Moongather (6 page)

The ship danced southward until days and nights matched and the winds were warm as her own breath—always no land, only the blue water, the blue sky and the mage wind blowing them into summer. Her life in her father's wagon following the vinat faded into vague dreams. She had a child's perception of time, the hours stretching out and out until one day was swallowed by the next, until she might always have run about the deck of the ship surrounded by an endless sea.

The rising sun was red in her eyes when she woke on the last day of the voyage; she blinked and yawned, sat up rubbing her eyes. Kicking the blanket away, leaving it in a heap for the hands to carry off, she trotted to the railing to see what was happening, squinting against the glare of the morning light. Her eye-spot tingled, a sourceless itch crawled about beneath her skin, and she had an uncomfortable sense of waiting-about-to-end. The nose of the boat pointed toward a triangle of black cutting up to spoil the smooth line of the horizon. She shivered. What there was about that rising dark fang to make her so uneasy she couldn't tell, but when she looked at it, she felt a hollow coldness spreading inside her. She watched it grow for a while then went slowly back to the mast and her cooling breakfast.

The black form became a tall cone-shaped mountain breathing out a wavering plume of steam. Other small dots grew into dark islands, an archipelago of stone whose tallest peak was an active volcano.

Having begun to think the South was all water, Serroi went to the rail again to watch, fascinated, the nearing islands. The ship dipped neatly through a ring of foam and slid past a large island of brown-black stone, then past a blunt stone pier with a huge stone house high above it rising from a glass-smooth cliff, a house that seemed big enough to stable her family's vinat herd. She stared up at it as they went past, wondering about it, pounded small fists on the rail in frustration because the hands were mute and couldn't answer her questions and Ser Noris was out of touch and she wouldn't have dared question him anyway.

The ship nosed through the twisting passage between the islands, past more tall houses and silent piers. The air felt heavy and dead, except for the mage wind driving them. The islands were barren with no touch of green. Even the water had lost its brilliance and sighed heavily and darkly under them.

The mage wind died and the ship glided smoothly along one of the stone piers. As it nudged into place the sails came down with hasty snappings and sighing slaps and the mooring lines snaked out to snub it against the pier. Serroi felt the rope about her waist come alive and writhe loose. It wriggled away from her to coil itself back on the masthook. Rubbing at her waist, she tilted her head back, her eyes moving up along the dark shiny face of the cliff to the tower that continued its ascent into a heavy sky. A dead place, cold and unwelcoming. She turned to face north, yearning for the tundra where life was thick and warm even when it snowed.

Ser Noris came up onto the deck moving with a calm, slow dignity. He stood a moment, she heard the soft sounds of his feet stop and knew he was watching her; she refused to look around. “Come, child.” The music of the words wooed her and surprised her almost as if she were hearing his voice for the first time, having forgotten the magic it made for her during the silent weeks on board the ship.

She turned slowly and walked across the deck to him, her feet dragging, her head down. She wanted to say to him that she needed to go home, that she didn't like this place, that it was dead and made her feel dead—but she didn't quite dare. She could feel an itch building in her that she couldn't describe or even fully understand, a growing resistance to being pushed along without understanding what was happening. When she forced herself to look up at him, his beautiful face was quiet, he was even smiling a little—but he was still a long, long way off and the smile was a grimace that didn't touch his eyes. She said nothing, simply took the hand he held out to her.

He lifted her onto the pier and led her down it to the cliff face which was glass-smooth and without a break she could see anywhere. She opened her eyes wide, wondering what the Noris was going to do, then gasped with surprise and fear as her feet left the stone of the pier.

They rose smoothly, soaring with the ease of the sea birds lately her companions. After her fright passed away and she was certain she wasn't going to fall, she laughed with delight and kicked her feet through the flowing air. The Noris ignored her antics. At the top of the cliff he halted the flight and glided smoothly to a landing inside a deep alcove cut into the tower's outer wall. Facing the tall bronze doors at the back of the cut, he spoke a quiet WORD. The doors sprang apart, crashing against the stone not far from his impassive face. He strode between the age-greened slabs into the thick blackness beyond, pulling Serroi along with him, a draggled kite tail almost forgotten.

