The Place Where the Star Used to Be

The Place Where the Star Used to Be

By the end of their first month at the High Street Stable the company had begun to feel more energetic and, with the additional clothing, quite comfortable in their mountain hideaway. They had established a rotation for cooking and cleaning. They were becoming familiar with their neighbourhood, though usually only one at a time unless it was dark. It had been two weeks since the Rider Network was formed and now they had established a safe system of communication thanks to a few of Drue’s close rider friends. The mountain seclusion was going well for all, all except for Alster. One morning, Tajan found a cluster of silver leaves growing beside a warm water channel outside the stable. She crouched to touch them, then remembered enough of Alster’s lectures not to.

“Alster,” she called inside. “This plant has fur on its leaves.”

“Most likely an adaptation of insulation against frost.”

He did not look up from fastening his pack.

“What is it called?”

“I don’t know.”

Tajan waited.

He did not come to see.

On another occasion, Blena returned from the market with three seed pods, a twisted root and a bundle of dried red flowers.

“Rare plants,” she announced, placing them before him.

Alster looked at the collection.

“The root is a tree turnip variant.”

“It cost me two gold piece cuts.”

“Then it is an expensive variant, but still just a turnip.”

“The woman said it grows only in volcanic earth.”

“Most things sold here grow in volcanic earth.”

Blena picked up a seed pod. “This?”

“Er... a cooking herb.”

“Rare?”

“No.”

“Important?”

“To the person cooking with it.”

Blena pushed the dried flowers towards him. “These are medicinal.”

Alster glanced at them. “They are dyed grass.”

Blena examined the red colour left by the grass on her glove.

“This city is rubbing me the wrong way.”

“That was terrible,” Tajan said through a moan.

“I know. The joke just dyed.”

“She is getting worse. Someone call the healer. I think she has altitude sickness.” Tajan smiled and looked at Alster, but he could manage only a closed, artificial smile. They tried less gently after that.

Drue asked a local grower to show them the terrace gardens. Kaelen bought a packet of seeds whose seller claimed they flowered only once every twelve years. Anderix took mineral readings from the soil and presented Alster with a table comparing heat retention at six elevations. All to no effect.

In that same week Alster sat at the cooking table with his elbows on the table and his head propped up by his open hands. He finally had a folded message that had arrived via rider. It was the latest word received from the Vireilian Bloomlands: Alfer had not returned.

It was Kaelen’s turn to prepare the meal, and he put the ingredients on the table. “I see you got news.” Alster didn’t respond. Before the message, there had at least been something, a grunt or a facile reply. Kaelen’s prompt yielded nothing.

“We know this is difficult.”

“Do you?” Alster asked.

“We know you are worried.”

“Then why does everyone keep bringing me plants?”

Tajan sat on the step beneath the shelf. “Because you like plants.”

“My brother is still missing.”

“We know.”

“No. You know the sentence. You don’t know where he is. You don’t know whether the Guardians took him. You don’t know if he is hurt. You don’t know if he was cast in a river while we admire flowers on a mountain.”

Tajan lowered her eyes.

Blena was sharpening a blade and set the steel aside. “We were trying to help.”

“By pretending I am still interested in stupid botanical trinkets?”

“You are interested in seeds and leaves and life,” Drue said.

Alster stood so quickly the shelf struck the wall behind him.

“My brother was carrying two hundred satchels of ground herbs. Do you understand that? Two hundred. He would complain about the weight every hundred steps. He would attempt to sell them to people who already owned the same herbs. He would overcharge anyone with polished boots and give half of them away to someone who said they were hungry. He is loud. He is irritating. He cannot pass a card table without losing money, and he should have been home days ago.”

No one moved.

Alster picked up some of Kaelen’s ingredients for the evening meal and threw them against the wall.

The root vegetable burst. Small black seeds scattered over the warm stone floor.

“I don’t care what’s for dinner.” His voice broke. “I do care about life, Alfer’s life.”

He stepped around the mess on the floor and left the stable, which felt colder than usual. The door struck the wall behind him.

For several breaths, the only sound was Dasher chewing in the stable stall next door.

Blena crouched and began picking seeds from the floor.

“We’ve been trying too hard,” Tajan said.

“We tried stupidly,” Blena replied.

Anderix knelt to help gather the seeds. “The two conditions are not mutually exclusive.”

Drue picked up the discarded green stalks and meat from the floor, placing them back on the table.

“I will go after him.”

“Don’t,” Kaelen said.

Drue looked towards the door.

“He shouldn’t be alone.”

“He asked us to stop pretending everything is okay. We should listen at least once.”

Tajan watched the steam curl past the window.

“He’s right. What are we doing here? Just hiding from everything, not achieving anything and eating bad food in the cold. It’s so stupid.”

