HM02 House of Moons (13 page)

After looping the reins around a fallen deadwood snag, he cleared the edge of the pool until he found the broad white steps. He sat down in the dead leaves and, shivering, shed his cloak and jerked off his boots. He couldn’t see the bottom of the pool beneath the water’s leaf-strewn pewter surface, but the other crystal had been invisible anyway until he’d dug it out of the mud.

The first step down into the frigid water shocked his breath away, and the second crystallized his bones into ice. He fumbled down the rest of the steps on rapidly numbing feet until the water lapped at his chin, then groped with his toes along the edge for the oblong shape of a latteh. For several minutes, he found nothing but the turgid ooze of cold mud, dead leaves, and an occasional stick; then his half-numb toes encountered the irregular outlines of something hard. He tried to scrape it out with his foot, but it was stuck fast. Finally he held his breath and dived down to wrest at it with his fingers. The crystal was buried deeply, though, and he had to surface for another lungful of air. A few feet away, the two captives watched him with disinterested eyes as he gasped like a dying fish, then dived back into the searing iciness.

He clawed at the mud until he could stand it no more, then burst back to the surface again, his teeth chattering and his lips blue. One more time, he told himself, then pushed the sopping hair out of his eyes and threw himself back into the water’s chill embrace. His lungs ached with the effort of holding his breath and his heart thumped sluggishly. As he pried and scraped, the icy water seemed to seep into his veins.

Then suddenly the muck gave way. Cradling the crystal against his chest, he pushed off for the surface, exuberant. It was large, perhaps even bigger than the one he’d found before. With this, he would rule the Highlands!

His head broke the surface. He gulped in the freezing air, then half walked, half floated back to the steps, his hands so numb that he could hardly feel the precious crystal between them. Shivering, he clambered out of the icy pool, then hesitated.

The bare brambles on the far side of the grove twitched as a silsha, black as a cave at midnight, emerged, prowling toward him on huge, impossibly quiet feet. Clutching the muddy crystal with hands that seemed to belong to someone else, he stumbled up the last few steps and glanced around for the gelding.

Wild-eyed at the sight of the beast, the horse’s ears flattened as it reared, breaking the snagged limb and freeing the reins. He cursed himself for not tying his mount to a more solid tree, then realized he had even left his sword hung on the saddle. “Steady now.” He forced his voice to remain soft and calm as his muddy hand groped for the reins trailing away from him. “It’s all right. Hold on.” The gelding snorted, rolling its white-edged eyes, then bolted through the gray-brown trees.

His heart thundering, Diren turned back around as the silsha snarled, never taking its baleful yellow eyes off his face.

* * *

“There, my Lord!” The frightened chierra maid pointed at the slumped body on the floor in Myriel’s bedchamber.

Lying there, her hand outflung against the paneled wall, the old healer was so white and still that at first Kevisson thought she was dead. He knelt and touched her lined cheek with the back of his hand and read the faint glimmer of her mind. He glanced up at the terrified chierra. “Find Lord Rald! Tell him I said to send for a healer from Shael’donn!”

The brown eyes blinked. “Be she—be she—dead, my Lord?”

“She will be if you don’t hurry!” he snapped, then tried to control his runaway pulse. “Just fetch your master. I’ll do what I can for her.”

The maidservant dropped a hasty curtsey and fled back through the door, her steps echoing as she pelted down the hall. Kevisson snatched a lavish rose-embroidered spread from the neatly made bed and tucked it around Enissa’s crumpled body. Bending low, he touched her temple and tried to reach her mind, but there was only the activity of her autonomic functions, and even those were breaking down.

Hold on, Enissa,
he told her.
You’re too tough and ornery to die like this.
And you can’t leave me, too, he thought. First Myriel, then Haemas, and now Enissa.

Rald’s heavy steps thumped up the stairs. Feeling Enissa slipping away, Kevisson opened his shields, pouring what strength he had into her failing mind.
Fight!
he said to her.
Haemas needs you and the House of Moons needs you and even those damn silshas need you!

