Filed To Story: The Knight and the Moth Book PDF Free by Rachel Gillig
Everything went still.
The gargoyle coasted over grass, then dropped down upon it. Benji and I fell in a heap, groaning. I coughed. “You all right?”
“I think so.” The king’s golden hair was dark with sweat, his ruddy cheeks wan. But his blue eyes were resolute. He took my hand. “Thank you for staying. You’re very brave, Six.”
I realized then that Benedict Castor, for just a moment, had thought he was going to die. A boy of seventeen, with everything in the world still to prove. “Not half as brave as you, Benji.”
Wind sang through the grass, the hills and road quiet, like it had all been but a terrible dream. I looked back at the knights, who were now riding toward us. Behind them, like a hill once more, lay the body of the slain mountain sprite.
Something sharp prickled behind my eyes. “What do they eat? Mountain sprites?”
“Shale from the Peaks.”
I turned my gaze on the king. “Then surely the right thing to do would be to feed it shale, not kill it.”
Benji tinkered with his broken greaves. “Likely. But the land we’re about to venture into belongs to the noble families of the Fervent Peaks. And they are adamantly against sharing it with sprites.” His straps finally unclasped, and he let out a sigh of relief. “After all, sprites have plagued Traum for centuries. Everyone knows that.”
“Perhaps,” I murmured. “Then again, someone rather wise once said, ‘Traum’s histories are forged by those who benefit from them, and seldom those who live them.'”
Benji’s hands stilled. He looked up at me. But before he could tender a response, the knights closed in around us, dismounting as they came to check on their king. Highfalutin apologies were spouted, the knights sorry not to have noticed their king fall. There were a few chuckles as well, a few heavy exhales, and a healthy amount of profanity, the company glad on all accounts they’d killed the sprite-
“Move.”
Someone was shoving their way through the group, pushing forward with urgent steps.
Rory.
His face was drawn and without warmth. When he saw Benji and me and the gargoyle seated in the grass next to one another, whole and unharmed, he put a hand to his mouth, smothering a low sound-then walked away as brusquely as he’d come.
Maude picked Benji up out of the grass. Looked him over. “All in one piece?” she asked.
Benji gave a shaky laugh. “All in one piece.”
Maude clasped his shoulder, then turned her gaze to me and smiled. Like I’d done something more than save her king. Like she wasn’t just pleased, but proud. “You did good.” She nodded at the gargoyle. “You too.”
We walked back to the road, which was littered with pieces of our lost cart.
“Look, Bartholomew,” the gargoyle said, lifting my boots from a bush. “Your foot-gloves are perfectly unscathed.”
“Well, what do you know.” Maude hauled a large wicker box from a gorse bush. “This too.”
“What’s that?”
“Your pretty waxen hide,” she said, unlatching it and showing me my Diviner dress, covered in wax. The one she’d cut off me-my precise measurements for armor.
Maude gestured at the mold. “I’ll sleep better knowing the next time you face down a mountain sprite, you’ll be dressed for it. I’ll send this to Petula Hall at the outpost ahead. The more time my blacksmith has with it, the better. You have impressive measurements.”
My head snapped her way. “For a Diviner, you mean?”
She fixed me with a reproving glace. “There aren’t ghosts in my words, Six. No rot hiding behind the scent of flowers. When I insult you, you’ll know it.” She nodded at the box. “You have a strong body to match a valiant spirit. That was all I meant.”
Her honesty, bereft of cruelty, shamed me. “I can’t pay your armorer.”
“Don’t lose your tail feathers-we’ll work something out. Unless you find your Diviners before it’s finished.”
“I’m sure another knight could make use of it if I don’t.”
There was something in her eyes I couldn’t read. Not derision or hunger or pity… “It’s not like your gossamer, shapeless enough to fit anyone. No one’s going to wear this armor as well as you.”
I realized what it was after she’d walked away. Kindness.
There’d been kindness in her eyes.
The Knight and the Moth
WHAT IS HARROWING IS HALLOWED
By the time we reached the village high within the Fervent Peaks, it was well into the night. It was raining, the sky stained black by clouds. The gargoyle and I were in a new cart, shoved up against bins that stank of dried meat and barrels that smelled of ale. We’d been traveling at an incline for ages now-up slopes, past hot springs, and into the Fervent Peaks, the roaring Tenor River never out of sight.
There were no cobblestone roads or brick houses. The Fervent Peaks boasted fishermen, vastly different than those who call the bustling modernity of the Seacht home. Here, the road was dirt and rock, the houses wooden and meek. Fishermen’s nets hung from walls, torchlight spilled from windows, and open doors were silhouetted by dark figures who watched us pass by. There were no sounds of greeting. Everything, save the Tenor and the wind, was quiet.
Some of the knights extended their hands in greeting and were answered in kind by men and women wearing utilitarian leather and wool. The only adornment in the village-save instruments of piscary-was a single oar, carved into the dark wood of their doors.
I murmured the Ardent Oarsman’s creed. “Only the oar, only vigor, can Divine.”
The air felt thinner. Colder. Sheets of rain stung my face, and I wrapped my arms around myself, looking up at the night sky, wondering if, somewhere, the other Diviners were looking up at it, too. Our caravan went up and up and up-
The cart bottomed out, jerking to a halt.
The road stopped upon a wide, lofty plateau, where the wind showed its teeth. Maude had said this was where the majority of the Peaks occupants dwelled, and I could see a substantial crop of buildings-houses, stables, a hall. They were crude like the ones on the road, spread out in a great circle. In the center of the circle, sloshing like a giant wet heart-
Was a basin of water.
I knew at once it wasn’t the basin from my dreams. It was too wide, too loud. A roaring waterfall poured into it from a sheer rockface, stirring the water, never leaving it still enough to appear crystalline. Still, it was beautiful-the moon rippling over its surface, the Tenor feeding it water and also taking it away.
I stifled a yawn. “What hour is it?”
“Late.” Maude dismounted from the cart. “The zealots have waited up, no doubt.”
“What zealots?” the gargoyle asked.
The answer arrived in fishermen’s attire.
Five figures, wearing leather wax-coated hoods, nets slung over each of their shoulders, came from the largest of the outbuildings. Torchlight caught in the crags of their aged, unsmiling faces. “King Castor.” They approached the head of the caravan. “Your falcon said you’d arrive yesterday.”
“Apologies.” Benji dismounted, torchlight dancing over his spotless armor. “Our business in the Seacht took longer than expected.”
The figures introduced themselves and said their names in such a way I understood at once they must be from the Peaks’ noble families. They were already familiar with Benji-perhaps from when he was a knight-but he was king now. Formalities needed to be observed.
A few of the knights came forward, greeting the figures. Hamelin was one of them. He came to a woman who’d introduced herself as Avice Fischer. She had blond hair and straight white teeth like his, and they embraced. His mother, I supposed.