Woman Who Loved the Moon (3 page)

Around the perimeter of the pavilion, the guards watched. Shea had not ordered them there; they had wandered by, casually it seemed. Rhune wondered if they thought he was a threat to Shea. It was an ironic but, he concluded, not a stupid suspicion.

The first two matches had been with wooden knives. Shea had won them both. He was deadly with knives. The third match had been wrestling, which Rhune had won, as he was about to win this one.

Shea feinted a punch, and followed it with a true one. Rhune seized the extended arm and twisted it in a circle. Shea’s whole body spun with the motion. Rhune yanked the arm upward until the wizard’s thumb touched his shoulder blade and scythed the wizard’s legs out from under him. Shea dropped, free arm curling to protect his head as he fell. Rhune followed him to the grass and held him there, arm locked, his knees on Shea’s spine.

“Two and two,” he said, and let go.

Shea rolled upright. He was breathing hard. “Winner’s choice.”

Rhune flexed his fingers. “Staves.”

With staves they were even; Rhune was taller, with a longer reach, but Shea was swifter. Nodding, Shea beckoned a guard to throw down two staves from the rack. “The red one,” he directed, as the man hesitated. “And any other.” The red staff was the sturdy oak one that Rhune had cut and polished himself, three years ago. No, Rhune reminded himself. Four years ago. A year had passed since he’d touched it. He picked it from the grass, feeling the familiar slant and warp and pattern of the grain.

“You kept it,” he said.

Shea half-smiled. “I don’t throw things away.”

He dropped into stance, one foot forward of the other, hands spaced evenly on the cudgel. They circled slowly, feinting and withdrawing. Rhune struck twice but Shea was ahead of him both times.
I don’t throw things away.
Am I a thing? Rhune thought. His hands tensed on his stick.

Slowly, and then faster, Shea began to push the attack, whirling his staff in jarring blows that Rhune was hard put to it to block, to the head, the groin, the stomach, the legs. The guards murmured approval. Rhune twisted and blocked and countered, feeling himself pressed. Suddenly he saw an opening as Shea, careless in victory, swung his staff at an almost horizontal angle to Rhune’s ribs. Rhune stepped inside the blow and swung his own staff into the pit of Shea’s stomach.

The shock of the strike went into Rhune’s hands and up to his elbows. He had not meant to hit that hard. Shea doubled and fell, gasping, fighting for breath.

Rhune dropped his own stick and knelt. “Shea?”

“All right,” whispered the wizard. He gestured with one hand. Rhune glanced around. Three guards had crossed the border of the practice space, their eyes worried. At the gesture, they halted. Rhune put his hands under Shea’s arms and helped him to sit.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean that.”

Shea took a deep breath. He coughed. “I swear there’s a hole in my spine,” he said. “Your match, I think.” Standing, he stretched. Rhune rose. Suddenly Shea whirled, swift as a cat, and his right hand, knife-edged, slashed Rhune’s neck.

Rhune rode the blow back, shaking his head to clear it, falling into a defensive posture automatically—but Shea did not follow up.

“You’re recovered,” Rhune said. “I wish I had your recovery time.”

“You don’t need it if you don’t get hit, and
you
don’t, very often.” Shea started for the house, then changed his mind. “I’ll come in a while,” he said. Rhune could not tell for whom he was speaking, Rhune or the guards. “I’m going for a swim.”

Rhune put the staves back on the rack himself. He smelled his own stink. The sigh of the spray on the breakwater rocks seemed inviting. Finally he followed Shea’s footprints east. He scrubbed himself clean of the oil with sand, and ducked in and out of the surf a few times. The westering sun laid a red track over the surface of the bay. Rhune closed his eyes, wondering how much more Shea had to do before they could leave.

He found himself listening, and laughed at himself. Shea was agile and silent in water as if he had been born in it. All he could hear was the hiss and moan of spray.

Suddenly a green wave rose up and up like a wall, and Shea came sliding down the curl like a dolphin riding a wake.

