Black Moon Draw(75)

The man at the center of the approaching riders flings himself off his horse and strides towards us. I recognize him from the rooftop of the Red Knight’s fortress.

Size runs in the family. While he may be in his prime, The Desert Knight isn’t much smaller than the Shadow Knight.

“Any trouble, son?” the Desert Knight asks the kid beside me.

“Nay, father.”

He yanks me off the horse and grips my chin a little too hard. Sensing danger, I decide to listen to Westley and stay quiet instead of protesting.

“Fully recovered from your fall, I see,” the Desert Knight observes. “I have never seen a battle-witch heal so quickly. Is your magic awake, witch?”

“Not consistently,” I reply.

“A sennight with the Vulture will fix that.”

“Father, we need her magic now. Black Moon Draw will not wait a day to send for his armies,” Westley says quietly.

The Knight releases my chin and lifts the medallion off my chest. His eyes match his son’s, though his features are heavier, seasoned, and deeply lined.

“Danger has a way of awakening the magic, does it not?” Westley adds. “We keep her with us in battle.”

“You left me a foolish boy and returned a wise man. I should give all my sons to the Red Knight to train.”

Westley says nothing. I stay quiet. The Shadow Knight was frustrated by my inability to use magic but willing to give me somewhat of a breather, perhaps because of his family’s history and his faith in the curse and legend.

I’m not sensing any intent to offer leniency in the hardened face of the warrior before me. If his son fears him, I don’t have a chance.

“Very well. You do not leave her side!” he ordered his son. Releasing me, he stalks back to his horse.

Westley nods towards my horse, indicating I should mount. I do so with little grace and watch the Desert Knight wheel his horse and head back to the tree line. Westley takes my reins without addressing me, and we follow his father through the throngs of Brown Sun Lake men.

I can feel their eyes on me and purposely stare straight ahead, clutching the saddle nervously.

I had hoped to find someone in this place capable of reason instead of war, but after meeting the Shadow and Desert Knights, I don’t think a peace summit or discussion is going to happen between the two enemies. They’re too hardened to want to work together, their blood feud fueled by a thousand years of repressed anger. It’s not going to get fixed in the two days we have left.

Watching the back of Westley’s head, I start to think there’s one button here I can push, one man who might be a tad more reasonable than the overbearing Knights of this world.

I just have to wait for my opportunity to talk to him alone once more. In the meantime, I need the Heart to start working on command. There has to be a key, something I’m missing. I begin to go over past instances where it flared to life.

My mind keeps going to the Shadow Knight and how angry he was. Why does it hurt to think of him?





Chapter Eighteen





There were two passageways through the mountain range isolating his fortress from the rest of the world. One was used by the people and visitors who wanted to reach the secluded, well-fortified hold at the seat of his kingdom. The other was for use by the Shadow Knight’s army commanders and messengers only, an expedited means of facilitating important news to and from those in the hold.

No one outside of his inner circle in Black Moon Draw knew the location of the secret pass between mountains, the one the men of Brown Sun Lake had taken him and the witch through. It was his second sign that aught was not right with the welcoming party, one that warned him more than the Jackal-headed man was a threat before revealing himself.

Brown Sun Lake had armies on his land and the means to pass through the mountains and destroy Black Moon Draw before his warriors returned. If the armies of Brown Sun Lake were this deep in Black Moon Draw, they had moved with help from his own people. There was no other way for them to hide such an enormous amount of warriors pouring into his lands, if someone were not actively suppressing any word of it.

Worse – Brown Sun Lake armies were between him and his warriors. Even if his messengers reached his men, there was a very good chance that Brown Sun Lake captured the hold on the cliff before help arrived. His enemy had a bargaining chip he would do anything to recover: the battle-witch needed to break the curse.

Frustrated and furious, the Shadow Knight defeated his enemies a couple of candlemarks after the battle-witch left the pass. He had no way of knowing how large the army waiting for him at the other end of the pass was. He turned back and tore out of the narrow path towards the fortress, mind racing.

He had miscalculated, stretched his armies out across the realm, marching steadily towards his final battle with his main enemy, only to learn the older, wisened, wily Desert Knight had circled behind and cornered him.

There were no warriors in his hold, and he doubted his former ally at White Tree Sound was going to help anyone but the victor.

The Shadow Knight wanted to roar in anger, most of which was aimed at himself for being too arrogant in battle and assuming he had the upper hand against an enemy like the Desert Knight. Instead, he hunched over the horse’s neck and urged it to run faster along the foothills towards the cliff where his hold sat.

Attack at shadow moon. Capture the Heart. The messages conveyed by the Desert Knight to the Red Knight now made sense. The shadow moon was the first night after a full moon, called such because it stayed out all day and disappeared soon after nightfall.