Starspawn

by Wendy N. Wagner

  “He won’t wake up,” Vorrin explained. “He was walking around, knocking things over. That’s what woke me. I tried to get him out of it, but he just dropped to the ground and started crawling around.”

  “Kran.” Jendara shook the boy’s shoulder. “Kran!”

  The boy pulled away. His eyes stared at nothing, their pupils huge and black. His hands scrabbled before him as if he could dig his way through the air.

  Jendara seized hold of his hands. “Wake up,” she said, gently. “Wake up, Kran.” His hands twisted in her grip, but she held him fast. “Wake up.”

  He suddenly jerked and blinked. He looked around himself, confused.

  “Kran? Are you awake?”

  He rubbed his eyes and looked around again. Finally, he nodded.

  “Do you know where you are?”

  He leaned to see around Jendara, the chart table, his empty cot, Vorrin and Jendara’s unmade bed. He nodded again.

  Jendara eased back to sit on his cot. The dog clambered up into Kran’s lap to lick at his face and paw his chest. After a minute he pushed the dog away and reached for the slate he’d left beneath his cot.

  His handwriting slanted tiredly. Sleepwalking?

  “Yes,” Jendara answered. “And you wouldn’t wake up.”

  Bad dream, he wrote. Something in a pit moving. I threw rocks but it didn’t stop. He paused a second and wiped his hand across the slate. It wanted to eat everything. You. Vorrin. The whole world.

  “I had a nightmare, too,” Vorrin said. “Something was trying to bring down the Milady. When you were knocking things over in your sleep, I thought it was really happening for a second.”

  Jendara cocked her head. “I had some bad dreams, too, and so did Zuna. I don’t like that.”

  Vorrin shrugged. “We’ve been stuck on this island for two days; I’m not really surprised we’re having nightmares.”

  “This island is a nightmare,” Jendara agreed. She paused, looking from Kran to Vorrin. “We have to stick together here.”

  Kran cocked his head, not sure what she meant.

  “You have to listen to me while we’re here. You did a good job while we were looking for Vorrin, and I’m proud of you, but we’re going to be in really dangerous territory once we go back to the ulat-kini. I don’t want you to try to be a hero.”

  Kran tipped up his slate so she couldn’t see what he wrote while he wrote it. He looked at the words for a long moment and then turned it around. You are.

  She laughed. “I’m a lot older than you, Kran. Give it time.”

  He shook his head and wrote again. Even when you were a kid.

  She sighed. “It only sounds like that in the stories. Trust me, if I hadn’t had my father to bail me out, I’d have gotten myself killed by the time I was six.”

  Vorrin smiled at her. “I don’t think you’re giving yourself enough credit. I’m thinking five, tops.”

  Jendara laughed again and got up off the cot to stand by her husband. “I owe you an apology, too. I wasn’t careful back there with that crab-monster. I wasn’t thinking about what would happen if I got hurt. If we’re going to be a family, I can’t go off half-cocked. We’re a team.”

  “Well, you’re the one with all the experience,” he said.

  She stepped in closer. Vorrin’s brown eyes twinkled at her, the lantern’s glow softening his sharp features. He smelled of her laundry soap, the stuff she made every summer when the lavender bloomed.

  Someone rapped on the cabin door. With a sigh, Jendara opened it a crack.

  “Dara? Are you all awake in there?”

  “Yes, Glayn.” As she answered, Vorrin sighed and reached for his jacket.

  “I started some food. Couldn’t sleep, so I figured a bit of belly timber was in order.”

  She opened the door wider and frowned down at him. “You had nightmares, too?”

  He nodded. “But I’ve got biscuits baking, so I figured I’ll be fine in no time.”

  Jendara had to agree with him on that one.

  * * *

  Jendara piled the clean plates back onto the shelf. Glayn had been right: a big, hot breakfast had been just what they needed. There was nothing like a full belly and ordinary domestic tasks to clear away the fug of bad dreams. Now Kran, who had just finished the washing up, sat with Glayn at the big table working some kind of elaborate cat’s cradle; Vorrin had a book out, and even the prisoner looked content as he munched a biscuit and a slice of ham.

