The Black Star (Book 3) (54 page)

"Should I bother to point out we're still within sight of Wending and there is nothing stopping us from going back to Pocket Cove?"

"Do you think this is such a bad idea?"

"The People believe the world will always choose to destroy itself, so it is best to get out of its way," Minn said. "But if we stuck to that advice, Cal might be dead."

"Well, my dedication is reaffirmed," Blays said. "We'll be there in three days. Suppose I can learn to shadowalk before then?"

"Stretch our trip to three months and you might have a shot. But it would make things a lot easier, wouldn't it? Let's give it a try."

Blays bent to his task with fresh vigor. It was on the awkward side, practicing (and mostly failing) in front of the sloop's small crew, who had little to do besides keep an eye on the waters ahead and make the occasional adjustment to the sails. They pretended not to watch, but the ship was too small for Blays to avoid their attention. Still, he and Minn didn't have time for the luxury of discretion.

"The nether is everywhere," she said. "Most of the time, however, even the few of us able to see it would never know it's there. It's concealed inside each grain of dirt and speck of blood. If you can follow it to those places, you'll be hidden, too."

"You want me to walk into my own blood? That sounds messy."

"You can't walk anywhere you can't physically walk yourself. There are shadows in the air we walk through, though. All you have to do is climb inside."

"Sounds as easy as putting one foot in front of the other," Blays said. "How do you do it when
you
walk into the magical netherworld?"

"I try to think like water must think as it's flowing down a stream." She saw his expression and laughed. "Apply what you learned in the course of the Four Seasons. How do you learn to walk? One step at a time."

He glanced across the sloop. The crew looked away, pretending to examine the clouds hanging over the peaks. He got out his kellevurt shell and sat crosslegged on the deck. He did some breathing, then spent a while drawing out the nether and watching it recede back into the spaces between things. It did flow a lot like water, albeit a viscous type you wouldn't want to drink.

He came out of his fugue to find a couple hours had passed. He ate a pocket of bread stuffed with cheese and green onions and went back to work. This time, instead of letting the nether flow away like rainwater into the ground, he tried to hang on to it. Not so much that it couldn't go back, but enough to slow its flow and stretch it out. He had the cockamamie idea that if he hung on with the perfect amount of strength—not too little, not too much—the nether would pull him in behind it. Probably this was his dumbest idea in a long line of dumb ideas. As always, however, a bad idea was better than no idea, so he stuck with it throughout the afternoon.

The western peaks pulled down the sun and gobbled it up. The sloop slowed, approaching the channel into the northern lake. Cliffs rose from both sides. As the last of the light trickled from the sky, they crossed into the northern lake.

After sundown, the wind went quiet and the sloop flagged to a crawl. Scattered lights flickered on the shores. The cramped cabin held four hammocks. They took turns napping. Stars painted the sky and were reflected in the mirror of the lake.

By dawn, they were halfway across it. The winds resumed, pushing them toward the channel that would take them out of Gallador Rift. Blays split his time among naps, attempts to follow the nether back into its hole, and thinking about how in the hell they were going to spy on the secluded world of the Endless Pillars if he couldn't learn how to shadowalk.

A V-shaped cleft appeared in the crags ahead. The river flowed swiftly, the water's only exit from the lakelands. The crew took up places to guide the ship through the bends of the river's tumultuous descent from the highlands. As Blays was hanging onto the nether, watching it ooze back into wherever it went to hide, the sloop dipped hard, making his stomach go floaty. His adrenaline surged. His focus became as sharp as chipped glass. His eyes widened; the world seemed to lurch closer, slowing down the same way it did during a sword fight.

For a split second, everything went dark. Yet he could still see. Certain objects—the crewmen, the trees on the shore, his hand—shined like moonlight on quicksilver. Their light was oddly muted, though. Like they'd look behind a pane of shadowcut glass like they used in the cathedrals of Bressel.

The sloop floated on, unharmed by the rapids. After a couple of miles, the land flattened out and the currents calmed down. Try as he might, Blays couldn't find his way back to that eerie land. He told what he'd seen to Minn.

