The Stars Asunder: A New Novel of the Mageworlds

by Doyle, Debra; Macdonald, James D.

  “You’ve got an extraordinary ship?”

  “A prototype,” he said. “Incorporating the material from your drone reports. We didn’t waste time upgrading older vessels … leave that to the sus-Peledaen! … we made a full-size working model instead. Armed and armored, with a range that should take you from Eraasi to—what was the name of the Diamond’s planet again—?”

  “Entibor.”

  “Eraasi to Entibor without needing to steal another ship at the far end. And if you’ve crossed Natelth sus-Khalgath, Entibor’s barely far enough from the homeworlds to be safe.”

  44:

  Year 1130 E. R.

  ERAASI: DEMAIZEN OLD HALL

  HANILAT STARPORT

  SUS-RADAL EXPERIMENTAL SHIPBUILDING FACILITY

  The drive from Hanilat to Demaizen was a long one. Arekhon sat moodily watching the road ahead unroll in the light of the groundcar’s driving beams. The other passengers were equally silent. After a while, the Hanilat suburbs fell away behind them, and they turned onto the Long Ridge Highway heading north and west toward Demaizen.

  Arekhon roused himself enough to ask, “Did you call ahead to let them know we were coming?”

  “Now that,” Ty said, “somebody would have been able to trace. Sorry.”

  “It’s all right,” Arekhon said, and went back to watching the road. Eventually—it was late, and the afternoon and evening spent in his family’s house had been emotionally wearing—he fell asleep.

  When he woke, the sky was pearly-grey and the eastern horizon was a line of golden light. Ty had made good time; they’d passed over the Long Ridge and into the rolling fields of grain interspersed with open pasture land that marked the Wide Hills district. Arekhon felt his bleak mood lightening. More than the fleet or Hanilat, Demaizen was home, and now he was returning to it.

  “About another half hour,” he said. “They’ll be starting breakfast soon.”

  Now the familiar landmarks were coming into view: The long rise of land steadily climbing, the curve of highway around the shoulder of the slope, the stone gate that marked the turn-off onto the private road.

  Karil, in the back seat of the groundcar, spoke for the first time since leaving the house in Hanilat—the words were Eraasian, so he knew she meant them to be understood by everyone. “Is pretty here, in the not-city.”

  “‘Countryside,’” he said. “Yes.”

  The road grew steeper. Engine growling, the groundcar took the sharp curve into the stone cut, and shifted into a lower gear for the final ascent.

  “They’ve let the home fields go wild,” Narin observed, looking out at the tall grass waving above the walls of the cut. “Garrod would have words to say about that, if he knew.”

  Then they emerged from the cut to see Demaizen Old Hall on the crest of the hill, backlit by the rising sun, and shock closed Arekhon’s throat so that he couldn’t answer.

  The Hall was a burnt-out shell: Its stone walls were black with carbon, and its distinctive many-chimneyed roofline had fallen away into rubble. Weeds grew inside the hollow interior, and light shone through the empty spaces that had once held windows. Outside on the drive stood a row of metal hulks, blackened but with streaks of rust running down the sides.

  Ty braked the groundcar to a sudden stop. His hands on the yoke and gearshift moved into position for the sharp, three-cornered turn that would send the vehicle speeding back the way it had come.

  “No,” said Arekhon. His mouth was dry, and the word came in a hoarse whisper. “Keep going.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  Ty put the groundcar back into motion. The gravel drive crunched under its wheels as he took it slowly past the row of burnt-out armored vehicles. He gave the hulks as wide a berth as possible—though it was obvious, as he drove past, that they had been long deserted.

  The flames that had devoured the Old Hall had scarcely touched the outbuildings. The garage still had a roof and most of its exterior walls, although the door had been ripped open and left hanging from its hinges. Ty backed the rented groundcar inside and cut the engine.

  “Now what?” he said.

  Arekhon unstrapped his safety webbing and got out. “Now we go see what happened.”

