The Knight and the Moth (The Stonewater Kingdom, #1)(118)

The batlike gargoyle stood before her, wings spread, baring his teeth, stone shards falling from his mouth. I’d never seen him so monstrous—so befitting of his namesake. A true guardian. Not of Aisling, not of the tor.

Of me.

“No one should live forever in the middle of a story,” he murmured. “If this is how it should end, Aisling… I am happy to see it done.”

“Bartholomew.” The abbess spat. “I should have killed you a century ago.” She reached for the loom stone—vanished. When she reappeared, she was high in the cloister, holding to a buttress, looming over us. “My cathedral is the keystone to Traum,” she called. “Take it away, and the kingdom crumbles. I am the architect, the master, the god of this place. Swords and armor are nothing to stone.”

All around us, her gargoyles closed in.

I dropped to my knees. Picked up the fallen hammer and chisel. “Please,” I said to them. “Go. Leave this place and never return.”

They did not heed me. They were creatures of Aisling. Died, and born of the spring. They kept coming toward me, stone claws reaching for me, for Rory—

And I could not save them from what the abbess had done to them.

So I swung.

My hammer hit stone. There was a great crack—a pouring of limestone dust that stuck to the water on my armor. Rory’s coin flew, and the batlike gargoyle’s claws tore, but the others kept coming, and I kept swinging.

Until the abbess’s gargoyles were nothing but lifeless chunks of stone upon the cathedral floor.

She watched from above, looming like a gargoyle herself, untouched by the brutality, the martyrdom, of her stone creatures.

“Whatever craft is yours,” Rory snarled, “cruelty or violence, we have beaten you by it. Get down, you fucking coward. Your ending has come.”

“The king of Traum has taken up the mantle,” Maude shouted, holding tight to Benji. “Your gargoyles are gone, your Omens defeated.”

Benji’s voice, triumphant, and a little unbelieving, echoed near and far, distorting through the cathedral. “Surrender your cathedral, abbess. You have lost.”

“Lost?” Once more, she vanished, reappearing near the great rose window, casting a shadow over all of us. “I will be as the wind, my loom stone keeping me ever out of reach. You may bear my stone objects, but you will not be safe. I will put you down as I did your heretical grandfather, and then I will come back to my tor. Make new Diviners, new Omens. The story does not change, boy-king. The hamlets will always look to their signs, and folk will come to me to Divine them. I have my cathedral, my spring, my tor. The only thing of influence you ever had, Benedict Castor the Third”—she pointed a finger over me—“was her.”

She appeared right in front of Benji—hit him over the chest with such brutal force his breastplate dented. He fell, and the abbess reached for her loom stone once more—

And screamed.

Maude’s axe had fallen, and with it, the abbess’s stone hand. It fell, hitting the floor with an ungracious bang, is if it weighed a hundred pounds.

I sprang forward. When our bodies collided, mine and hers, the sound was that of stone crashing into stone. A terrible, vociferous crack. The abbess fell, and I clattered over her, our feet upon the chancel. She reached into her gown—pulled a knife. The same one she carried with her during a Divination. It slashed through the air, and when it collided with my breastplate, the peal rivaled the ringing of cathedral bells.

I looked down at where she’d struck me, and so did the abbess. My armor was dented, a blooming pain radiating through my chest. She struck me again and screamed, as if she could not fathom why I would not break. Like she expected me to be made of nothing but gossamer.

“Am I all that you imagined?” I said, looking down at her. “Or am I so much more?”

I slammed my fist into her jaw, sending a dozen cracks, like tributaries, into her face. She hit me, too, with such force it felt as if the flesh beneath my armor had burst. Dropping the knife, she struck me with both hands, hitting my breast, my ribs, my arms—kicking at my legs. My skin broke, my armor dented.

But I did not diminish.

With one vicious tug, I had her careening forward, screaming as she scraped over the chancel, over the edge of the spring, falling into dark, rotten water.

I grasped the stone ledge with one hand and with my other I pressed. The abbess cried out under the water. Clawed and yanked at me. Flailed. I kept a grip over her throat and pressed. Bubbles filled the water. I kept her down. I pressed and pressed, drowning her. Then, with all my strength, I pulled her from the water. Threw her down upon the chancel.

I loomed over her. The gargoyle came to stand with me, then Rory and Maude, and finally Benji. There was no question of which we would take from her—hands or throat. There was no question at all.

There was only stone, and the tools to make it yield.

The abbess was writhing, seething, spitting chunks of limestone upon the chancel. I looked into her eyes—eyes just like mine. Then, with her own tools, with hammer, with chisel—

I struck. Right upon her stone heart.

I was not exact as I had been with the Heartsore Weaver. This was an annihilation, and Aisling would bear the mark of it. My blows were unbridled in their violence, stone flying, hitting my face as they flew by, scoring me with pain. Still, I kept striking her.