Dark of the Moon Read online

  DARK of the MOON

  P. C. Hodgell

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  DARK OF THE MOON: Copyright © 1985 by P.C. Hodgell

  Baen Publishing Enterprises

  P.O. Box 1403

  Riverdale, NY 10471

  www.baen.com

  Paper versions are available from

  Meisha Merlin Publishing Inc.

  www.meishamerlin.com

  ISBN 10: 0-689-31171-0

  ISBN 13: 978-0-689-31171-0

  Cover art by P. C. Hodgell

  First Baen Ebook, April 2007

  To my father, Robert O. Hodgel

  1922-2000

  the consummate artist.

  Characters

  Present And Past

  In The Kencyrath

  The High Council

  ADRIC, LORD ARDETH OF OMIROTH

  BRITHANY:

  his Whinno-hir mare

  PEREDEN:

  the last and youngest of his sons, in command of the Southern Host

  BRANT, LORD BRANDAN OF FALKIRR

  CALDANE, LORD CAINERON OF RESTORMIR

  DONKERRI:

  his grandson

  GENJAR:

  his son, who led the Southern Host at Urakarn

  GRAYKIN ("GRICKI"):

  his spy at Karkinaroth

  KALLYSTINE:

  his daughter, Torisen's limited term consort

  LYRA:

  also his daughter, consort to Prince Odalian

  NUSAIR:

  his son, Donkerri's father

  SHETH SHARP-TONGUE:

  his randon commander

  DEMOTH OF THE COMAN, Kraggen Keep

  KOREY:

  his half brother and rival for control of the Coman

  ESSIEN AND ESSIAR, LORDS EDIRR OF KESTRIE

  HOLLENS (HOLLY), Lord Dam'or of Shadow Rock:

  a distant or bone cousin of Torisen's

  JEDRAK, LORD JARAN OF VALANTIR:

  patron of the Scrollsmen's College at Mount Alban

  ASHE:

  a former randon, now a scrollswoman and singer attached to Mount Alban

  KEDAN:

  temporary lord after Jedrak's death

  KIRIEN:

  Jedrak's great-great-grandchild and heir

  RION:

  his great-great-grandson

  KENAN, Lord Randir of Wilden:

  patron of the Priest's College at Wilden

  KlNDRIE:

  a Shanir of his house, disowned for leaving the priesthood

  TORISEN, LORD KNORTH OF GOTHREGOR, HIGHLORD OF THE KENCYRATH, also called the Black Lord or sometimes "Blackie"

  BURR:

  his Kendar servant

  GANTH GRAY LORD:

  his father, once Highlord until his defeat in the White Hills and exile to the Haunted Lands

  HARN GRIP-HARD:

  his randon commander

  JAME:

  his twin sister

  JORIN:

  her blind ounce

  MARCARN (MARC):

  her friend, an aging Kendar

  LARCH:

  one of his former officers in the Southern Host

  ROWAN:

  his steward at Gothregor

  IMMALAI:

  an Arrin-ken from the Ebonbane

  In Perimal Darkling

  GERRIDON:

  the Master of Knorth, once Highlord, who betrayed his people to Perimal Darkling in exchange for immortality

  GLENDAR:

  his younger half-brother, who led the remnant of the Three People to Rathillien after Gerridon's fall and became Highlord in his place

  JAMETHIEL DREAM-WEAVER:

  Gerridon's twin sister and consort, also called the Mistress

  KERAL:

  a changer, half-brother to Terribend and Tirandys

  TERRIBEND:

  Tirandys' brother, who disappeared at the time of the Fall

  TIRANDYS:

  a changer and Gerridon's half-brother, whose sense of honor led him to follow his fallen lord even though he knew that this would lead to his own damnation; also Jame's Senethari or teacher in the Senethar

  In Tai-Tastigon (See God Stalk)

  BANE:

  a fallen Kencyr, possibly Jame's half-brother

  BORTIS:

  a brigand and Taniscent's lover

  THE B'TYRR:

