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  MOTH

  by

  Daniel Arenson

  Copyright © 2013 by Daniel Arenson

  All rights reserved.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by an electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the express written permission of the author.

  Table of Contents

  FOREWORD

  MAP

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  AFTERWORD

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  NOVELS BY DANIEL ARENSON

  KEEP IN TOUCH

  FOREWORD

  Welcome to Moth, a world torn in two—its one half always in sunlight, the other always dark.

  Between chapters, you might like to visit the Moth website, where you can find:

  * An original Moth soundtrack by musician Ekaterina

  * Moth artwork by fantasy artist Peter Ortiz

  * A Moth wiki detailing the world's kingdoms, faiths, and more

  Visit the website at: DanielArenson.com/Moth

  And now . . . let us enter a world of light and darkness . . .

  CHAPTER ONE:

  A DISCOVERY IN DUSK

  They entered the shadows, seeking a missing child.

  Torin swallowed, clutched the hilt of his sword, and gazed around with darting eyes. The trees still grew densely here—mossy oaks with trunks like melting candles, pines heavy with needles and cones, and birches with peeling white bark. Yet this was not the forest Torin had always known. The light was wrong, a strange ocher that bronzed the trees and kindled floating pollen. The shadows were too long, and the sun hung low in the sky, hiding behind branches like a shy maiden peering between her window shutters. Torin had never seen the sun shine from anywhere but overhead, and this place sent cold sweat trickling down his back.

  "This is wrong," he said. "Why would she come this far?"

  Bailey walked at his side, holding her bow, her quiver of arrows slung across her back. Her two braids, normally a bright gold, seemed eerily metallic in this place. The dusk glimmered against her breastplate—not the shine they knew from home, but a glow like candles in a dungeon.

  "I don't know," she said. "Yana has been strange since her parents died in the plague. Maybe she thought it would be an adventure."

  Despite himself, Torin shivered. "An adventure? In the dusk? In this cursed place no sensible person should ever enter?"

  Bailey raised an eyebrow and smiled. "Why not? Aren't you feeling adventurous now?"

  "No." He shook his head vehemently. "Adventure means sneaking out to Old Garin's farm to steal beets, mixing rye with ale, or climbing the old maple tree in the village square." He looked around at the shadowy forest, and his hand felt clammy around his hilt. "Not this place. Not the dusk."

  They kept walking, heading farther east, deeper into the shadows. Torin knew what the elders said. Thousands of years ago, the world used to turn. The sun rose and fell, and night followed day in an endless dance. Men woke at dawn, worked until the sunset, and slept through the darkness.

  Torin shivered. He didn't know if he believed those stories. In any case, those days were long gone. The dance had ended. The world had fallen still. Torin was a child of eternal sunlight, of a day that never ended. Yet now . . . now they were wandering the borderlands, the dusky strip—a league wide—that was neither day nor night, claimed by neither his people nor the others . . . those who dwelled in the dark.

  A shadow darted ahead.

  Torin leaped and drew his sword.

  A rabbit raced across the forest and disappeared into a burrow.

  Bailey stared at his drawn sword, eyes wide, then burst into laughter.

  "Protect me, brave Sir Torin Greenmoat!" she said, doubling over. "Will you defend me from the evil Bunny of the Night?"

  Torin grumbled and sheathed his blade, cursing himself. He had come of age last autumn, turning eighteen, and he had joined the Village Guard, yet it seemed Bailey would forever mock him.

  "Hush," he said. "It could have been them."

  She rolled her eyes. "They don't walk this far dayside, if they even exist."

  "How do you know?"

  Bailey groaned. "Everybody knows that. It's still too bright here. The nightfolk only live in the deep darkness." She lowered her voice. "It's dark as the deepest cave there, Torin. It's darker than the soul of a killer, darker than toast burnt in dragonfire, darker than the empty spaces inside your skull. So dark you can't see your own feet. That's where they lurk . . . scuttling, whispering, sharpening their claws . . ." She inched closer to him and smiled wickedly, the orange light reflecting in her eyes. "When all light is gone, that is where they'll . . . leap at you."

  She lunged toward him, clawing the air. Torin muttered and pushed her back.

  "This is no time for your games," he said. "A child is missing. Until we find Yana, I'm keeping my hand on my sword. And you should nock an arrow."

  She blew out her breath noisily, fluttering her lips. "Yana is thirteen, rebellious, and wants attention. We'll find her long before we hit the true darkness. Let's keep walking, and do try not to wet yourself." She winked. "I promise you, no bunnies will hurt you, Babyface."

  He sighed. She knew he hated that name. Even at eighteen, Torin still stood a little shorter than Bailey, and people often said he looked young for his age, his eyes too large, his cheeks too soft, and his chest too smooth. Torin had hoped that joining the Village Guard would make Bailey see him as a man, not a callow boy, but so far his hopes had been dashed. Standing almost six feet tall, preferring leggings and boots to gowns and slippers, Bailey wasn't easy to impress. Jumping at rabbits wasn't helping either.

  They walked on. Torin didn't wet himself, but with every step, his heart raced faster and more sweat trickled. As they headed farther east, the sun sank lower behind them. The shadows deepened, stretching across the forest floor like slender men in black robes.

