The Black Star (Book 3)

by Edward W. Robertson

  Like the day before, Minn was already down on the beach. Yesterday it had been to bring him food, but that day, she stood in the surf, waves foaming around her shins.

  "What do you think you're doing?" Blays said.

  "Warming up my feet." She brushed hair from her eyes and watched a gull wobbling on the winds. "It makes no sense to sit here on the beach for the rest of our trip."

  "Yes it does," he said. "You were bitten by a shark!"

  "That was three days ago."

  "Do you know how recent that is? You could count that on one hand. Even if you've lost a couple fingers in a tragic shark attack." Water dripped from his underclothes. He'd thought about swimming naked, but swimming around with his bits dangling like a juicy worm did not strike him as his finest idea. "Aren't you scared?"

  "Petrified," she said. "But if I force myself forward an inch at a time, sooner or later I'll have to swim."

  That day, she made it in to her knees. The next, as she stood with the surf swirling around her thighs, Blays found his first kellevurt.

  It was smaller than one of his knuckles, a white ball poky with spikes. Carefully, he gripped one of the prongs and pulled it clear from a knob of coral. He watched for any sign of fangs or stingers, but the snail seemed content to hide in its shell.

  He swam back to land and presented it to Minn. "Is this what I think it is?"

  She bent over for a better look. "A little baby that won't do you any good? Yes it is."

  "But I found one. It's possible! And I know what they look like!"

  "Well done, dolphin-man. Now get back to work."

  He grinned and ran back into the sea. With no use for the little snail, he swam it out to deeper waters, then released it. It tumbled down, swaying from side to side as it fell, like the world's most useless pendulum. As it came to rest on a slab of sludgy rock, a fish with a yellow stripe and a gray beak swam up to it, gave it a nibble, then swallowed it whole, spitting a plume of splinters from its mouth.

  Blays was aghast. Then he was thoughtful. Rather than swimming about willy-nilly, when the fish with the yellow stripe departed to peruse the ocean floor, he followed it. When it cared to, it swam much faster than him, jetting ahead with a blur of its tail. Mostly, however, it poked around like a couple out on market day, allowing him to catch up and keep pace. Its stripe stood out like a beacon.

  As afternoon waned, he found he'd followed the fish across a shallow plain and was now hundreds of feet from shore. Out of the corner of his mask, he glimpsed a gray shape as big as a man. He froze, clutching his spear. The creature drifted away into the watery haze.

  He took that as a sign to call it a day. Back near land, Minn was in up to her waist. She grinned at him. "See any sharks today?"

  He thought about lying, but if that got her back in the water and she was hurt again, he knew that he would have to kill himself. "Maybe. I didn't get a good look at it."

  "Well, I hope you did. I'm going to kill it and eat its heart."

  He laughed and walked with her back to the cabin. Their trip was now half over, but he felt good. He'd found one of the snails. There would be more—and he thought he knew how to find them.

  In the morning, he returned to the rocks where he'd found the juvenile, then struck out in search of one of the striped fish. Within minutes, he spotted one picking away at a crab; it fluttered away whenever its prey raised its claws, only to dart in from the side, wearing the crab down bite by bite. The fish soon proved the victor.

  And insatiable. As soon as it finished hollowing out the crab, it continued on its way, roughly parallel to shore. Blays kicked after it. A shape loomed between him and the land. He cried out, voice echoing up his breathing pipe, and rolled on his side to put his spear at the ready. Minn grinned at him and waved.

  He pulled his head above water. "Fancy seeing you here."

  "Did I just feel a warm current pass me by?"

  He frowned, then scoffed. "I would have speared you like a criminal. Are you sure you're ready to get back out here?"

  "No," she said. "But here I am."

  He wasn't sure if he'd have been able to do the same. Just like he'd done his first day back in the water, she spent more of her time looking around her than she did scanning the ocean floor. She stuck within ten feet of him at all times, too. Blays didn't mind. They should have been doing that from the start.

