Adventures in the Liaden Universe #2
TIME AGO ONE went out from Circle, sent by the Mother’s Own Word. The one was called Moonhawk, and she knew neither the face nor the name of what she went seeking.
The course of Seeking wound through the land and through the seasons and brought Moonhawk to a place that stank of Evil.
It is told that she hesitated at the edge of this place and thought she would not go in. This is the first of the things told here which must without fail be said: Moonhawk thought she would not go in.
At the moment of thinking so she heard the voice of the Goddess, and the words were Enter, thou.’
Obedient, Moonhawk went forward.
The second thing that must without fail be said is this: Moonhawk was afraid.
“THAT’S MINE.”
Lute flashed a grin sideways and upward, chidingly.
“Apologies, Noble lady. The bag is mine. It contains the necessities of my trade. The repository of magics, you might say. Dangerous in untutored hands.” He gripped the disputed item and straightened, smiling with urbane Idiocy.
“You will understand my reluctance to place so beauteous a lady as yourself in the slightest peril.”
The lady took a breath that brought the principals of her beauty into high display, and thrust out her lower lip.
“It’s mine.”
“Noble—”
“She said,” the walking mountain at her side interrupted, “that the bag’s hers, tricksman. Are you calling Lady Drudae a liar?”
Lute sighed inwardly. The intervention of the mountain was as unwelcome as it was inevitable. He made a mental note to curse himself roundly for visiting this Goddess-blasted place at all, and smiled more widely.
“It would give me nothing but joy to surrender my bag into the care of the Noble Lady if I did not know that it contains instruments of dread magic. Even now, I might place it in her hands safely, for I should be here to hold her protected. But think, sir, what if I were to leave the bag with the very Noble Lady and withdraw myself and my protection over the boundary of your delightful village, as we all know I must. What then?” He affected a shudder. “I cannot complete the thought.”
It was doubtful that the mountain had ever completed a thought in his life. The lady was more facile.
“You say only you can keep me safe from these dangers?"
“I say it, Noble, and it is veriest truth.”
She frowned, then smiled with pretty malice. “Why, then, it is simple! Since the bag is mine—and only you may control it—you must be mine, too!”
She laughed and clapped her hands.
“Take him to the pit, Arto. And leave the bag here.”
MOONHAWK CAME INTO the place of darkness and she was afraid. Still, she held her head high and made her step firm, as befits a Witch-in-Circle, and gazed upon those that crept out from between the thatch-bald hovels with calm eyes and compassion.
“Goddess give you good even,” she said softly to the one who ventured nearest, though the taste of its emotions sickened her. Terror lanced the creature and it scuttled back to its fellows. The boldest lifted a hand, showing rock.
Moonhawk stopped, anger heating fear. “For shame! Is this how you treat a traveler, most blessed of the Mother! I claim travel-right, and mean you no harm.”
“Travel-right?” That was the boldest, rock yet steady. “You claim travel-right in Relzda?”
“If this be Relzda, then I do.”
The rock-bearer laughed like another woman’s weeping. “If you claim travel-right, you must go to Lady Drudae. I can show the way.’
Moonhawk bowed her head. “It is a kindness, sister. My thanks.”
“No kindness. Your cloak is fine.” With no further words, she scrabbled between two lean-together huts.
Listening in vain for the Goddess, Moonhawk followed.
Lady Drudae sat upon a wooden throne in the center of a drafty hall. The floor was dirt and the wall-rugs threadbare. Smoky oil-lamps gave uncertain light. There was a musk of rotting wood.
“Come forward.” Petulance rather than command. Moonhawk and her guide obeyed.
“Well?”
“This one claims travel-right, Noble Lady,” gabbled the bold one, not so bold now. “I brought her. Her cloak, Noble Lady. My bounty, my—”
“Shut your horrid mouth!”
The rock-bearer did so, bending until her unkempt hair brushed the dirt floor. Moonhawk stood forward, sharpening her eyes in the gloom.
The woman on the throne was beautiful: red-gold hair above a face the uninitiated would claim for the Goddess. The robe of doubtful crimson revealed her breasts, in the manner of Circle robes. But this one was not of Circle.
At the woman’s side a man—hulking and muscle-gripped—stood stoic. There was a gash below one eye and a purpling bruise along the line of his jaw.
“Well,” said the woman again. “Travel-right, is it? You are bold.”
“I am in need,” Moonhawk replied levelly. “Night comes and I ask the boon of a roof.”
“Do you? But this is a hard land from which to scratch a living,, traveler. We have little to give. Even the favor of a place to sleep must be balanced by a valuable of your own.”
Moonhawk bowed her head. “I will work for the House with gladness. I sing the Teaching Tales, give news, heal…”
Lady Drudae was laughing. “Hear her, Arto? She can sing! She does not fear labor!” The laughter stopped. “You misunderstand, traveler. The boon of a roof demands the balance of a—personal—favor.” A snap of shapely fingers. “Arto!”
The man’s sluggish face lit and his lust was a thrust of jagged ice.
For a second time Moonhawk feared, and stepped back, gathering her mantle close.
“I do not choose to give that gift,” she said, flinging the words like stones to stop him.
He laughed then, low and idiot, and she knew he would heed no words of hers. She retreated, thinking of the door and of the way to the boundary lintels; and the voice of the Mother was thunder within her: “Stay, thou! Do not turn away!”
The man lunged forward, snatching her cloak. Whirling, she left it in his hand and stood ’round to face him, clad in travelers’ breech and shirt.
He threw the cloak aside and the creature who had guided her here scrambled forward in the dirt, wadding the cloth against her. The man lunged again.
Moonhawk danced away, but his hand had touched her arm. Thrusting away fear, she stood straight, and, staring into his dull, exultant eyes, reached out, as those in Circle may—
His cry was hoarse with terror and he bent double, hands gripping his privates. “It burns! Noble Lady—aid me!”
Moonhawk stepped around him. “Be still and you will have no pain. Seek to harm me and you will burn.” She withdrew her attention from the man and laid it upon Lady Drudae.
“I am charged by the Mother’s word to come to this place. I require—”
It was here that the Goddess in Her wisdom withdrew Her hand from about the person of Her daughter and allowed a well-aimed rock to fell her from behind.
THE EYES WERE open and of indeterminate hue; the face was blank, whether by intent or by nature it was not yet possible to know.
Lute nodded pleasantly and smiled.
“How lovely to see you wake! Allow me to offer congratulations. The mountain has only recently stopped wailing, from which I surmise that your aim is superior to my own. Well-played! I wish I’d been there to see it. Sound is useful, but I sometimes find it a bit confusing when not aided by sight. Don’t you?”
The eyes blinked once, slowly.
“Who are you?”
“A thousand apologies, Stranger Lady! I am Lute, Master of prestidigitation, illusion, and sleight-of-hand. No doubt you’ve heard of me.”
The eyes closed. Lute sighed and settled back against the dirt wall.
“Is it a little incongruous,” the woman wondered eventually, “for a Master of magics to be sitting at the bottom of a hole with his shirt torn and blood on his chin?”
Lute considered her shuttered face. “A minor reversal of fortunes. Only let me lay my hand upon my bag and neither this nor any other hole may contain me!”
“Oh.” The eyes were open again. “Where is it? Your bag.”
He pointed upward with a flourish. “Lady Drudae has it in her tender keeping.”
“I see.” She twisted her angular self gracelessly and sat up. “You’re an optimist.”
“A pragmatist,” he corrected gently. “But enough of me! What of yourself? What are you hight? Whither are you bound? How came you here? How will you go away?”
She raised her hands, feeling in the thick, unraveling knot of her hair. “Moonhawk. Where the Goddess sends me. Upon my two feet. The same.” Her hair became a cascade, obscuring gaunt features.
“Moonhawk.” He chewed his lip. “This is no good place for a name out of Circle. Call yourself otherwise, if you’ll take my advice—unless you’ve come to convert the heathen?”
She laughed, a pleasing sound in the dankness of the pit. “Hardly.” She ran pale strands through combing fingers. “You are devout?”
“I was raised to the Way and have traveled a good deal—Have you been to Huntress City? The lamps—harnessed lightnings, I was told, from the ships that brought our foremothers here.” He waved a hand upward, indicating the greasy shadows of oil light. “Far different, this.”
“There aren’t many places to compare with the glory of Huntress,” she said softly. “I would like to visit someday—Goddess willing. The last news I had was that Huntress Circle was collecting everything that might be from the Ships and placing all within a warded treasurehouse.”
“So? All the more reason, then, for one of the Circle to visit Lady Drudae. She possesses a most interesting artifact.”
He waited, gauging the moment. She was silent, combing her hair.
“You are incurious.”
She glanced up. “I am sitting in the mud at the bottom of a hole with a kitchen magician for my companion and a village of depravity above. My head hurts. My cloak is gone. I’m hungry. And cold. I see no way out of the present coil and no reason to be in it at all.”
“Ask your Goddess, if you lack reasons.” He had not intended his voice to be so sharp. “I’m told She has a plenitude.”
“She does not Speak.”
Lute shifted and carefully extended his legs.
“If my bag were here, we might dine on cheese and bread and fresh milk,” he said musingly. “I would share my cloak and mix you a tincture I learned in the Wilderwood that is efficacious in the soothing of headaches.” He sighed. “Rot those lamps—it’s getting dark. I hate to talk to someone I can’t see.”
Moonhawk raised her head, tracing the flicker of Power to the man—and out of him; flowing to the sticky floor.
A small blue flame appeared in the mud between them; faded, flickered, steadied. The man Lute settled back, sighing as one who has expended much effort.
“Light at least, Lady. I apologize that it does not give heat. If I had my bag…” He let the sentence go, peering upward for a moment before settling harder against the fabric of the pit, hope as thin as the wan blue light.
“Please, my name is Moonhawk—and I thank you for the gift. You should conserve your strength.”
“My strength will return soon enough. They won’t come for me tonight, I think. More likely tomorrow mid-morning—after Lady Drudae is angry.”
“OPEN IT! “She augmented the order with a ringing slap across the man’s ear.
