“Don’t suppose you can point me to the nearest mech shop?” I ask, huffing a laugh at my own joke, and just the tiniest, tiniest bit, hoping it’ll surprise me by answering.
It trills again, eyes reflecting the faint starlight as it blinks up at me. And then in an instant it’s moving, turning to scamper away across the water, sending out ripples in every direction, tail whipping behind it.
“Hey, wait!” My words are a hiss, and I’m frozen in place. Did it understand me? Is it going somewhere? Should I follow it? Or is it …
A sound off to my left instantly answers my question. There’s a group of five shapes moving toward me across the shallow mirror of the lake, creatures at least as tall as my chest. Like the little one, they’re moving on four legs, and when one turns its head I see its silhouette.
There are knives coming out of the front of its face.
My brain scrambles for the right word, one I heard from Saelis when we were small. They’re … tusks.
I’ve seen one bird hunt another, and I know instantly what I’m looking at: predators. I shrink in against the glider once more, holding my breath, trying to keep so perfectly still that I don’t even send out a ripple. But one of them lets out a hideous, squealing grunt, and the others answer, and when they quicken their pace it’s not in the direction of the little thing that had the smarts to make a run for it. They’re circling around to pin me in against the side of the Skysinger.
I lunge for the front of the craft, my hands closing around a strut as the creatures charge toward me. The metal cold against my hands, I brace one foot against the glider’s side and yank. When the pole comes free there’s a piece of canvas stuck on the end, the sparks nestled in its fold springing into fire as I brandish it.
The nearest of the animals pulls up short, just outside my range, and by the light of my brand I can see it clearly. It’s like my nightmares had nightmares, and those came to life—a huge pair of dirtied yellow tusks sit on either side of a long, blunt, hairy nose—the coarse hair covers its whole body, the muscle visible beneath it. Its teeth are just as sharp, poking out of its mouth in a vicious overbite, and long, curved horns sweep back from its head.
It snarls and grunts again. I swing the strut at it, then around to my right in an arc, forcing its nearest neighbor to pull up short as well. In a moment, four of them have formed a semicircle around me, the broken glider at my back, and I’m reduced to instinct as I work desperately to keep them at bay. But I know I can’t do it forever—the fire will burn out, they’ll grow bolder, they’ll realize I can’t stop all of them at once.
They’re grunting and squealing and slobbering, and I can’t tell if they’re communicating or just so frenzied at the thought of skewering me with their face knives that they can’t help screaming about it. And then there’s an echoing bang from behind me, as the fifth finally tells me where it is by trying to charge straight through the Skysinger to get me.
I yelp. And then I see another dark shape. This one is taller, thinner, with some kind of horn rising up above it.
No, no, no, my panicked brain chants. One more attacker will tip the balance. I can’t fight one more thing—I can’t even fight these things much longer. The strut is knocked from my hand, and I know I’m about to feel those tusks ripping me apart.
Then light bursts into blinding brilliance all around me, throwing long, sharp shadows against the surface of the water.
For a fraction of a second, the newcomer is outlined, and it’s a person. The horn is a staff in their hand, and it’s bright as the sun—and then I’m throwing up my arm to shield my eyes, turning in against the Skysinger to protect my face.
I can’t see a thing, but I can hear perfectly—every individual heartbeat as my chest tries to explode. Every grunt and squeal and splash as the creatures and their face knives run for their lives, setting off across the mirror lake like a flock of frightened pidges.
And then silence, save for the shallow water lapping against the sides of the glider.
Slowly I turn, lowering my arm, blinking against the white flashes still going off in my vision.
As the white sparks slowly fade out, I see a black shape against the starlight before me. A silhouette. And then her features start to emerge.
It’s a girl. Her mouth and nose are covered by a band of cloth, and all I can make out are a pair of dark eyes, staring at me, narrowed in suspicion.
A person—an actual human, alive and staring at me.
But there aren’t any people Below—everyone knows that.
Maybe I’m not a dead man after all.
Or maybe this girl is the next thing that’s going to try to kill me.
FIVE
NIMH
The glare from the beacon spell fades, my eyes dazzled even through my closed eyelids. The sound of the mist-bent boar splashing a noisy retreat tells me to relax, but they are hungry creatures, drawn by blood, not by light or noise. Something drew them here—something wounded.
Just before I cast the beacon, I saw a streak of fire swinging this way and that against the press of the shadowy predators. In the moment, I thought it must be a piece of the fallen object, jostled by the animals. But the truth dawns on me even before I open my eyes to see the figure half-fallen back against the crumpled, smoldering object.
Someone else has come seeking the Star.
He lurches unsteadily to his feet, sending me scrambling back, clutching my spearstaff more tightly as my heart begins to pound even harder. There’s nothing else inside the odd structure that fell from the sky, or at least nothing that I can see. The man—no more than a boy, really—is unarmed, and looks like he’s already had to fight his way to this spot. A thick line of blood coats the right side of his face from hairline to collar, and his arm is crudely bandaged.
“Have you taken anything from this place?” I demand, disguising my fear with an air of command.
He doesn’t move—he doesn’t even blink, nothing to register that he heard me, much less understood me.
I lower the tip of the spearstaff, shifting my weight so that I can level it at him. I won’t let some slack-jawed boy come between me and my purpose, not now that I might actually have one.
“How many others?” I snap, hoping to jar him from his stupor. “You cannot be here alone—where is the rest of your party?”
The boy continues to gape at me. He has big black eyes and an expressive mouth, and just now he looks as surprised as if I’d fallen from the sky along with this … this thing. His eyes are wide and fixed on my face with an expression oddly like one of hope.
“Move away.” At last, my demand gets a response—his eyes switch their focus to the tip of my spear, and, swallowing, he sidles away from the smoking ruin so I can approach it.
The structure that fell from the sky is clearly broken—even without knowing what it’s meant to look like, I can see the frame is bent and twisted, the outer skin crumpled and smoldering at its front from the impact with the ground. The lost stanza of the Song of the Destroyer describes the empty vessel wielding the Star against the darkness—the Star must be somewhere inside this tangle of broken construction. Keeping most of my attention on the boy, I take a step up onto part of the structure, making it creak ominously under my weight.