Starstone

by Denise M. Main

  “Nephew,” the High Lord concluded Jarlan’s introduction, thinking that the boy looked a bit young to have been given charge of something as potentially dangerous and unknown as a Starshard.

  The Lammian youth smiled and held out his hand to greet Morgan, then remembering what he held in the other, blushed slightly.

  “Er, Jarlan...” he began, hopefully.

  “Just hang onto it a second, I’ll grab another crate.”

  ***

  It was almost full night when Morgan, Rowan and Nicolas Vander Zant returned to Anraun. Conna stepped out of the tent, a worried look on his face.

  “We were just going to send Rajan to find you,” he stated, reaching out to grab Nicolas’s arm, then jerked back, staring hard at the newcomer and the dull metal crate he held in his arms. The youth also stopped, blushed a little, a faint bloom of pink brushed across smooth pale cheeks.

  “It’s okay. I fed before coming here,” he stated quietly.

  Conna looked even more puzzled at the soft spoken words.

  “I’m from Lammia,” the dark-haired newcomer added.

  “I’m from Anraun,” Conna replied, reasonably sure he was missing something, but content to follow the other’s lead until he found out what that was. “Morgan’s brother – Lord of Mirris,” he added, unable to keep the note of pride out of his voice.

  “Yes – we’d heard the High Lord...”

  “Morgan,” the High Lord broke in.

  “...Morgan,” Nicolas amended with a smile, “had seceded that kingdom to you on your coming-of-age. Congratulations. From my family, and myself.”

  Conna, who had been staring at the young Lammian’s mouth ever since the smile, blinked a couple of times, decided if no one was going to explain the enigmatic declaration of having fed – he would ask.

  “Thank you, lord Vander...”

  “Nicolas – well, Nic,” the youth grinned and Conna’s attention was yanked from the gentle brown eyes to the newcomer’s mouth again.

  “Right, er, Nic. Look, I’m sorry for being so blunt, but since no one has seen fit to tell me – what did you mean by having fed before coming here?”

  “And why are my eye-teeth a little longer and more pointed than yours?” Nicolas added, voicing Conna’s unspoken words, bringing a slight look of embarrassment to the Lord of Mirris’ face. Until he just shrugged and smiled, not sensing any hostility in the youth.

  “Yes, that, too.”

  “Okay, but can I put this thing somewhere safe first?” he glanced at Morgan. “D’you think it’s okay to put it with yours and Jarath’s or will they react before you’re ready?”

  “To be honest – I have absolutely no idea... Ah, Druin...gentlemen,” Morgan glanced past the lordling and his brother as marquee flaps were pushed back and light, closely followed by the healer, the two magi and Resh, came out into the evening. Tia’mar snapped his fingers and four were-lights popped into life, hovering around the little group, larger and brighter than the ones already alight and marking areas in the canvass town.

  “We think they draw power from the shards,” the magus explained, “which we’re keeping apart for the time being and under heavy guard. May I take that, young sir?” he asked of Nicolas.

  The Lammia, raised like all his family to be serious-minded, responsible lords ready for rule from a very early age, swiftly assessed the dynamics – and picked up on the presence of other, very powerful people in the large white-walled tent.

  “Of course.” He held it out with a warning. “It’s a little heavy – my uncle, the Juriaan, has it rather well shielded, and Jarlan added to it.”

  “Thank you,” Tia’mar murmured, studying the dull metal box Nicolas held to his chest with relative ease, yet since the Juriaan was Prime of Lammia, the magus knew that this boy, who looked even younger than Resh, was already likely to be twice as strong as anyone was in this little group. The Lammian world was big, generating a strong gravitational field, and while on his home world, the boy would only have normal strength – away from it and on a world with less gravity, he would be stronger by comparison. That wasn’t the only change, either. However, it did mean the metal box Jarlan had given Nic, even though only just over a foot square, would need someone considerably stronger than himself to carry it.

  “Jall!” he called.

