“But this Acharite blood must be thin indeed by now,” Zared said.
“Even the hint of its memory will be enough,” Drago replied.
“But my sons…” Theod said helplessly, and Faraday’s heart almost broke. She understood why Drago had chosen as he had, but the knowing could not lessen Theod’s grief. She could not look him in the eye, and dropped her face.
Katie pushed between Faraday and Theod, and took one of the man’s hands.
“Sir Duke,” she said in a clear piping voice, shaking his hand so that he would look down into her face. “Trust in Drago. Your sons will be well.”
Theod’s face twisted, and he turned it away. “My sons will die,” he said, his voice thick with emotion, “and I will mourn them all the days of my life.”
Katie’s hands tightened. “You will be too busy laughing with them to mourn them,” she said. “Wait.”
“We will go once dusk has passed,” Drago said, “and the night is clean and peaceful.”
The afternoon was spent either resting or pacing, depending on the temperament of each who waited. Zared sat a long hour at Leagh’s bedside, watching her rest, until he could stand it no longer and got to his feet and wandered about the room, straightening that which did not need to be straightened, and neatening the already neat.
He did not like it that Leagh should go with them, however magically easy the journey that Drago might procure for them. She was still emaciated and physically drained from her ordeal, and her fatigue was doubled by the fact that her body sent what little vitality it had to spare into the baby she harboured.
And Zared did not want her to face any risk. He had lost Isabeau through his lack of foresight—through lack of good sense, dammit!—and he’d all but lost Leagh the same way, and the gods must be crazy if they thought he might be prepared to risk Leagh again.
But he had little choice, did he? Drago was insistent that Leagh come with them.
Ah! The tension and worry was almost too much, and Zared determined to find Drago and insist that Leagh stay in Carlon. What could she do? Faraday would be there for whatever magical assistance Drago might need.
Checking to make sure Leagh still slept peacefully, Zared slipped quietly from the room and went to find Drago.
He found him, eventually, on the parapets. It was late afternoon, the dusk only an hour away but still currently safe enough to step into the open.
Drago stood at the far north-eastern parapet, resting his chin on his folded arms on the chest-high stone, staring out at the mass of animals that crowded against the walls. He had his copper hair neatly tied in a tail at the nape of his neck, and was wearing light-coloured breeches, calf-high close-fitting leather boots and a white linen shirt. He had his staff with him, but the sack was nowhere to be seen. Zared thought Drago looked far more elegant than he’d seen him in a long time…and more like Axis than Zared felt either Drago or his father would care to admit.
“Some sword practice, nephew?” Zared asked as he walked quietly up behind Drago, and was rewarded as Drago jumped.
Zared grinned. “Your new-found enchantments have not deepened your hearing, then?”
Drago returned the grin. “I was lost in thought.”
Then his grin faded, and he looked back at the creatures spreading like a bleak wave of sin beyond Carlon’s walls. “If I had ever imagined this horror…” he said softly.
“Then what?” Zared joined him in studying the force that swelled against the walls. “What? You would never have gone through the Star Gate? Drago, Fate has us all twisted in its relentless talons. If WolfStar hadn’t thrown those children through, if the Enemy hadn’t crashed in this land in the first instance…well, what chance that we would be here at all?”
Drago’s eyes twinkled. If the Enemy hadn’t crashed here, what chance that we would be here? None! Not if Noah hadn’t seduced Urbeth into his bed!
But he said nothing, and let Zared continue.
Zared swivelled from the view and leaned on the parapet with one elbow, studying Drago’s now unreadable face. “Spend no time bemoaning the past, or the fates that brought us to this moment, but instead think of the Tencendor that awaits.”
Drago raised one eyebrow slightly. “I did not realise you were the philosopher, Zared. Tell me, what is this Tencendor that awaits?”
Zared breathed deeply. “A Tencendor free of everything, dammit, but its own destiny. No prophecies, no long-buried Enemies, no Demons hurtling through space to tear it apart. Give Tencendor back the right to control its own destiny, Drago, and I swear that you will take your rightful place at its helm.”
