The Fire-Moon

by Isabel Pelech

  Kamorn shivered, both at the name and the idea. “Teshar, I’m so afraid for you.”

  Teshar looked away quickly, so her mother wouldn’t see what she was thinking. Kamorn caught it anyway. “I know that—that you must hate me terribly. I didn’t fight hard enough. I pleaded with your father, with Nairuntu, but I didn’t stop them from sending you—I argued with them, but I didn’t stop them from mistreating you. I know that. But I still love you and I’m still afraid for you and I can’t let him take you a second time, I can’t—”

  “Mother.” Teshar moved forward and put her hand on her mother’s arm. It stopped the flow of words, for a moment. “I don’t hate you.” Teshar thought about it. “Or maybe I do, but I love you more than I hate you. I’m not sure. Anyway—” She closed her eyes and searched for an explanation. “Utsepekt is—it’s not just that he’s evil. He’s so powerful that it’s like a disease, and he makes everyone else catch it. Father wasn’t a bad man, before. Nairuntu wasn’t cruel. The other mothers in Hasmahi used to be nice women, and now they’ll throw stones at children who look different. They weren’t perfect, any of them, but now they’re . . . I don’t know . . . sort of broken.” Teshar nodded to herself. “Yes, that’s it. Utsepekt is a people-breaker. A spirit-breaker. And he has to be stopped. If I have the magic, I have to help stop him.”

  Kamorn bowed her head, and Teshar thought, did I actually get through to her? Is it that easy? “Everything you say,” Teshar’s mother said quietly, “is true. But I’m your mother. And I can’t let you go. Not again.”

  Yes, well, I didn’t think that would work. Now for the argument that will really hurt her feelings. “I’m sorry, Mother. You can’t stop me. Aeret says it’s my decision. He says I made it for the right reasons, and that he’ll support me. With all his authority, he says.”

  Kamorn swallowed again and closed her eyes.

  And then she opened them and grabbed Teshar, spinning her around to carry and clasping a hand across her mouth. Teshar struggled instinctively, and said, “Muffr! Ftoff ih!” before Kamorn readjusted her hand and pressed down hard.

  She can’t do this. I have to go, I can’t let her do this! Remembering the temper tantrums she had thrown when she was younger, Teshar bit the hand.

  Her mother cried out softly, but held on. She might have been small for an adult, but she could still lift Teshar off her feet, and in a staggering sort of way, they were headed for the back door.

  Teshar found herself simultaneously in complete sympathy with her mother—she understood why this was happening, she loved her, and the noise her mother had made when bitten was almost more than Teshar could bear—and desperate to get loose. And then, suddenly, Teshar felt the emotions mingle and quietly explode inside her. Her “place past rage,” where her ears rang and she felt like fire was dancing beneath her skin.

  Teshar remembered what Aeret had said about her magic, her sekhim, and tried desperately to keep most of the fire inside her. All the rest of her thoughts, she focused on don’t hurt her don’t hurt her don’t hurt her don’t hurt her don’t—

  There was a roar of wind. Kamorn screamed and let go.

  Teshar landed on her feet, realized her eyes were closed, and opened them. Oh my gods, I hurt her—

  And then Teshar took in the rest of the kitchen. Oh. My. Gods. She spun, truly panicked now, expecting to see her mother in the same state.

  Kamorn wasn’t hurt. She was wide-eyed, shaking like a leaf, and staring up at Aeret. Who was looking around the kitchen, with the corner of his mouth twitching. “I do hope those aren’t our provisions.”

  The kitchen looked as if a windstorm had come through. Every cabinet had burst open, and most of them had evacuated their contents onto the countertops and floors. Shards of clay jars and pots were everywhere, along with their contents, from honey to dried peas. There was even bottled bean sauce—formerly bottled bean sauce, at least—dripping from the ceiling.

  “Um. No, our provisions are in that sack over—” It had moved with everything else. “That sack over there.” The responsible part of Teshar was shocked, but the five-year-old deep within her soul said gleefully, I made a mess!

  “Indeed. When you raid a kitchen, it truly does look like bandits descended on it. Perhaps next time, I should arrange our food.”

