Shifting Stars by Gary Stringer (best fiction books of all time txt) 📗

Day of the Lake of Tears that I have mentioned before. The day when, according to legend and his own journal (which is hardly unequivocal evidence), Lake Quernhow was formed.

A whole town wept for me this day. The baby started it, perhaps sensing how the greatness of Ulvarius was to be challenged. The rest of the town had to drown before they had a chance to spread the word and try to undermine me. Those deaths caused the ground to shake and sink beneath the waters of a brand-new lake, blessed with the souls of those I killed. It was truly magnificent.

Some higher planar creature came today to witness the glory of the power of Ulvarius. It refused to bow down to my greatness, even daring to suggest that a mage more powerful than I would one day rise. All nonsense, of course. The truth is, it secretly feared Ulvarius – I could tell – and was just using that ridiculous claim to try and make me hesitate to kill it. In the end, I let it run away so that it could warn other higher planar beings not to mess with Ulvarius in the future.

Even as the magic of Ulvarius made the whole town weep, it used some kind of staff to create a magnificent display of light in the sky in Ulvarius’ honour.

Nothing will be the same, now. Now that I know my magic has caught the attention of the higher planes, everything has changed, even the sky. For today, the stars moved for Ulvarius.

Now, I daresay something struck you about that, gentle reader – besides the revelation that Ulvarius even wrote about himself in the third person! It certainly struck my mother.

“The stars moved for him!” she cried, breathless. “Three hundred years ago, my Angel appeared, and the stars moved for him.”

“Well, I very much doubt they moved for him,” Dreya said. “That’s just his ego talking. To be honest, when I read this before, I just assumed it was a metaphor – or a delusion.”

“Understandable,” Cat accepted.

“But now that you’ve shown me your research and told me your own experiences, the similarities are too striking and repeated too often to ignore.”

Comparing star charts from Ulvarius’ time to more recent ones, showed a seemingly random group had once again moved out of position.

Some obvious questions naturally suggested themselves: Why did the Angel keep popping up at various times in history? Why did they conceal themselves from all but one person? And what were they doing with the Crystal Mage Staff to cause that lightshow?

“Can’t answer any of those,” Cat admitted, “but I do have a theory about the star shifts.”

“Go on,” Dreya encouraged her.

“Well, the author of Shifting Stars questioned whether it was the stars or Tempestria itself that was moving. He made a case for the latter, but I think he overlooked a third, more likely possibility. Maybe it’s neither. Maybe the stars and our world remain unchanged in their relative positions in the heavens. Maybe it’s merely our perception of the stars that is changing.”

“You mean, something in between is filtering or refracting their light?” Dreya considered. “You’re right, that does make more sense. I can’t imagine any magic moving heavenly bodies around but bending light – we can do that already. It’s just a question of scale. But why? What’s the point?”

Cat shrugged. “And that’s as far as my clever theory goes, I’m afraid. We don’t even know whether the shifting stars are a goal or a side effect.”

Dreya had to admit she could suggest nothing more.

“Also,” Cat continued, “there’s one other question that you’re being really sweet not to bring up, Dreya: Whatever my Angel’s been doing with this staff for goodness knows how many centuries, it must surely be important. So why in the name of Creation give it to me?”

“Maybe that’s important, too?” Dreya suggested.

“Yeah, right!” Cat scoffed. “Because I’m so important!”

“You’re important to me,” Dreya stated, matter-of-factly, “and I happen to think I’m pretty important, so it doesn’t seem an entirely unreasonable hypothesis.”

Cat shook her head and offered a wry smile. “Only you could combine a compliment and self-aggrandising in one sentence.”

Dreya smiled back. Cat got the impression that not many people got to see that. “Just telling it like it is.”

“Well, that does lead me nicely to something I wanted to bring up,” Cat said. “Since I’ve met you, you’ve talked about your interest in bringing diverse magic together to strengthen the whole, and in that context, something else has struck me about my staff.”

It had occurred to Dreya, too: The readings from the Crystal Mage Staff seemed to indicate it contained diverse forms of magic, somehow bound together with higher planar energy. How, or for what purpose, the sorceress could not fathom.

Catriona snapped her out of her thoughts, speaking Dreya’s name in the most solemn tone the sorceress had heard from her, and following up with a most unexpected question.

“We’re friends, aren’t we?” Cat asked.

Dreya looked puzzled. “I like to think so.”

“But more than that – and I know it hasn’t been that long – I think we have a pretty good understanding of each other.”

Dreya agreed.

“So, I’m under no illusions: for you, the power will always come first.”

“I won’t deny that,” Dreya said, “but don’t for one moment imagine that means I don’t…” she hesitated, unused to expressing such thoughts, “…care. I am, in point of fact, very pleased to have you in my tower and in my life.”

“I know,” she assured her with a smile, “and no matter how…unconventionally you say things like that, as I say, I understand you.”

“What are you getting at, Cat?”

“I just want you to understand me when I say that I would never ask you to turn down a chance for power for the sake of friendship. You wouldn’t, and I get that, I really do.”

“Why do I feel there’s a ‘but’ coming?”

Cat nodded. “But equally, my staff and whatever it contains, is more important to me than