He had something very important to do.
Under one arm he carried a sack with as much tenderness and care as StarLaughter carried her undead infant. The sack’s linen was slightly stained, as if with effluent, and it left an unpleasant odour in WolfStar’s wake.
Niah, or what was left of her.
Niah…WolfStar’s face softened very slightly. She had been so desirable, so strong, when she’d been the First Priestess on the Isle of Mist and Memory. She’d carried through her task—to bear Azhure in the hateful household of Hagen, the Plough Keeper of Smyrton—with courage and sweetness, and had passed that courage and sweetness to their enchanted daughter.
For that courage WolfStar had promised Niah rebirth and his love, and he’d meant to give her both.
Except things hadn’t turned out quite so well as planned. Niah’s manner of death (and even WolfStar shuddered whenever he thought of it) had warped her soul so brutally that she’d been reborn a vindictive, hard woman. So determined to re-seize life that she cared not what her determination might do to the other lives she touched.
Not the woman WolfStar had thought to love. True, the re-born Niah been pleasing enough, and eager enough, and WolfStar had adored her quickness in conceiving of an heir, but…
…but the fact was she’d failed. Failed WolfStar and failed Tencendor at the critical moment. WolfStar had thought of little else in the long hours he’d wandered the dank and dark halls of the waterways. Niah had distracted him when his full concentration should have been elsewhere (could he have stopped Drago if he hadn’t been so determined to bed Niah?), and her inability to keep her hold on the body she’d gained meant that WolfStar had again been distracted—with grief! damn it!—just when his full power and attention was needed to help ward the Star Gate.
Niah had failed because Zenith had proved too strong. Who would have thought it? True, Zenith had the aid of Faraday, and an earthworm could accomplish miracles if it had Faraday to help it, but even so…Zenith had been the stronger, and WolfStar had always been the one to be impressed by strength.
Ah! He had far more vital matters to think of than pondering Zenith’s sudden determination. Besides, with what he planned, he could get back the woman he’d always meant to have. Alive. Vibrant. And very, very powerful.
His fingers unconsciously tightened about the sack.
This time Niah would not fail.
WolfStar grinned, feral and confident in the darkness.
“Here,” he muttered, and ducked into a dark opening no more than head height.
It was an ancient drain, and it lead to the bowels of the Keep on the shores of Cauldron Lake.
WolfStar knew exactly what he had to do.
The horses ran, and their crippled limbs ate up the leagues with astonishing ease. Directly above them flew the Hawkchilds, so completely in unison that as one lifted his wings, so all lifted, and as another swept hers down, so all swept theirs down.
Each stroke of their wings corresponded exactly with a stride of the horses.
And with each stroke of the Hawkchilds’ wings, the horses felt as if they were lifted slightly into the air, and their strides lengthened so that they floated a score of paces with each stride. When their hooves beat earthward again, they barely grazed the ground before they powered effortlessly forward into their next stride.
And with each stride, the horses felt life surge through their veins and tired muscles. Necks thickened and arched, nostrils flared crimson, sway-backs straightened and flowed strong into newly muscled haunches. Hair and skin darkened and fined, until they glowed a silky ebony.
Strange things twisted inside their bodies, but of those changes there was, as yet, no outward sign.
Once fit only for the slaughterhouse, great black war horses raced across the plains, heading for the Ancient Barrows.
2
The Dreamer
The bones had lain there for almost twenty years, picked clean by scavengers and the passing winds of time. They had been a neat pile when the tired old soul had lain down for the final time; now they were scattered over a half-dozen paces, some resting in the glare of the sun, others piled under the gloom of a thorn bush.
Footsteps disturbed the peace of the grave site. A tall and willowy woman, dressed in a clinging pale grey robe. Irongrey hair, streaked with silver, cascaded down her back. On the ring finger of her left hand she wore a circle of stars. She had very deep blue eyes and a red mouth, with blood trailing from one corner and down her chin.
As she neared the largest pile of bones the woman crouched, and snarled, her hands tensed into tight claws.
“Fool way to die!” she hissed. “Alone and forgotten! Did you think I forgot? Did you think to escape me so easily?”
She snarled again, and grabbed a portion of the rib cage, flinging it behind her. She snatched at another bone, and threw that with the ribs. She scurried a little further away, reached under the thorn bush and hauled out its desiccated treasury of bones, also throwing them on the pile.
She continued to snap and snarl, as if she had the rabid fever of wild dogs, scurrying from spot to spot, picking up a knuckle here, a vertebrae there, a cracked femur bone from somewhere else.
The pile of bones grew.
“I want to hunt,” she whispered, “and yet what must I do? Find your useless framework, and knit something out of it! Why must I be left to do it all?”
She finally stood, surveying the skeletal pile before her. “Something is missing,” she mumbled, and swept her hands back through her hair, combing it out of her eyes.
Her tongue had long since licked clean the tasty morsel draining down her chin.
“Missing,” she continued to mumble, wandering in circles about the desolate site. “Missing…where…where…ah!”
