The Star Shard

by Frederic S. Durbin

  "The land falls away there," said Loric, pointing. "We should steer to the left."

  Rombol turned, and Cymbril hunched lower. But the Master was looking above her, toward the wheelhouse. "Five clacks to the shield arm," he called to the pilot. The Rake began a creaking turn.

  Rombol set his hands on Loric's shoulders. "That's it, boy! Carry on just like this until you see the guard towers of Banburnish. We should arrive before sunup. Get us there safely, and you'll have fresh blueberries and the whole day to sleep."

  "I understand the task, Master," Loric said pleasantly.

  Chuckling, Rombol patted the Sidhe's head, then gazed sternly at the two guards. He unhooked a large key from the ring at his belt and handed it to one of the men. "If there's any trouble, don't stop to think. Wake me."

  With a final glance out over the landscape, he strode in Cymbril's direction.

  Ducking, she scooted back farther into the dark space at the building's corner. As she tried to wriggle farther out of sight, the dry grape leaves crackled beneath her feet.

  She froze in place. Ten paces away, on the other side of the barrels, Rombol stopped walking. She could hear his cloak rustle as he turned, hunting for what had made the sound. His breath hissed in and out through his red nose, and Cymbril wondered if he could hear her pounding heart.

  Something scrabbled in the leaves to her left. From the corner of her eye, she caught a flash of movement.

  Miwa darted from the gloom, hopping stiff-legged, her silvery tail bristling. She arched her back and batted the air as if playing with an invisible mouse. Having bounded to the top of a windlass post, she sat licking a paw and turned indifferent eyes on Rombol.

  The Rake's Master grumbled at the cat and stumped away to his quarters. Speaking quietly, the guards settled onto a bench a dozen paces behind Loric. Miwa groomed herself, glanced once toward Cymbril with what looked like a smile, and began an agile stroll along the rail.

  Cymbril let out her breath and waited for her heart to slow down. She'd managed to get Miwa a dish of cream from the kitchens on the evening after their Night Market adventures, but she still felt indebted to the cat—and now Miwa had helped her again.

  Cymbril edged forward once more, being very careful where she placed her hands, knees, and feet. So the key stayed with whoever was guarding Loric. The elf boy's chain looped to the railing beside him where the second manacle was fastened around a sturdy upright post.

  "I see low hills and the river channel on the left," Loric reported to the guards. "The trees are scattered now. Once we pass this thicket, we should swing right."

  A guard relayed the information to the wheelhouse.

  Cymbril sat back, listening to the chop of the claws, watching the scrub trees march toward the bow to be flattened. Often the Rake followed paths it had gouged on previous trips, ugly swaths through the wilderness. But Rombol was always trying new shortcuts, striving to make better time.

  Studying the pulpit and the guards, Cymbril had an idea. Even in mud, the Rake's arms made considerable noise, as did the crunching trees and shrubs. Tongue between her teeth, she took one more look around and slipped back the way she'd come.

  The first stairway took her down beside a tower filled with wheat to a half-level beneath the top deck, a hive of low-ceilinged hallways and bins for storing tools and grain. No light filtered from beneath the counting master's door. Slinking past it, Cymbril heard faint snores from within.

  "Moowwrrr," said a voice behind her—the suspicious challenge of a cat, loud in the cramped space. But when Cymbril rubbed her fingers together, the large yellow tom nuzzled her and purred. It glided along with her as she tiptoed up a flight of three steps into a small chamber. She searched for the passage she wanted. There—a short, narrow duct leading straight to the prow. The far end was closed with a hatch, hinged at the top. Through a glass pane, Cymbril looked out at the dim marshland sliding toward her: stunted trees, stands of bush and hedge, and faint moonlight glittering on pools, on ribbons of stream.

  Two deadbolts fastened the hatch at its bottom edge. Working by feel, she pushed the shanks back through their tracks. Carefully, she found the cold handle and pulled the hatch toward her. A rusted hook on the frame slipped into a ring on the ceiling. The tomcat regarded Cymbril doubtfully as she crawled out onto a tiny square platform with no rails—a shelf on the clifflike prow of the Rake, nearly five stories above the ground—six, counting the empty space beneath the wagon city's axles. To the left and right, the enormous claws swung on their tree-trunk arms, first one, then the other, slamming into the turf. Straight above Cymbril, but well beyond her reach, was the underside of the pulpit on which Loric stood.

