The Towers, the Moon

by Andrea K Höst

  Had he taken the mask because of his name, or because he recognised it as the original? Would there be consequences even if she made him give it up?

  Rian followed D'Argent silently, weighing up her chances of winning one of his ten-Tears during the challenge, and whether she needed to aim for two. If she failed to gain any, then she would need to find a chance to talk to him, and bargain. Given the busy pace of the challenge, there would be few opportunities.

  The gold-winged organisers ushered the crowd inward, past what must be the main entrance to the hall, and beyond the vast broad shaft of the Gilded Tower. So they would play in the flatter central reaches, not the near-vertical outer edges of the dome? Good. Wingless humans were already at enough of a disadvantage.

  Rian's sweet-singer, chirruping softly, clambered up to her shoulder and tugged deftly at her veil. A single inky ten-Tear came away, and the sweet-singer pressed it to its stomach before launching itself into the growing cloud of similarly burdened fellows.

  Rian looked away, and found herself in a forest. She blinked at spindly white trees growing directly from the floor – and walls and ceiling – of the corridor she had been funnelled toward. The trees were the same glowing white as the walls, and could well be elaborate sculpture, though so delicate they trembled and swayed with every breath or movement. The Towers and domes grew like living creatures, so perhaps these pale trees lived as well.

  "Find the song, avoid the hunters!" the organisers were calling, and others around Rian were not slow to move – some shooting into the air, and others bounce-walking rapidly forward – and then checking when it became clear that there were few open spaces in this sky forest.

  One of the flyers, though, made a pleased noise even as she banked and hovered, plucking from the trembling white leaves a long, dark droplet. The woman held it up to consider the image it held, that of the person the ten-Tear belonged to, and then attached it to her veil.

  A single, distant note caught Rian's attention. Her sweet-singer, waiting at a gathering point. Rian had to reach her sweet-singer within the time limit or pay a penalty. She also had to give up a ten-Tear to gain entry to the first gathering place, and would rather it wasn't another of her own.

  This part of the sky forest filled a maze of curling filigree tunnels, with Rian's path constantly detouring through side-corridors. The Tears of the Night at least stood out clearly against the pale leaves and branches, and Rian found her first ten-Tear without any difficulty at all. She held it up, and saw a spindly man with red wings, wearing a Yue dragon mask. One of five hundred ten-Tears, and she would need a fine serving of luck to find D'Argent's.

  Spotting another ten-Tear high above, Rian hesitated. She could not reach that with a bound, and would need to pull herself up – not difficult in the gravity, but noisy.

  A low growling, far behind, served to remind Rian of some of the obstacles in this hunt, and she decided to move quickly toward the call of her sweet-singer, missing an opportunity for another ten-Tear when a woman in a swan mask reached it first.

  The woman then hastily stepped behind a tree and held herself as still as possible, and though she was far from hidden, the ruse was apparently sufficient to avoid the gargouille that galumphed directly past and captured Rian instead.

  It did this with all the grinning enthusiasm fifteen feet of snake-dog could muster, coiling around her in an excess of triumph, and Rian could not help but give its flat-snouted head a pat, even as two of the la clochettes who had been riding it dove with a distinctly mocking cascade of sound, and lifted away one of the layers of Rian's fountain dress as penalty.

  They'd taken the under-layer, which was a clever trick indeed, and left Rian in a knee-high dress. The loss at least allowed Rian to concentrate on speed and searching, since the rules allowed only one capture by hunters in each of the three segments of the challenge.

  The deep note of a gong warned her that the three-quarter mark had passed, and she decided to move on, searching for the meeting point. Even though the sky forest was full of seekers, Rian could hear only the song of her own sweet-singer above the rattle of disturbed leaves. It was fortunately close. Yes, there to the right the trees opened up. Not to a space large enough to hold five hundred, but still a solid crowd.

  Rian was stopped by a pair of members of the Gilded Tower, and handed over dragon mask's ten-Tear as payment for passing the stage before the gong sounded a second time. This, along with any ten-Tears not discovered among the leaves, would go to make up the challenge's prize.

