Dark Moon Daughter

by J. Edward Neill

  “Some prisoners require more than swords and shadows to hold,” said the warlock.

  “He will come with us?”

  “Yes. But you will not see him.”

  “Will you show me the book?”

  “We shall see.”

  The dark-haired girl came for her. She sank into the grass. She felt the blindfold blot out her vision, and the whispers drown out the wind. ‘Sleep, Andelusia,’ they bid her. ‘Your time is near. Your power shall be vast. Sleep, and wake long from now.’

  And sleep she did.

  Journal, Part VI

  Autumn in Midnon

  Midnon. Bottomless. Bleak. Full of old, old shadows. As melancholic as Thillria dares to be during autumn, Midnon is far gloomier. This is my thirty-seventh morning in this chilly, sunless, desolate fortress. Few comforts exist within these walls, and nothing to soften the harshness of I do. One could lose hope in here. One could die and never want to wake.

  I remember Aeth, with its vaulted sunrooms, cavernous halls, and hundred-windowed corridors. The castle is far, far away, but today I long for it. I hear none of the ocean’s music in Midnon. No waves lap against these walls, and no sun sparkles through the windows. Never does the dawn smile within these cold, dark passages, and even if it did there would be nothing for it to shine upon save black marble floors, crumbling stone stairs, and ugly, unhappy walls. I did not know this is what Midnon would look like. How could I have? It reflects who and what I am, but so stark is its soullessness that I begin to question my humanity living here. I dare not step outside, lest I forget myself and never return.

  Grimwain returned last evening. From the farthest corner of Thillria, the Sallow Gluns of the east, he came back to me with the best of news. Thillria’s harbor and borders have been sealed. None shall leave or enter this nation, not when they look upon the ghosts I have waiting. Moreover, the prisoners of Denawir, Muthemnal, and Dray have been assembled and put to work. Thillria’s lords toil beside its commoners, slaving in the Undergrave until our task is done. Grim assured me that the most special of my rivals, those hundred or so who have learned too much for their own good, are dead, each slain by his own hand. I tell myself I am not an evil man, but all my mirrors say otherwise.

  I sit alone now in Midnon’s master room, scribing my thoughts by the sad light of many lamps, which hang from the wall by ivory chains. Every surface save my bed, my desk, and my creaking wooden chair is made of granite or shining jet marble. From this room to the rest, the floors feel like polished glass, while the walls are smooth and seamless, as though I had carved this place from a single brick of underworld stone. These touches are what make Midnon perfect. I could have chosen something brighter, something happier, but it would hardly befit me, not now. Were Midnon comfortable, I might forget its purpose.

  And now I sit, bent to that purpose again. I must continue to memorize the Pages Black, now reassembled and laid open before me. I must learn its every note, every inflection, every graceless syllable writ in the language of old. I would attempt to copy all I have learned into this journal, but this flimsy book would quickly overflow.

  Even now the Pages beckons me. Its secrets are myriad, and the whispers from within too powerful to ignore. I have tried not to fall too deep. My eyes are tired from my labor. My bones ache. Each day I promise myself I will study only until nightfall, but I always break my word. When darkness comes, still I sit, hunched over my table with my hands crabbed and my eyes withering inside my head. With each phrase I learn and master, I crave another. This is no easy thing. My daughters and I are among the few who may learn the Ur language, for our blood is of the Archithrope, our souls tainted by our ancestors.

  Of the black book, I have long possessed the tenth Page, the Page of Masks. Now I must befriend the other nine:

  The Page of Storms, of which a copy is said to exist in distant Furyon

  The Page of Fevers, which I hope I must never use

  The Page of Famine, to dry the flesh of any foe

  The Page of Tongues, for speaking commands no mortal may deny

  The Page of Alacrity, to hasten nature’s sluggish pace

  The Page of Hexes, from which the Uylen suffered for so long

  The Page of Nightness, powers my eldest daughter already seems to possess

  The Page of Ghouls, for when living servants are not enough

  The Page of Ur Fire, which may consume a man, a city, or a world

  The Page of Masks, which has knit itself back into its original place, and which allows my grey men to walk so freely

  These I must learn. These I must master. I have taught myself much already, but I will need at least until year’s end to finish. I would continue even now, but I must begin today’s lesson late. I must meet with someone. I have neglected her for far too long. She is waiting for me now.

  Before I descend Midnon’s stairs, I pause. My quill trembles in my hand, as though afraid of what I might write next. It must be worried for my newest captive. It knows my decision is not yet made. Only yestereve, I sat in silence for more than an hour, twiddling my fingers, staring blank-eyed upon empty paper. Should I let her live? How long can I keep her prisoner without choosing her fate? I could take a knife to her ivory throat this very morn, but is that what I have become, a murderer of women, a slayer of children? Am I so terrified of her? Am I fearful enough to destroy my own flesh and blood? If I take her under my wing, will she struggle against me, or will she shed her inhibitions long enough to see who and what she really is? Is there much sense in keeping her alive? If I teach her my secrets, a different sort of death will visit her. Her heart would still beat, but the woman she is would be otherwise gone. It seems cruel to torment her much longer. I take no pleasure in keeping her captive.

