Jo Clayton - Duel of Sorcery - Moonscatter

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MOONSCATTER
Once upon a time a sorcerer soared on life and challenged it to a duel—in other words, this is
WHAT HAS GONE BEFORE
A master of many sorceries secured for himself what amounted to immortality—a cessation of the processes of
growth and decay within his body—and in so doing, pro-moted himself to the rank of noris. For several centuries he
enjoyed himself collecting knowledge, honing his skills, du-eling with other adepts. But as time passed he grew bored,
monumentally, disastrously bored.
After fretting and starting to feel old and useless, he real-ized that he could beat his boredom by extending his
control of change and decay beyond the narrow confines of his body and imposing it on the world beyond the
Sorcerers Isles. He could make for himself a new game. To make the game worth playing, he needed an opponent
worth playing against. He found his opponent in She whom men called variously Maiden, Matron and Hag, She who
was implicit in the alter-nation of death and birth, in the cycling of the seasons, the complex circling of the moons, She
who was phoenix contin-ually reborn from her own ashes, She who sometimes used as a vessel of her presence Reiki,
janja to a tribe of the pehiir.
In Moongather, the challenge is issued, the pieces are selected, the game is begun.
The Pieces
(who act without knowing they are pawns in a power game)
Seeroi
used by both players—Ser Noris and Reiki janja.
misborn of the windrunners, preserved from death by burn-
ing by Ser Noris, taken to his Tower, raised and taught by
him, her gifts used by him until she is twelve.
abandoned in a desert east of the mijloc when she becomes
useless to him.
walks out of the desert to a tribe of pehiir whose wise
woman is Reiki janja, spends several months with her.
makes her way finally to the Biserica, where she lives in
peace for a number of years, studying and learning the skills
of a meie. On her second ward—this time a guard to the
women's quarters of the Plaz and the Domnor's wives,
Floarin and Lobori, and his assorted concubines—she and
her shieldmate learn of a plot against the Domnor; her
shieldmate is killed and she runs.
when her panic dissipates, she returns to Oras, acquiring a
companion called Dinafar, meeting the Gradin family on the
way.
(She is disguised as Dinfar's brother.)
played in the game as Reiki janja's piece, she thwarts the plot
against the Domnor, though only partially because he is
driven from power by his wife, Floarin, with the aid of a
norit and forced to flee for his life.
she returns to the Biserica, taking the Domnor and Dinafar
with her.
Hern Heslin
Fourth Domnor in the Heslin line since the original Heslin
united the mijloc.
is nearly yanked out of his skin and replaced by a demon at
the Moongather, but Serroi and a poison knife along with a
small horde of rats and roaches introduce a little healthy
havoc to the scene, and he escapes with her after a sword
fight and some spectacular magic.
his role in the game seems minimal at first but gradually
grows in importance.
Minor Pieces
Moved by Ser Noris: the plotters who think they're the insti-gators of the plot, assorted Sleykynin, Plaz guards,
demons, a temple keeper of some importance and others. Moved by Reiki janja: creata shurin (small brown intelligent
teddy bears, sort of), Coperic, rogue and spy for the Biserica, the fisherfoik, the Gradin family, and others.
In Moonscatter, the game continues, shifting into a new phase. Ser Noris applies pressure wherever he can put his
thumb. Reiki janja seems to be losing, though she is fighting hard, but there are small things that begin to disturb the
noris.
SOME WORDS
AGLI
A norid with religious aspirations, a taste for sniffing tidra and for watching folk make fools of themselves.
BISERICA
An idea.
A structure at the north end of the Valley of Women.
Training school for shrine keepers, meien, healwomen.
Refuge for girls who find it painful or impossible to live
within the bounds of their cultures.
Girls everywhere, a flood of girls, girls chattering, laugh-ing, impatient, sullen, cheerful, glowing, lazy, bubbling
with nervous energy. Tie girls, tarom's daughters, city girls from Sel-ma-carth and Oras, girls from distant peoples
whose names and locations would be a catalog of the countries of the world. A culling of girls, the re-bellious,
the restless, the pleasure-loving, the pious, some fleeing repression, some seeking whatever it was the Biserica
seemed to offer.
Sometimes the refuge is temporary, sometimes permanent. An
ancient order whose origins are lost in misty before-time.
FOLLOWERS OF THE FLAME
Those dissatisfied with Maiden worship, those who find much more support for self-worth in a male image with
aspects of control, strength, order, power, those who want to make sure everyone acts in a way they consider proper.
HOUSE OF REPENTANCE Brainwashing bureau.
MAIDEN
Aspect of Her honored in the mijloc.
MEIE
Weaponwoman.
Sent out from the Biserica on three-year wards.
Fees are paid to the Biserica for the services of a meie pair and these are given an" additional fee for themselves.
Generally serve as bodyguards, guards of womens quarters, escorts for women traveling in caravans or on board
ships, as aides to merchants and in other miscellaneous duties that re-quire integrity, intelligence, agility, skill with
assorted weap-ons.
Up to the present, meien were welcomed and respected ev-erywhere but in Assurtilas.
NEARGA NOR
1. All sorcerers currently living.
2. The council of adepts.
3. Ser Noris (since the most powerful adepts left alive jump
when he says hop).
NOR
General term for sorcerers when rank is not in question.
NORID
Lowest rank of sorcerers, little more than tricksters perform-ing in the streets.
NORIT
The classy types. Not a lot of them around, perhaps a thou-sand scattered about the world. Their abilities and power
are limited when compared to the great nor, but much beyond those of the rather pitiful norids.
NORIS
The highest rank. The immortals. The survivors. Four left,
one of whom is Ser Noris.
