Secrets of Moth (The Moth Saga, Book 3) (31 page)

The Nayan warrior grinned.
"Hello, Bailey! I've been waiting for moons to fight you again,
you Ardish worm. Come to die."

Bailey screamed and drove
forward. She slammed Ishel's spear aside with her sword and thrust
her dagger, but the blade only crashed against the woman's
breastplate, doing her no harm.

"You killed Hem,"
Bailey said through clenched teeth. "You killed my friend. Never
make that mistake." She roared and swung her sword down. "I
am Bailey Berin, a child of sunlight, a warrior of darkness, and I
will have my revenge."

At her side, Torin swung his
sword too. Ishel fought with both scimitar and spear, parrying both
attacks at once.

I
will kill you, Ishel,
Bailey thought as she thrust and parried.
And
I will kill Ferius. And I will save the night. And I will save our
village. And—

She realized her blood was
seeping down her legs now. Damn wound! She hadn't thought the tiger
had hurt her this badly, but she ignored the pain, and she lunged
forward in another attack . . . but crashed down again.

She found herself on her knees.

Ishel's spear thrust, driving
into Bailey's shoulder, and she screamed.

Bailey dropped her weapons,
gripped the spear with both hands, and pulled it free from her body
with a wet, sucking sound and gush of blood.

"Bailey!" Torin
screamed, still swinging his blade, trying to find a way past Ishel's
defenses.

Bailey rose to her feet, still
holding one end of the spear's shaft; Ishel held the other end. Blood
dripping, Bailey didn't even bother lifting her weapons.

She leaped forward, barreling
into Ishel and knocking her down onto the mountainside.

"I'm not as good a
swordswoman as you," Bailey said, shoving Ishel's head against
the rocks. "But I'm a farm girl and a damn good wrestler."

Ishel screamed below her, still
gripping her sword, trying to swing the blade into Bailey's back.
Bailey leaned in like a tiger herself, driving her teeth into Ishel's
shoulder, and she tasted blood, and the two women rolled.

They tumbled down the
mountainside, pebbles jabbing them, the sky and earth spinning around
them, the night and day sides rolling, and it almost seemed to Bailey
that the world turned again. Rocks dug into her. Pain drove through
her, and her leg twisted, and her elbow slammed against stone and
blazed. Still she tried to claw, to bite, to tear out Ishel's neck.

With a thud and cracking wood
and blazing pain, they slammed into a pine and lay still.

Bailey blinked. The clock was
now high above her like a sun. Torin was running downhill but she
barely saw him, and Bailey smiled because she no longer hurt. The
fall had somehow healed her . . . or hurt her too badly for pain.

Vaguely, she was aware of Ishel
rising to her feet. The woman still had her bow, and while some of
her arrows had snapped, most were still whole. Standing above Bailey,
she nocked an arrow. She pressed her boot against Bailey's chest,
pinning her down, and aimed her bow up the mountainside.

"Torin!" Bailey
screamed. "Torin, watch out!"

The arrow whistled. Bailey
looked up to see the projectile slam into Torin's thigh, and he cried
out and fell to his knees.

"Torin . . ." Bailey
whispered, trying to struggle, to rise to her feet, but she could
not. Her blood leaked around her, so much blood, and she could barely
breathe, barely see.

A face thrust down before
her—Ishel's face, cruel and mocking. The woman caressed her cheek,
kissed her forehead, and whispered, "I will kill him first,
Bailey. I will kill him first as you lie here dying. When I kill you,
I want you to be staring at his severed head."

With that, Ishel drove down her
fist. Pain exploded against Bailey's face with white light, and she
couldn't breathe or see, and she floated upon the sea.

When she blinked, all she saw
was mist. Was this the fog of the afterworld? She thought that a
figure was moving ahead—Ishel walking uphill toward Torin, laughing,
already nocking another arrow.

Bailey tried to rise.

Her eyes rolled back, and she
gazed upon clouds, and her head rested among flowers, and it was
beautiful. It was so beautiful. Moths flew above her, their wings
black and white, and she smelled the hearths of home and felt the
warmth of her old bed.

No.

She pushed against the earth.

