Bitter Moon Saga

by Amy Lane

  “He stayed behind to distract the guards,” Aylan answered honestly. Torrant mumbled something in his arms, and Aylan rubbed his cheek against the shaggy hair. The white mark had been visible since Marv and Jino had brought him to Trieste’s, and seeing it now, against Torrant’s will, made Aylan feel as though his friend were naked in public. It hurt.

  Aylan looked at Zhane, keeping his face as open and honest as he could. He was so raw inside that open and honest was easier than he thought.

  “He wanted me to tell you that he couldn’t desert a brother to make his lover happy.”

  Zhane’s face showed panic, sadness, and a terrified love for Eljean—but not betrayal. Aylan would always count it as the best lie he’d ever told.

  “Let’s go!” Aylan called now, a half beat late. Without realizing it, he had been waiting for Torrant to give the command.

  With Heartland and Courtland in the lead, the last of the Goddess people in Dueance disappeared into the darkness.

  The walk to daylight only lasted a few hours, but Aylan spent that time listening to Torrant’s labored breathing, to Yarri’s soft singing to Starren, and to the periodic calls across the vast arm span of black that separated the two animals. The Goddess folk were probably murmuring behind him, but that was never what he remembered.

  Instead: “Torrant? Aylan?” It was always Yarri. Starren’s face had gone stark white with the first sight of the tunnel, but Bethen and Lane’s youngest daughter wasn’t stupid or selfish or vain. She had seen Torrant’s wounds; she had seen Aylan’s face as he’d crashed through the door, knowing his brother, his lover, his friend had been grievously hurt in his stead. It was awful, being in that heavy, thick blackness again, and she sat her horse and shivered in Yarri’s comforting clasp—but she didn’t complain.

  Anything that got Torrant to safety was something Starren would endure, just like the rest of the family.

  “Torrant? Aylan?” Yarri’s voice would wobble in the darkness.

  “Hush, Yarrow, we’re here,” Aylan would reply, and Yarri would go back to singing Starry’s favorite song—the one Torrant had brought home the day Aylan had met the family—to the clopping rhythm of the horses’ hooves.

  Torrant’s heart labored under the scarred skin, and the pain must have been truly horrendous, because he twitched sometimes and threatened to send them both out of the saddle. By the time the first glow of sunlight warned them of the over-bright sky to come, Aylan felt as though he’d been bathing in a reeking blind vortex of his own sweat and his brother’s blood for all of eternity.

  But suddenly it was over. The people behind them, who had been in too much awe and fear of their wounded hero to make much noise, began to mutter, and suddenly they were blinded. Even the horses, who snorted and whickered, acknowledged the light after the terrible darkness.

  When Alec of Otham led the group of soldiers to the mouth of the tunnel, Aylan suddenly wished he were blind again.

  In fact, not for the first time, nor for the last time, he wished he was wounded, bleeding out his life into Torrant’s arms, instead of the other way around.

  Torrant, that bastard—he had it easy.

  “Aylan?” Alec’s kind, lean face with its dominant blade of a nose was barely more than a larger spot in Aylan’s vision, but he could imagine the puckers of fear that went with the terrible disappointment in that voice.

  “I’m sorry,” Aylan muttered, squeezing his eyes shut and opening them again.

  “Aylan, where’s my wife?” Alec begged, and Aylan shook his head again, clutching Torrant to him like a shield from the wound of such terrible news.

  “We had to leave the regents behind,” he said, looking Alec as close to in the eyes as he could manage. “Trieste—she wouldn’t leave Eljean.”

  “Eljean?” The suspicion in Alec’s voice was too much to bear. Aylan looked around with his clearing vision and saw Zhane, his arms around Torrell’s daughter, Arue, busy taking a blanket from one of Alec’s guardsmen and putting it over the girl’s shoulders.

  “Yes, Eljean,” Aylan muttered, looking away before he caught those hurt, sloe eyes. “He fancies himself in love with this one”—Oh gods, he couldn’t even say his brother’s name!—“and ripped himself in the belly to distract the guards while we got away. Now we need to get him to Aldam, and soon….”

