It hurt.
At no time did he lose consciousness. He sat, awake and aware, through the entire ordeal.
He wished for death. Nothing would be sweeter than death. Sweet, blissful, total annihilation.
He realised it was over when he became aware that the five Questors were back in their semi-circle of chairs, and StarLaughter sat beside him. She stared at him curiously, her breast bared, its nipple hanging over the baby’s unresponsive mouth.
He stared back at the Questors, unable to form any words, but wanting to know why…why had they done that?
“We have leapfrogged closer to the Star Gate,” Sheol said, her voice echoing as if it came from behind an ice wall. “Look!” And she threw out a hand at the world beyond the pillars.
Slowly, every movement agony, Drago looked to where she pointed. At first he thought nothing had changed, but then he realised that the world beyond had altered. The trees were still there, but now they were so stunted they were barely shrubs. Now no mown lawns spread between them, but red, cracked desert. Now a silvery-white sky hung over them, and two giant red suns ebbed low on the horizon.
Pain throbbed through him, and Drago fought to remain conscious.
“Five more leaps and we will be there,” Raspu said conversationally. “Do you think you will survive?”
38
Zenith Lost
StarDrifter walked slowly up the rise toward the Temple of the Stars, every step heavy with sadness. Not only for Zenith’s problems, but also for RiverStar. News had reached him from visiting Icarii about her murder, and of Drago’s involvement. And now apparently Drago had disappeared. Two granddaughters lost, and a grandson fled. What was happening to his family? StarDrifter wished his power could stretch as far as Sigholt so that he could see down its secretive corridors.
The Temple rose into the morning sky, a great violet beacon that speared into the clouds. Stars danced in its midst, but StarDrifter found little even in that beauty to comfort him these days.
She stood there, hands folded before her, her wings folded less than gracefully against her back, staring into the beacon.
“I wish I could step in there,” she said, and sighed.
“No-one save Enchanters can enter the Temple,” StarDrifter said unnecessarily. But Zenith could have entered. His granddaughter could have entered.
Niah had apparently lost whatever powers Zenith had enjoyed.
StarDrifter shivered. Maybe it was catching. Over the past few days he’d felt as though some of his power had slipped away, as well. It was more than perturbing.
Niah turned and smiled at him. “Oh, StarDrifter, it is enough that I am alive to see it. When I was First here it seemed an impossibility that the Icarii would ever return, or that the Star Gods would walk among us again. But here I am, and I am alive to see it, after all.”
StarDrifter averted his eyes. She had been here five weeks, and in that time Zenith had not said a word, nor had StarDrifter seen her in an expression, or a single movement. Niah was in undisputed control of this body and this mind.
She said that she had always been Zenith, and Zenith her. That all that had happened was that “Zenith” had realised her true identity.
But StarDrifter did not believe that. He saw before him a completely different woman, different in movement, expression, and personality. If Zenith had been Niah all this time, then he should not have seen this massive change.
So if this entity occupying Zenith’s body was not Zenith, then where was Zenith?
Niah walked about the Temple, beckoning StarDrifter to follow, and he somewhat reluctantly did so. In normal circumstances he knew he would have liked this woman, but not now. Not now she had destroyed or trapped his granddaughter.
Damn WolfStar to eternal night, StarDrifter thought, his expression remaining neutral, and damn Azhure with him for encouraging his obsession with Niah. Damn her for damning her own daughter.
Niah led him about the Temple and then down the grassy slope towards the southern cliffs. She stopped some twenty paces from them, adjusting her wings awkwardly in the stiff breeze.
“Lift them out for balance, as I have,” StarDrifter said, and Niah glanced at his white wings extended part-way out behind him.
“I wish they would go away,” she said. “I hate them. I cannot adjust to them.”
And no doubt Zenith also finds it hard to adjust to whatever torment she has been subjected to, StarDrifter thought.
Without thinking he took one of Niah’s wings in his hand, intending to lift it into position for her.
