A Lament of Moonlight Read online

  Abagail struggled to catch her breath. “If you don’t let me go, I might not be alright,” she complained.

  Rorick laughed and let her go. He stared into her hazel eyes, tension melting away from his forehead as he finally realized that she was going to make it.

  “You had us all worried,” Celeste said. “Thank the All Father that Mari is so skilled with healing.” At the mention of the name, the other female elf, the one that looked like a child, perked up.

  “Hey, I helped,” the male elf said. He sauntered forward and held out his hand. “I’m Skye Caldor.” He was tall and thin. His hair was so blond it was almost white and it stood up at odd angles all around his head. Skye’s eyes were violet and sparkled in a way that made Abagail blush.

  She took his hand in her left, the one that wasn’t infected, and smiled. With a great effort she broke her gaze from his.

  “Mari,” Abagail said. “Thank you for your help.”

  Mari nodded and bowed her head. She was smaller than both of the other elves, and thinner. Abagail couldn’t help but think that Mari looked very much like a doll she’d had when she was younger. Her mouth seemed to move, but Abagail couldn’t hear what she said.

  “Sorry, she’s shy with new people,” Skye said.

  “I couldn’t tell,” Abagail said.

  “She truly is one of the best healers the light elves have ever seen,” Celeste said, and smiled at her friend.

  “I’m not that good,” Mari mumbled.

  Abagail looked to her sister.

  “I may have been out of it, but I remember what happened,” she said. She felt at her stomach, expecting to feel the wound where Daniken had driven the sun scepter into her stomach. She looked to her sister. Her blond hair, cropped so short a few days ago, was already starting to grow back in. “Thank you for saving me…again.”

  Leona blushed and nodded her head.

  “Celeste, I’m sorry about—,”

  “Don’t mention it,” Celeste said, waving away Abagail’s words. “She brought it on herself, and while I wish she hadn’t, there was very little doubt in my mind that Daniken would eventually meet with death.”

  Everyone dies, Abagail remembered the ballicrie saying. She shivered and yanked her mind away from the memory.

  “What about your scepter?” Abagail asked.

  “It was blooded by a harbinger,” Celeste said. “It has been opened.”

  “And that’s bad?” Abagail asked.

  “That’s what I’ve been wondering, how is that bad?” Rorick asked.

  “Besides the fact that it has to be bathed in the dying blood of a harbinger?” Celeste asked.

  “So I died?” Abagail asked, thoughts straying once more to the ballicrie. If she’d died, then she didn’t have to worry about the kiss, maybe it had already come to pass?

  “No,” Mari said. She tucked a strand of blond hair behind her ear as everyone’s eyes shifted to her. “You didn’t die.”

  Abagail looked to her hands.

  “Dying blood. You were dying,” Celeste said. “Mari stopped it.”

  “And now the scepter is open, and that’s good, right?” Rorick asked.

  “Kind of,” Celeste said. “I can do more harm against the darklings now, but the reason we never wanted to open the scepters is because it would bring us one step closer to what the dark elves wanted to do, and that would devastate the nine worlds.”

  “Right, opening the scepters in the Fey Forest would cause a ripple of power to travel through all nine worlds,” Leona said.

  “Not just that,” Celeste said. “We speculate that it would obliterate everything in its path.”

  “What would be the benefit of that?” Abagail asked. “If it destroyed everything, it would kill the elves too.”

  “That’s not exactly right,” Skye said, sitting cross-legged beside Abagail. His knees were touching her leg and she had to fight to keep herself from pulling away. Even so the proximity made her skin tingle. She looked up at the violet eyes of the elf and felt her stomach hitch in a funny way she only associated with Rorick. She quickly looked away, but couldn’t help feel the heat spreading up her leg from where his knees touched her. “Elves are made of light.”

  The moment he said it, Abagail remembered seeing them come the night before. They had traveled like balls of light, smiting the elle folk as they went. Celeste had also traveled by light when she’d left them.