  “This is not my—” Teshar caught the glint in his eyes and realized she was being teased. Kamorn made a wordless noise, and gave Teshar a panicked, pleading look, like a scared child thinking, please don’t tell on me!

  Aeret followed Teshar’s gaze. “So.”

  Kamorn cringed away from him. “Aeret,” Teshar said calmly, “if you pick on my mother I’ll punch you in the nose again.” Her mother stared at her in shock.

  Aeret chuckled, and reached down to offer his hand. “Oh, I think it’s about time.”

  “About—time?” Kamorn whispered, as if she expected the hand to change into a cobra’s head.

  “For you to take a lesson from the young,” Aeret nodded toward Teshar, “and learn some courage. You tried to run away with her, didn’t you?” Kamorn just stared at him. Aeret smiled. “I don’t see how ma’uthakhai could have let you do otherwise, really.”

  “Ma-what?” Teshar asked. It hadn’t sounded quite Khemtesh, somehow, the way Aeret said the word. Harder consonants, more guttural vowels.

  “The honor of my ancestors.” That was her mother, and she sounded stunned. “It’s B’dou dialect. How did you . . .” She stopped herself, and then slowly put her hand in Aeret’s and got up.

  “I will require something of you, however,” Aeret said.

  “W-what?”

  “Something for her to wear in the desert.” Aeret nodded at Teshar. “You and I both know that won’t do.”

  Teshar looked indignantly down at her skirt. It was ragged, because Nairuntu had only permitted her the one, but it was hers. And it only came down to Teshar’s knees, so there was no way it could be too hot. “What’s wrong with it?”

  This time it was Kamorn who answered. “It doesn’t cover enough of you. And you’ll sweat too much where the waistband is tight. I might have—” She looked down. “I don’t want her to do this.”

  Aeret answered just as quietly. “He’ll have to destroy me to touch her.” He smiled slightly. “And even then, I wouldn’t put money on it. Your daughter has potential. Teshar?”

  “Yes?” It was silly, Teshar thought, to feel like grinning with pride because someone said has potential. At the same time, her mother was looking at the kitchen, plainly wondering what Aeret himself could do if he treated this sort of mayhem so casually.

  “Hug your mother, apologize for throwing her across the room, and go with her to pick up your robe. I’ll get the sack. And, Kamorn?”

  Kamorn plainly hadn’t realized that Aeret knew her name. “Yes?”

  “If I were you, I’d go down to the village this afternoon. It might be best not to be around when Nairuntu discovers this—or when she has to clean it up.” Aeret chuckled softly. “In fact, I think it would be best, from a spiritual perspective, if she had to do this herself. A symbolic restoration of order and mahath to a scene of chaos. Very healing. You can tell her I said that, if you have to. Now go on, and Teshar, meet me out at the wagon.”

  Chapter Four

  Tomblight

  “That tickles,” Teshar said drowsily, about a quarter of the day later. They had just had dinner.

  “Cope with it.”

  “Can I open my eyes now?”

  “No, you may not.” Aeret traced his calligraphy brush lightly over her right cheek. He, apparently, was feeling testy, either from nervousness, motion sickness, or frustration with the delicate job at hand. “In fact, I’d prefer it if you stopped talking. Or at least waited until you have something important to say. It’s hard enough doing this in a moving wagon.”

  Teshar sighed, but complied. For a moment or two.

  It was, after all, important.

  For Teshar to cast a spell,
apparently, she needed to feel the surge of sekhim, which came with high emotion or great need, and just do it. She wasn’t sure, but she thought it became a little easier to reach that place each time. According to Aeret, that was not the only or even the most common sort of magic. The sort he was doing now involved hieroglyphs, which were the most complex and ancient kind of writing, and a thick silver ink called pa’ath. And, of course, Teshar’s face and body. She now had symbols called udjati on her eyes—”For protection, warning, and alertness,” Aeret had said—and “a rather specialized sa” on her forehead. She wasn’t sure what was going onto her cheeks, but it felt like it involved an ankh, or a life-cross, the same sort people wore on amulets and wedding jewelry.

