The Black Star (Book 3) (2 page)

"That's just the wind." Dante turned back to the man in the high window. "We've traveled all the way from Narashtovik. On foot, no less, because you've chosen to make your home in a place where horses are too smart to travel."

The man hesitated. "Narashtovik?"

"I am a member of its highest Council," Dante said. Something rustled behind him. He blinked into the darkness. "We're here to learn more about the lights. The death of your livestock."

"Look!" Lew hissed, pointing.

Dante followed his finger. Where the stream entered the plaza, a creature ruffled the grass. Dante's heart leapt. "What the hell is that?"

Lew moaned. "It's a kapper."

Dante strained his eyes. In the dark grass, a silhouette slunk forward. Man-sized at least, hunched over. Four-legged. Primal alarm surged in Dante's chest. He whipped his head to face the cliffs and something snapped at his nose. He shrieked—a small one, but undeniably a shriek—and batted at the object, which proved to be a knot-studded rope. It whapped against the cliff wall and swung back and forth.

"Hurry!" the man called in a hoarse whisper.

Lew gave Dante one look, then scrabbled up the rope. Across the plaza, the beast snorted. The rope jerked as Lew hauled himself up to the high window with surprising alacrity. A bass growl drifted from the stream. Dante jumped on the swaying rope and hauled himself up hand over hand, knees and elbows banging the cliff. He glanced toward the stream, but between the gloom and the twisting of the rope, he couldn't make out more than a shape lumbering into the square.

Above, Lew's legs kicked and disappeared into the cliff. Dante reached the window, a stone ledge that opened into a warm room lit by a handful of tallow candles. Hands grabbed his wrists and hauled him inside. Lew's eyes were enormous. The man who'd thrown down the rope grabbed Dante's shoulders and looked him up and down. The man was late middle-aged, hands scabbed from hard work. His blunt, round nose resembled some of the smaller boulders they'd seen on their trek into the mountains.

"Are you all right?" he said.

"A little bruised from sprinting up a thirty-foot wall," Dante said. "Why the hell do you live in a cliff?"

The man tilted his head quizzically. "Because of the kappers."

Lew leaned over the stone sill. "Look!"

In the starlit plaza, a silhouetted beast lumbered across the grounds, pawing at stones. Dante frowned and focused the nether, shaping it into a simple point of white light. The man gasped and fell back a step, shoes scraping the stone floor.

Dante winged the light down to the plaza, hovering it ten feet above the ground, fairy-like. The beast swung its head toward the source of light and stood up on its hind paws to sniff the air.

"Would that be a black-furred kapper?" Dante said. "Or the more common brown-haired variety?"

The bear—which was clearly a juvenile—snuffed loudly and dropped back to a four-footed posture. It pawed at a bit of trash wedged against one of the stone buildings.

Dante raised his eyebrows at the middle-aged man. "That's why you live in the cliffs like a flock of pigeons?"

"That is obviously a harmless bear," the man sputtered. He moved to close the shutters. "Kappers are another matter entirely. The size of a bear, but armored. Teeth like a shark. Spiral horns like a unicorn. And harder to kill than a tick."

"You've seen one?"

"Do you really think we'd sleep fifty feet off the ground because of a superstition?"

"So you've structured your entire lives around them?" Dante gestured at the cave walls. "By day, you go on about your business on the ground, but as soon as night falls, it's up to the sky-caverns?"

"They hunt by night." The man glanced about the room, as if just now realizing he'd hauled two strangers into his home and it would be quite awkward to evict them after explaining why his entire village refused to set foot outside after dark. "Can climb trees, too. How could you have been sent here without being told about the kappers?"

"We
were
told about them," Lew said.

The man raised his graying brows at Dante. "But you didn't believe."

"After that convincing display, you can be sure I do now." Dante stepped away from the shuttered window. "We're here to see a man named Ast Modell. Does he live here?"

"Sure does."

"Can you show me to him?"

"Gods, no!" the man said. "What kind of idiot climbs around on a cliff face in the middle of the night?"

Dante gathered himself to argue, then realized he was exhausted. The man's name was Vinsin and he offered to put Dante and Lew up in the smaller of his two rooms. Perhaps it was because of the complete darkness, or maybe just because they'd been hiking through the mountains for days on end, but Dante slept until Vinsin flung open the shutters with a creak and a clap, exposing them to the morning. Attempting to be a good guest, Dante moved to the window to empty the chamber pot.

