Dark Moon Daughter

by J. Edward Neill

  “All will be well,” he tried to assuage her. “When Rellen is done marching through the King’s mire of paper, he will be his old self again. He will come to you begging for forgiveness, and you will grant it. These things take time to heal, Ande. You will see.”

  “No.” Her eyes were glazed as if by ice. “This is not about Rellen. This is about me.”

  “Tell me, Ande. You’re worrying me.”

  She set her gaze on him like a swordpoint. It had always been her power over him, to make him feel small. “If I tell you this,” she said, “you must promise to repeat it to no one.”

  She is serious, he thought. This is nothing good. “You know you can trust me.”

  “No, Saul. I need an oath. I must say these things, but not to Rellen or Garrett. Swear to me you will never repeat what I tell you. Say it, else I will go.”

  What is she going to tell me? Goodness, the poor thing is terrified, but of what? “Alright, Ande,” he answered. “I promise. I swear it. On my honor, I’ll not tell a soul.”

  She rose and returned to her couch, whose cushions she sank into like a spade in soft loam. Her hands clasped together over her belly, she sent a wistful stare to the ceiling, seeming to wait for the right words to crawl into her mouth.

  “I am leaving.”

  Saul nearly fell from his chair.

  “I denied him at first,” she continued. “I told him I did not believe him, that I could not help him. But that was before last night. Those poor people, Saul, you should have seen them. It was dark, but I saw well enough. Women and children, all spread out on litters. I saw a mother with her eyes gouged out, a father with no fingers, and many more with no tongues. The guards carried them into King Orumna’s hall. They were cut up as if by knives, their skin carved to the bone. Most were still alive, though only barely. I had no idea the things he told me were true. I would have said yes right away had I known.”

  “Who?” He needed to know. “What people, Ande? What’s this all about?”

  She gulped down a breath, her cheeks paling. “The people. The ones in Orumna’s hall. Their faces were ghastly; no lips, no teeth. Their flesh was cut to ribbons. No one else saw, no one but the King and his guards. I was only there to fetch a candle, but I came to carnage instead.”

  He stood, the light from the window making a black silhouette of his body. Afraid. He felt a shiver shake his insides. She is afraid, but I’m the one shaking. “Ande, what are you talking about? What happened?”

  “I saw too much.” She stared right through him. “Last night, after everyone else was asleep, I wandered into Aeth. The guard unlocked the door for me, though I never should have gone. I was at the entrance to the King’s hall when I saw it. From some other door and some other place, four guards marched in. Their faces were black, Saul, like they had bathed in ink. Then I saw the people. There were two mothers, five children, and some dozen men. The guards laid them on the table like slabs of meat. They were mutilated, their clothes all cut up, and their wounds too many to bind. Their faces were white as death. I do not know whether they survived the night, but there they were, alive and bleeding. The children…the blood…I could not bear to watch. I ran back to my cottage. I did not want to see any more.”

  He went to comfort her, but she tucked her knees under her chin and turned her pale cheek away. “No. Stay away.”

  “Ande.” He drew his hand back. “I didn’t know. How could I have? If any of us had known, we would never have let you see.”

  “Do not be sorry, not for me.”

  “But I am. None of us heard of this. No one at Aeth said a word.”

  She slithered off the couch. As if pained by the window’s light, she walked to the far side of the room, where all the shutters were closed. “The King tried to warn me,” she said. “He sent his servant, but I ignored him. I should have listened.”

  The Inkhouse’s wonders no longer mattered. The comfort of Saul’s books dwindled until all that remained in the room was Andelusia, whose sadness wounded him more than she could know. Rellen was her lover and Garrett her protector, but Saul imagined himself as her family, the father she had never known.

  “Ande, I want to help.” He kept his distance. “But you have to tell me everything.”

  Her back was to him, her gaze sunken to the floor, but he saw her trembling all the same. “He said I am the only one who can put an end to it,” she murmured. “He said if I go to the black forest and do as he asks, the suffering in Shivershore will end. I do not care about the reward, Saul. I just want to help those poor people. That is why I am leaving. I wanted you to know. You can tell the others after I am gone, but not before then.”

  He went to her. “Is this Jix’s doing?” He set his palm on her shoulder. “Please tell me.”

  “He only wants my help,” she sniffled. “He says I am the one who can make this right. I have to save them, Saul. Those poor people, if you could have seen them…”

  Jix. The little man’s face came to life in his mind. The scoundrel. This is his work. Rellen was right. I should have known. All at once, he felt awful for keeping the truth from her. In Gryphon, Rellen had told him everything, and like a good pup I did as I was told. I lied to her. And now this.

  “We should have warned you, Ande,” he said. “Jix is the reason Rellen did not want you to be here.”

