Starless

by Jacqueline Carey

  I couldn’t help it, I rubbed the back of my neck; but now was definitely not the time for confessing my secret.

  “Will someone please tell me what passes here?” Lirios asked in a plaintive voice, his wings wafting uncertainly.

  Essee patted his shoulder and spoke gently to him. “Yah, of course. She says just give us a few moments,” Jahno translated. “There is much to explain, but first we must make an important decision. So.” He glanced around at us. “The Oracle has given us two possible destinations. And I am sorry to say it, but…” He swallowed, suddenly looking young and unsure. “We are a great deal closer to Papa-ka-hondras than we are to Tukkan. If we are journeying toward Miasmus…” He did not finish the sentence. “I may be the Seeker, but this choice I cannot make alone.”

  Papa-ka-hondras, A Thousand Ways to Kill. It seemed like a lifetime ago that Nazim the apothecary first told me about the place while I studied poisons in the Fortress of the Winds.

  No one spoke. No one wanted to give voice to the decision.

  It was Zariya who broke the silence, her voice unsteady. “The children of Miasmus claimed a great many lives today. If I were able to use the rhamanthus to summon the sun’s fire, as it seems I’m meant to do, I might have saved them. And this is only the beginning. My darlings, I fear our choice is plain. But you need not place your lives in jeopardy because of my infirmity,” she added, her voice growing stronger. She glanced at Jahno. “According to your great-grandfather, it is the interior of the island that is the most deadly. If you put us ashore, Khai and I will venture inland alone and seek the folk who dwell there.”

  I nodded.

  Lirios’s wings whirred. “Oh, but I will not leave your side, my queen.”

  Essee gave a soft trill; she would not suffer us to make the attempt on our own, either.

  Evene sighed. “You know, if we’re journeying toward Miasmus, like as not most of our damned lives are forfeit anyway. Papa-ka-hondras can’t be worse, can it? What the hell, let’s do this.”

  So it was decided.

  Our destination determined, Jahno and the Elehuddin consulted their charts to set our course, the sea-wyrms adjusting obligingly and angling across the swirling counter-currents toward the southwest. Zariya went below deck to rest and regain her strength.

  It fell to me to explain to Lirios the situation into which fate had unexpectedly thrust him.

  He listened attentively, his chin propped on his fists, the twin blades of his translucent wings folded on his back, his expression one of wonder. “So I am to be like Astarion the Noble, a Great Protector?”

  “Ah … I’m not familiar with Astarion the Noble,” I said.

  Lirios looked astonished. “No? The great hero of the Goat Isle War?” I shook my head. “He held the entrance to the Palace of Ten Thousand Bells against hundreds of Goat Islanders until help arrived,” he said reverently. “He died saving his queen, who was the queen of Chalcedony Isle, though they never had the chance to be mated. It is a most romantic story. I am surprised you do not know it.”

  I smiled. “Well, Zarkhoum is a very long way away. You probably haven’t heard our stories, either. But let’s not make dying in Zariya’s service a goal, all right? Our goal is to protect her.”

  “Yes, Khai.” He tilted his head. “I saw that you are very good at fighting. Can you teach me to be better?”

  “Absolutely,” I promised.

  In the weeks it took us to sail to Papa-ka-hondras, I did just that.

  At times I sympathized with the dismay that Jahno had evinced upon discovering the identity of the Quick. The mayfly’s unflagging energy could be wearing. Lirios might be a mature adult by the standards of his folk, but he possessed a childlike earnestness and enthusiasm. Subtlety and nuance often evaded him, and he had no understanding of the concepts of sarcasm, irony, or cynicism. He would have been utterly lost among the double-talking Therinians. But as I came to know him better and learn more about the culture of Chalcedony Islanders, wherein the women lived ordinary mortal lifespans and might take three or more mates over the course of their lives, I thought that it wasn’t the brevity of Lirios’s time on earth that engendered such earnest naïveté—surely there were children begging in the markets of Merabaht who had an unwelcome grasp of cynicism by the age of nine—it was the speed with which it passed.

  By the time he reached Jahno’s age, Lirios would be an old man; by the time he reached Evene’s age, he would be dead. The men of his people had no time to waste on such things, but sought to live every moment of life to its fullest.

