HM02 House of Moons (10 page)

“Well ...” Enissa reached for her pouch. “I suppose there are a few matters that could use my urgent attention, but I’ll be back in an hour to check on him.”

“No need for that.” Senn opened the door for her. “Have a pleasant day.” He waited until she was out of earshot, then spoke to someone just outside the door. “See that she doesn’t get back into the building without an escort, and that’s a direct order.”

Kevisson’s head seemed to weigh a million pounds; he sagged back onto the pillow. “Was that necessary, Senn?”

Senn turned his heavy-lidded golden eyes toward the chair at the bedside and Keehan Weald hastened to pull it out for him. The simple frame chair creaked as Senn settled his stocky frame. “I’m afraid you’ll find you have much more pressing matters on your mind in the future than an old maid’s bruised ego,” he said sharply.

Kevisson pressed his hands over his aching eyes. “Actually, Enissa Revann Saxbury was Lady of one of the Highest Houses before she came to the House of Moons.”

“All the more scandalous that she should turn her back on her position and responsibilities.” Senn sniffed. “At any rate, there’s to be an inquiry into the death of the Lenhe woman.”

Kevisson stared up at Senn’s implacable face. “Myriel Lenhe died in her sleep.”

“Yes.” Senn studied the nails of his right hand. The lamplight gleamed off his carefully combed golden hair. “A sleep that you forced upon her.”

“She was hysterical.” Kevisson tried to swallow, but his throat was as dry as sandpaper. “I was only easing her sorrow until a healer could come, nothing more. She needed rest.”

“Not a ‘rest’ from which she would never wake.” Senn stood up again, looming over the bed. “And there are curious reports from the servants that the two of you quarreled—something about a ‘child’?”

“That was only her grief!” Chill sweat broke out on Kevisson’s forehead as he hitched himself up on his elbows. “Nothing more! She was worried about losing Lenhe’ayn.”

Senn’s lips parted in a predatory smile. “And then there is the matter of those nasty scratches on your face. They look rather like fingernail tracks.” He shook his head. “At any rate, the Council will meet tomorrow to go into this further.” He motioned at the door and Weald threw it open. “Rest well.”

“You really should get some sleep,” Master Lising added. “You don’t want to make yourself worse.”

Black spots wavered behind Kevisson’s eyes as the healer followed Senn and the others out the door. “Rest,” he muttered to himself in the empty room. Only the fire crackled in answer as his fingers strayed over the angry welts across his face.

* * *

Haemas stretched out a trembling hand to the man’s lined cheek, then drew back, her heart racing. She could not give into this. He was not
her
Ellirt.

“Do we know each other, my dear?” He radiated the familiar good-natured humor that had never failed to put her at ease.

“No.” And
yes
, she thought behind her shields, but he would not understand. Her chest tightened and she had to turn her eyes away; she could not look into that beloved, lost face and breathe at the same time.

Axia jerked her aside with angry fingers. “You do know this old ummit, don’t you? This isn’t the right time!”

“No, I—” Haemas flinched as the Chee woman keyed the latteh’s annoying buzz into tooth-rattling pain. “Don’t do that! We won’t be able to get back!”

Master Ellirt cocked his white-haired head and stepped toward them. “Get back to where?”

“Get out of the way, old man!” Axia released Haemas to shove him.

“Axia, no!” Haemas started toward Master Ellirt as he stumbled against a long knee-high bench, then fell heavily backward. “He’s blind!”

The latteh phased up another painful level. Axia seized a handful of Haemas’s hair and jerked her head back. The latteh pulsed at her exposed throat. “Get us out of here, Tal, or I’ll kill you!”

“There will be no killing here.” Ellirt’s quiet voice came from the floor. “Not today or any other day.” He reached an arm toward her.

Without another sound, Axia crumpled, white-faced, into a heap on the broad flagstones, the dull-green latteh still clasped in her outstretched hand. Haemas stared down at it as the pain thundered through her head, then realized that the latteh would go on broadcasting at this level until she either died or went mad. Her only chance was to get out of its range. Turning, she began to fumble through the shadowy room.

“What is it?” Ellirt heaved himself laboriously to his feet and limped after her.

Haemas stumbled over a bench and fell to her knees with bruising force. “I—I have to—get
away
from it!”

“Wait,” he said, trailing her. “Tell me what’s wrong and I’ll help.”

