The Black Star (Book 3)

by Edward W. Robertson

  "Wasn't there a war? Didn't that have any impact?"

  "Oh, that thing?" Blays laughed. "I still can't believe we got duped into starting it. An all-powerful norren bow! The oldest trick in the book."

  She regarded him. "You started it?"

  "Well, I'd argue they started it. We weren't enslaving norren for decades. But in a very technical, wholly unintentional sense—yeah, it was totally our fault."

  "Tell me about it. And the man who chased you here."

  "Why?"

  "Because you're my student," she said. "And I have the right to know who I'm teaching."

  He couldn't argue with that. Well, he could, but it would be a churlish thing to do. Instead, he talked. About the mission that first brought them to Narashtovik to assassinate Samarand. About the refugees of her truncated war revitalizing the city. Of the long sequence of events leading to the Chainbreakers' War. About Dante and Lira, too.

  Strangely, it had the feel of a confession. Stranger yet was the fact that, in hindsight, he wouldn't have changed a thing. Not entirely true: he would have gone outside and warned Lira to step to the side of the gaping chasm that had claimed her. Aside from that, and the myriad minor fumbles he'd made but which ultimately didn't matter, the outcome had been great. Grand. Norren freedom. Independence for Narashtovik. You couldn't ask for more.

  But it had come at a cost.

  He skipped quickly through his recent stint in Setteven, telling her nothing of his schemes against the king. For all he knew, Taya and Lolligan were still executing a revised version of the plan, and while it seemed highly unlikely Minn would care, let alone tell someone (who?) about it, he saw no need to expose their operation to any risk, however slight.

  "It all sounds so busy," she said once he'd finished.

  "I guess it was."

  "Do you miss it?"

  "Not yet." He grinned. "I told you my story. Now why don't you tell me how the People of the Pocket are so good at hiding."

  "Not yet," she smiled back. "No need to clutter your head with what might be until you've learned to do more than see a few shadows."

  "Then let's get cracking."

  "Tomorrow." She stood, shaking one foot to work the blood back into it. "See you then."

  With nothing else to do, he ran through a few sword-and-dagger forms, then set aside his blades and practiced seeing the nether. Even after his revelation, it was hard to spot it unless he looked at something alive, such as his hand or the shiny black beetle that had trundled in during his recitation to Minn. He tried to see it in the shelves, but in the dimness of the room, he couldn't tell whether the shadows were nethereal, physical, or the spawn of his imagination. Once his irritation began to show up, he blew out the candle and went to bed. No use getting angry over something that was supposed to be fun.

  What with the lack of windows or daylight, he stayed asleep until Minn came for him. After breakfast, they went outside. The sea winds were sharp enough to cut off the tips of his ears. One night inside and he was already spoiled.

  "Winter's here," she said, padding southward in the direction of the tide pools. "What do you suppose that means?"

  "That the weather is intolerably cold?"

  "Do you find flippant questions help you to learn?"

  "Sure. They drive away the gadflies. Those who stick around must really want to teach me."

  "You're right. Asking you about Winter was an unfair question, one you couldn't possibly answer." Minn walked on, gazing out to sea. "If fall is the season of clarity, winter is the season is difficulty. Everything becomes harder, from the ground to survival. Animals go into hiding. Trees hide their wealth inside nuts. To make it, you have to learn to reach into the cold, dark places."

  "Meaning what, in practice?"

  "It's time to learn to touch the nether."

  "Sounds easy," he said. "I know right where it is."

  She tipped her head to the side, neither conceding nor disagreeing. "Most find it the harshest season. Learning to touch it means learning to forge a connection with it."

  "Okay, then how do I do that?"

  "Why don't you try for yourself?"

  "And then we'll see?"

  Minn smiled. "Who's the teacher here?"

  At the edge of the tide pool, he knelt. Minn stayed standing, which made him momentarily self-conscious about his decision; getting a few inches closer to the nether probably would not bring him the slightest bit closer to being able to touch it with his mind. But whatever, he was already down on his knees. More restful anyway.

