The Moonshawl Read online

  The Moonshawl

  A Wraeththu Mythos Novel

  Storm Constantine

  The Moonshawl: A Wraeththu Mythos Novel

  By Storm Constantine © 2014

  Ebook edition through KDP 2014

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

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book, or portions thereof, in any form. The right of Storm Constantine to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act, 1988.

  http://www.stormconstantine.co.uk

  Cover art by Ruby

  An Immanion Press Edition

  http://www.immanion-press.com

  [email protected]

  The Calendar of Wraeththu

  January - Snowmoon

  February – Frostmoon

  March - Windmoon

  April - Rainmoon

  May - Flowermoon

  June - Meadowmoon

  July – Ardourmoon

  August - Fruitingmoon

  September - Harvestmoon

  October - Vintagemoon

  November - Mistmoon

  December – Adkayamoon

  Monday – Lunilsday (Lunday – Loon-day)

  Tuesday – Miyacalasday (Calasday – Cah-laz-day)

  Wednesday – Aloytsday (Loitsday – Low-its-day)

  Thursday – Agavesday (Gavesday – Gar-vez-day)

  Friday – Aruhanisday (Hanisday – Har-neez-day)

  Saturday – Pelfazzarsday (Pelfday – Pelf-day)

  Sunday – Aghamasday (Gamasday – Gah-mahz-day)

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks to everyone who helped me shape this novel. To Louise Coquio and Paula Wakefield, who were my critics and work-shoppers, and who hauled me over any gaping plot holes, and all those other niggling infelicities that plague the writer at work! To Wendy Darling for her keen editing and all the suggestions she made to strengthen the story. To Lisa Mansell who checked and corrected my Welsh! To Paul Cashman, for proof-reading and picking up those sneaky typos. To Andy Collins for his suggestions concerning the background to the story. And to Tanith Lee for her ongoing inspiration and support.

  Introduction

  The ancient spirit of Alba Sulh still lives. Perhaps now, released from human negligence, it stretches its soil-damp limbs, rises from protective sleep and sees the land is free again. I believe it to be a contrary spirit, rife with petty evils, random spurts of compassion, and incomprehensible notions. For a while, perhaps coiled around the clutching roots of those trees that remained and were regrowing, it watched, waiting to assess the new sentient beings who had come to live upon its skin; they might be the same as those who’d come before. But now, somehow, did it not have the power to affect those lives in a way it never had?

  The spirit has many faces, many moods. It rides the gales above storm-bent forests as a throng of shrieking ghosts. It shivers as pale light in the deepest glades, offering promises with a silver smile. Animals can sense it – even see it. And hara? Hara are closer to it than their human forebears. This is the way we have been made to be, or the way our harlings are evolving. Alba Sulh desires to be wild and magical. It desires to be mysterious and misty, to seethe with phantoms and strange whims. This land was always that, a romantic, idealised archetype in the minds of human dreamers. Now, with only their thoughts and dreams remaining, they too ghosts amid the fields, Alba Sulh becomes.

  Ysobi har Sulh

  Chapter One

  I rode to Gwyllion in the early summer time, through the ancient ochre and lilac mountains and then into their deep, lush river valleys, along the old road, where laden canopies of oak and beech and sycamore held hands above my head. The light was green, an intense deep glow of many subtle shades, sometimes almost black, sometimes pure emerald-shot gold. Mossy banks rose on either side of the road, warted with immense green and gold-furred rocks, over which an occasional root might trail, it too dressed in moss.

  I was still not entirely well. The hurricanes of recent years still weighed heavily upon me. I was a stranger to myself, somehow reborn, renewed, but also older in my mind, burdened by knowledge, yet reassured in some small measure by wisdom.

  Those of you who know my history – don’t think I’d been sent from home as punishment or reward for my mistakes. The truth was that a phylarch of the Wyvachi, a sub-tribe of the Sulh, had a yearning to create his own spiritual customs for his hara. He wished for them to be taught in the way that hara in Immanion or Yorvik were taught. Not long after Bloomtide, early spring, a message came from the scholarly city of Kyme for me, whence such commissions often came: You might be interested in this assignment, Ysobi.

