The Knight and the Moth (The Stonewater Kingdom, #1)(91)

Perhaps it was why the Omens were so sure of their own transcendence. The Faithful Forester’s chime—the stone objects, their magic, their power—was astounding.

Maude shook herself, her eyes red but pointed firmly on the dais. “I’ll distract Helena Eichel.” She caught Rory’s arm. “You, my thief, will snag that chime. Six, you and the gargoyle make sure Benji is all right.”

I lowered my hand, and the gargoyle took it, and we all headed for the dais. But just as we grew close, Helena Eichel lifted the Faithful Forester’s chime once more.

And struck it.

My vision spun. The chimes. The chimes. So dissonant they sounded like the notes within notes, rasping against one another. Against the walls of my head, where, in darkness, the abbess’s voice waited. “All your love and resentment and martyrdom were for nothing.”

I slapped my hands against my ears.

“My mind is playing tricks on me,” said the gargoyle at my side. “What is magic, what is memory, and why are both so haunting?”

“It’s the chime.” My breathing was too fast. I pressed the cloth Rory had given me harder against my mouth. “It’s bringing me back to Aisling.”

“Me as well. I see craftsmen upon the tor, each holding a distinct stone object. Coin. Inkwell. Oar. Chime. Loom stone. I see Aisling, and I see dark, fetid water. I see blood.”

The gargoyle began to tremble. “I see young girls wearing shrouds, and I watch them age. The ones that do not vanish fracture and bend and cry out. But, like mine, their voices catch in the wind, distorting, then disappearing, over the landscape.”

I looked down at him. “That sounds like my dream, gargoyle. The one I had of the moth.”

His stone eyes held me. “I imagine it does.”

A sound perforated the wood. This time, it wasn’t a chime.

It was a scream.

I stumbled. “Did you hear that?”

There. Coming from behind us, somewhere in the dark haze of the glen. More screams—followed by shouts. I put a bracing hand out to the nearest birch tree.

And felt it prickle.

I turned. The tree’s bark was laden with gooseflesh. Only it wasn’t bark. It was skin. And the knots in its trunk—gashes in all that pale, sloughing flesh—

Were eyes.

I dropped the cloth I was holding and jerked back, yanking the gargoyle with me.

“Bartholomew, what are you—”

“Shhh!”

The tree, no—the birke—watched us, horrifying and grotesque and utterly silent. And I thought, maybe, just this once, it was not such a terrible thing to be from Aisling. Because this sprite, this monster, took no interest in the gargoyle’s stone eyes, and no matter how it searched for mine, it could not glimpse them behind my shroud.

I heard the ring of swords, more shouts sounding. “Sprite attack!”

The birke beside me shifted, and I saw how large it was. Behemoth—rivaling the tallest tree in the glen. It lifted its roots from the earth, moving toward the heart of the glen until it was looming over the dais—Benji and Helena Eichel still upon it.

There were more sprites, I realized. The glen was full of birke—every other birch tree seeming to move, the sacred glen morphing into something unholy. An ambush. A hunting ground.

Visors lowered, protecting their eyes against the vicious swipes of the birke’s gnarled branches, the knights struck out against dozens of swiping birke. Maude was at the lead. “Don’t let them see your eyes!” she cried, swinging her axe to the sickening sound of flesh splitting, blood splattering. Then—more screams.

They came from Helena Eichel. She was on the dais, holding tight to the Faithful Forester’s chime and staring up at the behemoth birke. Next to her, Benji, by fear or idleweed, was so incapacitated he couldn’t even raise his head. He trembled, and Helena screamed.

And the great birke drew closer. It blinked its dozens of eyes and reached forward with branch-like limbs. Then, the pale surface of its flesh was opening—a hole peeling wide in the center of the birke. No teeth, not tongue, just a dark, lipless mouth and more eyes within.

The gargoyle and I pushed forward on frantic feet, my hammer and chisel drawn. “Benji!” I shouted. “Benji, move.”

He looked up, right into the birke’s dark mouth, and froze. The birke made a horrible rasping call, and the king shut his eyes, quivered—

And vanished.

The birke’s branch-like fingers curled around Helena Eichel instead, and the Faithful Forester’s chime fell, catching on one of the creature’s branches. The birke raised Helena, screaming, from the dais. Brought her to its wide, gaping mouth.

And ate her whole.

Benji reappeared twenty feet away, clasped tightly in Rory’s arms. Hamelin and Dedrick Lange broke from the knights fighting more birke, and Rory handed them the king. They hurried from the glen, retreating into smoke, and Rory vanished, too, reappearing seconds later back on the dais.

It took a moment for him to spot me in the mayhem, his eyes so dark and desperate my heart stopped.

I ran to him.

Rory caught me around the waist, gripping me so tightly I lost my breath.

I turned to the birke. “We’ve got to get that chime.”

Rory weighed his coin in his palm. “Too high to throw.” He turned it over, rough side up—but he didn’t throw it, saying in a strained voice, “I don’t want to kill it.”