Starspawn

by Wendy N. Wagner

  Then a black-robed figure raced out of the far tunnel—the tunnel that led to the ulat-kini’s camp, the tunnel where she had just found Vorrin—and pounded on one of the chapel doors. Jendara leaned in, wondering what was going on.

  The door swung open. For a second, Jendara could see inside the chapel, which was crowded with human prisoners and milling ulat-kini. Then Skortti emerged, accompanied by three denizens of Leng. Skortti was dressed for ceremony. He wore his usual fish-bone and mother-of-pearl miter, but also a cloak made of shimmering fish skin. A rope of black pearls hung down over his chest.

  “The ritual can not be interrupted, Ahrzur!” Skortti snapped. “My people are busy tending to our sacrifices. Your scout discovered the attack party—you handle it.”

  Ahrzur waved a hand. “The deep ones are a minor inconvenience. Your warriors can handle them while you and your assistants prepare for the ritual. My people must prepare the portal device.”

  Skortti clasped his hands, clearly about to try a new approach. “Even just one moon-beast could stop the deep ones. My warriors would put themselves in real danger fighting such beasts. You do not want to weaken your allies before you even arrive on Leng, do you?”

  Ahrzur’s casual manner vanished. The veil obscuring his face twitched, as if the flesh beneath had given a spasm of irritation. There was something strange about the shape of his face, Jendara realized. She wanted to snatch off the veil and see just what hid behind it.

  “The moon-beasts prepare to control the god. They are the ones who will protect us from his rage when he wakes.” Ahrzur’s voice was harder and colder than ever. “We made a deal, ulat-kini. You will wake the god, and your people will keep the deep ones from interrupting the ritual.”

  Skortti took a step back. “It will not be easy,” he admitted. “When Bothrax stole the scepter the deep ones hid in the sunken city, he knew they would do anything to get it back. They worship the sleeping god. They are zealots.”

  Jendara sat back on her heels. The deep ones—they had searched the island so intently because they wanted the scepter the ulat-kini had stolen from them!

  “Bothrax was as big a fool as his sons. We tried to make a deal with him, but he insisted on keeping the scepter for himself,” Ahrzur said.

  Skortti narrowed his eyes. “Then I guess it was lucky for you that Bothrax, our finest hunter, somehow encountered a sea serpent too fierce for him to kill. Korthax was always suspicious about his father’s death.”

  Ahrzur gave a mirthless chuckle. “I suppose you were lucky as well when that idiot Fithrax won the bid for the tribe’s leadership. Things would be very different for you and for us if Korthax had taken the leadership—and the scepter.”

  Skortti folded his arms across his chest, beaten. “I will send out a unit of our best warriors to wipe out these deep ones. But remember: we dare not allow anything to interrupt the ritual.”

  Ahrzur nodded, and then they all slipped back behind the doors.

  Jendara jumped to her feet. “They’re sending out their best fighters. The moon-beasts will still be in there, but I think this is our best chance.”

  Vorrin made a thoughtful face. “The moon-beasts are the biggest threat. We can’t help anyone if we’re captured.”

  “Kran—” Jendara paused, thinking. “Kran was able to get control of his body somehow. Then he helped me. Maybe if we can free the Sorinders’ bodies, Kran can help us get enough people’s minds free to attack the moon-beasts. There has to be some way to hurt them, some way to keep them from using their powers.”

  The great doors opened again and a large group of armed ulat-kini hurried out.

  Vorrin yanked Jendara down behind the heap of rubble. “So that’s our plan?”

  She didn’t hesitate a second. “That’s our plan.”

  She sounded confident even to her own ears.

  25

  DEAD MOON RISING

  Jendara slipped inside the Star Chapel and dropped into a crouch. Vorrin and the others barely made a sound as they came in behind her. She had expected guards by the doors, but the remaining ulat-kini were gathered at the windowed wall, deep in discussion with Skortti. Perhaps they were regrouping after losing their warriors.

  She motioned for Zuna, Tam, and Glayn to circle around to the left side of the great space. She and her remaining crew moved into the shadows of the right. A few torches burned at the front of the room, but the Star Chapel was mostly dark. Through the window the last smudge of sunlight showed at the edge of the overcast sky. The air felt heavy and thick.

