HM02 House of Moons (8 page)

“You weren’t at the Lenhe funeral pyre yesterday. Kisa Lenhe has not had time to recover from what that unfeeling—” She passed a hand over her forehead, “what
he
put her through.” Enissa paused as she sent a mental call to Meryet to bring her medical pouch downstairs. “Now, what about Kevisson? Has he been able to tell you anything?”

The guarded anger in Nevarr’s face was overshadowed with worry. “He’s—too deep. His breathing is off and I can’t get any sort of response.” He grimaced, turning away. “Dammit, I don’t even know what he could have been up to last night.”

“I do,” Enissa said grimly. “He was Searching for Haemas.”

“Haemas Tal?” A hint of confusion escaped Nevarr’s shields.

“She’s missing, or haven’t you heard?”

“Missing?” His face paled until the faint dusting of freckles stood out. “You’re sure she didn’t just go off by herself? You know ...” His voice trailed away lamely.

“She did it before?” Enissa finished for him sharply. “May I remind you that she was only fifteen at the time
and
under the burden of believing she had killed her father? Or has the Highlands really forgotten what Jarid Ketral did to her? I assure you that
she
never will.”

Nevarr rubbed his bloodshot eyes. “Never mind that wretched business. Nobody cares about that anymore. Several students called me around the Ninth Hour last night when they found Monmart and I’ve been up with him ever since.”

“Never mind.” Enissa turned around as Meryet ran in with her pouch. “Thank you.”

The girl dropped a quick curtsey. “Will there be anything else, Lady Enissa?”

“No, thank you, unless—” She turned back to the healer and caught a stunned look on his face. “Nevarr, what is it?”

“I left a student to keep watch on Monmart.” The healer’s eyes widened. “He says he’s stopped breathing!”

“Lord of Light!” Enissa gestured at the double doors leading outside. “Go on ahead and I’ll come after you as fast as I can.”

But it was a five-minute run from there to Shael’donn. She could see in his stricken eyes the knowledge that he would be too late. “Go on!” she said. “I’ll be right after you.”

Nevarr nodded, then dashed out the door, his strong young legs pumping. Taking a firm grip on her medical pouch, she trotted after him as fast as she could, but she was already puffing by the time she reached the first bend in the path.

I’m too old for this, she told herself as the cold air rushed in and out of her straining lungs. She stopped to catch her breath and noticed the portal set halfway between the brown stone of Shael’donn and the gray House of Moons. She thought of the ilsera crystals waiting there, singing their silent song. Kevisson would be too far gone by the time Nevarr reached Shael’donn ... but the ilseri weren’t limited by time. Wasn’t there a way to use the temporal pathways to reach him before it was too late?

The back of her mind prickled as she tried to remember what Haemas had said about walking two lines in the same When. She shook her head and angled toward the portal. There was some difficulty about it, some complication, but she did know Haemas had done it once. Surely, then, she could, too. It was at least worth a try.

Reaching the simple spine-wood portal, she threw her mind open to the crystals’ vibrations as Haemas had painstakingly taught her, and sifted through the myriad shimmering, shifting blue lines of power that branched out from her feet in all directions, looking for one that would lead her to Kevisson’s bedside before it was too late.

* * *

The restless words on the page seemed to crawl together, the letters combining, then breaking apart, stubbornly refusing to make sense. Pressing her aching temples, Haemas squeezed her eyes shut. She couldn’t even think with the latteh so close by, much less concentrate. The pulsing vibrations were keeping time with the dull pounding misery behind her eyes and she was so infernally cold.

“Problems, Lady?”

Opening her eyes, she looked up into Chee’s mocking face. “If you want me to be able to work, then turn that bloody thing off!”

Chee drew the green crystal from his pocket and held it out to her so that the vibrations were even stronger, piercing her skull. She flinched back and he smiled lazily, like a beast about to tear into its prey.

Taking a deep breath, she tried to shield against it, but shields were of no use. A cold sweat broke out on her forehead and the pain continued unabated while Chee circled her.

Then it abruptly stopped. “All right.” He slipped the crystal back inside his tunic. “But don’t think you can try anything.” He draped his lean frame over a patched leather chair before the ash-clogged fire and stared moodily into the guttering flames.

