Free The Fate of Falling Stars by Unknown

Chapter One: The Rose and the Star
    The future is not so mysterious, to those of us who know how to read the turning roof of the sky. When that array of glittering stars beckons you to the gilded paths of fortune, you know you are destined for greatness.
    Still, bracing myself on an outcropping of black rock, the remnant of some ancient volcanism or arcane calamity, I wondered if perhaps the stars had other plans for me. I stood blinking into the westering sun at the rim of a shallow valley deep within the desert of Ketz, buffeted by a wind like a belch from a reeking furnace. I wrapped my keffiyeh tightly around my face, but the sand still ground in my teeth as I clamped my mouth shut.
    Despite the fearful wasteland, the promising allure of ancient treasure beckoned before me. A hill of black and red stones loomed above the shimmering desolation, crowned by a squat flat-topped tower seemingly as old as the Ketz Desert itself. Azzah’s Tower—just where I had calculated it must be. Even through the drift of centuries, polar Cynosure had pointed me true on my star charts.
    A short slide back down the slope deposited me in the minimal shelter of the defile that wound like an ancient road toward the tower. My minders awaited me beside their camels, a company appointed by the satrap himself to ensure I read my star charts accurately. Four were warriors, clad in layers of ochre leather and black cloth and bristling with the tools of their trade—scimitar, dagger, and a keen impatience for a halfling astronomer.
    Najh Semekh, their captain, a human with a touch of the ifrit in his brassy hair, sneered down at me with impatient disdain dulling his chestnut eyes. Resentment pinched his brow and darkened the planes of his face. I imagined he thought himself handsome and witty, but after four weeks in the desert I’d grown weary of his counterfeit charm. As a scout in the satrap’s service, he claimed familiarity with the Ketz’s trackless waste, but it was I who predicted the tower’s actual location, not he.
    “What do you see yonder, thief?” Najh inquired. “Is this the right place?”
    I allowed a smile to blossom and inclined my head in a semblance of a bow. I still bristled at the epithet “thief,” as it was hardly a fitting title for Haron esh Kazzar, palace astrologer. It was perhaps accurate, however, for I’d been caught in the satrap’s personal library with an armload of scrolls and a thin, rare volume of star-lore tucked in my sash. One parchment of particular interest detailed possible locations for the time-lost tower. Explaining that I had intended only to borrow the items in question for an evening of study failed to move the guards, the magistrate, or indeed the satrap himself.
    “A tower, just where your ancient survey map indicated. In a few short hours, the sign of the Stranger will rise behind it, and you will have your proof. Of course, there’s only one among us who can ultimately confirm that we have found Azzah’s fabled tower.”
    I pointed to our final companion, kneeling beyond the circle of Captain Najh and his warriors. Shaba Alemas, a human in a sand-colored robe befitting a hermit, was compact and muscular; even her long black hair had been braided close around her head. Her exact age eluded me, for the elements had etched her skin, but a youthful vitality remained in the flash of her topaz eyes. Where Najh chattered constantly, hers was a more phlegmatic demeanor. Now she knelt in prayer, her sun-dry lips moving in silent communion with the goddess she served—Sarenrae, the Dawnflower.
    I held little patience for the cult of the Dawnflower—they placed such importance on the sun’s course across the sky that they consigned the rest of the stars to a lesser role. But Shaba Alemas seemed to me touched by starlight. I saw its delicate tracery along the rough line of her jaw and the pale whirl of her eyes. Despite her rustic appearance and stolid devotion to her goddess, she would rise