HM01 Moonspeaker

by K. D. Wentworth

  The orange flames were leaping high above the central pavilion now. She could hear the crackling even on this side of the common. The hot swirling breeze carried bits of charred material past her face.

  The sweating gelding flattened its ears, dancing in place underneath her, its dark eyes white-rimmed with fear. Haemas glanced back at the man who had stolen her from Jarid; one of his golden-brown eyes had cracked open just enough to see her.

  Leaning over the gelding’s bunched shoulder muscles, she released its mind. Terrified, the horse plunged away from the fire and smoke through the crowds, carrying her back toward the narrow streets of Dorbin.

  * * *

  Cale was swearing under his breath. The entire common was filled with running, squealing animals until there wasn’t one safe square inch to stand on. “I’ll bet the little she-demon had this planned all along!” he told himself angrily, shoving through frightened people, dodging horses and clumsy savoks.

  He caught a glimpse of her patched tunic about twenty feet away, then threw himself aside as a white-eyed bay mare swerved toward him. When he looked back up, the Kashi girl had disappeared into the crowd. He swore again. What did she think she was doing, starting this ruckus before he was ready? They’d be lucky now to get away with their own ebari!

  Well, he for one didn’t intend to face Eevlina without his share of the booty again. Watching for his chance, he seized the trailing lead of a panicked sorrel colt as it galloped past. The big-boned colt, at least two years old, rolled its terrified eyes and struck at him with its forelegs. Cale hung on the rope, using his weight to pull its head down, and watched for an opening. Just as the colt hit the ground with both white-stockinged legs, he darted in and gripped its rope halter.

  A sudden commotion made him glance over his shoulder. A fallen man was being surrounded by angry townspeople. A plump girl with long black braids advanced menacingly on him, backed up by men and women brandishing sticks and tools. Cale glanced at the fallen man, then looked again.

  There could be no mistaking that bright golden hair and those light demon-eyes. It was a Kashi Lord, probably the one Haemas had been afraid of. His face darkened with anger. Just who did this Lord-fellow think he was, ruining Eevlina’s raid?

  The pale-gold eyes glanced up and a cruel smile flickered across the aristocratic features. The golden hair and eyes shimmered for a moment, then disappeared beneath the face of an ordinary chierra man.

  Cale reached down with his free arm to throttle the man. “Try your demon’s ways on us, will you, you misbegotten Highland . . .”

  The intense brown eyes stared back at him.

  . . . Cale found his hand steadying Mashal’s shoulder as he stood up. All around them, the circle of townspeople rumbled angrily and then edged in closer with their homemade weapons. The smoke thickened as Cale watched them out of the corner of his eye.

  “Mashal, what do they want?” He lowered his voice. “Did someone catch Jassfra setting the fire?”

  “I don’t know.” Mashal pushed Cale toward the edge of the crowd. “But we’d best get our tails out of this place while we still have them!”

  They shoved through the angry townspeople, back-to-back with Cale keeping a strong hold on the nervous colt. Each time they came within an arm’s length of anyone, their furious faces became confused, and then they just melted away into the crowd. The reek of charred wood and fabric grew stronger. The trembling, wild-eyed chestnut colt fought him at every step.

  “Over there.” Mashal pointed at a skittish gray mare boxed in between two collapsed booths. “We’ve got to have another beast or we’ll never make it out of here.”

  Cale was about to protest that they had to find Eevlina, Jassfra, and even Haemas, if possible, before they left, but quite suddenly he realized they could take care of themselves.

  “Hold the colt.” He handed Mashal the lead line. “I’ll be right back.” Ducking his head, he chased the terrified mare through the thickening smoke as it dashed behind booths and shied from fleeing groups of people.

  When he finally trapped the mare, he vaulted onto its back and looked around for Mashal. The big man waved to him from atop the chestnut colt.

  “Come on!” Mashal yelled. “Let’s get out of this skivit-ridden town before the whole stinking place burns down around our ears!”

