“She did not know what it was, nor where it came from. She did have other whispers for me, though. She told me that it was spreading among the mateless stone sky gods. She told me that Sceadulyr’s star map has completely gone out. He is trapped, now, in his Shadowlands palace.”
“Trapped?” I echoed, feeling suddenly off-balance. Maybe it’s the blood loss. I folded my wings and sat heavily upon the shimmering ground. I frowned down at my torso, slick with silver blood coursing from wounds inflicted by Skallagrim.
“Trapped,” Maerwynne replied flatly. “Every place that goes dark on your star map is a place you can no longer open a sky door to.”
I was glad I had seated myself. Because otherwise, Maerwynne’s words would have toppled me.
A stone sky god who cannot open a sky door?
It was unheard of. Impossible.
Maerwynne was no longer looking at me. He gazed at the gates of Heofonraed, his face unreadable, his star-dark hand opening and closing, over and over.
“Does it hurt?” I asked.
His fist clamped tight and stayed that way.
“No,” he replied, turning his black and red gaze back to me. “I feel nothing there, Wylfrael.” His voice caught strangely in his throat. “Nothing.”
I swallowed hard, looking down at my own hands, arms, chest, places that thrummed with the soft murmur of the star map’s power. I opened my wings and twisted, inspecting them. In a movement roughened by clumsy haste and blood loss, I stood, yanking off my Sionnachan leather trousers. I stood naked under my own fierce inspection. I was aware that Maerwynne was inspecting me as well, no doubt looking for the same thing I was. Any sign of star-darkness.
At least for now, everything seemed right with my star map. The blue flickers of the constellations glowed along my legs and across my groin as they always had. I fixed my trousers while Maerwynne turned his face from me. Not before I saw a strangled sort of emotion upon his features. I could not tell if it was envy or relief.
“You say this is spreading among mateless gods?”
“Yes,” Maerwynne said.
“Why then does the council block our entry? They should not be susceptible.” The Council of the Gods was comprised only of mated, mortal gods. It had always been so. Losing their immortality meant they acted with greater care, because they were more keenly aware of death and destruction. And because they died the moment their mortal mates did, it meant no god served too long a term and became entrenched in his power and place.
“I do not know,” Maerwynne said. “I am here for the same reason you are. To petition the council. I wanted to speak to them about the star-darkness, find out what they can do to stop it. I did not believe Rúnwebbe when she told me the council would not open their gates. I was flying up, trying to reach the top of the gates, trying anything to get them to open to me. That is when you and Skallagrim came through the sky door and I heard you calling.”
“This is unacceptable!” My roar caused the Eaforswynne to toss their bulky heads in warning. I ignored them, pointing a furious finger at the gates. “They are the only ones with access to the Heofonraed power of the stone sky relics!” They were supposed to use that power for the good of all of us, not hoard it.
“While they will not hear general petitions, they will allow mated gods to put themselves forth as candidates for the council.”
I sighed, lowering my hand.
“So, the only way to understand what is going on behind that gate and to talk to any of them is to be voted in by the current council?”
“It appears so.”
“Who is on the council now? Gunnarwyr?” I scowled, trying to remember the names of the other gods on the council before Skallagrim had sent me into my near-death slumber.
Maerwynne’s red eyebrows rose.
“Stone of the sky, no. He and any other council members you may remember are long dead. You have been gone for many mortal generations, Wylfrael.”
I tensed, letting out a harsh breath between my fangs. I’d had no sense of how long I’d been recovering after my last run-in with Skalla.
That means that every Sionnachan I knew, everyone I fought to protect from Skalla’s rage, is dead now.
Maerwynne kept speaking, and I fought to focus on his words through a clutching haze of grief.
“The current council members are gods I do not know. They are named Aelfsige, Beorht, and Paega.”
I inhaled and pushed my pain away. I watched Maerwynne expectantly, waiting for him to name the rest of the council.
He didn’t.
“Only three?” I asked, startled. I could not ever remember a time that there were less than seven gods on the council. Only three? How is that possible?
“Several newly mated gods have applied to join the council. None of them have been successful. I do not know what has happened to them since then.”
“Wonderful,” I muttered. “You’re telling me that since I’ve been asleep, everything has started to fall apart.”
“There is some hope,” Maerwynne said, though I heard little of that hope in his tone of voice. “There is apparently a cure for the star-darkness. Rúnwebbe told me she’d heard whispers of one stone sky god who found his mate. His star map returned.”
“Have you confirmed this?” I asked sharply.
Maerwynne’s wings shuffled.
“No,” he said. “He was one of the recent applicants to the council. I have heard no news of him since then.”
I grunted, dragging my fingertips through my hair. My head was beginning to ache.
“So, what are you doing wasting your time here with me, Maerwynne? You should be out there finding your mate. Before...”
Before all your stars go dark and you have no hope of finding her at all.
“That is my goal,” he said, his voice hardening with determination. “I will find her. And then I will apply to join the council and find out what is going on in there.”
We both turned to look at the gates once more, neither of us speaking aloud the ominous truth that lingered under Maerwynne’s declaration. The truth that he could go entirely star-dark, or mate-mad, before he ever found her.
“There is one more thing I must tell you, before I go,” Maerwynne said. “I fear I should have started with this news, but I knew you’d want to leave immediately once I told you, and you would not stay to hear the other things I had to say.”
“What is it?” My heart rate increased, every sense focused on Maerwynne and whatever truth he’d left until now to tell me.
“Rúnwebbe told me that a fourth race has achieved star travel.”
I did not think Maerwynne could have shocked me any more than he’d already done. But he had. The only ones who could travel the cosmos were stone sky gods, our uneasy allies the warlords of Riverdark, and our enemies the Tvarvatra.
“Who are they?” I hissed.
“Rúnwebbe calls them human,” Maerwynne replied. “Like the Tvarvatra, they do not travel with their own power but rather in machines. They are weak, but they are clever. They can use their machines to kill. And they are thieves. They plunder the worlds they find.”
“So why wait to tell me that?” It was important information, certainly, but it seemed less pressing than Skalla’s rampage, the star-darkness, and the disturbingly cloistered council. I did not see why such news would make me leave here with haste.
“Because, Wylfrael,” Maerwynne said gravely, his wings drawing around him like a scarlet shield, perhaps to protect himself from the explosive fury I felt at his next words. “These humans have landed on your world. They have invaded Sionnach.”