Secrets of Moth (The Moth Saga, Book 3) (24 page)

"Here we can speak without
the goddess hearing. Here Shalesh, whom we worship in temples and
homes, cannot judge us. Only here in this henge can we share our
secrets." Siyun looked down upon the village. "For too long
has she forced us to love her. For too many years have we sacrificed
our children to her cruelty. Every winter she demands a child. Every
summer she returns that child—mute, deaf, simple-minded, six arms
growing where only two had once moved. The faces of our children
return to us blank—no mouths, noses, ears, nothing but two eyes. And
oh, child of night . . . what pain we see in those eyes, what secrets
they dare not—cannot—reveal." He stepped forward, pain and
fear in his own eyes, and clasped Koyee's arms. "We will forge
you this silver gear. But please, child of the night. Please. You
must kill her. You must kill Shalesh."

Siyun turned away, trembling,
and fell to his knees. He lowered his head and would say no more.

She curled deeper in the dark.
She had been lingering for so long. She had been weaving her webs,
lapping at the salty puddles, dreaming . . . dreaming in the dark . .
. festering and fermenting and feeding upon the scraps of skin on
bones. Too long. Too many moons had waxed and waned above, casting
their light through the peering eye, the hole in the ceiling of her
cave, all seeing, blinking, light and dark, a clock of the worlds.

The
worlds can hide them,
Shalesh thought, twitching, and her tailbone flicked, tapping against
the wet rocks of her lair. The henge . . . the henge! The glowing
runes. The worlds above, magnified, screaming in her skull, pounding
against her, shrieking . . . begging . . . dying . . . Their screams
deafened her. Their light blinded her. The old ones—the Montai
folk—had stepped twice into the shrieking and light. Travelers
scuttled among them.

Strange things of distant lands,
yes . . . creatures . . .

They
seek to hurt you. They will cut you. They will come to explore you,
to shine light upon you, to see your shame.

Shalesh twitched, and her six
hands lashed out, arms flailing, fingernails scratching at the stone.
The pools of silver and violet water trembled below her, circles
within circles, rings like the henge, like the dreams in her mind.
Ancient. Ancient beyond knowing.

She remembered the sunlight. She
remembered the cruel yellow fire blazing through the peering eye. It
had died. It had left her here in darkness, rotting, reeking,
rummaging for flesh.

Worship
me.

Her spine uncoiled, cracking,
and she reached out and grabbed one of the bones, one of those
endless relics of those who had come to shine their light, to expose
her nakedness. She crunched. She snapped. Her head bore no mouth; she
had gotten rid of it. She had silenced her screams. She fed through
the mouths of her hands, sucking like tree roots, lapping, gnawing,
feasting upon the marrow and sweetness and old blood and scraps of
skin.

Worship
me.

"Mamma . . . mamma . . ."

The whimper rose in her chamber,
echoing between the stalagmites, shuddering the pools of water. She
looked up and saw them there—her children. The children she had
claimed from the Montai, the children under the white disk. She had
adopted them, nurtured them, morphed them, broken and reformed them,
grew them like mushrooms into her own image. Once the children of
men, they were now her spawn, blessed and infected with her old
beauty like icicles on stone. Six arms grew from the cold, indigo
torsos. She had erased their mouths, their nostrils, their ears,
sealing all cavities, leaving only eyes, only two blue eyes on blank,
hairless heads, eyes to admire her, to see out into the world for
her, to worship her.

Worship
me.

She held their hands. She fed
them, disgorging her lumpy feast through veins and palms, passing the
viscous goodness into their hands, their distending bellies, their
minds. When they had grown strong enough, she would send them forth.
She would return these deities made in her image. They would infest
the village of men, things to praise, things to fear, a warning for
all to worship her, for she could take their children, shape their
children, send their children back as creatures with six arms, no
mouths to scream, no ears to hear, only eyes of endless pain.

And they would worship her.

They would fear her, for she was
Shalesh. She was ancient. She was the last among those who had seen
the yellow light.