  Cale nodded and put his heels to the gray mare, following Mashal through the choking smoke. Well, he thought to himself, using his sleeve to wipe at the smoke-tears streaming from his irritated eyes, he had to hand it to her.

  Eevlina had outdone herself this time.

  * * *

  The black gelding trembled beneath Haemas and its neck was soaked with sweat. Slowing it to a walk, Haemas looked around the dusty street. People were running into their houses and slamming the doors shut, while others struggled on foot to reach the town gate. Behind her, a column of dense black smoke spiralled slantwise up into the clear green sky.

  If she could just find a place to hide, Cale and the rest of the raiders would leave and she would finally be free of them. Halting the gelding, she slid off its sweaty back behind a rickety wagon.

  “All I know is that the lass be here somewhere, and I gots to find her!” an angry voice said.

  Haemas glanced at the other side of the farm wagon and pressed back against the building as a white-haired old man shook off the woman clinging to his arm.

  The woman stumbled against the wagon, then caught the side to keep her balance. “But who is she?”

  The old man turned his back and stalked down the crowded street. Uneasy, Haemas used the wagon to remount, then headed the gelding’s nose back toward the town wall.

  Just as she passed the old man, though, he looked up at her with hard brown eyes and yelled, “Stop, you! Stop!” He lunged, catching her left boot.

  Trying to kick his hand loose, Haemas leaned over the horse’s neck and urged it to speed with her mind. The skittish horse plunged forward, but he wrenched on her leg until she lost her balance and toppled backwards.

  The beat of the gelding’s hooves receded toward the gate as she sprawled in the dust at the angry old man’s feet.

  BOOTS continued to pound by, but the shouting chierra voices seemed less anxious. Kevisson’s face was pressed into the stiff grass, and his head rang with an obstinate insistency. He clenched his fingers into the black dirt and tried again to get back on his feet.

  An arm reached down and levered him up. He squinted through the smoke-hazed air at a young man in a smudged blue costume trimmed in red, probably one of the dancers. The stranger ran a finger along the bloody gash in the Searcher’s right temple. “It don’t look too bad.”

  Kevisson flinched. “I’ll be fine.”

  “Come on, then. The fire be out now, but you should get on home to your folk.” The stranger shook his head. “Such a funny color of hair you have there.” He laughed a little as he steered Kevisson around a collapsed booth. “Almost like—”

  Bloody darkness! Kevisson jammed his six-fingered hands into his pockets. The fall had stunned him, and then he’d forgotten to shield his appearance.

  “Got your breath now?” The man studied him, and when the Searcher nodded, clapped him on the back. “Well, then I’ll be off.” The blue and red vest slipped off into the milling spectators before Kevisson recovered enough wits to thank him.

  He turned around slowly, reaching out with his mind for his link to the Tal girl. She still seemed to be near, but he couldn’t shake the impression she was in danger. And he couldn’t get the face of that Kashi man out of his mind. He was sure the Council had sent only one Searcher, but why else would a Kashi be here in the dusty backwoods town?

  He closed his eyes. The girl had fled toward the town gate. Summoning enough strength to shield his Kashi coloring, he ignored his throbbing head and trudged back across the common in that direction. His sen
se of the girl grew stronger with each step and the feeling of urgency increased.

  As he neared the town gate, he heard angry voices just up ahead. He supported himself against the rough stone of a ramshackle inn and caught at the shifting edges of someone’s hot unreasoning hatred and a second person’s bewilderment and fear. His link to the girl ran straight into that violent tangle of emotions.

  “Cittar, no!” a woman shouted, then there was the sound of scuffling.

  Kevisson followed the woman’s anguished voice around a wagon. An old man crouched in the middle of the dusty street, one hand knotted in the ragged tunic of a street urchin.

  A chierra woman hung desperately on his raised arm. “For the Mother’s sake, Cittar, it weren’t even your horse!”

  Kevisson blinked, trying to make his smoke-filled brain understand, then he realized—his link led to the dirty bundle of rags at the angry man’s feet.

