“It’s been a long day, my love,” Mirabel soothed, “and you had a nasty shock this afternoon.” She sat beside Stella, an arm around her shoulders. “The girl’s going to bring us up some stew, all she’s got left I’m afraid. I’m sure it’ll do you good, then we’ll get some sleep, eh?”
Stella lips unfroze as she clung to Mirabel’s arm. “I don’t know why, but I don’t like it here.”
“It’ll be alright once the candle’s out and we’re tucked up warm together. You’ll see.”
When Mirabel hugged her, Stella breathed deeply against her neck, the scent evoking the memory of their parting on that fateful day when Stella had later come down with a fever.
She stiffened, pushed herself away from Mirabel and stared at her. “Jaker. Of course, the man who gave me that lift up to Nordgang Road. Oh, Mirabel, I’m sorry. I’ve been a fool. Do you think he recognised me?”
Mirabel looked down at her lap, picking a stray thread from her skirt. “I’m ... I’m not sure. He spotted me behind the bar and came over to talk about the fire. He asked if we were on our way up to see the family at Blisteraising.”
“Yes, of course. He knows the farm. He brought me your message that time.”
“Yes ... but when he said how sorry he was to hear of ... to hear of your death, he then reminded me he’d met you again that day. Asked if my gentleman friend was a relative of yours. I told him you were Stella’s cousin, Stephan. It was all I could think to say.”
“Do you reckon he believed you, Mirabel? Really?”
“Well, whether he did or not, after I asked Gayder to set him up with whatever drinks he wanted, I’m hoping he’ll not remember in the morning.”
A knock came at the door. “It’ll be our food,” Mirabel said, easing herself from Stella’s hold before opening the door and taking a tray from Gayder. “Thank you,” and Mirabel made sure they were alone again before closing the door.
Neither bowl was finished when they came to be set aside on the windowsill, Stella’s less so than Mirabel’s. The two undressed and Mirabel removed the warming pan before they slipped into bed, the candle now on the bedside chair.
For a few minutes, they huddled together in the hot patch the pan had left, silently warming where they’d forgotten to slide it. Stella still felt tense until Mirabel kissed her forehead and whispered, “Time for sweet dreams,” before she snuffed out the candle and snuggled in closer.
52 Nocturnal Noises
“Are you awake, Stella?” Mirabel whispered.
“Yes. I’ve not slept at all,” and she recognised a sullenness in her own voice.
“Can you hear that strange noise?”
“Noise?” and Stella craned her ear from beneath the bedsheets, holding her breath for a few moments, hearing nothing.
“There,” Mirabel hardly breathed, and she too now clearly held her breath, the barely starlit room quickly settling to a frigid silence.
“I can’t hear anything, Mirabel. Are you sure...”
“Shush, there it goes again,” and Stella felt Mirabel shuffle up in bed, the springs creaking beneath them. “You must be able to hear it.”
“Hear what?”
“Like a ... well, like a wailing.”
“A wailing?”
“Yes, it keeps coming in slow waves, as though something’s passing by overhead.”
Stella’s blood now matched the chill her cold-drawn breath had given her nose. “What do you mean ‘passing by overhead’?” and the memory of the Towers of the Four Seasons scraped through her mind.
Mirabel clambered out of bed, a cold draught stroking Stella’s back. The floorboards creaked towards the window until the bedframe dully rang out. “Shit,” Mirabel mumbled in the dark, and the mew of a supressed whimper followed on. After a moment, her silhouette swayed across the misted window panes, the squeak of a hand on glass matching the rocking of her outline.
“I can’t see anything, not that you can see much at all in this starlight. I wonder...”
“Mirabel?” Stella’s voice cut shrill and icy. “I just heard it myself.”
“I told you, but I still can’t see anything, although it does sound as though it’s coming in from outside.”
“I need to light the candle. Where’s the flint, Mirabel?”
“We haven’t got one. What do you want it lit for anyway? We’ll see nothing outside if you do.”
“That’s not my worry,” Stella said and took a deep breath. As quickly as she could, she recounted her experience that day she’d stepped from the lemgang, close by the Four Towers. When she imitated Leiyatel’s wailing voice, Mirabel swore, felt her way back to the bed and sat down heavily beside Stella.
