Blue Moon (8 page)

Sabin hummed softly under his breath. Amber in the east and amethyst to the west. Night and day and rise and set. The cool electric light caught the facets, and his mind was lost in them for a time, fragmented. Eventually, he pulled himself together and placed a fist-sized ruby to the north and a counterpart sapphire to the south. The last stone he placed in the center. It was like shadow, with no real edges, no gloss to catch the light. Any shadow it threw was absorbed into its form, and it sat there as if it did not exist.

He cut his hand and dripped blood on the shadow stone. It did not react in any way, so he had to take it on faith he had done right.

Sabin stood and paced around the circle of stones. He whispered as he walked, strange old words that had long ago lost their meaning. This was not his true magical talent, making a soul call; his true gift was a strange one. He could move souls from one body to another. His other magics were weak—pitiful, really—but he considered that a flaw of the parched world he lived in.

He had only a little magic left, about two jam jars full, found in a rare buried pocket of a cracked and dried-out ley line, but it ought to be enough to last him until the full moon.

He opened one jar with great reverence. Magic had not started out as a tangible. He remembered when it was as light as air, when you could breathe magic, feel it in the thrum of life around you—when magic had been a thing of provable faith. You only had to know how to tap into the great well of it that made up the core of the planet and you could do anything. There were rules, of course, always rules, but the magic had been worth it.

Sabin remembered—he thought, but was not sure for it had been many, many years ago—lying out beneath the stars with his mother.

"Listen, Sabin,” she whispered in her Shadow voice. “Feel the ley lines beneath you. If you close your eyes you can see them running under the ground, pounding in time with your own heart."

Now, for what little magic was left to survive, it had to be bound to the tangible. Water was the best medium—it could sink into things, it could be doled out with a dropper. He took a spoon from his pocket and dripped out a tiny bit on top of the rock. It mixed with his blood and glowed redly. The redness spread along the drawn lines. He needed to keep thinking of her, to give the spell focus.

Sabin paused, and tried to remember more of his mother. What she had done to cause her name to be removed from the memory of all living beings. You could remember the others—Puck and Titania and Oberon and Mab. You could recount their deeds, describe for the listener what they looked like, but no one remembered his mother, the Dark Queen.

The Dark Queen. Sabin closed his eyes. He was to call her, to bring her here for the blue moon. It was his curse-task, and he knew how to complete it. But the most vital part, her name, what she looked like, had all had been wiped from his brain just like all others.

The Black Queen. Not the Dark Queen. The Black Queen. She was whispered of in a tale to keep children in line. What they whispered—of murdered lovers and orgies where the flesh of children was consumed and disgusting sexual acts involving innocent maidens and mutated beasts occurred were just stories. His mother had done far, far worse.

What had she done?

Sabin knelt again, staring at the circle, shaking his head. The glow had stopped just short of the outer stones. He grabbed the memory of her Shadow voice speaking of the ley lines, an unreliable memory but more than he had otherwise, and stepped inside the circle. He took everything he knew was hers—the color of his eyes, his magic, and called with every bit of his essence.

The glow leapt forward and engulfed the stones. The reflected light encased him in a sheaf of deep red. He threw back his head and screamed.

Zorovin could have told you about the burial place of the Black Queen, for he was one of the very few who remembered who she truly was.

In the mountains far away from where Sabin cast his spell was a tomb undisturbed by man. It contained six bodies—two elves and three dwarves in armor, the majority of a party sent forth with a terrible task. They were the pallbearers of the Black Queen.

She had been a cruel woman, so terrible that her memory was taken from almost all living beings. The kings and their wives carried the burden of her history, softened so they could sleep without nightmares. The seven brave ones they selected carried the horror in full so that they would never forget why they must take care with the corpse they carried, why they must bury it deep in foreign soil. And why they must not return, lest she possess one and return to the Twilight Lands like some nightmare plague.