Shoving the bench out of her way, she struggled on, then, her eyes full of pain-tears, tripped over something unseen in the dark room and struck her cheek. At the back of the room, a door opened, allowing outside light to silhouette two dark figures.

“Master Ellirt?” one called.

Ellirt waved. “Alidale, over here!”

The darkened room seemed to be expanding and contracting as Haemas stumbled toward the door, her streaming eyes fixed on the pale rectangle of light. Pain roared over her in great waves, shutting out everything but the need for escape.

Suddenly strong hands trapped her wrists. For a second, she fought to free herself, confused, unable to see. Then another hand, warm and callused, touched her forehead.

What is it, child?
Ellirt asked her.
How can we help?

“The latteh!” She gasped. “It—you have to let me go!”

“A latteh?” He hesitated. “Alidale, see what you can find.”

An immense black abyss was yawning beneath Haemas, drawing her down into oblivion. She felt that if she let it take her, she would never return, but she was almost beyond caring.

Footsteps hurried back across the floor. “Light above us!” the other voice said. “She has one in her hand, a big one!”

The darkness had a low growly voice, rumbling like thunder from the bowels of the earth. The pain sizzled along her nerves, leaving lifeless cinders in its wake. Dimly she heard voices, but no longer understood what they were saying. She felt separated from her body, just a tiny bit of awareness tossed on a vast river of agony. Nothing could be done; she would die here in this Otherwhen and no one she loved would ever know what had happened to her.

“Alidale, help me!” Ellirt’s voice was suddenly clear. “I almost have it!”

The darkness was cold and smooth, beguiling, whispering to her of an end to suffering, of perfect surcease. Her thoughts froze into shards of ice that fell behind as she slid toward it.

It’s all right,
someone said into her mind.
We’ve shut it down.

Her freezing hands were being chafed, and something heavy and warm was wrapped around her shoulders. She became aware of flagstones, cool and hard underneath her head.

“She’s in shock,” someone said. “We’re losing her.” A mind enfolded her, tasting of sunlight and lemons, illuminating the darkness that was carrying her away.
Hold onto me,
the same voice said.

For a moment, she resisted. The vast dark was a haven from the pain and the overwhelming responsibilities that hounded her every waking moment, a respite from the strain of loving a man who had kept his distance for years, too insecure to accept what she longed to give.

But Ellirt’s calm, imperturbable strength surrounded her like a well of deep, clear water that never failed; he was her teacher and friend who had never forgotten her, even at the end when he lay dying. Of all the voices in the world, his was the one she could not refuse.

That’s it. Now open your eyes. Let’s have a good look at you.

A pale light flickered through her eyelids, then she blinked up into a seamed face backlit by an urn of pale blue chispa-fire.

“That’s better,” he said cheerily. “For a moment, I thought we were going to lose you.”

She tried to speak, but no words came.

“There,” he said, his voice kindly, “give it a minute. You’ve had quite a turn.” His golden eyes stared down at her so steadily that she finally realized he really saw her. The Master Ellirt of this When was not blind like the one she had always known.

How strange,
he said
. I see in your mind that you do know me, but I swear I’ve never met you. Where have you and this woman come from? And where did she come by a crystal of that size?

“Here.” One of the others cradled Haemas’s shoulders and brought a pewter mug of brandy to her lips.

She let the fiery liquid roll down her aching throat, wondering what she should do. She owed these men her life, but most likely in this When they knew nothing of the timeways, and it would be much better if it stayed that way. Her fingers tightened on the pewter mug.

She was so tired of trying to decide what to do. She had been weary long before Diren Chee had showed up with the latteh to destroy her life. It was too much, this trying to make decisions for people who understood nothing of the way the universe worked. She wished she could forget the timeways and live a normal life. A warm tear trailed down her cheek.

“Never mind.” Ellirt brushed the tear away with a gnarled forefinger. “I’m an impatient old man, but my questions will keep a bit longer.”

* * *

Only an arm’s length away from him, the two women winked out of existence. Diren shook his head, suddenly much colder than the bitter wind could account for. He had glimpsed a wild, unnerving realm of blue fire in Axia’s mind before she disappeared. If it had been at all possible, he would have gone himself. His older sister was Talented, but she lacked the formal training of Shael’donn and tended to panic easily.

