Starbright: The Complete Series

by Hilary Thompson

  My stomach lurches, thinking of being a child in Hade’s grasp. “Did he know? That she was a maiden, I mean?”

  Pacem considers the question. “I think so. He was kind, at first. Uncharacteristically so. Of course, Irana was beautiful. Tiny and delicate, with that cloud of golden hair. I often imagined her in the grove at night, tending oranges on gossamer wings.”

  “And you? How is it that you are so…educated, if you don’t mind me saying?” I ask. His voice is measured, his vocabulary greater than many I’ve met outside of Asphodel.

  “One summer I invented a tool for Irana to help harvest the oranges – a kind of hinged arm. She was so short that she couldn’t reach the fruit. And she needed to stay useful.” His voice takes on a fierce, protective edge. “But the tool caught the attention of Hade’s master builder. He claimed me as his apprentice, and everything changed.”

  We are both silent for a long while. I can see the moon now, and I think of how much larger it seemed in Elysium. How much closer.

  “I was taken into other parts of the palace, whisked away on jobs with the builder, and Irana was left behind. Alone too much. Hade began finding excuses to invite her to his throne room. She danced for his special guests, like a doll.” His fists are clenched at his sides. “By then, I knew what he was capable of. What he did to beautiful things.”

  “The Destroyer,” I mutter.

  “Then, the day of her twelfth birthday, there was a fire in the greenhouses. Irana and her mother were trapped.” He takes a deep breath. “I ran in after her, but the fire...I got her out, but my wounds were too much. That’s when I died,” he says, staring at me, waiting for me to object.

  When I don’t say anything, he continues. “Just like your friend in the dungeons. But Hade found one of the elders of Reuben, and together they stitched me back together. Coaxed my soul back into my body. I still have no idea why he bothered,” he mumbles.

  “Who are the elders of Reuben?"

  Pacem glances at me, surprise on his face. “I thought they were known everywhere.”

  I shake my head.

  “Reuben was another Tribe. But they weren’t wanderers like Hebron, or peaceful like Kedesh. Instead, they devoted themselves to remembering the science that the world used to have. The technology. Before the Great Cleansing, things were very different.”

  “Yes, I know that,” I say, somewhat impatient to learn something new. “I thought Hebron and Kedesh were the only organized Tribes. The only communities besides Asphodel, Tartarus, and Elysium.”

  Pacem laughs, and his other arm scrapes against the roof of the vehicle, the scritch of metal gouging wood sending shivers down my spine. “Remember, only a few months ago, your people believed they were the only ones left. There are more people than you know of. I’ve heard rumors,” he sits and faces me, “that there were once twelve. The three cities, of course. But not everyone fit in those cities, or wanted to.”

  “And those people formed the Tribes,” I cut in.

  “Yes, but there were many, many Tribes at first. And many who were not in Tribes – families on their own, lone men who ranged the wilderness. But Reuben also formed in the desert, not too far from Tartarus. Of course, that was a bad place to be, and they were soon absorbed by Hade’s burning of the lands around the city.”

  “Join or die?” I ask, anticipating the answer. He nods.

  “They brought their technology into Tartarus, but they managed to keep much of it hidden. I suppose there was always gossip, but no-one had seen a true robot in decades. Until me. Hade brought the master builder to the palace, and forced him to remake me.”

  “So they have the technology of robotics still?” I say, excitement sparking through me. This could change so many things. “Where are they now? With the travelers from Tartarus?”

  Pacem looks at me with pity, and suddenly I see the stupidity of my question. The faith where none should be.

  “After Hade saved my life, he ordered all the elders to come work in the palace, or risk the arena. A few came, but many more died rather than share their knowledge with the Destroyer. They were hunted by his guards. Soon there were only two men alive who wore the symbol of Reuben on their back – who claimed to have the knowledge. Then one. Now none.”

  “Except you, right?” I can’t help but ask. Surely he knows.

