“And when you wake, Zenith,” Drago said quietly, “you are going to tell me what is wrong.”
“Mmmm,” she murmured, and let sleep claim her.
Hugging his sack tightly to him, Drago sat by his sister through the hours of the day, watching her, wondering, watching the sky and the lower Urqhart Hills, wondering.
Thinking.
Here he was a fugitive, running from those determined to kill him.
He had never felt freer in all his life.
His fingers tightened momentarily about the sack, and he smiled slightly.
Drago relaxed against the trunk of a tree, daring to think that he and Zenith might escape, daring to think that he might actually have a chance to take control of his own life. What would that be like, to be whoever he wanted?
He’d said to Zenith in the kitchens that even if he left Sigholt, word would spread that Axis’ untrustworthy and evil son, Drago, was travelling the land and that doors everywhere would be closed to him. He’d said he would have no chance at a life anywhere.
But was that true? What if he dyed his hair, grew a beard, assumed a new name, a new identity? What would it be like to wander as a travelling pedlar, or seasonal labourer?
What would it be like to be liked?
Apart from Zenith, and to a lesser degree Leagh and Zared, Drago had never known what it was like to be extended friendship and love. He’d first come to an awareness of his unenviable spot in Sigholt’s life when he was about three. He could remember the day clearly. He’d been playing alone in the courtyards of Sigholt, toddling about among the piles of hay and manure the stable lads were mucking out of the horse stalls, when he’d suddenly spotted the cook’s wife carrying her six-month-old infant into the sunshine.
She’d had a blanket over one arm, and she spread it out and sat herself and her baby upon it. After a few minutes the cook had called from the kitchen, and the woman had gone inside after checking that her baby was safely asleep.
Curious, for Drago had not seen a baby this small previously, he toddled over. His face was set in a frown of concentration and his fists clenched with effort, for the stable lads had left the cobbles wet and he did not want to slip over. He was about four or five paces from the blanket when the mother had re-emerged from the kitchen.
She’d taken one look at his frown and fists, then screamed in total panic.
Her baby had woken and begun to scream as well, and so also did Drago, as thoroughly frightened as mother and baby.
The woman had snatched her baby to her, and then literally spat at Drago. “Get you gone from my child! If you come near him again I will kill you!”
At the commotion a dozen people had come running, including his parents and Caelum, then about four or five.
At that time Azhure was heavily pregnant with Zenith, and when she had seen the woman and screaming baby, both staring terrified at Drago, she had cried out herself, and caught Drago by the shoulders, spinning him about.
“You will never go near any baby! Do you understand, Drago? When my baby is born you will never go near her…do you hear me?”
In fact, Drago could hardly hear her above his own sobs, but he nodded violently anyway. Even worse than the screams and the words was the ring of people about him, all wearing varying degrees of revulsion, disgust and fury on their faces.
You will never harm another baby again, Drago…
Think to kill again and you will be killed yourself…
You will never be allowed to harm again…
We will never forget what you did…
Against Caelum…
Against Tencendor…
We will never trust you…
Never…
Never…
The thoughts and words of accusation and hate rang about him and Drago began to spasm with his own hiccuping sobs. What was happening? Why did everyone stare at him with such hate? Why? Why? Why? He fell to the ground and hid his face in his arms.
Eventually they’d left him there, curled up into a tight ball – as tight as Zenith was now – against the hatred and disgust.
Caelum had been the last to leave, and Drago had caught a peek at his face from under his own arm.
It was such a mixture of terror – terror of him – and hatred and disgust that Drago had closed his eyes as tight as he could. Closed them against the world and everyone in it.
There he’d lain, wishing somehow he’d wake from this frightful nightmare, when a small cat had bumped her head against his arm. Reaching out to the only thing that had shown him affection, Drago had hugged the cat to him, and she’d snuggled into his chest, her body reverberating with the strength of her purring, and Drago had sobbed anew.
