The Black Star (Book 3) (29 page)

She narrowed one eye in distaste. "Why did you come to Pocket Cove?"

"I'm guessing Minn's already told you. That hasn't changed. I came to learn to disappear. To walk outside without fear of being seen."

"Do you consider yourself a part of this place?"

"Despite all your efforts to keep me separate from it."

The woman chuckled. "Thank you for saving Hellen from the waves."

"You're grateful? I figured a drowning here and there must serve to strengthen the herd."

"We keep ourselves strong so we're able to keep ourselves safe." There was an edge of warning in her voice. "We don't need to kill our own to do that. So, if you will accept it: thank you."

"You're welcome," he demurred. "Is that the reason you summoned me here?"

"Minn has permission to train you however she sees fit." Ro turned to Minn with a smile. "If he drowns, remember to bury the corpse six feet deep. The sand does an awful job concealing the smell."

Minn didn't seem to know if she ought to smile back. She inclined her head and took Blays outside. It was as cold as ever, but he hardly noticed.

"It's Summer," she said. "Can't you feel it?"

"It would feel more like it with a cold drink."

"Time to feel the nether grow. And when it's ready, to take it."

"How would one of your perfect recruits be instructed to grow and to take?"

She ambled toward the tideline. "By swimming naked in the worst of winter. Or running through fire. Or being sent to the plateau, shoeless and unarmed."

He scratched his neck. His beard was getting thick. "This truly helps them progress? Into things other than a worm's breakfast?"

"When you're Between, your only weapons are your wits, your hands, and the nether. What could be more motivating?"

"Sex. Booze. A roasted pheasant smothered in gravied mushrooms. No? Then I'll take the cliffs."

She nodded once and headed toward the staircase. "You'll spend three days in the Fingers. You can come down at any time—but if you return early, you'll be sent home."

"What if I don't know where home is?"

"Then you carry your home in your pockets, don't you? Free to make it wherever you wish."

He unbuckled his sword. "Keep it safe for me."

She wagged her finger. "Knife, too."

He glanced at his ankle in mock surprise. "Oh, this isn't one of those killing knives. This one's purely sentimental."

"Oh? What cherished memories does it carry?"

"...killing things." He handed it over.

She pocketed it. "You can keep your shoes if you like. We don't normally send people up to the Fingers this late in the year."

"If it costs me a toe, that's why the gods gave us ten of them."

"But if you come down early, I'll have to send you out."

"I want to do this the way the People do. Otherwise it means nothing." He pulled off his shoes and handed them over. "Practice too much with wooden swords, and when the real things come out, you're liable to get gored."

Minn pointed to the overcast sky. "It's noon. Or close enough to it to pretend. I'll see you in three days."

He grinned and surprised himself by hugging her. Equally surprised, she patted his back. He walked into the stairwell. Without Minn there, it went pitch black after the first turn. The steps were damp with ocean spray. He moved up in perfect silence, trailing his fingers over the walls. Eventually, light peeped from above. He turned a corner and was shrouded in light. It was cloud-filtered and wintry, as weak as noontime got, but after the blankness of the staircase, it was blinding.

Well, that was two minutes down. Only four thousand-something to go.

Fog slunk between the upthrust columns. Moss and vines clung to knobs of rock and wedged their roots into nooks. The ground was slippery, a mishmash of bare stone, thick mud, moss, and water that couldn't decide whether it aspired to be frozen, slush, or fluid. A peaty, half-rotten odor lingered among the smells of fresh and salt water.

Water was going to be a problem. Finding stuff that wouldn't turn him into a two-ended fountain, anyway. But he might be able to find some clean pools condensed on the fingers of rock. Or lick it from the moss or something. At least he wouldn't be doing any sweating. Maybe water wouldn't be so much of a problem after all. It was just three days.

The cold, on the other hand—that was liable to kill him. And if he didn't find some way to insulate his feet or at least keep them off the ground, his dancing days were over. There was the matter of the giant centipedes, too. As he had that thought, an ant the size of his thumb wandered over a clump of moss and stopped to wave its antennae at him. Blays frowned. Forget food, water, shoes, or shelter. The first thing he needed was a basher.

