Winter Moon (15 page)

The priest and priestess of the court approached and asked if Clirando was satisfied.

“Yes. But one more thing.”

“What is it?”

“Let him be sent away.”

“You know, Clirando, that he must be. You have disgraced him before the town. He will never fight for Amnos again.”

They offered her an interval to rest, then.

Clirando said she would meet Araitha at once.

She believed this would be harder, but in fact when her sister-friend came out, pale and angry and lovely in the broadening rays of the sun, Clirando felt nothing still.

They fought well and without tricks for ten minutes, during which each cut the other.

Clirando thought,
This is too much like play. This is too much like times when we have done this for exercise, and to learn from each other
.

Something came to Clirando then. The terrible rage she had not wanted to feel and, so far, had avoided feeling.

When she loses her self-control
, he had said.

Clirando lost it.

Some part of her stood in the air, watching in astonishment as she slashed and hacked at Araitha, who was now falling back before her.

Words tried to boil from Clirando's mouth. She held them in, but they radiated from her eyes she believed, judging by Araitha's face.

Finally Clirando sprang. She went through the swirl of Araitha's blade—which afterward Clirando found had sliced her left arm from shoulder to elbow. As they tumbled over, she drove her knee into Araitha's midriff, exploding all breath from her body.

Clirando knelt over her vanquished opponent, plucked the sword from Araitha's loose grip and slung it clattering across the court.

“You're done,” she hissed.

Araitha had no breath. She sprawled away and curled up on the paving, crowing for air, in the same posture Thestus had adopted when first attacking.

“Clirando, are you satisfied?”

“Yes.”

“She too is disgraced. She too will never fight for Amnos again.”

A victor might be applauded by the crowd.

The stands were applauding loudly. In the tumult Clirando could hear the battle shouts of her own band.

She did not look, did not acknowledge. She went below to one of the fighters' rooms, was bandaged, drank a pitcher of ale, and fell into a deadly sleep.

 

Araitha visited Clirando's house three nights later. It was the hour before Araitha's ship was to sail, taking her away to the distant city of Crentis, where she had relatives. Thestus by then was long gone.

Araitha wore a woman's dress and heavy cloak, and her hair was braided with golden ornaments.

She stood staring at Clirando.

Clirando said, “Who let you in?”

“Old Eshti. She doesn't know. She thinks we are still friends.”

Above, the dusk was already full of stars over the little courtyard. A tiny fountain tickled the night with silvery sounds, and leaves rustled in the trees as the house doves settled. Through a lighted door, Eshti the servant woman was already bringing cups of fruit juice and wine.

“Thank you, Eshti,” said Clirando. “Put them there.”

“Something to warm you. The nights turn colder,” said Eshti. “And she, our poor lady-girl, this long journey.” Then Eshti went to Araitha and pressed her young hand in two old ones. “Don't fret, dear. You'll
be home in Amnos before too long. I'll see the mistress doesn't forget you.”

Clirando had not been startled by her servant Eshti's ignorance of what had happened—only glad Eshti, who would have been upset, and not been bothered with it. The market no doubt would have carried the gossip, but Eshti was a little deaf, and besides well known and liked. It seemed lips were tactfully sealed when she approached.

When the old woman had gone, Clirando found she had dug her sharp nails into her palms. She relaxed her fists.

“Best she doesn't know then,” she said. “But tell me, before you go, what you could possibly want from me?”

“To give you something, Clirando.”

“I want nothing of yours. How could you think I would?”

“This gift you must take.”

“No.”

“
Yes.
I've had it especially worked for you. The ancient women who live in the caves on the mountainside—they helped me fashion it.”

Clirando's heart turned to stone.

Witches lived up there, and other mad and dangerous sorts.

She readied herself for one more trick—some poison or assault.

Araitha spoke softly.

“I curse you, Clirando. It's nothing much. Your life will be hollow as an emptied jar. Nothing in it but
dust. Love may come and go, adventures may come and go. But they will echo in the hollow of you, and they too will become dust. And never again will you sleep. Oh, no. That respite from your thoughts will never be yours—unless some drug gives it to you. All your life, be it short or long, sleepless and empty you shall go.”

Clirando shrugged. “You're a fool, Araitha.”

Araitha said nothing.

Her face was like a statue's, expressionless and blind.

She slipped away out of the courtyard, vanishing from dark to light to darkness in the subtle way of a ghost.

Clirando poured the juice and wine on the ground. They
had
been poisoned, by Araitha's words, her childish, horrible little bane.

Clirando was not afraid.

She spent the evening as she had planned, reading books and scrolls from her father's library. He had been both scholar and soldier, and traveled to many lands.

At the usual hour Clirando went to bed. Coolly she mused a moment on Araitha's words, but paid them no proper heed. Just as she always normally did, she fell asleep swiftly, and slumbered until morning. She had suspected it was a feeble curse.

 

The trading ship, the
Lion
, which was to carry Araitha to Crentis, sank in a gale off the unfriendly coasts of Sippini.

All on board were drowned, and the ship herself
dragged to the bottom. Only remnants of cargo washing in to the port evidenced what had happened.

When news reached Amnos two months after, it was Tuyamel and Vlis who came in person to tell Clirando.

She heard the tidings quietly. When her girls were gone, Clirando threw a pinch of incense into the watch fire of her private shrine.

