Circle Of The Moon Part 7

And in the hammering heat of midday, naked was the way she wished she was. And while she was wishing, she wished she was back at the villa of Golden Sky and not risking death by suffocation through her grandmother's scheme.

"You don't believe a thing that woman tells you," Red Silk threw back over her shoulder. "She's the king's minion. They all are, and that skinny-bones concubine of his most of all. What he says, they do. You don't trust any but your own. And you keep one eye on them."

That, Foxfire supposed, was the reason she and her grandmother had been brought to the Slaughterhouse District by three of her older brothers: dour Sormaddin, fierce-tempered urthet, and dandified Zharvine, sons of her father by his legal wife, Hearthfire Lady (no newfangled dropping of the old name forms for her!). Sormaddin and urthet had been left with the camels among the ruined villas that lay along the eastward road. Zharvine, reveling at the prospect of lurking about in disguise, followed them at a distance with drawn sword, clothed as one of the bullyboys whose violence ruled the slum. Foxfire considered his presence as unnecessary as the spells that hid her and her grandmother. The least he could have done was lead the goat.

She knew what her grandmother intended, and though their success might well save her father's life, she wished desperately that she was home.

The walls narrowed around them, high now though ruinous and sending back waves of heat as if the two dark-clothed women made their way through a bread oven. The reek of rotting meat from the slaughtering yards, of dung and privies, made Foxfire dizzy. Before them the black stone walls of the old Temple of Nebekht rose over the surrounding jumble; six months ago the cult of the Iron-Girdled G.o.d had been strong enough to nearly oust the king from his throne, and now, like the Citadel of the Sun Mages, it stood empty.

Empty save for the king's guards and for the statue of gold-sheathed crystal where Raeshaldis said that the djinn Naruansich still lurked.

Foxfire half closed her eyes, stretched out her mind. Let her consciousness pa.s.s into the black stone walls of the temple, as Summerchild had taught her-had taught both the mother and the daughter of her lord's enemy, because they, like she, were the Sisters of the Raven. Because they, like she, needed the full use of their magic, for all to survive.

The guards in the lobby were dozing. As who wouldn't in this heat? Her spells probed at their somnolent, undefended minds, halfway toward dreaming already. One man, the older, had brought a book with him, a compilation of the runes of High Script, which he'd been copying onto wax and studying, along with a simplified version of the Cla.s.sic of Kings. No wonder he'd fallen asleep, reflected Foxfire: part of the training of a Pearl Woman was to learn the thousands of runes of the High Script and how to read the cla.s.sics of philosophy, scripture, and ancient lore written in them. The younger man was daydreaming about his girlfriend. Foxfire felt the warm tingle of his reminiscent l.u.s.t, and blushed a little under her veils.

"Two guards, Grandmother," she breathed.

"Can you put them to sleep?"

She drew a deep breath. "I think so."

"Do it, then."

It wasn't difficult. Shaldis had taught them all the Sun Mage spells for easing people over the edge into dreamland, but Foxfire, like all the women, had used these only as a starting point. She realized she'd been making up little songs in her head for years, to make her nurses and governesses-and later some of the ladies in the Blossom House where she'd had her advanced education in the womanly arts-drift off to sleep. Raeshaldis had told her that she'd done the same thing at her grandfather's house.

So Foxfire and Red Silk had practiced, all over Mohrvine's household, without anyone being the wiser. Most times Foxfire could put a guard to sleep, or one of the pages waiting in their little day room. Once she'd whispered a dreaming song that had put the whole dormitory of maids under, but as that had gotten the girls soundly beaten by the housekeeper she hadn't tried it again. Her grandmother, who experienced no such scruples about who got punished for falling asleep on duty, was much better at it than she was.

