When the Stars Rise (Follow the Stars · Book Four)

In the north of the world, where the forests are old and the winters are long, there is a city made of gold.

It was not always golden. Once, not so very long ago, its leaves had gone grey, and its bells had fallen silent, and a cold king had sat alone on its throne in the dark. But that was another story, and it was over now. For fifteen summers, Zlatnomirheim had shone.

It stood in the heart of the forest of Glasirlund, where the trees grew so tall their tops were lost in the clouds, and every leaf on every branch was real gold. When the wind blew through them, they rang like a thousand tiny bells. At night they glowed softly, so that you could walk the streets without a lantern and read a letter by the light of the nearest tree. Silver towers rose out of the canopy like the masts of great ships. Bridges hung between the ancient trunks, strung with lanterns. Down below, in the roots, the market streets wound in and out of the tree-hollows, full of bakers and blacksmiths and cloth-merchants and children. The children chased the falling leaves, because catching one was good luck, and that summer, everyone was lucky.

There was peace in the north. The roads were safe. The harvests were good. The Wolf Legion still kept watch at the old outpost on the edge of the frozen hills, but it had been years since they had drawn their swords for anything worse than a troll who had wandered too far south and needed persuading home.

And at the heart of it all, in the palace under the First Tree, ruled the king.

His name was Aelric, son of Aerandor, and the bards were already calling him the greatest king the north had ever known. They said he had fought a demon emperor and won. They said he had broken a curse and remembered the stars. They said he never raised his voice in council, and never needed to, and that the grey in his silver hair had come from all the years he stood on the tower at night, keeping watch so the rest of the realm could sleep.

He did not like hearing any of it. When the bards sang about him at feasts, he looked at the ceiling until they stopped.

Beside him, on a throne of carved white wood that he had made for her himself, sat the queen.

The small folk loved her. Everyone did. She had come from another world, people said, a princess from beyond the stars who had fallen out of the sky one night into the forest, and the king had found her there. She was very old, older than the king, older than the city, though she still looked like a woman in her twenties. She laughed often, loudly, at things that queens were not supposed to laugh at. She knew the names of the palace stable boys, and of the bakers’ children down in the roots. She walked barefoot in the gardens, and flowers came up wherever she stepped, so that the palace gardeners had long since given up trying to keep the paths clear.

And it was well known in Zlatnomirheim, though nobody ever said it in front of her, that whenever Queen Mei-Ling told a lie, a daisy popped up somewhere close by.

The palace was full of daisies.

* * *

“He’s going to hate it,” said Mei-Ling.

She was standing on the high balcony outside the council chamber with her arms folded on the rail, looking down at the courtyard far below. Servants were running about with armfuls of silver banners, and a man on a very tall ladder was trying to hang a lantern from the First Tree and losing.

Beside her, the king did not look up from the scroll he was reading. “Who is?”

“Ren. The oath. Standing up in front of the whole court in a stiff coat, being solemn for an hour.” She smiled. “He’s never been solemn for an hour in his life.”

“He’ll manage.”

"You didn’t. When you were sixteen. Vjetromor told me. You laughed in the middle of your oath.”

Aelric’s mouth moved, very slightly, at one corner. “I sneezed.”

"Lie,” said Mei-Ling, delighted.

He looked down at the floor by her feet. Nothing came up.

“See?” he said.

“That’s because you’re the one lying, not me.” She leaned her head against his shoulder. Below them, the man on the ladder dropped the lantern, and a whole flock of goats scattered across the courtyard, bleating. “Fifteen years,” she said, more quietly. “It went so fast. He was a baby yesterday. I had many millennia to grow up. He’s had fifteen. I’m not ready.”

Aelric put down his scroll. He didn’t say anything. He just put his arm round her.

“After the oath,” said Mei-Ling, “I’m taking him home. To the Valley. I promised him. Through the door, with all three runes.” She was smiling again. “Haoran’s going to spoil him rotten. He’ll have the whole Valley out to meet him.”

“So will you.”

