Beneath Strange Stars: A Collection of Tales

by Ralph E. Vaughan

  She uttered a small laugh, and the music of their chains changed tempo as they turned their faceless heads in the direction of the unexpected sound. Bulky shadows moved about the faceless workers, cracking neural whips in the heated air.

  Lhalorin whirled at a soft sound behind as strong arms grabbed her. She stared into the started face of a guard. Startled, he relaxed his grip a bit. She kicked him hard and pushed him away. He toppled from the walkway.

  His scream was cut short when he broke his back on a piece of machinery, but she was already away from that chamber, vanished down another black tunnel. Muted sounds of alarm fell silent behind her. When she felt she was safe from discovery, she paused in her flight, and received a small shock of recognition. Pulling her cloak tight about her throat, she entered the colonnaded chamber from which a hundred tunnels branched above, around and below.

  The walls were decorated with signs and symbols that, she knew, were unknown to even the most learned scholars and priests of the Xenarchy. Once, as a little girl hiding behind a dusty panel, she heard two old scholars call this place Main Engineering. They had been slaughtered on the spot by Bosha’s own hand, who was, even then, as old and repellant to her as he was mysterious and exciting. Main Engineering, she knew from her many intrigues, was one of the oldest sectors of the Pits; equally old, but much more secret, was a place called Bridge, a chamber so well hidden that even she had yet to find it.

  Departing Main Engineering, she followed alluring sounds until she happened upon an excruciation. She had secretly witnessed more excruciations than she could count, and yet they still held a fascination for her. They reduced the complexities of life to simpler, more easily understood terms. There was pain, there was pleasure, and what more did one need?

  By the light of an unhooded lantern, three red-robed Holders of Silence worked on a man suspended from the metal ceiling. They had ribboned his tongue by degrees and had plucked one eye from its socket. The other would be removed before long, after which, if he were lucky, he would be banished to the Wilderness of Salt. She peered intently at the prisoner’s face, then smiled, for she knew him well, a guardsman named Alphoz who, as far as she knew, had never offended anyone.

  An arm encircled her waist, a hand was clamped over her mouth, and she was taken silently from the excruciation chamber. When she was finally released, she turned and smiled severely.

  “Diaban,” she murmured, glancing to his hand still upon her arm. “The Captain forgets his station…and mine.”

  He pulled his hand away as if it had been burned. “It is not proper that you are here. Your father would not want you to see what men do to each other away from the light.”

  “Not only men,” she breathed, thinking of her mother. “When I am Xenarch I shall view all excruciations. Openly.”

  “When you are Xenarch,” Diaban pointed out.

  “I will be, you know, when I have enough power.”

  “The crown will surely come to you in the fullness of time.”

  She laughed, a silvery sound in this dismal place. “In the fullness of time I will be a doddering old fool like my father. I will take the crown while I can still enjoy its authority, before I am consumed by fears and doubts.”

  “The crown of the Xenarch cannot be taken, only received.”

  “Poor foolish Diaban,” Lhalorin cooed, caressing his seamed face with her soft hand. “A pinch of alkaloid crystal in a wine draught, an emerald-eyed serpent beneath the bed sheet, a dagger in the hand of a trusted captain…”

  Diaban stepped back.

  “Of course the crown can be taken,” she asserted. “One only has to want it enough…and have friends who will help. Are you my friend, Diaban?”

  “I am a loyal servant of the Xenarch,” he replied stiffly, but barely a weak whisper.

  “Would a loyal servant of the Xenarch enter the Tower of Portents?” she asked.

  His eyes widened.

  “You are not at all good at seeing without being seen,” she remarked. “Poor little Alphoz. He never saw me, you know, but he did see you, so I suppose it is for the best.”

  A ragged gasp of protest escaped Diaban’s throat.

  “You will not tell my father anything, or that wretched Bosha.”

  Reluctantly, he agreed.

  She moved closer to him and writhed her albino python arms about him, grazed his lips with hers. “When I take the crown, I’ll turn my father over to the Holders of Silence. Then I’ll put his body on a tower beneath the open sky for the birds to pick clean. It is an open sky, you know. I saw that when I peered through Bosha’s toy. It is as the Stranger says.”

