The War of the Moonstone: an Epic Fantasy (4 page)

“And how long was it after this
that you began to feel sick?”

“Oh, I don’t know, perhaps half an
hour. But why are you so interested? It’s just the failings of an old man’s
body. Trust me, if they were interesting, I would fill a book with them.” He
laughed to himself.

“Likely nothing. You rest up. And .
. . I’ll see if I can’t get a blanket and some pillows for you.”

Giorn shivered as soon as he left
the tent, but it was not because of the biting cold wind that took just that moment
to gust up from the dreaded South and flap his cloak about him. It was the
thought of Raugst, the mysterious woodsman, and his equally mysterious flask of
spirits.

But no, Giorn thought as he made
his way through the camp, beneath the creaking branches of the Tree of Kings,
and finally back to his tent, it wasn’t possible. Whoever had shot Father had
looked like Duke Yfrin, and Raugst was a foot taller and many pounds heavier. It
was simply not feasible.

Unless . . .

But no, that was madness. Giorn needed
another drink.

Chapter
3

She came to him in the dark.

He hadn’t expected it. He had
wanted only a few hours of sleep before the hard decisions of the coming day
and had been dreaming of hunting rabbits at Duke Yfrin’s manor, but when he had
looked up the Duke had been covered in blood, his fingernails pulled, burn
marks on his arms, strips of skin from his cheeks missing, and all the while he
was saying,
I tell you, I did not do it!

When Giorn felt her touch him, he lurched
up gasping. One hand shot for his hunting knife.

She laid a bare hand on his sweaty
chest. Instantly he calmed. In her other hand she carried a candle, and by its
frail, flickering light he stared into her blue eyes.

“Niara,” he breathed.

“Giorn.” Her voice was a whisper.

Her lips were full and wide,
slightly parted. He acted instinctively. He drew her to him, pressed her body against
his, and met her lips with his. She melted against him, and for an endless
moment, he lost himself in her. She was warm and soft and wonderful. Then
reality returned to him, cold and sharp, and he broke away.

“No,” he choked.

“Why?”

“Father’s in the next tent. You
must go to him.
He
comes first. Only
then is there time for . . . us.”

She tilted his face so that he was
forced to look at her, and she smiled gently. She looked like an angel when she
smiled.

“I already have,” she said.

He cleared his throat, suddenly
nervous. “And?”

Her smile dimmed, but the light in
her eyes still shone. For the first time he realized she looked tired. She must
have ridden all through the night, all the way from Thiersgald. Bless her eyes!
A normal person could not have done it, could not have navigated at speed
through a dark forest, much less make her mount obey her. But she could. Even
for her, however, it could not have been easy. It must have drained her. And
then, so soon after that ordeal, to administer to Father . . . It must have
been painful, like tapping a dry well. He felt renewed love for her, and respect.

“I sang to him and poured into him
all the Grace I could,” she said. “But while I was bonded with him, I felt
something.”

“Yes?’

“A taint.” Her voice was grim. “That
arrow was poisoned.”
“Masan detected
nothing.”

“It was no natural poison. It was a
toxin of Oslog, perhaps venom from some fell thing, I don’t know. But it was
there, and it countered me. I could not drive it out, or destroy it. I’ll try
again tomorrow, when I’ve had time to recover, but I . . .” She lowered her
gaze. “I don’t have much hope.”

Now it was his turn to reach out
and raise her face so that she looked at him. He held her gaze steadily. “You’ve
done more than I could have asked. Thank you.” He said it with such gravity
that she did not deny her efforts, just nodded slightly. He let a moment go by,
closing that subject, then: “Masan
wants me to step forward. Take the reins of the barony.”

“You already have.”

“He wants to make it official.”

She considered that. “The time may
have come for that, or it may come soon, but . . . I see no
need
for it.”

“Exactly. There’s no cause, no
immediate threat to Fiarth. The fighting is far away. Without cause, it would
be unseemly.”
And it would mean giving up
on Father.

She drew closer to him. Her voice
lowered as she said, “Do what you think right. You’re a good man, Gi.” Her lips
brushed his. They were so soft.

He hesitated. “Niara, I don’t know
how much longer I can do this.” He gestured around them. “How much longer I can
keep this—us—in the dark. I had planned—” He broke off suddenly. It was no good
talking of what could have been.

“Tell me. What did you plan?”

He let out a breath. “Lord Ryswin
is weak, dying.”

