The Dawn Way was the longest paved road in the Cradle, its stone connecting the seats of four provinces, running from Halidor all the way to the Northern Reaches. The two largest cities of the region, Synirpa and Selamus, were built in its path, though numerous towns had sprung up adjacent to its length. It provided the easiest route for trade, and was usually kept well patrolled by the nobility of each province.
As one such town came into view, Jaiden was apprehensive about the welcome they might receive. On the one hand, the populace might see their arrival as a sign order was being restored, but on the other, perhaps they would be blamed for not defending them when the King-priest’s army came through.
He almost asked Sir Golddrake if they would be stopping, but held his tongue. His eyes stayed busy, however, surveying the wake of Ebon Khorel’s passing. The buildings nearest the road had been torched, though the damage seemed localized. More disturbing was that not a single soul appeared to watch or greet them.
Sir Golddrake must have been unnerved by it as well, and raised his hand to call a halt. He said something to Sir Kilborn, who broke off to his right, followed by the knight beside Jaiden. Sir Kilborn and his escort rode to an elongated building Jaiden guessed might serve as the town hall. They dismounted and drew their swords – Jaiden’s right hand released the banner staff and went to his own hilt.
Sir Kilborn tentatively climbed the front steps to the building’s wide, double doors and opened one. As he peered in, Jaiden craned his neck to see, though the distance and angle made it hopeless. After only a few seconds, Sir Kilborn shut the door and returned to his horse. With no sign of danger, Jaiden released both his breath and the grip on his weapon.
When Sir Kilborn reached the column once more, he was shaking his head. “It might as well be a charnel house.” He spit, as if his mouth needed to be cleansed of what his eyes saw. “There were flies – the smell was awful. They’ve been dead for some time, and clearly no one around to bury them. My guess is some sort of a plague.”
“The whole town?” Sir Golddrake questioned aloud to no one in particular, looking to either side of the road once more to perhaps catch sight of even a single survivor able to tell the tale of what brought such a deadly sickness.
“Not knowing what it is, I do not think we should stop here,” Sir Kilborn added.
Sir Golddrake nodded and gestured to the others they were to keep moving. “We will assure they are buried once we have answers.”
The next village they came to was smaller, yet hit by the same mysterious illness. This time bodies lay outside in their yards, or on the pathways from one house to another. The skins of the dead stretched tightly over their corpses, blemished by pervasive patches of blackened spots. If any were spared, they had abandoned their homes trying to escape the ravages of the contagion. None remained to explain the cause.
A growing sense of dread rose in Jaiden – what if those they were fighting to keep free in the first place had all been stricken by this foul disease? What would keep him and the rest of the Order from catching it as well?
That night they made sure to camp beyond the reach of civilization, heading a fair distance west of the road just to be sure they did not come into contact with any carrier of the plague. They boiled the water from a nearby stream before using it to fill their drinking bladders.
Sir Golddrake tried to reassure them with a hopeful message. “We will reach Synirpa tomorrow – surely there will be answers there. The city is too large to have succumbed to a plague this quickly.”
Jaiden was not so sure, but kept his concerns private as he slipped into an uneasy sleep.
Clouds swirled nosily in a vortex around him, stretching upward to the sky, leaving Jaiden unsure whether or not he was in danger. Suddenly, they billowed upward and spread harmlessly above, revealing the boundless night sky. He was sitting on the bed with sheets of midnight blue, wearing a long, loose-fitting tunic of silver, tied at the waist by a purple cord. The material was soft and light, barely leaving an impression on his skin.
“Tomorrow, the moon that bears my name will be full, and you shall receive your next gift.”
Jaiden turned his head to find Criesha kneeling behind him. She wrapped her arms around his chest and leaned to nibble gently on his ear, her moonstone earrings dangling smooth against his neck.
“What gift might that be?” he asked, not really caring as he closed his eyes and enjoyed the warmth of her tongue on the ridge of his ear.
The goddess slid around his body into his lap, keeping one hand tangled in his dark, wild hair.
