Beneath the Vault of Stars

by Blake Goulette

  “No, it’s all right. It’s just…something I heard not too long ago. Really, it’s fine.” He smiled again, meant it this time, and Pava relaxed, smiled in return.

  “You said your collectors had been getting darker? For generations?” said Zhalera. “How is that possible?”

  Pava laughed. “If you figure it out, tell me! Tell my people, all right?! We’re used to adjusting the collectors’ angles from season to season—the suns don’t always hit them in the same place throughout the year—but it seemed no matter how many adjustments we made, it wasn’t enough. We polished the crystals, replaced the mirrors, did everything we could think of, but nothing worked!”

  “Tell me, child,” said Falthwën, who’d been listening from a short distance away: “has the earth been well-behaved of late?”

  ‘Well-behaved?!’ Kalas wondered.

  “No!” Pava exclaimed as though she knew exactly what Falthwën meant. “For years now—maybe Sevens, maybe longer, I’m not sure—there have been rumblings. Not too bad underground, really, but some are worse than others. We’ve actually had to readjust some of the collectors after the stronger quakes! Do you know what might be causing them?”

  “You’re familiar with the Ildurguli Taruún?”

  She nodded, waited for the cleric to go on.

  Falthwën nodded, too, scratched his beard as he looked toward the north. The suns-light caught in his ring again. Its sparkles caught Pava’s interest.

  “Your ring—!” she began.

  “The mountain is waking up. Even now its smoke is tainting the atmosphere across the Wastes; soon, its murk will clog the air, scattering the suns-light before your collectors can make the most of it,” he said, deflecting her curiosity about his jewelry.

  “The mountain?” she said, puzzled. “But it hasn’t been awake for thousands of Sevens! What could have woken it? Why now?”

  “Fair questions, my child. Fair questions…”

  About mid-morning the next day, Rül finished his work on the replacement axle. He fitted it onto the cart and, with help, turned it upright. Hoisting the pole onto his own shoulders, he struggled to take a few steps. He smiled as he brought it to a halt.

  “This’ll do. You can feel a slight wobble, but it’s nothing Runner and Dancer can’t handle. I’ll need to have it replaced once we reach Ïsriba, but at least now we can actually get there!”

  After loading what remained of their supplies, Rül harnessed his team, whispered something to the pair that Kalas couldn’t make out, and gave each a loving rub behind the cheek. Shosafin and Breaker had been patrolling a small circle with their camp at the center; now, he maneuvered closer to the cart, although his eyes continued to scan for any signs of trouble.

  “These horses,” Pava said. “They’re…they’re really big, aren’t they?” She maintained a polite distance from them as Rül helped her into the makeshift seat between him and Falthwën.

  “You don’t have horses?” he asked.

  “No, we don’t! Donkeys, yes…I’ve seen horses before, of course—a few months ago, a bunch of them came down through the Áthradho. This is the closest I’ve ever been to one!”

  “Well, you have to respect them, for sure,” said Rül, noting her uneasy gaze, “and so long as you do, you shouldn’t have anything to worry about from Runner—the dark one here—or Dancer. C’mon, let’s get you situated.”

  As Rül flicked his reins and the horses started for the road, Pava almost lost her balance, clutched at his arm for support. Rül didn’t seem to mind. This time, Zhalera gave Kalas a knowing look.

  “Be nice,” he grinned.

  4.

  Faint hints of sulfur tainted the air as the party crossed the southern portion of the Ilvurkanzhime. Small, sick-looking trees and splotches of thorny scrub did their best to grow on either side of the Highway with little success. For the most part, it wasn’t too bad, and their senses adjusted, tuned out the stink. On occasion, however, the winds would shift, carrying greater quantities of the malodorous scent. When asked, Rül admitted he’d prefer to move with greater speed, but reminded everyone that the horses were still recovering, that swallowing more of this air than necessary could prove to be more damaging to them over time.