  One ten-Tear down, with two increasingly expensive stages to go, Rian briefly entertained the shining vision of winning that bounty, but knew her chances were minimal. She had, thankfully, enough to complete the entire challenge without risking Tears of the Sun, and only felt a faint pang at spending them. The Tears of the Night did not represent her own money, though she was still not entirely certain how much she had paid the Duke of Balance for them.

  Her sweet-singer landed lightly on her shoulder, tiny claws pricking bare skin. It piped, as if in greeting, and she stroked its head delicately, wondering why she was so sure it was the same one.

  The piping multiplied, as other sweet-singers returned to their chosen, and their voices merged into another recognisable tune. The players responded: finding partners, linking hands. Rian found two members of the Court, and placed her right hand on top of theirs, sharing their faint laughter at how far up she had to reach. Then they danced.

  A spiral of three, a pattern of nine, of twenty-seven, of seventy-one, all in a slow circular promenade. Dancers were exchanged from group to group, clasping hands and considering each other, deciding whose ten-Tears they hoped to capture.

  Rian could feel marked interest among those whose hands she briefly clasped, and also the general growing anticipation of the crowd. She saw D'Argent and watched him moving, swift and elegant, but the exchanges gave her no chance to talk or dance with him, and the next stage of the challenge began immediately after the end of the song, with each sweet-singer flitting off with two ten-Tears.

  The crowd followed into twilight, for the walls, ceiling, floor and forest beyond the clearing lacked the full-moon brilliance of the areas already passed, blurring detail without truly confusing the path.

  The vague shadows were easy enough for a not-quite-vampire to navigate, and Rian found her first ten-Tear almost immediately. She held it up to consider a human woman in a tiger mask. Attaching the Tear to her veil, she moved on quickly, shivering a little, for the sky forest seemed to have developed a cool mist.

  With the chill came a hush, muffling even the rattle of disturbed leaves, and seeming to add distance to the sweet-singer. And there was more scent, sharp notes of pine and loam…

  Rian stopped short. There was dirt underneath her soft slippers. Stars above. Wind touched her. These were not things of the Towers of the Moon, of the strange sky forest that grew but perhaps did not live. This was the Great Forest, the world-spanning Otherworld tied by vows of allegiance to her soul.

  And she was hunted.

  Rian did not question that certainty, immediately abandoning her search for ten-Tears and concentrating on finding her way out. This was part of the price she paid for her allegiance to Cernunnos: the Horned King was hunter and hunted. But it was the forest itself that judged and tested her, and she did not care to learn what failure would mean.

  There were no paths. Behind spread the silence that came to forests when tooth and claw moved with purpose. Rian, in three layers of nothing much, and slippers that let her feel every stone, did not run. Her only hope was to move as quietly and smoothly as possible, to try to keep ahead of what stalked her so that it could not properly discover her location.

  The sweet-singer's call pulled at her, and Rian struggled to maintain a smooth pace, watching her feet and doing her best to avoid fallen twigs and dry leaves. She did not run: she danced a secret course along twisting tree roots, skipped to stone, to dirt, to the gnarled skirts of anothe
r wooden partner. She did not run.

  She. Did. Not. Run.

  The call of the sweet-singer swelled, piercing, encouraging. A twig snapped behind her. Close! So close! Rian bit her lip, but did not break the dance, did not rush, not even when she saw the edge of a clearing ahead of her. She kept her pace, stepped lightly, and emerged.

  (x)

  A clearing in the sky forest, large enough for five hundred chosen. Rian was obviously on the trailing edge, arriving past the time limit, though she had not heard the gong. A cluster of la clochettes whirled around her in a cascade of sound, and when they departed she wore a hip-length dress.

  Rian was past caring. She paid over the cost of completing the stage, saw there were places to sit and things to drink, and took a glass before sinking thankfully into the nearest chair. Her feet throbbed, though the bruises were already hurting less. That was the vampiric symbiont, hard at work.

