Текст книги "The Knight and the Moth"

Автор книги: Rachel Gillig

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Текущая страница: 15 (всего у книги 23 страниц)

CHAPTER TWENTY WITH HAMMER, WITH CHISEL

Benji and Maude had joined Rory in a suspended state, staring, mouths agape, dread wafting off them like smoke. “What do you mean she can’t swim?”

“As I said,” the gargoyle remarked, “she is excellent at dr—”

“Outside of Aisling, it is not a good thing to know how to drown.” Maude’s shout echoed through the hall. “It is a very bad thing.”

The gargoyle recoiled, eyes wide, bottom lip quivering. He let out a terrible sob, turned to the open wall—vaulted past the columns and took flight.

I called after him, but my voice was swallowed by the oncoming storm. I glowered over my shoulder. “Don’t yell at him.”

“He’ll survive,” Maude said. “You, however…”

“Maude.” Benji so rarely raised his voice—so rarely tendered anything unpleasant. But now, hands locked in knots, I noted a tear in the visage of his good nature. A temper, lingering beneath. “You put your armor on her,” he snapped. “Now it’s time to put on your faith.” He turned to Rory, anger still fixed on his face. “She can’t use the coin. The inkwell, either. If they’re lost in that water, we’ll never get them back.”

Rory stood in the heart of the hollow room and for once did not fidget. His focus was tethered entirely to me. “It’s up to her.”

It was armor, only armor, that held me up. “I can move my feet. Keep my balance, even if that platform quakes.” I looked down at the coin in my hand. “But if I throw this—miss even once—”

There was a voice in the storm. A low, horrible rasp riding the wind. “Where is the Diviner, who thinks me nothing without her? Where is the Diviner, come to defeat me at my craft?” Then louder, as if echoing in the walls of my head. “Where is the Diviner, come to me for answers?”

I felt like a dreaming child, fallen and shattered within the mountain peaks, trembling. If I glanced up, I could almost imagine I saw Aisling Cathedral’s reaching vaults, where I’d spent my entire life believing in the story of the Omens.

But as I looked at the Ardent Oarsman, I felt my armor around me, so much heavier than gossamer, rooting me to the earth. This was not a dream, and he was not a god. The abbess’s story was fissuring.

And I would help break it.

I handed Rory back his coin and stepped through the columns into the rain.

The others called after me but did not catch me until I was already standing upon the lip of the basin, facing the Omen that waited.

There was a boat—small and wooden—a chain attached to its bow. The chain disappeared into water, then resurfaced upon the Ardent Oarsman’s platform. He reached down. Took it in his fist. Nodded at the boat.

Maude caught me before I could get in. “You need a weapon.” A weight slid into my hand. I didn’t have to look down to know it was her battle-axe. “I do have faith in you,” she said. “I think you would do anything for your Diviners. Even d—”

Her voice was drowned out by a new gust of wind. I looked up. Against the rolling gray sky a dark shape appeared, getting closer and closer. A voice, singing out of tune.

The gargoyle was back.

He landed with a huff, sticking his nose up at Rory and Benji and Maude in particular. But when he reached me, all haughtiness vanished. He looked up with an open face. In his hands, resting in the beds of his palms—

My hammer and chisel.

“It is important for a squire to carry a knight’s weapons,” he said, the words so stoic I wondered if he’d practiced them on the flight back. “I will carry them for you, Bartholomew. I will shoulder any weight you give me.”

Oh, I thought, a great swelling in my chest. To be a gargoyle. To be my gargoyle.

I set Maude’s axe down. Picked up the hammer and chisel. They bore no magic like the stone objects the Omens carried. But their weight was familiar, the feel of them in my palms assuring. With them, I felt strong.

The Ardent Oarsman pointed a gnarled hand at the boat.

“That’s your ride,” Benji said, coming up next to me. “No turning back now.”

“She’s not turning back.” Maude stood at my other side, rapping a knuckle over my breastplate. “I want this returned without a scratch.”

They both stepped aside, but not before Maude offered the gargoyle her hand in apology. He didn’t take it.

