Starborn

by Lucy Hounsom

  The Yadin regarded the dying man, pity and disgust in his face. ‘No,’ he said. ‘I wanted only one thing, and you took her from me many years ago.’

  ‘So,’ Kierik’s voice grew weaker, ‘you will make the world pay … for my crime.’

  Medavle towered against the morning sky, and a hush lay thick on the land, as if all life waited for the sun to crest the mountain’s shoulder. His gaze moved to the pouch around Kierik’s neck. ‘It is not my world,’ he said.

  ‘But it is hers.’ Kierik looked at Kyndra. ‘I do not even know your name,’ he whispered.

  ‘Kyndra,’ she said reluctantly.

  ‘Daughter of Reena,’ Kierik whispered, and Kyndra flinched to hear her mother’s name on those terrible, unlikely lips. ‘I wish you had never been born.’

  Chilled, Kyndra waited for more, but Kierik’s eyes held only remorse. They rolled up in his head, the whites showed for a brief instant and then his eyelids closed.

  Anohin’s grieving wail hit the plateau like a bleak wind. He clasped the dead man and moaned, rocking back and forth. His shattered legs lolled at obscene angles, and the blood flaked on his lips.

  ‘Leave him, Anohin.’

  Medavle spoke harshly. When the other Yadin didn’t respond, he repeated his command and Anohin looked up with a face that was wracked and senseless. ‘It is over,’ Medavle told him.

  Anohin screamed. He dropped Kierik and tried to throw himself at Medavle, but instead rolled helplessly across the rock. Immediately, Medavle knelt down beside him. He ignored Anohin’s curses to keep away and placed his hands on the broken body. After a moment he withdrew them, pale-faced, and turned to look over his shoulder. ‘Nediah!’ he called.

  Kyndra followed his gaze. Loricus’ death had ended Kait and Nediah’s struggle and the councilman’s Wielders now stood loosely together, stunned and frightened. Kait knelt on the ground, her hands over her mouth, with tears falling thickly from her wide, disbelieving eyes. Brégenne still hovered near the shattered tunnel. Her expression was guarded, as the high wind whipped up her hair, and Kyndra realized that day had taken her sight.

  Nediah made his way hesitantly to Medavle’s side. ‘His injuries are great,’ the Yadin said, gesturing to Anohin. ‘Please heal him.’

  Nediah knelt mechanically and laid his hands on Anohin’s body, but his face was grave. ‘This is very serious,’ he muttered.

  ‘You must heal him.’ Medavle’s hands balled into fists.

  ‘Why?’ Nediah asked quietly.

  It seemed as if Medavle would lash out, but Nediah held his ground, one hand resting on Anohin, and the moment passed. Then Medavle’s fists uncurled. His shoulders slumped, as he looked down at the bleeding man. ‘We are the last,’ he whispered. ‘I don’t want to carry that burden alone again.’

  Nediah’s face was unreadable, but he nodded. He placed both hands on Anohin’s chest and a glow seeped between his fingers.

  ‘No!’ The force that burst from Anohin knocked Nediah sprawling and the light around his hands faded.

  ‘Let him heal you, Anohin,’ Medavle said. ‘You are dying.’ His deep voice caught on the word.

  A mist drifted across Anohin’s grey eyes. He gazed at Medavle, as if he saw through him to the empty sky beyond. ‘No …’ he sighed, his voice little louder than wind over stone. ‘I will not live for you.’

  Medavle seized Anohin’s hands and gripped them so tightly that a spasm of pain crossed the other Yadin’s face. ‘Live,’ he said fiercely, the command roughened by fear. ‘You cannot leave me alone. I won’t allow it!’

  He shouted the last words and shook him, careless, it seemed, of the pain he caused. Anohin’s eyes clouded and his face whitened beneath the bloodstains. ‘Make my last moments unbearable,’ he breathed.

  Medavle stopped his desperate shaking, staring at Anohin with wet eyes. ‘You would be a traitor to the last,’ he murmured.

  ‘I served.’ Anohin coughed up blood. It trickled from the corner of his mouth and Medavle wiped it gently away with a sleeve. Kyndra could not bear to look at his face. It was a maelstrom of hatred, fury and grief that she knew she would never understand.

