The Stars Asunder: A New Novel of the Mageworlds (9 page)
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Authors: Debra Doyle,James D. Macdonald
BOOK: The Stars Asunder: A New Novel of the Mageworlds
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Del thought of spending the remainder of his holiday in the Wide Hills district, navigating with map and compass from landmark to landmark, but if he was going to make it back to Arvedan on foot—as he had, somewhat irrationally, promised himself that he would—he didn’t have the time. He estimated that he could spend one last night sleeping out in the hills before turning back.
Maybe, he thought, he could explore the Wide Hills roving-trails during next year’s holidays. It would give him something to look forward to while he was studying to become a banker or a legalist or a city resources developer.
His last campsite in the district was a small, unimproved patch of level ground high up on a long hillside overlooking a rolling plain. He pitched his tent, and boiled enough water over his pocket-stove to cook a packet of dried noodles and steep a cup of
uffa.
That done, he should have crawled into his sleep-sack and rested for tomorrow—but tonight, for some reason, he was wakeful. He sat cross-legged on the ground next to his extinguished pocket-stove, and looked out at the landscape and the evening sky.
uffa.
That done, he should have crawled into his sleep-sack and rested for tomorrow—but tonight, for some reason, he was wakeful. He sat cross-legged on the ground next to his extinguished pocket-stove, and looked out at the landscape and the evening sky.
The plain below him was largely empty, marked into fields for crops or grazing, and divided by the darker and lighter lines of paved and unpaved roads. Demaizen Town, which he had hiked through yesterday, lay somewhere just below the horizon to the south and east. The only habitation in view was a stone manor house, identified on his map as the Old Hall, and marked by the symbol for a landmark building in disused or unoccupied condition.
The sun went down and the sky changed from pale slate blue to a purpler velvet, and then to the dark blue-black of early summer night. The stars came out, great shoals and drifts of them—the same stars he’d seen every night during the past few weeks, but more dazzling tonight, somehow, and more numerous. When the silver lines appeared and began to coil and twist among them, he thought at first that he was watching an auroral display, of the sort that he’d read about in school but never seen.
He watched, fascinated, as the display grew brighter and more intense. Then he saw that the lines of silver were not in the sky alone, but curving and looping across the plain below him—a silver tracery, like writing in some ancient and esoteric script. The lines branched and spread and came reaching up the hillside and out toward the horizon, until he sat in the middle of a tangled network of silver.
This,
he thought, still dazed by the beauty of it all,
isn’t the aurora.
he thought, still dazed by the beauty of it all,
isn’t the aurora.
One of the cords began to shine still more brightly, as if his realization had given it a kind of life. The quality of its glowing substance altered slightly, so that it seemed to shimmer with a rainbow iridescence, and he found that he could pick out its peculiar shifting colors no matter where it went in the pattern of light that now surrounded him.
He was seized by the unshakable conviction that this rainbow line was, in some fashion, his. He rose from where he had been sitting, and followed the glowing thread down the long hill and out onto the plain.
It led him onward, wrapped and entwined in silvery light, from dusk almost to midnight, across the open fields and down the deserted roads until he came to the door of the Old Hall. He pulled on the rope for the doorbell, and listened as footsteps came to answer the deep metallic note.
The door of the Hall opened. The stocky, dark-haired woman who stood on the threshold wore a black wooden staff at her belt. For a moment he thought that it was a rover’s cudgel, and that she was only a summer vagabond like himself. Then he looked again at the way the silver cords wreathed around her where she stood, and knew that she was a Mage—and that he, who had never come any closer to the Circle in Arvedan than it took to wish them well at Solstice and Year’s-end—had followed the eiran to Demaizen Old Hall so that he might become a Mage as well.
Year 1118 E. R.
