The Spear of Stars

by Edward W. Robertson

  She shrugged her thin shoulders, scrunching the collar of her ornate shirt. "I cannot say what might show you how to do this. How many times must I tell you I am no wizard before that fact will enter your stone-like brain?"

  "The possibility's worth exploring. If this weapon was made once, it can be made again."

  "It is not said to be made by man," Gladdic said. "It was forged by the gods."

  "Do you really think that's true? How many divine relics have you seen? From what I can see, the gods made the ether, the nether, the world, and all that lives upon it. But everything else was made by people like you and me."

  "Do your people know the leader of their faith is a heretic?"

  "I doubt it," Blays said. "They haven't even caught on that he's an idiot yet."

  Dante shook his head. "I've seen the afterworld for myself. The Golden Stream showed us a past our holy books tell us nothing about. The world and our history within it is much larger than anything we've been taught."

  Gladdic snorted. "You fool. If the world is vast and full of mystery, that should make you more sure the gods and their works are still among us."

  "The gods may be out there," Naran said, "but I have seen too much of the sea's cruelty to think they are watching out for us. Hence we must always watch out for ourselves. Meaning no disrespect to your abilities, Dante, but it does not seem likely that you will be able to match the gods in forging this so-called Spear of Stars. Especially with no more to go on than a few passages in a book. That is why I will travel to Cal Avin anyway."

  Dante turned on him. "No disrespect to your abilities, Captain, but finding the spear apparently took the combined efforts of two powerful nethermancers. If you try it, you'll surely be killed."

  "Then I will die in service of my homeland and my friends. What is so wrong with that?"

  "The part where you die?"

  "Are you ordering me to stay in Bressel?"

  "What if I did?"

  Naran raised an eyebrow. "Then you would need to keep a very close watch on the port."

  Blays tossed up his hands. "Lyle's balls. If sailing off to die in a land of orange skies and talking frogs is what it takes to make Naran happy, who are we to stop him?"

  "Fine," Dante said. "But I'm still going to try my way. With any luck, I'll replicate the spear before you sail out of loon range, Naran. Lady Vita, thank you for getting this book to me. It could change everything."

  She cocked her head, drawing a tight circle with the point of her chin. "Who says I'm giving you the book?"

  "Me, because of the lich, and how he intends to murder us all."

  "I will give you the book. But I will only do so under one condition: that you promise me your protection."

  "Okay, I promise to go fight the White Lich and stop him from destroying Cavana. Oh yeah, and the rest of the world, too."

  "No. I ask your personal protection. For myself and House Osedo."

  "I can't do that. I'm going to need all of my attention on the Eiden Rane."

  "Then you cannot have the book."

  He gave her a steady look, feeling his jaw tighten. Lightning flashed through the glass of the window. "I could lie to you. Promise my personal protection. But I won't. What I can say is that I'll do what I can for you if you stick close to me, although you'd be in more danger in Bressel than you would if you stayed here. My duty is to fight the White Lich. That's what I'm going to do."

  Vita extended her slender arm, pointing at his chest. "Just make me your oath and the book is yours!"

  "Wrong. It's already mine." He marked his place, closed the covers, and picked up the tome.

  "Are you stealing from me? Guards!"

  Vita made a swooping motion with her arm. The two burly soldiers who'd accompanied her detached from their positions against the wall and closed on Dante. He shook his head and called to the nether. It came in a dark rush, as if stirred up by the storm outside. He sent it streaming to the guards' feet and rooted them to the ground. One man yelped in panic while the other toppled awkwardly to the side, catching himself on the stone floor and pushing himself back upright.

  On a lark, Dante moved into the stone beneath them. It smoothed out, liquefying, then climbed up their legs in a way water never should, let alone rock. It flowed past their hips and up their shoulders. They whipped their heads back and forth in panic as the stone covered their faces and scalps. Dante left only a small hole for their mouths, and a proper one for each eye, allowing their helpless terror to shine as brightly as the lightning beyond the window.