  Except, of course, it would not be quite the same kind, both because Aeret was drawing it, and because of the pa’ath. The ink was a source of sekhim, Aeret said, far more than normal water, and it channeled those energies well. It was sometimes even drunk by sorcerers in need of extra sekhim—”it tastes like water from the bottom of a mine”—and there were drops of it in some medicines, when depleted life energies were part of the problem. Only the temples knew how to make it, Aeret said, which in his opinion was both a good thing and a bad thing.

  Well—it would be a bad thing if a doctor needed some and couldn’t get it. But I can sort of understand why the temples would want to keep track of magic. Some of it is pretty frightening. “Aeret?”

  “What?” Aeret growled.

  “I have a question, but I think I should sort of whisper it.” She waited until she felt him bending closer, and then murmured, “That cobra you have guarding Uncle Beket, in case he actually likes Utsepekt. Is that a stick?”

  There was a short pause. “Now, that’s not just smart,” Aeret murmured back, “that’s very insightful indeed. How exactly did you work it out?” He put a finger on her lips quickly, and added, “Don’t smile. Your cheeks are still drying.”

  Teshar stopped herself from grinning. “Well, it doesn’t exactly look like a snake. If you look at it sort of sideways with your mind a certain way, you can see that. But if you just look at it regularly, you start thinking, danger danger danger danger and the only long skinny thing that’s dangerous is a snake.” She thought about it. “If you cast that spell on a log, would it look like a crocodile?”

  “Indeed—and if I held that stick in my hand, it would probably look like a spear or a sickle-sword.” Aeret resumed his calligraphy. “It may interest you to know that physical spells, such as your fire-making or that windstorm, take quite a bit of power, something that most apprentices and many full sorcerers do not have. Spells affecting the mind, on the other hand, take minimal power, because magic is at its heart a matter of mind and spirit—but they do take considerable finesse, because the mind is complicated.” He moved to her left cheek. “Don’t let that make you underestimate our adversary—best not to name him too much, since we’re approaching his territory. Holding a spell of control on six children at once must have taken remarkable strength as well as skill. Much as I hate to admit it, I’m somewhat grateful that I won’t face him alone. But it may also serve you to know that these mind-spells are complex—and complex machinery is more easily broken.”

  Teshar sighed. “I realize it doesn’t mean I’m evil, but I’m good at breaking things.”

  “Oh, yes.” But it was said with a chuckle, and a degree of admiration.

  “Aeret?”

  “What?”

  “You said that sekhim was the breath of life. But Ut—you know—is dead. So how—”

  “Metaphor trouble. Don’t say anything, I’m painting near your mouth. But you can probably open your eyes now.”

  Teshar opened her eyes and thought, metaphor trouble? as loudly as she could.

  —You do learn fast.— Teshar jumped, and Aeret grimaced and brought up the wet cloth he had been using to correct his mistakes. “Yes, metaphor trouble. Sekhim isn’t breath. Breath is air. Sekhim is the energy that keeps your limbs moving, your blood flowing, and all the processes of life happening as they should. It exists in all living things, and a number of other sources, such as rainwater. Once a sorcerer or a sorceress has been working for a while, our life processes produce enough extra sekhim for our use, rather in the way a farmer’s arms are stronger than a scribe’s. With me so far?”

  Yes. Am I actually talking like . . .

  “Quite loudly.”

  Sorry.

  Aeret’s mouth twitched. “At any rate, all sekhim production stops when one dies. So you are partially correct—our enemy cannot simply draw on his own energy, as anyone else might do, to power a spell. To even keep his body moving, since he now uses that power but does not produce it, he needs some other source.” Aeret sounded a little bit grim as he said the last part. “There are a host of harmless sources. Water. Moonlight. Energies that you can’t even feel yet, that run riverlike beneath the ground, even out here. Would you like to bet money that he’s using them? Because if you think so, I have some land south of Paunt that you might be interested in.”

  According to some scholars, there wasn’t anything south of Paunt. According to others, there was plenty, but it was roamed by dangerous monsters, from hippopotamus with horns to spotted camels a hundred man-heights tall. Not to mention elephants, which had teeth more than a man-height long, and—the most impressive thing of all—actually existed. Land south of Paunt was a concept like the Oasis of Beer; if you believed you could get to either one, you were a fool. So, Teshar thought, what are the un-harmless sources?