  "Are you following that grinder?" she asked some time later.

  "Is that what they're called? I've been thinking of him as Sir Stripe."

  "That's not a bad idea. Following it, not your name for him. That's terrible."

  Even with Minn's eyes adding to the search, and following the grinder until it swam away, they found nothing. The day after that, Minn burst from the surface bearing a black shell the size of a tomato, but it was a false lead: the shell was empty and cracked. Even so, at least Blays had now seen one in the flesh, as it were.

  Dark clouds swept in from the southwest. Just as he was beginning to wonder if they ought to take a break, lightning cut the sky in half. Thunder roared behind it. They swam back to the beach. Halfway to the shack, the clouds tore apart, battering them with rain. At least it got the salt off and spared them a dip in the creek.

  The thunder and lightning quit before morning, but the rain and winds persisted for three days. Every time it looked like it had calmed down, a new gale rode in and dumped buckets of rain everywhere. Blays spent the idle time trying to get the nether to expand. He'd been fooling around with it a little every day, but between all the swimming, fishing, and bathing—not to mention the exhausted sleep those things produced in massive volume—he'd had little time.

  It was good to get more practice in, but he could feel his time on Ko-o slipping away. Deep down, he'd been hoping to find a shell in the first few days, then take a hike up the volcano. He didn't think he'd ever climbed a volcano before.

  At last, the skies cleared. The rain dried. The seas were still choppy and visibility was less than ideal, but they had just three days remaining before Ro returned to take them back to the cove. Sand and pulverized plants wheeled through the waters, tugged this way and that by the angry tides. Many of the fish had gone into hiding. Or maybe they'd been sucked away by the storm. Either way, the grinders were nowhere to be seen.

  The first day was a bust. On the second day, a followup storm blew in and ruined their chances. Blays wandered along the beach, hoping to see a fresh shell turned up by the riotous waves. The storm raced off by late afternoon and he was able to get back in the water for a couple hours, but the seas were so rough he didn't dare swim more than a hundred feet from shore.

  Their last day began well. Within minutes of diving in, he turned up another white-shelled juvenile. But the auspicious start just gave Blays' hopes further to fall. The sun peaked, then began its slow-motion crash into the sea.

  Over the course of their two weeks, they'd been venturing more and more to the south, leaving behind the rocky arm of the bay. As the afternoon waned, Blays decided to reverse course and head straight north. It was too rough, the water too cloudy. Anyway, by sticking near the shore, they'd have better sight of the bottom. They hadn't been over the more sheltered waters since arriving on Ko-o. The storms may have blown in a wandering kellevurt during their absence.

  Just as the sun hovered over the horizon, he saw a flash of yellow. Underwater, he beckoned to Minn, but she gestured up and surfaced.

  "Time to head in, I think," she said.

  "I just saw a grinder!"

  "In minutes, it'll be too dark to see. We can try to squeeze in a couple hours in the morning."

  He stuck his face under the surface and glimpsed the grinder drifting away to the north. "Then I'll see you at the house."

  He crawled after the fish, slowing down when he grew near so he wouldn't spook it. He glanced back and saw that Minn had decided to follow him after all. He suddenly felt stupid. The water was already growing dark. If something came for them, they might not be a
ble to see it until it was upon them. More plausibly, if they misjudged how far they were from an upthrust of coral, a surge could drag them over it, shredding their skin or even breaking their bones.

  Twenty feet ahead, the grinder swashed its tail and dived straight down. Heart thudding, Blays followed. Most likely, it was after another crab, or biting senselessly at a branch of coral, but it went straight for a stretch of basalt and began attacking the rock.

  A fist-sized lump of darkness slid away from the basalt, retracting its charcoal tail whenever the grinder darted in for another bite.

  19

  Dante stared down the team of soldiers. At times like these, confronted by common-issue warriors with sharp but ultimately mundane weapons, he was always tempted to destroy them. Bring down the nether and churn them into a fine red mist. Even without having any of his blood at hand to feed the nether, he could do it almost effortlessly.

