StarCrossed

by Elizabeth C. Bunce

  “I have a plan.”

  “A plan? Does Lady Lyllace know?”

  “No.”

  “And why not?”

  My face was hard. “Because what she doesn’t know, she can’t give up under torture.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Werne is coming.”

  The prince hesitated a moment, letting the words sink like stones in water. “Start over,” he said.

  I sketched out the situation: Meri’s kernja-velde, the arrival of the Inquisitor and his men, the incredible danger we were all in if Werne found Wierolf here. He frowned and heard me out, but when I finished, nearly breathless, he shook his head.

  “I’m the prince — I have nothing to fear from the king’s Inquisitor.”

  “You’ve been in hiding for a reason,” I reminded him.

  “Yes,” he said slowly, “and I’m still not entirely sure why, exactly.”

  “Because people are trying to kill you, remember?”

  He shook his head, but fingered the scar. He said nothing — he didn’t have to. I recognized the look of someone lying to himself. “But the Inquisitor —”

  “Won’t care that you’re the prince. Trust me, Highness — I have known him all my life, and he is without mercy, without inhibition. And if the Lord High Inquisitor discovers His Royal Highness, Wierolf of Hanival, in a nest of Sarist traitors —”

  He hauled himself to his feet. “All the more reason I should stay, help protect them!”

  “Protect? Are you crazy? You’re barely fit to stand. What kind of protecting do you think you’ll be able to do here?”

  “Digger, you worry too — Aaagggh!”

  My hand shot out and jabbed him under the breastbone, where the scar was still healing. The prince stumbled backward with a gasp, all the color drained from his face. “Point taken,” he panted. “He really scares you, doesn’t he?”

  “He should scare everybody.”

  Wierolf struggled into his shirt, looking like he wanted to say something more.

  “Can we talk about this when you’re not in mortal danger?” I said.

  “We’re in mortal danger every second of our lives,” he said gravely.

  “Now you sound like me.”

  He grinned at that, and against my will, I had to smile back. He was good at that — at looking deeply into people and knowing exactly what to say to them. It would be a good skill in a king.

  If he survived that long. “Can you move a little faster, Highness? I don’t know how much time we have, and they’re waiting.”

  He looked up sharply from his coat laces. “Who’s waiting?”

  “That’s a little hard to explain. You kind of need to see them.”

  A worried crease lined his forehead. “Just how planned is this plan of yours?”

  Finally I got the man dressed and his few belongings packed. As Wierolf crossed the threshold before me, he gave one last glance around the room. Strange, indelible things had happened in this room the last several weeks, things that had changed both of us. I knew I wouldn’t soon forget them — and it seemed Wierolf of Hanival, prince of the realm, would not either.

  We took the kennels route, though Wierolf stopped to say hello to the sleepy dogs, crouching down to put his fingers through the cages.

  “Aren’t you a pretty beast?” he murmured as a slavering hound turned to pudding at his touch. “Those are very impressive spots —”

  “Wierolf!”

  He swung his head around. “Sorry.” As we resumed our flight, he said, “I could hear them barking, sometimes. Before you appeared out of the shadows, sometimes it was the only way I knew there was still a real world out there.”

  “Yes, and if anyone hears them barking now, we’re done for. Down here.” Using the path Meri had shown me, I led the prince down through the hidden entrance near the pentice, taking odd turnings through the roughest and most abandoned path I could plot out for us, avoiding the bits that ran past wine cellar and mews. On my own I could make up a lie if I were caught, but I’d be hard-pressed to explain why I was making off with the prince. As we went, I explained how the tunnels below the old castle continued through the mountain.

  “Unless they’ve collapsed in the last few weeks, they go straight to the Broad Valley.”

  Wierolf halted. “Collapsed?” he said, a note of alarm in his voice.

  I shrugged. “Don’t worry — they’ve been using them all winter. I’m sure it’s safe.”

  “They?”

  “Your new allies.”

  At last we came to the cold rough stones that marked the foundations of the oldest part of Bryn Shaer, where the tunnels left the castle and became caves beneath the mountain. I fairly pushed Wierolf into the passage. He had to duck — I’d forgotten how bloody tall he was. I scurried ahead and found a lamp and the flint that hung beside it. A second later, leaping yellow light danced with shadows on the cave walls.

