Shadows of Moth (22 page)

It was a city of
light, of beauty, of knowledge, an oasis in the dark wilderness.

It was a city under
attack.

Myriads of Magerian
troops surrounded the city. The enemy's warships floated in the
river, eclipses painted upon their sails, showing the golden sun
hiding the moon. Thousands of riders sat upon horses, and countless
footmen stood behind them, their black armor reflecting the light of
their torches. Barely visible, mere specks in the night, were the
mages. Madori had never seen so many of them in one place, not even
at Teel—a thousand mages or more rode upon black horses, the
vanguard of the host. The Radian army surrounded Pahmey like a colony
of ants surrounding a fallen morsel.

"Mother,"
Madori whispered, chest shaking. "Mother, where are you?"

She pulled the
locket from under her shirt. When she flipped it open, a gasp fled
her lips.

"Mother!"
she cried.

Koyee's locket was
open, and some hope filled Madori. Did that mean Koyee was still
alive? The view in the locket showed the Radian host up close: lines
of troops in dark steel, their torches crackling; mages upon horses,
hidden in black robes; warships in the river, cannons on their decks;
and beyond the soldiers and masts, the towering walls of Pahmey, and
upon them Elorian archers in steel scales.

"Why
. . . why are you among the Radians?" Madori whispered. How
could Koyee's locket be showing her a view from
outside
the city?

The view in the
locket spun madly. When the locket finally steadied, it revealed a
familiar face.

Madori felt faint.

It was Serin.

The Emperor, Lord
of the Radian Order, stared through the locket directly into Madori's
eyes . . . and smiled.

With a cry, Madori
slapped her locket shut.

She trembled. Her
heart beat madly. Her head spun.

"Mother . . ."

Was Koyee dead? Had
Serin killed her and claimed her locket?

"Mother!"
she cried toward the distant city. Her tears burned. She panted.
She—

Breathe.
Slowly.
Focus.

It was Master Lan
Tao speaking in her mind. Nostrils flaring, Madori obeyed him. She
slowly inhaled, filling her lungs from bottom to top, letting the
soothing air flow across every part of her, down to her toes, along
her arms, and inside her head. With every new breath, she let the
panic flow away. With every breath, she focused her awareness on
where she was: the feel of Grayhem's fur against her thighs, the
softness of her silk dress against her body, the chill of the wind
that streamed her two long strands of black hair. Slowly she became
fully aware of herself, in control again, grounded.

"I have to
find you, Mother," she said into the wind. "I have to fight
at your side."

Distant shouts in
Qaelish rose from the city walls. The banners of Qaelin rose from the
city's battlements—a silver moon within a star upon a black field.
Soldiers in scale armor cried out the words of their empire: "We
are the night!" And under this night sky, Madori—born half of
sunlight—felt a full child of darkness. Under this sky, facing this
battle, she was a child of Qaelin, of Eloria, and she would fight for
the darkness.

"We are the
night!" they cried below, and their arrows flew from the walls
toward the enemy hosts. Bronze cannons shaped as dragons fired from
the battlements, and their cannonballs crashed into the forces of
sunlight.

The battle began.

Madori drew her
sword, kneed her nightwolf, and leaned forward over his back.

"Run, Grayhem!
To war!"

He ran.

Madori raised her
sword, charging down the hills toward the enemy troops. She would die
here, she knew; she was a lone woman charging toward thousands. But
she would not cower as her mother needed her, as her city—and this
turn Pahmey was her city, the beacon of her heart—lay surrounded by
light.

She had ridden only
halfway toward the enemy when the walls of Pahmey began to shake.

Madori hissed, eyes
wide.

The thousand mages
surrounded the city like a noose, riding upon their black mares, and
each bore a crackling red torch. Their free hands pointed toward
Pahmey, and dark magic oozed from them, tendrils of black and silver
coiling like serpents.

One glass tower,
hundreds of feet tall and filled with blue light, cracked. The sound
of shattering glass pounded against Madori's ears even as she rode.
With a great shriek, the tower collapsed. Elorians—small as ants
from here—tumbled from its windows. Shards of glass showered over
surrounding roofs. Finally the tower vanished in a cloud of dust.

Madori could barely
breathe.

