Shadow and Light

by Peter Sartucci

  He tossed the last bundle of rope up to Sevan atop the second wagon, and nearly jumped when someone spoke right behind him.

  “I thought it might be makeup, but no,” a female voice growled. “You really are a halfbreed.”

  Kirin turned to find plain yellow robes and a cold pair of brown eyes above a gauze veil. The Purist. His heart beat faster.

  He felt a wave of relief when he saw that there were only four silver stars on her starched wimple. She might be the ranking priestess of a rural temple, maybe even an abbess of a small convent, but no more than that. Two more stars and she’d have had the rank to force him into a trial for demon possession, which could end with him burned at the stake. But he ought to be safe, if he took care not to provoke her.

  The Purist stared at him like something nasty stuck on her shoe. His fear faded while anger grew.

  “Dona Quartissima.” Kirin addressed her by title and rank, put his hands together and bowed. “I am loyal to the faith and a good Silbari, Dona.” He knew he should stop there, but bitterness provoked him to add, “I had no more say in my birth than any other man does.”

  Her gaze hardened. Sevan blanched. Kirin wanted to bite his tongue. For all that he knew it was a bad idea to anger the pureblood faction, he’d just had to poke back.

  “Dona.” Pieter inserted himself between them and bowed low, using the move to shove Kirin away.

  His father’s shaved head with its central scalp lock bent right in front of the woman’s face. The double silver rings that held Pieter’s elaborate hair knot announced his affiliation with the former Sons of the Defender monastic order, and the torture scars showed that he’d been a survivor of the Battle of Black Pass. Everyone knew the heroic story of that desperate, doomed action. Kirin hoped the priestess would respect it.

  “I am Pieter Ille DiUmbra, this young one’s adoptive father.”

  Her eyes flickered over his father and Kirin saw how she forced herself to return the appropriate head bow. Good; he breathed a little easier until she spoke.

  “Adoptive?” The woman’s voice was incredulous. “What possessed you to take in such a viper, Monk? It should have been stilled in the womb.”

  That last was perilously close to blasphemy, for the Orthodox Hierarchy did not approve of abortion—for humans. But the Purists didn’t believe folk like him even were human.

  Pieter looked her in the eye and answered. “Mother Seraph Umana’s charity possessed me, Dona Quartissima. Nothing more—nothing less.”

  Kirin saw her face tighten and her eyes squint. Plainly this Purist hated to be reminded that not all the Scholars of the Holy Writ agreed with her. At that moment voices cried for a healer’s aid. Before the Purist could say any more, an acolyte called her away to help some old woman who had collapsed. The Quartissima spared Kirin a cold glance before she turned to answer the call.

  Pieter’s father came over and growled at Pieter. “When are you going to learn to keep your mouth shut, boy?” Turning to Kirin, he ordered, “Tidy up the stage and let’s get out of here before you start more trouble, brat!”

  Pieter bowed exaggerated obedience, his way of defying his father, and dragged Kirin away with him.

  “I’m sorry, Father,” Kirin whispered while they made sure the local stage had been stripped of everything the DiUmbra Troupe owned.

  “I’m not,” his father answered quietly. “The fanatics need to be opposed, no matter what my father thinks. You did well, son.”

  That made Kirin glow. When they had tossed the last items into the second wagon and climbed aboard, he snuggled with Maia on top of the load and happily watched the small town shrink behind the departing troupe. He indulged in a little vicarious vengeance by imagining the afternoon light of the Two Suns blistering the whitewashed Temple dome.

  “You’ve been a rascal again, like Uncle Pieter,” Maia accused him with a smile.

  “I confess!” he answered, kissing her. He hoped they would have a room of their own wherever the troupe stayed.

  They made the next town before nightfall and found the expected inn. It had a warren of little rooms in a crooked wing that looked like it had been made by knocking three mudbrick houses together and dividing every room, sometimes twice.

  “At least it’s cheap,” Uncle Sevan the elder sighed, handing room keys to Pieter. He jerked his chin at Kirin and turned to distract Grandfather’s attention with details.