“I know.” She laughed. Then she went quiet. “I haven’t been back in so long, Aelric. Not since the end of the war. Something always got in the way. A baby. A kingdom.” She looked out over the golden city. “I want him to see it. Where I come from. Before he’s too grown up to care.”

“He’ll care,” said Aelric.

From somewhere far below, through the open windows of the long gallery, there came a crash, a yell and a great deal of laughter.

They both looked down.

“That,” said the king, “will be him.”

* * *

That summer, the palace was full of banners. Hundreds of them, in silver and green and gold, strung from every tower and bridge. Lanterns by the thousand, hung in the branches of the First Tree, waiting to be lit. Carts came in every day from the river towns, piled high with barrels and crates and bolts of cloth. Musicians arrived from the coast, and a troupe of acrobats from the south. A whole herd of extremely confused goats came from somewhere nobody could quite explain.

In two weeks, the crown prince would turn sixteen and swear his oath before the court. It had not happened in Zlatnomirheim for many centuries. Not since the king himself had been a boy.

So the whole city was getting ready to celebrate, and the palace staff were run off their feet.

The crown prince, meanwhile, was lying on the floor.

* * *

It had started, as most things did, with Hallvard.

“I bet you won’t,” he said.

The five of them were lying on the floor of the long gallery, where they had been for most of the morning. All the grown-ups were busy, the stables were full of goats, and the Chamberlain had banned them from the great hall after the incident with the lantern.

“Won’t what?” said Ren.

Hallvard pointed. At the far end of the gallery, on a velvet cushion on a little gilded table, sat the Chamberlain’s ceremonial hat. It was enormous, tall and silver, with a white plume on top, and he had left it there while he went to shout at the musicians.

“Touch it,” said Hallvard. “I bet you won’t touch the hat.”

“Don’t,” said Elarinya at once, without looking up from her sewing.

“I didn’t say anything.”

“You were going to.”

“I bet you a gold piece,” said Hallvard.

"Don’t, Ren.”

“A gold piece and my dessert for a week.”

Ren was already on his feet.

“Oh, gods,” said Elarinya, and put her face in her hands.

“For the record,” said Jun, without looking up from his book, “this is a monumentally ill-advised undertaking. The Chamberlain is already in a state of considerable agitation. Removing his hat will not improve it.”

Hallvard looked at him blankly. “What?”

“He says it’s a bad idea,” said Ren.

“Then why didn’t he say that?”

“He did,” said Ren. “That’s how he says it.”

"Everything’s ill-advised to you,” said Astrid.

“Yes,” said Jun. “And I’m invariably correct.”

Ren walked down the gallery, very casually, with his hands in his pockets, whistling. He stopped by the little gilded table. He looked at the hat. He looked back at the others, all four of them watching from the floor.

He grinned.

Then he picked up the hat and put it on.

“Ren!” hissed Elarinya. “I said touch—”

“You said don’t,” said Ren. “Hallvard said touch. Nobody said I couldn’t wear it.”

At the far end of the gallery, a door opened.

The Chamberlain came in, saw the crown prince of Zlatnomirheim standing beside the empty cushion in his ceremonial hat, and went the colour of a boiled beetroot.

"YOUR HIGHNESS!"

“Run,” said Ren cheerfully, and ran.

* * *

"Left!" yelled Ren. ”Go left! LEFT!"

They went left. All five of them, round the corner of the long gallery at full tilt, sliding on the polished floor in their socks. They were going far too fast, and a whole row of very old, very valuable portraits of dead kings looked down at them in horror.

Behind them, somewhere, the Chamberlain was shouting.

Aerenthiel Aelricson, crown prince of Zlatnomirheim, heir to the First Tree, was fifteen years old. In two weeks he would stand before the whole court and swear his oath to the realm. Right now, he was running away from the Chamberlain with the Chamberlain’s best ceremonial hat on his head.

