Moon’s blood fell cold from under
her face. The owl stooped off its branch quick and straight as a
dropped stone. Its talons closed on the lashings of the drum. The
great wings beat once, twice, and the bird was gone into the
rushing dark.
Moon fell to her knees, gasping for
breath. The voice of the owl was still caught in her ears, echoing,
echoing another voice. Weed. Yarrow. Yarrow.
Tears poured burning down her face.
“Oh, my weed, my stalk of yarrow,” she repeated, whispering. “Come
back!” she screamed into the night. She got no answer but the wind.
She pressed her empty hands to her face and cried herself to
sleep.
With morning, the Seawood crowded
around her as it had before, full of singing birds and softness,
traitorous and unashamed. In one thing, at least, its spirit
marched with hers. The light under the trees was gray, and she
heard the patter of rain in the branches above. Moon stirred the
cold ashes of her fire and waited for her heart to thaw. She would
go on to Great Hark, and beyond if she had to. There might yet be
some hope. And if there wasn’t, there might at least be a
reckoning.
All day the path led downward, and
she walked until her thighs burned and her stomach gnawed itself
from hunger. The rain came down harder, showering her ignominiously
when the wind shook the branches. She meant to leave the Seawood
before she slept again, if it meant walking all night. But the
trees began to thin around her late in the day, and shortly after
she saw a bare rise ahead of her. She mounted it and looked
down.
The valley was full of low mist,
eddying slowly in the rain. Rising out of it was the largest town
Moon had ever seen. It was walled in stone and gated with oak and
iron, and roofed in prosperous slate and tile. Pennons flew from
every wall tower, their colors darkened with rain and stolen away
by the gray light. At the heart of the town was a tall, white,
red-roofed building, cornered with round towers like the
wall.
The boy was right about this, too.
She could never find news of one person in such a place, unless
that person was the king or the queen. Moon drooped under a fresh
lashing of rain.
But why not? Alder Owl had set off
to find the prince. Why wouldn’t she have gone to the palace and
stated her business, and searched on from there? And why shouldn’t
Moon do the same?
She flapped a sheet of water off
her cloak and plunged down the trail. She had another hour’s walk
before she would reach the gates, and she wanted to be inside by
sundown.
The wall loomed over her at last,
oppressively high, dark and shining with rain. She found the huge
double gates open, and the press of wagons and horses and
pedestrians in and out of them daunting. No one seemed to take any
notice when she joined the stream and passed through, and though
she looked and looked, she couldn’t see anyone who appeared to be
any more official than anyone else. Everyone, in fact, looked busy
and important. So this is city life, Moon thought, and stepped out
of the flow of traffic for a better look around.
Without her bird’s eye view, she
knew she wouldn’t find the palace except by chance. So she asked
directions of a woman and a man unloading a cart full of baled
hay.
They looked at her and blinked, as
if they were too weary to think; they were at least as wet as Moon
was, and seemed to have less hope of finding what they were looking
for. Their expressions of surprise were so similar that Moon
wondered if they were blood relations, and indeed, their eyes were
much alike, green-gray as sage. The man wore a dusty brown jacket
worn through at one elbow; the woman had a long, tattered black
shawl pulled up over her white hair.
“Round the wall that
way,” said the man at last, “until you come to a broad street all
laid with brick. Follow that uphill until you see it.”
“Thank you.” Moon
eyed the hay cart, which was nearly full. Work was ointment for the
heart. Alder Owl had said so. “Would you like some help? I could
get in the cart and throw bales down.”
“Oh, no,” said the
woman. “It’s all right.”
Moon shook her head. “You sound
like my neighbors. With them, it would be fifteen minutes before we
argued each other to a standstill. I’m going to start throwing hay
instead.” At that, she scrambled into the cart and hoisted a bale.
When she turned to pass it to the man and woman, she found them
looking at each other, before the man came to take the hay from
her.