  A blue-finned fish drifted above a brainish lump of coral, nibbling at whatever caught its fancy. Blays cleared his throat—bit of an odd thing to do, given that he wasn't about to speak to it, but again, this was his show—and looked. And there the nether was. Tucked beneath the fish's scales. Looming in its gawping mouth. Lurking in its flesh.

  He reached out with his mind.

  He thought he did, anyway. He certainly focused on the fish and the nether inside it, concentrating on the wisps of blackness. But he didn't feel a thing.

  "Is this like when I was trying to see it?" He sat back on the rocks, withdrawing his focus. "Am I touching it, but it's so subtle I just don't know it?"

  "Everyone's feel for the shadows is different," Minn said. "But when you do feel it, trust me—you'll know."

  He tried again, jabbing his attention at the fish like a spear. It didn't flinch. Neither did its nether. He tried coming at it sidelong, whistling a lazy tune while his thoughts snuck closer and closer. All to no effect. He was about to cycle through all these approaches again, then sat back and threw back his head.

  He was going about this like a stupid person. Flailing about like a child with a wooden sword. Speaking of, he was already damn good at one area that required the perfect tuning of his mind and body: sword fighting. And he had a ritual whenever he was attempting to learn a new technique.

  It had begun as a general exercise, a way to isolate and thus gain control of every individual muscle group in his body: as he breathed in and out, he flexed and relaxed, learning to isolate (say) the muscles under his arms from those in his shoulders. It was a surprisingly useful exercise. It relaxed him, but it also taught him to exert sudden, devastating force wherever he cared to deliver it. For instance, a downward cross-body stroke could be augmented with a sudden diagonal tensing of his abdominals. He might do no more than twitch his wrist, but the extra force generated by the rest of his body could add bone-splitting force to his strike.

  Over the years, he had adapted the technique into more than a method to coordinate his musculature. It was also a way to clear his head, to get out of himself. Using it, he could learn a new skill in minutes. Invent new fighting techniques from whole cloth. By envisioning the combination of movements that would lead to an effective maneuver, he could break it down muscle by muscle, then combine those movements into a single gesture. A few days of practice, and the new technique no longer took conscious thought.

  As he sat on the rock, he put himself through his paces, starting with his head and working his way down. He tensed his ears, scalp, and brow. His neck, then his shoulders. His pectorals and lats, abdominals and hips, and so on. From the corner of his vision, Minn was giving him a funny look, but he was already feeling better, more at one with the various components that comprised the Blays he was. He let his breath flow in and out. He reached for the fish.

  "Oh shit," he said. "It feels like being stabbed with cold iron!"

  Minn jolted forward. "Are you okay? Did you sit on something?"

  "I felt it. The nether! It's cold and it hurts, right?"

  "Generally." She pushed out her lower lip. "But you can't have felt it already. You just started."

  "Unless you gored me with a pigsticker while I wasn't looking, I think I've done it."

  "How?" she said.

  "I swooped in on it."

  "You swooped in on it?"

  "Like a bird of prey." He cut his hand through the
air. "Like a blade closing on the bearer's enemy."

  "Impossible," Minn said. "Then do it again."

  "Whatever you say." He breathed, tensed, relaxed. Reached out. Felt the icy sting. Though he'd touched it with his mind, not his fingers, he couldn't stop from shaking out his hand.

  She blinked. "How'd you do that?"

  "Magic."

  "Well, you've magically destroyed weeks of my plans."

  "Does that upset you?"

  She looked up from the fish. "I put a lot of thought into those lessons."

  "Plans are like newborns." He straightened, retracting his focus from the nether. "Best not to get attached to them until they grow sturdy enough to be put to work."

  She laughed, then stopped herself. "Perhaps you'd like to spend the rest of the day honing your new skill. I have to find a way to build new plans on the ruins of the old."

  He thought he pretty much had it down, but it wouldn't hurt to be sure. As Minn retired to the caves, he worked his way around the pools, touching the nether within the snails, minnows, kelp, and a cruising octopus. He didn't see what the big deal was. The nether was there. He knew it was there. So why shouldn't he be able to touch it?

