Staerstone, page 1
Praise for Staerstone
“Goodness I love ‘Staerstone’. I’m a huge fan of worldbuilding and Helen has created this world with expert skill. She’s nailed all three ‘vitals’ of a story—plot, setting, character—and I can see why Gerry [IFWG] was eager to publish this. Even though I’m not a fan of YA … I found myself deeply inside Zericha’s head and fully understanding how she was so driven. The magical element is seamlessly and beautifully woven into the story and the whole thing is just perfect. Reading this gave me a deeper understanding of my son’s complete obsession with climbing.”
– Kylie Chan
“Patricia McKillip meets Cliffhanger. A fabulous and unique world, an epic adventure, and characters that will make your heart soar even as they hold on for dear life. Helen Stubbs brings something fresh and vital to the world of Fantasy. I promise you’ll never look at a mountain the same way again.”
– Trent Jamieson
Staerstone
The climb will take everything you have
by
H.K. Stubbs
This is a work of fiction. The events and characters portrayed herein are imaginary and are not intended to refer to specific places, events or living persons. The opinions expressed in this manuscript are solely the opinions of the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions of the publisher.
Staerstone
All Rights Reserved
ISBN-13: 978-1-923382-34-3
Copyright ©2026 H.K. Stubbs
This book may not be reproduced, transmitted, or stored in whole or in paert by any means, including graphic, electronic, or mechanical without the express written consent of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
IFWG Publishing International
Gold Coast
www.ifwgpublishing.com
To Brian,
For letting me be the wild one and always
being here when I come home.
Disclaimer
Climbing and hiking are rewarding but dangerous activities. This is a work of fiction. If you wish to hike or climb, educate yourself about the risks and seek instruction from qualified professionals, at your own risk.
Notes on Pronunciation
and Places
Readers can make their own interpretation of pronunciation, but in the author’s mind some of them sound as follows:
Andalu: And-ah-loo
Arkine: Ar-keen
Catiallé: Cat-ee-ah-lee
Cerderus: Sir-der-us
Denesis: Den-ee-sis
Forêt: Foray
Joärdie: Jo-ar-dee
Staercrags: Starcrags (meteorite/heaven)
Staerstone: Starstone (mountain)
Stellaeth: Stelleth (country and world)
Truachine: Troo-uh-sheen
Zericha: Zericka
Glossary of Terms in Staerstone
Anchor: An attachment point to the cliff, built with bolts or trad gear. Carabiners are attached for the rope to run through and for climbers to attach their harnesses to.
Arête: A corner or vertical ridge of cliff.
Belay: To counterbalance a leader by holding and controlling their rope, usually through a belay device.
Beta: The plan, knowledge or way to climb through a technical section of cliff.
Bomber: Strong. Derived from bombproof. Often applied to strong trad gear placements which should hold well if the climber falls and relies on the rope to catch them.
Carabiner: Pronounced ka-ra-been-er. An oval or D-shaped metal device with a spring-hinged gate used to connect to bolts, ropes or other items.
Choss: Loose or weak rock. A chossy route has a lot of loose or weak rock.
Clean: As in to clean a route: when the second climber collects the gear placed on the route by the lead climber.
Crimp: A small edge of rock approximately thinner than an inch.
Crush it: To climb a climb and conquer the challenge, or the act of climbing well.
Deck: As in to deck: a ground fall, possibly resulting in injury or death.
Flash it: To send a route the first time you climb it.
Heel hook: To hook your heel around a feature of rock and use it to hold on to the cliff.
Hex: A type of trad gear placement.
Jug: A part of the rock which is easy to hold, due to its size and shape.
Knee-bar: A formation of rock which allows a climber to rest their arms by placing their toe and knee into a large pocket of rock (or similar), which creates a bar with their lower leg. This move is called placing a knee-bar. A double knee-bar uses both legs.
Mantle: Moving your body high over a ledge and pushing up onto a straight arm or arms, then bringing a leg up.
Pidey: A spider.
Pitch: A segment of a multi-pitch climb, between anchors or belay stations.
Pocket: A pocket-like hole or cavity in the rock (often good for jamming fingers or the toe of your shoe into).
Quickdraw: Two carabiners connected by strong fabric (called a dog-bone) for fast placement in sport climbing. One carabiner attaches to a bolt. The rope is inserted into the other carabiner.
Run-out: A long section between gear placements, which can lead to big, dangerous falls.
Send it: To climb a route cleanly.
Slab: A cliff with a slight positive angle, not vertical or overhung.
Sloper: A rounded or sloping rock which is hard to hold due to its curve.
Snather: A snake. Some are furry.
Stoke: The drive to participate in, and the high or rush from, adrenaline sports.
Toe hook: To use the toe of your shoe as a hook on a nub of rock or arête.
Trad gear: Traditional gear like metal nuts and hexes which are inserted into cracks in the cliff as anchor points for the rope.
To Staercrags,
Every day
On cliffs of shade,
Looking out to sunshine.
Climbing hard,
On routes ever achievable.
—Arkine
The Klimbers’ Wish, within the
Staerstone Sagas
Part I
Chaos
Zericha
Come to me.
