A Legend of Starfire

by Marissa Burt

  “Well done,” Maya said, taking the pack, then dismissing him and dashing his hopes.

  Wren watched the boy go, wishing more than anything that she could swap places with him. “You want me to come with you?” she asked, the meaning of Maya’s impatience becoming clear. “But why? I can’t fight.”

  “No,” Maya began, giving her a hard look. “But you can do other things. We have a bargain, and your part isn’t done yet.”

  Wren supposed she meant something to do with the stardust, but Wren was too rattled by the cool stares of the Outsiders to argue her way out of this one. She had been able to work the magic last night; Maya probably wouldn’t believe her if she told her otherwise this morning. Shouldering her pack, she reached for the crossbow, hoping that her few days of lessons might pay off if a hovercat decided to stalk them. “This is it, though, Maya,” Wren said in a quiet voice. “One well. And then you fulfill your part of the bargain.”

  Maya’s mouth twisted into a hard line, but she nodded her agreement. “Move out!” Maya called. Scouts skirted the clearing warily, as though they expected an animachine to pop out from behind the toddlers who stood in a doorway cheering for them.

  Maya leaned in toward Wren. “Remember. No one must know about the starmilk.”

  Wren studied the old woman’s implacable face. If she didn’t know better, she would think that Maya sounded anxious.

  Wren thought of how she had seen one of the Outsider students disciplined merely for mentioning stardust. Maybe Maya was afraid of revolt. Or worse. “Don’t worry, Maya,” she said. “As long as you fulfill your part of the bargain, your secret is safe with me.”

  Maya’s right eye twitched, but she didn’t reference the starmilk again. Instead, she was back to giving orders. “Stay close to me. And stay alive.”

  The search party did not depart via the underground lake. Apparently, the well they were looking for was located on the opposite side of the island.

  “Out near the ruined caves,” a boy Wren vaguely recognized said half ominously, half eagerly. Wren watched him move easily with the scouts, wondering what it would have been like to have grown up among the Outsiders, learning that courage and honor were the highest goals. She wished she felt that they were more worthwhile right now. If she wasn’t so exhausted, she would be terrified.

  The group she was traveling with wasn’t large—two dozen or so. Most of them were grown-up Outsiders, both men and women, with a few older kids sprinkled in the mix.

  She fell in beside a girl whose blond hair had been plaited into a long braid. She was a good bit older than Wren, but Wren remembered watching her in the weapons ring. She was the one who had clobbered the other girl on the head. An Outsider A-student. She walked deftly across the uneven terrain, an arrow nocked into her bow. She swiveled alertly with each footstep, but she also watched her elders, mimicking their movements.

  “So what happens when we get to the well?” Wren asked her.

  The girl let her bow fall to one side. “Does it matter?”

  “Kind of,” Wren said. “Don’t you care what happens if all the stardust is gone?”

  The girl spun, and Wren found herself looking down her nose at a very sharp arrow tip.

  “What did you say?” the girl hissed.

  “Never mind.” Wren waved her hands in front of her face. She was letting her exhaustion get to her. She knew better than to try and brave conversation with Outsiders. She had been fooled by the fact that the girl seemed to be around her own age. Wren tried for an apologetic smile. “Nothing. I said nothing.”

  “That’s better,” the girl said, letting her attention return to the dense woods, and Wren thought twice about asking any more questions. She was beginning to suspect that the Outsiders didn’t ever ask questions. Courage and honor were all well enough, but without knowing what they served? She scanned the weathered faces around her. How many of them had even been to Nod? Or knew a Magician?

  Wren wondered if she could do as they were doing. Follow orders that might mean her own death simply because she’d been told it was the honorable thing to do. She tripped over a sharp stone in the path and barely caught herself before falling, winning a scornful glance from the girl with the blond braid. It was just as well Wren wasn’t an Outsider. Between wanting to know the reason for things and her inability to stalk, she probably wouldn’t have lasted past her fifth birthday. The forest emptied out onto a high cliffside that bordered the island to one side. The Outsiders had spread out into a V-like formation, with some scouts fixing their weapons on the skies and others aiming theirs across the ravine that lay in front of them. Wren adjusted the crossbow strap across her shoulder.

