Woman Who Loved the Moon (5 page)

“Where are we going?” Rhune said.

The man licked his lips. “To the Tower,” he replied. At the end of the hall there was a staircase which led up, where all the others now led down, and he pointed toward it. Something furtive and ugly entered his voice and eyes. “You said you wanted to see wonders. I will show you wonders, up there. But you must speak of this to no one. You are not supposed to visit the Tower.”

“What is there?” Rhune asked.

Hraki said, “You’ll see.” He pushed Rhune. “Go on, climb!” He made Rhune go ahead of him. The stair was narrow, and made of stone; their steps echoed from it. Rhune grew apprehensive, and sweat began to coat his sides. He pictured the Firelord waiting for him in the Tower, with punishment for his presumption, and drugs to put him once more to sleep, never to wake again. The thought weakened him so that he sagged against the wall.

Hraki hissed viciously at him. “Dolt! Fool! Don’t stop!” He pushed Rhune from behind. Mastering himself, Rhune straightened. Heart pounding against his ribs, he climbed the stair to its end. The guard came after him, eyes gleaming with a strange delight.

The top of the Tower was square and cold. Three doors led off, in three separate directions. There were no rugs on the stone flags, and no tapestries on the grim dark walls.

The guard pointed at one of the doors. It was slightly ajar. “You may go into that room,” he said. “But you must promise to touch nothing.”

“I promise,” said Rhune. Swallowing his terror, he went into the room. Hraki came after him. It was empty. A fire burned in a grate. By its light Rhune made out strange shapes. After a while he began to see what they were. In one corner of the little chamber sat a rack, its hideous machinery silent, and in another corner a wheel. A third comer held a table with instruments of torture laid out carefully on it: pincers and irons and screws. Rhune swallowed back the bile that rose in his throat. He said, “I do not like this place.”

Hraki chuckled evilly. “No one does.” But he beckoned Rhune to leave. Outside, he pointed to a second door. “You may look in this room.” But when Rhune reached to open the door the smaller man struck his hand from the knob. “No!” He pointed to a sliding panel, set in the door. “Look through this.” Rhune thrust the panel back. Stooping a little, he gazed through the opening.

This room was a small stone cage, bare but for three things. The first was a set of chains to go about a person’s wrists and ankles and stand him up against a wall. The second was another set of chains, this one set in the floor, so that a man within their hold would have to lie spread upon the cold stone, unable to move save to lift his head.

The third thing in the room was a great nest of coiling snakes, their bodies living flames. They hissed langourously at each other. Fire dripped from their tails and scales and tongues. Hraki chuckled. “Beauties, eh?” He struck Rhune’s shoulder. Rhune schooled his face to vacancy. But his mind was cold with rage and horror as he pictured a man or woman chained to the wall, or worse, to the floor, unable to escape the serpents’ touch.

His guide’s eyes now had an eager look in them that Rhune did not like. “And there is the third room,” he said. He dragged Rhune across the corridor, opened the third door, and practically shoved Rhune in.

In this room there was a man.

He lay locked onto the floor in the center of the room, arms and legs spread taut. Rhune could not see the chains that held him. Around him, out of the air, red fire lunged. It burned without consuming, touching his face and belly and groin, it burst from beneath his back, it ran along his legs and arms. His muscles contracted and strained with agony. Soundlessly he twisted and writhed in the invisible chains.

“The fire will not hurt us if we do not touch him,” said Hraki. He pushed Rhune again. “Go closer. Look at him.”

Rhune moved closer to the tortured captive. Green eyes from the floor watched his face.

“Who is this man?” he asked softly.

The guard grinned. “This was a great enemy of our Lord’s. He came here with magic chains, seeking to bind him, and now he lies bound, the fool! This is his punishment for such presumption.”

“How long has he been here?”

“Three months,” said the guard. He laughed. “Just as long as you.”

“How is it that the fire burns him, but he is not burned up?” Rhune asked.

“It is magic fire,” said Hraki. “But it is real, and it is even hotter than real fire. While it burns him he cannot eat or sleep or rest.”