Staerstone Mountain called to her.
Uneasiness squirmed in Zericha’s chest. Wait. Breathe. Be calm.
“May the best klimber claim the prize!” shouted the overseer in his long ivory robe, raising knobbly-knuckled fingers upwards. The crowd of Wyldren watched silently, waiting.
Dawn’s first rays refracted through the peak, a prism of diamond forty thousand feet above. The tip of Staerstone Mountain glowed, casting rainbows across the continent of Stellaeth, bathing westward clouds and the Truachine Desert’s white sands in a spectrum of hues.
“Climb!” the overseer cried, and the crowd roared the word after him.
A few dozen people, the best of the Wyldren’s klimbers, took hold of the cliff in eager, over-gripping hands. They began to climb. But not Zericha. She swallowed and met the eyes of her parents, Val and Valis Vardrenne, in their long red robes and gem-laden gold crowns. Mother nodded her approval, her clever eyes too close together. Approval for Zericha attending in her royal scarlet robe, as commanded, and not vying for the prize through climbing, which they’d forbidden, though her heart hungered for it.
The past week, Father had taken the unusual approach of acknowledging her existence. He’d said she must not set hand nor foot upon Trechaur Cliff in this challenge.
Zericha forced herself to nod back but couldn’t go as far as a smile. Mother and Father led from the comfort of the throne room in the dimarcheio, not from the cliffs. Zericha’s birth mother, Marris, had disappeared on Staerstone Mountain. After that, climbing on the higher cliffs was forbidden for all except the klimb guard. But it was not right! Anyone who could climb should be allowed.
Zericha saluted the belayers, who now stood along the foot of the cliff, eyes attentively focused upwards, hands managing their ropes. A latecomer shoved past her, hissing nasty words in her ear. His hot breath sent an unpleasant shiver down her spine, while his body odor assaulted her nose. She’d recognize that voice, that stink, anywhere. Zericha spun around and found herself too close to Yornan’s sneering, unshaven face. She pulled away. How dare he bring up—
“Sorry, Princesses,” he said, winking at Catiallé, who blushed red as he snatched her hand, pried open her fingers and pressed an open-mouthed kiss onto her palm. She gasped, wide eyes stealing a glance towards Mother.
Zericha’s cheeks burned too, but with fury. Yornan, captain of the klimb guard, was the best—and worst—of the climbers. Nothing he did should surprise her.
He released Catiallé’s hand, leapt up onto the rock, and began climbing free solo, with no belayer. He was fast! The crowd chanted his name. Yornan! Yornan! It made her sick. She glanced away and into Trechaur Gutter, lined with small rocks; at the bottom lay a broken farmer’s cart, wasting in the dry riverbed.
If she hadn’t already decided…well, that sealed it.
Her nightmares had warned of chaos, of change coming. It was all interwoven, entangled, with Staerstone at the core. And the peak seemed to call.
Come. To. Me.
Everyone was watching the klimbers. Yornan was nearing the lead already. Was it inevitable? Destiny?
“No.” Breathing fast, Zericha grabbed Catiallé’s hand and met her eye. Catiallé’s eyebrows rose. Time to act. Together they jumped down into the deep ditch of Trechaur Gutter.
“We’re really doing this,” Catiallé said, lower lip protruding as she blew a stray hair from her forehead. Zericha had stashed their gear under the rotting floor of the cart. This dry drain was the official border between the Plains and the cliffs which led up to their home, the Forêt Wyld.
Zericha hitched up her harness, under her robe, and fastened it. She glanced up at the rainbow of light illuminating the clouds high above. It kindled her hope. If she could reach so high and strain those streams of light through her fingertips, then yes; she’d find answers, untangle her nightmares and her dreams.
For a chance of making the peak, things had to change. If it didn’t start here and now, it never would. She had to prove herself in this challenge, claim the mystery prize. The race began at the Plains, went up the cliffs and across the forêt, then up another steep cliff to victory. This ritual was different. Important. But why? She couldn’t say.
She unfastened the clasp of her velvet robe. It fell, revealing a small crop top and tight shorts. Catiallé threw off her robe, too, and flicked away the cylindrical ceremonial hat she’d worn to appease her parents. Her long hair had been braided and spiraled around her head several times, close and tight, so it wouldn’t catch on anything. It was a climber’s style and, typical of Wyldren hair, it grew in two colors, though the contrast was more striking than those of other women, in rich scarlet and straw blonde.
Zericha also wore her hair in a spiral braid, but it was plainer: two shades of brown, dark at the top, light underneath. She tightened the straps of her harness. Their lives depended on good gear used well. She tied the rope through the loops on the front, in a perfect figure-eight knot.
“Are you sure about this?” Catiallé’s emerald eyes were wide as she crouched, setting up her belay device on the rope. She coughed and wiped her mouth on the back of her wrist. “The val and valis forbade it. You’re not yet eighteen suns…”
“Sure?” Zericha whispered, adding the last hexes and nuts—trad gear—to her harness. Was she sure she could make it? Sure they had any right to be in this race—or any chance of winning? She’d avoided thinking about it, but replied, honestly, “No, I’m not.”
