Starborn

by Katie MacAlister

  “Of course we,” Idril answered me, ignoring Hallow’s protest. “Naturally, I will go with you.”

  “There’s no naturally about it—” I started to say, but Hallow, always diplomatic, interrupted me.

  “Even if we use the stones to open a portal to Eris, it is far too dangerous for you to accompany us,” Hallow told her. “The land is crawling with Harborym and blood priests. Not to mention the captain of them all, Racin. I’m sure you wish to aid in the release of Deo and the queen, but you are not learned in the ways of either chaos magic, or arcany, as Allegria and I are.”

  Her lips thinned again. “It does not follow that I am useless and unversed in battle.”

  “Oh really,” I blurted out, then heard how obnoxious I sounded. “My apologies, Lady Idril, I would never cast doubt upon anyone’s abilities based on their appearance, but you certainly don’t have the look of a warrior.”

  “And that is my most valuable skill,” she said, idly brushing a bit of nothing from her gauze sleeve. “People underestimate me.”

  I glanced at Hallow. He gave Idril a piercing look, one I knew was tinged with a bit of arcane power, and which gave a boost to his ability to perceive what was hidden from normal view, but after doing so, he gave a little shake of his head. “It would be far too dangerous. We would have to assign a guard to protect you, and we will need to go with as small a force as is possible if we hope to avoid detection by the Harborym and Racin.”

  Idril was silent for a moment before saying in her calm, unhurried voice, “All my life I have been told to remain behind. First it was my father, telling me battle was no place for me; then later, when I was forced to wed Lord Israel, I was left behind again.”

  “You were forced to marry him?” I asked, surprised. I glanced at Hallow, but he was only giving her half of his attention, no doubt working out the best way to get the stone away from Jalas. “Why?”

  She gestured the question away. “My father insisted. It was the only way Lord Israel could get him to commit to the Council of Four Armies. The why is unimportant—what does matter is the fact that I am tired of being told that I must remain behind while others fight. I am not a hindrance, as my father claimed. I do not need a contingent of guards to protect me, as Lord Israel—” she leveled Hallow a pointed look that he completely missed— “and others feel is necessary. I can protect myself. I can fight. I am my father’s daughter.”

  “Jewel of the High Lands,” I murmured, referring to one of the titles people used for her.

  She dismissed that with another wave of her rose-tipped fingers. “Jewels can be just as deadly as blades.”

  “Huh?” I asked, trying to puzzle that out.

  “Gems can be quite hard and sharp,” she said, a tinge of annoyance edging her tone.

  “Not as hard as a sword—”

  “Regardless,” she said loudly over my words, her golden gaze now filled with ire that was unfortunately directed at me. “This time, I will not be left behind. Either you agree to take me with you, or I will take actions into my own hands.”

  “Meaning what, exactly? Are you threatening us?” I asked, then nudged Hallow so he’d stop introspecting and pay attention to Idril’s bizarre statements.

  “I will not be left behind again,” she repeated. Then with a swish of her silk and gauze gown, she spun around and glided out of the room.

  “I think I’m in love,” Quinn said as he watched her depart, his fingers twitching. “Do you suppose her husband allows her to have boyfriends, too?”

  Dexia narrowed her eyes at him, then wound Idril’s hair around the doll’s neck a few times before smiling again, her sharp little teeth so very wrong in her child’s face.

  “What were you mulling over that had you ignoring Idril’s obvious threats to us?” I asked Hallow, elbowing him gently in the ribs.

  “Hmm?” He looked up from where he’d been frowning at the maps again. “I was wondering how difficult it would be to learn how to form arcany to take on the shape of another person. I haven’t seen any reference to such a thing in the notes that Exodius left, but if Avas can learn to take on the shapes of animals, surely the same must be possible for people.”

  “Would Thorn be able to help with that?” I asked, a ripple of unease making the hairs on my arms stand on end. For some reason, the thought of Hallow donning the appearance of another made me very nervous.