Everybody called him Ren. Even the Chamberlain, when he wasn’t shouting. He was tall for his age and thin as a sapling, with his father’s silver hair, short and tousled and falling into his eyes, and his mother’s eyes, jade-green, with something deep down in them that caught the light, like frost. The queen said it was all her side of the family.

Ren had his mother’s grin as well, and it had been getting him out of trouble since before he could walk.

It was not getting him out of this.

“He’s gaining!" shrieked Hallvard.

“He’s sixty!” said Ren. “He can’t be gaining!"

“He’s very fit for sixty!"

Hallvard was running beside him, laughing so hard he could barely breathe. He was a year older than Ren, and he had been Ren’s partner in crime since they were both small enough to fit inside a laundry basket together, which they had once done, for a whole afternoon, during a state visit. He was the son of Lady Mirna of Havgradić and her housecarl Hattori, and he had come up from the sea castle with his twin for the summer, as they did every summer. He had dirty-blond hair, shaved short at the sides and spiking up wildly on top, a row of small silver rings in one ear, and sapphire eyes that were nearly always laughing. He was the funniest person in the palace. He knew it.

"Why did you take the hat?" panted Elarinya, from behind them.

“It was a dare!"

"Whose dare?”

"Hallvard’s!"

“I dared you to touch the hat!” wailed Hallvard. “I didn’t say steal the hat! I never said wear the hat!”

“You should have been more specific!”

Elarinya Velas’tari was the eldest of them, and she ran with her skirts hitched up in both fists and her long black braid flying out behind her. She had her father’s violet eyes and her mother’s sharp little chin. She was the one who looked after all of them. Ten minutes ago she had said, very clearly, this is a terrible idea, Ren. And then she had come anyway.

“This is still a terrible idea,” she said now.

"Noted!"

Beside her ran her little brother.

Junarion Velas’tari, called Jun by everyone, was three weeks younger than Ren, and the cleverest person in the palace. He had black hair that went in every direction at once, round wire spectacles that were always slipping down his nose, and brown eyes like his mother’s. He was holding a book against his chest with his free arm.

He was the voice of reason. The others ignored him most of the time, and most of the time they regretted it.

“Not the great stair,” he said now, without even looking up. “He’ll intercept us at the bottom. The servants’ stair, behind the third tapestry. It’s narrower, but it emerges beside the entrance hall, and I’d wager the Chamberlain has forgotten it exists.”

“How do you know that?” said Hallvard.

“I consulted the palace plans,” said Jun. “Last winter. They were in the library.”

"Why?"

Jun regarded him over his spectacles as if the question were faintly absurd. “Because they were there.”

Astrid was Hallvard’s twin. She had the same dirty-blond hair and the same sapphire eyes, but one side of her head was shaved close above her ear, like her brother’s, and the rest of it was swept over and pulled back into a long braided ponytail. She was the fastest of them and the strongest, and she was not afraid of anything: not the Chamberlain, not the guards, not the Wolf Legion, not her mother. There was a knife in each of her boots. There was always a knife in each of her boots. Nobody had ever been quite brave enough to ask her why.

Somehow, wherever the five of them went, she always ended up running next to Jun. She would rather have died than say why.

“Third tapestry!” said Ren. “Go, go, go!"

They ducked behind the third tapestry, and there it was, exactly where Jun had said: a narrow servants’ stair, winding down in the dark. Ren didn’t take the steps. He jumped onto the old wooden handrail and slid down it, all the way, three storeys, in the Chamberlain’s hat, whooping, with his arms out. Hallvard went down the rail after him, and fell off halfway. Astrid vaulted over the side and dropped the last ten feet, landing as lightly as a cat. Elarinya and Jun took the steps two at a time, and Elarinya said, ”Lunatics. All of you. Absolute lunatics,” the whole way down.

“I object to that,” said Jun. “I located the stair.”

“You’re a lunatic by association.”

“A fair point,” said Jun. “Regrettably.”

They burst out at the bottom into the great entrance hall of the palace, where forty servants were up ladders, hanging banners for the celebration.

