An Accident of Stars

by Foz Meadows

“What I did wrong,” Louis retorted, “was try to use the ilumet to contact a mind that was already disembodied. If I’d known what to look for–”

  Yasha let loose a string of Vekshi expletives, culminating in a furious, “Arsegullet! Show me!”

  Jaw clenched, Louis led them on through the dreamscape, which currently resembled a vast, snowy plain beneath an indigo sky. Breaking the monotony, a shape emerged on the horizon, and though they were still too far away to see what it was, a terrible sense of premonition set Gwen’s pulse racing. The closer they came, the more her anxiety increased. The shape resembled a figure – a small figure – lying on the earth; she wanted to be wrong, but when they finally drew to a halt, her worst suspicions were realised.

  It was Zech; or at least, the dreaming representation of her. She was naked and curled in the foetal position, her mottled skin almost garish against the snow. Spiny, batlike wings protruded from her shoulder blades, the translucent webbing pulsing pink in time with her heartbeat. It was an eerie sight, but Gwen was much less concerned by the wings than with the fact that Zech’s eyes were closed, her exhaled breath steaming slightly as it hit the air.

  “She shouldn’t be sleeping,” she said, shocked. “I didn’t know anyone could sleep, in this place.”

  “Fool of a Shavaktiin,” Yasha whispered, “and more fool I, for trying to interfere with Ashasa’s own judgement.”

  Gwen shot her an astonished look. “You’re accepting blame? Voluntarily?”

  Yasha clicked her teeth in anger. “Save your knives for better blood; I’m not above admitting fault. Of course your boy doesn’t know the trial; of course he doesn’t know the proxy magic. I ought to have remembered. I ought to have known better.” This last was muttered to herself.

  “Care to enlighten us?” Louis asked darkly.

  By way of answer, she prodded Zech’s sleeping form with the butt of her staff. The girl didn’t so much as stir. Yasha shook her head. “She ought to have borrowed Safi’s body, flesh and spirit linked, with the elder girl to ride as guide. Instead, you’ve brought her halfway here. Until the trial is done, she can’t return to her own body, but neither can she fully enter Safi’s. Their roles are reversed.”

  It took Gwen a moment to fully comprehend the implication. Once she did, she stared at Yasha, aghast. “You mean that Saffron will sit the trial, not Zech? That she’ll do it alone?”

  The matriarch sighed. “Most likely, yes. Though it’s possible she can still hear Zechalia’s thoughts – and maybe,” she added, her tone turning thoughtful, “Zech, in turn, can still hear us. After all, a part of her is with us now.” Abruptly, she knelt beside the girl, her movements more fluid than age permitted in waking. “I’ll stay with her until it’s done. Alone,” she added, when neither Gwen nor Louis made to leave. “I’ve been accused of many things, but betraying Vekshi secrets isn’t one of them.”

  Louis looked at her long and hard before nodding. “As you will.” He put a hand on Gwen’s arm, and only then did she see the faint lines of exhaustion marking his face. “Come on. There’s nothing left for you to do.”

  He was right; and yet Gwen hesitated, suddenly unable to look away from Zech’s weird, translucent wings. “What are they?” she asked. “What do they mean?”

  But Yasha didn’t answer.

  * * *

  Cold and disoriented, Saffron woke on the cavern floor. Her blindfold was gone, and the Vekshi queens and priestess were nowhere in sight. Except for Zech, who still lay prone a few feet away, she was utterly alone. She didn’t know long she’d been unconscious, but some internal mechanism suggested it wasn’t much longer than twenty minutes. An unpleasant, metallic taste in the back of her throat prompted her to sit up, casting around to see if they’d been left any food or drink, but there was nothing. Groggily, she slouched to her knees and shuffled over to Zech. What was supposed to happen next? Up until now, she’d thought that some magic or other was meant to bind them together – she had no idea what the end result ought to feel like, but she’d assumed, not unreasonably, that it ought to be obvious somehow; that she’d be able to tell it had worked. Instead, she just felt… ordinary.

