Dark Moon Daughter

by J. Edward Neill

  Ona

  Garrett hunkered in the twilit grass at the edge of camp, meditating while Saul and Rellen exchanged words like bitter cups of wine. Autumn. He felt the wind blowing briskly through the camp. It will be brief. Winter is near. We are a long way from home.

  As the sun collapsed into shadow and darkness claimed the earth, he found himself in the heart of Thillria’s grassland. In the starlight, the end of one field and the beginning of the next were indiscernible, while only a few sparse villages winked against the evening sky. He, Rellen, and Saul, along with Hadryn and his eight Thillrian soldiers had ridden since dawn, and although he could have traveled the night without sleeping, the others need their rest, he knew. A dozen times over the last two days, Hadryn had sworn they were but hours behind Andelusia, and that tomorrow they would catch her. Garrett knew it was not so.

  As he sat, the wind swirling all around him, he gazed to the sky. The clouds were on the move, overtaking the stars and swallowing the moon. A gust of wind arose against the Thillrians’ campfire, scattering ashes and embers like fireflies into the night. He watched them try to resuscitate it, but the wind threatened to fan the flames into the grass, and so they lit three lamps instead and ate bread and nuts in place of cooked venison. He might have joined them, but for the fact he was not hungry.

  Since leaving Denawir, Hadryn’s men had made for noisy, crass company. Even tonight, he listened as they laughed at unfunny jokes, drank water from their helmets, and plucked briars from their boots, complaining at every turn. They hated Hadryn, he had learned. Every time the young, bright-eyed Thillrian gave them his back, they cursed him for a fool. They would rather be back in Denawir, lurking in a seaside tavern and cooling their throats with mead. They are the worst sort of soldier, lethargic and bored.

  “If we don’t find the girl tomorrow, we should turn back,” he heard one Thillrian spit.

  “The pay is plenty,” said another. “But I’d just assume go home. We’re bound for Shivershore. I hate the Shiver folk, I do. Rotten teeth and rocks for brains, and not a pretty lass among them.”

  “Aye,” agreed a third. “But I hear the lass we’re chasing is a lovely one. If the winds blow right, our swords will have a new sheath to call home. I’ll have me a new wife, I reckon. We all will.”

  The Thillrians laughed. Garrett glared. No matter which way the winds blow, you will never touch Ande, he wanted to say to the Thillrians. But instead he sat in silence, gazing stoically into the night, his white-bladed sword bare atop his thighs.

  Besides Hadryn, he saw one other Thillrian sitting in the grass away from the rest of the soldiers. He had noticed the slender, tight-lipped servant many times already, but never so much as tonight. The little one’s hood was deep, black, and heavy as the approaching clouds, but beneath it Garrett saw somewhat other than a man. A woman, he sensed. Hadryn knows, but no one else.

  After a moment spent watching the dark little woman, he looked away from her and caught the grim corner of Rellen and Saul’s conversation.

  “What will you say when we find her?” he heard Saul ask Rellen. “She will want an apology. You had best give it to her.”

  Rellen plucked a blade of grass from the earth and let the wind steal it from between his fingers. “You assume we will find her safe and sound. I am not so sure.”

  “Don’t say that,” said Saul. “She’ll be fine. She has endured worse in her life than Thillria.”

  Rellen shook his head. “What if I had been nicer?” He dragged his fingers down his face. “What if I had left her at home? Maybe this is her way of punishing me. Maybe I deserve it.”

  “This is not about you,” reasoned Saul. “Or any of us. This is about her. It was inevitable, Rellen. She is not like other girls.”

  “You mean to say she wanted Jix to trick her?”

  “No. I mean to say she wasn’t tricked at all. She wanted to come to Thillria, and not for the reasons we thought.”

  Rellen shot Saul a look that might have doused the sun and knocked the moon out of the sky. He will not hear it, Garrett knew. He only knows the pretty little Ande, the wandering girl from Cairn. He was not in Furyon. He did not see.

  Later that night, as Rellen sat in the gloom and ran a worn whetstone along his too-sharp sword, and as Saul lit a trio of candles in his tent to read a book of Thillrian lore by, Garrett walked alone into the night. Away from the camp, darkness reigned. A few brave stars twinkled on the far south horizon, but elsewhere the clouds frothed in the sky, awaiting the right moment to release their prisoners, the rain. He ambled into a field and watched the distant flares of lightning, the red and silver strokes leaping from cloud to cloud. The conversations of the camp dwindled behind him. Even Hadryn seemed lost to the world, his hands folded in his lap and his gaze utterly empty.

  Out in the grass, only the wind spoke. It tousled his hair, cooled the day’s sweat from his brow, and billowed beneath his shirt. With the growing gale, he felt his darkest thoughts clear away, reduced until the only thing left in his mind was one he cared the most for. Andelusia. Since the eve of her disappearance, he had mined the depths of his feeling until arriving at the truth. I journeyed to Gryphon for her, not for me. She was the one I wanted to see, not Saul or Rellen. My soul is in the snow, the rivers, and the white mountains of Mormist, and yet I left it all behind. If not for her, I would not be here.

