Bitter Moon Saga

by Amy Lane

  Aylan wrapped his arm around her shoulders and gave her a brotherly kiss on the top of a coif of curls that started at her crown and dripped like honey down her back. “I’ll wait for them and guide them, sweetheart,” he said quietly. “You go take the children to the fair. We’ll be there before they’ve finished their first dance, right?”

  “Right,” Yarri said, her little face fighting disappointment, and Aylan fought his own surge of irritation toward Torrant. It had to have been important, whatever it was.

  But whatever it was, it wasn’t what was on Torrant’s mind as he came galloping across the bridge scarcely ten minutes after Yarri left so reluctantly to do right by her students.

  “Is she at the fair?” he asked without preamble, slowing Heartland down so abruptly the poor beast almost skidded on the well-worn boards of the bridge. “Am I too late to see her dance?”

  “No, they haven’t even started yet!” He looked so miserable at his lateness that Aylan couldn’t be angry at him even a little. “You have time to clean up and dress if you hurry. Here, pull me up, and I’ll take Heartland to the stables—” Before he could finish the thought, Torrant had given him a hand. With a creak of his foot in the stirrup, Aylan was sitting behind him, legs straddled, squashed intimately against his friend by the saddle. Torrant smelled of horse sweat and morning in the woods. Cedar had seeped into his clothes, and as he urged Heartland to his fastest trot (they were, after all, going through town, and there were people walking up the road toward the river), Aylan felt an unprovoked, unmistakable physical reaction to another human being for the first time in more than a year. For a moment in time, Yarri ceased to exist. He wrapped his arms around Torrant’s waist, buried his nose in the crook between his shoulders, and simply breathed in his sweat, his electricity and his person, filling his soul with the man who had come to be the center of so many worlds.

  The ride was over too quickly, and Aylan let go so Torrant could slide down and grab the saddlebag that held his best clothes. But Torrant surprised him, as he often did by being thoughtful, and even as he slung the bag over his shoulder he took Aylan’s hand as it held the reins and kissed the back of it, sighing playfully.

  “It’s a shame we were not to be, brother,” he said, the heartbeat of “run” still throbbing in his voice, “because it would have been particularly sweet.” And with that, he clattered into the house to a chorus of “You’re late!” and Aylan resumed his ride to the stables, shifting his seat every so often, smiling to himself, and shaking his head. He certainly hoped his brother got there in time to see his beloved dance.

  TORRANT EXPLAINED their lateness to Lane as the family trotted up the hill and past the bridge to the fair. The news made Lane purse his lips and brood, even as he stopped to wait for Roes and Aldam to come through the woods and across the bridge at a more sedate pace than Torrant had used.

  It was not the best of news.

  Rath had trained up another cadre of priests, and these were coming not just toward the Old Man Hills and the Desert Lands as they had been—no, many of these were aimed directly toward Eiran.

  They had asked for purchase at Triannon and been denied.

  Professor Gregor had taken over as a (very young) headmaster in the last couple of years, but he had not looked young at all when he’d pulled Torrant into his office to talk as Aldam had helped Roes load her things into the wagon. (Since this hadn’t taken nearly as long as Torrant’s talk, Torrant could only roll his eyes and speculate at what they had done to occupy themselves in the meantime.)

  “That priest came to my school without even a letter of introduction, sat himself in my office, and proceeded to tell me Triannon needed some of the gods’ speakers there, because otherwise the students would not be getting a ‘spiritually beneficial’ education!” Gregor shuddered, and Torrant realized the man was talking to him not only as an equal, but possibly as a confidante. These were revelations Gregor would not have wanted to make to the rest of his staff, whom, he said, he was trying to keep calm as it was, since every report emerging from Clough seemed to be threatening their lives or their professions in ways both immediate and ominous.

