Empires of Moth (The Moth Saga, Book 2) (20 page)

Yet he could not speak of these
things to Koyee; he knew he'd only stutter and his cheeks would
blush, and he worried that she'd mock him for his humble dreams.
After living in Pahmey, a great city, would she find his village
dull? Instead, he only traced his finger farther south along the map.

"And from Sinyong, we'll
have to navigate the sea," he said. "It looks like . . . by
Idar, the sea's as wide as the distance between Oshy and Pahmey. I
hope we still have enough supplies." He looked at their pile of
food, then back at the map. "And then . . . what's this city on
the coast of Ilar?" He squinted; reading foreign words in
Qaelish still stumped him sometimes. "Asharo?"

Koyee's eyes darkened, the smile
left her lips, and she hugged herself.

"Asharo," she repeated
in a whisper, the voice of a woman speaking of ancient evil. She
reached across the bench and grabbed the hilt of her katana.

"I take it . . . not as
pleasant a place as Sinyong," Torin said.

Koyee shook her head. "I've
never been there, but my father fought there in the great war between
Qaelin and Ilar." She looked up at him, eyes haunted. "Not
all wars are between day and night. We in the darkness of Eloria have
fought amongst ourselves—great, terrible wars that have claimed the
lives of many. Too many times did the Ilari warriors raid the
southern coasts of our empire. My father sailed south with Qaelin's
army. They crossed the sea. They reached the walls of Asharo. A demon
world, my father called that city." She shuddered. "The
walls were black. The towers behind them rose dark and jagged,
endless battlements manned by endless warriors. The Ilari rode
strange creatures of shadow, their teeth bright; like cats they were,
but the size of nightwolves. The armor of the Ilari was just as
black; they blended into the night, and they attacked by the
thousands. Many of my father's friends died." She caressed the
katana. "He slew many with Sheytusung, his sword. The Ilari will
not have forgotten the blade that felled so many of their sons. I
pray to the Leaping Fish and to all other constellations that we can
make peace with Ilar." She stared deep into Torin's eyes as if
peering into his soul. "The Ilari are horrible and mighty. With
their help, we can defeat the sunlight. Yet they are just as likely
to slay us before we dock our boat."

Torin couldn't suppress a
shudder. "So . . . yes, definitely not as pleasant as Sinyong."

She slapped his chest. "Be
quiet and go get our books. It's time to practice a new language."

Torin raised his eyebrow. "A
new language?"

For the past six months, he'd
been speaking with Koyee in Qaelish, her language, mixed with a good
dose of Ardish, his mother tongue. They both knew just enough of each
language to mix them into something they both understood. Torin
jokingly called their speech "Qaelardish," and he was
finally enjoying being able to converse freely with Koyee.

She nodded. "The Ilari
speak their own tongue. It's similar to Qaelish and shares many
words, but you'll have to learn the differences. My father taught me
some; I need to learn too." She scuttled across the deck,
reached into a chest, and produced a leather-bound book. "We
have a long time on this boat. We will learn."

With a sigh, Torin settled down
beside her, the book lying between them.

The boat flowed downriver.

The hourglass turned.

The stars moved above.

They ate, studied, slept holding
each other for warmth, and watched the landscapes roll by.

They were five hourglass turns
along the river when they saw the burning village.

More than the cawing crows, it
was the smell of burning flesh that woke Torin.

He
lay in the
Water
Spider
,
Koyee nestled against him for warmth. Fur blankets wrapped around
them. It was always cold in Eloria; most days chunks of ice floated
in the river, Torin's fingers felt numb, and his breath frosted. Yet
as he woke now, the smoky scent in his nostrils, heat floated on the
wind. Sweat clung to his skin and dampened his hair. He opened his
eyes, blinked, and saw ash swirling in the sky.

"Fire," he whispered.

Arms wrapped around him, Koyee
opened her eyes and raised her head from his chest. Lines from his
tunic creased her cheek. She blinked, sniffed, and then leaped out of
the blankets. She stood in the boat, stared off the port side, and
blanched. Never removing her eyes from the eastern bank, she knelt,
grabbed her katana, and drew the blade.

Heart leaping into a gallop,
Torin rose from his bed of furs, followed Koyee's gaze, and felt his
heart sink.

