Beneath Strange Stars: A Collection of Tales

by Ralph E. Vaughan

  Diaban rose from his lying place and squeezed into one of the godly alcoves, between a deity’s stone form and the curving wall. He nearly cried as he found himself staring into a demon’s visage, thinking perhaps the god had quickened to life in revenge of his heinous act. Then he realized he had inadvertently chosen to hide behind the twin-faced water-demon Nhagurz. His hold on consciousness nearly slipped when he felt the rending stone beak of her rear-facing head press against the softness of his throat. Only his fear of betraying Lhalorin kept him from slumping.

  They whispered past him, a full hand of grey-robed priests led by Bosha, whose black robe and cowl marked him as their master, the Keeper of Portents and Secrets.

  Diaban squeezed his eyes shut and did not breathe, expecting at any moment to be roughly yanked from his hiding place. Only when the final feathery footfall had passed him by did he dare to open his eyes, amazed to see their grey backs vanishing into the chamber.

  The priests were silent as they disappeared into the cupola and began tasks and studies of which even Xenarch Calimosh of Abraxes-by-the-Sea must remain blissfully ignorant, for the law of the ancient Xenarchy was incumbent even upon the Xenarch himself. No one, especially the ruler, could be immune from the penalties for blasphemy – death, or worse than death. Such rigidity was absolutely necessary for the maintenance of order.

  After a bare dozen heartbeats a slender pale form garbed in silks of diaphanous argent flitted past him, her small naked feet making no sound against the crystal floor. Her full lips were curved in a strange smile that was terrible to behold.

  After a dozen more heartbeats, Diaban weakly followed.

  Outside, in the Gardens of the Xenarch, Diaban paused in concealing shadows and let exotic perfumes waft about him, trying to convince himself he had not committed blasphemy and treason. Rare and beautiful plants whispered, tinkled and sang in the breezes that flowed gently from the eastern desert to the turquoise sea. Beyond the ancient palace’s beetling walls, from atop which leaped watchfires, there arose the incessant murmur of the people of Abraxas-by-the-Sea and the petty noises of their daily lives. A sense of the normal flowed back to his mind and life returned to his numbed limbs. Diaban reluctantly turned his gaze upward, to the once-unvisited cupola of the Tower of Portents, which was now lit by witch-fire and laser-light. He wanted to turn away, to look at the comforting ground, but he could not keep his gaze from drifting beyond, to the brilliant wash of stars, which were, he had always believed, lanterns hung close by in a reassuringly solid sky.

  The solidity of the vault seemed to vanish in an unwonted realization of infinite distances.

  He pressed his fists against his cursed eyes.

  A boot scraped against flagstone, a copper shield slid against a guardsman’s harness, intentional noises to announce an arrival. Diaban pulled his fists from his eyes to see a young guardsman hesitantly peering at him around a fluted column.

  “Come forward, Guardsman,” he said softly after a moment regarding the discomfited newcomer. “Present yourself.”

  The man stepped reluctantly forward. More boy than man, Diaban thought.

  “Alphoz, my Captain,” the guardsman said stiffly. “Third Watcher in the Western Pentile, an appointed Guardian of the Xenarch’s Peace.”

  “Have you walked your post faithfully, Guardsman Alphoz?” Diaban asked. “Have you been the Xenarch’s watchful Eyes in the darkness, his Shield against the Awful Shadow of the Solid Sky?”

  “I, uh…” The lad’s gaze darted in the Tower’s direction, then abruptly snapped back to his commander’s knife-sharp features. “Yes, my Captain. Unfailingly.”

  “Do you, then, have a report for me, Guardsman?”

  The sentry uttered a strangled sigh in the vastness of the night. He lowered his gaze. “Nothing disturbs the Xenarch’s Peace.”

  “Upon your eyes and tongue, you swear, Guardsman?” Diaban asked. “Upon your life? Upon your wretched life?”

  “So I swear.”

  “The Ship will come!” cried a spectral voice. It echoed up from the depths. “It will drop from space and rescue me! The sky sailors ply the endless void of space, and they will never abandon one of their own. They will come! You will see the Ship descend from the Stars. The sky is not solid! The Starship is coming!”

