feet fascinated Alec. He couldn't look away from them as they whisper-shuffled past: long toes, brown skin, and branched ridges of veins beneath the shifting black tracery.

  The smoke stung Alec's eyes, but he found he didn't have the strength to lift his hand and wipe them. He could hear the rhui'auros circling behind him now, yet somehow the feet stayed before him, filling his vision.

  Those aren't his feet, Alec realized in silent awe. They were a woman's—small and delicate in spite of the dirt that edged the nails and darkened the cracks on the callused heels. These feet were not dancing. They were running.

  Then he was looking down at them as if they were his own feet, flying beneath the edge of a stained brown skirt, running along a trail through a frost-rimed meadow just before dawn.

  A misstep on a sharp stone. Blood. The feet did not stop running.

  Fleeing.

  There was no sound, no physical sensation, but Alec knew the desperation that propelled her on as clearly as if the emotions were his own.

  Meadow gave way to forest with dreamlike speed, one landscape melting into another. He felt the burning in her lungs, the clenching ache deep in her belly where dark blood still flowed and the slight weight of the burden she carried in her arms, a tiny bundle wrapped in a long, dark sen'gai.

  Child

  The infant's face was still covered in birthing blood. Its eyes were open and blue

  as his own.

  Gradually his line of sight shifted upwards and he gazed through her eyes at a lone figure in the distance, standing on a boulder against the first pale wash of dawn.

  The girl's desperation gave way to hope.

  Amasa!

  Alec had recognized his father first by the way he carried his bow across his shoulders. Now t
he wind whipped tangled blond hair back from that square, plain, bearded face in which Alec had tried so often without success to find himself. He was young, not much older than Alec himself, and racked with desperation as he glared back past the girl.

  He loomed closer until he seemed to fill Alec's vision. Then came a wrenching lurch, and Alec was looking down into the face of a young woman with his own dark blue eyes, full lips, and fine-boned features, all framed by ragged clumps of dark brown hair, hacked cruelly short.

  Ireya!

  He didn't know if the voice was his own or his father's, but he felt the agony of that despairing cry. Helpless as his father had been, Alec watched in horror as she thrust the baby into his arms and dashed back the way she'd come, toward the horsemen who pursued her.

  Then Alec was looking down at the small, bruised feet again as she ran at them, spreading her empty arms wide as if to gather the arrows speeding at her heart from the bows of

  brothers

  The force of the first shaft knocked Alec flat on his back and hot pain sliced the breath from his lungs. It passed as quickly as it had come, however, and he felt his life leaving like smoke from the wound, rising on the sparkling morning air until he could see the horsemen gathered around the still body below. He couldn't see their faces to know if they were pleased or horrified at their own deed. He saw only that they ignored the distant figure fleeing west with his tiny burden.

  "Open your eyes, son of Ireya a Shaar."

  The vision collapsed.

  Opening his eyes, Alec lay sprawled on the cold floor, arms flung wide.

  Elesarit crouched next to him, eyes half closed, lips parted in a strange grimace.

  "My mother?" Alec asked through dry lips, too weak to sit up. The back of his head hurt. In fact, he hurt all over.

  "Yes, little brother, and your Tirfaie father," Elesarit said softly, touching Alec's temple with the fingertips of one hand.

  "My father—he had no other names?"

  "None that he knew."

  The smoke closed in around him again, bringing another wave of dizziness. The ceiling overhead dissolved into a miasma of shifting color.

  Stop! he begged, but his throat was numb. No sound escaped.

  "You carry the memories of your people," the rhui'auros said, lost somewhere in the shifting blur. "I take these from you, but not without giving something back."

  Suddenly Alec was standing on a rugged mountainside beneath a huge crescent moon. Barren peaks stretched out in front of him for as far as he could see. Far below, a torch-lit procession wended its way along a twisting track, hundreds of people, it seemed, or thousands. The chain of tiny, bobbing lights stretched back through the night like a necklace of amber beads tossed on rumpled black velvet.

  "Ask what you will," a low, inhuman voice rumbled behind him, like rocks grinding together in an avalanche.

  Alec whirled, reaching for a sword that wasn't there. A few yards from where he stood, a cliff rose into the darkness overhead, sheer except for a small hole near the bottom not much larger than the door of a dog kennel.

  "Ask what you will," the voice said again, and the vibration of it sent loose pebbles clinking and pattering down around Alec's feet.

  Sinking to his hands and knees, he looked into the hole, but there was only darkness beyond.

  "Who are you?" he tried to ask, only somehow the words came out "Who am I? " instead.

  "You are the wanderer who carries his home in his heart," the unseen speaker replied, sounding pleased with the question. "You are the bird who makes its nest on the waves. You will father a child of no woman."

  A deathly chill rolled over him. "A curse?"

  "A blessing."

  Suddenly Alec felt weight and heat against his back. Someone placed a thick fur robe over him, one that had been warmed before a fire. It was so heavy that he couldn't lift his head to see who had covered him, but he glimpsed a man's hands and recognized them— strong, long-fingered Aurenfaie hands. Seregil's.

  "Child of earth and light," the voice pronounced. "Brother of shadows, watcher in the darkness, wizard-friend."

