The Knight and the Moth summary - Full recap with spoilers

Read a The Knight and the Moth Summary, the first book in Rachel Gillig’s Stonewater Kingdom Series. If you are wondering what happened in The Knight and the Moth by Rachel Gillig, then you are in the right place! Get ready for the next book by reading up on exactly what happened in book one.

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Author
Rachel Gillig

Ratings
4.5 stars on Amazon
4.3 stars on Goodreads
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Stonewater Kingdom Series
#1 The Knight and the Moth (this page)
#2 The Knave and the Moon (synopsis)

***** Everything below is a SPOILER *****

What happened in The Knight and the Moth?

Your The Knight and the Moth summary:

Six women/girls known as Diviners serve the abbess of Aisling Cathedral. They are blindfolded by strips of gossamer (shrouds). Every ten years, another cohort of female foundlings (orphans) is taken to the cathedral and raised by the abbess. Each girl also learns a craft in preparation for when they leave the cathedral to live a normal life. Six uses a hammer and a chisel to make art. In turn for being raised by the abbess, the girls drown and dream of portents in a magic spring of fetid water upon a tor.

The newly crowned young King, Benedict Castor the Third, comes to visit the tor to have his future Divined. The girls hate drowning in the water and dreaming. Six, the main character, draws the short straw and dreams. She is the most faithful of the abbess’ Diviners and takes pride in doing her job well. She has never left the tor despite nearing the end of her service.

Just before Six hurries to the cathedral to drown, she meets a rude knight. He rudely leaves during her drowning ceremony. The abbess says some words and pushes Six under.

There are six Omens, or gods. The lore is that they each come from their own hamlet and have a special object made of stone. The Harried Scribe carries an inkwell, the Heartsore Weaver a loomstone, the Faithful Forester a Chime, the Ardent Oarsman an oar, and the Artful Brigand a coin. Long ago, they used these objects to drive away the sprites plaguing the hamlets and bring peace. With triumph over the sprites, the Stonewater Kingdom rose. Six dreams of their stone objects and thus Divines five ill portents for the king. The sixth Omen is faceless and unknown, its harbinger a moth.

After the drowning, Six is sick from the spring water. She goes to get fresh water and finds the King and his knights in the common dining room. The rude knight is also there, and he tells Six she hasn’t lived in the five hamlets and seen the real world. He expresses disbelief in the gods. She thinks him the foulest knight in all of Traum. Six smells stolen spring water in the King’s possession.

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Six blackmails the King and his knights into taking them to Coulson Faire, or else she will tell the abbess of the stolen spring water.

The King challenges the rude knight, Rodrick (Rory) Myndracious, at his craft. Challenging someone at their craft is a test of skill and a challenge to one’s honor. The King urges three tries from an opponent to knock Rory from his feet. If the opponent wins, Rory’s future will be Divined. If Rory wins, the King will howl at the moon naked. Rory agrees, but only if he chooses the opponent. He chooses the Diviners. Six knocks him over.

The abbess is served by stone gargoyles fashioned after different animals who follow her will. Six is pushed under the water by a peculiar gargoyle. This one is bat-shaped and talks, unlike the others. It calls everyone Bartholomew, regardless of their name.

Six’s dream is different. She only sees a moth, and none of the normal stone objects. The knights leave for Castle Luricht.

Six goes to bed, and when she wakes, one of her sisters is gone. Every night, another sister disappears. After three sisters disappear, she runs to the castle with the peculiar gargoyle to meet with the king. She can’t even get through the gate’s guards.

Six returns to the cottage. All of her sisters disappear except One. One removes her shroud and looks in the mirror and is horrified. She does not say what she saw.

The next morning, One is gone. The gargoyles try to keep Six from leaving, but Rory appears. Rory uses a coin to transport them outside the cottage. Six sees it is the Artful Brigand’s coin and thinks he is an Omen. The strange gargoyle comes with Six.

Six travels with Rory to the Seacht, the hamlet of the Harried Scribe. They meet up with the King and Maude, another of his knights. They enter a building and meet the Harried Scribe. His eyes are made of stone. They challenge him to his craft and kill him and take his inkwell. Before he dies, the Scribe licks some of Six’s blood from the floor.

Six realizes Rory might be right – the Omens aren’t gods, but men elevated to gods. She can’t fathom that she’s wasted 10 years of her life.

