Crown of Stars: Volume Six of Crown of Stars, by Kate Elliott
Prologue
Feather Cloak was fertile, the only pregnant
woman left among her people. Indeed, she was the only woman
living who had quickened more than once. Therefore, she presided
over the council of tribes because she had power the others did not
possess, power that had been draining from the land during their
exile. No one could explain this slow leaching but they knew it
presaged the death of both land and people. If anyone could save
them, it must be the one in whom power still resided long after it had
departed from the rest.
The Eagle Seat had yielded to her. In
truth, it was now the only place she rested easily. Her older
child was almost an adult in aspect and learning, but in the days when
he had grown within her, he had not waxed so large. It seemed she
would harvest a giant’s spawn, although she happened to know that the
sire of her budding child was Rain, who was no smaller or larger than
any other man. He was a gentle soul of medium build, kind,
good-natured, a hard worker with clever hands, a skill for
flint-knapping, and a well-omened name, and for all these reasons a
much better choice for a father than arrogant warriors like Cat Mask
and Lizard Mask who liked to shake their spears and strut before the
women.
As they were doing now.
“We must gather in one place, farther inland where
we’ll be protected, and ready ourselves! Then we can act at once,
and in numbers. We can strike before our enemy expects us!”
“Better to station ourselves in smaller groups, you
fool! Spread out around the countryside. If one group is
taken by surprise the others will be able to harry the enemy and
regroup when it is safe.”
“If the enemy strikes first, if the enemy passes the
White Road and sets foot in our country, we are lost!” Cat Mask
pounded the haft of the speaking staff repeatedly into the dirt to
emphasize his point, as if his voice wasn’t loud enough!
Lizard Mask had half a head of height over Cat
Mask. He used it now, puffing up his chest and jutting out his
chin, as he curled a hand around the haft, above Cat Mask’s hand.
“If the enemy invades, how can we know where he will cross? If
we’re all in one place, we’ll lose mobility. We’ll lumber along
as slowly as your mind works!”
“Feh! Your wish to be safe has made you
frightened. We must be bold!”
“We must be cautious but clever, the thorn in their
side.”
“The arrow in their heart! One blow to cripple
them, not a frenzy of meaningless stings that will only anger them but
do no lasting damage.”
The women were seated around the cavernous council
chamber, watching the two young warriors stamping and blowing in the
center. The older women seemed amused and indulgent, while the
younger women had settled into expressions of disgust or intent
interest depending on their liking for belligerent male
posturing. The older men stood with crossed arms and resigned
expressions as they waited for the storm to die down; they had
blustered in like manner in their own day and knew better than to
intervene.
“A swarm of bees may bring down a wolf who angers
them and disturbs their hive.”
“A wolf may outrun them and stalk back at night when
they sleep to rip their refuge to shreds for other animals to mangle
and devour!”
Because men had the floor, it wasn’t the place of
women to speak, but Feather Cloak was not surprised when The Impatient
One - Uapeani-kazonkansi-a-lari, daughter of Eldest Uncle - laughed.
“What fine phrases these are!” she cried.
“Shall we acclaim the one who pierces us with the finest poetry?”
The two men flushed red. Faced with her
mockery, they shifted their stances to join against her. In years
past, The Impatient One had slept with both of them, and cast both
aside, and whatever jealousy they nurtured each toward the other
measured less than their resentment of her indifference.
“You argue over war,” she went on, “but force of
arms cannot win this battle.”
“We must fight!” declared Cat Mask.
“Whether we choose to mass our forces or disperse
them, we must be ready to fight,” agreed Lizard Mask.
She snorted. “They are many and we are
few. Beyond that, humankind are only one of the dangers we
face. We may yet suffer grievous harm when the day comes - close
now!”
As if to emphasize her point in the same way Cat
Mask had rapped his spear against the ground, the land beneath
shuddered. The vibration resembled a temblor but was instead the
judder of the land as it called out like to like, seeking its home
through the waves of aether that surrounded it. It shook right
through Feather Cloak’s body. Her womb clenched and relaxed in
harmony with that rhythm. She wiped her brow with the back of a
hand, knowing her time was close, just as the day they had so long
awaited was close.
What was torn asunder would come back to its resting
place, and the Ashioi - cursed and exiled - would come home.
Many spoke, all at once, now that The Impatient One
had spoken out of turn. Peace. War.
Appeasement. Negotiation. Each view had its adherents, but
those who clamored for war shouted loudest.