  “Things that take life away from other things. Shedding blood, obviously. Sucking the breath out of you. There are stories about dead sorcerers who made fields wilt and die as they walked across them, because their sheer hunger for sekhim drew it out of the plants and into them. No-one reported anything quite so dramatic happening last time our enemy came to Hasmahi, but I think he or his captives are using your farms in some way. Your barley harvest is late and thin, your fruits and vegetables under-produced—exactly like a drought, but the flood was adequate.”

  It made sense to Teshar. Aeret cleaned his brush and repackaged it. “Done. You can sit up if you want to, but don’t talk for a moment more and don’t rub your face.” He sorted through his pack, and added over his shoulder, “Cope with it.”

  Teshar started again. She had been thinking that it itched, but she hadn’t meant to say it to him.

  “Hmm, yes. You’ve started spellcasting, so your thoughts are becoming unusually forceful—and you’re untrained. Most sorcerers have been studying for several years at this point to shape and control their own mind; for most people, that’s a prerequisite for any magic.” Aeret tapped his lips. “In many ways, you’re more like a B’dou channeller than a sorceress of Khemtesh. I should remember that you’re likely to do things much differently.”

  Mother said I was a channeller, Teshar thought. Did you travel with the B’dou at some point?

  Aeret raised his eyebrows. “Child, I’ve been to Haieln and beyond. I’ve traveled almost everywhere you’ve heard of, and done it with people far odder than the B’dou.” He paused. “I’ve never been to Paunt, though. Hopefully my duties will let me go there—or even send me there. Who knows? At any rate, you need to learn a magical exercise that we temple-schooled types call the Encircling of the Mind—and then perhaps I should paint some spells for stealth on you. Just in case.”

  Teshar sighed.

  “We’re here.”

  Teshar gulped, wriggled out from under her concealing blanket, and looked around. Beket brought the oxen to a halt.

  They had come into the desert hills at dusk, right after supper. Teshar was convinced her supper hadn’t actually done anything to nourish her; it still lay like a brick at the bottom of her stomach. The stone hills were as strange as she remembered them, some sheer-sided, some even pillar-like, with sinuous stones all around like a huge madman’s pottery. With nightfall, Aeret had become taciturn. The only sentence to escape him was
not even addressed to her: “Who built this road?”

  Until then, it hadn't occurred to Teshar that they were on a manmade surface. Once she thought about it and looked around, it was obvious. They were on the only truly even surface in the whole forbidding landscape.

  Beket ducked his head nervously. “No-one knows, my lord.”

  “Hmm.”

  Now, as the moonlight slanted down and turned the rocks into a forest of light and shadows, Aeret collected a number of items from beneath the seats. “There was an arch, last time,” Teshar recalled. “A big stone arch.”

  Beket pointed ahead of them. “U-up around that bend.”

  “This exercise calls for a certain amount of stealth.” Aeret pushed a lantern into Teshar’s hands and began applying a flint-and-iron striker to the other one. “I rarely think of ‘sneaky’ and ‘great blundering cows’ in the same sentence. Beket stays here.”

  Beket bobbed his head again. “My lord?”

  “I’m not a lord. What do you want?”

  “No disrespect, your Holiness, but w-what if you don’t come back? Your snake . . .”

  “The snake will transform back into a piece of wood at sunrise. If we’re gone that long, I suggest you make haste back to Hasmahi, tell everyone what happened, pack up your wife and babe, and leave. Don’t look back; it’s famously bad for one’s health.”

  “Um.”

  “Otherwise, you may do whatever you need to with your beasts, but I expect you here when we return. My pet thinks poorly of betrayal. Here, hold this one now.”

  Teshar took the lantern Aeret had already lit, allowing him to use the striker on the other one. It was mostly sheathed in metal, with a shutter that allowed a person to trap all the light inside if for some reason they needed to. What was more, the glass was very thick and colored, making the light an ominous amber-red. “What is this?”