Winter Moon (14 page)

She took in his own battered face now, for the first time. “Kedric!” she exclaimed, anger replacing the sick sourness in her stomach. “Are you hurt? Did they—”

“And you will do what? Send out men with nets to haul in what was thrown out the window?” With some difficulty, he curved his swollen lips in a smile. “I think we should both save our energy to deal with the King. He is not going to be very happy about losing his Fool and his Grey Lady—”

She brought up her chin at that, covering her wince—she thought—rather well. “He will not have a choice,” she said. “I am the Keep Lady, and you are sealed and bound to me by the Keep Lord and my own will. If he does not wish to begin a revolt of the sea-keeps, he had better keep his opinions on the matter to himself!”

“Well said, my lady!” crowed someone behind Kedric, and the Fool began to laugh, shaking his head.

“Oh, you are a terrible woman, Moira of High
clere,” he said, tears leaking out of his swelling eyes. “I fear for my sanity, if not my life!” But the arms that held her did not release her; in fact, he pulled her closer as some of the men behind him began to chuckle. “Come along with you.”

He pulled her to her feet, though his own balance was none too steady. “Do you think it is possible in this howling gale to manage a bath for your lady?” he called over the storm.

“Eh, trust a Fool to want a bath at a time like this!” someone shouted mockingly, and everyone laughed, as they parted for the two of them to pick their way across the lumber and down into the heart of the keep again.

Yes,
she thought, with warmth and a sudden feeling of contentment!
Trust a Fool. I shall certainly trust a Fool, with all my heart, for all my life.

Tanith Lee

Dear Reader,

The heart of the moon is, of course, the heart of a cool, strong and self-controlled woman. In this case, Clirando. She wears a “mask” because she's been hurt. And because she is tough, she challenges what hurt her and drives it off.

But most of us know there are things that, discard or deny them as we may, leave their marks on us, like the scratches of a lion. Some fade, some scar. The scars are still there to be looked at long, long after.

I wanted very much to find a way to free my character from her hurt. She deserved that. But like most of the ones I write about, she, or others in this tale, told me how her freedom would come about. She needed not only new light, but the means to confront the shadows. When Zemetrios entered the story and showed his worth, the core of the narrative began to flame—the fire-heart was being refueled.

In fact, I first saw the heroine's name in a dream, written across a white moon above a dark isle. It's a kind of play on words, too, I believe. Clir-an-do:
Clear and do
.

Lightning

The night that lightning struck the Temple of the Maiden—that was the night she found them. Clirando would never have suspected the warrior goddess Parna of such harsh melodrama. Though justice, of course, was partly her province. It seemed she had wanted Clirando to see and to know. Perhaps she had expected Clirando to behave differently after it had happened.

The narrow streets of Amnos were moon-and-torch lit, and people were shouting and running up toward the Sacred Mount, where stood the temples of the Father and Parna the Maiden. Smoke and a thin flame still sizzled from her roof, and the sea-washed air was full of the reek of scorching stone.

But by the time Clirando reached the lower terrace, men were already on the tiles, girls, too, from the various female warrior bands. Clirando saw two of her own command, Oani and Erma, busy there.

She shouted to them. “Are you safe?”

“Yes, safe, Cliro. But come up—”

One of the men, no less than the architect Pholis, swathed in his bed gown, called down, “Use the stairs! No more swarming on ropes here, the roof is damaged.”

So Clirando and several others ran up the final terrace and in from the side court.

There were guest rooms off the court. Priests and others used them, if they were on duty that night at the temple.

Almost everybody had come out. They stood around the tank of crystal water under the fig tree, talking, shaking their heads, some offering prayers.

Two people were late, however, leaving a room.

As Clirando walked into the court—yawning, she afterward recalled, for the levin-bolt had woken her from sleep like most of the town—she saw them. One was Araitha, her closest friend. The other dark-haired Thestus.

Clirando knew them both so well that for a long moment it did not startle her to see them there. She was pleased, very probably. Her best friend, as well as her lover, Thestus, both of whom would be excellent at assisting on the roof.

Even with his hand slipping from Araitha's shoulder…even with the way Araitha suddenly drew aside
from him, her eyes blank with far too many emotions to show.

And his rasp of guilty laugh.