  He reached out to the old man’s mind and met a seething swirl of fear and hatred. He hesitated, but then the old man shook the woman off and drew back his fist to strike the child again.

  Kevisson lurched forward and clutched his thin arm. “What’s the problem, friend?” he said, sending his own mind deep into the pit of black emotion before him.

  The old man’s fist hesitated. A puzzled look seeped across his wrinkled face as Kevisson struggled to damp out the angry energy loosed inside his mind. Then Cittar turned puzzled brown eyes to the Searcher and the fight melted out of his wiry old body. “I don’t . . .” His hand opened slowly and the girl’s limp body slumped back into the dust at his feet. “I don’t know.”

  Kevisson kept his own hand steady on the old man’s arm as he tried to trace the source of all that hatred. His lips tightened as he realized someone, who wasn’t too neat or particular, had done violence to this defenseless old man’s mind.

  “It’s all right, Cittar.” He released the peddler’s arm. “Just a mistake, nothing more.”

  “What were I doing?” Cittar watched in bewilderment as the woman dropped to her knees and cradled the unconscious girl’s head in her lap. “I don’t even know the lass.”

  Kevisson brushed his fingers across the girl’s clammy forehead. He glimpsed the familiar silver glow of her mind, muted, but steady. He straightened, feeling relieved. “I don’t think she’s badly hurt.” He looked at the woman who was wiping at the tears trailing down her own grimy face. “Is there somewhere near here where she can rest?”

  The woman smoothed the dirty brown hair out of the girl’s face and nodded. “My place, the Golden Egg, right behind you.” She shook her head. “I can’t imagine what made Cittar act so mean. I’ve knowed him fourteen years now and he were always such a gentle old sod.”

  Kevisson glanced at the old man standing in the middle of the road with a dazed expression. “Perhaps the smoke confused him.” He gathered the girl in his arms. Her long legs dangled, but she weighed no more than a lightwing.

  The woman stood up and beat at her dusty skirts. “Maybe so, but he were acting peculiar even this morning when he got up. Do you know the lass?”

  Kevisson’s feet were as heavy as stone as he trudged to the inn’s door and shoved it open with his elbow. “She’s my sister,” he said with an effort.

  “Really?” Her brown eyes widened. “That’s so fortunate, with all this trouble.” Then her plain honest face fell. She dropped her voice to a confidential whisper. “You know, the young rascal were stealing a horse, a big black one. You really ought to watch her a mite closer.” She opened the door and stood aside. “Up the stairs, third door on the left.”

  Kevisson stopped on the landing to get his breath and leaned back against the rough-hewn coolness of the stone wall. Only a few more steps and he would rest, he promised himself. He looked down at the still ragamuffin in his tired arms.

  At least his Search was finished.

  * * *

  Birtal Senn accepted the silver cup of spiced mead from the apprentice’s outstretched hand, then scowled as he watched the youngster retreat. It just didn’t seem natural for a Kashi lad to perform such a menial task.

  The boy looked over his shoulder, his golden eyes wide as he made a stumbling, awkward exit from the study.

  Over in his chair before the fire, Lord High Master Ellirt chuckled. “Really, Birtal, if you’re going to think such things, you ought to shield around the youngsters.” He winked one of his sightless eyes. “It’s hard enough to get the little rascals to do their part when they first come here.”

  Birtal sniffed the spiced mead, then took a dubious sip. “Don’t see why they should do such menial work at all.” He settled into the opposite seat before the hearth and propped his heavy boots up on a stool. “It’s not as if you couldn’t have as many servants here as you need. The Houses have offered enough times.”

  “Our students don’t come to Shael’donn to be waited upon. They get enough of that at home.” Ellirt reached for another log, then thrust it unerringly into the fire’s crackling red heart. “They come here to learn to do for themselves.” The flames sizzled as the log settled into place.

  Birtal rolled the hot mead on his tongue. Excellent, as everything tended to be in this infuriating place. He wondered, not for the first time, how every product of Shael’donn could prove to be so much better than anything the rest of the Highlands could produce.