  And by all the fallen stars, he was quick. I fancied myself fast, but Lirios could very nearly run rings around me. It frustrated him that it wasn’t enough to defeat me when we sparred, and I could not help but remember my own frustration at being unable to utilize my own speed and agility to get past Vironesh’s deceptively impenetrable guard in those early days.

  I couldn’t teach Lirios to channel Pahrkun’s wind, but I could teach him to improve his footwork and his strokes. Bit by bit, he attained enough skill to press me in our bouts, the number of openings he left narrowing. I was glad of it, for the challenge of sparring with the mayfly sharpened the skills I feared were suffering from neglect.

  At first, Zariya was unwontedly reserved with him, not wanting to lend false encouragement to his ardor. “It just doesn’t seem fair, my heart,” she murmured to me. “It’s not like it is with you and me. The Sacred Twins didn’t join us at birth. I don’t feel what he feels.”

  “I know,” I said. “He understands. The men of his folk don’t expect their queens to feel as they do.”

  She glanced at Lirios practicing his footwork, his wings a happy blur. “I just wish he wasn’t quite so excited about the notion of dying in my service.”

  I nodded in rueful agreement. “We’re working on it.”

  Zariya and Jahno spent a great deal of time conferring together, pooling their shared knowledge of everything they’d ever read about Papa-ka-hondras, which lay under the aegis of Shambloth the Inchoate Terror, about whom little was known except that it was a deity that instilled mind-rending fear in unwitting trespassers. They discussed the thousand ways the island might kill a person and speculated on ways we might avoid its myriad pitfalls.

  The first of those was the death-bladders.

  It was a clear morning when we drew within sight of the isle, which lay on the outermost verge of the great western current. From a distance, it looked a pleasant and uninhabited place with an apron of empty white sand beaches ringing its shores and a lush, green interior. It was only as we drew nearer that we could see that the calm seas surrounding it were filled with the translucent violet sacs of death-bladders bobbing in the water, stinging tentacles dangling beneath them. From time to time, one of the death-bladders would stir below the surface of the water, its deft tentacles entangling a darting fish.

  The sea-wyrms dropped their bits and dove, burbling, underwater. Our ship drifted untethered.

  Eeeio surfaced to raise his head and give an inquiring trill; Kooie nodded emphatically, his tendrils waving, and whistled in reply.

  Jahno looked hopeful. “Eeeio thinks these funny little cousins might listen if they ask them nicely to move, yah?”

  I would not in a thousand years have described the death-bladders thusly, but move they did at the sea-wyrms’ polite request, the deadly violet sacs drifting languorously to the east and west to clear a path to shore, tentacles trailing in their slow wake. I supposed that our crew meant to draw as near to shore as possible, then anchor in the shallow waters, whereupon we would have to swim for the shore as best we could, since we had no smaller secondary vessel. In this I was mistaken, for the wyrm-raiders had a unique method of beaching their unusual ship.

  Can you swim? Keeik signed to me as we neared the shore.

  “Yes,” I said. “But should we not discuss how we’re to transport the items we need? Not to mention my lady Zariya?”

  He gave me one of his
toothy grins, flicking his fingers in dismissal. No, you will see. Come.

  So I stripped down to the sleeveless tunic and cropped breeches I’d worn swimming at the Villa of Heart’s Ease, following the Elehuddin and Jahno as they dove into the sea with careless grace. Those who could not swim, which included Evene and Tarrok and Lirios with his fragile, useless wings, remained aboard the ship.

  Upon reaching the shore, we set about digging a long, deep trench in the gritty white sand, the considerable task made easier by the speed with which the Elehuddin were able to scoop sand with their large, webbed hands.

  “This wouldn’t work with any other kind of ship,” Jahno informed me as he dug. “But because of the sea-wyrms and because ooalu wood is so buoyant, we can beach it here. The trench will stabilize it.”

  “So the wyrms will pull it ashore?” I asked.

  Jahno shook his head, wiping his sweating brow with one forearm. “No, they cannot survive on land; the weight of their bodies is too great to allow them to return to the sea. They will sling it ashore.”

