When the Wind Speaks (Starstone Prophecies Book 1)

by Corinne Kilgore

  “Shhh!” Beothen hushed.

  “Calm yourself.” Athan set a hand on Garrett’s shoulder. “And take a deep breath.”

  Garrett took in a deep breath of the night air and deflated into a semblance of his porcelain demeanor. “Sorry. Well, I have delivered the mule. Now what?”

  Athan patted Treven’s neck and stared into the mule’s eyes for a long moment before speaking. “We’re heading for the Thorngrove.”

  Treven took a step back and shook his large head.

  “What?” Garrett said, barely managing to keep his voice down. “If you think a gods’ forsaken, haunted forest will deter the King’s Guard, then you are as much a fool as that mule. We have an estate near Northlake. My grandmother lives there, but I’m sure she wouldn’t mind the company.”

  “That’s very kind of you,” Dnara said as she pressed a hand to Treven’s neck. “But I must go back to the forest. There are answers there I must find before I can move forward again.”

  Treven’s dark glossy eyes stared at her, then his head lowered and the tension on his reins slackened.

  “Back to the forest?” Garrett’s mouth opened, then shut, then he shook his head. “No. Never mind. It’s probably better I don’t know, at least until I can get those plate-armored ogres out of my town.” He crossed his arms and stood poised in the moonlight. “Fine. Go to the Thorngrove, disappoint my poor, elderly Nan.”

  Beothen snorted, as he moved back to the gate. “Well, wherever you’re headed, you best get going before they reach this end of town. Stay north, along the mountains, and you should be safe.”

  “Thanks.” Athan clasped Beothen’s forearm. “I owe you again.”

  “Think not of it,” Beothen dismissed. “Look, there comes Jenny. ...I think. The woman moves like liquid shadow.”

  The shadow moved from one side of the street to the other, paused then slinked into the courtyard where the moonlight gave light to Jenny’s silver hair as she pulled back her hood. “All clear,” Jenny whispered.

  “Told you I wasn’t followed,” Garrett said to Beothen’s rolling eyes then looked back to Athan. “I’ll meet you in two days at the north edge of the Thorngrove with supplies. Sooner if I can do so without raising suspicion.”

  “No, Garrett,” Athan argued. “I’ll not have you risk going against the king.”

  “As if you have a say,” Garrett chortled then stared steadfastly at Athan with two fingers raised. “Two days. Don’t be late.” He turned then to Dnara, his gaze revealing worry as his words made an earnest request. “You will keep him out of trouble, won’t you?”

  “I will do my best,” she said, unable to promise more with the threat of the King’s Guard looming over their backs.

  “Good enough for me.” Garrett spun on his boot heel and left the courtyard without another word, cloak billowing behind, stride confident and the moon a halo around his blond head.

  “Strange one, him,” Jenny muttered once the alleyway shadows had swallowed Garrett’s figure whole. “But, I think I like him.”

  “You and every girl between here and the Red City,” Beothen joked. “All right, off you go.”

  Jenny mounted Rupert with swift grace and held out her hand down to Dnara. “Up with me, m’lady. It’ll be faster.”

  Dnara reached for Jenny’s hand but hesitated, her gaze drawn toward the town center where raised voices preceded the clang of swords. “What of Penna and Tobin?”

  “I’ll see to their safety,” Beothen promised, already heading for the alley. “Come now, through the gate before the fighting reaches us!”

  “This is madness,” she whispered, taking Jenny’s hand and seating herself on the saddle behind her.

  “I fear this is only the beginning,” Jenny replied, then placed Dnara’s hand around her waist. “Hold tight. We’ll have to ride with the wind and shadow.”

  Dnara wrapped her other arm around Jenny’s waist, clutching her hands together. The wind pressed into her back, whispering wordless urgency into her ears. “The wind is with us, at least.”

  “Demroth can keep his shadow,” Jenny muttered. “Ready, forester?”

  “Sorry,” Athan said to Treven before mounting the mule’s rarely used saddle. “But, desperate times...” Treven tossed his head up and down, wobbled in his steps to find balance but didn’t unseat Athan from the saddle. “Ready. We’ll part ways at the gate. Head for a knoll just east of Axe Hilt Pass and set against the mountains. It’s topped with dead trees and an abandoned watchtower. Hard to miss.”

