The Black Star (Book 3)

by Edward W. Robertson

  Stiff, sore, exhausted, hungry, and generally miserable, he continued across the hills, pushing the horse to a trot here and there, but mostly sticking to a walk that would preserve their collective endurance. He cursed Dante's name the whole while. He descended from the hills into a plain bordered by the mountains of Gallador Rift to the east and by Vossen Forest to the west. He stopped at another farmhouse and traded a silver necklace for meat pies, baked potatoes, a sack of walnuts, and two thick blankets. He almost asked for a quick nap in a bed, but there was no getting around the fact the next couple days would be a living hell. He just had to make it through.

  He carried on. Sometimes he dozed in the saddle, but despite the lack of roads, he wasn't concerned about going off course. Hemmed in by mountains and forest, the way forward was clear.

  Miles came and went. His horse wouldn't win any shows, but it had been trained to endure, and he only spent two more nights in the wilds. He was so tired that, when he first saw the sheer black cliffs of Pocket Cove, he thought they were a mirage.

  He rode up and touched the cool basalt. The cliffs rose monolithically, sweeping north to south, blocking all entry to the bay on the other side.

  He dismounted, legs aching. Wind whistled through the prairie. He waved his hands over his head and shouted as loud as he could. "Hello! Hellooo!"

  Nothing. Just as he'd expected. He led the horse south along the wall, stopping every few hundred feet to shout some more. After three hours, he reached the spot in the wall where the hidden staircase was. More accurately, where it had been: first in his excitement, and then in his exhaustion, he'd forgotten the People of the Pocket had crumbled it into rubble.

  "Hello!" he said. "Listen, I know you're up there. I've met you. And if one of you doesn't have the courtesy to come give me a wave, I'll climb up there hand over hand."

  The whooshing wind was his only reply. He added a sigh to it, got down from his horse, and began to climb. It wasn't easy—the cliffs were almost smooth, and he didn't have anything in the way of equipment. Instead, he had one extremely effective tool: maniacal determination.

  Eight feet up, as he clung to a two-inch ledge, the rock beneath his fingers disappeared. He fell to the ground, landing in a low, knee-jarring crouch. He tipped back his head and smiled wryly. Far up the cliff, a head poked over the edge.

  "If you try that again," the woman said, voice carrying with unnatural vigor, "I'll wait to drop you until you're a hundred feet up."

  "There you are!" he said. "Do they leave one of you unfortunate souls posted up there all day?"

  "We keep watch on our walls."

  "So have any of your friends recognized me? I'm Blays Buckler. Visited you a few years back. I had a friend with me named Dante."

  "I remember," she said. "We haven't had another visitor since."

  Blays nodded and took a drink to soothe his throat. "Well, Dante figured out how to move the earth around like you guys do. With a vengeance. If you don't let me in, I'll sneak around the coast and into Pocket Cove when you least expect it. To find me, he'll tear down the cliffs."

  "If we let you inside, what would stop him from tearing down the cliffs anyway?"

  "At least you'll know when he's coming. And I'll do my best to talk him into leaving."

  She lifted her head to look across the plains. Blays followed her gaze. Miles away, three silhouetted riders moved across a ridge and dropped from sight. Heading west.

  "What exactly do you want?" the woman said.

  "To learn what you do best: how to disappear."

  "Those who come in can't ever leave."

  "Perfect!" Blays said. "Where do I sign?"

  "One moment."

  The woman withdrew from the cliff. The wind stirred the grass. A minute ticked by. As Blays prepared to call up to her and demand an answer, stone groaned across the plains. Before his eyes, a staircase appeared in the side of the cliff.

  Blays grinned and started up.

  9

  The dark curtain stood on the prairie like a wall at the end of the world. Dante sighed and cursed simultaneously.

  "What is it?" Lew said. "Did we go the wrong way? Is that a dead end?"

  "Yes. Which only proves we're in the right place." Dante shifted in the saddle. "Give me a minute to think."