  And cold, of course. Between the residual chill from the water and the natural underground cool, her teeth were starting to chatter. Goosebumps pimpled her arms and legs. Hugging her torso with one hand, she nudged Zech with the other.

  “Zech. Zech. Come on, wake up. What happens now?” She paused, suddenly uneasy. “Zech?”

  No response.

  Very slowly, Saffron rocked back on her heels. Try not to panic, she told herself. It didn’t work. She shook Zech’s unconscious form, helplessly repeating her name, but she didn’t so much as stir. I’m panicking, she thought, and with an effort of will forced herself to stand, taking several deep, soothing breaths. Calm down. Maybe this is all part of the test. Zech said she didn’t know everything a proxy was meant to do. Perhaps the bond comes later. I should just… get on with it, whatever that means. And besides, it wasn’t like there was anything else she could do.

  Not true, a part of her whispered, her gaze drawn to the doors. This isn’t your world, and it sure as hell isn’t your trial. Why risk your life for something you barely understand? You could walk out of here right now, and in a few days, once Trishka’s strong enough to send you home again, none of this will matter.

  It was a treacherously attractive prospect; and yet she couldn’t make herself leave. Slowly, she turned back into the cavern. Of course her actions here mattered, not just to Zech and Yasha and everyone else she’d travelled with, but to her too. If she gave up now, she’d have to live with the knowledge that she’d betrayed a friend.

  And so, after looking Zech over one last time – though still unmoving, her steady pulse and even breath suggested she was in no physical danger – Saffron headed deeper into the cavern.

  As she walked, the silence was oppressive. Her bare feet made no sound in passing, her passage lit by the luminescent, cat’s-eye glow of the crystals. After several minutes, however, her surroundings began to change: the roof loomed inwards, the walls closed in, the crystals appeared less frequently. Before too long the massive cavern had diminished into a narrow, increasingly dim tunnel through the earth. With the walls so much closer, the sound of her breathing was abruptly magnified, its hissing echo filling her ears. The ground began to slope forward, too, as though she were walking down some monstrous throat.

  Without quite meaning to, Saffron started singing. It was something she often did while walking alone, albeit quietly. There was no particular pattern to the songs she chose; she simply sang whatever popped into her head, from classic rock and pop ballads to advertising jingles and Christmas carols. Usually it cheered her up, but all too soon her voice tailed away into nothing, defeated by the cool, surrounding dark.

  She continued, more weighed down than ever by the silence. The footing became softer, hard stone giving way to a layer of moss so thick it felt like walking on carpet, while the previously straight tunnel began to curve and corner like the bunched coils of a snake. The dry air turned moist. Droplets of condensation beaded the more prominent crystals; the walls were wet to the touch. Almost imperceptibly at first, but soon unmistakably, the silence ebbed away, broken by the distant chuckle of running water. Saffron halted, turning her head in an effort to tell where the sound was coming from, but though it grew louder with each passing minute, the source remained a mystery.

  Turning a corner, she came to an abrupt halt. The tunnel ahead split into three different paths, but all were devoid of crystals: whichever way she went, there was no option but darkness. For the first time since leaving the main cavern, she let herself remember that the trial was meant to be dangerous – and that Zech was meant to be in charge. She’d been waiting for her perception to drop away somehow, but it hadn’t happened. Surely the binding ought to have taken effect by now?

  “You have to choose, Zech,” she murmured. “Please. Are you there? You have to choose wh
ich way to go.”

  She waited, but no answer was forthcoming. Breathing deeply, Saffron examined each of the paths in turn, walking as far down the respective tunnels as the dim light extended, then hurrying back out again. She’d hoped there might be an obvious choice, but as far as she could tell, the three were identical; the moss, the wet walls and the darkness were all the same, and yet she knew, with absolute certainty, that there was only one right answer.

  As much to rest her legs as to calm herself, she sat down cross-legged before the junction, rested her wrists on her knees, and closed her eyes. Come on, Zech. You have to be there somewhere. Please. Please. Please.

