Bitter Moon Saga

by Amy Lane

  “Now I didn’t want to upset Aldam, but I needed to talk to the two of you about Solstice.”

  “Aylan had nothing to do with it,” Torrant said immediately, but Aylan wouldn’t let him get away with that.

  “Bollix,” he said evenly. “I was there.”

  “It was nothing, Uncle Lane.” Torrant looked at Aylan a little desperately, but Aylan remembered Torrant’s words on the mountaintop that day. If you think I don’t know the sheer dumb luck of being orphaned twice and ending up with good men to father me both times, you’re mad. Here was a father, and a good one, and Aylan was having no part in interfering between the two of them.

  “Why don’t you let your uncle decide that? Ouch!” Torrant had taken advantage of the dark and gotten a sly smack in on the back of Aylan’s head.

  “If it was nothing, the telling shouldn’t be hard,” Lane said evenly. “Aldam told us he spelled you to sleep, and you spent the Solstice at school. The end. But Roes and Yarri, and even your Aunt Beth—you know where they were looking, don’t you?”

  “The map,” Torrant said miserably.

  “Uhm-hm. And what do you suppose the map showed them?”

  Torrant thought for a moment. “Aldam moving toward Clough, and then me, catching up and taking him back toward the school….”

  “And then Trieste, Aylan, and another rider meeting you and taking Aldam back to the school….”

  “And then Aylan and I on the trail toward Clough….”

  “For several hours, before you staggered back,” Lane’s determined voice held more than a hint of concern and anger.

  “It showed the staggering?” Aylan asked curiously and caught an elbow in the ribs for it.

  “The staggering was a guess.” Aylan could see Lane’s teeth glinting against the darkness of his beard for just a moment. The twin moons had risen fully, and Triane was already a giant thumbnail on the horizon. “Do you care to fill me in?”

  It wasn’t really a request. “You can’t tell Aunt Beth,” Torrant said desperately.

  “I can, and I will. Now stop stalling, boyo, and tell me what happened before I lock you and Aldam in the downstairs bedrooms for the rest of your lives in sheer panic.”

  “Rath sent his men.” Even to Aylan, Torrant’s voice was raw. “They were supposed to get me when we left, I think, but we didn’t leave. Aldam went for a walk in the morning. He was missing Roes so badly. I think he just needed to think, and I was….” Torrant’s voice cracked, and without thinking Aylan put his hand on his shoulder. Torrant tried to shake it off, but Aylan kept it there.

  “You were having a life,” Aylan said quietly.

  “Trieste came….” Torrant tried again, blushing warmth into the cooling air, and Lane put a hand on Torrant’s other shoulder.

  “You get to have sweetness, Torrant,” Lane said quietly. “And I get the idea.”

  Torrant nodded and broke away from both of them. They were at the river now, running swiftly in the spring’s thaw, and he was standing on a rise maybe fifteen feet above it. It was the same place two of Rath’s guardsman had been disposed of one chilly winter’s night long ago, though Aylan didn’t know it.

  “Anyway,” he murmured, mastering himself, “I woke up, and Rath’s men had Aldam, and I went and got him. Aylan and Trieste came to help, that was all.”

  “How many?” Lane asked quietly.

  “The snowcat doesn’t count,” Torrant replied stiffly.

  “Seven,” said Aylan, knowing that even if the snowcat didn’t count, Torrant did.

  “Not bad!” Lane praised, and Aylan fought a laugh as Torrant shot him a shocked glance. “Well, boyo, what did you expect? You protected your family—against great odds. Am I supposed to be disgusted? Angry? I told you, Goddess thinking is family thinking. If you want me to be angry, let something happen to your family when you know how to stop it.”

  “Dumb sot,” Aylan muttered. “Did he let any of us know he was beating himself up about it? No, he just keeps soldiering on….”

  “It’s how he ended up here,” Lane replied conversationally. “Almost died, he did, bringing Yarri and Aldam over the pass. And then when he came to, he almost died again, while we were trying to convince him he could stay.”

  “Would you stop talking about me like I’m not here?” Torrant’s voice came out from the dark, and although it was still raw, there was humor too. “I’m fully aware I’m too stupid to live.”