And then there was a deep voice in my ear. A steadfast presence at my back. “Nervous, Diviner?”

“No,” I said in a rush. Then, “Tell me—”

I swallowed.

“Tell you…” The warmth in Rory’s voice was dissonant against the sound of rain, pinging over our armor. He rounded my body, blocking my view of the Ardent Oarsman, and pulled Maude’s helmet from the crook in my arm. “What?”

“It’s stupid.”

“Then it should come easily to me.”

I bit down on a smile. “The Diviners asked for stories. When we were sick or tired or afraid. To calm us.”

“You want me to tell you a story?” He placed the helmet on my head, over my shroud. His voice, trapped within the iron, hummed in my ears. “Once, there was a foundling boy who didn’t believe in anything. He grew up, became a worldly knight, and still he struggled to believe. He bore hardly any hope, and a mountain of disdain. And that should have been the end.”

He took my hand, squeezed it, tightening my hold on my hammer. “But then he came to a cathedral upon a tor, and met a woman there. And all the tales he’d troubled himself with about cruelty, about unfairness and godlessness… he started to forget. He was afforded another chance, as if by magic, to believe in something. He’d never be a very good knight, but every time he looked at the woman, he had the distinct faith”—his eyes roved my face—“that things could be better than they’d been.”

I’d fallen through the seams of time into a place where there were no Omens or stone, no armor, no gossamer. There was just Rory, me—and a strange sacrality between us.

He lowered the visor of my helmet. “Can you still see?”

“Yes.”

“Good. If you fall in that water, I’m coming in after you.”

I stepped around him. Faced the basin, the Omen—but looked back to Rory. “It’s a good story, Myndacious. I liked it.”

He held me in his gaze like he needed to. “Do you want to know how it ends?”

“Does it end?”

He nodded. “It ends a handful of minutes from now. After you’ve won, and there is one less Omen in the world.” He grinned. “It ends when you kiss me.”

“You mean it ends after I’ve won, and there is one less Omen in the world—and I hit you as hard as I can.”

“With your mouth.”

I withdrew, tucking away my grin. When I faced the basin again, it was my spine, not my armor, holding me up.

I stepped into the boat.

The Oarsman was on his platform, watching. When I got into his boat he took the chain in both hands and began to yank. The water began to churn, the Omen pulling the boat, and me within it, toward his platform.

I wanted to look back. At the gargoyle and Benji and Maude. At Rory. I wanted to see the assuredness in their gazes. But all I saw, when the boat scraped against the side of the platform and the Ardent Oarsman offered me a gnarled hand—

Were cold stone eyes.

I ignored his hand, hauling myself up and moving to the opposite side of the platform, widening the space between us, ever wary of the water waiting just over the wooden lip.

The Oarsman surveyed me beneath his hood and smiled that toothy, jagged smile. He lifted his oar, pointed it at me like a threat, then swung it outward. His voice boomed over the water. “Any intervention on the Diviner’s behalf shall render the challenge lost and her life forfeit. No gargoyle, no king, no knight shall come to her aid.” His smile widened. “Agreed?”

I allowed myself a glance at the shore. The others were there, hands on their weapons, feet practically in the water, watching with such furious intensity they had the effect of an army awaiting the war call. And Rory—

His face was remade by hate. His black hair caught the wind, painting him wraithlike, a dark smudge in the storm. Maude came up next to him, and Benji as well, Rory and he holding out their stolen objects—the Harried Scribe’s inkwell, the Artful Brigand’s coin—like they were the severed heads of their enemies.

The Oarsman’s knuckles cracked as he strangled the neck of his oar. He pivoted—pointing that oar once more at me. “You little fool.” He made a low, horrible noise. “This will be the end of you.”

I kept my jaw hewn shut.

His stone eyes fell to my hammer. “What will you do? Crack my skull? Do you imagine the truth of your lost Diviners will fall like blood from my brow?” The platform groaned as he took a step forward. “They are to the wind, consumed by this starving world. You should not have come here.” He dipped the blade of his oar over the side of the platform. “But I’m very glad you have.”

