The Forgetting Moon

by Brian Lee Durfee

  “You’ll cut your fingers with that,” Lawri said. When she and her cousin were little girls, Lawri had always been overly protective. But now that they were older, Tala was taking more of a leadership role in the friendship. She wondered if it was because she was sister to the king that Lawri allowed it. Growing up, Lawri had organized their childish games and wanderings into the castle’s “secret ways.” Now it was Tala’s turn, and she had a mind to turn their wanderings into actual adventures—like her older sister, Jondralyn, might do.

  Many hallways now separated them from Dame Mairgrid and the king’s chamberlain, Ser Landon Galloway. Tala had dismissed her tutor, Mairgrid, then merely walked out her chamber door, informing Galloway and the two Silver Guards that she and Lawri were off to visit her older sister, Jondralyn, whose chamber was just down the hall. But instead of entering Jondralyn’s room, the two girls had continued on down the corridor. And the sleepy guards, ever apathetic at their stations, hadn’t noticed a thing. Tala felt a pang of guilt knowing that Galloway and the guards would come under harsh discipline when the captain of the Silver Guard, Ser Lars Castlegrail, discovered they had lost sight of both the princess and her royal cousin.

  Tala drew aside the corner of the heavy gilt-worked tapestry that stretched from ceiling to floor. “A new passage Lindholf told me about.”

  Behind the tapestry was solid block and mortar but for one missing stone roughly a foot and a half high and two wide, a floor-level opening just big enough for a person to crawl into. Tala lay on her stomach and wiggled her head and shoulders into the hole until her upper body was beyond the wall, then pulled her way through. Lawri squirmed into the hole too, and the corner of the tapestry fell back into place behind her, hiding all trace of their passage. The small chamber they’d entered was scarcely big enough for two. “A dead end,” Lawri said, “an empty room leading no place.”

  Lawri had dark eyes that held an innocence Tala found charming. Her cousin was stunningly beautiful, with straw-colored hair that almost appeared to glow in the narrow beam of sunlight raining down from a crack up high. Dust sparkled in that tiny ray. There were many cracks in the stone walls around them, cracks where ivy crept in. Tala imagined the vines coming alive to strangle her and burrow into her skin. She shuddered, then grinned. The thoughts that sometimes come a-creeping into my head.

  “Lindholf told me of a secret latch he and Glade found last year.” Tala felt along the stone wall until she located the outline of a wooden door just above her own head. She found the bottom corner of the door, pulled forth her dagger, and slipped the blade into the crack. Fishing around with the blade, she heard a click and then the rasp of a hinge, and the door pushed inward. She pulled herself up and into the opening. A short, narrow corridor appeared before her with a ladder at its far end. “There’s better light up here,” she called back to Lawri.

  Soon her cousin was up and into the new passage too, a worried grin on her face. “Aren’t we getting a little old for this?” Lawri asked. “Sneaking about the castle with Lindholf and Glade was fun when we were children. It seems silly now.”

  “It’s never silly,” Tala said, bothered by her cousin’s attitude. After all, there were many secret things to be discovered whilst sneaking about. Like when she’d spied on her sister one recent evening as Jondralyn had squirreled away a folded parchment within which was a hidden sapphire necklace behind a removable panel built into the wall behind her bookshelf. Third book to the left on the top shelf, to be exact! Later Tala had snuck into Jon’s room, admired the glittering necklace, and read the scroll—nonsense their late father had written about something called the Brethren.

  Exploring the hidden passages of Amadon Castle kept Tala from growing bored with life as the pampered youngest daughter of the late king, Borden Bronachell. After all, the drudgery of leisurely castle life under the cumbersome tutelage of Dame Mairgrid could grow unimaginably tiresome. Adventuring was the only time she could put aside the facade of the highborn princess everyone expected her to be. In fact, the only moments in life Tala felt normal were those precious few she’d spent with her older twin cousins, Lawri and Lindholf Le Graven. But it seemed lately all Lawri was concerned with was what young noble had been given what lands and title or what dashing young prince had been newly knighted. Her father was Lord Lott Le Graven of Eskander. Her mother, Mona, was Tala’s aunt—sister to Tala’s late mother, Queen Alana Bronachell. The Le Graven family and their Lion Court had journeyed from Eskander to enjoy the coming Mourning Moon festivities and watch Lindholf perform his Ember Lighting Rites in the Royal Cathedral, an honor only bestowed upon the sons of royalty. Other young men performed their Ember Lighting Rites in their local chapels. Lawri and Lindholf weren’t the only set of twins in the Le Graven family—there were also twelve-year-olds Lorhand and Lilith.