They enclosed her in crystal, they buried her beneath rock and dirt, deep inside the tall mountain. Freed from the greatest part of their task, they had a feast with special provisions they had brought. They sang and ate then spent the next day in quiet contemplation while each dug his own grave. One stayed alive long enough to shovel the dirt over them, to erase any signs that they had been there. His hatred of the Queen rose above all others; his was the sword that had pierced her heart.

He crawled down into a small cave, and as his life bled away, he thanked God that he would no longer remember the Black Queen's name, or her deeds—and his own shame. That her one wish, to be to remembered for all time as the greatest horror that ever lived, would not be granted. That she would die as she should have lived, quietly and unremarked.

His only hope was that his brother would have the courage to slay the Black One's child and not let misdirected mercy or familial ties stay his hand. He was relieved that he would not have to put the knife to his own son, that the task would be his brother's. He closed his eyes and prayed he would be forgiven his sins, and drifted away into everlasting sleep.

This is the story the dragons tell, but sadly, they did not know the rest of it. They could not warn those who were to come after.

Many, many years later, deep in a cavern, a soft reddish glow reveals a tomb of crystal beneath centuries of dust. A ghost stands there and sees the small cracks where air and water have seeped in. Her body is nothing more than sludge and filth, nothing that the Black Queen can reclaim. She feels a pull, insistent, to the east of where she is. So, her son still lives. All is not lost.

She willed herself to the surface. There she wandered, trying to find a direction that would take her to what she needed. She shook her head. Who knew that a soul could be groggy from so much sleep?

She heard footsteps crunching on the path and looked for a place to hide, then laughed because she was invisible, unless she didn't want to be. At least, if the old rules held.

Jill broke down on the highway but managed to roll her car off the road sputtering and hissing and leaking fluids like a slain dragon. Her father would be angry, mostly because she had bought this car rather than let him buy a better one for her. It wasn't really stubborn pride but the desire to do for herself and prove herself.

She kicked the tire and grabbed her backpack out of the trunk. She wished she'd let him buy the better car, now. Or the cell phone he'd offered.

She looked up at the sky and realized she'd better get going. Girls were prey after dark, and staying by the car was even more dangerous than heading through the woods. Besides, she was familiar with the area and in an hour she'd get home. She was only an exit, maybe two, from where she'd meant to get off anyway.

She jumped over the rail and began climbing. After a time, she reached a path. Her feet crunched on dead leaves, and she tried to walk more softly. The moon had broken through, bright even though only a sliver showed, and she could see.

The path melded into a clearing. She saw a stone and thought she would sit and rest—it was about waist-high and flat enough on top. A cloud passed, darkening the land, and she looked down at her feet to make sure she was still on the path. When she looked up, she saw a woman.

She was the most beautiful woman Jill had ever seen, and she wished desperately that she could look like her, with such glossy, raven-black hair, such large gold eyes set in a finely boned face. The woman was slightly alien-looking, and very exotic.

"Would you really like to look like me?” a Shadow voice in her head asked.

"Yeah,” Jill said. “Who wouldn't?"

The woman smiled. The moon's light glittered again through the trees, and Jill realized she could see through her.

"Now, now,” the voice said as cold fingers touched her face. “It is too late to change your decision."

The cold poured into her, shoving her consciousness into the back of her mind.

The Black Queen stretched as she filled Jill's body, was reminded of how it felt to have arms and legs and a back.

Do I still have the power? she wondered, and tapped deep into the earth, looking for one drop, one little rivulet of magic.

She found what she sought in the stone of a ring trapped on an ancient skeleton's finger. She absorbed it, and Jill got her wish. Her face and figure reformed; her hair became long and black.

"Sabin?” she whispered, and the wind took her voice as she sensed for magic. She let her knowing spread until it touched the sea, where she felt her own kind coming closer along the waters. Silly creatures. They thought Titania, far away on the other side of existence, was the one they should be afraid of.

