Dark Moon Daughter

by J. Edward Neill

  “Good evening.” Tycus slapped his hands against the table and drowned out the last few murmurings. “Welcome to the King’s hall. I hope you all will accept my presence here. Orumna remains absent. For this night I will act in his stead.”

  Voices came from the crowd.

  “But where is the King?”

  “Has he taken ill?”

  “Has he died?”

  Tycus paused before answering. He does not know, Andelusia sensed.

  “Orum remains missing.” Tycus composed himself. “We all know the rumors: kidnapped or killed by the warlock’s shadow men, fallen to his death in the sea, or fled north to Triaxe. None of these ends should surprise us. It matters not. We must continue without him.”

  None of the assembly disagreed. Orumna’s absence meant that the stagnation of his rule might be lifted, something Thillria obviously craves.

  “You know why we are here,” Tycus continued. “We’ve a snake in our fields, a parasite who has drank himself fat on Thillrian blood. Most of you have never met this man, for his servants did well to hide him. But now he is caught, and thanks to the efforts of the few he sits in the dungeon of this very castle, awaiting whatever fate we decide.”

  Tycus rested his palms upon the end of his table. His cheeks smoldered crimson in the braziers’ light. The shadows beneath his eyes deepened despite the light. And the crowd fears him.

  “Friends, you know me.” His voice echoed in the rafters. “I’ve never been a man to stray from the law. We Thillrians are more civilized than the Furyons, more merciful than the folk of Triaxe, and wiser than the senseless, marauding Yrul. We execute none. Our brothers are sacred to us, even the lowest Shivershore dog. And yet…in this…I cannot help but hope for blood. In the Aeth deeps, I met the warlock only this morn, and I left his presence so afflicted by the darkness of his soul I feel sick to have spoken with him. He’s no Thillrian. He’s no brother of ours, no good man gone astray. He told me he was an orphan from Romaldar, but I felt no pity. Though I pried, he offered no contrition, not a single genuine reason for his pernicious acts other than to say he is driven by something none of us would ever understand. We’ve all heard of the warlock’s deeds. His list of sins is too long for any one book to hold. Hundreds of us suffered directly under his rule, dragged beyond the Gluns to live a year in miserable slavery. One thousand thirty-three of us are counted dead, and another thousand missing. His servants stole from our coffers, worked uncountable treasons against lord and commoner alike, and used the lure of wealth to turn many a good-hearted man against his Thillrian brethren. If Orumna were here, even he would be moved to punish this man. Even he would demand death.”

  The assembly clenched their fists and rumbled their approval. Andelusia saw the fury in their gazes, a mob about to be born.

  “And yet...” Tycus silenced the room. “…we’ve little direct evidence linking the warlock to these crimes. His shadow servants are gone, vanished in the space of a single night. Those who his men turned to evil can recall no names and lead us to no place where his ringleaders might have gone. Even the fiend Grimwain has disappeared. It is as though our enemy never really existed, as though this were a trick played on all our minds. I find this maddening. How did one man engineer such horrors upon us, and how did no Thillrian rise to stop it?”

  The assembly cooled. Each Thillrian looked to the man nearest him, having no answers.

  “We’ve the answer here tonight,” Tycus said after many moments of silence. “You all know of her, but few of you have been so lucky as to hear her story. She’s the breaker of the Undergrave, the freer of the masses, the one to root the demon from his hole. Many of you might doubt what Lady Andelusia has to say, but I beg you listen and listen close. Many of her deeds, she did in the presence of Ghurk Ghurlain, humble son of our own Duke of Muthemnal. She is the truth we require.”

  Here it comes, she knew. My time.

  She waited for the applause to die before rising. She hated their attentions. Rellen was always much better with crowds than I.

  “Hello.” She managed a meek smile. “I am Andelusia. I come from Gryphon, city of Grae. It is true what Tycus says. I know what happened. I saw everything.”

  A second applause arose, though the look she gave them soon suppressed it. “Please.” She shook her head. “Do not put your hands together for me. I did what any of you would have done. I am nothing special.”

  Tycus snapped his fingers, returning all gazes to him. “Milady, you hold within you the power to satisfy all of Thillria. Our enemy’s servants are gone. The effects of his dominion are fading. He is the last object standing in the way of our return to happiness. With only hearsay and conjecture, Thillrian law would only allow us to imprison him. But he is no Thillrian. With the truth as you offer it tonight, we might bury him and erase his ugly part in our history. We might destroy him and progress to the next order of our country’s business: restoring a King to the throne.”

  A King. She might have rolled her eyes, had she sipped just once more from Saul’s chalice. And who might that be?