  He'd come so close. Since riding from Setteven two days ago, the pressure in his head had mounted steadily. And in the last hour, that pressure—the physical manifestation of the nethereal link between Blays and the blood Dante had collected on the handkerchief—had accelerated. That meant Blays had stopped. Stymied, most likely, by the cliffs of Pocket Cove. Dante knew that Blays wouldn't have dashed all the way out here without some sort of plan for entry, but the People of the Pocket a) didn't know Blays was coming, and b) were notoriously inhospitable (which was likely the very reason Blays was gambling on this approach).

  There had been a chance, in other words, for Dante to catch him again. He'd sent another burst of nether through their horses' veins to cleanse them of their aches and fatigue, then galloped across the prairie.

  And then the pressure had begun to slacken. Blays was moving away from Dante. Somehow, he'd gotten inside.

  Considering Blays' head start, it was a miracle they'd come this close. Blays' stunt at the palace had caught Dante completely off guard. He'd been so startled by the fact Blays had shoved him off the railing that, before he hit the ground, he'd had no time to do more than clutch his arms to his head and yelp.

  He woke in a stone room. Four guards and two old men in robes whirled to face the bed, feet shuffling as they stepped back. Dante's left arm and hip throbbed dully. His head ached much worse. Not all the way conscious, he drew on the nether. The robed men shouted. Pale ether crackled in the air. Dante went very still.

  That pause allowed them to explain. They were Moddegan's court ethermancers. In the fall from the terrace, Dante had broken his arm, chipped his hip, and rattled his head. They'd healed him.

  This was confusing, especially in his addled state, but over the following hours of discussion, his status clarified. He wasn't a prisoner, per se, although he wasn't allowed to leave despite his urgent protestations. Eventually, the court interrogator downgraded him from "Potential Assassin" to "???". At that point, Moddegan himself stepped in for a brief conversation.

  Because Dante was a fellow regent. Even if he and Moddegan were dire enemies, which they no longer were, Dante would have been afforded the special privileges that were his due. By definition, a ruler bore the mandate of Arawn. You couldn't disrespect that without weakening your own status as king. Not to mention degrading yourself in the eyes of other regents, who might not feel compelled to treat you any better, should you some day wind up in their hands.

  Additionally, Moddegan seemed to understand Dante hadn't come to Setteven to hurt him. If anything, given Moddegan's line of questions, Dante deduced that he believed Dante's exposure of Blays had helped save him from something.

  The short and long of it was that, while the events in the palace had been shocking and remained opaque, Moddegan had no reason to believe Dante knew any more than he did. Their nations weren't at war or particularly close to it. The crown appeared safe.

  Even so, had Dante been a commoner, he never would have seen the light of day again. Instead, he was told that the court would continue to investigate, and if they determined Dante had come to the palace for hostile intent, the consequences would be sinister. Then he was released.

  All told, he'd lost less than 24 hours. A frantic scramble to the southwest ensued. By the time he, Lew, and Cee took their first rest, Dante had guessed where Blays was headed. And here they were, at the indomitable cliffs of Pocket Cove.

  Following the pressure in his head, he rode to their base and threw back his shoulders. "I am Dante Galand, high priest of the Council of Narashtovik. You will give me Blays Buckler—or I will come in and take him."

  Grass whispered to itself. High above, the cliffs remained vacant.
>
  "Do you think they heard?" Lew said.

  "Absolutely. Blays will have warned him."

  "They're the People of the Pocket," Cee said. "They don't talk to anyone."

  "They'll hear this," Dante said.

  He cut his arm and wiped the blood across his palm. Nether bloomed. He delved into the shadows lurking in the rock atop the cliff and coaxed them away. Stone flowed like tepid bacon grease, revealing the first turn of a new staircase.

  Five heads popped up from the cliffs.

  "Stop that," a woman said.

  "Sure," Dante replied. "All you have to do is give me Blays."

  "No one goes in—or out."

  "Then how did Blays get in? Give me the same exemption you gave him."

  "Leave now," she said. "Before you're left to fertilize the prairie instead."

  "If that's how you want to play it."

