The White Road of the Moon

by Rachel Neumeier

  “A real key, no,” said Meridy. “But…” She looked past him, at Diöllin. “Another option, maybe. If you’re ready?”

  The princess nodded and came quickly back to Meridy’s side of the bars.

  “Oil the hinges,” Niniol reminded them.

  Meridy pretended she hadn’t forgotten. “Of course.” She got out the jar of oil and handed it through the bars to Lord Roann, who was taller. The seneschal took it without further argument and stretched up to oil the hinges of the cell door. Meridy left him to it, laying her left hand on the lock and holding out her right hand to Diöllin.

  Diöllin wasn’t able to touch the lock on her own, far less shift the tumblers. But she took Meridy’s hand, then frowned at the lock as though it had suddenly come into focus for her. Then Meridy had to wait for a truly agonizing period as Diöllin did…whatever the quick dead did, to make an ethereal object. In this case it was harder, because Diöllin wasn’t trying to make something she knew well, or even something she had glimpsed once. She was trying to use the lock itself to make its own ethereal key.

  Meridy knew she and Diöllin should be able to do this. Ghosts could make ethereal objects, the lock itself would shape its own key, it should work. It should.

  And at least she knew what Diöllin was trying to do. Lord Roann finished with the hinges, tucked the little jar away in a pocket, and then simply had to wait with tense patience for something useful to happen. He put an arm around the young prince’s shoulders—Herren was practically swaying. The boy leaned against him, not exactly trustingly, but as though he couldn’t stand up entirely on his own and was marginally willing to let the seneschal support him. Meridy suspected Lord Roann’s air of edgy quiet was better than she could have managed, if she’d been the one waiting for someone else to open her cell door with magic and sheer force of will.

  The wait seemed interminable. The only sounds were a slow trickle of water from somewhere not too far away, and a sudden, disturbing low moaning from some unfortunate prisoner a little way back along the row of cells. Meridy shifted her weight carefully from one foot to the other, trying not to fidget. No doubt this experience was character building—

  Dim light from a spell glow slid along something that did not exist. There was nothing there. There was. Meridy squinted, trying to decide whether she was seeing more than merely her own hope. On the other side of the bars, Lord Roann drew in his breath, and Herren straightened shakily, gripping the seneschal’s arm. A key, long and pale, limned with light, shaped itself out of the air and rested on nothing, glimmering.

  “Try it,” Diöllin whispered, her voice in Meridy’s ear seeming even more muted than usual.

  Meridy reached out with her free hand and touched the key.

  For an instant it was hard and cold against her fingers. Then she closed her hand about it, and it puffed into nothing as instantly and completely as though it had never been there at all. Meridy only barely stopped herself from groaning aloud in disappointment. Herren turned his face aside, and Lord Roann gripped his shoulder encouragingly. Meridy looked helplessly at Diöllin.

  “Wait,” murmured the princess. “Just wait a moment. It’s my fault, I let you touch it too soon—it wasn’t ready, but I can do it, I know I can. Let me try again.”

  Another wait, not so long this time. Another key, drawn out of air and imagination to tempt the hand and mock the attempted touch. Gone like the first, a breath of cold solidity lost to the first brush of a living hand.

  “It’s not going to work,” Meridy whispered.

  “You’re both trying too hard, likely,” Niniol said impatiently. “Take it slow, touch it gently.”

  “I can’t touch it lightly enough—it isn’t going to work.”

  “It will!” Diöllin whispered. “Roann will make it work!”

  Meridy, startled, saw for the first time that the seneschal was no longer standing on the other side of the bars. He had turned slightly away and retreated a few steps for what privacy the cell could afford him, leaving Herren, who had crouched down and was leaning against the bars but had made no protest.

  The seneschal was kneeling silently, facing one of the cell’s stone walls, head bowed. He wore no priest’s medal—the warden must have taken it—but even if she hadn’t known he was a priest, Meridy could hardly have missed it now. His hands were cupped at his throat where the medal should have been. His neck and shoulders were tight with tension, as though he were attempting some arduous physical task. His voice, in low entreaty, was a thread of sound against the buried silence of the dungeon. Meridy couldn’t clearly make out his words, but she could tell he was calling on the God. He was calling the attention of the God, in the name of justice and truth, to the lie the princess-regent had told, the lie that wore Tiamanaith as its face.

