Dark Moon Daughter

by J. Edward Neill

  Her reluctance to read the letter did not last. Her misgivings gave way to curiosity. She uncurled the letter, stretching it taut against her knees.

  It read:

  Mistress Andelusia,

  You were not expecting a letter from me, I think. You probably saw Ramill and took for granted more ill tidings were on their way. For this reason I have asked Ramill to play cheerful especially for you, that you might not assume the worst. If he fails in this task, forgive him. He is my friend. He means well.

  If you thought now was when the ill news was to start, you thought wrong again. Take heart, I beg you. Even now, in the foggy folds of Sallow, the Undergrave is being sealed. Workers of Dray and Muthemnal are on the move. I heard yesterday that the men began in the middle tunnels, collapsing vaulted ceiling and stone column alike, moving up to the next highest chamber even as dust settles in the caves below. I do not know how the engineers do it. Each cavern they seal, they say the earth rumbles to the tune of an earthquake, rattling the ground for a day in each direction. I think it is safe to say no one will venture down there for many, many years. Even Grimwain might find it hard, whatever manner of monster he is.

  And I have more good news yet. It seems you made quite an impression when you set all us prisoners free. They write songs about you here. I’ve even seen a play, though the woman playing your part does you little credit. You’re a deity, of sorts. We’ve no gods, but perhaps we’ve a goddess.

  Now to the real point, lest you fall asleep before reading the rest. This letter is valid currency, this one and Saul’s alike, to visit my father’s estate here in Muthemnal. Yes, you read rightly. This is an invitation to stay with us as long as you wish. My father would very much like to meet those who saved his son’s life, and I would be happy to rescue you from Lord Tycus, who is so eager in preparing himself for the possibility of being King that I hear he might be overzealous in his pursuit of a queen. If you are agreeable, you and Saul may step into Ramill’s carriage and enjoy a trip along the northern shore to Muthem. At my home, you may expect to receive a stipend, our way of thanking you for what you have done. Trust when I tell you the trip is easy, and that you will find Muthem much more wondrous than old and tired Denawir.

  You have seven days from the receipt of this letter to take Ramill’s carriage. If you cannot decide until after that, present my seal to the local carriage house. We will pay them when they set you down at my father’s door.

  Adoringly,

  Your friend, Ghurk Ghurlain

  Lastly, I heard Garrett set off for the countryside, else I would have sent him an invitation as well.

  She read the letter twice and set it on the table.

  “What do you think, Saul?”

  Saul looked to Ramill. “Ser, might you give us a moment? I’ve questions for milady.”

  Ramill dismissed himself into the hallway outside the door. Saul perused his letter again, furrowing his brow as though disbelieving what was written.

  “I think…” He started and stopped. “I do not know what I think.”

  “So...” She scooted to the edge of the couch. “I suppose your letter is the same as mine? An invitation?”

  “Yes. To Muthemnal.”

  “Well?”

  “I know a bit about the Duke’s city.” Saul paced. “They say its towers are so tall one can reach out any window and touch the moon. They say its walls and markets are built with black granite. A great hill leading to its top, a road with grand markets and a sea of green grass beyond the walls. It sounds…different.”

  “Shall we?” She bounced on her cushion. “No one has ever sent me a carriage before. We should go. Nothing awaits us in Graehelm, nothing but sadness.”

  She hoped for a happier response, but Saul’s eyes darkened. He peered out the window, through which a humid breeze skirled. “We have business back home,” he said. “Rellen’s family will want to know the truth. Graehelm will want to know Thillria will have a new monarch. We’ve drawn this out for as long as we can. If there were others to deliver these sorrows, I might say yes, but there is only you and me. Springtime is passing us by. It’s time to go, time to face the oath we owe to House Gryphon.”

  Another oath. Back to Gryphon. Back to my tower. But no Rellen. She thought of her fallen love. She saw his face, handsome, swept with golden locks. A dark chord sounded in her heart, and the ache of his absence stirred to life.

  “Rellen is gone,” she shuddered. “The life I had in Gryphon is no more. I am tempted to make another.”

  “What are you saying? You mean not to go back?”

  “And if so?”

  “You don’t have to stay in Graehelm forever,” Saul reasoned. “You could come home for a season or two, and then choose your future with a clearer mind. Do not forget; I am bound to House Gryphon. I made an oath to Rellen’s father, and to Rellen himself after his Emun died. I am their servant. You are my ward. We have to go back.”

  “I release you.”

  “You what?”

  “My letter says I have a room and gold awaiting me. I will want for nothing, it claims. And besides, I am no one’s ward.”

  “Garrett made me promise.”

