The White Road of the Moon

by Rachel Neumeier

  “Witches aplenty in Cora Diorr!” he’d told them cheerfully when they’d approached him about riding in his wagon to the capital. “The witches in Cora Diorr live under the law. Nobody’s going to be stealing anybody’s soul in our city, see, and it’s helpful, you know, being able to get the haunts out of a place after a tragedy, or send some poor grieving soul to the God.”

  They had all looked at one another. Suddenly it seemed obvious where Tai-Enchar had gotten witches to make into his double-shadowed servants. Meridy could see it all: the law that for years, maybe, had brought witches to Cora Diorr and kept them there, vulnerable to the witch-king, ready for his use. And then the princess-regent—the sorceress Aseraiëth—had murdered Prince Diöllonuor to get him out of the way, so she could seize power in Cora Tal and help Tai-Enchar with…whatever he meant to do next. It was ugly, but she thought it had probably happened just like that.

  “Well, but how about the priests?” Jaift had asked, sounding a little doubtful. “I mean, I know the priests can’t always clear a haunting, but—”

  “But the witches of Cora Diorr can!” The carter had sounded even more smug when he explained that. “They manage what the priests can’t, see, so His Highness that was, he sent most of the priests out of Cora Diorr, to tend to the towns and villages as don’t have our law and can’t have witches about.”

  Jaift had drawn a breath to say something, probably something tart about thinking witches, no matter what law might rule them, could take over the priests’ role. But then she’d closed her mouth again without arguing. After all, they needed a ride—and there was nothing they could do about any of it now, anyway.

  “That’s why you’re on your way to the capital, eh, girl?” the carter had added to Meridy. “You’ve heard how the princess-regent’s called up all witches out of the whole principality, have you? Of course you have! Well, have no fear, you’re right to go to the princess-regent. She’ll welcome you and teach you the law and you’ll love our beautiful city. And your friend is going with you, is she, to see the sights? Wonderful! Always better to have friends about you, and everybody ought to see Cora Diorr once in their lives! I’ve a light load and room to spare. A silver coin each, you say? Good, that’s ample, especially for a pretty pair of girls like you!”

  So the journey to Cora Diorr had been pleasanter than it might have been, and at last they came over the saddle between the mountains. The carter—whose name was Jans, it turned out—checked his team of mules and gave his passengers their first real look at the concentric circles and white spires of Cora Diorr.

  “How about that, eh?” Jans said in a genial tone. “Cora Diorr’s the only city in the world with towers like that. You’ve heard it called the City of Spires, eh? Well, there you go! Built ’em by sorcery, the prince did, so they say. Prince Tirnamuon, that was, of course.” He saw Meridy’s nod and went on with enthusiasm, “You’ve heard the tale, eh? Yes; Prince Tirnamuon built those towers, and laid out the streets, and made a law that everything else in Cora Diorr must be made of local stone quarried right out of these mountains. Nor can anyone raise up other towers—nothing over ten times the height of a man. Though I don’t know as he had to set that into law; these days there’s not so much sorcery floating around loose as to spend it building towers!” Jans chuckled and nodded and waved the driver’s whip vaguely over the backs of the mules, which flicked their ears and started forward again.

  The road ran down from the saddle between the mountains to the gates of Cora Diorr in a series of long, lazy curves, so the distance took longer to cover than seemed reasonable. But the road here was good. The slope was gentle and all downhill, so everyone could ride if they wanted. Meridy perched on a bale of wool yarn beside Jaift, and they both watched the city grow gradually larger and more distinct. Meridy found her attention caught as well, as they drew closer to the city, by another group of travelers on the road before them.

  They had seen other wagons now and then as they came closer to the prince’s city; in fact, there had hardly been an hour when they hadn’t seen other travelers of one sort or another. Just on this last day, besides the wagons of tradesmen and farmers, they had seen two companies of guardsmen and, three times, small high-wheeled carriages drawn by high-stepping horses and escorted by outriders carrying banners depicting birds or fish or crescent moons. Meridy didn’t know any of those signs, but she could see why brigandage was of little concern on the Coramne Road if there was always so much traffic and so many guardsmen.

