A TELLING OF STARS
CAITLIN SWEET
a ChiZine Publications eBook
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Dedication
Introduction
Prologue
Book One
Home: Chapter One
Luhr: Chapter Two
Silga: Chapter Three
Telon Plain: Chapter Four
Iben: Chapter Five
Alilan: Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
The Palace of Yagol: Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Book Two
Shonyn: Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
The Ladhra River: Chapter Sixteen
Fane: Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
The Eastern Sea: Chapter Twenty-One
Book Three
The Raiders’ Land: Chapter Twenty-Two
Return: Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Copyright
About the Author
DEDICATION
For Alison Frances Shand
and Brent Arthur London—absent, present, beloved.
INTRODUCTION
I started A Telling of Stars when I was twenty. I was nursing a broken heart and an unrelated yet equally overwhelming sense of disillusionment with fantasy; I thought I’d try to address the latter, anyway. I’d write a story that was difficult, that offered ambiguity instead of closure, rendered in language that would be lush, as wonder-inspiring as what it described. I’d subvert tropes all over the place. It would be my protest fantasy, and there wouldn’t be a single family tree diagram or whiff of capitalized Good and Evil in the entire thing. And I’d write it for me—just me.
I started Telling in a tiny bachelor apartment, on a blustery December night in Montreal; I finished it on a sunny November morning six years later, in a tiny Toronto bungalow. I put it away, then. I had no idea whether I’d achieved what I’d set out to do, all those years before, and I wasn’t nearly as vehement and fierce and angry as I’d been then. I was sad, mostly. A dear friend of mine had died, as I was writing; another died as I was revising. They were both in the book, as was the guy who broke my heart, and my first love (who didn’t). My protagonist’s grief, longing, helplessness and hope were mine. I figured it would end this way, for her: with a manuscript that I put in a box. But it didn’t. Years later, I hauled it out and reread it. And I got an agent. An editor. A publisher. Readers who weren’t my parents and sister. It was a dizzying, amazing thing—until a few years after that, when it slipped quietly out of print. I figured it would end that way.
But, thanks to ChiZine, and you, it didn’t.
PROLOGUE
“Telling is magic”: she hears this somewhere, before or after, as sparks coil.
Speak to us of sunlight, they say now, bending so close to her that she feels the cool breath of their horns and talons. We have told you how long we have been prisoners, bound beneath the world. Please: speak to us again of the bright places you have seen. Tell us the turnings of your mind and steps.
I will try, she says, and as her voice falls into the darkness, they listen, straining to catch the words and make them sun. She speaks in this deep place, with earth and stone above, and forgets her hunger and her skin. Spaces of sky and sea and desert. Giant, fisher, weaver, dancer, boy. A tangle of words, but she sees them all, feels each in her mouth like sorrow.
My home, she says, before or after. Shell’s curve of beach, and wind that turns the sun to water.
BOOK ONE
HOME
CHAPTER ONE
Jaele was six years old when she met Dorin. He was nine or ten: she never knew for certain. They met for the first time on the beach below her parents’ hut. This beach stretched in a wide crescent around the water, which was so green near the shore that it looked like crystal, or the shine of a serpent’s back. Farther out, near the cliffs, the water was blue. Beyond that it was nothing, only a hazy line below the sky.
Jaele was running on the day she met Dorin. She liked to run when the sun was up and blazing on the sand; the soles of her feet burned then, but only if she was slow to lift them. She ran through hot wind and sunlight that was almost white.
She stopped running when she rounded a towering rock. Her father had told her that it was a club, all that remained of the giant whom the Warrior Queen Galha had killed, when there was only sea and no beach. There was a little pool of water here—clear, neither green nor blue—and a large collection of snails of all sorts. But today there was also a boy, and Jaele frowned.
He was looking out across the water. A cloth bundle lay on a rock beside him. He was very small—smaller than Jaele—and had light hair, while hers was as black as deepest water. He did not turn round, even when she coughed loudly. She frowned again and moved to stand beside him.
“Who are you?” she said. “Why are you in my private place?”
The boy looked at her and she saw that his eyes were pale—grey or light, light green. His voice was high and measured. “I am Dorin. I have left my home.”
“I am Jaele. Why did you leave?” she demanded, and thought that he looked very sad, even though he was not crying.
“The Raiders attacked my town, and the elders wanted all the children to learn fighting. I didn’t want to, so I left.”
Jaele was suddenly excited. Her words trembled a bit when she said, “Raiders? The Sea Raiders that Queen Galha conquered?”
The boy glanced at her; now he was frowning. “I suppose so.”
“Did they have webs between their fingers and toes?” she went on, stretching her own fingers wide as if to show him.
He nodded. “Yes. But there weren’t very many of them, and—”
“You didn’t fight?” she interrupted, bouncing from foot to foot. “You left?” He turned his head away, and she said, “I would have stayed. I would have protected my land just as Queen Galha did.”
Dorin was silent. Jaele almost asked him if he was a coward, but something in his face frightened her a little. She stood quietly beside him. White-and-black seabirds called high above them, and it sounded like weeping.