  The forest began to thin out. Back in Timandra, in the full light of day, the trees grew thick and lush and rich with birds. Here in the dusk, they faded like receding hair on an aging man's scalp. The verdant woods dwindled into a few scattered trees, stunted and bent, their leaves gray. The soil lost its rich brown hue, darkening into charcoal thick with black stones. Another mile and the sun actually touched the horizon behind them, casting red beams between the last trees. The air grew colder and Torin hugged himself.

  "We should go back," he said, hating that his voice sounded so choked. "We've come too far. We're almost at the night."

  A lump filled his throat like a boiled egg, too large to swallow. Torin had seen the night before. Like everyone in the Village Guard, he had climbe
d the Watchtower upon the hill. He had gazed across the dusk, this withered no man's land, and beheld the great shadow in the east. But that had been different. In the safety of the Watchtower, the daylight upon him and the forest rustling below, it was easy to be brave. Now he walked toward the very lair of the beasts.

  "Scared?" Baily asked, smiling crookedly.

  Torin nodded. "Yes and you should be too. They live near here." He took a shuddering breath. "The people of the night. Elorians." The word tasted like ash.

  Bailey snickered and kept walking, her braids swinging. "If you ask me, 'lorians are just a myth." She trudged up a hillside strewn with boulders. "People who live in eternal night, their eyes large as an owl's, their skin milk white, their souls pitch black?" She snorted. "It's just a myth to keep children away from the darkness."

  Torin followed reluctantly, though every beat of his heart screamed to turn around, to head back west, to return to the eternal daylight of his home. Bailey could snicker at the stories, but Torin wasn't so dismissive. If the world indeed used to turn, and day and night would cycle like summer and winter, would people not have lived here once? When the world had frozen, leaving Timandra in light and Eloria in darkness, would the people here not wither into twisted demons, hateful of the light, thirsty for the blood of honest folk?

  "Torin!" Bailey looked over her shoulder at him. The low sun painted her a bloody red. "Are you following, or will you run back to safety while I go looking?"

  He grumbled and trudged uphill after her. "If I turn back now, I'd never hear the end of it."

  She grinned and winked. "That's the spirit, Winky."

  He sighed. It was another name he hated. Years ago, while wrestling with Bailey, he had fallen upon a stone and scratched his left eye. Since then his pupil had remained fully dilated, hiding most of the iris. He could see only smudges from that eye now, a blurred world like a melted painting. Folks joked that his eyes were like the world's halves, one green and good, the other black and dead. To Bailey, he had simply become Winky.

  Since his parents had died in the plague ten years ago—a pestilence many claimed the Elorians had spread—Torin had been living with Bailey and her grandfather. The young woman, a year his senior, could always draw him into trouble. Whenever Bailey climbed the Old Maple, she would challenge him to climb too, then laugh as he dangled and fell. Whenever she ran across the fields, she'd challenge him to a race, then tease him relentlessly for losing. Torin had always been a little slower, a little clumsier, a little meeker, and even here and now—old enough to serve in the Village Guard, tracking a missing child through the shadows—she could goad him.

  He shook his head as he walked uphill. Sometimes he loved Bailey like a true sister. Sometimes he thought her beautiful, brave, and his best friend. And sometimes, like now, he thought her the most stubborn, reckless soul this side of darkness.

  Several feet ahead of him, she reached the hilltop, froze, and gasped.

  Torin's heart raced. He clutched his hilt and drew a foot of steel. For an instant, he was sure the Elorians were swarming toward her. He raced uphill, boots scattering pebbles, and came to stand beside her.

  His hand loosened around his hilt, letting his sword slide back into its scabbard.

  Bailey turned toward him, her eyes damp, and smiled tremulously. "It's beautiful, Torin. It's so beautiful."

  He looked ahead, saw the land of Eloria, and could barely breathe.

  Beautiful? he thought. It looked about as beautiful as the black heart of a viper.

  From the Watchtower back home, the night seemed a mere smudge of ink, a blackness that spread into the horizon. But standing here upon the edge of dusk, he beheld a new world. Lifeless black hills rolled into the distance. Beyond them, mountains rose against a deep indigo sky. Wind moaned, scattering dust and invading Torin's clothes with icy fingers. No plants grew here; he saw no grass, no trees, no life at all.

  Upon one hill, several miles away, rose the black obelisk men called the Nighttower, a twin to the Watchtower back home. Torin had seen it before from the safety of daylight, a needle in the distance. Seeing the edifice so close chilled him, a strange feeling like seeing one's profile between two mirrors, a vision familiar yet uncomfortably different. The Nighttower rose like a stalagmite from the hilltop, black and craggy. Some men claimed it was a natural structure, carved by wind and rain; others claimed the Elorians had built their own tower to observe Timandra. Even standing here, Torin could not decide, but he had no desire to get any closer.

  Above all else, even more than the barren stone and looming tower, it was the sky that spun Torin's head. Countless small, glowing dots covered the firmaments like holes punched through a black blanket. An orb floated among them, as large as the sun back home, glowing silver. It took Torin a moment to realize—it was the moon. He had seen the moon before from the dayside, a wisp like a mote of dust, but here it shone like a great lantern.

