Crown of stars, p.1
Crown of Stars, page 1
CROWN OF STARS
WORLD WHISPERER BOOK 6
RACHEL DEVENISH FORD
SMALL SEED PRESS
This book is for Becca, my sister, my first friend.
I love you.
CONTENTS
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Reviews
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Also by Rachel Devenish Ford
Copyright © 2022 by Rachel Devenish Ford
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
PROLOGUE
Teru was coming back from the hot water pools when she heard the noise. A deafening crack, loud enough that she felt it in the palms of her hands and the soles of her feet, loud enough that it knocked her down and blinked the light out of the sky.
Teru had grown up going to the hot water pools, starting when she was a little girl. She remembered sitting in the water, steam rising around her until the world was like a dreamland. She loved to sink all the way down into the water until only her eyes were looking out. People looked so lovely through the mist. But then the queen was stolen, and the hot pools dried up. There was no more soaking in the morning, no washing each other's backs and listening to the old women gossip and laugh together. Everyone in Maween mourned the hot pools, but they were so cut up with grief over losing the queen that it was hard to tell where sadness over one thing ended and the other began.
Recently, very recently, hot water had begun to trickle out of the earth again. Teru's husband Dawit had been the first to discover the new pools. Early one morning, on his way up to the waterfall, he noticed steam rising from the little clearing where the empty hot pools still sat. He told Teru, "I walked over, not believing my eyes, but beloved, water is flowing from the rock like it always used to."
The children were away fighting, protecting the Hadem from extinction. Teru had to believe that the return of the hot water was a good sign, that something good had happened to bring it back. The elders marveled, and after a few healers went out to check the water for poison and found it clear, they had declared the hot pools open again.
It had been so many years.
Teru had started a habit of going early in the mornings before most people were awake. She left in the dark when the stars were still out, walking carefully over the ground, barefoot, the way she had when she was a small girl. Then she sat, the water soothing all her aches, the stars glittering above, the sky gradually brightening until the sun rose. It was beautiful, worshipful, and she found herself singing to Nenyi in the early morning quiet.
Sometimes she went with Kital and Ibba, making sure they got a good soak and were safe on the slippery stones, but what she really liked was going on her own. Every so often, she met someone else in those early hours. They sat quietly, though, with an unspoken agreement that it was a time for quiet.
Going to the hot pools meant that Teru now had a second place she regularly visited, away from her house. The other was her friend Tomas's studio. Teru didn't go out often. In recent years, Teru had gone to the palace a handful of times for Isika's sake. But that was it. The hot water pools and Tomas's studio. Teru couldn't have said exactly when she stopped being able to leave her house. She knew the approximate time because it was nearly ten years ago, after her only son had left for exploration on their borders and had never returned. Teru and Dawit had not known pain could exist that took your very breath out of your body. Even losing the queen had not felt like this. She breathed his name in her sleep, though she barely spoke it aloud. Kebede. Her dearest. Her darling son.
She had been given the barest scraping of explanation. Not enough, never enough. Amid a routine border patrol, the other rangers said, Kebede had fallen into a deep ravine. When they got to the bottom, there were signs of a struggle, and there was blood--signs that Kebede had been terribly hurt or killed. They never found him, and he was presumed dead. Teru and Dawit went through months of longing and hope before they began to accept his death. That was what they told everyone. They had lost their son. Their son was dead. It was easier that way.
It was impossible to think of Kebede somewhere out there, not knowing who he was, or worse, imprisoned or enslaved. The fall had been very far, the other rangers had told them. There was no way Kebede could have survived. He must have been carried off by a wild animal. Or a person, Teru thought in the dark nights when she could not sleep. Or some poison worse than anything they had ever encountered.
At some point, Teru realized she had not left the house in a week. The next time she thought about it, a month had passed, and she still hadn't gone out. And then it was a year, and everyone around her stopped urging her to come out. They came to accept her new way of life. Dawit got what she needed from the market. She declined all invitations.
But then, one day, she found her feet taking her to Tomas's workshop, and it became the second and only other place where Teru felt comfortable. It was a safe place, with soft afternoon light, the dusty smell of clay, and very few surprises. Teru spent time in her garden, she made her home beautiful, and she mourned. Her work as one of the elders was suspended indefinitely. She couldn't go to the palace. She couldn't go to the ceremonies or even the singing. She missed the singing the most.
