Wandering Star: A Zodiac Novel

by Romina Russell

  Outside, the village is illuminated only by the lit-up embassies and the colorful holograms flitting between people. I close my eyes and touch my Ring.

  Hysan.

  No response, and I don’t have my Wave. I run to House Aries and search the wrestling line, which is even longer now than it was during the day. “Stan!” I call out, running alongside the line.

  Finally I spot his baby blue suit, only two people away from the front. “Stan!”

  “Rho! Can you believe we’re still in line?” The two Scorps from earlier stand with him, but I don’t see Aryll.

  “Where’s Aryll?”

  “I don’t know—he left a while ago to get us something to drink. If he doesn’t hurry, I won’t have a partner—”

  “Stan, Aryll’s Marad.”

  My brother’s face grows stern. “Rho, I don’t care what that Libran says—”

  “That Libran is likely the best judge of character in the Zodiac,” says a voice behind me.

  If not for the familiar baritone, I wouldn’t have believed it was Mathias speaking. I turn to see him barefoot and still in bed clothes, staring at me. “If he said Aryll was duplicitous, you should have listened.”

  I never thought I’d hear Mathias praise Hysan, especially not in front of me.

  “Hysan planted false information so Aryll would come after him,” I say brusquely, scanning the heads of the crowd in search of his familiar golden crown.

  “The Libran embassy,” says Mathias, urging us in that direction.

  “Wait.” I close my eyes and touch my Ring. Sirna.

  Rho—what is it?

  A member of my crew—the redhead with the eye patch, Aryll—he’s Marad. He might have Hysan; they could be anywhere. Can you alert the Royal Guard at every embassy to do an immediate search?

  Helios! I’ll give the order right away. Where are you? I’ll send you a guard.

  Don’t worry about me. But if anything happens, you know how to track my location. Just let me know what you find. I open my eyes and meet Mathias and Stanton’s waiting stares.

  “Sirna is alerting the Royal Guard of every House.” A mere moment passes before we’re watching people begin to pour out of the surrounding buildings as the Zodai shut each embassy down for a search.

  “Rho . . .” Mathias furrows his brow, a light sheen of sweat beading his forehead. “We had our most advanced ships in the area of Space where the Marad captured me, and none of them sensed the army’s presence. If Aryll wants to stay hidden, they won’t find him.”

  I close my eyes and concentrate. If I’m going to save Hysan, I have to think my way through this the way Aryll would. “We have to assume the worst—that Aryll already has him. Aryll’s smart. He knows us. He won’t take Hysan to his home turf, he’ll bring him where he can have the upper hand.” I look pleadingly at my brother. “Stan, you know him best. Where do you think he would be most in his element?”

  Stanton looks at me blankly, and I recognize the expression because I’m feeling the same way. Neither of us knew the true Aryll. He wasn’t the baby Stanton saved. He’s not the hurt, heroic Cancrian we took him for. I can barely process it myself, but I don’t have the luxury of doubt or disbelief any longer. Hysan’s life is on the line.

  “You said Squary is on Scorpio,” says Mathias. “I wouldn’t be surprised if Charon is Marad—he’s corrupt enough. Maybe that’s where Aryll went.”

  It feels too easy. Aryll didn’t just act the part of family; he really became it. He knew things about us, understood exactly who he had to be for us to take him in and defend him with our lives. To do that, he had to really mine our heads and hearts and understand us from the inside out. He’s thought through what we’re most likely to do in this scenario. He knows we’d go to Libra first, and then we’d denounce Charon and demand to search Scorpio. So where is he really?

  “Gemini,” whispers Stanton.

  I survey my brother’s pallid face. “Why?”

  “It’s the only place I’ve ever seen him really connect with. Every Cancrian on that settlement spent most of their time in the Imaginarium to see their loved ones. Most of us couldn’t stay too long before the bad thoughts warped the good ones, but Aryll would stay in there for hours. I thought he must miss Cancer more than anyone to endure it that long.”

  Mathias looks at me. “Every moment we stand here, Hysan’s . . .”

  He doesn’t finish, but I know what comes next. In the normal world, a few seconds is nothing, but every second of torture feels like a lifetime.

