The Black Star (Book 3)

by Edward W. Robertson

  Not wanting to disturb the deepstone, Dante brought back some of the rock he'd removed, shaping it into a staircase along the side of the pit, which was close to twenty feet deep. He glanced across the butte, then started down. The others followed.

  As he neared the bottom, the green squiggles on the pillars began to fade. Before they disappeared, he saw they weren't swirls in the deepstone. They were runes. He thought he recognized some from the written language of Old Narashtovik, but they vanished before he got close enough to be sure.

  He stepped onto the floor. Snow dusted from above; he wasn't sure if it was being blown in from what was already there, or if it was a fresh fall. He stopped mid-step. When he'd been looking from above, his perspective had made the tops of the chest-high pillars appear flat and empty. Most were. But one bore a round black object the size of a grapefruit. At first he thought it was a piece of deepstone, but as he moved closer, he saw no silver flecks in its surface. It was perfectly black. Matte. Lightless. Like a hole through the world.

  A chill swept through him, stronger than any the Woduns could bring to bear. "That's it."

  "What's what?" As if drawn to it, Cee's gaze found the ball. "No way."

  Somburr licked his lips. "If it's here now, why hasn't the Minister come for it already?"

  "I don't know," Dante said. "Maybe he didn't know it was back yet. Or maybe he was missing a piece of the puzzle. Could be his nethermancers hadn't yet figured out how to get it out of the rock." He continued to gaze on the object, hypnotized by the endless void contained in the small sphere. "More likely, he was waiting until his troops were prepared and the weather improved. If no one else knew how to find it, it would be safer here than in Corl."

  Whatever the explanation, it didn't matter. All that mattered was that Cellen was in front of him. His for the taking. He moved toward it. Time seemed to slow, as it did in dreams. Questions swirled like the powdery snow: Should he try to use it here and now? Would he even be able to, or was its expenditure something that would require research and tests? The people from the stories had seemed to know how to use it intrinsically. Would its wisdom flow into him as soon as he touched it? What if he became immortal? What would happen if the world ended before he did?

  He reached toward it. He held it in his hand and it was heavy yet light. A spark of green showed within it.

  And then it vanished. Dante screamed.

  32

  Blays would have paid all the money he'd ever earned or would earn in the future for a portrait of the look on Dante's face.

  Hidden in the world of quicksilver, he dashed past the others—weird old Somburr and the two strangers, faces going wide with shock—and up the stairs Dante had helpfully built into the wall. He had to get out fast. Even with the kellevurt shell on hand, he figured he had ten minutes, fifteen tops, before he was forcibly discharged from the shadowlands. The surrounding landscape was nothing but snowfields and busted chunks of rock. Awful cover. Unless the snowstorm picked up, he'd be visible for miles.

  He had to make it to the valley to the south. That's where Dante had set up camp, and he'd surely return to it in time, but Blays had to get into the cover of the trees there. He'd only seen one good way down to the valley, the trail Dante's people had used to get to the butte—the same one Blays had taken as he and Minn followed them, darting from rock to rock, slipping into the shadows whenever they had to cross open ground. It would be dicey. He'd leave tracks. He could do what he could to conceal them by running on bare rock when possible, but he'd have to hope that Dante mistook his tracks for those of the others in his group.

  Down in the pit, Dante was shouting at the others, demanding to know what they'd done with it. As Blays reached the top, Minn fell in beside him, sprinting over the top of the snow; somehow, this held their weight. The ball of blackness in his hand felt as dense as iron yet light as an empty shell. As if it were skimming on the surface of reality much as he and Minn were dancing atop the snow.

  They got down the butte and raced across the snowfield. The ground was level and he ran across it as fast as he would down a paved road. The sun was hidden by a mountain of clouds, but in the world of nether, shadows sparkled on the snow.

  Flurries skirled from the clouds. Maybe he wouldn't have to worry about tracks after all. Within five minutes of leaving the pit, they got to the edge of the valley and hurried down the switchbacks as fast as they dared. He began to get "winded," his grasp on the nether slipping. He had to hang on. If he could make it to the bottom and get just a couple hundred yards north of the cave, he'd leave no tracks to follow. Knowing he'd been followed and robbed, Dante would have the smarts to search around, but by the time his aimless search reached the place Blays had rematerialized, his footprints would be obliterated by wind and snow.

