Tempt the Stars

permanently.
    So I didn’t.
    I didn’t try to stand again, since that was about as likely as flying right now. I didn’t even try to follow whatever was being said, because that clearly wasn’t happening, either. I concentrated everything I had on just getting my damned tongue to quit lolling around my mouth and do something besides drool. To somehow form the words I’d dragged Pritkin across three worlds to say.
    And I guess I managed, even though I couldn’t hear my own voice. Because suddenly, the dark was eclipsed by a light, like a single star glowing in the distance. And then right in front of my face, blindingly bright and uncannily beautiful this close, showering me with a prism of changing colors.
    I stared into it, half-mesmerized, and would have had to fight an urge to reach out and touch it, if I had been able to move. As it was, I swallowed and tried again, unsure if I’d spoken aloud, or only in my head. “Artemis . . . would address the council.”
    “The one you call Artemis is no more,” the light informed me. “How would the dead speak to the living?”
    I tried to answer, but the only thing that came out was a gagging wheeze. It felt like the horse that had been sitting on my chest had just been joined by an elephant. Rosier
really
didn’t want me to speak, which only made me that much more determined.
    “She gave me . . . a message,” I gasped. “She said . . . there are things . . . you need to under—awk.” My little speech was abruptly terminated when the elephant was joined by a couple of its buddies.
    And okay, that was it. I couldn’t talk anymore, couldn’t even breathe. It felt like my chest had just been caved in.
    Until the light moved forward and engulfed me, its shining rays blocking out the rest of the room, and the power that went with it.
    “You . . . you’re the council?” I gasped as the pressure abruptly eased.
    “I am the Gatekeeper, child. I summon the council, if the need is sufficient. Tell me, why should I summon them for you?”
    “To hear . . . my mother’s message.”
    The light reflected on this for a moment as I struggled to reinflate my lungs. “Give it to me, and I will relay it to them.”
    And maybe it was me, but the nonvoice had taken on a sly note I really didn’t like.
    “She said . . ” I licked my lips and forced out the words. “She said . . . it would only work . . . if I play it in front of the full council.”
    “Play.” The light fluctuated. “It is a recording?”
    “Yes. Sort of.” I wasn’t really clear on that part, but this didn’t seem the time to bring it up.
    “From she whom you call Artemis . . . to us?”
    “Yes. And it’s about more than Pritkin . . . John . . . Emrys,” I gasped, my oxygen-starved brain finally coming up with the name Rosier used for his son. “There are other things . . . you should know.”
    The light flickered again for a long moment, or maybe that was me. I was starting to have trouble seeing now, too. I reached for my last reserves of strength, only to find that I didn’t have any. This needed to be over. . . 
    And then it was.
    “We will hear what the Huntress would say to us,” the light told me. “You will be summoned.”
    And then good old-fashioned electricity came rushing back, and a wave of furious clapping and whistling broke over me, and a couple of empty rugs spiraled out of the sky, their contents gone like the star, like the Allû, like the whole room as I fell into nothingness.
    I woke up with a gasp, my hand on my throat, feeling like I was being choked. And that I was stuck in some twilit nothingness, waiting for a verdict that was so important, it meant everything, but that I couldn’t control. Or even predict . . 
    But I wasn’t in dim light; I was in no light. And if anybody was here with me, they were being damned quiet about it. I stared around, panting, but as far as I could tell, nothing stared back. There was only velvety darkness, the soft shush of air-conditioning, and the familiar scent of the fabric softener the hotel used on my sheets.
    I relaxed back against the bed with a relief so profound it made me dizzy.
    Or maybe that was something else. It felt like the bed was slowly revolving beneath me, a faint, drifting feeling, like the lazy roll of the carpet before Rosier arrived. . . . Rosier.
    And suddenly, everything came rushing back.
    Pritkin,
I breathed, and started up—
    Which was