She pulled her hands free from
theirs; they came loose with sucking sounds. She raised her head, a
white oval, staring ahead through the cave. Things were drawing near.
She could feel their vibrations in the rock. She could hear their
thoughts like static in the air, crinkling, crackling, echoing. She
had no ears, but their voices reverberated through her arms, her
spine, her skull, racing up and down, crying inside her. The
foreigners. She had sensed them in the village. Her discarded
children, lying wrapped in cloaks in the village moonlight, had
spoken in her mind of these travelers, and they were cruel, and they
were dangerous, and they had come to hunt Shalesh, but she was an
ancient huntress, and she had feasted upon many in her lair. They too
would worship her. They too would become her. They too would sprout
arms and lose their faces, things of the dark, things of water and
rock and shame. They would be Shalesh sent forth into the world,
small idols for the children of men to praise.

"Koyee!" cried the
little one, a daughter of men barely larger than a child. "Koyee,
can you see anything, I— ow!"

"Hush, Nitomi!"
Another spoke now, the dangerous one, the daughter of men with the
long white hair and ancient shard of steel, a blade drenched in much
blood whose scent still filled the air, sickly sweet and sticky.
"Keep your voices low. She's in here somewhere."

The little one stamped a foot,
still distant but sending vibrations through miles of caves. "She's
got no ears. You saw the statues. She can't hear. She— ow, all
right! Let go and I'll be quiet."

A grunt shook the stalagmites; a
giant walked there too, twice the little one's size, but still small
and weak by the glorious, unfurling might of Shalesh. "Qato
silent."

Shalesh stared into the dark,
crouched, her six hands upon the ground, her spine raised, her legs
ready to leap, long and pale, larger than three children of men,
slick, white, waiting, all seeing, holy, sickly sweet, sticky meat.
She was ancient. She was goddess. She was hungry and here in the dark
of her cave, among the stalagmites and stalactites, among the pools
of rotting fish and the white light peering through Hollow Eye, she
would feed. She would nurture. She would make them her own. She would
steal their voices.

She crept. Step by step. Over
puddle and rock, over her children who cowered, reaching for her.
Mamma. Mamma. She brushed past them, moving down a tunnel, through
water, over boulders, slinking, always seeing, always hearing,
waiting in the dark, her great blue eyes piercing the shadows. Her
hunger rippled inside her, and the mouths upon her six hands opened
in a gust of fervor, sucking at the cold water and mushrooms, waiting
for the sweet meat. She would feast upon two, she decided—the giant
and the little one. The huntress—the one with the steel shard, the
one called Koyee—that one she would break. That one she would remake
in her image.

She raced through the darkness.
She leaped. She cocked her head and stared. Down tunnels, up walls,
through burrows and echoing caverns, squeezing through wet places and
swimming and racing along the ceiling, clinging like the bats she fed
on, crunching them in her hands. She moved through the shadow,
silent, a great white spider upon stone, until she saw their forms
ahead, and she paused, held out her six palms, opened her six mouths,
and shrieked.

The shrieks flowed from her
arms, her body, her spine, the depth of her shame and despair, for
she had been a child of men once, she had walked upon the world in
eras past, a child, a female child of fear, and she had fallen here
and lived and lingered and changed and screamed, and now all that
scream of ancient, twisting malformation burst from her, shaking the
cave. And they heard her. The three children of men heard and they
covered their ears and they screamed too.

Palms open, her six mouths spoke
. . . the old words, the words she had demanded for the endless
years, the turn of seasons, the dance of the worlds that could still
blind her.

"Worship me."

They stared at her. Two children
of men in black, one small and one smaller, and they tossed their
blades toward her, and they screamed as they cut at her, but Shalesh
was ancient. Shalesh had lingered. Their steel shattered against her
rubbery skin, and she sucked up the shards, absorbed them, turned
them into armor, into a cold hardness inside her. She lashed her
head, clubbing the larger one, the mindless one, the one called Qato.
Her skull, long and hard and draped with her skin, slammed into him,
shoved him against stone. Her leg lashed out, sprouting three clawed
toes, a leg for climbing and slinking, for striking, and she slammed
it into the one called Nitomi. The thing's daggers shot out, darts of
pain, driving into her, but Shalesh only shrieked again, shoved the
daughter of men down into the water, drove her foot upon her, and she
saw into her, saw her shame, her secrets, her pain. A daughter of men
failed. Banished. Outcast from the mountains and hurting inside.

