Starbright: The Complete Series

by Hilary Thompson

  “If he can get rid of Keirna, they’ll follow him anywhere,” I answer.

  Zarea glances at me, and her sober expression says what I can’t bear to think – there’s always the possibility that Lexan might not be able to defeat Keirna.

  “Anyone want to go again?” she asks a few minutes later.

  “Actually, all of you need to begin your time in the womb,” the Prophet says, his voice quiet. “Finding your inner power may be easier as you find your inner path, and as long as you stay within Elysium’s walls, you must attempt progress.”

  Zarea presses her lips together, and I imagine her biting back a threat to leave Elysium. I hide my grin with a big bite of roll.

  Irana leads them away, and the Prophet nods to me as he slips out the curtain. I’m suddenly alone, with nothing to do.

  I pass many faces I recognize on the way to the beach, and many of them actually smile and greet me. Once the Sisters formally announced that hallucinations had forced my hand against that young boy – not ill will – the people have been surprisingly accepting.

  This hard-earned acceptance seems to stem mainly from their odd belief that hallucinations, or visions, as they call them, are more holy and respected than just about anything else.

  Finding a flat, empty place in the damp sand at the edge of the water, I sit and begin to stretch my muscles before beginning one of the long runs I have begun taking each day. My strength and endurance have grown weaker during my days of trials.

  Once Elysium is ready to leave, I plan to find a way to go ahead of the main caravan.

  My people in Asphodel need me.

  Lexan needs me: the mornings and afternoons have strung together to form a line so long that surely Lexan and Pacem must have already found each other, if the bird has found us.

  Maybe they’ve even reached Asphodel.

  But still there is no further word.

  I know it takes days for the birds to fly across the entire land, but every time I’m outside, I’m watching the sky to the east.

  TWENTY-NINE

  LEXAN

  June 21, 2067

  Today, Charles brought a few of his advisors with him to the café. This is the first time I’ve met any of his associates, and for the most part, they seem competent. One in particular caught my attention, for two reasons. One, he asked if I had any pretty sisters to bring with me next time. And two, he was eating an orange. No-one has seen an orange since the rebels released the insect plague last summer.

  Yet when he saw me watching him, he simply pulled another orange from his pocket. “For your sister,” he said and grinned the most unnerving grin at me.

  I’m not certain if I should introduce Clota to this one or not – one of them will surely be eaten alive by the other.

  From First Leader Lakessa’s personal journal

  Included in Firene’s secret papers

  The metal bird soars into the air and heads west. If the gods have any sense of humor at all, it will reach Trea about the time I’m sinking a knife into Keirna’s back.

  I glare at the sun high above us and slam the door to the vehicle.

  “Do you have everything you need?” I ask Pacem. He nods, and shifts several branches to better hide the vehicle from obvious sight. After so many days walking alone in the desert, it was nearly impossible to sit still in the vehicle.

  It was even more awkward to create conversation, when all I could think about – all I can still think about – is being home.

  Finding Keirna, and taking from her what she’s taken from me.

  I hoist my pack onto my shoulders and string my bow across my chest. Reaching to check the full quiver of arrows, I nod and begin to climb the slight hill before us.

  Walking feels good. Like action.

  “We’re probably five or six days out,” I say, looking around for anything familiar. I haven’t told Pacem yet, but we’re stopped just west of Madna’s hideout, and I plan to check on her, and bring her with us if she’ll come.

  It won’t take any extra time, and I’ve dreamed of the Lost and their fires too many times to risk leaving her unwarned.

  Several hours of walking in the dense forest brings me right to a curtain of ivy I remember well.

  “Want to meet a friend?” I say, grinning at Pacem. His human eye narrows, and I feel like the robotic eye is scanning me for duplicity. “This is how to get to Madna’s. She runs the safe house where Trea and I stopped after leaving Asphodel.” I pull the vines away, revealing the rickety stairs.

  “Are you certain it’s safe?” Pacem asks.

