Shadows of Moth (35 page)

Authors: Daniel Arenson

BOOK: Shadows of Moth

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She blinked softly,
struggling to open her eyes. The bed was soft around her, warm and
safe, womb-like, enveloping her. Mother looked down from above, her
lavender eyes loving.

"Mama?"
Madori whispered. "Are the monsters gone?"

"Yes, sweet
child." Koyee wiped the sweat off Madori's forehead. "All
gone. We defeated them."

Madori shivered.
These dreams had been worse than monsters or ghosts. She had dreamed
of cruel men in steel, and many bones, and starvation in darkness,
and . . .

She frowned. She
sat up in bed so quickly her head spun. The room swayed around her.
And she remembered.

She was no longer a
child but a woman. The iron mine. The chasm of bones. Lari. Jitomi.

"Mother!"
Madori's eyes flooded with tears. "Mother, you're alive."

Koyee looked thin,
almost skeletal, her cheeks sunken and her eyes huge. White stubble
covered her head, all her long, silvery hair gone. But she wore a
cloak of lush black silk, the cloth embroidered with red flames. She
smiled warmly and color touched her cheeks.

"I'm alive,
sweetling. We're both ali—"

Madori would not
let her complete her sentence. She leaped up and wrapped her arms
around Koyee, squeezing so hard, never wanting to let go. Hot tears
flowed down her cheeks onto Koyee's cloak.

"I'm so sorry,
Mother." Madori shook, barely able to breathe. "I'm so
sorry for everything. For everything. For how I was. For fighting,
rebelling, running off to Teel. Please forgive me."

Koyee laughed and
her own tears fell. "Only if you forgive me for being a
horrible, stern nightmare of a mother to you. My own mother died when
I was so young, and I didn't know how to handle you." She held
Madori tight. "I'm so glad we're both here."

Held in her
mother's embrace, Madori looked around her. Where was "here?"
She saw curving clay walls, iron beams, and a small round window. The
room was still swaying. At first Madori had thought herself dizzy,
but now she realized—she was on a ship.

Gingerly, she
released her mother, stepped off the bed, and stood for a moment on
bare feet. She was wearing a silken gown, and her wounds were
bandaged. A thought struck her and she looked at her hand. Her
finger, which Lari had cut off, was reattached and bound tightly. A
smile tingled across her lips, and Madori tiptoed toward the porthole
and peered outside.

A gasp fled her
lips. Many other ships sailed outside, a great fleet—their sails
battened, their decks lined with cannons, their figureheads shaped as
dragons and panthers. Red flames were painted onto iron hulls.

"The Armada of
Ilar," she whispered in awe. She spun back toward her mother.
"Jitomi! I remember. He brought aid." She laughed. "Not
all Eloria has fallen. There is hope."

A voice spoke
softly behind her. "There is always hope."

She turned around,
saw him standing at the door, and her eyes dampened anew. "Jitomi."

He smiled, though
there was pain and sadness to that smile, and suddenly Madori
hesitated. She had parted from Jitomi in anger at Oshy. Would he
still be mad at her? Were things still broken between them? But then
his smile widened, and his eyes softened, and he held out his arms.
She raced toward him and they embraced. He kissed the stubbly top of
her head.

"Silly little
Billygoat," he said.

She gasped. "Nobody
but my parents is allowed to call me that." A thought struck
her, and she turned back toward Koyee. "What of Father? Have we
any word of him?"

Koyee still sat
upon the bed, her hands in her lap. Her eyes darkened. "Only
rumors. They say that your father was captured in Kingswall, but that
Cam freed him from his Radian captors. Men speak of a Free Arden in
the northern forests, joined to Verilon. A northern front rages
there. I believe that Torin still lives, that he still fights."
She placed a hand against her chest. "Our hearts are joined, and
I can feel his heart still beating with mine."

Madori breathed a
sigh of relief. Father was fighting in the war, but he had not died,
at least not that they knew of. She sniffed and turned back toward
Jitomi. "What of Tam? And Neekeya?"

Jitomi lowered his
head. "Of them we have no words, no whispers, no rumors. All we
know is that, when we parted last year, they were heading to Daenor.
We've heard talk of Daenor falling to the Radians, but not of our
friends' fate."

Madori nodded
silently, and fear for her friends gnawed on her. "I need to see
the water and the sky." She wobbled toward the door, still so
weak. When she passed by a mirror, she looked at herself, and she
barely recognized the reflection. The girl she had been—with tanned
skin, fierce eyes, and two long strands of black hair—was gone.
Instead she saw a pale, thin woman, only black stubble on her head.
Her purple eyes seemed even larger than usual in her gaunt face. She
tightened her lips, looked away, and exited the chamber.