You
will stand up now, Bailey Berin,
spoke a voice inside her.
Do
you hear me? You will stand up now, and you will not die here. Not
this turn. Now like this. Not now. You will still run.

She shoved herself up.

She stood in blood, weaponless,
and balled her hands into fists.

"I will still run."

Wobbling, almost blind with
pain, she began to trudge up the mountain. To battle. To Torin. To be
the woman she'd been born to be, to fight the fight of her life. For
him and for this whole world of Moth.

He was on his knees, her Torin,
an arrow in his thigh. He still held his sword, but he did not move.
He only looked up, pale, staring. A dozen yards away from him, Ishel
stood upon a boulder, smirking, a new arrow nocked in her bow . . .
aiming at Torin.

"The last one was hard to
aim," Ishel said. "This time I won't hit your leg. This
arrow is going into your heart, little boy."

Torin turned his head and looked
at Bailey.

Their eyes met and Bailey cried.

There he was—her foster
brother, her brother at arms, the man she loved. There he was, so
close to her but heartbeats from death.

"We will always run
together," she whispered.

Smirking, Ishel pulled back her
bowstring.

And Bailey ran.

She had been running for
years—through fields, meadows, forests, and battles—but this was
the run of her life. Here was the run she'd been born for—across the
mountain of time, not just the time frozen in the clock above, but
all the time spanning her life. Her boots raced through the rye field
south of the Watchtower back home. They raced through meadows of
flowers, tugging Torin behind her. They were small feet, shuffling,
upon woolen rugs when she was just learning how to run. And he was
always there, always a light in her life, even now at the end.

She ran and she leaped and she
lunged toward him, to be with him again.

The arrow flew.

Bailey soared through the air
between Torin and the projectile.

Pain drove into her chest with a
shower of light.

She fell.

Torin leaped to his feet, and
she thought he was running toward her, but he jumped over her and
screamed, and his blade lashed, and though the world was smudged, she
saw his sword drive forward, crash into Ishel, and sink into her
chest down to the hilt.

Ishel never even screamed. Her
mouth opened silently. She gasped. She seemed almost in shock, as if
she had never believed she was threatened. The rainforest warrior
tilted her head quizzically, opened her mouth as if to speak, but no
words emerged, only blood.

Torin pulled his sword out of
her flesh.

Ishel stood for just a moment
longer, then crashed down and rose no more.

The sword clanged to the ground,
and Torin left the body and rushed toward Bailey.

He knelt above her. He placed
one hand against her cheek, the other under her head, and his eyes
watered.

"Hi, Winky," she
whispered, lying on the ground. The arrow thrust out of her chest.

"Bailey," he whispered
back.

She nodded, smiling. "There
are arrows in us." She gave a weak laugh that became a cough.
"But . . . you'll be all right. I promised Grandpapa. I promised
I'd look after you. And you'll be all right . . . I know it."
Her voice was so soft, barely a whisper. "But . . . I won't, I
think."

His breath shook. He placed a
hand around the arrow in her chest, meaning to pull it out, but she
stopped him. She shook her head.

"You'll be fine, Bailey,"
he said forcefully, but his face was pale and his eyes were damp.
"I'm not going to let you die here. Do you hear me? You're
coming home with me. Back to Fairwool-by-Night."

She laughed softly and tasted
her tears. "No, Torin. I'm going on another run now. I'm going
on the longest run yet, and you don't have to race me this time."
She reached up and caressed his cheek. "This is one run I won't
drag you on. I'm going here alone . . . to a new field under strange
skies."

He shook his head, his hand
cradling her cheek, his other hand stroking her hair. His voice was
hoarse, torn with pain. "I won't let you."

"You never could stop me.
You never could tell me what to do, you know that. Nobody could. Kiss
me one last time."

His tears fell, and he kissed
her lips, and he held her so close.

"I love you, Torin,"
she whispered into his ear. "And I want you to do something for
me."

"What?" he whispered,
seeming unable to say more.

"I want you to be with
Koyee . . . to love her, to build a life with her, to never let her
go. I want her to be yours . . . and you hers." She smiled, held
in his arms. "I didn't give my life for you to mope alone
forever, damn it. So marry the girl."

