Cast Down the Stars

By Phoebe Matthews

When spies are caught in the borderlands, Glory joins an army of workers to repair a breach in the protective wall around their country. What begins as an adventure ends as a full scale disaster and Glory is called on to find answers in the stars to save the people she loves.

• Language: English
• Publisher: LostLoves Books
• Release date: Jun 6, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393007104

Phoebe Matthews

Phoebe Matthews is currently writing three urban fantasy series. Her novels have been published by Avon, Dark Quest, Dell, Holt, LostLoves, Putnam, Silhouette, and Scholastic.

Book preview

CAST DOWN THE STARS

CHAPTER 1

Honor and I were in the fields when we saw the border guards.  At any other time we would have waved as they passed and asked what news they brought from their vigil on our northern borders.  But this time the guards brought prisoners, barbarians from the outlands.

Honor dropped his hoe in the dark earth, caught my hand, and pulled me into the ditch that edged the field.  We crouched down and peered up through the scrub bushes to the road above our heads.  None of our people had ever seen a barbarian.  We all knew only the tales whispered by small children, that a glance from the evil eye of a barbarian could destroy a person.

The guards wore the light green tunic of our national uniform, bound at the waist with brown rope that held the scabbards for their daggers.  The embroidered tunic edge hung halfway to their knees.  Because it was summer their sun-browned legs and feet were bare.  One of the guards was bareheaded.  Her dark hair fell straight down her back.  The rest of them had tucked their hair under their caps and pulled the brims down in front to shade their eyes.  Their faces shone red with heat and fatigue but they walked quickly, their backs straight.

My gaze swept past them to the prisoners, their strange shapes silhouetted against the hot blue sky.  Honor’s hand tightened on mine.  I did not move or make a sound.

The chains that bound the six prisoners together clanked in rhythm with their strides.  Their sandaled feet pattered on the soft dirt road, raising dust clouds.  I knew Honor would not look at their faces.  I did.  I stared straight at them.

They were all men, short, muscular, and ugly to my eyes.  Were all of their people so ugly?  Their eyebrows drew together, forcing a fan of deep wrinkles up to their hairlines.  Beneath their light hair their skin was strangely white and burnt red in odd patches. Little brown flecks scattered over their faces and  their arms and legs.  Was it some disease?

Their eyes glittered beneath their short eyelashes.  I almost cried out.  Their eyes were as  bright blue as the sky.

So the tales were true.  But if their pale eyes sent evil rays that destroyed their enemies, how had the guards captured them?

The broad heavy faces of the prisoners were pulled down in frowns that creased their skin from mouth to chin.  They wore odd clothes, brown and heavy, cut away from their throats and without sleeves.  Shiny metal discs the size of a thumbnail formed a row down the front of each tunic.  Straps that crisscrossed from knees to ankles seemed to hold on their sandals.  Perspiration dripped from beneath the shaggy fringes of their hair, rolled in beads across their pale faces and down their wrinkled red necks, staining dark the  edges of their tunics. 

And then I heard the other sound.

Above the clang of the chains that bound them waist to waist I heard their breathing.  Their mouths hung open in frowns and their breath puffed out with a wheezing sound like the bellows of a forge.  They sounded more like oxen than people.

Did they know how to speak?  I could not imagine the soft, musical voices of my people coming from such mouths.  Perhaps they snarled to each other in deep cries that rose to whines, like the wolves that roamed in the far hills and terrified the shepherds at night.

They passed so close to us that if we had stretched out our arms through the dark hedge we might have touched their sandaled feet.  What would they have done if suddenly a hand reached out and touched a foot?

As though he read my mind, Honor caught both my hands in his and held them firmly.  He was my closest friend—indeed, we were like brother and sister we had grown up so close to each other—but there were times when I regretted he knew me so well.

They passed us without seeing us, those bent, scowling prisoners, their light eyes glaring at the straight backs of their guards.  Behind them walked four more guards, tall and straight, their faces impassive in the shadows of their hat brims.

When they were out of sight I pulled my hands free and stood up.  I leaned my head forward and let my hair fall across my face.  I did not want Honor to see my smile.

Whispering, I asked, Did you see their eyes?

Honor, whose disposition was always as controlled as his quiet face, said, No, but I’m sure you did.