  Natelth left the guest wing while Isayana was still quizzing the house-mind, through the aiketen, about the breach in her security instructions. “I’ll take breakfast in my study,” he told her as he departed.

  Such a change in the morning routine—combined with the need to provide hospitality for Captain sus-Mevyan, who as the Captain of Octagon Diamond was in truth and not merely in circumlocution an honored guest—would keep Isa busy for at least an hour. He needed the time. If Isa found out what he intended to do, she would try to stop him, and she might succeed. He needed Isayana, both for her management of the household and for her skill in the complex work of instructing the aiketen and ship-minds of the sus-Peledaen fleet. And Isa’s fondness for their younger brother exceeded all reason.

  Once it’s done I can blame it on somebody else, Natelth told himself. Still in his belted night-robe, he strode into his study and locked the door behind him. The sus-Radal, maybe, or the sus-Dariv. Isa may not believe it, but she’ll know better than to ask for the truth.

  At his desk, he picked up the voice-comm handset and pressed the numbers for a certain code sequence, one of a handful that he trusted only to his own memory. Friends—such few as he dared to have—and family could be reached by codes kept in the house-mind’s archives, and the desk itself would remember the codes of his business associates. A determined investigator, such as Isayana, could persuade the house-mind or the desktop to give up its secrets; but Natelth himself was not such easy game.

  The signal at the other end of the line stopped abruptly, and a sleep-heavy voice grumbled, “What do you want?”

  Natelth spoke a code phrase—another item he hadn’t entrusted to the household quasi-organics.

  The voice on the other end of the line changed, as though the speaker had been jerked into complete wakefulness. “We’re standing by, my lord. Do you have specific instructions?”

  “Yes,” Natelth said. “I want you to assemble your personnel and go at once to Demaizen Old Hall in the Wide Hills District.”

  “Yes, my lord.” The voice paused. “You do know that the Old Hall, um, burned down last year in a tragic accident?”

  “I’m quite aware of that. Nevertheless, I want you to go there.”

  The Demaizen Circle had been ’Rekhe’s other home; if he had left the family and the fleet, there was no more likely place for him to go. And where he went, his Mages would follow. Natelth pulled open his desk’s central drawer and extracted several pictures, which he fed one at a time to the desk’s scanner.

  “You are receiving images for all people currently at the Hall except one; she does not have an image on file. She is also an honored guest of the sus-Peledaen, and whatever happens she must come to no harm. In fact, you could look upon your job as a rescue mission—she doesn’t speak our language well, and I’m afraid that her present company might mislead her, or work to cause her some injury.”

  “Don’t touch anyone we haven’t got a picture for,” the voice said. “Got it. And bring the extra back with us.”

  “Crudely put,” Natelth said, “but there you have it. One other thing—”

  “Yes, my lord?”

  “Extreme measures may not prove necessary. Don’t act until you hear the confirmation signal.”

  “Yes, my lord.”

  “Enough for now—I’m delaying you. I look forward to hearing your report.”

  He clicked off the transmission. After a moment he pressed another code-sequence.

  “This is sus-Khalgath sus-Peledaen,” he said, as soon as the signal ended. “I need to speak with your First.”

  The sus-Radal’s prototype ship had been built in secret, but the vessel’s surface-to-orbit design meant that the work could be carried out on-planet rather than in one of the orbital
yards. The yards were rife with bribery and espionage—as Vai knew from experience—and they leaked information like water out of a basket. Theledau had opted for a simpler, old-fashioned method of securing the fleet-family’s new construction: He had built his shipyard and factory complex on an island in one of the remote far northern lakes.

  Vai made the journey by flyer from Hanilat, leaving the city not long after dawn. By late afternoon she had crossed the mountain barrier between the fertile upland plains and the deep subarctic forest. The land below her was mapped, but mostly from orbital observation; the tribal peoples who lived there were said to make the fishers of Veredde look progressive, and the practices of their Mage-Circles were not those of the modern world.

