The Black Star (Book 3)

by Edward W. Robertson

  Cee gazed westward. "Sounds like we ought to head on back to Corl and pluck his head like a lorbell."

  "We're only a few days out from Morrive," Dante said. "Horace thought it was important we go there. I say we take a look around, then return to Corl."

  "First we go to a haunted ruins, then we hightail it for a land we're banished from. Sounds like a wonderful plan."

  "The ruins are haunted?" Lew said.

  "Of course there's ghosts in ruins," Cee said. "You should be happy if there's no mummies."

  They continued down the path. Continuing to Morrive felt like an odd thing to do, considering they'd just learned a powerful man who was possibly crazy intended to deploy an omnipotent artifact to destroy their homeland for reasons that were not just obscure, but completely unknown. Part of Dante was in denial, and the part that wasn't in denial was in shock. The moment he came out of it, he intended to loon Nak and explain as best he could. But he needed to wait until he could explain at all.

  Conveying what they'd learned to Nak took three days. Not because Dante procrastinated; he looned Nak as soon as he'd eaten dinner that night. Rather, because the loons could only be used for an hour per day, and if they exceeded that limit, they'd break. Dante had barely begun to fill Nak in when Nak, realizing the gravity of the situation, ran off to find Olivander. Dante then had to explain things all over again, and since only Nak could hear him, Nak had to repeat it to Olivander, who often had questions and commentary of his own. Working through everything Dante had seen, heard, and learned took two and a half full sessions.

  "And you find all this...credible?" Olivander asked once he'd concluded.

  "I know it sounds like lunacy," Dante said. "But all the pieces fit."

  "What type of forces can he muster?"

  "The layout of Spiren makes it extremely hard to estimate. When I look at a city, I can guess how many people live there. A forest of titanic trees? No idea."

  "We're still recovering from the last war," Olivander said. "Do you have any idea what timeframe he's operating on?"

  "If his plans rely on Cellen, it all depends on when it manifests. Even if he were to obtain it tomorrow, and used it to part a path through the mountains, I can't imagine he'd move before spring."

  "He couldn't be planning logistics unless he knows what to expect in Narashtovik. That means he had or has agents here. Any way you can get Somburr back home? Use a trebuchet, if necessary."

  "He's the one who figured this out," Dante said. "And this can all be averted if I get to Cellen first."

  "It makes me nervous to have you so far away from the mountains when this 'Minister's' prize could show up at any moment. Are you sure you're making the right move?"

  "People keep asking that, but the answer doesn't change. I have no gods damn idea. But I think this is the best option."

  "I hear you," Olivander sighed. "I'll begin long-term preparations. Check in whenever there's any development, no matter how minor. And do not put yourself in harm's way. If the Minister gets wind of what you know, he'll execute you on the spot."

  Dante wasn't entirely sure how he was supposed to get into Corl and figure out what was going on without putting himself and/or his companions in danger, but he let the matter rest. He was talked out. Besides, they were almost to Morrive.

  The day before, they had plodded along the pass through a line of small, worn mountains. The other side was brown and rocky. The land below was as flat as the prairies of Ellan, but here the grass grew in lonely yellow clumps. Minty-smelling shrubs rose where they could, branches humped like the back of an old field hand. Winds rattled across the plain, swirling the dust into tiny, erratic tornadoes. Patches of snow had been hardened into crusty sheets by the unblocked sunlight and the scouring winds. Rodents and small birds picked around for seeds. Twice, they saw shepherds tending goats. Small bands of nomads passed by on horseback, dogs barking across the flatlands.

  For the most part, it was a place of weather and sky.

  The sixth day after leaving Ellan, they came to a village settled around a large pond. Most of the homes were leather tents insulated with wool and grass. A few were built from mud bricks. Fences penned in sheep and goats, the posts and rails built from ragged, warped wood that looked like it had been there for centuries.