  “We’ll try it once more,” Diöllin whispered. “The God’s hand will be above us.” She sounded quite certain about it.

  Meridy wished she were that sure, but maybe…maybe it would work now. “Do you think it’s safe for you, though?” she asked Diöllin.

  Diöllin laughed, a half-audible sound with real amusement in it. “Mery!” she said, though she had not usually called Meridy by that little-name. “I don’t know! But Roann is right: what else can we do?”

  “Trust the God,” Niniol said quietly, but Diöllin was already working on making a third key, which began taking tenuous shape almost at once. The key solidified as Meridy watched, pale and gleaming as if it held an immanent light of its own within its slender form.

  Lord Roann had fallen silent. He was perfectly still, as though prepared to stay exactly as he was for hours, or for days. It was not exactly a stillness of waiting; there was nothing in it of either patience or impatience. In some indefinable way Meridy thought it seemed to go beyond any such familiar concepts, to touch a form of stillness greater than mortal men should know. She wanted to say something, anything, just to break the silence. This was surely not the time. She bit her lip and didn’t make a sound.

  It took a conscious effort to conquer that quiet sufficiently to reach out yet a third time for the key, where it glittered among the shadows of the dungeon hall. As it had been before, it was cold and hard to the touch: but this time there was something more than that first solidity. A tight stinging raced up Meridy’s arm and made the back of her neck prickle, as though her hair were trying stand on end; a cold that chilled her hand to the bone as though the key were made of some more unearthly substance than any ice. It burned like the winter made into fire and given form. Meridy came appallingly close to dropping the key in shock; and whether she could have retrieved it or whether it would have fallen instead back into the ethereal realm from which it had been created, she had no idea.

  Then she closed her fingers about the slender bar of it, steadied the lock with her other hand, and shoved the key home. It turned with a gritty scraping sound, but once it turned, the lock sprang open as though eager to yield to an irresistible force. Meridy gasped once, in pain and relief, and let go of the key: despite the pain of it, it took a conscious effort to force her hand to open, as though some part of her craved that coldly burning touch. The key, released, fell from the lock and struck the floor. It rang once against the stones, shredded into light and air and silence, and was gone.

  Meridy simply could not believe she had dropped the key. What a stupid thing to do. That golden tone must have been audible all through the dungeons, maybe all through the city. It had sounded exactly like a prayer bell—worse, it had sounded exactly like a prayer bell that the very hand of the God had lifted and struck. The tone, absolutely pure, lingered on the ear even after it had faded into silence, as though the silence were somehow part of the sound. It was the sort of ringing chime that seemed as though it must have been heard everywhere in the entire world. Meridy clenched her burned fingers in her other hand, fiercely blinked back tears as the sharp pain faded, and stared at Niniol.

  Niniol drew his sword, a whisper of ethereal sound, and took
a few steps back along the corridor. He stood now, alert and poised at the point where the corridor turned. He didn’t say, Hurry. He didn’t need to.

  But there was actually no sign, yet, that the prison guards had heard the sound, though it had rung out so clear and sharp and perfect to Meridy. She stood still, listening, trying to breathe quietly. There were no alarmed shouts, no sound of rushing boots, nothing.

  Within the cell, Lord Roann got awkwardly to his feet, as though needing to remember and carry out each necessary movement separately. Diöllin hovered by him, trying to help him, though her hands only passed through him. Herren, though stumbling himself, was more use, half supporting the seneschal and half forcing Lord Roann to focus and support himself. Meridy swung the door of the cell open—it made a scraping sound, but nothing too loud. By then, Lord Roann, with Herren’s help, had made it to his feet.

  “Are you all right?” she asked, very low, offering the seneschal her shoulder to lean on.

