Moon Called Read Free Page A

expressed emotion the other could not or would not communicate otherwise.
    Though she had opened the two other doors leading out of the great room in the traders’ rest she had found nothing but bare chambers. Perhaps these served as storage chambers. Sometimes the traders were rumored to hold back part of their stock in well guarded places, taking with them only small loads for trade.
    How had Malkin come to be here? Traders did not deal in living things, guarding jealously even their beasts of burden which were well trained to trailing. Sometimes they had a hound such as Kort, but those were never sold or bargained for—they were too highly esteemed. People (Thora classed Malkin as that) were not items of trade. So why had this furred, silent creature been abandoned here?
    On the third day Malkin moved about restlessly, pulling at the binding on her ankle. Though Thora tried to restrain her, the girl at last gave up the struggle, watched the wrappings she had put on so carefully strippedaway. Then Malkin set about working over her own hurt, taking her toeless foot between her hands, massaging and bending it.
    Thora could sense the pain that manipulation caused the other. Still Malkin continued with determination. And Thora did not try to interfere. Fresh meat provided by Kort, who brought in small kills, seemed to revive the furred one amazingly. Thora's own revulsion at the manner of Malkin's feeding died away. It was really no different than Kort's; only because the furred one was humanoid in appearance did it bother her.
    They were five days in the copse camp. On the night of the fifth the waning moon was narrowed to a thin slit in the sky. Now it would disappear, and with it the strength which Thora believed she could call upon. At the rise of that crescent she threw aside her clothing and walked into the open. The rituals she knew she had mainly watched, only a few of them had she ever taken part in at the Craigs. But, since her wandering westward, she had not neglected any that she knew or could improvise upon. This was not the fullness of the ripe moon, but it was the Last Light before the rebirth of the Maid.
    Beneath her feet the new growing grass was soft as she walked first that Path, seeing in her mind Tall Stones which were not here, but which must each be saluted in turn. She facedthe Nameless Lords, the Four Watchers. Though those she dared not invoke. However she hummed the Drawing Song, the invocation to HER ABOVE ALL. The old ache, the lack stirred painfully within her. If only she had been Blessed before she had been set adrift . . .
    Then—
    It was neither a whistle nor a hiss—only a sound as thin as the lightest of breezes. The faint notes of it rose and fell with a cadence which Thora had never heard. Her body answered before her mind was aware of what she did. She dipped and swayed, twirled, turned, foot forward, foot back, caught in the net of that sound as securely as a salmon might be caught in a net set in the spawning river. The sound was so low that at times it echoed more in her head than in her ears—
    She moved faster and faster until, turning her head up to the sky, it seemed that the star points shining there were spinning too, following also the bidding of that singing. For singing it was even if it came from no human throat.
    Round she went, following the sunpath, pausing at each Watcher's point, north, east, south, west. About her waist the chain slipped and there was a radiance growing. The moon jewel flashed as she moved. Thora did not even feel the grass beneath her feet. Instead she was free, as if flesh and bone, all which madeup Thora, had grown as light as some wind-carried seedling reft away from the earth to be born up to the very sky throne of the Mother.

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    Even as it had slowly caught her by its rhythm, so did the song to which she was captive begin to die. Moisture dropped from her chin, to spatter on her breast as Thora stood quiet, her body bathed in sweat in spite