Dark is the Moon

by Ian Irvine

  Nadiril laughed, a rustling sound like the leaves that blew along the streets of Thurkad. “I’m paying. Order the best of everything, if you wish. It all tastes the same to me, but it gives me pleasure to see young folk eat.”

  Llian had not had a decent feed in days. He ordered soup, a platter of appetizers and, to follow, the second-most expensive dish on the menu. Nadiril selected the wine to go with each dish. When the first wine appeared, a small jade flask containing a luscious yellow vintage so strong, sweet and thick that it could have been a liqueur, Nadiril fixed Llian with a flinty glare and said, “Now tell me your tale; omit not the least detail. And take my warning to heart. I can read truth from falsehood as I read a book. Give me nothing but truth, as you know it and as you have been taught as a chronicler.”

  “Truth is what I am searching for,” said Llian. “But my tale will take all night.”

  “You have other appointments?” Nadiril asked with a wry grin.

  Llian also managed a smile. “I don’t receive many invitations these days.”

  “Then begin!”

  Llian began. A good while later the soup arrived, a honey-colored consommé made from prawn heads flavored with saffron, with wafer-thin slices of marbled egg floating on top. It was gorgeous, but when it was gone he was hungrier than if he had eaten nothing.

  By this time he was standing in the dock in Shazmak, telling his tale to the Syndics. We have heard the evidence of Llian, and it is truth as he knows it, Selial had said.

  “Ha!” said Nadiril. “I see what Karan did, and it has never been done before. An astounding talent. I must speak to her about it.”

  “The Syndics did not pick it,” said Llian.

  “Pah! People are books to me. You are not tempted to lie to me are you, Llian? I wouldn’t advise it.”

  Llian caught a glimpse of the hard edge beneath the kindly face. However, the idea of telling even a fib to the great Nadiril was beyond his ken.

  “Good! Go on.”

  They cleansed their palates with eggcups of water of lime, a misnamed drink if ever there was one, for afterwards his breath made the candles roar.

  Llian continued. Shortly the ancient waiter returned, staggering under a tray as wide as a wheelbarrow.

  It contained appetizers too numerous to mention. There were nuts glazed with hot ginger or cardamom or bitters; a bowl containing a spray of crisp noodle-sticks in the colors of the spectrum; a side-dish of prawn heads, probably those that had been used for the soup, the empty shells packed with minced walnut, grape and herb stuffing, and beautifully arranged with the long red feelers crossed to make diamond patterns against the white plate. In the center of the tray was an octagonal plate containing raw chacalot cut into perfect cubes, and around the plate were ten dipping bowls. One was filled with olive oil and one with chilli oil; one with rock salt, one with garlic slivers, one with hot bean paste, one with lime pepper, one with crystallized molasses, one with green mint and purple basil in vinegar, one with flaked toasted almonds and the last with mustard seed. And there were many other dishes, spices, sauces and pickles on the tray, some so strange that Llian could not imagine what they were made from.

  “How does one approach this?” he wondered, pointing to the chacalot dish.

  Nadiril smiled. “Take one of these leaves in your left hand, thus,” he said, shaking off drops of water. “With the silver tongs, so, select your piece of reptile and dip it in the sauce of your choice—I prefer the lime pepper—then place it in the middle of the leaf. Then, still only using your left hand, fold the leaf into a neat little parcel and pop it in your mouth.”

  Llian began loading his leaf with half a dozen pieces of chacalot, each well steeped in a different condiment. The folding operation proved to be more difficult than he had thought, and mixed sauces dribbled down the front of his shirt.

  “It is generally thought to be poor etiquette to combine flavorings in the one leaf,” said Nadiril, with a twitch of the lips. He handed Llian a napkin. “I tell you this just for future reference, you understand, since I care nothing for such whimsical conventions. Resume your tale, if you please.” He leaned back in his chair, his eyes never leaving Llian’s face.

