The Hidden Stars

by Madeline Howard

  Then thunderous footsteps sounded behind, and a stinging gust of snow and wind struck her. The mare, still running hard, flattened her ears and squealed a warning as a tremendous dark shadow went hurtling on ahead, blocking their path to the fortress.

  The chestnut would take no more. She reared up on her hind legs, raking the air and screaming in terror. Winloki felt herself falling, landing with bruising force on the icy grass; then all the air was knocked out of her lungs, and for a moment she saw and felt nothing.

  She came back to herself just in time to avoid being crushed under the hooves of the dancing mare. Though she could still barely see for the snow and the dizzy grey sparks of light whirling before her eyes, Winloki managed to scramble to her feet.

  The giant loomed up before her, snarling. His mouth opened on a row of broken yellow teeth, and a blast of burning cold air hit her so hard that she nearly fell. Then his war hammer passed over her head, only barely missing her. It made the air whistle, and the breath of the nearest horse turn to ice.

  I ought not to be still standing after that, she thought, remembering the men she had revived, and the one she had not been able to revive, in Lückenbörg. But as she clenched her hands together, Winloki felt the great ring of bone on her right thumb. It was, she suddenly realized, both her peril and her salvation.

  Two of her guards hurled themselves between her and the giant, and Haakon was suddenly there on foot beside her. The boy’s strong hands encircled her waist, and he was lifting her up to the back of the piebald gelding, which stood solid as a wall while she tried to mount. She reached out, caught ahold of the cantle and a handful of dust-colored mane, then managed to throw a leg over Lif’s broad back and settle into the saddle. She saw that Arvi was there on the other side, where she had not been able to see him before, still mounted, and holding the gelding’s reins.

  He threw her the reins, she nodded her thanks, and a moment later they were riding along, side by side, as fast as the horses would go. Lif, she realized, was every bit as good as Haakon said he was; he moved like the wind, in long, effortless strides.

  Just as she saw the massive gates swinging open before her, she could hear the ice giant come loping along behind her. Arvi fell back a little, to defend her at need, and Lif, without any urging, managed an extra burst of speed.

  Then she was riding under the arch of the gate, clattering through the dark tunnel inside the gatehouse, then out the other side into an overgrown courtyard, where Lif’s hooves struck violet fire from a broken marble pavement. She pulled in and looked back over her shoulder, just in time to see Arvi emerge from the tunnel behind her and hear the gate slam shut. Then she leaned forward, resting her face on the gelding’s sweaty, bristly neck, while she struggled to catch her breath.

  A moment later there were running footsteps, a babble of voices high and low. When she looked up, the courtyard was a sea of curious faces. A host of ragged men and women had gathered around her, shivering in the chill air and asking excited questions.

  “It is the Lady Winloki,” panted Arvi. “She is a great healer, but I think—I think she should be looked after herself just now.”

  She took a great gulp of air and shook her head. “I am well enough.”

  “No you are not, Princess,” he retorted. “You can’t see your own face to see what that creature did to you, but look at your hands: they are blue with cold.”

  Holding up one hand, Winloki saw that he was right. She had not, after all, been entirely immune to the wind of the ice giant’s hammer.

  As she slid down from the saddle and stood unsteadily on the marble paving, two tall women put their arms around her and supported her across the courtyard, then through another gate. She felt somebody drop a rough woolen shawl over her shoulders.

  “Thank you,” Winloki whispered, feeling weak tears rise in her eyes at the thought of one of these ragged women sacrificing her own inadequate protection against the cold in order to warm her.

  But as she emerged into the next snowy courtyard she could see and feel the shadows all around her: faint and tenuous, yet quite unmistakable, lurking wherever the light was dimmest, prowling in the shrubbery, sliding from one dark alley between the buildings to the next. Fear settled into her bones then, and stayed there.

  And she thought, For all the good intentions of the people here, the kindness of these women—for someone like me, the Old Fortress at Tirfang is no safe place.