  Dante focused on the cliff and began to carve another segment of stairs. He'd no sooner touched the nether in the rock than a flood of shadows gushed through the earth toward his work. He shouted, redoubling his strength, but the combined efforts of the Pocket's defenders dashed his hold, erasing the steps from the top of the cliffs.

  "First warning," another woman called. "The next time, we bury you and your friends alive."

  "I don't want to be buried!" Lew hissed. "Can't you negotiate? Why does it always have to be the crushing of them by you?"

  "Quit cowering," Dante scowled. He tipped back his head to call up to the cliffs. "Why does he matter to you?"

  "Because he does," the first woman said.

  "See, that's not actually a reason. I won't hurt him. I'm his friend."

  "You don't understand. He's passed into the Pocket. Your previous lives, whatever your connection to him, none of it matters now."

  "These are the last words we give you," the second woman said. "Now go."

  Dante nodded slowly. A hawk shrieked from the vacant blue sky. He turned his horse and strolled away from the cliffs. The others didn't speak. After he'd gotten a half mile from the black wall, with the sun descending on the west, he stopped, dismounted, and made camp.

  "Still some daylight left," Cee said.

  "I see that."

  "Daylight that can be used to distance ourselves from this creepy ghostland."

  Dante pulled a towel from the bags and rubbed his horse's flank, settling in. "We're not done here."

  Cee rolled her eyes. "Sure, in the technical sense that you can stay here until you starve. It's not over. But in the sense that you will never, ever get into Pocket Cove? It's done. Let's go home."

  "You want a position at Narashtovik? Then you start now." Dante pointed at the dark line of the cliffs. "Your first job is to get me inside the Pocket."

  She reached for a waterskin and said nothing.

  Lew gazed at the grass. "It seems like he doesn't want to be found. If you get to him again, what are you going to do?"

  "Talk to him," Dante said. "Get him to see reason."

  The others fell silent. They strung up canvas tarps to block the wind. The night was frigid. Small creatures rustled, foraging for seeds. Dante woke in the darkness, killed a rat with a pinpoint of nether, and delved his sight into its dead eyes. He directed it to run across the flat ground to the rocky scree beneath the basalt walls. The rat's claws hooked into nooks in the stone, ascending. When the wind gusted, it flattened itself against the wall. It was three-quarters of the way up the heights when a bolt of nether lashed down from above. Dante's second sight winked out.

  With dawn glowing to the east, someone cleared their throat. It repeated. Dante opened his eyes.

  "Are you out there?" Nak said through the loon.

  "Where else would I be?" Dante said, phlegm catching in his throat.

  "Given your comings and goings, for all I know you're on Arawn's grassy hill. Or underneath the sea, demanding the crabs tell you when they last saw Blays."

  "What do you want?"

  "For you to do something about the infestation."

  "Nak, do you have any idea how early in the morning it is? Start talking sense or I'll throw this loon in a lake."

  "The infestation of norren in our plaza."

  Dante rolled to his side and sat up. "Norren? Has something happened in Gask?"

  "Why does it sound like that wouldn't surprise you?" Nak said. "They came to tell us they've seen lights in the hills near the Dundens. Strange creatures. Oh, and a man named Hopp claims that, if you continue to defy him with your non-presence, he'll 'send you downstream like the good old days.' Does that mean anything to you?"

  "Unfortunately," Dante said.

  Specifically, it was a threat to drown him, like Blays almost had during the admission trial to Hopp's Clan of the Broken Herons. Which Dante still belonged to. Dante might be a great lord and master in the human world, but among the norren, he was a common clansmen, beholden to the orders of his chief. Assuming, of course, he cared to honor his part.

  He found that he did. While his time fighting alongside the norren felt like it belonged to an earlier stage of his life (in fact, he hadn't seen Hopp in over a year), it still held meaning to him. He might have respected his chieftain's wishes even if Hopp hadn't been bearing news about the same phenomenon they'd witnessed in the Woduns.

  "Tell him to stay put," Dante said. "We'll be back as soon as we can."

  "And how long will that be?" Nak said.

  "A week. No more than ten days."

  "Ten days?? Where are you, the moon?"

  Dante glanced at the cliffs. "In one sense, it's even further."

