Chapter Eleven

Red Moon in the Kitchen

 

The city of Hellsinc, the planet Perdition: Now

 

 

Inside the cook-house, the smell of cooking bacon filled the air, driving away all thoughts of Harbinger. Red Moon squealed in unbridled pleasure and followed her nose to the stove. Taurok had every burner covered with a frying pan. Large lumps of lard were rapidly melting in the heat. The pan with the bacon was only now starting to sizzle.

“When can we eat?” she asked breathlessly. Taurok looked up from the enormous bowl in which he was cracking two dozen eggs. “Not yet. Go out the back door and see what herbs are growing in the garden. Be quick. Before the bacon burns.”

The herb garden surrounded the back stoop. The beds of onion and garlic and root vegetables were in the next grow-bed. Off along the monastery wall more fruit trees grew. There were tables and chairs and benches set in the shade. She tore up handfuls of herbs and garlic and ran back to Taurok. The bacon was starting to brown. Taurok scowled at her bounty. “You brought half the garden in with you. Go wash that off. I shall beat you if I find sand in my eggs.”

“You and whose army?” she growled at him, but she took them over to the sink and tried turning on the taps. Nothing. Gathering it all up she went back outside and found the rain-barrels situated under the downspouts. She gave everything a brisk dip in the water, gathered them up again and almost ran back to Taurok in her excitement. The bacon was getting crispy. The eggs were bubbling in their pan. And praise be to all the gods in the heavens, Taurok had found cheese.

“The bread has gone stale but we have flour so I made griddle-cake batter. That is your job—frying up the griddle cakes.

When it was all done, Taurok piled it all on two platters and took it out to the wrought-iron table placed under the nearest apple tree.

Taurok wolfed his half down and then sat back and watched Red Moon work her way through the mountain of food.

“Where are you putting all that?

“Mmmff,” said Red Moon from around a mouthful of eggs.

“Oh, my. You are going to strain yourself.”

Red Moon swallowed. “I am hungry. You didn’t hear me commenting on your eating habits.”

“Yes, but I am five times your size.”

Red Moon kept on shoveling it in.

“You are going to make yourself sick.”

“I am already sick. I have used too much of myself and I need to recharge.”

Taurok studied her out of the corner of his eye. She had a point. The pallor was leaving her face to be replaced by a rosy flush. She was looking less and less ethereal and more like a young girl with a healthy appetite. She might be getting better, but he had no baseline to compare this to as he had yet to see her healthy.

“Hmm,” Taurok said, wondering how to get her to focus less on food and more on their mission. “Now that I have you as a captive audience, maybe you can answer all those questions my granddad could never answer when I was a kid.”

She glowered at him from under her brow. “Like?”

“I have seen you naked.”

Red Moon slammed her fist into the table, still chewing. Fool man. He was forever pushing her boundaries.

“Now, now. It’s nothing like that. I was just wondering where you hide your egg-tooth.”

She choked, trying to gulp down the wad of food in her mouth. Taurok slapped her on the back to help it along.

Red Moon wiped the tears from her eyes and coughed again. “My what?”

“Like the ancient Ertta of Anstiba. It is said they had a spur on their heels to cut open their leathery egg sacks. Or the Scerrons who grow spines along their jaws but shed them not long after they hatch. How do you break the shell and hatch? Grandda said the eggs were stone. It would take a heck of an egg-tooth to break out. Do you remember being inside the egg?

Red Moon laughed. “You realize they are not actually eggs, right?”

“Err?” grunted Taurok.

“When it is time to give birth, the Ancellian female creates an eddy in the fabric of space-time. A bubble of time on an infinite loop. There she deposits her young. Sometimes there are more than one, and then the children are expected to battle for control of the bubble. Only one ever comes out alive. But that is a fierce mother who does that to her children. My mother was desperate and she had very little time to prepare me for the ordeal. She made me and left.” Red Moon wanted to say more but the worlds turned into an incoherent snarl. She shook her head and continued to eat. But she was slowing down.

“You don’t have any love for your Ma. I can understand that.” Taurok nodded. “You were stuck inside a time vortex. Did you start out small, a single cell, and grow—or are you born full size? How did you get out?”

