The Thillrians shook like the last of autumn’s leaves. With so few of them and so many Uylen, she wondered why they had even been sent. A distraction? She feared. A sacrifice? These boys will die so I can slip through?
As if commanded by a voice only they could hear, the Uylen surrounded the Captain and the Thillrians, and then ceased to move all at once. They stood like statues in the forest, gruesome carvings of marrow and white marble, stalling some twenty paces away from their prey. Blind, she remembered what Jix had told her. They cannot see. They can only smell.
The Thillrians froze. They seemed to understand that if they remained still, the Uylen would be unable to find them. Through a window made by three fallen trees, she glimpsed the Captain, who stood still as stone, his swords crossed before his chest.
“Captain,” one of the boys whispered, “what now? The girl’s gone. We’re dead if we stay. Should we run?”
The Captain said nothing. His eyes moved but his body did not. He was watching the Uylen, waiting for them.
“Captain? Tell us what to do!” pleaded another Thillrian.
Nothing. Andelusia looked on with horror in her eyes. Do nothing. Stop talking, stop moving, stop breathing. With each word the boys uttered, she saw the Uylen take one crooked, collective step closer before freezing in their tracks again. Whenever any sound slipped out of the Thillrians’ mouth: a whisper, a groan, or a heartbeat, death drew nearer. It was a macabre waltz, she reckoned, a creaking symphony. Ten more breaths, and they will all be dead.
She wondered why the Uylen did not attack. They are close enough, she gulped. They can smell the boys by now. The Uylen’s eyes, white and without pupils, looked as vacant as empty graves. The creatures knew nothing of color, of light, or of the sun, she supposed. They were defined by darkness. The sounds of beating hearts echoed like drums in their ears, and the voices of men were the same as bleating lambs. But the Captain. He makes them nervous, she sensed. They hesitate, though not for long.
The foremost Uylen mounted a rotting log and stood before the Thillrians. He was a lank-haired, three-toothed skeleton of a creature, his pale ligaments wrapped like cables around his spindly arms and legs. Gazing outward with sightless eyes, he clicked his white fingernails together. They were long and slender as milk-white daggers, jutting from his fingertips like fine utensils. Andelusia had the sense they were not his own, but that some cruel Uylen surgery had put them in place during his youth. Ten daggers to cut with, she counted. Ten to dine with. The monster played his talons like a haunted dulcimer, until all the others joined in.
A Thillrian gasped, the tall Uylen clicked his fingers a final time, and the monsters moved in for the kill. They were fast, horrifically so, tearing the earth to tatters as they sprinted between the trees. Within moments they had three of the Thillrians on their backs and screaming. She held her breath as she watched. The Uylen ripped the lads’ armor off, slicing their flesh to ribbons, scoring deep into muscle and bone. Two of the boys threw down their swords and fled, but a dozen Uylen each ran them down and smothered them. She saw gouts of blood leap into the air, the Thillrians’ flesh torn apart like rags as they were devoured. Another two lads were braver. With swords sharp and true, they hewed three Uylen down. But look. She felt sick. Here come a hundred more. When the lads fell, the Uylen stripped their armor off and made a meal of them. She saw eyes plucked out, heads popped off, and flesh peeled from limbs peeled, all of it in a matter of moments.
A part of her died along with the Thillrians. She felt her stomach squelch, her eyes froth with tears, her heart batter away at her insides. As the forest drowned in death and the Uylen dragged the boys’ bodies into the darkness, she wondered how long it would be until they found her. Not long now, she reckoned. Stupid, stupid, stupid girl. What made you think you could help these people? You are a fool. And now you will die.
And then her sights fell upon the last man standing. In the heart of the clearing, center stage in a theater full of Uylen, the Captain and his swords waited. A few dozen Uylen dragged what remained of the Thillrians’ bodies off, but the hundreds who remained made a vast ring around the Captain. Clacking and clicking, their faces splashed with the pale light from the Thillrians’ tumbled torches, they closed in slowly.
And then they stormed him.
In waves of white bones, the Uylen host fell upon the Captain. This will be brief. She winced when she saw it. Next to die is me. They hacked at him with their talons, bit at him with mouths full of rotten teeth, and flailed upon him with skeletal limbs. Her surprise came when he endured the first hundred hacks without falling, and her shock when he began to fight back. One by one, two by two, he felled the Uylen nearest him. He flashed his swords quicker than sunbeams, severing arms, hands, legs, and heads. He was like water, like Garrett, she thought. It seemed the Uylen were mortal after all, for when he slew them, their blood ran as red as any, and their dying wails were that of men, however ruined.
The Captain killed twenty and wounded ten more beyond any hope of survival. He and his swords danced like rain beneath a black sky, like bitter wind in the thickets, until he and the earth were the same crimson color. Then, just when a moment’s peace came to him, just as the Uylen regrouped and rallied to swarm him all at once, he called out to her. “Run!” He boomed, and she swore the forest shuddered. “Follow the totems! Find the Pages!”