As soon as the Noris stepped over the threshhold, the door clashed shut again, almost nipping Serroi's cloak between its jaws. She gasped and stumbled, blind and frightened in the sudden darkness. Clinging to the Noris's cool fingers, she turned and twisted with him through darkness, having to trust him to lead her back to light. He walked as freely as if the dark were light to his eyes, but she felt her terror growing until her breath was near strangled in her throat. When she knew absolutely she couldn't take another step, he stopped, dropped her hand, spoke a WORD.

The wall split before them and a cool pearly light flooded into the blackness. The Noris stepped through into the room beyond. To Serroi's watery eyes, he was a tall black column with opaline fringes. She rubbed at her eyes with fisted hands, then went timidly through after him.

The room was a domed cylinder that looked as big as the inside of a mountain to her. The light came from all over as if it filled the room like air. There were tall chairs around the walls, some tapestries—images of plants and animals in bright splashes of color, three long narrow ink-paintings—again natural images suggested in splashes of black and white. On the far side, opposite the doorway, a dais jutted from the wall with a massive throne-chair centered on it, the dark wood carved into serpentine twists of vine with animal heads snarling through the leaves. On the floor the rug was a shimmer of brilliant leaf and flower forms. Serroi gave a soft exclamation of delight and stooped to caress the thick silky fibers, to trace one of the twisting vines and stroke a crimson flower the size of her hand. She glanced at the Noris, a question on her lips that died when she saw the look on his face. “All the things I'm denied,” he said. She felt the pain and self-mockery in the soft voice and crouched trembling on that magnificent rug, more frightened than she'd ever been in her short lifetime. Then he was calm again, his face a sparely sculptured mask. He held out his hand. Slowly she straightened, got to her feet, crossed the rest of the rug to him and took the extended hand. He led her to the tapestry that hung behind the throne chair, pulled the edge aside to reveal a barrel-roofed corridor. “Through here, child. Walk ahead of me.”

Serroi frowned down at her toes, resisting the urging of his hand. All the small rebellions of the long journey came together in her at the sight of that dimly lit wormhole. Knowing she would be punished, having rebelled and been punished for it countless times before, struggling against the torments her older brothers and sisters inflicted on her, rejecting their instinctive attempts to break her spirit and turn her to something less even than the animals they at least tended with some care, she snatched her hand from the Noris, scowled up at him. “My name is Serroi.”

THE WOMAN: III

Serroi gasped out of her troubled sleep and sat up. “Maiden bless,” she groaned, clutching at her throbbing head. When the pain steadied to a dull ache, she flung the quilt aside and drew her knees up, sitting in the cool darkness of the pre-dawn morning, struggling to come to terms with the forces contending within her.

No more running
. She pressed her fingers against her eyes, feeling the familiar wall of resistance rising in front of her.
No more. Feet won't go no more
. She pulled her hands down and smiled at her toes, wriggled them, then sighed, her brief flash of humor subsiding. Staring at the crumpled quilts beyond her feet she saw in her mind the Valley of the Biserica, her Golden Valley, the place of peace she sought for and fought for and suffered for.
Fifteen years. After fifteen years he should be cleaned from my blood. I was surprised, that has to be it. I didn't have time to prepare for the fight
.

With a groan and a yawn she stretched her torso up as far as she could, then bent forward until her forehead touched knees still trying to shake. When she straightened, she stripped the case off the small hard pillow and rubbed it over her sweaty body, the coarse fabric scratching at her skin, stirring her blood. After she finished, she sat quietly, elbows on her knees, hands cupped over her eyes.
I have to go back. I have to find Tayyan if she's still alive. I have to warn Domnor Hern about his number two's plotting against him, the lovely Lybor. Wonder if he'll believe me. He has to know what she's like—but if he does, why the hell did he marry her? Or Floarin, for that matter. Tall and beautiful and gloriously blonde. Why do I bother asking? Both of them near a head taller than him. What's he trying to prove? Doesn't he know how ridiculous he looks beside either of them, little fat man prancing along beside golden goddesses?
She scowled.
Though I've seen a look in his eyes sometimes—he's laughing at himself or us or the whole damn world. I don't know
. She stopped a moment.
I should have known I couldn't just run off. All that wine and I still had nightmares. I suppose I'll have to face my Noris someday if I'm ever to win free of him
. She grimaced; she wasn't ready to face the great nightmare in her life, perhaps she never would be—though she didn't care for that thought.

