First…the men. Sheol opened her mouth, and her teeth lengthened and curved.
Her eyes glittered, and then changed, becoming dark fluid that roiled about in their orbits.
Her skin paled to a desperate whiteness.
The three Avar men, standing about the emerald dome, lifted their heads and stared towards the shrubbery where Sheol stood.
Their eyes were stricken…despairing.
WolfStar slowly raised his head and stared at the man nearest him. His back stiffened, and he turned his head very, very slightly, but otherwise made no reaction.
The Avar men were not armed, loathing any kind of weapon, but Sheol nevertheless had her way with them. One dug his fingers into his eyes, wriggling them in as far as he could go until he dropped dead to the ground.
Even then his fingers continued to worm.
Another took a great stone from the ground and beat himself over the skull with it.
When he, too, dropped dead to the ground, his hand continued to lift the rock and smash it against his skull until the crackle of wet bone gave way to the dull thud of pounded meal.
The third merely tore a wrist-thick branch from a sturdy bush and impaled himself on it. His body heaved up and down on the blood-soaked stick in a parody of love long after he had ceased to breathe.
WolfStar’s head moved very slightly, enough so he could see all three Avar men from the corner of his eyes, but he otherwise still did not move.
He certainly did not look behind him.
Now the enchantment. Barzula waved a hand towards the glade, and a wind of immense power, and yet curiously without movement, lifted the emerald dome from WolfStar and smashed it against two nearby trees until it lay in useless shards amid the exposed roots.
WolfStar finally rose. He fastidiously dusted himself down, rearranged the feathers of one wing, and pulled one boot more comfortably along the close fit of his calf. His nonchalant behaviour concealed horrified thoughts. The Demons! Here! WolfStar cursed his stupidity. He had allowed himself to be captured by Drago and held until the Demons had arrived.
What would happen if Niah fell into the Demons’ control? What would they do to her?
What would they do with her?
Giving his breeches a final dust down, WolfStar slowly turned around.
If StarLaughter had expected him to show fear, she was disappointed. Even without power, WolfStar looked every bit as haughty, and every bit as malignant, as the day he’d hurled StarLaughter through the Star Gate.
“I would imagine,” he said to the bushes before him, “that after four thousand years, StarLaughter, you have thought of the perfect curse to assail me with. Why so silent?”
She stepped forth, and her appearance—the bloodied and rent gown, the wild eyes—finally caused WolfStar to raise an eyebrow. For her part, StarLaughter could do little but stare at him. For so long she had hungered for this moment, for so long she had—
“At least you have managed to come back through the Star Gate,” WolfStar said, “even if you have taken your sweet time about it. Have you brought me power, then, as I requested?”
Hate rippled across StarLaughter’s face, and her hands jerked into fists. “I have power, WolfStar, and you have none. How does that feel? How does it feel, Talon-of-naught, to know you have no more sorcery than the smallest of worms?”
“Whatever I have done,” WolfStar said quietly, his eyes not leaving her face, “I will go to my grave knowing I did not destroy this beloved land in order to—”
“But you were prepared to kill innocent children, weren’t you, to gain power!”
“You were hardly innocent, StarLaughter. You lusted for power as much as I.”
“Our son was innocent, and yet you murdered him,” StarLaughter whispered. “Two hundred and more you sent to the grave to garner yet more power for yourself. Never think to judge me for what you would have done yourself had you the chance!”
“Our son was corrupted with your blood from the moment he was conceived. Stars only know if I was the father, or if any one of the dozens of birdmen you coupled with behind my back planted him in you.”
StarLaughter shrieked with rage. “I lay with no-one but you! And Stars only know my experience of love at your hands was enough to dissuade me from anyone else’s bed!”
WolfStar tensed, and his eyes blazed. Had he ever loved this woman? No! How could he have done!
“Your frigid character mirrored itself in your performance in bed,” he said. “I sighed with relief when you said you were pregnant. I would as soon lie with a corpse as with you.”