Her eyebrows shot up. "That's what I see. It's like walking through starlight. At the same time, it's like walking from a dazzling afternoon into a dark room."

"I did it!" Blays said. "And I have no idea how."

She suggested a number of exercises, but nothing got him back to that place of light and shadow. It felt like a breakthrough, though, and he'd had so few of those he nearly burst with hope. But hope was frustration's favorite food, and as he tried and tried and failed and failed, he began to resent that he'd tasted success in the first place.

The day came to a close. The sloop pulled in to port at a medium-sized town. Dennie had paid Blays well, so he bought the crew room and board in an inn where they'd have proper beds and food before their return to Wending.

In the morning, he purchased a pair of horses on Dennie's letter of credit, along with several days of food and a couple sets of clothes. Nothing all that elegant. But he was still wearing the fancy (if weatherbeaten) garb of Lord Pendelles. Where he was going, lighting himself on fire would attract less attention.

Before departing, he asked about the roads into Setteven. Supposedly, the king's men had reduced their patrols in the last couple months, but despite that, the passage remained free of bandits. Even so, as he and Minn rode north into the farmlands, Blays kept a long eye down the road. When they reached the forest, he cut away from the rutted trail, walking his horse through the trees. After a few miles, they emerged onto more farms. The ground was clear but the cold air threatened snow.

They arrived in Setteven after dark. The main road passed through a sentried gate, but there was nothing to stop a person from entering through the single-family farms surrounding the city's southern approach. Blays did just that. The city always smelled best in winter. Most of its most unpleasant substances were frozen in the gutters, and with few fresh vegetables on hand, people tended to bake copious amounts of bread. The scent of wood smoke was everywhere. It smelled even better after having been on the road.

He knew the city well enough to find the ideal neighborhood for their stay: a place that was shady enough so that no virtuous soul would ever visit it, yet not so down and dirty that they'd be in harm's way every time they stepped outside. He stabled the horses, and on inquiring with the stable boys, was able to find a room on the top floor of a rowhouse. He paid two weeks' lodging in cash.

Minn gazed up at a spider that had occupied the upper corner of their room rent-free. "What's our next step?"

"No idea," Blays said. "Let's go lay eyes on the place and see if that makes us any smarter."

It was still early evening, but the Endless Pillars were tucked into the hills behind the palace, and getting to them would take long enough that dark would conceal them soon enough. Blays pulled up his hood and got a move on. He kept an eye out for unwanted attention—he had not one, but two infamous identities to be recognized under—but it was dark, he was unkempt and coast-tanned, and the Settevites who could recognize a cleaned-up, well-lit version of himself were probably limited to three or four dozen. To be on the safe side, he took a path through the meaner quarters, aiming significant looks at any men who paid too much attention to the ostensible couple that was himself and Minn.

They crossed a bridge over the river and walked through a set of rolling hills. The rowhouses there were older but statelier than the one they'd found cheap lodgings in. And then the hills grew too steep for any houses at all.

But not for a couple of fools who probably should have stayed by the sea and left the questing for those who still had a stake in the world. As they walked down a quiet street that dead-ended in a steep, grassy hill, Minn passed beneath the shadow of a tree and vanished. With the kellevurt's help, Blays shrouded himself in darkness. This had the less than ideal side effect of blinding him, but Minn's hand found his. She led him through the frosted grass. The land climbed for a while, then began to descend.

Minn squeezed his hand. "Ought to be safe now."

He let the shadowsphere drop away, blinking at the starlight. They were in a cleft between hills, hidden from the vast capital below. A series of hills and short cliffs stood before them. The next leg of their journey was less than half a mile as the crow flies, but it involved a great deal of climbing up and down. Three times, they had to backtrack when the way forward was too steep.