  Alphoz pressed his fists to his ears, trembling, but removed them when he saw his commander standing with cocked ears. Too late, Diaban realized that as Captain of the Guard he should have been the one to set the proscribed example, not a mere guardsman. But his mind was aswirl with forbidden thoughts and burning with sights he should have never seen, and he counted himself lucky he could think at all.

  “The Stranger speaks heresies,” Diaban murmured into the awkward silence between the two men.

  “Deadly heresies.”

  “After his trial before the Xenarch tomorrow, he’ll no longer cry in the night,” Diaban continued. “His end will be the fate of all heretics and enemies.”

  The lad nodded.

  Diaban continued, less harshly: “Continue to walk your post, Guardsman. Should you have anything to report, you shall report to me directly, not the First Watcher of your Pentile. Such is the will of the Xenarch. Am I clear about that, Guardsman Alphoz?”

  Alphoz trembled slightly. “Yes, my Captain, I understand my orders. Perfectly.”

  Diaban released the guardsman to his rounds, and when the boy was away he wiped his sweaty hands on his tunic. As he passed through the garden, he passed beneath the window of the Xenarch’s daughter. He watched as soft golden and azure light spill outward from fanlight and etched glass panes. Grill-work shadows flowed over him as he neared the window. He paused and heard a silver harp’s plucked strings, heard Lhalorin’s crystalline voice sing an ancient Phatavian ballad of love lost beneath pastel moons floating upon the surface of the solid sky.

  He again shivered as he had when ensconced in the Tower, but this time not from terror.

  After a few delicious moments, he moved away lest the night held other eyes unseen.

  Her soft voice lingered in his ears as well as his heart as he crossed through courtyard after courtyard. How could she sing so sweetly of the solid sky after what she had seen through the brass instrument of the Stranger? He yearned for such dispassion to calm his nerved, then wondered if she harbored any passion at all.

  Could she love anyone?

  Could she love him?

  You’re forty years her senior, at least, and only barely above the dirt people in her eyes, he thought bitterly. Your foolishness will be your death.

  Yes, he was old, but he also held her secrets.

  Out of sight of the Tower, beyond the hearing of her sweet euphony, he unlocked a grilled portal into the world below the palace with a skull-headed key kept on a thick chain riveted to his harness. Mind aswirl with heresy and passion, he descended into the chambered darkness of the Pits.

  ***

  Calimosh, Xenarch of Abraxes-by-the-Sea and its attendant Provinces, dismissed everyone from his silver and lacquer chamber except for Bosha and Diaban. Keeping his gaze trained only on his master, Diaban hoped he would be held for only as long as it took for the Silent Guardsmen to bring forth the Stranger from the Pits.

  The circular chamber was high-domed, the shadowed ceiling adorned with the terrible deities of the solid sky. Slender columns supporting its rim were carved with the likenesses of demons of air and mountain, and within the thoroughly polished marmoreal floor writhed the insatiable beings which dwelt under the ground and in the cold black ocean depths.

  “Has the Stranger been made ready?” the Xenarch asked.

  “Yes, my Xenarch,” Diaban answered. “A hand of Silent Guardsmen await with him just beyond the portal of the Pits.”

  The Xenarch nodded, sitting pensively upon his jade and silver throne. He was a tall man, even seated, once muscular but softened by indolent years. He rested his sharp chin upon a pale fist. He looked toward Bosha, Keeper of Portents.


  “Are the witnesses ready to render testimony in this matter?”

  “ Yes, Xenarch, and held separately,” announced the Keeper of Portents with a curt nod that would have been considered insolent from any other man. “Ready to give true and secret words under penalty of excruciation.”

  “All right, let’s get started,” Calimosh said. “Get the Stranger.”

  Diaban stepped sprightly from his post at the Xenarch’s left to the plushly curtained portal, pushed aside the fabric, and motioned for the pentile of Silent Guardsman to escort the prisoner within.

