Caelum hesitated, the nerves in his stomach flowering into full-blown nausea. But he was determined to show Zared – nay, all Tencendor – that he could captain as well as his father. Forward scouts? No, he would work it better.
“Keep the scouts back, Askam. We will ride into Kastaleon in full force. Zared does not expect us, and those guards atop the walls are all but asleep.”
“Caelum!” Askam stared aghast at him. “It is surely prudent to send in scouts first? Make sure that –”
Caelum turned from his contemplation of Kastaleon and snapped at Askam. “I know what I am doing! I can cloak us in enchantment so thick that Zared and his men will not see us. They are not expecting us, are they? That fort is as quiet as a grave. Why waste time on forward scouts?”
Askam chewed the inside of his cheek. What Caelum said was true enough, and if he could cloak them in enchantment…Askam suddenly smiled at the thought of finding Zared abed, waking to discover the tip of Askam’s sword at his throat.
“As you order, StarSon. Shall we move out immediately?”
“Wait a moment. I have to cast the enchantment.”
It sickened him even more that he must mask the approach of his units with enchantment, but if it gave them an edge…
Axis had never fought under cloak of enchantment.
Caelum thrust the thought aside. He was not his father, and surely Zared had brought sneakiness upon himself. Caelum twisted the ring about on his finger, although he did not need it to show what Song to sing for a cloak of invisibility. He had used the Song only recently and it was fresh in his mind, but the action calmed Caelum’s nerves. He ran the Song through his mind, then coldness swept over him.
The Song had required significantly more power than when he’d last sung it. Why? Caelum remembered WolfStar asking whether he’d noticed a taint in his power. What was happening? Was it just nerves that had made him expend so much more energy on the Song this morning, or was it something else? Something considerably bleaker? What?
“It is done, Askam. Move them out.”
They had moored their boats four hundred paces north of Kastaleon, hidden both by the darkness and a sharp bend in the river. Over the past hour Askam had sent troops out to surround the castle as best they could without actually being seen. Now, he sent out the order for them to move in.
He and Caelum mounted their horses and set off down the main approach road. No-one within the castle would be able to see or hear them, and there was no reason to try to be quiet. Askam dug his heels into his horse’s flanks, sending the beast skittering across the roadway.
“Peace, Askam,” Caelum said. “We will be there soon enough, and Kastaleon will soon be back under your control.”
“I want to wake Zared with the point of my sword –”
“Enough, Askam!”
Askam subsided into silence as they covered the last hundred paces before the castle. There was still no reaction from within, even though soldiers were pouring in through the gate. Askam smiled a little at the thought of Zared’s surprise on waking at sword-point.
It would be very, very good finally to see Zared fail at something.
Askam wondered if Caelum would strip Zared of his lands for his misdeeds. Would he then receive some? What? Askam wondered…Severin…the gem mines? All his debts could be solved with one signature if he got the gem mines.
The next moment gem mines were forgotten as they clattered across the bridge and into the castle. Askam shouted orders to his captains, then he and Caelum dismounted.
“It’s too quiet,” Caelum said, looking about. “Even with this enchantment someone should have noticed something…bumped into one of us, for Stars’ sake! Askam…shouldn’t there be more guards about?”
Before Askam could answer, one of their men ran from the stables. “StarSon! The stables are empty!”
An awful premonition gripped Caelum. What should he do? No horses…did that mean…?
“Check the barracks!” he called, and reached for his horse again. Should he mount? What should he order? What would his father have done?
There was a faint shout from atop the walls. “Dummies, StarSon! There are no men up here!”
Caelum shot Askam a wild look. What…?
“The barracks are empty, StarSon!”
“They’ve gone!” Askam cried, unnecessarily.
“Well, at least you have your castle back,” Caelum murmured, trying to think it through. Should they secure the castle or ride after Zared? But which way had he gone? How long had he been gone? Caelum cursed. Why hadn’t he brought any Icarii with him? Axis would never have made this mistake.
“Perhaps –” he began, and then the world exploded about them.
For minutes all he knew was a dreadful shock. He was blown off his feet, his horse beside him. About him were screams and grunts, choking smoke, shrapnel flying through the air, a stifling heat that went on and on and on, and the smell of charcoal and burned flesh.
Caelum rolled onto his side and gagged. The stench of burning meat filled his entire body and he couldn’t get it out. Screams cut through his mind, tore into his soul. Gods! What was going on? Why wouldn’t the screamers shut up?
A hand grasped his shoulder and rolled him over. “StarSon? Are you alright? Oh, praise the StarMan, you live! Get up, my Lord, you have to get up…”
Caelum allowed himself to be dragged to his feet. Every muscle felt torn, every bone broken, but he found he could walk easily enough. Perhaps he wasn’t close to death, after all.
The hand dragged him forward. Caelum hoped that whoever the hand belonged to knew where he was going, because Caelum could not see a pace in front of him in this red, smoke-filled hell. He bent over and choked again, and found his eyes not a handspan from a corpse that had literally been blown apart. There was red flesh and white bone fragments, but nothing else recognisable.
