A Rising Moon Read online

  “And if they give you orders you think misguided after your plain advice, you will ignore those orders?”

  “I’ve done so exactly once, my Emperor, and you know the results: Ceanndraoi Voada and Ceannàrd Maol Iosa were both eliminated.” And it was close enough even then, he wanted to add. If Ilkur’s cohorts hadn’t arrived when they did, I would have been dead on the field of battle at Siran, and only the fates know what Voada might have done then. As it was, we lost so many troops that we couldn’t even pursue the remnants of the Cateni army over the River Meadham. There was no final and complete victory. But he said none of that, only stared placidly forward as the hawks glared ominously on either side of the dais, his hands folded calmly in his lap as if this were just a conversation with his officers.

  Another sniff. “Great-Voice Utka questions whether you can be trusted, Commander.”

  There it is—the reason for this audience. “And do you wonder that also, my Emperor? If so, I freely offer you my sword, my resignation, and my life if you wish to take it.”

  Pashtuk gave a barking laugh that lifted his beard. “By all the old gods, you are blunt to a fault,” he spat, his volume causing all the clerks to look back toward him. The guards stationed around the room stiffened, as if ready to move. “Tell me, Commandant Savas, did you agree with the Great-Voice’s decision to invite me to come here?”

  “I did not,” Altan answered. “I told him that we should wait perhaps another year or even two. I feel the level of unrest among the Cateni is still too high. Voada’s death has only enflamed them further. Our army is continually quashing small uprisings, especially in the northern towns of Albann Deas, and all of our incursions over the River Meadham meet severe resistance from the clans there. Too many of our soldiers are Cateni conscripts rather than Mundoan regulars, and I don’t entirely trust them. I asked Great-Voice Utka to request replacement troops from Rumeli: loyal and well-trained Mundoan soldiers, not Cateni.”

  “He’s made that request, and I’ve granted it; the first cohorts should be arriving within a moon.” Pashtuk paused, sinking back against the cushions of his chair. “The question is whether you’ll be their commander or some other. I know which Great-Voice Utka would prefer.”

  “And is that Emperor Pashtuk’s preference as well?” Altan asked.

  “No, it’s not,” Pashtuk replied, and for the first time, Altan let himself relax. The tension drained away in one swift breath. You live to fight again, to live in this world another day. At least as long as he doesn’t find out what else you’ve done without the Great-Voice’s knowledge . . . “But don’t misunderstand me,” Pashtuk continued. “You are still alive only because Great-Voice Vadim and Ceanndraoi Voada are both dead. Utka will continue to be my Voice here once I leave, and I expect you to obey him as you would obey me whether you agree with his orders or not. Follow your instincts again rather than the orders you’re given, and I will have your head presented to me on a platter. Do I make myself clear, Commander?”

  “Completely so, my Emperor.”

  “Then you may leave, Commander, with your head still on your shoulders for the moment.”

  Altan rose, saluted, then bowed deeply to the emperor. “Thank you, my Emperor,” he said. As was customary, he walked backward toward the door, continuing to face Pashtuk, his head inclined to the floor. The guards at the door opened it for him as he approached and turned.

  He tried not to look relieved as the faces of the highborn outside all stared at him.

  3

  A Visitor in the Night

  TEMPLE NIGHT WATCH.

  To Orla, it was the most boring duty possible for an acolyte. She was stationed there on the remote chance that a taibhse—the soul of a dead Cateni—became lost on the way to its final resting place in Tirnanog and wandered into the temple, where Orla could show the ghost the sun-path that would lead it to the otherworld. But Onglse was populated largely by draoi and menach, none of whom were likely to become lost should they happen to die during Orla’s watch, and Onglse was too far from the shore of Albann Bràghad for any Cateni souls on the mainland to find their way across the water to the Temple of Bàn Cill.

  No, this was drudge work that was far more punishment than reward for the acolyte. At least on day watch there were people moving in and out of the temple and other duties that kept one alert. That was rarely the case during night watch. The most difficult task was keeping your eyes open so that if Menach Moire happened to look in, as she inevitably did, you weren’t found asleep.

