The Star Shard

by Frederic S. Durbin

  She hoped the snorting monster wouldn't come again to her door.

  At last she blew out her candle and slept.

  All during the market day at Windwall, piles of gray clouds threatened rain, as if Rombol's mood affected nature itself. Today he'd left his goose-headed stick indoors, and his morning speech in the ramp chamber was only a glance around and a nod.

  Windwall was a stone fortress-city on a stone ridge, altogether as gray as the sky. The Rake crouched against the crenelated wall like the siege engine of an invading army, the ramp leading straight down through an open side gate. There was no soil to warm and soften the footing, no greenery to sweeten the air. In this outpost of the King's troops, even the women seemed to march as they moved through the market, towing their quiet children. The Armfolk had no woodland to retreat to, so they also spent the day in the garrison square. Cymbril knew the Urrmsh were secretly hoping the sky might deliver rain. Wet weather was unfavorable for the merchants, but the Strongarms enjoyed a good drizzle as much as they loved shadowed streams in forest glens.

  Cymbril thought her own voice sounded pinched and feeble, half drowned by the wind against the battlements. Still, people made their requests, pressing close to see her. They smiled and clapped as she finished each song. Watching the gray sky, Cymbril pondered again how close she and Loric had come to freedom. The barrenness of the stone city made her all the more conscious of the cage she lived in. I need the forest, she thought. I need to see my father's homeland. My chains aren't visible like Lories, but if I don't get free of them, I'll die.

  On a sudden impulse, she ignored the requests that people were calling and launched into a song of her own choosing. Throwing back her shoulders, she lifted her face to the wind and sang "The Green Leaves of Eireigh" with such passion that the crowd stood transfixed.

  The green leaves of Eireigh when summer is there,

  Aglow in the sunlight, are laughing and fair;

  With memory's whisper they call as I roam:

  "Come, wanderer, back to the forests of home.

  Come back to the wildwood, the forests of home.

  "The roads of the lowland are weary and long,

  So far from warm shadows that echo with song.

  In Eireigh's soft twilight the hearth fires burn,

  Awaiting the wayworn, the lost one's return;

  Come back to the greenwood; to Eireigh return."

  My heart is still there in the misty blue hills,

  Where the glens are a-sparkle with chattering rills,

  And the oaks cluster dark on the shoulders of stone.

  I'll take up my pack and journey alone;

  I'll pray for what's needful and journey alone.

  A strong bow of yew and boots of good leather,

  A kindness of sun, the wind in the heather,

  A jerkin of green and a mantle of gray,

  And a steed to carry me far and away,

  A steed to carry me back to Eireigh.

  When she'd finished, at first there was a hush broken only by the wind moaning past the towers. Then there was a collective sigh as the music's spell lifted. The applause began, and the captain of the city guard led his men in a cheer. The Urrmsh joined them with voices like deep horns, and the cheer rolled on and on, echoing from the walls.

  The Urrmsh were especially popular with the soldiers, who never seemed to tire of watching them hurl boulders and tug teams of men across lines. In exchange for these displays, the men dropped bright coins into the sacks at the Strong - arms' feet.

  Wiltwain came by on his rounds, looking tired. "Rest awhile," he told Cymbril. Brushing his long hair back with his fingers, he braced a foot on the wagon and leaned on his raised knee. "Quite a rousing rendition of 'Eireigh,'" he said, not quite smiling. "I don't think I've ever heard you sing it that well. Where did you learn it?"

  Cymbril sat in the wagon bed. "It was one of the first Mistress Selene taught me when I was young."

  Wiltwain laughed, expelling air through his nose. "When you were young. Yes, all those years ago."

  "People in the western towns request it often," Cymbril said. "There are other versions. I heard one where the singer goes home at the end, actually reaches Eireigh, but I can't remember the words."

  Wiltwain stretched his back. "Do you know where Eireigh is?"

  Cymbril shook her head. It was nowhere the Rake ever went. She'd always supposed it was a made-up place, existing only in the song.

  "If you believe the old stories," Wiltwain said, "it's a part of the Fey lands, where those like Loric come from. So the person singing the song is Fey." He watched her with an eyebrow raised.

