A Star-Reckoner's Lot (A Star-Reckoner's Legacy Book 1)

by Darrell Drake

  “On the lam!” she ordered, hurriedly stuffing the eggs into her mouth before the jay could reclaim them. Once they were safely trotting toward Jupiter, she marvelled. “Look at the beard on that one. What a šo-chattering thing.”

  Waray then pulled her camel alongside Tirdad’s and began rummaging through his belongings for another cloak. “It’s frosty,” she explained when he caught her shoulder-deep in his pack.

  He sighed and turned his attention back to the yardangs. “Do what you will.”

  Upon yanking out a tangle of two cloaks, she considered herself blessed. A whoop was in order, and far be it from her to abstain.

  “I overheard something about a peace treaty being signed during our stop in Behdesir,” Ashtadukht idly mentioned. “With Hrom, that is. A cease of hostilities.”

  “Will not last,” said Tirdad. “The area around Hayk is too volatile. The question is not if the treaty will be broken but when and by whom.”

  Ashtadukht nodded. “Fair point. Seems like it’s always been contested in one way or another. Would you have been there?”

  “I believe so.”

  “Instead, you’re in the middle of a desert. Out of the frying pan.”

  “Eh, it is a step above the armour. Imagine trying to wear the wardrobe of your entire family all at once. Not much of a step but a step nonetheless. And the stench. It reeks.”

  “But none of the glory and adrenaline,” said Ashtadukht, checking behind her for Waray, who was bundled such that she looked the part of a Savaran.

  Tirdad was doing his best to watch the pinprick Ashtadukht had pointed out as being Jupiter. He worried he’d lose it despite the planet being one of the brighter celestial bodies. “If our journey thus far has been any indication, I would not write off glory or adrenaline so soon.”

  “Any glory involving a spoon is glory you won’t find in war that’s for sure,” Ashtadukht noted.

  Hours passed before Vega heralded the Lyre in the northeastern sky, at which point the cohorts adjusted their course by the way of a narrow pass between yardangs that framed the star. It wasn’t long before Vega towed the rest of the Grand Triangle into the heavens, and Saturn along with it.

  The appearance of that final milestone directed them toward an especially stout-looking yardang that didn’t resemble anything in particular beyond the vague idea of treetops. They circled it, and in doing so came across an entrance marked by a single torch.

  “Šo-spooky,” Waray muttered, peering into the darkness. Her infrared receptors were too overwhelmed by the torch to pick out anything within.

  “What do you think?” asked Tirdad.

  “I think this must be it,” answered Ashtadukht, favouring her eyes by not actually looking at the ingress. “Where else would we find a torch in the middle of the Lut? Grab it and go on, would you. I’ll take care of our mounts.”

  Tirdad removed the torch from its sconce and hefted it lightly in one hand. He bounced it once or twice to get a feel for its balance—you could fend off both men and divs with a torch to the face—and started in.

  “Stay outside,” Ashtadukht bade Waray. “Watch for anyone trying to sneak in behind us. And keep an eye on the camels.”

  “But . . .” Waray began, searching for some excuse to join them. She canted her head. “There’s . . .”

  Ashtadukht gave her shoulder a squeeze—what she hoped was an emboldening, or at the very least pacifying, gesture. For someone so prone to disappearing, the half-div hadn’t let them out of her sight since the incident with the illusion. “It’ll be okay.”

  Waray nodded uncertainly. “Maybe,” she weakly mumbled, not at all convinced. Ashtadukht handed her the reins to all three camels, and the leather creaked under the strength of Waray’s grip. “Maybe.”

  “Don’t run off,” Ashtadukht said before hurrying to catch up to Tirdad. A barely perceptible, “Maybe,” followed her through the mouth of the tunnel, which quickly took on an incline and a slight bend.

  She caught up to Tirdad, and they proceeded for easily half an hour before they reached an open, well-lit chamber. Ashtadukht shielded her eyes.

  A high yet silvery voice rang from inside like a lightly-stroked santur. “Made it past the traps, I see.”

  “Oh, sure,” said Ashtadukht, thinking that perhaps they should have been more cautious on the way in. “The traps.”

