StarLaughter, fighting to gain some semblance of control over her own mount as well that of her son’s, looked on in a combination of bewilderment and panic that the Demons should have suddenly reacted like this.
“What’s wrong?” she yelled as soon as both Demons and horse had regained something resembling composure.
“The StarSon!” Mot hissed, and the other demons howled at the word. “The StarSon!”
“What about him?” StarLaughter cried. What had gone wrong now?
“He has eaten one of our Hawkchilds!”
“But…but…I thought his power had gone!”
“Well, he has found some more!” Sheol screamed so violently that spittle sprayed over the entire company. “And it tastes of the Enemy.”
“The Enemy?” StarLaughter said. “But—”
Mot snarled, twisting his entire face like melting clay with the movement. “But he will not trick Qeteb with the likes of that! Not again! No!”
Suddenly all the Demons were screaming in laughter rather than rage.
“No! No! No!” they cried. “Qeteb will turn it against you this time!”
They went into convulsions of laughter, although the sound was still thin and harsh. Then, as one, they stopped.
“We will slaughter him,” Sheol said.
Caelum slowly rose to his feet.
“Father, will you pledge me one thing?”
“Surely. What is it?”
“If I die, give the Song Book to Drago.”
“No! I would rather cast it from the—”
“Do this for me!” Caelum screamed and gripped his father by the shoulders, shaking him. “If you love me, then pledge me this!”
Shaken to the very core of his being, Axis nodded jerkily. “If you wish.”
“Then pledge it.”
Axis ran his tongue about his lips. “Very well. Caelum, on everything I hold dear, I pledge to you that should you die, I will give the Enchanted Song Book to Drago.”
Caelum stared at him, searching for any deception in his father’s eyes. Then he spun him about, and flung one arm out to indicate the continent spread out below Star Finger.
“Tencendor is your witness, Axis SunSoar. Fail your pledge, and you fail this entire land!”
54
The Cruelty of Love
StarDrifter had not returned into Sanctuary immediately after leaving Faraday, Drago and the girl on the silver-tracery bridge. True, he’d begun to walk that way, but the thought of talking to Zenith made him feel uncomfortable, and so StarDrifter found himself walking back over the bridge and up the stairwell to the Overworld.
There he’d re-inspected the screen of trees that Drago had erected, marvelling at the skill of the man.
“But then, he is my grandson,” StarDrifter murmured, and grinned at his own self-satisfaction.
From there he talked a while with WingRidge, and then with FreeFall and EvenSong, who had finally made the trek from their palace in the peaks to Fernbrake below, and then StarDrifter had found himself at a loss for something to do with the evening drifting in. He still preferred not to talk with Zenith. Above all else, he feared what she might say to him.
Obviously, Zenith had talked with Faraday. So what had Faraday counselled her? StarDrifter tried to think what Faraday might have said, and came up with twelve different responses—none of them comfortable.
“I swear to all gods that have existed and who are yet to exist,” StarDrifter whispered, “that if WolfStar has scarred her irreparably, then I will kill him with my bare hands.”
Lost and unsure, and terrified that Zenith might reject him, StarDrifter finally forced her from his mind and wandered into the night.
Without thinking about where he was going, StarDrifter found himself rambling in the forest of Minstrelsea below the eastern ridge of Fernbrake crater. It was peaceful, the shadowed walks of the forest as calm and as beautiful as they’d always been.
StarDrifter wandered further and further into the forest, not truly looking where he was going, lost in his worries about Zenith, wondering how he would cope if she did reject him. Anything, he thought over and over, I will do anything for you Zenith—just don’t leave me, don’t leave me…
“StarDrifter? What are you doing here?”
StarDrifter leapt backwards and hit a grumpian tree. He tumbled into an undignified heap beside it.
Isfrael emerged out of what little moonlight there was and leaned down, offering him a hand. “StarDrifter?”
StarDrifter accepted Isfrael’s hand and stood up, dusting himself down. He grinned ruefully. “I was wandering and thinking, Isfrael. Obviously a combination of activities unsuited to my level of skill.”
