Changer's Moon (2 page)

Assorted Sleykynin, Plaz guards, Sankoise, Majilarni raiders and their shamans, NEKAZ KOLE, Ogogehian general and his mercenary army, the two Aglim of Cymbank, all the Followers of the Flame, assorted demons and demon beasts. NILIS GRADINDAUGHTER and the DECSEL MARDIAN are sliding pieces, first serving Ser Noris, then the Maiden.

MINOR PIECES (Reiki janja)

CREASTA SHURIN (small brown intelligent teddy bears) COPERIC (general purpose rogue and news source for Yael-mri) and picked members of his troupe. His co-conspiritor, the fisher Intii VANN, the Ajjin TURIYY and her son (shape changers), assorted other fisherfolk, Stenda, fenekelen, tiny fliers, glass dragons large and small, ship masters, outcasts, keepers, all the Meien, YAELMRI, HARS, the SHAWAR, BRADDON of Braddon's Inn, ROVEDA GESDA (thief, smuggler, busy entrepreneur of Sel-ma-Carth and news source for the Biserica), assorted small folk dwelling in the cracks and crannies of the mijloc. And the CHANGER'S GIFT: JULIA DUKSTRA, GEORGIA MYERS and his raiders, ANGEL and his bunch, the Council, and the men, women and children with various talents Hern brings through the MIRROR.

Comes the CHANGER'S MOON and the endgame begins that will determine the winner of the World.

AT THE CUSP THEY CAST LOTS

With the forefinger of his left hand he stirred the dodecahedral dice. His right was a withered claw, gray like dirty chalk, held curled up against his chest between the spring of his ribs. His face was thinned, worn, yet grown stronger since the game had begun. The ruby was gone, that vestige of youthful flamboyance that had dangled, a drop of fire, from the small gold loop piercing his left nostril. He gathered up the dice, tipped them into an ivory cup.

“Your pieces are scattered, janja,” he said. “Shall we throw for time?”

She knelt on an ancient hide, the coarse wool of her skirt falling across the rounds of her thighs in stiff folds. Her face had thinned also and that which was mortal and human had grown more tenuous. The Dweller-within showed through the smoky flesh, stern and wild and tenderly terrible, without the sheen of Reike's smiles to temper its extravagance.

“Time does not exist. There is only now.”

The corners of his mouth curled up. “Granted, Great One.” There was wry laughter in his dark eyes, a touch of mockery in his voice. “I would offer you another
now
to put your pieces on the board.” His hand closed tightly about the cup. “You're losing the janja, Indweller. You give me an edge you might not want to concede, not having her touch with detail.”

Reiki smoothed the yellowed ivory of her braids. “You're an impudent rascal, my Noris.” Under their white brows her brown-green eyes twinkled at him.

He lifted the ivory cup as if he toasted her. “Are you displeased, Janja?”

“You know more than you should, my Noris. Surprising for Soäreh's get.”

He shrugged, distaste on his lean face. “I use Soäreh, I don't follow him,” he said impatiently. “Shall we throw for time?”

“No. I am permitted a warning, Ser Noris. Consider carefully the consequences of each move. You have the dice. Throw.”

The gameboard sat on a granite slab which thrust through shag and soil like a bone through broken flesh and fell away a stride or two behind the man, a thousand feet straight down to a broad valley white and silent under heavy, moonlit snow. The board was a replica in miniature of the world below them, complete to the placement of trees and structures but empty for the moment of moving forms.

He rattled the dice in their ivory cup, cast them on the stone beside the board. The moonlight waking glitters from their facets, emerald and ruby, amethyst and topaz, they tumbled through a staggering dance and landed with four sigils up: The Runner, the Sword, the Sorcerer, the Eye.

“Ah,” he breathed. “My army begins its march.” He drew his long slim finger along the line of the Highroad, clearing the snow from it and from the land on either side, then he brushed the snow from the fields around Oras. Gravely he contemplated the cleared space. “The order,” he said. “Yes.” He began arranging on the board tiny figures of men-at-arms, on foot and in the saddle. When he had them set out to his satisfaction, he set half a hundred traxim hovering in the air above them, then added supply wains and their teams of plodding hauhaus, the double-teamed war wagons piled high with gear and the parts of siege engines. Last of all he set down tiny black figures, scattering them about the periphery of the army, norits to serve as shields and alarums, transmitting what the traxim saw. He looked over what he'd done, made a few minor adjustments then spoke a WORD and watched the figures begin marching south along the Highroad. Smiling with satisfaction, he scooped up the dice, dumped them in the cup and handed the lot to Reiki janja. “Your throw.”