His stomach roiled again, and the hand now grasped his hair and hauled him forward.
They stumbled through the gate – or what was left of it – and fell head-first into the moat.
The bridge had gone.
The icy shock of the water brought Caelum to his senses as nothing else could have done. He spluttered and fought his way to the surface, blinking the water out of his eyes. Beside him a foot soldier likewise spluttered – it must have been this man who dragged him out of the inferno – and Caelum looked back to the castle.
What he saw appalled him. The castle had been blown apart. The outer walls had great holes rent in them through which smoke and flames now poured. The Keep no longer existed – there was only blackness where once that had stood. Men and horses, some of them on fire, careened out of the smoke and flames and fell into the water.
“Stars!” Caelum whispered, unable to come to terms with what he saw. “Oh…Stars!”
Eight hundred paces away on a small hill, Theod stared, appalled, at the carnage. How had Caelum ridden into the castle with his entire force without been seen?
Enchantment, no doubt.
But why hadn’t he sent in forward scouts first? Every war leader was trained to do that. No-one rode blindly with their full force into an unknown situation.
The charges had been rigged so that they would be set off when the first scout reached the cellars. Yes, a few men would be killed, but the main object had been to destroy the castle and all river boats moored beside it. Caelum would be delayed several days until he could get more boats.
But the man had taken his entire force inside!
Neither Theod nor Zared had foreseen – even imagined – such stupidity. Or such carnage.
How many dead? Theod sat behind his covering bush and gaped, trying to come to terms with the disaster.
His man-at-arms finally found his voice. “Gods, my Lord! What…what did you pack into those cellars?”
Theod swallowed and managed to speak. “Wood, nails, pottery, fire powder, eighty-five barrels of resin cracked and left to spread…and sixty-nine fat pigs. It w
as the pork fat that gave the explosion such potency.”
“But,” the man stumbled, “why did Caelum lead his entire force in? Why didn’t he send scouts in first?”
“As any competent captain would have done,” Theod said grimly. “Come on, man. We’ve got to get out of here. Zared needs to know what’s happened.”
He grabbed the man’s sleeve, and they both ran for their horses.
Caelum eventually found the strength to swim for the shore, where for an hour he sat shivering and watching the sun rise over the devastation. Survivors slowly stumbled from the castle, fell into the moat, and swam to shore. A few score, perhaps, no more. There had been five hundred men still outside the castle when it had exploded. Some of those had died from rocks and shrapnel catapulted out of the inferno, but most had survived. That left him, what? Six hundred out of the five thousand he’d brought sailing down here.
Six hundred.
His first military action, and he had lost ninety per cent of his command.
And not one kill for it.
Even Gorgrael and his enchantments, even the Gryphon falling out of the sky, had not been able to inflict such calamity on Axis.
And yet Caelum had lost ninety per cent of his command to a meagre force of humans!
He rose unsteadily to his feet and walked slowly among the groups of men lying on the grass. Most were injured to some degree, some horrendously so, and Caelum knew they would not live. Here and there he stopped and stared, the men he looked at staring back, but he said nothing and eventually he walked on.
Damn Zared to eternal fire!
At one group he stopped, then dropped to his knees. “Askam? Askam?”
His friend lay unconscious in a pool of blood. One of his men sat by him.
“He lives, StarSon. Just.”
Caelum nodded dumbly. That Askam lived at all amazed him. His left arm had been blown completely off.
45
The Enemy
He lay in bed, trying to find his courage. The Questors had used him for two leaps, each more painful than the last, if that were possible. And today, another one.
Why did they cause him so much pain? StarLaughter murmured in her sleep by his side, and turned over. Drago glanced at her. She slept peacefully enough, but she did not have to endure…
Although StarLaughter had, she assured him last night. She and all the children WolfStar had cast to their deaths had been used in this way.
“Me more than most,” she’d murmured comfortingly to Drago last night, “for I was more powerful and more highly trained than any of the children.”
“But they stopped using you…”
“A long time ago, my love.”
“Why?”
“Eventually our life force lost its potency. You are so useful because your life force is still so strong. You are only recently come through the Star Gate.”
Drago thought briefly about the baby. He was surely evidence that one’s life force ebbed considerably after four thousand years beyond the Star Gate.
“The Questors find it so easy to follow your trail back,” StarLaughter said, and then she paused and smiled at him. “We are so close, my love. Three or four more leaps and we shall be at the threshold of the Star Gate.”
Three or four more leaps. “Will you survive?” Raspu had asked. Drago didn’t know. He didn’t know if he could endure the pain.
“They’re draining me of all my power,” Drago said. “Is all my potential as an Enchanter being burned up? Am I being burned up?”
“Hush, lover,” StarLaughter whispered, holding him tight. “They will not drain you completely. They use only a small portion of your potential. When we tumble back through the Star Gate, your blood order will be reversed and you will come into your full potential as an Icarii Enchanter. The Questors have promised, and they will hold by that promise.”
“Are you sure?”
“Very sure. Why would the Questors lie to you?”
“I don’t know,” Drago said slowly.
“Then trust them.”
