The White Road of the Moon

by Rachel Neumeier

  But he said, collectedly enough, “Tai-Enchar isn’t afraid of guardsmen or priests or—or anyone. He’ll kill anyone who tries to protect me and bind their ghosts—he will,” he insisted, though no one had disputed this. “He can do that—bind unwilling ghosts, so fast they can’t get away. Or the souls of living men. I’ve seen—I’ve seen him do it.”

  “I have, too,” put in Diöllin, as though her brother needed support.

  Meridy didn’t doubt either of them. Besides, she could tell that in another minute, the young prince would finally lose all his hard-held control and burst into tears. She knew he would feel humiliated after he’d worked so hard to keep his poise, so she said as briskly and coolly as she could, “Well, we’ll keep you safe, but even if you have some perfectly splendid ideas about what we should do next, this is not the time to hear them. Let’s go somewhere else first and then plan what to do next. Where do you suppose this alley goes?”

  “Oh,” said Jaift, as though surprised Meridy hadn’t realized. “This alley has to lead to Cora Talen’s market. You remember we saw the awnings earlier, and how else would the inn staff get to and from the market? If the market is like the one at home, it’ll open at dawn, but a lot of people will be setting up already. It’s a good idea to go there. We can get rolls or something and figure out what to do next.”

  “We can get horses,” Herren said, still with that startling decisiveness. “We need to go to Surem.”

  There was a pause.

  “Surem?” Meridy asked at last.

  “Well, sort of. Moran Diorr, really. He was taking me there,” the prince said, his voice tense and young in the dark. “That’s a place of power for him, but—”

  “Then we should go anywhere else!” said Meridy, thoroughly exasperated.

  “Listen!” the young prince said. “It’s not only a place of Tai-Enchar’s power, it’s a place of power for Inmanuàr as well.”

  “Oh!” Meridy supposed she should be getting used to being startled, yet she couldn’t help but ask, “You know about Inmanuàr?”

  “Of course! Listen! If I go to Surem under the witch-king’s power, it’ll be terrible, but if I meet Inmanuàr there, then it’s different! He will know what to do.”

  “But why—” Jaift began, and at the same moment Meridy said, “Carad Mereth said—” and Niniol said sharply, “You may be—”

  All their voices tangled up, and then Herren said, “Enough!”

  He sounded young. But somehow he did not sound childish. His tone made this an order. It was not much like the tone an ordinary little boy would take in an argument.

  There was a pause. Then Niniol asked, his tone dry, “How old are you, Your Highness?”

  “Nine,” answered the prince. “Almost.”

  Diöllin put in, exasperated and affectionate: “Our father hates—hated—to have anybody dispute his decisions. Herren is a lot like him. Everyone says.”

  “Yes, I’m sure that works out well for them, especially when they’re making a mistake,” Niniol retorted.

  Meridy admired Niniol’s confidence, if he was willing to argue with a prince, however young. But she was also becoming more and more uneasy with the way they were all standing here in an unfamiliar alley, in an unfamiliar town, in the dark, arguing. Anybody might come this way—the inn’s servants, anybody. She said, “I wish we dared call Inmanuàr here and ask him, but of course we can’t, and he probably wouldn’t explain anyway. I don’t think it’s likely we’ll be finding our way to Moran Diorr unless we all learn to breathe like little fishes, but Surem, then. That’s fine. I don’t have a better idea, anyway. And we can figure things out on the way, I guess. I suppose the first step is probably finding this market.”

  “Someone there will certainly be selling horses,” Diöllin agreed. “We can buy as many as we need, and supplies and everything, and be on the road in just—”

  Jaift interrupted the princess. “Oh, we don’t want to buy horses! That would take a lot of money, and worse, people would notice us on the road if we rode out like so many scions of princely houses, especially dressed like this! We’d need new clothing and servants and guardsmen and everything, so that won’t work at all. You know what we should do? Farmers will be coming to the market with”—Meridy felt rather than saw Jaift wave an impatient hand—“cabbages or turnips or whatever. Some of them will stay in town all day, but plenty of them will go home as soon as they’ve sold their goods, so we can quite easily get a ride with someone going north. Then no one will look twice at us.”