An hour later, they crested a ridge. An ovoid valley lay below. The Endless Pillars were more than just a name: in the center of the valley, a circle of white pillars enclosed a lawn and a complex of stone buildings. Each pillar was as broad as a horse's chest, but some were knee-high stumps while others stood thirty feet or more, with all heights in between. The central building was round and a good sixty feet high, with a flat roof and classically arched windows. The surrounding buildings had the simple elegance of older times. A few lanterns burned around the pillars and at points on the lawn, but they saw no one.

"Think you can sneak in?" Blays said.

"Think they leave the door open?" Minn said. "Before I were to get inside, I'd need to know exactly what to look for. Even then, if one of their sorcerers were paying attention, it would be easy enough to spot me."

"Back when I used to hang around the palace, gossip often turned to the Pillars. It's basically a self-contained village. Like all villages, rumors fly fast and furious within it. I hear the court's sorcerers are treated like circus bears—cared for, but kept in a cage. Except when it's time to put on a show."

"So we won't be able to get inside. Or talk to them. Yet besides the king himself, they're the only ones who'll know about his plans toward Cellen. I hate to cast doubt before we've tried to lift the stone, but how are we supposed to get this done?"

"This is exactly why I continue to run short on ideas."

Minn bit her lip. "I could join them."

"Except that would be crazy."

"I'm not the Pocket's biggest whale, but I bet I'd be the most promising student to come here in years. They won't be able to turn me down. Once I'm embedded with them, who knows what I'll see?"

It was kind of an incredible idea. Much less roundabout and more effective than anything he was liable to come up with. He couldn't volunteer himself—too much of a chance he'd be recognized—but Minn would be an irresistible talent. It was a scheme right out of the old days.

But that was the problem. Back then, they'd always been so eager to get what they wanted they'd given no regard to the cost.

"You can't," he said. "Once you're in, they won't let you back out."

"Who's going to stop me?"

"The staff!" he blurted.

Minn muffled her laughter. "What are they going to do, cross their rakes in front of me? When I decide to leave, they won't even be able to see me."

"In any institution, the staff always knows more about what's going on than its own leaders. This makes the help bitter. And
that
makes them susceptible to bribes. Sometimes they'll spill their guts out of sheer spite!"

She looked down on the grounds. "Do the staff get to leave?"

"They work in shifts. Two weeks here, two weeks home with their families. Something like that. I talked to one at a ball once."

"Do you really think the servants are going to know—what, exactly? The precise curve in the king's intestines where he's pocketed the Golden Key?"

"Well, we won't know that until we kidnap and torture them." He couldn't stop his smile. "We will inquire discreetly, misrepresenting our interests. If that doesn't work, we'll try your plan to voluntarily imprison yourself."

Getting a line on the Endless Pillars' servants proved harder than he would have believed. The first time Minn asked a man if he knew any of them—Blays was trying to keep his direct contact with people to a minimum—the man behind the bar asked why she wanted to know, and when she hesitated, he showed her straight to the door.

"New approach," Blays said. "You're looking for employment at the Pillars. You yearn to be part of such a glorious institution. You know they're beyond selective with their employment, so you're looking for someone who can grease the skids by providing you with an introduction."

"We can sweeten the deal by claiming that if I'm hired due to their introduction, I'll pay them ten percent of my first year's wages."

"That is devious business," Blays laughed.

"That's why it will get results."

An hour and three pubs later, her bait caught a strike. One of the runners had a friend whose sister worked at the Pillars. Better yet, she was currently on leave with her family. After exchanging a few notes and settling on a sum for the woman's time, the runner arranged a meet in the pub for that same night.

"Ever done something like this before?" Blays said once they'd returned to their apartment.

"What?" Minn held at arm's length the long-sleeved shirt they'd bought to make her look the part. "Lied to someone about my intentions in order to learn whether the ancient order of sorcerers that employs them is on the verge of capturing an item of unspeakable power?"

"Asking about something you don't care about while trying to extract information about the thing you
do
care about. I suppose that's a daft question, isn't it? We all do that every day."

"I've never done it professionally, though. You'll be there to chaperone me, won't you?"