Liaden Universe Constellation Volume 3

by Sharon Lee

  “Thank you, Lady!” the novice gasped, belatedly recalling her bow. She performed this ritual hurriedly, straightened without having received the Lady’s aye and blurted again: “You must come quickly!”

  Lady Moonhawk lifted an eyebrow, dark blue eyes sharpening on the novice’s face. “Oh,” she said, in dangerously sweet accents, “must I?”

  The novice gulped, nervously tangling her fingers together before her. “Please, Lady, it’s—”

  “Keela’s baby.” Moonhawk was up in the same instant, moving with long strides across the slippery floor. “Fetch Mother Portal,” she snapped over her shoulder as she vanished into the hallway.

  “Yes, Lady Moonhawk,” the novice said, and quit the room herself, forbearing to run until she hit the stone-floored hallway.

  It had been a hard birth and the baby had not been hale, so both mother and child had been brought to the Temple Infirmary, to be cared for by the Circle until both were strong.

  Keela did well, gaining weight and strength with joyous ease. The babe had not done as well, though neither Moonhawk nor any of the other Healing Sisters could determine what it was that ailed him.

  “He has no will to live,” Greenlady had said, though not in the mother’s hearing. “Poor babe, he hangs by a thread, as if life were a fault in the weaving, rather than the purpose of the loom.”

  There was wisdom in that, Moonhawk thought, for the boy certainly showed no spark of the all-consuming interest characteristic of other children his age. She probed him, seeking his soul, seeking the nature of his mind—and found only weariness, as one might find when aiding those full old to prepare for their reunion with the Goddess.

  Just as well, she thought, that he return to the Mother now . . .

  Aye, the next thought intruded, and what of Keela?

  Keela, who had lost her man this winter past, when the river ice cracked wide and the frigid waters dragged him down; who had rejoiced in a son to bear his likeness—and his name. Keela, who nursed the sickly boy with fierce patience, holding him in her arms, willing him to life with a potency that bordered upon a Sister’s skill.

  What of Keela, should the child die, too?

  Moonhawk began to run.

  The Infirmary was quiet as she dashed into the common room, so that she dared hope—and then she saw Keela, bent over the cradle, her arms moving in the way Moonhawk had taught her. She was pressing on the child’s chest, helping him breathe.

  Moonhawk stopped at the cradle’s side, watching Keela work, caught a whiff of the other woman’s desperate terror, saw the thin chest rise and fall under his mother’s hands.

  “He breathes,” she said. “Keela, let him take it up.”

  “He breathes,” Keela said grimly. “Three times before I thought so, and when I stopped, he did as well!” She glanced aside, face grim and wet with sweat. “Lady Moonhawk, my child is dying!”

  It seared of Truth. Moonhawk opened herself to the trance, stepping into it even as she moved forward and put her hand beside the other woman’s hand, upon the baby’s breast.

  “Let me See,” she said, and then she said no more, nor saw more, either, except what lay before the Inner Eyes.

  A wasteland lay stretched before her, parched, misbegotten and doomed. There was no air, nor sun, no water, no joy.

  In the world she had left, Moonhawk’s other hand moved to rest atop Keela’s own.

  A second landscape overlay the first, this one lush with life and love and joy, save that where it crossed the wasteland, patches of lush greenery became tainted; here and there strands of grass were seen to die.

  And as the two landscapes stretched further together, each bound into the other, the first began to leach more life from the second, killing wholesale, until, on the edge of the horizon, Moonhawk could see no difference between them—only deserted waste, stretching onward forever.

  Chilled, she closed the Inner Eyes, took one glimpse at the mother’s grim desperation, moved both her hands and lifted Keela away from the child.

  “No!” One cry, anguished, and Keela slumped against her, face hidden against Moonhawk’s shoulder. Moonhawk held her close, stroking the disordered hair, opened the Inner Eyes—and Watched the baby die.

  It came quickly—only a fading, a shuddering sigh of ultimate easement, with no need of her to smooth the path, without a note of the singing joy so commonly heard at the last instant. Joyless alive, joyless he died, giving up the life that had been only burden.

