Star Mage (Book 5)

by John Forrester

  The old man stopped his work and glanced back and forth between Talis and Mara with inspecting eyes. “You’re not brother and sister, are you? No it couldn’t be, you’re trying too hard to express your jealousy over the Princess. You’re speaking in far too bright and interested tones.” He chuckled softly and wagged his head in a friendly flourish of sympathy.

  “I was once in love with a girl when I was young like you two. Silly of me, I never told the girl how I really felt. Day after day went by and I believed she’d always be there. I thought I had time to tell her, but it turned out I didn’t. Soon I saw her hand-in-hand with another boy and I found out I was too late. Much too late to mend my broken heart.”

  At the old man’s persistent and probing gaze, Talis felt guilty at his own actions and a sense of pity towards Mara as she looked away in embarrassment. Why was everything so confusing and complicated? Maybe in Naru things would have been simpler for Mara and him, but in a way he knew it wasn’t true, remembering the old rivalry between the Lei family and the Storm family, and Lady Malvia’s effort at trying to have her betrothed to other royals.

  Was Lady Malvia worried that Mara would do something with Talis that might get her in trouble? Perhaps all the time Talis spent with her concerned Mara’s mother. Talis nodded his head, remembering how Mara hadn’t even said goodbye to her mother, and only left a note on her desk. He was certain that his parents would feel nervous at their lack of propriety.

  Mara’s soft voice broke the silence. “The thing is, Talis knows that I love him. He can feel it inside his heart. It’s been there for a very long time.” She glanced at him and tears welled in her eyes. “I can see it so clear and strong in the tenderness of his eyes when he looks at me. He adores me and is always buying me such thoughtful presents. And—”

  Her voice broke and she wiped her cheeks with the back of her hands, and the old man waddled over and gave her a handkerchief. He gave Talis a look of insistent urging and tilted his head at Mara as if he should go to her immediately. With a heavy feeling of self-loathing, he strode over to her, and though she resisted at first, he scooped her into his arms like a blanket enveloping a sleepy child. He felt terrible and wished she wouldn’t cry over him. He didn’t know if he was worth all her tears.

  “Just stop it and eat your food, I’m really ok. I don’t need your hug.” She pushed him away but Talis just squeezed her and whispered in her ear that he loved her, and he meant it with all his heart. But as he closed his eyes and felt her body loosening itself of tension, and her small hands snaked around his waist, in the darkness of his mind’s eye he pictured the ravishing face of Princess Devonia.

  He knew he was doomed.

  23. THE UNKNOWABLE

  Interrupting the endless infinity of timeless, thoughtless meditation, Rikar was summoned several times by the temple priests and asked to return to the locked chamber where the Nameless resided, though upon reflection, he doubted it was a chamber at all, more of another universe of some kind. After each visit, Rikar felt as if his mind had been torn apart and probed for any tiny detail regarding his interaction with the Starwalkers. What scared him the most was that the story was intermixed with Talis, Mara, and Nikulo, and the being asked him where his old friends could be found, and whether Rikar could entice them to visit.

  The worst part of his last interaction was Rikar’s feeling that the Nameless actually knew of Talis and Mara, though Nikulo seemed unfamiliar. Was Talis out there tracking him in the desert? Maybe he had used the Surineda Map and it had pointed him to the Ruins of Elmarr? A cold chill sank into Rikar and broke his meditation on the transience of life. What if Talis and Mara had visited here and somehow communicated with the Nameless? Or even worse, they were trapped inside the temple and maybe soon Rikar wouldn’t be needed by the Nameless?

  Then the cruel vision of the Starwalker woman being impaled on the crystalline shards filled his mind’s eye and he knew that this would never be the case. He would always be of value to the Nameless, so long as he was still alive and the Starwalkers hated him—which was likely forever until they killed him or they were killed. The last part seemed doubtful, considering the vast power of the fragments in their possession. How many fragments did they control?

