A Star Shall Fall

by Marie Brennan

  But it hurt now, and she hated it.

  The sundial began to spin. Cuddy stepped forward and grasped its angled style, throwing his slender weight backward to help drag the door open.

  Only one other mortal had ever gone inside that chamber and closed the door behind him. Irrith had heard the story of Hamilton Birch in gruesome detail, since Galen went into the room; her mind had conjured up plenty of possibilities for what would emerge today.

  Abd ar-Rashid stepped through the portal first. If the strain of the chamber had told upon him, he gave no sign. But he nodded to Lune, and then Galen came out.

  The Prince looked almost unchanged. No lines in his face, no white in his hair. It would be easy to imagine the Calendar Room had no effect upon him—easy, until one looked in his eyes. There Irrith saw changes for which there were no words. He was older in mind, if not in body, and he’d left part of himself in the Calendar Room. Everything in him that was fire.

  Galen bowed to the Queen and said, “I am ready.”

  Both rigidity and nervous fidgeting were gone from his body. He stood with his hands loose at his sides, his breathing slow and measured. Like a man ready for battle—

  No. There would be no battle; only surrender and death. He stood like a martyr, ready for the lions.

  Lune asked quietly, “Do you wish the services of a priest?”

  Irrith choked. Had Galen told her? The horrific words she’d flung at him, telling him he was damned to Hell—the Prince was shaking his head. “No,” he said, equally quiet. “I have been in meditation for days now, preparing. I must not lose this. Let us speak to the court, and be done.”

  The Queen did not press the question again. Throat aching with unsaid words, Irrith followed the small procession out of the workshop, toward the great presence chamber, where Galen would be made Prince no more.

  It had been done once before, Irrith knew, divesting a Prince of his title. Michael Deven gave over the position before his own death, so that “Prince of the Stone” would be an office passed from man to man, rather than a privilege belonging to him alone.

  But there was no replacement waiting for Galen. Amadea had spent the past eleven days assembling a list; there were possibilities. None were gentlemen. Lune would choose from among them after this was done—if there was still an Onyx Hall left.

  Galen surrendered to Lune the London Sword, the central piece of their royal regalia. She released him from his obligations as Prince, with many fine phrases. All of it was for show. Many of the watching fae knew by now about the London Stone, if not where its faerie side lay; they knew the true release would come in that hidden chamber, where Lune had once bound Galen to the keystone of their realm. Even Michael Deven had never renounced that bond. But this ceremony served its own purpose, because the enchantments of the Hall were not the only things that needed to bid the Prince farewell.

  Lune faced her court and spoke, pitching her voice so it carried to the far corners of the chamber, and up into the crystal panes high above. “Once the sun sets, we will be redeemed from the threat that has haunted us since the days of Charles II. Galen St. Clair, though Prince no more, will render unto us the greatest gift any man can bestow. He will lay down his life, binding the spirit of fire to his own mortality, and in doing so will destroy it. Remember this. Remember him. Let the Onyx Hall honor his sacrifice, until the last stone falls, and the last faerie departs from England’s shores.”

  The wave spread outward from the dais, fae kneeling upon the cold marble. Perfect silence followed in their wake, as if all the court held its breath. Then footsteps: uneven, two no longer walking as one. Hand in hand, Galen and the Queen descended and crossed the chamber, going out through the great bronze portal, which shut behind them with a sound like the closing of a mausoleum door.

  The Monument, London: April 30, 1759

  The sun died a bloody death on the eastern horizon, staining the last remaining shreds of cloud with crimson light. London still bustled with evening activity, carters and porters and housewives exchanging familiar curses, but it was distant and muffled. Magic as strong as that used to hide the Moor Fields for Midsummer cloaked this little yard, clearing it for the use of the fae.

  The Monument to the Great Fire of London dominated the space, its squat, square base ringed about with carving. Three sides bore Latin inscriptions; the fourth bore an elaborate allegory of the City’s destruction. Irrith had paced past it six times already, and hated the work more with each turn. That stiff image did not begin to describe the infernal horror of those days.

