Shadows on the Stars

by T.A. Barron

  “Heeeevashhh! Heeeevashhh!”

  As the sharp, hissing sound rent the air, the creature suddenly froze, and ceased crushing Tamwyn. To his astonishment, it lifted its limb slightly—not enough that he could extract himself, but just enough that he could breathe again.

  “Oiyanishhhla. Shhheralass, oiyanishhhla!”

  Slowly—and, Tamwyn sensed, reluctantly—the creature raised its limb another notch. He pulled himself free, spinning away on the grass. Panting, he knelt on the slope, eager to see who, or what, had stopped the creature from killing him.

  A tall, broad-chested figure in a hooded cloak strode toward him. With a sharp wave of his hand, the figure cried out again, louder than before. This time, the knobby creature and its companions actually backed away. With a hiss of disappointment, they turned and slowly shuffled off toward higher ground, their rootlegs thumping on the turf.

  Tamwyn watched them for a few seconds to be sure they were really leaving, then faced the cloaked figure again. At that instant, the figure pulled back his hood.

  A man! All the way up here in Merlin’s Knothole!

  Tamwyn bit his lip. Carefully, he scrutinized the face of this stranger, whose long gray hair and coal-black eyes, gleaming in the starlight, made Tamwyn think, for an instant, that this just might be the person he’d longed his whole life to find.

  Yet he knew, in the very next instant, it was not. As much as Tamwyn wanted to believe that he had finally found his father, he felt sure, by some inner sight that had nothing to do with the eyes, that this was someone else. But who? And how did he come to be in this place?

  The burly man furrowed his brow, as if he were asking himself the very same questions. At last, in a voice that seemed to echo in his barrel chest, he said simply, “Yer a long way from home, lad.”

  Tamwyn reached for his staff and rose to his feet. With a nod, he answered, “So are you, I’ll wager.”

  “Then ye’d lose, lad. This valley be me rightful home. Has been now fer . . .” He paused, counting. “Seventeen years. An’ in all that time, yer me first guest.”

  Tamwyn stiffened. Seventeen years. The time of his father’s expedition! This man might have been part of the team Krystallus had assembled—in which case he’d surely know what had happened to that team. As well as its leader.

  Yet as much as he hungered to find out, Tamwyn sensed that the time wasn’t yet right to ask. He’d hold back, at least for the moment.

  “Long enough,” the man went on, with a shake of his gray locks, “to learn the tongue o’ them drumalin’s.”

  “For which I’m very grateful!” Tamwyn smiled, then asked, “Drumalings? Is that what you call those creatures?”

  “Aye. That be not their name fer theirselves, which rolls on an’ on like a damn waterfall, somethin’ like hershnaganshalaslianooshkalash. But that be what I took to callin’ them—after the Old Fincayran word fer tree, ye know.”

  “Druma.”

  “Right, lad.” He stroked his curly gray beard for a moment, then extended his immense hand. “Me name be Ethaun. An’ yers?”

  “Tamwyn.” He cleared his throat, then asked the question that burned inside him: “Did you, by chance, come to this place with—”

  “Ye must be hungry,” Ethaun declared, cutting him off. “Come on, I was jest fixin’ me own breakfast when I heard yer shout. So now ye can join me fer some eats.”

  Without waiting for a reply, he turned and started down the grassy slope, angling toward the ravine at the bottom. With a sigh, Tamwyn followed along behind.

  35 • A Name from the Past

  Ethaun, who seemed as burly as a bear, led Tamwyn down the slope into the thicker grasses of the valley floor. To the young man’s surprise, his guide veered away from the gardens and orchard, and toward the deep ravine. Where is he taking me? Tamwyn wondered.

  Just as they neared the edge of the ravine, which dropped five or six times Tamwyn’s height into the fertile ground, he saw a staircase wrought of something that resembled ironwood. The steep stairs led down to a simple earthen hut, its roof made of mossy wooden shingles with a sturdy stone chimney at one end. Outside the hut’s doorway sat a substantial pile of firewood, a chopping block, and dozens of assorted garden tools—hoes, saws, rakes, pruning shears, and the like—many of which looked broken or only half-built.

  Of course, thought Tamwyn as he climbed down the stairway. He lives down here to stay out of the wind! Or maybe, he added grimly, out of the reach of those drumalings.

