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  Moonscatter

  Jo Clayton

  Once upon a time a sorcerer soured on life and challenged it to a duel—in other words, this is

  WHAT HAS GONE BEFORE

  A master of many sorceries secured for himself what amounted to immortality—a cessation of the processes of growth and decay within his body—and in so doing, promoted himself to the rank of noris. For several centuries he enjoyed himself collecting knowledge, honing his skills, dueling with other adepts. But as time passed he grew bored, monumentally, disastrously bored.

  After fretting and starting to feel old and useless, he realized that he could beat his boredom by extending his control of change and decay beyond the narrow confines of his body and imposing it on the world beyond the Sorcerers Isles. He could make for himself a new game. To make the game worth playing, he needed an opponent worth playing against. He found his opponent in She whom men called variously Maiden, Matron and Hag, She who was implicit in the alternation of death and birth, in the cycling of the seasons, the complex circling of the moons, She who was phoenix continually reborn from her own ashes, She who sometimes used as a vessel of her presence Reiki, janja to a tribe of the pehiir.

  In Moongather, the challenge is issued, the pieces are selected, the game is begun.

  THE PIECES

  (who act without knowing they are pawns in a power game)

  SERROI

  used by both players—Ser Noris and Reiki janja.

  misborn of the windrunners, preserved from death by burning by Ser Noris, taken to his Tower, raised and taught by him, her gifts used by him until she is twelve.

  abandoned in a desert east of the mijloc when she becomes useless to him.

  walks out of the desert to a tribe of pehiir whose wise woman is Reiki janja, spends several months with her.

  makes her way finally to the Biserica, where she lives in peace for a number of years, studying and learning the skills of a meie. On her second ward—this time a guard to the women’s quarters of the Plaz and the Domnor’s wives, Floarin and Lobori, and his assorted concubines—she and her shieldmate learn of a plot against the Domnor; her shieldmate is killed and she runs.

  when her panic dissipates, she returns to Oras, acquiring a companion called Dinafar, meeting the Gradin family on the way.

  (She is disguised as Dinafar’s brother.)

  played in the game as Reiki janja’s piece, she thwarts the plot against the Domnor, though only partially because he is driven from power by his wife, Floarin, with the aid of a norit and forced to flee for his life.

  she returns to the Biserica, taking the Domnor and Dinafar with her.

  HERN HESLIN

  Fourth Domnor in the Heslin line since the original Heslin united the mijloc.

  is nearly yanked out of his skin and replaced by a demon at the Moongather, but Serroi and a poison knife along with a small horde of rats and roaches introduce a little healthy havoc to the scene, and he escapes with her after a sword fight and some spectacular magic.

  his role in the game seems minimal at first but gradually grows in importance.

  MINOR PIECES

  Moved by Ser Noris: the plotters who think they’re the instigators of the plot, assorted Sleykynin, Plaz guards, demons, a temple keeper of some importance and others.

  Moved by Reiki janja: creata shurin (small brown intelligent teddy bears, sort of), Coperic, rogue and spy for the Biserica, the fisherfolk, the Gradin family, and others.

  In Moonscatter, the game continues, shifting into a new phase. Ser Noris applies pressure wherever he can put his thumb. Reiki janja seems to be losing, though she is fighting hard, but there are small things that begin to disturb the noris.

  SOME WORDS

  AGLI

  A norid with religious aspirations, a taste for sniffing tidra and for watching folk make fools of themselves.

  BISERICA

  An idea.

  A structure at the north end of the Valley of Women.

  Training school for shrine keepers, meien, healwomen.

  Refuge for girls who find it painful or impossible to live within the bounds of their cultures.

  Girls everywhere, a flood of girls, girls chattering, laughing, impatient, sullen, cheerful, glowing, lazy, bubbling with nervous energy. Tie girls, tarom’s daughters, city girls from Sel-ma-carth and Oras, girls from distant peoples whose names and locations would be a catalog of the countries of the world. A culling of girls, the rebellious, the restless, the pleasure-loving, the pious, some fleeing repression, some seeking whatever it was the Biserica seemed to offer.

  Sometimes the refuge is temporary, sometimes permanent. An ancient order whose origins are lost in misty before-time.

