HM02 House of Moons (20 page)

Tal snorted, then laced gnarled hands across his chest. His face might have been made of tempered steel. “You don’t expect me to believe that, do you? That disgraceful wretch has sworn never to marry any man, not even that worthless half-breed Monmart.”

“But she has agreed to accept me.” Diren held his hand out as if in goodwill, concealing the latteh in his gloved palm. “Provided you give us your approval.”

“She can do as she likes.” The golden eyes blinked, reflecting the firelight like two polished mirrors. “She always does.” A log shifted in the red-hot heart of the fire, shooting sparks outward. Tal seized the poker, then leaned forward, angrily spearing the logs as if he had a grudge against them. “Her decisions have nothing to do with me. I’ve finished with her.”

“Isn’t the truth more that
she’s
finished with you?” Still holding his hand out, Diren laced his tone with sarcasm. “Didn’t she renounce Tal’ayn?”

Holding the poker so tightly that his knuckles shone white, Tal gave him a sharp glance. “So that’s what this is about, is it? My ‘approval,’ indeed! The last time that ungrateful wench wanted my approval, she was still in nappies!” His white brows drew together over his hawk nose.

Curling his fingers around the latteh, Diren locked his hands behind his back, seeming to give the matter serious thought. “Wouldn’t you like to put all this behind you now, Tal? She is, after all, your only child. No matter what happened between the two of you, Tal’ayn is bound to come to her someday.”

“Not if I entail it elsewhere!” The old man clanged the poker back onto the stone hearth. “Say one more word and I’ll will it to my cousin’s youngest son, Lan Kentnal! I’ve always meant to anyway.”

So he hadn’t gotten around to it yet. Diren repressed a smile. All the better, then. Now that Haemas Tal had returned from the timeways, it would make claiming her as his bride all the more appealing if she brought the wealth of Tal’ayn to him. With that much gold, a dozen Chee’ayns could be put to rights.

“Isn’t Lan Kentnal only two or three years old?” he asked casually as he edged around behind the old man’s chair.

“Five.” Tal leaned his head back against the leather and closed his eyes. “Now get out!”

“Five years old and already a wealthy man,” Diren said softly. “What a lucky youngster. I do hope he appreciates his good fortune.” Then he pressed the latteh crystal to the pale, almost transparent flesh of the old man’s temple. Tal’s body went rigid with shock, then sagged in the chair, his mouth open and eyes staring.

Diren held the latteh in place another moment, then realized Tal wasn’t breathing. After quickly pocketing the crystal, he felt Tal’s face; the skin was already cooling.
Breathe, damn you!
he shouted into the other’s mind, but he could sense the lack of response, the seeping dimness that signaled neural shutdown.

But it didn’t fit in with his plans! He needed the old man alive, not dead. It would be disastrous for Haemas Tal to come into her inheritance before he had her under control again. As mistress of Tal’ayn, the Council might actually believe her, if she went to them about the latteh. Shuddering, Diren dropped his shields and flung himself into the dying mind, trying to make the heart beat again, the lungs breathe.

But everywhere blackness loomed, dissolution, blankness. He discovered the sites of old injuries that had healed over with fearsome twisted scars. Years ago, he remembered now, Tal had been mindblasted by his nephew and had nearly died. Obviously he had been too frail for the latteh. His brain had not been able to stand up to the power surge.

Numbly Diren withdrew, then stared down at the lifeless body. He rubbed a trembling hand over his face and felt cold sweat. What should he do? Tal’s snip of a wife and at least one of the servants knew he was here. He couldn’t just leave and let them find the body. Bloody Darkness, he’d been so stupid! He should have come here in secret. He should have made sure that no one saw him. He should have—

With an effort, he controlled his panic. What was done was done, and he had to make the best of it. He hauled the door open and ran out into the empty corridor. “Lady Senn!” He looked around in unfeigned wildness. “Lady Senn, come quickly!”

“Coming.”

He heard her voice from a long way off and waited as she managed to hurry without ever stooping to the indignity of actually running.

“My word, Lord Chee, what is it?” Her flushed face regarded him scornfully as she tucked a fallen tendril of bright gold hair back into place. “Has Dervlin run out of mead again, or does he just want someone to remove his boots?”

“I’m sorry.” Diren hesitated, his hands dangling helplessly. “But I’m afraid—does Tal’ayn have a healer in residence?”

“A healer?” Her eyes narrowed. “No, Dervlin can’t abide them. Why?”

“Lord Tal ...” He glanced back at the crumpled figure in the chair. “I think he’s—dead.”

“Really?” Alyssa Senn stood on tiptoe, trying to peer over his shoulder. “Are you quite sure?”

“I’m sorry,” he repeated numbly. “It was some sort of attack. It happened—so fast. There was no time to call you before he was gone.”