  He had half a mind to leap to the bottom and see if he'd land as lightly as his steps did on the snow. But he stuck to the trail, forcing the nether to stay with him. Halfway down, he began to fade fast. He clung to the shadows with everything he had. He started to get lightheaded, legs going weak. As he started down the last set of switchbacks, the nether yanked free from his grasp.

  He found himself abruptly real again. His feet sank into the snow mid-stride. He tripped and skidded down the path, clawing for purchase, snow billowing behind him. Blays slid into open space.

  He wasn't sure which way was which, so he tucked his chin to his chest and hugged the black ball with the crook of his arm. He landed back-first in a deep drift. Something banged into his hip. He rolled from the snow, aching and addled. And found himself staring up at a stranger.

  The man, by virtue of being a man, was not Minn. He wasn't Dante or any of the people Dante was traveling with. Odd, that. Blays and Minn had been watching Dante for two days and were positive his party included just four people. Peculiar that this stranger would be up here, then, given that "here" was the monster-infested mountains in the middle of winter.

  The man was lean and tall and his jaw was angled like the head of a shovel or a snake. He smiled—it wasn't a smile Blays liked—and grabbed the black orb from Blays' hand.

  "Should I thank you for delivering this to me?" He spoke in a strong, pinched accent Blays had never heard before. Blays didn't like his tone, either. There was cruelty in it and the wrong kind of confidence. The man grinned unkindly. "Then again, it would have been mine either way."

  Blays wobbled around, holding his head and making a show of it while he gathered his feet underneath him. "Who are you that I've just done this favor for?"

  "Its owner."

  "That's funny, because the guy I took it from sure wasn't you. How about you hand it over before I'm forced to become rude?"

  The man's eyes twinkled. "Don't do anything you wouldn't do in front of a crowd."

  People moved in the pines behind him. They'd been there all along, Blays saw, but he'd had other things to be concerned about. A woman and two of the men looked like bad people. They were supported by a dozen other men who wore no uniforms but moved with the quiet surety of professionals.

  It all added up to one thing: he was dead.

  "Run!" Minn's voice bounced between the valley walls. It took him a moment to home in on it. She was calling from somewhere in front of him, behind the stranger who'd taken Cellen. Roughly the direction of the cave. The others turned in surprise, casting about, but the man's gaze remained stuck on Blays.

  Blays lunged at him, but he danced back with agile steps. Fighting him for the ball would mean dying. As Blays wasn't inclined to make a permanent trip to the netherworld, he swerved left, heading straight toward Minn's voice. Anyway, the ball didn't really concern him now. The man was clearly a foreigner. Let him go do what he would in foreign lands. The important thing was that Cellen had been kept away from Moddegan—and Dante.

  Snow kicked from Blays' heels. The man sighed. One of his people shouted. Pines whisked past Blays' face. He felt nether streaking toward his back and he hunched over, grimacing, waiting for the s
pear of force to strike his ribs. Ahead, a dark bolt raced toward him and continued past. The two energies met and burst over his back in a shower of black sparks.

  Minn ran toward him through the woods. He didn't ask where she'd been, just fell in beside her. The strangers crashed through the branches behind them. An arrow whirred past. A second later, Blays juked, and another arrow passed through the space he'd just occupied and thwacked into a trunk. Minn pitched forward, stumbling. He slowed to help her catch her balance.

  "Keep going!" she snarled.

  He ran ahead. She pitched along, windmilling hands grazing the snow. Rock crackled and roared, pluming snow and dust behind them. Men shouted in fear. Blays glanced over his shoulder. A gap yawned in the ground. It wasn't all that long, but the men on the other side were running away in terror. He laughed and kept going.

  The slopes surrounding the south edge of the valley loomed ahead. "What now?"

  "Into the cave," Minn panted.

  "You mean the easily accessible enclosed space with no exit?"