"Serin!"
she shouted. She doubted her voice could he heard; thousands of
voices were now screaming from the city. "Serin, stop this!"

A second tower
crashed down, its glass walls shattering. Screams rose from the city.
Cracks raced along the walls. The mages kept casting their magic, and
Madori rode as fast as Grayhem would carry her, but she could not
help, could not avoid seeing the devastation.

One chunk of wall
fell, its turrets and ramparts slamming into the ground. Behind it,
houses collapsed and vanished into sinkholes. More towers crumbled.
Dust rose in clouds, thick with glass fragments that flew like snow,
a million lights reflecting the fires. More of the wall fell. Canyons
were tearing open. Sinkholes greedily swallowed buildings like
gluttons guzzling down food. Elorians began to flee the city, racing
out the gates into the wilderness, only to encounter the enemies'
swords.

Madori
was only a mile away, charging toward the enemy troops, when a great
crack
tore across the land, louder than anything she had heard. She was
forced to cover her ears, and even Grayhem yowled. A thousand
buildings in Pahmey tilted inward, their walls crumbling. Dust
blasted out. A massive sinkhole opened within Pahmey's center . . .
and the ruins of the city vanished.

Mewling, Grayhem
stopped running, stared down, and whimpered.

When the dust
settled, all that remained of Pahmey was a ring of cracked walls, a
few odd houses clinging to the rim, and a great hole in the center.

"They're all
gone," Madori whispered. "Thousands of buildings. Countless
people. A history of thousands of years. Gone."

Her tears flowed.
She had never seen such devastation. She had heard stories of the
last war, of how King Ceranor of Arden had attacked this city, how
thousands of Elorians had died defending it. But this . . . this
wasn't conquest. This was genocide. This was the effacement of a
civilization.

Madori stared in
horror. "Pahmey is gone."

For long moments,
the land was eerily silent.

Then the Radian
troops began to cheer.

Men waved banners
and blew trumpets. Joyous songs erupted. Effigies of Elorians,
constructed of wood and straw, were set aflame. White doves were
released into the sky. Everywhere the troops cried out in joy,
celebrating the destruction.

Only a few Elorians
had survived along the sinkhole's rim—a couple thousand, that was
all, a fraction of the city's lost civilization. The Radian soldiers
mobbed them, chained them together, whipped them, kicked them, and
howled with laughter as they bled.

Madori watched from
the distance, still hidden in shadows, her wolf panting beneath her.

"What do I
do?" She shuddered. "Stars of the night, what do I do?"

She looked into the
locket again but saw nothing; its twin locket was closed. Was Koyee
dead, one of the hundreds of thousands of fallen? Even Yin Shi could
not calm Madori now, and her tears flowed.

"And so I will
die with my mother." She raised her sword, and she roared into
the darkness. "We are the night!"

A lone woman upon a
lone wolf, she charged down toward the tens of thousands of Radian
soldiers.

They turned toward
her, amusement in their eyes, and Madori crashed against them,
screaming and swinging her sword.

She fought in a mad
fury. She fought with magic, blasting out bolts of power. She fought
with Yin Shi, aware of every swing of a sword, and she cut men down,
driving her katana through steel as easily as silk. Beneath her,
Grayhem bit and clawed, driving through the enemy. Madori fought with
tears in her eyes, a roar in her throat, a wild woman of darkness.
Blood flew around her. Men toppled at her wolf's feet.

She was still
screaming as blasts of magic knocked her off her wolf, as clubs
slammed against her, as hands grabbed her, as chains wrapped around
her ankles and wrists. Pain exploded across her. Fists drove into her
face. Her wolf growled somewhere in the distance, and all she saw was
a sea of Radian soldiers.

"Mother!"
she cried hoarsely, blood in her mouth.

Hands yanked her to
her feet. A canvas sack was thrust over her head. Blows drove into
her stomach, and she doubled over, and a kick sent her sprawling. Her
head hit something hard, and Madori wept for the loss of darkness.

 
 
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN:
THE BEAR OF VERILON

Torin stood in the
arena, chained to the pole, as the crowd roared around him.