The water around the basin erupted. Two waves rose, crashing down on me like cantering horses, dropping me to my knees. I gasped—braced myself. The wind picked up, a ripping force, and the rain hardened to hail.

I understood then the full magic within the Omen’s oar. When he dipped the handle into the water, the magic transported him. When he dipped the blade of the oar in, it became a staff of destruction, the water itself bending to his will. He stirred it, calling forth waves that crashed over the platform, splashing me, making me fall.

I tried to stand—was knocked down by another wave. The platform tilted and I rolled to the lip—the Oarsman suddenly on top of me. I rolled again, and his oar crashed just shy of where my head had been.

I heard voices on the wind. I was too busy trying to hold my hammer and chisel, too busy trying to hold myself from toppling over the edge of the platform, to heed them.

The first time the oar struck me was in the chest. Wind screamed out of my lungs. I faltered, gasped. The second hit was just below the rim of my helmet. Right along the jaw. So hard I fell onto my back and saw stars.

The voices on the wind were louder. Six! Bartholomew!

Move your feet!

Waterlogged, heavy in my armor, I dragged myself up. The Oarsman made a low, mocking noise and swung once more.

My hammer met his oar, the crash rivaling thunder. The reverberation sent us both back a step, fleeting surprise slackening the Oarsman’s glare. He withdrew his oar. Showed me his teeth. I struck again, and he did not block in time. My hammer hit his leg—exactly where I’d stabbed him with my chisel three days ago.

The Omen bellowed, and then he was coming full force—oar in the water, appearing and disappearing and shaking the platform, giving his all to put me once more upon my knees.

Every movement I tended, every breath, was spent defending my stance, my body. I met oar with hammer, kept my balance, tried not to slip—

But it wasn’t enough.

The Oarsman vanished over water, then reappeared right before me. There was a sharp ring. A horrible pain as the oar crashed, full force, into my left hip.

I clattered belly-down onto the platform, waves pummeling over me, filling my mouth with water. I was gasping, choking, trying to haul in air.

The Oarsman stalked toward me. “How easily you fall.” His steps shook the platform. “You believe it is me who is nothing? Look at yourself, Diviner—a child in armor—an insect next to a god.”

He wrenched me up by the back of the neck. Tore at my armor with bruising fingers. “Your conviction in yourself is profane.” He was gasping, ripping away my pauldron and exposing my shoulder, the curve of my neck. “You disgust me.”

He sank his teeth into my skin.

I screamed.

Out on the shore, four figures were a dark blur, a mess of limbs, tangling, struggling. Not against the storm, but one another. Benji, holding back the gargoyle.

Maude, holding back Rory.

The Oarsman made a low noise of pleasure in my ear. “Yes.” He ran his tongue over the bite in my neck, lapping up blood. “You’ve swallowed so much more of Aisling’s water than the other one. I can practically taste the spring.”

Another scream ripped up my throat. I bared my teeth against excruciating pain—

And slammed the back of my head into the Omen’s face.

He staggered back, grasping his oar for support. His face was painted with my blood, and so were his teeth. He opened his mouth, let out a vicious shout that came back a bellow, a chorus and fury over the water.

“What other one?” I was wet, trembling, blood in my mouth. Just like a Divination. “You’ve seen another Diviner?”

“She came as they always do. Utterly still.” The Omen came closer, his steps crashing over the platform. “Every ten years, they come.” He took another step. “It’s the only spring water I’m given—their blood.” Another step. “I have my strength to keep up. My hunger to sate. And so”—he was upon me now—“I take my fill.”

His oar collided with the side of my face.

Maude’s helmet was knocked clean off my head. With it came a desperate ripping sound. A sensation of wetness, like skin, sloughing off. I raised a hand to my eyes—but not fast enough. My shroud tore away. Caught the vicious wind.

Disappeared into the storm.

The ruination upon the Ardent Oarsman’s brow froze. Stone eyes wide, mouth a jagged, bloody hole, he gazed at my unshrouded eyes so intently it seemed to cast him into a dream. A fleeting, utter stillness.