Beckoning, the Sealord said his name. Rhune rose from where he had been sitting. “Come walk,” said Shea. They walked, stitching a path of prints down the wet sand.

Fear began to grow in Rhune: fear of the future. Finally he could no longer stand the silence. “Shea, I don’t want to go.”

He felt Shea look at him. “Afraid?”

“Yes! Not of Seramir.”

“Of what?”

Rhune clenched his fists. “Of myself, and what I might do.”

“Go on.”

Rhune looked at the bay. “I broke faith with you. I—you were right to name me traitor. Might it not happen again?”

There. He had said it.

“It might,” said Shea. He sounded very calm. “I think it will not. Besides, I broke a kind of faith with you.”

“How?” Rhune said. It was not what he had expected Shea to say.

“Do you not know?” said the wizard. Rhune shook his head, unsure of the Sealord’s meaning. “Strange. But you are still angry. Surely you must have wondered why, of everything the ocean took from you, the anger remains.”

He sat on the sand. Rhune sat beside him. “I always had a temper,” he said. The clinging sand made him itch; he brushed it off, watching the shadows move and slide over Shea’s face.

Shea said, “We built the fleet together, you and I, Rhune. It took ten years.”

“Yes,” said Rhune. The rush of memories made his heart twitch with pain.

Inexorably the quiet voice went on. “You loved that life— the life of the docks and the ships. You were the best fleetmaster this coast has ever seen.”

Rhune bowed his head. “I thought I was.”

“We only lost one ship. It was
Waverunner,
do you remember? She foundered in the fourth year, in the autumn gales. The other ships wore black sails for a month. All the hands were lost.”

“I remember it.”

“That was the first year I thought of giving up the fleet,” said Shea.

Rhune jerked his head up. “You never spoke of it.”

“I know. I should have. I blamed myself for those deaths.”

“Could you have prevented them?” Rhune asked.

Shea shook his head. “No. But it was my ship they sailed, my route they followed—my will that kept them in the water. For that I am responsible. Power over wealth, over lives—that is not always a good power to give to a sorcerer. It’s too easy for us to abuse it.”

Rhune said, “You did not abuse it.”

Shea sighed. He lifted a handful of sand from the beach, and let the grains slip through his fingers. “I think I did. Remember the day we sailed
Windcatcher
to Mantalo, to ride the waves?”

Rhune smiled. “I remember.” He recalled the feel of the wave cresting under his thighs, and the great green hole it carved in the sea before it fell. He had ridden it down, without even a piece of wood to hold, with death a thunder in his ears, and Shea’s laughter ringing through his veins...

“It was good,” Shea said. “Terrible, and beautiful, and you trusted me to keep you safe...”

“Yes,” Rhune said.

“Yet I could not—did not—spare a thought to keep you from Osher’s whispers and his greed. If you needed wealth, I should have given you wealth.”

Rhune’s heart lurched. “
Given
me wealth? I killed a man last year to try to take that fleet from you—and now you say you should have given it to me?” His voice rasped. He stood, legs shaking. He stared at Shea’s upturned, shadowed face. “I’ll see you dead before you give me anything!”

* * *

Two days later, they sailed for the Firemountain.

Shea called a wind into the sails to speed them on their way, but it was still past sunset when they saw to the northeast the red glow of the Firemountain against the blackening sky. As they sailed nearer, they saw red streamers reflecting off the water. “What is that?” Rhune whispered.

Shea said, “The mountain’s heart is restless.”

Three lengths offshore they were intercepted by a ship. It had red sails, and painted on its black hull was the golden image of a firedrake. Lanterns glimmered along its prow.

“Halt,” came the call from the ship.

Rhune repeated the order to Shea, who was handling the boat. Like an obedient servant, Shea furled the sails and bent to oars to hold
Windcatcher
in her rocking trough. The name on the little ship was not
Windcatcher,
nor did she look as she usually did, trim and sleek and white, nor did Shea look like Shea. All these things he had changed, with magic. Only Rhune looked himself. It made him feel exposed.

“Who are you?” cried the voice from the big ship. “By what right do you trespass into the domain of the Firelord?”

