Lord Nephril indicated a doorway at the end of the passageway, glowing temptingly with its fill of afternoon sunlight. “Please, please, do go through to the kitchen,” he said as he closed the door. “’Tis the cosiest room at this time of day,” and a scent of sandalwood teased her nose as he came up behind and encouraged her on.
The large and airy kitchen glowed in the golden light of the sun, warm from the heat of a range. On the far side, windows overlooked a sizeable lawn, beyond which more of the yew hedge blocked out any further view. Stella was just wondering what the white loops were for, stuck in the lawn, when Lord Nephril offered her a seat at a well-scrubbed wooden table.
“Tea, mine dear?”
Stella chose dandelion from the selection he offered as she sat down and placed her bag on the floor beside her. When he reached up to a shelf above the range, he accidentally knocked off a packet of tea but caught it mid-fall. “Oops,” he said, absently,
The way he moved so quickly and so easily prompted Stella to wonder if she’d found the right Lord Nephril. He certainly didn’t seem old enough to have known Mirabel’s mother as a young girl.
He soon placed her tea before her and sat down opposite, his hands clasped on the table top before him. Only they appeared to belie his age. “So, Mistress Sodbuster,” and he smiled broadly, “to what do I owe this most charming of visits?”
Despite his welcoming look, uncertainty constrained her voice, and they sat facing each other as the chink of coals settling in the stove pointed the silence between them. Stella remembered back to her first meeting with Mirabel, that strange lapping in her stomach, the waft of warm air at her neck that had lightened her head.
“I,” but she had to stiffen her jaw. “I know about the threat to me from Leiyatel,” she finally found herself saying, searching his face for a reaction. She was hard put to tell he even breathed, and he certainly didn’t respond.
“You don’t seem surprised, Lord Nephril.”
“How be thy tea? To thy liking I hope.”
She assured him it was fine then watched those deep grey eyes study his hands, their knuckles now a little whiter than before.
After a long while, he lifted his gaze, but not as far as her eyes. “Thou seem so certain of this, Stella, if I may call thee by thy first name?”
“What? Oh, yes, by all means, Lord Nephril. I think you’ve known me long enough.”
He forced a smile. “Known of thee, certainly ... but thou see, I do so hate the honorific. I cannot seem to shake it off, however much I try, so ‘Nephril’ if thou would.”
“Nephril?”
“Hmm?”
“I don’t blame you, you know ... for telling mum and dad how they had to treat me.”
He frowned.
“I know you meant well.”
“How ... how dost thou know all this, Stella? Has thy father...”
“No, not dad, but however I’ve found out, it doesn’t change the danger I’m in, now does it? Nor the fact you’re my last hope.” She looked down at her hands, folded in her lap.
Nephril rose and stood by the window, staring into the garden. “What makes thou think I can serve thee any better now than I have in the past?”
Stella took a deep breath. “Because ... because I think I have a solution.”
“A solution?” Nephril turned from the window, his penetrating gaze once more upon Stella.
Her breath faltered and her heart beat at her throat, but her voice eventually firmed. “But,” and she looked up into his face, “but I can’t get to the bottom of whether it would really work or not.”
“Ah,” and he pulled a chair round and sat down beside her. “And thou think I will know?”
“Not ‘know’, Nephril, no, but be able to find out,” and she reached down into her bag and drew out the metal box, laying it on the table in front of her.
Nephril gasped.
“I take it you know what this is then, Nephril?” but all he could do was stare wide-eyed at the box, as though a ghost had somehow appeared before him.
27 About Sacrifice
Nephril’s study appeared cramped, although clearly a large room. Bookcases hid every wall, right up to the high ceiling, crammed with books, manuscripts and folios, all fronted by a plethora of what looked like nothing more than knickknacks. Obscuring a threadbare carpet, two laden tables, a couple of upright chairs, a writing desk and a leather armchair jostled for elbowroom amongst stacks of heavy tomes, open chests full of papers and a sleeping cat.