Ren skidded across the marble, caught the end of a long silver banner that was trailing down from a ladder, and kept going.

The banner came with him.

So did the ladder.

So did the servant at the top of the ladder, a very surprised young man who rode it all the way down like a falling tree. He landed, by sheer luck, in an enormous basket of folded tablecloths at the bottom.

There was a long silence in the great hall.

Forty servants looked down at the crown prince of Zlatnomirheim, standing in the middle of the marble floor in the Chamberlain’s hat with a silver banner wrapped round his legs, and his four best friends skidding to a halt behind him.

“...Sorry,” said Ren. And he grinned.

Somewhere in the galleries above them, the Chamberlain’s voice was getting closer.

"Run,” said Elarinya.

They ran.

* * *

They did not stop until they were out through the kitchen garden, over the wall, and lying flat on their backs in the long grass under the old peach tree at the bottom of the palace orchard, where no Chamberlain had ever thought to look.

At first, nobody spoke. They just lay there in a row in the grass, five of them, breathing hard, looking up through the branches at the bright summer sky.

Then Hallvard began to laugh.

He couldn’t stop. It was the falling-ladder man. He kept seeing him, riding the ladder down like a tree, with that expression on his face. And then Astrid started, and then Jun, quietly, behind his book. Then Ren, and even Elarinya in the end, though she tried very hard not to. They all lay there under the peach tree in the long grass, crying with laughter, until their stomachs hurt.

“We’re going to be in so much trouble,” said Elarinya, wiping her eyes.

“Worth it,” said Ren.

"You’re going to be in trouble. You stole the hat.”

“Hallvard dared me.”

“I dared you to touch it!”

Ren took off the Chamberlain’s hat and looked at it. It was very tall and very silver, with a long white plume on top, and it was slightly squashed now. He put it on Jun’s head. It came down over Jun’s spectacles to his nose.

“Suits you,” said Ren.

“I appear to have lost my sight,” said Jun, from inside the hat.

“You never can.”

They lay there in the grass a while longer, in the sun, under the peach tree, the five of them, the way they always had.

They had grown up together. They had climbed every tree in the palace orchard and fallen out of most of them. Every summer since they were born, Hallvard and Astrid had come up from the sea, and every summer it was as if they had never been away.

They were not brothers and sisters, not all of them. But they were the next best thing.

“Two weeks,” said Hallvard, to the sky. “Two weeks and you’re a man, Ren. Swearing oaths. Standing in front of the court. Being serious.”

“I’m always serious.”

Four people laughed at once.

“Mum’s taking me to the Valley afterwards,” said Ren. “For my birthday. Through a door in the sky. She promised.”

“We know,” said Elarinya. “You’ve told us.”

“I’ve never seen it. The Lotus Palace. My uncle. The aunties. The lions on the bridges.” He lay there grinning up at the peach tree. “Can you imagine?”

“You’ll fall in a lotus pond,” said Astrid. “First thing.”

“I will not.”

“Everyone in your family falls in a lotus pond,” said Jun, from inside the hat. “It’s practically a hereditary condition. It’s documented in all the stories.”

Ren opened his mouth to argue.

And from somewhere behind them, from the direction of the orchard gate, there came a sound like a small stampede.

* * *

They came over the hill in a furry little wave, and not one of them came up past Ren’s belt.

There were six of them, and they were the children of the two dwarf brothers who lived in the palace, Fror and Gror, and the two fox-spirit sisters who had married them. They were short and sturdy like their fathers, with their mothers’ pointed red ears, and every one of them had nine fluffy tails that swept everything off every table they went near.

They were very excited now. They came tearing down through the orchard toward the peach tree, all fifty-four tails streaming out behind them, all six of them shouting at once.

Behind them, at a much more dignified pace, padded Bai Gui. The queen’s great white tiger had been put in charge of the pups for the afternoon, and he looked as though he deeply regretted it. One of them was hanging off his tail. Another was riding on his head. He came down the hill with his winter-blue eyes half shut, like a very old uncle at a very long party, and lay down in the shade of the peach tree with a sigh that shook the leaves.