  "If you want to live."

  Further back, the man was yelling at his people in total gibberish. Some had resumed the chase, but Blays and Minn had a good lead on them. At the cliffs, Minn motioned Blays up first. He dashed up the makeshift stone rungs and turned around to give her a hand up. When she was halfway up the carved ladder, another lance of shadows tore through the air. She flung up her hand. Again, the opposing nether exploded into black powder, wafting to the ground like negative flakes among the wheeling snowfall.

  She threw herself inside and shoved Blays back. Stone groaned and flowed across the entrance, sealing them in total blackness.

  "I see," Blays said. "What about that air we need?"

  "Do you have a better idea?" Her voice sounded like it wanted to echo, but the space was too tight. "Well, please think of one before we suffocate."

  Blays bit his lip. It seemed pointless, given the utter darkness, but he crawled around the little cavern, feeling his way along the walls for any hidden passages, dragons who might be talked into an alliance, or automatic, self-feeding, repeating longbows. He found a couple bags filled with squishy, sweet-smelling objects whose outsides felt disturbingly like human skin; a few extra blankets; a pile of clattering cookware. But no tunnels out or tools that could turn the tides.

  Something slammed into the sealed mouth of the cave. Blays jumped away, banging his back against the wall. Dust whispered to the ground.

  "Well, that's—"

  Another crash. Blays winced. Daylight peeped through a crack in the wall, spearing the dust. Before he could speak, Minn sealed it back up.

  "I don't know how much longer I can last," she said. "Do you have anything left?"

  He shook his head, then realized she couldn't see him. "Mine gave out on the switchback. That's why I fell."

  "I thought so." She sounded sad, in the resigned way you might talk about the passing of a beloved old pet, a death that had been coming for a long time.

  "I've still got swords. Nobody likes getting jabbed by swords."

  A wallop of nether rattled the cave a third time. In the brief light, Blays saw sweat sliding down Minn's temples. She patched up the cracks again. Everything went quiet. Their breathing seemed to fill the cave. Blays became conscious of little else. As a kid, he'd loved catching bugs in jars, and had been heartbroken when, after finally capturing a scar-beetle and going to sleep with it bottled beside his bed, he'd woken to find it on its back, legs crossed. That was when his mom had told him there was a spirit in the air and that's why you needed to breathe. But breathing in used that spirit up—so, in short, poke some holes in the lid of your jar next time, dummy.

  He'd done that next time, and had run into no other surprise suffocations across a childhood that went on to involve countless instances of bug-hunting. Yet ever since, he'd been wondering how fast a person could use up the air in a room. For a while, it had even been a phobia—his mom had mocked him for leaving the door of the privy open even when he was raising a stink.

  He'd gotten over it. For the most part. But now he was in a cave with a limited supply of that airborne spirit, and outside, men who wielded a spirit of a much darker kind wanted him dead.

  Just as he was readying to suggest Minn open a hole for a peek outside, another bolt slammed into the wall. It went quiet after that, but it was quite possible the man's nethermancers were biding their time, waiting for him and Minn to come out for air.

  "Well," Blays said after another couple minutes. "If I've gotten us killed, I'm terribly sorry about that."

  Minn laughed, then laughed a little harder, surprised by herself. "It's been quite an adventure. Now that I've been away for a couple weeks, I know I've been wanting to leave Pocket Cove for a long time. Not for good, mind you; just long enough to breathe for a while. I love it there, but it's so...claustrophobic."

  "Please don't say that right now."

  She laughed again, wryly this time. "We're not dead yet. You'll find a way out, I think. It seems to me that's what you do."

  Blays smiled, but he didn't feel as confident as she sounded. He'd recognized the look in the man's eyes. He'd seen it before: Samarand, Cassinder, Moddegan. Dante. People who got what they wanted. Without fail. Because they were willing to do whatever it took.

  After a while, the cavern began to warm up. He supposed that was their body heat doing its thing. He felt tired, but in a good way, like after a long day of sparring. He drew up his knees and rested his chin on them and started counting to three hundred. In five minutes, he'd suggest she open up the wall. Not all the way. Enough to stir the air and get a look outside.