  Following Ethaun’s broad form, he stepped into the hut and set down his pack and staff. As he closed the door behind him, a stone bell that hung on the back of the door jangled. Tamwyn smiled, knowing that his host, like himself, must have spent some time in Stoneroot, the land of bells. As if in response, the small quartz bell on Tamwyn’s hip sounded a note of its own.

  With only one window, the hut was quite dark, in addition to reeking of smoke. But as Tamwyn’s eyes adjusted, he realized that some of the darkness was, in fact, smoke. A thick, dark cloud hovered near the ceiling above the hearth.

  Ethaun bent over the hearth coals and blew a long, steady breath. The coals immediately burst into flames, filling the hut with more light—as well as more smoke. He tossed a good-size slab of wood onto the fire, sending up a fountain of sparks.

  Then Ethaun stepped over to a sturdy wooden table, which held a large carving knife, a blackened pipe—and the largest melon Tamwyn had ever seen, fully as big as a troll’s head. The barrel-chested man started to pick up the knife, then stopped and turned back to Tamwyn.

  “Tickle me toenails,” he declared, breaking into a wide, gap-toothed grin. “I’m fergettin’ me manners! Not used to visitors, ye know.” He motioned to a stool by the wall. “Jest slide that over here, lad, so we both can sit at the table.”

  As he stepped across the earthen floor to the stool, Tamwyn gazed around Ethaun’s dwelling. It seemed very crowded—and very human. Under the table sat a straw basket full of pipes, most of them carved from hardwood burls, along with a sack of pipeweed that looked like dried leaves of lemon balm. Over by one wall sat a straw pallet with a ragged cloth blanket. And stuffed partially under the pallet’s edge was a torn copy of a book he recognized: Cyclo Avalon, the famous Drumadian text by Lleu of the One Ear.

  Against the opposite wall, many smaller tools hung on hooks. There were hammers of several sizes and shapes, knives, tongs, thin-bladed saws, a set of chisels—and many implements that Tamwyn couldn’t recognize, including some sort of glass globe in a leather strap. All the tools showed considerable craftsmanship, whether they had been made from wrought iron, polished hardwood, or chipped stone.

  In the far corner of the hut sat a set of triangular shelves, drooping from the weight of the chunks of iron ore, slabs of obsidian, and coils of heavy rope that they supported. Nearby rested several large bags, overflowing with colorful seeds. And in baskets by the shelves sat more enormous fruits and vegetables, all jumbled together. These included a bunch of fist-sized grapes, a single carrot as long as Tamwyn’s arm, a leaf of lettuce that could have covered his entire back, a batch of giant scallions, and a turnip that looked about as heavy as one of the iron chunks.

  Tamwyn’s gaze moved back to the hearth. Shaped as a semicircle, and built from blocks of granite, the hearth and its chimney took up most of one wall. Beside it rested a flat, oblong hunk of rock that looked very much like an anvil.

  All at once, Tamwyn realized this place wasn’t just a home. It was also a smithy! He nodded to himself as he spotted the heavy, charred apron hanging from a hook over by the tools.

  “Well, lad, are ye comin’ to breakfast er not?” called Ethaun from his seat—a pair of unopened seed bags by the table. “Bite me boots, this melon be tasty.”

  Tamwyn grabbed the stool and slid it over to the table. Seeing the hefty slice that his host had set aside for him, he took a big bite of the melon’s juicy white center. For some time after that, the only sounds within the hut we
re chomping teeth and dribbling juices.

  Although Tamwyn ached to ask about his father, he could sense that Ethaun would need to be in the proper mood. So, biding his time, he asked instead about the strange creatures who had nearly killed him.

  “Meant no harm to ye, them drumalin’s,” declared Ethaun as he cut himself another slice of melon.

  “No harm?” asked Tamwyn, incredulous. “That beast nearly broke my back!”

  “Not knowin’ly,” the gray-bearded man insisted. “It was jest overly scared, ye see. Truth be told, them drumalin’s be scared o’ everythin’. Even their own bitty little green mustaches! Not to mention that wild wind up there on the slopes, which scares them even though they can anchor theirselves with rootyfeet.”

  “I still say,” countered Tamwyn, pausing to swallow, “they’re dangerous.”

