Ogden gaped at Veremund. “What? I packed not a crumb of this! I thought you did!” Then he frowned into his pack. “Where did you put the napkins?”
Axis, rising from the fire laughing, had told them to stop arguing and advised the others to simply enjoy the food and not push the Sentinels on where it came from. “They will just argue with each other,” he said to Azhure and Raum, “to keep from answering you.”
Each evening after they had eaten, Axis entertained with his wonderful voice and his skill on the harp. He sang Icarii melodies for the first part of the evening, but as the night deepened Axis’ mood changed and he sang ballads and songs of Acharite extraction, making Rivkah and Azhure smile and tap their fingers in pleasure. He far surpassed any court bard Rivkah had ever heard.
Axis often asked the others to sing with him, or to sing their own songs. Rivkah and Raum both sang well, Ogden and Veremund enthusiastically, but Azhure had one of the most dreadful voices anyone had ever heard, and after one attempt at joining them in song, she had laughed and promised not to sing again.
But they did not simply sing the evenings away. For long hours into each night they talked, Axis walking soft melodies up and down the strings of his harp as he listened. Sometimes they talked of the Icarii or Avar myths and legends, sometimes of the Star Gods. Occasionally Rivkah recalled her early life amid the intrigue of the Carlon court. Ogden and Veremund, rascals that they were, told tales of the exploits of some of the early Icarii, tales of when the Icarii had first learned to fly and had sometimes fallen from the sky in tangled and embarrassing wreckages.
Late one night, early in their trek, Axis stretched out comfortably, his legs extended towards the fire, hands behind his head, his eyes on Azhure as she finished plaiting her raven hair for the night.
Azhure smiled a little uncertainly at him, then spoke to Raum. “Raum, may I ask about the Horned Ones? Are they Avar?”
Raum seemed not to mind answering Azhure’s question. “Yes. The Horned Ones were once Avar Banes. But only the strongest of the male Banes are allowed to complete the transformation to Horned Ones. It is the responsibility of the Horned Ones to act as the guardians of the Sacred Grove.”
“How do you change?” Axis asked, remembering the frightening beast of his nightmare outside the Silent Woman Woods. How could someone so apparently gentle as Raum metamorphose into such a frightening, angry creature?
Raum’s dark face was now unreadable. “There are some mysteries that I will not even tell you, Axis SunSoar. We simply…change. The change picks us, we do not pick it. When we feel the change begin, we wander the ways of the Avarinheim alone, for we no longer desire the companionship of our friends and family.”
“And no female Banes ever become Horned Ones?” Azhure asked, her thick plait hanging over her shoulder.
“No, Azhure. We do not know why. But no females walk the Sacred Groves as Horned Ones.” Raum frowned. “I think female Banes transform, but they guard their mysteries closely, and I do not know into what they transform, or where they go when they do. We each have our mysteries, Azhure, and we do not pry too deeply into them.”
As Raum spoke, Axis had sunk deeper into the memory of his dream of the Sacred Groves. “The Horned Ones haunt the trees that line the Sacred Grove, watching,” he whispered. “They drift with the power that lives among the trees.”
“How do you know that, Axis?” Raum asked.
“I travelled to the Sacred Grove once, Bane Raum, in a dream.”
To one side Ogden and Veremund nodded. They had felt this when they tested Axis in the Silent Woman Keep. The Horned Ones would not welcome the intrusion of a hated BattleAxe into their mysterious realms.
“You have?” Raum said. “How?”
“It started with a nightmare,” Axis began, sitting up again, and he told them of the night outside the Silent Woman Woods when his old nightmare had claimed him, but had turned instead into a dream of the Grove. He had stood on the cool grass, feeling the power and the eyes that moved among the encircling trees, watching with horror as the man with the magnificent, but terrifying, head of a horned stag approached. When challenged for his identity Axis had said that he was Axis Rivkahson, BattleAxe of the Seneschal, and the puzzlement that he had originally felt from the eyes in the trees turned to rage. As the Horned One neared, swinging his head from side to side with hate, Axis had screamed and woken from the dream.
