The Black Star (Book 3)

by Edward W. Robertson

  "We don't leave the Pocket. When they come by sea, we seal the caves."

  Blays sighed and closed his eyes. "Look, the fact you have to lie about it only proves you do have contact with outsiders. Last time I was here, all I saw was women. Unless you've got a very lucky man tucked away in a cave, new recruits have to come from somewhere."

  A streamer of mist shrouded the sun. In the dimmed light, she looked much older. "The man down there. Is he here to kill you?"

  "I don't know what he intends. To blather at me, probably. But he's crazy enough to try to haul me away with him." He rubbed his hands down his face. "Does it matter? I'm sick of being hunted. I want to learn what you do. To be free."

  "How do I know you're not a spy?"

  "For who, the guy I'm trying to warn you about? Let him up here and see for yourself."

  She smiled slightly. "Come with me to the shore. We'll see what the others have to say."

  She turned and squelched through the muck. Ahead, gnarled black pillars rose from the plateau like the arms of plague victims. Cold fog billowed through the rocks, sliming them with condensation. It smelled like salt and the flatulent scent of peat. Insects squirmed in the lichen.

  The mist enveloped them, reducing visibility to fifty yards. The woman picked a careful trail through the columns and stagnant pools. Adrift in the fog, the walk felt eternal, yet it couldn't have lasted more than fifteen or twenty minutes. Eventually, the plateau fell away, exposing a narrow strand of beach and an endless gray sea. She walked to a staircase built into the cliff and descended to the sand.

  "You will wait here," she said.

  "Righto."

  She moved to the cliff face, brushed aside a leather curtain, and entered a dark cave. Blays stood there a few minutes, rubbing his hands together to warm them back up after the chill of the plateau. The afternoon was growing late and a bitter wind swept off the sea, bringing the smell of kelp and hollowed crabs. A group of women emerged from the cave. He stood up and smiled, but they ignored him and headed up the staircase to the bluff. It only took him a second: they were off to deal with Dante.

  He sat back down, got cold, stood up and wandered the strand, careful not to stray too far from the cave. Mist swirled overhead, but the beach itself was clear; the steam appeared to be materializing as currents of air moved from the sea to the land. Miles to the north and south, the cliffs curved inward, encircling Pocket Cove in a solid wall of stone. It was the world's finest fortress. And if Dante could be believed, the People of the Pocket had built it themselves to keep them safe from the conquering Gaskan hordes.

  Blays could almost believe it.

  The sun glowed from the waves so fiercely he thought it might melt the sand into glass and him into jam. It hung above the water, a perfect red ball he could stare right at without blinking. It touched the horizon and slid away with the slow, steady momentum of a beast with no fear of predators. As soon as its red rim winked behind the blue ledge, the woman appeared from the cave.

  "You can stay," she said. "For now."

  Blays grinned. "I was afraid men weren't allowed."

  "Rarely. They have a habit of trying to take this place for themselves."

  "Well, I promise you'll find me as pliable as that pile of goo next to the seaweed over there."

  "I'll take that in the spirit it's intended."

  "So," he said. "Got a name?"

  "Minn." She walked toward him. Twilight softened her features, made her look younger again. "And it's the last name you get to learn until we know you."

  "Fair enough. Now can we go inside? I'm freezing."

  Minn swiveled her head toward the leather curtain shielding the cave mouth. "That's where the People of the Pocket live. Are you a Person of the Pocket?"

  "Is this a trick question?"

  "You'll live here." She gestured to the beach. "As we did when we first came here."

  Blays frowned. "If that's how it's going to be, it would have been nice to have some warning. I could have built a hut while you were in there talking."

  "We weren't expecting visitors, were we?"

  "Your house, your rules. But if you come out here tomorrow and I'm a solid block of ice, at least have the courtesy to drop me in something alcoholic."

  Minn laughed twice, a quick ha-ha that sounded rusty from disuse. "I'll get you started."

  She turned back toward the blank cliffs. On reaching their base, she drew a razor from her belt and touched it to the back of the first knuckle of the third finger of her left hand. Shadows bloomed in her hands. As Blays watched, a wall of rock six feet long and three feet high emerged from the sand.

