The Dawn King (The Moon People, Book Five)

by Claudia King

  “I know,” she answered with a glare, her eyes fixed on Thakayn. “Adel told me what he did to you.”

  “All the more reason not to make things any worse.”

  “We are here to make friends, not enemies,” Adel murmured.

  “With the man who sent those warriors to take us?” Kiren said.

  “What else can we do, Kiren?” Netya squeezed her apprentice's wrist. “Warriors fight. Seers see.”

  “And what am I supposed to see?”

  “A path forward that is troubled with no more bloodshed.”

  Kiren glowered after Thakayn as he left the room, but she said no more for now. Upon looking back at Atalyn Netya realised that he had been following their conversation and nodding in agreement. So he spoke the Moon People's tongue too.

  “Now that we are by ourselves we may speak so that Kiren understands,” he said in their language. “Forgive me for my rudeness before, Kiren.”

  “Why can't Thakayn know that you speak our tongue?” she replied.

  “Oh, he knows that I speak a few words. I could tell him that I learned the rest from Ilen Ra, or one of the other shamans, but he would be suspicious. It is in Thakayn's nature. I would not want him to suspect that Jarek was the one to teach me.”

  Kiren bristled at the mention of Ilen Ra, but she said nothing. The girl certainly had the capacity for patience, but events beyond Netya's control had left her with an aggressive, distrustful streak. Just like Adel, she had wounds of the soul that might take many years to heal.

  Atalyn's conversation turned mild at that point. He asked Netya simple questions about herself, to which she responded truthfully, then conferred with Adel and Kiren regarding their days spent in the temple. None of his inquiries pried too deep, for he seemed keenly aware of the tension that still lingered between them. This meeting was intended to set them at ease, and to that end it was surprisingly effective. The Dawn King's promises of comfort and safety were only partially reassuring, but the old man's concern did come across as genuine. He seemed a kindly soul, but a strong one, perhaps a little like the sort of elder Caspian might one day grow to become. The thought of her mate brought a lump to Netya's throat, and she swallowed it down quickly. Perhaps she would be able to return home and see him again soon. Would they be able to journey back across the mountains before winter, or would they remain in the lands of the Sun People until spring came? The thought of waiting that long was terrible. Caspian would face a winter believing she was either lost or dead, and not knowing for sure would make it all the more unbearable for him.

  “I wish your arrival could have been a more pleasant one,” Atalyn said at last, “but I am truly glad to welcome another of Adel's kin into my house. Adel, Kiren,” he nodded respectfully to the pair, “I will not ask you to sit here any longer, but I would like to speak with Netya further if you would allow me.”

  “She needs rest,” Adel said. “Her wound will not heal without it.”

  “I can stay a little longer,” Netya said. In truth her back had been throbbing for most of the conversation, and her spine ached from the effort of holding it stiff.

  “You are sure?”

  Netya gave her a small nod and a smile. Adel responded with a tense look that conveyed no small degree of apprehension. She was in two minds about leaving her apprentice alone with the Dawn King.

  “Trust me,” Netya said. Adel's features softened. She returned the nod and rose to her feet. Something about the den mother's simple acceptance stirred a swell of pride within Netya. Adel trusted her, she realised, not just to guard her tongue, but to say the right things. Perhaps she even trusted her more than herself to make a friend of this great leader. Netya had her own wisdom, Adel had told her, and though it differed from her own, it was not necessarily any less insightful.

  Netya took a deep breath, realising the trust—and the responsibility—Adel was giving her. She put the pain in her back out of her mind and moved to the middle of the bench, resting her hands upon the table in a reflection of Atalyn's posture. Once Adel and Kiren had departed the Dawn King spoke to her using the language of the Sun People.

  “You are different from them in some way, aren't you?”

  “All of us are different, Dawn King.”

  “Yet you moreso. You don't speak as they do. My language sits upon your lips as though you have spoken it your entire life. And their tongue... you falter with it a little, the same way I do.”

