Secrets of Moth (The Moth Saga, Book 3) Read Free Page A

sky, they did not forget their
nobility. Blood now stained Ishel's tiger-skin cloak, dents marred
her iron breastplate, and dust dulled the gleam of her golden
armlets, but she was still a great leader, a shining light even here
in the dark.
    Moaning
rose ahead. Ishel stepped around a toppled column and fallen street
lamp, oil still burning behind its glass panes. There he lay, his
legs trapped under the column's capital, a young soldier of Eloria.
His large eyes—freakish things the size of limes—stared at her in
pain. Blood stained his long white hair, and he reached out to her,
begging in his tongue, pleading for aid.
    Ishel
came to stand above the soldier, placed a boot upon his chest, and
laughed.
    "I
can't speak your wicked tongue," she said, pressing her toes
down into a wound upon his chest.
    The
man was too weak to even scream; he could only whimper. Tears budded
in his eyes. He seemed young to Ishel, not yet twenty.
    "My
brother was young too," she said softly, staring down upon this
soldier. She removed her boot from his wound, knelt, and caressed the
boy's cheek. "He was only a youth but already old enough to
fight. He marched into the night, vowing to light the darkness . . .
and they slew him. The Chanku Pack, cruel wolves of the night,
murdered him upon the moonlit plains."
    The
young Elorian soldier whispered to her, still speaking his tongue,
and some softness filled his eyes, some relief.
    "Help
. . ." he said, his accent heavy, finally speaking her language.
"Help . . ."
    Ishel
laughed and mussed his hair. "Such a clever boy! How did you
learn to speak?" She patted his cheek. "But I don't want to
hear you speak . . . I want to hear you scream."
    His
eyes widened with fear as she straightened and raised her spear.
    She
drove the blade down.
    And
he screamed. He screamed as she twisted the spearhead in his gut, and
it was beautiful, and she smiled.
    "Good
boy . . ." she cooed as he died upon her blade.
    Her
tiger growled at her side, and Ishel nodded and loosened the chain.
    "Very
well, my pet. You may feed."
    The
tiger pounced upon the dead man . . . and feasted.
    Ishel
kept walking through the ruins, listening to moans and screams,
driving her spear down to silence them. Soldiers, mothers,
children—all died upon her blade. All were filthy Elorians,
creatures to exterminate, lower than maggots.
    "Yet
my greatest kill was the traitor." She speared a moaning woman
found trapped under a dead wolf. "The fat boy. The Ardish scum."
She spat.
    All
in the Nayan army—perhaps across the entire host of eight Timandrian
kingdoms—knew of the traitors, those four children of sunlight who
had defected into the darkness.
    Torin
Greenmoat.
    Camlin
Shepherd.
    Linee
Solira.
    Ishel
licked her lips. "And the one I killed—Hemstad Baker."
    She
smiled to remember firing her arrows into his portly form. He had
died silently—a disappointing death. Ishel craved screaming almost
as much as blood. She vowed that when she found the other three, she
would make them scream and squeal. Elorians were insects to crush,
but those Timandrians . . . they were something even worse.
    "Treachery
will be punished." She stroked her tiger. "We will find
them, my sweet Durga. They fled this city, but we will find them. You
will feed upon them too."
    She
reached a section of wall that still stood, rising from rubble, its
crenellations chipped. She walked up the inner stairway, stepped onto
the battlements, and beheld her army below. The hosts of Naya roared
in a shadowy courtyard, banging spears against shields. Tiger pelts
draped across their shoulders, fang necklaces hung around their
necks, and blood stained their breastplates. Tigers growled among
them, chained to their wrists. Bone beads filled the warriors' long,
red hair and beards. Ishel's own hair—the color of fire—fluttered
in the wind. Standing upon the wall, she raised her bloody spear.
    "Warriors
of Naya!" she shouted.
    "Ishel!
Ishel!" they chanted.
    She
swung