  Hungry, and too lazy to go build a fire, he cut loose some mussels and ate them raw. He wouldn't go so far as to say he was getting a taste for raw mussels—he wasn't sure you could get a taste for nature's phlegm—but he no longer minded them. Funny how fast you got used to things.

  In the morning, he and Minn reconvened at the tide pools. He stretched his elbow over his head and pulled it to the side, extending his shoulder. "Figured out what you're going to do with me next?"

  "Tell you about the next Season."

  "Just like that?"

  She brushed a ragged bang from her eyes. "What were you expecting, a feast in your honor? Shall I fetch the stew?"

  In truth, he had been expecting something to mark his accomplishment. The Progression of the Seasons was supposed to take about as long as the real ones, wasn't it? And he'd burned through Winter in ten minutes. Darned impressive, he thought.

  He supposed that, in the scheme of things, it was nothing more than a baby step. He hadn't even begun to use the nether yet. This was just his ego standing up and taking its pants off. Ego could be a fine thing, of course. A strong one could help you accomplish goals even when those goals were plainly boneheaded. And aside from the practical advantages of ego, it was simply a fun thing to have.

  But at the moment, ego wasn't helping. If anything, it was slowing him down. When it came time to learn, the role model was the sponge, and he had yet to meet a sponge that was full of itself. What with all the holes, they could never get enough.

  "Yesterday's stew can wait." He blew into his hands. "I hope the real winter passes as quickly as the fake one."

  "A change that sudden would drown us in storms," Minn said. She took a moment, letting her amusement fade and replacing it with a look of authority. "Spring. The season of melting and unlocking. First you saw the nether. Then you learned to reach it. Next, you learn to melt it."

  "Makes sense. It felt as cold as snowman's piss."

  "It's critical to keep in mind this isn't literal. Though similar in some ways, the nether isn't ice. It isn't water, either. Don't confuse a metaphor for what's actually in front of you."

  "Don't worry, I'm used to dealing with people who are constitutionally incapable of talking in plain terms."

  "Then get to work."

  He ran through his breathing warmups. On top of a damp, slimy rock, a fiddler crab was jerking its big claw back and forth, announcing to all the other crabs that it was the most fiddlin' fiddler that ever fiddled. He saw the nether in it, touched it. It was as cold and sharp as before. He intensified his focus, imagining it as the heat of a climbing bonfire. The nether stayed cold. Immobile.

  He was unworried. He hadn't expected Spring to zip by as briskly as Winter. The subtleties of Fall were still fresh in his mind. After a while, Minn returned to whatever other duties occupied her in the caves, but he stayed beside the captive saltwater, willing the nether to come forth.

  A week later, he was still there. He had tried any number of mental tricks. Thinking of his attention as heat that would melt the dark ice. That it was a knife that would slice loose the fastened shadows. That it was a big old fist capable of yanking trees out by their roots. He had tried it on crabs, fish, birds, grass, slime, coral, a juvenile shark, a lost seal. And, as far as he could tell, he'd gotten exactly nowhere.

  "Got any more roots?" he asked Minn at the end of Spring's first week. "Preferably something that will cause my brains to pour out my ears so I can pick them up and give them a shake?"

  "Nat-root won't do you any good here," she said. She caught the look on his face. "But we can try it anyway."

  "I mean, worst case, we have a good time, right?"

  So they ate bowls of mashed-up root and Minn sat by the water while he tried to warm, force, and tickle the nether from its obstinate shell. He fell over more than once, but despite one incredibly vivid hallucination that he'd convinced the shadows to swim out from their hidey-holes and leap like a pod of dolphins, he had no luck.

  Another week went by, never to return. The first snow hit, a squall of whirling flakes that barely had time to crust the sand before a warm wind blew in from the south. Blays watched it melt with calm fury. Stupid nature, always showing people up. When he calmed down a bit, he tried to take a lesson from that, to imagine where he might conjure up a southern wind of his own, but after a couple of flailing attempts, he threw the idea out like an empty mussel shell.

