Fallen Star



  FALLEN STAR

  Copyright © 2016 by Anne Elisabeth Stengl

  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.

  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.

  Cover art and book design – A.E. de Silva

  Model credit – Stephanie Marguerite Anderson

  Photography credit - Rohan

  ___________________

  To Christa Scott,

  who picked Beana and inspired this tale.

  ___________________

  THE GHOSTS OF ROSES

  ON THE DAY HE discovered that the dragon-blasted nanny goat had broken loose from her pen, the old man set out into the forest in search of her, holding his little girl by one hand. Though he was bent and stiff with age, he nevertheless found himself obliged to adjust his long stride to the child’s, for she was not quite two years of age and struggled to keep up.

  But she was strong. The old man smiled at the fierce grip of her fingers on his hand, so fierce he sometimes wanted to pull loose and allow the blood to run freely once more. He never did, however. He held onto her as carefully as she held onto him, and so the two of them made their way slowly into the forest.

  As they went, he called for the nanny goat. “Lilybean! Liiiiilybean!”

  The girl raised her voice to join his. “Lil-a-bean! Lil-a-bean-a-bean!”

  Her voice did not carry so far as his, however. Not for lack of effort on her part—rather, because the veil she wore over her face got in her mouth and smothered her words. Irritated, she pulled at the cloth.

  “Off!” she said. “Take i’off, Dad!”

  The old man, carefully lifting a low-swinging bough from their path so that it would not strike the girl on the head, looked down at the sound of her frustration. He sighed, but rather than doing as she demanded, he straightened the veil carefully into place. “Sorry, my rosebud,” he said, his creaking voice gentle but firm. “We don’t know who we might meet on our way. I’ll take it off’n ye when we get home. But we’ve got to find Lilybean before she gets herself hurt or meets a wolf.”

  “Wolf?” said the little girl, forgetting her irritation with the veil at this exciting prospect. She looked around at the deep, lush forest surrounding them, her eyes bright through the slit in her veil, eager for any glimpse of such a dreadful monster. When none was to be had for several paces, however, she went back to pulling at her veil, interspersing her cries for “Lil-a-bean” with more demands to have the offending object removed from her head.

  The old man took no notice but trudged on through the heavy atmosphere of the forest. Up here in the highlands, the summer heat was not so intense as it was down below, but morning fog and rain rolled through these green peaks in suffocating blankets, only to finally dissipate into humid afternoons. The wet air was hard on his lungs, and his pace slowed more and more, until by the time they came to the end of the trail, just where the trees gave way to bare rock, he was obliged to stop and catch his breath.

  He took a seat on a convenient boulder and, letting go of the girl’s hand for the first time, swept the hat from his brow. Its brim was soaked with sweat.

  The girl, seeing him thus relieved of his head covering, redoubled her demands. “Take i’off!” she said, pulling at her veil so that it slid halfway from her face.

  The old man sighed. He looked around. The landscape was empty as far as his eye could see, and the nearest village was some miles lower, nestled in a little valley. Shepherds were unlikely to bring their flocks this high to graze, and none of the tea fields sprouted anywhere near at hand. Shading his eyes and gazing off to the east, he could just see the spiraling pattern of tea bushes descending a mountainous slope, but the figures working among those bushes were too far away to discern clearly.

  “Very well,” he said, and caught the veil just as the girl pulled it from her head and tried to fling it to the ground. He tucked it away inside the front of his vest, grinning somewhat ruefully to see how the girl beamed with delight, holding her face up to the sun and the mountain breeze.

  Suddenly the girl whirled about, pointing with one eager hand. “Lil-a-bean-a!” she cried.

  Turning much more slowly—for the climb had stiffened his already stiff limbs—the old man looked where she pointed. Sure enough, not far from where he sat, up among a tumble of bare boulders, stood his nanny goat. Sunlight brightened her small horns into an evil little crown, and she peered down at them with yellow, slitted eyes, bolder than any wicked queen of ancient days.

  “Dragon’s aching teeth,” the old man sighed, putting his hands to his knees and somehow contriving to get himself onto his feet once more. “What are you doing up there, ye devil-beast?”

  “Baaaaaah!” said the goat, and pawed at the stone with one cloven hoof. Then, with a flick of her tail, she turned and sprang, nimble as a young kid. She was not a young kid, however, and the old man feared she would break a leg in her defiance.

  With a muttered “Dragons take you!” he set off after her, calling back over his shoulder as he proceeded painfully up the incline, “Stay where ye are, Rosie! Be my good girl and sit still!”

  The girl twisted her hands in the ragged folds of her dress. She watched him climb, took several paces after him, then stopped. Obedience didn’t come easily to her, but she did love her old dad and hated very much to disappoint him. With a heavy sigh, as though she bore the weight of many sorrows upon her shoulders, she took a seat on the stone on which he had so recently rested. Thus she prepared herself for the long torment of sitting still. Why must goodness always come at such a steep price?

