Dark Moon Daughter

by J. Edward Neill

  “Say again.” He felt his blood grow hot. “I think I misheard you. You said she went to Shivershore. Your only duty was to protect her. It was the reason I brought you here, remember?”

  “I would have stopped her had I known.” Saul hung his head.

  “How do you know this?” he rumbled. “How are you so certain she fled?”

  Slowly, reluctantly, Saul produced a slip of paper, a sheaf so thin the slightest breeze might have torn it in two. “Here. Look.” He gave it to Rellen. “I found it in her cottage. She left it on her bed.”

  I do not want to read this, Rellen knew even before he lifted the paper to his eyes. What have you done, Ande?

  The letter read:

  Dearest Saul,

  I have to go now. I hope you will understand. I am sure Rellen will not. Please do not worry for me, and please do not blame Jix for my leaving. I go to help all of Thillria, a deed someone must do before all is lost. I will be back. I promise.

  Once I am gone, please tell Rellen I am sorry. Tell Garrett the same. I love each of you. When I return, I hope our squabbling will end. There was no reason for it to begin with. It was all a misunderstanding.

  If you must know why I go, I can say little. I feel driven to do this. Something inside me aches to be useful to the world. I can only hope that helping Thillria’s people will cure me of my gloom. These days, when I look to the sun, I wish it was the moon. When the wind catches me, I wish it was colder. I hear voices in the night, dark and terrible. I feel sick with these thoughts. I must find a way to be rid of them, and I believe this might be the way.

  I will be back. I will see you when this is over, when the forest is safe and the wickedness inside me is gone. Whatever you do, please do not follow me. You cannot catch us where we go. Do not come to the forest. What happened to the people in Orumna’s hall happens in Shivershore all the time.

  Love

  -A

  He read the letter thrice. His blood coursing like fire through his body, he mouthed each syllable again and again until Saul finally broke his concentration.

  “She’s less than an hour gone. With luck, we can catch her.”

  “Where is he?” Rellen growled.

  “Where is who?”

  “Jix. I should have strung him from father’s tower when he came to Gryphon. When I find him, and I will, no man will stop me from ending him.”

  “He’s gone,” said Saul. “Likely with Ande to Shivershore. We can catch them both. A few nights from now, we can be well on our way home. But what of the King?”

  “What of him?”

  “The treaties. We are ambassadors. If you kill Jix…”

  The King and Jix be damned, he thought as he lifted Andelusia’s letter to his eyes again. Her ink strokes were short and sharp, betraying her haste. ‘What happened to the people in Orumna’s hall happens in Shivershore all the time,’ she had written. He did not understand.

  “She is not herself.” He let the letter fall to the floor. “Even before we left Gryphon, something was wrong. Was it me? Did I drive her to this? Or does it have something to do with what happened in Furyon?”

  He looked to Saul for an answer, but gained none. Answering instead was the man who had exited the door alongside Saul. The young, scarlet-clad Thillrian had listened the entire time. Nonchalantly, he injected himself into the conversation.

  “Perhaps I can help?”

  Rellen’s jaw tightened. Then and there, he would have given his castle, his city, and the sword off his waist if it meant he never had to speak to a Thillrian again. “Who are you?” he asked. “This does not concern you.”

  “Oh but it might,” said the Thillrian. “I have seen much of late, too much, or so my masters would say. I know what happened to your lady.”

  Rellen glared at him. “You know, do you? Tell me then; why did she leave? What did Jix do to her?”

  “I was only just telling Ser Saul.” The Thillrian’s grin was too broad for Rellen’s liking. “It appears your lady has stumbled upon Thillria’s gravest secret. A few nights ago, she came to the King’s hall in the wee hours, when we received several folk of Shivershore. The folk she saw were ravaged by the dead peoples, the Uylen, as our Shiverfolk name them. All of them have since died. The Uylen cut them with poisoned blades, and your little lady witnessed their last moments of suffering. Ser Saul will tell you as much. That, and the fact that her mare is missing from the stables.”

  “It’s true, Rellen.” Saul nodded. “All of it.”

  He cast his memory back to Jix, to the shadowed stairwell in Gryphon Keep, and to the things the sniveling little man had tried to convince him of. Even now, the fact that his mother and King Jacob had accepted Jix’s proposals filled him with anger. “Dead peoples?” he snorted. “Shivershore monsters? It would have taken more than that to tear Ande away.”

  “As I hear it, she means to help us,” countered the Thillrian. “It is not as insidious as it might seem.”

  “What did you call them? The Uylen?” He glowered. “If they are half as real as you say, what could my Ande do about it? Nothing, of course. I will warn you just once. If any harm comes to her…”

  “You do not understand. King Orumna condemns Jix’s sneakiness. I am here to aid you. I can help you retrieve your lady.”

