A War of Swallowed Stars Read online

  “It’s not an insult,” Amba says. “It’s an invitation. As a ship, you could not have entered the Temple. In a human body, you can.”

  Max looks at me for a moment, and then he says, “Amba, go ahead without us. We’ll catch up in a minute.”

  She glances at him, then back at me, and nods. “Very well.”

  I look up at Max and try to slow my breathing. My human mouth feels moist and thick and funny.

  “I’ve been inside other bodies before,” I try to explain. “Sort of. I’ve looked at the world from Amba and Kirrin’s points of view, in different bodies they’ve worn. But this isn’t like that. This is different.”

  He nods.

  “I—” I falter. “My face is wet. Why is my face wet?”

  “Because you’re crying,” he says gently.

  I shake out my hands and wiggle my toes. As a ship, I was strong and indestructible, but I was also fixed in place. In this body, everything is so mobile. Every part of me seems to be able to move. I can even wiggle my ears!

  I touch the tears on my cheeks. My skin feels so soft, the tears so wet and slippery. “Wh-what do I look like?”

  “Human,” says Max. “You look like you’re about thirteen or fourteen, which is about right, isn’t it? You’re small and quite delicate. Your dress is the same silver of your chassis when you were a ship. You have an upturned nose. Long brown hair. Brown eyes. Brownish skin. Freckles on your nose.” He pauses. “Actually, here, see for yourself.”

  He taps his watch and turns the screen toward me. A girl looks back at me. She’s very young. Her wet eyes are open wide and there are tears on her rounded, reddened cheeks. Her hair is pulled back into a long thing that Sybilla calls a ponytail, tied with a silver ribbon. I blink, and the girl blinks, too.

  She is me. I am her.

  It’s temporary.

  A feeling of intense, human want makes me feel like I might tear myself in two. I want this. I want it more than almost anything else.

  “This was what Suya offered you, wasn’t it?” Max says quietly. “This, forever. This is what you want.”

  I drop my eyes and look away. I still have my hands curled into his shirt to help keep me steady on my feet. I let go and try to stay upright on my own.

  “It’s okay to want this, Titania.”

  “I don’t want it so badly that I’ll pay Suya’s price,” is all I’m willing to say on the subject.

  I do want this, but the one thing I want more than this is to make sure Esmae and Max and everyone else I love is safe and happy, and I can’t do that as a human.

  “We should join Amba,” I say to Max.

  “Can you walk?”

  I feel my mouth curl. My first smile. “I’m not leaving until I do,” I tell him. I rock back and forth on my bare feet. Grass tickles the bottom of them. “I’m not leaving this planet until I can run. I’m going to make the most of every moment in this body.”

  Max looks away. “I wish she could see you now.”

  “So do I.”

  “Wait,” he says. He taps his watch again. “I’ll record you. We’ll find her, Titania. And when we do, she’ll want to see this.”

  I let him record my unsteady attempts to walk up a grassy path, my sputtering giggles when I trip over, and my profoundly ungraceful attempt at a twirl. I talk to her, too, because that way it almost feels like she’s here.

  Max lowers his wrist when we’re done. “You’re doing better,” he says. A brief, boyish smile flashes across his face. “Race you to the Temple doors?”

  I have seen Max run before, so when I stumble up to a slightly perplexed Amba at the doors and Max is somehow a step behind me, I know he let me win.

  “If you are both done behaving like children,” says Amba, pointing her most disapproving look our way, “Shall we go in? I believe we still have a galaxy to save.”

  The damp, tickly grass of the winding cliff path turns to cold stone as we step into the Temple. It’s easier to walk here because the surface is smooth, but I tread cautiously nevertheless, and my arms flutter out at my sides to help me keep my balance.

  The chamber we step into is enormous, almost as vast as the entire Temple itself. The great dome above us is glass, a direct view to the stars and lightning, and there are dozens of orbs of golden light suspended in the air. One wall is covered in stone and rock, with a waterfall gurgling down into a rocky pond. Another is pure glass, swirling with smoke. And further ahead, we see a grove of trees, mango and gooseberry and silver oak, all somehow growing out of the marble.