  But it was easier to look at the carvings than the pillar above. The Monument soared two hundred and two feet into the darkening air, an enormous, isolated column, crowned with an urn of gilt-bronze flames. Tiny shadows moved up there: the von das Tickens, placing the lenses and mirrors Schuyler had made for this purpose. The comet, they said, haunted the southern horizon, beneath the constellation of Hydra, just on the edge of twilight. Once they arranged their equipment and opened the hatch in the urn, they would banish the few remaining clouds; and then someone would be able to look up from the bottom chamber and see the comet.

  Galen would be able to look. Irrith’s gut twisted into a knot.

  The spear-knights waited on the paving stones of the Monument Yard, armed and armored and protected by the tithe. Bonecruncher led a troop of goblins in support. They, like Irrith, carried guns loaded with iron shot, and knives made from leftover slivers of the jotun ice. The rest of the Onyx Guard were stationed at the entrances to the palace, in case all failed, and the beast escaped them. If Galen’s own mortality didn’t kill the Dragon, they would.

  They hoped.

  Irrith halted near the door into the Monument, because there was movement at the edge of the yard. The procession was a small one: just Lune, Sir Peregrin Thorne, his half-human son Edward, and Galen. No Delphia St. Clair. Irrith didn’t blame her for not coming to watch her husband die.

  Galen wore only a shirt and knee breeches, stockings and shoes; no coat, no waistcoat, no wig. In the light of the lantern Edward held, the chestnut tint of his hair was stronger than ever. Irrith stared as if she would memorize it, to be recalled a century from now, and then she closed her eyes in stark refusal. No. Let it go.

  The light dimmed. She opened her eyes to see Edward extinguishing the lantern, and the knights and goblins saluting. Belatedly, she did the same. Lune pressed her lips to Galen’s brow. Only that; no final words. Perhaps she’d said them below, when they were alone in the chamber of the London Stone. Or perhaps there was nothing she could say.

  The former Prince hesitated. For a moment, Irrith thought he was about to speak; then she thought he was about to refuse. She froze, torn between terror and hope.

  Galen spun without warning and strode toward the Monument. The others were standing a little distance away, and so they were behind him; Irrith, waiting near the door, saw his face.

  Fear. The white line of his lips, the desperate set of his jaw, the tendons rising sharply from the open collar of his shirt. What Galen hid from the others, Irrith saw: the terror of a man walking to his death.

  Tears obliterated her vision, and then he was gone.

  He’d walked the path a thousand times in his mind.

  Through the door, into the cramped space beyond. To his left, one set of stairs: barely wide enough for two people to pass, leading upward to the viewing platform and the urn of flames. To his right, a second set: rougher and narrower, leading downward into darkness.

  He took the second path.

  A dozen steps, then a sharp turn, then five more. Galen descended carefully; they dared send no faerie light with him, and he hadn’t thought to ask for a candle. The chamber at the bottom was stiflingly close, almost small enough to span with his arms. The ceiling curved into a shallow dome, with a round opening in the center. By the faint light filtering in from above, Galen positioned himself beneath the opening, and looked upward.

  The sun-gold sheathing t
he walls, marked with alchemical symbols, was invisible in the gloom. Through the opening, though, he could see the stairs, curving around and around, more than three hundred steps in total. The hatch at the top, concealed within the urn, was still closed. But soon enough the von das Tickens would open it, and then he would look through the lenses and mirrors to the comet whose return Halley had predicted more than fifty years ago.

  He would see the Dragon, and the Dragon would see him.

  The warmth of the sun-gold did not touch the coldness inside. Abd ar-Rashid had prepared him inside the Calendar Room: congelation, distillation, fermentation, conjunction, separation, dissolution. Alchemical processes, their order reversed, while Galen purged all things of fire from his body and spirit. There was no anger in him, no desire for action; he was an empty vessel, awaiting the annihilating light.

  But fear was not a thing of fire. And so the fear remained.

