Starless

by Jacqueline Carey

  Before us …

  The pit yawned, magma seething. Far below us, flaming gouts rose and fell, splashing and returning to molten formlessness. All around us rose the walls of the hollow mountain, and high above us were the starless skies, lit with the light of three moons.

  We ranged ourselves along the ledge.

  My useless weapons sheathed, I touched the pouch strung around my neck containing the Barren Teardrop; the seed of ending that had been lodged in my flesh for so long. Such a small thing on which our fates depended.

  “Miasmus!” Jahno cried. “We are here!”

  For a moment there was nothing; and then there was laughter, deep and dark and bitter, arising all around us and thrumming through our bones. On the walls surrounding us, stones and pebbles cascaded as a series of four glowing eyes blinked open, roiling with magma. An enormous round mouth like that of a lamprey, ringed with row upon row of teeth, emerged from the lava, swaying above it.

  “The defenders of the four quarters.” Miasmus’s voice reverberated all around us, dripping with contempt. “Such a pathetic lot my father Zar sends against me at the end of the world! How pathetic that my brothers and sisters cannot fight their own battles, but must send these puny children of theirs!”

  My ears hurt.

  Against the god, I felt small and impotent. How were we to defeat a living mountain?

  “We are not here to do battle with you,” Jahno said. “We are here to usher in a new order.”

  Again, that dark, bitter laughter shook the inner walls of the volcanic hollow, seeming to come from nowhere and everywhere. “You understand nothing, mortal! My mother shrouded me in darkness. My brothers and sisters raised their hands against our father; and for their sins he cast me down.” Eyes blazed all around us. “I want them to suffer!”

  The word broke over us like one of Tarrok’s thunderclaps, the very air trembling at Miasmus’s rage.

  Let your mind be like the eye of a hawk …

  I willed my thoughts to stillness.

  Somehow, Miasmus must be induced to swallow the seed of ending. I had no powers of persuasion. I could only assess what I could do. I gauged the distance to the swaying lamprey-mouth of the Risen Maw, trying to determine if I could hurl the Teardrop into its gullet.

  No. It was too far.

  I peered over the ledge. If I’d had a rope twenty times longer than the paltry length tied around my waist, I might be able to descend far enough, if the forge-breath of the lava didn’t kill me first. But I had no such thing. I needed another plan.

  Essee was speaking.

  “… take your rightful place in the heavens?” Jahno translated for her. It was for our benefit, not the god’s; it was a scholar’s reflex and I was not even sure he was aware he was doing it. Even so, he caught something of her sympathetic tone. “For if we understand rightly, that is the truth of the gift we offer you.”

  “No.”

  A single syllable, cold and dark, falling like a stone and shattering whatever frail hope we held.

  The lava far below us surged and flared in accordance with Miasmus’s mood; the basalt walls expanded and contracted in harsh pants. “Understand this, defenders of the four quarters. My army is on the march. Trask and Kerreman and Yaltha have fallen; as we speak, Tukkan falls. Elsewhere, my firstborn children, my spiders, spread my gospel, and your puny folk turn against one another. But in time, all will fall. All will die.” Its voice rose to a crescendo. “The earth and seas will die beneath the trampling feet of my army; all will become death and decay and barrenness. My brothers and sisters will be left alone, alone as I have always been, to mourn the loss of all that they held dear beneath the starless skies,” Miasmus thundered, and the walls shook around us, rocks showering down. “Nim the Bright Moon and Shahal the Dark and my fickle mother Eshen the Wandering may join my arrogant father Zar the Sun to gaze down upon the devastation I have wrought and know regret!”

  The silence that followed his soliloquy was deafening. Into it, Essee gave a low, plaintive whistle, asking a simple question. “But will it make you happy?” Jahno translated in a soft murmur.

  On the walls, Miasmus’s glowing eyes regarded her, and somehow for all their molten glow, their gaze was cold; cold and cruel. Its gaze shifted to take in all of us in our collective impotence. “Shall I tell you what will make me happy?” the god inquired with malice. “Your despair.”

