Jo Clayton: Moongather

The dark in the passage was timeless. Only the throbs of her heart clicked off the minutes for her. She was thirsty, drank again from the wineskin. She felt cooler all over though the wine was heating her gullet. There was a small intense hot-spot on her leg where the tajicho burned hotter and hotter as time passed. She began to remember what had happened and why she was here in this stifling darkness. She sat up, dislodging roaches and rats, staggered to her feet, peeling them off her like a lumpy blanket. She swayed, slapped her hand onto the wall to keep herself from falling. It had to be time for the Norid’s rite. Close to it, anyway. The Norid was busy, the tajicho’s fire told her that. She closed her fingers end slammed her fist into the wall, angry that fear, fever and the Sleykyn’s whip-poison had held her impotent for so long until now, until the Norid’s Moongather spell gained momentum.

She let her nightsight dim and spent her strength searching out Domnor Hern. She turned her head slowly as the eyespot throbbed and the immaterial search-fingers spread out and out, wavered, finally tugged upward and to the right. With roaches whirling about her head, clinging to her tattered clothing, with rats swarming like dingy foam about her boots, she began the climb through the walls to the Domnor’s bedroom.

Up and around, up narrow stairs where the flood of rats lengthened before and behind her, up and up, then around in a squared spiral up the central tower. Up and around, wading against a wind that tried to push her back, that grew stronger and stronger until she was leaning into it as one leans into a gale, fighting for every step.

Until she stopped before an exit like the many she’d passed before. She stopped, knowing without doubt that the Domnor was there. The rats piled up around her. She could feel the whole mast trembling until she feared the building would topple; they crouched around her without a sound, ominously, unnaturally silent. The roaches whirred about her head, then settled around the exit, clinging to the stone, so close they touched, like brown scale mail covering the wall. She leaned her head against the planks of the door. It was hard to think; she had to fight against the steady pressure of the force flowing out of the bedchamber.

Lifting heavy, clumsy arms, she fumbled at the catch, locking the spyhole shut. As she turned them back, she felt her eye-spot go still. She blinked slowly, startled, then leaned to the hole, hardly daring to breathe.

The Domnor sat in a straight-backed chair, his back turned to her, his short pudgy body stripped naked, his arms and legs bound to the chair. His thick mop of straight hair-black liberally streaked with grey-was tousled, one lock standing like a lizard’s crest above the rest. His body was still but his strong blunt fingers were working patiently at the ropes, shifting them slightly, working a knot closer and closer. The ropes were cutting painfully into his flesh; every movement had to be a minor agony, but he showed no sign of that. With iron patience he kept working, all the while seeming to concentrate his attention on the Norid. Serroi caught her breath, astonished. She’d seen little of the man during her ward. In spite of her contempt for Lybor, she’d let herself be influenced by that viper’s contempt for her husband. Still, there was what Tayyan said. She closed her eyes, the pain back. Tayyan said he was a terror with a sword, said you wouldn’t believe how fast he could move when he wanted to, said he could ride a macai better than most Stenda even. She blinked again, able to believe this as she watched him coolly and stubbornly working at the ropes while the Norid stalked about the room making preparations with an arrogance that held the other two in Serroi’s field of vision reluctantly silent even when he bent double and began tracing a pentacle around them, muttering a complex chant under his breath as he drew the circled star, dragging the thick greasy crayon over the inlaid floor. The rugs had been kicked aside to lie in tangled mounds against the wall. When he finished the pentacle around Lybor and Morescad, he turned to the Domnor and drew a second pentacle around him. When that was closed he set a thick black candle at each of the points, then stepped back, frowned, black eyes searching restlessly about the room, bothered by something.

Serroi moved her foot, feeling the heat in the tajicho against her leg. His eyes had a wild look to them; his stiff black hair was tied back from his face with braided gold wire that crackled with the energies flowing around the room. Watching as he placed white candles at the points of the pentacle around Morescad and Lybor, Serroi thought, He’s Norid, not Norit at all. I was right. One of the little Nor, reaching over himself out of greed and ambition, backed, I suppose, by the Nearga-nor or he wouldn’t dare. She shivered, sick to her stomach at the sight of him. Power enough to light a match on a hot day and he terrifies me, All the time she’d watched him moving about she was trembling, sweat thick and slippery over her body. Her hair clung to her bead in ragged oily strings; her eyes blurred and cleared, the thudding of her heart seemed loud enough to wake the whole Plaz. It took a strong effort of will for her to hold her eyes at the spyhole when she wanted to run and run, to get away from the Nor…

And all the time she knew that the Norid in the bedroom was a nothing, a fool, as much a fool as Lybor and Morescad.

The Norid stepped in front of Morescad and Lybor. “The demon will materialize within the pentacle drawn about the Domnor’s chair.” He thrust his hand into a pouch dangling at his belt and drew forth a knobby stone, dull black streaked with red. “I shut the demon’s soul in this sjeme. Who holds it will control the Domnor once the demon swallows his soul and animates his flesh.”

“Give it to me.” Lybor started to step out of the pentacle.

“Don’t break the line, Doamna ,” the Norid cried hastily. He thrust a hand out, pushing at the air in front of her. “Or I can’t answer for your safety.” Sweat beading his forehead, he tossed the sjeme carefully into her cupped hands.

She caught it eagerly and cuddled it against her breasts, her eyes glittering, her face drawn in harsh lines of greed. Morescad narrowed his eyes, then smiled indulgently and slid his arm around her shoulders. Lybor shuddered, smiled stiffly at first then with her practiced charm. “When do you begin, Ser Nor?”

“Soon.” He glanced at a large hourglass placed on the seat of a chair. There was about a fingerswidth of sand left in the top bubble. “Soon.”

Serroi moved her head away from the spyhole, then braced herself against the wood, her eyes closed, her body trembling. The tajicho was a fire eating into her flesh but she didn’t dare pull it out; it was shielding her. Shaking and sick from too many memories, she pulled in a deep breath and put her eyes back to the spyhole.

Lybor and Morescad were talking in low tones that held a touch of acrimony. One of Morescad’s big hands was resting over Lybor’s, the tips of his fingers touching the sjeme.

Serroi forced herself to watch the Norid and found her fear diminishing as she in a sense confronted him and it. The rats pressed closer against her. Several roaches half-fell, half-flew from the wall, landing on her head and shoulders. The touch roused her, set her wondering, but she shook off her questions and brought her attention back to the room.

The last grains of sand were trickling past the waist of the glass. The Norid circled Morescad and Lybor, flicking a finger at the white candles. One by one they flared up, then began to burn steadily, giving off a thick greasy smoke and an appalling odor. Ignoring Lybor’s exclamation of disgust, he commanded fire from the black candles around the Domnor. Their flames burned an acid green, releasing a mist that smelled of rot and death. Lybor stirred, protested. “Must you?”