Moon-Flash (20 page)

It was while they were passing the planet between Thanos and Xtal—the giant water bubble called Niade with its eighteen moons—that trouble came out of nowhere. It was as if a hand out of the dark struck them with a terrifying force, sent them spinning toward those moons, toward that looming water, toward the bottomless deep beyond.

THE HUNTERS stood still within the shadows flowing from the moonlit trees. Behind them, the water pouring down the Face thundered its constant, powerful chant, then gradually grew deep, slow, near the place where the hunters hid. They were watching a cluster of small, bobbing boats anchored in the River, illumined by moonlight and by the fire of torches held aloft. The reflections of fire streaked across the dark water toward the Healer’s house.

A chant began, low, indistinct. Terje’s hair twitched slightly in a puzzled shake. “What is it?” he whispered. His words had little more sound than a nightmoth’s wings under the chanting and the distant roar of the Falls. Regny drew breath softly, easing his stance one muscle at a time.

“I’ve never seen anything like it . . . I don’t recognize the chant.”

“It’s something to do with the River. They keep asking it something—” He made another abrupt, tiny
movement. “We have to get closer.” Regny’s hand closed above his elbow, and he stilled.

There was a faint crackling of leaves, no more sound than a beetle might make, foraging. Terje looked out of the corner of his eyes. A hunter passed them, not stalking, but walking in his normal way, his bare feet automatically adjusting his weight to pass noiselessly across whatever twig or dry leaf happened to be underfoot. They watched him move toward the Healer’s house and stop, merge into the silence of the trees around him.

Terje whispered, “He’s watching, too.”

“There will be others. Stay still.”

“But what is it?”

“You’re asking me? You were born here.”

“You should know,” Terje said reasonably. They listened. A few more boats, poled upriver, were joining the cluster. The chant seemed no more than a murmur, rising and falling rhythmically, like breathing. Another hunter appeared briefly in the moonlight, slipped into the shadows around the Healer’s house. Something in their secrecy made Terje think not of rituals but of wild things drawn toward warmth, or toward something unfamiliar. Or toward—

“You should know,” he said again. The pitch of his voice made one hunter turn his head, scan the night.

Regny had gathered breath, but he held it until the hunter turned away again. Then he breathed, “Calm down. Or else go wait downriver.”

“I’m sorry.”

“You should be.”

“Regny, what is it? The whole Riverworld is watching the Healer’s house. It’s night, they’re chanting to the River, there’s no feasting, no Moon-Flash, so it can’t be a betrothal; they seem to be waiting—they seem . . .” His voice faded uncertainly. Regny answered after a moment, his face holding no more expression than a stone.

“I’ve never seen it before. But the darkness, the fire, the chant to the River—they’re reminiscent of the mid-year ritual.”

Terje glanced at him quickly, involuntarily. “The naming of the dead. But this isn’t a death ritual. The Healer gives the dead back to the River.”

“I know.”

“Maybe he’s doing some kind of special Healing. That must be it.” He brooded, his eyes on the stone house, its round windows rippling with fire. “Regny, we have to get closer.”

“The house is surrounded by hunters. You’d be recognized.”

“There are other fair-skinned hunters. I wouldn’t be that conspicuous.”

“You would be with your head through the window.”

Terje was silent, frowning. Another hunter passed them, an older man, with grizzled hair and black feather armbands. Seeing two men dimly in the moonlight, he gave them a hunter’s greeting, showing his palm with his sign on it, then went on, silent as an owl in the night. Regny loosed his breath slowly.

“It’s getting crowded around here. We should separate.”

“Listen.”

The chant had stopped. A night breeze stirred through the trees, left a moonlit hush in its wake. The moon had grown distant, shriveled. A petal of fire dropped from one boat into the water. Then another. The boats, their bows lamplit, were turning downriver. The hunters watched silently for a long time until the last golden star of light had glimmered away into the darkness. Then Terje whispered, “Now. Now we can see.”

“I’ll go.”

“I’m coming.”

“No.”

Terje opened his mouth, closed it. He said patiently, “If you weren’t with me, that’s the decision I would make.”

Regny’s impassive face relaxed a little. “I know. You should be here alone, and I shouldn’t be telling you what to do. But you’re not, and I am. The Healer is an extraordinary man. You know that. One glimpse of your face and he’d be asking so many questions we’d both be out of a job. Bear with me. We’re both here, and it’s safer for me to go. All right?”

Terje sighed, an inaudible fall of breath. “Regny. I’m going.”

“All right,” Regny whispered. “All right. Just wait here for me; I’ll see if the hunters are still around. All right?”

“Yes.”

He stood motionless, trying to hear Regny’s movements
through the forest, unsurprised when he couldn’t. His thoughts turned to Kyreol. He resisted an impulse to look at the sky to see if an interplanetary vessel might by chance be passing overhead. Xtal. He tried to remember what he had learned about it. Second planet from the sun, smallest in the system, full of volcanic dust and sulphur, and some of the most advanced underground cities in the system. Most of what he remembered, she had told him, her face alight with wonder and curiosity. Much of the time when she talked of other worlds, he didn’t listen. He watched her face, its constantly varying expressions making him smile. Now he wished he had listened. But even as he concentrated on Xtal, her face drifted among the stars where the planet should have been, and he felt himself smiling again, thinking of all the things she would have to tell him after her long journey. Then two hunters making their way home after their vigil passed him, and he made his mind as quiet as his body. They didn’t notice him; they spoke softly, briefly to one another.

