The Hidden Stars

by Madeline Howard

  Her gentle face was all compassion as she stood cupping the candle flame with her hand. “In the meantime, I’ll apply myself to finding you some new task. One better suited to your talents.”

  2

  Baillébachlain on the Isle of Leal, is a port of some consequence: an ancient town, solidly built of slate and limestone, half-timber, oak, and cobble, with shops, inns, houses, taverns, and a fine old harbor whose quays and warehouses, made of the native stone, are as weathered and enduring as the town itself. Ships from every allied nation drop anchor at Baillébachlain, and traders from countries as far distant as Pehlidor and Oméiä stop there to barter goods. In every season, the narrow streets are crowded with wagons and oxcarts, and with men and women on horseback, afoot, or riding the sturdy island ponies. A hundred different languages and dialects can be heard along the waterfront, and anything from furs, to salt, to blocks of tin, lumps of ambergris, and copper beads may be purchased at a reasonable price.

  Above the beehive of the town, remote but watchful, stands the famous Scholia of the wizards: an immense block of building with a great central dome, perched on a rocky eminence overlooking the sea.

  On a day in spring, travelers began to converge on the Scholia. Ships carrying grim-faced warlords in silver mail and surcoats embroidered with marvelous devices of birds and beasts sailed into the harbor, startling the merchants. The Prince of Weye rode up the hill on a mettlesome grey stallion and with him, on foot, came a company of archers and pikemen, dusty and travel-stained after walking the length of the island, under his standard of the silver elk. Wizards and swordsmen appeared out of the east, west, and south.

  King Réodan, who had summoned them all, watched them arrive from a vantage point in one of the square corner towers.

  “There were many I expected to see who haven’t yet come,” he said on the third day. “I begin to wonder if we will even see them.” Turning away from the window, he met an unexpected challenge in the steady hazel eyes of his young kinsman Gwynnek of Weye.

  “Men who don’t have wizards at their beck and call may find themselves at the mercy of contrary winds…or of no winds at all,” said Prince Gwynnek. “My own ship was becalmed two days on the Thäerian Sea. Depend on it: our cousins have suffered a similar delay.”

  “But what news will they bring when they do come?” asked a soft, melodious voice. It was the wizard Elidûc, who had been sitting unnoticed in a corner of the room, as silent and unobtrusive as any of the simple furnishings. “We have heard nothing so far but the very worst news that could possibly be. The tides of war are turning against us.”

  “If that is so, the time has come for a change of tactics,” Gwynnek replied, thrusting out his chin. “A bold stroke is needed—we have been too cautious.”

  Elidûc rose from his seat. He was a man of average height, average looks; he had hair and eyes of no particular color. In his plain long robes, with his short, neatly trimmed beard, he might easily have been mistaken for some minor court official, rather than a mighty wizard, a great king’s friend and advisor. When silent, he was easily overlooked. Yet there was a quality in his musical voice, even when he spoke as quietly as he did now, that commanded attention. “And you would suggest?”

  The Prince of Weye was silent a moment, as though measuring his words. But then he burst out: “An attack on Phaôrax—why not? We’ve tried nothing of the sort for almost twenty years. She would never expect it.”

  “No, our enemy would never expect anything so foolhardy; not after the resounding defeat we suffered the last time.” This came, not from the wizard or the King, but from a slender, fair-haired youth who had just entered the room. He stood in the doorway, lithe and graceful in a sky-blue surcoat emblazoned with the screaming Thäerian eagle differenced by a pattern of three stars, and he surveyed the others with an expression that was difficult to fathom. “More than a hundred ships lost, more than two thousand men, and we never even came in sight of the island.”

  “You speak as though you were there!” exclaimed Gwynnek, though he eyed the newcomer warily, as if uncertain how to react in his presence, uncertain what he might say or do. But then, even Elidûc (who knew Prince Ruan as well as anyone did) did not always know what to make of King Réodan’s uncanny half-blood grandson.

  “No,” said Ruan, smiling slightly. “I wasn’t there. My nursemaids and tutors forbade it.” On the word tutors he glanced briefly in the wizard’s direction; then his bright inhuman gaze turned back toward Prince Gwynnek. “And you, as I recall, were still a sucking infant.”