  ***

  Hidden in a fold in the hillside, camouflaged by the dark and concealed beneath a confusion spell, Varen and Omell looked down on the valley. With orderly lines and blocks of tents marked and lit by were-lights, it looked like some bizarre geometric pattern laid out by giants. Or the Creator, perhaps, Omell thought fancifully – to solve some mathematical puzzle. It all looked rather pretty with sentries moving along set routes like animated toys. There were three small areas, widely apart that, to her eyes, glowed brightly, much brighter than any were-globes, and were laced about with wards, protections and spells. Strange metals contained much of their power, kept it dormant and sleeping, the terrible energies bound and quiescent. But all three could...sense…that which Varen carried, the shard that had come from her, that even now linked inextricably with all of them, each exerting a gentle force on her, like small children holding her hands and pulling her in opposite directions. On Varen, they exercised a different pressure – she knew. Between the shard he carried and the island itself, Varen was becoming so drained that the things she did like setting camp, cooking, carrying their bags, was done through necessity, not simply because Varen desired it. While she...she felt full of energy – could have run where perforce she had to keep to Varen’s slow pace; could have carried on through the nights without needing rest; could have almost flown here! She felt Varen’s cold eyes studying her and hastily dampened down her enthusiasm and contented herself gazing off into the twilight.

  “Do you see a good place to camp, girl? Not too near that our presence is detected, yet not so far that we’re unable to keep an eye on proceedings.”

  Scouring what she was able to see of the land, Omell pointed at an angle, back and diagonal from where they were. There appeared to be enough of a dip in the hillside to form a shallow cave. Following her outstretched arm with more senses than merely sight, Varen nodded briefly. Unable to draw strength from the night as a full-blood Nightlord any longer, he summoned up the final scraps of his reserves to cloak himself. Effectively becoming invisible, he ordered the girl to make her own way there, and not attract any attention by using magic. She opened her mouth to protest, but Varen was indistinguishable from his surroundings, and she couldn’t say for certain where he was.

  Making sure she followed her master’s dictates, Omell was minutes from their hideout when she was stopped in her tracks. Raw energy crawled over her skin, crackling in her ears, limning the shape of her body with a deep purple glow. Uncomfortably aware of her sudden visibility, she set her jaw and forced her knees to bend. With agonizing slowness, the girl started to sink to the grass, expecting any second to hear shouts of discovery and see warriors hurrying to capture her. Teeth clenched, finally she felt the cool, soft grass with her fingertips and let herself fall the rest of the way to the ground, quietly sobbing in relief and effort. Only then dare she search for the cause of the energy flux. It wasn't Varen, of that she was certain – yet there was something so familiar about this that it was on the tip of her tongue to speak its name.

  Tilting her face to the stars, a small shocked cry passed her lips. Although not yet full dark, the sky was pitch black – unrelieved by the pinprick swaths of twinkling light that formed the heavens. She flinched, her shoulders hunched as though there was a physical presence pressing down on her.

  Danaach! The prison world – it was here!

  Such certainty set her heart pounding so fast she barely had space within her chest for lungs to work, and her hands began to tingle for want of air.

  And just as quickly as she realized the prison world was not fully aligned with this one, she was able to take a breath, vision and thoughts clearing acc
ordingly.

  Voices from the tents on the valley floor rose in the night air, not clear enough to be distinguishable, but enough that the urgency in them was plain. From that, Omell deducted they had neither called the world, nor expected the way to it to open right now. Was it possible that a section of the blackness was different to the rest? Omell blinked rapidly trying to make her eyes function better. Was there a break in the darkness? A shade of color not like the rest?

  Unaware that she was moving, Omell made her way down to the valley floor and the large tents grouped at one end.

  ***

  Nicolas explained to Conna what the various effects all other worlds but his own had on his body. The need for certain enzymes and proteins he was unable to store – the reason for the longer and sharper eye-teeth and hemoglobin requirement. But he was not a vampire, Nicolas reassured him. On Lammia, none of the blood taking was necessary – nor was the greater strength and speed in evidence either. Obviously, the big, dim world his people came from was ordinary to him, but on any other, his metabolism went haywire. Yet, he hastened to add, the taking and giving of blood was an... Here he paused, aware to these people he was little more than a child and his next words may sound somewhat peculiar. Although he was only 14 of Lammia’s years, even among long-lived races, those years were long ones. Just because he didn’t look grown-up...

