A Telling of Stars

by A Telling of Stars (v5. 0) (epub)

  She slipped down from the table without looking away from him. He shifted against the stones; ivy rustled, and a moth fluttered up behind his head. She felt herself blink and swallowed over the dust in her own throat. He straightened and took one small, careful step, holding his right hand out so that she could see its webs—and she leapt forward with her dagger raised.

  Suddenly there was a blade in his own hand. She saw in one glance that it was dark and notched and much longer than hers. But she ran, closing the space between them, and was not afraid.

  When she was only paces away, he lunged. She stumbled, and twisted to keep from falling, and he was past her. She wrenched herself around and saw the ivy stirring where he had been. She followed. This time she heard his footsteps and his breathing ahead of her, close, close. She could not see him—saw only the swinging plants and the darting of the creatures in his path. She cut at knotted creepers and could not remember such density before, such jungle profusion. Her foot hit something—stone or root—and she cried out again, in pain and desperation, because his sounds were farther away and she was losing him again.

  When she came at last to a wall, she halted. She heard nothing but birdsong and her own breathing. No, she thought. No no no. Then she walked, tracing the curve of the wall until it led her to a door and a staircase. She sat on the bottom step. Mother, Father. Elic. She bent her head over her dagger and was still.

  Jaele found Dorin in the Throne Room. He was sitting between the thrones—two identical constructions of black metal that were shocking against the familiar stone. They stood on a raised platform in the centre of the hexagonal chamber. Before them was a hollowed-out pit stacked with fresh wood—Keeper’s wood, new wood that would smell of sap and earth below the ridged layer of bark.

  There were no windows, but Dorin sat bathed in the blue and red light that streamed through the dome of coloured glass above. Shifting shades of fire and water on the stone, the wood, their skin and hair. Alnila, Jaele had thought, too quickly to quell it, the first time she had seen the red glow. Now she did not. She walked toward him and watched his smile fade as the light showed him her face.

  “Jaele?” he said, as she sat down beside him on the platform. “What is it? “Your dagger—what has happened?”

  “Keeper brought me to him,” she said. “Or brought him to me. In the kitchen.” She cleared her throat as if words would be smoother. “I nearly had him, but he was standing so still and then he moved so suddenly—I tripped, and then he ran into the plants and I couldn’t follow fast enough.”

  “So,” Dorin said slowly, “he ran from you. Again.”

  She nodded. “Yes. But he had his knife, and I thought, when he jumped toward me . . . but he ran.”

  “Perhaps he was afraid,” Dorin said, and she made a sound that was almost a laugh.

  “Afraid? Of me? No. I saw his eyes.” She paused, then said, “Keeper knows what is happening and why; he is causing it to happen. He took me there—he told me to come. Perhaps he was finally trying to help me, but could not do more because of his Binding.”

  “Or perhaps,” Dorin said, each word measured, “Keeper only wanted you to see him.”

  Jaele did laugh, this time. “Ah, of course—to see him. I suppose I should also have asked the Sea Raider who murdered my mother to join me at the table. If only you had been there to suggest this!”

  Her breath was ragged and rough, as if she had been running. She stared at her dagger, at the blade and jewels which caught the light and dazzled it back against the stone and their skin. She was cold, beneath these shifting waves of water and flame.

  “We must free him,” she finally said, quietly.

  “Oh?” Dorin said, looking at her. “Why?”

  She raised a hand to the bumps that were smoothing now along her neck. Keeper had cut the thread out, snipping it without a blade. “He is a slave. If he were free, he would not have to serve the Sea Raider. I am sure he wants to be free,” she continued as Dorin opened his mouth to speak. “He shows me these visions, and they are nearly all images of sadness and need. He is asking me for his freedom.”

  “Why do you think that?” Dorin said, in his voice of edges. “How can you possibly assume that you know his mind? Look at him. At the gardens and the palace. What kind of slavery is this?” He paused, but only for a moment. “Jaele,” he continued, and she shivered. “You don’t think that he’d help you kill the Sea Raider if you freed him?”

