Beneath the Vault of Stars

by Blake Goulette

  “I noticed that, too,” agreed Falthwën. “Though more pressing matters attend us. When there’s time, tell your father: he’ll know what to do.”

  A short distance later, the road turned sharply to the right, around a protrusion of rock. Almost immediately, the discordant banging of the Pump dwindled to a dull series of clunks and thuds. Once past the Pump, the road’s poor condition more closely resembled that of the Ruins Road. After another rough mile and an intersection they almost missed in the deepening shadows, the pair reached Tàran, Dzharëth, and Ëlbodh.

  “Cleric! Over here!” shouted Kalas’ father.

  Falthwën stepped into the small clearing in which Tàran stood over Ëlbodh, whom he’d draped with skins from his pack. Dzharëth huddled nearby, whimpering again.

  “Cleric! Zhi Ilun dàbiras nir! Ëlbodh is hurt. Badly. And I don’t—”

  Tàran noticed his son for the first time. His eyes darkened as he continued: “I don’t think it was just the rainfire.”

  Falthwën nodded toward Dzharëth. “And him?”

  “Dzharëth. Ëlbodh’s boy. He’s…something’s wrong with him. Wouldn’t know what.”

  Falthwën nodded again and removed the skins covering the wounded man. Kalas gasped.

  Ëlbodh’s face—what remained of it—was pocked much like Kalas’ shovel. One of his eyes dangled from its socket, perhaps staring sightlessly through the jagged hole that used to be his cheek.

  The chill in the late day air must have roused him from unconsciousness, because after a series of shallow breaths, he stirred: his remaining eye blinked once or twice before widening to its uttermost. Ëlbodh raised his arms—revealing ragged, parallel scrapes, dark with clotted blood—and screamed.

  Not from pain, thought Kalas. From fear. But fear of what?

  Vitreous seeped from his ruptured eyeball. Fresh blood oozed and dribbled from his opened cheek as his scream decayed into a choked gurgle. His arms fell limp, his staring eye snapped shut, and for a moment, the world seemed to wait, silent.

  “So much…so much redness,” murmured Dzharëth, who had drawn up beside Kalas without a sound. Kalas flinched, unsettled by his friend. Tàran’s reaction indicated that he, too, had missed the strange boy’s approach.

  “Is…is he dead?” said Kalas.

  Falthwën had already knelt and produced the unguent he’d prepared back at the Sanctuary. With the same thin silver instrument, he stirred it briefly, and, with his finger, applied it to Ëlbodh’s wounds, humming to himself as he did. Maybe it was a trick of the light, but Kalas was almost sure he saw that same subtle glow he’d seen earlier in Falthwën’s alcove. Neither Dzharëth nor his father seemed to notice.

  “Not dead, child. Not yet, anyway, though I can’t say with certainty for how long.” To Tàran he added: “Come, let’s prepare him for transport. I’ve done what I can for him out here.”

  Falthwën and Tàran fashioned a litter from the cleric’s staves and a thin sheet from his bag. With care, they lifted Ëlbodh onto it. He whimpered for a moment, then remained silent. His breathing had slowed, his breaths had deepened: Falthwën’s potion seemed to be working its magic.

  “Kalas,” commanded Tàran, “You and Dzharëth, run ahead of us. This time, obey: tell the clerics we’re coming!”

  Kalas nodded once. He turned to Dzharëth, patted him on the shoulder.

  “Let’s go!”

  Dzharëth’s head lolled back and forth for a moment, his eyes unfocused again, before shaking his head.

  “Let’s go!” Kalas repeated, snapping his fingers mere inches from Dzharëth’s face.

  “I…right, the Sanctuary. The clerics. Of course,” he mumbled. Stiff and numb, he followed Kalas.

  4.

  The second sun had all but set now, spreading long, dark shadow-fingers across the blur of gray and brown the forest had become. They hurried, and soon, the subtle drone of the Pump’s inner workings pressed against his senses. For the last mile or so, neither Dzharëth nor most of the woodland fauna had made a sound, and Kalas lost count of the times he’d thought for sure the disturbed young man had strayed from the path. Each time, however, Dzharëth was close behind, his former stiffness gone, his steps impossibly quiet atop the twigs and gravel.

