The Dawn King (The Moon People, Book Five)

by Claudia King

  If they remained here and sent Netya on her journey, she would not be away from Jarek for another two seasons.

  —30—

  Liliac's Plan

  Caspian sat in the darkened storehouse reflecting on everything that had transpired to bring him here. His thoughts were still awhirl, relief fighting with apprehension, guilt with optimism.

  He had staggered forward to embrace Kale after the boy arrived, needing some outlet for his upwelling of emotions in the wake of their confrontation with Liliac. The embrace had surprised both of them, but it only lasted for a moment before Caspian forced himself to let go. He had heard the shaman getting up, a sudden reminder that their situation was still a dire one.

  “Was she one of you?” Liliac gasped, rubbing his throat where Fern had choked him. “All of you—are you my curse? Have you come to kill me?”

  Caspian guessed he was referring to the hooded girl who had put something into his drink. “I told Fern to let you up. If we wanted you dead I would have let her carry on choking you.”

  Liliac squinted at him in confusion, tried to take a step forward, and staggered into the wall of the house. He was still suffering the effects of the drink, and being choked half to death had clearly not helped.

  “Sit down. Fern, help me with him.” They led Liliac to the wood pile and eased him down, then Caspian splashed half the contents of his waterskin into the man's face and gave him the rest to drink. Instead of drinking, Liliac vomited on the ground. After that he seemed a little more clearheaded.

  “Spirits help me.” The shaman rubbed his face. “It was poison, wasn't it? Fool that I was I almost drank it. Why did you stop me?”

  “We needed to know where our people were. You said at the temple.” Caspian turned to Kale. “Is Netya there too?”

  He nodded. “She went several days ago. A messenger came to find me, from one of the high priests. Adel must have persuaded them to bring word. All three of them are there. I don't think they could tell the messenger much without revealing the truth, but he said they were being treated well, as guests of the Dawn King.”

  “Then why have they not left?” Fern asked.

  “Some guests may as well be captives,” Liliac murmured. “Priests always make their intentions sound noble.”

  Caspian glared down at him. “Like you did?”

  The shaman voiced a dry chuckle. “I'm suffering for it, aren't I? That girl put poison in my drink. That's the weapon of a priest. I'll be killed by someone else, even if you spare me. No one hides from the Dawn King's eye.”

  “That girl asked me questions, too,” Kale said nervously. “Who I was, how I came to know Netya.”

  “Then you'd best run, boy,” Liliac said. “It seems we've both earned the temple's ire.”

  “Is this how your Dawn King punishes his people?” Fern asked contemptuously. “With poisons and lies?”

  Caspian thought that Adel was not so different in her methods, but she never tried to murder her own followers.

  Liliac frowned at the comment, rubbing his eyes and blinking hard a few times. “No... Atalyn would have sent his warriors if he was the one who wanted me dead. Oh, those snakes.” The three of them waited for him to continue as he spat and sipped some water. “Jarek and Thakayn. They were the ones who sent me to your lands. One of them must have sent the girl, and I think I know which.”

  Kale caught on to what he was saying quicker than Caspian and Fern. “She was wearing a token around her neck like the one Eral gave me—one from the high priests. If it was a high priest's token that means she came here with their authority.”

  “Thakayn,” Liliac spat, seeming to have made up his mind. “He's the one you should kill. Jarek... he only asked me to make your den mother an offer. Thakayn was the one who promised me more if I used my bows and spears to bring her by force.”

  It frustrated Caspian to hear the man blame others for his own greed, but he had no energy to argue the banal point. Instead he was struggling to think of what they could possibly do with Liliac now that they had spared his life.

  “If this high priest is a threat to you then we could help you leave this place,” he suggested. “Our wolves could carry you far and fast. But first you must tell us how to free our people from that great monstrosity of houses.” He pointed up in the direction of the temple.

