The Sable Moon (14 page)

Trevyn peered. “And where does he keep the brooch during all this consultation?”

Emrist had to smile at his eagerness. “Why, on him, of course,” he answered gently. “Or else the spell would not take.”

“On him?” echoed Trevyn numbly.

“Ay, even when he sleeps. It must always touch his skin, you see, to draw. He wears it pinned inside his shirt, facing his stony heart. I saw him pin it there.”

“Mother of mercy!” Trevyn swore morosely. “I am likely to need this bloody hacking sword.”

“Unless it is a magical sword, it will be of small avail against Wael. Nay, we can only face him with our own poor powers.… And what an ass he has made of me!” Emrist sighed hugely. “I might have been slain by sheer, foolish fright last night if it had not been for you. I owe you my thanks, Freca.” He spoke the name with warm affection.

Trevyn reddened at the words. “You owe me nothing,” he said roughly. “The debt is all mine. What about the gold you gave for me?”

Emrist smiled sheepishly. “That was only sorcerer's gold. I would not use it with honest folk.…”

“Why, what becomes of such gold?”

“It vanishes after a little while.…” Trevyn threw back his head and laughed, and Emrist joined in, a laugh from the heart that shook his small frame. “Ay, I would like to have seen those slave merchants drubbing each other for the theft of it!” he gasped.

“Is there any chance you could conjure up some horses for us?” Trevyn asked wistfully. “Or even a donkey for yourself?”

“Nay, that would be dishonor.” Emrist rose to his feet with dignity. “I can do what I must without such devices. Come, let us be moving.”

They traveled more east than south for the time, working their way through a maze of small valleys between wooded slopes. Eventually, following that direction, they would find the broad Way that ran due south to Kantukal. It would make traveling easier, if no less dangerous. Trevyn carried a quarterstaff of green oak as well as his sword, in case they were beset. Though he distrusted these wilds, he knew they must sleep that night, for they had scarcely rested the night before. At dusk he found them a camp within a thicket of cypress, and they watched by turns.

Nothing happened that night. But the next day Emrist's pace was slower, and pain clenched his face. Trevyn gave him the staff to lean on, but he grew weaker hour by hour. Trevyn rubbed his legs for him that evening and prepared him a draught to ease his rest. Sunk in a haze of weariness, Emrist drank what Trevyn gave him without thought or question. In a few minutes he was deeply asleep. Trevyn slung their packs onto his waist, then carefully lifted Emrist, blanket and all, to his back. The moon, nearly at the full, lit his way. Trevyn went softly, hearkening to every sound, for he would have been hard put to protect himself and Emrist if he had been taken unawares. Still, he made good speed, and by morning he found himself in a tamer country, with cottages and garden plots to be seen from time to time.

The sun was high before Emrist stiffened on his back and spoke. “By thunder, what is happening here?” Trevyn set him down and grinned at him.

“Did you rest well?”

“Like a babe in the cradle, being rocked.” Emrist looked around in bewilderment. “We must be nearly to the Way! Did you not sleep at all?”

“I'll sleep tonight. Come, let us eat!” They had reached a deserted stretch, where the path wound between dirt banks topped by beech and oak; homesteads showed only in the distance. Trevyn swiftly settled himself on the ground. He was very hungry after his night's journey, already breaking the last of their bread as Emrist sat, but his hand stopped midway to his mouth as he saw the shadow on Emrist's face. “What is it?” he asked.

“Nothing.” Emrist forced a smile. “Eat.”

Trevyn put the bread down. “Not until you tell me what is wrong.”

Emrist gestured irritably. “A foolish thing. It vexes me that once again you bear my weight for me. A fine adventurer I make, who must be carried to the fray!”

“You are man enough, Emrist,” Trevyn replied quietly. “You do not need strength of the body for that. I thought you knew.”

“Most of me knows.” Emrist smiled, warmly this time. “But there is no such thing as a man without foolish pride.… Never mind me, Freca. You did what you must.”

“Just as you shall, when the time comes.”

Trevyn gulped his portion of food. Emrist ate more slowly, picking his way through the meager meal as if it were a puzzle he had to solve. Trevyn watched him, brooding. He couldn't really carry Emrist to Kantukal; he knew he was going to have to find him a horse somehow or they would never reach the court city in time. They were out of food now, and they had no money to buy any with. The journey seemed impossible, the quest itself impossible. He wondered if Emrist dreaded the confrontation with Wael as much as he did.

