Daughter of Moth (The Moth Saga, Book 4) (29 page)

Nitomi tilted her head, grabbed
the scope from him, and stared down. She gasped and covered her
mouth. "Evil magic! Somebody turned them all to straw!"

Cam's heart sank, and a tremble
seized his legs. "No magic," he whispered. "A ruse."

He tightened his jaw and balled
his fists. He thought of his wife, beautiful Queen Linee; of his best
friend, Torin; of hundreds of thousands of people back in Kingswall.

He turned to the two dojai. They
were staring at him silently—Qato somber as ever, Nitomi gasping.

"Take us back to our camp,"
Cam said, forcing the words past stiff lips. "Kingswall is in
danger . . . and a month's ride away. We head back at once."

 
 
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE:
INTO THE WOODS

The wagon trundled down the road,
jostling the Elorians inside their cage. With every bump, Madori
slammed against the bars, and her fellow outcasts swayed and pushed
her harder against the iron. They were only a few miles away from
Teel University now, but bruises already covered her body. The gloomy
sky and clammy rain did little to alleviate her discomfort.

"Damn shackles!" For
the hundredth time, she chose and claimed the shackles that bound her
wrists and ankles. Try as she may, she couldn't change the metal,
only rattle it, nor could she snap the iron—it was too hard. "I
can't break them."

Jitomi stood with his arms
wrapped around her, providing only partial protection from the iron
bars and the elbows of their fellow students. Still, she was thankful
for his embrace.

"We're too weary for magic
now." He kissed her cheek and tucked one of her strands behind
her ear. "And it's hard to change something as intricate as a
lock when the wagon keeps bouncing. When we stop, we'll try again."

She sighed and leaned her head
against his shoulder, only for the wagon to bounce again and toss
them against the bars. She winced. She imagined that under her robes,
her body was striped like a zebra. Shivering with cold, weary, and
aching all over, healing magic was beyond her grasp too. She made a
halfhearted attempt—the latest in many—to claim and bend the cage
bars, only to slump in weariness again.

"If only we had stayed at
Teel another year, we'd be powerful enough to break out of this
place," Madori said. She sighed. "I didn't think our first
year at Teel would end like—"

"Silence, nightcrawler!"
shouted the wiry, one-eyed soldier Madori had secretly nicknamed
Patchy. Walking beside the wagon, the brute lashed his club between
the bars. Madori tilted back just fast enough to avoid the blow. "You
talk again, I open this cage and bash in your teeth."

On the other side of the cage,
the second guard—this one a beefy, older man with white
stubble—burst out laughing. "We'll soon do some bashing. Lord
Serin said we reach the forest first. There we—"

"You too shut your mouth!"
snapped Patchy. "I'll bash your teeth in too."

The larger guard fell silent.
The two kept trudging through the mud, the rain pattering against
their helmets and armor. Ahead upon the wagon, the third of their
captors—the dour coach rider—leaned forward in his seat. Madori had
still not heard that one speak nor seen his face. From the cage, the
driver seemed like a gargoyle, hunched over and stony, the rain
streaming off his cloak.

We'll
soon do some bashing . . .

Madori looked at Jitomi. She saw
the same concern in his eyes.

He leaned against her,
pretending to kiss her ear, and whispered in Qaelish, the language of
her Elorian homeland. A child of Ilar, his accent was thick but his
words confident. "Conserve your magic. You might need it yet."

She stroked his head and nestled
against him, pretending to nuzzle his cheek. "Where are they
taking us, Jitomi?"

He held her close, stroking the
stubbly hair on the back of her head. "I don't know but I doubt
they'll just set us free." He let his hood droop, curtaining
their faces, hiding them from the guards. When he spoke, his lips
brushed against hers. "Whatever happens, I'll look after you."

She nodded, her eyelids brushing
his cheeks. "And I'll look after you. I'm a better mage than you
are."

He sighed. "With me
battered and bruised, there are lumps of coal that are better mages
than me right now."

She stifled a laugh, glancing
back at the guards. "I've seen you in Magical Healing. There
were always lumps of coal better at magic than you, at least in that
class."