  The door to his sanctuary opened and two temple priests entered, causing Rikar to panic at this strange occurrence. He’d never seen more than one priest together since he’d arrived at the Ruins. The first priest was the same one as always, but the second one was an old woman with a shaved head and a horrific patchwork face of the gruesomely disfigured. One eye was mounted higher than the other, as if a drunken surgeon had placed it there by mistake. The one functioning eye stared at him and projected a seething rage into Rikar’s mind that caused him to froth at the mouth and clench his fist in fury.

  The other lazy eye of the priestess lost interest and wandered around the room independently of the other, torturous eye. Mercifully, Rikar was released from the spell and he gasped and glowered at the woman, raising his hands against her, wanting nothing more than to obliterate her from existence.

  “It is time for the bait to be placed in sight of our prey.” The old woman sniffed and turned to go. She glanced at the other priest and said, “Make sure Bait behaves himself or he must be punished. I should think that ensuring that Bait is properly fragrant would be prudent before positioning him in the scent trail of our prey. Do everything with our Lord’s complete satisfaction in mind.”

  The priest bowed to the old woman and kept his head down until she left the room. He turned his fanatical, gleaming eyes on Rikar and stretched out his hands. A wave of nausea overpowered Rikar as he allowed the ripples of blackness bursting from the priest’s fingertips to enter his body. He knew better than to fight the priest; that would only lead to more torment and an even longer delay. And the otherwise infinite patience of the priest seemed to vanish under their now urgent mission to trap the Starwalkers and steal their fragments. Rikar guessed it had something to do with the prison that housed the Nameless, or possibly that the Nameless couldn’t move at all beyond the chamber.

  If that chamber were a universe, and this world were an illusion, then the Nameless was somehow trapped in between. Rikar was certain of it. The power of the fragments would help the Nameless break free and escape in either direction. Rikar hoped that the entity wasn’t planning on coming to their world. But if Aurellia’s master were truly the Nameless, then wouldn’t it be part of their plan to join up and conquer the known worlds together? Rikar still didn’t believe that Lord Aurellia was interested in making peace with his brother and sharing in the domination of Vellia. He knew his master. He couldn’t share power with anyone.

  From the overpowering nausea came the spiking pain along the inside of his arms and legs, and on the soft part of his side, just below the ribcage. He screamed in agony at the feeling of needles piercing his flesh and he pictured blood blooming from the wounds and smelled the familiar coppery scent of his lifeblood slowly draining away. Soon he felt dry and withered as his vital fluid spilled into glass jars illuminated with an eerie, sickly yellow light that caused his blood to look like disgusting pus.

  His spirit ejected from his body in a wrenching, tearing movement, and as he hovered around the sanctuary, he turned and noticed his shriveled up figure lying on the floor. His gaunt face held the look of shock and betrayal. His arms and legs were wasting quickly away, drying up and shrinking into themselves until only a gnarled, twisted, woody corpse remained. It somehow felt good to be dead and released from the pain and suffering of his body. Everything would be better now, more peaceful and his soul could fly to the Underworld and he could see his father again. He was free at last.

  But for some reason he remained in that room and gazed at the priest dragging his body away and as Rikar followed him, another priest came and helped carry his insignificant corpse up the stairs, up and winding around the endless stairs, until finally they exited the temple and entered the harsh light of the Nalgoran D
esert. When he noticed two wooden planks nailed together in a cross, and he glanced back and watched the two priests dragging his body towards the torture device, Rikar decided he’d seen enough. He tried to fly away, but to his horror found some kind of a strong silver chain yanking him back in the direction of his body.

  He examined the chain and realized it wasn’t a chain at all, but some kind of woven silver cord that looked and felt like the texture of a serpent’s skin, and was cold and scaly to the touch. Looking up, he realized that for some strange reason, darkness had fallen in an instant, and the vast panorama of starlight swept across the sky. Had he drifted off and lost consciousness? The four moon sisters seemed to shine their light upon Rikar’s now mounted and splayed body, as if his shriveled, wrinkled form were a pathetic sacrifice to the gods.