  "You can handle the rest," she said.

  "How about dinner?" he said. "Or am I catching my own fish, too?"

  "Can you?"

  "With this?" He smacked the sword on his hip. "On a calm lake on a clear day. In churned-up waves approaching dark, I think I'll wind up eating sand cakes."

  She pointed to the mist-fed falls a couple hundred yards upshore. "There's your water. Tonight, I'll bring you food. After that, your needs are your own to meet."

  "I regret this immediately," he said.

  Without another word, she returned to the caves. He took a deep breath and walked down to the tideline to gather driftwood and carry it back to the stone wall Minn had conjured up. But there wasn't enough for a roof, let alone walls, and night was coming on fast. He propped a loose rafter system between the wall and the cliffs, then jogged back to the water to gather dried kelp. Tiny black flies swarmed in protest, and it was crackly and foul-smelling, but it was either that or shiver in the breeze all night. He layered it over the rafters. He had a half-decent roof by the time Minn showed up.

  She'd lied: not only did she bring him a wooden bowl of soup (fish and green onions), but she'd brought a blanket, too. She said her goodnight and returned to the cave. Blays ate, tucked the bowl inside his hovel, and walled both sides up with kelp and driftwood. By the time he finished, it was dark and the wind had calmed to flickers. Inside the hut, which smelled like salt and sea-stink, he found the blanket was just warm enough for him to drowse off. The coastal weather was a touch warmer than it had been inland, but unless he could build himself a firepit (and find both fuel and flint), he figured he had about a month to endear himself to the People of the Pocket. If he still wasn't inside by then, he'd have to run away to someplace that had actual shelter.

  Yet he went to bed unworried, feeling as light as the mist floating above the sands. It wasn't just that there had been no sign of Dante. It was the lightness of a new beginning. The purity of that allowed him, for the moment, to forget the rest.

  He beat the sun to rise. There was plenty of moon, so he took the opportunity to comb the beach in search of anything useful. A mile downshore, a spur of rock extended into the water. Dark oblong shapes crusted the boulders: mussels. He wasn't hungry enough to eat them raw, but it was always good to know you had a ready source of individually-wrapped snot-like ocean creatures at hand.

  He found a frayed length of rigging and slung it over his shoulders. Thatches of broad-leafed grass sprouted from the sand. He pulled up an armload and carried it back to his hovel. As light filtered in behind the eastern cliffs, he stripped away the kelp and clumsily wove himself a new (and much better smelling) roof.

  Minn walked out as he was sitting in the sand rubbing his stomach and thinking about walking back down to the rocky spur.

  "You're still here," she said.

  "Despite your best efforts."

  She eyed his shelter. "It looks like you'll be staying."

  He laughed. "That depends on whether my stomach agrees to hold down raw mussels."

  "The stems of the grass you used for your roof are quite nourishing."

  "Is that so? Do I have time to go fetch some, or is it time for my first lesson?"

  "You have time," she said. "When the stomach is angry, the memory's lazy."

  He watched her a moment, expecting her to crack a smi
le, but had no such luck. He winked at her and padded up the beach. This time, he tore the grass out at the base, gnawing on the thick white stems. It was salty, but there was a sweetness to it, too. And it filled his belly, so he couldn't complain. Except about it being grass. Once he'd had enough, he walked back to Minn, who'd remained on the shore across from his shelter.

  "So far, my role appears to be that of a new dog," he said. "I'm not allowed inside the home. You're my master. Fortunately for you, I'm housebroken. Sound about right?"

  "That's the gist," she said. "To them, you're a mongrel. You should be thrown out. But I respect what you want. Enough to show you how to get it."

  "Excellent. So is there a potion or something I can take to get my friend off the smell of my blood? Or are you simply masters of disguise?"

  "We use the nether."

  He threw up his hands. "Oh, shit!"

  She drew back her head and the years accumulated in her face. "That's a problem?"

  "It's ten or twenty problems. All of which boil down to the fact I'm not a nethermancer."

  "We all have the nether inside us."

  "We've all got a brain in our skulls, too," he said. "But it turns out very few of us are capable of using it."

