Starfall (Stealing the Sun Book 3)

by Ron Collins

  “They will make for great stories,” Cestral replied with a wild grin.

  “None of that matters,” Hateri E’Lar called out. The group turned their gazes to him.

  “What do you mean?” Ogala asked.

  Hateri shrugged. “Just that we need to keep our mind on the reason we’re out here.”

  The group grew quiet, each keeping any further thoughts to themselves.

  Taranth sat against a shaded rock and sipped from his bladder, enjoying the feeling of the liquid tingling as it passed through his body.

  “I thought it was just me,” M’ran said from a resting place a short distance away. He pulled his head covering back and opened his shirts to further give his heat plates exposure.

  “What’s that?”

  “Your expression,” M’ran replied. “I feel the water all the way to my feet, too.”

  Taranth gave a closed-lip smile. “There is nothing like being in the desert to teach you what it means to be alive.”

  M’ran raised his bladder and sipped.

  “They did good, didn’t they?” he said. “Dealing with the rela?”

  Taranth gave an affirmative grunt.

  His primary stomach grew tighter as he took in the sight of Hateri E’Lar sitting with Pietha of the M’ktal Family. He restrained a grimace at the dagger-sharp gazes that Cestral of the Taler Family was sending them. Taranth noticed that Pietha was enjoying a certain level of attention, and Hateri was enjoying the fact that Pietha enjoyed it. Both appeared oblivious to the anxiety this was causing Cestral, though Taranth was fairly sure Pietha had noticed her competition some time ago.

  He drew a breath to help him relax.

  The group didn’t need that kind of distraction.

  “What do you expect,” M’ran said to him when he saw Taranth’s discomfort. “They are whelps.”

  “They will be dead whelps if they are not careful.”

  “Jealousy does not look good on you, my friend.”

  “Jealousy has nothing to do with it.”

  M’ran gave his own grunt, but this one carried more laughter than bitterness. “Feel free to lie to me,” he said, “but don’t do that to yourself.”

  Taranth scrunched up the crest over his central to show M’ran he didn’t have a response. But he couldn’t deny the intensity of his jealousy and anger when he watched Hateri E’Lar of the Terilamat openly admire the witze-covered face of Pietha M’ktal of the Hlrat, and when Taranth let his gaze go to the scar-lined hands that marked Cestral Taler as Kandar as she wound them anxiously together. Taranth wondered how long it would be before Hateri joined Pietha in her lean-to, or visa-versa. The idea that Cestral might even join them was enough to make Taranth want to spit.

  But he did not spit.

  Nor did he respond further to M’ran.

  When the shadows had moved half a finger width, he stood and got the party back into a line. They moved quickly, and with only a smattering of complaint.

  Perhaps, he thought as they began the next leg of the search, this expedition might make it home without incident.

  CHAPTER 5

  The chain of whelps was spread out to Taranth’s right. He glanced at Eldoro and pulled his robe up to protect his lips from the blustering sand. The wind swirled and hissed around him. Katon had risen for the eighth time since they had begun their search. The ring of the Esgarat far to the north was a small strip of brown on the distant horizon.

  Their water supply dwindled.

  Frayed nerves and short tempers had served to keep conversation to a minimum, and the only sound Taranth heard was the wind whipping over rock.

  And now they trudged through one of the stronger storms that Katon’s time had brought since they had left the caves.

  There is nothing to find, he thought as he fought the wind. The Light That Fell from the Sky is nothing but a stone.

  Maybe we should go back.

  “Elder?”

  The thin voice was almost lost in the wind.

  “Elder?” it repeated. A tug at his elbow raised him further from his thoughts.

  Yip Kil’s eyes were the only noticeable feature visible through her tightly clasped robe.

  “What is it?” he said.

  “We’ve found something, Elder.”

  He followed the whelp as she took him across the expanse of the desert and into the lee of a small mesa that was almost more of a ledge than a formation. Hiva Hen’tal and Senni Gash were bent over a crumpled mass of broken debris scattered over the floor of a long crevasse that ran alongside the mesa. Gis’le, who had been teamed with Yip, stood back, scanning the whole debris field.

  A long, cylindrical object, blackened at one end, was pushed against a cliff of hardened obsidian and wedged at an angle into the space between two boulders. It was huge—several quadars tall.

  “What is it?” Yip asked.

  Taranth put his hand on the surface.

  It was no stone—that much was certain.

  It was made of some kind of metal, but smoother than any he had ever felt or seen before. Crotchety ancient or not, even Taranth could admit he felt the excitement of discovery rise inside him.

  Word spread, and as he scanned the pieces, more of the team arrived on the site.

  “Look at it,” he said to M’ran when his friend came to his side.

  Taranth pointed to the jagged rips in the thing’s outer shell that exposed strangeness on the inside, his eyes gleaming in the reddish light of the dimming of the heat.

  “There,” he said, pointing again. “And there.”

  “There’s a big piece over there, too,” M’ran said, pointing further downwind.

  The wind nearly knocked Taranth over when he stepped forward to follow M’ran’s direction. His sandals sank into shifting sand as he walked around the mesa. Dust rose up in the current. The smell of sulfur mixed with the odor of trail sweat that permeated every item of clothing the team had.

