“Did thou hear our conversation, Stella?”
“Yes, Nephril. Enough.”
“Then thou will be as relieved as I that Mirabel has come out of this unscathed. She must hath...”
Stella had raised her hand before his eyes, the stain on her palm now brown and crusted.
Nephril frowned as he peered at it. “What be this, Stella?” and she told him of the broken and jagged branch she’d grasped. He held her hand and prodded the stain with a fingertip, raising it to his nose. “Blood,” he barely breathed then turned and looked up the street, letting her hand fall from his.
He strode on a few paces and squatted down to the pavement, this time stabbing his fingertip into a similar stain on its flags. A second sniff, and he peered ahead, striding on yet further to another telltale patch, a trail that quickly pressed them on, anxiously, towards Leigarre Perfinn.
56 From Beneath her Petticoats
When the street eventually veered sharply towards the east, more on a level, Nephril led Stella into a narrow alleyway that continued their gentle southerly climb. Its setts were almost lost to a carpet of long, rough grass, the sun once more in their faces. To the west, Mount Esnadac’s steep cone lifted courtyards and walls and snaking buildings yet higher still, mounding their mass of masonry towards the mountain’s barely visible crown.
It had been an hour or so since they’d left Henson, and the first time Stella had summoned the courage to ask how much further they had to go. Nephril’s answer drifted to her over his shoulder as he pushed ahead through the grass, a hollow encouragement in his tone.
A couple of hours more, Stella now knew she had to suffer. Two more of expecting to find Mirabel slumped against a wall, or sprawled in the road. Her trail had given out, no more stains upon their way, which worried Stella that her friend might have taken a different route.
Meanwhile, their unrelenting push south, up onto the mountain’s shoulder, helped to keep the knots from Stella’s stomach, the tension from her neck, the tears from her furtively searching eyes. Nephril and she had largely been silent, each lost in their own thoughts, their own imagined fears. Now, though, that silence soured the air Stella drew in at each breath, and muffled her ears with its suffocating weight. She had to break it.
“The bastard did it again, didn’t she, Nephril?”
“Aye, Stella,” Nephril sighed, as though he’d already answered that very same question of himself. “Leiyatel played on a weakness; a young man’s proclivity set before an overt temptation; clouded his judgement; turned his normally practiced hand into a noviciate’s weapon.”
He stopped, half turned, but froze, staring at the ground. “Did she play mine own hand too, Stella? Eh? Did she? Should I have kept us all together, to protect one another?” When he faced Stella, tears filled his eyes, adding a glisten to the dullness of his stare.
“You did what you thought best, Nephril. None of us can do any better.”
He nodded, curtly, turned and pushed on up the alley. “Well, at least we are now near the top” he called back. “All downhill thereafter,” and Stella wiped her eyes before hurrying to catch up.
The alleyway gave out onto a road that ran across its end, an open space opposite revealing a broad view of the Southern Hills in the distance. Nearer to, the Suswin River meandered its silver thread through its shallow but broad valley. Bazarral, though, still hid from sight beyond the gentle curve of the mountain now slipping away before them.
“Which way?” Stella eventually had to ask, for Nephril now stood stock-still, seemingly lost in thought.
“Hmm? What?”
“Where do we go next ... for Leigarre Perfinn?”
“Ah, yes. Err,” and he peered eastwards, along the road. “There be ... there be a snicket off to the right. It cuts out a long walk by...”
Stella drew close beside him. “A long walk by what, Nephril?”
He looked at her, blinking. “By road, Stella. It cuts out a long walk by road.”
“Well, come on then. Show me.”
When he faced along the road again, he didn’t move but only chewed at his lip.
“Nephril? Are you alright?”
He raised his hand to his mouth and now chewed on that as he slowly turned fully about, taking in the heaving spread of the castle. “Is this right?” he seemed to say as he mumbled past his fist. “Is this not how it should remain?”
“What’s wrong, Nephril? You’re as white as a winter’s day.”
“Ha, ‘tis nothing, mine dear. Just an ancient man’s whimsy,” and he strode off, briefly leaving Stella behind.