  Maya held up a fist to signal a halt, and the company drew in close together. A few of the men busied themselves at the cliff’s edge, pulling on a rope that seemed to be attached to a pole. The younger Outsiders had gathered around Maya, their weapons momentarily forgotten. Wren watched them, though she couldn’t hear their conversation. From this distance they looked like a pack of puppies, fawning over their owner for a dog treat. And it seemed that Blond Braid had won it. With a gloating smile on her face, she clasped forearms with Maya and then circled around the other kids.

  Suddenly the blond girl sprinted back toward Wren, her face set in stone, tugging a rope behind her. Just in time Wren leaped out of the way, stumbling and falling gracelessly into a spongy bush, and by the time she righted herself, the girl had turned around and was sprinting just as hard toward the cliff’s edge. Now Wren could see that she had the rope tied around her waist, and the rope was attached to a towering tree. Wren stifled a squeak as the girl swung out over the gorge, her body hanging in the air for one long moment, before she landed sure-footed on the other side. She attached the rope to some sort of post, and then turned to face her friends.

  A cheer erupted from the Outsiders, and even the kids who had been passed over looked pleased. Blond Braid stood on the other side with her hands raised in victory for a moment too long.

  A cry of alarm came from someone on Wren’s left, and then arrows were in bows, shooting their way across the ravine, but it was too late for Blond Braid. Something had descended from the sky. It was the size of a fully grown Fiddler falcon, with claws like steel daggers. Its wings thumped the air with a metallic sound, and its war cry sounded like scrap metal being crushed at a junkyard.

  Everything after that happened very fast. Crossbow bolts and arrows flew across the gorge. Some struck the initial animachine; others flew toward the second, which had just joined its mate. There were other weapons, ones that shot fiery bolts that seemed to maximize damage with each blow. Before Wren had even found her feet, the whole thing was over. The first animachine fell from the air, spiraling down and out of sight, while the second gave an ear-piercing screech. It scooped up the blond-haired girl’s body and flew off toward a mountain on the horizon. The group of Outsiders grew suddenly still at the escape of their enemy.

  “They’ll be back,” Maya finally said in a hard voice. “Best we be across the gorge before they return.”

  Wren was speechless. She looked around at the others, who were matter-of-factly packing up their gear and stowing away weapons. “What about the girl?” she asked Maya, who cut her off with an icy stare.

  “You think you care more for one of our own than we do?” was all she said, and Wren didn’t dare ask any more questions. Even if she had wanted to, she needed her full attention for what came next. Apparently, the blond-haired girl’s task had been to connect the rope to a pulley. Once attached, Outsiders on this side could pull up a threadbare woven bridge that hung between the two cliffs. Wren realized with a sinking sensation that they all intended to cross it. She instinctively felt for the pouch around her neck and cursed the stupid Outsider fear of stardust. If she hadn’t spent her time back at camp snoozing, perhaps she could have gone looking for it. She had no idea how the unpredictable stardust could help her across the dizzying gorge, but she wished she had the
security of it nonetheless. Instead she had to settle for the few drops of starmilk left in the bottle she had taken.

  “Girl,” Maya said. “You’re next on the bridge.”

  Wren gave her a blank look. Calling it that was generous. Two ropes, one strung above the other, did not make a bridge. Several of the Outsiders were already halfway across, hands shuffling quickly over the top rope and feet moving easily across the bottom.

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” Wren mumbled under her breath. Surely she could go back to the village. Help the Healer with Auspex. Do more training. Anything else.

  “I never joke,” Maya said, and even if Wren doubted the woman, which she didn’t, the hard edge to her jaw made her intent clear.

  “Perhaps I could—” Wren began, but Maya didn’t even let her finish.

  “You will find your courage in the doing,” she said, piloting Wren by her sore elbow until she was teetering on the edge of the cliff. “You want the Outsiders to help you?” She nodded toward the ones who had reached the other side and were assisting their companions through the final stretch. “Act like an Outsider.”

