Circle Of The Moon Part 32

There were still a hundred doors, but now only one of them looked like that of her grandfather's room.

She opened it.

She went in spearpoint first, which was fortunate. Something-a table? a small bookshelf?-crashed down onto the spear, wrenching it out of her hand, and sinewy hands groped for her throat.

Shaldis wrenched at them, kicking, as she was borne back onto the floor. Her knife was in her belt, but she could not draw steel on her grandfather. He had burned her books, beaten her, torn her mind daily with his invective and his blows, but she could never, ever hurt him. . . .

And he was trying to kill her. He pinned her down, seized her hair, trying with all the force of his arms to beat her head on the floor, screaming, "Thief! Wh.o.r.e! You won't get it! You won't get it!" She could only twist to get away, could only grab his arms as he bit her hands, drawing blood, and jabbed her with his knees. "It's mine! Mine!" The stink of him filled her nostrils, and somewhere she saw the glimmer of misty green light. "Thief!"

Shaldis's hand went for her knife hilt, but she knew wounding wouldn't stop him. He slammed her into the floor, his greater weight-a man's weight-bearing her down. "Thief!" His hands closed on her throat.

Then his grip broke; a black tangled form fell through the door beside them and struck her grandfather aside. Chirak Shaldeth went rolling, sprang to his feet, and fell on the newcomer with a shriek like the demons of ancient legend. Shaldis, wrenching away from the tangle of kicking feet and clawing hands, saw that the newcomer was Ahure. "Thief! Cheat! Liar!" the Blood Mage howled as he grabbed Chirak's hair, then tried to beat his brains out on the floor as moments before Chirak had tried to beat out those of his granddaughter. Blood streamed from a dozen cuts on Ahure's arms, breast, and scalp. No wonder he's been able to resist its takeover for so long.

Shaldis staggered to her feet, saw in an instant where the green light was glowing, flickering over the bed, over something lying in the pillows.

With the obsidian knife she drew cuts into both her arms and into the skin just below her collarbone; as the blood flowed down she dove for the bed. Both Chirak and Ahure flung themselves, shrieking, after her, but neither would let the other reach it, so they locked again, ripping and hammering at each other. Shaldis sprawled over the bed, caught up the ball of brownish gla.s.s that glowed with green light deep within, and dashed it with all her strength to the tile of the floor.

It shattered into a thousand pieces. Misty light flickered over it, swirling, as some formless creature sought to lick up the trapped dreams as the shattering of spell-wrought gla.s.s released them, and she slapped the obsidian knife blade down into the midst of it, screaming out the words, "Lolo ano ti, ti, lolo walana."

Someone screamed in the darkness like a gutted horse. Hands seized her, sticky with gore, dragged her away from the shattered fragments of gla.s.s. But the mist had gone.

"What have you done?" Ahure shrieked at her, shaking her so that her head rolled on her shoulders and she thought her neck would snap. "What have you done, hag? b.i.t.c.h! Wh.o.r.e! You've broken it! Broken it!"

And he collapsed suddenly, face buried in his mutilated hands, rocking on his knees and howling with grief.

Shaldis stumbled past him to her grandfather. One look told her he was dead. His neck was broken. Even as she watched, his body blackened with the mummifying infection of the Dreamshadow, desiccated like sun-dried leather. It crossed her mind that he might have been dead when he attacked her.

FIFTY.

Shaldis found her mother in the attic, in the same sort of trance that had held her father. Tulik and their other brother, twelve-year-old Zelph, were both deeply asleep in Oldflower's little back room off the kitchen, with Tjagan's two children and Oldflower and Five Flower keeping watch.

Five Flower, good nomad girl that she was, had arranged broken gla.s.s and a dozen other chasers of Bad-Luck Shadow across the door.