  Nadiril had taken only a few mouthfuls, though he sipped his wine with evident relish. The main meal came and went, huge crayfish in a voluptuous sauce. They had such beautiful carapaces, brightly colored in greens and blues and reds, even after cooking, that Llian could scarcely bear to crack his open. He ate every morsel, licking his fingers clean at the end, but a minute later could not have told what he had eaten, he was so involved in the tale. Karan and he were crawling through the caverns of Bannador now.

  Around midnight the dessert appeared, an astounding confection: a spiraling tower of iced cream, molded jellied fruit and toffee balls each filled with a different liqueur, all woven around and around with threads of brittle toffee, and topped with creeping glaciers of red and yellow purée, winter strawberries and gellon. It was so delicious that Llian was forced to break off the tale until he was finished. With it appeared another bottle of wine, this one a purplish black with an astringency that contrasted sharply with the sweet fragrance of the dessert.

  Llian picked threads of toffee from between his teeth. “You are not… tired?” he asked hopefully. Nadiril’s questioning was still razor-sharp, but Llian’s head was spinning. He had slept badly of late.

  “I sleep only a few hours a night, and if I don’t get it, it hardly matters.”

  The tale continued, all the way to the Great Conclave in Thurkad. Coffee came with a sweet fortified wine so rich that Llian again had to stop talking till he had licked the last drops from the rim of his bowl.

  “Leave the bottle,” said Nadiril to the aged waiter, who was yawning behind a swollen-knuckled hand. “And another pot of coffee, if you please.”

  That did them until well into the early hours, by which time Llian’s tale had reached Katazza, where Tensor was working on his gate. Llian was beginning to flag badly.

  “Ah,” said Nadiril. “This I am especially interested in.”

  He questioned closely as the tale unfolded, and at the end of it, when the gate was made and Llian’s final collaboration with Tensor told, he fixed Llian with a penetrating stare. Llian felt more exposed by this kindly old man than he ever had by Yggur’s merciless interrogation. “This does not reflect entirely to your credit,” said the librarian.

  Llian could not meet his gaze any longer. He lowered his eyes, red in the face and thoroughly ashamed. “No!” he whispered. “I was too curious. I would have done anything.”

  “It is good to truly love your work, but the chronicler must remember that he is also a man and owes a duty to his wife, his family and his people.”

  “I have no wife,” said Llian stonily.

  “Of course you don’t. I know everything about you. Tell on.”

  More coffee, and that did them till dawn scattered pink petals across the sky beyond the harbor. Llian was still in the Nightland, for that was a topic of surpassing interest to Nadiril, and he questioned almost every sentence.

  “All in all, not entirely to your discredit,” he said, when the gate had spat Llian back into Katazza. “I see that you have told me a pretty good swag of truth. But what did Rulke do while he had you in that trance? That’s what we must find out. Come closer.”

  He did something with his hands. Llian slid smoothly into a hypnotic state, and, sometime later, out again. The sun was well up. “I shall have to think more about this,” Nadiril said. “I’m sure there is a way to penetrate this veil. Now, what say you to breakfast? This telling is hungry work, I imagine.”

  Breakfast appeared, porridge with a golden brown well of syrup and butter melted down through the middle, and a huge pot of tea. The tale moved more quickly now, for the trip back to Meldorin had been relatively uneventful, and before the tea was finished Llian was in Tullin dreaming nightmares about Rulke.

  Again Nadiril questioned him keenly,
but there was much that Llian simply did not know about that night, and at the end of it Nadiril said, “There is also something here that I don’t understand. I can see that it will cost me another dinner or two to get to the bottom if it. Still, the price of truth was always high. Continue!”

  Llian finished off the tale and Nadiril’s frown grew deeper as he heard of Llian’s treatment by Shand and Karan.

  “Hmmn. A fine tale. And I believe it too, more to the point. Most of it,” he amended.

  “You believe me!” sighed Llian. “I had begun to think that I was the monster that everyone makes me out to be. Or might as well be.”

  “Never think that! Be true to yourself and your calling. Do your work with proud indifference; time will prove you right. Beware to be too curious. And if you ever need help, you have only to ask.” He put what seemed to be an extravagant amount of money on the table. “Now, take my arm. Help me back to my rooms. Then, I regret, you must take yourself back to your cell. Your parole has run out.”

