Starcrossed (21 page)

Suddenly, something snapped behind me.

I scrabbled up from the snowbank, my tears freezing in the bitter wind. I wobbled in my loose boots. Looking left and right, glancing behind, I tried to pinpoint the sound. I was terribly exposed — anyone hiding behind a tree or a snowdrift could pick me off and carry me away, and nobody would be the wiser. I fumbled through my layers of coat and skirts and found Durrel’s knife, but I wouldn’t be able to wield it long before my fingers froze in the open air. I clamped it in my teeth, and shoved my hands back inside the fur sleeves. Not, I may add, a recommended posture for sneaking.

Seeing nothing, I cautiously took a few gliding steps closer to the trees. It could have been a bird, I told myself — one of the black rooks that lingered for the winter. Marau’s birds. But there were no branches to creak overhead, no prints in the snow that I could see.

When I reached the trees, a little girl in a purple cloak was standing a dozen paces from me.

I just stood and stared at her, half sure she must be some sort of cold-induced hallucination. Apparently she was thinking the same thing, her eyes wide open in surprise.

I spat my knife into my hand. “I’m not going to hurt you,” I said, and she shrank back. Pox. I stuck the knife behind me through the shell of the coat, at an angle so I wouldn’t idiotically stab myself or slice the pleats right off the back of my dress. “There, look. All right?” I took a step closer to the little girl — gods ask me why — but she spun and ran back into the woods.

And I ran after her.

I must have had some mad, half-formed thought that she was lost, one of the servants’ children, somehow come loose from the castle. But her cloak was like a lure — that impossible, illegal color. Black branches flashed and slapped, silver moonslight sparkled the path of white at my feet, while the purple ducked and wove through the woods. I kept up until I stepped too heavily in a deep place and lost one boot to the snow. I fumbled my way out again. Close to the trees, the snow was not so deep. I kicked off the other boot and picked my way through in just my slippers, the girl in purple always just ahead.

Finally we broke out into a clearing, and I scrambled to such a quick stop that I almost fell over. Clustered around a blazing campfire were at least a dozen people, all of whom looked
very
shocked to see me. A blocky brown dog lunged my way, roaring its objection, but a firm hand gripped its collar and held it back. The little girl flew into the waiting arms of a beast of a man, who scooped her up from the forest floor like she was made of moonslight.

Slowly I snaked my hand toward my knife. Fine night for a campout. I remembered the Nemair’s warning about outlaws and eased back toward the trees.

“You are lost from castle?” A tall man bundled in gray stood up from the fire and shook his hood back to reveal a thick mane of light brown hair, just starting to silver. He beckoned me closer. One of his companions said something, in a low, guttural language I couldn’t understand, and Graymantle barked back, silencing him.

“Who are you?” I said, my voice a little too sharp.

He smiled. “We are . . . Tigas Wanderers. We make winter camp here at Bryn Shaer.”

I nodded, edging farther from the fire. The Tigas were an ancient people from Talanca’s hot southern coast — swarthy and dark, with black hair and skin like copper. But my young friend in purple had hair like a flame; the man holding her wore a ginger beard. I looked at the gray cloaks and the motley clothes. More flashes of purple, below collars, inside hoods, and suddenly my crack to Daul about baby-eating Sarists didn’t seem so amusing. Memory served up every horror the Celystra had ever ascribed to the followers of Sar: Animal mutilation. The desecration of the dead. Brandings. Burnings. Outrageous accusations, meant to scare us.

They worked.

I couldn’t have gone far — a straight line through the trees, and I’d be back at Bryn Shaer, hiding the gamekeeper’s mangled coat, in ten minutes.

“You are lost?” Graymantle repeated.

“Yes. No. I’m just going to go back the way I came — I saw your — the little girl, and thought she might be, and — so lovely meeting you all, good night.” I made a sort of curtsy-bow cross and turned to leave.

Graymantle gave another order in his strange language, and I froze, one hand gripping the hilt of my knife. A boy about my age or a little younger stood up from the fire. He was fair as Marlytt, with white-pale hair and blue eyes.

