Fevered Star

Fevered Star is the second book in Rebecca Roanhorse's Between Earth and Sky epic fantasy trilogy, set in the Meridian, a continent where a centuries-old treaty has outlawed the worship of gods and the practice of magic. The story picks up immediately after Black Sun, in which Serapio, a young man raised from childhood as a vessel for the crow god, slaughtered the Watchers, a priestly order governing the holy city of Tova, during the Convergence, a rare eclipse on Sun Rock, the city's sacred ritual site. Naranpa, the true Sun Priest, survived, having been deposed by conspirators within her own order. The eclipse still hangs over Tova as the novel opens, the sun and crow god locked in celestial struggle, and the city's factions scramble for power.

In Cuecola, a merchant city across the Crescent Sea, Lord Balam, a sorcerer and architect of Serapio's creation, acquires the forbidden Manual of the Dreamwalkers, a text teaching spirit magic that lets the user enter human dreams. He murders the thief who stole the book and begins consuming godflesh—a rare substance found at the Graveyard of the Gods—to practice dreamwalking. His cousin Powageh, who served as Serapio's tutor, is racked with guilt over raising the boy only to die, but Balam dismisses xir concerns. When Balam learns Serapio survived the Convergence, he tasks Powageh with potentially killing the young man if dreamwalking fails to eliminate him.

In the mountains west of Tova, Serapio wakes in an ancient crow monastery, tended by Okoa, the captain of the Carrion Crow clan's Shield guard. He discovers with horror that the crow god has left him. Blind since childhood, he can still perceive the world through crow vision, borrowing the sight of birds perched on his shoulder. He anchors himself by remembering Xiala, a sea captain of the Teek, an island maritime people, whom he loves, and by reaching out to the crows, who have not abandoned him. Okoa warns that the other Sky Made clans, the noble houses of Tova, demand restitution for the slaughter. Serapio agrees to return, insisting they make a spectacle of their arrival to inspire fear.

Beneath Coyote's Maw, the poorest district of Tova, Naranpa wakes entombed in a burial chamber. Her estranged brother Denaochi, a criminal boss, and Zataya, a witch working with Denaochi, placed her there after Zataya's blood sorcery saved her from death. Crawling through dark tunnels, Naranpa discovers mysterious new powers: Her palms glow and her eyes emit light. She reaches Denaochi and learns the Watchers are dead, killed by a single man wielding shadow magic.

Xiala, stranded in Tova, learns Serapio survived. With help from Uncle Kuy, a Carrion Crow man, she crosses to Odo, Carrion Crow's district, where hundreds of faithful have gathered outside the Great House, the clan's seat of power, hoping to see the Odo Sedoh, the Crow God Reborn. She gives a guard a wooden mermaid Serapio carved for her, asking that it be delivered to him.

At the Great House, Okoa's sister Esa, the new matron of Carrion Crow, views Serapio as a threat and locks him in a prison cell despite his demonstration of shadow magic. The Odohaa, a devoted religious faction led by Maaka, discover his imprisonment and pledge their lives to him. Okoa finds himself caught between loyalty to his sister and belief that the Odo Sedoh could unite their clan.

Zataya suggests Naranpa may be "god-touched," her powers resulting from rare ingredients in the sorcery that saved her: salt from the Graveyard of the Gods and ground god bones. At the celestial tower, Naranpa discovers that the Watchers were sorcerers all along: The Sun Priest's golden mask was forged from the scales of the sun god, and the investiture ceremony was a magical rite disguised as ritual.

When Serapio transforms involuntarily into a flock of crows while searching for Xiala, he lands atop the celestial tower and encounters Naranpa. Their divine powers clash, and he sends crows to kill her. She narrowly escapes. Meanwhile, Xiala flees Odo after encountering Iktan, the former Priest of Knives and Naranpa's onetime lover, now spying for Golden Eagle, a rival Sky Made clan led by the matron Nuuma. Iktan offers Xiala escape on a waiting boat, and she boards with a whispered promise to return for Serapio.

Iktan brings Xiala into a Golden Eagle expedition north to Hokaia, a foreign seat of power, aimed at rallying support against Carrion Crow. Xiala develops severe land sickness, and guilt over deaths caused by her Song, a supernatural vocal power, leaves her unable to call upon it.

In Tova, Naranpa wins the allegiance of the Maw's criminal bosses by healing Denaochi from a ritual bloodletting that nearly kills him. She claims a seat for a revived Coyote clan and convenes a summit of the Sky Made matrons at the Lupine, Denaochi's gambling den. When she accuses Nuuma of conspiring with foreign powers, violence erupts. Pasko, one of Naranpa's allies secretly turned by Golden Eagle, throws a knife at her. Denaochi hurls himself in front of the blade and dies. Naranpa kills Pasko with fire from her palms, and Nuuma flees. In the aftermath, Okoa produces the Sun Priest's golden mask, retrieved from Sun Rock, and proposes forging it into weapons capable of wounding the Odo Sedoh.

Okoa's cousin Chaiya attacks Serapio, who retaliates with shadow magic that dissolves Chaiya's forearm. When Okoa intervenes, Chaiya confesses that he stood by while Iktan assassinated their mother, the former matron Yatliza. Serapio slits Chaiya's throat. Okoa talks Serapio down before he can kill the remaining guards, warning that a god with no worshippers is no god at all.

Balam sails for Hokaia with the Cuecolan merchant lords, arriving to find spearmaidens, Hokaia's warrior women, have seized power and a Teek queen named Mahina has appeared with a fleet. When Xiala reaches Hokaia with Nuuma's party, Lord Pech, one of the Cuecolan merchant lords traveling with Balam, recognizes her and demands her arrest. Her Song erupts in a lethal note that kills him. Mahina, whom Xiala long believed dead, steps forward and identifies Xiala as her daughter. Balam recruits Xiala as his spy among the Teek, giving her a shadow mirror—a magical artifact that enables covert communication through shadow sorcery—and falsely promising to spare Serapio.

Naranpa, grieving Denaochi, names Sedaysa, one of the allied Maw criminal bosses and the proprietor of the Agave pleasure house, as the new Coyote matron. She walks to Sun Rock to face Serapio. They fight in their divine forms, firebird against crow flock, above the city. Exhausted, Naranpa crawls to Serapio and heals his wound, drawing out a fragment of the golden mask lodged in his side. She tells him she is leaving Tova to find a teacher and advises him to unite the clans by force. She transforms into a firebird and flies north toward the Graveyard of the Gods, a remote place where divine remains are found.

Serapio uses blood magic to raise a fortress on Sun Rock from the bones and sinew of the dead. He summons 12 Odohaa, commands them to cut their own throats as a test of faith, then heals them using dual powers of shadow and light. He names them the Tuyon, his personal guard, and orders them to summon the clan mothers. Xiala, chained aboard a Teek ship, sails toward her homeland carrying Balam's mirror and a whispered promise to return. A comet blazes in the northern sky as the story continues in Mirrored Heavens.