The White Road of the Moon

by Rachel Neumeier

  Herren tugged at Meridy’s sleeve. “We can’t stop! We can’t stop here, not for a second! She knows. She’s coming.”

  “Oh, no!” said Jaift, jerking her head up.

  “Oh, yes!” Meridy gave the other man an assessing look. He looked strong, at least. “Quick—if we can’t get him up, we’ll have to carry him!”

  Jaift patted the seneschal’s face, trying to rouse him out of the vague stupor that had claimed him. “Who is this? He looks terrible, poor man.”

  “You didn’t know?” exclaimed Lord Perann, with a grim glance that weighed both Jaift and Meridy and found them thoroughly suspicious. “No, of course you didn’t, or you’d have used his name to buy my help—and fair weight to the coin at that. Listen to me, Roann, you get yourself up on your feet right now or I will tell Mother you got me in trouble with the princess-regent, do you hear me? And if I wind up beside you in that cursed dungeon, I will blame you.”

  Meridy bit her lip, trying not to laugh. Brothers, indeed. And better, Roann was now making an earnest effort to get to his feet. Jaift backed up toward the door behind them, reaching for the latch, but it opened just as she reached it.

  For an instant Meridy thought her heart might truly have stopped beating. She’d always thought that was merely an expression, but it actually felt exactly like that. But the two girls who stepped through the door were servants carrying trays cluttered with tea things, not the princess-regent or horrible black-eyed servants of the witch-king, and the door they’d come through opened, after all, just to the servants’ kitchen and hope of safety.

  They all stared at each other in mutual astonishment and alarm. Meridy knew her eyes were wide and frightened—and black—and she couldn’t imagine what her group looked like to those girls: Lord Perann supporting most of his brother’s weight; Jaift hovering anxiously; and worst of all, Herren, his young face surely all too recognizable.

  And the sound of someone coming down the stairs toward them was now unmistakable. Several people, in fact, their boots clattering, sounding to Meridy’s frightened ear a good deal more like guardsmen than servants.

  “Excuse us, please,” Jaift said composedly, stepping past the two girls and holding the door open for Perann, who huffed in wordless acknowledgment, heaved Lord Roann around, and got his brother aimed, both of them staggering, for the kitchens. Meridy, pretending as hard as she could that everything was perfectly ordinary and unremarkable, hurried after them, still holding Herren’s hand.

  Then a shout made her glance over her shoulder, and she saw half a dozen men round the corner of the next landing up.

  “Here, you!” the one in the lead called out, and Meridy took a step backward, but before she could turn and run, the stairway and half the landing crumbled slowly away to sand and dust. The men fell away into sudden yawning emptiness. They didn’t even have time to look surprised. A wind came up, redolent of hot stone and blowing dust, here in this inner stairway where no passing breeze could possibly find its way. And, strolling confidently from the midst of the empty plain that yawned wide, where only moments ago the perfectly ordinary stairway had led up and away, came Princess Tiamanaith.

  —

  The princess-regent looked exactly like a sorceress. Meridy couldn’t see how anyone could miss what she had become. She wore mourning white, a simple, sweeping dress that fell in gorgeous panels to her feet, and over that a long vest of black, its pectoral embroidered with shimmering black thread. Her black hair was looped up with strings of white pearls; her skin was aristocratically pale; strands of tiny black pearls swung from her ears.

  Meridy, unable to move in that first moment of astonishment, met the princess-regent’s gray eyes and realized at once that that had been a mistake, because she could not look away.

  The woman smiled, and then Diöllin whirled in front of Meridy, crying out with the thin, breathless voice of a ghost. Tiamanaith’s smile faded, but the thoughtful look she bent on Diöllin was not the look of a mother for her daughter. There was a terrible covetousness to it, an angry, balked possessiveness. She started to speak, but Meridy didn’t stay to hear her. She whipped around and fled, pulling her ghosts along with her through the sheer force of her will. One of the servant girls squeaked and dropped her tray. The other, admirably sensible, hurled hers away, grabbed her friend’s hand, and pulled her out of the way.