A fist-sized rock at the base of a column would do for now, but he really needed a stick. Something that would keep his precious hands at a safe remove from all stingers, mandibles, and smelly ichors. He wiped the rock's muddy bottom off on a patch of fuzzy lichen and stepped forward, keeping one eye on his feet. A single cut could be the end of him.

It quickly became apparent that there weren't a lot of trees around. Nor...anything, really. Besides fog, the slimier sorts of plants, and bugs so big it made you want to sit down and cry. After just a few minutes, he had to sit on a rock and tuck his feet into his lap and rub the feeling back into them. He really should have accepted Minn's offer to keep his shoes. Principles were for idiots.

Once he'd warmed his feet, he moved on. Most of the rock pillars were as steep as towers, but he soon found one with a natural staircase. On a lark—maybe it was a sign!—he climbed it to a small plateau. A gnarled tree grew there, orange berries festooning its branches. With no idea whether the berries were poisonous, he let them be, but beard-like gray-green moss hung from the branches as well. He tore this off, wiped off as much moisture as he could on the thighs of his trousers, and put the moss in his pockets. He tore off a springy branch as long as his arm and as thick as his big toe. What he really needed was a proper bug-whompin' log, but the stick would do for now.

Careful not to slip, he got back down, rubbed his feet some more, and wandered on.

And that was as exciting as it got for three hours. Bouts of walking regularly interrupted by bouts of sitting and sole-rubbing. On the eighth or ninth stop, he noticed three toes on his left foot had gone numb. The moss in his pocket was dry, but unless he ripped up his clothes (something he was loath to do, given that he was barely warm enough as is), he had nothing to secure the moss to his feet with. He picked at the bark on his stick, but it was much too thick and rough to tear into strips.

Grass grew beside a pillar, but it would shred within seconds of walking. His clothes were the only way. Stomach rumbling, he found a loose string on the bottom of his cloak and began to pick at it. He unraveled eight feet of string, bootied his feet in moss, and tied it in place.

"Ha!" His laugh died in the mist.

He got up, hefting his stick, and decided to see if there was any food that wouldn't wriggle all the way down his throat. Not ten minutes later, the string tore from his left foot, dragging moss behind him.

He secured it back around his foot, but the same incident repeated twice. He sat down and pressed his palms to his forehead. He did his breathing trick to warm himself up a bit, and then, to boost his sagging morale, he climbed around on the rocks until he found a shallow, fresh-smelling pool. It tasted good. And if he caught a disease, so what? At that point, the warmth of a fever would feel good.

Using the stick, he poked around in lichen and moss, exposing a handful of white grubs. They twitched disturbingly, but a quick chomp ended that. They tasted fatty, almost sweet, but it wasn't much, and only stirred his hunger.

The day grew short. He picked up his pace, eyes out for shelter. Could be a natural cave around. The People of the Pocket might even have built a cabin or something to house those on sentry duty in the Fingers. Twilight came, then a descending gloom. With the stars and moon blocked by fog, he curled up beside the eastern exposure of a pillar, shielded from the worst of the mist and steady wind, and proceeded to pass what might have been the most miserable night of his life.

On the second day, he decided all this running around was foolish. It wasn't as if he
had
to find the necessities of life. He didn't have enough to work with here. If he'd mysteriously woken up in the Fingers, he wouldn't try to
live
here. He'd walk out of it as fast as possible. Find somewhere with trees whose branches you could use to bash mammals whose skins you could wear to avoid dying.

All he had to do was get through another 48 hours. Then it was back to the caves. No point breaking his back with the end so close.

Anyway, he was supposed to be up here to get closer to the nether. He sat with the bottom of his cloak swaddled around his feet and practiced his Seasons. And there it was, all right. Shadows everywhere. Fall no longer took him any thought. Winter was as easy as a snap of his fingers. Spring still required conscious focus, but now that he knew the mood necessary to make the nether pliable, he could do so with few failures.