“Forgive her, Parna. Let her live well in the lands beyond death. Forgive me too for I don't know what I must feel.”

That night Clirando dreamed of Araitha, not drowning, nor as she had been in life, but veiled and hidden, passing through a shadow to a light—to a shadow.

When Clirando woke with a start it was still deep night. She lay awake through the rest of it, until dawn showed in the window.

The following night, though tired from exercise, she did not sleep at all.

Her life was active and under her command. She did not think this insomnia could last. But it lasted. Night followed night, sleepless. She grew accustomed to the changing patterns of moon and cloud reflected on the ceiling. Even when, exhausted as she came to be, she lay down to rest at noon, sleep would not come. It fluttered over the room before the cinders of her eyes, brushed her with its wing, and flew far, far off.

Death it seemed had cemented the curse firmly into a place of power. Or, it was Parna's punishment.

 

Winter entered Amnos. Now was the time of long nights.

Clirando suffered it as best she could. When an alarm rang from the town's brazen gongs, she leaped down the streets leading her band among the other warriors. Pirates were trying their luck again, made hungry by lean weather. They were beaten back into the sea. Clirando's band did well, and sustained no casualties.

As the season moved toward spring, Clirando took herself in hand. The physician had already supplied her with an herbal medicine, which scarcely had an effect. Now she gained a stronger one. With its aid, every third or fourth night she was able to sleep two or three hours—though waking always with a heavy head and sickened stomach.

The bane will die away in its own time, like a venomous plant. I must ignore it, which will lessen its hold on me
.

She pushed the burden from her, would not think of it by day, and lay reading through the nights.

Strangely, her body, young and fit, acclimatized to sleep loss, even if, on the third or fourth evening without slumber, sometimes she would see phantoms moving under trees or against walls—tricks of her tired eyes. Surely not real?

The priestess she consulted listened carefully to all Clirando told her. The priestess, who had been a warrior too in her youth, and was now middle-aged
and stout, told Clirando gently, “And you have not mourned Araitha.”

“No, Mother. I've made offerings to the goddess for her sake, and put flowers by the altars in Araitha's name. But I can't mourn. I—I'm angry still.
Disgusted
still.”

“Yet you fought her and bested her and ruined her life in Amnos.”

“Do you mean I killed her?” Clirando stared. “It was because she had to go away that she died.”

“No. It wasn't you that caused her drowning. The sea and the wind did that. But you broke her spirit, Clirando. Why else did she curse you in that way?”

“She could have wished
me
dead.”

“I think,” said the priestess quietly, “she preferred you to live and suffer. Thestus did not curse you. He didn't care enough, or love enough. But Araitha was your sister. Measure her feeling for you by her last acts.”

“What shall I do?”

“Like all of us, Clirando, you can only do what you are able. Do that.”

 

The moon, which by now figured so vividly in Clirando's sleepless nights, began to be important to all the town—indeed to all the known world, from Crentis to Rhoia, and the burning southern deserts of Lybirica.

Every sixteen or seventeen years, through the strange blessing of the gods, there would come seven nights of midsummer when every night the moon
would be full: seven nights together of the great white orb, coldly glowing as a disk of purest marble lit from within by a thousand torches.

The last such time had been in Clirando's earliest childhood. She had only the dimmest memory of it, of her mother leading her up among the family on the roof each night to see—and of all the house roofs of Amnos being similarly crowded with people, who let off Eastern firecrackers in spiraling arcs of gold and red. Among Clirando's band, only Erma and Draisis had never seen the seven full moons.

But all of them had heard of the Moon Isle. Even Thestus, come to that. He had compared Clirando to its unlovely rocks when they fought.

The Isle lay out in the Middle Sea, beyond Sippini. It was sacred and secret but, as was also well-known, on every occasion of the Seven Nights, certain persons had to go there, to honor and invoke the moon's power.

Amnos would send its delegation of priests and priestesses. Sometimes others were selected to sail to the Isle. How they were chosen was never made public, and no one was permitted to speak—or ever did so—of what took place upon the island. Nevertheless, or perhaps
because
of the silence, theories abounded. The Isle was full of dangerous and terrible beasts, also of spirits and demons. It was a spot of ultimate ordeal and test—and some of those sent there had not returned.

Clirando herself had never speculated unduly. She had been too busy, too fulfilled in her life.

The same priestess was waiting for her when she
answered the temple's summons, and entered the shrine beside the main hall.

In the altar light below the statue of Parna, the dumpy older woman had gained both grace and presence.

“I have something to tell you, Clirando.”

“Yes, Mother?”

“You, and the six girls of your band, have been selected for an important duty.”

“Certainly, Mother. We'll be glad to see to it.”

“Perhaps not.” The faintest nuance went over the priestess's face. It was an unreadable expression—caused only, maybe, by the flicker of the altar lamp. “You seven are to travel to the Moon Isle.”

Clirando felt her heart trip over itself. She swallowed and said, “To the Isle?”

“Yes. You will leave in ten days, in order to be there at the commencement of the Moon Month.”

“Mother—this is an honor for us—but none of us have any notion of what we must do when we arrive.”

“None have,” said the priestess flatly.

“But then—”

“Clirando. This is both an honor for you, as you say, a reward for your valor and care in the past—and a penance. A privilege and a trial. You'll have heard disturbing things of the place, yes?”