  Gwynnek gnawed on his lower lip; his hand twitched in the direction of the sword he wore on his hip, but the movement was arrested. There were few men, perhaps, from whom he would brook such disrespect, but this distant cousin was apparently one of them. Stronger than he looked, and deceptively quick, Ruan had a formidable reputation as a swordsman. Now, though he did not seem to move with any haste, he was suddenly there across the room, standing beside Elidûc.

  “Well then,” said Gwynnek. “Perhaps the time has come to seek new allies. Your own kinsmen among the Ni-Féa Faey—” He bit off the sentence, unfinished, at the sudden fierce glow in Prince Ruan’s eyes.

  “Our wars, our policies, our sufferings are as nothing to the Ni-Féa. No more to them than the politics of fleas and gnats are to us. And if you were about to suggest that they might take an interest for my sake—” Ruan’s teeth flashed white in something that was not a smile. “My kinsmen among the Faey, if they bothered to consider my existence—which we may count ourselves fortunate they can’t and don’t—would be far more likely to rain down curses on our heads.”

  There was a brief, silent struggle between the two young princes, though all of the effort seemed to be on Gwynnek’s side. Elidûc watched, fascinated, as they stood facing each other: the Prince of Weye, solid and ordinary, with straw-colored hair and eyes of a clear golden brown, like a good homely ale; and Ruan, light-boned, fair-skinned, silvery-haired, with nothing ordinary or comfortable about him. Finally, Gwynnek accepted defeat. With a glance of pure dislike for his cousin and another for the wizard, he jerked a bow to the King and strode out of the room. With a slight shrug of his shoulders, Ruan bowed, too, and followed lightly after him.

  As they left, Elidûc thought he saw something, some scrap of darkness, some fragment of shadow denser than any of the shadows in the room, clinging to the folds of Prince Gwynnek’s cloak. But all that he said to the King was, “They are growing restless, some of the younger men. Restless and reckless. They would buy peace, I think, at practically any price.”

  “I know it,” answered Réodan, grimly. “It becomes harder and harder to make them see reason.” He stepped aside, and the wizard took his place at the window.

  As he stood gazing out, over land and sea, Elidûc sensed the presence of six Master Wizards in a room directly above, mind-linked, hovering over a smoking brazier and breathing in the fumes of a fire made of nine aromatic woods. He joined his mind to theirs, and gradually his sight grew sharper, his ears keener; he became aware of many things from afar.

  The war continued on many fronts. Men died; women wept for them, then picked up their children and their belongings and carried on, following first one army, then another. Crops were burning, cities were razed to the ground. A great naval battle raged somewhere to the south, between ships flying the eagle standard of Thäerie and a fleet of black galleys. And there was turmoil everywhere, even among those who played no part in the war. He sensed dark forces at work in the realm of the Dwarves; doubt and fear among the Gnomes, and the Seal-Folk. Things were beginning to awake, creatures of an older world, bound fast by the spells of ancient wizards. The Change had not aroused them, but something did so now, causing them to stir, to stretch, to struggle to break free from their prisons under the earth, under the sea. Is this Ouriána’s doing? Elidûc wondered.

  But when he shifted his sight in her direction, all he could see was the usual barrier around Phaôrax, a blankne
ss, a vacancy that frustrated all attempts to see through it or beyond it. Ouriána warded her island well.

  “What do you see?” asked the King, bringing him back to that austere tower chamber, with its spare furnishings and bare stone walls.

  “I see a world in grave peril,” answered the wizard. “I see despair spreading like a disease.” He blinked, to bring his surroundings back into focus, and found that his hands were trembling, his palms clammy with sweat. “I have an idea that all the ill news we’ve received so far is only the beginning.”

  Meanwhile, lords and warriors continued to arrive at the Scholia. They shattered the serenity of the ancient college. In the narrow corridors—once the domain of soft-footed students in robes of sky-blue, russet, and saffron, and of wizards impenetrably serene in colors signifying the various ranks and disciplines—now there was a clatter of arms and the clink of chain mail, and the long staircases resounded with the thud and echo of booted feet ascending and descending. The visitors broke the peace, and continued to do so for three long days, waiting for the latecomers, the Prince of Hythe and the Duke of Mere, and speculating loudly over the delay.