  But they were coming up on a group now that wasn’t like any of those. These people were gathered off to the side of the road doing…something. Something that involved a lot of jumping around and shouting. Meridy started to stand up, to try to see better, but the mules, suspicious of all that commotion, pinned their ears back and started to balk and sidle sideways, and the wagon was suddenly nothing like steady enough to risk standing up. Jans, his hands full of reins, cursed the mules good-naturedly but didn’t use the whip.

  “What is it?” Jaift asked, craning her neck. “Can you tell?”

  Meridy tried again to get to her feet, steadying herself with a hand on her friend’s shoulder. “Not quite…”

  Diöllin murmured in Meridy’s ear, “That’s Lord Taimonuol—but I can’t imagine what he’s up to.”

  “You know him?” Meridy asked, and then guiltily remembered the carter couldn’t see Diöllin and pretended that she’d been talking to Jaift, though of course there was no reason in the world Jaift would recognize anyone. But the carter, busy with the mules, didn’t seem to have noticed her slip.

  Diöllin was laughing, a little scornful but amused, too. “Everyone knows Lord Taimonuol, trust me on this! That’s his banner, but even without that, I’d recognize his horse—that white one. And his hair, that bright gold, look there. Wait till you see him properly; he’s worth a look, believe me! I can’t see what he’s up to, but it’ll be something flashy and dramatic, and all the men in Cora Diorr will wish they’d done it and all the women will fall in love with him. That’s what he’s like.”

  “That must be some lord or other—you can see his banner, but I can’t make out what’s happening at all,” Jaift said, though she was too prudent to attempt to actually get to her feet.

  But Niniol, standing in the road with the sunlight streaming through him, his hands on his hips and a disgusted expression on his face, said, “Ah, those fools! They’ve got a fire horse. Or they did have a fire horse. It’s gotten loose; that’s the trouble.”

  “A fire horse!” exclaimed Meridy and Jaift and Diöllin all together.

  “Ah, no, a fire horse, is it?” said the carter, interested despite the trouble he was having with the mules. “Takes a fool or a king to ride one, as they say.”

  “But,” said Jaift, “after what happened with Prince Diöllonuor?”

  “You might think so!” cried Jans. “But I guess the princess-regent is still offering the bounty, or at least them as caught this one must be hoping she is.”

  “I know why she wants this one,” whispered Diöllin. “She wants it for Herren, I know she does! He can ride anything—he’s like our father that way; she won’t have to coax him to try it, but God’s grace! My brother’s only eight!”

  “Every year or two some fool tries to bring one in for the prince’s bounty, and like as not gets his guts ripped out for his trouble,” Jans continued chattily, not hearing the princess. “Not but that them there haven’t got this one farther along toward Cora Diorr than most, I’ll give ’em that.”

  Niniol gave a disgusted little nod. “Men will be fools. But if the princess-regent lets one of the creatures kill her son, she won’t be regent long, I imagine.”

  Diöllin shook her head. “She won’t let that happen. She’ll have a plan.”

  Meridy couldn’t resist getting to her feet, craning to see, and never mind the mules’ continued restiveness. “Can’t we go closer?”

  “This’s more than close enough, my girl!” the
carter put in hastily. “Far away is the best place for those monsters, believe me!”

  “I’m sure Jans is right,” Jaift put in, sounding worried. “What if it breaks away entirely? Poor thing, I hope it does,” she added, not very consistently.

  “Now, now, you shouldn’t wish it turned loose on the countryside!” Jans exclaimed. “I’ll tell you what, we’ll just turn around, take the wagon back a little ways, get clear of all that nonsense, and let them up there sort it out….”

  Meridy jumped down out of the wagon. She’d seen illuminated manuscripts with pictures, but that wasn’t the same as a living fire horse. And she’d been too terrified to see anything properly when the princess-regent had ridden the other one out of light and air to snatch her son from Cora Talen.