“Ha—Cliro. Are you going up, too? That was a strike and no mistake. A wonder the temple withstood—”

Behind the two of them, the curtain of the little room had been drawn back, to show a disheveled bed, narrow but still wide enough for the pair of slender and hard-muscled figures who had chosen to couch there together. A flagon of wine stood on the floor. In the grey-red moon-and-torch mixing of the light, it gleamed in a horrible way, blinking and winking at Clirando like the center of an evil eye:
Didn't you guess, girl?
it seemed to say. Didn't you
know?

Clirando walked past the water tank and met Thestus and Araitha at the door of the cell, and pushed them both back inside. They let her do this, not resisting.

Thestus was taller than she, but Araitha was her own height. Araitha with her beer-brown eyes and long, dark golden hair. Thestus had always honestly praised that hair. And other things. Araitha's warrior skills, her musical gift with lyra and tabor. Clirando, Araitha's sister-friend since they had been six years old in the training courts of the temple, was always happy when others praised Araitha.

As for Thestus, he had come to the Father Temple, a warrior, with his own band of twenty men, only two years before. He had singled Clirando out inside three days, as she had him. Since the Spring
Festival they had been lovers. Parna never minded such liaisons. Her warriors were also allowed love, and to make children, if they wished.

Clirando shook her own long brown hair over her shoulders and looked at him. Then she looked at Araitha.

Neither of them spoke.

Thestus's mouth locked shut as if a key had turned behind his lips.

It was Araitha who laughed now and said, scattering her words light as beads, “Oh, Cliro. It means nothing. We only—only for a moment. That was all.”

“Liar.”

“Cliro—what could it matter? We both love you. Do you—” she threw back her head, defiant “—grudge me a little pleasure?”

Always her way. Attack was defense to Araitha.

“I grudge you this.”

Thestus opened his locked lips and spoke to Araitha.

“Don't try to reason with her. We both know what she can be like when she loses her self-control.”

Cliro turned and slapped him stingingly across the mouth.

He swung aside with a curse, was already reaching for the dagger lying in its sheath on the floor. Araitha made a noise. Cliro kicked Thestus's hand away, then kicked Thestus full in the chest so he fell back bruisingly on his well-formed butt.

“No,” said Cliro. “Soon but not yet, sweetheart.”

“Cliro—” said Araitha.

Clirando no longer liked the sound of her name from her friend's beautiful mouth. The mouth was very red and swollen from Thestus's kisses tonight. Maybe that was why the name of
Cliro
sounded wrong.

“Be quiet, you bitch. Both of you. I'll issue the challenge now, so you know. In seven days at first light, before the Maiden. First you, I think, Thestus, for the shorter time I've known you—if ever I knew you at all. A little later for you, Araitha, you filthy slut.”

“I am no—”

“You are a slut
. You are a
traitor
. To me. Him I hate. But
you
I hate the most. I called you friend.”

Araitha began to cry, like any soft merchant's wife.

Clirando turned, her own eyes burning. She stalked out and across the court, where the others standing there, who had seen most and heard all of it, murmured together.

She knew that anyone, other perhaps than some great sage, would have felt shocked pain and anger. But aside from her personal hurt, this very publicly witnessed betrayal showed her own judgement up poorly. No one could fail to be aware she had been in ignorance until tonight. Clirando was a commander. In no respect could she be seen to have been stupid.

She thought now, in horror, that, blind to their antics, she might well have trusted them beside her in battle—and possibly been unwise in that, too. Had their desire proved so irresistible, honor demanded they should have told her to her face. But they had deceived her as if she were some silly woman reared only for the house.

Clirando did not go up to the lightning-blasted roof.

“Forgive me,” she said to the goddess, in the private shrine beside the main hall. Amber lamplight starred the goddess's calm face. Polished marble etched and dressed with gold, her eyes were two green stones. Clirando also had green eyes—Thestus had said they were green as leaves of the bay tree. “I can't help mend your roof, Maiden. I'm shaking like some fool before her first skirmish. Pardon me.”

The calm face looked down at hers.

“I will meet both Araitha and Thestus individually in the war-court. Before the whole town. I think you allowed me to see what those two had done to me, to find them out. I'll punish them. Oh, not a fight to the death. But I'll shame them both. They'll lose their places in Amnos and go far away. Where I need never look at them again. Do you allow it, Lady?”

Above, there came a faint rushing—tiles dislodged—and then cries and a crash as they plummeted onto the terraces below.

“Is that disapproval, Lady?”