“I am me. I have always been me. My body is the body I choose. It is a construct that must solidify over time. It is not the body that must grow, but the mind. Inside the bubble the Ancellian children draw sustenance from the chaos swirling about the egg and remember who they are.”

“But it is not an egg. You said so yourself.”

“What would you call it? The eggs are a construct meant to protect the un-born. On this plane of existence, it appears as a stone, a crystalline stone about a meter in height.”

“So you hang out inside the egg?”

“Hang out?” Red Moon said, shaking her head. “It is nothing so simple as that. All my ancestors are inside this bubble. Tens of thousands of past lives. All that there is to know about my species is imparted, mind to mind, from the Ancestors to the child. I had many names inside the egg. One of them roughly translated means “She who will eat the world and remake all existence.”

“Wow. That is quite a mouthful. What do they call you for short?”

“Bin called me Ven.”

“Bin?”

“Harbinger. Ancellian eggs must have Keepers. It is usually the mother or an auntie, if the child is to be female. My mother gave the job to my cousin Harbinger. Patient, he was. He was full of grief, for he loved my father with all his heart. All he had known had been destroyed and he was without hope. The only thing he had left in the world was one small egg. Every day he would wake and press his forehead to the crystal and pray, begging me to come out.”

Taurok sat up straight and pressed his knuckles into the top of the table. “Wait. Wait. Back up. There is a male Ancellian still alive out there somewhere? A male?” He sounded angry.

Red Moon flinched and looked away. She instantly regretted telling him anything. It always played out like this. The questions. The accusations.

“Red Moon!” Taurok said, his voice becoming tense. “I have to know.”

Red Moon gave him a poisonous look. “Would you prefer a male Ancellian to me? Do I disappoint you? This is what you all want, after all. The next king. Not some worthless female.”

“What?” Taurok said, sitting back, a shocked look on his face. “No. No. I did not mean . . .”

No, no, they never did, Red Moon thought bitterly. The words just fell out of their mouths and cut like a rain of glass shards and it was her heart that was wounded, her soul that needed healing. The old wound broke open and her heart began to bleed anew. She felt her skin grow cold as the rage began to build inside her chest. She need to leave before someone died.

Red Moon rose and fled out into the garden, the hurt look in Taurok's eyes nipping at her heels. She had hurt him because he had hurt her. It had been unintentional on his part, his words careless, born of five hundred years of strife. Everyone wanted the next male heir to the throne. She ground her teeth together. It did not make hurting Taurok right and it did not mend the hole in her heart, but she could not help but feel guilty. Her guilt just made her feel angrier.

She stopped under an apple tree and began breaking off small branches and turning them into kindling with her bare hands. By the time they were mere shards, they were beginning to smoke.

Taurok slid his hand around the back of her neck. She froze. He had followed her. The branch in her hand burst into flame before she realized he was not mad, just concerned for her, his touch meant to break in on her reverie and remind her of his presence before she reacted unconsciously to the intrusion. It was a gentle touch. His hand slid down to her shoulder as he pulled her away from the smoldering fires at her feet.

“Talk to me,” the large Zendellian said softly as he stomped out the fires. “Finish the story. What happened to Harbinger?”

“Leave me alone,” she warned. The wall of ice around her heart was melting and something ugly lived behind it. She could not risk Taurok. What if her control slipped and she killed him? There would be nothing that could keep her from walking across the Veil after that.

“Something eats at your soul. Let it out into the light of day. It helps to share it, even if it is only with one other person. Talk to me,” Taurok said, his voice a low rumble that caressed her mind. “Harbinger prayed over your egg. How long did that take?”

Red Moon shuddered. This story ended in darkness. She did not want to finish it. But she owed Taurok her life. Someone should know her story after she was gone. “About fifty years Standard, give or take,” she said through frozen lips.

“You could hear him inside your egg?”

“Yes. At first I did not understand. Even after I did, I ignored him. But how can you turn your heart from one who is so true, so loyal, so fierce? Sacred is the heart that hungers for justice, is the saying, and Harbinger wanted justice more than he wanted life.”

“Harbinger,” Taurok nodded. “I think he is listed on the last Palace census. They assumed he died in the pogrom.”