  Conna ended the pause. “I overheard Tarik say this not too long ago, ‘the kisses of a Lammian lord are sweet and erotic.’ Is that what you’re trying to say?” he grinned. Then felt so uncomfortable at Nicolas’s obvious embarrassment that he felt obliged to add, “But he probably wasn’t talking about you personally. Oh, crap. Sorry, Nic, that sounds just as bad! I didn’t mean...you know.”

  The two young lords looked at each other, and burst into laughter, the ice well and truly broken. Nicolas had met Tarik a few times and the tall Nightlord was beautiful, but they’d never... Conna’s arm over his shoulders halted that line of conjecture and he allowed himself to be guided inside the marquee and to the talks going strong inside.

  More tables had been brought in and laid with food, beverages and wine. Books, writing paraphernalia, charts and chalkboards cluttered the original tables or acted as focal points for discussion. Large diagrams covered in scientific, magical and mathematical symbols hung from the cross-supports of the huge tent’s walls. Images, 3-dimensional, and flat, flickered in and out of being depending on who was controlling them in any particular example of behavior or projected possibility.

  “Wow,” Nicolas murmured, staring around, dark eyes wide, taking everything in. “It’s like the Academy at Thesa only condensed.”

  “You’ve been there?”

  “Just to visit,” Nicolas admitted, craning his neck to look around Conna at Mesar and Tia’mar, but the young lord of Mirris heard the awe and yearning in his new found friend’s voice. “I’m not allowed to attend until I’m 17 and in full control of my...appetites,” he finished a little sadly, then perked up, “But I love visiting – everyone loves visiting Anraun!”

  “Yeah. Listen, you’ve got to come and spend a few days in Mirris, my kingdom. I could keep an eye on you and we’d have a great time – it’s not quite as civilized as Delgannan, but the girls are so much prettier!”

  Laughing, they headed towards the refreshment tables. Morgan, in a quiet, screened corner, watched them together. There was a new confidence – no, a new maturity about Conna. It was in the way he moved, held his head, looked at people and interacted with them. Making the young nephew of Lammia’s Prime welcome and looking after him without being asked, and not pushing himself into the centre of things. There was a moment when Morgan almost didn’t want to have children of his own so that Conna would follow in his footsteps and be the next High Lord.

  ‘He’s growing up well,’ a voice beside him said, a voice so full of emotions it brought a lump to Morgans throat. ‘All my sons are,’ Ulric added, and the two High Lords exchanged a look.

  “We had a good teacher,” Morgan said quietly, then looked away and down at Liath who lay asleep on a small cot behind the screen he rested his shoulder against. She had fallen into an odd sleep an hour ago and rather than have her in a tent alone, both Druin and Morgan decided she should be better off with all of them and had the screen and cot brought in. Neither had said anything, but both knew this was not a natural sleep, as did Resh. The youth squatted comfortably on his heels where the screen touched the outer wall of the marquee and would not move for anyone. Morgan tripled the guard around the marquee and set Garrant, his Master-at-arms, to make sure no one left or wandered out alone.

  ‘There’s something in the air, Morgan,’ Ulric said solemnly. ‘And not just the peculiarities of this island. It’s coming – that damned blasted world. It’s so near I can taste it!’ The old High Lord paused and spat on the floor – or as near spitting as a wraith could manage. ‘How is it so close? It shouldn’t be so tangible with just the three shards.’

  “But three was the amount to open and close the way,” Morgan pointed out, most of his attention on the increasingly restless young woman tossing and turning on the cot, the light blanket Druin had covered her with had slipped over the side and trailed on the floor. Morgan reached down and shook it out, gently laid it over her again.

  ‘The bare minimum,’ Ulric corrected, his eyes on the seer and worry lining his semi-transparent face. At a movement, sensed rather than seen, he shifted his focus and nodded a greeting to the Darkworld Prime.

  “I see on Anraun, being dead doesn’t necessarily prevent one from joining the fun,” Jarath observed, joining them and standing at the wraith’s side. Not as old as Ulric, his age somewhere in the middle of the two High Lords, he was nevertheless well acquainted with the elder one.

  ‘Anraun’s a wonderful place,’ Ulric stated. ‘So, how’s your family, Jarath?’