She runs away and wanders for about 2 days on the street, looking for the Diviners. Benedict’s knights catch her. Benedict (Benji) tells Six he wants her help. He wants to kill the false gods and use their wealth to help all of the hamlets and free Stonewater from Aisling’s thrall. He tells her his grandfather also learned they were false gods and killed the Faithful Forester, but never recovered the Chime. He was then killed as a heretic. Benji wants to take up the mantle and finish the job. Benji tells Six that Rory used to be a foundling, and he worked for the Artful Brigand and stole spring water for him. Its magic likely caused the Omens to live so long. The abbess is the sixth faceless Omen. Rory worked with Benji’s grandfather to kill the Brigand.

Six agrees because she will look for the Diviners with them and lend the power of the faith to Benji’s journey. Benji tells the nobles he is traveling to each Hamlet as part of his new reign. At each hamlet, the nobles hold a ceremony honoring the Omens. Benji attends to appease them. He does not tell them he is killing Omens.

Rory sculpts hot wax on Six to craft her a suit of armor. There is some sexual tension.

The group travels to the Fervent Peaks to kill the Oarsman. They fight a hungry mountain sprite on the way. Once they get there, they use stolen spring water to lure the Oarsman out. They follow him to his house and challenge him to his craft. The Oarsman wants Six to fight him. He also has stone eyes.

Rory trains Six for three days. Maude lets Six wear her armor to the fight. The Oarsman sniffs Six during the fight and bites her and sucks her blood. He can “taste the springwater” in her blood and will have the water by any means necessary. During the fight, Six’s shroud comes off, and the Oarsman is surprised. Six wins. She uses a hammer and chisel to kill the Oarsman, whose body is partially made of stone, but she is injured.

Six wakes up in Maude’s house in the Chiming Wood. Six wanders the house alone. She finds some of Benji’s grandfather’s writing and realizes no Diviner has even been seen in the hamlets. She realizes Omens killed the Diviners and drank their blood to get the spring water.

The king and his knights attend a sacred ceremony where they smoke idleweed (similar to cannabis) and a noble bangs on a stone chime. The trees turn out to be sprites and try to eat people. Six recovers the Chime. Maude is injured. Sybil has sex with Rory. She takes off her shroud for him. In the morning, she sees her eyes are stone. Rory tells her he still loves her. She wants him to call her Sybil, not Six.

Benji and his knights travel to the Cliffs of Belllidine. Now they have the Chime, the Coin, the Oar, and Inkwell. They are after the Loomstone.

How did The Knight and the Moth end? The Knight and the Moth summary

Before Maude, Benji, Rory, and Six leave to search for the Heartsore Weaver, Six sees Benji talking to his other knights. Most knights are the sons and daughters of wealthy nobles and wield power and influence together over Benji. They venture down into a cave system carved out by the ocean. Only Six makes it through the traps. She meets the Weaver, who gave up her Loomstone long ago on the tor. The Weaver is tired of life. The Weaver tells Six she turned into a stone gargoyle because she stopped drinking the spring water. She does not see herself as a god and asks Six to kill her. Per her, the abbess collects money from nobles who seek Divinations and pays the Omens to continue acting as gods. She confirms the Diviners were killed by the abbess and sent to the Omens so they can drink their blood and remain eternal. Gargoyles are former Diviners who stopped drinking the spring water. The peculiar gargoyle is the first Diviner and was named Bartholomew.

Bartholomew tells Six his story. The Omens were five craftsmen who fought each other and died on the tor. They were resurrected by the abbess and the spring water. The Diviners are also dead foundling girls who were resurrected by spring water. Bartholomew was a boy, but after serving the abbess for a while, he grew questioning, and so the abbess locked him away and turned him into a gargoyle. The servants she liked best, she gave the hammer and chisel to and turned them into gargoyles. The others every ten years she kills because otherwise they question too much. She also picks girls because they are more loyal than boys. The abbess’s name is Aisling.

The knights and Six go to the cathedral and confront the abbess. The abbess tells them she was stillborn and the fountain resurrected her. She holds the Loomstone and uses it to kidnap the other Diviners and deliver them to the Omens. They kill her and bring down the cathedral, burying the spring.

Benji then betrays everyone. He tells Six she is going to be his new queen. He wants her to Divine for her and lend legitimacy to his rule with Aisling and the Omens dead. He threatens Rory, Maude, and Bartholomew’s life and takes the Omen’s objects for himself. Six/Sybil goes with him to save Rory. The book ends on a cliffhanger with Sybil set up to be a new “god” for the kingdom.

There you go! That’s a recap of what happened in The Knight and the Moth by Rachel Gillig. We hope you enjoyed this The Knight and the Moth summary with spoilers.

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