No, Drago had never forgotten that day.
He’d grown silent and withdrawn. Sullen, his parents said. Zenith had been born shortly after that event, and all Drago had known of his sister for the first four years of her life was her distant cry, or tiny footfall. His parents had never let him near her until she was four.
When he was five it was RiverStar who’d finally told him why everyone hated him so much. She’d told him with a smirk on her face, revelling in his hurt. Drago hadn’t believed her, hadn’t wanted to believe her, and had in fact asked Axis to tell him it wasn’t true.
Axis had stared at him, silent, and turned away.
Drago hugged his sack tighter to him, tears glinting in his eyes. He had hated himself for a while, hated himself for what he’d done to Caelum, but over the years that self-hatred had been turned back out against the world that hated him. He’d spent his teenage years deep in bitterness, then his twenties and thirties as deep in resentment. How was he to know if he’d actually done what legend stated?
And finally, by the time he’d reached thirty-five, his mortality had struck deep. His siblings were all highly magical, enchanted creatures, revelling in youth and power and the adoration of all who saw them.
Here he was, rejected, hated, loathed by all…
Well, not quite all. The cats continued to adore him, and as a child and even a youth Drago had spent many nights curled in the hay with the courtyard cats.
And Zenith liked him. That was unbelievable. She was the child he was never allowed near, she was the one everyone feared he would hurt, and yet Zenith had never regarded him with anything except friendship – and perhaps even love.
Unbidden, a memory crashed through his mind. A night racked with violent storms long ago when the SunSoar children had all been staying with their grandfather StarDrifter in the Temple complex on the Island of Mist and Memory. He had been about twelve then, battling to reconcile his approaching puberty with his ever-increasing resentment, only to realise they complemented each other. He had been lying in bed, watching lightning streak across the night sky, when the door had opened and Zenith, only six or seven, had scampered across the room and flung herself into his arms.
“Please,” she had whispered then, “I’m scared.” And she had clung to him all through the night and Drago, so rarely hugged or cuddled himself, had lain there, holding her tight, wondering that she had come to him first of all in her fright.
Zenith whimpered in her sleep, and the sound broke Drago out of his reverie. “Zenith?”
But Zenith was trapped in her own nightmare and did not hear him.
She was in a house, and the man who approached her had death in his eyes. He forced her to her knees, and then to the floor, and then he’d begun pushing her back.
Back towards the fire.
Oh, how she’d fought him! Her terror had given her abnormal strength, but she could not fight her way free.
Heat lapped at her head, and then flames at her hair. She could feel them crackling amid her hair, she could smell them, and then with a great roar her entire head had been enveloped in a ball of fire.
The agony was extraordinary.
Fire lifted her skin in massive blisters that burst and caught fire themselves. Fire seared through her throat and lungs wh
en she took breath to scream. She tried to beat it out, but her hands caught fire, and then she somehow comprehended that her entire dress was aflame, and she knew she was going to die slowly, horribly, from the outside in, and that the agony would take its own sweet time in killing her.
She’d called out to her daughter, but those words did not mean very much now, not when her entire body was such a mass of torment, and her spirit inside was aware, aware, aware…
Drago jumped back, almost crying out. Zenith had abruptly rolled over and screamed, beating at her body with her hands as if she were consumed by fire. She screamed again, her body convulsing with the strength of it, and Drago gathered her into his arms and tried to calm her.
She struggled against him for a long time, and then finally lay quiet, crying a little.
Caught as she had been in Niah’s torment, Zenith had realised why the sweet-natured woman had changed in death. It had been the manner of her death – the suffering, the fear, the knowledge that no-one would come to save her. She had lain there, helpless, hearing and smelling and feeling as she burned into blackened meat that crackled and joints that popped in the heat.
And all the time she had remained aware. Right to the end, when her heart finally gave out.
But her sweet nature had given out first. That had been destroyed along with her body. Even in rebirth, Niah would never be the same again.