  “You want us to ride in a farmer’s wagon?” said Diöllin, without a lot of expression in her voice. “You want my brother to pretend to be a farmer’s brat?”

  Meridy, tired and scared, snapped, “There’s nothing wrong with asking a farmer for seats in his wagon! People do it all the time!”

  The first gray light of dawn was beginning to filter into the alley, so she could see Diöllin lift her chin in arrogant disdain. “Yes, other farmers!” she retorted.

  “Meridy is right,” Niniol said firmly. “She’s right and you know it, Your Highness, or you ought to. If anyone’s seeking His little Highness, then looking like farmer’s children is perfect. Breeding doesn’t make a man stupid—nor a princess, I should hope—so have some sense!”

  Diöllin sniffed soundlessly, but she didn’t answer, either. Meridy had some hope Niniol had settled the matter, until Herren said stubbornly, “I don’t care how it looks, but wagons are slow. We could walk to Surem faster than a farmer’s wagon will get us there. We daren’t be slow. Inmanuàr—”

  But before the young prince could finish whatever he had been about to say, Iëhiy suddenly lunged forward, barking furiously. Meridy had half a second to grab Herren’s hand, and Jaift’s, and start to step back, and then the dark alleyway folded around them and the princess-regent herself rode out of a sudden cold wash of ethereal light.

  Though she had never seen Princess Tiamanaith before, never even seen an image of her, Meridy knew at once that this must be the princess-regent. She looked like a princess, with long strands of white pearls looped through her black hair and more pearls, tiny black ones, swinging from her ears and from the bridle of her horse. It wasn’t an ordinary horse, either: Meridy would have known the princess just from that. She rode a fire horse, a black mare, the slit-pupiled eyes blazing with fury and bloodlust. The mare fought the rein, wanting to slash at them with ivory tusks as long as a girl’s thumb, wanting to rear and lash out with clawed forefeet, and Meridy jumped aside with a small, embarrassing scream.

  But the princess-regent jerked the fire horse’s head up with a hard rein, calling out in a high, clear voice, “My son! Here you are at last!”

  Meridy couldn’t tell whether Princess Tiamanaith even saw the rest of them; certainly she didn’t seem to. But she reined the fire horse around and reached down to her son. She was smiling, though there was something strange about her smile, about the tilt of her mouth and the look in her ice-blue eyes. As far as Meridy could see, there was no relief in her; neither joy nor fear, but only a cold and glittering triumph.

  Meridy had lost her hold on his hand, but far from running to meet his mother, Herren ducked back and away. Jaift grabbed for him, and she was too late as well. Iëhiy snapped at the fire horse, and Niniol strode forward with his sword blazing in his hand, but Meridy had neither smoke nor dust nor strong light with which she might pull them into the real, and there was nothing they could do. The fire horse leaped forward, and the princess-regent reached down and seized her son and dragged him up and across the front of her saddle. At once the fire horse sank down on her haunches, whirled around, and lunged back into the scintillating light through which the princess-regent had made her path into the real world, and—

  —the light failed, and Meridy jumped after it, but it was too late to bring it back even if she’d been sure how to do it. Iëhiy raced into the dark and vanished, a sharp flicker of light and memory, there and gone, and Meridy and Jaift,
and Diöllin and even Niniol, were all left standing like fools in the alley, with empty hands and stunned expressions and nothing at all saved out of the violent night. Prince Herren was gone.

  “That was Princess Tiamanaith?” Jaift sounded stunned.

  “I guess we know now what kind of bargain she made with Aseraiëth.” Meridy tried to keep her voice from shaking, not very successfully. “Inmanuàr said you have to agree to let a sorcerer do that to you. But she did agree. And look what happened to her. What she’s become.”

  “She was desperate,” Jaift whispered. “I know she was desperate. But she can’t have understood what bargain she was making. She can’t have. Did you see her face?” Her voice rose in horror and outrage. “That was her son!”

  Meridy rubbed her own face, trying not to cry with fury and fear and grief for both Princess Tiamanaith and her son. “Not hers. Not anymore.”

