Star Thief

by Robin Kristoff

  Tobin glanced between the bodies, Nolan, and the horses. He raised one hand. Nolan’s feet rose a foot off the ground. He floated awkwardly in the air, staring down at Tobin’s mask-like face. “You better hope you never see me again, mundane,” Tobin hissed. “Don’t think you’re getting away with this. But the others’ll need me if they want to catch you now. I’d start running.”

  Tobin made a shoving motion with his hand. Nolan flew violently backwards, hit a tree, and saw nothing more.

  When he woke up at the foot of the tree, Tobin was nowhere to be seen. No glimmer of light suggested that the sun was disposed to rise anytime soon, so Nolan guessed he could not have been unconscious long. He gingerly picked himself up, wincing as this activity caused the pain in his head to double, and looked around.

  Hoof prints led away west away from the campsite. Tobin must have ridden to meet the other magni alone. His bedroll was gone, as were the Rusamites’ supply of food. Gone also were two of the Rusamites’ horses, but, amazingly, Tobin had left the other behind. Even more startling, he had left Kris.

  Nolan felt a thrill of triumph. Ignoring the pain that this rush of emotion sent to his head, he picked his way over to Kris’s sleeping body and touched her shoulder with a trembling hand. He said her name. He touched her cheek, and shook her shoulder more firmly. Kris didn’t answer.

  She didn’t stir at all. Her cheek was as smooth as glass beneath his fingertips, and just as cold. If Nolan hadn’t seen her chest rising and falling as she breathed he might have thought she were dead.

  He had as well as murdered Belen and Cylas, something that Nolan knew wouldn’t sit easily in his gut later. But in that particular moment, he truly didn’t care about the lives lost that night, or what kind of afterlife they were headed for.

  Deciding he couldn’t wait here alongside the dead bodies of two magni for her to wake up, Nolan picked Kris up gently and moved her temporarily closer to the campfire while he packed what he could. She was so cold. Other than get her away, far away, where the magni wouldn’t find them, Nolan thought the best thing he could do was keep her warm.

  The horses were both uneasy after witnessing the earlier violence, but they gave Nolan little trouble as he tacked them up. He didn’t like the idea of slinging Kris over the magni’s horse like a sack, or even putting her on Star—if the horse he was leading ever broke loose, she had no way of dropping to safety. He settled the problem by putting all of the packs and both of their bedrolls on the new horse, a liver chestnut gelding. Nolan helped himself to the magni’s blankets and wished Tobin had left him even a little bit of their food. With numb fingers Nolan wrapped Kris’s blanket more securely around her, banked the fire and tethered the gelding’s lead to Star’s saddle. He lifted Kris gently into Star’s saddle and swung up immediately behind her, using one arm around her waist to keep her from falling forward off of the mare. With his free hand, he picked up Star’s reins. The resulting position was awkward to say the least, but Nolan managed to guide Star away from the dead men behind him and back the way he’d come.

  Nolan had no free hand to hold the star-jar ahead of them. Within minutes, he was riding without any sense of what lay before him, and let Star pick her way down the mountain path at will. The predawn hours were eerily quiet. All Nolan could hear were the horses’ hoofbeats and his own breath. Only Star’s warmth below him and Kris’s comforting, solid weight against him reassured him that this was not a dream, or some strange afterlife. That Nolan did indeed walk away from that clearing of Rusamites, leaving dead men behind and cradling Kris in his arms. That it was not he, the Surian, the non-witch mundane, who had been left behind dead and unburied on a frosty mountain.

  They reached the mining village again at daybreak. Already many of the villagers were busily going about their day chopping wood, tending their animals and drawing water. Quite a few people stared as Nolan passed, then hustled away. Smoke was rising from the villagers’ homes. They looked cozy. And warm.

  A rugged, bearded man leaving his home with traps over his shoulder stopped dead at the sight of Nolan and studied him ferociously for a few moments. He called out over his shoulder in Ostmontian.

  Nolan braced himself for another man, for weapons, for a fight. But what appeared in the doorway of the cottage was a middle-aged woman with chestnut hair pulled in a loose braid. She peered out of the doorway with a curious expression, holding a bowl and dishtowel between her hands. Her expression changed from curiosity to alarm with lightning speed when she saw Nolan.