  “Let’s go,” Tala said, beckoning. The two of them crossed the length of the corridor. Pink light began to filter in at regular intervals. Wind whistled through arrow slits in the walls. Tala paused at one of the slender openings and peered through. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust to the brightness of the outside light, but once she did, beyond the pigeons perched on the battlements below, she could see the panorama of the city.

  Amadon—the largest city in Gul Kana—spread out before Tala as far as her eyes could see. The rotund Royal Cathedral, shaped like a crown, the sanctuary where the Blessed Mother Mia was buried, dominated the skyline. Next to the Royal Cathedral was the Temple of the Laijon Statue, equally as tall. The cathedral and temple were the physical monuments of the great Laijon and the Blessed Mother Mia. Pilgrims from the breadth of Gul Kana flocked to worship at these two massive edifices. Beyond the crenellated bastions marking the inner wall of the old city lay the exquisite, ethereal Hall of the Dayknights and the circular, columned gladiator arena. Even farther out, like a barely visible kiss of green, lay the Hallowed Grove, a patch of sacred forest on the outskirts of the city, where the thousand-year-old Atonement Tree still stood. Beyond that was the marbled mound that was the slave quarry at Riven Rock.

  Amadon’s population had swelled in recent days. Royalty from all corners of Gul Kana had flocked to the city, along with freemen, peasants, and farmers. All had come to partake in the three-week gladiator spectacle and annual Mourning Moon Celebrations. A myriad of tents had been pitched in the outskirts of the city to accommodate the eager throngs.

  Tala looked down upon the warren of crooked and cobbled buildings and streets with their narrow winding pathways with two parts revulsion and two parts excitement. The River Vallè wove a sluggish pale path through the center of Amadon. The distant barks of a dog echoed off stone walls, mixing with the sounds of vendors hawking their products. Tala could imagine the teeming masses filling the marketplaces. Sailors, dwarves, oghuls, urchins, bloodletters, and thieves milled through it all. Tala both loved and hated her city, as she both loved and hated the massive castle she called home.

  Completely engulfing what were once the steep cliffs of Mount Albion, high above the mouth of the River Vallè overlooking Memory Bay, was the grandest structure in all of Gul Kana: Amadon Castle. It brooded over the city like an ominous storm cloud. Tala had lived her entire life within its walls. Skirted by a wind-tattered patchwork of outer buildings and hundreds of add-on structures, the castle boasted a daunting legion of crenellated battlements, spires, towers, baileys, courtyards, palisades, barbicans, and connecting causeways all hewn of the grayish-black lava stone of Mount Albion and dotted with flags of silver and black. The sun was going down, and the castle’s many spires stood rose-tinted against the cloudless sky. There was Blue Sword, Black Spear, and Confessor Tower, along with Martin’s Spire, Sansom Spire, and a dozen or so more named after dead grand vicars: Coye, Styne, Rion, Dairehne, Swensong, Cember, and the like.

  A shaft of cool air brushed Tala’s face, and she pulled away from the opening.

  They moved on, passing through another corridor, down twisting stairs, and into a red,
high-ceilinged, spacious room lined with gritty wooden benches and a stone altar in the shape of a cross smack in the center. The altar frightened Tala. High on the near wall was a large stained-glass window, each pane such a deep shade of red it cast a gloomy, scarlet pall over everything. Along the far wall hung a tapestry, graced with a beautifully stitched likeness of the Blessed Mother Mia. This ruby-hazed room looked big enough to hold near twenty people, yet none of the furniture appeared to have been used in years. Its white-plastered walls were so discolored and streaked by smoke they were almost black. There were ashes and fragments of bone strewn around the base of the cross-shaped altar. Its surface was stained with a dark substance. Dried rivulets of blackness ran down the altar’s sides, as if someone had poured tar over it. Or blood. Tala shuddered.

  “Let’s go back,” Lawri said.