She grasped the cup, shook it vigorously, sent the dice skittering over the stone with a practiced flip of her wrist. “Interesting. Kingfisher, Poet-warrior, Priestess, Magic Child. The mix as before with a factor added.” She touched the Poet-warrior sigil with a fingertip. “And one change.” She tapped the Priestess.

“There's no center to the mix; it'll never serve against an army. You don't even have leave to mass your meien against me.” He frowned at the dice, running the fingers of his good hand over the chalky skin of the crippled other. “Cede me the mijloc,” he said. “And I'll turn the army from the Biserica.”

“The mijloc is not mine to give. Take it if you can, go elsewhere if you wish. Nothing changes.” The Indweller spoke through a janja gone smoky again. The wildness was flaring, weighed down a little by a compassion as cold as the stone they sat on.

“To the end, then,” he said.

“To the end.” She bent over the board and began setting her figures in place.

I

THE JANJA'S PLAYERS MOVE

KINGFISHER

Hern woke disoriented, coming out of dreams not quite harrowing enough for nightmare. He reached out for Serroi, not wanting to wake her but needing to be sure she hadn't evaporated as had his dream. His hand moved over cold sheets, a dented pillow. He jerked up, looked wildly around, the not-quite-fear of the not-quite-nightmare squeezing his gut.

She was curled up on the padded ledge of the window Coyote had melted through the stone for her comfort, moonlight and starlight soft on the russet hair that had a tarnished pewter sheen in the color-denying light. Relief washed over him, then anger at her for frightening him, then mockery at his dependence on her. He sat watching her, speculating about what it was that drove her night after night to stare out at stars that never saw the mijloc. What was she thinking of? He felt a second flash of anger because he thought he knew, then a painful helplessness because there was nothing he could do to spare her—or himself—that distress. Not so long ago he'd shared dreams with her and learned in deep nonverbal ways the painful convolutions of her relationship with Ser Noris. Love and hate, fear and pleasure—the Noris had branded himself deep in her soul. If he could have managed it, he'd have strangled the creature. Not a man, not in the many senses of that word. Creature.

He got out of the bed and went to her, touched her shoulder, drew his finger down along the side of her face. “Worried?”

She tilted her head back to look up at him. For a moment she said nothing and he thought she wasn't going to answer him. Then she did, with brutal honesty. “No. Thinking, Dom. Thinking that this is the last time we'll be together.”

He wrapped his arms about her. Her small hands came up and closed warm over his wrists. “You aren't coming back with us?” He heard no sign in his voice of the effort he'd taken to speak so calmly.

“That's not what I meant,” she said. “I meant whole to each other, one to one, with everything, everyone else left outside the circle.”

“I see. The last time until this is over.”

She said nothing. He felt her stiffen against him, then relax, knew she had no belief in any afterwards even if they both survived. And he knew with flat finality that there was no place for her in his life as long as he continued Domnor of Oras and Cimpia plain. And knew, too, that each passing day made going back to that pomp more distasteful to him—that shuttered, blinded life where no one and nothing was real, where the courtiers all wore masks, faces pasted on top of faces that were no more real than masks. Like peeling the layers off an onion: when you got down to the last, there was nothing there. He looked over her head at the scatter of moons. He had to see his folk and the mijloc clear of this, but that was all he owed them. I'm tired, he thought, they've got enough years out of me. He shifted so he could slide his hands along her shoulders, moving them up her neck to play with her earlobes, back down again, flesh moving on flesh with a burring whisper. “There will be an afterwards for us,” he murmured. “If you'll come with me, vixen. The world has another half to it, one neither of us has seen. You heal, I'll heave, and we'll end up as wizened little wanderers telling stories to unbelieving folk of the marvels we have seen, the marvels we have done.”

She moved her head across his ribs, sighed. “That feels good.”

He dropped a hand to cup her breast, moved his thumb slowly across her nipple, felt it harden. “Can't you see us, me a fat old man with a fringe of mouse-colored hair, feet up on a table—I've forgotten all my manners, you see, gone senile with too much wine, too many years. Where was I, oh yes, feet up on the table, boasting of my sword fights and magic wars fought so long ago that everyone's forgotten them. And you, little dainty creature, bowed by years, smiling at that old man and refraining from reminding him how much more necessary to the winning of those wars you were.” He slid his arm under her knees, scooped her up and carried her back to the bed.

