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  Koren pointed at herself. “What would happen to you if I were to resurrect Exodus?”

  Brinella’s eyes seemed to brighten. “I dared not mention that option. It would be selfish of me to suggest it.” “Go on. I’m listening.”

  “If another Starlighter were to take my place, I would no longer be bound to Exodus. I could go to my Lord without the star’s destruction.” Brinella shook her head sadly. “But I could never ask you to do that. The world would lash out against you as it did me, and you could easily face the same fate, either centuries trapped beneath a ceiling of rock or, should you escape the star’s embrace, an eternity of lonely wandering.”

  Koren gazed into Brinella’s weary eyes. The poor girl was so sad, so tired. She just wanted to go home to her Creator. She knew nothing about Taushin’s alternative idea, to temporarily resurrect Exodus without sealing the hole. What would happen to Brinella then?

  Reaching out, Koren took Brinella’s hand. A buzz ran up Koren’s arm, warming her skin. “Are you sure there aren’t any other possibilities? Could you sit against the hole and block it with your body?”

  “I have tried, but Starlight’s tales don’t come to me unless I am at the center.”

  Koren tapped her chin. “Then maybe I could block it while you tell tales from the center. Then it would rise, wouldn’t it?”

  “With both of us weighing it down?” Brinella shook her head. “I doubt it.”

  “Maybe I can find the king of the Northlands. He can tell us if Exodus can carry that much weight.”

  “Find him?” Brinella asked. “You said the king of the dragons told you to inflate Exodus and make it rise.”

  “Yes. That was Taushin, king of the dragons in the south.”

  Brinella’s tone sharpened. “There is only one king of the dragons, and his name is Alaph, the lord of this castle.”

  “Alaph?” Koren repeated. “I don’t know that name.”

  “How is it that a Starlighter does not know the white dragon’s name?” Brinella squinted. “Are you sure you are a Starlighter?”

  Koren withdrew her hand. “I … I’m pretty sure. When I tell stories, they come to life around me. Everyone can see them.”

  “Do your listeners lose their focus on the world?”

  Koren nodded. “It’s like they’re hypnotized. I have used their loss of senses to escape from danger more than once.”

  “You left them in that state?” Brinella backed away a step, new color filling her cheeks. “I think I am beginning to understand.”

  Koren tried to close the gap with a step of her own, but Brinella slid farther away. “What’s wrong?” Koren asked.

  “You wear the vestments of a sorceress. You do not know Alaph. When your listeners are prepared to hear your teaching, you leave without filling their minds with wisdom. Under your influence, they are open, vulnerable, easily enslaved. A Starlighter must never leave her listeners in that state. If they come out of a trance on their own, they are susceptible to any influence that enters their minds. The Starlighter must command her visions to flee so her hearers can return to normal and decide whether or not to accept the wisdom she has provided. Otherwise, they are nothing more than—” Spasms rocked Brinella’s body. As before, a barrage of words surged from her mouth in a series of altered voices.

  “You cannot understand her words, because you are dull of hearing.”

  “What a fool you are! There are no sounds. It is merely a star.”

  “She provides wisdom. She warns of disaster. The star is a gift from the Creator.”

  “The star is a curse. The sooner we are rid of it, the better.”

  The flood of words ceased. Panting, Brinella backed farther away, waving a hand as she spoke in halting gasps. “Leave me now … You cannot replace me … You have the power … the power of a Starlighter … but you lack the spirit or the wisdom of one.”

  Koren stepped closer again, displaying the stardrop in her palm. “Do you want this? You can seal the hole and —”

  “I want nothing from your hand!” Brinella thrust a finger toward the wound. “Leave me! It is better that I suffer alone than allow a pretender to take my place!”

  A wave of heat flashed across Koren’s skin, and tears welled in her eyes. Brinella’s pain-twisted expression tore a hole in her heart. As she slid her boots backwards, she closed her fingers around the stardrop. “I’ll find the white dragon and ask him what to do to get you out of here. I won’t forsake you.”

