Circle Of The Moon Part 9

I can't be too late! Not having come so close!

"If they died of plague it was from unclean dishes." Hiero the cook appeared in the pantry door, tall and slightly stooped, his wise, kindly face luxuriantly bearded and radiating serenity. He looked exactly like every wizard in every story Shaldis had ever heard, far more so than the two rather sleepy old ruffians across the table from her. "Or from a lethargy caused by laziness."

Kylin gulped down his tea and got to his feet, darted back into the kitchen.

Yanrid, of whom Shaldis had spent her first eighteen months at the Citadel absolutely terrified, grunted. "Disaster struck Three Wells the night before last," he said. "Had the woman in your dream been there she would not have said Our children die, but We all perish." He smeared a little goat cheese on his bread, studied the result in a shaft of sunlight that was already growing hot. "And in any case there is little you can do. And nothing that you could have done."

Shaldis knew he was right-knew it down to her bones. Why then, she wondered, did bitterness and anger sicken her so? She pushed her own bread away, her hand shaking, and sat for a time gazing into the shafts of sunlight, the shadows beyond. Did I leave the scrying chamber too early? If I hadn't let Jethan talk me into abandoning it then, would I have heard from her?

Did I really destroy our only hope through my weakness, my carelessness?

She looked across at the craggy-faced man opposite her, saw the dark eyes that had always seemed so unfeeling still on her, filled with an understanding concern.

"How did you do it?" she asked softly. "How can you do it still? Knowing the outlander mages, knowing they have to be going through something just as terrible as we're going through here, if their magic has faded. Friends, people you've known for years. You know what's happening and you can't do anything! She could be dying-she could be dead already."

"If she is dead, there was nothing you could have done." Yanrid's voice was like granite, unmoving. But not, she realized, because he didn't feel. "If she is alive, there is nothing that you can do to keep her from dying tomorrow . . . or not dying. I think no one who has our powers-your powers," he corrected himself gently, "ever loses the feeling that we owe it to everyone to help them. And until we find a way to step past that, there is no end to the harm we do ourselves and others. We do what we can. And we come to understand the things that we cannot do. You don't know whether this woman is alive or dead. It isn't necessary to hurt yourself thinking she's dead when, in fact, you simply don't know."

"It comes with age, child," sighed Rachnis, giving his white hair a single deft twist onto the back of his head and skewering it into place with a stylus. Then amus.e.m.e.nt glinted in his black eyes and he added, "Or anyway I hope it will to me," and they all laughed.

"As for what you can do," said Yanrid, "since this woman seems able to communicate through dreams rather than regular scrying-a method which has been written about but for which no spell of control exists-I suggest that each night before you sleep, you meditate on the healing herbs that will bring down fever and the spells to be written over them that add to their strength. With luck these things will enter your own dreams, and she may read them there."

"But what if she lives in the deep desert?" asked Shaldis. "Or the mountains-she has to be somewhere far away, not to have heard of healing with herbs to begin with."

"That only means you must meditate on as many different varieties as you can. I'm sure"-here he glanced beside him at Rachnis-"that we can come up with enough herbals in the library to keep you and your unknown sister busy."

Shaldis drew a deep breath, as if the old men had lifted some great weight from her shoulders. It hadn't even occurred to her that others had communicated in this fashion before. "Thank you. I'll do that. And if there's anything else you think of that I can do . . ."

"Yes," said Yanrid firmly. "Take care of yourself, so that when you do sleep, your own dreams will be clearer. As I said, no one has ever come up with a method of opening this dream communication at will, but if it happens again, any notes you can take on the subject will-"

Kylin swept back into the refectory, a towel slung over one shoulder and sand all over his ap.r.o.n, with which they scoured the pots. "This came for you." He fished in his belt satchel and brought forth a tablet of the sort that merchants' accounts were tallied on. The two wooden leaves were tied together with green string and sealed with the seal of the Clan Shaldeth.

Another attempt last night. Grandfather well, though shaken. A maid killed.

How like Tulik-Shaldis recognized her brother's textbook-neat hand-not to bother to say which of the maids had died.