But in this case, aided by the day's heat, the matter was ludicrously easy. Foxfire breathed a sweet nostalgic air into the younger man's mind, about his beautiful sweetheart, and into the older man's whispered a soft monotony of runes, lulling as the song of spring wind in willow trees. Beside her she heard Red Silk chuckle. "Very good, little minx," the old lady whispered. "You've put half the neighbors down as well. Now come. Let's see how you are with opening doors."

That was another skill Foxfire had practiced under her grandmother's watchful eye. At least that one didn't get the servants in trouble. Foxfire wrapped her hands in the end of her veil before pressing them to the sun-hot bronze of the temple doors, probed into the iron-strapped slabs for the mechanism of the locks. Soth, Oryn's librarian, had taught them that, and mad old Pomegranate, whose brother was a burglar: all the women had studied the construction of locks and latches, to know what to feel for with their minds. Foxfire could see the mechanism in her thoughts, as if she were remembering a dream she'd had, but she couldn't touch the intricate maze of levers. She felt it when her grandmother reached in, and pushed the tumblers aside.

Her grandmother had poured dumbweed down the goat's throat, to paralyze its voice. Still it struggled, rasping hoa.r.s.ely as they pulled it over the threshold, as if it knew what would become of it in the vast enclosed dark of the temple.

Foxfire shuddered, hating herself as she drew the great doors closed.

The sanctuary that lay beyond the vestibule breathed with the old reek of sacrificial slaughter, of dirty blood and sc.r.a.ps of meat left rotting in corners-the followers of Nebekht had never enjoyed a reputation for cleanliness.

Above all, the statue of the Iron-Girdled One brooded in the dark.

"High One!" Red Silk's voice rang in the darkness like the blow of a hammer on steel. Foxfire clutched at the sleep spells on the guards. "Sunflash Prince, Naruansich, lord of the invisible kingdom of the winds!"

Foxfire winced, knowing that her grandmother had learned the djinn's true name from Shaldis. She wanted her father to survive-she wanted her father to be king, but she knew betrayal when she saw it.

"We call upon you, Lord of the Thousand Lights, we beg of you, show yourself!" The old woman fell to her knees before the idol.

"We seek your council, wisest prince! We seek your aid. Show yourself, we beseech, we pray! Speak with us here!"

Silence, and the reeking weight of the noonday heat, as if the whole of the heavens pressed down upon the black rafters far above their heads. After what felt like hours-but, Foxfire calculated, was probably about as long as it would take to walk a mile-her grandmother cursed, and pulled from beneath her robes a corked gourd bottle of brandy doctored with tiga root, which the nomads of the desert used to simulate madness. Lohar, to whom the djinn had spoken in the name of the G.o.d Nebekht, had been mad; Foxfire privately considered that to "free the mind" in this way was crazy in itself, but knew better than to tell her grandmother so.

Trembling, she led the goat forward, and the two women wrestled it to the dirty floor. It flung its horns up and down, and the broken noises that came from its mouth seemed louder than shouts in the horrible shadowed silence of the windowless temple; Foxfire was hard put to keep her thoughts concentrated on the two men sleeping in the vestibule, on the other spells Shaldis and Summerchild and old Pomegranate had taught her, to turn the attention of pa.s.sersby aside. She couldn't believe no one would hear.

The goat's hoof slashed her wrist and drew blood. A stone knife glinted dully in Red Silk's hand, a sacrificial implement from the desert tribes among whom she'd grown up. Foxfire draped her weight over the goat's thrashing legs and grabbed at the horns, and Red Silk struck. The flint blade tore through hair and soft flesh; blood fountained out. Pressed to the goat's body, Foxfire felt its lungs and heart work wildly as its life gushed away.

In her heart she cried, I'm sorry, and fought not to weep for the animal's soul.

Fought to keep her little songs of sleep upon the guards.