“Don’t you dare touch me!” she hissed and spun away, almost overbalancing with the weight of her wings.
“I was only trying to help,” StarDrifter said, keeping his voice even.
“I am sorry,” Niah said stiffly. “It was concern for my baby only that made me speak so.”
Her hands rested on her belly, and StarDrifter involuntarily glanced down at them. And curse that baby that had been got on Zenith’s unwilling body.
StarDrifter knew Niah encouraged WolfStar back into her bed night after night. A feeling, a presentiment whenever the renegade Enchanter was with her, the expression on Niah’s face in the morning, all told him that WolfStar visited her whenever he could.
StarDrifter felt sickened by it, but there was little he could do. He was powerless in the face of WolfStar’s own ability, and he could hardly lock Niah up for taking a lover to her bed.
“I dreamed last night,” Niah said unexpectedly after a few minutes’ silence. She was staring out to sea, the wind whipping her black hair to tangle in the upper feathers of her wings.
“Yes?”
“I dreamed that I was trapped in a small chamber underground, so restricted I could not stretch my wings, could not fly. I called and screamed for help, but no-one heard.”
She shivered. “No-one heard.”
Niah turned her head and smiled at StarDrifter. “I must have been remembering when I was locked in death, don’t you think? Awaiting rebirth. I was pleased when I awoke.”
No, StarDrifter thought, that was Zenith calling for help, and you woke and trapped her into yet more darkness.
“Ah.” Niah wrapped her arms about herself. “This breeze has grown cool. I shall go back to my quarters, I think, and perhaps find one of the priestesses to talk to.”
“Do you resent not being First any longer?” StarDrifter asked suddenly.
Niah tipped her head back and laughed. “Oh no! I shall use this life for other purposes, methinks.”
And then she was gone, and StarDrifter was left to watch her walk towards the Temple with eyes and heart smouldering with loss and resentment.
He flew, for Zenith’s sake as much as his own. He lifted off the cliffs and soared sunward on the thermal rising from the combined heat of island and temple beacon.
It was only there, high in the sky with just the seagulls and the sun to observe, that he let himself cry. He had lost a granddaughter, yet still her body was paraded before him, used, to remind him every moment of his loss. She had been stolen, and abused in that stealing.
He soared higher and higher, until the island became only a speck far below him. Perhaps it was time to leave the island, find a different purpose in life. He could not bear staying to watch Niah give birth (and to what? An Enchanter? Surely, if WolfStar fathered it, and if Zenith’s Enchanter powers were latent in her body), or to watch WolfStar himself croon over the baby.
No, he should leave. Perhaps stay with FreeFall and EvenSong for a while in the Minaret Peaks. But that would be a useless life, and here at least he had some use.
I have failed her, he thought. I have failed Zenith. I should have been able to help her.
Slowly he spiralled downwards, thinking only to secrete himself in his room for reflection, when he swept over the northern cliff face of the Mount. A cart had dropped off a visitor at the foot of the steps and she was now climbing upwards.
Impelled by curiosity more than anything else, StarDr
ifter made another pass over the steps – and almost fell out of the sky in surprise.
Faraday stood there waving at him.
She climbed to the top and StarDrifter alighted before her, sweeping her into a great hug.
“StarDrifter!” Faraday laughed breathlessly, and pulled herself out of his grasp. “Whatever is it?”
She sobered as she saw the expression on StarDrifter’s face. “What’s wrong?”
He took a great, sobbing breath. “I’ve lost my granddaughter.”
They shared tales in StarDrifter’s quarters, Faraday sitting close to the Enchanter, holding his hand, comforting him.
“Is she lost or is she gone?” she asked eventually.
StarDrifter told her of Niah’s dream. “I have to believe she is still there, Faraday.”
Faraday smiled and patted StarDrifter’s hand. “Well, if Zenith is lost we shall just have to find her again.”
39
The Maze
SpikeFeather moored his boat to the dusty grey rock and studied the city before him. WingRidge had drawn a plan of the waterways, directing him to this cavern.