  “I know the place,” Jenny said.

  “Athan,” Dnara called out to him, a fear rising from separation as the sounds of clashing anger grew closer.

  “It will be all right,” Athan promised. “We must give them more than one trail to follow. I’ll be back with you by next day’s end, I swear it.”

  “Come!” Beothen beckoned. “It’s now or never.”

  With Beothen signaling the all-clear, they set off past a cobbled wall, following it to the north gate. Smoke rose in the distance, near the temple courtyard, the city’s dwindling fires doing nothing to stop the flames of discontent from spreading. Ahead, the gate stood open with a torch lit and held by young Mikos, his eyes wide and face pale as the moon.

  “The whole town’s gone mad,” he said, voice shaking. “Stark, raving, blight-addled mad!”

  Beothen jogged up, keeping pace with barely a sweat upon his brow. “That it has.” He took a round shield from the gate’s weapons rack. “Stay at the gate, lad. Any townsfolk who come, tell ‘em to head north to Axe Hilt Pass then west at the fork to the Whitehall lands near Northlake. If the king’s men make it this far, you shut the gate and barricade the tower.”

  “W-what?” Mikos stammered. “But, what about you?”

  Beothen slapped his broadsword against the shield, squared his shoulders and cast his gaze to the city. “I have a promise to keep.”

  “You’re mad, too!” Mikos called after Beothen as the veteran soldier ran off into the night. Mikos cursed under his breath, kicking a stone from the dirt, then looked up at Dnara as she passed riding behind the former blackrope. “Can you do nothing to stop this?”

  Dnara opened her mouth but didn’t know what words to speak. She could stop it, if she turned herself over to the King’s Guard. Mikos knew it as well as she did, but all she could offer in the face of his question was a pitiful apology. “I’m so sorry.”

  Hope dwindled from Mikos’s eyes as the torch lowered in his hand before sputtering out into smoke and shadow. “You never should’ve come here,” he muttered to her hunched back as they passed under the spiked gate.

  “I know,” she whispered and buried her face into Jenny’s cloak as Rupert jolted into a run that rivaled the wind.

  Part 3

  A Shadow Will Come

  And Demroth, trapped beyond the veil he had so foolishly torn, did bide his time, dreaming of the downfall of man. For though he had been conquered by mighty Retgar and brave Brodan, with his last breath into Ellium did Demroth whisper a warning to Faedra.

  “The children of men shall know peace,” he spoke as shadow surrounded him. “But it will be a peace that lasts only long enough for men to forget themselves and the promises they have made. Slowly, they will fall into complacency, then into corruption, and finally into despair. From their greed shall come their own undoing.

  “The wind will speak and the earth shall tremble at the dream it awakens. Rot will spread, the old will outnumber the young, and the fires of men will be extinguished. A shadow will come, seeking vengeance on a kingdom built from lies, and when at last its chains are broken, all shall know the truth of this betrayal. And then, my dearest Faedra, the stars shall fall from the sky and the age of man will end.”

  With his warning spoken, Demroth fell into shadow and was silent. Heed ye this warning, children of Retgar. Do not fall into greed. Remember your vows. Be fruitful of children. Keep flames lit at the altar. Do not give into despair. Let not th
e final words of the Faceless Betrayer come to pass. May the stars forever shine their light upon us, and grant us peace.

  -Retgar’s Saga, Chapter 5

  Verses 32-36

  24

  Whispers of the Fire

  “Grab her!” bellowed a man’s voice over the cacophony of sounds filling the street as Ka’veshi citizens from various guilds gathered together to mark the first day of spring.

  Bells jingled, horns blared and fire-sand sticks sparkled with crackling pops. Children laughed and dashed through the crowd, women danced with tambourines and men loudly boasted while raising their drinks. Despite his red-faced attempts, one man’s yell hardly made a dent in the throng. Naomi used this to her advantage and dove deeper into the crowd.