SHAWAR (The Silent Ones)
The heart of the Biserica. A circle of women Elders who are greatly talented in magic and whose gifts are devoted to
the service of the Maiden and the forces of life. Very little is known about them beyond the above.
SLEYKYN
Weaponmen.
They hire out to provide services; fees are paid both to the
individual and the order.
They serve as bodyguards, assassins, torturers, muscle for am-bitious lordlings, raiders, spies.
SOAREH
Lord of light, his aspects are reason, logic, control, power,
force order.
He is eternal and unchanging.
STENDA
Mountain dwellers whose holds are united by a common
culture and a great deal of intermarriage.
Very loosely affiliated with the mijloc, nominally under the
rule of the Domnor.
Independent, arrogant, rigid in their interpretation of custom,
xenophobic, deadly fighters, terrible soldiers.
TAR
A big chunk of land held by one family, a glorified farm.
TAROM
Owner of a tar, head of a family.
TAROMATE
Landowner's council, more or less runs things in its area.
Usually organized about a town or a village.
TIE
A person born on a tar, not legally bound to the land, but in
practice that's what it amounts to.
As taroms inherit land, ties inherit jobs.
TILUN
Combination prayer meeting and orgy.
TORMA
Tarom's wife.
The Belly of the Lune (an interlude)
A tic fluttering beside his mouth, long pale fingers tapping a ragged rhythm on his knee, he squatted before the board,
slitted obsidian eyes flitting across the pebble patterns where black was advancing in a somber wave to encircle all
that re-mained of white.
She knelt on an ancient hide, the coarse wool cloth of her skirt falling across the rounds of her thighs in stiff,
hieratic folds. Sweat crawled down her calm unsmiling face, down gullies worn in her weathered flesh by time and pain.
The gameboard sat on a granite slab that thrust through shag and soil like a bone through broken flesh and fell
away a stride or two behind the squatting man, a thousand feet straight down to the valley floor where the earth lay
groaning under the weight of its own abundance, where even in the breathless autumn heat black midges swarmed
across the land, scything and sheaving the grains, stripping a golden rain from fruit trees in the orchards, stooping
along plant rows in the fields.
The sun struck bloody glitters off the ruby teardrop dan-gling from one nostril as he leaned forward and placed a
black pebble on a point, closing a black circle about a lone white straggler. He smiled, a quick lift and fall of his lips,
plucked the pebble from the circle and held it pinched be-tween two fingers. "Give it up, Reiki janja. The game is mine.
Or soon will be."
The clear brown-green of water in a shady tarn, her lumi-nous eyes turned sad as she watched him rise, flick the
pebble aside and walk to the cliff edge where he stood gazing hun-grily down into the valley, hands clasped behind
him, paper-white against the dull black of his robe. "No," she said. The word hung heavy in the hot, still air. "You
started it. End it."
A film of sweat on his pale face, he kicked restlessly at bits of stone, unable to match her response, his irritation all
the greater for this. After a moment's strained silence, he turned his gaze on her, his black eyes flat and cold. "End
it—why? Hern? Or the meie?" He jabbed his forefinger at the
many-courted edifice below. "They're impotent as long as they sit down there and in my hands if they come out. When
I'm ready, I'll sweep them off the board." He swung his arm in a slashing arc. "The mijloc is mine already, janja, in all the
ways that count. I gather strength every day. You re-treat."
"Perhaps." Getting heavily to her feet Reiki edged around the gameboard, shaking her skirt down as she went,
pulling hot fat braids like ropes of yellowed ivory forward over her shoulders. She stood beside him at the cliff edge,
touching the single gold chain about her neck, stroking its pendant coins, smiling as she did so at the memories it
evoked. Once she'd worn a double-dozen chains, but these she gave away—all save the one—on a tranquil summer
night long ago. "She'll surprise you, our little misborn meie. The change in her has begun; you force her growth by
everything you do, my friend. Yes, our Serroi will surprise you again and yet again." He winced as if the words were
stones she flung at him. Sigh-ing, she brushed her hands together then rested them on the gathers of her skirt while
she watched the bustle far below. "Harvest," she said softly. "Winter comes on its heels. Your army won't march
through snow."
"Winter comes when I will it, not before." His voice was harsh, his skin drawn taut across his facebones (she saw
him for a moment as a black viper cocked to strike). He spoke again (she heard rage that didn't quite conceal
an unacknowledged pain), "Serroi feels my hand on her every night, janja. If she changes, she grows to me. She'll
come to me soon enough when she sees the sun burning hotter each day, when the waterways go dry and the deepest
wells spit dust. The vanguard of my army, janja—a furnace wind and a sucking sun."
"So you say. We'll see .. .we'll see." She used both hands to shade her eyes as she gazed intently at the massive
double gates in the great wall that cut across the Valley's narrow northern end, watching a pair of riders pass through
the gates and ride up the rough road toward the mountains. "So the blocked pieces get back in the game." Carefully
not looking at Ser Noris, she returned to the gameboard, settled herself on the soft old leather where she'd been before
and contem-plated the pebble pattern. "My move, I think."
CHAPTER I:
THE MIJLOC
Tuli sat up, shoved the quilts back, annoyed at being sent to bed so early. Like I was a baby still. She ran her fingers
through her tangled hair, sniffed with disgust as she glared at the primly neat covers on her oldest sister's bed. Hunh!
If I was a snitch like Nilis. . . . She wrinkled her nose at the
empty bed .......... I'd go running off to Da 'nd tell him how
she's out panting after that horrid Agli when she's s'posed to be up here with us. She eyed the covers thoughtfully,
sighed, stifled an impulse to gather them up and toss them out the window. Wasn't worth the fuss Nilis would create.
