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  MOON'S HONOR

  Adventures in the Liaden Universe® Number 20

  A Liaden Universe® novelette

  Sharon Lee and Steve Miller

  Pinbeam Books

  http://www.pinbeambooks.com

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this novel are fiction or are used fictitiously.

  COPYRIGHT PAGE

  Moon's Honor

  Copyright © 1996, 2013 by Sharon Lee and Steve Miller. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without permission in writing from the author. Please remember that distributing an author's work without permission or payment is theft; and that the authors whose works sell best are those most likely to let us publish more of their works.

  Moon's Honor first published at Splinter Universe (www.splinteruniverse.com), February 1, 2012

  On Casting your Fate to the Moon, is original to this publication

  ISBN: 978-1-935224-98-3

  Published August 2013 by Pinbeam Books

  Pinbeam Books

  PO Box 1586

  Waterville ME 04903

  email [email protected]

  Liaden Universe® is a registered trademark

  Cover image from JupiterImages

  Cover design by Sharon Lee

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  On Casting Your Fate to the Moon

  MOON'S HONOR

  About the Authors

  Thank you

  On Casting Your Fate to the Moon

  The Lee-Miller writing team is often given credit for the scope, depth, and tightness of our plotting. Readers are thrilled to think that we could have already known, 'way back in 1984, when Agent of Change was written, that this-or-that seemingly random piece of business put into narrative by Val Con and Miri would be a valuable assist to Theo, in 2010, when Ghost Ship was written.

  While we're pleased to accept any laurels tossed in our direction, what we actually deserve credit for are retentive memories and extraordinarily facile back-brains.

  Because, of course we didn't—and don't—plot twenty-six years and thirteen books out. No, what we excel at isn't plotting, but remembering that random bit of business, and apprehending the problem to which it is an answer in the on-going tale of Clan Korval, its allies, and its enemies. Call it, if you will, retroactive plotting.

  Of course, that's not to say that we don't plan—or plot—ahead. Moon's Honor is a case in point.

  See, 'way back in 1984, when we were writing Agent of Change, and plotting out seven books in series, we were also plotting out a secondary narrative line that would include several novels. That secondary narrative would chronicle the adventures of Moonhawk and Lute, serially reincarnated characters who operate in what seems, at first, to be a fantasy world. The plan, back then, was to move that pair of characters along in time until their thread intersected with the frankly science fictional thread following Clan Korval.

  Well, the publishing industry—what we'll call reality—didn't favor that plan—or plot. The seven-book SF thread was shot down at Book Three—we never even got a chance to propose the Lute and Moonhawk thread.

  During the years in which we were out of contract, we wrote a couple short stories about the pair—see Fellow Traveler's: Adventures in the Liaden Universe® Number 2, available as an ebook from Amazon, BN, and Smashwords—and they of course play a strong supporting role as the allies of Rool Tiazan and his lady, in Crystal Dragon.

  That brings us roughly to late 1996—eleven years after we laid our Grand Plan and seven years after it all fell to dust and ashes. We had written, in our copious free time, The Tomorrow Log, Local Custom, Scout's Progress, and Plan B, plus numerous short stories. And we said to ourselves something along the lines of, "Well, since we basically writing for our own amusement at this point, why not put together a proposal for the first Lute and Moonhawk novel?"

  They say it's better to be busy than not, so we did that—12,000-ish words of sample chapters and an outline of how the book would proceed from there. The proposal made the rounds—and had no takers. The common editorial complaint that the story was simply too generic.

  So be it. Had things gone along as they had been going along, i.e. Lee and Miller write novel; submit; every publishing house on earth rejects—we might have, many years before Kickstarter, written the book anyway (as had become our habit), to amuse ourselves and to keep our covenant with the characters.

