Bitter Moon Saga

by Amy Lane

  “That will be the last of them, you think?” Aylan asked, wiping his bright eyes.

  “For tonight, yes.” Their eyes met again.

  “How long until Yarri gets here?”

  “Three weeks.”

  “Some people, who weren’t meant to be, never have one night,” Aylan said softly.

  “We’ve had at least two, brother. Are you ready for bed?”

  An entirely different chill and tingle had taken over Aylan, and he could only nod and follow Torrant back to the flat in the regents’ quarters, his heart pounding in his ears.

  Later that night, when both their hearts had subsided and Aylan threw open the patio door to let in a breeze to cool their naked, sweating bodies, Torrant allowed the last of the magic to fade and dreamed some more.

  That night, he dreamed of Bethen.

  The Strongest Heart of Joy

  SHE WAS sitting on Yarri’s bed, holding one of Roes’s old rag dolls and watching the curtains billow in the stiff, chill breeze off the ocean. Even in his dreams—perhaps especially in his dreams—Torrant couldn’t see her any way but beautiful. When he’d first opened his eyes in Eiran, after hauling Yarri and Aldam down the mountain in a fever daze, she’d had curly auburn hair with a few silver ones at her hairline and lines at her eyes and the corners of her mouth from smiling for most of her life. She’d had freckles and round cheeks and the most expressive brown eyes he’d ever seen—including Yarri’s—although Yarri’s eyes might someday equal Bethen’s, after she had some living behind them.

  He’d seen her through Yarri’s eyes, with the shock of the harsh lines her illness had drawn, but here, through his own eyes, he saw the Bethen he remembered from his adolescence, the Bethen who would never change.

  There was a movement behind her, and she turned and smiled, and her beloved entered the room.

  Lane didn’t seem to age, perhaps because he had always been a little wise beyond his years. There was more gray in his hair and silver in his beard, but the lines around his merry blue eyes were the same. The soul-deep sorrow was new.

  “See something interesting?” he asked, sitting behind her and twisting to wrap his arms around her waist. She sighed and leaned back into his warmth.

  “Seeing this house full,” she answered. “It doesn’t feel right with only Starren here.”

  “We can stop them, you know. They probably haven’t gone very far.”

  Ordinarily, Torrant would think he was joking, but his voice was gruff and clogged, and there was nothing light about the look in Lane Moon’s eyes.

  “No.” Bethen shook her head hard and tried to pretend teardrops hadn’t just flown into space to spatter where they would. Discreetly, and a little late, she wiped her face with her apron. “It would have killed Cwyn to sit here and watch, and we need those boys back here alive, now more than ever. It doesn’t matter if they get here before or after. This… this house and this town just need them. Yarri will make that happen.”

  “That’s a lot of faith in a small girl,” Lane protested.

  A pure and dazzling smile, without a hint of sadness, lit up her face through the tears. “She has your family in her—she’s big enough for the job.”

  But the melancholy was too pervasive to leave Lane, even with her smile. “It’s not right,” he said gruffly, burying his chin into her shoulder. “It’s not right that you should be here, alone, with only one child to care for you.” Some heat crept into his voice. “I still don’t understand why Professor Austin had to send Aldam and Roes to Wrinkle Creek.”

  Bethen’s shoulders shook with a suppressed laugh. “I think that would be perfectly obvious, Lane. It’s because I told him to.”

  Lane was shocked enough to release her waist and stalk around the bed, coming before his wife to kneel and take her hands in his. “Bethen… Bethen… why? Why would you send Roes away now?”

  Bethen shook her head, still laughing a little. “It wasn’t Roes, it was Aldam! That foolish boy kept trying to ‘heal’ me—I would wake up and feel better for a day or two, and Aldam would be pale and shaking for a week or more. I finally figured out that he had been healing me in my sleep. I asked Austin. Austin said that eventually, Aldam would succeed”—her voice dropped and all the laughter faded—“but the consequences, neither of us could have lived with them, my darling. I told Austin to make them go away, and that for once, there was something that Roes was not to know.”