“Zenith?”
At Drago’s soft query, Zenith raised her head and smiled.
“Will you tell me what is wrong?”
Her smile faded, but finally she nodded and spoke. “Do you remember the stories of our grandmother Niah? Then listen…”
20
Icebear Coast Camp
In the east of Tencendor the Fortress Ranges rose from an undersea range and then stretched north in wildly undulating ridges, dividing forest from plain, and the haunts of the Avar from those of the human plain-dwellers. After a score of leagues the Fortress Ranges thickened, then leapt for the sky in a series of massive, almost vertical, razor-backed ridges until they merged with the permanently cloud-shrouded Icescarp Alps. For generations these Alps had been the haunt of the Icarii, condemned to a bitter exile by the Brotherhood of the Seneschal, but now few of the brilliantly coloured birdpeople fluttered about the ice-capped mountains, preferring the milder climes of the Minaret Peaks far to the south.
Each one of the peaks in the Icescarp Alps was a majesty in itself, but of them all the fabled Star Finger was the most exalted. Once it had been called Talon Spike, and had been the home of the Icarii during their exile, but it was now a place of contemplation and study, where the most powerful and knowledgeable among the Icarii Enchanters studied the mysteries of the stars. The mountain had become a place of libraries and halls, of music and enchantments, and of tremulous discoveries and lingering silences.
Star Finger’s hauntingly beautiful ice-shrouded cliffs and ethereal mists cast a shadow, if not literally then metaphorically, over all of Tencendor.
From the northern and eastern faces of Star Finger a great glacier ground its way yet further north to calve its icebergs in the Iskruel Ocean. Here curved the extraordinary landscape of the Icebear Coast. To the south the alps rose sheer and black, while to the north the grey–blue sea crashed onto the pebbled beach, the ice-pack grinding behind it, the sea birds wheeling and crying with eerie voices above.
Few mortal steps ever trod the Icebear Coast. Sometimes a tribe of Ravensbund would move silently along the shoreline, seeking seaweed to make their Tekawai tea, very occasionally a fur trader from the plains far to the south would stand overawed on the pebbles, staring over the unknown waters that extended further north.
More often the pebbles rasped and rattled beneath the great paws of the strange icebear Urbeth as she chased down sea birds and seals, scattering their blood over the shoreline before she retreated to her ice den and her waiting cubs.
And sometimes the Icebear Coast played host to beings far stranger and far more powerful than Urbeth.
They sat about a campfire somewhere on the Icebear Coast. Nine of them, the complete Circle of the Star Gods. Adamon, turning a roasting partridge and smiling about the fire. Xanon, his wife, and Goddess of the Firmament. Zest, Goddess of Earth, and her companion, Narcis, God of the Sun. Across from them sat Flulia, Goddess of Water, Pors, God of Air, and Silton, God of Fire. Making up the Nine were Axis, Song, and Azhure, Moon.
“You frown, Axis,” Adamon said. “Why?”
Axis sighed. “I worry.”
“The worries of Tencendor should be far behind you.”
“I fought for that land, I watched those who fought with me die. It is hard now to just sit, and watch.”
“Axis,” Adamon said gently, handing him a piece of roast bird. “You are one of us now, and you must let Tencendor and Caelum find their own feet.”
“The weight of Tencendor rests on Caelum’s shoulders. What if he falters? Am I to let Tencendor falter with him?”
“Oh, Axis!” Azhure said shortly. “Caelum will not falter! Trust your own son.”
“We understand how you feel, Axis,” Xanon said in her gentle voice. “That Tencendor relives, and that we are Nine, is so much due to your and Azhure’s efforts. But now you are not what you once were. You must move on.”
“You let me deal with Gorgrael. You were happy enough to let me wander the plains and mountains of Tencendor then.”
“Gorgrael was personal, Axis,” Adamon said, “and your battle with him concerned us greatly. If you had lost then he would have taken his place among us as God of Song. Now we must all move on, and you must let Caelum rule from the Throne of the Stars. Leave mortal worries for mortal shoulders.”