She drew her legs up, wrapped her arms around them and sat listening to the night sounds coming through the
unglazed, unshuttered windows and watching as the rising moons painted a ghost image of the window on the
polished planks of the floor.
When she thought the time was right, she crawled to the end of the bed, flounced out flat and fished about in the
space beneath the webbing that supported the mattress until she found her hunting clothes, a tunic and trousers
discarded by her twin. She wriggled off the mattress, whipped off her sleep-ing smock, threw it at her pillow,
scrambled hastily into her trousers, shivering as she did so. She dragged the tunic over her head, tugged it down,
resenting the changes in her body that signaled a corresponding change—a depressing change—in the things
she would be allowed to do. She tied her short brown hair back off her face with a crumpled rib-bon, her eyes on her
second oldest sister placidly asleep in the third bed pushed up against the wall under one of the win-dows. Sanani's
face was a blurred oval in the strengthening moonlight, eyelashes dark furry crescents against the pallor of her skin,
her breathing easy, undisturbed.
Satisfied that her sister wouldn't wake and miss her, Tuli, went to the window and leaned out. Nijilic TheDom was
clear of the mountains, running in and out of clouds that were the remnants of the afternoon's storm. The
Scatterstorms were
subsiding—none too soon. It was going to be a bad wintering. Tuli folded her arms on the windowsill and looked past
the moonglow tree at the dark bulk of the storebarn. Her back still ached from the hurried gleaning after the
scythemen— everyone, man woman child, in the fields to get the grain in before the rain spoiled yet more of it. With
all that effort the grain bins in the barn were only half full—and Sanani said Gradintar was one of the luckiest. And the
fruit on the trees was thin. And the tubers, podplants, earthnuts were swarming with gatherpests or going black and
soft with mold. And there wasn't enough fodder for the hauhaus and the macain and they'd have to be culled. She
shivered at the thought then shoved it resolutely aside and pulled herself onto the sill so she sat with her legs
dangling, her bare heels kicking against the side of the house. She drew in a long breath, joying in the pungency of
the night smells drifting to her on the brisk night breeze—straw dust from the fields, the sour stench of manure from
the hauhau pens where the blocky beasts waited for dawn milking, the sickly sweet perfume from the wings of the
white moths clinging to the sweetbuds of the moonglow tree. Grabbing at the sides of the window, she tilted out
farther and looked along the house toward the room where her two brothers slept.
Teras thrust his shaggy head out, grinned at her, his teeth shining in his sun-dark face. He pointed down, then
swung out and descended rapidly to wait for her in the walled garden below.
Tuli wriggled around until she was belly-balanced on the sill, felt about for the sigil stones set in the plaster. Once
she was set, she went down almost as nimbly as her brother, though the tightness of the tunic hindered her a little. At
about her own height from the ground she jumped, landing with bent knees, her bare feet hitting the turf with a soft
thud. She straightened and turned to face her brother, fists on her narrow hips, her head tilted to look up at him. Two
years ago when they were twelve she'd been eye to eye with him. This was another change she resented. She scowled
at him. "Well?"
"Shh." He pointed to the lines of light around the shutters half a stride along the wall. "Come on." He ran to the
moon-glow tree, jumped and caught hold of the lowest limb, shak-ing loose a flutter of moths and a cloud of
powerfully sweet perfume.
Tuli followed him over the wall. "What's happening?" she
whispered. "When you signaled me at supper. . . ." She glanced at- the dark bulk of the house rising above the garden
wall. "Nilis?"
"Uh-huh." He squinted up at the flickering moons. "TheDom's rising. Plenty of light tonight." He started toward
the barns, Tuli running beside him. "Nilis was sucking up to that Agli down by the riverroad a bit after the noon
meal." He kicked at a pebble, watched it bound across the straw-lit-tered earth. "She caught me watching and chased
me, yelling I was a sneak and a snoop and she'd tell Da on me." He snorted. "Follow her, hunh! Maiden's toes, why'd
I follow her?" He dragged his feet through straw and clumps of dry grass as they rounded one of the barns and
started past a hauhau pen. Tuli slapped her fingers against the poles until several of the cranky beasts whee-hooed
mournfully at her. Teras pulled her away. "You want to get caught?"
"Course not." She freed herself. "You haven't told me where we're going or why."
"Nilis and the Agli they were talking about a special tilun, something big. That was just before she saw me and
yelled at me so I don't know what. She sneaked off yet?"
Tuli nodded. "Her bed's empty."
Teras grinned. "We're going to go, too."
"Huh?" She grabbed at his arm, pulling him to a stop. "Nilis will have our heads, 'specially mine."
"No. Listen. Hars and me, we were looking over the home macain to get ready for the cull. I got to talking with him
about tiluns 'nd things, Nilis being on my mind, you know, and about the Followers 'nd everything and he said there's
some big cracks in the shutters, they put the wood up green and the Scatterstorms warped th' zhag out of 'em.
Anyone looking in from outside could see just about everything going on." He grinned again, skipped backward
ahead of her, hands clasped behind his head. "I think he watched them the last time he took off to Jango's, anyway he
said they get real wound up, roll on the floor, confess their sins 'nd everything." Pupils dilated until his pale irids were
only thin rings, his eyes gleamed like polished jet "Maybe Nilis will be confessing tonight." His foot snagged
suddenly on a clump of grass; he tottered, giggling, then caught his balance.
"What a chinj she is." Tuli mimed the popping of a small-life bloodsucker as she ran past him laughing. She swung
up . the poles of the corral, rested her stomach on the top pole, balancing herself there, her hands tight about
it as she
watched the macain heave onto their feet and amble lazily toward her. ¦
Teras climbed the fence and sat on the top pole, knees bent, bare heels propped on a lower one. "Remember the time
when oP spottyface was courting Nilis and we made the mudhole in the lane and covered it with sticks and grass?"
