Moonlight

by Amanda Ashley

  Moonlight

  Amanda Ashley

  Contents

  PART I

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  INTERLUDE

  PART II

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  About Amanda Ashley

  PART I

  Chapter One

  The Isle of Mikos

  He had spent his whole life in a cage. As a child, he hadn’t questioned it, it was simply the way things were, the way they had always been.

  He had learned to crawl, then walk, then run, on the hard, cold stones.

  In truth, it wasn’t a cage at all, but a large, square room made entirely of rough-hewn gray stone except for the door, which was built of wood reinforced with thick, iron straps. There were two beds, two chairs, a table, a shelf filled with scrolls that contained the learning of the Kenn—scrolls that were changed each year. A single, iron-barred window was set high in the east wall.

  The days passed slowly. His mother, Isobele, read to him from the scrolls for hours at a time. She was the center of his world, his life. He had no contact with anyone else save the guards who twice-daily brought them food and water. The guards never spoke to Navarre, never made eye contact with him. Only on rare occasions did they speak to his mother.

  As Navarre grew older, Isobele taught him to read and write and cipher.

  Once, he heard her mutter something under her breath, something about it being a waste of time to teach him to read and learn his numbers.

  “Why, Mother?” he had asked. “Why is it a waste of time to teach me these things?”

  She had knelt down to face him, her expression filled with kindness. “What do you mean, Navarre?”

  “I heard what you said. Why is it a waste of time for me to learn to read, to write?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You did!” He had stared at her, wondering why she was lying to him. She had never lied to him before.

  “No, Navarre,” she had insisted, not meeting his eyes, “you must have misunderstood me.”

  He hadn’t argued with her, but later that night, when she thought he was asleep, he had seen her standing at the window. The moonlight cast silver highlights in her long blonde hair. The sound of her muffled sobs had brought tears to his own eyes.

  Sometimes she held him up to the window so he could look out. As a young child, he had spent hours imagining what it would be like to run through the tall grass, climb the towering trees, play in the clear blue river. Far in the distance, like a castle in a fairy tale, stood a gold-domed building made of sparkling white stone known as Stone Hall Keep.

  Sometimes men clothed in long gray robes came to the window to stare in at Navarre, their pale blue eyes filled with curiosity and a strange kind of awe that bordered on fear.

  “Why do they look at me like that?” he asked one day.

  “They stare at you because you’re such a handsome boy,” Isobele replied. She turned her head away, but not before he saw there were tears in her eyes again.

  “Handsome?”

  “Oh, yes,” Isobele said. “You look just like your father.”

  “Father?” Navarre knew what a father was, of course, from the scrolls he had read. But it had never occurred to him that he must have had one.

  Isobele nodded. “He was a very handsome man, your father. He had blue-black hair, just like yours. And his eyes were the same shade of smoky gray. When you are fully grown, you’ll be tall and broad-shouldered, just as he was.”

  “Where is my father? Why does he never come to see me? What is his name?”

  “Your father is dead.” Isobel took a deep breath. “You are named after him.”

  “I am?”

  She nodded, a faraway look in her eyes.

  “How did my father die?”

  Isobele felt the color drain from her face. She had always known she would have to answer this question one day, but, even so, she was not prepared. How did you tell a child that his father had been sacrificed to a heathen god? How could she tell her son that he was destined to meet the same cruel fate?

  “Mother?” He looked at her through eyes far older than his years as he waited for her reply.

  “Do we have to speak of it now?” Isobele glanced out the window. “Look, the vixen is outside, playing with her babes.”

  “How did my father die?”

  Hands clenched at her sides, she said, “He was sacrificed to the goddess Shaylyn.”

  Navarre frowned. “Sacrificed? I don’t understand.”

  “Please, Navarre,” she pleaded. “Let us not speak of it now.”

  “When, then?”

  “When you are older.”

  “How old?”

  “When you have seen thirteen summers.”

  Another year, he thought. Certainly he could wait another year.

  In the meantime, there were other questions crowding his mind, questions he had never considered before. It was as if his first query had unleashed an avalanche.

  “Why do we live in this place? Why can’t I go outside?” Suddenly restless, he began to pace the room. “Where do those other people live, the ones who come to stare at me?” He glanced down at his hands. “Why is their skin so light when ours is dark? How long will we have to stay here?”

  He looked at his mother, eager for answers, only to find her staring at him, her face drained of color, her dark blue eyes filled with sorrow that seemed to have no end and no beginning.

  “I’m sorry, Navarre,” she murmured, her voice thick. “So sorry. I didn’t want this for you. I tried to kill myself, but they stopped me. Your father…” She took a deep breath. “He tried not to touch me, but they drugged him…”

  “What are you saying?”

  Isobele fell to her knees before her son. Her hands shook as she clasped his. “Forgive me, Navarre, please forgive me.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  He was looking down at her, looking at her through eyes exactly like his father’s. How could she explain? How could she make him understand?