  She turned to face the wind blowing off the sea. "Anyone can be taught to use the nether."

  "Is that why its practitioners are valued more highly than the king's semen?"

  Minn laughed a real laugh. "You're right about this place. We bring people in from outside. But a recruit's natural talent is only one factor in our decision."

  He bit his lip. "You have ways of developing it."

  "To degrees the king would kill for. Can I make you as potent as your friend? No. But if you're willing to work, I can teach you to disappear."

  "Just like that?" Blays said.

  "No," she said. "Not like that at all."

  "Then it sounds like we'd better get to it."

  She turned to give the water a long, meaningful look. "We begin with the Four Seasons. The first is Fall."

  "Not on any calendar I've ever seen."

  "You're in a place you've never been," Minn said. "Expect different. In the autumn, the mist clears from the water, and the islands reveal themselves. That is why Fall comes first—because first, you must see."

  "Right," Blays said. "See what?"

  "The nether."

  "And I do that how?"

  Minn shrugged. "That's up to you."

  "This doesn't feel like you're doing much teaching."

  "It's best to try to see for yourself."

  "And if I can't?"

  "Then we'll see."

  Blays rolled his eyes. "Can you at least tell me where it is?"

  "Everywhere," she said.

  "Well, then this should be a breeze."

  He closed his eyes, because that's what the supplicants of Urt did when they got serious about seeking out the truth. Flecks of color drifted against a field of black. After a few moments, Minn's feet crunched away through the sand.

  He stood like that for a long time. The sun rose, touching his skin. He put the light to his back and faced the sea. The breakers sighed up the beach. Birds called so sadly you'd think someone had stolen their lunch. Soon, he got stuck on his breathing. Breath was a vital part of being good at waving a sword around, and he had trained himself to become well acquainted with the tidal influx of air into his lungs, but this felt different. For the first time, he was spine-deep aware that it wasn't an inevitable process. One day, it would stop. And now that he was focused on it, what if he suddenly took that focus away? Would his breath stop? What if he didn't notice, would he pass out? If so, would his body remember to do what his brain had forgotten?

  Probably not a productive area of thought. He was getting off track. And "close your eyes so that you might see" was the kind of stupid crap Cally would have yelled at Dante. Blays opened his eyes, blinking against the harsh yellow glare. For a moment, he thought he saw shadows waving at the edge of his vision, but it was just his eyes adjusting.

  He sat on the shore and gazed over the ocean, relaxing his focus so it didn't settle on any one particular thing. That felt like a good way to go about it: don't miss the forest for the trees and all that. He tried to ignore his breathing. The sea was still gray. Gulls banked in the steady wind. He tried to let the corners of his mind sort of...reach out there and wave to the nether, entice it to show itself, but by the time the sun climbed up to its noontime throne, all he had to show for himself was an empty belly and swollen impatience.

  At that moment, Minn showed up behind him. "How does it go?"

  "I'm not seeing anything," he said. "Besides all the usual stuff."

  She nodded. "Are you hungry?"

  "Would it matter?"

  "Those who work hard eat free."

  "Then bring on lunch. All this sitting has been grueling."

  She left him to it. Whatever "it" was. He had the suspicion he was wasting time. Not that he minded idling about. Or sprawling, lounging, loitering, or snoozing. But when there was a thing that needed doing but which wasn't being done, he got restless. Terribly so. To the point where he was apt to do something stupid just for the sake of doing something. He didn't know how he could get in trouble on an empty beach, but he had the feeling he might find a way.

  Minn returned with more stew. This time it had lemongrass in it. Probably to conceal the fact it was the same stew from last night. Blays was too hungry to complain. Anyway, a little digestive trouble only toughened your guts against further troubles. While he was mid-slurp, Minn turned and walked away.

  He finished eating and rinsed his bowl in the surf. Since the previous hours had seen no results, he decided to apply a more active approach. Anyway, his legs were stiff. He got up and crept down the tideline, hovering over pebbles and shells, then snatching them up to try to catch the nether by surprise. Nothing. Except a few sand crabs and some horrible red worms as thin as thread. He made a note never to go barefoot again.