  The woman shoved her bowl and towel into her husband’s hands and rushed at them. Star snorted. Nolan cued her to trot away, but the woman caught hold of Star’s reins. She was speaking loudly and quickly and gesturing at him in a near panic.

  “We’re going, we’re going.” Nolan nodded at the mountain road before him. He had no hand to point with. Star snorted and shied sideways, but the woman clung on to the reins, using one hand to stroke Star’s neck. Her husband said something, and she nodded. She gestured at Nolan, and at her house, speaking a little more slowly. Nolan couldn’t understand a word, but the woman didn’t seem to be attacking them. Star quieted slightly under the woman’s hands.

  The woman repeated herself, pointing at Nolan, at her house, and then putting her head sideways on her hands. When Nolan still only looked at her blankly, the woman made an exasperated noise and walked forwards to touch Kris’s knee.

  Comprehension struck Nolan like lightening. The woman hadn’t been pointing at him at all. “You want to help?” He swung out of the saddle, keeping one arm around Kris so that she didn’t fall.

  The woman smiled briefly and called over her shoulder to her husband. The bear-like man came and scooped Kris off of Star in one fluid motion. He registered the look on Nolan’s face and met his eyes for a long moment. Behind the beard and the bushy hair, the man’s brown eyes were warm and kind. Nolan nodded permission. The stranger said something gentle to Nolan before carrying Kris into their cottage. His wife spared only a moment more over her shoulder to call to Nolan and point around the corner of the house to the stable. Then they disappeared inside the house, leaving him standing outside with the horses.

  Fighting the urge to follow immediately after them, Nolan walked Star and the gelding around the house to the small stable there. The barn housed a pair of goats and a handful of chickens who stirred unhappily at the sight of the intruders. Nolan stripped both horses of their tack and left them to rest in a spare stall next to the goats. He paused at the house door, but the bear-like man was there in the doorway and shooing him inside before Nolan could even raise his fist to knock.

  The first thing that Nolan noticed about the cottage was the smell. Dozens of scents; some sharp, some musky, some gentle and flowery, reached Nolan’s nostrils the moment that he crossed the cottage threshold. One entire wall was covered by shelves lined with small vials and sachets. Plants of all different sizes and textures hung from the ceiling. Nolan very nearly smiled. Luck was favoring him if he’d found his way to a healer’s home.

  The woman was leaning over a bed that had Kris tucked inside of it. She was chafing Kris’s arms and legs briskly. When her husband returned with an armful of wood and began stoking up the fire, the woman folded the blankets back over Kris and combed her way expertly through the array of concoctions along the wall until she found the sachet she wanted. She sprinkled a few grains in a mug and poured water from a teapot over them, flicking her eyes at Nolan in brief acknowledgement. She nodded to him and carried the mug over to Kris to press it against her lips. Blue-silver light streamed from her fingertips while Kris swallowed. If the woman’s husband hadn’t been standing there, Nolan might have hugged her. He’d never been so happy to see a witch in his life.

  The man pointed Nolan to a chair. Nolan sat, and waited. The fire grew deliciously hot in very short order. The couple exchanged a few more words. The man nodded to Nolan and disappeared outside the cottage. Nolan spent the day watching the woman move between
the medicine wall, a staircase that presumably led to a basement, Kris’s bedside and the fireplace. The hours not spent tending Kris she devoted to ironing. Her movements were very like Nolan’s mother’s—calm, sure, methodical and gentle.

  Nolan felt odd watching her work while he did nothing, but she seemed to expect nothing of him and he wasn’t sure how to offer help. He’d never ironed clothes in his life. And in any case, having nothing in the way of work left him free to watch over Kris.

  Kris showed more signs of life by the hour. Blood returned to her lips and cheeks. Her skin color slowly returned to its normal cream color, rather than the deathly white it had been before. Though there was no part of her available to touch, Nolan didn’t doubt that her body had lost its icy feel. She began to stir in her sleep until the healer returned with another mug of medicinal tea. Nolan smiled at her whenever he could, marveling that they had found this house. Only a very strong witch could have worked such a change in the course of one day. This woman was probably the only witch of her strength for a hundred miles.