  Jame's name as a dancer

  CLEPPETTY:

  housekeeper and cook at the Res aB'tyrr

  DALLY:

  Men-dalis's younger brother, who loved Jame and was murdered by Men-dalis, who thought he had betrayed secrets to her

  GHILLIE:

  hostler and musician at the Res aB'tyrr

  HANGRELL:

  an apprentice thief who injured Marc and whom, in turn, Jame delivered to the city guard to be flayed alive

  ISHTIÉR:

  a renegade priest of the Three-Faced God

  MEN-DALIS:

  Theocandi's rival for Leadership of the Thieves' Guild

  PENARI:

  Jame's master in the Thieves' Guild

  SCRAMP:

  a thief who hanged himself, partly because of Jame

  THE TALISMAN:

  Jame's nickname in the Thieves' Guild

  TANISCENT (TANIS):

  the Res aB'tyrr's former dancer, who died of an overdose of Dragon's Blood given her by Bortis

  THEOCANDI:

  lord of the Thieves' Guild, who stole the Book Bound in Pale Leather from Jame and accidentally burned his brains out with it

  TUBAIN:

  innkeeper at the Res aB'tyrr

  Elsewhere

  GRISHARKI:

  warlord of the Grindarks

  KRUIN:

  late King of Kothifir, who went hunting wolvers

  KROTHEN:

  Kruin's son, present king of Kothifir and the Southern Host's employer

  MOTHER RAGGA:

  the Earth Wife of Peshtar, a far-hearer

  ODALIAN:

  Prince of the Agontiri of Karkinor, a would-be ally of the Kencyrath and Caineron's son-in-law

  THE WOLVER GRIMLY:

  a poet and werewolf from the Grimly Holt

  Prologue:

  The Story So Far

  SOME THIRTY MILLENNIA ago, the entity known as Perimal Darkling first breached the barrier between the outer void and the series of parallel universes called the Chain of Creation. It began to devour universe after universe, invading each one in turn by way of the threshold world that linked it to the adjacent dimensions.

  To meet this threat, the Three-Faced God forged together three races from different threshold worlds into the Kencyrath. Then, apparently, he abandoned them. The Three People— Highborn, Kendar, and catlike Arrin-ken—found themselves alone, pitted against a foe too great for them. And so the long, bitterly fought retreat began from world to world. As the fighting skills of the Kencyrath increased, its number dwindled and its bitterness grew. The Three People felt betrayed by their god and yet unable to refuse the role that he had forced on them. Honor alone upheld them.

  Then one man rebelled. Gerridon, Master of Knorth, Highlord of the Kencyrath, offered himself and his followers to Perimal Darkling in exchange for immortality. He persuaded his twin sister and consort, Jamethiel Dream-Weaver, to dance out the souls of the Kencyr Host. On that night, two-thirds of it fell. The remnant fled to the next threshold world, Rathillien.

  At this point, the Kencyrath has been on Rathillien nearly three thousand years. In all that time, there have been no major clashes with Perimal Darkling, though the Perimal Darkling and Gerridon have taken over part of th
e planet, and the Highborn have long since begun to fight among themselves. Some thirty-three years ago, one of these power struggles, combined with a major battlefield defeat in the White Hills, led to the exile of the then Highlord, Ganth of Knorth, called the Gray Lord.

  Ganth settled in the Haunted Lands, near the Barrier between the free lands and those controlled by the Perimal Darkling. He took as consort a mysterious Highborn lady whom he brought back one day out of the hills near the Barrier, seemingly out of nowhere. She bore him twins: Torisen and Jamethiel, called Jame. Then she disappeared back into the hills.

  Ganth didn't particularly want a daughter, especially when it became clear that Jame had inherited Shanir blood, which linked her, as it had both the Master and her namesake, to the oldest, most feared powers of her race. Ganth cursed her and drove her out of the keep.