  Tala’s gaze roamed back to the tapestry of Mother Mia. She recalled her father saying the Raijael worshippers of Sør Sevier never referred to Mia by name, but called her Lady Death. Tala did not like to think too long on things her father had taught her. He’d hurt her deeply going off to Wyn Darrè to fight against Sør Sevier and never returning. She had loved him more than anything, and he had almost destroyed her in dying.

  She continued searching the room. Rags and furs were jammed into the many cracks lining the far wall to keep out the wind. Two wood-plank doors were on the right. Neither was locked. Both doors yielded easily and, with a creak of rusty hinges, opened. Behind both doors were stairs, one set leading up, the other down.

  “Upward, I say.” Tala climbed the stairs. Lawri followed.

  They soon found themselves in a long, peculiar corridor. The ceiling was lost in darkness, the floor was flat. To their right a rough stone wall rose straight up into black nothingness. But to their left, the wall was smooth and arced outward away from them at an angle, also disappearing into darkness. Atop this curved wall was a system of counterforts and flying buttresses, like the roof of a grand cathedral. Row upon row of these buttresses receded away into the darkness. Blots of shadow dwelled in the angles and alcoves. There was a faint orange glow in the distance. Tala and Lawri proceeded. It was as if they walked along the edge of a cathedral roof now, only this cathedral was enclosed within the confines of the great Amadon Castle. Ahead, cracks in the sloping wall shot spears of yellow light upward as if lit with fire from underneath.

  Tala heard voices coming from below and quickly realized where she was—above her father’s study. She leaned over the curved wall until she lay flat against it, ear pressed to the cold stone. The voices were muffled. One was her older brother, the other her older sister. There was a stream of brighter light above, so she climbed. Once at eye level with the beam of light, Tala wedged her feet against a nearby buttress. Feeling safely perched on the curve of the wall, she peered through the crack.

  The study below was large, windowless, stone floor worn smooth. Four pillars held up the arched roof, and each pillar carried a burning torch. Deep rugs lined the room’s center. Iron double doors at one end were emblazoned with the royal crest: a silver tree. There was a stone hearth fireplace at the other end, crackling with flame. Weapons and armor were piled in one corner. From their crude workmanship, Tala figured the weapons were oghul-made. The room’s lofty, curved ceiling was adorned with intricate carvings above a maze of wooden rafters. Next time she was in the study, Tala would make it a point to look up and find the crack she peered through now.

  “What can you see?” Lawri asked. Tala turned, shushing her cousin with a wave, then planted her eyes to the crack, watched, and listened.

  “You don’t understand the costly undertaking of a war in a distant land, Jon,” said Tala’s oldest brother, King Jovan Bronachell. Twenty-eight years old, he was wrapped in a fur-rimmed cloak fastened with a brooch of Vallè-worked silver. He wore decorative ring mail under the cloak, and his hair was thick waves of shoulder-length brown confined by a simple silver band about his head—the royal crown. Despite his relative youth, he was tall, imposing, and radiated power. When he spoke, the timbre of his voice was deep. “The time-consuming cares of palfrey and charger alike, the provisioning of an army of men and beast, the food, logistics? It’s not the overnight picnic you imagine it.”

  Tala’s older sister, Jondralyn, shook a sheaf of papers before Jovan. “Gul Kana should have stayed by Wyn Darrè. Instead you fled the battle five years ago after Father was killed, leaving Wyn Darrè to ruin and your betrothed to die at the hands of Aeros Raijael.”

  “Do not lay that cow’s death at my feet, lest you forget your own betrothal. A gross blunder and misjudgment Father ever matched you with that thief and killer.”

  “I will not have you bring Squireck into this.”

  Jovan laughed hollowly. “If not for the White Prince’s war, you’d be married to that thief for nearly ten years now, his traitorous little babies bouncing on your lap.”

  “And you’d be married to Karowyn Raybourne . . . eternal bliss for one like you, I’m sure.”