Tuli grinned. "Da whaled us good for that one. It was worth it. She was so mad she near baked that mud solid."
Teetering precariously, she reached out and stroked the warty nose of the nearest macai. "I wonder what she could
find to confess, she's so perfect, according to her." The macai moaned with pleasure and lifted his head so she could
dig her fingers into the loose folds under his chin. "Which one's this?"
"Labby." Teras stood up, wobbling a little, arms out-stretched; when he had his balance, he jumped lightly to the
macai's back, startling a grunt from the beast. "There's a hal-ter over there by the barn, get it, will you?"
Cymbank was dark except for Jango's tavern and even there the shutters were closed; only the burning torch caged
above the door showed the place was still open. The streets and the square were deserted, no players or peddlers, no
one camped out on the green or restless in the spotty moonlight to catch the twins in their prowl, not even stray
guards from the double decset quartered in the Center for the last tenday.
Tuli rested her cheek against her brother's back, wondering mildly what she was going to see. The Followers of
Soareh the Flame had been around the mijloc awhile, a ragtag sect no one paid much attention to, though there were
rumors enough about the tiluns, whispers of orgies and black magic, other whispers about their priests who called
themselves Aglim though everyone knew they were only stupid little norids who couldn't light a match without
sweating. Still, there did seem to be a lot more Followers and an Agli here in Cymbank and she'd heard of others in
other villages along RiverCym. Not long after the Great Gather when the Dom-nor vanished somehow and Floarin took
over as regent for her unborn child, not very long after that, orders came down from Oras and the Doamna-regent for
the Taromates of the South to provide land and roof for the Followers and their Aglim, orders backed by a Decsel and
his ten guards. The Taromate of RiverCym had grumbled and done the least they could, giving the Agli a long
abandoned granary that was, by
mischance, directly across from the Maiden Shrine. The loca-tion made the people of Cymbank very unhappy and the
taroms weren't too pleased with it but no one had anything better to offer and the thing was done. That was near a
year ago now and folks were used to it, ignored it mostly.
The walls of the granary, though crumbling a little on the outside, were solid enough and the roof reasonably intact.
The Agli had looked it over and accepted it, though Tesc told Annie in the hearing of the twins that he didn't like the
look in that viper's eyes and he prayed that he never got his teeth in any of them.
Teras turned Labby toward the back of the Maiden Shrine. "Almost there," he whispered. She could feel the
muscles tighten in his back, hear the tension in his voice. He pulled the macai to a stop, tapped his sister's hands, and
when she loosed her grip on him, swung down. As she slid after him, he knotted the halter rope to one of the rings on
the hitching post then waited for Tuli to take the lead.
His night sight was only adequate; he didn't stumble around, but saw few things sharply once the sun went down.
His realm was daylight while the night belonged to Tuli. Ev-erything about her expanded when the moons rose; she
ran faster, heard, smelled, tasted far more intensely, read the shifts of the air like print—and most of all, saw with
dream-like clarity everything about her, saw night scenes as if they were fine black-and-white etchings, detailed to the
smallest leaf. No night hunter (no hovering kanka passar or prowling fayar) could track its prey more surely. She loved
her night rambles nearly as much as she loved her twin, loved both with a jealous passion and refused to acknowledge
that she'd be wed in a few years and shut away from both these loves, from her brother and the night. "Through the
shrine?" she whispered.
"For a look first," Teras murmured. His hand brushed across his eyes, a betrayal of bis anxiety, then he grinned at
her, gave her a little push. "Get on with it or we'll miss ev-erything."
Tuli nodded. She circled the small schoolroom where she and Teras had learned to read and figure, had memorized
the Maiden chants, moved past the Sanctuary and the Shrine fountain, stepped into the columned court. As she
passed the vine-wreathed posts with their maiden faces, moon-caught, smiling through the leaves, Tuli relaxed. There
was a gentle goodness about the court that always reached deep in her and
smoothed away the knots of anger and spite that gathered in her like bulrs and pricked at her until she burst out with
ugly words and hateful acts whose violence often frightened her. Sometimes after Nilis or one of the tie-girls had
driven her to distraction she ran away to this court for help in sub-duing her fury when, staying, she might have
half-killed the other. Night or day, the Maiden gave her back her calm, gave her the strength to live with herself and
with others no matter how irritating. This night she felt the peace again, for-got why she was here until Teras tapped at
her arm and urged her to hurry.
She stopped in the shadow by the shrine gate; Teras pressed against her as they both examined the bulky cylinder
of the old granary. He stirred after a moment, itchy with the need for action. "See anything?" There was trouble in his
voice. He had a sense she lacked. It was like a silent gong, he told her, if you can imagine such a thing, like a great
dinner gong vibrating madly that you couldn't hear only feel. It didn't sound often but when it did, it meant get the hell
out, if it was really loud, or sometimes just watch where you put your feet, there's danger about.
"Gong?"
"A rattle."
Tuli nodded. Leaning against the gatepost, she narrowed her eyes and probed the shadows across the street. At
first she saw nothing more than the wide, low cylinder with its conical roof, then in the deeply recessed doorway she
felt more than saw a faint movement, as if the air the watcher stirred slipped across the street and pressed against her
face. The watcher moved; she saw a darkness pass across a streak of red-gold light. She scanned the building with
slow care for one last time then let out the breath she was holding. "Guard in the doorway. That's all. If we go out the
back here, circle round and come down the riverbank, we can climb over the court wall and get to those windows Hars
told you 'bout." She frowned. "He must 've got over the wall himself without getting caught, but maybe there's a guard
there now."
Teras shrugged. "Won't know till we look. Come on."