  “Maybe so, lad. But they’re also spectac’ler gardeners.” He waved his big hand at the baskets of fruits and vegetables. “‘Course, they never grow anythin’ but salads an’ fruit. But count me curls, they do that well! An’ all year round, too, since it never gets so cold here as to frost er snow. Why, they even grow me all the firewood I need fer me smithin’.”

  He paused, his eyes suddenly bright, and leaned toward Tamwyn. “Ye don’t have any dried strips o’ meat in yer pack there, do ye?”

  “No. Sorry about that.”

  “Not so sorry as me! Seventeen years without a single lick o’ meat, think o’ that.”

  Tamwyn nodded, deciding that maybe the time had finally come. “So tell me,” he said as casually as he could, “whatever brought you to this remote place?”

  Ethaun slowly wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, then spoke as if he hadn’t heard the question. “Soon after I arrived, it strikes me these gardeners do pretty well with their bony stickfingers, but what if they had a few real garden tools? So I makes them a trade. They gets some tools, an’ I gets all the food I can ever eat.”

  “But tell me, Ethaun. When you came here, did you—”

  “Here, lad. Have a carrot.”

  Tamwyn peered straight at him. “Just tell me this. Did you come here with a man named Krystallus?”

  At the mention of that name, Ethaun suddenly looked troubled. He set down his melon rind. “Now that be a name from the past,” he said finally, his voice as low as a thrumming grouse. “But aye, I did travel with him, leastways fer a while.”

  “A while?”

  Picking up his pipe, Ethaun chewed on its stem for a moment. Then, in one deft motion, he took a pinch of pipeweed and pushed it into the bowl with his little finger. From his tunic pocket he grabbed a pair of iron stones, much like the ones Tamwyn himself carried, and lit a spark. After a few thoughtful puffs, he finally spoke again.

  “That be a long tale, lad. Are ye sure ye’d like to hear it right now?”

  Tamwyn’s face looked just as hard as the stones of the hearth. “I’m sure.”

  He took another puff. “Well, I s’pose it’d do me good to tell somebody. Been a dragon’s age, it has, since it all happened.”

  36 • The Dagger’s Blade

  Ethaun leaned back on the seed bags that formed his chair, gazing across the wooden table at Tamwyn. “Ye see, I always wanted to be an explorer. To go places, aye! Places so amazin’ that I couldn’t even imagine them. Even though I’d seen naught but the inside o’ me old master’s smithy in Stoneroot, that was me dream.”

  He sucked on his smoke-blackened pipe. “An’ so I ran away, I did, after hearin’ that the greatest explorer o’ them all, Krystallus hisself, was roundin’ up brave folks to join him on his biggest journey ever. A journey people said might go all the way to the stars.”

  Tamwyn’s gaze bored into him. “Yes?”

  “Well, I was so very young, Krystallus didn’t want me along. Said it was jest too damn dangerous. But I tried me best to convince him he’d need a good smith, as I’d worked the hammer an’ tongs since boyhood. Still he said no. But I pestered him an’ pestered him, bein’ the sort o’ lad who jest wouldn’t give up.”

  He chewed on his pipe for a moment, eyeing Tamwyn. “A lot like ye, methinks.”

  Grinning, Tamwyn nodded. “And what happened?”

  “Well, finally, he changed his mind. Said I could come an’ be a second smith, as well as pot washer, seam stitcher, an’ all-round helper. Told me that, with the twelve folks he already had in his group, I’d make it a lucky thirteen.”

  Ethaun turned toward his wall cluttered with tools, his face wistful. “Well, I was happier than a pig in paradise! An’ fer the first few weeks, it was a great adventure, fer certain. I saw jest about everthin’ I’d ever hoped fer—portals, painted tunnels, upside down waterfalls, ye name it.”

  Suddenly he scowled. “Then one day, jest when we was settin’ up camp in a cavern, them termites came out o’ nowhere! Hulkin’, fearsome beasts, with slashers like giant broadswords, an’ hungry fer blood. I seen them first, but I . . .”

  After his voice faded, the hut was silent, as if the earthen walls themselves were waiting for him to continue. The cloud of smoke, hovering above the hearth, seemed to darken. And it was Tamwyn who spoke next, for his intuition told him what had happened. Quietly, he asked, “You didn’t stay to fight, like the others, did you?”