  We race toward the orange Geminin embassy. Elaborate cupolas encircle the top of the globe-shaped building, like a fanciful coronet, and windows bubble outward, reflecting the silver moonlight. Orange-suited Dreamcasters patrol the front steps, still ushering people out onto the village pathways.

  “Thank you for visiting,” I hear a prepubescent centenarian tell a group of veiled Piscenes as each hands him back a pair of heavyset glasses. We hug the round outer wall as everyone files out, and then we wait. Gemini’s embassy is one of the smaller ones, so the platoon of Dreamcasters finishes its search quickly and marches back outside.

  But it’s enough time for me to cast every doubt I can think of on our plan. What if Aryll’s taken Hysan away from the village? What if they’re at the spaceport? What if the price of having Mathias back is losing Hysan?

  I snap back into the present as Mathias tries the double doors. They’re locked. He looks at my hair. “Do you have a pin in there?”

  I dig into my hair and pull out the long pin Leyla used to fasten my braid. Whittled from a nar-clam shell, it’s smooth and sturdy. Mathias fits its pointy end into the lock.

  Rho, Sirna chirps in through the Ring. Where are you?

  I twist the band around my finger. Searching the Geminin embassy with Stanton and Mathias.

  We’ve already searched it, she says shortly. You need to get to safety.

  Any sign of them?

  Not yet. Rho, please, let me get you a guard—

  Listen, Sirna, I think the Marad’s headquarters are in Squary, the former weapons-testing site on House Scorpio. I need you to check it out, but discreetly. Don’t trust Charon.

  She pauses for a moment, then says, I have other contacts on Scorpio. But I won’t reach out until you meet me and explain—

  Sirna, I know you’re concerned for me, and I’m grateful. But I need you to trust me again. I need you to look into this lead and get back to me as soon as there’s news.

  I let go of the Ring and focus back on the task at hand. Mathias is holding the door open for us, and I think back to when he, Hysan, and I visited planet Argyr, and how defenseless its capital city was, just like planet Cancer. The Geminin people only protect one thing: their regenerative formula.

  We slip inside the building into velvety blackness. “Where’s the light?” I whisper.

  “I don’t feel any switches or controls on the wall,” says Mathias.

  “I found a crate of eyeglasses,” says Stanton. “People were handing these to the Dreamcaster out front.” I feel my way toward him and take the pair he hands me. I slip them on, and suddenly I can see.

  We’re surrounded by a maze of orange walls that sparkle and flicker like flames. The fiery images make me think of the color-changing changelings, and suddenly the room cools to the blue tones of the Cancer Sea. The colors start to drip off the walls like paint and pool on the floor, until the ground is flooded with water. I scream.

  A weight lifts off my face, and everything vanishes. I’m back in velvety darkness. “The glasses,” I hear Mathias say. “This whole place is an Imaginarium. The orange maze is real—everything else is only in your mind. Focus on the weight of the glasses to stay present.”

  He slips them back on my face for me, and I keep my eyes closed until I’m focused enough to face this. I’m in the Imagina
rium. This isn’t real. We need to find Hysan.

  When I open my eyes, the walls are orange again, and I see Mathias and Stanton beside me, both wearing the same thick-rimmed glasses. I feel their weight on the bridge of my nose, and it helps me anchor myself.

  There are a dozen directions we could take, and each pathway is named for a different House. Stanton and I start toward Cancer, but Mathias says, “Rho, turn around.”

  Behind me is a nameless thirteenth path.

  “Thanks,” I say as the three of us head into the unknown, until we come upon a fork in the road. One way says Infinite; the other, Finite. “Should we split up?”

  “No,” says Stanton, and Mathias shakes his head.

  “Fine.” I think of Aryll. As an unbalanced Riser and a liar, there’s nothing finite about him. “We’ll take Infinite.”

  The guys follow me, and soon we come upon another choice: Fate or Free Will. This one’s obvious—Risers have no control over their transformations, so they probably despise Fate. I know I would.

  We take Free Will. As we run down the next hall, the orange walls ripple in the periphery of my vision, as if my imagination is itching to generate more distractions. I press the glasses down against my nose until they cut into my skin. Then I hear Stanton scream.