  “Well, come in, come in,” insisted the voice. “Blinds you, does it not? I think the schmuck who built this place made the tunnels just long enough that your eyes would forget the light before entering. The torch helps, though.”

  Ashtadukht placed her palm on Tirdad’s back and nudged him in. “Are you the one who sent for me?” she asked, blinking hard to get a look at him.

  “None other. Probably feels insulting being ordered out here over a spoon, but it’s no ordinary spoon.”

  After a great deal of squinting and wiping her eyes, she finally caught a glimpse of her contractor. To say he was weathered would have been putting it gently. Decades in the sun had baked him prune-skinned and a deep golden brown, but in an oddly generous sort of way. Like you’d expect an adventurer to appear in their later years. Reclined amidst a pile of pillows, he looked at the same time frail and brimming with vitality—as though his bountiful spirit made up for any infirmity. She admitted he was handsome, particularly his pristinely trimmed beard. She tipped her hat.

  “So you are a woman,” he said when she stepped from behind her cousin. “Had to see it to believe it. And a mighty fine one, too. Mighty fine. Farrobay, ready to service.”

  “You better have called me here for more than that,” Ashtadukht said with an edge so keen you could skin a crocodile.

  “Well,” replied the man while turning on his side, “we can save that for later. I’m just pleased to find you so . . . pleasing. Although I was expecting to meet your half-div friend, too.”

  “My what?”

  “No need to play coy, sweet Ashtadukht. A star-reckoner does not survive as long as I have without learning a few tricks. I can sense her because I have met her before. Something beginning with ‘w’. A real piece of work that one.” Farrobay laughed and grunted to sit up. “She left me with a nasty scar. Nasty. Show you later.”

  Ashtadukht gulped. Had he lured her here to kill her? She glanced at Tirdad, and found some comfort in the sight of his palm resting on the pommel of his sword. He had read her well.

  “No need to go pale,” the man said with a merry ring. “Your secret is safe with me. I thought it would be nice to see an old face. Not that I really knew her, mind. But you tend to remember the ones that get away when they leave you with a limp in doing so.”

  “Get away?” asked Ashtadukht.

  He shifted positions. “She might’ve gotten into some minor yet persistent trouble in the past. Something about cities’ supplies of eggs. Strangest thing. Water under the bridge anyway. Anyone involved is either dead, distracted by the decades since, or me. And I never was one for grudges.”

  “Kind of you,” she said.

  “You could say that.”

  Ashtadukht had the growing suspicion that what she first perceived as unrest or discomfort was actually a series of provocative poses meant to woo her. Just now, he had one leg settled atop a pile of pillows so that an obtrusive bulge pressed against the leg of his trousers.

  “The spoon,” she pressed icily. “You’re a star-reckoner, so why in the seven climes am I here?”

  “Aside from the pleasure of making my acquaintance, you mean? I called you here because, frankly, I’m not what I used to be. This spoon has been in my family for generations upon generations, and there has always been a div that tries to steal it from us. It’s an artifact one of my ancestors claimed as a prize for vanquishing a div, and is therefore dear to me. My children will inherit it when I die and so on and so forth.”

  “And this div’s stolen it?” asked Ashtadukht. The light only slightly pained her now, which encouraged a look around and a respite
from his libidinous stretching. The architecture looked ancient, similar to the palatial ruins at Fars, seat of her Iranian ancestors, with its once-columned porticoes now reduced to a handful of stubborn doorways surrounded by rubble. She could only wonder what purpose this place had initially served.

  “Yes,” replied Farrobay. “Snatched it and escaped down below, where I would rather not venture. The catacombs aren’t all that vast, but they’ve a way of making one lose his bearings.”

  “You have got to be kidding me,” grumbled Tirdad.

  “Afraid not.” Farrobay extended a rhyton and went on in a conversational manner. “Have a drink before you go. I know: wine boats or bowls or whatever they’re called are less of a fuss, but I prefer something more traditional. Old world drinking.”

  Tirdad lifted a hand. “After.”

  “Oh, come on. You’ve been drinking what? Water? Or wine that may as well be water?”

