“And soon we travel to the Yuletide Meet!” Pease said, her dark brown eyes gleaming with excitement.
Azhure frowned. “The Yuletide Meet?”
GoldFeather joined them, sitting down by the fire beside Azhure. “Each year the Avar and the Icarii meet for two important festivals. Although the Avar are close to the earth and the Icarii closer to the heavens, they share the Yuletide and Beltide festivals in common, and each year meet in the groves of the northern Avarinheim where the forest meets the mountains in order to celebrate these festivals. Yuletide is the most important of the rites. It is held at the winter solstice, only a few weeks away now, and both Avar Banes and Icarii Enchanters are needed to ensure the sun rises from its death and is reborn. The Beltide festival is a more joyous affair, and is held in early spring to celebrate the reawakening of the earth after the death of winter.”
Pease’s grin widened. “Many marriages are contracted at Beltide, Azhure. It was then that I joined the GhostTree Clan as Grindle’s wife. Other unions and ambitions are consummated as well. Beltide is the one night of the year when Icarii and Avar indulge in temptations denied them the rest of the year. Beltide is a night when dreams and desires become reality. Tell me, Azhure, of what do you dream? Of whom do you dream?”
Azhure blushed and the other women laughed.
“Azhure will have no opportunity for Beltide excesses if she does not remain with us, Pease,” Barsarbe broke in suddenly, standing at the entrance to the tent and looking coolly at Azhure. The two Avar women stopped laughing and looked away from Azhure although GoldFeather smiled reassuringly at the young woman. Barsarbe turned her attention to Grindle’s senior wife. “Fleat, will you assist me? Raum refuses to lie abed any longer, and he insists on joining us for the evening meal. Well, I suppose it is time we heard what he has to say.”
The two women supported a still-ashen Raum out of the tent. His leg was tightly bound and splinted, and he found it awkward to swing as he hobbled to the fire. Raum sank gratefully down by the fire. Obviously still in some pain, he managed to smile at the women and children gathering in some excitement about him. Grindle himself stalked back into camp and peered anxiously at Raum.
“Brother, are you well?”
“Thanks to the skill of Barsarbe and the good care of Fleat and Pease, yes, I will be well, Grindle.” The deep lines around his mouth and the unnatural pallor of his skin partially belied his words, but the spark of life burned bright in his eyes, and his mouth retained a quirk of humour.
Grindle looked relieved and joined the others around the fire. “I would never have let an Axe-Wielder catch me, brother,” he said mildly.
“He stayed behind so that Shra and I could escape,” Azhure said, stung that Grindle should even jest about Raum’s inability to flee the BattleAxe.
Both Grindle and Barsarbe looked at her sharply, annoyed that she had spoken, and Azhure subsided, regretting her interruption. Even the three older children aped their father and stared at her with a total lack of tolerance. GoldFeather patted Azhure’s arm in sympathy; of all the others about this campfire, GoldFeather knew what it felt like to be an outsider among a people who had no understanding of the culture that had shaped her. GoldFeather had found her first years among the Icarii hard.
Fleat gave Raum a mug of the herbed tea the Avar brewed and drank at every opportunity, and the Bane drank it down gratefully. For a long moment he looked into the fire, then he sighed and spoke to the group.
“There is much I have to tell you,” he said, “and much of it is bad. What is not bad is, to say the least, puzzling.” He took Barsarbe’s hand as she sat beside him. “Barsarbe, it is as we feared. The Prophecy is awake and walking. Gorgrael has indeed been born, and is even now preparing to push his forces south and destroy all before him.”
Everyone about the fire gasped, save Azhure, who looked mystified. All the Avar knew of the Prophecy of the Destroyer, and the talk at the last Beltide Meet had been primarily concerned with the fear that the time of the Prophecy of the Destroyer was finally upon them.
“How can you be sure?” Barsarbe asked, after a worried glance at Grindle.
Raum took a deep breath. “The Sentinels walk abroad. Shra and I met two of them at the Mother.” If Raum’s previous statement had stunned the group, now they were wide-eyed with shock. Raum described his meeting with Jack and Yr at Fernbrake Lake and explained how they had told him that the Prophecy was awakened, and that the StarMan was even now beginning to stir to meet Gorgrael.