Tuli loped easily along behind the shops that lined the main street, Teras behind her; in a kind of litany she named
them under her breath—cobbler, saddlemaker, turner, mer-cer, hardware seller, blacksmith, coper, candy maker—a
lit-any of the familiar, the comfortable, the unchanging, only
she would change, though she'd hold back that change if she could. They circled kitchen gardens and macai sheds,
ducked past moonglow groves and swung round the empty corrals where macai dealers auctioned off their wares at
the Rising Fair. She felt a bubbling in her blood; her face was hot and tight in spite of the chill in the air blowing
against it; she was breathing fast, not from the running, her heart knocking in her throat with excitement. Before, when
she was still a child, running wild at night was worth a licking if she was caught at it, now she'd started her
menses the danger was far greater. / might be cast out of the family, utterly disowned, left to find my living
however I could, poor, starved, beaten, maybe I'd even end up in the back rooms at Jango's. She swallowed a giggle,
luxuriating in imaginings, knowing all the while that Tesc, her father, loved her far too much to do any of these dire
things to her.
She led Teras back along the riverbank until she came to a clattering stand of dried-out bastocane directly behind
the granary. She scanned as much as she could see of the walls of the square back court, then nudged her brother.
"Gong?"
"Not a squeak." He came around her, trotted silent as a wraith across dry grass and debris to the crumbling mud
brick wall. He turned and waited for her, propping his shoul-ders against the wall, his eyes glistening with mischief.
Tuli grinned at him, kicked at the mud, jerked her thumb up. He nodded and started climbing, feeling for cracks with
feet and fingers, knocking down loose fragments that pattered softly beside her. She watched his head rise over the
top, saw him swing across the drop without hesitation. Following as quickly as she could, she pulled herself over the
wall and let herself down beside her twin. She heard a macai honk in a shed at the back of the court, heard the wail of a
kanka pas-sar in swoop close by, the buzz of night flying bugs, but that was all, no guard, nothing to worry about.
Thin streaks of red-gold light outlined a series of double shutters that covered what once had been grain chutes but
now were, presumably, windows set into the thick wall. The shutter nearest the courtwall had a long narrow triangle of
wood broken off one edge. Light spilled copiously from the opening and gilded the ground beneath. Teras touched
Tuli's shoulder, pointed, then moved swiftly, silently, to the broken shutter.
Belly cold with a vague foreboding far less definite than her brother's gong and somehow more disturbing, Tuli
hesi-
tated. Teras swung away from the crack and beckoned impa-tiently. She shook off her anxiety and crossed to him to
kneel by the bottom of the crack while Teras leaned over her, his eye to the opening. Sighing, Tuli looked inside.
The room was round with one flat side, taking up most of the ground-level space within the granary. Tuli was
surprised how much she could see from her vantage place, the curve of the wall giving her an unexpectedly wide angle
of view. Half the room was filled with silent seated figures uncertainly visi-ble in the murky light from oil-wood torches
stuck up on the walls. On a low dais a four-foot cylinder supported a broad shallow basin filled with flames that had a
misty aura about them like a river fog about a late strayer's lanthorn. She sniffed cautiously, picked up a faint oily
sweetness that tickled her nose until she feared she'd have to sneeze. Eyes watering, she pinched her nostrils together
until the need faded, then began to examine the faces more closely, recog-nizing some, too many for her comfort. Some
were neigh-bors, some their own people, members of families that had lived on Gradin lands and worked for Gradin
Heirs for as long as the Taromate had existed. She must have made a slight sound. Her brother's hand came down on
her shoulder, squeezed it lightly, both warning and comfort.
Nilis sat among the foremost, an exalted look on her pinched face, a passion in her staring eyes that startled Tuli;
she'd seen Nilis fussing and angry but never like this. We've missed some, she thought, seeing weariness as well as
exalta-tion in her sister's face. Wonder whafs going to happen now? She looked up, met her brother's eyes. His lips
formed the word chinj. She tried to answer his smile, swallowed and once again set her eyes to the crack.
The Followers were sitting very erect, as if they had rods rammed down their spines. Two dark figures, heads
hidden in black hoods, stood before the fire-filled basin. Long narrow robes covered their bodies chin to toe, long
narrow sleeves covered their arms, even their hands, and fell half an arm's length beyond their fingertips. Muffled
hands moved, swaying slowly back and forth, the dangling sleeves passing through clouds of droplets spraying out
from the flames. A moan blew through the seated figures, grew in volume. The Follow-ers shook as if a strong wind
stirred them.
"Light." One of the dark figures intoned the word, his voice a clear sweet tenor.
"Light." The response was a beast moan, a deep groan.
"Father of light." The tenor rang with tender power. It was not possible to tell which of the dark ones spoke.
"Father of Light," the beast groaned. The smell of the in-cense grew stronger as it pressed out past Tuli's face,
turning her light-headed though she got not one-tenth the dose the Followers inhaled.
"Bright one, pure one."
"Bright one, PURE one." A moan of ecstasy.
"Burn us clean."
Outside in the darkness Tuli felt the pull of the chant, felt the heated intensity of the many-throated beast, her
disgust weakened by drifts of drugged incense. Over and over the phrases were intoned and responded until they
wore a groove in her mind, until she found herself breathing with the beast, mouthing the words with it, until her heart
was beating with it. Alarmed when she realized what was happening, she wrenched her face away from the crack and
laid her cheek against the splintery wood, breathing deeply the chill night air. It smelled of manure and musty grain, of
damp earth and stagnant water, of unwashed macain and rotting fish—and she savored all these smells; they were real
and sane and red-olent of life itself, a powerful barrier against the insanity hap-pening inside the granary. She became
aware that the chanting had stopped, replaced by the rattle of small drums. Unable to resist the pricking of curiosity,
she set her eye once more to the crack.