She snatched at a long white hair that clung to the outer reaches of the thorn bush and hurried back to the pile of bones with it. She carefully laid it across the top.
Then she stood back, standing very still, her dark blue eyes staring at the bones.
Very slowly she raised her left hand, and the circle of light about its ring finger flared.
“Of what use is bone to me?” she whispered. “I need flesh!”
She dropped her hand, and the light flared from ring to bones.
The pile burst into flame.
Without fear the woman stepped close and reached into the conflagration with both hands. She grabbed hold of something, grunted with effort, then finally, gradually, hauled it free.
Her own shape changed slightly during her efforts, as if her muscles had to rearrange themselves to manage to drag the large object free of the fire, and in the flickering light she seemed something far larger and bulkier than human, and more dangerous. Yet when she finally stood straight again, she had regained her womanly features.
She looked happily at the result of her endeavour. Her magic had not dimmed in these past hours! But she shook her head slightly. Look what had become of him!
He stood, limbs akimbo, pot belly drooping, and he returned her scrutiny blankly, no gratitude in his face at all.
“You are of this land,” she said, “and there is still service it demands of you. Go south, and wait.”
He stared, unblinking, uncaring, and then he gave a mighty yawn. The languor of death had not yet left him, and all he wanted to do was to sleep.
“Oh!” she said, irritated. “Go!”
She waved her hand again, the light flared, and when it had died, she stood alone in the stony gully of the Urqhart Hills.
Grinning again at the pleasantness of solitude, she turned and ran for the north, and as she did so her shape changed, and her limbs loped, and her tongue hung red from her mouth, and she felt the need to sink her teeth into the back of prey, very, very soon.
Scrawny limbs trembling, pot belly hanging from gaunt ribs, he stood on the plain just north of the Rhaetian Hills.
Beside him the Nordra roared.
He was desperate for sleep,
and so he hung his head, and he dreamed.
He dreamed. He dreamed of days so far distant he did not know if they were memory or myth. He dreamed of great battles, defeats and victories both, and he dreamed of the one who had loved him, and who he’d loved beyond expression. Then he’d been crippled, and the one who loved him had shown him the door, and so he’d wandered disconsolate—save for the odd loving the boy showed him—until his life had trickled to a conclusion in blessed, blessed death.
Then why was he back?
3
The Feathered Lizard
Faraday kept her arm tight about the man as they walked towards where she’d left Zenith and the donkeys. He’d grown tired in the past hour, as if the effort of surviving the Star Gate and then watching the effects of the Demons flow over the land, had finally exhausted him both physically and mentally.
Faraday did not feel much better. This past day had drained her: fighting to repel the horror of the Demons’ passage through the Star Gate and fighting to save Drago from the collapsing chamber, then emerging from the tunnel to find Tencendor wrapped in such horrific despair, had left its mark on her soul. For hours she’d had to fight off the bleak certainty that there was nothing anyone could do against the TimeKeepers.
“Drago,” she murmured. “Just a little further. See? There is Zenith!”
Zenith, who had been waiting with growing anxiety, ran forward from where she’d been pacing by the cart. A corner of her cloak caught in the exposed root of a tree, and she ripped it free in her haste.
“Faraday! Drago! Drago?” Zenith wrapped her arms about her brother, taking the load from Faraday. “Is he all right, Faraday? And you…you look dreadful!”
The staff Drago had been clutching now fell from his fingers and rolled a few paces away.
“He needs some rest,” Faraday said. She tried to smile, and failed. “We both do.”
Zenith looked between both of them. Her relief that Faraday was well, and had managed to ensure Drago’s safe return, was overwhelmed by her concern at how debilitated both were. Drago was a heavy weight in her arms, his eyes closed, his breathing shallow, while the only colour in Faraday’s ashen face were the rings of exhaustion under her eyes. She had clasped her arms about herself in an effort to stop them shaking.
What happened? Zenith longed to ask.
“The cart,” she said, and half-dragged, half-lifted Drago towards it.
“Let me help,” Faraday said, and took the weight of his legs.
Between them they managed to lift Drago into the tray of the cart, then Zenith helped Faraday in.
“Sleep,” she said, pulling a blanket over them. “Sleep.”
Drago and Faraday shared the bed of the cart, and shared the sleep of the exhausted; and they shared a dream, although neither would remember it when they woke.
But over the next few days, as they wandered the forest, the scent of a flowering bush occasionally made one or the other lift a head and pause, and fight for the memory the scent evoked.
Zenith watched them for a long time. She was torn between relief at their return—thank the Stars Drago was alive!—and concern for both Faraday and Drago’s state. What both had endured, either with the Demons, or within the Star Gate Chamber itself, must have been close to unbearable. Even though she had been protected by the trees of Minstrelsea, Zenith had felt a trickle of the despair that had overwhelmed Tencendor when the Demons had broken through, and she could only imagine what Faraday had gone through so close to the Star Gate.
But Faraday and Drago were not Zenith’s only concerns. She wished she knew what had happened to StarDrifter. He’d been at the Star Gate towards the end, trying to help her parents to ward it against the Demons.