  A heavy iron pulley hung there. Cymbril had watched the Rake's merchants hoist flour sacks up from the ground. She had never wanted to be the man who crouched on this platform with a long-handled hook, snagging the sacks and hauling them aboard.

  But here she was, and the platform was much, much higher than it looked from below. She clutched her collar shut and held on to the hatch frame. Maybe this hadn't been such a good idea. It was like flying—empty air all around, and the world unfolding, a thousand shades of gray and blue, moisture-laden wind, and her hair and cloak whipping.

  From a safe distance in the passage behind her, the cat's eyes advised her to come in. The moon was lowering toward the west. Treetops swayed in the breeze. Away over the silver-etched boughs, an owl circled. As the Rake lurched through a rut, Cymbril almost shrieked.

  Don't look down, she told herself. She closed her eyes and concentrated on finding just the right volume for her voice.

  "Loric?"

  She counted slowly to five, holding her breath. Then she tried again, a fraction louder. "Loric? Can you hear me?"

  The cat glanced over his shoulder into the dark hallway and tilted his ears: forward, then back, then one forward and one back.

  "Cymbril."

  Had it been Loric's voice or the breeze? She rose to her knees, straining to hear. The wheels splashed into shallow water, throwing up gouts of mud against the under boards: whump, whump, whump.

  "Stone. Stoo-oone."

  Yes! It was Loric's voice, very soft. It was trickier for him to speak, Cymbril knew, with nothing but air between him and the guards. But what was he saying? Stone?

  "Fooore ... heeaad..."

  Stone? Forehead? Cymbril wanted to hear words—but these seemed random, nonsensical. Was she only imagining them?

  "A little to the left!" said Loric, much more loudly. Then he whispered again, "Forehead."

  She nearly forgot to hang on as the bow yawed to the left. She blinked up at the pulpit's underside, then looked around herself. There were trees, more empty air than she cared for, and down in the dark, a great deal of mud. But "stone" was the one material she couldn't see anywhere.

  Cymbril drew a breath, and her hand darted to her pocket. "Stone" could only mean one thing.

  Holding her father's stone tightly, she gazed into its depths, which shone with a deep aquamarine, brighter than she'd ever seen it. Forehead. Without thinking, she raised the stone to her brow.

  It was smooth on her skin, warm from her pocket, and hard—exactly as it felt in her hand. But in a heartbeat, it was as if a door had swung open in her mind—as if she were at one end of a tunnel in the air.

  Cymbril!

  Loric's voice: not through her ears, but inside her head, as clear as if he were beside her.

  Now you can hear me, and I can hear y—

  Startled, Cymbril pulled the stone away. Silence. When she pushed the stone back to her brow again, Loric's voice returned.

  Are you there? Don't speak aloud.

  Yes, she answered, pressing her lips together, careful not to use her voice. She only thought the words. Yes, I can hear you. Is this Sidhe magic?

  It is. We can speak with our thoughts through this stone you carry, if we are close together.

  Cymbril wanted to laugh with delight. And no one else can
hear us?

  No one. Aloud, Loric told the guards the Rake should veer left again to avoid what might be quicksand.

  Cymbril grinned at the cat, who had curled into a circle, eyes nearly closed, paws warming his nose.

  What is this stone? Cymbril asked in her mind. Where could my father have gotten it?

  Did your father give it to you?

  He left it for me.

  And I suppose no one has ever been able to take it away from you, though several have tried.

  Cymbril nodded, still smiling with joy at this freedom to speak under the guards' very noses. Then, remembering Loric couldn't see her nod, she thought, That's right.