She smoothed her hands over her hips, swayed in a few steps of dance, feeling muscles bunch and slide beneath flesh. She giggled with undiluted joy, and small things for miles around cowered in the brush and would not make a sound or move until she was far away.

The Ghost Ship

"So, it's coming,” Captain Cearvus said, eyeing the other three gathered around the table. He was the oldest, which was ironic considering that once he had sat at this table, the second youngest of a group of rebels who saw the splitting of the worlds as a chance to get away from oppressive rule. It did not seem so long ago that he and the others had decided not to heed the call of the parting song, but took to boats and floated in the ocean while their people departed for another world.

They lived on the sea and built a huge ship. For centuries, they kept to themselves, determined that no human would learn of them, content to allow the truth of the elven peoples to fade into folklore. This ship was the fourth, made mostly of salvaged parts. The prow read
The Flying Dutchman
, because some of the parts were from that ship, found wrecked on the shores of a deserted island. They would have been amused to hear the tales their ghost ship created.

Cearvus looked at his wife, the only other survivor of that first group. She was called Isis, and she was the color of ice. He was the only person she ever melted for, and that was only in the privacy of their cabin.

He thought for a moment of those First People, all in their graves at the bottom of the ocean. What would they do now, when it seemed that perhaps their queen was coming to reclaim them?

Next was Bronwyn, one of the first generation born on-ship, flame-haired and green-eyed. Next to her was Dare, much younger but so wise and calm, despite the implications of his name, that only a fool would keep him off the council.

"The queen will come,” Isis said. “She will not easily pass up this opportunity to avenge herself against those of us who remain.” She spoke with complete conviction. Titania was proud, and would not forget the slight of those who rejected her rule. Isis, Cearvus thought, was probably looking forward to the fight. She, too, was proud and long of memory.

"We do not even know if she still rules,” Dare said calmly. “If there is someone else on the throne it is unlikely they'd even remember us after all this time."

Bronwyn slipped her hand behind Dare's seat. She thought her relationship with the younger man was a secret. She curled a small bit of Dare's midnight hair around her fingers, her eyes all worry. He gave her a gentle smile. They had been devoted lovers for more than a year, despite the hundred-year difference in their ages. Cearvus smiled. The ship was too small to keep happenings in the dark.

"What was it, exactly, that made Alvaris think we were in trouble? Is it just the coming of the blue moon?” he asked.

Dare answered. “Alvaris said she felt something awaken. An old power appeared in the mountains by the sea. She couldn't tell if someone had truly come through from the other side, but it seems the only explanation. Someone worked a great spell, and one of the old ones, older than you, Cearvus, answered the call. We don't know if this power has aught to do with us or not."

"Someone must go and alert the settlements,” Isis said. “'Tis better to be safe, they say."

"If I remember correctly,” Bronwyn said, taking back her hand and putting it on her lap, “There are only two—Belterhoff and Barrow's Point."

"As far as we know,” Isis said. “But if there are others the chiefs of those places will know and send their own messengers."

"I will go,” Bronwyn said. She had helped set up the twin settlements originally and would know the secret paths, made so they folded reality a bit and made the journey shorter.

The settlements were built to take the overflow of elves from the ship, located in the hardest to reach places the elven kindred could find.

"Not by yourself,” Dare said.

"Actually,” Cearvus said, “Cristoff wished to go to Belterhoff. He is considering staying, as he has family there. Bronwyn can go to Barrow's Point—we will drop you off there first, then take Cristoff to his destination since we'll be coming back for you."

Bronwyn nodded.

"I'll go,” Dare insisted.

"No,” Isis and Bronwyn said together.

"I can go by myself,” Bronwyn added. “Less conspicuous."

"Take someone,” Dare said. “Take Moros. He's strong,” He showed worry keenly, for Moros was Bronwyn's ex-lover.

"We cannot spare anyone,” Isis said. “But we must send someone, so we will send our best, and thus only need to send one."