  Jaift, too, climbed down from the wagon at last, half reluctant and half curious. “Really, Mery, I don’t think this is safe….”

  “ ‘Nàmàru kiën y daha manet siän,’ ” Meridy murmured. Blood-red shadows falling from the sunset…How did the rest of it go? Something about Blood-red shadows falling to rend the earth. That was how a famous poet had described his first sight of fire horses, a wild herd pouring down the slopes of the mountains. She remembered those lines, but somehow she had lived her whole life in the shadow of the Wall and never yet actually gotten a good look at one of the famous creatures. Now she felt how unfair that was. “There’s no need to be frightened, with all those men, don’t you think?”

  “I suppose you’re right,” Jaift said, though she didn’t look happy about it.

  Jans was brave enough to try to come after them, but his mules were having none of it. “My mules have more sense than the pair of you girls!” he shouted. “Listen, those fools don’t have it under control or they wouldn’t be jumping around like that! There was one not long ago, last year maybe, I heard it killed five men and near a sixth before archers put it down—”

  Meridy stopped listening. Niniol was speaking to her, too, but his voiceless murmur washed over her. She couldn’t see Diöllin, though she supposed the princess must be around somewhere and hoped she was not too worried about this delay. But surely an hour here or there couldn’t matter set against a journey of days, anyway.

  Fire horses were usually blood bay, though a few were black from nose tip to tail tip. Any ordinary cart horse might be bay or black, but no one would ever mistake a fire horse for a normal horse, not for a second, not even if they were exactly the same color.

  An ordinary horse might have a flying mane and tail and thick feathering on its fetlocks; an ordinary horse, if it was a fancy riding animal, might have an elegant head and small ears and an arched neck and move like it was dancing. But fire horses had eyes like a cat, slit-pupiled and yellow. They had clawed feet instead of hooves, short tusks set in the upper jaw and longer tusks in the lower, and a killing instinct that made wolves look like sheepdogs. You could train a horse to the saddle, or to pull a cart or plow a field, but no one could train a fire horse to do anything—except the Southerners, of course, who had brought the fire horses to the Kingdom in the first place. And those of royal blood, if one could believe the stories.

  Jaift caught Meridy’s hand and pulled her to a stop. “Isn’t this close enough?”

  Meridy shook her head. “It won’t be too dangerous to go just a little closer….”

  But then Niniol snapped, so forcefully she couldn’t ignore him, “May the God forgive the stupidity of children! Stop right here!” He had his sword in his hand, naked blade glittering like ice in the sun to Meridy’s eyes, and strode forward, back stiff with annoyance, to put himself between the girls and the commotion.

  Meridy felt her face heat and was glad Niniol had his back to them, because she could imagine his expression. She was embarrassed, but she still wanted to see. She stood on her toes, peering ahead.

  The fire horse was contained, barely, by a circle of men, a circle that bowed outward when the animal charged and bent forward again when it gave back. The men had long spears—that was how they were keeping the fire horse in the circle. Other men had heavy, powerful crossbows, but they weren’t shooting, not yet.

  The fire horse had been chained, Meridy saw, but now the broken length of chain dangled from its neck, whipping around dangerously when it whirled and lunged in a different direction. It had been hobbled, too, but the hobbles had only been ordinary leather and it had broken them—or probably bitten them through. Its powerful jaws certainly looked up to the job. The beast had savage tusks longer than a man’s hand, jutting upward like those of a boar. Now Meridy remembered the princess-regent’s fire horse had had tusks like that, too, but this one’s tusks were much heavier and longer. They were grotesque yet somehow didn’t ruin the elegance of its head. When it reared and screamed, the sound resonated with fury, not fear or pain.

  This one was blood bay; a brighter red than any horse, only a little darker than the fresh blood running down from the narrow wounds scored across its chest and heavy neck—it must be a stallion, with a neck like that; yes, that would explain the vicious tusks, too.

