The Forgetting Moon Read online

  For good or ill, the plans set in motion by the Brethren of Mia nearly three years ago were now fully underway.

  * * *

  Be we slave, peasant, knight, or lord, within all of us dwells a craving, a longing deep in our soul to know our own heritage and to identify the birthright of our fellow man. For regardless the number of good works and heroic deeds we achieve in life, the fatherless are by nature deemed unholy, susceptible to betrayal, and useless in the eyes of the great One and Only.

  —THE WAY AND TRUTH OF LAIJON

  * * *

  CHAPTER ONE

  NAIL

  7TH DAY OF THE SHROUDED MOON, 999TH YEAR OF LAIJON

  GALLOWS HAVEN, GUL KANA

  We become what we think. Leastways, that was what Shawcroft was fond of saying. Nail fancied himself a good artist. It was what made him the happiest anyway, charcoal and parchment in hand—that, and dreaming of Ava Shay. He thought about both to an alarming degree. He also thought he was good with a sword.

  In fact, despite the pounding rain, things were going well. Nail ducked and raised his blade to parry. Steel cracked against steel. His hand stung with the impact. It felt good. He swung again, his momentum pushing him forward. He slipped, drawing Dokie Liddle’s sword harmlessly over his head. With a clatter, Nail fell to his knees, wooden shield plowing into the mud, sword skittering off with a twang.

  “Bloody Mother,” he cursed, helmet cocked sideways, obscuring his vision. Fool! Concentrate! His sword had landed just close enough in the grass that he considered lunging for it, but the tip of Dokie’s blade was already poised over him.

  “Yield,” Dokie ordered, brandishing his sword menacingly. Nail was the strongest seventeen-year-old in Gallows Haven. He wasn’t easily beaten. He imagined the grin now spreading over Dokie’s face under the helm. Stefan Wayland, Zane Neville, even Zane’s brute of a shepherd dog, Beer Mug, watched, all waiting to see him stand and thrash Dokie good. Jenko Bruk was nearest, a look of pure amusement on his face. The Gallows Haven banner hung lifeless, sopping with rain, from the pole cradled in Jenko’s arm. The other forty young men gathered on the practice field held similar looks. A grin spread over the gruff, bearded countenance of their trainer, Baron Jubal Bruk.

  Frustrated, Nail sat back on his heels. Too much daydreaming about Ava Shay. Tossing his gauntlets aside, he dug grime from under his armor with determined fingers and said, “A lucky twist of fate for you, Dokie. ’Tis only this mud that’s bested me.” He shoved his gauntlets back on and tried to stand, feet slipping out from under him again. “Rotted angels,” he cursed.

  The air stirred as a chill wind stung Nail’s face. The breath was sucked from his lungs. Lightning! His mind screamed in warning as a blinding flash flamed off Dokie’s armor. The boy was flung away with a crack of thunder, sliding on his back.

  Nail hugged the ground. The air was caustic, his lungs raw, mouth parched. White mist clung about his vision. A shower of sparks spiraled down around him, dissolving in the rain-splattered grass. The back of his sword hand sang with pain.

  There were muffled voices, as if he was hearing them from under water. Jenko Bruk and Stefan Wayland were standing over him. “Lucky bastard,” Jenko muttered, dark amber eyes shifting between Nail and the others. Zane’s shepherd dog was barking up a riot. Stefan held forth a hand. Nail took it, stood on wobbly legs. He spotted Dokie sprawled in the mud, arms and legs splayed out, blank eyes staring up at the rain. Dokie’s body had left a path where it had slid through the muck. His helmet was gone and smoke drifted from the soles of his leather boots. Hoarse breaths swelled from his chest.

  “He’s still alive!” Baron Jubal Bruk bellowed as he made the three-fingered sign of the Laijon Cross over his breast and looked toward the sky. “Let’s get him into town.” Baron Bruk and his son, Jenko, along with a few others, snatched up Dokie’s limp form into their arms and headed for town.

  The rest of the sodden troop, clacking and clattering in their armor, quickly gathered their belongings and followed the baron south toward Gallows Haven.

  Nail struggled behind the rest, slogging through the muck, still in a daze. He looked skyward, eyes trying to focus as rain peppered his face. The back side of his sword hand still burned under his gauntlet.

  “Your satchel.” Stefan came up behind him, draping the bag’s leather strap over Nail’s shoulder. “You almost forgot it.”