"Well, Madori, you are the
best healer Teel has had in—" He bit down on his words and
glanced out the bars; Patchy was walking near again, grumbling under
his breath about nightcrawlers and their stench.

Madori too feel silent, deciding
to conserve her breath along with her magic. She stood still, holding
Jitomi, wishing the cage left her room to sit down or even stretch.
The other outcasts pressed against them, silent and dour, rain
dripping off their robes and white hair.

The hours stretched on and the
guards gave them no rest. Thunder rolled in the distance and
lightning flashed, illuminating a distant fort upon a hill. Madori
was nodding off—even as she still stood on her sore feet—when she
saw the marching army.

She stiffened. Jitomi inhaled
sharply and held her closer. Around them, the other students narrowed
their eyes.

Countless Radian troops were
marching toward them along the road, each man clad in steel and armed
with a sword, dagger, and spear. When lightning flashed again, the
Radian eclipses shone upon breastplates, shields, and helmets. The
wagon was moving north while these troops marched south, moving in
two lines, mud staining their boots.

"Elorian prisoners!"
one soldier cried out, his eyes widening to see the cage. "Damn
nightcrawlers."

Another soldier guffawed and
slammed his blade against the bars. "Hang these bastards. Death
to Eloria!"

The wagon kept trundling south,
and the soldiers passed them by, one line of troops on each side, as
if the wagon were rolling down some great, steel throat. Some
soldiers stared with wide eyes, others sneered, and some guffawed.
One man began to sing a song, its words lovingly detailing the
plunder of Eloria and the slaughter of "nightcrawlers."
Soon all the troops were singing as they walked by. One man tossed a
rock into the cage, hitting Jitomi in the shoulder. Another soldier
dropped his pants and wriggled his backside at the cage.

"Kind of looks like Lari,"
Madori remarked to Jitomi.

"Enjoy your bars, scum!"
one troop said and spat onto Madori. "Once we invade the night,
we won't just cage you. We'll drive our swords into your bellies."
He waved his sword as if to demonstrate.

It seemed an hour that the
troops kept walking by, two by two; there must have been thousands.
Finally the last stragglers passed them by, leaving the wagon to
trundle alone along the cold, empty road.

"They're all riled up and
look ready for war." Jitomi whispered. "Where do you
imagine they're going?"

Madori chewed her lip. "Not
to attack Arden; an army that size would have to cross at Hornsford,
and they're moving the wrong way. Might be a battle on the southern
border with Naya. Or maybe Serin just wants to bolster his troops in
the capital, and—"

"Silence!" Patchy's
club swung through the bars again, hitting Madori on the arm. "One
more word and teeth spill."

She fell silent but her mind
still worked feverishly. With Serin on the throne and his troops
moving across the land, war was near. She had heard enough of her
parents' war stories to smell it in the air. She thanked Xen Qae,
Idar, and the constellations of Eloria that at least Mageria shared
no border with the night. If Serin had access to Eloria, she had a
feeling all those troops would be streaming into the shadows right
now, plundering and butchering and burning.

Arden
still separates Serin from the night,
she thought, feeling some relief.
King
Camlin and Queen Linee defend that land. Serin cannot cross.
She
took a shuddering breath.
Eloria is safe.

Trying not to remember the
stories her parents had told her of the last invasion of Eloria, she
leaned her head against Jitomi's shoulder. He held her close and
stroked her hair, running his hand again and again between the
stubbly back and the long, silky strands that drooped from over her
brow.

They must have been traveling
for at least a turn now, maybe two. Madori's belly ached with hunger,
and her eyelids drooped with weariness. At some point she nodded off,
pinned between the bars and Jitomi, sleeping fitfully even as the
wagon bounced and her feet ached beneath her. When she opened her
eyes again, the rain had stopped, though thick clouds still covered
the sky; it seemed almost as dark as Eloria, and she was thankful for
her oversized eyes. Jitomi was still awake, his own large eyes
gleaming as they moved back and forth, scanning the landscape.

