An Ill-Fated Sky

by Darrell Drake

  An Ill-Fated Sky

  A Star-Reckoner’s Legacy Book Two

  Darrell Drake

  AN ILL-FATED SKY

  A STAR-RECKONER’S LEGACY #2

  ISBN 978-0-9919681-9-0

  Copyright © Darrell Drake 2018

  All rights reserved worldwide.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and events either are the product of the author’s runaway imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, events, or locales is purely coincidental.

  Edited by Daniel E. Olesen, author of Annals of Adal.

  Cover art by John Anthony Di Giovanni.

  Cover design by STK Kreations.

  Acknowledgements

  For nearly half my life I’ve been dealing with Pina, and I’m better for it. The book is, too.

  Without the company of Merill, nothing would be anchors aweigh. Certainly not this book.

  Many thanks to my ragtag group of beta readers: BookWol, HiuGregg, Jen, John MacIntyre, Armani Salary, Tam, Sam Taylor, Marian L. Thorpe, and Travis Tippens.

  In editing, Daniel E. Olesen taught me an important lesson: You don’t fire an arrow!

  Another collaboration between John Anthony Di Giovanni and STK Kreations makes for another superb cover.

  Arash Zeini was kind enough to share his expertise in the field of Sasanian Iran, for which I am grateful.

  A Star-Reckoner’s Legacy

  Book One

  A Star-Reckoner’s Lot

  Book Two

  An Ill-Fated Sky

  Book Three

  The Thousand-Notched Axe

  I

  Honour, at all costs.

  So steadfast in its pursuit, Tirdad had never stopped to consider that anything that had to be done at all costs, shouldn’t be done at all. For all his talk of moderation, he had never thought to apply that to honour.

  Only now did it dawn on him. Only too late. As Ashtadukht’s ragged breathing thinned, as her head began to droop, as an unravelling plait brushed over his knuckles with a gentleness that grief had strangled out of her: only now. He’d never again have the pleasure of proving her wrong.

  Ashtadukht had walked the path of the warlord. She had descended upon their homeland cruel with vengeance, as heedless and unforgiving as the procession of the planets. Her div host had defiled the land with greasy stains where families had once thrived. Running her through would guarantee him a lifetime of honour—restore his name if not their House.

  She had orchestrated misery. All the same, Tirdad considered himself privileged to have journeyed by her side. He thought of her as a just person who had been backed into a corner.

  For many years her annual ritual had claimed another star-reckoner, and in doing so furthered her twisted revenge. She had cursed them for her husband’s death because she couldn’t bear to curse herself; the loss had all but extinguished her spirit. Tirdad had witnessed firsthand the good she’d done, and he figured her rites paled in comparison, despicable or not.

  That sordid night when he’d walked in on Ashtadukht, meaning to apologize for their earlier encounter, he’d interrupted her ritual. Then he’d banished her. In doing so, Tirdad had deprived her of her one coping mechanism. If only he’d been more composed; if only he’d forgone those draughts of wine. Maybe things would’ve gone differently. This is what troubled him for the years following her disappearance, and what troubled him now.

  What is the cost of honour, and at what point is the price too steep?

  “I am truly sorry,” he said. “It is over now. Find peace, cousin.”

  Ashtadukht drew her last while hunched against him, having slid further and further down his blade as she faded. She reeked of divs so strongly it made his stomach turn, but he held her a while longer. He recalled their time together, the wonders they’d shared, the trials they’d overcome, and more than anything he feared the finality he now faced. She was gone. So too was any chance of rekindling their bond. When at last he eased her to the floor it was with great reluctance, withdrawing his sword from her heart as he did. So focused on committing her face to memory, he didn’t notice the magpie-black oil that clung to the blade until it was pulled free.

  “What in the seven climes?” Tirdad muttered, holding the sword out to better examine it. The tar-like glaze swam with iridescence that seemed to suck the life from the already cloud-choked moonlight. Worse, it throbbed in his grasp. Tirdad felt the obscene throbbing—and there was no mistaking its obscenity—emanate from the blade as though he were holding a beating heart. That was enough to convince him to fling it aside, which was the worst possible reaction.