"There you are!”

“We looked for you!”

“The Chamberlain is so angry!"

“He said a word!”

“Ren, Ren, he said a word, and Mother says it’s a bad one—”

They piled straight on top of the five big ones lying in the grass, in a squirming heap of ears and tails and elbows. Hallvard disappeared entirely. Jun’s hat went flying. Somebody sat on Elarinya’s stomach.

At the very top of the heap, beaming, sat the smallest of them all, with huge shining eyes, and all nine of her tails were wagging at once.

“Hello, Ren,” said Pip. “We want to play.”

"No,” said Astrid, from somewhere underneath three of them.

"Please.”

“We’re hiding,” said Elarinya, pushing a tail out of her face. “From the Chamberlain. That’s a very serious game. You can’t join in.”

“Then play hide and seek,” said Ingrid. She was the eldest of the six, and she was in charge of rules. She stood up on Hallvard’s chest with her hands on her hips. “With us. The big ones count. The little ones hide. Now.”

“We’re too old for hide and seek,” said Hallvard, from underneath her.

“You’re never too old for hide and seek,” said Ingrid. “That’s a rule.”

“Since when?”

“Since now.”

Pip didn’t say anything. She just sat at the very top of the heap and looked at Ren. She made her eyes go huge, wet and shining, and let all nine of her tails droop at once, slowly, like a sad little sunset.

It worked on him every time. She knew it.

Ren sighed.

“All right,” he said. “One game. We count, you hide. Anywhere in the palace.” He held up a finger. ”Except the queen’s tower. Nobody goes up the queen’s tower. Not ever. Understood?”

"Understood!" shouted six small voices, much too quickly.

And they were gone, over the orchard wall and away, in a whirl of red tails.

* * *

It took the five of them nearly an hour to find five of the six.

Bram was in a laundry basket in the washhouse, under a pile of the Chamberlain’s shirts, which seemed fair. Ingrid had gone up the chimney in the Blue Room and came down black from her ears to her toes, delighted with herself. Dagny and Nell were in the Master of Horse’s hat cupboard, eating the sweets he kept hidden in his second-best hat. Odd was asleep inside a suit of armour in the long gallery. When Hallvard lifted the visor, he snored.

Pip was nowhere.

They looked everywhere. Under the beds in every guest room in the east wing. Behind every curtain in the great hall. In the library, where Jun stopped to look at a book and had to be dragged out by Astrid. In the stables, the bath house, the wine cellar and the bottom of the old well.

“This is ridiculous,” said Astrid, climbing out of the well with cobwebs in her hair. “She’s five. She’s smaller than a chicken.”

“Chickens are remarkably adept at concealment,” said Jun. “Statistically speaking.”

"Statistically,” repeated Astrid, staring at him.

“I read a treatise on it.”

“Of course you did.”

“Maybe she went home,” said Hallvard hopefully. “Maybe she got bored. Maybe she’s having lunch. I’d like to be having lunch.”

“You’ve had lunch,” said Elarinya. “Twice.”

“Hide and seek makes me hungry.”

"Breathing makes you hungry.”

“That’s true,” said Hallvard, deeply moved. “That’s actually true, Rinya. You really understand me.”

Elarinya threw a sock at him. Nobody knew where she had got it.

“Pip!” called Ren, up into the rafters of the stables. ”Pip! Game’s over! You win! You can come out!”

Nothing. Only a horse, looking at him over a stall door, deeply unimpressed.

“She’ll be somewhere silly,” said Ren. “She always is. Somewhere nobody would ever think to—”

He stopped.

“We’ve searched every place she was permitted to go,” said Jun quietly. “Which, logically, leaves only one.”

Elarinya was looking at Ren. So was Jun.

“No,” said Elarinya, her eyes widening. “She wouldn’t.”

“We told her,” said Ren. “We told her not to.”

“She’s five,” said Astrid. “Telling a five-year-old not to go somewhere is the same as giving her directions.”

