Moonscatter (2 page)

TILUN

Combination prayer meeting and orgy.

TORMA

Tarom's wife.

The Belly of the Lune (an interlude)

A tic fluttering beside his mouth, long pale fingers tapping a ragged rhythm on his knee, he squatted before the board, slitted obsidian eyes flitting across the pebble patterns where black was advancing in a somber wave to encircle all that remained of white.

She knelt on an ancient hide, the coarse wool cloth of her skirt falling across the rounds of her thighs in stiff, hieratic folds. Sweat crawled down her calm unsmiling face, down gullies worn in her weathered flesh by time and pain.

The gameboard sat on a granite slab that thrust through shag and soil like a bone through broken flesh and fell away a stride or two behind the squatting man, a thousand feet straight down to the valley floor where the earth lay groaning under the weight of its own abundance, where even in the breathless autumn heat black midges swarmed across the land, scything and sheaving the grains, stripping a golden rain from fruit trees in the orchards, stooping along plant rows in the fields.

The sun struck bloody glitters off the ruby teardrop dangling from one nostril as he leaned forward and placed a black pebble on a point, closing a black circle about a lone white straggler. He smiled, a quick lift and fall of his lips, plucked the pebble from the circle and held it pinched between two fingers. “Give it up, Reiki janja. The game is mine. Or soon will be.”

The clear brown-green of water in a shady tarn, her luminous eyes turned sad as she watched him rise, flick the pebble aside and walk to the cliff edge where he stood gazing hungrily down into the valley, hands clasped behind him, paper-white against the dull black of his robe. “No,” she said. The word hung heavy in the hot, still air. “You started it. End it.”

A film of sweat on his pale face, he kicked restlessly at bits of stone, unable to match her response, his irritation all the greater for this. After a moment's strained silence, he turned his gaze on her, his black eyes flat and cold. “End it—why? Hern? Or the meie?” He jabbed his forefinger at the many-courted edifice below. “They're impotent as long as they sit down there and in my hands if they come out. When I'm ready, I'll sweep them off the board.” He swung his arm in a slashing arc. “The mijloc is mine already, janja, in all the ways that count. I gather strength every day. You retreat.”

“Perhaps.” Getting heavily to her feet Reiki edged around the gameboard, shaking her skirt down as she went, pulling hot fat braids like ropes of yellowed ivory forward over her shoulders. She stood beside him at the cliff edge, touching the single gold chain about her neck, stroking its pendant coins, smiling as she did so at the memories it evoked. Once she'd worn a double-dozen chains, but these she gave away—all save the one—on a tranquil summer night long ago. “She'll surprise you, our little misborn meie. The change in her has begun; you force her growth by everything you do, my friend. Yes, our Serroi will surprise you again and yet again.” He winced as if the words were stones she flung at him. Sighing, she brushed her hands together then rested them on the gathers of her skirt while she watched the bustle far below. “Harvest,” she said softly. “Winter comes on its heels. Your army won't march through snow.”

“Winter comes when I will it, not before.” His voice was harsh, his skin drawn taut across his facebones (she saw him for a moment as a black viper cocked to strike). He spoke again (she heard rage that didn't quite conceal an unacknowledged pain), “Serroi feels my hand on her every night, janja. If she changes, she grows to me. She'll come to me soon enough when she sees the sun burning hotter each day, when the waterways go dry and the deepest wells spit dust. The vanguard of my army, janja—a furnace wind and a sucking sun.”

“So you say. We'll see … we'll see.” She used both hands to shade her eyes as she gazed intently at the massive double gates in the great wall that cut across the Valley's narrow northern end, watching a pair of riders pass through the gates and ride up the rough road toward the mountains. “So the blocked pieces get back in the game.” Carefully not looking at Ser Noris, she returned to the gameboard, settled herself on the soft old leather where she'd been before and contemplated the pebble pattern. “My move, I think.”