  Anohin died with his eyes open. When the last breath had left his lungs, Medavle rose. Death had swept his face clean of expression. ‘What do the young people of Brenwym learn during their Inheritance Ceremony?’ he asked Kyndra.

  Kyndra stared at him, dazed by the question. ‘Their true name and calling,’ she answered slowly.

  ‘And what was your calling?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ That afternoon was so distant now. ‘The Relic broke before it showed me.’

  Medavle’s eyes glittered. ‘Are you sure it didn’t show you?’ He lifted a white-clad arm and pointed. ‘There is your calling.’

  The finger pointed at Kierik, at the pouch still hanging around his neck. Hesitantly, Kyndra crossed the open ground to the Starborn’s body. She would never think of him as anything more, she decided. The dead man was a stranger whose life had been lived long ago in a world recalled on crumbling paper.

  She tried to touch the corpse as little as possible, but the pouch’s string was tangled in Kierik’s matted hair and Kyndra had to break a few strands to free it. Shuddering, she returned to Medavle, the pouch on her palm, but the Yadin shook his head. ‘It’s yours,’ he said, ‘and yours alone. Remember the Ceremony. Remember what the Relic showed you.’

  ‘It didn’t show me anything,’ Kyndra began and then she stopped, staring wide-eyed at Medavle. ‘Are you saying … it was supposed to break?’

  Medavle smiled.

  Kyndra thought back to the Ceremony. She remembered the weightlessness of the Relic and its freezing, searing touch. She remembered the lights spinning in its depths. Most starkly of all, she remembered the crack as it shattered. ‘What is my calling?’ she whispered.

  ‘Open the bag.’

  Her fingers trembled. As she loosened the neck of the pouch, Kierik’s memories soared and sang within her. The fortress of the sun; a phalanx of Lleuyelin, ribbons whipping the wind; great cities heaving with people; the Cargarac Ocean’s stormy swells that drove the warships of the south.

  The earth pooled on her hand, each grain seemingly infused with a drop of blood, and Kyndra saw the red valley once more, but this time it wasn’t in the earth or a memory. She took a few astonished steps towards the precipice on which Kierik had crouched and, blinking, tried to strip the mirage from her eyes. Beyond the circular chasm, there had only been mountains, but now she saw the red valley too, stretching away west and bearing the pockmarks of war. The mountains were still there, but they looked fragile, as if drawn on paper, and the longer she looked, the clearer the valley grew.

  Medavle caught her arm. ‘If you can see it, don’t trust your sight just yet. The Starborn’s death has brought it closer, but only you can reunite this continent with Acre. You’ll need the earth. It is the soil of the old world, of the true world.’

  Kyndra gazed at him, unseeing, too stunned to speak. Kierik had spent years in study and, as a result, had shaped concepts few could comprehend. She remembered that final vision, when she’d looked out of Kierik’s eyes. She remembered the feel of Rairam in her hands and the chill touch of the stars.

  ‘Acre is your calling,’ Medavle said.

  Kyndra watched the double landscapes that only she could see. How could she undo what had been done? How could she break the barrier that Kierik had forged between worlds? ‘Why should I?’ she asked aloud.

  ‘It’s the only way to protect Mariar and its people from the Breaking.’

  Kyndra looked sharply at Medavle. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘The Breaking is a force that can’t be controlled – even by you,’ the Yadin said. ‘And now that Kierik is gone, it will grow wilder. You saw how it worsened as the Starborn declined. But it only exists so long as Mariar remains separate from Acre. Once Kierik’s laws are destroyed and the last of his power fades, so, too, will the Breaking.’ He held
out a hand. ‘Your path is clear, Kyndra. Restore the continent of Rairam to Acre. Make the world whole again.’ Medavle briefly closed his eyes. ‘Enough people have died for a madman’s dream.’

  ‘What about the empire?’ she asked the Yadin. ‘What about the war?’

  ‘Five hundred years have passed,’ Medavle answered, staring out at the mountains. ‘The empire may be no more. It is, however, a risk you have to take.’

  Kyndra turned away from him and a cold whisper touched her mind. At first she recoiled, but the whisper became a voice speaking and Kyndra started to listen. Other voices joined the first and she forgot Medavle and the people who stood behind her. A freezing core hardened in her chest. She saw it as a door, a black, shining portal to the void. The great star, Sigel, beckoned her and she felt an instant of terror before she passed through.