Shalesh lifted the two in her
hands, and her tongues emerged from her palms, licking, tasting,
shuddering as the tongues' hooks brushed against the hot skin,
feeling the blood flow beneath. Yet she would not dine yet. She would
save them. She would savor them. She tossed them behind her, sweet
meat for a long, languorous feast.

She cocked her head, blinked,
and stared at the one remaining before her. The dangerous one. The
bright one of inner light, a thing of the moon.

Her mouths spoke—a slow,
sucking sound.

"Koyee . . ."

The daughter of men stood before
her, sword raised in one hand, lantern in the other, and the light
blazed, the light of the moon reflecting in the blade, and the ghosts
of its slain cried out, countless voices of men. This blade had
driven into the hearts of warriors, into dragon-flesh, into the light
of the worlds, and Shalesh screamed as it burned her eyes.

"Sheytusung," her
mouths spoke. "A blade of old steel from the worlds."

She remembered the stone and
metal falling, crashing into the sea, driving a crater into the
world, a ball of minerals and metal, full of the fire of the heavens.
Its inner flames still burned in that blade. Now it drove toward her.

The shard dug into her thigh,
raising smoke, crashing through her white skin, spilling black blood.
Shalesh swatted it away, but it cut her hand, and she cried out
again, and she reached for the daughter of men, for the huntress, and
she grabbed her hair in her sticky hands.

She pulled the small head close.
And Shalesh stared.

There
was power in eyes. There was power in seeing. And Shalesh, grown in
darkness, broken and transfigured in darkness, was a goddess of
seeing. Her two eyes, large like the woman's head, stared with blue
knowledge, and they
saw.
They saw a brother. They saw a river. They saw a shame . . . a shame
of a mother who loved another, of a bastard boy fled to sunlight, of
a rot returned to haunt, to cut, to burn. And from Shalesh's six
hands a laughter rose, bubbling like blood in a wound, and they spoke
into the girl.

"His name is Ferius and he
is your secret. He is your shame. Have you told your kindred, your
friends, the soft ones whom I will feast upon? Have you told the
empress you serve? Have you told the Montai folk whom you swindle?
Have you told the lesser gods who fear me?" Shalesh tightened
her grip, pulling Koyee closer, even as the blade thrust into her
side again and again. "I see your filth . . . your humiliation."

Her blade coated with black
ichor, Koyee stared back.

Shalesh gasped and hissed and
recoiled.

Koyee
saw
.

There was power in those
lavender eyes, there was seeing, knowing.

There was old wisdom.

"And I see you, Shalesh,"
said the daughter of men, Koyee of the night. "I know who you
are." There was no accusation in her voice, only sadness and
pity. "You were like me once. You were a girl . . . only a girl
who got lost in the dark. Who drank the deep waters. Who changed."
Tears streamed down Koyee's cheeks. "You fell ill, and the
illness took your mouth, and your nose, and your ears . . . it took
your voice, your hearing, your memories. I'm so sorry, Shalesh. I'm
so sorry."

The scream of Shalesh tore
through the caverns, shaking the walls. Dust fell and rocks rolled
and cracks filled stone.

"Look away!" Shalesh
pulled back and covered her blank face, hiding her shame, hiding her
eyes. "You know me. Do not look upon me. Do not shine your light
upon the shame . . . my humiliation."

Koyee stepped forward, and
Shalesh scuttled back, but always the young woman advanced, her blade
alight, her lantern piercing the shadows.

"You told the Montai you
were a goddess." Koyee's voice shook. "You made them fear
you, worship you. You changed their children, infecting them with
your disease. They grew four new arms and lost their faces."
Koyee shook her head, eyes pained. "Why? You lied. You said you
remade them in your image, the image of a goddess to praise, but . .
. it's only a disease. You didn't remake them; you contaminated them.
How can I cure you?"

Shalesh swung her head, slamming
her skull into Koyee. She knocked the daughter of men down.