  “Tiboran’s breath — you weren’t kidding,” Wierolf said, coming forward to take the light. I hefted his pack over my shoulder and let him wander down the path ahead of me.

  A few hundred yards in, beneath the makeshift camp in the old tomb, we found them. Wierolf stopped short and gave me a questioning glance, lifting the lamp to shine on a cluster of expectant, anxious faces. Faces I didn’t need the light to see.

  The whole band was there, men, women, and children crouching against the tunnel walls, waiting. I made out a handful of violet cloaks, more than one tattoo — on hands, necks, foreheads. A great many packs and bundles lay about them; Hosh sat patiently swishing her tail against the cave floor. These people didn’t look like a mighty army that would boldly march our prince to safety; they looked like what they were — a band of half-starved refugees. Well, so was Wierolf. He’d fit right in.

  Closed, expressionless faces turned our way, and for one freezing moment I decided that this had been a dreadful error. I was going to get the prince killed — if not by these people, then along with them.

  “Digger?” Wierolf’s voice was soft, questioning.

  As the light filled up the space, I saw Meri speaking with Stagne. She turned, saw Wierolf, and then froze, eyes wide with astonishment. A second later, she dropped smoothly to one knee, her head bowed. Every single person with her did the same. It gave me a strange, hollow feeling, all those men in violet bowing to the prince.

  “Your Highness,” Meri breathed, and the prince strode up to her and took her hands, lifting her from the rocky floor.

  “Prince Wierolf, Lady Merista Nemair, heir to Bryn Shaer,” I said. That almost sounded like it was supposed to.

  “Well met, Lady Merista,” Wierolf said smoothly, and Meri dipped another perfect curtsy — and it was all just so ridiculous! We were in a freezing cave, for gods’ sake, at the dead of night, with a band of outlaw magicians and their dog, all running away from the Inquisition, and they were playing nob.

  Meri clutched my arm. “I knew it!” she whispered fiercely. “I knew you and my mother were hiding something, since that night Yselle came for you.” But instead of hurt or disappointed, she seemed excited. “My prince,” she said gravely, “please allow me to introduce a good friend of this house, Tnor Sarin Reynart.”

  From out of the cluster of bodies, a wiry man in gray rose and doffed his hood, freeing the mane of wild hair. “My prince,” Reynart echoed Meri. Wierolf was staring at Reynart, a puzzled, pained expression on his face. The wizard took a step closer. “We are relieved your royal person has recovered from such grievous injuries.”

  “You —” the prince said. “It was you. At Olin — you saved my life.”

  Reynart was smiling. “And my companions, Highness. The lord of Olin has been a friend to us; long have our people camped in those lands. We knew the lady of Bryn Shaer has a reputation as a skilled physician — among other things — and that she could care for you in better comfort than could we.” He drew one of his companions forward, the plump woman with the pet
crow. “Kespa, our healer.”

  She bowed briefly, then set upon the prince, a hand on his fore head, lifting his shirt hem, nodding with satisfaction. I saw the tattoos on her palms, winking violet in the lamplight. “The touch of the Goddess can heal,” she said, standing on tiptoe to peer inside Wierolf’s collar, where the musket ball had struck, “and we can ease hurt, cool a fever, sometimes even stave off Marau, for a time — but I don’t have your Lady Lyllace’s knowledge of anatomy and surgery. You required a real physician.”

  Wierolf took her hands. “Perhaps this is knowledge that may be shared one day.”

  Reynart’s serenity never wavered. “Highness, we are blessed to serve you. Only command us, and we obey.”

  Wierolf gave a strange half grin and looked at me. “Actually I believe Celyn is giving the orders here tonight.”

  I explained again how the tunnels led to Breijardarl, how Reynart’s men would slip beneath the mountains just as the Inquisitor rode above them. Soon, easily, Reynart and Wierolf took over on their own, Reynart gesturing into the tunnels, Wierolf listening keenly and asking questions, both oddly at ease. The prince was among his people; as Reynart introduced his companions, Wierolf reached out to touch hands, heads, dogs, knelt beside a small girl with wide eyes who held her purple-clad dolly tight to her chest.