  “Treason,” he croaked. “Blasphemy.”

  “You will commit treason with me, won’t you, Diaban?” she asked. “You will blaspheme, enjoy all the forbidden fruits?”

  He pulled her close to him and sought her hungry mouth with his. The nearness of her slim young body pressing hotly against his, seemed to burn through their clothes, inflaming passions he had never before given reign.

  “Will you murder for me, Diaban?”

  “Yes!” he gasped.

  She stepped back from his passionate embrace.

  “Not yet,” she said, “but there is something I want you to do.”

  “Tell me what.”

  “Take me to see the Stranger.”

  “It is forbidden,” he replied, but his words carried no force. “I cannot go against…”

  “I must see the Stranger, must talk to him about the open sky,” she insisted, her voice husky with desire. “I’ve seen the mysteries of the Tower, seen through lenses the burning stars. I want the Stranger to tell of the vast spaces beyond the sky.”

  Diaban shivered. He would rather she spoke of murder and treason than blasphemy, but he knew he could not stop her from giving voice to either.

  He led her through tunnels known only to officers and senior guardsmen, some only to him. In lightless corridors they passed through panels that slid aside noiselessly when he whispered certain words or touched depressions in the metal walls in certain ways. As they entered a series of vaulted rooms, Diaban motioned for absolute silence. Lhalorin looked down a corridor and saw the back of a Silent Guardsman. Diaban danced his fingers over a metal plate set in the wall and a portion of the wall slid open. They stepped through quickly and it closed behind them. They traversed a narrow twisting blue-lit passage and emerged near a cluster of barred cells. All were empty but one.

  Diaban opened the cell.

  “The Stranger,” Lhalorin whispered.

  At the slight sound, the man in the cell stood from a low stool upon which he had sat slumped and turned toward his visitors.

  “Well, well, what have we here?” the Stranger murmured.

  “Swiftly, Lhalorin, swiftly,” Diaban said softly.

  “I saw you at that trial, if that’s want you want to call it,” the Stranger said to Diaban. “Have you come to kill me for upsetting whatever cockeyed belief system you people march to?” He looked to Lhalorin. “Is this supposed to be my last meal?”

  Lhalorin pressed her hands against the Stranger’s chest. His clothes were torn and dirty, his face marred by bruises and crustings of blood, and his odor was tinged with the befoulment of the pit. His eyes were an impossible blue, and there was even something about the way he stood that made him unlike any other man she had ever known. Rather than being repelled, however, she was attracted. Everything about him spoke of unknown climes, of alien worlds beyond the vastness of the open sky.

  “Tell me of the open sky,” she murmured.

  The Stranger pushed her away. “What new insanity is this? Either let me go or kill me and get it over with!”

  Diaban moved nervously to the main door, but through the narrow viewing slit saw only the back of a Silent Guardsman’s head, saw his sewn-shut ears.

  “Tell me of worlds beyond the sky,” Lhalorin implored. “Tell me what new delicious sins are found among the stars.”

  “I will not
play your crazy games,” the Stranger replied. “I don’t know how you people became so perverse in your isolation, but I’m not joining you in cloud coo-coo land.”

  Lhalorin reached for him. “Tell me, Stranger, is there really a Ship coming? Tell me of it, Stranger.”

  “Stop calling me that!” he cried. “My name is Karl Blake. I work for the Dog Star Freight Line. A starship is coming to rescue me from this madhouse world. I am not abandoned!”

  Lhalorin grabbed the Stranger, pulled him to her, pressed his bruised lips to hers.

  He shoved her away.

  Diaban caught her.

  The main door opened and a Silent Guardsman entered carrying a bucket of water. When he saw Diaban and Lhalorin he dropped the bucket and started to pull his sword. The sword slipped from his fingers and dropped back into its scabbard, and the Silent Guardsman slid down the wall to the floor, Diaban’s thrown dagger protruding from his chest.

