HM02 House of Moons (9 page)

“Yes, Master!” The youngster darted to the door and wrenched at the latch with both hands; then Enissa heard his feet pelting down the hall.

Nevarr pulled off his cloak and folded the warm wool around her shoulders as the shivers came hard enough to rattle her teeth. He bent over and laid his palm on Kevisson’s moving chest and some of the tension eased from his face. “There was no way for you to get here ahead of me,” he said, “unless—”

“Leave it alone, Nevarr.” She locked her hands together to keep them from shaking. “It doesn’t matter how.”

He studied her, then pressed several fingers against her temple to monitor her condition.

“Stop that!” Before she realized what she was doing, Enissa pushed his hand away. “I mean—” She broke off, not sure exactly what she did mean.

Nevarr cocked his head, a grudging respect in his eyes. “Well, I guess you’ll live.” He threw another log on the fire, then crossed back to the bed to peer down at Kevisson’s pallid face. He bracketed the unconscious man’s head with both hands for a moment, then straightened. “He’s sleeping normally now, but a few minutes ago, I was afraid I would only get here in time to lay him out under his shroud.”

Enissa closed her eyes, seeing again the disrupted mental energies, the disturbing images of endless falling. “That’s very nearly all you did get to do.”

“You were in his mind.” Nevarr stirred the fire with the poker, making the sparks fly. The room smelled pleasantly of burning wood. “What happened to him? Did he have a stroke or a blood clot?”

“No.” Enissa held her hands out to the crackling yellow flames, sighing as a hint of warmth crept back into her fingers. “The question is not ‘what happened to him?’ but ‘who?’” She rubbed her hands over her arms, still half frozen. “What happened to Kevisson last night was no accident. Someone tried to kill him.”

* * *

The dining hall’s long tables stretched before Riklin Senn in uneven rows. The air reeked of scorched vegetables and half-cooked chops. Watching moodily as the students bickered back and forth over the noon meal, his mind kept returning to that bizarre scene before the Council. What had prompted Chee to support him like that? He remembered their time together here at Shael’donn, and there certainly had never been anything like friendship between the two of them.

Riklin realized he wasn’t Ellirt’s equal when it came to training Talent, but he characterized himself as a good organizer and a careful thinker. Besides, the old man had had years to perfect his techniques. Riklin was just starting his tenure, and it would take a while to sort out his own style. For the moment, he really didn’t need to take a personal hand with the instruction, just keep everything running along smoothly. He was aware that the post of Lord High Master had come to him as much through his uncle’s influence as for any merit he himself possessed, but that was part of the game and he meant to prove the Council had made the right choice. Already most of the teaching Masters here at Shael’donn looked at him with more respect.

Most, but not Kevisson Monmart.

He jotted down another pair of names as an under-table kicking match between several adjacent boys bloomed into a full-blown brawl. The way Monmart had withdrawn his name and stomped out of the Council instead of staying to be soundly defeated as he deserved made it look as if Riklin couldn’t have won otherwise.

Damn Kniel Ellirt anyway for designating Monmart as his successor. The crazy old man should have known the Council wasn’t going to stand for another Lowlander holding this crucial position. The outrage that had erupted when the High Mastership had gone to Kniel Ellirt all those years ago had never quite died down. The students at Shael’donn represented the future of the Kashi people and were far too important to leave in the hands of
another
Lowlands House, even if one overlooked Monmart’s distressingly chierra-like appearance—and no one was likely to do that.

At any rate, everyone was nervous about that attack down at Lenhe’ayn, especially the unexplained death of the Lenhe woman. Still, he wondered if he could make something out of that. Monmart had been alone with her, then left her there to die. Riklin’s eyes narrowed. Perhaps her death could be blamed on Monmart. He felt a faint, unaccustomed smile tugging at the corners of his lips. After all, what Lord would trust someone who had been so careless with the training of his sons in the delicate mindarts? One mistake could ruin a child’s Talent for life.

Yes, he told himself, perhaps the implications of this Lenhe tragedy should be presented at the next session of the Council of Twelve. It was not possible to be too careful.