  “Wait a minute.” Alec finally stopped looking for Trieste and started thinking like the gods instead of the Goddess. “Is that the Moons’ youngest daughter?” Yarri had sent sketches of her family to Trieste for the past five years—Alec knew them like he knew his own staff. “Don’t you need to get her home?”

  Aylan looked over at Starry, and suddenly he stopped thinking like the gods, and started thinking like the Goddess. “Dueant’s maimed heart!” he swore. She was hunched and miserable, and Yarri kept rubbing her arms and murmuring reassurances into her ear. The two young women were cuddled on the horse with the familiarity of sisters, but it was obvious that not even a sister could ease the terror of being back in the tunnel, even for a few hours instead of a few days.

  “Stanny left with Roes a week ago,” Alec said distractedly. “Trieste stayed on her own?”

  Aylan pulled his attention back to his other “little sister,” and he tried to give Alec all the information he’d need. “She was planning to stay with Eljean as he was arrested,” Aylan said thickly, the full import of this action sinking into his consciousness like a lead weight in oatmeal. “Eljean’s a regent—the other four regents are going to lobby against Rath to try to get them released.” Oh gods, he had a sudden memory of the no-longer young men who had been enlisted to help give out blankets and food in a long ago summer.

  “They were supposed to come with us….” His voice cracked into a raw whisper. “We were all supposed to leave together.”

  “I don’t understand!” Alec cried, his voice and his ineffable command cracking in agony. “Why would she stay behind?”

  “She said….” Aylan remembered Trieste’s secret, wistful looks at her husband’s letters, the way she would mention his name with reverence and not too often, in case the extent of her homesickness would make them uncomfortable, and he found that the words came much easier than they had for Zhane. “She said that she could not desert a brother, not even to make a lover happy.”

  “Damn you,” Alec choked. “Damn your whole honor-bound family. What are you going to do with Starren? Bethen’s ill….”

  “Do you think I don’t know that?” Aylan tried not to shout. “We need to….” And oh gods, after that terrible lie to Zhane, these were the words that stuck in his throat. “We need to find somebody to take her home,” he said on the second try. His arms ached, he thought miserably. He had been holding Torrant on horseback—a thing he’d never thought would be a difficulty—but Goddess help him, he’d been doing it for hours, and the ache alone was enough to make him weep.

  Suddenly, Torrant gave a twitch and a shudder in his arms. “You have to go with Starren,” he said, as pellucid as a crystal fountain.

  “Go to hell!” Aylan cried, only to have Yarri and Starren dismount and move stiffly to argue with him.

  “They’re going to block the underground pass through the Hammer, Aylan,” Yarri told him gruffly. She reached out her shaking arms, as though forgetting she was tiny and didn’t have enough leverage to help Torrant down, even if her legs could carry the two of them. There were deep circles under her eyes, and her face was pale and wan. Aylan had roomed with Torrant and Aldam enough to know about the care and feeding of a pregnant woman, and the sudden, terrible weight of responsibility for the people Torrant loved almost smashed the air from his lungs.

  “Alec,” he croaked, his own muscles trembling from Torrant’s leaden burden, “Alec—move her. Feed her. Get her a place to sit. We’ll put Torrant on the cart, and I’ll take them to Moon Hold.”

  Suddenly, Torrant’s body felt lighter in his arms, and Torrant’s weary voice marched, weak but clear, giving orders as
he always did. “You will take Starren home, brother, and that is the last I’ll hear of it.”

  It would have been, but Aylan argued. He argued as Alec’s soldiers hefted Torrant down. The keening hiss that dragged through Torrant’s throat made every voice in the little camp around the tunnel hush but Aylan’s own.

  He argued as Yarri shoved big pieces of bread and cheese down her gullet. She and Starren crouched down by Torrant in the back of the cart, and Yarri tearfully told her young cousin to give Bethen their eternal love. Alec kept telling them the tunnel would be sealed until the country was settled. It would be weeks before they could leave. This was Starren’s one chance to get out of the country in time to see her mother, and the girl didn’t say a word, didn’t beg, didn’t plead at all. What she did, in fact, was sit at Torrant’s head and smooth his hair back and whisper reassurances to his quiet messages to her family.

