Dark Moon Defender

  “I understand,” Ellynor whispered. I understand far better than you know. She forced her cramped muscles to unclench, pushed herself almost upright in the saddle.

  “She’s been sick,” Shavell said reluctantly to the Lestra.

  “Yes, I know she has. But she will be stronger now,” the Lestra said, her voice sounding most sympathetic. She urged her big horse closer to Ellynor’s and held out her hand. In it was a small, fluid shape that Ellynor recognized as a water bag. “You will feel better if you have something to drink. Take a few sips, and then lead us on our way.”

  Ellynor would have liked to refuse, to fling the container to the ground at the stallion’s sharp feet, but she was too thirsty. And there was so much distance left to cover. She murmured her thanks and lifted the bag to her mouth, greedily sucking down half the contents.

  How could a tainted gift from such a vile source taste so sweet?

  “Thank you,” she said again, handing it back. “I’m better now. I’ll lead until someone else knows the way.”

  She made herself straighten her shoulders and guide them all back toward the road. She was in front of the party, so no one could see her lips move, no one could catch her silent, desperate prayer. Great Mother, ride beside me. Great Mother, pour your strength into my body. Great Mother, show me what I must do. . . .

  She felt the breeze stir about her so faintly that it was as gentle as a mother’s breath on a baby’s neck. The sky overhead grew even blacker, as clouds scrolled over the face of the night, hiding the helpless stars. A few of the men riding to the rear murmured apprehensively among themselves, worrying about a possible storm. But Ellynor knew it was no such thing. Merely, the Dark Watcher had settled in.

  She felt the goddess’s presence during the whole of that interminable trek. It was as if the Black Mother laid her hand on Ellynor’s back and bade her lean against it for comfort. It was as if she brushed her lips across Ellynor’s cold cheek and promised her the night would hold no more terrors.

  Once, Ellynor saw an owl fly overhead, white and silent, a midnight hunter. Three or four times she noticed bats swooping by, dipping close enough to see her face and then clawing their way back up through the sticky air. For a good hour, she knew that a wolf paced beside them, an envoy from the goddess, protector of the Black Mother’s lost children. A moth came and settled on Ellynor’s hands where they were wrapped around the reins, and rested there for the whole of that endless journey.

  As her body loosened with exhaustion and her ears still rang with the mystic’s screams, Ellynor clung to the only thing that made sense in this whole dreadful night. The feeling that the Great Mother had enveloped her in healing hands and would carry her safely home. The belief that the idle wind had whispered actual words in her ear: I am here. I am holding you. I will not let you go.

  FOR the first two days after she made it back to the convent, Ellynor did nothing but sleep. Darris came and checked on her three times; Astira and Lia were at the door every few hours, offering food and anxiously asking what they could do to help. It was easier to let people believe she was physically ill—not heartsick—so Ellynor allowed them to wipe her face with cold water and feed her bowls of thin soup. And then she went back to sleep.

  Rosurie showed only the most cursory interest in her condition, though she did keep the chamber pot emptied and the room clean, and made sure the candle was lit and set in the window every night. “Let me know if you need something,” her cousin said in such a perfunctory way that Ellynor was not moved to ask for help or advice.

  “I’m fine,” she said. “I just want to sleep.”

  But sleep brought no answers, and neither did the wakeful hours spent lying in bed, staring at the walls, trying to decide what to do. She had to leave the convent, that was certain. Where could she go? Where could she turn for aid?

  If she went to Neft, Justin would help her.

  If she went to Justin, and her brothers found out, Justin would die.

  If she left the convent without Rosurie, her father might ban her from the house.

  If she left the convent and did not return to the Lirrens, Ellynor would die.

  She had to leave the convent, and bring Rosurie with her, and make it safely to the Lirrens without anyone’s assistance.

  Therefore, as she rose from her sickbed on that third day, Ellynor decided that Rosurie had become her priority.

  It was impossible to talk to her cousin for most of the day, however. The novices who were Ellynor’s particular friends gathered around her in the dining hall at breakfast, asking how she felt, exclaiming over her paleness.

  “You look so thin,” Lia said. “You haven’t been sick long enough to lose so much weight!”

  “I’m fine.” Ellynor said. “I’m hungry now.”

  “You’re working in the gardens today with me,” Astira said. “It’s cool out, not too bad. I know you like it cold. It will do you good to get sun on your face.”

  “Where’s Rosurie working? She was gone from the room when I got up this morning.”

  Astira made a face. “She’s off with Shavell and Darris. Some great plan they’re hatching. A new ritual or something, I don’t know. We won’t see her again till dinnertime.”

  Indeed, the entire day passed without a glimpse of Rosurie, but it was a restful, healing sort of day even so. As Astira had predicted, Ellynor gathered strength from working outside, pulling up the dead weeds and discarded stalks, clearing out piles of leaves from the bare garden. The brisk air calmed her circling thoughts and made her skin tingle with sensation. She wouldn’t have gone inside all day, even for lunch, except that she was so hungry.