  Hythe finally came—a black-browed, broad-shouldered youth, who arrived like a storm cloud, full of bad news—but Mere did not, and Réodan left off waiting and called for his Council of War to assemble.

  They met in the Hall of Winds under the dome. That was and is a high, spacious chamber, with tall, arched windows on all four sides, unglazed, and open to every wind that blows. The floor is a mosaic swirling with all the colors of the ocean, and the dome is painted with golden stars on a dark blue ground, so that to enter that room is to feel suspended between sea and sky. In those days, it was triple-warded so the airs that passed through might carry away no hint or rumor of anything said there.

  For this occasion, chairs, benches, and stools were brought in for the King, the Masters of the Scholia, and the other great men. While the warriors and men-at-arms took up positions by the windows and by the great double doors, a handful of the younger wizards and a half-dozen students of the college sat down cross-legged on the cool tile floor.

  Faolein came in late. Making his way slowly across the crowded room, he tripped over a young healer and bit his tongue, and continued on with his eyes watering, until he found a place for himself among the other Master Wizards—Tuilach, Ariéneil, Níone, Cathaoch, Curóide, Draithleann, Melliéne, and Feneilas—and sat down.

  Motioning the assembly to remain seated, the King rose to his feet, stood tall and grave to address them all. “We have come together,” he said, “in a time of great trouble. These may be the last days of Thäerie and of the Alliance. But if, by wisdom, sacrifice, foresight, and courage, we may still find a way to live on as a free people, then let us find that way. For this war we fight, however long, bloody, and cruel, is but a single battle in a much greater war, and that is one in which surrender is unthinkable.”

  He spoke, then, of the Black Years, a time when men had neither peace nor rest, nor safety, being perpetually at war with hags and wraiths, demons, dragons, basilisks, and other such creatures of Night and Unlife. While some men defied the Dark, others yielded, becoming thereafter tyrants and oppressors and black magicians. Yet, through the intervention of the Fates, chief servants of the Light, a new race of men arose—a race of healers, prophets, heroes, and wizards. After many years, they succeeded in building first a city, then a kingdom, then a mighty Empire.

  While the Empire of Alluinn flourished, a rival power far to the south and east also grew mighty, but Otöi was a realm founded on slavery and piracy, on every form of rapine and cruelty, maintaining a covenant with the Dark through blood sacrifices and other rituals too terrible to mention.

  He would not, said Réodan, speak of the inevitable clash between those two great powers. It was enough to say that, in the end, the world was cleansed of a great evil, but at a cost nearly beyond comprehension.

  Yet the battle between Erüi, which is the Light, and Nëos, which is Darkness, is as old as time itself—in all ages of the world it must be fought and refought again. One hundred years after the fall of Otöi, Ouriána of Phaôrax had revived in her own person all the black sorceries of the Otöwan mages. With power came pride and vaunting ambition. She established a new cult, proclaiming her own status as an object of worship. When even that proved insufficient to sate her ambition, she set out to conquer what remained of the Empire. Those who did not wish to accept Ouriána’s rule resisted under the leadership of the Pendawer Kings on Thäerie. So events had come full circle, with north and south again at war. That war had dragged on for decades.

  “But of our most recent battles, our most recent losses, I will not speak,” said Réodan. “There are others here more qualified to do so than I. Let each tell his own tale, then we will decide what is to be done for the future.”

  The High King sat down in his carven chair. His two eldest grandsons, Ailbhan and Ruan, leaned forward in their seats, as though they were disposed to speak, but at a signal from Réodan, so slight that Faolein almost missed it, they subsided.

  There was movement among the men-at-arms, a clash of iron rings. Finally, a warrior with a grim, weary face left his place by the doors and approached the King with a heavy step. “I will speak next, with your permission.”

  One of the nobles whispered something in Réodan’s ear, and the King nodded. “Llio of Cuirquorno, you are welcome here. We are ready to hear you.”