“Lady, I cannot! It does not—there is no—I see nothing—”
“Open it or fry! “This time she aimed her blow at the bag, knuckles sharp, as if she struck the idiot’s simpering face.
“Lady, It is not possible! “pled Kat. “Perhaps the trickster told the aye—”
Clink!
They froze; turned as one to stare at the bag sitting, inviolate, on the high wooden table.
Beside it lay a solitary token of the type used to count score In gambling games.
“Where did it come from?” wondered Kat.
“The bag…”
“Lady, the bag is not open!”
‘Where else would it come from?” she cried. “Do you have such a thing? Do I? It must come from the bag!” She snatched at the clasp, swore; lifted the whole with fury’s strength and slammed it upon the table. “Open, damn you!”
The bag sat, shuttered and uncowed.
Lovely shoulders drooping, Lady Drudae turned away.
Plingplinkbinkplunk!
She spun. Rolling unhurriedly down the slope of the table, four bright pottery marbles: red, blue, green, yellow. Lady Drudae stared them to the edge of the table and watched them fall, one by one, to the dirt floor.
“Fetch the magician.”
MOONHAWK SAT AT the bottom of the pit and listened.
Lady Drudae’s voice she heard most—strident and scolding, then threatening. Less often came the undistinguished bass rumble of a man’s speaking. Least often, she heard Lute’s clear, trained voice. He spoke very few words for one who seemed to like them so well. Most of the words he spoke meant ‘No’.
“You will open that bag now,” Lady Drudae stormed. “If you do not, Kat will break your fingers.”
“If he does so, Lady, heed my warning! Run away from here as fast as you may. For the bag becomes its own master if I have no hands to lay upon it. Listen! And believe.”
Very nearly did Moonhawk in her pit believe, though straining Witch-sense brought no taste of power, other than the gall of evil.
“So…” hissed Lady Drudae. “Kat!”
A moment’ s incredulous silence was followed by a man’s hoarse scream.
They threw him down from the edge.
Moonhawk broke his fall with her body and he rolled away, coiled around his ruined hand, sobbing.
“Lute.” She touched him and he shuddered, sob catching on a gasp.
Witch-sense questing, she found a mangled chord of clarity within his terror, caught it and wound it round with calm, feeding comfort in a riverflow until he let her touch the pain and share it.
“Lute. I am Healer.” She did not force trust; did not stint on what she gave.
Slowly, the coiled body unbound. He flopped to his back, eyes stabbing hers.
“Good. Now it is my turn to give a gift… I must touch it. Lute, I am Healer. Through me flows the love of our Mother. Through me flows Her strength—to you, Her son…”
She held the mangled member now; felt and knew utter destruction: the tiny bones ground and shattered and hopeless. Around them, the highly trained muscles mourned.
Moonhawk took breath, drawing in strength, and crossed over into that gray space from which all Healing takes place.
The man beneath her hand screamed; she exerted the will necessary to quiet him. The Inner Eyes saw bone shards reform, fit together, settle into the cradle of tissue, seal into wholeness—into health.
She let breath escape; removed will and hand and sat back, face dripping sweat, body shuddering.
“In Her Name it is done.”
Lute caught her with two good hands as she toppled sideways, and laid her gently down, head pillowed on his thigh.
MOONHAWK BLINKED IN the gash of sunlight and tried not to breathe through her nose. The one called Kat held her arms twisted behind her back and he stank like last week’s slaughter.
Lute’s hands hung free. He faced Lady Drudae over a dull blue tube and smiled as if the terror in him was no more real than dreams.
“You know what this is?” The Lady asked him, voice unnaturally calm.
Lute bowed his head. “I do. I beg leave to remind the most gracious and noble Lady that, fried, I am of no use to her.”
“How is your hand mended? It was broken beyond praying for—Kat?”
“It was, Noble Lady,” his voice boomed over Moonhawk’s head. “You know me!”
Lady Drudae nodded, eyes flicking to Moonhawk. “You. How comes the magician’s hand to be whole?”
Moonhawk met the mad blue eyes steadily. “I Healed him.”
“So.” The eyes widened. She lifted the tube. “Do you know what this is?”
“No.”
“Then I will show you.” Her voice rose. “Arto! Bring the nemrill!”
The Lady backed away, tube lowering. The mountain shadowed the door arch, a bundle of fur swinging from a huge fist.
“Throw it in and stand away!”
The bundle hit the dirt floor, rolled into a puddle of sunlight and came up spitting, fangs showing, tail fat with fury, claws at ready.
This nemrill was none such as they had at Temple, pleased with the world and themselves. The ferocity of this creature startled the Healer; its fear pierced her.
Lady Drudae laughed, pointed the tube and pressed the thumb-stud.
There was a zag of lightning; a stink of ozone. The nemrill was encased in a nimbus of flame, shrieking in mortal agony. Moonhawk reached within; saw Lute start forward while the Lady laughed and—pop!
The nemrill was gone.
The stink of scorched fur and frying flesh reached Moonhawk and she gagged, sagging shamefully in her captor’s grip. Lute turned to her; was halted by a shake of the tube.
“Now, magician, listen closely. Open the bag—or she fries. You see?"
He laid a hand on the bag; withdrew it. “It is a long process, Noble Lady; and fraught with peril. I have not eaten in some time—a simple oversight, no doubt! My strength is not sufficient to the task. If I err, we may all fry!”
“I marvel you carry so dangerous a thing with you.”
“It is wise to keep the danger you know best to hand, Lady.”
Hesitation that Moonhawk tasted as her own, even as her powers faded. Food… She separated her need, hurled it into the madwoman with the last of her strength.
“Very well. Arto—bring food for the magician. Kat—tie her.”
Lute carried the bad bread and doubtful cheese to her, ignoring the tube though his nerves shrieked. He halved the meager portion and raised a cheese-bit to her lips: “Eat.”
“Look, Kat!” Lady Drudae shrilled. “The magician is kind! He shares his meal with a stranger! Or is she not a stranger? A night in the pit together, with no other entertainment—and she would not have Arto!”
Moonhawk felt the flare of his fury, held his eyes with hers. “My thanks to you, brother.” Shoulders aching with the strain of the rope, she took the cheese and ate.
He fed her the bread and gave her a drink of pure, icy water. Then he ate, taking much longer than he might. She had the sense that he was gauging something, counting…
The Lady shifted irritably, fingers tightening on the tube. Lute offered more water; had another sip for himself and turned.
She read no hope in him.
“Now, if the Lady and her bodyguardian will stand well away…”
“Stand away! You can’t go—” Arto’s bellow spun Kat and the Lady around. Lute faded two light steps toward the bag, hope scalding.
Through the arch a ragamuffin crowd jostled, pushing bulky Arto before it like jetsam in a floodtide.
“Noble Lady! See what we bring! Bounty for all!”
“Enough!” The tube pointed unwavering at the center of the crowd. Voices halted and the tangle rearranged itself, becoming four of the village surrounding two who were manifestly not.
The man struggled against the rope that pinned his arms to his sides. The woman stood wary and alert in her bonds, dark eyes flashing.
“He has coins, Noble Lady!” cried one from the village. “And fine clothes! We followed and captured! We demand bounty!”
“You demand?” The tube had one target now and the blue eyes held only madness. The one who had spoken sparked fear and flung himself belly down on the dirt.
“Forgive me, Noble Lady. I spoke hastily.”
“Count your wretched life as bounty.” The tube averted its stare with reluctance. “And the rest of you! I’ll decide your bounty—if any! Go! Now."
They abased themselves and went, Arto following. Kat came and stood behind the captives, grinning.
“Coins?” wondered Lady Drudae, eyeing them. “Fine clothing? And not so bad looking a woman, eh, Kat? We’ll give her to Arto, to atone for the one who wouldn’t have him.”
The man froze, horror pouring out of him. The woman’s head went up.
“I am well content with the man I have. We are travelers and sacred. In Her Name you must release us.”
Lady Drudae laughed. “Oh, well said! In Her name, release us. Oh, yes! Arto!”
MREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!
A noise loud enough to stun the mind burst into the room: all save one were startled.
Now there was a rush of wind filling Moonhawk’s head as the room telescoped away, becoming tiny, tinier… This was the whole of the Power, as she’d tasted it but twice before: The Mother Herself was looking through Moonhawk’s eyes. Before the room was gone entirely from her human sight, she looked for Lute and saw him at the table, one hand on the magic bag, and one hand perhaps in it…
THE GODDESS DID pour Herself into the earthly form of Her daughter Moonhawk. Rising up, She snapped the puny bonds of hemp.
With a glance, She caused the ropes to fall from the two captives and cried out in a Voice like the Wind That Scattered The Stars:
“Away! Take thy man and go!”
The woman caught the man’s hand. For a moment he resisted, thinking he might stay and fight. Then sense prevailed and he turned with his woman and they ran like wise rabbits away from that screeching place.
The murderer Kat started after, hands grabbing. Before his eyes the Mother flung images of past evil and he fell to the ground upon his knees, tears running his cheeks. Lute aided the Mother, striking with a mallet that unguarded head.
Lightning came at Her as the tyrant woman added screams to the din and the Mother laughed, for Lightning is Her Consort and will not harm Her. She raised a hand to the stream and deflected it upward, to and through the rotting roof.
Then the Goddess reached out once more, and put before Lady Drudae’s eyes another image, so that she dropped the death-tube.
A hand fell upon Her Person. A voice dinned in Her ears. The Goddess looked about, well pleased with Her work, and returned the body to Her daughter.
“MOONHAWK! Moonhawk!”
She blinked at Lute, stared at the fallen Kat, at the Lady, back to the far wall, fist jammed into her mouth, eyes fixed with rigid horror on something she alone saw.
“Moonhawk!” A shake that snapped her head on her neck.
“What?”
“The roof’s afire! Goddess blast you—run!”
Run. She fumbled at the body’s controls and began a shambling trot toward the door, the path she must take through the village to the northern edge unfolding before the Inner Eyes. Lute was right. She must run—
The door was abruptly blocked. Arto. Moonhawk breathed a prayer to the Mother and did not slow.
