Dark Moon Daughter

by J. Edward Neill

  She regarded her bands. They were heavy, weighing not just upon her arms but also on her soul. She gazed upon her hands, her fragile fingers and pale, dirty palms. Were he a liar, he would not have put these on me. If I had no power, he would never have bothered.

  “You would let me read from the Pages?” she asked, her voice as soft as the lightest rain.

  “I would.”

  “You would teach me to drive the whispers out? You would show me how to master the night?”

  “Yes.”

  “I was a good person.” Her gaze sank to the stairs. “I dreamed of friendship, of love and marriage. I thought I would have children one day. I would have given them all the things I never had. But now I see another life. I tasted it in Furyon. I felt it in Nightmare. There is another world for me.”

  “Yes.” The warlock nodded. “A place for people like you and I, where the laws of this life do not extend, where the shadow overlays the light and lets us live forever.”

  “Forever?”

  “You will not believe me, but I tell you truly. My own father, the eldest Anderae, lived many thousands of years with this power. You will know him as Dancmyrcephalis, the small, slender, green-eyed sorcerer who arranged the destruction of Furyon.”

  “Dank. You mean…my grandfather?”

  “Indeed.”

  She might have sobbed, but she had no tears. She heard no whispers, only the slow thrum of her heart as she wavered between life and death. “My friends are gone.” She felt her eyes fall shut. “Home is far away. Nothing remains for me in this life, and so I will admit I thirst for what you offer. I feel it moving inside my blood, wanting me to submit. I am not Andelusia anymore.”

  If the warlock was pleased, he showed her nothing. “You are where I once was.” He touched her cheek with his palm. “You sound as I did when I was young. All seems desolate now, but it will not be that way forever. The Pages is like sweet, sweet wine. After a short while, the meaning of the world will change. You will see everything anew, and you will encounter truths mortal men cannot understand. You will be reborn. I see it in you. You have desired this far longer than you know.”

  “Yes.”

  “Come with me. I will take you to your room.”

  “Yes, father. Thank you.”

  He opened the gate and ushered her out of the dungeon. She did not resist him. When the gate rattled shut behind her, she did not look back, for my darkest days are behind me.

  She knew nothing of where he took her. She knew only that it was cold and dark and damp. The warlock led her down an impossibly long corridor, passing many cells that were open to her sights, but none of which were occupied. No one else existed here, no living souls she could see. The ebon floor and shadowed walls seemed to forbid all life.

  “Where are we?” she asked after walking many thousands of steps.

  “Midnon. We are both within Thillria and beyond it. No one else may find us here.”

  “Midnon?”

  “My fortress. In the middle of nothing and nowhere.”

  “It feels like a tomb,” she remarked. “You called yourself a king in the fields outside of Nightmare. Why not choose someplace more comfortable?”

  “We are not here for comfort’s sake. Midnon is a special place. The walls amplify our power, and no prying eyes can see us. As well, there is no iron, not a trace except what you wear.”

  “But the walls…”

  “Stone. Seamless and indestructible. I call it mindstone. You will learn soon enough.”

  He brought her to another stair, though it was unlike the stair in her dungeon. It felt smooth beneath her bare feet, almost like still water, almost like ice. She climbed it up and around, ascending as it coiled into an ever tighter spiral. Her breath often gave out, forcing her to stop several times.

  “Without your bands, you might fly instead of climb,” said the warlock. “When you are shadow, little is the need to labor with lost breath and tired feet.”

  The stairs ended. The warlock opened a door at the top and led her into a grand hall, a space almost as huge as the whole of Gryphon Keep. The ground floor, she sensed. If there is such a place.

  Midnon’s crypt-like entrails fell behind her. The grand hall felt like the beginning of someplace else. She saw windows stretching from the floor to the vaulted ceiling, but no sunlight brightened their panes. She saw doors, but all were shut. The great room, partitioned by pillars and lined from wall to wall with monastery pews, was lit solely by braziers and tall, many-windowed lamps, all of which burned with violet flames. The fires danced before her, filling the hall with an unearthly haze, making every shadow seem alive. It was beautiful in a way.

  “Ur fire,” said the warlock.

  “The ones who came before us,” she whispered.

  “Indeed.”

  Five steps into the hall, she froze in her tracks. She felt suddenly watched, as though a thousand sets of eyes had swiveled in their sockets and fixated upon her. She glanced into the hall’s many corners, swearing she saw movement. After snapping her eyes open and shut several times, she found the sources of her unease. Creatures. She shivered. Monsters. At least twenty of them.

  Her watchers stood in the darkest parts of the room, masked and sealed behind black, bone-tined armor, holding silver spears that stood at twice her height. The watchers were only somewhat taller than a man, but they are no men. Their masks had no eyes, and no breath puffed out of their hidden mouths. Dread and faceless, they looked like the denizens of a child’s nightmare, the very personification of horror. Worse than the Uylen, she thought. Worse even than the guardians of Malog.