Rhune filled his lungs. He saw Shea’s nod of encouragement and trust. “My name is Rhune,” he called. “I enter by right of refuge!”

From the pause that followed his announcement, Rhune guessed that his name was not unknown to the voice. Finally the answer wafted down to them. “Follow us.” Shea shipped the oars and raised sail. Slowly they tacked in toward the docks, keeping as far back as they could from the dragon-ship’s long white wake.

The harbor was lit with great red torches. By their light, Rhune could see along the docks and into the interior of the island. Shea had not told him what to expect, and as he gazed he felt the muscles of his face slacken in surprise. Built up the sloping side of the volcano was a mighty stone city. The streets were wide and smooth, paved with stone. Red banners with the dragon device waved everywhere. It was night, but all through the myriad streets and alleys people moved. Rhune counted thirty ships anchored in the harbor. Over all, the mountain rumbled softly, like a sleeping dragon.

The master of the ship that met them directed them to a berth amid the boats, and waited for them to leave the craft. He bowed to Rhune. “Welcome to the Firemountain,” he said. “Come with me.” They followed him (Shea at Rhune’s back, as was proper) to a great stone palace. Its sides were smooth as water, and they shone like scarlet glass.

Guards barred their passage. But the master of the ship drew them aside. Rhune heard his name, and then Shea’s. He kept his face impassive. Finally the guards moved from the door. It swung open, into a long dark hall.

A silent man beckoned them into the darkness. “Come,” he whispered. They paced after him through an immense, windowless corridor. Torches flickered in the silence. He opened yet another door, and pointed. “Go.” Rhune swallowed, and went in. Shea came afterward. He had changed his face and coloring and also the way he walked. Rhune kept having to glance twice at him before he remembered that this was Shea.

The room was hot, and rich with tapestries, rugs, heavy, polished furniture, and red-gold ornaments. Rhune paced. He did not want to sit down. He itched for a bath and some cold water to drink, feeling dirty and rough from the journey.

A small door popped open in a wall. Rhune stiffened. A man walked toward him. He wore red and black. His hair was gray. His face was white, and his eyes deep ebony. In them a steady red flame seemed to burn. “Good evening, traveler,” he said. His voice was deep. “I am Seramir, Lord of this mountain.”

Rhune bowed low. His palms were clammy with sweat. “Lord, my name is Rhune.”

“Rhune, who once served Shea Sealord?”

“That is right.”

Seramir signalled. A servant entered, carrying a golden tray. She set it on the table and pulled two chairs to the table’s edge. The Firelord sat. “You are welcome to my kingdom,” he said. “You are no doubt hungry and thirsty from your journey. Let us eat, and then talk. Your servant”—the dark, burning eyes found Shea, where he stood silently against a wall—”may find food and drink in my kitchens.”

Rhune tensed, remembering Shea’s admonition to him, that he should eat nothing prepared with fire. “I am not hungry, lord. Thank you.”

“But after so long a journey you must be thirsty,” said the Firelord. He poured something from a golden pitcher into a golden cup. “It is a tiring sail from Kameni Bay.” He pointed to the velvet-backed chair. Gingerly, Rhune seated himself at its edge. The Firelord held out the cup. Rhune took it. “Dismiss your servant, Rhune Fleetmaster. Drink, and be refreshed—if it is not discourteous of me to offer liquid to a man who has so recently been an ocean.”

There was no help for it. Rhune gestured to Shea to depart with the Firelord’s servant, and took the cup. He hoped the goblet held water but no, it held wine. He sipped it. It was red and rich, a Ryokan vintage, flavorfully spiced. “I am not a fleetmaster, lord.”

“You were once,” said Seramir. “Perhaps you will be again. How do you like the wine?”

“It’s very good,” said Rhune. “It tastes like a Mantalo vintage.”

Seramir nodded. “It is. We grow no grapes on the island.” He filled his own cup and drank. Rhune swallowed a little more of the liquid. He wondered whose ships had carried the casks from Mantalo, and if its sailors lay buried in the ash of the ruined harbor.