  He shrugs. “I can build robots, of course. You’ve seen that. My training with the master builder allowed me to figure out that much. But I was taught nothing of the science that binds these metal pieces to my body. Nothing of the magic that winds the wires into my own brain. I’ve managed to repair myself once or twice, but I’ve never created another like me.”

  He falls silent, and I want to ask if he’s ever tried, but the moonlight shifts onto his face, and something there makes me hesitate.

  “Why would Hade want the elders gone?” I ask instead. “Wouldn’t they have been helpful to him?”

  Pacem turns to face me, and his jaw is clenched. The blue light of his man-made eye seems to bore into mine, almost painful in its intensity. “Hade never wanted to help. Only to destroy. Even when he did create things, at the end of every day…there was only ruin. That’s why I stayed – I had to protect Irana from all of that.”

  “And you’re why she stayed,” I say, suddenly realizing. “She stayed to keep the peace. You. Pacem.”

  He nods, a strange half-smile on his lips. “Yes. Pacem means peace. Hade promised never to hurt us as long as we stayed together.”

  His words linger in the air for a long time after, as we both silently watch the moon and stars through the shifting leaves above us, and one word shimmers in the recesses of my brain: guardian. Zarea and Stian. Irana and Pacem. Trea and me.

  Maiden or guardian: each of us protects our other half.

  Eventually we move, eat, and divide night watch, and the night passes into dawn.

  Several days and nights pass just like this, with the two of us trading stories at brief intervals, but mostly sharing silence as the vehicle creeps its way east.

  Then one morning, just I am rising from my favorite watch spot on top of the vehicle, I see a dark figure in the trees – human in its barely visible form. The sun is just breaking over the horizon, but there is enough light to understand that it is hiding. Watching us. I stay as still as possible, sliding a single arrow from my quiver. Even that action is too much, though, and the figure darts away before I can scramble down the side of the vehicle. Cursing, I bang on the side of the vehicle to wake Pacem, then take off through the trees.

  The figure is fast, but loud, crashing through the brush in a way that screams untrained. My heart pounds – are there more survivors? The prophecy hasn’t exactly been clear, but I know enough to realize that if there are survivors, we have to find them.

  Yet even as I follow the noise, I lose it. Somehow the figure disappears into the early morning shadows. I walk on another mile perhaps, but find nothing. The birds have begun their ritual morning songs, telling me that whoever our visitor was, he or she is no longer in the area.

  As I track my way back to Pacem, and the sun sweeps away the remaining shadows, I begin to notice the familiarity of the landscape. We are only a few more miles from Kedesh. Our map told me this, of course, but after Pacem’s stories of the rumored attacks on Kedesh, I had no desire to see any of the bloodied rock walls.

  No desire to witness the destruction of the most compassionate people I’ve met.

  Now I’m not so certain. Any delay keeps me from Asphodel and saving the rest of my family. But if there are survivors…

  “What happened?” Pacem asks, meeting me several yards from camp.

  “I saw someone in the trees. I chased them but found nothing.”

  “A survivor? From Kedesh?” he sounds as surprised as I feel, although he’s assumed the same logic.

  I shrug. “Perhaps. I think we should go there, just in case. No more than a day, though,” I warn. He nods, his eyes keen to read my face. I keep
it neutral, avoiding the intrusion.

  We guide the vehicle through the trees and out into an open area before finding the valley where Kedesh once was. Still is, if you can count this deserted, haunted place as a tribe of refuge. Stian’s term for it echoes in my ears as I walk from room to room, stroking my fingers along the ash-covered walls and stepping over the kinds of messes people make when they are fleeing for their lives, or fighting for them.

  There is so much brownish, dried blood – wide swaths and trails of drips and splatters on the walls. But there are no bodies.

  “Look,” Pacem says, kneeling. “I didn’t notice this last time. Someone was dragged away here.”

  I follow the marks that look like brush strokes on a grisly canvas, but they lead everywhere and nowhere.

  “So many good people,” I whisper, trying not to choke on sorrow or outrage. Instead I turn it into an abstraction, focusing on the mystery of the scene. “Why did the attackers take all the bodies?”

  The question hangs in the air between us.