  Rosurie was present at dinner, but sitting too far away for Ellynor to talk to her, and then Rosurie was chosen to sing the evening devotional, while Ellynor was sent back to their room. Ellynor went upstairs, lit the candle, unbound her hair, and brushed it out with slow, methodical strokes. It had been weeks since Rosurie had last dyed it for her; maybe her cousin would have time tomorrow to add new pattern lines.

  But Ellynor never got a chance to ask. She fell asleep before Rosurie returned to the room, and Rosurie was still abed the next morning when Ellynor had to hurry downstairs to help with breakfast.

  The entire rest of the week went that way, Ellynor and Rosurie speaking briefly in passing but never having a moment when they were alone in the same room at the same time long enough to talk. When one of them was chosen to sing the nightly rituals, the other was sent up to her room; when one of them was assigned morning duty in the kitchens, the other had a chance to sleep in. Finally, at the end of that week, as the moon waxed toward full, a majority of novices had been kept behind to sing, and Rosurie and Ellynor were both with the group that stood in the courtyard and lifted their voices. At midnight, they climbed the stairs and let themselves into their room and quickly began getting ready for bed.

  “I wonder if we could stay up and talk a few minutes,” Ellynor said as Rosurie lit the candle in the window. “I feel like I’ve scarcely seen you! Astira said you’ve been consulting with Darris and Shavell on something.”

  Rosurie laughed. “I suppose you could call it that. I wanted to know what I had to do to take the next step—to move from a novice to proselyte. Darris and Shavell are dedicants, and, of course, I can’t be one of those, not yet, though I want to be someday. But there are only ten proselytes, and Deana will become a dedicant in a few months, and so there is room for me, Shavell said. But it’s a lot of work.”

  Every word Rosurie said made Ellynor feel more depressed and anxious. “So you think—you don’t ever plan—you want to stay here. For the rest of your life,” she said. “You don’t ever think you’ll go back to the Lirrens.”

  “Never,” Rosurie said.

  Ellynor moved on the bed, sitting up with her back to the wall. “But, Rosurie, I want to go back,” she said in a whisper. “I am not—I am not as happy here as you are. And I don’t think the family will let me return without you.?
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  “Then stay!” Rosurie said. She had been perched on the edge of her bed, but now she joined Ellynor on hers. “You say you’re not happy here, but you would be if you would just give yourself over to the goddess. If you would let her take over your heart and your mind—if you would make her will, your will. It’s not easy, I know. I want to—I want to push myself into her arms, fling myself at the Silver Lady, but I hesitate. I get afraid. And then I despise myself for my cowardice. I want to find a way to show her I am worthy so that she will take me as her own.”

  Ellynor could understand a little of that devotion; so she felt about the Black Mother, whose presence was so real in Ellynor’s life. But something about Rosurie’s voice, her expression, made Ellynor shiver. It was as if Rosurie’s love for the Pale Mother bordered on madness.

  Obviously, Rosurie would not be disposed to listen to Ellynor’s tale of mystics burned at the behest of the moon goddess. Or she might hear the story and react far differently than Ellynor had hoped. Praise be to the Silver Lady for striking down mystics, burning them where they lay. . . .

  “I don’t think I have your willpower, Rosurie,” Ellynor said instead. “But I will hope with all my heart that you attain your own dream. That you become a proselyte and a dedicant in service to the goddess.”

  “I will,” Rosurie said confidently. “I just have to think of a way to prove my worth.”

  The conversation unsettled Ellynor so much that even after Rosurie returned to her own bed and fell asleep, she could not close her eyes. Clearly, she would not be able to persuade Rosurie to leave; clearly, she could not stay. She should just plan her own escape then, slowly amass food that would take her through a couple weeks of travel, study a map, if she got a chance, so that she could visualize her route. If she left at night, it was possible no one would miss her for an entire day. Rosurie would think she had risen early to work in the kitchens and it was unlikely anyone else would sound the alarm. And she would be able to slip away under cover of darkness . . . nothing easier. . . .

  That decision made, she was able to fall asleep, but she was so tired that she had a hard time waking. What eventually made her open her eyes was a long pounding at the door and the sound of Astira’s voice laughing outside.

  “Come on, you two, wake up! Breakfast is over and you’re both supposed to be helping me in the kitchen. Were you up all night talking? I’m coming in.”

  Ellynor yawned and struggled to gain full consciousness just as the door swung open. Astira’s shriek made her snap her jaw shut and sit up, staring around.

  Rosurie lay on her back on the cold stone floor, completely nude, her arms spread out, her hands cupped beseechingly, her eyes open but unseeing. All around her, like sloppily harvested wheat, her long hair lay in patterned drifts. Her skull was imperfectly shaven, nicked here and there from a badly wielded knife or razor. A thin line of blood traced a route from her forehead down her cheek on the right side of her face.

