Starflower

  Omeztli stood empty. The black corridors echoed nothing but silence; the bustling life of Etalpalli was forever stilled. The queen’s tower looked out upon a ghost city. It was barren and forlorn save for its last inhabitant.

  She sat on the tower’s roof. And she was as empty as Omeztli.

  Her hand pressed to her chest, feeling that place where her heart had once pulsed. Usually it was warm with the blaze of her inner furnace. But now even that was dulled to almost nothing. She felt as hollow as a dead tree.

  “You’ll never get your wings now.”

  The Dark Father stood behind her. She sensed his presence with distaste but did not move. Her gaze was fixed on the far, blank horizon of her demesne. Even her hated offspring had left the city. Her prisoners were swiftly putting distance between themselves and Etalpalli. The vastness of her solitude was impressive, to say the least.

  “You let Bebo’s cousin go.” The Dark Father placed a long-fingered hand on Hri Sora’s shoulder. She wanted to flinch but wouldn’t. “She was a good chance. She is weak, at the mercy of her own vanity. You could have wrung the secret from her had you made the effort.”

  In the cold clarity of her mind without fire, Hri Sora acknowledged the truth of her Father’s words. But it did not matter. Learning Gleamdren’s secret would not have guaranteed her the Flowing Gold. And even had she succeeded and laid the fabled treasure at the Dark Father’s feet, who could say if he would have honored his side of the bargain? He was a liar. He was the inventor of lies.

  But this way—if it worked, if the girl was smart and did as she was told—this way, Hri Sora’s deepest desire could be fulfilled. And the Death-of-Dreams himself could not stop it!

  “I’m no fool, my daughter,” said her Father. “I can piece together this little puzzle.”

  He needed no motivation, and she did not care to give him any. She sat as though stone. He laughed to himself, and embers fell from his mouth and singed her tatty hair.

  “You came back from your second death stronger and more beautiful than tongue can tell,” he said. “The Flame at Night rekindled! And you dared laugh in my face and tell me your fire was the greatest to burn in all of Time. To prove your words, to make your defiance complete, you declared before all your brethren in the Netherworld that you should do what I dared not try. You would rise to the vaults of heaven and devour Lady Hymlumé, the moon herself, destroying the harmonies of the Sphere Songs forever.

  “You flew far and you flew fast. You rose to the highest reaches. You looked Hymlumé in the eye, and the worlds felt it when she, frightened, stumbled in her dance and lost the beat of her Song. How powerful you were, my daughter! How glorious beyond all created beings!

  “But I am your Father. I will not be undone. You will not defy me to my face and go unpunished.

  “I stripped away your wings. I stripped away your dragon form and left you in the frail, wingless body of a woman. And there you stood before the moon. And she looked upon your pathetic state and said: ‘Poor little thing.’

  “It was too much for you, wasn’t it, my darling? In despair and disgrace, you flung yourself from the heavens, willing to die your third and final death rather than be pitied. The flame of your fall was like the destruction of worlds, fire spilling from your mouth, lashing from your hair, your fingertips. Your screams shattered the sky. And you streaked to your destruction, striking that mountain in the Near World with such force that the fire could be seen far and wide. It burned for days, for months, possibly for years as counted in that mortal world. When at last it died away, the nations assumed you had met your final end.

  “But that wasn’t how it went, was it, my child? You didn’t die. You lay exposed upon that bald mountain peak for a year or more. But you did not die.

  “At last you woke. Your fire was gone, and your shell of a body was empty. You wandered down the burned slopes of that mountain, helpless as a new babe, no memory of yourself or your past glories. The mortals of the Near World found you. They took you in as one of their own, and you became no better than they. A Faerie queen turned dragon turned beast of the dust. And so you lived for years. . . .

  “What made your fire return, Hri Sora? What finally kindled that memory of flame? You blazed back into Etalpalli ten years after your death was declared, destroying them all. And you brought those monstrous children with you.

  “I am no fool! I can guess at your story as easily as though you told me!

