The Forgetting Moon

by Brian Lee Durfee

  Gul Kana, the Illuminations claimed, was a rich and fertile land, infested with nothing more than gluttonous wretches who worshipped Laijon in blasphemous gaudy cathedrals and temples, a place where the people would wail and flagellate themselves before a enormous sculpted statue of Laijon, hailing it as an effigy of the great One and Only. The Chivalric Illuminations of Raijael spoke of Gul Kana and the ghastly harvest of carnage and bloodshed Church of Laijon zealots had reaped in the name of their perverted view of Laijon when they had taken and lost and retaken time and again both Wyn Darrè and Adin Wyte from the heirs of Raijael over the centuries. Aeros Raijael would take Gul Kana as he had retaken Adin Wyte and Wyn Darrè. He would give Gul Kana its Fiery Absolution. For that which was taken in blood, can only be regained in blood, spoke the Illuminations. As the prophets foretold, on that day of Absolution, the Angel Prince of Raijael would reign as the true One and Only returned. King Aevrett Raijael had raised his only son, Aeros, for just this purpose. And Aeros had fought these last ten years for just this goal. To the armies of Sør Sevier, Aeros Raijael was not only their fellow warrior, but their prince, their lord, even their One and Only returned.

  In Sør Sevier, to be saved, one must only proclaim Laijon as the true One and Only and swear fealty to Aeros Raijael as Laijon’s living heir. There was no vicar or Quorum of Five Archbishops in Amadon to pay homage and tithes to. There were no temple prayers, lists of good works, flagellations before holy statues, or ceremonies of ember and ash to earn your way into heaven. In Sør Sevier, belief was simple: study the Illuminations and believe in Raijael, Laijon’s only son, and Aeros, his living heir and warrior for the faith.

  And Aeros had more than proved himself in battle these last ten years. He was a keen and brave fighter, at the forefront always, seemingly indestructible, glorying in the savagery of battle. Never injured once. He’d been trained by the best warriors and killers King Aevrett could offer. Aeros was Aevrett’s prize, his pride, his joy. And both were driven by this one goal of ushering in Absolution.

  All of which brought Gault’s mind around to something else.

  Thoughts of the brilliant green stone Aeros had found on the battlefield had lately consumed him. To see it one more time is all I’d need. He looked to the soaring height of the Laijon Tower. Its witch-born flame had been extinguished nearly a moon ago, doused forever as was prophesied. But Gault took little solace in that final act of triumph. Years ago, the very thought that he himself might be an integral part of fulfilling that ancient Illuminations prophecy would have thrilled him no end. But now, after so much war and death, he scarcely cared. Now all he could think of was a small green stone. And that frightened him. Was it really an angel stone? That was the question he’d been mulling for the last few days now. He wondered if his mind hadn’t played some trick on him—wishful thinking combined with the stories of his mother. He pulled his cloak tighter over his shoulders like a mantle. It would soon be his turn at watch. The snowy Wyn Darrè night would soon grow bone-chilling.

  The flap of Enna Spades’ tent folded aside. She stood there, still wearing most of her armor, tossing a copper coin in her hand—her special coin, a trinket that had a history. Spiderwood, still standing watch, looked at her briefly, then turned away. Spades showed no emotion.

  Gault knew her well. She’d described her childhood to him once, traumatic, full of pain and betrayal—horrific things he himself would rather not think of. She’d never felt much power in her life. But in the hideousness of war she’d discovered a way in which she could gain it. She’d joined Aeros’ army in her late teens and, through sheer skill and ruthlessness, had risen through the ranks: squire, Hound Guard, Rowdie, Knight of the Blue Sword, and she’d rightly earned her spot at Aeros’ side as Knight Archaic.

  She faced Gault with a curious tilt to her chin. He knew that look and wanted to turn his eyes away. In matters like this, she had nurtured her icy lack of facial expression to an art. He could read nothing in her but knew what she wanted. He purposely looked away. She pocketed her coin and retreated into her tent. Both Hammerfiss and Stabler chuckled. As much as Enna Spades tempted him still, Gault knew nothing good would come of their coupling. Let the Bloodwood pleasure her if he so desired. They’d been together as of late. After all, the two shared a common bond. Spades and Spiderwood both hunted the same man—a former Bloodwood assassin known as Hawkwood.