“Lord Ryswin? The ambassador to
Havensrike?”

“Yes. He’s an old man and wants to
return home, to die in bed surrounded by his family. King Ulea must choose a
new ambassador, and I’d been petitioning Father to recommend me to the King. I
think he might have done it, too, and then, after I’d been sent away, you could
transfer to the temple in Glorifel, and we could be together in Havensrike,
where they are not so devout as here, where a priestess is not supposed to be a
saint. Just think of it. We could be together, you and I, walking hand in hand
down the city streets of the most fabulous city built by Man, or riding through
the canals in a gondola . . . but now . . .” He sagged. “Now there is no chance
of that. Not unless Father recovers.”

Tears gathered behind her eyes. “Oh,
Gi.”

Gently, she kissed him, and he
could taste her tears on his lips. As he kissed back, a fire blazed brighter
inside him. She must have felt it, too, for suddenly her kisses became more
passionate, almost reckless. Then she tore at his clothes, and he at hers.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes, my love,
yes, this is how it should be . . .”

He kissed her breasts, her nipples,
and she moaned in pleasure. “Shhhh,” he said, and she quieted. He kissed her
more, working his way down her slim belly, past her navel, then between her
legs. He kissed her there for a while, and she gasped and breathed deeply, at
times closing her thighs tightly around his head, enfolding him in softness. At
last he spread her legs and entered her. She was tight and wet. She curled her
delicate white fingers through the hair on his chest and rocked her hips
against him as he thrust into her, at first slowly, then faster, harder.

Her breaths came more and more rapidly.
Finally she reached for his hunting knife in its leather scabbard and stuck it
between her teeth to keep from crying out.

Their lovemaking was desperate and
all-consuming, as if to deny the horrors of the outside world. For them, for
that one moment, there was only Giorn and Niara, and the hot, burning passion
that engulfed them. Then, panting, he spent himself inside her, and she held
him tightly. Both sweaty and exhausted, they lay together for a time, but at
last he fell asleep, and it was the deepest sleep he had ever known.

When he awoke, dawn had turned the
canvas sides of his tent pink.

Niara was dressing. She noticed
him, smiled, and leaned over to kiss him on the lips.

“Good morning,” he said.

“’morning.” Her voice was rich and
deep and soft. Her eyes shone happily, but with a tinge of sadness. She
straightened her clothes, stood and moved to the tent flap. “I must go.”

“Yes.” Sudden concern made him sit
up and grab her wrist. “What if somebody sees you?”

She smiled. “I’m a High Priestess
of Illiana, my love. I am not without power. Added to that, well, you have
probably heard the rumors . . .”

“It’s true, then. You
are
part elf.” He had never wanted to
cause her discomfort by asking about it; she would reveal it in time if she so
chose. Until then he had always chosen to believe the various things she was
capable of, such as healing a dying man with no surgical instruments, was
accomplished through use of the elvish stones her order regularly used.

Now she revealed the truth, nodding
wordlessly.

“So, what, you’ll use your magic to
make you invisible?”

“No,” she said. “Easier to go as
myself but plant the suggestion in the minds of any witnesses that I am simply
a servant woman. I don’t actually change my shape, I just cloud their minds for
a moment.”

He released her hand. Intrigued, he
said, “Show me.”

“If I must.”

She seemed to shimmer, and Giorn
found himself looking into the eyes of plain-faced woman with gray-brown hair. Her
eyes were of the same color, and her clothing . . . well, it wasn’t drab
exactly.
Drab
might have been
noticeable in that camp of nobles. No, it was simply so boring that the eye
rolled off it. Indeed, the eye seemed to slide off her whole body, as though
she didn’t even exist.

“Remarkable,” he said.

She shimmered again, and he found
himself staring again into Niara’s beautiful blue eyes. “There,” she said.

“Amazing . . .” He had always heard
of the magic of the Light-born, but he had never seen it. Suddenly he felt
deceived. “You should have told me.”

“I want to be closer to you, Gi,
not farther apart. This power . . .”

He nodded, and with the same
sadness. “Man is fallen and without Grace.” He sighed. “It doesn’t have to
separate us, though.”
It will in time
,
he thought uneasily.
I will age and die,
but she will live on.

She kissed his forehead. “I’ll see
you again later.” She sounded more formal now, less loverly, once again the
High Priestess.