“Where is he?” Barsarbe asked urgently.
Raum shrugged. “I do not know. The Sentinels were reticent when it came to the actual identity of the StarMan. He walks, as does Gorgrael, but I had the sense from them that the time is not yet arrived that he can meet Gorgrael. Perhaps he has still to break through the walls that the lies have built about him.”
“And what else did the Sentinels have to say, brother?”
Raum thought for a moment. “They talked of their two companions left travelling with the BattleAxe of the Axe-Wielders and of many other things, Grindle. But it is not so much what they had to say, Grindle, but who they had with them.” He paused and looked at the ring of faces staring at him. “They were at the Mother for a specific purpose. They had brought with them a young Plains Dweller, a woman called Faraday, to present to the Mother.”
“Sacrilege!” hissed Barsarbe.
Raum put his hand up. “That was how I reacted, Barsarbe. But the Sentinels invited me to test her and I did.”
“You put her to the test?” Pease gasped.
Raum nodded. “She was exceptionally strong. My friends, the Sentinels believe, as I do now, that she is Tree Friend. The forest sang for her. That has never happened before.”
For a while there was total silence as the other Avar digested this piece of news. Ever since the Wars of the Axe, when the Avar were pushed behind the Fortress Ranges and the southern Avarinheim slaughtered before the axe, it had been legend among the Avar that one day Tree Friend would appear; a man or woman who would lead them back across the Fortress Ranges and enable them to re-establish themselves and the Avarinheim on the barren plains that ran down to Widewall Bay. But that Tree Friend should be a Plains Dweller, of the race that had slaughtered both the Avar and the Avarinheim, was unthinkable!
Raum could see the thoughts and emotions running across the faces of his fellow Avar about the fire.
“After the test,” he continued softly, knowing as he spoke that his companions did not really want to hear the words, “I bonded and presented her to the Mother as I did Shra. We walked the pathways to the Sacred Grove, and the Horned Ones were there and greeted her and called her Tree Friend.”
He stopped and let them absorb the news. GoldFeather found the news easier to accept than they did. She knew the Avar placed all the hopes of their race in the long-hoped-for Tree Friend. To find that Tree Friend was of the hated Plains Dwellers was a hard blow for them to absorb. GoldFeather frowned a little as she remembered the name, Faraday—what was it that Raum had said to the BattleAxe about Faraday? Azhure still looked totally mystified, and GoldFeather looked at her and indicated that she would explain later. She looked back to Raum. Strange days were upon them.
“Where is Tree Friend now?” Barsarbe finally, reluctantly, asked.
“She is travelling north to Gorkenfort.”
GoldFeather’s head rose sharply and she stared at Raum, her eyes hard, “where she is to marry her betrothed, Duke Borneheld of Ichtar.”
GoldFeather gave a strangled moan, her hands flying to her mouth, her eyes distressed, and everyone looked at her, startled. “What is it, GoldFeather?” Azhure asked, concerned. She had never seen GoldFeather anything less than totally composed.
GoldFeather took Azhure’s hand and grasped it so strongly that she crunched the bones of Azhure’s fingers. Azhure’s mouth tightened a little with the pressure, but she said nothing.
Grindle leaned forward. “GoldFeather? What is
it?”
GoldFeather fought to compose herself. While some of the Avar, mostly Banes, knew that she had come of a high-born Acharite family, none knew her true origins or name. GoldFeather had buried her past completely behind her when she’d gone to live with the Icarii. But now Borneheld…Borneheld. Before this morning she had hardly thought of him in almost thirty years, then first she had feared Borneheld was the BattleAxe, and now Raum mentioned his name again. Hardly coincidence. Was the Prophecy going to pull her into its frightening entanglements as well?
“I knew his father once,” GoldFeather finally managed to say, trying to reassure the group with a small but unsuccessful smile. “He was a hard and humourless man, more comfortable in his armour with his enemy at the point of his sword than wasting time in needless pleasantries. I cannot imagine that Borneheld will be anything less than his father. The Prophecy moves in mysterious ways.” Again the Duchess of Ichtar will become friend to the Forbidden, she thought to herself.