  Pieter led Kirin to the first of the rooms assigned to the Troupe. “Time for the needful, son,” he whispered, urging him inside.

  Kirin nodded obediently, and while Pieter guarded the hallway, he closed the door behind him and sent out his Shadow.

  It poured out of his chest, black as his silk performance tights, and flowed over the floor and furnishings. Darkness rose like a tide to drown the room. Within it the tiny lives of the vermin—bedbugs, lice, and ticks—glittered like sparks in his mind. He freed that stricture he normally enforced on the Shadow, and let it kill. The sparks snuffed out. A tiny pulse of life energy passed across his heart like the faintest brush of a butterfly’s wing. It dived into the darkness of his Shadow and vanished. He grimly throttled the nausea that followed. There were more rooms to go.

  In each he reaped tiny lives like grain. The fleas leaped about in fruitless attempts to escape before they fell dead on the floor. Kirin’s face twisted up in disgust as sparks of bedbug life force flowed through him and into the Darkness. When the rooms were finally clear of pests, he gladly forced his Shadow back into its cage under his heart. Sated with its harvest of small deaths, the Shadow went with only a token struggle. Kirin trembled a little in relief when he had it locked away again. He emerged from the final room, wondering if the day would come when he couldn’t make it stop killing.

  “Well done, son,” Pieter told him with a clap on the shoulder. “You saved us all from a miserable night and from only-The-One-knows what illnesses.”

  Kirin smiled halfheartedly.

  They went to join Sevan and the cousins at the inn’s bath house. It wasn’t fancy, a big cauldron set into a brick fireplace in one corner of the courtyard with privacy provided by a woven slat fence. It did have several worn benches, a trickling fountain of fresh water, and a set of buckets. They had to bring their own drying rags or let the summer heat do it for them.

  There were pegs to hang up clean and dirty clothes. An attendant fed the fire and scooped warm water from the cauldron to fill their buckets and to pour slowly over each bather. When Kirin stripped off his trousers and exposed the manumitted slave tattoo on the pale skin of his right thigh, the servant’s face twisted in disgust. He made Kirin stand there, waiting with his bucket, for a long moment before ladling out a share for him.

  Sevan and Kirin passed a scrubbrush back and forth. Both still had bits of makeup in their ears and hair and the creases of their skin. It hadn’t taken as much of the oily white paste to make Kirin’s golden skin look like an Imp. The attendant, as brown-skinned as the rest of the DiUmbra family, openly moved his right hand in a sign against evil. Kirin pretended to ignore it; one more hurt in a long litany. But he saw Pieter stare coldly at the man until the attendant went back into the inn.

  Sevan and his brother and cousins quietly gripped Kirin’s arms or patted his shoulders. He bent his head without saying anything and pretended to be busy cleaning his feet.

  “I’m sorry that swine insulted you,” Sevan muttered.

  One of the cousins added, “First that country priestess and now this small town yokel.” He shook his head with the lordly contempt of a born and bred City man for rural peasants.

  Kirin flinched nonetheless. He knew that his unknown sire had likely been some Gwythlo conqueror; everyone knew what had happened in the war eighteen years ago. His endless shame rose up anew.

  “You may well be a child of love, you know,” Pieter reminded him.

  “Or rape,” Kirin answered bitterly, staring after the servant to avoid meeting the eyes of his adopted family. “Ma
ma never told me which before she died. But is either one my fault?”

  Pieter took him by the shoulders and turned him around. Kirin looked up into his face; his father stood a hand taller than him, like the rest of the grown men of the family. That face filled with patient kindness as familiar words formed on his lips. “Kirin—”

  “I know,” Kirin interrupted, dropping his gaze down to his own feet. “‘We’re performing in small towns where people have never even seen the ocean, where strangers from outside Silbar are rare and folks’ memories are of Gwythlo conquerors and their pale skin and pointed ears. I shouldn’t let people’s fear hurt me.’ I know.”

  Pieter sighed, squeezed his shoulders with both hands and lightly cuffed him on one ear for the interruption, not even hard enough to sting.

  “At least I know you’re listening to me,” he said. “Maybe someday you’ll heed me.”