And then the children had come. Isika and Ben, Ibba and Kital. Teru remembered the very moment that Dawit had told her about the children. Saying yes at his insistence had shaken her until her teeth rattled. Before that time, she had refused to take any of the rescued toddlers.
"We raised our child and lost him," she told Dawit. "I don't think I can do it again."
But looking at his face as he burst into the house that day, winded from running up the hill, her dear, patient husband, she hadn't been able to tell him no, even though it would break her, no, it would finish her off.
"They're nearly grown," he had said, holding her eyes with his own, holding her hands when she would have pulled away. "And they are different. There is something extraordinary about these children. Please, beloved."
Dawit, her love. He had been so patient with her through the years. How could she deny him, despite the immensity of the request? Four children? Four? But he had been right.
They had changed Teru's life—such an understatement. They brought her new life. They made her see how small her life had become, the circle she wore into the kitchen floor and garden too small, too limited. She lived a bigger and fuller life through them, and they had even caused her to leave the house a few times, even to battle the Desert King, side by side with Ibba in conflict. She had started to think of her life in terms of before and after. There was before Teru lost Kebede. Then there was the middle space. And there was after the children came.
She still stayed very close to home, but now the hot pools were back and Teru had begun something new: starting her days here in the warmth, watching her prayers rise like steam. She lay against the hot stones, and she dreamed. The pools gave her visions of her father. She dreamed of her mother and a time before her son had been killed. Sometimes in these dreams, the children were mixed into the past. She saw Isika speaking with her father or her mother playing in the garden with Kital. Sometimes Keerza came to the water's edge, or birds landed on the trees surrounding the pool, and they sang to her, their songs winding their way into her dreams.
She knew it was time to go when the rim of the sun rose above the trees. She stood and plucked her sarong from a nearby rock, thinking about the strange peace she had felt over the last few months. Where did it come from? Did it come from the hot pools? Or the sunsets, which had changed into a rich blanket of unearthly colors. They looked like the sunsets from Teru's childhood, before the queen had been stolen. Or was it because Ibba and Kital had started to cook sometimes, and Teru had more time to rest? She didn't know why she felt different, but the feeling was nice, and she didn't want to prod at it too much.
She wanted to look at the treetops silhouetted against the sky and enjoy the peaceful feeling. She whispered words of courage to Isika and Ben, somewhere out there, trying to save their sister. Had they found a way to reach her?
Teru tied her sarong more tightly around her and slipped her feet into her sandals. It was time to go back to her house and prepare for the day. She walked to the edge of the clearing, but just as she came to the break in the trees, there was a crack, sudden and loud, so strong that it knocked her o
Teru opened her eyes, unsure of how long she had been asleep. It felt like forever, but when she looked around, she saw that the birds were still protesting, and the sun was no higher in the sky. Her hair was still damp from the hot pools. She slowly raised herself on one elbow and then pulled herself to her feet, groaning. She was too old for this. Too old for falling and visions, for loud noises to shake the earth. She marched down to the palace, grumpy and wet, uncaring that she was in her sarong. Ivram, Laylit, and Andar were sitting on the palace steps, talking. As Teru arrived, Karah joined them.
They stopped talking and turned to stare at Teru. She scowled back at them.
"Why are you all outside?" she demanded.
"You're asking us why we are outside?" Ivram responded, his voice mild.
Well, she would give them that. It was not normal behavior for Teru to show up at the palace, especially not in a sarong. Usually, if the elders wanted her to do anything remotely elder-like, they had to come and find her.
"We ran out here because we heard a loud noise and wanted to see if something was happening," Laylit said after a moment. "I take it you did too."
Teru considered the question. "What is going on?" she countered. "What have you done?"
Andar opened his hands. "We're mystified. And we have all seen the same vision. Did you have a vision?"
Teru nodded.
"The palace guards and servants saw nothing, though they heard the noise," the first elder went on. "We wonder who has seen it and why."
Karah was biting her lip. "We need to collect everyone who saw the vision."