“I thought you liked my turnip casserole?”

“Shut up!”

“Then what do we do?” asked Blena.

Kaelen looked at the black seeds and broken vegetable pieces in his palm.

“We find his brother.”

• • •

Alster returned before dark. No one had arranged another distraction or botanical quest, but Drue had cooked dinner. He handed Alster a bowl of hot stew without asking how he felt. Blena moved over to make space beside the wall at the cooking table. Tajan sat on her sleeping shelf and smiled but did not say anything.

Anderix and Kaelen were talking to each other and both stopped to inspect the inside of their empty mugs.

Alster sat down.

“Why are we here?”

“We may be arrested somewhere else. We are safe here,” Kaelen said, almost defensively of his plan.

“But why are we even doing all this? Why do we care about some power leaks and all this ancient history that doesn’t matter anymore?”

Anderix considered the question.

“Because this thing is bigger than all of us now.”

Alster gave a tired, humourless laugh. “Bigger than my brother?”

“That’s not what I meant.” Anderix adjusted the strap of his eyepiece. “Family is first.”

Alster looked at him for a long moment.

“Thank you.”

“You are welcome?”

Drue stirred the cooking pot. “I sent Sella to the Vireilian Bloomlands.”

Alster’s spoon stopped.

“When?”

“This afternoon. She will speak to your family and search the Bloomland routes. She knows which riders can be trusted.”

“You should have told me.”

“You were shouting.”

“Before I was shouting.”

“I had not sent her then.”

Alster absorbed that and returned to his stew.

“Thank you,” he said again.

No one attempted to cheer him.

It was the first helpful thing they had done all day.

• • •

By the time they had been hidden in Kael’Voryn for six weeks an ease slipped into their life of exile. No one had found them and they were beginning to feel that no one ever would. Their respite had felt indulgent at first as they went into self preservation mode, but they had gradually fallen into comfort and routine, even as some level of preparedness permeated their behaviour. Kaelen still woke before dawn each day expecting boots at the door. Blena carried her sword to the bathing room. Anderix dismantled and reassembled the latch until it could be secured three different ways. Tajan kept charged crystals within reach while she slept.

But Kael’Voryn continued around them. Bells marked the departure of riders from the platforms. Steam rose from the channels heating homes and pipes. Riders carried heavier loads up the mountain. Old riders sat in the sun repairing harnesses. The city did not ask the company to explain themselves, and many in the High Street area knew them by name. They began to breathe with the city.

Tajan and Anderix walked beyond the last houses one evening and sat upon a shelf of black rock overlooking the western valley. The sun had descended behind the peaks, leaving bands of copper and violet across the cloud.

For some time neither spoke.

The silence between them was not empty. Wind moved over the grass. A distant waterfall appeared whenever the cloud thinned. Griffons crossed the last light and became black shapes against the sky.

Tajan tucked her hands beneath her arms.

“This is beautiful.”

“Yes.”

“It would be better if I could feel my face.”

“That does not alter the visual properties.”

“It alters my appreciation of them, and you did hear me say I’m cold, right?”

“Loud and clear.” Anderix opened his pack and removed a flat metal cylinder.

“I retained one field device.”

“You have been carrying heat and allowed us to suffer?”

“Its range is limited, and it is inefficient with power transfer.”

He turned a ring around the cylinder. Something clicked within it. A moment later, the metal became warm.

Tajan pressed both hands around the device.

“I forgive the Mechanum Ascendancy.”

“For what?”

“I haven’t decided yet, but definitely not for hiding a device like this. Why don’t we all have one?”

The warmth faded.

Anderix frowned and opened the casing. “The storage filament was partially dismantled in Marinth Bay.”

Tajan drew a small crystal from her pouch.

“Move closer.”

“Why?”

“Limited range.”

He shifted until their shoulders touched.

Tajan cupped the crystal in both hands. Amber light gathered inside it. The air around them warmed abruptly, then became hot enough that Anderix pulled at his collar.

“Your output is excessive.”

“You also complained about the cold.”

“There are irregular temperature waves fluctuating from your crystal. It is not even at all.”

“Mechanum criticism is no longer accepted inside the warming field.”

He started to move away. The wind caught him immediately.

He moved back.

Tajan leaned against his shoulder. Anderix became very still.

The heat from the crystal softened. Anderix adjusted the small device and placed it beneath their joined hands, allowing the mechanism to distribute the crystal’s energy more evenly.

“You can do that?” Tajan asked.

“Yes. For a limited time if the...”

Tajan interrupted him. “You don’t have to explain. Just say something like, ‘Yes, for you.’”

“I lack the experience regarding Solaryn courtship rituals.”

“Also don’t say courtship rituals.”

