Starflower

by Anne Elisabeth Stengl

  But who had dared cross her boundaries without her knowledge? Only one of great courage. Someone powerful.

  She saw them, there at the edge of her city. She frowned.

  “What are you looking at, Dragonwitch?” Gleamdren cried, her chirpy voice setting Hri Sora’s teeth on edge. “Have they caught poor Glomar?”

  “We have more visitors,” the dragon replied.

  “Really?” Gleamdren could not have been more delighted. “I knew they would come at last! How many? Oh, I do wish I had a mirror and some sort of comb. I’ll be such a wreck by the time they get here! I can’t wait to see their dear faces when they realize what peril I am in. Such a battle it will be! I do hope Eanrin has come along so he can put it all down in verse.”

  “It is the poet,” said Hri Sora. Her eyes were mere slits as they pierced the distance. “I recognize him, for he came to me in the Wood and nearly saw through my glamour. By some miracle, that selfish rat has now entered my world. But who . . . who is that with him?”

  “Might be Sir Danu. He pretends indifference, but I know he’s quite mad about me. A girl always knows. Or it could be young Rogan, such a favorite—”

  “It is a woman.”

  “A what?”

  Hri Sora hissed, and smoke twirled in the air as it rose from her nostrils. She studied the maid crouched on the stone beside the poet. She took in her clothing, her skin, her hair. And when the girl raised her face and seemed to look across the long miles, straight at Hri Sora, the dragon gasped.

  The girl was from the Hidden Land.

  “Silent woman!” Hri Sora snarled. Fire dripped from her tongue.

  All was red stone around them. At first, Imraldera could have sworn she and the poet had landed inside a deep red canyon. But when she blinked the water out of her eyes, she saw that the rocks formed towering buildings, windows and doors and spires and balconies, all stretching to the seared sky as though they would touch the heavens. The stone blocks of which they were made fit so seamlessly together that each structure might have been chiseled from a single huge boulder. Carvings of feathers and wings in patterns more complex than she could discern wrapped around each tower and formed the banisters of stairways and balconies.

  Imraldera had never seen anything like this place. Her mouth moved in a soundless prayer to some unknown god. Then, with a moan, she covered her face with her hands. The air was so hot that her wet skin and hair steamed. Her clothes shrank and shriveled as they dried, smelling almost as bad as the sodden cat.

  “Well,” said Eanrin, “I must say I’m relieved.” He didn’t look relieved. He looked a sight. Even when he took his man form, his appearance did not improve. His bright red cap had lost all shape, and his cloak and clothes looked uncomfortably damp in that sultry air. He fumbled with the buckles and let the cloak drop to the stone cobbles, all the while looking about him. His nose twitched as he sniffed. “I was uncertain what to expect at that gate. This place was once known as the City of Wings, and the Sky People lived here. They had wings sprouting from their shoulders, if you can believe it. Wings! Great, shimmering feathers. Or so I’m told. I never saw them. And naturally, being winged, they flew everywhere. I half wondered if Cozamaloti Gate would open into empty sky . . . which would have been the worse luck for us today. We’d have had a hard landing!”

  Imraldera wiped her face, now wet with perspiration. The city, as far as she could see, was dry. Nothing had grown here for decades.

  The poet-cat added his outer doublet to the discarded cape, leaving only a thin white shirt and breeches beneath. “All my beauty stripped,” he sighed with a forlorn shake of his head. “What has my life become? But all and more for the sake of my beloved! She owes me a new hat.”

  He shook his hair one last time. It was nearly dry already and standing out like straw all around his face, which made him seem quite wild. But he smiled and strode over to Imraldera, offering his hand. “Up, up, my girl. Hymlumé spare me, but you smell a fright! We must away ere darkness falls. These streets will be perilous at night.”

  Imraldera accepted his hand but frowned at his words. The sky was red, not with sunset but with burning heat, as though it had been wounded by fire and never recovered. It was hard to imagine night falling in a place such as this.