“Oh, I’ve had quite enough time with my Lord husband already.” Placing one small manicured hand firmly on his chest, she pushed him aside and crossed the sitting room to gaze down at Tal’s staring eyes. “In fact, he and I have had so much time together, it’s a wonder we haven’t killed each other by now.”

The sight of her perfect features gazing so dispassionately at the dead man chilled Diren even further, and he flashed back to another moment in his life, when his father had gazed so at the broken body of his mother lying at the bottom of a rocky chasm—where he’d thrown her.

Finally,
his father had said, radiating a rare satisfaction.
Finally, some peace.

With an effort, Diren wrenched himself back to the present. “Is there anything I can do, my Lady?”

Alyssa glanced up from her husband’s dead body. Her fingers played idly with one of her green koral-stone earrings. “No, thank you, Lord Chee. I think you’ve done quite enough. Would you care for some refreshments?”

* * *

Blue was everywhere, mind-numbing, robbing her senses of all other sensations until Axia was not even sure she existed anymore. Perhaps she was dead and this was actually the realm of Darkness where the wicked were eternally punished.

But that couldn’t be. There was too much light, a searing blue brilliance that danced and glimmered and sang with a nightmarish intensity until she would have screamed if she could have found her voice in this terrible place. In her hand, the latteh crystal buzzed, overriding her thoughts and making it impossible to concentrate and find her way out. The Tal woman had done this to her—maneuvered her into touching the latteh with her bare skin, then abandoned her to die in this glittering blue wasteland where nothing was real.

Splintered scenes appeared in a dazzling circle around her: places she knew, faces she remembered, events she had tried desperately to forget. Over and over again, she saw her father pitch her mother’s writhing body over the cliff, then stand with his arms crossed, staring after her.

Why, when all of time was supposed to be accessible here, she should have to endure that moment again and again, she did not know. Once she had seen Diren standing outside on the frozen grounds of Chee’ayn, and for a second she had thought she might reach him. But then the scene had faded and she had been here again, alone and hopelessly lost in the awful draining blueness.

And most frightening of all, she could feel herself changing. This place was not meant for humans. The electric blueness was invading her brain, searing the small portion that wasn’t already paralyzed by the latteh. Soon she would not be able to think at all.

The scenes shifted again, as they often did, and she saw Diren in an unfamiliar place, standing in a room with an old man slumped in a chair, a diminutive, proud-faced woman at his side. If only she could reach him, take his hand, perhaps he could pull her from the nexus before it was too late. Perhaps ...

Fire laced her brain as she struggled to make her foot step on the writhing blue line that led to Diren. The line itself seemed to fight her, whipping back and forth, and the latteh disrupted her thoughts to the point that she was not sure she even knew what she was doing.

Then she felt her foot make solid contact with the pathway, the tremendous energies surging up through her as if she were some sort of lightning rod. Good so far, but it took three steps to exit the nexus. She remembered that much from before. Her brain in agony, she tried to take another step, the blueness shining so much that she could barely see at all, her eyes dazzled until everything was just one intense field of scintillating blue.

Then, just as her foot made contact with the reluctant blue line, Diren and the room faded, and she was left alone in the nexus.

FROSTVINE SURVEYED
the forest
passing below her nebulous body. She had spent many pleasant Interims there as an ilseri, roaming the huge trees that shadowed the birth pools, riding the air currents above to seek the sun’s nourishment. Hovering, she savored the remembered sense of peace and sisterhood, then sank through the leafless trees, feeling her body drift thinner and thinner. It took constant vigilance in this cycle of her life not to let go and scatter her molecules across the face of the planet one final time, to mingle forever with the weathered cliffs and the wind, and the stars, and no matter how careful she was, her time would come soon. It almost took more density than she could summon now to communicate with the more youthful Third Ones.

Still, she must persist for a little longer. She had examined the nexus for the possible outcomes of this crisis. At the ends of more than half the lines, the ilseri were only a half-forgotten memory to the invading humans. And at the conclusion of most of the rest, the wretched human-things had decimated the forests or completely destroyed this world.

Even spread so thinly, she could feel the one that her sisters called Moonspeaker far away on the other side of the daunting mountains. What a strange creature it was, always behaving as if human and ilseri were only two branches of the same tree. Having watched the quarrelsome, greedy human-things through the many Interims of her long life, she had thought Windsign’s attempt to train one would be fruitless. Human-things were obviously a less-advanced life form, forever fixed into a solid state, perpetually immature, really no more than cruel, careless, unthinking children.

But, for the first time since she had phased into the Last Life, she had been wrong. This particular human’s mind was silver-bright and powerful. It had learned more than she had believed possible, even halting the disastrous experimenting with the timeways begun by the males of its species. Whether it could now do anything about the theft of the First Ones remained to be seen. At that thought, anger surged through Frostvine, roiling, massive, and dark, like a storm cloud blocking the sun. Down through the Interims, the Last Ones had been helpless, never able to reshape their minds to a pattern that could stop the humans when they raided the birth pools and then later attempted the timeways. This time, though, she would find a shape within her mind strong enough to do what must be done, even if it hastened her end.

