Starfall (Stealing the Sun Book 3)

by Ron Collins

  “You’re going to have to talk about it sometime, Hateri. If nothing else, the Families will want to hear it from you.”

  “Not now.”

  “All right. But we do need to talk about the Light That Fell from the Sky.”

  Hateri grinned. “The Taranth Stone,” he said.

  “The Taranth Stone?” Jafred said.

  “That’s what we named the Light That Fell from the Sky.”

  “Because?”

  Hateri swallowed and clicked his throat to indicate he was thinking. “It’s a bit of a story,” he said, deciding he didn’t want to talk about it. “You’ve seen the stone?”

  “I’ve had it put into a safe place for now.”

  “Where?”

  His father glanced to the door, then out the window. They were small movements, but clear to Hateri.

  “I need you to agree to help me,” Jafred said. “The Families are going to want to hear from you, and it is crucial that you tell them that the expedition found nothing.”

  “What?”

  “You came up empty. There was nothing there to find.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense. If you’ve seen it, you know it’s important. If we pretend it never existed, it makes all the sacrifice mean nothing.”

  His father bent close. “I agree completely. We need to study it. But it is precisely because I’ve seen it and precisely because we need to study it that I’m telling you we have to hide its existence.”

  “I can’t believe I’m hearing this.”

  Hateri clenched all three eyes, then opened them again.

  His father was perched on the edge of his seat and leaned forward, his entire body engaged in this discussion.

  “You know how much I believe in bringing the Families together, Hateri.”

  “I used to.”

  “But you haven’t seen them as I’ve seen them. They aren’t ready for this kind of step right now, especially after losing their namesakes. We need to give them time. If the Families see this thing, they will tear it apart. They will take their stakes and make of them what they will. And if we tear this system apart, we’ll never be able to discover what it was to begin with.”

  “I don’t know,” Hateri said, his brain still fogged.

  “Yes, you do.”

  Hateri remembered his compatriots. The way they worked together. He remembered Pietha. “You didn’t see us,” he said. “We were a team. We made it work. The Families can agree to keep the Taranth Stone in one piece.”

  “Don’t be ignorant. It won’t happen that way.”

  “They died for this, Father. My friends. They died doing what I said, and now you want me to hide the very thing they died for? What kind of a quadar do you think I am?”

  “I think you’re the kind of quadar who can see what is right for the whole of our civilization.”

  Hateri clenched his jaw.

  His father spoke. “I need you to tell the Families that you did not find the Light.”

  “I can’t do that.”

  They sat together for several moments while breeze from the window filled the room. Sounds filtered up from below, distant voices echoed, and the hustle of quadars going about their lives seemed to come from everywhere at once.

  Hateri’s father stood, then straightened his shirts.

  “You need to rest,” he said. “We’ll discuss it later.”

  Then he left to do whatever it was that a council member did—a set of tasks that Hateri now had no interest in whatsoever.

  He grimaced as he reached for the bowl.

  The soup was cold.

  CHAPTER 15

  When Jafred E’Lar left his son’s bedside, he strode purposefully through the manor and toward the gates that led to his carriages. He was late to his chamber, which meant he would be late to the discussion of the Tael Family’s request to alter their permissions to farm roots. Not that any of that mattered to him right then.

  He supposed he should be proud of his son, but he had no time for such luxury.

  The Families would hear of Hateri’s return. They would want information, and they would want that information now. Hateri had to be made to understand this. If the council was found to be withholding such news, the Families would be completely within their rights to remove Jafred and the rest of the elders from their positions. Yet, he couldn’t let the Families strip the Light That Fell from the Sky, this “Taranth Stone,” as Hateri called it—which is exactly what they would do if they got their hands on it. The council needed to understand exactly what this was before letting anyone else know about it.

  “Council Member Jafred?” Pana said from the doorway behind.

  Despite the early hour and the long night before, Pana was dressed properly as he stood in the doorway.

  “What is it?” Jafred said.

  “You have visitors in the receiving room.”

  Jafred dropped his chin to his chest, using his central to check that Eldoro’s heat had barely risen. That was even faster than he expected.

  “Who are they?”

  “Representatives of the Waganat and Ombat Families.”

  Steeling himself, he walked back to his dwelling.

  “Please have a message sent to the council that I will be running late,” he told Pana as he walked past.

  His visitors were not just representatives of the Families.

  One was Musef Ombat, the other Ranya Waganat.

  The Family heads.

  They sat stoically on two of the four ornamental guest stools in the room, having taken positions as far from each other as the small chamber would allow. The Ombat leader wore formal leggings and a thick tunic made of root fabric. His boots had been shined with fresh oils recently enough that they showed no dust. The Waganat wore his Family crest on a ring that encircled his head above the central, and a loose robe that pooled to the floor. Both Families were of the Terilamat clan.

  Jafred understood the game.

  As a council member from that same clan, Jafred would be expected to provide them information before the others.