“Never say that!” Drago straightened, his violet eyes snapping with anger. “Once I have helped right the wrong that I helped perpetuate then I do not want leadership of anything save my own life and destiny. I do not want to snatch at a crown, Zared!”
Zared looked at Drago carefully, ignoring the jibe. “And if not you, Drago, then who? Neither Axis nor Azhure retain the right to lead the land and its peoples forward. And Caelum…well…” He paused. “Who? Who?”
A muscle twitched in Drago’s jaw, then his face relaxed. “We are indeed confident of victory, Zared, if here we stand fighting over who wants the glory afterwards.”
Zared’s own mouth twitched in a smile. “I thought we were fighting over who did not want it!”
Drago laughed softly, then looked back over the creatures which thronged the plains beyond Carlon. “I do not like this, my friend.”
“They increase by the day. The guards used to try and count them once a day, but they gave that up a long time ago. Now they just estimate the depth of the swarm about Carlon’s walls.”
“And?”
“And in the past week it has more than doubled,” Zared said softly. “I think every creature—and every lost Acharite—that has been infected has found its way to Carlon.”
To the Grail, and the Grail Lord, Drago thought, but did not speak it. “Zared…when did Theod arrive back?”
“Theod? The same night you and Faraday—and your menagerie—arrived.”
“But how?” Drago waved a hand to the swarms beating against the walls. “How? I gained the impression he’d come through alone…”
“He had. And Herme and myself had the same suspicions you perhaps entertain—”
Drago shook his head. “His mind is his own, even if it is over-burdened with grief.”
“Well…Theod told us a remarkable story that, had it not been corroborated by several of the guards, I would find it hard to credit. He said that after he’d lost Gwendylyr, as the others, in the Western Ranges, a fabulous white stallion with a mane and tail of angry stars had appeared before him.”
Drago stared, then smiled thoughtfully as he realised who the horse must be.
Zared only thought the smile a sign of scepticism. “Drago, this is true…I believe Theod!”
“Go on, uncle. I am not questioning you.”
“Well…” Zared repeated the tale Theod had told him. “When the horse approached the ranks of the creatures outside, stars fell from his mane, burning a path before and about himself. The creatures howled and clamoured, but they could not approach the horse. And so this star stallion carried Theod to the gates.”
“Star stallion,” Drago repeated to himself. “How appropriate.”
He lifted his voice. “And where is this stallion now?”
Zared shrugged his shoulders. “No-one knows. He vanished the moment Theod dropped from his back.”
“North.” Drago stared in that direction, then looked back to the closer problem of the hordes snapping and howling outside the walls.
“Apart from the obvious dangers to those who venture beyond the gates,” he said, “have the creatures posed any other threat?”
Zared took his time in answering, and when he finally answered his voice was tinged with deep disquiet. “Look at them.”
He waved his hand out, and almost as if the swarm of creatures had heard him, t
hey screeched and screamed and howled, stamping a million feet from the tiny to the massive on the cold-baked earth.
Zared flinched. “Look at them, hear them. There are oxen and calves, vetches and ermine, cats and rats, snakes and creeping lice. Everything that once inhabited this land, that walked, crawled and hopped, has found its way here. I dread the moment that some of them find even the tiniest crack in the city’s defences. Gods, Drago! When are you going to get us to this Sanctuary?” Suddenly all thought of leaving Leagh safe behind in Carlon fled Zared’s mind. Safety in Carlon? It was an illusory thing. Those creatures outside were waiting for something, and Zared did not want to be here when that something arrived.
“When we come back from the Western Ranges,” Drago said. “Believe me, that needs to be attended first.”
Zared stared at Drago. “You need Gwendylyr and Leagh and Faraday—”
“And Goldman and DareWing, if useful. Yes. Without them few people here would have a chance to get through. There are what…”
“Over two hundred thousand.”
“Over two hundred thousand to get across to Spiredore, and I do not think Carlon has the fleet to ferry them over the Lake…do you?”