  It would have been a betrayal of all the Moons had given them in the way of family, love, and honor to not at least try to get her home in time to say good-bye.

  But still he argued. And in the end, the person he was arguing with, the one person who would hear none of his excuses, was the one flirting with the stars’ dark.

  “It’s time, Aylan,” Torrant muttered, as Aylan tearfully tried to convince him that someone else could take Starren.

  “But I’ve had your back for a year, you arse!” Aylan shouted, no longer pretending the world couldn’t hear. “How can you tell me to leave you now, when you need me most of all!”

  “You’re not leaving me to my death, Aylan.” Torrant smiled a little, trying to make the situation less dire, but he had been coughing blood since they laid him in the cart, as though the blood seeping through his cocoon of blankets was not enough of a scarlet scream of grim possibility.

  “You’re leaving him to me,” Yarri said gently, taking one last, hard swallow of food that she obviously needed but had no stomach for. Aylan was crouched in the back of the borrowed wagon next to Starren, and Yarri hopped awkwardly out the end and stretched out an imperious—and steady—hand to help them down. “It’s time, brother,” she said softly. “You’ve had his back for a year—now it’s time to let me take him to his other brother, right? Honor is great for fighting, but not so great for healing—and that’s what he needs. Starry needs her Honor now.”

  “Don’t talk to me of gods,” Aylan snarled.

  “Then don’t talk to me like you’re not the Son of Oueant!” Yarri snarled back, her first sign of spirit since forcing Torrant to accept Eljean’s dreadful bargain. “It doesn’t matter how this ends, Aylan. The act you would never forgive yourself for is the one where you’d fail your honor. Don’t you see—that’s why he’s telling you to go. Not because he doesn’t want you to see him die—” She squeezed her face tightly, so she could keep talking. “—but because he doesn’t want you to regret the choice you should have made. She’s yours, brother. And our family is yours. And you know how you need to serve us.”

  Aylan’s cry of anguish once again sealed the camp in silence, and when the echoes had faded, he knelt to his brother and kissed his forehead. “You unlivable wank,” he growled, “if you die, I’ll forsake my honor. I’ll die like Djali, my blood staining the seas, my honor streaming behind me like entrails, and I’ll be able to do it because my wounds will finally be my own. If you let this wound take you, I will never forgive you, and the family will never forgive me, and Triane and Oueant will crash in the sky and burn the world in the flames of their destruction. You live, Torrant. You live. Your beloved is carrying your children, and if that’s not a reason to stay rooted to this world, then you are not the man I’ve loved.”

  “Aylan,” Torrant murmured, his voice fading into finality. “Good speed, brother. I love you.”

  “I love you too…,” Aylan choked, and once more he screamed anguish into the bright spring morning. Then he and Starren were on Heartland’s back, thundering toward home without even taking time to wash.

  Yarri clambered up so she could watch them go from the back of the wagon, Torrant’s head pillowed in her lap. Zhane and the other Goddess folk were coming to Moon Hold, although Alec had told them as concisely as he could there were no guarantees of safety there either.

  “We’re going in. If they don’t give me Trieste, I’m going to take your precious city and grind it to dust.” It was an oath he took seriously, but Torrant, even from his back, clutching his life force to his body with the force of woven threads, couldn’t abandon his brothers to their fate.

  “There are friends in there—good men. They’ll be trying to get her out. Please, Alec—they’ve risked their lives. They could have come with us, but they stayed. Please….” He coughed again, a dangerous cough from his wounded insides that brought up dark blood, and Alec swore, long and angrily, and then gave his word that he would do what he could to keep them safe.

  And Yarri thought miserably that there must have been something wrong with her, something defective with her heart, compared to all the damned glorious children of honor who swarmed around her like flies, because she would have given them all—Eljean, the young regents, even Trieste—just to have her beloved safe and whole in her arms.

  “No you wouldn’t,” Torrant mumbled, and she bent down to hear him over the creak of the wheel.

  “No I wouldn’t what?” she asked, but she was certain he knew. He’d known her every thought, the deepest darkened corners of her heart, from the moment she’d drawn breath.