  Mathias and I whip around to see my brother cowering before an invisible monster. Mathias reaches across and rips the glasses off his face, and Stanton stops shaking. Mathias waits a moment for his breathing to slow before giving them back.

  “Fear is bringing out the worst in our imagination,” says Mathias. He’s broken into a full sweat, and beyond the tinted lenses his eyes are growing cloudy again, regaining that lost, dazed quality I noticed on the trip to Taurus. This place isn’t good for him.

  “Do you want to take a moment without your glasses, too?” I offer him.

  “No. Let’s keep moving. If we don’t find him soon, we should try another House. We don’t know for sure that he’s here.”

  “Agreed,” I say, even though instinct is whispering to me that we’re going the right way. We come to the intersection of Star and Constellation. Since Risers are loners, we take Star. Every time we turn, we speed up, so by now we’re running.

  We come to the end of the maze and stop in front of our final decision. Our choices have led us to three doors: Yes, No, and I Don’t Know.

  “We’re splitting up,” I say decisively. “There’s no time to search them together. Each of us chooses a door, scouts the room, then we meet out here to report. Whoever isn’t back in three minutes, the others go in to find them. Ready?” Without giving them a chance to answer, I say, “Let’s go.”

  Mathias takes Yes, Stanton takes No, and I take I Don’t Know. This room is dark, even with the glasses on, so I decide to try something. I picture Helios as I saw it from ’Nox’s nose, and I imagine a miniature version of the sun floating beside me and lighting my way.

  Immediately, a small galactic sun pops into existence. I smile at the mini Helios, a red corona glowing around it and tiny jets of vapor bursting all across its surface. With the sun’s light, I see I’m in a white room, similar to the ones on Sagittarius. Only the walls here have the same sparkly, shimmery quality of the orange ones from the maze, and it’s very possible they were painted with the pearlescent paint Deke’s family produced that’s so prized on Gemini.

  A distant melody—birdsong, only low-pitched, like a bird singing underwater—plays softly in my ears.

  My skin crawls with an eerie sense of recognition.

  Mom’s black seashell.

  I press the glasses into my nose again. I’m in the Imaginarium. I’m in the Imaginarium. I’m in the Imaginari—

  “I don’t remember where I came from, but I think if I had to choose a House, it’d be Gemini.”

  Aryll materializes out of thin air. I know he’s real and not imagined because when I’m not looking directly at mini Helios, the projection retains its light but loses its details. Yet this Aryll appears as precise and intricate as the real thing.

  Just as Mathias suspected, he’s been veiled this whole time. “Where’s Hysan?”

  “When I got to the Cancrian refuge on Hydragyr, I’d expected Gemini to be a bit more like Sagittarius: busy, colorful, diverse in landscape and style. Instead, it felt barren and stark.” He walks around the room’s perimeter, giving me a wide berth, taking his time with each step. He sounds completely different from the Aryll I thought I knew—older, smarter, meaner. “I didn’t realize that curiosity and imagination were completely different things.”

  I can’t feel the Abyssthe in my Ring; Aryll must have put up a hyperlocal Psy shield. I know I’m too far in to make it to the door before he catches me. I’ll have to keep him busy until it’s time for Stanton and Mathias to check on me. “Is Hysan alive?”

  “The difference is, curiosity must be piqued. It’s something that gets ignited, like a fire. It requires outside stimuli.” Though his voice has changed, his cadence is friendly, as if he’s actually conversing with me and not delivering a monologue. “But imagination is like Space—it’s always there, always a mystery, always expanding.”

  Aryll continues his slow pacing around me, in no rush to be anywhere. “I’ve never had trouble withdrawing to the deep recesses in my mind. Maybe it’s a defensive mechanism left over from when the changes began—probably a good thing I can’t remember.”

  “Please. I’ll do whatever you want. Just don’t hurt him—”

  “Back on Hydragyr, I used to spend hours in the Imaginarium. I always felt powerful in here. You, though . . . you might not like it so much. You don’t know the joys of amnesia.” He stops moving and stares at me. “I bet you remember perfectly how Ophiuchus’s icy fingers felt when he wrapped them around your neck.”