Only the window remained uncluttered, but it gave no better view beyond the yew hedge than they’d had from downstairs. It also did little to lift the study’s gloom, the stain of dark wood furniture and musty old book bindings seeming to drink in the light.
Nephril grunted. He’d heaved a pile of leather courier’s satchels from one of the chairs and now dropped it to the floor.
“Here thou are,” he offered,” as he hoisted the chair clear and plonked it down before one of the tables. The satchels slowly subsided and slid onto the cat which let out a long-suffering and muffled meow before stretching a paw free.
Stella sat, cleared a space on the table and put the metal box down. Another chair appeared beside her, where it rocked unsteadily as Nephril sat down. “I keep promising mine self a thorough spring-clean,” he said, “but then each Spring just seems to come and go.”
“I’m not sure a whole springtime would be enough, Nephril,” and Stella shuddered as she again surveyed the study.
He held his breath and stared at the box until turning her an inquisitive eye. “So, thou dost reckon thou hath a solution to ... to thine unfortunate predicament?”
“My ... my idea’s simplicity itself, Nephril – in principle.”
“Which is?”
“I know why Leiyatel wishes to destroy me, to get rid of my alien weft and weave.”
“Ah,” Nephril said and slowly nodded. “Mirabel.”
“I also know what’s in the cask I found with this,” and she tapped a finger on the box.
“And what be that?”
“A new Leiyatel, Nephril, as you well know, one attuned to my own weft and weave, and so one that would never wish me my own death.”
Nephril’s eyes narrowed.
“What I need to know now, though, is if it’s still possible to complete dad’s task, to replace Leiyatel with the Certain Power he brought back.”
Nephril’s eyes appeared to fill his face. “But ... but there be no way that can be done now, Stella. Leiyatel is vigorous, inviolable. She cannot be supplanted, however much thou would wish it.”
“Are you sure, Nephril? Do you know that for a fact?”
His mouth hung open, his gaze flicking about her face, as though searching for sanity, until he stared her in the eye. “Even if it were possible, Stella, think what it would mean, think of the impact on every Dican – thyself no less than others.”
“I have, Nephril, very carefully and for some time now.”
“Thou clearly do not fully understand, mine dear. It would make the weft and weave of every Dican as alien as thine own now is. Dost though not see that? All Dicans would become prey to the new Certain Power, all bar thee condemned – the roles reversed.”
Stella smiled, “I know,” and placed a reassuring hand on Nephril’s, but the shock of the warmth it found chased her thoughts away. Her fingers slid between his own as her eyes dropped to his mouth, until rising to find confusion in his eyes.
She snatched her hand away and averted her gaze. “But,” she finally said, “they would all be invisible to the new Certain Power, only I able to give them away.”
Nephril looked out through the window. “And would thee, I wonder. Could just one weft and weave reveal so many?”
He turned and clamped his hands upon her arms, raising goose bumps, his close breath fingering shivers down her neck. “But, mine dear Stella, thou would then be just as imprisoned as all Dicans are now. No, Stella,” he said, shaking his head, �
�put thine wayward ideas aside. T’would be far simpler and safer just to remove thyself from Dican life, as I had hoped thy starmaker appointment would do. Choose the life of a recluse, Stella, as have I – a recluse, but one still with freedom of the mind. I can always make arrangements for thee to live out a contented life somewhere...”
“You’re not listening, Nephril, are you?”
“Listening?”
“I’m not bothered about my own insular freedom. I’ve never felt I belonged here, so I wouldn’t mourn its loss – and anyway, I’d know nothing about it eventually. No, Nephril. What I want to do is to give that very freedom back to all Dicans, so they can be who they truly are, deep down inside.”
He stared at her as a smile slowly filled his face, softening his stare to a gaze. A tear briefly glimmered and fell as he quietly laughed and gently took up her hand, against which he pressed a thoughtful kiss.
It took Stella’s breath away, warm waves lapping at her limbs, her mind numbed to all but his words.
“How strange,” he whispered across her hand, sending shivers down her arm, “to find a kindred spirit after all these interminable years, a spirit that doth see the same truth as I. But thou hath had so little life where I have had so much, that it doth make of thy sacrifice a far nobler thing than mine own.”