CHAPTER I:

THE MIJLOC

Tuli sat up, shoved the quilts back, annoyed at being sent to bed so early.
Like I was a baby still
. She ran her fingers through her tangled hair, sniffed with disgust as she glared at the primly neat covers on her oldest sister's bed.
Hunh! If I was a snitch like Nilis
.… She wrinkled her nose at the empty bed.…
I'd go running off to Da 'nd tell him how she's out panting after that horrid Agli when she's s'posed to be up here with us
. She eyed the covers thoughtfully, sighed, stifled an impulse to gather them up and toss them out the window. Wasn't worth the fuss Nilis would create. She drew her legs up, wrapped her arms around them and sat listening to the night sounds coming through the unglazed, unshuttered windows and watching as the rising moons painted a ghost image of the window on the polished planks of the floor.

When she thought the time was right, she crawled to the end of the bed, flounced out flat and fished about in the space beneath the webbing that supported the mattress until she found her hunting clothes, a tunic and trousers discarded by her twin. She wriggled off the mattress, whipped off her sleeping smock, threw it at her pillow, scrambled hastily into her trousers, shivering as she did so. She dragged the tunic over her head, tugged it down, resenting the changes in her body that signaled a corresponding change—a depressing change—in the things she would be allowed to do. She tied her short brown hair back off her face with a crumpled ribbon, her eyes on her second oldest sister placidly asleep in the third bed pushed up against the wall under one of the windows. Sanani's face was a blurred oval in the strengthening moonlight, eyelashes dark furry crescents against the pallor of her skin, her breathing easy, undisturbed.

Satisfied that her sister wouldn't wake and miss her, Tuli went to the window and leaned out. Nijilic TheDom was clear of the mountains, running in and out of clouds that were the remnants of the afternoon's storm. The Scatterstorms were subsiding—none too soon. It was going to be a bad wintering. Tuli folded her arms on the windowsill and looked past the moonglow tree at the dark bulk of the storebarn. Her back still ached from the hurried gleaning after the scythemen—everyone, man woman child, in the fields to get the grain in before the rain spoiled yet more of it. With all that effort the grain bins in the barn were only half full—and Sanani said Gradintar was one of the luckiest. And the fruit on the trees was thin. And the tubers, podplants, earthnuts were swarming with gatherpests or going black and soft with mold. And there wasn't enough fodder for the hauhaus and the macain and they'd have to be culled. She shivered at the thought then shoved it resolutely aside and pulled herself onto the sill so she sat with her legs dangling, her bare heels kicking against the side of the house. She drew in a long breath, joying in the pungency of the night smells drifting to her on the brisk night breeze—straw dust from the fields, the sour stench of manure from the hauhau pens where the blocky beasts waited for dawn milking, the sickly sweet perfume from the wings of the white moths clinging to the sweetbuds of the moonglow tree. Grabbing at the sides of the window, she tilted out farther and looked along the house toward the room where her two brothers slept.

Teras thrust his shaggy head out, grinned at her, his teeth shining in his sun-dark face. He pointed down, then swung out and descended rapidly to wait for her in the walled garden below.

Tuli wriggled around until she was belly-balanced on the sill, felt about for the sigil stones set in the plaster. Once she was set, she went down almost as nimbly as her brother, though the tightness of the tunic hindered her a little. At about her own height from the ground she jumped, landing with bent knees, her bare feet hitting the turf with a soft thud. She straightened and turned to face her brother, fists on her narrow hips, her head tilted to look up at him. Two years ago when they were twelve she'd been eye to eye with him. This was another change she resented. She scowled at him. “Well?”

“Shh.” He pointed to the lines of light around the shutters half a stride along the wall. “Come on.” He ran to the moonglow tree, jumped and caught hold of the lowest limb, shaking loose a flutter of moths and a cloud of powerfully sweet perfume.

Tuli followed him over the wall. “What's happening?” she whispered. “When you signaled me at supper.…” She glanced at the dark bulk of the house rising above the garden wall. “Nilis?”

“Uh-huh.” He squinted up at the flickering moons. “TheDom's rising. Plenty of light tonight.” He started toward the barns, Tuli running beside him. “Nilis was sucking up to that Agli down by the riverroad a bit after the noon meal.” He kicked at a pebble, watched it bound across the straw-littered earth. “She caught me watching and chased me, yelling I was a sneak and a snoop and she'd tell Da on me.” He snorted. “Follow her, hunh! Maiden's toes, why'd I follow her?” He dragged his feet through straw and clumps of dry grass as they rounded one of the barns and started past a hauhau pen. Tuli slapped her fingers against the poles until several of the cranky beasts
whee-hooed
mournfully at her. Teras pulled her away. “You want to get caught?”