  Meridy ran into the kitchens after Jaift and the others, but she felt now almost like she had fallen into a dream, the kind of dream where you run and run but you can hardly move, and all the time something terrible is coming up behind you. Worse, she really couldn’t get away: in the kitchens everyone was piled up against the door, Jaift standing off a cook twice her size and three times her age while Lord Perann supported his brother and Herren struggled to unbar the door and the rest of the kitchen staff looked on in amazement.

  Obviously the bar was stuck or jammed or held somehow. Herren couldn’t get the door open. They couldn’t get out. There was no way out. Meridy skidded to a halt and turned, helplessly, to face Princess Tiamanaith as the princess-regent stepped with measured grace into the kitchens and gazed across the long room, first at Diöllin, then straight at Meridy, and finally at her son.

  Herren, brave though he was, made a thin sound of terror and cowered like a beaten dog.

  “He is mine!” declared Tiamanaith. “Mine! My son!” But she said my son not with love but in a tone that made it clear she claimed possession. She looked beautiful and passionate and just as human and mortal as anyone, but there was nothing human or mortal in her eyes. “Mine!” she repeated. “I carried him in this body and marked him with my sign at his birth, and I will have my price for him!”

  “You were his mother!” cried Diöllin. “What bargain did you make that you would use him like this?”

  To Meridy’s surprise, Tiamanaith actually answered Diöllin. “She would have lost him,” she said coldly. “She had lost him, and she had not the arts to reclaim him. Was it not kind of me to offer my aid in her trouble? Was it not generous of me to share her life for nine years? For nearly nine years the boy lived and was healthy, and nearly all the time he lived under the affectionate gaze of his mother. The bargain did not require I wait so long.”

  “She didn’t know what she did!” Diöllin retorted. “I know she didn’t! She meant to give you her own life, not Herren’s! You cheated her!”

  Tiamanaith laughed scornfully. “It’s not my fault she didn’t understand her own bargain. She was a careless woman—careless and vain, but she was the one who accepted the aid of sorcery in her trouble. Stupid woman, you know it’s true. Be quiet!”

  Meridy realized, with an unpleasant chill, that when she said Be quiet, the sorceress, Aseraiëth, was actually speaking to Tiamanaith. The princess-regent was still in that body, along with the sorceress.

  She couldn’t stand it. So she took one long step, grabbed Herren by the wrist, and dragged him and her ghosts the other way, the way the princess-regent had opened up, into dust and emptiness. Into dreams and memory.

  It wasn’t her dream, of course. Or her memory. She recognized the white spire in the empty plain, now, and couldn’t believe she hadn’t recognized it at once as a dream of Cora Diorr; but this was a Cora Diorr in which all the city—all the world—had turned to dust except for that one perfect spire. All else was gone, or had never been. The dust hissed across the wasteland with a sound like loneliness.

  In this place, terrible as it was, the quick dead took on color and seeming solidity; Niniol, intimidatingly stolid and grim, had again taken on the semblance of life. Diöllin put her arms around her brother, holding him tight. Her hair, smooth and lustrous, fell in a rich brown cascade down her back, and the golden chain that bound it glittered. Her eyes, narrowed with determination, were the eyes of a living person. Meridy had forgotten their odd color, green bronze like moss on forest loam.

  Meridy stared around, searching for anything except dust and desolation, but could see nothing here that
could help them against the princess-regent, and still no way out.

  “She’ll follow!” Herren said tensely. “And this is his place, this is Tai-Enchar’s own realm. It’s the worst place we could have come—”

  “I know! Be quiet!” Meridy tried to think. At least Jaift wasn’t here; she was glad of that; surely Jaift must be much safer now: the princess-regent would come after Meridy and Herren, and Lord Roann and his brother would protect Jaift. But now she and Herren were trapped here where every place was the same place, and it was all the dream of the witch-king.

  “Carad Mereth!” she shouted, and then, “Iëhiy?” But neither sorcerer nor wolfhound came. It was on the tip of her tongue to call Inmanuàr, but some half-recognized terror stopped her; this might be a bad place for her and Herren, but she felt sure it would be much worse for Inmanuàr.