  “Right, thanks.” The words felt strange on Nail’s dry tongue. He swallowed hard, still trying to regain his bearings. His satchel held his most prized possessions: prayer book, art supplies, collection of charcoal drawings.

  Claps of thunder boomed behind Nail and Stefan as they hustled their pace to keep up with the others. Patches of trees added some shelter from the rain, but the road mainly bore them through fields and farmland. Hedges, wattle-and-daub fences, and rows of stone lined their path. The hollow clanking of goat bells sounded in the distance.

  On occasion, Zane’s dog would bark into the gathering darkness of early evening, as if something were out there following them. Through the fog that still covered his brain, Nail’s imagination began spinning with unholy images, images that had plagued his dreams since childhood. The fiery forms of the nameless beasts of the underworld. Red-eyed beasts that seemed to haunt the minds of lonely children, those children born fatherless, motherless, and alone. Nail knew he was different. He was a bastard and unnatural.

  When they tottered by a candlelit cottage, a whiff of woodsmoke swirled past Nail’s nose, the aroma clearing his mind of churning thoughts.

  Soon the small company of trainees broke through a stand of evergreens and Gallows Haven was a sprinkling of lights before them. To the right of their path, on a low, sloping hill overlooking Gallows Bay, was the empty husk of Gallows Keep. It had not seen use in centuries. Now its leaning crenellated battlements rose over the village, nothing more than the ancient, broken-down remnants of a castle that was once whole.

  To their left was the village chapel. Nail felt sudden reassurance in its bulky gray presence. Despite what negative things Shawcroft said about the Church of Laijon and its teachings, Nail felt there was safety held within the chapel’s great arches, in the thickness of its walls and its stoic grandeur. Above the door, three large stained-glass windows inlaid with intricate designs threw colorful shadows across their path. As those bearing Dokie’s lightning-struck form passed through the front doors of the chapel, Nail looked up at those splendorous windows. On brighter days, with tattered sketchbook in hand, he would sit outside under them and sketch. In the center window was an image of Laijon, five colorful angel stones hanging above him like halos: white, red, black, green, and blue. Laijon wore a coat of shimmering chain mail and hefted a silver battle-ax named Forgetting Moon. In the left window floated two white-robed angels, one wielding a broadsword, Afflicted Fire, the other a black-wood crossbow, Blackest Heart. In the right window were two more heavenly apparitions, one with a horned war helm, Lonesome Crown, and the other carrying a mythical shield, Ethic Shroud. These were the five ancient weapons of lore.

  Once Jubal and Jenko Bruk and the others were inside the chapel, those five angelic images cast ghostlike reflections of white, red, black, green, and blue over them as they laid Dokie on the floor before Bishop Tolbret. The bishop was a plain-faced man, short and balding. He wore the dull brown cassock and black sash of his station with sacred white robes underneath.

  In the vaulted apse behind the bishop was a statue of Laijon cut from rough-hewn stone, the muscular carving thrice the size of a normal man, naught but a loincloth about his waist and a wreath of white heather atop his head. Laijon bore a flawless face but for the faint red line representing the fatal wound in his neck. He hung upon an even larger black-painted wooden replica of the Atonement Tree; its twining branches soared, almost reaching the ceiling of the chapel, filling the entire space of the apse.

  When Bishop Tolbret saw Nail, muddy and disheveled, he shot him an unfriendly look. Nail dropped hi
s gaze and peeled off his gauntlets. His right hand, his sword hand, stung something fierce. The back of his hand bore a thin burn in the shape of a cross. The fresh wound, so raw and red, almost seemed to glow.

  Nail didn’t even notice the bile rise in his throat, or the gentle twisting of his stomach, for he’d seen the image of a glowing red cross on the back of his hand before.

  As a child, alone and afraid, he’d seen it in his dreams.

  Nail and Stefan sat alone, Nail’s charcoal drawing unrolled on the table between them. The Grayken Spear Inn’s tavern was abuzz about Dokie Liddle. Late winter days along the southwestern shores of Gul Kana were likely to bring sudden bursts of rain that ofttimes turned to snow. But lightning strikes so close to town were rare indeed. Dokie’s injury had reined in the normally boisterous mood of the tavern to a somber crawl.

