Starflower (32 page)

Eanrin felt sick inside. He hated himself in that moment, he who had never before thought of himself without love and self-satisfaction.

“It would be useless anyway,” he muttered. “The Black Dogs would get her. Hri Sora wants to see this creature destroyed even more than Imraldera does. She will have given them orders to kill the girl should she fail her task.”

As soon as he said it, he knew it was true. There was no going back. Forward was the only option, forward into an uncertain future. They had trod the Path of Death already. They would tread it again together.

The Beast had vanished inside the hut. Eanrin, still a cat, crept to the doorway and crouched there, listening to the breathing of the wolf shaped like a man. Suddenly that breathing caught short.

“I smell you,” said Wolf Tongue. “I smell you, Faerie man.”

Eanrin swallowed hard. Then he spoke in his brightest, merriest voice. “What-ho, my wolfish friend! Well met, I say, in these odd mortal lands! How came a chap like you to be among this riffraff?”

The answering growl was thunderous. “This is my demesne,” said the Beast. “How dare you come here? This is my land and has been these many centuries now! How did you pass the rivers?”

“Oh, you know, I have my ways,” said Eanrin. His cat's eyes could just discern the creature's shadowy form moving toward him in the darkness. He backed away, ready to bolt, feeling safer in the open sunshine. “Secret ways to and fro. I'm known for my guile, even as you, my lord, are known for your thievery.”

“Cat.” The Beast spat the word like a curse. He appeared in the doorway, still a man, and stared down at Eanrin where he crouched. “You are not welcome here.”

“No more are you, I imagine,” Eanrin replied with a careless flick of his ears, though his heart raced madly. “Unless you want to try and tell me that these mortals
asked
you to come and steal their land.”

“What business is it of yours?” Wolf Tongue cried. He would have
liked to snap up the cat in a single bite and be rid of him. But he dared not. Not if there was a breach in his land allowing Faerie folk through. He must learn the source of that breach, and soon, if he was to close it and secure his territory once more. “Why should you care what I do with these maggots?”

“I find myself caught up in all sorts of business not my own these days,” said the cat, smiling. “But curiosity always was my downfall, you know.”

“It will be in the end, I have no doubt,” said Wolf Tongue. He took a menacing step out of the house. Eanrin crawled back a few paces. “How did you break those protections and infiltrate my realm?”

The cat said nothing.

“The rivers keep all Faerie kind out,” said the Beast, “save those brought in by a man of this land. Thus was I given admittance. A young man making his rite of passage came upon me in the Wood. I convinced him that if he took me back into his world, I would make him a king among his people. He agreed and led me back, and so I crossed the river gates that would otherwise have held me at bay. And I did indeed make him master of his people . . . and I became his god! So have I worked to make this realm my own, to make myself a power as great as any Faerie king or queen.

“But I will not permit others of our kind to enter here and contest my rule! So I ask you again, and I will not ask a third time: How did you pass the rivers?”

“I come,” said Eanrin quietly, “on behalf of Maid Imraldera.”

Wolf Tongue stared at him. “Imraldera,” he breathed, the name rolling slowly off his tongue. “Imral . . . the star . . .” A slow, terrible smile spread across his face, and he was more wolfish now than when he ran upon four feet. “You come on behalf of the Starflower.” His look was ravenous and he gnashed his teeth. “How I loved her!”

“Loved her?” Eanrin stood upright as a man. He cut a small figure beside the towering Wolf Tongue, and his bright shock of hair contrasted against the darkness of that other. “You say you
loved
her?” He shook his head, grimacing. “You have never loved anyone but yourself all your life!”

Wolf Tongue's smile grew. “And you have?”

Eanrin stared into that terrible face, and he saw his own reflected
there. A beast. An immortal beast. His voice shook, but he spoke his next words loudly, flinging them in Wolf Tongue's face as a challenge.

“The Starflower has returned to her land!” he cried. “She has returned to finish her business with the god of her people. She waits for you even now at the Place of the Teeth!”

