Moon's Honor

by Sharon Lee

  "Master's work," commented a voice to his right, abruptly enough to intend to startle. Lute finished the gesture properly, allowed his cloak to wrap him in mysterious stillness and held it for one long beat before he turned to face his audience.

  "How pleasant to hear you say so," he purred and had the satisfaction of seeing the man's jowly face take on a pinkish tinge. He bowed, sweeping the cloak out and making it seem of velvet and ermine, to thus place it on a level with his host's 'broidered scarlet sash and silken shirt.

  He of the scarlet sash bowed also, with grace, but without wit. "I am Feldris, newly Master of Dyan City Magician's Hall."

  "And I am Lute, Master Magician, who had been apprentice of Master Magician Cereus."

  "Registered of what Hall?" The question was an insult; the names of all Master Magicians were inscribed in the Book of Masters kept in each Guildhall and it was the duty of each Hallkeeper to have that Book by heart. Lute lifted an eyebrow.

  "Hagsmere, and it please you, great lord."

  Feldris colored again, mouth tightening ominously. "I regret," he said stiffly, "that I am new to the house and have not committed the names of all the Masters to memory."

  "A failing deserving of regret," Lute acknowledged, around a sudden sense of foreboding. "Let us step over to the Common Room and pull down the register, that you may satisfy yourself of my—authenticity."

  The other man fluttered his hands—a formless thing, and thoroughly unlike the measured gesture one expected from a brother magician. Lute felt his foreboding grow, the parchment in his sleeve as heavy as stone.

  "I am certain you are who—and what—you say you are," Feldris Hallkeeper said soothingly. "Did I not with my own eyes see you light the torches? But the doorkeeper spoke of an urgent matter you must discuss, and I have kept you waiting long enough. In what way can Dyan Guildhall aid you?"

  Foreboding flared into active dismay. Here? Lute wondered, keeping his face bland. In the very entrance hall? With neither table nor greet-wine nor the witness of others of the Guild?

  "It is a matter of sufficient import," he murmured, "to interest all currently resident within the hall."

  "Ah." Feldris folded his unschooled hands before his sash. "That would be myself," he said. "And the doorkeeper, of course."

  "Is everyone at the Foundation Rituals, then?"

  "They are no longer in the city," the Guildmaster said softly.

  Lute took a breath, and then another. "Well," he said lightly, "I can see that I've wasted my time and yours, sir! Good Beltane to you—" He turned smoothly and went, smoothly, toward the door, ignoring his stammering heart and the lungs that wished to labor.

  "Hold!" The Guildmaster's tread was heavy behind him and Lute was too far from the door—fool that he had been to bar it!

  "Hold!" Feldris cried again as Lute laid his hands upon the bar and—

  "Hold!"

  "Hold!"

  "Hold!"

  Cried three separate voices from three corners of the entrance way, so that Feldris spun on his heel, surprised by words in the hall he knew to be empty. Lute flung the bar aside with a clatter, jerked the door wide—

  And ran.

  #

  To become invisible it is merely necessary to become one of many.

  Thus had his master had taught him, and good lore it was, as far as it walked. It was certainly no failing on the part of Master Cereus that his apprentice wished most ardently to avoid the place where the shielding crowd was thickest.

  "If I wanted congress with Circle, I could as easily have clung to Master Feldris' side."

  So saying, Lute left the crowd two streets short of Goddess Square and ducked into the shadow of an ornate garden gate, there to complete his preparations in private.

  Master Cereus had been a gentle man, but no one's fool. He had walked a rough road for upwards of forty years and took no lasting harm from it. It had been his ardent wish that his 'prentice did as well.

  "Of course," Lute muttered to himself in the privacy of the gate-shadow, "he never meant you to fight Circle, either. Each as the Goddess made us, master. Excepting only that the Goddess has lately reached forth her hand and made some of us more perfect than others."

  He freed his bag from its carrying strap and knelt by it on the paving stones, hands hasty on the secret clasps. In the very act of unsealing it, he stopped, hands gripping the worn black leather.