“Emrist,” he asked suddenly, “can you teach me magic to face Wael with?”

Emrist looked up with thoughtful amber eyes. “You can learn magic, perhaps,” he said slowly, “but I cannot teach you. Magic cannot be taught. It must always be learned anew.”

“But why?” Trevyn raised his brows in bewilderment. “Are there not schools for magic, where spells are taught, and rituals, and symbols—”

“Schools!” Emrist's scorn burst from him. “Schools where the riches of the whole world and beyond are boxed into tidy charts—
‘a'
is for
alembic
, and ten is the perfect number. Bah! Don't they know that an emerald is not just the stone of the Lady? Everything of here or Other connects, and not in neat little boxes, either—or circles, or spirals, or any design a man can understand. Not even the mighty mandorla.” Emrist subsided a bit. “Really, more than two circles must join.… Nay, it's only Wael's kind of magic that you'll learn in such schools, Freca. Even a villain can memorize certain ancient words, the puissant words of the Elder Tongue, and if power of self-will is in him.…”

“So that is how a man such as Wael comes to be a sorcerer.” Trevyn glanced at Emrist mischievously, prodding him toward further asperity. “I dare say he has a black-handled sword—”

“Ay, an athane, and robes of every color, gloriously embroidered, and gongs and censers without number. All that is good for show. But I have always scorned even to make the ceremonial circle; why should I need to protect myself? And to do any magic, either good or ill, only one thing is necessary: to call upon the dusky goddess of the Sable Moon.”

“The great goddess?” Trevyn yelped, shocked. He had expected Emrist to call on Aene.

“Nay, nay, only Menwy of the Sable Moon. She is only one phase of the moon, and one of the Many Names, though all are in her, nevertheless. But if one knew the true-name of the goddess, that power would encompass every pattern and power and peril.”

“But someone has told me that name,” Trevyn protested. “It is Alys—”

A tremendous crash and rending noise engulfed them with its vibrations, washed over them from every side. Earth moved under them and split around them; rocks slid from the slopes above and mighty trees toppled with a roar. Trevyn crouched over Emrist, shielding him with his arms, as stones and branches hailed around. A huge oak thundered to rest beside them, lifting a canopy over them with its trembling, upraised limbs. Then gradually the clamor subsided, and earth trickled to a standstill. Utter silence fell.

Trevyn and Emrist got cautiously to their feet, gazing wide-eyed at the destruction all around them. Only the little plot of land on which they sat was untouched, as if they had been at the vortex of a mighty storm.

“Where did you ever hear that name?” Emrist gasped. “Don't say it!” he added frantically.

“Gwern told me,” Trevyn murmured. “But he said it without any such scene as this.”

“Then he, whoever he is, must himself be of godly sort,” Emrist declared.

It took them the rest of the day to fight their way out of the devastated patch of woodland. They wondered, at times, whether the wreckage stopped with the woods. But they got clear of it at last, and Trevyn was relieved to see that no households had been touched. He and Emrist went hungry that night, for they had found nothing to forage and, oddly, no animals killed by the uproar they had weathered. Trevyn's snares, set in the underbrush around their camp, netted them nothing. The situation put Emrist in a bad humor.

“You knew that name,” he grumbled, “a name of incomparable power, and you let yourself by flogged half to death.… And played at being mute, forsooth! Who is your enemy, Prince of Isle?”

Trevyn creased his brow at him. “Why, Wael, of course!”

“Wael is just a silly old man,” Emrist snapped. “He could have slain you in Isle or on shipboard, but he plays at power as some people play at dice, reluctant to consummate the game. Who is your more worthy enemy?”

“Fate, then. The goddess, if you will.”

“She is friend or enemy to no man; she is above such dalliance. Guess again.”

“Gwern,” Trevyn hazarded.

Emrist snorted. “You want to face Wael with magic, and you do not yet even know your own enemy! Prince, what did this—Gwern—tell you about that name?”

“To use it when I had need.”

“And when could you have more need than when you were enslaved? You had only to make a proper appeal, and the whips would have turned against their wielders. It is because you mentioned her so offhandedly that she threw things at us earlier. And that is but a taste of her power. We might feel more.”