  As if summoned by their conversation, which she might have been, Daphne fluttered down from the canopy above them. She had to be made of light as well. Not just because she was fay. She just radiated a purple light.

  “So this cosmic light,” Abagail said. “Your physical bodies would melt away, and you would become one with the light?”

  “Essentially,” Celeste said.

  “But this is just a theory, right?” Rorick said. “You don’t know for certain that…”

  “What do you think the sun would do to the earth if it settled on the land?” Mari asked.

  “I don’t know,” Rorick confessed.

  “You have Hafaress’ Hearths back on O, right?” Celeste asked.

  “Yes, of course,” Leona said.

  “And that burns. Well, so does the sun,” Celeste told them.

  “Except so much brighter and stronger,” Skye said. “It would burn away everything that ever was. With the sun and moon scepters opened in a way that would burn through all the nine worlds, there would be nothing left in its wake.”

  “But then what would happen?” Abagail asked.

  “The elves are content to live alone, drifting out in the stars?” Leona asked.

  “The dark elves seem to be,” Celeste confirmed.

  “But that’s just a theory,” Rorick said. “How do you know that would even happen? The scepters were given to you so you could protect the worlds from the darklings, and so far it doesn’t seem like the scepters closed are doing much of any good.”

  No one said anything. Abagail stared at Rorick. Leona worried the edge of her lip and toyed with the moon scepter in her lap. Abagail remembered that Leona had killed Daniken, but she didn’t remember her claiming the moon scepter as her own. The scepter was dark now, there wasn’t any light that shined forth from it. She would have to charge it in the light of the next full moon.

  “Maybe the light of the scepters won’t burn anything, maybe they will only shine light in all the dark places of the nine worlds and chase away any darkness.” Rorick was looking at the elves, but only Skye was meeting his gaze. Skye’s eyes were hard, his jaw set.

  “That is always a possibility,” Celeste said with a sigh. Abagail felt less like Celeste was admitting that he was right and more like she just didn’t want to argue with him.

  But Abagail couldn’t deny that what Rorick said made sense.

  “Maybe it’s because you guys don’t like the dark elves that—,”

  Skye lashed out then, backhanding Rorick in the mouth and knocking the bearded man backwards. Blood bloomed to his lip, and his hand went to his mouth. Rorick reached for the hammer, but Leona pulled his hand away from it.

  “You will not speak of things you know nothing about,” Skye said, raising to his full, considerable, height. Was it her imagination, or was he glowing? Or rather, seemed more radiant than normal. “The affairs of elves is no place for humans to go poking around.”

  Mari took several steps back, her arms crossed over her stomach. Celeste stood, placing herself between the two men.

  “When it concerns humans, I think it is the perfect place for my nose to be.” Rorick’s voice was dark, his face was darker. Blood ran over his beard, dripping into his lap.

  “I think we should let this matter rest,” Celeste said. “It does no good for us to talk about it when the elves haven’t even decided what to do. The elves are the ones who will make the decision, no matter what any other race says. We were entrusted with the scepters, and so it’s left to our discretion.”

  “But the ni
ne worlds might hang in the balance,” Leona said.

  “And that’s why it’s such a hard decision to make,” Celeste nodded.

  Several tense moments passed while Rorick wouldn’t meet anyone’s gaze and Skye wouldn’t break his from the other man. Mari was doing a great job ignoring the situation and studying the darklings perched in the branches above. Celeste remained poised between the two men.

  “Alright, so if we’re done with our pissing contest, maybe we can continue on our way to the harbingers of light?” Abagail asked. She stood, her back protesting and felt around for her sword but it was still on her hip. When she looked up, Skye was stalking away, Mari trailing after him and Celeste was helping Leona secure the scepter on her back the way the elves wore theirs.

  Above the group two black birds soared. They weren’t darklings though.

  They were ravens.