  My throat grows sore as a glacial grip closes in on my neck, and I feel like I’m fighting for breath. It’s not real, it’s not real, it’s not real.

  “Or Corinthe sticking that knife into your arm.” Again, actual pain blazes through me, a memory made real, and I clutch my bandaged arm to be sure it’s not really happening. “Or your dead father, what must he have looked like when he kicked it . . .” To my horror, a shadowy form begins to take shape in front of me. “Let’s see, he drowned in the sea, so his corpse would be bloated—”

  “Stop it!” I shriek as Dad’s features begin to fill in, only deformed, colorless, dead—and I take off the glasses.

  The room is dark again. Dad is gone. So is my little Helios.

  In the blackness, Aryll looms larger. I feel a chill in my chest, and I thrust the glasses back on, more afraid of what I can’t see.

  The dark lifts only a little. Quickly, I picture Helios again, and the small sun materializes.

  A cold hand covers my mouth, and another grips my waist. “Imagine all the ways I could kill you,” whispers Aryll in my ear. “I could stab you in the back right now.” I feel a knife dig into me, and the pain is so blinding that for a moment I think he actually did it. “Or I could crush you from the inside. Destroy all your reasons for living.”

  I brace for the worst pain of all, but instead he lets go of me. He’s taking his time. He doesn’t seem afraid that he’ll get caught. Or that I’ll escape. “After all, what’s the point of killing you if you don’t know you’re dead?”

  “But you saved Stanton.”

  “The price of admission into your heart, my lady.” He mocks Hysan’s centaur smile, only on Aryll it’s a delirious grin.

  “Why wait until now to show yourself?”

  “At first I was only supposed to get close to you and collect information,” he says, resuming his orbit of the room. “But when Corinthe failed, I decided to carry out my master’s plan in her stead. I was going to kill everyone on the ship that night, then broadcast your deaths to the Zodiac. But then I discovered Hysan knew something—a secret th
at would make me invaluable to my master.”

  I stifle a gasp. Hysan’s lie about the Thirteenth Talisman—his deception saved all our lives.

  “The Libran was smart,” says Aryll. “I had to be smarter. He already disliked me, so I had to be careful not to give myself away. That meant refraining from killing everyone who came over from the Marad ship, even though their knowledge could pose a threat.”

  I turn in a slow circle to keep my eyes on him as he paces. “You mean the hostages we rescued?”

  “And the Risers you took hostage.”

  I frown. “Why would you kill your fellow soldiers?”

  “Corinthe is no soldier. She disrespected my master. Showing you her face, trying to kill you ahead of schedule—she’s just as much a liability as the others.”

  “Why didn’t she recognize you if you’re both Marad?”

  “Nobody knows I’m Marad. For a month now I’ve been working for my master on a secret mission.” He stops walking when he’s in front of me, standing just a few paces away. “You.”

  He whips off the eye patch, and I scream. His eye isn’t missing—it’s in a state of transformation. It’s grown into an oversized orb, and the skin around it is drooping and flaking off. He’s beginning the molting process—the sunburn, his peeling nose, they’re all signs of the shift.

  My muscles quiver, and I dig the nails of my right hand into my palm until pain overpowers my fear. Aryll is more of a psychopath than Corinthe. He’s one of the Marad’s top men. He’s been close to us. He knows me.

  “We loved you,” I whisper.

  “And love overpowers hate, right?” he says excitedly, as if he’s eager to trade philosophies. “Only that’s a lie you Cancrians made up. I never felt the love. I could tell that you and your idiot brother felt it, but being around you two only made me feel my emptiness. It filled me with hate. And I think that if I’ve ever loved anything, it’s hate.”

  The space between us has shrunk to arm’s length. My fists are still clenched at my sides. “Who is your master?” I demand.

  “You really do have a deluded sense of self. And yes, I know I’m not one to talk.” His leering smile unnerves me. “You’re just a teenage girl who’s seen a few visions—you’re not a star. While you’re off predicting tomorrow, my master’s foreseeing the next age of man. Didn’t you ever wonder how I knew exactly what to say and do? How to make you and your brother love me enough for you to throw aside the Libran’s warnings? How I knew about the White Dove?”