“I will speak,” Feather Cloak said, and the rest -
even The Impatient One - quieted. “Listen well. If we do
not speak with one voice, we will surely perish. We no longer
have leisure to argue. A decision must be made, so I will make
it. Let it be done in this way: Let the people be gathered
inland, where they may hope for the most safety, but let them assemble
in thirteen groups each apart from the others so that if one falls into
danger the others may yet escape. Cat Mask, you will split our
warriors into two groups. The larger group will remain with you
at a place of your choosing, where you can move and fight
swiftly. Lizard Mask, you will order the rest into small groups
that can patrol the borderlands to warn the rest of us if any hostile
force passes our borders. The council will disperse with the
others. I will remain here until the storm passes. White
Feather will act as my midwife. For the rest, we must prepare to
defend ourselves, but only after the storm can we know how we are
situated and how many of us have survived. We will assemble again
at that time to choose our course of action. I have spoken.
Let none dispute my words.”
She had only once before invoked her right to make a
unilateral decision. No wise leader did so often. She
sighed, doubly burdened, as the council acquiesced. Most left
swiftly to carry out her orders. A few tarried, arguing in soft
voices that nevertheless echoed and reechoed in the cavern. Only
Eldest Uncle remained silent where he sat, cross-legged, on the second
terrace.
“You have offered no opinion, Uncle,” she said.
“He has no opinion,” replied his daughter, turning
away from her conversation with her companion, White Feather, who like
her was harsh but strong. “He has fallen in love with his
grandson’s naked mate, whom all men desire because she burns with the
fire of the upper spheres.”
Eldest Uncle sighed.
“Is this true?” asked Feather Cloak. “I admit
I was surprised when you brought her before the council. She is
dangerous, and in the way of such dangerous things, attractive and
bright.”
“She is young, and wanted teaching. If you
women can think of nothing but sex, that is not my fault.”
“My father and my son - both enslaved to
her! What do you say, Feather Cloak?”
“I banished her, seeing what she was. Beyond
the danger she poses to every earthly creature because of what she is,
I saw no harm in her.”
“You are a fool!”
Feather Cloak smiled, clasping her hands over her
huge abdomen. “That may be. And maybe you are jealous.”
Eldest Uncle chuckled.
The Impatient One glared.
“But I sit in the Eagle Seat. If you dispute
my right to take this place, you will have to prove yourself more
worthy than I am.”
Like every adult among her people, Feather Cloak
could use a bow and had learned to defend herself with knife and staff,
but The Impatient One had relished the arts of war in which all
adolescents trained. She was physically strong, with powerful
limbs and a martial grace that could be used to protect, or to threaten
- as she did now, tense and poised, a warrior ready to cast a spear at
her enemy.
“I have walked the spheres! Do not mock my
power.”
“I do not mock you, cousin. But I do not fear
you either. Power is not wisdom. It is only power.
Cat Mask and his warriors cannot protect us if he makes rash
choices. We are weakened by our exile. We do not know what
we may yet suffer. I counsel caution and readiness. You
yourself spoke against using force of arms.”
“Only because they are many, and we are few.
We must strike swiftly with other means. The greatest and
cruelest of their warriors can be overcome by sorcery. I have
defeated even the wild beasts among them who would have torn me limb
from limb.”
“Beware,” said Eldest Uncle quietly. “We have
seen how much greater is suffering when sorcery is used for harm.”
“You think we should surrender!”
“Do I? We must seek peace.”
“Peace is surrender! Humankind will never
offer us peace.”
“How can you know this, daughter?”
“I know them better than you do! I have lived
among them. I bore a child to one of them.” She looked
defiantly at Feather Cloak. “They are not like us. They
will never make peace with us. My son was raised as an outcast
among them, and even so they seduced him to their ways.”
“Better to have raised him in our ways,” said Eldest
Uncle, “instead of abandoning him there.”
“So you would say! But it was decided to try
the course of appeasement by birthing a child who would mix their blood
and ours. That plan has failed!”
“Has it?”
“Do you believe otherwise? How can you
know? You have not walked on Earth since the old days - and the
old days are forgotten by humankind. They recall us only in
stories, as an ancient enemy long banished and defeated. Or is it
the memory of the Bright One that blinds you, so that you do not wish
to war against them?”
“It is ill mannered for daughter to speak so
disrespectfully to her own sire,” commented Feather Cloak. “Your
words may carry truth, but your behavior gives us cause to doubt you.”