  “I need to check on her. Besides, she has soft beds and great food,” I add.

  He nods and grins, remembering what I’ve told him before about her house. We huff our way to the top of the stairs, and the meadow opens before us, just like I remember.

  Instead of rows of brown dirt, though, the gardens stretch before me, lush and green: harvest time. The plants are heavy with fruits and vegetables I haven’t even seen since I used to visit Mother in the Growing Rooms.

  My smile fades as I advance, watching carefully for movement.

  “Madna is quick with a weapon,” I whisper to Pacem as he tries to follow me stealthily. His metal leg just isn’t meant to move quietly, though.

  Yet we reach the house without a hint of noise or movement from any of its ramshackle windows. I’m already nervous as Styx when I see the blood.

  Pacem notices it at the same time, and he turns to me, fear etched on his face.

  “Lost?” he mouths.

  I clench my jaw, my hand making a fist around the knife at my belt. For their sake, it better not be.

  My stomach churns as I get closer to the porch. The dark red blood is splashed everywhere, and it isn’t fresh. A sharp, musty scent lingers in the air.

  I step one foot on the shallow stairs, and chaos breaks loose. A twang buzzes in my ears, and Pacem cries out, toppling over. A wall of fire erupts before me, and I would have been burned alive if my powers hadn’t reacted before I could even generate a thought.

  The fire bends backward like tall grass in the gust, then I remember to snap the air away, and it drops to the porch, like a man on his knees. The blood is still burning, and I realize it must have been mixed with some sort of gasoline or oil.

  I hear a cackle from inside, and I draw an arrow, searching the windows for movement while I motion for Pacem to stay down.

  “You can put that Styx away, boy,” a voice calls from above me.

  I back up so fast I stumble over Pacem, nearly falling to the ground myself.

  There, hanging out of an upper window, is Madna herself.

  “You almost roasted us alive!” I call. It should be impossible to get angry when she’s grinning like that, but I’m almost there.

  “An old girl can’t be too careful these days,” she yells back down. “Hang on, I’ll be down in a sec.”

  An odd sort of step-thump, step-thump sounds in the house and several minutes later, Madna throws open the door and tosses a bucket of dirt on the little bit of fire left, leaning one side of her body on a crudely made crutch.

  “Gonna have a damn hole in my porch now,” she gripes, surveying the damage. “But it would have kept the crazies out. Can’t get me twice!”

  She lifts her skirt just enough for me to see her right leg is gone, up past the knee. The stump is healed, but messily.

  “Had a visitor about a month ago,” she says, growing sober.

  “Where were they from?” I ask, afraid of the answer.

  “Hades, I guess. Crazy eyes, crazier taste for human flesh. He came at me and knocked me down so fast that my bone snapped in half. Stuck clean out of my leg, and he about went insane at the blood. I shot him right here, from right about there,” she finishes, pointing between the temples and to the floor just inside the door frame.

  “The Lost,” I say. “Madna, I’m so sorry.”

  “Nothing you could have done. I planted him out back once I could drag
him there. The house still doesn’t smell the same,” she says, wrinkling her nose. “But my leg didn’t heal right. I had to take it off.”

  “You took off your own leg?” Pacem manages. He sounds as sick as I feel.

  She nods, surveying him. “Survival, son. What happened to you?”

  “A fire. Then the elders of Reuben healed me – added these robotic parts.”

  She nods. “Reuben. Heard of them. Never met one. Maybe they can make me a new leg one day,” she cackles again.

  “I’m afraid they’re all dead,” Pacem says seriously. This only makes Madna laugh harder, and he looks at me in confusion.

  I just shrug. “Madna isn’t really one to need help,” I say.

  “Smart boy, you are, Lexan,” she smiles. “Where’s Trea? And whatever happened to my Stian and Zarea? I’ve been lonely for company for weeks, even though I hear whispers on the air of people moving.”

  “We have a lot of news,” I say. “Can we come in and sit?”