It was enough.

I sprang forward. I had no oar, no inkwell, no coin, but I was across the platform in a flash. The Oarsman let out a rasping shriek—swung his oar. I ducked. Kept going. My vision was blurry, blotted out by rain and blood and the bruises that were already swelling around my eyes, but I kept going.

When we collided, the Ardent Oarsman and I, the clamor was of two undeterred forces—a seismic crash. He fell back onto his platform, and I landed on top of him. He prodded me with the blunt end of his oar, but I was already pressing my chisel over his chest.

He thrashed, frothing as he hit me again and again. But I raised my hammer. Harnessed all the strength I possessed—

And struck it directly into the Omen’s heart.

His cry filled the air, a violent calamity that echoed through the Peaks. The Oarsman looked down at his body—at my chisel, protruding from his chest. Blood oozed, seeping from his clothes onto wood, dripping through the platform’s slats into crystalline water.

I lay over his body. “I have defeated you at your craft, Ardent Oarsman. Matched your strength and overcome it.” Blood, like the rain, streamed down my face. “Where is the Diviner that was brought to you?”

His grip on his oar tightened, but he did not lift it. “Your eyes…” He peered down at himself. At all his blood, staining the basin’s water. “I did not know this could happen. I did not think I would ever die…”

Rage, revulsion, and the unspooling terror that he hadn’t been lying—that he’d sunk his teeth into past Diviners—it did something wretched to me. “Tell me the truth.” My gauntlets crashed into the Omen’s jagged body, hitting, breaking, again and again until my hands were screaming. “Where is the Diviner?”

“I already told you. She came barely a week ago, naked and still. I took her into my castle. Placed her upon my throne…” The Omen’s breaths grew shallow. “And drank her.”

When he looked at me one last time, his stone eyes held nothing. “Dead. Your Diviners are all dead.” A terrible gasp fled his mouth. “And so are you.”

He slammed his oar into the platform.

There was a terrible creak, wood splintering into a thousand pieces beneath me. I lost my balance, held to my hammer and chisel. Rolled, then fell.

Into water.

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The Chiming Wood

Chime.

Harken to the chime in the Wood. There, the wind tells us how to feel what we cannot see. Only the wind can say what is to come.

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CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE SYBIL DELLING

Diviners moved around me, twirling under a watchful moon. They danced upon the world’s grassy tongue, spinning until they were airborne. Pale wings blossomed from their gossamer gowns like petals.

They flew away. I tried to follow, but my feet were pulling me down. The Diviners giggled like sprites in a glen, floating farther away until they were white specks, like stars, upon a violet-blue sky.

I walked alone to Aisling Cathedral. Inside, the abbess waited, a shroud in her hands.

“Well?” she said. “How do you feel?”

“I don’t know.” I looked down at myself. I was naked. “Strange.”

“You are. Sybil Delling is dead. What remains is strange. Special.” The abbess beckoned me forward. She tied the shroud around my eyes, then took my shoulders. Hugged me. “And new.”

She shoved me into the spring.

Water drew over me like the lid of a coffin. The abbess dipped her hand into the spring, grasped my throat and pressed. I cried out, bubbles filling the water. I clawed, thrashed—and was kept down. Pressed and pressed and pressed.

“Benji! Bring her here!”

I heard voices. Not low and steady like the abbess’s, but loud. Rough. Desperate. “Get her out of the fucking armor.”

“It’s bent—I can’t—”

“Pith, she’s blue.”

Someone was crying. Long, aching sobs. “Bartholomew?”

“Give me your axe, Maude.”

“The sprites are coming—”

“Give it to me!”

Pain, greater than I’d ever known, touched my face, my hands, my ribs. I felt something shift—and then an oppressive weight found my chest.

“Come on,” a man’s voice shouted. My mouth was pulled open by an unseen force, hot, torrid breaths filling me. “Breathe, Diviner.”

There were more sobs. “Bartholomew always wakes. Why doesn’t she wake?”