  Still, the barmaids were busy doing their jobs. And one young lady who worked here always had Nail’s attention—Ava Shay. She was his age, seventeen. Over the past year, when Nail could break away from working the mines with Shawcroft and come into town, they had grown close. At times Nail wondered if they weren’t boyfriend and girlfriend. He found it nearly impossible to keep his mind off her.

  Thin and delicate as a willow leaf, Ava weaved her way through the tavern toward him, hands laden with two fresh mugs of beer. She wore a simple gray shift tied about the waist with a black sash. Her blond hair fell in rippling clusters down her back, and in the torrid glow of the tavern’s many hearths, those silken curls danced about her face like flame. As she drew near, her eyes met his with open interest, deep-green eyes that always left him spellbound. He glanced down at his drawing, a sketch of a long-haired girl in a simple dress carrying a water pail through a knee-high meadow of flowers. Nail imagined the flowers to be white daisies, and the girl to be Ava Shay.

  “Sad about Dokie,” she said upon reaching their table. “Will he be okay?”

  “His parents are with him,” Stefan answered. “As are Bishop Tolbret and Baron Bruk. The baron will bring further word, I’m sure.”

  Ava placed a wooden mug of birch beer in front of Stefan. “One for you.” She slid a mug in front of Nail. “And one for you, too, m’dear.” She saw his drawing. “I’m not near as talented as you, Nail, but Ol’ Man Leddingham displayed one of my fish carvings today.” She motioned to the shelf above the bar that stretched along the far wall—her wooden carving sat next to a clear jar holding the rare daggerlike teeth of a mermaid. “If I carve some otters and seals, he said he’ll place them on the mantels of the travelers’ rooms.”

  “Your work is terrific,” Nail said, happy for her accomplishment.

  “You’re so sweet.” She smiled a winsome smile, then dipped a small curtsy in acknowledgment before making her way back toward the bar.

  “I see Ava still sets her charms about you,” Stefan said, pulling Nail’s drawing across the table. “Calls you m’dear whenever you’re in the Grayken Spear.”

  “She calls everyone m’dear.” Nail’s eyes followed Ava as she drifted through the crowd. The tavern was fifty paces across and a hundred deep, and tables lined the breadth of it. A bar ran the length of the left side. The scarred surface of the wood floor was covered with a film of soot and ale. Cobwebs hid in the rafters, while the low-hung beams were draped with the pelts of silver-wolf and black bear. The walls were lined with the mounted heads of boar, elk, and stag. Near the door hung the ivory tusks of a walrus and long dried strips of grayken baleen. The owner of the inn, Ol’ Man Leddingham, tended to a haunch of venison cooking on a spit in the open hearth in the center of the room.

  Every Gallows Haven young man of seventeen and eighteen, most still in some form of armor to impress the girls, was crowded into the tavern. It was tradition. After arms training, the girls working at the Grayken Spear Inn prepared a meal for the conscripts. Nail lived for the arms training with Baron Bruk and the hot meal at the Grayken Spear afterward. It was one of the few times Shawcroft allowed him to come to town—arms training was mandatory; it was the law.

  Stefan pushed the drawing back to Nail’s side of the table. “Ava seems quite taken with your drawing. She didn’t smile once at me.”

  “You suffer from no lack of attention.” Nail noticed Gisela Barnwell approach, her eyes fixed on Stefan, who was now blushing. Gisela set two steaming plates of food on their table, curtsied, and said, “Poor Dokie,” before heading back to the bar. The dainty girl, two years younger than Nail and Stefan, wore a wreath of blue heather on her head. She had recently been crowned Maiden Blue of the upcoming Mourning Moon Feast, the annual honor bestowed upon the fairest young girl in all of Gallows Haven.

  It was clear Gisela liked Stefan. But Stefan Wayland didn’t see it. Nail’s friend had the beginnings of a strong jaw and hawkish nose. Dark hair fell in a tumble over his shoulders. He had the hard eyes and tanned skin of one who had spent the last few years on Baron Bruk’s grayken-hunting ship. Where Nail was strong and fast on the practice field with a sword, it was the longbow where Stefan excelled. He was a lock to win the archery competition against the conscripts from Tomkin Sty and Peddlers Point during the annual tournament between the towns. After all, he’d won every Mourning Moon archery competition since he was ten. And from the look on Gisela’s face when she’d brought them their food, Stefan had likely won her, too.