  Zuna, though, sat on her own, face covered by her long black braids. Jendara brought the last of the biscuits over and watched the other woman as she took a pair of pliers and painstakingly crushed the silver bell at the end of a braid.

  “Need a hand?” Jendara asked. She held out half of the biscuit. “I could help with the back.”

  Zuna shook her braids back over her shoulders and then took the biscuit. “If you don’t mind. I got a lot of hair.”

  Jendara reached for a braid. “Can we just take them out?”

  “Don’t have time,” Zuna said. She tapped one of the shorter braids by her chin and made the bell chime. “It’d take hours to finish all the ends, and we need to be quiet.”

  Jendara squeezed the second silver bell between the pliers’ powerful jaws. “I’m sorry.” Zuna had never set out to be a fighter or an adventurer, but working on the Milady had forced her to become one. It wasn’t fair.

  Then something shiny caught in between two braids distracted her. “Hey, look at this.”

  Jendara pulled out a thread, long and shimmering, and held it where Zuna could see. Thicker than a string of silk or linen, the thread caught the light and broke it up like glitter.

  “Shiny,” Jendara mused. “Where’d it come from?”

  “Was that in my hair?” Zuna squinted at the thread. “Must have brushed off of something. It’s pretty.”

  Jendara reached for her empty tea mug. “Let’s keep it. It reminds me of … something. I’m not sure what, but maybe it’ll come to me.”

  With a sigh, Vorrin closed his book. “If everyone’s finished, we better start gearing up.”

  “Oops. I’m almost done.” Jendara hurried to crush the last few bells, and gave Zuna an awkward smile as she passed over the pliers. “I’ll miss the sound of them.”

  Zuna shrugged. “I’ll probably just get beads the next time I get my hair done.” She turned away to put the pliers back in her pack.

  Jendara wasn’t sure what to make of the other woman’s response, but there wasn’t time to chatter. She beckoned Kran over. “Do you have some extra dried beef for Fylga? We don’t know how long this will take.”

  He nodded. Then he reached for his slate. You like Fylga now?

  She made a face. “Don’t push me, kid. Now get up on deck and make sure everyone gets a lantern.”

  He hurried away, a spring in his step. He might not have gotten a solid nap, but at his age, he recovered faster than the rest of them. Jendara’s limbs felt leaden with tiredness, but there was nothing for it. Boruc, Tam, and Sarni were depending on her.

  She made her way up to the deck. Outside the cave, she could see the clouds jamming up in the sky.

  “Rainy raids are the luckiest,” Jendara murmured. Her father had sworn by that particular bit of folk wisdom. Her hand went to the handle of her belt axe. It wasn’t the timeworn weapon she’d inherited from her father, but it reminded her of him anyway. He would have approved of its craftsmanship. A sudden lump rose in her throat. It had been only two days since her birthday, but it felt like a hundred, two hundred. Boruc was missing. Tam and Sarni, too. Three of her best friends, stolen from her by this island.

  “Just what we need, right? Shit weather.” Zuna looked in her pack. “Glad I packed a scarf.”

  Jendara had to smile at that. She’d grown up on these islands, but Zuna and Glayn were newcomers to this part of the world. Ice and snow were still an enemy to them. She glanced over at Glayn. He was already wearing the woolen cap she’d knitted for h
im a few years ago. Suddenly she felt less gloomy.

  “Let’s go get our friends,” she said.

  They made their way up to the main boulevard in comfortable silence, but once they passed the crab-thing’s corpse, Vorrin pushed Korthax out in front. They’d tied a rope to his waist to make sure he wouldn’t cut and run. “Which tunnel do we take?”

  Korthax gave his elbow a flap; his hands were bound in front of him and lashed to his waist so he could move them no more than a few inches. “At end.”

  Vorrin looked back at the others. “That’s where we found the trident.”

  Jendara’s hand went to her axe. She didn’t like Korthax and she didn’t like his little deal. But at least they were on the right track.

  They entered the cross-tunnel. This one was broader than either of the two they had explored, the floor the smoothest. Only a few puddles showed in the light of Glayn’s lantern as he moved at the head of the group, Vorrin and Korthax on his heels. Jendara looked up at the ceiling, lost in the darkness above. This tunnel didn’t seem like the other cross-tunnels at all. With its high ceiling and finer stonework, it had the same gloomy grace as the main boulevard.

