Circle of the Moon

by Barbara Hambly

  Music whispered, deep in the hollows of her brain.

  Then the scratch of bare feet on the rock behind her startled her nearly out of her skin, like a drench of icy water, icy fear.

  A teyn . . .

  Eleven Grasshoppers?

  The jenny appeared around the rocks, pale as a ghost in the light of the blazing moon. Her silvery hair glimmered as she hurried toward the girl, running like a wilding on hands as well as feet. “No,” the old jenny said, in the hoarse, flat voice that all teyn had when they spoke the few words of which they were capable. “Off.” And coming near Foxfire, she caught her torn sleeve, tugged her to follow, then let go immediately, obviously fearing the slap that was the inevitable result of a teyn laying hands on its master. Her eye slits were dilated so that they nearly hid the pale blue rim of iris; her strange narrow face between its thickets of hair seemed very human.

  She gestured around her at the dark landscape, the unseen sense that there was some terrible thing there, something that the wildings had fled. Something waiting. “Off.”

  “I think you’re right, sweetheart,” agreed Foxfire, and gave the jenny a quick, heartfelt hug. “Let’s get off right now.”

  It never crossed Foxfire’s mind that Eleven Grasshoppers might be leading her into some danger, and in fact it was only minutes until they emerged from the mouth of a wadi to see the rear wall of the compound in the Valley of the Hawk. It wasn’t the same wadi Foxfire had gone up but one on the other side of the compound. She couldn’t imagine how the old jenny had navigated in these hills, where, to Foxfire’s knowledge, she’d never been before. “Wait a minute,” Foxfire whispered, “wait a minute,” as Eleven Grasshoppers tried to pull her toward the walls. Foxfire took a deep breath, steadying herself, then—despite trembling exhaustion, terror, exertion, and a ravenous hunger headache—called around them both the concealing cantrips of a Gray Cloak.

  She would have liked to stretch out her mind to the guards on the wall, breathe into their thoughts the spell of inattention and daydreams that had worked so well at the Temple of Nebekht. But such a spell might have been strong enough to impinge into Red Silk’s consciousness. Moreover, all the way here she’d been aware that Eleven Grasshoppers was in a state of growing fear, looking around her and now and then plucking Foxfire’s sleeve to get her to hurry. Whatever had frightened away the attacking wildings, it was still in the hills. Though Foxfire could hear nothing of its approach, and even by extending her senses she could neither scent it nor see it, it was there.

  It was close.

  And it had to be fearsome, Foxfire thought, for Eleven Grasshoppers to be ready to return to captivity—and for all the others to remain behind the walls rather than slip out by whatever means she had used—rather than to face it by trying to escape.

  Not good.

  Despite her growing sense of urgency, Foxfire paused long enough to listen one more time, casting her senses toward the compound—and couldn’t hear a thing. Oh, thank you, Grandmother, for those spells of concealment. With pounding heart, not knowing what waited for her, she put one arm around Eleven Grasshoppers’s shoulders, fixed her mind on the Gray Cloak, and led the old jenny across the moonlit sand toward the low place in the kitchen wall. She could see the silhouettes of the guards on the walls passing before the torches. One of them called another and pointed, not toward Foxfire but past her at the wadi from which she’d just emerged. Turning, Foxfire saw something move, a whisper of greenish mist, the reflection of greenish light on a rock.

  She quickened her step and glanced back several more times as she scrambled over the wall. Eleven Grasshoppers followed her with monkeylike nimbleness.

  Standing in the darkness behind the water barrels, Foxfire probed the compound with hearing and scent.

  No shouting. No weeping from the direction of her own room, only Opal’s soft, steady breath. Not even sleeping, it didn’t sound like.

  And like heaven, the smell of salted lemons, chicken, olives, rice.

  God of Women, thank you. Thank you.

  Foxfire slipped open the bolt on the door of the teyn compound, gently guided Eleven Grasshoppers in again. (For all the good that’s likely to do!) She’d have to come up with a story that accounted for her torn dress, bruised knees, and lacerated hands that both took place within the compound and would give her a good excuse to ask for Eleven Grasshoppers as a personal slave, exempt from the stake and the poison cup.