  Her sweet-singer found her almost immediately, and nestled against her throat, tail curled around her neck. It took much longer for Rian to spot the silver lion among the crowd, but eventually the sweep of the dance brought D'Argent into view. He'd lost his coat, but otherwise seemed in fine fettle as he was passed between partners.

  It was a dance of pairs, and an opportunity that might not come again, so Rian climbed to reluctant feet and was ready for the next exchange.

  D'Argent murmured politely as she stepped into the flow of the dance, and regarded her with a straightforward attraction, combined with deep wariness.

  "You have been watching me, Mademoiselle Serpent."

  An observant man, then. "Yes," she agreed, simply.

  "Perhaps I have something on my face?"

  Rian laughed. "You do. I was wondering if you would bargain for it."

  His mild surprise came through to her clearly, then curiosity and a thread of anger. She wondered if she'd ever met him, for she knew many French actors. He did not feel familiar, and mask and veil together made it extremely difficult discern his face. Dark eyes, behind the mask.

  "You recognise it, then? A thing out of place. Are you, then, a friend of a faded star?"

  This wasn't good. He'd recognised not only the mask, but the one he'd won it from.

  "No," she said, not allowing herself to examine how disastrous such knowledge could be to Martine. "In this matter, I am a friend of things being returned to their right and proper place."

  "But me, I like it where it is." He was entertained, but not particularly sympathetic. "Try to win it, if you will." He glanced down at her two tissue layers. "I think you will not succeed."

  The sweet-singers brought dance and conversation to an end, reaching forward to take three ten-Tears from their veils. Rian watched D'Argent's fly into the forest, since that would at least give her a starting direction.

  "I think I will talk to you later, Monsieur," she said, and set out into a forest quite as large as the Gilded Tower's assembly hall, but barely lit: the blackness relieved only by the glimmering of countless leaves, and by dim, occasional points of light on floor, walls and ceiling. In the bare gravity of the tower, it was like swimming into the stars.

  Despite their dark colour, the Tears of the Night stood out particularly well among the motes, glowing with a purple radiance that transformed them into small moons. Able to see the branches and trunks tolerably well thanks to her symbiont, Rian skipped toward the nearest moon, but changed direction as several partially-clad figures also converged. Here on the fringes there would be too much competition: best to try to push ahead.

  The path she followed seemed to be sloping upward, and she realised that there were wide, spiralling ramps in the forest, allowing the wingless to access the upper reaches, and ensuring the centre of the sprawling chamber was not left empty. Rian bounced quickly forward until she was at least a third of the way into this part of the forest, and then she slowed, oriented on the nearest luminous purple bauble, and headed toward it.

  After barely a glance at the image of a mouse-masked owner, Rian attached the ten-Tear to her veil. This round was her chance to regain some losses, for her night vision gave her an immense advantage, allowing her to move through the sky forest at relative speed – and forewarning her of this round's hunters.

  Three lithe shapes were moving down the slope ahead. They resembled stoats or weasels, but banded black and white, and as long as Rian was tall. Each was ridden by one of the la clochettes, but the tiny sprites were silent, clutching the ears of the furred hunters, straining to see through the glimmering dark.

  Any movement risked drawing their attention, so Rian stood her ground. But she could not hide her scent, and the three coursed toward her…then shied away, flinching almost, and disappearing over the side of the broad, curving slope.

  Rian stood in the Great Forest, in the sky forest, in a place of night and shivering leaves. Around her slid long bodies: not of the gargouille, or the striped weasels, but of the golden-horned amasen of Cernunnos, the great snakes of good fortune. She no longer wore the mask of the snake, but of the stag, and she strode unimpeded, all barriers falling from her path as she took into her hands droplets of night. Bear. Dove. Silver lion.