Scraping his chair back from the Masters’ table, Riklin eyed the blackened chop and overcooked whiteroot on his plate. Since all the work at Shael’donn was carried out by the students, the cuisine was abominable. Although his uncle had promised to send him an experienced chierra cook from Senn’ayn, so far none had appeared. It was an old pattern in his life for people to promise him things and then forget. One day soon, though, he was going to ensure that no one ever forgot the name of Riklin Dynd Senn again.

* * *

Diren Chee snatched a threadbare cloak from a stand in the front entrance hall and tossed it at Haemas, then pushed her through the door. Broaching the chill air was like walking into a wall of ice, and the ache behind her eyes resurged. A thin, dry layer of snow had dusted the shaggy, winter-blasted lawns and tangled bushes, and a cutting wind gusted up over the cliffs, carrying the sweet, pungent scent of pine.

Chee made her walk before him along the overgrown path. The bright Highlands sun winked down, giving off light without warmth in this chill setting—as lifeless, she thought, as desire would be without love. She huddled inside the borrowed cloak, remembering Kevisson’s touch last night, the faint whisper of his mind, gone too quickly for her to even try to answer him.

Impulsively she opened her shields and reached out across the Highlands, seeking Kevisson’s familiar golden-brown presence.
Here!
she called to him.
I’m at Chee’ayn!

“Forget him!” Chee’s fingers clamped over her arm, making her wince breathlessly. She felt the latteh he carried phase into a higher level of activity, turning its annoying pin-prickle hum into a shower of needles inside her head. Her temples throbbed as he hustled her across the unkempt grounds toward the Chee’ayn portal.

“He’s probably dead,” Chee said. “And even if he’s not, he’s nothing, just a boorish nobody who hasn’t even had the decency to marry you!”

“I have no intention of marrying anyone!” Haemas watched her feet navigate the rough path.

“You’ll do whatever I tell you,” he said grimly, then towed her around the trailing branches of a whip-willow into sight of a wind-blistered portal.

His sister leaned over the rail, shivering, her cheeks reddened by the wind. She pushed her furred hood back on her shoulders. “What took you so long?”

Chee released Haemas and passed the palm-size latteh crystal to Axia. “Here.”

His sister’s mouth tightened. “Why in Darkness don’t you go yourself?”

“You’ve read the notes of the Temporal Transference Conclave.” He frowned. “You know as well as I do that men simply cannot do this. Too many of them have already died trying, and I have no wish to join the list.”

He reached for Haemas’s arm, but she evaded his grasp, suddenly understanding what he must intend. “She can’t bring that thing into the timeways!” The knee-high dead grass crunched beneath her feet as she backed away.

Chee’s feral, dark-flecked eyes narrowed, then he met Axia’s gaze. She nodded and the latteh climbed another level, vibrating at a frequency high enough to shred Haemas’s mind. Blinded by the pain, she turned and ran, but Chee snagged her waist within two steps.

REALLY, LADY.
His mindvoice thundered inside her head.
DO YOU EXPECT TO ESCAPE ME SO EASILY? WHY DO YOU THINK THE LATTEH HAS BEEN FORBIDDEN ON THE PAIN OF DEATH FOR SO MANY HUNDREDS OF YEARS?

The stunning volume hit Haemas like a blow. She swayed in his grasp, unable to move or speak; then, just as suddenly, the latteh subsided.

“Now,” he said in a strangely reasonable voice, “perhaps we finally understand each other. You can see that Axia handles the crystal almost as well as I do.” He swung Haemas up into the portal like a sack of whiteroots. She sagged against the railing, her vision beginning to clear, and fought to control her ragged breathing. Master Ellirt would not have given up, she told herself. He would have kept his head and found a way out.

After taking a leather satchel from Axia, Chee pulled out a set of pale-blue ilsera crystals and began inserting them into their slots in the portal housing. His manner was almost cheerful. “The two of you will travel back into the days when the lattehs were harvested and put to very good use by the ruling Houses. And, put plainly, unless you take Axia to that time and nowhere else, she will use the latteh to make you wish you had.”