  29

  For Sindérian there was pain—agonizing pain in her head, her shoulder, all down her left side. She felt herself buffeted repeatedly by the waves, beaten against a hard, unyielding surface. Scarcely conscious of where she was or what she was doing, she floundered in the water, swallowed a bitter mouthful of brine, and somehow managed to get away from the tormenting rocks.

  Then something heavy struck her, and she felt herself sinking, down and down, fathoms deep in cold green water.

  Tangled up in her long skirt, she tried and failed to struggle back toward the surface. In growing desperation, she watched her breath doing what she could not: rising upward, as a series of tiny pearly bubbles.

  The farther she sank, the darker it grew. Yet there was something shining in the depths: a pattern wrought in iridescent silver, a phosphorescent spiderweb of eerie light. It was, she realized, all around her—more than that, it was the thing that was pulling her down. She began to struggle even harder, but the strands which appeared so insubstantial were as tough and resilient as rope. She was netted as neatly as a fish—and was likely to die as one, flailing about and gasping for breath. The more she fought the weaker she became, wasting the little air that she had still in her lungs.

  Then something burst inside her head, and for a moment it seemed that she was floating in endless light.

  So this is what it is to die, she thought, this vision, this clarity. Indeed, it seemed that she could see for a thousand, two thousand miles in all directions, worlds within worlds under the ocean.

  She saw the gigantic kraken waving their myriad tentacles in a deadly slow dance; the skull of a leviathan so tremendous that whales swam in and out through the gaping eyeholes. She saw the breeding grounds of water dragons and sea serpents, and a clutch of new eggs the color of jade, as large as houses. She saw vast mermaid cities of coral and ivory in the deepest trenches of the sea, and knew that this was where the Sea-People had retreated, into the abyss, to rebuild their civilization farther from the land and the proximity of wizards and magicians fighting their endless wars. She saw hulks of wrecked ships, and towers of drowned cities where the sea had encroached on the land. She saw monstrous great creatures, neither fish nor serpent, armored like dragons, gnawing away at the roots of the islands of Thäerie and Phaôrax.

  Most terrifying of all, she saw what might be the type and progenitor of all the dragons: a long, pale, bloated body, as round as an earthworm yet miles and miles across, with spines as high as underwater mountains, all glowing with an unwholesome, nacreous light. It was curled up on the bottom of the ocean as if in sleep, but as Sindérian watched, it slowly lifted its weighty head and met her gaze, looking back at her with Ouriána’s face, Ouriána’s vivid green eyes.

  All this, in a brief bright instant of inspiration, which was gone before she could truly grasp it.

  A shadowy form glided past Sindérian, so close that she could almost touch it. With the detachment of despair, she watched it turn and come back, shearing through the gleaming strands that held her. A sleek, muscular body grazed against hers, a hard head nudging her ribs. Then it was underneath her, pushing her, pushing her upward, back toward the air and the pale moonlight.

  As soon as her head broke the surface of the water she gasped for air, dragging as much as she could into her lungs. Blinking water out of her eyes, she tried to get her bearings, but the moonlight was fading, the night was closing in on her. Out of nowhere, a thin cold hand reached out and strongly grasped hers.

  After that, for a time, she knew nothing at al
l.

  When Sindérian next became aware of herself, she was lying facedown in wet sand. She tasted sand in her mouth, felt more of it in her eyes, in her hair, sticking to her face and her arms like a second skin. With a groan, she rolled over on her side. It was early morning, not long after sunrise, if she could judge by the pale pink and gold colors of the sea and sky; but it might as well be noon, so fierce was the glare to her burning eyes.

  Squinting to keep out some of the light, she saw Prince Ruan and Aell not far away, sprawled as she was on the beach, where they had all apparently been deposited like driftwood. Her vision blurred again, so that it was impossible to tell if either of them was breathing. She thought she saw Aell move. Struggling to lift her head, the better to see, she felt the world tilt under her, and everything turned grey again.

