Starflower Read online

  © 2012 by Anne Elisabeth Stengl

  Published by Bethany House Publishers

  11400 Hampshire Avenue South

  Bloomington, Minnesota 55438

  www.bethanyhouse.com

  Bethany House Publishers is a division of

  Baker Publishing Group, Grand Rapids, Michigan

  www.bakerpublishinggroup.com

  Ebook edition created 2012

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—for example, electronic, photocopy, recording—without the prior written permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in printed reviews.

  ISBN 978-1-4412-6047-5

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, incidents, and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Book design by Paul Higdon

  Cover photography by Mike Habermann Photography, LLC

  For Esther,

  my hand-reader friend.

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  A Note to the Reader

  Prologue

  Part One

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  Part Two

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  Part Three

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  Tales of Goldstone Wood

  Coming Summer 2013

  Back Ads

  Back Cover

  A NOTE TO THE READER

  STARFLOWER TAKES PLACE more than sixteen hundred years (as mortals count time) before Heartless. There are dramatic topographical differences between the Near World of Starflower’s day and that of Una’s, and some characters, though living, are not yet who they will become. Even the Prince of Farthestshore is known by another name. . . .

  PROLOGUE

  ONCE UPON A TIME, great Etalpalli, the City of Wings, was ruled by a Faerie queen. Her name has long since been forgotten. What is remembered are her youth, her beauty. Her hair was bright as the sun and no less vibrant than the feathered wings sprouting from her shoulders.

  She was young when she came to the throne, and her heart was tender and full of love for her people. They flocked in the air, their wings a garden of many colors, and lived in the green-grown towers of Etalpalli. In those high places, they found it easy to hear the voices of the sun and the moon singing and would sing back in joyful echo.

  Once upon a time, the City of Wings was a peaceful demesne full of life.

  Now it burned.

  ———

  Hri Sora sat up, choking as though she’d swallowed her own tongue. Poisonous fumes filled her lungs. Surrounding her on all sides, towers of fire issued thunderheads of black smoke. She stared about, unblinking. Ashes and flying embers lashed the air, but these could not hurt her. Her thin face and form were those of a woman. But her yellow eyes betrayed her true nature.

  The Dark Father stood with his back to her, a shadow, like smoke himself. At first, she thought he must be unaware of her presence. His head turned this way and that as he appraised the inferno surrounding him. The searing air shimmered red. Flames licked at his long black cloak, but it did not catch fire.

  Hri Sora staggered to her feet, clutching her stomach. Her body was hollow and cold inside. She wondered if she should speak or back away, avoid the Dark Father’s gaze. But he settled that question by addressing her first.

  “That, my darling, was quite the tantrum.”

  She blinked at his broad back and said nothing. He did not seem to expect an answer but shook his head and continued, “Dear, oh dear. I wondered if I should say something to you when you started . . . remind you of those vows you made long ago. ‘I shall never return to Etalpalli!’” His voice became a high, unflattering mimic of hers. “‘Though I die, the City of Wings will live forever.’ Such a fine sentiment. I’m sure you meant it at the time.” He shrugged.

  Hri Sora whirled about where she stood, dizzy with emptiness. Her eyes widened as she looked again at the towering flames, hundreds of fiery tongues tasting a blackened sky.

  “No,” she whispered.

  “Oh yes,” said her Father. He turned to her. The heat in the air rose so strong that the edges of his cloak floated up behind him in a dark swirl. He was more than seven feet tall, and his skin was white, stretched thin over a skull of black bone. He smiled, his fangs gleaming dully in the firelight. “I’m afraid it’s true. You, my sweet, came blazing out of the Near World straight through Cozamaloti Gate and set fire to your own city. Do you not remember?”

  Somewhere amid the roar of the flames came the deeper roar of a tower crumbling. Hri Sora gasped and clutched her head in her hands. “I did this?”

  “Do you doubt it?” Her Father chuckled, rolling his eyes to the burning heavens. “You, who once boasted to me that your fire was greater than my own?”

  “No,” she whispered. Then, her voice a hoarse bark, she screamed. “No!”

  She tried to walk, to run, but her feet betrayed her, and she collapsed on her hands and knees. The hot embers covering the streets should have burned her skin, but they did not, for she was a dragon, and this was her own fire. Rather than burn, they warmed her, bringing slow clarity to her addled mind.

  Etalpalli. Her city . . .

  Her Father laughed outright, the rumble of his voice itself like flames. Then he moved to stand beside her but made no offer to help her to her feet. Instead, he took another slow spin, as though he could not get his fill of the destruction.

  “I will give you this, daughter. Not once have I seen any of my children burn so brilliantly before. You always were special, weren’t you? My firstborn!”

  She could not make herself rise but remained on all fours like a crawling beast. She, who had once flown to the highest vaults of heaven, into the presence of Lady Hymlumé herself! To what depths had she fallen? Closing her eyes, she strove to remember.