“Yes, for you.”

She nudged him with her shoulder. He nudged her back, very carefully.

They watched the final bands of sunlight slide up the mountains.

“When you flew to the Vireilian Bloomlands the first time,” Tajan said, “did the tingling happen?”

Anderix looked towards the valley where Vaska had dived into the cloud.

“Yes,” he said. “And right now I must be flying!”

Tajan smiled and rested her head against him.

• • •

Kaelen found the crystal field by accident.

He had followed a warm water channel beyond the city with a magnetic honing device that Anderix had in his pack. His thinking was it would curve towards the condensers. Instead, it passed through a split in the rock and descended into a narrow valley where a few blue crystals rose from the sides of the mountain.

Some were no taller than grass. Others reached above his head, branching into angular limbs. Thin crystal platelets peeled away like bark from a tree and chimed when the wind moved through the valley and broke them free. Moss glowed around their bases with a soft green light. Night was always quick to fall. It was more shadow than true night, as sunlight still shone above the mountains while the valleys and troughs became instantly cold. It gave Kaelen the feeling of being in a bowl, looking up at a mixture of light and night above shadow.

Kaelen walked until the city bells became faint.

He had spent so long studying crystal outcrops that the sight of them growing without purpose made him question what he had learned. Crystals formed when the lines and pieces inside them locked themselves into repeating patterns, usually as molten stone cooled or mineral-rich water evaporated. Heat, pressure and time determined their shape. At least, that was what Kaelen had been taught. These crystals seemed to have chosen where they would grow and they were beautiful. They weren’t being hauled out of soil and cleft from rock for a cradle waiting to drain them. There was no Council ledger numbering them, no one seeking a monetary benefit from their magnificent creation. And now they caught the final light because light existed. He sat among them. Above the narrow valley, the first stars appeared.

One shone directly over a forked crystal. Then another. Kaelen leaned back against the cold stone and found patterns he knew from his mother’s maps: the Lantern Bearer, the Sixfold Crown, the long curve of the River Serpent.

A sound came from behind him.

Not a footstep. A breath spoken through water.

“You placed it incorrectly.”

Kaelen turned.

A man hung between two crystal trunks.

Only half of him was present.

His head, shoulders and one arm appeared clearly, clothed in a pale garment cut in no style Kaelen knew. Below the ribs his body became transparent, then divided into lines of light that disappeared among the crystals. One side of his face was young. The other flickered through age, injury and expressions that did not belong to the same conversation.

The apparition looked above Kaelen.

“No. That star wasn’t there when we calibrated it.”

Kaelen rose slowly. “Who are you?”

The man turned towards someone on his left.

“I told them the western array would drift. Syterra said the receiver could compensate, but she always says that before...”

His face changed.

Terror crossed it.

“Don’t stand there. The array converges there tomorrow.”

Kaelen stepped back despite himself.

“What array?”

For one moment, recognition steadied every part of the apparition’s face.

A second voice called from somewhere beyond him.

“Kahleen?”

The man turned towards it. Then his gaze caught Kaelen.

Kaelen’s throat tightened. “It’s me, Kaelen.”

“Yes. Of course. You haven’t gone yet.” The man smiled with exhausted relief. “Tell Alderat we are still receiving.”

“Alderat?”

“The tower beneath the constellation.”

The man’s visible hand lifted. His fingers moved across controls that were not there.

“Increase the central flow by point two. No more. Do you hear me? No more, or the lower channels...”

He turned away.

“Why haven’t they answered?” he asked an empty part of the valley.

“We only just sent them through.” Another voice responded.

His body flickered.

For an instant Kaelen saw many versions of him occupying the same place: laughing, shouting, in pain, asleep, older, young again.

“Wait,” Kaelen said. “Where is Alderat Tower?”

“Wait, we’re receiving an audio transmission. Low frequency.”

Kaelen repeated, “What is Alderat? Where is this tower?”

The apparition pointed towards the star map in a room that wasn’t there. Kaelen only saw him point to the sky.

“Under the Crown.”

“Which star?”

“Not a star.” The man’s voice came from far away. “The place where the star used to be.”

The crystals rang all at once as a breeze washed through.

Kahleen vanished.

Kaelen stood alone beneath the night.

The Sixfold Crown burned above the valley. Six stars made its familiar shape.

He counted them twice.

Then he ran back towards Kael’Voryn.

• • •

The old star maps covered the floor of the stone house.

Kaelen had awakened everyone except Alster, who had not been sleeping. Lamps, crystals and Anderix’s focusing lens cast overlapping light across parchment borrowed from the city archive.

“Begin again,” Anderix said.

“I have begun three times.”

“The first account included your interpretation. The second omitted the sequence of physical changes. The third...”