  “Oh?” She spun around, the green in her eyes cold and ready to crack. “And did Rellen say what passes for peace in Thillria? Did he mention the murders, the butcher’s work in Shivershore? Did he tell you about the evil magicks at work, the same witchery as in Furyon? No, I doubt it. My Rellen talks plenty, but leaves all the juicy bits out. When he took you aside and told you to hate Jix, did he ever once speak of Nightmare, where the walking dead lurk? Did he tell you about the children? Well? Did he?”

  Certainly none of that, he thought. What lies has Jix told you, you poor thing? “Jix has deceived you,” he told her. “You cannot help these people any more than I can. You’re one woman, and Shivershore is no safe place. I’ve been reading. I know.”

  “You are wrong. I can help them.”

  “How?”

  “I know things.” Her fury flashed through her eyes. “I know what my masters taught me, what powers they gave me a taste of. No one can find me if I wish to stay unseen. I walked right into your room and lied down on your couch, and you heard nothing. Any place in the world, I can walk unchecked, unharmed. I can do it in Nightmare. I can end this.”

  This was not how the morning was supposed to go, he thought as he backed away from her. He knew what he had to do. Run to Rellen, warn of Jix’s treachery, and beg leave to ride north with Andelusia on the morrow. The only right thing to do is protect her. We could be home in a month. All this would be forgotten.

  After a deep breath, he made for his table. “It will go like this,” he said as he snuffed the lantern, clapped the shutters closed, and slid all his books into his satchel. “You and I will find Rellen. We will snare an audience with this King Orumna, summon his man Jix, and have out with the truth. No more sneaking about, no more lies.” He grabbed his satchel and shouldered his battlestaff. “It’s time Thillria tells us exactly what they want, else it’s time for us to go home.”

  In his frantic state, he overlooked the only thing that mattered. He glanced to the shadowed section of wall near which Andelusia had stood, but she was nowhere to be seen. Gone? So quickly? He felt a fool. He looked to the door, shut as tight as it had been moments ago, and wondered how she had done it. And where she went.

  Out the door he crashed, down the stairs, and onto the crowded market street, but like a breath of cool wind in the dead of summer, Andelusia had vanished. In her absence, the sun seemed not so bright anymore, and wind flowing down the streets of Denawir felt stronger than he remembered. My fault. He pelted toward Aeth, his face red with shame. If something happens to that poor girl, Rellen might as well send me to the gallows, for I will already be dead.

  Hadryn
r />   In a corridor between the two highest towers of Aeth, Rellen walked alone with King Orumna. His was a miserable gait, slow and slogging. His belly was full of another of the King’s breakfasts, his head thick with yestereve’s wine, and his legs leaden from walking the castle hallways morning, midday, and dusk. For all the exercise Orumna seemed to take, it seemed a marvel to him the King remained so huge. For all we do is walk, walk, walk.

  It was morning yet, five days deep into the discussion of the Grae treaties, yet Rellen believed he was no closer to an end. He wished his mother had sent him with an advisor, someone from King Jacob’s court who grasped the minutiae of the some three hundred pages of documents. He had argued, cajoled, reasoned, and groused with the King, but nothing seemed able to put Orumna’s pen to paper. The Thillrian sovereign was a stubborn man, and seemingly more interested in food than alliances.

  At one window, wide open to the chilly autumn breeze, Orumna rested his sausage-like fingers on the sill. The open sea crashed against the cliffs some thirty stories below, a sight that seemed to please the King. “The water grows dark,” the rotund man said. “Autumn is on its way. It’ll be a cold one, it will. The winter will be long and dark, and the ocean will be angry. You Graefolk have never seen a real winter before, have you?”

  Some dark thought in Rellen’s head whispered that the treaties would sooner be signed if he shoved Orumna right out the window and into the sea. He almost smiled at the notion, but the shivering wind whipped down the corridor again, and he remembered why he was here. “Highness, more is the need to be done with this. King Jacob would be unhappy were I to be stranded until winter.”

  “Stranded?” Orumna’s laughter shook the hall. “Why, if I were a petty man, I’d be offended. Stranded, you say. Is Thillria so foul? You prefer your pale, pretty waifs to our raven beauties? You like your winters toothless?”

  “No, Highness,” he corrected himself. “I only mean you have yet to read more than Jacob’s introduction.”

  “Ah,” Orumna burbled. “One wonders where your friends are, Lord Gryphon. I expected them to join us for breakfast and support your browbeating of me, but they shun you as if you carried some sickness. What’s the trouble, lad? Woman got you vexed? Thillria taking its toll on you?”

  Everything here takes its toll on me, you especially. Rellen wandered to an adjacent window, a wide casement in the hall affording him a full view of the ocean. “They and I are weary of each other. The road took its toll. We see now our differences.”

  “Forget about them,” Orumna chuffed. “What matters is that you will soon be a hero. You will ride back to Graehelm with a new treaty in hand. Your king will be impressed. This is what you want, yes?”

  His eyes lit up. “So we will begin? We will sit and go over the terms?”

