The Hidden Stars Read online

  THE HIDDEN STARS

  BOOK ONE OF THE RUNE OF UNMAKING

  MADELINE HOWARD

  Contents

  BOOK ONE

  1

  On the great isle of Thäerie, there is a region…

  2

  At malanëos, the hour of utter darkness, the Princess died.

  3

  Dawn came, grey and chilly, with a driving sleety rain.

  4

  They landed on a grey day of sleet and snow,…

  5

  They made their way slowly through the rumpled foothills, by…

  BOOK TWO

  1

  The air reeked of blood and smoke and heated iron.

  2

  Baillébachlain on the Isle of Leal, is a port of…

  3

  There was silence in the room, a great silence made…

  4

  The hour was very early, the air damp and utterly…

  5

  In the great city of Apharos, inside the brass wall…

  6

  All day, the two wizards lived with a prickly sensation…

  7

  Two days later, they limped into the harbor at Tregna…

  8

  On the night before the day he was to sail…

  9

  The air reeked of blood and sweat and burning feathers,…

  10

  It was a dusty, weary, and footsore party that came…

  11

  Sindérian stood in the heart of the vortex, in the…

  12

  The last red light of sunset burned on the water,…

  13

  The cell where the two guardsmen Jago and Aell languished…

  14

  Sindérian woke on the floor of the cave, every muscle…

  15

  And far away, far away to the north and east…

  16

  All day and into the evening the army was on…

  17

  Faolein is dead. That was Sindérian’s first thought on waking—as…

  18

  As if in sympathy with Thaga’s distant spellcasting, it…

  19

  Toward evening the road began to climb; in the distance,…

  20

  For days they followed Gilrain over steep-sided ridges, across ledges,…

  21

  It was a bright day of wind and sun when…

  22

  Sindérian climbed down from her dangerous perch, stepping carefully from…

  23

  Though Sindérian could not know it, a thousand miles away…

  24

  Winloki woke to a confusion of men and horses milling…

  25

  Two days later, Kivik’s battered army left the grasslands behind,…

  26

  How do we even know that these wraiths mean to…

  27

  In Aurvang, Sindérian woke to the sound of wings beating…

  28

  The road, which had steadily climbed for so many days,…

  29

  For Sindérian there was pain—agonizing pain in her head, her…

  30

  Fumes of mandragora, hellbore, and ylls-yllatha hung heavy on the…

  About the Author

  Other Books by Madeline Howard

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  * * *

  BOOK ONE

  * * *

  1

  On the great isle of Thäerie, there is a region north of the Siobhagh River where the barley fields and apple orchards of the south, the prosperous farms and the ancient many-towered cities, gleaming white and gold, give way to bleak dun-colored moorland, sullen hills, and rocky upland valleys. They call this country the Mointeach. Long ago, it was a land much plagued by warlocks, black bards, and cunning-men, but many perished at the Changing of the World, and many more fled at the coming of the High King. His allies were the mighty wizards of Leal, whose powers were far too great for these rustic necromancers and petty spellcasters to withstand—and there were still, in those days, many wild, uncivilized places in the world where those who made their living raising ghosts and cursing cattle might flourish unmolested. Yet they left a number of strange customs and beliefs behind them on the Mointeach, and there was hardly a house to be found there without a rune-wand or a bundle of bones buried under the doorsill, some half-understood charm scratched upon the hearthstone.

  The land remained much as it had always been. Villages were few, and divided by vast tracts of wilderness, while the little stormy bays and inlets were treacherous and difficult to navigate. No visitor ever came there traveling for pleasure, and few of any sort came there at all.

  Yet it happened, one dreary day on the cusp of winter, in the time of the High King, that a trio of wizards trudged through the Mointeach. They were on their way to witness a birth and (it might be) a death, and a great sense of urgency and dread was on them.

  For hours they walked through country wild and trackless, while a lonely wind whistled in the rocky defiles, and hawks and gulls circled overhead. Late in the day, they finally came upon a road. Little more than a footpath it was, and very rough and stony, but quite unmistakable, cut deep into the earth and running on for mile upon mile. They had seen no other signs of human habitation since landing their boat on one of the pebbly beaches to the northeast, and it seemed to the wizard Faolein and his two companions that this road must lead to the town of Cuirglaes. They decided to follow it.

  After skirting the hills for an hour or two, the track began to climb. The wizards kilted up their long robes and continued on. The road wound uphill between shadowy stands of pine and spruce. Every now and then the forest grew thinner, and Faolein could see all the way to the top of the hill, could just make out in the failing light a huddle of ancient buildings made of stacked stone.

  Could this be Cuirglaes? he asked himself. They had been expecting a town of moderate size, at the very least a great seaside fortress, not this tiny isolated settlement. Sudden panic clutched at his throat. If they had missed their true road, gone somehow astray—

  A scattering of big wet snowflakes drifted down, melting as soon as they touched the ground. Faolein tripped over a knotted root, barked his shin on a tree stump, righted himself, and continued on, trying to ignore the sting where his skin had been scraped raw. Clumsy. Clumsy he was and always had been, especially when he allowed his thoughts to wander, when he failed to use all six senses to observe his surroundings.