  The Guildhall where he—three times a fool!—ignored the gatekeeper's most obvious warning. And Feldris—no magician he, nor even one who had much experience of the breed, to be so startled by a minor bit of ventriloquism. Newly come to the post, was he, by Moon? And by whose aye, with the Guildhall empty and Dyan City's magicians "gone?" Lute sat back on his heels and shivered as might-have-been ran down his back on many cold feet.

  Feldris might well follow him: For his own safety, Lute must suppose that the hunt was already on. However, the pretty sash and soft hands spoke of one not so familiar with the rough, twisty streets along the city's outer ring. It was in those streets that Lute intended to pass the night, and be out the Western Gate the moment it opened, tomorrow.

  "Fortunate, indeed, if dawn sees you out of the city," he told himself grimly. "Remember this and never again go within gates."

  He took a deep breath then, and performed the linked series of mental images that had been the first magic his master had taught him. Calmed by the exercise, hands steady and mind cool, he finished the necessary adjustments to the bag.

  A moment later he was out on the street, joining the crowd running there, and let it bear him, resistless, toward Goddess Square and the choice of multiple routes to the outer city.

  #

  Some time later he was moving toward a spur street tending westward and out and feeling a bit more sanguine regarding his chances of winning clear. So he ambled along, angling through the crowd, the picture of a man vaguely questing—for a lover, perhaps, or an aged parent—nothing frantic, to draw the eye, nor even particularly purposeful.

  Inside the cloak, he rounded his shoulders to disguise his height and took care to walk heavy on the paving stones, to foster the illusion of bulk.

  It took time to do the thing thus, but he judged it to his advantage to allow time for his path to grow cold to the nose of whatever hounds the false Guildmaster might call out to the chase.

  So he thought and so he believed. And so did this endeavor appear to have the Mother's smile, for he had the proper street in his eye; and was beginning to count the steps until he began once more to be safe—when he of the 'broidered sash, Master Feldris himself, stepped out of the street that Lute had thought his salvation, stopped and looked directly into the magician's eyes.

  His jowly face lit as if he'd been chosen for Temple consort, flushing pink as he pointed at the place where Lute had been and looked over his shoulder to call out, "Here he is, Lady! Come quickly!"

  But whether the lady obeyed such ungenteel summons or not, Lute could not have said. He was running, pushing and shoving and not caring whose feet he trod on—running, back into the thickest of the crowd.

  THE FOOL

  Simplicity, Faith

  Upon her balcony overlooking the innermost garden, Moonhawk sat in meditation. Outer eyes closed, she yet saw the greening bushes, the budding trees and the soft new grass with exquisite clarity. The garden was a haven of tranquility, after all, and many potent spells had been woven to insure that tranquility. It was a fitting model for the meditations of one judged by her sisters to be hasty and arrogant.

  It had taken work to shed her bitterness at being excluded from Beltane eve circle; work that, in her current meek state, only illustrated more painfully that she was not fit for Inner Circle; and much less than fit for her duty as vessel of the Goddess.

  With these realizations newly in hand, she had eschewed the more sophisticated trance-patterns and opted for one that needed no drawn-out ritual to birth it, but merely required her own unimpaired Sight, and a rela
xing of her arrogant will.

  Upon the balcony, deep in meditation, Moonhawk was the garden and the peace therein.

  Until, in the garden, there was—discord.

  It was a slight thing, quickly gone, but it was enough to pain her, linked as she was—more than enough to break the web of trance.

  Eyes still closed, but alert now, and seeking, Moonhawk cast her net out to capture the cause of discord.

  She found it nearly at once: A pattern startling in its clarity, tinged with elusive familiarity. From the surface thoughts she caught frustration and anger, desperation, yet not despair. She received the impression that the intruder was being hunted, without expectation of either mercy or succor.

  Hunted, on Beltane! Moonhawk stood, and opened her outer eyes, coordinating what she saw with what her other senses brought her. She established the intruder's location and nodded.

  Hunted, in the very garden of the Inmost Circle!

  Moonhawk went to the edge of the balcony, stepped off and walked the air down to the ground.