Heart pounding, Haemas gripped the weathered portal housing. “Think, Chee. The latteh is very powerful and I have no idea what effect it will have if she activates it inside the nexus. We could both die.”

Pain shot up her wrist as he levered her into the center of the portal beside his sister’s shorter figure. “Then you had better make sure she doesn’t have to activate it, hadn’t you?”

THE ICY HIGHLANDS
wind wailed like a lost child through the stand of pines at the edge of the cliff. Dry-mouthed, Haemas turned from Diren Chee’s unrelenting eyes to Axia. The woman’s bitter, angular face stared defiantly back. Her lips were pinched with cold, her mouth outlined by deep grooves that told of a lifetime of barely repressed anger and doing without.

Haemas forced her clenched hands down to her sides, then tried to focus on the task at hand. “To enter the timeways, you can either lower your shields and allow me to take you—” Axia threw back her head and laughed. The shrill sound rang out across the deserted grounds to be swallowed by the wind.

“—Or you can monitor me and try to align yourself as I do,” Haemas continued. Winter-bare bushes scraped across the outside of the wooden portal. “But it’s difficult. Most of the girls who come to the House of Moons cannot learn more than the simplest part of it.”

Axia’s lip curled. “If
you
can do it, I certainly can, too.” She raised her fist and let the dull-green crystal gleam through her fingers. “Quit making excuses and show me how.”

Haemas listened beyond the anger in the woman’s words. Axia was strung as tight as a bow. Her eyes were white-rimmed and she shifted from foot to foot as if she’d rather be anywhere else.

“You’re right to be afraid,” Haemas said quietly, and glanced up at the pale-blue crystals embedded in the portal housing, trying to summon the steadiness of nerve that she needed. How long had this particular set of crystals been used without being replaced? One century? Two? Three? Lowering her shields, she listened for the single frequency hidden among all the others the ilsera emitted, the one that would give her access to the temporal pathways—the same timeways, she thought with a pang, that she had sworn to defend.

The Chee’ayn crystals sounded old and dull, almost muffled, as if something stood between her and the nexus. Closing her eyes, Haemas concentrated, pouring all of her energy into trying, but finally, out of breath and sweating, she had to desist.

“I thought you were supposed to be so bloody good at this.” Axia stepped toward her. “What are you trying to—”

As she approached, the heavy dull feeling increased, and Haemas realized the latteh crystal was still broadcasting on a level almost below conscious perception. “It’s that—thing. I can’t focus properly when it’s activated.”

Standing just outside the rickety portal, his face half obscured by a weathered pillar, Diren Chee crossed his arms. “Damp it,” he said to his sister.

“But—”

“I said shut the damn thing down!” The dark-flecked eyes glittered. “You can flick it on again if she tries anything.”

Axia stared at him, two vivid spots of scarlet blooming in her cheeks, and the latteh faded from Haemas’s awareness, draining a tension of which she had not been fully aware. She took a deep breath of the bitingly cold air.

“Now get on with it!” Axia snapped, and fear leaked through her shields. A snowflake stung Haemas’s cheek and melted as she let down her shields again, and this time, though still thready, the ilsera crystals’ voice rang more clearly in her mind. Concentrating, she separated out the vibrational signature she wanted and laid her mind open to Axia.

Axia gasped as she glimpsed the shimmering blue nexus with its eerie, lightning-bright lines that radiated outward in every direction. “Lord of Light!”

You have to match this frequency,
Haemas said into her mind as she held onto the critical tone.

She felt the other woman struggle. It was something like using the ilsera crystals to travel from place to place, as all Kashi were taught as young children, and yet much more complicated. Perhaps Axia would not be able to do it, Haemas thought, and then she could just walk off into another When and leave all this behind.

But if she did, what would become of the latteh? And what revenge would Diren Chee take on those back at Shael’donn and the House of Moons? She had to take Axia through the timelines long enough to get that crystal away from her. After that, she would consider what to do about Chee.

