Starflower (5 page)

“I am,” said Hri Sora. Her voice rasped between her sharp teeth.

“Of course you are. I know where it is; did you know that?”

“I did. And you will tell me.”

Gleamdren laughed outright. Her laugh was artificial, as though she'd forgotten long ago what a real laugh was supposed to sound like. She wiped one eye with her thumb and turned a smile upon the dragon. “Oh, honestly! Do you really think that's how it's going to work? I'm not about to just tell you a secret like that, older than the foundations of the world! You're going to have to kidnap me.”

Hri Sora hissed and fire gleamed in her mouth. “Tell me what I want to know, and there will be no need for kidnapping.”

“What? And spoil all the fun? I think not! No, no, it's much better that you steal me away to . . . wherever you live. I do hope there's a good
high tower there. It's proper if you lock me in a high tower. That's how these things are done.”

The dragon rose from the bed. Fire burned through her skin, and the green nightgown caught and smoldered at the neck and sleeves. “Tell me what I want to know.” The heat of her words melted the gilding on the bedposts, on the walls, on the mirror's frame.

“No. Sorry. Kidnapping it must be.”

“Are you not afraid?”

“Why should I be afraid? I have
scores
of suitors, and they'll all come to rescue me. Can you imagine how romantic that will be? Much more so than epic poetry. I've never been kidnapped before, but I've always rather liked the sound of it! So yes, why don't you just spread your wings like a good dragon and carry me off?”

Hri Sora gnashed her teeth. Fire fell from her lips, setting the counterpane ablaze. Even Gleamdren had the sense to take a step back, blinking rapidly. But Hri Sora reached out and took hold of the front of her dress, dragging her so close that Gleamdren thought her nose might melt away. For the first time that evening, a flutter that might be akin to fear stirred in Gleamdren's breast.

“I'll carry you off, little maid,” snarled the dragon. “I'll lock you away fast and far. And believe me, you will tell me what I wish to know, or you will die.”

“Don't . . . don't make a fool of yourself,” Gleamdren gasped, still trying to keep her voice light. “The people of Rudiobus don't
die.
”

“Perhaps not.” Fire surrounded the dragon's tongue as she spoke. “But you can be killed.”

Gleamdren opened her mouth to speak but found she had no words. That thrill of fear she'd known for the first time only moments ago returned suddenly, paralyzing her. She went limp in the dragon's grasp, made no struggle as she was caught up in two powerful arms and borne to the window. It may have been some spell. It may have been the overwhelming poison of the dragon's breath no longer disguised by an attractive enchantment. Either way, Gleamdren found herself unable to move, unable to speak, unable to so much as cry out for help.

The dragon flung wide the casement, and the fire of her hair and her
eyes lit up that dark street within the mountain, angry red light bursting through every window and startling all sleepers into instant, panicked wakefulness. Then she roared in a powerful voice that carried not only throughout all Rudiobus Mountain, but also across the lake, into the Wood and the worlds beyond. The language was one never before spoken in the land of the Merry People, and it would never be heard in those halls again.

“Yaotl! Eztli!”

War and blood. Fire and terror. The words cracked rocks and broke hearts even as they sped through the passages and pierced the boundaries of worlds to fall upon the ears of those to whom they called.

Then the baying began.

The voices of the Black Dogs filled the ears of every man and woman living in the mountain. Called at last from within, those awful hunters burst through boundaries heretofore unbreakable, sped across the water, and hurled themselves like a hurricane wind through the gates of Fionnghuala Lynn. No one dared stand in their path as they hurtled forward, dragging a vicious dark Midnight in their wake.

Gleamdren saw them within a moment of the dragon's call. She glimpsed huge bodies; she glimpsed flaming eyes all tangled in a snarl of sounds and shadows and raging winds. Her hair whirled about; even the fires of the dragon's hair were threatened with extinction. But the dragon's claws clutched Gleamdren by the shoulder, and she was dragged through her window and mounted on the back of a black body she could not see with all that assailed her senses.

Then they were gone: Dogs, dragon, maiden. Vanished from Rudiobus so quickly that no one saw their passing, not even Iubdan's mare standing dumbstruck at the gate. But the baying of the Black Dogs echoed through the byways of Rudiobus for hours afterward. And when the echoes at last died away, the heavy darkness of Midnight lingered for hours more.