  Jarath smoothed his glossy dark hair back, folded his arms and sighed; eyes, green as a sycamore leaf, searched the faces for one in particular. “Same as ever, Ulric. One half of it can’t stand the other half. My sister still lives on the opposite side of Saybel to me, and my one remaining brother is an outcast, a Stealer of souls. My Second wants to simply be me without character of his own, and the one I’d prefer to follow me...” He shook his head, “So, no change, at all.”

  ‘Aye. Often I wonder what we’d all be like if we were just ordinary folk.’

  Jarath gave a short, humor-less laugh, and then abruptly changed the subject. “Something is going to happen. Soon. You can feel it,” he stated. “Both of you. The seer most certainly can, I can. In fact I’d wager every person in this tent is aware of it, too.”

  ‘That’s not a wager I’d bet against,’ Ulric muttered, hooking a hazy thumb through his equally shadowy belt. While the other two murmured agreements, the old High Lord looked about him. Under one, albeit flexible roof, was the influential select of Anraun. The temporal and spiritual leaders, their heirs, the heads and their seconds of the four most powerful orders, and assorted rogues and travelers who themselves were expert in their fields; plus Druin and his daughter. The Prime of Saybel, his son and probable nephew, and add to that the Juriaan of Lammia’s nephew.

  Here we all are, nicely contained within this 50ft square box of canvass, the wraith thought. Either ripe for the picking, or gathered to attack. Which will it be?

  ‘It’s coming,’ he muttered, his dark grey gaze dragged to the screened cot. Liath cried out quietly in her sleep, shifting restlessly beneath the blanket. When he looked up again, the healer was weaving his way around tables, chairs and groups of the other 40 or so people talking and planning. Rowan was also coming his way, as was Rajan. The Nightlords, it seemed, were apparently more sensitive to what was happening – whatever that was, Ulric thought. But of course – he realized he knew exactly what it was. Why, was a different matter – even with this third shard arriving there should have been some sort of...ritual performed and the three be joined before it triggered the o
pening to the prison world.

  Rowan stepped around them, carefully avoiding Ulric, and grabbed hold of his father’s arm. ‘Go back to Saybel,’ he ordered telepathically. ‘You’ll be safe there.’

  ‘Why, Rowan, you surprise me. I wouldn’t have thought you actually cared whether I was safe or not,’ Jarath smiled, wry amusement in his mental voice.

  The younger Nightlord frowned. Jarath wasn’t acting right at all, hadn’t been since he got here. He’d never say anything like that. He might think it, sure, but to really say it, no. ‘You’re the Prime of Saybel. If you come to harm on Anraun’s soil, some people might get the idea to retaliate.’

  ‘By some people, I presume you mean Benedict, my Second – your eldest brother.’

  ‘Yeah, Benedict the ass,’ Rowan muttered. ‘Look, just go back home, I’ll let you know what happens, all right?’

  ‘You don’t think me capable of looking after myself?’

  ‘Yes, Dad, I do. I know you are...’

  Jarath broke in, ‘Then why this desire to be rid of me?’

  Rowan carried on as if his father had never interrupted, ‘But what you’re even better at doing is looking after Saybel. And I’m really not taking any orders from Ben. Ever. That’s just not gonna happen. Besides, if it goes wrong here, you can come back and launch an attack. Or, we send them to you. There’s no-one stronger than you are when you’re on Saybel. The Darkworld’s your centre of power! And you’re the strongest Nightlord in generations!’

  ‘Yes, but...’

  “For fuck’s sake will you stop goddamned arguing with me!” Rowan yelled out loud, hushing every voice in the large tent. Collective breath was held and no moves were made. Shadows, subconsciously created by the two Nightlords, cloaked the walls and ceiling, creeping along the ground and coating the tables.

  “Rowan...” Jarath warned, his voice soft and cold.

  “Go home! I can’t have you here! It’s too...”

  “Dangerous,” Morgan finished. If these two fought, they’d do more damage than the prison world. Besides, it was irresponsible to put this particular Prime in harm’s way. Dealing with retribution from Saybel was not something he wanted to deal with – ever. “Please Jarath, much as I do appreciate you being here and all the help you’ve given us, you are just too important to the Structure for you to be at risk. Rowan’s right.”