Would she see him again?
It didn’t occur to Zenith that she hardly thought about her parents. Now that she knew Faraday and Drago were safe, she needed to know that StarDrifter was as well. To think that he was dead…or somehow under the Demons’ thrall…
Zenith shivered and pulled her cloak closer about her. She could feel how deeply disturbed the forest was…were the Demons secreted within its trees? Were they even now creeping closer to where Zenith stood watch over Faraday and Drago?
Zenith’s head jerked at a movement in the shadows. Something was there…something…There was another movement, more distinct this time, and Zenith felt her chest constrict in horror. There! Something lurking behind the ghost oak.
She stumbled toward the donkeys’ heads, thinking to try and pull them forward, get herself and her sleeping companions away from whatever it was…escape…but when she tugged at the nearest donkey’s halter it refused to budge.
“Damn you!” Zenith hissed, and leaned all her weight into the effort. Why in the world did Faraday travel with these obstinate creatures when she could have chosen a well-trained and obliging horse?
Zenith tugged again, and wondered if she should take a stick to the damned creatures.
The donkey snorted irritably and yanked her head out of Zenith’s grasp.
Just as Zenith again reached for the halter, something emerged from the gloom behind the nearest tree.
Zenith’s heart lurched. She dropped her hand, stared about for a stick that she could defend Faraday and Drago with…and then breathed a sigh of relief, wiping trembling hands down her robe.
It was just one of the fey creatures of the forest, no doubt so disturbed by the presence of the Demons that it cared not that it wandered so close to Zenith and the donkeys.
It was a strange mixture of lizard and bird. About the size of a small dog, it had the body of a large iguana, covered with bright blue body feathers, and with a vivid emerald and scarlet crest. It had impossibly deep black eyes that absorbed the light about it. What it used the light for Zenith could not say, perhaps as food, but once absorbed, the lizard apparently channelled the light through some furnace within its body, for it re-emerged from its diamond-like talons in glinting shafts that shimmered about the forest.
Zenith smiled, for the feathered lizard was a thing of great beauty.
Watching Zenith carefully, the lizard crawled the distance between the tree and the cart, giving both donkeys and Zenith a wide berth. It sniffed briefly about the wheels of the cart, then, in an abrupt movement, jumped into the tray.
Zenith moved very slowly so she could see what the lizard was doing—and then stopped, stunned.
The lizard was sitting close to Drago’s head, gently running its talons through his loose hair, almost…almost as if it were combing it, or weaving a cradle of light about his head.
Zenith was vividly reminded of the way the courtyard cats in Sigholt had taken every opportunity they could to snuggle up to Drago.
Zenith’s eyes widened, and suddenly the lizard decided to take exception to her presence. It narrowed its eyes and hissed at her, then leaped to the ground and scuttled away into the trees.
Zenith stared at the place where it had disappeared, then looked back to Drago. She smoothed the loose strands of his coppery hair (was it brighter now than it had been previously?) away from his face, studying him carefully. He looked the same—and yet different. His face was still thin and lined, but the lines were stronger, more clearly defined, as if they had been created through purpose rather than through resentment and bitterness. And even though he was asleep, there was a strange “quiet” about him. It was the only way Zenith could describe it to herself. A quiet that in itself gave purpose—and hope.
His eyelids flickered open at her touch, and his mouth moved as if to smile.
But he was clearly too exhausted even for that effort.
“Zenith,” he whispered. “Are you well?”
Zenith’s eyes filled with tears. Had he been worried for her all this time? The last time he’d seen her had been in Niah’s Grove in the far north of the forest, battling the Niah-soul within her.
She smiled, and took his hand. “I am well,” she said. “Go back to sleep.”
Now his mouth
did flicker in a faint smile, but his eyes were closed and he was asleep again even before it faded.
Zenith stood and watched him for some time, cradling his hand gently in hers, then she looked at Faraday. The woman was deeply asleep, peaceful and unmoving, and Zenith finally set down Drago’s hand and moved away from the cart.
Unsure what to do, and unsettled by the continuing agitation she could feel from the trees, Zenith remembered the staff that Drago had dropped. She walked about until she found where it had rolled, and she picked it up, studying it curiously.
It was made of a beautiful deep red wood that felt warm in her hands. It was intricately carved in a pattern that Zenith could not understand. There was a line of characters that wound about the entire length of the staff, strange characters, made up of what appeared to be small black circles with short hooked lines attached to them.
The top of the staff was curled over like a shepherd’s crook, but the knob was carved into the shape of a lily.
Zenith had never seen anything like it. She hefted the staff, and laid it down next to Drago.
Then she sighed and walked away, sitting down under a tree. She let her thoughts meander until they became loose and meaningless, and her head drooped in sleep.
She dreamed she was falling through the sky, but in the instant before she hit the ground StarDrifter was there, laughing, his arms held out for her.
I will always be there to catch you, I’ll always be there for you.
And Zenith smiled, and dreamed on.
A hand touched her shoulder, and Zenith awoke with a start.