  Hawkwood had betrayed his homeland for the love of a woman: Jondralyn Bronachell, sister of Sør Sevier’s greatest enemy, King Jovan Bronachell of Gul Kana, and daughter of the woman he had been sent to assassinate—Queen Alana Bronachell. Most believed Alana had died in childbirth. But there were some, like Gault, who knew the truth. Alana Bronachell had died at the hands of a Sør Sevier Bloodwood assassin. And that assassin had been Hawkwood. And that assassin had fallen in love with the woman’s eldest daughter, Jondralyn, the fairest woman—it was said—in all the Five Isles. So fair her face was minted on every copper coin in Gul Kana. Now Hawkwood was known in Sør Sevier as a betrayer, a turncoat. Many wanted him dead. For he was to have killed Jondralyn, too—but had not.

  Hawkwood was not only a former Bloodwood assassin, but also Spiderwood’s brother, and Spades’ former lover.

  A Bloodwood was not allowed to fail in his duties.

  And one did not just leave Black Dugal’s Caste of assassins for a woman.

  And one certainly did not leave Enna Spades for anything.

  And now Spades kept a Gul Kana copper with Jondralyn Bronachell’s image emblazoned on it with her always—she kept it so she would know the face of the woman she most desired to kill.

  * * *

  In this embattled world, man held faith in invisible forces and hostile spirits, ofttimes doing the bidding of the wraiths that fed in his soul. To appease the winged demons who ruled with fiery death, man erected altars of sacrifice. It was a time of selective loyalties, a time of great betrayal. A time of celestial divinations that one holy and pure and strong of mind would be born by the sea, blessed with the Mark of the Cross.

  —THE MOON SCROLLS OF MIA

  * * *

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  JONDRALYN BRONACHELL

  18TH DAY OF THE SHROUDED MOON, 999TH YEAR OF LAIJON

  AMADON, GUL KANA

  Squireck Van Hester circled his foe, a stick-thin man in rusted chain mail, wooden breastplate, and dented helm, bearing an unwieldy-looking longsword.

  The orchestra bell gonged a deep Boom! Boom! Boom! whenever the Prince of Saint Only stepped onto the arena floor. The crowd booed to the cadence, the bells heralding the inevitable. The air was ripe with the stench of death. But that was the way of the arena: ancient, gray, pitted, rancid, and stained.

  Today the king’s suite was crammed with the entirety of Jovan’s court; only Lord Kelvin Kronnin was absent. He had taken leave of the festivities yestermorn and journeyed back to Lord’s Point to attend to his wife, Emogen, and their newborn daughter.

  Tala held hands with Lawri Le Graven, both with heads bowed and eyes clenched shut. Occasionally Dame Mairgrid would reach back and slap the top of their hands with one of her own beefy palms. Jondralyn knew her sister and cousin merely wished to have their delicate sensibilities unsullied by the arena horrors. But Jondralyn saw things differently: she figured a princess must look unflinchingly at the world, soak it all in without abhorrence. Those were things her mother, Alana, had instilled in her. Though her mother had hated the arena as much as Tala seemed to now, she’d taught Jondralyn to see it for what it was. She worried for her younger sister. Tala hadn’t spent as much time under the tutelage of their mother as she had. Now it seemed Tala wandered about the castle full of naught but idle mischief. But soon Jovan would have her marry Glade Chaparral, and her standing in the court would be firmer and she could avoid the arena if she so desired. Jondralyn elbowed her. But Tala refused to look. Jondralyn turned her own attention to the arena floor. She would look. Though she still feared for Squireck’s life, watching his
brute power in action was magnificent. To her, there was a quiet accuracy in Squireck’s movements, a clean efficiency.

  He swung his longsword only once; it flashed fiercely in the sun. And his foe fell dead at his feet, chain mail and wooden breastplate torn asunder, chest split open and weeping sheets of scarlet over the dirt. Boom! Boom! Boom! went the bells. And a great chorus of boos rained down upon the Prince of Saint Only. Squireck held his bloody sword aloft.

  He stood there below the king’s suite in naught but his leather breeches, frozen in place, bare-chested. Wearing no armor, beads of sweat glistened on his tanned, rippling torso. He was fearsome, eyes wide and inflamed. Golden hair just a wild tangle down his neck and back. Except for the quivering of his forearm held high, Squireck was quite still, elegant even—as if forged of marble. Jondralyn knew her feelings for her once betrothed were deepening. Sitting here next to Hawkwood, watching Squireck kill in the arena, she had never felt more vibrantly alive.