  It was true. Once a boy, one of the kitchen slaves, had tripped her with a broomstick and grabbed the stone from her hand. The boy dashed away to hide, and she had run screaming to Master Rombol, who'd told her grumpily to go to her bunk, that it would be all right. Weeping all the way back, Cymbril had been sure the stone was gone forever—but when she'd opened her door, it was waiting for her, glowing on the middle of her bed. Another time a dour old teabunk seamstress had snatched her hairpin and said it was too valuable for a little girl to wear around, that she would "keep it safe" for Cymbril. Again Cymbril had howled—but even before she reached her room, she'd found the pin back in her hair. That's when she realized the treasures were more magical than she'd guessed, for they could not be stolen. Rombol, she was sure, had tried to take them away first of all—and probably so had the woman with the red scarf and hairy chin.

  Cymbril could, however, put the treasures somewhere and walk away, and they would not come back to her. She'd cautiously tried that with both. As to whether she could accidentally lose them, she had no way of knowing—unless it happened, and the thought of that made her very unhappy.

  The stone, Loric said, is a Star Shard. It's full of starlight. Star Shards are very rare. They fall from the sky. I suspect your father found it. The hairpin was made with Fey magic.

  But, Cymbril began, how could my parents—?

  Cymbril, only a Sidhe can find a Star Shard.

  She thought about that. Surely her father couldn't have bought a treasure so precious—who would ever sell it?

  And "Cymbril" is a Sidhe name.

  Cymbril felt a rush of emotion, as if a soundless chord of music had passed through her. She looked at the long, lithe fingers of her hand on the hatch frame. Glimpsing her flying hair, she understood at last why it was of a different hue than anyone else's. Tears spilled down her cheeks. It was as if she'd found something that had been lost for years and years, but all the while it had been close by. Mouth and nose to the wind, she inhaled the earthy scents. Now she knew why she felt at times so apart from the other slaves. She knew why she had trouble understanding the deepest hearts of even the humans she liked. If she was Fey, it also explained why she could find hidden magical corridors. But she couldn't see in the dark.

  You have many human qualities, too, Loric said. Your mother must have been of the Second Folk. But your father was one of my people. That makes you a Halcyon Fey, with the blood of both.

  The half-hidden waters glittered. Everything in the dark land looked different—the air smelled different, felt different on her skin—and everything called to her. Suddenly, the enormous Rake was not nearly big enough to contain her. Tell me that it's really true, she said through the stone.

  Look into a mirror, Loric said. You have blue eyes. If in one of them you see a streak of brownish gold, that's a sure sign of a Halcyon.

  If she'd been on a safer perch, Cymbril would have danced. She knew she had such a streak. Her parents' faces became a little clearer in her mind. Escape from this place felt all the more important, and she was certain there must be a way. It was as if discovering more about her past assured her that she would have a future. She came closer to understanding Loric's calm—his patience, his fearlessness of locks and chains.

  Nor had she missed hearing the fact that Loric knew the color of her eyes.

  She felt something in her mind—a warmth, a comforting sense of someone nearby but not intrusive—and at once she jerked the stone away from her head, mortified that another person could be sharing every thought she had.

  She held it against her chest, half afraid to use it again. She was too full of thoughts and feelings—they all threatened to come spilling out as laughter in the piercing dark, on this precarious perch above the world, with the treetops spread out like green-black clouds and the low moon soaring.

  She glanced back at the cat. His head was raised, the tip of his tail twitching.

  Cymbril wanted to see Gorhyv Glyn, Loric's home. One way or another, she would get the key to his collar. She put the stone to her brow to tell him so.

  Cymbril! he cried out in her mind. Get out of there quickly!

  What is it?

  There's danger. Master Rombol's hound, and something ... just GO!

  Her pulse quickened. She shoved the stone into her pocket. The cat was on his feet now, facing the black interior and making a soft, unhappy sound. Cymbril scrambled in through the hatch and unhooked the door. It thumped shut. She clawed the bolts into place. The cat preceded her up the passage, ears flat, body crouching.

  Where the hall led into the chamber of the three steps, the tom sat bristling and tense, his head pushed forward just enough to peep around the corner. Cymbril waited behind him, still hidden.

  A terrible barking shuddered the walls. Toenails clacked on planks, and something heavy crashed and rolled across the floor.