  "I'm not going to bother to ask what that means," Nak said. "See you when I see you."

  The connection dropped.

  "We're going back to Narashtovik," Dante informed the others once they were up.

  "Does your brain sweat or something?" Cee said. "You change your mind like some men change socks."

  "There's no getting inside. I can't handle the People of the Pocket by myself. And there are more pressing matters at home."

  "Like what?"

  "Large, furry men who get grumpy when you make them wait."

  They ate and rode out. With no desire to risk any further troubles in Setteven, Dante set a course dead east toward the peaks of Gallador. They found a trail across the prairie and rode hard. When their horses tired, he showed Lew how to soothe their exhaustion. Though the young monk was talented, and a quick learner, there was only so much the nether could do for the animals, who still required regular rests and sleep. As did the humans.

  Regardless, they made great time, and soon reached the paved road into the mountains of Gallador Rift. The lakes glittered below them. In less trying circumstances, he would have paid a visit to Lolligan, to catch up and hear for himself how things stood between the Gaskan Empire and the semi-breakaway state of Gallador, but that could wait for a later day. The events in the hinterlands troubled him. Mostly because nobody seemed to have a single clue what they meant.

  They crossed the basin and the mountains to the east, then descended into the wheat fields of Tantonnen. Oxen lowed, ploughing rows of winter wheat. The land looked at peace. Dante stopped to purchase supplies, then took the northern road all the way to Narashtovik.

  He wasn't sure of the distance they'd crossed between the city and Pocket Cove. Eight hundred miles? Amazing how fast you could move with proper roads and magically-enhanced mounts. Past the Ingate, a makeshift village of tents and yurts filled the square between the Cathedral of Ivars and the walls of the Sealed Citadel. Norren men and women sewed clothes, smoked fish, and chipped arrows from flakes of obsidian, as if they were off in the lonely hills instead of occupying one of the busiest plazas in one of the largest cities in the known world.

  A yurt flapped open. Hopp strode into the sunlight. To Dante's mild surprise, he was still beardless, continuing to display the circled R branded on his right cheek. Relic of the days, not so long ago, when norren had been property rather than people.


  "This is how you treat your chieftain's orders?" he boomed. "By dawdling?"

  "Dawdling?" Dante said. "Tell that to our overworked horses. If you're prepared to get trampled."

  "Such insouciance calls for a public flogging." He turned and flung out his hands. "Men! Where is my cat-o-ninety-nine-tails?"

  "Please, sir!" Lew said. "We came as fast as we could. All the way from Pocket Cove."

  Hopp turned on him, glowering down at him from a height of seven feet. Lew raised a hand to protect his face.

  Unable to take it any longer, Hopp burst out laughing. "What the hell were you doing at Pocket Cove?"

  "Admiring the scenery," Dante said. "What the hell are you doing camped in the middle of Narashtovik?"

  "Coming to see you. Is that a problem?"

  "The whole clan?"

  Hopp squinted, then nodded broadly. "This is strange to you, because you are a human, and humans don't like to leave their homes."

  "Whereas if you're norren," Dante said, "the entire world is your home."

  "Close. The clan is our home. So it would be more strange for a few of us to leave the others behind than for us to bring the entire band."

  Dante glanced across the men and women of the Broken Herons. He still recognized nearly all of them. "You look well. Has there been any trouble?"

  "That is a worthless question," Hopp laughed. "When is the answer not yes?"

  "Rather than playing games, why not tell me what brought you here?" Dante gestured to the Citadel gates. "Should we talk inside? Olivander will want to hear this."

  "Is he too good to come and join us in the fresh air?"

  Beside Dante, Lew looked like his eyes might explode. Cee smirked. Dante scratched the back of his neck. "He's a military man. They guard intelligence like they gave birth to it. On the other hand, if we speak in the open, that makes it less likely he'll flay me alive. I'll ask him to come down."

  He called up to the gatekeepers to send for Gant. A minute later, the majordomo emerged, listened intently to Dante's request, and returned inside. Soon enough, Olivander exited the gates, burly and bearded enough to be mistaken for one of the norren, though half a foot too short.