She closed the diptych, slid it into the purse at her belt, and snagged an orange to eat as she walked. "I don't know when I'll be back."

"That can't possibly be Three Wells, can it?" Oryn shaded his eyes with his hand against the horrific glare of the forenoon sun. The morning's warm cerulean had burned out of the sky: the Hero Sun, the mages called this strengthening, nearly vertical heat. The province of Ka-Issiya, the G.o.d of the golden noon.

The rangeland beneath it was a gilded anvil, still as death.

The wheeling vultures were too distant to be more than minute specks swimming in blue emptiness, but Oryn thought there were a lot of them.

"You said the village lay due east and a full day's ride, did you not?" Oryn turned in the saddle as the young salt merchant Poru reined his horse up beside the king's.

"I did, my lord. There are vultures there right enough, or at least there were when I pa.s.sed through it yesterday. But we'd not be seeing them yet." Like the rest of the cavalcade the young man's face was wrapped in gauze veils against the sun, and the skin around his dark eyes glistened with sweat and ointment.

Numet-captain of the first company of the king's guard-joined the little group at the forefront of the line of guards, remounts, and provision mules, and squinted against the blazing light in the direction of Oryn's worried gaze. "That'll just be a dead steer, is all, sir." Since they'd ridden out of the city in the darkness before dawn, they'd seen more than one picked-over skeleton. He urged his horse forward, then turned back when the king made no move to follow.

"That's a lot of vultures for a single steer, isn't it?"

The captain looked again. He was a broad-shouldered young man from one of the cadet branches of the House Jothek, chosen like many officers of the guards for his good looks. "It could be two or three steers," he offered. "Maybe there was a stampede, and several fell down a wadi all together."

"Hmn." Oryn untoggled the spygla.s.s from his saddle horn, rose in the stirrups to get a better look. Behind him, Elpiduyek-master of the king's parasol-unfurled the white-and-gold rooflet, and the first company closed ranks around the little knot of captain, merchant, royal mount, royal concubine, and parasol bearers. Geb and Elpiduyek had both pleaded with Oryn to travel by litter as befit the king-and to bring along a second litter for Summerchild rather than have her ride horseback like some trooper's moll-to little avail. Oryn had spent the first dozen years of his reign lolling in a litter on those few occasions when he went out of the Yellow City at all, and he knew exactly how long that sort of elegant transport took to even get out the palace gate.

Much as he loathed jolting over the rangelands on horseback-not to mention the weeks it would take to repair the sun's ravages on his complexion, ointment, veils, and parasol notwithstanding-he understood in the marrow of his aching bones that there was no time to lose.

Maybe no time at all.

In the sharp circle of the spygla.s.s the vultures made a wheeling black column, like a dust devil. He thought, but he wasn't sure, that its base was far too wide for even two or three dead cattle.

He turned in his saddle, scanned the horizon toward the east, though Three Wells would be far too distant yet for any trace even of a vulture column to be seen.

"Poru, my dear boy, is there a wadi there where the vultures are circling? Were they there when you rode past this place yesterday afternoon?" He pa.s.sed his spygla.s.s to the salt merchant.

The young man studied the column for a time, then said, "That looks about where Black Cow wadi should lie. It's true cattle or goats sometimes fall over the edge and kill themselves, but it's also true that bandits, or rogue nomads, will sometimes ambush caravans there. The edge of the wadi overhangs and makes good cover. Everyone who makes the rounds of the villages knows about it."

"Do they indeed?" Oryn took the spygla.s.s back and pa.s.sed it to Summerchild. She looked through it for a time, then folded it up, handed it back, and drew from the reticule at her belt a silver hand mirror. This she gazed into for so long that Numet began to fidget and look pointedly at the angle of their shadows and off in the direction of Three Wells village. Oryn paid him no attention-he knew perfectly well that if he said they were going to camp for a week exactly where they were, the captain would be required to acquiesce no matter what his opinion was-but kept a close watch on Summerchild's topaz-blue eyes.