  She reached the island near the close of day. From the air, the factory complex looked like an ordinary shipyard for building and repairing small surface-to-orbit craft, like the shuttles that moved cargo to and from the lumbering, space-bound transports. Vai gave Thel—or the advisor who had persuaded him—full credit for a clever idea. Every fleet-family built shuttles. If Theledau syn-Grevi sus-Radal chose to build his on a desolate island in the back of beyond … well, he was a moon-worshiping northerner himself, and nobody would be surprised to see him taking care of his home-people now and again.

  The codes that Theledau had supplied allowed her to land the flyer at the edge of the shipyard’s main field, and brought a family representative hurrying out to meet her. He wore a quilted jacket in spite of the summer season; Vai, who had left subtropical Hanilat dressed for the weather there, was relieved when his first action was to present her with a similar jacket of her own.

  “Visitors from down below always need something warmer,” he explained, as they made their way across the open, windswept field toward a collection of low wooden buildings. “It’s even worse in the wintertime, believe me. You said you have papers from Theledau syn-Grevi?”

  “That’s right,” Vai said. They entered the nearest of the wooden buildings, which turned out to be a construction office full of bulky office-minds and drafting-aiketen, with plans and printouts pinned to the walls and spread out on the tables. She pulled Theledau’s note to the shipyard from her tunic pocket. “He sends you this, over his signature and seal, and says—this part isn’t in writing—not to worry, she’ll have a fleet of sisters before you’re done.”

  The representative looked over the papers, and looked at Vai. “So you’re the one who’s going to take the Daughter away.” He handed the note back to her. “You’re acting as your own pilot, it says here. You might want to reconsider that part—this isn’t an atmospheric flyer we’re talking about.”

  “The information I have says the Daughter answers to the same basic orbit-to-atmosphere commands as a fleet-family shuttle,” Vai said. “And I’m qualified to pilot one of those.”

  “This is all for some scheme of Lord Theledau’s that I’m never going to hear the whole story about, isn’t it?” The representative shook his head glumly. “Oh, well. Working up here, we never hear anything anyhow.”

  “And nobody hears anything about you,” Vai said. “Which is the whole point. At least now you know that the family appreciates what you’re doing and has faith in your work.”

  “We live to serve,” said the representative. “How soon do you need the Daughter to be ready?”

  “The sooner the better,” said Vai. “Right now would be ideal.”

  “Natelth had to have known about this,” Arekhon said, when they had completed a circuit of the outer walls and found nothing but charred timbers and blackened stone. “No matter who did it, Natelth would have found out afterward. But he never spoke a word of it to me.”

  Ty said, “Maybe he was afraid that if he did, you’d ask him why he let it happen.”

  “He wanted to keep you in Hanilat,” Narin said. Her square, brown face showed no emotion, neither shock nor grief nor anything else. “And he knew that once you heard about Demaizen, you would be gone.”

  “So what became of Garrod?” said Ty. “The Garrod we left behind, I mean? Is he gone too?”

  Arekhon drew a deep breath. “We’ll have to go inside and look.”

  He went up the stone steps of the Old Hall and entered through the gap where the great front doors had hung. One of them still stood partway ajar; the other lay face-up on the ground inside the ruin. The hall’s interior was mostly level, with partly-burned beams protruding from the surface. The grand staircase had been made of stone, and a portion of it still led upward, giving access a second floor that no longer existed.

  They found calcined bones lying throughout the wreckage, but none that they could identify until they came to the area that had once been the kitchen. There, among the many, they recognized Delath’s remains by the nearby silver grip and end-cap of his staff. Another skeleton, much smaller, also had the fittings of a staff lying amid the jumbled bones.

  Narin went down on one knee to touch a finger to the charred wood. “Serazao.”

  “There’s still one staff missing,” Arekhon said.

  Ty nodded. “Kief’s. I wonder why.”

  “Sometimes things happen and you never know the reason,” Narin told him. “That’s how life works.”

