Harvest Moon (14 page)

This…this was even harder.

It wasn't so much the
combat
by itself. It was the opponents.

One by one, he faced every fear, every humiliation and every defeat he had ever had. One by one, he was terrified, humiliated and defeated all over again. The first time it happened, he was petrified, thinking that to lose one of these battles was to lose Bru.

But as he picked himself up off the ground and his opponent faded away, he understood that winning wasn't the goal after all.

It didn't matter if he won or lost, only that he faced the things inside himself and survived. And, presumably, the same was true for Bru; he had heard nothing of her behind him, but that was the point, wasn't it?

But it was hard. Bad enough to have dealt with these over the course of a lifetime, but to face them one after another, but with no breaks? By this point his strength was just about run out; he kept his eyes fixed on Hermes's heels, and plodded along through the mist like an old man.

The one thing he didn't have to face again was the temptation to give up; evidently Aphrodite was deemed the most potent weapon in the rack on that score, and there was no point in bringing out anything else.

Just as he was thinking that, he almost ran into Hermes. He looked up.

Ahead of them was a solid wall of ebon blackness. Night was not this black. It oozed despair, dread and fear, and the end of hope. Hermes pointed.

“You must follow me through this,” he said tonelessly. “This is your last trial. You must face the final darkness, the last fear, that of knowing that you are utterly, utterly alone. On the other side is the Upper World. This is your last chance to turn back and admit defeat.”

Leo looked at the Void, and shuddered. He didn't want to go in there. He had never much liked being alone in the conventional sense, and to willingly plunge into
that?
Instinctively, he understood the import of Hermes's words. This wouldn't be merely being “lonely.” This would be—being alone. He would find himself in there with nothing for company but all his faults and fallibilities, and he would be unable to escape them.

He didn't have a choice. Not if he ever wanted to be able to look at himself in the mirror again.

Hermes vanished into the black. Leo followed.

 

Five months since Persephone had returned to her mother and for the first time, spring and summer had come to the realm of Olympia, and now, on this the very first Harvest Moon of the Olympians, there was another occasion that would (hopefully) not be repeated. All of the gods and no few of the Godmothers had conferred and consulted; all agreed that Brunnhilde and Leopold had earned their respective rewards. As everyone had expected, for his reward, Leopold chose to have his beloved back, and Brunnhilde had chosen immortality for her love.

This was all agreed, and yet to make sure that The Tradition was properly satisfied, there was one more
ordeal that they had to pass. The Harvest Moon, and the occasion for Persephone to return to the Underworld, seemed to be the most suitable moment. After all, there would be a trade of sorts—Brunnhilde for Persephone, one entering the Underworld, and one leaving. So now, as the Olympians gathered at one of the openings into Hades, Persephone among them, they waited and watched.

This would be a test of faith, in each other. Hades had decreed that Leopold could, indeed, fight his way down to the great palace and lead Brunnhilde out. But he had also decreed that once he began the journey back, he was neither to look back to see that she was following, nor speak to her, no matter what he saw or heard. And for her part, she was not to make a sound, nor touch him, nor give any sign that she was there—no matter what she might encounter.

And both of them would encounter a lot. Persephone, who knew her love very well, knew that he would not make this test a mere token.

What that long ordeal would be, what the two of them would face, no one knew, but since Hecate and Hades were the ones in charge of the obstacles Brunnhilde and Leo would encounter, they were bound to be very personal, and very dark. On the whole, Persephone reflected, she would rather face an ordeal created by any gods other than those two. Most of them would simply line up shades for a simple fight. Not Hades, and not Hecate.

Brunnhilde would have to trust that no matter what
she
saw, Leo wouldn't lead her astray. Leo would have to trust that, no matter how tempted she was, nor how terrified, Brunnhilde would follow him.

The gods waited with bated breath. Others had failed
this test before. Others would likely fail it in the future. As Hades had pointed out, this would set a precedent and he couldn't afford to make it anything less than the worst that anyone could bear. It could never be permitted to be easy to take a soul from Hades's realm, even when that soul wasn't actually dead.

Finally the door opened. A great stillness settled over the clearing.

First to emerge was Hermes, acting as Leo's guide. Then Leo, looking white and anguished. Then—nothing, and someone in the crowd groaned.

But then, stumbling and shaking so hard her armor rattled, Brunnhilde.

The assembled gods cheered, and Persephone ran from the crowd to meet them—

But she didn't reach them before Hermes signaled to Leo that he could turn, and the lovers fell into each other's arms.

Persephone stopped, right at the door into the Underworld, smiling so hard her mouth hurt. They clearly didn't need her.

