HM01 Moonspeaker Read online

  Excitement diffused Summerstone’s body and she had to concentrate to hover near her sister. A few of the quiet-minded females can hear a little. We could send one to help it, perhaps bring it to us.

  Windsign hesitated. But what of the mountain males?

  We cannot let them stop us this time. If we fail, it means the end of this When.

  Then we must try, Windsign said. Send a quiet-minded one to fetch it down from the mountain.

  * * *

  The touch on her cheek startled Haemas awake. Her eyes flew open and she stared up into the calm brown gaze of an older chierra woman.

  “What a place to rest, my girl.” The round, plump face crinkled into a broad smile. “Oh, to be that young again.”

  Haemas sat up, then hunched over against the pain in her sore, stiff right shoulder. The woman gathered the full skirt of her long, unbleached dress in one hand and leaned over her, clucking in sympathy.

  “Have you taken a fall?” She fussed at the bloody edges of Haemas’s torn tunic, now also soaked with the heavy morning dew. “Well, that’s what comes of climbing these hills at night.”

  Alarmed, Haemas lurched painfully upright. The sky and the rocks spun in sickening circles around her.

  The chierra woman watched her shrewdly. “You don’t look at all well.”

  Haemas wove haltingly down the hillside in the early morning light. The woman followed, then slipped her arm around Haemas’s waist from behind, bracing her.

  “Let’s get you down the mountain and out of them torn, wet clothes lest the Mother take you before your time.”

  The Mother . . . the term jarred Haemas. She’d heard these Lowlands chierra were pagans, worshipping some sort of fertility goddess, instead of the Light and its power. Chilled and aching, she looked sideways into the pleasant homely face, then gave in. As it was, each step cost more effort than she thought she had left. After a while, the woman hummed an old folk tune as they walked. Eventually, a rough path asserted itself and the way grew easier.

  “Yes, just lean on my shoulder, young chick.” The woman’s voice was soft. “Idora knows the way.”

  It wasn’t seemly for the daughter of a High House to give over so to a Lordless chierra stranger, and yet, Haemas thought wearily, what did “seemly” have to do with her anymore? She rested the weight of her throbbing shoulder against Idora’s maternal softness and concentrated on just moving first one foot and then the other.

  Hours later, it seemed, they arrived at some place warm and bustling. Haemas straightened her aching back, blinking around her in a daze. Work-roughened fingers reached up and brushed her face, fingered a stray tendril of her hair. She drew back in alarm.

  “Sisters!” Idora chided. “Let the child be. She’s had a rough time, as you can well imagine.” Her strong arm pulled Haemas away. “Come with me. Talk will keep.”

  A score of steps later, Haemas found a cot at her knees. At Idora’s urging, she stretched out on it painfully, pillowing her hot, aching head on her undamaged left arm.

  Idora smoothed the long pale-gold hair back from her face, then disappeared. When she returned, she brought a steaming mug redolent with strange spices. Putting an arm around Haemas, she braced the girl up long enough to sip at a hot unfamiliar tea which burned a fiery track down her parched throat.

  “Enough for now.” Idora’s voice was businesslike as she lowered her back to the cot. “Sleep for a while. You be safe here. Dream of the Mother’s arms.”

  Haemas sagged back down on the clean, rough blanket as her eyes fluttered closed. She dreamt of nothing at all.

  THE STONE shrine faced the rugged foot of towering Kith Shiene. Idora paused in the doorway and stared up at the late afternoon shadows outlining the infamous pass into the Highlands. It was said attempting the strange blue light would kill a person faster than an arrow through the heart, though she couldn’t imagine why anyone would even be interested in trying. Fortunately, she’d had very little to do with Kashi Lords, but, if even a tenth of the stories told about them were true, much strangeness went on up there, minds taken over, chierra forced into involuntary servitude generation after generation, bodies used and thrown away. She shuddered. The Kashi seemed to think that just because a thing was possible, that made it right. Even living this close to their lands was risky, but on that Idora had no choice. It was here the Mother had bid her shrine be built.