  There had been the pure, hateful, cleansing light of the moon shining in her face. She had unhinged her jaw to swallow it whole—the light, the song, everything. Then came that horrible moment, the tearing across the center of her soul, deep into the core of her fire. The moment when her wings had been stripped away.

  After that, the fall.

  Her head throbbed, and Hri Sora forced herself to forget, at least for now. She was too weak in the wake of her last great flaming, the flaming in which, she guessed, she had destroyed Etalpalli. Her memory was full of ashes, and just then she wasn’t sure she wanted it to clear. Spitting more ash as she spoke, she demanded, “When did I do this?”

  “This?” said her Father, sweeping a hand to encompass the burning city. “About a hundred years ago, I should think.”

  “A hundred years?”

  “Etalpalli is nothing but ruins now, all the greenery burned away, half the towers destroyed, th
e others hollow shells full of shadows. What you’re seeing here isn’t real. It’s a dream. Rather, it’s the death of a dream.”

  Hri Sora forced herself up onto her knees and stared around once more. The hot air caught at her hair, whipping it across her face. She licked her lips slowly and reached up to touch her cheeks, her nose, her mouth. “I’m still a woman,” she said.

  “Yes.”

  “You took—” She struggled with the memory, not wanting it to come. But it forced its way in at last. “You took my wings from me.”

  “That I did. And your dragon form.”

  “Am I no longer a dragon, then?”

  The Dark Father sneered down at her. “Of course you are! Do you think any but a dragon could do something like this?”

  Long ago, in the heat of her first flaming when she was newly reborn, Hri Sora had burned away the last of her tears, along with her former name. Her heart was gone, replaced with this raging furnace. But somehow, as she looked upon this destruction, dream though it was, she thought her heart must break should she still possess one. She wished for the relief of tears. For a moment, she saw Etalpalli as it once was, the high towers covered in green vines, the air filled with the wings of her people, their plumage bright and flashing.

  “They were certainly glorious,” said her Father, as though reading her mind. “All your former subjects. Such beautiful wings! I can see why you couldn’t allow them to live.”

  They had still boasted wings when she no longer did.

  “I killed them.”

  “They put up a fight,” said her Father. “But you were in quite the rage when you returned. Though you walked the ground like a mortal woman, your fire blazed to the sky and burned their wings. They fell like shooting stars at your feet.”

  How she hoped that memory would not return, not yet! Hri Sora forced herself to stand, trembling. What a despicable thing was this woman’s body. Much too weak to support the fire inside her. No wonder she had lost consciousness for a hundred years.

  “Let me wake up,” she said to her Father.

  “Why?” he asked, chuckling again. “Don’t you like this dream of yours? It is your finest victory!”

  “Let me wake up. I have work to do.”

  He turned a cruel, devouring smile upon her. “What kind of work can a wingless dragon possibly pursue?”

  Her mouth opened, but no words came. Her mind suddenly crowded with images, with hate. Her Father watched her face, reading more of her thoughts than she liked, so she turned away from him.

  “What happened to you?” he asked.

  “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “When you fell from the heavens. I took your wings to punish your idle boasting, and you plummeted so hard and fast, I thought sure you’d die your third death then and there! Obviously, I was mistaken. You landed in the Near World and weren’t heard from for ten mortal years at least. What happened to you during that time in the mortal realm?”

  “I don’t remember,” she snarled.

  “You burst back through to the Far World so suddenly, it took everyone by surprise. Even those cursed Knights of the Farthest Shore had thought you were gone for good! But no, back you came and, of all things, dragging two children behind you.” He shook his head, a forked tongue flickering between his fangs. “Fancy—me, a grandfather! Ugly little brutes they are, too. Certainly not a brood of which to boast. I’ve found uses for them, however. There’s always more room in my realm.”

  “They are mine.” She bit the words out.

  “Yes, yes, the little monsters are quite devoted to you,” said he. “I’ve sent them out on several errands, but they always want to return to you, sniffing about and making sure no one comes too near.” He shook his head at her. “But they can’t reach you here. Not in your dreams.”

  “Let me wake up,” she said again. “Let me wake up so that I may . . . so that I may find . . .”

  “Find what?”

  She chewed her lip with dagger teeth, drawing lines of dark blood. Flames burned the back of her throat. “None of your business,” she said at last.

  “All your business is my business,” said her Father. “You have a look of revenge about you. Don’t try to deny it; I know the signs. It’s best not to think of it now, however. You are nothing without your wings. Oh, you can flame bright enough to destroy this whole city of yours. But that’s just it, daughter. It was your city. Your demesne. Yours to keep or devour at will. Now it’s gone, and you have nothing.”

  “I have my children.”

  “For what good they do you!”