  Jendara studied the room. The prisoners were crowded between the worn and broken stone pews. A few hung from their bindings—if not dead, then unconscious. She searched for Kran, but the room was too crowded to make out one dark-haired boy amid the mob.

  Beside the knot of ulat-kini, the denizens of Leng and their loathsome pink beasts gathered around a large plinth made of the same slick black material as their floating docks and packing crates. It stood about waist high, and it supported a smaller block of the black stuff with a glowing blue orb set in the middle. The block and the orb vibrated and hummed loud enough to make the hairs on Jendara’s arms prickle. She was glad she’d tied Fylga up in the other tunnel—the sound would have made the dog howl for sure.

  Jendara ducked behind the nearest prisoner, thinking about the strange device as she scanned for Kran. Ahrzur had mentioned a portal device; the humming black box had to be it. What kind of portal would it open? And where would it lead to? Where could Leng be if, as Yerka had said, it wasn’t of their own world?

  She squelched her uncomfortable thoughts and crept forward to the next row. There he was. Just another row forward, his head turned a little so she could see the hint of a frown sketched on his face. Kran’s mind was back in control of his body, and he wasn’t doing a very good job hiding it.

  Falling in behind him, she risked a whisper: “Keep your face blank as I untie you.” She began picking at the knots. “We’ve got to get everyone free before this ritual starts. Can you help with their minds?”

  The rope came undone. Kran looked around and nodded very slightly.

  Jendara squeezed his shoulder. It was a long shot, but the best one they had.

  “Skortti!” Jendara turned to see Ahrzur snap his fingers at the ulat-kini. His nails were long and hooked, more talons than fingernails. “The sun has fully set. Why haven’t you begun the ritual?”

  “We wait for moonrise,” Skortti said. He raised up a bronze staff, its surface covered with complex symbols. “The instructions on the scepter are clear.”

  Ahrzur strode toward the ulat-kini. “Our power source will only last a few more hours. We’ll need every second if we’re going to get the god and all our people through the portal. Now begin!”

  “Not until moonrise!”

  Ahrzur lunged at the nearest ulat-kini, his black-robed arm lashing out with preternatural speed. Jendara barely caught the flicker of movement as his free hand drew a dagger out of his robe and then drove it into the ulat-kini’s throat. Blood sprayed over Skortti’s silver cloak.

  Ahrzur pulled the blade free and kicked the dying ulat-kini aside. His veil had come loose and now hung open, revealing the flesh beneath. Jendara gave an inadvertent gasp.

  Where his lips should have been, a mass of tentacles twisted and writhed around a mouth filled with glossy black teeth. Behind those cruel teeth, a pair of fleshy organs like the mouth parts of some primitive intertidal creature wriggled and danced.

  “Begin the ritual,” Ahrzur commanded. He ripped off the damaged veil and tossed it on the ulat-kini’s corpse.

  Skortti trembled as he nodded.

  They were running out of time. Jendara drew her belt knife and slashed the ropes holding Chana. Kran was already working on the ropes of the man in front of him. He finished and gently turned the man’s face toward him. It was Norg, the baker with the amazing bread. Jendara felt a pang as she remembered all the times Norg had given Kran a fresh roll, h
ot out of the oven. He wasn’t just some strange man that needed to be rescued: he was her neighbor. Kran smiled at the man and patted his cheek.

  She moved to the next captive and sawed at his ropes, still watching Kran and Norg. Suddenly Norg went stiff. He blinked a few times. Kran mimed for the man to be silent and Norg nodded. He stared around himself, clearly searching for a way out. Jendara grinned. They had at least one ally. She hoped the others were as lucky.

  She scanned the room and frowned. An ulat-kini at the front of the room had turned around. The creature peered out over the group with a suspicious expression.

  Jendara shoved Kran down. “Don’t move!” she breathed, and hoped Norg heard it. The baker froze in place.

  The ulat-kini left the group and walked toward them. Jendara stood straight and motionless. She knew it had looked at her, but Kran was short enough he might have gone unnoticed. She tried to remember how her face had behaved while she’d been under the moon-beast’s control. Had her mouth sagged open? She forced her muscles into a peaceful expression and hoped she wasn’t overdoing it.