  Diöllin had flown to defend her brother, but ineffectually, as they’d all been ineffectual. Her insubstantial hands fluttered as though she tried to reach after the vanished light, after her brother. Now, turning to Jaift, she whispered in the thin voice of the quick dead, “Our mother killed our father. I saw. I couldn’t believe…but she did it. And now she has Herren….the witch-king stole him, but now she’s stolen him back, and I don’t know what she means to do with him. And I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to do anymore.”

  “Just how did your father die?” Meridy demanded. “How did you die?”

  “People said it was a riding accident,” Jaift said in a low, sickened tone.

  Diöllin tossed her head, recovering a trace of her customary attitude. It was mostly a pose, Meridy saw, at least right now. But her tone was haughty as she said, “A riding accident that killed two people? It was that fire horse, that same one, my father thought he could tame her, men of royal blood are supposed to be able to tame them, maybe he could have, my father could ride anything and horses always loved him, but the girth was cut half through, I saw it go, and then—” She stopped. Then she went on, “So then I ran into the corral. I was so stupid, but I thought maybe…maybe I could save him. But it was too late. I thought I could climb the fence before…but I wasn’t fast enough.” She shuddered helplessly.

  This gave Meridy far too complete and horrible a picture of exactly how the so-called riding accident must have happened. She said, “The fire horse killed your father, and then you, and it was your mother who cut the girth in the first place?”

  “She did. I know she did. I saw my mother’s face when he fell. She expected it to happen. I could tell.” Diöllin pressed her hands to her face. She would have been weeping, if ghosts could weep. But when she lowered her hands and glared defiantly at Meridy, her translucent face was unmarked by tears.

  “And now she’s riding the same fire horse herself?” Jaift plainly found this detail unbelievable. “How can she? Don’t people think that’s, well, creepy and awful?”

  Diöllin shook her head. “Everyone understands that part, even if it is creepy and awful. She wanted to make sure she was made regent. You know people say only royalty can tame fire horses. She was never—she was never a princess by birth, you know. She wanted to show everyone she was royal.”

  Niniol said quietly, “With her husband and her daughter gone to the God and her son merely a child, Princess Tiamanaith would rule for a long time, I suppose. Or the sorceress, in her place.”

  “Sorceress?” cried Diöllin. “What sorceress do you mean?”

  “An ally of the witch-king’s, who took your mother’s place, we think.” Meridy explained as briefly and simply as she knew how. “But listen, allies or not, the sorceress can’t have wanted Tai-Enchar to take the young prince, or why snatch him up the minute we got him away from the witch-king’s servants?”

  “But if that’s not really my mother, that’s even worse! We have to save him!” declared Diöllin.

  “What, you mean we have to save him again?” said Niniol, the dryness of his tone not altogether without justice, Meridy had to admit.

  But Jaift said firmly, “Of course we have to save him. Poor little boy! Did you see that woman’s face? She was scary. We can’t simply abandon poor Herren to her!”

  “Iëhiy went with him,” Meridy offered. “I think.”

  “Well, that’s something, but even if it weren’t for the young prince, we can’t let that woman be regent, either. It’s not right! We have to tell someone what Princess Tiamanaith did, and who that is in her place!” Jaift sounded fiercely determined about this.

  “Oh?” said Niniol, crossing his arms over his chest and tilting his head. “Who, exactly, and why would they believe us?” But then he added thoughtfully, “Though that’s a reason to find the young prince again, I suppose. Whether we’re to thwart the witch-king or unseat the princess-regent or both, it’s His little Highness as will have to do it, young as he is.”

  “Yes!” cried Diöllin. “The first thing is to make sure Herren’s safe!”

  “You’re right,” Meridy said, relieved to find they could agree after all on what they had to do. She had no idea how they could do any of that, but agreeing on a direction was almost like figuring out the first step of an actual plan.

  But Niniol was going on, “Still, I don’t see your friend Carad Mereth anywhere, do you, Mery? He challenged Tai-Enchar’s servitor—and where did that get him? And now we’ve got to worry about the princess-regent of Cora Tal? You know what we ought to do: we ought to find the nearest priests’ sanctuary and turn all this over to the priests. They’re far better suited to deal with this than we are.”