The mountain fell back and let her by. He was still standing with his hands empty at his sides when Lute passed a moment later, hands and bag ablaze with strange incandescent light.
Running was easier now. More natural. She added speed, weaving between the thatchless hovels, following necessity, oblivious to the shadows, vaguely curious of the light that had kept pace and then was gone…
She broke out of the village into a clearing ringed with rock—an ancient corral, perhaps—the carved shapes of boundary markers towered, just beyond.
She raced across the opening, eyes on the markers, necessity urging her on. Her foot struck a hidden rock and she hurtled forward, catching herself on her hands, rolling up—and freezing.
Encircling her, not mere rock, but a crowd of rag-tag creatures. She saw a flash of dark blue—her cloak. And the woman who wore it held a stone.
All of them held stones.
She reached within, but her powers were gone to ash. She reached without and touched nothing but hatred. Necessity burned in her. Fear turned her legs to jelly.
The one who wore her cloak drew back her arm, grinning. Moonhawk braced herself.
“Make way!” cried a voice and the human wall broke as a thin man in a torn shirt burst through, bag in hand. He slammed to a halt and spun in a wide circle, rounds flashing from his hands.
“Gold! Gold for all!”
“Gold!” The crowd fell as one, scrabbling in the knotted grass.
Lute grabbed her arm and pulled her with him, nearly jerking her arm from its socket.
The villagers were still grubbing for the coins when the two of them passed the boundary stones.
“OF ALL THE STUPID—Why run this way? The eastern boundary was closer—and easier going beyond. Or am I to believe you came in this way?”
“No,” said Moonhawk absently. “I came in by the eastern way. Here.”
“Here what?” he demanded, but she was going away from him like a sleep-walker. Cursing under his breath, he followed.
In a moment he heard the voices of the recent prisoners.
“North for a bit, then,” the winded traveler was saying. “We’ll turn south beyond the hills. There’s time for a short detour, isn’t there, Maria?’
The woman’s doubt was palpable. She hunched in her cloak, dark eyes tired now, not flashing.
Moonhawk stepped around the rock that sheltered them, the magician trailing.
“Go due north,” she said, voice deep with Foretelling. “At the end of seven day’s walking you will come to a town by a wide river. The name of the town is Caleitha. When your daughter is born, take her to Circle there. They will Know her.”
She sagged suddenly and felt Lute’s hand beneath her elbow as she smiled. “The Goddess Herself intervened for you, sister. Be joyful.”
LATER THAT EVENING, Moonhawk fed twigs to a fire while Lute grumbled over the state of his property.
“Is your bag really worth so much?”
“So much?” He stared at her in disbelief. “My dear Master, may he rest in the arms of the Goddess forever, taught that a magician’s receptacle is his life.” He stood, bag in hand. “It’s his prop.” A sharp shake and legs appeared. Lute set it firmly on the ground.
“Hi s means of living.” Bright scarves dazzled in the firelight.
“His safe.” Coins glittered and clinked.
“His watchman.” A moment of that hideous noise that had started the escape!
“His lightning. “A quick flash of pyrotechnic light danced about his hands.
“And his restaurant.” A tin arced across the fire and she caught it, laughing.
“Hardly fresh milk!”
“Fresher than we had elsewise,” he retorted, and came to sit near her, letting the bag stand, “where do you go now?”
“Where the Goddess sends me.”
He nodded and moved his long hands. A wooden top spun in one palm. He played with it, dancing it over his fingers, vanishing it from the right hand to appear in the left. Moonhawk laughed in wonder.
“How are you doing that?”
He glanced up with a grin. “Magic.” The grin grew speculative. “Would you like to learn?”
“May I?”
“You seem to have a certain aptitude. And I need an apprentice. Been putting it off far too long. Since we both go where the wind blows us, there’s no need for us not to go together, is there?"
“No,” said Moonhawk, “there isn’t.”
“Good,” he said and vanished the top. Standing, he went to the bag. “We should, though, head more or less toward Huntress City.”
“Why?”
He turned and the firelight glinted off the dull blue barrel.
“I took this from the Noble Lady’s hall. It seems to me such a thing belongs with others of its kind, under the careful eyes of those who know their dangers, rather than loose in the poor, half-wild world.”
“Will I have learned magic by the time we reach Huntress City?” Moonhawk wondered and Lute laughed as the weapon disappeared into the depths of his bag.
“It depends on how apt a pupil you are.”
THUS DID MOONHAWK and Lute meet and decide to travel together across the world, this with the blessing of the Goddess, our Mother.
The first tale ends here.
THE WIND WAS out of the southwest, carrying the acrid odor of baking rock. The sun was out of the same quarter, and backlit the magician in the weed-choked square, casting spears of light into the eyes of his audience.
Moonhawk, the magician’s traveling companion for this month or so, sat on the cistern wall, face turned aside the sun-spears, and watched each gesture with care.
It was to be a rope trick now. Lute showed the crowd the length of common brown cord, called a lad from the audience to test its strength and, finally, tie it snugly into a loop and hold it high above his head.
Lute held up the circle of steel and waved it under the rope-holder’s nose. The lad called out that it was only a saddle-ring.
Moonhawk leaned a little forward where she perched on the wall, opening herself to nuance, as she had been taught in Circle. The ring-and-rope trick always baffled her, though she had seen it fifty times in the past month. Perhaps this time—
“And now,” Lute intoned, voice thinned only slightly by the wind, “by the grace of the elements of hemp and iron, by the impermanence of the things we aim to touch and hold, by the wind and by the sun—Ho!” He made a forceful gesture of throwing—and reached forward in nearly the same instant to steady the village lad who had staggered, letting the rope loop sag.
The lad got his feet under him and shouted aloud, holding the rope up, so the crowd could see the loop, unbroken, with the saddle ring threaded neatly as a pendant, spinning lightly in the wind.
There were then as always several from the crowd who must need test rope, knot and ring, all under the magician’s tolerant eye.
Moonhawk settled back on her wall, a most un-witch-like curse on her tongue. Befatched again, Goddess take the man! Well, she would simply ask him the way of it. But it galled her to need to do so.
The crowd had demonstrated to its own satisfaction that rope and ring were inextricable. Lute had the mating back and untied the knot, with a well-worn patter praising the skill of the knot-tier and the efficacy of the knot. He slid the ring free, hung the rope over one shoulder, frowned at the ring and with a gesture vanished it. The audience roared, men stamping their feet and women clapping their palms together, and Lute announced the show was over.
“But if you will, friends, a bit of something for the work expended—a coin, an egg, a loaf, a sup of ale—for, as great as magic is, not even the greatest magician can conjure himself a meal…”
It was a giving crowd. By the time its disparate portions had wended home, five eggs, a new loaf, and a quarter-sausage had come to rest on Lute’s tattered yellow prop cloth.
“And if a great magician cannot conjure himself a meal, does it follow that he may not conjure a meal for another?” Moonhawk asked, stepping forward and bending to retrieve the three nesting wooden cups.
Lute looked up, mischief glinting in his dark eyes, gaunt face stern.
“The ways of the Craft Magic are not for the student to ridicule,” he said austerely. “You will learn these mysteries in the proper order and with the proper respect. Until then, you will keep a civil tongue in your head, Madam.”
He sounded so like old Laurel, the Witch who had the training of the child Moonhawk, that the adult—woman and Witch in her own right—laughed aloud. Lute grinned, and waved a graceful hand at the accumulated bounty.
“Besides, we’ve conjured enough for a fine dinner and a bit left aside to break our fast. And—” A flourish, a snatch and he held out a quarter-moon, brittle with age. “A coin to trade for ale at the inn. I’m told this village boasts an inn.”
Moonhawk glanced about her, frowning as much against the ill-kept square as against the sun. “It does?”
“There you go again!” Lute cried, slipping the cups from her hand and placing them carefully in his bag. “I can’t recall the last time I spoke to so disrespectful a woman.”
“No doubt my early training is to blame,” Moonhawk returned. “And the fact that one is used to city comfort!”
“No doubt,” Lute agreed, with mortifying sincerity. He finished the various fastenings and straightened, gripping the bag’s handle and giving it a sharp shake. The legs retracted with a snap—mechanical magic, this, not sleight-of-hand. He gestured, showing her the dusty square and rag-tag huts.
“Look about you well. For the world is more nearly like this than it is like Dyan City. The lot of common folk is hard work and short lives, relieved—and the Goddess smiles—by love, and by children, and by an occasional diversion such as myself.”
He dropped his hand, and in the fading light looked abruptly tired. “For the most part, the Goddess blesses those more, who live nearest the Temples.”
Moonhawk kept still. She knew the correct response—knew that every teaching she had ever received told her she put her immortal self at danger, traveling with such a one.
Yet, his voice reverberated with Truth, and Witch-sense showed her his sincerity. She sighed. The man sowed disquiet like gladiola seeds. And yet—
“Master Magician!” The woman’s voice was breathless with hurry; she herself somewhat better dressed than most of the crowd had been, though her hair was coming unbraided and dust lay thick upon her. She rushed up to Lute and caught his hand in both of hers; Moonhawk marked how well he controlled the instinct to snatch the precious member away.
“Lady,” he said, respectfully, bowing his head, and taking the opportunity to slip his hand free. “How may I serve you?”
“My daughter,” she began, and lay her hand against her breast. “Oh, thank the Mother you are here! My daughter said that you would not aid me, but I pray—Indeed, how could you not? It is the responsibility of power to aid the powerless!”
“So I have always been taught,” Lute said carefully, while Moonhawk opened herself to the other woman’s self and scanned each nuance of emotion.
Distress, she found, but no disorder such as madness might generate. She glanced at Lute and saw he had reached the same conclusion.
“Before aid can be bestowed, we must be aware of the nature of the problem,” he told the woman gently.
“Yes, certainly!” she cried, and gave a breathless little laugh, though Moonhawk detected no joy in the sound.