  She slipped from the platform; her feet struck echoes from floor and dome. She knelt by the sunken brazier and stretched her fingers toward it. She stared at her hand upon the warm, knotted wood. “Yes. He might. And if we could not do that here—if the Raider escaped, somehow—Keeper could come east with me. With us.”

  “Us?” His voice was very soft, but the word seemed to sound against the glass of the dome. “I told you in Luhr that I could not accompany you to the Raiders’ Land—I told you I could not fight with you. I do not have your anger—I told you this.”

  “But you and Keeper and I—”

  “Stop.” His voice hard, louder now. “You cannot think this. Do you actually imagine that you could tear Keeper away from the only long life he’s known? And just so that you will be able to cower in his shadow while he crushes Sea Raider bones, as you have not yet—”

  “Cower?” Jaele felt suddenly taut, and she blinked to ease the scathing dryness of her eyes. It was a relief, this anger; another layer over fear and sorrow. “Who are you to speak of cowering? You run, you flee, rather than confront whatever it is that torments you—”

  “And you hid, didn’t you? You hid until the Sea Raiders were gone, until it was all over.”

  “It’s not the same”—but her voice was splinter-thin now. “And I’m not hiding any more, am I? I’m going to avenge them, as Galha avenged Ladhra. I have sworn to do this, and I will.”

  Dorin leapt down. She fastened her eyes on his brown leggings, which were coarse except for the smooth-worn knees. “And feel comforted? Guiltless? You think it will be that easy, Jaele?”

  She felt a crack, then, a criss-crossing like ice. She rose and looked at him, and as she spoke, she was far away and exultant. “Why is it that you are so afraid of me? Of my search? As if you are at peace. Bienta agreed that you were a fleeing one.”

  “Ah, Bienta,” Dorin scoffed, “the perfect man, passing judgment. How thoughtful of you both to discuss me. A fleeing one?”

  “Yes.” She felt as if she had abruptly remembered to breathe. “You cannot dispute that. You fled the Giant’s Club, you fled the silga mountain—you fled from me. We’re together again, Dorin—so when will you disappear next? Shall I prepare myself now?”

  There was a silence. Words rattled in Jaele’s head and sounded real, a deafening roar in the windowless room. A patch of crimson light lay over his right eye and cheek, and blue on his hair. He shifted and she refocused her gaze, searching for his strong outline beneath the light.

  “Prepare yourself?” He laughed, like pebbles grating.

  She was no longer far away and anger-dry. She put a hand out into the air as if to steady herself. She had been in the kitchen—she and the Sea Raider, with their daggers. It did not seem real.

  “Yes. You must know this.”

  “But,” he said with his twisted smile, “what about the man? The one with the voice, the one you loved?”

  “I never said I loved him,” she answered quickly. She was almost blind, withered with shame and sorrow—but the wagons had gone without her, and Dorin was here, and she could not be alone. “I never said that. And why does this matter to you?”

  He laughed again and looked at her, although she could not see his eyes. She waited. He moved past her and she followed, but when he wrenched open the doors and went out into the corridor, she stood still. After a time she slid down the wall until she was sitting staring back at the dome. Sun from the hallway wove in the air bes
ide her. She wrapped her arms around herself to stop the shaking which she could see but not feel. Her dagger lay beside her; she did not touch it.

  She rose much later. The dais that had been light-soaked was dark; the thrones swept shadow toward her. As she walked slowly away from the chamber, the moon silvered her hair and skin like frost.

  She saw Dorin sometimes in the days that followed, edging around stone and trees with his head bent, melting from corners into shade. She did not follow him or call out: it was enough that he was still there to be seen. The Raider was still there as well, though she did not see him. She looked at the library stone beside the door and found it empty, morning after morning, night after night. Still there.

  She sought again, despite the helpless certainty that she would not find. As she wandered alone, the palace voices grew louder; they hummed and crackled, and she fell asleep with them ringing in her ears. She no longer saw distinct forms, as she had earlier—only trailing lines of colour and whorls like moving cloth or limbs. After a time she became accustomed to the confusion, and as she passed her days in solitude, it was more and more a comfort. Weeping and laughter that she did not recognize: she could drown in these voices.

