The Black Star (Book 3)

by Edward W. Robertson

  "I wasn't sure you'd come," Ast said, making no effort to shake hands. "It's just a few lights."

  "And gutted sheep!" Lew said, with a little too much enthusiasm.

  "Whatever it is, it's unnatural," Dante said. "Narashtovik is happy to look into it and ensure no harm comes to your people."

  Ast shrugged his thin shoulders. "No one's being hurt. Strange things often appear in the mountains. In time, they disappear."

  "I hear these signs have persisted for weeks. We'd rather be safe. Even if they're completely innocuous, a phenomenon like that is of interest to the Council."

  "Getting to them will require a walltent. Are you aware of their use?"

  "I'm not aware of their is," Dante said.

  "Portable sleeping platforms," Ast said. "You secure them to the sides of cliffs at night."

  "Is that safe?" Lew said.

  "Safer than sleeping on the ground."

  "They won't be necessary," Dante said.

  Ast gave him a long look. "You prefer to be shredded and devoured?"

  "We won't need portable tents when I can create portable caves. All you need to do is provide a few supplies and lead the way."

  The thin man looked skeptical, then nodded. "If that is your wish. The hike will take three days."

  "Three days?" Dante said. "Where are we walking to, the moon?"

  "This isn't Narashtovik. These are the Woduns. There are no roads."

  "Well, that's ominous," Dante muttered.

  Ast went to gather the requisite food, clothes, and climbing gear, some of which he had stored in his cave, some of which he had to barter from other villagers. Compiling these goods took a couple hours, which Dante spent frustrated and bored. All he wanted to do was help these people. Yet Ast—whom Olivander swore by; he'd fought for Narashtovik during the Chainbreakers' War—seemed reticent to take a single step outside town.

  Terrified of kappers, no doubt. Dante had seen their horns displayed as trophies, admittedly. At the same time, he'd lived in Gask for a decade. Had traversed the lands from the norren hills to Pocket Cove. In all that time, he'd never seen evidence of a live one.

  He decided to quit grousing about how much time they were losing and go save some instead. At a stone structure that housed ten different vendors, he bought travel food: meat pies, bread, smoked sausage. A few potatoes in case they got ambitious enough to cook on the trail. By the time he wrapped up, Ast returned with packs full of gear. They struck north at ten that morning.

  A dirt trail switchbacked up the side of the cliff where Soll retired each night. At the top, the sun shined on a broad, windswept meadow. White sheep dotted the grass.

  "Don't the kappers eat the sheep?" Lew said.

  "Sometimes," Ast said. "They seem to prefer humans."

  "Curious," Dante said. "And convenient."

  Ast gave him a sidelong look, but said no more. Beyond the meadow, screes of dark shale footed sudden peaks. Ast led them over a spar of jumbled stones, which shifted threateningly underfoot, clacking dryly. In the sunlight, Dante worked up a hard sweat. The scree led up to another pine forest. Birds hopped from branch to branch, chided by squirrels. Slippery needles lay thick underfoot. Dante hunched his shoulder to wipe the sweat from the side of his face.

  The woods continued for several forevers. It was a steady uphill slog, and very soon Dante was having serious thoughts about foregoing the whole endeavor to take up a life of farming. Better yet, to become a fisherman. Anywhere far from the mountains.

  The sunlight grew brittle, the air chilly. Ast nodded ahead. "Be on the lookout for cliffs. Anything twenty feet or higher should do."

  Lew took his assignment very seriously, head on a swivel for any sign of rocky rises. Assuming they'd be rather easy to spot, Dante gave it no special attention. Twenty minutes later, Ast pointed at a gap in the canopy. A black wall loomed above the forest.

  It was an everyday cliff. Nearly vertical. Fist-sized rocks littered its base. Dante glanced at the sun, but it was hidden behind the trees. Maybe an hour until it set. Part of him wanted to continue on until dusk—there was no shortage of cliffs in the area—but another part of him, specifically his legs, argued for an immediate halt to all activity more rigorous than breathing.

  He got out his favorite knife, a short-bladed, antler-handled norren weapon that never went dull, and cut a quick line on the top of his left arm. As soon as he called to the nether, it flocked to the welling blood. He tilted back his head and felt for the nether woven into the rock of the cliff.