There was a silence between them for a while.
“And then,” Drago said softly, peering yet further into the distance, “there must be still more trapped in the forbidding wilds of Tencendor. What of those in Skarabost? And in your native Ichtar? And Nor, and Tarantaise?”
“You cannot surely hope to retrieve everyone?” Zared said.
“I must,” Drago replied, and turned his eyes back to Zared. “I must! If I leave even one soul that I could have saved to feed the appetites of the Demons, how then can I be saved?”
Caelum leaned back against the wind and laughed. Urbeth’s eyes gleamed.
“And then…then, oh two-legged one, the seal said to me—”
“No! No!” Caelum said. “I do not want to hear what the poor seal said to try and save its life. No doubt it didn’t succeed.”
Urbeth grinned. “You are right. I sank my teeth into its back halfway through its pleading. It was boring me.”
Caelum wiped his eyes, still chuckling. He had never thought to be so amused by a story of a seal’s death, but the way Urbeth told it…
They had sat here swapping tales for what seemed like months—or was it years? Caelum had no way of gauging the time. There was only snow and cold that somehow did not perturb him, and the leap and twist of flame and words.
He remembered some vague wish he’d had as an infant to spend months wandering the northern wastes and talking with Urbeth, but as he’d grown he’d never found the time or the energy.
Now he had the time. He and Urbeth had shared not only tales, but also knowledge. Urbeth had talked to him about the craft and the Survivor. He told her of his sins. She’d shared her own sorrow at what she’d not done, and her joy at what she’d thought not to do, but had anyway. He’d hardly believed it when, halfway through one of her soliloquies, he’d realised her true identity.
Stars! She’d seen the look in his eye, and had nodded briefly, but that was the only concession either she or he had made to her ancient role as Mother of Races.
Mostly, Caelum had simply rediscovered the joy in life—something he realised he’d lost a long, long time ago.
“Ah,” said Urbeth, looking over Caelum’s shoulder at something approaching from the south.
He twisted about, expecting to see Drago, but all he saw were what he first thought looked like two small white donkeys, then gradually materialised into two great icebears, almost as large as Urbeth herself.
“My daughters,” Urbeth said. “I would wager they have a tale or two to add to the warmth of this fire.”
61
The Bloodied Rose Wind
“Well?” Zenith asked anxiously, staring at StarDrifter. There was peace between them, although as yet neither was at ease with that peace. Despite StarDrifter’s unconditional love, and his immense patience in a situation where he’d never before had to be patient, Zenith still felt guilty. As for StarDrifter, he felt as if Zenith might flinch every time he so much as glanced at her.
“They are there,” he said quietly. He looked beyond the screen of trees and across the Lake.
“Where? I cannot see them!”
StarDrifter hesitated, then pointed. “There. Between the holyoak and the whalebone tree. Do you see?”
She stared, then nodded.
“And you, Isfrael?”
Isfrael stood with them, his entire body rigid with fury. News had been brought to him but an hour previously of the corpses found in the glade where WolfStar had been kept. Isfrael did not know if the Enchanter had gone with the Demons willingly, or if he had been forced—more blood found on the ground suggested that more force had been required than persuasion—but Isfrael did not care about the niceties of the difference. WolfStar was now with the Demons, as was that half-dead but bewitched she-creature he had carried about with him, and that, as well as the deaths of three good men, was all that mattered.
“And does the sight make you reconsider Drago’s plea that you evacuate your people into Sanctuary?” StarDrifter asked. StarDrifter could not understand Isfrael. The Mage-King accepted that Drago was the StarSon, yet stubbornly resisted any suggestion that he send the Avar into safety.
Isfrael did not reply, not even blinking as he stared at the dim dusk-cloaked forms on their black creatures in the distance.
“Your magic could not stop them, Isfrael.” StarDrifter’s voice had hardened. “They discarded it as if it were a wisp of a child’s imagination. Would you condemn the Avar to death for the sake of your pride?”