  “Let’s break down and get camped,” he told the crew.

  He held his arm up as a shield against the dust.

  The shade here would be a welcome respite, too, assuming the infernal storm ever ended.

  The next heat dawned clear, so the party examined the find with exacting detail.

  The biggest piece was three or four times Taranth’s height, and easily big enough around for him to fit into if the contents of the shell were removed. Its outer crust was a light brown that had been burned black at one end. Parts were crushed and torn away to reveal wiring and boxes and other strange devices on the inside.

  “What is it?” Yip asked again.

  “How should we know?” M’ran replied.

  The rest of the expedition talked in the background, whispering about it, pointing to each other, heads nodding and throats clacking. Only the Waganat stood alone, scanning the device, occasionally touching it, sometimes sighing to himself, other times looking up at the mesa and into the sky.

  “I think we’ll call it the Taranth Stone,” Hateri E’Lar said.

  Taranth bristled at the joke until he saw the flavor of the smiles that the name brought to the team. Perhaps he was due a little ribbing. And he realized the team had earned the right to make fun of him. That Hateri used humor this way made Taranth feel like he was a part of the group.

  “The Taranth Stone,” he said. “I like it.”

  And the group smiled again.

  “It’s huge,” Hateri said. “We’ll never get it back home the way we came.”

  Taranth clacked his throat in agreement and knelt to peer into the thing’s guts. The shell echoed when he tapped against it. It definitely would not fit on the simple skin sleds the group was carrying.

  “Other stones from the sky have not been so large,” he said, nearly under his breath.

  “What are we going to do?”

  “I don’t know,” he admitted.

  He had planned to return through the same underground passages they had come from. But this would never fit down
the passages near Lashto’s Break, nor any other passage he was aware of. They would have to take it back around the mountain and through a pass.

  He ran his hands along the object.

  “Perhaps we can chop it to pieces.”

  “I don’t think that’s wise,” M’ran said.

  Despite the warning, Taranth pulled cutters from his utility belt, but even the tattered shards proved too tough for the shears, and they were so tiny as to make the effort laughable.

  “You’re probably right anyway,” he said.

  The group spent the heat in radial searches, gathering parts that were scattered across the desert floor and bringing them back to the lee of the mesa. Besides being protected from the wind, the area was in the shade of early Eldoro, a combination that helped maximize the yield of their nighttime water catches. Taranth felt the anxiety of the group release as they realized they would stay here for at least the rest of the heat, though personally the idea of staying put made him more anxious.

  “I don’t like sitting in one place,” he said to M’ran as they broke for Eldoro’s highpoint.

  But what he really meant was that he disliked being unable to answer the most important question on everyone’s mind.

  As the heat progressed, Eldoro fell toward and then under the horizo. The sky turned bloodred. A patch of green and white desert flowers opened their petals, and Taranth could almost hear the initial scurrying of the piela lizards and insects that were readying themselves for the feeding time.

  “What are we going to do?” Hateri said as the group gathered amid the wreckage of whatever the Taranth Stone was. Katon was dim in the sky and cast an echo of a shadow over them all.

  Taranth drew a breath.

  His idea wasn’t going to be popular.

  “It’s obvious we’ll have to go overland to get this back. And we’re going to need carts and beasts to handle the load. Harshish Point is five heats’ walk. We go there, get carts and tal beasts, then come back.”

  “Five more heats?” Hateri said. “Ten, total? And then a trip around the Esgarat? That’s what, thirty heats?”

  “Probably longer, given that the tal beasts will be slow.”

  “Our water won’t hold out for that trip and a return.”

  Taranth tried not to get angry at the whelp for his direct talk. M’ran had been right about Hateri’s effect on the others.

  “They will have water at Harshish Point,” Taranth said.

  The whelp clicked the back of his throat.

  “This is what it will take,” Taranth said.

  Hateri hesitated as if trying to hold his tongue, then let loose anyway. “It’s unnecessary is what it is.”

  “Your alternative?”

  “I suggest we go back without the stone. Return the way we came, then ask the council for motor carts to come get it.”

  “Motor carts?” Taranth asked.

  M’ran replied before Hateri could.

  “Platforms on wheels that move with the aid of power systems. The Jastari Family built one recently using motors taken from Waganat irrigation pumps.”

  Taranth shook his head. “There’s always something new. Always an easier way. Except they rarely work.”

  “New ideas often work,” M’ran said. “After a time.”

  Taranth gave a gruff grumble. “The desert will break any machine.”

  Hateri spoke up. “We’ll pay the Jastari to come along on the return trip. They can fix it if it breaks.”

  “Commerce cannot fix everything.”

  “A motor cart will travel faster than a tal beast.”

  Taranth glanced at M’ran.

  “The motor carts do travel faster than tal beasts,” M’ran said, not being helpful at all.

  The rest of the team looked on expectantly, obviously interested in any option that reduced their time in the desert.

  “I don’t like it,” Taranth said.

  “You just don’t understand it,” Hateri said before M’ran could respond.