  Hri Sora turned to him then, planting her feet and throwing her head back. He towered over her, but she was still his firstborn, and she met him eye for eye. Her lank hair swelled behind her in a cloud, and her fists clenched at her sides. The fire in her eyes dominated every womanly vestige. She was a dragon, through and through.

  “Give me back my wings!”

  “And let you challenge my authority again?” He swept his gaze across the crumbling ruins, then back to her. “Not likely.”

  “Give them to me!”

  “Why should I? You’ve done your worst, Hri Sora. You’ve earned yourself a place in history, both in the annals of Faerie folk and the legends of mortals. You have no need of wings or flame now.”

  But she did.

  Somewhere in the world was a dark hut where a man lived—a man she had been unable to kill even when her flame was hottest. She remembered him now, though she wished more than anything to forget. She remembered those years of crawling about in the mortal dust when she had always been meant to fly!

  “Amarok.” She whispered the name like venom. “My dear one.”

  “What’s that?” said her Father.

  Hri Sora did not answer. She drew a long breath, sucking flames down into her lungs. “I must have my wings,” she said. “I must. But I will not tell you why.”

  “In that case,” said he, “I do not care to give them back.”

  “Everything has a price,” she said. “Name it!”

  In the jet-black depths of the Dragon’s eyes, flames flickered. He looked upon Hri Sora’s stance, took in the smoldering fire ready to burst from her breast. She was a beauty, he thought, or had been when he first turned her. A shame, really, that she’d puffed herself up so! Nevertheless, she had done more to strike terror of his name into the hearts of all peoples in all worlds than had any of his other children. His firstborn . . . his prize. Even the Knights of the Farthest Shore had failed to quench her flame.

  “There is a price,” he said slowly.

  “Tell me!”

  He could make her do anything now. She would be willing to dive into the Final Water, to swim to the Farthest Shore and set fire to that unreachable realm if he asked her. Wretched fool! But he could get some sport from her yet.

  “I want,” he said, “the Flowing Gold of Rudiobus.”

  Her flaming eyes did not blink. She neither moved nor spoke for some time. At last she said, “It is hidden.”

  “Most definitely.”

  “Kept safe by Queen Bebo.”

  “Indeed.”

  “She who is oldest and strongest of all Faerie queens.”

  “The same.”

  Hri Sora shook her head slowly. “No one knows where it is. No one knows what it looks like. It is the chief treasure of King Iubdan Tynan, and no one else has even seen it!”

  “A fine addition it will make to my Hoard. Don’t you agree?”

  The dragon woman blew a spurt of flame. “What you ask is impossible! Who can penetrate Rudiobus without a call? Who can take from Bebo and Iubdan what they wish kept secret?”

  The specter smiled. “There is one other who knows the secret of Rudiobus. Or so rumor would have it.”

  “Who?”

  “Lady Gleamdrené Gormlaith, Queen Bebo’s own cousin, highly favored in the courts of Rudiobus. Of all Iubdan’s merry subjects, it is said she alone knows the truth behind the legends of
the Flowing Gold.”

  Hri Sora considered this. “It is well,” she said. “But one must still penetrate the boundary protections that Bebo herself established. No one can enter Rudiobus uninvited. To even set foot in Gorm-Uisce Lake without leave would be death.”

  “So much for the power of the firstborn,” said the specter with a mocking laugh.

  She snarled at him, spewing drops of blood from her lips. If only she might tear him to pieces here in the nightmarish remains of her demesne! But he was without substance, no more than a shade. No fire of hers would ever harm him, she knew.

  There was nothing left, then: No power without her wings; no city to call home. Only the hideous memory of former fires and that burning, driving lust for revenge. Such a pathetic creature she was, reduced to this form.

  Unless . . .

  Hri Sora smiled. This form was pitiable, but her mind was still good. And dragons command many powerful enchantments. An idea took root, and her smile grew.

  Perhaps a soft and vulnerable woman was not so soft and vulnerable after all.

  “Very well, Father,” she spoke in a fearfully gentle voice. “I swear to you, I will do the impossible. I will get you this gold and make myself worthy in your eyes once more. Then”—flames flickered in her throat—“you will give me back my wings.”

  “Idle boasts,” said he.

  She roared. Her woman’s face twisted almost beyond recognition, and fire fell from her bleeding lips. “Wake me up!”

  The Dragon laughed at her. Then he put up one hand and snapped his fingers.

  The dream vanished.

  1

  SHARP ROCKS TORE at the girl’s bare feet as she ran. Her aching body cried out for relief, for rest, but she dared not stop.

  Water lapped near her. Now, at high tide, the ground on which she ran was no more than a narrow stretch of pebbled beach with ocean extending forever on either side. Behind her were the mountains, but she would not look back. She could still hear the howls echoing and reechoing from peak to peak until she thought she might go mad. She fixed her gaze forward, struggling to see through the thick fog that rose up from the ocean and threatened to smother her. Yet the Path was firm beneath her bleeding feet.