He let her go, but as soon as she
was gone he felt something dark cross his soul. So:
beings of power could appear to be someone else
—if only for a
moment or two. It was enough. Duke Yfrin had only been seen for an instant
before he made his escape from the knoll. And once he was gone, away from the
prying eyes of witnesses, had he then ceased to be Duke Yfrin and become
someone else, perhaps the newest member of the royal family of Fiarth?

The thought was nightmarish in its
implications.
Fria is sleeping with a
monster!

Giorn shook his head. He reached
for his bottle of wine, finding it more than half empty. He uncorked it and
took a swig.

No, he thought. It couldn’t be. Surely
he was imagining things.

Yet could he now truly go forward
with torturing Duke Yfrin?

He took another swallow.

After breakfasting with the men and seeing to his first
round of tasks, including turning away the many villagers who had come from
surrounding towns to pay their respects to their ailing lord, Giorn reached a
decision. Raugst must be placed in custody. The problem, of course, was that
Giorn had no evidence of any kind. Thus he could not hold nor try Raugst. However,
Raugst was clearly far too dangerous to allow to simply walk around free. Giorn
needed some proof. Perhaps Niara could help him.

At lunchtime, as she was leaving
the Baron’s tent, looking exhausted and ready for nourishment, Giorn drew her
aside.

“How is he?”

“No better.” Her voice sounded
weary, and he noticed the skin over her face was thin and stretched. Her curly
black hair was lank with perspiration.

“And neither are you. Come,” he
said, “let’s take lunch. Then I have something to talk to you about.”

He didn’t dare lunch with her
privately for fear of talk circulating around the camp, so once again he ate
with his officers. Meril and Niara joined them. It was a tense, quiet lunch, as
all brooded on the imminent death of the Baron, and the mood was not improved
by the besieging well-wishers. Some of the nearby villagers had come in wagons
with their whole families and had set up camps beyond the cleared circle Giorn
maintained around the Baron’s camp. The well-wishers sang songs of the Baron’s
great deeds, chanted prayers to the Moon Goddess Illiana and to her noble
husband Brunril, Maker of the Sun.

Giorn had not allowed them to visit
his father—it would be too stressful for him—but was still unsatisfied with the
current state. Giorn was very tempted to drive them all away, well-wishers or
no. That would only anger them and hurt them, though, and if Giorn was to
assume the throne of the barony he would do well to appease the people, not
molest them. He decided he would ask them to relocate farther away, where their
songs and prayers would not bring down the morale of the Baron’s family and
soldiery.

During lunch he received the latest
reports from the south. Borchstogs had taken several fortresses along the
border in Havensrike. They were minor keeps, but even so it illustrated the
Borchstogs’ bloodlust. What had stirred them up to such an extent still
remained a mystery. Giorn consoled himself that at least the Moonstone still
guarded Hielsly and that as long as it did, Felgrad was, in theory, safe.

After lunch, Giorn was able to draw
Niara aside once more into the shadow of the Tree of Kings, half hidden by one
of its high gnarled roots snaking down into the dry stream. It had been here
that the last King Wesrain had signed the famous peace treaty with King Raegar
and become the first Baron Wesrain. Whenever Giorn’s father went hunting
through these woods, he always found reason to camp at the base of the great
cypress. When Giorn had been little, Harin had set him upon its thick, knotty
roots and told him tales of the days when the Wesrains had been kings. Giorn
remembered those times fondly. He did not think the Tree would last much
longer. The creek on whose shores it had stood had dried up long ago, and it
looked as though the Tree would shortly follow. Soon it would be merely a giant
husk looming over the forest, dead and rotting. The thought saddened him.

Wary of his soldiers’ eyes, Giorn
made sure to keep plenty of distance between him and Niara, though he longed to
reach out and tuck a lock of hair behind her ear. It hung down before her left
eye, distracting him. Though disheveled, she looked much replenished after the
lunch, if still tired.

“Take some sleep,” he suggested. “You’re
straining yourself too much.” He tried to smile. “I want my father to live, but
I want some of you left over when he comes back to himself.”

“Thank you, but I must give all I
can if I’m to drive out that taint.”

“Have you had any success?”

She shook her head and leaned
against the high root of the Tree. “It’s taken hold, I fear. I strive against
it, but it’s too strong.”

Suddenly Giorn wished he had a
bottle handy. He ran a hand through his hair and frowned when he saw that it
was shaking.