  Llio half turned, so that his words might carry to all parts of the room. “No one here can be ignorant of the evil and tragic events of the last days of Rheithûn, but with your leave I’ll tell something of what occurred at Gilaefri, for I was there at the very end.”

  Faolein leaned forward in his seat, intent on Llio’s words—hoping, for Sindérian’s sake, that the story about to unfold would not bring further grief.

  “It would be impossible to describe the horror,” said Llio, “or the confusion, when the Furiádhin threw down the walls: the choking dust, the terrible noise. The maimed and the dying were lying in the rubble, crying out for help, and our healers were few, too few. And when the smoke cleared, when it was possible to see the ruin of our defenses, our leaders surrendered at once, rather than spend more lives in useless resistance.

  “Men of Phaôrax and of Rhuaddlyn took them, and bound them, and led them away. I can see our lords now: how Cailltin looked so pale, and so sick at heart—yet he never flinched as they tied his wrists. Briac and Coall—those noble youths, treated like felons. And Lord Duillig—grey-haired and leaning on his crutch—”

  Llio slammed a meaty fist into the palm of his hand, and his voice grew hoarse with emotion. “What need to bind ANY of them, who were men of honor, and had already given their parole? That was what we all wondered, and accounted it a very shameful thing. A short while later, one of the Furiádhin came and spoke to us. For their rebellion against the rightful rule of their undoubted Empress, he told us, our leaders had earned the lingering death reserved for traitors. Yet, as Ouriána was merciful, they had not suffered ‘according to their deserts’ and death had come swiftly. So said the furiádh Goezenou, branding as renegades men who died as patriots and heroes. Though we were not allowed to witness the executions, we did see the bodies later. They had been badly mutilated. I hope it was done after they were dead, as the Pharaxions told us.”

  Faolein sat back, shielding his eyes with one hand. For, of course, Sindérian would hear of this; the story of the mutilations would run through the Scholia. It would be far, far better if the news were broken to her gently by her own father, than carelessly by any of the students, or roughly by the men-at-arms. Yet he shrank from the task, fearing he would do it badly.

  “No act so vile was ever committed when Prince Guindeluc was her Captain-General,” Llio was saying. “Nor would Prince Cuillioc have permitted such a thing. But the one is dead and the other recalled to Apharos, and the Dark Lady has placed the command of her armies solely in the
hands of the Furiádhin.

  “It was intended, maybe, to bring shame and despair to the living, to crush any thought we might have of escape or resistance. But as we were marched south, some of us did resist. We overpowered our guards, made our way north, and crossed safely into Mere.” His big fists clenched again. “Yes, we escaped—but our kingdom of Rheithûn no longer exists. We are homeless, leaderless, hopeless—”

  “You will not be homeless,” said Réodan, reaching out to touch Llio lightly on the arm. “A place will be found for you, all of you. I know it’s small recompense for what you have lost, but all that can be done will be done.”

  Next came a man of Gonlündor to speak. His clothing was rough, made of sheepskin and leather, worn and patched, but there was dignity in his glance, and his speech was not unmannerly. “It may be that few here know much of my homeland. It’s a desolate region, very wild and largely unsettled since the fall of the Empire—for, being then a principality of Alluinn, we were caught in the backwash of her destruction. Though we live in a land once famed for poets and minstrels, for men of high learning, we are, in these latter days, farmers and herdsmen and nomadic hunters, a simple and rustic folk. Yet we, too, have resisted Ouriána. We may lack the numbers to muster a great army of our own, but many of our sons have joined your companies, fought side by side with the men of Thäerie and other western lands. Over the years, we have served as your scouts in Rhuaddlyn, Rheithûn, and Malindor. But now she has answered our little defiance with a devastating blow.

  “Five weeks ago, a thick yellow fog came creeping over our land. It was no natural fog, no weather of this world. Horses and cattle ran mad. Strong men, women in their prime, healthy young children, fell down in fits.” He shuddered at the memory. “Fully a third of our people died overnight. Why has she done this thing, you may ask, sent forth this mighty sorcery merely to bring such an insignificant number of us to our knees—”