Circle of the Moon

by Barbara Hambly

  THIRTY-FIVE

  Shaldis returned to her grandfather’s house too weary to do more than make a single, listening patrol along the galleries, and heard only her mother and her aunt Apricot rising and going downstairs to get the kitchen fires started and start the teyn grinding the day’s corn. It was the hour of the Sun at His Prayers; she dropped to the bed in her own room and formed up the images of fever tree and willow before crashing into dreamless sleep.

  When she woke it was broad light, and her head and body ached with the scraped weariness of too little rest. Now, this is a good way to be going into a major effort of spell-weaving, she thought bitterly, and hoped Jethan—who could barely have returned to the barracks in time to change his clothes before going on duty at the hour of the Bird Sun—wouldn’t think too harshly of her for obliging him to be up all night. One of the maids had, Rohar be thanked, left scrub water for her outside the door of her room. She used it, and stumbled downstairs to the kitchen court in time to watch her father have three cups of wine with his simple breakfast before going up to doze over the clerical work that Tulik would check in the evening.

  Tulik himself was already in their grandfather’s study, deep in conversation with one of their corn-brokers, with two caravan chiefs waiting outside. He would not, Shaldis reflected, welcome an interruption on the subject of why the head of the household might have murdered one of his son’s concubines.

  The camel drivers who acted as guards on the gallery outside her grandfather’s door during the night had gone back to their mates in the front court. His door was still locked.

  On her way to the palace, Shaldis turned aside from the route she normally took through the Gem-Cutters’ District and passed through a small square close to the city wall. The houses there were very old, and one side of the square was bounded by the black stone wall of a tiny temple whose rear was set into the city wall itself.

  Shaldis had seen the square, and the silent black stone temple, hundreds of times in her years of childhood ramblings around the city. It had always appeared deserted and half forgotten, though she’d always known that a single servant of the god dwelled there, performing unknown rites behind its sealed door. The laundresses who lived around the square might drive spikes into the wall for their clotheslines, but they made signs of aversion when asked about the nature of the god whose house it was and would not speak his name.

  Today, the clotheslines were gone. Instead, every laundress who used the square had already marked out her own little pitch of ground with stakes and rope, each pitch occupied already by a half-grown child. In five days, Shaldis knew, those laundresses would be able to charge a crown a person for standing room in that square. And they’d get it, from people who’d come to watch the king go into the Temple of Khon—the House of Death.

  Always supposing, she thought, quickening her steps almost to a run along the alleyway toward the Golden Court, he made it that far.

  “He says he’s found her.” Pomegranate cradled the small cup, alabaster delicate as blown glass, between her callused palms. Her eyes looked hollow, as if she hadn’t taken her own advice about unsleeping worry wearing one to a ghost.

  Moth and Pebble, seated on the divan with the remains of an excellent palace breakfast before them, exchanged a glance behind the old woman’s back. Shaldis dropped to her knees beside the bed on whose corner Pomegranate sat, and looked up into her face. “Is he all right?”

  Pomegranate nodded, looking relieved. To have been asked? Shaldis wondered. To be believed?

  “He says he can’t reach her, can’t get her out. He says he doesn’t understand that kind of magic.”

  Moth looked like she had a number of comments to make on the subject of the conversation that must have taken place between Pomegranate and the imaginary pig, but from the corner of her eye, Shaldis saw Pebble squeeze her hand. Shaldis asked, “Did he say where she is?”

  “He said, Don’t go there,” replied Pomegranate quickly, twisting the chains of beads around her neck. “He said, Don’t even try to go there. It’s deadly, he says. It will devour the body through the mind. He says it’s only what we’re doing here—what we’ve been doing—that’s kept that from happening so far. Otherwise she would have been gone.”

  The old lady frowned and took another sip of her coffee. “I’m glad Pontifer’s back safe,” said Shaldis. She added, looking down at the floor, “Pontifer, sweetheart, thank you. That was a brave thing you did.”