It was hot, wet, prickly work, but
it didn’t take long. When the cart was empty, they exchanged thanks
and Moon set off again for the palace. On the way, she watched the
sun’s eye close behind the line of the hills.
The brick-paved street ran in long
curves like an old riverbed. She couldn’t see the palace until
she’d tramped up the last turning and found the high white walls
before her, and another gate. This one was carved and painted with
a flock of rising birds, and closed.
Two men stood at the gate, one on
each side. They were young and tall and broad-shouldered, and Moon
recognized them as being of a type that made village girls stammer.
They stood very straight, and wore green capes and coats with what
Moon thought was an excessive quantity of gold trim. She stepped up
to the nearest.
“Pardon me,” she
said, “I’d like to speak to the king and queen.”
The guard blinked even more
thoroughly than the couple with the hay cart had. With good reason,
Moon realized; now she was not only travel-stained and sodden, but
dusted with hay as well. She sighed, which seemed to increase the
young man’s confusion.
“I’ll start nearer
the beginning,” she told him. “I came looking for my teacher, who
set off at the end of last autumn to look for the prince. Do you
remember a witch, named Alder Owl, from a village two weeks east of
here? I think she might have come to the palace to see the king and
queen about it.”
The guard smiled. Moon thought she
wouldn’t feel too scornful of a girl who stammered in his presence.
“I suppose I could have a message taken to Their Majesties,” he
said at last. “Someone in the palace may have met your teacher. Hi,
Rush!” he called to the guard on the other side of the gate. “This
woman is looking for her teacher, a witch who set out to find the
prince. Who would she ask, then?”
Rush sauntered over, his cape
swinging. He raised his eyebrows at Moon. “Every witch in Hark End
has gone hunting the prince at one time or another. How would
anyone remember one out of the lot?”
Moon drew herself up very straight,
and found she was nearly as tall as he was. She raised only one
eyebrow, which she’d always found effective with Fell. “I’m sorry
your memory isn’t all you might like it to be. Would it help if I
pointed out that this witch remains unaccounted for?”
“There aren’t any of
those. They all came back, cap in hand and dung on their shoes,
saying, ‘Beg pardon, Lord,’ and ‘Perishing sorry, Lady.’ You could
buy and sell the gaggle of them with the brass on my
scabbard.”
“You,” Moon told him
sternly, “are of very little use.”
“More use than anyone
who’s sought him so far. If they’d only set my unit to
it...”
She looked into his hard young
face. “You loved him, didn’t you?”
His mouth pinched closed, and the
hurt in his eyes made him seem for a moment as young as Fell. It
held a glass up to her own pain. “Everyone did. He was—is the
land’s own heart.”
“My teacher is like
that to me. Please, may I speak with someone?”
The polite guard was looking from
one to the other of them, alarmed. Rush turned to him and frowned.
“Take her to—merry heavens, I don’t know. Try the steward. He
fancies he knows everything.”
And so the Gate of Birds opened to
Moon Very Thin. She followed the polite guard across a paved
courtyard held in the wide, high arms of the palace, colonnaded all
around and carved with the likenesses of animals and flowers. On
every column a torch burned in its iron bracket, hissing in the
rain, and lit the courtyard like a stage. It was very beautiful, if
a little grim.
The guard waved her through a small
iron-clad door into a neat parlor. A fire was lit in the brick
hearth and showed her the rugs and hangings, the panelled walls
blackened with age. The guard tugged an embroidered pull near the
door and turned to her.
“I should get back to
the gate. Just tell the steward, Lord Leyan, what you know about
your teacher. If there’s help for you here, he’ll see that you get
it.”
When he’d gone, she gathered her
damp cloak about her and wondered if she ought to sit. Then she
heard footsteps, and a door she hadn’t noticed opened in the
panelling.
A very tall, straight-backed man
came through it. His hair was white and thick and brushed his
shoulders, where it met a velvet coat faced in crewelled satin. He
didn’t seem to find the sight of her startling, which Moon took as
a good sign.
