The White Road of the Moon

by Rachel Neumeier

  A small knot of stillness had formed around Carad Mereth. He was backing slowly away from Tai-Enchar, one quiet step and then another, as though he moved through an empty room and not a brawl, as though he and the witch-king were the only two men present.

  The witch-king moved forward, one slow stride and then another. Niniol tried to strike at him, but there was the high sharp sound of breaking glass, and a swelling chime that snapped suddenly into a dissonance, like a bell had been lifted and struck so hard it had shattered, and his ethereal sword shattered and was gone, leaving Niniol weaponless. He leaped back, but Tai-Enchar tilted his head and Niniol staggered to a halt and cried out, a terrible thin sound.

  “Niniol!” cried Jaift. She flickered forward, trying to catch Niniol as the witch-king’s will forced him to his knees—one ghost trying to support another—and they both flickered and faded before Tai-Enchar’s cold assault. There was no blood, for ghosts couldn’t bleed, but Niniol was shredding around the edges. He gripped Jaift’s arms, shuddering. Meridy cried out, and in that moment Aseraiëth twisted somehow and broke the binding Meridy had laid on her. She shook herself free, hissing with triumph and rage.

  Whirling on Meridy, Jaift commanded, “Let me go! This is enough, it’s too much! You have to let me go.” Her voice, though soundless, was filled with passion. Jaift glared at the witch-king, her expression fierce with revulsion and simmering fury. “He thinks he owns me,” she cried. “He thinks he’ll possess me—he thinks I’m his to give away! But I was never his, and I make my own choices. Let me go, and I’ll open the White Road wide right here! It will run both ways, Mery! I’ll open it and you’ll hold it open, and let Tai-Enchar face the very God! He won’t have everything his own way then!”

  Meridy knew Jaift could open the White Road of the Moon, exactly as she said. She knew she had to let her. But then, whatever else, once Meridy let her friend go, Jaift would go. And then she would be gone. And Meridy would never see her again.

  If Meridy held her, then Jaift could stay with her forever. She need never be lost entirely from the world of men. Let ancient ghosts and ruthless sorcerers contest as they would, let Inmanuàr and Carad Mereth defeat their enemies without dragging everyone else into their battle. She would get Jaift away somehow—and Niniol, and—

  “Mery!” cried Jaift. “Let me go. I have to open the way! This is the time, this is the moment, Inmanuàr is coming, can’t you feel him coming? He’ll be here any second! The White Road has to be open when he comes—it has to be open if anyone living is to have a chance to get out of this, get away—”

  “I know,” Meridy snapped furiously. And as Aseraiëth had unwittingly showed her, she lifted the binding she had laid and let Jaift go.

  Jaift gave her a decisive little nod and gripped Niniol’s arm briefly in farewell. Then, despite Tai-Enchar’s grasping power, which tried to claim and possess her, Jaift turned and stepped forward, and where her foot fell, that was the White Road of the Moon. The witch-king did not stop her; maybe he could not stop her. Moonlight fell over Jaift, and the White Road spilled around her, a river and a road that ran from life into death, from the real into the God’s own realm. Jaift lifted her hands, and they filled with moonlight that ran over and splashed around her feet, and then the river that was the road carried her away and she was gone.

  Though she had known that was going to happen, Meridy wanted to cry out her grief and anger. But she had no time for that, not now, because once Jaift had brought the White Road into this place, Meridy found she knew exactly how to open it wide for the living as well as the dead. It was sorcery, but it was something she had learned how to do. It was just like tipping a tidbit from the real into the ethereal for a dog; it was just like that. Only bigger. Wider. Wide as moonlight. But she could do it, and it would get them all away from this terrible place and save everyone from Tai-Enchar.

  Except if she didn’t do something to make the White Road lead from this tower back into the real, then it would surely carry the rest of them away to the God’s realm, living and dead alike, and while they would then be safe from the witch-king, that would also ruin what Jaift had tried to do, waste all her generosity. Meridy couldn’t bear that.