  The sun finally crested the mountain and Kyndra threw up her hand. The red earth left her palm in a scatter of light and each grain hung in the air, turning slowly. Standing on the black path that ran between the stars, she saw the power that separated Rairam from Acre. It was Kierik’s law and it wrenched at the margins of time. The world would not fight her – it struggled to be whole.

  Sigel’s heat poured into her. She let it flow in her veins like blood, relishing the sensation. It wasn’t the black ice she had used to kill Helira. This was clean, brutal energy capable of ruinous things. It took all her will to hold it back until she felt saturated – a being of fire. And, in a moment, that fire would obliterate her. No, Kyndra thought, and she brought the power crashing down on the strained cords that kept Rairam and Acre apart.

  Red earth fell like a curtain, and to those watching, it seemed as if it pulled the endless mountains down with it. Thunder shook the plateau and cracks splintered across the surface of the rock. Everyone except Kyndra was thrown from their feet, as the quake rumbled on, spreading north and south, dragging down the mountains known as the Infinite Hills. Great choking plumes rocketed into the air, rising in a dark cloud.

  Kyndra used the four cardinal stars called the Watchers to witness Kierik’s bonds unravel across the world. The southern ocean heaved, as it crashed against a new land, sending a mile-high wave towards the coast. She reached for Sigel again and a gust of power broke the wave before it hit. The Great Northern Forest breached the Rib Wall to straggle onto a vast, icy plain, where the ground hissed and water boiled in deep troughs. Then Acre rose in the west like a flawed sun, a yawning, endless earth whose distant corners lay beyond her sight.

  Overwhelmed, Kyndra pulled her mind away from the stars and dropped to her knees, hands flat on the rock. It was history repeating itself once again, she realized, gazing at the pitted surface. This spot – sunken by the force of the Deliverance – was where Kierik had first stood to create his world.

  The sun shone, the wind blew and the scent of summer grew strong in her nose. Ahead, the desolate valley glowed, as if it were made of countless rubies, or the bright red blood of the slain. Somewhere, unconcerned, a bird began to sing.

  32

  ‘Long ago, when the Starborn were still acknowledged as part of the cosmosethic triad, they traditionally wore black.’

  Kyndra looked up from her packing to see Medavle leaning idly against the chamber wall. The Yadin’s white outfit was once again pristine, cleansed of the blood that had stained it a month ago. Though his wound had been healed, he still favoured his right side when he walked.

  ‘Nediah got these for me,’ Kyndra said, plucking at a black sleeve. ‘It’s nice not to wear rags.’

  ‘You’re nearly finished, I see.’

  She nodded. ‘I don’t have much to pack. There wasn’t time to take anything from home.’

  Events had moved forward so quickly, Kyndra thought, as she tucked a spare shirt into the bag. She scanned the room – at least five times the size of her previous cell – for anything she’d missed. The walls bore a myriad collection of tapestries and paintings, and bright rugs hid the unforgiving stone. Despite the opulence, or perhaps because of it, Kyndra keenly felt the presence of the mountain surrounding her here. She would almost have preferred to stay in her tiny room, but that had been deemed inappropriate.

  Kyndra grimaced. If she had attracted attention before, it was nothing to the kind of attention she attracted now. Some faces wore awe, others curiosity. But she also caught poorly veiled disgust, especially from some of the older Wielders. And fear.

  ‘What are you thinking about?’

  ‘How much has changed,’ Kyndra answered after a moment. ‘In a way, I feel like I’ll wake up any day now, and everything will be as it was.’

  Medavle watched her with intent, dark eyes. ‘Do you want it to be?’

  Kyndra hesitated. ‘I suppose not,’ she said wistfully. ‘But … did I make the right decision? What if the war starts again?’

  ‘Kierik’s world was never going to last forever,’ Medavle said. ‘Even the greatest power gifted to an individual cannot be used to change the fabric of what is.’

  ‘Cannot or should not?’

  ‘That is a matter of opinion,’ the Yadin answered. ‘Had Kierik’s idea to separate Rairam from Acre ever been put to a vote, I would have stood against it.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘My people’s demise aside, it came at a high cost.’

  Kyndra waited, hands paused on the pack’s fastenings.