  I hung back, feeling useless but satisfied. This would work after all. With a strange, closed-off feeling in my chest, I backed off a few steps and turned to leave. Tucked together under a magically reinforced seam in the cave ceiling, Meri and Stagne held each other closely, her dark head against his fair one, both of them flickering with their strange, watery light. He clutched the scrap of her unfinished embroidery.

  I heard my name. I turned to see Reynart standing near me, holding something toward me in his tattooed hands. “Celyn of Bryn Shaer,” he said solemnly. “Friend to Merista, the Reijk-sarta.”

  “The Channeler,” I said, and he nodded, pleased.

  “I have spoken with the others,” he said. “We believe that we may have an answer to your magic.” He cupped a tiny book, no bigger than his palm, bound in dark velvet that was worn and thin at the corners. I reached toward him, and a flume of light poured over and frothed the air around our hands. “I told you of two magics — reijk-sarta, the gathering, and kel-sarta, the shaping. But this ancient book, passed down among hidden mages for many centuries, speaks of a third magic, the rarest of all: erynd-sarta. The finding.”

  I repeated the word softly to myself, and something felt warm and alive — and new — inside me. Placing the book in my hands, Reynart opened it to a page of faded script, hand-inked an impossibly long time ago: And unto the world Sar gave a third blessing, the Eryndeth, or Finder, given the power to see the Breath of the Goddess, or track Her footsteps.

  “When magic was abundant, there was no need for someone with a special skill to locate it,” Reynart said. “All knew where it could be found. But not now.” He was smiling, but there was something sad in it. “Your path lies elsewhere,” he said. “You are called by a different god. But when you hear the voice of Sar speak your name, you will find us again.” He closed my fingers around the book, turning back into the darkness toward his men. I held the little volume tightly, awash with wonder. Eryndeth — the Finder. Well, I may not have a real name, but I was certainly collecting a share of nicknames that fit.

  “Digger.” Wierolf strode toward me, across the cave. “A plan,” he said, a playful note in his voice. “A good one, I think.”

  I had to smile. “You’re not afraid of small spaces, I hope.”

  Wierolf barked out a powerful laugh. “Come with us?”

  I paused, a hand lifted to my mouth as I realized it had never occurred to me. I could stroll down the tunnels along with the prince and the Sarists, and never have to face Werne and the Inquisition. “It’s tempting,” I said.

  “But you’re not coming.” It wasn’t a question, and I found myself shaking my head.

  “I guess not.”

  He reached a hand toward me, held mine tightly. “Thank you, Digger. And good luck.” As he pulled his hand away from mine, I realized he’d left something small and smooth in my palm. In the flickering light, I held it up: a small disk of wood, no bigger than a coin, in the shape of the prince’s new device. The lion passant, against the rising sun.

  “My favor,” the prince said. “Should you ever need it.” And then, quick as that, he stepped away from me and raised both arms in a salute. “You are braver than you know,” he said firmly. He looked my way one last time. “May Tiboran guide you home.”

  Meri and I went back to his room after that and stripped away the evidence. It took hours and a heavy stone I’d pried from a crumbling tunnel wall to break apart the bed — all the gods damn me, I thought those things were supposed to be portable! — but before we’d lost all the night, Wierolf’s chamber looked like what it was supposed to be: an adjunct to the stillroom. We left the prayer stand but dragged in a little shelf, stashed bottles every where, spilled a little oil on the floor, lit and put out a tiny fire to scorch a circle on the shelf and fill the room with heady, acrid smoke. It was good work: I was a practiced forger, after all, with experience making things appear to be what they were not.

  Still, I had to quell a little pang as we rolled a dirty rug over the floor. I’d never see him again, but that was hardly new; I’d parted from most of the people I’d known in my life. Funny how one winter at Bryn Shaer could make me grow attached to people I shouldn’t even know. I leaned up against the door frame and sniffed. It was a tiny, stuffy, poorly heated room; I should be glad to be rid of it.

