Dark Moon Daughter

by J. Edward Neill

  “Ande, are you sure?”

  “No,” she replied. “It matters not.”

  That evening, after plundering stores of food from the grottos nearest the Undergrave entrance, he, Saul, and Andelusia descended to a cave worthy of hiding in. So this is the place she wants to live. He crept in with his torch held high, his shoulders sagging under three sacks’ weight. I hate it.

  The low-ceilinged cavern was not terribly large or far below the Undergrave mouth, but it felt as deep and dark as anywhere else beneath the surface. Both its entrances were rimmed with rocky teeth, while a thin sheen of water wept from the walls, lubricating the floor. A dreary, claustrophobic catacomb. He ambled inside. “I remember this place,” he groaned. “Saul and I were dragged through here. We thought there was no coming back.”

  “And here we are again,” said Saul. “The warlock will have to come this way to go any deeper. There is no way around.”

  “It will do.” Andelusia slipped between him and Saul. She glanced to each corner, eying the grotto’s daggerlike rock formations. “We sleep together tonight, but tomorrow we begin our watch.”

  “I wish Garrett were here,” Rellen sighed.

  “As do we all.” She waved her torch through the darkness. “But our grief must wait. We will mourn for him another day.”

  He trailed her to the darkest corner of the cave. Her torchlight illumined the floor, the shadows swaying like monsters on the smooth, grey wall. Here again, he exhaled. Stuffy. Chilly. Stinks of old water and rotten rocks. Had he not been exhausted, he might have turned around and marched for the surface. Instead, he dropped his bags full of food, torches, and tools, lied down on the smoothest stone he could find, and collapsed into fitful, uncomfortable sleep.

  Many hours later, he awoke. The silence felt unbearable. In his first breaths after rising he feared he lay in his prison pit again, waiting for death. But no. No pit. Still alive. The lantern Saul had scavenged from the hilltop cast a pale yellow light on the nearest rocks, but otherwise the grotto lay in darkness. Cold again. He sat up. Dust in my lungs. A wonderful cave you found, Ande, as hospitable as the gut of a hollow, rotted tree.

  He breakfasted on two strips of salted meat, a brick-hard biscuit, and a tin of water tasting of minerals. As he chewed his food and wondered just how many days he could sit in the darkness before despair claimed him again, Andelusia yawned and sat up beside him. Damn her. He marveled at the way the lantern light gilded her cheeks. A night’s sleep on rocks, a supper of salt and stones, and look at her. She looks like a queen rising from a mountain of pillows.

  “Still want to stay?” he murmured as she sipped her water.

  She finished stretching and moved to sit beside him. He liked the way her hair spilled down neck, the smell of rain still upon her. “He is coming,” she said. “I cannot leave.”

  “Let us suppose he is late. Our food will run out. Our weapons will rust.”

  “You and Saul will fetch more. I will wait here.”

  He rolled his eyes. “You put your faith in Ghurk to help us, but have you ever really talked to him? He was a noble ere the grey men dragged us down here. One sniff of freedom, and we will never see him again.”

  “You were a noble, too,” she said with the first smile he had seen in days, “ere we came to Thillria.”

  “No arguing with that.”

  “None,” she agreed. “The warlock will come, Rellen. I will be ready. If he will not surrender, I will destroy him. You cannot see it now, but you will.”

  She is different. Cold. Sharp. Powerful. I miss the old her. But the new her…fascinating.

  “Ande.” He scooted behind her and cradled her bare shoulders in his hands. The scent of her hair intoxicated him, the feel of her skin softer than silk. He expected her to resist, to stand up and walk away, but she remained.

  “Rellen.” She tugged his arms around her belly and leaned into him. “When you were in that awful pit, did you ever hate me?”

  “No. Never.”

  “Fibber.”

  “All my rage, I saved for him.” He felt his sadness surge in his throat. “All the lies, all the death. He killed mother; I know it. Everyone whose face he wore, he murdered.”

  Lying with her head against his chest, she squeezed his hands. “Your mother. Orumna. Jix. A dozen more, maybe a hundred. Strange, but for as long as he imprisoned me, I never sensed he was capable of murder. I suppose I was wrong.”

  “Can we talk about something else?” he asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Do you know why I really came?”

  “The same reason as always. To try to talk me out of it.”

  She knows me too well, he thought. “We could walk right out of here,” he said. “A few months from now, we could be in Grandwood again. Remember Grandwood? Remember how you loved the trees? We could start again, Ande. All you have to do is say, ‘Yes.’”