  Liliac's eyes took on a glazed quality. “Take me back to my birth village. Ha. Yes, the Dawn King's eye doesn't see that far.” He seemed to be considering it, but there was no pleasure in his expression. Leaving would probably mean sacrificing all of his power and status in these lands. Caspian thought it an easy choice when death was the alternative, but he reminded himself that this man had already risked his own life and sacrificed many others for the sake of his pilgrimage. The Sun People's motivations were different from his own.

  “I need sleep,” the shaman said eventually. “Can't think like this. The spirits are still dancing in my head.”

  “We can take you back to the house with the hammocks,” Caspian said.

  “No!” Liliac exclaimed. “Nirut's is the first place Thakayn would look. I need to hide. The boy should too, if that girl was interested in him. Help me up.”

  Begrudgingly, Caspian and Fern obliged. Liliac stank of vomit and sweat, but after a few unsteady steps he managed to find his footing. Stumbling from building to building, he led them away from the hill and into one of the more densely packed parts of the village by way of an area filled with more piles of logs and heaps of workable stone. Caspian could hear the sounds of craftspeople working on the opposite side of a tall grass screen, but the area where they stored their materials was mostly quiet. Liliac was clearly keen to avoid the main path. After a short walk, during which Caspian and the others were too tense and shaken to talk much, they came to a square building with a wooden screen over its entrance and grass growing out of the mud bricks at its base. Caspian suspected it must have been built of wood on the inside, for the crumbling earthen exterior could not have supported such a shape on its own.

  After a few grunting attempts to shift the screen on his own Liliac fell down panting, and Caspian and Kale stepped forward to help. They heaved the wood aside, revealing a cool but dark chamber that smelled like a dry forest.

  “Plants and weave for the winter,” Liliac explained. “No one needs them in the summer.”

  “What if they're still filling this store?” Fern asked.

  “Then they wouldn't have closed it. Look.” He gestured inside. Sure enough, most of the space between the walls was packed with baskets, pots, and threads of sinuous fibre draped over poles that ran horizontally across the ceiling. The shaman went in first, leaving Caspian and Kale to drag the hefty wooden screen back into place behind them. Without the sun spilling in from the doorway they were left in near total darkness. Only a few rays of light found their way through the gaps in the screen, making it difficult to follow Liliac to the back of the chamber. He had chosen a good place to hide, at least. Even if someone else were to come in, they would have to push through all the hanging fibres and past several stacked baskets to be able to see them.

  Caspian wanted to ask Liliac how they might enter the temple, but by the time he sat down the shaman was already dozing with his head against a basket. Fern, who had been sharing plenty of Nirut's drink earlier, was weary as well. It would do them all good to get some rest after everything that had happened. It would be unwise to leave themselves vulnerable in the same house as Liliac, however.

  “Kale,” Caspian said, putting his back up against the wall and letting Fern rest her head in his lap. “Watch him till you feel drowsy, then wake me.” He gripped the young man by the shoulder. “And thank you. Thank you for going after her.”

  It was hard to tell in the darkness, but it looked like Kale smiled. “She was the one who was there for me after I became a wolf.”

  “It was more than a kindness, what you did. It was selfless. For that you will always have my gratitude.” Cas
pian squeezed his shoulder again, then let go. “We'll talk more later. I want to know everything that's happened.”

  “Of course. Take your rest. By the looks of you both you've had a harder journey than we did.”

  “Let's hope the journey home will be easier.”

  Kale did not respond to that. Letting the tug of weariness claim him, Caspian let his chin fall forward against his chest and began to doze.

  It was after Kale woke him that he sat back and began to reflect, having little else to do in the gloomy chamber but stew in the company of his own thoughts. Night had fallen by then, but he could tell that Liliac was still asleep from the faint sound of the shaman's snores. He probably wouldn't wake till morning.