  FOLLOWERS OF THE FLAME

  Those dissatisfied with Maiden worship, those who find much more support for self-worth in a male image with aspects of control, strength, order, power, those who want to make sure everyone acts in a way they consider proper.

  HOUSE OF REPENTANCE

  Brainwashing bureau.

  MAIDEN

  Aspect of Her honored in the mijloc.

  MEIE

  Weaponwoman.

  Sent out from the Biserica on three-year wards.

  Fees are paid to the Biserica for the services of a meie pair and these are given an additional fee for themselves.

  Generally serve as bodyguards, guards of womens quarters, escorts for women traveling in caravans or on board ships, as aides to merchants and in other miscellaneous duties that require integrity, intelligence, agility, skill with assorted weapons.

  Up to the present, meien were welcomed and respected everywhere but in Assurtilas.

  NEARGA NOR

  1. All sorcerers currently living.

  2. The council of adepts.

  3. Ser Noris (since the most powerful adepts left alive jump when he says hop).

  NOR

  General term for sorcerers when rank is not in question.

  NORID

  Lowest rank of sorcerers, little more than tricksters performing in the streets.

  NORIT

  The classy types. Not a lot of them around, perhaps a thousand scattered about the world. Their abilities and power are limited when compared to the great nor, but much beyond those of the rather pitiful norids.

  NORIS

  The highest rank. The immortals. The survivors. Four left, one of whom is Ser Noris.

  SHAWAR (The Silent Ones)

  The heart of the Biserica. A circle of women Elders who are greatly talented in magic and whose gifts are devoted to the service of the Maiden and the forces of life. Very little is known about them beyond the above.

  SLEYKYN

  Weaponmen.

  They hire out to provide services; fees are paid both to the individual and the order.

  They serve as bodyguards, assassins, torturers, muscle for ambitious lordlings, raiders, spies.

  SOÄREH

  Lord of light, his aspects are reason, logic, control, power, force, order.

  He is eternal and unchanging.

  STENDA

  Mountain dwellers whose holds are united by a common culture and a great deal of intermarriage.

  Very loosely affiliated with the mijloc, nominally under the rule of the Domnor.

  Independent, arrogant, rigid in their interpretation of custom, xenophobic, deadly fighters, terrible soldiers.

  TAR

  A big chunk of land held by one family, a glorified farm.

  TAROM

  Owner of a tar, head of a family.

  TAROMATE

  Landowner’s council, more or less ru
ns things in its area.

  Usually organized about a town or a village.

  TIE

  A person born on a tar, not legally bound to the land, but in practice that’s what it amounts to.

  As taroms inherit land, ties inherit jobs.

  TILUN

  Combination prayer meeting and orgy.

  TORMA

  Tarom’s wife.

  The Belly of the Lune (an interlude)

  A tic fluttering beside his mouth, long pale fingers tapping a ragged rhythm on his knee, he squatted before the board, slitted obsidian eyes flitting across the pebble patterns where black was advancing in a somber wave to encircle all that remained of white.

  She knelt on an ancient hide, the coarse wool cloth of her skirt falling across the rounds of her thighs in stiff, hieratic folds. Sweat crawled down her calm unsmiling face, down gullies worn in her weathered flesh by time and pain.

  The gameboard sat on a granite slab that thrust through shag and soil like a bone through broken flesh and fell away a stride or two behind the squatting man, a thousand feet straight down to the valley floor where the earth lay groaning under the weight of its own abundance, where even in the breathless autumn heat black midges swarmed across the land, scything and sheaving the grains, stripping a golden rain from fruit trees in the orchards, stooping along plant rows in the fields.

  The sun struck bloody glitters off the ruby teardrop dangling from one nostril as he leaned forward and placed a black pebble on a point, closing a black circle about a lone white straggler. He smiled, a quick lift and fall of his lips, plucked the pebble from the circle and held it pinched between two fingers. “Give it up, Reiki janja. The game is mine. Or soon will be.”

  The clear brown-green of water in a shady tarn, her luminous eyes turned sad as she watched him rise, flick the pebble aside and walk to the cliff edge where he stood gazing hungrily down into the valley, hands clasped behind him, paper-white against the dull black of his robe. “No,” she said. The word hung heavy in the hot, still air. “You started it. End it.”