  The room he was in retreated from view as if slinking away from the solar system that stormed in with stars and planets blazoned. Some cosmic awareness rushed over him, bringing with it the theatre of the luminaries.

  Ashtadukht had explained to him in layman’s terms the nature of star-reckoning, had given credence to the celestial battlefield described in doctrine. He’d taken her word for it because she was family, and because she was the star-reckoner. Now and then he’d imagine it while gazing into the night. His imagination had failed him spectacularly.

  Tirdad careened through an unfathomable, glimmering expanse girdled by the smoky length of Gochihr, the terrible dragon that will someday collide with the world and drown it in molten metal. He should have been awestruck, but it all came to him with the familiarity of a past life. The faraway clashes of those countless lights reached him as charged sighs—no more than hints at their puissance. Sighs he knew intimately, each and every one.

  This transpired as his sword flew away with meaningful revolutions. The first few were harmless enough. But an overwhelming lethargy soon compromised those revolutions, nearly bringing it to a halt mid-air. If Tirdad’s consciousness weren’t indisposed, he might have picked out a mounting struggle, as if the blade itself were too frightened to go on. A struggle it lost. The blade broke free of his gravity, and in doing so was thrown into the wall with such force that it was buried halfway to the hilt.

  That spelled doom for Tirdad.

  With neither pomp nor circumstance, Saturn interrupted his heretofore blithe visit. Where there had been empty space, it now hung before him every bit a gas giant.

  The planet was more than the manifestation of death. It was the calculated patience of a frost that yearned to consume the universe, a cosmic glacier. Its rings glinted with pride, their sharpness stolen from the constellation of the Lion in a recent triumph. Within its millennia-old storms, trillions of divs licked their wounds, awaiting the next clash. What’s more, it hungered with a bided ferocity, as if Tirdad had been keeping it at bay for a lifetime.

  He wasn’t even a speck in its shadow.

  Saturn must have been nonplussed by the appearance of a planet-reckoner besides Ashtadukht, because it hovered there with the planetary equivalent of a creased brow long enough for his eyes to rove over its features. Then it answered his lot.

  The wretched hedrons of planet-reckoning violated his mind, leaving permanent furrows wherever their chaotic rattle took them. But he was no planet-reckoner. Saturn had answered his lot fully aware it would end him.

  Agony bunched his every muscle. The patient frost of Saturn eased itself into the freshly-carved furrows of his mind, daring him to burn his memories for heat or risk losing his mind altogether. But that was only the beginning. Even the most confident star-reckoners and planet-reckoners used their souls to channel a careful, almost insignificant fraction of the power of the luminaries. It buffeted Tirdad like novae through a nebula. His soul would be eroded long before his mind or body failed.

  “Tirdad.”

  He reeled. If he had ideas about things
not getting any worse, they were soon dashed when a star rocketed out of the Lion to take advantage of Saturn’s distraction. Their collision lashed at his soul with white-hot intensity. The exchange that followed had the two grappling, Saturn scoring Regulus with its whetted rings, their innumerable forces emerging like a swarm of locusts—divs and yazatas loaded for bear.

  “Tirdad.”

  He was lost in a world of pain. But the voice had as much substance as the theatre, threading its way between the sorties and skirmishes as if it were at home in their wake.

  “Tirdad.”

  He couldn’t immediately place it because he hadn’t expected his sword to be calling his name. The blade throbbed from a breach it’d carved in the curtain of space, the steady heartbeat somehow reaching him over the din. It beckoned.

  “Tirdad.”

  He struggled to heed its call, a struggle so pitiful it could scarcely be considered a fight. Somehow, he managed to will himself toward the breach. If with only minor headway. The power that buffeted him caused his muscles to knot, his mind to reel, and he could only summon the strength to move during the all-too-brief pockets where the fighting was least fierce. The blade directed him through the thick of the swarm with nudges that came to him like gut feelings.