  "You may want to stand back," he said.

  The two men shuffled behind him, feet scraping over rocks. 25 feet up, Dante plunged his focus into the stone. He thought about dropping the excavation in a single dramatic boulder, but not wanting to make too much noise, or inadvertently smash Lew into monk-jam, he opted to liquefy the rock into the consistency of thick mud. It flowed down the face of the cliff and settled over the sharded rock on the ground. Within moments, a hole large enough to climb through had appeared in the side of the wall.

  "Not bad," Ast said.

  "It isn't." Dante took a step back to examine the cliff. "But here's the best part."

  Starting just below the cave, he gouged a small hole in the rock, leaving a lip of stone on its bottom edge. A foot below that, he duplicated it, continuing in this fashion all the way down the cliff. He'd soon carved a makeshift ladder up the wall.

  He staggered back, legs trembling; he could move much more earth than that, but delicate work was always more draining. "Should be a little easier than a rope."

  This time, Ast's look was unreadable. "I'd heard about your people. I saw some of you during the war. But I never knew you were capable of a thing like this."

  "The others aren't," Dante said, allowing a certain pride to enter his voice. "Just me."

  Ast nodded vaguely. "Hungry?"

  "As a kapper."

  Lew laughed uncertainly. They sat down on a fallen log. At the other end, wear and insects had reduced the wood to a spongy crumble. Inch-long black ants trundled through the orange bits. Dante kept one eye on them as he ate his meat pie.

  "Tell me more about these signs," he said.

  Ast gave it some thought. "Lights in the sky. They are rumored to resemble Ghost Lights."

  "Isn't it too early in the year for that?"

  "I don't have a direct line to the clouds," Ast said, "but through careful observation, I've discovered they do whatever they want whenever they want. If it were to snow tomorrow, you might think it's too early in the season. But you couldn't argue with the fact there was snow."

  "He probably could," Lew said, then shot a startled look at Dante.

  Dante ignored this. "Sure, but if the snowflakes were shaped like trees—or cicadas—I might begin to suspect it wasn't your average, everyday storm."

  Ash chewed bread, watching the woods, and brushed crumbs from his shirt. "People see shapes that aren't there. Particularly people who spend all day staring at sheep. In a couple of days, you can see for yourself."

  They finished eating and climbed the makeshift ladder to the cave. Inside, they spread blankets on the smooth floor and hung sheepskins over the small entrance to help trap their body heat inside. Even so, the cold woke Dante more than once. When it did, he pulled aside the sheepskin and watched the night, but saw no strange lights in the sky.

  At daybreak, they climbed down and prepared for the day's hike. Dante didn't bother to fill in the cave; they'd need it on the way back, and in any event he wanted to conserve his strength. The forest quit abruptly just an hour into the day, spitting them into a craggy field bereft of everything but shrubs, weeds, a few late-season wildflowers, and a hell of a lot of boulders. They stopped at the edge of the pines to cut walking staffs, then continued into the rocks.

  The uneven footing made for slow going. Ahead, conical peaks soared against the sky, white-capped and forbidding. Lew struggled to keep up. Their breath misted the air. Patches of snow hid in sheltered bl
ue pockets the sun rarely touched.

  The field stretched for a few miles that took far too long to cross. Elevated above all but the highest peaks, and with no ground cover taller than his waist, Dante felt simultaneously exposed and protected. It would be virtually impossible to sneak up on them here.

  Shortly after noon, they climbed a short ridge and found themselves at the edge of a sheer ravine. The gap plunged a hundred feet to a frozen stream bed of bright ice. The far edge of the ravine hung sixty feet away.

  "Shall we climb down?" Ast said. "Or would you prefer to save us an hour and simply sling a rock bridge across it?"

  "A bridge?" Dante said. "I must have left it in my other cloak."

  "Yesterday, I watched you carve a hole in a cliff by staring at it. Would this be so much harder?"

  "Yes. And significantly more prone to collapsing halfway across and dashing our brains against a glacier. I could probably conjure up a sturdy enough bridge, but that might leave me too worn out to create a cave tonight. And where does that leave us? In a kapper's stomach."