With a moan, Axia wrenched herself into the nexus. Her contorted face was beaded with sweat, although Haemas could not tell if it was from pain, fear, or both. Haemas gazed around at the coruscating motes of blueness, as awed by the wild beauty of this place as the first time she had entered.

Hurry up!
Axia’s fingernails dug into her arm.
I don’t know how long I can stand this!

The blue timelines radiated away into a thousand fractured scenes, bright-colored, shifting. Haemas bit her lip. No matter what Chee thought, the timeways did not have a geography like the Highlands that could be mapped and navigated. Every time she entered, they were different, presenting an infinite number of Whens based mainly on what she held in her mind at that moment.

She had to at least make a show of taking Axia to Ivram’ayn, the extinct House that had long ago ruled the Highlands above all other High Houses. She had read the description of that period in Chee’s book, but there had been no illustrations, so there was no way for Axia to recognize it, either. They only had to exit somewhere safe. She rotated slowly, examining the lines.

Axia’s fingernails convulsed through her skin.
Hurry up!
The sticky warmth of blood dripped down Haemas’s arm.

Men—Haemas saw men everywhere she looked. Men in strange clothes ... bearded, angry, bloodied, fighting, dismembered, dying, dead. Axia’s thoughts must be focusing the timelines, too, interfering with Haemas’s desire to find a safe haven.

Axia’s nails ripped her arm again.

If we emerge in the middle of a battle,
Haemas told her,
we will die just as surely as if we were killed in our own time.

With her free hand, Axia shoved the cold facets of the latteh against Haemas’s temple.
Do it now or I swear I’ll turn your brain into jelly!

Her heart thumping wildly, Haemas looked again, but nothing was familiar. Feeling Axia activate the latteh, she chose blindly, stepping off onto a line that led into a shadowed darkness where she could see the soft blue flicker of chispa-fire and no men at all. The line thrummed beneath her foot and she felt Axia stumble after her, still pressing the latteh against her head. Where in the name of Light were they going?

She took the second step, squinting into the unknown When ahead of them. At least it didn’t seem to be a battlefield. Axia’s nails punished her arm again, and she knew the Chee woman was at the end of her strength. For a second, Haemas let herself wonder what would happen if she just pushed her away and abandoned her in the nexus without knowledge of how to get out. Then she thought of the latteh, and the unknown effects that such a powerful crystal might have, and took the third and final step.

The blue shimmering faded, along with the singing voice of the ilsera crystals. Haemas stared at a cavernous room with a high, vaulted ceiling and strangely fluted urns of mind-conjured chispa-fire set at irregular intervals. The mood was calm and introspective, vaguely familiar. A hint of incense lingered and long benches were lined up facing one wall—a chapel of some sort?

Axia’s voice broke the silence. “Where in the name of Darkness are we?”

“In the name of Darkness?” a deep, gravelly voice asked. “Interesting. Few people come here to invoke
that
.”

A frozenness came over Haemas as she heard those words spoken in a cheerful, measured tone. It was the same voice she’d heard in her dreams many times in the past few days, but nowhere else—the one voice she’d longed to consult in the midst of all Kevisson’s troubles with the Council, but all the same, one that had forever passed beyond her own timeline.

Locking her hands together, she turned and stared into a craggy face topped with a thinning layer of white hair.

“Master Ellirt,” she said numbly.

* * *

With each examination of the nexus, Summerstone grew more dispirited. Each emerging sister told of a multitude of Futurewhens, but always the answer was essentially the same: The possibilities were endless, but all were terrifying.

Windsign had seen one startling timeline where the orange sun shone down on a green and blue planet devoid of any sentient life form at all. Seashine and a number of others reported snowy scenes of great destruction where slack-jawed, staring human corpses lay scattered like fallen leaves. Summerstone herself had seen a reality where the powerful golden-haired humans occupied every arable region while a multitude of dark-haired ones toiled ceaselessly in their fields and houses, and ilseri were so long forgotten that no one even recalled they had once existed.