  I am no killer. Even when I finish learning what the Pages plans to teach me, I doubt I will choose to lay waste to the world without at least a moment’s hesitation. And thus it comes to my decision. I have used these last moments to consider it. I do not think I can bring myself to harm her. She is, after all, my daughter. She is as beautiful as her late mother, as pure and powerful as all the Archithrope of her line. She is diminished by the shadows, but that is not her fault. She is innocent. Any sins she has committed could be rightfully blamed on me, perhaps even the Furyons, but never herself.

  No. I cannot do it today. I do not think I can ever do it. No. I will not kill her. I will not kill my eldest child.

  Midnon

  Andelusia awoke at the bottom of the world.

  She sat up, her eyelids like black curtains rising. Her first breaths were ragged, the life inside her lungs fluttering. I will die today, she thought the same as countless days before. This is my grave. She could not remember just how it was she came to be dropped into the world’s deepest sepulcher, and yet here I am. As ever, her first sensation was of the manacles locked over her wrists. The bands, forged of beaten iron, burned her skin, hurting her to her bones. No chain bonded them, but their fit was so tight to her skin she knew she could never remove them. After more than a month of being snapped against her forearms, they were beginning to rust, the bleeding red poison leaching like fire into her welted flesh. They are a part of me now, she believed. And will be until the end.

  She sat on the wet stone floor, shivering, sweating, nearer to death than she knew. After so many days alone in her abyss, she was starving. Her stomach squelched. Her bones hurt whenever she moved. She rarely made a sound anymore, for even to murmur half-forgotten songs set fires to burning in her throat.

  Her prison chamber, vast and hollow, lay so deep in Midnon’s bottom that she knew she stood no chance of escape. The three hundred stairs leading up to the chamber’s only egress seemed like three thousand, and the door was barred with iron rods thick around as her arms. She had never seen or heard another prisoner. She was alone, trapped in a dungeon whose walls oozed sorrow and whose chains, snaking down from a ceiling too high to see, dangled like teeth loose in their sockets. Only by the gr
ace of her two daily meals of gruel had she survived thus far. Even her shadow powers had abandoned her. The purpose of the iron around my wrists, she suspected.

  In the dark, indeterminable hour, she rose to her feet. She stretched her raw and swollen elbows, pushed a lock of wet hair from her forehead, and lolled off the bottom stair, which she had used as a sleeping nook. As ever, little light reached her eyes. With her shadow-piercing gaze foiled by the iron bands, she draped her flimsy blanket over her shoulders and picked her way about the room using the sad glow of many distant candles, which flickered and dripped from a monstrous chandelier far above her head. There was little to do in her abyss. She had no books to read, no pebbles to toss, no other prisoners to talk to, and so she began her routine of wandering around the room, trailing her fingers against the rounded stone wall. I will go mad soon. The walls will start talking and the floor will swallow me. Or perhaps I am already dead.

  As she slogged about the room, dreaming of a song remembered from a day long forgotten, she heard footsteps far above. My gruel, she knew. My daily poison. She shed her blanket, skittered across the floor, and plucked her bowl from the bottom steps. The footsteps were surely those of the hooded man, the one who arrived twice every day to spoon her daily nutrition from his pot into her waiting bowl. She no longer possessed the strength to run, and so she took slowly to the stairs, lurching up toward the prison gate one slow step at a time.

  “I am here,” she whispered when she came to the gate, whose iron bars hurt her to be near. As expected, the hooded man awaited her on the gate’s opposite side, his pot in hand, his eyes invisible behind his drooping hood.

  “Your meal,” he croaked.

  He reached through the bars and spilled the contents of his pot into her bowl. She took several sips of the warm, oily broth, savoring it as though it were the finest wine. If for only an instant, she felt her shivers subside.

  “It does not taste as bad as it looks.” She showed a meek smile between mouthfuls. “Tell me again; what is your name? What is this place called?”

  The hooded man gave no answer. He never does. Beneath his hood, he is laughing at me. Silent as death, he stood and watched her eat, bobbing his head as though to approve of her appetite. Go ahead and laugh. When I am dead, you will still be here. She drained her bowl, wiped her chin clean with her sleeve, and stared right back at him.

  “Ser jailer, are you one of the warlock’s servants?” she questioned. “His cook, perhaps? Or just another of his prisoners?”

  The hooded man shook his head.

  “Wait,” she continued, “I know. You are not a servant. You are him. You are the warlock, and you and I are the only ones here. Is it so? Tell me. Please.”

