Jo Clayton: Changer’s Moon

“To the end, then,” he said.

“To the end.” She bent over the board and began setting her figures in place.

Kingfisher

Hern woke disoriented; coming out of dreams not quite harrowing enough for nightmare. He reached out for Serroi, not wanting to wake her but needing to be sure she hadn’t evaporated as had his dream. His hand moved over cold sheets, a dented pillow. He jerked up, looked wildly around, the not-quite-fear of the not-quite-nightmare squeezing his gut.

She was curled up on the padded ledge of the window Coyote had melted through the stone for her comfort, moonlight and starlight soft on the russet hair that had a tarnished pewter sheen in the color-denying light. Relief washed over him, then anger at her for frightening him, then mockery at his dependence on her. He sat watching her, speculating about what it was that drove her night after night to stare out at stars that never saw the mijloc. What was she thinking of? He felt a second flash of anger because he thought he knew, then a painful helplessness because there was nothing he could do to spare her-or himself-that distress. Not so long ago he’d shared dreams with her and learned in deep nonverbal ways the painful convolutions of her relationship with Ser Noris. Love and hate, fear and pleasure-the Noris had branded himself deep in her soul. If he could have managed it, he’d have strangled the creature. Not a man, not in the many senses of that word. Creature.

He got out of the bed and went to her, touched her shoulder, drew his finger down along the side of her face. “Worried?”

She tilted her head back to look up at him. For a moment she said nothing and he thought she wasn’t going to answer him. Then she did, with brutal honesty. “No. Thinking, Dom. Thinking that this is the last time we’ll be together.”

He wrapped his arms about her. Her small hands came up and closed warm over his wrists. “You aren’t coming back with us?” He heard no sign in his voice of the effort he’d taken to speak so calmly.

“That’s not what I meant,” she said. “I meant whole to each other, one to one, with everything, everyone else left outside the circle.”

“I see. The last time until this is over.”

She said nothing. He felt her stiffen against him, then relax, knew she had no belief in any afterwards even if they both survived. And he knew with flat finality that there was no place for her in his life as long as he continued Domnor of Oras and Cimpia plain. And knew, too, that each passing day made going back to that pomp more distasteful to him-that shuttered, blinded life where no one and nothing was real, where the courtiers all wore masks, faces pasted on top of faces that were no more real than masks. Like peeling the layers off an onion: when you got down to the last, there was nothing there. He looked over her head at the scatter of moons. He had to see his folk and the mijloc clear of this, but that was all he owed them. I’m tired, he thought, they’ve got enough years out of me. He shifted so he could slide his hands along her shoulders, moving them up her neck to play with her earlobes, back down again, flesh moving on flesh with a burring whisper. “There will be an afterwards for us,” he murmured. “If you’ll come with me, vixen. The world has another half to it, one neither of us has seen. You heal, I’ll heave, and we’ll end up as wizened little wanderers telling stories to unbelieving folk of the marvels we have seen, the marvels we have done.”

She moved her head across his ribs, sighed. “That feels good.”

He dropped a hand to cup her breast, moved his thumb slowly across her nipple, felt it harden. “Can’t you see us, me a fat old man with a fringe of mouse-colored hair, feet up on a table-I’ve forgotten all my manners, you see, gone senile with too much wine, too many years. Where was I, oh yes, feet up on the table, boasting of my sword fights and magic wars fought so long ago that everyone’s forgotten them. And you, little dainty creature, bowed by years, smiling at that old man and refraining from reminding him how much more necessary to the winning of those wars you were.” He slid his arm under her knees, scooped her up and carried her back to the bed.

Serroi woke with Hern’s arm flung across her, his head heavy on her shoulder. The window was letting in rosy light, dawn well into its display. She lay a few minutes, not wanting to disturb him. He had enough to face this day. Coyote was growing increasingly impatient because Hern hadn’t yet selected any of the mirror’s offerings. Today would be the last-he hadn’t said so, but she was sure of that. Today Hern had to find his weapon, the weapon that would someday turn in his hand and destroy him, if what Yael-mri hinted at was true. Or destroy what he was trying to protect. The Changer. Ser Noris feared for her, but she discounted that, not because she thought he’d lied but because his passion was for sameness not change; he wanted things about him clear-edged and immutable. At the peak of his power, any change could only mean loss. She sighed, eased away from Hern. His body was a furnace. Her leg started to itch. She ignored it awhile but the prickles grew rapidly more insistent. Carefully she lifted his arm and laid it along his side. For a moment her hands lingered on his arm, then she slid them up his broad back. She liked touching him, liked the feel of the muscles, now lightly blanketed with fat, liked the feel of the bone coming through the muscles. She combed her fingers very gently through his hair, the gray streaks shining in the black. Long. Too long. You ought to let me cut it a little. Clean and soft, it curled over her wrist as if it were a hand holding her.

The itch escalated to unendurable. She sat up, eased the quilts off her and scratched her leg. She sighed with pleasure as the itch subsided, glanced anxiously at Hern, but he was breathing slowly, steadily, still deep asleep. She smiled at him, affection warm in her.

The light was brightening outside with a silence strange to her. All her life she’d seen the dawn come in with birdsong, animal barks and hoots, assorted scrapes and rustles, never with this morning’s silence as if what the window showed wasn’t really there. Magic mirror. She smiled, remembering the mirror Ser Noris made for her that brought images from everywhere into her tower room anywhere, anything she wanted to see it showed her, tiny images she never was sure were real, even later when she’d seen many of those places and peoples with her own eyes, heard them, smelled them, eaten their food, watched their lives. I wonder if that is how Ser Noris sees all of us, pieces in a game, sterile sanitary images that have shapes and textures, but no intruding inconvenient smells and noises. Not quite real. No one quite real. No, I’m wrong. I was real for him awhile. Cluttering, demanding, all edges some days, all curves another. Maybe that’s why he wants me back-to remind him that he’s real too. He wants the touch he remembers, the questions, the tugs that pulled us together, yet reminded each that the other was still other. He doesn’t want me as I am now, only the Serroi he lost. And he doesn’t even know that the Serroi he wants never quite existed, was a construct out of his clever head.

She sighed, looked down at Hern and wanted to wrap herself about him so tight he couldn’t ever leave her, but she knew far better than he how little possibility for realization there was in those dreams he’d described to her. She smoothed her hand over his shoulder. He muttered a few drowsy sounds of pleasure, but did not wake, though his hand groped toward her, found her thigh and closed over it. Ah, she thought, I won’t say any more to you about that. I won’t say don’t count on me, love, I might not be around. “I’m a weakness you can’t afford, Dom Hern,” she whispered.