Shadows of Moth (5 page)

Lari looked up at her father,
the rage gone from her face. Suddenly she seemed like a child again,
desperate for her father's approval.

"Did I do it properly,
Father?" She bit her lip. "I was hoping to drive the
serpents into her heart right away. I didn't think they'd crawl under
her skin."

"Keep practicing."
Serin frowned at her. "I expect the best from you, Lari. Next
time you kill, I want it quick. You will have to kill quickly on the
battlefield. Do you understand?" He clenched his fist. "Do
you remember what happened when you were a child, when you failed to
play the proper notes on the harp?"

Lari blanched and her bottom lip
trembled. Those bruises would linger for turns. To her father, the
harp was almost as important as magic; whenever Lari had played a bum
note, he would knock her onto the floor, would beat her with sticks,
would leave her bruised, bleeding, and begging for another chance.
Lari had grown into a woman, perhaps too old to beat, but Serin still
expected perfection from her.

She nodded. "I will
practice, Father. I promise. I will practice on as many nightcrawlers
and traitors as it takes." She kissed his cheek. "I will
make you proud."

Standing beside them, Headmaster
Atratus cleared his throat—a horrid sound like a vulture gagging up
a chunk of maggoty flesh. "And don't forget about your old
professor. After all, I taught you much magic myself."

Lari smiled sweetly at the
balding, stooped man. "Of course, Headmaster. I had to leave
your university early to join the war effort, but I promise you—what
I miss in classes I will perfect on the battlefield." She turned
back toward the corpse. "And now . . . now I will bloody my
sword. Now I prepare a gift for the mongrel. A little herald of
what's to come."

Lari drew her sword and swung it
down several times, finally severing Egeria's head.

They walked down to the
river—an emperor in bright steel, a princess with a bloodied sword,
and a mage in black robes. Myriads of soldiers stood at their sides,
forming walls of steel, a force of sunlight about to swarm into
darkness. The warships of the Magerian Empire rose in the water,
masts like a forest. Serin barked a few orders, and soon a
rowboat—an old landing craft the fleet could easily spare—was
lowered into the water. Serin himself stuck the head onto a spear,
then propped it onto the boat's prow, forming a lurid, dripping
figurehead.

He took a scroll and quill from
a servant, and standing on the river bank, he wrote in his fine,
flowing script.

Dearest
Madori!

Last
we met, you took a finger from me. I now give you a head. Poor Egeria
died knowing your fate. I wanted you to know it too. When we meet
again—and it will be soon, my dearest Madori—I will take a finger
from you. Then another finger. Then all your fingers and all your
toes. But not your head. That will remain, so that you can see the
crowds of Timandrians who gape at you, so you can hear their jeers,
smell your own blood as they pelt you with stones. You and I will
travel my empire together—you as a circus freak, I as your trainer.
I'm afraid that dear old Egeria suffered a fate far kinder than what
awaits you.

I
am coming for you, and I will see you soon, sweet mongrel!

Your
dear uncle,

Emperor
Tirus Serin

He rolled up the scroll, nailed
it onto the boat's hull, and sent the vessel floating eastward. He
stood with his daughter, watching as the boat moved toward the dusk.
Soon it entered the gloaming, and beads of light gleamed upon its
wake like drops of liquid metal. Then the boat was gone into shadows,
gone toward the village of Oshy. To Koyee. To Madori. To all the
Elorians who would see his might and fear him.

"Perhaps they will fight as
we march in," he said softly. "Perhaps they will beg.
Perhaps they will flee. No matter what they do, the outcome will be
the same. They will die."

Lari leaned against him. He
slung his arm around her, and they stood together, watching the
darkness. Behind them, the army stood ready to invade. Very soon now,
the last troops would arrive from the capital. Very soon now, the
darkness would burn.

 
 
CHAPTER FOUR:
SWAMP AND STONE

Madori stood upon the hill, the
wind whipping her cloak and two strands of black hair. She gazed down
upon her home—the village of Oshy, the Inaro River, Salai castle,
and beyond them the dusk. She had spent many of her childhood summers
here. She had sought sanctuary here. When the invasion began, she
would shed blood here.