  “As you did not forsake those you hypnotized?” Brinella turned her back. “Speak to Alaph if you wish. If you search the castle, you might be able to find him. But leave my presence. I will not be deceived by a sorceress in a Starlighter’s body.”

  Brinella’s head sank into her torso, and her legs drew upward. Seconds later, only a floating ball remained, again covered with an array of images and again emitting streams of multicolored light.

  The streams zoomed toward Koren, pelting her body with their buzzing impulses, though they carried no momentum and left no mark. As if driven back, she turned toward the star’s wound and scaled the slick incline, her boots providing traction. After glancing at Brinella once more, she stretched the hole and slid through. A new cry of pain sounded from within, but it quickly silenced.

  Now on the outside, Koren clenched her fists. Her ears flamed. A pretender? A sorceress? How could Brinella say such things?

  Glaring at her clothes, Koren pinched a sleeve. This black dress wasn’t really hers. Zena forced her to wear it. It wasn’t fair to be judged based on what she did under compulsion. And how could she have learned the white dragon’s name? How could she have known she shouldn’t leave people hypnotized? There was nothing in the Code about how to be a Starlighter.

  She turned toward the tunnel leading to the long stairway. The answers to her questions lay elsewhere. Taushin waited outside the castle, and the white dragon abided somewhere within. Since Taushin was able to see through her eyes due to the connection he’d forged with her, he had likely watched everything that happened within the star, but without the transmission of sound, he couldn’t know what Brinella had said. Still, he probably had read the girl’s facial expressions and figured out that something went wrong. Yet, no matter what Taushin thought about Koren’s actions, he couldn’t do anything to stop her, at least not right now.

  Koren turned back to the sphere and, keeping the stardrop in her grip, pulled the sides of the wound together. Brinella moaned. Koren flinched. This would be like performing surgery without anesthesia. She squeezed the stardrop, then opened her hand. The once spherical shape had flattened and spread out. Pinching the gap closed with one hand, she pressed the stardrop against the wound with the other and rubbed it across the narrow opening as if applying a salve.

  While Brinella continued whimpering softly, the glowing material drizzled over the gap but dripped to the floor. It didn’t appear to be sticking at all. Even as she rubbed, fresh material from the star’s membrane gathered in her palm. Her hand acted like a scoop, digging out stardroplike radiance without leaving a divot in the surface.

  She spread out her fingers and looked at the handful of radiance. Taushin had said she could seal the wound from inside, so maybe she should give it a try. After releasing her pinching hold, she reached through the wound and applied her newly gathered salve on the inner wall. The top of the wound sealed instantly, but, of course, with her arm in the way, she couldn’t possibly seal the rest of it.

  She withdrew her arm and scooped out another handful. Then, after compressing it into a new stardrop, she pushed it through the hole and rolled it toward Brinella.

  “You can use this to seal the wound and rise again,” she called. “It’s up to you.”

  As the stardrop rolled toward the center of Exodus, two eyes appeared in Brinella’s floating ball, blinking. Her voice returned, weak and lamenting. “If you think Exodus’s rising is up to me, Koren, you have much to learn.”

  The stardrop rested near
Brinella’s hovering sphere, but she seemed to pay it no further mind. The eyes vanished, and the flashing images continued—more tales to be communicated, stories of Starlight emanating from the bosom of the planet for the sake of anyone who cared to listen.

  Heaving a sigh, Koren walked into the tunnel, her legs wobbly. The swimming lights streamed from behind, breezing by without pausing to deliver their whispered messages.

  Koren shuffled her feet. There was no need to hurry. The climb would take a long time anyway. When she reached the stairs, she looked beyond them and scanned the path leading in the opposite direction from the one that had taken her to Exodus. A glowing whisperer broke off from the stream and swam that way.