  The hooded man threw back his hood.

  The warlock was not as she remembered, but it is him, she realized with a shudder. Her mouth fell open, her stomach roiled, and her shivers reclaimed her. No shadow men stood behind him, nor did the foul fumes of his magic roil from his fingertips, but she was terrified all the same.

  “I am he,” the warlock said, and she was surprised to hear no thunder. “I’ve brought your meals every day since you arrived. I find I must look upon you, Andelusia. I worry for your health.”

  She dared a second glance at him. His eyes were grey no longer, but instead as green and tranquil as the summer sea. “You worry for me?” she asked, incredulous. “How is that? I assumed it was only a matter of time before you killed me.”

  To her astonishment, the warlock unlocked the gate and stepped through. Her first thought was to run, her second to crumble into ash. He put his arm over her shoulder and beckoned her to sit beside him on the topmost stair. Her weakness was such that she did not entertain the slightest notion of resisting. These moments are my last. He is simply being kind before killing me.

  “If I may be so bold.” She stared into the darkness rather than face him. “Why are you doing this? You have your book. The Uylen are dead. Are my pain and death so important you must come here to mock me?”

  He looked upon her, and for the first time she saw pity, even concern, drifting in his gaze. “No, Andelusia. I do not mock you. I do not wish you to die. You will not understand, but I have good cause in keeping you here. You are dangerous to others, to yourself, even to me.”

  “Impossible.”

  “Do not pretend.” His fingers flexed upon her shoulders. “We both know what is inside you. Your potential is as great as mine, perhaps greater. Admit it to yourself. You held the book. You know what is inside.”

  It is true. I cannot deny it. She remembered the feeling of power, however brief, when she had taken the black book from the Mortician’s dais. She remembered the attraction when she had glimpsed its insides, the feel of its fleshy cover beneath her fingertips. If I had known, the warlock would be the prisoner and I the warden.

  “Who are you?”

  “I have a name, but it would mean nothing to you.” The warlock seemed almost sad, though the moment passed like a waft of autumn wind. “For now I am the keeper of the Pages Black. I will be something greater in the months to come.”

  “How did you know it was in the forest? Why did you send me?”

  “I have possessed the tenth Page since I was a boy. It has taken me most of my life to trace it back here. You and I, we were meant to find it. We were meant for magic, I the father and you the daughter.”

  She blinked hard when she heard him say it. “You must mean that in an imaginary sense,” she countered. “You meant to say you the teacher and I the student. That is what I wished for, though I wish it less since you dropped me in this dungeon.”

  The warlock stood and descended two stairs until his gaze and hers were at the same level. The candlelight glimmered in his eyes, burning in his pupils like two fires guarded by the night. “Teacher and student, yes. But father and daughter as well. You are Andelusia Anderae, wanderer of the night and unwilling child of the last line of Archithrope. I knew your mother, little Ande. We named you together before she died. I brought you to the Cairn hallows, in the heath where the trees loom like green towers in summer and like skinny-armed scarecrows in winter. I left you there with a woman who said she’d be your caretaker, and although at first I thought I’d never see you again, the memory of you grew always in my mind. When I learned you survived Furyon, I knew I had to find you.”

  Lies, all lies, she thought at first, but then the truth closed around her heart. I should be shocked, she told herself. I should be angry, joyful, or despairing. But no…I feel nothing. The weight of the warlock’s words could not break the coldness of her soul.

  “If that is true, what do want from me? You took Rellen, Garrett, and Saul from me. You sent me to Nightmare, where I all but died. Please remind me why I came here so willingly.”

  He climbed behind her on the stairs. He loomed above her, his shadow falling like night across her. She sat as still as stone, not certain whether he was about to slay her or embrace her.

  “Andelusia,” he said, “when I found you again, you were doing little more with your life than peppering Gryphon with your prettiness. You were not part of my plan any further than the Pages Black. But now that I have you here, I see something I did not expect. I see the willingness in you, the sort of strength that makes a woman leave her friends and lover in chains for the chance of something more. You, my daughter, desire to know the Pages, do you not? You hunger to place its power at your fingertips. I’ve kept you alive not because you are my mine, but because I see this in you. You would join me if I asked. You would become heir to the everlasting throne I am about to make. Is this untrue?”

  She thought long upon his words. He promises me a second chance. He promises me power. To embrace this will bring me no joy, nor will it bring back what he took from me…but it might bring me meaning, the same sort I felt in Nightmare, the same I feel whenever the night reigns.

  “If you prefer the virtuous road, you may stay here instead.” The warlock gestured into the dungeon gl
oom. “I won’t kill you, but nor will I permit you to leave. The bands about your wrists will not allow you any of your magicks. Iron is the un-doer of any wizard, you see. Long ago, when our enemies discovered this secret, they used it to wipe Archithrope off the world.”