She stumbled back, nauseated by the stink of the fresh blood, her own garments dribbled and blotted. Reeling with the onset of the drugs, Red Silk knelt over the dying goat, slit the body open, and plunged her hands inside. Foxfire looked away, and when she looked back she saw her grandmother standing before the plinth on which the idol rested, her body pressed to the stone. The temple was windowless and the darkness complete, but Foxfire could see in the dark, as all Crafty ones could. She saw the trail of blood that led from the goat's body in her grandmother's wake, saw the thin streams of it crawling down, from where Red Silk's ensanguined hands stroked the idol's golden feet.

"Come to us and help us." The old woman's voice was thick now and strange, stammering with the drugs that disjointed her mind. "Speak, and we will speak for you. Help, and we will grant you whatever it is you ask for, whatever it is you need." She pressed herself to the stone. Flies, that were to be found everywhere in the Slaughterhouse District, began to roar dully in the stillness and to settle on the dead goat and the blood trail.

Foxfire felt sick.

For almost two hours Red Silk whispered, screamed, pleaded, and threatened: offered blood, more goats, teyn, slave children. "Tell me what it is you wish! What price you demand! You must speak to me! You must give us your help!"

Sleepy-by, sleepy-by, you're safe in Mama's arms, Foxfire sang mechanically into the minds of the two men slumped by their lamp in the oven heat of the vestibule. Sweat crawled down her face and body and the drone of the flies filled her mind like the howling of desert winds. As long as she's with you, you'll come to no harm.

She forced her thoughts to see only that plump little brown-eyed girl that the younger guard loved, a little like Opal before the fire, singing the sleepy-by song as she brushed her hair (Who is she? Do you treat her well?); to shape the one-thousand-two-hundred-and-fourth, the one-thousand-two-hundred-and-fifth of the twelve thousand specialized sigils of the High Script. What will you do with this knowledge? Write poems about the stars, read the tales of the ancient kings?

It seemed to Foxfire in her half-dreaming state that they were not alone in the temple after all, that someone or something stood quite close to her grandmother beside the blood-smeared plinth. Something that shined as if all the stars of the Milky Way had collapsed upon one another into a single column of unbearable light.

Something that looked upon the old woman and the dead goat with disgust and contempt in its golden eyes. Around her the air seemed for an instant to buzz and jangle, as if with the sound of a hundred thousand chains shaken at the far side of the universe.

Then it was gone.

At last her grandmother staggered back to her, tripped on the dead goat, fell to her knees, and vomited. Foxfire hastened to her side to steady her, but was shoved away. "d.a.m.n it, girl, you think I can't look after myself? In the tribes a woman who can't get to her feet again is left behind. Give me my stick."

Trembling, Foxfire obeyed.

"There's nothing here," muttered Red Silk. "Nothing. Curse them all. Curse them for liars. Let's get out of here."

She reeled toward the door, leaving the goat's carca.s.s in a puddle of filth, blood, and flies for someone else to clean up.

"We'll find a way, though. You mark my words, girl-my son will be king."

In the doorway she slewed around, dilated eyes staring into the darkness. Then her drugged gaze swung onto Foxfire, contempt bitter in her voice. "Just like that hussy Raeshaldis to lie about him being here. There's no one here. You can't trust her. Can't trust any but your own."

But who, Foxfire wondered, are my own?

FOURTEEN.

A little before sunset Raeshaldis woke. The afternoon heat broke in the palace sooner than anywhere else in the city; breezes ruffled gently in from the lake, bringing the dry rustle of the date-palm groves along its sh.o.r.es, the creak of the long lines of bucket hoists that these days transferred water across the stretches of what once had been submerged.

She had slept with her crystal beneath her pillow, hoping for another dream. Now she cradled it in her hands, tried to call back anything, any image, that might lead her to sight of the unknown Raven sister who had cried for help in the night.

But nothing came.

In time she set the crystal aside, collected a light robe from one of the wall cupboards, and went downstairs and along the garden path to the palace baths.

There were several of these, dating from the times when kings had maintained dozens of concubines and scores of dancing girls, some of whom had to be kept from encountering one another at all costs. Although in his youth King Oryn had pursued an extravagant course of debauchery, it had been, Shaldis suspected, more to annoy his father than out of any true inclination for multiple liaisons; he'd generously dowried and married off most of those young ladies the moment his father's death had opened for him the way to the woman he truly loved.