A third dark figure (she wrinkled her nose as she recog-nized him) stood before the basin; his wrists were crossed
over his heart, fingers splayed out like white wings. The acolytes knelt, one to the right the other to the left, like black
bookends (she swallowed a giggle at the thought) tapping at small drums, their fingers hidden in the too-long sleeves.
"Agli. Agli. Agli," the Followers chanted as the acolytes beat the rhythm faster and faster, pushing at them, forcing
them harder and faster until the massive old granary seemed to rock about the serene magnetic figure of the Agli.
Tuli watched with horror as people she knew, some she'd counted almost friends, her sister, all of them howled, beat
at themselves, tore at their hair, screamed wild hoarse cries that seemed to tear from bloody throats, rocked wildly on
their buttocks, even fell over and rolled about on the floor.
The drums stopped. The moaning died away. One by one the Followers regained control of their bodies and sat
again rigidly erect
The Agli spread his hands wide, wide sleeves falling from his arms like black wings. The acolytes set their drums
aside and each brought hidden hands together, palm to palm, in the center of his chest, sitting like an ebony orant as
the Agli spoke.
"Think on your sins, o sons of evil." He spoke softly, his rich warm voice caressing them. "Think on your sins."
This time the words came louder. "Think on your sins!" Now the sonorous tones filled the room. The Followers
moaned and writhed with shame. He wheeled suddenly, turning his back to them, rejecting them, one hand stretched
dramatically toward the flame, the other lifted high above his head. "Look on this light, o you with darkness in your
soul." He whipped around, his face stern, a forefinger jabbing in accusation at them. "Look on the Light and know
yourselves filled with darkness. Soareh of the Flame is light, is purity, is all that is good and true and worthy. Soareh is
your Father is the flame that cleanses. Be you clean, you who call yourselves the fol-lowers of Soareh. Burn the filth
from your sodden souls, you sons of evil. Cast that filth into the outer darkness, cast out the hag who fouls you."
Tuli shivered, fear so strong in her she was sick with it. He was talking about the Maiden, how could he say such
things, how could they bear to listen? And how could Floarin doamna-regent sponsor such . . . such . . . she couldn't
find the words. Grimly she watched what was happening, deter-mined to know the worst.
The Agli was winding up to a climax, his voice hammering at the Followers. They stared at him, eyes glazed,
unfocused, faces idiot-blank, surrendering will and intellect utterly to him. "Follow the hag and you will be cast into
the outer darkness, foul to foul, eaten by worms." He flung his arms out again, black wings silhouetted against the red
and gold and dancing blue of the flames. "Do you renounce the sins that taint you?"
"We do." At first the answer was ragged, uncertain, then the Followers found their voices again. "We do renounce
them."
"Do you renounce the dark hag?"
"We do." A full-throated roar.
"Confess your sins, oh sons of evil. Confess. Set your hands in the fire and confess.
Nilis staggered to her feet and stumbled forward, arms out-stretched.
Tuli shuddered. Teras and she had laughed at the idea but the reality was not funny at all.
Nilis stopped before the Agli, her face shining with an ea-gerness that Tuli found obscene. The Agli laid his hands
on hers, then he stepped aside. Without hesitation she plunged her arms to the elbows into the flames. She stepped
back a moment later, raised her arms high, small tongues of fire rac-ing up them to curve into a crackling arc above her
head. "Blessed Soareh Father, I have sinned." Her voice was tri-umphant, no hint of shame, a thin harsh whine that
grated on Tuli's ears.
The two acolytes began tapping out a simple rhythm. "Fire cleanses," the tenor sang. Again Tuli had no idea which
of them spoke.
"Fire cleanses," the Followers answered him.
"I accuse myself, I dwell with evil."
"The light is pure."
"Pure is the light."
"I accuse Tesc and Annie Gradin."
"Blessed be the light."
'The Light be blessed."
"They plot against the light. They plot against our blessed patron Doamna Floarin. They plot to withhold the grain
share owed to the blessed of the Light."
"The Flame will purify."
"Be purified in the Flame."
"Tesc Gradin, my father, called the Taromate of River Cym together to plot treason. All of them will hide in secret
cellars a portion of the harvest from the Servants of the Light when they come to take the Doamna's tithe."
Tuli bit her lower lip to keep from crying out in blind fury. She pounded her fists on her thighs and couldn't even
feel them; she wept and didn't know she wept. She heard as from a great distance her brother's muttered curse. When
her eyes cleared, the first thing she saw was Nilis looking smug and self-righteous. To control her rage she swallowed
and swallowed again. How can she do this to her own? How can she?
"The light be blessed."
"Blessed be the light." There was a greedy pleasure in the Followers' response, a stench of malice.
Tuli searched the faces of some she knew, seeing in them hunger and spite, greed and hate. Chark—three healthy
older brothers who stood between him and any chance at his own
land, a father who despised him, a sickly stooped body; his eyes glistened with spite as he chanted. Nilis—a cursed
woman, her single suitor a stuttering second son courting her only because no one else would have him and even so
only lukewarm in his pursuit while her sister Sanani, two years younger, was promised already and happy in it.
Kumper— only son of Digger Havin, a good old man; Tesc endured Kumper's whines and complaints and slovenly
work for his father's sake, but two seasons ago, when he found him tor-menting a macai, he threw him off the Tar,
telling him not to come back ever.
"The Taromate has named Tesc Gradin spokesman. He leaves tomorrow early for Oras to protest the tithe."
"Cursed be those who deny the light."
"Be they cursed."
"I live because I have to among the followers of the dark hag. I am tainted with their evil. Purge me, Soareh. Be
Fa-ther and family to me."