I wanted to hit him.  What a fool you are! I cried.  In all your lifetime you may never see the barbarians again and the one chance you have, what do you do?  You don’t look, that’s what!

He stared at his bare feet and said nothing, as though he were a small child waiting for a scolding.

Think!  If they could kill people with a look, the guards would be dead.  Evil eyes!  That’s child talk.  I should have known it was.  I looked straight into their eyes and here I am!

A bird flapped noisily up from the brush.  Startled, we turned at the same time and saw the place of the sun in the sky.

We’ll be late, he said.

We ran across the fields, leaping from furrow to furrow, our bare feet digging into the warm earth, our blue school tunics flapping against our legs.  At the stream we glanced at each other, daring, and then without pausing we leaped forward.  Honor’s long legs cleared the width easily, landing him on the far side.  My front foot touched dry grass.  I tried to lean forward, wavered, then fell back.  My other foot splashed in the muddy edge.

Look at me!

Mud speckled my leg from the hem of my tunic to my foot.  Honor laughed and ran on.  Furious, I lowered my head and rushed after him across the grass knoll, under the low tree branches, and then past the herb garden that grew at the base of the tower.

He stopped short of the doorway, waiting in the shadow of the gray stone tower.  I caught up with him, fell heavily against the cool stones, and leaned there, out of breath, my sides aching.  When I could breathe, I started for the door.

Honor touched my arm.  Glory.

I stopped.  Now that I was Second Starcaster no one called me by my given name except Honor.  I did not much like the name Glory, perhaps because I did not like the memory of those who had given me my name.  However, what should he call me?  He could no more call me by my title than I could call him Third Geomancer.

He stood very still.  He was tall and slender, as are all our people when they are young.  His brown hair, cut shoulder length, was blown back from running.  His gray eyes were steady in his quiet face.

Yes?  I was in a hurry, already late.

Speaking softly, he asked, Glory, what did their eyes look like?

I could not laugh.  Something in his face made me feel his urgency, his fear.

Slowly I said, Like blue sky, very pale blue, reflecting light.  But not cool, Honor.  No.  They were like—like blue sparks in a fire, burning and freezing at the same time.

I thought of the tales the children told to frighten each other and bring terrible dreams and shook my head to clear it.  If I started believing that nonsense about evil eyes I’d soon be believing in wizards who talked to the dead.

Pulling open the heavy door, I hurried up the circling stairs.  The stones cooled my feet.  I closed my eyes briefly to accustom them to darkness, then opened them to the shadowed gloom.  Above me the stone walls rose in a hollow tube, broken by an occasional shaft of light from one of the arched doorways that opened onto the stairs.  We passed the classrooms of mathematics and astronomy.  Halfway up the stairs Honor ducked into the room of the First Geomancer.  I continued alone to the top of the tower.

The stairs ended on a narrow landing with two archways opening off its width.  To the right were the rooms of First Reader, a dear lovely man who answered all my questions.  Unfortunately my study time with him would not begin until midafternoon.  What must he think of the odd prisoners brought home by the border guards.  Did he know of them?

Of course he knew.  From the tower the road was easily visible.  He would know who they were and how they were captured and what was to become of them.  Had he not told me yesterday that today would bring strangers?  I had a thousand questions to put to him.

I glanced inside but First Reader was not visible from the doorway.  Across the wide expanse of his rooms I could see through to the second archway and beyond that a window opening on the bright sky.  On the desk beneath the windows one corner of the map pulled loose from its tie and was flapping in the breeze.  It should be tied properly before it tore.  But before I could attend to it another student crossed the room and leaned above the table, securing the map.  My excuse gone, I turned and entered the opposite doorway.

The room to the left of the stairway was empty of furniture.  Its gray walls rose high to the wooden beams that supported the roof of the tower.  A staircase wound up one wall, ending in a hole in the ceiling that allowed passage to the roof.  Above and below the stairs, narrow windows opened to the sky.  All the space in between was covered with maps and charts rolled into tight scrolls that were tied with thread and hung from the hundreds of small metal hooks that jutted out between the stones.  Through the inner archway another window was visible with a desk beneath it.

First Starcaster bent over her desk looking like a cocoon.  If she had ever been a butterfly, it must have been a thousand years ago.