  She hugged his arms tighter to her body. He felt her chest rise and fall, and he knew she had closed her eyes. I know what she is thinking. She wonders how happy she could be in Gryphon. She wants to know if she could forget all of this and let life be as once it was. She wants to know if we will be together.

  “There is no new start for me,” she said, and his heart sank. “It is pointless to hope otherwise.”

  “Why?”

  “What does home have for me? You and I cannot marry. We can never have children. My blood is poison.”

  “What does that mean?”

  She pulled away from him. “Any child born from my belly will be the same as I am. They will always wonder what is wrong inside them, but they will never know. Evil thoughts will pull at their hearts. They will love the night more than the day, the shadow more than the sun. I cannot curse any child to live like that.”

  “Nonsense.”

  “No, not nonsense. You do not understand. I am one of them, one of the dark people. I am like him. I am like Garrett. I am like my father.”

  Garrett? he thought. “Your father?” He stiffened.

  “I should have told you before. He is my father. I am his orphan. He left me in Cairn with a woman who was never my mother. I know it is true.”

  “How?” His heart raced.

  “He told me. If you should ever see his eyes, you will know.”

  He drew in a slow, soul-searching breath. In younger days he might have smothered her with questions, but not today. Everything she said, she believes. After a shiver, he drew her back to him.

  “This makes me more afraid.” He swallowed hard.

  “I wanted you to know the truth.”

  “We should go home, Ande. Forget this place. Nothing is for us here but death. Please.”

  She tensed beneath his touch. He wanted her to be soft again, to float away with him all the way to Graehelm, but her body felt like a bowstring, taut and cold and impossible to pluck.

  “No,” she said. “You cannot understand. It began here. It ends here. If we journey to Graehelm, we will return only in time to witness its destruction. You did not see what I saw.”

  The way she said it chilled his blood. “Tell me.”

  “A tower, tall and black.” Shadows stormed across her eyes. “A tomb grander than all the world’s graves put together. No men lie therein, my love. When father stands before it and works his wicked spells, the tower will open and all that you and I ever knew will end. There will be no Thillria, no Graehelm, no nothing. This is larger than the hope of vengeance over my father. This is everything. He knew better than to teach me magic, and he did it anyway. He should not have.”

  His words died on his tongue. He shrank against the wet wall, his bones hurting.

  “I hope you understand why it has to be this way.” She faced him. “Until he is humbled, I must dwell here in the dark. You and Saul may leave if you like. This is my struggle. Mine and no one else’s.”

  “I will not.” He shook his head. “I love you. If this is the only way to have you back, I will stay to the end.”


  “Good. But do not ask me to leave again.”

  His mind retreated to places dark and deep. Stay. He commanded himself. Never leave her. Love her to the end. Never complain. Never question her again. Look at her. She knows. She has been through worse than prison pits and grey men’s spears. Stay, Rellen. Can you do that? Can you trust her?

  Yes. Yes you can.

  He slumped against the wall. His body was limp, his mind as tired as though he had never slept. He had not noticed it, but at some point during his and Andelusia’s conversation, Saul had awoken and walked off. He heard the man of Elrain shuffling between the limestone pillars, and he saw his torch spitting.

  “Saul?” He clambered to his feet.

  “Aye?” Saul’s voice echoed in the grotto.

  “Anything the matter?”

  “No.”

  “What are you doing over there? Is the warlock here?”

  “No.”

  “Then what?”

  “Ghurk is here. And some thirty Thillrians are with him.”

  Old Blood

  Waiting in the darkness proved lonelier than Andelusia imagined.

  By her reckoning, eight evenings had passed since she claimed the grotto to guard against her father. Now is night in the overworld again, she presumed. The sun over Sallow has fallen, and shadows cover the stars.

  Away from her fellow guardians, she hunkered atop her rock. The smooth lump of marbled stone lent her vantage of every other part of the grotto. As she so often did, she attuned her vision to the Nightness and gazed over the gloom. She saw Saul and Ghurk return from scouting the surface. Saul plunked down atop his pitifully thin bedroll, while Ghurk dropped to his backside beside a cooking pot, looking thinner than she remembered. Around the small, simmering fire in the grotto’s center, twenty-eight Thillrians sat quieter than usual as they supped, no doubt pondering their wisdom in returning here.

  But where is Rellen?

  She missed her love, but dared not leave her vigil. She felt invisible atop her rock, a shadow of a shadow. When she closed her eyes, she heard everything from the Thillrians murmuring to the blind rodents skulking at the grotto’s outskirts. After a while of watching the men eat, bicker, and sharpen their swords, she let her thoughts fall away from the world. All fear of her father escaped, while her daydreams flowed like water through her mind.