  The trail led to the village. Since crossing into the desert, there had been nothing to forage for. Their supplies were growing light. After a quick discussion, they decided to approach the settlement, stopping outside of bow range while Dante and Ast went to speak to the locals. A sun-tanned and wind-beaten woman met them on the road, the tails of her white braids flapping in the wind. According to Ast, she spoke First (Weslean). He spoke enough to confirm they would be allowed to enter and trade. The tongue was similar enough that Dante could understand it in snatches. He prayed there would be no misunderstandings.

  Their attempt to barter did not get off to a strong start. Other than their knives, and a few metal tools the locals were in short supply of, they had very little to offer. While Dante and Ast haggled over the value of a steel knife, a man brought back his son from the wilds. The young boy's feet were both frostbitten.

  It took some time for Dante to convince them he could help—in the end, he had to cut his arm, then heal his wound in front of their eyes. A few of the men seemed to think that was a sign Dante ought to be sunk in the lake, or dragged behind a horse until there was nothing left of him, but the boy's father shouted them down and beckoned Dante into his tent. A few minutes later, the boy's green and red toes had gone pink, their swelling soothed.

  Dante cautioned the man that he still wasn't sure about one of the toes, but the man kissed him on both cheeks, slaughtered a sheep, and began preparations for a feast of mutton, blood-and-barley pudding, and fermented milk. Many of the villagers were disinterested, but some three dozen others came by over the course of the afternoon and evening, bearing small dishes or skins of beer.

  They were cautious at first. Then a young woman shyly showed Dante her rotten tooth. It was too far gone to save, but with the nether, he was able to push it painlessly from her mouth, her gums healing behind it.

  With that, the floodgates opened. He, Lew, and even Somburr were inundated with requests to heal cuts, infections, aches, and fevers. They couldn't do much for the older people's arthritis, and Dante had to inform one gentleman that even the nether had no solution for baldness. Yet by the end of the feast, they were stuffed, drunk, and gifted with a score of feather charms and bone talismans—along with sacks of barley, dried mutton, and skins of spiced blood the locals claimed would make you as strong as the horses it was harvested from.

  "Where are you going?" the father of the boy asked when things had wound down and the stars blazed from the sky.

  "Morrive," Dante answered.

  The man frowned. "I would not go there if I were you."

  "Why? Is it cursed?"

  He laughed. "Of course not. But this is the last village from here until the end of the desert. There is nothing else. Nor at Morrive."

  "I hope you're wrong. My home depends on it."

  Dante asked the others about the place, but while it was nearby, it stood across miles of sandy dunes the villagers rarely spent any time in. Those who'd seen it shrugged, dismissing it as no more interesting than any other hunk of rock in the desert.

  They were given space to sleep in a stranger's tent. In the morning, they were fed flatbread and farmer's cheese. They took water from the lake and continued south.

  The baked dirt mingled with sinuous arms of sand. Soon, the trail disappeared. Over the course of a couple miles, dunes replaced the plains, rippling north-south as the winds scattered their grains to the east. It was still freezing, but the snows were gone. The loose sand made for slow travel. At the top of each dune, Dante stopped to look in all directions, hunting for anything that looked out of place. With enough height, he could see for miles, but with no road to lead them through the shifting sands, it was possible
they'd pass right by the ruins.

  As the sun fled west, he began to fear they had. But miles to the south, a shadow lay on the desert, elongated by the slant of the light. They pushed on. A squared stone tower projected from the sand. They reached it in the last of the light. The stone was a leopard-spotted granite, patterned with black rings enclosing a heterogeneous mash of orange minerals. It was some fifty feet tall and its walls were a hundred feet wide. Friezes and glyphs were etched in the rock. Those on the western face were worn smooth by years of wind-driven sand.

  Dante wanted nothing more than to investigate then and there, but they'd already pushed too far; if they didn't put together some sort of shelter, they might freeze. They moved to the shelter of the east wall and set up their tents. He feared the sand would provide no purchase for their stakes, but the ground right next to the tower was hard-packed, practically stone.

  Not long after the sun was down, the wind settled as well. They were left in silence broken only by their own breathing and the shuffling of the ponies. The stillness was so complete Dante could believe nothing had ever lived here at all, that the tower had been dragged out here by a crazed king who fancied himself an architectural critic.