Vinsin grabbed his wrist, gaping in horror. "What do you think you're doing?"

"Removing the piss from your house," Dante said. "Or were you saving it?"

"Not out the window you're not! What if everyone did that? Think of the stink!" He shook his head, tied a thin rope around the pot's handle, and gingerly lowered it foot by foot to the ground. Once it rested safely at the base of the cliffs, he pointed to a gap in the trees west of town. "There's a rather large hole over yonder. I hope you can figure out how to use it."

Dante still hadn't had a sip of tea, but the climb down the knotted rope got his heart pumping fast enough to clear his head. He strolled across the plaza, holding the pot away from himself to avoid splashing. A couple dozen ropes dangled down the cliff like the world's biggest loom. People came and went from the stone buildings. Smoke rose from chimneys. The smell of baking bread, roast mutton, and fried greens filled the square.

The odor above the yawning latrine was less wonderful. Dante emptied the pot, careful not to pitch himself into the pit along with it, walked to the stream to wash his hands, then returned to the plaza.

There, Lew stood on tiptoes. He spotted Dante and his eyes lit up. "Breakfast this way!"

He led the way to one of the structures. Inside, a score of people poked at stovetop pans. Steam rose from the cooking. Vinsin waved, grabbed a kettle, and brought them hot mugs of minty tea. It took Dante a minute to understand what he was seeing: the kitchens and indeed much of the village was communal; privacy (and most private property) was reserved for the cliffside homes. Vinsin finished at his station and brought them plates of bread, grits, fried mushrooms, wilted greens, and a few shreds of chicken. They ate outside. Though Dante didn't know what Ast Modell looked like, he couldn't stop himself from glancing around the square.

"Ah," Vinsin said as they were busy scraping up the last of the grits with heels of bread. "There's your man."

Ast Modell stood out from the others like an albino. Or, in his case, the opposite: while Gaskans were notoriously pale, Ast had a brush of color to his skin. Could easily pass for a citizen of far southern Bressel, yet there was something else foreign to his features which Dante couldn't place.

"I wasn't sure you'd come," Ast said, making no effort to shake hands. "It's just a few lights."

"And gutted sheep!" Lew said, with a little too much enthusiasm.

"Whatever it is, it's unnatural," Dante said. "Narashtovik is happy to look into it and ensure no harm comes to your people."

Ast shrugged his thin shoulders. "No one's being hurt. Strange things often appear in the mountains. In time, they disappear."

"I hear these signs have persisted for weeks. We'd rather be safe. Even if they're completely innocuous, a phenomenon like that is of interest to the Council."

"Getting to them will require a walltent. Are you aware of their use?"

"I'm not aware of their
is
," Dante said.

"Portable sleeping platforms," Ast said. "You secure them to the sides of cliffs at night."

"Is that safe?" Lew said.

"Safer than sleeping on the ground."

"They won't be necessary," Dante said.

Ast gave him a long look. "You prefer to be shredded and devoured?"

"We won't need portable tents when I can create portable caves. All you need to do is provide a few supplies and lead the way."

The thin man looked skeptical, then nodded. "If that is your wish. The hike will take three days."

"Three days?" Dante said. "Where are we walking to, the moon?"

"This isn't Narashtovik. These are the Woduns. There are no roads."

"Well, that's ominous," Dante muttered.

Ast went to gather the requisite food, clothes, and climbing gear, some of which he had stored in his cave, some of which he had to barter from other villagers. Compiling these goods took a couple hours, which Dante spent frustrated and bored. All he wanted to do was help these people. Yet Ast—whom Olivander swore by; he'd fought for Narashtovik during the Chainbreakers' War—seemed reticent to take a single step outside town.

Terrified of kappers, no doubt. Dante had seen their horns displayed as trophies, admittedly. At the same time, he'd lived in Gask for a decade. Had traversed the lands from the norren hills to Pocket Cove. In all that time, he'd never seen evidence of a live one.

He decided to quit grousing about how much time they were losing and go save some instead. At a stone structure that housed ten different vendors, he bought travel food: meat pies, bread, smoked sausage. A few potatoes in case they got ambitious enough to cook on the trail. By the time he wrapped up, Ast returned with packs full of gear. They struck north at ten that morning.