  Hours passed. At several points Nolan fell asleep in his chair, to wake with a start for no reason at all. The woman passed him a bowl of stewed vegetables at midday. Well before dark her husband returned with a brace of rabbits that became the main course of their dinner.

  The healer and her husband introduced themselves to Nolan as Yohanna and Berrin during dinner. Yohanna pointed at Kris and smiled for Nolan’s benefit, nodding and making soothing-sounding words. Nolan smiled back and carefully pronounced the Ostmontian “thank you” that Jal had taught him. Moving slowly, still smiling gently, Yohanna took his hand in hers and turned it over. Light sparkled in her hand, which didn’t surprise him. Her eyebrows rose as she studied his palm, and she released it with a pitying pat.

  She answered her husband’s query in a serious voice, sounding distracted. Berrin answered in surprise or concern, looking from Kris to Nolan. They exchanged a few more phrases that settled him somewhat, then passed the rest of the meal very quietly. The hairs on the back of Nolan’s neck prickled. There was no way of knowing what the woman might have seen or guessed, but he had the odd sense she’d somehow learned quite a lot of how Nolan had come to sit at her table.

  Nolan made himself leave the house to follow Berrin back out to the barn. He needed something to keep his hands busy. Something useful he could do without being taught. Even without words he and Berrin worked surprisingly well together to feed the animals and clean out the stalls. Nolan fell easily back into the rhythm of the work he’d left in River’s End, amazed at how soothing it was to focus on something so straight forward again. The smell of the barn was different here because of the goats, but the sounds of crunching hay and oats were the same. After the animals were fed Nolan found a brush and took his time in brushing away the sweat and dirt that had gathered over Star’s back, then combing out both horses’ manes and tails.

  Berrin crooned to the animals as he worked around them, each of his movements surprisingly gentle and unobtrusive for such a big man. Nolan could see why a healer would like this man. That same gentleness and easy, quiet kindness were probably what had drawn Nolan’s mother to his father. Berrin had the same attentive frown as he ran his hands over each of the animals’ legs, and the same warmth in his eyes when he looked at his wife. After a few minutes Nolan had to stop watching him.

  When he finally returned to the cottage, his hosts pointed him to neatly folded blankets on the floor beside Kris’s bed, topped with a pillow. Nolan tried to show them this was unnecessary by smiling and fetching his bedroll, but Yohanna just frowned slightly and returned the bundle to the outer doorway, holding it gingerly by her fingertips. She smiled a little more firmly when she came back, indicating the fresh, soap-smelling blankets and adding something incomprehensible in Ostmontian. Nolan supposed that nothing so dirty as his packs had ever crossed her threshold before. Yohanna then led him to a small washroom where a steaming bath waited. She spoke all the while, showing him soap and a towel. Nolan instantly forgot the words she taught him, but nodded his understanding and thanked her in her own language, smiling again. He’d done quite a bit of smiling that day to smooth the translation gaps. And for the first time since Kris was taken, that movement didn’t strain his face. Nolan curled up in his blankets that night feeling refreshed and warm. He fell asleep listening to Kris’s steady, untroubled breathing.

  Kris’s eyes were open when Nolan sat up to check on her the next morning. She blinked at him confusedly. “Nolan?” she whispered.

  He smiled. “It’s so good to see you awake again.”

  She stared at him disbelievingly. “How did you…Where are we?”

  “We’re in a village. In a healer’s cottage.”

  “But Cylas and Belen…”

  “They’re dead. You’re safe for now.”

  “How…?”

  Summoned by the sound of voices, Yohanna arrived carrying a fresh cup of medicinal tea. Kris eyed her warily, even after Nolan made a hasty introduction. “I think she wants you to rest more. You were so weak yesterday…”

  “Where’s Tylan?”

  “He’s safe. With Jal.”

  Yohanna bent down to Kris’s eye-level and smiled reassuringly at her. She spoke soothingly, and mimed sipping the tea, then sleep.

  “I’ll explain more later, Kris. She’s right. You should sleep now. Drink your tea.”

