Dark Moon Daughter

by J. Edward Neill

  “Tower? Book?” Greckan squinted at her.

  “His secrets. The worst of my worries.”

  “Will he send more shadow men?” Lilia fretted. “Are they real enough to hurt us?”

  “He will, but I doubt they are dangerous. Each troupe will have but a single living soldier. Find the one and the game is up. The rest will be shadows, made by father to fool us.”

  “And all this time we’ve done whatever they asked.” Greckan drummed his boney fingers on the table. “We’re ignorant, all of us. We’ve known no magic in all our lives.”

  “No one has,” she assured him. “If you wish to save your lives, you will tell this truth to as many as you can. Father thrives on his illusions. He’s counting on you to obey his grey men, to never ask questions. Tell your neighbors. Urge them to spread the word. Bring hope, and you may yet live. Do nothing, and it will not matter. You will stay his slaves until the end.”

  “Who is this man who calls himself king?” asked Faye, shy and pretty. “Is he really your father?”

  “Yes. We’ve all wondered,” pressed Lilia. “Is that how you landed in Lune? You ran away from him?”

  She gazed into the lantern’s flame. “I left him. I fled because I know what he wants. His heart is full of malice. He would doom us for no reason I can make sense of. He wears his little disguises and plays at being the lord of Thillria, but he wants more than that. I must stop him, or nothing will remain. He is my father, but no love lives between us.”

  Lilia stood speechless. Greckan hunched over the table, grimacing.

  “He would kill us?” Faye squeaked.

  “He wants to reshape the world,” she answered. “If he has to put us in our graves to do it, he will.”

  “We don’t understand,” said Lilia.

  “I would not expect you to.”

  The three villagers fell quiet. Still bleary-eyed, Andelusia sank onto the edge of the bed. I studied the Pages Black. Her mind roamed. I know its magicks. How can I seal the Undergrave? How can I make all the shadow men disappear? What if father comes for me? He makes fortresses in his mind and wears the faces of dead men. I have none of these powers. None.

  Her thoughts broke likes waves inside her skull, her wits still dulled by her bottomless sleep. The harder she tried to dream her father’s defeat, the more her hopes faded. Worse still, each time she shut her eyes she envisioned but one horror, one foe above all others. He stared her down through his eyeless mask, his sword rutting the Thillrian grass as he stalked her through the night.

  “Mogru…” she uttered his name.

  “Pardon?” said Greckan.

  She stood again. She felt suddenly out of place in the dwelling, a child in the company of strangers. “I must go. I need whatever food you can give me. Please, quickly.”

  “But we thought you were feeling better?” Lilia gulped.

  “No. No, not at all. He is near. Just outside. He will find me.”

  “Who? Your father?”

  “Mogru.”

  Her mind felt like mush, but she was sharper than she knew. She sensed the only thing that mattered: Mogru, whose presence slithered into her thoughts and chilled her to her bones. She felt him pumping through her blood and haunting her frozen heart. The taste on her tongue turned ill. Like poison. Like death.

  She heard a creak beyond the dwelling’s only door, the groan of a wooden plank bent almost to breaking. Lilia stiffened. Greckan, half-deaf as he was, snared his daughter’s arm. “What’s that noise?” the old man asked. “Is someone at the door?”

  She felt her heart stop and start again. Faye shrieked. Lilia turned whiter than milk. He is here. Right now. At the door.

  No sooner did she think it than Mogru arrived. He crashed through the door, scattering splinters of wood across the threshold. The villagers screamed again. She stood still and silent. Through the broken planks she saw the monster’s black-gauntleted hand, his scarred breastplate, and his mask. His entire body was locked beneath his armor, but she knew what lay beneath. Death.

  Mogru lumbered into the room. Brave and foolish, Greckan stood from his chair and swatted at the monster with his cane, but with a flick of his armored fingers, the horror seized the old man’s neck, squeezed his fist near to closing, and hurled Greckan’s limp body out into the night.

  Faye let loose a bloodcurdling wail. Lilia stood to face her father’s killer, but Mogru glanced her way, and like a burning flower the woman wilted to the floor and made no more sound.

  Mogru saw Andelusia and dragged his sword inside. She felt him gazing at her through his ebon mask, deciding how best to kill me. In a heartbeat, he hoisted the table with his free hand and hurled it at her. She ducked, wincing when the slab of wood smashed to pieces against the wall behind her. As mortar dust and pebbles rained on her shoulders, Mogru let out an audible snort. Laughing at me.

  Her horror became anger. Remembering her studies, she summoned the Nightness to her fingertips. She reached to a shelf nailed to the wall beside the bed, touching several objects with shadow before hurling them at the monster. She slung a candlestick, a hammer, two knives, and two bowls, each frosted with Nightness, each sharpened to a spectral shard that would have slain any mortal man. The objects crashed into Mogru’s mask and breastplate, but shattered like glass, raining in pieces to the floor.