  He wandered farther into the fields than he knew. His sword, buckled over his shoulder, bounced against his back, the most familiar rhythm of his life. He remembered the night a month ago in the Dales, and his encounter with Andelusia beside the water. She came to me. And though she was not herself, I desired her. But I turned her away. ‘Your betrothed is your sword,’ she said to me. ‘Your cold confidence your shield.’ And so it seems true.

  He strayed still deeper into the pastures. He walked through the fields of sword grass and dry reeds until he was utterly alone, a pensive vagrant of the night, and yet even as he stopped to imbibe a deep breath of dark air, he was surprised to hear a snap in the grass behind him. His mind fled to his sword, but he stayed his hand. The wanderer in the darkness was only Hadryn’s servant, who had followed him through the pitch.

  “You should be more careful,” he warned. “I might have mistaken you for someone else.”

  The servant, slender as a willow, eased through the grass until she stood beside him. “You are Garrett?” Her voice slid like a whisper from beneath her hood. “Garrett Croft?”

  “I am. You play a dangerous game, girl. If the others knew your secret…”

  “They wouldn’t dare touch me,” she said. “Hadryn would not have it.”

  The girl shivered in the breeze. Calmly, she loosened her collar, shrugged back the shoulders of her robe, and lifted her hood up and away from her face. His gaze fell from the sky and onto her. The darkness did nothing to hide the young woman’s beauty. Her hair was starkly raven, her eyes as penetrating as the stars, and her skin as white as the waxing moon. He glimpsed her by the lightning searing the sky, and there was no mistaking it. She was as exquisite a beauty as any woman, and for a moment he questioned whether she was real or dreamed, for she has the look of Andelusia.

  “Hello Garrett,” she said, her voice soft as springtime rain.

  “You are not what I expected.” He forced himself to look to the sky.

  “The great and powerful Garrett Croft taken off his guard?” She smiled. “You knew I was a woman, but you kept it secret. I would beg you to keep it that way, but I think you will without my asking.”

  “You speak to none but Hadryn,” he observed. “He may guard you well enough. Even so, you do not belong out here with us.”

  “I’ve nothing to fear,” she said. “And my name, if you should like it, is Ona.”

  “Ona,” he repeated.

  “The one and only. Hadryn said he needed someone to bring water to the men, clean their boots, and stand watch at night.”

  And for some other reason yet unsaid, he knew. H
e watched her raven hair dance in the wind, her lips curling like rose petals. He stopped himself before he lingered too long. “Ona,” he said while following the clouds’ advance across the sky, “if you are here, then you know where we are bound for.”

  “Nightmare,” she answered.

  “And you know we will never catch our quarry by tomorrow. Every one of us knows it, save Lord Rellen. We will come to Nightmare by one way or another.”

  “Yes.” Her smiled remained. “And we may meet the Uylen.”

  “Which makes a man wonder why you chose to come.”

  She reached for him, her fingertips grazing his forearm. “Because it was the only way to be near you.”

  He swallowed a shallow breath and stood still as a mountain, stirred back to life only when a flurry of rain-scented wind rushed over him. “You say this, but you do not mean it.”

  “I mean it as much as anything I’ve ever said.” She circled him, trailing her finger around his shoulders as she went. “I saw you in Denawir, Garrett. You left the castle after the meeting with Orumna. Your friends had bitter looks on their faces. They’d been arguing, I think. But you…your mind was elsewhere. I was right there behind you, walking down the same street you took on your way to the harbor. You did not see me, you who sees everything. Do not feel bad. No one ever sees me.”

  Even through his black hauberk, he felt her touch. Her lips, full and red and dark as wine, and so like Ande’s, breathed what sounded like the truth. “We have never met,” he said. “You have another reason for following me, only you have yet to say it.”

  Ona protested with a bat of her lashes and a feigned frown. In the waning starlight, her dark, enigmatic eyes looked like pools of black water. “No other reason,” she sighed. “I came for you and only you. It will seem childish, but when I learned you were leaving the city, I begged into Hadryn’s service. I know you, Garrett Croft. I’ve heard all the stories of you. I tiptoed in the shadows behind you when you left your cabin to walk at night. I walked by your door a hundred times, hoping you might see me. It is bold to say these things, but I cannot help myself. You are a hero to the ears of many Thillrians. You defeated the Furyons and drove the storms back from our shores, and I am not ashamed to say you are the most handsome man I have ever laid eyes upon.”

  Garrett’s heart heated inside him. Never before had any woman struck him with such a sense of stillness, such an absence of an answer. I must be wearier than I thought, he presumed, to let this girl affect me so.