  She clucks at herself, shuffling over to make room for us to pass. She locks the door behind us and tucks her crutch back under her arm. I try to help her as she fixes food for us, but she just waves me away.

  “Tell me a story,” she says instead. So Pacem and I tell her all we can about the journey west, and the upcoming journey east, the developments with Stian and Hebron, with Zarea and her mother and sisters, and with Trea and Hade. She takes it all in, filling our plates again as soon as we finish them.

  “So now you’re on to Asphodel to take out First Leader Keirna,” she says when the stories finally stop.

  I nod. “She can’t be allowed to do this again, Madna.”

  “Will you come with us? I can make you a false leg,” Pacem offers. “I made one for Ashta.”

  She laughs, rubbing at her thigh beneath her skirt. “No, I can’t say that I want to go east.”

  “But you can’t stay here forever!” I say. “I know walking won’t work, but we’ll let the caravan from Elysium know, and you can ride with them. They’ll be here before it snows.”

  She looks at me again, all traces of laughter gone from her lined, brown face. “As soon as I could, I chose this little hollow of earth for my own. I’ve lived pretty much my whole life, Lexan, and I don’t plan to hobble to the end of the world just to escape a death I know is coming regardless of my address.”

  I glare at my plate, trying to think of something that might make her want to come.

  “Don’t tire your brain out. I’m not going,” she says again, a smile in her voice. She rises and limps over to the window. “About dark. How about you two help me set that trap again, and then we all get some sleep?”

  I obey, because I really can’t bring myself to argue. I’ll send a bird to Elysium soon, and hopefully Zarea can come through here and convince Madna to join them when they come.

  I show Pacem to a room, but I don’t go to mine. Instead, I wander the house until I find Madna sitting on the couch, thumbing through the pages of her traveler’s journal.

  “All this new history,” she says, motioning for me to sit. “I want you to take this book with you. Take it to the new city, and save it for me.”

  “You can just bring it yourself,” I say, smiling.

  She rolls her eyes, then looks up at me, studying my face. “I don’t envy you your task, boy. You have a lot of heartache waiting for you in that cave, and such a long journey after that.”

  “It’s no different from anyone else’s life, really. Everyone deals with heartache, and life itself is a path. I’m lucky to have found some people who make the journey interesting. And a little magic doesn’t hurt,” I add, lightening the mood with a smile. I use my air to lift a mixture of dried rose petals from their bowl on the table, swirling their darkened colors into she shape of a rose.

  “Well, look at that trick. Tell me, has my advice with Trea paid off?” She gives me a sly look, and my face flushes.

  I nod. “When we settle in Asphodel for the winter, I want to ask her to complete the Partnering Ceremony with me. It will be her eighteenth birthday.”

  “And you think she’ll say yes?”

  “I hope so. I think we’ve both reached a point where we know we have to take what we want in the time we have left.”

  She nods, the serious mood creeping back into her eyes. “I remember telling her once – warriors don’t die on the journey.”

  “They die in battle,” I finish. “We have a few battles coming up. But Trea’s tougher than she used to be.”

  “Well, then she must be about invincible. Never saw a girl tougher than her, except maybe Zarea,” she grins. Leaning forward, she pats my hand with her wrinkled one. “You’ll live through this, Lexan. Just don’t forget what it’s like to be innocent.”

  Rising, she hands me the book, and trudges off to a back room without another word. I push away the feeling of foreboding that her words have brought, brushing my fingers over the worn leather cover.

  I’m suddenly so tired I can barely stumble to bed. Pulling the blanket over my chest, I whisper a prayer that I don’t even finish before sleep thankfully ends the day.

  “You make sure and warn whoever it is you’ll be sending to collect me,” Madna says over breakfast the next morning. The sun is barely up, and she’s already scolding me. “I don’t plan on going, and my traps’ll be ready.”

  “I’ll be sure to tell Stian you’re waiting for him,” I grin. She huffs and hides her own grin behind a mug.

  Pacem has been sketching a copy of our map onto a scrap of paper from his pack, marking the route leading from Asphodel toward the coast.

