Changer’s Moon

2

When Hern and Serroi stepped through the Mirror, the gathered crowd surged onto its feet, the big brown bald man, Ombele, descended on Hern like an avalanche and had his arm twisted behind his back before Hern had a chance to catch his balance. The fighter band lunged through the crowd at him and stood guard while Georgia patted him down with quick efficiency and none-too-gentle hands, removed the sword and held it up, disbelief in his square face. He turned to Serroi and stopped, his jaw dropping. “Green?”

Serroi chuckled. “Green,” she said. “Suppose you let my friend go and listen to what he has to say.” She looked up at him, with a wry smile. In the mirror Georgia had seemed big enough but not enormous compared to the others, yet her head barely passed his belt buckle. These were a large people. Even the smallest of the adults would be at least a head taller than the tallest of the mijlockers; only the Stenda came close to watching them.

Georgia grinned down at her. “Feisty li’l bit,” he said. He waved his fighters back, handed Hern his sword and went to squat in the front row of the gradually quieting crowd, balanced on his toes, ready to move swiftly if there was need.

Hern sheathed the sword and brushed at his sleeves, his eyes glittering, his long mouth clamped in a grim line. He wasn’t used to being handled like a child and looked ready to skewer the next to try it, but even as she wondered if she should say something, the anger cleared from his face and his palace mask closed down over him. He swung around to face the council and Samuel Braddock who was polishing his glasses with a crumpled white handkerchief. “May I speak?”

Braddock slipped the glasses on. “Think you better.” He climbed onto his stool to sit, resting long bony hands on long bony thighs.

Heim turned to the intently listening folk. “I am Hern Heslin, hereditary Domnor of Oras and the Cimpia Plain, a land on a world other than this. I’ve come to offer you a refuge from your enemies.” As he paused, Serroi studied the faces before them, some interested, some skeptical, some hostile, some indifferent, all of them alert, following his words with an intensity that startled her. Talk well, Dom, she thought, they’re going to need a lot of convincing. “I’ve been watching you,” Hern said. “On my world there is a being who calls himself sometimes Coyote, sometimes Changer, with a Mirror that looks into other worlds. To pay off an old debt, he in effect gave me my choice of whatever I saw in his Mirror. I have watched you governing yourselves and I like what I’ve seen. I’ve watched your fighters in action, effective action with a minimum of force used and blood shed.” He smiled. “I was much impressed.” A blend of interest and alarm lit Georgia’s faded blue eyes. “On my world we are engaged in a battle that is much like the one that engages you here. From what I heard, your government has been taken over by a group that is trying to control every aspect of your lives. So it is with my land. I need you. I have no gold to pay you, but I can offer you a refuge from those that pursue you and land to build a new country, raise your children, govern yourselves as you please. Fight for me, help me throw out those who want to tell my people how to act, what to think, who want to destroy an ancient seat of learning and refuge. In return, I will take all of you back through the Changer’s Mirror, all of you, old and young, fit and sick, fighters and non-combatants alike. I will cede to you a stretch of land north of Oras, a territory empty of other folk and kept as a hunting preserve by my father and grandfather. The soil is fertile, it has an extensive seacoast and access to one of the major rivers of the land, a good part is forested, and there is abundant game.” He made a small deprecating gesture. “Since I don’t find much pleasure in hunting, they’ve been left undisturbed for a number of years. The size… um… that’s a difficulty.” He rubbed a hand across his chin. “I would say the preserve is just about three times the area of that city where the armory was. You understand, I can only promise you that land if the Nearga Nor and Floarin’s army are defeated, but no matter what happens some of you will survive and there is much open land on my world.” He turned, made a slight bow to the council, then swung back to the others. “I stand ready to answer your questions.”

A man got to his feet, scowling, a stocky dark man with long black hair braided into a single plait and tied off with a thin leather thong. “Havier Ryan,” he said. “A lot of us don’t think much of hereditary anythings. We got ’em and we close to dying of ’em.” In spite of his stolid appearance, he radiated an immense anger tautly controlled, control that flattened his voice to a harsh monotone. “Fight for you, you say. All right, what’s the chances? We don’t mind a fight if something comes of it, or why the hell we here? Lost causes, that’s something else. Might as well stay and tend to our own miseries as jump off into the back end of nowhere.” He crossed his arms over his chest and stood waiting.

“Your weapons are far more lethal than ours, with a much greater range. My world fights with sword and bow, lance and sling. With those two-wheeled machines you have mobility and ten times the speed of anything my people know. You would be fighting beside several hundred meien, women trained to weapons who will give the last ounce of their strength to defend the Biserica, not least because they can look forward to a slow skinning over a hot fire if they’re defeated. Also a few hundred irregulars, men and boys driven off their land, and some Stenda mountain folk who don’t take well to being told what to think. You’d be fighting behind a great wall, defended from sorcerous attack by the most powerful concentration of life-magic in our world. Your numbers are few, but as I said, your range, power and mobility will more than make up for lack of numbers. There might be other allies joining us, but I’ve been away from the Biserica for some time and haven’t seen the latest reports, As for the other side-I think we can count on having to face three or four thousand. Not all of those will be trained fighters, but enough of them to roll over my meien like a flood tide no matter how fiercely they fight. And there is the council of sorcerers, the Nearga Nor. Since they are the ones who started this mess, they’re gathering in all the norits and norids they can lay hands on. Norids you don’t have to worry much about since they’re barely able to make a pebble hop. Norits are something else. Besides things like longsight and flying demons sent as spies and saboteurs, they can compress the air above you so that it falls on you like a stone, turn earth to bogs that suck you down, or open wide cracks under your feet, burn anything flammable you have on your body, including hair and nails, freeze the breath in your lungs, or snatch it away, freeze the blood in your veins. But they can’t work their magic from a distance greater than ten or a dozen bodylengths and there are only a few hundred of them-and as long as the Shawar are untroubled, they can block everything the norits throw at us. The most powerful of the nor, the norissim, are very few, one active, the others reduced to shadow extensions of his will. But he’ll be concentrating on the Shawar shield so won’t be a direct threat as long as we can keep the army from breaking through the wall. With you there, we can stop them. A tough fight, but far from a lost cause.”

“And what happens if we don’t choose to come?”

“I go back through the mirror and look for another force to fight for me.” He looked round at them. “And you pack up and start running.”