The narrow snicket, as snickets are wont to do, cut between a long series of overgrown gardens, its surface pocked and scribed by the elements. Its treacherous footing curtailed any conversation, so by the time they emerged at the top of a flight of broad steps, questions queued behind Stella’s tight lips.
As Nephril descended ahead, Stella was about to speak when she noticed him stealing glances at the more open view to the south; so engrossed he almost tripped down a step or two. Something made her draw beside him and take his hand in hers. It felt cold and unresponsive. When she gave it a squeeze, he again stopped, an alarmed look in the eyes he turned her.
“Your hand’s cold,” Stella told him. “Are your feet getting just as cold?”
“Mine feet?”
“Aren’t you keen to know Mirabel’s safe, that this cask,” which she now hoisted higher on her back as she nodded towards it, “is put to its intended use?”
“Of course, mine dear. Of course.”
“Then why do you seem so distracted?”
He stared at her, open-mouthed. “Stella,” and he faltered, snapping his mouth shut and narrowing his eyes. “I,” he finally said, “I ... I keep seeing images.”
“Images?”
“Of a Dica I no longer recognise,” and his gaze wandered again.
As Stella fought to find words, her own gaze rested on the view of Galgaverre far below, here made more visible by the slightly steeper fall of the mountain’s flank. At its heart, a ring of black towers circled a hint of red, a haze of bright green glowing at its centre.
“Of course: Baradcar,” she whispered, “the lair of the Living Green Stone Tree.”
Nephril turned to look down upon it himself.
“Her unobstructed gaze,” Stella said to herself and grabbed Nephril’s arm, roughly spinning him about to face her. “How thorough was the alteration they made to your weft and weave, Nephril?”
“Thorough?”
“Can she see you? Can she know where you are?”
“Who?”
“Leiyatel of course. Will she know you’re here?”
“I ... I do not think so, but what I do know is she cannot control mine actions. That was the whole point of...”
“Not your actions, Nephril, no, but what about your thoughts, the images in your mind?”
He looked about at the castle’s grey mass. “It be as though I can see what Nature will bring to all this, what changes will disfigure it.”
“Oh, Nephril, my sweet, sweet Nephril. What have the centuries done to you?”
He lowered his eyes to his feet.
“You’re like a little boy, Nephril. Do you know that? Scared by tales told you by a wicked stepmother, hiding beneath her petticoats in fear of bogeymen.” She took his hand, kneading it in hers. “Leiyatel is now souring your mind, Nephril. Don’t you see? She must know what we’re up to – and it must be through you.”
His hand stiffened in hers and he tried to snatch it away, but she gripped it hard, tugging it towards her, grasping it with her other. “Nephril? Look at me. Come on,” and he slowly lifted his gaze. “I reckon she’s kept you immortal by freezing you in time; encouraged you to cower behind her skirts; made you fearful of change. That’s what she’s done to the whole of Dica, to preserve it for the one task of creating stars, to offer life a chance to persist in this corner of the universe.”
“It
is a rightful purpose, Stella, our reason for being.”
“Yes, but it’s not the only way – it’s not the natural way.”
“Natural? How so when Nature herself hast brought this world of ours to ruin, and almost all life upon it?” and he threw his free arm out, encompassing the distant deserts and lifeless seas that hemmed in their tiny lifeboat realm.
“Not Nature, Nephril. That’s only yet more of the bastard’s lies. The race of man did all that. Man and a greed that came from abandoning Nature.” Nephril frowned but kept his gaze upon her. “You cannot see Nature in my eyes, Nephril, because Leiyatel has blinded you, more so than any in this realm. More so because of your immortality.”
His eyes glistened and he blinked them wide open. “Be that why mortality itself has so enticed me these past few centuries? Why I chose to escape Leiyatel’s embrace, to find mine own carr sceld beyond the Gray Mountains? Did I somehow know I have slowly been suffocating beneath the layers of her petticoats?”