“It is my daughter,” she said again. “Three days together she has been gone. Her sister would have it that she is only about some madcap scheme and will return when it occurs to her, but she is not like that! Wild she may be, and heedless of manner, but her heart is good. To worry me so—and she must know that I would worry! No, I cannot believe her so cruel. She must have fallen aside of danger—she may even now be lying in some rock-catch, broken-legged and hoarse from calling… “Her voice faltered and Lute stepped expertly into the small silence.
“Lady, I am distressed to hear of your trouble. But surely this is a matter for those of the village, who are familiar with the country roundabout and who will know where best to search.”
“They have searched,” she said, suddenly listless. “They say—they say she must only have gone off with a lover and will return, in a day or six. They say, no one could stay hidden so long, from all the wilder-wise.” She bent her head. “They say, unless she is dead.”
“Goddess forefend,” murmured Lute devoutly. Moonhawk slanted him a slicing look, which he disarmed merely by refusing to meet her eyes. He kept a grave face turned toward the woman. “But this other—that she is gone with a lover to celebrate the Goddess’ best joy—is that not possible?”
“With her own betrothed sitting at my hearth, wringing his hands and wondering what is come of her? I say again. Master Magician, she is not a cruel girl.”
“Ah.” Lute did glance at Moonhawk then, eyes explicitly neutral, then looked back at the grieving mother. “What is it you think I may do for you, Lady?”
“Find her!” she cried, and made as if to clutch his hand again, a move he adroitly avoided. “You have magic… power… the sight… In the name of the Goddess, Master Magician! In the name of she who bore you! My child must be found. My child—” She gasped, bent her head and struck her breast three times, slowly, with a shaking fist.
Lute cleared his throat. “Alas,” he said, face and voice betraying nothing but the utmost sincerity, and perhaps a shade of sorrow. “There is magic and there is magic. I have no ability to find what is lost—”
“But I have,” Moonhawk said abruptly, and lay her hand briefly upon the woman’s head, feeling the warmth of the unraveling hair beneath her palm. “Peace on you, Sister,” she said “in traditional benediction. She took her hand away and met the woman’s incredulous stare with firm coolness.
“You are—Sing thanks to the Goddess! You are of the Circle?” The woman’s eyes shone with tears, with transcendent hope. “A priestess?”
“I am Moonhawk,” she said austerely. “Witch, Healer and Seer. I may find that which is lost, by the grace of our Lady.” She glanced aside, saw Lute watching her intently; returned her gaze to the woman. “There are certain items I require, in order to search most efficiently.”
“Certainly!” The woman cried. “Certainly—and you shall have them! You shall come—both of you shall come!—to my house, sup with us, sleep, you may have all I have. Only find her, Lady Moonhawk! Find my child.”
“I shall try,” said Moonhawk and felt a sudden chill.
THE WOMAN’S NAME was Aster and her house was a large one, set just above the village, with two goats In the front yard and a hen house in back. Taelberry twined up an arbor by the door, the heavy purple blossoms silking the air with fragrance.
“Here we are,” said Aster, leading them to the flower-hung porch and working the latch, “Lady Moonhawk, Master Lute—please be welcome in my home.”
“Peace on this house,” Moonhawk returned in proper ritual.
“Joy to all who live here,” Lute said sweetly, bowing his head in respect before stepping over the threshold.
Moonhawk followed, then the host, into a kitchen smelling of new bread and warm spices. By the hearth stood a slim and well-made young man, dejectedly stirring the stew pot. From another portion of the room hurried a girl: brown hair neatly done into a knot at her neck, sturdy hands drying themselves briskly on a clean white apron.
“What’s this?” she cried, her eye full of two tall, ragged strangers; then she spied Aster. “Mother? You said nothing of guests—”
“I said I was gone to fetch the magician from the village, if he was still there and looked kindly on my case,” said Aster sharply. “As it happens, he did, but could do nothing for me. However, his traveling companion has skill in finding what is lost and she has consented to help.”
“Traveling—?” Again, those quick brown eyes counted Lute and Moonhawk, flashed back to the older woman’s face. “You bring us a pair of gypsies to guest?”
“Even not, gracious lady!” cried Lute. “For gypsies have the foresight to bring their houses with them, where I am so dimwitted as to have no house at all!”
“And so we ask travel-grace,” added Moonhawk, in her deep, level voice, “from charitable homes along the way."
The boy at the cauldron laughed once, a sharp-edged sound carrying more scorn than merriment. “Bested, Senna,” he called out. “Make welcome before they eat you alive.”
“Wrong also, young sir,” Lute said dulcetly. “For what person of dignity will stay in a house where welcome is not a gift?”
“As it is here,” cried Aster, bustling forward, “most sincerely! Senna! Cedar! Your manners want brushing! Bow to Lady Moonhawk, Witch of Dyan Temple, and to Master Lute the magician! Lady, Master—my eldest daughter, Senna; and—and Cedar, who is betrothed to my youngest—to Tael…” She caught her breath hard, then straightened and clapped her hands together.
“Quickly now, children! Senna, show the Lady and Master to the guesting room. Cedar, take hot water to fill the basins. Give them houserobes, Senna; and put their things to wash. I will be along in a moment with wine and a bit of cheese, to help you through till dinner…”
So directed, the two young things obeyed with startling will, and it was not too long before Lute was reclining shamelessly among a mountain of pillows, wineglass in hand, dressed in a houserobe of rich vermilion wool.
“Much better than eggs,” he announced with satisfaction, and took a deep draught of wine.
Moonhawk looked over from the table at which she was combing her hair and paused, comb arrested. Lute glanced up, eyebrow quirking. “Yes?”
She recovered herself, finished the stroke and began another. “It is only that you look very nearly respectable, dressed so.”
His eyes gleamed and he brought his glass up to drink.
“Who is he, Zinna?” demanded a girlish falsetto from across the room. “What do you mean who? That handsome fellow in the red gown, of course! Do you suppose he’s a wealthy merchant? Perhaps a noblewoman’s son…”
Moonhawk laughed, conquering the urge to turn and stare at the girl she knew was not there, put the comb down, picked up her glass and moved over to the pillows. “I didn’t say handsome,” she protested. “I said respectable.”
“My hopes dashed,” he sighed, face reflecting unsurpassed sorrow. He assayed the glass, slanted his eyes at her face. “Perhaps I’ll have a try for the eldest daughter. This will be hers someday, after all, and with a few manners I’m certain she’d be quite tolerable.”
“A mannerly woman is very important, “Moonhawk agreed with false gravity and he inclined his head.
“Present company excluded, certainly.”
She froze on the edge of hurling the contents of her glass into his gaunt brown face; sighed and shook her head.
“Always one step before me, Master Lute,” she said, with equally false softness.
He tasted his wine. “Hardly that. At the most, half-a-step ahead and half-a-step to a side.” He leaned forward suddenly; surprisingly extended a hand. “Come, cry friends! I swear I hadn’t meant it to sting so sharply!”
Carefully, she put her hand in his, felt his fingers exert brief, warm pressure and then withdraw, leaving something light and cool in her palm. She cupped her hand and turned it over, revealing a tael-blossom.
“Named for the berry that gives the good wine,” murmured Lute. “Heedless, but not cruel. And the elder sister’s a shrew.”
Moonhawk glanced up. “You think she left with forethought—and intent?”
He shrugged. “Perhaps they argued—the shrew and the heedless one—or perhaps love’s veil was somehow shredded and she saw that dull young fellow for the boor he is.”
“Quick judgments, Master Lute,” she chided him. “You were with them for less than a quarter-glass.”
“It’s my business to make quick judgments,” he said, unperturbed. “Magic must be good for something, after all.” He waved a hand at the hourglass, now three-quarters done. “We shall soon have the opportunity to make less hurried appraisals. And then you will do your magic.”
“Then I will ask the assistance of the Goddess in the pursuit of truth,” Moonhawk corrected austerely, and he sighed.
“I WILL REQUIRE a new candle,” Moonhawk told Aster; “a length of string or thin rope and something that belongs to Tael—preferably something she often had about her.”
“At once,” said Aster, face glowing with the half-sick hope that had filled her all through the meal, so that she pushed her food around the bowl and shredded the good, warm bread into untasted crumbs. She turned to her eldest, who was hovering with Cedar by the fire. “Senna. Bring Lady Moonhawk what she requires.”
“Yes, mother,” the girl said quickly enough, though her mouth was turned down with ill temper. She bustled out and returned with a new candle in a wooden holder, a cord of fine white wool, a bright blue cloak and a string of pierced beads. She placed them, one by careful one, on the table, saw Moonhawk’s eye on the cloak and faltered, a blush warming her cheeks.
“I know some feel it is sacrilege, Lady Moonhawk, for one of the world to wear Circle blue. But Tael loved the color. She spun the thread, wove the cloth, dyed it in taelberry juice, fashioned the cloak—all with her own hands. Being so, I thought it might aid you. This…” her fingers caressed the beaded necklace.
“Is my troth gift to her,” Cedar finished harshly, and laughed, “which she hardly wore.”
“Still,” said Aster, “it must have meant a great deal! Perhaps fear of losing it—”
“Yes, of course!” he said bitterly. “But the truth is that she would rather wear that length of leather and that stupid bit of wood—” He caught himself, folded his lips and made an awkward bow. “Your pardon, housemother; my concern and grief make me short of temper.”
“I see that it does,” Aster replied, “but in just a few moments, Lady Moonhawk will find her and—”
“I also require, “Moonhawk interrupted, “quiet. You may repair to the parlor. I will call as soon as I have found what there is to find.” She looked hard at Aster. “Remember, this lies with the Goddess, not with mere mortal hope."
The older woman bowed her head, hand rising to touch her breast. “We abide by the will of the Goddess,” she said devoutly. She beckoned the others with a sweep of her hand. “Come.”
Moonhawk bent to arrange the items upon the table: Candle to the north, string coiled before her, one end tied securely about the trothing gift. The cloak she considered for a long moment before laying it about her own shoulders and twisting the brooch closed.
“You may leave also,” she said, without turning her head to look at Lute, leaning silent against the mantle.
