When spring came, Orrigan climbed into the mountains again, only to return weeks later ragged and underweight. Orrigan said that he had hiked in unending circles, finding only the bones of his lost neighbors, over and over again. He found no survivors, and he found no caves. The village widows fell to their knees weeping. The village elders cursed the caves and cast Orrigan from the village as punishment for luring the other men to their deaths. Each survivor of the village swore an oath in blood to never speak of the caves again.
Yet still the stories of the Dawn Caves and the guardian spread, and legends rose, and men chased after the dream of a cave that would grant the seeker any one wish of his choosing.
~~~
The next morning, Nolan stared over the rail of the Seaglass, appalled by the effects of the previous night.
Somehow he’d managed to find his way back to the ship the night before, ignoring the growing crowd in the Golden City that was mutely gazing skyward. He’d wrapped the star-jar in several shirts to hide its light and stuffed it deep into his pack before climbing into his hammock. He’d lain there with a pounding heart for hours, hoping desperately that everything that had happened was some bizarre dream that would evaporate when he woke.
It was entirely possible that Nolan did not actually manage to sleep at all that night, but whether or not he did, the following gray, foggy morning showed no sign of erasing the night.
There was no tide. There was no moon to control the tide. The ship barely rocked at all. Above deck and below the Seaglass was as still and silent as the waters that cradled it. Luckily, Nolan had no trouble looking just as stupefied and frightened as the rest of the crew.
Shock, he thought dimly. Real, life-changing shock. This is what it feels like. Like if you move, the whole web that makes up the world will be broken apart.
More than a few sailors were murmuring prayers, holding onto any scrap of the Night God’s silver they could find. Several sported new silver rings acquired that morning from the city’s most enterprising merchants.
After another fifteen minutes, Walker arrived on deck as well. He took one long, pensive look at the tranquil waters, drew himself up to his full height and began barking orders at the crew.
“What are you lot standing about for? Is staring at the sky like imbeciles going to change anything? Back to work! I want that silver loaded and this ship on the move by mid-day. Let’s put the Golden City as far behind us quick as we can. Move!”
“Night God guard us,” Nut muttered. Nolan followed him below deck, only to be rebuffed and sent back to help load the Seaglass’s new cargo. The men had taken up their work again under Walker’s stern glare, but nothing could stop them from nervously eyeing the sky and sea for the remainder of the morning. No one would touch the water. Hardly anyone more than picked at the fresh-caught fish that were the central dish for dinner. There were no card games after the meal, and no music.
Nightfall only increased anxiety on the Seaglass. When Nolan reported for his watch, he found James staring into the dark, alternating oaths and muttered prayers with equal fervor. He nodded a greeting to Nolan, but made no move to leave. Nolan followed James’s gaze, thinking of how he’d never realized until the previous night how much light the stars and the moon had given them, even on a cloudy night. The single oil lamp hanging over his head was a poor substitute, leaving Nolan and James staring at empty, unnerving, unrelenting darkness.
Nolan didn’t dare bring out his little jar to try to change this, but his thoughts went back to the jar again and again. To his dismay, he hadn’t found a moment to slip away all day, so he still had yet to look it over by daylight. If he could just find a way to open it, maybe the witch would know he’d learned his lesson, or whatever her point was, and set everything right again. Nolan had certainly learned to guard his words around witches.
Still, some part of him doubted that the answer to reversing the sorceress’s spell could be anything so simple.
“What do you figure, Nolan?” James asked after an hour or so of uneasy silence. “The Night God’s sleeping? He and the Sun Lord are having it out again over the Mother? Or did every man on this earth get on the wrong side of everybody upstairs?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know anything about it—the gods, the stars, or the moon.”
“Shoot, Nolan, me neither but I sure wish somebody did. And this feels an awful lot like one of those plagues my preacher in Dale used to talk about. He mostly talked about the Mother, but even so… Sure feels like some kind of warning doesn’t it? I just can’t think why…”
Nolan didn’t say anything.