  She sat on that stone for what seemed a terribly long age, listening to the not-so-distant bleats of Lilybean and the cries of her old dad as he chased after her. She twisted her skirts into knots and untwisted them again, then played with her fingers, pretending they were much more interesting than they were.

  Something glimmered in the corner of her eye.

  The girl turned to the glimmer with all the eager interest of a magpie, desperate for anything to ease her boredom. Not many paces from where she sat, just where the trees began to grow more thickly and cast long green shadows, the shining something lay close to the ground. It was not a something for which the girl had a name, and curiosity overwhelmed her so completely in that instant, she didn’t pause to question her next actions.

  She jumped up from her stone and hastened down to the trees, her short legs carrying her swiftly. Was it a flower? If so, it was the most shimmering, shining flower she had ever imagined! Bigger than the starflowers which bloomed white at night on their vines. Bigger than any flower she had ever before seen, a frilly explosion of many petals, all luminous and faintly pulsing with an aura of pure beauty.

  The girl hastened toward it. Her old dad was a gardener by trade, employed at the great people’s fine house lower down the mountain, so she knew better than to pluck a blossom for fear of killing it. But she wanted to look. And she wanted gently—oh, so very gently!—to stroke those petals.

  When she drew near, however, the flower faded away like mist and vanished. The girl stood in the place where she knew it had been, frowning hard. When she frowned, her whole body frowned with her, from the slump of her shoulders to the sag in her knees to the clenching of her small fists.

  Another shimmer. She looked up, the frown instantly vanishing. Was that her flower?
It must be! And not many paces away, just a little deeper in the shadows . . .

  Some small plucking of conscience whispered that she should return to her stone and sit. She should wait for her old dad, just as he’d asked her.

  But the flower seemed suddenly to flare with extra brilliance. A magical beauty, irresistible and so very near!

  The girl took off after it, plunging into the forest.

  THE LADY KNIGHT

  THE TALL TREES OF THE Wood Between whispered together in gentle, murmuring chorus of rumor and intrigue. Their branches interlaced so thickly that no light could possibly pass through, and yet the Wood was not dark down by its roots where brave souls walked. Instead, a light as golden as sunlight seemed to glow from the ground itself. All was lush and green and growing, and yet solemn and, always, dangerous. Deadly, even.

  The lady knight walked in the Wood, striding with confidence along her path. She knew how deadly a place this could be. She had many times come close to losing her life here and did not doubt she would narrowly escape death many times more while on her patrol. Such was the life of a Knight of Farthestshore.

  But she did not fear death. So she strode her path swiftly, her sword strapped to her back, and her eyes bright and keen as she sought any sign of something amiss. Her task—that of all the knights of her order—was to watch the gates: gates into the realm of mortals, through which Faeries liked to creep when given half the chance, there to prey upon the weaker beings of the Near World.

  Many gates could be found in the Wood Between, which separated the Near World of mortals from the Far World of Faeries. They were most of them, however, unrecognizable save to the quickest, cleverest eyes. Mortals could not see them at all, and this was just as well. Faeries rarely saw them, but if they did, they would try anything to force them open and gain a chance to sneak into that forbidden realm.

  And what did these gates look like? Like anything . . . and nothing at all. An arch of sapling branches . . . a certain bed of ferns . . . a tunnel through enormous tree roots . . . even an empty shimmering in the air over a stream. Any of these, and many more, could prove an opening from the Between.

  The lady knight had long since learned how to recognize them. She quickly marched this stretch of the Wood Between, solitary and comfortable in her solitude, checking every lock on each gate as she passed it. For the most part she managed well enough on her own. Sometimes, when she discovered a lock that had been tampered with, she must turn hunter and find the Faerie which had tried to pass through. Not once had a Faerie managed to break into the Near World on her march. She was good at her job.

  She paused now to check a certain gate—an unobtrusive pile of stones which, at first glance, might seem to have fallen at random from a cliff high above. Second glance, however, would show that they were carefully arranged by clever hands so that the energies of each stone might work off the others, weakening the barriers that separated worlds. A slight shift of one stone might easily open the gate.

  The lady knight kicked one of the stones out of alignment, securing the lock. No one would get through this way now. Satisfied, she turned to follow her path . . . then stopped suddenly mid-stride.

  “Something is wrong,” she whispered.

  Around her the tall forest loomed, heavy shadows of green laced with dots of golden light from an unseen source. No one could be said to truly know this Wood. It was much too old, much too dangerous, much too fully and deeply alive to be known. But the lady knight liked to think she knew this small corner that made up her patrol quite well after so many centuries.

  Thus when her senses told her something was wrong . . . some faint whiff in the air tasted strange and unwholesome . . . she knew better than to doubt herself.

  She held perfectly still, inhaling deep breaths and expelling them slowly. One by one she quieted her outermost senses, all those mortal senses with which she’d been born and which ever since leaving her mortality behind she had sought to suppress at least in part. Out here in the Wood, mortal senses—sight and sound, taste and touch, even smell—were much too easily distracted or swayed. Better to trust to those immortal senses for which there are no words in any mortal tongue.