  Ashtadukht reluctantly took the rhyton, which drew a smile from Farrobay.

  “Atta girl,” he said.

  She gave Tirdad a defeated shrug. The man had a point. She hadn’t downed an honest, unalloyed wine in nearly a year, and to his credit, this vintage was exquisite. She suppressed a satisfied hum and handed it back. “You’ve great taste in wine,” she said.

  “The same goes for women,” said Farrobay. “I invited you here after all.”

  Ashtadukht frowned, and it occurred to her that he’d probably started drinking long before they arrived, especially considering the concealing cloak she wore. “You mentioned something about this div accosting your family for ages. What can you tell us about it?”

  “Actually pretty run of the mill as far as divs go. Hairy, strong, reeks. All that sets it apart is its unnatural stupidity and tenacious drive to possess that spoon.” He tilted his head. “Huh. Now that I think about it, maybe my family has held on to the spoon for so long for no other reason than to cause the creature grief. Funny.”

  As far as Ashtadukht was concerned, funny was about the least applicable adjective for what he’d said. Not only was she annoyed by the levity with which he considered her charge—a charge she’d travelled months to fulfill—but fatigue had just latched onto her back with all the weight and spunk of a hyper anvil. She leaned into Tirdad, fighting vertigo as she did. “The catacombs,” she said.

  Farrobay indicated a passage across the chamber. “Some ways in. Hang a left at the wall. From there, well, good luck.”

  Ashtadukht worriedly glanced the way they’d come. She hoped Waray would be fine. It was freezing out. And if that weren’t enough, she doubted this man’s interest in the half-div was as innocent as he let on. Ashtadukht reminded herself that Waray wasn’t some stray who needed to be mollycoddled. “Let’s get this over with,” she said.

  “Hurry along,” Farrobay merrily called to them as they left to pursue their quarry. “Nowruz comes, and you should, too.”

  “Crude man,” Tirdad remarked after they’d been travelling a few minutes.

  “Something like that,” said Ashtadukht, thinking the sooner she finished this mission the better. The journey was beginning to wear on her.

  Tirdad seemed to notice. “Everything okay?” he asked.

  Ashtadukht reflexively ironed out her slouched back and added some pep to her step through sheer force of will—or pride, more likely. Then she figured he knew better than that. “Not at my best,” she admitted. “You know the strangest thing about the illusion we faced?”

  “Where would I even begin?”

  She chuckled. “All the immediately strange things aside. It’s odd, but I miss it right about now. I felt hale. You have to understand: before then I hadn’t the faintest idea what that was like beyond the general idea of good health. The closest I got was with . . .” Ashtadukht’s voice trailed off at the humiliating thought of her having resorted to drug use. “Anyway, it was pleasant not to have bones like creaky wood.”

  “Well,” Tirdad replied, a delicate hesitation in doing so, “look at it this way. Another moment in that illusion and Waray would have slaughtered you, which effectively meant it was anything but healthy. You are better off among the living.”

  “I realize that. Doesn’t change the . . . I guess you could call it a revelation.” Something brushed against Ashtadukht’s boot, closely followed by another something. This had the effect of bypassing her weariness and applying a death grip directly to her heart. She shrieked, snatched Tirdad’s sword, and stabbed at the darkness.

  Tirdad brought his torch around, which threw its light on a pair of equally shocked hedgehogs. “Should I just give you my sword?” he asked. “Want the scabbard, too? You seem to think you put it to better use. Against hedgehogs.”

  “You didn’t even reach for it!”

  “Against hedgehogs.” Tirdad held out his hand.

  “Don’t look so smug,” Ashtadukht grumbled, placing the hilt in his palm.

  “I do not go reaching into your head whenever I need star-reckoning.”

  “You never need it.”

  “You said it, not me.”

  Ashtadukht sighed, and dragged her fingers over the limestone-hewn wall at one side, whose dusty recesses and ridges she likened to the Lut if seen from above. “They’re popular with the locals,” she mused aloud. “Hedgehogs. Due to their appetite for ants and other of Ahriman’s creatures.”