“Has to be the Night God, doesn’t it? The stars were his gift when the Sun Lord forgot us. It has to be him who took them back, doesn’t it?”
“Maybe…”
James spat. “Time to get my behind back in a church, I guess. Soon as we make land I’m looking for a Night God priest.”
“Good idea,” Nolan said weakly. He wished he could believe in so simple a solution. “‘Least my uncle’s got a compass, right?”
“Blasted thing’s the only reason I set foot on this ship today.” James sighed. “That and Sam needs another couple of days in his cot.”
A furtive examination of the star-jar by daylight proved useless. The jar was made of glass and was about as long as Nolan’s hand and as wide as his palm. The jar could stand on either flat end. Though he forced himself to look into the star-jar until long after his vision swam with purple spots, Nolan could only make out a thick oval shape as the source of the jar’s light. He couldn’t see any stars or moons, but he supposed their light was too bright to see them clearly. Looking into the star-jar felt like looking into the sun.
Nolan could find no seal on the jar, no mark or ridge that hinted at how to release its contents and return them to their proper place. Reluctantly, he finally tucked the jar back in his pack, padding it with a spare shirt.
At breakfast the next morning, a hollow-eyed Carver stared at Nolan as he served the morning porridge.
“This is your doing.”
Nolan’s fingers slipped on the bowl; it fell to the table with clatter.
“Witches like your mother. Sorcerers and their friends.”
“My mother didn’t do anything,” Nolan said.
“She’s a witch.”
“She’s a healer. She can’t count how many lives she’s saved.”
Carver spat to the side. “Spreading her magic all around, like the rest of them, poisoning us all. It’s no wonder the Night God turned his back on us.”
Nolan wiped away the mess and filled another bowl. Carver spat again, this time hitting him on the cheek. “Keep your hands off my food, witch’s brat.”
Nolan swung a fist up, only to have it roughly pulled down. Nut kept one hand on Nolan’s wrist and wrapped the other arm around Nolan’s neck.
“There will be no brawling on this ship,” he said, his voice carrying through the whole galley. “That’s the captain’s rule. Fighting is the last thing we need. Is that clear?”
Low murmurs of agreement came from the rest of the room. Carver glowered.
“Keep the boy away from me then.”
“You keep your mouth off my mother.”
Nut’s hold on him tightened. “Are we clear? Or should I call the captain?”
Nolan gritted his teeth. “Clear.”
No one else picked a fight, but the tone of the following three weeks of their journey from Golden Isle to Marayne was dramatically different from that of their first two weeks out. There was far less laughter. Dinners were quiet, tense affairs. Card-games and dice slowly returned to the tables, but the vigor of the games had gone. None of the ship’s musicians touched their instruments, and at each meal Carver watched Nolan with sharp, furious eyes.
Nut seemed more affected than most in his slow, pensive way. He picked up a habit of chewing his lip as he cooked, and spoke even less than his usual want. The ready set of corrections to Nolan’s work stemmed s
omewhat, and Nolan doubted it was due to any drastic improving in his cooking. He even caught Nut staring into space a few times, his hands empty and still. He’d never seen Nut stop moving before.
Through each day of chapped hands, stale bread, rats, and bruised knuckles, Nolan thought he would have happily endured all of it if he could have just turn back the clock and made the star-jar disappear.
Port Prosper, Marayne looked a lot more like Brine than it did the Golden City. The people were pink with brown hair, by and large. The city was built primarily of bricks, though here and there Surian timber could be seen lining the finer establishments. The docks smelled fishy and sour just as Brine’s had. There were fewer flowers here than there had been on Golden Isle, and most of those flowers were familiar to Nolan.
There was also no hint of revelry on the Maraynian streets. The faces on any passerby were invariably drawn or solemn. Everywhere Nolan looked, people were wearing the silver color of the Night God. Those not wearing jewelry wore light gray skirts, shirts, or hats. A pair of Night God priests greeted the Seaglass’s crew at the dock. Nolan couldn’t follow all that they said, but he heard “blessings”, “the danger of witches”, “the god’s anger”, and “curse on the world.” Several sailors, especially those already wearing silver, asked the priests’ blessing as soon as they set foot ashore.