  "The stars and the moon," Bailey whispered. "I've heard of them. The lights of the night."

  He grabbed her arm. "Bailey, this is enough. We've crossed the dusk; this is Eloria itself ahead. This land is forbidden." He tried to tug her back downhill. "We go home. Now."

  She refused to budge. "Wait. Look, Winky. Down there."

  He followed her gaze, staring toward the distant land of darkness. A lump lay below upon the eastern hillside.

  "A boulder," he said.

  Bailey shook her head, braids swaying. "All the other boulders here are tall and jagged. This one's smooth."

  She pulled her arm free and walked downhill, heading deeper into the darkness. Torin cursed and looked behind him. Back in the west, the sun still shone and trees still grew; they were gray and twisted nearby, green and lush farther back. Far above them, he could see the top of the Watchtower and the blue sky of Timandra behind it.

  Home. Safety.

  He turned away, muttering curses, and began walking downhill after Bailey.

  "She always does this to me," he grumbled.

  Thanks to her taunts, he had fallen from trees, almost drowned swimming after her in the river, and nearly gagged during a pie eating contest. And now this—walking into the land of darkness itself.

  He drew his sword and held the blade before him. He had never swung it in battle; he wondered if that would change now. As he moved nightward, his boots scattering pebbles, he kept glancing around, seeking them. He had seen countless statues, paintings, and effigies of Elorians, and now those visions returned to him, mocking him with oversized eyes, sharp teeth, and claws. He sucked in his breath and held it.

  Bailey knelt ahead over the lump. She looked up at him, and the last beams of sunlight filled her eyes. They gleamed, two orange lanterns.

  "Torin," she whispered, voice choked.

  He crossed the last few steps toward her. He knelt at her side, looked at the shadow below, and lowered his head.

  We found her.

  Yana lay on her back, eyes glassy and staring. Her skin was pale gray, and her hands were still balled into fists. Three gashes gaped open across her chest, and blood soaked her tunic, deep crimson in the night. A steel star, its points serrated, pierced her neck.

  Bailey's hand shook as she closed the girl's eyes.

  "I think we should leave now," she whispered.

  Torin nodded and they lifted the girl. All the way here, they had taunted each other, laughing and groaning. They walked home in silence, leaving the darkness and returning to a day that seemed less bright.

  CHAPTER TWO:

  THE WATCHTOWER'S SHADOW

  Torin stood upon a green hill under blue sky, the villagers shouting around him.

  "We will slay them all!" one man cried, waving a bread knife.

  "It's time to kill the savages!" shouted another man, clutching a sickle.

  Torin raised his hands and called out, his voice ringing over them. "My friends, calm yourselves. Please!"

  Yet they kept bustling and shouting, and Torin sighed.


  Five hundred people lived in Fairwool-by-Night, this peaceful village on the border of Eloria. It seemed every one of them now crowded the grassy Watcher's Hill.

  The sun shone overhead, the air was warm, and birds sang, and yet a chill clung to Torin. He was back in Timandra, the sunlit half of the world, but his knees still shook and ice still filled his belly. Whenever he blinked, he saw it again—the dusky borderlands withering and fading into the blackness that lay beyond, the barren realms of night. Yana lay in the village temple now, wrapped in a shroud and awaiting her burial, but Torin could still see her glassy eyes, her bloodstained tunic, and the metal shard embedded into her neck.

  He shuddered, took a deep breath, and looked down the western hillside upon the good half of the world. The village of Fairwool-by-Night, his home, nestled in a grassy valley. Thirty-odd cottages, their clay walls supporting thatched roofs, surrounded a pebbly square. A brick temple rose above the homes, a stronghold of the new Sailith Order that had recently spread from the capital. The gurgling Sern River flowed south of the village, its banks lined with rushes and wildflowers, its water mottled with sunlight. Several boats swayed, tethered to the docks, awaiting loads of wool for the capital. West of the village spread farmlands, barns, and pastures. A distant flock of sheep grazed like clouds in a green sky.

  Home, Torin thought. A place of peace and greenery on the edge of darkness.

  A small rye field rustled south of the hill, and a forest spread to the north. When Torin turned eastward, he saw the trees slide toward the dusk, the shadowy strip that still made him shiver. Beyond loomed the darkness, a stain across the sky. He could see the top of the Nighttower rising from the shadows, a lone sentinel, and wondered if any Elorians now stood upon that obelisk, watching Fairwool-by-Night. In all of Timandra, the blessed lands of sunlight, no other settlement lay so close to Eloria, the land of darkness.

  We live on the very border of evil, Torin thought, a sheep grazing just outside the wolf's den.

  Finally he looked behind him at the Watchtower, a stone steeple that rose from the hilltop. It dwarfed every other building in the village, even the temple, and battlements crowned its top. Torin had climbed the tower many times since joining the Village Guard last autumn. From its crest he could see for miles, past the dusk and into the night itself. For hundreds of years, the Watchtower had guarded the border of night. For hundreds of years, its guard had been peaceful.