  Off to the side came a cavalcade of candle-wielding priests walking in a solemn procession. A dark, purplish aura surrounded their hooded heads, and a solitary eye hovered high above the congregation carefully watching the ceremony. The priests positioned themselves across the sandy ground, and their formation created an odd pattern of lights flickering in the night. For a time they stood there and silently seemed to absorb the feeling of the stars shining down on their upraised faces. After a long while, a song escaped their lips, a melancholy song that reminded Rikar of the band of musicians from Onair that he had seen, of refugees singing a sad song mourning their loss, and of the beautiful city they’d left behind.

  But this unfathomable song was unknowable to Rikar’s ghostly ears, and was only made familiar through the sound of sadness in the tone of the singers. It was almost as if the priests were mourning the loss of their humanity, the loss of feeling itself, and the loss of family and friends and everything that had once been dear to them in their old lives. If he had a face, Rikar was sure that tears would be spilling down his cheeks. In a way that song reminded him of himself, and the old life he’d left behind.

  For the first time in many months he thought of his mother. Was she still alive back in Naru? Had Talis saved her from the undead plague and restored her old life? If he had then he owed him, and Rikar didn’t like owing anyone, especially not Talis. But what did all that even matter anymore? He was dead, and his body was stretched like a carcass across the wooden planks of a cross. His old life was over. But why wasn’t he able to journey on and greet the Guardians of the Underworld?

  He’d heard stories from Master Holoron of ghosts similar to this experience. A wraith bound to a sorcerer, like an undead body chained to a necromancer. Could the priest have bound his soul as a slave? Rikar reached around and tugged on the silver cord, and pulled and pulled until he floated over to where it was tied. Shocked, he found that it was attached to his own body, into the ganglion of nerves above his stomach. Why had the priest killed him and yet kept his spirit connected to his old, shriveled body?

  The grotesque answer came swiftly. As Rikar was studying his emaciated body, eyelids flicked open around his body’s dried and cracked skin, and to his horror, the eyeballs darted around in terror. Those eyes were not the unseeing, unknowing eyes of the undead, they were his eyes with his feelings of fear pouring out. Desperate, he tried to dive back inside his own body but found himself blocked and he bounced off and catapulted towards the starry sky until he was jerked back and knocked around by the cord. This nightmare was real. Rikar could feel the truth of it with his entire being.

  His hearing came back to him in a burst of song, but soon the priests lowered their voices and raised their hands into the air. The flickering candles floated up a few feet above the priests and paused there for a while. As Rikar gazed at the luminous display, an explosion of light burst out and blinded him for a moment. So strange, Rikar thought, that ghostly eyes can be blinded? But then he remembered back to the light in his dreams and remembered the darkness of caves, and the bright, burning light of the sun. He still was able to perceive a wide range of sensations.

  When he looked again, the candles had transformed into spidering lights that soared into the sky, weaving a great web of light, a fabric, a luminous mesh that stretched to the stars and covered the sky from the horizon all the way to the zenith. The mesh pulsed with a pattern, the rhythm of which reminded him of the priests’ song. To Rikar’s entranced vision, the song strummed in a series of lights and it seemed to him like a message in code, like smoke signals from a mountaintop created by primitive tribes, but this message was being sent out to the stars. Were the priests trying to reach out and summon the Starwalkers?

  After the phosphorescent mesh was complete, the priests shuffled back in a single file to the temple, their hooded heads bowed low. Soon the massive, phantom eye faded away, as if the being’s watchfulness were slowly waning away to nothingness. Rikar found himself alone beneath the stars and the pulsing fabric of light. But he heard the hideous voice of the Nameless surge inside his mind, towering over his thoughts in a mad rush.

  You can survive all this if you listen and pay careful attention to my words. The loud raspy wheezing of the being returned and caused Rikar to raise phantom hands to his head. Those humanoids that roam the stars will soon arrive on this pathetic planet, lured by the promise of vengeance. They want you dead, and upon seeing the sacrifice we’ve made of your body will find disappointment in their unsated craving for revenge. It will drive them mad with bloodlust. Then my most loyal priests will entice them into the temple with the sweet scent of your blood, and lead them down into the deepest level of this lair and into the chamber where I reside and keep your blood safe and secure.