  She’d been so careful, but all it took was one misstep to have the Hunters on your trail. And now, with a guild war looking all but certain, there weren’t just men aiming to sell you to the Roses. No, they’d sell you to whoever bid highest, and there were far worse places a guildless orphan could end up than the Roses.

  Naomi ducked into the shadows beside a cart selling meat-filled sweet buns. She panted, trying to catch her breath as sweat rolled down her neck. For the first day of spring, it felt more like the high end of summer. The scents from the food cart made her stomach growl even as her muscles cramped from running three blocks as fast as her bare feet would take her. Crouched down with hands gripping her knees, she spied a half-eaten, discarded bun laying in the dirt beneath the cart. Without hesitation, she snatched it from the ground and pushed away from the cart to continue swimming through the crowd.

  The meat inside the bun was gone, but what remained of the bread was soft and not nearly as dirty as one would think. She hated wasteful, and most likely entitled, people. The bun helped ease her hunger but did nothing to slow her heartbeat. The men, she knew, would not give up the chase so easily.

  This would be her third escape in the past week. Finding food and items to hawk had become more dangerous as guild tensions intensified in the city. Every guild had begun drawing their ranks in close and seeking new blood to fill out their numbers. The ‘Battle for the Flats’ had been long forgotten to the ‘Victory at the Crown’ and the ‘Blood Market’ that followed. She could clearly remember that day; the heat roiling off the pavement, the Purple Hand and the Harvesters standing side by side, the Spears marching in with the morning light glinting off their metal armor. Despite their numbers, the Purple Hand and Harvesters had lost the market square that day. After losing the Crown, the Spears had drawn a hard line in the paradunes and took their repayment in blood and territory.

  Or, at least that’s what she had heard on the wind. Naomi hadn’t stuck around to watch the actual fighting. She’d taken what food her satchel could carry and slunk off into the shadows without shame. A few Crows had stayed so they could barter the tales of the Blood Market and the thirty or so poor fools who had died in a fight over a couple city blocks and stalls full of half-rotten fodder.

  She’d bunkered down on her rooftop after that, for as long as her satchel’s meager contents could last. It bought her two days and three nights of relative peace and quiet, but flaccid carrots and beetle eaten cabbage could only be stretched so far. When her feet touched the ground again, the old man had warned her of the Hunters, how they’d snatched unmarked boys from a washerwoman’s house two alleys over and sold them to the Spears. Those boys were probably washing the barrack floors now, soon to be trained up and marching in shiny armor for sultana and country instead of enjoying what semblance of merriment tonight’s truce had brought to Ka’Veshi.

  The sultana herself had declared an armistice during the night’s festivities, vowing that any bloodshed would be met with swift punishment. Hollow words coming from the same royal palace in command of the Spears, and it hadn’t deterred the Hunters. Naomi’s sore feet and winded lungs could attest to that much.

  She cast a nervous glance out over the crowd before ducking low again. Perfume made her gag as she pushed past a few Roses on a different hunt of their own. When they weren’t escorting or servicing those who could afford it, the Roses were as skillful a cutpurse as any. They could whisper sweet songs into a man’s ear while emptying his pockets, leaving him none the wiser and feeling foolish once he noticed the money was gone. Not many men would call the Spears on the Roses for theft while their wives looked on. No, better to say they’d lost it while drunk or gambling and take the lesser beating and cold shoulder that followed, and chalk it up to a lesson learned.

  Not that they ever learned. Men.

  Naomi snorted a laugh as the three Roses latched onto a young man in lavish attire and a few cups on his way to drunkenness. They giggled and he smiled, cheeks as red as his eyes. Naomi just shook her head and pressed on in her search for a shadow to hide in. That man would be lucky to not find himself left naked and penniless in a back alley by morning.

  Naomi had cut a few purses in her time, too. Desperation and hunger made poor company for morals and guilt. As a woman walked by with her beaded coin purse so conveniently located, to say Naomi wasn’t tempted would be a lie. The woman was distracted by her two children asking for sweets from a nearby vendor. It would’ve been an easy affair for Naomi to cut the strap and slip away. But, that woman could be desperate and hungry, too. She may’ve been saving for months to treat her children to sweets from that booth. Not all in Ka’veshi were cutthroat corrupted crooks.

