The White Road of the Moon

by Rachel Neumeier

  “Yes,” he murmured, lounging back on the warm hearth as though it were a couch and looking already half asleep.

  The sunlight was startlingly bright after the dimness of the inn. Meridy glanced around indecisively, not sure which way to go to find wood. Off toward the center of town was closer, but usually dead wood was more abundant at the edge of town, where the forest had long been encroaching. She was aware of an unaccustomed excitement, which she was too self-conscious about to give free rein. Sorcerers and magic! She was certain Carad Mereth was a sorcerer. All that nonsense about being a priest just some of the time! He didn’t seem wicked. If he was a sorcerer, maybe he would explain how a witch learned to be a sorcerer. Maybe he knew, even if he wasn’t a witch himself. If she could learn that, she wouldn’t need the help of a ghost to reach into the ethereal. That would show Aunt Tarana—it would show everybody. If she could be a sorcerer, she wouldn’t have to worry about being apprenticed to a soap maker.

  And the poetry! She’d never met anybody but Ambica who would refer to Laor Tai-Sinn, who would even know that tai was a way of saying king. He’d quoted the poet so casually, he must know the classics well, better than she did; he could teach her poetry and history, too.

  She longed to know what he might be saying to his ghost, but she was not a child to listen at the door to see if she could overhear anything interesting. She couldn’t hear anything anyway, other than a low, indistinct murmur of voices. So she might as well gather wood after all, and if she was quick, maybe they would still be talking when she came back.

  She ran down the inn steps, careful of the uneven places, and hurried toward the center of town, hunting for dead branches that would be easy to break and carry. It took longer than she had hoped to collect a good armful. To her surprise, before she was finished, she caught a shadowy flicker out of the corner of her eye and found that the ghost dog had come after her. He stood like a king’s dog from some story, calm and alert, his tail waving slowly, but his ears were canted back as though he was not quite certain of his welcome. So of course she had to put down half the wood she’d gathered and rub his insubstantial ears.

  Then when she would have gone back to gathering wood, the dog leaned his bodiless bulk against her hip, demanding more attention. She didn’t have to bend down at all to pet him. Yet for all his size, he was an elegant creature. His eyes were set deep beneath wiry brows; his jaw and the planes of his skull were level and strong; his shoulders sloped well back from his long neck. Again she thought of the tall hounds that were shown, in illuminated histories, as the companions of kings.

  “Were you ever a king’s dog?” she asked him, smiling at this fancy. “You’re a long, long way from any king’s court now, aren’t you?”

  The dog wagged his tail and leaned on her harder, almost enough for her to imagine that she felt his weight. If he’d been a living dog, she was sure he would have pushed her right over. So she had to pet him again and assure him he was a fine dog even if he was a ghost, and so gathering the wood took a little longer still.

  Given all that, she supposed she shouldn’t have been astonished to find, when at length she made her way back to the shelter of the inn, that Carad Mereth was gone. But she was astonished.

  Meridy frowned around the empty room, her vision shifting between the dilapidated, half-rotted wood and dusty stone of the present building and the polished, clean, cluttered image of the cherished past. Naturally the ghost boy was gone; that didn’t surprise Meridy a bit. But the dog had followed her and was still here. That surprised her a good deal. She had been sure he was the boy’s dog. But he stood in the doorway, blocking none of the afternoon light, and showed no signs that he knew he had been abandoned and no inclination to try to follow his master.

  Other than the dog, there were bloodstains on the hearth where Carad Mereth had lain, and bits of torn blankets scattered on the floor, and that was all.

  “Ambica!” Meridy said out loud, turned on her heel, and stalked out of the inn.

  The ghost dog leaped down from the porch and trotted along with her. Meridy could not believe the boy had left him behind, and resented it fiercely on the wolfhound’s behalf, but the dog, to her puzzlement, seemed cheerful. His head was up and his ears attentive to everything that moved, ghost or bird or swift flickering lizard, but he moved confidently, not with the cringing nervousness of a dog that knows it has been abandoned. He came to nose at her hand from time to time, to make her pet him, but with an air of reassuring her rather than seeking reassurance. In the way of any ghost dog, he seemed to want the company of a living person, and she suspected she’d bound him without realizing what she’d done. She certainly hadn’t chanted his name or declared her intention to anchor him to the world, the way witches did in Ambica’s stories. On the other hand, she didn’t know how much of that was necessary and how much poets just made up because it sounded impressive.