Her mother and the two sleepers responded dimly to the bloodletting that had awakened her father. She led them back along the track of the twine, glimpsing down alleyways she'd never seen before courtyards that opened into scenes of carnage, of beauty, of strangeness. She felt the presence of the Dreamshadow still in the neighborhood, saw the green corpse glow at windows and the mist flowing out doors. But she felt, too, the power of the Raven sisters, the power of the Circle of the Moon, slowly driving the rotted semiconsciousness of it into the black gla.s.s traps.

The fires were out in the Grand Bazaar when she and what remained of her family reached the square. As they emerged from the mouth of Sleeping Worms Street, Soth ran up to her, still clothed for a desert journey and covered with dust. "Yanrid took your sisters and father to the Citadel, along with others who were removed from the infected area," the king's tutor said. "You only just missed the king. He came straight here the moment we came into the city, but Bax sent him on to the palace."

Shaldis realized with surprise that the night was far spent. The last thread of the moon was gone, and the air, outside the infected alleyways, was clear. It was only a few hours till dawn.

"The way your father was cut." The former Earth Wizard looked past her at the dazed Tulik and Zelph, then back to Shaldis's own gashes. "Who told you about that? Pomegranate said the bloodletting breaks the hold of the Eater of Dreams. The night before last the king was taken by this thing, and someone knew to cut him and to trace spell marks on him with his own blood. I've made a copy of the marks, but we didn't know what they meant until your father came out with them. Are you well enough to come to the palace with me and try them on Summerchild? Cattail's done her best keeping her alive, but it's clear her last strength is failing."

"Get me a horse," said Shaldis, and checked her belt-pouch for a flake of obsidian large enough and sharp enough to use in place of Puahale's knife. "You put me in a chair and I'm going to fall asleep on the way, and you may not be able to wake me. Has Jethan come in yet? He went to help Foxfire. Cosk and about twenty riders went after them just after sunset."

"Bax told me." Soth took her hand as Kylin led up a cavalry horse. "If they'd had to hide somewhere in the hills-Jethan and Foxfire, I mean-Cosk might not even have found them yet."

"Is there any way of stopping the jubilee ordeals until they get here?" Shaldis swung into the saddle, and to his great credit Soth didn't attempt to help her. Only mounted his own horse and rode beside her through streets still duned deep in dust. No one seemed to have made any attempt to sweep, though tracks crisscrossed the soft sand. Hundreds, thousands of foot trails, all flowing like a river toward the northern gate of the city, beyond which lay the Place of Kush, the Place of the Lion.

The place where the king would meet the first of the six ordeals.

"That isn't possible," said Soth quietly, and followed Shaldis's gaze. "They're waiting all around the walls of the pit," he went on. "They've been waiting since sunset, in spite of the riot in the Bazaar District. Even when the flames there rose above the roofs of the city, more people went to gather around the lion pit. Waiting to see the king."

Cosk, thought Shaldis, you'd better bring Jethan and Foxfire back fast.

There was no time to scry. And she feared, moreover, for the loss of the energy the attempt to do so would cost her. She knew she would need everything she had left.

In the Golden Court before the palace gates, the sand had been swept up and disposed of. Pa.s.sing through the gate into the gardens was almost like stepping into one of those illusions that she'd glimpsed around the dark turnings and flame-lit doorways while trying to get up Sleeping Worms Street: small lamps shed flakes of golden light on rosebushes still in bloom, and the air was heavy with the scent of jasmine and the waters of the lake, like the Island of Rainbows.

Walking along the paths to the Summer Pavilion, Shaldis missed the pounding of the surf.

No one stirred in the gardens save the king's cats, stalking crickets in the dark. Shaldis wondered if Pontifer Pig had returned to Pomegranate's side and if he was somehow helping her and the other sisters draw the Dreamshadow into their obsidian traps.

Her grandfather was dead. Her scalp still hurt, where he'd dragged her by the hair trying to kill her. The stab of her breath with every step she took told her pretty clearly that he'd cracked one of her ribs-not for the first time in her life.

She was too tired to feel anything about any of this.

Only that Summerchild was dying.

Puahale, she thought, and brought to mind the silver amulet that Twinkle had given her, the silver amulet she'd left with her new sister, if you have any power left to lend me, lend it now.