  I debated for a month or so, afraid of change yet craving it. A couple of weeks before Feybraihatide I told Jassenah, my chesnari, about the commission, having already decided I would take it. We were in the kitchen of our small, comfortable house, with the windows open and scented air pouring in. Jassenah, with his thick dark gold hair tied back, ready for work, his expressive face unusually motionless as he listened to me, my inevitable lies. When my words fizzled out, there was a silence between us, as there often was. ‘You wish to go?’ he asked at last.

  ‘I think I wish to work,’ I told him. There was little for me in Jesith now. My former commissions were no more; I was not considered “suitable” to continue in that line of work. Somehar else was now the main hienama of the town. I was regarded as a scholar and, at the behest of our phylarch, Sinnar, had helped form the Lyceum of Jesith. I had become immersed in the land – its legends interested me – so I had been encouraged. Anything to put the past behind us.

  ‘I see,’ said Jassenah. ‘What does this work entail exactly?’

  ‘Apparently, a study of the landscape, its folklore, and the shaping of a suitable yearly round for the hara of Gwyllion.’

  Jassenah eyed me steadily. ‘And there is no local har to undertake this native task?’

  I held his gaze, wondering why I felt as if I was deceiving him: this part was correct. ‘The phylarch asked for a hienama of Kyme. We can only suppose he can afford it.’

  ‘Are you asking me or telling me?’ Jassenah enquired.

  ‘I’d like to do it,’ I replied. ‘It sounds interesting. There could be a book in it.’

  Again, a silence.

  ‘The work is academic,’ I said. ‘And I’d hardly be missed here. I’d like to be doing something worthwhile.’

  I was of course trying to escape some kind of parole on my life. In Jesith I was watched and constrained. I had no doubt the hara cared for me – they had welcomed me back after all – but they couldn’t trust me in the way they had. I accepted this. I hadn’t proved trustworthy.

  Jassenah had turned away from me, tidying pots that were already tidy. ‘How long for?’ he asked. ‘How long do you intend to be away?’

  ‘A few months or so. You and Zeph could visit me. The countryside is said to be beautiful up there.’

  Jassenah faced me again. ‘Can you be honest with me, Ys? Are we really talking about how you need to escape this place – perhaps us?’

  I paused before answering. ‘While we’ve been talking I realise I want to escape,’ I said, ‘but not us. Jesith makes me claustrophobic. It’s like an open prison.’ I took a breath, wondering if the next thing I said would be appropriate. ‘We could even go together.’

  Jassenah snorted. ‘Of course I have the time for that!’ He shook his head, laughed shakily. ‘Ys, if you want to go, go. I’m not your gaoler. I appreciate it’s sometimes difficult for you here.’ He put his hands on my shoulders. ‘But Jes
ith is my home, it’s my life. I love what I do here. I don’t want to leave.’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking of anything that permanent,’ I said.

  ‘I know... It would be good for you to go. I’m being selfish. I can’t keep you on a leash.’

  ‘You don’t have to. I thought you knew that now.’

  He nodded, smiled at me, turned away. He’d never trust me again.

  In the late afternoon of a glorious Flowermoon day, I rode my piebald cob, Hercules, into Gwyllion. I’d travelled light, bringing with me only several changes of clothes, three books, and a few basic toiletries. This lightness had made the journey easier for both Hercules and myself. We’d grown even lighter as we travelled. Gwyllion was a small town with a modest population, and even from the start I found the hara innately tribal. Their phylarch was like a king to them. He lived with his family on an estate to the north of the village. Before going to introduce myself to the lord of Wyvachi, I sought out a local inn – there were only two in Gwyllion – and booked a room there. The keephar of The Rooting Boar asked me, naturally, what brought me to their town, and I explained I’d been hired by the phylarch.

  The inn was empty at that time of day, so the keephar came to sit with me to satisfy his curiosity about a stranger to his town. He told me his name was Yoslyn.

  ‘Oh, the hienama!’ said the keephar. ‘We were told of this. It will be good to celebrate the festivals again.’

  ‘You have no hienama?’ I asked. A certain discomfort settled over me.

  ‘Not now,’ said Yoslyn.