  Pomegranate smiled, clearly touched. “I’m glad he’s getting out and about more. He didn’t used to take an interest in anyone but me, and I suspect—” She glanced around, as if to make sure her unseen pet wasn’t in earshot. She lowered her voice. “I suspect it’s not good for him, or for anyone, to have such narrow interests.”

  “Did he say what the place looked like?” asked Shaldis, sitting back and clasping her arms around her knees. “Was it a lake of fire? Molten metal, or molten rock even, surrounded by black glass. Green mists drifting among the rocks.”

  Pomegranate looked startled, and shook her head. “It’s . . . it is rock,” she said. “The rock of the earth, deep in the earth. He didn’t say anything about rock melting. Can rock melt?”

  “Sand certainly melts,” spoke up Pebble unexpectedly. “That’s how they make glass.”

  “Look, where she is, that’s not important,” said Moth. “What’s important is we get her out, we get her back. Then we can ask her where she been.”

  Not having experience with this kind of ailment, the Sisters of the Raven dared not sponge out the Sigil of Sisterhood or the Sigil of the River of Life that surrounded the bed, to draw them anew. But standing in a circle around the bed—a circle that now could stretch to include holding Summerchild’s cold, inert hands in theirs—Shaldis guessed that this did not matter. The sigils united them. The circle gave each the power of the others, power that they channeled into the River of Life; power that filled her heart and mind, erasing her weariness, flooding her with strength. Shaldis felt her fellows, as acutely and intensely as if they were truly her sisters, raised in the same household, or that she had been raised in theirs. Understanding and loving Pebble’s sunny kindness, Moth’s acerbic humor, the tragedy and madness masked by Pomegranate’s humble exterior. What, she wondered in some corner of herself, did they see in her? Through Pomegranate’s mind she even glimpsed Pontifer Pig, sleeping at the foot of Summerchild’s bed with his nose on Pomegranate’s discarded sandals.

  But of Summerchild, she felt nothing, as if she were not even present.

  And when, at last, drained of energy, they each emerged from the deep trance of healing, the room was filled with the first shadows of evening.

  And Summerchild lay as she had lain that morning, a wasted little wax doll in the pale rivers of her hair.

  Geb brought them food. The others ate in silence; Shaldis could only curl up on the divan in the corner, numb. Only after the others left, at the chamberlain’s invitation, to avail themselves of the palace baths, did Shaldis sit up and creep to the table to pick through the remains on the serving platters.

  “My dear child, let me send for something fresh.”

  She looked up, startled, and saw the king, standing in the garden doorway.

  “You don’t have to.”

  “It’s sheer selfishness on my part, my dear,” he went on earnestly. “Word gets out, you know. It’s bad enough knowing half the city’s betting on the crocodiles without hearing them hiss at me behind my back, And you made that poor girl pick at leftovers, too. I hope you’re investing in wagers?” he added as Shaldis burst into laughter. “Besides, Geb loves to fetch and carry. My dear,” he added in distress as he saw that her laughter had flowed into tears of near-hysterical weariness. “Here,” he said gently, and, sitting on the divan beside her, gathered her into his arms. He said again, simply, “Here,” and then just held her, offering neither a comfort in which she could not believe, nor mitigation that she would have despised.

&nb
sp; He was only there, big and solid and surprisingly strong, the deep blue silks of his robes smelling of musk and vanilla.

  When she was finished crying, he gave her a clean linen handkerchief and brought some water for her to wash her face. To her astonishment she felt better, and hungry; and together they devoured the leftovers, quibbling like dogs over the best bits. To his questions, Shaldis told of her ghastly stay in her grandfather’s house, and from there went on to speak of her grandfather’s quarrel with Ahure, Nettleflower’s murder, and her own visit to the Blood Mage’s house the previous night.