  Dismissive of pride, he let her take his weight. “I will be. Is anybody coming? They must have heard that….”

  “The guards don’t seem to have,” Meridy said doubtfully. “Maybe it wasn’t a real sound.”

  Herren was trembling with cold or fear or the drug. “If it wasn’t real, my mother will have heard it. Tai-Enchar probably heard it, wherever he is.”

  “I would say there’s no chance they didn’t both get an earful,” Niniol agreed, his tone grim. He still had his sword naked in his hand, but he had to know as well as Meridy that it would do no good against their true enemies.

  Lord Roann said, “Please tell me you have a plan for the next part of our daring escape.”

  “Yes,” Meridy agreed fervently. “I hope so! Hurry. Try to be quiet.” She helped the seneschal back down the corridor toward Tiranann’s special cell with its hidden way out. She hoped Lord Roann would be able to manage the climb—he was putting a lot of his weight on her, almost too much, and she staggered, trying to be quiet.

  No guards intercepted them, so Meridy was more and more certain that the ringing tone hadn’t been a real sound. She half expected, as they came around the curve of the wall, to find a guard standing outside Tiranann’s cell, but no one was there. She opened the disguised panel and waved Lord Roann and Herren into the hidden chamber at the base of the long shaft that led up and out of the dungeons. Then she hurried back to close and relock the door.

  “Rub out the marks in the dirt,” Niniol ordered shortly. “Hurry. There is a guard coming, now. I’m not sure those fools know even yet that anything’s wrong—I think it’s a routine change of shift. It’s likely dawn, or nearly.”

  Meridy scooted out of the cell into the bottom of the hidden shaft with deep relief, pushing the panel closed behind her and summoning a wisp of ethereal light to let everyone see better. Then she leaned against the panel for a moment to catch her breath. She almost felt safe.

  “I had no idea,” Lord Roann murmured, glancing around at the constriction of the shaft.

  “I didn’t know,” Herren said tensely.

  “I should have told you,” Diöllin said to her brother, penitent. “But Father said only his heir was supposed to know. But I would have told you, only how could I know she would imprison you down here? Or Roann, either? And then it was too late.”

  “We’re not out yet!” Meridy reminded them. “And, I’m sorry, but the only way out is straight up, about eighty feet.”

  “I can do it,” Herren said at once, with the confidence of youth or possibly desperation.

  Lord Roann drew in a slow breath and released it. “I can make it.”

  “There’s no good place to rest along the way,” Meridy warned them both. “I mean, if you fall—” She broke off, because it wouldn’t help to say, If you fall, there’s nothing to catch you. She said instead, “There’s no landing at the top. I’ll have to go first to get the panel open. Then Herren, then you, all right?”

  “I understand,” the seneschal agreed. And if he understood that if the young prince fell, he would have to try to catch him and break his fall, well, that was exactly what Meridy meant.

  “I won’t fall,” Herren put in, also understanding this. “I won’t.”

  Meridy studied the boy worriedly. He looked white and exhausted. So did Roann. There was a tremor in the seneschal’s hands, and a muscle under one eye showed a distressing tendency to twitch. He didn’t look like a man who should be climbing an ordinary flight of stairs, much less an eighty-foot shaft with poor handholds and no way off save at the top.

  Lord Roann must have seen her worry, but he only leaned his head back against the wall and whispered, “I’m fine. Go on.” And Herren seconded this: “Yes, go. Go!”

  Meridy knew neither of them was anything like fine, but she saw no other choice. “Follow me as close as you can.” Turning to the rough stones of the shaft, she began the climb.

  It wasn’t exactly difficult, but it seemed to take a great deal longer than coming down, far longer than could possibly be safe. She found herself trying to count the falling of grains of sand in her head: time passing far too quickly. She wanted to climb fast, but she made herself stay one step above Herren, hoping that if he started to lose his grip there might be time to try, somehow, to steady him before he fell. Diöllin hovered behind her brother and the seneschal, murmuring encouragement, and though she had no way to truly help either of them, they both continued to move upward steadily, with only a little hesitation now and then to find a new grip where the stones were especially rough.