  After glancing at the stairs, Koren followed the floating voice. It swam slowly into a new tunnel, allowing her to catch up. Its glow illuminated the area, making a spherical halo large enough to envelop her body as she walked at its pace.

  Soon the tunnel opened into another chamber, and the glow, wiggling as it floated, continued. Koren stopped and slid her foot along the floor. It seemed solid. In fact, it felt smooth, more like marble than unfinished stone. A few objects lay scattered about, books and stacks of papers, but with the whisperer’s light farther away now, shadows kept their details hidden.

  At the far side of the chamber, maybe five steps away, the elongated orb stopped at a wall of rock. It turned to the left and inched along the barrier, as if searching for a hole that would let it escape.

  Glancing down at the floor to avoid stacks of books, Koren caught up with the whisperer and listened as its voice grew clear.

  “Store them, Arxad. The research and relics might be useful later.”

  Then, as the globule of light continued its slow, futile crawl, it repeated the sentence again and again.

  Koren picked up a hefty book and blew a coat of dust from the cover. In bold handwritten letters, the title read Disease Progression—Observation Book #3. She opened to the first page, but the small handwriting prevented her from reading anything beyond the title at the top. Day Seventeen—Account Recorded by Orson of Masters Lake University.

  “Orson,” Koren whispered. “How odd.” Her father was named Orson, but there wasn’t any place on Starlight called Masters Lake University. Yet Jason’s last name was Masters, so two familiar names in the same old book had to be more than mere coincidence.

  She laid the book on top of its stack. Since she couldn’t possibly haul one of these all the way up the stairs, the mystery would have to remain a mystery, at least for now.

  Koren shifted her attention back to the whisperer. It lit up the wall’s gray, stony surface all the way to the floor, where a wooden pole lay a few inches in front of her boots. She stooped and looked it over. About twice the width of a broom handle, it appeared to be as long as she was tall.

  She grasped it and slowly lifted. It was heavier than she expected, more so to one side than the other. She raised it closer to the floating spheroid and examined the heavier end. There the wood changed over to metal and widened to the barbed point of a spear, similar to the weapon the hunter dragons used at times. A leather band encircled the spear’s neck, securing a cylinder wrapped in paper. The cylinder appeared to be as big around as her forearm and about half as long.

  She squinted at a series of letters printed on the side—DANGER. EXPLOSIVE. Easing the spear away, she leaned it against the wall and studied it from two steps back. She set a hand on her hip and let explosive roll around in her thoughts. The miners had created explosive devices from effervescent minerals, allowing the gasses in a sealed compartment to build up until they exploded, but the force was great enough only to dislodge small, stubborn rocks they couldn’t reach with a hammer and chisel. Surely it couldn’t be considered dangerous or be used as an enhancement to a weapon. What could a small pop like that do to an enemy that the point of a spear couldn’t?

  Koren grasped the spear again and drew it close to her nose. The odor was unfamiliar, nothing like the minerals the miners used. It smelled like sulfur, charcoal, and … and something else.

  She touched the paper. It seemed fully intact. If this device was meant to explode, it obviously failed or perhaps was never used.

  After taking a step to the left to move back into the glow, she drew the spear close again and studied the words. The lettering was perfectly straight without a hint of change in width or darkness. Who could have written this message so flawlessly, and why? Someone stored it here for a reason—a relic that might be useful someday. But what was its purpose?

  Her thoughts snapped back to Exodus and its hole. This spear could have easily ripped a gash that size. But with an explosive attached, someone meant to do more damage than merely deflate the star. Whoever threw that spear meant to destroy Exodus and the guiding angel within.

  The whisperer passed by a wooden slat nailed into the rock. More slats ran up the wall until they disappeared in the darkness. Just like in the Exodus chamber, a tiny light shone far above, another opening to the outside, though this one seemed even farther away.

  Koren touched the closest slat. Together, these slats could act as a ladder, another way to leave the castle’s underground, but it would take hours to scale, and the danger would be even greater than climbing the staircase.