  Dante woke multiple times during the night. But he was so tired and sore that despite his excitement—an excitement very much like the kind he'd had as a child waiting for Falmac's Eve—he was able to stay beneath his blankets until dawn. Once he was up, he ate quickly, then made a circuit around the tower of Morrive.

  Except for the occasional patch of glyphs or wind-weathered carving, the walls were blank. There was no sign of a staircase. There were, however, multiple windows on each side. Including a few that could be reached from the ground.

  He returned to the camp and explained he was going inside. To Dante's total lack of surprise, Lew offered to stay outside and copy the glyphs on the walls and attempt to translate them using the Speech of the Lost. As always, Cee wanted to join the more active part of the mission. Somburr's curiosity led him to volunteer as well. Ast preferred to stay outside and keep watch, but said that Dante should call him up if he encountered anything strange.

  Dante took Cee and Somburr back to the window. The tower was obviously long dead, but he wished he had a rat to send in first. Even a moth would do. Lacking scouts other than himself, he jumped up, grabbed onto the stone still, and hauled himself inside.

  Dust motes twirled in shafts of light. Sand sprawled across the floor. The room was otherwise bare stone. He gestured to the others and lowered himself to the floor. It smelled like dust, but there was no hint of mustiness. The other two climbed in behind him, landing on the floor with a burst of sand. The rest of the rooms were as empty as the first, but they found a stairwell, hard-packed sand cementing the steps into a ramp. They stomped their feet through the crust and headed upstairs.

  The sand on the second level drifted against the walls, but there was less of it, with stone showing in the middle of the floor. Shrunken piles of what might have been curtains were crumpled beneath the windows. When Dante touched one, it crumbled to ashy remnants. A metal bar lay on the ground, pitted and green with age. Loose timber sprawled around the room, but it was so chewed up and rotten that it was hard to identify what it might once have been.

  The next three floors presented similar results. The rooms weren't empty, but they may as well have been. The higher they got, the less sand rested on the floor. The fifth floor led to the roof.

  The tower was the tallest thing for miles and offered sweeping vistas of desert. Dante only had eyes for the roof itself. A circle of black stone dominated the surface, sixty feet in diameter and divided into twelve equal slices. As usual, sand dusted it all, but he immediately understood what it referenced: the twelve gods of the Celeset.

  A far smaller circle was inscribed in the center. Each of its foot-long wedges was carved with an icon: the twin rivers of Arawn, the hound of Mennok, the anvil, the maiden. Some of the symbols didn't match what he was accustomed to, but what struck him was that there were twelve. Same as in Mallon and Gask. Here in Weslee, however, they worshipped the Thirteen Lords of the Broken Circle.

  The slices were filled with regal glyphs. Some were clogged with sand, others wind-worn, but he thought they'd be able to read them. He moved to the edge of the tower and hollered down at Lew until the monk agreed to join him on the roof.

  They set to work copying the glyphs. Somburr assisted. Cee slipped away. Ast stood on the roof and watched the desert. As the sun climbed, the air warmed enough for Dante to shed his cloak.

  The translations weren't easy business. The glyphs stood for syllables rather than letters, and the Morrivese grammar was crude. They'd had time to familiarize themselves with the Speech of the Lost during the walk from Ellan, though, and it turned out the words in the circle were familiar: paraphrased lines from the Cycle of Arawn.

  But Dante had found something outside the black circle. Near a corner of the roof, other glyphs had been hammered into the rock. They were sloppy, out of line, shallower than the orderly symbols chiseled into the Celeset. Dante called Lew over to help.

  Within an hour, they had several interpretations of the line. It was something close to "The stone has broken and brought the skies down with it." They consulted with Ast, who confirmed their translation.

  "Does that mean anything to you?" Lew said.

  "Sure," Dante said. "That I owe Horace a punch in the face for wasting our time."

  "I don't know. It sounds portentous."

  "What it sounds is vague."

  "Have you checked the whole roof? The inside of the tower? Maybe there's more to see."