The last thing she saw before fleeing was the Uylen mob descending upon him. Their withered limbs and moonlike faces surrounded him. Their clacking bones split the air, their deathly shapes saturating the forest forever in every direction. They came, and the Captain dealt out a dozen deadly hacks, but there were too many. They were hundreds, and he just one. She almost felt for him, but for the fact she heard him laughing.
In a panic, she fled. Her only guide was terror. She sprinted between towering trees and splashed through blood-red loam, nimble as a fox, so swift upon her feet the Uylen might not have been able to catch her even if they had seen her. She swished like a sparrow past limb and bramble, and darted like a mouse into the darkest places of the wood. The trees lashed out at her, and by the time she ran a thousand steps, her face was cut, her arms torn, and her shirt in tatters. Strips of cloth hung from her arms like ragged curtains. She felt naked, her shoulders, belly, and legs bare to the world, but still she ran, heedless of everything. She ran as such until she could run no more, and somewhere in the darkness, gasping for breath, she fell to her knees.
Rank with sweat, her flesh cold and slick, she crawled to the trunk of a rotting tree and hunkered amongst its roots, which coiled like great serpents all about the earth. She lay within the snaking roots, a baby cradled in a monster’s folds. Her body quaked with fear and cold. She peered into the darkness long enough to see that no Uylen was near, that no creature of darkness haunted her steps, and then, with a last blink, she let her eyes fall shut.
Beneath the ancient tree, she drifted into slumber. Hers was a sleep deeper than any other. Her dreams, cold and colorless, stole her heart away where no one and nothing could harm it. She dreamed of the world fading to black. Her friends, her fears, her life fled before her, all of them like shadows stretching too far to reach. She lost herself. She forgot her name, her hopes and fears, and the feeling of her own two feet upon the earth.
And then, somewhere in her mind’s abyss, she found herself.
She walked a long hall in the lowest of cavern of her soul, and like a child stumbling upon a chest of long forgotten keepsakes, she found what had always lain dormant within her. She discovered her magic, her means to move the shadows, the part of her the Furyons had only barely grazed with their teachings. Even while dreaming, she knew the truth. She knew Jix was right after all. I am not like other people, she understood. I can best the Uylen. I can save Thillria. I can find the Pages Black.
Dance with the Dead
She awoke when night was at its deepest. The air was cool, the breezes gliding like ghosts over her skin, and the trees still and soundles
s. The moon, though nearly full, spilled precious little light into the forest, its glow barely bright enough to glaze the topmost limbs with a sorrowful, sallow light. Andelusia stood, expecting to be blind in the dark, but when she blinked away the last vestiges of sleep she found she could see as though it were early twilight beneath an open, cloudless sky. She did not ask her eyes to do as much. They just do. They work the way they were always supposed to.
She took a moment to gather herself, brushing the dirt and bone gristle from the front of her pants. Her fear was gone. Her heartbeat was steady and strong. She did not know it yet, but her hair, once the color of rubies and red wine, had turned blacker than pitch during her sleep, while her eyes were the blighted hue of spent charcoal. She was altered beyond her own understanding. I am more alive than ever, she knew. Though not by natural means.
Her new power pounded through her veins and into her skull, a thousand shadows whispering in her mind. The feeling was fresh to her, too fresh, and at first she felt dizzy with it. When she tried to take a step away from the tree, she staggered. When she looked to the moon, its light was as blinding as the sun.
After she gathered her feet beneath her and shook the moonlight from her eyes, she stood beside the tree, flexing her fingers and staring into her palms. What can I do? She wondered. So many things. How did Jix know? And the Captain, too…
Just as she had done many weeks ago, she shut her eyes and let the night take hold. The world became a murky place, half real and half dream. All sound drained away. After a few breaths under, she opened her eyes and swished the flat of her hand like a dagger through the air. It worked as she knew it would. She felt her skin fade into shadow, rendering her invisible, her body becoming more ghost than woman. I can do this anytime I want, she knew. If only I had known…
With a flick of her wrist, she snapped her palm above her head. When she did, the moonlight blazing on the nearby limbs vanished. The thickets around her fell into impenetrable darkness, a black darker than any ink, though she could still see through it. I can create night. She smiled. No more broiling beneath the sun. No more light creeping into my bedchamber. The world shall be as black as I desire.
And then she tried something else.
The idea slipped like a moonbeam into her mind. She cupped her hands as if to catch water from a fountain, and when she did a dark fume began to broil between her fingers. Hot enough to melt iron and burn bone into ash, the black flame smoldered and smoked, and yet she was unscathed. The ebon tongues of fire felt as mutable as clay in her grasp, and more dangerous than any substance in the world. It danced wildly on the tips of her fingers, threatening to leap into the trees until she closed her fist around it, snuffing it out.
When the black fire fled, she quaked and stared wide-eyed at her fingers. What was that? She felt stunned it had not slain her. The voices. I remember what they said. ‘The weapon,’ they whispered. One touch can kill a man. Much more could kill thousands.