  “How?”

  The Thillrian placed a hand on his shoulder and walked him away from Saul. “My name is Hadryn,” he said once they were well away from the others. “I am a captain in the service of King Orumna, but I am also from Shivershore, where the dark deeds of the Uylen pass for normal. I know what happened to your lady. You must not place the blame for it on the King. This is Jix’s doing, Jix alone, Jix who would see the right thing done, but who knows not how to go about it. I would ask you to trust that Andelusia will be safe, but I have the feeling you would not listen.”

  “You would be right.” He shrugged loose of Hadryn’s grasp.

  Standing back, Hadryn clasped his hands together and gazed into Rellen’s eyes. Rellen was not sure what he saw in the young Thillrian. Honesty or lies? The King’s captain or another sheet pulled over my eyes. Hadryn looked ordinary enough. He had a hawkish handsomeness, his black hair slicked to his head in the Thillrian manner, his cheeks pale and sharp, and his green eyes almost as bright as Andelusia’s. But who is this person? Orumna never mentioned him. And where is our ponderous king? He should be here. He should know how his servants are conspiring.

  “I have spoken to Ser Saul,” Hadryn explained. “We agree; the answer to your troubles is simple. If you are willing to wait for my men to assemble, we will leave tomorrow at dawn. My soldiers know the way south much better than Jix and his lot. We will catch your lady before she attempts anything to your disliking. I have Orumna’s authority. Be assured of that.”

  Rellen’s head throbbed. “Thillrians,” he said scornfully. “You all sound the same to me. Tearing my Ande away with one hand, promising to find her with the other. How is it Thillria lasted all these centuries? One sniff of your double talk, and all the swords of the Triaxe should have been at your throat ages ago. Mine would have been, were I a king.”

  “Every moment we bicker, your lady slips further out of reach,” Hadryn reasoned.

  “How is this?” He looked down upon the young captain, who stood a full head shorter than he. “How is it you would help me? How do you pretend to know me, my lady, or my friends? I should blame myself for this. I knew it would happen, and yet I allowed your hospitality to cloud my mind. Make yourself plain, little man. Summon Orumna and let us put this in the open. Either that or I will find Andelusia myself.”

  Hadryn took several steps back. Rellen advanced on him, backing the young captain down like a wolf wanting to corner its prey.

  “Lord Gryphon, the King will be angry.” Hadryn waved him back. “When he learns how far Jix has gone, he will rage and become unreasonable. You do not need Orumna, I say. You need me. I am his voice. I will help you if you allow me. Though naught but go
od can come from your lady love’s actions, I will take you to her. Perhaps she can explain all of this better than I.”

  I want to slap his jaw right off his face, thought Rellen. I want to throw him and all the rest of them into their beloved sea. He knows, but he knows I will not do it. “Why must it wait until morning?” he growled.

  “Shivershore is not terribly safe, not these days,” Hadryn reasoned. “A few of my best soldiers will take the afternoon to assemble, weapons and all. Come dawn, we will ride on fresh mounts on the swiftest road, and we will catch your lady before three nights pass, long before she arrives at the forest.”

  Rellen looked over his shoulder, where Saul stood in stony silence. “What do you think?”

  “What choice do we have?” Saul answered stiffly.

  Yes, what choice indeed? He thought. “Get your weapons. Find Garrett. Tell him everything.”

  Wordless, Saul marched past him. The room’s lanterns seemed to shiver all at once, while the sound of the door closing carried like thunder throughout the hall.

  “Better if your companions remained in Denawir,” said Hadryn once Saul was gone. “Faster too.”

  “You are familiar with Garrett Croft?” He stared Hadryn down, and for once the young Thillrian looked less than comfortable. “Yes, of course you are. And so you know the tale of what he did to free Andelusia from the Furies. One man, one sword, and hundreds of Furies dead. Thillria is not Furyon, my friend, nor even a shadow of it. If anything happens to her, it’s him you will answer to, not me.”

  “In the morning then?” Hadryn gulped, and the maidservants scurried away.

  “In the morning.” He turned away. “And tell Orumna, that pompous, waffling moon of a king, I want the treaties signed upon my return. I have had enough of Thillria, and enough of him.”

  That night, he hunkered in his cottage, seated like a statue in the room’s only chair. His broadsword, polished to perfection, lay across his knees, while a pair of silver knives sat on the bed just beside him. He expected Orumna’s grey guards to at any moment crash through his door to arrest him, but they never came, at least not yet.

  Sitting alone by the sad light of three candles, he brooded deep into the night. Orumna, Jix, and Hadryn’s faces floated in his mind, smiling at his heartache. Oh, to be home, he wished. Father, you never would have let them drag you here. You would have sent Jix sprawling into the fields. You would have let me do the honors, and I would have savored it.