  "What clan am I?" Alec gasped as the warm robe pressed down on him.

  "Akavi'shel, little ya'shel, and no clan at all. Owl and dragon. Always and never. What do you hold? "

  Alec looked down at his hands, pressed to the rocky ground as he fought now to hold up the weight of the robe. Tangled in the fingers of his left hand was his Akhendi bracelet with the blackened charm. Wadded beneath his right was a bloodstained length of cloth—a sen'gai, though he couldn't make out the color.

  The weight of the robe was too much for him. Falling forward, he was trapped by its smothering bulk.

  "What name did my mother give me?" he groaned as the moon was blotted out.

  There was no reply.

  Exhausted, trapped, and aching in every muscle, Alec cradled his head on his arms and wept for a woman nineteen years dead, and for the silent, brooding man who'd stood helplessly and watched his only love die.

  Seregil inhaled deeply as he waited, hoping the smoke of the strong herbs would take the edge off his fear. There were no meditation symbols in this chamber—no Fertile Queen, Cloud Eye, or Moon Bow. Perhaps the rhui'auros stood too close to the Lightbearer to need such things.

  "Aura Elustri, send me light," he murmured. Folding his hands loosely in his lap, he closed his eyes and tried to find the inner silence necessary to free his thoughts, but it would not come.

  I'm out of practice. How often had he entered a temple during all his years in Skala? Less than a dozen times, probably, and always with some ulterior need.

  The even breathing of the dreamers around the room grated on his nerves, mocking his restlessness. It was a relief of sorts when a guide finally came and led him down the winding stairs to the cavern below.

  Oh, yes, he remembered this place, with its rough stone and heat and the flat, metallic odor that tightened the knot of dread already cramping his gut.

  Three passages branched from the main chamber, sloping down

  into darkness. Seregil's guide waved a globe of light into being and set off down the one to their right.

  The same? Seregil wondered, stumbling along behind him. Impossible to know for certain; he'd been so frightened that night, half dragged, half carried into total darkness.

  It got hotter as they went. Steam curled thickly from seams in the rock. Condensation dripped from above. It was difficult to catch his breath.

  drowning in darkness—

  Small dhima stood at irregular intervals along this tunnel, but Seregil's guide led him far deeper into the earth before stopping beside one.

  "Here," the man instructed, lifting the leather door flap. "Leave your clothes outside."

  Stripping off everything but the silver mask, Seregil crawled inside. It was stifling and stank of sweat and wet wool; a small fissure emitted a steady flow of hot vapor. Seregil crawled to a rush mat next to the steam vent. His guide waited until he was seated, then dropped the flap back into place. Blackness closed quickly in around Seregil; the man's footsteps faded back in the direction they'd come.

  What am I so scared of? he wondered, fighting down the panic that threatened to unman him. They finished with me, passed sentence. It's over. I'm here now by Iia'sidra dispensation, a representative of the Skalan queen.

  Why didn't someone come?

  Sweat drenched his body, stinging the scabbed abrasions on his back and sides. It dripped from the tip of his nose to pool in the contours inside the mask. He hated the feel of it, hated the darkness and the irrational sense that the walls were pressing in on him.

  He'd never feared the dark, not even as a child.

  Except here. Then.

  And now.

  He crossed his arms across his bare chest, shaking in spite of the heat. He couldn't fight off the wolves of memory here. They rushed at him, wearing the faces of all the rhui'auros who'd interrogated him. They'd woven their magic deep into his mind,
pulling out thoughts and fears like so many rotten teeth.

  Now, as he huddled trembling and sick, other memories followed, ones he'd buried even deeper: the sharp sting of his father's hand against his face when he'd tried to say farewell; the way friends

  had refused to meet his eye; the sight of the only home he'd ever known or hoped to dwindling to nothing in the distance—

  Still no one came.

  His breath whistled harshly through the mask. The dhima trapped the steam, searing his lungs. Stretching out his arms, he felt for the wooden ribs on either side of him to reassure himself that the sodden walls were not collapsing in on him. His fingers brushed hot wood and rested there. A moment later, however, he let out a sharp hiss of surprise as something hot and smooth skittered over his left hand. Before he could pull it back, the unseen creature had clenched itself around his wrist. Needle teeth pierced the fleshy part of his palm just below the thumb, spreading quickly to engulf his entire hand.

  A dragon, and one at least the size of a cat, judging by the weight.

  Seregil willed himself not to move. The beast released him, dropped to his naked thigh, and scrambled away.

  Seregil held still until he was certain it was gone, then cradled his hand against his chest. What was a dragon that size doing so far from the mountains, and how venomous was such a bite? This made him think of Thero, and he choked back an hysterical laugh.

  "That will leave a lucky mark."

  Seregil jerked his head up. Less than a foot to his left squatted the glowing, naked form of a rhui'auros. The man's broad face looked vaguely familiar. He had thickly drawn markings on his large hands. His muscular chest was covered with others that seemed to move with a life of their own as he reached to examine Seregil's wound.

  There was no light; Seregil couldn't even see his own hand, but he could see the rhui'auros as clearly as if they both sat in daylight.