“Life has to be a battle, Nephril, a battle with Nature, a fight to win balance, to ensure order in a chaotic universe. It’s what gives us our spirit, what turns a grey world into a whole rainbow of vibrant colours; sadness through to joy, hate through to love – weakness through to strength.”
She now held both his hands, standing before him, entreaty in her hint of a smile. “You hanker after a grey world, Nephril, the grey world of Dica, but there’s so much more if you’d only come out from behind Leiyatel’s skirts. Then, maybe then you would see the one thing I know you desire but are too timid to grasp with both hands.”
“Desire?”
“I don’t know why I didn’t see it before, or maybe I did and just thought it was a fancy of my own.”
“See what, Stella?”
“A love you daren’t admit to yourself, a love that could never blossom in a soil of grey dust.”
His brows now seemed so creased she was sure Grog could have planted spuds in them, and she laughed, but gently, softly.
“If you’d the strength of a conviction born of having fought Nature to a truce, you’d be able to speak it now, Nephril ... to say it to me, to my face. You’d know in your heart it was the right thing to do, and you’d know what my answer would be.”
“But,” he quietly said, more to himself than Stella, “that would mean feeling what I know I should not.”
“Well, my timid child, you just thank Nature I have that strength within me,” and she let go his hands and wrapped her arms about his neck, raising her lips to his.
Nephril froze, but slowly, reticently, cupped her head of bristled hair in his hand as his lips softened and his tears soon seasoned their kiss.
Stella eventually leant away, a level look in her eyes. “Can you trust me, Nephril?”
He only stared at her.
“Trust me. Have faith in me, for here and now is neither the place nor the time for this, for the wholeness of my heart also hangs by Mirabel’s thread. I need to know she’s safe, Nephril, and ... and we still have a task to complete. One that demands both the people I love.”
Nephril placed his fingertip against her lips, as though he’d not heard, his eyes glazed in thought for a moment before he whispered, “Trust thee? If it be thee who speaks, if thy voice be of the one who has forced a truce upon thy Nature within ... but is it so, Stella? Be it thee I truly do hear – or Nature speaking through thee?”
57 Leigarre Perfinn
Unusual during daylight hours, rain clouds had quickly rolled in as Stella and Nephril steadily descended into the warren of deserted ways encrusting the southern districts of the Upper Reaches. Rain began to speckle the pavement of the narrow street of close-pressed terraced buildings along which they now hurried, a gap appearing ahead.
It contained a tall, arched gateway, set back from the street. A long driveway stretched away from it, across a wide expanse of grass on the far side, on which they’d only just set foot when the rain became heavier, the sky fast darkening.
“Is there much further to go, Nephril?” Stella said as they picked up their pace.
“This be Leigarre Perfinn’s driveway, Stella.”
“Well, you could’ve said,” and she peered ahead as the metallic tang of rain soaked flags assaulted her nose. “So, where is it then?”
“There,” and Nephril pointed to a clump of tall bushes at the end of the drive, above which a small, yellow dome barely peeped.
She frowned and was about to speak when the heavens opened, a curtain of rain fast sweeping across, soon obscuring all but a few dozen yards ahead.
They ran, heads down, feet splashing through quickly gathering puddles, the rain blurring Stella’s vision, until the bushes darkly swept past, giving way to the stark yellow, curved wall of a building. Nephril raced around to the far side, Stella at his heels, and there they came to a small porch, its door wide open.
Rushing in, they huddled together and stared out at the rain as it now bounced a good foot off the ground, gutters and gullies gurgling and gargling around them.
“Bleeding Norah, Nephril,” Stella shouted. “I’ve never seen rain like it,” and then she noticed a hand-shaped stain on the porch’s doorframe, quickly smearing redly as the rain lashed against it. She turned and stared further into the building, her sharp gasp unheard against the thunder of rain on its roof.
Before her was a circular room, its low walls white but its concave ceiling mirrored, lending the place an unnatural brilliance. All but a narrow border of the floor was sunken, deep steps leading down to a small flat space at its centre.