Chilled to the center of her heart, Haemas passed a trembling hand over her face and sat back. Try anything? Even if she could get away from him, there would still be the latteh crystal. And if she fought him until it cost her life, there were others, like Enissa, who shared knowledge of the timeways, although they were not as skilled. He would no doubt go after one of them, perhaps even one of her students. And if she went before the Council and told them what she knew, they would just laugh. They were already inclined to disregard anything she had to say, and lattehs only existed in old myths, like giants and lasers; no one believed in them anymore.

Bending back over the ancient book, she pretended to absorb herself in the stiff, twig-like script again while her mind raced. Her best chance lay in agreeing to take this Chee woman into the timelines with her, then leaving her there and transferring back to the House of Moons. It made her ashamed to even think of doing such a thing to anyone, and yet what other choice remained? Diren Chee had never seen the timeways; he knew nothing of the infinite numbers of Otherwhens coexisting alongside the Truewhens.

Haemas had not been lying; Truewhen and Otherwhen were almost indistinguishable to her, as well as to the few other women she had been able to train so far at the House of Moons. Only the ilseri seemed to be capable of easily telling the difference. Chee’s demands were impossible; even if she found the period he sought, it might be in an alternative timeline where the rules for using a latteh were not the same as they had been here.

“Aren’t you finished yet?”

She took a deep breath and focused again on the musty yellowed page. “Nearly.”

“I would like to get started sometime this century.” He unfolded himself from the chair. “Let’s go.”

Turning the page, she ran her eyes down the descriptions of the Ivram Period hastily, blanching even as she read. Surely this couldn’t be the time that he wanted—so violent and lawless, each House obliged to hold its territory against all others, employing the mind-disciplines to kill and maim.

Seizing her arm with fingers of steel, Chee jerked her out of the chair. “Stop stalling.”

Numbly she tried to match his long strides as he pulled her through the echoing halls of Chee’ayn toward his portal and the ilsera crystals that would give her entry into the timelines.

HALF-BLINDED BY
the dazzling array of glimmering blue temporal lines, Enissa shielded her eyes with one hand. Again she struggled to remember what Haemas had said about walking two lines in the same When, but she could only recall that it was dangerous and somehow disorienting, and the longer one attempted to do it, the harder it was to break free. She decided to seek Kevisson as close to his collapse as possible, traveling back only a few minutes at the most to limit the amount of time she would overlap herself.

As she concentrated to focus the timeways on the proper moment and place, the scenes shifted crazily around her. She formed the proper picture in her mind—Kevisson as she must find him, lying unconscious in his bed on the brink of death.

The breath wheezed in her chest and her heart raced. The ghostly blue nexus possessed a terrible beauty, but she always found it frightening, worrying each time she entered that she would never find her way out again. She turned and saw a dozen Kevissons, then a hundred, a thousand splintered images of him, each differing in some slight degree. Her heart sank; the passage of time had no meaning here, but the awesome energies of this place strained the mind and nervous system. Enissa didn’t have the strength to investigate a thousand possible Whens in order to find the right one. How could she find the Truewhen, the one line that would lead her to the moment that could save his life?

She sorted through the scenes, discarding every image that showed him healthy, sitting up in bed, or, as in one large section, already dead, laid out pale and bloodless under a silken shroud. Then she centered her attention on that part of the nexus where all the lines led to his bedside and a young boy seemed to be looking up in alarm. Three of the scenes had all the necessary details. Still, they must vary from each other in some vital way. How would she ever differentiate between them?

She made herself pick one by treading firmly on the fiery blue line that led to it. Raw power crackled up through her foot, hazing her mind and throwing her off-balance. Gritting her teeth, she tried to retain her focus, but unfortunately this had never been as easy for her as it was for Haemas. She managed a second step, though it was like wading through freezing fire, and then the third and final step.

The blueness faded, leaving her safe within the solid stone walls of Shael’donn. She gasped with relief and sagged against an elegant oak chest. A snub-nosed boy stared at her from Kevisson’s bedside. “Bloody Darkness! Where did you come from?”

The room looked subtly wrong, filled with expensive clothes and furniture that she was sure Kevisson had never owned. She touched the youngster’s tousled bright-gold head. “Do you know me?”

Within, his young mind was as cluttered as a boy’s of his age ought to be. Images burst into her mind, some familiar like the Shael’donn orchard, others not, faces, names, places ... she probed a little deeper, then sighed. This was not the When that she sought. Here, the House of Moons had never been built and this Kevisson lay ill with a fever.