  Where would you be without me, Gorjie? Hilda had once cooed to him when he was nothing but a little boy, a snake before his first molting, twined around her wrist. It was a question that filtered down through the years with him. If I didn’t take care of you, where would you be now?

  Most likely dead, withered to dust on the banks of Elivigar, Gorjugan thought. It was Hilda who’d found him when he had been cast out of the Ever After because of his abhorred body. A monster they’d dubbed him. He’d been ripped away from his sister, Vilda, the same way Anthros had been when they’d chained him to the roots of the great tree, and the same way Hilda had been when she’d been sent over the edge of Elivigar and into the inky abyss beyond in nothing but a small boat.

  Gorjugan had been cast out of the light of the Ever After and down into Elivigar. He didn’t get the luxury of a shelter as Hilda had. He didn’t get a place to rest his head like Anthros had. He was nothing but rubbish.

  Until she saved me, he thought.

  The wagon lurched him out of his thoughts. His eyes had been trained on the snowy roadside for some time now, but he didn’t see the banks and drifts, nor did he feel the chill wind that cut through the wagon. His mind was on colder times.

  The one good thing about the elle folk failing was that at least now Gorjugan didn’t have to pay them their fee for services. He wondered how much the flesh of a cast out god could cloth those diminutive beasts.

  I should have done it myself, he thought. At least Hilda hadn’t been there to see his failure. Gorjugan shifted himself around on the soft bench. Even with all of the cushions, the bench quickly grew uncomfortable from the rough cobbled road beneath the wagon’s wheels.

  What state would you be in if I didn’t think for you? She had said. She was always better at making the decisions. Cowardice will get you nowhere. That was another one of her favorite lines.

  But Gorjugan didn’t think of it as cowardice. If the God Slayer struck him, he’d be dead. Not just a little dead. It would be full death.

  At least in Eget Row it would be. There was no telling what fate he might suffer if the God Slayer struck him while he was in a physical body in another world. It was true this body was on loan, but why take risks.

  Not cowardice, Gorjugan began to argue when he got older. I don’t think being cautious would make me a coward.

  Hilda had laughed at that in the way she had when she thought his arguments were cute and didn’t hold any real conviction.

  If only I had done what she wanted in the first place, Gorjugan thought. Then I wouldn’t be racing off into the Frozen North to join the giants. I would probably already be back to Eget Row.

  He tried to imagine how pleased Hilda would be when she saw the God Slayer, when she held it in her hands, her feet resting on the slain bodies of the gods who’d cast them out of the Ever After so long ago. He’d never truly seen Hilda pleased, but he liked to think the smile would spread across her entire face, the rotten half as well as the healthy half. A true smile, not the sardonic half smile she was so used to giving.

  Anthros would be free, and together they would rule over the nine worlds.

  Gorjugan smiled and leaned back in his seat. Soon, he thought. He could feel it. The God Slayer was close, and soon it would be his.

  Soon the Ever After will fall.

  “That’s the way out?” Rorick asked, tightening his grip on the hammer.

  Celeste nodded.

  “But there’s nothing but darklings there.” Abagail said.

  She turned back to the end of the trail. There it was, a curtain of darklings so thick it was like a wall of flapping wings and snapping jaws of shadows.

  “We need to turn back,” Leona said. “We need to find the other way that Daniken hid from us back along the trail. That will take us to the harbingers.”

  Abagail nodded. “You said there was a way that your sister hid from us, a branch of Singer’s Trail that would lead us more directly to the harbingers of light. We should go that way.”

  “She may be right,” Mari said, her voice so low that Abagail could barely hear her over the cacophony of darklings.

  “No, we have a way of getting through this,” Rorick said. “There’s no point in backtracking. We are here, and this is a way out.”

  “And what do you suggest?” Skye asked, spreading his arms wide.

  “The sun scepter,” Rorick said, his eyes darting to the weapon that stuck up over Celeste’s shoulder. “It’s open, you can use that.”

  Skye clenched his jaws.

  Abagail worried the edge of her lip waiting for the blow to come again, but Skye controlled himself this time.