  Wren swallowed all her protests. Stopping Boggen and rescuing the others was too important. She gulped down her fear and edged her first foot out onto the rope. Her gloves slid smoothly over the top rope, and they kept her hands warm. This high up, the wind whipped cold around her cheeks, sending loose tendrils of hair stinging her forehead. Wren tried to keep her gaze forward, out through the gully and toward the high wall of the city of Nod. From this perspective, the Outsider island wasn’t an island at all. It was more of a peninsula surrounded by the pinkish lake. The fourth side merely ended in a cliff wall that dropped straight down into a heavily wooded area. The landscape seemed to repeat in this fashion, for she could see similar gullies and crevasses out toward the horizon. This was the rippled pattern she had seen on her initial descent into Nod. What had looked so peaceful now only kindled her fear.

  She tried to keep her mind on the task in front of her. “One step at a time,” she told herself, moving first her right foot, then the left. It was about halfway across that she made the mistake of looking down. The ground far below was a carpet of treetops, and her shifting body weight caused the ropes to sway. Wren lost her nerve, clinging tightly to the ropes, which made them twist and buckle even more.

  “Keep your head, girl” came Maya’s voice from the other side of her.

  Wren peeked over and saw the stern-faced woman moving across the rope bridge toward her with an ease that indicated she had done this many, many times. Wren stared at Maya, willing her body to calm down, but she was paralyzed. The tiniest bit of fear had escaped from her shut-tight box of emotions, and she was captive to it. She didn’t dare release the rope and move her hands; she couldn’t even inch her foot a minuscule step forward. She loathed the thought that even once she got across the stupid bridge, she’d somehow have to cross it again on the return trip.

  “Don’t look down,” Maya said, and her words were a hint softer this time. “Keep your eyes on your destination.”

  Wren tore her gaze from Maya’s approaching form, and ever so carefully shifted her head a fraction of an inch. Something inside her was sure that talking, moving her head, even breathing would send the bridge swaying again. She saw the horizon, the faraway turrets of Nod, and then she looked opposite, to her destination. Why, it wasn’t much farther at all. She was more than halfway across the gully. She saw the Outsiders there, a few of them watching her appraisingly, others already spreading out into the forestlike vegetation beyond.

  From somewhere else she heard the distant cry of an animachine, and fear jolted through her again. But this time it spurred her to action. She slid her feet forward, shutting out the swaying of the ropes, pulling herself along until the cliff’s edge was in sight. With one final leap, she was over, crouched on the spongy ground, her breath coming in sharp, relieved gasps. She could feel the dirt beneath her fingers, smell the mineral scent of it.

  “Well done, girl,” Maya said gruffly from where she stood, disconnecting the rope and ensuring that no one could cross back over to the island.

  Embarrassment enveloped Wren. Kind words from Maya equaled a standing ovation from just about anyone else. No more praise was forthcoming, but the old woman seemed to look at Wren less as an alien creature and more as a fellow Outsider. I might as well act like one, then. She got to her feet and brushed the dirt off.

  The Outsiders were circled up near the cliff’s edge, and Wren realized it was the place where Blond Braid had first fallen. There were no speeches. No tears. Instead, one of the crew captains held a fist up to his chest in a gesture of respect. “Courage and Honor,” he said, and then he dropped to one knee. “May Hawthorne find peace.”

  A little murmur of echoes ran around the group. Wren whispered it under her breath. “May Hawthorne find peace.” She hadn’t even known the girl’s name, and she felt tears welling up in her eyes. What had happened to her? What did the animachines do with their prey? She watched the other Outsiders’ stony faces as they prepared to journey on. Even the kids seemed to accept it as a matter of course. She wondered how many such ceremonies they had witnessed. The search party began to move, and Wren shouldered her crossbow like the Outsiders in front of her and followed stoically behind.

  It was hard work keeping up with the others as they hiked easily through the rubbery undergrowth, but the adrenaline kept Wren’s exhaustion at bay for a time. Even so, she was more than grateful when someone decided it was time for a water break. The group passed canteens around but said little. They rested in shifts. Ever-alert Outsiders stalked the clearing, looking for enemies, while others leaned up against trees in what would be very dangerous to mistake for a relaxed pose.

