Arren couldn’t look him in the eye. “I wanted to ask . . .”
“Yes? What is it, Arenadd?”
“When—when they give my body back to you, I want you to take it to Rivermeet. Bury it in the field, where Eluna is. The locals can show you the spot. Can you do that for me?”
Cardock’s face creased in pain, but he nodded. “Yes, Arenadd. I promise I’ll do all I can.”
“Thank you,” Arren whispered.
Annir looked as if she wanted to stay, but Cardock took her by the arm. “Come on. We have to go and see the Mistress.” He looked at Arren. “We’ll see you again, Arenadd, I promise. I swear you’ll get out of there alive and we’ll take you home.”
Arren managed a weak smile. “Goodbye, Dad.”
He watched silently as they left and then sat down again, miserable with guilt. The words he had spoken to his parents repeated themselves in his head, and they sounded even more bitter and cruel than he had realised. But they were the truth, and they always had been.
The robe lay crumpled in the corner where he’d thrown it, and some part of him wanted to hold it again. But he left it lying where it was and didn’t look at it for the rest of that day, and then night came and it was too dark to see it anyway.
The moon rose, appearing over the distant mountains, faint and dull at first, until it passed through the clouds and soared up into the sky. It was a fat crescent, nearly a perfect half, and Arren kept his eyes on it as it rose higher and higher. In the darkness, he couldn’t see the ground below him or even the mountain in front. Everything was utterly black, as though he was standing in space. Alone in the world, hanging in the air with the moon and the stars. The stars glittered brightly, and he remembered the Southern belief that they wove the future.
But they were all outshone by the moon. Pure white light shining on his upturned face, he walked slowly to the other side of the cage, not noticing when it shifted and creaked against its supports. The moon, huge and silent, like a cold sun, filled him with awe and a strange sense of humility.
He stared up at it, speechless, and then bowed his head and started to murmur under his breath, speaking not griffish or the Southern tongue but another language: a harsh, lyrical, cold language, one he had not spoken in front of anyone but his parents for as long as he could remember. One he had spent most of his life pretending he did not know.
“Help me,” he whispered. “Please help me. I’ll do whatever you want. Please, I don’t want to die. Help me.”
Arren was not the only one watching the moon.
Darkheart lay in his cage in the darkened enclosure and stared up at the glowing disc. Hunger was burning inside him, and thirst as well. He had not eaten in four days and had not taken any water in nearly two. There was water in his trough and a joint of meat just beside his beak, but he ignored them.
His captors had tried to make him eat and had even attempted to force food into his beak, but they had failed. He had only hissed and cursed at them, and tried to attack. When he caught one of them with his beak and ripped a deep wound in its side, they had finally left him alone.
“You must eat,” Aeya said softly. “You will weaken and be unable to fight.”
Darkheart didn’t answer her. He hadn’t spoken to anyone in nearly a week. He had even stopped bashing his beak on the bars, and he had ceased his evening call. He lay on his belly, making no sound or motion other than the slow in-out of his sides, and the faint rumble of his breathing. His eyes stared straight ahead, not turning to follow movement as they normally would, as if he had gone blind.
Now they were fixed on the moon. He could just see it over the wall of the enclosure, shining out of the darkness. The light reflected in his eyes and he blinked slowly, just once. There was a strange feeling inside him, and it was not hunger or fear or pain, or even despair. It was in his throat, ice-cold, burning hot, powerful and maddening. The imprisoned scream was resting just behind his