The darkness was greying with the dawn; she stretched out again and lay scratching at her stomach and staring up at massive rafter beams as their outlines slowly sharpened, wondering just how she was going to get back into Oras. The Plaz-guards would be on the watch for her and the Norid.… She grimaced again then forced herself to remember him. He wasn't much, only a Norid, a street-Nor, capable of a few cheap tricks, selling false gold and charming quartz to fool jewelers.
Not like … no, I won't think of him
. She winced away from the face that had haunted her for the past fifteen years.
Calling up demons. That's what he promised Morescad. Him? He wouldn't dare try it unless he had backing. Backing Morescad and Lybor couldn't know about or they wouldn't have gone near him
. She frowned as she recalled more details of the scene in the secret room.
Lybor's nurse. She had the circled flame embroidered on her sleeve. The Sons of the Flame. Are they involved in this? Connected with the Nearga-nor. Can't be. They rant against the Norim almost as virulently as they do against the Maiden
. She chewed on her lip.
This is all speculation. I need more information. Still, Yael-mri should know what we saw. Another reason for getting back into Oras. Coperic's birds. But how
…
how … how … if they're looking for me, if the Nearga-nor goes after me? Or Ser Noris
. She whispered his name into the grey morning. “Ser Noris. Why am I alive?” Tears flooded her eyes. “Why did you let me live?” This was a question she'd asked a hundred times before and as before she got no answer. Rubbing impatiently at her eyes, she rolled over and slid off the bed.

Her feet made soft slipping sounds over the pole floor as she walked back and forth, back and forth, hearing the noises of the stirring family on the sleeping platform on the other side of the flimsy wall. The wide low bed behind her was the Intii's own. He'd moved his woman and himself out to join the immediate family who slept on pallets rolled out on a wide platform jutting out over the single large room of the great hall. Other dependents slept below, anywhere they could find space to spread their bedding. Though she was grateful enough for the privacy she suspected it wasn't so much a matter of courtesy as it was a protecting of the people from the corrupting presence of an outsider. She stretched again, did a few quick bends and twists, then started dressing.

The sky was reddening in the east when she stepped into the street but the village was still dark and quiet, though most of the halls had lines of yellow light around doors and shutters. As she moved slowly along past the big square buildings built of white chalk and red sandstone, she caught glimpses of fisher vassals milking the varcam and feeding other stock, of the sheds and pens and corrals tucked in between the halls and the wall. She heard a grunt just behind her and wheeled to see a posser amble past her, cross the street and lean into a housewall, rasping its stiff bristles against the soft white stone. More of the squat shadows loomed up beside her and crunched past. Apparently the fishers turned their posserim loose to forage outside the walls where they rooted among the grasses for tubers and dug small rodents out of their nests.

She moved slowly toward the open gate; after last night's violence the peace and the simplicity of the dawn was almost disconcerting. Even the sky with its faded stars and the rags of last night's storm was tranquil. Then she saw the dark heads thrusting out the tower windows, turned toward the mountains. Life was going on as usual, but the Intii was taking no chances on a sneak attack.

Torches lit the dark forms of men working about the boats, turning them upright, sliding them into the water, stepping the masts. When they spoke, which they did seldom, their voices echoed hollowly over the water. Their shadows jerked and wavered over the grass and mud.

Serroi leaned against a massive gatepost sunk halfway into a groove in the chalk wall while more posserim trotted past her. She watched the busy men getting ready to ride the retreating tide out to sea and felt a restlessness that had little to do with her nervous apprehension about returning to Oras. She fidgeted a while longer then followed the posserim along the wall, walking out onto the grassland. The sun was showing layer on layer of transparent color as it came from behind the jagged peaks of the Earth's Teeth. The forests carpeting the lower hills began to emerge from the smoky shadow still clinging to the earth.