“One I think you might find a need for…henceforth, while the full moon still rides in the night sky, the touch of both your hands together will cure a body of any pestilence.” She stretched her neck to meet Jaiden’s mouth in a deep, hungry kiss. “So long as you remain faithful to me, of course,” she added as she pulled away.
“Of course,” he nearly moaned the words. He wrapped his arms around her body – touching her made his flush with an ecstatic current. How could he ever do anything but what his mistress required?
She slipped off his lap, lowering her head to kiss his inner thigh. Criesha’s short, sheer gown rode up to her waist as she moved, and Jaiden stared at her round, exposed buttocks. She pushed up the hem of his own tunic and took the tip of his member past her soft, wet lips.
With expert efficiency she took him toward another unearthly climax, making him feel as if his body had dissolved into pure energy and become one with the stars. For a long while he could not even remember a word she had told him, only that feeling of transcendental bliss. Its afterglow stayed with him as he rose in the morning and prepared for a long day of riding.
They came within view of the Castle at Windhollow Rock around dusk. Unsure of what they might find, Sir Golddrake resisted putting the entire group at risk. For recently being under siege, the castle appeared in excellent shape – nothing like the ruins of Halidor Keep.
Jaiden volunteered to investigate, and once he did, Saffron declared she would go as well. Sir Golddrake rejected the idea at first, but withdrew argument when Jaiden insisted Criesha would be with him. Saffron nimbly convinced him her passing knowledge of medicine and plants would allow her to find clues others might miss.
Together, they navigated the treacherous, twisting trail to the front gate – the sheer drop to the rock canyon below was one of the castle’s best defenses. Drawing near, Jaiden announced their approach to anyone who might be inside. No one presented on the wall to greet them, and by the looks of it, the entire fortress was abandoned. Once they reached the final, straightened stretch to the gate, Jaiden spotted a flash of color behind one of the arrow slits in the turret to his right. Something inside was still alive.
A small, square cut-out in the gate swung inward a few moments later, and a shadowy face appeared, declaring in a throaty voice, “Seek your rest elsewhere, travelers. Only the plague visits Windhollow Rock, until it has run its course.”
“We would enter, regardless,” Jaiden said. “You may tell the Duke of Rosegold, or whoever is now Lord of this castle, that the Order of the Rising Moon seeks an immediate audience.”
“Hmmmm,” the throat answered. “The Duke does live, for now, and I will deliver your message, but do not presume that will gain you entrance. Wait for my return.” The wooden square closed, leaving Jaiden and Saffron with little to do but be patient.
“At least not everyone is dead, yet,” Saffron mentioned. “There may be something helpful to gain if I can examine a living specimen.”
The sun was nearing the horizon, and had partially dipped behind the hill housing the foundations of the castle. Windhollow Rock resided on the very site from which its stone was quarried. Laborers had scooped out half of the hillside to use as materials for construction. Even the ground surrounding the foundation of the castle was excavated. The result created a fortress unique for its vertical rise; the main gate stood nearly halfway up the structure instead of at the base, and
was accessible only by a narrow, precipitous trail. To scale the walls from the bottom would require a significant feat of climbing, making Windhollow Rock difficult to assail by numbers alone. Apparently even the King-priest never gained entrance, for as the emissary indicated, the Duke was still inside.
Finally, the gate swung inward. Jaiden shrugged at Saffron as they awaited formal acceptance into the stronghold.
A short, stocky man with thinning hair peeked out from behind the gate. The knuckles of his left hand were blackened, their skin cracked and blistered. “His Grace will see you if you choose to enter,” the raspiness of the man’s voice seemed more pronounced, now that his face was visible. “But he bids you consider such action carefully, as all who reside here are doomed by this hellish curse.”
“At the very least we should cover our mouths and hands, and be careful not to touch anyone who might be infected,” Saffron said. “We don’t yet know how the sickness spreads.”