  But, things didn't go along as they had been doing. In late 1997, Meisha Merlin contacted us about reprinting the first three Liaden novels, Agent of Change, Conflict of Honors, and Carpe Diem. After negotiation, the reprinting project was parlayed into a seven-book deal, including all the books we'd written but not published to that point. Between 1998 and 2006, we published eleven novels in eight books with Meisha Merlin—which also passed on the Moonhawk and Lute thread, so as not to "dilute" the main Liaden narrative.

  Which left us with. . .the first 12,000-ish words of (in our humble opinion as the fond authors) a pretty dern good novel, or! a novelette detailing one of the many "first meetings" of Lute and Moonhawk.

  So, here you have it. We hope you enjoy the story.

  Sharon Lee and Steve Miller

  The Cat Farm and Confusion Factory

  Central Maine

  August 18, 2013

  MOON'S HONOR

  THE MOON

  Caution, danger, error, disillusionment

  Out of the high country it drove him, lashing him through and around places where normally he would have tarried, displayed his skill, collected a coin, an egg, a cheese.

  At first he fought it, this vast and reasonless compulsion, though his master had always urged him to heed the lesser sendings he had experienced in the past.

  Those had never frightened him.

  This—this chilled his soul. So he fought, striving to bring his own will to the fore—and lost, as the compulsion moved him, puppet-like, down from the mountains where breath still showed frost at dawn and at sunset, into the high valleys and further, to the river plain itself, where spring was already blooming.

  He must reach Dyan City by full Moon. So little to know, when one was accustomed to being one's own master. Certainly too little to keep him on his feet and traveling well into the night, with only the racing Hounds to light him. Far too little to raise him from his fireless camp at dawn's first blush, walking again as he broke his fast from the dwindling supply of journeybread.

  The bread was gone by the time his feet touched the road to Dyan City, and he walked the last miles hungry, passing through the gates as they were closing for the night.

  It was Beltane Eve.

  The compulsion shoved him through the gate-market, past the rim of cheap inns and beer-rooms, through a ragged ring of houses, toward the city's center.

  He hurried across the warehouse district, and a zone of painfully tidy houses, each with its own tiny garden spot; through the midpoint market and the streets of upscale inns; past shops and through wide cobbled streets faced by spacious houses where music and laughter spilled from walled and secret gardens. On and on his demon rode him, through odorous crowds, past perfumed pavilions, until he reached Goddess Square.

  There, facing the glory of Dyan Temple, at the very foot of Maidenstairs, with the Elder Hound just rounding the Eastern Tower—there, the compulsion left him.

  "Crone's teeth!" An oath, though he was not in general a man who cursed.

  He swayed, so suddenly was he free, and his knees began to go. Teeth-grit, he caught himself, determined that none of the Temple should see him kneeling and mista
kenly bear him inside as a supplicant.

  His master had maintained that these incidents of compulsion were Goddess-sent, thus holy, and had adjured his apprentice to heed the sendings and obey them with grace.

  Sadly, the 'prentice had never been so sweetly devout as the master, and endured these moments of the Goddess' favor with wariness, not to say, dislike. Endured he had, however, and learned that a foretelling of gold eventually turned golden, and a whiff of disaster held real danger. Thus, he added another weapon—chancy as it was—to his arsenal of survival. But such a compulsion as this? Never before had he experienced the like: To be herded like a cow, five days down from the mountains, neglecting both work and food—neglecting even the all-important practice!—to be dumped at the foot of Maidenstairs like a sack of wheat, without the first notion of why he should be there? His life disrupted and his stomach growling, all for the Goddess' mere whim?

  He was inclined to be annoyed.

  However, it was not politic to be annoyed at the foot of Maidenstairs within the heart of one of the Three Cities, and he was a man possessed of shrewdness.

  Deliberately, playing for those who might be watching from tower-top or window-slit, he made obeisance, cloak swirling gracefully as he sank to one knee in the Houndlight. He held the genuflection for a long beat of three, head bowed in reverence, then came straight in one fluid movement. Carefully, he backed nine steps from the foot of Maidenstairs, his eyes on the pinnacle of the Eastern Tower.