  Beneath the grove of trees is a man. He has short black hair that ripples upward as if there’s a wind blowing from beneath him, very pale skin, and is dressed in simple black pajamas that flutter loosely around his ankles. His features are cold and severe: straight brows, mouth set in a thin line, a furrow in his forehead. He hovers in the air just above the roots of the trees, with his eyes closed, his legs folded, and his hands upon his knees. Energy crackles around him, like the lightning in the sky.

  “Ash,” Amba murmurs.

  He looks human, but this avatar of him is simply how he’s chosen to appear to us. Mortal eyes can’t process the true form of a god.

  Every one thousand years, Ash sleeps for a hundred years. His Sleep is supposed to be a healing time, a century in which the universe stitches up the wounds of the centuries past and starts the new millennium with greater wisdom and hope. From what I gather, Ash can reset his Sleep if he’s woken.

  But he does not like being woken.

  There’s that unfamiliar, fluttery feeling again. Not fear, but like it. Maybe this wasn’t such a brilliant idea, after all.

  I tear my eyes away from the god and examine the rest of the Temple chamber. The rock pond and grove of trees appear to form two points of a trinity, and I take a tentative step closer to the third point. It’s a glowing, revolving disc with seven sides, suspended about four feet off the ground, and at least three feet tall. As I get closer, I can see shadows in the light, silhouettes cut into the disc on each of the seven sides.

  No, I realize quickly, as the disc completes a full revolution and the first silhouette I noticed comes around once more. The silhouettes are on just six of the seven sides.

  A bow. A spear. A trident. A crooked staff. A hoop. And a lightning bolt.

  Or, as they are better known: the moonbow, the sunspear, the trishula, the seastaff, the chakra, and the astra.

  “The Seven,” I whisper.

  The seventh side of the revolving disc, the only side without a shadow carved into the light, would have once held the silhouette of a sword.

  But the starsword, of course, isn’t here.

  “We have to wake him,” Amba says behind me.

  I turn back to the grove of trees and to Ash in his Sleep. Max gives Amba a wry look. “I suppose you want me to do it,” he says.

  “I saved your life,” she says at once. “I think this is the very least you can do for me.”

  Max rolls his eyes. “I seem to remember you saying that when you conned me into giving you a permanent suite of rooms in my palace.”

  Amba raises her eyebrows. “A suite of rooms is hardly the equivalent of bravely taking my father on in battle, slaying him, and rescuing my devoured brothers and sister.”

  Shaking his head, Max turns back to the grove of trees. The humor in his face fades as he stares at Ash for a moment. Then, quietly, he says, “By the stars that gave us life and the ashes of the old world, I bid you wake, Destroyer.”

  My new human heart beats faster. My new human knees wobble. Lightning splits the dark sky in two.

  And Ash, the destroyer, opens his eyes.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Titania

  That terrible, electric power crackles around Ash, fiercer than ever, as his dark eyes settle first on Max, then on Amba, then on me. I try a smile, but my mouth won’t move the way it’s supposed to.

  Silently, still hovering in the air, Ash unfolds his body. As he moves,
his black pajamas reshape into an armored black tunic, fitted trousers, boots, and vambraces. By the time he sets himself on the marble floor, he is a god in full battle gear.

  “Uncle,” says Amba, bowing her head.

  “You should have both known better,” is Ash’s only reply. His voice is cold and severe.

  “You know we wouldn’t have woken you if it wasn’t important,” says Max. “Sorsha is free. We’re all in danger.”

  “If you think I was not aware of that, you are mistaken.” Ash steps out of the grove of trees. His boots leave scorch marks on the marble everywhere he steps, but they fade away almost immediately, as though the marble has healed itself. He gives Max a grim look. “You should not have woken me, Valin. I would have Slept through this if you had let me be. Now I cannot do that.”

  That should be a good thing, shouldn’t it? Why does it sound like a warning?

  Max’s eyes dart across the chamber to the revolving disc, then back to Ash, whose gaze does not waver. Max closes his eyes as if in defeat. “Don’t,” he says.