"For now I say goodbye,
Oshy." The whistling wind drowned her words and nearly tugged
off her cloak. "I go into shadow."

For
the first time in her life, she wore Qaelish clothes—garments she,
half Timandrian, had once rejected. A
qipao
dress hugged her body, its indigo silk embroidered with golden fish.
A silver sash encircled her waist, inlaid with pearls, and her silken
black cloak sported dragon motifs. Across her back hung her greatest
possession: Sheytusung, fabled katana of her father.

Now
I travel into the Desolation, to find the master who trained my
grandfather.
She touched the silk-wrapped hilt.
I've
learned to fight with magic. Now I will learn steel.

She sighed. Once she had dreamed
of being a healer, not a soldier. When her mother had miscarried
years ago, leaving Madori an only child, she had vowed to learn to
heal others, not slay them. At Teel University, she had made her
greatest progress in Magical Healing class, not Offensive Magic. Yet
now she—the girl who had wanted so badly to mend broken bodies and
souls—would march into the darkness to become a killer. Perhaps her
fate was to be torn—between day and night, between healing and
hurting.

She turned to look northeast,
away from the dusk and the village in its light. The full darkness of
Eloria stretched there, empty, lifeless, nothing but black hills and
plains beneath the stars. The wilderness. Madori was half Elorian,
but the sight of so much darkness, such vast empty land, chilled her.
She would not be sailing upon a river that reflected the stars, that
glowed with lanternfish, that eventually led to cities of light. She
would be traveling into the emptiness; she might as well have been
walking across the surface of the moon.

She gulped.

"You're out there
somewhere, Master Lan Tao," she whispered.

She unrolled her parchment
scroll, revealing fields of stars. When Koyee had given her this
starmap, Madori had only nodded, rolled her eyes, and insisted that
she understood the directions. She had lied. She could barely
understand the runes, arrows, and coiling lines that snaked between
the illustrated constellations. Yet she had needed to quickly leave
her home in the village, to leave her mother, to begin her quest.
Every moment back in Oshy, she was tempted to defy her mother, to
race into the dusk, to find Serin and challenge him to another duel.
That would have meant her death, she knew. As much as she hated
Serin, her training was not yet complete; a single year at Teel had
not made her powerful enough to defeat her enemies. So she had
stuffed the map into her belt. She had raced here to the hill, too
anxious for teary partings. And now she stood out here in the wind,
on the cusp of pure darkness, afraid, alone.

She took a deep breath. "I
survived the searing light and cruelty of Timandra." She smiled
crookedly. "I can survive the cold, empty darkness of Eloria."

She took a single step—the
first of many, the beginning of a new journey.

A voice rose behind her, tugging
her back like a rope.

"Madori."

She spun around to see Jitomi
walking uphill toward her.

The young Ilari, once her fellow
student at Teel, wore the raiment of his southern, island-empire. His
black silk robes fluttered in the wind, embroidered with small red
flames. Upon his belt hung a tanto dagger, a traditional weapon of
Ilar. A red bandana encircled his brow. His nose ring gleamed in the
moonlight, as did the smooth, white hair that hung across his brow.
His dragon tattoo coiled up his neck and cheek, the scaled head
resting above his eyebrow.

Madori nodded at him, a new lump
forming in her throat. "Jitomi."

He stepped closer and stood
before her. His blue eyes—large Elorian eyes like hers, twice the
size of Timandrian ones—stared at her. "You are leaving without
saying farewell?"

She looked away. "I don't
like goodbyes." Her voice sounded too thin to her, too hoarse.

"I'm leaving Oshy too. I'm
returning to Ilar, to speak to my father, to try and enlist help for
the border." He stared south into the darkness as if already
seeing his distant homeland. "This is not only the border with
Qaelin but with all the night. I'll make my father understand; he
holds sway in the court of Empress Hikari. When he speaks, she
listens. Ilar will help us, Madori."

She turned back toward him. "I
thought you came here to say goodbye, not to speak of armies and
empresses."

Jitomi nodded. He held her hand,
and he leaned forward, trying to kiss her. She pulled back and took a
step away.

"Madori?" His voice
was soft, hurt.