  “Not for us,” said Arekhon. The coldness that had been with him since coming to Eraasi was back, changed now into a bleak resolve. “We’re Mages. We can learn the reason.”

  Karil asked, “How?”

  “Come with me,” he said.

  He led the way through the ruin to the open, fire-blackened space that had once been the meditation chamber. Without needing to be told further, the other Mages joined him to form a circle, kneeling on the burned-over ground with their staves lying before them.

  Karil hung back—something in her, Arekhon suspected, still thought that Magery was an unnatural act. He beckoned for the Entiboran to come closer.

  “Keep watch,” he said. “If anyone comes, let me know.”

  She nodded and moved away toward the entrance to the Hall. Arekhon watched her go, then turned back to his Circle.

  “Now,” he said, and allowed himself to slip away from the material present to the place where the eiran themselves had weight and form …

  … it was the place of broken stone, again and always as it had been since the start of Garrod’s working.

  He looked for the eiran, and found them at last, high above him and out of his reach, all torn, the broken ends snapping one way and another as if a hard wind blew them. Through the gaps in the shattered weaving he could see the stars in a night sky. As he watched, the eiran turned from silver to blood-red.

  “Who did this?” he shouted into the silence. “Who?”

  No answer came. Instead the stars began to fall, rushing down out of the sky, straight toward him. Then he realized that the stars were not falling—that instead he was moving toward them at titanic speed. They zoomed past him on every side like streaks of light. He passed through the ragged network of the eiran and out into the Void.

  He stood on a grey hillside surrounded by fog, his staff blazing in his hand. He looked behind him, and saw a woman bundled in white wool, her face obscured by the folds of cloth.

  “You promised to come back,” the woman said. She spoke with Elaeli’s voice, and the hand that reached out to him and touched his shoulder was Elaeli’s also, though it was cold. “You have to cross the gap, if you want to mend what was broken.”

  45:

  Year 1130 E. R.

  ERAASI: DEMAIZEN OLD HALL

  The hand on Arekhon’s shoulder grasped more tightly, and shook him hard. He opened his eyes and saw that night had fallen over the ruins of the Old Hall, and that the hand on his shoulder belonged to Karil.

  “Someone’s coming,” she hissed in his ear. “Wake up. You asked me to wake you if anyone came. Wake up.”

  He took his staff and rose from his knees. “Thank you. You did right.”

  “What about the others? Should I wake them up too?”

&
nbsp; “Yes. But quietly, and tell them to stay back.”

  He left Karil struggling to rouse Narin from a deep meditative trance, and went out to the broken doors of the Hall. There he saw that the Entiboran woman had spoken the truth. A man was coming on foot up the long drive, his progress marked by the red glow of the staff in his hand. The man’s posture and gait were familiar: Even before he drew near enough for the light to illuminate his features, Arekhon recognized the lanky, gangling frame of Kiefen Diasul.

  I wanted to know why Kief wasn’t dead like all the others, Arekhon thought. And it looks like he’s come here himself to tell me.

  Kief passed by the line of empty, burnt-out vehicles and climbed the steps to the doorway. Arekhon moved forward to meet him, and the two men embraced.

  “’Rekhe,” Kief said. “You were gone for too long—I believed that the Rain was lost.”

  “The distance across the interstellar gap was greater than we expected,” Arekhon said. He gestured toward the empty walls. “What happened here?”

  “Treachery,” Kief said. His voice was harsh, and heavy with old anger. Arekhon saw the lines of it marking his face in the red light from his staff. “There’s more than enough of it to go around in these degraded times.”

  “What became of Garrod?”

  “Dead, like the others.”

  “You spoke of treachery,” Arekhon said. The memory of Natelth’s silence was painful in his mind, and the thought of Kief’s staff, absent from the burning. Don’t say it was your word that betrayed them, or his money that paid … . “Whose?”

  Kief laughed, a bitter choking noise that was more like a sob. “Mine,” he said, “though I didn’t know it until too late. He used me—”