  “Well, bring one along if they have an appetite for divs,” said Tirdad. He said this over his shoulder, and had the bad luck of doing so just as the tunnel opened to a collapsed bridge. He had one foot over oblivion when Ashtadukht caught his arm. This caused him to pivot on the toe of his boot and come around chest-to-face with her, heels on the precipice.

  He was pressed against her, his free arm half clinging to Ashtadukht while he kept the torch safely away. She inhaled. The heavy scents of sweat and camphor filled her nostrils.

  “Ashtadukht,” he said.

  “Hmm?”

  She inhaled again. It was intoxicating. She could imagine him—she coughed, truncating that thought, and pulled him away from the ledge.

  “Uh, sorry.” She tugged at her sleeve. “Bridge’s out. Be careful.”

  “So it is. Are you up for this?”

  “For what?” Ashtadukht scrunched her face. She was having a hard time concentrating; thoughts came as nebulous as the fringes of clouds. When they did come, she was beginning to suspect the wine Farrobay offered had been tainted. “I mean yes. Yes.”

  She set her jaw. “Yes.”

  “If you say so,” Tirdad doubtfully replied.

  Ashtadukht parted her lips, where something lascivious threatened to dart from her tongue, before pointedly focusing on the black below. “Bridge’s out,” she stupidly muttered.

  Tirdad extended the torch over the gap, which illuminated nothing: no below, no across, no above. “What now?” he asked.

  She fussed with her cuff and hazily dragged her attention along the side of the bridge, where the torchlight hinted at something solid. Ashtadukht teetered over. “Steps,” she declared, tapping the toe of her boot on the uppermost tread. “Seems sturdy.”

  “And you seem unsteady,” Tirdad said, applying a firm grip to her sleeve. “Let me help you.”

  “I’m fine,” she growled, and brusquely snatched her arm away. Her voice softened. “I’m fine.”

  Ashtadukht focused hard on the steps, and began her descent, carefully planting both feet before tackling the next. She reminded herself to apologize later: he was only looking out for her, and rightfully so. She must have looked ridiculous. That is what bothered her so deeply—not just that she looked ridiculous, but that she had been made to look ridiculous.

  “I thought this would be an ossuary,” Tirdad said from behind her. “Or a tomb. But there are no signs of either.”

  She might have replied, even put forth her own supposition, if it didn’t require all of her concentration simply to traverse the stairs. Several dozen steps later and the bridge was out of s
ight. All Ashtadukht could see was within range of the torch.

  Ashtadukht’s stomach roiled. Her head flared. She broke out in sweat. That was all the warning her body gave her before the contents of her stomach lurched up her throat and over the side of the stairs.

  “Ugh.”

  “Here,” said Tirdad.

  She spat, reached from her hands and knees to grab the waterskin he offered, swirled a mouthful, spat again, and wiped her face on her sleeve.

  “Better?” he asked.

  “Better.”

  “Wine get the best of you?”

  “Mmn.”

  “Seedy bastard. Should we turn back?”

  “No,” said Ashtadukht, using him as an anchor by which to pull herself to her feet. She felt more confident with them beneath her now—less like they belonged to another person. And her head was considerably clearer, though the fog hadn’t entirely dispersed. “We finish what we came to do.”

  She handed him the waterskin and offered one of her trademark smiles: a forlorn expedition that sought her eyes but was forced to turn back by the inhospitable terrain. “Sorry for being short with you.”

  “Happens.”

  Ashtadukht gave him an appreciative nod and tackled the stairs more confidently, no longer delegating both boots to every tread.

  The climb down still took what seemed like forever; her legs were burning upon reaching the next level, which was yet another inky blot as far as she could tell.

  She never did like catacombs or caverns or caves or anything deep and unknown and without a sufficient light source. Their only allure was situational. And she didn’t classify shelter during a storm as a point in their favour any more than she’d praise a bear for fighting off bandits. Sure, she’d cheer it on, but when it was all said and done it was still a bear.

  While she figured most people shared her perspective, someone had excavated this place. And all things considered, she had a weird relationship with dimly lit underground spaces. As much as she disliked them, she’d always been drawn to their dank corridors.