  “You met Amarok the Wolf in the Near World. He took you for his bride. He, a self-styled lord, a lowly shifter, a devil in animal form. When you were Queen of Etalpalli, he would not have dared look you in the eye. When you were a dragon, he would have fled before your fire!

  “But he saw you then, reduced to this helpless state, wingless, witless. What a prize you were! More valuable in his eyes than you could ever have been to Sir Etanun.”

  Here the Flame at Night’s body convulsed. Smoke streamed black from her nostrils. But she stopped and drew it back, breathing it deep and swallowing it down. She could not lose her mind so soon! She could not let the flames overtake her again! She must wait. She must wait for her children’s return. She must hear whatever news they might bring.

  Oh, let it be word of death! Let it be word of vengeance!

  “How you must have longed for his death,” breathed the Dark Father. “It need be only one death for him, for he is no true Faerie king, this thief of mortal lands. But when you came to yourself, when you recalled your fire and blazed once more, you did not kill him. Why not, Hri Sora? Why did you not destroy Amarok?”

  The Dragonwitch bowed her head. She could not bear to admit it, though she knew the Dragon must have guessed already. His laugh told her that she was right.

  “He knows your name. He knows your lost name just as you know his. The name that should be forgotten. He knows who you really are!”

  The Dark Father leaned down, his hands upon her shoulders, and whispered in his daughter’s ear: “Ytotia. My Lady Who Dances.”

  With a moan, Hri Sora pulled away, burying her face in her hands. If only she had tears with which to cry out her shame! How could she have let him discover her name? In what moment of madness or passion had she let it slip? Now, as long as he hid within his own self-made demesne she could not kill him. Amarok, her lover, her enslaver, her dear and hated one! He had made her think she loved him. He had made her believe she was weak and mortal, that it was her honor to be his bride. How she had rejoiced when she carried his children, how she had wept with joy when she bore him twins! Those monsters.

  He had made her a silent woman.

  Foolish! Hateful! She had loved because she knew no better, and she had made herself vulnerable before him. The fiend. The Beast, unfit to lick the soles of her feet! And he must die. He must die, for she had loved him, and love was not to be borne!

  But her flames could not hurt him in his own demesne, stolen though it was. If she’d been in full power, with her wings and her mighty dragon form, the tale would have been different. No one in the mortal world could withstand the Flame at Night!

  Her wings were gone, however. Her power reduced. She could not kill Amarok.

  No matter! He could not stop her flight from the Land, her escape through the mountains and out into the world beyond. He could not keep her children from her, so the three of them fled and stood beyond the Circle of Faces, beyond his power. Then she had called him. She knew his Faerie name. She had heard of Amarok the Wolf, if only in passing, generations before she took her Father’s kiss. She stood on the isthmus separating the Land from the Continent, and she called to him.

  “Amarok! Wolf Lord! Come to me and meet your doom!”

  He could not resist the call of his true name. And the moment he stepped beyond the Circle of Faces, her fires would consume him.

  But then, the worst truth was revealed. His voice called back to her from the caverns: “Ytotia! My ladylove! Your voice has no power over me!”

  The sickening.
She felt it even now like a knife in the gut, the strength of her name spoken on his lips. Or rather, the name of a Faerie queen who was gone but whose memory, however faint, yet lived within the Flame at Night. For though Ytotia was long destroyed, her name spoken in Amarok’s mouth still held power. Enough to prevent Hri Sora from commanding him.

  With a roar that blasted the mountains and boiled the ocean on either side of the isthmus, she cried: “Stay in your prison, Wolf Lord! Stay in your stolen world! But know this, my husband, and know it well: The moment you set foot beyond the Circle of Faces will be your last. For I shall send the Black Dogs, your own two children. And they will rend you to pieces and drag your spirit to the Netherworld where you belong. So I have vowed in fire!”

  Hri Sora, sitting on Omeztli’s rooftop, whispered again, “So I have vowed in fire.”

