The Moonshawl: A Wraeththu Mythos Novel

by Storm Constantine

  Peredur gave me his hard moon stare.

  ‘You don’t know about your mother, do you?’ I said.

  He came back to sit beside me. ‘What about her? They never found her. Over the years, I’ve hoped somehow she got away.’

  ‘Not exactly. Like you, she tried to kill herself, after what was done to you. She felt a hideous end was all that was left for her too. She cut her wrists in my tower.’

  His hands flew to his face. ‘Christ!’

  So strange to hear that anachronistic expletive. ‘Like you, she wasn’t successful, but in a different way. This is going to sound... well... I’ll just tell you what’s happened.’

  He listened in an agitated silence, his hands moving constantly – wringing together, touching his hair, his face, picking at the shawls on the sofa. When I’d finished what I had to say, without pause or question he said, ‘Bring her to me!’

  I reached out to still his hands. His skin was warm and smooth, slightly furred, made to touch. A pang of pity shot through me and he snatched his hands away. ‘I can’t bring her,’ I said. ‘She can’t leave the tower, Peredur. You must come to her.’

  He put his hands to his face again, then stood up, walked in a circle behind the sofa, making soft sounds of distress. I twisted round to watch him, allowing him these moments without further words from me.

  Then he stood still for a few seconds, before turning to me. ‘White is too harsh for her,’ he said abruptly, the fingers of one hand gesturing at his face. ‘I think red, but would that be too much like blood?’

  ‘What other colours have you got?’

  He made an impatient gesture. ‘Everything. Dozens.’

  ‘What colour were your...?’

  ‘Golden, after inception.’

  ‘Then, topaz? Perhaps?’

  He nodded. ‘All right. You must tell me, though. Come.’

  I confess I got to my feet with reluctance then, but perhaps this was the price, or a further test. He led me up the stairs to his other room, which again was barely furnished, containing a bed, a dressing table, a packed bookcase, a low table strewn with belongings, and several thick rugs on the floor. What seemed to be about half a dozen black and white cats were sleeping on the bed. Two more sat like matching porcelain ornaments on the window casement and turned their faces to me idly to see who I was. The room also contained a tall cabinet packed with shallow shelves. They were laden with Mossamber’s gifts. Peredur ran his hands over them, removed a few trays, such as those in which gem collectors store stones. Some of them were like real eyes, staring up at me as if in shock to be disembodied. I swallowed. ‘Maybe a pair of these ones that look... real?’

  ‘No!’ Peredur snapped. ‘Why should I try to make others comfortable with what’s been done to me.’

  ‘Yes... I’m sorry.’

  ‘These are yellowish,’ Peredur said, grabbing one of my hands and making me touch a tray.

  ‘I could do with light...’

  He went to a lamp and turned it on. I carried the tray over. They were just beautiful stones, I told myself, not wanting to linger over the choice. But he would know if I didn’t examine them carefully.

  He laughed, ‘You’re squeamish for a magus.’

  ‘Guilty,’ I said, ‘at least in this respect.’ It was peculiar I felt that way, since I could operate surgically upon hara unflinchingly, and deal with all manner of medical situations that might turn most hara’s stomachs. I think it was because I knew how these lovely stones had become necessary, the barbarity they could not help but symbolise. Eventually, I took his hand, pressed his fingers against two of the stones. ‘These.’

  ‘Give them to me.’

  They were beautiful golden stones, not spheres but concave, almost warm to the touch, slippery. I put them into his hands. He smirked at me, hesitated for a moment, then turned his back on me. When he turned to me once more, he held back his moonshawl mane with both hands. ‘Well?’

  ‘Come into the light.’

  He let me lead him.

  ‘Yes, just right.’ The warm glowing colour made him less spectral somehow.

  ‘I need to do something with my hair. I must look like an old witch. Excuse me a moment.’

  He took his moonstone eyes with him into another room, which I assumed was a bathroom, since I heard water running. He came back, drying the stones carefully on a soft cloth, before selecting a tray and placing them into an empty slot, nestled in silk. Then he went to a dressing table, picked up a hairbrush. I watched as he made a thin plait on either side of his face, then confined them at the back of his head with a jewelled, tarnished silver clasp. ‘Will this do?’ he asked me, knowing full well it was perfectly neat.