“Your sacrifice, Nephril?” she said as her hand gained a life of its own and slid from his hold to his cheek.
Nephril gently drew it away, clearly uncertain. “Long before thou were born, mine pretty one, I once saw Leiyatel’s purpose writ plain in another.”
“Another?”
He stared at Stella, although he clearly saw her not, until he ran his tongue slowly along his lips and said, “I witnessed what Dica would become if Leiyatel were allowed to persist, to grow strong again. I saw her true nature in a sister of hers - in Grunstaan.”
“I don’t understand, Nephril. Who’s Grunstaan?”
“Nouwelm’s own Certain Power.”
“Nouwelm? Ah, where you went with Lady Lambsplitter, beyond the Gray Mountains.”
“How did thou... But of course, Mirabel again. Be careful of that woman, Stella. She is an instrument of Leiyatel somehow, that I am sure. Be very wary of her.”
“What did you see in Nouwelm, Nephril?”
“In Nouwelm? Ah, well, a warning, a salutary warning,” and he went on to tell her about his journey to what remained of the old settlement, long cut off from Dica until then by Leiyatel’s waning strength. There, he’d found an insular community of just a few hundred Bazarran, all locked away for almost two thousand years in a world that knew nothing of what lay beyond its walls.
“As be the case with Dica now,” he bemoaned. “On our return, I vowed to destroy what we had brought back: Leiyatel’s last hope of salvation. I swore to let her die a wasting death, and by it give Dica its freedom, and me mine own freedom from accursed immortality.”
“And did you... Just a minute, immortality?”
Nephril smiled, but only thinly. “Leiyatel’s last hope was soon lost to the Farewell Gap when Phaylan innocently handed Dialwatcher’s ring to... Well, when it went beyond our reach forever.”
“Immortality, Nephril? You said ‘immortality’.”
“Aye, mine own sacrifice.” He tutted to himself for a moment. “Much later, when I was at the Farewell Gap again, this time with Leiyatel’s remains poised to be thrown to a certain end, Phaylan convinced me I was wrong, that Dica had dire need of her. Mine own sacrifice, thou see, was mine decision then to accept continued immortality,” and he lowered and slowly shook his head.
Even as she put her arms about his shoulders, Stella couldn’t help but feel elated. Here, in this strange man, she’d found someone else who clearly despised the hold Leiyatel had over Dica. It firmed her resolve. “Why can’t we just destroy her then, Nephril? Surely there’s a way.”
“Ha,” he laughed out loud, patting her hand at his arm, “if only we could, but thou see, Stella, Phaylan was right. Without her, or another in her place, Dica’s air would soon turn foul, the rain evaporate away to nothing and the sun burn Dica’s fields to dust.”
“So why did you try to destroy her in the first place?”
“Because I did not know that then, Stella. Only later did I learn what truly lies beyond Leiyatel’s gaze, a world of unending deserts; that Dica is an oasis of life upon a dead world, an oasis only kept green by the Living Green Stone Tree itself.”
“So I was right?”
“Right?”
“If our oasis has to have a Certain Power then it has to be the one dad brought back, the one that should have supplanted Leiyatel in the first place: the one that will finally bring freedom to every Dican.”
“Except thee, Stella, except thee take note.”
“I don’t care, Nephril.”
“No, but perhaps I do,” and a dark cloud drifted across his features, although his eyes still glinted, as though with youthful hope. “So, Stella, all we have to do is find a way,” at which he barked a laugh. “And then a safe haven for thee whilst I live out a newly mortal life at last.”
28 Jargon’s Obfuscation
Stella opened the metal box and slid it in front of Nephril. “So, what do you know about these then?”
He peered at the papers within, clearly seeing only memories as he played a finger over the topmost sheet and slowly answered, “Thy father brought them back from a place called Eyesgarth, along with the cask, six months before thou were born,” and he sighed. “He should hath gone for them at the outset, when Leiyatel first called him back, but mine mortal need of him at the time delayed matters ... and ultimately saved Leiyatel herself.”