But from the beginning she had ached for the power and prestige the latteh represented, too. He remembered their first trip down to the Great Forest where it bordered the Lenhe’ayn fields. Indeed, a few of the black Lenhe horses had watched from the shade of the ancient trees as he and Axia had followed the old map he’d found in their father’s things. It had led them to a still, leaf-filled pool formed out of white stone blocks, set deep into the ground. And down in the soft mud at the bottom had rested dozens of the dull-green crystals. He had selected one of the largest and taken it back to Chee’ayn.

Grasping the peeling wood of the old portal, he swung himself up onto the platform, feeling the chill wind cut through him. He wondered how long he would have to wait for the women’s return. As long as the ilsera crystals had to remain in the portal, he decided he might as well pay a visit to Shael’donn. Diren smiled to himself. Even if Monmart had survived the power surge that severed his Search link, he was sure to be weak, and there were a number of interesting tricks that could be played on a powerful mind that was momentarily defenseless.

Monmart might prove useful in new and interesting ways.

THE MIND-CONJURED
chispa-fire threw flickering shadows along the curved wall of the Council’s meeting room at Tal’ayn. From the threshold, Kevisson gazed out over the restless crowd filling the tiered gallery. Many of Shael’donn’s Masters were in attendance, including most of those who had never accepted him. Their faces were grimly anticipatory and he caught the spillover of a brittle excitement through their shields, mingled with the sharp taste of ambition.

His stomach rolled weakly, but he had nothing in it to lose. No doubt that was a mistake; he should have forced himself to eat, but he still felt disoriented and wobbly, and the little they had offered him had turned his stomach. What had happened to him on that ill-fated Search? He retained only the vaguest memory of having found ...
something
, then an explosion of red pain, severing his link and leaving him to fall endlessly through blackness.

“Kevisson Ekran Monmart.” The old Tal himself rose from his seat, radiating a sense of raw power. His hardened face floated above his gold-encrusted ceremonial jacket. “You are called before the Council of Twelve.” The old man’s shoulders were bent with age, his hair sparse and white, but the eyes, Kevisson thought, those golden eyes were still as fierce as a caestral swooping out of the sky to attack.

Chilled to the tips of his fingers, he walked into the circular room, past the twelve High Lords occupying the same seats in which their fathers and their fathers’ fathers had sat. The hereditary makeup of the Council had not changed in over two hundred years. His own father had never set foot in this room, Monmart’ayn being only a Lowlands House, however profitable its vast fields of zeli had proved. If not for his Shael’donn education, Kevisson would never have come here, either. Few Kashi outside the Highest Houses ever did.

He stopped before Tal’s seat, locked his hands behind his back, and squared his shoulders, trying not to notice as the curved walls of the room seemed to weave. A thin sheen of perspiration broke out on his forehead.

Tal resumed his seat, then shuffled through several parchment sheets. “Lord Monmart, three days ago you were commanded to Lenhe’ayn to investigate the damage done by chierra raiders.”

“Yes, my Lord.” Kevisson met the old man’s volcanic gaze without flinching.

Tal leaned back in his chair. “And what did you find?”

The burned fields, the slaughtered stock, the pale youth lying on a bier in the darkened chapel, all the wrenching details leaped back into his mind. “If my Lords would care to examine my memories, it might save time.”

Tal shot him a look of pure loathing that took him by surprise. Kevisson’s jaw tightened. He sometimes forgot whose daughter Haemas Sennay Tal actually was. It was clear, however, that her father would never forget Kevisson’s involvement when Haemas had abandoned Tal’ayn to study at Shael’donn.

“I think a brief summary will prove adequate, Master Monmart.” Diren Chee, youngest of the Council of Twelve, spoke blandly from his seat near the end of the table’s half circle.

Kevisson took a steadying breath. “The raiders killed the only son of the family and a number of the field hands, burned the fields that bordered the Great Forest, and slaughtered half the stock.”

“Yes, but what of Lady Lenhe?” Petar Alimn, an old Lord with thick silver hair and a dour expression, tapped his forefinger on the table. “She survived the raid, did she not?”

Myriel’s anguished face, white as sun-bleached bone, surfaced in Kevisson’s mind. “Yes, but she was so distraught at losing her son that I feared she would hurt herself. I made her sleep, then sent for a healer from the House of Moons.”