  The living wall behind Essee shifted. A long, vertical ridge peeled loose and lifted, becoming a clawed limb. Before any of us could react—even me, even Lirios—it grasped Essee around the torso and flung her into the pit. Her sharp trill of sudden terror was cut short as the lamprey-mouth of the Risen Maw shot into the air to devour her in a single gulp.

  There was another silence, this one stunned. Evene began to weep quietly and hopelessly.

  Let your mind be like the eye of a hawk.

  Clarity descended upon me.

  “… was your conscience, was she not?” Miasmus was saying in a taunting voice, for all the world like a cruel child lashing out. “Shall I send her back to you, risen and returned, and force you to slay her? Yes, I think I shall.”

  Kindness and love would be needed, the Green Mother had said on Papa-ka-hondras, but all the gifts of Papa-ka-hondras were double-edged. I think among us only Essee had a heart vast enough to find within it love and compassion for this mad god, this neglected vengeful god-child who sought to destroy the world, who would torment us here at the end of all things like a mortal child pulling wings from flies for mere sport. And Miasmus had repaid her with cruel death; death and further perversion yet to come. But Essee’s unwitting sacrifice had shown me what must be done.

  Pahrkun’s wind blew through me, steady and sure. I backed up a few steps to get a running start. It would take a prodigious leap to gain the pit and the Risen Maw within it, but then, I was a prodigious leaper.

  Zariya’s head swung around, her dark eyes wide with horror. She knew my mind; she knew my heart better than I did.

  “I am sorry,” I said to her; and I was so very sorry. Sorry for the opportunities wasted, sorry for the dishonesty and the secrets withheld, sorry beyond words that here at the end of the world, honor beyond honor demanded that I leave her. “I’m so sorry. Just be ready, my soul’s twin.”

  Her eyes filling with tears, my lion-hearted princess nodded her understanding. Leaning one-handed on her canes, she reached for the remaining handful of rhamanthus seeds.

  The others were turning, slower than Zariya to grasp what was happening, to grasp my intention.

  In the fiery pit, the gullet of the Risen Maw belched forth a lone figure, depositing it on the ledge below us.

  It began to climb.

  Essee.

  Kooie let out a low moan of anguish, and Jahno averted his gaze.

  I took a deep breath, the gift of Ishfahel the Gentle Rain yet coursing through my veins, and gathered myself.

  In the periphery of my vision, there was a darting motion. “For my queen!” Lirios shouted, his voice high and fierce and wild as he snatched the pouch containing the Barren Teardrop from around my neck, yanking it hard enough to break the thong and send me staggering to one knee. “For my queen!”

  “No!” The shout left my throat raw, but it was too late.

  One step, two, three; Lirios launched himself from the ledge, his narrow sword in his right hand and the leather pouch clutched tight in his left. The mayfly was a prodigious leaper, too. For a moment it seemed he hung in the air, a shining figure, his translucent wings spread wide. And then he fell, still shining; shining like the vision of a star falling from the heavens, his golden hair catching fire and his wings shriveling in the heat.

  Below us the Risen Maw of Miasmus dilated, the round opening lined with row upon row of teeth. Swaying, striking like a snake, it snatched Lirios in mid-fall, tossing him into its gullet and swallowing him whole; swallowing the seed of ending he clutched in his left fist.

  Later, I would gr
ieve.

  Now, I leapt to my feet. “Zariya! Now!”

  Zariya raised her fist, golden traceries alight, her expression set with grim fury. Blue-white lightning forked from her fist in all directions, striking the walls around us with their watching eyes, striking the swaying trunk of the Risen Maw, crackling into the starless sky above us.

  Oh, my brothers and sisters …

  Lightning laced the rock, lightning laced the lava; here at the end of the world, the lightning of Anamuht the Purging Fire was turned loose. The seed of ending met the seeds of beginning. Wind and fire, life and death. These were the gifts we carried, Sun-Blessed and shadow.

  There was a sound.

  A wail, call it; rising and rising and rising, a wail of agony. Miasmus was dying or ending. The walls of the volcanic hollow began tumbling around us, the ledge crumbling beneath our feet.

  “Fall back!” I shouted, thrusting Zariya behind me. “Everyone! Fall back and flee this place!”

  It was easier said than done.