Opening her mind again to the nexus, she fought her way back through the temporal energies into the scintillating blue. The scenes danced around her, shifting even as she tried to select another. Trembling, she chose anyway and set her feet to the line, fighting the disorientation as the energies surged through her body. With the third step, the nexus faded. She drew a deep, steadying breath and noticed that the boy bent over Kevisson’s bed had a touch of red in his gold hair and seemed vaguely familiar. “How is he?” she asked.

“Goodness, Healer Saxbury!” A shy grin split the youngster’s face, revealing a missing front tooth. “You gave me a start, coming in so quiet.” He adjusted the quilt over the motionless figure on the bed. “Master Monmart is sleeping, but his breathing’s a little rough.”

This Kevisson was still breathing. Either he wasn’t the one she sought, or she had arrived before the situation turned desperate. She stepped closer to the narrow bed. “What does Healer Nevarr say?”

“He’s been called out.” The boy stood up and offered her his chair. “Healer Lising has been attending him.”

Wrong again! Enissa turned away, already reaching for the nexus with her mind, but the energy drain on her was telling. Her vision swam and it was difficult to catch the vibrations.

“Have you come to see after Master Monmart?” the student asked from behind her.

Harder! She must try harder! She clenched her hands and strained to hear the vibrational signature. She caught the edges of it, like a strange, faint music, and the shimmering blue line appeared at her feet. She stumbled back into the nexus, then scanned until she found the third possible scene. Her legs were shaking and weariness dragged at her as she fought to take the first step on the proper line, then the second.

The small room she was struggling to reach had a hard, bright quality, as if it were sealed behind stained glass. She felt as if she was just a whisper from Kevisson’s side, and yet infinitely far. She started to take the final step, but as her foot came closer, the line whipped crazily back and forth. Concentrating, she managed to tread down just as it writhed across her path.

“My Lady!” The small boy jumped out of the wooden chair and stared at her, his eyes wide with surprise.

Ignoring him, she crossed to the bed and placed a monitoring hand on Kevisson’s chest—it was not moving. Before she could act, she had a startling flash of herself standing both here, before Kevisson’s bed, and
talking to Nevarr in the House of Moons’ common room, hearing the irritating, officious tone of his voice, feeling her own answering surge of annoyance ...

She was in both places at the same time, her consciousness divided between two separate bodies, and she found herself unable to discriminate between one set of hands and the other. Summoning more of her waning energy reserves than she could afford at this point, she strained to shut the distracting second image out. A breath later, her vision cleared, leaving only Kevisson’s room. She lay her trembling hand across his clammy forehead and threw open her shields, probing down through his unconscious mind and abandoning her body with a recklessness that surprised even herself.
Breathe!
she commanded him.

His mind was filled with troubling images. He seemed to be tumbling through blackness, falling forever.
You’re not falling,
she told him.
You’re here in your room, your very own bed. Breathe!

Then the other scene surged back over her—
Nevarr’s shocked face, her own heart racing with the fearful knowledge that Kevisson was dying, that they would be too late.
She froze, overwhelmed by conflicting sensory information, her attention perilously divided. Drawing still more energy, she pulled herself back into only this viewpoint, the Shael’donn room where Kevisson needed her so desperately.

The House of Moons and Nevarr faded from her awareness again, but as she resumed her probe, she sensed that Kevisson was dying, his thought-processes and memories becoming fuzzier, fainter. Careless of her own safety, she plunged deeper into his mind, looking for the cause. A dysfunction so sudden and severe was no accident or disease. Someone had done this deliberately, but how could she trace the damage in time to save his life?

Then she almost passed it: a place of overload in his brain where the energies of half-completed thoughts popped and fizzed like the embers of a dying fire. It was damage from a power surge of some sort, but far more extensive than any mindburn she had ever seen. It would have taken enormous strength to inflict such an injury.

Retreating, Enissa found his breathing centers and stimulated them, making his chest rise and fall to take in life-giving air. Then, little by little, she diverted her attention to the damage, sealing off the overloaded area and rerouting the grounded energies. When the worst had been circumvented, she gradually withdrew her control until he breathed on his own. Then she concentrated fully on repairing the injury—as much as such a blow might ever be repaired. Even as she worked, she worried about what the lasting effects would be on his abilities.