“How may I help you?”
he asked.
“Lord
Leyan?”
He nodded.
“My name is Moon Very
Thin. I’ve come from the east in search of my teacher, the witch
Alder Owl, who set out last autumn to find the prince. I think
now...I won’t find her. But I have to try.” To her horror, she felt
tears rising in her eyes.
Lord Leyan crossed the room in a
long stride and grasped her hands. “My dear, don’t cry. I remember
your teacher. She was an alarming woman, but that gave us all hope.
She has not returned to you, either, then?”
Moon swallowed and shook her
head.
“You’ve traveled a
long way. You shall have a bath and a meal and a change of clothes,
and I will see if anyone can tell you more about your
teacher.”
Before Moon was quite certain how
it had been managed, she was standing in a handsome dark room with
a velvet-hung bed and a fire bigger than the one in the parlor, and
a woman with a red face and fly-away hair was pouring cans of water
into a bathtub shaped and painted like a swan.
“That’s the silliest
thing I’ve ever seen,” said Moon in wonder.
The red-faced woman grinned
suddenly. “You know, it is. And it may be the lords and ladies
think so, too, and are afraid to say.”
“One of them must
have paid for it once.”
“That’s so. Well, no
one’s born with taste. Have your bath, and I’ll bring you a change
of clothes in a little.”
“You needn’t do that.
I have clean ones in my pack.”
“Yes, but have they
got lace on them, and a ’broidery flower for every seam? If not,
you’d best let me bring these, for word is you eat with the King
and Queen.”
“I do?” Moon blurted,
horrified. “Why?”
“Lord Leyan went to
them, and they said send you in. Don’t pop your eyes at me, there’s
no help for it.”
Moon scrubbed until she was pink
all over, and smelling of violet soap. She washed her hair three
times, and trimmed her short nails, and looked in despair at her
reflection in the mirror. She didn’t think she’d put anyone off
dinner, but there was no question that the only thing that stood
there was Moon Very Thin, tall and brown and forthright.
“Here, now,” said the
red-faced woman at the door. “I thought this would look nice, and
you wouldn’t even quite feel a fool in it. What do you
say?”
Draped over her arms she had a
plain, high-necked dress of amber linen, and an overgown of russet
velvet. The hem and deep collar were embroidered in gold with the
platter-heads of yarrow flowers. Moon stared at that, and looked
quickly up at the red-faced woman. There was nothing out of the way
in her expression.
“It’s—it’s fine. It’s
rather much, but...”
“But it’s the least
much that’s still enough for dining in the hall. Let’s get you
dressed.”
The woman helped her into it,
pulling swaths of lavender-scented fabric over her head. Then she
combed out Moon’s hair, braided it, and fastened it with a gold
pin.
“Good,” the red-faced
woman said. “You look like you, but dressed up, which is as it
should be. I’ll show you to the hall.”
Moon took a last look at her
reflection. She didn’t think she looked at all like herself. Dazed,
she followed her guide out of the room.
She knew when they’d almost reached
their destination. A fragrance rolled out of the hall that reminded
Moon she’d missed three meals. At the door, the red-faced woman
stopped her.
“You’ll do, I think.
Still—tell no lies, though you may be told them. Look anyone in the
eye, though they might want it otherwise. And take everything
offered you with your right hand. It can’t hurt.” With that the
red-faced woman turned and disappeared down the maze of the
corridor.
Moon straightened her shoulders
and, her stomach pinched with hunger and nerves, stepped into the
hall.
She gaped. She couldn’t help it,
though she’d promised herself she wouldn’t. The hall was as high as
two rooms, and long and broad as a field of wheat. It had two
yawning fireplaces big enough to tether an ox in. Banners hung from
every beam, sewn over with beasts and birds and things she couldn’t
name. There weren’t enough candles in all Hark End to light it top
to bottom, nor enough wood in the Seawood to heat it, so like the
great courtyard it was beautiful and grim.