Secrets of Moth (The Moth Saga, Book 3) (10 page)

When they sailed into the port,
Koyee sucked in her breath. At her side, Nitomi hissed and drew a
dagger, and even Qato—almost always silent himself—grunted.

"Sheathe your blade,
Nitomi," Koyee said and raised her hand high, a gesture of
peace. She called out across the water. "We come peacefully,
friends!"

A
dozen figures stood on the docks, robed in pale silk, aiming bows at
the approaching
Water
Spider
.
They were lanky and barefoot, and their robes hung across their
chests, revealing their left shoulders. Their skin was black as the
night, their hair long and silvery like moonbeams, and their eyes
were gleaming blue pools, brighter than lanterns. Each man and woman
carried a thin, curved blade upon the hip.

When Koyee saw the two youngest
figures, she gasped and narrowed her eyes. One was a child of six or
seven, the other a babe held to her mother's chest. Both sprouted six
arms from their torsos, and their heads were blank, black bulbs with
no features save for huge blue eyes—no hair, no mouths or noses or
ears, only those dead, insect-like orbs.

"This place is cursed."
Nitomi shivered. "Koyee, the children are . . . are deformed,
and the adults have bows and arrows, and I'm not wearing armor. I'm a
dojai, we don't wear armor, we need to be sneaky, and . . . and if
they shoot us, we'll—"

"Hush, Nitomi," Koyee
said. "We keep going." She held up both hands now.
"Friends! I am Koyee of Qaelin. I've come seeking a—"

An
arrow sailed through the air and slammed into the hull of the
Water
Spider
.

Nitomi squeaked. Koyee froze and
clutched her sword.

"Sail away, foreigners!"
called one man from the port; his accent was so heavy Koyee could
barely understand. "No strangers may visit our isle. Return to
your lands!"

Nitomi squeaked and scuttled
toward the stern. "They're hostile."

Koyee stared ahead, eyes
narrowed, and shook her head. "No. They're afraid. Qato, row
on." She raised her voice. "Do not fear, friends! Whatever
plagues you, we can help you."

The
Water Spider
moved closer to the port, and the Montai folk upon the boardwalk
tugged back their bowstrings. Their eyes narrowed, glowing crescents
in their dark faces, and Koyee winced, for a moment sure they would
fire again. Yet she would not turn back.

I
fought Ferius in the dregs of Pahmey. I faced a horde of sunlight
upon the walls of Yintao. I know cruelty. I know evil.
She
looked at the archers' tightened lips, their taut muscles, their
quick breaths. She saw several children who hid behind barrels,
peering with large eyes; most appeared healthy, but one had the same
six arms and bald, dark head, its only features large blue eyes. She
saw a village with no color, almost no light, no more joy than could
be found in that old graveyard of ghosts.
I
see no cruelty . . . only fear.

"We are friends!" she
called out again. "We bring help to Montai." She did not
know what plagued this island—whether it was poverty, disease, or
the monsters Nitomi feared—but whatever it was, it would be foremost
on these people's minds. Her words would conjure that blight . . .
and hopefully a welcoming.

She held her breath as they
sailed, then shakily released it when the Montai lowered their bows.
One among them, an old man with a wrinkled face, raised his hand in
welcome.

"You may dock your boat,
Koyee of Qaelin, though it has been many years since your people have
set foot upon our shores." His voice was deep like underwater
currents, his accent flowing like waves on stones. "I am Siyun,
sage of this town. Tales have reaches us of your courage, daughter of
Eloria, the fabled Girl in the Black Dress who fought the sunlit
demons. Our island is distant but our ships sail far, and our people
crave tales. Moor and we will speak of the evil in your land . . .
and the evil in ours."

They docked and stepped out onto
the boardwalk. Koyee's legs wobbled after so long at sea, and her
companions swayed at her sides, seeming just as unstable, their sea
legs like boneless fish. Elderly Siyun turned to head into the town,
gesturing for them to follow. The world still swaying around her,
Koyee walked after him, her two dojais flanking her. The other
townsfolk remained behind.