  A film of sweat on his pale face, he kicked restlessly at bits of stone, unable to match her response, his irritation all the greater for this. After a moment’s strained silence, he turned his gaze on her, his black eyes flat and cold. “End it—why? Hern? Or the meie?” He jabbed his forefinger at the many-courted edifice below. “They’re impotent as long as they sit down there and in my hands if they come out. When I’m ready, I’ll sweep them off the board.” He swung his arm in a slashing arc. “The mijloc is mine already, janja, in all the ways that count. I gather strength every day. You retreat.”

  “Perhaps.” Getting heavily to her feet Reiki edged around the gameboard, shaking her skirt down as she went, pulling hot fat braids like ropes of yellowed ivory forward over her shoulders. She stood beside him at the cliff edge, touching the single gold chain about her neck, stroking its pendant coins, smiling as she did so at the memories it evoked. Once she’d worn a double-dozen chains, but these she gave away—all save the one—on a tranquil summer night long ago. “She’ll surprise you, our little misborn meie. The change in her has begun; you force her growth by everything you do, my friend. Yes, our Serroi will surprise you again and yet again.” He winced as if the words were stones she flung at him. Sighing, she brushed her hands together then rested them on the gathers of her skirt while she watched the bustle far below. “Harvest,” she said softly. “Winter comes on its heels. Your army won’t march through snow.”

  “Winter comes when I will it, not before.” His voice was harsh, his skin drawn taut across his facebones (she saw him for a moment as a black viper cocked to strike). He spoke again (she heard rage that didn’t quite conceal an unacknowledged pain), “Serroi feels my hand on her every night, janja. If she changes, she grows to me. She’ll come to me soon enough when she sees the sun burning hotter each day, when the waterways go dry and the deepest wells spit dust. The vanguard of my army, janja—a furnace wind and a sucking sun.”

  “So you say. We’ll see … we’ll see.” She used both hands to shade her eyes as she gazed intently at the massive double gates in the great wall that cut across the Valley’s narrow northern end, watching a pair of riders pass through the gates and ride up the rough road toward the mountains. “So the blocked pieces get back in the game.” Carefully not looking at Ser Noris, she returned to the gameboard, settled herself on the soft old leather where she’d been before and contemplated the pebble pattern. “My move, I think.”

  CHAPTER I:

  THE MIJLOC

  Tuli sat up, shoved the quilts back, annoyed at being sent to bed so early. Like I was a baby still. She ran her fingers through her tangled hair, sniffed with disgust as she glared at the primly neat covers on her oldest sister’s bed. Hunh! If I was a snitch like Nilis.… She wrinkled her nose at the empty bed.… I’d go running off to Da ’nd tell him how she’s out panting after that horrid Agli when she’s s’posed to be up here with us. She eyed the covers thoughtfully, sighed, stifled an impulse to gather them up and toss them out the window. Wasn’t worth the fuss Nilis would create. She drew her legs up, wrapped her arms around them and sat listening to the night sounds coming through the unglazed, unshuttered windows and watching as the rising moons painted a ghost image of the window on the polished planks of the floor.

  When she thought the time was right, she crawled to the end of the bed, flounced out flat and fished about in the space beneath the webbing that supported the mattress until she found her hunting clothes, a tunic and trousers discarded by her twin. She wriggled off the mattress, whipped off her sleeping smock, threw it at her pillow, scrambled hastily into her trousers, shivering as she did so. She dragged the tunic over her head, tugged it down, resenting the changes in her body that signaled a corresponding change—a depressing change—in the things she would be allowed to do. She tied her short brown hair back off her face with a crumpled ribbon, her eyes on her second oldest sister placidly asleep in the third bed pushed up against the wall under one of the windows. Sanani’s face was a blurred oval in the strengthening moonlight, eyelashes dark furry crescents against the pallor of her skin, her breathing easy, undisturbed.

