Filed to story: The Knight and the Moth Book PDF Free by Rachel Gillig
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.
The Knight and the Moth
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.
The Knight and the Moth
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.