All this while, the girl in the Wood slept on the River's edge, and it pulled at her hair with its wet and wanton fingers. Her sleep was deep
indeed and troubled as only enchanted sleeps may be. In her dreams she lived again and again that dark moment when the moon vanished behind a cloud. When a looming shadow appeared between two jutting stones.

She heard the wolf howling in a voice so like those of the Black Dogs that it may almost have been the same.

E
ANRIN
SCOWLED
at the blister on his finger. There it was, right in front of him. Swollen and ugly, painful even to look at.

Yet he had carried a dragon into Rudiobus.

“Dragon's teeth,” he hissed, quietly so as not to be heard. He stood hidden in a gallery above Iubdan and Bebo's council chamber and did not want his voice to echo.

They rarely used this chamber for anything resembling a real council; their council members were unused to being summoned at all, especially at this hour. Everyone sat ill at ease, some in their nightshirts, some in uncomfortable robes of office that looked as though they had not been worn for centuries (most of them hadn't). Iubdan sat with his face very red behind his ebony beard.

“How can this have happened?” he demanded.

Eanrin strained his ears, waiting for someone to remind someone else that it had been the poet's fault. As much as he hated to admit it, it probably was. He should have seen through the disguise! Even the caorann tree had been deceived, but that should have made him still
more cautious. Only dragons, it was said, could fool the caorann. And only a dragon—he knew this now with rueful certainty—could burn a man at the slightest touch.

What a fool he'd been. The longer he dithered over her, the longer her glamour had worked itself into his brain. Had he acted upon his first instincts and left her there, none of this would have happened. She could have scraped and scrabbled on the edge of Rudiobus for a hundred years and never found an opening.

“But it wasn't my fault,” he muttered, unwilling even now to admit a mistake. “I might have put her down, if it wasn't for that . . . that . . .”

He could not bring himself to speak the word. A dragon in Rudiobus was bad enough.
Only one monster at a time,
he told himself.
You needn't worry about that other. Not yet.

With a shudder, he returned his attention to the scene in the chamber below.

“How can this have happened?” Iubdan demanded for perhaps the tenth time. The councilmen cast one another accusing glances, as though any one of their neighbors must be at fault and why not confess now and let everyone else go back to sleep? By the king's black beard, it was going on noon already, and all of them should be properly tucked away in bed!

Glomar stood like a lump to the king's right, arms crossed and his brow more badger-like than ever, offering not one useful word. “We've got to fetch her back!” was all he said, as though no one else was capable of coming to this conclusion. Eanrin, from his hiding place (poets are never officially invited to secret council meetings), sneered at the man and his fellows.

“We've got to fetch her back!” Glomar stated again after another interminable silence crept by. “Immediately! I'll set out now and track them down.”

“Track the Black Dogs?” one of the councilmen said.

“I'll do it!” Glomar roared.

Eanrin watched as the councilmen exchanged glances. Even those dunces, less blinded by love than the captain, knew how foolish such a venture would be.

“You'll end up on the road to Death's realm,” said Iubdan, thumping
his fist on the arm of his chair. “That's where you'll go, and that's no help to anyone. No one is setting out that way unless we've a good plan for how to venture both in and out. Ugh! I little like the notion of stepping into the Netherworld again! Poor cousin! Taken by such fiends . . . she must be well on her way to that dark place herself. Where else would the Black Dogs carry her?”

“Etalpalli.”

All eyes in the chamber, including the covert pair in the gallery, turned to Queen Bebo. She sat apart from the table of councilmen, on a humble chair of twisted roots growing up from the mountain floor. Her green sleeves, delicately picked out in spider webs of exquisite work, draped over the arms, and her silver veil still covered her hair, though she had long since removed the goblin crown. She sat apart and scarcely raised her eyes from her hands as the menfolk talked and argued and forgot her presence. But when she spoke, they all remembered and turned to her as schoolchildren might turn to a benevolent teacher for advice. For Queen Bebo was older than they, older than the mountain. And she heard the voices of the sun and the moon.

“What's that you say, my dear?” asked her husband the king, raising his great bush of an eyebrow. “You spoke a name, I think, but one with which I am unfamiliar.”