“Find a way down,” WingRidge had said, and then remained obstinately silent.
What is it about the Icarii race, SpikeFeather thought irritably, that so predisposes us to mysteries? No doubt WingRidge thought there was value in making SpikeFeather toil in finding his way to this forgotten Maze, but SpikeFeather thought WingRidge could just as easily have told him directly.
He stood in one of the largest caverns in the waterways. It soared high above his head, so high SpikeFeather could not see its roof in this dimness, and extended so far back that SpikeFeather was sure he could fly for an entire day and not reach its limits. Most of the cavern was taken up with an ancient city so old that the stone of walls and pavement had bleached into a colourless grey. Cracks webbed their way through wall and road alike, and rock dust lay thick over every flat surface and clung in damp draperies to the walls. The buildings were massive, fourteen, fifteen levels high, SpikeFeather guessed, and each level spacious enough to plant a field of grain in. Doors of petrified wood hung at odd angles, shutters lay in piles beneath windows and littered the roadways.
It was a place, not of death, but of nothingness. People (who?) had once lived, loved, laughed and died here. But there was nothing left. Nothing to remember them by save these memory-less buildings. The entire purpose of their existence had been lost forever.
SpikeFeather shook himself out of his maudlin thoughts. He reached into the boat and drew out a dry brand – Orr had insisted he always carry a torch with him in case he found the need to explore the caverns. Well, now SpikeFeather had the need. He lit the brand and, carrying it high, walked into the city.
Down, WingRidge had said, so SpikeFeather walked slowly through the streets, looking for an entrance to a cellar, or steps leading down…something. But no matter how hard he looked, and how many buildings he explored, he found no trapdoors or stairwells.
Down. But how? Only the need to find Orr and to explain his terror kept SpikeFeather looking even when tiredness began to slow his steps. He did not know how far he’d wandered through the city, or how much time had passed, when he came upon a curious symbol scratched into the pavement.
It was a diagram of a knot – a maze.
It was the same symbol that the Lake Guard wore on their tunics.
SpikeFeather squatted down and studied the symbol. It showed a stylised maze, a walled circular centre space with twists of corridors about it, eventually leading, once the dead ends had been negotiated, to an exit. SpikeFeather looked at the exit, then looked to where it pointed. There was an alleyway leading away from the main street.
SpikeFeather stood and walked down the alleyway. Some seventy paces down he found another symbol scratched into the pavement, and this time the exit from the maze pointed down a wide avenue.
SpikeFeather followed the sign until he found another symbol, and another, and then another.
He paused, and looked about. He was back in a street that he knew he’d been down hours ago – and yet there had not been a symbol here then. And look! The next indicated street was another that he’d previously explored. He realised he was retracing his steps, and the maze symbols also criss-crossed each other, so he was partly retracing the original pathway the symbols had told him to take.
SpikeFeather stood and thought. Lost? Misled? Or something else?
He remembered something Orr had taught him. The waterways formed patterns in the same way that sung music did. Were the symbols leading him in a complicated dance? Were the patterns he formed with his steps a kind of magical dance – an enchantment?
Yes, yes, that was it. The symbols were forcing him to form a pattern, and when that pattern was completed…
SpikeFeather hurried down the street indicated. Now that he knew what was happening he did not hesitate. He felt rejuvenated, excited. How much longer before he completed the pattern – the enchantment – that would show him the Maze?
As it turned out, not long. Three more symbols, three more turns, and the enchantment slipped into place.
SpikeFeather walked into a large rectangular stoneflagged market area, an area he had crossed four times already in his quest for the Maze. But this time there was something different. This time almost all the stone flagging had disappeared to make way for a massive set of stairs leading down, down, down.
“Down,” SpikeFeather whispered, and began his descent.