He saw her brows draw together in puzzled distress. "There's at least a dozen men dead there," she said at last. "They look like nomads, the an-Ariban tribe, I think. They're not one of the warlike groups-mostly sheep stealers and tomb robbers."

"If they met a bad end, serve 'em right." Numet laughed. "Thieving beggars. Why we should make ourselves late to the nooning site over it-"

"Heaven forfend that we should," agreed Oryn affably. "Still, I am the king. And I'd like to have a look."

He could feel the glares of his chamberlain and parasol bearer like knives sticking in his back as he reined in the direction of the vultures.

On her way to the Bazaar District along the broad Avenue of Gold-with its handsome houses, beautiful temples, and even-more-beautiful public baths-Shaldis ran through in her mind the women of her grandfather's household. Her father had mentioned the addition of one maid, whose name would inevitably be Eight Flower and who would almost certainly be a child, knowing her grandfather's habits of domestic economy.

But in spite of Pebble's surmise yesterday evening in the baths, Shaldis would have been surprised to have little Eight Flower turn out to be the Crafty behind the murder attempts. A child old enough to do the heavy housework required even of very young maids would have been old enough to recognize the potential of her own power and, depending on her nature, either offer it for sale to the head of the house or use it to flee.

A child young enough to be utterly dependent on adults, her grandfather would not have bought.

Her sisters? Magic had generally appeared in boys at age four or five, then vanished again until p.u.b.erty. Shaldis wasn't sure whether this pattern held true for girls as well. Foxfire, the youngest in the circle of the Raven sisters, had been fourteen when she had consciously begun to use her full powers, but that had been at a time when all over the Yellow City, such powers had begun to stir in the hearts of those who later became crafty.

Foursie was twelve, Twinkle eight.

Shaldis was almost positive that had there been another Raven sister in the household in the months preceding her departure-if her mother (difficult as it was to even think about picturing that!) or Aunt Apricot or old Yellow Hen had begun to develop power-she would have known. She would have felt it in the walls of the house.

And she was almost-though not quite-certain that they would never have left her to suffer and be cast out alone.

If they had developed such power after her departure, they almost certainly would have gotten word to her at the Citadel.

That left the maids.

She considered them, one by one; considered the world in which they lived. The world that, but for her propensity for sneaking over the courtyard wall in Tulik's clothes, would have been the whole of her own world until her marriage to sulky Forpen Gamert.

A world of gossip and hard work, of hair pullings and whispered secrets after the lamps were out. Early on, she'd fled from the chattering hive of the maids' dormitory to sleep and study in one of the attics above the kitchen-the heat was ghastly in midsummer and the rats worse-but she'd still grown up in their world of horoscopes and astrological almanacs, of petty thefts and pettier rivalries, of shirked tasks, love notes from camel drivers, and the vital importance of who knew what about whom.

A world of soul-killing smallness, thought Shaldis with a qualm of bitter memory. And yet, not nearly as bad as that desolate northland village Jethan had fled. Most were illiterate. Cook, Four Flower, and Aunt Apricot spent their evenings drinking cheap sherab and smoking hemp, and who could blame them? When One Flower-Old Flower, everyone called her (out of Grandfather's hearing)-had grown too old even to grind corn with the teyn, Chirak had tried to sell her: Shaldis's father had paid the small asking price through an intermediary, and the old woman shared the cook's tiny chamber behind the kitchen, a secret the whole household kept from its head. Two Flower-Cook's older sister-was nearly that feeble as well when Shaldis had last lived in the house, and was going blind.

None of them-with the possible exception of her uncle Tjagan's concubine the sharp-witted Nettleflower-had ever impressed Shaldis as imaginative or outward looking, qualities she a.s.sociated with magic. And yet, she reflected, as she crossed the Avenue of the Sun and plunged into the lively string of open-air marketplaces that led toward the Grand Bazaar, Pebble was of nearly the same mental makeup as the maids: simple hearted, even a little simpleminded, shy in the presence of adults and loving the animals and birds with which she surrounded herself.