  They came at last to the top of the shaft. Meridy pressed one hand against the far wall and bent down to touch Herren’s hand. It took a long moment for the boy to stop trying to climb, to understand that he must be still and wait for the panel to be opened. Niniol, fortunately, was able to make sure that the stair landing was clear without the need to wait, listening, for some interminable interval.

  Meridy slipped the catch and pushed on the panel. It didn’t yield, and for one horrible moment she thought the panel was irretrievably stuck. She forced herself not to claw at it frantically but to try again from the beginning. It lifted out at the third attempt, and she scrambled through with a convulsive urgency. She doubled around at once and reached back through the narrow opening to help Herren out—his small size was a big help, but then Lord Roann nearly got stuck. The man’s shoulders were a good deal wider than Meridy’s. He’d never have made it if Meridy and Herren hadn’t been there to pull him through. Worse, after the seneschal was out, he lay on the landing with the boneless sprawl of the truly exhausted. His face was white, his fingernails torn where he had gripped the stones during the climb. The pale spell light of the stairway revealed every bruise and cut with unforgiving accuracy.

  “Roann!” Diöllin cried, frantic with dismay.

  Niniol nudged Meridy and she realized how stupid she was being. She wanted sand or dust, mist or smoke, or at least strong sunlight, but there was a lamp on a hook not too far away. She hastily opened the glass and fed the little flame with bits of cloth hastily torn from Lord Roann’s shirt. It didn’t make enough smoke, not nearly as much as she would have liked, but it was something. She cupped her hand over the lamp and blew the drifting smoke toward Niniol.

  Niniol shivered as he shifted momentarily into the real. Then he reached out, gripped Lord Roann’s arm and belt, and heaved him up, coming smoothly to his feet and settling the other man over his shoulder, undignified but secure.

  Roann stirred, murmuring an incoherent protest, making a fumbling effort to get away from Niniol and get back to his own feet.

  “Roann!” whispered Diöllin. “Stop arguing. Be still!”

  He did stop, too, which Meridy hadn’t expected.

  “We’ve got to be quick,” Niniol said, his voice almost clear for once because he was that close to the real. He strode down the stairs.

  Meridy caught Herren’s hand and ran after Niniol, frantically feeding the lamp flame with bits of cloth and hoping t
hey didn’t encounter anyone coming up the other way. It was three flights to the bottom of the stairs, with doors on each landing.

  Niniol, colorless and glimmering with ethereal light, carried Roann Mahonis, looking, as in a child’s story, like a ghost under the command of an evil witch stealing away a soul in the night—rather too much like that, in fact. Meridy was constantly terrified that someone would cheerfully open one of those doors, step into the stairway, and see them. She was sure she looked just like the mad witch in the story—wild-eyed terror probably looked exactly like madness. She clutched the railing and glanced over her shoulder, trying to decide if she really heard hurrying footsteps behind them or whether that was only her nerves populating the upper levels of the stairway with pursuers.

  “Someone’s behind us!” Herren said, tense, his hand cold in hers, and Meridy nodded. She only hoped Jaift had gotten the seneschal’s brother to help; she prayed they were in place—this stair was near the servants’ kitchens; Diöllin had insisted they’d be able to get out that way, through the door by which butchers and cheesemongers brought in their wares. But what if something had gone wrong; what if Jaift wasn’t there?

  There was nothing to be done except go on. And then Meridy had to duck forward fast and haul Niniol farther into the real as he started to slip away into the ethereal, and she still had nothing to work with except wisps of black smoke and terror and prayers. Niniol gave her an exasperated glance and started taking the stairs two at a time.

  Diöllin flicked back around the last turn of the stairway and beckoned to them. “Here!” she whispered. “Hurry!”

  Meridy sent one last wordless prayer to the God, hurried with Herren down the last flight of stairs, stepped around the corner, and found Niniol just easing Lord Roann down, with Jaift and a man she didn’t know, surely Lord Perann, taking his weight between them. She darted forward to help, gratefully allowing Niniol to fade into the ethereal.