Nut said he had business of his own to see to that afternoon. “We’ve got soup to spare from lunch, and I’ve got sourdough rising. Why don’t you take the half-day? You’re overdue for it.”
Nolan stared at him. He could scarcely believe the freedom being offered to him. And there was something off in Nut’s tone.
“Don’t stand there like a lack-wit. Off with you, before I change my mind.”
Amazed at his luck, Nolan decided his best option was to take the star-jar with him and try to really of think what to do about it. Or simply get rid of it. There was nothing else to hide it in properly, so he ended up shouldering his pack as well and left as casually as he could. Luck was with him in that Walker was nowhere to be seen.
He threaded his way through the winding, narrow streets until he found a deserted alley. Hastily he opened his pack and took the jar out with both hands. It glowed brightly in the alleyway’s dim light. Nolan hadn’t wanted to do anything on the ship to draw attention to himself, but he’d been thinking hard and the only solution that he could think of was to try and smash the jar and hope that the stars knew their way back to their where they came from. Doing nothing certainly wasn’t helping, and Nolan couldn’t imagine finding anyone quite like that sorceress ever again. Nolan lifted the jar high over his head and took a deep breath.
“Don’t you even think about it!” a familiar voice cried out.
Two sets of very rapid footsteps beat against the dirt of the alley. Nolan grabbed his bag and started running on pure instinct, but not quickly enough. A man’s arms wrapped around his waist and slammed him up against the wall of the nearest building. Nolan’s ribs protested pointedly, and his grip on the jar loosened.
The man, whose small frame did nothing to make his bushy black brows and pointed, olive-skinned face less imposing, snatched the jar out of Nolan’s hands. The two men were blocking any exit of Nolan’s now, and the smaller man was muttering fiercely in Maraynian. Nolan’s grasp of the language was rusty, but he distinctly heard “idiot” at least twice in the space of five seconds.
The larger man muttered something in Maraynian to his companion, then turned his attention to Nolan.
“Newman, what in six hells are you doing?”
Nolan gulped and tried to stand straight. “Nut! You gave me the afternoon off. I was just—”
“Don’t play that game with me,” the cook growled. “I’ve been looking for the source of that magic since we left the Golden City. Soon as you were off the ship I felt it gone, too. And Philippe here felt it land. Couldn’t believe it, but here you are, and here this jar is, and don’t you dare insult me by thinking I don’t know what’s in it.”
The olive skinned man, Philippe, squinted at Nolan from beneath his bushy brows. “What evil have you been doing?”
“I didn’t do anything!” Nolan whispered harshly. “All I did was save a woman from drowning.”
Nut blinked at him. “You saved a woman…” his eyes sharpened, “and she asked you what you wanted.”
“You wished this—!”
“Next thing I know she’s giving me this jar and the sky goes black and the tides won’t come and she disappeared and how am I supposed to fix it? I thought if I just—”
“If you break that jar every living thing inside it will die,” Nut said with devastating simplicity.
“What do you mean living things?” Nolan asked. “They’re stars, and the moon.”
“Have you looked at that jar, boy? How many stars are in it? A thousand? Ten thousand? With stars can come planets. You really think we’re the only living things in this whole universe?”
“What woman was this?” Philippe asked sharply. “What did she look like?”
“Some witch…she kept changing her looks, but she had black hair. I thought she was older when I saved her, then she was young…” Nolan felt heat rise in his cheeks.
“Edeva.” The men groaned in unison, ignoring his discomfort. Philippe added emphatic, foul-sounding words in Maraynian.
“You know her?”
“Enough to know she has too much power for her own good. Old as the ages, impulsive…more than a sorceress, but that’s what she calls herself. Gives everybody with the least hint of magic a bad name.”