  Orla sat on a cushionless wooden stool to one side of the central altar. The polished marble of the temple’s sun-paths gleamed in the guttering, shuddering light of the torches set in the sconces around the temple, which Orla would be expected to replace at least once during the night. The sun-paths formed an X whose center was the altar and the lines of which led to the temple’s four large windows framing the sunsets and sunrises of the two solstices. Above the altar, the roof of the temple was open to the sky, and tonight wan moonlight trickled down erratically from between streaking, pale clouds. Orla pulled her cloak closer around her for warmth and tried to find a comfortable position on the unyielding seat of the stool.

  She expected this to be a long and boring night.

  True to form, Menach Moire appeared at the temple’s main door a few stripes after Orla’s watch began. Orla saw the movement and a glimpse of the red cloak that looked black in the dimness. “Menach,” she said, rising from the stool and bowing her head as custom required. She heard the menach’s sniff echoing along the stone walls.

  “Acolyte Orla,” the woman answered. “Anything to report?”

  “Nothing, Menach,” Orla told her. “No one’s come by other than yourself, and I’ve seen no taibhsean to send along. It’s been a quiet night.” Just like every other night you’ve made me spend here. She didn’t add that, but she suspected Menach Moire could see the complaint on her face.

  Another sniff echoed. Orla caught a glimpse of Menach Moire’s pale nose emerging from under the shadow of the hood of her cloak. “See that you stay awake, acolyte,” she said. “And I expect you to be at the temple tomorrow for lessons no later than Fourth Stripe.”

  “Tha, Menach,” Orla told her. Yes. She suppressed the sigh she wanted to heave. Having to return by the fourth stripe after sunrise meant she’d have very little sleep.

  With a final sniff, Menach Moire left the doorway and continued on, and Orla furtively gave the gesture of the Horned Spirit to her back. She resumed her seat on the stool, shivering in the cold as overhead the moon slid behind clouds once more.

  She wasn’t sure how late it was when she first noticed movement near the door. Orla saw a glimmer of pale light—a form that appeared to be a person’s, though blurred and indistinct. At first, she thought that against all the odds, someone had died and their taibhse had become lost and needed help finding the sun-path. But as she rose from her stool, she saw the specter more clearly. The apparition’s face was especially difficult to distinguish, as its features seemed to change from moment to moment. Orla knew it then for what it was: not a lost soul taibhse but an anamacha, the merged ghosts of dead draoi who served as the conduit of power for a living draoi. An anamacha allowed its draoi to gather and harness the power of Magh da Chèo, where the spirits of the draoi dwelled eternally, never permitted to go on to Tirnanog to join their relatives, their spouses, or their friends in the Otherworld of the Cateni.

  Orla had seen the anamacha who accompanied the draoi here on Onglse—that of Greum Red-Hand, of Ceiteag, of Menach Moire, and of all the others. The anamacha were presences unseen by any but other draoi. This anamacha, though, was alone, without a draoi. Its elusive face seemed to stare at her, and it lifted a hand as if beckoning her. Orla remained still, shivering not just from the night’s chill but from seeing the anamacha. Finally, as the anamacha gestured again, she started to take a step toward them.<
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  “No!” The imperious command came from beyond the anamacha. Ceanndraoi Greum Red-Hand stood there with Draoi Ceiteag, the torcs around their necks gleaming in torchlight, both of them flanked by their own anamacha. The night air seemed bright with all their presences. “Stand away from them,” he said as the anamacha continued to glide into the room as if riding on the air itself, moving toward Orla and the altar.

  “Ceanndraoi?” Orla queried, confused and uncertain what to do.

  “Don’t let that anamacha touch you,” Greum told her. “Come here, now. Toward me.”

  Orla started to obey, but the anamacha moved quickly to interpose themselves between her and Ceanndraoi Greum. The misty, multiple faces stared at her, the arm lifting again—pointing, Orla noticed, to the silver oak leaf pendant that she wore. Then the features suddenly settled, and Orla let out a gasp.

  “Mother,” she whispered. “Mam, I see you . . .”

  “Orla!” Greum and Ceiteag barked warningly in concert, but she only distantly noted their voices. She could feel the chill of the anamacha, their hand hovering near her arm. She stared into her mother’s face as the anamacha’s mouth moved silently, and Orla read her own name on those ghostly lips.