“Ungracious, Lady Moonhawk!” he returned. “You watch my magic, after all. Fair trade is fair trade.”
She did look at him then, for the fine voice carried an undercurrent of what—had it not been Lute—she would have identified as worry. “I have done this before” she said, wishing it didn’t sound quite so tart. “It’s a very simple spell.”
“Nothing can go wrong,” he agreed pleasantly, then brought a fingertip to his lips. “But here I am babbling when you require silence! Forgive me, Lady.” He sank soundlessly to the bench and folded his hands in his lap. “Silent as the dead, you find me. My master insisted upon the same condition when he was working, so neither of us is novice at our task.”
Far more distracting to argue with him than to acquiesce; which she did with a tip of the head. She then ignored him, closing her eyes and offering the prayers that would ready her for the work.
Lute bent forward on his bench, foreboding like a chill handful of stone in his belly.
Moonhawk’s breathing deepened; the lines smoothed out of her face, leaving it at once childlike and distantly cruel. She raised her left hand, eyes still closed, pointed a finger and lit the candle. She lowered the hand, laid it on the coil of twine and pulled in the necklace, holding it in her right hand.
She opened her eyes.
“By the grace, with the aid and in the Name of the Mother, I reach out to the one called Tael.” with a smooth flip of the wrist, she hurled the necklace far across the kitchen, paying out the twine until the beads hit the stone flooring with a rustling clink.
“With the will of She who Is, I call Tael to me.” Moonhawk intoned, and began, slowly, to pull in the cord.
It came easily at first, sliding over the stones with a half-audible murmur. But midway to the table the cord faltered in its smooth passage through Moonhawk’s fingers, picked up—and faltered again.
Lute craned forward, gravel-dread gone to ice in his gut, saw the necklace move jerkily into the circle of light cast by the candle—and stop altogether.
The Witch continued to work the cord, taking up the slack, then tightening the drag, until it stretched taut against the necklace, which moved no more, but lay as if welded to the floor.
He looked back, saw Moonhawk’s eyes closed and sweat on her face, the cord taut as a lute-string between her hand and the troth-gift, quivering and giving off a faint, smoky luminescence.
The ice in his belly sent a shaft lancing upward into his chest and he came off the bench in a silent rush, meaning to shake her, to pull away the cord, even to shout—
The beads shifted against the floor with a sound like sobbing, and, obedient at last, hurtled through the air to land with a clatter upon the table top, half-an-inch from the Witch’s long hand.
Lute froze, staring at her face, willing her to open her eyes, to shake her hair back, extinguish the candle and put aside the blue cloak; to mock him, even, for his terrors—She sat, still and silent as death. Beside her, the candle flame flickered, and went out.
Finally, he moved; relit the candle and set it so the light fell full on her face. It was then he saw that she was crying.
“Moonhawk?” A cracking whisper; much unlike his usual manner. He reached forth a hand and touched her, lightly, on the shoulder. “Moonhawk.”
She gasped and hurled back in her chair, lifting a warding hand, eyes wide now, and bright with terror.
“Moonhawk!” He caught the uplifted hand, and nearly gasped himself at the coldness of her flesh.
“Ah!” She cried and bent her head, making no effort to take her hand from his. Her breathing shuddered. “Gone,” she mourned. “All gone. Goodbye sun. Goodbye flowers. Goodbye love. Hello dark. Mother? Mother! Where is she? Why is there no rest, no sweet embrace and welcome home?”
“Moonhawk!” He held tight to her, cupped her chin in his free hand-sacrilege, and worth a stoning, to touch the sacred body of a priestess without her aye—and forced her head up. Wide, unseeing eyes stared into his.
“Moonhawk sleeps,” she said, still in that young, grief-sodden voice. “Tael was called and Tael is here—and here will remain until right is done. “She put her hand up and gripped his wrist in cold, ice-cold, death-cold fingers.
“Avenge me.”
THEY WERE GATHERED in a bright-lit parlor two steps down the hall from the kitchen: Mother, daughter and son-to-be, all with a bit of work to hand. The boy was mending a harness—competently, Lute noted with surprise; the shrew was setting tiny, precise stitches into a shirt. Aster sat with her work held lightly in her right hand, needle poised in her left—but she was not stitching. Her eyes dwelled dreamily upon the candle flame and she seemed lost to her surroundings.
Nonetheless, it was she who looked up as Lute paused outside the room, and she who rose to greet him.
“Master Lute. Is there—has Lady Moonhawk found my child?”
He smiled, and bowed with professional grace, trying not to think of the mourning wraith he had left in the guesting-chamber, tucked among the pillows.
“The Lady Moonhawk,” he intoned, “has wrought a very powerful spell. Your daughter has indeed been located and—Goddess willing—will be home tomorrow morning.”
Joy lit Aster’s face. She clapped her hands and looked to where her eldest still sat, calmly stitching.
“Senna, have you no ears? Did you not hear Master Lute say that your sister will be home tomorrow?”
She glanced up, brown eyes hard as pebbles. “And did I not say she would be home when she had done with whatever madcap scheme she was chasing?” She bent her gaze once more to her stitching.
“You would believe that some ill had come of her. Ill never comes to the likes of Tael, who laughs at everything.” She made a particularly violent jab at the fabric with her needle before concluding, half-whispered, “As she will be laughing at all of us, tomorrow.”
“Senna—” her mother began, shock blighting the joy on her face.
“Tomorrow?” That was the boy, rigid as a carving on the stool, harness forgotten in his hands. “If she’s close enough to be here tomorrow, why don’t we go and fetch her tonight?” He turned wild, glittering eyes on Aster. “You’d do better not to let your hopes rise, housemother! What do we know of this Lady Moonhawk, in truth? what word have we, except her own, that she is Circle-trained? Does she come to us properly clad—no! She comes like a ragged gypsy fortune-teller, bearing company with a—”
“Cedar!” Aster commanded. “Hold your tongue!”
“Yes, do,” said Senna, bending to put her work into the basket. She stood and glanced from her mother to the boy. “Morning will be here soon enough, and then we can all judge the truth of the foretelling.” She yawned, covering her mouth with work-scarred fingers.
“I, for one, believe the lady, by whatever means she gained her knowledge,” she concluded. “And now I am going to bed, the better to speed morning along. Mother?”
“Yes,” said Aster distractedly, and turned to lay her mending haphazardly on the chair. “A good notion.” She straightened and held out a hand. “Master Lute, thank you for your service to us. I will just step down the hall, Senna, and give thanks to Lady Moonhawk, also, and then—”
“Lady Moonhawk,” Lute interposed smoothly, “was exhausted with the working of magic and has since retired. Doubtless there will be a time for speaking together, tomorrow.”
“Doubtless,” said Senna, sarcastically. She put a surprisingly solicitous hand under Aster’s elbow. “Come to bed, Mother. Good-night, Cedar. Master Lute.”
“Dream sweetly,” Lute wished, and bowed them out of the room. He turned in time to see Cedar come to his feet, harness falling unnoticed to the floor. He shambled forward, and started badly when Lute touched his arm.
“I see you’re as wide awake as I am,” the magician said, smiling into the bewildered young eyes. “Do the grace of walking with me. A touch of evening air and a bit of exercise are doubtless just what we both require.” The boy simply stared. Lute smiled more widely, took a firmer grip on the arm and pulled him, unresisting, toward the kitchen and the door.
“Come,” he said softly. “I’ll tell you a story while we walk.”
THE MOON WAS high, limning the countryside in silver, and the stars hung pure and unflickering just out of Lute’s longest reach. He looked around with genuine pleasure.
“What a delightful scene! What delightful country, certainly, once one climbs out of the village. I thought of settling here this afternoon.”
“But your mistress has no mind to rest,” Cedar said, with a touch of his former acidity.
“You mistake me, child. I am my own man. And the Lady Moonhawk is indeed a Witch out of Circle, properly attired or not. We happen to travel in the same direction. When either of us chooses a different way, why, then we shall part company.”
Cedar unlatched the gate and they stepped through onto the track. Once more Lute looked about him. “Truly delightful! What direction shall we walk?”
Hope flickered in the boy’s face, clearly discernible in the moonlight. He turned east, toward the village. “This way,” he said eagerly.
Lute extended a hand, caught the boy’s arm and turned him firmly west. “I’ve a fancy for this way, myself. Come, walk with me.”
Hope died in that instant; the boy’s shoulders sagged and something in his face crumbled—but he stayed stubbornly rooted, resisting the gentle tug of Lute’s hand.
“Come,” Lute repeated. He gestured with his free hand and plucked a silver bit from the starry air. Taking the boy’ s resistless fingers, he turned palm up and placed the money there, closing the fingers firmly.
“Here now,” he said. “You’ve agreed to guide me—and taken my coin to seal the bargain. Let us walk this way.” He pulled more sharply on the arm, and this time Cedar went with him, walking silently on rock-hard path, with Lute keeping pace beside.
They had gone for some little distance, silent, but for the magician’s now-and-again comments on the surrounding country, or the stars, or the breeze, when Cedar glanced over.
“What is the story?”
“Your pardon?”
“The story,” the boy repeated impatiently. “You said you would tell me as we walked.”
“Ah,” said Lute softly. “The story.” He went another few steps along the path, glancing upward as if to ask the moon for guidance. “The story, “he said again, ““is this.”
“Not very long ago—nor very distant—there walked on a path very like this one a young woman and her betrothed. It was a dewy morning, or a brilliant afternoon—though doubtfully evening, for she did not wear her cloak against the chill and it was not the moon’s time of fullness—the path would have been too dark.
“So they went, these two, and as they went, they talked. Alas, the talk turned from pleasantries and flirtations to distressful, hurtful subjects. The lover accused the girl of being unfaithful to him, cried out that she refused to wear his troth-gift; that she refused, perhaps, to fix the date of their final vowing. He demanded to know the name of his rival; demanded to know by what right she—a woman grown and mistress of her own life—by what right she continued to wear the necklace she had always worn—the one he had not given her.