  She glanced down from the jagged granite peaks to her light-haired charge and shook her head. How had the Mother known exactly where the lass was to be found? Here at the edge of the Great Forest, it was well known the Mother’s power waned, yet, last night, Idora had heard Her Voice more clearly than ever before, telling her exactly where to look. Somehow this troubled girl must fit into Her plans.

  She laid a hand on the girl’s shoulder and felt the slender body trembling through the homespun shift. Although the youngster had the height of a grown woman, Idora doubted she could have more than fourteen or fifteen years at the most. Her eyes, a strange shade of pale gold, were never still and, despite Idora’s patient urging, she had yet to speak a single word. What had happened up there in the Houses of the high and mighty Kashi Lords to send her this terrified child? And what would happen when they came after her, as they surely would.

  Guiding the girl to an old blanket, she settled her beneath the setting sun to breathe the Mother’s fresh air. Idora had cared for enough young ones in her time to appreciate the healing power of the Mother’s world. The breeze picked up, carrying damp smells from the stream.

  Knyl, one of the younger sisters, shyly handed the girl a wooden bowl of dried beans and showed her how to sort them. The girl picked up a handful and idly let them slip through her six fingers onto the blanket.

  Six fingers! Idora sighed. No matter how much some might insist Kashi and chierra had once sprung from the same roots, there were enough physical differences to remind her that they were also worlds apart. She wondered what life was like up there. Were the Kashi really as rich as everyone said, were their lives truly so easy? Could they really speak with their minds and travel in the blink of an eye?

  She watched the girl scoop the spilled beans back into the wooden bowl, using her right hand haltingly. She could already see the shoulder was not going to heal right. Perhaps if she immobilized the arm—

  Suddenly the lass’s light, almost blank-appearing, eyes darted around the clearing. Her young face froze, then she struggled to her feet and bolted toward the huge, blue-capped trees a hundred feet away.

  “Mother above!” Idora clutched a double handful of her skirts and followed.

  The girl was gasping raggedly by the time she reached the shade of the outlying trees. Staring wildly as though something were close on her heels, she threw her arms around the huge, rough-barked trunk and held on. The tree shivered and slowly pulled a thick rope-like root out of the dark earth.

  The spreading branches with their lacy blue leaves collapsed downward, lying nearly flat against the trunk. The girl leaped back and watched as the exposed root slowly snaked out along the ground away from her and punched a new hole. Shuddering, the whole tree moved a few inches forward as the root disappeared back into the earth.

  “What is it?” Idora panted up behind her. “Did you hear your folk? Be they near?” She brushed the exotic light hair out of the young one’s eyes. “Are you well enough for someone to take you back up the mountain? We can send for someone from one of the Kashi Houses down here to take you home.”

  Pale eyes wide, the child shook her head. Knyl and Cerissa ran up, questions in their eyes, but Idora waved them away. “Go back to your chores.”

  “Yes, Sister.” The two younger women lowered their eyes and turned back to the keep. The tree closest to Idora quivered, pulling up two roots at once, then plunging them into the ground on the opposite side to drag itself away. The Kashi child stared at
the trees with puzzled eyes.

  “Have you never seen a Wanderer before?” Idora took the girl by the arm and pulled her gently toward the sprawling gray stone keep. “They be a sign of the Mother’s special blessing. There’s some what says the Wanderers sing, but I never heard them. All the same, we try to stay out of the grove so they will remain with us for a long time, blessing us with their shade and fruit.”

  The girl watched for a moment as the edge of the grove crept toward the stream, then allowed Idora to take her back.

  “Don’t you want to go home?” Idora asked as they stopped to retrieve the blanket with the pile of spilled beans. “Talk to me. We’ll give you refuge if that’s what you want.”

  The girl dropped to her knees. Idora saw her hand closed convulsively around the hard, dark beans.

  “I’ve never had a Kashi come down from the mountains in all my years of serving the Mother, but I know you speak our language, or we speak yours. It’s all the same thing.”