  The forest closed in again. Under the trees the air was damp and cool, heavy with the sharp scent of pine.

  He considered the possibility that a mistake had been made. The sky had been overcast since morning, with not a single gleam of sunlight the whole grey day. Nevertheless, his own sense of direction was good, and Éireamhóine’s was even better. He thought: If we’ve gone astray, it is the curse at work. It must be. Mother and child will both die, and with them all our hope.

  Another bend in the road brought the village back into view, this time from the west. And now, partly screened from the road by a ragged line of beanpoles and skeletal dried cornstalks, Faolein spotted a cluster of buildings larger and more solidly built than the rest, and in their midst, thrusting upward, a round tower some thirty or forty feet high, with narrow windows set into the thickness of the walls.

  “Perhaps Cuirglaes after all,” said Éireamhóine. His pale, perfect face was impassive in the gathering gloom, the deep-set dark eyes without expression; only his words betrayed his fear. “May the Fates grant that we come in time to save two lives and foil our enemy’s schemes.”

  Even as he spoke, the wind came up and scattered the clouds. The stone buildings on the sum
mit stood silhouetted against a bloody sunset sky and the immense yellow moon, like a rotten pumpkin, just then rising behind the tor. As one man, the three wizards stopped where they stood, and Curóide flung up his yew-wood staff like a barrier against the ill omen, muttering a béanath, a charm of blessing, under his breath.

  Then, carried on the wind, thin but unmistakable, came the anguished cries of a woman suffering a difficult labor.

  It was Éireamhóine who first shook off the fey mood that held them rooted in place. He left the track and the shelter of the trees for a more direct route: up an uneven slope of gravelly shingle, then across a dry streambed. Recovering, Faolein and Curóide scrambled up the scarp behind him, then pushed their way through a mazy thicket of thorny cat’s-whiskers and yorrel growing between outcrops of weathered granite.

  As they entered the village, a door at the base of the tower flew open, and a tall woman appeared backlit on the threshold, beckoning them on.

  “We had almost given up hope,” she said, at the wizards’ approach. Ushering them inside, into a low, round, firelit chamber, she closed the door behind them. “But the Princess sensed you were drawing near; she has that much power left to her at least.”

  From a room up above came a despairing wail. Momentarily distracted, the woman stood with her hand still on the door, frowning up at the rough plank ceiling. She turned back toward the wizards just as they began to remove their cloaks.

  “But you are none of you healers!” she protested, taking in at a glance their long woolen robes: deep purple for Éireamhóine and Faolein, sage-green for Curóide.

  “There were no healers to send. As here on Thäerie, so it is on Leal,” said Éireamhóine. “When we left the Scholia, the healers were all bedridden—without strength, without power, many of them almost lifeless.”

  “But then what good are you?” the woman asked bitterly. Her dark hair was disheveled and her face deeply marked with signs of weariness and strain. Into the mind of Faolein, who had a gift for names, came one that seemed to belong to that face: Rionnagh.

  Her thin, nervous hands clasped and unclasped. “Why have you even come here?”

  “We believe,” said Faolein gently, “it can be no coincidence: our healers all helpless just when the Princess has such need of them. It is Ouriána’s doing—her malice made manifest.”

  Rionnagh made a sign to ward off evil. Her hard grey eyes traveled to each of their faces in turn, challenging them. She knew, as they knew, how hopeless it all was.

  Éireamhóine bowed his head; the other men did likewise. “We will try once more to remove the aniffath.”

  Left to themselves in the firelit room a short while later, the wizards set their wards with runes of protection, secrecy, and silence; they sketched a magic circle on the packed-earth floor. Stepping inside the circle, Éireamhóine began to trace a glimmering figure on the air. Shaping energies like filaments of starlight, he drew them out with his lean, strong hands, forming an image of the vast, complicated pattern of time and chance and circumstance that was the aniffath—the Empress Ouriána’s curse on the woman upstairs.

  Taking seats by the fire, on two stools and a chair they had previously arranged facing north, west, and east around the central hearthstone, the three wizards closed their eyes and began to chant.

  The magic came, as it always did for Faolein, like liquid fire, like molten gold running through his veins. It burned through him, consuming, refining, reducing thought and intention to a pure, vital essence. Then came the familiar disorientation, a spinning vertigo as mind separated from body. He felt himself sailing, bodiless, through infinite regions of wind and darkness.

  Suddenly, he was there: within the aniffath. It surrounded him on all sides, a silvery network so intricate and involved that it bewildered him. The thing had been growing in complexity over the years. How could it be the product of a single mind? He began to fear that there were other forces at work here, beyond the one he knew.