  “The whole time, he was looking at me as though he wanted to jump on me and shave my head!” Gregor’s silver streak of hair was particularly vivid against his black sweep of a widow’s peak, and Torrant could well imagine the sight would be insufferable to someone who thought the Goddess’s mark was a demon’s kiss. But Gregor had shaken off his own revulsion and continued with the meat of what Torrant told Lane. “I told him no—we didn’t want his brand of education at Triannon, and I was certainly not going to turn over or burn any of the books in the library on his list.” Another shudder. “That list was terrifyingly long, by the way. But what I really needed to tell you was this. Your family’s name came up. I gather the consort actually knew little about the family. Much like all of the speculation that followed you at school, they’re pretty sure a boy and a girl survived, but they’re not sure about the ages. Which is why they think Yarri’s at Triannon.”

  Torrant’s eyes had widened, and he’d had to fight the urge to go interrupt whatever Aldam and Roes were up to and do exactly what Lane had threatened to do the year before: tie Yarri’s prickly cousin up in her little girl’s bed safe and sound in Eiran until this madness had worn itself out.

  “Yes.” Gregor had read his mind. “I think Roes is in danger. Not while she stays here, but she’s training in the same area you are. She’s ready to go out into the field and intern, just as you and Aldam did, and I don’t want to let her go.”

  Torrant had spent the next several hours discussing alternatives for Roes’s education, ways to keep his little cousin safe, what Triannon could do against the incursion of the priests, and how Eiran would deal with them as well. Torrant had suggested a portion of Eiran’s militia might be housed at the school, and since attendance had fallen off (more and more young men were being pushed into the university at Dueance), there would probably be enough room for them. Gregor had proposed this year’s crop of seniors be asked to build barracks at the top of the bowl valley—and told Torrant they’d be ready at the end of summer if Eiran would agree to send the troops. The very idea had made Torrant suck in air through his teeth and grab the edge of Gregor’s desk hard enough to leave marks on his hands.

  The militia, which had been so thinly staffed when Torrant had slid down a mountain to safety, had grown significantly in the past eleven years. Of course, mail service had never been better, but that did not mean their duties weren’t proportionately more important as well. A population did not simply quadruple with refugees without the need for a regular force policing the dissatisfied and the despondent, and the militia had been organizing itself along those lines very well indeed. Supplying soldiers to man Triannon would not be a problem—but the idea that it was necessary…. Torrant had almost cracked the ledge off the professor’s desk before Gregor gently warned him about his strength.

  When their discussion was done, and Roes and Aldam had finally tapped impatiently at the door, Torrant had looked at Roes, sturdy and scowling and lovely, and wondered what force on earth was going to keep her under Triannon’s roof for her last year at school.

  He hadn’t even broached the subject to her as they’d ridden through the brightly lit night. All three moons were full this Beltane, and it was almost too light to sleep.

  So on this even more brightly lit morning, when all the colors were tangy with spring and all the leaf edges a sharper green from the blinding blue of the sky, Torrant was forced to brief Lane about fear and anxiety, even as he trotted on light feet to keep his promise to Yarri.

  He got there just in time, and as he sat breathlessly on the same hillside he and Yarri had occupied years before at their first Beltane fair, he thought he would have ridden for weeks without sleep to arrive in time to see her dance.

  She was leading the children from the orphanage through their dance figures as much of the village looked on a
nd applauded. Torrant smiled and waved and marveled at how some of them had grown from the year before, but really, he only had eyes for Yarrow Moon.

  Her dress was new, which he noticed only because the gold and green and rich harvest purple were striking and beautiful, and the curls spilling from the pins at the top of her head were so red-gold against her green vest that she looked like one of her own oil paintings. Her face was as it had always been—round at the cheeks and pointed at the chin, with a little red bow of a mouth and brown eyes so real and direct they seemed to scan his every thought. Her cheeks were flushed with the heat and the dancing, and she had a sweet little smile on her bee sting of a mouth that made the children taking her hands and swinging into their figures smile back. In the light of that smile, the pain of completing memorized figures for school vanished into the joy of dancing in the sunshine with friends.

  Then she saw him, sitting on the hill in his best clothes, his hair (which had grown out over the winter and swept back from his face in soft waves, with his silver forelock falling a little over his eyes) was wet-combed, and he had a smile quirking over his playful mouth that truly was only for her.