 

  Orla nearly sobbed, a hand flying to her mouth to hold back the mingled grief and joy. “Mam, it’s truly you?”

  The anamacha nodded wordlessly, and Orla reached for the specter’s hand. The anamacha walked into her as if they were entering a room. The shock of contact was immediate. she heard the anamacha say, their voice that of a chorus speaking in stuttered unison. Suddenly the temple and Greum’s shout of outrage faded around her, and she was standing somewhere else, the world she’d known all knotted and tangled and overlaid with another. In that second world, a storm raged over a bitter, broken landscape, lightning splitting the sky and a frigid wind howling. Orla blinked, trying to combine the two worlds into a single reality, but she could not. They remained stubbornly intermingled. She could smell the sharp acrid scent of the storm, and the wind was loud with voices, and ghosts walked around her: female, male, young, old, handsome, scarred, smiling, angry, frightened.

  One voice dominated. It was not her mother’s, even though the ghost nearest Orla had Voada’s face and it was that ghost who spoke. The anamacha’s voice was not a single one; it was a dozen voices or more.

  And with that statement, the anamacha stepped away from her, gliding to her side, and the real world snapped back into place around her. Greum Red-Hand was glaring at her. “I told you to stay away from that anamacha, girl!” he railed, speaking the words so angrily that she thought he might spit.

  “Ceanndraoi, you saw . . . I couldn’t . . .”

  “Nor did you make much of an effort,” he answered, then released a long, bitter sigh. “That is your mother’s anamacha? This is the Moonshadow?”

  “You know it is, Ceanndraoi,” Ceiteag answered before Orla could respond. In the flicker of the torches, Orla could see moving shadows in the deep wrinkles that carved the old woman’s face. “I can feel it. I remember it from when Voada had it.”

  Orla nodded her assent. “Draoi Ceiteag is correct,” she said to Greum.

  Greum uttered another sigh as bitter-sounding as the previous one. “It’s too late now. The best we can hope for is avoiding the madness that overcame your mother. The Cateni can’t afford another catastrophe like that, not now.”

  He gestured to someone unseen behind him, and Orla noticed Menach Moire lurking in the deep shadows of the corridor with another of the acolytes—a young man—standing alongside her, yawning. “You’ll return to the dormitory for the rest of the night, Orla. Menach Moire has brought another acolyte to finish this night watch for you. You’ll come to me tomorrow, and we’ll determine whether you’re even capable of being a draoi. You’re no longer an acolyte destined to be a menach, and if you think that means a better and easier life for you, you’re mistaken. It remains to be seen whether you have the strength to handle your anamacha, especially this anamacha. It may be that they will simply consume you when you try.” The ghost of a smile drifted across the ceanndraoi’s lips with that statement, as if the thought gave him momentary pleasure. “Still, you’ve given us no choice but to try. For now, you’re not to let the anamacha enter you again until I’m with you to guide you. Do you understand me?”

  “Tha, Ceanndraoi,” she told him, though she wondered how she could stop the anamacha if they decided that was what they wanted to do.

  “Ceanndraoi,” Ceiteag said, “perhaps I should take on the task of training her. You have other and more important duties before you. After all, I was the first to teach Voada.”

  Greum was already shaking his head before Ceiteag finished. “I will do it,” he said, and there seemed to be some unspoken communication between the two. Orla found herself staring at Ceiteag. She knew my mam? She taught her?

  But she had no chance to ask about that. Greum Red-Hand gathered up his cloak, gestured for Orla to accompany him, and with Ceiteag following behind, they left the temple. Orla inclined her head to Menach Moire as they passed her and the acolyte in the hall outside, but there was nothing but anger in the glare Menach Moire gave her. To Orla, the Moonshadow’s anamacha was painfully visible in the night, a glowing apparition that shadowed her footsteps, a cold presence at her side that gave her little comfort.