Raum looked at GoldFeather, concerned by her sudden pallor, yet knowing that there was still more he had to tell the group. News that would confuse, perhaps frighten them, even more.
“My friends, Tree Friend is not the strangest news I have to tell you. You know that Shra and I were captured by the villagers of Smyrton. They imprisoned us for four days in foul conditions. Shra was near death.” Pease looked stunned, and her arms tightened about the little girl, who was now awake and listening to Raum avidly. “On the afternoon of the fourth day the villagers brought the Seneschal’s BattleAxe to see us. Shra was no more than an hour from death.”
Barsarbe looked as if she wanted to say something, ask Raum some questions, but he stalled her with a raised hand. “No, Barsarbe, let me finish what I have to say to you. I held her in my arms and watched the BattleAxe walk across the cell towards us, and I thought we were dead. But then…but then he asked to hold Shra.”
“And you let him?” Pease asked, her voice angry and hostile.
“Pease, you were not there. What I saw in the man’s eyes was compassion, not hatred. I gave her to him. He held her for a moment, and then…then the BattleAxe of the Seneschal, the one man we have all been taught to hate and fear without thinking, sang for her the Song of Recreation. He recreated Shra before my eyes.”
The Avar group were stunned into total silence now. Eyes drifted to Shra, then back to Raum.
“My friends, I have never heard such power from an Icarii Enchanter previously. Not even from the most powerful alive today—StarDrifter. Within the body of the BattleAxe of the Seneschal, an Axe-Wielder, lies the soul of an Icarii Enchanter.”
Her eyes wide and alarmed, GoldFeather battled to control the emotions within her. She realised why it had not just been the BattleAxe’s resemblance to Priam that had made him so familiar. He had the facial bone structure and the eyes of an Icarii, and what GoldFeather had first thought was the arrogance born of ignorance which festered within the Seneschal she now recognised as the natural demeanour of an Icarii Enchanter. A crazy thought, so crazy, so disturbing that it threatened to drive her over the edge of sanity, started to drift out of her subconscious, but GoldFeather thrust it back into the darkness where it belonged. No! she thought. No! I will not consider it! He died…died!
“What does this mean?” Barsarbe said, her small hands twisting in her lap, her eyes distressed. “How could this be?”
Raum folded her hands in his own. “This must be presented to the Yuletide Meet, Barsarbe. The sooner both Avar and Icarii can discuss it the better.”
Grindle nodded, but looked concerned. “Raum, we will have to start moving for the northern Avarinheim within a few days at the latest. Will you be able to travel?”
Raum’s face tightened in determination. “I will have to manage. If you can fashion me some crutches then I should be able to keep up with you.”
“We could make you a sled, Raum.” Helm, quiet until now, spoke up. “It would be no trouble to pull you. The paths are clear most of the way to the north.”
Grindle looked at his firstborn with affection and pride. “Well done, Helm. One day you will make a fine leader of the GhostTree Clan.”
The lad’s chest swelled with pride, and his sisters gazed at him admiringly. His mother nodded, clearly proud of her son.
“Um,” Azhure broke in, unwilling to speak but her uncertainty about her own situation driving her to it. “What about me? Can I travel with you? I cannot go back to Smyrton now.” Grindle had allowed Azhure to stay with his Clan until Raum told his story, but her place in the Avarinheim was still unresolved.
Barsarbe looked at her consideringly. “Perhaps it would be best if you tell us exactly why your villagers would not welcome you home, Azhure.”
Azhure licked her lips, worried that the group would not understand the circumstances surrounding her father’s death—Barsarbe had reacted badly before when GoldFeather had suggested that Azhure had committed violence to free Raum. Her eyes flickered about the group, feeling their eyes upon her, feeling very alone. She turned to GoldFeather, but the woman was so preoccupied that she offered her no comfort. “Well, I helped Raum and Shra escape. For that alone they would not welcome me. But,” Azhure looked down at her hands, unconsciously cleaning imaginary blood from beneath her fingernails, unable for the moment to meet anyone’s eyes. “But they would also not welcome me because during the escape I mistakenly caused the death of my father, Hagen, and knocked the Axe-Wielder who was guarding Raum unconscious.” Her eyes flew up again, hoping they would understand. “I was desperate to help Raum and Shra escape! Please, understand.”