To her knowledge, four of those former concubines had asked to remain: one of them worked with Soth in the palace library, two had become lovers and lived contentedly as pensioners in a small pavilion in a corner of the gardens, and the fourth had taken over administration of the palace household funds, invested part of the income from royal lands and lent the rest out at interest, and was making a small fortune for herself and the king. All of them got on extremely well with Summerchild.

At the baths this evening, however, Shaldis encountered only Summerchild herself, who gave her further details of the search Soth and Pomegranate had been engaged upon since late in the spring and the problem of lake monsters which would eventually have to be dealt with. "The odd thing is, Pomegranate says that she encountered marks that felt like ward signs in the City of Reeds and in one of the villages along the sh.o.r.es of the White Lake-both in places where everyone has said there are no Crafties of either s.e.x and have not been since the magic of men faded. She says she isn't certain, but she thinks they're newer than that, and she thinks they were made by women."

"I don't understand." Shaldis moved her shoulders into the powerful ma.s.sage of the bath woman's hands. She and Summerchild had pa.s.sed through the soaping and rinsing, the bubbling hot pools and the steam, in small talk and silence; now they lay on towels and warmed marble in the delicious afterglow stage that made actual baths-as opposed to the pan-and-pitcher scrubs with which most people started their mornings-such addictive pleasure. The royal bath women were the best in the realm and had hands like blacksmiths'. "That's what I don't understand about what happened to my grandfather, either. Why would a woman who has magic, who can do magic, hide her skills? I mean, Cattail down in the Fish-market is practically coining money!"

"Maybe they're afraid of Cattail," surmised Summerchild quietly. "Although to tell the truth I've never heard of her threatening another Raven sister. Her att.i.tude seems to be there's plenty of customers out there for everyone."

"Including the ones she's sold good-luck spells to, to counteract the bad-luck spells their enemies have paid her to put on them." Shaldis took a sip of the mint tea whose delicate cups stood between their respective ma.s.sage slabs. "That wouldn't hold in any case for those in the north, when there isn't a jealous and powerful Raven sister trying to corner the market."

"Unless someone was lying to Pomegranate."

"It could be children." Pebble and Moth came in, sweating and pink from the hot tubs and swathed in enormous cotton towels. Before returning to their respective homes at noon-borne in the palace sedan chairs in which they'd been fetched-both junior sisters had promised to return that evening, to ride along the lakesh.o.r.e and test spells on crocodiles. Pebble went on, "When I was little, my friends and I played games with signs: You can't walk past this line, that sort of thing. Could Pomegranate tell what the signs had been made for?"

"No. She said they weren't real sigils or ward runes, just simple little squiggles imbued with magic." Summerchild and Shaldis exchanged a look as they yielded their places on the ma.s.sage slabs to the others and retreated to the couches. A junior bath girl brought their tea; two others fetched sandalwood combs and began to comb their hair. Pebble just wound her limp, mousy strands into a knot, but Moth had brought her own maid to execute one of the elaborate braided coiffures that were in such fashion in the city, when the ma.s.sage was done. "That sounds like children, at that. But surely their parents would know. Would tell someone."

"Maybe they don't know themselves yet," mused Shaldis. "And maybe they come from families like mine, where even five-year-olds know they'd better keep everything to themselves if they want to have any kind of lives of their own."

"Pomegranate say anything else?" asked Moth, wriggling like a contented cat into the ma.s.saging hands of the bath woman. "Other than monsters coming out of the lakes and stomping on villages just like in the stories? I always thought monsters in the lakes were just fairy tales, you know, like phoenixes and rocs that fly away with camels in their claws and devils that can put the Bad-Luck Shadow on you when you're asleep." Her dark eyes sparkled with childlike delight that such marvels might come true.

