Circle Of The Moon Part 18

Eleven Gra.s.shoppers regarded her with those round pale-blue eyes beneath her tufted brow. Foxfire would have sworn they glinted with irony.

"You know what I mean," she said.

Eleven Gra.s.shoppers only blinked and bared her teeth good-naturedly. Beyond her, the other teyn slept huddled together in each other's long arms, scratching and now and then snuffling in their sleep.

She knew they didn't understand. Nevertheless, Foxfire whispered, "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."

And closed and barred the gate.

Though she was shaking with fatigue and hunger-and running the risk of being spotted by Red Silk in her torn dress and wild, dust-covered hair, if her grandmother was still awake and prowling-Foxfire climbed one of the pine-pole ladders up to the battlement. She stole along the compound wall, pa.s.sing unseen within inches of the guard on that side, and made her way back to the western wall, the direction from which she and Eleven Gra.s.shoppers had returned to safety.

For some time she stood in the darkness at the corner of the parapet, gazing out at the hills in which she'd stumbled, searching for some glimpse, some hint to what it was that had frightened away the wildings. For whatever scared the teyn in the compound so badly that they'd risk certain death by remaining.

Had one-or some-of the djinni in fact survived?

She didn't think so. She'd felt none of the jangling, horrible electricity in the air that she'd experienced near the djinn Ba, the djinn from whose blind hunger Shaldis and the king had rescued her last spring. The tingling sensation she'd sensed like a whisper across her skin in the shut-up Temple of Nebekht.

And she'd never heard anyone mention the djinni in connection with greenish mists or lights.

Only where the westering moon threw inky shadows did she see that the dust, all along the feet of the hills, glowed in patches, a faint but distinct green, as if a low-lying vapor were very slowly exuding from the earth. Now and then it seemed to her that the mist stirred, though the night was profoundly still. Once a stream of it, no thicker than Foxfire's finger, appeared to drift toward the compound walls-she could hear the guards calling to one another, pointing and asking-only to dissipate as it drew near.

If she were a better person, a truer Craft woman, Foxfire thought, she'd remain, to watch it and see what it did. Shaldis certainly would. But she was trembling with hunger and fatigue, and her cuts were smarting as if her skin had been filed. Moreover, the longer she stayed away from her room, the greater grew the chances that Opal would be discovered as a conspirator in her absence.

So Foxfire tore herself away from the sight of that strange glimmering phosph.o.r.escence and ghosted down the ladder again and along the colonnade to her room. There she let Opal bathe her cuts and brush her snarly hair, and while she devoured her now-cold dinner like a starving wolf they devised a tale of an expedition to the walls ("Because we heard the guards calling"), a fall from the ladder, and selfless a.s.sistance from Eleven Gra.s.shoppers ("What was she doing out of the pen?" "You knocked over a water jar and let her out to help clean up.").

But though she knew she'd have to wake at dawn and face another day of exhaustion and horrors, once she lay down, Foxfire could not sleep. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the faint glow of green mist, curling across the sands.

When she dozed, she heard it sing.

TWENTY-NINE.

Oryn was sitting beside Summerchild's bed, where he had been since they'd brought her back at midnight, when word came to him that the priests of the Veiled G.o.ds were waiting for him before the palace gates.

The thick sweet-scented night had seemed endless, like a dream from which he could not wake. Now and then throughout the small hours, Moth or Pebble would tell him to go get some sleep, and he'd politely agree that he needed it and would do so presently. But he knew-and they knew-that he would not and could not leave her side.

He literally could not imagine continuing to live if Summerchild died. He supposed he must-and supposed he must make the attempt to do so, serpents, crocodiles, and poison notwithstanding. Rainsong. He was far too well acquainted with what befell the underaged children of deceased kings to entertain even the slightest hope that his daughter would not perish in the mess of rebellions, power grabs, and infighting that would follow his death.

So he knew in an academic sort of way that he had to go on living. He had to survive the ordeals of consecration somehow.

And when he thought about it, he shuddered to contemplate the mess Barun-or Mohrvine-or whoever did succeed-would make of the realm for the short time before the lakes dried and everyone perished of thirst.

But without Summerchild it all seemed pointless, like trying to make a song after one's tongue and heart had both been cut out.

"Lord King?"

He looked up. Moth was standing beside him again in the speckled light of the lamps in the niches, her beautiful brown hair braided back like a servant girl's. She'd been saying something to him. He replied, "Yes, my dear, I'll go along to bed in a moment."

Fear and grief had wiped away the brisk bossiness that usually so amused him, but she wasn't a girl to lose her head. With great gentleness, she said, "Sir, they're asking for you. They say the priests are here from the Sealed Temples, and you better go out and see them."