  As she pushed the door closed she chopped her hand down in front of the opening, whispered, “No! No.”

  Eleven Grasshoppers regarded her with those round pale-blue eyes beneath her tufted brow. Foxfire would have sworn they glinted with irony.

  “You know what I mean,” she said.

  Eleven Grasshoppers only blinked and bared her teeth good-naturedly. Beyond her, the other teyn slept huddled together in each other’s long arms, scratching and now and then snuffling in their sleep.

  She knew they didn’t understand. Nevertheless, Foxfire whispered, “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  And closed and barred the gate.

  Though she was shaking with fatigue and hunger—and running the risk of being spotted by Red Silk in her torn dress and wild, dust-covered hair, if her grandmother was still awake and prowling—Foxfire climbed one of the pine-pole ladders up to the battlement. She stole along the compound wall, passing unseen within inches of the guard on that side, and made her way back to the western wall, the direction from which she and Eleven Grasshoppers had returned to safety.

  For some time she stood in the darkness at the corner of the parapet, gazing out at the hills in which she’d stumbled, searching for some glimpse, some hint to what it was that had frightened away the wildings. For whatever scared the teyn in the compound so badly that they’d risk certain death by remaining.

  Had one—or some—of the djinni in fact survived?

  She didn’t think so. She’d felt none of the jangling, horrible electricity in the air that she’d experienced near the djinn Ba, the djinn from whose blind hunger Shaldis and the king had rescued her last spring. The tingling sensation she’d sensed like a whisper across her skin in the shut-up Temple of Nebekht.

  And she’d never heard anyone mention the djinni in connection with greenish mists or lights.

  Only where the westering moon threw inky shadows did she see that the dust, all along the feet of the hills, glowed in patches, a faint but distinct green, as if a low-lying vapor were very slowly exuding from the earth. Now and then it seemed to her that the mist stirred, though the night was profoundly still. Once a stream of it, no thicker than Foxfire’s finger, appeared to drift toward the compound walls—she could hear the guards calling to one another, pointing and asking—only to dissipate as it drew near.

  If she were a better person, a truer Craft woman, Foxfire thought, she’d remain, to watch it and see what it did. Shaldis certainly would. But she was trembling with hunger and fatigue, and her cuts were smarting as if her skin had been filed. Moreover, the longer she stayed away from her room, the greater grew the chances that Opal would be discovered as a conspirator in her absence.

  So Foxfire tore herself away from the sight of that strange glimmering phosphorescence and ghosted down the ladder again and along the colonnade to her room. There she let Opal bathe her cuts and brush her snarly hair, and while she devoured her now-cold dinner like a starving wolf they devised a tale of an expedition to the walls (“Because we heard the guards calling”), a fall from the ladder, and selfless assistance from Eleven Grasshoppers (“What was she doing out of the pen?” “You knocked over a water jar and let her out to help clean up.”).

  But though she knew she’d have to wake at dawn and face another day of exhaustion and horrors, once she lay down, Foxfire could not sleep. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw the faint glow of green mist, curling across the sands.

  When she dozed, she heard it sing.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Oryn was sitting beside S
ummerchild’s bed, where he had been since they’d brought her back at midnight, when word came to him that the priests of the Veiled Gods were waiting for him before the palace gates.

  The thick sweet-scented night had seemed endless, like a dream from which he could not wake. Now and then throughout the small hours, Moth or Pebble would tell him to go get some sleep, and he’d politely agree that he needed it and would do so presently. But he knew—and they knew—that he would not and could not leave her side.

  He literally could not imagine continuing to live if Summerchild died. He supposed he must—and supposed he must make the attempt to do so, serpents, crocodiles, and poison notwithstanding. Rainsong. He was far too well acquainted with what befell the underaged children of deceased kings to entertain even the slightest hope that his daughter would not perish in the mess of rebellions, power grabs, and infighting that would follow his death.

  So he knew in an academic sort of way that he had to go on living. He had to survive the ordeals of consecration somehow.

  And when he thought about it, he shuddered to contemplate the mess Barún—or Mohrvine—or whoever did succeed—would make of the realm for the short time before the lakes dried and everyone perished of thirst.

