The Knight and the Moth (The Stonewater Kingdom, #1)(89)

“A good portent,” one of the other nobles said. “I can feel it.”

“A sign of great things to come from the Faithful Forester,” another added.

Night fell, and it began to rain. We filed into the glen, where the rain did not touch us. The trees were too dense, some of the birches growing in such immediate proximity that animals had gotten caught and died between them. There were antlers, skulls—the grotesque remains of creatures long dead.

Chimes hung from their bones.

Above, leaves wove together, forming a yellow roof that did not let the rain through. It lent a dampness to the air. An oppressive closeness. We walked through trees—through smoke and gloom—and then I saw it.

A dais, standing in the center of the glen. At its edges, pyres of idleweed smoldered.

The noble elders gathered upon the dais. Held out their hands to Benji. When he joined them, standing before us like an actor upon a stage, they removed his breastplate. Pushed his shoulders down until he was kneeling before them. “It takes more than a strong arm and a sure axe to be a forester,” one of the nobles called. “You must consort with your senses, understanding your tree from its roots to the tips of its leaves before you fell it. You must know its place in the Chiming Wood, and intuit what its absence will bring. By touch or sound or smell, you must know what the bark is like before you cut into it. You must learn to feel.”

The nobles ran their hands over nearby chimes—a discordant knell. “Only the wind will tell us what is to come,” they murmured.

“We cannot see good portents, nor bad,” another proclaimed. “That is for the Omens, and their harbingers. But we can feel them—just as, with the sacred smoke of yellow idleweed, we feel the holy presence of the Faithful Forester among us. She is the song of the wind, near and far, hither and yon. Felt, but never seen.”

“I’m about to pass my own wind if they don’t wrap this up,” the gargoyle muttered.

“For it is the Omens who rule Traum,” all five nobles said at once. “Omens who scrawl the signs. We are but witnesses to their wonders. Pupils of their portents.” They looked out over the knighthood. “Ever but visitors to their greatness.”

“Ever but visitors,” Benji said.

“Ever but visitors,” the knighthood echoed.

I said nothing.

A flint sparked and more idleweed was lit. Orange light perforated the trees, painting the entire glen a hungry orange hue.

Helena Eichel came onto the dais. In her hands was a velvet cushion with a gray object upon it. When she lifted it, my body seized.

It was a chime. Not like the others in the glen, fashioned of wood or metal—this chime was stone. Old, and strange. I’d seen it thousands of times before.

But only ever in my dreams.

“Take it in,” Helena Eichel said, scouring the crowd. “Listen to the wind. To the voice of the Faithful Forester, sounding between the trees.” She lifted her hand. Struck the chime. “And feel.”





CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE


THE CHIME




The ring of the chime was beautiful. Steady, melodic.

But it split into me like a chisel. Suddenly I was fissuring, my mind cracking open. The glen of tightly woven birch trees became a blurred visage, and my thoughts became unmoored. I was everywhere and everything at once. Foundling, Diviner. Sybil, Six. I danced around a pyre in Coulson Faire, climbed a mountainous path in Fervent Peaks, rushed through bustling streets of the Seacht.

Then—familiar noises, echoing in the walls of my mind. Footsteps on the stairs in the Diviner’s cottage. A young Three and Five, laughing. A comb, tugging through Four’s dark hair. One, breathing long and low in her sleep. The batlike gargoyle, humming to me as I worked the wall.

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.