  Llian felt crushed. He had been hoping that his imprisonment was over. “You are staying in Thurkad?” he asked as they went slowly along.

  “For the time. The library is in good hands, and this business needs an eye from someone who stands to gain nothing from it. And a word of caution: beware Yggur, and Mendark too.”

  “Mendark?”

  “He suffered a devastating loss in Havissard, as you will hear. He has come back full of fury and bitterness, and knowing him as I do, he will be looking for someone to blame. Be careful.”

  * * *

  It was time for the Council to begin. Mendark was already sitting at the Council table and Karan was shocked at his appearance. He looked like an old, old man who had tried and failed, and could not come to terms with that failure. He did his best to hide it, but not quite well enough. Though months had passed since his defeat in Havissard, the bitterness still showed. She could hardly imagine it was the same man they had traveled so far with. He now looked like an aged, withered raptor. His skin had shrunk tight all over, pulling his nose into a beak, his ears out sideways and his fingers into claws. He moved like a robot, as if his garments were far too tight, and his eyes were as dull as cooked fish.

  “What’s happened to him?” Karan whispered to Tallia, beside her.

  A strange, almost panicky expression passed across Tallia’s face, then she turned away. “He had a very hard time of it, in Havissard.”

  Karan knew Tallia was dissembling but did not press her.

  Yggur entered last of all. He seemed not much changed but for wearing spectacles with lenses as thick as bottle ends. He still walked with a limp, though now he carried a cane. Yggur sat at his own small table, overlooking the larger, staring down as if sorting people, but Karan noticed that his eyes did not move.

  Watching him, she saw that he weighed everyone at the lower table, his broken eyesight stripping them to their essentials: friend, enemy, troublemaker, fool… But when he turned his head to Mendark, a fleeting cold rage passed across his face, a terrible thing to see.

  The Council was full of posturing and power games between Mendark and Yggur. Mendark harped incessantly about the past, about his great deeds at the time Rulke was imprisoned and since—his heroism in Katazza particularly. But somehow he was unconvincing, almost plaintive.

  Yggur listened in silence, growing ever more irritable; then, for no reason that Karan could see, abruptly broke up the meet and hurried them all out of the chamber. That night a messenger came to Shand’s rooms, to tell them that there would be a small meet in a few days’ time.

  Shand was furious. “Damned if I will,” he roared, shaking his fist in the messenger’s face. “If Mendark and Yggur are going to play games, I’m going home.”

  “I would be grateful if you could stay long enough to dine with me,” said Nadiril, who had dropped in for tea. “Are you free this evening?”

  “I am,” said Shand, suppressing his anger.

  “Good! It must be ten years since we last ate together, and there is a lot to catch up on.”

  Nadiril, noticing that Karan was eavesdropping, drew Shand over into the corner. “Not least this business of Llian. Sometimes I don’t understand you, Shand.”

  “I know what I know!” Shand said stubbornly.

  “I don’t think you do. Your prejudice against the Zain is quite irrational. Now come, which of us is the more impartial judge of character?”

  “You are,” Shand said, grinding his teeth.

  “So I am, and I say you have done Llian very ill. But we will talk about that over dinner.”

  That evening they did dine together, a dinner that was almost as long as the previous one, but the old friends fell out at the end and Nadiril went home by himself in the early hours. In the morning a haggard Shand packed up and, telling only Karan that he was going back to Tullin, suddenly disappeared.

  That night Nadiril took Karan to dinner. She enjoyed the evening immensely, for he was a charming, sensitive dinner companion. Only one notable thing came out of it, however, when late at night she asked what had happened to Mendark.

  “That’s his secret,” Nadiril said after a long silence. “Though I suppose there’s no reason why I shouldn’t tell you. Mendark is very old and Havissard nearly killed him. He was forced to renew himself, though he knew it was one time too many. It was not a complete success, and the best spellmasters in Thurkad have not been able to undo the damage.”

  “Renew himself?”