  “Gone,” she said, and felt Keela shudder, then move away. The Inner Vision spun for a heartbeat, then steadied again on the exuberant land that was Keela, a small near patch of blight showing, then a lush regrowth. The sun was warm, and Moonhawk thought she heard birdsong.

  She opened her eyes.

  Keela was holding her son in her arms, tears running her face, breast heaving. “The Goddess gives,” she gasped, half-raising her face.

  “And the Goddess receives us back,” murmured a soft voice from beside Moonhawk.

  “Lady Portal.”

  The Mother of Dyan Circle bowed slightly. “I see I am too late.” She lay a tiny hand upon Moonhawk’s sleeve. “Come to me after Tenth Chant.”

  “Yes, Mother.” Dismissed, Moonhawk bowed deeply and turned away. Mother Portal’s soft voice followed her out of the room, accompanied by the first subtle flavors of a Heart Heal: “There, there, my child. Come, lay the lad down in his crib. No, there’s no shame in crying. Such a bonny boy he was and so strongly did you fight for him . . .”

  Except, Moonhawk thought, she’d lost, despite the love and the fight, and the combined efforts of three Witches skilled in healing. In the end, the babe would die, and perhaps better he had never lived at all. She caught her lower lip in her teeth at such a thought and turned her mind forcibly to the prayers to establish serenity.

  She returned to her own rooms, bathed and dressed in a fresh gown of the shade known outside Temple as “Circle blue,” and cut to fully reveal the breasts.

  Any other of the Sisters would then have repaired to the Lady’s Chapel in Temple’s center or to the private altar each kept within her room, to meditate on events just past, to seek portents and signs of things left undone for the soul returned, to achieve communion with the Power that moved the universe.

  Moonhawk went to the East Tower.

  There, she stared up into the late day sky, and when the hawk spiraled into sight, she brought her arm up, crooked so, as if this were a tame beast and not wild the length and breadth of its days.

  She held her arm up and, obedient, the hawk stooped, cruel talons digging tight into the invisible shield she conjured to protect her fragile flesh.

  The invisible shield was a small magic, in Moonhawk’s estimation. The miracle was having one of the Goddess’ wildest children with her of its free feral will, looking without fear into her eyes.

  They stayed so, Witch and hawk, for a timeless time, staring deeply into each other’s eyes, drinking each of the soul of the other. Then the woman moved, slowly bringing up her other hand, and trailed her fingers through the chest feathers in caress.

  The bird allowed it: One stroke, from beak to belly, then it flicked its wings, and broke the gaze that had bound both.

  Obedient in her turn, Moonhawk brought her arm sharply up and the bird was gone in a blast of wings, soaring upward into the purpling twilight, until it was lost to the Witch’s straining eyes.

  Regretfully, she brought her eyes down, bent and picked up the barred brown feather from between her bare feet. “Thank you,” she murmured, and moved to the parapet.

  One hip braced against the low wall, she gazed down into Goddess Square as her fingers separated a lock of hair and began to make a braid into which the hawk’s feather would be woven.

  Pilgrims had been flowing in for the past half-moon, two, three, a dozen every day, and now, on the evening before Beltane, it would seem that all had gained the security of the Supplicant’s Courtyard. The plaza she gazed down o
n was empty, except for those townfolk who crossed it in the course of normal business. At the foot of Maidenstairs there was no one, travel-stained and weary, come down from the mountains to partake of Beltane at the Temple, to offer themselves up to the Spring Goddess and beg for good growth, good fortune, good health.

  But no, what was this? From the ring streets came a man, dark-cloaked and dark-haired, barely more than a blot against the shadowing air, striding purposefully toward Maidenstairs.

  Straight across the plaza he came, looking neither right nor left, eyes seemingly fixed on Maidenstairs. He moved with long graceful strides, but Moonhawk caught a sense of weariness rise up from him, as if he had kept the pace for longer than was wise.

  At the foot of Maidenstairs, he stopped, cloak swinging into stillness, embracing him with shadow.

  The First Hound was barely around the edge of the tower where she leaned, braiding the feather into her hair; the supplicant had time, just, to climb the stairs and beg Sister Doorkeeper the boon of shelter and food for the night.