“Lord of Light, what happened?” Rald grasped the door jamb with perspiring fingers, red in the face and wheezing.

“I don’t know.” Kevisson glanced up, his head spinning from the energy drain. “Send for a Shael’donn healer. I’ll try to make her hold on until then.”

Dimly he heard Rald calling to Shael’donn, his mindvoice ringing out through the betweenness that separated Lenhe’ayn and the Highlands, calling for a healer to come immediately.

And all the while, Enissa’s skin chilled underneath Kevisson’s hand as her life dribbled away and he hovered over her, powerless to prevent it.

THE HEAVY CROSSBAR
holding Axia’s door scraped out of its braces and another in an apparently limitless supply of silent, well-shielded young men stepped inside her room. She glimpsed a second white-robed figure standing guard as the door swung shut. The first man carried a tray loaded with fresh bread, crumbly white cheese, and a steaming mug of keiria tea across the room, and at no point did his gaze ever quite meet hers. She eyed his sturdy shoulders and calm, unlined face angrily from her perch on the bed. They all had the same look here—serene, healthy, modest, confident, the sort of young men who would never have come to Chee’ayn to seek her hand.

But what did they know of the way the world really worked? They had never lived in Brann Chee’s terrifying shadow or gone hungry and cold in the middle of a huge disintegrating house or been locked out in the snow in the dead of winter. She could still smell the musty, manure-clogged barn where she and Diren had huddled many nights. Her nails dug into her palms and she longed to slap this fool’s smug, self-righteous face.

The blue-striped crockery clinked as he set the tray down on the small table by the hearth. The aromatic aroma of the tea filled the room, and she realized she was quite hungry. Still, she was in no mood to be mollified. She slid off the bed and her lip curled. “I suppose you actually expect me to eat this—slop?”

Red tinged the cheeks under his sandy beard, but like all the other denizens of this dreary place he said nothing, just thrust his hands into the pockets of his long white robe and turned back to the door.

Panic welled up in her throat like a living thing trying to escape. What were they going to do with her? No one would tell her anything. She could not stay in this claustrophobic room one second longer! She shoved him sideways into the hearthside table, then rushed the door. The loaded tray clattered to the floor as he lunged and caught her around the waist with both arms.

Let me go!
She twisted, at the same time trying to compel his mind, but his shields were damnably strong and she felt the force of her will slough off him like rain from a weather-treated cloak. She clawed at his hands.
You can’t keep me in this hole!

He deposited her on the narrow bed as if she were only an errant child, then knelt silently and began to pick up the scattered slices of bread and cheese.

Axia wrapped her arms around her ribs and turned her head away. Her eyes ranged along the whitewashed wall, hot and dry. “How can you do this to me?” Her voice came out in a harsh whisper. “What did she say about me? By what right do you think you can hold the Lady of Chee’ayn?”

A faint glimmer of surprise leaked from his mind, then was hastily damped. She heard him replace the mug on the tray, then mop at the tea soaking into the rug.

“Take me before your Lord!” she said. “I demand to know why I’m being held!”

Behind her, the door creaked open, then closed. Clenching her fists, she paced a tight circle around the small room, glaring helplessly at the sunlight slanting through the tiny window set far above her head. If they didn’t let her go soon, someone was going to pay!

She closed her eyes and centered down again until she was calm, then sent her mind roaming through the sprawling establishment, seeking an unshielded mind to torment. But Haemas Tal seemed to be awake now, and there were no others within reach.

As had been true her whole life, everyone was determined to thwart her.

* * *

“It will be easier if we darken the room.” Ellirt drew the drapes in his small wood-paneled study against the afternoon sun.

Unaccountably cold, Haemas shifted on the edge of the wooden chair, knotting her hands in her lap. Despite his reassurances, she found it difficult to believe the latteh could do anything but hurt. She remembered too clearly being caught in its power, helpless to call out to another’s mind or shield or use any of the other skills that were so ingrained by time and training that she had taken them for granted.