Oryn whispered, "Ah," and got to his feet. He almost staggered. His whole body ached from having been in the saddle since daybreak. He realized only then that he was still in his riding clothes, his face and hair covered with dust.

But one did not keep the housekeepers of the Veiled G.o.ds waiting.

Ever.

Pebble handed him a wet towel. He wiped his unshaven face and smiled his thanks, but his eyes remained on the woman who lay within the golden ring of the lamplight. The two Raven sisters had done what they could for her body, but her eyes were already sunken from the dehydration of a day in the baking desert heat. After what had happened to Shaldis, neither Moth nor Pebble had dared go seeking her mind in the gray world of trance-bound dreams. Nor would Oryn have permitted them to do so, had they asked.

Death was one of the Veiled G.o.ds, to be sure, but no one prayed to those strange archaic deities for favors. No one even recalled these days what their rites had been, if any, or how their servants were chosen or trained. They were not, strictly speaking, true G.o.ds at all. It did not matter to them whether a man was reverent or rude.

Still, reflected Oryn as he crossed the gardens toward the lamplit gate beneath the Marvelous Tower, it was self-evidently not a good idea to even consider the possibility of not being scrupulously polite.

Even Geb, trotting faithfully at his heels, was silent.

At this blue hour the first vendors of ices and fruit were usually setting up their pitches in the Golden Court outside the palace's gate, and the shutters were being taken down from royal workshops around the court. Housewives of the neighborhood, slaves, and occasional well-trusted teyn would be making their way with water jars through the dark streets to the great fountain house at one side of the square. Lights glowed deep within the Temple of Oan Echis, and on its steps the horoscope ladies would be setting out the day's wares. There were few hours of the day or night when the Golden Court wasn't a cheerful buzz of talk, movement, life.

It was empty now, as if in a continuation of his nightmare vigil at Summerchild's side. Lamps burned in the colonnade which surrounded it, and the dim amber outlined the crowding shapes of vendors, housewives, horoscope ladies, and teyn, all pushed together behind the pillars, watching. In the center of the square, just beyond the glow of the gate's lamps and just outside the circle of brightness from the sconces on the fountain house, the seven Veiled Priests stood, black robes seeming to drink up what little illumination there was.

Ean of the Mountains, greatest of the G.o.ds, had created the world and had devised the laws by which the world existed. All the other G.o.ds-Darutha of the Rains, Rohar who protected women, stingy Niam, and cheery BoSaa the Lord of Cattle, and all the rest-were Ean's children, as humankind was his grandchildren.

Those things that dwelled in the Sealed Temples were not G.o.ds as mankind understood G.o.ds.

Death.

Change.

The desert that stretched in all directions and did not end.

Fire that was both life and destruction.

The sightless abyss of the mind, from which both wisdom and madness spring.

Time.

At least they'd stayed out in the court this time, reflected Oryn as he stepped through the gateway to meet them. Twelve years ago, in the time of the waning moon immediately preceding his coronation, he'd woken in the deeps of night to find them standing in a circle around his bed.

The rite was a silent one, quickly performed. The six priests of Khon, of the twin G.o.ds Pelak and Drenan, of Kush, Zaath, and Shibathnes, came forward in turn to touch Oryn on the face, shoulders, and hands; the nameless representative of the nameless G.o.d of Time did not move. As with most matters pertaining to the Sealed Temples, no one really knew the purpose of the rite, though Oryn suspected that it was so the priests could get a good look at the candidate and make sure the prospective king didn't send in a subst.i.tute drugged to the hairline with powdered coca leaves. When they turned away, still in silence, and melted into the final shadows of the dawn streets, he remained kneeling for a long time, fearing that if he tried to rise too soon his knees would not support him.

It was one thing to think, I cannot live without Summerchild.

It was quite another to realize that without her a.s.sistance, he would die a terrible death in ten days.

And his daughter and his brother would die, too, very shortly thereafter.

And then every one of his people.

Dawn transformed the palace gardens into a world of birdsong. Oryn walked back along the paths with Geb fussing at his heels; and even in his shock, his grief, and his fear, he was conscious of, and cheered by, the beauty of the flowers. If there had been the slightest change in Summerchild's condition, he knew a messenger would have been waiting for him in the porter's lodge with Geb, so he detoured his steps to the Porcelain Pavilion and was just in time for his daughter's breakfast tea.

"Is Mama better?" asked the girl as Oryn poured out cups for her, himself, and Rabbit the nurse. Radiant Dawn, the doll who up until a year ago had been Rain-song's inseparable companion ("I'm too old for dolls now, Papa"), had made a reappearance at the breakfast table. Oryn made no comment. Neither did his daughter. It was sufficient, evidently, that this link with her childhood was there-as Soth's hand had been, closed tight on his own during his father's consecration.