And then she felt the presence she had ached for over the last five months, just behind her.

She turned to find Hades behind her, smiling down at her.

She had thought of all the things she would say to him when she finally saw him again, but now, when she saw him, she forgot all of them.

“Welcome back,” said her love, and pulled her into his arms. And while the attention was on everyone else, she and he walked hand in hand into the darkness, and home.

Demeter had absolutely refused to make Leo immortal. She had flounced off to her temple to sulk for the seven months of winter, while the rest of the gods were still celebrating the Harvest Moon feast at the mouth of Hades's realm.

Once she was well gone, Hecate appeared in her customary puff of blue smoke, this time without her dogs, but with a large amphora dangling from one hand as if it weighed nothing. Bru greeted her with a grin, Leo with a matching one.

“Stubborn woman,” Hecate muttered. “Well. As I told you both, thanks to Hades's helmet, I was able to watch her when she was working the magic to make that little mortal child an immortal. I tried it out on that little lad Zeus kidnapped for a cupbearer, so I know it works. This is why I was making sure you never ate anything but ambrosia for the last five months.” She eyed Leo suspiciously. “Please tell me you obeyed my order to the letter.”

“I swear!” Leo protested. “Lady, I know how The
Tradition works, and if you wanted me to eat nothing but ambrosia, then there had to be a good reason for it.”

Hecate sighed with relief. “All right, the last part is this.” She heaved the amphora at him. It definitely was much heavier than it had looked. Leo caught it with a grunt. “Come with me, we need privacy for this.”

Without any preamble, the blue smoke enveloped all three of them, and when it cleared, they were in a windowless chamber that held a very comfortable-looking couch and a central hearth on which a fire burned. There was a good supply of firewood next to it. Leo smiled. Things were already improving.

“Now, Leo, you get completely undressed and bathe yourself in the nectar in that amphora.”

He waited. Hecate showed no signs of vanishing.

“Ah—a little privacy?” he begged.

She snorted. “Mortal, you have absolutely nothing I haven't seen before, and nothing I am interested in. Strip. Bathe.”

Feeling his manhood withering under her gaze, Leo meekly did as he was told, covering himself in the sticky nectar. Which would have been very, very nice if Bru was going to lick it off, but with Hecate standing there looking like the incarnation of his disapproving old nurse, was less than erotic.

“Now go sit down in the fire,” Hecate ordered. “Or lie down, you might as well. You're going to be there all night.”

“What?”
Leo yelped.

“And every night for the next month.”

“WHAT?”

She tapped her foot impatiently. “Do you want to be
immortal or not? By Kronos's severed goolies, I didn't get this much fuss and protest out of little Ganymede, and here you are a fully grown man! Bru will tend the fire, you'll toast in it all night long while I recite the spells. It will take thirty nights to burn the mortality out of you. That's how it is.”

Leo's heart sank. It had been almost a whole year, and he had
not
wanted to spend his first night with his beloved separated by ten feet of pavement and a fire.

He certainly had not wanted to spend the first
thirty
nights with his beloved separated by ten feet of pavement and a fire.

But Bru was giving him the big-eyed pleading look. And after all she had gone through to get him this gift—

“Uh…question?” he said, wondering awkwardly where he ought to put his hands. And blushing enough for three.

“What?” Hecate glowered.

“Exactly what sort of immortality is this, anyway?” He'd learned quite a bit about “immortality” as the bargaining agent for the gods. “How does this work, exactly?”

Hecate stopped glowering and eyed him with speculation.

“I'd like to know too,” Bru put in. “I'd like to know if you lot are going to try to fit us into your pantheon, or if your local mortals will. Because, if it's all the same to you, I'd rather not.”

“Well.” Hecate offered a small smile, which looked very odd on her usually dour face. “Intelligent questions. What a change! It's simple enough. It's relative immortality, just like the rest of the half-Fae. Ambrosia comes from the Fae realms, which is why you're sup
posed to eat only that for a set period of time. Then the spell takes the design, the ‘half-Faeness,' from someone else and the ambrosia sets everything up. The fire is transformative. It doesn't really burn anything away, it's both a metaphoric and actual transformation. And the ambrosia coating you protects you from the very literal fire. In your case because, no, I do
not
want you two joining up with the Olympians, thank you, I'm using you, Brunnhilde, as the pattern. Demeter usually uses herself.”

Leo scratched his head. The ambrosia itched. “How long is ‘relative' immortality?”

“I don't have an answer for that. A very long time, unless you do something to get yourself killed. And if you do, your souls will go wherever you believe you'll go. Elysium wouldn't be too horrible, I suppose.” Hecate shrugged. “From what Brunnhilde has told me, I wouldn't care for Vallahalia.”

