Wintermoon

by Mercedes Lackey

  As the season moved toward spring, Clirando took herself in hand. The physician had already supplied her with an herbal medicine, which scarcely had an effect. Now she gained a stronger one. With its aid, every third or fourth night she was able to sleep two or three hours—though waking always with a heavy head and sickened stomach.

  The bane will die away in its own time, like a venomous plant. I must ignore it, which will lessen its hold on me.

  She pushed the burden from her, would not think of it by day, and lay reading through the nights.

  Strangely, her body, young and fit, acclimatized to sleep loss, even if, on the third or fourth evening without slumber, sometimes she would see phantoms moving under trees or against walls—tricks of her tired eyes. Surely not real?

  The priestess she consulted listened carefully to all Clirando told her. The priestess, who had been a warrior too in her youth, and was now middle-aged and stout, told Clirando gently, “And you have not mourned Araitha.”

  “No, Mother. I’ve made offerings to the goddess for her sake, and put flowers by the altars in Araitha’s name. But I can’t mourn. I—I’m angry still. Disgusted still.”

  “Yet you fought her and bested her and ruined her life in Amnos.”

  “Do you mean I killed her?” Clirando stared. “It was because she had to go away that she died.”

  “No. It wasn’t you that caused her drowning. The sea and the wind did that. But you broke her spirit, Clirando. Why else did she curse you in that way?”

  “She could have wished me dead.”

  “I think,” said the priestess quietly, “she preferred you to live and suffer. Thestus did not curse you. He didn’t care enough, or love enough. But Araitha was your sister. Measure her feeling for you by her last acts.”

  “What shall I do?”

  “Like all of us, Clirando, you can only do what you are able. Do that.”

  The moon, which by now figured so vividly in Clirando’s sleepless nights, began to be important to all the town—indeed to all the known world, from Crentis to Rhoia, and the burning southern deserts of Lybirica.

  Every sixteen or seventeen years, through the strange blessing of the gods, there would come seven nights of midsummer when every night the moon would be full: seven nights together of the great white orb, coldly glowing as a disk of purest marble lit from within by a thousand torches.

  The last such time had been in Clirando’s earliest childhood. She had only the dimmest memory of it, of her mother leading her up among the family on the roof each night to see—and of all the house roofs of Amnos being similarly crowded with people, who let off Eastern firecrackers in spiraling arcs of gold and red. Among Clirando’s band, only Erma and Draisis had never seen the seven full moons.

  But all of them had heard of the Moon Isle. Even Thestus, come to that. He had compared Clirando to its unlovely rocks when they fought.

  The Isle lay out in the Middle Sea, beyond Sippini. It was sacred and secret but, as was also well-known, on every occasion of the Seven Nights, certain persons had to go there, to honor and invoke the moon’s power.

  Amnos would send its delegation of priests and priestesses. Sometimes others were selected to sail to the Isle. How they were chosen was never made public, and no one was permitted to speak—or ever did so—of what took place upon the island. Nevertheless, or perhaps because of the silence, theories abounded. The Isle was full of dangerous and terrible beasts, also of spirits and demons. It was a spot of ultimate ordeal and test—and some of those sent there had not returned.

  Clirando herself had never speculated unduly. She had been too busy, too fulfilled in her life.

  The same priestess was waiting for her when she answered the temple’s summons, and entered the shrine beside the main hall.

  In the altar light below the statue of Parna, the dumpy older woman had gained both grace and presence.

  “I have something to tell you, Clirando.”

  “Yes, Mother?”

  “You, and the six girls of your band, have been selected for an important duty.”

  “Certainly, Mother. We’ll be glad to see to it.”

  “Perhaps not.” The faintest nuance went over the priestess’s face. It was an unreadable expression—caused only, maybe, by the flicker of the altar lamp. “You seven are to travel to the Moon Isle.”

  Clirando felt her heart trip over itself. She swallowed and said, “To the Isle?”