  Mogru stomped across the room and swung his sword at her head with all his unearthly might. His great blade, too huge for so small a dwelling, tore into the walls, knocked stones into the night, and showered black sparks upon the floor. She twisted and ducked and tried to reach the door, but the beast blocked her way. He carved up the bed, filling the air with a plume of feathers, and he gouged smoking wounds in the walls. Lilia and Faye started screaming again, but when Andelusia backed against the wall, Mogru took the time to slay them both.

  She watched the women die. The silence after Mogru’s macabre deed left her gasping for air. Backed against the wall, the bed and table in pieces all around her, she felt her courage crumbling inside her. Fiend! she screamed in her head. You were here for me. How could you? You killed them, and for nothing.

  Mogru came to her. Blocking out all light, he stood above her and hoisted his sword for the killing blow. The tip of his blade clipped the low rafters, rattling the entire roof. She shrank into a corner, the same as Faye did, and waited to die. Deflected by the rafter, Mogru’s first stroke landed in the plank between her legs, but his next one will not miss. He ripped his sword out of the floor. She remembered the time he had dragged her from her room in Midnon, and how much she wished she had died. And now…

  All but defeated, she closed her eyes to the room. A thousand images flashed through her mind, each a different fate for the world should she perish. She dreamed of Midnon, of the Nightmare Forest, of the black tower at world’s bottom, and of death. She saw Rellen, Saul, and Garrett. Her fear fell away. Her heart pumped shadows instead of blood.

  And then she remembered the Nightness.

  Mogru speared her in her abdomen. His blade did nothing. She watched his sword pass right through her, making nothing more than the faintest ripple in her shadow body. Mogru pried his black spoke from the floor. The instant his blade left her body, she became flesh and bounced to her feet. Mogru grasped for her throat, but she slipped into her nether state again, becoming shadow just long enough to dance through him and rematerialize at his back. With her half-breath of freedom, she snatched Greckan’s splintered cane from the floor and jammed its sharp end into Mogru’s neck. Her stroke found the gap between his armored shoulders and the back of his steel-coifed skull. Die! she hoped, though she better.

  Mogru grunted, a puff of dead air bleeding from beneath his mask. He spun and cleaved the wall above her head, but she slid beneath his sword and became shadow a third time, marveling as a cloud of stone dust drifted through her body. Mogru grunted again. Stuck, she realized. His sword is stuck in the wall. I can run. Or I can fight.

  She leapt through him. Becoming
flesh behind him, she snatched up a broken bedpost and drove it into the back of his knee. Three times she hammered the mesh of black rings covering his bones, hurling every mote of herself into each blow. Now, she thought as the Sarcophage staggered. Do it now! You saw the Page. You remember. Just a drop is all you need.

  She flung the bedpost away. Darkness flooded her mind, a thousand whispers in the language of the Pages Black. She felt her words glide between her lips as she summoned the faintest flicker of Ur fire. The black flame, scourge of all material, crackled and popped around the knuckles of her left hand, boiling like the molten heart of a dying star.

  Mogru ripped his sword out of the wall and faced her. She screamed and raked her fingers across his mask. Where she clawed him, metal melted in four twisted lines, the molten droplets sizzling on the floor. He reached for her throat, but she grasped and held his elbow. You are dead, and I am living! she wanted to scream. I am strongest here! Where she gripped him, bone and metal boiled and snapped, birthing a sound like an oak breaking in two.

  The stench of the horror’s melting bones poisoned the air. Snarling, she wrenched his arm, and his limb came off at the elbow. As his sword clattered to the floor, she staggered away. The black fire. What have I done? I am the same as father.

  She let his armored limb sway in her grasp before dropping it. Its grisly work done, the Ur fire on her fingertips vanished. “Leave me,” she growled at Mogru. “Crawl back to father. Tell him he has failed.”

  Through the gashes she had melted in Mogru’s mask, she glimpsed his empty sockets. He understands, she knew. But he will never stop hunting me. In a half-breath, she willed herself to walk in the shadows one final time. After spiriting through Mogru and fluttering through the wall behind him, she became flesh some twenty paces in a field beyond the house. Stars, bright as she had ever seen, gazed upon her. The weeds danced at her ankles, the night’s breeze hot against her deathly cold skin. She lifted her palm to her mouth, blew across it, and watched as a gust of Nightness wind tore the house down with Mogru still inside.

  Forgive me. A tear streamed down her cheek as she thought of Lilia, Greckan, and Faye. I was not strong enough. It should have been me, never you.

  Treacherously weary, she dared a glance toward Sallow. The twisted trees and barren hilltops looked black against the starry sky. She peered back to the house, where Mogru clambered to his feet in a heap of crumbling stone and broken rafters. His armor was dented, his sword dangling from his only remaining hand.

  But he is far from finished, she knew.

  Run, Ande. Run and never look back.