“You sure it was Leiyatel?”
“Oh, yes, absolutely. She made it all too clear. Scared the shit out of me ... like she’s threatening to do now if her wailing gets any closer.”
“So, why the candle, Stella?”
“Because we can’t stay here any longer. We have to get away, and soon. I don’t want anybody in this inn getting hurt as well. I’ve done enough harm as it is.”
“Hurt?”
“A fire, Mirabel? Like the one at old man Ditchwater’s? I reckon Jaker’s weft and weave’s given me away, whether he knows it himself or not.”
“Ah, I see what you mean, but where would we go?”
“I know the perfect place, but we need to wrap up well, enough for, well, in this light, for an hour’s slow walk.”
Mirabel offered to feel her way down to the kitchen, to light the candle from the stove’s embers. She was gone awhile, enough time for Stella to hear a few more ghostly threats, thinly but now more clearly howled down from above the inn.
Eventually, flickering shadows danced across the stairwell wall and Mirabel appeared, candle held in a sooty hand, a black smudge to her nose. Stella fought back an involuntary giggle until Leiyatel howled again, this time loud enough for them both to make out a word or two.
By the time they’d dressed and let themselves out through the back door of the inn, the sweeping invective now seemed loud enough to wake the dead. Stella had left the doused candle on a ledge just inside the door and so they were forced to pause awhile for their eyes to adjust.
As they waited, an odd smell, like unclean stable straw, stung sharply at Stella’s nose and eyes. At last, though, she could make out the black windows above, surprised half-moon faces weren’t already peering out, flints being struck and wicks turned up.
“Can you see well enough yet, Stella?” Mirabel whispered, tentatively sniffing the air herself as she held close beside Stella.
“Why’s no one else heard it?”
“What? Oh, err, I don’t know,” and Stella felt her turn to look up at the windows herself. “Maybe they’re all sodden soundly asleep, or maybe no one’s in the rooms this side.”
Another wail passed overhead. “...thou art here somewhere,” it now clearly scrawped against Stella’s nerves.
“Come on,” she said in a cracked voice, grabbing Mirabel by the hand and tugging her across the yard, until Stella caught her foot on the uneven setts and nearly stumbled.
“Take care, petal,” Mirabel said, holding them back. “You’ll break both our necks.”
Stella growled and hissed through her teeth at the sky, “Is that what you’re up to, eh, you bastard? Well, you won’t succeed, do you hear, you’re not going to scare me like...”
“Come on, my love,” Mirabel soothed, hugging Stella before carefully urging her out of the yard and into the lane, felt more beneath their feet than seen.
Somehow, they avoided succumbing to its ruts and potholes, stopping occasionally to peer back towards the inn, expecting its windows to be ablaze with lamplight – or worse. Each time, though, only blackness spread like a velvet cloak beneath the speckled heavens, a firmament no longer raked at their greater remove by Leiyatel’s screeching search.
Although the Cambray Road gave easier going, its black press of trees slowed the
m to a shallow zigzag between its verges. Only when the trees gave way to open fields did their dark adjusted eyes and the light ballast of the road lend them some better speed.
Eventually, at the junction with Blisteraising’s lane, Stella turned one last time, to stare out across the faintly star-silvered view towards Chop Gate and its inn. She breathed in deeply and sighed.
“Well, at least I’m not leaving a blaze behind me this time,” she said to Mirabel who now stood close at her back. Mirabel wrapped her arms around Stella, a cool kiss lowered to her neck, drawing out the tension that had steadily strung her nerves so taut.
Stella turned in Mirabel’s embrace, their lips now a breath apart, each stilled, each tasting the air of the other, until Mirabel’s face lit up brightly. A dull rumble soon followed, turning them both to look out across the spread of briefly lit fields and woods.
A roiling plume of billowing flame met their startled stares, quickly darkening until it vanished into the returned but now more intense pitch-black of the night.