And, worst of all, Wind sign could find no branching moment, no choice sufficient to end this ancient problem.
We must call Moonspeaker,
she said finally to the assembled sisters, and even volatile young Seashine, humbled by the inevitable tragedies that lay ahead, did not protest.

Ilseri could not go to the high places, where Moonspeaker lived with her people. The lands were too cold, the atmosphere a bit too thin. Summerstone reached instead up into the mountains with her mind, pouring her strength into the seeking. She visualized the fragile small-sister, long-limbed, solemn, quiet, for all the paleness of her hair, eyes, and skin, graceful and lovely after the fashion of her kind—

But there was nothing, no sense of the one who had fought beyond her strength when the males of her kind had almost destroyed the fabric of time with their meddling. At length, Summerstone turned to Windsign.
She is gone—and yet, if she had died, we would have felt the wrenching of her passing.

Perhaps she walks the nexus, as we do,
Windsign soothed.
She senses the danger and is already seeking the solution.

We cannot wait for her return.
Summerstone solidified enough to stand on the forest floor.
We must set the shadowfoots to watch the pools, then seek out an Oldest.

* * *

Even though his window was closed, Kevisson heard the silshas roaring as they grew ever more agitated. Lord of Light! His aching head shifted restlessly over the pillows. They had never ventured so near Shael’donn before. If Haemas did not return soon, they would have to be tracked down and killed before they hurt someone. He had never truly appreciated the hold she had over the huge black predators before. Their seeming docility had been due only to her presence, nothing more. They were still as wild and savage as the forest that had spawned them.

He turned his head as Enissa Saxbury opened his door. “Has she—?” he asked.

“There’s no word.” The healer discarded her cloak and medical pouch, then crossed the room and laid her warm hand over his forehead. The tingling energy of her touch spread through his body as she assessed his condition. He’d never liked being fussed over by healers, but her mind had a warm, faintly cinnamon glow that wrapped round his weariness and soothed away the aches.

“You’re exhausted.” She frowned down at him, then twitched at the quilt covering his bed. “You’re no good like this to Haemas or anyone else. If you don’t get some sleep, I swear I’ll push you under myself!”

“I was asleep.” Kevisson tossed restlessly on the narrow bed, remembering the strange feeling that had woken him. “But then I thought I heard Haemas calling me.”

His door swung open, revealing the black-velvet-clad frame of Riklin Senn, flanked by several other men. “Are you well enough for visitors, Monmart?”

The healer turned, planting her short, plump body firmly between Senn and the bed. “He is
not
.” Her tone was crisp.

Senn’s steely eyes lighted on her face. “Why don’t we let him answer that?”

“I’m—fine.” Kevisson struggled to sit up, then blanched as the room swam around him in great sloping circles. He broke into a sweat, hot and cold at the same time, and his vision grayed at the edges.

“He is not fine!” Enissa’s mouth tightened as she pressed him back against the mound of pillows.

Senn blinked at her, then motioned his grim-faced retinue into the small room. Kevisson recognized Niels Pallin and Keehan Weald, two of his Shael’donn contemporaries who had been his most relentless tormentors during his early days as a student. Their flawlessly golden eyes met his darker ones with no hint of compassion or warmth.

Senn gave Enissa a slight nod. “We appreciate your help, Healer Saxbury, but we won’t detain you any longer. Please feel free to return to your duties at the House of Moons.”

“Kevisson is my patient and—”

“As you know, Shael’donn is blessed with a number of excellent healers.” Senn stepped aside as a spare-framed older man with thinning dark-gold hair entered the room. “Master Lising, here, for instance.”

“It’s all right, Enissa.” Kevisson closed his eyes to make the room stand still. “I’ll be fine.” He wanted to tell her that it would do no good to make a scene, but his head ached too abominably to even try a shielded thought-whisper.

“Of course he will.” Lising’s fingers picked up his wrist and felt for his pulse. Kevisson winced at the cool, astringent indifference in the other’s touch and jerked away. The healer’s face tightened and he locked his hands behind his back. The room fairly crackled with suppressed energy. Kevisson glared at Senn, daring him to get on with it.