Filed To Story: The Knight and the Moth Book PDF Free by Rachel Gillig
The chime stopped ringing, and I was jolted back to the sacred glen, my mind righting. But then-gods, it rang again. Only this time the notes were not melodic. They were ugly, discordant-a horrible knell. Once again, my mind felt struck open, only now it hurt, disorienting agony radiating from my temples.
I heard the slosh of spring water. The abbess’s voice. “Strange, special… and new.”
When I looked down at my body, my shiny new armor was covered in pale, fluttering moths.
The chime stopped, and everything went quiet. My armor held no moths, just the reflection of licking flames. When I looked around for the gargoyle or Rory or Maude, the knighthood was not standing in a line as they had been. They were scattered among the trees, swaying on their feet. Some had their hands to their ears, others had their eyes shut-but all looked to be in a stupor.
It was the chime. The Faithful Forester’s chime.
The magical stone objects. Their abilities. Transportive, and destructive. The coin, the inkwell, the oar-those were all physical. But this, the chime, the sound of it, wasn’t a flickering of my corporeal self. It was as if my thoughts had been transported. When the chime had rung harmoniously, my thoughts had gone with it, taking me to the joyous corners of my mind. But when it had rung discordantly-
There was pain. Fear.
Strange, special… and new.
I coughed, smoke stinging my eyes.
Meanwhile, upon the dais, the ceremony continued. Helena Eichel, bleary-eyed, had set down the stone chime, and was holding a smoldering branch of idleweed out like a torch. All the nobles were. They turned in predatory circles around Benji, wielding the branches, stirring the air, smoke ghosting behind them.
The glen became blanketed by smoke. It put a lid over me, sedating my senses, burned my eyes. I faltered back a step.
My spine collided with armor.
“Have you smoked yellow idleweed before?” a voice said in my ear.
It took me a moment to recognize Hamelin with his face painted. “No.”
A noble with thin lips and gnarled knuckles bent low over Benji. His spine went rigid, but he did not resist. The noble inhaled idleweed smoke into her nose from her burning branch, seized Benji’s face-
And clamped her mouth over his.
I let out a curt breath. When the noble let Benji go, imbuing him with smoke, the clarity in the king’s blue eyes was already fading.
“They only ever burn it like this when a new king comes for a ceremony,” Hamelin murmured. “I’ve heard breathing it is like a fever dream. Your mind is thrown asunder. Prepare yourself for a treat.”
It’s not just the idleweed, I thought.
It’s the chime.
All five nobles bent over Benji, filling him with smoke from their mouths. When they’d finished, the king was still on his knees, but he seemed unaware of it. He was swaying, as if he weighed too little-yet far too much. His eyes rolled back, and he began to hum in wretched harmony with the chimes.
The nobles watched him, satisfaction stealing over their painted mouths. They turned.
And set their smoldering branches loose on the knighthood.
The idleweed was passed from knight to knight, the process repeated. Not all partook. Those who did breathed in the smoke. Pulled in a second breath, then pressed his or her mouth over another’s-filling them with smoke like a tongue fills a mouth in an impassioned kiss.
I thought of Four, blowing idleweed into our mouths the night we visited Coulson Faire. How she’d told us of what life would be like away from the tor, transporting us into the future. How, in a soft cloud of smoke, I’d promised her a world where we would always be together.
How, without meaning to, I’d lied.
Next to me, Hamelin held a branch of idleweed. Breathed it into his nostrils, then turned to me. “Take a deep breath. You’ll like it.”
I shook my head.
Hamelin’s hand fell upon my shoulder. “Come, Diviner. Be mythical, be fearsome,” he said, echoing the words he’d said to me weeks ago, between kisses. He sucked more smoke into his nostrils, leaned his face toward mine. Whispered, “He’s a dark horse, keeping you close.”
He tried to blow the smoke into my mouth, his lips practically on mine.
I shoved him back. Hard.
He stumbled, as if the idleweed-and being twice denied by a Diviner-had made him unsteady. Hamelin looked up with lifeless eyes. Took a step toward me again.
And was brought to a wrenching halt.
Rory had his fellow knight by the face. He gripped Hamelin’s cheeks-pressed brutally. Hamelin coughed out smoke-and Rory sneered at him, slapping the idleweed branch from his hand. “Don’t fucking touch her again.”
Hamelin’s gaze darted from Rory to me, then to Benji in the distance, as if beseeching the king to put a leash on his knight. But Benji was on his knees upon the dais, swaying with shut eyes, leaving Hamelin no option but to lower his own.
When Rory let go of him, he blurred away, disappearing into the glen-into smoke.
I reached for Rory. “It’s the Faithful Forester’s chime,” I said. “When it rang, did your mind-did you-“
Rory caught my arm and pulled me against him. “Yes.” He winced against the smoke. “The idleweed isn’t helping. Or maybe it is. No one suspects a magic chime is twisting their thoughts when there’s this much smoke in the air.”
He reached to his belt. Withdrew a small knife, then cut the hem of his tunic into two strips. He held one to his face, covering his nose and mouth, then handed me the other. “This will help with the idleweed. That chime, however-“
Maude was suddenly there, and so was the gargoyle, their voices reverberating around me. She nodded at the dais. “We need to snag that chime from Helena Eichel while the others are too distracted by the smoke to-“
The chime rang again, harmonious.
The world blurred.
My thoughts were as helpless as gowan flower against a gale. I was suddenly a girl, back in Aisling Cathedral, spring water on my lips. The abbess was there, holding me, stroking hair from my eyes and tying a shroud around them. “There, there,” she murmured. “Everything will be better for you now, little foundling. To sleep is to finally awaken. After all-swords and armor are nothing to stone.”
The chime stopped, and my vision righted.
Helena Eichel stood next to Benji upon the dais, running her fingers over the Faithful Forester’s chime, eyes rolling back in her head. “It came from this glen, this chime,” she called into the haze. “A gift from the Omens, just like the gold we’ve found over the years. Yes, yes, a gift from the Forester, for whenever I strike the chime, I feel transported through time and space. I feel bliss and agony, just as the faithful must.”
The other nobles in yellow cloaks stepped off the dais, moving slow and serpentine between birch trees. “Do you feel it?” they called. “Do you feel the divine?”
All around, knights swayed, moving through tightly positioned trees. Whether they believed their thoughts had fallen prey to idleweed or something more sacred, it frightened me to see the kingdom’s most commanding soldiers, like its king, so easily manipulated.
Perhaps it was why the Omens were so sure of their own transcendence. The Faithful Forester’s chime-the stone objects, their magic, their power
-was astounding.
Maude shook herself, her eyes red but pointed firmly on the dais. “I’ll distract Helena Eichel.” She caught Rory’s arm. “You, my thief, will snag that chime. Six, you and the gargoyle make sure Benji is all right.”
I lowered my hand, and the gargoyle took it, and we all headed for the dais. But just as we grew close, Helena Eichel lifted the Faithful Forester’s chime once more.