A dirt trail switchbacked up the side of the cliff where Soll retired each night. At the top, the sun shined on a broad, windswept meadow. White sheep dotted the grass.

"Don't the kappers eat the sheep?" Lew said.

"Sometimes," Ast said. "They seem to prefer humans."

"Curious," Dante said. "And convenient."

Ast gave him a sidelong look, but said no more. Beyond the meadow, screes of dark shale footed sudden peaks. Ast led them over a spar of jumbled stones, which shifted threateningly underfoot, clacking dryly. In the sunlight, Dante worked up a hard sweat. The scree led up to another pine forest. Birds hopped from branch to branch, chided by squirrels. Slippery needles lay thick underfoot. Dante hunched his shoulder to wipe the sweat from the side of his face.

The woods continued for several forevers. It was a steady uphill slog, and very soon Dante was having serious thoughts about foregoing the whole endeavor to take up a life of farming. Better yet, to become a fisherman. Anywhere far from the mountains.

The sunlight grew brittle, the air chilly. Ast nodded ahead. "Be on the lookout for cliffs. Anything twenty feet or higher should do."

Lew took his assignment very seriously, head on a swivel for any sign of rocky rises. Assuming they'd be rather easy to spot, Dante gave it no special attention. Twenty minutes later, Ast pointed at a gap in the canopy. A black wall loomed above the forest.

It was an everyday cliff. Nearly vertical. Fist-sized rocks littered its base. Dante glanced at the sun, but it was hidden behind the trees. Maybe an hour until it set. Part of him wanted to continue on until dusk—there was no shortage of cliffs in the area—but another part of him, specifically his legs, argued for an immediate halt to all activity more rigorous than breathing.

He got out his favorite knife, a short-bladed, antler-handled norren weapon that never went dull, and cut a quick line on the top of his left arm. As soon as he called to the nether, it flocked to the welling blood. He tilted back his head and felt for the nether woven into the rock of the cliff.

"You may want to stand back," he said.

The two men shuffled behind him, feet scraping over rocks. 25 feet up, Dante plunged his focus into the stone. He thought about dropping the excavation in a single dramatic boulder, but not wanting to make too much noise, or inadvertently smash Lew into monk-jam, he opted to liquefy the rock into the consistency of thick mud. It flowed down the face of the cliff and settled over the sharded rock on the ground. Within moments, a hole large enough to climb through had appeared in the side of the wall.

"Not bad," Ast said.

"It isn't." Dante took a step back to examine the cliff. "But here's the best part."

Starting just below the cave, he gouged a small hole in the rock, leaving a lip of stone on its bottom edge. A foot below that, he duplicated it, continuing in this fashion all the way down the cliff. He'd soon carved a makeshift ladder up the wall.

He staggered back, legs trembling; he could move much more earth than that, but delicate work was always more draining. "Should be a little easier than a rope."

This time, Ast's look was unreadable. "I'd heard about your people. I saw some of you during the war. But I never knew you were capable of a thing like this."

"The others aren't," Dante said, allowing a certain pride to enter his voice. "Just me."

Ast nodded vaguely. "Hungry?"

"As a kapper."

Lew laughed uncertainly. They sat down on a fallen log. At the other end, wear and insects had reduced the wood to a spongy crumble. Inch-long black ants trundled through the orange bits. Dante kept one eye on them as he ate his meat pie.

"Tell me more about these signs," he said.

Ast gave it some thought. "Lights in the sky. They are rumored to resemble Ghost Lights."

"Isn't it too early in the year for that?"

"I don't have a direct line to the clouds," Ast said, "but through careful observation, I've discovered they do whatever they want whenever they want. If it were to snow tomorrow, you might think it's too early in the season. But you couldn't argue with the fact there was snow."

"
He
probably could," Lew said, then shot a startled look at Dante.

Dante ignored this. "Sure, but if the snowflakes were shaped like trees—or cicadas—I might begin to suspect it wasn't your average, everyday storm."

Ash chewed bread, watching the woods, and brushed crumbs from his shirt. "People see shapes that aren't there. Particularly people who spend all day staring at sheep. In a couple of days, you can see for yourself."