  Meridy had brought herself here, brought Herren and Diöllin and Niniol here, but there was still no way out, and Herren was right, this was the worst place she could have brought them—she could almost feel Tai-Enchar’s attention closing around them, as though the witch-king were an approaching storm—something bitter and terrible that would break across them and turn them all to dust—

  Behind her, a step that wasn’t a step, and a breath that wasn’t a breath, and she whirled, knowing it was the witch-king, he was here and it was too late—

  But it was Iëhiy, looking almost like a living hound, brindled and powerful; and with him, beautiful and terrible, a fire horse.

  After that first shocked instant, Meridy recognized the beast. Of course she did. This was the blood bay stallion she had seen killed on the road outside Cora Diorr.

  Like the other ghosts, he seemed almost alive here in this ethereal realm, shockingly vivid against the empty plain and the colorless sky, red bay half a shade darker than blood, black mane flying as he tossed his head and half reared in threat and warning. But though he seemed poised to attack or flee, he did neither. His yellow cat’s eyes were fixed on Meridy, his ears pinned back, his teeth bared—his tusks gleamed like ivory in the dead air. But he didn’t snap at her, or tear at her with his clawed forefeet. He did snort at Iëhiy, but the hound only tilted his ears back in a friendly way.

  No one else was so sanguine about the fire horse’s sudden presence. Diöllin had shoved her brother behind her own body, and Niniol had caught Meridy’s shoulder to pull her back, too, but Meridy refused to move. She stared at the stallion. She could tell, now, that she was his anchor. She could feel it. She knew she was his anchor. She must have drawn him after her without even knowing it, just as she had drawn her other ghosts—no wonder, no wonder she had felt in Cora Diorr that there was someone following them, following her. She had been right all the time. It had been this terrible, wonderful, brutal, brilliant, monstrous creature. And Iëhiy, with a dog’s sure wisdom, had led him right to her.

  And as the empty air opened wide and something—or someone—terrible began to coalesce, Meridy shook herself free of Niniol’s half-tangible grip, caught Herren’s hand, stepped forward, and flung herself onto the back of the fire horse, dragging the young prince up in front of her.

  It didn’t matter that she could never have leaped up like that onto the back of an ordinary horse, or that she didn’t have the strength to lift a boy of almost nine, or that the living fire horse would never willingly have let either of them touch him. This was a place of dreams, and she did leap to the stallion’s back and pull Herren up with her; and the fire horse did let her do it.

  The stallion wanted to run. Meridy wanted that too. He wanted to run forever and never stop, so he leaped forward, and in that first great flying breathless moment, Meridy shouted to Iëhiy, and the dog was there, in front of them, racing across the dead realm. And before the dog, the light twisted open between dreams and the living world, and Meridy shouted again, and in one great bound the stallion carried them though the roiling confusion of light and out of the ethereal into the real.

  She nearly fell. In that first instant, she nearly fell right through the fire horse, because in the real world the ghost did not have weight or heft or solidity. He was already racing the wind, and if she had fallen, she would have smashed into the ground with terrible force, dragged Herren down with her, and probably killed them both. But the dawn light was streaming through a silvery morning mist, and in one terrified gasp Meridy limned the fire horse with mist and jerked him into the real. She might have fallen even then because she wasn’t a very good rider and she’d never been on a galloping horse, far less bareback on a galloping fire horse. But there Herren saved her, saved them both, because his balance never faltered. Meridy wrapped one arm around his waist and clenched her other hand in the stallion’s thick mane—it was like gripping a handful of cloud—and somehow stayed on.

  She made no effort at all to guide the stallion, or even see where he was going. She didn’t care, as long as it was away. But she realized eventually that Herren was somehow guiding the fire horse. It was as though the boy merely looked the way he wanted the stallion to run, and the fire horse turned that way. She had no idea how Herren did it, but the fire horse bolted around one white spire and another and then hurled himself for a gate. Thankfully the gate was standing open for a dawn delivery of, she couldn’t guess, fresh-baked bread or produce for the kitchens or who knew what. There were wagons in the way. The fire horse did not hesitate but only gathered himself and leaped for a gap between a wagon and the gatepost. The gap would never have been big enough for the living beast. But the ordinary horses harnessed to the wagon shied violently and the wagon tilted to the side, and then the gap was after all wide enough, barely. The white street unrolled before them, straight and level, and the fire horse pinned his ears flat, put his head down, and charged along it with furious disregard for anyone who might get in his way.

