Turning from the door, her slipper clad feet scooted across the carpet towards a wall set next to a dressing table. On the white wall, an armored knight knelt before a painted lady. The knight’s red plume reminded her of Aldric and their meeting in the clearing, though the fancy attire of the lady looked nothing like how Dnara had been dressed in the forest. Behind the knight, an unlit wall sconce protruded with melted wax untrimmed. Dnara’s hand reached out and pulled on the bronze sconce. A click echoed and Dnara felt the faintest hint of fear as the wall shifted inward and opened to a set of stone stairs leading down.
Her palm brushed over cold stone as her legs took her downwards. Though no light lit her path, her feet felt sure in their steps, as if she had walked down this secret stairway a thousand times before. Silence permeated and the air hung stale. The swish of her nightgown and the distant echo of dripping water accompanied the growing hum from the starstone at the back of her neck. Wherever it was taking her, Dnara felt certain that it had been there before.
But, how? How could a starstone have been anywhere before, much less remembered being there? But, she did not stumble in the darkness, and her body did not hesitate when the stairs ended and a low ceiling stone hallway began. It walked on, as if guided, while the starstone in her collar hummed.
‘They come from your kind, mageborne. When a mageborne dies, their body turns to ash, and all that’s left are starstones.’
The memory of Ren’s voice whispered from the shadows, speaking a truth Dnara found hard to accept. The starstone that had been in her collar before, and the collar she wore now, had been born from the death of a mageborne. Who had they been? Had they died of old age, or had they exploded before experiencing the world?
Then a more troubling thought shook Dnara even as her body walked onward without missing a step. Did these starstones remember who they had been?
As if in answer, the starstone in her collar resonated with a different tone as her body turned a corner, walked through a plain wood door deeply set under a cracked stone archway and stepped out onto a quiet courtyard. The moon watched as Dnara continued along a narrow cobblestone path, staying within the wall’s thin shadow until coming to a set of stairs climbing upwards along the outside of four story annex. Up she climbed, stair after stair after stair, until she felt as high as the moon.
The wind followed, giving movement to the layers of her nightgown, but she could not feel the embrace she had abandoned. Just when she thought perhaps her body had decided to walk all the way to the top, with an unsettling idea it may then fling itself over the edge, her feet stopped walking. She stood next to an arched, narrow window, its wooden shutters flung open to the mild night temperature. Candlelight flickered onto the stones, making them glow, and from within the room Dnara heard a sound she had grown accustomed to over the years: the rhythmic scratch of an ink quill upon parchment.
Her body sat down beneath this window and pulled her knees up to her chest. The wind played with her voluminous skirts for a moment before settling. A chorus of crickets drifted up from the courtyard far below. Dnara leaned back against the cool stones, and the starstone resonated.
‘Listen.’
If Dnara could gasp, she would have. It sounded like the wind’s voice, but her heart knew that wasn’t possible. Just as she could not feel the wind, even as it stayed by her side and followed her into Carn, she hadn’t heard it speak since the night of the shadow dragon.
‘See.’
See what? Her gaze held not but darkness, stone buildings and stars. And then her eyes closed, and she saw nothing at all.
‘Listen, and see.’
A knock echoed into the room beyond the window. The quill stopped its scratching. “Enter,” spoke the voice of Delmurra.
A door pushed open, its hinges squeaking in a want for oil. “Pardon my intrusion, Bena Mageraetas,” spoke a male voice with humbled respect lacing each word. “But we have finished the latest harvest.”
“And?” Delmurra, the head mage of the Red Conclave, asked in an impatient tone.
A shuffle of shoes across the stones. The thunk of wood being set upon wood. An iron latch unsecured and smaller hinges creaking. A chest set on the desk and opened, perhaps? Dnara tried to visualize all the sounds her eyes could not see.
“As you can see, Bena Mageraetas,” the man said with a sad resignation and an inkling of fear. “The harvest has, once again, been poor.”
A clinking ting echoed as Delmura examined the harvest. “Disappointing, but not unexpected. They were not the best fields to plant seeds in. But, desperate times...” Delmurra sighed heavily and dropped the object back into the chest. It landed with another ting. “Leave them with me. Perhaps I can salvage this harvest into something useful.”
“As you wish, Bena Mageraetas.” The man’s subservient stooping could almost be heard.
“And send a raven to the Black Conclave,” Delmurra continued. “Tell them we require better, less damaged fields if we are ever to harvest enough to share. As it stands, their crop allotment is hereby halved until further notice.”
“A-as you wish, Bena Mageraetas,” the man stuttered.
After a quiet pause, Delmurra stood, her chair sliding across the stones with a discordant noise. “Hmm, perhaps I should send the raven myself, if they are to truly understand how dire a situation they now find themselves