  Then, ritual flawlessly performed, he turned gently on his heel and vanished back into the city.

  There was a guildhall in Dyan City, but he was not wishful of meeting his fellows thus new from the kiss of the Goddess. The few coins hoarded in the lining of his cloak were enough, he reckoned, for a meal at one of the outer inns. He trusted to his skills—rusty as they must be from so long without practice—to earn him a place near the hearth for sleeping, and a bit of sausage wrapped in fresh bread to see him along the road, tomorrow sunrise.

  Mind made up and course once more his own to chose, he sauntered through the streets of Dyan City, taking leisure to look about him, now that the lash was off his back. He marked the silks, furs and fine woolens; the gilded doors and the locked gardens, gates lit by the steady glow of electric lanterns, gift of Dyan Temple's generator.

  He sighed and went away from the avenues of nobles, crossed the empty evening market and passed into a gaggle of thinner streets, most lit with candle-lanterns. More folk were about here, there being no pleasure-gardens to lock themselves into, and he went freely among them.

  Those who saw him at all merely marked a thin man, a bit taller than some, with a face that might have seen twenty years or forty, in the way of faces sun-browned and scoured by the winds of turning seasons. His neatly braided hair was black, showing no lighter strands; under the road dust his cloak was likewise black. He carried a bag beneath it, slung over his shoulder by a leather strap. But none passing him on the street would note that.

  The inn he chose, by and by, had a remarkably lifelike carving of a snowy owl aside the door, talons gripping the wooden peg it stood upon. On the wall above someone had shakily hand painted the legend: Hunter's Moon.

  He had not expected such erudition in this ring of the city and turned eagerly toward the merry red door and the wooden owl's baleful stare. He moved his hand as he did so, conjuring a bright green counter from the air. He walked it across the back of his hand, vanished it, reached out and drew it from the carven feathers on the owl's snowy cheek, grinning in unselfconscious pleasure. His fingers were not so stiff, after all.

  It was then he saw the parchment.

  Real parchment, such as Temple Proclamations were written on, inked in green and signed in silver, with official ribbons dangling from the pentagram that sealed it. Heart unaccountably stilled—for what did Temple Proclamations have to do with him?—he leaned forward to read it.

  Let it hereby be known that all and any practitioners of the so-called "Craft Magic", which is that fraudery and sleight-of-hand designed only to trick the naive eye and beguile the foolish from the True Wonder of the Goddess, shall fail to display these supposed arts within the sight and hearing of the Circle.

  Let it also be known that any who in defiance of this order of the Temple persevere in displaying the "Craft Magic" shall be considered to have performed blasphemy and shall be schooled accordingly.

  This by the order of the Inner Circle, Dyan Temple, whose will is set forth by the hand of Greenlady upon the thirty-second night of the waxing moon looking toward Beltane.

  "Blasphemy." His fingers flicked, vanishing the damning counters even as he tried to breathe normally, to hide all outward signs of fear. The "schooling" that drew one away from blasphemy had to do with incarceration in some deep room within the Temple, and the constant company of those of the Circle, whose purpose it was to bring the sinner to honest abhorrence of his sin and repudiation thereof.

  Some even survived the experience.

  Was this why he had been driven to Dyan City? he wondered, and then shook his head. The Goddess knew each of Her children by name and every soul was as a crystal for Her scrying, so the teaching went. Armed with such knowledge, She could not for a moment have supposed that Her son Lute would gladly walk up Maidenstairs, declare himself magician and practitioner of the so-called "Craft Magic" and joyously embrace schooling.

  "We are all as the Goddess made us," he whispered, and smiled thinly. It was a thing his master had been prone to say; the comfortable mantra of a man comfortable in his faith. Goddess thanked he had not lived to see this.

  He looked again at the proclamation, at the unweathered parchment, the crisp ribbons, and the bright nail holding it to the wall over the owl's left wing. Posted new this morn, or so he judged it.