* * *

They found the first pawprint at the bottom of the long white staircase in the corner of the great hall. It was the one nobody used, because it went up into the queen’s tower, and only one person ever went up there.

There was a tiny muddy pawprint on the first step.

And another on the second step. And another on the third. They went up and up, round and round, into the shadows at the top of the tower.

They all looked up.

At the very top of the stair, the door to the queen’s rooms was standing open. Just a crack. A thin line of green light was falling out through it onto the landing.

It was never open.

“She’s not supposed to be able to reach the handle,” said Astrid.

“She stood on Bram,” said Ingrid, who had come up behind them with the others, still black with soot. She sounded quite proud. “He doesn’t mind.”

“I do mind,” said Bram.

Ren was already on the stairs.

“Everybody wait here,” he called back over his shoulder. “I’ll get her.”

“Ren,” said Elarinya. “Your mother said—”

“I know what she said.”

“She said nobody. Not ever.”

“I know.” He stopped, three steps up, and looked back at her. For once, he was not grinning. “But Pip’s up there, Rinya. On her own. In a room full of things nobody’s allowed to touch.” He shrugged. “Mum would go. You know she would.”

Elarinya held his gaze. Then she sighed and picked up her skirts.

“Fine,” she said. “But if your mother kills you, I’m telling her it was your idea.”

“It’s always my idea.”

"Exactly.”

“I’d like it noted,” said Jun, “that I advised against this. Twice.”

“Noted,” said Ren.

“And that if we’re going to break the one rule your mother has ever given you, we should at least do it quickly and touch nothing.”

“Noted.”

She went up after him. So did Jun, with his book. Astrid went too, taking the stairs two at a time. Then Hallvard, last, with six small pups crowding up behind him.

“Nobody,” said Hallvard, to the pups, “touch anything.”

“We won’t,” said six small voices, much too quickly.

* * *

Pip hadn’t meant to go up the tower at all.

She had been going to hide in the hat cupboard with Dagny and Nell. But on the way, as she ran past the bottom of the white staircase, she had heard a voice.

It was a soft voice. A kind voice. Like someone singing a long way off, or like somebody’s mother calling. It hadn’t come from anywhere in the hall. It had come from inside her head, right between her two ears.

Up here, little one, the voice had said. The best hiding place in the whole palace. They’ll never find you up here. Come and see.

So she had gone up. She didn’t tell anyone about the voice. She thought it was her own idea.

* * *

The queen’s rooms were round, like the tower, and full of green light.

Every windowsill was crowded with pots and bowls of lotuses. There were white ones and pink ones, and the rare blue ones from the Valley, which glowed faintly at the heart. All of them were open, even in the grey light. It was warm in there, much warmer than the rest of the palace, and it smelled of water and flowers and something else, something very old, that Ren could not name.

Pip was sitting on the widest windowsill in the middle of the lotuses, with her tails wrapped round her feet, beaming.

"Found me,” she said. “You took ages.”

None of them came in. They all stopped in the doorway, in a row, and stared. Ren’s mother had told him so every day since he could walk. It’s the one place that’s only mine, little star. Everywhere else is yours.

“Pip,” said Elarinya, in her calmest voice, the one her mother used for frightened horses. “Come here. Slowly. Don’t touch anything.”

“I’m not touching anything,” said Pip, offended, and stood up on the windowsill to climb down.

All nine of her tails swept along the sill behind her like a broom.

A pot of lotuses wobbled. A shallow bowl of dark earth beside it tipped, slid and hung for one heartbeat, half over the edge, and fell.

Ren caught it.

He was across the room before anyone else had moved, and his hands went out, and the bowl was in them, the whole heavy bowl of earth, an inch above the floor.

"Nice,” breathed Astrid.

Ren grinned at her over his shoulder.

Then he looked down.

Two small grey discs of wood had rolled out of the earth and into his palms.

They were round and smooth, old and worn, no bigger than his palm. On the face of each, very faintly, someone had carved a little tree, with roots below and branches above.