  “Ordinarily I’d question Ahure’s story about being attacked by teyn near his house,” she said, picking the remainder of the meat off a chicken bone. “Because that bodyguard Drupe was right: the teyn don’t attack adults, as a rule, and never if they have open desert to flee to. But that’s all changed now. We don’t know what they’ll do. And they were watching the house. Does it look to you as if the teyn are being controlled by a nomad Raven sister—or Raven sisters, since sometimes the traces I’ve found feel like they were being left by different people? It would explain why she’s never been seen in the city. The nomads come and go.”

  “Dear gods.” Oryn passed a tired hand over his face. He had lost flesh, despite Geb’s obvious efforts to tempt him to food; it was one of the few times Shaldis had seen him without eye paint, and she saw now with surprise the gray at the roots of his hair.

  He went on, “For more than a year now I’ve been waiting in dread to hear that the nomads had Crafty women among them. There have been nomad mages, over the years, but without proper training their powers were always limited. Are you sure?”

  “No.” She dipped her hands into the washbowl, dried them on her napkin. “But it might make more sense than a Crafty child or children roving the city’s streets. Someone would surely have noticed. Did the Zali wizards use glass to work magic? Or to store magic power in, the way the Sun Mages did with crystals?”

  The king shook his head. “Not that I’ve heard of. Surely they taught you the history of thaumaturgy at the Citadel, didn’t they?”

  “They did. And certain kinds of magic can be stored in glass, which is why so many amulets are made of it. But except for a few small wards, the magic came unfixed from most amulets around the same time men ceased to be able to work it—at least all those I’m familiar with. But if it’s the Zali, I don’t know. I wish Soth hadn’t left so soon.”

  “Oddly enough, he spoke about Zali magic only a few nights ago. And it seems to have been perfectly ordinary magic and, in fact, somewhat less powerful than that used later on. And yet there’s quite clearly power of some kind coming out of the tombs, enough to curse the whole village of Three Wells—and then kill those poor guards simply because they were camped nearby—not to mention sending that tomb robber mad. A pity Ahure isn’t talking about what it might be.” He frowned. “I never did like the man or trust him. But he seems to think he knows enough about this power—whatever its source—to think he can use it.”

  “If it was a nomad Raven sister he paid to try to get that glass ball away from my grandfather,” said Shaldis softly, “she may be trying to keep him from doing so. And she’s used the teyn to keep you out of Three Wells long enough for her to . . . to find something there?”

  “Or do something there.” The king’s face grew grim in the soft blue twilight of the darkening pavilion. “And when she refused to work for Ahure anymore—or possibly sent the teyn against him—he was reduced to bribing your uncle’s concubine to steal it. It makes sense, though of course there could be other explanations. Do you think our nomad Raven sister will have another try on her own?”

  “I’m almost sure of it. I’ve been listening for her, walking the house—” She broke off, hearing herself say it, and rolled her eyes in self-disgust. “Walking the house and scaring her away.”

  “Is there a place nearby where you can watch, not in the house itself?”

  “The alley,” said Shaldis promptly. “That’s the way she came in the first time anyway. The wheat broker next door dumps broken baskets and things into the alley—there’s always a pile of them back there. You could hide a couple of camels in there, let alone a person.” She glanced through the archway, past the garden trees at the luminous sky. “There’s a night market in the square in front of the Grand Bazaar—it’ll be hours yet before the place quiets down.”

  “Then I suggest you get some sleep,” said the king, and rising, helped her to her feet. “I shall have Geb wake you an hour before midnight. And when you catch her, if you catch her”—his voice grew grave—“make an ally of her, at any cost. Offer her anything. Whatever she wants, I will honor it, somehow. And I hope you understand this isn’t simply because I have a constitutional aversion to crocodiles.”

  “The thought of motivation so petty had never crossed my mind, my lord.”

  “I’m glad.” The king took her arm and escorted her down the stairs. “By the by, have the dreams of healing herbs you mentioned borne fruit? Do you know? I’m assuming that this isn’t the same woman . . .”

  “I’m almost positive it’s not,” said Shaldis. “But in ten nights I haven’t heard her—whoever she is—calling for help.”