  They finished bathing and trooped back inside with wet hair and clean clothes.

  Kirin stayed quiet during supper in the inn’s common room, but his eyes roved nervously. Once townsfolk had seen the DiUmbra’s performance they generally liked the family, sometimes with wild enthusiasm. But until then most viewed the troupe as a disturbingly large mob of suspicious strangers. There were three merchants and their retinues in the room, too cosmopolitan to give Kirin’s skin more than a glance. But easily half those present were small town dwellers with superstitious distrust stamped bone-deep into their faces.

  They stared. Kirin endured.

  Sevan the Elder and his wife Carmella led the evening worship for the family in proper Silbari style before the clan sat down at a long table. Kirin sang the descant with Sevan and Maia in three-part harmony. That quieted some of the suspicion in the room, though there were still plenty of looks directed at his pale skin and pointed ears.

  Maia and Sevan bracketed him at the table for a meal both filling and good; even the small-beer was passable. But Kirin noticed that Maia ate litte and drank less.

  “Not hungry?” he asked her softly.

  “Not very.”

  “Shall I peel an orange for you?”

  “All right.”

  He did, removing the peel all in one long coil for Uncle Ger’s six-year-old son Berrin to play with. He set the juicy wedges before Maia in a fan. She ate a few, gave the rest to the kids.

  “Just tired, I guess,” she said, and leaned against him.

  He put an arm around her, his skin tingling at her touch. Even after most of a season he still couldn’t quite believe his good fortune. This wondrous woman had chosen to marry him despite his pale skin and evil ears.

  “We have our own room. Want to go to bed early?” he whispered to her. Both suns were down. The tallow candles lighting the inn’s common room smoked and gave little light. “We can just sleep if you’re too tired.”

  She gave him a grin and said, “When have I ever been that tired, love?”

  His blood sang in anticipation.

  They managed to leave the table with only a few amused smiles from the family, found their way to their assigned cubby, and disrobed in the silvery light of Calm. A big pad covering most of the plank floor in the tiny chamber did for a bed. Kirin knelt on it and straw crunched. Maia finished hanging up her clothes and turned to him, all shining dark curves in the night. His heart beat so hard he thought his chest might burst. She bent over to kiss him and pushed him down onto his back.

  “Love me, Kirin,” she said, and he did.

  Hours later he awoke to find himself alone in the bed. A retching sound came from the corner with the chamber pot.

  “Maia?” Fear stabbed him as he sat up and pushed off the light blanket. “Are you ill?”

  “No,” she answered, turning her face to him. The light of the Moon of Madness glittered on fresh teardrops.

  He hastily crawled to her side. “Is it something you ate? Should I call your mother?”

  “No,” she said again. “There’s nothing wrong with me, Kirin.”

  “But something is wrong, isn’t it?” He tenderly enfolded her in his arms and she sagged against him. “Tell me.”

  “I’m pregnant.”

  He twitched in shock. His first happy thought, I’m going to be a father! gave way to the frightening, does she want to keep our baby? There were no pregnant acrobats, for good and painful reasons. He knew they were making the best money the family had known since before the Gwythlo Conquest. Without Maia they couldn’t do their most profitable show.

  He pulled her into his lap and held her close. Neither of them said anything for a long while. But through his memory ran the fortune teller’s words.

  I will be tested with fear and loss? Please God, not Maia!

  * * *

  Early next morning Kirin and Maia found a moment when they could take both Pieter and Carmella aside privately.

  “But I bought you a pregnancy protection spell!” Carmella protested. “They’re supposed to be good for a year!” She looked at Kirin accusingly. “You said you’d be careful!”

  “Carmella, I was careful!” He protested, then glanced around and lowered his voice as he gestured at Maia’s belly. “My Shadow never broke the spell, it’s still there. But last night I discovered that it’s got tiny holes in it, like pinpricks. I think my, um, seed, must have pierced the spell without destroying it, or being destroyed by it. I didn’t know that could even happen!”

  “I didn’t either,” Maia admitted miserably. “I know we should have been more careful, we knew the risk, but—we didn’t want to stop—well . . .”