  ‘Yes,’ Medavle said, ‘Sartyan rule was violent and autocratic, but it also brought order. And by separating us from Acre, Kierik deprived Rairam of all sorts of Acrean inventions. The empire was wealthy beyond imagining. Not only from plundering its enemies’ towns, which it did without mercy, but also from developing a host of advancements.’

  ‘Advancements?’

  ‘Contraptions to improve farming, designed to lighten the ploughman’s load, devices to streamline domestic and agricultural processes.’ Medavle gestured as he spoke. ‘Dangerous yet necessary jobs like mining and building could be made safer and more efficient.’ He paused. ‘For a price, of course. The empire’s technology wasn’t cheap, but it could be used by anyone. Solinaris and its Wielders weren’t in the practice of mixing with ordinary people. Though their abilities were widely known, very few used them to better a person’s lot. The empire’s rule was strict – and I’m not condoning its practices – but once a land agreed to be governed, it generally prospered.’

  ‘I wonder what we’re going to find,’ Kyndra said. She imagined walking through the red valley, boots coated in the bloody earth. What lay beyond the forested hills at its end?

  They lapsed into an unexpected silence and Kyndra kept her hands busy, trying to disguise the thoughts that tumbled about her head. One loomed larger than the rest, a question she’d striven to ignore. But Medavle’s quiet presence drew it out, and she realized that if she didn’t ask now, she never would.

  ‘You knew, didn’t you?’ she said, staring at the pack’s fastened straps. ‘You knew as soon as you saw me that I was his …’

  ‘Yes,’ Medavle said. ‘Your eyes, the shape of your face. Yes, I knew.’

  ‘But that was what you planned, wasn’t it?’ Kyndra made herself continue, gaze still fixed on the bag. ‘You wanted him to father a child, another Starborn.’

  Medavle pushed himself off the wall and took a step closer. ‘It was a theory,’ he said, ‘based on legend. No more than a gamble. You even know the legend.’

  Kyndra looked up. ‘I do?’

  ‘I gave you part of it in Sky Port East.’

  She stared at Medavle for a few puzzled moments before the memory of the poem returned. ‘The dragon-riders,’ she said wonderingly. ‘It was about a woman … and a Starborn.’

  ‘More importantly, it was about the love they bore for each other,’ Medavle said. His expression grew distant. ‘Their love is the reason why the story became legend. Starborn are not given to love.’

  Kyndra shifted uncomfortably. ‘So what made this one different?’

 
‘Nobody knows. The story is remarkable because the dragon-rider also chose him. They never take partners outside of their society, a custom based on an ancient law.’

  ‘What happened to them?’

  ‘They had a child,’ Medavle said, his face serious. ‘A daughter. She was as wild as her mother, they say, but possessed of her father’s terrible power.’

  ‘She was a Starborn too?’

  ‘Yes, the birthright was there. The moment her father died, she would come into her own. But her father was young then, unlike Kierik, and had centuries of life left to him. As is the case with many legends, tragedy struck. The Lleuyelin, incensed at the woman’s crime of mating outside of her society, finally tracked down the family where they lived in exile, hidden high in the mountains. It was the rider’s dragon that betrayed her, mad with jealousy and rage. You see, in Lleuyelin society, a rider’s dragon is their mate.’

  Kyndra blinked, uncertain she had heard correctly. ‘What?’

  ‘Though few realize it, the dragon-riders and their dragons are one people. All have the ability to become dragons. Even if they do not, they share certain features.’

  ‘But how do they … ?’

  Medavle smiled a small, wicked smile. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘The world never knew much about them.’

  ‘So what happened when the Lleuyelin turned up?’ Kyndra asked, trying unsuccessfully to rid her mind of several disturbing images.

  ‘The rider was killed, of course. Her dragon ate her heart.’

  ‘And the Starborn stood by and watched?’

  ‘Yes,’ Medavle said soberly. ‘That was the true tragedy. Though he called on his power to protect her, he couldn’t touch it. He couldn’t find his way back to the stars – they had become so alien to him. Loving her destroyed his ability to recognize them in his soul.’

  Kyndra was silent, hearing her heart thump uneasily.

  ‘Wracked with grief over his lover’s death and at his failure to protect her, he threw himself over the precipice.’

  ‘That’s horrible,’ Kyndra said, shuddering. ‘What about his daughter? Didn’t he think of her?’