“How long will he stay here?”

Hraki grinned. “Forever, I suppose.”

Rhune looked down, and saw the marks of the Firelash lacing the man’s body. “Three months,” he repeated. “Do you know his name?”

Hraki smiled, as at a cunning jest. “When he had a name, it was Shea.”

“Yes,” said Rhune. Reaching out, he fastened his hands on the sadist’s neck.

Hraki struggled, but he was no match for Rhune’s strength. Rhune cast the broken-necked body aside. Kneeling down, he said. “Shea. Tell me what to do to break the chains.”

Shea’s lips twisted with pain. It was clear that he could not speak. The fire weaved over his flesh. Rhune took a deep breath. Then he lifted himself up and lowered himself over Shea, covering him, taking the flames on his own body. They seared through his clothes. It hurt. Tears ran out of his eyes. He groaned, and laid his face against Shea’s.

“The spring drying—the well empty—then pull—”

“I heard,” Rhune whispered. He sat up, away from the flames. Hastily he made a picture in his mind, of a magnet weakening, dying, losing its power, till it was no more than a lump of tired rock in the ground... Then he reached again through the fire.

He felt for the chains. Finally he found them, light and thin as a child’s hair, hard and strong as iron. Rage and pity and love rose in his mind. He seized and wrenched until they shattered in his hands, first right, then left, arms, then legs. Then he lifted Shea from the fire as a man might lift a lover, and carried him from the room.

* * *

With stealth and speed he ran down the stairway and out a side door. If he was seen, he was not recognized. The thick velvet drape that he had ripped down to conceal his burden made it unrecognizable as human. He made his way through the grounds of the great stone palace to the water. Flinging the drape away, he waded out, and then knelt in the cold sea, lowering Shea into the ocean.

He propped Shea’s head against his shoulder. “Shea—can you hear me?”

“I hear you,” whispered the wizard.

“I’ve been drugged and dumb for three months, living at night, charmed by a fire creature, barely knowing my own name. I saw the sea. It woke me. I stole wholesome food and came searching through the house, not even knowing what I was looking for—” His voice broke. “Had you left me in the ocean I would have served you better!”

“No,” whispered Shea. His voice was stronger. “We both failed. And paid.”

“You paid for us both.”

Somehow, Shea laughed. “I had hope, where you did not. I knew you would come. He told me you were alive, taunting me with it. But I always knew that was a mistake.” The Sealord’s voice was almost normal. He stirred in Rhune’s grasp and then moved to stand naked in the sea, his body shining red in the light of the volcano. “My strength returns. Rhune, don’t torment yourself. It’s done. Now we have our task to do.”

“No!” protested Rhune. “Shea, you’re weak as a child. You cannot fight Seramir now. Let us leave.”

Shea glanced at the stars. “It is six hours to dawn. In six hours Seramir will climb the stairs to that room, whip in hand. He will find a dead man on the floor, and me gone. He will rouse the mountain and all his power to find us. If he finds us, we will never escape him, and if he does not find us, he will wreak such havoc upon Ryoka that we will wish we had never set out upon this errand. We must return to the house, and do what we came to do.”

“Can’t you just tear the mountain apart, and drown him?” Rhune demanded.

“I do not think I could kill him. Even if I could, I have no right.”

“No
right
!” Rhune shivered with rage. “I will do it, if you will not.”

Shea smiled. “If I cannot, you certainly will not be able to. But you will not try, Rhune. Swear it.” His voice sharpened, and Rhune had to look away from the power in his eyes.

“I swear it,” he said.

“Good.”

“But, damn it, Shea, you cannot go back into that house. You’ve spent three months in chains. You’re too weak to confront Seramir within his own domain.”

Shea’s smile broadened. He said, “But I have you.” He turned to walk to shore. Rhune cursed. Then he caught Shea’s wrists from behind, locking them behind the whip-marked back, holding him.

The ocean reached out a giant paw and tore his fingers loose. Water roared around him, deafened him, blinded him. His lungs burned. Darkness pounded its fist against his skull. Then he was free. He sat gasping in shallow water. A few lengths away, Shea watched him.