Stella shouted above the downpour, “Where’s Mirabel? Why’s she not here?” and turned back to the stain only to find it had already been washed away.
“She should be inside by now, Stella,” Nephril’s raised voice declared, close by her ear.
“What do you mean, ‘inside’?” and she again stared into the empty room.
He took her by the arm and led her in, down the steps to the base of the hollow and there drew her close to his chest as he looked up. She followed his gaze and started at the distorted image they both now formed in the ceiling above. Appearing where the rain seemed to thunder the hardest, their reflections made as though some great beast had them trapped here in its lair.
Transfixed, Stella didn’t notice the steps about them smoothly rise, not until they hissed to a halt, forming a flat, black ceiling. The monster now appeared as no more than a haloed hole directly above their heads. Stella, though, clung to Nephril the harder at the silent darkness that had quickly pressed in around them.
“We are on the first level of Leigarre Perfinn,” he could at last quietly say. “Let thine eyes adjust awhile before we move on. I do not want thee falling down the stairs.”
“Stairs?” Stella whispered, starting to make out a thin horizontal line of dim blue light before her. When she turned her head, she noticed the line grew steadily brighter until, now facing away from Nephril, she saw it slant down at an angle to an abrupt end. “Stairs. Of course,” and she stepped away from Nephril who took her by the arm, holding her back.
“This way, Stella,” he said, guiding her to the dim start of the blue line, following it around the curved wall in which it ran until they reached the top of a flight of stairs. The glare of the level below hurt her eyes, so Stella squinted, but soon saw her beloved friend Mirabel lying inert on a blood-stained floor, her back propped against the bottom few steps.
“Mirabel, oh, Mirabel, my love,” Stella cried out, soon down the stairs and hunched over her, gripping her unresponsive arms.
An ashen face lay seemingly asleep beneath Stella’s pained gaze. It quickly drew her cheek to a cold press against Mirabel’s, lending no more than a shiver to Stella’s spine. She recoiled, hardly able to see through her tears, and so didn’t notice the tremble of Mirabel’s grey lips.
Nephril’s calm voice drifted in to the storm of thoughts now raging about Stella’s mind. “Now then, Stella. Do not hold her so hard,” a
nd he gently eased her away by her shoulders. “I think she tries to speak.”
Stella quickly wiped her eyes, seeing Mirabel’s own now fluttering, her lips slightly parted. “Stella?” Mirabel barely whispered. “Is it really you?”
“It is, my sweetheart, it is,” but Stella could now no more than sob.
Mirabel’s cold, damp hand slowly raised and rested against Stella’s cheek, tried to caress it but soon dropped back, limply to her blood-sodden bodice. Her voice, though, strove that bit harder. “Oh, Stella, how hard I’ve tried to hold on, to see you again ... to feel your warmth.”
“Don’t tire yourself, Mirabel. We’ll get you better, you’ll see. Don’t you worry now, we just need to...”
Mirabel slowly rolled her head from side to side. “Too late, Stella, too late, but listen. Listen now. I don’t have long.”
“Don’t say that, Mirabel. If you preserve your strength, I’m sure we can get a leech to you in...”
Nephril gave Stella’s shoulders a few firm hugs. “Listen to Mirabel,” he told her. “Do not squander her remaining time.”
Stella swallowed, sniffed back her tears and finally said. “I’m listening.”
A sigh, a deep breath and a rattle in its wake, and Mirabel said, “Leigarre Perfinn is readied, Stella, except for one last thing. I hadn’t the strength to climb back you see, so listen close.”
Stella lowered her ear to Mirabel’s steadily waning voice.
“On the level above, where you came in, go to the dimmer end of the blue line. Walk to beneath the hole in the ceiling and you’ll find ... a small recess in the floor. Reach in to a nipple, Stella, and unscrew a knurled nut beneath it ... until you hear a loud scream. Stand back quickly, mind, until it stops, then ... then wait a minute before screwing it back tight.” She sighed, heavily, and closed her eyes, a groan as her hand redly gripped at her wetly glistening side.
Starmaker Stella (Dica Series Book 6) Page 25