The Questors were waiting for them in their circular chamber. Outside shone a world of pure gold, the Hawkchilds spinning about the trees in an agitated cloud, whispering, whispering, whispering.
“Quick!” Sheol said, her voice brusque. “The interstellar winds are propitious for a giant leap. If we manage this, we may only have to do two more leaps instead of three.”
Sheol and Barzula thrust Drago onto the couch, and then all the Questors were crowding about, their hands heavy on his head and shoulders.
Mot smiled benevolently. “This won’t hurt –”
“Much,” finished Rox, and all five Questors laughed, then bit deep into Drago’s soul, deeper than they’d ever gone before.
Pain seared through him. He arched his back in a silent agony – and felt some part of him dying, burning as though caught in a great conflagration. He’d never felt this so strongly before, but he knew what it was. The Questors were destroying his power. They had lied to him.
They were destroying him.
He screamed.
They leaped.
Into a world where there was no clear definition between ground and sky, where light and rain melded as one, where there was no colour save grey, no joy, no life, no ease of mind. The children whispered in a grey shadow through the trees – now petrified stone in this greyest of worlds – and StarLaughter sat and crooned to her undead child. The Questors laughed and spoke words of praise and comfort to Drago, and he outwardly let himself be comforted and reassured that yes, they did love and need him and no, they were not engaged in bleeding him to a useless hulk.
DragonStar SunSoar, Icarii Enchanter, would live again, they cried – and then they all laughed. They howled with laughter, and Drago stumbled away from them, deep into the forest of petrified stone, where he sank down against a tree and put his head in his hands.
Eventually he sat up and idly fingered the contents of his sack. The coins felt comforting, and Drago let his mind go blank as he sat there on that alien world, watching with unseeing eyes as the strange children leapt and cried amid the fossilised wood, and as StarLaughter sat smiling with the Questors, jamming her useless nipple yet again into the child’s mouth.
And Drago slipped into waking dream.
He dreamed of the hunt, and he felt the thrill of power surge through him. The forest slid by amid the thunder of hooves, and the hunters whooped with joy, sensing their quarry near. The children – the Hawkchilds – had been loosed and were swooping through the forest. The prey was frantic. Who? Drago wondered. Who?
The hunt surged forward.
Yes, everything would be alright. The Questors did not lie to him. They would not drain him completely, and his Icarii powers would be restored when they leaped through the Star Gate.
And then the entire perspective of the dream changed. Suddenly Drago found himself running through the forest. His heart was pounding, his legs were trembling with fatigue, cold sweat bathed his face and body. His breath rasped through his chest and throat – he couldn’t breathe at all! Trees loomed to either side, closing in on him, tightening about him.
Behind him a clarion sounded. Shrieks of joy reached out to him. The hunters were closer! There was a rustling and roaring in the trees – the Hawkchilds had spotted him!
Drago fell into thorn bushes and then scrambled out, blood pouring from a dozen deep cuts to his face and arms.
On the forest path behind him galloped a great black horse with an even darker rider. His armour absorbed light, but the point of his lance reflected it – it was a beam of light, coming straight for Drago’s chest.
He stumbled, and then fell.
He twisted onto his back, trying to scrabble away, but the horseman had reined his beast to a halt before him and Drago felt the lance in the centre of his chest.
With every breath he felt the point slide in deeper.
The pain was horrific.
“Who are you?” he scre
amed.
“I am DragonStar, come back from death,” replied the horseman, “and I hunt the Enemy.”
And he leaned his entire weight on the lance.
Drago lurched into consciousness, his breath rasping into his chest in preparation for a scream.
But it never came. He managed to control it, but he sat there for a very long time, remembering the feel of that lance as it had sliced through his lungs and heart.
46
The TimeKeepers
“There is trouble in Tencendor,” Axis fretted, rubbing his hands before the fire. “I can feel it. Caelum…Caelum has encountered trouble.”
“I, too, can feel it,” Azhure said, and shook out her thick black hair, letting it stream out in the wind that ran down the Icebear Coast.
There had been disturbances recently, disturbances they had felt in the very fibre of their beings. In their power.
With nothing else to blame it on, they thought it a product of the disharmony within Tencendor.
“But,” Azhure glanced at Axis, “we can do nothing. Tencendor is Caelum’s to do with as he will. Leave it, Axis, he will manage.”
Across the fire Adamon nodded. “Leave it, Axis.”
Axis sighed. “Yes. I will leave it.” He smiled wanly and looked about the group of Star Gods. “Did you have as much trouble leaving your mortal concerns behind?”
Flulia laughed. “Oh, my! I remember Adamon had to snatch me from my old laundry. I could not bear the way the new laundress starched the sheets.”
Adamon smiled. “I told her that a god had no business amid the washing. Flulia became quite angry, as I recall. She actually stamped her foot.”
Everyone laughed, and Pors leaned forward. “I chased the brown-legged frogs of Bogle Marsh through my dreams for a thousand years after I achieved my place with Adamon and Xanon. I missed them desperately. What you and Azhure are going through, Axis, is nothing unusual.”