They were warm.

“Ren,” said Jun, from the doorway, under his breath. “Don’t move. Those are the runes. The real ones.”

He knew what they were. Every child in the realm knew the story of the three runes carved from the Tree that holds up the world. He had seen these runes once before, glowing in his mother’s hand.

They were humming. He could feel it through his fingers, like bees, a long way off.

It was getting louder.

He stopped grinning.

“Rinya,” he said. His voice was steady. “Get the little ones out. All of them. Now.”

Gold light came up between his fingers.

* * *

She crossed the room in three strides. She scooped Pip off the windowsill with one arm and Bram from the doorway with the other, and threw them both out onto the landing, as gently as you can throw anybody. Astrid grabbed Dagny and Nell by the backs of their tunics and slung them after. Hallvard swept up Ingrid and Odd, one under each arm like a pair of furry parcels, ran them to the door and pushed them out onto the top of the stair.

"Go,” he said. “Go and get Auntie Mei. Go and get everybody. Run!"

The six pups stood on the landing in a frightened huddle, with all fifty-four tails bristling, staring back in through the door.

Behind Hallvard, the light was spreading.

It went out from Ren’s hands across the round room like a ripple across a pond. It went over the floor and up the walls and through the lotuses on the windowsills, which all closed at once, every one of them, like hands closing into fists. And in the middle of the room, in the empty air, the light began to draw something. A circle, round as a moon, round as a gate in a garden wall.

Through it, they saw darkness. Stars. A moon, white and much too big.

“It’s a door,” said Jun. His voice had gone very quiet. “Precisely like the stories. Ren, it’s opening a door.”

“I can’t let go,” said Ren.

He was staring down at his hands. His fingers had closed round the runes by themselves, and they would not open, however hard he tried. The light was pouring out of them now in long gold threads, faster and faster.

“Rinya,” he said. “I can’t let go.”

Elarinya ran back across the room and grabbed his wrists.

Jun grabbed his sister. Astrid grabbed Jun. And Hallvard grabbed Astrid.

“Oh,” said Hallvard. “Oh, I take it back. I’m not bored any more. I’m really not bored. This is—”

The floor of the queen’s tower opened under them like water, and they fell.

* * *

On the landing, the door swung slowly shut by itself.

Click.

For one heartbeat, the six pups stood in total silence.

Then Pip opened her mouth and screamed, and they all ran.

They ran the whole length of the palace, six small furry shapes, down the long white stair and along the galleries and through the great hall, with their tails streaming out behind them like banners, all six of them screaming at once. Servants dropped their banners. A footman dropped a tray of goblets. The Chamberlain, coming round a corner still looking for his hat, was knocked flat. And they burst through the great doors of the council chamber in the middle of a long, dull speech about road tolls, tripped over each other, and landed in a heap at the feet of the queen.

"Auntie Mei,” sobbed Pip. ”Auntie Mei, Auntie Mei, the big ones are gone, the floor ate them, it ate Ren, it ate Ren and Rinya and everybody, and it was my tails, it was my tails—”

Queen Mei-Ling was out of her chair before Pip had finished speaking.

* * *

When she reached the top of the tower, the room was empty.

The bowl of earth lay on its side on the floor. The lotuses on the windowsills were all shut tight. And in the middle of the floorboards, a ring was burned into the wood, round as a moon, still faintly warm.

She did not scream.

Behind her on the stair, the king stopped. In all his long life he had never heard her this quiet.

She knelt on the boards and laid both hands flat inside the burned ring. She pushed back her sleeve. On the inside of her wrist, an old scar shaped like a little tree began to glow, green and gold, brighter and brighter, until it lit the whole round room.

She called to it with everything she had.

Nothing answered.

The ring went cold under her hands.

Slowly, Mei-Ling turned round on her knees and looked up at Aelric. Her face had gone as pale as a ghost.

“Oh no,” she whispered. “Oh no. Aelric.”

Far away, on the other side of the sky, the moon was rising over a rice field.