  There was a guildhall in the city. A very full guildhall, no doubt, this being Beltane and practitioners of the "Craft Magic" standing at least as devout as the rest of the populace. On average.

  Behind him, he heard steps—voices bearing down toward the merry red door. In that instant, he made his decision, flicked a hand out, then melted into the shadows aside the doorway. The two customers—younger sons of outer ring market families, by their dress and accent—passed within a finger's breadth and never saw him.

  The door swung closed and Lute stepped into the street, moving with long, unhurried strides—back toward the deep of the city.

  Behind him, the carven owl stood vigil over sign, door and a bright, new nail.

  THE HIGH PRIESTESS

  Wisdom, serenity, judgment, learning, sagacity, common sense

  "Lady Moonhawk! Lady Moonhawk, come quickly!" The novice who demanded it hurtled pell-mell into the library, sandals grating on the polished wooden floor. She hit one of the red and yellow rugs with no diminishment of speed, skidded—and would have fallen except that the woman curled in the window glanced up from her book and prevented it with a flicker of long fingers and the breath of a Word.

  "Thank you, Lady!" the novice gasped, belatedly recalling her bow. She performed this ritual hurriedly, straightened without having received the Lady's aye and blurted again: "You must come quickly!"

  Lady Moonhawk lifted an eyebrow, dark blue eyes sharpening on the novice's face. "Oh," she said, in dangerously sweet accents, "Must I?"

  The novice gulped, nervously tangling her fingers together before her. "Please, Lady, it's—"

  "Keela's baby." Moonhawk was up in the same instant, moving with long strides across the slippery floor. "Fetch Mother Portal," she snapped over her shoulder as she vanished into the hallway.

  "Yes, Lady Moonhawk," the novice said and quit the room herself, forbearing to run until she hit the stone-floored hallway.

  #

  It had been a hard birth and the baby had not been hale, so both mother and child had been brought to the Temple Infirmary, to be cared for by the Circle until both were strong.

  Keela did well, gaining weight and strength with joyous
ease. The babe had not done as well, though neither Moonhawk nor any of the other Healing Sisters could determine what it was that ailed him.

  "He has no will to live," Greenlady had said, though not in the mother's hearing. "Poor babe, he hangs by a thread, as if life were a fault in the weaving, rather than the purpose of the loom."

  There was wisdom in that, Moonhawk thought, for the boy certainly showed no spark of the all-consuming interest characteristic of other children his age. She probed him, seeking his soul, seeking the nature of his mind—and found only weariness, as one might find when aiding those full old to prepare for their reunion with the Goddess.

  Just as well, she thought, that he return to the Mother now. . .

  Aye, the next thought intruded, and what of Keela?

  Keela, who had lost her man this winter past, when the river ice cracked wide and the frigid waters dragged him down; who had rejoiced in a son to bear his likeness—and his name. Keela, who nursed the sickly boy with fierce patience, holding him in her arms, willing him to life with a potency that bordered upon a Sister's skill.

  What of Keela, should the child die, too?

  Moonhawk began to run.

  #

  The Infirmary was quiet as she dashed into the common room, so that she dared hope—and then she saw Keela, bent over the cradle, her arms moving in the way Moonhawk had taught her. She was pressing on the child's chest, helping him breathe.

  Moonhawk stopped at the cradle's side, watching Keela work, caught a whiff of the other woman's desperate terror, saw the thin chest rise and fall under his mother's hands.

  "He breathes," she said. "Keela, let him take it up."

  "He breathes," Keela said grimly. "Three times before I thought so, and when I stopped, he did as well!" She glanced aside, face grim and wet with sweat. "Lady Moonhawk, my child is dying!"

  It seared of Truth. Moonhawk opened herself to the trance, stepping into it even as she stepped forward and put her hand beside the other woman's hand, upon the baby's breast.