  She smiled back, such a full and glorious expression that his breath came to a stuttering halt, with a little whimper the last thing to clear his throat. His eyes focused on her alone, a shining, splendid presence in the middle of joy. The rest of the world faded into whispers and shadows, and Yarri was his only sun.

  The dance figures took her away in a swirl of gold-and-green skirts and an exuberant laugh and a hop and a bounce he knew was for him alone.

  In one moment of sunshine and red-gold hair, one beat of flute and snare drum, one chime and toll of bells, Torrant Shadow went from loving Yarri Moon with all his soul to being in love with her with all his heart as well. It was as simple and easy as crossing the threshold of home.

  The dance ended, the town applauded, and Aylan arrived with lunch packets wrapped in colorful kerchiefs for the children, along with (Torrant’s donation, via Courtland’s still impressive stamina) a small packet of coins in each kerchief, so they could go into the fair with allowance in their pockets like every other child of Eiran.

  After Yarri bid them to go off and enjoy themselves, she turned to Torrant with a shyer, more reserved smile than the one she had offered across the field, but it was too late. The damage had been done. Torrant’s heart was already beating with the throb of her pulse.

  “You’re late,” she said, ducking her head and trying not to accuse. He rubbed his thumb across her lower lip to keep it from trembling.

  “Something came up,” he understated. “But I’m here—I promised.”

  Her lips quirked up then and she managed to meet his eyes. “You always keep your promises, don’t you?”

  “If the three moons let me, yes,” he told her softly, still breathless from her nearness, her warmth, her smell…. She looked up and caught the electricity in his eyes, and in an uncharacteristic show of nervousness, her little white teeth came out to nibble on her lower lip.

  “Do I want to know what kept you?” she asked, and both of them, in their little bubble, were aware that the world had ceased to be.

  “Later,” he said softly. “Right now….” He swallowed, suddenly so nervous he could barely speak. “Right now, I have another promise to keep.”

  Her lips were so soft, he thought randomly, when her tongue was often sharp and tart. And then she was soft and sweet and warm, and she smelled like yarrow and rose and chamomile and home. Her mouth parted for him, without hesitation, without warning, and there were no more thoughts. There was only Yarri the woman, kissing him. Her taste was wild and sharp and sweet and home.

  The kiss lasted forever. It was the focus of the universe, the axis around which the planets revolved, the center of the sun. Ending it was like separating him from the only half of himself he’d ever wanted to know. They stood together, his arms around her, her head pressed against his chest, gulping air for another five hundred years, before Yarri released a shuddering breath and pulled her bones back into her body to take her own weight.

  “That was a good promise,” she breathed. “You wouldn’t consider breaking one this summer, would you?”

  Torrant stood up straighter, and his arm around her shoulder became less like her own skin and more like a companion’s arm. “No,” he said shakily, and then summoned a grin from the depths of his soul. “No.”

  “That’s fine,” she murmured, assuming a direction and guiding him toward the Moons’ family table. “But don’t think I won’t try to break you. I’ve got two months, now, don’t I?”

  A throaty rumble sounded in his chest, one that told her that it would be the sweetest, most excruciating two months he had ever known.

  AYLAN SAT at the picnic table with Starren and watched Torrant and Yarri share their first kiss and wondered why they didn’t rise to the heavens and glow there like a second sun. Their coming together seemed so right.

  He was unaware of the depth of his sigh until Starren patted his knee in sympathy. “He woul’ ha’ bee’ ’pectacular ib beb,” she garbled through a mouthful of potato salad, and Aylan choked on his own mouthful and then checked his ears to make sure she’d said what he thought she did.

  “How would you even know to say a thing like that?” he asked, wiping his mouth and trying to regain his composure. Suddenly he wished his self-imposed ban on taking lovers in the summer was not so well established. He really wanted a woman, or a man, someone to hold and to touch him and to tell him he was beautiful and desirable and would not be alone in the silence of his own heart for the rest of his life.