  Feet upon the path, she paused once more to be certain of her direction, then set off at a rapid walk.

  #

  He had been a fool to think that the hounds Feldris would bring to the hunt could be any less than Witches.

  Not one Witch, as he had first thought, but three. Almost, he laughed. Three Witches and a false Guildmaster to run one ragged conjurer to ground? Soberness claimed him in a chill rush. Was this the reason the Goddess had herded him to Dyan City? That he might be held as an example to others of his profession?

  Yet, for whatever reasons, three Witches. More than enough to push him in the direction they chose, and to deny him any hope of the streets beyond the square.

  What they had aimed for, he thought, was to pin him against the base of East Tower, there to gather him up at their leisure. But he had moved a little too quickly; played the crowd-currents a little too adeptly. He came to the wall near the tower, certainly, but to the north, hard by the wicket he had noted earlier in the evening. It was the work of a moment to pick the lock and slip through, and hardly more than that to make sure the gate was locked again behind him.

  He doubted his ploy would hold his pursuers long, but he hoped it would hold them long enough for him to hide himself. For in all the great pile of Dyan Temple, he thought, treading the conch-lined path with care, there must be one small hole into which he might crawl, there to sleep through Beltane. He would let himself out the way he had come in tomorrow.

  The path made a sharp turn and twisted through a taelberry arbor, turned again. . .

  And ended at a blank wall.

  The wall must protect a private garden, Lute thought, refusing to accede to despair. The private garden, perhaps, of some Witch, who, if she held rank high enough to possess such a quiet spot, might well be a part of the Beltane eve rituals taking place in the Moon Court even now.

  Beltane itself did not come to fruition until Moonrise tomorrow and there were certain other rituals after, so he had heard, that might keep a ranking lady well away from her garden.

  It was the best gamble he had, who should have quit the table long ago. He brought gloves from beneath his cloak and pulled them on before he set his hands carefully among the wallstones and began to climb.

  The wall was admirably supplied with hand- and foot-holds. Moments later Lute dropped lightly to the floor of the garden beyond, stripped off his gloves and headed for the shalmon bush at the base of the cort tree. He slipped in tight against the trunk, cloak melding with the black bark. The bush clothed him with leaf to the knee.

  He leaned his forehead against the tree and deliberately emptied his mind of everything that was Lute or of Lute's concerns. He was a part of the garden, just quickening with spring. He was the cort tree, warm, smooth bark, widespread branches, soft, feathery leaves.

  And then he was nothing, merely a blot of shadow among the other shadows beneath the tree. Invisible, not there, never there, safe and calm and—

  "It is you!"

  The voice shattered his self-hypnosis and he jumped; stumbled within the embrace of the shalmon bush, and would have fallen except that strong hands caught his shoulders and held him gently upright.

  "It is you," the voice reiterated. "But however did you come here?"

  The speaker was nearly his own height; yellow-haired and angular, dressed in the blue, breast-baring robe of an Initiate. Lute felt his heart go to ice.

  As if she felt his dread, the woman held out a slim hand and stepped away from his hiding place. Rings of power glittered in the moonlight—enough silver to feed him for a goodly number of years, baring an unnaturally short life.

  "Come," the woman said gently, "you don't need to be afraid. No harm will come to you here, I swear it!" She moved her fingers, beckoning, as if he were a bashful child.

  "Come," she said again, and he stepped out of the bush and went two steps toward her across the grass. He could think of no place, now, to run.

  "Good," said the woman—the Witch. "I saw you earlier, at the base of Maidenstairs; I was sorry you had not come in. But you are here now and may find peace, for the Goddess is Mother of us all and Her Temples are safe havens for all Her children." She tipped her head.

  "You are still afraid, but you needn't be. No one will hurt you here. Haven't I said so?"

  "There he is!" He heard the words and felt the blow at the same time: A blow as from a giant's fist, slamming into his skull, driving him to one knee as the world shimmered and started to go gray. . .

  "No! I have said he is safe here!" The world steadied and took back its colors; the pain in his head receded to a dull ache. Lute looked up, saw Feldris and another woman in Circle blue coming toward himself and his champion. This woman was smaller, rounder, darker, and frowning like a thunderhead.