A woman’s voice sounded. “Rory.”

“No.” There was more pressure—a pounding sensation over my chest so violent the world quaked. “Wake up, sweetheart. Wake. Up.”

And the pain, the pain I knew so well from drowning, from dreaming—

Was now the pain of awakening.

I opened my eyes under a new shroud.

Gossamer, fastened too loosely, lay over my eyes. When I peered through it, it was into a darkened room with high ceilings and a tall lancet window that held the night sky.

I wore a long linen tunic and lay in a bed with a pillow and sheets far finer than the ones I’d been afforded at the Diviner’s cottage. I tried to move—to take in the anatomy of the room. But every muscle hurt, and half my bones were arrested in pain. There was a throbbing agony near my temple, and another along my left hip.

But nothing was so painful as my stiff, bandaged neck.

“Hello?” My voice grated up my throat. “Gargoyle?”

No answer.

I sat up. There was red on my linen tunic, too, below my pubis. I’d bled my moon’s blood. I’d been lying there some time, then.

The world was hazy, my mind undulating. I remembered darkness—hands tying fabric around my bleeding neck, then traveling through gales of wind, held in the gargoyle’s stone arms. I was adrift, my body washed and bandaged and put in new clothes. Then, fitful sleep.

It was all so murky. The last clear thing I recalled…

I sat up.

The Ardent Oarsman. His magic oar, calling up waves. Water, crashing into me. Teeth, biting. Blood, pain.

She came barely a week ago, naked and still. I took her into my castle. Placed her upon my throne…

My body seized.

Dead. Your Diviners are all dead.

I leaned over and coughed up bile. Then I was out of my bed, feet slapping against the cold floor.

No fire was lit, the room a dark blotch behind my new shroud. I reached for the iron handle of my door, turned it, and was confronted by a long, twisting corridor with a wine-red carpet that ran down its center like a tongue.

It looked like Aisling. Its ceilings were tall, vaulted, crafted with carefully cut stone. But the cathedral was unadorned but for its ancient pews, its stained-glass windows, and this—wherever this was—

Was opulent in its ornaments.

There were looking glasses taller than me and twice as wide. Tapestries, paintings—landscapes and portraits that, even in the hazy dimness, were vivacious in color. Shelves upon shelves held tomes and glass casings filled with petrified insects, animal pelts—live plants with serpentine stems and black petals I didn’t know the name of.

Artistry, craftmanship, everywhere.

A low creak sounded somewhere ahead, and I limped toward it. When I reached the end of the corridor, I was greeted by three doors.

I don’t know what made me knock on the third door, or why, when no one answered, I opened it.

Hinges groaning, I was confronted by a wide room, lit by moonlight and the dying embers in a hearth. I stepped inside, throwing shadows hither and yon. The room was as the corridor—cluttered with artifacts. I saw a table, strewn with stacks of paper, some aged, some new. “Hello?”

No one answered.

I came to the desk, looking for a seal—some indicator of where I might be. The Harried Scribe’s stone inkwell was there. My stomach twisted. So was the Ardent Oarsman’s oar. I ignored both, my fingers scraping over parchment, stirring dust. There were leaflets, letters, and—

My breath stilled.

Benji’s grandfather’s notebook.

A more obedient version of me would have left it alone. It wasn’t mine to look at. But that version of me belonged to Aisling Cathedral, and I had fled that place, intruding upon the strange, perilous land of Traum.

What was one more trespass?

I opened it, the smells of aged leather and parchment filling my nose. I didn’t know what I was looking for. Something to challenge the horrible things the Ardent Oarsman had spewed before his death. Proof of Diviners past. Reassurance, in all of King Castor’s scholarly learnings, that daughters of Aisling had never been treated as anything but holy.

I saw his art instead. Beautiful drawings, some in dark ink, others in faded color. He’d drawn sprites, a few I recognized, many I didn’t. Some looked like monsters—twisted bodies, hollowed-out eyes, jagged teeth and claws—while others were strange amalgamations of birds and reptiles and mammals.