53 Of Dunager and Seawater
Only very slowly did the stars creep from their exile, steadily peppering Stella’s stunned sight. First to appear, Polaris tentatively stepped out the Small Bear by its forepaw, drawing the constellation from the darkness. Below it, Cassiopea twinkled in mimicry of the jagged line of the Gray Mountains above which she floated; five recumbent highlights from the vain queen’s own lustrous and naked form. Soon, Muscida and Altrai joined the tinkle of heavenly voices, a growing choir of familiar faces whose serenade stilled the rising threat of bile from Stella’s stomach.
Each speck of light had, over the past year or so, adopted her, drawn her into their celestial family, told her of their tales and travesties, of their loves and losses and lamentations. More kith and kin than the flesh and blood amongst whom she’d lived her life, Stella had, as a starmaker, found a story in the night sky that somehow rang truer than her own.
Why then did she feel the likely loss of yet more Dicans so raw and close to her heart? Distant, cold, otherworldly to her, they had almost all refused to meet her gaze, had rebuffed her outstretched hand, denied her her very own voice. Yet, some hollow space within them always hung at the corners of their eyes, always hungered after what they clearly but unknowingly saw she herself carried with such carefree ease.
If only those Dicans knew what she now knew; if only. Perhaps, if she could keep her nerve, they would, and hopefully soon, very soon indeed.
When Stella forced her gaze lower, she only slowly realised that Chop Gate’s Bluebell Inn – where she’d assumed more of her guilt this night must lie – was strangely no more evident than a speck of soot upon the black folds of the castle’s nighttime cloak. Had she dreamed it? Had her fear of Leiyatel somehow stoked no more than a bright and billowing spectre?
“Why’s there no fire, Mirabel?”
“I ... I don’t...”
“Why aren’t flames leaping from the inn, lighting up the fields by now?”
“I honestly don’t...” but Mirabel stiffened beside Stella. “What day is it?”
“Day?” and Stella finally turned to find her friend’s frown barely visible in the starlight. Stella had to think. “Err ... we’re now into Wednesday. Why?”
“Of course,” and Mirabel sat down heavily on the road’s verge. Stella peered down at the dim outline of her face, a hint of constellations glinting back from her eyes as they now stared up at Stella.
“I should have thought,” Mirabel almost whispered to herself. “Jaker, on the last Tuesday of the month, and in an out of the way place like Chop Gate.”
Stella sat down close beside Mirabel, the reflection of the Great Bear clear in the black depths of the wide-eyed stare she now turned Stella.
“That’s why he knew so readily how to get to your farm, Stella, when I sent you that message. This must be the way he’s come over all these years.”
“Come? Come for what, Mirabel?”
“Oh ... it’s something father’s fall brought about.”
“His fall? You mean, the one he had at the Royal College, all those years ago?”
“When he slipped in its entrance hall, yes.” Mirabel wrapped her arms about her drawn up knees and there rested her chin. “He seemed to lose interest in a lot of things after that. I was still with Phaylan at Pilot’s Point when it happened, so I only got to hear about it later. He’d been keen on some scheme involving a balloon...”
“A what?”
“A massive, house-sized sack which they filled with a special air, something father called dunager. Somehow, this dunager lifted the balloon, and a basket strung below, high into the sky; quite a way by all accounts.”
“But why? Why would they want to do such a thing?”
“I’m not sure. Some ‘distant observation’, as father put it a few years after I’d moved back in with him, when it came to light he’d forgotten all about the college’s order for the supply of the special air.” She laughed, but without much mirth. “By then, the place that made it had an awful lot in stock.”
“So how does Jaker come into it?”
“Apparently, dunager doesn’t keep well in storage. It eventually draws in damp air, especially as the seals of the flasks it’s kept in get old. Father said, ‘dunager and water make for dangerous bedfellows.’ The only way they could safely get rid of the stuff was to mix it with seawater.”
“I still don’t see...”
“The dunager was made and stored in Yuhlm, Stella, but the only place seawater can be got these days is in Utter Shevling, through the gate in its wall, down to the old harbour.”
“Ah, so I take it Jaker’s been carting this dangerous air between the two?”
“A wagonload once a month; out Tuesday, back Thursday. He’s the only one father trusted to do the job safely. You see, when moved, the old seals on the flasks have to be checked every few hours, to keep them driven home – even during the dead of night.”