  “You mean the Garrett who left us? The Garrett who slung a sword over his back and rode into the mist? That Garrett?”

  For all his wisdom, Saul could conjure nothing more. He sat on the table, hands on his knees, gazing out the wide-open window.

  “You are angry?” she asked.

  “No, not angry.”

  “Hurt? Betrayed?”

  “All this time, I never considered the possibility.” He hid his grief poorly. “I took it for granted you and I would return to Gryphon together. Rather foolish of me. Rather selfish. I should have asked you how you felt.”

  “For all the good it would have done you.” She stretched on the couch. “Before tonight, I never could have said where I wanted to go.”

  “Aye.” He shrugged.

  “Aye.” She closed her eyes.

  The room descended into the stillness of a cemetery. In the lanterns’ light, shadows danced like wild wraiths upon the walls. She felt no bitterness, only sadness. For Saul will not go with me. All three of my companions, lost.

  “The way to Gryphon will be lonely without you.” He broke a long silence.

  “I know, but you will promise to visit me,” she hoped. “Or maybe I will journey to see you. I will not lose you forever.”

  “Are you sure this is what you want? This is no simple matter, Ande. Muthemnal may not agree with you, nor you with it. You need time to decide if this is right.”

  “No. No time. This is what I need. Denawir reminds me of Rellen and Garrett. I cross the King’s hall and I see Rellen waiting at the table, ready to argue and later make up with a kiss. I walk the courtyard and I see Garrett’s cottage. He wants to come to me, but he resists, and I am reminded that we will never be together. Ghosts live in Denawir. They call to me, and if I listen too long, they will carry me into darkness. The Nightness will see to it. This, I know.”

  Saul breathed, his sigh as deep as she had ever heard. “Then there’s just one thing.”

  “Yes? Say it.”

  “Books. I mean to carry many back to Graehelm. The Inkhouse promised me seven, and I collected a dozen others over the winter. Seems I’ll have room for just one more in my bag.”

  “Oh? What book is that?”

  “Yours.”

  “Father’s journal?”

  “The other one.”

  She drew back on the couch. As if sensing her discomfort, a chilling gust cut through the window. He means the Pages Black. My book. My only book. My only possession in the world.

  “If you still have it,” Saul continued, “I’d like to take it with me. I need to study it, to catalogue its contents. I believe it may be one of the relics of Archithrope. The old texts say there are five: the Orb, the Eye, the Tower, the Needle…and the Pages. It would be safe in my keeping. I intend to learn what o
ur enemy was after, and then lock it away where no one will ever find it.”

  Her face went ashen. Her eyes glimmered grey. If Saul had been facing her, he might have fled the room.

  “No.” She sounded colder than she meant to.

  “No?”

  “Never.”

  “Why?”

  “I will keep it,” she said. “After all I went through to find it, it is owed me.”

  “Ande, think hard on it,” he protested. “It was the ruin of your father, the curse of the Uylen. Rellen and Garrett had their doubts about magic, but I know better. I’ve seen the effect it has upon you. No happiness lives between its covers, and no glory to be found.”

  “Look at me,” she said.

  He faced her.

  “What do you suppose Garrett is doing right now?” she asked.

  “Would that I knew.” He paled.

  “Chasing Grimwain,” she said. “It may be twenty years before our enemy shows his face again, or it may be a hundred. Or…tomorrow we might wake and find he has returned.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I will go to Muthemnal. I will live a new life and try to be happy. But I will also remember. The Pages stays with me. I may need it before the end.”

  Saul closed the window and locked the shutters. She expected his frustration, his doubt, and maybe even his anger, but when he sat in his chair, rolled up his letter, and faced her with a smile, she saw only her friend. “Ghurk’s man awaits our answers,” he said. “Rude of us to keep him waiting.”

  “Indeed,” she sighed.

  “I will go to Gryphon, and you to Muthemnal. Two new lives, we’ll make. Promise me you will write if ever you need a thing. And promise…the Pages…you will use the book seldom, if ever.”

  “I promise.”

  “I am grateful, in a strange way, for all of this.” He rubbed his beard. He looked tired, so very tired. When next we wake, nothing will be the same.

  “I know what you mean,” she said.

  “Friends?” he offered.

  “Always,” she said, “and forever.”

  Journal, First Entry

  - Fortieth day of spring, bound for the mansions of Muthemnal

  My name is Andelusia Leda Anderae. I have not written my full name since childhood, and I have never spoken it aloud outside of Cairn, my place of birth. This journal once belonged to my father. Precious little of it remains to fill. I shall make but one entry, for the rest is taken, and afterward I shall find a journal of my own.