  He gasped, eyes wide but blind; he'd been asleep. There was something he'd meant to tell Minn. It felt important. He furrowed his brow, but he couldn't remember it, and the way she was breathing, she must be asleep. He didn't want to wake her. Not after all she'd done for him.

  He put his chin back on his knees. It was the best sleep he'd ever had.

  33

  The nether was slow to come, protesting like a child yanked from bed. The backs of his eyeballs were itchy, his hands shaky. He'd already pushed his limits on the day.

  But if one of the Minister's sorcerers were inside the cave—some fiendish trap or rearguard (and what else could it be, other than an attempt to leave them exposed to the kappers?)—Dante would need to draw on even more.

  Hanging from the ladder, he softened the stone and drew it away from the entrance. He glanced down at Somburr, who waited inside the treeline, nether at hand. Cee crouched beside Somburr, peering up at the cavern over the length of an arrow. Ast had a couple slim knives in his hand. Dante got out his torchstone, blew on it, and lobbed it inside the cave.

  It landed with a clack. He scrambled up after it, forcing the nether to stand ready. Dante thrust his head above the lower edge of the cave and nearly fell off the ladder. Inside, Blays sat tangled in the blankets, blinking, chest heaving, face contorted as he shielded his eyes from the glare of the stone.

  He got out one of his swords, waving it clumsily. "Back, fiends!"

  "What—?" Dante swallowed down the lump in his throat. He didn't understand how Blays could be here, in the Woduns, sealed inside Dante's cave. Then it came together in his head with a violent crescendo of understanding. "Where is it?"

  Next to the entry, a lump lifted its head and squinted its eyes. Dante jerked back. A young woman, pretty, weathered from travel.

  "Hello," she said slowly.

  Dante could only stare; she was a stranger. He snapped his gaze back to Blays. "Cellen. The Black Star. You stole it and ran off like a thief. How did you do it?" He looked around himself. "And what the hell were you thinking, hiding yourself in my cave? Did you think I wouldn't notice the shelter full of my things had mysteriously gone missing?"

  Blays' brows beetled. "It was the guy. Soul like a quenched brand."

  Dante gritted his teeth and climbed inside. The woman moved to block him. He stared her d
own and crawled toward Blays. "I don't care why you're here or what you think you're doing. Just give me back Cellen."

  "I can't." Blays' voice grew steadier. He breathed in and out, staring down at his hands, turning them back and forth in astonishment.

  "We're the only gods damn people for a hundred miles! Don't act like it wasn't you."

  "Oh, I took it all right. Lyle's left nut, you should have seen the look on your face. Then again, I probably looked just as silly when it was stolen from me."

  Dante reached for the collar of Blays' cloak and pulled it tight, gathering the nether in his left hand. "If you don't—"

  "He's telling the truth," the woman said. "A man took it from us. Tall, mean, dressed in black. He had sorcerers with him. I had to close us inside the cave to protect us."

  Dante's stomach sank until he felt it might splash across the bare floor. A shrill noise sounded from the back of his head. "Did this man talk to you?"

  "Sure," Blays said. "The usual death threats. Had an accent like he was holding his nose at my stench. Not from any part of Gask I've ever been to."

  He sat down. "That's because he's not from Gask."

  "Well, he certainly wasn't from Mallon. The Western Cities?"

  "You're getting further and further away. Try the other side of the Woduns."

  Blays cocked his head. "Across the mountains? What's even over there?"

  "A maniacal killer and his massive invasion force," Dante said. "And you just handed him the most powerful weapon in the world." He had more, but all the energy and anger drained out of him. He pressed his palms to his forehead. "Get down from here. We have to catch him."

  "I've discovered I don't have to do anything," Blays said, but Dante knew him too well not to hear the doubt that had entered his voice.

  Dante scooped up the torchstone and headed down the stone ladder. The others approached, lowering their weapons.

  "What's going on?" Cee said.

  "Nothing much," Dante replied. "My dearest friend stole Cellen from me, and then my worst enemy stole it from him."