Shadows of Moth (24 page)

For a moment, Serin did not know
what to say. He simply stood, blocking her passage.

How
do I speak to her? How do I tell her how I feel?

"Move!" she said
again.

He reached out to touch her
hair. "My dear, I would very much like a private song. Would you
play for me in your chamber?" He hoped she understood his words.
He pulled a silver coin from his pocket. "I will pay you. I—"

She recoiled from his touch, her
eyes flashed, and she shoved him aside. She spoke through her mask,
voice brusque, accent thick. "No. Go away."

Rage flared in Serin.

How dare she refuse him? He was
Sir Tirus Serin, a great lord, heir to Sunmotte! His father commanded
armies. His coffers overflowed with gold.

"Do you know who I am?"
He grabbed her wrist, refusing to let her climb the stairs. "Do
you even understand my words?" He tugged her closer to him. "I
am Lord Tirus Serin! If I tell you to play for me, you will obey.
You—"

She slapped him.

Her hand connected with his
cheek so powerfully it stunned him. Before he could react, she kicked
him swiftly in the chest, knocking him back. He tripped over a chair
and fell down hard onto his backside. Mugs of ale tumbled off a table
and spilled across him.

The hall erupted with laughter.

Timandrian soldiers brayed,
cheered, and pounded the tabletops. Upon the stages, the other
yezyani giggled. Koyee fled upstairs, cursing, and everywhere the
laughter rose. Serin sat on the floor, drenched in ale. He had banged
his tailbone; the pain was so great he couldn't stand. The great
lord, the great soldier—dripping wet, humiliated.

"Beaten by a woman!"
cried out one soldier and roared with laughter. "Smacked down by
a little Elorian lass half his size!"

Serin's eyes stung with tears.
He stared around the room, and there he saw him, sitting at the
back—Torin Greenmoat, his cousin. The young soldier was not laughing
like the others; Torin stared at Serin with something far worse than
mirth. He stared with pity.

Rage exploded through Serin, and
he rose to his feet, only to slip in the ale and crash back down onto
the floor. More laughter rose.

"Let me help you,"
Torin said, approaching. He tried to help Serin up.

"Let go of me!" Serin
screamed. He shoved Torin aside. He leaped back to his feet, grabbed
a table for support, and all but raced through the room. He stumbled
out into the street to the sound of laughter.

Serin stood in the darkness, ale
dripping from his hair, and spun back toward the Green Geode. Through
the door he heard the yezyani sing again.

I
loved you,
he thought.
I
loved you, Koyee, and you . . . you did this to me.

He clenched his fists. He tossed
back his head. And he bellowed in rage.

With that, Serin spun around and
marched down the street, marched through the city, marched outside
the gates and into the open night. He boarded his family's ship. He
said nothing as they set sail, only stood at the stern, staring at
the lights of Pahmey grow smaller in the distance, then fade beyond
the horizon.

He returned to the sunlight, and
he married his betrothed, and he fathered Lari, and he watched his
father die, and he inherited Sunmotte, and he claimed the throne of
Mageria, and he founded an empire, but Serin never forgot her. Never
forgot the humiliation he suffered in the night.

"And now you are fallen,
Pahmey, city of shadows," he whispered, staring at the smoking
sinkhole. "You hurt me, so I destroyed you. And I will destroy
you all."

He looked around him. His
soldiers—a massive army of a hundred thousand—were not mocking him,
were not laughing, were not jeering. They were chanting his name.
They were killing for him. Before him, the sinkhole gaped open like a dark soul—the magic Serin himself had developed in the depths of his dungeons, a magic the mages of the last war had lacked, a final solution to the vermin of the night.

"And
you will suffer more than all, Koyee,"
Serin
whispered. He clutched her locket in his hand, its edges digging into
his palm. "You will regret what you did to me."

"Radian rises!" the
soldiers chanted. "Radian rises!"

Serin
allowed himself a single, small smile.

 
 
CHAPTER TWENTY:
BLOOD MARCH

Pain exploded across
Madori's face.

"On your feet,
mongrel!"

The voice was
distant, muffled, echoing as in a dream. But the pain was real. It
blazed across her cheek again, then drove into her back, and Madori
cried out. Tears flooded her eyes.

"Get up,
half-breed, or stay here and die in the cold."

Pain drove into her
side again, and she gasped and opened her eyes.