“She likes to tempt men, or boys,” Philippe eyed Nolan disdainfully, “and she likes to twist words into power, to change what should be a gift to the worthy—” Philippe hesitated on the word, as though unsure Nolan deserved such an adjective, “into a lesson, or a game, whether he is worthy or not.”
“This is no game!”
“Even for her…” Nut agreed, glancing at Philippe. “Edeva’s a recluse, a seer, and a mule-headed snake, but she’s not mad. To do something like this, on account of one boy…there must be more in it for her.”
Philippe spat on the ground. “What could there be? Of all the reckless, careless, stupid…”
“Is there any way to find her?” Nolan asked. “If we could get her to change her mind…”
Nut shook his head glumly. “She is never in one place for long. Until now no one had heard of her in fifteen years.”
“Well…you two…you’re witches, aren’t you? Can’t you fix it?”
Nut grimaced. “I’m a hedge-witch. Not too much more than herb-lore about me, though. Just a pinch more. Same with Philippe here. We’re the common sort. Do you have any idea what kind of power it took to interfere with the night sky? She could have split the world with that power, thrice over. Sorceresses with Edeva’s power are…far…rarer than diamonds, boy. And even she must have been hoarding it for years to do a spell like this.”
So I just ran into her on a bad day? Nolan thought bitterly.
“Well, so then what?” he demanded aloud. “What are we supposed to do? Just leave the moon and everything else in the jar? Throw the jar in the sea? Put out an offering for her? Tell me!”
“We can’t do anything,” Philippe snapped. “This is a task that has been marked on you, through your words, and you must find what help you can on your own.” He poked Nolan hard in the chest and scowled. “And don’t you ever, ever even think to let that jar out of your hands.”
“This isn’t my fault!” Nolan knocked Philippe’s hand away and fought to keep his voice low. “I never meant for this to happen! And I don’t have any idea how to fix it.”
Nut rolled his eyes as though Nolan were a whining toddler. Nolan glared back at them defiantly. This wasn’t his fault.
“What exactly did you say to Edeva? What did she say to you?”
“She asked me what I wanted. I said I didn’t know,” Nolan answered shortly. “I said…I guess I said I
wanted a lot, but I didn’t have words for it. Maybe there was something about the moon in there…but I never asked for it! I just said I might as well. Or something like that.”
Philippe rubbed his temples. “Idiot boy,” he whispered. “Even you should know better than to say such a thing near a witch, even in jest! Now look what chaos you have created. Imbecile! You realize that those worlds will die if you keep them stationary for too long?”
“My own mother’s a witch! She’d never do anything like this!” Nolan protested hotly, his cheeks burning. “And I’m not trying to kill anybody. I’ll undo it. I want to. Just tell me how.”
“Think of the stories, Nolan,” Nut said carefully. “You did one good deed and like it or not you got the reward for it. It’s a powerful thing to prove yourself that strongly. Maybe something similar will give you another chance.”
“The chance of earning any wish is one in a hundred million!” Philippe protested. “The chance of winning such a wish twice is a hundred times less. No, you would do better to seek the Dawn Caves, boy. If you survive the climb, you can wish yourself out of this there.”
“The ‘if’ in that survival is pretty big,” Nut murmured.
“That is not in our hands. If he is worthy he will succeed. He must. How many things are connected to the tides? How long can the universe exist cut in half as it is? The risks are already too great, for this world and the others.”
“I thought the Dawn Caves were a myth.”
Both men looked at Nolan condescendingly. “Nolan,” Nut said, too patiently. “Think where you’ve gotten yourself. It’s time to start believing in myths.”
“The Dawn Caves are far to the north, at the edge of man’s known world.”
“But almost anyone who tries to reach them never returns,” Nut said.
“For ordinary adventurers they are a graveyard, yes. If we were to try, we would fail. But he is marked for this task. He has a chance.”
Everyone fell silent. The two men watched Nolan expectantly.
Star Thief Page 4