  If it weren’t for those nudges, he would have died summarily. Divs and yazatas were at odds all around. Some fought with tooth and nail; some with sword and shield; some with ideas; some with what he could only grasp as divinity. And there loomed over the fray a planet and star locked in single combat. It was a wonder then that he emerged from the swarm at all.

  When at last he reached out and clutched the hilt of his sword, there was no mistaking the voice that followed. It belonged to Ashtadukht, though utterly deprived of emotion.

  “Don’t ever let go.”

  Her words had immediate and spectacular effect. The bedroom returned like a sandstorm, swallowing the celestial theatre, snuffing out stars and suffocating planets.

  Left with a headache so sharp it’d give the bite of Waray’s axe a run for its money, Tirdad collapsed against the wall, a death grip on the sword. Before he had the chance to recover, Ashtadukht’s memories flooded his brain like rapids, too quickly and vehemently to make out. Interred in that flood were the remains of every div she’d dispatched, every lonely night contemplating suicide, every meal that tasted like dirt, every star-reckoner brought to justice, everything she’d learned and experienced. Only her final moments came with clarity, though he wished they hadn’t.

  His lips were warm on her forehead. His sword bit at her chest. A profound sense of failure hung over her.

  Tirdad stared at the wall. He knelt in a bed of eggshells, one arm raised to cling to his sword through sheer force of will. All else fell slack. He issued a groan that broke into a sob.

  On that ill-fated night, in an estate that would never be a home, a good man would forsake honour.

  II

  Tirdad awoke to the wandering, virtuoso performance of a nightingale arrived too early in the year. Its song accompanied a soreness so thorough it afflicted his soul—as if his existence were somehow less than whole. With a lasting wince, he sidled to sit against the wall.

  “Looks like someone beat you like a filthy carpet.”

  Tirdad’s thoughts were thick as molasses. He squinted through the dusty dawn light at a figure who leaned against the wall just across the room. The shadows were more resilient there. Only the hint of trousers and boots caught the light.

  “Who in the?” Tirdad mumbled drowsily, furrowing his brow and squinting in earnest.

  “They box your fucking ears, too?” the man asked, his tone limned with amusement. “Or has a night with her made you forget me that easily?”

  The man stepped forward, and the full-toothed smile he wore made an embarrassed shift to a frown. His attention turned to the corpse of Ashtadukht. “Sorry. That was thoughtless.” He ran his fingers through his hair, disheveled like the wool of a dirty sheep, and grimaced at his crassness. “You in one piece?”

  “Chobin,” Tirdad greeted. He had been the only one to sympathize with Tirdad after the news of his cousin’s vile deeds had spread. In that way, it was more than his tall, lean stature that earned him the name ‘Javelin’, it was his ability to sense a person’s heart true as a javelin finding its quarry. “Far from it. I don’t think I’ve ever—” The sword!

  Tirdad scrambled for its hilt, kicking eggshells in his desperation, and an almost unnatural relief washed over him when he hung from it once more. That brief yet keen surge of fear had the effect of scattering the clouds in his mind.

  “I killed her,” he uttered, thick with regret. So intent on remembering Ashtadukht yesterday, he couldn’t bear to look at her now. “Why’d I kill her?”

  Chobin grunted. He’d been nonplussed by Tirdad’s sudden clambering, but he knew this mood well. Tirdad had vacillated between depression and anger over the years, though he figured his friend had a damn good reason. No words would soothe him. So he gestured at the wall. “Need help with your sword? How did you manage that?”

  With a defeated sigh, and realizing how sorry he must look, Tirdad pulled himself to his feet, muscles objecting all the while. He stared at his blade, which was still choked in magpie-black. “Don’t ever touch my sword,” he warned, almost threatened. “For your own good.”