“Course not.” She freed herself. “You haven't told me where we're going or why.”

“Nilis and the Agli they were talking about a special tilun, something big. That was just before she saw me and yelled at me so I don't know what. She sneaked off yet?”

Tuli nodded. “Her bed's empty.”

Teras grinned. “We're going to go, too.”

“Huh?” She grabbed at his arm, pulling him to a stop. “Nilis will have our heads, 'specially mine.”

“No. Listen. Hars and me, we were looking over the home macain to get ready for the cull. I got to talking with him about tiluns 'nd things, Nilis being on my mind, you know, and about the Followers 'nd everything and he said there's some big cracks in the shutters, they put the wood up green and the Scatterstorms warped th' zhag out of 'em. Anyone looking in from outside could see just about everything going on.” He grinned again, skipped backward ahead of her, hands clasped behind his head. “I think he watched them the last time he took off to Jango's, anyway he said they get real wound up, roll on the floor, confess their sins 'nd everything.” Pupils dilated until his pale irids were only thin rings, his eyes gleamed like polished jet. “Maybe Nilis will be confessing tonight.” His foot snagged suddenly on a clump of grass; he tottered, giggling, then caught his balance.

“What a chinj she is.” Tuli mimed the popping of a small-life bloodsucker as she ran past him laughing. She swung up the poles of the corral, rested her stomach on the top pole, balancing herself there, her hands tight about it as she watched the macain heave onto their feet and amble lazily toward her.

Teras climbed the fence and sat on the top pole, knees bent, bare heels propped on a lower one. “Remember the time when ol' spottyface was courting Nilis and we made the mudhole in the lane and covered it with sticks and grass?”

Tuli grinned. “Da whaled us good for that one. It was worth it. She was so mad she near baked that mud solid.” Teetering precariously, she reached out and stroked the warty nose of the nearest macai. “I wonder what she could find to confess, she's so perfect, according to her.” The macai moaned with pleasure and lifted his head so she could dig her fingers into the loose folds under his chin. “Which one's this?”

“Labby.” Teras stood up, wobbling a little, arms outstretched; when he had his balance, he jumped lightly to the macai's back, startling a grunt from the beast. “There's a halter over there by the barn, get it, will you?”

Cymbank was dark except for Jango's tavern and even there the shutters were closed; only the burning torch caged above the door showed the place was still open. The streets and the square were deserted, no players or peddlers, no one camped out on the green or restless in the spotty moonlight to catch the twins in their prowl, not even stray guards from the double decset quartered in the Center for the last tenday.

Tuli rested her cheek against her brother's back, wondering mildly what she was going to see. The Followers of Soäreh the Flame had been around the mijloc awhile, a ragtag sect no one paid much attention to, though there were rumors enough about the tiluns, whispers of orgies and black magic, other whispers about their priests who called themselves Aglim though everyone knew they were only stupid little norids who couldn't light a match without sweating. Still, there did seem to be a lot more Followers and an Agli here in Cymbank and she'd heard of others in other villages along RiverCym. Not long after the Great Gather when the Domnor vanished somehow and Floarin took over as regent for her unborn child, not very long after that, orders came down from Oras and the Doamna-regent for the Taromates of the South to provide land and roof for the Followers and their Aglim, orders backed by a Decsel and his ten guards. The Taromate of RiverCym had grumbled and done the least they could, giving the Agli a long abandoned granary that was, by mischance, directly across from the Maiden Shrine. The location made the people of Cymbank very unhappy and the taroms weren't too pleased with it but no one had anything better to offer and the thing was done. That was near a year ago now and folks were used to it, ignored it mostly.

The walls of the granary, though crumbling a little on the outside, were solid enough and the roof reasonably intact. The Agli had looked it over and accepted it, though Tesc told Annic in the hearing of the twins that he didn't like the look in that viper's eyes and he prayed that he never got his teeth in any of them.