To StarDrifter’s utter amazement, Isfrael laughed. “I did not think you capable of self-mockery!” he finally said. “But why here? This part of the forest is not a usual haunt of the Icarii.”
StarDrifter looked at his grandson suspiciously. What was he hiding? A bevy of female Avar Banes that their Mage-King was personally inducting into a higher level of mystery?
Isfrael noted the look. “WolfStar is being held in a glade a short distance from here, StarDrifter. Do you want to see?”
StarDrifter nodded, sober now, and Isfrael led him down a side path and to the edge of a small glade.
They stopped at the edge of the glade, for its internal spaces were totally immersed in a dome of emerald light, similar to the one that Isfrael and his Banes, together with the Star Gods and Icarii Enchanters, had worked to guard the Star Gate against the TimeKeeper Demons. Isfrael hoped this enchanted dome would prove stronger than the last. Seven Banes squatted on their haunches about the glade, concentrating on the magic needed to maintain the ward.
Behind the ward, WolfStar was seething. His words did not penetrate the dome, but his vengeful expression was message enough. He paced to and fro, occasionally lunging at the Banes seated outside as if he hoped to distract them from their work, and slamming fists and heels into the walls of the dome.
As StarDrifter watched, WolfStar rose on his wings, and tore at the apex of the dome with his fingernails and teeth, until dark streaks of the Enchanter’s blood became clearly evident on the inside surface.
StarDrifter turned away, wishing Drago had allowed him to kill the Enchanter. “Where is she?” he asked quietly.
“This way.” Isfrael led him through a screen of bushes to a much smaller space.
The girl-woman—Niah, if this soulless automat dared be called by any name—sat motionless, expressionless, dead save for the rise and fall of her pubescent breasts.
Her beautiful, angelic face was almost identical to Zenith’s, bespeaking the close soul and blood bond between them, although it lacked any warmth or charm, or Zenith’s deep compassion.
“I wish we could kill her!” StarDrifter said, with a savageness that astounded Isfrael as much as his grandfather’s previous self-mockery had.
“We already tried,” he said.
Now StarDrifter was the one to stare. “You tried to—”
“Watch.”
At Isfrael’s nod, an Avar man stepped forth from the shadows of the ring of trees, a long curved knife in his hand. Isfrael nodded again, and the man stepped over to the girl, and plunged the knife into her belly, twisting and turning it mercilessly.
StarDrifter forced himself to watch, although the sight sickened him. The girl sat there, no change in her expression, nor in the gentle rise and fall of her breasts.
The Avar man withdrew the knife, clotted with blood and pieces of the internal organs he’d sliced apart, but as the knife slid out, so the girl’s belly skin mended as if there had never been any attack made on her person.
“I myself have tried,” Isfrael said. “We have surrounded her with dead wood and burned her. We have crushed her beneath rocks. We have—”
“Stop!” StarDrifter said. He turned away, then forced himself to look back a last time. “What will you do with her, and with WolfStar?”
> Isfrael took his time in replying. “I do not know,” he said, and walked back into the shadows.
StarDrifter went back to Sanctuary. It was time he talked with Zenith. Once he had walked across the silver-tracery bridge, the long line of Icarii wending their way down to the bridge seemingly never-ending, he lifted into the blue sky of Sanctuary and flew towards the valley mouth.
StarDrifter rose high, very high, and the wind felt warm and powerful under his wings. The sky, as Sanctuary, was apparently limitless, but StarDrifter wondered what would happen if he gave in to his urge to flip over onto his back and relax and let the thermals carry him ever higher.
Would he circle into infinity? Or would he smash against some ward that, like the emerald dome about WolfStar, would prove his imprisonment?
Unsettled, he flew further, soaring above the valley mouth and the first of the endless orchards, paths, ponds and palaces.
Everything was so perfect, so beautiful, so…so cloying.
A prison, just like a dark, barred cell.
