I stoop, the metal casing cold against my eye-socket as my vision adjusts to the magnification. A rubied ball of light with a sweeping tail comes into focus. My skin pebbles and I step back. But I won’t be put off by vague sky-signs and the starscribes’ guesswork.
‘I have to do this. Perhaps I’m making a mistake, but I have to try.’
Izarius places a hand to his temple. ‘And if I give you the key? If you do this, how do you think your father will respond?’
‘I’ll tell him I stole it. You won’t be involved.’ I remember the hiss of the whip against Elvi’s back and grit my teeth. ‘I swear no harm will come to you.’
‘Child, I don’t worry for me, but for you…’ His gaze slides to my wrists, where the fading bruises are still visible.
I tug my sleeves lower. ‘I have a plan. He won’t hurt me again.’ I grip my tutor’s hand. ‘My second-sight has shown me things, Izarius. Things I mean to use against him. He’ll have no choice but to fall in with my plans.’ Not unless he wants the entire court to learn of the Northern rebellion, how precarious lies the crown upon his brow.
Izarius shakes his head. ‘There’ll be a terrible price for disobeying him.’
‘If it comes to it, Orthriel will protect me,’ I say. ‘Give me the key, that’s all I’m asking. You’ve seen the mountain, how dim it is. You know what will happen if we do nothing… This is my chance, Izarius. Help me prove myself.’
He looks at me for a long moment, this man more my father than the cold, hateful king who sired me. With a heavy sigh, he turns. Skirting past stacked papers and discarded astronomical instruments, he takes something from a drawer and lumbers towards me. ‘Do you even know where the Flarestone is kept?’
I nod. ‘My father let me see it once.’
I was seven. We’d gone to the Observatory to inspect a new star-glass in the main viewing dome, but I was more interested in a wooden chest, hidden in a dark alcove. My father told me it contained an ancient treasure that hadn’t been used in generations. I begged him to unlock it. He indulged me, fetching the key from Izarius, opening the case an inch to allow me a glimpse.
The last kindness my father ever showed me.
The Flarestone had been enormous to my child’s eyes: a tower of pure white crystal. I wasn’t permitted to touch it. Too much exposure to light, and the stone would ignite, emitting a beacon bright enough to summon the leaders of the enemy realms. But the smooth, glistening surface begged to be stroked. My visions started that very evening. My mother left for the Asteum a moonscycle later. Life was never the same after that.
Izarius opens his hand, revealing a tarnished silver key. It looks like I’ll finally get to touch the Flarestone after all.
I snatch the key before he can change his mind, and my elbow jogs a heap of scrolls, which tumble to the floor. I stoop to pick them up. ‘What are these?’
‘Maps.’ Izarius bends to help me restack them. ‘I consulted them last night after learning of Noelani’s letter, hoping to find a detailed map of the Astral Mountain. But even in the Lustrous Age, few navigated its perilous heights. The only records we possess are those drawn by your liegemaid’s forefathers during their excavation of the Ice Steps to reach the site of the Starfields. They’re crude I’m afraid, and far from detailed, but better than nothing.’
I turn to look at him. ‘How did you know that’s where—’ I stop myself.
Izarius cracks a wry smile, nods slowly. ‘So, my instinct was right, that is where she hid the sceptre?’
‘It’s buried in the Crystal Caves,’ I whisper. ‘Noelani’s letter said further instructions await me in the Silver City. Perhaps they’ll reveal some way to scale the mountain.’ I don’t add that even reaching Estelia’s old capital, high in the Desolate Peaks, is likely impossible. The mountain range was renamed after the great exodus. As its new name suggests, Talini – like all the other ghost cities – was abandoned sunrings ago, its air unbreathable.
Izarius’ gaze drifts to my throat and his eyes widen. He crosses to the bookcase behind me, returning with a silver scroll case.
Izarius unscrews its finial. ‘Do you know what this is?’
I shake my head.
‘One of the Medellan Scrolls – Estelia’s earliest medicinal records. I’—he clears his throat—‘liberated them from the Sanctuary. For safekeeping.’
Izarius unwinds the scroll. It’s brittle, yellowed and almost translucent in places, the script and illuminations faded. So far as I’m able to read it, it describes a range of methods for treating mountain-sickness.
‘Here, do you see?’ He points towards a small annotation, an addendum to the main body of the text. It contains instructions for preparing some sort of distillation.
‘The men who carved the Ice Steps, abetted by the cragstalkers, were given a tincture laced with ground starstone so they could fulfil their duties alongside the great mountain-cats. It was the cielsylphs who suggested the formulation; mirroring their methods of replenishing their heartcrystals; though cielsylphs absorb Star-Aether through a sacred invocation as they can’t imbibe it. Even before the Sickening, prolonged exposure to the altitude at the summit of the Astral Mountain could prove overwhelming.’
A chill spreads through my body as I understand his meaning. Assuming I manage to convince the Outrealmers to form an alliance, assuming by some miracle I make it to the Crystal Caves and Noelani’s sceptre is still there, the Sister-Stones will be the only things standing between my mother and an agonising death. Who knows what effect removing a fragment of the starstone within the Celestial Chain to make such a tincture could have on the Sister-Stones’ ability to grant that all-important wish.
My mind lurches back to my mother in the Orbium, struggling to draw breath, lips turning blue before she toppled unconscious into Astrophel’s arms. If I hadn’t seen that, if I hadn’t heard the healer’s prognosis, perhaps I’d hesitate.
But I did see. I did hear. And I don’t have a choice.
A compromised chance is better than no chance at all.