  "Oh," said Cymbril.

  The Overseer stepped back and hooked his thumbs into his belt. "In the swamp, we all thought the harpy had gotten you."

  "She almost did. We almost died."

  "In at least four different ways—I'm glad you realize that. Cats have nine lives. Little girls have one. Even girls with magic stones, as far as I know." Wiltwain spread his palm on the top of her head. "For now, your tablet is clean. You broke the curfew, but you also saved the elf boy's life. That was brave. Brave, goodhearted, and very foolish."

  "Well," said Cymbril, "that's two good things out of three."

  Wiltwain eyed her darkly, squinted at the clouds, and strode off.

  A few drops of rain fell. Cymbril put on her torn rain cloak but left the hood down. Although the sky rumbled, it wasn't truly raining yet. She smiled across the cobbles at Urrt.

  After her next song, Cymbril glimpsed the fat frog hopping through the market's open center, gazing appreciatively at the gloomy sky and glaring at the customers who stepped around him, distaste in their faces. Cymbril wondered why Rombol put up with the frog. He was nothing if not bad for business. She could only conclude that the Master was afraid of the Eye Women. She doubted he'd even questioned them about the Night Market.

  For all his wealth and power, there were people Rombol feared: those old sisters, Brigit, and certainly the Lady of the Wild herself. The women in his life frightened him, Cymbril thought with a smile—especially the ones he could not understand or clap into a cage.

  ***

  That evening, when Cymbril managed to linger near Loric's door, he warned her that they would need the key soon. He'd been asking Miwa about the Rake's route and schedule, which the cat remembered well. Also, Miwa had had a recent peek at Rombol's map. In three days the Rake would hold a market in Berryholt, a town above a wooded ravine called the Greenmouth—which was the entrance to Gorhyv Glyn.

  Berryholt is small, said Loric in Cymbril's mind. I'm sure we'll only be there one day. The best time for escape will be just before dawn on the morning we arrive, after I'm brought back to my room. With any luck, Master Rombol will be in bed.

  If we wait too long, said Cymbril, he'll be up and getting ready.

  Yes. It will have to be precisely timed. When I'm on the bow, Rombol leaves the key with the guards. If we reach the destination before sunrise, the guards lock me into my room and slide the key under Rombol's door.

  Cymbril jumped at a scratching sound. But it came from Loric's room—or more precisely, from his threshold. Through the crack beneath the door, he was pushing out a piece of stiff wire as long as Cymbril's forearm.

  I found this on the ground in Banburnish and put it up my sleeve. It's been here under my bedroll ever since. It should be just the thing you need.

  Cymbril picked up the wire. For what?

  When the guards leave the key under Rombol's door, you'll be hiding nearby. After they've gone, you can use this to drag the key back out.

  Cymbril's heart beat faster. Perfect!

  Hardly perfect. Too much could go wrong. But it's a chance.

  And what about the ... the thing that walks around at night? she asked.

  Miwa's had a glimpse of it. From what she describes, it sounds like a black nargus.

  Cymbril had no idea what a black nargus might be. I think Brigit brought it
aboard at the Night Market, she said.

  That fits, said Loric. A nargus is a magic-sniffer. That's why it came to the prow when we were using the Star Shard to talk—and why it's likely to come nosing around your bunk, so keep your door closed tight. It can smell anything enchanted.

  It smells my stone and hairpin?

  Yes, but don't worry. Its nose tells the nargus that they're not what it's really looking for. I think the Eye Women bought the nargus from Brigit because of the magic storerooms you found. They suspect there are a lot more vaults or cupboards on this Rake, a lot more hidden magical treasures. They mean to find more—that's likely the reason they travel with Master Rombol.

  Cymbril fingered the Star Shard. We're using magic now, she thought.

  Yes, but it's early. The nargus comes out when the Rake is quiet.

  Is it dangerous?

  I would guess the Sisters aren't feeding it. The hungrier it gets, the sharper its sense of smell. But a hungry nargus is very unstable. They're bad-tempered at best. When they're starving ... My people have an expression: "A moth's draft to a nargus"—it means a little thing, like the puff of breeze from a moth's wings, that sets off the fury of a storm.