  After a while, Zhalera tugged on Kalas’ sleeve and pointed toward something moving alongside the road just ahead. As Rül approached the scene, several huge, black birds with glistening, naked heads flexed their wings and took to the sky with angry cackles and hisses. Their gathering place had been the weathered carcass of a horse—and its rider. Though both had been picked almost clean, their skeletons still boasted a few scraps of flesh and sinew.

  “One of yours,” said Shosafin, who’d drawn up beside the cart. “That’s what the other Lohwàlarrinme said on their way back from Ïsriba. Didn’t catch his name.”

  “Dzhamïs,” Zhalera supplied as she pointed to the shreds of cloth and leather still clinging to the bones. “You can kind of still see the Poyïsriba falcon sewn into his shirt. I remember him because he was wearing it when he came by the smithy to pick up tack for his trip to the capital. His wife had stitched it special for the occasion. He was so proud of it…Did anyone say how he died?”

  “He took ill on his way through the Wastes. Horse got injured somehow. Neither recovered.”

  “Those birds are a bad omen,” warned Pava as she looked up at the lazy circle of winged specks orbiting above them.

  The others agreed. After Zhalera whispered a brief prayer for Dzhamïs, Rül gave the reins a light snap. Dancer and Runner snorted, thankful not to have to wait around any longer than necessary, it seemed.

  Just before nightfall, they reached Wastes’ boundary, and Rül had to rein in his team: despite their fatigue, the first few breaths of cleaner air provided an unexpected burst of energy which the two were loath to squander.

  “Easy, átemme! Easy!”

  Maybe it was because of the inescapable nastiness through which they’d come during the daylight hours, but Kalas thought the sunsets—both of them—have never looked more beautiful. Vast swaths of vermilion layered atop far-reaching splashes of rose hung beneath a topaz sky with subtle hints of deepening violet high above. Far away, occasional streaks of lightning saturated the display with momentary brightness.

  “Look at all those colors in the clouds!” agreed Zhalera.

  “We sometimes see the sky like that,” Pava volunteered. “Not very often, but more and more over the last few years.”

  “If it weren’t for the Wastes, just imagine what it would be like to see this every night,” Kalas mused.

  “It’s because of the Wastes—the Ildurguli, I mean—that the sky looks that way tonight,” Falthwën informed them. “As its rumblings become more frequent, as it belches increasing amounts of ash and smoke, its particulates will scatter the suns-light more and more.”

  “That means our collectors will be less and less effective, doesn’t it?” posed Pava after a moment’s consideration.

  “It does indeed, I’m afraid,” the cleric nodded.

  “Can anything be done about it?” she asked with open concern for her home.

  “That…I can’t say.”

  ‘Can’t say,’ not ‘don’t know,’ Kalas thought.

  “Let’s turn aside here,” Falthwën instructed in the last rays of the remaining sun. The Wastes and its poisonous fumes were about an hour behind them, and beyond the reaches of the Ildurgulidas miasma, the landscape had begun to thrive. On the other side of the plateau, the road acquired a gradual decline as it lost elevation. Here, a small stream bubbled alongside the Highway. Rül reined in his horses, grabbed a bucket—and his axe—and headed toward the water source. Everyone else helped make camp.

  The withered, blasted scrub that had been the only flora for leagues and leagues had been replaced with strong, healthy trees. Though neither as vast nor as tall as some of the others through which they’d come, the woods provided better shelter—better cover—than they’d had in
days. Within a small glen, they pitched their tents and prepared a light supper.

  “Do you think anyone…the ilrâigme…will bother us tonight?” Pava asked between spoonfuls of soup. “It’s so open out here! I guess I’m still not used to it.”

  “We should be all right,” said Rül. The others agreed.

  “Ilbardhën has an uncanny sense about his surroundings, which also happen to be our surroundings, and an ilrâig would have to be desperately hungry to travel so far across the Wastes,” Falthwën added.

  When the others—Shosafin excluded—had disappeared into their tents for the night, Kalas sat up with the ancient cleric. Neither spoke. Neither needed to. Somehow, as the Song wrapped around their thoughts, wove itself within their consciousnesses, it seemed to carry portions of those mental elements from one mind to another: nothing as overt as coherent thought, but a nuanced intimation of mood.