“Coming?”

“Damn you,” Rhune said. He stood up. “Tell me what I have to do.”

* * *

They silenced and bound two livery-clad servants, and took their clothes. Dressed, they moved like men on an important errand up the back stairway past the ground floor, past the second floor, to the third. Shea strode down the hall to a shut door. “He is here,” the wizard said. “Go in swiftly, Rhune, and do not look into his eyes. He is off guard, unsuspecting, and that is our advantage and our weapon.”

Rhune nodded. He walked to the door, flung it open, and stood swaying in the doorway. “Lord—” he said, and then crumpled to the floor.

“What—?” Seramir hurried to him, and knelt, reaching for the throat pulse. With the speed of one of the Firelord’s own serpents, Rhune lunged upward and closed his hands around the wizard’s neck. Seramir flapped, but Rhune thrust his thumbs against the great arteries that lead to the brain until the man went limp. Rhune hoisted him to his shoulder. They went down the stairs, out a door (not the kitchen door) and into the grounds. Rhune kept a hand on Seramir’s throat as they moved. They went over the lawn, across the rocks as before, and into the sea.

“He wakes,” Rhune warned. He tightened his grip on the Firelord’s wrists.

Seramir moaned and opened his eyes. He looked at Rhune from pupils that seemed all red flame.

But Shea looked into them and his own eyes were cold as the winter seas. He touched the guard’s knife to Seramir’s throat. “If you move or speak without permission,” he said, “you are dead.” Catching Seramir’s hair in his left hand, he jerked the older man’s head back, baring his throat wholly to the blade. “I owe you much, tormentor.” The water touching Seramir grew icy. Rhune felt him shudder. “You are in my element, Seramir, as I was in yours. Can you name a reason why I should let you go? Speak.”

Seramir swallowed, and spoke. “I have something you want.”

“What, Lord of Fire?”

“Power.”

Shea laughed. “The power of the sea can master the power of fire. The ocean is deep and strong and never sleeps. Your mountain is only a little volcanic island. Find me another reason. I grow impatient, and my memory is sharp—sharper than this knife. Perhaps you will discover a reason if I feed your eyes to the fish.” Shea rested the point of the knife lightly, very lightly, on Seramir’s closed left eyelid.

“No.”

Again Shea laughed. “No, you will not speak, or no, I must not take your eyes? Look at me!” He moved the knife.

Seramir opened his eyes, and the flame in them was almost gone. “I will give you the thing you came for—the tool that lets me call the fires of Ryoka from their resting-place.”

“Where is it?”

“In my room, the room you took me from. Take me there, and I will give it to you.”

Shea laughed a third time, and Rhune trembled at the fierceness of the laughter. “Fool you think me, Seramir Firelord. Shall I indeed go with you to your chambers, the heart of your kingdom? For that alone I should bind you living to the seabed.” His hands moved. “Watch!”

And the ocean behind them lifted from its rest and fell upon the cone-shaped mountain. Inexorable and unbreachable, it grew into a tremendous wave, higher than their heads, higher than treetops, higher than the Tower of the Firelord’s house. The wave raced like a hurricane toward the shore, and the water screamed as it poured upon the stone, and so did the people of the house, cowering with terror as the wall of water crashed over them. Down it fell, like the sundering of the sky. Then it sucked back, and with it came the palace: stones, rugs, drapes, furnishings, and people, in a great vortex of ruin. The debris swirled by them and out to sea.

Seramir stared at the scar in the earth where his home had been.

“It is gone,” said Shea softly. “All your devices of magic are gone. While I live the sea will not give them up. No more of your power have I ever desired, than this. Your servants and all the folk of your house live, and are swimming back to shore. Your palace you may rebuild. Your ships I have not touched. Still will the dragon-ships ride through the waters, and the merchants of Ryoka will pay their toll.” He sheathed the knife. Rhune released the Firelord’s hands. “And if you can, Seramir, you may still bind men into your dungeons of fire, or drug them to oblivion in your tapestried halls.”