Queen of Stars (Starfolk #2)

by Duncan, Dave

  When it was all over, nothing remained of the two killers except their moon-cloth wraps and a scattering of amulets. It couldn’t bring back Rigel, but it felt good all the same. The Starlands could finally live in peace again, as Izar had never known them.

  The queen stood up. Now she would speak an elegy for Rigel and hold a proper funeral for him. She eventually had to raise her arms to get the cheering to stop.

  “My people, this is a happy day, which has seen a great curse lifted from our land. The terror has ended. We now have no Naos other than me, although I have heard hints of several youngsters who have begun to display the mark but are being kept hidden by their families. In the meantime, we need to maintain our customs. My son is still a long way from legal adulthood, but over these last few months he has displayed courage and maturity far beyond his years. I therefore proclaim him Prince Izar Naos. Moreover, I need a designated heir, so I also declare him my regent-heir. Chancellor?”

  What? Ship’s biscuits! Izar turned—almost falling over his own feet in the process—and there was Aspidiske, holding a massive disk of gold links with a hole in the center.

  All Izar could say was, “Huh?”

  “We must now go down to the Star, Your Highness, so you can take the oath.”

  Highness? Him? He stumbled after the chancellor. Salm, Uk, Dschubba, Uk, Salm—oh, please, please be here to see this! He and the old man did the oath ceremony, although it was all a blur, like a very muddled dream. The damnable collar weighed as much as he did and almost made him trip over the steps again as he went back up. The court was cheering him! Everyone except Mom would have to bow to him now!

  She didn’t have to kiss him again in public! But she did and he put up with it. It felt quite good, actually. He waved to the nice people and they cheered all the louder. Vildiar was dead! Hadar was dead! Rigel…Now the funeral?

  But Mom was smiling. “I give you leave to withdraw, Prince. You should go to the robing room right away.”

  “I want to stay for the funeral!”

  Why was she still smiling?

  “No funeral.” She turned to face the court. “My people. There has been a slight misunderstanding, or perhaps I should say an exaggeration…”

  Two-ton collar or not, Izar moved faster than a falling star—leaping right over Commander Zozma, around the end of the great black monolith, and up the steps in the back of it. Only once had he been inside the robing room. Like most of Canopus Palace, it had no roof, so it was another court, quite small and private, but with flower beds and palm trees and some comfortable divans.

  On one of them sat a male starborn with sandy hair, and on the other a three-quarterling with white eyes and a bronze helmet.

  “Rigel!”

  Rigel just had time to jump up and spread his arms before Izar and his collar hit him like a runaway behemoth and they crashed down together on the divan. And then Turais joined the scrimmage, all wagging tail and slobber.

  “Stars almighty, Prince! Are you trying to kill me all over again?”

  “How did you do that? I saw you die! Saiph fell off your wrist. You had arrows in—”

  “In just about everything, yes. Mage Achird keeps trying to explain it to me, but I doubt if he really understands it himself.”

  Mage Achird was bowing to Izar and giving him the salutation owed to a superior, so Izar had to get up and respond properly. Then he sat down and reached for the wine jug. Maybe wine would sober him up, and no one would tell a prince what he could or could not drink!

  “Tell me too,” he said. “That’s a royal command.”

  “This is going to be hell,” muttered either Tyl or Thabit, whom Izar had not noticed before, sitting in the corner, under the shade of a fig tree.

  “You don’t have to put up with it. I don’t need a bodyguard anymore.”

  The halfling said, “You’ll need a team of lifeguards if you try to go swimming in that collar.”

  Princes should not need to water their wine like starlings did. Izar Naos took a gulp of it straight, choked, coughed, spluttered, and lost the thread of the conversation.

  “…didn’t know it myself,” Rigel was saying. “But I should have figured it out when Saiph wouldn’t kill Vildiar for me.”

  Izar had recovered enough to say, “Mage?” hoarsely. They all smirked at him, but he didn’t mind. He couldn’t mind anything on a day like today, with Vildiar dead, Hadar dead, Rigel alive, and him a prince! He had his adopted big brother back and was going to have a real baby sister. If he lived to be five thousand he could never top this day! “Tell me why this freak isn’t dead.”

  “The key to it, Your Highness,” Achird said, smiling, “is that Saiph is the strongest and most ancestral amulet around. Moreover, it’s a defensive amulet, but Hadar and the Family were hunting Rigel and planning to kill him just so that they could get hold of Saiph! That’s a paradox—a defense that itself puts its owner in danger. It did save his life when the arrows were loosed at him, and even when he could no longer move his arm, because even the shots through his chest and abdomen missed vital organs, where wounds would have killed him instantly. He must have somehow twisted out of their way to make that happen.”