  She looked at the floor again. More oddities met her gaze, but—except for papers and books—nothing looked familiar. It would be fascinating to sit here and search through everything, deciphering what the objects might be.

  As her eyes followed the globule’s path, one item caught her attention, a black rectangular box no bigger than her hand. She picked it up and studied a series of white letters near the edge of one surface. Printed next to a raised circle, they spelled out an unfamiliar word — DETONATE.

  She formed the word silently with her mouth, then, shrugging, she laid the box back where she had found it. More mysteries. More unanswered questions.

  The whisperer finally reached the entry tunnel and, breaking away from the wall, headed back to the staircase, taking the halo of light with it. Koren let her shoulders sag. Learning about the other relics here would have to wait, but at least she could take the spear into brighter light and get a better look at it.

  After following the whisperer back to the stream, she stopped at the bottom of the stairs and studied the spear again. The off-white paper had charred edges, and a sooty smear underlined the word DANGER. Why would a spear have been exposed to fire and then only partially burned?

  Koren gazed up the stairs. Taking this to Taushin would be foolhardy. Though he had likely already seen it through her eyes, she couldn’t allow him to use it for evil purposes.

  With great care, she laid the spear on the floor near the base of the wall opposite the bottom step. Then she walked into the flow of whispering lights and began climbing the stairs, listening to the disjointed murmurings. It might take an hour to get to the top, but trying to piece together the jumbled sentences would keep her mind occupied.

  When she reached the top, she would find the white dragon, as she had promised Brinella she would. Taushin might protest in any number of ways, but she had to learn the truth, and if the white dragon could be found, she would find him.

  two

  Jason stood in the midst of the forest and listened to the eerie quiet. No birds flitted. The leaves gave no hint of a breeze. His father, Edison Masters, waited close behind, only a heartbeat away, breathing not a word.

  His sword drawn, Jason scanned the dark sky through an opening in the canopy. A moon peeked between cloud-banks: Pariah, the smallest of the trio that rose and set together. Until now, lack of light proved to be a benefit. After leaving the abandoned dragon village, he and his father had been able to cross miles of open land without detection, even though two dragons had flown overhead during the journey. Now deep in a thick forest, they had reached a concealed area, but it seemed that the real danger lurked here rather than out in the open.

  A breeze passed through the branches
and filtered down to their level. Jason took in the sensation, searching the wind for telltale odors and gaps that might indicate a close presence. About twenty paces to his left, something stood between two trees.

  Edison leaned close and whispered, “I smell a familiar odor, but I can’t place it.”

  Nodding, Jason pointed with his sword at the suspected hiding place. His father’s sense of smell was keen, and something familiar could mean good news. Recognizable odors would likely originate from Major Four, so the lurker might well be human, but whoever it was could be combative. Coming upon two strangers in a dark forest had to be a frightening experience, especially for a runaway slave.

  When Jason drew in a breath, hoping to call with a reassuring word, a sharp voice broke in.

  “It’s you!” The undergrowth rustled, and a human form burst into the open. As it closed in, Jason lifted his sword, but when the form took on a feminine shape, he lowered it again. She leaped, wrapping her arms around him. “Oh, Jason! You’re alive! Praise the Creator!”

  Jason pushed her back gently and sheathed his sword. “Elyssa?”

  Dim moonlight illuminated her smiling face. “Of course it’s me! Who else on this planet would hug you like that?”

  “Uh …” He glanced at her waist. A sword belt hung loosely at her hips, and the hilt protruded from a scabbard at her side. “You look … different.”

  She touched her sword. “You didn’t expect a girl to wander around here without a weapon, did you?” Reaching out, she lifted his necklace chain, pulling a pendant from under his shirt and letting it dangle from her fingers. “You found it!”

  “Yeah. It’s been a good reminder. That’s why I’m here, actually. I was searching for you.”