  If she’d accidentally made herself an anchor for the dog, it was a little disturbing, but at least he didn’t seem to mind, and she was glad of it. Glad he was with her, glad he seemed willing to stay by her. She ran her hand over his half-perceptible ears and hoped he was anchored and would stay close.

  Ambica smiled when she approached, and he held up a rose. The afternoon sun caught dust motes in the air, outlining his thin hand with a fine pale light but turning the flower blood-red. Meridy set her hands on her hips and glowered at him. “You hear everything, old man. Tell me, why a rose? Did you know the ghost boy who gave me the other?”

  Ambica crinkled his eyes at her, amused. “Why not a rose, thorny child? Every house needs its sign, and it’s the scent of roses that summons the soul and wakes the sleeping dead, isn’t that what the poets say? I’ll wager you’ve been woken from your sleep, eh, child?”

  Meridy snorted.

  “Maybe I knew him and maybe I didn’t; how can I tell?” Ambica went on, more abstracted now. “I remember stories better than my own life. But I saw that old ghost make his rose for you. He’s no one who died here, that one. He died long ago. Long ago.” He blinked, recalling himself to the present. “Well, well, and you met his anchor, then, and helped the man? Good. Yes, that’s good.”

  “Now he’s gone!” Meridy snapped. “They’re both gone, and what do you know about it?”

  “Well, well, not much, but there’s nothing so very astounding in their going. Sharp set, that boy, and his anchor no less so, or I miss my guess.” He peered at her with shrewd interest. “Did he give you his name, that ghost boy? Did his anchor give you his right name?”

  “He said his name was Carad Mereth. He was a sorcerer, I think. Or a priest. Although he said he wasn’t—or only some of the time. How can you be a priest only some of the time?”

  A translucent hand fluttered. “Perhaps the God calls to his soul only now and again; who can tell? Carad Mereth, did he say? From the tales, that will be. The bird that flies before the storm; the bird that brings the storm trailing from the tips of its wings. What color were his eyes?”

  “Not black.”

  “So he would not be a witch, although—yes, perhaps a sorcerer.”

  “I know. Are sorcerers always wicked?”

  Ambica laughed at her. “No, no, of course not, no more than witches. Sorcerers are like anyone else, good and bad and mostly in between. I knew half a handful of sorcerers, once. Deira Cias, who was a priest before he came into the skill, and never stopped listening for the voice of the God—so you see? He certainly wasn’t evil. He never trusted Tai-Enchar, argued against his influence with the High King….Perhaps that was the voice of the God there as well. This was in the old days, of course, when Tai-Enchar was merely one more lesser king and answered to the High King’s rule, or so men thought. These were the days before he betrayed Miranuanol, betrayed us all, tried to raise up his witches to rule men and himself to rule over all.” Ambica had fallen easily into a storyteller’s cadence, and he went on with measured phrases: “In those days, the Southerners still came by one
s and twos, trading gemstones and iron and spices for the dyes and alum and pearls of the Kingdom. In those days, no one mistrusted Southern blood or feared witches’ treachery.”

  “I know,” said Meridy. “You’ve told me.”

  But the story carried Ambica forward anyway, as sometimes happened. “But then the days of peace gave way to days of war, and the Southerners rode across the desert lands in their armies, perhaps for lust to conquer or perhaps pressed by some disaster in their unknown homeland; who can say? Then the Southerners came in their thousands and their tens of thousands, with sword and flame, mounted on vicious sharp-clawed fire horses as terrible as their riders, and they conquered all the southern part of the Kingdom, driving the folk of those lands into the north….”

  Meridy had heard all this many times before. She said impatiently, “Yes, but sorcerers? You said you knew Deira Cias. Whom else did you know?”