“So you’re alone?” she said at last.
Dorin nodded. “I’m going to see the world. I’ve heard there are golden sea snakes and trees as tall as the sky.”
“This is the Giant’s Club,” Jaele told him, pointing to the huge stone beside them. “Queen Galha killed him, and the water swept away all but his club, which got stuck in the bottom of the sea. This is it.”
Dorin smiled, and his face softened. “I like those stories.”
“So do I,” said Jaele. “My father tells them to me when he’s weaving. Let’s race,” she said abruptly, wanting him to smile again.
She ran past the rock and along the beach without looking back. At the beaten track that led to her hut, she stopped and turned. Dorin was not behind her, and he was not at the Giant’s Club when she ran back to look. She could not see him anywhere along the beach or on the forested hills that rose behind.
She was angry, and later just sad. As the years passed, she forgot what he looked like; sometimes she even forgot that she had ever met him. But even though she did not remember that his eyes were light and his face was sad, she did remember that there were golden sea snakes somewhere, trees as tall as the sky, Sea Raiders who still hunted across the water.
J
aele’s father often told her the story of the Sea Raiders, especially when the sky was dark above the sand. “It was long ago,” he would begin, leaning close to the single candle so that his shadow leapt and twisted. “The land was beautiful, and those who lived in it were happy, for Queen Galha ruled with wisdom and kindness. But one day,” he said, his voice dropping as he bent to catch her eyes, “one day in midsummer, strangers came from across the sea. They killed the people of the coast, who were not expecting such an attack. They pushed on into the desert, where Queen Galha awaited them. She had called together her Queensfolk, the strongest men and women in her realm. These Queensfolk had until that time been explorers, teachers; now Galha gave them bows and swords and named them Queensfighters. And although she was a queen of peace and gentleness, she rode with her warriors to face the Sea Raiders.” Jaele huddled deep into her blankets, knowing what was next.
“The Raiders were strong and many in number, but they were also of the sea, descended from the fishfolk who breathe water as if it were air. Queen Galha knew this when she saw their hands and feet, which were webbed like a seabird’s. It was obvious that they were able to live in the earth and air for long periods of time, as the fishfolk could, but the Queen guessed that they could not be separated from water forever, so she held them in the desert and filled in all the wells. These Raiders fought and killed many Queensfighters, but slowly they began to sicken, for the water they had brought with them was gone.
“The final battle was fought at the very gates of Luhr, the Queen’s City. Queen Galha was strong and proud, sure of a victory—and so she sent her only daughter into the fight, wanting the desert people to see their next ruler.” Her father paused and looked into the candle flame; Jaele watched the light shivering in the blackest part of his eyes. “The Princess Ladhra rode proudly, her dark hair shining, and with her own bow she killed many of the enemy. But at the very end of the battle, as the sun set along the sand and the Raiders fell back, one of them crept up to her horse. He gripped her ankle and pulled her down, and her mother, sitting at the head of her victorious army, saw the man thrust his dagger into the young princess’s heart.” Usually Jaele’s mother, Lyalla, was listening now as well, standing in the darkness by the window with baby Elic breathing softly in her arms.
“With that one thrust Queen Galha whose love was peace, became the Warrior Queen. Leaving her consort at Luhr, she pressed the Sea Raiders back toward the Eastern Sea. She drove them through desert and mountains, plains and hills and finally desert again, following the rising sun. Many died as they fled, and the Queensfighters slew many more who were too weak to keep pace with the main Sea Raider army. Nonetheless, when the Raiders at last reached the river that they had been seeking—the great desert river that has since borne the name of the murdered princess—they swam, strong and swift.” Jaele would shudder as her father spoke these words, for she almost understood the Sea Raiders’ underwater strokes, long with hope and relief.
“Even in the great ships that awaited them, the Queensfighters could not overtake their enemies. When Galha and her army swept downriver with the tall houses of Fane—that glorious port city—on either side of them, she found that the Sea Raiders had already swum from the river into the sea. The Queen and her troops followed in their ships, accompanied by the boats of humble fishers such as ourselves. She pursued them to the edge of their land, which was green and lush and shining with the water of many rivers and lakes. She looked on this beauty of water and growing things, and in her heart was the desert and the blood of her daughter. She ordered the Queensfighters to hack down the trees and fill the lakes and rivers with earth. She herself set fire to the tall grass and tore at the vines that hung thick from the branches of trees.
“At last, when all was scarred and dry, she called upon her mindpowers—mindpowers which could only be summoned in direst need. She cursed the land of the Sea Raiders. Never again, she decreed, would water come to them in lakes and rivers, but only in trickles that would barely sustain them. Never again would green things grow in abundance, but only in small, ragged clumps that would hardly keep them alive. Oh, they could sail across the sea if they wished, and they could gaze at or even swim in the water of other lands—but a taste would bring instant death. They could eat the fruits and grains and meats of other lands—but without water they would inevitably perish. They would live in misery, either in their seared land or travelling away from it, and their webbed hands and feet would forever remind them of water and green and the girl they had killed.”