"Fire burns clean, the Light cleanses all."
"Blessed be the light."
"Father, mother, sisters, brothers, all refuse the light. I sin because of them. I give in to anger. I doubt the right.
They are the roots of my sin. I renounce them, Soareh, my Father. I renounce them." Her glowing eyes were fixed on
the arc of flame above her head.
"Blessed be the light that burns away the darkness."
"Blessed be the light."
"Let my soul be a transparent glory, let the light shine in me." With this final outburst, Nilis lowered her hands and
thrust her arms back in the fire, crying out after a moment, a wild hoarse wail of a pleasure too much for her slight body
to hold.
As Nilis swayed back to her place and another of the Fol-lowers stumbled to the fire, Tuli slapped at her brother's
leg, then wriggled away from the window. Without waiting for him, she clawed her way up the wall and dropped to the
ground outside.
Teras thudded down beside her. "How could she do that?" There was anguish in his voice. His usual control
stripped away, he slammed a hand against the mud bricks. "Traitor!"
Fighting with her own anger, Tuli caught his hand in hers, held it tight, his need the one thing that could cool her
heat "What are we going to do?"
He tugged his hand free, rubbed it hard across his face.
"Tell Da first, that's one thing." His voice was hoarse. "We have to, he has to know what she did." He kicked at the
wall, stared away from her, blinking tears he was ashamed of from his eyes. "I can't believe she did it, Tuli. Why'd she
do it? Why?"
"She's Nilis, I s'pose that's all." Tuli touched bis arm. "What can we do?"
"I don't know." He struck the wall with the flat of his hand, then raced along it toward the street.
Tuli ran after him, caught hold of his arm, stopping him. "The watcher," she breathed.
He pressed his back against the crumbling brick. Eyes closed, head back, he stood, breathing raggedly. In the light
of Nijilic TheDom, directly overhead now, clear for that mo-ment of clouds, he looked far older than his fourteen years.
Tuli shivered, chilled by a sense of loss—then he opened his eyes, grinned at her and the world was right again. She
grinned back, pointed down the street, started loping through the shadows of the overhanging storefronts, moving
with the stealth of a prowling fayar. Several shops down she cut across the street then circled around behind the
Maiden Shrine toward patient Labby slumping half-asleep against the post.
They rode in silence, Tuli's arms around her brother's waist, her cheek pressed against his back. Neither spoke until
the barns of Gradin-Tar loomed ahead and the great black bulk of the watchtower, then Teras brought Labby to a halt.
He twisted around, his face grave. "You better get back up the wall 'fore I go in. Da 'ud skin you alive if he knew you
were out."
"Yah." She relaxed her hold, shifted back until she was sit-ting on the macai's rump. "Think he'll believe you?" With
a small grunt, she swung a leg up and over, slid off and stood looking up at him.
"Why shouldn't he?" He clucked to Labby, started him walking again in a slow amble. "If he doesn't, I’ll have to tell
him you were with me and heard the same things."
Tuli grimaced, touched a buttock. "My backside will heal faster than what Nilis is doing to us. Teras...."
"Huh?"
"Make sure Da knows that if he still is going to go, he should leave right now, not wait for morning. And he should
be careful, real careful."
"Hah! You think I didn't think of that?" He leaned for-
ward, squinted at the moonlit area in front of the house; the macain tied there earlier were gone. "The meeting must be
over."
Tuli sniffed. "Course it is, you heard Nilis."
"Hunh!" He slid off the macai's back. "Get up that wall, you, before Da wears out your bottom." He led Labby
toward the corral. "Girls." CHAPTER II:
THE QUEST
Her Noris stands high on the mountain, black boots ankle deep in cold stone, his narrow elegant form a darkness
half obscured by swirls of snow and mist— cold, cold, so cold. Pale hands reach for her, sad eyes plead with her.
He touches her, catches her hands in his—cold, so cold.
"Help me, Serroi," he whispers and the words are splinters of ice tearing into her flesh—cold, cold, so cold.
"Come to me, dearest one," he cries to her. Stone creeps around his knees while below, far below, the val-ley
stretches out in golden splendor, golden warmth. "Help me," he pleads. Gray and relentless, the stone rises past
his waist—cold, so cold. His hands reach to her again. She feels feather touches on her face—cold, cold, so cold.
"Come to me, daughter, come to me, my child." The stone closes around his neck; the yearning in his eyes
touches the long-denied yearning frozen deep within her—oh cold, so cold.
"Let me be, father, let me be, teacher," she whispers and sees before the stone closes over his head the agony
in his eyes, an agony without measure as the pain in her is without measure—cold, so terribly cold.
Moonlight slanted silver through the window, painting an oblong of broken silver on Serroi's body. She turned and
turned in her troubled sleep, side and back and stomach, caught in dreams she could neither banish nor wake from.
Her Noris reclines on black velvet before a crackling fire. She is a small girl, comfortable and happy beside his
divan, half-sitting, half-lying on piled-up pillows, silken pillows glowing silver, crimson, amber, azure, vio-let,
emerald, midnight blue. His hand drops, strokes her
hair, begins pulling soft curls through his fingers. The fire is no warmer than the quiet happiness between them.
"No!" Serroi jerked up from her sweat-sodden pillow, leaped from her bed and reached the door before she woke
sufficiently to remember she was home, home and safe, safe in the Valley where Ser Noris could not come. Once, long
ago, he'd tried using her as a key to unlock the Biserica de-fenses for him. She pressed her face against the door's
pol-ished wood, squeezing back tears she refused to shed. Now I'm no key, I'm a lever and you're using me to force
an opening for you. It won't work, won't, can't work. I would have done anything for you once, but not now. "Not
now," she whispered.