Remembering my manners, I said, I am late.  I am sorry.  We  stopped to watch the border guards return.  They brought prisoners.

The brown cocoon did not move but it snuffed loudly. 

Why did I bother to explain?  Like First Reader, she knew everything that happened everywhere.  I tried again.

I was in the field.  I saw them.  They were very white, with little brown dots all over them.

Her shoulders twitched.  The whole length of the worn brown robe, from the hood to the hem that covered her feet, shook violently.  She sneezed.

Very loudly I said, First Starcaster!  Are you ill?

Her gnarled brown hands crept out from her sleeves and grasped the edges of the desk.  Slowly she turned on her high stool.  As she raised her head the hood slid back from her face.

I waited, trying to control my excitement about the prisoners.  She did not like to see people smile or frown or show any sign of emotion.  Her own face was always the same, a small brown circle beneath a heavy mass of stone gray hair.  Her thick eyebrows stood out from a fine web of wrinkles and shaded her eyes.

Freckles, she said firmly.

My eyes widened.  The word was unfamiliar.

Your curiosity shows.  Put the tea on.

My curiosity showed!  I should think it might.  All my life long I had spent a part of each day helping in the fields, as did everyone, even my learned teacher, and many times I had seen the border guards going and returning from their patrols on the far serpent lines, five days journey from here.  The guards came and went, and we seldom looked up to watch them pass because we preferred not to think about why we needed border guards at all.  They had their job to do, and I suppose we were all secretly thankful we had other callings.  No one could envy them their lonely vigil on the edges of the northlands.

Never in all those years had the border guards returned with anything other than their own number.  Nor had strangers ever come from any other direction.  When First Reader said strangers would come today I had expected people from another village.  He had said no, truly strangers, but he had not said barbarians.

None of us had seen a barbarian before today.  We spent our lives frightening each other with tales of the barbarians, never expecting to encounter them outside of evil dreams.  It was whispered that some of the barbarians were half human and half beast, with animal bodies and four legs and tails, but human heads and arms.  Also, according to legend, the barbarians had so much gold and silver that they dressed themselves with these precious metals and even used them to build their towers.  Those were the worst tales, tales of vast wealth and great palaces, and those tales were forbidden.  Still they were whispered, and in my lifetime they had brought great tragedy.

I clamped my mouth shut and took the copper kettle from the wall shelf.  I had seen a real barbarian, six of them in fact, and First Starcaster thought my face should register no curiosity!

I lit the flame on the alcohol burner.  It flared up a bright blue, familiar and unfamiliar.  I almost dropped the kettle with the shock of memory.  The flame settled back but the blue remained in front of my eyes, cold, cutting, and terrible.  And something else.

I bit my lip.  Another word burned my mind.  Beautiful.  That’s what those eyes were.  In  those ugly scowling faces the blue eyes shone with a rare beauty.

If only I could talk to First Reader.  I must tell him what I had seen.

To make the time pass more quickly, I took down my charts from the wall, spread them on a reading table, and began memorizing the daily positions of the moving stars.  In my head I carried their approximate positions for the last hundred years, but I must also know their exact positions for any given day.  I must calculate that from the memorized tables and my knowledge of the variations of their paths.

I must know when the Love Star opposed the Blood Star and when the Sea Star joined the Broken Star and when the Dark Star shadowed the Thought Star or the Gift Star.  Seven stars moved constantly in front of the millions of fixed stars in the sky and the journey of each of the moving stars must be remembered, as well as the journeys of the sun and the moon.  I loved my work.  Nothing could be more beautiful than the moving patterns of the sky.  But sometimes my head ached from the mathematical equations.

When the water boiled I dropped in the dried leaves, waited for the rising and falling of the bubbles, then filled two cups with tea.

First Starcaster had pulled her hood up tightly around her head again.  Bent over her  desk, she once more became a brown cocoon that sneezed and sniffled.  Placing a cup of tea on her table, I said, I am sorry that you do not feel well today, First Starcaster.

In answer I received a loud sniff.  The sniff accompanied by a grumpy throat clearing displayed a good deal of emotion for someone who prided herself on never showing emotion.

However, I did not say so.  I returned to my table. 

Burned into the reading table