  “Yes. You will leave in ten days, in order to be there at the commencement of the Moon Month.”

  “Mother—this is an honor for us—but none of us have any notion of what we must do when we arrive.”

  “None have,” said the priestess flatly.

  “But then—”

  “Clirando. This is both an honor for you, as you say, a reward for your valor and care in the past—and a penance. A privilege and a trial. You’ll have heard disturbing things of the place, yes?”

  “Yes, Mother. I thought most of them fanciful.”

  “Forget that impression. The Isle is supernatural and may produce anything. It is a place half in this world and half elsewhere. In spots, they say, it opens on the country of the moon itself. For philosophers have decided the moon is not what it appears, a disk, but rather a world, an unlike mirror to our own. Therefore anticipate magic, and great danger. Sacrifice is common on the Isle. So is death. But too the land is mystical and profound, and from death life may spring. There is a saying, a closed eye may sometimes see more there than one which stares. Do you consent to go?”

  “Mother—I consent. But my girls—”

  “Have no fear for them. They will be safer than you. You, Clirando, are the one the Isle requires. Human presence on it invokes the power of the moon, her cold fire. But sometimes pain is needed in the process, but not from all.”

  Clirando felt a shadow fall on her, like a heavy cloak for traveling. Her sleep-starved eyes half glimpsed Araitha suddenly, standing there in the shade behind the goddess’s statue, motionless, with face averted.

  “This is my true punishment, then.”

  “You may see it as such,” said the priestess. “Or as a chance at salvation. The seas at this time of year are calm as honey. The voyage will last no longer than nineteen days, and perhaps rather less. Go now and tell your band. Pack anything you may need, for battle or for mere existence.”

  1

  Landscape

  Across night and water, in darkness: the island. There was no moon tonight. Tomorrow was the moon’s First Night.

  “Clirando, do you see?”

  “I see. The beacons are burning.”

  High up, the coastal cliffs were gemmed with them, drops of brilliant fire, each one separated from the next by many miles.

  They were like eyes, watching, as the boat came in. Nothing else was to be seen, but the luminous rollers of the surf on the shore.

  The galley had put them off as soon as the sun set in the Middle Sea. The Isle was visible, a black dot far away. The captain told Clirando the water there was too shallow for his ship, but also no man or woman, unless called or ordered to the Isle, might go in any nearer.

  Strong, and aching for action after the slow voyage, the band was quite eager to take up oars and row.

  Gradually the sea dulled to a leaden blue and the sky faded like an autumn rose. Great darkness came, scattered with stars. The galley had drawn away.

  Briefly the younger girls chattered, excited or unnerved. Then they fell silent as the rest.

  The hump of the island grew from the night, always still blacker, and then the beacons burned out above.

  Clirando had been given by the captain a rudimentary map, which showed a way in. They found the entry soon enough. A narrow defile sliced between and below the steep surfaces of the cliffs.

  They followed the sea channel and soon the beacons were left behind them. Only starlight then shone like steel on the water.

  For perhaps a further quarter of an hour they rowed unde
r the cliff stacks, until the channel opened again into an inner bay.

  They drew the boat up across pale shingle.

  A statue of an unknown goddess stood there, guarding the beach, her eyes glittering grey zircons.

  “Who is she?” whispered Draisis.

  Seleti said, “Maut, I think.”

  “A goddess of the East?” asked Tuyamel. “Do you think it’s Maut, Cliro?”

  Clirando bowed to the goddess. “Maybe. But whoever she is, this is her place. We’ll offer some wine when we uncork the skin.”

  After they had set their fire, the ordinary sounds of arrival and domestic preparation ended. Then each of the women heard, Clirando thought, the vast stillness close about them. It was intense and fur-soft, and fearful, this silence. It had in it a kind of tinsel quivering—noiseless yet always in the ears. They spoke, the women, in hushed tones, eating the cold meats and apples from home, drinking the wine.