  The Prince of Saint Only had scarcely taken his eyes off the king’s suite. Even in the midst of slaying his latest challenger, Squireck’s eyes almost never wavered from the spot where Grand Vicar Denarius and the quorum of five sat. Archbishop Spencerville, squat and round, seemed especially to squirm in his seat.

  “The victorious Prince of Saint Only!” The herald’s voice swelled through the arena once the ravenous boos of the crowd and thunderous booming of the bells ceased.

  “Blessed Mother,” Roguemoore said. He sat near Jondralyn with Hawkwood. “What a specimen. I daresay his arms have grown two sizes bigger since his last fight.”

  What the dwarf said was true. Squireck’s body was as chiseled as the sculpture of Laijon that graced the rotunda of the temple. Down on that arena floor was a true fighter, a true warrior, a real man, all sculpted muscle and confidence.

  A feeling of complete and utter inadequacy filled Jondralyn then. A desire to build up her own physique to match that of Squireck’s instantly consumed her—she too wanted a warrior’s body. But as a woman in Gul Kana, what chance was there of that?

  I will find a way!

  Hawkwood was looking at her curiously. She wondered if he knew what she was thinking. On the floor of the arena, Squireck swung his sword and chopped the head from the dead gladiator, then picked it up by the hair and flung it high into the air. It sailed over the bulk of the orchestra, landing among the drum section just below the king’s suite. The musicians gasped and scrambled away.

  “This man’s blood be upon the grand vicar and quorum of five!” Squireck yelled, holding his arms wide in supplication. “His blood is not upon me!” He turned and stalked away. The arena crowd booed with more vigor and flame. Once again, Squireck Van Hester exited the arena, his body free of blood. This had been his fourth win without suffering so much as a scratch. The headless corpse was branded with the cross of Laijon and the body dragged away. As the dirt of the arena floor was raked, the orchestra struck up a soothing melody, and the crowd patiently awaited the next match. A Silver Guard pikeman leaped down into the orchestra pit and snatched up the head of the gladiator. He flung it back onto the arena floor, where it landed in a spray of dirt for the sand rakers to gather.

  “Someday,” Roguemoore said loud enough for all in the king’s suite to hear, “one of those heads is bound to reach the lap of one of our beloved archbishops.” There was a defiant challenge in the dwarf’s stance and a dangerous rising of his bushy brows.

  “Best watch your mouth, dwarf,” Grand Vicar Denarius chortled, staying seated. His thick hands were folded over the lump of his stomach. He took a deep breath that sounded more like the grunt of a boar. His eyes, prickly and wandering, appeared to miss nothing as he continued. “Yes, best watch your mouth or you’ll soon be down with Squireck, running about in that arena on your stumpy little legs, begging for your life.”

  “Is that a threat, Denarius?” The dwarf faced the quorum of five.

  Archbishops Leaford and Donalbain stood as if to protect their leader, the latter tall and sticklike, always reminding Jondralyn of an old scarecrow she’d once seen. Vandivor, Spencerville, and Rhys-Duncan stayed seated—but they were the more heavyset of the five, Spencerville particularly round of gut.

  The grand vicar’s scrutiny of the dwarf was unwaveringly long. It seemed as if the dwarf was momentarily taken aback by the intimacy of the unending look from Denarius.

  “Fools,” Jovan snarled, leaning forward in his chair. “Can’t you see, the Prince of Saint Only makes us all look like simpletons.” He looked to the Dayknight captain, Ser Sterling Prentiss. “See to it that Squireck is imprisoned separately from the other fighters.” With strained impatience etching his face, he stood and addressed the entire suite. “The Prince of Saint Only’s training is at an end. He is to be given naught but bread and water by the guards. On pain of death, nobody is to visit the arena prison without my leave. Or perhaps I will just have him moved back to Purgatory.”

  “That is unfair!” Jondralyn shot to her feet.

  “I won’t have my sister questioning me in public!” The king snapped his fingers and pointed to the exit. “Have her removed, Prentiss.”

  Since Jovan had grown up and become king, his childlike bullying had only become worse, but in a different, sinister, more official kind of way. Now he had other men, like Sterling Prentiss, do the dirty work. Prentiss motioned to the four Dayknights standing guard behind the king. They moved toward her with purpose. Hawkwood stood, hand on the hilt of his sword. Each of the four Dayknights drew his weapon. Everyone froze. The tension was thick. Jondralyn was at once flattered that Hawkwood would risk so much for her, and irritated that he just assumed she could not take care of herself.