“Your old nightmare?” Rivkah said after Raum had finished questioning Axis about his dream. “What do you mean?” she asked, thinking of her son, lost and alone without either of his parents and in the grip of nightmare.
Axis had never spoken of the nightmare that had haunted so much of his life to anyone, not even when his long-time lover, Embeth, Lady of Tare, had pressed him about it. Yet now he was telling this group without hesitation about the nightmare entity that had come to him throughout most of his life, the entity that claimed to be his unknown father. The dreams had stopped only after Axis escaped the fury of the head in the clouds outside the Ancient Barrows—when he’d realised that, whoever he might be, his father had loved him and could not have been the hateful voice of his nightmare.
“It was Gorgrael who came to you,” Veremund said. “Trying to break your heart and your spirit with lies about your father.”
Axis’ face flinched with the memory. “He said that my mother died giving birth to me, died cursing me for taking her life. I believed him. I had no choice, none to tell me differently.”
Appalled, Rivkah reached out and seized Axis’ hand. She finally understood what a lonely childhood he had led, thinking his mother had died hating him, not knowing who his father was. For a time both mother and son sat, holding hands, lending each other comfort.
Then Axis sighed and turned to Azhure, letting his mother’s hand go. “Azhure,” he said gently, “it is good to let go of old nightmares. Will you tell us how your back came to be so horribly scarred?”
Azhure’s reaction caused the only dark moment of the trip. Her whole body went rigid and she stared at Axis, her eyes dark and frightened. For a moment she said nothing, her mouth, trembling, then she whimpered.
“No.” It was the whimper of a terrified little girl.
“No!” she shouted, her voice edging towards hysteria. “No! Stay away!”
Rivkah quickly shifted over to her, wrapping her arms about the terrified woman.
“No!” Azhure shouted again, louder, twisting against Rivkah’s hands. “Stay away! Please! Please! I will not do it again!” She took a deep, shuddering breath. “I promise!” she screamed.
Axis leant forward, thinking to add support to that of his mother’s, but Azhure almost wrenched herself out of Rivkah’s arms in the effort to twist away from him. “No!” she screamed, patently terrified by Axis’ approach. “Forgive me!”
Veremund hastily placed his hand on Azhure’s shoulder. She stopped twisting immediately, but only very slowly did she relax. Veremund exchanged a worried glance with Ogden before looking at Axis.
“Withdraw the question,” said Veremund. “She doesn’t want to talk about it. The memory is too much for her.”
“I am sorry I have caused you pain with my question, Azhure,” Axis said, touching her cheek gently with his fingertips. “Please forgive my intrusion. I retrieve my words.”
A gentle melody spun through the air and Axis sat back as Rivkah let Azhure go.
“What is it?” Azhure asked, puzzled as she looked about to see everyone in the cave staring at her. “What did I say?”
Veremund caught Axis’ eye and nodded, pleased. Axis had learnt well from StarDrifter and MorningStar. Still, more lessons had been learned. One—never ask Azhure about her back. Two—find out what did happen, because that knowledge could well unlock some of Azhure’s secrets. But Veremund had the dreadful intuition that to unlock that particular secret without proper precautions could well cost either Azhure her life, or that of the person who tried too insistently to make her answer.
Azhure had been the only one to sleep well that night, and Axis had lain awake for many hours, watching her gently breathing. Wondering.
Four days out from Talon Spike Axis abruptly stopped on the path, his face tight with concentration. Then he smiled, laughed, and called ahead to Raum.
“Raum! I hear her! I hear her! She sings beautifully!”
Raum turned back to Axis and smiled. Although he could not hear what Axis did, he knew what it must be. Earth Tree. Earth Tree singing her Song, the Song that had destroyed the Skraeling attack on the Earth Tree Grove at Yuletide, the Song that now protected the entire northern Avarinheim against Gorgrael. If it had not been for StarDrifter and Faraday, Earth Tree might still be asleep and the Skraelings might well have eaten their way through the Avarinheim by now.
Two days later Raum began to catch the first faint strains of Earth Tree’s Song himself, and two days later yet, Rivkah and Azhure started to pick it up.