  Starry swallowed, then took a sip of water from a bottle at her belt. “I’ve been following Cwyn all my life, and unlike adults, he’s not afraid of corrupting my sweet little ears with talk about sex.”

  “Cwyn doesn’t know as much as he thinks he does,” Aylan grumbled, and Starren grinned unrepentantly.

  “That doesn’t mean he’s not happy to find out!”

  Aylan laughed and looked sadly at his constant companion, the one person he could talk with as openly as he did with Torrant. “We just weren’t meant to be, that’s all,” he said philosophically and could have sworn loudly when his eyes grew bright.

  Starren finished her potato salad and wiped off her hands and face, then stood (she was going to be taller than both Yarri and Roes, but not as tall as Bethen) and moved behind Aylan. She wrapped her arms around his shoulders and leaned her cheek against his in a gesture he remembered from the first moment she had launched herself at him and declared him her “music.” “You and I will be better, if you can wait,” she promised, and Aylan almost choked on his own tongue.

  “I will be old and ugly by the time you come of age. There will be prettier young men by the dozens, Littlest,” he said lightly when he could speak, and that soft cheek moved next to his negatively.

  “You will never be anything but beautiful, Aylan Moon,” the little girl admonished, “and those dozens of men will never be my music. Now come and buy me a new toy before I completely terrify you, and your heart will start to mend.”

  Aylan allowed himself to be led bemusedly into the merchant’s tents and found that his pockets were full of gold he had saved for this very purpose, and he wondered the whole time who was going to tell Starry she didn’t get to pick who she would marry when she was a child and have that plan work out when she was a full-grown woman. She smiled at him, her pale, freckled face as open as her mother’s, and her blue eyes fathomless and bright. He touched her nose and felt like a coward because whoever told her she couldn’t marry her music, it was certainly not going to be him.

  TORRANT AND Yarri danced that Beltane. They danced through the figures like otters frolicking through rivers, and they held each other and danced when the music was slow like honey. When it was Torrant’s turn to take the lute, he sang a song to his beloved that brought tears to every eye in the town but Yarri’s, because it was her song, and
she would not weep for it, no matter how much it moved her.

  And when the children and families had gone home and the wilding began, they slipped away to the shore, where the brightness of the moons precluded any wilding on the beach. They sat and talked, kissed and talked, and watched the silvered black of the ocean move like cold molten metal and then crash into lace on the sand. They kissed and whispered until the moons faded, and the sun slid slyly through the trees to turn the river to a ribbon of gold.

  When Yarri saw the dawn, she said a succinct word and hopped off Torrant’s lap so quickly he overbalanced into the sand. “I need to make sure the children are in their beds!” she called as she went tearing down the beach. “Go tell Auntie Beth I’ll be home in a breath!”

  Torrant stood and stretched and laughed into the wave-crashing stillness of the dawn.

  When he got home, he was a little dismayed—but not surprised—to see a sleepy Aunt Bethen sitting at the table eating some of the bread she’d set out the night before. She was taking a few bites and then doing a few stitches on a bright sun-gold stocking, as though the knitting was there only to keep her awake. Torrant walked up and kissed her cheek, then took her knitting from her and set it down gently on the table as he sat.

  “Are we the last in?” he asked quietly.

  “Mmmmnnn….” She yawned. “Is Yarri checking the orphanage?”

  “Yes,” he said. “If I’d realized she had to do that, I would have walked her up earlier. Dawn sort of took us by surprise.” He sat and cut himself a thick slice of bread. He couldn’t tell who made it—bread was one of the things Auntie Beth could do well sometimes. She always said it was because there was a recipe to bread, but everything else had to be guessed at.

  “She isn’t drinking that tea,” Beth said through a yawn. “I hope you two were careful.”

  Torrant choked out breadcrumbs all over the table. “But we didn’t—” he protested, and Bethen blinked rapidly, coming awake at last. “We’re not going to—” he tried again, and her eyebrows hit the line of rusty gray curls at her forehead. He cleared his throat and tried one more time. “I’m going to wait until next Beltane if it kills me!” he said at last succinctly, and Bethen shook her head as though she hadn’t heard right.