  By the time we climbed back out to the main corridors, darkness was starting to fade from the sky. Tired as I was, I wasn’t quite ready to just slip into bed. I took Meri out onto the battlement, where I’d once watched her meet with Stagne.

  I leaned over the wall, looking over the spread of mountains. This early they were barely more than hulking shadows, tipped with moonslight. Six moons in various phases dotted the sky — all but Zet, protector of royalty, who must have ducked into hiding with her prince. I hoped she’d watch over him, wherever Reynart and his band took him. Tiboran was a fat pink blob to the northeast, disappearing behind the crest of a hill, or into a cloud, or into a broad valley somewhere — it was hard to tell, in the darkness. I grinned at it. Fair enough; I could do this on my own.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  At dusk on the eve of midwinter, the Inquisition came riding to Bryn Shaer. And they brought the king’s army with them.

  Everyone gathered on the east tower, where we had watched the avalanche pin us to the mountain, to see the soldiers flood through the pass and spread up the sides of the mountain like poison in a wound. Beside me, Meri made a stricken sound and clutched tight to my arm. I felt sure we’d done right, sending the prince off with the Sarists, but as the Green Army crawled inexorably toward us, I wondered. If Werne and the Confessors had found Wierolf here, would that be a big enough prize to leave us alone?

  I knew the answer to that.

  I had seen no more of Berdal’s “friends” from the mountains, but I knew Lord Antoch rode out every morning with Meri, and I hoped our little Bryn Shaer family was growing. The missing member of our strange assemblage had not gone unnoticed however. The morning after Meri and I had our last late-night adventure, Lady Lyll confronted me. We were in the solar, putting the finishing stitches in Meri’s ceremonial embroidery.

  “Celyn, dear, I seem to have . . . mislaid an item of some value. You would not have seen it anywhere, by chance?”

  “Item, milady?” I looked up. Lady Cardom was watching us over the edge of her embroidery hoop.

  Lyll bent closer. “This is no time for games. Do you know where he is?”

  I studied my own needlework. “No, milady, not precisely. And more to the point, nor do you or Lord Antoch or Meri. Or Daul. But he’s safe. I’m certain of it.”

  She looked vexed — she was v
exed, but there was nothing she could do about it. Finally she sighed. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

  Now, back at the battlement, Lord Antoch lifted his spyglass — that new, heretical invention from Corlesanne, with which we could look up and examine the faces of the moons — and trained it on the Breijarda Velde. “I’m counting about two hundred fifty men,” he said.

  Lyll reached for the glass. “Why so few? That’s not an invasion force.”

  “No,” Cwalo put in. “It’s a statement.”

  I understood him. It meant Bardolph could reach us here, at the most remote place in Llyvraneth, and that only a handful of soldiers would be required to subdue any brewing rebellion.

  “Our supplies are low; we can’t hold out a siege.”

  “No siege,” said Lyll. “No siege engines. But perhaps they mean to occupy us.”

  A tremor of revulsion went through me. Greenmen billeted in every Bryn Shaer bedroom, touching the Nemair’s belongings — and the Nemair’s guests? I turned to Lyll. Her face was set, impassive, even though all her plans were surely at an end. Even with the men Berdal had brought, we were no match for the king’s soldiers.

  “What’s going to happen?” I asked.

  She was grim. “The Inquisitor and his men will ride to the gates, and we’ll let them in. There will be some formalities — an exchange of greetings and such — and then Werne will request we give lodging to his men.”

  “And if you do?”

  Lyll shook her head. “We’ll be prisoners in our own home. They will hold us here until Bardolph decides we’re no longer a threat.”

  “How long will that be?”

  She just looked at me. “Forever.”

  I felt sick. I had done this — Daul and I had worked together to bring Werne here.

  We stayed there in the fading light as the Green Army filled in the dip below Bryn Shaer, that impossibly narrow ridge of plain that was the only place to launch an attack on the castle. They were all in green, the same bright-grass color, and it was hard to tell them apart: sol dier from Greenman, ordinary priest from Confessor. But one figure stood apart.