  The ulat-kini gave her a hard look and then turned back to the others. Jendara pulled Kran to his feet.

  “We have to hurry,” she whispered.

  He nodded and turned to the blank-faced Chana. Jendara cut the ropes of the next prisoner. She could see the rest of her crew moving throughout the room. A few of the prisoners were looking around themselves, awake and alert. She had no idea what made a person gather their will and throw off the moon-beast’s control. She couldn’t remember doing anything other than just looking at Kran, but that had somehow been enough.

  She slashed the bonds of the next person. She was almost to the end of this row. At the front of the room, Skortti’s six acolytes had lit more torches. Their ruddy glow flickered and danced as an evening wind blew in through the broken windows. Twilight had ended. Without the torches, it would be entirely dark.

  The acolytes clasped hands and began to chant, their voices melding into a hollow drone.

  Skortti raised high the bronze scepter. “Awaken, O sleeping one,” he intoned. “Awaken, O child of the stars.”

  The chapel doors burst open. Fylga rushed past the ulat-kini in the doorway, barking furiously. Jendara cringed, ready for the moon-beasts and ulat-kini to attack the dog.

  But the figure in the doorway distracted them. Korthax marched inside the chapel, Tharkor at his heels. He strode toward the startled Skortti, holding the stolen astrolabe before his chest. “You dare awaken the sleeping god without this.”

  The stones beneath Jendara’s boots gave a little lurch. She caught herself on the shoulder of the prisoner in front of her. She looked around. No one else seemed to have noticed the minor earthquake.

  Skortti lowered the scepter. “I have no need of your petty bauble.”

  “My father observed the ritual of the deep ones. He was the one who saw what power the sleeping god could give us.” Korthax stopped at the midpoint of the chapel’s broad aisle. “At the time, he thought the scepter woke the god, and the astrolabe was only a tool for measuring the moment when the stars were right. But I have learned otherwise.” Korthax paused, his face bending in a triumphant smile. “The astrolabe taps the power of the stars so that the god may be controlled!”

  “Get it,” Ahrzur snapped. A black robe charged at Korthax.

  The floor began to shake. A crack split down the aisle, separating the left group of prisoners from the right. A horrible sound came up out of the crack, a shrill whisper that clawed at Jendara’s eardrums.

  A huge green-gray tentacle broke out of the floor and sent the black robe flying.

  26

  FALLING STARS

  The woman beside Jendara shrieked and fell over, pulling down the man in front of her and the little girl beside him. Jendara grabbed the woman’s arm.

  “Calm down,” she ordered the woman, hacking at the rope that connected the prisoner to the row of captives in front of her. She caught a glimpse of Boruc helping another group of prisoners run toward the shadows on the far right-hand side of the room. The moon-beasts must have lost control of the humans, too distracted by the giant tentacle breaking through the floor.

  The woman gasped and Jendara brought her attention back to her. “Hold still,” she snapped.

  “Where am I? What’s happening?” The woman burst into tears. “Jona!” she screamed. The knife parted the last strands of rope and the woman stumbled sideways, out into the aisle. “Jona!”

  “Wait!” Jendara shouted, but too late, as a terrified man slammed into the woman on his way toward the still-open chapel doors. She stumbled backward, her right foot going into the crack in the floor. The chapel shook and lurched, and the woman sank down to her waist, wedged into the crack.

  “I’m coming!” Jendara called, but the crowd shoved her aside in its mad dash toward freedom. Jendara caught herself on the remains of a pew. She could just see the trapped woman, her screams overpowered by the roar of the crowd.

  The woman’s right side suddenly jerked and sank deeper into the floor. Her torso went rigid. Her mouth opened and closed, and then blood fountained up out of her lips.

  There was a crunching loud enough to be heard over the panicked shrieks of the mob. And then the woman vanished into the crevice. Jendara could only stare at the spot where the woman had been.

  Someone yanked on Jendara’s arm, forcing her to turn. It was Kran, wide-eyed and pale. He tugged her toward the door.

