“Perhaps there is,” Drago said. “See?” He pointed to the north. “The Demons will come through from that direction. Not only because it is the most direct path from the Lake of Life, but because there are no trees on that side of Fernbrake’s crater. They will want to steer clear of the trees.”
“And the Icarii are filing down into the crater from the south, and through the trees.”
“Exactly. Perhaps I can arrange it so that the Demons will never see the Icarii, nor the entrance to Sanctuary. Wait here.”
Drago walked to the nearest tree and laid his hand on her trunk.
“I beg your indulgence,” he whispered, “and crave your understanding in what I now do.”
He leaned upwards and broke off a small branch and then broke that into several dozen smaller pieces.
“What are you doing?” StarDrifter asked.
“Come with me,” Drago said, and led the way around the gentle curve of the Lake to the point where the path wound down out of the forested slope and arced towards the entrance to Sanctuary. There, oblivious of the curious stares of the Icarii walking along the path, Drago bent and placed one of the broken pieces of wood in the ground.
He straightened. “StarDrifter, will you aid me by placing a handful of water from the Lake about each of these twigs I plant?”
StarDrifter nodded, his eyes narrowed in thought. Stars! Surely Drago did not command the power to…?
He did as his grandson asked, and for each twig that Drago placed in the ground about the curve of the path, StarDrifter carefully placed a handful of the emerald water in the depression that surrounded it.
When Drago reached the entrance to Sanctuary, he planted the final half a dozen twigs before it, and waited patiently for StarDrifter to water them.
“You can’t do it,” StarDrifter said as he rose from the final twig.
Drago grinned. “Really? Faraday did, so why can’t I? Stand back a pace, StarDrifter. I would not want you damaged.”
Frowning, StarDrifter stepped back, watching Drago. The man had lowered his eyes, as if in concentration, and he hefted the staff slightly in his left hand his fingers opening and then closing about it. StarDrifter thought he saw a very slight flicker go through the muscles of Drago’s hand where it clenched about the wood, but he could not be sure.
The next moment Drago raised his face, and his left hand drew a symbol so fast and so fluidly that StarDrifter could not follow it.
“Do as I ask,” Drago said, his voice curiously flat, and an instant later StarDrifter—as every Icarii within fifty paces—cried out in surprise.
Where Drago had planted the twigs, now rose massive trees. Even taller and more dense than usual for the Minstrelsea, they unravelled in the space of two breaths, and when they were finally still, the spaces between them were so filled with jutting branches and overhanging foliage that no-one could see through them.
It was not only branch and foliage that protected the Icarii from view, for between each tree also hung such threatening shadow that StarDrifter knew no-one would be tempted to walk through to investigate.
The passage from Minstrelsea to Sanctuary was completely hidden.
“Ye gods!” StarDrifter murmured, and looked at Drago.
“Faraday?”
She turned from where she’d been waiting at the valley end of the silver-tracery bridge and looked at Drago walking across the bridge towards her. Maybe they had come to some kind of compromise regarding their relationship, and maybe Drago had accepted her decision with unusual good humour for a SunSoar—but he had also pointed out he was a SunSoar male, and Faraday was only too well aware what difficulties might lie ahead for her.
Beside her Katie looked on patiently, her hand, as always, clasped in Faraday’s. Now Faraday tightened her grip slightly on the girl’s fingers.
StarDrifter was a step behind Drago and, as they neared, Faraday switched her eyes to him. “StarDrifter, we should talk—” she began, but Drago interrupted her.
“No. You can talk to StarDrifter some other time. For now we have to go to Carlon.”
“Why?”
“Faraday,” Drago said, as gently as he could. “The Icarii are not the only ones who will need the comfort of Sanctuary, and whatever Acharites are left will have a hard journey from Carlon. We will need to aid them.”
“Yes. Of course…I’m sorry. StarDrifter? Will you talk with Zenith?” Faraday asked.