  Nail knew how he himself looked to others. At seventeen he was bigger and stronger than most men in Gallows Haven. He had grayish-green eyes, a thin nose, and a pleasant smile on a youthful face under locks of blond. He continually flicked wild strands of hair from his face, a habit he couldn’t shake, but a habit that made the girls notice him even more. Nail kept his hair just long enough to cover his ears—thin ears that he felt poked out from his head a bit too much.

  Stefan had stopped eating, eyes staring into space.

  “Eat,” Nail said. “Don’t mope; Dokie will be fine.”

  “I know,” Stefan muttered. “It’s not that.”

  Nail set his fork down. “You’ll soon be dancing with Gisela at the Mourning Moon Feast like man and wife.” He pointed a finger at his friend. “And you’ll ask her to dance even if I have to force open your mouth and move your lips about for you.”

  Stefan smiled weakly. Zane Neville walked up.

  “I’ll have that beer if you’re goin’ to do naught but stare at it.” Zane plunked himself down on the seat beside Stefan, a heaping plate of food in hand. He snatched Stefan’s beer as promised, and in two gulps, it was gone. Zane’s shepherd dog, Beer Mug, sat next to him, long snout resting on the table. Zane slid a piece of smoked salmon the dog’s way. Beer Mug gulped it down, tail thumping the floor. Zane’s large dog reminded Nail of the stealthy silver-wolves that roamed the mountains near the gold mines above town. But unlike those wild wolves, Beer Mug was a good-natured fellow.

  Zane’s round face boasted a plump nose, a smattering of freckles, and a bush of carrot-colored hair that stuck up from his head like a big lit torch. He was tall yet portly, and his sloping shoulders and pear-shaped body defeated his best attempts to squeeze completely into his training gear. Still, despite his plumpness, Zane was one of the best new grayken cutters on Baron Bruk’s crew.

  “You two talkin’ about Gisela Barnwell?” Zane asked, chomping a mouthful of potatoes. “She made mention she was glad to see you here tonight, Stefan. As Laijon is my witness, I swear it’s true. She was glad you weren’t lightning-struck, as was Dokie.”

  “Stefan’s frightened to death of Gisela,” Nail said. “Wouldn’t acknowledge her if she came up and slapped him in the face or grabbed him by the pecker.”

  “Well, he’s blushin’ redder than a billy goat’s arsehole now,” Zane said. “I’ll wager he’s probably already took her up in Farmer Wetherby’s hayloft and buried his face under that skirt, her pretty little legs wrapped around his—”

  “It ain’t like that,” Stefan snapped. “I would never—”

  “Well, spank me rosy, someone’s
bound to. All you ever do is moon over her like a heartsick pup. Act now lest some other fellow snatch her up. I swear it, as Laijon is my witness, someone will snatch her up right from under you.” Zane had the irritating habit of saying as Laijon is my witness a half-dozen times in every conversation.

  Zane stood. “Perhaps I’ll just throw Gisela to the floor and dry-hump her right here in front of you.” He leaned over the rear of his dog and mimicked a humping motion, tongue out, moaning.

  “Don’t be crude.” Stefan looked around frantically. “She might be watching.”

  “Humorless as always.” Zane sat and chomped a mouthful of salmon, spitting bits everywhere. Beer Mug eyed the food as it tumbled from Zane’s chest-plate armor to the floor, then licked it up.

  Zane’s hefty older sister, Liz Hen, set a bowl of stew in front of each of them—the Grayken Spear was generous with its many courses of food. She was nineteen, tall, broad of shoulder, thick of gut, and bore a thatch of hair wilder and redder than Zane’s. Beer Mug was glad to see her, tail wagging, ears alert.

  “I can’t eat this.” Stefan sniffed the steaming bowl. “Chunks of turnip, radish—”

  Liz Hen swatted Stefan upside the head with a beefy backhand. “Feed it to the dog then, you clodpole.”

  “Ouch,” Stefan exclaimed, poking at the stew. “I’m only saying—”

  “Does it look like I give a goat’s fart what’s in the stew? Could be pigeon shit for all I care. I’m only the innkeeper’s big fat errand girl.” With that she stomped away.

  “Don’t anger her so.” Zane watched his sister waddle off. “I swear she’ll take it out on me later. As Laijon is my witness, she thinks she’s the most important person in the whole Five Isles. You’re so damned dour tonight, Stefan. Dokie’ll be fine.”