Julian May - Sorcerer’s Moon - Part Three of the Boreal Moon Tale

As for myself, Induna and her mother Maris, a much-admired shaman in Tarn’s coastal Stormlands, had invited me to stay with them indefinitely in order to learn the healer’s art, since I no longer had any taste for spying. Using part of the fortune she had inherited from her late grandsire, the renegade wizard Blind Bozuk, Induna purchased a fine manorhouse and lands that lay in a pleasant place called Deep Creek Cove, backed by grasslands. For my sake the manor was fortified with ingenious magical defenses. Rumors persisted that High King Conrig still thought I was even more of a threat to his Iron Crown than Maudrayne had ever been. Induna and I both feared he’d eventually send someone to eliminate me, and we resolved to be ready.

Maris was a kind person endowed with singular wisdom, who helped me to a deeper understanding of my uncanny abilities. (Up until then, I had been entirely self-taught in magic.) She also gave me valuable advice concerning the two moonstone sigils, Concealer and Subtle Gateway, that were still in my possession. I yearned to cast those soul-destroying tools of the Beaconfolk into the deep sea so I’d never again be tempted to use them; but Maris counseled against it. In one of her trances, she’d had a puzzling vision concerning me and the stones and an enigmatic black creature bound with sapphire chains who dwelt beneath the icecap of the Barren Lands. Maris had no notion of the dark thing’s identity – although I had! – but she was certain that my destiny involved both the creature and the two sigils. When Induna added her pleas to those of her mother, I finally agreed to keep the moonstones.

Induna…

She later admitted that she had loved me almost as soon as she first saw me lying senseless in a rock shelter on the Desolation Coast, at the point of death after having rashly used the Subtle Gateway sigil to transport me and my companions and all our gear to the place where Maudrayne and Dyfrig were imprisoned. Induna realized at once that my mortal illness was the result of Beaconfolk sorcery. The terrible beings of the Sky Realm were feeding on my pain, and no groundling remedy could heal me.

So she shared with me a small portion of her own soul, in a manner that only northland shamans are capable of. It left her diminished even as it cured me. Later, she performed the same mystical operation once again, shortly before I decided to renounce my fealty to King Conrig. Her selfless acts of generosity did not immediately inspire my love. On the contrary, I was left with vague feelings of discomfort and indebtedness that only melted away during the long months when we worked together and began to really know one another.

I was amazed when it finally occurred to me that life without her would be unthinkable. The emotion I felt toward Induna at that time was no overwhelming passion: I was then, as I am now, a man plagued by an aloof and calculating nature. But she was my best friend, my teacher, and my comforter, and if I did not yet love her as wholeheartedly as she loved me, I still wanted none other for my wife.

We were solemnly betrothed according to Tarnian custom, and planned to marry in the summer of 1134, in Blossom Moon, when I was one-and-twenty years of age and Induna was eighteen. But the Cathran warship arrived in the waters off Deep Creek Cove three weeks before that, and our happy plans came to nothing.

Commanded by Tinnis Catclaw, the same debonair but unscupulous Lord Constable who had agreed to murder Princess Maudrayne on Conrig’s orders, the vessel carried a coven of mercenary Didionite wizards. Six of the disguised magickers came stealthily ashore and combined their talents to overpower Induna and Maris while they were beyond our home’s magical defenses, visiting the byre of a local small-holder to attend the difficult birth of a foal. I myself had been working with them, until I was sent back to the manorhouse to fetch a special physick to soothe the suffering mare. I was there when the wizards announced their ultimatum.

I was ordered to row out to the warship lurking just beyond the cove’s northern headland and surrender to the Lord Constable, who carried the Sovereign’s warrant for my arrest…or else scry my womenfolk as they were burnt alive in a tarnblaze holocaust that would leave behind nothing but a heap of charred bones.

The horrific tarnblaze chymical was impervious to any sorcerous intervention I might have attempted, nor had I any hope of reaching Induna and Maris before it could be ignited. I had no choice but to comply.

I left the place that had become my only true home and allowed myself to be shackled and hauled aboard the Cathran man o’ war. Lord Catclaw awaited me on deck, an oddly apologetic expression on his handsome countenance and his long blond hair tied in a tail. Two armed seamen gripped me. He ordered a third to slice off my clothing and footgear with a keen varg sword, using great caution. When I stood stark naked, the constable smiled in satisfaction as he saw the moonstone sigil called Concealer hanging on a thin chain around my neck. Properly conjured, it would render me invisible. Conrig knew about it, of course. I had used it in his service.

‘Don’t think to call upon your devilish Beaconfolk amulet,’ Catclaw warned me, ‘or I’ll have this fellow here bespeak the other wizards on shore to ignite the tarnblaze.’ He beckoned to a black-robed magicker standing nearby, who held a golden goblet and a pair of nippers. ‘You! Get the sigil off him. I’ve been told it cannot be conjured unless it’s next to his skin. Be very careful not to handle it yourself, except with the cup and tool. The High King himself has warned me of its perils.’

The wizard eased the translucent small pendant into the goblet, then severed its chain. Had he touched the moonstone with his own bare flesh, he would have been hideously burned. Concealer was bonded to me, and no one else could use it or even handle it with impunity.

‘Where is the second sigil?’ Catclaw demanded. ‘The one called Subtle Gateway, which transports a person instantly from place to place? I have been commanded by the King’s Grace to seize both amulets from you and bring them back to him.’

In spite of all my warnings, sigil sorcery obviously still held an unhealthy fascination for Conrig.

I responded in a near-whisper, which was all I was capable of without betraying myself. ‘I threw the thing into deep water months ago. His Grace knows full well how much I abominate moonstone magic. Concealer is a minor sort that causes only insignificant discomfort to the user, but Gateway was one of the so-called Great Stones. Conjuring it induced an appalling agony and put my very soul in peril to the pain-eating Beaconfolk. When I rescued Princess Maudrayne and completed my mission, I had no more need of it. I was glad to get rid of the thing.’

I was lying. But Catclaw was not about to find that out until I learned what he planned to do with me – along with Induna and Maris.

One of the ship’s officers stepped forward. ‘Shall we go ashore and search for the stone in his house, my lord?’

‘Why bother?’ I told the Lord Constable. ‘The sigils are worthless to the High King, whether he realizes it or not. When I die – and I presume my fate is sealed – any sigil owned by me becomes inactive: a worthless piece of rock. I learned how to use them only by a lucky accident. No one knows how to bond them to a new owner save the Salka who made them in the first place. Once, Queen Ullanoth of Moss and her lunatic brother Beynor also knew the secret. But she’s dead and he has disappeared.’

Tinnis Catclaw frowned and appeared to be considering the matter.

Emboldened, I asked the all-important question. ‘Do you now intend to kill my betrothed and her mother as well as me?’