  He remained quite, quite still, as if having come this far his resolve now failed him. Moonhawk leaned more nearly over the parapet, heedless of the dangers of overbalance, and sought him with the Inner Eyes. If she could but discover the fading ember of courage, entice it to flame once more . . .

  Weariness she read in him, as clearly as if he were a Sister in Circle; hunger, and a spark of honest anger, overridden at once by wariness. Moonhawk blinked, very nearly overbalanced at Center by the clarity with which he could be read. Yet, she Saw no trace of that which must have carried him many days and miles.

  Biting her lip, she embraced the prayer for serenity and prepared herself to attempt a deeper Reading.

  The man in the plaza below moved.

  Gracefully, he sank to one knee, sleek head bent in respect.

  Three heartbeats later, he came as gracefully to his feet, and backed nine smoothly precise steps away from Maidenstairs, his shadowed face lifted to the East Tower. If it had been day, Moonhawk thought, he might have seen her; she might have been able somehow to influence him to mount the stairs, and enter the comfort and safety—

  The man turned away, walking back across Goddess Square, his stride still smooth, though less long, less—driven.

  Moonhawk watched until he vanished into the shadows of the ring-street, unaccountably troubled by his failure. So small a thing, to climb Maidenstairs, to ask the ritual question and be welcomed within. So small a price to pay for relief of whatever had driven him to such weariness. To lose a soul from one instant of human fraility—

  She shook her head, smiling wryly. Peace, Lady Moonhawk, she told herself. Well you know that no soul is ever lost. The Goddess speaks to us all in the tongue we know best. Yon seeker this time heard imperfectly. Next time he’ll doubtless hear fully.

  Doubtless. She raised her face to the Hound and stretched both hands high, palms open, naked feet braced against the tower stones, welcoming the weak power of the lesser moon into her, letting it wash away her grief for the dead child, the lost seeker, allowing her soul to take wing and soar as the hawk had soared, spriraling gloriously upward.

  The bell-notes preceding Ninth Chant brought her to herself with a gasp and she lowered stiffened arms. The Hound was behind her, half-done its first circuit of the night. The Moon itself would rise at Twelfth Chant, at which time the Founding Ritual that prepared all for Beltane itself, would take over the attention of the Circle. Goddess Plaza, deserted now below her, would be crowded with townspeople eager to lend their energy and good heart to the ritual.

  Her talk with Mother Portal would be over by then, and she would be with the others in the center courtyard, raising her voice with them in the opening songs, merging her being with the beings of her Sisters, raising and sustaining power—the first complex level of power needed for the coming joyous ritual . . .

  She should, she thought abruptly, eat something. In general she was careless of meals, but the hunger she had tasted of the seeker nagged at the pit of her own stomach. Food, she thought, firmly, and so thinking climbed down from the tower and went down the long hallways to the kitchen.

  When she arrived there, she made a good meal of roast lamb and spiced vegetables and fresh bread with sweet butter. She ate methodically, and more than she would have eaten for herself, as if she might feed the unknown seeker, too.

  “And so you felt it time to allow Keela’s baby his death?” The question was mild, as all of Mother Portal’s questions were mild, but Moonhawk felt a chill pebble her skin.

  “With the Inner Eyes I Saw how it was with the babe, how he would take all of Keela’s joy and remain joyless. How, if he were to return to the Goddess, she would heal, and he would have the Summerland, and rest before his next incarnation. It was True Seeing.” She heard the defensive note in her own voice, bit her lip and moved her eyes to contemplate the green-and-silver candle burning upon Lady Portal’s private altar.

  “True Seeing.” The tone was bland, empty of any compulsion or command. “But not Goddess-moved.”

  Moonhawk turned her head to stare at her interrogator. “Goddess-moved?” she echoed. “No, Mother. It was myself who Saw, who knew right action and acted.”

  “So,” Mother Portal said. “Lady Moonhawk takes it upon herself to judge who should live and whose life is a burden no longer to be borne.”