  Keeper also came to her, solid beneath the blurred muttering. He brought her sweetbread and fruit, and soft green tunics with belts and leggings—even, once, flat shoes with buttons. She would feel his shadow upon her in the sunlight and see him over her shoulder and smile her hope and her escape to his mountain face. She no longer asked him to lead her to the Sea Raider; instead she spoke to him of freedom.

  “I could help you,” she said once, “I could help to Unbind you, somehow, if you allow me to. Then you could choose whom to serve.” He looked down at her, then walked in long slow strides away.

  He serves me now, she thought as the voices jabbered and cried. He serves me. He will serve me better when he is free. He will help me. Dorin will see that I am right, Keeper will be our strength because I will save him, I will find a way to Unbind him. And then she would catch sight of the black ring and remember the stone pictures of his Binding, and she would moan and close her eyes against the people she could almost see, and those others she would see too clearly.

  She went to the library and gazed at the Sea Raider’s image so intently that sometimes he seemed to move: breathing, blinking, lifting his eyes to look at her as he had in the garden. As he had on her beach, long ago, before a girl had danced, before daggers and flame had shone in the sky above a marsh. She ran her fingers lightly along Keeper’s powerful arms and torso, his black neckring, his fingers curled around axe or bird. She looked at the pictures of Keeper and the Sea Raider and felt hope, rage, old and bruised.

  One morning Jaele woke to silence. It was grey beyond her window, and she heard the sound of her own breathing above the rain. “Dorin?” she whispered, and “Keeper?” But she was alone, truly alone, and she gasped at the sound of her feet touching the floor.

  The corridor was quiet except for water. She walked slowly, turning her head from side to side and widening her eyes so she would not blink away a drift of colour. She wandered around corners and beneath doorways, and the darkness thickened. When she finally heard a noise, she stopped. An unfamiliar hallway; a woman’s voice. She began to walk again, following the voice beneath arches until she came to a closed door.

  The woman was crying. Jaele put her ear against the wood and heard it quite clearly: muffled sobs, words broken between. A low, low sound as well, constant as singing. Jaele pushed slightly and the door opened.

  She was blinded at first: there was sunlight in the room, dazzlingly white, and she pressed her palms against her eyes. When she could see more clearly, she eased her head around the frame.

  The One Wife was standing by the window. Her fingers were on the ledge, pressing ivy leaves into hollow shapes. Jaele saw her instantly—her hand and dress and the glistening wetness of her cheeks. It was the man—the deep singing voice—she turned to next, and her own fingers dug splinters from the door.

  Keeper was kneeling before the One Wife. Even on his knees, he was rock or tree. One hand was cupped around her cheek, curled into her hair. His face was close to hers, breathing, murmuring, and Jaele saw that he too was weeping. She saw as well, moments later, that his neck was bare.

  “No,” she heard the One Wife say, very clearly now, “there is too much danger for you, Maruuc,” and then he rose and drew her up against his chest and lowered his face to hers so that she could no longer speak.

  “Maruuc.” Jaele whispered only, but their heads lifted and she froze beneath his eyes, which were dark and furious, and which she had never seen. The One Wife gazed at her; her mouth opened, but she was silent. They all stood still. The ivy rustled, a cloth wall hanging flapped; sunlight eddied over the bright cushions on the floor and corner bed.

  When the hand clamped around her shoulder and neck, Jaele cried out. Keeper was behind her, above her, looming in the darkness of the corridor. She shrank from his face and the ring that gleamed black at his throat, and twisted again to the chamber. Maruuc and the One Wife were clutching each other, turned wide-eyed to the door. The woman reached out a hand. “Maruuc?” she said in a child’s voice, and the man who held her shouted, “No!” Then their skin and clothing shimmered and thinned, and their outstretched hands and staring eyes trembled away, and there was just a sunlit room and Keeper standing with his head bowed.