  “It will never work, you know,” said the Dark Father. “You’ve sent the mortal girl to her doom. She cannot lure Amarok from his demesne. She is but a pretty toy! He will catch her and do what he wants with her. She cannot hope to trick him. Is Amarok a fool? He made a dragon and queen into his willing bride! He is not about to fall prey to the manipulations of a mortal wretch.”

  “I gave her his name,” said Hri Sora. “She has his Faerie name.”

  The Dragon laughed mockingly. “It matters little. The girl is a mute! The name is useless to her as long as she cannot speak it.”

  “That,” said the Dragonwitch with something almost like a smile, “shows how much you know.”

  3

  MIDNIGHT RESTED HEAVILY upon the Wood, but the Black Dogs remained out of sight. So Imraldera sat alone in that dreadful place, knowing that her escorts were near, yet not knowing how near, scarcely able to see her hand before her face.

  At least they had permitted her to stop awhile. And it was well that they did, or their cursed errand would have met an untimely end. She could not bear the thought of one more step without rest! Not without a sleep untroubled by dreams . . .

  When was the last time she’d slept? she wondered as she lay down upon the hard forest floor, adjusting her body around roots and rocks and fallen branches. Lying on the burned stones of Etalpalli, her head pressed to the chest of the cat-man poet, listening to the fading strains of his lullaby; she had slept then. It had not been a restful sleep, but she had, at least for those brief moments, felt safe.

  Safety was far from her now, with the Black Dogs so close and the weight of her task crushing her heart.

  She must go back. The old life beckoned with the insistence of death. Imraldera had not thought it possible that she could so swiftly be convinced to return to the Land. Though her life had been one of few joys or pleasures, it was the only life she knew. By returning, she tossed that life, so hardly won, into the jaws of Death. The Beast would be waiting for her. He might even now crouch at the cavern entrance where the river burst free. How long had it been since she fled? A few days, perhaps? A few hours? Would the Beast have already returned to the lowlands?

  Would he have returned for Fairbird?

  “Starflower.”

  The girl startled at the voice speaking from the darkness. She sat up, twigs and leaves sticking to her matted hair, staring into the impenetrable Midnight. She waited, hoping the speaker would reveal himself. Nothing followed, however. Perhaps she had dreamed it in her loneliness.

  She lay back down, shivering though it was not cold, and pillowed her head on her arm. Her eyes would not close but continued straining against the dark. And in her mind, she kept seeing a flash of teeth in the moonlight, and she heard a dark voice saying:

  “You were always meant to be mine!”

  This must be her fate. Even though her father had given his life to fight it, even though she had fled into the Void and discovered the terrible worlds beyond, still she was driven back. Even if Hri Sora had not made this dreadful bargain, she knew she would have returned eventually.

  Because it was true: Fairbird was not safe. She never could be safe as long as the Beast lived. Therefore, as long as the Beast lived, Imraldera must continue fighting him. But how could she, silent and small, hope to combat a vicious and cunning monster many hundreds of years old?

  “Starflower.”

  Once more she sat up. Her heart jumped to her throat. Was it the cat-man? But he did not know her name, nor did his rival. No one out here in the world beyond the Circle of Faces knew who she was.

  She waited. Again, nothing followed: no second cry, no sound in the underbrush, not even a warning growl from the lurking Black Dogs. It was either sit like a statue forever or lie down and try to rest. So she lay down again, this time firmly shutting her eyes.

  Death. She was sent to lure Wolf Tongue to his death. To trap him, to deceive him, just as he had once trapped and deceived her.

  Oh, Mother! she cried out in the echoing silence of her mind. What sort of monster have I become?

  “Starflower.”

  She was on her feet in an instant, spinning in place, her eyes peering desperately into the darkness. Her heart thudded in her throat, but for a moment her exhaustion was forgotten in tense preparation for yet another flight. The Black Dogs would pursue her, yes. But better that than to sit here and listen to ghostly voices!

  “Starflower.”