  Somewhere in the distance, someone was speaking, reciting a spell in a harsh, grinding voice. It filled him with dismay, that voice, it was so pitiless, so impersonal, like stones rubbing together under the earth, like cold water seeping down and down, eating away at the roots of mountains. It was, he realized, a Hymn of Unmaking, the Dark whispering to the Dark; if he listened to it very long, he would go mad.

  With the greatest care, Faolein began to explore the patterns of the curse, moving from thread to thread as delicately as a spider traversing her web, following each glittering strand to its ultimate conclusion. From path to path he followed, as one possibility led to the next. But in every situation, in every circumstance, the end was the same: Death.

  Faolein came slowly back to an awareness of who he was, and where and when.

  With his eyes still closed, the otherworldly image lingered behind his eyelids. He took a deep breath, then released it. At the same time, he felt the power flow out of him like water from a cracked jar, leaving him dull and heavy, mired in the flesh, a creature subject to the eight elements rather than their master. There was a stabbing pain in his right shoulder, an ache in the small of his back, and a cramp in his left foot.

  He opened his eyes and glanced around the shadowy chamber. He was alone. The others, wiser than he, or perhaps less patient, had abandoned the attempt long before Faolein was willing to admit defeat, and had apparently gone upstairs to pay their last respects to the dying Princess.

  Flexing muscles grown stiff after so many hours in one position, the wizard rose from his uncomfortable seat. The room was chilly and damp; the fire had burned down to a handful of glowing embers. Bending with an effort, Faolein selected a block of dried peat from a pile on the floor near the hearth, placed it on the ashes, and spoke a simple spell: “Hanemh féalen, perifehlim éma üli.”

  The peat ignited with a white flash, and the flames rose high momentarily, illuminating the entire room with an unnatural brightness until the fire died back again.

  But in that moment of uncanny clarity, the wizard had spotted a childish figure, huddled disconsolately on a low rough bench in a niche in the wall. Drawing his stool up closer to the fire, he sat down, tugged at his beard, and nodded in her direction. “Sindérian, is that you?”

  “Yes, Father,” a small voice answered.

  “Then come here, my child, and let me look at you.”

  With a sigh, she pulled herself up from the bench and crossed the floor with a dragging step. Though he knew what to expect, her waxen pallor and alarming thinness shocked him. He reached out with a trembling hand to stroke her long dark hair. “You have grown so tall, so womanly. How many years has it been? One year? Two?”

  “Almost three,” she answered softly.

  He made a swift mental calculation: she would be eleven, no, twelve years old—tall for her age, as he had already noted, growing swiftly, he supposed, and changing from day to day. And he, Faolein, had missed it all. Old fool, he thought, old fool—did you think she would stay a child forever? You ought to know by now, they never do.

  “I asked after you when I arrived. They told me you were sleeping. As indeed you should be,” he added, groping for the proper note of paternal authority. “You ought to be resting.”

  Sindérian blinked back tears, shrugged a thin, angular shoulder under her gown of apprentice healer’s russet. “How could I sleep, when I could hear her screaming? And she needs me, Father. Why won’t they allow me to go to her?”

  Faolein ran his fingers through his neat black beard, obscurely embarrassed. A woman would know what to say, how to comfort her, but the women were all occupied in the room above.

  “There is nothing that you can do. If there were anything, you would certainly be there,” he managed at last. “As it is, there are far too many in attendance already—too much noise, too much confusion. It’s always so at a royal birth, I am afraid, even when all goes well.”

  “But the Princess is in pain, terrible pain.”

  He nodded solemnl
y. “But pain is a natural part of childbirth. Our philosophers say that is the price we pay for a new life.”

  “But she ought not to suffer like this,” said Sindérian, as he drew her down to sit on his bony knees. “I know, Father. Something is very, very wrong. Will the Princess die?”

  Again he hesitated. But, after all, Sindérian was no ordinary little girl. She was wizard-born and showed promise of extraordinary talents. These three years just past, she had been training as a healer, under the guidance of the Princess Nimenoë. Still too young to work the greater spells of mending and healing even before this mysterious malady sapped her strength, she could no doubt make a simple sleep charm, or dull the edge of pain—which meant that her work would often take her to the bedsides of the dying, that she would be called upon again and again to ease the passing of those too ill or injured for the older healers to save.

  It was a harsh beginning young healers experienced, harder than anything faced by apprentice wizards in the other disciplines, but it was necessary. Healers must be strong, or the work would break them; any weakness was best discovered early. Faolein could only imagine the things she had seen, the heartbreak she had witnessed. Yet how to explain to this child—as precocious as she was—that her friend, her teacher, her foster mother, the most powerful healer on Thäerie—perhaps the most powerful healer anywhere, ever—was dying in childbed?

  Surely not, her father decided, by any evasion of the truth, by an attempt to conceal from her things that Sindérian probably understood a great deal better than he did.