ERAASI: HANILAT STARPORT
I
n the year 1118, Arekhon sus-Khalgath’s fleet-apprenticeship came to an end, and he returned to his family’s house in Hanilat. After two years living in prentice-berthing on
Ribbon-of Starlight,
‘Rekhe found the sus-Peledaen town house in Hanilat to be echoing and empty by comparison. The spacious building was occupied in this generation only by his brother Natelth and his sister Isayana—both of them considerably older than he was—and by the aiketen that Isayana built and instructed. At the moment, as ’Rekhe stood in the corridor outside of Natelth’s study, there wasn’t even an aiketh to keep him company. He was, for almost the first time in months, completely alone.
n the year 1118, Arekhon sus-Khalgath’s fleet-apprenticeship came to an end, and he returned to his family’s house in Hanilat. After two years living in prentice-berthing on
Ribbon-of Starlight,
‘Rekhe found the sus-Peledaen town house in Hanilat to be echoing and empty by comparison. The spacious building was occupied in this generation only by his brother Natelth and his sister Isayana—both of them considerably older than he was—and by the aiketen that Isayana built and instructed. At the moment, as ’Rekhe stood in the corridor outside of Natelth’s study, there wasn’t even an aiketh to keep him company. He was, for almost the first time in months, completely alone.
He knocked on the door. Natelth’s voice, muffled by the thick wood, said, “Come in.”
’Rekhe obeyed. The room he entered was furnished in dark, polished wood—everything solid and proper, like Natelth himself. A deep bay window looked out over the streets of Hanilat as they sloped away toward the port.
In times past, the head of the sus-Peledaen could have overseen the landing field from that window, and the shipyard where the fleet-family’s star-going vessels took shape within their great metal cradles. These days the office towers of Hanilat’s business district blocked the view, and most of the new construction took place in orbital facilities, but Natelth kept the room’s arrangements as he had found them, out of respect for tradition.
Two armchairs and an
uffa
table stood in the window alcove, but they were unoccupied and likely to remain that way—for this meeting, Natelth sat behind his desk with a thick folder lying on the desktop in front of him. ’Rekhe suspected that the folder held the hardcopy records of his time with the fleet; Natelth disliked posturing too much for him to be toying with somebody else’s papers just for the effect.
uffa
table stood in the window alcove, but they were unoccupied and likely to remain that way—for this meeting, Natelth sat behind his desk with a thick folder lying on the desktop in front of him. ’Rekhe suspected that the folder held the hardcopy records of his time with the fleet; Natelth disliked posturing too much for him to be toying with somebody else’s papers just for the effect.
“Allow me to commend you,” Natelth said formally, “on the successful completion of your prentice-voyage. The family is pleased to have you back with us.” He paused and looked at ’Rekhe gravely over the closed folder. “We need to devote some thought to your future career. Prentice-master Lanar of the
Ribbon
speaks highly of you—your voyage was an excellent one by anybody’s standards—and Captain syn-Avran states that he would be willing to advance you to Navigator-Tertiary on merit alone, regardless of your family.”
Ribbon
speaks highly of you—your voyage was an excellent one by anybody’s standards—and Captain syn-Avran states that he would be willing to advance you to Navigator-Tertiary on merit alone, regardless of your family.”
“I’m honored,” ’Rekhe said.
“You should be. Lanar, in particular, has been quite critical in years past of inner-family scions who turn out, in his words, to be a dead waste of an apprentice billet.”
There was a distinct sour note in Natelth’s voice on the last phrase. ‘Rekhe wondered if, perhaps, his brother had once encountered the rough side of Lanar’s tongue himself. Surely not … thought Lanar was old enough …’Rekhe found the possibility amusing, and strove with some difficulty to keep his thoughts from showing on his face.
“It was the Ildaon thing,” he said, “with sus-Dariv’s
Path-Lined-withFlowers.
But that was mostly luck.”
Path-Lined-withFlowers.
But that was mostly luck.”
Natelth shook his head. “I’d call it keen ears and quick thinking, if the report is true, but I won’t deny that syn-Avran believes you’re a lucky man. Another reason he wants to advance you, in fact.”
That was the opening that ’Rekhe had hoped for. “If I’m a luck-maker, then I belong with the Circles, not on shipboard. Wild luck is dangerous.”
Natelth looked resigned. “You haven’t changed your mind, then.”
“We had an agreement,” ‘Rekhe pointed out. “Do my duty, make my ’prentice-voyage, and I could join a Circle with your good will and free permission.”
“I’d hoped that the time with the fleet would change your mind on the subject.”
“I’m afraid not,” ’Rekhe said. “It’s not the fault of anybody in the fleet—if I weren’t going to the Circles, I’d take Captain syn-Avran’s advancement and be happy to do it.”
“I understand,” said Natelth, though ’Rekhe didn’t think he really did. “syn-Avran’s loss will have to be the fleet-Circle’s gain.”
