Filed To Story: The Knight and the Moth Book PDF Free by Rachel Gillig
My hands fell to the hammer and chisel upon my belt. “Should we get the others?”
“Benji will still be in the water. Wouldn’t want to give the Oarsman time to vanish,” Rory whispered, stepping forward. “No sudden movements, all right?”
“I say, Bartholomew-“
“No talking, either.” He nodded at the stairs. “We go very, very quietly.”
My feet were silent and so, so cold upon the castle’s stone steps. I held the gargoyle’s hand in a vise and Rory took the other, his right hand balled in a fist around the Artful Brigand’s coin.
The three of us walked in a silent, crooked line up the stairs.
The shale sprites slept on, their sleeping breaths low growls. A few stirred, others sniffed the air-rows of teeth peeking behind thin lips. One even stuck out a jagged tongue as I passed, nearly grazing my bare foot. I flinched, tasting my own heartbeat.
But none woke.
Rory squeezed my hand. Kept pulling me forward. Rain pinged against his armor, and then we were past the sprites, up and up until there were no more stairs to climb.
We stood before the weathered castle door. Rory tried the handle. Locked.
“Someone ought to knock,” the gargoyle whispered.
Rory looked back at the sprites. Swallowed-then pounded the door.
The clamor resounded in the palm of the mountains, as if he’d knocked on the peaks themselves, and then there was a shuffling of footsteps, a low, terrible creak.
The sprites sprang awake, and the castle door opened. From it, darkness spilled, a cloaked figure within it.
He was taller than me-taller than Rory-wide in the shoulders and tapered at the waist. From the long spool of his tattered wool sleeve was a hand composed of gray skin and jagged joints.
The Ardent Oarsman clutched his stone oar and looked down upon us.
I couldn’t see his face. The mouth of his hood was all darkness. Still, I could feel his gaze. When the Oarsman spoke, his voice was a low rasp that put a thousand prickles on the back of my neck. “Who comes?”
“The king’s knight.” Rory stepped forward, lazily hunched. Had I not understood his back, his shoulders tighter than a bowstring, I might have thought him bored. “With a Diviner and her gargoyle.”
“A Diviner?” The Omen said it sluggishly, as if all the surprise had atrophied out of him long ago. “There must be some mistake.”
“There is no mistake, Oarsman.” My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. “I’ve come for answers.”
Rory’s voice was dangerously even. “And to take up the mantle.”
The Oarsman stood eerily still. Slowly, he lifted a hand-withdrew the hood of his cloak.
I swallowed a scream. The Harried Scribe’s face had been flesh, but the Ardent Oarsman’s face was akin to the mountain sprites-gray, smooth in some places and rough in other. His eyes were smooth, pallid.
Made entirely of limestone.
His lips pulled back in a smile, and I saw that his teeth were fangs. Shattered, sharpened stone. His gaze shifted between Rory and me and the gargoyle. He lifted his oar, pointing it into the dark castle, and that terrible serrated smile widened. “Won’t you come in?”
Not even a flickering candle lent animation to the castle. Dark and full of angles, with no carpet, no hearth, Rory and the gargoyle and I were led into a hall, the sprites stalking in our wake. The east wall was opened up to the night, a low breeze blowing. Through a row of columns, I could see out into the peaks-see the basin of crystalline water and the moon over it.
Cold and entirely inhospitable, the hall bore only three adornments. A pool, hewn into the stone floor, brimming with water. A throne, gray and lifeless as everything else-
And a mountain of gold.
There were piles of it, stretching like pillars to the lofty ceilings. Coins, gold trinkets. I even saw the rich colors of jewels. A king’s fortune, as vast as the Harried Scribe’s library-all of it covered by a thick layer of dust.
“Quite the banquet hall you have,” Rory said, the room throwing his echo back at him. “Though reaching it proved a bit of a task.”
“I built it myself.” The Ardent Oarsman rounded his pool and stood on one side while Rory and the gargoyle and I remained on the other. “Culled granite and shale from the Peaks. It took time-I’m no stone mason.” His eerie eyes fell to the hammer and chisel on my belt. “But I learned a few things from my time upon the tor.”
His gaze rose to my face. “Was it you who left the spring water for me to find?”
I nodded, staring at his heaps of gold. The shale sprites lay down at its base, like dragons protecting their plunder. “Where did you get all your coin?”
The Ardent Oarsman laughed. A rough, barking sound. “To be feared, to be venerated, to be an
Omen, bears great influence-and influence is owed affluence. Aisling’s gargoyles bring me many riches.”
I turned to the batlike gargoyle, but he merely shook his head. “‘Twas not I.”
“What will you do with it?” I asked the Oarsman. “Your great wealth?”
“Do with it?” He frowned, as if he did not understand the question. “Measure time by its growth, I suppose.”
Rory scoffed.
But the Ardent Oarsman kept his gaze, unmoving, unblinking, on me. “But you are not like that, are you, Diviner? You have not been brought to me like one of Aisling’s treasures. You’ve simply…” He opened his arms. “Come. Like a little insect, beckoned by a flame.”
“I’ve already said why we’ve come.” Rory’s voice was hot iron. “The new king is taking up the mantle.”
The Ardent Oarsman ignored him. His focus had drifted, now aimed upon the stone oar in his hand. He smiled at it, showing those horrible teeth, and lowered its handle into the pool. Shut his eyes.
And vanished.
He appeared directly in front of me. Took me by the throat-ripped me away from Rory and the gargoyle.
I screamed, a sickening rush stirring my stomach, and then I was vanishing with the Oarsman, his oar propelling us back across the pool. When my feet hit the ground, his stony grip fell from my throat to my waist, and then he was pulling me backward, onto his body-
Slamming the both of us into his throne.
The sprites rose to their feet and screeched.
“Stay your hand, knight,” he called in a booming voice. Then, as if only just seeing the coin locked in Rory’s grip, the Ardent Oarsman barked a laugh. “Where did you get that?”
“Nipped it off an Omen.” I thought I’d seen hate in Rory’s eyes before. I hadn’t. Not like this. “The Artful Brigand is dead. You’re about to join him.”
The Oarsman snapped his teeth, caging me against him. “Throw that coin and I will take a bite out of your Diviner’s throat, and my pets will do the same to you.” He nodded at the shale sprites. “One word from me, and they’ll eviscerate you. Starving things are loyal when fed.” For some reason, that made him laugh. “I would know.”
The gargoyle’s wings were spread, his bottom lip trembling as he watched the Oarsman’s hand return to my throat. And Rory-