  “You wouldn’t trade me for them.” Yes, oh yes, he still knew everything in her heart.

  “I already did, beloved,” she murmured, stroking his shaggy white streak back from his face. Perversely, she wanted him to talk to her. It meant he was planning to live. “And I’d do it again,” she added, “and not because you’re the savior of the Goddess folk, and not because you’re a healer who helps hundreds of people. Not because you’re a poet, Torrant Shadow. I’d trade them all just for you, because you’re mine, and you love me.” It was best that he know, she thought wretchedly. It was best that he know how Goddess-blinded she was, had always been, by him. Best he knew that she was selfish, and self-centered, and that she had no honor where he was concerned.

  If he knew that, knew it all the way in his thread-beating heart, he’d know that she needed him. With all of her selfishness, she would need him to keep the planet from wobbling on its axis.

  “Of course I love you,” he said dreamily, his consciousness an ephemeral thing. “How could I not love you? You’re my promise, Yarrow Moon. You’re spring after harsh winter and rain after the closeness of clouds, but I got you too early. I got you too early…. I didn’t earn you yet…. Ellyot gave you to me. I needed to pay him back.”

  Oh gods. She wanted to hang her head and weep. “You paid him back by getting me out,” she told him. “All Ellyot ever wanted was for us to survive….”

  Torrant laughed, a hollow, strengthless sound. “You don’t remember him, beloved. He would have grown to be such a fighter. He would have killed Rath already, and this would all be over.”

  “No it wouldn’t.” Oh gods, she had to keep her emotions steady as the cart creaked around them and the obscene sunshine promised warmth it wouldn’t deliver. How was she supposed to get him to Aldam alive if she couldn’t stop weeping? “It wouldn’t be over, because Rath’s ideas would still be here. You did what Ellyot couldn’t, beloved. You’ve killed his ideas. Even if he lives, nobody believes in him anymore. When he no longer rules, Clough will no longer follow him. You did that.” Oueant save her, it was true. All those months, meeting in secret, being constantly afraid for him when he was out of her sight—and it only made sense to her now, when she was defending him from a ghost.

  “You’ve done it, Torrant. Let it go. Turn all that will on healing. Heal, and all you’ll ever need to be again is mine.”

  He nodded, falling out of consciousness with her name on his lips, and she stroked his hair and prayed.

  The
wagon creaked steadily on.

  ALDAM WAS waiting for them. It had hurt to give Roes into Stanny’s care, her body lumbering with their daughter already, but she had to bring his love to Bethen.

  And he had to stay for Torrant.

  Torrant had left him behind, this one terrible time, and it wouldn’t be right in Aldam’s heart until he saw his brother home.

  Fredy stayed with him, and some of the heartier men and women who had been smuggled out of Dueance. Roes and Aldam had won some strong loyalties that winter, simply by providing for the people and keeping them alive and safe until spring.

  So it was Fredy who gave the first shout that someone was coming, and there was something in his voice, something odd and fearful, that had Aldam running as fast as his large, square body could take him from the newly built porch to the clearing at the front road.

  When he saw the wagon with no Torrant on horseback, he knew what was wrong.

  Aldam literally scrambled over the wagon’s side before it stopped moving, but Fredy and Grand were there to help Zhane to the front, so it didn’t matter.

  Yarri was holding Torrant’s head in her lap, touching his face and singing to him. His breath was rattling in his chest, and there was blood on his mouth and everywhere, and when Aldam put his hands on his brother he had a sudden vision of that poor frog, skin pinned to the sides like a grisly butterfly, his internal organs open to the world in a way that was obscene and pornographic. A body was never meant to look like that. Especially not Torrant’s.

  “You left me!” Aldam exclaimed, running his hands down the front of the seamed sheet.

  “Hullo, Aldam,” Torrant rasped, his smile sweet and pleasant as though death weren’t only a few breaths away.

  “If I had been in the city with you, I could have healed you as soon as this happened!” Aldam continued bitterly. He found the seam of the sheet and pulled out his belt knife and began to rip.

  “Aldam,” Yarri said dazedly, riding the ragged weft of exhaustion, “don’t you want to wait until we get inside to….”