The Knight and the Moth (The Stonewater Kingdom, #1)(68)

I remembered flying with Benji. The pain, the exertion, of keeping someone else from falling. “Tighter,” I told Rory, slipping my arms up and around his armored shoulders.

His eyes flared, and his grip around my waist grew firmer. “I’m not going to drop you, Diviner.”

The gargoyle sprang into the air.

Rory swore, tightening his hold on me, and we met the sky, battered by wind and the waterfall’s dampening mist. The gargoyle held fast to us, his wings beating with impressive strength, and when we reached the lip of the waterfall, he glided up and over it, landing us upon a flat tableland that had been impossible to glimpse from below.

Our feet hit stone, and the gargoyle’s arms retracted from around me. Rory’s didn’t—he was taking in our surroundings, his cheeks full of color, his eyes alight, his hair windblown. He looked so—so—

His gaze collided with mine. He let go of my waist, and I his shoulders. I heard the shaky sound of his exhale, and then we both looked away. Fast.

Around us, the peaks were indeed like claws fixed upon a seven-fingered hand. And in the palm of that hand, smooth as glass, was a basin. Rory and I and the gargoyle stood upon rocks and looked out over the water. Fed by mountainous snowdrift, this basin was a mother to the waterfall—a mother to the entire Tenor River. And yet it was vast enough to be unmoving, still as the surface of a mirror. Even in the darkness I was struck by how clear it was—so pure it was as if we’d sullied it just by looking upon it. Only I had looked upon this water—this basin—before. Thousands of times.

But always in my dreams.

Reflected upon the water, next to the wrinkling visage of the moon, was a castle.

Tall and ancient and crude, it was the same gray hue as the mountains, as if whoever had carved it had harvested shale from the Peaks themselves. Its entry was lifted, and upon the stone stairwell, leading to a great stone door—

Sprites. At least ten of them, the same shale variety that we’d seen earlier. They lay curled around themselves in sleep, their rocky chests rising and falling.

My hands fell to the hammer and chisel upon my belt. “Should we get the others?”

“Benji will still be in the water. Wouldn’t want to give the Oarsman time to vanish,” Rory whispered, stepping forward. “No sudden movements, all right?”

“I say, Bartholomew—”

“No talking, either.” He nodded at the stairs. “We go very, very quietly.”

My feet were silent and so, so cold upon the castle’s stone steps. I held the gargoyle’s hand in a vise and Rory took the other, his right hand balled in a fist around the Artful Brigand’s coin.

The three of us walked in a silent, crooked line up the stairs.

The shale sprites slept on, their sleeping breaths low growls. A few stirred, others sniffed the air—rows of teeth peeking behind thin lips. One even stuck out a jagged tongue as I passed, nearly grazing my bare foot. I flinched, tasting my own heartbeat.

But none woke.

Rory squeezed my hand. Kept pulling me forward. Rain pinged against his armor, and then we were past the sprites, up and up until there were no more stairs to climb.

We stood before the weathered castle door. Rory tried the handle. Locked.

“Someone ought to knock,” the gargoyle whispered.

Rory looked back at the sprites. Swallowed—then pounded the door.

The clamor resounded in the palm of the mountains, as if he’d knocked on the peaks themselves, and then there was a shuffling of footsteps, a low, terrible creak.

The sprites sprang awake, and the castle door opened. From it, darkness spilled, a cloaked figure within it.

He was taller than me—taller than Rory—wide in the shoulders and tapered at the waist. From the long spool of his tattered wool sleeve was a hand composed of gray skin and jagged joints.

The Ardent Oarsman clutched his stone oar and looked down upon us.

I couldn’t see his face. The mouth of his hood was all darkness. Still, I could feel his gaze. When the Oarsman spoke, his voice was a low rasp that put a thousand prickles on the back of my neck. “Who comes?”

“The king’s knight.” Rory stepped forward, lazily hunched. Had I not understood his back, his shoulders tighter than a bowstring, I might have thought him bored. “With a Diviner and her gargoyle.”

“A Diviner?” The Omen said it sluggishly, as if all the surprise had atrophied out of him long ago. “There must be some mistake.”

“There is no mistake, Oarsman.” My tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth. “I’ve come for answers.”

Rory’s voice was dangerously even. “And to take up the mantle.”

The Oarsman stood eerily still. Slowly, he lifted a hand—withdrew the hood of his cloak.

I swallowed a scream. The Harried Scribe’s face had been flesh, but the Ardent Oarsman’s face was akin to the mountain sprites—gray, smooth in some places and rough in other. His eyes were smooth, pallid.

Made entirely of limestone.

His lips pulled back in a smile, and I saw that his teeth were fangs. Shattered, sharpened stone. His gaze shifted between Rory and me and the gargoyle. He lifted his oar, pointing it into the dark castle, and that terrible serrated smile widened. “Won’t you come in?”





Not even a flickering candle lent animation to the castle. Dark and full of angles, with no carpet, no hearth, Rory and the gargoyle and I were led into a hall, the sprites stalking in our wake. The east wall was opened up to the night, a low breeze blowing. Through a row of columns, I could see out into the peaks—see the basin of crystalline water and the moon over it.