When she had done what she could, she let herself ascend slowly, level by level, journeying back to the body she had left behind at his bedside. Kevisson’s mind seemed quieter now as she passed through, his mental rhythms more akin to natural sleep.

“I left a student to keep watch on Monmart.” Nevarr’s eyes widened. “He’s stopped breathing!”

Enissa paused, confused, seeing sandy-haired Nevarr standing before her even while she was aware of being submerged in Kevisson’s mind. The doubleness was overwhelming; she was lost, drawn perilously thin between two conflicting realities, and she lacked the energy to shut out the scene with Nevarr a third time.

“Lord of Light!” She gestured at the double doors leading outside. “Go on ahead and I’ll come after you as fast as I can.”

Black weariness dragged at her, and she realized that, in her haste, she had neglected to delegate a portion of her mind to oversee the basic functions of her body. She had to go back immediately before her heart quit beating, but the doubled imagery of two different realities was blurring her perceptions. She couldn’t feel which of her two selves was the body at Kevisson’s bedside now, couldn’t distinguish which way to turn.

Bewildered, Enissa seemed to be standing on her own two feet in the front room in the House of Moons and yet tumbling through the images of Kevisson’s sleep, both at the same time. Dreams bubbled up, confusing her ... Haemas Tal playing with a powerful black silsha on the front steps of the House of Moons, her light-gold hair flying, laughing, batting away the huge paw that could have broken her back with one swipe ... the fields of Lenhe’ayn, smoldering and black, with acrid gray smoke curling up into the cloudless green sky ... Myriel Lenhe, white and still under a silken shroud ... her fault ...

No! she told herself. Those were his memories, not hers. Blessed Light, which was the way back to her own body?

She could see in Nevarr s stricken eyes the knowledge that he would be too late.

She had already lived through this moment, but by going back through the timelines to save Kevisson, she had entered it again and now was experiencing this particular bit of time from two vantage points.
“Go on!” she heard herself say to Nevarr. “I’ll be right after you.”

If she could just hold on long enough, she would catch up to the second that she had entered the timeways and this doubleness would pass, but she was so cold and tired. Searching for the Truewhen had drained her energy, and she couldn’t find the way back to her body.

Nevarr nodded, then dashed out the door, his strong young legs pumping. Taking a firm grip on her medicinal pouch, Enissa followed him as fast as she could, but she was already puffing by the time she reached the first bend in the path.

Hungry black silshas with hot yellow eyes circled her, rumbling low in their savage throats ... the edges of Kevisson’s nightmare swirled over her, closing in, blurring the distinction between herself and him ...

I’m too old for this, she told herself as the cold air rushed in and out of her struggling lungs.

People sneering at her, despising her for the brownness of her hair and eyes, speaking in loud whispers of Shael’donn’s “pet chierra” behind her back.

The back of her mind prickled as she tried to remember what Haemas had said about walking two lines in the same When. She shook her head and angled toward the portal. There was some difficulty about that, some complication, but she did know that Haemas had done it once. Surely. then, she could, too.

Falling again ... spinning through a knowing blackness that wanted to tear her heart out, she concentrated with all her might, trying to find ... what? She could not remember.

Reaching the simple spine-wood portal, she threw her mind open to the crystals’ vibrations, just as Haemas Tal had painstakingly taught her, and began to sift through the myriad shimmering, shifting blue lines of power that branched out from her feet in all directions, looking for the single line that would lead her to Kevisson’s bedside before it was too late.

The double image of herself faded and she perceived her body where it had fallen against the bed, head lolling, skin temperature and breathing rate dangerously low. Wearily she stretched toward it, skirting Kevisson’s dreams now, stretching back toward herself with the last of her strength.

“Healer Saxbury!”

Enissa opened blurry eyes, straining to make out the face leaning over her. “Ne—varr?”

“How—?” His mouth snapped closed, then he slid an arm around her shoulders and braced her back in the bedside chair.

An aggravating grayness ate inward at the edges of Enissa’s vision. Bowing her head, she rubbed her eyes. “It doesn’t matter.” Then she was even more annoyed to hear how thready her voice was. “Perhaps—the lad could bring me a bit of brandy.”

Nevarr mopped his sweaty face with the back of his sleeve. “Emayle, bring up a bottle from the cellar—and two glasses.”