  The girl dropped the beans into the wooden bowl with a clatter and stared silently at the blanket.

  “Mother above and below!” Idora reached out a hand to the girl’s chin and tilted her head back to peer into those strange eyes. “I must be just a stupid old woman after all. You can’t speak, can you?”

  The girl clung to her work-roughened hand, then picked up the last of the beans and poured them into the bowl.

  * * *

  Haemas heard the murmur of the sisters’ soft voices in the next room. Idora had sent her to bed, but she didn’t dare sleep. Even she, unTalented as she was, had been taught enough about Searching to know better than that. Yernan, her old tutor, had always told her the “unguarded mind” was easiest to follow.

  Idora’s low voice spoke steadily, interspersed with the quieter tones of the other sisters. Haemas pressed her cheek to the doorjamb and listened. There was a warmth to this place that went beyond blankets and fires. She had never felt anything like it in the vast halls of Tal’ayn, but if she stayed here at the very foot of Kith Shiene, they would come. It was only a matter of time, and very little time at that.

  The image of the dead-white face at her feet leaped into her mind again. Tears welled up and the awful, aching sorrow swept back until she couldn’t bear it. Her head began to throb. She pressed the heels of her hands over her eyes.

  Speech seemed to have left her now; every time she tried to speak, the words just—weren’t there anymore. But it didn’t matter. How could mere words ever explain away the horror of what she had done? How could she explain what she, herself, did not understand?

  Reaching under the cot, she pulled out the simple gown the sisters had given her to replace her torn tunic and breeches. She pulled on the soft clothing in the dark, then stuffed her light hair under a worn wool scarf she had found among the sisters’ things, hoping if she met anyone, it would hide what she was. In the other room, the voices droned on. When she was finished, she slipped through the darkened rooms to the back door.

  The heavy beam was already in place for the night. Her right arm all but useless, she had to tug at the bar one-handed. It wouldn’t budge. Frightened, she kept at it; she had no choice.

  If she stayed this close to the mountains and lower-lying Kashi lands, her people would find her, and then, in payment for all their kindness, the gentle chierra sisters of this peaceful place would be forced to share her death.

  * * *

  Birtal Senn balanced the ornate silver-hafted dagger on the tips of his blunt fingers. A good weight, although only moderately skilled workmanship. Perhaps he should refuse to purchase it. After all, a man in his position had a responsibility to encourage excellence.

  He let his eyes rove the new tapestry, acquired just last winter, on the opposite wall of his study. The red and yellow threads portraying the Coming of the Light to Kaenen, the first true Kashi, were simply the best and brightest he’d ever seen. Now, there was a prize worth a man’s gold.

  He stretched, then sensed the serving girl’s nervous presence outside his study. He seized control of her mind and made her lock more loudly than she’d intended. “Enter,” he said, then smiled. They hated it when he did that.

  Trembling, the young chierra pushed open the heavy door and stood there, her brown eyes cast down to the floor. His appraising eye noticed her front teeth were crooked and her skin tended to dark-cream, not to his taste at all.

  He lifted a silver eyebrow and laid the dagger aside. “Yes?”

  She closed the door and advanced a few hesitant paces. “A young Lord to see you, sir.” She twisted her hands in her white apron. “Shall I show him up?”

  “Just one?”

  She nodded.

  “Bring him up, then, and have Tchirna send up refreshments.” He turned his back and sorted through his papers for a map of the western Lowlands.

  Her reply was almost too low to make out. “Very good, my Lord.”

  He heard the door whisper shut. What a little idiot, he thought. It seemed the new chierra girls taken from the Lowlands were more timid every year, not that this one had anything to worry about. With those teeth and that skin, she was as plain a young thing as he’d seen.

  A few minutes later, the door opened again. A tall, lean-bodied Kashi walked through and pulled off his long gray cloak. He carried himself aloofly as though he had iron in his backbone and stone in his jaw.

  Senn gestured with the rolled map at a seat by the fire. “I am Lord Birtal Dynd Senn.”