“He was half a person,” Blena said, frustrated. “He could hear Kaelen and told him to find a missing star. That is enough beginning.”

“Are you sure it was Kahleen?” Alster said. “From the Alfadin tower? I mean, he was only half there.”

Kaelen looked at him. “It is the half I recognize.”

“He told you to look at a chart.”

“Yes... No, he mentioned a constellation.”

Alster leaned closer to the map. “Kahleen is Veylborn. A healer. He finds plants and tools needed to preserve life. We learned about him in school, but I didn’t believe in spirits back then.”

“Perhaps the apparition was speaking to the Veylborn world,” Tajan said. “Not to you.”

“No, it was different. It was Kahleen from the tower, but I saw him as a person, then as an old man and then as Veylborn. It was like a dream, but so real, and I was awake.”

“Are you sure there wasn’t gas?” Alster asked Kaelen.

“You said it looked at you but also through you?” Blena was trying to get an image she could understand. “The Veylborn look at things that happened yesterday while answering questions asked tomorrow,” Blena said. “Looking at you may be unrelated.”

Anderix adjusted the magnifying lens above the oldest chart.

“The map.”

Kaelen placed a recent navigational chart beside it. Both showed the Sixfold Crown above the northern Emberwild peaks.

“They match,” Drue said.

“No,” Kaelen replied. “I know the constellation matches.”

“That is what I am talking about, Anderix.”

“Look beneath it.”

The copied map from the Ruodoon map room included points of light for known towers and crystal sites. Several were marked individually. Beneath the Sixfold Crown, however, a fine line descended from empty space to a symbol that was not on any modern chart. On the chart they had borrowed from Sella, the corresponding area had nearly been erased by age.

Anderix rotated his lens.

“A semicircle,” he said. “Possibly a ring.”

Kaelen pointed to the modern star chart used for navigation by the riders. “This star is now part of the Crown. It is not on the old map, and all of it was in the map room at Ruodoon.”

Tajan knelt beside him. “Stars do not simply appear.”

“Some do,” Anderix said. “Their brightness changes. Conditions in the air around Aethoria alter visibility. The recorded position may also be incorrect. I have even listened to lectures in which observers documented stars getting brighter, then disappearing. Mechanum telescopes are quite superior.” He tapped his eye. “Lenses!”

“Or the map is showing something other than a star,” Kaelen said.

He laid tracing paper over the two charts and aligned the oldest fixed stars. The Sixfold Crown shifted. Five points remained close. The sixth did not.

The room grew quiet.

Drue crouched on the other side of the map. “If this is a location, it lies north-east of the city. Beyond Cloud Lake.”

“What is there?” Blena asked.

“Volcanic slopes. Old lava tubes. Nothing anyone travels to.”

“That is becoming our favourite kind of place,” Tajan said.

Alster had found a faded notation beside the semicircle.

“Alderat,” he read.

Kaelen stared at the word.

The broken man’s voice returned to him. “Tell Alderat we are still receiving.”

Anderix placed one finger against the symbol. “Ruodoon possessed a tower. Alfadin possessed a tower. Veritas Temple was constructed over one. Alderat may represent the Emberwild site.”

“And the apparition appeared in a field of crystals connected to volcanic heat,” Kaelen said.

“Which does not prove...”

“I know what it does not prove.”

Anderix looked at him. “Perhaps you are jumpy because of your experience?”

Kaelen softened his voice. “Sorry, but it is enough to look.”

Drue rose and went to the window. The city was dark except for the landing fires on the highest platforms. Dasher slept half inside his section of the stable and half outside, with his head beneath one wing.

“I can have griffons ready at first light.”

Alster folded the message from home and returned it to his pocket.

“Sella may return while we are gone.”

“I will leave word with someone I trust,” Drue said.

Alster stared at the name on the map.

“And if she brings news?”

No one answered quickly enough.

He looked at Kaelen. He couldn’t yet be angry, not without knowing what had happened to Alfer. He wouldn’t let himself feel pain or sadness that would be giving up. What remained was exhaustion and the decision to continue with the distraction of their search for the tower to keep the thoughts at bay. Kaelen rolled the recent chart.

“Trust me. If there is news the Rider Network will find us,” he said.

Outside, a departure bell sounded once in the cold mountain night.

Another bell answered from a platform lower in the clouds.

Then another, farther away.

The message travelled into the dark.

Thy Quest 4: Chart the Emberwild Sky
Draw a star chart containing every constellation mentioned in this chapter: the Lantern Bearer, the Sixfold Crown and the River Serpent. Clearly label each constellation, show the Sixfold Crown with six stars and mark the place Kahleen described as “the place where the star used to be.” Include a symbol key or short notes explaining the important features of your chart.