Jaiden was already wearing gauntlets, but he took a rag from his saddlebags to cover his nose and mouth, tucking it into his coif. Saffron once again wore the veil she’d removed during her stay in Chelpa to disguise her origin, but donned a pair of leather gloves before they proceeded into the castle on foot, leading their horses.
Their guide sighed. “You may leave your steeds here,” he said as he shut the reinforced gate and took up a nearby torch. “No sense taking them to the stables where they could be infected – it’s overrun with vermin.”
The courtyard was a tighter fit than Blackthorn or even Halidor, as the architecture was mostly concerned with upward expansion. Jaiden looped his reins around an empty iron sconce along the inner wall as the raspy-voiced man passed, and Saffron followed his lead. Soon enough they were indoors, ducking under a stone archway into the shadows of a dimly lit hall.
“His Grace and most of the others have taken up the Great Hall as their final refuge. It is not far.”
Jaiden’s glances down several corridors yielded similar glimpses of death. Bodies, blackened and besmirched with bloated pustules lingered in the otherwise abandoned spaces, illuminated by scarce torchlight – burying the dead had apparently become too burdensome. At least their guide spoke truly enough and it was not far to the Great Hall, though the scene awaiting them was even more depressing.
A nearly wasted Duke of Rosegold slumped in a high-backed chair at the nobles’ feast table, his face marred like the others who had contracted this disease. Scattered about the room, another two dozen at most of the infected still clung limply to the world of the living. None responded visibly to the newcomers’ arrival. Only half the candles overhead in a large, iron chandelier were lit.
“Your Grace, visitors from the Order of the Rising Moon,” the guide announced, his throaty speech making Jaiden wish someone would offer him a cup of water.
The Duke raised his chin and then, slowly, his hand, showing his faculties survived. “So, you did not heed my warning to leave us be?” His voice, though not loud, was remarkably clear, given his condition. “Is that because you are stubborn, or do you carry tidings of such monumental importance you would forfeit your lives to deliver them?”
“Perhaps a little of the first, Your Grace,” Jaiden responded. “Though in truth, we are compelled to this audience by our own search for news. We have encountered towns along the Dawn Way stricken by the same affliction as Windhollow Rock, but with no survivors left to tell the tale. We hoped someone here could explain the nature of this contagion, and how it has spread so quickly.”
“Your timing is poor, Knight of the Rising Moon. I recall, some weeks ago, expecting the arrival of your reinforcements, only to be left fighting off the King-priest on our own. Now, your belated presence serves only to doom you to the same fate we thought had been avoided by the enemy’s retreat. We do not have any answers here, I am afraid. Only death.”
Saffron challenged his decree with more questions. “Do you remember when exactly, your Grace, the sickness began? How long does it take to run its course?”
The Duke stared at Saffron, and Jaiden imagined him working out whether he should respond to a common woman – a foreigner at that – who had the audacity to speak in his Court. Only, the Duke was not really at Court; he was slowly and painfully dying in the Great Hall amidst the remains of his Court, who were likewise suffering.
“It was some weeks ago,” he finally started in his surprisingly clear voice. “Difficult to remember now, as the passage of time has not played the same since the sickness began. I do know it was mere days after the Chelpians broke their siege. We fought them back from the walls for three long days and nights.
“The King-priest tried as he might, calling down fire and hurling burning pitch against our firmament, to little avail. As you can attest, the approach to our gate is narrow, and their soldiers learned quickly the fall from those heights is final.
“After a lull in the fighting that very first night, I took a risk to sneak out three riders who might speed word to our yet unresponsive allies. I sent one south to find Sir Golddrake, one north to the Prince in Selamus, and perhaps foolishly, a third east toward Naresgreen.” The Duke deteriorated suddenly into a fit of coughing, but regained his composure to continue.
“To our surprise, as morning broke on the fourth day, the host of Chelpa was nowhere to be seen. They had packed up during the night and marched east, or so it seemed from the tracks leading away. I was sure it must be some kind of trick, and we remained watchful for the enemy’s return, but they have not shown themselves since.”
