The Knight and the Moth (The Stonewater Kingdom, #1)(6)

“And so,” the abbess said, “we find ourselves in the center of Traum’s greatest story. A great cathedral was built upon the spring’s tor, and more foundling children were brought there to dream, and they became daughters of Aisling, revered Diviners. A king was crowned, and Traum’s five hamlets were unified by belief, thusly named the Stonewater Kingdom. The king’s knights were tasked with defending the faith as well as they defended the hamlets against sprites.”

She paused, looming over young Benedict Castor, whose eyes were on his feet. “And the king swore to be more supplicant than sovereign, that he would never take up the mantle of his faith for personal gain—never seek the Omens or their stone objects for his own power or vanity.

“For in the end,” the abbess said, “we are all supplicants. Whether craftsman or a king, knight or foundling or Diviner—faith is the same. It, like Aisling Cathedral, holds up the hamlets. And while we all bear our own creeds, we must never forget—it is the Omens who rule Traum. Omens who scrawl the signs. We are but witnesses to their wonders. Pupils of their portents.” She raised her hands in beckoning. “Ever but visitors to their greatness.”

“Ever but visitors,” I called.

“Ever but visitors,” the king murmured.

“Ever but visitors,” the knighthood echoed.

The gargoyles closed in around the spring.

Breath shuddered out of me. “What name, with blood, would you give the Omens?” I said to the king.

He startled, as if he’d forgotten me. “Benedict Castor the Third.”

The abbess put her hands on my shoulders.

“Lie down,” she instructed me.

The smell of rotting flowers—the taste of blood—the slip of oily water—were everywhere. I lay on my back in the spring, looking up into Aisling’s reaching cloister and the windows therein, it in light, I in darkness.

The abbess leaned over me. “Dream,” came her final, resolute command.

She pressed down on my clavicle, hard enough to bruise.

I sank into cold, terrible water.

I shut my eyes, opened my mouth. Sucked water into my lungs and choked. My body spasmed once, twice—a ripple in the spring. Then I did what I’d always done since my very first day at Aisling Cathedral.

I drowned.

There was pain, pain, then—

Nothingness. A bright, pallid nothingness.

I lay on a clean stone floor, looking up at the same windows as before. Only now, it seemed much higher, the vaulted cathedral roof cloudy, as if far above me in the sky.

Gargoyles, Diviners—the abbess and the king and his knights—were gone. Not even the mahogany pews remained. I was alone in a pale, liminal version of Aisling that had never existed in my waking hours.

I got to my feet. My robe had disappeared. The only stitch of fabric I wore now was my shroud. I looked down at my nakedness, hair and flesh, fat, muscle, and bone. A strange laugh bubbled in my throat. I always felt a mile wide after swallowing blood and water and drowning in the spring. As if I were infinite, holding all that discomfort so well within my body. It made me sick with self-loathing—and flushed with pride.

A shadow shifted in the corner of my eye. I turned, but the shadow flickered, then vanished.

I was small in the vast space. “Omens,” I called. “I am your harbinger, your dreamer—ever but a visitor. I’ve come to Divine.”

Silence. Then—

The cathedral began to ripple. Light blurred away the details, pillars and windows and buttresses all caught in a strange, undulating glow. I walked through the pale nothingness, the world sluggish, but my heart upon a hummingbird beat.

The cathedral rippled in earnest. Dark spots, like stains upon fabric, perforated the wide white space. “I’ve tasted the blood of Benedict Castor the Third.” Once more, I said, “I’ve come to Divine.”

The cathedral rippled, rippled—

Then winked out entirely.

The floor beneath my feet gave way, and I fell through seams of light into darkness. My stomach lurched, hands and feet hollowed out as my body gave way to the sense of falling.

A flash of silver in the darkness. Then—

My knees hit first, then my hands, the substance beneath them cold and hard and unsteady. I swallowed a groan and teetered. Tipped, toppled, then rolled over myself like a pin over dough. There was a chorus of clinking, and when I stopped rolling, twisted and naked and already bruising, I braced myself and sat up.

Coins. I’d fallen upon a bed of coins. Hundreds, thousands of coins stacked in a dark room.

I scanned my surroundings. Looked up. There were purple banners in the room, long windows, and an illuminating blue sky. Still, I could see the ghost of Aisling’s buttresses, her vaulted ceilings—her cold stone innards.

They’d have dragged me out of the spring by now. Once rendered unconscious by the drowning, a Diviner was always pulled from the water and laid down to dream upon the chancel, set on her back with open arms, like an offering.

I could still hear what was happening outside my dream, but the sound was muddled. “Well?” the abbess’s faraway voice called.

I opened my mouth to answer—

Then saw it. A coin, different from the rest, suspended in air. One side was smooth stone, the other dark and rutted and rough.

“The Artful Brigand’s coin,” I called. “I can see it. The rough side is up.” I let out a breath. “A presage of bad fortune.”