“Etalpalli,” she repeated in her gossamer voice. “The City of Wings.”

Something in the way she spoke sent a burning dart through Eanrin's heart. For a moment, his breath steamed the air before his face. He shook himself and hunched his shoulders, leaning out of hiding to better see her face. The councilmen gave one another uncomfortable looks.

Iubdan, however, leaned back in his seat, his face thoughtful. “Ah yes,” he said. “I remember. Once upon a time, we journeyed beyond the Cozamaloti Gate into the City of Wings, did we not?”

“For the coronation of the new queen, yes,” said Bebo. “Two thousand years ago, if you count the hours as mortals do.”

Iubdan rubbed his mustache. Rarely did the Merry People see their king's face so solemn. “A bright little girl she was,” he said, musing with remembrance. “Newly crowned and so pretty on her great throne, with those wings of hers still overlarge for her wee frame.”

To Eanrin's horror, the king bent his head and hid his face in his hand. The poet stared, wondering if his own eyes deceived him. Did Iubdan weep?

“Her name is forgotten,” said Queen Bebo, her soft white lashes closing over her softer blue eyes. A single look at her face, and Eanrin knew that one person at least remembered the young Queen of Etalpalli's name. But he also knew that Bebo would not speak it. Instead, she swallowed, and the sight of his queen forcing back tears was enough to make the poet want to hurl himself from the gallery and burst into some manic song. Anything to make her laugh! The Merry Folk were not intended for tears, especially not their queen.

There was a catch in Bebo's voice when she raised her eyes and again addressed the assembly. “Her name was forgotten long ages ago. When she gave up her heart and succumbed to the voice of him we call Death-in-Life. When his kiss sealed her, her name was lost. And she became the firstborn of all dragons.”

The councilmen drew their robes and nightshirts close; several wiped sweat from their brows.

“She abandoned her people in the passion of her first burning,” Bebo continued quietly. “But she did not forget them long. A hundred years ago, she returned to her own demesne and burned it beyond recall. The City of Wings is no more. Its empty ruins rise to an emptier sky.”

The men in the hall hung on her words, holding their breath as though afraid she would say more, afraid she would tell them some horrible detail of the story at which she hinted. But the queen was lost in her own thoughts, her face tight and closed as though she listened to something no one else could hear. Iubdan, his face still covered in his hand, did not look up.

At length Glomar crossed his arms and cleared his throat loudly. “What can dragons have to do with any of this? It's the Black Dogs we're after.”

Eanrin nearly burst from hiding then and there to rain insults upon the captain. But he was spared by King Iubdan, who put up a silencing hand and turned a near-violent face upon his guard. “My lady knows of what she speaks, badger-man. Do not take so disrespectful a tone in
her presence. Of course there's a dragon involved in all this mess! Who but a dragon could spin a spell so powerful as to trick all Rudiobus?”

“And of all Death's offspring, only one has the power to deceive me,” said his queen.

“The Flame at Night!”

Which of the councilmen whispered the name remained unknown. But everyone heard it, and all traces of amusement vanished from their ruddy faces. This was not a name to be spoken lightly, and each man desperately hoped Queen Bebo would contradict the assertion, would assure them that no, such a dire suggestion was unwarranted.

She did not. She said only, “Hri Sora, the Flame at Night, firstborn of her kind. She alone, the onetime Queen of Etalpalli, could blind my eyes to her true self.”

“But she is dead!” said one of the councilmen. “Did we not all see her fall flaming from the sky? Sir Etanun of the Farthest Shore slew her twice with the sword Halisa. Then she fell from the vaults of Hymlumé's Garden and lost her third life. We saw the fire of her fall ourselves!”

“It seems she did not die after all,” said King Iubdan in a voice as dark as his eyes. “The Flame at Night still lives her final life.”

“But why the Black Dogs?” someone else asked. “Why would she call them into Rudiobus? If she is indeed the Flame at Night, why did she not transform and fly from here herself?”

“That,” said Queen Bebo, “I do not know. Nor do I know why the Black Dogs obey her. But of all Death-in-Life's children, she is the only one with the strength to command them. So it must be she who has taken my dear cousin, not into the Netherworld . . . no! No, she would not venture into the realm of her Dark Father. Not yet. She must have ridden the Dogs into the realm that once belonged to her. Into Etalpalli.”