Leo and Bru exchanged a long look. There would be many discussions about this in the future, he was sure.

“Now, will you
please
step into the fire?” Hecate added. “I'd like to get this started in the proper time.”

Leo sighed, and did as he was told. Although he had been expecting something painful, it wasn't. In fact, it was rather pleasant, if…weird. Then again, he had gotten used to weird. He did have a hill for a mother-in-law, after all.

He made a mental note
not
to mention the immortality when he and Bru visited
his
family. Things were already complicated enough.

He made himself a little hollow among the coals and curled up, giving Bru a longing look.

She smiled as Hecate began chanting. “Don't worry, husband,” she said, with a wink that looked as if she had stolen it from Aphrodite. “I've never heard it said that sharing a couch could only be done between dusk and dawn. There are
many
hours in a day, and we have nowhere to go till the end of Harvest Moon.”

He blinked. “Oh. Ha!” And the mere thought of what awaited him in the morning caused a great movement among the coals down around his nether regions.

“Worse than nymphs and satyrs, the two of you,” Hecate muttered, and went on with her chanting.

 

Hades and Persephone paused by the edge of the Acheron. The unhomed souls were building up again. Persephone eyed them thoughtfully.

“Perhaps a temple?” she hazarded.

“Eh?” Hades's mind had clearly been elsewhere. Not that she blamed him. Five months was a very, very long time.

“A temple—no, several! Placed at caves or other places where mortals think entrances to your realm are. They can make offerings of coins for the spirits, and in return—” she thought quickly “—in return I will grant them guaranteed passage across the river. That way you remain the stern ruler, and—”

“And you are the sly little creature that works around my rules.” He caught her up and kissed her soundly. “I like it. I believe you deserve a reward.”

She giggled. “And what would that reward be?”

“Me, of course.” He raised his voice in a bellow. “CHARON!”

“Coming, coming,” came the lugubrious voice out
of the fog. “I'll be only too pleased to get you two to a room. You're scandalizing the spirits.”

For the first time ever, Hades threw back his head and laughed, and laughed, and laughed until his sides ached.

Michelle Sagara

The girl sat in a chair in the center of the highest point of the Tower of the Hawks. The aperture of the roof was open; moonlight touched her head and shoulders.

Lord Grammayre, Commander of the Hawks, one of the three bodies that enforced the Emperor's Law, faced her while she waited; her knees were drawn up to her chest and she'd tucked her chin behind them. She didn't look up.

She couldn't leave the Tower, but hadn't tried; the only time she had reacted at all was during his brief mirrored conversation with the Imperial Office. “You are familiar with the Tha'alani?” he'd asked.

She hadn't answered, but her tight, strained silence was enough; she knew. “I'll answer your questions,” she finally said in a low, low voice. “I'll tell you anything you want to know. I've got no reason to lie.”

“You will forgive me,” he said in a voice that implied that if she didn't he wasn't concerned. “Your answers to my questions—any of them—will be suspect.” The girl hadn't arrived as a guest; nor had she arrived as a
messenger. She had arrived—through the roof—as an assassin, and it was clear that she understood the cost of failure. “The Tha'alani are best known for their ability to read thoughts, and they can approach memory clusters of events that you yourself might recall less clearly in a conscious fashion.” He watched her closely. “If you do not resist his examination, it will pass quickly. There will be some minimal discomfort.”

“And if I do?”

He didn't reply.

In the process of ascertaining that she wasn't armed, he had discovered marks that ran the length of her visible forearm and her lower legs; he was not certain how far they extended. They were a dark gray that was almost black, and they appeared to be writing, although not in a language that he recognized.

“How old are you, Kaylin?”

She didn't look up at the sound of her name. Since he assumed that the name she had given him was false, he wasn't surprised. But there was no defiance in her now. “Thirteen.”

The Tower doors flashed a brief blue before they began to roll open. Standing between them was an older Tha'alani man. His expression was grim and set, and the single defining characteristic of his race—the stalks that occupied a third of his forehead—were weaving stiffly. He bowed.

“Lord Grammayre.”

“Garadin.”

“I apologize for my delay. I headed to the cells first, and was redirected.”

“It is a slightly unusual case.” Lord Grammayre
nodded to the girl who occupied the central portion of the Tower.

“This is the subject?”

“Yes.”

“She is…young.”

“Yes. I'm sorry.”

Garadin hesitated. “May I suggest an alternate agent?”