  This is creepy, Kalas thought.

  Falthwën chuckled, mostly to himself.

  As he looked away, Kalas caught a glimpse of a faint red streak arcing through the heavens.

  Why does that remind me of something?

  5.

  Nothing untoward had interrupted them during the night, but in the morning, Pava seemed more exhausted than the others. When asked, she admitted that she hadn’t slept too well, that she’d half-expected something malign to happen at any moment. The injuries she’d sustained from her fall had made sleep not only necessary but inescapable; now that she’d recovered, she found time to entertain her darker thoughts about what could be lurking within the boundless shadows.

  “It just seems so unnatural,” she laughed as her cheeks blossomed. Indeed, her few days in the suns had already begun to tan—and burn—portions of her alabastrine skin. Falthwën had managed to assemble some kind of cream to ameliorate her discomfort. Kalas wondered where he kept all his ingredients.

  “I guess if you’re used to sleeping in caves your whole life, I can see how it might,” allowed Rül with a vigorous nod. “I’m sure you’ll get used to it!”

  They packed up their campsite, brushed away any trace of their presence, and, after watering the horses and restocking their water supply, headed for the road. The forest through which it now ran featured brilliant white birches that gleamed as the first sun cast its light upon their branches. Some leaves remained a rich, vibrant green; most, however, had taken on a muted yellow color. Low grasses in shades of green and brown lined either side of the Highway. Kalas took a deep breath, then another, of the unfamiliar—yet pleasant—fragrance of fresh air mingled with the subtle, earthy smell of prior years’ fallen leaves returning to the soil.

  “Don’t hurt yourself,” Zhalera laughed as he relished yet another lungful, held it for a moment before he exhaled. She, too, however, tasted the air more than once.

  “I could get used to this,” he smiled.

  “It’ll be winter soon,” said Falthwën as he considered the gold-hued foliage. “Up here, winter is different from what you’re used to in Lohwàlar. Colder. Much colder. We should reach Ïsriba long before the worst of it, however.”

  “Winter nights in Lohwàlar get pretty cold,” insisted Kalas. Even Shosafin chuckled from somewhere nearby.

  “I wonder if we’ll see snow while we’re there,” Zhalera wondered aloud. “Father said he’d seen snow—once—when he was a boy. None of us ever has.”

  Kalas and Rül nodded their agreement.

  “Sometimes we’ll see snow from the Áthradho,” said Pava as she turned toward the back of the cart. “I’ve had to help brush it away from the collectors a few times.”

  “Depending on how long we’re there, how the weather behaves, it’s possible we might see snow,” Falthwën allowed. “We’ll only know for sure when we see it—or when we don’t.”

  “I do hope it snows,” insisted Zhalera. “Water you can hold in your hands without a bucket—that would be something to tell our friends back home!”

  “Because nothing else we’ve been through on this trip would make a good story?!” said Rül. Kalas laughed.

  A few days later, the party came to an old stone bridge that spanned a deep, narrow ravine. From somewhere far below its edge came the muffled churn of running water. The suns had just separated in the sky—it was just after midday—and Kalas hopped down and peered into the fissure.

  “I hear water, but I don’t see anything,” he remarked.

  “And now you know how the Óronas Lohwà earned its name,” said Falthwën. “There’s a trail that’s hidden, too, just beyond those rocks, that leads to the water itself. It’s steep, usually slick, but this late in the year it’s probably not too bad. On the other side of the bridge, the road widens: we’re perhaps three or four days out from Ïsriba. We’ll reach the town of Thosha before day’s end: it’s just at the bottom of the valley, and that’s where we’ll resupply. Two or three days from Thosha, we’ll come to the city of ivambar, not quite a day’s journey from Ïsriba.”

  Kalas offered to fill the water buckets and followed Falthwën’s directions past a collection of mossy boulders toward the trailhead of a hard-to-find path. It took him a while to reach the bottom: though the cleric had guessed correctly, loose leaves and fraying mats of desiccated algae made some rocks just as slippery as if they’d been wet. Beyond a small cove strewn with smooth stones, he saw a waterfall with a drop of maybe fifteen, twenty feet. Dark lines of mud cemented to the cliffs indicated the river’s typical water level, almost two feet higher than its present volume. As wide and powerful as the waterfall appeared even now, Kalas wondered how much more impressive it might have been in the spring.