  I will claim the power of their fragments for myself, and I will never again be contained…

  The dark sky ripped and tore apart from within, a bright blossom of brilliant light that flowered open as if it were a white rose unfolding in the warm days of early summer. And inside was a long, spiraling tunnel, within the greater light, and there were found four figures veiled in shadowy cloaks. The quad jettisoned from the portal of light and hovered in suspicious fury as they stared at the wasted corpse on the cross.

  The Starwalkers had come for him, come seeking the sweet savor of revenge.

  24. THE ROYAL SUMMONS

  In the serenade of lovesick dreams, Mara floated and slept and faded away into the fragrance of Talis’s skin, the memory of his embrace still thick in her mind, and the scent of him woke her in a sweetness that possessed nothing of the jealousy that had kept her awake last night. She felt renewed, and as she stood and stretched and yanked open the curtains, the burst of bright light filled her with the amazing feeling that she knew was the purest form of love.

  Talis had said it to her; his own voice whispered in her ear. He said he loved her, and that was enough to erase the jealously she’d felt towards Princess Devonia. A wave of Mara’s hand washed away the memory of the girl’s disgustingly beautiful face. Did she have a nasty wart in some hideously funny place? She probably nagged and was annoying all the time. There had to be a dark secret about the Princess that doomed her to a solitary life of misery. Mara certainly hoped so.

  She flung off her nightclothes and strode over to the dressing room and flipped through her wardrobe, and finally selected a long, flowing dress that shimmered white and silky in the sunlight. It was perfect. Dressing quickly, she darted out of the room and went to Talis’s room and knocked and waited, but he didn’t come to the door. A servant girl glided over and bowed cautiously and whispered behind a covered mouth that the young master was downstairs having breakfast in the dining room.

  Disappointed for a second, Mara nodded to the girl and realized that likely Talis had let her sleep in and recover from their late night. She followed the stairs down to the grand foyer and allowed her nose to guide her to the dining hall where only a few people remained at their tables, most drinking tea or sipping coffee and chatting. She must have slept in really late. Off to the corner of the room she spotted Talis talking with Master Goleth. She waved and weaved her way through the tables until she took her seat
as Talis held the chair for her.

  “We thought you’d sleep all day.” Talis winked at her and flashed her an overly friendly smile that made her worried for some strange reason. It was like he was going out of his way to be nice to her. Wasn’t he acting a little weird?

  “So,” Master Goleth pronounced, and raised a finger in an official-looking flourish. “We’ve heard from the Royal Secretary.” At Talis’s excited eyes, the Builder allowed a grin to cross his face. “Yes, yes, I knew you would be pleased. That’s why I waited for the both of you. Couldn’t spoil the news.”

  He took a sip of coffee and savored the taste as if wanting to torture them. Mara didn’t really care, she wasn’t all that excited to meet Emperor Ghaalis, and certainly didn’t want to see Princess Devonia again, and from the old servant’s words, she really didn’t want to meet her brother either. He sounded like an arrogant, rude royal, like so many of them. Did she even want to go? Suddenly all her excitement at what Talis had told her last night, and from having a good night’s sleep, vanished in the smoky haze of having to see Princess Devonia at the Royal Court. And to make things even worse, Mara hated the idea of Talis seeing the Princess again…

  “That’s wonderful,” Mara said, her voice sarcastic. She cleared her throat and swallowed after her voice cracked. “The response was faster than you expected?”

  Talis glanced with cautious eyes at Mara and she felt a bit embarrassed at the tone of her retort.

  “Much faster, actually. I’m surprised that Emperor Ghaalis even paid attention. It’s like someone pointed us out to him.” Likely Princess Devonia mentioned her encounter with us last night, Mara thought. The timing was too perfect. “He certainly knew we were here otherwise he’d never had arranged that powerful display of magic. But going so far beyond protocol and granting us an audience right away…unheard of, at least in my experience.”