  More even than the Thillrians, his mind fell back to what Saul had read to him. Saul was gone now, off to find Garrett, but before leaving he had sat Rellen down and cracked the cover of some dusty old tome he had borrowed from the Inkhouse.

  “I found something.” Saul had said. He had been standing at Rellen’s door, his battlestaff leaning on his shoulder, the leathery book under his nose.

  “What do you mean?” Rellen had asked.

  “In this very book,” Saul answered. “If the only word we had to go by was that of the Thillrians, I would not trust it. But here, on these pages, I found something. Here is a passage…”

  In the dusklight creeping through the shutters, Saul had stood and read from the page. Though many of the letters were blurred and the ink flaking away, he read without error. They were the words of Dank, whose book had come to the Inkhouse by some unknowable path. Saul knew Dank’s writing better than any other:

  In Shiver they dwell, their skin paler than the moon, their teeth filed to daggers. They have no sight, the Uylen, nor do they need it. They simply know. Whether trailing the scent of blood, the trace of beating hearts, or the gentle footsteps of the innocent, the Uylen are aware of all life. They crave it. They adore it. They would eat the world if they could.

  I have learned the motivation of the Uylen in recent years. They have not degraded to this state without reason. They exist as guardians of sorts, keepers of the very thing that twists and mutates them. They have lived, or unlived, since the days of the Ur. They breed, sleep, and socialize, but not like men do. They are not evil so much as they are slaves. If I am correct, there exists no reason ever to approach them, no reason to enter their domain. Men should avoid them, shun them, and kill them only if they leave their forest, and they should take no joy in it when they do.

  Whatever we do, whatever our entanglement with the Uylen might one day become, we should never think to enter the Shivershore forest. I hope no one will ever think to try, but hope is only so strong a thing. Fear should be our reason for staying away, and terror our protector. Swords matter little against the Uylen. Only one of the old blood could hope to encounter them and survive.

  Saul had left him with that. He had remained in his chair ever since, sliding his whetstone up and down his already-sharp broadsword. Old blood, he brooded on Dank’s words for what felt like an eon. They think Ande is some kind of witch. If she should die, what will they care? I will destroy them if that happens. They are not the Furies. It would not be hard. They are Thillrians. I would be doing the world a favor.

  Journal, Part IV

  Autumn…

  This is my last night in Aeth. As dwellings of man go, it is not so foul a place. I shall miss it, I think. More than anything, I shall miss the bed. My work leaves me little time for sleep, but the few hours I lay in Orumna’s cradle are more restful than any in my life.

  I often marvel at Aeth, first castle of Thillria. It is so much taller than my little tower in Shivershore. Fifty men could stand on each other’s heads and have little hope of reaching my window. It feels secure, a bit less available to the dangers of the world. Tonight I can hear the sea better than during most nights. The high tide grinds against the rocks and froths like mead upon the sand. I could sleep seven days to such sounds, but not tonight. It is better that I remain awake. I will save my next sleep for the end.

  I must take this moment to admit something. I sit here, comforted by the rhythm of the ocean, and yet I feel something that has been with me since the beginning. Cowardice. I often endure it, a reluctance to go, a thousand maggots gnawing through my gut. I am a flawed man. I am soft. I am not truly from Shivershore, where life is hard and the people harder. Now more than ever, I fear to go back to that terrible place. How delicate am I, some sort of weakling. I look at my hand and see it tremble. I bury my face in my hands, and the moisture from my fear drips between my fingers. Imagine me, the last man who ever will live, burdened with some unspoken phobia. At least no one else will know.

  Most men would hate themselves forever for being afraid. Not I. I will conquer it. Most terrors can be overcome, while others can be circumvented. Such is the case with the dark forest, the place they call Nightmare. I have no intention of wandering too close to all its shadows and death. I shudder to imagine its black, twisted limbs and blood-drizzled leaves. I sweat when I dream of the wailings that worm their way out, of the men, women, and children the Uylen leave in tatters atop the loam. I dare not go any nearer than I must. My skin would be game for the Uylen. My powers would fail me, for what good are a playwright’s guiles against creatures both blind and deaf? And yet, all of this will not matter. I have a way around them. It will be an easy thing, if all goes as hoped for.

  I must stop writing soon. I have more to do than ink this tired old rag. I have someone to meet tonight. My little creature, I have kept her in darkness for so long. I wonder if she will remember what the sun looks like. When I set her free, Thillria will have not one perfect beauty in its midst, but two. A wretched man, I am, to have kept for my own. History would have condemned me as cruel, selfish, and incestuous. But then, very soon, history will be no more, will it? For history is made by mankind, and without mankind who will keep it? No one will. The fires will burn high. The ash will rain. There will be no books when the nether kingdom comes to be, none save this journal of mine.

  The Awakening