  Journal, Part VIII

  Year 14, near the end

  From mountains our family came. We were light as wind, strong as stone. In the valley twixt the war, we lived many generations. Two kings did we serve, one light, both dark. Every autumn, we paid tribute to both, the year’s harvest divided. We were lucky, for beyond the valley, winter was the only season.

  In those long, dark years, I met my love. She was the moon. She was the stars. She was divine. She came to us from beyond the vale, where the towers made of coal and bones strove for heaven. This woman, my candle in the night, loved me for a full season. When the stars went out and the war consumed us, she stood beside me until they took her away.

  ‘You should be lucky, my son, to ever meet a woman so fair. If you should chance upon her, take her far from the rest of the world. For although the darkness has lifted and the war ground to an end, I know, even as I write this, the worst has yet to come.’

  These were the words of my father. Beyond the gold he left behind to ensure my survival in Romaldar, this note is the only memory I have of him. They say he was a small man, but possessed of many kingdoms’ worth of wisdom. I read his letter more times than I can remember, and each time I wished he had been there to tell me the story…the whole story. For now, many years from then, I believe him.

  The worst has yet to come.

  I am cold, so cold. Tonight, as I push the Pages away, I look into the void and shiver in my chair. When I leave this place, winter will be near. I can already taste numbness in the wind. I can already imagine my fingers freezing, my skin turned white as snow. Beyond these walls, autumn still thrives, but all I can think of is the season to come. It will ride from Shivershore and tug a curtain of death over us. The sky will turn to slate, the trees to skeletons, and the grass to dry, crackling bones. This winter will be the world’s last. I know this, and yet I continue.

  These are my last days in Midnon. I bear them with a strange sort of sadness. My journal is dying. Only a few fallow pages remain for me to fill. I often pause in inking these last sheaves, brooding over each word before penning it upon the page. I could start a new journal, a fresh canvas to paint, but there seems little point. My entries all seem the same anymore. Another book would be less a sequel and more a replica. I think I will miss you, sweet journal. For all my many children, I never loved a woman as my father did. You alone watched over me as I brought about the end.

  I sip my water. I gaze into my Ur lamp. I come to a new truth. I am sad to realize this journal is the only thing that has ever known me. It is the only part of the world recognizing I am still human. For so many years I have explained myself to it, dribbling thoughts upon these pages no other would want to hear. How charming. How miserable. If this journal could speak, it would chastise me. It would tell me to leave this madness, to remove these masks and seek atonement for all I have done. These pages summate my conscience, but once they are filled I will be free to move without any consequence of guilt. I will leave this book for the last living man to find, that he might have something to light a fire with on the day the sun forgets to rise.

  Enough sorrow. Enough shame. This is what I bargained for, is it not? My ambition is gleaming gold. My heart is suitably black. My questions are answered. The world will despise me. It does not matter.

  For many breaths, I allow Midnon’s walls to be translucent. The stars riddle night’s curtain, their light like eyes in dark. I rise from my chair and walk to the wall. I see the orchards, the little houses, and the fields beyond. I see the wild wheat mixed with silver-stemmed grass. I see the moon smiling. Here I stand, happy for my latest thought. I learned only moments ago that my eldest has survived. Against all hope she lives on, and though it seems meaningless I will rejoice for her. We are hard to kill, we of the Anderae. Father would have been proud.

  I sit at my table again. I begin to wonder what Andelusia’s life would have been like had I never interfered. Would she still be at home, shucking corn and pouring mead until boredom bid her elsewhere? Would she dote upon children of her own, perhaps stealing wistful looks into the night while her family sleeps, wondering why the darkness appeals to her? This and more I wonder. If only I could go back and return some sliver of happiness to her. If only I could undo the fateful meetings that led her and I to where we are.

  And now it comes again, the feeling that scatters all others. I can hardly recall what I was thinking just a few breaths ago. I write, but it seems only my hand has the wherewithal to continue. The rest of me becomes as still as death. The shadows swell beneath my heart. My blood thickens and slows. This is my ancestry speaking. This is my soul telling me who I am and what I should do. Father, would that I had your strength, I could resist these evil thoughts. I might be more like you, a destroyer of our hated pedigree rather than a slave to temptation. Why did you leave me to chance? We might have fought the enemy together, and you might still be alive.

  My eyes run black, but still I write. My hairs rise, bending toward a wind that is not yet here. Will it ever come, the sweet release of standing before the tower? Will I ever know the end of my burden? Loneliness will be my only foe, one which I have already conquered. Were it my choice, I would have selected a lucky few to live on and serve the empty earth beside me. I would have kept Reya, servant of the king. I would have allowed Ona, my youngest. And certainly, I would have asked Andelusia to stand beside me.<
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  But no. Even they are not promised. My only subjects will sway happily before me, wild root and leafy tassel, crumbling ruins returned to the whim of the wind. The mountains shall be my barons, my dukes, and my peasants gladly tending to their work. He cannot deny me that. He cannot take everything away.