“I’ll take you back to Bryn Shaer.” He spoke native Llyvrin, with a nearly imperceptible Carskadon accent. A local boy.

Still eyeing Graymantle, I nodded warily. The boy brushed past me into the trees.

“Stagne —” Graymantle said, and the boy turned back. The older man said a few words in that odd, smooth language with the disappear ing consonants, and the boy — Stagne, apparently — inclined his head. Graymantle accompanied us to the edge of the clearing, and put his hand on my shoulder in farewell.

And I nearly collapsed from the weight of the magic
rolling
off him. Stagne grabbed my elbow and hauled me upright, but Graymantle’s hand, his arm, his whole person had lit up like he was consumed by white flame. Why hadn’t I seen it before? I had to look away, he was so impossibly bright with it — and saw that Stagne’s hand on my arm was flickering steadily too.

“Are you quite well?” Graymantle leaned over me with concern, and it took all my effort to look at him and keep from squinting. I caught a glimpse of his left hand, which I realized he’d been carefully hiding in his mantle, and saw that the palm was branded with a deep purple star — a wizard’s tattoo. The Mark of Sar.

Long ago, before magic had faded from the earth, wizards pledged to Sar were tattooed on each palm to show their loyalties. But that was hundreds of years ago. Nobody in Llyvraneth would be so foolish as to put the Mark of Sar on someone. Which meant he could only have received that mark in secret. Or in Corlesanne, where as far as I knew, worshipping Sar was still legal. But what were Corles Sarists doing in the woods outside Nemair lands?

And how had this man come by so much magic?

Oh, this was
not
my business.

It took every thing I had not to break free of Stagne’s hand on my arm and flee straight back into the night. But I might actually need these people to get me home again. I shook my head. “Thank you, I’m just — very cold.”

“Come back to the fire and warm up,” Stagne offered.

I felt dizzy, my vision hazing over with all this magic. “No, I’ll be all right. They’ll start to miss me at Bryn Shaer.” Which was no more than the honest truth.

“Very well. Good night, little Bryn Shaer girl.”

Stagne led me easily through the trees, keeping up a quiet monologue that I gathered was meant to be reassuring: “Here, watch this branch. It’s a little deep there. Would you like to take my arm?” But I just shoved my hands farther into my sleeves and trudged along wordlessly after him. I could still feel the magic on my fingertips, like the prickling of a limb fallen asleep, and I didn’t like it. It had never happened before. But, then, I’d never encountered anyone like Graymantle before either.

Back in the castle that night, I threw myself into Meri’s bed, crawling deep under the covers. Her warm plump body was like a furnace, heat and light rising from her as she breathed. I stared into the starlit darkness about her, my thoughts a whirl. Who were those men in the woods? Did anyone else at Bryn Shaer know about them? Ordinary Sarists — the kind Daul had me hunting down — were one thing. Disgruntled, passionate, a threat to the Goddess-ordained peace and order in Llyvraneth, yes. But these weren’t ordinary Sarists. These people had magic, which meant they were all kinds of danger.

I just couldn’t decide if they were dangerous — or
in
danger.

I pulled a feather pillow as tight round my head as I could, but I was still shivering when morning came.

I was edgy and addled as I dressed Meri for her ride the next day, but she didn’t seem to notice. My hands shook as I brushed her hair straight, watching the swirl of magic just dusting her skin. I imagined her suddenly flaring up as brightly as the Sarist in the woods, and nearly dropped the hairbrush.

“Meri,” I said when she swapped me for the brush and started in on my hair, “have you ever seen anything — strange, on your rides?”

“Strange?” she echoed. “Like what?”

Like the six-foot-tall flaming candle and his merry band of outlaw wizards? That was one danger I’d bet even Berdal didn’t know about. “I don’t know, people? Your parents told us there were bandits in the forest. Maybe you shouldn’t ride out alone.”

The brush stroked down the back of my head. “But I don’t ride out alone,” she said, and there was not a trace of anything but pure Meri honesty in her voice. She smiled at me in the mirror. “Your hair’s getting longer. Will you wear it up or down for my
kernja-velde
, do you think?”