“A sleep from which she never woke!” A low murmur rippled through the room and all eyes turned to the doorway where Riklin Senn stood, resplendent in a tunic of green suede trimmed with green koral stones. He swirled off his cloak and passed it to a servant. “Do you deny the two of you argued that day?” Senn’s voice, heavy with accusation, rang out over the crowded room. “Do you deny that those are her marks on your face? And why did you send for an inexperienced woman when you could have had any of the finest healers at Shael’donn?”

The other man’s face seemed to undulate, as if Kevisson were seeing it underwater. “She was out of her head—possibly suicidal.” He tried to swallow over his parched throat. “I wanted someone to comfort her, another woman who might understand what she was feeling.”

Diren Chee looked faintly amused. “Someone from the House of Moons.”

A white-hot wave of anger burned through Kevisson, even as he warned himself that this was probably just what they wanted. “Yes, and why not? Over and over again, I have seen Enissa Saxbury to be a gifted healer.”

“And Master Lising is not?” Senn’s lip curled. “What did Lady Myriel argue with you about?” His eyes narrowed. “I can, of course, have the Lenhe servants here in a flash, if you prove unwilling to enlighten us.”

A distant roaring began in Kevisson’s ears, as if a great river had sprung up just out of sight. “She—wanted a child from me. To replace her dead son, so she wouldn’t lose Lenhe’ayn.”

“A child?”
The Council Head looked incredulous. An unshielded thought rang out from him, so clear that every Kashi in the room must have heard:
The Lenhe woman would have borne your mud-colored brat?

The watching men and women in the gallery shifted uneasily. Kevisson stiffened. “She would have been glad of a child of mine,” he said slowly, “had I ever consented to give it, but I would not, twelve years ago or three days ago.”

Then Riklin Senn, Lord High Master of Shael’donn in Kevisson’s place, glided into the center of the room, surprisingly light on his feet for so stocky a man. “Are you sure, Monmart, that’s the way it was?” A feral gleam crept into his eyes. “Or did you approach her and she fought you off, scratching your face? Isn’t that how it has always been, whenever you wanted a woman? Isn’t that how it was with Haemas Sennay Tal?”

Kevisson stared dumbly at Riklin’s heavy face, the golden eyes glittering like two burnished rocks beneath confident, bushy eyebrows.

“Do you deny that you asked the Tal woman for her hand and she refused?”

The roaring in his ears crested, almost drowning out Senn’s snide tone. His chest tightened. He had ached for Haemas so long that he couldn’t remember not wanting her, but she was above him—in rank, in Talent, in appearance, in every way he could name. His hands bunched into fists. “Yes, I deny that.”

“Well, then, do we at least agree that you and Haemas Tal argued just before you left for Lenhe’ayn?”

“We had a—disagreement.”

Senn turned a triumphant face to the Council, then strode importantly along the curve of the table. “Fresh from a disappointment, Monmart goes to Lenhe’ayn, and, seeing an attractive woman rather more on his level, argues with Myriel Lenhe. Does anyone here truly believe
she
approached
him?
”

A titter rattled through the room.

“Enough!” Tal smacked the flat of his hand upon the gleaming oak table and glared at the gallery. “We will have order.”

“Perhaps they did more than argue,” Senn continued smoothly. “Perhaps he took what he wanted and, once finished, did away with the evidence.”

“That’s a bloody lie!” The back of Kevisson’s mind prickled, then a volcanic fury exploded through him, damping every control, every bit of logic and common sense. He found his hands crushing Senn’s throat before he was even aware that he’d moved. How dare this arrogant bastard speak of Myriel that way! Her pale, grief-hollowed face hovered before him, obscuring everything else. He was dimly aware of others tearing at his hands, trying to pull him off, of voices calling his name.

A sudden jolt of raw mindpower staggered him to his knees. Two servants caught his arms, holding him upright when he would have slumped to the floor. His eyes rolled back in his head, but he fought to hold onto a thin thread of consciousness.

“My Lords!” Enissa’s voice rang out over the muffled din, cool and authoritative. “Please stand back.”

A white-hot mist still burning behind his eyes, Kevisson clenched his now-empty hands, breathing raggedly.

“Master Monmart has been quite ill.” Cradling Kevisson’s temples with her hands, the older woman stared deeply into his face. Her eyes were two golden suns, drawing him toward her, easing the shock. He felt his breathing even out, the wild racing of his heart slow.

