HM01 Moonspeaker

by K. D. Wentworth

  “We’ll be there, Gran.”

  Haemas watched the old woman shove a large wicker basket at Jassfra, then limp toward a large, open-sided pavilion set up in the center of the wide grassy common. Cale dismounted, then reached up to pull Haemas down. The instant her feet touched the grass, a prickly feeling crawled down her spine. “Someone’s watching us.”

  “Where?” His black-haired head craned around.

  “I don’t know.” The awful feeling, like fire mites crawling over her skin, was growing more intense. She glanced nervously at the laughing, chattering people crowding past.

  “Come on.” He jerked her arm impatiently. “I don’t see no one looking at us but I do see the horses.”

  “No, it’s true! I—feel it.”

  He stopped and studied her face with his strange blue eyes. “Feel it?”

  “Like the silsha.”

  “Oh, quit making excuses and get on with it.” He dragged her over to a nervous chestnut mare decked out with bright red ribbons in its cream-colored mane. She offered the flat of her hand to the mare’s twitching muzzle. The pink nostrils flared, then lowered to sniff, tickling her palm.

  A short, energetic brown-eyed man wiped his hands on his worn black leather breeches and walked around the mare’s flank. He grinned broadly. “That’s amazing. I trained this here gorgeous creature myself since she were a wee filly, and I ain’t never seen her take to anyone so fast.”

  Haemas stroked the mare’s warm neck, then scratched behind the velvety ears, listening to its mind. “But didn’t you just trade for her yesterday?”

  “You wasn’t there when old Groengin and I striked the deal.” The man peered suspiciously into Haemas’s face. “No one were.”

  Thrusting himself between her and the trader, Cale smiled thinly. “Looks to be a mite too fine for our purse anyway.” He snagged the girl by the neck of her ragged tunic and dragged her toward the next horse. “Thanks all the same.”

  “Did Groengin send you to queer my deals?” The trader’s brow furrowed. “I’ll fix that old bastard! He traded me fair and square!”

  Cale marched Haemas past the next three horses before he stopped. “Are you trying to get us killed?” He peered over the back of a tall black gelding.

  “Sorry,” Haemas said, rubbing her neck. “I wasn’t raised to be a thief.”

  “You wasn’t raised to do anything useful but you’re going to learn.” Cale straightened up cautiously. “Now get to work. Eevlina and Jassfra should be ready soon.”

  “Ready for what?” Suddenly Haemas shivered even though the air was balmy. The crawly feeling of someone watching her was overwhelming.

  “Never you mind. Just get on with it.”

  She stretched out a hand to the long-legged black gelding. It flicked an ear at her, then turned away.

  The watched feeling increased again. A spot right between her shoulder blades began to itch. She turned around just as a man and woman pushed past Cale. The woman had long dark braids and a shy smile, but a curious doubleness overlay the man’s face. He had brown chierra eyes and hair, tan chierra skin . . . and bright-gold hair with pale-gold eyes.

  She blinked hard, trying to see what was truly there.

  Brown eyes.

  Gold eyes.

  Her breath caught in her throat; she couldn’t separate the two. He had to be Kashi, sent to punish her. Slipping around the gelding, she pressed her forehead against its smooth neck and tried to breathe slowly.

  The gelding nickered, then lipped at her sleeve. Closing her eyes, she reached out with her mind for her pursuer, but nothing was there, as nothing had been ever since that night.

  “Enough already!” Cale grabbed her collar and pulled her away. “We’ll have every horse trader in the whole of Dorbin breathing down our backs. All you have to do is talk to the beasts a bit, not make love to them!”

  She looked over her shoulder and caught another glance of the double face. “Someone is after me. We’ve got to get out of here!”

  “That line were old before Eevlina was born.” He marched past several ebari and a skeletal ummit, then stopped in front of a swaybacked gray mare and its colt.

  “Can’t you see him?” She ducked down behind the placid mare. A chill washed through her. She seemed to feel someone only a few feet away, laughing at her, the same way he always did when--? Her mind raced. Was it Jarid?