Still trembling, she tumbled back to the bed and sat wea-rily on its edge, dropping her head into her hands. "Maiden
bless, I'm tired. Let me sleep, will you? Please. Please, let me be." Her eyes burned. She rubbed them then lifted her
head to gaze out the window toward the shadowy granite cliff across the valley. "You're up there now, aren't you?
Wanting all this not for what it is, wanting it because you can't have it, wanting it though it would turn to dust and
ashes at your touch." She shivered in spite of the night's warmth at the thought of that touch, feeling a painful mixture
of revulsion and desire. Her lips curved tiredly up then fell to a bitter line. "If only you knew, my Noris, you betray
yourself with every dream you send to torment me. You show your own weakness, not mine ... ah, Maiden bless,
that's a lie. My weakness too, too much mine." She turned her eyes from the cliff but found no ease for her spirit, not
when the only other thing she had to look at was the empty bed across the cell. Even in the cloud-mottled moonlight
she could see the preci-sion of the blanket folds, the crispness of the white pillow. Tayyan had never in her life left a
bed like that, not without a lump here, a sag there, a wrinkle or two that her greatest effort couldn't eliminate. A
knocking at the door broke her from her brooding. She lifted her legs onto her bed, crossed her ankles and tugged her
sleeping smock over her knees. "Come."
Yael-mri pulled the door open and stood in the dark rec-tangle, the candle she held stiffly before her painting inky
shadow into the hollows and lines of her strong face. "The Silent Ones sent to tell me you were dreaming again."
Serroi's hand trembled on her knee. "Yes."
The flame wavered as Yael-mri sighed, licked at a raised edge sending a liquid slide down one side of the candle.
The smell of hot wax was suddenly strong in the small room. Ab-sently Yael-mri straightened her arm, holding the
candle far-ther from her. "The Shawar are troubled by these sendings. Their meditations are disturbed, and what's
worse, several makings have collapsed."
Serroi licked dry lips. When she met Yael-mri's compas-sionate gaze, she stopped breathing, then tried to smile, but
the twisting of her mouth felt more like a grimace so she let the smile die. "I'll have to leave the Valley."
"I'm afraid so. Come to the prieti-varou when the bell sounds treilea. We'll talk. I have some suggestions I want to
make about your destination once you set out."
"I hear." Serroi drew shaking fingers across her eyespot, trying to counter its painful throbbing. She grimaced. "At
least I'll be doing something, not just sitting around watching the rocks grow."
"You do a great deal more than that."
Serroi shrugged. "Other people's work."
Yael-mri watched her a moment, frowning thoughtfully. "Do you want someone to stay with you the rest of the
night? Or should I send one of the healwomen?"
"No." As Yael-mri still hesitated in the doorway, Serroi lifted her head, stared coldly at her. "Don't worry, I won't
sleep again. There won't be any dreams."
The door clicked shut, footfalls moved crisply away, fading as the thick walls cut off the sound. Serroi pulled the
quilt off her bed and wrapped it around her shoulders. She touched her eyespot again, traced its outline, a long oval
with its ma-jor axis parallel to the line of her brows, a dark green oval almost black against the bright olive of her skin,
remember-ing other ringers that had touched her there, slim white fin-gers of surpassing beauty when she was a child
and, later, the love touches of tan fingers rough with calluses from swordhilts and macai halters, thin and a little bony
and very dear. Tayyan, lover and swordmate. Tayyan, abandoned on a street in Oras to bleed to death, her body
tossed outside the walls for demons to eat. She pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes, then let her hands fall
into her lap. The days had dribbled like quicksilver through her fingers, days un-numbered, one much like the other.
Time. Too much time. Her grief was blunted, her guilt lost in fear as her Noris
fought to reclaim her. She leaned against the wall, her eyes on the window as she watched the shifting clouds, the
shadows dappling the mountainside. Find me something hard to do, Yael-mri, hunt out an impossible quest and I'll
hug it to me like it was my only child. Her lips twitched. Foolish-ness. Still—anything would be better than this
wretched drift-ing.
She spent the morning cleaning out one of the stables and washing down trailworn macain brought in by meien
who came home dismissed from their wards, some of them run-ning ahead of hostile mobs. The mindless labor brought
quiet to her spirit until she was calm and ready to face whatever Yael-mri had in mind for her.
When she heard the dalea bell, she swiped at the dusty sweat on her face and carried her tools to their shed. The
stable-pria looked up from a macai's slashed leg as Serroi came from the stable; she was an old meie, mountain bred,
better with animals than people though time had taught her to read her fellows nearly as accurately as she did her
beasts. She was Yael-mri's closest friend and unofficial adviser, wise beyond her years, wiser perhaps even than the
most venerable of the Shawar because she'd suffered more. She came to the fence. With wordless sympathy she held
out a lean, callused hand. Serroi smiled as the rough fingers closed around hers. "It's nothing so bad, pria Melit."
Melit nodded. "Not life or death, it will pass. Later, after the talk is done, come see me."
Serroi nodded, warming to the warmth offered her. "I will."
By the time she'd washed away the grime of the stable and pulled on clean leathers, the bell was ringing treilea. She
stood still a moment, fingers opening and closing, then walked quietly out with no backward glance at the room that
had been hers for half her life.
摘要：

MOONSCATTEROnceuponatimeasorcerersoaredonlifeandchallengedittoaduel—inotherwords,thisisWHATHASGONEBEFOREAmasterofmanysorceriessecuredforhimselfwhatamountedtoimmortality—acessationoftheprocessesofgrowthanddecaywithinhisbody—andinsodoing,pro­motedhimselftotherankofnoris.Forseveralcenturiesheenjoyedhim...

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