  She turned to the cat-man. “You jumped to save me,” she signed.

  “Stop all the hand waving. It looks perfectly ridiculous, and you know I don’t understand.”

  Imraldera bit her lip uncertainly. In all the terror that was her life, she must cling to those few good things: to memories of a little girl wrapping skinny arms around her neck; a house on a hill; and a gray lurcher standing in the yard, eyes fixed on the road, waiting for her mistress. The good things were so rare, so precious.

  Now added to their number was a cat-man who looked and spoke like a buffoon, but who had risked his life for her, perhaps more than once.

  More for herself than for him, she signed: “Though I am a stranger, you have been a true friend. I am grateful. I will help you find your beloved. I swear on the—I swear on my hand. Before I try to find my own way in this awful world of yours, I will help you, Bard Eanrin. I will rescue your lady Gleamdren.”

  He watched her hands fly, his quick eyes moving to follow them. Then he laughed and caught them between his own palms. “Enough, I say! You look like a clown when you flail about so. We must get moving.” Keeping hold of one of Imraldera’s hands as though she were but a child, the poet strode down the narrow street as confidently as if he owned the place. Such is the way with cats.

  Imraldera cast a backward glance over her shoulder at the pile of scarlet clothing steaming on the stones. But they turned a corner, and she saw them no more. Despite the heat, a cold sensation inched up her spine. She felt as though, when they turned that corner, the street they’d walked but a moment before had vanished entirely. Not merely from view but from existence.

  There were no doors on the lower levels that Imraldera could see. There were, however, tall windows at least three times Eanrin’s height. These were set high but within reach if Imraldera were to jump. Although the sky was bright and the red stone glared almost blindingly, deep shadows lurked within the towers.

  Imraldera looked at the street they followed, winding among the red buildings. Every turn it took seemed to her much like the turn before. She wondered if they were going in circles. But when she took time to study the carvings adorning the towers, she saw that each one was unique, as though carved by a different hand. No two buildings they passed boasted the same arrangement of feathers or clouds. They were as individual as faces, and beautiful too. So they couldn’t be going in circles.

  The buildings cast no shadows.

  Imraldera realized this truth rather suddenly. Already it felt as though they had wandered the streets of the empty city for hours. How could one sense the passage of time in a world that cast no shadows? Everything was wrong. When she looked ahead, she could not make heads or tails of the street. Did it extend forever, or only a few paces? Was that a turn coming up, or did it continue straight? Everything was distorted. Straight lines waved before her eyes. And everywhere was blistering red stone.

  Her stomach clenched, and she gagged, doubling over. But she was empty inside, and nothing could relieve the churning in her gut. She could only stand, bent over and panting.

  Eanrin dropped his hold on her hand and stood aside, his arms folded. “Poor creature,” he muttered. Then he firmly shook that thought away. After all, she deserved what she got, fool mortal, for venturing into worlds where she didn’t belong! Served her right if she found the ways of Faerie beyond bearing.

  And yet, there he went, stepping to her side once more and gently putting a hand on her shoulder. He should be taken by the scruff and shaken until his teeth rattled!

  “It’s all right,” he heard his own voice saying, no matter how he struggled against it. “This place would be difficult for anyone. There’s hardly a soul in Faerie who could walk t
hese streets and not feel a hint of what you’re experiencing right now. Perhaps my good Queen Bebo, but few others. It’s a nasty city. The Flame at Night has wounded it to its heart. Even the ground is unstable.”

  Imraldera shuddered when she breathed. She was, Eanrin realized, probably hungry and parched as well. He recalled hearing somewhere that mortals could not go for as long without food or drink as the folk of Faerie might. Her face was drenched and gleaming with sweat and her eyes were dull.

  “Look, we’re getting nowhere like this,” he said, wrapping an arm across her shoulders and helping her to stand once more. She swayed and leaned heavily against him. “Come,” he said, supporting her as she walked, “let’s get you inside one of these towers. Then I’ll climb to the top, yes? And get a good scout out of the city.”