I'm
alive,
she thought.
Stars,
I'm alive.

She coughed and
tasted blood in her mouth. When she blinked, bringing the world into
focus, she couldn't see the stars above, only dust and smoke.
Magerian soldiers were staring down at her, Radian eclipses upon
their breastplates. One of the men, his gruff face covered in
stubble, raised his hand above her. Blood stained his fingers—her
blood, she realized.

"If it were up
to me, I'd leave you here in the dust." The man spat onto her;
the glob hit her forehead and trickled down her face. "Emperor
Serin wants you to live." The man's face split into a cruel
grin. "Though he didn't say we couldn't shed some of your blood
on the way."

He backhanded her
again, and Madori yowled. Blood flew from her mouth, and she growled
and leaped to her feet, ready to attack.

Chains clattered
around her ankles and wrists, and she slammed back down onto the
ground.

The Magerian
soldiers roared with laughter. When Madori blinked, she saw that
dozens of them stood around her. Ignoring the pain—every last inch
of her hurt—she tried to summon her magic, to claim and heat their
armor, to blast them with air, or to set their hair on fire. But she
was too weary, too hurt.

Breathe
,
she thought. She inhaled slowly as Master Lan Tao had taught her.
Brea—

"Up!" the
gruff soldier shouted. He grabbed her by the ear and tugged, and
Madori screamed in pain and scrambled to her feet, sure he would rip
her ear straight off. "Now go. Walk! Move—the lot of you. Go,
nightcrawlers!"

Madori blinked and
turned around. She gasped. Before her gaped the great sinkhole that
had swallowed Pahmey; only a few walls and homes surrounded the chasm
in a ring. Those few Elorians who had fled the city stood outside the
devastation.

Fresh tears filled
Madori's eyes. She saw a thousand survivors, perhaps two thousand—no
more. Blood covered many of them. They wore ragged burlap tunics; no
more silk dresses, scale armor, or simple fur garments distinguished
between Elorian nobles, soldiers, and commoners. All stood trembling,
their bodies bruised and bleeding, their wrists and ankles bound with
chains. The prisoners gazed at Madori with their gleaming Elorian
eyes, large and blue and purple like lanterns in the night. A few
were only children, weeping and unable to even cling to their
parents, their limbs chained.

When Madori looked
down at her body, she saw that she too had been dressed in burlap
rags. Dust, mud, and blood covered what parts of her the ragged tunic
did not. Manacles encircled her ankles and wrists, and chains ran
between them, long enough to let her walk but not run or fight. She
pawed for her locket, but it no longer hung around her neck. Grayhem,
her dear nightwolf, was nowhere in sight.

She spun back
toward the squat, scruffy Magerian who had struck her. He wore golden
eclipses upon his pauldrons, she saw; this one was a commander. She
spoke in a slow, steady voice simmering with rage.

"Let. Us. Go."
She bared her teeth. "I don't know who you are, but if you don't
release us, I will—"

He drove his fist
into her belly.

She doubled over,
coughing and spitting out blood. Her eyes burned. She could barely
breathe.

"Chop off her
head, Sir Gora!" shouted a soldier.

"Gouge our her
eyes!" cried another.

Through her tears,
Madori saw the gruff captain—Sir Gora—shake his head and spit.
"This one's a mongrel. Only half nightcrawler, she is. Her hair
ain't white and her skin ain't pale enough to be full-crawler. Serin
said to keep mongrels alive." He shook blood off his fist.
"She'll get to the emperor, one way or another." He pulled
a whip off his belt and cracked it in the air. "Nightcrawlers—move!"

Around the chained
prisoners, the Magerians soldiers mounted horses and cracked whips.
Several of those whips landed across Elorian backs, shedding blood.

"Move!"

One by one, the
Elorians began to shuffle forward; their chains only allowed them to
take short, heavy steps. A few wept as they walked, their manacles
clattering, their chests shaking. Others glanced around nervously.
Some walked while staring with defiance, eyes hard, fists clenched. A
few were were strong and healthy; they walked straight. Others were
too old, too young, wounded, or weak; they limped and swayed as they
hobbled forward.