  “Quite the opposite, boyo,” Lane said quietly. “You’re too brave to die. Well, now I know the whole of it, I can talk it over with my smarter half, and we can decide if it’s likely to happen again. Any odds the bodies will be traced back here?”

  Aylan and Torrant met eyes through the darkness. A month after that cold day on the mountain, they had been in the middle of their government class when the whole school heard a sound like the cracking of a board, followed by a rumble which shook the floorboards and rattled the windows in their frames. The two of them had met eyes then as they were meeting eyes now, paled, and then turned their attention fiercely back to the professor.

  “Not likely,” Torrant said faintly, and Aylan nodded in agreement.

  Lane looked back and forth between them, seeing their pallid faces in the moonlight, and grunted. “I’ll ask another time,” he said gently. “And now, one final question, and then we all go see your Aunt Bethie before she comes out here in the dark and checks you for broken bones. How’s Aldam? Do I have to bother him about this, or can I leave him be?”

  “I don’t know,” Torrant said. At the same time, Aylan said, “Leave him be.”

  “It brought back… what that—” Torrant hesitated and shivered, apparently not wanting to even voice what he knew. “That horse trader, the one who attacked Yarri. He’d… he’d gotten to Aldam first, when Aldam was younger. It brought it all back. He’s been…. He hasn’t been sleeping well, and….”

  Torrant looked at Aylan miserably, but Aylan refused to take the hint. Like Aylan would use this to hurt Aldam—not a chance. “And he keeps crying out in his sleep for me to save him.”

  Lane sucked air in through his teeth, and Aylan finally looked away.

  “You did save him,” Aylan said, watching as the deeper darkness of the river gorge cut a path through the moonlit darkness to the star-shattered sea.

  “But not from that,” Torrant murmured. “None of us could save him from that.”

  “You save him every day you love him now,” Lane said softly. “Now, come here, boy, let me pretend to father you and give me a hug, and let’s go see Bethie. I have a feeling you need some mothering, now we’ve gotten this over with, right?”

  “Right.” Torrant nodded, wiping at his face with the back of his sleeve. “Absolutely. Let’s go.” And Lane caught him in an embrace of strength and tenderness and care, and Torrant returned it. For just a moment, Aylan got to see his friend set his burdens down on someone else’s shoulders. Then the moment was over, and Torrant shouldered his own pain again, but even in the dark, Aylan could see the weight was less onerous than before.

  Summer Stories

  DINNER AT the Moon home was loud and exciting. More than once, Trieste and Aylan found themselves meeting eyes across the crowded, noisy table in acknowledgment that they were far more out of their depth here than Torrant and Aldam had ever been in Triannon.

  Starry had taken an instant liking to Aylan. As he entered the house on Lane’s and Torrant’s heels, she had turned her head from its place on Aldam’s chest (oh, how she had missed Aldam!) and announced loudly “He’s like my music!” before squirreling down and running to introduce herself.

  Aylan looked down at the pudgy, fair child barely out of her toddler years with the fantastic head of bright-orange curls, even as Torrant looked at her bemusedly and said, “How’s my Littlest?”

  Starren raised her arms distractedly and Torrant lifted her up into a hug, but her wide blue eyes didn’t leave Aylan. “Have you brought me my music, Torrant?” she
asked seriously, and Torrant blinked a shrug at Aylan.

  “This is Aylan, my friend from school, yes?” He exchanged a puzzled look with Lane and then looked over at Bethen, who was giving a wide-eyed, shocked, and pained once-over to a still oblivious Aylan.

  “He’s my music. He will do fine,” Starry told him with a sober kiss. “I’m glad you’re home, Torrant. We all missed you. Thank you for bringing Aylan to me.” She smiled at Aylan, whose expression went from mild bemusement to the utter stun-ation of a pole-axed ox. Starry held out arms and leaned, hard, forcing Torrant into a stumble forward, and Aylan put out his arms to catch her. The result was that Starren spent the rest of her night on Aylan’s lap, patting his chest every so often to assure herself he was still there. Even during dinner, when Bethen tried to make her youngest sit in a chair all by herself, Starry would shake her head and cling tighter to Aylan’s shirt. She called him her music, and that seemed to be all she expected anyone to need to know.