  Don’t what?

  “I must,” says Ash. “You know I cannot do otherwise.”

  “Can it be stopped?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ahem.” I clear my throat dramatically. “Can what be stopped, exactly?”

  Three pairs of unfathomably dark eyes turn to me. I scowl back, mostly because I can scowl now. Ash tilts his head to one side as he considers me. “This form suits you,” he says. “Would you like to keep it?”

  “No,” I say at once. Yes.

  Ash nods like he knows exactly what I didn’t say. Turning away, he sits down on one of the trees’ thick, sturdy roots and gestures with his hands. “You woke me for a reason, I presume? Make your request.”

  Uncharacteristically hesitant, it takes Amba a moment to say, “Much as I wish otherwise, it is no longer possible for Sorsha and this star system to coexist. If I could save them both, I would, but as it stands, it would seem that the only way to preserve millions of lives is to kill my sister.”

  She speaks calmly and clearly, but I think I can hear the pain she’s trying very hard to hide.

  I think Ash hears it, too, because he says, “I know this is not easy for you, Amba. I do not like it, either. If I could undo Ness’s curse, I would.”

  Amba nods, looking away like she’s trying to compose herself. She looks unbearably tired, so I am not surprised when she, too, sits on one of the roots. Her back stays straight, her head high, but her hands clench in her lap.

  I feel like I should step in and spare her having to keep talking about the murder of her sister, but Max, who obviously feels the same way, gets there first. “Only one of the Seven can kill Sorsha,” he says. “We came here to ask your permission to use one.”

  “No,” says Ash coldly, “You came here and woke me to ask my permission for a god to use one. And my answer, as I am sure you expected, is no. I will not revoke my vow.”

  “We’ll all die if Sorsha cannot be stopped!” I protest.

  Ash raises his eyebrows. “You will not.”

  “That’s not a comfort,” I huff. “Are Sorsha and I to be the only sentient creatures left behind when all the stars in this galaxy are gone? Am I supposed to chase her from star system to star system until she runs out of stars and dies and I am all that remains in an endless dark void?”

  I have never said this out loud. I have never even dared to think it. And now I cannot escape it, this terror that that is indeed what will become of me.

  “A mortal cannot kill Sorsha, Uncle,” Amba says quietly. “The odds are infinitesimal.”

  Ash considers. “A mortal? Perhaps not.”

  Max narrows his eyes like he’s trying to unpick a riddle.

  “Why are you like this?” I demand, bewildered and angry. Amba shakes her head sharply at me, but I am not in the mood to listen. “You gods and mortals, you’re not actually as different as you think! All of you, with your vows and curses and wars, and all of you too proud to undo any of it. I want an explanation. I demand an explanation. I do not understand how you can refuse to revoke a vow when you know our entire world is at stake.”

  Lightning flashes across the sky above us. Electricity crackles around Ash, who opens one of his hands. Lightning dances on top of his palm, a single bolt, a miniature of the astra locked behind the revolving disc.

  I dart behind Max immediately. “Thanks,” he says drily.

  Poking my head out from behind him, I attempt my loftiest tone. “I’m not sorry I said it!”

  Ash’s cold, severe expression doesn’t so much as flicker. “I do not owe you or anyone else an explanation, child,” he says. He leans into the roots around him, like a king on his throne. “Moreover, you speak as if I should want to save this galaxy from the cataclysm that is coming.”

  I inch out from behind Max, even more bewildered than before. “Why wouldn’t you want to save it?”

  “Why would I?” he counters. His voice is still cold, but for the first time, I feel like I can hear something else. Fatigue, and pity. “After everything you have seen, can you truly tell me you believe this world is worth saving?”

  I open and close my mouth, half-words coming out before stopping again. I don’t understand what is happening.

  No one speaks for a moment or two. Max’s fists are clenched, his jaw tight.

  Amba takes a deep, steadying breath. “Uncle,” she says, “Do you know where Esmae Rey is?”