  “Please, Jovan, Your Excellency.” Jondralyn’s aunt, Mona Le Graven, stood and bowed deeply. “Don’t quarrel. Grant us leave to just sit and enjoy the—”

  “Do you wish to be removed too?” The king’s face was lit with rage. Mona slunk back into her seat next to her husband, Lord Lott Le Graven, who now looked ill.

  Jovan shot an icy stare at Hawkwood. “Remove your hand from the hilt of that weapon or else my Dayknights will cut you down where you stand.”

  Hawkwood kept his hand where it was, cool gaze unwavering.

  “Do not do this, lad,” Sterling Prentiss said to the Sør Sevier man. “You’ve been a great help in training my men. That I appreciate. But I must do as my king commands. My men will slice you to ribbons on my orders. Make no mistake.”

  Everyone looked between Hawkwood to Jovan. The king stood tall and sure, rage on his face. As a young girl, Jondralyn had always been reassured by the breadth and firmness of her older brother’s shoulders, the rigidness of his posture, the squareness of his young jaw. But when they’d reached their teens, those attributes turned Jovan into a more formidable tormentor to her. That rage everyone now saw on his face, she’d seen before. Again she recalled when she was only twelve and he fifteen: Jovan, having become enraged over some triviality between them, cornered her in a dark corner of Tin Man Square. He ordered her Silver Guard watchmen away, then threw her to the ground and stomped her arm and leg muscles beneath his heavy boots as she lay helpless on the ground. He made her promise to never tell their father or he would scar her face until she was so ugly no man would want her. Jondralyn, fearing he would follow through on his threat, obeyed. She had seen the determination for cruelty in his face. Yes, today he stood tall and sure. But now those attributes just added to the crazed look of him. Everything he ever did was full of brute unfairness and spite. Where had he learned such unkindness? Their father had never been like that. Alana Bronachell had not been totally blind to her son’s meanness as a child and had tried her best to correct that in him, but she would hate who he had become, as Jondralyn did now.

  In fact, Jondralyn hated him more than ever before as he motioned to the captain of the Dayknights. “Remove her from my sight. Kill anyone who tries to stop you.”

  Jondralyn shoved away the first Dayknig
ht who attempted to grab her. “If I’m to leave the arena, it will be under my own power.”

  The captain of the Dayknights appraised Jondralyn with a heavy-lidded gaze. “The order was given to me. I aim to fulfill it. I will escort you from the arena whether you like it or not.” There was purpose behind his words. He had once been Borden Bronachell’s most trusted knight. But since her father’s death, the Dayknight captain had been a bulky threat looming at not only Jovan’s but the grand vicar’s side. When she was a child, the grim look of Sterling Prentiss could send Jondralyn scurrying away in fear. He was looking down on her now with those squinty, steely eyes of his. She wondered if the man sat up at night practicing intimidating looks in front of a mirror. The thought made her giggle. This earned an even darker look from Jovan. Sterling’s thick hand went to the black opal on the pommel of his sword. The man followed her brother’s orders to a fault.

  Grand Vicar Denarius spoke. “You should take little offense at your sister’s words, my king.” He was puffed up like a toad in his seat. “Though she is one most beautiful, she is only a woman. Barely more than a silly court girl, really. They never grow out of it, the court girls. It is why you don’t see them in the bishopric, or as lords or nobles or kings. They know not what they do. And Jondralyn knows not what she says. It’s the dwarf who fills her head with such folly, having her believe she is more than she is. And that Sør Sevier turncoat who teaches her sword craft does her no favors either. Just look at how she dresses. She thinks she’s a real warrior. Thinks it unfair that Squireck go without training and food. But what does a woman know of the arena and its workings?”

  “I know exactly of what I speak,” Jondralyn snarled.

  The vicar sat back in his chair, chubby and self-contained.

  “I agree with our holy vicar,” the Val Vallè ambassador, Val-Korin, said in his very peculiar taut voice, just above a whisper. Everyone had to strain to hear what he said next, his words directed at Roguemoore and Hawkwood. “Ever since the dwarf council in Ankar sent you to Borden’s court, you’ve stirred up nothing but trouble for the Silver Throne, Ser dwarf. And you, Hawkwood, are naught but a dirty Sør Sevier turncoat and assassin.”