The Star Shard

by Frederic S. Durbin

  The chain snagged on bark, holding them for a dangling, dizzy moment on the trunk's far side. The Rake struck. Vibrations passed through the wood, and every branch Cymbril could see separated for an instant into multiple ghost images of itself, all wavering. A splintering crack traveled up from deep below, as if the Earth itself had broken a bone. Birds squawked from a knothole. Chunks of moss pattered among hairy vines. The tree tilted.

  Her back against the trunk, Cymbril did not let herself consider how high above the ground they must be. She looked over Loric's shoulder—into the glowering face of the harpy.

  The monster sped toward them out of the darkness, its shriveled features a mask of hunger. Loric stirred, his hair drifting across Cymbril's face. There was no escape this time. They swung outward as the tree leaned. The chain loosened again, slithering off the bark, and they slid with it. The harpy's lips pulled back in a wicked smile.

  Above their heads, the stump of a dead, broken limb jutted out from the trunk, its angle changing with the tree's slow fall. The harpy, intent on its prey, flew headlong into this blunt, stone-hard lance. With a deafening scream, the monster crunched to a dead stop. Brown feathers swirled in all directions. Its face contorted in agony, and the harpy tumbled backwards, wings flopping.

  Cymbril and Loric were falling, too. The colossal tree toppled with them, crashing through other limbs. Her arm around Loric, Cymbril gripped the chain. The tree swung them forward, dank wind whistling in their ears, and the last metal links snaked free of the trunk.

  Bushes on a steep slope hurtled up to meet them. Cymbril's feet furrowed through their branches. Suddenly she and Loric were tumbling heels over heads, lashed by shrubs, scratched by twigs—but cushioned by deep moss, as if they were falling down a staircase of pillows.

  Snapping booms rolled above like thunder. The air rained dirt and dead leaves. Seeds and pebbles bounced over Cymbril's head, and some vast, dark shape lowered like a ceiling. She landed face-down in the moss, her breath knocked out of her.

  Slowly, the sounds faded. The ground trembled and lay still. Her face against the moist, velvety moss, Cymbril coughed and inhaled. The smell of earth and mold was overwhelming. She tasted grit.

  Loric's eyes, so close to hers she saw nothing else, blinked several times. His chain jingled, and he sat up, sliding from her arms. "Are you all right?" he asked.

  Her lips moved before she could force her voice out. "I think so."

  She looked up. The tree lay beside them like a cliff, near enough to touch. Ferns and shrubs had been scooped, roots and all, from the soil and lay strewn in deep piles everywhere. Overhead, just visible in the dimness, the Rake's prow loomed like a wooden sky. Only the trunk had held it off her and Loric. A gigantic tree limb had embedded itself just at their feet. Loric leaned against it to struggle upright. Tree, prow, and piercing limb—any of the three might easily have crushed them.

  Cymbril kept still, listening, hardly daring to breathe. Where was the harpy?

  "It's gone," Loric whispered, seeing her worry. "I don't sense it anywhere nearby. It was injured."

  Shouts came from high above, men calling for Cymbril and Loric. Torch light glimmered from the bow.

  Loric smiled at her, pulling in the loose chain hand over hand, coiling it around his wrist. "I'll thank you soon for saving my life," he said. "But first, we have to run."

  Cymbril drew a wondering breath. They wouldn't be needing the key after all—they were free. With Loric's sight, they could easily elude the soldiers in the swamp.

  "It's a long way," said Loric, "but we can reach Gorhyv Glyn. Are you ready?"

  Cymbril patted her pocket. The stone and the hairpin were there. She was ready. Laughing, she took Loric's hand.

  But she couldn't stand up. It was as if the ground wouldn't let her go. Pulling up the hem of her skirt, she saw her left leg was caught beneath the tree limb, deep in the mud. She could wiggle her toes and foot—the mire had saved her from being hurt, but a fork of the limb rested squarely on her lower leg. No matter how she pulled and twisted, she couldn't free herself.

  Loric dug with his fingers, scooping out armloads of muck, his shirt and trousers black with it. But when he made a little progress, the limb settled lower. The weight on her leg increased, scaring Cymbril. She braced her other foot and strained until the wood gouged her shin, but it was no use. Tears welled in her eyes. She pounded her hands against the bark.