  ‘Yes, it’s fine.’

  ‘Then...’ He drew in his breath, steadied himself against the dressing table. ‘Suddenly I’m afraid. I feel panicky.’

  ‘It’s all right. I’m with you.’ I paused. ‘Will Mossamber just... allow this?’

  ‘You say that as if you assume he has any control over what I do,’ Peredur said lightly. ‘Do you think he’s cruel or something?’

  ‘No, but concerned for you... yes. You must tell him where you’re going.’

  He shook his head. ‘No. He knows I can take care of myself, and besides I have you to protect me, don’t I?’

  I wasn’t convinced what he said about Mossamber was true, but didn’t argue. Before we left the tower room, Peredur turned back at the threshold, as if to absorb its familiar ambience, as if he’d never return to it. In a way, of course, he wouldn’t, because he was shedding a part of himself that would leave that room forever.

  The dawn was beginning to unfurl as we came out into the yard behind the house. Already, lights were coming on in high rooms and presently hara would be up and about. Did Mossamber lie awake in a room somewhere, knowing his chesnari was taking this brave step? What did he think about it? I’d never met the har; he seemed like a creature of myth to me. And Nytethorne, who’d known the secret all along, but had been too afraid to tell me, perhaps fearful of incurring Peredur’s wrath rather than Mossamber’s. Where was he now? What were his thoughts?

  Peredur took my arm. ‘He is glad,’ he said.

  We went to where Hercules was waiting, and I helped Peredur onto the horse’s back before mounting up behind him. I put my arms about him and he leaned back against me. ‘We’ll be riding into the dawn,’ he said. ‘I can hear it rising.’

  I urged Hercules forward and he walked across the lawn. Birds were waking, singing in the morning. Crows argued in the cedars. Once across the bridge, I urged Hercules into a canter. Peredur held out his arms to embrace the air and I held him tight. ‘There’s so much out here,’ he murmured, ‘so much...’

  In the sky above us, I heard the call of a swan, and looked up, but I could not see it flying, not yet.

  As we approached the tower hill, Mossamber’s hounds began to yelp in the farmyard below. ‘They know me,’ Peredur said. ‘Fox, Bramble, Cutter... I know all their names.’

  ‘How many are there?’ I asked. ‘Sometimes it sounds like a dozen, sometimes hundreds.’

  ‘Perhaps that is the truth,’ Peredur said, laughing.

  I helped him dismount at the field, where I released Hercules to graze.

  ‘She used to bring me here,’ Peredur said. ‘When I was very small. Vivi didn’t like that – she said it was too far from the house, dangerous. Mum didn’t care. She liked to get away from Vivi. And Dŵr Alarch looks after its own.’

  ‘It certainly tries to,’ I said.

  He climbed the steps ahead of us that led to the door, turned the immense old handle ring. The door creaked open. ‘You don’t lock it?’

  ‘No. I’m sure the only threats around here won’t be put off by a barrier of mere wood.’

  Peredur was about to enter the tower, then he paused, turned back to direct his perception over the land. ‘Feel it, Ysobi,’ he murmured. He held out his hand to me, which I took. ‘Close your eyes and feel
it.’

  I did so. Holding on to Peredur in the flesh, my own senses were heightened. From the moment I shut my eyes, I could see a dark purple mist creeping over the land. It was like fingers, or footsteps, not devouring or covering, merely moving around, retreating, advancing, nosing. ‘Is that Vivi?’ I whispered.

  ‘She travels in it sometimes,’ Peredur said softly. ‘I have too... sometimes. Where it goes so a secret will open up, or a hole with a darkness in it, or a memory long forgotten.’ He let go of me and I opened my eyes, for a moment still able to see that dark mist over the glorious summer landscape. ‘The dead will rise,’ Peredur said.

  ‘Some already have, it seems.’ I gestured at the doorway. ‘Come, it’s time.’

  I could sense that Arianne was alone in the kitchen above us. She always rose very early. Was it cruel to spring this on her unannounced? I toyed with the idea of sending Peredur in without me, then realised this was somewhat cowardly. I had created storms of emotion in my past and fled them. Now I should simply weather them – even when they belonged to others.