* * *

The shadowfoot’s shoulder pressed against Haemas as she mounted the Shael’donn portal. She rested her hand on the large head, glad of its ferocious company. If it came to a physical struggle, the creature might well tip the balance in her favor against Chee. The minds of all three silshas sent to her by the ilseri had been sealed against the Kashi, although she had never understood how.

Closing her eyes, she activated each ilseri crystal in sequence, then called up the signature vibration of Chee’ayn, praying that the crystals were in the portal right now, not removed and separated as they had been when she had been imprisoned in that strange ramshackle house.

The shadowfoot snarled as it was pulled with her into the cold gray betweenness, then emerged into the chill night on the other side of the Highlands caldera. The stars glittered down, tiny bits of broken crystal in a clear night sky that arched blackly overhead, terrifyingly infinite. The pines swayed and whispered at the edge of the cliffs. Haemas’s fingers clenched in the beast’s thick fur.

Would Chee be sleeping at this late hour? She shivered and stepped down from the staging platform, forcing her way through the overgrown brambles crowding the weathered wood. Everything depended on catching him unaware so she could recover the latteh without a fight. If he had time to set it for mind-binding, it would be much harder, if not impossible.

Blacker than the surrounding night, the shadowfoot flowed at her side, its great head weaving back and forth as it sampled the scents. Ahead, the half-ruined house loomed without a single light to stand against the darkness, many of the windows boarded up and ominous. The broken outline faintly echoed other, more prosperous times, when the weed-choked gardens must have been lush and cultivated, the stonework bright, the steps scrubbed. Haemas thought of growing up in this decaying atmosphere and shuddered; as oppressive as the emotional climate had been at Tal’ayn, she had at least never wanted for basic comforts.

She lowered her shields and cast her awareness through the building, seeking the mind of another Kashi, first encountering a chierra mind, muffled and quiet, lost in vague dreams, then another, and another. Concentrating, she ranged farther into the maze of dusty rooms and nit-eaten furniture, trying not to ask herself what she would do if he wasn’t there. Finally, in one of the crumbling towers, she found a spark of slumbering consciousness that shone Kashi bright to her psi-senses.

She withdrew, not wanting to alert Chee to her presence. No doubt he would have the latteh close by, perhaps even on his person. Circling the house, she tried a warped side door, but it was locked. Then she circled around to another wing, but that door was also bolted. From the rundown appearance of the place, many of the doors and windows had been permanently shut for years.

Finally she wrapped a rock in her cloak and broke an unboarded window, then climbed through, nicking herself in the process in half-dozen places on the jagged splinters of glass. The silsha leaped neatly in after her without even touching the broken pane, then pressed up against her, licking her cut hands and arms with its raspy tongue.

Not now.
She pushed the black-furred head away.
We have to find the latteh.

After giving her one last warm lick, it padded on ahead of her, seeing far better than she could with its nocturnally oriented eyes. Resting a hand on the back of its neck, she let it guide her through the darkened house, thinking at each creak and groan from the ancient floorboards that someone would wake up and give the alarm. But the few servants slept on as she and the silsha mounted the old staircases, seeking the tower where she had sensed the Kashi.

After she had stubbed every one of her toes and bruised most of her body on unseen objects, she felt the sleeping Kashi mind very near. Her hair filthy with dust and webs, she stopped before the door and tried to lift the latch without waking Chee or the servant she sensed sleeping in the room next door. It was locked.

Grinding the heel of her hand against her forehead, she fought down her panic and tried to think. The shadowfoot could break the door down, but that would rouse the entire house. There had to be another way. She decided to try the door of the servant’s room. Under her trembling hand, the latch gave with a rusty click. She slid into the cold, stuffy silence, the stealthy shadowfoot at her heels. The air smelled of mold and unwashed clothes. In a narrow bed shoved against the far wall, an older chierra woman stirred and mumbled in her sleep.

The back of her neck bristling, Haemas hesitated, then touched the woman’s temple and spoke to her chierra mind.
Sleep,
she said.
All is well. Sleep soundly and do not wake up, no matter what you hear.

The muttering trailed away into snores. Haemas took an uneven breath, longing for a light, but afraid to risk it. She turned to the silsha.
A door,
she said to it, and pictured what she wanted.
Is there another door in this room?

The beast padded around her, then nosed up against the wall on the right side, waiting. Sensing its pleasure, she held her hands out to keep from bumping into anything and followed it through the darkness to find that there was indeed another door. This small room adjoined one on the other side. She lifted the latch and flinched as it gave with a squeak.