  “You try involuntarily twisting when you’ve already got one arm and one shoulder nailed to the wall,” Rigel said, and took a gulp of wine.

  “Deception is one of the basic tactics in swordplay. When Rigel fainted, Saiph feinted. It abandoned him, because that was the only way it could save him from further harm. You all assumed that Saiph was leaving a corpse, but Rigel had just passed out from the pain. Vildiar carried you off. Almaak made sure Hadar and Tegmine were dead, as Vildiar had ordered. Botein wasn’t about to stand still for that, but Sadalbari stabbed her in the back. Then they carted off their dead, leaving Rigel hanging there.”

  “You were spying on us?” Izar said angrily. “And you didn’t help?”

  Achird looked ashamed, as well he might. “Starborn Mizar and I had been seancing you for days. We saw Starborn Elgomaisa order Rigel to attend him at Vindemiatrix that morning, but we didn’t know where you were going when you left Segin. So we lost you and could only watch the rainbow bridge, believing that there was no other way in.”

  “Hadar must have moved his troops in by portal,” Rigel said.

  “The one behind the throne was open,” Izar told him. “Vildiar took me out that way.”

  “When you and Starborn Rigel arrived,” Achird said, emphasizing Rigel’s new title slightly, “we tracked you in with Elgomaisa. By the time we saw what was happening, it was too late to warn you or stop it. Fortunately Fornacis is another twig of the Phegda domain tree, as is Vindemiatrix. As soon as the last members of the Family left, I portaled in and cut Rigel down. His healing amulets had kept him alive, although barely, and I slapped some nova-strength reinforcements on them to pull him through.”

  Rigel said, “What I still don’t understand is how Saiph could muddle up the Time of Life prophecy, or why.”

  Achird shrugged. “Prophecy’s always tricky. How much of what you saw was right?”

  “Maybe two-thirds. The people, and some of the dialogue. But I saw a forest with snow, not a log wall and gravel, and the fact that I didn’t die was wrong! It was supposed to be prophesying my death.”

  “It did prophesy your death. If it hadn’t been for Saiph, you would have died, and Saiph is stronger magic than the Time of Life. Two-thirds right is a spectacularly successful foretelling anyway. Fomalhaut wants you to come back and try again.”

  “Not likely!”

  “He’s babbling about a three-quarterling having a lifespan of at least a thousand years.”

  “Let him babble.” Rigel refilled his glass. “Uh-oh!”

  Commander Zozma had padded in, all menace, tail swishing.

  “Marshal, the queen wants you.”

  Rigel laid down his glass with a sigh. “Where is she?”

  “Still in court. The people refuse to disperse until they’ve given
you a cheer or three.”

  “Me? Why me? What have I done?” Rigel looked so horrified that Izar almost burst out laughing.

  “Well, it could be your courage,” the sphinx rumbled. “Or your miraculous escape from certain death. Or your superlative service as marshal of Canopus. But I don’t think it’s any of those. Starfolk are just crazy about babies, and royal babies are special. They don’t produce cubs easily, you know. Not like us sphinxes. I’ve lost count of mine.” He purred seismically at his own joke. “So they want to cheer your virility. Royal command: Go out there and let them admire you, the Royal Stud. The females, I mean. The males are just jealous.”

  Zozma turned his dread eyes on Izar. “You, too, Your Highness. They seem to think you’ve done something worth cheering, too.”

  “I ’spect they just want a look at Saiph,” Izar said, rising, staggering a little, and recovering his balance. That wine was ’stremely powerful!

  “You’re the First Family,” the mage said and then spoiled the effect by laughing.

  Rigel stood up also, looking glum. “They probably want to tear me apart as an imposter.”

  Izar clapped him on the shoulder, which was not so very much higher than his. “Don’t worry, starborn. I’m Saiph-bearer now. I’ll defend you.”

  About the Author

  PHOTO BY LILA KLASSEN, 2008

  Dave Duncan is a prolific writer of fantasy and science fiction, best known for his fantasy series, particularly The Seventh Sword, A Man of His Word, The King’s Blades, and Against the Light. He and his wife, Janet, his in-house editor and partner for over fifty years, live in Victoria, British Columbia. They have three children and four grandchildren.