  “Maruuc,” Jaele whispered again, and Keeper raised his head so quickly that she stepped back until her spine was flat against the door frame.

  “No,” he said, and his voice was the same as ever. “Only Keeper, who serves.”

  “I’m not afraid of you,” she said—words wavering with her lie—“and I must speak. You have been creating these visions for me, then taking them away before I can do anything—except for the first, the One Wife. Were you surprised that she could see me? Were you testing me? You show me these things—why not Dorin?” She looked up into his face. “And you brought me to the kitchen to find the Sea Raider. You want to help me, but you cannot while you are Bound. You cannot speak your heart. Your Binding is death. This place is death, despite your gardens and your birds.” She drew a quick, shallow breath. “You know that I need you as much as you need me. Let me help you, Maruuc. Please.” Her teeth were rattling, and she clenched them in what was almost a smile.

  Keeper was looking at her—she was sure, even though she could not see his eyes (again, always the shadowed bone). “No,” he said. “The birds and water and walls. The green garden and dark rain.”

  “Say I,” Jaele interrupted, and her voice broke and leapt. “Say my black neckring, my solitude, my love.”

  His hands came down. He lifted her slowly, so that she hardly noticed until her eyes were on his great brown mouth. “Keeper is Bound,” he said, and she felt his voice in her bones and skin. “Always.” Jaele drew a breath and he shook her, though gently. “Strong girl—listen. Keeper serves Jaele, with time that flows backward and around. Serves Jaele.” He lowered her to the floor and her legs were water. He kept his hands about her until she could stand. “Now,” he went on, and pointed down the corridor, “go. Go now.”

  She went, walking at first, then running through a shifting, blinking haze of tears and rain. At last, when she came to the turning that would take her away, she looked back. He was still there, standing in the bright doorway, watching as a woman cried and called his name.

  The stone by the library door had been cut. Jaele sank to her knees and felt dust and shavings on her skin. She touched the fresh carving and thought that it was warm. The Sea Raider walking between the fortress gates. Out into the desert, beneath a low round moon. He was hunched over, clutching a bag to his chest. Fruit, she knew. Fruit from Keeper’s gardens.

  Her hand trembled on the sharp new ridges.

  I know how deeply all of you understand the twinning of rage and helplessness. I felt this then—b
ut even as I did, I was not surprised. The Sea Raider could not wait any longer; even Keeper’s tending could not save him. The Eastern Sea still called, and he had to follow. And so, I thought, must we. Dorin and I. Keeper, freed. We would go east together, all of us. I would still have the revenge I had spoken of with Nossi.

  Jaele thought of the map she had not taken out of her pouch since Nossi had commanded her to put it there; of Galha and the river with her daughter’s name; of Fane, with its tall, pointed houses and its harbour. These thoughts, warm and effortless with the Alilan, were aching things now. We will go east together, Dorin and Keeper and I. . . .

  She looked for them after she left the library, but could not find them. Daylight thinned to dusk, and dusk thickened to night. Tomorrow, she thought, and slept as night birds sang in the garden outside her window.

  “Jaele,” Nossi hissed, “wake up. Wake up, Jaele.”

  Jaele opened her eyes. All visions—the Sea Raider in kitchen and garden and stone, boys with axes, tower fire—vanished like smoke before this one bright image of Nossi. “No,” Jaele whispered, even as she rose shaking from the bed. But she followed when Nossi said “Come” and slipped out the door.

  The corridor was dark. The full moon threw window-arches of white on the ground and on Nossi’s hair. Jaele followed slowly at first, then more quickly as her shaking became hope. Nossi danced through the streaks of light; she whirled and sprang, and when she looked over her shoulder at Jaele, she smiled.

  Jaele was silent. She wanted to call out but could not after that first “No.” She thought, She will dance me into the night and away over cool sand, to the wagons with their painted ivy flames. But Nossi kept to the hallway’s curves, and Jaele passed beneath one final arch to find her waiting at the massive double doors of the Throne Room.