 

  Saffron jerked as though scalded. Heart racing, she stared wildly over her shoulder, half expecting to find that Zech had crept up behind her through the tunnel. But she was alone; the voice had sounded inside her head, a whisper-that-wasn’t, made faint by impossible distance and yet clearly determined. Saffron shut her eyes again. Zech. I can’t hear you. Which way do we go?

  One breath. Two.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  The answer came in disjointed fragments, overlapping and echoing as though blown apart by the interference of some psychic breeze. Saffron shivered, trying to make sense of it. But I don’t understand, she thought desperately. Zech? How do I choose which way to go?This time, the pause stretched out interminably, until she feared no further advice would come. But just as Saffron was about to give up, Zech’s voice returned, a short burst of words whose wavering cohesion betrayed the effort expended in their sending.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  And with that last command came a flurry of images, blizzarding Saffron’s inner sight: a long, sharp crystal held in hand; a burning stone; a sun-dazzled waterfall; a pair of glowing, inhuman eyes. She sat back gasping, her lungs as empty as if she’d been running uphill, and for several minutes all she could do was lie slumped against the tunnel wall, trying to make sense of the message and breathe at the same time.

  Dazedly, she stood. A strange calm overtook her, just as it had in the darkness of the pool. One hand trailing the wall, Saffron wandered back the way she’d come, casting about for a suitable crystal. This far down, the pickings were slim, and with no way to mark the passage of time, she didn’t want to retrace her steps and risk invalidating the trial by failing to complete it before dawn. Her eyes lit suddenly on a nub of white-gold crystal protruding from the stone. It was hexagonal beneath the pointed tip, and nearly two fingerwidths wide, but only about a centimetre of the whole length was visible. Tentatively, she scratched at the surrounding rock, and was surprised to feel it give under her fingers, as gritty as hard-packed sand, though far less yielding. Clenching her teeth, she started digging the crystal free, grunting in satisfaction each time a chip or fragment of rock broke away from the wall. Though part of her quailed to imagine the entire tunnel structure disintegrating so easily, her rational mind considered it impossible: Yevekshasa’s mesa-stone had clearly been built upon for hundreds, if not thousands of years, and if this particular patch of wall was soft enough to be permeable when all else was solid, it must have been a geological quirk.

  Whatever the case, the crystal didn’t loosen all that easily; her fingernails were bloody and sore before it popped free of the wall, and even then, she’d been tugging on it fiercely. A cry of triumph escaped her. The whole thing was the length of a good-sized knife, if not nearly as sharp. Thus armed, she headed back to the junction, winged a prayer to the universe that she’d understood Zech’s cryptic instructions, and threw the crystal down the first tunnel. It landed soundlessly on the soft moss, casting a white glow over everything. Saffron retrieved it, wiped it clean, and threw it down the middle path. Once again, nothing happened, except that the crystal continued to glow. Unable to decide whether she felt more foolish or frightened, she picked it up and cast it down the final tunnel, which was the leftmost of the three.It stopped glowing.

  Heart in mouth, she proceeded forward, half convinced she’d simply lost sight of the thing around a corner. But after several metres spent shuffling into darkness, one hand on the wall for balance, one foot questing tentatively forward, she felt the cool length of crystal clink against her toes, and bent down to retrieve it. Briefly, she considered trying to wear it shoved through her belt, but she didn’t trust herself not to let it fall by accident, unheard on the mossy ground. Instead, she gripped it firmly in her free right hand and continued onwards, into the unseen.

  True darkness swallowed her whole. Saffron had known the dark of the pool, and before then had wandered outside at night without the aid of fire or torch; she’d even been in an unlit bomb shelter once, as part of a school excursion in a world that felt lifetimes away. But none of that even came close to the black she moved through now. It was almost tangible, a velvet shroud tossed over her face; she couldn’t see her fingers wriggling, let alone anything else. She was trapped under stone – perhaps even under the earth; for all she knew, she’d travelled so far down through the mesa’s core that she was actually below ground level – and with nothing to do but press onwards.