  Swimming as close as they dared, the wyrms lifted their heads to inspect the trench, whistling when they gauged it sufficient and returning to the ship to take up their bits. I’d grown accustomed to Eeeio and Aiiiaii and come to think of them as friends in their own right, but I had to own, it was intimidating to stand on the shore and see them bearing down on us at full speed, heads reared against the sky, the ship riding high and skimming over the waves behind them. At the last minute, they dropped their bits and veered left and right.

  Borne by momentum, the ship cleared the shore, grinding to a halt in the trench we’d dug for it.

  “I don’t suppose reversing the process will be easy,” I observed.

  “Easier than this,” Jahno said confidently. “When the time comes, we will move the tow-lines to the stern and Eeeio and Aiiiaii will pull us back into the water.” Kooie added something, laughing his cat-sneezing laugh. “Yah, as long as we didn’t make a mistake and do this at low tide! Otherwise we’ll be floating soon and have to do it all over again.”

  The ship secured, the others descended. Zariya was quite adept on the boarding ladder, though it was a large enough drop from the final rung that she suffered me to lift her down.

  Lirios, following her, halted in astonishment at the sight of me, his mouth agape. “Khai!” He pointed at me. “You’re female!”

  I glanced down at myself, at the thin soaked cotton clinging to my shallow breasts, which I hadn’t taken the time to bind. In all this time, it had not occurred to me that Lirios didn’t know I was bhazim, and I didn’t know if I was proud or indignant that he hadn’t noticed.

  “Khai is whatever he wishes to be,” Zariya said firmly, testing the sand with her canes. “There are more important things at hand.”

  He turned his wide-eyed gaze to her. “But she is someone’s queen!”

  “Or he is someone’s prince,” Evene said in an impatient voice. “Can we not get on with this?”

  Essee whistled softly for peace, signing a reminder that we were all brothers and sisters here.

  “Yah, we need to take stock of the situation.” Jahno dusted sand from his hands and glanced around. “Quiet here, eh?”

  It was quiet on the beaches of Papa-ka-hondras; unnaturally so. Behind us, the sea lapped the shore, death-bladders drifting soundlessly in the calm waters, the sea-wyrms feeding amongst them. A hundred yards before us, the green interior of the isle lurked in waiting silence. Here on the white sands, nothing grew; not grass or trees. No crabs scuttled underfoot, no mollusks burrowed beneath the sand. Not even seabirds flew overhead.

  “Are we sure it’s inhabited?” Tarrok inquired.

  Jahno and Zariya exchanged a glance. “My great-grandfather Liko met them.” He gestured toward the tree line. “He got half a league or so into the forest and lost a dozen men in the process. The Papa-ka-hondrans found them and led them back to the safety of the beach. There, the elders spent two weeks among what remained of my great-grandfather’s company learning the rudiments of the traders’ tongue, and when they did, they told him to go away and never come back.”

  “Well, that’s encouraging,” Evene remarked.

  “It was a different time,” Zariya murmured. “We are here out of necessity, not curiosity. Let us pray that it makes a difference. But let us take a closer look at what we’re up against, shall we?”

  “I’ll fetch the stink-lizard’s hide,” Jahno offered. “Maybe we can test our theory.”

  After he had done so, we ventured together to the verge of the interior.

  Here, the silence ended.

  The forest of Papa-ka-hondras was alive, rustling and whispering with quiet menace. Tall trees with broad crowns of spatulate green leaves trembled and released showers of acrid dew that left smoking holes in whatever it touched; unseen insects buzzed and whirred, hidden frogs croaked in an ominous chorus. Prickly vines writhed and contorted with an anguished hissing sound, tendrils reaching out blindly, causing us all to take a prudent step backward.

  Things I could not name made sounds I could not identify.

  I did not like this place. Everything about it conspired to say, You do not belong here, you are not welcome here.

  Beneath the tall green canopy, the terrain was sprawling with fallen logs dense with emerald moss, thick with shrubs and vines, dotted here and there with saplings. “I fear that’s going to be difficult for me to traverse,” Zariya commented.