  Someone stood just behind her.

  She drew a long breath. She felt the close proximity of the stranger, someone tall, someone strong, but she dared not turn to face him. Nor did she dare to flee. Raising trembling hands, she signed, “Who are you?”

  “You know me, my child.”

  Her heart surged at the words. She did! She did know! She knew that voice better than her own father’s. She had never heard it speak words like these, the words of a man. Always before it had rung from the heavens, whispered in the moonlight, sung in the silence of her mind. And she knew his name, a name she had long wondered at, a name she had seen her mother sign in prayer or praise.

  “He Who Names Them!” she signed. “You are the one my mother knew, the one who gave the names to all living things!”

  “You go into great peril, Starflower,” he said.

  She longed to turn around, to see his face, but she did not dare. She bowed her head instead and signed: “I have lived my life in peril.”

  “Live it now in triumph, my child.” How fluid was the sound of his voice. It wasn’t like a man’s voice, she realized, though at first she had mistaken it for such. Nor was it that of an animal. It was altogether unique. Speaking into her spirit, it reverberated there, and she knew she would never forget that sound. “You have followed my paths many times in fear. Follow me now in trust. Trust me, Starflower, and do as I tell you.”

  “But I am going on a dragon’s errand! My way has become dark as this Midnight.”

  “Yes,” said he. “Your errand is one of wickedness and will leave you broken.” How gentle were his tones, and yet his was a voice that could destroy nations. “But trust me, my child, and I will make yours a mission of freedom, not of vengeance. I will make you the liberator, not the murderer.”

  “How can I be anything other than a murderer?” Imraldera signed. “I would give my life for Fairbird, but must I give his death instead? He is loathsome and he is dreadful, but . . . but what makes me any different if I go through with this pact?”

  “It is a dark path, Starflower,” spoke the Lumil Eliasul. “But I will see you come to no harm. And when you emerge victorious, the worlds will know you are mine. And they will wonder at the works you perform in my name.

  “But you must see the truth. You must see who this Beast is. Look at him with your heart, Starflower. You must see his true name, the name which no one has ever known. And when you know his name, you must speak it.”

  “The Dragonwitch told me his name.”

  “See the truth, Starflower.”

  “I do not know how to see!”

  “When you see, you must speak.”

  “I have no voice!”

  “Imra
ldera. Wake up, my dear.”

  The girl startled upright, blinking hard in her efforts to drive off the darkness. It would not lift, and she remembered with a sickening rush the Midnight and the Dogs. But there had been more, hadn’t there? A voice she knew, a promise given . . .

  “I don’t know how you can sleep in this murk. You mortals are a strange lot, I tell you.”

  Shaking herself, she forced her eyes to focus. To her surprise, she found Eanrin sat beside her, cross-legged. He grinned wanly and held out his hand. “Hungry?”

  He offered her fruit she did not recognize. She snatched it up and, little caring if it be enchanted or poisoned, devoured it so fast she scarcely tasted it. The cat-man chuckled as he watched her, then produced more. The second piece went down more quickly than the first. By the third piece, she began to notice the flavor, sweet but with a sour hint. It was larger than a fig, more crisp than a mango, with a thin outer peel and an inner pulp of odd texture but full of juice that eased her thirst as well as hunger. Her stomach growled in gratitude and, embarrassed, she placed a hand over it.

  Eanrin shook his head and produced a fourth fruit. “One would think you had never seen an apple before. Or have you?” he added as an afterthought and raised his eyebrows musingly as he considered this point. Imraldera ignored him and ate, thinking even then that she would never be satisfied.

  “Strange company you have chosen to keep,” Eanrin said, glancing about. The Black Dogs remained hidden, but he knew they were aware of his presence. They had been given no command concerning him, however, not since they had chased him through Etalpalli. He hoped they would leave him be. “Gleamdren told me of your bargain with Hri Sora. Brave girl. Foolish too, absolutely! But brave. So we’re returning to your homeland, are we?”