  “It is what the Sight is for!” Moonhawk cried. “It is what I was trained for, why I was shown to the Goddess and taught the Inner Magics—”

  “And you believe that attaining the Inner Circle makes you like unto the Goddess, able to give life and take it?” Sharp as ice now, Lady Portal’s voice, and each small cold cut hurt and bewildered, so that Moonhawk sat back upon her heels and merely stared.

  “Answer,” Lady Portal directed and Moonhawk licked her lips.

  “Mother, I have told you what I Saw. I believe that I acted rightly, in accordance with the Way I was shown and with the Will of the Goddess as I have been taught to understand it. It is my private belief that the child wished to die and that as he grew older his wish would grow greater until it would have taken all the Circle, concentrating all their energy upon him and him alone to keep him from the Summerland.”

  “And so you acted and took away the hands that might have saved him one more time and allowed him to slip away now.” There was a pause during which Moonhawk ran through an exercise to embrace Serenity and abandoned herself to the will of the Goddess.

  “How do you know,” demanded Lady Portal, “that it was time for that child to die, Lady Moonhawk? Did your True Seeing show you that?”

  Within the warming cloak of Serenity, Moonhawk felt a spear-thrust of ice pierce straight to her heart.

  “No,” she murmured. “I did not know that.”

  “So.” Lady Portal stared at her, eyes showing sadness. “I have had reports from others of our Sisters,” she said slowly. “They tell me that Lady Moonhawk is full with herself, that, though her talents are great, so is her pride. That Lady Moonhawk alone is the best judge of ritual rightly done, of results correctly obtained.” She glanced down at her hands, folded upon her lap; looked up again into Moonhawk’s face.

  “How long have you been in Circle, Sister?”

  “How long—” Moonhawk caught herself staring again; blinked. “All my life, Mother,” she said carefully. “I was brought here as an infant, to fulfill my birth-mother’s vow to the Lady.”

  “And, showing talent as soon as you could walk, you were trained, knowledge poured into you until you were full to bursting. With a flick of your fingers you can conjure a spell that another of our Sisters, less talented, yet industrious and good-hearted, may spend days of careful ritual to achieve.” She closed her eyes.

  Moonhawk sought again the green-and-silver candle, and abandoned both thought and unease. It would transpire as the Goddess willed it, she thought firmly, pulling the rags of Serenity about her. Whatever punishment might be hers, for failing to
read fully, that she would do. Neither Mother Portal nor her Sisters in Circle nor the Goddess would put upon her more than she might bear.

  Mother Portal opened her eyes. “You are arrogant,” she said slowly, each word a pebble, dropped into the still pool of Moonhawk’s mind. “Further, you are ignorant. It is our duty, who have trained you, to see that these faults in you are amended, so that you may serve the Goddess to the full extent of your powers. I shall meditate upon it, as shall the Circle.” She moved, rising to her full, diminutive height, and smoothed her hands down the front of her rumpled robe. Moonhawk rose as well and stood looking down at her, Serenity yet cloaking thoughts and emotions.

  “You will go to your rooms,” Mother Portal said. “You will cleanse yourself and you will do a Crossing Over ritual for Keela’s child. You will then fast and meditate and await my call.”

  Within Serenity, a spark of panic. “But—Beltane . . .”

  Lady Portal looked severe. “Beltane was before there was Moonhawk,” she said sternly. “And Beltane there will be long after Moonhawk is returned to the Goddess. Do not add disobedience to your transgressions.”

  Moonhawk stood, and stared.

  Lady Portal sighed. “You have your instructions, I believe?” she said, voice unremittingly even.

  The panic had gone from spark to conflagration, through which that dangerously mild tone cut like a honed blade. Moonhawk bowed low—“Yes, Mother. Blessed be.”—and left the room.

  Numb, she walked down halls glowing with the lambent energy of nearly a hundred excited Witches and novices. She was bumped once or twice by those hurrying toward Moon Court for the midnight ritual, but most of the tide she moved against avoided her scrupulously. No one called her name in friendship. No one caught her sleeve and laughingly scolded her for walking the wrong way. She moved alone, as she ever did, through halls crowded with the Sisters of her Circle.