  Kooie was closest to the tunnel. He slung one arm around Zariya and began hauling her by sheer force, her feet dragging; Tliksee hurried to help him. Evene extended her hand to me, her face rigid with terror as the rocks gave way beneath her, and behind her, Jahno gave a shout of alarm and vanished from my sight.

  I lunged to catch Evene’s hand and only barely succeeded, our fingertips curved like hooks. I could feel her slipping. There was no time to think. I took one step closer to the crumbling ledge, loose rocks sliding under my feet, and grabbed her wrist with my other hand, yanking her to safety. “Go!”

  She stumbled past me in a daze, cradling her right arm.

  Jahno.

  I had to look, and as impossible as it seemed, our Seeker had not yet plunged to his death. He dangled from the crumbling ledge, knuckles ashen, his hands shifting in an ongoing effort to maintain purchase on the rock eroding beneath them. I whipped the length of rope from around my waist. Lying on my belly, I managed to pass it beneath his arms, gathering both ends in my hands and rising.

  I had scarce gained my feet when another great section of ledge gave way, forcing me to scramble backward. There was no time to brace for the impact of Jahno’s full weight on the rope.

  It nearly dragged me down with him, but stubbornness and rage fueled my determination. I tightened my grip on the rope, set my feet, and continued to work my way backward, racing the crumbling rock. I hauled Jahno out of the abyss, bruised and battered, but alive.

  With the living mountain groaning and shaking itself to pieces around us, we raced after the others, dodging falling rocks. Our company had passed through the aperture before us, all save Vironesh, who stood slumped against the wall of the tunnel, his sword held loosely in his right hand, his left pressed to his belly. Crumbling corpses littered the ground at his feet.

  I shoved Jahno toward the egress, and he staggered out. “The risen dead?” I gasped at my mentor. “Do they yet await us?”

  Vironesh gave me a smile of surprising peace. “No, they have turned to dust and decay. I held them off long enough for you to succeed, little brother; and against all odds, it seems you have done so. But I fear I am done for.”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  He did not protest as I looped his arms around my neck, only grunted with pain as I wriggled through the aperture, the bulk of his weight draped over my back.

  Down …

  Down …

  Down …

  The ground trembled beneath our feet. The gorge we had traversed was clogged with desiccated corpses. We tripped and stumbled over them as we descended the slope. I struggled under Vironesh’s increasingly slack weight, my steps coming hard, taking comfort from the sight of Zariya in the vanguard before me, swaying in the sling that Kooie and Tliksee had retrieved in the course of their flight.

  Behind us, Miasmus’s wail of anguish rose, spiraling higher and higher into the starless sky.

  Above us, the three moons moved into conjunction: Nim the Bright, Shahal the Dark, and Eshen the Wandering, the mothers of all of creation, all of them full and shining here at the end of the world.

  We gained the plain, staggering a distance away from the mountain. The Elehuddin released Zariya, who braced herself on the canes she had somehow retained on our flight. I lowered Vironesh to the ground.

  The jagged cracks of lightning ran all through the mountain now. Overhead, a thousand beams of light shot downward and outward from the conjoined moons, bright and milky against the night sky, mottled with traces of red and blue. One plunged into the depths of the hollow mountain, and in that instant, the endless rising note of Miasmus’s anguish changed to something altogether different, a shimmering sound of exultant crystalline purity.

  The living mountain exploded into the sky.

  I flung myself over Zariya without thinking, bearing her down to the corpse-littered ground and covering her body with my own. When the hail of debris I anticipated failed to fall, I stole a glance over my shoulder. What I saw made me roll onto my knees and stare, Zariya sitting upright beside me.

  A transformed Miasmus was ascending into the heavens. The shattered chunks of the living mountain coalesced into something different, an immense being of surpassing darkness and unbearable brightness, such brightness that I had to shield my eyes with my hand to gaze upon it.

  “Look,” Jahno said in a hushed whisper, pointing toward the east.

  It was not only Miasmus.

  All the children of heaven were ascending, a thousand thousand points of light rising into the night sky, shedding their inhuman immortal forms shaped by sea and earth, desert and forest, temple and mountain and tree, and all the myriad creatures that dwelled beneath the starless skies to become something other, brilliant and dark, terrifying and incomprehensible. The chiming note of Miasmus’s ascendance became a vast chorus of soul-aching beauty.