“You are fools!” The Impatient One snapped her
fingers, and one of the young warriors, loitering by the passageway
that led out of the cavern, came to attention. “Still, it is
possible - just possible - if they are not dead but only caught between
the worlds. . . .” She grinned, leaped up the steps, and vanished
into the darkness, the young man at her heels.
“Who is dead?” asked White Feather.
“We are caught between the worlds,” said the elderly
woman known as Green Skirt. “What mischief is she up to?”
“She’ll try to get pregnant again,” said White
Feather. “She’ll want the Eagle Seat. She’ll wrest it from
you, if she can.”
Feather Cloak had weathered many trials in her life;
they all had, who lived in exile. She smiled, feeling the
familiar tug of weariness at her heart, leavened only by a memory of
laughter she had once shared with The Impatient One when they were
girls together. “In the old days,” she said as the last of her
council gathered around her, “we did not acclaim a leader solely on her
fertility. It is a shame it has come to this.” She patted
her belly. Muscles tightened under her hand. The skin
rippled as the child within rolled like one of the merfolk underwater.
“How has the world changed?” she asked the others,
marking each one with her gaze: Eldest Uncle, Green Skirt, the old
warrior Skull Earrings, and White Feather, who would act as
midwife. These were the ones she trusted most, because they were
honest even and particularly when they did not agree. They were
her spring, winter, autumn, and summer. “We do not know what we
will find when we return to Earth, for none among us has walked in the
other land as it is now - except The Impatient One.”
“Uapeani-kazonkansi-a-lari walked the spheres,” said
White Feather. “She risked her life so that she could learn what
was necessary to cross over the aether and back onto Earth. We
should not dismiss her words so lightly, just because she does not
agree with her father.”
Eldest Uncle chuckled.
Green Skirt had an older woman’s distaste for
nonsense. She lifted her chin sharply to show she
disagreed. “That she refuses to listen to her elders is precisely
what makes her opinion suspect. She is rash.”
Skull Earrings crossed his arms. He had once
been a bold, impetuous, impatient warrior like Cat Mask, but age,
hunger, and despair had worn him down. He was like ancient gold,
burnished to a soft gleam. “First let us survive what is
coming. We do not know what to expect, except what the Bright One
told us - that our old enemies live again and seek to exile us
forevermore. If we survive, then we can send scouts to survey the
lay of the land. If we do not survive, if we are cast adrift a
second time, then we will certainly die. What can we do?”
“We can do nothing,” said Eldest Uncle, “except take
shelter and hope for the storm’s winds to spare us.”
“There must be something we can do!” cried White
Feather. “Are we goats, to be herded at the shepherds’s whim and
slaughtered when it is time for meat?”
“Now - right now - we are helpless,” said Eldest
Uncle. “There is no shame in accepting this as truth, since it is
so. I agree with my nephew.” He gestured toward Skull
Earrings.
The other man laughed. “After so many years,
it is good we agree at last, uncle!”
The old man smiled, but Feather Cloak saw that the
gesture came only from the head, not his heart. “I will wait
beside the clearing where the burning stone appears.”
“That is on the edge of the land,” protested Feather
Cloak. “The tides may wash over you. You will be at risk.”
“As you are here, Feather Cloak.”
“I cannot leave the Eagle Seat. I like you
close at hand. It makes me feel more at peace.”
He shrugged, knowing she was right, knowing that as
leader she had no peace. The weight of the Eagle Seat was as
heavy a burden as pregnancy. “Nevertheless, I must wait there, in
case-”
White Feather snorted. “In case the Bright One
reappears? Perhaps your daughter speaks the truth, uncle.
You have a young man’s mind in an old man’s body.”
“That never changes!” he retorted, but he was not
offended by her statement. The others laughed. “I am
eldest. I will do as I wish in this. I will see what I will
see, and if the tides overwhelm me, so be it.”
A contraction gripped Feather Cloak’s womb, and as
if in echo the earth trembled and shook on and on until she found
herself breathing hard, hands clutching the eagle’s wings.
White Feather knelt beside her. “You are
close.” She beckoned to Green Skirt, who nodded and hurried to
the door to give a stream of directions to one of the warriors waiting
there, a young woman wearing a fox mask. The girl ran out to
fetch water while White Feather emptied coals out of a hollow stick and
coaxed a fire into flame. Skull Earrings fetched the birthing
stool.