  “Here, just in case,” he says, handing Madna the paper. “This is the route we plan to take to search for the Garden. The True Prophet believes it to be directly east from the cities.”

  “And hopefully I’ll recognize the landmarks from my visions to get us the rest of the way,” I grumble.

  “Not much to go on, huh. The gods are always kind,” she grins. “Thank you, but I’ll not be going east.” She folds the new map and stuffs it into a drawer.

  “We should go,” I say, standing. I’d love to spend more time here, but my heart is simply too restless.

  Madna nods and makes her way to the door with us. Just as I’m about to step off the porch, she grabs me with one arm and pulls me into a fierce hug.

  “Lexan, please be careful,” she says in my ear, her arms tight around my shoulders.

  “I can do it, Madna. I can beat her.”

  “That’s not what I mean. Your mother would never want you to change who you are – not over her death. No mother would want that.”

  I nod, wishing my eyes weren’t filling with tears. “Be safe, Madna.”

  She only laughs. “This is a safe house, and I’m a dangerous woman. Don’t you worry.”

  And we leave the way I came in so many months ago, retracing my steps toward home. I don’t speak much the rest of the day, or the days which follow, lost in imagining what I might find when I reach Asphodel. Every step is both automatic and agonizing as my anxiety ratchets up and up.

  “Do you hear that?” I ask Pacem in a whisper, as we stop by a familiar stream to gather water and eat. I know we’re close. I tilt my ears to the breeze, calling on it to bring me news.

  I hear the thunk of weapons into wood, the echoes of faraway shouts, the creak of giant things toppling and crashing to the earth. Pacem’s eyes are wide, but not necessarily afraid.

  I shove my things in my pack and we creep forward, nearly crawling from tree to tree until we reach the edge of a great clearing. Just beyond us are the stumps of trees that have been newly chopped, and beyond that is a mix of ruined buildings and new, half-built structures. Men are everywhere, hauling wood, building, sweating even in the cooler fall air.

  A new city is being built right before us.

  Aitan’s message said nothing about this. We watch the men working, and I see a few familiar faces, but no-one I might approach as a confida
nte.

  “We shouldn’t go in this way,” I whisper to Pacem. In all our time traveling, somehow I neglected to plan a solid way back in to the city without a confrontation. Stupid.

  We back further into the trees, far enough that we can talk without the danger of being overheard.

  “Do you think there are guards or scouts?” Pacem asks, scanning the trees around us.

  I nod. “Probably. Although I bet Keirna is most focused on building now. I wonder what happened to those other buildings – the ones that looked like they’d been in a fire?”

  “They look new,” Pacem agrees. “Perhaps the elements.”

  “Let’s go around – maybe I can find the place where we escaped and go in that way.”

  “It would be most likely to be guarded,” Pacem says doubtfully, but he follows me anyways as we make our painstakingly slow trek around the perimeter, looking for openings into the cave.

  Seeing Asphodel from the top, I begin to realize why it took a hundred years to find us. It’s nearly impossible to locate any signs of life beyond the clearing. I do find one wisp of smoke, which I can only guess is from the burn room next to the hot pool. Everything else just looks like rock and trees and brush.

  Finally, we make the right turn, and I see a familiar ledge up the face of a low hill.

  Pacem grabs my sleeve before I can advance, pointing at a tree.

  A man is waiting there, below the cliff I remember leaping from. He’s well-concealed in the tree, and obviously hiding and watching for someone. There are probably more guards inside the secret cave room where Stian used to sleep – if the room itself hasn’t been sealed off.

  “They know you’re coming,” Pacem whispers.

  “They know someone is coming,” I clarify. “For all Keirna knows, I’m dead. But they have the Garden prophecy too, and they’ll be anticipating the other cities traveling east. We warned Stian not to engage Asphodel until we sent a bird, though. I don’t know how fast they were able to travel, but he was supposed to filter everyone from Tartarus and Hebron around to the south, just in case.”