"Bailey!" He gripped
her hand. "Bailey, no. You can't leave now. Do you hear me?
Bailey, do you hear? I'm not letting you go." He blinked and
shook his head and his voice dropped to a hoarse whisper. "I
don't want you to go."

Her fingers trembled, but she
managed to reach up and pinch his cheek . . . one last time.

"Hold me," she mouthed
silently.

He held her in his arms. The
sunlight fell upon them, and flowers rustled around her, and she
could see a grove of maples below. She had always loved maples.

She closed her eyes and thought
of home, and she imagined lying in the grass of Fairwool-by-Night
upon the hill, Torin at her side, a place of safety and warmth, of
crickets and flowers and endless sunlight. It was like falling asleep
in his arms. She smiled softly. She was running again, heading into
haze and light and another adventure, exploring the hidden meadows
and secret forests of the undiscovered country.

 
 
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT:
THE ORRERY SUN

She ran down the tunnel into the
mountain, shouting over her shoulder.

"You want me, Ferius! Face
me in darkness." The stone walls were narrow around her, roughly
hewn, and even her Elorian eyes could barely see here. "Fight me
in shadow."

As she ran, her heart twisted in
worry for Torin and Bailey, but here in this mountain, she had to
face him. The demon of sunlight. The man who had murdered her father,
her brother, and countless of her people.

Ferius.
My half-brother.

She heard him grunting behind
her, chasing in the darkness, and when she looked over her shoulder,
she saw his stocky form. A red light gleamed upon his sunburst helmet
and waxy face, turning him into a creature of flame. His eyes burned
like embers, cruel and hungry for her flesh. Koyee spun her head back
forward and saw the firelight ahead. It bathed her with heat, but she
couldn't see its source.

A few more steps brought her
into a round chamber the size of a temple. Koyee gasped; she had
never seen a place so strange. The walls were carved of the same
rough stone, but the floor was an intricate astrolabe of metal
tracks, turning gears, and clicking sprockets, the pieces flat and
smooth enough to walk on. Great rings of metal rose from the floor to
fill the chamber, as if some giant had tossed down armlets large
enough to loop around homes. Upon these rings, metallic spheres spun
in a lazy dance, and small maps appeared upon them. Koyee remembered
standing within the henge of Montai, gazing up at great, round worlds
in the sky. These were the same worlds, she realized, but forged of
brass, iron, and silver. It was an orrery—a map of the skies.

In the center, among all the
rings, blazed a brazier as tall as her. It was perfectly round,
formed of an iron grill that encircled embers and flame. It looked
like a mechanical sun. The metallic worlds all orbited around it,
some supporting little moons on rods. One sphere looked like
Mythimna; upon its surface appeared a map shaped like a moth. As the
sphere moved around the sun, traveling along its round track, only
one side faced the mechanical sun. The flames lit only one of the
wing-shaped continents, leaving the other in shadow. The other worlds
all spun around their axes, but Mythimna—this world they called
Moth—remained frozen.

"So much for darkness,"
Koyee whispered.

She spun around and saw Ferius
enter the chamber. The monk stepped toward her, mace in hand. His
sunburst helmet blazed in the firelight like a secondary sun. The
scar Torin had given him at Bluefeather Corner shone on his cheek,
and Koyee felt her own scars sting.

We
are more alike than ever,
she thought. Born of one mother, they had the same triangular face,
broad forehead, pale skin . . . and now both bore similar scars.

"You've come so close,
Koyee," he said. "You've come to the very heart of time.
It's fitting, I think, that here—right by your hope for victory—you
will fall."

Koyee shook her head, and her
eyes stung. "Why? Why, Ferius? You're my brother. You don't have
to do this. You—"

"Your
half
-brother."
His face twisted and pain filled his eyes. "Your people like
that word. Half. When I was a child in Oshy, I heard it a lot.
Half-boy. Half-creature. Half-brother to Okado. I killed him myself,
did you know? He burned in my fire."

Her eyes stung. "So much
hatred, Ferius. So much anger." She could barely speak, and
tears burned in her eyes. "We would have welcomed you back into
our family. We would have loved you. Why did you take this path?"
Her sword wavered in her hand. "Why did you turn to bloodshed,
to hatred, when we could have offered you love?"