Ivram's head was bowed over his hands. "I recognized the man," he said. "We know him, and it does not seem like good news to me, the way he moved off into the distance, the way it seemed that he was giving us a final message."
Teru sat, suddenly, on a lower step, looking up at them all. "Herrith," she breathed. Her heart gave a creak of something like grief.
That night it took Teru a long time to fall asleep. She stayed at the palace all day. Dawit brought her clothes, eventually, after telling them that he, too, had dreamed of a man in the desert. The elders compared visions and talked over what they could mean. It turned out that it was only the six of them who had seen the man in the desert, though everyone in Maween seemed to have heard the noise. It was a serious day, as they tried to figure out what it had meant. None of them felt good about whatever had happened to Herrith, and there was some kind of weird magical residue that tasted of poison.
When Teru finally returned home, she found Ibba already making dinner. She joined her foster daughter, and the little family ate together in the lamplight of the kitchen. All of Teru's familiar things were around her, the comforting smells and sounds and people of home, and still, she could not settle. The six of them. The vision had come to five elders and one elder's husband. What was it? What had happened? Was Isika okay?
They had talked that over for a long time, all of them old enough to remember how it had felt when Queen Azariyah had been taken. This did not feel like that. In the days after the queen had been stolen, Maween had felt the suffering in the earth, the water, and the sky. The hot pools dried up, and the river stopped running for some time. The birds mourned with endless calls that could not be silenced. Nothing like it had happened this time, and Teru tried to let that knowledge reassure her, lying there wide-eyed in the dark of her bed.
Dawit fell asleep first, his light snores as familiar as his dear face, and Teru finally drifted off to sleep.
The next thing she knew was the cliff edge. Teru stood, gripping the stone wall behind her with her fingernails, trying not to fall. In front were the ocean and the sunrise. This was no vision, Teru knew. She could feel the stone under her hands and the wind on her face. She could smell the sea and feel salt spray. She felt the wet rock under her feet. She looked from side to side and saw that she was completely and utterly alone, with no idea where she was. She had practice, over the years, at calming herself, and as she began to put all her effort into not panicking, she had one thought.
Well, she thought. Finally.
CHAPTER 1
After they arrived in Azariyah to find the elders gone, Isika went into some sort of fog. More than once, she found herself walking without knowing where she had come from or where she was going. Losing Herrith had been such a blow, but the discovery that Ikajo had sent his malice all the way to Isika's home, that he had found and stolen their foster parents, was a terrible invasion. It echoed painfully around their little group of travelers and others in the city, bringing memories of their stolen queen to them. Queen Azariyah had never come home. Isika couldn't let herself think about that.
She realized she had been holding herself together until she could get home to Auntie Teru and Uncle Dawit, dreaming of her bed and Auntie's food and care, her firm, gentle hands on Isika's head and shoulders. Isika wanted to tell them that she and Jabari were engaged and ask if they would please be the parents to bless the marriage? She had longed for her normal life, waking up knowing there was care in her home.
Immediately after Jerutha had met them on the road and told them the terrible news, chaos erupted in their exhausted traveling group, everyone shouting and asking questions.
It seemed that Ikajo hadn't been willing to give up Aria without a last savage blow, a punishment so devious it took Isika's breath away. She found she was nearly doubled over, and her guard, Nat, was holding her up.
"Ben!" Isika cried, and he knew what she needed.
"They are not dead," he said. "I sense their life, still."
Isika could breathe a little better after that, though when she realized they were at the palace steps, Isika didn't remember getting there.
Pull yourself together, she told herself. She was a queen. She needed to help her people.
She surfaced from dread a little as Ibba and Kital ran down the palace steps, sobbing. They threw their arms around her, hugging her tightly and weeping. Isika felt such rage toward the Desert King at that moment that she could have gladly gone back in time and made the decision to kill him. What had she been thinking, letting him go? Would he ever let them be free?
Ibba told Isika that Jerutha and Mesu had moved in to live with them at the house since the day Auntie and Uncle had been taken. Isika could see the fear and sorrow in their faces. They had already lost so much and had said goodbye to Isika and Ben over and over again. The love of their foster parents had been holding them together, too.
Isika looked at them very seriously, holding their eyes with her own.
"Auntie Teru and Uncle Dawit are alive," she said, "and we will get them back."
