‘Astrophel won’t want you left alone.’
I roll my shoulders back. ‘Astrophel’s not my keeper.’
Tansy studies me again. She’s no Seer, yet she sees so much.
She heaves the pack onto her shoulder. ‘Don’t be long, or I’ll send him to fetch you.’ And with that parting threat, she heads back through the hedgerow.
I turn my back on the twisted vines, too.
I needed to see this, but I can’t look anymore.
*
I’VEFOLLOWEDTHEriver too long; the sun is little more than a hangnail on the horizon. I should turn back before nightfall. The others will be getting worried – I’ll never hear the end of it from Astrophel. But I can’t get the stench of rot out of my nose.
Nestled among the pines, a moon-arch, a circular gateway to a narrow tunnel, towers before me, furred with moss and choked with flowering vines. I pause before it. Where does it lead? Despite the lateness of the hour, I’m considering following it when something moves in the periphery of my vision. The worm of unease burrows deeper, my throat tightening as a sound carries on the breeze – a low, resonant chuffing. I turn, keeping my movements slow; the memory of those angry villagers and their rocks fresh in my mind. But it’s not irate farmers. Sister’s mercy, I wish it were. I’d stand a better chance against them than the hoarclaw lumbering through the trees towards me.
Ice floods my veins, freezing me to the spot. I try to remember what Astrophel said to do if we ever saw one in the wild. Run? No, keep still. Play dead. My breaths rush loud in my ears. Surely it will hear me? I slip under the moon-arch, glad of the slight protection it affords. From the shadows, I watch and wait.
Astrophel said the bears don’t start fights, not unless hungry or provoked. But this one is thin. Painfully so. I can make out bones beneath its fur as it roots in the undergrowth for food, a shoulder blade jutting sharp where a patch of white mars the silver of its coat, as it casts blighted starfruit from its path with great hooked claws. It shouldn’t be here. The hoarclaws belong to the peaks. Bitterness snakes my gut. Arden, the Sickening, that’s the reason it’s been forced south. That’s the reason it’s starving. The bear stops in its tracks, lifts its muzzle, and scents the air. Three deep snorts. Its ears twitch back, and it starts ambling towards the moon-arch. The sound of its claws raking across the frosted ground decides me. I slip under the gateway and into the gloom.
The passage is dank and laced with mildew, but I run as fast as my legs will carry me. If the hoarclaw caught my scent, I don’t relish the thought of it chasing me down here, of being trapped with it in this dark, airless lair. It’s a relief when the circle of light at the other end of the tunnel grows larger and brighter, and I emerge into a sunken walled garden. Alone.
I pause, gasping for air, and search behind me.
For once, my prayer was answered. The hoarclaw hasn’t given chase.
The crumbling stonework is ivy-clad; frosted wildflowers are dotted in haphazard clusters. Their sweet scents fragrance the air, driving away memories of rotting vines, fetid tunnels and slavering beasts. A bird is singing somewhere in the distance and there’s a stone bench in the farthest corner. Stepping over roots and ice-rimed pansies, I weave through the garden till I reach it. I collapse onto the bench, breathing hard, and close my eyes. Being embraced by the garden walls is comforting. I try to empty my mind, still my racing thoughts, focus on the bright kiss of the setting sun on my upturned face, the caress of the biting breeze against my cheeks. Only the occasional chirrups of the starlark break the stillness. The first moment’s peace I’ve known in Stars know how long.
The box containing the mooncrystal presses sharp against my thigh. I root inside my cloak pocket and draw it out. Unfastening it, I stroke the glassy surface of the globe. The moons have not yet risen and won’t be full for more than half a moonscycle. There’s no danger of my awakening the crystal’s ancient magic tonight. Still, as my fingertips graze the orb, that strange dragging sensation, like the tug of the tides, wrenches at me again. I lean into it this time. It pulls harder, like it’s trying to reel me in. I snatch my fingers back. Closing the box with a snap, I pocket it again.
All magic has its price. All magic is dangerous.
My eyes dart over the garden, observing it more closely. In the back left corner, partially obscured behind a stunted weeping tree, there’s a large area fenced on all sides by thickets of rosemary.
Numbness steals over my body as I stand and walk towards it. Part of me doesn’t want to look, knowing what I’m likely to see. But I can’t stop myself. I peer over the rosemary.
Neat rows of regularly spaced mounds, each one topped by a tiny diamond. Too many to count.
In Meissa, under the ever-spreading shadow of Flamefever, we now cremate our dead within a moonsrising of their passing, commending departed spirits to the Void beyond the Stars. Beyond the Veil. Tombs are reserved for Regents only. But in the Hill Country, they still practise the ancient custom of burying their untainted dead in remembrance gardens. Izarius taught me that, explaining their antiquated tradition of burying bodies vertically to encourage the spirit’s ascent to the firmament, of marking graves with diamonds to help the dead find their way back to the stars. The size of the remembrance diamond indicates the age of the departed spirit. Judging by the minute gems in this plot, this is a garden of lost children. Lost neverborns.
Pressure builds behind my eyes; they start to sting. How many generations, how many families, have endured this pain because of what Arden unleashed? Because of the cursed magic that flows in my veins.
I think of my parents’ losses. The five before me; the one that came after. Never discussed, that procession of tiny lost souls destroyed my family. If they had lived – if any of them had lived – things might have been different.
I’ll never forget the night we farewelled the last one. My brother. The char that lingered in the palace gardens for a moonsquarter, the size of the remains – piteous, even to my child eyes. I tried not to look, not to see the mottled fingers and toes, no bigger than my smallest fingernail, peeping through the shroud. I focused instead on the tears tracking my mother’s cheeks and the tortured expression in my father’s eyes as he vowed before the pyre this would be the last time.
He kept his word. He always keeps his word. There were no more pregnancies for my mother after that. They hid their pain, swallowed it whole, but I saw the dead-eyed glances that passed between them. I heard my mother’s desperate, hollow cries in the night.
If only my mother never left the safety of the Crystal City for the Asteum. If only she hadn’t needed to find answers about her cursed child when my powers started to manifest. If only she’d never caught the fever on that fateful journey. If only she’d rested during her convalescence, instead of tending to her fretful daughter. Perhaps then, the fever wouldn’t have taken such a devastating hold. Perhaps then, my brother wouldn’t have been birthed before his time. Perhaps then, he might have been spared.
If only. The saddest words in the shared tongue.
I can’t stay here. My gorge is rising, my throat closing. The stench of smoke seems to swirl the air dragging me back to that awful night. For a moment, the thought of the hoarclaw, its eviscerating claws and slavering jaws stills my feet, but surely it will have moved on by now? I flee the garden, stumbling as I re-enter the tunnel. A cry slips my throat as my knees slam against the earth.
‘Orthriel!’ My cry is the pathetic mewl of a kitten. I try again, but my Guardian doesn’t answer. I beat in vain at the door connecting our minds.‘Where are you?’The tunnel’s sour reek is choking me. Panic starts to surge. Breathe. Keep breathing. I repeat this instruction like a charm as I crawl along the tunnel, repeat it until my breaths are even and slow. Until the world slowly rights itself.
Gripping the moon-arch to steady myself, I stand and peer around the vine-throttled masonry. It’s growing dark, but the woods are still, silent as… I don’t finish the thought. My legs are weak, wavering like a fading star, but they carry me. The mutilated image of Arden from the Reliquary portrait swims before me as I walk back to camp, along with a procession of the faceless neverborns buried in that remembrance garden, the phantom siblings I never got to meet. They swirl against a backdrop of wizened vines and mouldering starfruit.