Instead, Rainsong conversed in a very grown-up fashion about tea ("I like mountain green-tip best, don't you?") and her lessons. Anything but her fears. Only at the end did she say, "I hope Mama will be all better in time to watch you be crowned king again."

"As do I, my dear." Oryn stood and enfolded his daughter in a rather dusty embrace. "As do I."

"Really, Your Majesty, you must get to the baths," a fl.u.s.tered Geb insisted as Oryn rejoined him under the arbors that surrounded the pavilion. "A king is never seen in such a state! I don't know-" He broke off as Oryn turned down the path among the jasmines that led back toward the Summer Pavilion. He reached out and plucked his master's sleeve, and in a gentler voice went on, "It will not change things, you know, in the next hour, for you to go starved and dirty. She . . . she seems to be quite stable as she is. And I have ordered the baths to be got ready."

"Have you?" Oryn paused and looked down at the little eunuch with a smile. "That was very kind of you, Geb." He half turned back toward the pavilion, the shape of its cedar lacework eaves blending artfully with the sycamores and palms set all about it. Lamps still burned in its upper chamber, but the paintwork of gold and blue, the multiple hues of its gardens, were beginning to emerge into their daytime hues with the swift flood of the coming light.

He took a deep breath. I have to live, he reminded himself. I have to live at least long enough to make sure Rain-song is hidden away before the fighting starts.

"Yes, thank you, I will bathe. Please lay out . . ." His voice stumbled. The choice of robe, earrings, accessories-the usual preoccupation and delight of his mornings-seemed suddenly beyond him. Peac.o.c.k and turquoise? Blue and bronze with the antique amber necklaces? Silver summer tissue with the parures of ancient rubies? He didn't think he could have picked between a red robe and a blue.

Summerchild.

In his mind he saw the black-robed shadow of Khon-Death-standing before him as it had stood before him in the square, barely as tall as his shoulder, reaching out to touch his face with a long-fingered white hand.

I have to live. Living involves bathing and breakfast. . . .

"Bring me whatever you think is best," he said, keeping his voice steady with an effort. "And send . . . send . . ." Dragon-eyes tea from the slopes of the Eanit Mountains or lowland black? Sweet green sugarmouse fruit or bananas? "Send some breakfast up to the pavilion afterward for me. Anything will do. Ask the ladies what they will have."

Geb whispered, "Yes, Majesty," clearly aghast at this indifference.

"I will see her, though, for a moment. Yes, it will really only be for a moment," he added, with a wan flicker of a smile at his valet's expression. Geb clearly expected him to sink into lethargy at Summerchild's bedside again, and for the life of him, thought Oryn, as he entered the pavilion's blue-and-golden shadows, he could come up with no real reason why he shouldn't. An hour in the baths was a long time. If something happened, would they interrupt him in time for him to come here before-?

Desperately, he tried to slam shut the doors of his imaginings. Of coming back to this room to find them waiting for him at the bottom of the stairs, looking at each other, asking, Will you tell him or shall I?

Pebble was at the bottom of the stairs with three men. For an instant Oryn only saw the tall girl's shape against the dawn shadows, and his heart seemed to lock into immobility in his chest. Then one of the men snapped, "And I tell you that after what happened last night we cannot wait! The teyn-"

Oryn's heart sank. Not here! Those slumped, hairy forms returned to him, erupting from the wadis, driving the men back. Waiting in the hazy heat, clearly at the command of some unseen ruler. Please, not in the city!

"What about the teyn?" he asked quietly. "What's happened?"

The smallest of the men turned, and despite the dimness and shadows of the pavilion's lower chamber Oryn recognized Lord Akarian.

"What's happened?" The old man jabbed a skinny finger up at him. "Fifteen escaped from my compound at Dunwall village last night! Twenty more from my villages at Deepditch and Skipfarm! I demand that you send your Crafty girls out to put marks of fear on the walls of my compounds that will keep the teyn inside at night where they belong! This girl of yours"-he jerked a thumb at Pebble, who still stood at the foot of the steps, looking doubtfully from his lordship to the men with him-Akarian's sons, Oryn now saw-and back to Oryn-"doesn't owe allegiance to the royal house anyway! My sons have checked. Her father is of the Url Clan, which is a dependent of House Akarian. I am within my rights to demand that she-and that other girl, whose master also appertains to the House Akarian-be sent now, today, to deal with this problem, before we are all of us impoverished!"

I'm going to be eaten alive by crocodiles in ten days, and you want me to send the women of power out to mark your teyn compounds.

Summerchild could be dying, and you want me to send the only ones who might save her to keep your field labor from escaping.

Oryn drew a deep breath. "I understand that there is an increasing problem with teyn escapes, but so far, no magic has been evolved to prevent them."