  “I am so pleased to see you both,” Jafred said as he sat between them. “I assume you are here due to news of my son’s return.”

  “We understand he returned alone,” Ranya Waganat said.

  Jafred drew a deep breath.

  “There is no good way to say this, Ranya, but it is my sad duty to tell you that all of the party was lost with the exception of my son.”

  Though it had probably been expected, the news settled harshly on both quadars.

  “M’ran?” Musef Ombat replied as he unfolded his hands, and folded them again. “And the guide?”

  “Only the guide returned with my son, but he left before I could even have him paid.”

  “That is unfortunate.”

  Jafred made an agreeing motion. “I am sorry for the news.”

  “But you still have your son,” said the Ombat.

  “I apologize for my good fortune amid the tragedy.”

  “Do we know what happened?”

  “Yes, we do. The guide described the horrible events of a burning storm.”

  Jafred didn’t have to put on an act for his shudder to show revulsion. The idea of living through a burning wind was terrifying. But the moment gave him a thought. If he could sell this properly, perhaps he could spare the need to have Hateri speak publicly at all.

  “I am sure there is more to learn,” Jafred said. “And as I learn more I will gladly share it all. But Hateri is quite ill. He’s desert dry and has suffered a contusion to his leg. His memory is also somewhat clouded by his baking and the dire nature of his travels. The medical staff has told me it could be many heats before he is prepared to speak on the subject with any clarity.”

  “I see,” Musef replied.

  “Do we know what they found?” the Waganat said.

  Jafred measured a careful sigh, thinking of his philosopher’s background and the debates and discussions he had held in the past. He
believed every such conversation has this particular moment to it—the time where the path of the present diverges into multiple futures. These were dangerous moments, yes, but they were also thrilling.

  Options collapse at these points.

  Choices must be made.

  Ranya Waganat was the least sentimental of the Family heads. Young Satrak Waganat was his nephew a few times over, and as such, the loss was real. But Ranya Waganat was a developer of technologies and an arranger of businesses above all other things. His Family was intertwined with more projects than any other Family Jafred knew, and he knew them all. Ranya was the quadar Jafred feared the most when it came to the Light That Fell from the Sky.

  He kept his gaze impassive as he focused all three eyes on the Waganat.

  “The search team found nothing,” Jafred said. “Taranth—the plainsguide—brought Hateri home on cart pulled by a half-dead tal beast, but the rest of the cart was empty.”

  His visitors absorbed his comment.

  “Perhaps,” Jafred continued, “that is why the plainsguide disappeared without word and without payment.”

  “Perhaps we will find the plainsguide and find out,” Waganat replied.

  “I have already dispatched a team,” Jafred said, knowing now he would need to do this before he left for his office.

  “We should each charter our own search teams,” Ombat said.

  “Yes,” Waganat added. “Two or three efforts are better than one.”

  “Indeed,” Jafred said, knowing he could not forestall them. “The more eyes on a subject the better.”

  The Waganat clicked agreement from deep in his throat.

  “We will want to hear your son speak when he is strong enough to handle such a task.”

  “Rest assured I will call all the affected Families together as soon as it’s possible.”

  “Terilamat first,” Musef said.

  “Of course,” Jafred said. “Always.”

  CHAPTER 16

  With the painkilling aid of mashed chi leaf, the new sensation of having had enough water, and the comfort brought on by the oils Pana spread over his skin, Hateri was able to sleep fitfully throughout the heat.

  At one point, he wanted to retrieve his pouches from across the room, but the muscles of his legs were balls of fire and the flats of his feet had been rubbed raw. The idea of moving that far made him ill.

  At Eldoro’s highpoint Chanzi delivered a meal, which Hateri ate.

  When the cook returned for the tray, Hateri took advantage of the moment to ask for his pouches.

  “Thank you,” he said when the cook handed him the belts they were strung on.

  Hateri dug into one worn pouch with two fingers and extracted the smooth rock that Pietha had given him the evening before they left Harshish Point.

  The stone was cool, heavy in his palm. The surface had been etched with an impromptu image of the three hearts. Her smile as she gave it to him had contained the perfect balance of interest and mischief. The smooth surface of the stone brought him the full memory of the rest of that night.

  “Consider it my fourth heart,” she said to him later as she slid it over his bare chest.

  “I don’t have a fourth for you,” he replied.

  “Then you’ll have to give me one of your three.”

  He thought of her kiss, warm in the cool chamber of the private section of the cave. He gazed out the window, into the hazy sky. Eldoro fell in the distance, and without needing to look he knew exactly where Katon would be. He thought about the old guide. Where was Taranth? Why had he left without a word for him?

  Hateri chewed his lip.

  He held Pietha’s fourth heart in one hand, and threw the pouches across the room to skitter into the corner. Rolling the stone between his fingertips, he thought about what his father had asked.

  Council member or not, his father was wrong.