  “It’s open, we can’t deny that,” Leona said. She stepped between the two men. “We would be foolish not to use it. It’s not like using this one scepter is going to bring about the end of the nine worlds.”

  Celeste shook her head. “They’re right. It’s foolish to deny it.”

  “And we’ve seen you guys go all glowy before,” Abagail said. “Can’t you transform to sunlight and destroy them?”

  Mari was nodding before Abagail finished speaking. Something happened with Skye then. It was like Abagail’s voice washed away all the tension Rorick had brought on. His shoulders sagged and he looked to the ground.

  “Yes, you’re right,” he said. “There’s no point in turning—”

  Whatever he was going to say then was drown out in a loud boom from behind them. Energy rippled along the trail and white hot pain shot up Abagail’s arm, straight into her shoulder. Her arm went numb, and she gasped in agony, clutching at her chest where the nerves burned from the force of the attack.

  “What was that?” Leona asked, her hand going to the scepter on her back. She couldn’t channel the power from it at the moment since it was depleted, but it was good enough to function as a club.

  But she really didn’t have to ask, because just then the cloud of darklings at the end of Singer’s Trail surged forth.

  The trail had been compromised.

  The warding collapsed in a shower of angry red sparks.

  They were surrounded in darkness.

  Abagail sunk low to the ground, throwing her arms over her head to protect it from the storm of darklings. She searched for Leona, but she couldn’t find her sister in the beating wings. A sobering thought came to her then. If they were darklings, did that mean they would spread the shadow plague?

  Abagail wasn’t used to having her afflicted hand bare, but it was probably for the best now that the darklings were right on top of them. Before she could fully form the thought, a silver orb of light expanded forth, pushing the darklings back. The orb settled into place around them, the darklings kept at bay.

  Abagail looked around. Rorick was crouched close to the ground, his cloak thrown around him in defense. When he didn’t feel the wings beating at them any longer, he looked up, and Leona crawled out from under his defenses. Celeste was nowhere in sight, but if the flashing gold lights outside Abagail’s protective barrier was any indication, the three elves had transformed into light and were taking care of the darklings.

  Around
the silver shield the darklings fell in troves, vanishing to dust as they drifted to the ground.

  “Abagail,” Leona breathed. She stepped forward, her hand reaching toward the plagued arm, but not close enough to touch it. “Look at the plague.”

  Abagail’s arm was stretched high causing her sleeve to fall around her elbow. The silver light radiated from an opening on her palm, fountaining up and around them. Where the night before the shadow plague had been up near her shoulder, it was now under her elbow.

  “It’s retreating!” Leona said.

  “That can’t be.” Rorick came closer.

  But Leona was right. There was no denying it.

  “It must have to do with how you use the plague,” Leona said. “That all makes sense. If you’re using it to attack, you’re doing what the plague wants.”

  “You’re just speculating,” Rorick said. It was the first time Abagail had heard him shoot down something Leona was saying.

  “No, I think she’s on to something,” Abagail said. For the moment she ignored the darklings around them. “Remember, Celeste said that it would be hard, I would have to work against the plague. Things would happen that would make me give in more easily to the shadow, but I would have to work to do what was right and choose the light.”

  “So when you attack, you’re choosing the shadow,” Leona said.

  “And when I protect, I’m choosing the light?” Abagail said. “This all seems so crazy.”

  “Not as crazy as the shadow plague claiming you. But we have to be right,” Leona argued. “The plague is shrinking.”

  Behind them came the familiar twang of a musical note. The darkling cloud of birds and snakes and wolves fled in terror leaving them alone, surrounded by the orb and the stillness of the frozen forest.

  The three elves alighted on the ground around them. The golden light that encompassed them sloughed off to rejoin the earth. Where it drank the energy in, the earth glowed softly, and then dimmed as the power was neutralized.

  “The elle folk,” Skye said. “They are the ones that must have brought the warding down.”