  But without Summerchild it all seemed pointless, like trying to make a song after one’s tongue and heart had both been cut out.

  “Lord King?”

  He looked up. Moth was standing beside him again in the speckled light of the lamps in the niches, her beautiful brown hair braided back like a servant girl’s. She’d been saying something to him. He replied, “Yes, my dear, I’ll go along to bed in a moment.”

  Fear and grief had wiped away the brisk bossiness that usually so amused him, but she wasn’t a girl to lose her head. With great gentleness, she said, “Sir, they’re asking for you. They say the priests are here from the Sealed Temples, and you better go out and see them.”

  Oryn whispered, “Ah,” and got to his feet. He almost staggered. His whole body ached from having been in the saddle since daybreak. He realized only then that he was still in his riding clothes, his face and hair covered with dust.

  But one did not keep the housekeepers of the Veiled Gods waiting.

  Ever.

  Pebble handed him a wet towel. He wiped his unshaven face and smiled his thanks, but his eyes remained on the woman who lay within the golden ring of the lamplight. The two Raven sisters had done what they could for her body, but her eyes were already sunken from the dehydration of a day in the baking desert heat. After what had happened to Shaldis, neither Moth nor Pebble had dared go seeking her mind in the gray world of trance-bound dreams. Nor would Oryn have permitted them to do so, had they asked.

  Death was one of the Veiled Gods, to be sure, but no one prayed to those strange archaic deities for favors. No one even recalled these days what their rites had been, if any, or how their servants were chosen or trained. They were not, strictly speaking, true gods at all. It did not matter to them whether a man was reverent or rude.

  Still, reflected Oryn as he crossed the gardens toward the lamplit gate beneath the Marvelous Tower, it was self-evidently not a good idea to even consider the possibility of not being scrupulously polite.

  Even Geb, trotting faithfully at his heels, was silent.

  At this blue hour the first vendors of ices and fruit were usually setting up their pitches in the Golden Court outside the palace’s gate, and the shutters were being taken down from royal workshops around the court. Housewives of the neighborhood, slaves, and occasional well-trusted teyn would be making their way with water jars through the dark streets to the great fountain house at one side of the square. Lights glowed deep within the Temple of Oan Echis, and on its steps the horoscope ladies would be setting out the day’s wares. There were few hours of the day or night when the Golden Court wasn’t a cheerful buzz of talk, movement, life.

  It was empty now, as if in a continuation of his nightmare vigil at Summerchild’s side. Lamps burned in the colonnade which surrounded it, and the dim amber outlined the crowding shapes of vendors, housewives, horoscope ladies, and teyn, all pushed together behind the pillars, watching. In the center of the square, just beyond the glow of the gate’s lamps and just outside the circle of brightness from the sconces on the fountain house, the seven Veiled Priests stood, black robes seeming to drink up what little illumination there was.

  Ean of the Mountains, greatest of the gods, had created the world and had devised the laws by which the world existed. All the other gods—Darutha of the Rains, Rohar who protected women, stingy Niam, and cheery BoSaa the Lord of Cattle, and all the rest—were Ean’s children, as humankind was his grandchildren.

  Those things that dwelled in the Sealed Temples were not gods as mankind understood gods.

  Death.

  Change.

  The desert that stretched in all directions and did not end.

  Fire that was both life and destruction.

  The sightless abyss of the mind, from which both wisdom and madness spring.

  Time.

  At least they’d stayed out in the court this time, reflected Oryn as he stepped through the gateway to meet them. Twelve years ago, in the time of the waning moon immediately preceding his coronation, he’d woken in the deeps of night to find them standing in a circle around his bed.

  The rite was a silent one, quickly performed. The six priests of Khon, of the twin gods Pelak and Drenan, of Kush, Zaath, and Shibathnes, came forward in turn to touch Oryn on the face, shoulders, and hands; the nameless representative of the nameless God of Time did not move. As with most matters pertaining to the Sealed Temples, no one really knew the purpose of the rite, though Oryn suspected that it was so the priests could get a good look at the candidate and make sure the prospective king didn’t send in a substitute drugged to the hairline with powdered coca leaves. When they turned away, still in silence, and melted into the final shadows of the dawn streets, he remained kneeling for a long time, fearing that if he tried to rise too soon his knees would not support him.