  "You have said he's safe here," she snapped. "And what have you to do with it?"

  The yellow-haired Witch pulled herself up. "He failed at the door at First Hound—I saw it! Now, he comes to us, but afraid. Afraid of being hunted, Sister! Remind me, is it not Beltane eve?"

  The dark one lifted a brow. "You know very well the name of the ceremony from which you are excluded."

  "Yes?" the taller woman said with a false sweetness that set Lute's teeth on edge. "And yourself?"

  "You—dare! On what day and hour was Moonhawk named Circle's Center? I draw my duties from the Circle, and to the Circle alone do I explain my reasons!"

  "Strange," murmured Lute, climbing to his feet and wincing at the persisting headache, "I'd have thought you might reserve time for that which the Goddess sends you."

  "Be silent!" snapped the dark woman, tracing a sharp sign before her. Lute saw the image shine against the air for an instant, then vanish.

  "Certainly," he said and bowed, slightly and with irony. "Since you ask it so nicely."

  The dark woman fairly gaped, but her escort was at no loss of words.

  "Respect for Lady Rowan!" he cried and came two strides forward, fist rising. Lute watched his approach calmly; saw him stop as if suddenly rooted as the tall Witch wove her hand through glittering air.

  "Shame, Feldris Circleman! To move for violence within these walls!"

  Feldris Circleman. Lute stared at the other, searching the soft face and haughty eyes. A servant of the Temple, perhaps even the angry lady's consort. Thus might Lute have been. . .

  "This man," Lady Rowan was telling—Moonhawk?—pointing at Lute's very self, "is a breaker of the peace and one who actively works to rend Circle and lead the ignorant into error. He must be brought before Truth-seers at once."

  Lute stirred. "I am of course honored that word of my skill has come to the ears of the ladies of Dyan Circle," he said smoothly. "However, I have traveled hard the last few days and doubt not my work is grown ragged." He smiled, noting how Lady Rowan's eyes sparked with fury even as her cheeks seemed to pale.

  "I would bring nothing less than my best performance," he said gently, "befor
e your sisters."

  Lady Rowan walked forward, heavy, deliberate steps that crushed the new grass beneath her bare feet. Straight past Feldris Circleman she went until she stood less than an arm's length from Lute and there stopped, looking up at him with her hands on her hips.

  "I bade you be silent. Magician."

  Lute felt a spark of anger, though he kept his face pleasant. Make a curse-word of his profession, would she? He bowed once again, slight and mocking.

  "Why so you did," he said, smiling down at her. "Forgive me a faulty memory."

  Her lips tightened, and she brought her hands sharply up, tracing a design that shone like living bars of fire in the air between them. He heard the other woman make a small sound even as his tongue began to burn.

  Never anger a Witch, he thought as the pain grew and he felt the roof of his mouth scalding. The inside of his cheeks began to fry and he wanted, desperately, to scream—

  "Avert!" One word, that seemed to lance through his tortured mouth like a spear of ice. The pain died on the instant and Lute closed his eyes in blessed relief. He opened them again to see Lady Rowan turning toward Moonhawk.

  "You will cease to meddle! You will free my servant and return to your meditations. When Mother Portal hears of this—"

  "Which she will better hear from my lips than yours, I think, Sister," said Moonhawk coolly. "Let us go together, why not?"

  "Together?" Lady Rowan had gone very still.

  "Together," Moonhawk replied, looking down upon her. "Where should this man better go than to Mother Portal, who knows Truth as plain as any other Seer?" She smiled, but not warmly. "And how better to bring word of my trespass most quickly to her ear?"

  There was a hard silence, then a nod. "Very well," said Lady Rowan stiffly. "Join with me in subduing the magician—"

  "Subduing?" Lute felt Moonhawk's glance like a physical thing. "He hardly seems frantic, though he has every right to be. Few folk, you know, Sister, would stand calm while their tongue was set afire."

  "Oh," said Lady Rowan, ignoring the rebuke. "So you think he'll come quiet, do you?"