  "Like a million acres of sand?" Dante folded his arms. "I'll check inside again. Maybe I missed something."

  Lew bobbed his head. "I'll get back to deciphering the walls."

  Dante went down to the fifth floor. This time, he forced himself not to rush, using his torchstone to light the gloomier corners, but there was simply nothing to find. Besides rubble and junk, anyway. He circled through the rooms, sketching a quick layout, but there were no obvious walled-off spaces that might contain a hidden room. He walked down to the fourth floor and repeated his search. Midway through his sweep of the third, someone whistled from outside. He went to the eastern window and stuck his head into the daylight.

  "Jump on down!" Cee said from below, shielding her eyes with her hand. "Or take the stairs, if you prefer. Either way, you got to come take a look at this."

  "What is it?" Dante said.

  "Nope. You have to come see for yourself."

  He clenched his teeth and headed down the stairs. On the ground floor, he hopped out the south window into the sand and headed over to Cee. There, the sand dropped a couple feet, exposing the tower's foundation. She beckoned him over and pointed to a rippled patch.

  "Very good," Dante said. "You found more desert."

  "Yeah. And it's all marked up with snake tracks."

  "Snake tracks? These look exactly like the patterns on every dune here. Should I be fleeing for my life?"

  "These tracks run the wrong way to be the wind," Cee pointed. "And there is no wind on this side. It's in the lee of the tower. The final reason you're wrong: these are shaped like snake tracks."

  Dante glanced around. "Okay, so what? Are you thinking of eating them? Be my guest."

  "Lew came by a few minutes ago. He said you hadn't found anything." She pointed at the base of the wall. "You checked in there?"

  A small hole peeped from the wall. The sand around it had a lot of marks similar to the ones Cee had found. Dante reached to scoop away the sand, thought better of it, and delved into the nether instead. Moving the sand turned out to be more difficult than he'd expected—it wasn't as sticky with itself as dirt or rock—but there were still shadows in it, even in this dry and lifeless place. Sand poured out of the hole.

  And kept pouring. The hole, initially large enough to admit a hungry mouse, expanded to the size of a plum, and then a fist.
A sour, primal stink issued from within. Counter to his better instincts, Dante continued pulling sand away. A couple feet underneath the wall, sunlight spilled onto a ball of tan ropes someone had coiled up and thrown away. In a horrible, scaly, living pile.

  "Gross!" Dante jumped back. "Are you trying to get me killed?"

  "Think they're venomous?"

  "Even if they're not, I might shudder to death."

  She smirked. "Look harder, brave leader."

  He crouched back toward the ball of sluggish snakes, extending the torchstone into the space. It shined on a bunch of sand and more snakes. "What am I supposed to be looking at? The physical manifestation of the world's nightmares?"

  "Don't look at what's in the hole. Look at the hole itself."

  "Why don't you save yourself from being strangled by me and—" He cut himself short. The hole through the wall wasn't ragged or crumbled. It was a smooth line. He brushed away the sand crusted at its top, revealing a pointed arch. He was looking into a window. One identical to the one he'd clambered through to get into the ground floor. Rather, what he'd assumed to be the ground floor. "The stairwell's completely plugged with sand—and there's more building below it."

  He backed out, brushed off the dust, and ran to the window to the first floor.

  "Hey, Lew!" Cee shouted, still beside the hole. As Dante strode across the sandy floor to the stairs, Lew screamed bloody murder.

  The sand in the stairwell looked solid. It felt solid, too. Even when Dante stepped and then jumped on the place where more stairs must have been hiding. He moved back to the entry and plunged his mind into the grains, using the nether inside them to assess their shape. It was solid all the way down to the next landing.

  Dante nicked his arm and focused. A snake of sand oozed from the stairs and slithered toward the window, growing wider as it went. Its "head" hit the wall, diverted upward, and felt its way through the window. The stream leaving the stairwell was now thicker than his waist. Several unearthed steps were visible below what he had taken to be the start of the stairs. Within minutes, he had an empty staircase and a great big pile of sand outside the window.