It was too much; all StarLaughter could think of was that he’d murdered her, and then betrayed her with another. Her face contorted with loathing, she summoned every last skerrick of power the Demons had given her and threw it all at WolfStar.
He gasped, and collapsed to one knee, doubling about the crippling agony that had but a moment ago been his belly.
“And so I suffered,” she hissed, “giving birth to your son in the lifeless wastes beyond the Star Gate!”
“Is that the best you can do?” he rasped, raising his face to her. “The best? I would have expected more from—”
She strode the distance between them to kick him under the throat, but in the instant before her foot struck home WolfStar seized it and pulled her down by his side. In one furious movement he straddled her back, burying one hand in her hair and pushing her face into the earth.
“In the dirt, StarLaughter,” he said. “In the dirt, where you belong! I curse the day I ever took you as my wife. I curse the day I ever took you to my bed. I curse the day I—”
“For our part, WolfStar SunSoar,” a voice thin with hunger said behind him, “we are truly grateful you did all the aforementioned. Your son has proved a boon to us.”
WolfStar gave StarLaughter’s head a sickening wrench, then he leaped to his feet and turned about in the same graceful movement.
He stared at the emaciated man standing before him, knowing instinctively who—and what—he was.
“Demon,” he said, his voice flat, “get you gone from this land!”
“Never!” a woman’s voice said merrily, and Sheol stepped forth, Raspu just behind her. “It feeds us too well, songless Enchanter, for us to ever want to leave.”
“It is not your land,” WolfStar said, hiding the revulsion that filled him.
“All lands that feed us are ours,” Sheol said, gliding forward and circling WolfStar so close he could feel the graze of her robe against his skin. “But more to the point, has not this land of yours harboured what was stolen from us so long ago? You, and every sentient being as well as half-conscious beast that walks or crawls this land, is as much accomplice to the harm that was done us as those who brought our brother here.”
“Then take him…and go.”
“Nay, good birdman.” Sheol had stopped her inspection, and now stood close beside him, a hand lightly resting on his belly. WolfStar had to fight the shudder of revulsion that threatened to ripple through him.
“Nay,” she repeated in a whisper. “We think we like this land. We have travelled homeless and rootless too long. This,” she stamped her foot lightly, “will become our paradise. And you…” her hand rubbed slightly, and WolfStar turned his head away, his jaw tightening, “shall become our plaything.”
“He dies!” StarLaughter shouted. “You promised me he would die!”
Sheol pressed the length of her body against WolfStar’s, and what he could feel roiling beneath her robe finally made his body quiver with disgust.
“There are many ways of dying,” Sheol whispered, and her hand suddenly shot down, her fingers tightening like talons about his genitals, “and many states of death.”
WolfStar screamed, doubling over, and Sheol let go her grip as he tumbled to the ground.
“Where is the girl-child you have filled with our property?” she asked tonelessly.
“Find her yourself, bitch!” WolfStar gasped.
>
Sheol half-smiled and she turned her head to Raspu. “My brother,” she said, her voice almost gurgling out of her throat, “it seems WolfStar needs some persuasion.”
She stepped back, taking StarLaughter by the arm and pulling her away as well. “Watch,” she said in the birdwoman’s ear, “as your murderer gets a fraction of what he has dealt out.”
WolfStar blinked away the tears of agony in his eyes, and looked towards Raspu.
The Demon stepped forward, stopped, then tore the robe from his body. It was a mass of compacted sores, running with whatever pestilence Raspu had chosen to wear that day.
“You berate StarLaughter for her coldness amid the act of love,” Raspu said, his voice far worse than Sheol’s as it bubbled up through his throat from pus-filled lungs, “and yet I do not think you can possibly know the true coldness of love. Get to your knees, WolfStar, and then bend over, your face in the dirt.”
“No!”
Raspu roared with laughter. “Do as I say, birdman!”
Power girdled WolfStar, and suddenly he was lifted up, thrown to his knees, doubled over, and his face pressed so far into dirt he began to choke on it.