“Ah … no. I don’t think that would be a good idea.” This was going to be the tricky part; ’Rekhe would have to be very careful. “Going to the fleet-Circle, I mean.”
Natelth frowned. “Why not? You’ve trained with them before, and at least that way you’ll still be in the family.”
“That’s the problem,” ’Rekhe said. “I
am
in the family. Too much in the family; it wouldn’t be fair to the rest of the Circle, having me around.”
am
in the family. Too much in the family; it wouldn’t be fair to the rest of the Circle, having me around.”
“Hmph.” Natelth shoved the folder aside and looked at ’Rekhe. “Disappointing, but I can see your reasoning. Do you have another Circle in mind, then? Just so long as you don’t go to another of the fleet-families …”
“You know I wouldn’t do that. I’ll look around; there are always new Circles forming and old Circles needing to fill a place.”
As the oldest child of his family’s senior line, Kiefen Diasul was supposed to study trade and manufacturing and the keeping of accounts, the better to oversee his family’s mercantile interests. To the delight of his siblings and several cousins, however, Kief had adamantly refused to learn any of those things. He attached himself instead to the Institute of Higher and Extended Schooling in Hanilat, where he worked in the stargazers’ disciplines; and he left his family altars for the workings of the Mages.
The Circle he joined was a quiet one, associated with the Hanilat Institute and drawing most of its members from the students and faculty. The school grounds and buildings were quiet, and the local population was more-or-less well behaved. The Institute Circle had not needed to perform a great working for more than a decade, a fact which Kief found reassuring.
It was true that he had the Mage’s gift—he could see the
eiran
glowing like silver threads, and could act in concert with the Circle to make the threads weave according to his desire—but he had no urge either toward heroics or toward changing the shape of the universe. He was content to help perform the small rituals that kept the Institute happy and secure, at the same time as he used the school’s massive telescope and its equally massive multiple-node house-mind to watch the distant stars.
eiran
glowing like silver threads, and could act in concert with the Circle to make the threads weave according to his desire—but he had no urge either toward heroics or toward changing the shape of the universe. He was content to help perform the small rituals that kept the Institute happy and secure, at the same time as he used the school’s massive telescope and its equally massive multiple-node house-mind to watch the distant stars.
The stars, in the end, were his undoing.
From his first years with the Institute onward, he had studied the problem of interstellar navigation. The star charts used by the fleet-families, he would admit when forced to be polite, were marvels of practical utility. They combined observed data from known locations with markers left by Void-walking Mages to produce a tool upon which hundreds of spacefarers daily wagered their lives and fortunes. A good enough tool, and safe enough … but Kief nevertheless found it, as an intellectual construct, aesthetically displeasing.
“There’s no predictability,” he complained, not for the first time, to the fellow student who shared his cramped office space at the Institute. “Until some Void-walker makes it there and back, we don’t have a marker. And if we don’t have a marker, we can’t send a ship. And if we can’t send a ship, we don’t have observed data … and if we don’t have observed data, then the points on a star chart might as well be random imaging artifacts for all the truth in them.”
His office-mate, Ayil syn-Arvedan—whose own field of interest was the less emotionally taxing question of interstellar gas clouds—shook her head. “I’ll grant you that it’s not elegant—”
“Elegance doesn’t come anywhere near it,” he cut in. “If logical processes were pieces of string, this one would be a mended bootlace.”
“—but it works.”
“So does the bootlace, if you don’t pull on it too hard.”
He pushed his chair back from a desk covered with sheets of printout material, stacks of stiff plastic charts, a combined chart-reader and house-mind interface, and a half-dozen empty paper cups. Kiefen Diasul was tall and gangling, with long, light-brown curls already turning an early grey, and an abundance of nervous energy that expressed itself in quick, jerky motion. The cramped, windowless office didn’t give him much room to pace, but he used all the room that he had, moving restlessly from the desk to the bookshelves to the
uffa
pot on its ceramic heater.
uffa
pot on its ceramic heater.
He pulled down another paper cup from the dispenser and filled it with the pale yellow liquid. It was lukewarm, as usual. “There should be a way to make the charts give us hard numbers and not just probabilities … hard enough numbers that we can use the charts to reach places we haven’t yet been.”
Ayil looked at him as if he had produced the last piece of an especially intriguing puzzle. “That’s the important part for you, isn’t it—the ‘never been before’ thing?”