  She rallied at these words and shook her head. But he clucked dismissively. “Never fear, princess! I know what I’m doing. Am I not the Chief Poet of Iubdan Rudiobus, renowned throughout Faerie for my heroic verse? One cannot write that much heroic verse without learning a thing or two about heroics. This is a good plan, I tell you.”

  While he talked, he led her to the nearest of the towers. Like all the others, its windows opened into nothing but blackness beyond, and there were no doors. Eanrin leaned Imraldera against the red wall. The stone was hot but not unbearably so. Then he scrambled up onto the windowsill and peered into the shadows. He saw nothing, smelled nothing. “Seems fine enough,” he lied through a charming smile.

  Imraldera glared up at him.

  “All right, all right, let me just . . .” Holding on to the windowsill, he leaned into the shadows.

  They were thick, almost tangible. As though all the shadows of the outer city had taken refuge inside, allowing no light to enter. Eanrin took a deep breath. His sunny disposition disliked all that darkness, yet he transformed into a cat and hopped down inside.

  For a split second, he felt as though he would fall forever. But he landed on all fours on a solid floor below the window. His cat’s eyes, skilled at seeing in the dark, took a moment to adjust. Then he saw that the room was empty. And it was, he realized the next moment, vast.

  Not in circumference. In floor space it was no greater than his own modest bedchamber back in Rudiobus. But in height, he could not begin to guess its dimensions. The shadows concealed details, but he got an impression of . . . perches. Of landings and chambers without passages between, without stairs. This was a world intended for those with wings.

  He sniffed and prowled the ground floor, finding nothing of interest. It should be safe enough for the mortal girl to hide here while he scaled the outer wall and took stock of their surroundings. With this conclusion in mind, the cat stood up into his man’s form again. It took several attempted leaps and a certain amount of ungraceful scrambling before he gained enough purchase on the windowsill to pull himself up out of the shadows. He recovered himself on the sill, smoothing back his hair, and smiled down at the girl.

  Only she was gone.

  14

  WHEN THE BLACK DOGS HUNT, they never stop until their quarry is found, or so rumor would have it. Glomar saw no reason to doubt that rumor as he hobbled down the twisting streets of the firstborn’s city.

  They were always just behind him, just one bend away. If he dared a glance back, he saw the looming Midnight that always followed in their wake and knew it as the shadow of his own doom.

  But Glomar was a man of Rudiobus, and fear was unknown to him. So he staunchly limped on, groping the hot stone walls for support, swinging his bad leg and stretching his good one for all it was worth. Lights Above, what a jump that had been! He’d been right after all in thinking the little two-foot trickle was a deception. Trust your instincts . . . how often had he pounded that maxim into the heads of trainee guardsmen? Your instincts are a better guide than your reason nine times out of ten!

  He took badger form. While not swift, this shape at least gave four legs to hobble on rather than two. Panting, he rounded yet another bend in that shadowless world. Perhaps he’d not escape the Dogs . . . not in the end. But he would find Lady Gleamdren and deliver her before they got him! He was Iubdan’s man, and failure was not part of his vocabulary.

  He took the turn and met a Dog nose to nose.

  The Midnight swarmed in to surround him.

  The Dragonwitch smiled. The Black Dogs had done as she asked. She reached out to them across the distance, calling into the dark recesses of their minds.

  “Find the poet,” she said. “And the maid.”

  “Maid? Hmph!”

  Gleamdren pressed her face against the iron bars of her cage, little caring how dizzy they made her. Her stomach churned with something much more potent than dizziness.

  “How dare he bring a maiden on a rescue?” she muttered. “Eanrin. Of all people! What happened to those romantic verses of his?”

  She was so angry, she thought she might split in two!

  So the dragon watched the story play out in the streets, and her captive watched the dragon. And they were watched only by an empty, burning sky.

  The moment he disappeared through the window, Imraldera knew the poet was not coming back. Whether he had vanished from the world entirely, she could not guess. This world was unlike her own. The rules of nature were different, if rules existed at all.