  So the lady knight closed her eyes, closed her ears. She simply stood, a tall, slim figure among tall, slim trees. Anyone either mortal or immortal who might happen to pass by would struggle to see her. Even some of the near-invisible fey eyes that watched her warily from high boughs of the trees above blinked in surprise as she suddenly seemed to vanish.

  The lady knight reached out with her immortal senses—senses she’d not been born with but which she had sought long and hard to hone ever since entering this Wood and commencing her ageless service. As mortals count time, it was five hundred years since she’d become a knight . . . but she tried not to think about this. The crush of those years piling one on top of another could too easily break her spirit. Break her heart.

  Something whispered to her across enormous distances. Distances of spirit not measured by leagues or miles. Something whispered without words . . . perhaps more like a scent on the wind, an aroma calling to life dozens of mostly forgotten memories. Something for which she could not quite remember the name. Could it be . . .

  “Roses?” she whispered.

  Her eyes flew open, and all of her mortal senses rushed back upon her at once in a crashing wave. In that moment she was no longer a lady knight, ageless, her veins flowing with immortality, her heart driven by the single purpose of service. Instead, she was a young woman again—younger even than she looked (and she looked quite young still, for the centuries had not aged her by even a day, save in the depths of her eyes). Her heart beat not with courage but with fear . . . the potent, almost insurmountable fear that stems from love.

  The fear of losing that love.

  The fear of sundering and separation.

  She stood there in the ageless Wood and felt the crushing weight of Time upon her. Years upon years, decades upon decades, centuries upon centuries that had seen her separated from . . . from . . .

  From him.

  And now she smelled roses.

  Could it be that the end of her wait was at hand? Could it be that this painful separation would not last another endless stretch of forever?

  Did the scent of roses indicate that the Lost Demesne was near? Ready to be found at last?

  Though reason sprang up viciously inside her mind, warning her toward caution, advising her to keep her steps slow and deliberate, to not rush in like a fool . . . the lady knight instead allowed her heart to drive her. She stepped from the narrow path she had been following and plunged into the deeper foliage of the Wood, pursuing that elusive aroma.

  The instant she did so, darkness fell upon the Wood.

  THE UNICORN

  DARKNESS CREPT THROUGH THE Wood Between the Worlds. Darkness contained in a form unlike anything seen there in countless ages paced on huge cloven feet slicing deep into the soil, and it left despair in its wake. Darkness the more profound in that once this form had shined with the very light of Heaven.

  So the unicorn walked in this Timeless place, far from its celestial home, far even from the hell to which it had long ago plunged. Summoned forth by desperate powers, enslaved and enslaving, it stalked the dire paths of the Between.

  Sometimes it stopped and opened its mouth. Its powerful throat constricted as though it would scream or sing, but no sound emerged. Instead, something else spilled forth from the very center of its being. Something like song, something like sorrow. Something mortals can neither fully sense nor comprehend.

  Something . . . that resolved itself into the shimmering shape of ghostly roses.

  The Wood slowly filled with perfume.

  And the unicorn walked on, its savage horn low, its flaming eyes keen for the hunt.

  AN UNFAMILIAR PATH

  TRACE OF THE DARKNESS swept down over the lady knight, freezing her in her tracks. She was not afraid. She didn’t yet know enough about what
was happening to be afraid. Maybe when she’d had time to think about it, time to investigate the situation, she would allow herself a dash of fear—which, after all, isn’t an entirely useless emotion but can be made quite effective given the right circumstances.

  For the moment she was simply . . . still.

  And she smelled the roses.

  All right, she reasoned with herself, perhaps it wasn’t the smartest idea to step off your path just then. But that doesn’t necessarily make it the wrong decision either.

  The darkness was dense but not impassible. By taking care, she could probably find a safe way through it.

  Though the perfume of roses urged her to drive forward at once, to boldly forge her way through, she forced herself to remain calm and sensible. To search with her highly tuned immortal senses for a safe way, a way that would allow her to continue searching for the source of that scent.

  The young woman inside her brimmed with impatience. Hurry, hurry! her passion urged. Hurry before you lose the scent! Hurry before you lose your chance!

  The first chance offered her in half a millennium. The first hope she’d felt that maybe, maybe . . .

  . . . Arpiar might yet be found.

  She couldn’t let herself think this way. The only path she would find with such thoughts coursing through her brain was the path to disappointment and ultimate ruin. So she suppressed her younger self, suppressed that passion, and called into play all the calculating composure she’d honed over the centuries of her service to Farthestshore. As this calmness regained control, she breathed in the scent again, studying it with care.

  Behind the scent of roses she smelled something else, something for which she had no name. Sulfur, perhaps, but combined with a scent of . . . How could she describe it? Hugeness? Blackness?