To shore up his ability, he spent the rest of the day getting the nether to melt. Now and then he got up to stir his blood. On one such meander, he found a rock structure so massive a rivulet of water trickled down its side. He let it pool in his palm to make sure it wasn't clouded with bad humors, then drank until his thirst went away.

His stomach sucked against his backbone, but there wasn't much he could do about that. To help ignore it, he cycled through his three Seasons, repeating Spring over and over.

He got lost in the work. Instead of walking around when he got cold, he breathed in and out, tensing and relaxing, willing his temperature to rise. Night came and all warmth went. Nether seemed to fill the void, surging everywhere. He called out to it like you'd call in the herd. It wobbled, but refused to detach from the moss, like a drop of water clinging to the underside of a window sill, defying gravity.

He woke. It was light again. His cloak was draped over his lower half. One of his moss-wrapped feet stuck out. He was very warm. He lay there, enjoying the sensation. Shadows roiled over him, mingling with the mist. He'd never felt closer to peace.

With a completely inappropriate sense of amusement, he realized he was on the brink of death.

He bolted upright, rubbing himself down from head to toe with his cloak. As soon as his fingers and toes began to tingle, he jogged slowly between the rocks, kicking his knees high, shaking his hands. He began to shiver uncontrollably, but he thought that might be good.

As his wits returned, he felt sick. Starved. Weak and clumsy and exhausted. He knew if he lay down again, or let himself sit for longer than a few moments, he'd drift off. And he wouldn't return. So he walked, and when he got too tired, he leaned against a pillar until he felt well enough to go on. He'd gone some distance from the staircase, but without a clear sense of the sun's position, and with his head swimmy and confused, he wasn't positive he was heading in the right direction. His feet hurt. At some point the moss wore away. It was afternoon, probably, but that meant he had a whole day left in the Fingers.

He stopped, with no strength or will to keep searching. A couple of tears wound down his cheeks. He tasted salt on the back of his tongue. He closed his eyes. A faraway rumble carried through the silence. In his state, he felt certain that Dante had found him and was punching a chasm in the ground, that he'd tumble inside never to be found, the same fate as Lira, just one more bag of nether being returned to the messy web of shadows that enwrapped the whole planet.

The rumble faded. Three seconds later, it repeated. It was the surf.

He blinked back his tears, feeling foolish, and headed toward the sound. The fog thinned. Below him, white-yellow sand curved to north and south. He found the staircase soon thereafter and sat beside it to massage his feet. A deep part of him yearned to stagger down it and end this nonsensical quest—just what was he doing here? Not just up here in the Fingers willingly shaking hands with death, but in Pocket Cove at all?—but he felt his ego tear from its cocoon, grab him by the collar, and scream into his ear.

He wasn't going to give in. And he wasn't going to die. He was going to find greatness.

That night, the nether flitted around him like black shooting stars. He tried to summon the shadows to his hands, but they remained as aloof as the heavens beyond the clouds. He persisted. Morning came. He stood beside the stairs until the sun's blocked glow stood overhead. One step at a time, he descended. Standing on the sand, Minn's face was white with worry. He collapsed.

It took a few days of sleeping to prove he was fine. He wasn't certain what he'd learned Betweening in the Fingers (except that he never wanted to do that again), but he did feel closer to the nether. He spent days at the tide pools urging it to separate from its hosts and come to him. When that stalled, he stripped nude and dived into the waves, meaning to literally shock himself out of his rut. It felt incredible, doubly so once he got out and ran to the caves to shudder in front of a fire, but the wisdom of Summer remained elusive.

The actual year ended. He stood on the beach to see the first dawn. Minn joined him. "Where is Summer?"

Blays laughed. "In hibernation."

"How are you trying to move the nether?"

"By calling to it. Summoning it. That's what you're supposed to do, right?"

"Why should it listen?"

"Because I say so?" A wave retreated and he watched pea-sized crabs scurry to bury themselves in the wet sand. "Seriously, because I want it to. Is that wrong?"

She folded her arms. "Hell if I know."

"Oh. That's one of those questions where the answer is whatever I find in myself. Hate those ones."

"Then answer it quickly and get it over with."

"Because it wants death and knows that I will die," he blurted.