Did those below perceive it thus, or were they still lost in Sanctuary’s beauty and comfort? Did he only see it because he’d crossed to and fro some dozen times on various businesses?
“Stars grant Drago success,” StarDrifter whispered as he began to descend, “for I would not want to be incarcerated in this prison for ever more.”
He hunted for Zenith for over an hour before an Icarii woman told him where to find her.
She was comfortably settled in a pretty crystal-domed chamber on an upper level of one of the myriad of palaces, staring at herself in a mirror.
“Zenith,” StarDrifter said softly, and walked over to her as she twisted about on a stool. She was wearing a blue and silver gown, and he thought she’d never looked so beautiful…nor so vulnerable.
Her eyes were wide, almost frightened, and StarDrifter instinctively dropped to his knees before her, trailing his wings across the floor behind him.
Zenith hesitated, then held out her hands for him to take. “We have to talk, you and I,” she said.
“Zenith, WolfStar is bound. Safe. He will never trouble you again. Isfrael has him—”
“No. StarDrifter, the problem between you and I is not WolfStar, nor even what he did to me. Will you listen if I talk?”
StarDrifter nodded, feeling with an icy certainty that he was going to lose Zenith before he’d even had a chance to love her.
His face was rigid, unreadable, and Zenith had to briefly close her eyes and summon her courage before she could go on.
“Dear gods, I love you, StarDrifter,” she whispered, and dropped her eyes to their clasped hands, “but I do not know how I can ever be your lover—”
“No!”
“Listen to me! Please…please, just listen to me.”
And so Zenith talked, haltingly at first, and then with more resolve. She told him that WolfStar’s rape was not that which lay between them—gods, how desperately she wanted some other, more loving memory to overlay that one!—but that she could not overcome her revulsion at having a grandfather touch her carnally.
Zenith stumbled at that point, still feeling guilt that she should couch StarDrifter’s love in such a shameful construct, then hurried on before he could say anything.
“Whenever you kiss me, or touch me, I feel such revulsion—”
Stars! Why had she said it so badly! What had she done? Zenith opened her mouth but, not knowing how to snatch back what she’d just said, said nothing at all.
Silence. StarDrifter did not speak, even his hands lay unspeaking and unmoving in hers.
She raised her eyes and looked him in the face.
And all she saw there was panic. Not condemnation. Not frustration. Not rejection. Not even puzzlement.
Panic.
“Zenith…gods! I had no idea…I don’t know what to say…what can I say…” The words tumbled awkwardly, and the depth of dread in StarDrifter’s face increased. “Zenith, I want you for my wife—”
And until those words were out StarDrifter had no idea how desperately he wanted Zenith for his wife.
“—and there is no shame in that. Is there?”
Zenith was crying. “No, no, there’s no shame in that save what I feel in here!” She wrenched her hands from his and buried her fingers in her hair, giving her head a shake. “Oh gods! Why did RiverStar get all the wantonness and I all the inhibitions? Why can’t I—”
“Zenith!” StarDrifter leaned forward as if to wrap his arms about her, hesitated, then gave an incoherent cry of frustration and, jumping to his feet, stalked over to the window.
Outside the sham sun shone over the sham world of Sanctuary, and StarDrifter thought he would scream if he saw so much as one smiling face.
And then, gently, hesitantly, stunningly, he felt arms slide about him, and Zenith’s damp face press against his back.
“Please don’t blame me,” she whispered. “I want so much to be able to love you as we both want.”
StarDrifter’s heart broke. He turned around in her arms and hugged her to him.
“Don’t run away from me,” he whispered into her hair. “Please. I will do anything—”
She raised her face and looked at him. “Will you wait for me?”
Wait for what? he wondered. Wait for instinctive revulsion to fade?
“One day,” and now she was smiling a little through her tears, “your silly granddaughter will grow up and become a woman who will see you with a woman’s eyes. Will you wait for that day?”
StarDrifter nodded, and Zenith turned her face away so she did not have to see the tears in his eyes.