  Ambica blinked, recalled to the actual moment. He said thoughtfully, “No one called Carad Mereth. I knew Usamie, who could speak to any creature living or quick but hardly ever said a word to any man, though there were plenty as tried her silence. She was a beauty, was Usamie. I told her a story, once, and she laughed out loud at the ending. Aseraiëth, now, she was one of Tai-Enchar’s allies at the end, to her shame. She had been Laìdomìdan’s lover—did I ever tell you that story?”

  “I don’t think so….”

  “Well, she fell under the witch-king’s sway, she did, or maybe led him into treachery herself. I don’t think anyone ever knew the truth of it. Ambitious, that was Aseraiëth, for all her fair beauty. I thought Laìdomìdan would win her heart, but Tai-Enchar promised her power, and she wanted that more than love.” Ambica was silent for a moment, remembering. He went on at last in a quieter tone, “Not that Laìdomìdan wasn’t ambitious on his own account. I remember him laying down the law with that arrogance of his to High King Miranuanol himself. He could do arrogance up fancy when he chose, could that one; no wonder he and Aseraiëth were lovers for that time.”

  Meridy snorted. “My Carad Mereth was arrogant enough to fit right in, I think. I suppose those sorcerers are all long dead.”

  “Oh, aye, those were the great ones when I was young myself—near as young as you are now, Mery, my girl. Young enough to go out on the roads of the land with a light heart and an empty pocket, just as you’re going now.”

  Meridy stared at him. But then she realized it was true. She was going. Now, this hour. She was going to walk away, leave Aunt Tarana’s house just as her aunt had wanted, but on her own terms, with nothing to remind her of her aunt’s bitter charity and no apprenticeship contract to constrain where she would go. She had not even known it until now, and yet she was not even surprised.

  Ambica tilted his head, a smile pulling at the corner of his mouth. “Ah, that village up the mountain was never any place for you! I remember Kamay, who gave you her black eyes and her cleverness with poetry and her crooked smile.” His face went a little vague on that recollection, with the difficulty the lingering dead had with time and memories, but he added, “She used to come talk to me, too, though she saw the ethereal only in glimpses. Your eyes she had, but only a trace of Southern blood. You, now, you can call the ethereal to your hand. You can almost reach out of the real to touch the ethereal. Perhaps you will, someday. I’d have liked to see you come into your strength, young Mery.”

  “You’ll miss me. I’m sorry for that.”

  “Ah?” The old man blinked back at her. “I’ve my memories, bramble-girl. And the road out there runs both ways, so it does. Remember that.” The spidery hand lifted again, to wave her on. “So go on, go on, young Mery, my rose-child-all-thorns. Take the first turning and see where it leads—but be careful! Don’t be too proud to take help where it’s offered; give it back where it’s needed; and pay attention to any dreams you have in which the moon is full.”

  “Yes, Ambica,” Meridy said obediently. She found she was smiling after all. She felt light, somehow, and no longer angry with Carad Mereth. She was hardly even angry with Aunt Tarana, now that she knew she was going to leave Tikiy and not go back to her aunt’s house.

  “And never patronize your elders!” Ambica told her severely.

  “Of course not, Ambica.”

  The sun at his back turned the storyteller translucent as glass, but his voice was still clear. “Well, then, be sure to visit Moran Diorr while you’re about it, my girl. The City of Bells is a wonder of the world, so it is.”

  Fishes swam now among the towers of Moran Diorr. Eels lived in the High King’s hall; anemones swayed among the jewels and the bones. Ambica had told Meridy that tale himself, but she forbore to remind him now. The memories of the long dead were always chancy. She said instead, “I will if I can! And you, old man, think up a new tale to tell me, for when I get back.” It was, she realized, the truest goodbye she had to say to anyone in either the old Tikiy or the newer village. That made her stop smiling.

  She ducked away quickly and went, before the gathering brightness of the day could make her eyes water. Behind her she heard the murmur of Ambica’s voice, spinning out a story: Once there was a briar-girl, born from the kiss of sunlight upon the rarest sort of rose….

  She half wanted to listen, but she hesitated only a second and then went on after all.