  “Jest ran off an’ hid! Tremblin’ like a worthless leaf in the wind.” Ethaun bit so hard on his pipe the stem snapped, spilling pipeweed onto the floor. He spat out the end that had been in his mouth. “Not exactly like an explorer, eh?”

  Tamwyn pinched his lips together. “That’s nothing compared to some of the fool things I’ve done.”

  The man just grunted and stroked his curly beard. “I’ve wished a hundred times, if I’ve wished once, to live them moments again. To do right fer me mates. An’ ‘specially fer Krystallus, a better man than any who ever walked the paths o’ Avalon.”

  Tamwyn’s eyes shone, though he said nothing.

  Ethaun heaved a sigh. “None o’ them survived, not a single bloody one.”

  “All of them died?”

  “That be right, lad. All o’ them.” Bitterly, he added, “Except fer lucky number thirteen.”

  “But,” protested Tamwyn. “I heard Krystallus did survive. And that he came up here to the Knothole, just as I did.”

  Ethaun shook his hairy head. “Not that I know about, lad. An’ that means, I’m afeared, it never happened.”

  “How can you be certain?” Tamwyn banged his fist on the table. “You can’t be!”

  The big man got up and fetched another pipe and a different sack of pipeweed, which smelled like crushed needles of cedar. Biting the pipe stem, he filled the bowl, lit the weed, and took a first puff. Then, moving slowly, he returned to the table and sat down on the seed bags.

  “It be like this, ye see. When I comes out o’ hidin’, I went back to the battle scene. An’ counted the bodies, mangled though they was. Twelve, all together. Nobody survived, I tell ye. Nobody.”

  Seeing the disbelief in Tamwyn’s expression, he went on. “Anyways, I came up here straightaway after that. Rode the bloomin’ waterfall, I did, far as I could. Used me tarp to ride higher—like a big sail that was lifted by the water. Then I jest followed tunnels fer days an’ days, growin’ weak from hunger. I was sure that I was goin’ to die—an’ that I deserved to die. Somehow, though, I jest happened to find a tunnel that took me here, to this very valley.”

  He chewed vigorously on the pipe for a moment, then puffed a few times. “If any other man was ever here, don’t ye think I’d know about it? An’ in all these years, I’ve seen nobody else wearin’ two legs. Until ye came along.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Aye.”

  Tamwyn squinted at him. “I still think he came here, just as Gwirion said. And even if he was badly injured, the élano in the water should have healed him, as it did me.” Turning away, he added under his breath, “I just can’t believe he’s dead.”

  For some time, neither sp
oke. Finally, Ethaun blew a ring of smoke toward his hearth, and said, “I’m sorry, lad. Ye must o’ been pretty young when Krystallus left the root-realms. But . . . did ye know him?”

  Hoarsely, Tamwyn whispered, “I would have liked to.”

  “Well, well. Now I understand” boomed Ethaun. He leaned back on the seed bags, his strong hands clasping one of his knees. “Makes perfect sense, it does.”

  Tamwyn looked over at him. Could he have guessed the truth?

  Ethaun gave a knowing nod. “Yer a young explorer, too, aren’t ye? Jest like I was.”

  Tamwyn just stared at him blankly. All the hopes, all the longings, he’d allowed himself to feel—now crushed. He still wasn’t willing to let them go completely . . . but he didn’t really believe them anymore. He felt strangely empty inside. He still had the friends he’d left behind on Hallia’s Peak, of course, as well as his quest. But if he’d lost any hope of ever finding his father, then he’d also lost part of himself.

  “Well now, lad,” said the smith. “Seein’ as yer an explorer, an’ likely have a long ways more to go, do ye have anythin’ that be needin’ fixin’? I’m still fairly good with the hammer an’ tongs.”

  Absently, Tamwyn shook his head. “All I have is an old dagger that I broke on a living stone. But it’s so old and rusted you probably can’t fix it.”

  Ethaun leaned forward, crashing his burly forearms down on the table. “I’ll be the judge o’ that, lad. Where be it? In yer pack? I’ll jest fetch it fer a look.”

  Suddenly afraid that Ethaun would open the pack and find the scroll from Krystallus—which he didn’t want to talk about right now—Tamwyn got up himself. He walked across the earthen floor to his pack, reached inside, and pulled out the dagger’s broken handle and blade. Glumly, he dropped them on the blacksmith’s lap.