StarDrifter nodded, but looked puzzled. “About what?”
“About how much you love her, and what you would do for that love.”
StarDrifter nodded again, but frowned a little. He inclined his head at Drago, and then walked past Faraday towards Sanctuary. Drago watched him go, then gave a sharp whistle. Almost instantly the hounds, cats and the feathered lizard bounded out of the grass.
Drago grinned at them, rubbing heads and patting flanks as they crowded about him, and then he looked at Faraday. He unslung the Wolven from his shoulder, as also the quiver of arrows.
“Will you take these? I am overburdened enough.”
“Me?” Faraday kept her hands at her side, refusing to take the Wolven and quiver. She wasn’t quite sure why she hesitated, but wondered if even the act of accepting something from Drago’s hands might be construed as acknowledging a bond between them.
“Faraday, please. They will not bite.”
Slowly she reached out and took them, handling them as gingerly as if she thought they might explode in her hands. At Drago’s urgings, she eventually slung the bow and quiver over her shoulder.
“Good,” Drago said, and held out his hand.
Faraday tensed, thinking he meant her to take it, but in the next instant he’d sketched a symbol in the air, and the far end of the bridge from Sanctuary dissolved into a blue-misted tunnel that led to the interior of a many-staired and balconied tower.
Faraday relaxed slightly, then she and Katie followed Drago into Spiredore.
Perhaps it understood the urgency of the matter, for Spiredore did not take long to transfer them to its outer door that led to the edge of Grail Lake. Three turns of a spiral staircase and they were there, the hounds, cats and feathered lizard close behind.
Drago pushed open the door and stepped outside. Then he halted, transfixed with horror as Faraday, Katie and sundry animals bumped into him.
The far shores of Grail Lake were dense with hundreds of thousands of animals—horses, cattle, feral creatures, birds of every variety—and wild-eyed humans, all milling about the walls of Carlon.
Even from the far side of the Lake Drago and Faraday could hear them howling and mewling and screaming. One of the cats, crouched low at Drago’s feet, growled at the cacophony of sound drifting over the Lake.
Faraday’s face went ashen, and she put a hand to her mouth. Drago leaned around to gather Faraday and the girl tight against him. Appalled and grief-stricken by the sight before her, Faraday did not object.
Katie merely studied the scene expressionlessly.
It was mid-afternoon, and the grey miasma of despair was settled upon the land. Drago and Faraday had grown so used to their immunity, as that of the hounds and, apparently the cats, that it completely escaped them that Katie seemed unaffected as well.
In her, the power and magic of the Star Dance surged more powerfully than it did in the vast unfettered spaces of the universe, simply because it was concentrated into a vastly smaller space.
Inside her tiny body, Katie had enough power to ravage the entire land into a blackened, smoking waste, should she put a mind to it.
Katie grinned.
52
Of What Can’t Be Rescued
Theod rode as if in a dream. Time passed him by unnoticed, and landscape and sun and night melded into one unknowable blur.
All he was aware of was the feel of the stallion’s silken coat and powerful muscles beneath him, and the cold fire of the stars that foamed about his hands where they gripped within the mane.
All Theod
thought about was Gwendylyr and his sons. Gone. Had he failed them? Should he have done something different?
Was she still somehow alive?
No. The existence she currently enjoyed could in no way be called “life”, but while her heart still beat, there was hope, surely.
Surely.
Somewhere there had to be hope!
He had to ride south, meet Zared who must be on his way north with his army by now, and go back and get her…and save the other groups crawling slowly, innocently, towards that horrid cave and all the beady eyes awaiting in its depths.
But Theod never met Zared coming north.
“Where are you?” he screamed one day into the blur that swept by him, but no-one answered, and the stallion’s gait did not falter. They sped south through days that folded inexorably from sunlight to night to sunlight again.
“Norden? Norden? Sir? Wake up!”