  “Were you going to tell me?” Lane demanded, hurt.

  “I just did,” Bethen replied mildly, and when Lane would have jerked away from her, she held his hands with a strength that surprised both Lane and a dreaming Torrant.

  “It was when you wouldn’t talk about it, Lane,” she said gruffly. “Remember?”

  “I’m an arse,” Lane Moon said from a raw throat. “I’ve always been an arse. Why would you want to be married to someone who wouldn’t see something like that?”

  Bethen smoothed rough, working hands around her husband’s dear face. “Because of why you wouldn’t see it, beloved,” she whispered and dropped her face to his for a kiss that made even a sleeping Torrant uncomfortable to witness. Lane pulled away and buried his head in her lap, wiping his cheeks on her apron, and Bethen licked her lips a little in what seemed to be shyness, tasting his tears.

  “I’d understand why you wouldn’t want to,” she said hesitantly, wounded. “I know you can feel… lumps and things…. I’m not beautiful, not that I ever have been.”

  Lane looked up from her lap. “I always want to,” he said, and even through his tears there was a hint of the dry humor that had pulled Torrant through some difficult years into manhood, “and I’ll always think you’re beautiful. But I’m afraid, Bethie. What if it hurts? I don’t want to hurt you….”

  Bethen laughed, and to Torrant’s sleeping ears it was the sound of all joy. “Oh, Lane,” she said with a chuckle, “after thirty years, do you think I don’t love the sweetness more than I hate the pain? And how much longer will I have both? Kiss me, beloved.” Her voice dropped, and there was no more laughter in it. “Please kiss me. Let me know sweetness, yes?”

  Their lips met, and this time Torrant truly could no longer watch, not even to dream. He awoke to Aylan holding his shoulders and whispering in comfort as he wept in his sleep.

  “MAMA?” THE little man at Bitsy’s side was tugging her skirts for her attention.

  “That’s not you, is it?” The child was confused, and Bitsy stopped rocking the fussy baby on her shoulder long enough to stoop down and clarify.

  “No, poppet, that was my grandmamma—I was named for her.”

  Young Prince Aerk, as the family called him, thought for a moment. “My grandmamma isn’t going to get sick, is she?”

  Bitsy looked over her shoulder to where her mother stood, her graying red hair mercilessly scraped back into a practical bun. “Not anytime soon,” she murmured, looking affectionately at her father, who had his hands protectively on Roes’s shoulders.

  She believed it too. Aldam would never let his Roes leave without him. Even their role in Clough had been together. In fact, the more Bitsy had heard this story at the healer’s knee, the more she thought the parts of all the Moons and Shadows had been spliced together like yarn and woven so tightly, it was impossible to tell where one part ended and the other’s task began. Torrant began the next verse, and Bitsy sighed. Like the rest of the family, she loved this song, was proud of the part her family played in it.

  But because she’d grown with it in her bones, she knew the most painful part was yet to come.

  To the students I left and the ones who left me—you’re important, and I miss you.

  To my family, whom I leave sometimes too—you’re important, and I rejoice in you.

  Acknowledgments

  IT WAS a risk, taking a quiet, unacknowledged set of books and putting time and effort into rereleasing them. I cannot thank Dreamspinner Press and Harmony Ink and their amazing team of professionals enough fo
r making this series new again. This last book is Marv and Jino’s, but it’s also Elizabeth’s and Nessa’s. Bless you all.

  Part XVIII—The Changing Moon

  Triane’s Son Waiting

  Tragedy—Triana the innocent, falling from the sky in a crash of blood and bone; her lover, Djali, heir to Clough, eviscerating himself in the river, defiling his own corpse, precluding burial.

  Torrant, baring his soul and his name to the regents who followed him—

  And who followed him still.

  Tragedy, loss….

  Rebuilding.

  Torrant and Aylan, swearing the vows of friends turned lovers, that they would not desert their task.

  And Torrant’s dream that his beloved was coming, coming to aid him, coming to bear him up when his own heart failed.

  And Torrant agreeing to let her come.

  Tragedy.