  So Aylan and Trieste were casting alarmed glances over Starry’s head. Roes and Aldam were sitting a courtly distance from each other and having painfully casual conversation. When Roes wasn’t bickering with Stanny, Bethen and Lane were asking everybody questions about their schooling, Cwyn was asking everybody questions about their sex lives, and Torrant was actively defending Trieste from a hostile Yarri. The chaos didn’t thin until everybody had cleared away Bethen’s filling meal, and the family gathered on chairs set out on the back porch to catch a breeze and talk.

  Yarri came up from Torrant’s old room holding his lute, and Torrant looked at her warily. “You only went through my things, right, Yarrow root?”

  “As if I would stoop so low!” Yarri sniffed, and Torrant and Trieste exchanged pained glances. Trieste was going to have to go through her things very carefully before she wore anything that had been put in the downstairs bedroom.

  “Have you written any new songs, Torrant?” Bethen asked hopefully. Since Starry had deserted her lap for Aylan’s, she had her knitting out and was working on something small and delicate and purple that wouldn’t make her lap sweat in the heat.

  Torrant smiled a little and flushed. “A few, Auntie Beth,” he murmured, tuning the lute, accustoming himself again to the feel of the hard wood against his chest and under his arms. He had played nearly every night, except during those last few frantic weeks of studying, and he was probably better now than he had been before he’d left. And he’d practiced this song carefully—it seemed heart full, somehow—but until this moment, Aldam and Aylan were the only ones who had heard it. The words were for Trieste and Yarri, but the music was intense, in minor keys, with surprising sweetness.

  Aylan heard the first few notes and froze, despite Starry’s pudgy little hand patting his chest in comfort.

  “See,” she whispered, “it’s our music.”

  Her voice distracted Aylan, but only for a moment, because Torrant’s voice had already pitched itself with thrumming passion, and it soared over their heads on heart-beating wings.

  Will you be there in the winter with the terrors it might bring?

  Will you be there in the springtime when the Goddess starts to sing?

  Will you be there in the autumn when we mourn our honored dead?

  Will you say farewell in summer as I join my one beloved?

  You are pretty as the winter, darkest trees and palest snow.

  You’re as pretty as the springtime, thinnest sun and plumpest rose.

  We met at the cusp of autumn when my heart did mourn my home

  But we’ll say farewell in summer and we’ll part to walk alone.

  My beloved’s fair as autumn, and her heart is ever true.

  She’s fiercer than the summer’s hottest sun in sky so blue.

  She’ll be angry as the sea in brutal winters on the shore.

  If I know you in the springtime, I’ll know her forevermore.

  We’ll be absent in the winter, when the snows blind us to pain.

  We’ll be absent in the springtime when the earth shall wake again.

  We’ll be absent in the autumn when the red leaves start to sing.

  I’ll be there with my beloved at the summer’s close of spring

  And I’ll think about you warmly with your beloved’s golden ring.

  When he was done, he didn’t dare look up. He wondered at the hush, whether it was for admiration or for the audacity of speaking about the thing they all knew was true but which people rarely mentioned for the sake of politeness.

  Then he felt something plop on his knee, and he realized Trieste, who had been sitting at his feet as he’d started playing, was weeping softly, and he wanted to kick himself. Then Yarri sniffled into the back of her hand, and he wanted to die.

  The family broke into applause, and Lane clapped him on the shoulder. Bethen put down her knitting and kissed his cheek soundly, and even Roes gave him a glowing grin. He blinked hard and looked to Aylan. Sardonic, quick-witted Aylan would surely be able to find something to say to give Torrant ground to stand on.

  But Aylan was looking besottedly into the eyes of Starren, who continued to pat his cheek serenely. Torrant couldn’t hear what she was saying to him, but he caught the repeated use of the phrase “our music” and he could only wonder what it would mean.