  “When Irana and I found this, on our way to Elysium, we didn’t investigate at all. I wanted to keep her as far from all of this as possible. But you can see it, can’t you – these trails lead north.”

  “Tartarus,” I say, and he nods, meeting my gaze. I feel the anger flare in my gut. We have worked so hard to free people and save people and treat everyone how they should be treated.

  And then there is this.

  Humanity is its own worst enemy.

  “Let’s check each room, carefully, for any survivors. I know what I saw this morning – there’s someone nearby.” I don’t mention my sinking feeling that we’ll likely need to detour all the way to Tartarus as well, if we want to solve this mystery.

  As Pacem nods and goes to search the common areas, I rub at my temples, searching for patience I hope I have. It’s just one more day. Just a few hours lost, and how can I do otherwise? Mother would never want me to choose revenge over the possibility of helping someone.

  The people in Asphodel are not more important than these people are, no matter what panicked message my heart is beating out. Finally, it’s thinking of the vastness of the journey ahead, and the immediate hope that could come from all this misery, which push me to accept what we are doing in Kedesh, and why.

  Forgive me, I pray over and over to Aitan, Pasia, Isa, and everyone in Asphodel, as I begin to methodically search the many carved-out rooms that make up Kedesh. Please keep them safe, I pray to every god and goddess I can think of, as I open each door and look under each bed.

  Regrettably, we find nothing and no-one alive. After hours of searching, all we can conclude is that the attack was planned, clever, and brutal. There is evidence of how the people were trapped in their once-safe valley by fires to the north and fires to the south.

  They had no chance.

  “I’m sorry,” Pacem says softly, when we both end up where we started this morning, in the room where Trea and I once showed our fire and air powers to a crowd of loving, accepting people. The memory jolts my heart one more time, and I have to turn away. Instead of answering, I lower my head and run my fingers along the wall next to the elders’ chairs, brushing absently at the dust that covers it, as though I could brush away the memories, the anxiety, the fear.

  It’s dusk when we make our way back to the vehicle, and so we must spend the night again. I take first watch, if only so I can watch from the roof as the stars appear one by one, and wonder what other secrets wait for us along this journey.

  When I left Elysium barely a week ago, I was filled with rage and intent only on murder and revenge. I feel the scales beginning to even out again, balancing the darkness with thoughts of learning, solving these puzzles, and finding the remaining people scattered across this land.

  It is up to us to save them, and I don’t want anyone to be left behind.

  When I wake in the morning, Pacem is waiting for me, a grim look on his face.

  “I saw someone, too,” he says. “When I tried to follow, they ran. That trail there,” he points to one cutting north.

  “Tartarus,” I sigh, and he nods. Quickly, we pack up each tiny trace of our camp, then I eat and navigate as Pacem turns the vehicle slightly north and east, around the towering hills that encase what was once Kedesh.

  We’ve just rounded the last hill, with desert stretched before us, when we both lurch forward in our seats.

  A body lies in the dirt just in front of us.

  Pacem throws the vehicle into stop, and we both leap from the door. The body couldn’t be the survivor we saw – its cloak is faded and torn and the flesh is ripped from the bones. A stench of rot drifts toward me, and I feel my breakfast churning in my stomach.

  Pacem kneels beside the body, and for a second, I think he is praying.

  “Look,” he says,” retrieving a coin-sized piece of metal, which had been hanging around the victim’s neck on a leather cord. The symbol is the same he showed me yesterday, for Kedesh.

  “This might have been one of their elders,” I say, thinking of how this person’s cloak matches the colors I remember from the men who told us stories of the moon as we ate around their fire.

  “Should we go?” Pacem asks me carefully after a long stretch of silence.

  “Should we bury him?” I ask, looking around me at the hard, cracked ground. It seems horribly disrespectful to leave him here.

  “I think his soul has long departed,” Pacem says doubtfully.

  “Maybe burn it, then,” I say. I feel the need to do something. I know some religions believe the soul cannot travel if its body is not at rest.