  "All right," said Loric with a sigh, sitting down in the moss. "Don't hurt yourself."

  Cymbril sagged back, gasping, and clenched her fists. "You have to go," she said. Even now, Rombol's men would be racing down ladders, pouring from the bottom hatches.

  Loric smiled again and squeezed her wrist. "When we go," he said, "we'll go together."

  Now Cymbril couldn't hold back the tears.

  With a sudden, nervous flicker in his gaze, Loric leaned close and quickly kissed the side of her head.

  As she turned a wide-eyed glance upon him, he hurried out into the brightening torch light. "We're safe," he called, facing the sound of footsteps. "But we need a shovel."

  Digging Cymbril free was the easy part. It took the rest of the night to get the Rake back on level ground. The vessel wasn't built to crawl backwards, so the claws were useless. Since the slope below was blocked by close-set, tremendous trees and then a bog, the Armfolk had to hoist the city wagon up to the ridge again. The movements of the Urrmsh were purposeful and unfailingly effective, but slow as the turning of seasons. An hour slipped by as they simply got into position. They wrapped chains around trees and carried boulders to brace the wheels. All the while Rombol fumed and gave orders, unable to blame anyone but himself. Before the Rake could resume its journey, the Urrmsh needed to splint a claw arm that had fractured.

  The Huntress might have been watching, and Rombol might have had her favor, but he certainly did not receive her help—unless she was holding back the wild beasts of her domain. Certain night birds gave the impression of cackling, mocking the intruders and their silly wooden monstrosity.

  The soldiers stood guard, waving firebrands at glowing eyes that drifted nearer, some disturbingly large and high above the ground, increasing in number on every side. A hunting party of the bravest men ventured a few paces into the trees, but the harpy had vanished—which made Rombol all the angrier: he'd hoped to put the creature into a cage. The search for the winged hag ended abruptly when one of the men saw a huge, snarling shadow that frightened him so badly he could not describe it—nearly as anyone could guess, it had been a gigantic wolf.

  Cymbril heard all this later from Urrt. She and Loric were sent inside the Rake, allowed to wash, and after a healer tended her, Cymbril was put to bed. Her only wounds were skinned patches on her knees and shins, and a few scratches from thorns. She was thankful she still had both legs.

  Over and over, she thought of Loric's quick, impulsive little kiss, his face and clothes covered with mud. He had stayed. He had stayed in captivity because Cymbril couldn't go with him. The thought made her insides feel light and watery.

  The baying of wolves reached Cymbril in her chamber, raising goose flesh on her arms. If she and Loric had escaped, they would be out there now with the hungry pack on their trail. No wolf would attack the Armfolk, so she did not fear for them. With the Urrmsh heaving and towing all around the wagon city, she felt safe in her warm bunk, but she ached with a bitter disappointment. For one moment, she had known the joy of freedom. She had pictured herself running beside Loric, careening over roots, and following the paths of wild things, the wind streaming in her hair. They'd been outside the Rake, alone in the night, with no walls to hold them in. But now they were back in the cage, and punishment was sure to come. At last, exhausted as much by regret as by physical exertion, she sank into sleep.

  Her dreams were strange and troubling, full of ember eyes and the chorus of the wolves. And always, always she dreamed of a Lady in the shadows, pale eyes aglow, always watching.

  C
ymbril awoke with a gasp in the blackness. The blanket clung tightly around her, as if she'd been tossing. Her hair stuck to the damp, chilly sweat on her neck. The darkness of her room sat like a weight on her chest. Fighting to loosen the patched cover, she sat up, hands bunched at her throat.

  Nightmare. She'd been having a nightmare. There was no dark figure squatting on her chest, crushing away her breath ... There were no glittering eyes. When she could move again, she dove for her trunk and flung it open, sighing with relief as the mingled light of her two treasures shone from atop her folded clothing. She grasped the hairpin and held up the Star Shard like a lantern. Barefoot, shivering, she peered into the corners and under her bed.