  She darted around the mare, keeping her eyes on the ground, swerving past clumps of people, knowing only that she had to get away.

  Suddenly a black boot snaked out and tripped her. She crashed hard into the ground, stomach-first. Stunned by the impact, she sprawled in the short grass, an iron band constricting her chest, unable to get her breath.

  The black boots walked up to her nose. “Well, Light bless me if it isn’t the skivit underneath all that dirt.”

  * * *

  Kevisson swallowed the last bite of savok stew and stood back, feeling much better. The woman behind the roughly made counter looked pointedly at the wooden bowl in his hand.

  “More stew, sir?”

  “No, thank you.” He sopped up a smear of savory brown gravy with the remaining crust of black bread, then stuffed it into his mouth and handed her the bowl. Fortunately, his silver had been in his pocket when he’d encountered the pool, or he’d have gone hungry.

  Testing his link for direction, Kevisson began to trace it again through the crowd, although he wasn’t sure just what he could accomplish in front of so many people. More than likely, he’d have to track the girl when she left with her friends and take her somewhere in the countryside, perhaps when they all slept tonight.

  He passed a dancing circle of girls with tiny blue and white spring flowers braided into their dark hair, their slim hands tracing graceful figures above their heads. Behind him, the feda pipe slowly increased its tempo until the crowd’s clapping hands could not keep up. A shout finally went up as the dance ended, dancers and piper alike exhausted and laughing.

  Then several fiddles took up the slack, weaving lively harmonies around each other as he worked his way across the common. He slipped his hand into his pocket and closed his fingers around the hard obsidian ring. Even through the cloth wrapping, the sense of his quarry was so strong, he should see her any second.

  Passing the final food booth, he saw a string of animals staked out up ahead. Suddenly a slender dark-haired figure darted past him and continued on a short distance before tripping and sprawling face-first in the grass.

  He started to pass as several people stopped to help, but the ring in his hand vibrated with Haemas Tal’s closeness. Kevisson glanced around in a quick circle, but saw no one who fit her description.

  Closing his eyes, he tested his link to be sure. Then he looked again as a Kashi man with bright-gold hair seized the gasping smudged-faced waif and hauled her roughly to her feet.

  Somewhere on the common behind him, the fiddles reached the climax of their tune as Kevisson and the heir of Tal’ayn locked eyes for the space of a heartbeat before the Kashi jerked her away and the crowd closed between them.

  “TAKE a strong hold on this ragamuffin, Mairianda,” Jarid instructed as he jerked Haemas’s prone form up, “and haul her straight back to your father. He can use her to take out the slops.”

  Mairianda seized the struggling girl’s arm with both hands. Her soft, round-cheeked face smiled at Jarid as though he were inviting her to a festival.

  He reached across and shook Haemas until her head snapped. “Now stop that and, for once, behave yourself like a Lady! I’m not going to take you back.” He let a sly smile seep across his lips. “After all, you did both of us a favor.”

  His cousin stared at him, her eyes enormous, and touched the livid bruise spreading over her cheek with the back of her hand.

  He read the doubt and suspicion playing through her mind.
“I’m sure you realize you can never return to Tal’ayn.” He felt her shame rekindle as the white-hot memory of her father lying dead at her feet resurfaced. He schooled his voice to reasonableness. “Go with Mairianda.”

  Yes, skivit, he thought to himself with satisfaction, go with Mairianda so I can send the old peddler to finish you off and no one will ever trace your death to me.

  “She’ll take care of you.” He reached for her mind, reassuring himself that the girl’s mind was not shielded. Ever since that fiasco at Tal’ayn when his young cousin had fought him with such unexpected strength, he had been plagued by a lingering uneasiness whenever he’d planned for this meeting.

  Haemas jerked away, then surprised him by closing her eyes and sending a mental call for—something. Before he could tap into her thoughts directly, he was distracted by shouting and a cacophony of squealing, snorting, and neighing behind them. Hoofs pounded as several horses and an ebari broke loose and raced past. Throwing himself to one side, Jarid watched in shocked silence as two more horses along the stakeout line reared and fought their bonds until they also were free.

