Seeker of Stars: A Novel Read Online Free PDF Page B

tensed. Taz had warned of marauders. I hurried back to our camp and told Taz and Salvi. Taz nodded to Salvi and, with a warning finger against his lips, ordered me to follow him. We stole close enough to hear them. In the darkness, I could see a scene that reminded me of vultures we had seen picking flesh from a carcass on the road. A group of men dressed in dark, heavy cloaks circled together. We could hear a murmur of low voices and occasional exclamations among the cluster of capes.
    “Marauders?” I whispered. Taz shook his head, then motioned me to be quiet and to follow him back to our caravan. When we reached our fire, my curiosity could be contained no more.
    “If they weren’t thieves, were they necromancers?”
    Taz laughed. I would miss that laugh. “Necromancers? Of a sort. Melchi, those were your astronomers!”
    I was astounded. I had never considered what astronomers actually looked like, nor how they looked at stars when they lived in a city that was lit at night. What do they do in the day ? I wondered for the first time. Would they laugh at my lack of knowledge, or would I impress them? Would they love the beauties as I did, or would they be sophisticated intellectuals? I wanted to see more, but Taz urged me to bed.
    “You’ll see enough tomorrow,” he reminded me.
    I gave one quick glance at the unchanging star, a touchstone so far from home, and turned in for the night.

Part Two

~ 7 ~
    S tar
    The torches had long been lit on the city walls by the time I walked home, the route that had become so familiar to me after a dozen years of living among the astronomers. But everything appeared new to my eyes now that we had discovered the star. I thought of my wife waiting for me, and once again I recalled the shock that had come when I married Reta. Since we found the star, there were days when I awoke with a sense of disorientation, wondering where I was and who was beside me.
    “A new star?” Reta said, frowning at the news that burst from me as soon as I entered our house. “I didn’t think that happened.”
    “It doesn’t.”
    Reta shook her head as she walked back into the kitchen to fetch my supper. When she returned, she was still frowning. “Why would a star appear?” she asked.
    “Caspar says it means something. A portent. A sign. Something big.”
    “Something good?” My wife’s hands instinctively covered her growing belly.
    “It’s not an omen. Balzar says it may signal a new order. Do you want to see it?”
    Reta’s hungry eyes betrayed her. With a sense of shame, I realized I had not invited her to look at the stars with me since we had married. I offered her a robe, but she shook her head.
    “It’s late. Let’s just go up on the roof the way we used to.”
    I put on my own robe and followed my wife up the stairs. As I climbed, my eyes instinctively sought the unmoving star to orient myself in the dance of the night. I realized I had not been to the roof of my own home in months, maybe years. Then, looking around, I realized someone else had. “Who—?” I asked.
    “Sometimes when you are out, I steal up here for a look.”
    I stole a quick glance at her just then, though I said nothing. I thought of the chief astronomer’s wife, who sat sewing and gossiping. That was what wives did, I had assumed. I had little opportunity to find out otherwise. Every clear evening, I carried the water clocks out of the city to observe and calculate the stars’ positions. When I returned, Reta was always asleep. When it was cloudy, I came home in the evenings, but I always felt I was disrupting Reta’s peace with my presence and rarely knew how to respond. Reta gazed at me from the pools of her eyes. This wife of mine surprised me with depths like the jet blackness of the space between the stars.
    I had begun to think quite a bit about that blackness since it had been pierced by a new and moving star. Before, I had only noticed my beauties and measured their positions. Now I began,