  The stag mask vanished when Rian took up D'Argent's ten-Tear. Panting faintly, she looked about and saw she had been brought to the brink of a pool of light spilling through a vast doorway. That had been a new experience. Cernunnos himself had walked with her. Were the night's events his doing, after all? Or was he simply lending his power because of the bond of allegiance between them, and because the challenge triggered his own circumstances? The hunter became the hunted. The hunted, in turn, would hunt.

  She had arrived well ahead of the pack, and paid over a mouse and a bear and a dove to complete the round, then passed through the doorway into a sumptuously appointed star-shaped hall.

  Among the provisions for comfort and further gaming were a generous scattering of members of the Tower of Balance, ready to oversee the payment of forfeits, and Rian was not in the least surprised to find Alexandrine standing at her elbow. Cernunnos was not the only power pulling her strings this night, whether the Duke of Balance called himself a god or not.

  "Are these games always so elaborate?" she asked Alexandrine.

  "This is one of the major challenges," Alexandrine said. "To honour the sweet-singers."

  "It's something they enjoy?" Her sweet-singer had not wafted down to join her, though she could still make out its voice, clear in the growing chorus above.

  "In a manner, they are competing as you have done. As if with a race of horses."

  The black-winged woman looked amused, but did not outright suggest Rian represented a poorly-chosen outlier at long odds. As was to be expected with any wild gamble, Rian had not performed well. She had achieved her primary goal, but the game had cost her eight of her own ten-Tears, which ironically – or as a matter of suspicious coincidence – left her with Tears equal to the cost she had paid for double entry to the Towers in the first place. And one more.

  "I have a forfeit I would like to claim," she told Alexandrine, raising D'Argent's ten-Tear. "Whenever that is possible."

  Entirely unsurprised, Alexandrine nodded, and touched Rian's shoulder. The world shifted, and Rian found herself alone in a room where shimmering curtains wavered in not-very-vertical directions, as if they were reaching out to the single table and two chairs set in the room's centre.

  Rian sat down, and briefly inspected her feet. The bruises no longer hurt, though small purple circles marked where she'd found particularly sharp stones or gnarled roots. She wondered if she'd get the rest of her dress back, when all of this was done. The rules hadn't been clear on that point, and it would be awkward travelling even the short distance to the special Towers train in only two layers of gossamer shimmer.

  "I compliment you, Mademoiselle."

  Rian glanced up from contemplation of her clothing, and found that Alexandrine had returned with D'Argent – who thankfully still wore the Mask of Léon. At
last. Time to finish this.

  (xi)

  From the count of the ten-Tears hanging from his veil, D'Argent had been a little more successful in the challenge than Rian, but her last fear – that he had obtained one of her ten-Tears, and thus could cancel out her forfeit through exchange – was quickly assuaged, and so she said briskly:

  "My forfeit is the custody of the mask of a silver lion."

  Alexandrine nodded briefly, and D'Argent's ten-Tear rose from the table, and split into two fragments, one of which vanished. The man promptly unlaced his mask and handed it to Rian.

  "Thank you," she said, interested to see that the ribbons and threads that surrounded him so thickly had shifted when he gave up the mask. Some had grown more prominent, and others had receded.

  With the veil concealing only his lower face, D'Argent was revealed to be quite a young man, with fine black eyes, lightly-marked brows, and dark brown hair.

  "I look forward to seeing it again," he said, with emphasis.

  That was, at the very least, a promise to check to see that she returned it to the Sourné. Rian put the mask on the table, and glanced at the remainder of his ten-Tear, worried he would pursue the question of how the Mask of Léon had fallen into Henri's hands.

  "Do you wish to claim another forfeit?" Alexandrine asked, obligingly.

  Rian hesitated, for she had been left with only a small number of D'Argent's Tears. How would he react if she attempted to extract a binding promise from him, but failed because she did not have enough for the cost?

  And what to do about her discoveries regarding the Prince Royal?

  "Is it so very hard to decide?" D'Argent asked, sounding amused. Still standing, he leaned forward in order to gaze into her eyes through her mask. "I do not think I have ever met you before."