  The stallion’s mane flew as he reared and screamed and slashed with his tusks, trying to catch and break the spears. His claws flashed ivory amid the black feathering of his feet. He was terrifying and magnificent, and now that she saw him, she understood why kings and princes would pay a bounty for the chance to try to tame one of these monstrous creatures. But she couldn’t imagine little Herren trying to ride this terrible beast. The idea would surely terrify a child. It would certainly terrify her.

  “My lord!” shouted one of the men. “We’ll never get a chain on it again! You must give the order to shoot!” This wasn’t one of the ones with a spear but a man standing back a little way, near Meridy and her friends, in fact. He stood like someone important: with his hands on his hips and a thunderous expression on his face.

  The man to whom he spoke was younger and a lot more elegant and quite astoundingly handsome. Meridy understood immediately exactly what Diöllin had meant by declaring, Everyone knows Lord Taimonuol, trust me on this! She could imagine that every girl in all Cora Diorr would recognize this man. He had the most beautiful golden hair and fine hands, and even now he wore a fancy sapphire-blue shirt with black and violet ribbons lacing up the sleeves. His eyes were blue, too, almost as dark and pure a blue as his shirt. She exchanged a look with Jaift, who raised her eyebrows and mouthed, discreetly under her breath, Worth a look!

  Meridy would have laughed, except she was sorry for the fire horse stallion and afraid for the men trying to keep him under control. She could see the older man was right: no one was ever going to be able to get another chain on the stallion. She wasn’t even exactly sorry that recapturing the beast seemed impossible; chains and captivity seemed a miserable fate for him.

  But the golden lord did not seem quite ready to admit defeat. “Let’s not be hasty, Connar,” he said to the older man. “We can run him back and forth, wear him down, let thirst work on him. He’ll not keep this show up long.” He didn’t shout but spoke in a cold, level voice that somehow carried better than a shout.

  Niniol snorted, plainly skeptical of this assertion.

  Diöllin agreed scornfully. “Just like Taimonuol. He’s always been too arrogant to see plain sense.”

  “My lord—” the other man, Connar, began, but he got no further because at that moment the fire horse reared, whirled, lunged—then twisted unexpectedly to the side and snapped twice, first catching and shattering a man’s spear, then closing his terrible jaws on the man’s side, just above his hip. The stallion jerked the screaming man off his feet, flung him aside, and attacked the man’s neighbors while they struggled to close their ranks. Suddenly there was a tangle of screaming fire horse and shouting men, everything far too fast and violent and confused for Meridy to follow—she backed away, only realizing she was clinging to Jaift when she stumbled and the other girl put an arm around her to steady her.

  Then the fire horse broke free of th
e ring of men and raced away, clawed feet digging into the earth, hurtling toward the city, head high and mane flying.

  The lord cursed, low and bitterly.

  “Shoot it down!” ordered Connar. “Shoot!”

  The lord shook his head in disgust and gestured assent to the crossbowmen. Quarrels flicked out from the heavy crossbows. Two men missed, but four quarrels struck the fire horse in the back and haunches and side, and he screamed—still a sound of fury rather than fear—as his rear legs collapsed under him.

  “Oh!” whispered Jaift, turning her face away.

  The fire horse flung his head up, raked the earth once more with his terrible claws, and died as another half dozen quarrels followed the first. But almost at once, his ghost pitched himself violently up and leaped into furious flight toward the mountains surrounding the city. Meridy felt better, seeing this evidence that the beast might have died but that death was not the end.

  The fire horse’s ghost didn’t take the Moon’s Road out of the real, however. His path curved in a long arc away and around, and Meridy didn’t see the pearly white of the Moon’s Road open up before him. She was surprised, but the fire horse must have been too angry and distraught to go to the God’s hand right away. Until she lost sight of the translucent ghost against the sky and the mountains, he fled faster and more lightly than any living animal, seeming hardly to touch the earth at all.