  The first sun, just past its apogee, still reached into the gorge with its light, created rainbows in the cascading spray. Despite the sun’s tepid presence, Kalas felt the skin on his arms turn to gooseflesh in the chilling mists. As he allowed himself a moment to observe the shifting colors in the air, to breathe in the peculiar scent that reminded him of the lesser falls along the Ilswàr, he thought he glimpsed something dark just behind the waterfall. A cave, perhaps. Kalas considered fording the river—it was only ten or twelve feet wide—but soon thought better of that idea when he realized the fast-moving river’s banks were large, rectangular blocks of granite, and its bottom was just as hidden from his sight as the river itself was hidden from those waiting for him high above.

  I could walk right off the edge of one of these rocks and not even know it.

  “Lad,” Shosafin muttered from over his shoulder. Kalas spun, surprised. The soldier had been invisible for the better part of the last few days.

  “Shosafin?! Where’d you come from? You know what? Never mind…”

  “Listen, Kalas,” he continued. “Be wary when you get to Thosha: you should be all right, but it’s not that far from Ïsriba. You’ll head to ivambar next…I haven’t told you everything—I didn’t think I’d need to. Just know this: Ësfàyami’s spies could be anywhere, and I’m certain she’s stationed more than a few in ivambar. She’d love to see my head on a pike, but I have reason to believe she has other goals as well.

  “I won’t be with you—not even in the shadows. Not for a while. I need to find out what Marugan is up to, how he fits into Ësfàyami’s accession. I need to uncover the extent of his plotting, understand his endgame. You and your cleric should be just the distraction I need. Yes, it sounds callous. And it is. Still, don’t mistake pragmatism for indifference…

  “Here’s what you need to know: be careful, be vigilant, and abandon your naïveté—you trust too readily, believe too easily. Those qualities might serve you well elsewhere, but in and around Ïsriba, they’ll get you killed—or worse.

  “Take this. Hold on to it for me until we meet again. Its markings, its Poyïsriba crest will be bane to me—perhaps it’ll be a boon to you.”

  Shosafin tossed something to Kalas, who knew what it was even before he caught it.

  “Your sword?” he whispered with unvarnished awe.

 
The soldier offered no explanation. By the time Kalas looked in his direction, he’d already disappeared.

  6.

  “You look like you’ve seen a ghost!” remarked Zhalera when Kalas reappeared with his buckets full of water—and Shosafin’s sword.

  He laughed, remembered his first impressions of the old soldier, his first attempts to learn more about the enigmatic figure.

  “Maybe I have,” he admitted.

  She noted the scabbard slung across his shoulder with a quizzical look.

  “A ‘ghost’ asked me to hold onto it for a while. He’ll want it back, though: I’ll still need a sword of my own someday…”

  “You’re persistent, I’ll give you that,” she sighed, though she couldn’t quite hide her smile as she helped him with the water.

  On the opposite side of the bridge, the Highway had been paved with immense flagstones—long ago, judging by their cracked faces and canted angles. Within a few miles, the forest thinned out as the road traced its path along the ridge of a series of fallen rocks; then it turned, and the ground flattened out and began its gradual descent through the valley. What would have been a dangerous decline had been tempered via numerous switchbacks set into the hillside. Despite the pavement’s lack of upkeep, it still felt smoother than most other portions of the Highway—even with Rül’s hand-carved axle.

  Vast meadows clothed in golden grasses and late-blooming flowers swayed with the gentle breezes that rolled down from higher elevations. The air’s bouquet held weak floral notes underscored with an almost powdery scent. On the road’s flatter parts, Runner and Dancer moved as though the residue of their prior exertions had disappeared, the combination of proper roads and pleasant smells working wonders.

  “Now this is something I could get used to!” said Zhalera after a deep breath. “And just look at all these flowers! I don’t think I’ve ever seen so many in one place!”