  Not, Shaldis reflected, that she’d gotten much sleep to speak of in that time.

  “That may mean that you have already succeeded,” said the king. “And even though it would be nice if this lady suddenly appeared to resolve all our woes—and send us rain next spring—if she lives, and her children live, then that should be enough. And at the moment, only the gods know that.”

  THIRTY-SIX

  Wrapped in the Gray Cloak, Shaldis slipped past the main gate of the house on Sleeping Worms Street. Even at midnight, torchlight flared in the arcade around the court where the camel drivers were unrolling their bedding. At other merchant houses, women from the night market would come in and dance for those illiterate but loyal ruffians, and afterward bed them in the fodder of the stables; there was none of that, under her grandfather’s roof. The women were there, of course, but they spoke in whispers; she heard their giggles as they shared the messy feast of supper leftovers with the men.

  Shaldis passed around the corner to the alley, settled herself behind the scratchy and mouse-smelling baskets. When she closed her eyes and extended her mind into the house, she could hear the women in the main court still, the coarse relaxed murmuring of lovers who knew each other as friends.

  Did such women visit the courtyard of the palace guards?

  Of course they do, she told herself roughly.

  And then, when something squeezed tight and angry in her chest, Did you expect Jethan was a virgin at HIS age?

  She pushed the thought away and tried not to ask herself why she felt pain.

  Don’t be a schoolgirl.

  And anyway you’re not here to think about Jethan. You’re here to find this woman, this nomad Raven sister. Not just to save Summerchild, to rescue the king from being eaten by crocodiles.

  To save us all.

  Half in the dozing trance of meditation, Shaldis picked out every voice, every sound, every clattering trail of footsteps, as the house settled into sleep. For five nights—since Summerchild had been brought back from Three Wells—Shaldis had been too exhausted and drained to listen so, over a long period. She had checked for the whiff of magic and had fallen at once to sleep.

  Now she listened to her father’s querulous singsong as he rambled on to someone—Tjagan, by the sound of it—about a lovely dream he’d had; to her grandfather’s deep, slow breathing in sleep. To Tulik, demanding irritably where Shaldis was and why wasn’t she back yet. We are her family, it’s to us she owes her loyalty. . . .

  The camel drivers talked endlessly of gambling, of women, of a thousand petty altercations with the city guards or with other camel drivers. Their friends came in, with the latest information on how the betting stood on the king’s surviving one or all of the tests of consecration and which
gods would see him through and how to tell it.

  Then in time their talk, and the soft whispers from the fodder stacks in the stables, faded, and the house sank into silence. Shaldis’s head began to ache from concentration. Rats crept through the piled baskets, and now and then a drunkard came staggering into the alley to relieve himself.

  The stars moved overhead and the crescent moon made fragile shadows on the roof edges. In the house, Foursie cried out frantically in her sleep, and Three Flower gently shook her, held her while she sobbed.

  The city slept. The sun dreamed, deep in the bottom of the night.

  Then sudden and clear as the note of a harp, Shaldis felt it. A sleep spell, sliding off her but palpable, like silk slithering over her face. It startled her so that her concentration broke, and only with greatest effort did she keep still behind her wall of baskets. At once she focused her mind again—after a split second’s burning desire for several platefuls of dates and cheese—on the sounds of the alley before her and not only heard the stealthy whisper of footfalls but smelled the unmistakable musty sweetness of teyn.

  Her mind tried to grope deeper, but the strong animal smell—not unpleasant, as many claimed—drowned whatever other scent there may have been. And, in fact, Shaldis realized, if the nomad Raven sister could control teyn from a distance, there was no reason she had to be close at all.

  A moment later she heard the dry scrape of the bolt on the inside of the alley gate slide back, felt the tickle of the spell that operated it.

  Either she’s here after all, or she’s able to work it at a distance—something no mage or Crafty woman of Shaldis’s acquaintance had ever managed to do.