  “Possibly, but imbuing your spirit into an inanimate object after leaving the mortal world is a different matter from changing your form using arcany,” he said, then smiled and wrapped an arm around me. “Don’t look so unhappy, love. We’ll have five days sailing to the High Lands to work out the best way to tackle Jalas.”

  “Five days?” I shook my head. “We should go by land. It will be quicker.”

  “The pass is treacherous this time of year,” Hallow said. “Master Nix and I once tried to venture north through it, and it was nigh on impenetrable. We’ll go up the River Sian as far as the town of Threshing and take the road east from there.”

  “The valley road is far easier when the pass is frozen over,” Quinn agreed, pocketing a book from Lord Israel’s shelves. He caught me watching him and grinned, his charm palpable despite his petty thievery. “It’s slower going via the Sian than open water, but the Tempest is a light ship, and has a shallow draw, so she should get you to where you want to go.”

  With few other options open to us, we settled on that plan, and spent the rest of the day gathering supplies, soaking off the dust and salt of our last week of travel, and enduring Idril’s frosty looks and frostier manner.

  “You will at least allow me to travel with you to Ilam,” she said the following morning when fresh water, a few barrels of dried meat, and a couple of milk goats were loaded onto Quinn’s ship. I was in charge of making sure the supplies we’d bought were safely stowed and stood next to an odious individual named Rixius, once Deo’s body servant, who had lately affixed himself to Lord Israel. Rixius was insufferably rude, no doubt because he harbored secret passions that even I didn’t like to dwell on—I suspected he might be one of the turnip people—and was more or less a bane of my existence.

  “I thought you were supposed to stay here because you made your father insane?” I asked her as I watched a crate of vegetables dropped into the hold. I turned to Rixius, and asked, “Did the barley get stowed?”

  He made a face and shoved a board with several papers attached to it in my face. “Do you see the check mark? Yes? Then it means the barrel containing barley was placed aboard.”

  “Kiriah’s shiny hair, man! You don’t have to snap my head off just because I asked a question.”

  “That was ten days ago,” Idril said smoothly, ignoring Rixius. To my surprise, rather than toadying up to her, he was obviously pretending she didn’t exist. “By now Father must be over the worst of his fit—they normally last only a few weeks. And as you have made clear, Abet is not my home.”

  “Mmhmm.” I watched as a couple of men staggered by with more barrels, one marked dried peas, the other flour. I couldn’t think of any objection to Idril sailing with us to her homeland (other than the knowledge that she would continue to look utterly gorgeous even in the direst storm, while the second we set sail, my hair would twist itself into a mass of unruly curls, my clean tunic would somehow become stained, and I’d most likely acquire an unsightly muscle twitch on the side of my mouth) and said with as much grace as I could muster, “I don’t see a problem unless Quinn says there isn’t room for you.”

  Quinn, who had been up on a mast attending to rigging with one of his men, slid down it and immediately noticed Idril. He shimmied over to her side, taking her hand in his so he could slobber over it in a most ingratiating and blatant manner.

  “He said last night that I might have his cabin,” Idril said once she—with a smidgen of effort—managed to reclaim her hand. “Did yo
u not, captain?”

  “It would be my greatest honor for you to inhabit my personal cabin,” he agreed with alacrity. “I can think of nothing I would enjoy more, short of you allowing me to spread your hair across my naked torso, while at the same time my hands were full of your—”

  “Thank you,” Idril said quickly, giving him a graceful nod of her head. “My handmaidens have my things. Would you please show me to my cabin so they might put them away?”

  I pursed my lips when, mingled in between the tradespeople who were supplying the ship, a line of six women in the gold and amber colors that Idril favored, hauled aboard a number of satchels, bags, and even two wooden trunks. “I’m not sure if you’re bringing enough,” I told her as she turned to follow Quinn. “You never know how many gauzy, gossamer cobweb gowns you might need in the next five days.”

  Rixius gave a disgusted click of his tongue. “It will be good to have the keep back to its rightful inhabitants.”

  “I’m sure it will, although to be honest, I’m surprised to find you here. I thought you were Lord Israel’s shadow, ever on his heels.”

  “High Lord Israel himself asked that I stay behind and monitor the business pertaining to the keep,” Rixius answered in an officious manner.