While she had slept, they had
entered a forest. Oaks twisted around them, their trunks forming the
shapes of beasts and cruel faces in her imagination. Pines coiled,
sending branches like lecherous fingers to slap against the bars.
With the canopy shielding the overcast sky, the light dimmed further.
The leaves turned dark gray, the shadows dark like demons lurking
between the trunks. Madori was reminded of the dusk, that twilit
strip that lay many miles away, a land neither day or night. When
lightning flashed, the trees—white, looming, twisted—seemed like
goblins about to strike, their faces long and cruel.

Finally the wagon rolled to a
halt.

The prisoners—Madori had come
to think of them as prisoners rather than outcasts—jostled against
one another. After moving for so long, even in stillness Madori's
head spun and her legs swayed. Patchy—she still did not know his
true name—spat into the dirt, unlocked the cage, and tugged its door
open.

"Everybody out!" He
banged his club against the bars. "Out, vermin! Out or I'll burn
the lot of you."

Madori stood closest to the
door. She had spent the ride wanting nothing more than to leave the
cage. Looking around at the dark forest, she suddenly preferred
staying behind the bars. Yet when Patchy raised his club again, she
winced and began to climb out. Her ankles were still hobbled, her
wrists chained behind her back, and she could only move slowly. Once
past the cage door, she slipped off the wagon's edge, tilted over,
and thumped facedown into the mud. The foul paste filled her mouth,
and Patchy stood above her, his boot inches from her face.

"Up, maggot." He
grabbed her by the collar and yanked her to her feet. Madori growled,
spat out mud, and lunged toward him, intending to knock him down. He
stepped back and Madori, weak and dizzy, fell back into the mud.

It was Jitomi who helped her
rise, as gentle as Patchy was rough. The other Elorians emerged from
the cage too. They stood together on the roadside, twenty-five
banished students.

"Where are we?" Madori
said. "You can't just leave us here. We're in the middle of
nowhere. We'd never find our way home from here."

The trees creaked and a rider
emerged onto the road, still cloaked in shadows. A voice rose, smooth
and cruel as a blade.

"My darling Madori, that is
exactly the idea."

The horse stepped closer,
revealing the rider—a tall man in armor, his hair golden, his eyes
cold and blue. The hard, handsome face twisted into a smile.

Madori sucked in her breath and
took a step back.

"Lord Serin," she
whispered.

 
 
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR:
THE BATTLE OF MUDWATER

Torin walked through the palace
gardens with his queen, missing his home so badly even the aromatic
flowers, the bright birds, and his queen's company could not soothe
his soul.

"I've never seen you so
troubled." Linee's brow furrowed in concern, and she placed a
hand upon his arm. "Torin, smile for me."

He looked at Linee—his queen
and his very old friend. Her golden hair was raised in an elaborate
construction of braids and curls, and her gown shone with jewels.
Idar's sigil, a half-sun, gleamed upon her breast. Torin took her
hands in his and squeezed them, thinking back to that turn—twenty
years ago—when he had first come to these gardens and met his queen.
Linee had been only twenty then, a silly young woman, flighty and
careless as a butterfly. The years had filled her eyes with wisdom
but had not dulled her beauty; her skin was still unlined, her hair
untouched by white, the only sign of her age a lingering sadness that
hung about her like a shadow over a summer garden.

"Queen Linee Solira,"
he said softly, her hands in his. "Few will know what we've been
through, how we fought, how we suffered, what we saw all those years
ago. We've lived in peace since then. We cannot let this peace burn."

"We will not!" she
said. "Cam guards the bridge; it will not fall. Our walls here
are strong; they will stand."

Torin watched a bumblebee fly
from flower to flower. "Lord Serin sits upon Mageria's throne,
and he will not sit idly, content to rule one land. He does not
muster his forces for defense but for war. Eloria is the prize he
craves . . . and we stand in his way."

Linee nodded. "And we will
remain standing. We've sent word to the night; troops will arrive
from Qaelin, swelling our numbers. Already our smiths work turn by
turn, forging new swords and armor. Already our commanders train new
men to fight upon our walls and in our fields." She touched
Torin's arm. "We've faced enemies before and defeated them. Last
war, we were not afraid."

He smiled thinly. "Last war
we were young. Youths are too naive for fear, perhaps. But now we're
older, and now, yes Linee, I'm afraid."