  Kran tapped her elbow and pointed to Fylga. The dog kept her nose close to the ground, sniffing hard. He raised an eyebrow.

  “This is where Yerka went yesterday,” Jendara mused. She watched Fylga snuffle at the first closed door. Jendara leaned close and listened. She didn’t hear anything except the whisper of the wind. She gave the door a shove and felt it swing open. The heavy stone slab moved far more easily than the other doors she’d tried opening on this island.

  Fylga trotted in and went immediately to the farthest wall, darting from place to place while sniffing hard. Jendara played her light around the room. “No debris.”

  “It’s like someone cleaned it out,” Zuna said. She stooped down beside the spot Fylga was examining. “I can’t tell why the dog’s so interested.”

  They left the room behind, although Kran had to urge Fylga out. Jendara eased the door shut and watched the dog move up the hallway, pausing to sniff every few steps. Jendara brought out her handaxe. It wasn’t just the dog’s behavior that made her feel uncomfortable and exposed. It was the strangely clean room and hallway. The tunnel felt well used and well tended, somehow horribly alive inside this rotting shell of a city.

  “Wait up, Glayn,” Vorrin called out.

  Jendara hurried to catch up. The tunnel ahead split, one hallway bending off to the right and one staying mostly straight. The two hallways narrowed, and the ceilings descended to the height of most of the others. Their floors still looked preternaturally well maintained and clean.

  “Which way do we go?” Vorrin asked the ulat-kini.

  Korthax turned from left to right, clearly uncomfortable. “I only come this way once.”

  “Which I’m certain was a memorable experience,” Vorrin said in a dangerous voice. “Which way?”

  “Uh—straight.” The ulat-kini took a few steps into the hallway ahead. “Yes. Straight.”

  Kran caught Jendara’s sleeve. He jerked his head in Fylga’s direction. She was nosing around the entrance of the right-hand path.

  She looked from dog to prisoner. Vorrin and Glayn had followed the ulat-kini into the other hallway, and their light was already fading. “I guess we can double back if he’s wrong,” she said. Her gut told her to follow the dog, but she wanted to see where Korthax would lead them.

  Kran raised his eyebrows. But they both followed the light and the ulat-kini hybrid.

  13

  STAR TAKER

  The hallway ended in a set of double doors. No mollusks coated their plain stone faces, no corrosion sealed them to the floor. They looked in perfect working order. After passing so many ruined or disfigured doorways in these tunnels, Jendara had started to take for granted that most everything on the island was falling apart. These doors and the doors to the Star Chapel stood out.

  Korthax paused in front of the doors. “They look different,” he murmured. “Cleaner, maybe. But this is way. I am sure of it.”

  Zuna tested the door with one hand. “It’s not locked.”

  “Then let’s go,” Vorrin said.

  Zuna pushed open the rightmost of the doors. The dank smell of mold and mildew wafted out, stronger than any place they’d yet explored. Kran made a disgusted face. Glayn strode inside, his lantern gleaming amber in a dimly lit chamber with a vast, high ceiling. A kind of mezzanine ran around the room, its floors broken in several places, and the stairs were long gone. Half-dissolved metal brackets in the walls suggested where shelves must have once run around the room. A corroded ladder, still showing a glint of bronze here and there, hung at an angle against the far wall.

  “A library,” Glayn whispered.

  Kran stepped out into the center of the room, craning his neck back to stare at the ceiling. His mouth had fallen open.

  Jendara tipped her head back, too. A faint gray light emanated from the ceiling, where a hazed and milky glass allowed daylight to penetrate the aged space. Perhaps it wasn’t glass at all—it could have been alabaster, she supposed, and missed Boruc more than ever.

  When the island was young, this room must have been filled with light. She could imagine it: soft white light shining down into the open room, lamps brightening the areas tucked away beneath the mezzanine. There was room in this dead library for thousands of volumes, a vast storehouse of wisdom.

  “Amazing,” she breathed.