  “Oh, it’s High Lord Israel now, is it?” I asked, nodding when one of the men carrying a large wicker crate full of fresh eggs called a greeting. I recognized him from the battle the previous year.

  “As befitting one who leads the Fireborn and controls Aryia,” Rixius said with smugness, just as if Lord Israel’s glory covered him, as well. I thought of pointing out the error of his ways, but at that moment Hallow, surrounded by four magisters wearing the white gowns and red cloaks of their kind and all apparently talking to him at the same time, slowly made his way down the dock toward the gang plank.

  “She is the most exquisite, loveliest creature I’ve ever seen,” Quinn said when he emerged from the cabin that he’d handed over to Idril. He gazed back at the door to the cabin with eyes that could only be described as googly with infatuation. “Did you see her hair? I just want to rub myself all over that hair.”

  “I can arrange for that,” Dexia said as she strolled over to us, a dead rabbit slung over one shoulder. Judging by its squashed, muddy appearance, I gathered it had been run over by a cart. “I bet I could find a perfectly good curse to cause baldness…”

  Quinn heaved one last besotted sigh, and turned his attention to the crew, chivvying them to get the ship ready to sail.

  “Baldness is good,” I said thoughtfully. “I imagine that would evoke some sort of emotion from the icy block that is her heart.”

  Dexia looked thoughtful. “Ice floats.”

  “Yes, it does.” I watched her, wondering what horrible things were going on in her mind.

  She moved her gaze to the rail. “So if she went overboard, she wouldn’t drown immediately. She’d just float there, being nibbled on by fishes. That might be better than baldness.”

  “You really have a dark, dark soul,” I told her, more than a little disturbed by the way her mind worked.

  “What soul would that be?” she asked, her childish eyes wide in question.

  I backed away slowly. “Er…just so. Idril’s heart isn’t really made of ice, so why don’t you pretend I never said that, and you never had the thought of throwing her overboard to be eaten by fish, all right?”

  Dexia ignored my request and narrowed her eyes in thought. “Warts. How could I have forgotten about them? Warts are very easy to manifest. If she was covered in great, crusty warts, one with thick black hairs, perhaps a couple of which might ooze…yes, that is definitely something worth thinking about. I will need some toad leg ferns, but those are easy enough to come by. It’s only the lark’s tongues that are difficult…” She drifted off, her departure making me feel as if Kiriah had come out from behind a black cloud.

  By the time Quinn shouted to Hallow to get a move on or we’d miss the tide, it was evident that my husband’s ears had been filled by the few magisters who’d survived the Harborym’s previous attacks.

  “I’m surprised to see there were four magisters left,” I told Hallow a short while later, when all the porters and Idril’s handmaidens had departed the ship, and we made our slow way out of the harbor. “I thought most of them were consumed by chaos magic while trying to destroy the portals.”

  “Not quite all of them, thankfully,” he answered, pulling me up against his side. As expected, my hair immediately whipped free of the ribbon with which I’d tied it back, and blew all over Hallow’s face. He pulled a few strands of it out of his mouth and eyes and added, “None of them knew of ways to adopt the skin of another, let alone an animal. That surprises me. The grace of Alba which all magisters have learned is based in earth magic.”

  “Yes, but it is mostly used in the healing arts. Or at least so Sandor claimed whenever I begged her to teach me how to remove the toes of the butcher’s son, who repeatedly tried to put his hands inside my robe.”

  Hallow looked startled, pulling yet another strand of my hair from his face before tucking it behind my ear. “The butcher’s son tried to touch you?”

  “Only once. Sandor said the grace of Alba was not to be used for such trivial things, though, so I never did learn how to wield it.”

  “Don’t tell me,” he said with a slow smile. “You discussed the matter with Kiriah and took care of him yourself?”

  I grinned back at him. “I would have, except Sandor had already done it. She might have been unreasonable about giving up the moonstone, but she really did not tolerate men taking advantage of any of her priests. Did you see that Idril is on board?”

  “I did. And can I say how proud I am of you for not referring to being blighted by her presence?”