  * * *

  Sorcha was awake when Orla returned to the dormitory, sitting in the hallway outside the bedroom with a steaming cup of mint infusion. She stood up and silently handed the cup to Orla. “Ceanndraoi Greum came into the dormitory half a stripe ago with that old woman draoi,” Sorcha said as Orla sipped at the mint-laden brew, relishing the sweetness of the honey Sorcha had put in it. “They were staring at the empty air like they were following someone I couldn’t see. They walked over to your bed, then turned to leave again a few breaths later. The Red-Hand saw me watching them and asked me where you were. I told him you were on night watch. ‘That’s where the anamacha must be going, then,’ he said to the other draoi. They left the room still staring at the empty air.”

  Orla glanced at the Moonshadow’s anamacha. “You don’t see them?” she asked Sorcha.

  “See what?”

  “My mother’s anamacha. The Moonshadow’s anamacha. They came to me in the temple. They’re here now, next to me, at my right side.”

  Orla saw Sorcha’s eyes moving as she searched the hallway, then the woman shook her head. “I’m sorry. I don’t see anything.” Her lips tightened in a forlorn half scowl. “But then, I don’t see the ghosts of the dead that you and Menach Moire and the other acolytes can see, either. And you . . . you see both taibhsean and anamacha. I don’t have the gift of either sight.”

  “You have other gifts, Sorcha,” Orla told her. “Better ones. You and Azru saved me when no one else would. You were my one true friend in the soldiers’ encampments. You kept me alive and hopeful when I would have despaired after I miscarried Bakir’s child, and you helped me escape from the Mundoa when the time came. I owe you nothing less than my life.”

  She reached out her hand to stroke Sorcha’s cheek, but the woman stepped back from her before she could touch her, her eyes widening. “Menach Moire came in after Greum Red-Hand left and told me that you’re no longer an acolyte,” she said, her eyes downcast.

  “The Ceanndraoi said he’s going to teach me to be a draoi,” Orla told her. “I’m to start in the morning.”

  Sorcha nodded. “I thought the mint infusion might help you sleep. You should go to your bed now. The sun will be up in less than a hand of stripes.”

  “Sorcha . . .” Orla began, but she was thinking that Ceanndraoi
Greum must have known that the anamacha would claim her. He had to have surmised that nothing he could say or do would stop that from happening, since he’d already told Menach Moire to bring a new acolyte to the temple to replace her before Orla ever saw the anamacha. She looked down at the mug in her hand as if she could find answers in the tan ripples there. “Sorcha, there’s no glory and no privilege in being able to see taibhsean or anamacha. My mother could also see both, and those abilities brought her nothing but pain, loss, and death.” She remembered seeing the Moonshadow’s anamacha as a child in the temple at Pencraig and how everything had changed for them horribly afterward. “And having those gifts has done nothing but bring me the same so far,” she finished.

  Sorcha lifted her chin and attempted a smile that faltered quickly. “Go on and sleep,” she said.

  “I don’t know that I can. I have so much to think about . . .” Orla stopped. “But I’ll try. Will you stay close enough that, if I need you, you could hold my hand?” Orla held out her left hand, the side away from the anamacha. Sorcha looked at it, then silently lifted her own hand and took Orla’s. Together they walked to the dormitory’s door.

  4

  Meeting Dead Draoi

  DESPITE HER WORDS, she must have slept, for it was Sorcha’s hand on her shoulder that shook Orla gently awake in the morning. She opened her eyes to find the dormitory’s windows alight with burgeoning dawn. Sorcha was already dressed, crouched at Orla’s bedside. “Menach Moire wants me to attend to her,” Sorcha said, “or I’d have let you sleep a little longer. Good luck today. Promise you’ll find me later and tell me all about your lesson with Ceanndraoi Greum?”

  Orla nodded, finding Sorcha’s hand and squeezing it once. Sorcha gave her a fleeting smile as she rose to her feet to leave, her gaze drifting past Orla as if searching for the anamacha she was unable to see. Orla looked herself, though she found she didn’t need to; she could feel their presence like a cold stone wall alongside her. Orla could see the anamacha as well, standing on the other side of the bed, a pale wisp in the dawn light. In full daylight, she knew, it would be entirely invisible even to her, though she was certain she would still feel their proximity. A creature of shadow and darkness, always . . .