Jo Clayton: Changer’s Moon

Nekaz Kole scowled at the dragons, suppressing anger and scorn. He couldn’t afford to offend the Nor now that the last stage of the battle was being set, but he swore to steer wide of magic and religion the rest of his days. He dropped his eyes from the enigma that still bothered him and watched the flames biting deeper into the stubborn wood of the gates, feeling a small glow of satisfaction. Not long now.

Julia leaned against the cold, pitted stone of the tower wall, picking idly at the knot in the rag tied about her arm, working it loose. Any heat from the sun couldn’t reach her through the gusty wind that smelled of ash and ice. The overflow of Serroi’s power had healed everyone they shoved into the tower, had healed the scratch on her arm and the hole the vuurvis had etched into her thigh. The rooms behind her were empty now, the healed were clustering about the tables set up near the rutted road where excited girls were serving bowls of a rich, meaty soup, loaves of fresh-baked bread and cups of hot spiced cha. Now and then a gust of wind brought the aromas to her, reminding her that she was hungry, but she didn’t move away from the wall. She was fit and whole again, even the cold she’d been starting had dried up with her wounds, but she was tired, a weariness of the will as much as of the body. She knew food and hot cha would chase much of that malaise away, temporarily at least, but she hadn’t enough desire left in her to shift her feet.

She pulled the rag off her arm and looked at the skin. No scar but a paler patch not yet tanned to match the rest. A lot of those patches scattered about her hide since she’d come here. Not the sort of thing you expected to happen to a sedentary middle-aged writer from a post-industrial society. Smiling a little, she looked down at Rane.

The ex-meie was sitting with her back against the wall, knees drawn up, arms draped over them, staring out into nothing. She looked as tired, as dead, as Julia felt. Rane yawned, then sighed. A gust of wind lifted dust, dead leaves, other debris and slapped the load against her. She got to her feet, brushed at the folds of tunic and trousers, looked up, caught at Julia’s arm. “Look.”

Lone sinuous shapes undulated over the valley, dragons of flexing glass, scales delicately etched on the transparent bodies, pastel colors flowing in waves along the serpentine forms, a silent song in color. No two of the dragonsongs were alike but each complemented the others like chords in a chorale. They drifted eerily into the wind, not with it, creatures not quite of this world. Julia’s heart hurt with their extravagant beauty and their strangeness, a strangeness that brought suddenly home to her the realization that she stood on alien soil, something she’d almost forgotten because of the familiar feel of the dirt and weeds under her feet, the familiar look of the mountains around her, the human faces of the people here. She watched the dragons sing and felt a new homesickness for her own land and people, felt like an exile for the first time since she’d jumped through Magic Man’s Mirror. She wondered what was happening back home and whether she’d run out on her responsibilities by coming here. Maybe Tom Prioc was right, maybe they owed their country the effort to redeem it. But as she continued to watch the dragons, she felt her regrets leaving her. I’ve half my life left. No use looking back.

One of the dragons slipped away from the rest and came drifting to earth a few meters out from the west tower, its delicately sculpted head rising high over Julia’s. The dragon tilted its head and gazed down at her with large glowing golden eyes. Half mesmerized she drifted away from the tower, not noticing that Rane was coming with her. She expected to feel heat from it, but there was neither heat nor cold, only a faint spicy perfume that was pleasant and invigorating.

Rane’s hand tightened again on her arm, dragging her from her dazed contemplation, of the dragon’s eyes.

Serroi and Hern had come from the tower. They were standing close together looking at the grounded dragon, the flow of emotion between them so intense Julia felt a touch of embarrassment at watching them.

Serroi moved a few steps away from Hern to stand beside the dragon, one hand on the smooth curve of its side. She smiled at Hern, that wide glowing grin Julia remembered with pleasure. Her voice came to them on a gust of wind. “You’d hate idleness, Dom,” she said. “Keep busy and live long.”

Rane whistled softly. “Maiden bless, Jule,” she whispered. “She’s going to him, going to face him at last.”

Julia said nothing, remembering all too clearly the silent fear in Serroi that night in the Southwall Keep.

“Come on,” Rane said as she started for the nearest table. “I need something to wet my throat. This is the end for us, one way or another.”

The dragon rose with easy languorous grace into the sky, floating slowly toward the great rock face at the west end of the wall.

Hern got to his feet, looked down at himself and grinned. “Better fetch me a blanket, love.” He patted the smooth curve of his belly. “If I were as slim and elegant as you, I wouldn’t bother. But there’s a bit too much Hern on view.”

Serroi laughed and went away. He watched her go, for that moment content with himself and the world. He hadn’t forgotten the war, but he was refusing to think about it. Like Serroi, he was taking a rest from the urgencies of the moment and the pressures of his responsibilities. Smiling, eyes half-closed, he listened to the soft scrape of her feet on the stone, heard the sounds fade. When these were gone, he moved cautiously across the ashy, pitted floor and looked out a windowslit, being careful not to touch the stone. He raised his brows at the fires leaping from the vuurvis barrels, at the black sprawl of the dead Nor. The raiders were still busy behind the army, Maiden bless them, and making their efforts count. He watched Nekaz Kole send messengers to stop the catapults along the wall, all but the two in the center that were pounding at the gate. His throat tightened as he remembered the burning and the pain and knew that even with Serroi at his side he couldn’t face that again. Mind or body, neither could endure that… that… he couldn’t find a word for the experience; pain, agony, torment , they were all inadequate for the totality he remembered. He frowned at Nekaz Kole. Bad luck for us you weren’t in your tent. He watched the catapults fling two more clay melons then crossed to the side slit that looked down on the gates, watching the skin of flame eating at them. Yael-mri had warned him about vuurvis, that the Shawar could slow its action but couldn’t quench it. At the rate it was consuming the wood, it’d burn through sometime before dawn. And once the gates were down, the army would come flooding over them.

“Hern?”

He turned. Serroi held out a thin gray blanket. As he wrapped it about himself, he scanned her anxiously, not liking what he saw. The eyespot pulsed through the curls that fell forward over her brow, its green turned almost black. Her flesh glowed, very faintly but visibly in the dim light that filled the blackened room. It seemed to him that if he looked too hard at her she would melt away altogether, dissipating like fog on a warming day. He tied two corners over his shoulder so the blanket hung in folds about his body. “How many did the vuurvis get?”

“Three to five dead at each place the catapults hit.” Seeing him almost trip over the dangling blanket, she handed him a short length of rope. “Better hitch up your skirts, Dom. I don’t know how many were burned and lived. Julia had a brainstorm, packed all of them into the rooms below. Apparently there was a lot of overflow while I was pulling you back, love, seems I sucked in power from everywhere and this tower was pulsing like a mothsprite in heat. Everyone she got here walked out again a while ago, they’re getting food now, which reminds me, my love, I’m hollow from head to toe.” Her strained cheerfulness melted suddenly. She came into his arms, leaned against him, trembling. “So much pain.” Her voice broke and she pressed her face into his shoulder, shaking as if with ague. “So much waste. Lives, time, materials. Gone. And for what? Nothing.” She was afraid, more than that, terrified, and he knew what frightened her and he too was afraid.