  “Yah,” Jahno agreed. “We’ll have to rig something to carry you.” He glanced at Evene. “Is there anything the Opener of Ways can do to forge a passage?”

  She frowned in concentration, at length shaking her head in regret. “No. I’m not sure if I can explain, but this forest … it’s not just an assortment of trees and plants. On a level we can’t see, it’s one single living entity. There’s no way to part it. I’m sorry I’m of no use,” she added in misery. “I probably could have managed the death-bladders.”

  A small animal with bright bulging eyes scampered down the trunk of a tree; a large plant with clamshell-shaped leaves snapped shut upon it. There was a short agonized squeal, and then viscous material oozed from the plant’s needle-edged lips.

  My flesh crawled.

  “Well, we’ll just have to manage.” Zariya eyed the weeping bile-trees. “Lirios, are you quick enough to spread this hide under one of those without getting any of those drops on you?”

  “Of course, my queen!” He looked pleased at being assigned a task. The stink-lizard’s hide was actually in three pieces; it was one of the smaller wing segments that Jahno had brought. Lirios leapt over the writhing vines and darted under the canopy of the nearest bile-tree and opened the stiff hide beneath it, darting back to join us. The tree’s leaves trembled and a shower of droplets fell to patter harmlessly on the hide.

  “Ha!” Jahno grinned and clapped a hand on my shoulder. “So we have found a good use for your prize, dragon-slayer. We’re going to need poles, though,” he mused while Lirios retrieved the hide. “Lots of them.”

  I pointed at the scattered saplings, which looked to be immature bile-trees. At least none of them were weeping yet, and I hoped it would stay that way. “How many?”

  He scratched his chin and conferred with Seeak, one of the older Elehuddin. “Two long ones sturdy enough to use for a litter. We can use smaller ones for the hide shields. Maybe six of those?”

  “Shall I attempt it, Khai?” Lirios inquired, not quite looking at me.

  “No,” I said, drawing my yakhan. The mayfly’s slender sword didn’t have the cutting heft this task would require, and his blade strokes lacked the acuity to wield mine effectively. “But follow me and retrieve what I cut.”

  “I can fetch my blade and assist,” Tarrok offered.

  I shook my head, gazing into the forest, quieting my thoughts and feeling Pahrkun’s wind stirring in me. “I can see a path between one danger and another, brother. Let us do this.”

&nb
sp; He didn’t protest, and I didn’t blame him for it.

  “Be careful, my darling,” Zariya said softly.

  It went well enough at first. One need not be able to name a danger to sense and avoid it. I avoided the reaching vines, I dodged around the verdant shadows of weeping bile-trees, I gave the carnivorous clam-shell plants a careful berth. I stooped and slashed low and my wind-cutter sang in my fist, the curved blade severing the slender trunks of saplings at their base with a single stroke. One great, two small; another great, three more small. I let them fall and kept moving between one thing and another, trusting Lirios to gather them.

  And then it changed when I ventured deeper into the forest for the sixth small sapling. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a shadow; a shadow of something immense and only vaguely glimpsed moving in the green dimness. For reasons I could not name, it made my bowels clutch and tighten, my breath come short.

  “Khai?” I turned. Behind me, Lirios’s arms were filled with saplings. Pinpoints of glistening bile were gathered on their leaves, not profuse enough to collect and fall in droplets. The whites of his eyes were showing and his wings vibrated at a terrified pitch. “Oh, Khai! I think it’s coming for us.”

  Somewhere to our left, the unseen thing let out a deep cough and a low guttural growl. A questing vine wrapped around my ankle, stinging prickles sinking into my flesh. I wrenched my foot loose, severing the vine with my yakhan. My skin stung as though bitten by fire ants. The vine’s remnants clung to me, writhing.

  “Run!” I said to Lirios.

  We ran, the both of us; him with his arms filled with saplings, me with my naked blade clutched in my fist. You should not be here, the forest whispered behind us. You do not belong here.

  We burst out of the forest onto the white sand of the beach, Lirios flinging his bundle of saplings to the ground at our companions’ feet.

  “There!” I pointed behind us. “Did you not hear it? Do you not see it?”

  No one did; nothing was there. The forest had fallen silent.