  But acts of incredible violence weren't as simple as that. For one thing, his friends were up there on the next flat. Three nethermancers would make a potent group, but if Dante mist-ified eight soldiers, the rest would be unleashed upon them post haste. And the second encounter would be much nastier than the first.

  For another thing, he wasn't sure these men meant him harm. The only way to find out would be to go with them.

  "The Minister?" Dante said mildly in the local tongue, aware his accent was less than stellar. "Are we arrested?"

  This seemed to confuse the lead soldier. "The Minister wishes to see you. So you will see him."

  Ast glanced between Dante and the soldier. The tall man hid it well, but Dante had spent enough time around Blays to look for the subtle tension in Ast's arms. He could draw his sword in a flash if he had to.

  Dante nodded once and stepped forward. "We go."

  The soldier eyed Dante's sheathed sword, then gestured them to head back to the staircase. Though Dante was dying to see if the others were seeing this, he was careful not to look up into the branches.

  Two of the soldiers took the lead up the stairs, with Dante and Ast in the middle, ushered upwards by the remaining six. It was a long walk and Dante had questions, but he didn't trust his Weslean vocabulary.

  Lanterns flickered in the branches, pooling light over flats popular enough to be doing business after midnight. Dante wondered where they got their oil. Most of Narashtovik's was garnered from the whaling trade that thrived in the northern seas. If he'd had to bet, he'd bet money—Gaskan silver or Spirish teeth—that they piped their oil right out of the lorens.

  They stopped at the toll-gate to the Fifth Loft. The soldier called to the guards. His speech was quick and informal; the guards were expecting them. They lowered the steps into place and the soldiers continued their climb.

  It was too dark to tell, but the Fifth and Sixth Lofts looked little different from the Fourth. Halfway up the Sixth, the soldiers stepped off the staircase and walked across a never-ending flat lined on both edges by plain row housing. Eventually, they reached another trunk-based staircase—they had crossed seamlessly from one loren to another.

  Foreigner he might be, but Dante could tell at a glance this tree was different. The rounds on the other trunk had been individual one-room apartments, but on this loren, each round circled all the way around the trunk, giving the owner 360 degree views of the forest and a heck of a lot more living space. Alternately, he supposed they could be barracks for soldiers. Whatever the case, this tree was somehow associated with the court.

  After a whole bunch more stairs, with lanterns shining through three hundred feet of branches below them, they reached an elaborate triple gate. While no tolls were required, one section of stairs couldn't be lowered until the next one had been raised. The metal teeth of cranks clanked in the night; wood groaned. Passing through it took a couple minutes. It was enough of a delay that Dante suspected there must be a secret bypass elsewhere for when the Minister and his agents needed to travel in a hurry.

  Past it, big blocks of buildings sat on the flats, blotting out the night. A spiderweb of catwalks and ladders connected the flats, blurring the transition between one structure and the next. A speckling of stars peeped behind the leaves.

  The soldiers climbed out onto a branch, passed through a gated checkpoint, and led them down a narrow ledge along the back of one of the buildings. A single rope rail stood between Dante and a four hundred foot drop. He was glad it was too dark to see the way down.

  The lead soldier unlocked a nondescript door, took them up a cramped staircase into a slightly less cramped hallway, knocked on a door, and said something Dante couldn't understand. A male voice replied from the other side. As feet thudded behind the door, the soldier turned to them and made a statement. Ast nodded and handed over his sword. Dante hesitated, then did the same.

  The door opened to a long rectangular room with a snapping fireplace, shelves of books and ledgers, and eight more soldiers standing around the walls in statuesque stillness. A great many rugs, weavings, curios, carvings, and artifacts filled the walls, floors, and tables. There were no aesthetic commonalities to the horde of art, as if it had been collected from all across Weslee and lands beyond.