“Who will become the new Healer?”

“No one knows.”

“The Healer will know before he dies.”

“The River will give him a dream.”

“The River dreams the World.”

They faded away into the night. Terje swallowed, his body suddenly stiff and heavy as a tree trunk, a numbness seeping into his face. For a moment he thought he couldn’t move. Then he was moving, very quickly but noiselessly, trying to breathe around the weight in his chest. If there were other hunters,
he didn’t see them. His mind was focused on the frail, wavering flame within the dark house. He reached it finally, sweating and beginning to tremble, though he hadn’t run far. He hugged the stones, eased his face into one of the open windows.

A roil of smoke full of pungent herbs almost made him cough. Then the air cleared, and he could make out the firelit figures. A woman—Korre’s mother—sat beside the firepit, crushing dried herbs into it between her fingers. The Healer lay beneath furs. His eyes were closed. The fire swam across his face, and Terje could see the sweat, the deep furrows of pain. Icrane made a sudden, restive movement as Terje gazed at him, turning his head, murmuring, and the woman put her hand quickly to his brow.

Terje sank down under the window. His mouth was dry; he tried to swallow but couldn’t. His eyes stung from the smoke. “I can’t even talk to him,” he heard himself whisper. “I can’t even tell him—” And then Regny was there, his steady hold coaxing Terje up from the ground, his face hard, stunned in the light.

“Go,” he breathed. They moved far downriver, past the houses, deep into the forest before they spoke again.

They stopped on a sandy, boulder-strewn bank. The great broken stones would hide their fire; the water, running swiftly there, would hide their voices. Terje gathered twigs, struck firestones over them aimlessly, but they refused to spark, and Regny, with a muttered exclamation, took them out of his hands.

“Flint.” The sudden exasperation in his voice made Terje stare at him. Regny struck a fire and added
harshly to the flame, “One call to the Outstation, Domecity could send medication—”

“No.”

Regny looked at him. The anger left his face. He added twigs to the fire and said softly, “The River is the World.”

“Yes.” The word caught in his throat, hurt. He said unsteadily, “I wonder—I wonder what’s the matter with him.”

“Snake bite. Food poisoning. Some virus.”

“Was it us? Kyreol and me? Leaving him?” He stirred away from the thought. “I heard some hunters talking. He doesn’t have— He never chose anyone to teach his healings to. Maybe he thought Kyreol would come back.”

“After four years, he would hardly be dying of sorrow.”

“He—he should have known.”

“He should have known what?”

“That he would need to choose the next Healer.”

“He’s not that old. He probably didn’t expect this.”

Terje picked up a twig, burrowed holes in the sand with it, searching for words. “This is one of the things he should have dreamed,” he said finally. Regny was silent; Terje added, burrowing deep, “He is probably expecting Kyreol. And she’s on Xtal.”

Regny sighed. “I don’t know. Maybe. You know this world better than I do. But I really don’t think, with all his powers of dreaming and foresight, he would spend his dying hours expecting someone who isn’t going to come.”

Terje’s hand stilled. He tossed the twig on the fire,
swept his hair back with his hands, his face bewildered. “She’ll be angry with herself,” he said softly.

“She couldn’t have come here even if she had known.”

“She’ll be angry that she ever left. That her father is dying and she’s on another planet.”

“These things happen,” Regny said gently.

“Not very often,” Terje said, sighing, “in the Riverworld.”

He was silent then, gazing into the fire, his body assuming a hunter’s pose, unremarkable as a stone. Memories of the Healer ran through his mind: childhood memories of Icrane standing beneath torch-fire on the betrothal carpet, of Icrane gazing at the Moon-Flash, of him in a boat at midnight, holding fire and water, chanting the names of the dead to the River. And earlier memories, of Icrane and Nara, before she had left him to find the River’s end. Of Icrane and Nara and a very small Kyreol, gathering herbs and bark for dream tea in the forest. Of Icrane opening the door to Terje’s knock, his face at once fierce and gentle, a peaceful man, a dreamer of mysteries, whose voice was the River’s voice, whose mind was the World.

The fire formed under his eyes again. Regny was gone; he had slipped away quietly, probably to hunt, for dawn was breaking and the small animals would be stirring. But he didn’t come back for hours. Terje caught a fish, then prowled the forest for berries. His prowling led him upriver. He watched the Healer’s house from under brush-cover. The Riverworld seemed to be going about its accustomed habits.
People brought small gifts to the Healer’s doorstep: food, flowers, a caged bird. But there was no gathering of boats by day. The scented smoke still drifted out of the roof, hung in the still trees.

He found Regny again in the late afternoon, dozing in the sunlight on the sand. He lifted his head as Terje sat down beside him.

“Where did you go?” Terje asked.

“Outstation.”

“Why?”

Regny swept sand out of his hair, yawning. “Nara.”

“What?”

He sat up, blinking. “Nara,” he said again, his eyes on the whorling, dimpling water. “She seemed uneasy when we left. Maybe this was why. I thought she should know that the Healer is so ill.” He paused, added, “She said you could return to Domecity when you wanted to. I’ll stay.”

“I’m all right,” Terje said.

“I told her that.” He pitched a stone into the water. “She sounded—not surprised. But very sad.”

“They’ve been leaving gifts at his door all day.”

“It’s hard for her.” He threw another stone, with more force. “She makes the rules. She could save his life, probably. But—”