  “We are kept in this place because we are prisoners, Navarre. Your father was born here, just as his father before him, and his father before that.”

  “Were you born here, too?”

  “No.” She released Navarre’s hands and sank back on her heels, her thoughts turned inward. “I was kidnapped by the Kenn when I was sixteen. Your father and I were imprisoned until the day of your birth, and then your father was taken to the Temple of Shaylyn and sacrificed to the goddess.”

  Isobele closed her eyes, the memories she had sought to keep at bay flooding her mind as she related the story to her son. It was the way of the Kenn, to sacrifice a living male to the goddess Shaylyn every five and twenty years in the belief that such a sacrifice would insure the goddess’s continued benevolence, but the sacrifice must be a man who had proven his virility by siring a male child.

  Since time out of mind, the Kenn had raised men who were destined to be sacrificed. Men who were pure in heart and mind and body because they were never exposed to evil.

  For a year, she had been locked in a cage across from Navarre’s father. They had been able to see each other, to speak
to each other, but never allowed to touch, until the year he was four and twenty.

  Aware of what the future held for him and any male child he sired, Navarre had refused to bed Isobele, but the priests of Shaylyn had drugged him with a powerful aphrodisiac. She had been horrified when they brought him to her. His deep gray eyes had been glazed with lust, his body ready. She had been frightened of him then. That night, he had not been the gentle man she had grown to love, but a stranger, a man who had no regard for her virginity, no thought at all save to appease his drug-induced lust.

  Her protests had fallen on deaf ears, and he had possessed her over and over again, every night for the next fortnight, until his seed had taken root, and then she had been taken away, never to see him again.

  He had been sacrificed to the goddess on his twenty-fifth birthday.

  And now her son was destined to meet the same fate. When Navarre became of age, he would be mated to a virgin and then, when his son was safely born, Navarre would be sacrificed to the goddess Shaylyn.

  Isobele opened her eyes to find her son staring down at her, a look of horror etched on his handsome young face.

  “They are going to sacrifice me, too, aren’t they?”

  She couldn’t say the words, but he read the truth in her eyes.

  “How?” he asked. “What manner of sacrifice is it?”

  Isobele shook her head. “I know not, Navarre. All I know is that they took me away and I never saw your father again.”

  All that night, Navarre thought of what his mother had told him, more and more questions crowding his mind. But he had no chance to ask them.

  The next morning, when he woke, his mother was gone, and he was alone in the cage.

  Chapter Two

  Years passed, and he thought he would go mad from the loneliness. And the waiting. The gray-robed men still came to stare at him, but they never spoke to him, and when he tried to talk to them, they turned away, almost as if they were afraid. Or ashamed.

  Did they know he was to be sacrificed? Was that why they refused to speak to him? But then, no one spoke to him. Not the guards who stood outside the door, not the man who brought him food twice each day, nor the man who emptied the slop jar every morning and changed the rough linens on his narrow cot once each week.

  His mother had spoken of being sacrificed, but she hadn’t known the method of execution. His dreams, heretofore only vague fantasies of being free to explore the vast land beyond his prison, now turned dark and ugly as, each night, he imagined a fate worse than the one the night before.

  Often, he woke in a cold sweat, the harsh sound of his own hoarse screams lingering in the air. He had nightmares of being beheaded; of being drawn and quartered, his still-beating heart ripped from his chest. He had grotesque dreams of being burned at the stake or boiled in oil; of being torn to pieces and eaten by wild beasts; or thrown into a pit of snakes; of being bound hand and foot and tossed into the depths of a river, or into a live volcano. He dreamed of being tied between four horses and ripped apart…

  He had never seen death, but he knew the horrors that haunted his dreams existed because he had read of such things in the scrolls and manuscripts that were his only companion now that his mother was gone.

  In the beginning, he had thought such grisly deaths were merely the gruesome creations of the authors, but now he feared he would meet his fate in an equally cruel manner. He suspected that the scrolls that were left in his room had been deliberately chosen to warn him, to prepare him for a hideous death, if such a thing were possible.

  But first he would mate with a woman…

  A woman. Except for his mother, he had never seen a woman. He knew nothing of females, nothing of mating save that his male member was used in the act.

  As the day of his twenty-fourth year grew closer, he scrutinized every manuscript, searching for some clue as to what went on between a man and a woman, but to no avail.

  But it mattered not. He had no intention of mating with anyone, no intention of begetting a son who would grow up in a cage with nothing to look forward to but a horrible death.

  Navarre slammed his fist against the stone wall. His mother had told him his father had tried to refuse to mate with her, and they had drugged him into obedience.

  Slowly, hesitantly, he picked up the knife he used for eating and turned it over and over in his hand. The blade was short and slender. And sharp. If he were to cut off that part of him that made him a man, he would be unable to mate. Perhaps, then, they would let him go…

  Shutting his mind to what he was about to do, he lowered his breeches and sat on the edge of his cot. The blade was cold against his flesh, as cold as the sweat that iced his brow and dripped down his back.