  Jame crossed the Barrier into Perimal Darkling. She was gone from Rathillien for at least ten years of her life, apparently spending most of that time in Gerridon's House. Then she fled back to her home world, bringing with her an ancient object of power called the Book Bound in Pale Leather but no clear memory of what had happened to her during all that lost time. She found that on Rathillien more than twenty years had passed. She also found her old home, but now it was only a broken shell containing the dead. Her twin brother alone wasn't there. She took their father's ring and his sword, Kin-Slayer, and went southward to look for Torisen.

  What she came across first, though, was the city of Tai-tastigon, where she was delayed for more than a year. During her stay, she became involved in the Thieves' Guild, where she made a name for herself as the Talisman, and with an inn called the Res aB'tyrr, where she discovered that she had not only brought the Book out of Perimal Darkling, but fighting and dancing skills that drew on her Shanir blood in alarming ways. The latter ability proved especially useful, however, when Ishtiér, renegade priest of her own god, went mad and she had to dance down the rampant power of his temple before it could destroy all Tai-tastigon. At the same time, war broke out in the Thieves' Guild and Jame found herself accused of the Guild Lord's murder. She fled the city with her ounce Jorin and the Kendar Marcarn.

  This story begins three days later.

  Chapter 1

  Fire and Ice

  The Ebonbane: 7th of Winter

  TAI-TASTIGON BURNED.

  "Wake, wake!" shouted city guards under windows barred for the night. Fists pounded on doors. Bells began to shrill. From the roof of the Council Hall came the sudden boom of the warning horn, all five of its mouthpieces manned at once.

  The citizens woke. They tumbled bleary-eyed into the streets to find the sky alight overhead. From the north came shrieks and the crash of falling buildings. An unearthly wail rose from the Temple District as the gods, bound in their sanctuaries, felt the stones heat around them. Fiery motes danced in the air. What they touched, burned: roofs, clothes, flesh. Panic spread. Now people were running, some already on fire, down through the twisting streets, toward where the River Tone ran between dark buildings. Quick, the water. The swift, cold current bore them downstream under the soaring bridges to smash against the prow of Ship Island or drown in the white water along its sheer sides.

  On the island itself, in the Palace of the Thieves' Guild, an old man sat in a tapestry-hung room. On his lap lay a book bound in white leather with the texture of an infant's skin. His head tilted back. Gaping mouth and empty eye sockets opened only into darkness.

  The chamber room door burst open. A man clad in royal blue stood on the threshold, his golden hair shining softly in the gloom. He stared at the old man. An unpleasant smile twisted his handsome features, but when he turned to the dark figures crowding the corridor behind him, they saw only anger and grief in his face.

  "The Talisman has done this," he said to them. "Get her."

  A low growl answered him. The hallway emptied. Moments later, shadowy forms slipped through the streets, oblivious to fire and ruin, growling still. Swift as they were, rumor outpaced them:

  The Lord of the Thieves' Guild is dead, is dead. The Talisman has slain him. Brother thieves, the hunt is up!

  The Talisman ran for her life, ran for home. One corner more, and there was the inn, the Res aB'tyrr, blazing. Dark figures came at her, silhouetted by the glare.

  "The fire might have spared it, Talisman. We didn't."

  They closed in on her. Someone inside the inn began to scream. She fought her captors' sooty hands, shouting the names of her friends: Cleppetty, Ghillie, Taniscent. . . . But here was Tanis now, clinging to her arm.

  "A party, Talisman, a lovely party, and you're the guest of honor! See, here's a friend to escort us."

  The brigand Bortis shambled out of the darkness, grinning. The blood streaming from the red ruin of his eyes looked black in the light of the burning inn. He took her arm. The streets were lined with silent people, staring at her: Hangrell, Raffing, Scramp with the rope still around his neck, Marplet . . . dead, all dead. Judgment Square. The Mercy Seat.

  Dally was sitting on the stone chair. He looked up, smiling, and courteously rose to make room for her. His skin hung in tatters about him.

  "I loved you, Talisman. See what your love did to me."