  Kran took her hand and pointed out details around the milky skylight that she hadn’t noticed: simple but beautiful golden bas-reliefs of the creatures and beings from which the major constellations took their names. Not all of the gold-leafed figures were ones she recognized; whoever had built this library had certainly envisioned the night sky in a way far different from her own people. She had to wonder what stars were contained in the octopus or the great shark. Some of the animals weren’t even identifiable.

  “It’s so old,” Vorrin said. “And all of it’s ruined. Just flooded away.”

  Kran began to move around the edges of the room, studying the heaps of debris. Jendara joined him. While most of the stuff was unrecognizable, merely corroded metal or rotting shards of wood, sometimes she could make a guess at a thing or two: a pewter weather vane caught her eye, sticking out from beneath a heap of fallen floor tiles; a marble bowl, perhaps a mortar, sat unharmed and upright.

  Kran wrote on his slate: Science.

  Jendara shook her head. “I don’t understand.”

  Not just a library, he wrote. A school.

  The others’ voices echoed off the stone walls around them. She frowned, and looked from the weather vane to the mortar. “How do you know?”

  Kran reached for his chalk, but his eyes suddenly went wide. The slap of feet on stone spun Jendara around. A deep one lunged out of the shadows in the corner of the room, a bone-white trident leveled at her.

  And behind were more of them.

  She drew her sword and ran toward the hulking things. The smell of fish and dampness rolled off them in a wash of stink. Jendara’s blade met the trident with a thud that vibrated up into her wrists. She wrenched the trident out of its bearer’s hands and sent it clattering onto the ground. The creature’s bulging eyes widened. Before it could respond, she brought her sword back around and slashed through its green belly. The deep one dropped like a stone.

  Another was on her before she could even step over the dead one’s blood. The deep one clawed at her with its webbed fingers, its spiky nails slicing into her cheeks. Her skin immediately burned: had it tipped its claws with poison? Jendara squeezed her eyes shut in a desperate attempt to protect them and smashed her forehead against the deep one’s slimy cheek, driving it backward. It lost its grip on her face. She opened her eyes and realized the thing had slipped on its comrade’s innards.

  “Dara!” Vorrin cried out, but she didn’t turn her attention away from her attacker. It was still too close f
or her to get in a good blow with her sword. Jendara drove her fist into its unprotected face and sent it reeling back a step. She made a one-handed chop at its leg and heard the gratifying splintering of bone.

  The deep one went down, crying out in its gurgling language. She skewered it through the chest and then leaped away, turning to face the battle. There were at least four more deep ones in a mass. Vorrin and Zuna had gotten Kran between them and Glayn closed off one side of their group. For now their swords could keep the creatures off her son, but they were outnumbered, and Glayn lacked the reach of the hulking deep ones.

  Jendara went stiff. Where in all hells was Korthax?

  She spun around. The ulat-kini, still bound and now on his back in the blood of the two fallen creatures, grappled with a large, heavily muscled deep one. Its dorsal fin glistened in the pale light, and the spines jutting from it looked wickedly sharp. Korthax bit down on his attacker’s gills and the thing hissed with pain.

  So Korthax hadn’t run. She supposed she’d have to help the ulat-kini, but if she misjudged her blow, she risked killing him.

  The deep one suddenly head-butted Korthax. The ulat-kini lost his grip and fell backward. The bigger creature grinned evilly.

  “Stay down!” Jendara barked and made a deep lunge. Her sword pierced the side of the deep one’s head and passed straight through to the other side. The creature blinked once, and then its legs and arms began to jerk.

  Korthax rolled out from under the seizing deep one. He jumped to his feet. “The boy!”

  Jendara kicked the deep one off her blade and turned to follow him. The ulat-kini threw himself into the thick of battle, shouldering a willowy deep one out of his way. In the tumult, she could just make out Kran’s slight figure. Over the roar of her own pulse in her ears, she could hear Fylga’s angry growl.

  The enemy’s attention was entirely on the knot of fighters. That was their mistake. Jendara slashed through a deep one’s neck. For a second she felt her sword catch on its collarbone, just as it had back in the Star Chapel, but she slid it free. She glanced around. Vorrin and Zuna held off their attackers; Zuna had cut enough holes in her adversary to turn him a new color. To her left, Glayn drove his dagger into the leg of a deep one and danced aside as a fountain of blood sprayed out.