  Haemas’s eyes were open now. She whirled against Mairianda and pushed the heavier young woman to the ground. The peculiar calling continued and he realized she was summoning the animals.

  Mairianda sat up in the grass, her face smudged and apron disarrayed, and watched stupidly as Haemas stumbled into the stream of horses and ebari. Then the chierra girl turned her black eyes to him, looking at him first with puzzlement, then in awakening anger.

  Belatedly, he realized he’d forgotten to hold onto her mind or to shield his Kashi appearance . . . indeed had forgotten everything in his effort to control his cousin. He shoved the chierra girl aside and followed, reaching again for Haemas’s mind, thinking angrily that he would not come so close to eliminating her claim to Tal’ayn and fail. He had just grasped the edges of Haemas’s shieldless mind when a stampeding savok slammed his shoulder from behind and pitched him head over heels.

  He struggled to his knees, stopping her flight with the full force of his mind. Defiant, but unable to move, she glared at him from ten feet away. Sweat trickled down his temple as he fought to hold her there. He could swear the brat had no shields, yet every time he had her pinned, her mind twisted in his mental grasp, leaving him without full control.

  A tall dark-haired man appeared behind her and, bundling a long cloak around her face and shoulders, dragged the girl into the crowd.

  Stumbling back onto his feet, he started to follow, but a circle of chierra townspeople closed on him, white-faced and angry, their hands clenched around sticks and hoes and whips.

  Jarid smiled uneasily and concentrated on regaining his chierra appearance.

  * * *

  The handsome male dancer tripped over the two long poles flashing back and forth over the ground in an intricate rhythm. The crowd laughed and jeered until he took up the pattern again, his feet flashing over each pole as the beaters moved it in time with the music. The onlookers roared their approval.

  Jassfra, standing just inside the canvas wall of the pavilion, found herself clapping and calling out with the rest of them until Eevlina elbowed her in the ribs.

  “Forget that nonsense and pay attention!” Eevlina’s heavy face scowled at her. “It be almost time.”

  Jassfra moved the basket up on her arm and nodded, although her gaze drifted back to the blue-and-red-shirted male dancers concluding the dance. Their good-natured sweating faces were tense with concentration, and she had her eye on one broad-shouldered fellow with a ready smile. Just once, she thought testily, she would like to go to a festival or a fair and have some plain, ordinary fun.

  The notion of horses to ride on their raids all summer cheered her up though. No one could catch them if they were mounted on horses, and the beasts would likely last clear into the fall before they went all spindly and listless from lack of Old grain.

  “Are you sure it’s still all right?” Eevlina reached for the basket.

  Jassfra rolled her eyes. “Yes.”

  “Don’t get fresh with me, you red-haired baggage!” Eevlina planted one fist on an oversized hip and jabbed Jassfra with her walking stick. “I’ll still be stealing long after the rest of you lies dead and buried!”

  Jassfra was saved from answering by a disturbance from the far end of the common. A handful of people drifted outside to see even as the male dancers were joined by young women in beautifully embroidered green vests to begin a complicated flirting dance.

  Eevlina arched her bushy gray brows. “Now.”

  Jassfra stood on tiptoe to peer over the heads of the crowd outside the pavilion. “I thought Cale was going to wait for us to start.”

  Eevlina took her elbow and hustled her into a dark corner behind a sausage booth. “Them’s horses I hear out there, so if it isn’t Cale and that yellow-eyed brat, it might as well be. Get on with it.”

  Jassfra set the basket down behind Eevlina’s full skirts and picked up the ebari horn filled with carefully banked embers.

  “Hurry up!” Eevlina hissed, while nodding pleasantly at several gaily dressed women who glanced at her curiously.

  Jassfra removed the moss stopper and blew on the embers. The faint red glow inside flared.