  Tears stung my eyes at the sheer beauty of it; and at the unfairness, too. Lirios, earnest Lirios, had shone like a star as he fell. For failing to destroy the world, Miasmus was rewarded with a homecoming to the heavens from which he had been unjustly banished.

  But the minds of the gods were unknowable. Perhaps it was unfair; or perhaps it was fitting in a way that none of us puny mortals, we puny mortals who had fought the children of heaven’s battle for them—for it had been a battle—and won, could comprehend. All we could do was watch and wonder.

  Beside me, Zariya slid her hand into mine.

  I squeezed it in silent reply.

  Together, we wept for those who had paid the cost for this victory: for Lirios; for valiant Eeeio and stalwart Tarrok, who had given his last breath; and for the peaceable Elehuddin, and most especially Essee. We wept for those who had passed before them, for the dead lands and the dying seas, and for the thousands upon thousands of victims whose names we would never know.

  Above us, the stars shone brightly in the night sky.

  FIFTY-SEVEN

  Vironesh died at dawn.

  All of us knew it before the end. His injuries were too numerous and he had lost too much blood to survive.

  “Khai.” He whispered my name with an affection I’d never heard before, beckoning me to his side with a feeble gesture. “Do not grieve for me, little brother. You granted me a gift I never thought to find.”

  I nodded. “Redemption.”

  His eyes closed, a faint smile curving his lips. “Exactly.”

  Soon afterward, his breathing ceased.

  “What do we do now?” Evene asked, glancing around. The world had not ended after all, but for us, it might as well have. We were battered and exhausted, grief-stricken and diminished, stranded on a barren isle amidst dead seas in a world bereft of gods.

  Kooie heaved himself to his feet and let out a low, inquiring whistle. When there was no reply, he whistled a sharper series of notes that carried across the corpse-cluttered landscape.

  At length there came a faint trill in distant reply.

  Aiiiaii h
ad not deserted us.

  Kooie bared his pointed teeth in a grin, clicking and signing. We go home.

  Evene gazed at him with dull eyes. “And where is that?”

  I wondered, too.

  Jahno roused himself. “We do not know how we will find this changed world, and we can only pray that there is enough of Ishfahel’s gift remaining to sustain us for long enough to escape the dead seas.” He exchanged glances with Kooie and Tliksee, who signed agreement. “But of this I am sure. You are family, all of you. There will always be a home for you on Elehud.”

  “Thank you, my darling.” Zariya pushed disheveled braids back from her face. The golden traceries on her right hand and forearm had turned silver-bright. “Let us first see if we might survive this bitter victory.”

  I had not counted the toll of our day-long battle. Now Pahrkun’s wind no longer blew through me, nor did I know if it ever would again. Now my mortal flesh and bone and muscle felt the price of what I had done.

  I hurt.

  I hurt everywhere.

  But so did we all, and we were alive. So we trudged uncomplaining, the brittle corpses of the unwilling risen dead crumbling under our feet, Zariya suffering herself to be carried in the sling, all of us taking turns at the dual yoke. It took us the better part of a day, but there was no urgency. The battle was over.

  With Aiiiaii’s assistance, we boarded the ship. We tended to our myriad injuries and partook of the sustaining water of Ishfahel the Gentle Rain. After Aiiiaii had drunk her dipperful, the sea-wyrm took up both bits in her jaws and began towing the ship toward the east.

  The black basalt shores of the isle of Miasmus receded behind us. The world had not ended, and we were journeying toward that which remained.

  Slowly, slowly, we traversed the dead seas, Aiiiaii performing the heroic work of two. Our wounds began to knit, our aching bodies to heal.

  Our hearts were another matter.

  Of all the losses we had endured, it was Lirios’s death that affected me the most, for I felt he had died in my place. I was Zariya’s shadow, trained from birth to defend my Sun-Blessed charge. I had caught the hawk’s feather in my fist, but it was the mayfly who had taken the sacrifice upon himself. I heard his final words ringing in my ears, and saw him shining as he fell, his hair streaming flames and his wings, his useless, lovely wings, shriveling into nothingness.