HM02 House of Moons (3 page)

Rald and his cousin started slowly toward the huge outer doors, just two old men who had been beaten somehow without knowing why, then stopped as Monmart burst into the room.

“Attack!” Monmart gasped, then looked wildly around the chamber. “Lenhe’ayn has been attacked—by chierra!”

WITH THE REST
of the crowded Council chamber, Diren turned to stare at Monmart as he stood, outlined by the open doorway, his face flushed, his eyes dark and tense. Chill air from the outer passage threaded through the room.

Tal rapped on the oak table for order. “Take your seats!” The crowd of astonished Kashi, however, surged toward Monmart, buzzing with questions.

Rising, Tal banged his fist on the Council table. A fluted glass jumped and tipped over, spilling water on his notes. He cursed and hastily blotted the sheets against his shirt. “Dammit, take your seats!” The noise faded to a murmur as the onlookers drifted back to the gallery. Then Tal settled into his own throne-like chair. “Now, Monmart, you say Lenhe’ayn has been attacked?”

Monmart met the old Lord’s eyes. “Yes, my Lord. On my way to the courtyard portal, I was contacted by Lady Myriel, who said chierra forces attacked earlier this afternoon, burning the unharvested fields, stealing what stock they could and slaughtering the rest, and—” He spread his hands helplessly, “—murdering her son.”

A hush fell over the crowded room, deeper than the mere absence of words. Diren tapped his fingers against his chin, a study in sober reflection, while he savored their radiated shock, their inability to take it all in; the normally servile chierra had organized themselves to attack a Kashi House and had killed a Kashi heir. Such a thing had not happened within living memory. They found it unthinkable. He might have felt the same, if he hadn’t been there himself.

Tal cleared his throat. “Are the attackers still there?”

Monmart shook his head. “No, my Lord.”

“And what of the chierra servants—did they mutiny and join the attacking force?”

“According to Lady Lenhe,” Monmart answered, “a number of the field hands actually gave their lives fighting for Lenhe’ayn.”

Diren cocked his head. “How is that the Lady contacted you and no one else?” He smiled lazily, watching Haemas Tal’s high-cheekboned face out of the corner of his eye. Her fingers were knotted in her lap, her skin as transparent as fine porcelain. “It had escaped me that the two of you were so—closely associated.”

Monmart’s golden-brown eyes jumped slightly.

He had definitely hit a nerve with that one, Diren told himself.

“We were acquainted, having met some years ago.” Monmart turned away. “And so many people were sequestered here in the Council chamber, which is of course shielded. She is distraught and could locate no one else she knew.”

Diren raised a questioning eyebrow and leaked just the faintest tendril of disbelief through his shields.

“Well, we must investigate at once.” Tal sat back in his seat, then impatiently righted the upset glass. “This is a nasty business, chierra attacking Kashi. We can’t let it go unanswered.”

“Isn’t Lenhe’ayn close to Monmart’ayn?” Diren asked innocently. “Perhaps Master Monmart should assess the damage, then make a report to the Council. I’m sure Lady Lenhe would appreciate his help in this difficult time.” He watched Haemas Tal’s face lose what little color it had.

“Yes, yes.” Tal waved his hand at Monmart, dismissing him like some chierra footman. “That would most likely be best. Go down and render what aid you can. Send for more help, if you find it’s needed, and bring us your report at the earliest possible moment. We must keep the closest of watches on this situation.”

Monmart stood in the doorway like a pillar, his tan face distressed. It was almost too delightful, Diren thought. Here the man was actually losing the High Mastership of Shael’donn and the Tal woman in the same day, and it all fit so beautifully with Diren’s own need to get her alone at some point. When that moment finally came, it would be safer if Monmart was far away in the Lowlands, too distant to be of any help.

“As you wish, my Lords,” Monmart managed finally, then turned on his heel and left the room, taking Haemas Tal’s pale-gold gaze with him.