“You are right,” Axis said after a small silence. “It is just that the past few days have been so disturbing. I long to be there. To help in some way. Stars! Our daughter is dead!”
“We grieve with you and Azhure for RiverStar’s death,” Pors said, and by his side Flulia took Azhure’s hand, and stroked it.
Axis nodded, unable for the moment to speak.
“I knew here,” Azhure touched her head, “that Axis and I would eventually outlive our children. But we thought that we had hundreds of years…that we could watch them grow and love and give us grandchildren. To see RiverStar die, and so cruelly, and,” her voice hardened, “at her own brother’s hands makes it hard for Axis and me to sit and watch.”
Her hand now touched her breast. “My heart cannot let go my mortal concerns so easily.”
There was silence as the other gods shared their grief, and tried to impart comfort. They were much older than Axis and Azhure, and had seen their own mortal families die into dust thousands of years previously. They had come to terms with their immortality – Axis and Azhure still had to embrace unending life with equanimity.
“And now Drago has run,” Axis said. All the gods were aware of the search for Drago.
“Leave it, Axis,” Xanon said, and touched his knee. “Leave it. They inhabit a different world to you and I. Leave them to that world and all the pain it contains.”
“There is one problem we should not discard so quickly,” Azhure said, and looked about the Circle. “WolfStar.”
The others nodded slowly. WolfStar. His reappearance was disturbing. For all their powers, the Star Gods still could not entirely understand WolfStar, nor where he went for so many years or what he did when he was gone.
Anything they did not understand made them wonder if they should fear it.
“We will watch,” Adamon said eventually. “It is all we can do.”
“And the Star Gate?” Azhure asked. “Should we watch that, too?”
“The voices,” Adamon reflected. “The Icarii nation’s murdered children, come back to haunt their killer.”
“There is something wrong,” Axis said, and he suddenly leapt to his feet and paced back and forth just inside the circle of light from the fire. “There is something wrong!”
“Axis
?” Azhure glanced worriedly at Adamon, then rose to her feet and took Axis’ arm, bringing him to a halt. “What?”
“I don’t know!” Axis cried, and kicked at a pebble in utter frustration. “I don’t know what it is, but there is something wrong. The Star Dance seems…not quite as it should.”
“It is your grief and worry about your family that so disturbs you,” Xanon said soothingly. “The voices are nothing. They will not hurt us, nor this wondrous land.”
“We heard them occasionally during the time when Artor imprisoned us in the interstellar wastes,” Silton said. “Trifling voices.”
“They are there,” Zest agreed, “but they are harmless enough.”
“Are you certain?” Axis said.
“Absolutely,” Adamon replied. “They drift about the interstellar spaces calling WolfStar’s name, looking for vengeance.” He suddenly laughed. “No wonder he chose to return from his death so quickly! I would not like to have such as these on my tail!”
“And they will not come back through the Star Gate?” Axis asked.
“WolfStar was right when he told Caelum they do not have the skills to step back through,” Adamon said as firmly as he could. “They are relatively powerless, kept alive only by their need for revenge. Axis, leave it be. Drift with us. We are your home now, not Sigholt. We are your family, not Caelum.”
21
Travelling Home
Leagh dressed herself in the dawn chill, despondent and apathetic. She was to go home with Herme and Theod, it seemed, and there wait for however Askam and Caelum decided to dispose of her future.
Over the past few days she had wept until she’d realised that weeping did no good. Then she had sat and wiped her eyes and decided that her only choice was to accept what life had dealt her. She loved Zared, but she was not to be allowed to consummate that love. Well, that was the lot of a princess. It was foolish to dream of being a peasant woman and choosing as her mate a man she loved. She was not. She had been raised in privilege, and lived in privilege, and for that privilege she had to mate with whomever her brother and Caelum decided would be best.
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