  “What do you say to this?” Tycus questioned. “Will you help us?”

  She held the hall in silence, peering from man to man as though to read their very hearts. She knew what most of them were thinking. They want death. They want it now. If only it were Grimwain sitting in their dungeon.

  “I will help you. But only on one condition.”

  “Milady,” warned Tycus. “You do understand our seriousness? Justice must be upheld.”

  “I have decided.” She sucked in a sharp breath between her teeth.

  “You’ve decided what?” replied Tycus.

  “You will not kill him.”

  “Mistress? Do we hear you right?”

  “I will tell you all he did. I will catalog every detail of his plan to ruin you. But in exchange you will swear not to slay him. Drop him into your lowest prison and bind him in so much iron that his arms will forever sag at his sides, but do not kill him. I am not begging. I am demanding. You will let the warlock live.”

  The Thillrians erupted into a furor. Several rattled the room with mocking laughter, while others banged the flats of their hands against their tables and shouted.

  “He must die!” derided one. “Can’t you see it?”

  “He’s already dead!” cried another. “Dig his grave and be done with it!”

  “Fool! Child!” shouted yet another. “The warlock’s no Thillrian! He’s no law to protect him. Wag your finger, little woman, and put an end to him!”

  The shouts came in waves, but she weathered them all with stoic grace. I am Garrett for this night, my skin stone against your hornets’ stings. Be glad I not more like Grimwain, else I might call upon the Nightness and sweep your lives away.

  “Enough!” said Tycus at last.

  The hall collapsed into uncomfortable stillness. “Why?” Tycus grimaced at her. “Why should we let this animal live?”

  She stood to her tallest. “We need him alive. He knows too much for us to snuff him out. If you let me, I will interrogate him. I will draw every truth out of him. I will have him kneeling before you, begging for breadcrumbs and weeping a thousand apologies at your feet. Give me time, and I will break him.”

  “You?” scoffed Tycus. “Unlikely. But even if you could, his repentance is not enough. Why else should we spare him?”

  “Because he is no murderer. He wore the faces of many, but never killed a single soul. Every death you tally is by the hand of Grimwain. Every sword stroke and dagger planted came from that cursed knight. I read the wizard’s diary. I know this is true. The creature you want is still at large, still roaming the countryside. If you desire justice, you will use the wizard to find Grimwain. Let the old man keep his miserable life, and get the answers you need in return.”

  The hall boiled with Thillrian disquiet. She heard them grumble and complain, bicker and deride. They traded opinions of the warlock as though his life were a glass trinket, easily da
shed to pieces if they willed it. Of all the Thillrians, only Tycus remained silent.

  “He believes you,” whispered Saul.

  “It will not matter,” she replied. “No one else does.”

  Tycus cleared his throat and rapped his knuckles against the table. He looked far graver than before. “Mistress Andelusia, I will make no guesses as to why you hope to spare this man. Perhaps you grew too close to him during your journey, or perhaps there is another reason. In the end it does not matter. Thillrian pride is at stake. The warlock must be destroyed.”

  “Then why invite me?”

  “Pardon?” said Tycus.

  “If his death was already decided, why bring me here? A waste of your time…and my own.”

  “Thillrian law demands it. We would hear your testimony, and then decide.”

  “I gave you nothing. And yet your minds are already made.”

  She felt every Thillrian heart in the room turn against her. Tycus grimaced, others grinned, and still others stared through her, wanting me gone. She saw the reluctance in Tycus’s eyes, but father’s doom is sealed nonetheless.

  Saul rose beside her. “Wait,” he shouted. “Hold your decision.”

  Stunned the same as the Thillrians, she stood breathless in the quiet following Saul’s interruption.

  “And who are you?” asked Tycus.

  “Saul of Elrain, from the realm north of Grae.”

  “We are well aware of Elrain, Ser Saul. You’re a guest in these halls, and not yet invited to speak. What dare say you?”

  “I am friend to Andelusia, companion to Garrett and Ghurk, and witness of too many deaths.”

  Andelusia caught the gleam in Tycus’s eye. “Are your arguments different than your lady friend?” The Thillrian lord pulled at his collar. “Will you bear witness against our prisoner?”

  “No,” countered Saul. “I have a different solution. You demand justice; I can give it to you. Andelusia desires leniency; I understand why. I can offer both, if you will listen.”

  All sounds deadened. All ears turned to Saul. None knew what he was about to say, not even Andelusia, who stood beside him and held her breath.