“But why?” Glomar's voice boomed in the hall, and he clenched both fists in his fury. “Why would such a monster steal away Lady Gleamdren? I don't understand!”

Bebo turned her mild eyes upon the captain. Though her voice was gentle, it carried more force than his bluster ever could. “Gleamdren knows the secret of Rudiobus. She knows the whereabouts of the Flowing Gold.”

A silence like a trance held the room captive as the truth of this statement soaked in. At last Iubdan said quietly, “Aye, that must be it. Even Hri Sora would not dare attempt to wrest the secret from you or me, my girl. But your cousin is not so strong. How could she hope to withstand the firstborn's fire?”

For the first time since the commencement of the meeting, Captain Glomar turned a baleful glare up to the gallery shadows where Eanrin stood. He shook a fist, crying, “And
you
carried the monster right through our gates!”

“And just what do you imply?” Eanrin appeared at the railing, leaning so far out one would have thought he'd lose his balance. Then, with a catlike yowl, he leapt right over the rail and landed in a crouch just in front of Glomar. He paused a moment, his knees up and elbows out, catching his breath, for the fall was greater than he'd anticipated, before he rose and grabbed Glomar by the front of his jerkin, pulling him nose to nose. “Dare you imply that it is
my
fault my lady has been placed in such dire peril? Dare you insinuate that
my
actions have led to this terrible state?”

“That I do!” Glomar snarled.

Eanrin narrowed his eyes and set his jaw. Then he smiled and released his hold, leaving Glomar to stagger backward a few steps. The poet gave a dismissive toss of his head and addressed himself to his sovereigns. “He may be right, my good king, my fair queen. But I put it to you and all this wise council that the fault came only from a heart too easily moved to compassion at the sight of one apparently helpless! Can you lay guilt upon intentions so pure if so misled?”

Glomar snorted but Queen Bebo said only, “We were all deceived. We all welcomed her to our bosoms.”

“As does us credit!” Eanrin cried, still smiling. “We are a darling lot, aren't we? But darlingness aside, we've got ourselves in an awful fix. Not only does the sweetest maid that ever walked the meadows of Faerie lie even now in the clutches of Evil's own daughter, but also, how long shall the protections we have enjoyed in our own dear realm last? For should the Flame at Night, by her fell arts, wrench from Gleamdren's lips the secret—though she will find the courage of my queen's cousin nigh unto impenetrable, I grant you!—what should stop her from storming
Rudiobus once again? Or even—and I shudder at the thought—holding fair Gleamdren for ransom?”

“Enough babble!” cried Glomar, turning to Queen Bebo. “Talking will get us nowhere, my queen, and Lady Gleamdren is even now in danger! I shall set out at once for Etalpalli to see if what this idiot says is true.”

“And I,” declared Eanrin, “shall go with you.”

“Never! I'd not have you for a companion though my life depended upon it.”

“You have no choice in the matter, my blundering badger. I shall go whether you wish it or no, and you may do as you like with your life.”

“I know your games, cat. You'll do nothing but put yourself in my way!”

“If that is so, I'd suggest you get out of mine.”

“Why, I'll—”

“Stop.”

Queen Bebo's face was quiet when poet and guard turned to her. They dared not speak, though both thought her silence lasted too long. She appeared to be listening, but there was nothing to hear in that chamber of rock deep within the mountain. A muscle in her jaw twitched and her eyes first closed, then opened slowly.

“You shall indeed go,” she said. “Badger and cat. Soldier and poet. One who loves too much; one who loves not at all.” She stopped again, once more listening to voices no one else could hear. Eanrin and Glomar shuffled their feet and looked about, but a glance from Iubdan quieted them again, and they stood like statues.

Suddenly Bebo smiled. It was strange, considering the dire events. But she smiled, her face lighting up with unexpected joy that radiated down upon the two would-be heroes.

“Go to Lady Gleamdren's aid, both of you!” she cried. “Seek out Etalpalli, storm its gates, and demand the prisoner freed. But—” Here she laughed outright and shook her head as though disbelieving what she herself was about to say. “But I tell you this, my little darlings: Only one who truly loves will at last break through the Flame at Night's defenses and bring my cousin safely home. True love! Only true love . . .”