"That's nonsense! The Sun Mages were able to ward the compounds for a thousand years!"

"Then I suggest you go speak to the Sun Mages on the subject," replied Oryn in his most reasonable voice. He made a discreet finger sign to Pebble to return upstairs. "They will tell you that the magic of men and the power that women are now able to wield work differently, and many of the spells that worked for mages are simply inert when performed by women who otherwise have power."

Oryn could see by the way Akarian was looking at him that his lordship didn't believe a word of it.

"You owe it to us," the old man insisted stubbornly. "As king, divinely appointed by the G.o.ds, you owe it to us to share with us the power of these women you've taken under your command."

It took Oryn the better part of half an hour to disabuse Lord Akarian of the notion that he was going to be able to leave the palace with Moth and Pebble that morning and get them to keep his teyn from escaping. When his lordship and his lordship's sons finally departed, they left a pet.i.tion the size of a short novel explaining why the levy of teyn demanded of House Akarian for work on the aqueduct was unfairly large and should be reduced. As their voices died away across the garden-still arguing with Geb and with the guards who'd been called to escort them to the main gate-Oryn turned to the stair that led up to Summerchild's chamber.

But it was as if his knees had been paralyzed, as if leaden boots had been fixed to his feet. His hand on the corner of the tiled wall, he stood for a moment, absorbing with weary grat.i.tude the silence of the first solitude he'd had in over a day. Then he slowly sank to the steps, leaned his head against the wall behind him, and began to laugh, huge racking sobs of laughter while tears ran down his face.

"My lord, what is it?" Moth came hurrying down the stairs, sat on the step at his side. "You all right?"

"Quite well, my dear," Oryn whispered, aware that for some time he'd been weeping, not laughing. "Quite well. When this is all over I must ask Soth if there didn't used to be Eight Veiled G.o.ds, not seven-there seems to be one immutable force besides Death and Time and Change that they've forgotten."

The concubine looked up at him with worried brown eyes, clearly concerned that he was either hysterical or had gone insane from his contact with the priests in the square. "What's that?"

"Stupidity," said Oryn. He wiped his eyes, looked out past Moth to the garden archway, where beyond the lattices the sun already burned bright and hot, as if the night's coolness, the dawn's birdsong, had never been. "Has Raeshaldis come? She should have been here by this time."

"No, my lord." Moth sounded scared. "We been trying to reach her since dawn, Pebble and me. She don't reply."

THIRTY.

It had been a coyote that delayed them-a spooked horse and a man and horse falling together over the edge of an arroyo, not a serious injury but an annoying delay in the empty rangelands at night. Shaldis had been waiting while Jethan and the others twisted his friend Cosk's dislocated shoulder back into place and tracked the horse, when Foxfire had called her from somewhere in dark hills in the night.

It was almost dawn before they saw the walls of the Yellow City rising before them.

"Will you stay in the Yellow City?" Shaldis reined in, gazed west through the thinning darkness. "If something should happen to the king?"

The baroque pearl of the moon stood a finger's breadth above the formless jumble of land in that direction: hills from this side but in actuality the pink-and-yellow bluffs that backed the Yellow City where they drew near the Lake of the Sun. That flat-topped shoulder of rock, she knew, was the high point of the Citadel, the Ring where for six hundred years the Sun Mages had sung for the coming of the rains.

Even at this distance-three or four miles-it seemed to her that she could hear the echoes of the magic that had been raised there year after year, a whispered comfort in her heart.

In the predawn stillness the rangeland hummed with insect life and sang with birds. From here she could smell the lake and the cook fires in the city that lay invisible beyond the hills.

"You mean if he should die?" Jethan was always relentless, but his voice now was quiet and sad. He owed his life to the king, and though as they jogged slowly through the night he'd treated Shaldis to his opinions of His Majesty's foppish wardrobe, curled hair, painted eyelids, and red-lacquered fingernails, at other times behind his stiff protestations of grat.i.tude and duty she had heard the echoes of his genuine love for Oryn Jothek. "I would remain, of course."

"To serve Barun?" Shaldis had no great opinion of His Majesty's brother. She kept her voice low, to exclude the tired band of Jethan's colleagues who cl.u.s.tered around the injured Cosk-any one of whom, she reminded herself, could have been one of Barun's short-term paramours. "Do you think he'll survive the tests, if Oryn doesn't?"

"I don't think Barun will even take the tests." Jethan's voice, though without inflection, was cold. "Not from cowardice, for His Majesty's brother is as brave a warrior as any man I've encountered. But simply because he does not understand why he can't be king-accepted by the priests and the nomads and the people of all the countryside-simply because he has the largest army and holds the widest lands."