Filed To Story: The Knight and the Moth Book PDF Free by Rachel Gillig
Below, Maude was rubbing her brow. “Poet laureate my ass.”
“Never trust anything written in rhyme,” Rory muttered.
“Not well-read, I see.” The Harried Scribed composed himself. “I find courtly love rather banal. But a laugh from the belly is a welcome occasion.” He snapped the book shut, vanished, then reappeared on the shelf next to me, making it shake. “Onto faith, then.”
This question required no book. The Harried Scribe leaned forward, perched like a gargoyle upon his shelf. His rasp dripped with mirth. “What was the name of the first Diviner? The foundling child who came to the tor and named the Omens?”
The trio beneath me balked. “The abbess does not speak it in her Divination story,” Maude called. “It’s never been spoken.”
The Scribe toyed with the sleeve of my cloak. “Is that your answer? That the first Diviner was without a name?”
Another biting moment, then King Castor said, “It is.”
“Pity. Once more, you are incorrect.”
King Castor and Maude were unmoving and Rory the opposite, slouched, boot tapping, hand fidgeting incessantly in his pocket.
Only one question remained.
“What was it?” I whispered. “The child’s name?”
“All that matters is that I know it and they did not know it.” The Omen rolled his jaw, his shoulders, joints cracking, pointing to his shelves. “Knowledge is mine to bear, and theirs to beg. Even if they manage to get the next one right”-his lips peeled back in a grotesque smile-“they are condemned.”
I looked down at the others and felt as though I was dreaming-prickling, sweating, afraid. “Please. You must be aware that Diviners have gone missing from the tor. I’ve left Aisling in search of them-“
The Scribe threw his ink before I could finish and vanished, then appeared on a shelf across the room. “My final inquiry,” he called down to the king and Rory and Maude, “is a riddle of war.”
“Another lovely poem, I hope,” Rory deadpanned.
“The Seacht keeps its books, but also its forges, its armories and arsenals. This composition, I penned myself.” The Scribe held out a leaflet. I was afforded the barest glimpse of its cover.
A moth.
Once more, the Omen cleared his throat and read.
Not hefty in weight or long in the arm, it’s thin as a reed in the ground.
Kept sharp or kept dull, however you’re fond, its customs and merits abound.
So, too, is it stocky-a blunt heavy head, with sturdy wood handle to grasp.
With bodily might, it swings and it splits, with one fist or two to hold clasp.
In battle or field or wherever you stray, keep fixed in slack loops on your belt.
For breaking and beating, passion or labor, there ne’er was a blow thusly dealt.
The Scribe’s stone eyes lowered. “Well, king? What weapon does this poet describe?”
The king, Rory, and Maude all wore the same heavy brow, as if burdened by their own contemplation. But I-I was back on the tor, back to my chores, back to the stone wall. I’d spent days feeling ignorant and unworldly and helpless, a victim of my own occupation and the cathedral’s tight fist.
How fitting that the answer to the Harried Scribe’s riddle should be that which I took from Aisling itself.
My posture went rigid, and Rory’s gaze shot up. He studied me a long moment, as if unfurling the riddle of me and not the one the Harried Scribe had posed. His lips pulled back in a smile and then he was leaning over, whispering in King Castor’s ear.
The king let out a fraught sound of relief, then straightened himself. “It’s not a singular weapon,” he said to the Scribe. “It’s two. A hammer, and a chisel.”
The Omen went still, and so did the sound in his cavernous room. He vanished-appearing once more on the shelf next to me. This time when he dipped his finger into his inkwell, he stirred it counterclockwise. “What would you ask me then, king of Traum?” he challenged. “To beat me at my craft?”
King Castor stepped closer to Rory and Maude. “Allow us a moment to confer.”
“Never say I am not a generous god.” The Harried Scribe watched them, drawing near to me-petting my head like I was a dog. “Do not worry,” he murmured. “They will not ask a question I have not already penned the answer to. Only ink and the persuasive pen-“
“If you know all,” I said, trying again, “you must tell me what has happened to my lost Diviners.”
The Scribe pulled away. I felt a sharp sting, several strands of my pale hair caught in the cracks of his aged hand. He brought them to his nose. Inhaled. “Your Diviners?” His mouth opened, a wide, black hole, and then he was tossing my hair into his mouth.
Groaning in ugly ecstasy. “You belong to Aisling. To the Omens. That’s what I know, and what I know is ever the truth.”
Below, Rory and Maude and the king were looking up once more, eyes darting between me and the Harried Scribe. “Speaking of Diviners,” Rory called. He said it idly, but the line of his shoulders was drawn tight as a bowstring. “Tell me, Scribe-do you favor them? Aisling’s holy dreamers? The hard-laboring harbingers of the Omens?”
The Scribe spat dark phlegm at the king. “I favor my Diviners more than you your gods, heretic.”
The phlegm fell, missing King Castor and landing on Rory’s boots. He glowered at his feet. “Will everyone kindly leave my fucking boots alone-“
“Our question is rather simple, Omen,” King Castor said in a rush. “Since you claim divinity-the god of all knowledge-tell us.” He nodded at me. “What’s her name?”
The Harried Scribe’s teeth groaned as he bit down. When he turned to look at me, his eyes bore a lifelessness not even the stones at Aisling’s wall, with their lichen and weather-worn flaws, possessed. “She is a daughter of Aisling. She has no name.”
Sybil came the faintest whisper deep within me. “Everyone has a name,” I murmured. “Even foundlings.” Then, with sudden, biting clarity, “If you were truly a god, you would know it.”
They knew then that they’d beaten him. Rory, Maude, and the king were grinning, standing tall, looking more fearsome and valiant than I’d ever seen them. They’d challenged the Harried Scribe to his own craft-his own knowledge-and won.
The Scribe knew it, too. I could see it, even in the emptiness of his stone eyes, the moment he realized that his magic inkwell was forfeit. The Omen dipped his gnarled finger into his inkwell, stirring it counterclockwise with a sudden fury. Then, with the same revulsion I’d seen the scribe at the bridge display when he’d attacked the sprite, he turned his inkwell over, upending its ink onto Rory and Maude and the king.
This time, the ink was not transportive.
It was a weapon.
It landed on the arm of Maude’s cloak. She let out a sharp noise and shoved King Castor and Rory back. The ink on her sleeve turned a molten red, burning like coal through the wool. Maude flung her cloak off, but the unmistakable smell of burnt fabric-and burnt flesh-lingered in the air.
The Harried Scribe laughed, and then he vanished, appearing on a shelf across the room-throwing ink once more.
“What are you doing?” I cried.
The Omen did not answer but to bark at me. “Stay as you are, Diviner.”
It was terrifying, watching him vanish and reappear-invariable in his movements and the flinging of his ink. Smells of burnt paper or wool and even hair filled the room; Rory and Maude and the king were fast on their feet-eyes up and weapons drawn-but Maude’s axe and the king’s sword were nothing to the ink. They were struck, burned, several times.
But they did not flee.