A few candles still burned in the lamp niches of Summerchild's pavilion. The chamber downstairs had been cleared of its screens and of the dust that had filtered through them; Lotus was waiting with dates, coffee, and b.a.l.l.s of sweetened bean paste that Shaldis walked straight past to climb the stairs. In the upper chamber, the lake breezes drifted through the open archways, bringing the scent of the gardens. Only now and then, when they veered, the air was gritty with smoke.

Cattail rose from beside the bed, a startlingly different Cattail from the one Shaldis had visited a dozen nights ago in her vulgar new mansion in the Fishmarket. She was dressed in the plain clean linen frock of an ordinary Fishmarket housewife, and her gray-black hair was knotted into a businesslike bun. She held a sponge with which she'd been washing Summerchild's still face. The steamy scent of lavender water filled the blue-and-gold chamber.

Candlelight wavered over the maze of power lines chalked on the tiles around the bed. The scent of coffee lingered in the air, and of herbs.

"I'm glad you've come," said Cattail, all her boldness momentarily gone. "I've done everything I can, but she does not stir-she barely breathes. The king was here earlier"-his harp still stood near the garden door-"and I hoped . . ."

"We all hope." Shaldis came to the tall woman and embraced her. "Thank you. Thank you so much." She knelt at once beside the bed, drew out the sharp obsidian flake and the little papyrus roll of diagram that Soth had pressed into her hand.

They were obviously spell marks, though from what system Shaldis could not guess, nor what words were said with them, if any. Still, she set a ring of broken gla.s.s around the bed, drawing between the shards the signs Puahale had shown her and the formulae from the tombs. When that was done she drew back the sheets and made the cuts in Summerchild's fragile silky skin exactly as they appeared on the diagram-most of them corresponded precisely to what Puahale had showed her-and used the blood to draw the circles, the lines, the zigzags on the unconscious woman's hands and face and throat, as she had done on her father's.

Since she did not know the formulae of those spells, she used Puahale's, calling on the strength of the sea, the slow hammer of the surf on the faraway sh.o.r.e-and beyond that sh.o.r.e, the dimmer, stronger knowledge of the water that stretched away out of sight of land.

The waves that ran forever, as the desert around the valley ran, under the ever-altering eternity of the moon.

She sat back, holding Summerchild's hand, and let the power flow through her. She was far too exhausted for it to be more than a slow drift, and she knew that, too, would be gone soon. She didn't even know if the power was real or was merely the sweetness of her memories.

She heard Cattail come back into the room and smelled fresh coffee, though the big woman did not speak. For once, it appeared, Mohrvine had offered genuine help in paying for the former laundress's services. Later she heard Pomegranate's voice below, and those of Moth and Pebble. From some great distance she saw, as if in a dream, a double circle of women dancing on the beach of the Island of Rainbows, the outer ring moving one way, the inner-with Puahale's tall head standing above the rest-moving in the other. The sun westering over a pink-dyed sea made a sharp golden square of the silver amulet on Puahale's neck.

In the garden she heard the first birds begin to waken and sing.

Summerchild's fingers tightened around hers.

"Shaldis?"

"I'm here." She opened her eyes. The whole eastern sky above the palace gardens was a wash of blazing gold. The shadows of a new day stretched lakeward. Every bird and bee in the world seemed to be awake.

Summerchild was looking up at her with the incurious eyes of the last extremities of weakness. "What happened?" she asked.

"What didn't?" Shaldis almost laughed, and held out her hand, into which Cattail instantly pressed a cup of milk, which smelled of the sweetness of honey, and a silver spoon. "Can you drink?"

She propped her friend a little-Summerchild couldn't have weighed more than an eleven-year-old girl-and put the spoon to her lips. Pebble was already vanishing through the door in quest of something stronger. Beside the stairway screen, Pomegranate and Moth hugged each other in a silent ecstasy of joy.

"The thing that drove mad the people in Three Wells seized you. You've been unconscious for twelve days. I'll tell you all about it later, but we thought we'd lost you."