"Merciful Idar," he
said, grabbing and drawing his own sword.

"Are they all dead?"
Koyee whispered.

Torin walked toward the stern
and grabbed the rudder. He began directing the boat toward the
eastern bank. "We're going to find out."

A village nestled along the
riverbank—or at least it had once been a village. The place now
smoldered. Clay huts lay shattered, their roof tiles strewn across
the ground. Charred corpses lay upon a boardwalk, and crows—birds
Torin had only seen in Dayside before—feasted upon them. Lantern
poles rose along the docks, but rather than holding lights, corpses
now hung from them.

Koyee winced. "The enemy
might still be here."

"I see none." Torin
grabbed an oar. "The Timandrians came, burned, and moved on.
This is no longer a war of conquest. It's mindless slaughter."

When they reached the docks and
moored, the stench flared so powerfully Torin nearly gagged. He
pulled on his shirt of steel scales, donned his helmet, and stepped
onto the stone pier. Koyee joined him, tugging on her own armor.
Leaving their boat behind, they walked into the village, swords and
shields raised.

"By the light," Torin
said, wincing as he stepped onto the main street.

Corpses lay charred upon the
cobblestones, their bones curling inward like wet parchment. The
skulls seemed to have bloated and cracked like sausage casings
stuffed with too much meat. Only bits of skin clung to the remains.
The shells of houses rose around them; beyond the crumbled walls
Torin saw more skeletons, these ones of children. Some of the
skeletons sprouted extra limbs. One child's skeleton had two skulls,
while another's ribs flared outward, flipped backwards upon the
torso.

"Who did this?" Koyee
said, voice shaky. "Who would desecrate the dead like this,
rearranging bones to form these . . . these shapes?" She stared
at a skeleton at her feet, its femurs coiling like pig's tails.

Torin swallowed bile. "They
did not deform the dead. They deformed the living." He could not
stop his hands from shaking. "Magerians did this."

He pointed at the wall of a
temple, its dome collapsed. A mural spread across it, painted in
blood, forming a buffalo with long horns and red eyes.

"Magerians?" Koyee
whispered. She stared at the painted animal and shivered. "Who
are these demons?"

"Mageria is a kingdom in
Timandra." Torin kept walking, heading around a fallen bronze
statue of Xen Qae, founder of Qaelin. "It lies west of Arden, my
own homeland. You remember how you told me that different Elorian
nations have fought one another? The same has happened in Timandra.
There are three empires in Eloria. We have eight kingdoms in the
daylight, and Mageria is the most dangerous among them. They fight
not with swords and arrows, but with dark magic. Their spells can
twist bones like clay, burn flesh, and spread death like a farmer
spreading seeds. They conquered Arden's capital city thirty years
ago; they would have reached my village too, had King Ceranor not
driven them off." Torin rounded a corner, saw a hundred
skeletons stacked in a grotesque hill, and grimaced. "And now
they're here in the night."

Koyee stared at the hill of
bones, her eyes dampened, and she shivered.

"I want to leave this
place." She looked at him. "All are dead here; we cannot
help them. We must seek aid. We must." She turned and began
walking back to the river. "I don't know if any in Eloria can
fight such evil, such power. But if we have any hope, it lies south.
Come, Torin. Let us oar. We must reach Ilar before all lie dead."

They returned to their boat in
silence, ash raining upon them, hot and stinging and scented of
charred meat. Torin grimaced to think that these pale flakes might be
the remains of the dead. When they were sailing downriver again, he
did not look back.

The hourglass turned and turned.

The moon waxed and waned.

The stars rose and fell.

The world became only their boat
floating upon an endless black sky. Fish lit the water, luminous
bulbs growing upon stalks, spine ridges bright with running pins of
light. They shone like stars below. Nothing but darkness and glowing
beads surrounded them, and Torin barely knew water from sky, ground
from air. Endless night. Endless, cold darkness.

And endless death.