  "And we didn't bring a walltent." Ast nodded. "Let's hope we've got enough rope."

  They'd need every bit of it to descend the ravine, which had a few ledges here and there, but was otherwise vertical. Ast secured the rope around a rock, then belted himself to the rope, gave it a tug, slipped on thin leather gloves, and started down.

  "Just like that, then?" Dante said.

  Five feet down the cliff face, Ast glanced up, squinting against the sun directly overhead. "Unless you'd prefer to jump."

  "Lew first. I can use him to cushion my fall."

  Dante looped his belt over the rope and got on gloves. Once Ast was halfway down, he paused on a ledge and signaled Dante to follow. With his pack and clothes, the going was awkward; the first time his feet dangled into empty space, he had to bite down a scream.

  Yet the climb wasn't as atrocious as he expected. With his legs curled around the rope, his belt threaded around it, and the cliff right beside him, much of the pressure was eased from his arms, and he was able to take breathers on three separate ledges. He did his best not to look down until Ast finally called from below—he'd reached the bottom. Dante looked up and gestured Lew to follow.

  A couple minutes later, his feet scraped solid ground. He lowered himself and removed his belt from the rope. Pebbles and dust skittered down the cliff, dislodged by Lew's scrabbling. While Dante waited for the young monk, Ast crunched across the ribbon of ice and gazed up at the other cliff.

  Lew lowered himself inch by inch. Six feet from the ground, he let go, rope sliding between his belt and legs. He jarred into the ground and crouched. "They do not teach us this in the monastery."

  "I'll take it up with your master." Dante tipped back his head. "Go make yourself useful to Ast."

  Lew scurried across the rocks, slowing to pick his way across the ice. Absently, Dante opened a small cut on his arm, gazed at the spot where the rope disappeared over the top of the cliff, and felt his way through the nether to the rock where the rope was secured. With a thought, he turned the rock's base as soft as sand, then yanked on the rope with all his weight. It caught, then jerked free. Dante sat down hard. He scrambled out of the way as the rope thumped to the ground in loose coils.

  He gathered it up and carried it across the ice to Ast, who had hammered a couple of spikes into the side of the opposite cliff.

  Ast glanced over his shoulder noted the rope. "That should make things easier."

  Dante threw the coils at his feet. "How were we going to get up without it?"

  "With great difficulty."

  Ast had already shed his cloak and all his gear except two small but heavy pouches. He spent the next half hour scaling the cliff freehand, securing the rope to ledges, outcrops, and spikes bashed into nooks in the rock. Dante watched the skies. Supposedly the lights only appeared at night, but maybe that was because no one thought to look during the day.

  At last, Ast reached the top, then clambered back down, stopping at a ledge some thirty feet high. "This is the only tricky part. Cliff slopes in here. Bring up the gear, then I'll give you a hand up."

  Dante loaded up and did as he was told, hauling himself up the rope. Dust clung to his gloves and sweaty face. The air smelled of ice and freshly broken rock. He climbed the first twenty feet quite easily, but as he grew nearer to the ledge where Ast was perched, the cliff slanted away from him, separating him from its face. He paused a moment to catch his breath, then hauled himself up to the lip of rock. A hand poked from the edge. Dante wrapped his arm around the rope, unshouldered a pack, and passed it up. Once he'd transferred the last of the gear to Ast, he grabbed the ledge to pull himself up.

  Grit slid under his gloved hand. He felt his grip give, first on his left hand, then his right. He kicked at the rope to try to tangle his legs and realized he'd forgotten to belt himself to it. The ground spun thirty feet beneath him. With a shout, he fell into empty space.

  Ast grabbed his wrist, pitching forward. Dante dangled, pawing for the rope, but he'd fallen to the side and couldn't make contact. Tendons bulged on Ast's neck. Inch by inch, he slid across the dusty platform.

  Dante took a quick breath and dived into the nether in the cliff. Ast scraped over the black rock, grunting. With his free hand, he grabbed at the rope. Dante's weight pulled him from the ledge; for a moment, he hung onto the rope, Dante suspended beneath him, and then his hold gave out. Lew shouted. They fell.

  A black platform shot from the rock two feet below them. Dante landed on it and then Ast landed on him, bashing the breath from his lungs. Dante fought for air, sprawled on his back, and laughed stupidly.