Nettleflower-a slim woman whose beauty always reminded Shaldis of first-quality honey-had the sly intelligence that probes for secrets. Shaldis remembered her as the troublemaker in the stifling little world of the maids: always prying out information and carrying tales to Chirak Shaldeth, whom she seduced within twenty-four hours of coming into the household, to the deep distress of Shaldis's grandmother.

Chirak had grown bored with the girl within a year and had, according to Habnit, pa.s.sed her along to Uncle Tjagan shortly after Shaldis's grandmother died. The other maids hated her. Nettleflower might not want to murder Chirak, reflected Shaldis, as she peeled her breakfast orange with her fingernails and edged her way through the narrow Lane of the Blue Walls. But her services might easily be bought by someone who did.

Rohar G.o.d of Women, she prayed, don't let her be the Crafty in the household! She caught the prayer back guiltily, knowing how badly the Raven sisterhood needed every woman of power. But the thought of working with Nettleflower, the thought of the havoc she'd cause, turned her stomach.

In any case, Rohar of the Braided Hair must have been feeling in a benign mood that day, because her wish was granted. When she stepped through the gate into the kitchen court and dropped from her the Gray Cloak of illusion that she'd a.s.sumed, almost automatically, to pa.s.s through the dusty chaos of the outer court of the camel drivers, the first thing she asked old Yellow Hen was "What happened? Who was killed?"

"Nettleflower." The old lady spat without missing a beat at her grinding quern. "Good riddance to the little s.l.u.t. Tulik wants to see you."

EIGHTEEN.

She was killed in the pa.s.sageway that leads past Grandfather's study, out to the alley." Tulik lifted back the sheet that covered Nettleflower's body, where it lay on a worktable in the kitchen storeroom. Shaldis winced at the sight of the contorted, blue-lipped face, the blood-dabbled disorder of the honey-blond hair. "Grandfather was awakened by the sounds of someone moving in his room. Before he could cry out for help, someone rushed at him in the dark, slashing and clawing at him. He thrust his attacker off and heard him-or her," he added with the air of one making a concession, "flee. So bruised and shaken was he that it was several minutes before he could follow, and when he did, he found poor Nettleflower lying dead on the floor of the pa.s.sageway and the alley door standing open. He then came back upstairs and awakened me, and we both tried to revive her, but, alas, were too late."

He drew the sheet back over the girl's face. Through the open archway into the kitchen court, the grumbling sc.r.a.pe of the grinding querns made a soft background of sound, and with them came the stinks of dust, of woodsmoke, of indigo boiling in the dye cauldron. The house had always been a place of violence, thought Shaldis, looking down at the threadbare linen that outlined the dead girl's sharp nose and curving b.r.e.a.s.t.s. Never a day had gone by here, in her recollection, that had not been rendered hideous by her grandfather's screaming rages and hissing rod.

Though it came from the outside, this murder seemed to be of a piece with all those recollections, all those days of sickened fear.

"What was Nettleflower doing down in Grandfather's garden in the middle of the night?" she asked. "Had she been with my uncle Tjagan?"

Tulik hesitated, and from the doorway, Foursie-who was leaning in the arch with Twinkle-replied at once, "No, 'cause Uncle's gone out to Kamath to look at camels."

"Foursie, take your sister upstairs and get to work on your sewing," ordered their brother. "She shouldn't see something like this-nor you, either." He turned back to Shaldis. "I can only a.s.sume that she'd left or . . . or had forgotten something in Uncle's room and went back to get it." More confidently, he went on, "In fact I think I heard her in the gallery-I have the room up there between Uncle's and Father's now, you know. I wasn't sleeping well, and I did hear her walk past."

"But you didn't hear her being killed?" Shaldis pulled the sheet aside again, revealing the whole of the body in its torn and rumpled red dress. The dress she recognized as one of Aunt Apricot's. Nettleflower had probably talked Tjagan into giving it to her, the way she'd gotten most of her grandmother's jewelry. "Looking at the state of her clothing and the blood in her hair, she fought. She wasn't just strangled, she was battered to death against the walls of the pa.s.sage. You didn't hear this?"