He’d drawn gargoyles, too, the detail striking, particularly their wide stone eyes.

Beneath them, in slanted script, was writ: The gargoyle sprite has no discernable home, save the tor, for their bodies are composed of the same limestone as the spring in which the Diviners dream.

I shoved the page aside, accosted by maps—dozens of them, with scribbles in the margins. King Castor had charted all the hamlets, and I could make out the rows of merchant tents at Coulson Faire, the cobbled streets and reaching buildings of the Seacht—the jagged contours of the Fervent Peaks. There was faded yellow paint where he’d painted the birch trees of the Chiming Wood, and pink where he’d rendered the dawn, rising over the sea along the Cliffs of Bellidine. Then, near the end of the notebook—

A cathedral atop a hill. A long stone wall.

And six shrouded figures.

I leaned in—traced a finger over the ink. The art was faded, but I knew exactly who the six figures were. They weren’t Omens.

They were Diviners.

Above each of them, drawn in careful detail, was a moth.

King Castor’s slanted script returned. I have traveled Traum, this land we have settled into the Stonewater Kingdom; known her hamlets like the fingers of my hand. Yet I have never met a Diviner after her service at Aisling Cathedral has passed. There are no records of them in the Seacht libraries, no mention of their names or even their numbers. Indeed—how does the abbess choose them? Where do they go after ten years? I seek them, but they remain hidden. They are saints and martyrs, as venerated, as significant—as unknown—as the Omens themselves.

I turned to the last page of the notebook, where a single line was written.

But ever, I wonder. What horrible thing do they hide behind their shrouds?

“Six?”

I whirled.

Benji stood behind me, holding a cup of wine and a candle.

My voice was an ugly rasp. “Where am I?”

“The Chiming Wood. This is Petula Hall—Maude’s house.” His eyes were wide. “We arrived yesterday. You’ve been unconscious. Are you—do you feel any better?”

His eyes fell to his desk. To the notebook, sprawled open upon it.

I stabbed my finger over the final page. “What is this?”

He didn’t seem to understand. “My grandfather’s notebook.”

“He’s written about Diviners.” The bite marks in my neck seared with every word. “You told me he hadn’t.”

The king fiddled with his wineglass. “Yes, well, what he wrote wasn’t exactly relevant to taking up the—”

I came before him like a dark shadow. “This was never about taking up the mantle for me, boy-king. It was about finding my friends.”

He nodded so quickly he looked like he was shaking. “I thought you might not come with us if you knew what my grandfather had written—that no Diviner had ever been heard from after her service at Aisling. I thought—” He looked to his wine for courage, upending it into his mouth. “I thought it would pain you.”

I put a hand to my bandaged neck. “So the king decides when I should bear pain and when I shouldn’t, so long as it serves him best?” I said it with the tastelessness it was due. “Not so different from the abbess, are you? From an Omen.”

Benji flinched. “It sounds horrible when you put it like that.”

“True things often do.”

Shoulders slumping, mouth struck down, the king looked helpless. “I’m sorry, Six. It is very difficult for me, with all of Traum’s opposing stories, to know what to say, or what is right. I usually ask Maude or Rory to tell me what to do, because most of the time I simply don’t know. I should have just been honest.” His chin began to tremble. “There is a very good chance we will not find your Diviners.”

Dead. Your Diviners are all dead.

“Because of Aisling’s spring water. Because the Omens crave it, and we have spent our service drowning in it. So when our ten years are up, the abbess—” But I couldn’t say the rest. “Where is my gargoyle?”

“He’s with Maude in the village. Pith, I’m sorry, Six. It’s—oh. You are…” Benji’s gaze lowered to my tunic. “You’re bleeding.”

“I’m fine.”

“We thought you were dead, you know. We got the oar off the platform before it sank. Kicked the Ardent Oarsman’s corpse for good measure. We pulled you out of the water and Rory beat your chest, but we thought—” Benji’s voice was small. Frayed. “You should rest. I’ll send for some fresh clothes.”

He left me the way he’d found me. Alone with the unbearable truth.