  “Oh, can we?” Jaift said wistfully.

  Meridy took a breath, let it out, and said, “I don’t think we can, you know.”

  “Oh, but—”

  “No. I mean, I’m the one who’s bound Diöllin, and she’s the one who can find Herren—can’t you, Diöllin?”

  The ghost murmured assent. “I always know where he is. He’s east of us now, a long way away—oh, she took him home, of course, to Cora Diorr. And the priests wouldn’t believe us anyway,” she added earnestly. “Who would believe that Tai-Enchar is still alive? Or quick, even if he’s not alive. Who would believe that a sorceress has taken my mother’s place?”

  “Well, you are the princess,” observed Niniol. “It’s not like you’re just anybody with a wild story. Although…” He paused. “Umm.”

  “Yes,” agreed Meridy. “It’s not very believable, is it? And the quick dead don’t always clearly remember their own deaths. Princess Diöllin could be confused. Blaming her mother, well, she’s distraught. Prince Diöllonuor’s death could have been an accident, you know. A broken girth—those things happen, and when you’re trying to ride a fire horse, well, there you go. And Carad Mereth didn’t seek help from the priests, either. Or if he did, he didn’t mention it to me. I expect it was because he knew they’d argue with him or one another and nobody would do anything until it was too late.”

  “Who’d want to believe any of this?” asked Niniol, his tone resigned. “I wouldn’t, sure enough. So, then, say Her Highness may be able to find Herren, what are we supposed to do once we find him?”

  Meridy had no idea, but she declared, “We’ll figure that out when we get there.”

  “I have friends,” Diöllin put in earnestly. “My father’s seneschal, Lord Roann, he’ll help us, I know he will!”

  “If he was your father’s seneschal, he owes the princess-regent service now,” Niniol pointed out.

  “No, Lord Roann will help us. He’ll know something’s happened to my mother, I know he will! I trust him!”

  Niniol shrugged. “Well, maybe. But you know, the histories are filled with stories about the trusted servants and close friends and reliable allies of royalty. Exciting, dramatic stories.”

  “Do you think I cannot distinguish a flatterer’s tongue and heart from those of a true friend?”

  Niniol didn’t seem convinced. “It’d be a brighter world if
we could all do so, Your Highness. And yet—”

  Meridy said hastily, “Let’s not start arguing again! One thing we know for sure is that we’re not safe here. We need to do something and go somewhere, and does anybody have a better idea than getting seats in a farmer’s wagon and heading east toward Cora Diorr?”

  Not even Diöllin argued this time. By this time it was light enough to make out her expression, so Meridy could see she looked profoundly skeptical. But the princess said with an exasperated little shrug, “All right. All right! A farmer’s wagon will do for now, I suppose, and since it’ll take forever to get to Cora Diorr in a wagon, we can figure out the rest of it on the way. But don’t say anything to me if you don’t like sleeping in barns and washing at a pump!”

  Meridy let her breath out in relief that they could start moving at last. “A barn is good enough, as long as no one looks for us in barns.”

  “I’d like to find a pump right now,” added Jaift, also sounding relieved. “Or even a fountain. We need to make sure we look respectable if we’re going to chat with strangers!”

  Meridy gratefully let the older girl take over, thinking instead about Cora Diorr—the prince’s city, the City of Spires. She knew that Cora Diorr lay in the midst of a plain, but that the city itself was surrounded by a ring of mountains. And she knew that Herren’s father had been collecting witches in Cora Diorr for years and years, so in that one city, a girl with black eyes might not stand out at all.

  —

  Diöllin was right about a farmer’s barn not being as comfortable as a room in a decent inn. But on the other hand, Meridy thought this particular barn was actually fairly nice. There might not be beds, but the barn smelled of clean hay.

  And it was a lot more pleasant than her aunt’s crowded cottage in Tikiy, where she’d had to sleep in a bed with cousins who hated her. The hands at this farm slept in the stable, not the hay barn, so she and Jaift—and Niniol and Diöllin—could talk without fear of being overheard. That was important. They had so much to talk about.