  Kris looked down at her teacup doubtfully. Her hands were trembling with the effort of holding it.

  “How do you know we can trust them?”

  “There’s nothing wrong with the tea, Kris. If they wanted to hurt us they’d have done it already. Drink. Rest. You need to get your strength back up.”

  Kris hesitated, sipped, and wrinkled her nose. Yohanna guided her hands for each movement with professional assurance.

  “Where are Jal and Tylan?” She sipped again.

  Nolan considered briefly. “Safe.”

  Already Kris’s eyelids were drooping, but she still managed to frown at him. “But Tylan—the spell. If it’s broken they’ll…” she startled and struggled to rise. Yohanna pushed her back gently and began scolding Nolan in Ostmontian.

  Kris’s voice carried over the scolding. “But they’ll come after him now!”

  “Shh…Kris, drink. The magni broke their word first…I helped a bit. But Tylan’s bracelet’s off and he’ll be long gone by now. They won’t find him.”

  “How…? But—”

  “They’ll be a lot more interested in us than in him, if that makes you feel better. He’ll be fine. Now drink, rest.”

  The worry line between Kris’ eyebrows did not fade, but she drank. In less than a minute she was asleep, a small frown still on her face. Nolan brushed her hair back from her forehead with trembling fingers, amazed that she was in front of him again, alive, arguing, and healing. Nolan smiled at Yohanna, who shooed him away from the bed with the motions of a farmwife herding chickens.

  As he’d promised, Nolan did his best to explain everything to Kris whenever she intermittently woke up over the course of the day. This was difficult, as Yohanna invariably interrupted to shush him and press a mug of tea into Kris’s hands. The hasty answers that Nolan was able to give were clearly well short of Kris’s standards. By mid-afternoon Nolan thought it was probably a good thing that Yohanna could not understand Kris’s comments on his unsatisfactory answers, Ostmontians, healers, and tea.

  Between rounds of fending off the interrogations of an angry mage, Nolan tended the horses, hauled water for Yohanna, and split the wood he found stacked near the barn. In mid-afternoon Yohanna found him in the yard, and, with a look between pity and exasperation, set him to oiling leather harness parts in a chair by Kris’s bed. Nolan painstakingly cleaned and conditioned each piece. He’d told his father once that he’d spent half his life oiling tack and the rest mucking stalls. Of the two choices, he’d always preferred mucking the stalls, because that at least let him move around. Now, sitting sti
ll and quiet for the first time in months, Nolan didn’t find cleaning the harness pieces so trying.

  Two visitors came to the door while Nolan worked away at the tack. He tensed each time, half-expecting the magni to come barreling through, but his alarm proved unfounded. Yohanna chatted casually with each visitor without letting them beyond the threshold, and sent them on their way with whatever it was they’d come for. At some point Nolan must have fallen asleep himself. When he woke, just before dusk, Kris’s eyes were open and she was looking at him solemnly. Her lips quirked ever so slightly when Nolan met her eyes.

  “I must be getting better,” she said wryly. “The healer came in, but once she felt my head and my wrist she took that awful tea away.”

  “That must be good then.” Nolan agreed with Yohanna. Kris looked better, and not just because the crankiness had faded from her face. She still looked tired, but her eyes had lost their glazed look. They were now focused and thoughtful, guarding some emotion that Nolan couldn’t place, but showing no sign of the morning’s panic.

  “You saved me,” she said, so evenly that Nolan couldn’t tell if this was an expression of gratitude or an accusation.

  “Well, we’re not really safe yet. Tobin got away, like I said. They’ll be looking for us. But…yes. I tried.”

  “Why?”

  Nolan stared at her.

  “I knew what I was doing. You knew that. You can’t have more than a few weeks left to get the star-jar to the mountain. My whole world is depending on you, Nolan. Who knows how many other worlds are too.”

  “You wanted me to leave you with them?” Nolan demanded. “Do you have any idea what they did to you?”

  “I’ve seen the way you look at me when I do magic.” Kris spoke softly, but bitterness and hurt clearly laced the words. “You think I’m dangerous. Without me you’d have no magic, no burns, nobody to hide from the magni or these townspeople. So why follow the magni for me, when so many other people need you?”