Then, worse of all, he felt the presence of Raspu behind him, felt the Demon drop to his knees behind him, felt glacial hands tearing his breeches to shreds, and then felt the icy coldness of pure pestilent desire worm and shove its frightful way into his body.
WolfStar convulsed with horror, trying to struggle free from the rape being visited on him, but Raspu’s power was too strong. WolfStar screamed, and then screamed again, inhaling dirt deep into his lungs as what felt like blunt frozen steel impaled his body, plunging deeper and deeper, until it felt as if the contents of his entire abdomen had succumbed to the invasion and were being clubbed into pulp.
“Tell us where the girl-child is!” he heard Sheol’s voice scream from somewhere very far away, but WolfStar did not answer, could not answer, and he did not know what was worse, the feel of Raspu’s horror punching and pummelling its way through his body, or the sound of StarLaughter howling with merriment.
“How does it feel, beloved husband?” she shouted from somewhere very far above him. “Do you now understand why I did not writhe with enjoyment every time you penetrated me?”
Tell us where the girl-child is! Sheol’s insistent voice screamed in his mind, but still WolfStar could not speak. His hands groped blindly before him, and his face scored through the earth again and again as Raspu pushed home his rape with frightful eagerness.
Then the Demon screamed himself, and jerked about like a marionette, and WolfStar felt pestilence bubble forth and boil through his body, searing through him until its caustic effluent bubbled up through his lungs and throat and he choked on the foulness, dribbling it through his clenched teeth and down his chin.
Where is the girl-child?
One of WolfStar’s hands, seemingly of its own will, clawed through the dirt until it lifted and pointed, quivering as if in the final extremities of the shaking sickness, towards a group of bushes on the eastern side of the glade.
“Very good,” said Raspu, standing and re-robing himself in an unsullied garment with a wave of his hand. “Shall we fetch her?”
StarLaughter stared at the immobile and expressionless girl and loathed her. This, this, is what WolfStar preferred to her?
“As WolfStar, so her,” Raspu whispered in her ear.
StarLaughter looked at him. His cheeks were still flushed, and his breath trembled with expectation.
“But far, far worse,” he said, and StarLaughter smiled.
She turned a little further, and there was WolfStar, crouched behind her, his face ghastly wan and still wracked with pain, his eyes deep with hate, his naked body bruised, bloody and still smeared with Raspu’s attentions.
A thick leather collar had sunk deep into the flesh of his throat, and a golden chain ran from it to StarLaughter’s hand. She had not realised revenge could ever feel this good, and she glowed with love for her companions.
Later, perhaps, Mot could assuage his hunger upon WolfStar, and then Barzula could plummet his tempest deep into her husband. StarLaughter smiled with pure coldness, and sent her thoughts and images spearing into WolfStar’s mind.
He quivered, but whether with hate or fear she could not tell.
I hope it is fear, earth-creeper, she whispered into his mind, for you shall have much to fear. Her smile widened. Again and again. Morning, noon and night.
“And there is always your son, WolfStar!” Sheol cried merrily, clapping her hands. Her sapphire eyes glowed very bright. “Don’t you think he lusts for revenge as well? When cognisance finally fills your son’s eyes, WolfStar, what revenge do you think he might like to visit on your body?”
“My son no more,” WolfStar rasped. “If ever he was.”
StarLaughter’s face tightened, and she jerked the chain tight.
WolfStar choked, and fell over, his hands tight about the collar.
StarLaughter smiled sweetly.
“The Lake,” Sheol said. “We have what we need, and we have wasted enough time here.”
“Hardly a waste,” StarLaughter murmured, and jerked again at WolfStar’s chain. “For I find that I have enjoyed myself mightily.”
60
Of Salvation
“What I did to Leagh,” Drago said, “I can do for only a few more. There are potentially twenty thousand out there running wild through the Western Ranges. It would kill me to bring them all back.”
“But—” Theod said, his face tight.