  “Soon.” Orumna belched. “After my meal settles in me.”

  Were there gods to give praise to, Rellen might have dropped to his knees and spent an hour in worship. Instead his relief was interrupted by the door groaning open behind him. In came Reya, the King’s poor, pale, overworked maidservant. She was breathless, having climbed many stairs to reach Aeth’s uppermost hall. “Forgive me, Highness,” the woman panted. “Lord Rellen, you are needed. Master Saul of Elrain would speak with you.”

  Rellen chewed his lip. He dared not leave now, not with Orumna so close to signing. “Tell him I will see him tonight.”

  “Yes.” Orumna sounded annoyed. “At supper. No sooner.”

  “Milords, it seemed urgent,” the woman persisted, looking so dreadfully weary. “Master Saul was distressed. He swore he would not have come unless it was a dire matter.”

  “All the same.” Rellen looked out the window, the dark sea roiling beneath him. “Tonight would be better.”

  “But milord Gryphon,” Reya chiseled away at his patience, “Master Saul said it involved lady Andelusia. There’s some trouble, you see. He awaits you in the King’s hall.”

  The sea seemed to darken, and the light crawling in through the window paled. The way Reya said it stripped all concerns of kings and treaties from Rellen’s mind. No matter that he had hardly spoken to Andelusia since arriving in Aeth, he felt his heart stop and start again. “Ande? What trouble? Where is she? Is something the matter?”

  “I…don’t know,” Reya stammered. “Master Saul was not specific.”

  He spun for the stairs, but the King snared his sleeve. The ogreish man’s fingers were stronger and chillier than he expected, biting at him even through his deep blue tunic. “What of your treaties, Lord Rellen?” The King scowled. “We could take this afternoon to sift through them. By evening, who knows? We might even be done with it. Surely your little lady can fend for herself a few more hours?”

  “If she is well, I will return.” He freed his arm. “If not…” He backed away, the drum of his heartbeat clattering behind his ribs. Orumna looked ready to strangle Reya for her interruption, and the poor maidservant seemed to know it, shrinking against the wall. Rellen did not care. He took to the stairs like a river plunging off a mountainside, his footfalls like hammers against the stone steps. Orumna’s complaints never reached him.

  Down he raced, descending through the throat of one of Aeth’s six towers. Many hundred steps later, he cut through an archway, sprinted down a torchlit corridor, and burst into the King’s grand hall. No Saul, he observed. And no Ande. What goes here? Orumna’s table was unoccupied. Save for four grey-clad guards and Tinali, the pretty maidservant flitting about to sweep the floor, the great room was empty.

  “Where?” He approached the girl. “Where is he?”

  Wide-eyed and frightened, Tinali nearly dropped her broom. “Um, m’lord? Whom do you mean?”

  “A man with a beard and a staff. You served him supper only two nights ago. The woman said he was here.”

  “Oh.” She looked stunned. “Sorry, m’lord. I haven’t seen anyone.”

  “No one?” He halted at the head of Orumna’s table. “But the woman told me.”

  The poor girl gaped at him, and he felt consumed as if by some sudden madness. This is nothing good, he agonized. Saul would never do this. Ande must be in danger. Why is this castle so damnably empty? Someone must know where he is.

  He walked to several of the chamber’s dozen doors, flinging them open one by one, glimpsing only darkness beyond. Bewildered, he marched into another corridor, calling out Saul and Andelusia’s names, but he earned no answer, nothing but the sound of his voice echoing off the cold stone walls. His heart blasting, he stormed back into the hall, where he found Tinali and Reya waiting, but no Saul, and no Orumna.

  “Where did Saul go?” he demanded of the women. “Back to his cottage? Off to find Garrett? Tell me. Tell me now!”

  The maidservants looked frozen with fear. Their eyes were wide and their lips clamped shut. Mother and daughter, he knew then. Had they been men, he would have throttled them to make them talk, but even as he thought it he heard a door open elsewhere in the room. The awful sound cracked the silence in the darkness behind Orumna’s chair. The great slab of oak groaned against its hinges, dragging on the floor like a dead man being hauled to his grave. From the gloom, two men emerged. Saul was the first of them.

  “Crows take my eyes!” He confronted Saul. “I thought something had happened. Where is Ande?”

  Saul’s expression looked as hard as stone. One stroke from a hammer, and Rellen imagined his face would shatter. ““She is gone. She fled not an hour ago.”

  The air left Rellen’s lungs. “You jest. Fled where?”

  “Shivershore.”

  “Nonsense. She and I are not so cross. She must be in the city somewhere, maybe out in the gardens. We need to look harder.”

  “Rellen, listen to me.” Saul shook his head. “She’s been deceived. It’s Jix…you were right about him. He whispered some poison in her ear and she believed it. She makes for Shivershore, for the forest they call Nightmare. I should have seen it earlier. I never thought it would come
to this.”