  Rosurie had sacrificed her hair—her family, her sebahta—to the Silver Lady. Then, apparently, had fallen into a trance from which she would not soon be wakened. Neither Astira’s second scream nor Ellynor’s scramble to the floor caused Rosurie to flutter or stir. Ellynor put up a shaking hand to check Rosurie’s pulse, but her heart was still beating. She was still alive.

  She had merely given herself completely over to the goddess.

  CHAPTER 25

  DARRIS allowed Ellynor to spend the entire day in the infirmary, though there was very little either of them could do for Rosurie. “But while you’re here, you may as well see if you can help Deana. She’s had a cough for two weeks now and she’s just miserable. And you could fold these cloths for me, that’s a good girl. I don’t know how everything got into such a muddle.”

  Ellynor did everything Darris requested but only halfheartedly. She certainly wasn’t going to risk calling on the Black Mother’s power to see if she could help poor, wretched Deana, who sounded like she might cough her life away. Not when mystics were being burned in their houses. Not when anyone who noticed what Ellynor did would think she was mystic.

  She didn’t even want to summon magic to see if she could call Rosurie back from her ecstatic trance. This was a matter between the goddesses. If Rosurie had offered herself to the Silver Lady and the Silver Lady had accepted her, Ellynor had no right to ask the Dark Watcher to pull her cousin back from the brink of oblivion. Rosurie would not thank her, and the Pale Mother might not forgive her. Ellynor was already wary of incurring the Silver Lady’s wrath. Now was not the time to put a foot wrong.

  But she was still consumed by anxiety all day as she watched Rosurie lie motionless on her sickbed. It could not be good to lie so still, to loiter so close to death. Rosurie took no food or water all day, did not speak, did not even appear to be breathing.

  Ellynor could not think what she would tell the sebahta if Rosurie died.

  A hasty dinner with the other girls, whispering to Astira and Lia what little she knew, then Ellynor was back in the sickroom to spend the night. Deana was still coughing, and a novice had been brought in with a similar ailment, so Ellynor would have plenty to occupy her during the hours she could not sleep.

  “Hope there isn’t a sickness that sweeps through the whole convent, but there probably is,” Darris grumbled. “I heard Shavell coughing over dinner. Next thing you know, it’ll be you and me.”

  Ellynor found she did not much care if Shavell came down with a dreadful illness that kept her confined to the infirmary for weeks. She wouldn’t lift a hand to aid the dedicant, wouldn’t even whisper a prayer to the Silver Lady. Let someone else care if Shavell was sick or well. Let someone else nurse her. Ellynor would not be able to show the older Daughter any kindness at all.

  She did, however, try to ease Deana and the other patient through the night, though she was still afraid to try any magic. Magic. How quickly she had come to accept that word to describe what she was capable of when the Black Mother moved through her body. How quickly she had come to believe that she was a mystic.

  But she could not use that power, not here, not now. She stepped between the beds, administering herbs, offering water, straightening blankets. Deana and the novice alternately slept and wheezed, both of them sounding truly uncomfortable, but Rosurie did not stir at all.

  ROSURIE lay unconscious for the next five days. Ellynor divided her time between the sickroom, the dining hall, and her bedroom, where sleep was hard to come by. So many things weighed on her mind! Worry about Rosurie, anxiety about her own situation, ongoing horror about the midnight trip to the mystic’s cottage. If only she could talk to her father—if only she could talk to Justin—no, she could not wish for Justin’s advice or counsel, for that would mean Justin’s presence, which she could not afford. But, oh, if only she knew which way to turn, where to go for help.

  She prayed for guidance to the Black Mother every night. Invariably, she came away calmed, heartened by the conviction that someone was watching over her, but still no closer to a solution to any of her dilemmas.

  When she returned to the sickroom late in the morning on that fifth day, Darris was beaming.

  “Your cousin is better,” the dedicant greeted her. “She woke around noon and spoke a few words. Ate some soup. She’s sleeping again now, but it’s a more natural sleep. I think she will make a complete recovery.”

  “Praise the Mother,” Ellynor said. “I still think I’ll sit with her again tonight.”

  “I would be happy if you did. And now we have three other patients. All coughing.”

  “You were right. Everyone’s going to get sick.”

  That night was even less restful than the ones before, since the two youngest patients were fretful and impossible to please, and Ellynor was constantly bringing them water or soothing them when they started to cry. Deana, who had remained in the infirmary this whole time, seemed to be failing instead of improving. She lay almost unmoving under the covers, but her breathing was rapid, strai
ned, and shallow. Ellynor stood a long time by the proselyte’s bed, gazing down at the long, narrow face, pinched and pained by moonlight.