  Meridy, terrified, saw men and ladies, carriages and ordinary horses, scramble this way and that, and she couldn’t help but wonder what all those people saw: two children clinging to what seemed a half-solid burst of red-tinged fog with blazing yellow eyes and clashing tusks?

  Behind them, they must have left an uproar, but Meridy could hear only the wind rushing past. All her thoughts jolted and scattered with the speed of the fire horse—she was almost not afraid of falling now, she was almost getting used to shaping the fire horse continually out of the mist and the rushing wind. It almost felt as though she truly was riding the wind, as though there was no way to fall, not now. Ridiculous as it was, she almost felt safe.

  She couldn’t tell whether Tiamanaith was coming after them, but she didn’t know how the sorceress even could, now. How horrible for poor Herren, his mother lost to the terrible sorceress; he must be so frightened, he was just a baby, but he felt so steady in front of her. She couldn’t see her other ghosts, not even Iëhiy anymore, but she knew she still held them; she could feel the binding between them and knew they weren’t lost, they were here, with her.

  The fire horse had cleared the edges of Cora Diorr with blazing inexhaustible speed, far ahead of any possible pursuit. He was racing south, his muscles bunching and stretching beneath her; but for all his seeming solidity, she knew they were riding a ghost as insubstantial as smoke, and what she would do when the morning mist burned off, Meridy did not know. She could not imagine holding the fire horse this far within the real with nothing but sunlight and a handful of ethereal dust.

  But, though nothing like tame, he might have realized that somehow carrying Meridy with him meant he was free to run for the mountains. He wasn’t fighting her binding, at least; or at least he wasn’t fighting her as long as she wanted him to do what he wanted to do anyway, which was run. He wasn’t afraid of her, or she thought not. A fire horse didn’t have any reason to fear a mere girl, even if she was clinging to his back; a fire horse didn’t have reason to fear anything less fierce than a dragon or a griffin. Or maybe he didn’t fight her because Herren was royal and thus, as all the stories claimed, naturally able to tame and ride
a fire horse.

  Meridy, lifting her gaze, looked west, toward the road and the gap in the encircling mountains. She shouted in Herren’s ear, “West! We have to go west before we can go north!”

  The young prince jerked his head in a tense nod, and the fire horse’s path curved, racing for the gap.

  —

  Of course, even a fire horse stallion couldn’t carry Meridy and Herren all the way to Surem in one mad gallop, no matter how fast.

  Meridy couldn’t hold the ghost far enough into the real for so long without a break, for one thing; and then two children riding a fire horse ghost at blazing speed down the Coramne Road…Well, it would not be precisely discreet to leave a trail of astonished rumor behind them.

  On the other hand, the journey to Surem did promise to be much quicker than any other journey Meridy had ever taken in her life. The fire horse was so much faster than a public conveyance or carter’s wagon that it was like comparing mutton with turnips, as the saying went.

  Speed was important. She could imagine how many White Swan guardsmen might be on the road behind them. What she could not guess was whether Princess Tiamanaith—the sorceress Aseraiëth—would be after them herself or, if she was, whether she would ride through the real world like an ordinary person, or straight through dreams.

  Nor could she guess what Tai-Enchar might be doing. Meridy detested the sorceress for Herren’s sake, but she was fairly sure the witch-king intended worse for the young prince than even Aseraiëth. And she still did not know what Carad Mereth or Inmanuàr or anyone could actually do, at Moran Diorr or anywhere else, or whether it might still be possible to let Herren draw their enemies’ attention so she might free Carad Mereth. If she could indeed find him, in Tai-Enchar’s terrible lonely realm; and after her recent visit to that place, she couldn’t see how to even begin. For all she knew, Carad Mereth had already been crushed and turned into dust and was now blowing on the wind of the witch-king’s dreams.