  Cymbril didn't dare to move. She heard a grunting snort—something like the voice of a pig, only deeper, bigger. Footfalls crossed the chamber, sending vibrations through the planks under her knees. Cabinet doors rattled. Barrels tipped.

  The grunting noise moved farther away, and Bale pursued it, barking savagely.

  A tin fell clattering from a shelf, and silence returned.

  Staring at the cat, Cymbril gathered her cloak around her, catching her breath. As doors opened in the distance and merchants began to run and shout, the cat dashed off into the shadows.

  Cymbril sprinted back to her room. As she passed, she saw that the chamber of the three steps was demolished, barrels and crates broken everywhere.

  Shutting the door of her bunk, she glanced around the room in the glow of the Star Shard and tried to stop trembling. She changed quickly into her nightclothes and stowed what she'd been wearing in her trunk. As she dived under the covers, footsteps approached her door.

  Someone opened it without knocking. Firelight shone on the walls. Cymbril wondered if she should pretend to be asleep. No—she was a light sleeper. She raised her head and blinked groggily into the light. It was Rombol.

  "You're here," he said, glancing around the small berth.

  "Yes," she said with an air of confusion.

  "And you know nothing of this hurly-burly?"

  She rubbed an eye. "What hurly-burly?"

  Rombol touched the candlestick on her bedside stand. The wick, of course, was cold. "Never mind," he said. "Sleep. Banburnish Crossing at dawn. Your red dress." Shooting a last dubious look at her, he went out and closed the door.

  Cymbril sank back into the bedding. They always assume I'm behind everything, she thought. Well, who can blame them?

  Experimentally, she put the Star Shard against her brow and called out to Loric in her mind. No answer came, even after several tries. Loric had said that the communication worked only if they were near each other. The distance now must be too great, but she'd wanted to be sure.

  Cymbril lay still in the darkness. What had Bale been chasing? What had passed through the chamber beneath the prow? It was a long time before she drifted off.

  Chapter 12

  Metamorphoses

  In Banburnish Crossing, Loric wasn't paraded out for the crowds to admire but was allowed to sleep in the Rake as Rombol had promised. Cymbril didn't need to stand in a wagon bed to sing. Banburnish had a platform stage at one end of t
he marketplace outside the town gate. She also had more chances to rest than usual, since a troupe of jugglers and acrobats shared the stage with her. Rombol was glad of their presence—they helped to swell the throngs of townsfolk and farmers. The performers in their parti-colored costumes tumbled, flipped each other in aerial somersaults, and rode on each other's shoulders in imitation of jousting knights.

  It was a delight to be in the sunlight and air. Shreds of white cloud rode what must be a mighty wind in the upper sky, though the breezes wandered gently through fields and orchards. In such intensity of sunshine, Cymbril was less sure of what she'd heard in the night. Everything seemed ordinary this morning, everyone behaving normally. Bale ambled across the market, exploring its thousand scents.

  There were pigs in a pen on the Eaves deck, one story down from the Rake's top. Probably a pig had gotten loose last night and gone tearing through the forward chambers. Cymbril knew from experience that the most common things could be frightening in the dark, especially if they turned up in unexpected places. At any rate, whatever had happened, it looked as if Rombol and his crew had gotten to the bottom of it.

  She watched the cloud shadows gliding over roads, gardens, and fencerows. No barriers stopped the shadows of clouds. They needed no keys, could change into any shapes they wished, never had to explain themselves, and no one told them what colors to wear.

  Lost in her musings, she studied the Rake. It towered like a gray-green mountain. Where Rombol's market city came and stood, the landscape changed for a day. Trees bunched thick along its upper decks. Its timbers had baked and frozen year on year, soaked by rains and brushed by the passing woods of the world. Nets of ivy and green fungus blanketed its walls, where birds roosted and pecked after insects.

  Cymbril smiled, more aware of the Rake's abundant life than she'd ever been. Twenty-three hundred souls made their home aboard it (counting merchant families and slaves, but not counting the Armfolk, animals, or anyone she'd seen at the Night Market). The Rake's dwelling quarters were full. New merchants could take up residence only when others retired, all subject to the approval of Master Rombol, who leased them space and collected a share of their profits.