  Clirando observed them. They were good girls, awed and probably nervous, yet staying cool and contained. This was not like fighting. What war asked of you was quite different. What the Isle asked… Only the gods knew.

  Presently Clirando, who had not yet drunk, took some wine in a bowl along the shingle and poured out a proper measure for the goddess who seemed to be Maut, Haunter of Waters.

  “Let all go well for them, Lady. Protect them and allow them to win honor. For myself, I won’t ask you. Nor for sleep. I know, even if you’d grant it, I’d be unable to receive your gift.”

  Firelight made the zircon eyes sparkle—but only the firelight.

  When she went back, they were saying that games were celebrated at a town on the island, deep in its interior, to mark the Seven Nights, and a great fair was held as well, full of wonders, with goods and animals on show that came from remote lands. She wondered where they had heard this. All Clirando had ever heard of the Isle, even on the galley, had been mysterious, uncanny and troubling.

  Someone yawned—Vlis. Clirando said, “I’ll take the watch.”

  “Yes, Clirando.” They nodded solemnly. They believed that their leader had trained herself to need little if any sleep on duty. None of them, even Tuy, knew Clirando now seldom slept at all. Why worry them? They boasted of her talent for wakefulness.

  As they settled down, Clirando again went off a short way. She sat on a boulder jutting from the stones and sand, about forty paces along the beach. From here she could see all the long curve of the shingle and, beside, a cliff path that slipped suddenly up along the rock face. It looked to be rough going, but they would use it in the morning.

  Would they find other people here quickly? The beacon-lighters perhaps, if no one else.

  The sea sighed and crinkled to and fro, lit by phosphorescent runners of foam. Like a lullaby—for some.

  In the red circle of firelight, the others had curled up. Already they were all sleeping, heads on rolled cloaks, long legs and folded arms relaxed as the limbs of sleeping cats. Only Tuyamel softly snored, just audible in the quiet. But Clirando was aware the snoring would stop once Tuy was properly asleep.

  How well I know them.

  I know them better than I know myself.

  Clirando regarded the act of sleep. Sometimes it had seemed to her, wandering up to the roof of her own house, she had seen all Amnos sleeping, all the world, with only she herself awake forever.

  A pebble, loosened by something or nothing and tumbling down the cliff side, jolted her into a tremendous jump.

  Clirando started to her feet, dazzled and alarmed. What had happened? She had slept—she had slept? For how long? Her trained eye scanned the stars. From their positions she worked out that all of an hour must have passed.

  She did not sleep. She had been watching for hours, now and then prowling up and down along the edge of the sea…and then.

  A deadly chill washed through her, and slowly she turned her head. The campfire burned low, and in its smoky glare she saw that no one now lay curled about it. Every one of her band had vanished.

  Clirando ran forward. She kicked the fire up in a blaze, drew out a flaming stick and held it high. Where had they gone—and why—without waking her?

  All around, the rolled cloaks, undisturbed, the impressions of sleeping heads still pillowed into them. The last baked apples sat along the fire’s rim. Nothing else was there, apart from a bit of wood Seleti had been carving, and the wineskin.

  Clirando drew her sword. If some enemy were about, he, she or it must be confronted. It was too late for subterfuge. “Here!” she called. And then she gave the ululating battle cry of the band. It echoed wildly off the cliffs.

  She hoped against hope for some answering call. When her own yell died, none came. Nothing did. Only the sigh of the waves and the thick glimmering sound of the silence.

  She could not help herself, a kind of terror was in her. She who could not sleep had slept, and her brave girls—none of them a weakling and all six together—had been taken—or had gone—away.

  A weird gleam shone out across the water now. For a moment she could not think what it was. But it was the dawn beginning.

  Clirando walked to the sea and plunged in her hands and her feet. The water was night-cold, shocking her back to some sanity.

  She was alone, as all were when it came down to it. She must rely on herself.

  Whatever had lured or forced her girls away, Clirando would find it and them.