  Of course there was no one else here. And yet what had woken her, she felt certain, was the nearness of something, some terrible thing that was now not quite so near. Raising her head, she glanced at the door. An icy tingle passed over her scalp. Something had been out there, in the hallway. Something had been just on the other side of her door.

  The creature that grunted like a pig and breathed in the dark—it was real, and it was still onboard.

  The door was no longer locked. Cymbril remembered noticing, in her weary state as she'd come to bed, that the key was where she'd left it, sticking in the keyhole outside. No one had turned it to lock her in again. She took hold of the door's handle, determined to yank the portal open and shine her blue-green light into the corridor. It would be a simple matter to retrieve the key and secure the room.

  Yet after a long moment, she backed away from the door and slid into bed, the stone and pin clasped firmly to her chest.

  Even for Cymbril, there was a time to let well enough alone.

  Chapter 16

  The New Evil

  In daylight the Rake rolled slowly to Windwall without Loric's guidance. Cymbril helped straighten a larder and several storerooms where containers had spilled. She was glad for the physical work, which always made the darkness of night seem paler and further away. But all the while, her thoughts were of Loric. Was he all right after the ordeal? He'd come so close to death—or whatever unspeakable fate the harpy had planned.

  She thought back through the night's harrowing events. The winged hag's attention had alighted first upon Cymbril. Failing to snatch her from the roof, the monster had seized Loric's chain. I suppose we looked more tender than the soldiers and Rombol, Cymbril thought with a shiver, and we were light enough to carry.

  Over and over, she let herself recall the shy, swift press of Loric's lips against her hair. The memory brought a feeling like a tiny bird beating its wings inside her chest, a tickling thrill. He might have escaped, but he'd stayed for her. What she'd learned about him in that moment was a treasure she carried now, like the stone and pin from her parents, secret and safe. No matter what was happening around her, she could think about Loric and feel that fluttering joy.

  First thing in the morning, she'd found Wiltwain and tried to tell him about the presence outside her door. But he was seething with tension, dealing with Rombol's mood and responsible for a hundred tasks in putting the Rake to rights. "A nightmare," he said, patting her shoulders. "You saw a harpy in the flesh. Be glad you came away with nothing more than nightmares."

  About to resume his duties, he stopped and narrowed his eyes at her.

  Cymbril drew a breath. She'd been temporarily forgotten in the hubbub, but now the reckoning would surely come.

  "You used magic, didn't you?" Wiltwain stared at her, and she couldn't decide whether he was angry or amazed. "You're as witchy as that Fey boy. It's the only way I can imagine that you got out of a locked room."

  "I—I used my hairpin," she stammered—which was true, only not in the way that Wiltwain seemed to think.

  "I knew it!" He frowned, apparently at a loss, and then rubbed his temples wearily. "The Master is too furious at all this to deal with you today." He swept his hand in a gesture that must mean the swamp and the Rake. "So he's turned your punishment over to me. I can't lock you up. I can't take away your enchanted pin. What would you suggest, Cymbril? What would you do with you, if you were me?"

  "I—" Cymbril blinked and shrugged. She wasn't about to help him think of ways to punish her.

  A merchant signaled to Wiltwain, calling him to examine a shattered pulley.

  "I'll think on it," the Overseer said to Cymbril. "Meanwhile, you can start by lending a hand today along with the other maidservants from your block. Let's just try to get out of this mud hole in one piece."

  Later, in the storeroom where Cymbril was reshelving tins, Miwa found her and rubbed against her ankles, asking to be petted. "What's aboard this Rake, Miwa?" Cymbril whispered in her ear. "If you can't tell me, then tell Loric." Feeling jumpy in the darker galleries, Cymbril was glad at first even for the company of the other girls, with their boorish gossip and talk of boys—though today their topics were mostly of last night's fright, the crash of the Rake that had flung everyone out of bed, and the rumors of the winged monster, which became—for those who had not seen it—a fanged woman with serpents for hair, whose gaze had turned two men-at-arms into stone.

  "I heard there's another monster," Cymbril ventured. "One that prowls around the corridors at night."

  "You mean Bale," said Theriel with a lopsided grin. "He's a dog."

  "No, something else," Cymbril insisted. "Something worse than Bale."