* * *

The warm, lazy air currents above the edge of the sea cradled Summerstone as she drifted, spread as thinly as an oil sheen on water, soaking up the wan energies of the cold-season sun. Most of her ilseri sisters had migrated into the southern regions, seeking the more concentrated life-giving rays of the sun while the great forest lay shrouded in the shadow of winter. She alone had lingered this far north, savoring the crash of waves on the air-pocked black rocks, the frothy greenness of salt water, and the streamlined jiri that dove into the icy sea to feed, then soared back into the sky to share the clouds with her.

From far away, something teased at her consciousness, a dim sense of fear/anger/warning. Reluctantly she increased her density, gathering herself into solid form.

Come!
childish voices called in the most urgent of ilserin modes.
Come now! Danger! Sorrow! Danger!

She hesitated, her face turned up to the sun’s orange disk. Ilserin were silly and prone to panic. This was probably nothing important, but she would check on the excitable young males, then spend a few days soothing their fears, perhaps teach them a new game. Soon they would be scrambling through the trees again and leaping like jiri into the wild river below the falls, dreaming of their own days to come when they would ride the sky at her side.

* * *

Fastening her barret-down cloak at her neck, Haemas hurried up the narrow stone steps leading to Tal’ayn’s courtyard. It had been a disastrous meeting and the sooner she quit Tal’ayn, the better for everyone. She still found it difficult to be so close to her father’s long-smoldering anger, and harder yet to visit the scene of so many painful memories.

Although twelve years had passed since her cousin Jarid’s death, his ghost seemed to linger here, permeating the ancient gray stone, haunting every niche and corner, whispering that he would never leave this House for which he’d fought so savagely, that he would never forgive Haemas for winning.

She hurried to the upper door and burst outside into the frigid, snow-edged air. A short queue waited at the Tal’ayn portal up ahead as the visiting Kashi returned, mostly in ones and twos, to their own estates and lives. Joining the line, she heard the door squeak open again behind her.

“Lady Haemas!” Diren Chee’s golden-haired head appeared beside her. “I would like a word with you.”

She didn’t turn. “I’m sorry, Lord Chee. I have pressing duties back at the House of Moons.”

“Please.”

She felt the heat of his presence next to her, bright as an over-stoked fire. A man of average height with lean, sharply chiseled features, he had come into his inheritance after the disastrous Temporal Conclave where so many had died. He had always been courteous to her, which was more than she could say for the rest of the Council. And yet, behind his bland expression and tight shields, there was something dark and unsettling. His eyes were hungry, almost feral, and his ever-present polite smile made her uneasy.

His voice followed her across the snow-dusted cobbles as she advanced with the line. “You could help the Council pinpoint those responsible for this chierra attack.”

She halted in midstep in spite of herself and turned. He wore his golden hair long and undisciplined, and his dark-flecked eyes hinted at things best not mentioned in the daylight. She shivered. Was he broadcasting at her? Strengthening her shields, she swallowed hard and looked away. “How could I possibly help?”

He reached her side again, his expression strangely hungry. “By using what the Old People taught you to travel between times.”

She paled. She had been forced to go over this subject again and again with her father and various other Lords. They would never really understand what the ilseri, the natives of this world, had taught her all those years ago. In fact, most of them did not even want to understand, persisting in the mistaken belief that the temporal pathways could be put to some sort of purpose, like a hammer or an awl or any other tool—but the truth was that they could not.

“You could go back and see who attacked.” Chee’s angular face smiled blandly at her, but she noticed how his eyes, gone as reflective as two pools of melted gold, showed no emotion at all.

“It’s not that simple.” Her heart thumped inside her chest. Not now, she told herself. She couldn’t handle this on top of everything else.

“Couldn’t you go back?” he insisted.

“If I could find it.” She saw the glittering blue temporal pathways again in her mind, the bewildering array of Whens to which one could travel if one had sufficient Talent and training—and if one were female. “The timelines exist in infinite number, but most of them are Otherwhens as far as we are concerned. The ilseri can tell the difference between Otherwhen and Truewhen, but I have always found it difficult.”