  "As I told you," Dante said, sticking the book in his pack, "I'll do whatever I can for you. But my duty comes first."

  After what he'd done to her guards, a lesser woman would have scurried away. But Vita stopped in front of him, fists held at her hips like she might draw her thin sword.

  "There is something different about you," she said. "Something colder."

  He looked up. "I didn't tell you everything that happened in Tanar Atain. When we were defending Aris Osis, the lich took me under his power. When this happened, I saw what he thought. I thought what he thought. He is cold beyond all understanding. The only hope we have to prevail is to be as cold as our own nature allows."

  Vita's lips were slightly parted, her brows drawn in confusion. Then she yanked back her head as if she'd been slapped. "Take the book. Take the book and kill him."

  Dante waved his hand. The stone dropped from the two guards like water, settling back into the floor. The nether rooting their feet seeped away. The men jerked backward, eyes wide, nostrils flaring.

  "The Eiden Rane fights for the end of everything human," Dante said. "He dies or I do."

  He descended the tower and walked back into the storm.

  3

  The city was quiet in a way cities shouldn't be. As if it was hunting something. As if it was being hunted. If Raxa had just showed up in Bressel that night, she would have stayed in her room until she understood what was driving its mood. For she was a child of the streets, and when she listened to what Bressel was telling her, she heard one word.

  Violence.

  "See anything?" she said.

  Sorrowen hunched forward. It looked like he was examining the broad avenue that led to the staggeringly tall tower of the Odeleon, except his eyes were glassy, the tell that he wasn't looking with his own eyes, but through the sight of the dead bugs he'd sent to scout the way forward.

  "Yes," he said. "Two men."

  "Armed?"

  "No. I mean, maybe. But I don't think it will matter, because one of them's throwing up. And the other one looks asleep."

  "Right," she said sarcastically, though he wouldn't pick up on it, which was one of the ways she'd learned to tolerate his overly literal and often irrelevant responses to simple questions. "Let's check it out."

  She twisted halfway around, removing a glass lens from her pocket and tilting it back and forth to catch stray light from lanterns and the moon. This done, she turned back to the gigantic cathedral and walked toward it at a perfectly casual pace.

  The thing was huge. Even taller than the Cathedral of Ivars, and several times wider. And guarded by enough gargoyles to make you seriously curious about what kinds of treasure Taim was hiding inside. You would expect a place like that to be lit even at night, but it was currently dark. Probably on account of the fact the local priests had recently been violently displaced.

  She and Sorrowen made a quick pace of the outer grounds. Seeing nothing out of the ordinary—and definitely no hordes of foreign soldiers ready to spring from the darkness—she got out her bit of glass and flashed it down the lane again. It was a good trick, the signal glass, but it would have been better if it was disguised as something harmless so when the city watch asked you what it was you could shrug your shoulders and show them it was just a toy or a lid or what have you. She might have to make something like it for her people when, and if, she got back to Narashtovik.

  Footsteps from down the street. They
were all wearing plain trousers and long loose shirts to deal with Bressel's warm, damp summer air, but only someone who'd never been arrested before wouldn't be able to make out the squared shoulders and disciplined steps of the soldiers. As for the other two, anyone who'd robbed as many aristocrats as Raxa had could spot their practiced grace from three miles away.

  The first of the fancy lads was Bilton, the Mallish priest who'd hired her and Sorrowen on as extra blades. He was looking a little less haughty that night. Probably because the man with him was obviously and in every way his superior.

  The other man's black hair was shot through with white streaks and spots that didn't look like the product of normal aging. A distant, observing intelligence animated his dark and recessed eyes. Deep lines bracketed either side of his mouth, like everything he said was a side note within a set of parentheses. He was fairly tall but seemed even taller, with a build like an ironwood staff. There was a sense that just seemed to roll off him. Like it was a bad idea to take your eyes off him for too long.

  Bilton glanced at her and Sorrowen. "Watch the perimeter."