“My father refused to throw him away in defense of the palace. Instead he was given to my mother. She needed a keeper and he was all she had. I followed his voice up out of the shadowlands. Don’t go, my grandmothers whispered. Stay with us. Nothing but tears and heartache wait for you on the other side. But the heart of my Keeper drew me out. I had a need to burn and he was going to show me the way.”

“And then you hatched,” Taurok nodded.

Red Moon pressed her lips together and shook her head. “You did not hear me. One day, fifty years after the death of the last queen, Bin put his hand upon the crystal, and found it hot to the touch. In the next moment, the crystal, which was in reality a door into the time bubble, shattered under his hand. He told me the story of that day many times. How the egg turned to light and when the light was gone, a small child lay on the ground where once the egg had stood.”

“So Harbinger sat on your egg until it hatched. Now get to the part where you lost him.”

“I hate you,” Red Moon said glaring up at him.

“No you don’t,” Taurok said with a soft smile. “Keep going. What happened next? Did he teach you to talk?”

“Did you not hear me tell you that all knowledge was imparted to me inside the egg? No. Gravity and air were new to me, though. I knew words but the sound of my own voice was an odd thing after so much silence. I told him my True name. That made him laugh. Call me Vengeance, I said—for I knew what was in his heart.”

“Vengeance,” Taurok crowed. “I love that. It is better than Red Moon. How did you get that moniker, anyway?”

Red Moon glared at him and continued.

“Show me our enemies,' I said. He laughed and said that once I knew all he knew to teach me, then the Ancestors would call a ship out of the dark that would take us off that world and deliver us into the heart of our enemies.”

“Did they?” Taurok asked, his eyes gone wide in amazement. “How did you get off that world?”

Red Moon looked away.

“Red Moon? What happened? How did you lose Harbinger?” Taurok asked, his own need pressing at her.

“I cannot. I have never told . . .”

“So tell me. How bad can it be? I talked my brother into enlisting in the Rebel army and it got him killed. I just buried him not two days ago. What could you tell me that is worse than that?”

Red Moon flinched and looked away. “Men came,” she said in a small voice. “I was new to the world. Harbinger had taught me how to fight but he had never been very clear about who I was to fight. They came, these men, but I cannot even tell you what species they might have been. They looked like Harbinger, only a little taller. They tasted just like Harbinger in the Nothingness in between. Perhaps they were a distant cousin to the Ancellians. It would explain so much about how they knew what to do. Being young and a fool, I let my curiosity override my caution. They were strange and new and exciting. I wanted them. Two was not enough to rebuild a species. I came out of the place I was hiding and went to talk to them.”

“Oh, shit,” breathed Taurok.

“To them, I was nothing. Less than nothing. They caught me and chained me to an immense stone in the middle of a clearing.”

Red Moon hesitated and began to tremble.

“Just breath,” Taurok said. “Say the words as if it happened to someone else. Tell me as if it were a dream.”

“They hurt me and they laughed when I began to cry and still they hurt me, until all I could do was scream out Harbinger’s name, over and over again. He heard me and he came and surrendered to them. This was what they wanted. What they had intended all along. They took Harbinger and left with him.”

Red Moon closed her eyes. She could not say the worst part. That Harbinger had looked away from her, refusing to meet her eyes as they pulled him out of that clearing and out of her life forever. Did he hate her for forcing him into the hands of their enemies? Was he ashamed of what they had done to her? That. That one thing gnawed at her guts the most. “I think he must hate me for betraying him.”

“Oh, gawds, Red Moon. I am sorry,” whispered Taurok.

She looked up into his eyes, a deep rage burning inside her gut. “Why be sorry? He was to be king and I was just a female whose pain counted for nothing. That is not even the worst part of the story.”

“Stop. You don’t have to tell me anymore. Forgive my stupidity,” Taurok said hoarsely.

“There I was,” she whispered, “chained to a stone like an animal, terrible feelings all jumbled up in my head, thinking they chose Harbinger over me because I was worthless, worth less than an Ancellian warrior prince, feeling guilty for forcing him to sacrifice himself for me through my own stupidity, grief stricken for having lost him, bereft that I was alone for the first time in my life.”

“Why did they not kill you?” Taurok asked, puzzled. “You were a danger to them. To everyone who had made an enemy of you. Why leave you alive?”

“In a way, they did kill me.”