Norden mumbled and opened his eyes, irritated that Greman had woken him before his watch was due to start. What in the world could—
“Wake up, sir!”
The panic in Greman’s voice woke Norden as nothing else could. The captain of the northern wall watch struggled to his feet, cursing the lingering lethargy and stiffness of sleep, and moved to where Greman stood by the parapets.
He was staring at something beyond the wall.
Now that Norden could understand. The tens of thousands of cursed creatures were wailing and moaning with even more virulence than usual, but their cacophony in itself was nothing to be remarked on.
Were they preparing to attack?
Norden leaned on the stone blocks of the parapet, trying to see what it was that had disturbed Greman.
“There, sir, directly north. Do you see?”
Greman narrowed his eyes against the cold wind, ignoring the mass of creatures seething at the base of the walls for the moment.
“I—” he began, then concentrated. There was something…something…pale…
Beside him, Greman visibly relaxed. “It’s a horse and rider, sir!”
Norden grunted, not wanting to concede that Greman’s younger eyes were clearer than his.
“Perhaps,” he said. “And if it is, then who would be so stupid as to ride straight for this psychotic circus below us?”
He blinked, and this time he, too, could see that it was a horse and rider. A white horse, with a peculiarly brilliant mane and tail, and a rider.
“Gods, but look how fast they’re coming!” Norden said, and before he could add any more, or even think about informing someone of this peculiar event, the animals below roared into full-voiced fury.
Both guards instinctively dropped below the level of the parapet.
“Gods!” Norden whispered again, and carefully peered over the stone ledge.
What he saw this time stunned him.
The animals—while not abandoning the walls—had nevertheless turned to meet whatever it was that ran toward them. They were screaming with such vigour that Norden could actually see one or two convulsing with the strength of their hate.
The horse and rider were now very close, within only twenty or thirty paces of the outer ranks of the animals. Norden’s throat went dry…they would be torn to pieces! But even as he thought that, the white horse had closed the distance between it and the animals, and plunged into the first ranks that leapt to meet it.
Norden thought the horse and rider would be overwhelmed instantly, but suddenly creatures screamed and smoke rose from either side of the horse.
Norden blinked, then decided he was seeing true.
Tiny stars were falling from the horse’s mane, burning a path through the now-frantic animals. The stallion—the Star Stallion—cantered through the crowd as though it paraded along a processional boulevard, the man atop him swinging somewhat uselessly to either side with his sword.
The creatures had backed several paces away from the horse, still snarling and howling, but terrified of the horse’s magic.
“Open the gates,” Norden whispered, then recovered his voice and roared down the ladder. “Open the gates!”
As the guards leaned to the bolts, Norden scrambled to his feet and headed for the ladder, sliding to the ground in three heartbeats. Turning from the ladder, he heard the horse leap through the gates, and then the thunder as the guards slammed them shut against the first of the creatures leaping after the horse.
But Norden had no eye for anything save the wondrous Star Stallion and his rider.
A man—it was the Duke of Aldeni!—slid off the stallion’s back, and the horse reared, screamed…and disappeared.
The Duke saw Norden standing gaping, and dropped a heavy hand on his shoulder.
“Get me to the King. Now!”
Norden stared at Theod’s haggard face, then moved hastily to obey.
Earl Herme rose slowly, unbelievingly, from his chair outside Leagh’s chamber as he saw Theod and an officer of the watch approach. “Theod? My friend…what do you here?”
“I come wondering why Zared did not bother to ride to my aid. Where is he? Where is the carrion-cursed—”
“We have had no word, Theod.” Zared emerged from the door, closing it softly behind him. “Nothing. No farflight scouts. No ships. We thought…”
He stopped, staring appalled at Theod’s face. “What has happened?”
“No-one got through?” Theod whispered. “Not one of the farflight scouts got through? Oh, gods!”
He sat and drank, glass after glass of the best Romsdale gold, and neither Zared nor Herme stopped him.