  Later that night, after he had played his fingers sore and his voice hoarse, Stanny took Aldam and Aylan to his flat above the warehouse. This last had been much to Starry’s dismay—her heartbroken sobs about losing “her music” had only been stilled when they told her he’d be back in the morning. Torrant and Trieste retired to the downstairs after Yarri’s fierce hug and “I’m glad you’re back.”

  She said nothing at all to Trieste’s tentative “Good night,” and after Torrant had lit the downstairs lamps, Trieste carefully went through her luggage. She was so prepared for the worst that the dead mouse hardly earned a squeak from her, although Torrant had a tough time hiding his laughter.

  “What?” she asked him irritably while scraping the poor dead thing onto a piece of parchment with her shoe. “What is so damned funny?”

  “Nothing,” Torrant answered, controlling himself. “I just….” She glared at him, and he was now 100 percent sober. He took the parchment carefully from her, kissed her gently on the lips, and said, holding the mouse at an acceptable distance, “You need to tell me how you want me to handle this, sweetheart. I could force her to be nice to you. She would if I got angry—and she would be stiff and polite to you for the entire visit. Or I could let you fight it out, and maybe you could really be friends by the end of it. I know you don’t like unpleasantness, but Yarri’s not afraid of it. It is up to you. I’ll go however you want me to.”

  Trieste’s glare softened a little. “Did you and Aylan rehearse this?”

  He was legitimately surprised. “No, I think Aylan just knows people, that’s all.”

  “You don’t know people?” she asked curiously as he made his way to the stairs to throw the mouse away.

  “I know my people,” he said thoughtfully, turning a little. “The people that want to hurt my people, I don’t know them at all.”

  THE NEXT morning after breakfast (which everybody attended), and after the men had gone to help take in the influx of product the fair seas of summer inevitably brought to the little harbor, Trieste tried to ask Roes where a good place would be to wash out a nice dress that had been “stained by the journey.”

  Roes wasn’t buying it. “So that’s where Anye’s little porch present went yesterday. Mama went to get the dustpan and it disappeared.”

  Trieste flushed. “I have no idea how it got there,” she lied politely, and Roes rolled her eyes and would have said something amusingly acerbic, but at that moment Yarri walked in carrying an armload of laundry from the line.

  “How what got where?” she asked, her brown eyes button-bright with malice.

  “How this stain got on my nicest skirt.” Trieste’s voice was nothing if not bland and polite.


  “Ooh….” Yarri nodded her head judiciously. “That’s a tough stain. You know… there’s this special mud out by the bend in the river, where the trees start, just before the bridge. I bet that mud could get this stain out.”

  Roes opened her mouth to protest, but Trieste’s eyes narrowed, and what she knew to be her “polite court smile” twisted her lips. “Really? How wonderful. Stain-removing mud. I’ve never heard of it,” she said flatly, knowing all her teeth were showing.

  “I’ll show you where it is!” Yarri said helpfully. “Just let me fold these and put them away. I’d be happy to help!”

  Roes and Trieste breathed in tandem through their noses until the patter of her feet disappeared surely up the stairs, and Roes was the first to break the silence.

  “You’re not going to bring this nice silk thing….” Her fingers caressed the smoky purple silk with covetous strokes. Her father would buy her any fabric she wanted, but Roes claimed to disdain silk and trappings like it. But, oh Goddess, would Aldam like to see her in a skirt like this, the color of yellow roses that had sat close to a red rose bush for too many years.

  “No.” Trieste shook her head tightly to emphasize that she wasn’t stupid. “No, but if you’ve got an old burlap sack, I’ll fill it with washrags or something.”

  “But why follow her?” Roes was baffled.

  “Because we’re going to have this out!” Trieste had actually been planning to chicken out and let Torrant fight this battle for her, but Yarri had walked in, full of her own pride, and laid a guileless sunshine smile on her. In a sudden flash of insight, she found she didn’t just like Torrant’s moon-destined—she admired her. Trieste knew she, herself, was not strong. Maybe, just maybe, although she probably couldn’t best Yarri in full womanhood on a bad day, if she could defeat young Yarri on a good day, she might survive her own trials as wife to the King of Otham.