  Bosha’s voice sounded in the distance.

  Diaban grabbed Lhalorin away from the Stranger and closed the door in his face. He pulled her through secret corridors and passageways until they attained the surface. He sent her running to her own chambers to be seen by her ladies in waiting.

  Diaban scurried to establish his own alibi. Too late he remembered he had left his dagger in the guardsman’s chest. All that could be divined from it, however, was that it was of military issue, the kind of weapon carried by every soldier. The Stranger could not name him, but had recognized him. A wave of nausea swept over Diaban and he considered banishing himself to the Wilderness of Salt. Only thoughts of Lhalorin and her soft embrace kept him from running.

  In a short time, there were a dozen guardsmen in various locations about the palace and its grounds who could truthfully say they had seen Diaban making his rounds of the posts. And he had replaced his dagger from stores, under the very nose of an unobservant quartermaster.

  In one of the gardens he heard the distant dulcet tones of Lhalorin singing old ballads. His dire thoughts of the Wilderness of Salt faded.

  As he neared the north barracks, Bosha stepped unnoticed from the shadows.

  ***

  Calimosh felt much older than his years allowed. He still sat upon his throne in the audience chamber, as he had through the long day, head slumped into his hand. His crown felt as if it were slicing into his flesh, cutting into the bone of his skull. Black shadows twisted through his mind. Afar off he heard the sweet singing of his dear child, but even that failed to push aside the darkness.

  The sky was not solid, but open, and there were myriad worlds beyond, the Stranger had claimed. It was a heresy for which there could be no other penalty but death, and an appropriately excruciating one. During his reign, thousands had died at his command for much lesser crimes, sometimes only for suspicions of heresies or dreams that were open to interpretation by the clergy. There was no reason to keep the Stranger from the fate decreed by ancient law.

  And yet the Stranger had said a Ship was coming, a Starship.

  The Xenarch clambered wearily from his throne, shuffled across the tiled demons decorating the floor, and made his way to his private chambers. He dismissed all the servants, all those who would ply him with opiate wines, dainties and sweet words of favor. He lit no lanterns or tapers, gliding through the ebon shadows cast under the feeble lights of the pastel moons. He threw open the filigreed double leaves and stepped onto the balcony that overlooked the city and the sea beyond. It was the same balcony upon which he had stood in his disturbing dream, the same balcony upon which he had awakened.

  He stared at the stars and moons reflected in the silvered ocean.

  To the Keeper of Portents, it was all very easy – just kill the Stranger, as they had so many others. Then mount his head on a pike where it could be seen by everyone who passed by, as a lesson, as a talisman whose sightless gaze would be a comfort to all who might otherwise question the solidity of the sky or the validity of millennia-held beliefs.

  And yet, Calimosh wondered, leaning upon the alabaster balustrade, what if there was some truth in the Stranger’s claims? What if there were worlds beyond, sky-sailors who never abandoned their own, and a Ship even now enroute, speeding across the heretical void?

  Two moons were high in their slow slide across the sky, their pastel images reflected in the calm waters beyond the breakwater. The sea was very tranquil tonight, but none of that serenity seeped into his own spirit.

  The sound of Lhalorin’s sweet song still came to him faintly. How he envied his young daughter’s simple life, one without care or worry. Innocent and ignorant of the world’s brutalities, she had never faced a decision more difficult than what gown to wear to the harvest festival, or what young noble to favor with the next dance. In a few years, perhaps too few, the custodianship of the Xenarchy would fall to her, and he had done nothing to prepare her. He had at times considered bringing her into the sphere of politics and religion, but always he had dissuaded himself from shattering her perfect world.

  He turned from the sea and started back inside. Eventually he would have to pass judgement on the Stranger, but not just yet.

  As he entered the chamber, he stepped on something slippery and his feet went out from beneath him. He lay on his back staring at the fearful stars till he regained his breath. He dared not summon a servant to see him thus. He turned onto his side.

  A stain glistened black on the moonlit marble, spreading outward from something still hid by shadow. An obsidian stickiness coated his hand.