  They journeyed and rested twice more, a stretch of time that was as hazy as a dream to exhausted Wren. No one spoke. No one told tales. No one did anything to pass the time. Wren carried her crossbow as Maya had instructed her, but she hardly thought she’d be able to shoot. Her arms ached with the weight of it. Maya must have noticed, because some time later she positioned Wren in the center of the group. “Don’t stray, girl,” she said, and disappeared with the others. Wren had given up hope of impressing them. They’d either have to help her out of the goodness of their hearts or not, because she couldn’t act like an Outsider any longer. She could barely walk without tripping all over herself. She stumbled yet again into a bank of shrubbery and got to her feet, but this time she didn’t keep moving. It wasn’t because she was tired. It was because she recognized the scene in front of her.

  “What is this place?” she whispered, and then louder, in Maya’s direction. “Where are we?”

  The scorched ground in front of them lay in a shallow bowl, and the knobby outlines of trees marked its rim. Wren felt goose bumps up and down her arms.

  “The Old City,” Maya said in a weary voice.

  Wren already knew this eerie landscape from the dream she had experienced back on Earth, but that didn’t make it any less creepy to see it in front of her while she was awake. When she had come here in her dream, there had been a bird that attempted to tell her something. She tried to gather her scattered wits. Had Robin brought her here? No. She scanned the horizon. She had come here on her own. In a reckless attempt to escape from Boggen’s hold in the dream. Somehow she had ended up here.

  Maya’s mouth was pinched tight in a firm line. “You can see what comes of using magic.” She nodded sternly toward the desolate landscape. “So much loss.”

  They walked single file, a stretched-out line of silhouettes against the deadened landscape. Wren had the uncanny feeling that they were being watched, but each time she glanced back over her shoulder, she saw that no one else was there. When she passed a gnarled tree a little shiver ran through her. She recognized the spot. It was where the bird had first crowed at her. But the air remained silent, without even a whisper of wind to break the quiet. The soft crunch of boots against dirt foll
owed Wren as she caught up with Maya.

  The group was entering the ruins of a settlement. Buildings must have once stood here, but now there was only rubble. Clay bricks lay in piles of ashes. Everywhere she looked was ruin and destruction.

  “What happened here?” Wren matched her pace with the other woman’s, sending up little puffs of dirt as she walked.

  Maya didn’t say anything, and at first Wren thought she simply wasn’t going to answer. Then, without breaking stride, she began to talk. “This was an outpost—a research station designed to study and improve upon the biological life native to this planet—but the Magicians here ended up creating the animachines.” She shook her head. “They should have known better, but they used stardust to tamper with things better left alone. The station was destroyed after the plague.” Her feet stumbled a bit when she said this. Wren wouldn’t have noticed if she hadn’t been trying so hard to match Maya’s stride. “Would that all the stardust would have been destroyed along with it.”

  “Did you . . .” Wren paused, wondering if there was a polite way to say this. “Did you lose someone in the plague?” Maybe that was why Maya was so hard and emotionless.

  Maya’s eyelid twitched. “Yes.”

  Nothing else was said, and Wren was wondering how she could delicately ask for details, when a strange whistle came from somewhere far ahead of them. In an instant Maya crouched down, shoving Wren up against the nearest half wall.

  “The animachines are coming,” Maya hissed. “We won’t have much time.” She reached into her pocket and pulled out one of the gems they had used to work the spell. It was glowing dully, pulsing with an internal light. “We’re getting closer to the well. With luck, we can drain it before the animachines find us.”

  Wren knew better than to ask questions. The air was taut with tension. All the Outsiders had melted away into the ruins. Wren eased her crossbow out and waited. Maya crept forward, beckoning behind her for Wren to follow. Another whistle came. And then the haunting cry of an animachine. Wren scanned the skies as if one of the swooping creatures from earlier might snatch her up next, but Maya grunted. “Not that kind, girl. These ones come from the ground.”