Stella jumped when he thumped the table. “Damn the kings of Dica who made me forever but grit in Leiyatel’s wheels,” and he shook his head.
“Grit? Kings?”
Nephril gazed at her, a smile softening his lips. “Yet from it has ultimately come such beauty. Perhaps to the good.”
They looked into each other’s eyes, only the cat’s muffled purring marking time. Stella felt an urge to reach out and touch him, to ease a hurt she couldn’t begin to understand.
“These are thy father’s instructions,” Nephril said as he took the sheets from their box, breaking the spell. “Two tasks that made up his only true purpose to life. He should, though, hath had to wait an eternity to fulfil them, not the mere one hundred and sixty thousand years that have passed.”
Stella swallowed. “A hundred and...”
“The problem is, Stella, I have only seen these from a distance, and only briefly. I am also very rusty in the old tongue, certainly for text of such a great age as this,” and he peered closely at a sheet he’d lifted from the pile.
“Yes,” he mused, “thy father’s tasks: the replacement of Leiyatel with a new Certain Power and the seeding of its matching weft and weave amongst Dica’s human stock.”
“Folces tarbweyn Saawaned,” she whispered, and Nephril’s brows lofted.
“Thou dost speak the tongue well thyself, mine singular beauty. College has taught thee well.”
“No, Nephril. My long labours over these damned papers have only revealed how little I’d really learned.”
“Do not berate thyself unduly. Thou set thyself an impossible task thou know.”
“Impossible? You mean, they’re not in the old tongue after all?”
“Oh, they are certainly in Ancient Bazarran, Stella, but use words thou wilt find in no Dican dictionary. ‘Jargon’ was the way thy father described them, although thou will not find that word either.”
“You said ‘human’, Nephril?”
“Ah, so I did. Well, more on that another time. For now, though, Stella, I am keen to discover if I am right – that there truly be no way of finishing off what thy father started.”
Nephril got up, eased his way through the clutter to one of the bookcases and dragged out a large and heavy tome. A small cloud of dust lifted from its battered binding when h
e dropped it to the table, beside the stack of papers.
“The oldest dictionary I possess, Stella,” and he wiped his hands on his robes. “A little over a thousand or so years before I was born, so still quite late, but it will have to do.”
He arranged the papers on the table, leaving room to open the dictionary, and sat down.
Stella watched him trace his finger beneath the words she’d spent so much fruitless time trying to decipher. Occasionally, he grunted, sometimes tut-tutted, but otherwise said nothing; nor did he write anything down.
After a while, he creaked open the dictionary and hefted thick reams of pages back and forth until finding what he sought – or more often than not didn’t by the sound of it. The minutes slowly ticked by towards the first hour of his close studying, Stella about to get up and have a look out of the window when he grunted, “Bah!”
“What is it, Nephril?”
“Hmm? Oh, well, it is just that there are so many words unknown to me that I am gaining little sense from it. Here, see this,” and he stabbed at the sheet. “What on earth does ‘dockdis’ mean? And ‘maatrix’? They hardly look like Ancient Bazarran at all.”
Stella peered at the text beneath that familiar boldly printed heading. “Oh, that bit. Yes, it stumped me too.” She searched out her notes from the box. “Here we are; I translated ‘On neanig gerecendis leatenwitlaefan dokdis’ as ‘On no account permit’ but then got stumped myself at ‘dokdis’.”
“‘On no account permit dokdis of the’, what have we here, ‘of the sprutanhorniman undtill der eynrepodis maatrix’.” Nephril gnawed at his lip. “So, ‘of the something-or-other-cask until the in-place’ ... no, ‘until the incumbent maatrix is still-made to below visible something levels’.”
He stared blankly at Stella who only shrugged.
“’Tis clearly a warning, Stella, but of what I cannot say. Nor does the consequence mean much more to me than ‘face-between something-or-other annihilation will result’, which does sound rather dire.”
Starmaker Stella (Dica Series Book 6) Page 12