  Lord Roann, appearing at her side, closed a powerful hand on Meridy’s shoulder, giving her a small shake. “It leads to the God’s realm, that’s where it leads—”

  “I know. But it also leads everywhere,” Meridy insisted. And, kneeling, she set her hand upon the glimmering light of the road and bent it around until it ran straight between Cora Diorr and that low place not so far away, the saddle where the road ran between the mountains.

  Then she looked for a way to anchor it, and a way to make it broader—broad enough for everyone in the palace, everyone in the city beyond, broad enough that all the people of Cora Diorr would find it opening up before them, between one step and the next—she didn’t know how to anchor it, but she knew she had to find a way, that if she couldn’t, she would never forgive herself for wasting the gift Jaift had given her, given them all.

  “Oh,” said Lord Roann. “Oh, I see.” And he held out his hands, palm up, in the gesture of supplication, and said in a different, fervent tone, “Look on us with favor, O God! O God, be merciful to your servants!” And pale moonlight poured over and across him, and out of him, too, until it seemed the living must be half blinded by the light.

  Roann, and through him the God, was anchoring the White Road. Meridy knew it. She could feel it. She had bent the Road away from the God’s realm and made it leap through the mortal world, and the hand of the God reached out to support all her effort.

  She had just time to know it, and to cry out in her heart, Then why did Jaift have to die to open the way? Couldn’t the Road have been opened without that cost? But there was no time for more than that, for at last Inmanuàr came, pursuing Tai-Enchar out of the realms of dream and memory and into the real, and there was no more time for rage or grief.

  The fire horse stallion leaped out of shattering light, for all the world as fierce and vital and vivid as a living beast, Herren-Inmanuàr high on his back, leaning forward, small and pale and equally fierce. Light broke before him like a wave and scattered behind him like sparks, and with him like a flood tide came the host of the ancient dead loosed from the hand of the God, and Meridy was both relieved and terrified by what she saw coming down upon the world of mortal men.

  “Get out!” she cried to everyone in the tower, everyone living, and Roann Mahonis seconded this, commanding in his deep, authoritative voice, “Run, run, go!” And from somewhere far away, somewhere even Meridy couldn’t see him, she heard Iëhiy bark thunderously: This way! This way! as clear as could be. She shouted, “Follow him! Follow him! Don’t you know dogs belong to the God? The God’s hand has opened for us all!”

  And at last the White Swan guardsmen and their lords and the servants and all the mortal people in the chamber who had been fighting against Tai-Enchar’s witches began to struggle instead toward the glimmering light of the White Road. Meridy waved them all urgently onto the road and opened it all through the palace—it was strange, but the White Road wanted to open everywhere at once. It did not have to limit itself to the palace, either: it could perfectly well open before every threshold in Cora Diorr, and at the mouth of every alley; it could roll out before every traveler upon the avenues and streets of the city. Where any of the folk of Cora Diorr walked, their very next step could carry them into moonlight.

  “Hurry!” Meridy called out to them all, to everyone in the City of Spires. The moment stretched out and out; the God was allowing the moment to linger, or maybe Meridy’s own furious terror only made it seem that way. But she could feel the wave about to break and cried loudly, “Hurry, hurry! It’s the ending of the age! Run, if you want to see the next age dawn!” And all through the city, some men listened to her and some fell back; some mothers snatched up their children and ran forward into moonlight and some caught up their babies and ran away; some craftspe
ople and tradesmen and merchants abandoned their tools and shops and coins and leaped into moonlight and some could not bear the loss and would not. All through Cora Diorr, some folk trusted the God and ran forward and some feared too greatly and fled, lords and common people, guardsmen and servants; and if there was any pattern to who went forward and who refused, Meridy could not distinguish it.

  And in the high white chamber where long-dead sorcerers strove against the living and the dead for victory…for a long, stretched-timeless moment that might have been measured in seconds or in hours or in days, Meridy could not tell how the battle progressed or even where it was taking place.

  She knew that Inmanuàr fought Tai-Enchar, but she could hardly perceive anything of that. It was not a battle of blade against blade, but she did not understand what it was. She knew, though, that they battled partly in the real world but mostly in the layered realms of the ethereal; in memory and in dreams.