  How long she travelled through darkness, she couldn’t say. It might have been hours, and it might have been minutes; she lost all sense of herself, nerves strung out to breaking point with the fear of ending up lost, of getting caught in a cave-in, of having the ground give way beneath her feet, of any one of a hundred other terrors that could befall her in the dark. The sound of running water had grown fainter now, and played on the edge of her hearing like a half-imagined melody. She cried silently, salt tears trickling down her cheeks, the bloody nails of her left hand tearing even further as she clung to the wall, her other hand gripping the crystal so tightly it hurt.

  I’ll die down here, she thought. I’ll die in stone a world away from everyone I love, and they’ll never know what happened.

  Her muscles ached. Thirst clawed at her throat, the sound of water a torment; her skin felt hot and tight. She wanted to give up. The weight of darkness was terrifying – and what if she’d chosen the wrong path after all? What if she was stuck travelling in an endless loop, with no way back to the surface? She was only touching one side of the tunnel – what if she’d taken another fork without even realising? She’d starve to death before anyone found her, assuming anyone looked. She slumped to the ground, shaking with fear, and began to sob in earnest.

 

  “No.” This time, she spoke aloud. “I can’t, Zech. I’m sorry. I can’t. I’m lost. I’m so lost.”

 

  “Please.” She was almost delirious now. Her voice was hoarse and cracked. “Please.”

 

  The braided path. She remembered Trishka’s words to her, back in the compound in Karavos, and tried to summon some of the courage and inner strength the concept had lent her then, but even the memory felt weak.

 

  “I want to,” Saffron whispered, but keeled over even as she spoke, until her cheek was pressed to the mossy floor. She shut her eyes, inhaled – and instantly felt a fresh wave of terror swamp her.

 

  “Can’t.” She choked out the word, paralysed even beyond speech. I’ll die down here. And yet some distant thought refused to stop niggling at her, itching at the back of her brain. I’m not afrai
d of the dark.

  Slowly, Saffron opened her eyes, pulse racing as though she’d run a marathon. It wasn’t a boast, but a statement of fact. Even as a child, she’d never found darkness frightening, though Ruby once had. The thought of her sister hit her like a dose of cold water, and in the clarity that followed, she found the strength to push herself to her knees.

  Her terror ebbed slightly, and only then did she understand.

 

  “The moss,” she said, staggering to her feet. She spoke English, the familiar words a shield against the darkness. “It’s a hallucinogen, a poison – something like that. I’ve been breathing it in. It’s making me afraid. But I’m not afraid!”

  And with that, she began to run, stumbling blindly on, still clutching her lightless crystal, free hand outstretched as a guide. More than once, she fell, and each time it was a struggle to stand again, the toxin increasing in potency the closer she came to the source. Within minutes, she was covered in cuts and scrapes from banging into the surrounding rock, tripping at every turn. It was a nightmare run, and if the tunnel had appeared endless before, that was nothing to how it felt now. Trying to breathe shallowly left her on the brink of hyperventilation, gasping for air she knew was poisoned – how long before it took her over completely, or did some permanent damage? She tried to push the thoughts away, knowing rationally that increased fear could only make things worse, but it was impossible.

  And then, with a suddenness that made her eyes sting, her crystal suddenly flared into life, a white-gold glow that literally stopped her in her tracks. Hardly daring to believe it, Saffron blinked the afterimages out of her eyes and held the thing up in front of her, convinced it would wink back out again. Trembling, she took a shaky step forward.

  The light remained.

  She burst out laughing, the sound high-edged and tinged with hysteria born of relief. After so long in darkness, even such a limited glow felt bright as the sun, and when, a few metres on, she felt the moss give way to hard stone, she wept a few tears of relief. With each passing minute, she felt her thoughts grow clearer and calmer; the toxic influence was fading, and with it, her fear had gone. Soon, though, she had a new reason to be grateful for the crystal’s light: the footing had grown treacherous. Small stones and chunks of rock strewed the path ahead, while the ground itself was pitted and rough – exactly the sort of place where an unwary soul could turn an ankle. Picking her way forwards with care, Saffron licked her cracked, dry lips and tried to remember Zech’s instructions.