  The five Silent Guardsmen, with their ears and lips sewn shut, marched between them the man taken from the Pits, hounding his movements with savage jabs of their enforcement truncheons. The Stranger wore a one-piece garment of a fabric unknown to anyone, apparently a uniform, sporting on one shoulder-sleeve a colorful patch depicting a grinning canine of unknown breed running amongst blasphemous stars. On the other shoulder was a pentagram of blazing suns. His hair was wild and his eyes were rheumy and red-rimmed. His bound hands were raw. A shining metal oval covered his blaspheming mouth, held securely in place by tightly drawn leather thongs.

  “Let’s hear your witnesses, Bosha,” Calimosh said. “When it’s time for the prisoner to plead his case, I want everything over and done with, the chamber empty but for us.”

  Bosha bowed ever so slightly and cleared his throat.

  “What, Keeper?” Calimosh asked testily.

  “It is my advice that when the Stranger speaks, the Captain of the Guard be dismissed from our presence,” Bosha said.

  Diaban refrained from frowning at the Keeper’s words. Truly he had not wanted to stay any longer than it took for the Silent Guardsmen to present the prisoner, and had been surprised when it became apparent the Xenarch expected him to remain through testimony, but he bristled that Bosha wanted him gone. He wondered what lies Bosha might possibly utter in his absence. And then he wondered if Bosha might know of what had transpired last night. By a supreme effort, he kept his hands from trembling, kept all his attention focused on the Xenarch.

  Calimosh glanced at the captain, then cocked his head inquisitively toward the Keeper of Portents. “Why?”

  Bosha clasped his hands together and smiled. “There is no insult intended the good Captain Diaban.”

  “Why then?” Calimosh persisted. “Diaban has been my loyal fist for many years. Is there any reason for mistrust?”

  “I think only of Diaban’s sensibilities.”

  “Indeed?”

  “I have interrogated the Stranger closely since we took him into custody two pentans ago,” Bosha explained. “In those ten days, he has become unbelievably hostile and blasphemous. His sudden clamor last night through the air-grills made it necessary to fit him with a punishment appliance and restrict his custodianship solely to the Silent Guardsmen. When the time arrives for the Stranger to speak for the Xenarch’s ears…”

  “You fear, when he speaks…”

  “Precisely, my Xenarch,” Bosha cooed. “No doubt there is no braver man than Captain Diaban in a physical battle against mortal foes, but he is but a man of common mind and merely martial training. His tongue loosed from captivity, the Stranger may well utter blasphemies that will sear the mind of a common soldier. Only the ears of the Xenarch and his Keeper of Portents may endure all the Stranger may say.”

  The Xenarch nodded thoughtfully, shrugged and looked to Diaban. “There is much in what Bosha says.”

  Diaban remained silent, untrusting of his own tongue.

  “What’s your opinion, Diaban?”

  “As you wish, my master.”

  Calimosh nodded, but looked faintly disappointed at Diaban’s answer. “Well, that’s that, then. Leave us before we unstrap the prisoner’s mouth.”

  “Yes, my Xenarch,” Diaban murmured.

  “Let’s move this along, Bosha. Who’s first?”

  “Two witnesses, heard together because their words fit like a dove and tail,” Bosha replied.

  Calimosh made an impatient little gesture with his fluttering hands.

  The witnesses were Da and Hadj, a farmer and a merchant from the Davalosian Crescent far to the south, where the Stranger was taken.

  Bosha opened a heavy velum scroll covered with small crabbed handwriting. “You saw the sky-fire first, Da?”

  “Aye, your worship,” the farmer replied. “I was tending the millet needs at my south-left irrigator when I heard thunder-booms coming out of a clear nooning. They come like a river rushing, not with light-flashes from out the solid sky as the lords of air and clouds make it. My ears are hurting and when I look up to see if the gods are mayhaps fisting an unimportant farmer, but then I see a line of fire instead.”

  Bosha glanced at the scroll. “Like the Lance of Agni in the Dreamtime, you said.”

  “Well, those wasn’t my fine words, your worship, but the village prayer-master’s when I tried to say to him what I’d seen,” Da explained. “If I had learning, I might have thought of those fine words on my own, but having heard them, I cleave to them, for it does seem like something from the old stories whispered about the campfires of my youth.”

  “That’s fine, Da, but continue,” Bosha encouraged.

  “Was too scared to think of fine words on me own,” Da added, casting a worried glance toward the august form of the Xenarch.