  The time to himself was both a blessing and a curse. It had been a long time since he'd been able to sit and think, but the things he had to think about were not all pleasant. It troubled him how close he'd come to letting Liliac die. Caspian had always thought himself a man of good sense, with the rare ability to put his mind before his heart. Yet he'd done reckless things in Netya's name before, and believing that he'd lost her had drained the thoughtful, compassionate man out of him. If not for Kale's arrival, would he have remained in that dark place? Would he have let Fern kill the shaman? It was unnerving to feel suddenly blind to the nature of his own spirit. He might have sought vengeance on more Sun People, or given up in his attempts to save Adel. Surely he would have snapped out of that stupor eventually, but he did not like to think about what he might have done in the meantime.

  Good sense or not, Caspian reflected, he was no wise elder yet. There were things he had yet to learn from life, and today had been just one more lesson. He resisted the urge to take his mind back into that despair, to question and explore it so that he might be better prepared for such loss in the future. Those were not good thoughts to have at a time like this. Instead he tried to focus on how he had felt when he learned that Netya was still alive.

  As he passed the night in that quiet room, those thoughts kept him company. He imagined it was Netya's head on his lap instead of Fern's, her long black hair spilling across his thighs and curling through his fingers. He'd not dared to think of her in such a way since leaving the pack, but now that he knew she was alive he could dare to hope again. Soon he might hold her in his arms again. He could gaze down on that pale face with its soft, inquisitive eyes. Kiss those inviting lips that always gave of themselves so readily, but never without the faintest hint of reservation that told him to be tender. Netya had always made love the same way her lips kissed, with a pure, truthful passion. She never wanted roughness the same way some women like Fern did, but intensity. She wanted to be held on the brink of climax until her voice cracked and her body trembled like a leaf in a storm. Seeing her in that moment, hearing her, feeling her, had always excited him more powerfully than any taste or touch of her naked body. It was that soul-bearing moment at the heart of it all, the moment in which she was most vulnerable and most open to him. He loved her deeply in those moments, and the release that followed, heavenly though it was, only made way for the pleasure that came afterwards as they lay in each other's arms, warm and close and tender, breathing the same air and sharing the same heat as though they were one person. In those moments they did not have to carry their burdens alone. Everything seemed to flow between them, back and forth, in and out, without shame or hesitation. Caspian had told Netya many things in those intimate moments, things he never spoke of to anyone else, and she had done the same with him. He'd spoken of how he feared dying without one day passing on everything he had learned to a son, and how he still wondered, in moments of weakness, whether he was somehow a cowardly or lesser man for never aspiring to the role of alpha the way others did.

  Netya had a way of putting those deep worries to rest, dismissing them to a place where they could not influence him. She spoke of the way she sometimes felt alone, even among her closest friends, knowing that she was a sun wolf while they were not. Someone might speak an obscure word she did not know or refer to an old tale she'd never heard, and the moment of confusion would throw her out of harmony with the others. She'd told him how she still had nightmares, even though they rarely woke her from sleep any more. She missed her family, the white wolf who had been her first spirit guide, and most of all their daughter who had never been born. The girl's spirit still visited her in dreams, as a grown woman standing atop an outcrop with the faces of every person in the world looking up at her. Those dreams troubled her most deeply of all, for she feared the spirits were showing a future that would never come to pass. A future that she, in her weakness, had killed the same moment she stabbed Alpha Miral.

  But just as she did for him, he soothed those doubts, sometimes by doing nothing more than listening. When she looked into his eyes, she knew he understood her worries, and that sharing alone was enough to spread the burden.

  As dawn began to pierce through the cracks in the wooden screen, Caspian realised that he would always have this. Even if he had arrived here to find Netya dead, the memories of her would still have been there for him this night. Her spirit would have waited for him in his dreams. The sadness of knowing they would never again share such moments would have been terrible, but great despair was only a reflection of the joy that preceded it. He would have to hold on to that, staring through the dark reflection to remember what lay on the other side. Perhaps such deep sadness was a blessing, for it was something few people would ever feel.