  I can hear the dread in her voice. It is the question all three of us, I suspect, wanted to ask first and were all also afraid to ask at all. I am not sure any of us wants to hear the answer.

  “I do not,” says Ash, and I almost burst into tears.

  Max is tense, but he presses further. “But you know something.”

  “I know you will need her before the end of everything,” says the god. “And I know that when you need her, she will be there.”

  I am not ashamed to admit it: at that, I do burst into tears. The joy of being able to cry actual tears is only exceeded by my joy at this irrevocable proof that Esmae is still alive and she will come back to us, and so I bawl, letting tears and snot (I have snot!) run down my face.

  Amba has put her face in her hands, possibly overwhelmed by her own relief and emotion. Max’s eyes are brighter and more alive than I’ve seen them in weeks. Observing me, Ash waves a hand, and a handkerchief materializes in my own hand. I blow my nose noisily.

  “Thank you,” Amba says quietly, lifting her head.

  “But that is not the only reason you are here, is it?” Ash’s dark stare pins me in place. “I believe you have another question to ask me.”

  I blow my nose one more time. “Why did you give Cassel Rey the starsword?” I ask. My voice sounds thicker, probably from the snot.

  “Cassel Rey’s conscience troubled him a great deal,” says Ash. “He had inherited a crown he believed should have been his brother’s, he blamed himself for his mother’s death, and he was never quite able to forgive himself for giving his daughter up. He would pray. Night after night, he would pray to me for reassurance that he had done the right thing. I could not give him that reassurance, of course, but the more I listened to him, the more I started to see pieces of a future that he would have to play a part in. And so,” he goes on, rising to his feet, “I visited him.”

  Ash waves a hand. Holographic shapes appear, solidifying into the forms of King Cassel and Ash himself.

  Cassel, who is kneeling on the floor, stares up at Ash in shock. “You’re here!”

  “I know what it is you want from me,” the other Ash says to the king. “You want to be told that you have done the right thing, but I cannot do that. You want to know if the idea hiding in the back of your mind is one you should pursue, but I cannot tell you that either. You must decide for yourself what you can live with. You must decide for yourself what happens next.”

  “What I can live with,” Cassel repeats. He sounds ashamed.


  There’s a pause, and then the holographic Ash opens one hand. A sword appears, lying across his palm.

  “What’s this?” Cassel asks, surprised.

  “One day, your daughter will carry this sword into battle,” Ash tells him. “Until then, it is yours.”

  Before any of us can see how Cassel reacted to that, he and the other Ash collapse into gold pixels and fade away.

  “That is why I gave him the starsword,” Ash tells us.

  I can feel my wonderfully mobile eyebrows pull together. “I feel like you’re not sharing everything you know,” I complain.

  “I am never sharing everything I know,” he replies. He turns away, ending the conversation with a finality even I cannot argue with. “Amba,” he says, “Come into the grove with me. I cannot give you your godhood back, but perhaps there is something I can do to make your remaining years as a mortal a little less painful.”

  He and Amba kneel in the middle of the grove of trees, facing each other. Ash puts his fingertips to either side of Amba’s head, and she closes her eyes. Lightning flashes between them.

  This could take some time, and I know I won’t be in this body for much longer, so I move away from the grove and take a closer look at the rock wall, waterfall, and pond. I kneel beside the rocks, trail my hand in the pond, and smile giddily at how alien and peculiar and lovely the cool water feels against my human skin. Small, bright fish swim up to my hand and nibble at my knuckles. I giggle.

  I let my hand drift idly in the water as my eager eyes search the vast chamber, devouring every detail. Along the back wall, beyond the grove, are a number of slender doorways. They are all sealed, except for the third one from the left, which is open. Something inside glows gold, spilling light out onto the marble floor of the chamber we’re in.

  Curious, I leave the pond and go to the doorway. Stepping inside, I find a much smaller chamber, and in it, the most bizarre thing:

  A man, asleep.

  I suppose it’s not so bizarre, actually, considering where we are. Ashma appears to be the place to take a nap. Rama would have loved it here.

  But this sleeper is not Ash, so who is he?