  While the light strengthened in the east. Clirando gathered her few belongings together. As the last stars winked out, she was already on the tortuous path that wound upward from the beach to the high places above.

  Just as predicted, it was hard going. When she at last broke out of the thin clinging shrubs onto the plateau of the cliff top, the sun was two hands’ width above the sea. Behind and below her the beach and the water. But ahead—Clirando looked inland.

  Shoulders and walls of rock palisaded the headland, grey and white and grown with sea ivies and wild peculiar flowers. Quite some way off, the plateau tipped over and down into what seemed to be thick forest of pine and larch, the dark evergreen trees sacred to night and the gods of hidden things. Far in the distance, other heights rose from the forest and stood on the sky.

  Nearby a narrow stream of clear water emerged from the natural stonework. Thankfully Clirando drank from it, cupping the water in her hands. It was sour and salty here, too near the sea, but it quenched her thirst.

  When she raised her head, a creature was there among the rocks, staring at her. The wildflowers framed it oddly. It was a kind of lion or large lynx, yellow eyed, with a dappled creamy hide.

  Clirando pulled the knife free of her belt. She had hunted where she had to, for food or protection. Though she had never seen an animal quite like this one, she could deal with it if necessary.

  The beast fixed its eyes. Against the lean flanks a long tail lashed.

  Generally they did not meet your gaze this long.

  Was it magical?

  Clirando said, very low, “What do you want?”

  The lion creature flung up its head, eyes narrowed and jaws open to reveal lines of white fangs. This gave the irresistibly unsettling impression it laughed. Then, with a final lash of its tail, it sprang around and bounded away between the stands of rock. It had been a male, and obviously not hungry.

  Clirando walked toward the plateau’s dip and the forest.

  By day, the Isle was not so silent. From the shore the cries of seabirds sometimes lifted, and from the forest occasionally other notes. However these sounds were sparse and intermittent.

  For this reason the faint shuffling and skittering that started to accompany her progress, and which had nothing to do with her own light footfalls, seemed at first an illusion, some obtuse echo stirred up from the aisles of rock as she moved. But in the end Clirando knew her instinct that something followed her must be addressed.

  She turned slightly, still going forward—and caught a flash of vague darkness darting behind a rock.r />
  Paying no apparent heed, Clirando strode on, but again she drew her knife.

  She could not be sure what tracked her. She did not think it was human. Yet she had not seen enough to judge what sort of animal it might be.

  By then she had reached an area where the cliff plateau bulked upward to a stone hill, on the top of which was built one of the great beacons. Unlike the others along the outer coast, this had not been set alight, though a thin smell of old fires clung here. The beacon itself, she saw, was built as a round cauldron of stones, the kindling stacked ready inside and covered by oiled skins, pegged into sockets in the hill. This emblem of human activity both gladdened and disconcerted her.

  As she was looking up, the skittery soft scuffle came again at her back, definitely not an echo of her own movements.

  Clirando spun round.

  She froze.

  Three things poised on the rock in a curious huddle—almost as if they were chained together by some invisible rope. They were unlike anything she had ever seen—yet mostly piggish in shape, large pigs covered in an ashy black skin, from which stuck out spines like those of some Lybirican cactus. Their heads were misshapen, with tusks or horns pointing from their jaws, the sides of their faces, and above their small, flat, greenish eyes. Horrible things. Monsters. The very stuff of the legends of Moon Isle.

  They made no move to attack.

  Clirando took half a step toward them—they neither ran at her nor backed away.

  Stooping swiftly, she plucked up a handful of loose stones and hurled them at the creatures.

  They shied a little at the impact, tossing their ugly heads. That was all.

  Were they the beasts of some local god?

  Abruptly all three peeled back their upper lips. Unlike the lion beast earlier, their teeth were blunt and yellow, but even so not an encouraging sight.

  Clirando rasped her sword out of its sheath. She would not turn her back on these things again, she thought.