  So we hurriedly gather a few scrubby, dried-out plants and thin sticks, and I pour a little fuel over the body. Pacem strikes a match, and I say a few silent prayers as the body burns.

  It doesn’t take long.

  We’re silent as we climb back into the vehicle.

  We haven’t been driving more than ten minutes before we see another body, slightly more north of our path, but obvious in the open space.

  We burn it too.

  Then we find another, again slightly north.

  “I think this is a trail,” Pacem whispers as we set fire to a third corpse, which has also been mostly stripped of flesh. “A trail leading toward Tartarus.”

  I don’t say a word as he adjusts our path on the map, heading for Tartarus instead of Asphodel.

  SIXTEEN

  ASTREA

  January 18, 2067

  I think Kess is going to run away with Charles, and I don’t know what to do. It will kill Mother.

  Kess is being stupid. She thinks Charles can save everything and everyone. But no one person can do that.

  We have to work together if the world is going to make it through this war.

  From Aisa’s personal journal, saved from before the Cleansing

  I can’t remember how long I spent in prayer, trying to find my temple. I didn’t find it anyways.

  I can remember the minute my door opened, and Tariel stepped in, jabbing me with a needle before I could even rise from my knees.

  I’m lying on a blanket now, on the floor of the womb chamber, with no idea how much time has passed. My eyes seem too heavy to bother opening, and I can vaguely feel someone rubbing my skin with the oil they use to close up any scrapes. So the salt in the water doesn’t sting, interrupting the pain of the womb with the pain of a wound.

  Tariel must assume I’m still fully sedated, because I don’t feel any further needles pressed into my skin. Only a tug as the helpless heaviness in my limbs is handled by more than one set of hands.

  My feet slide into the water of the womb chamber, and I struggle to open my mouth. I want to ask them something, but I can’t remember how. Or what, actually.

  I try to push my eyelids open, but those muscles have somehow stopped responding too.

  The second the door to the womb chamber closes me into darkness, I realize just how bad my idea to have Tariel sedate me really w
as. Consciousness is drifting away faster than I can grasp at it, and although it is blacker than a starless night inside, still I can see the velvety swirls of true darkness already beginning at the corners of my eyes.

  Hade. He’s coming for me, and I cannot move. I cannot even scream.

  The water begins to buzz with its customary first fire crystal. But instead of sensory deprivation, this time I’m reduced to one sense – touch.

  The fire in my veins seems to leach into the water, and it sizzles to a temperature just short of burning. It bubbles against the most sensitive parts of my body, bringing what is surely a hot blush to my cheeks.

  A soft, sultry laugh begins to vibrate inside my ribcage.

  Still such an innocent, aren’t you, darling, the voice says in my inner ear. The voice I’ve dreaded for days. Weeks. Months.

  The voice I will probably hear as I die, I think suddenly as the bubbles and the heat soon overtake every inch of my skin, until I’m sweating despite being naked in the water.

  The heat quickly grows unbearable, threatening to melt the skin from my very bones, and my mouth finally rips open in a desperate scream just as the blackness snakes its tendrils around my mind.

  I would never let you die. You’re far too useful, is the last thing I hear before the door to the womb springs open and my body is yanked from the water.

  The surrounding air is frigid by contrast, and my muscles begin to spasm in shivers, my eyelids fluttering open and closed like butterflies trying to outlast a storm. I see glimpses of Tariel, and a male face I’ve never seen.

  It barely registers that he’s seeing me naked as the pain from being nearly boiled alive begins to register in my scalded nerves. I begin to scream as their fingers prod me onto a table which I’m sure is supposed to be soft.

  Tears stream from my eyes, the salt prickling the raw skin as it runs down my cheeks into my hair.

  Someone begins to dab a cool salve on my face, then my neck, and on and on, until the cold has drawn most of the fire from my skin. I slit my eyes open long enough to see that they are wrapping me now, binding me in long white strips of cloth. Scraps of their conversation reach my ears as I wait for the tears to stop and the pain to lessen and the silky chuckles of a dead man to cease echoing in my brain.