I didn’t go back to my room. I didn’t know where I was going—but I went.

Bare feet slapping against stone, I took to the stairs. When I reached the entry, the punctures in my neck swelled as I hauled open the great wood door.

The stormy skies I’d known in the Fervent Peaks were gone. The Chiming Wood’s night was still, with blue heavens and a glowing moon that hung over a dense forest of birch trees.

I limped away from Petula Hall down the drive until I stood at the edge of a vast wall of trees. Slipped into the arms of the Wood.

And screamed.

My feet couldn’t take me where I needed to go, because my feet were bleeding. Just as well. I had nowhere to go. I tripped over rocks, roots, brambles.

Fell.

I lay utterly still upon dirt, bleeding moon’s blood, praying for a way to sink my teeth into earth and stone and flesh and rip Traum open until the entire world was a gaping wound. To wipe Aisling Cathedral from existence. Obliterate the Omens from lore, from memory, from the annals of time.

I lay there and lay there, and my prayers weren’t answered. Nothing answered, save the wind.

It wasn’t a mournful note like it was upon the tor. The wind in the Wood was a chime, dissonant, discombobulating, flinging itself near and far. It reverberated through the trees, the leaves, the thorny vines that lay over the road.

The Wood suddenly felt tighter, the air closer, as if the spaces between the birch trees had narrowed. I looked up. Studied them. Their pale bark wasn’t translucent or papery, but mottled. Heavy. Like old flesh. And the knots in the trunks—gashes of darkness in all that pale, sloughing bark—

The knots were eyes. Hundreds of black, lidless eyes, watching me.

I jerked back, my hands, my feet scraping over thorns, scoring the road red.

There was a noise. The groan of wooden wheels.

Yellow light split the darkness. I blinked against it, and saw that there was a cart on the road, drawn by a gray horse, coming toward me. Driving the cart was a man with a gray beard, stooped over the reins. Next to him, lantern light catching along the angles of his face, his black hair, the rings in his ear—

Rory.

When I looked back to the birch trees, they were eyeless once more. Just wood and bark and branches and leaves.

I slipped into their gaping shadows.

From between thorns, I watched the cart roll past. Then—

“Whoa.”

The horse whickered a complaint, and the cart groaned to a halt.

“Go ahead, Victor.” Rory’s boots hit the ground. “I’ll be there shortly.”

The cart resumed its journey, but those boots stayed firmly in my line of sight, rocking back and forth onto their heels. “Whoever you are who’s bled onto the road,” Rory called, “I hope you’re enjoying your night.”

When I stepped from my hiding place, Rory’s eyes widened, roaming over my clothes—and the blood upon them. “What the fuck, Diviner.”

I touched my new shroud. “Did you put this over my eyes?”

He blinked confoundedly, like he’d been thrown into a horse race with no horse. “Did I—yes, I put that there. I’d thought you’d—” He shook himself. “The Wood is dangerous after dark. What the hell are you doing, bleeding out here in the middle of the night?” He hissed out a sigh. “And would you look at that. You’re not wearing shoes.”

“I’ve spoken to Benji. He told me what his grandfather knew. That there are no records of Diviners after they leave the tor. That’s why”—I spoke too fast, rushing through the atrociousness of it all—“the Ardent Oarsman bit me, because he’s put his teeth in Diviners before. Lapped up their blood. They’re—” I forced myself to say it. “They’re dead.”

Warmth fled his face, silence taking us in its fist. Rory did nothing to dispel it, then—“The Artful Brigand always wanted the spring water. But the rest—” He was too anxious, too furious to even fidget, standing perfectly still. “I didn’t know.”

I was struggling to breathe. Underwater. Drowning all over again. “The abbess never told us how the spring works. How the dreams come. But it’s fearsome magic. When I Divined for you, when the gargoyle drowned me, I didn’t dream of the five Omens… I dreamed of the sixth. The moth. The Diviners vanished after that.” I put my hand to my chest. “Maybe I’ve known this entire time that something horrible had happened. That I’d never see them again.”