  “I am not from Thillria,” he continued. “I had never heard of your country before leaving Elrain and joining the Grae in the war against Furyon. It would be fair to say I know almost nothing of your land, that I am at best an uninvited stranger. But I do know one thing. I know of a place where you might exile your prisoner. The place I speak of is described in many Thillrian texts. More punishing than death, they say, as dread and inescapable as any prison made by man. I believe you would know it as the Cornerstone, the isle at world’s end.”

  Cornerstone? Andelusia felt her blood run cold. What is he talking about? What is he doing?

  “Cornerstone.” The way Saul said it chilled every Thillrian in the hall. “In the last weeks, locked inside my hut, I have chanced to read many Thillrian books. The Cornerstone is oft mentioned. I come to believe it is more than a myth.. It exists. It is real. I propose you sail the wizard to it. Bind him in iron chains, cast him off from the southernmost tip of Shivershore, and leave him to serve such bitter penance he will spend his every remaining day wishing he had never raised a hand against you. Doing this will allow you to punish him without shirking your sacred laws, and will spare Andelusia from acting as your executioner.”

  Cornerstone, she thought. Every Thillrian shuddered to hear the word spoken. They know it. What is it? Where is it? Saul, what have you done?

  Like frightened children, the Thillrians shrank in their chairs. Even Tycus blanched, his chiseled cheeks softening.

  “To send him there…worse than death,” uttered the oldest man in the room.

  “But no sweeter revenge could we hope for,” said another. “Two hundred years ago, our forefathers sent exiles to Cornerstone. The gravest punishment, it was, fitting for thieves, scoundrels, and murderers.”

  The assembly seized Saul’s idea and passed it between themselves, clutching it greedily. Andelusia glared at Saul. She hated him a little, and dwelled in dark thought for what she might do were he not her friend. I gave you no permission, she wanted to say to him. And yet you dare speak.

  “Sers,” she addressed the room. “Is this justice? One manner of death exchanged for another?”

  The Thillrians quieted. With darkness in his eyes, Tycus looked across them. “Empty the hall,” he declared. “All of you. Only Andelusia is to remain.”

  The Thillrians railed against it.

  “Nay,” cried one noble. “We’ve a right to be here.”

  “Leave? We’ve only just begun!” shouted another.

  “Go,” said Tycus. “Everyone, to your separate chambers. Return tomorrow at midday. Not a moment before.”

  The Thillrians fumed, spat, and glared daggers at her, yet in the span of a hundred breaths abandoned the room in one great herd. Even Garrett and Ghurk took to a far door, with Saul shuffling out behind them. In the silence after everyone’s departure, Andelusia stood one table removed from Tycus, the braziers smoking all around her. His mind is unchanged, she knew. What does he want?

  “This is no simple thing.” Tycus broke the long, uncomfortable quiet.

  “Indeed.”

  “You think me a monster. You believe we are driven by vengeance. I can hardly blame you.”

  “The warlock is nothing. The monster is Grimwain.”

  “Perhaps.” He rounded the table. “But as he’s lost to us, we can punish only who’ve we caught.”

  “You waste your time.”

  “These crimes are capital.” Tycus looked wounded. “In cleaner times the king would act as judge. But Orumna is lost, and our laws provide little direction in his absence. I won’t ask why you defend the warlock’s life, only that you respect our judgment. This is the way it must be. There can be no proper trial.”

  “You owe me no explanation,” she said bitterly. “I am only a woman, only a Grae girl, remember?”

  “We would rather you be a hero. It’s what you are, after all. I’ve heard dozens say as much.”

  “After tonight, you will never hear it again.” She closed her eyes. “You know this Cornerstone?”

  “Yes. An infamous realm, it is. Five days south of Shivershore, across the Selhaunt Sea, so the maps read. A thousand mountains of white slate, a shore frosted with daggers of ice, and endless hollows pocking the desolate snow like prison pits from the Undergrave itself. Ser Saul raises an excellent point. We can dream of no better punishment for Thillria’s enemy.”

  “The same as death,” she said.

  “Are you so objected to it?”

  Yes, she thought. Only I cannot say why. “You do not understand your enemy,” she managed. “The warlock is one rotten apple fallen from a much larger tree. Grimwain is the enemy that matters. Ask those who survived the Undergrave. Ask them, and they will tell you. Give the warlock prison, give him iron bars, but let him keep his body. He cannot harm you now, nor ever again. But he might be able to help you.”

  Tycus clenched his teeth, the taut muscles in his jaw pulsing. “I am not the damner of men this assembly presumes. I am not as cruel as you think me.”

  “No? Prove it. Be merciful.”

  “Were I king, I might honor your request,” he reasoned.

  “They say you will be king. Be it now, I ask. If not for mercy’s sake, do it out of wisdom. Find Grimwain. Hunt him down. Ask the warlock for his aid.”