“Three more,” Drago said, “can I bring back as I did Leagh. Only three.”
“You said that—” Theod started to shout.
“The others I can save,” Drago said, his own voice tenser now. He’d realised over the past two days what the effort to return Leagh back had caused him, and he knew he could never repeat that twenty thousand times. Not all at once.
And knowing that broke his heart.
“I can save them,” he repeated, “but only by moving them on.”
“Moving them on?” Zared asked carefully. He, Leagh, Theod, Faraday, Katie and Herme stood in one of the smaller chambers of the palace, a fire burning brightly and the drapes half-drawn to keep the bitterness of early spring at bay.
“Through death—” Drago said, and before he could say any more Katie finished for him.
“Into the field of flowers,” she said.
Faraday and Leagh had told all present what they’d seen during Drago’s enchantment, but even so Theod was slow to nod his head in understanding.
“Which three?” he asked.
Drago looked at Leagh and Faraday, then back to Theod. “Gwendylyr will be the first.”
Theod’s face crumpled in relief. “And then my two sons.”
“No.”
“No?”
“Theod,” Zared said quietly, but with clear warning. He stepped forward to a spot where he could intervene between the two men if need be.
“Then who else?” Theod spat.
Drago hesitated. Gwendylyr had been an easy decision to reach. With Faraday and Leagh, she would make the third in the triangle he’d need against the Demons. Drago’s three witches.
“Jannymire Goldman,” he said.
Zared’s face reflected his surprise, as did Theod’s and Herme’s.
“Goldman?” Herme said. He had kept very quiet until this point, reluctant to speak of things among those he did not truly understand.
Drago nodded, but did not explain himself. He walked over to the fire, standing before it, his hands clasped gently behind his back.
“And who is the third?” Zared asked.
“If suitable,” Drago said, speaking into the fire, “I will also bring back DareWing FullHeart.”
“If suitable?” Theod asked, his hand jerking in a curt, impatient and utterly frustrated gesture. “If suitable? Pray, what do you mean by, ‘if suitable’?”
Drago turned about, lookin
g at Faraday to answer. She was a little disconcerted. Since their clash on the roof of the palace, Faraday had been unsure of Drago, or of her reactions to him. They’d passed some small time in company since then, but never alone, and they had maintained a rigorous politeness that tore at Faraday’s soul.
But what else could she do? Did she want to live, or did she want to love?
Drago raised his eyebrows, waiting, and Faraday forced her mind back to the issue at hand. If DareWing was suitable? What did he mean? Then she remembered what Urbeth had told them, and she realised what he meant.
“We went to Gorkenfort,” she said, “and—”
“What in curses names does Gorkenfort have to do with this?” Theod yelled.
“Listen,” Zared cautioned. “And let her speak.”
“And while we were there we met with Urbeth,” Faraday continued, finally looking away from Drago back to the others. “You know of her?”
All nodded. The story of Urbeth had been one of the more puzzling of those to emerge from Axis’ battle with Gorgrael.
“She talked to us of many things, among which she passed across the secret of the Acharite bloodline.”
Faraday’s mouth twitched in secret amusement as she told them, if not the truth of the father of the Acharite race, then of their potential for enchantment, but only once they’d passed through death.
Leagh gasped, and then a beautiful smile graced her face. “No wonder I feel…” her voice trailed off. “No wonder I feel as I do,” she finished quietly, and Zared looked at her wonderingly.
“So why DareWing?” Theod asked, and all could hear the unspoken question in his voice: if Acharites are so useful, why bring the Icarii DareWing back and not one of my sons?
“Theod,” Faraday said, and stepped forward so she could take his hands in hers. “For countless generations before the Wars of the Axe, Icarii men took lovers from among Acharite women, believing their human blood would add vitality to the Icarii race. When these women bore children, the Icarii carried the babes off to raise them as full-blood Icarii.”
“Thus many Icarii carry Acharite heritage in their veins,” Drago said, “although they may not realise it. If DareWing is one of those, then he will be more than useful.”