She nodded as if satisfied, then turned back to the Council. “If I had been consulted, as I should have been, I would not have approved him appearing before you today. He should be in bed this very minute.”

“He seems well enough to me,” Riklin Senn rasped, leaning against the Council table, his face a mottled purple, one hand pressed to his bruised neck. “Or is it that if he were feeling better, he could have killed me?”

“You’re lucky he didn’t.” Enissa’s tone was blunt. “
I
would have.”

“No.” Kevisson lifted his throbbing head. The room swam and he swallowed hard. “It was a mistake, stupid—”

“Shut up,” she said without looking at him. “You forget, my Lords, that I was also at Lenhe’ayn that night. I can swear that Myriel Lenhe did not die at Kevisson Monmart’s hand, and if you doubt my word, then examine my memories.”

“And mine!” Kevisson added.

“What good would that possibly do?” Senn rubbed the red marks encircling his neck. “With the level of training you both possess, it would be almost impossible to tell a constructed memory from the real thing.”

“I’ll give you control,” Kevisson said, then wondered at himself—give control of his mind to a creature like Riklin Senn?

A faint smile tugged at Senn’s lips. “Total control?”

Enissa glared at him. “With an impartial monitor.”

“Name one.”

Enissa was silent. Kevisson tried to think of someone acceptable, but his mind was hazy and uncooperative. “I—don’t know. I’ll have to think.”

“Don’t take too long.” Tal rose from his seat. “The Council may make a decision without considering your evidence.”

“He needs at least two weeks to recover from his present injury.” Enissa braced her free hand on her broad hip. “An injury that, I might add, has been much aggravated by his appearance here today.”

Dervlin Tal glanced at his fellow Council members, most of whom nodded. “A ten-day is granted, then.” His fierce eyes narrowed. “But we will not tolerate a repetition of this kind of behavior.”

Kevisson bowed his head, glimpsing Senn’s smile out of the corner of his eye.

* * *

Haemas woke suddenly on a narrow, unfamiliar cot in a night-shadowed room. Her heart pounded until she vaguely remembered Master Ellirt settling her here between fresh sheets, then sitting at her side, a wall of strength, until she drifted off. Silvery moonlight streamed through a small barred window above the bed, revealing a warm, whispering night somewhere in the depths of summer, a night that should still be half a year away.

But, of course, this was an Otherwhen, where Kniel Ellirt lived on and the forbidden craft of using latteh crystals was evidently still known and employed. How many other things had diverged? She stirred restlessly and wondered if another Haemas Tal existed somewhere out there in that balmy summer night.

Fortunately she had found that the simultaneous existence of selves born of different Whens in the same timeline was somehow different from a single self attempting to walk two lines in the same When. The latter generated a frightening and potentially lethal disorientation that interfered with the timewalker’s ability to return to her own When.

She had actually seen herself once as a small child in an Otherwhen without ill effects. That other Haemas had watched her from the sheltering arms of Anyah Killian Sennay, the mother who died giving her birth in her own timeline. Anyah had been willowy and tall, with same too-pale eyes and hair, and the depth of her love for her daughter had shone from her like a beacon. The memory of that other Haemas and Anyah now warmed a corner of Haemas’s mind that had stood achingly empty before.

The door opened and Master Ellirt’s craggy face peered in. “Feeling better, my dear?”

“Yes, thank you.” Turning her head on the pillow, Haemas drank in his familiar features, overwhelmed at how good it felt to see him again, this endlessly patient man who had been like a father to her, and a far better one than Dervlin Tal had ever bothered to be.

“Perhaps you’re up to some questions now.” Treading softly, he set a small lamp made of pierced tin on a low table next to the bed. The lamp was a jolting reminder that he was not the Ellirt she remembered.
Her
Master Ellirt, blind from birth, had found his way through the world by use of his psi-senses and had never needed anything so ordinary as a lamp.

The spartan wooden chair next to the bed creaked as he settled onto it. “I’m very curious to find out how you know me.” His straggly white hair stood out in the half darkness. “Down through the years, I have guested in a great many Houses, both in the Lowlands and up here in the Highlands, but I can’t recall ever meeting you, and my memory usually serves me better than that. Perhaps you were very young at the time?”