  ‘And there’s nohar among you wanted to take that role?’

  ‘Not really. Hara have too much to do around here for that. We want somehar to do it for us, make the blessings, talk to the corn for us... naming days, chesna bonds, all that.’

  ‘Well, I didn’t think my work here would...’

  Yoslyn interrupted airily, as if I hadn’t spoken. ‘Tiahaar Wyva told us he’d sent to Kyme for a Nahir Nuri for us. It will be wonderful for the community. Pity you’re here too late for the Feybraihatide arojhahn. Many of us want to revive the old customs. Mixing them with the new, of course!’

  My imagination obligingly presented me with a grisly visualisation of hara being slaughtered in the fields at Cuttingtide. The phylarch, Wyva, clearly had not presented his requirements to Kyme accurately. Or perhaps that had been deliberate. ‘I can train somehar up,’ I said, ‘to do these things for you when I leave.’

  Yoslyn gave me rather a hard look. ‘I doubt you’ll find anyhar round here keen on that,’ he said. ‘We’re simple hara. We like a simple life, and we’ve no time for so much learning. It takes a special har to be a hienama. You have to want to be one, for a start.’

  I could hardly blame him for these sentiments. ‘Well, we’ll see,’ I said, smiling with what I hoped was suitable brightness. ‘I’ll talk to tiahaar Wyva and find out what’s needed.’

  First impressions of a har, unbiased, are always useful, but so is the information you can get from the hara who regard him as lord of their lives. You can tell a lot, for example, from whether he is loved, reviled or scorned, or the words that are not spoken – in fear.

  ‘So tell me of the family,’ I said. ‘The family of Wyva har Wyvachi.’

  The keephar smiled, a good sign. It was a smile of affection, reflecting a certain amount of humour. Perhaps Wyva was not wholly wise. ‘There is Wyva, who is phylarch, as you know, his chesnari Rinawne and their harling, Myv. He’s a strangeling child, or changeling maybe. Sweet, but distant as a star. He walks his own path, they say.’

  I nodded. ‘Born this way?’

  ‘They say so.’

  Hesitation? Perhaps I wanted it to be there, a mystery to solve.

  ‘The household is not overly large. Wyva is second generation and has two brothers, Cawr and Gen. Wyva and Cawr have taken the bond, but only Wyva has made new hara from the blood. Meadow Mynd is an old house, and was in Wyva’s family long before his hostling became har.’

  ‘That’s unusual to find,’ I said, with a gossipy inflection in my voice. I indicated with the wine bottle in my hand that the keephar should join me in refreshment. He appeared eager to do so.

  ‘The Mynd is a beautiful house,’ he said as he filled a cup. ‘None would leave it willingly, and none did.’ He laughed as he took a drink. ‘Wyva is a good har, and fair. He’d see none go hungry.’

  ‘What of his chesnari?’

  ‘Good, too. We have no complaints with any of them.’ Again he laughed. ‘As long as you don’t toss the count stones with Wyva’s brother, Gen. He’s a renowned cheat!’

  ‘I shall take care not to.’

  ‘We need a hienama,’ Yoslyn said firmly. ‘The spirits are strong in these fields and forests.’

  This remark took me by surprise. ‘Can you explain to me what you mean?’

  Yoslyn shook his head. ‘You’ll see. It’s not a bad place; it is rich. But the spirits are strong.’

  The road to Meadow Mynd was a summer tunnel, a faery path rising to sun-stippled heights, then down to green shadowy hollows. To either side, legions of pines in straight lines marched away from me. These, I supposed, were a legacy of earlier human forestry; the pines had not been harvested for over a century. To the west of me, paths of sunlight carved down the occasional wide avenues between the trees. They looked like processional ways. And then eventually, I saw upon one of these paths a figure on a horse, rendered in silhouette by the afternoon sun. Horse and rider were both so still, some three hundred yards from me. I had no inclination to pause, to call, or to investigate. Neither did I think I’d seen something supernatural, even though I’d perceived a deep purple glow around the horse. I had to keep moving.