“The forests—” Isfrael began.
“The forests will be burned to the ground when Qeteb rises,” StarDrifter hissed. “I trust that you will enjoy watching as your people roast for your stupidity!”
Isfrael finally turned to his grandfather. “I know what is best for my people,” he said. “Cease your useless interfering!”
StarDrifter’s mouth hardened into a thin line. Curse Isfrael! He was as stubborn—and as blind—as a braindamaged mule.
Beside them, Zenith’s breath jerked in her throat. Both StarDrifter and Isfrael stared at her, then turned to see where she looked.
“Oh dear sweet gods of creation,” Zenith whispered. “It is WolfStar! What have they done to him!”
StarDrifter’s eyes jerked momentarily to Zenith’s face. What was that emotion in her voice? Horror? Or sympathy? Then he looked back to the scene before him.
The Demons advanced from treeline to water’s edge with more than usual circumspection. There was something odd, something different, in this place, but they could not smell it or taste it or see it or hear it, and that made them very, very cautious.
Was there another trap of the Enemy’s here? Another bridge to snatch at one of them?
Their jewel-bright eyes glowed, searching the landscape. The Demons studied the terrain carefully, slowly, but their eyes did not linger when they passed over the line of trees that Drago had created to screen the Icarii evacuation.
Slightly to one side of them, and closer to the hidden entrance to Sanctuary, StarLaughter stood with WolfStar still collared and chained to her hand. The Enchanter crouched, as motionless as StarLaughter’s still occasionally cruel hand would allow, for every movement ripped agony through him. He knew he’d been cruelly injured by Raspu’s rape; not only the rape itself, but whatever essence the Demon had spurted into his body felt like it was eating away at his entrails, and corroding his lungs.
Even breathing was torment.
WolfStar wondered if he would survive whatever Mot or Barzula chose to do to him, but he wondered more whether Tencendor would survive what the Demons did with Niah. Was there a chance he could yet get her away from them?
Just behind StarLaughter and WolfStar, completely motionless and vacant, stood the boy and girl. Both were naked, their pale, gleam
ing pubescent bodies empty vessels for whatever would fill them here, and StarLaughter, in either cruel jest or hopeful anticipation, had put them hand in hand.
“Your son and your lover,” she said to WolfStar when she’d done it. “Will you allow your son the pleasure of your lover? Will you smile indulgently when you watch them couple?”
WolfStar had turned away, refusing to respond to her taunts.
Now Zenith dragged her eyes away from WolfStar’s battered body to the girl beyond him. “Gods! It’s Niah!” she cried. “Oh dear gods, it’s Niah!”
Her hands were to her cheeks, her eyes huge. Everything about the scene before her filled her with horror. Whether the sight of the Demons, or the bloodied and fouled WolfStar, or the horrible, horrible sight of Niah resurrected when Zenith had been sure that she had disposed of her once and for all, Zenith could not cope with it all at once, and she turned away, leaning on a tree for support.
As it was with Zenith, so with StarDrifter and Isfrael, although they did not have the same depth of revulsion at the sight of Niah as she’d had.
“That must be WolfStar’s son,” Isfrael eventually said quietly, inclining his head towards the boy.
“Qeteb half-reborn,” said StarDrifter, also taking pains to keep his voice low, although it was apparent the enchantment shielded them from the Demon’s eyes and ears. He glanced behind him. The lines of the Icarii were thinning now. In the past few days most had managed to find their way down to Sanctuary, and it was only the few who’d had to come from outlying areas that were now scurrying down the stairwell as fast as they could go.
He turned back to watch the Demons.
“How do we go down?” StarLaughter asked. She was impatient to see her son gain a little more of Qeteb’s life. The sooner he could wreak his own revenge on his father the better. And the merrier! StarLaughter spared a glance in WolfStar’s direction. She hoped the Enchanter would survive to endure his full-grown son’s hatred.
Sheol cut back on her temper. “We have told you before we do not go down again. From this point what we need comes up.”