  “What in the seven hells are you doing down there, girl?” Eevlina fretted, without looking at her. “They’ve almost finished the blasted dance!”

  Jassfra spotted a side flap of the pavilion trailing limply in the breeze. Protecting the horn with one hand, she pressed the heavy cloth to the embers inside and watched as the flames caught and blackened the edges. Then she thrust the horn back into the basket and strolled away, nodding to Eevlina as she passed. The old woman glanced back over her shoulder at the yellow flames creeping up the side of the pavilion and followed her hastily. An acrid smell drifted behind them.

  They had barely reached the opposite side when a woman’s screams added to the din of animal noises outside.

  “What is it?” someone yelled over the music as the spectators turned and gaped.

  “I hope them worthless boys is paying attention.” Eevlina pushed through the crowd without a backwards glance. “I don’t intend to have to do this twice. They better come up with them horses this time, or I’ll learn’em not to disappoint me again!”

  Jassfra pitched the basket underneath the wooden plank of an ale booth and then hurried after the gray-haired woman.

  * * *

  Jarid’s pale eyes pinned Haemas with a magnetic compulsion impossible to break. Her fists clenched until her fingers were white. Whatever happened, she told herself, she would not go with him!

  While still calling the horses with all her strength, she tried moving just one foot, but her feet were made of lead.

  Suddenly rough wool enveloped her from behind, pinning her arms as she was lifted off her feet. For a second Jarid’s compulsion to stay dragged painfully at her mind and she fought her rescuer. Then his hold snapped, and she sagged limply against the arms carrying her.

  It must be Cale, she thought, stumbling blindly after him. Who else would come for her? The cries of frightened horses and ebari and people yelling swirled around her, and a new note of panic developed in the voices.

  Working one arm up, she fought the smothering cloak. The hold around her shoulders slipped and she managed to claw the cloth out of her face. The man pulling her through the milling crowd of people and animals glanced down, his brown eyes widening in surprise.

  Or were they golden? A sick, panicky feeling raced through her as she stared at the curious doubleness of his face and hair. He tightened his grip and dragged her onward. “Don’t make this harder on yourself than it has to be.” Breathing hard, he jerked her out of the way of a terrified ummit veering from one side to the other.

  Heart pounding, she squirmed and twisted, but with a grown man’s strengt
h he looped the cloak back over her face and forced her onward. She couldn’t let this stranger take her back, her mind insisted in a red haze of panic. Then she managed to get her feet under her as they stopped and she caught of whiff of something burning.

  Smothered by the coarse material, she reached out with her mind, searching for the black gelding. Holding onto that purpose, she didn’t resist when the man resumed his zigzag course across the common until, suddenly, she felt the terrified gelding near.

  Here, she called to it. Here I am! Come to me!

  She heard hoofs pounding through the grass, and then the horse’s labored breathing, coming in short, heavy blows. She reached for control. Knock him down.

  The confused gelding snorted, its mind radiating fear. She could feel it back away, snorting uneasily.

  Knock him down!

  A solid impact sent Haemas and the man sprawling. She lay dazed for a moment, then scrabbled out of the cloak. Men and women, towing screaming children, dodged around her, fleeing back toward the main part of town. The stench of scorched fabric choked the air.

  She glanced down at the man on the ground. He had grazed his temple on an ale barrel as he’d fallen. A red line disappeared back into thick golden-brown hair. A few feet away, the black gelding pawed fearfully at the turf as the smoke thickened.

  Haemas reassured the horse’s mind as she stroked its shoulder. The gelding trembled, but stood when she grabbed a double-handful of coarse mane. Just as she almost had her leg over its back, it shied away from an ummit colliding with the plank front of a nearby booth. Haemas’s weak shoulder refused to hold her weight, and she slipped back.

  The man on the ground moved his arm a few inches, then groaned. Haemas took the frightened gelding’s headstall and guided it around to the fallen plank. Using that as a step, she hitched herself over the horse’s knobby backbone, balancing there on her stomach until she could swing her leg over.