  Meadow Mynd eventually came into view when the pines thinned out and gave way to older, deciduous trees. Massive oaks spread their history against the skies. I caught the silver glimmer of water through the aching green, and a herd of deer for some time walked beside me, some distance off amid the mossy trunks. They were unafraid and watched me curiously, the does sometimes pausing to stare unashamedly, heads up, ears forward. Perhaps hara from the house fed them, and they associated me with that. As I rode Hercules at a walk up the driveway, I heard the tolling of a bell in the distance. An odd time of day for that, I thought, unless it was to gather hara in from the fields. It was a beautiful, yet melancholy sound that reminded me of days long gone, my lost human childhood.

  The house was grey and sprawling, its walls peppered with yellow lichen, its windows small and frowning, but for some on the ground floor, which were like doors. Hara were at work in the gardens – which appeared to be a meld of both ornamental and vegetable, all strangely mixed up together – and paused in their labours to watch me draw near. Above the front door was a wide lintel of stone, supported by two columns adorned with twisted ivy, of both carved stone and living leaf. A harling squatted atop the lintel like some kind of gargoyle. I assumed this to be the son of Wyva and Rinawne and waved to him. The harling regarded me expressionlessly, and then bounded away up the wall behind him like a wild beast, leaping through the old ivy stems. I could see now what Yoslyn meant about him.

  A har came out of the house, perhaps having been alerted by a member of staff. I didn’t know who of the family I was looking at, or even if it was just a high-ranking employee. He was nearly as tall as me, with a thick mane of loose, curling black hair. His brows were thick, his mouth wide, his eyes a striking blue. He was not conventionally beautiful, but possessed an arresting presence. I could tell at once he was a har used to getting his own way.

  ‘You must be Ysobi har Jesith,’ he said to me, inclining his head. He had a strong Erini accent. ‘You’re welcome here to the Mynd.’

  ‘Thank you, tiahaar...’

  ‘I am Rinawne har Wyvachi. Please, come on in. Our hara will see to your horse.’ He jerked his head and a har previously unseen came running from... somewhere. He led Hercules and my baggage away, seemingly before my feet were
properly in contact with the ground.

  ‘Good journey?’ enquired Rinawne.

  ‘A good time of year to travel, yes,’ I replied.

  ‘You must want a meal...’

  ‘No need, tiahaar. I stopped at an inn in town before coming here, booked myself a room.’

  Rinawne’s eyebrows lifted. ‘We have accommodation for you. Private. Not in the house.’

  ‘Oh, that’s kind of you.’ I had, of course, expected this, but it was best not to make assumptions.

  ‘I’ll send somehar to cancel your reservation. Do you have luggage?’

  ‘Only what I have in my horse’s saddlebags.’

  Rinawne grinned. ‘You travel light, then.’ He gestured. ‘Come in. We’ll take refreshment anyway. I always look upon any excuse for it as a gift.’

  I laughed. ‘Thank you.’

  ‘Wyva will be here soon,’ Rinawne said. ‘He’s out doing something somewhere, perhaps looking at a field or a ditch. Such things concern him.’

  Again I laughed, hoping that was meant to be a joke.

  Rinawne smiled widely. He conducted me into a living room that smelled strongly of roses. A huge bowl of them adorned a table beneath a window. ‘The scent of flowers is like bringing the outside in with you, isn’t it?’ Rinawne said, brushing a hand over the white petals. As he moved I caught a scent from him, which I can only describe as green; something of cut grass, of reedy hollows, of the darkest corners of summer.

  ‘Where I come from – Jesith – is famous for its vineyards,’ I said. ‘The aroma of the vine, of the grape, is very strong. They even make a perfume of it.’

  ‘I hope you’ve bought samples of both products with you,’ Rinawne said.

  I hadn’t. ‘I regret it didn’t occur to me to bring any produce with me.’ That is the sort of thing Jass would have thought of, naturally, as would Zeph, our son. I should have thought of it, too. Perhaps Jass had even mentioned it to me, but I’d not heard him. That was not an uncommon happening, as he was fond of telling hara. ‘As the industry has grown in our town, so has the variety of produce. My chesnari works for the yard. He’s the manager for our phylarch. I’ll write to him, have him make up a hamper. I really should have thought of it, as he’ll no doubt remind me!’