Changer's Moon Read Online Free Page B

shadows trading shots. She thought about turning up the sound, but didn’t bother. No point in listening to the newsman’s hysterical chatter. They were all hysterical these days, not one of them touching on the root causes of much of this unrest. The rich getting richer, the poor getting poorer and more desperate. When you’ve got nothing to lose but your life, what’s that life worth anyway? In recent months she’d thought about leaving the country, but inertia and a lingering hope that this too would pass away had kept her where she was. Hope and the book she was finishing. It exhausted her and was probably a useless expenditure of her energy. There was still a steady market for her books, loyal readers, bless their gentle hearts, but her editor had begun warning her the House was going to make major changes in anything she sent them, even in the books already published, so they could keep them on the shelves. “You’re being burned all over the country,” he said. “The money men are getting nervous.”
    She watched the battle run to its predictable end (blood, bodies, clouds of teargas, smoky fires), and thought about her life. Most people would consider it bleak beyond enduring but it suited her. A half-dozen good friends (ex-lovers, ex-colleagues, ex-clients that she called now and then, whenever she felt the need to talk), who called her when they had something to say, had dinner with her now and then. Sometimes they met for a night of drinking and talking and conjuring terrible fates for all their enemies. Those friends would help all they could. If she asked. But she wouldn’t ask. They were as poor as she was and had families or other responsibilities. And there were a few acquaintances she exchanged smiles with. And a handful of men not more than acquaintances now, left over from the time just after the divorce when she was running through lovers like sticks of gum, frightened of being alone. They sent flowers on her birthday and cards at the new-year Turn-fete, invited her to parties now and then, slept with her if they happened to meet her and both were in the mood.
    And there was Simon who was something between an acquaintance and a friend, a historian she’d consulted about details she needed for her third book. He’d got her a temporary second job as lecturer and writer-in-residence at Loomis where he was tenured professor and one of the better teachers. He’d asked her to marry him one night, grown reckless with passion, liquor and loneliness, but neither of them really wanted that kind of entanglement. He’d groused a bit when she turned him down, and for over a year refused to admit the relief he felt, his vanity singed until she managed to convince him she simply didn’t want to live with anyone, it wasn’t just him she was refusing.
    That was the truth. It pleased her to shut the door on the world. And as the years passed, she grew increasingly more reluctant to let anyone past that door. I’m getting strange, she thought. She grinned at the grimacing face of the commentator mouthing soundless words at her from the screen. Good for me. Being alone was sometimes a hassle—when she had to find someone to witness a signature or serve as a credit reference or share a quiet dinner to celebrate a royalty check (few good restaurants these days would serve single women). But on the whole she lived her solitary life with a quiet relish.
    A life that was shattering around her now. She contemplated the ruin of fifteen years’ hard slogging labor with a calm that was partly exhaustion and partly despair.
    THE PRIESTESS
    Nilis sat in the littered room at the tower’s top, watching moonlight drop like smoke through the breaking clouds. The earth was covered with snow, new snow that caught the vagrant light and glowed it back at the clouds. Cold wind came through the unglazed arches, coiled about her, sucking at her body’s heat. She