He climbed down the wide, winding stairwell until his legs screamed in protest. This was longer and more arduous than any of the stairwells SpikeFeather had travelled in order to reach the waterways from the Overworld. The incline of the stairwell was deceptively mild, but after hours of travelling and turning, SpikeFeather had learned to curse it.
He stopped, paused, and laughed wryly to himself. What was he doing? Had his years with Orr fuddled him so completely he’d forgotten his wings?
Still smiling ruefully, SpikeFeather spread his almostforgotten wings and spiralled down the stairwell.
In two turns he came to the end, and he wondered if he’d passed some kind of test.
There was a high corridor, extending perhaps some hundred paces before him. It was lined with columns carved with strange picture symbols that SpikeFeather glanced at but did not pause to investigate. He strode down the corridor, through the archway at its end, and stopped…stunned into complete immobility.
He stood at the lip of yet another staircase, but he could well see where this one led. Before him spread a city – but it was more than a city. It was also a maze. A labyrinth. And it was massive beyond comprehension.
There was a wall, some thirty paces high, that ran about it, but directly before SpikeFeather, at the foot of the staircase, was a gate.
SpikeFeather walked slowly down the stairs. Like everything else associated with this Maze, the gate was huge. It stood twenty paces high, and ten across. It was arched with great blocks of stone guarding twin closed doors of solid wood. There were no handles, no locks. SpikeFeather cautiously laid a hand on one of the doors and pushed.
It did not budge…but the instant that he’d laid his hand on the wood SpikeFeather had felt rather than heard a distant tinkle.
As if glass had broken.
SpikeFeather was no fool, and Orr had taught him well. He knew what that was. These gates had been warded. An enchantment had been laid over them to warn someone if they were touched.
Warn who?
Warn of what?
SpikeFeather spun about, unsure what to do. Should he run? Get out? Should he –
“Well, well. I always thought it would be Caelum who found this Maze,” said a voice, “or at the very least Axis.”
WolfStar SunSoar stepped down from the arch of the corridor. “But, no. It is SpikeFeather TrueSong. The Ferryman’s apprentice. A birdman with no business here at all. What do you do here, birdman?”
40
The Maze Ga
te’s Message
“How did you find this place?” WolfStar said, walking down the steps. “The Lake Guard drew me a diagram.”
WolfStar stopped on the last step and raised his eyebrows. “The Lake Guard? But they were ever sworn to secrecy regarding this place.”
“They are afraid that the Grail King stirs.”
“What?”
WolfStar rocked badly enough to make him almost lose his balance. Then, in a movement so fast it was a blur, he was on top of SpikeFeather, a hand buried in the cloth of his tunic, another in SpikeFeather’s hair. “What?”
“The Grail King in the Maze,” SpikeFeather forced out between teeth clenched in fear. “Qeteb. The Maze. That is all I know.”
Qeteb? he wondered amid his fear. Was that the name of the Grail King? Of whatever was trapped in the Maze?
“And how is it that you know these things, SpikeFeather TrueSong? You are an apprentice Ferryman,” WolfStar spat the phrase with unconcealed disgust, “and not even an Enchanter. You have no right to know these things, nor to be standing before the Maze itself!”
As briefly and as quickly as he could, SpikeFeather told WolfStar of the message – and the terror – Orr had passed across to him.
“I have been looking for Orr as much as the Maze, WolfStar. Do…do you think he might be in there?”
Despite WolfStar’s still fierce grip, SpikeFeather managed to tilt his head slightly towards the Maze.
“In there?” WolfStar let SpikeFeather go and the birdman relaxed. “In the Maze? No, I do not think so. He would not be able to enter. Caelum is the only one who can.”
“Caelum?”
WolfStar ignored the question. “I need to retrieve the memory of the night Orr sent you that message, SpikeFeather. Be still…this will not hurt.”
WolfStar buried his hand in SpikeFeather’s hair again, holding him still. The Enchanter initiated the Song of Recall, faltered, then recovered, and SpikeFeather felt the memory of Orr’s terror and words sear up through his mind.