Tulik's eyes shifted. "If a wizard did it, he could have kept anyone from hearing."

Shaldis's skin p.r.i.c.kled, as if tiny lightning bolts had run up her spine.

Before she could speak, a shadow darkened the archway and her grandfather snapped, "Of course a wizard did it, imbecile! How else could he have undone the bolts in the pa.s.sageway door by the study? And I know what wizard it was, too! It was that poisonous charlatan Ahure-"

Shaldis said, "What?"

At the same time Tulik corrected, in the voice of a man correcting a child, "Of course that's only a guess, Grandfather, since your room was pitch-dark and you didn't see your attacker-"

"Nonsense!" Chirak Shaldeth thrust his grandson aside as Tulik attempted to ease him back into the courtyard. He pushed his way into the storeroom and caught Shaldis roughly by the arm, as he had when she was a child living in this house. "I always thought it was that scoundrel Ahure and now I'm sure of it! A stinking leech and a liar! He's sought to cheat me and steal from me for years!"

Shaldis said nothing, only stared at the old man in shock. He had clearly been battered by someone, his cheeks and forehead marked by the parallel scores of claw marks or nail scratches, and bits of dried blood still stained his unkempt white mustache. He wore only his bed robe, though it was late in the morning. Shaldis looked down and saw his wrists and hands, too, marked as if someone had tried to tear something from his powerful grip.

"Grandfather . . ." Tulik stepped between them, closed his hand over the old man's wrist, and stared hard into his eyes. "You're not feeling well, remember. You're still quite shaken up."

"Balderdash! I'm well enough to know-"

"You're not, Grandfather." With their faces close together-and within a few handsbreadths of Shaldis's own-she saw again how similar they were, not in shape or coloring but in expression. It was hard to recall her brother was only sixteen, his cheeks innocent of any trace of down. "Trust me, Grandfather," he went on, emphasizing the words. "You need to rest, probably for the remainder of the day. You've had a terrible shock."

For a moment Shaldis saw the old fire glint in Chirak's eye, as if he were going to lunge forward and bite his grandson's face off.

Then the fire died. It was like watching a lion go down under a hunter's spear. Shaldis felt shock and dismay at her own flash of pity.

"You're right, my boy," muttered Chirak. "I . . . You're right." His shoulders slumped, as if all strength had gone out of him, and he made no protest as the youth led him away across the hot sunlight of the court. Shaldis heard him say, "It was Ahure," but his tone was that of a petulant child. "He's a thief. He wants to rob me of what's mine."

"Yes, Grandfather, I know he is. But you mustn't say so to just anyone."

Why not?

Shaldis turned back to look again at Nettleflower's body. The nails of both hands were broken, as if she'd torn and clawed at her attacker's face and wrists. When Shaldis looked more closely, she saw blood and skin clotted up under them, and lodged in that blood, a stiff white hair from a beard.

The sun was high and blisteringly hot when Oryn and his cavalcade reached Black Cow wadi. The horses were beginning to labor in the heat; the men bowed down under it. They would soon have to break their journey and set up even the minimal shelter of army shades, to hide through the worst of the burning noon. With this detour-as Captain Numet and Geb both pointed out on several occasions during the ride-they wouldn't reach Three Wells until almost twilight.

Yet his instincts told him that whatever had destroyed Three Wells, it would be best to know if it was capable of reaching out this far beyond that doomed village and killing again.

He glanced sidelong at Poru as they rode, remembering the young salt merchant's description of what he had found when he and his men had ridden into the village the morning before. They all died at once, my lord, for 'twas clear none had tried to bury any other or even drag them into the houses from the streets. The birds were just beginning to come down as we made the town, the sky just growing light. Wolves must have been there in the night, I think, for I saw pieces of bodies in the streets as well as bodies still whole. It was as if a battle had pa.s.sed over the place, yet there was no blood. We stood only at the edge of the town and looked. If it was sickness that had done it, we wanted to carry none away. It was clear none moved about alive.