  He wiped the perspiration from his hands and then, with a cry of despair, he hurled the knife against the far wall, cursing himself for his cowardice.

  The next morning, five guards came for him.

  They backed him into a corner, and when he tried to escape, four of the guards wrestled him to the ground and held him there while the other one shackled his hands and feet. When that was done, they led him out of the cage.

  Despite the chains that bound him, Navarre felt a tremor of excitement as he drew in a deep breath. For the first time in his life, he was out of the cage. He felt the coarse texture of sun-warmed earth beneath his bare feet, and then the soft velvet of spring grass as they led him across the meadow toward the domed building.

  His gaze darted right and left, drinking in sights he had never seen but recognized from the scrolls: flowers in a multitude of vibrant reds and blues and yellows, a small herd of black sheep grazing in the noonday sun, a shaggy brown and white dog sitting beside a young man carrying the crook of a shepherd, birds and squirrels.

  As they drew nearer the building, he saw horses and cattle and goats. He was surprised by how large they were.

  And the noise. The cage had ever been as silent as the grave save for the sound of his mother’s voice before they took her away, but now he heard the bleating of sheep, the warbling of larks, the caw of a crow, the lowing of cattle.

  He longed to stop, to run his hands over the grass, to touch the animals, to speak to the shepherd, but his guards urged him onward, refusing to let him explore the wonders that surrounded him.

  The building was much larger than he had imagined. Up close, the stones seemed to glow in the sun. There were half-moons and stars, sunbursts and comets carved on each of the two heavy wooden doors.

  Four men wearing long black hooded robes stood in front of the massive portal.

  They drew back as Navarre approached.

  One of the black-robed men opened the door on the left and when Navarre hesitated, one of the guards gave him a push and Navarre stumbled into the building.

  For a moment, he could only stare at what he saw. The walls were at least twelve feet high. The domed ceiling was covered with gold leaf. The inside walls were made of luminous white stone. Brightly colored tapestries woven with the same suns and moons that decorated the outer doors were hung at intervals. He saw dozens of tall golden candelabra. The light and scent of a thousand candles was overwhelming.

  They led him down a long, narrow hallway. Soft carpets muffled his footsteps. Paintings of stern-faced priests and kings lined the walls. An occasional window let in the sun’s golden light.

  At last, they reached a large, round room that was decorated in muted shades of blue and saffron. A man in a long white robe sat behind a small desk, his face hidden in his cowl.

  The guards made deep obeisance before the hooded man. “Your Eminence, we have brought the sacrifice, as ordered,” said one.

  Navarre felt the hooded man’s gaze move over him, cold as ice, palpable as a touch.

  “He will do,” the High Priest replied. “Take him below. See that he is bathed and fed, then take him to his cell.”

  “It shall be as you command, your Eminence.”

  One of the guards took hold of Navarre’s arm, b
ut he shook him off.

  “Wait, I want to…” Navarre grunted as two of the guards forced him to his knees.

  “You will not speak to the High Priest unless spoken to,” the guard on his right hissed. “You will beg his Eminence for forgiveness.”

  Navarre had been taught from childhood to be obedient in all things, at all times. He had accepted the fact of the cage; he had accepted his fate, but now, from somewhere deep inside himself, sprang the first seeds of rebellion.

  “I will not.”

  The guard on his left grabbed a handful of his hair, jerked his head back, and slapped him across the face with the back of his hand.

  Navarre gasped, startled more by the fact that the guard had struck him than by the faint burning pain in his cheek. In all his life, no one had ever laid a hand on him in anger or violence.

  “You will beg his Eminence to forgive you for your impertinence!” the guard demanded.

  Still stunned by the fact that the man had struck him, Navarre shook his head. “No.”

  The High Priest leaned forward, and Navarre caught a glimpse of a face so gaunt it appeared skeletal; eyes so pale they seemed colorless.

  The High Priest lifted his hand in a faint gesture, and one of the guards drove his fist into Navarre’s face.

  Navarre groaned as blood spurted from his nose and filled his mouth. He was stunned by the pain, and by the sudden urge to retaliate. He felt his hands curl into fists and he wondered what it would feel like to strike out, to loose the anger and frustration building within him.

  “Apologize,” the guard commanded.

  He knew it was foolish to defy them, but anger and pain fueled his resistance. Staring at the hooded man, Navarre shook his head. “No.”

  Again, that faint wave of the hand.

  Navarre tried to shield his head as the guards began to beat him, their fists driving into his ribs, his face, his back, until his whole body was throbbing with pain and he fell to the floor, trembling convulsively.

  “Enough. He will be of no use to us if you damage him.”

  The words, low and brittle, brought an end to the beating. Rough hands grabbed Navarre under the arms and dragged him out of the room, along a dark corridor, down seemingly endless flights of stairs, and into a small room that held a large, wooden tub and nothing more. After removing the chains that bound him, they stepped out of the room. They did not leave him to bathe alone, but stood at the door, watching.