Every turn or two, they sailed
by them—the burning remains of a village, a town, or a humble
riverside temple burned down. At every outpost they saw them—the
dead. The twisted corpses hung from lantern poles, hundreds of the
fallen lining the riverbanks. Their bones coiled like fingernails
left to grow too long. Bits of flesh clung to their skulls, the
mouths agape in silent screams. Upon the walls of their houses
appeared the same sigil, again and again, a mark of damnation
crawling downriver—the buffalo of Mageria, horns long, eyes red, a
demon painted in blood.

At every settlement Torin and
Koyee docked their boat. At every settlement they prayed to find
survivors. They found only death, a hill of skeletons between burnt
houses.

"When we reach the southern
coast, what will we find?" Koyee whispered as they sailed away
from another burnt village. "Is Sinyong, the great city at the
edge of the river, but a graveyard for thousands—another Pahmey, its
people trapped and burned?" She lowered her head and hugged
herself. "Will we find the same in Ilar? Torin . . . what if all
the lands of night are dead and gone, if only a handful of survivors
still live, dwindling every hourglass turn?"

Torin
grimaced, watching the latest village fade into the distance behind
them, the corpses swinging upon the lamp posts. "I don't know
how many more live. But so long as
we
live, we will seek life. We will sail past death so long as we
breathe, even if we are the last." He turned toward her and held
her hands. "But I don't believe that all are gone. Even in the
deepest darkness a light shines. We will find life again."

A tear trailed down her cheek,
and Torin lifted it on his finger. He found himself stroking her
cheek as she gazed at him, her eyes twice the size of his, deep
lavender that reflected the stars. Her lips parted in a shaky breath,
and he kissed her.

He did not mean to kiss her, and
yet he found himself holding her against him, his hands stroking her
back. She wrapped her arms around him and her eyes closed, and her
body was soft and warm under her silks.

"We will find life,"
she whispered.

They lay upon a fur blanket,
pulled another blanket atop them, and moved in the soft warmth and
shadows. His blood burned and his body ached as he tugged at her
sash. Her silks came free, and her hands ran across him, pulling the
lacing of his tunic and breeches, and soon they were naked under the
furs, their lips trailing across skin, meeting in a clash of warmth,
and parting to explore before meeting again. She lay atop him, their
chests pressed together, and he closed his eyes and whispered her
name as he loved her.

They clung together, warm in the
cold night, desperate for each other as their boat moved downriver .
. . heading deeper into shadow and the fires of war.

 
 
CHAPTER FIFTEEN:
THE IRON ROAD

"Furry sheep droppings,
she's scary when she does that, isn't she?" Sitting cross-legged
on the rocky ground, Cam shuddered. "One of these turns, she's
going to spin around and toss those things into our necks."

Sitting beside him, Linee gave a
small whimper. "Don't say that. Please, Camlin. Suntai is scary
enough without you saying these things." She glanced at the
three nightwolves who stood nearby, feeding from bowls of meat and
bones. "And it's bad enough we have to share the road with those
. . . those hairy things."

They had been traveling the Iron
Road for many turns now—Cam wasn't sure how many, because his
hourglass kept falling over in his pocket. Judging by the waning
moon, they'd left the crater half a month ago. During all that time,
Suntai—their guide, their protector, and their terror—had barely
said a word.

"Look at her sat up there,"
Cam whispered. "Does she even eat or sleep? I don't think I've
seen her do either."

Linee stared down into her bowl
of salted beef and boiled chickpeas, part of their dwindling supplies
of Timandrian goods. "Of course she eats and sleeps. She has to.
She's not . . . not a ghost." Linee shivered. "Right?"

Cam himself had no appetite and
shoved aside his own bowl. He stared up at the Elorian woman. About
twenty yards away, she perched upon a milestone, one of the tall
boulders that marked distances along the Iron Road. Suntai. Alpha
female of the Chanku Pack. The most terrifying woman Cam had ever
met—and he'd suffered Bailey's kicks about a hundred times.

But Suntai . . . this woman was
even worse. Bailey would scold him, wrestle him, kick him, and one
time—when he'd accidentally broken her childhood doll—she had given
him a bloody lip. Cam had learned to tolerate Bailey's aggression,
believing that deep down she was his friend, that she cared for him
despite her outbursts. Suntai, however, was a different story. Suntai
held him no love. If Suntai got upset, Cam felt that she wouldn't
just smack him—she'd stick her throwing stars into his neck.