55
An Enchantment Made Visible
“Leagh?” Zared asked. “Why Leagh? Do you need to view her yourself? Would you like a portrait done of her in her current curious animalistic form? Would you like to see—”
“That’s enough, Zared!” Drago snapped. “You are King of the Acharites, damn you, and you have been given responsibility for all Tencendor, not just one woman. How dare you sit here and go into a guilt-ridden fugue while Theod desperately tries to save the last remaining vestiges of your realm outside this city. He has a right to verbally lash me…but not you.”
Zared visibly flinched, but he sat up slightly straighter. “I ask again, Drago. Why do you need to see Leagh? She does not deserve to be inspected like a curious freak displayed on fair days.”
“I ask to see her so that I might help Tencendor.”
“That makes no sense, Drago,” Theod said, his voice hard. “At least I agree with Zared on the issue of displaying Leagh like a freak.”
Drago bent down, retrieved his staff from the floor, stroking one of the cats as he did so.
He stood up, adjusting the sack at his belt. “Zared, is it your opinion that Leagh’s mind is completely possessed by the Demons?”
“Yes.”
“So,” Drago said slowly, and he glanced at Faraday as he spoke. “Would you say that Leagh, as her own person, character, entity and soul, is completely dead?”
“Oh!” Faraday whispered, utterly shocked as she realised what Drago was going to attempt. “By all the heavens, Drago. Can you do it?”
“Can you imagine, Faraday,” Drago said, ignoring the others’ angry confusion, “what resources Tencendor would have at its side if we could?”
He held Faraday’s gaze, and then he smiled, sweetly and tenderly, utterly transforming his face.
“What are you going to do?” Zared yelled, stepping forward and seizing Drago by the upper arm.
“I am going to bring Leagh back,” Drago said. “With all the heritage of her Acharite blood.”
“You can bring her back?” Zared whispered hoarsely. He paid no attention to the second part of Drago’s statement.
“Indeed he can,” Katie said, rising from her spot on the floor. “If I aid him.”
Drago looked at her, puzzled, but he did not say anything.
Zared looked wildly at Herme and Theod,
neither of them knowing what to think or say, and then his grip on Drago’s arm tightened yet further, and he pulled him towards the door. “Come!”
Theod and Herme began to move as well, but Drago shook his head. “Only Zared, Faraday, Katie and myself,” he said.
A movement at the corner of Drago’s eye caught his attention.
“And the lizard,” he added hurriedly, and allowed Zared to drag him forth.
The walk was relatively short in distance and time, but thick with Zared’s wild hope and Faraday’s unspoken queries.
Herme’s place before the door to Leagh’s chamber had earlier been taken over by a palace guard, and Drago dismissed him. “Go down to the kitchens and ask the cooks to prepare a light but nutritious meal. The Queen will require it soon enough.”
The guard looked hesitantly at Zared, but when his King said nothing, he nodded and set off down the corridor towards the main stairs.
Zared still had Drago by the arm, and now he fumbled with the doorknob with his free hand. His hand slipped, and he lost his grip, but he pushed aside Drago’s attempts to help him.
“I can do it!” he said.
Standing slightly behind the two men, Faraday felt sick. She had a very good idea of what she would see within the chamber, and she did not want to see Leagh thus degraded. She wiped damp palms against the rough weave of her gown. Could Drago truly do what he intimated? Had he come this far, this quickly?
By her side, Katie looked up into Faraday’s anxious face. She patted at the woman’s skirts, drawing her attention, and smiled when Faraday looked down. Faraday took a deep breath, and nodded. If Katie was confident…
The door swung open, and revealed the horror inside.
Leagh herself was not immediately apparent, but her stench flew out the open door and struck the faces of those who would enter. Drago and Faraday had to quell sudden nausea, and the lizard spat. Then it scurried past the hesitant legs before it, and disappeared inside.
Its entrance was greeted by a wild shriek, and the sound of a body shuffling about the floor.
Drago and Faraday forced themselves inside.
“Stars in heaven,” Faraday whispered, and turned aside momentarily.