"My father told me he heard a rumor yesterday about a plague among the northern lakes," said Pebble quietly. "One of the men on the lumber boats from the Mountains of Eanit said whole villages were killed off in a night."

"Maybe they got a lake monster up there, too?" Moth didn't sound terribly upset about the prospect.

Summerchild's face was grave, and suddenly tired. "I'll have the king send word to the marketplaces to ask," she said, and sat up on her couch. "Thank you, dear," she added, to the girl who was coiling her hair into its deceptively simple knots. "And it may only be rumor. Sometimes I wonder if the realm won't fall apart simply because we don't have Sun Mages in Ith or the City of White Walls to speak with Yanrid every morning in the Citadel's scrying chamber and let him-and us-know what's happening three hundred miles away. The City of Ith could be destroyed by lake monsters-or by plague or an infestation of locusts or Bad-Luck Shadow-and we wouldn't know it for weeks."

Our children are dying.

"Pomegranate didn't happen to mention anything that might have been the sound I heard in my dream, did she?" Shaldis sat forward on the couch and drew her bath sheet closer around her thin shoulders. "A long soft roaring followed by a crash? Like an avalanche, but repeated, s.p.a.ced out at about a count of five."

Summerchild shook her head and looked at the others. They both returned blank stares.

Shaldis sighed. "Just a thought."

The king joined the ladies for a light supper at the Summer Pavilion just after the sun went down. When full dark came, they all set off from the northern gate of the palace that opened to the kitchen courts, riding secretly in twos and threes under the cloak of spells. Summer nights saw a thousand daytime occupations, and a carnival atmosphere prevailed in the rural suburb that cl.u.s.tered outside the Yellow City's northern gate. From the road through the palmeries and farms of the lakesh.o.r.e, Shaldis could see the torchlight of the gate and its surrounding taverns and bawdy houses. Not many people, it was true, walked along the wall to the lakesh.o.r.e itself-if you didn't get eaten by crocodiles, the saying went, you would be by mosquitoes-but everyone who hadn't gone back to work by torchlight was out walking in the evening cool.

They kept the cloaks-of magic or of dark anonymous wool-well wrapped around them until they were clear of all these evening strollers. It wouldn't do for anyone to report that the king had ridden out with his coterie of Raven sisters, to see if by spells they could circ.u.mvent the will of the G.o.ds. Looking ahead of her at Jethan's broad shoulders and stiff back, Shaldis wondered if that young man had been one of those who'd believed implicitly in the will of the G.o.ds.

She wouldn't put it past him.

"The guards on the Temple of Nebekht report that they awoke from deep sleep this afternoon to find the mutilated carca.s.s of a goat in the sanctuary," murmured the king, reining back his tall horse to ride between Shaldis and Summerchild. "There was blood on the statue-were I a betting man I'd wager six pots of first-cla.s.s ointment and four camel loads of white rose petals that the celebrants of that particular little rite were my uncle Mohrvine's ladies."

"You really think you could find a taker, my lord?" Summerchild raised her brows, exquisite beneath the pearl border of her head veil.

"I'm sure I could order someone to accept my bets. I understand kings have in the past." He glanced away across the fields and pastureland east of the road to where the low black wall of the Place of Kush, the only one of the Sealed Temples to lie outside the city, stretched almost invisible beneath the chilly glow of the stars. "Completely aside from the uncleanliness of it-they could at least have tidied up after themselves-I shouldn't care to think Lord Mohrvine now has a djinn on his side."

"It tells us one thing," remarked Shaldis. "It tells us Red Silk doesn't have the power to make those spells work, any more than we do. Not if she's bargaining with a djinn for goats. We know Naruansich's name," she added, "and we know spells that will hold off a djinn. Or at least they did last time. And personally, I don't think he came out. He was a slave before, doing the bidding of a madman. I think he'll be careful about putting himself in that position again." In a lower voice, she added, "I would be."