“I have considered it carefully, but I do not have the luxury of time. I must make a decision, and it must be made with minimal knowledge and minimal paperwork.”

“As you wish, Lord Grammayre.”

The subject in question looked up. Her lips thinned and her body locked as if she were in sudden rigor. But once again, she made no attempt to flee. Her eyes and nostrils widened as Garadin approached. “What,” he asked the Lord of Hawks, “am I to search for? What am I to determine?”

“I wish to know who sent her to the Tower. I wish to know,” he added, “where she received the…tattoos…on her arms and legs, and if possible, the extent to which she understands them.” He hesitated, and then added, “I wish to know, in the limited context of an informational search, what your opinions of her state of mind are.”

Garadin nodded his graying head. He turned, reached for the girl's face, and drew it closer. She struggled, but it was minimal and visceral; she probably couldn't control the response. Garadin's thumbs pushed her matted hair out of the way, exposing skin; he touched her forehead with his stalks. She screamed.

 

It was the screaming that echoed in the Tower long after Garadin had released the girl. Garadin himself was cool and remote. He had not, of course, physically harmed her at all; the Lord of Hawks bore witness, and in any case, that was not the Tha'alani way. Grammayre lifted one hand, and the circle in which the girl sat began to glow.

“Please,” he said to Garadin. “My office.”

 

“She is thirteen years of age,” Garadin said. His voice, like his expression, was shuttered and would remain so, in Lord Grammayre's experience. “She knew her mother. She has never met her father. She lives in the fiefs.”

“The fiefs.”

Garadin nodded. “The marks cover her inner arms and legs. They are also found across most of her back, to her knowledge.”

“And the marks themselves?”

Garadin said clearly, “She doesn't understand what they mean, and she fears them. She does not know how she received them.”

“Did you notice that they were glowing while you were conducting your investigation?”

“No.”

“Ah. They were. They were visible through the cloth of at least her shirt.”

Garadin nodded again, as if the information signified little to him either way. “What do you intend for her?”

“What does she want?”

“That is not in the purview of the requested information.”

“I ask only for your opinions.”

“Grammayre, she is young. She is too young to be a Hawk. Short of remanding her into Imperial custody or the custody of the Foundling Halls—if they would take her—I fail to see why it is relevant.”

“She attempted to kill me.”

“Yes. And she failed. She is cognizant of both facts. She expects to die here, and she will not fight that fate. Will you have her executed?”

“Execution requires the usual run through the Imperial Courts.”

“She is not a citizen of the Empire, as you are well aware.”

The Lord of the Hawks was silent for a long moment. “She is not,” he finally said, “similar to any of the assassins sent against me in the past.” Garadin waited.

“I have arrived at my exalted position,” Lord Grammayre said, grimacing, “by instinct.”

“And that?”

“The marks she bears are dangerous,” he said softly.

“And she has attempted to kill you. I fail to see the significant difficulty.”

“She failed to use them to stop you. Given her reaction otherwise, had she been able to, on a purely instinctive level, she would have.”

The stalk jabbed air. “And had she?” was the slightly pointed question.

“You would—I believe—have been safe in the Tower. But more to the point, my second instinctive re
action is that she might, under the right circumstances, prove useful to the Halls of Law.”

“At thirteen?”

“No. But she will not be thirteen forever. What is your opinion, Garadin?”

Garadin exhaled heavily. “It is my opinion,” he finally said, with the enunciated care of his people, “that had she the capability, she would still have failed to kill you. She has killed, but so, Grammayre, have you. It is neither what she wants nor what she enjoys, and inasmuch as humans loathe their own ‘secret' failings, she loathes herself for many of the deaths she has caused.

“But it is
also
my opinion that she is unsuited to a certain type of duty. If you ask—or force—her to kill, you will lose her. She will lose what very, very little sense of self or hope she now possesses.” Garadin stood and began to pace in front of the desk in a tight circle. “Give her something to lose and she will fight with everything she has to defend it. But it must be the right thing. And there is the matter of her age. If she will not always be thirteen, she is thirteen
now.
”

Lord Grammayre nodded. “It will present challenges,” he finally said. “I will, however, petition the Imperial Court for leeway.”

“And not the Emperor directly?”

“I feel this is…a trivial matter, and the Emperor values his time highly.”

Garadin raised a brow. “An indirect petition will take time.”

“Indeed.” Lord Grammayre was silent for long enough that the interview was almost certainly at an end, but before Garadin could leave, he asked one last question. “What is her name?”

“Kaylin Neya.”

“That is not the name she was known by.”

“No. But inasmuch as you wish to change her circumstances, I feel that it is now the name she
should
be known by. The choice is, of course, yours.”