  Fern awoke shortly after dawn, leaving Caspian to nap through the morning while they waited for Liliac to come to his senses. The sound of the shaman urinating into one of the pots roused him some time later, and he realised that they would have to leave the storage house soon. It would have been wiser to go out for food and water during the night, when no one was likely to notice them, but he had been too distracted to think about it then.

  “Well, Shaman?” he demanded, startling Kale awake with the loudness of his voice. “Will you help us, so that we might help you?”

  Liliac knotted the cord that held up his leggings and turned to face him. He seemed angry now that he was sober, though not at Caspian.

  “Aye, I'll help you, but I'm not running away. I won't let a high priest use me and then try to silence my tongue with poison. He fears what I have to say, so you must help me say it.”

  “How can we do that? If you want people to hear you there are plenty in this village.”

  “Not them. It's the Dawn King's ear I need.” Liliac tapped the side of his head knowingly. “He can be hard, but he's a fair enough man. Your people respect honour, don't they? Well he does too. That poison wouldn't have come from his hand.”

  “What is it that this high priest fears you saying?” Fern asked.

  “The same thing he warned me about the day I returned. The thing he wanted none of my men to speak of. He's afraid of people learning that we brought Moon People back to the temple.”

  “Does your Dawn King know who Adel and the others are?” Caspian said.

  “I don't know. Two high priests did. Some of their warriors might as well. Maybe it's reached the Dawn King's ears, maybe not, but if that doesn't anger him then learning that one of his priests tried to poison me will.” He pointed to the three of them. “My word alone against a high priest's won't be enough, especially not with these damned rumours about me being cursed, but if three others come to the temple along with me he'll have to listen. Then Thakayn will wish he'd given me what I was due.”

  “And we will be allowed inside the temple,” Caspian said.

  Liliac nodded. “You may not care much for me, but I've no ill will toward your kind. I did what I did for glory, not out of any hatred. If you help me then I may come out of this a man of power, perhaps even a high priest in Thakayn's place. With that kind of power I could have your den mother and the girl freed.”

  Fern scowled at him. “Why should we believe the word of a liar?”

  “You spared my life. That's a bond th
e spirits honour.” Seeing that she was unconvinced, Liliac added, “I don't come from these lands. Moon People used to visit my village when I was a boy, up in the north of the great forest. You spoke our tongue and shared our food. I know there's more man than monster in you.”

  Fern's scowl faded a little. “We called you the North People.”

  “That you did. So, what's your answer? Sun or Moon, you're all people to me, and I'd sooner have you as friends than enemies.”

  So you are selfish and greedy, but not hateful, Caspian thought. It did nothing to endear him to the man, but at least it told him what Liliac believed in. If his foremost desire was to gain power and status, then he would need help in that endeavour. Caspian did not think the shaman was lying about the intentions of his plan, but he was more sceptical about what might happen afterwards. If high priests could simply have people killed on a whim, then there would be nothing stopping him from silencing them the same way Thakayn had tried to silence him. Regardless of Liliac's own feelings about the Moon People, others would surely be disturbed if they learned that he'd had intimate dealings with them.

  That was all thinking too far ahead, however. Caspian did not know whether Liliac's scheme would result in him becoming a high priest after the old one was denounced, nor did he plan on waiting to see whether the shaman would prove true to his word. Entering the temple was enough for now. Once they were inside they could find Netya and the others, then they could make their own plans for escape if necessary.

  “Very well,” he said. “If you bring us inside the temple then we will tell your Dawn King the truth of what happened. And you must help us find our people.”

  “You have my word.” Liliac held out an open hand to him. Not knowing what the gesture meant, Caspian only eyed him suspiciously. It was the kind of invitation a man of the Moon People might have offered to a brother before embracing him, and Caspian was not about to extend that show of intimacy to Liliac.