  Satisfied that her sister wouldn’t wake and miss her, Tuli went to the window and leaned out. Nijilic TheDom was clear of the mountains, running in and out of clouds that were the remnants of the afternoon’s storm. The Scatterstorms were subsiding—none too soon. It was going to be a bad wintering. Tuli folded her arms on the windowsill and looked past the moonglow tree at the dark bulk of the storebarn. Her back still ached from the hurried gleaning after the scythemen—everyone, man woman child, in the fields to get the grain in before the rain spoiled yet more of it. With all that effort the grain bins in the barn were only half full—and Sanani said Gradintar was one of the luckiest. And the fruit on the trees was thin. And the tubers, podplants, earthnuts were swarming with gatherpests or going black and soft with mold. And there wasn’t enough fodder for the hauhaus and the macain and they’d have to be culled. She shivered at the thought then shoved it resolutely aside and pulled herself onto the sill so she sat with her legs dangling, her bare heels kicking against the side of the house. She drew in a long breath, joying in the pungency of the night smells drifting to her on the brisk night breeze—straw dust from the fields, the sour stench of manure from the hauhau pens where the blocky beasts waited for dawn milking, the sickly sweet perfume from the wings of the white moths clinging to the sweetbuds of the moonglow tree. Grabbing at the sides of the window, she tilted out farther and looked along the house toward the room where her two brothers slept.

  Teras thrust his shaggy head out, grinned at her, his teeth shining in his sun-dark face. He pointed down, then swung out and descended rapidly to wait for her in the walled garden below.

  Tuli wriggled around until she was belly-balanced on the sill, felt about for the sigil stones set in the plaster. Once she was set, she went down almost as nimbly as her brother, though the
tightness of the tunic hindered her a little. At about her own height from the ground she jumped, landing with bent knees, her bare feet hitting the turf with a soft thud. She straightened and turned to face her brother, fists on her narrow hips, her head tilted to look up at him. Two years ago when they were twelve she’d been eye to eye with him. This was another change she resented. She scowled at him. “Well?”

  “Shh.” He pointed to the lines of light around the shutters half a stride along the wall. “Come on.” He ran to the moonglow tree, jumped and caught hold of the lowest limb, shaking loose a flutter of moths and a cloud of powerfully sweet perfume.

  Tuli followed him over the wall. “What’s happening?” she whispered. “When you signaled me at supper.…” She glanced at the dark bulk of the house rising above the garden wall. “Nilis?”

  “Uh-huh.” He squinted up at the flickering moons. “TheDom’s rising. Plenty of light tonight.” He started toward the barns, Tuli running beside him. “Nilis was sucking up to that Agli down by the riverroad a bit after the noon meal.” He kicked at a pebble, watched it bound across the straw-littered earth. “She caught me watching and chased me, yelling I was a sneak and a snoop and she’d tell Da on me.” He snorted. “Follow her, hunh! Maiden’s toes, why’d I follow her?” He dragged his feet through straw and clumps of dry grass as they rounded one of the barns and started past a hauhau pen. Tuli slapped her fingers against the poles until several of the cranky beasts whee-hooed mournfully at her. Teras pulled her away. “You want to get caught?”

  “Course not.” She freed herself. “You haven’t told me where we’re going or why.”

  “Nilis and the Agli they were talking about a special tilun, something big. That was just before she saw me and yelled at me so I don’t know what. She sneaked off yet?”

  Tuli nodded. “Her bed’s empty.”

  Teras grinned. “We’re going to go, too.”

  “Huh?” She grabbed at his arm, pulling him to a stop. “Nilis will have our heads, ’specially mine.”

  “No. Listen. Hars and me, we were looking over the home macain to get ready for the cull. I got to talking with him about tiluns ’nd things, Nilis being on my mind, you know, and about the Followers ’nd everything and he said there’s some big cracks in the shutters, they put the wood up green and the Scatterstorms warped th’ zhag out of ’em. Anyone looking in from outside could see just about everything going on.” He grinned again, skipped backward ahead of her, hands clasped behind his head. “I think he watched them the last time he took off to Jango’s, anyway he said they get real wound up, roll on the floor, confess their sins ’nd everything.” Pupils dilated until his pale irids were only thin rings, his eyes gleamed like polished jet. “Maybe Nilis will be confessing tonight.” His foot snagged suddenly on a clump of grass; he tottered, giggling, then caught his balance.