 

After Garadin left, Lord Grammayre lifted his head. “Records.”

The mirror on his desk was in no way the equivalent of the stately, full-length oval mirror that adorned his Tower room, but it was perfectly functional. The mirror's reflection—which consisted mostly of sparsely lined shelves and a very clean desk surface—shivered and fell away; what was left was a gray, blank slate.

“External case file. Time, six months past. Bodies—distinguishing marks. Inner arms. Approximate ages of victims. Cause of death.”

The mirror began to flash as Records disgorged the requested information.

 

Sergeant Marcus Kassan looked up from the paperwork that covered most of the visible surface of his desk, butting in teetering stacks against the mirror that was used for personal communication and research. It was, at the moment, in his favorite state: blank. Mirrors had one of two base states: gray and featureless, or reflective. Sergeant Kassan didn't find reflective all that useful. He knew what he looked like, and anyone who didn't like it didn't make it his problem more than once. For the most part, he didn't have to deal with outsiders. This was a good thing because most of the outsiders who had cause to visit the Halls of Law were human, and Marcus Kassan was not. He was the sole
Leontine employed by the Halls of Law, and the racial fur and large fangs often caused humans less familiar with Leontines some distress.

His office, and therefore his job, was confined to investigations. The front office, which was known colloquially as Missing Persons, was the public face of the Halls. He'd only visited twice, which was one damn time too many.

Looking up, he saw two of his Barrani corporals. They looked, to the practiced eye, grim. Marcus had that practice. “Teela?”

“Three more for the morgue,” she said, voice flat. “The building, except for corpses, was abandoned. Someone set off an Arcane bomb.”

“An Arcane bomb?”

Her partner, Tain, nodded.

“Where was the bomb created?”

“We've got three distinct magical signatures,” Teela replied. “We've run them through Records. You're not going to like it.”

“How much less could I like it?”

“They're all Arcanists.”

He swore. In his mother tongue, it was an impressive roar of sound. The office staff, jaded as they were, barely blinked.

He grimaced. “The corpses?”

“Best guess? They're human.” This wasn't as sarcastic as it sounded; the Barrani were immortal and their comprehension of mortal age was often poor.

“Best guess,” he growled. His lips had risen, exposing his fangs.

“Oldest would be ten. Two girls, one boy. Youngest estimate, eight.”

“All three of the dead were children?”

She nodded. “One was missing a hand.”

The growl replaced words, and claws knocked piles of paper off the desk.

“The bodies are being conveyed to Red now. We're here to pick up some of the magical heavy lifters, and we'll head back to the location.”

“This is the third in the past six months. The Emperor is
not
going to be happy.”

Teela grimaced. “Probably happier than the victims,” she said under her breath. She was Barrani. Her hearing was as good as a Leontine's; what the humans in the office wouldn't pick up, she knew the Sergeant would. She turned away, and then turned back. “I don't think this is the last of it. I don't think we'll have another few months before we discover another half-burned-down building.”

“Why?”

“Hunter's Moon.” She said the words calmly.

He heard them, by dint of experience, differently. “This has something to do with the Barrani?”

She was silent for a moment. Exhaling, she finally said, “It may. On no previous occasion was an Arcane bomb used. On no previous occasion was magic used in any significant way. The rest of the setup is consistent with the first two sites—but not the bomb.”

Magic implied, to Teela, Barrani involvement. Barrani involvement, to the Sergeant, implied ulcers. The Hawks enforced Imperial Law, and in
theory,
everyone who lived in the Empire was subject to that Law. In
practice,
where there was no interracial involvement claimed, the caste courts for each individual race
could—and sometimes did—take precedence. The Barrani caste court would surrender Imperial Criminals to the regular courts when the world ended and there were none of them left standing. If then.

“Humans are perfectly capable when it comes to magic.”

“Yes, sir. But the moon…”

“Yes?”

“It's a
Hunter's Moon
,” she repeated softly.

He frowned. “Before I accept the possibility of Barrani involvement, I need something other than a hunch.” Behind the backs of the two Hawks he could clearly see the wings of an Aerian.

The Hawklord's presence in the office immediately changed the flow of daily office bitching and gossip, because it was very, very seldom that the Lord descended from his Tower. Usually, if he wanted to give or relay orders, he summoned you up to the heights. Which made this instantly suspicious; if he came to Marcus in the office, it meant he
wanted
everyone to hear what he had to say.

Marcus glared, briefly, at Teela, who lifted one brow in response.

“We came straight here, Sergeant. If word of the latest disaster has reached the Tower, he's listening in on the mirror transmissions.”