Parna did not answer. But Clirando had never known her to. It was a formality to ask. Clirando's human course was already set.

She had long thought, though one must respect the gods, one could not expect understanding from them. They gave favors or hurts according to some indecipherable law of their own.

And I am hurt
, she thought.
Struck in the heart
.

She would make them pay, her lover, her sister. There was no other road now to peace.

 

Arguments among the warrior-priests of Parna and the Father were often settled in the war-court, in public duel.

Generally it was two men who fought. Women tended to settle their disagreements with only their bands to witness. Rarely did a female warrior demand satisfaction of a male in the court, though there had been cases now and then. Clirando had known that aside from the officials and certain priests bound to attend, a lot of Amnos would crowd into the public seats to see.

It had occurred to her, many people had known about Thestus's liaison with Araitha. Some even came to her, subsequent to her finding out, and confessed—among these was Erma from Clirando's own band.

“I never knew if I should tell you, Cliro—”

“You should have.”

“I know. But—”

Clirando forgave Erma, who was holding back her tears. She was still young, only fifteen, five years younger that Clirando. Tuyamel, on the other hand, offered to skin Thestus for Clirando. “I wouldn't want the skin, thanks, my friend,” Clirando said. Tuy had laughed. “Fair enough. I shall leave it to you then.”

The morning was fine, the sun just torching the east, when Clirando stood on the war-court and faced her former lover across the clean paving.

All around, the crowd sat in respectful silence. There was none of the shouting or merriment that
went on when ritual games or war exercises took place here. This was a solemn, fraught occasion.

Clirando had to steel herself, too. She had fought beside Thestus only once in battle—against pirates last fall, blood raining among red leaves at the edges of Amnos's forested shores. But often he and she had exercised together. They knew each other's moves perhaps too well.

She had thought he would try to surprise her. She judged correctly.

The instant the signal came to begin, he dropped onto the ground and came rolling at her like a human hedgehog. As she leaped aside, his short sword whipped out. It cut one of her sandal thongs. Only her reflexes had saved her from much worse.

She tore off both sandals and he, having stood up again, watched her mockingly.

There was contempt in his face. Maybe that was only a mask. Or maybe his looks of love had been the mask.

She had tried very hard not to examine why he had used her as he had, and played her false. Now certainly was not the time for analysis.

Clirando wondered if he had other tricks, and he had. Having allowed her space to undo her shoes, he lounged idly, paring his nails, so a slight amusement rippled through some of the audience, only to be shushed as improper.

He would not move again to meet her.

She stood waiting.

He
stood idling. He began to whistle a popular tune of the town.

“Come on,” she said. Her voice carried.

“I'm here if you want me.
You
come on.”

She knew it was another trick.

Clirando moved toward him slowly, then suddenly very fast, running as if straight into him—veering at the last second. A fine pinkish powder spurted from his left hand, clouding the air between them. He must have taken it out with the paring knife. It would have been in her face, her eyes, if she had dodged less effectively. Play dirty then. A bitter smile touched her mouth. He must be scared of her.

From veering, she swung and cut him across the left shoulder. Blood burst like a flower.

With a roar he turned on her.

To her he seemed heavy now, graceless. He had not bothered to prepare for this, only his tricks. She had been practicing every day.

He was a poor warrior. Brave and strong, cunning sometimes. But his skill was not so great. She had thought more highly of him when she loved him, seeing him through lover's eyes, wanting him to shine.

Inside six minutes more, she had scored him lightly across arms and chest, thighs, and even his back as he went skidding down from a sidelong blow. She did not aim to cripple him. He would need his fighter's trade where he was going, out into the wide world far from Amnos.

But by then he was a mess, and losing blood, his
face pale and congested, ugly, frantic. He was bellowing at her, oaths and blasphemies for which the priests would be setting him a penance. He told her, also, and told the crowd, why he had lost his sexual interest in her. She was too cold, he said. Cold as Moon Isle with its heartless crags. She was too masculine. She had no feminine gifts to match her male ones.

Clirando knew these things were lies, and saw that possibly, in desperation, he was trying to unnerve her that way, and so catch her off guard. She felt nothing by then, only the desire to end the fight. As he lunged she brought up her blade under his and sent it spinning—to be fair, his sword had grown slippery from his blood—then she punched him clean and square on the point of the jaw. He keeled over and fell with a crash, his already unconscious eyes staring at her all the way down.