A Dark and Starless Night

Part Two - Of Magic & Murder : Chapter Twenty-Three

When Eve was just a girl, running riot in the streets of Rydwarn, a scholar and a warrior from Eleen's Temple came recruiting. Every year they would come from the desert, looking for children who presented some form of magic. At that time in her life, she had never seen magic, and the scholar and warrior couldn't be convinced to show them.

"This power is not for entertainment," the scholar would grumble, while the warrior smiled sadly.

"My friend is right, child," he would say, setting on a wall while the children would gather. They spoke Islan, so it was only the children whose parents had been stubborn enough to teach their children the language that listened.

"Then what's the point?" Eve asked, arms folded across her chest. She didn't trust them; they'd already taken two of her friends the year before and had refused to take her with them. They told her that her magic had to present – if she had magic – before they would take her to Eleen's Temple.

"I bet Eleen never got asked such disrespectful-"

"Lias, please," the warrior said, resting a hand on the scholar's shoulder.

"The point, Evelyn," he continued, having learned her name thanks to her always trying to cause trouble for them, "is to be able to protect those who cannot protect themselves. Eleen had boundless power. She could have levelled mountains and cliffs. Brought down forts and castles. Re-forged the world in an image of her own choosing. But instead, she chose to liberate us from a great war."

"A war with who?" someone else asked, making Eve roll her eyes.

"The Star Eaters."

The children that had gathered made noises of fear and shock while Eve tried not to snap at them to shut up. But, just like them, she sat on the boulders and broken wall to listen. She could never resist a good story.

"When Eleen had come to our world, the people lived like slaves, with chains of greycass metal around their wrists-" he rubbed his hand around his wrist, "-and their necks." He drew a line around his neck. The children shuffled uneasily. "And her prince had no idea that it was wrong or cruel to make his people live like that.

"Eleen showed him right from wrong, taught him that the Isle could be something better, brighter, only if they could work together. The Star Eaters didn't like this. They were happy with things the way they were, with them as lords of the land.

"So, they plotted against Eleen and her prince. They gathered a great force to them, of slaves bound to their will. But Eleen had made friends and forged alliances. She was not afraid to fight for the freedom of others. And then," he said, and the children leaned in, "Eleen showed them her power.

"Golden light, like the sun and the stars. Shifting and moving, taking the form of whatever she willed it into. A staff, a whip, a sword, a shield. A full body of golden armour, impenetrable and indestructible. That light could knit flesh back together. It could move her from one spot to another in the space of a second.

"As army broke upon army, like a wave against the shore, Eleen displayed her strength, the Five Who Fell be her side. When they waved their arms, swathes of star eaters fell. When they called down their light from the very stars, shackles fell and slave marks burned into nothing. Some stories even say..." The children, even Eve, pulled closer. "That they could call down the Dead and Sleeping Stars – molten, blazing rock that created the Black Ravines of the Dead."

The scholar shook his head and muttered something in another language. The warrior gave him a pointed look and the man fell silent again.

"Why did they leave then?" Archer asked, arms crossed across his chest. He was Eve's closest friend, and even more of a trouble starter than she was. "Why didn't they come back when Zyrna came?"

The warrior sighed, bracing his hands on his knees. "Because... when the land was at peace and on its way to healing, their children grown and with children of their own, they wanted to go home. To their sisters. The heavens were sealed behind Eleen when she returned. No one knows why, but, if you look in the sky to the south at the breath before dawn, you can still see those sealed gates still."

"If we have the golden light can we do all that?" one child asked, eyes wide.

"Maybe," he said, looking hopeful. "They say that one day Eleen's powers will return again. Maybe it will be you."

Eleen's powers? She had heard stories that Eleen herself would return when the Isle needed her most. Not her powers.

When all the children had cleared away, running off because they had no shred of power, at least not yet, Eve slowly approached the warrior. Archer hung back, looking like a kicked dog where he waited. She slipped her hand in the pocket of her trousers, a pocket her mother had sewn in, and pulled out the handkerchief. Inside it were two pieces of sea glass she'd found, green and smooth and beautiful.

"Can you give these to them?" she asked, tentatively.

The warrior gave her a smile that was warm and sad, the same smile her mother would give her some nights. But the scholar opened his mouth, disapproving and sneering.

"As apprentices, they're not allowed trinkets and pretty things."

He walked away, Eve sticking her tongue out at him and throwing him a gesture that she'd seen one of the sailors give to a city guard.

"Don't worry," the warrior whispered, dropping her a wink as he pocketed the handkerchief. "I'll make sure they get them."

And every year after, he would courier gifts back and forth between them. Eve got pressed flowers from desert oases and shards of strange desert glass. Her friends got seashells and even one year a rose each that Eve had stolen from the gardens of the House of Starlight. But, like all things that children do, that had come to an end.