I stared at her. What did it matter? But I said, “I’m supposed to be practicing
your
hair.”

She shrugged. “I like doing it. Maybe Phandre was right, and I should be a lady’s maid.”

“Your parents would love that, I’m sure.”

“Should I try it?” She struck a formal pose and said, “Mother, Father, I’ve decided
not
to wed Lord Cardom or Lord Sposa, and instead I’ll be running off to serve as Lady Celyn’s chambermaid. Will that upset your grand plans overmuch?” She gave a giggle and dropped down beside me on the bench. “You were so brave to leave the Celystra. I’d never be able to do that.”

“There was nothing there for me. You have a lot to lose.”

“What? Lands and a title?” She said it casually, but I heard an edge of bitterness in her voice.

“No.” I turned to face her. “Parents who love you. A big family to take care of you. People like Durrel, and — Morva. Phandre.”

“Phandre?” She cocked her eyebrows, but her lip twitched.

“Maybe not Phandre,” I said, and she grinned.

Still, a little of that cold dread stayed with me all morning. I made Meri promise she would stay close to the castle on her ride. She looked at me strangely, but agreed. I didn’t know what else to do. I didn’t want Lady Lyll to find out I’d been running around outside the castle walls at night; I wasn’t sure what she’d say, but she was likely to curtail my movements around Bryn Shaer, just when I needed freedom.

Worse, I’d lost Durrel’s knife. When Stagne led me out of the trees, I’d seen the lighted hulk of Bryn Shaer and launched myself toward it without a backward look, dumping the gamekeeper’s coat in a heap inside the mews, the knife not among its folds of fur and wool. I stuck my head back out into the icy night, but the snow was bare but for the deep furrow of my tracks. All that day I kept moving my hand to my thigh, checking for what wasn’t there. It wasn’t just being weaponless; there had been something about its heavy presence that I’d found comforting, some tie to the world outside the Carskadons.

I craved the peace and calm of Lady Lyll that morning, but down in the stillroom, my thoughts were scattered and wild. I mistook the order of ingredients in an unguent I could make from memory, and it wouldn’t set up.

“Celyn? Are you quite all right? You’re not yourself today.”

I just shook my head, and cleaned up the mess of the ointment I’d been preparing. “I’m sorry, milady. I won’t waste any more.”

“No worries, Celyn,” Lyll said softly. “I was thinking about you.”

Instead of starting a new batch of ointment, I leafed through the pages of her herbal, the heavy handwritten book that guided our hands in the stillroom.

“Where did you learn all this?” I asked her.

Lady Lyll’s fingers brushed the pages. “Did they not have herbals at the Celystra?”

“Books like this?” I almost laughed at the thought. “No — believe me, we had no books like this when I was there.” Lyll’s herbal would have been locked up tight in the bowels of the Celystra scriptorium, or consigned to the balefires.

“But surely the priests and hospitallers have the knowledge of healing? What did they do when someone fell ill?”

Something about her voice told me she knew the answer already, but I answered anyway. “Mostly they just
prayed.
They said Celys would choose to save who she would, and send for Marau to carry away those who did not meet her favor.”

“Celyn,” Lady Lyll said patiently. “Celys is a goddess of life. She has given us herbs and fruits and flowers that can cure, that can heal, that can save lives and ease pain. Does it not make sense that she would want us to use them?”

I just shrugged, because when did the gods ever make
sense
?

Like a lot of thieves, I knew some basic tavern medicine — how to stanch bleeding, stitch a cut, bind a broken bone — but nobody understood how to keep poison from a wound, save a rotten limb, or bring down a dangerous fever. There were always guesses, of course, and people more than willing to make a profit on those guesses. Apothecaries and potioners’ shops abounded in Gerse, selling ridiculous decoctions that were as likely to make you worse as better. And when summer fevers ravaged the city, as they did nearly every year, the Celystra’s response was to shut tight its doors to protect its own, and ring the temple bells out in prayer.