“Now ...” He seated himself across the small table from her, so that the crystal, as big as her palm, stared up between them in the dimness like a malevolent dull-green eye. His craggy face was thoughtful. “I want you to monitor what I’m doing without actually coming in contact with the crystal yourself.”

She nodded, but as his gnarled hands reached out to cradle the odd shape, she found herself trembling.

“My dear, there is no need for you to do this.” His faded-gold eyes scrutinized her face, as always, trying to look deeper than she was willing for him to see. “We can keep this crystal here at Shael’donn and use it to save lives. It will be a great boon, and no one will think any the less of you for dealing with it in that way, not after yesterday. You nearly died.”

The blood pounded in her head as she considered, just for a moment, returning to her time line and trying to take up her life where she had left off. But it was, of course, no use. If Chee had found one latteh, he most likely could get more, and as long as he had that kind of power at his disposal, she would never be able to stand against him. Her friends were in jeopardy as well as her school; her one chance to make a difference. Everything she had worked so hard for would come to nothing. Chee had made it quite clear that he would never stop until he both possessed her and controlled the Council. The feel of his hot hands on her arms came back, the burning closeness of his fevered mind ... She shuddered. “I have no choice.”

A wave of reassurance washed over her from Ellirt’s mind. “Then try not to worry.” He closed his eyes.

Haemas let her eyelids drift downward, too, as she softened her shields and tried to follow what he was doing. Through the buffer of his mind, she felt the latteh under his fingers, not cold and dead like an inert piece of stone, as she had expected, but vibrant, filled with flickers of green energy deep within.

This is where the power of the latteh lies.
He held it up in the dim light.
When these energy pulses are organized one way, it can be used as a potent agent for healing. In another pattern altogether, it binds a person s mind and steals his will.

The energies pulsed slowly in the quiescent crystal, random like fish darting in a pool, neither dangerous nor useful. It was like fire, Haemas thought—it could be put to either great good or great destruction, but was not inherently good or bad in itself.

Ellirt began to structure the energy pulses in a complex sequence.
Now this is the pattern used for healing, although it takes practice on the user’s part.

She watched through his mind as the energy pattern took shape, trying to memorize the complex interweaving. With each nudge into place, she became aware of a subtle harmonic building within the crystal—nothing like the buzzing dissonance that had nearly torn her mind apart before, but a throbbing harmony that made her feel better just to listen to it.

Ellirt paused.
Yes, it is beautiful, isn’t it? It’s a great crime against nature that something so useful can also be put to so ugly a task as mind-binding.
Concentrating, he brought the few remaining random pulses into the sequence, producing a harmonic that brought tears to her eyes.
And now ...
His fingertips spread across her bruised cheek.
I will demonstrate, although we usually reserve such power as this for life-and-death situations.

The bruise tingled beneath his hand, and a warmth rushed through her, like sunshine streaming through her veins, building into a golden heat that dissipated all the weariness and aches she’d accumulated since Diren Chee had abducted her from the House of Moons. Her head nodded, the relief so unexpected and welcome that, just for a second, she forgot to be afraid of anything.

You see?
he murmured, then his fingers spasmed and a wave of shock washed out from him.
By the Blessed Light! It can’t be!

Belatedly she realized her shields had slipped; he must have glimpsed the last few days in her mind. She jerked away from his touch.

“Other times.” He passed a hand over his ashen face. “Thousands of realities, similar, yet different from our own.” He lurched to his feet, his eyes staring. “You
have
known me, in another reality, similar to this one—another Kniel Ellirt.”

“He was like a father to me.” She focused on her clenched hands, fighting to keep her voice even. What would happen to this When now? “Much more than my real father ever was.”

His back was turned to her. “And now?”

“He’s dead.”

“Did this Axia kill him?”

“No, he died of a fever.” She bit her lip. “But it was very sudden, and recent. I still can’t believe he’s gone.”