Serroi woke with Hern's arm flung across her, his head heavy on her shoulder. The window was letting in rosy light, dawn well into its display. She lay a few minutes, not wanting to disturb him. He had enough to face this day. Coyote was growing increasingly impatient because Hern hadn't yet selected any of the mirror's offerings. Today would be the last—he hadn't said so, but she was sure of that. Today Hern had to find his weapon, the weapon that would someday turn in his hand and destroy him, if what Yael-mri hinted at was true. Or destroy what he was trying to protect. The Changer. Ser Noris feared for her, but she discounted that, not because she thought he'd lied but because his passion was for sameness not change; he wanted things about him clear-edged and immutable. At the peak of his power, any change could only mean loss. She sighed, eased away from Hern. His body was a furnace. Her leg started to itch. She ignored it awhile but the prickles grew rapidly more insistent. Carefully she lifted his arm and laid it along his side. For a moment her hands lingered on his arm, then she slid them up his broad back. She liked touching him, liked the feel or the muscles now lightly blanketed with fat, liked the feel of the bone coming through the muscles. She combed her fingers very gently through his hair, the gray streaks shining in the black. Long. Too long. You ought to let me cut it a little. Clean and soft, it curled over her wrist as if it were a hand holding her.

The itch escalated to unendurable. She sat up, eased the quilts off her and scratched her leg. She sighed with pleasure as the itch subsided, glanced anxiously at Hern, but he was breathing slowly, steadily, still deep asleep. She smiled at him, affection warm in her.

The light was brightening outside with a silence strange to her. All her life she'd seen the dawn come in with birdsong, animal barks and hoots, assorted scrapes and rustles, never with this morning's silence as if what the window showed wasn't really there. Magic mirror. She smiled, remembering the mirror Ser Noris made for her that brought images from everywhere into her tower room anywhere, anything she wanted to see it showed her, tiny images she never was sure were real, even later when she'd seen many of those places and peoples with her own eyes, heard them, smelled them, eaten their food, watched their lives.
I wonder if that is how Ser Noris sees all of us, pieces in a game, sterile sanitary images that have shapes and textures, but no intruding inconvenient smells and noises. Not quite real. No one quite real. No, I'm wrong. I was real for him awhile. Cluttering, demanding, all edges some days, all curves another. Maybe that's why be wants me back
—
to remind him that he's real too. He wants the touch he remembers, the questions, the tugs that pulled us together, yet reminded each that the other was still other. He doesn't want me as I am now, only the Serroi he lost. And he doesn't even know that the Serroi be wants never quite existed, was a construct out of his clever head
.

She sighed, looked down at Hern and wanted to wrap herself about him so tight he couldn't ever leave her, but she knew far better than he how little possibility for realization there was in those dreams he'd described to her. She smoothed her hand over his shoulder. He muttered a few drowsy sounds of pleasure, but did not wake, though his hand groped toward her, found her thigh and closed over it.
Ah
, she thought,
I won't say any more to you about that. I won't say don't count on me, love, I might not be around
. “I'm a weakness you can't afford, Dom Hern,” she whispered.

As if in answer to that his hand tightened on her thigh; he still slept but he held onto her so hard, there'd be bruises in her flesh when he woke. His hands were very strong. Short, broad man who'd never be thin, who was already regaining his comfortable rotundity with rest and Coyote's food. She laid her hand over the one that was bruising her and felt the punishing grip loosen. Deceptive little man, far stronger and fit than he looks. Fast, stubborn, even quicker in mind than he was in body. Tired little fat man, gray hair, guileless face, bland stupid look when he wanted to put it on. She stroked the back of his hand and heard him sigh in his sleep, felt the grip loosen more. A snare and a delusion you are, my love. Mijloc didn't appreciate you when they had you, won't appreciate you when they get you back. She eased the hand off her thigh and set it on the sheet beside him. He didn't wake but grew restless, turned over, his arm crooking across his eyes as if the brightening light bothered him, then he settled again into deep slow breathing, almost a snore. She slipped off the bed, kicked the discarded sleeping shift aside and began the loosening up moves that would prepare her for more strenuous exercising.