Mercedes Lackey - Wintermoon

“What’s happened here?” Zemetrios asked.

The walls of the village-town lay ahead of them, and in them two tall wooden gates stood wide. A street of tamped earth ran in from there, and buildings lined the way. But there also—no movement, and no illumination.

“We must go and see,” she said.

The thought of her girls as in her mind. They had vanished—and now this deserted village.

They hurried to the gates, and reached them as the final golden wash faded on the sky’s edge and darkness bloomed like a long sigh over the earth.

“ Look! The gates are closing —”

Together, not thinking, caught by some primal instinct, they bolted between the slowly joining gates. Clirando cursed herself even as she did so—to pelt into this unknown enclosure that might contain anything—and heard Zemetrios curse louder.

But by then they were in.

The gates padded together at their backs.

And, in a fiery chorus, at once every lamp, torch and candle in the village was, or began to be, lit.

The village street, the houses and other buildings, blushed to sudden life. Faces appeared at windows and figures emerged on terraces. Others came strolling along the thoroughfare. Two men, that neither she nor Zemetrios, she thought, had previously seen, were securing the gates with bars.

“Just in time, travelers,” one of the men remarked to them.

Then down the street came striding a giant creature, tall as the roofs, her black hair swinging as she swung her impossibly long legs, a lighted brand in her grasp with which she brought alive the last torches leaning from house walls.

Zemetrios laughed. Clirando glared at him. Had he gone crazy?

“A stilt-walker, Clirando,” he said.

And looking back, Clirando saw the woman, who was dark skinned as a Lybirican, was perched on two long poles, each swathed in her abnormally long white skirt.

A child ran up then. She carried a basket of apples and dates, and offered it to them.

Zemetrios reached out at once.

Clirando said, “Be wary.”

“I’m hungry, Clirando.”

“Yes, but if you eat that you may also be dead.”

“Or,” he conceded, “this is magic food.”

But the child waited there, smiling and holding up the basket, which had been lined with vine leaves.

Before either of them could decide, a man rode by on a brown horse and called the child to him. Bending from the saddle, he took a fruit and bit into it.

“Are these truly people?” Zemetrios asked, “that one there on the horse, the child—or are they another sort of demon—illusions—even figments come from our own heads?”

“We both see the same things here,” said Clirando, “men with snakes, lamps lit, a horseman and a child. A basket of fruit.”

“Yes. But suppose—”

Another man tapped Zemetrios on the shoulder. Zemetrios shot around to find the fellow bowing low. He wore the leather apron of tavern staff.

“Come to our inn-house, warriors. It is a fine house. The best wine on the Isle. Good meat and new-baked bread. Our rooms are of the nicest—though we’re full for the celebration of the Seven Nights, still one or two choice chambers remain. We also boast a bathhouse, and water always hot from a steamy spring. Come to our house, warriors.”

“He sounds like any tavern tout from Rhoia to Ashalat,” murmured Zemetrios.

The man swayed, beaming and bowing.

All through the village circulated the usual evening street sounds, laced now with rills of laughter and notes of music.

Above, a woman called across from one balcony to its neighbor, and in another window another woman appeared with a little pet dog on her shoulder.

The scene was normal. Perplexingly so. As he had said, Rhoia—or anywhere thriving in the civilized world—would parade like this after sundown. Even Amnos.

Clirando said to the taverner, “What’s the name of your inn?”

“The Moon in Glory.”

Zemetrios added, “And why does your village hide until the gates are shut? And why is there no one out in the fields and not a single light?”

“Oh, master, it’s our custom on the Seven Nights. Soon as the sun starts to sink, we sit in quiet and not a candle’s lit till the last ray’s gone. Then we shut the gates and every light is kindled. As for the country about, why—everyone’s here. Of course they are. Where else to see and salute the great moon?”

Zemetrios turned to Clirando. “Do we believe him?”

“Oh, believe me, master—” The taverner had a round face that now grew anxious. “The innkeeper will be displeased if I lose him custom.” Sidling nearer, the man whispered, “He’s a skinflint, and he loves to make money.”

“Ah, money . Then I reckon this is real enough.”

Clirando looked about her. Her weariness pushed against her back and shoulders. Who cared if it was a trap or an illusion… She should not think this way. But she said, “We can see for ourselves.”

The man skipped before them up the street and along an alley to a blue-plastered wall, out of which a lemon tree grew, its hard green fruit scenting the air.

A boy, all smiles as well, whisked open a gate into a yard. Torches blazed on walls, night-perfumed flowers spilled luxuriously from urns. There was additionally the smell of good bread and roasting joints, and over the low wall steam puffed from the domed roof of a little bathhouse, just as promised.

“Oh, Clirando—forgive me. I can’t resist.” Zemetrios sounded both amused and charming.

“Nor I,” she admitted, but with chilly reserve.

Yet from nowhere the oddest feeling fled through her. What in the Maiden’s name was it? In dismay, Clirando accepted it had been a moment’s natural pleasure. As if her life was quite natural too, and the town her friend, and Zemetrios, this unknown fighter from another country, someone she trusted, liked, and perhaps much more…

Night unfolds her wings

With the white moon in her hair

And love rises from her bed of dreams

To waken all the sleeping earth.

“What is it, Cliro?”

She gazed at him, stricken. “I can hear a song—”

“I can hear it, too. About night and the moon and love. I’ve heard it in Rhoia. It’s an old tune.”

Something loosened in her. She thought, Even if this is fakery, we both see and hear the same things now. Something in that. And besides, that voice singing is a boy’s. Not hers—not Araitha’s—

It was only after they had parted to seek the male and female sections of the bath that she recalled Zemetrios had called her Cliro . As if long familiar with her, and close.

Despite the taverner’s boast, the inn seemed not that full—or certainly not the bathhouse. Clirando had the three narrow rooms to herself. She washed in the first under the tepid fountain, and then soaked in the second in a pool of delicious heat that blanketed her up to the chin. An attendant in the first room washed her hair. Now it spread about her in the hot pool, scented like the perfumed shrubs outside. Finally she sprang into the last cold pool, with a hiss of anguish that quickly disappeared as the water toned her muscles, closed her pores and awarded her a feeling of vigor. She might have slept a whole night through. It seemed to her there must be special salts in the spring that fed the bathhouse, which was often the case. She felt literally renewed, her eyes clear and well focused, her blood moving like waves of light.

Unnerving her less now, the feeling of pleasure, almost of happiness and anticipation, continued and grew stronger.

She thought of Tuyamel tilting her head doubtfully, and Vlis chuckling, and young Draisis enthusiastically vindicating happiness at all costs.