They stared at one another, Stella seeing the same thought in Mirabel’s silence as now passed through her own mind. “Something that would likely be overlooked in the wake of free ale, eh, Mirabel?”
“I never thought. If I had, I never would have... But then, Jaker’s not the sort. That’s why father trusted him so. He’d have kept himself sober, I know he would, come what may – free drink or no.”
“Normally, Mirabel, normally I’m sure he would have ... without Leiyatel’s interference.”
Mirabel gulped and again stared out at the dark countryside. “One of the wagons in the yard must have been his ... and that smell as we left...” The glint of her eyes turned to Stella. “Did you close the inn door behind you?”
“No. Didn’t you?”
“I thought you had ... oh, and the kitchen stove was only a short way down the vestibule, its embers newly raked and blown to a glow to light our candle.”
Stella narrowed her eyes. “But that would mean Leiyatel’s worked her evil through us this time, which can’t be so ... can it?”
“I hope not, my dearest. I damn well hope not.”
Both now stared out at the dark-hidden view until Stella finally said, “It still doesn’t explain why the inn’s not ablaze.”
“Maybe Nephril will know. It can’t be long before sunrise,” and Mirabel turned that way, drawing Stella’s gaze towards the northeast, the jagged line of the Gray Mountains now a little more discernible against a faint hint of twilit sky.
“I’m getting cold,” Stella said, placing her hand on Mirabel’s arm before standing. “There’s nothing we can do, not now, and we need to be at the farm when it stirs.” She helped Mirabel to her feet, and together, arm in arm, they plodded up the lane towards Blisteraising.
Before long – the sky as yet barely touched by an awakening sun, the land yet darker still – Stella led them into the farmyard, quietly up the gable steps of the stable and into its hayloft. They finally felt their way onto a bed of bales and slumped down, the sound of horses co
ntentedly chewing hay drifting to them from below.
Against this homely background, Stella strained for any hint of a wailing threat in the air above, a vigilance that kept her awake until the morning finally began to break.
54 Like Bubbles in Ale
Nephril had been insistent he’d stayed awake all night and had heard nothing untoward. “What dost thou mean, ‘a rumble’?”
Stella felt lightheaded now from lack of sleep, the cold dawn air failing to freshen her thoughts, her eyes gritty in the flat, grey light. Mirabel seemed sharper, keeping her voice low so Henson didn’t hear from where he groomed Ginny in a stall at the far end of the stables.
“It was a muffled rumble,” she said, “like distant thunder, just after we saw a cloud of flame billow into the sky.”
“Billow... Stay here,” and Nephril slipped out through the doorway, his footsteps hurrying around the stable. Stella and Mirabel stared at each other until his footsteps returned.
“Well, I can see nothing unusual anywhere near Chop Gate now. Are thee sure...”
“We both saw it, Nephril,” Mirabel said. “It was only brief, just a few heartbeats, and if you were at the back of the house, you’d not have noticed.”
They hurried through what had happened during the night, from first hearing Leiyatel’s wailing cries. When Stella let slip how she’d recognised them as Leiyatel’s threats, Nephril’s face turned to stone.
“Thou used the lemgang?” and his face now epitomised incredulity. “And thou alighted at the Four Towers?” He placed a hand gently on Stella’s arm. “Thou were lucky to survive, mine foolish girl.” He silently stared at her for a moment. “Why ever did thou not tell me thou intended travelling that way? I would have warned thee.”
A stall door thumped open, drawing them to watch Ginny being led out to the carriage, Henson casting them a quick glance. “Fifteen minutes, m’Lord,” and Nephril waved he’d heard before turning his gaze back to Stella.
“Now we know why Leiyatel found thee so quickly.” He slowly shook his head. “She will hath seen thy form stark against the mass of thoughts she holds there at the towers. She may not hath seen thee directly, no more than we see the air of a bubble in a pint of ale, but she will hath seen the shape of thy displacement, known what to look for thereafter – seen thy telltale form at Stanwell Ditchwater’s bedside later that day.”
Starmaker Stella (Dica Series Book 6) Page 23