  “What are those?” She trembled.

  The warlock followed her gaze. “Ah. You found them.”

  “Are they alive?”

  The warlock moved closer to the nearest creature. He sniffed it and tapped its black bone mask with a finger. It did not move. “No, not alive,” he explained. “They are my hunters, named in the Pages Black as Sarcophages. Only one week ago, I awoke them from the catacombs. They are quite dead, but being dead has its uses. They cannot be killed again, save by Ur fire or dismemberment. They will do as I ask until destroyed or put to sleep again. You may touch them if you like. They kill only when I command it.”

  “No, thank you.” She backed away. “If you let me see the book, I think I will skip that Page.”

  “As you wish.”

  The warlock marched into the heart of the hall, striding swiftly between two long rows of pews. She scurried to follow him, glancing this way and that to see if the Sarcophages were watching her. Despite what the warlock had promised, she had the distinct feeling the dead things would slay her if they could.

  To her relief, the warlock moved quickly through the hall. He led her to its far end, where the black pillars ended and a massive door barred the way forward. No Sarcophages were near, at least none I can see.

  The warlock grasped the door’s cold stone ring and tugged the portal open. “Up.” He beckoned her. “Your new home awaits.”

  More stairs. She let out an imperceptible sigh. Her calves felt heavier than oak trunks, and she could tell at a glance the sharp, narrow stairwell tunneled upward for a vast distance. I have no choice, she thought. Climb or die.

  Step by step, she ascended. The Ur lamps watched her, and to her tired mind it seemed they danced wilder whenever she walked beneath them. When at last she reached the topmost stair, she slid through a narrow passage and entered a great round room in which seven doors stood shut.

  “One of these is mine.”

  “Yes, that one.” The warlock stretched his skinny toward the farthest.

  “Which is yours?” she questioned.

  “I stay in another part of Midnon. When the time comes to teach you, I will find you.”

  “Oh.”

  His countenance darkened. “Whatever you do, daughter, do not leave this corner of Midnon. The fortress is very old. I have known it all my life, and have yet to explore it all. It wi
ll find a way to lose you, should you allow it.”

  He crossed the room and opened the door to her room, beckoning her to enter before him. Floating into the dark space beyond the door, she glimpsed three windows, each little more than a slit in the dark stone. Starlight blazed through the tiny gaps, cold and bright as diamonds. The room was a palace compared to her dungeon, replete with a small but soft-looking bed, a washbasin brimming with cool water, a bowl of apples, and white linens piled high against the walls.

  “When is my first lesson?” she asked after plucking an apple from its bowl.

  The warlock looked her up and down, his stare hard enough to slay a field full of flowers. “The room one door to the left is unlocked. It has a bath. It will be cold, but you will survive it. Clean the filth from your skin, comb the knots from your hair, and dress in the robes that lie beneath your bed. A visitor shall arrive after you sleep. If you are pleasing to his eye, he will bring you to me.”

  “Visitor?” She brought the apple to her lips, but dared not bite. “Who?”

  “You will see.”

  In a swirl of black robes and shadows, he left her. The chamber door clattered shut behind him, and her sudden aloneness startled her. She yearned to follow him, to beg for a tiny taste of the Pages Black. But no, she thought. I will wait.

  The warlock’s absence made Midnon soulless and silent once again. She heard nothing beyond the thump of her heart and the patter of her bare feet against the frozen floor. She explored her little room, touching all its surfaces to make certain they were real. The narrow bed and its soft, lacy sheets felt pleasant enough. When was the last time I slept in a bed? Ages ago, it seems. She plucked two apples from the bowl and devoured them to their cores, their sweetness numbing her tongue. Afterward she stood above the basin of water, whose surface she saw her face within. She had only the starlight to see by, but it is enough. I am a ghost of the girl I used to be.

  The hours slipped by. Her fear of Midnon crumbled. She ate five more apples, gazed through her window onto the stars, and lay in her bed, willing herself to forget the agony in her wrists. After a time, she stripped away her ragged, rotten dress and padded to the room beside hers, where she bathed in the frigid waters of a pool graven into the floor. The cold, ink-hued water chilled her to her bones. The grime sloughed from her skin, the filth draining down the strands of her hair like rain falling from leaves. The longer she remained in the water, the more comfortable she became.

  After her life’s longest bath, she dressed in the grey robes the warlock had left for her. A mirror beside the pool caught her eye, and she admired herself within it. After all this time, look at me. I thought I was ruined, but no. I thought the darkness made a monster of me. I was wrong.