  They stepped through the ancient archway and into the crossroads, the noise of the Pump again a cacophonic bass line underneath the infrequent twilight sounds all around them. As they started up the slope of the road, the last slice of the silver sun crept behind the world, and again, the now-familiar music blossomed in Kalas’ mind like a violent flower. Petals of raw energy unfolded from its center, wrapped and unwrapped around his thoughts in fronds of ripening power as myriad tunes climbed and crashed over themselves, intermingled with one another and resolved into a solitary chord. Then the white sensation of heat receded, blew away like wisps of cloud with the Song’s last reverberations.

  Kalas staggered, stumbled as the shapes of rock and cliff and road reappeared. Whether the effect of Falthwën’s lozenge lingered, he couldn’t say: he just knew that his headache only seemed a touch more intense than before. He wiped at his nose—no blood this time—and closed his eyes for a moment.

  “I don’t suppose you heard that, did you?” he said as he turned to Dzharëth.

  Dzharëth was gone.

  “Dzharëth?” Kalas called.

  No answer.

  “Dzharëth!” he repeated, louder.

  He surveyed the area but saw no sign of his friend. He thought of looking for him, then decided getting help for Ëlbodh was his first priority. He started walking again, looking up the gradual incline, toward the miles-distant rise he hoped to reach soon. Against the flat yellow plate of the sky, he thought he could just make out the shifting lope of a shadowy figure, gaunt and clothed in tatters.

  5.

  He ran now. The moon hung low in the sky behind him, dull pink and stippling the desert as its reflected light fell, wearied, through the smattering of clouds that had gathered during the afternoon. He shivered: the sands only held the suns’ heat while they were shining; now, in the dark, cold wind oozed, languid, through the air, dragged across the surface of Kalas’ sweat-beaded skin. He stood, picked his way along the road for a while, then ran some more, keeping an eye out for Dzharëth. The wind moved with an unpredictable syncopation: sometimes beside him, sometimes in front of him. Sometimes not at all. On occasion, he glimpsed in his peripheral vision what looked like—or at least gave the impression of—a pair of gleaming yellow eyes, but whenever he turned to be sure, they were gone. Maybe they’d never been there in the first place.

  “Dzharëth,” he called out from time to time, never receiving (nor expecting, he realized) an answer.

  Maybe he’s already at the Sanctuary, he hoped.

  He reached the broken cobblestones leading into Lohwàlar sooner than he thought he would and paused to catch his breath before making his way through the rough spirals that were the town’s streets toward the Sanctuary.

  “u!” he began, addressing the still-annoyed man at the dais. “My father, Tàran, and the cleric Falthwën will be here soon: they’re carrying Ëlbodh—Hwena’s husband, Dzharëth’s—has Dzharëth been here? No? Dzharëth’s father. There was a…a rainfire storm out near the Pump! Ëlbodh was caught in it! Please, he—they—need your help!”

  The secretary’s annoyance evaporated as he nodded and trod a pedal beneath his desk. From somewhere behind him, Kalas heard a series of chimes and thought for a moment he was hearing the music again. Instead, a cleric emerged from around a corner. She raised an eyebrow toward the secretary, who gestured toward Kalas.

  “Someone’s injured?” she inquired.

  “Yes!” he answered. “Falthwën and my father should be here soon, from the Pump Road. They’re carrying Ëlbodh, Dzharëth’s father. Got caught in a rainfire storm!”

  The cleric nodded and fetched a stretcher and a lantern.

  “Ilâegsali,” she said. “Horrible curse. Come!” />
  They retraced Kalas’ steps, the lantern casting dancing shadows all around them. A handful of townsfolk noticed them and whispered to one another. Soon, a small crowd formed and followed the pair. Kalas’ mother, Màla, was among them.

  “Kalas? Son, is that you?” she wondered.

  “Mother? Mother!” he said, and let the crowd flow around him until Màla reached him and hugged him, buried his face in her steely tresses.

  “Is Tàran, is your father—?”

  “No, Mother, he’s fine: it’s Ëlbodh, Dzharëth’s father. Rainfire!”

  She squeezed him too tightly, then relaxed her grip. She held him at arm’s length, surveying him, assessing him.

  “What about you, child? What are those streaks on your face? Are you—?”

  “Mother, I’m fine. I’m fine! Father’s fine, too!”