  He set the cup down with a clink. “I want to know what your boy has found down in the Lowlands.”

  “At last report, very little.” Ellirt rose and guided himself behind his high-backed chair with one hand. “As you should well know. If I’d heard more, I would have told you.”

  Birtal grunted.

  “What do you really want, old friend?”

  “I want this whole blasted nightmare to be over!” Birtal knew he was letting his irritation leak through his shields, but he didn’t care. Let Ellirt know, let the entire benighted place know that Birtal Senn had run out of patience! “I want Alyssa’s man back at her side! I want to see a whole roomful of her children ready to inherit Tal’ayn!”

  “Ah . . .” Ellirt ran a hand back over his sparse head of white hair. “Now we begin to get at the truth.”

  Birtal picked up the silver cup, then realized it was already empty and thumped it back down. “It’s all very well for you here at Shael’donn to turn up your nose at inheritance and family, but the rest of us still have to carry on.”

  “And Alyssa isn’t with child?”

  “No.” Birtal grimaced. “Nor is she likely to be.” He studied the old man’s blind eyes. How did Ellirt always manage to cut to the heart of matters so?

  A tiny part of his mind whispered back that perhaps his own shields weren’t what they once had been.

  Ellirt picked up a silver pitcher setting close to the open hearth and handed it to his visitor. “Has old Tal died then? I hadn’t heard.”

  “No, but he isn’t improving either.” Birtal took the heavy pitcher and poured another measure of hot mead for himself. “The Council is growing restless. Someone has to take up Tal’ayn’s seat.”

  “Or your faction will lose its majority?” Ellirt’s face remained blandly polite.

  Birtal scowled. “I’ve a perfect right to expect Tal’s support.”

  “But Alyssa can’t inherit if she hasn’t borne an heir.” Ellirt guided himself back to his seat and sank down on it again. “And Tal already has an heir.”

  “That ingrate forfeited every right she ever had to Tal’ayn the night she tried to kill her own father!”

  Ellirt nodded slowly. “You’re right, of course, but I’ve been thinking . . .” His voice trailed away thoughtfully. “What a strange thing that was for a youngster to do.” He leaned back in his chair, locking his hands across the tooled sunburst on his belt. “Oh, I know old Tal was a rough sort, but still . . . she’s so young and said to be gentle
-natured.”

  He paused, his sightless eyes staring unerringly at Birtal’s face. “Her mother was from sound Sennay and Killian stock, wasn’t she?”

  “Killian stock.” Birtal snorted and moved restlessly in his chair. “Not one head of really golden hair in the whole pale-eyed bunch!”

  “And so abominably independent-minded,” Ellirt murmured. “Isn’t there a matrimonial contract pending between Tal’ayn and Killian’ayn?”

  “I don’t care about the damn Killians! I just want her brought back and punished so the matter of Tal’ayn can be resolved. I want Alyssa to get on with her life.”

  The silence hung stiffly between them as the burning logs shifted downward, choking the fire in its own ashes. Finally, Birtal said, “What’s this I hear about you forbidding Shael’donn masters to participate in the Temporal Conclave? We’re meeting tomorrow and, without Tal, we need at least one more strong mind in the power relay.”

  Ellirt rose and put a hand on Senn’s shoulder. “Every time you broach those energies, you risk the lives of everyone there. And even if it were safe, what if you could travel across time, would that make our lives better in any measurable way? Leave this insanity alone and put your considerable talents to some other, better use.”

  Birtal lurched to his feet and reached for his cloak. I could use your support in this, Kniel.

  A somber wave of regret washed through the warm glow of friendship Ellirt projected. Don’t ask what is not mine to give, old friend.

  Birtal’s back stiffened. He swirled the cloak around his shoulders and banged the door open. Ellirt’s regard followed him down the corridor, but Birtal just meshed his shields more tightly and shut the old man out.

  * * *

  Kevisson dipped the clean cloth into the basin of warm soapy water and dabbed at the grime covering the girl’s face. The greasy dark film washed off easily, leaving her skin gleaming palely in the room’s dim light.