"I dreamed about you. I dreamed such strange things. Do we really have a new sister?" The milk and honey-and the spells of strength Cattail had written on the cup and spoon, which Shaldis felt through her hand-had their effect. Summerchild's eyes focused a little more and her fine-drawn brows pulled together in concern. "Darling, what happened?" She brought up a feeble hand to touch Shaldis's face: grimy with soot, cracked with the sun, fresh cuts clotted with blood, and her tangled hair full of sand. She realized her bloodstained clothing smelled like camel. "Are you all right?"

"Just tired. There was . . . much evil from the thing that was in the village. But it's gone now. And I've learned new things, many new things about our power."

Pebble approached with a cup of chicken broth. Summerchild murmured, "Thank you," as she took it, and then, "Oh, you poor child!" to the big lank-haired girl. Pebble, too, was filthy and soot grimed, her eyelids smudged with dark exhaustion. Looking past her at Pomegranate and Moth, Shaldis saw they were the same. If their lives had depended on lighting a single candle by means of magic, she guessed, between the four of them they would all perish.

But by their calm faces-by their mere presence here-she knew that the eater of dead men's dreams had been imprisoned.

And Summerchild was alive, and awake, and would live.

"Thank you," whispered Summerchild again, as Shaldis laid her back into the pillows. "I feel so weak. Twelve days, you said? My poor Oryn. Where is he?"

In the shocked, deathly silence that followed this, Shaldis turned her eyes to the others. They, too, in their exhaustion and their joy, had for the moment forgotten.

The sun stood high above the Citadel bluff, flooding the Yellow City with light. The king would have set out for the Sealed Temples with the first stains of the dawn light on this day of the new moon.

Stoutly, Moth said, "He be back before night, Summer. You rest now." And she grabbed the maid Lotus by the arm as Lotus came in with another honey posset and gave her a glare whose urgent demand for silence could not be mistaken.

The four Raven sisters and Cattail cl.u.s.tered together at the head of the stairs that descended from the upper room. "They've fixed the lion and the fire," breathed Cattail as they descended. "And Lord Mohrvine told me they got one of those big ugly harmless scorpions. The king'll be coming to the Temple of the Twins just about now."

"I been listening," said Moth. "It's all been silent, I haven't heard no crowd howling, like they would if-if something went wrong."

"Can you help us?" Shaldis looked straight into Cattail's eyes.

The older woman hesitated, then shook her head. "I've been trying for two weeks to come up with spells," she said, not adding-she didn't have to-any speculation about who might pay her for such efforts and how much.

"We may not need much extra power," said Shaldis, leading the way down the stairs into the soft gloom of the Summer Pavilion's lower chamber. "If Jethan . . ."

She stopped in her tracks.

Jethan stood in the center of the room. He had washed his face, but still wore the sand-worn tattered clothing he'd had on in the desert, torn now and stained with blood. He'd worked his veils into makeshift bandages, around his head and on his upper left arm, where an enemy's sword would be likeliest to nick. Bruises blackened his cheekbones and jaw.

His face was expressionless, his eyes desolate with grief, self-blame, defeat.

"I'm sorry, Shaldis."

She said the first thing that came to her. "Are you all right?"

A flash of anger pa.s.sed across his eyes, and his gesture seemed to be an attempt to push his own pain aside. "They took her. Red Silk and her riders. I tried to follow but I was afoot, and they turned back to hunt me. Cosk and his riders got me away from them, but they-we-were outnumbered; to try to fight our way past would have been death, and to no purpose."

Looking into his eyes, Shaldis understood that had his friends not arrived-had his friends not been in danger-he would have gone on fighting, and died, rather than retreat.

"I'm sorry," he said again, his voice like the sc.r.a.pe of stone. "I did what I could."

He's lucky he wasn't killed, thought Shaldis, sick in her heart that she'd sent him to do a task that he couldn't hope to succeed at. "No, I'm sorry," she whispered, stepping up close to him under the glum gaze of two of Summerchild's eunuchs, who had all this time watched from a corner. "You did well even to get out of there alive, and better, to know when to come back here. We'll need you."