  —

  Meridy did not climb the path back toward Aunt Tarana’s house and Tikiy-up-the-Mountain. She went the other way, the way she had never gone in all her life, across the stones laid into the stream and down the path on the other side of Tikiy-by-the-Water, following the rippling little creek north toward the Yellow River, which she had never seen save as a line on a map.

  She picked her way over and around the fragmented stones that had once paved a wider road, a great highway from the time before the mountains of the Wall had been raised up, with the Anchor to hold the Wall fast forever against Southern magic. Even now some of those ancient paving stones remained visible, though broken by frost and pushed up here and there by great knobby tree roots, half hidden in places by the accumulated soil and leaves of the passing years.

  The ghost dog came with her, through the ragged lanes to the edge of town, around the tumbled stones of the town wall, and down the path. He had taken her as his anchor to the living world, plainly so, though Meridy hadn’t done anything to bind him, not that she knew of. Sometimes he trotted before her and sometimes he ranged off to one side or the other, slipping in and out of visibility as he padded through patches of sunlight and shadows, but he never left her. She was glad. Because she might have left Tikiy on her own and for her own reasons, but as long as the dog was with her, she didn’t feel too much alone. And she felt, somehow, that he might know even where he was going, though she didn’t. After all, the dog wasn’t from Tikiy. He was from the broader world, and now he was going back to that broader world. And she could tell from his cheerful gait and his waving tail that he wasn’t afraid.

  Just under three hours after leaving Tikiy-by-the-Water, Meridy climbed over a fallen tree, clambered around an inconvenient pile of boulders that must have tumbled down last winter and that no one had bothered to move out of the way, and stepped at last onto the hard-packed earth of the Yellow River Road. She stamped her foot on it, proving its solidity: she was really standing here, on an actual road that led away from the mountain villages and out into the world. The river itself, beyond the road, was broader and slower than she had expected: here where the foothills of the Southern Wall abruptly gave way to gentler land, the river had room to stretch out. The water was indeed an earthy yellow, the froth where the stream came down a paler ivory.

  First she looked out across the river. Then she stood with one hand resting on the ghost dog’s half-present back and gazed down the road to the east, then turned and looked along it to the west. The road ran as far as she could see in both directions. It ran broad and nearly straight through the woodlands, only turned a little this way and that to accommodate the rougher foo
thills. It was the first true road she had ever seen; neither uneven wagon track nor ancient highway overgrown by centuries of forest. The lowering sun ran down the road, gilding the dust and turning the Yellow River ruddy.

  Meridy had spent long solitary afternoons following in her mind the windings of the Yellow River Road. She knew that from here the Yellow River ran east to where the Wasp River joined it, and then went on farther east, past all the small towns and villages of the foothills, until eventually it came to Tamar, on the eastern coast, and so to the sea. She would like to see the sea—she couldn’t even imagine it—but she knew she didn’t want to go east.

  If she turned west, the Yellow River Road would soon leave the Yellow River behind, cross from Harann into the principality of Cora Tal, and enter the lands of stories and histories. If she went that way, this road would lead her all the way to Riam. Riam! She wanted to see it: a city that had lain cradled in the western hills since the time of the high kings. Hardly anyone from Tikiy had ever been so far. Meridy longed to go there.

  And from Riam…she hardly dared imagine it, but Riam was the gateway to the whole north. From Riam, the Riamne Highway curved north and west, and then farther north and farther west, touching the Western Ocean at Loran and then passing from the principality of Cora Tal into Moran Tal. It was called the Suremne Highway then, but it was all the same road. It did not end until it culminated finally in Surem on the shore of Moran Bay.

  Ambica’s stories crowded into Meridy’s memory: stories of the High King’s city, Moran Diorr, which had drowned when Tai-Enchar betrayed the Kingdom and the High King. The witch-king had wanted the Southerners to conquer the Kingdom; he’d wanted to establish a different sort of kingdom, one where witches ruled over ordinary men and he ruled over all. And so when High King Miranuanol had cast the great sorcery to drive back the Southerners and raise up the Southern Wall so they could never return, Tai-Enchar had turned against him and broken his hold on all the power of that sorcerous working. And the sorcery had shattered and Moran Diorr had sunk down, and the ocean had rolled in over them all.