  She held him close again. He could feel fear slip away from her, a heavy garment falling from her shoulders. She released him, took his hands and smiled, an expression of relief tainted with concern.

  “You stay with the cleric. With your father. I’ll…I’ll find Hwena. She should know.”

  Kalas squeezed his mother’s hands, then turned and ran to catch up with the swelling crowd. It didn’t take him long. They’d reached the edge of town when a pinprick of greasy yellow-orange light appeared in the distance, bobbing and swaying as it grew nearer. He was sure that it had to be someone other than Falthwën and his father: it didn’t seem possible that they’d have made such excellent time, given their burden. Somehow, though, they had. Tàran had suspended a lantern from a tent pole strapped to Ëlbodh’s litter. The stitching in Falthwën’s robes glittered in its rays. Two sturdy townsfolk stepped forward and traded places with the wearied pair and rushed the injured man toward the Sanctuary.

  “I can’t believe how quickly we got here!” Tàran said to Falthwën, who made a show of wiping his brow, his expression grim.

  “Vàyana,” said Falthwën, addressing the cleric. “We don’t have much time.”

  The old man bowed his head. So did Vàyana. Together, they began a low, almost inaudible conversation. A prayer, Kalas realized. The lanterns’ brightness seemed to grow, though it might have been the moon, now high above the earth. Then the prayer was over, and the clerics retreated toward the Sanctuary. The lights lost some of their intensity, and a cloud drifted overhead. The solemnity of the crowd’s tones fell away as its members exchanged questions and suggestions. Kalas tuned them out and approached Tàran.

  “I saw Mother, on my way back here. She went to see Hwena. How…how is Ëlbodh?” he asked.

  Tàran mopped his own brow with a scrap of cloth, then shivered. For a moment, he said nothing, then: “You heard the cleric, boy. What was his name again?”

  “Falthwën.”

  “Falthwën? Wonder how long he’s been in town. Seems to know his business though.”

  Tàran thought for a moment, then shrugged.

  “Anyway,” he said, returning to the subject, “I’ll tell you what, boy: in all my Sevens, I’ve never seen the hungry rain eat a man’s face like that. That was a bad storm, sure, but his eye? his cheek? And those marks on his arms? Looked like something clawed at him. Some kind of animal. Maybe the same thing that spooked his boy. Did he stay at the Sanctuary when you got back to town?”

  “Dzharëth…he ran…I lost him, on the way up the road. I…I stopped—just for a minute, I think, and when I looked up, he was gone. I thought he was on his way to the Sanctuary, but no one there had seen him. Maybe he went home? I hope he’s all right.”

  “So do I, boy. So do I. I’m sorry this is how you had to spend your second Seven.”

  Kalas smiled: he’d actually forgotten that today was his birthday.

  “But it’s not over yet. Come on, let’s go home.”

  Somewhere in the darkness, behind sparse trees and beyond the reach of the lanterns’ glow, something bayed at the moon, pearlescent pink like bone.

  6.

  Màla clung to her husband’s neck and refused to let go. They stood there, entwined, until Kalas returned from putting away his tools. Only then did his mother pull away, gracing her husband with a simple peck on the lips. Kalas smirked as subtle roses bloomed within his father’s already suns-burned cheeks. Màla turned to her son and said, “Ëhath vam dàbires nir, Kalas.”

  “Thank you, Mother. I’ll remember it, that’s for sure!” He paused, not quite sure how to phrase his question, then just asked: “How was Hwena? Was Dzharëth there?”

  Màla shook her head.

  “I walked her to the Sanctuary. I offered to stay with her, but the cleric promised to take care of her and told me I should go. They brought Ëlbodh in as I was leaving. I’ve never heard screams like that,” she shuddered. “I hope I never do again.”

  In the dim light, his mother’s years seemed more pronounced, the silver in her hair more drab.

  “And no, Dzharëth wasn’t there. Was he caught in the storm, too?”

  “No,” said Kalas, and he told her the story.

  “When we passed the Pump,” he added, now addressing Tàran, “we noticed something wrong, something in the sounds it made. The cleric said you’d know what to do.”

  “I’d have to hear them for myself, but how would a cleric from—where did he say he was from? ‘Beyond many sands,’ you say? Hmmph! How would he know anything about Lohwàlar’s Pump? About me?”