“Yes,” he admitted. “It’s hard for some people to understand. You … your family is—what?”
“Country,” she said. “Land.”
“Then they wouldn’t know. And the City-professionals … they don’t know either. But the Diasul are traders and manufacturers, and we come up against it all the time.”
“Up against what?”
Kief made an impatient gesture. “How slow it all is,” he said. “So many stars—so many
planets,
if we only knew how to reach them! So many worlds waiting for trade. And the fleet-families own them all.”
planets,
if we only knew how to reach them! So many worlds waiting for trade. And the fleet-families own them all.”
“Not really,” she said.
He gave her a scornful glance. “They own the charts and the routes and the ships, which amounts to the same thing. But that’s not the worst of it. They own all the Void-walkers, too.”
Ayil blinked, startled. “I didn’t know that. I thought—”
“—that the Circles did their work for its own sake?” He was pacing in earnest now, his paper cup of
uffa
forgotten on a corner shelf. “Once, maybe, but not any more. The only Circles that do serious exploration are the ones attached to the fleet-families, and the fleet-families don’t want new worlds opening up faster than they have ships to trade with them … and nobody designs ships or builds ships or lifts ships except the fleet-families. So it’s slow, too slow. Not enough trade, not enough real data coming in to make the charts useful for anybody outside the families. It’s like choking to death when you know the room is full of air.”
uffa
forgotten on a corner shelf. “Once, maybe, but not any more. The only Circles that do serious exploration are the ones attached to the fleet-families, and the fleet-families don’t want new worlds opening up faster than they have ships to trade with them … and nobody designs ships or builds ships or lifts ships except the fleet-families. So it’s slow, too slow. Not enough trade, not enough real data coming in to make the charts useful for anybody outside the families. It’s like choking to death when you know the room is full of air.”
Ayil was undiscouraged by his tirade. “I was going to say, I thought there were still independent Circles doing work like that.”
“Name one.”
“Demaizen,” she said. “My brother Del is working there, and he says that Garrod—”
Kief halted in his pacing. “Garrod.”
He’d heard the name before—had, in fact, more than once regretted coming to the Institute too late to talk with the man who bore it. Garrod syn-Aigal had been the Institute Circle’s last Void-walker, with a reputation that had not faded in the years since he left the Institute and took the Second of the Circle along with him.
“This Demaizen,” Kief demanded. “Where is it?”
“In the country,” she said, and added, before he could expostulate further, “I have the address.”
‘Rekhe met with Elaeli Inadi on the third morning after the end of their prentice-voyage. His first day back in Hanilat had been filled with all the rituals of homecoming: The greetings and exclamations about his increased height and strength and presumable maturity, the dutiful presentation of flowers and incense at the family altars, the welcoming feast. Isayana had instructed the kitchen
-aiketen
in the identity and preparation of all his favorite dishes, and ’Rekhe had been obliged to eat heartily.
-aiketen
in the identity and preparation of all his favorite dishes, and ’Rekhe had been obliged to eat heartily.
On the second day had come the discussion with Natelth. By the time that bit of family business was over, Elaeli had packed up her gear and left
Ribbon-of Starlight.
It took ’Rekhe most of the afternoon and evening to find her again, and to set up a rendezvous at the sculpture fountain outside the Five Street transit hub.
Ribbon-of Starlight.
It took ’Rekhe most of the afternoon and evening to find her again, and to set up a rendezvous at the sculpture fountain outside the Five Street transit hub.
‘Rekhe arrived at the meeting place early, but Elaeli was already there, sitting on a stone bench and watching fresh water rise up from the pool and tumble downward over the fountain’s tall abstract shapes of steel and bronze. Unlike ’Rekhe, she still wore the sus-Peledaen blue and crimson, now with the piping and emblems of a Pilot-Tertiary.
He sat down beside her on the bench and put an arm around her. She leaned her head against his shoulder, and they sat that way for several minutes without speaking, while the rented groundcars came and went in the lot across the plaza, and the city busses rumbled up to the curbside, disgorged their passengers, and moved on.
“How did it go?” she said at last.
“Natelth? Better than I’d hoped, actually.”
She chuckled, a warm throaty sound. “You weren’t really expecting your brother to order you into the fleet, were you?”
“Mmh,” ’Rekhe said. “Natelth’s stubborn if you hit him wrong. If he’d taken it into his head that I was crossing him outright …”
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