She squinted up at the challenge above, the lowest cliffs of Staerstone. One thousand feet to the forêt, and then across its wooded acres to the final pitch, another very difficult fifty-foot climb to their goal. Far below the peak, but long, grueling and dangerous. “But I must try. Are you definitely well enough to second?”
Catiallé closed her eyes and cleared her throat. “I’d better be.”
Zericha squeezed her sister’s shoulder through her hand-sewn leather jacket. Catiallé was the only one who’d climb with her. If Catiallé didn’t belay her, no one would.
The other competitors had begun when first light struck the peak. Now the sunshine was halfway down the highest cliffs. The crowd—all Wyldren, her people, from the forêt above—watched them closely. They’d descended by the winding track yesterday and camped out overnight.
The Denizens, farmers who worked the plains behind her, showed no interest in this ritual. They despised climbing. Soon, they’d be out working in the fields.
The first leaders, centuries before, had led the Wyldren here, up now-submerged cliffs. They’d saved their people’s lives when the waters rose. They were the legendary klimbers Arkine and Denesis. They’d gone all the way to the Sacred Cave at the peak to forge an agreement with Staerstone Mountain: that they would inhabit the lands. The history of connection to the mountain—their legacy—was ignored at peril.
Zericha glanced at Catiallé. They cross-checked their setup.
“Are you ready?” Zericha asked.
Catiallé tilted her head. “Ready for all hell to break loose.”
“Then let’s go—now!” Zericha pulled herself up out of the ditch and offered Catiallé her hand. She sprang to standing and ran, Catiallé close behind, small pack on her back, rope over her shoulders. Zericha raced across the grass. It was wet and slippery, but their balance was good, their footwork honed from climbing’s requisite acrobatics. Speed and agility mattered now more than ever. Their leather-and-rubber shoes gripped well.
Zericha chose a gap between belayers and aimed for it.
“Who’s that?” Excitement rumbled through the crowd.
“A latecomer.”
“Very late. Not klimb guard…”
Ignoring the wave of gossip, Zericha leapt up onto a tall rock and seized a jutting edge, well away from the route Yornan had taken. Freezing rock, damp with morning dew. Reaching high with her right foot, she placed a heel hook and levered herself up. Don’t slip now.
She reached up with her left hand, fingers splayed, and hauled herself higher, locking it off, pulling up to a mantle, and reaching to a side-pull and then a pinch.
“I’m climbing!” she called.
“Spotting you,” Catiallé replied.
“Zericha!” cried the overseer, recognizing her voice. “Zericha has now joined the challenge.” There was respect, admiration, in his announcement, entirely new to her. He raised an arm to point to her, the long sleeve of his ivory robe hanging low.
She’d begun! That was a small victory.
“No, she has not joined the challenge,” Val Vardrenne, her father, shouted, panting from his hurried return from further out. “She’s not ranked! She can’t climb today.”
“What in the Sodden’s fetid cavern do you think you’re doing?” shrieked Valis Vardrenne, her stepmother, Catiallé’s birthmother. “Get down!”
“Get her down!” Val Vardrenne cried.
Zericha climbed higher, found a comfortable, outward-facing position in a three-sided chimney. She looked out. Her heart beat hard in her chest. She was—what?—ten feet up. Her arms felt good. Dry fields extended far to the horizon. Sunlight reflected off the Tarsalbroek Sea like a path of gold. Beautiful. She belonged here today.
Father was smaller already, below her. She turned back to examine the cliff and found a good crack. She slotted in an alloy hex, attached a quickdraw and clipped in her rope.
“On belay,” Catiallé said, inhaling deeply.
“You conspired in this?” Valis Vardrenne challenged. “We forbade it. How could you?”
“Look at my climber. I need to concentrate,” Catiallé said.
So do I. Zericha studied the rock. She must figure out this section, plan her ascent. Another climber had placed gear above, her rope still running through, down to her belayer. Few rules constrained the climbers in this ritual, so Zericha could use or take any gear she came across, but keeping peace would be safer than starting fights. She wanted to find a good placement for her own nut. She didn’t want Catiallé to fight over gear, either.
“Bring her down!” Val Vardrenne ordered.
“I’m afraid that’s not possible, Val,” said the overseer. “Once a climber has a foot on the cliff in Staerstone’s annual ritual, they climb until they win, abandon the quest, or die.”
Die.
“Let’s hope it’s not the third one,” Zericha said. She would not abandon the quest until she’d given it everything she had.
Andalu
The crowd cried out in anger, an uproar. What could they be riled about? Andalu, lying on a tall boulder, using his swag as a backrest, could hear them fighting from this distance… And he had kept a fair distance, because he shouldn’t be here.
He sat up.
They were very upset. Some commotion at the start. Odd, as the klimbers had started a while ago. None of them had fallen…yet.
Ah—it was her!
He stood up for a better view. He’d hoped she’d be in it, but she hadn’t started with them. She was different to the other klimbers. She never climbed with their klimb guard. She was late, but she looked comfortable on the cliff.