  Chapter 17

  Restless

  For the next two days, Cymbril's thoughts whirled like a spring wind, going in one direction, then in another, full of restless hope and anxiety. As much as she despised the constraints of the Rake, it had been home for almost as long as she could remember. Now that she would be leaving, she could hardly bear to walk in the mossy alleys, to climb the ladders of half-levels, and to ride the crank baskets. Never to pass the Candleway again ... never to skulk through the shadows of Longwander ... At breakfast Miwa rubbed her ankles, and Cymbril felt a pain at the base of her throat. She held the cat on her lap for a long time, stroking Miwa's silvery fur. "I don't think you can come with me this time," Cymbril whispered to her old friend. Miwa wasn't hers to take along. Probably the forest home of the Sidhe was no place for a cat, anyway. Yet Miwa had been around for so long—always helpful, always seeming to understand what Cymbril felt, what she needed. Cymbril rubbed her face on Miwa's silky head.

  And of course Cymbril would miss Urrt and the other Urrmsh. How could she say goodbye to them?

  Even the Rake's grand circuit tugged at her heart: the cities and towns under the changing seasons, each far-flung wall built of different stones, the morning light different on each thatch, the breath of each hay field different in sweetness. It was her enslavement that had allowed her to see so much of the world. She thought of the seas of human faces. I'll be out among them, she reminded herself. When I'm free, the whole world will be spread out before me and waiting.

  The necklace of swamp flowers was withered now. She'd hung it on a cloak peg. The dry garland broke beneath her fingers, the petals swirling to the floor. She knelt and sifted through the dead blossoms, thinking of Gorhyv Glyn and what it might be like there. Would she be happier? Would the Sidhe accept her as one of their own? It was hard to abandon the comfort of a home she could see around her in search of one that was still unknown. Change took courage, but leaving the Rake was a change she needed, beyond the fears and the pain. Deep down, Cymbril knew she needed to be free.

  Not long before, she'd watched a gardener on the top deck transplanting rosebushes from clay pots into deeper soil beds. When they came out of the pots, the roots were bunched up in cramped tangles. Cymbril almost believed she could hear the plants sighing with relief when the gardener settled them into the black earth, where they could stretch like sleepers awakening. I'm like the roses, Cymbril thought. Huge as the Rake was, it was still a very tight clay pot.

  After the next day of work in Blue Barrows, she went to see Urrt. She'd thought of a half-dozen ways to bid him farewell, but she used none of them. Sitting beside his feet, she began to weep.

  "Ah," he rumbled, pulling and pushing on the oar. "Yes. We are coming soon to the place you are going, little thrush." Around them, a long, humming tale went on—or maybe it was a song.

  Cymbril hugged his knee and shook as waves of agony she'd never expected rolled through her. Tears spilled from her eyes, and her nose ran.

  "Little bird." Urrt's palm brushed her hair, gently as the falling of light. "This is a song I've not heard from you before. But it is a good song, too, and makes the world better, not worse."

  "I thought it would be easier," Cymbril gasped when she could. "If leaving is right, why does it hurt so much?"

  "It's the way with life," said Urrt. "Parts of the world are broken, and there's no fixing them until the End. This kind of hurt means you love. And that, songbird, is a treasure better than a stone or a pin. Have courage." After a long pause, he added, "Remember the hatch. It will be open tomorrow night."

  Cymbril told him she thought there was a black nargus aboard the Rake and that the Eye Women were responsible.

  Urrt considered this news for a long time.

  "If that's what it is," he said at last, "then those old sisters in yellow are growing awfully bold, and there's trouble coming. A nargus has a mind like an empty pit. Those women must be controlling it."

  "Will the Armfolk be all right?" she asked.

  "We will keep watch," Urrt said. "It may be that Master Rombol will need our help before long."

  The help of the Armfolk—did Rombol have any idea how fortunate he was to have Urrt and the others rowing for him? Cymbril closed her eyes and rested in the warm space, the Urrmsh song resonating in the wood, in her bones. The next thing she knew, Urrt was nudging her awake.