In the silence that followed, Jaele would hear waves sliding onto the sand outside her hut. The stars would be out, and it would be difficult to tell sky from sea.
“Will they come back?” she whispered each time, and each time her father murmured, “It is said that they often return by night and in silence, to little children who have misbehaved...”
“Reddac!” Jaele’s mother would say, coming into the circle of light with a smile in her voice. “Enough! I wish you wouldn’t frighten her so,” and every time, Jaele would cry, lying, “I’m not frightened!” For during the day, as she played Queen Galha under the sun, she was very brave —but at night she was small in her bed, as she listened for the grinding of boats and the hissing of webbed feet on the sand.
Jaele’s father told her stories as his loom clacked and his fingers flew over sunlit wood and cloth. Her mother taught her the sea. When Jaele was very small, her feet chubby and unsteady on the earth, Lyalla rowed her out into the bay and showed her the fish that wound like her father’s threads beneath them; she showed her green and blue water, and water that prickled sharp stones. She taught her how to swim just below the surface and how to dive until deep-growing plants trailed along her skin. Jaele collected some of these plants to eat while her mother gathered fish in a net Reddac had made. He called Jaele and her mother his Sea Loves, and he always smiled as they pulled the boat onto the sand, their hair glowing dark and wet. The baby would be bouncing on his knees, chortling excitement, and when Lyalla bent to him, she said that he too would be a child of water.
Jaele dove and watched her father’s colours twining and taught baby Elic how to paddle. She was not lonely, although after her encounter with the boy Dorin she felt an ache that she did not recognize. Every rising of the full moon she and Reddac, bearing swaths of woven clothes and blankets, rode their donkeys to a nearby town; there was always music at the inn in their honour, and Jaele forgot her solitude as she danced.
She dreamed of Queen Galha and desert-churning horses and swords singing air, but she was not restless. Elic was soon old enough to be her groom or manservant. She trained him to brush her steed’s mane and sides, and to bow to her so that his forehead touched his knees.
“If you continue to order him about so much,” her father said to her once, “your servant may become annoyed and seek out other employment.”
“He will not,” Jaele answered firmly. “I am the Queen.”
And so she and Elic played and grew, until he said, on a day of sun and silence, “I want to be the Prince.”
She turned to him. They were standing throwing pebbles from the rocks that jutted and tumbled into the sea. “No,” she said, surprised but unconcerned. “You can’t. I am the only ruler.”
Elic’s pebble danced once, twice, then sank. He did not look at her. “You’re always important. I never even have a name.”
“I’m ten,” she explained, “and you’re seven.”
“Doesn’t matter,” he retorted, and then he did turn to her. “We should have a test to see who can be in charge. We should see who’s brave enough to open father’s box.”
Jaele gaped at him. “The dagger?” she said, and he nodded. Eyes wide and full of sky.
“But we’re not to open the box. Father made us promise not to. He said he wouldn’t lock it if we promised.” She glanced over her shoulder at the hut. Smoke drifting, door open, no sounds of loom or voices.
&nb
sp; Elic straightened his shoulders. “I’m not afraid. And if you are, you don’t deserve to be Queen.” He paused. “And he’s in the forest,” he said. “And mother’s fishing.”
They walked across the sand, Jaele a few paces ahead. When she reached the door, she stopped, and a moment later Elic stood beside her. They gazed at the box, which sat on a shelf above the loom: a box of smooth light wood, with two hinges and a lock that looked like gold (but weren’t, Reddac had told them).
“He made us promise,” Jaele whispered as her brother stepped toward the loom. She was very still as he climbed onto their father’s bench and reached up until his fingers grazed the wood. She was still as he returned, clutching the box against his chest. Only when he passed her did she move, crying out his name. Then they ran, stumbled giddy and terrified to the rocks.
“Put it down,” she said, attempting in vain to sound queenly.
“I will,” he replied, “but remember it was me who got the box. Me.”
“Yes—but I’ll open it,” she said as he bent and placed it carefully on the sun-warmed stone.
He did not speak. They blinked as the golden metal caught the light. A warm wind rose and stirred the water and their hair and the trees beyond the sand.
“I’ll open it,” Jaele repeated, and waited for Elic to challenge her. He did not. Shrugged, instead, and looked at her, steadily and in silence.
She was breathing very quickly. The box glinted. She knelt before it, traced her fingers over its wood and its clasp. Then, because her brother was waiting and everything was too quiet, she threw open the lid and grasped the dagger’s hilt and lifted it shining toward the sky.
There was a stillness—a boy and a girl, rocks by the sea, a gentle wind—but only for a moment. Red and blue jewels flashed. Jaele leapt to her feet and cried, “I am the Queen!” and Elic turned and ran. They both laughed as they slithered over the stones onto the beach, laughed as she chased him into sprays of water and back to sand. “You cannot escape me!” she shouted, and lunged forward so that he tripped and carried her with him to the ground.
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