Faintly illuminated by embers in the fireplace, a sleeping figure squirmed on a cot, then rolled over. Haemas froze, her heart hammering in her chest. If Chee woke up now, it would certainly come to a fight.

Afraid to probe him, she slid through the door, watching the dark heap on the cot all the while, listening with her mind for any sign of consciousness on his part.

The figure on the cot suddenly bolted up. “Father?” Haemas stared in shock. The voice was a child’s. She hadn’t known that Chee had any family except Axia.

“Father, is that you?” the child asked again in a voice blurred by sleep.

“No,” Haemas heard herself say. “I’m—looking for him. Do you know where he is?”

“He left.” The child fumbled on the bedside table for an unlit candle, then her bare feet thumped on the floor. “Just a minute. I’ll make a light.”

Haemas sensed the child concentrating on the candle, racing through the old Kashi ritual to generate the spark. Then the flame blazed up, bright and strong, illuminating the cluttered room with its wavering yellow light.

“I’m Kisa,” the child said, blinking at her with sleep-clouded eyes.

Haemas took in the long hair and the worn nightdress, much too big. A little girl, she thought numbly. She hadn’t known. “Kisa—Chee?” she asked.

“No.” The girl rubbed her eyes with the back of one fist, then yawned. “Kisa Lenhe.”

“Lenhe?” Dumbfounded, Haemas balanced on the edge of the bed. Then the shadowfoot nosed the door aside and padded into the room. “Don’t be afraid,” she said quickly. “He won’t hurt you.”

Kisa held her free hand out to the beast and smiled as the silsha licked it. “I know.”

The silsha radiated a rare contentment as it allowed the small hand to stroke its face. Haemas was utterly amazed. She always introduced each new girl accepted into the House of Moons to her silshas, but the beasts had never shown any of them more than a wary willingness to allow them to look at a distance. Even Enissa, the most Talented of all who had come to work with her, had never been accepted by them like this. For Haemas’s sake, they tolerated a few other humans, but nothing more.

“He’s nice.” Kisa laid her cheek against the black-furred face, then looked up at Haemas. “When is my father coming back?”

“I don’t know.” Haemas’s mouth tightened as she fingered the raggedness of the single quilt provided against the night’s bitter cold. “How long has he been gone?”

“We came back this afternoon.” Kisa pushed at the matted hair hanging about her face and frowned. “Then he left me with Sanna and she locked me in here. She’s not nice at all, not like Dorria.”

Dorria ... Lenhe ... With a shock, Haemas realized that Kisa must be Myriel Lenhe’s child. Why in the name of Light had Chee brought her here? Was he really her father?

Numbly she watched the youngster stroke the strangely patient shadowfoot; the beast recognized something in her, no doubt the same sort of thing that it had once seen in Haemas. Kisa must have a potentially strong Talent, stronger than any of the girls who had been sent to her for training, the sort of child the House of Moons had been founded to train and nurture.

And she was Diren Chee’s daughter.

* * *

The sweat on Diren’s forehead dried in the second it took to flash through the chill gray betweenness between Tal’ayn and Chee’ayn. Chilled to the marrow, he looked up at the massive outline of Chee’ayn, black against the endless green-black of the night sky. Damnation, but he was tired. He couldn’t think what to do now, how to turn the old Tal’s death to his advantage. He wrenched the ilsera crystals out of their housing and stuffed them into his pockets, then hunched his shoulders against the rising wind and set off for the house, still seeing Dervlin Tal’s white face in his mind as the old man stiffened at the touch of the latteh crystal, then just—died.

That wasn’t his fault, he told himself fiercely, each breath puffing white in the chill night air. He couldn’t have known the old man’s brain was scarred from that fight with his nephew. All that had happened years ago. No one could have expected him to remember that!

At least the Shael’donn healer, called in by the old man’s wife, had seemed to suspect nothing. “It was bound to happen sooner or later,” he had said to Alyssa after the briefest of examinations, his aristocratic face indifferent. “And he did have a long life.”

“Long enough,” Alyssa had agreed, her face impassive and her shields woven tightly around her mind. Her hand strayed to the heart-shaped diamond fastened at her throat. “But I will, of course, have my memories.”

Diren fumbled in his pockets for the key as he trudged wearily down the overgrown path. Tal’s death had put a gigantic hole in his grand plan, but—

Ghostly blueness shimmered suddenly before him and he glanced up involuntarily into the star-scattered sky. A scintillating blue glow hovered overhead just out of reach, and in it he saw her face again—Axia’s face, tormented, afraid, inhuman in the way that the bright-blue motes of light seemed to form one side of her head now. She was changing.

Her eyes, glowing with the strange light, finally came to him and seemed to focus. He shivered as her lips shaped his name, although he heard nothing but the wind moaning through the pines. Behind her, he glimpsed splintered scenes of other places and people shifting like a kaleidoscope.