  Still smiling, he bound her to the chair with strips of his own skin.

  They were all coming for her. Firelight flashed off knives, off short, flaying blades, their edges white hot. She huddled back in the Mercy Seat, but they kept coming, coming . . .

  "No!"

  Jame woke to her own cry of horror. Stone pressed against her back, but where were the knives? The air here was cold, so cold that it seared her lungs as she drew a deep, shuddering gulp of it. Where was she? The wind keened and snow stung her face, numbing it. No, not in Tai-tastigon at all, but high above it in the storm-locked passes of the Ebonbane. She had fled the city before the thieves could catch her. Now a blizzard had her instead, and she was lost in it. But why was it so dark? She drew back against the rock that sheltered her, fighting the first feather touch of panic.

  "Marc, where are you?"

  Jorin whimpered in her arms. Blind from birth, the ounce cub saw through her eyes—when she could see anything at all.

  "Marc?" Fear sharpened her voice, making her sound even younger than her nineteen-odd years. "Why is it so dark? Did you let me sleep past moonfall? Marc?"

  Feet crunched on the snow. "Lass? Softly, softly. Let me look."

  She felt the Kendar's big hands gently touch her face.

  "H-have I gone snow blind?"

  "Ah, no such thing. Your eyelids are only frozen shut."

  Tears? thought Jame. But I never cry. Then she remembered the inn.

  "They all burned to death," she said unsteadily. "Cleppetty, Tubain, everyone at the Res aB'tyrr except Taniscent, and she was dead already."

  "Well now, I suppose it could happen," said Marc slowly. "A good bit of the city was burning when we left, but that was three days ago, after the worst of it, and the inn was safe enough then. Now, if you were a farseer—"

  "But I've been spared that at least, haven't I?" Jame's voice sounded strange even to her, as if it belonged to someone else, locked away in the dark, gripped by nightmares and memories. "You needn't remind me that I'm Shanir. The old blood, the old powers—god-spawn, unclean, unclean . . ."

  Marc shook her. Gentle as he was, the tremendous strength in his hands shocked her away from the memory of her father shouting those words after her as he had driven her from the keep that had been her home, into the Haunted Lands. But that had been long ago, before the years in Perimal Darkling, which she could no longer remember, before she had returned to Rathillien to lead her double life as the Talisman, apprentice to the greatest thief in Tai-tastigon; and as the B'tyrr, tavern and temple dancer.

  Jorin anxiously touched noses with her. Then she felt the rasp of his tongue on her frozen eyelids. There in the dark, still closer to dreams than reality, she tried to sort one from the other.

  "So the R
es aB'tyrr is probably safe, but Dally and Bane. . . . Is Dally really dead?"

  "Yes. Very."

  Jame shivered. "And Bane? Is he dead too?"

  "We can only hope so."

  So, in the end, it came to that. Bane, Dally, Tanis, Scramp. . . . She gave a bitter laugh. "It occurs to me, somewhat belatedly, that I'm rather hard on my friends."

  At that moment, the ice sealing her eyelids at last melted away. Jorin rubbed his soft cheek against hers, purring. His whiskers tickled. Marc had let her sleep almost until morning, Jame saw, but in that time the storm had eased. Now more snow seemed to be blowing than falling, and the full moon low in the sky glowed through a thinning cloud cover.

  By its light, Jame regarded her friend with concern. The biggest mountaineer's jacket they had been able to find barely fit across his broad shoulders, much less down those powerful arms. The exposed wrists looked blanched. His beard was white too, both with frost and years. At ninety-four, late middle age for a Kendar, surely he was too old for such a desperate adventure.

  "Why did you ever let me talk you into this?" she demanded.

  "As I recall," he said mildly, "it was more a case of not being able to talk me out of it. We'd pretty well decided even before the uproar that it was time to leave. You have that twin brother of yours to find—name of Tori, wasn't it?—and I've an itch to see old friends in the Riverland. We're going home, you and I. This is just the shortest route."