  "Nice catch," Ast said dryly.

  "Could say the same for you," Dante managed. "Thank you."

  "It was nothing. But please don't do it again. Not unless you're able to reattach yanked-free arms."

  "I've never tried." Dante sat up and brushed himself off. He was scraped and bruised but intact. He leaned over the edge and called down. "Bad news, Lew! You still have to climb this after all."

  They made it up without further incident, stopping above the ravine to let their hearts settle and to knock off the dust. All told, the crossing had cost them two hours. Two hours to travel sixty horizontal feet. Dante really needed to learn how to fly.

  They spent the next couple hours crossing a flat, gleaming snowfield interrupted by fingers of ebony rock. Dante's boats soaked straight through. He was starting to think this trip had been a mistake. There might be a few gutted sheep out here in the wilds, but whatever was happening was too far removed to menace Soll or the other villages in the foothills.

  After a long, steady descent, another pine forest swallowed them up. They called an early day to build a fire and dry their shoes as best they could. Ast scouted another cliff, into which Dante hollowed another cave. They returned to the fire to warm up dinner. The smoke smelled good. So did the meat pies heated in the pan: oil, fried dough, warm shredded pork.

  "Of all the ways I've almost ever died," Dante said between bites, "I think that's the first time it's been from falling off a cliff."

  Ast chuckled. "You wouldn't be the first to be claimed by the Woduns."

  "Are you from here?" Lew said brightly.

  "More or less."

  "How can a place be 'more or less' your birthplace?"

  "I was born here," Ast said carefully, "but we don't consider it our homeland."

  "'We'?" Dante said.

  Ast gestured to take in the woods and mountains. "My people."

  Lew dunked a chunk of bread in melted snow-water, softening it. "If you miss it so bad, why don't you just go home?"

  The man laughed. "It turns out it's difficult to go back to a place that no longer exists."

  "Oh." Lew cleared his throat, blushing. "What happened? If you don't mind my asking?"

  "War," Ast shrugged. "That's all."

  They stayed by the fire through dusk, warming themselves, steam rising from
their boots. The sun glowed orange on the peaks, then stole away behind the western ridges. They climbed up to the cave and settled in for another cold night.

  Hours later, light flashed on Dante's eyelids. He felt far too tired for it to be dawn already. He parted the sheepskins on the cave's entrance and stared into the frozen night. Starlight played on frosted pine needles. So did other colors: pinks, pastel blues, electric greens. He leaned out from the cave and craned his head, but the lights were sourced on the other side of the cliff, out of sight.

  But he could see plenty. Narashtovik was far enough north that he'd witnessed the Ghost Lights on three different occasions. And the colors in the sky did not resemble the Ghost Lights.

  The three of them had borne their swords with them all this way. Dante retreated into the cave to fetch his blade and his boots. Once he'd put these on, he pawed out past the sheepskins, found his torchstone, and blew on it, illuminating himself in soft white light. More than enough to find his way down the ladder hewn into the stone.

  He reached the ground and backed away from the cliffs. His breath hung heavy in the air. The torchstone glowed on gnarled pines and spotty grasses. He walked briskly through the undergrowth, climbed a small rise, and emerged onto a bald crown of rock.

  Behind the cliffs, rainbows of fluid light flowed across the skies. Sometimes they weren't so different from the Ghost Lights of winter—eerie reds, greens, and blues, flickering rhythmically, as if to a silent tune—but at other times they formed abstract lines and shapes. Once, he would have sworn he saw a winged insect; another time, a rabbit. A nethermancer could create such illusions, but unless the fellow was insane, this would be a very strange place to be doing so.

  Twigs snapped behind him. He turned, turning the torchstone with him. Eyes flashed from the darkness. Horns. Teeth and plated scales worn by a beast the size of a bear.

  The kapper lowered its head and charged.

  2

  Lord Pendelles awoke in a stranger's sheets sweaty, hungover, and eminently pleased with himself. He stretched, wincing lightly at the headache behind his right temple. It was indeed a hard life, being chauffeured around the countryside to drink the fine wines and liquors of Gask's wealthiest men, but someone had to keep these fools entertained.