Jaiden found it difficult to believe Ebon Khorel had simply retreated. He had never heard a single story of such an occurrence. “Your Grace, did your messengers ever return with tidings?” He knew the Order would have been difficult to locate, but Jaiden wondered how the other rulers would respond to such a plea for help. He had his suspicions – the Northern Provinces’ lack of unity stood as a tragic shortcoming for years, the significance of which was now blooming.
The Duke’s head bent at the question and his voice softened, leaving his guests straining to hear. “Not a one, though I have no reason to believe they ever made it past the King-priest’s lines.”
“What makes you say that?” Saffron chimed in.
This time, however, the Duke seemed not to heed the source of the question, his vacant stare heralding his regression into the land of memory. “As night fell on the enemy’s departure, a pair of scouts I’d sent to track the Chelpians returned, sooner than expected. They found Hesrick, the emissary I sent east, barely alive along the road. He was delirious with fever, and when asked how he came to be there, only repeated nonsense about meeting a ‘man of bone, with a thorny crown.’ He clearly never made it through to Naresgreen, whether cowardice or contrivance blocked him, and he died in the infirmary without ever recovering his senses.”
“And the others?” Jaiden asked.
“Neither was heard from, nor did we receive aid – though it may be for the best, given how our fortunes turned. I cannot assume any of the messengers reached their destinations.”
“I take it the sickness began after this Hesrick was brought into the castle?” Saffron inquired. She did not seem interested in receiving an answer, but Jaiden inferred from her furrowed brow that she was working through a line of thought to its unhappy conclusion. “Was he injured in any visible way when found, or simply ill?”
“Hesrick was delirious with fever, but had not been assaulted,” the Duke lashed out. “This ‘man of bone’ he spoke of was just a hallucination. He lasted a week, but was never able to communicate with reasonable intelligence, and neither are you as far as I am concerned, madam.”
Jaiden’s eyes got big and he touched Saffron’s arm lightly when he saw her about to speak again. The Duke of Rosegold coughed and struggled to catch his breath, visibly drained by his outburst. After a moment of calm he continued, his tone more subdued.
“Simply look around you,” he gestured to the gaunt remainder of
his court, “this is our reality, and the folly of you coming here. Yes, it occurred to us eventually that Hesrick’s illness was not a coincidence, but what does it matter? It was already too late. Others were stricken before he passed, and there is no cure we have found.” The Duke’s chin sank to his chest and he mumbled, “We are all doomed.”
Jaiden’s hope sagged, for he had seen the evidence of the contagion’s finality with his own eyes in the villages to the south. “And what of the city, Your Grace? What of Synirpa?”
The Duke shook his head. “I locked the doors to Windhollow and forbade any to leave once seeing how completely the disease was spreading, but not in time. Only days after others here fell ill, a delegation from the town arrived to beseech my aid against a sickness rising in the merchant quarter. ‘A curse,’ they called it. What succor could I give? I turned them away.”
Saffron spoke softly, only to Jaiden, lest her words invite harshness from the lord of the castle. “A curse may be exactly right. A natural disease may pass through contact, sure, but from one village to another, so quickly?”
Jaiden whispered back, “Could it not have been spread by travelers along the Dawn Way, by those who did not even know they were sick?”
“Given enough time, I would agree. Only, with the King-priest coming north from Halidor, who would be bold enough to travel to all those places directly in his wake?”
Jaiden glanced back at the Duke, slumping in his chair. He didn’t seem aware of his visitors carrying on a conversation in his presence – they may as well have been ghosts, or the other way around, he acknowledged. “Are you saying you think Ebon Khorel himself is responsible for the plague?”
Saffron’s eyes widened and she shrugged. “It fits, does it not? If he could do something like that – if Gholdur the Tyrant could grant him that sort of power,” she shivered upon invoking the dark god’s name, “why not let it do the work for you? Why bother storming a castle when you can safely wait for its inhabitants to rot?”
Shiver the Moon Page 33