In addition to the king, the Raven sisters were accompanied by Bax, the white-haired commander of the palace guard; by Yanrid, Rachnis, and the novice Kylin; and by a handful of trusted guards, who formed a cordon in the darkness among the cornstalks and the tomato vines. By everyone, in fact, Shaldis guessed, who could be trusted with the secret that Crafties, not G.o.ds, were to be behind the king's success in his ordeals of consecration. Leaving the king and Kylin to mind the horses, they picked their way through the dark field rows to the spongy stretches of mud where the water had dried away to mazes of pools, papyrus, and desiccating reeds.

Mosquitoes swarmed here, and Shaldis, who eschewed veils with the pride of a young woman who can protect herself, was extremely glad for the gauzy folds Summerchild had lent her: pride was one thing but there was no need to be stupid. Crocodiles swarmed here, too, not only in the streamlets and irrigation ca.n.a.ls but crawling among the islets of dry land and up in among the rows of corn and vegetables onsh.o.r.e. Shaldis and her fellow Raven sisters carried wicker hampers filled with newly killed chickens, to leave Bax and Jethan free to use, if necessary, their crossbows and pikes.

They needed them. The four women tried every spell and combination of spells that the two former wizards could think of-including a dozen variations of Pomegranate's lake-monster spells-individually and with their powers fused by the Sigil of Sisterhood, to drive the twelve- and sixteen-foot reptiles back from the chickens they tossed out among them. Twice Bax and Jethan had to fire flaming crossbow bolts at hungry reptiles for whom a few chickens weren't enough.

In the end, exhausted and frustrated, the little party beat a hasty retreat up the path through the cornstalks, Shaldis and the others stretching out their awareness to listen for the rustle of huge scaly bodies in the dark away from the trail. They found the king and Kylin both mounted again, torches in hand and looking nervously down at the road around their horses' feet.

"No, no, I haven't had any company," the king explained, dismounting gingerly as the party of magic workers emerged from the cornstalks onto the road. "Just a great deal of rustling, which of course could have been rats or foxes as easily as crocodiles. Indeed, it occurred to me that you might have driven the crocodiles away with spells so potent that they rushed ash.o.r.e and all this distance inland in a panic. . . . No? Well, a man can hope."

FIFTEEN.

We command the fire and the serpents and the stinging insects. . . .

Shaldis watched the main party of king and guards turn along the dark path toward the palace's northern gate. The late moon was rising, full and smiling as a young wife carrying a longed-for child.

It would wither away to nothing in fourteen days, leaving the king to face his ordeal in its darkness.

She rubbed her eyes, her head throbbing. That afternoon's siesta and bath seemed years in the past.

Fourteen days.

Ahead of her, Rachnis, Yanrid, and Kylin talked softly about negotiations with the grocer and whether the Citadel should liquidate some of its hard-won investments in order to purchase a collection of grimoires being offered by the widow of a former Pyromancer in Ith who had hanged himself last spring. Behind, she was aware of Jethan riding with a single lantern, in silence.

"Thank you for doing this tonight," said Summerchild softly, riding at her side as they pa.s.sed through the city's northern gate. "I know it's late."

It was well past midnight. Even the jostling late-night shoppers, the prost.i.tutes and tavern keepers and sellers of horoscopes and silks who livened the summer nights of the Flowermarket District around them, were retreating to their beds. Customers emerged, chattering happily, from the discreet doors of the Blossom Houses; servants waited till they were out of sight before gratefully putting up the shutters.

Dawn would come soon.

"I meant to ask you to help me scry for the woman in my dream this morning," said Shaldis, "only my father showed up instead."

If bath and siesta felt years ago, the morning had retreated into the mists of the legendary past. They reined their horses apart from the king, his guards, and the other two sisters. Like shadows they pa.s.sed through the gates as they were closing and along the city's silent streets: Shaldis and Summerchild, Rachnis and Yanrid and the novice Kylin, with Jethan riding behind.