  "You should go back now," Urrt told her, "before they miss you up there."

  Cymbril rubbed her face. It felt stiff with dried tears. She took Urrt's hand. Panic fluttered in her chest.

  "Go on," Urrt said. "We will talk again soon, I promise you."

  Cymbril hurried to her bunk, afraid to look back.

  She tossed through the night, sleeping in snatches, springing awake. Once she sat up at a terrible barking from Bale. Not long afterward, when silence had returned, two soldiers trudged down the hallway past her door. She heard the creak and clink of their armor. "Whatever it is," one muttered to the other, "it clawed through that gate like a swatch o' curtain, and there was nothin' left but feathers. Not hardly nothin' o' the cages themselves."

  "It's a witchy-wolf, I say," the other guard answered. "That's how it gets away. I saw what one did up in Burl Valley when I was a boy."

  Then the soldiers passed beyond hearing.

  Cymbril pulled the covers close around herself and lay blinking in the dark.

  Over and over she picked up the stone and the hairpin, the two treasures that no one could take from her. As long as she had these, with their glow of Sidhe fire and magic, she carried a part of her parents. Peering into the Star Shard's depths, she could almost see the faces of her mother and father, hazy as dreams remembered on waking.

  She was up before dawn and wriggled into her green dress with embroidered leaves on the cape. Today no one had given her orders for what to wear. Her choice of clothing anticipated Gorhyv Glyn, the woodland realm, but it also celebrated summer—the best dress for her last day on the Rake.

  The town was Deepdike, named for the mossy trench that circled it, too wide even for a charging horse to leap across, and four fathoms deep. Wooden footbridges spanned it, strong enough to support normal traffic, but the Thunder Rake could not come across to the market square. Instead, a procession of carts and wagons rolled down the ramp and over the bridges.

  Cymbril mustered her best efforts, singing with as much conviction as if all the songs told of her own life's journeys. The ballads brought tears to her listeners' eyes, and the merry songs made them grin. At the end of "Blue Were Her Eyes," she saw an old farmer in the crowd suddenly catch his wife by the arms and kiss her. The woman looked back at him in happy surprise, her own blue eyes sparkling from a wrinkled face like those of the woman in the ballad. Cymbril watched the couple as she sang "Lavender an
d Primrose." All throughout its lilting verses, they danced together, weaving among the other listeners as if they were on the floor of some grand castle ballroom. Perhaps in their minds, Cymbril thought, that's exactly where they were.

  Then something happened that had never happened before. Two minstrels bounded through the crowds, a boy and a girl, both a few scant years older than Cymbril. People laughed and clapped in recognition, thumping the pair on the backs as they passed. Their clothes were patched and of poorer cloth than Cymbril's, but equally green, as if the three had dressed to match. The boy and the girl appeared just as Cymbril began "Home, Lads, Home." From the midst of the audience they played along, their fingers flying over the strings of long-necked instruments that hung by straps from their shoulders. As they pounced right up into the wagon bed, one on each side of her, Cymbril stopped in surprise.

  "Keep singing!" said the girl. Her black hair hung in a long ponytail, and a spray of faint freckles dotted her face.

  Cymbril forged ahead, and they matched her tune with their own voices, blending into harmony. After her initial bewilderment, Cymbril began to laugh inside, as if she were floating in the sky, sweeping with the birds from cloud to cloud. People in the market began to clap in rhythm, and more linked arms and danced. With three voices intertwined, the long cascade of nonsense syllables at the song's end brought exuberant cheers from the crowd.

  The minstrels caught Cymbril's hands and bowed with her. She wanted to collapse and catch her breath, but there was no time—now the requests poured in, and the two paused only to be sure Cymbril knew the next tune.

  The sun climbed the sky. Even the merchants came out and stood before their stalls to listen. As the singers huddled together to discuss the words to "Far Green Hills," Rombol clanked goblets with the Patron of Deepdike and cupped his free hand around his mouth to shout, "You're doing far too well! Nobody's buying a thing!" The crowd laughed with him—but turned quickly back to the wagon as the three began singing again.