  Netya felt her shoulders stiffening. The secret of sun wolves was something few of Atalyn's people understood, and those who did regarded it as an abominable curse that was beyond forgiveness. Her own mother had turned against her when she suspected it. Atalyn seemed to be an accepting man, but was this a wise secret to share with him? For a moment she wished Adel was there to answer for her. Yet Adel was not, and the decision was hers.

  “Once, I spoke your tongue,” she said. “I was similar to you in every way. My people lived in a small village on the western edge of the forests.”

  “Close to the lands of the Moon People.”

  Netya nodded. “They took me one night. I felt so very young back then. Even though the Moon People were my enemies, I thought it all a great adventure, and soon I learned to call many of them friends, then lovers, and eventually family.” With a stiff arm she touched the spot on her gown that sat just above an old scar on her side. “The Moon People's bite kills most Sun People with a sickness. A poison. But it did not kill me. Those few who survive such wounds awake reborn, with a wolf of their own inside them.”

  Atalyn stared at her intently. “I have heard tales of the Moon People stealing souls, but like many of the stories about your kind they are often larger than the truth, and twice as terrifying. There are old legends of pilgrims whose brothers were slain by the Moon People, only for spectres to reappear wearing their faces days later.”

  “Well, I am no spectre. I have changed, yes, but so does any woman as she grows older.”

  Atalyn smiled at her. “One as young as you still has much to learn about growing old. Your den mother, too. She believes herself to be very wise, as I once did when I bade my men to slay the ones we thought our enemies and take their villages by force. Now as I sit here in my temple, the entire land paying homage to me, I question whether my decisions were as wise as I once thought.”

  Netya realised she was gripping the edge of the table tightly, and forced herself to let go. She desperately wanted Atalyn to accept her for what she was. When he smiled she felt the return of a fleeting hope that had faded many years ago. It was the hope that somehow, some day, she might see her family again, and have them look upon her with love rather than fear. Atalyn was not her family, yet he was a man who might sway the will of his people. She envisioned the same future Adel must have imagined, where the priests of the Dawn King spread word of the Moon People not as abominations, but as friends. Could such a thing ever truly come to pass? Could such teachings reach her village within her lifetime? It was nothing more than a wisp of a hope, but it was something. In meeting Jarek again Adel had found something she had believed long lost. If the spirits could do that for her, could they do the same for Netya?

  The Dawn King stroked his beard, his fingers playing over the polished ring that pinched it at the base of his neck. “Your tale fascinates me, Netya. To think that people of the Sun and Moon can be one and the same.” He suddenly chuckled. “Perhaps it would please you to hear a tale of my own. When Thakayn was but a boy, and me barely a man, we played together at being Moon People. One pretended to be the beast while the other fought back with a stick. We thought it a great game. Two powerful warriors, one with the strength of a wolf and the other the might of a spear. Even I, who should have known better, saw nothing wrong with our play. Yet when our fathers caught us they punished us fiercely, and forbade us from ever being so foolish again. We should never wish to be Moon People, they said, not even in jest. It was a blasphemous thing. Our shamans made many prayers to the spirits to forgive us
for our ignorance.” His hand worked its way up to his chin, teasing down the crinkles of stray hairs. “Had I known women like you could exist back then, perhaps I would have sought out the Moon People's curse too.”

  Relief surged through Netya. He believed her. He understood. She felt a weight draining out of her soul. One of her own people understood. When the Dawn King spoke again it was with a softness that reminded her of a father she barely remembered.

  “You have suffered for your change, haven't you?”

  “No sun wolf has not.”

  “Sun wolves. How majestic that sounds to my ears.” He reached out for Netya's hand. After a moment's hesitation, she took it. “Thank you for speaking with me, Netya. If the spirits are gracious, I will yet live to see a day where men and women like you are not seen as abominations, but the twine that binds our two peoples together.”