“So she is sending us to bed without our supper,” Trevyn retorted. “I'll say ‘please' to no such goddess. We Lauerocs call only on the One, and not to turn weapons at our command.”

“You are your own enemy, Prince,” stated Emrist softly. “Do you really think Aene is not the goddess?”

Trevyn sputtered. “Indeed, ay! Aene can have no name—”

“But all things you can name are in Aene, and Aene is in them. How can you set yourself against any of them? They are part of you as well.” Emrist sighed, having vented his spleen, and lapsed into a gentler tone. “Nay, Freca, you are like a mighty castle for endurance, but you will never do true magic until you have learned the wisdom of surrender, the joy of swimming with the tides of your selfhood and your life. Women, many of them, come by that knowledge instinctively, and do not feel the need of chants and charms; they have their own spells. No wonder Wael hates and fears them so.”

“Does he call on the goddess to do his kind of magic?” Trevyn asked curiously.

“Only to make her a whore for his own lusts' sake.… Nay, Freca, no such thing!” Emrist made startled protest against Trevyn's thought, which he had heard like speech. “You cannot use that name against him. You could bring the castle down on top of us, but, what is worse, if Wael learned that name and survived to use it, he would become invincible. Do not even think of it in his presence.” Emrist quirked a wry smile. “I know you are practiced at hiding your thoughts.”

“Then how are we to face him?” Trevyn demanded.

“That is as it comes. For your part, I hope that endurance is all that will be necessary, for the time.”

The next morning Trevyn awoke to find himself looking into the long, mournful countenance of a horse. Its whiskery nostrils were poised within inches of his face. He reached up to grasp the halter, then scrambled to his feet and looked the beast over. It appeared to be a pack horse that had escaped from some trader's train—hardly a luxury animal, but suitable enough to carry Emrist to Kantukal. And the pack on its back contained a quantity of very barterable goods.

“I think the goddess is over her pique,” Trevyn called.

Emrist sat up painfully and stared at the horse with distaste. “Don't press her,” he said finally. “We're likely to find ourselves in trouble on that beast's account.”

“Nay, I think the Lady has made us a gift of it. Food, Emrist, we shall have food! Come on, get up!”

He badgered Emrist onto the horse's back and traded for bread and cheese with the first cottage wife he could find, making a very bad bargain of it; he didn't care. That day, with Emrist mounted, they went along steadily, reached the Way, and turned south at last, keeping an eye out for kingsmen who might recognize Trevyn. And he was hardly inconspicuous: a golden-haired youth with sword at side leading a mouse-colored, plodding nag on which sat a companion perched atop a packsaddle! Some changes had to be made, and that evening at their campsite they attended to it.

“If you are going to ride,” Trevyn decided, “you must look like a horseman.”

So Emrist had to wear the sword and a cloak, for rank. He would sit on a gaily patterned blanket. Trevyn attached reins to the horse's halter, hackamore style, and brushed the animal up a bit. In these warm lands, even men of rank went bare-legged and sandal-shod during the summer. Mounted on his nag, Emrist might be able to look the part of a very minor noble.

“And, if it is not too outrageous to be endured,” Emrist suggested tartly, “might we sully that crowning glory of yours?”

A more humble servitor went forth the next morning, a sun-browned fellow with flattened, grimy hair of an indeterminate muddy hue. Trevyn would not have appreciated knowing how much, except for his eyes, he looked like Gwern. There was nothing to be done about the sea-green eyes, startlingly bright in his tanned face. He cast them down, as befits a mannerly slave, and took care to lag a step or two behind his master. A horseman traveling with a slave in attendance was no rarity. Kingsmen passed them with a nod.

In a few days they came out of the jagged hill country and onto the great plain that stretched all the way to Kantukal, a flat, dusty expanse planted with famished beans and vines. They traveled it for over a week. Now and then the road crossed streams trickling deep in baked beds, each with a fringe of bright green grass. Everything else looked faded and worn, like a poor woman's dress. The occasional kingsmen on the Way seemed interested only in putting this comfortless region behind them. The sun beat down without surcease. Trevyn and Emrist moved steadily through the days, camped gratefully in the cool of evening, and sometimes talked late into the night. The journey had become an interlude for them, an entity in itself; they did not think too much about the end of it. They clung quietly to the fellowship of the road.