  I went into the kitchen first. Arianne had emptied all the cupboards and was cleaning them – I suppose she had to find things to do. She heard me and turned, ‘Ari,’ I said. ‘You have a visitor.’

  Peredur walked past me then. The expressions on Arianne’s face changed quickly. Surprise, horror, fear, disbelief, joy. ‘Peri?’ she said.

  ‘To me, you never died,’ he said. ‘I saw nothing. You saw everything. This is less shocking for me than for you.’ He went to her then and touched her arm.

  She reached to his face hesitantly, her gaze flickering all over him. ‘Ysobi went to see Medoc,’ she said. ‘We were told... But then, we weren’t, were we? Medoc knew only what the Wyvachi knew.’

  ‘Mum,’ he said simply, a word that had not been uttered in affection in these lands for over a century. They embraced, wept, laughed, kissed – the stew of reactions that flavour the most intense moments of life.

  ‘Don’t leave me,’ Arianne said, ‘promise me, Peri. Don’t.’

  ‘Neither of us is leaving,’ Peredur replied, ‘not yet.’

  Then I left them, went back outside, sat down on the stone terrace that surrounded Dŵr Alarch. The Swan Tower. Peredur’s tower. Waiting for him all these years.

  Around half an hour later, Peredur came out of the tower and sat down beside me. ‘Thank you,’ he said.

  ‘My pleasure.’

  He turned his face to me, observed me goldenly. ‘Ysobi, I’m sure of something.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’ll be staying here at Dŵr Alarch for some time... if you’re agreeable.’

  ‘Of course. Whatever you want to do.’

  ‘Good. I’ll let Mossamber know.’ He dangled his hands between his raised knees. ‘I can’t opt out of the future. I know that now. For her sake, for yours, for the harling’s, for stupid, lovesick Nytethorne’s...’

  ‘Peredur! Please don’t say that.’

  He uttered a derisive snort. ‘Well, I’m just impatient with that sort of thing now.’

  ‘Understandably, I suppose. But Nytethorne and I aren’t “that sort of thing”.’

  Peredur said nothing, but he was smiling.

  ‘So,’ I said. ‘What do you want to do?’

  He leaned back on straight arms, the morning light falling over him, this creature, like a being from a fairy tale. I could still hardly believe he was real. ‘I want you to let me be part of whatever you intend to do,’ he said. He turned his face to me. ‘I could demand that, but I won’t. I’m asking.’

  I reached out to touch his shoulder. ‘You don’t need to ask. This is your history, Peredur. If anything, I should be asking you! Thank you, anyway. Your help and knowledge will be an asset.’

  He reached out in return and touched my face. So much easier between us to touch than between Nytethorne and I. ‘That’s settled then.’ He paused. ‘Aren’t you afraid that part of me is drwg and will sabotage your plans?’

  ‘No, not in the slightest.’

  He smiled. ‘I hope you’re right.’

  ‘I am. Things are proceeding as they’re meant to be. Can’t you see how the pieces are all fitting together?’

  ‘Maybe.’ He ran his hand up and down my right arm. ‘So strong, aren’t you? Yet weak as a kitten in some respects. True strength, maybe. Kittens are fast.’

  I simply laughed, unable to comment on those observations.

  ‘Now,’ said Peredur, ‘make me a sumptuous breakfast, because food’s my main enjoyment. I’m hungry.’

  ‘All right.’

  We went back into the tower.

  Later that day, as twilight fell, Peredur asked to walk with me amid the trees below the tower. At Ludda’s farm the hounds were fretful, occasionally yelping discordantly but not singing together. I heard the distant faint tolling of a bell.

  ‘Do you hear that?’ I said. ‘The bell...’

  ‘All the time,’ Peredur answered. He took one of my arms in his. ‘You are the only other har to hear it. That is the ghost of Plenty, Gwyllion’s bell, sounding an alarm too few can perceive.’

  ‘We will raise it,’ I said. ‘The Silver Swan will return.’

  Peredur laughed sadly. ‘I can’t feel the future yet. There are too many hidden variables.’ He turned to me, put his hands upon my upper arms. ‘Ysobi, there is something I must say to you.’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Don’t tell anyhar else about Arianne, nohar.’

  ‘But if she remains...’