  She was, in that hour, the most beautiful creature in the world. For the first time in her life, she realized it. Her hair, no longer a mess of crimson waves, shined like a solid black curtain, hanging wet to the middle of her back. Her skin looked the same as polished snow, her lips painted like ink, and her youthful prettiness turned to dark exquisiteness. The clothes gifted by the warlock pleased her most of all. They were part robe, part gown, a slick sheen of grey cloth cut so close to her body she felt nearly naked. And I would be, if not for my iron bands.

  And then, soul-weary and hurting, she lay in her bed, eased onto a pile of pillows, and drifted slowly into sleep.

  She slept dreamlessly that night. Her slumber was as deep as the sea, so dark and serene that even when three gleams of moonlight carved through the window slits and shined upon her face, she drowsed all the deeper. When next she arose, she wondered if one night had passed her by…or one lifetime.

  She slid out of bed. As ever, the stars winked beyond her windows. There is no daylight here, she began to believe. It will always be night. She yawned and stretched, ate another two apples and ran her fingers through her hair. She felt refreshed, far more than expected. The terrors of her dungeon, of the Sarcophages, and of losing Rellen, Saul, and Garrett were gone. Her heart was free of guilt. Midnon felt almost like home.

  Shadow Sister

  He told me not to. I know I should stay in my room. But he said the visitor would be here when I awoke, and after so long, no one has come. The Pages…I need it. Come father, take me to it. Is this all a cruel test?

  Andelusia hovered in the entrance to her bedchamber. The seven-doored chamber lay open before her, the lights of three Ur lamps flickering on the walls. For two agonizing days, she had eaten, bathed, and slept the hours away. And now my iron bands hurt worse than ever, she thought. This is a test. It must be. He wants to know if I am brave enough to search the fortress and find him.

  She pushed the door fully open. Her grey gown fluttering in her wake, she tiptoed to the other doors, pulling and pushing to see if they might open. Only one did. Save for the bath chamber, each room was sealed, their black stone doors too thick to dream of breaking.

  She looked to the stairs, graven into the far wall like the shaft of a deep, dark mine. The way down is far, she dreaded. What will he do if he finds me? Worse still was her terror of the hall’s lifeless watchers, the Sarcophages, whom she knew would be waiting for her. So long as night reigns, they will watch. And it will always be night in Midnon.

  She took one step onto the topmost stair, drew in as deep a breath as her body could hold, and plunged downward into darkness. She loped down the stairs with effortless grace, gliding beneath the violet lanterns. Long afterward, she set her bare feet upon the cold marble floor of the great hall. Hundreds of Ur fires burned in the black expanse, grimly lighting the bone masks of the Sarcophages, who stood like empty suits of armor in some twenty shadowed corners.

  She halted beside a pillar, her heart pumping hard, her courage teetering. She took one step and then dozen more into the hall. The Sarcophages did not stir. She moved like a midnight breeze into the labyrinth of pews, almost daring the dead guardians to chase her. Her horror soon became exhilaration, and with each footfall she grew bolder, licking her lips as if relishing the flavor of her fear. The creatures might as well be made of stone, she decided. Father told one truth, at least.

  Her terror forgotten, she moved through the hall until she came to the first of many alcoves, within which a bronze-banded door lay shut. Two fires blazed on the door’s either side. Atop their pedestals, the lavender-tongued flames smoked and danced inside two bowls of stone. She warmed her hands and prodded the door with her fingertips. Unlocked. No accident. He left it this way on purpose. She pushed harder. The door swung open. She glanced once more upon the Sarcophages, and then quietly as a graveyard breeze tiptoed into the hallway beyond.

  Her wanderings took her into the depths of Midnon. She wound through its corridors like a fluttering moth, gliding by the light of a stolen Ur candle. Midnon was vast, too vast for any one man to have dreamed. With its mazes of doors, passageways, cavernous chambers, tiny alcoves, and bottomless chasms, the fortress felt as if designed by madmen. She found libraries stacked with ancient, dust-covered books, laboratories brimming with bizarre, otherworldly instruments and sculptures, and crypt-like museum halls, in which strange artifacts lay unused and portraits of unknown people hung upon otherwise naked walls. A thousand years it must have taken to create this place and fill it. She crept about, poking and tapping every object within reach. Where in Thillria could such a place exist?

  By the time she entered her hundredth room, her feet ached and her eyes were tired from straining against the shadows. I should go back. This is far enough. The Pages is elsewhere. She wandered about the final room, by far the emptiest she had found, and turned on her heels. Back to my room.

  A door creaked open behind her.

  The creaking hinges severed Midnon’s silence. Shuddering away her fear, she followed the noise, sidling snakelike along a barren wall, creeping slowly to the corridor’s rear door. No light came from the space beyond the barely cracked portal. Dark enough to hide anyone…or anything.