  Rebuilding.

  Faith….

  A WEEK after he dreamt that Yarri was coming, Torrant patrolled under a single, chilling moon and thought a little yearningly of Aylan, asleep in Torrant’s bed. He wished he could insist Aylan sleep in his tiny, crumbling flat with the sprung couch—he knew he should. But no one had noticed yet, or if the maids who came in periodically and cleaned the bathroom and swept the rug had noticed, they certainly hadn’t reported that another man was living in the same room as Ellyot Moon, the newest almost-regent.

  He told the other regents he didn’t think it necessary to push for a majority vote. “For the moment, they’re listening. Rath’s milking the sympathy for everything it’s worth, but….”

  He hadn’t needed to finish that sentence—the evidence that something was amiss in the consort’s house had been all too damning, bleeding on the courthouse steps. Not even Rath attempted to maintain the fiction that Djali was still alive.

  So it wasn’t necessary for “Ellyot Moon” to officially become a regent, and although nobody said it, he could tell they were all relieved they wouldn’t have to force their fellow regents to believe a lie.

  That was fine—they were making progress. He and Aylan still patrolled at night, but the guards had thinned out enough that they were able to split up the work, and the five young regents had taken turns working in pairs in the early parts of the night to simply patrol the area. Some of the others on the floor who had been sympathetic in their voting had started to come along. A sudden influx of blankets and food had found its way into the clinic the last rest day, and Torrant, at least, was encouraged.

  But the giant structure on the hill above the city continued to grow like a stone wart, and they still hadn’t found a solution to the problem of guarding the people they were smuggling out to the secretly reestablished Moon Hold. He hadn’t discovered where Rath was keeping the Goddess’s gifted who kept trying (at unexpected times) to force his hand on the floor, and as of yet, he could get no other regent to publicly accuse Rath of abducting Triana. These complications were not encouraging.

  In fact, they were downright frustrating, and as Torrant was visited with dream after dream of Yarri’s progress toward him, he could only marvel that she seemed to be able to accomplish anything, while he was stuck on just these two problems.

  “Do you know who’s coming now? Bethen’s big ‘surprise’ at Wrinkle Creek?”

  Torrant woke Aylan out of a sound sleep in the wee hours after this dream had visited him. He’d enjoyed the dream at first—had, in fact, been taking an inordinate amount of pleasure in the dream from just looking at Yarri. She was so beautiful. Her brown eyes sparkled, and her lovely autumn-colored hair rippled past her full hips. Her yellow dress all but sang of the brightness in her soul, and her body was so lush…. Was it because he had been surrounded by nothing but regents or sick people for the past months, or was it just her? He didn’t know, but he knew that as the true dreams continued and she started to get closer to him, he had begun fixating on her body or her face in total enchantment.

  Breasts. His beloved had soft, pillowy, sweet breasts. When was the last time he had looked at a woman for that feature when it hadn’t been purely functional? The answer was easy—it had been the last time, the one time, he’d been in her arms.

  When Trieste entered the dream, dressed simply and fine in a dress of dark blue linen, he hadn’t noticed her breasts at all. She made an unlikely, gracious presence in the red-dusted cedar woods of Wrinkle Creek. In the background of the dream, he could see the house he had roomed in with Aldam for nearly four years as they’d served the people in the hills. Aldam had been upset, he could tell, because there was an added room over the center of the house—the part with the best foundation and sturdiest walls. Aldam always did his best carpentry when he was unhappy.

  Yarri, Trieste, Roes, and Aldam were packing four wagons for the lot of them. Trieste even had a retinue of servants, including a sturdy, practical steward who was discussing with Roes how to pack so that when Roes and Aldam swung south to head for Moon Hold, they didn’t have to split up belongings. Aldam had been calmly taking direction from Trieste in the easiest way to cover his white streak, which was nearly unnecessary since his hair was almost white-blond on its own. When he’d pointed that out, a look of pain crossed Trieste’s features, and she and Yarri had met eyes in a clear plea on behalf of the Queen of Otham to see if Yarri could keep her beloved friend out of danger.