  Her own perception had become fragmentary and uncertain. Sometimes it seemed to her that she still knelt within a round chamber high up in a white tower; but sometimes she thought that she hovered above Cora Diorr and looked down upon the whole city spread out below her. Or sometimes again it seemed that she knelt in the midst of an infinite empty plain where the wind hissed through the dust with the sound of aching loneliness.

  In certain confused moments, she thought moonlight washed around her like water, breaking around her knees and flinging light like spume past her face; sometimes she thought bitter ash and smoke rose up around her, so she choked on it and could hardly catch her breath.

  She glimpsed Tai-Enchar’s servitors. There seemed a lot of them, now that she could look out over the whole city at once. She thought of all the witches Prince Diöllonuor had brought to Cora Diorr, who let themselves be made into the kind of creatures that caused normal people to fear witches; and for what? To serve Tai-Enchar and bring down all the world under his rule? She was furious with them, and horrified by them. But even through the fury and horror she still also pitied them, because there was so little left in them save their master’s will, and after all, the witch-king had taken Jaift for his own as well and she knew her friend had never chosen that. Maybe it had been like that for all of them.

  But no matter whether they had surrendered to Tai-Enchar willingly or not, none of Tai-Enchar’s witches would take the White Road now, and there was nothing Meridy could do to make them. The God never compelled anyone to take the Road into his realm; there was nothing she could do to make the living risk such a journey. They fought for their master, and if the long dead hadn’t poured forth to challenge them and press them back, Meridy doubted Inmanuàr would ever have made it fully into this confusion of real and ethereal to challenge the witch-king. She glimpsed High King Miranuanol, and she was intensely relieved to glimpse Niniol at his back, but then even with her wildly expanded vision she lost sight of them both.

  Even so, however, even with the old dead holding back Tai-Enchar’s servitors; even with Gonnuol under Inmanuàr like a living banner…even so, Meridy was more and more afraid that the witch-king could not be defeated. Even now, he was being held back only just enough to stop him from crushing them all. She could see plainly the desperation on Herren’s living face, the face that Inmanuàr now inhabited. He was too young—the witch-king’s ambition had come to fruition too early and too fast, and despite his driving will, the body he had taken was simply too young. She had known that—they had all known that—he didn’t have the strength. She looked, desperately, for Carad Mereth.

  He met her eyes through all the mad tumult, a long look that somehow contained both terror and hilarity. He gave her a brilliant, vivid smile and held out his hands, palm up, and his hands were filled with light and also with shadow, and he cried out, “Inmanuàr!”

  “Yes!” Inmanuàr cried, and in that instant he abandoned Herren’s body, which crumpled immediately, falling from Gonnuol’s back as a wild storm of uncontrolled sorcery broke across the city. Meridy cried out, and the fire horse screamed in rage, but High King Miranuanol was there, striding out of the tumult to catch Herren and lay him down gently. Then the High King leaped to the fire horse’s back in the boy’s stead, and the stallion reared and screamed again and lunged away in answer to his will, and Meridy lost sight of them.

  She wanted to go to Herren, see if he might somehow have survived Inmanuàr’s use of him. His body looked so small and crumpled, abandoned there in the midst of all the turmoil. But she tumbled off her feet the instant she left the White Road, struck by the storm of sorcery that Inmanuàr’s sudden capitulation had released. She had not known what that could be like until she was out in it, and then she didn’t know how anybody could possibly hold on to balance and sanity in the wild storm. It was as though lightning struck all around her. She was blind with it, blind and deaf and left without any sense of where she was.

  Only she did know where she was—she knew she was in the round white chamber high in the spire of the palace, and Herren had fallen…he could not be far away…she remembered the young prince’s desperate surrender of his living body to Inmanuàr; she could not believe Inmanuàr had abandoned Herren now, either his body or his soul….