  His silence seemed not to trouble her. She sidled one step closer, gazing up at him as though he were her king. “I can be your secret, were you willing,” she whispered. “I won’t tell Hadryn. I will be yours, and you mine. You need but ask.”

  “You are young.” He peered into the night. “Too young to say such things.”

  She smiled dangerously. “If I peel this cloak off, you will not say so.”

  He dared another glance at her. It felt like the briefest thing, but the look was long enough to remind him how beautiful she was. “Keep the cloak on,” he said. “Too cold out here.”

  “You doubt me.” Her gaze felt like the moon upon his cheek.

  “It matters little.” He nodded toward the distant camp, the tents fluttering in the darkness. “I am not here for play. I am here for Andelusia, and to make certain none of your Thillrian brethren raise their blades against my companions.”

  “They are terrified of you.” She brushed his hauberk with her fingertips again. “But I am not. In Denawir I am no one. I have no friends, no lovers. Ordinarily, a man like Hadryn would never allow me to serve him. But when I begged, he allowed it. You do not believe me, I can tell. It doesn’t matter. I don’t care whether you believe or not. All that matters is that we are alone together, if only just for tonight.”

  She smells of flowers and rain, he thought. Like Andelusia. Perhaps this is a dream. “You talk as though you know me, but all you have are stories.”

  “Mostly true,” she said. “It must seem mad to you, I know. You are probably in love with Andelusia, your pretty, fire-haired Grae lady, but even so… I could not let you go to Shivershore without telling you how I feel. That is why I came to you tonight. Make what you wish of it.”

  “Andelusia is not mine,” he was swift to say. “She belongs to Rellen. I am only her protector.”

  Ona smiled. “So you say. But if you are her protector, why then is she halfway to Shivershore?”

  Because I let her go, he almost said. “I need no reminders of that,” he said instead. “We will find her alive and well, else a year from tonight Graehelm will be at war with Thillria, and I will be its vanguard.”

  “But you do not love her?”

  “Let other men love her.” The words tasted bitter. “I am only here to protect her.”

  A raindrop skimmed his forehead, followed by several more. The storm was moments away from cracking the night open. He looked to Ona again, and the shock of her beauty made him forget his moment of bitterness. He thought to say something to her, a few soft words to send her off, but she snared his hand, squeezed it as a lover might, and pulled her hood back across her face, shrouding her eyes in shadow again.

  “The rain.” She looked skyward. “It will give us a good thrashing. I have to check the horse tethers. Tomorrow I will see you again. At midnight beneath the clouds, I hope.”

  Unlikely, he thought. “Maybe,” he said.

  “I’m sorry for meeting you like this.” She backed away from him. “It was the only way. The road to Shivershore is long and dark, Garrett Croft. I am an honest woman. Give me a chance. I have many more nights to prove myself to you.”

  Then she was gone. Like a sparrow flitting through the dark, she sprinted through the grass, making for the camp. After she vanished, he remained, and the tempest unleashed its fury. The rain pelted him like cold little knives, the thunder booming above his head like an angry ocean against a craggy shore, but he hardly moved. He stared at the shadows Ona had fled into. Strange, beautiful girl, he thought. I am so very far from home.

  His sleep was poor that night. His restlessness was neither the fault of the wind, nor the rain lashing at his tent, nor the water seeping into the earth beneath his bedroll. He lay awake with thoughts of Ona. He shut his eyes and tried to drift away, but she remained, her sweet, enthralling smile and soulful gaze still upon him. She felt so like Andelusia, and so different. She was the raven in the darkness, a sliver of starlight in the shadows, and try though he did to dream of swords, Shivershore, and all he had learned on the long road to Thillria, he dwelled on nothing beyond Ona.

  The Black Kiss

  For one night, the storms made a ragged thing of the Thillrian grassland. Clouds like black sheets walled off the moon and stars. Curtains of rain slashed the fields, waging war against the earth. Roaring thunder and pale strokes of lightning reigned as though they were the new lords of Thillria.

  The next dawn, with all the world wet and dripping, the rain dwindled, but the wind remained. It feels like Furyon, Garrett mused when he awoke from an hour’s shallow sleep. But far colder.

  As the cloud cover melted from the black of night into the greys of dawn, Garrett stood beside his rain-battered tent, listening to the world awaken. Chilling winds swept through the grass, but he remained, a black tower watching over all things. First to emerge was Saul. The poor man of Elrain’s tent had sprung a leak in the night, and his beard and hair were slicked as if with oil. Saul shouldered his battlestaff, showed Garrett a grim smile, and wandered off toward his horse, which Ona had tethered to a fence in a nearby field. Saul, Garrett wanted to tell him, you should have stayed in Gryphon.

  Next to rise was Rellen, whose eyes were dark and whose blue tunic hung from his shoulders like a weather-beaten flag. No sleep again, Garrett knew. He will be angry. Our hosts will suffer for it. Rellen nodded at him, but then strapped his sword-belt to his waist and strode straight for the Thillrians, just as Garrett expected.