Ogden and Veremund had begun to hear it about the same time as Axis.
The night before they reached the foot of the Icescarp Alps, the group ate a splendid meal of roast partridge stuffed with breadcrumbs, cheese, raisins and almonds, and relaxed about the magical fire.
“Tell me of how you bonded Faraday to the Mother,” Axis asked Raum, reluctantly lifting his eyes from the firelight glinting through Azhure’s hair. “There is so little I know about her. So much I want to comprehend.”
Faraday’s connection with the Mother, with the power of the earth and of nature, was one of the deeper mysteries that Axis did not yet understand. There had been so little time or opportunity at Gorkenfort for Faraday and Axis to talk.
And Axis needed someone to speak of her, to remind him how much he loved her. Once her image had been so vivid in his mind, now he had to struggle to recall the exact shade of her hair and the timbre of her laughter.
Raum hesitated a little, then began by explaining the significance of the groves to the Avar people and how those Avar children who had the potential to become Banes had to be presented and bonded to the Mother. Fernbrake Lake, one of the four magical lakes in Achar, lay deep in the Bracken Ranges far to the south of the Avarinheim, and the Avar people had to travel secretly through the hostile Skarabost Plains to reach the lake they called the Mother.
“And Rivkah helped you in this?” Axis asked, smiling at his mother.
“Yes,” Raum said. “For many years now she has spent the summer months with us, often helping to take a child or two through to the Bracken Ranges.”
“And yet none in Achar knew that the Princess Rivkah walked among them,” Axis said, his eyes on the flames. “Did you never want to return to your home, Rivkah?”
“I thought my life dead, Axis. I thought you dead. Had I known you lived I would have kept walking until I reached the Tower of the Seneschal and its BattleAxe.”
For a while there was silence, then Azhure prompted Raum to return to the story of the night he had bonded Faraday to the Mother. Ever since Azhure had seen the vision of Faraday awakening the Earth Tree on the night of the Yuletide attack, she had been fascinated by Faraday.
Raum told the story as if every moment of that night was seared into his memory. How he had tested Faraday at Jack and Yr’s insistence and, to his shock, had found she talked to the trees as easily as if she had been Avar-born. He told them how Faraday had bonded instantly to the Mother, how the Mother herself had wakened the lake and how he, Faraday and the child Shra had walked into and through the lake, to the Sacred Grove.
All listened intently, astounded by Raum’s tale.
“You walked through emerald light into the grove?” Azhure asked, her blue eyes wide. This was magic beyond anything she had yet seen.
Raum told them of how the Horned Ones had greeted Faraday, and how the most ancient and sacred of them all, the silver pelt, had given Faraday the bowl of enchanted wood.
“The bowl is a way for her not only to reach out and touch the Mother,” Raum explained, “but also to reach the Sacred Grove whenever she feels the need.”
“She has been blessed,” Azhure said, admiration and wonder evident in her voice.
Raum let his hand rest on Azhure’s shoulder. He had become very attached to this lonely woman and wished that the Avar had accepted her. She had saved his life, but Raum’s regard for Azhure went much deeper than gratefulness. “Yes, Azhure, she has truly been blessed.”
Axis’ eyes lingered on Raum’s hand. He raised his gaze to the Bane’s face slowly. “Is Faraday’s only role in Prophecy that of Tree Friend, Bane?”
“She has many things to do, Axis,” Veremund answered for Raum. “As do you. Concentrate on your own path, and let others find theirs as the Prophecy guides them.”
Axis nodded. “Has Faraday used the enchanted bowl, Raum? Has she stepped back into the Groves?”
“Yes,” Raum answered. “Yes, she has. Several times. Each time Faraday uses the bowl I can…feel it.”
Ogden and Veremund both studied the Bane closely. You can feel it? wondered Ogden. And I would wager that you can feel it changing you, can’t you, Bane Raum? How long before you, too, feel the urge to wander the paths of the Avarinheim all by yourself, wander until the pain in your body and your skull drives you mad? Until you are transformed? Do you feel it yet, Bane? Do you know?