  With that, he began working it out of the wall little by little, relating the events of the night before as he did. He left nothing out. The man behind him had earned his trust many times over. Only when he’d finished did he look at Chobin, who’d listened in silence. “Well?”

  Chobin shrugged, thumbs hooked over his belt. His brow was knotted, but with what, Tirdad couldn’t surmise. “I believe you. Explains earlier.”

  “Earlier?”

  “Nothing.”

  Tirdad sighed and held out the blade to demonstrate an iridescence that settled one and unsettled the other. “I don’t know what to make of it. I’m sure it has something to do with her. What do you think?”

  “Something different about the way you talk.” Chobin was examining him rather than the blade, an ear canted his way. “Sounds off.”

  “You’re worse than Waray at answer—” He swallowed the rest of that remark, and it went down with an edge. “Stop tilting your head like that.”

  Chobin straightened his back in feigned offense, but it only made him look all the more like a dashing marzban, province commander. Tirdad had nothing but love for the man, but he often envied him his military prestige. That might have been him if he hadn’t volunteered to ride off alongside Ashtadukht. Instead, he’d been reduced to a lowly mercenary, getting by on the charity of the man before him.

  “Always lost in thought. It’s a fucking wonder you survived this long.”

  Tirdad shook his head. He felt as if a part of him were still out there in the cosmos. “Huh?”

  “So, what now?” Chobin shifted his weight, a subtle sign of uneasiness that Tirdad had come to recognize.

  For the first time since he’d laid her there, Tirdad gave his eyes leave to fall on Ashtadukht. She looked pitiful, an unstrung harp that had never really played in tune. “She was brilliant once,” he said soberly. “Brilliant like you wouldn’t believe.”

  He punctuated the pithy elegy with a prolonged silence, over which he watched her world-weary frown and silver-streaked plaits, and as he did, the strangest memory came to him. He remembered watching himself sleep. Just watching. Just the steady rise and fall of his chest. Then as smoothly as it’d arrived, it dispersed. Tirdad blinked confusedly and turned to Chobin. “Have you come alone?”

  The marzban met his gaze. “Brought a small detachment. Had no way of knowing what we would find.”

  Tirdad nodded, then looked again at the corpse. “I’d like to perform the rites. I want to take her to be exposed, observe the mourning period—everything. I’ll look into the sword after. You have my word. I realize it’s a lot to ask, but—”


  Chobin took Tirdad by the head, and pressed his forehead against the once-black hair now banded with grey. “We will find a dog to follow, and a priest to purify the estate. After, you will mourn,” he said, then paused as if to contemplate. “I’ll make it right with the others.” Another pause. “Find you some fucking wine, too.”

  “This means a great deal to me,” replied Tirdad, knowing full well the gravity of that short silence. After the crimes she’d committed, convincing the royalty, nobility, and clergy to allow the rites of death would take some doing. They’d treat her like a div. Although, knowing the marzban he would skip straight to giving the orders. Asking for permission was too much trouble, he’d always say. Forgiveness, on the other hand, made the slighted party feel good about themselves. And people hunger for self-righteousness. “I’ll make it up to you,” he added at length.

  “Hah!” exclaimed Chobin, unable to smother his characteristic joviality any longer. “You are full of tortoise-sodomizing shit. More full of it than a northerner playing at loyalty. What kind of friend accepts compensation?”

  “You’re a northerner.”

  “Farther north.”

  Tirdad grinned, but it strained to reach his eyes, which were still trained on his cousin. What kind of friend kills you?

  • • • • •

  Tirdad fastened his sword belt over his girdle. He secured a dagger to his thigh, where it was partly hidden by his baggy yellow trousers, then a short sword to his right hip. All that remained was his long sword.

  He kept it bedside on a length of bunched silk, the color her tunic must’ve been before all the dirt and wear. Its narrow golden scabbard was embossed with a feather motif emblematic of Wahram, yazata of victory, and inlaid with garnet and glass. From there, the guardless hilt curved slightly downward to end in a ram’s head pommel, and it had been given the same decorative treatment.