  “No.” She had to shout to be heard over all the terrified voices. “We’ll get trampled.”

  Then the voices changed from shouts to screams. The crowd pushed back from the doors as armed deep ones, dozens of them, hacked and slashed their way inside.

  “To the windows,” Jendara ordered Kran. She shoved him toward the front of the room. With the deep ones serving as a distraction, maybe she and the others could find a way to lower people down to the sea.

  The floor shook again, harder. The walls and ceiling rattled. A huge slab of stone crashed down in the center aisle, sending people racing back into the pews. A woman shoved Kran aside, ripping his hand out of Jendara’s grip.

  “Kran!”

  But a trident caught her in the side of the arm. She twisted away. It was a glancing blow, but the tines stung where they cut into the flesh. The deep one lunged at her.

  This time she wasn’t distracted. Jendara stepped aside and let the creature’s sloppy attack take it past her, driving her knife into its exposed spine, just above the fin. It dropped without making a sound.

  Jendara spun around, but Kran was gone. And she’d been driven back into the center aisle, just inches from the crack in the floor. A stench wafted up from it like rotten fish and death. The stink of the sleeping god’s pit.

  “Out of the way,” a voice shouted, and Korthax pushed past her. He scrambled over the huge slab of stone and then broke into a run. With a snarl, he slammed into Skortti and toppled the older ulat-kini. They grappled together on the floor. The acolytes kept chanting, but they looked ready to run.

  Jendara looked around herself, desperate for a glimpse of her son. The ground rumbled and lurched beneath her. The sleeping god was about to rip its way into the Star Chapel.

  “Dara! Where’s Kran?”

  Vorrin had found her. He grabbed her by the shoulders, turning her to face him.

  “I don’t know,” she shouted. Panic hit her. “I don’t know!”

  He stared at her, as scared as she was. The chapel was chaos and their boy was lost in it.

  The portal device’s humming, so constant that Jendara had stopped even noticing it, suddenly grew louder. Jendara felt her teeth buzzing in their sockets. A brilliant blue light filled the room.

  Jendara squinted as she searched for the source and saw that the light poured out of the portal device. The denizens of Leng must be readying to open the doorway back to their own land, wherever that was. As her eyes adjusted to the glare, she realized Ahrzur was not
among the massed denizens, and she pulled her gaze away from the device to search for him. He was the one who had set the moon-beasts on them in the first place, the one behind all of this.

  She saw him moving behind the still-chanting ulat-kini acolytes, toward the brawl. Skortti suddenly cried out, and Korthax dragged himself to his feet, holding both the astrolabe and the scepter. With the grin of a madman, he brought them together, the end of the scepter sliding neatly into the tube on the back of the astrolabe. He pulled something like a shining bronze key from his belt pouch—the same metal object she had seen him take from Fithrax in the spiders’ cave. The symbols on the two ancient brass relics burst into white light.

  Ahrzur lunged at Korthax and ripped the starry scepter from the ulat-kini’s hands. Korthax swiped at the denizen of Leng, but Ahrzur knocked him aside as if he were no more significant than a fly. The ulat-kini fell to the floor, stunned.

  Ahrzur took position in front of the portal device. Blue light outlined his stocky figure, and the starry scepter glowed. Jendara could barely stand to look at him, but she had to see what he would do next. She glanced away for a second to ease her aching eyes, and noticed Skortti’s battered shape crawling across the floor. He had lost his proud miter and silver cloak; his eye had swollen shut, and blood trickled from his nose. But he kept dragging himself toward Ahrzur. He stretched out his hand for the scepter.

  Then the portal device’s humming changed. A long peal ran out. The walls of the chapel began to vibrate. The stones behind the portal device began to glow and shimmer with their own blue light.

  “What’s happening?” Vorrin shouted.

  “They’re opening the portal!” Jendara bellowed. Tiny shards of stone rained down from the ceiling. It felt like the whole island could shake apart. “We have to find Kran!”

  She spun around, searching for the boy. She saw Zuna with Glayn at her side, fighting a group of deep ones. On the far side of the room, Boruc carried Chana in his arms as he urged a group of anxious Sorinders toward the exit.