She found a
staircase and climbed, holding onto the rail for support. The smell
of oil, steel, and water filled her nostrils, and she breathed in
deeply and climbed onto the deck.

"We're sailing
on the Inaro," she whispered in awe. She would recognize this
river anywhere; it was the river that ran south of Oshy, her home in
the night, and that morphed into the Sern River upon which
Fairwool-by-Night had stood. She did not recognize what part of the
Inaro this was, only that here was the starlit water of her
childhood.

The deck stretched
hundreds of feet long, and many Elorian soldiers bustled across it.
They were not the soldiers of Qaelin, her homeland; Qaelish soldiers
wore steel scales and elegant, curving helmets. These soldiers wore
heavy, lacquered plates painted red and black, tassels hanging from
them. Their helmets were shaped as snarling demons complete with
horns and fur mustaches. Many katanas hung across their backs, the
grips wrapped with red silk. Here were the soldiers of Ilar, the
southern empire Jitomi was from.

When she looked
across the water, Madori saw many other Ilari ships, all bearing the
Red Flame sigil. She gasped to see some Timandrian ships too—tall
carracks built of wood, their sails woven of canvas. When she noticed
that Ilari banners rose from them too, she tilted her head.

"We captured
them in battle," Jitomi said, coming to stand beside her. He
placed his hands against the balustrade and leaned forward, gazing at
the rest of his fleet. "Many sailed against us further
southeast. Many sank." He smiled thinly. "I took a few for
my fleet."

She looked at him,
eyes narrowed. "Your fleet?"

He smiled wanly.
"For a while longer."

He spoke then of
the past few moons—how he had traveled to Ilar, how his father had
died, how he had become Emperor of Ilar. He spoke too of sailing
north along the Inaro, of meeting the Radian fleet in the water, and
of sailing onward until he reached the ruin of Pahmey.

"I had hoped
to find you in the city," he said. "When we saw that Pahmey
was gone, we captured a few Radian soldiers who were lingering around
the ruins. We questioned them. When I learned of the mine, hope
sprang in me, hope that you still lived." He took her hand in
his. "And you are alive."

She leaned her head
against his shoulder. "For a while longer."

He placed an arm
around her and pulled her close. "Now we must choose, Madori. We
must choose our path. We are a lone army in a sea of enemies. A lone
beacon of hope in a land where all other hope is lost. Do we land our
fleet upon the bank, then march across the darkness of Qaelin,
seeking survivors?"

"Where is
Serin?" she asked.

Jitomi looked out
across the water. "Radians we captured spoke of him returning
west into sunlight, back to his palace in Mageria."

"Then that is
where we go." She walked along the bulwark, moving between
soldiers, until she reached the prow of the ship. An iron figurehead,
shaped as a dragon, thrust ahead. The western waters were dark and
calm; their ship led the way. Darkness waited there in the distance,
but beyond it, Madori knew, lay the light of day. Jitomi came to
stand beside her, and they stood together, staring at the horizon as
behind them sailed hundreds of Ilar's ships.

"We sail on,"
she whispered. "We sail through darkness and we sail into the
light. We sail along the Inaro, and along the Sern River, until we
reach Serin's backyard. We will do what no Elorian army has ever
done: Invade the daylight."

Jitomi wrapped his
arms around her and kissed her head, but Madori would not relax in
his grip. She kept staring ahead into the shadows, and pain filled
her.

I will never forget this pain,
she thought, and her eyes stung, and her throat constricted.
I
will never forget how the whips hurt me, how the hunger clawed at my
belly, how I watched my people die. Forever, in darkness or in light,
that nightmare will fill me. We will meet again, Serin. I promise you
this. I vow this by the stars of my forebears. We will meet one more
time, Serin . . . the last time. The time I kill you.

The fleet sailed on
through the darkness. Ahead, across many miles of shadow, the dusk
blazed with light.

The story will continue in . . .

LEGACY OF MOTH

The Moth Saga, Book Six

COMING SOON

To learn when
Legacy of Moth
is released, sign up to the Daniel Arenson mailing list (you'll also receive a free ebook as a gift):
DanielArenson.com/MailingList

AFTERWORD

Thank you for reading
Shadows of Moth
. I hope you enjoyed this novel.

Want to know when the next book is released? Here are some ways to stay updated:

* Join my mailing list at:
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And if you have a moment, please review a
Moth
book online. Help other fantasy readers and tell them why you enjoyed reading. And please help spread the word! Lend
Moth
to a friend, talk about
Moth
online, and help others discover these books. You can review the first
Moth
book
here
.

Finally, remember to visit the
Moth
website, where you can find original
Moth
music, artwork, a wiki, and more:
DanielArenson.com/Moth

Thank you again, dear reader, and I hope we meet again between the pages of another book.

Daniel

NOVELS BY DANIEL ARENSON

THE MOTH SAGA