  Tonight is chillier than I hoped. I know it less by the feeling of the air and more by the blankets my carriage-mates have draped over their shoulders. If my words are clumsy, it is not the cold’s fault. It is because I have never written of my life before, and I am not sure where to begin. I cannot go all the way back. I have but a few pages, and so much of my life before the last few years seems trivial. I am grateful to my mother, even though we shared no blood. She had wisdom enough to teach me how to write and read. I suppose it is no accident. Father must have known. I should dread to think of the things he planned for me. But no. I am grateful.

  It is hard to fill a journal when your hand is shaking. I will try all the same. Penning these first words, I feel like an adolescent, and I believe my father must have felt the same. He inked his pages with words he could never bear to express to another, and now I see I have lived the same as he. There is so much I wish I had said, but never did. I had friends, good friends, and only just tonight, just now as I set quill to page, do I understand how much I will miss them. Oh, to have them all here, to sit beneath the stars and laugh beside them. I can almost see the campfire lighting their faces, and in my imagination they are happy, unhurt, with no enmity or mistrust among them.

  They are still whole to me, my friends. I remember the way I knew them in the beginning, not separated and lost as they are now. I see Saul and his beloved books, and I cherish all the things he taught me during our journey across Graehelm. I owe Saul a debt I can never repay. He gave me my freedom and my life, which otherwise I would have lost long ago.

  Then there is Rellen, sweet Rellen. I cannot see him as he ended. I cannot recall the moment his happiness turned to bitterness, or his laughter to jealousy. No, I only remember him as he was with me at the start, our breaths frosted in the winter air, our hands clasped beneath his father’s table, and our hearts beating beside each other even as darkness stretched its shadow over our lives. I cannot feel the guilt of his loss anymore. It runs too deep, and would kill me if I dwelled on it as much as I should.

  And of course Garrett, my soldier. Would that I had known him better. He is a mystery. His past is presumably far darker than he will ever tell, and yet I will never judge him. I know it is foolish, but the day he returned to Gryphon I hoped in my heart of hearts it was because of me. I never asked him, of course. He would surely have dashed my girlish dream to pieces. If that had happened, I might remember him only as a soldier, cold and callous, even though that is farthest from what he is.

  That is my past, plain and simple. My life is not reckoned in deeds, places, or the things that have befallen me. All I have meant in this world is nothing without my friends, without those few people I have touched. They are lost to me now. I still love them. I always will.

  And so I sit now. The carriage has stopped for the night. My tremors are worse than when we started. I did not know what to write when I opened this book, but now I see it clearly. I have lived too long inside my head, not in the world around me, but lost in a permanent daydream. I eat, sleep, and survive, but these things are peripheral to my imagination, which houses a likeness of the world completely different than it really is. I see glory in things no other would dare. The night is mine. The stars adore me. I close my eyes and hear all the nocturnal things of the world calling me name.

  Who am I? I am of Archithrope, whatever that means. I have my father’s blood, throbbing thick with the shadows of the world’s oldest civilization. Sometimes I wonder if I am mad, if my brain is fevered and sick beyond healing. Other times I know I am not. A strange creature, most must think me. So be it. If I should love the night, the sea, the empty fields, who is anyone to judge me for it.

  An hour has passed. I am well beyond midnight. No one else is awake in the inn we have occupied. My company is Ramill, Myrlaen, and Jix. Yes, Jix. The real, true Jix. The servant of Aeth father impersonated. The messenger between Denawir and Muthemnal. Grimwain never killed him. How unexpected. How strange. I can hear him snoring in the room below me, and I know he is not an illusion. How strange that I should meet him now. I wonder if I should tell him what I know. No. I think not. Let him sleep.

  My quill moves slower now. My mind turns inward. The candles are asleep. My lamp is cold. I see everything. I come to the questions I feel I must answer before the end:

  Are the Ur real? Who are they? What are they? Will they return as promised? Will I have anything to do with it? Will father? Will Grimwain?

  Will I spend the rest of my days dreaming of these horrors, only to look back and know they were all in my head, that my life was torn to tatters for no reason beyond my and my father’s madness?

  My dilemma deepens. In three days I will arrive in Muthemnal, and perchance have the opportunity to be happy. Ghurk Ghurlain is kind enough, as is Ramill, as is everyone. I shall be well-received, so I like to think. A room shall be mine. An allowance is promised me. If I play nice, I can see myself falling into an easy life. To live amongst nobility is something I would have wet my bed as a little girl to imagine. In Muthemnal I will make new friends, wander new places, and live as I have never dreamed. Oh, to be the princess I once dreamed of.