  Naomi watched the woman buy the two children one stick of hardened syrup candy to share. The looks in the kids’ eyes told Naomi they were used to sharing, and that the candy was a rare treat. With a soft sigh on the hint of a smile, Naomi moved on. There were still good people in Ka’veshi, even if the upturned dust from the constantly shifting paradunes made it hard to see.

  Rough hands latched onto her collar and yanked her into the narrow passage between buildings. “Well, what have we here?”

  Naomi shrank away from the foul smelling breath and cursed herself for being distracted by the woman and those kids. Dwelling on the past and lamenting at what could have been always led to trouble. “Let go,” she demanded with a swift kick towards the man’s groin.

  The man easily dodged and let out a harsh laugh. “Let go? But I just caught you!”

  “I’m on a critical delivery run to the Purple Hand,” she bluffed, even though the dog paw mark on her cheek had long ago been smeared into a black smudge by the first group of Hunters that night. “They won’t tolerate my lateness, nor anyone who interferes.”

  “That so?” The man sneered and didn’t let go of her collar. The man’s other meaty hand grasped her chin and yanked her cheek into the slits of light snaking their way into the alley from the celebration just out of reach. “I see half a dog’s foot poorly drawn in charcoal.”

  “I haven’t been inked yet.” Naomi tried the same lie that hardly ever worked but usually gave enough pause for her to find a way out. “I’m just a pup, and I’ll be skinned alive if this message doesn’t get through.”

  His brow skewed as he considered her lie. Most guilds had a cheek inked the moment a conscript reached the legalized age of thirteen, but with the troubles brewing, it wouldn’t be unbelievable for guilds to be falling behind with their tattoos. The sickle on the man’s cheek said he was no Hunter, but the Harvesters were probably scouting on their own and rewarding members for new conscripts. Naomi thought to use the man’s desperation against him.

  “Please, sir.” She tried a softer approach. “We dogs ain’t allowed to take sides, but everyone knows it’s them Spears that are the problem, keeping everyone under the sultanate’s foot. I don’t know what my message says, as I can’t read, but the woman who gave it to me from the Roses swore me to deliver it by high moon.”

  “The Roses?” The man’s fist slackened its hold on her collar. “You think they mean to join against the Spears?”

  “I honestly can’t say, sir, but everyone knows the Roses have had their fair share of trouble f
rom the Spears.”

  “True.” The man’s sweaty brow wrinkled. “But, why give such an important message to a pup, if you even is a pup.”

  “Spears are watching the regular messengers.” She knew that to be true. “They thought no one would pay a kid any mind, delivering merchant orders and the like that new pups normally carry.”

  His fist slowly began to uncurl. “Maybe...,” he said in consideration. “Maybe, if you show me the message...”

  Naomi feigned wide-eyed fear, even though some of her fear was real. “You know I can’t, sir. On my life, it’s forbidden!”

  The man reached for the messenger bag. A set of fire-sand poppers crackled loudly, making the man jump. Naomi kicked off his thigh and tugged free from his relaxed grip, stumbling into a run as soon as her bare feet hit the dirt.

  “I must not be late!” she called over her shoulder, hoping her further act would deter him from following.

  She didn’t dare look back. After skipping the first cross alley and threading her way through an open warehouse of woven baskets, she emerged onto a moonlit street of houses. Three blocks from the edge of the festivities, the housing block stood in hushed silence as Naomi crept across an untended courtyard with a fountain that probably hadn’t spouted water since the last sultanate dynasty. The carved stone fish topping the fountain had its mouth open, hopelessly waiting for rain to fall from a dark sky with nothing to offer but stars. Its dead stone eyes watched Naomi as she stepped from shadow to shadow in search of a safe side street headed back towards the crowd.

  Light from an open window flickered as the wind tugged at threadbare drapes. Voices beyond were engaged in an argument that sounded domestic in nature, not shouted in anger but more a soft dispute between lovers. Naomi headed for the gap between houses but paused under the windowsill as unexpected words floated cautiously into the night.