“He demanded these things, petulant, and she ignored him—ran a little ahead or to the side or exclaimed over a flower.
“Goaded, he said other things, ugly things, striving to be hateful, to hurt her, as a child will try to wound the adult who has disciplined him.” Lute paused, glanced back at the boy, who had stopped on the silvery path and was staring ahead, hands fisted at his sides.
“Cedar?” he said softly. “Is that how it was?”
“She laughed at me!” the boy cried out. “Laughed! But I swear by the Mother—I never meant to kill her!”
“But you did kill her,” Lute said, still soft.
“It was an accident!” Cedar half-raised his fists, anguish twisting his face. “She laughed and then she—she said that she was sorry, that of course she wouldn’t wear my gift, that she had never—had never considered me a life-partner—” His voice caught, as if on a sob. “She said that she saw she had been wrong, that she had tried to be kind to me, until I outgrew my—my—” He brought his hands down, still fisted, to rest tautly against his thighs.
“I hit her,” he said, and bent his head.
“One blow killed her?” Lute wondered, soft as thought. “Or were there more than one?”
“One!’ Cedar wailed. “Only one, as the Goddess knows my soul. But she fell—I heard her head hit the rock and then she didn’t get up… I knelt beside her and tried to—tried to lift her head—” He swallowed hard. “The blood…” He looked up and Lute marked the tears that dyed his cheeks silver in the moonlight.
“There is a—a spring-cave not far away. I carried her there; piled rocks around her so that the animals…” He swallowed again.
“It was early morning. After—that evening, I went to Mother Aster’s farm, asking for Tael. She wasn’t there. I waited—and I’ve been waiting. Soon, they would have given her up! Senna would have decided that Tael simply didn’t wish to be found. Aster would have mourned—and taken up more good works in the village—and forgotten. Soon, there would have been—would have been peace. But you had to come and that Mother-blasted woman—how did she know?” he screamed suddenly, lunging forward and swinging a fist, randomly, it seemed to Lute, who merely stepped aside and let the rush go past him.
The boy whipped around, admirably quick, though still a shade uncautious, and braked so strongly he went down on a knee, loose stones clattering across the path.
“Wisdom, boy,” Lute said, no longer soft; and plucked a silver sliver from the air. He made a magical pass and showed the kneeling youth a quick succession: sliver, stiletto, dagger, nothing. Sliver, stiletto, dagger…
Cedar licked his lips.
“Consider illusion,” Lute directed. “Consider reality. You hold the coin I gave you still within your fist. Which of these is real, Master Cedar? Will you gamble your life that I only juggle air?” He ran the sequence again, and again, using the rhythm of the moves to add force to his words.
“The Lady Moonhawk is a Witch. She called Tael and come Tael did, demanding what right remains her—proper burial, benediction—truth. Our duty tonight is to have her home, laid out and decent for her mother to see at dawnlight. Your duty then is to tell the truth—for justice and peace—and your own salvation.” He vanished the dagger for the last time and stood staring into the boy’s eyes.
“Peace never came from lies, child. And hearts do not forget so quickly.” He gestured. “Get up.”
Cedar did, as if the gesture lifted him, and Lute nodded. “Show me the place.”
“All right,” said Cedar and turned westward once more on the path, Lute walking just behind.
IT WAS MANY hours later that Lute went into the laundry, stripped off the fine red robe with all its stains and tears and washed, scrubbing himself from hair to toenails, rinsing and then scrubbing again. When he was done, he combed his hair and braided it, dug the silver knife from the sleeve of the discarded robe and used it to scrape the stubble from his cheeks.
Lastly he dressed in his own clothes, damp though they were, and stood, shivering, thinking about the night’s work.
Mercifully, the spring-cave had been cool, and the season not yet high summer. Sadly, something had been at one of the hands, and there was, after all, the blood, and the other general nastiness attendant upon days-dead bodies. Her face—her face had been untouched, except for the bruise splashed across the right cheek.
In life, she had been beautiful.
Lute shuddered.
They had laid her in the parlor, across two benches pushed together, draped with an old quill they had found near the wood box. They had crossed her hands over her breast—whole one over chewed—and combed her hair until it fell in gleaming waves straight back from her face to the floor.
Her eyes had already been closed.
“Blue,” Cedar had said distractedly, touching her hair, her face, her folded hands. “Blue as tael-flowers, her eyes. You would have loved her, Master Lute, if you had seen her—as she was.”
Lute shuddered again, whether in pity or revulsion he did not know.
The boy had declined to wash or sleep, saying it was not so long until dawn and if he was to see Mother Aster and tell her the whole, he might as well be there when she came down.
“Besides,” he said softly, eyes on the dead girl’s face. “She’s home now. It would be graceless, to let her in the night alone.”
Pity locked Lute’s tongue. Leaving the reminder of three abandoned nights unspoken, he had gone to wash.
Washed, and in somewhat better control of himself, he quit the laundry and went to the guesting-room, dread ’round his heart like ice.
“MOONHAWK?” In the candle-glow he saw her, reclined among the pillows, wrapped in the blue cloak that she had not allowed him to remove. Her face was smooth, distant, childlike. Her breathing went in and out with regularity. He could not tell if her state was trance or sleep.
Sighing, aching in every joint, he sat on the pillows opposite, set the candle carefully aside and prepared himself to wait.
A scream wakened him.
Aster was the first he saw as he rushed into the parlor. Aster with her fist shoved against her mouth and her face white as her dead daughter’s. Then he saw Senna, wide-eyed and staring, but not at Tael—at something, it seemed, upon the floor. At something which, now that he noted it, Aster stared as well.
Foreboding flared, too late, and he stepped into the room, looked over Aster’s shoulder—
He had used a leather-hook; it lay by his right hand. The slash it had made across his throat was ragged—and very deep.
His eyes were still open.
“No!” Lute flung forward, went to his knees by the pooled blood, extended a useless hand—and pulled it back, clenched.
“Young fool! There was no need, no need.” The tears were hot, they fell into the pooling red.
A hand touched his shoulder; warm fingers gripped him. Behind him he heard Aster shift and clear her throat.
“Cedar was so undone by my—by Tael’s death that he killed himself. His love was such—”
“No,” whispered Lute, and—
“No,” said Moonhawk, as she gently kneaded his shoulder. “Cedar killed your daughter, housemother—unintended, but he was the instrument of her death. We have the story, if you will hear it. And we will stay and help you bury them, with every proper rite, if you will have our help.”
“I STILL DON’T understand why he did it,” said Lute, playing a blue counter over his knuckles, disappearing it and re-appearing a yellow, a red, the blue again, and, in addition, a green.
Moonhawk fed more twigs to the cook fire and glanced up at the starry sky. “Guilt,” she said softly, “and pain—he did love her, I think. In his way. But his way was too sober for her—the heedless one, remember? The one who laughed at everyone.” The fire flared and she ducked prudently back, keeping the blue cloak tightly around her.
“It happened so quickly—like a bad dream. To see her again… to know her dead…” She sighed. “May the Mother pity him.”
Lute glanced at her sharply. “And yourself? I find you wholly mistress of your own soul and not sharing it with some heedless, teasing beauty?”
She laughed and tossed her hair back over her shoulders. “My own self and no other,” she said softly. “Poor Master Lute. But while we were together, I did—dream.” She glanced down, in a sort of maidenly shyness foreign to her usual manner. “I was never a free woman, you know. In the Circle, there is—duty. Some of Tael’s memories were—interesting. I shall have think on them more fully, as Sister Laurel would have said.”
“More fully,” Lute echoed and shook his head, vanishing all four counters. “Well, take some advice and stick to my sort of magic in the future. Less dangerous. More lucrative.”
Moonhawk laughed and pulled the pan from the fire. “Eggs, Master Lute?”
So ends the second tale of Lute and Moonhawk.
THE WOOD BENCH was cool beneath her bare buttocks, the stone cold under her bare toes. No heat came from the empty fireplace, nor light from the empty oil lamps and candelabra. Despite the season the barred windows high in the walls were open.
She needn’t see the walls, canted inward as they rose, to understand the meaning of the word prisoner, though it was a word unsaid by the Sisters and the Mother herself.
“You will be assigned more appropriate duties after you recant, Mendoza,” they’d told her, already stripping away the dignity of the name that had come to her unbidden the first time she’d bled.
Mendoza, they called her now. More properly, Priscilla Delacroix y Mendoza. And what of Moonhawk?
She sighed, felt her dry skin shiver, and went to lessons of Intent to remove her concentration from the discomfort and center it on the reality.
The reality she found was motion and what it meant. The breeze was motion—
Within the light breeze that chilled her bare breasts were odors of the evening: dinner smells from the dining hall for the Maidens-in-Training, the hint of expensive herbs burned by wealthy supplicants down on Mother’s Row, the occasional acrid touch of metal and smoke from the foundry on the edge of the bay downriver.
It all meant that the wind was from the west, and the night would be colder than last, and that in the morning they would take her to the Mother s Chamber to say a confession she would not make.
“You will recant,” had said the Mother; “You will admit that you never heard Moonhawk calling, that you’ve always stolen your power from others, and that you were wrong to do so. You will be assigned to more appropriate duties, and given a Name-in-Keeping.”
In the meantime they had left her here to meditate, for three days and nights, having left her only the earrings given her by a dead grandmother, witches knowing better than to trifle with a gift of handwrought silver.
What they had taken! They’d taken amulets of power, bracelets of strength, stones that concentrated will. Then they’d subjected her to spells of unmaking, to other thefts…
To think that they’d feared her so much! If only she had the bracelets, even now—
She shivered. Even now she needed food. She needed drink. She needed Moonhawk as never before and Moonhawk had been forced away from her by the Council.
A tear came, and quickly she regretted it. No water here, no food. They wanted a weak and beaten, near-nameless Maiden, not Moonhawk-in-training. Every tear was in their favor.
Now the breeze brought something else: the distant hum of voices, and now more, and then the City’s temples were all heard, each chanting Tenth Chant.