  A sharp rap on the door interrupted them. Màla’s head snapped up, and she smiled at her son as she disappeared into the small anteroom. Muffled voices slid around the thick mud-mortared stone walls, and it was Kalas’ turn to blush as he recognized them.

  “Dàbiras vam, my boy!” exclaimed Gandhan. His daughter, Zhalera, stepped from behind him.

  “Dàbiras vam, Kalas!” she said. “Here, I made you something.” She held out a small wooden box.

  “Thank you,” replied Kalas. He took the box and opened it.

  Gandhan was Lohwàlar’s preeminent smith, and, much to his delight, for the year since her second Seven Zhalera had been his apprentice. Gandhan often boasted about his daughter’s skill with anvil and hammer, and as Kalas took hold of the small metal blade nestled within the straw-padded box, he could see—could feel—that Gandhan’s pride was well founded. He held it up and turned it, slowly, admiring its every curve and corner as its edge glinted in the room’s soft light. In his hand, its weight felt perfect, its balance precise.

  Zhalera, mistaking his awe for something else, apologized: “I know it’s not much, and the box—I made that, too—isn’t very pretty, but I—”

  “No,” corrected Kalas. “It’s…it’s perfect. This is perfect.”

  Zhalera smiled, looked at her feet.

  “Thank you.”

  He tucked the knife into his belt, stepped forward and hugged her. She returned the gesture, and suddenly self-aware, Kalas stepped back, the burn in his cheeks even more pronounced.

  “You really like it?” she asked.

  “I love it,” he confirmed. The color in Zhalera’s heat-tanned face deepened, matching that in Kalas’. Gandhan laughed.

  “I knew you would, my boy! I told you he would, didn’t I, srufin—Firebird?” he bellowed, tousling his daughter’s raven hair.

  “If you’ll excuse me,” interjected Màla, “I still need to prepare the meal. There was some excitement, as you’ve probably heard.” She disappeared behind a curtain of animal skins.

  “Yes, Ëlbodh,” said Gandhan as he turned to Tàran. “What happened?”

  Kalas’ father began his tale, and Kalas headed for the anteroom, where he pulled an old cloak from its peg and put it on. He stepped out into the bracing night air, breathed deep, and stared up at the star-filled sky.

  “Going somewhere?” said Zhalera, surprising Kalas.

  “I thought…I thought I might go for a walk while Mother cooks,” he said as he turned around. “Try to clear my head. I keep seeing Ëlbodh: his face ripped apart, his eye jus
t hanging there, and I can’t get it out of my mind.”

  Zhalera took his hand, massaged the webbing between his thumb and index finger. Her high cheekbones shone in the moonlight, her tawny eyes glinted gold in its waxing radiance. A slight gust displaced a length of dark, shimmering hair that had been tucked behind her ear. She smoothed it back and asked, “Would you like some company?”

  “You know what? I would.” His former reserve overcome, he wrapped his fingers around hers, marveling at the paradox of callused elegance and delicate strength therein.

  Hand-in-hand they walked, silent except for the crunch of dirt beneath their feet, for some time. They stopped when Kalas realized the town’s flickering lights had thinned out behind them. Together, they stared up at the stars and all their myriad colors, at the iridescent halo that ringed the moon; together, they wondered why the stars came in so many different sizes, why one in particular seemed to wobble with an almost undulating light high above them. A trail of vibrant, crimson light sped across the sky, then disappeared.

  “They say it’s a good sign,” said Zhalera, nodding up. She shivered. Embarrassed that he hadn’t thought to do it sooner, Kalas removed his cloak and draped it across her shoulders. She leaned into him, filling his senses with a mingled fragrance of smoke and flowers, and suddenly the cold had no power over him.

  After a while, though it pained him, he suggested they make their way home.

  “Even though,” he added, “I think I could stay out here all night, with y—”

  He hadn’t even heard the creature’s approach as it launched itself from a high rock, sailed into him and splayed him on the ground.

  “Kalas!” Zhalera screamed.

  Stunned, it took Kalas a moment to collect himself. He shook his head and dived out of the way as the hulking black mass came at him again, missing him by mere inches. Its breath, hot and stinking of old meat, condensed in a fetid film on his neck. He leapt to his feet and squared himself with his assailant.