They listened to his extraordinary tale, and shared doubts in silent glances over Theod’s bowed head. If all others had perished, then how was it Theod had got through?
How had he made it south safely through unprotected territory…unshaded territory?
How had he come so swiftly?
How had he got through the cordon about Carlon’s walls?
Was he mad with grief…or mad with Demonic delight?
Was he another Askam?
Zared’s hand slipped about the knife in his belt, and saw Herme’s silent nod.
“Sire?”
Zared’s head jerked about. He’d forgotten Norden’s presence.
“Sire,” Norden said. “I saw him, and this horse. I cannot vouch for the earlier part of his tale, but of this magical horse I can say he speaks truth. And over a dozen of the watch on the northern wall will say the same thing.”
“And where is this magical horse now?” Herme said.
“Gone, sir Earl. He vanished before our eyes.”
Zared glanced again at Herme, and saw that doubts remained. Had they all been infected?
His hand tightened about his knife.
“How can we get across?” Faraday said. “Look at the water!”
The waters of Grail Lake were simmering. Great bubbles slowly broke across the surface.
Faraday jerked, and pressed closer to Drago in horror. A huge slimy tail rose lazily in the air above the water, then slammed down again.
The water was not boiling, it was full of…of…
“Eels,” Drago said. “Grown to gigantic proportions under the Demons’ careful nurturing.”
The water roiled, and several heads appeared. Fully five paces long and two wide, the eels had yawning mouths filled with razored, yellowing fangs. One of them had the remains of a cloak caught between its teeth, and as Faraday watched a neatly severed human leg dropped from the folds of the cloth and splashed into the water.
All three eels instantly lunged back into the water, fighting over the delicacy.
“There’s a boat tied to the pier,” Drago said, apparently unconcerned by what he’d just witnessed. “And large enough for our variety of furred and feathered companions as well.”
Faraday pulled away from him. “No!” She hugged Katie tight to her, and buried the girl’s head protectively in the folds of her skirts. Katie twisted her head about slightly to gaze quietly at Drago.
&n
bsp; “We will never get across alive!” Faraday said. “Do you want to kill this sweet child before she has a chance to live?”
Katie now twisted her face about so she could look at Faraday.
“Faraday—” Drago began.
“No!”
“Faraday,” Drago’s voice became firmer. “Trust me. We can get across.”
Faraday stared at him, her eyes panicked. She could not believe that Drago was prepared to risk the live of Katie with such equanimity.
A movement to their right broke the stand-off. It was the feathered lizard—now, Faraday observed, far larger than any of the hounds—climbing carefully into the boat. It settled itself at the prow and began to preen, totally ignoring the glistening hump of an eel that had surfaced four or five paces out into the Lake.
Sicarius, FortHeart as ever at his shoulder, leapt in after the lizard, and the next moment the boat rocked as the remaining Alaunt and the cats all leapt in at the same time. The lizard raised its head, its emerald and scarlet crest flaring, and hissed irritably at them.
There were three spaces left clear on the benches.
“Trust me!” Drago said, and held out his hand.
Faraday stared at him, then at the boat packed with sundry animals, then back at Drago.
She swallowed.
Drago gave a small smile. “Faraday, the worst that can happen is a rapid annihilation, and the best is an exhilarating ride. Will you risk it?”
His hand waggled a bit.
Faraday lowered her eyes, and made as if to speak to Katie, but the girl pulled free from her and ran to the boat, climbing in.
“Katie!” Faraday cried.
“I think,” Drago said, “that you have been outvoted. If you do not wish to risk the journey, I can always leave you here. No doubt Spiredore will keep you safe and warm.”
Faraday’s cheeks reddened, and she marched stiff-backed past Drago and climbed into the boat.
His smile gone, Drago unmoored the boat and pushed it out into the water as he jumped in. He settled down in the remaining space, placed the staff carefully under the bench, unshipped the oars, and rowed strongly for the opposite shoreline.