  Raxa nodded, heading off several paces before slowing down and stopping next to the cathedral walls. Still within earshot.

  "Who is that?" Sorrowen whispered.

  "Don't know," Raxa said. "And we won't find out if you don't shut up and let me listen."

  The two men moved toward the cathedral's front steps. Bilton tilted back his head to take in the height of the spires. "Well, Ordon Adaine? What does it augur?"

  The ordon—so he was a priest, and an important one—gave Bilton a brief look of disdain. He reached into the pocket of his breeches and withdrew a small object that glinted when he held it up to the moonlight. A glass figurine of some kind. Raxa was too far away to see what it was, but from the way its facets were shining, it was worth more than most men earned in months of labor.

  Ordon Adaine twitched his hand upward, then whipped it down, smashing the figurine against the cobbles.

  Raxa flinched, more from the senseless destruction of wealth than from the sound. The priest lowered himself to one knee, hand lifted in benediction above the shards of glass. Light glowed from his fingers. Then it glowed from the shards, too, rising from them in narrow beams to form a web of strange geometry.

  "We can't meet the usurper here," Adaine said. "Or the gods promise us death."

  "Death?" Bilton looked up at the church's spires again. "But there is no holier site in all of Mallon. These grounds should protect us."

  "Why would our gods protect us when we have betrayed them, Bilton?"

  "Betrayed them? But we're the ones who've been betrayed!"

  "You are a servant of Taim. Tell me your understanding of his ways is not as shallow as you make it sound."

  Bilton's head had been lowered, but he now lifted his chin. "I am imperfect, lord. But I am always ready to be enlightened."

  "Is that so? Then look into the light and tell me what you see." Adaine lifted his hand to Bilton's face. Ether glimmered, then intensified, pouring into the lesser man's eyes. He flinched away from the glare. Adaine arced his fingers into claws. Bilton's head snapped forward as if Adaine had hooked him by the mouth. The ordon leaned closer. "Do you see?"

  "I see the light," Bilton said. "But I don't understand what—"

  "Do you see?"

  The light brightened further, searing across the cathedral steps. Tears flowed from Bilton's eyes. Raxa would have sworn she could see the man's skull through his skin. He began to shudder, then to shake as if gripped by a great angry hand. His tears turned red under the pure light of the ether. Ribbons of blood snaked from his nose and ears.

  "You do not see." With a disgusted chop of his hand, Adaine cut off the ether. The steps went dark.

  Bilton collapsed, limbs curling and spasming irregularly.

  "The king of Mallon is the pillar connecting heaven and earth." Adaine's voice was now perfectly calm. "When the king was murdered, that connection was broken. We have no more claim to heaven. Thus we can't use the temples of heaven until the pillar is rebuilt. Yes?"

  Bilton pushed himself up on his hands, choking and snorting, blood and drool falling from his face. "I understand."

  "Do you then understand how, in letting our link to the gods be cut, we have betrayed them? The question that then arises is this: Did the connection break because it was corrupted by outside forces? Or because King Charles broke it himself?"

  Through his pain, Bilton looked horrified. "Ordon, that is…"

  "Heresy? Yes, obviously. But if we are to restore order, it is a heresy that must be answered." Adaine clasped his hands and turned his back to the cathedral. "The doors of heaven are closed to us. We must look for earthly houses instead. Let us meet this Drakebane in the most earthly place in Bressel: the Exchange."

  "Yes, lord."

  Adaine glanced down, as if surprised to find that his subordinate was still on hands and knees. "Heal yourself, Bilton. We don't have time to waste."

  The lesser priest did as ordered, then stood and turned on the soldiers, barking orders to the Exchange. The lot of them marched through the streets. Once they drew near the Exchange, Bilton ordered Raxa and Sorrowen to proceed ahead to make sure it was clear.

  Sorrowen darted a glance over his shoulder. "Are we sure we're working for the right people?"

  "We're not working for them," Raxa said. "We're working for your master. And if these creeps don't do what he wants, I'll bet you as much silver as you can fit in your mouth that they'll wind up just as dead as their king."