  Dante didn't have a lot of time to absorb this, however, as someone immediately began speaking to him in what sounded like a sub-dialect of Third. The man wore simple black clothes and the unmistakable air of authority. He said something more—a question, judging by its inflection—and cocked his head at Dante.

  Two seconds ticked by. Ast opened his mouth. The man, presumably the Minister, made a cutting motion with his hand.

  "Or should I put it another way?" he said, switching to Gaskan. He smiled brightly. "I see you understand me now. That provides the answer to my question: where are you from?"

  "Gask," Dante confirmed, breaking from their cover story.

  "You might as well be telling me you're from earth."

  "Tantonnen," he improvised. "We are exploring the possibility of bringing tea from Gallador to Weslee."

  "How exactly did you manage to cross the Woduns?"

  "Ponies bred for mountains and cold weather. We had to use walltents the whole way."

  "Are these very small ponies?" the Minister smiled. "Or did you bring very large tents?"

  "I heard stories of kappers," Dante tried. "We must have been fortunate. We encountered none along the way."

  "You would be the first." His jaw tightened. "I believe you're lying. And that I will punish you by throwing you off the top of this tree."

  "I was born in the Eastern Woduns," Ast said. The Minister paused, mid-gesture to his guards, and raised one brow. Ast continued, "But I have lived in Gask for many years. I know the ways. I took them through Torun Pass."

  The Minister narrowed his eyes. "Have the kappers granted you a gentleman's agreement to leave your bodies intact?"

  "They've been drawn away from the divide by strange lights to the north."

  "The Ghost Lights?"

  Ast shook his head. "Not like any I've ever seen. We've been trying to find a route through the mountains for a year. When I saw the kappers vacating the route, I seized the opportunity to make the attempt."

  The Minister stroked his upper lip. "Just the two of you?"

  "We lost a couple in the crossing. There are others here with us."

  "That matches what I had heard, and I thank you for telling the truth. Where are they now?"

  "What is all this about?" Dante said.

  "It's about the fact you're foreigners—Gaskans—who are in my lands, my home, without my permission."

  Dante gave Ast a severe look. "I wasn't aware we had to register."

  The Minister laughed. "You believe you should be granted clemency because you were too irresponsible to learn the laws of my land?"

  "Your Highness, one of the reasons for our trip was to learn more about your people. In Gask, Weslee is virtually unknown."

  He smirked. "Perhaps we like it that way. I've reached a decision. You won't be flun
g from the Farthest Ledge. Instead, you will leave Spiren. Now. And you will never return."

  "We're not done with our business."

  "Yes," the Minister said, "you are."

  Their soldier escort flanked them. The Minister nodded at the commander, then sprawled in a stuffed chair and grabbed a book from his desk. The troops took them back into the night.

  "Where are your friends?" their captain said once they were below the palace.

  Ast rattled off an address in Third. The captain gave a quick order. Half the soldiers jogged toward the flat connected to the other tree. The descent to the ground took several minutes. There, the captain returned their swords. Dante had Ast tell the commander about the ponies, hoping to be allowed to fetch them himself, give the soldiers the slip, and rush to track down the monk. But the soldiers shadowed him to the stables, where a very angry owner woke to bring the ponies around and demand more money for the inconvenience. The captain said something and the owner went quiet and sullen.

  Dante had been on edge this whole time, half expecting that once the soldiers rousted Somburr, Cee, and Lew from the inn, they'd be imprisoned, or led to a quiet place to be slaughtered. But the other three were brought to them without incident. As they took to the road, the Minister's soldiers continued to chaperone them.

  "What's happening?" Cee said.

  "We saw the Minister," Dante said. "He suggested we leave. Or he would be happy to throw us out. Of the tree."

  "The Minister? How did he know we were here?"

  Dante glanced back over his shoulder at the soldiers. "Keep walking."

  It was already one in the morning, but the soldiers stayed with them until they stopped two hours later at a one-loren village with rooms available in the roots.

  The captain walked up to Dante. "We'll check with the innkeep tomorrow to make sure you've moved on. I suggest you don't tarry."