But her own guilt about Hagen’s death and Belial’s injury shone from her face and hardened Barsarbe’s heart.
“Wanton violence always results in heartbreak, Azhure.” Barsarbe’s voice was cold. “Your actions caused his death. Even though the act was not premeditated, it is still murder.” The Avar, as wild as they were, abhorred physical violence, let alone murder; any brutal behaviour was extraordinarily rare among them.
Azhure hung her head, too ashamed to meet Barsarbe’s eyes. “Hagen was a violent man,” she tried to explain. “He abused and maltreated me from the time my mother ran away. I did not mean to kill him…but…I was afraid of what he would do to Shra. He…” She paused, unwilling to show these people what she had never shown or spoken of to anyone else, but Azhure was desperate to make them understand why she had taken the foolhardy actions she had. “Look.” If she had to, then she would. Her fingers started to fumble with the fastenings at the back of her dress, and GoldFeather roused enough to push Azhure’s fingers aside and unfasten the gown herself. She undid the dress to Azhure’s waist, startled at what she saw, then she folded the material over Azhure’s shoulders to expose her back.
“Look,” GoldFeather said, echoing Azhure, twisting the woman’s upper body around with her hands so that the others could see.
The Avar gasped in horror. Running down Azhure’s back were the raised and red scars that looked to be the result of years of repeated vicious beatings; running down either side of her spine their tracks ruined her pale skin. She was marked for life. Slowly GoldFeather slid the woollen material over Azhure’s back again and hugged the tense woman to her for a moment. In all the years she had known Azhure, she had never, never mentioned this to her. GoldFeather raised her eyes to Barsarbe challengingly. “Well?”
Barsarbe was shocked. As a healer she had never seen anything like this. Abuse of children was rated close to murder within Avar society, but did it justify murder?
Shra scrambled out of her mother’s lap and toddled across to Azhure. She touched the woman’s forehead and then glanced back to Raum. “Accepted,” she said, clearly.
Raum frowned. “Shra? What do you mean?”
“Accepted!” the child repeated, almost angrily now.
Azhure looked up, eyes still bright with the shame that the Avar had seen her back. “After Hagen…died…Shra did the strangest thing.”
“What?” Raum and Barsarbe both said together, leaning forward.
“She wiped her fingers in Hagen’s blood and then ran them down my forehead, and then she said, ‘Accepted’.”
GoldFeather looked at the two Banes. “What does that mean?”
“I’m not entirely sure,” Raum frowned, “but it perhaps indicates that she accepted Azhure’s father’s death as a sacrifice to the Mother. It is strange. I don’t know exactly what Shra meant.”
Shra walked over to stand by Azhure’s side, regarding the rest of the group with great dark eyes. Raum paused, and then continued. “I do know that if it wasn’t for Azhure then Shra and myself would not be here now. She showed great courage in first trying to make our imprisonment more comfortable, and then in freeing me from that hateful cell. I say, let her stay with us for the time. She cannot go back. If the Clan wishes it, then she will have to answer to the Yuletide Meet for the violence she has committed.”
Barsarbe took a deep breath, considering, then she abruptly nodded. “I will accept that Shra has apparently approved of Azhure’s actions, and I will accept that Azhure saved the life of Raum. I cannot easily accept the violence she has demonstrated, however. I will support what Raum says. Let Azhure stay with us, and she will answer to the Yuletide Meet for the death of her father and the assault on the Axe-Wielder.”
Grindle nodded as well. “I accept that. You may stay with us, Azhure. Be well and welcomed to our Clan.” For the first time he smiled at her, his face completely losing its normal austerity. For whatever reason Shra had accepted Azhure, so he would too.
Azhure smiled in relief. At least she could stay with the GhostTree Clan for the time being. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you.”