  “We old humans age quickly, Karan. Even mancers cannot live for a thousand years without renewing their bodies many times. But there is a limit and Mendark has pushed beyond it. I can say no more than that.”

  “Have you done that too?”

  Nadiril laughed. “This grizzled cadaver is the original me. One life is enough, for me.”

  “So that’s why Mendark is so preoccupied with his reputation!”

  “Obsessed, almost to the point of madness,” said Nadiril, then turned the conversation to other topics.

  The following day he lunched with Malien and by the end of the week he had dined with everyone who was involved in the affair. But he kept his counsel.

  The meeting was held some days later, in a small dark room upstairs in the citadel. When Karan arrived she found Tensor (attended only by Asper), Malien, Tallia, Nadiril and Yggur. Shortly after, Mendark came in, leaning on Llian’s shoulder.

  “Perhaps some among you have wondered at this subterfuge,” said Mendark, standing at the end of the table. Even his voice was different; it was gravelly, like gallstones rattling in a bottle. He cast a scowling glance at Yggur, who was looking down his nose at them from a higher table. “It is well known that I have come back from a long hunt. It could hardly be otherwise, coming as I did by ship, in such haste. And after all the events of the past year, it takes little to set tongues wagging.”

  “Not to mention the loose mouths of certain chroniclers,” snapped Yggur. “Consider yourself on probation, chronicler. Were it not for Nadiril you would be chained to my dungeon wall, not privileged to be here as recorder.”

  “My dungeon wall, as it happens,” said Mendark. “You will recall that we separated in Faranda each to undertake our particular purpose. And what have we found?”

  “For my part, very little,” said Yggur. “I sent trusty lieutenants to Alcifer. What did I find? Regarding the making of flutes, nothing. About the Mirror, nothing. Of Aachan gold, only this!”

  Opening his fist, he let fall on the table a ring, too small to fit a man’s hand. It rang out, a richer and more mellow tone than that made by ordinary gold. It was a luxurious golden-red, like Karan’s hair.

  “Are you sure it is Aachan gold?” asked Tallia.

  “The color is quite characteristic, though I suppose that could be faked. But I put it to the test anyway. I am satisfied.”

  “I’m not!” cried Mendark. “Let Tensor verify it in front of us.”

  Tallia carried the ring down to Tensor
. He accepted it with reluctance, but did not even look at it and handed it back at once. “It is,” he said hoarsely. She brought it back.

  “What do you know about it?” Llian asked Yggur, leaning forward eagerly.

  “Not much, though I’ve had it for a thousand years. I found it in Alcifer just before Rulke was taken!”

  That caused a sensation. Mendark leapt to his feet, his mouth hanging open. “You’re trying to get at me! Well, it won’t work.”

  Yggur leaned back in his chair, his hands clasping the back of his neck. Light from an overhead lamp fell on the long bones of his face. His eyes were closed but he was smiling.

  “You needn’t worry, Mendark,” he said, in his deep, slow voice. It seemed that he relished the coming contest. “It’s just a simple ring as anyone might have worn.” He passed it around.

  “What a beautiful thing,” Karan said when it came to her. It was made of the finest golden wires, woven together into a flat braid of five strands. She slipped it onto her ring finger and held it up. It fitted rather well.

  “Look at it carefully, Llian,” said Yggur. “This ring was used in the betrayal of Rulke.”

  Llian pricked up his ears. What had Rulke said about that, in the Nightland? I was betrayed, and the woman I was to pair with, an innocent, was destroyed. Clearly there was more to the tale than The Taking of Rulke revealed.

  “It’s much too small for Rulke’s finger,” said Llian.

  “It was a betrothal ring for his bride-to-be,” said Yggur. “Seek out that story and you will have another Great Tale. One that has never been told, for it reflects an ugly light on us all.”

  “Shut up, Yggur,” snarled Mendark.

  Yggur smiled. “Your reputation will need all the polish you can give it, Mendark, after I’ve finished with you.” He looked directly into Llian’s eyes. “In that struggle, Llian, we all did evil in the name of good. To win the war against Rulke, to save our world from him, justified any crime. I would not have the Histories speak false about this matter.”