Koyee beheld a town of black and
silver. Black were the bricks of the houses and shops, black were the
cobblestones, and black were the banners that rose, showing no sigil
or rune, upon the roofs. Silverwork gleamed around her: doorknobs and
hinges, belt buckles and sword hilts, and goblets and figurines in
shop windows. Through other windows, Koyee saw silversmiths
hammering, twisting, and coiling their masterworks, forming cutlery,
hourglasses, jewelry, and buttons. Even the silken robes the Montai
wore were colored silver, as if they too were made of the metal; they
gleamed against their charcoal skin like moonlight upon water.

As they passed by a school,
Koyee looked inside to see twenty children sitting upon rugs, reading
from scrolls. One child sat in the back, her six arms hanging loosely
at her sides. Her blank head rose to stare at Koyee, and her sapphire
eyes gleamed. Slowly, the child raised her six hands toward the
window, spiderlike, and Koyee gasped. Mouths full of sharp teeth
opened and closed upon the six palms.

They walked on. In the village
square, between braziers, rose a silver statue of a woman. It stood
twice Koyee's height. Like the strange children, the statue sported
six arms, and its face lacked a nose or mouth but stared with cold
eyes. Montai folk knelt around the statue, whispering prayers and
kissing the flagstones. It almost seemed to Koyee that the idol's
eyes watched her, moving in the bald, silver head as she walked by.

Siyun led them past the houses
and onto a pebbly, hillside path. They climbed to the hilltop where
they found a henge of boulders, each inlaid with a metal disk. Some
disks were large and bright, others small and dim, some ringed,
others surrounded by smaller circles. When the company stepped into
the henge and stood among the stones, the stars seemed to brighten
above; Koyee had never seen them so bright. She stared, head tilted
back, and gasped, for it seemed to her that the runes upon the
stones—disks and rings—filled the sky like floating lanterns torn
from their strings. Great, blue spheres gleamed above her, and she
saw maps upon them—the shapes of strange lands and seas—and around
the spheres shone smaller circles, each bearing its own terrain. The
spheres seemed so close to Koyee—she could reach out and touch them,
she thought—yet so far, countless miles away.

"They're worlds," she
whispered. "They're round worlds in the sky."

Siyun nodded. "And upon
those worlds the same henges stand, and eyes there gaze upon us in
Mythimna, for we too are but a single world, a sphere in an endless
sky." He lowered his head. "And now our world is fading,
for an evil rises."

"The Demon of Daylight,"
Koyee said. "Ferius. He leads the hosts of the sun, and his
light will blind us."

Siyun regarded her. "I
speak of an older evil, child. Tidings have reached us of the demon
Ferius, yet for many years, we in Montai have been suffering under a
greater demon's heel."

He looked between the henge
stones, and when Koyee followed his gaze, she saw the silver statue
below in the town. The woman with six arms seemed to stare back at
her, face blank. People were still kneeling before the idol, singing
prayers.

"The silver woman with six
arms?" Koyee asked. "But you pray to her. Some of your
children look like her."

Siyun nodded. "We worship
her from fear, and only here in the henge dare I speak these words,
for only among the glow of the worlds is our speech veiled to her. We
pray to a statue, but the true creature lives far in the mountains,
and her name is Shalesh, and she is as ancient as this island. Every
year her shadow sweeps into our town as the worlds align, when the
power of the henge fails to protect us. Every year she takes a single
child—a child lost to us, a child who grows four new arms, who loses
a mouth to scream with . . . and ears to hear others scream. Some of
these children Shalesh returned to us, and they do not age; some
among them are centuries old. Most remain with their mistress,
serving Shalesh, praising her name in caves and tunnels."

Koyee could not tear her eyes
away from the distant statue of Shalesh. Its eyes locked on hers,
tugging, calling to her, whispering into her ears, speaking of all
those secrets in her heart. In those eyes, Koyee saw her shame—an
urchin upon the streets of Pahmey, a daughter who let her father die
in flame, a coward who fled the desolation of Yintao as the enemy
killed and burned, as her brother died. In those eyes, it seemed to
Koyee that she herself was the monster Nitomi had spoken of, an evil
worse than any in sunlit or shadowed lands. She winced and hugged
herself, and her head spun, and—

"Koyee?" Nitomi was
tugging her arm. "Koyee, what's wrong? You look like you've seen
a ghost . . . or a monster. Oh dear, have you seen a monster? I knew
it. I knew they existed here. I wanted to turn back but—"

Koyee shook her head wildly,
clearing it of thoughts, and turned toward old Siyun.