  But the next time she woke, both men had revived. The sky was even brighter than before, and the Prince and Aell knelt in the sand beside her, gazing down at her with looks of grave concern on their white, weary faces.

  And no wonder, she thought, if I look even half as bruised and beaten as they do.

  “I thought I was drowning,” she said to Ruan in a cracked whisper. “But then you helped me.”

  “I regret to say that I was unable to help anyone, I was so battered against the rocks,” he replied with a shake of his head. His voice was flat and toneless, all of the music gone. “Your Arkenfeller ghosts saved all three of us—with some assistance from Faolein. He was, as I think I recall, a sea lion at the time, though he has since returned to the falcon-shape he seems to favor.”

  “Three of us?” Sindérian asked sharply, then she remembered. “Jago is dead?”

  “Yes,” said Ruan, and she saw his face suddenly twist in pain.

  She tried to gather her thoughts, to think of something she could say—she who had been consoling the living for the death of their friends almost as long as she could remember. Yet this time the words were simply not there.

  “Your losses have been very great,” she finally whispered, glancing from him to Aell and back again, remembering Tuillo as well as Jago.

  “Yes,” the Prince answered shortly. And then, with a brief flash of his old arrogance: “The more reason—as you once told me—to make certain they did not die in vain.”

  Reminded that she had a duty, Sindérian sat up then and tried to struggle to her feet. But the pain in her head was so intense, she could only fall forward on her hands and knees, vomiting seawater into the sand.

  A long time later—it seemed a long time later, no matter how long it actually was—she sat back on her heels and wiped at her mouth.

  “I think you have another head injury,” said the Prince. “You look very much as you did that time before.”

  Remembering how sick she had felt that other time, how long the misery had lasted, Sindérian thought for a moment that death would have almost been preferable.

  Only you don’t have that luxury, she reminded herself, gritting her teeth.

  She remembered what she had seen under the water, the web that had entangled her. She knew what it meant and she knew who was responsible. There were only a few people capable of creating such a thing, and only one of those wicked enough to do it.

  Many things which had worried and puzzled her before began to make sense: the dreams that had haunted her across the mountains, the perils which had assailed her every step of the way through Arkenfell. None of it was accident; nothing had occurred at random. Somehow, Ouriána knew about her, out of all the world Ouriána had singled out her, marked her for destruction.

  Yet as terrifying as that thought was, against it she could set this new knowledge of herself and her potentialities, of all that she might learn and become under Faolein’s continued tutelage. Or might—if her time were not so dreadfully limited, if she were not under this curse! It was a curious feeling, knowing herself to be under sentence of death.

  There was a flutter of wings, and the falcon settled on Sindérian’s shoulder. A warm, reassuring current of life force flowed from father to daughter, and after a while, though her head still throbbed, she began to feel a little stronger.

  “What happened to the wraiths of Arkenfell?” she asked, realizing with a start that somewhere along the way she had lost the bag of earth.

  Ruan shrugged. “They have gone on their way. No doubt impatient to attend to their own pressing business, according to your bargain. Even bringing the three of us ashore, they wanted me to know, was a great concession.”

  She accepted the hand that he was offering her and staggered to her feet. Her gown and the shift underneath were both stiff with salt; she ached in every part of her body. “It is as well that I have a hard head,” she said, attempting a smile.

  “So it is,” answered Ruan, with a flash of his teeth. “They chose well on Leal. As much for your strength as your impressive stubbornness.”

  It was already well after noon when they left the beach behind and started walking inland, through acres and acres of coarse sea grass, past the occasional stretch of reeking green bog. Aell went first, then Sindérian, then the Prince.

  “We have no horses, no food, and very little money,” she said, making an effort to hold up her head, to put a little iron into her backbone. “At least we have reached Skyrra ahead of the Furiádhin. I suppose we should be grateful for that.”