  Briella, the block leader, gave her a withering look. "Everyone knows about that monster. It's been around for weeks."

  Three other girls perked up their ears, the brushes and rags in their hands slowing down.

  Briella lowered her voice. "The two old witches with the frog made it on a table, from the skin of a dead horse. They put sheep guts and magic herbs and a human heart inside—still beating—and sewed up the skin."

  "Whose heart was it?" asked a girl named Tansy.

  Now Briella clucked her tongue at Tansy's ignorance. "In every city, the witches have a secret contract with the captain of the guard. In the middle-night, the frog hops into the jail, where they keep the convicted prisoners waiting for the headsman's ax. The frog takes along a bag of gold, dragging it with the cord in his icky mouth. When he hops back out, the bag is full of warm hearts that the witches use in their spells."

  "Why did they make the monster?" asked Jen, who looked skeptical but amused.

  Briella spoke in such a hush that they all had to lean closer. "It's looking for the person who cheated the witches out of one copper coin. When it finds him..." Briella widened her eyes ominously.

  So no one had seen or heard the creature that really lurked onboard.

  Cymbril threw herself into the work, remembering the days before she'd been the Thrush of the Rake, when—aside from voice lessons—there had been endless carrying, dusting, polishing, and scrubbing of floors, even though she'd been very young. She sighed. By removing her from the drudgery, by setting her upon a perch to sing, Rombol had guaranteed she would have no human friends. Who wanted to be friends with an ornament?

  All day she longed to curl up in the warmth beneath a rowing bench and listen to the songs of the Urrmsh. But the Rake had endured such a shaking that she was kept busy until suppertime.

  There were no further mishaps under the bearded trees, but it was evening by the time Rombol's Rake, plastered with mud, crawled like a defeated beast up the last slope beneath the high, meandering stone wall of the city. Rombol called a halt beside a stream, and his men did nothing more that night than wash the wheels, axles, arms, and underside of the Rake. They dumped bucket after bucket of muddy water back down the rocky gully.

  When at last Cymbril found her way to the footboards beside Urrt, most of the Strongarms had disembarked to help with the washing and to sleep outdoors like great boulders in the dark. Urrt and his bench-mate Arrubh were too tired to be of much help. The third time Urrt's eyelids drooped closed, Cymbril realized just what a tremendous labor it had been to rescue the Rake. In a single night, the Urrmsh had accompl
ished a task that would have confounded a human army. Then they had rowed throughout the day.

  Even so, the Urrmsh did their best to listen sympathetically.

  She told them about the nightly noises—the snorting creature that Bale had been barking at since before Weepwallow—and how she was certain it had been outside her door during the night. And deciding she'd better give them all the details she could, she confessed that she'd been to the Night Market.

  Urrt and Arrubh looked down at her with wide eyes.

  She did her best to explain. "I went there to buy a skeleton key for Loric's collar and the Nixielixir that made Gerta and Berta beautiful. Only I didn't have enough money, so the Eye Women took back the skeleton key as the exacted difference." She told of encountering Brigit, too, and of how Brigit had known Cymbril's name and said, "You've grown."

  Both Urrmsh gazed at her in amazement. Urrt looked around the nearly deserted Pushpull Chamber, apparently checking for eavesdroppers. Leaning forward, he spoke in a quiet rumble. "When you saw this woman Brigit, what was she doing?"

  "She was..." Cymbril sprang up onto her knees and gripped the edge of the bench, remembering the cloaked men with Brigit. There'd been a wagon, a cage on wheels wrapped around with heavy chains.

  "She was bringing the monster onboard."

  Cymbril didn't leave her room that night. Instead, she rested and tried to think of ways to get the key for Loric's collar. The rescue, she supposed, would have to be done under the cover of darkness. But it would have to be a night on which Loric wasn't guiding the Rake.

  She wished it were easier to talk to him whenever she wanted. He would have better ideas about how to manage things. With a sigh, she took out her two treasures and tried again to call out to Loric through the Star Shard. But his chamber was too far away. Once more she imagined her parents, her mother with shining hair, her father a taller version of Loric—lean and mysterious, with clothes that seemed cut from the sea and the night. If only she had even one clear memory...