"We seek a gear. I don't
know its size or its material. But stars and moons are engraved upon
its teeth, and it's ancient, a gear from before the empires of Eloria
had risen, from before there was an Eloria." Koyee unfolded a
page she'd removed from the library codex, displaying a drawing of
the gear. She showed it to the old man. "Have you seen this
artifact?"

Siyun examined the page and
shook his head. "This is a craft beyond Montai knowledge. We
work with silver and stone, but we forge no gears; it is a lost art.
Of these things only the weaveworms upon the mountain possess
knowledge, for they collect many gears, sprockets, and axles for
their looms. They are great weavers of silk, and though they forge no
metal of their own, they gather the crafts of men and build machinery
to spin, dye, and weave their fabric. If you seek knowledge of gears,
you will find it among them, but beware, for they hold no love for
the children of men. They are an ancient breed, more ancient than us,
and they have lived upon this island since the days when the world
still turned."

Nitomi squeaked and hid behind
Koyee. "The weaveworms?" Nitomi's voice dropped to a
whisper. "Monsters?"

"To some." The old man
nodded. "They trade with children of men, but they do not suffer
our feet to tread upon their mountain, for it is holy ground to
wormkind. In years of old, they would allow our sages to climb and
speak with their masters, but those times have passed, and now they
slay all who approach. Often we have found the bodies of our children
who had strayed onto their land, cocooned and lifeless, wrapped in
shrouds of their silk."

Siyun pointed between two of the
henge's stones. Koyee turned to see a distant mountain rising in the
east. Its crest glowed as with white fire or a crown of fallen stars.

"We will climb the
mountain." Koyee folded the page and placed it into her pocket.
"Perhaps they'll try to slay us, but if they possess the
knowledge we seek, we must face them. We will visit the weaveworms."

 
 
CHAPTER NINE:
MEMORY IN DARKNESS

Jin
stared into the dark sea, remembering his fallen home and his fallen
friend.

"I
miss you, Shenlai," he whispered into the cold wind.

The
black waves whispered below, their foamy crests silver in the
moonlight. Beyond that sea lay his fallen home, the lost empire of
Qaelin. Beyond that black horizon, his best friend—the blue dragon
Shenlai—lay forever sleeping.

Jin
closed his eyes, and he could see it again. His city crumbling. The
sunlit demons spreading across the night, bearing torches and blades.
The thousands dying and the arrows and swords driving into Shenlai,
cutting through scales, slaying this ancient dragon who had protected
the empire for millennia . . . who had protected Jin for the humble
ten years of his life.

A
hand stroked his hair. "He flies now among the stars, child. He
still looks after you."

Jin
nodded. Born without limbs, he used to ride upon Shenlai, but now he
hung in a new harness, snug like a baby against Empress Hikari's
chest. When he tilted his head back, he saw her looking down at him,
her face framed with long white hair. She smiled softly, and her hand
kept stroking his head, again and again. Jin's mother had died giving
birth to him; some whispered that she'd died of shock upon seeing the
limbless babe emerge from her womb. Jin had never known the touch of
a mother. Perhaps it felt like this.

The
empress stood upon the northern walls of her empire, this distant
land named Ilar, a place of safety in the darkness. His own empire
had fallen, but he had a new home now, and he had a new friend.

"He
gave his life to save the world," he said, returning his eyes to
the sea. "He died so he could reveal his secret to the right
person . . . to Koyee." He sniffed. "For so many years,
assassins and armies tried to kill him. Only with his dying breath
could Shenlai reveal his old truth. But he always lived. He always
waited. It was Koyee he had to speak to. She is very brave and very
strong." He stared into the darkness, trying to imagine her
there in the distance, traveling across distant lands. "And now
she's out there, walking the road he sent her on. Shenlai told her to
save the night. And she will . . . she will."

Hikari
sighed. Jin rose and fell with her chest, feeling as if he floated
upon those waves below.

"When
Koyee first came into my hall, I thought her weak," said the
empress. "I thought all Qaelish folk weak; they were an enemy to
me. Yet now I see all Elorians as one people, and Koyee is strong.
But Jin . . . we cannot place all our trust in an old story, in a
clock that might only be a legend. If there is safety for the night,
it stands upon these walls."