“Fascinating.” He moved forward beside her, his steps measured and thoughtful. “I would like to learn more.”

She caught her breath; there was a strangeness about him that set her teeth on edge, and nasty rumors circulated about the House of Chee, talk of instability, madness—and murder. Coals smoldered behind this man’s eyes whenever he looked at her. “Some other time, perhaps, Lord Chee.”

“Yes.” He smiled again without warmth. “Perhaps later would be better.”

Three people ahead of her, a middle-aged man escorted his wife onto a covered platform inset above and below and at the four midpoints with pale-blue ilsera crystals. A second later, they disappeared as he mentally wrenched the energies to transport them home. Then a tall, elegant woman stepped into place—one of the Sennays, if Haemas wasn’t mistaken, and a distant cousin of hers.

A young woman in front of Haemas, gowned in Rald crimson, stepped into the portal, holding a little girl dressed in lacy blue by the hand. How strange to take a child to a Council meeting, Haemas thought. Her father had never taken her anywhere, not even to a Council meeting, even though they were always held here at Tal’ayn. She had rarely left the grounds until the day she fled down into the Lowlands—when Jarid had convinced her that she’d killed her father.

“You must visit Chee’ayn,” Chee said pleasantly over her shoulder. “We have the only surviving stand of pine there, right at the edge of a cliff. Chee’ayn is the one place in the Highlands where the soil is just right. When the wind blows from the north, you can smell the needles all the way up to the main house.”

Haemas stepped onto the platform as soon as the woman and child disappeared, hastily throwing her mind open to the vibrations of the psi-active crystals.
North ... south,
she recited in her mind, feeling each crystal warm in turn,
east ... west ... above ... below!
She altered the vibrations to match the portal at Shael’donn. The world twisted into a chill grayness, then resolved itself into the familiar snow-covered grounds shared by the paired schools.

* * *

Kevisson stepped out of the Lenhe’ayn portal into the warmer air of the Lowlands. Smoke from the smoldering fields curled up into the clear green sky and the acrid smell of burned grain filled his lungs. After stripping off his black leather gloves, he thrust them into his belt while he surveyed the havoc wrought: the sturdy, well-kept outbuildings burned to ashes, the famous black Lenhe horses and other stock lying torn and bloodied in the dead grass, the golden fields of ripe zeli-grain now a charred ruin. An iciness ran through him; he had never known the outlying chierra people to be violent, and like all Lowlands-bred Kashi he had dealt with them his whole life.

Closing his eyes, he cast about with his mind for some hint of the surviving Lenhes, the Kashi family that held this land. Letting his awareness drift, he passed the unhearing minds of the estate’s sorrowing chierra servants, brushed against the bewildered, untrained minds of several Kashi children in the main house, then came across a tendril of broadcast pain and grief. Tracing it, he identified Myriel, the old Lord’s grown daughter, in a large vaulted room somewhere nearby.

He followed her thoughts, passing several dark-haired, olive-complected chierra workers as they struggled to drag the mutilated stock to an enormous bonfire burning in one of the blackened fields. They met him with wary, strained expressions, but he stared each one down as he walked by, forcing their dark-brown eyes to lower and acknowledge him a Kashi Lord.

He didn’t enjoy that, but it had been impressed upon him at an early age what his hair and eyes of golden brown meant in a society in which the lightness of a man’s coloring was taken as the measure of his worth and strength. Golden eyes and hair were the genetic tag that indicated the presence of inherited mindtalents, and their absence indicated that an infant was only chierra, both head-blind and head-deaf, forever excluded from Kashi circles. Shael’donn had been the one place where none of that mattered, but Shael’donn was changing.

Stopping at a low building, he pushed open an ornately carved door and realized he had found the Lenhe family chapel. The stuffy air was thick with incense and oversweet with mounds of fall flowers. Myriel Lenhe stood at the far end, framed in a bright shaft of sunlight slanting down from a high window, her ash-gold head bent, gazing down at the still face of her murdered son—the child she had once asked of him many years ago and which, for his own reasons, he had refused to give.