  Three hundred steps and more, a spiral path to Heaven. Galen stood in the darkness below. It was fitting, really. Irrith’s words had cut deeply because they were true. All of this had come about because he loved Lune. Because of her, he returned to London, following his heart instead of his duty to his family. Because of her, he searched the city high and low until he found a door to her hidden realm. He accepted the title of Prince, which he never deserved to bear; he betrayed the loyalty he owed to Delphia, in spirit if not in deed. None of it was righteous. And now he sought his own death.

  I am damning myself to Hell.

  No priest’s absolution could change that. No penance in advance could ameliorate the sin committed afterward, the willing suicide. The Dragon’s fire would be only a foretaste of the fires that waited for him after judgment. Irrith was right about every part of it.

  Yet here he stood, beneath the Monument, hearing the metallic clang of the dwarves working high above. Because when Irrith left him, he stood in the silence of his chambers, tears wet on his face, and he thought about London, and the Onyx Court. Fae and mortals who would suffer, perhaps die, if the Dragon were not stopped. The Goodemeades and Abd ar-Rashid. Edward and Mrs. Vesey. Lady Feidelm, Wrain, Sir Peregrin Thorne. His sisters. Delphia. Irrith.

  Lune.

  If he refused this choice, then they all burnt. Better to die now than to let that happen.

  Even if it meant going to Hell.

  He accepted it, embraced it, clasped the notion to him with desperate strength, lest his nerve break and he flee. Light flooded down the shaft: the hatch was open. The gold about him began to glow, alchemical emblems glittering with cold radiance, turning the chamber into a trap, and a vessel of transformation. Galen flung his arms wide, flung his head back, stared up toward the waiting sky.

  Come on. Come to me. Let us be each other’s death.

  His entire body was shaking, trembling like a leaf in the wind. Tears ran down his face, and he clenched his jaw so hard his teeth ached with the strain. This is it. My last moment, and I’m weeping, because I’m going to Hell—oh, God—

  He could see nothing through the tears. But he felt the moment the connection formed: a terrible awareness, inhuman beyond anything the Onyx Hall contained. Vast, and distant, but filled with a malevolence that did not forget. The clouds had broken, and the comet blazed in the sky, and the Dragon saw him.

  His own keening filled his ears. God, please save me, Christ, oh Christ—

  Light pierced the sky, a lance from horizon to lens to mirror, downward through the pillar, and Galen screamed.

  All of them flinched when the scream came. It tore into Irrith like a serrated knife, a sound no mortal throat should produce, a sound that would stay with her until the end of her immortal span.

  And then it stopped.

  She blinked away the ghost of that flaring light and saw the spear-knights set themselves, great pike of ice raised. No one knew for sure what would happen now. The simple fact of being bound to mortality might kill the Dragon on the spot—or flames might come pouring out the door, the pillar itself exploding into a hail of shattered stone, as the golden prison failed and the beast broke free. They had to wait, until their enemy emerged or enough time had passed that someone dared brave the interior, descending to see if Galen St. Clair was dead.

  Noise from inside: the scuff of a shoe, short gasps of breath. And then Galen stumbled out the door and staggered down the two steps, falling on his knees before them.

  Sir Peregrin stood with one fist raised, ready to give the signal.

  Galen’s voice was a ragged thing, torn by his unbearable scream. “Where did it go?”

  Irrith’s heart thumped painfully in her chest. The spear-knights were too disciplined to look away from the body they expected to be their target, but Peregrin’s gaze snapped to Lune, who stood well back, one hand pressed to her breast. The Queen wet her lips, lowered her hand, and said, “What do you mean? What happened?”

  Galen shook his head. His fingers splayed hard against the paving-stone, knuckles white. “I don’t know. It came down the pillar—I felt it—then through me.” His body twisted in a half cough, half retch. “I think it went down. Into the Calendar Room.”

  Which lay directly below the Monument. Horror rose like bile in Irrith’s throat. What little color was in the Queen’s face drained away. It wasn’t a proper entrance, not like the others; that opening only admitted moonlight, the ray from which the great clock’s pendulum hung. The Dragon shouldn’t have been able to escape that way.

  Shouldn’t and couldn’t were two different things.