  Imraldera stared up at the windowsill, where a cat had sat just the moment before. Not for the first time in her life, she wished for the ability to scream. Not, she rationalized, that it would do much good. But it might feel good.

  As it was, she could only stand there and stare as the silence pressed in upon her, both inside and out. How, by the stone teeth, had she come to this?

  Almost without her realizing it, her fingers made signs of grief, of passing. Perhaps they were useless. After all, she could not know if the poet-cat was alive or dead. She only knew he would not come back. So she made the signs traditional to her people, her hands moving fluidly through the hot air.

  “May he walk safely through the void beyond the mountains,” she said. Then she added a sign she had been taught, not by the High Priest or the underpriests, but by her mother long ago, when she was a little girl. “And may the Songs sing him to life.”

  Tears blurred her eyes. How many times had she made these signs in her lifetime? For her mother. For Sun Eagle. For her father . . .

  Had Fairbird remembered to add that last line for her?

  Shaking herself, Imraldera dashed tears from her eyes. She was the daughter of Panther Master. She must not weep. She had vowed to the poet-cat that she would find his ladylove before she gave thought to her own troubles, and find her she would, or die as she was meant to die.

  Turning away from the window and back to the streets, she forced her mind to review what Eanrin had told her of Etalpalli . . . a dragon . . . Gleamdren . . . It all tangled up in her mind. Her head was light with hunger, and her eyes blurred, though whether from heat or fear she could not have said. Part of her wanted to curl up in a ball and let the heat melt her away into nothing. Instead, she found herself walking. What was the good of waiting under a window? She would fulfill no vows that way. She must find a way to solve the puzzle of these tortuous streets.

  Her thirst was great and she stumbled as she went. When was the last time she’d eaten? The wafers fed her by the priest . . . but no! She would not think of that. That was another time, another world entirely.

  The street bent.

  It was a sudden, jerking movement that threw her off balance. Imraldera landed on her hands and knees, stunned. For a moment her head whirled, and she thought she would be sick. Then her stomach settled, just as the street did.

  She raised her face and found that she was surrounded by thick, black Midnight.

  It was the darkness of a night without a moon, that hour when children awake in their beds, terrified because the sunset is long gone and sunrise far away. There is no escape from such darkness. All one can do is wait and hope.
r />   Imraldera found she’d had enough of waiting.

  Grinding her teeth, she scrambled back to her feet. Her knees were scraped and one palm bled. She did not care. She’d already sat once in moonless darkness on the top of that mountain. No more! She would keep moving until she dropped.

  The only sound was the slap of her bare feet on cobbles still hot to the touch. The street now stretched before her without turn or bend, and it was too dark for her to make out either its beginning or its end. It was as though the city itself had decided upon her path and shaped it for her.

  A sob rattled across the silent stones.

  The sound startled her, and she backed up against one of the tower walls; having rock at her back was somehow comforting. She strained her ears. Sure enough, a second sob followed the first, and this one gave her some idea of the direction. It was a pitiful sound made by a small voice. She should be afraid, she knew. This darkness was dreadful, this world more dreadful still. She should be cowering, running for her life.

  But the sound wasn’t one she could fear.

  Picking her way quietly down the street, walking on her toes so as to make no noise, she followed the sobs. At length her searching eyes made out a form sitting in one of the high windowsills. Eanrin? Her heart leapt with the hope. Then she realized that the sobs came from this creature, and the voice was not the poet’s.

  It was a child.

  The instant Imraldera recognized this, the Midnight vanished. It was as sudden as snuffing out a candle, only the opposite. One moment, she stood in darkness. The next, blistering red sky leered down at her. The abrupt shift hurt her eyes, and she shielded them with both hands.

  When at last she dared look again, she saw the child still perched in the window. One thin leg dangled down the wall; the other rested up on the sill. The little urchin was so thin and underfed as to have lost almost all traces of childhood. Boy or girl, Imraldera could not guess. It covered its face with bony hands and sobbed its heart out.