  Taranth grabbed Hateri by the loose folds of his robe and pulled him close. “I understand you are an insolent whelp who has no idea of his place.”

  Hateri’s central flared with unabashed disdain.

  M’ran stepped close by. “Let him go,” he said in a low voice.

  The wind blew hot on Taranth’s face for several breaths before he relaxed his hold.

  Hateri straightened his clothing, then stepped away.

  “You have not seen the true depth of a desert storm,” Taranth said when he finally gathered his calm.

  “We’ve—”

  Taranth cut Hateri off with the wave of his hand, and the whelp remained silent.

  “I say to you that you have not seen the depths of a desert storm and you want to tell me I am wrong, but I have never seen a motor cart, and yet you still expect me to believe it is a miracle that will save us from pain and hard work?”

  The rest of the team stared at him.

  “What you’ve seen on this trip so far is nothing,” he said. “Nothing.” He waved his hand and turned to M’ran. “The desert will not take to your motor carts. We’re going to do this my way,” he said, “or we’re not going to do it.”

  Then he walked away.

  Taranth needed to be alone.

  “Why do you do this, my friend?” M’ran said much later.

  Eldoro was long set, and only the thin glow of Katon filled the sky. The team was down for their sleep, and Taranth was taking his turn as sentry. He was glad for the time to sit in the open and hear the sounds and movements of the nocturnal animals. M’ran, standing some distance behind Taranth, was here to relieve him of his assignment.

  “Do what?” Taranth replied.

  “You’re the finest plainsguide there is, Taranth Melarin. But you’ll gain no shortage of poor notoriety by shaking the insides from a councilor’s son.”

  Taranth turned to face parts of the Taranth Stone that lay in pieces on the ground. The lesser heat’s light painted the burnt portion of the shell the maroon of dried blood. He looked to Hateri’s lean-to, knowing that he and Pietha M’ktal had retired there together, and pretending he had not heard the noises they made despite obvious attempts to be discrete.

  M’ran stepped to his friend’s side. “You cannot change the fact that Alena’s dead,” he said.

  “I know that.”

  Taranth couldn’t say more.

  M’ran knew of the troubles he and Alena had suffered between their Families and their clans, and though he was aligned with the council, M’ran wasn’t an idiot. He could put three and three together and come up with six every time. M’ran certainly guessed the pain of loss that Taranth felt when he looked at the young whelplings being so free to…cavort.

  But Taranth couldn’t tell M’ran the deeper truth that raged within him. He couldn’t speak the full nature of the dreams that plagued him each night, couldn’t give voice to the concern that maybe he had been wrong when he and Alena had turned down the offers of balm and other medications that the Conjise Family had offered to them.

  Maybe they had both been wrong.

  He could not bring himself to face the idea that Alena might be alive now if they had been willing to try something new. But the medicines scared them both, and they had not been willing to try the Conjise’s balm.

  Instead, they placed their faith in the priests and in the mountains of the Esgarat.

  And Alena had grown worse.

  Now, standing before this strange not-stone that had fallen from the sky, Taranth could not bear to tell M’ran how on the last night—when her whimpers were so faint and so pitiful, when the pain had grown so bad that she called out continuously through the darkness—that he had finally relented. He could not tell M’ran that in that darkest moment he had lost his resolve, lost his faith in her beliefs, lost his faith in the priests. That he had called the Conjise medicine peddler to administer those roots and other medicines that they had promised could help.

 
That still she had died before Eldoro had risen.

  But that she had lived to see the Conjise arrive.

  She had lived to see him remove her witze oils and replace them with his lotions.

  Taranth would live for the rest of his life with the memory of the expression on her face—an expression that screamed “How dare you betray me” through the murkiest moments of his dreams.

  The Conjise Family said it had been too late. The medicines needed time—time that Taranth had not given them. He didn’t know if those words were true or not. He would never know, could never know, and in fact, did not ever want to know because if a time came that he learned Alena could have been saved, he could not live with that knowledge.

  So he didn’t tell M’ran that he was afraid his decisions had killed his beloved Alena, or that he could not try Hateri’s technology because to see it succeed where his own efforts failed would say that new technologies could work better than the old ways. He didn’t say that this knowledge would cause him more damage than he could bear. Instead, he merely retreated to his sleeping pallet in silence, spread it on the floor of the crevasse, and stared at the dark lumps of the thing his group was calling the Taranth Stone.

  Taranth decided then that he did not care what the Taranth Stone was, but that he was determined to see it brought to the council by his own sheer will rather than through any of Hateri’s beloved technologies.

  That was how it had to be.

  CHAPTER 6

  Taranth woke with the aftereffects of a dream playing in his head.

  He rolled off his bedding and went to the water catch. Each cup contained barely an inch of liquid. Not much, but it would do no good to complain.

  The team was still sleeping. Katon was fading to the west, and Eldoro would not rise for some time.

  Yip Kil was on sentry duty. She watched him swirl his cup and sip from it.

  The liquid refreshed the taste in his mouth.

  “What are we going to do?” Yip asked quietly when he sat down on the rock beside her.

  Taranth made the huffing sound that requested silence.

  The time before Eldoro rose was his favorite moment on the surface.