  The corners of her mother’s mouth pulled up unwillingly. “Saints witness, I should have foreseen that. Looks like your talent breeds true, Kirin.”

  “I thought I had it under control,” Kirin said wretchedly. He had tried so hard . . .

  “You’re both young and infatuated with each other’s bodies,” Pieter observed drily. He’d been a monk for nearly thirty years, but he knew the world. “That’s the One God’s way of making sure people have enough babies for the next generation.”

  Kirin gripped Maia’s hand and she squeezed back while her mother rolled her eyes.

  “Daughter, do you want this baby?” Carmella asked bluntly.

  “Yes!”

  Kirin thought Maia surprised herself with her answer. He found his own heart singing. She wants my child! Part of the fear that had been gnawing at him all night melted away.

  Maia continued more quietly, “I always wanted children out of Kirin the moment I knew I wanted him. I just didn’t expect them for a couple years yet.”

  She leaned against Kirin and he ached with sudden desire for her.

  “Mama Carmella, we talked about children,” he tried to explain. “We wanted to wait until after we’d made our fame among the troupes and brought the family money and honor.”

  “You’ve already done both,” Pieter assured them. Kirin discovered that it helped, a little.

  “How long since you caught?” Maia’s mother asked her with a sigh. “Give me your best guess if you’re not sure.”

  “Maybe six tendays. Or seven.”

  “Hmmm, you can probably keep performing for the rest of this trip anyway, possibly a little longer. Don’t tell anyone else about your condition while we’re on the road. Your grandfather will burst a blood vessel when he hears about this, so I don’t want to tell him before we’re home in Aretzo.”

  They all relaxed a little. If they were home when Grandpa found out, at least there’d be the rest of the family for support, and Grandmother to help rein him in. Kirin wished she wasn’t so frail that they had to leave her behind with the nursing mothers and the babies and the infirm of the family. The troupe’s leader was a lot easier to live with when he had Grandmother with him.

  Pieter said, “I’ll do my best to keep him distracted. Maia, take good care of yourself. Kirin, you keep right on taking care of her, too.”

  “I will, Pieter,” Kirin answered fervently. He hugged Maia as tenderly as a
man handling spun glass, and she hugged him back. “I will.”

  CHAPTER 2: TERRELL

  Light.

  Prince Terrell DuRillin DiGwythlo dreamed of Light.

  Bathing him like the two suns. Sleeting through him like tiny spears. Light, endless Light that roared stronger than a tempest. Light that assaulted him with sheer overwhelming power until his mind was swept away. Light!

  Someone shook him. He gasped and opened his eyes to darkness.

  “My Lord?” Pen’s anxious voice finally penetrated his ears. “You were groaning in your sleep. Are you ill?”

  Terrell sat up blinking. He’d pushed most of the covers off. Sweat soaked his nightshirt despite the chilly northern night. His room in Gwythford Castle faced northeast and both moons had set. The night candle by his bedside had burnt more than half way so it must be past midnight. He released Pen’s hand, which looked even darker in the candlelight than his own, and rubbed his eyes.

  “It was only a dream,” he told his bodyguard and best friend, who had but one day of life more than his own seventeen years. “I’m not sick. I’m all right.”

  “You’re as sweaty as my gambeson after a four hour fight,” Pen answered. “You had that Light dream again, didn’t you?”

  “Yes,” Terrell admitted.

  “You promised me you’d tell Dona Seraphina if it happened again.” It wasn’t quite an accusation.

  “I will, Pen, but I don’t think there’s any need to wake her now. Morning will be soon enough.”

  “Will you still remember it in the morning? Maybe you’d better write it down.”

  Terrell sighed, but Pen had the right of it. “I will.”

  He climbed out of the feather bed. He peeled off his sweaty nightshirt to don the clean dry one Pen brought and lit a taper at the night candle. He settled himself at his writing desk with the taper lighting a blank sheet and took a fresh quill in hand.

  “Did I say anything?” he asked Pen, uncorking his inkbottle and scribbling rapidly.