  “We aren’t nearly so destitute as you seem to think,” said the Prince. “When we come to a town, I will sell my brooch or my torc. The brooch alone should provide for our needs as far as Lückenbörg.”

  If and when we come to a town, she thought grimly. There was no telling how far these marshes extended. It might be five miles, it might be a hundred.

  As she walked, more and more of her undersea revelations returned to her. She told Faolein of the creatures she had seen undermining the islands, expecting him to be as shocked and horrified as she was. Tens of thousands of people lived on Thäerie and Phaôrax, and if those islands were swamped, the death and destruction would be—unthinkable. We thought we had years, even decades, to set things right. Now it looks as though we can measure that time in months or weeks.

  I must admit, he answered calmly, that I had some inkling of that at Saer.

  And yet you never told me? she asked, bristling up with indignation.

  No more than you intend to tell Prince Ruan or Aell. You should know that as soon as a seer shares his or her vision with others it alters the world in mysterious ways.

  Sindérian bit her lip. It was true there were things she had seen that she was not yet ready to share even with him. She could not even be sure of what she had seen, or what it might mean. Sometimes the line between revelation and hallucination was very thin, and parts of what she had seen came uncomfortably close to her nightmares.

  Although a woman who might measure the time remaining to her in heartbeats ought not, perhaps, to worry overmuch about the future.

  She gritted her teeth against the pain in her head. Well then, what if she was doomed? At least knowing that, she had a chance to make her death matter, a chance to choose the time and the place, perhaps even the manner.

  They walked on until sunset, without coming to any houses. At last, feeling unable to take another step, Sindérian threw herself down on the soft grass on a little hillock, looking back the way they had come. The sky overhead and to the west was like a stained-glass window, in gorgeous shades of orange and red, fading into a transparent violet and a faint, luminous turquoise.

  After it turned completely dark, there was a rain of shooting stars falling into the sea. Her sight still blurry with the concussion, Sindérian tilted her head back to look at the stars directly overhead.

  She could not be certain, but it seemed to her that there were strange new signs in the heavens, omens and portents of things amazing and terrible and wonderful to come: unknown constellations rising, in colors as vivid as the sunset, among the Hidden Stars.

  30

  Fumes of mandrago
ra, hellbore, and ylls-yllatha hung heavy on the air. The fire hissed like a basilisk.

  The chamber where Ouriána stood feeding the fire had twelve walls, one door, and no windows; it was paneled in ivory. Nine torches burned in sconces around the room, and nine faint shadows fluttered on the walls. On the floor was enscribed a hexagram: two triangles overlapping to form a six-pointed star.

  Ouriána had positioned herself at the center of the star, and they were her shadows that danced on the walls. She wore a slithery grey gown made of snake skins, sewn together with silver wire. Her auburn hair was bound back by a silver fillet, enriched with pearls and deep purple amethysts; silver, too, were the bracelets she wore on her shapely white arms. At her sandaled feet, an iron brazier on a curious goat-legged brass stand was responsible for the sluggish wreaths of faintly purple smoke that scented the air, causing her to feel slightly giddy.

  She threw more herbs on the fire. The flames pulsed, and there was a little flurry of white sparks when leaves caught fire. Around the room, the nine shadows took on fantastical shapes: images of Ouriána as a siren, a lamia, a sphinx, a harpy, and creatures stranger still.

  She muttered certain words, spread her palms wide, and something began to form in the heavy air. Chaos boiled and smoked between her hands; it changed color from palest lavender to a rosy red, and finally to a deep crimson. Chanting a verse, she divided the whirling mass into nine parts, then named each one.

  As she spoke a name, a single ball of matter would wink out, and a scintillating cone of light would materialize, either at one of the six points of the star, or at an intersection where two lines met. At first thin as smoke, it gradually took on the lineaments and the apparent solidarity of a gaunt man in robes of scarlet.