  ~

  They got their orders the next morning. The Drakebane had refused to meet the priests of Bressel himself, but had offered to send his lieutenant in his stead. The meet would take place that night, at the Exchange.

  Bilton rousted them as the Odeleon's bells announced they had two hours until the meet. Like the night before, the dark streets seemed to be waiting for something. After the rage and chaos of the first few nights of the Drakebane's takeover, this new silence felt sinister.

  The Exchange was a fat round building five stories high and wide enough to take up most of the block. Prior to being closed down by the takeover, it had been used as a central locale to trade currencies, sell and swap excess cargo, and seek investment in various shipping ventures. Most of its top was flat, but two strips of peaked roof ran down its center.

  Ordon Adaine wasn't there yet. Raxa didn't know if he was going to be. Bilton seemed to relish being top dog again, rattling off orders about who was to stand sentry where. He assigned Raxa and Sorrowen to an intersection a block away.

  Not surprising. They were newcomers, mercenaries. Nobody was going to post them at Adaine's side during the negotiations, or blustering session, or whatever it was that was supposed to take place that night. After all, Raxa had only used her knife to talk their way into the Golden Hammer a few days ago, and they'd only just been transferred to Bilton's command.

  But being posted down the street would run directly counter to the plan of learning what was going on and how to deal with the two sides going forward.

  She waited for Bilton to finish, then approached him with a half bow, hoping to soften up his ego. "Lord B—"

  "You have your orders," he said. "I suggest you perform them."

  "Yes, my lord." She drew closer, dropping her voice and glancing around to make sure no one could hear them. "But I've seen a flaw. And the only thing I fear more than violating your orders is seeing our people get hurt because I was too cowardly to speak up."

  "A commander served by cowards won't command for long," Bilton said, sounding like he was quoting someone, and also that he was reluctant to agree with her. "Speak up. And be quick about it."

  "Nearly every avenue of danger is covered. All except for the roof."

  He sneered at her. "That's because no one can get to it, you Gaskan simpleton."

  "I can, sir. And if I can climb up to it, then maybe the Drakebane's soldiers can, too."


  Bilton glanced at the sheer sides of the building, his face darkening. "I see no scaffolds, ladders, or staircases. You're so certain you can reach the peak?"

  "I am. Because I've spent most of my life skulking across roofs to rob people like you and running back across them to escape people like your soldiers." She gave her little bow again. "My lord."

  The corner of his mouth and eye twitched. "If you can attain the roof, I will take it as proof of the wisdom of your counsel. But if you cannot make it, I'll have you flogged and chained for false boasts. Hurry on with you."

  She turned away, letting herself grin, only to drop it immediately when she realized there was no way Sorrowen was going to be able to follow her to the top. Well, either he could find a way to magic himself up, or he could stay down in the street.

  Once she was right up against the walls of the Exchange, she could see the source of Bilton's scorn. The walls were gray granite, sanded smooth. There were a few windows and arches, but much fewer than your average manor or tenement. She stepped back, examining the whole for routes up.

  There weren't any. Not without a lot of special gear she didn't have. If she went to Bilton for it, the only thing he'd give her was a lashing. She swore, then swore again. She had a way—or thought she did; she'd never had to use it before—but if she messed it up, she'd be praying she'd opted for the whip instead.

  She bounced on the balls of her feet and jogged toward the wall. Nearing it, she picked up speed, then launched herself upward. Her outstretched hand found the edge of a window sill. She grabbed it, flattened herself against the wall like a lizard, and pulled herself up.

  The arch above her was close enough she didn't even have to stand on her toes to reach it. No sweat. The window after that was high enough she had to jump, which always got the heart dancing, but she'd made jumps scores of times, and pulled it off without a hitch. The next twenty feet looked impossible, but she'd learned to read walls the way monks read their folios, and she was soon forty feet in the air.

  Two-thirds of the way up, there was just nowhere else to go.