  Hateri was growing up in a different world. A new world where a Family member could be wrong, where Families were important but other things were, too. That’s what they had proven out in the desert—all of them together, members of twelve Families. They had proven beyond doubt that the best way to survive was together, to have each other’s backs regardless of their clan. He couldn’t betray Pietha, or the rest for that matter. If his father couldn’t understand that, it was not Hateri’s fault.

  The sky was growing dark by the time Hateri heard his father’s voice outside his room. He clenched Pietha’s heart in one hand and closed his eyes, bringing his blankets up over his shoulders to pretend sleep. The door opened and footsteps came closer. Stool legs shuddered across the floor before coming to a stop. The sound of his father’s weight settling in was like judgment falling.

  “I know you are awake.”

  Hateri turned to his back and stared at the ceiling.

  “I told the Families that you found no Light That Fell from the Sky.”

  Hateri gritted his teeth and felt blood squeeze from his fingers as he clutched Pietha’s stone. He was finally hungry, now, which was maybe good, but his mouth felt like it was pasted together.

  “I am on your side, Hateri.”

  “No, you’re not.”

  “You’re not wrong—the Families should work together on this. But it’s not time, yet.”

  “If not now, when?”

  “I don’t know, son. All I can say is that we will know it when it comes.”

  Hateri stared at the ceiling.

  “I wish it were different. I really do.”

  Hateri remained silent.

  “The Family heads want you to speak with them. I am delaying that as long as I can, but it’s going to happen. And when it does, I need you to tell them that you found nothing. To say there is no Light That Fell from the Sky. Taranth told me you were headstrong, which I already knew. But he also said you were a leader, and that your friends loved you. If you don’t support me on this, you will destroy the reason all of those friends died.”

  Hateri pressed his tongue against the roof of his mouth.

  He shook his head.

  “I can make it work,” he said, forming each word clearly. “I have to make it work. I will show you that the Families can work together.”

  His father gave a sigh that dropped about half the weight in the world. He sat still for several moments, then left.

  Hateri turned to his side again, pressed the smooth stone to his cheek, and tried to go to sleep.

  CHAPTER 17

  Jafred laid his head back against the door’s hard surface.

  The hallway outside his son’s room was uncomfortably tight now, lit against the darkness with the cold glow of luminescent lamps made from crossbred moss grown in caves by three different Kandar Families. The arrangement between those Families was unique among the quadarti, the only truly collaborative effort between Families in existence prior to the expedition. It had taken nearly an entire season to work out—and that was between Families of the same clan.

  The air that moved through the corridor was a result of a fanning system designed by the Waganat Family, and installed by the council over a year ago.

  It galled Jafred now that he was no Waganat.

  Ranya Waganat would just force his son to do what he said to do, and that would be it. But Jafred would rather face the disgrace of being barred from the council than take that kind of act. He could handle disgrace, as could Bethleen, his pair-mate and Hateri’s mother.

  As stubborn as Hateri could be, he was a grown quadar now. His son had to make his own choices.

  Jafred pushed himself off the back of the door, and walked down the hall. He rubbed his chin, deep in thought as he passed through the door leading into the darkening night and out through the garden. He sat under the grisa tree, and took in the rest of the area, thinking of Bethleen and of the fact that she had chosen to remain on the northern slopes while he completed his tour with the council.

  He held true affection for her, but her choice to remain in the slopes rather than
be here with him showed how firmly her mindset was tied to that of the traditional Family order.

  Bethleen would speak with Hateri, of course.

  She would travel here as soon as she heard Hateri had been found alive. It would take time to arrive but she would come, and she would fawn over her son as any mother should. Since she had no knowledge that the Light That Fell from the Sky existed, her conversation would not be about that. Her words would carry only concern for her son’s health, news about her own father, and the goings-on of the entire E’Lar Family. But merely by its focused exclusion of anything not Family or clan related, her rapid-fire conversation would carry the full impact of Families—exactly what Jafred needed Hateri to hear.

  Unfortunately, her conversation would serve only to drive Hateri deeper into his position. Jafred had seen it before.

  Her arrival was not going to help him here.

  It would also force another conversation he didn’t want to have.

  His time on the council was due to finish at the end of this cycle, at which point he was intended to return to the northern slopes to join her. That had been the plan, anyway. It’s what Bethleen had told all her acquaintances. Jafred didn’t want to tell her he had decided to remain on the council seat for as long as they would have him.

  She would ask why, and he wouldn’t be able to tell her.

  Unless, of course, Hateri proved good to his word, and exposed the existence of the Taranth Stone. If that happened, he would be returning to the north earlier than expected, anyway.

  Jafred’s problem was bigger than the Taranth Stone, though.

  The reason he had decided to stay here in Esgarat City was bigger than even Hateri could comprehend right now.

  Though his son was too distraught to hear it now, Jafred had come to the view that only by working together could the Families progress beyond their current state of living—that staying in the Esgarat basin was, in itself, limiting them. Harming them. In his opinion, the quadarti had to grow beyond the barriers of their world, or their civilization would strangle itself and slowly die.