  The young man dropped his cloak over the drying rack by the fire and turned oddly dark eyes on Senn. His hair, too, was a darker variety of gold than Senn had seen in many years, more a shade of golden-brown.

  “What’s your family, boy?” Senn watched him closely as he sat down in the opposite chair.

  “I am not a boy.” The dark eyes, the muted gold of late afternoon sunlight, bored into his own. “If I were, you wouldn’t have sent for me.”

  Senn leaned back in his chair, stroking his beard. “I sent for the best Searcher the Andiine Brothers could provide.” He laced his fingers across his belt. “Your family?”

  The young man seated himself. I presume you’re asking if I am full-blooded. Does this answer your question?

  Senn frowned as the volume of that reply made his head ring. “Ellirt knew I needed the best. He wouldn’t send me anything less.”

  “I’m a Monmart, if it makes any difference, Kevisson Ekran Monmart.”

  Both surnames denoted minor families, neither one of them High Houses, but still respectable; Senn had known a few from each line down through the years. He wove his shields tighter, smiling vaguely. “Don’t let a curious old man put you off.” His own bright-gold eyes narrowed, studying the seated figure opposite him. No matter what he said, that fellow carried more than a touch of chierra, there could be no doubting that. Still, it happened occasionally, for all the laws against degrading the gene pool. Some hot-blooded son would get a chierra girl with child, and then his family would foolishly let the baby live, thinking they could hide it away among their servants. And once it survived into adulthood, it was sure to breed more mixed brats. He scowled at the thought. If Kashi Talents slowly filtered into the chierra population until no one could tell where they were likely to pop up, the Kashi would lose their advantage and the chierra masses would overwhelm them. Someday such idiocy would be the downfall of the Highlands.

  He folded his hands over his belt. “I’ve never seen you at the Temporal Conclave.”

  “I attended once, before Yjan Alimn died.” Monmart’s dark-gold eyes glittered. “Master Ellirt believes you’re toying with forces beyond our control. He’s forbidden us to participate.” He drummed his long fingers on the arm of the chair. “The Search, my Lord?”

  Was there a trace of impatience in that voice? He couldn’t be sure. Young Kevisson’s shields were quite as tight as his own. “
Yes,” he said, unrolling the parchment and smoothing it out on the table. “Take a look.”

  Weighting the corner with a pen stand, the younger man bent over the aging map and followed Senn’s finger.

  “You are familiar, I take it, with the events at Tal’ayn a few days ago?” Senn’s thick finger stopped at the inner circle of the Highland caldera, on the rocky inner border of Kith Shiene where a dark outline indicated Tal’ayn’s holdings.

  Kevisson Monmart shook his head. “Master Ellirt said you would tell me anything I need to know.”

  “The young heir seems to have escaped over Kith Shiene, through the Barrier, and on down into the Lowlands.”

  The golden-brown eyes fixed him with a penetrating look, unnerving in their steadiness. “‘Escaped,’ my lord?”

  “She attacked her father.” Senn straightened, grimacing at a twinge in his lower back. “It’s just a matter of days before my granddaughter is left husbandless.”

  “She must be quite strong.”

  “My granddaughter?”

  “No, the young Tal.” Kevisson’s finger traced the route from Tal’ayn to the Lowlands, a dark-blue mass on the map divided by the lighter-blue ribbons of the rivers. “In order to overcome her father, a fully trained Lord.”

  “He was drugged,” Senn said contemptuously. “Any untrained nobody could have done it, given half a chance.” He glared at the Searcher. “She is to be brought back alive before the next Council meeting.”

  “I’ll need something to focus on.” Kevisson rolled the map into a tight tube and handed it back to Senn. “I’ve never met her or her family.”

  Senn pulled a yellow strip of silk out of his pocket and unfolded it on the table. “Her birth gift from her mother’s line,” he said, holding the carved black obsidian ring out in the palm of his hand.

  Kevisson took it in his long fingers and clasped it tightly. Finally he nodded. “This will do.”