  —22—

  Priest of the Sister

  The shadows hid the girl well from the eyes of the guardsmen, but Thakayn knew where to look. He watched the shrouded figure flitting in and out of the darkness, scuttling past the refuse piles and earthen mounds that bordered the cooking pits. Night had long since fallen, but the temple never truly slept. One found all sorts of secrets lurking in the dark halls after sundown. Thakayn's encounter with Netya and the seeress a few nights prior had been just one such fortunate discovery, and he hoped to make another that evening. The cloaked figure approaching through the shadows was the bearer of news. Good news, he hoped. If it was not, well, then she might not live to see another dawn. He fingered the handle of the poisoned blade concealed within his tunic, careful not to nick himself on the oily edge. A swift stroke from that blade had solved many problems that might have caused him trouble had they ever reached Atalyn's ears. His cousin was easy to placate, but he had grown decrepit with compassion in his age. Every time Thakayn looked upon the Dawn King's greying visage he felt pity for a man who had begun crumbling like a burnt-out kiln. Pity, and a hint of terror. He did not like staring at the tired creases in his cousin's face, nor the grey in his head of hair that had once been as midnight black as Thakayn's was golden blonde.

  He clenched his fist tight, feeling the ache of the healing bruise he had given himself when he struck the table a few days prior. Yes, the night held many enticing secrets, as did the Moon People.

  Thakayn had tucked himself out of sight in a shadowed crevice at the end of one of the domicile halls, at the top of a short but steep slope that prevented anyone from climbing up on this side of the temple. A thick stone wall stood to his right, one that he knew made it nigh-impossible for those inside to hear any conversations that transpired in this spot. The approaching figure disappeared into the shadows cast by the temple. Thakayn waited until he heard footsteps brushing through the grass below, then knelt down and held out his arm. A white hand shot out of the darkness, gripped his wrist, and he hauled the figure up the sheer slope. Her feet scuffed against the earth and sent down a small shower of pebbles, but the noise was easily lost in the whisper of the wind.

  “You are as quick and sly as your name proclaims, my darling.”

  Rat rose to her feet in front of him and threw back her hood, revealing her dark hair and those narrow, distrustful eyes. Thakayn wrinkled his nose at the smell of her. He made the girl bathe every time she entered the temple, but during her days away she reverted to the primitive barbarism that kept her alive out in the wilderness.

  “He was like the others,” she said. “The sacred tonic killed him.”

  “Another tragedy.” Thakayn shook his head, feigning sorrow. “And it was done discreetly? No one suspected that you were responsible?”

  “Of course. Men do not watch their drinks very closely once they are drunk.”

  Thakayn smiled and moved his hand away from the knife. Instead his palm settled upon Rat's face, cupping her cheek with the touch of a doting father. He saw the glimmer of longing in the girl's eyes, the desire to lean in to that touch, to receive his praise, to be comforted the way some other man had no doubt comforted her in the past. A parent, perhaps, or a lover, cut down before her eyes, leaving her destitute and alone. He pitied the pathetic creature. She truly believed him her saviour. Her guardian.

  “You do so much good for our people, my darling girl. Every man who joined Liliac on his pilgrimage must be tested this way. You must visit every village, force every one of them to imbibe our sacred draught. Those who live will be proven pure. Those who perish will join the spirits, but in death they will be free from the Moon People's curse.” It was a practised lie that he had recited to her every time she returned with news of another dead pilgrim. Though he had been unable to promise the girl Moon People to kill, he had given her the next best thing—Liliac and his pilgrims.

  The rumours had been easy to spread. Thanks to Thakayn many people now believed that Liliac had befallen a foul curse, one that had been placed upon him by a Moon People sorceress. That was why his pilgrimage had not been honoured at the temple the way it should have been when he returned home. The gossip had not spread as fast as Thakayn would have liked, but once the pilgrims began dying it had caught momentum. With Rat to administer the “sacred tonic” for him there was no one to suspect that the high priest had a hand in it. To unwitting eyes the men were simply dying of mysterious causes, for he had made sure to use an obscure poison known only to the shamans of his home village. Rat, the poor fool, believed she was testing them, oblivious to the fact that no man could survive the draught Thakayn had given her. She was not a stupid girl, but her hatred for the Moon People clouded her wits. Thakayn wondered whether she might one day attempt to taste the poison for herself, just to test it. That would be unfortunate, but it would get the girl out of his hair sooner rather than later. It would be preferable if Liliac and his followers were dead first, but the fewer of them there were the smaller the chances of them revealing the truth about the Moon People they had brought back. He could always find other ways to silence any survivors.