All this industry, and the intense grip of further
contractions, distracted Feather Cloak. She had the merest
impression of Eldest Uncle’s brief farewell and the pair of young
warriors who followed him. When she next looked around the
chamber, all three were gone.
<line break>
As the contractions came hard and with increasing
frequency, she began no longer to be able to distinguish the forces
shaking her body and those shaking the land. So many burdens; so
much exhaustion; so great a trial to be faced. She had to let it
go. It was beyond her control. All she could do was endure
it. All she could do, between stabs of red-hot pain, was pray to
Sharatanga, She-Who-Will-Not-Have-A-Husband.
“Guide us through this birth and this death.
Give us your blessing.”
Was that her voice or White Feather’s? Was it
Green Skirt speaking, as the green beads and little white skull masks
clicked together each time the old woman moved? Did she herself
mumble words, or only grunt and groan and curse as the pains of opening
came and went?
She was vaguely sensible beyond her skin of the
greater skin of the cosmos, that which wrapped Earth, opening as a
flower opens to receive that which now returned to it: the exiled
land. Vast forces moved within the deeps. The sea waters
raged on the surface and winds howled, but in the caverns far beneath,
rivers of fire shifted to create a new maze of pathways.
Earth is welcoming us home.
“Hush,” said White Feather. “Hold your breath
so you can push.”
“Listen to what Feather Cloak says!” objected Green
Skirt. “She can see where we cannot.”
The pain of opening transformed her awareness,
altering within her body as the child within pressed forward, ready to
be born. It was not pain but inevitability that dragged
her. Now the exiled land was drawn back to the place it had come
from, where it had always belonged. Now the child would be born,
because children must be born once they are begun on that journey.
Four attended her: White Feather, Skull
Earrings, Green Skirt, and the fox-masked young warrior, a serious girl
who glared at everyone as she ran to and fro on whatever errands they
gave her.
She knew this not because she paid attention to
them, but because she knew all things. The vital soul that
resides in the cosmos and imbues it and all things with life, even
those that may seem dead, became visible to her. She saw the
vibration of all things down to their smallest particle. She saw
the reach of the heavens as they expanded in an infinite curve whose
unknowable horizon confounded her. The exiled land was almost
drained of this soul. Ruptured from its nurturing womb, it had
waned as the tide of the sacred presence had ebbed. Now the
vibrant net that entangled the earth swallowed them, and as the child
in her belly was thrust out from its shelter, they were dragged in to
the ancient nest in whose architecture still resided a memory of their
place within it.
The slippery mass of a child dropped into White
Feather’s waiting hands.
She groaned, or perhaps it was the earth grinding at
a register almost too low to be perceived.
“Another one!” cried Green Skirt in shock.
“Twice blessed! Twice cursed!” sang out White
Feather, shoving the first infant into the waiting hands of Skull
Earrings so she could catch the impatient second, now crowning.
Feather Cloak pushed as the world was born again, as
the White Road burst into existence again, a ribbon so bright that it
shone, as Earth exploded beyond the borders of the Ashioi land.
Firestorms raged and gales seared the land. Yet all this
transpired at such a remote distance from the heart of the maelstrom
that her awareness of the cosmos, too, faded, and she was after all
weary. So weary.
“Two girls!” said Skull Earrings, cradling the first
tenderly in his arms. “The gods have favored us!”
She slid down the long road of exhaustion and fell
into sleep.
North of the land
lies devastation so complete that the land steams. Has their
return created such a wasteland that smoke and ruin are all she sees?
No. Beyond
the scar lies land touched by fire, by wind, by raging seas, by great
shifts in the earth itself, by tumult, but it is not dead.
She sees now what
caused the land just beyond the White Road to be engulfed by molten
rock. The Bright One walks in the wasteland. She created it
with the power that resides within her, the curse she received from her
mother’s kin. She is naked and carries nothing except a bow
layered with the magical essence of griffin bone. So bright it
shines. . . .
She moaned and came awake, squinting against a light
she did not recognize.
“Ah!” She shielded her eyes. “What is
it?”
“He-Who-Burns!” cried Green Skirt. “That is
the sun. See how his light shines!” She pointed at the roof
of the cavern, where a yellow glare illuminated the spray of plant
roots dangling from crumbling ridges of soil.
Skull Earrings stepped forward with White Feather
beside him. “Here are your daughters,” he said, displaying the
dark babies.
White Feather nodded. “So small. So
perfect!”
Weeping, she kissed them. “They will never
know exile. We have come home.”
***