  He crawled fearfully to the object still steeped in shadows. He recognized the hot metallic scent of spilled blood. He stared into the dead eyes of Diaban, saw a dagger protruding from his old friend’s throat. The Xenarch’s scream echoed through the palace, bringing hundreds of running feet.

  Above dark murmurs, Lhalorin’s song lilted sweetly.

  ***

  Bosha stood outside the rooms of the Xenarch’s daughter. After a moment, he stepped through the curtained archway. She gazed at him without surprise, then set aside her harp.

  “Yes, Keeper, what is it?”

  “News of a tragedy is spreading through the palace.”

  “Oh?”

  “Captain Diaban is dead.”

  “Really?”

  “Murdered,” the Keeper explained. “Your father found his body near the balcony of his private chamber.”

  Lhalorin’s lips curved into a thin hard smile. “Why bring the news to me, Keeper?”

  “I thought you would want to know,” Bosha explained. “I was under the impression the two of you were close.”

  “I’ve known him all my life,” she replied. “But the same could be easily said of many palace servants. The same could be said of you, Keeper, but familiarity usually results only in contempt. You, of all people, should know that.”

  “I apologize, Lhalorin,” he said, bowing low. “I must have been misinformed.”

  “Evidently.”

  “Do you know the Stranger still lives?”

  “Does he? Truthfully, I have not paid the matter much attention.” She picked up a comb made of bone inlaid with shell and ran it through her shimmering hair. “I would have thought he would be excruciated and headless by now.”

  “Your father seems reluctant to mete the proper punishment.”

  “Who can question the Xenarch?” she asked. “You?”

  “I am a loyal servant,” he answered. “But I am also the Keeper of Mysteries and Portents, a guardian of our ancient ways.”

  “The Stranger is one of those Mysteries,” Lhalorin said. “He is a danger to those ancient ways.”

  “You are a very perceptive young lady,” he murmured. “If you were Xenarch...”

  “Some day, Keeper, in the fullness of time.”

  “Soon.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “No one can deny you anything you want,” he said. “Not even the Stranger, I an sure.”

  The comb fell from her hand and into her silken
lap. “He will not yield, will not give up his secrets of his heart.”

  “You could at least have his eyes and tongue.”

  “I could, if I were Xenarch,” she admitted after a moment. “But I am not Xenarch.”

  “If you were to ask your father for the Stranger’s eyes and tongue, he could not deny you.”

  “He fears the coming of the Ship.”

  “There is no Ship!” Bosha croaked harshly. “It is not real!”

  “It is no less real than his fear.”

  “Make him promise,” he said, his mouth close to her ear. “Once you have the Xenarch’s word, he cannot refuse anything you ask. It is the law. Even with the Stranger’s eyes and tongue, you would still have the Stranger waiting in the Pit.”

  Lhalorin smiled.

  ***

  Calimosh looked up and saw Lhalorin enter the shadowy audience chamber carrying her harp. She paid no attention the guardsmen and advisors ranged about him.

  “You look very unhappy, Father,” she said. “I went to your chamber but it was sealed. Has something happened?”

  “A monstrous deed,” Calimosh explained. “Captain Diaban was murdered on the balcony of my chamber. I don’t know why he sought me there, but I feel it might have had something to do with the Stranger. I tried to get his honest opinion today about the Stranger, but he was reluctant, I think, to speak in front of Bosha. Whatever he wanted to tell me, someone wanted to stop him, was desperate enough to kill him. I feel surrounded by enemies.”

  “I don’t understand, Father.”

  “Of course not, my child,” the Xenarch said, smiling sadly. “Such things do not intrude upon your world. How could you possibly know anything about how the world really is? What terrors exist in the minds of men?” He glanced at the harp in her arms. “A little while ago I heard you singing and wished you were singing to me. Will you sing to me now, Lhalorin? Come, let your voice lift my soul from the endless night into which it has descended.”

  She plucked a mellow chord and smiled coyly. “I will, Father, if you will grant me a boon.”

  “Lift me back into the light, and I will grant you anything you desire,” Calimosh said.