  Breath drawing in a sharp gasp, Lune closed her eyes, no doubt seeking within. She shook her head. “It’s too difficult to sense from up here. The Calendar Room doesn’t exist entirely within the Hall. We have to get below. If we can trap it there—”

  Peregrin was already snapping orders. The guards on the entrances, under Segraine’s command, must draw inward like a net, seeking to catch the Dragon if it escaped the Calendar Room. Cerenel and the other spear-knights set off for the Billingsgate entrance at a run.

  Lune hesitated. Her eyes were open again, and they rested on Galen, still hunched on the ground before the Monument. He had one palm braced against his thigh, trying to rise, but his entire body shook with the effort.

  He was no longer Prince. If Lune had to summon the power of the Onyx Hall against the Dragon, he could do nothing to help her. He couldn’t even stand, let alone fight.

  Yet he was trying to rise.

  Irrith stepped forward and faced the Queen. “I’ll carry him if I have to. You get below. Galen and I will find you there.”

  One curt nod; that was all Lune could spare. Then she hiked up her skirts and ran.

  “Can you make it to Billingsgate?” Irrith asked, alone with Galen in the Monument Yard. “Or do I have to carry you after all?”

  He’d forced himself to his feet, but still stood half-bent, shoulders trembling. In the privacy of her mind, Irrith placed a wager on “carry.” But Galen shook his head. “Not Billingsgate.”

  “What?”

  Another wracking cough. When it ended, Galen rasped, “Have to defend from the center. London Stone. It’s an entrance, too. Might still answer to me.”

  An entrance. She shouldn’t be surprised: that was the central point, where faerie and mortal London merged into one. Galen was already staggering past the Monument’s base, stumbling like a gin-soaked beggar, but moving with speed. The mortal face of the London Stone was almost as close as Billingsgate. Irrith hurried after him, flinging a concealment over them both, so that no one would try to stop the half-dressed man and the faerie that was chasing him.

  They dodged the carts and carriages, sedan chairs and people on foot that still crowded Fish Street Hill, then turned onto the lane that became Cannon Street a little farther down. Irrith could see the spire of St. Swithin’s up ahead, hard by the Stone, which lay now on the north side of the street. They were almost there when Galen’s foot caught against something in the muck and he went down again, collapsing h
eavily to the ground.

  “Hang your pride,” Irrith muttered, and caught up to the fallen man. She could at least support him, if not carry him. Before Galen could protest, she slipped one arm under his chest and lifted him to his feet.

  His skin burnt hot through the thin fabric of his shirt.

  “You’re feverish,” she said, foolishly—and then she saw his eyes.

  Pupil, iris, and white: all gone, replaced by blazing flame.

  Instinct sent her leaping backward, an instant before his hand could close on her throat. Curses flooded through her mind, panicked and incoherent. This wasn’t the Dragon they’d fought before, the ravening, near-mindless beast, its cunning limited only to destruction. No, they’d given it a human mind, a clever one. A mind that knew all about the Onyx Hall: not just its power but its secrets, from the Calendar Room to the truth of the London Stone.

  The beast that wore Galen’s body shuddered, an inhuman, spine-twisting ripple. Irrith flinched on instinct, remembering that motion from the infernal days of the Fire—

  But nothing happened.

  She smelled smoke, the dreadfully appealing scent of meat on the spit—but no flames leapt out at her. The blazing eyes widened. Then the Dragon, realizing its powers were limited by human flesh, did the only thing it could.

  It ran for the Stone.

  Irrith hurled herself after. She was the faster of the two, and knocked her quarry sprawling a second time. They narrowly missed a maid, sleepily yawning her way down the dark street. An inhuman snarl rose from Galen’s throat, and a foot slammed into her face, hard enough that Irrith saw stars. She rolled free, then forced herself to her feet once more, because a single thought survived the impact of his foot: I have to keep it from the Stone.

  They were already at Abchurch Lane. Irrith snatched out one of her pistols and fired, but running spoiled her aim; her shot chipped the front of a shop. Swearing, she dragged out the other and halted for an instant, concentrating on Galen’s back.

  Her second shot flew more true—but not true enough. It struck his hip, spinning him into the brick wall at his side, scarcely three paces from his goal.