  He continued down the beach, yanking up shells and rocks to catch the shadows off guard. Soon enough, he forgot what he was doing. On realizing his mind was a blank, he waited for enlightenment, but it refused to manifest.

  He kept at it until late afternoon, when the sun once more glowed from the waters like a furnace made out of the whole earth. He was hungry again, and the fact Minn was having to feed him was doing something to his pride. Not stinging it, exactly, but giving it a poke. She seemed to appreciate his effort, though. Perhaps a display of such would convince her to make more of one toward his education. With the hopes of killing two birds with one stone, he headed back north to the tide pools he'd passed on his southern rambling. There, he bashed up a couple palm-sized crabs and used his knife to pry a bushel of mussels from the rocks. He was forced to pocket the salty bunch. On the way back to his hut, he gathered up some driftwood that looked reasonably dry, along with several handfuls of yellow grass.

  Back home, he pulled broad strands of grass from his wall and laid his catch on them. He scooped out sand and arranged the pit with the wood and grass. He was squinting at it trying to think of a way to make it combust when Minn exited the cave. She glanced at his tinder, extended one finger, and set it aflame. Blays scrambled to find flat rocks. Once the fire burned down, he layered them over the smoldering wood and set down the crabs and mussels to bake.

  He spent the next day staring. At sand, stones, shrubs, birds, the cliffs. As directly and pointedly as he could, as if trying to see right through it. Minn and Dante always talked about the nether being inside things, after all. But his powers rudely refused to present themselves.

  On the third day, he meditated. And napped, which seemed to be the inevitable outcome of any prolonged meditation. He refused to feel guilty about this. Minn had said it was best to discover sight through your own means, and his process had always involved scads of napping.

  But this too failed to do anything except leave him exceptionally well-rested.r />
  On the dawn of the fourth day, Minn came to stand with him at the shore. "Well?"

  "I'm nowhere," he said. "Well, as the norren would point out, I'm undeniably somewhere. But it's not the where I want to be."

  "Do you feel there's been any progress?"

  "I haven't glimpsed so much as a single speck of the stuff."

  "Can you see this?" She turned to a bedraggled bunch of kelp. Bug-like shadows flocked from it, hanging in the air between them.

  "What, you mean the cloud of terrifying darkness?"

  "Can you see it emerge?" She dispersed the cloud and refocused on the kelp. As Blays watched, shadows oozed from the fronds and bulbs.

  "I see it, yeah."

  She stepped back. "Now look for yourself."

  He squatted and peered at the kelp, trying to see past it, to the shadows lurking in its shadows. He saw plenty of the mundane kind. Something twitched in the shade.

  "Hey!" Blays exclaimed. He leaned forward and a black fly crawled from the darkness and rubbed its legs together. "Nevermind."

  "Try again," Minn said.

  They repeated this business a second time, then a third. After the sixth, Blays flopped on his back in the sand and barred his arm over his eyes. "I can see it when you do it. But when I look by myself, all I see is a pile of rotting kelp."

  "The rot is where it's strongest."

  "And why are we so eager to deal with such a substance?"

  "The Four Seasons has more than one meaning," she said. "It commonly takes a full season of time to advance to the next season of nether."

  "I'm no math-a-mancer," Blays said, "but it sounds like you're saying it could be a year before I learn to do anything."

  "Are you in a rush?"

  "Is it bad to want to be good at what you do?"

  "If it causes you to learn badly? It's better to know nothing than to have to unlearn false wisdom."

  "I dunno. I've found that acting like a fool can teach you all kinds of interesting things." He sighed through his teeth. "If it's best to be in no hurry, then I'll be in no hurry."

  "Keep trying what we've done today," she said. "If there's no fruit on that tree, we'll plant another."

  He didn't think much of the prospect of gazing into the inner recesses of the beached kelp's soul, but Minn's talk had recalibrated his expectations. He tried. Perhaps not with enthusiasm, but with undeniable effort. When he got tired of kelp, he went to examine grass. Then mussels. Then he got hungry and ate a few of them. He thought their death might convince the bloodthirsty nether to pay him a visit, but no dice.