Azhure sighed and sat back. She envied Faraday greatly. Not only did she have Axis’ love, but she had a major role to play in the Prophecy, a role that would one day see her walk at Axis’ side. Azhure might love Axis herself, but she knew her love would not be returned. Axis would never be her lover. Faraday and Axis were both heroes, and they would walk together into legend and immortality. She was only a human woman, scarred in mind and body, doomed to drift without a true home or a lifetime lover.
The next day the party walked down from the mountains and into Beltide.
The pigs abandoned Sigholt five days before Beltide.
Saddened, Jack stood and watched as the fifteen who had kept him company for the last three thousand years rolled and grunted their way across the bridge. He had always known they would go one day, always known they would pick the day. What better time to choose than these days when the Prophecy walked?
But Jack was excited as well as saddened. The pigs would only leave him to seek the Blood.
For three days the pigs trotted resolutely along the HoldHard Pass, stopping only to rest or nose around the rocks for whatever they could find to eat. But they did not waste much time foraging for food. Soon there would be better eating than stiff weather-worn grass, so aged and wizened it took true hunger to make it palatable.
On the fourth day the pigs emerged from the HoldHard Pass and turned north-east. For another day and night they trotted.
On Beltide, as the day darkened towards dusk, the pigs began to change. Their limbs lengthened, their bodies became sleeker, their coats lighter. Their teeth began to glint and their mouths began to grin.
As the moon emerged they began to lope, but they made no sound. They would not begin to bay until they had caught the scent they had waited so long for.
Above, the moon gleamed and lit their way before them.
15
BELTIDE
As they closed the distance between the last of the alps and the Avar groves, Axis drew closer to Azhure. “Azhure, what do you think of the Avar?” he asked. Azhure thought for a moment. “They are a reserved people, Axis, and they do not accept strangers easily. They are very peaceable and reject those who embrace violence.”
Axis nodded. If the Avar had rejected Azhure because of her involvement in her violent father’s death, then how would they feel about a former BattleAxe of the Axe-Wielders?
“They are reserved,” Azhure repeated. “Shy. They have learned over centuries of persecution to fear the Plains Dwellers, as they call…” She almost said “us”, “the Acharites. They protest to loathe violence, but…” Her voice trailed off.
“But they have an aura o
f violence about them?”
Azhure glanced at Axis, startled. “Yes. I had not thought of it that way before. But…yes. They put their children through a frightening test to see if they have the ability to become Banes—a test that kills many of them. And sometimes the Banes themselves can threaten violence. When I was a girl in Smyrton and stumbled upon Rivkah and a Bane taking two children past the village, the Bane was so angry that I think Rivkah only just managed to prevent him from killing me. Yes,” she paused, “they protest violence, but they exude it.”
“When I walked into the Sacred Grove in my dream,” Axis said, “the feeling of hatred and inherent violence was overwhelming—of course,” he laughed humourlessly, “I was BattleAxe, then.”
“Do you still fear the reaction of the Avar, Axis? You do not walk into their groves as BattleAxe but as the StarMan.”
“Perhaps, but they still have reason enough to distrust me. They will not be easy to win over.”
“They are ashamed that it was their blood which birthed Gorgrael but not you,” Azhure said softly so Raum, walking just ahead, would not hear. “The Icarii and the Acharites have accepted and will accept you because you have been born of their blood. But to the Avar you will not only be foreign, but also frightening.” She paused. “Axis, don’t be too confident. The Avar will not be as ready to follow you as the Icarii were.”
Axis was taken aback once again by her perceptivity, but did not say anything. Like Ogden and Veremund, more and more he found himself wondering if Azhure was the peasant woman she first appeared to be. An odd memory resurfaced. Strangely, the few times Azhure had discussed Hagen, she had never referred to him as her father.
“Azhure,” he said, hesitant.
“Yes?” Azhure replied, her face open and uncomplicated.
“Was Hagen your father? Your real father?”
“What a thing to ask! Of course,” she said, but her voice sounded forced. “Who else?”
Axis began to say something, but Azhure broke in. “Look, Axis! We’re almost there. How I’m looking forward to seeing Fleat and Shra again!”
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