  ‘She won’t,’ Peredur said simply. ‘That’s one aspect I can see clearly. She’s lent to us and has a task, but beyond that... whether we succeed or fail... her place is not here and now. We have our little group and we must be contained, closed. Trust me on this.’ His voice was tight. How difficult it must be for him to find Arianne after all this time, only to know their reunion wouldn’t last. Rinawne had also become very attached to Arianne. He wouldn’t be happy to lose her either. ‘You can trust me,’ I said, ‘but what about Rinawne and Myv? Might they not tell?’

  ‘Afterwards, they might, and they also might be believed, but...’ Peredur shrugged. ‘Just for now. Say nothing.’

  ‘She can’t leave the tower, though,’ I said. ‘Are we supposed to deal with the ysbryd drwg from here?’

  ‘No, she’ll be able to leave it. Tomorrow, maybe. I’ll see to it.’

  I wasn’t convinced Arianne would ever be able to do that, but Peredur seemed sure. His faith, like Kinnard’s had once done, could perhaps change reality.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  A message came from the Domain the following morning. Written in an elaborate script in black ink upon a thick piece of pinkish handmade paper, were the words: Ysobi: Please call at the Domain today. I wish to speak with you. Mossamber har Whitemane.

  I was under no illusion that this was anything other than an order.

  Mossamber had kept away from me completely, occasionally sending out relatives to befuddle and beguile me, but even when I’d stolen his chesnari away from his house, he’d not shown himself personally. I knew so little about the Whitemanes, not even who Ember’s father was. There’d been no opportunity so far to discuss this. The previous day’s conversations had focused solely upon Peredur and Arianne becoming reacquainted and, apart from my brief conversations with Peredur, I’d given them privacy for that. The Whitemanes had kept me out; now I was somewhat ‘in’.

  I rode Hercules to the Greyspan, intrigued about what was to happen. Was I to receive warnings about how I must conduct myself or would the Whitemane phylarch offer help for my task? I imagined Mossamber would meet me in some grand, gloomy room, distant across a vast desk. But as my horse set foot upon the bridge, a rider came cantering from the other side.

  Like all of his kind, Mossamber was dark-skinned and sensual of feature, but he managed also to appear somewhat austere. I’d glimpsed him in the darkness of a Cuttingtide night, but now, in full sunlight I could see hi
m clearly. I could tell he was first generation immediately, even if I hadn’t been aware of the truth. He carried the years on his shoulders and within a certain expression in his eyes. He had come alone to meet me; Peredur had no doubt advised him of my approach. As he drew near, he gestured for me to halt.

  ‘Thank you for coming, tiahaar,’ he said, once he did not have to raise his voice for me to hear him.

  ‘I’m pleased to meet you, tiahaar,’ I responded, inclining my head.

  The horse he rode today was pure white but with a dark nose and eyes. Its mane reminded me of Peredur’s hair, spilling wantonly over Mossamber’s hands as he rested them on the animal’s neck. ‘It’s time we talked,’ he said. ‘Come. There’s purpose to this meeting. Will you follow me?’

  ‘Lead on.’

  On the Wyvachi side of the river, we turned back roughly in the direction of my tower, keeping close to the water.

  We kept to a walking pace, so that Mossamber could draw his horse alongside mine to talk. ‘Peredur will have explained what we know,’ he said. ‘I never thought this day would come. I believed we controlled the environment. Now the opposite is true.’

  ‘What would happen if nothing were done?’ I asked.

  He shrugged. ‘The end,’ he said. ‘Oh, not immediately in some dramatic, crashing fashion, but this community would die, slowly, as the poison seeped through the soil, through hearts and minds.’

  ‘You are sure of this?’

  He glanced at me coldly. ‘My swan convinced me you were sent to help us, like some deharan angel. Are you telling me now you propose we do nothing?’

  ‘No. I was just asking the question.’

  Mossamber nodded thoughtfully. ‘I see what you’re getting at – our own fear feeds what we fear, creates it. There is some element of this, of course, but the egregore has been allowed to gorge itself for too long. It does have independent existence. Of this I am sure. So in answer to your question. Yes.’ He tilted his head back a little, flared his nostrils. ‘You will see.’

  For some moments we rode in silence, keeping pace with the rolling river. Willows had come to crowd the banks, dipping their hair into the sparkling water.