Taurok blinked. “What? I don’t understand.”

“Chained to a stone I could not escape, my mind full of my grief, I turned to stone. Did you know female Ancellians could do that? Under extreme duress, we turn to stone. I stayed in that clearing under the stars, waiting for Harbinger to return to me, waiting for someone to rescue me, watching the sun cross the sky, streaming by faster and faster as I simply . . . ceased.”

Taurok swore virulently, his hands finding a branch of the apple tree and breaking it off with a loud crack. The violence eased his anger. He took a great shuddering breath and looked down at her. “How are you here?”

“I sat there for nearly one-hundred years. I became Dragonstone,” Red Moon looked away, frowning. “Do you think that was what they intended? I have had three hundred and fifty years to think about this. Did they mean to return once the transition was complete? Were they Dragon Masters? Was this part of their magic?”

“Dragonstone?” Taurok said in dawning horror. “I thought that was an old wives’ tale. No, wait. Oh gods. I have seen Dragonstone. It is worth a king’s ransom. Wired to a reactor core, it can power a small city for a thousand years. Gods, Red Moon, we did not know. In our ignorance, the lesser races have perpetuated your race’s pain out into the universe.”

Red Moon cocked her head, listening to the smug whispers of her grandmothers from the other side of the Veil. She grimaced.

“Ah, do not feel guilty. The grandmothers are taking delight in my ignorance. Apparently the history of the Ancellians is not as benevolent as we would have liked everyone to believe. Every peace-loving Overlord has a dirty, little secret, it seems. The Gods of War came to dwell for a time among the early Ancellians. We are well versed in the art of war, having waged a millennium of war upon ourselves. It was in this time that they came up with the technology that could convert a sleeping Ancellian female into perpetual energy.”

Red Moon met Taurok’s look of horror. She flinched and looked away.

“Never mind. Back to the story. How did I get off that planet? A mining ship came, their instruments sweeping the surface of the planet, looking for a thing much like what I had become. They landed, broke my chains, pried me loose from my stone bed and took me away. I woke in the hold of a star freighter, having already been traded out in the dark places of the world a dozen times so I had no clue where my birth planet was. The minute the ship made orbit, I stole away on a lander craft and found myself on a planet named Finn’s End. It was only later that I came to realize Harbinger was lost to me forever. No matter what I did, I never found my birth planet. All records of an Ancellian named Harbinger and a ship full of men who may or may not have been Ancellian could not be found anywhere.”

“What? Why? How? How did you wake up?” Taurok asked, confused.

“I had learned to hate in that clearing under the stars. My ten thousand grandmothers wanted to put that to use. Finn’s End is a human planet. The grandmothers woke me and told me I was there to learn the ways of humans.”

“Err?” Taurok said, not liking the sound of that.

“Did you think I just woke up knowing how to act human? No. It took years of study. Finn's End was where my first teacher found me. A gypsy named Taliba.”

“But what . . . why?” Taurok sputtered. “Why study humans?”

“I can only guess. My name is Vengeance. Humans had a hand in killing my species but humans were divided. They were to be my weapon. I had to learn to pass for human so that I could find General Far Ranger, of course,” Red Moon said. “I needed an ally and he was to command my armies. The gods of war and my grandmothers have much in common. Do you think my grandmothers knew I would eventually blow a hole in this world so big that it would swallow Far Ranger whole?”

Taurok stared at her, his mouth open. She had reduced him to speechless wonder. Again. Red Moon smiled. None of her answers comforted him. Maybe he would leave her in peace for a while. Maybe he would just leave her. Her story was a warning. If he stayed, she was going to get him killed. Red Moon walked away. Finding a bench under an apple tree, she took one of the chain-rings off her belt, pulled out the remainder of the copper coil and began weaving a Tree of Life in the interior void of the cog. With great care, she twisted the copper to form trunk and roots, branches, and leaves, a symbol of the One Mother whose magic flowed through all things. Red Moon cleared her mind and thought of all the magic of the world. Darkness and light, root and leaf, power and strength flowing both ways through the trunk, life and death and rebirth, earth and air, fire and water, all these things were represented by this tree. She whispered the prayers that called all the magic of the known Oneverse into her simple copper wires. As her fingers distracted her mind, she began to remember Far Ranger.