Oryn wondered whether Poru and his camel drivers had thought about the possibility that some survivor had lingered, incapacitated, in one of the houses. If that had been the case, he reflected, that survivor was undoubtedly dead now. And another quick look at the thin dark face of the merchant, the exhausted mouth and haunted eyes, told him that yes, Poru had thought about it, probably many times on his ride to the Yellow City to deliver the news.

Did you look into the teyn compound? he'd asked as Geb had fetched them coffee and the palace pages had darted away with orders to fetch Summerchild from the Citadel of the Mages and to ready a cavalcade and guards.

Poru had shaken his head. It was true, Oryn knew, that teyn suffered the same diseases as humankind. A teyn could take a disease like smallpox from a man, or pa.s.s it to him, much as a man could take a cold from a dog.

Still, if the teyn had been closed into their compound before the disease struck, he didn't like to think of them shut there, without food and probably without water, for the day that it had taken for Poru and his men to reach the Yellow City and for this second day that it would take for help to return. We heard the cattle lowing in the byres, Poru had said, the a.s.ses complaining and the camels in their stables. Yet we dared not enter the town.

At least they all had that much sense, Oryn reflected, his glance going beyond the merchant to Summerchild, and to the baggage a.s.s led by her most faithful maid Lotus, bulging with packets of herbs and books of healing. He edged his horse to Summerchild's side, asked her softly, "This woman Raeshaldis sought for in the scrying crystals, the Raven sister who called out for help. You say she spoke of sickness?"

"She did, yes. And of healing 'no longer flowing' from wizards' hands. Yet if she was from Three Wells, she'd be close enough to the Yellow City to have heard of healing with herbs, which indeed nomads and midwives have been using for centuries without benefit of wizardry."

"That may be so," murmured Oryn. "But it's also true that I've never heard of an herb or a nomad or a midwife who could cure madness. Or indeed, of any sickness that produces it to the degree that it would wipe out a town."

Vultures stretched out their naked heads at the intruders as the king and his guards came up on the dry deep creva.s.se of Black Cow wadi; opened b.l.o.o.d.y beaks to squawk curses and spread their soot-dark wings. The nomads lay, not in the wadi itself, but about a dozen yards from its edge, crumpled among the summer-yellowed bunchgra.s.s. Their dark hair was wet with blood, their eye sockets stared sightlessly at the hard colorless sky. All men, Oryn observed. A cattle-stealing or tomb-robbing party almost certainly. All were small and lithe, their swarthy cheeks, chins, foreheads marked with the black tattoos of the an-Ichor tribe. Summerchild's guess at an-Ariban hadn't been far wrong-both tribes wove a cloth dyed red and indigo, only the pattern of the stripes differing.

"They at least didn't die of sickness," murmured Jethan, stepping from the saddle and turning one of the bodies over with his foot. The man's throat had been slit with some rough weapon, a blunt-edged tool or a chipped stone. "Yet their tracks lead back toward Three Wells."

"Teyn did this." Captain Numet raised his head from an examination of the scuff marks around one of the bodies. Oryn himself had already seen the flat, crooked, splay-toed tracks lacing everywhere, interspersed with the marks of dragged knuckles. He dismounted cautiously, gathering the fluttering golden silk of his robes to keep it from snagging in the ubiquitous camel thorn, and picked his way among the corpses. Small hoof gouges, torn-off bridles and saddlecloths, huge gouts of splashed blood clearly announced that the an-Ichor had had at least a couple of their tough little desert ponies with them. Wilding teyn-the untamed bands that roved the near-desert preying on insects and lizards-would kill a straying goat or sheep if they thought they could get away with it, but it was unheard of for them to attack men.

Or at least it had been, up until that spring.

"I don't like this," Oryn murmured as Summerchild returned to his side. He patted under his veils at the sweat rolling down his plump cheeks. "I don't like this at all. Before last spring you never heard of teyn attacking men at all, not even the deep-desert nomads who hunt them for the market. I didn't know they could organize themselves for an attack, for one thing, much less cut throats with edged weapons. How can they coordinate an attack, if they don't speak among themselves?"