  I am alone, but not.

  She imagined Rellen, his arms around her, and how she wished she had kissed him before he wandered off. I know where he is, she thought with a smile. Still trying to get the ring off his ankle. She imagined Saul, who needs a book before he dies of boredom. Poor thing. Beyond her friends, she took comfort in the courage of Ghurk and the other Thillrians, whose names she had trouble remembering, but whose strength and loyalty defied her expectations. As her eyelids grew heavy and her waking dream deepened, she dwelled also on Garrett. Not dead, she believed in her heart. If I could have one warrior at my side, it would be him.

  She never meant to fall asleep.

  She intended to sit and listen to the Undergrave until her father arrived. I will sense him, not see him, she thought as she drifted farther from consciousness. But as the Nightness evaporated and the Thillrians’ voices dwindled, her eyes glazed over. She forced herself to sit up, but moments later curled atop the rock and lost sight of the world.

  In sleep, dreams awaited her. She could not recall the last time she had dreamed, and so she parted her mind’s curtains without restraint. To a realm far from the Undergrave, she wandered. She walked upon a sunlit beach, the water foaming upon the white sands of a shore that stretched into forever. The sunlight limned her face, and for once she savored its touch, for it did not burn her, but healed her of her darkness.

  I am not awake. I am deep under. This place is real. Far from where I sleep, but real. And someone else is coming.

  She saw him stroll across the shore, walking the line between sand and water. His raiment was as pure and pale as cloudstuff, his hair white as Mormist snow, and his eyes greener than Grandwood leaves. He was handsome, if not tall. She stood ankle-deep in the shallows as he approached. Father, she knew him. Young, but not. She thought it strange to see him here, stranger still to feel happy for his presence.

  “Daughter.” He came to her.

  “Father.”

  “Ah, I wish this were real.” He regarded the waves. “We could walk here outside our dreams. We could stay forever, no voices, no gloom, no him.”

  He means Grimwain, she knew. She looked to the ocean and wished the same as her he did. The water eddied around her calves, warm and soothing. She could not remember ever feeling so at ease.

  “Father.” She stood at peace beside him. “I am frightened.”

  “I know. I understand.”

  “Why must the world be so awful?”

  “It is not.”

  “But it feels so.”

  “Daughter, you and I will always live a grimmer life than most. We will never know beauty as others do. We will only briefly taste happiness, for it will always take refuge within our dreams, never to be had while we are awake.”

  “Can we change it?”

  “We may fight it, and we may believe ourselves victorious, but come the end the shadow in our blood will claim us all. Your grandfather came closest to resisting, but it took him like all the rest.”

  “You mean Dank?”

  “Indeed. We are many hundred generations old, we Anderae. We are fathers and daughters, mothers and sons, all the way back to the very hour the old wars began. Take pride in your blood, my child. Dancmyrcephalis slew the one most directly responsible for the curse lying within us. Savor that truth. Because of him, you and I are among the last.”

  “Why not kill ourselves?” She lost herself in his gaze. “Why not put us out of everyone else’s misery?”

  “I have asked myself the same question. After so many years, the truth seems simple. The Ur will not allow us to die, not until we wake them. They need us. They made our thirst for power greater even than our despair.”

  She blinked back her tears. She told herself this was only a dream, a longing for a moment that would never happen. “I could do it. I could put an end to me.”

  “No. You couldn’t.” He draped his arm around her shoulders. “Not even Mogru could extinguish you. To kill one of us takes something far greater than a desire to die. If you doubt me, look to your guardian, your Garrett. In a way, he is immortal. He is the same as we are.”

  Garrett. She knew it to be true. Feeling weak, she sank to her knees, clutching at her father’s hands and dragging him down before her.

  “Why? Why me? The voices…why will they not leave me be? They come to me at night. They whisper terrible things. I should hate them, and yet I welcome them into my heart. Why?”

  “So many questions.” Her father’s eyes were filled with sympathy. He stroked her hair and caressed her cheek. Impossible to hate him now.

  “I want to go home,” she said. “Please, let the black tower stay shut. Take the Pages and throw it in the ocean. I want to walk in Grandwood again. I want to look at the stars and know the Ur are sleeping.”

  Tears slid down her cheeks. The sun slipped below the horizon and the sounds of the sea dwindled. Weeping, she sank into her father’s embrace. He held her close, and for the first time in years she felt truly loved, as sheltered from the world as a baby fresh in her father’s arms.