With those words, Eanrin spun about and ran. Taking his cat's form, he hurled himself down the hill, streaking like lightning. And only just fast enough! No sooner had those words crossed his tongue than the Beast lunged for him. He felt the brush of teeth against his skin. He felt the heat of breath upon his fur. Had he hesitated even an instant, those jaws would have closed upon his spine and snapped him in two.

He hurtled through the village, a bright orange streak, darting for the nearest Faerie Path he could find and praying it did not belong to the Beast. Howls filled the air behind him, and he knew that Wolf Tongue had taken his true form.

The race was on.

I
MRALDERA
STOOD
ON
THE
EDGE
of the Place of the Teeth, watching the landscape far below. She understood many things that she could not have begun to imagine the last time she came to this place. She knew what lay beyond the Circle of Faces. She knew that the Void was no Void but in fact held worlds far greater than the world she had always known and found sufficient.

She gazed upon the Land of her people, the Land that belonged to the Beast. The naming of things had always come easy to her. The night her mother died and Fairbird drew her first crying breath, Imraldera had studied her sister until she discovered her true name, and wondered then if perhaps she had known it all along. Later, she had gazed into Frostbite's snarling face and known what the dog had been intended to be, not what it was. Even the Black Dogs, waiting now just beyond the ring of mountains . . . even they had names, though their souls were suppressed to the point of extinction.

The name of this land was Sorrow. But what, she wondered, was the true name of its master?

“When you hold the name of a Faerie Lord, you hold power indeed.”

So had the Dragonwitch said. And she had given Imraldera, as though bestowing a gift, the name by which the Beast was known in the worlds beyond.

Amarok.
Imraldera rolled the word around in her mind. Though the language was foreign to her, the meaning translated itself: Ravenous. Cunning. Cruel. How could Wolf Tongue have any other name? It was too accurate to be doubted. She had gazed into his eyes. She had seen the desire. She had watched through all the years of her life how he feasted upon the fat of her land and grew strong, and she knew he had been at this feast since long before she was born.

Amarok.
Her hands tried to form the word, to make the signs. There was no word quite like it in her vocabulary. She signed
hungry.
That wasn't true. She signed
brutal.
That too was incorrect. She frowned. The shadow cast by the central stone fell across her face. But her hands could not form the name.

“Say his name,”
Hri Sora had said,
“and he will do your bidding.”

Imraldera clenched her fists and drew a long breath. She stood in the middle of a bloodstain, whether human or animal she could not know. In her mind's eye, she gazed upon her future, the path she must follow. She saw only death. Her death, perhaps. Perhaps the death of her enemy. But death, one way or the other. Could such an end be right? Could such an end be pure? Or was holiness always bloody?

The mountain growled.

Imraldera felt rather than heard the reverberations beneath her feet. The stone Teeth quivered to their roots, and Imraldera herself stumbled and nearly fell from the stone. She caught hold of the nearest rock, clutching its sharp contours to support herself. And she gazed down into the valleys below.

He was coming. She could not see him. But she knew beyond doubt.

The Beast was returning to Bald Mountain.

The god of the Land ran across the long expanse of his demesne. His head was low, his claws tearing the turf in painful gouges, scarring the
countryside in his wake. He covered miles in a stride, his eyes fixed on the point beyond the horizon where his prey awaited his coming.

The Land shuddered at his passing. The people, his worshippers, hid their faces, weeping at what they thought was their imminent doom. But he passed them by without a glance. He had but one purpose in his heart.

Her!
The escaped one! The one who fled through the watery pass she could not have known, following some guide whom she trusted more than she trusted him!

But she had returned to him. She waited for him now. She had passed into the worlds beyond and found them more dreadful than the love he offered. He would have her at last! He would have her and keep her as he had been unable to keep Ytotia. Ytotia's flame could not be suppressed forever. This girl was mere mortal dust—but not for long. He would transform her into one such as he, and if her mortal frame could withstand the change, she would be a worthy consort to his godhood.