“Then how did she come to attack you?”

“Her brother obtained a latteh somehow. In my time, they have been forbidden for generations and little is remembered of how they function. He used it to force me to take Axia and seek knowledge of the crystal in the timeways so he could use it—and me—more effectively.” She saw the ice-blue glitter of the nexus again in her mind, felt her fear as Axia unleashed the latteh’s power. “At a critical moment, without even knowing, I somehow found a When in which you still existed. I must have been drawn to you.”

“And yet, in this reality, we have never met.” He fell silent. “Why don’t you tell who you are now? I don’t see how it can hurt.”

Could it? Every second she lingered in this When, every word she uttered must change things forever, and not necessarily for the better. She stared down at her hands on the table. “I was born Haemas Sennay Tal.”

“Tal’ayn.” She heard recognition in his voice. “One of Dervlin Tal’s and Anyah Sennay’s daughters?”

“Their only child.” Haemas rose and crossed to the window, pulling aside the heavy brown drapes to look out on the sunlit afternoon and a pair of tow-headed boys busily trimming a curving row of whip-willows. She thrust her hands into the white tunic’s spacious pockets. “Anyah died when I was born.”

“Not here.” His voice was soft. “If I remember right, Anyah gave him four daughters and three sons. Alidale attended the Naming of the youngest only last winter and reported him a fine strapping boy.”

“And Anyah?” She had difficulty speaking around the lump in her throat.

“By all reputes, a fine mother and a good wife.” Perplexed, he stared at her for a moment. “Oh, you mean does she still live?” A gentle smile tugged at his lips. “Yes.”

It was as if the floor had sunk beneath her. Suddenly her legs would not hold her up. She leaned against the window and tilted her head back, letting the air cool her flushed face. Here in these Highlands, Anyah lived on with her sons and daughters—and Dervlin Tal. And perhaps he was a better man for living in her light all these years. Perhaps the other Haemas had never been driven to leave Tal’ayn, had never been unhappy at all.

Her eyes strayed to Master Ellirt’s concerned face. If she had not left home, the House of Moons would not exist. She would never have met Master Ellirt, or had the opportunity to train at Shael’donn. She would be an utter stranger, someone else entirely—and she would not have Kevisson in her life.

“But how is it done, this traveling between—” He stood up from the table and gestured helplessly with his hands. “Realities?”

“The secret to that almost tore my timeline apart twelve years ago.” Haemas thought again of the whirling dark-blue maelstrom of disrupted time, then sharpened the memory and laid it bare for him, the whip-crackle of disintegrating temporal patterns, the grinding dissonance of disrupted energies tearing the universe apart.

He staggered backward, his face drawn.

Haemas raised her shields. “Like the latteh, once learned, this secret is a constant danger. Would you have me loose that upon your world?”

He leaned heavily on the back of his chair and sweat glistened on his wrinkled forehead. “No, of course not.”

She hesitantly reached out and took his hand. His flesh was warm against her chilled palm. “I have to go back, and no one in my world remembers how to counteract the latteh.”

He nodded, then opened his mind to the crystal again, and let her feel the humming harmony of it through him.
That, at least, I can provide. Watch now and I will show you the pattern for mind-binding. You cannot understand how to undo it without first knowing how it is done.

And even though she knew he was right, she trembled as he altered the patterning, rearranging the energy pulses in a different, more sinister structure, one that did not hum with harmony but rattled and buzzed with a raw, repressed power that set her nerves on edge. She made herself study it, memorizing the hateful sequencing.
But how is it set for just one person?
Her mouth straightened.
And more important, how do you break its hold?

He sighed.
There is only one way to learn how to break its hold. You must see it demonstrated.
The door opened, revealing the tall thin form of Brother Alidale. Ellirt beckoned him to the table. “I called Alidale to help me demonstrate how to break it.” Ellirt’s lined face was grim.
Watch closely, now. I want to do this only once.