  “Continue,” Bosha said coldly.

  Da paled, then said: “My great fear, both for fire-touched plots and my own miserable soul, starts me to screaming. ‘Save me,’ I cried. ‘Save me from doom falling from out the solid sky!’”

  Bosha silenced Da’s outburst with a dark frown, then consulted his scroll. “And that is when you arrived, Master Hadj, true?”

  “Yes, my lord, quite correct,” the merchant said. “I have been Da’s nearest neighbor for many years. I have never known him to ever utter an inaccurate or blasphemous statement. He is honest and hard working. I cannot say as to the truth of fire coming from the solid sky, but…”

  “Just tell what occurred within your own senses that morning,” Bosha urged.

  Hadj nodded nervously. “I had only that morning returned to my house from a trade mission outside the Crescent. I heard what I first took to be gas explosions of the sort that occur when the gods shift beneath the ground and vent from the deep places. The noise, however, continued without abate, and the intensity increased until my ears throbbed with a terrible hurting. I heard Da cry for help above the sound. I did not connect the sound with Da’s distress, but thought that perhaps he was being menaced by some beast while at work in his fields. I grabbed the nearest weapon, a sos-snare, and ran to help him.”

  “What sort of weapon is that?” Calimosh asked. “A sos-snare?”

  “A weapon of the provinces,” the Keeper explained. “It consists of a long length of rope with weights at each end. While one end is a thrower that entangles, the other is used as a club,”

  Calimosh nodded.

  Bosha motioned impatiently for Hadj to continue.

  “Before I reached Da, there was a motion of the ground that almost knocked me off my feet. At the same moment, there was a near blinding flash of light from the blind side of a pastured hillock. I saw Da on the ground, helped him up, and then he started babbling about fire erupting from the solid sky. With Da beside me, I started over the hillock to see what, if anything, had fallen.”

  “But you saw nothing fall,” Bosha prompted. “Pray be precise.”

  “Da saw fire, we both heard dire sounds, and I had seen the flash of light from beyond the hillock, but actually seeing anything fall – no,” Hadj explained. “However, if nothing else, it seemed prudent to see if a piece of the sky had fallen.”

  Bosha frowned at the conjecture.

  “Solids do crack with age,” Hadj murmured softly. “And the sky being so old…”

  “That is not…” Bosha started to counter.

  “Did you seek other witnesses?” the Xenarch asked.
/>
  “No…no, my Xenarch, we had no such thoughts,” Hadj stammered, nearly speechless at being questioned directly by the lord of the land. “We were too full of fear to think straight. I had not seen all Da had claimed to see, but I had seen enough to make it prudent to explore beyond the hillock.”

  Calimosh gestured limply.

  “Continue,” Bosha said.

  “We advanced over the hillock, me with the sos-snare and Da having only the hardwood pry-stick he uses to lever rocks from his channel irrigators,” Hadj said. “That was when we saw a metal spire sticking up from the center of a lake.”

  “That metal was never in the lake before,” Da added. “I swear!”

  “The lake is not on either of our properties, but we were both familiar well enough with it to know the metal did not belong,” Hadj agreed.

  “The lake be the property of Vale, a master of ponies,” Da explained. “But he be away at the time, and be away still in the up-mountain meadows with his foaling mares.”

  Bosha made a silencing gesture. “Confine yourselves to the subject. Tell us about the metal.”

  “It wasn’t a proper metal, as wrested from the ground by a sapper or aglow from the fires of a smith,” Hadj explained. “It gleamed under the suns like silver, but it was not silver, for a merchant knows the glint of silver true. On its sides were emblazoned those strange symbols.” He pointed at the patches on the Stranger’s shoulders. “Then the metal spire began to slowly slide beneath the waters. That was when we saw this man.”

  “Everything be as true as rock,” Da interjected. “We find this man at water’s edge, bleeding unto death, and we carried him away toward home for the Wife to bandage up. It was just honest hospitality, naught more.”

  “When we looked back, my lord, the spire had completely vanished,” Hadj said. “We did not see the final vanishment, but the lake is fed and drained by underground streams. It might have been removed to a chamber below, but whether by demon or sinkhole is beyond our ken.”