Priscilla felt her throat seek the words and was surprised by it—she’d sung no chant since she’d been thrown here. She closed clamped her mouth on the words, and then relented. Tenth Chant Wardsday was Moonhawk’s Chant.
She began then, low and quiet, eyes raised in the darkness. But all was not dark: high up was the silver glow of moonlight on the cold stone walls.
Priscilla had held the original of the chant in her own hands in the Library when she’d been permitted the boon of study of her namesake. She covered the trail of history entire: Moonhawk had helped build the world she lived in, had helped create the chants, had designed spells, had defined powers—Moonhawk had been there over and over when the Temple needed help. Priscilla had caressed the pages of those chants, had seen that the words were penned by two hands, not one—and she’d never gotten an answer to that question of why the other hand was a masculine hand. Sister Dwelva denied it, as she denied so much.
Sister Dwelva refused to discuss the notation on the side of the chant, in that second hand:
“Here’s a truth, for the survivor bold, always take silver, rather than gold, it’s less the weight and more easily sold!”
NONSENSE, even arrogant—
Yet the front of the page was purity itself, words and feeling so perfectly meshed… she sang harder.
As the chant came stronger to her throat she saw that page again in the moonspot, felt she caressed the words and paper yet again—
“It was Lute, my dear,” came the voice in her head. “It was Lute who made me write that one down. Lute who knew the value of silver and saved me through it. It was Lute you looked for, all unknowing, when they trapped you—aiiieee, girl; they have never let me at Lute again in all these centuries! And what shall we do for you now that they’d make you lie or have you stoned for truth?”
Priscilla never broke chant but she grasped her left wrist frantically, knowing the while that Moonhawk’s bracelets had been torn away by magic and force—she’d first heard Moonhawk speak to her when she’d grasped the bracelet at Blood-test and had never been without it again until now—
“Look on the moon, youngster. It carries silver and its path is a bracelet about the planet. You have worked hard for me and it has cost you. Think on me…”
Outside, the chanting faded away. But Priscilla’s eyes saw the moon gleam and she continued the chant, felt herself growing warmer.
“You’ll need energy, tomorrow, too. You’ll not be stoned if I have my way of it. If only you could touch the moonlight…”
There was a new sound as the city quieted after Tenth Chant. The bars and taverns were closed now, except at the space port’s foreign zone; the houses were darkening, but there was a new sound—a sound of birds maybe, or rats!
It was not good to dwell on rats. Priscilla knew this. But Moonhawk’s voice had told her to think on Moonhawk…
The last time she’d been truly filled with Moonhawk’s vision and force she’d killed a woman and stunned another senseless. She’d left her post at the Temple and traveled—without permission—to the seedy bar where a Sintian man was about to give stolen Temple secrets over to an outworlder. And when she’d recovered the secrets, she’d let the surviving outworlders, mere spaceship crew—and the thief himself—go.
And she’d given her word—Moonhawk’s word—that they be safe. The single death had been atonement enough, for the dead woman had been the cause of the theft in the first place.
But Circle had wanted more: they’d wanted a show of power. They’d intended to turn the thief or thieves over to the crowds for a proper stoning, to quell the cyclic complaints that the Temple ran far too much of Sintian life.
Show of power? Instead now they would show power by sending her to be stoned for heresy if she refused to recant, or send her to the Temple of Release to be night comfort to the men and women who’d lost their spouses if she did.
“Politics, young one, politics. You did well for one unused to that level of command. Our whole order is based on proper use of intuition and the balance of life: but since the first coven was consecrated there’s always been that other—the greed of power, of personal importance. They’d not believe that I would let the starship people go, but what had they done? Accessories, accidental as they were. And the man? what good stoning him when the true trouble lay dead—aye, so you used a little too much force? It was at my behest, and the woman was dead before she arrived—that was in her eyes. But you hadn’t time to see that—they’ve trained you for ceremonies instead of duty! If only they’d train you properly, let you find your love… even if it isn’t Lute. I looked for him there, with your eyes, but he is not yet seen. They sing my praises and let me loose with virgins… they alter history for convenience and forget the truth—that I was sent on Quest to get me out of Circle because I demand Balance in my dealings and expect the same of others. The whole thing was politics, this time, and I had no time to warn you, that’s all.”
“But what of the Temple property! Temple secrets! It was important!”
The words sounded hollowly throughout the big room.
“Temple secrets!” mocked the voice in her head. “Samples of what they call the ‘catalyst molecule’ is what, in exchange for trading rights. They think it can make a Witch out of one without power. Old secrets pulled from the ship records they hide. Ah, they won’t learn. Politics! You—we—did right to stop the theft, but then we should have fixed all of the problem. I swear that’s why they haven’t given me a smart girl to choose—until you—for three hundred years!”
“Given! Don’t you choose?”
“I won’t discuss it with you now. Later, if there’s a way. We must get you strengthened! You must touch the moonlight!”
Priscilla stood then, knowing it was useless. She was slender—scrawny said some, until they saw her standing with Moonhawk’s aspect upon her—and fairly tall. But the moonlight was still a half-dozen or more elbow lengths over her head, and the slant of the wails made it impossible for her to climb that high.
She tried standing on the bench that was her bed, and that was too short, as well. And if she leaned the bench against the wall?
She tried it, willing tired muscles to push the heavy wood into place near the wall, and then tried to lean it—no. Logic showed it could not work: the bench would wedge itself in and there was no way she could stand on the end of it then….
She pushed the bench over; it fell with a crash, the low backpiece splintering noisily.
She stood in the darkness, naked and exhausted, sweat cooling rapidly on her body. She began to shiver and with it came an inner blackness so total—
“I have failed you, Moonhawk! I am too weak, too—” There was no sound, within or without. Whatever the watchers heard or thought was as hidden from her as Moonhawk.
“They will stone me, then, that’s all, and the circle will continue. Moonhawk can choose a better vessel and all will be well with the world.”
She said that and the words came back her and then struck her full force. She’d seen stonings twice and had been sickened by them; but now, to have the crowd after her?
There was no panic. She would hang herself, that’s all. She could use the empty lampholder to tie her hair to, tie it around her neck as well, and then jump from the bench and—
“Will you kill Moonhawk?” came the question.
“Never! Moonhawk lives!”
“Precisely. Moonhawk lives. I may withdraw from time to time, and be subject to meddlings, but I live. Lute lives too, though they deny it. For that matter, Priscilla Delacroix y Mendoza lives. I swear that if you ever in life attempt an unreasonable suicide again I will abandon you forever! They’ve pretty well got me walled out, you know, but then they’ve got a couple dozen full strength Sisters working on this. Don’t fight them with your magic, child: they must believe it’s all mine! Now, if you can use your head—”
In the darkness Priscilla moved, tripped on the splintered backrest as she looked at the light on the wall. The moon was nearly to the zenith—the touch of silver light might move down the wall another handspan or two but…
“Lady Moonhawk, guide me!” said the girl, but she was already moving. She pushed the bench toward the spot of moonlight on the wall carefully. Then she hurried, bare feet soundless on the cold stone, to the backrest.
It was heavy, but it was long enough. She climbed onto the bench. It swayed slightly, but would surely hold. Then she ruthlessly twisted the ends of her hair into a quick braid, and pulled the braid into the cracked wood at the end of the backrest.
She swayed and missed the spot the first try, and the next—each time wincing as the end of the impromptu pole fell away from its target, straining hair roots unmercifully.
The third time she came close, but her braid fell from the pole. Her arms were cramped and the back of her neck ached. She was sweating and shivering at once as she tugged her hair into the splinters. Somehow it was the other side of that chantpage she saw…”less the weight, more easily sold.”
“I’m crazy,” she said. “They’re right. I’m crazy—”
But the fourth time did it. The wide end of the stick landed in the midst of the patch of moonlight and she twisted it in her hands to expose the braid to the silver light.
Nothing happened. She’d expected—
Well, what had she expected, she wondered. Power? Escape? Wings?
She waited. The stick leaned against the wall, taking some of its weight off her arms. She didn’t feel as tired as she expected, but—
“Patience. It seems they’ll kill you if we’re not careful, and you’re far too good to be killed over politics.
I’m afraid this round’s going to be a draw. So call on the moon for what you really need now, and hurry! But never recant. They can take your power only if you give in!”
Priscilla stood, arms over head, staring at her hair in the silver light. Then she began chanting, the properly measured chant of Moonhawk’s own words.
The vision she saw was not of the Moon, nor of freedom, but of a man. Not simply any man, though—a man gaunt of face; with fingers so strong they’d crush rock to powder, fingers so gentle they’d caress and tease a breast for hours…
Lute! she realized. Lute the Magician. She’d read of him, both good and bad; in the public schools he was a legend, and in Temple training he was example: she’d read the tracts explaining away his magic and showing a novitiate how to see through the sleight-of-hands he’d performed… the more recent books had him as an amiable charlatan, persuaded of the Goddess through Moonhawk’s True Power. They’d been lovers!
The thought burned her: she been taught a Moonhawk strong and pure, celibate. But Moonhawk had had a lover—
She’d touched his words, too, then! And could power but go to power? Surely Moonhawk’s lover—
“Lute,” she called out loud then, “Lute! Lend me your power! Lute, by the Goddess—”
She heard a noise and returned to her chant, her demand still echoing up the walls toward the open windows—
They came quickly: dozens of them, including the entire Inner Circle. They came brandishing open-flamed torches and with silver and stone headdresses. They came with 11 of the 14 living Names among them, and with spell-proof outworld rope they pulled her from her perch, bruising her breasts and legs. They chanted back, and with two Sisters on each arm and three on each leg they held her face down on the stone floor to stop her voice, and they took the finest of knives and slashed at her hair, cutting and hacking at it till it fell everywhere around her.
“How dare you!” screamed one of the Inner Circle when the hacking was done. “How dare you! To call on a charlatan within the Goddess’ own hold? What use can some mere male trickster be to you, fool? Heresy in the Temple itself! In the morning you will recant!”
“No!” shouted the girl, bruising her lips on the floor. “Not while Moonhawk lives! While Moonhawk lives, so does Lute, and he is a Name!”