She had no more time for experimentation, she knew. She did not understand why her magicks had chosen this moment to awaken, but it does not matter. This night has been long in coming. I have what I need to defeat the Uylen. I must find the Pages.
She left the ancient tree behind. She became one with the shadows. Like a slip of winter wind, she glided effortlessly between the trees, who dozed like the dead, heedless of her passing. She made no sound where she floated, no crunch of dry leaves or snap of sharp twigs, for she was only a passing shade, a blot of ink, a shiver in the night. She might as well have been a spirit, for no living creature heard her, not the crow whose tree she flew beneath, not the bats, not even the Uylen, several of whom she floated treacherously near to.
The darkness was her playground. She roamed an hour deep into the forest, then two, until she came to another clearing riddled with Uylen totems. Ten skulls hung from a single strand of human sinew, their gazes falling upon her like a morbid audience. She was not afraid. She emerged from the shadows and walked right up to the skulls, clicking several with her finger. Everyone in Thillria will look like this, she imagined, if the Uylen have their way.
And then she saw them, five Uylen dozing beside the blood-mottled trunk of a nearby tree. The creatures had a campsite, if it could be called as much. She glimpsed their filthy blankets spread across the wet the loam, a pile of dust-covered pillows, and three white jugs filled with a nameless liquid. The Uylen were skeletal, so emaciated that their flesh puckered between their ribs, countable even at a distance. Even as she tapped the last of the totem skulls, their eyes, as useless in their heads as river rocks, snapped open. They are aware of me. She froze. They can smell me.
The Uylen creaked and groaned and rose to their feet. The moonlight shined upon their faces, white on white, their skins livid as dead men. She knew she could escape any time she wanted, so she stayed right where she was. They sniffed the air and clicked their daggerlike nails. Watch this. A foolish thought came to her. Standing in the clearing’s heart, she teased them into coming closer with a snap of her fingers and a cluck of her tongue. Their knees popped and their jaws fell open. They came within ten paces, but then halted. They lost me, she laughed inside. They need me to make another noise.
Why it was she felt curious, she could not say. She guessed that the Uylen had once been men, but that the Pages had corrupted them, making evil, sightless monsters in place of ordinary humans. A few eons with the Pages, perhaps, she thought. Though who put the black book here, and why?
She exhaled, and the Uylen moved three steps closer. My heart. They can hear it.
Without warning, one of the creatures licked its lips and lurched for her.
She shut her eyes and called for the night to retake her. Her heart fluttering, she spread her arms like wings, preparing herself for the rush of darkness, wanting to be wafted away by the shadows. Nothing happened. The night was supposed to tear her away from the Uylen, but her skill was too young, her concentration imperfect, and before she knew it the first of the monsters grasped her wrist and slung her to the ground as though she were a child’s toy.
She heard a crack as the back of her skull struck the earth. Three of the monsters fell like a storm upon her, taking tight hold of her wrists, ankles, and throat. Their fingers felt frozen, little warmer than corpses, and their coldness seared her flesh wherever they touched her. Why did I provoke them? She cursed herself for a fool. Dazed, her blood frozen inside her, she screamed and kicked and tried to will her magic to reawaken, but the Uylen held her fast, choking her and raking their claws across her skin. No!” she gasped. “Please! This is…not how it goes! This…is not how…I die!”
Her cries did nothing. The Uylen had her right where they wanted. She saw the moon, the twisted tree limbs, and three of their faces looming above her. The fourth and fifth of them kneeled near, sniffing her like supper, smacking their ghastly chops in anticipation.
Then they spoke. It was mostly gibberish, but she could make out a few half-shaped words.
“Take she for the eating!” One drooled. “Make she sweetness on the tongue!”
One of them lowered its teeth to her belly. It moved as though about to bite her, but instead it licked her. Up and down her ribs the loathsome lashes went, and she could not escape. It tasted her sweat, her salt, and it shuddered as though she were the tastiest morsel it had ever caught.
“Hers is Ur meat, red and rare,” the thing told its brethren. “Hers is dessert, be skin like no other.”
“Eat then,” said yet another. “Before the rest come and steal.”
She cried out again. Her scream shattered the night in all directions, alerting a thousand more Uylen that she was helpless and captured. She heard them approaching through the shadows, as deft as deer even in the blackest of shadows. They mean to eat me! Her terror seized her. The next totem will be my bones! Garrett! Rellen! Captain! Please!
She gritted her teeth, waiting for the first bite to sink into her skin. Her breathing was ragged, her heartbeat too f
ast. The first Uylen tore something from his rotting belt, a dagger, not unlike the dagger of Kilnhome, which was still tethered to her waist. He raised it above her belly and swung his arms high. He meant to plunge it into her.
She could have turned her cheek. She could have let the Uylen impale her and feast upon her remains. No! The thought screamed inside her. Never! Her fear fled all at once. Rather than die, she gritted her teeth, glared up at the Uylen straddling her, and allowed her anger to consume her. “You will not have me!” she shouted, and her rage was so terrible it gave the creatures pause.
Dark Moon Daughter Page 18