Her mouth still
bleeding, Madori walked with them. When she missed a step, Gora—he
now rode upon a stallion beside her—cracked his whip. Stones cut
into Madori's bare feet, her chains felt heavier than boulders, and
her head spun so wildly she barely knew north from south. As the
convoy of prisoners moved, the Magerians kept shouting and lashing
their whips. They herded the prisoners into a long, snaking line,
three or four Elorians wide.

"March!"
Gora shouted from his horse. "Move, nightcrawlers! Stop and you
die."

One Elorian, a
little boy barely ten years old, swayed and collapsed.

"Move!"
Gora shouted. "Up!"

The Radian's whip
hit the boy's back. Blood splattered.

"Stop that!"
Madori shouted. She lunged forward, trying to reach the fallen boy,
but Radian soldiers grabbed her, tugged her back into the line, and
shouted at her to keep walking.

"Let go!"
She managed to tear free, even with her chains, and hurried toward
the fallen boy. Gora was leaning across his saddle, beating the
child, whip landing again and again. Madori screamed and placed
herself between the boy and the whip. The lash struck across her
chest, and she yowled.

"Back into the
line!" Gora shouted.

"Let me help
him," she said, blood dripping across her. She knelt and tried
to raise the Elorian boy, to revive him.

Oh
stars . . .

She lowered her
head, weeping.

The boy was dead.

"Walk!"
Gora shouted. He dismounted his horse, grabbed Madori under the arms,
yanked her to her feet, and shoved her back into the line with the
other prisoners.

She
kept moving, her chest constricting with fear. Before her, the two
thousand survivors stretched across the dark plains. They moved on,
leaving the ruins of Pahmey behind.

Madori could barely
walk. She had lost too much blood, was too hurt, and her chains were
too heavy. Yet she forced herself to keep moving one foot after
another, refusing to fall.

Breathe.
Focus. Be a still pond.

The procession
continued to move across the landscape. Madori counted several
hundred Radian troops on horseback, their whips ready to strike any
Elorian who fell.

At first the
Elorians marched close together, some weeping, most silent. But the
road stretched on. After walking for several hours, some began to
fall. An old woman. A wounded soldier, his hand severed. A young
girl. They fell to their knees, begging for rest, begging for mercy.

They found neither.

The Radian whips
tore into flesh.

"Up! March!"

A few of the fallen
rose and shuffled on. Other simply lay on the ground, too weak to
continue. The whips kept cutting into them, and Radian lances drove
into their backs. As the march continued, the prisoners moving deeper
into the darkness, the fallen remained behind upon the barren
land—broken bodies for the night to claim.

As Madori walked,
she kept scanning the crowd of prisoners. She stood at the back of
the line; the two thousand Elorians stretched ahead of her, heads
lowered. Their long white hair flowed like banners, and blood and
dust covered their bodies.

"Are you here,
Mother?" Madori whispered. She kept rising onto her toes, even
hopping in her chains, trying to find Koyee in the crowd. But she
could barely distinguish between the Elorians ahead; bloodied and
chained, they had become a single mass of broken souls.

And they kept
falling.

Whenever one
prisoner crashed down, the Radian whips landed, and spears thrust.
Most of the fallen never rose again. Every few moments, Madori found
herself stepping over another corpse. And with every corpse, her
heart trembled, and she expected to see her mother lying dead beneath
her. She saw so many dead faces: children, elders, wounded soldiers .
. . but never Koyee.

"Are you still
alive, Mother?" Madori whispered, trudging on. "Have you
fallen in the battle of the dusk? Or in the ruin of Pahmey?" She
trembled. "Or do you march here ahead, so close to me?"

"Silence!"
Gora shouted. He rode his horse beside her, swung his whip, and
lashed Madori across the shoulders. "Walk!"

She cried out in
pain, and she kept walking, blood trickling down her back.

The moon rose and
fell above. The stars moved. The Magerians changed their shifts; some
retired to a wagon to sleep, and others emerged to ride the horses
and goad the prisoners on. They had soon walked for a full turn—the
length of a day and night back when the world had still spun—and the
Magerians gave them no rest. The second turn of marching stretched
on, and the whips and spears kept lashing, and the Elorians kept
falling. Their captors laughed as they rode their horses, drank wine,
and feasted upon meat and bread and grapes. Whenever an Elorian fell
dead, they roared with laughter and trampled over the body, leaving
it crushed behind. Whenever Madori looked over her shoulder, she
could see the trail of the dead—hundreds stretching into the north.