So he ran, and Bald Mountain watched his coming, and watched also the girl standing upon its slopes, small among those jagged teeth on the sacrificial stone. It did not watch the orange cat streaking just ahead of the hunting wolf, for in the grand poetry of the story playing out below, that creature played no role. Only the girl and the wolf, a tale as old as Time itself. Girl and wolf; maid and monster. The dead mountain knew the symmetry of the worlds, the fixed laws of stories being lived. It had watched them all since it was Lady Whitehair, tall and glorious.

So the mountain paid no attention to the Bard of Rudiobus making that last mad, exhausted scramble up the secret Paths to the Place of the Teeth. And Imraldera, as she stood waiting—every muscle tensed to run, forcing herself to stand—did not see him until he sprang suddenly onto the stone and collapsed at her feet.

“Run now!” he gasped, his form flickering between cat and man. “The wolf is upon you!”

The sun sank, staining the sky red, hurling shadows across the mountain. Imraldera stared down at the cat. Her eyes, memory dazed, saw her father lying in a pool of blood.

“Run!”
he had said, his last word. And she had obeyed, leaving him
behind, leaving Fairbird, leaving her people. She had deprived the Beast of his due, and what price had her people paid in her absence?

“Run!” Eanrin cried. “It's our only chance!”

And what of Fairbird?

Her mouth twisting in a silent scream, she whirled about and leapt from the stone. Even as her bare feet scrabbled in the soil, the wolf appeared below and in a single, powerful leap, landed among the Teeth. Imraldera heard his sharp intake of breath, and her limbs froze. She turned and stared at the monstrous form—large as a horse, black as sin, her oppressor, her god.

“Starflower!”

The Eldest's daughter gazed into the face of the wolf and, just as she had that night under the cold moonlight, she saw death there. Tears filled her eyes, even as her heart refused to beat and her legs refused to obey her and run.

“Starflower!” the Beast cried. “You have returned to me!”

Maid and monster. Girl and wolf.

He was a man now, standing on the edge of the stone. His eyes were as yellow and intent as a wolf's, and his gray wolfskin fell back from broad shoulders. His arms reached out to her, ready to embrace, ready to kill. “You have returned,” he said. “You know the truth, deep in your heart. You have known it since the night you dared spit in my eye. You are as vicious as you are beautiful! Not the demure, silent maiden, not you, Starflower. You were always meant to be mine.”

Her mouth was dry. Her body shook. Her mind screamed,
Run!
But if she did . . . if she ran that Path leading over the mountains and down into the water deeps of the river cavern . . . if she led her enemy through that dark way and emerged at last into the Midnight where his children waited . . .

Imraldera stared at the Beast, her fear overwhelming. All thought, all reason, all puzzling through the dangerous questions was reduced to silence.

“Come to me now, my pretty one.” The wolf in man's form gnashed his teeth, and blood fell from his lips. “At last,” he whispered. “Let me take you and make you what I want.”

Suddenly Wolf Tongue screamed. A barrage of fur and teeth and claws had leapt into his face, snarling for all he was worth. The cat tore viciously at his eyes and ears, slipping through his furious fingers, scrambling around behind his shoulders to cling just out of reach. The Beast roared and became animal once more, lashing and writhing in his efforts to get the tiny monster off his back. In the midst of their ugly howls, Imraldera heard Eanrin shouting, “Run, fool girl!”

She came to her senses in a rush, gasping at the pain of it. Then she was running, fleeing up the mountain Path once again as the sun sank and night overcame the world. She knew who she was, she knew where she had been, and she knew what lay before her.

A shriek cut the darkness behind her. A death cry? Sickness tore at her heart. Had immortal Eanrin met his doom? But she could not think of that. She must run, and faster! Up the highest slopes of Bald Mountain, where the air should be so cold her blood would freeze, so thin her lungs would collapse.