“You will be stoned for that!” said another of the Circle, tracing stars in the air, and then patterns that glowed bright red. “False Moonhawk! Recant, give up your magic, or it will be taken!”
Within her, the voice, distant, cool. “These fools forget the well they drink from—Never recant! If they take my Name you have yours, Priscilla, never forget! When they take Sintia’s blessing you’ll be as invisible to them… We are angry, Priscilla!”
Within, Priscilla felt heat, and the nearest to her shrank away from the power there.
“I’ll not recant!”
Another voice, perhaps the Mother herself, said quietly, “Let it begin then—”
The woman holding her left arm began to twist it, and nearby a sword rattled.
From where she lay she could see her dark hair scattered about the floor, and feet, and the glitter of high-level magics on everything. Her cheek hurt.
“I was always concerned of this one—” said someone as she was kicked.
She managed to see the woman who spoke: an older woman, politically secure—
“Will you stone Moonhawk, Ignela Rala y Duedes? You whose names are also Renata Dulavier Francotta and—”
“Stop!” said the woman, using the power of Command, the same command that Moonhawk and Priscilla had killed a woman with. “Stop!”
“—Sylvette Anna Ringwald? It isn’t required. Moonhawk is walking away from your ken for now, leaving your necessity behind for this generation. Remember that she is in every Temple, and will know how you deal!”
They beat her then, with rods of metal and gems, and each touch was an agony, as if her soul were being drained, and they twisted her arms and spoke Commands and Spells.
When they twisted her arm again she screamed, and when they twisted further, she screamed again, calling out for Moonhawk and Lute. For a moment she felt as if Lute were at the door, drawing sword—
“No!” came the word in Priscilla’s head. “He can’t stand against so many Names yet! He stirs, though, girl—he stirs! I must find him—live your life. You will not be forgot!”
Within Priscilla there was a sigh, and a relaxation of will: Moonhawk could not save her, Lute would not save her. And Moonhawk was elsewhere now.
A jubilant cry sprang from a close-eyed woman in the back of the room: “Gone, sisters, the false Moonhawk is gone!”
THEY LEFT HER after awhile, in the darkness, having exhausted an amazing amount of magical energy on her. They took with them the wooden bench, and they burnt her hair where it lay, that she’d not have influence over any holder of it, should her false magic return.
She lay naked on the stones, and cried. She was going to die now, or very soon, and badly. The bruises and scrapes ached at her soul. What had she gotten in this life? What right had any of them—all she’d really wanted was to live a good life, in Balance, to honor the Goddess, to live well. What could she do now—The noises she’d heard before came closer now. Rats? Bats? There was a clatter. And another. The sound of wings. More clatter. Something fell on her thigh, jerking her sharply awake. She reached—
And found a thing about the size of her thumb, dimpled and light… a frenal nut! As she cast around she found more; there was a rain of them now. She’d wanted food, and here was food, of a sort. If she could just have enough strength to face them once more—There was a louder flutter, and a keening. A large bird swooped past her head, settled in on the stone floor. She could hear it walking, could almost make out its form in the night.
The bird’s head bobbed and it dropped an offering—a harvest plum. As it jumped into the air she saw its markings in the distant light: a hawk it was…
IN THE MORNING Priscilla Delacroix y Mendoza was declared dead by her mother, in open court. It was a minor thing. Being a civil matter its transmission to the world was delayed by a more important announcement.
This more important announcement went first to the rest of the Names who Lived, who meditated upon it for some hours before declaring officially to the Temple that Moonhawk was dead. Thence to the underlings went the news: those who would take the message to other Temples in the City, with the true and proper story: young Moonhawk had turned back the theft of all that was Holy and returned to the Temple a key to Balance: in so doing her mission for the Mother in this life was fulfilled, and she had returned to the fold.
In the Temple basement a lone guard stared down at the prisoner a long time before nudging her awake with his foot. He’d considered—but no, not in the Temple, and not with that damn bird staring down at him from the empty lamp holder.
“Get up, you,” he said, kicking at her a little harder. “Get out!” He threw her a rough and ragged shift, a castaway from the alms box.
“If you ain’t out by next chant you’re up for trespassing in the Temple! Can’t trust any of you Nameless.”
She was full of pains and aches, but overriding that was an emptiness that was like a drug that dulled her senses. Things weren’t as sharp; she could not summon warmth—
Priscilla reached out, unwillingly accepting the new because the past was totally gone; she put the shift on, and stood slowly. She was cold, but here was a little bit of food, and—
The man was staring pointedly at her breasts. She put her head high, felt the ache in the back of her neck, suddenly feeling the weight of his words.
Nameless. Dead. A nothing—No longer Moonhawk. No right to be bare-breasted in public. No right to call the Goddess Mother…
Awkwardly, unnaturally, she buttoned the shift across her bruised and chafed breasts, felt its hem rub on the raw bruises on her thighs.
There was an explosion of wings behind her, and the bird that had been poised there flew out the door and to the left.
“Out, damn you!” snapped the guard. “Look at this mess we gotta clean up! By the Goddess’ good foot, get out!”
Numbly, she gathered together a few more of the nuts. Food. A little bit of food.
The man pushed at her roughly.
“Get out! You’re not wanted. You’re dead!”
She ran then, ran out the door and to the left, ignoring the open door to the right that led upramp into the beggars courtyard.
“I’m not,” she said to the wall as she climbed the stairs, “I’m not dead.”
She stopped at the door to MaidenHall, waiting for the tingle of acceptance at the crossboard in the stone floor—
There was none.
There was nothing. No quiet gong sounding the advent of a Maiden, no warning brangle of alarm bells, no roar of tarfire from the pot over the door.
Nothing.
She stepped through, then and touched the naming stone with a bare foot.
Nothing again. Moonhawk’s name was not intoned by the four guard coyotes, long-frozen by spell: nor did they raise hackles and charge. She was there, Nameless.
Moonhawk’s words came back to her: too much training had gone before for her to continue without some ceremony.
“Priscilla,” she said meekly.
Again nothing happened. No repetition, no echo, no—She realized then she was a thief in Temple!
She ran with trepidation, furtively, until she found the locker that had been hers briefly but that had always been Moonhawk’s.
To stop a thief one uses locks. So had the wise women of Sintia done, and the sight of that silver-bright lock sent shivers of fear and indignation through Priscilla. what could she do now? She’d certainly starve, unable to get at what should be hers. And how dare they assume she stoop to stealing—
Incongruously, she laughed, and it was a true laugh despite everything, one that took in all the ironies—
She felt the sound of added laughter, distantly heard within her a voice new and thrilling—a male voice!
“You’ve a chance to survive then, haven’t you? It isn’t always easy, but girl, Look! It’s only a silver lock, all curled about with magic signs that’d burn the hands off any believer still shackled to their cow-eyed vision—”
Priscilla recoiled at that description—felt the distant voice pause—
“—Can’t argue with you now, dammit. She needs help for this trick of hers and I—Priscilla, get a pin or a nail.”
The voice felt different, even more distant—but Priscilla took one of Delana-who-was-Oatflower’s favorite stainless steel pins from her unkempt locker top and found herself in front of Moonhawk’s locker, lock held precisely thus—
Her hands pulled on the lock expertly as the pin searched within; she felt her muscles respond to minute ridges the pin struck, felt her wrist twist this way while the other hand pulled that way and the pin slammed home and—
Twang!
“Done. Luck be with you girl, ’cause we can’t go beyond the door with you. Never give in!”
Priscilla pulled the lock off the clasp and hurriedly began stuffing the locker contents into a cloth sack: shoes, a belt, work trousers, a few old copper and aluminum coins—
She left to the Temple and its minions the costly clothes, the makeups, the gold armbands and necklets, signs of power, while happily grabbing up the tight-wrapped soya bar she’d left negligently behind the week before. She covered her newly-shorn head with an old blue kerchief that had been a dusting rag for Moonhawk’s ceremonies. What else?
Her gaze fell again to the bright—wrought things, eyes full of the greed of necessity. Dare she?
An odd song tickled at the back of her head, though she couldn’t catch the words. Still—When she moved on she held her right hand tight to seven silver bracelets.
She turned toward the door, found she still held the silver lock in her left hand, under the twisted top of the cloth bag. Her impulse was to toss it away—Silver! She looked at the magic symbols, shrugged her shoulders, and dropped the lock into the bag.
“Good girl!” came distant approval. “Silver travels well! Go as far as you can!”
She hobbled out as best she could then, the grief chants of the Temple covering the sound of her ungainly escape.
Across Sintia the Priestesses waited for the proper hour, and then covered the carved Temple figures of Moonhawk in green cloth, signifying her return to the Goddess, this time.
No one dares mention that the eyes in the statues continued to glow, despite the funereal announcement.
No one dares mention to the Inmost Circle that Moonhawk still lives.
So ends the 55th tale of Lute and Moonhawk.
East Winslow, Maine November 18, 1998
OUR NOVELS Agent of Change, Conflict of Honors, and Carpe Diem, haven’t been on the SF best-seller list, but they have reached a very persistent group of readers, many of them on the Internet.
When we got on the ’net ourselves, our readers let themselves be known.
“When,” they asked “will there be something else in the Liaden Universe?”
This year, like last, lacks a Liaden novel. Next year, in February l999, comes our novel Plan B from Meisha Merlin. Still, our readers have asked for something for this holiday season, something Liaden. We hear you, and read our email. Hence, Fellow Travelers.
In l995 we brought you Two Tales of Korval, stories written as we were defining the Liaden Universe. To Cut an Edge and A Day at the Races both dealt with recent Korval family history.
The first two stories here also were part of our defining of the Liaden Universe, but these are set centuries before the core novels. These stories, Where the Goddess Sends and A Spell for the Lost deal with the role of magic in a world where technology is slowly being rediscovered. The third story— Moonphase—was originally not written for publication, but for our own understanding of Priscilla Mendoza, an active character in the later books But a story once written takes on its own life and necessity, and this story, too, is here.
Thanks to you, the Liaden Universe keeps growing.