She shook her head and looked
away. "Go, Jitomi." Her voice caught in her throat. She
remembered that time in Teel, the time they had kissed in the
infirmary, how she had lain in his arms. "Go to Ilar; that is
your path. And my path leads into the wilderness. There's no need for
farewells, no need for your kiss, no need for any of this." Her
voice cracked. "We must tread different paths. Perhaps they will
never cross again."

She hefted her pack across her
back and began to walk away from him, heading into the darkness.

"Madori, wait." He
stepped toward her, held her shoulder, and touched her hair. "Do
you forget all we've been through? Do you forget the year we spent
together at Teel, the long moons we spent together on the road?"
His voice dropped to a whisper. "Those turns we slept in each
other's arms, those secrets we whispered, those—"

"That's all over!" Her
voice rose so loudly she was almost shouting. Tears burned in her
eyes. "Don't you understand, Jitomi? We're not youths anymore.
All those turns together have ended. It's war now. War like the one
my parents fought, like we'll have to fight." She tasted a tear
on her lips. "There will be no more embraces, no more kisses, no
more sunlit turns of youth. We're in darkness now. We must walk our
paths alone."

Pain filled his eyes. He touched
her cheek, lifting her tear onto his fingers. His voice was barely a
whisper. "Madori, I love you."

That only sent anger flaring
through her, a rage fueled by her pain. "Well, I don't love
you." She shook her head wildly. "What can love bring us
now? Only heartbreak. Go, Jitomi. Go! Go to your homeland and I'll
travel my own road. That is what's left for us." She laughed,
though it sounded more like a sob. "I told you I hated goodbyes.
I told you to leave. Now look." She gestured at her tears. "Now
look what you've done to me. I hate you, Jitomi. I . . ."

Yet somehow she found herself
embracing him. Somehow she found herself kissing him again, and it
tasted of her tears.

She placed her hands against his
chest and shoved him back. She turned away, eyes damp, and walked as
fast as she could into the shadows. The stars spread above, and the
icy wind cut through her, and she did not look back.

* * * * *

Tam Solira, Prince of Arden, and
Neekeya, a daughter of Daenor, crested the rocky hill and beheld the
swamplands sprawl below into the horizon.

"Daenor," Neekeya
whispered. "Home."

The young woman stood bedecked
in crocodile motifs—a helmet shaped as a crocodile head, a shirt of
scales mimicking crocodile skin, and a necklace of crocodile teeth.
Finally, a sword with a crocodile-claw pommel hung from her belt. Her
tattered green cloak fluttered in the wind, as did those strands of
her black, chin-length hair that escaped from her helmet. The rising
sun gleamed upon her brown skin and lit her large, chocolate-colored
eyes. She smiled wistfully, gazing with love upon her kingdom.

"I
missed you,
Denetek
."
She turned toward Tam, her eyes bright, and her smile widened to
reveal her teeth. "Isn't it beautiful? We call our land
Denetek
in our tongue; Daenor is what the kingdoms of Old Riyona call it."

Tam looked back toward the view.
Three years ago, he had visited the rainforest of Naya and thought
that land harsh. Now, viewing the marshlands of Daenor, he understood
what true harshness looked like. Daenor was not just lush and wet; it
looked like a flooded apocalyptic nightmare. The water stretched for
miles, covered in algae and lilies. Mangroves grew like spiders of
wood and leaf, their roots twisting. Boulders jutted like islands
from this green sea, looking as sharp and cruel as blades. Mist hung
in the air, birds cried out discordantly, and distant pyramids rose
upon the horizon, as grim as tombstones.

If
ever the world fell to ruin, to flood, to decay,
he thought,
it
would look like Daenor.

He suppressed a shudder and
forced himself to nod. "It's lovely, Neekeya. It's very . . ."
He thought for a moment. ". . . full of life."

Of course, "life"
probably meant man-eating crocodiles, insects the size of his fist,
and snakes that laid eggs inside human skulls, but he felt it safest
not to vocalize those thoughts.

She held his hand and pointed
across the marshlands. "Do you see that distant pyramid? That's
my home. My father rules all these lands, as far as you can see.
They'll be our lands one turn, Tam. We'll be married and rule
together, a wise lord and lady of the swamps."