  “You may show me as many physical forms of appreciation as you please,” I allowed, ignoring the guilty memory of the conversation with Dexia.

  “And so I shall. Earlier today, I made a stop by a little shop which specializes in a form of restraint that I think you’ll find…oh, no! No! He can’t be back already!”

  “Thorn? He can’t be. You only sent him off a few days ago.”

  “Almost a week. He certainly should not have been able to fly to Ilam and then to Abet in that time. Kiriah’s breath, he’s already yammering…yes, we are naturally thrilled almost unto death to see you.”

  A shadow flickered overhead when Thorn flew low over us, swooping through the masts until he alighted on his accustomed perch of the black wooden staff on Hallow’s back.

  “We are surprised you’re back so quickly, however—he’s not! Did you get him out? Yes, we heard about that bear. No. No, we plan to go straight there. Yes, she is looking particularly fine. Allegria always looks fine. It’s one of the many things I love about her. And I’m sure she’s equally as fond of you. Why don’t you stop talking for a few minutes so I can tell her? Yes, I know that was rude, and I apologize for my abruptness, but I can’t think when you fill my head with chatter.” Hallow made a face, and said quickly to me, “Thorn returned because there was nothing he could do in Ilam. Evidently Jalas’s mood did not improve when Idril left, and he threw Israel and his company into the depths of his keep, where they are locked away in various unpleasant cells. I will tell her, but you have to be quiet. Thorn says Jalas’s pet bear tried to eat him and patrols the passages outside the cells as a guard.”

  “That’s just bizarre,” I said.

  “What part? Using a tamed animal as a guard?” he asked.

  “All of it. Those aren’t the actions of a sane man, Hallow. I begin to think that Idril was right and her father has lost his wits.”

  “Either way, now we have Lord Israel to rescue,” he said with a sigh that I felt go right down to his toes.

  I held him tight, wishing again that he wouldn’t take on so much responsibility, but knowin
g that his sense of honor was as deeply ingrained in him as lightweaving was in me.

  We’d just have to add Lord Israel to our list of chores to perform before we wrestled the moonstone away from Jalas.

  Or his bear…

  Chapter 8

  “Does the she-witch travel with you?”

  Idril folded her hands together, mindful as ever of the need to present a placid, unruffled demeanor, no matter how much she wished to yell at her father. And shout that she was innocent of all wrong doing.

  Not to mention demanding that people stop treating her as if she was a doll made of fragile glass. She was Idril, Jewel of the High Lands, daughter of the most ruthless man alive in Poronne, and quite capable of taking care of herself, thank you.

  If only others saw that fact.

  “I am here, Father,” she said, gazing with apparent serenity at her father, who stood before the entrance of his keep in Ilam, legs braced in battle stance, his arms crossed over his long red beard. Tucked away in an inner pocket of her gown, her fingers curled around the toad-sized rock that she had picked up on the ride to Ilam after docking at Threshing, the closest river town. It was a good rock, a solid rock, one that was smoothed by centuries of tidal currents in the estuary, and which fit perfectly in her hand. She thought lovingly of the rock even though her voice carried no emotion but that of the mildest interest. “I hope you have been well in my absence.”

  “Well! Well? If I have been any better, it’s because you weren’t here to pour poison down my throat at every opportunity! Why are you here, arcanist? Why did you bring the she-witch back? Is it part of your overlord’s plan to destroy me? Kiriah’s hairy wart, is that a Bane of Eris with you? I thought she was killed with the others…no, they didn’t die, did they?” Jalas’s golden eyes, so like Idril’s, narrowed in suspicion. “That was part of Israel’s devious plan to rid the High Lands of my tribe.”

  Idril considered him, her temper—which could be just as prodigious as her sire’s—well in check. His face was red with fury, but he looked unchanged, no better or worse for her absence. She sensed something different about him, however, an aura of suppressed excitement that both surprised and baffled her. “No one wishes to rid Aryia of either you or the tribesmen,” she said with her usual calmness. “Especially Lord Israel. You know that he has long viewed you as a valuable ally.”