  It was one thing to think, I cannot live without Summerchild.

  It was quite another to realize that without her assistance, he would die a terrible death in ten days.

  And his daughter and his brother would die, too, very shortly thereafter.

  And then every one of his people.

  Dawn transformed the palace gardens into a world of birdsong. Oryn walked back along the paths with Geb fussing at his heels; and even in his shock, his grief, and his fear, he was conscious of, and cheered by, the beauty of the flowers. If there had been the slightest change in Summerchild’s condition, he knew a messenger would have been waiting for him in the porter’s lodge with Geb, so he detoured his steps to the Porcelain Pavilion and was just in time for his daughter’s breakfast tea.

  “Is Mama better?” asked the girl as Oryn poured out cups for her, himself, and Rabbit the nurse. Radiant Dawn, the doll who up until a year ago had been Rain-song’s inseparable companion (“I’m too old for dolls now, Papa”), had made a reappearance at the breakfast table. Oryn made no comment. Neither did his daughter. It was sufficient, evidently, that this link with her childhood was there—as Soth’s hand had been, closed tight on his own during his father’s consecration.

  Instead, Rainsong conversed in a very grown-up fashion about tea (“I like mountain green-tip best, don’t you?”) and her lessons. Anything but her fears. Only at the end did she say, “I hope Mama will be all better in time to watch you be crowned king again.”

  “As do I, my dear.” Oryn stood and enfolded his daughter in a rather dusty embrace. “As do I.”

  “Really, Your Majesty, you must get to the baths,” a flustered Geb insisted as Oryn rejoined him under the arbors that surrounded the pavilion. “A king is never seen in such a state! I don’t know—” He broke off as Oryn turned down the path among the jasmines that led back toward the Summer Pavilion. He reached out and plucked his master’s sleeve, and in a gen
tler voice went on, “It will not change things, you know, in the next hour, for you to go starved and dirty. She . . . she seems to be quite stable as she is. And I have ordered the baths to be got ready.”

  “Have you?” Oryn paused and looked down at the little eunuch with a smile. “That was very kind of you, Geb.” He half turned back toward the pavilion, the shape of its cedar lacework eaves blending artfully with the sycamores and palms set all about it. Lamps still burned in its upper chamber, but the paintwork of gold and blue, the multiple hues of its gardens, were beginning to emerge into their daytime hues with the swift flood of the coming light.

  He took a deep breath. I have to live, he reminded himself. I have to live at least long enough to make sure Rain-song is hidden away before the fighting starts.

  “Yes, thank you, I will bathe. Please lay out . . .” His voice stumbled. The choice of robe, earrings, accessories—the usual preoccupation and delight of his mornings—seemed suddenly beyond him. Peacock and turquoise? Blue and bronze with the antique amber necklaces? Silver summer tissue with the parures of ancient rubies? He didn’t think he could have picked between a red robe and a blue.

  Summerchild.

  In his mind he saw the black-robed shadow of Khon—Death—standing before him as it had stood before him in the square, barely as tall as his shoulder, reaching out to touch his face with a long-fingered white hand.

  I have to live. Living involves bathing and breakfast. . . .

  “Bring me whatever you think is best,” he said, keeping his voice steady with an effort. “And send . . . send . . .” Dragon-eyes tea from the slopes of the Eanit Mountains or lowland black? Sweet green sugarmouse fruit or bananas? “Send some breakfast up to the pavilion afterward for me. Anything will do. Ask the ladies what they will have.”

  Geb whispered, “Yes, Majesty,” clearly aghast at this indifference.

  “I will see her, though, for a moment. Yes, it will really only be for a moment,” he added, with a wan flicker of a smile at his valet’s expression. Geb clearly expected him to sink into lethargy at Summerchild’s bedside again, and for the life of him, thought Oryn, as he entered the pavilion’s blue-and-golden shadows, he could come up with no real reason why he shouldn’t. An hour in the baths was a long time. If something happened, would they interrupt him in time for him to come here before—?