He glanced at the stair.

"Summerchild's alive," said Shaldis softly. "She's awake, she'll live. Will you come with us now to the Temple of the Twins?"

"And do what?" demanded Jethan, almost spitting the words. His eyes, cold with self-reproach, raked her, then pa.s.sed to the others: haggard, shaky with fatigue, clearly far beyond even the smallest of magics, even had they known the spells to save the king.

"And stand by him," said Shaldis, "as his friends. Even if there is no hope."

Jethan was silent, the bitterness of his blue gaze terrifying. Then he sighed and took her hand. "Let's go, then," he said.

FIFTY-ONE.

They got as close on horseback to the Temple of the Twins as they could-Shaldis, Jethan, Pomegranate, and Pebble, Moth having volunteered to remain behind with Summerchild. The crowd filled every street, alleyway, and square of the Flowermarket District, in whose boundary wall the small black Temple of the Twins was set like a bead in a ring. More people crowded the lower temple fence that extended beyond the city wall, as the wall of the Temple of Death extended beyond the southern wall on the opposite side of the city. Men stood on ladders and on one another's shoulders to look over into the enclosed and rather sc.u.mmy lagoon from which a wide channel led out to the lake itself.

Under other circ.u.mstances any of the three Raven sisters would have simply extended the minor spells of illusion to open a path for themselves through the crowd. None was capable of doing so now. Jethan pushed and thrust, Shaldis clinging to his belt with one hand and to Pomegranate's wrist with the other. They were halfway to the small, guarded door when a noise, like a sigh or a gasp or a stirring, ran through the crowd, a buzz of antic.i.p.ation.

d.a.m.n it, Shaldis thought frantically, d.a.m.n it.

What any of them could have done when they reached the inner enclosure, if they reached it, she hadn't the faintest idea. Only that they had to be there, they had to at least try, even though not a trace of power remained to them now.

The temple's small door was closed, but as Jethan and the three women came near, it opened. The black-veiled figure who regarded them enigmatically from the threshold was alone, but not another soul of the crowding mult.i.tude even attempted to push forward. People took liberties with the G.o.ds all the time, pilfered from their temples and falsified their t.i.thes and took their names in vain, but they treated differently those who dwelled in the Sealed Temples.

The single, small, high-roofed chamber was empty and clean swept. As she and the others walked through, Shaldis glimpsed a niche curtained in black. The northern side of the chamber was open, pillared, and looked out onto the lagoon, down to which led shallow steps. The stink of dirty water and crocodiles was overwhelming. It was as if, Shaldis thought, the temple had been built only as an adjunct to the lagoon, existing solely for the consecration of kings and in disuse for centuries. Crocodiles must creep up the channel from the lake and bask on its steps and in its cool shelter all the time.

There was a s.p.a.ce of about twenty-five feet between the lagoon's stone brim and the enclosure wall. It was jammed solid with watchers, but they stayed away from the steps.

Two priests stood on the steps, alone. Shaldis came to a halt still within the temple's shadows. She could see the king wading steadily, breast deep in the green water, across the pool to touch the far edge, which she knew he must do and come back.

The pool was full of crocodiles. It was a hot morning; they basked on the lower steps, floated in the murky verges of papyrus and reed that had rooted over the years all around the lagoon's sides. They swam, gliding in the green water with the heavy deadly sinuousness of water snakes. One of them came close enough to the king that the bow wave of its pa.s.sing slopped over his shoulders; he had to step back a pace so that its scaled side wouldn't brush his face.

Shaldis's eyes scanned the crowd, frantically searching for a face she knew. She saw Yanrid, Rachnis, Hathmar cl.u.s.tered together with Hiero and Kylin. By the way the Sun Mages clung to one another's hands it was clear they were in terror and were not even attempting magic. Nearby them Geb, the king's fat little chamberlain, held his hands pressed over his mouth, weeping.