  Yarri had shaken her head firmly, saying, “No. It’s not going to happen. Not for Torrant, and not for you.”

  And that was when Torrant had sat up in bed and awakened Aylan.

  “Aldam and Roes? And Trieste? It will be quite the reunion!” Aylan was grinning, his white teeth flashing in the moonlight from the patio window, and therefore he was not anticipating Torrant’s smack on the back of his head. “What was that for?”

  “All of them? Damned bloody all?”

  “Well, not all of them here. Aldam’s not stupid, you know. He’s heading for Moon Hold, using, I might add, the same deduction you used to establish the new colony there.”

  Torrant had blown out a breath and thrown himself back against the pillows, goose bumps rising around the scars on his bare chest. “Oueant’s tears, what in the name of the stars’ dark are they thinking?” he asked the air in general.

  Aylan frowned, not caring for the way Torrant shivered outside of the blankets as he pulled the comforter up under his friend’s chin. Torrant scowled at him, and Aylan shrugged, completely unrepentant at his fussing. “Perhaps they’re thinking what the regents and I have already figured out, brother. You may be the one man who can save the world, but it’s going to take a bunch of us to save you.”

  Torrant snorted then and curled up on his side, burrowing into Aylan’s smooth-skinned comfort. Their legs tangled under the blankets, and Aylan’s arms came around Torrant’s shoulders, his palms skimming the ridges of the scars that had so appalled Eljean.

  “So,” Aylan murmured against Torrant’s shorter hair, “how did she look?”

  Torrant didn’t have to guess which woman Aylan was referring to. “Lovely,” he replied, falling back asleep even as he answered. “She has the most amazing breasts.”

  THREE NIGHTS later, in the dank recesses of the rough-cobbled alley between crumbling red and yellow brick walls, Torrant could hear the warmth of Aylan’s chuckle in his memory, and it kept him still. He wondered, then, at his hubris, that he thought he could come to this city all alone and make a difference, when in truth he could hardly do it even with the help of all his friends.

  He heard a sound then and shrank back farther into the shadows, waiting to see who it was. He could smell the sweat on metal and hear the clink—had, in fact, scented the guard coming for some minutes now. But he wanted a glimpse of him, to see if it was the guard he had been thinking of.

  Soundlessly, he reached above him and hauled himself up onto the roof of the building next to him. He crept above on the shingles, thankful for once that all three moons were down. It was hard to be quiet on the roofs of the ghetto�
�most of the buildings were falling apart. The roofs were in disrepair, and the shingles slid out from under his feet if he trod even a little wrong. But he and Aylan had been moving quietly in the ghetto for months, and he was good at it now. In silence and shadows he trailed the man from the rooftops, wanting to see where he was going.

  The guard suddenly stopped, looked behind him and around him, and then made an abrupt turn. Apparently he was going into a dead-end alley.

  Torrant crept along the edge, waiting for the man to come out.

  The guard started talking to the crumbling mortar instead. “Hullo… whoever you are?”

  Torrant fought the urge to yelp, and the man kept talking, as though fully aware he had an audience.

  “The man who has been knocking me on the head for months? I know you’re out there. I don’t know how—but I can tell by now.” The guard looked around, tried looking above but couldn’t; his helmet impeded his vision. It had made things very simple for Torrant and Aylan these past months, but for right now, the lack of visibility didn’t matter. He continued to talk to the dark night chill.

  “I know which nights I’m going to be belted on the head, whether I have a partner or not. My partner’s drunk, you know—I left him several alleyways back, weeping in the shadows. If he gets one more whack on the skull, the local leech said he may never wake up. Not that he’s a good man, but I thought you’d like to know. It’s nice of you not to kill us when you have the chance, but it is taking its toll.”

  Torrant took a deep breath and for a moment felt the weight of all the deaths on his soul. Poor mad Ulvane, fragile Djali, innocent Triana, gallant old Jem… the nameless, faceless men who hadn’t been so lucky as to merely get knocked on the head.

  Without knowing who he would be when he stood, he leapt….