The wolf was behind her. She felt the pound of his pursuing feet.
Oh, cat! You should have left me by the River! You should have abandoned me to the Black Dogs and let me walk this Path alone!

She stumbled as she ran, cutting her hands upon sharp stones, and her feet bled just as they had the last time, leaving red footprints in her wake. The Path turned downward, and she slipped and skidded, nearly collapsing altogether. But the Hound was ahead and the wolf behind, and she could not stop, not yet.

“When you hold the name of a Faerie Lord, you hold power indeed.”

Fear! Was that his name? That spear of terror he plunged into the hearts of his worshippers? Amarok the Wolf. The Father of Fear.

See the truth, Starflower.

The song sang into her heart. She clutched it like a lifeline pulling her along when everything in her begged for release, for collapse, for an end. This Path was all she had to cling to now; no more reasoning and no more hope, just run, run, run!

See the truth and speak.

The river flowed ahead, cutting through the mountains and deep underground. Imraldera followed the Path, feeling as light and tossed
about as an autumn leaf, prey to the whim of greater forces. But Fairbird must be safe. And if that meant death, so be it! Imraldera plunged once more into the darkness of the cavern, where she was blind and the roar of rushing water filled her ears. No gleam of gold to relieve her here. Nothing but darkness all around and the wolf just behind.

See and speak.

She was blind and she was mute. But she would not give in, not yet!

Her hand traced the cavern wall, and her feet sometimes nearly slipped as the river flowed past, ready to tug her under. The Path she walked was magic, however, and led her safely through those underground miles. She should have died down there the last time. By rights, she should die there now. But instead she saw the gleam of light far ahead. Sunlight! Night had come in the world above, come and gone, and daylight reigned once more. But where was the Midnight? Where were the Black Dogs?

“My love.”

The wolf's voice, so near behind, was enough to shatter the spirit. She staggered and collapsed against the wall. He was close. His voice was a monster's, but a man's hand reached toward her in darkness.

“You fled me down this Path before,” he said, “and where did it lead you? Back to me, Starflower. Back to me, where you belong. Why fly from me again?” His voice was a snarl, but it pleaded with her. “My own, my love. You will only be brought back to me a second time. Such is your doom; you cannot escape it. I am your god, and I have decreed it so.”

He could not touch her, not while she stood upon this Path. But his words sank into her heart, and she feared the truth of them. Girl and wolf . . . inexplicably joined. Only death would sever his hold upon her, upon Fairbird, upon the Land.

See the truth.

She pushed herself upright, forcing her eyes to look ahead, to look to the daylight where the river emerged from the deep places of the world and roared out into the sea beyond the Circle of Faces. One step, then two. She felt the wolf reaching for her; all his will strained against her, begging her to stay.

“Starflower—”

The river caught her.

Just as it had the last time she fled, it swelled about her legs and snatched her up, carrying her through the darkness. She should have drowned; her bones should have been crushed. But the Path was true and swift. It did not lie. It carried her beyond the darkness, out into the blazing light of day and cast her upon the shore of the narrow isthmus, beyond the reach of the mountains, beyond the reach of her god.

Imraldera lay gasping for some time, uncertain of herself and her fate. At last, her arms shaking and her legs protesting in agony, she forced herself to her feet and turned to face the long cavern.

The wolf stood at its mouth. His eyes were full of black fire, and his fists raised in furious protest. “No!” he shouted, his voice carrying above the roar of the river. “Come back to me, love! Do not leave me again!”

The silent girl stood trembling, water dripping from her hair, her nose, the hem of her dress. She stared at the Beast and he raged at her. But he did not step beyond the safety of the mountains.

The Black Dogs were nowhere in sight. Perhaps they were near, but Imraldera could not say for sure. There was no trace of Midnight. She was alone upon that stretch, ocean on either side, mountains before, haze of a distant horizon behind. She and her enemy were the only two beings left in the worlds.