  Thakayn had learned early on the importance of quieting troublesome tongues. He had been barely fifteen years old the first time a girl threatened to accuse him of ravishing her—as if any woman would have objected to being taken by a man of his beauty. She had screamed, raged, and threatened to wake the entire village. Back then Thakayn had been aghast and terrified when he split her neck open with his knife, striking out in fear of what might happen if his father overheard. But there had been no reason for that fear. All it took was a few cuts on his own body and a small splashing of the girl's blood, and the village had been all too eager to believe that wild men had accosted them as they frolicked through the fields at night. The village shaman, the girl's uncle, had even elevated him above his other apprentices, believing that they shared a common sorrow in her loss.

  The older Thakayn had grown the more adept he had become at such manipulations, and this pitiful girl was as willing a tool as he had ever encountered. He saw the ghost of some long-forgotten joy in Rat's face whenever he offered her his praises. She had been an innocent soul once, now hardened into a blade. Blades were what shaped fate, not the spirits.

  “Bring me another dose of the tonic, High Priest,” Rat said. “There is another one of them in the temple village right now. I will see him tested before dawn.”

  “Will you not stay and rest? A soft cot and hot food await you inside.”

  She shook her head. “It is the shaman Liliac. If the curse is strongest with any of them, it will be him.”

  “Ah,” Thakayn said softly. Of course, he should have known that Liliac would return before long. Deference to the temple had kept him away for a while, but shamans were spun from wiser thread than most. Liliac would want to know why he had been denied his rightful glory, especially after bringing home such a special prize. Thakayn frowned for a moment, realising that he should have sent some gift to placate Liliac for a while longer. Well, it did not matter now. If Rat was willing then he could have the problem wiped away before L
iliac even had a chance to seek an audience.

  “See to it that Liliac is tested first,” he said, “then I have another task for you. Some days ago the priest of the Daughter told me of an old friend he met in the village. A young man named Kale. He came here in the company of a woman. I want you to seek out this boy for me. He may still be somewhere in the village.”

  Rat gave him a suspicious look. “What does he have to do with the Moon People?”

  Thakayn smiled. He had questioned Eral thoroughly the day after his encounter with Netya. “Kale is a pilgrim we thought long dead. A hero lost to the fangs of the Moon People. If he has returned, he must be given the honour he is rightly due.”

  Rat's posture loosened slightly, and she gave him a nod. “If this man is here, I will find him.”

  “I know you will, my darling.” He touched her cheek again. “The spirits test us to the limits of our endurance, but we must understand that they do so for a purpose. They took your family from you so that you might find your way here, to serve me. Serve me, and in time you will be granted everything your heart desires.”

  “A place on a pilgrimage.”

  Thakayn nodded. “And the Dawn King's own blade in your hand. Wherever you walk, the grass will turn crimson with the blood of the Moon People.”

  Rat's eyes lit up with righteous fire. She desired it so desperately. It was her only reason for living, the one thing she believed would bring peace to the horrors in her heart. What a sad, misguided soul she was.

  “Bring me the tonic,” she said.

  “Of course. Wait here in the shadows now, and make sure you are not seen.”

  —23—

  Desperation

  Caspian struck the handle of the blade with a rock, his muscles burning as he beat the polished wood until it cracked and began to split. He had already hammered the blade into a thrice-folded lump of metal, something with neither edges nor sheen. Perhaps a master craftsman might still be able to tell what it was, but he doubted anyone else could identify the twisted lump. Its metal was still valuable, but they could not afford to let anyone recognise it again.