  Jovan’s sharp brows narrowed at his sister. At twenty-five, Jondralyn Bronachell was nearly ten years older than Tala. Most deemed her the most beautiful woman in all the Five Isles. Four years ago, the mint in Avlonia had changed the image on its copper coin from the fabled Val Vallè princess, Arianna, to a likeness of Princess Jondralyn Bronachell of Amadon. Tala knew her older sister was a beauty. She was compared to Jon every day and in every way. Jondralyn, tall as any man, had long legs, a perfectly formed athletic body, full lips, and frosty blue eyes set beneath delicate brows. Her shoulder-length hair matched Tala’s in color, but seemed more alive and lustrous. Jondralyn was dressed in a flowing blue, richly brocaded gown tied at the waist with a silver belt, a casual forest green cape thrown over one shoulder.

  “I know you wish to act the crusader.” Jovan made a crisp gesture at Jondralyn’s outfit. “I know you wish to throw that gown aside and prance around the castle dressed like a man, Hawkwood teaching you sword fighting. It flies in the face of your Ember Gathering Rites. You’re no warrior. You’re not even fit to be a squire. You need to act more like a lady. Mother would be mortified. I’ve seen battle. A lady does not belong there.”

  “In Sør Sevier, women fight alongside the men, doubling the size of their armies. Hawkwood has trained many women to fight.”

  “Sør Sevier is full of crudeness and idolatry.”

  “Be that as it may, Sør Sevier is at our doorstep. You placed too much faith in the advice of Grand Vicar Denarius and that Vallè you keep council with.”

  “The Silver Throne keeps council with whom it chooses!” Jovan’s voice thundered through the room. “I don’t need my sister telling me how to govern my own kingdom.”

  Jondralyn threw the sheaf of papers at his feet. “There is growing unrest throughout your kingdom!” In that one act Tala saw the fire of their late mother, Alana Bronachell, in her sister. Queen Alana had died whilst birthing Ansel five years ago. Alana would argue politics with their father with the same fervor as Jondralyn argued with Jovan. “These are the letters from starving, war-ravaged, plague-ravaged villagers of Wyn Darrè. Hundreds more letters arrive on Roguemoore’s doorstep every day. Letters from Agonmoore, Oldrisek, Morgandy. Everywhere Wyn Darrè people suffer, as Adin Wyte did before them. And now that the Laijon Towers are under final threat, our own country fears invasion. We’ve even reports of oghuls trying to hasten their own Hragna’Ar prophecy by raiding northland towns here in Gul Kana! Hragna’Ar! And you do nothing. We’ve naught but ill-trained landowners and barons out giving farm boys two years’ training in naught but how to fight with rakes and shovels. The White Prince from the west. Hragna’Ar oghuls from the north. The oghuls live for their Hragna’Ar prophecies.”

  “The oghul raids are hearsay.”

  “We need to bolster our armies. We need real warriors. We need to forge weapons and armor. Lord’s Point abbeys are overflowing with Wyn Darrè refugees—”

  “We are in the last minutes
of the eleventh hour before Absolution,” Jovan cut her off. “The great and last battle will be fought in Gul Kana, as was prophesied in The Way and Truth of Laijon. Neither you nor Roguemoore can change the will of Laijon. There was nothing to be done in Adin Wyte, and there is nothing to be done in Wyn Darrè.”

  “Nothing!” Jondralyn snapped. “Fiery Absolution need not happen. The prophecies in The Way and Truth of Laijon are false.”

  “The dwarf brainwashes you with that kind of talk, as he did Squireck!”

  “You could have fought off the White Prince on Wyn Darrè soil as Father willed. He gave aid to Adin Wyte and Wyn Darrè against those earliest Sør Sevier raids. You yourself fought alongside Father to defend Wyn Darrè’s western shores against the initial Sør Sevier attack. Do you not remember your own two-year conscription to church and crown? Or have you now grown so complacent, so far removed from threat that you do not care? You could have beaten back Sør Sevier before they ever threatened our shores.”

  “We are sufficiently garrisoned,” Jovan answered. “There are many who believe Wyn Darrè and Adin Wyte now pay the butcher’s bill for the centuries of turmoil and death their pirates and raiders caused Sør Sevier. There are many who say Sør Sevier is merely taking back what it is owed. The wars and battles and back-and-forth between those three kingdoms have gone on for a thousand years. Gul Kana will endure until the time of Fiery Absolution. Once Father died, I was right not to further waste our armies in Adin Wyte or Wyn Darrè. Father once told me he wished all leaders of men could walk a battlefield and witness the horror of mutilated bodies and cries of the dying. Leif Chaparral and I did fight in Wyn Darrè—”