Many years ago,
Torin had stood in the arena of Asharo, Capital of Ilar, in the
darkness of Eloria. There he had seen Koyee fight Tianlong, the black
dragon of the night. Despite its horrors, that had been a grand
amphitheater carved of polished stone, a marvel of architecture. This
place, in the sunlit kingdom of Verilon, was only a crude pit dug
into the dirt. The hole was a good ten feet deep, perhaps a hundred
feet wide, and around it rose a ring of wooden bleachers. Hundreds of
Verilish men and women sat upon the crude wooden seats, roaring down
at the pit. They drank from pewter steins, dribbling ale onto their
beards and thick fur cloaks, but their true thirst this turn was for
blood.

My
blood,
Torin thought.

In the arena's
center, a wooden pole rose from the frozen earth. A chain ran from
the pole to Torin's ankle, perhaps ten feet long. He stood barefoot
on the cold soil, clad in nothing but a woolen tunic, armed with
nothing but the humble dagger they had given him. Like this, chained
and shivering with cold, thousands of men watching and roaring for
his blood, Torin waited to die.

I
survived the great War of Day and Night—the dark magic at Sinyong,
the inferno at Yintao, the bloodshed in Naya. I survived the torture
of Lord Gehena. I lived through fire, through darkness, through war
and disease.
He clutched his dagger.
And
now I die like this, a fool for their amusement.

He scanned the
crowd above, finally locating Ashmog. The King of Verilon was chewing
on a pig's trotter between gulps of ale. Grease filled his bushy
brown beard. Two young women sat on his lap, one on each knee,
stroking the king's hair as he feasted.

"Ashmog!"
Torin shouted up toward the king. "Ashmog, hear me! This is not
the way. I've come here to aid you, not to fight for your pleasure."

The king gulped
down a chunk of meat, looked from one of his women to the other, then
burst out laughing. His two companions laughed with him, and soon the
entire amphitheater was roaring.

"Oh, I don't
expect you to fight much, murderer's son!" the king shouted
down. He drank deeply, coating his mustache with foam. "You'll
probably curl up and die begging for mercy." The king rose to
his feet upon the bleacher, knocking his companions down. He pointed
at Torin from above, his eyebrows pushed down, and his voice boomed.
"My father fought nobly. He died with a bloody sword in his
hand, slaying enemies, even as your father stabbed him in the back.
But you . . . you will die squealing."

Torin grumbled. He
refused to believe his father would ever stab a man in the back. His
father had been a noble knight. Torin was about to shout back at the
king, to defend Teramin Greenmoat's honor, when iron doors creaked
open in the arena's wall.

Torin spun toward
the exposed tunnel. A roar sounded from within. A great paw reached
out from the tunnel, the claws as long as swords. All around the
arena, the spectators upon the bleachers roared with new vigor.

By
Idar . . .

The beast was too
large to stand in the tunnel; it had to crawl out like a creature
emerging from the womb. Its fangs were like spears, its eyes like
smelters. When it rose to its feet, it towered like a great oak,
twenty feet tall. Here stood the great bear Gashdov, a deity of the
northern pine forests, symbol of Verilon—an ancient creature who fed
upon the flesh of men.

Torin raised his
dagger—a puny piece of metal.

The towering bear
slammed its front paws against the ground. The arena shook. The crowd
cheered. Roaring, Gashdov raced toward Torin, strings of saliva
quivering between its teeth.

"
Shan
dei
!"
Torin cursed, switching to Qaelish in his fright. He ran behind the
wooden pole. His chain clattered. An instant later, the bear's paw
slammed down where Torin had stood, the claws digging into the frozen
soil.

Torin's heart
pounded and sweat washed him even in the cold. He clutched his dagger
but knew he could not win this fight. He could barely even call this
a fight; it was an execution.

I'll
never see my wife and daughter again,
he thought. He did not fear death, but how could he let Koyee become
a widow, to let Madori live without a father?

The bear lolloped
around the pole and faced Torin again. It rose to its hind feet,
roared, and swiped its claws again.

Torin leaped back.
The chain pulled tight, and he fell onto his back. The claws swiped
over his head. Torin thrust up his dagger, and the blade cut into the
bear's paw. The beast roared; the dagger was like a thorn's prick,
enraging the bear but doing no harm.