  Thinking it would be the strongest and thus easiest to get a handle on, he cut himself to work with his own blood. But that got him nowhere. Except bandaged. Finally, so frustrated he could kill something, he climbed up the staircase to the misty plateau, where he could overlook the beach and have a laugh about flinging himself down upon it.

  The climb felt good. The solid sheet of mist-borne ice on the rocks, however, felt like it might induce death. But there was something bracing about that, something that kicked him free of his snarled irritation and back into immediate survival, so he turned his back on the ocean and picked his way inland.

  Below, the exuberant tide thundered to the shore. Ahead, he heard nothing. Not even the dripping of water. But then he heard voices: one male, and one female.

  They appeared to be conversing, not shouting, so he left his sword sheathed (he'd only brought it because the plateau was known to harbor centipedes as long as your arm). He crept forward, keeping knobby pillars of rock between himself and the two people. Anyway, he didn't need to see the woman to recognize the voice as Minn's.

  He came within proper earshot as their conversation reached the goodbye phase. Their parting words were lengthy, and as it became clear he was eavesdropping on close friends, Blays grew sheepish. He turned back to the staircase. By the time he reached the bottom, however, he felt less bad—Minn wasn't supposed to be up there in the first place. He sat in the sand to watch the stairs.

  Minn walked out a couple minutes later. Her eyes alighted on Blays, widening.

  "Went up for a walk?" he said.

  "Just to clear my head," she said.

  "Me too. Who were you talking to?"

  She shrugged. "A friend. Who else?"

  "This friend sounded decidedly male."

  "Afraid I'm replacing you?"

  "Are we allowed visitors, then? Or is that one of the countless things I still don't understand about Pocket Cove?"

  Minn eyed him, head angling to the side. "Maybe it's time to fix that. I haven't been much help this Season. Then again, the first time is as much a lesson for the teacher as the student."

  "I'm your first student?" Blays said. "I don't know whether to feel honored or horrified."

  "Both, I'd think. Perhaps it's time to take you to my teacher."

  "Now I'm definitely horrified."

  Minn smiled. "At least your instincts are
good."

  She took him to the cave, then had him wait in his room while she went deeper. She returned and nodded. As they walked to the main tunnel and ventured toward what lay beyond, Blays found himself so thrilled to be seeing something new that he laughed out loud. Minn glanced at him but held her tongue.

  Torchstones embedded in the walls threw just enough light to reveal the way. They passed a doorway every ten or twenty feet, each papery door supported on a frame of the bamboo-like reeds that grew on the beaches to the north. The hallways grew warmer, rich with the scent of incense and spices. Although Blays knew better than to say so, it was probably to cover up the smell of fish oil that hung in the air, too.

  Once, they passed a young woman in a loose robe, a red scarf fluttering from her wrist. The woman gazed at Blays with mild curiosity and moved on. After a couple more turns, Minn opened one of the parchment doors. A brief foyer opened to a wide room. The walls and floors were so thick with blankets and rugs it took Blays a moment to spot the woman sitting in their midst.

  "Oh," he said. "You again."

  Minn's head cranked around. "You know each other?"

  "We met a few years ago," Blays said. "Sort of. I think Dante was too busy blathering for me to get in a single word."

  "I remember you," the woman said. Her long dark hair was streaked with gray. "But we don't get many visitors."

  "Really? All it would take is a three-hundred-foot ladder."

  "My name is Ro," she said. "Minn tells me you're stuck on Spring."

  Blays looked up from a rug woven with a repeating geometric pattern he'd never seen before. "Is that unusual? I thought these things could take months to get right."

  "Often, yes. Others find it goes much faster. But after unusually swift advancement, you seem to be..."

  "Unable to find my ass with both hands." He winced. "Ma'am. If that's what you prefer to be called."

  "Ro is fine."

  "Maybe I passed my first two Seasons too easily, without gathering the tools to go further. Maybe I'm missing something obvious. Or maybe I'm not cut out for this. Either way, I would appreciate any lessons you can manage to pound through my dense skull."