  “Here,” said a crisp voice near at hand, not a real voice, she could never have heard any actual sound, not now. But she didn’t hear the voices of ghosts with her ears, and she heard that call. So she turned toward it, and only a second later she practically stumbled across Herren’s body. She patted the boy’s body and face until she found his wrist, and then heaved him up, glad for once he was so small and young. But then she did not know how to find the White Road again, she couldn’t see anything, she was lost—

  “Here!” Inmanuàr said again, not far away, and she stumbled after that inaudible voice and staggered into the silent serenity of the White Road of the Moon just before her strength gave out. She fell to her knees, Herren’s body in her arms, and tried to understand what was happening.

  Inmanuàr’s abandonment of the battle had left Tai-Enchar facing no opponent at all. The witch-king stood within the raging sorcery that filled the world, and for once Meridy could recognize the expression in the witch-king’s eyes, on his face. He was baffled, and he was beginning to be afraid. She shot Inmanuàr a glance—he knelt beside her, translucent, one bodiless hand gripping her wrist to keep himself from following the road, his other hand resting on Herren’s limp body. Meridy opened her mouth, meaning to demand, What have you done?

  Before she could speak, Carad Mereth cried, “Aseraiëth! I loved you once. If you ever loved me, if there is anything that remains of the woman you were, now is the only time left!”

  But Aseraiëth cried out passionately, “Damn your fool’s kindness, and the mercy you offer in your blind arrogance! Do you think I want it, or would take it? If the age must end, then bring it down!” And the sorceress flung out her hands and reached out into the ethereal, striving to gather up the loosed sorcery. But it swept away from her, spinning around Tai-Enchar. It was he, Meridy understood, who would impose order and pattern on it, and force all the real and ethereal realms to bend to his will.

  Carad Mereth made no such effort. He did not try to hold or even guide the storm of magic. Instead, he put out both his hands and sent it exploding outward, and Meridy saw power leap through him in a blazing, scouring rush—he burned with his own internal light as the God flung limitless power through him and broke Tai-Enchar’s withering pattern.

  Carad Mereth cried out, a sharp wordless shout, and deep black cracks rushed across the fine marquetry of the floor and the white plaster of the walls; only these cracks widened rapidly, each becoming an abyss that had no limit to its depth.

  Aseraiëth stood, bodiless and yet looking almost like a living woman, in the white chamber, in front of the white throne, until the fine marquetry of the floor shattered under her feet. Then she fell without a sound, and whether she fell beneath the crashing stone or fell upon the White Road and was swept away, Meridy
could not tell. All around, the white spire crumbled and came down upon Tai-Enchar. Even then, the witch-king might have held himself together through the destruction, but he had no chance. Because the other spires of the palace shattered, one after another, in a slow cascade of cracking stone and breaking glass. At first Meridy couldn’t see whether any of this happened in the real or only in some terrible dream, and then she understood that for this moment the ethereal and the real had spilled into each other and all the layered realms had become one.

  The destruction spread out in concentric circles, as the ripples of a thrown stone spread out into a pond; the destruction ran out into the city and the surrounding land. While Meridy knelt safe amid the rushing light of the White Road, clinging to Herren, the earth itself opened up, and at last, all around the city, the encircling mountains that sorcery had once raised up swayed and cracked and came roaring down in one enormous avalanche after another, burying Tai-Enchar within Cora Diorr, the City of Spires, until no sign of sorcerer or city was left there.

  And as the broken mountains settled across the bones of the city and whatever might be left of the witch-king’s soul, the long dead rode across the wreckage and faded out of the world, passing again out of time and memory, going back into the hand of the God. The last to go was the High King, Miranuanol Incuonarr. He rode Gonnuol through the ethereal, across the tumbled stones and the shattered spires, the fire horse treading down the dead and the ghosts of the dead. But High King and fire horse wheeled then to face Meridy. Gonnuol tossed his head and reared, arrogant and fearless as ever, and the High King lifted his hand in grave salute toward Meridy, or maybe toward his son, who still stood beside her in the midst of the pouring light of the White Road, resting a steadying, insubstantial hand on her shoulder. Inmanuàr returned a nod to his father, and after a second, so did Meridy.