Sinner
Page 22
“Zenith!” And with one great flap of his wings he was at their side, falling to his knees beside Zenith. “What’s wrong? What’s happened to her?”
“Drago,” the Goodwife began, and StarDrifter’s head snapped up at the name of his grandson, “told us her body and mind is tormented by Niah’s reborn soul. Zenith fights it.”
The Goodwife shrugged. “But m’Lady and I can do nothing for the poor sweet girl. The Niah-soul wins.”
Niah’s reborn soul? Azhure had once shown Niah’s letter to StarDrifter, and he knew what the Goodwife alluded to. Niah? In Zenith?
He looked again at his granddaughter. She appeared unconscious, but was obviously in anguish. Her skin was pale and sweating, her muscles twitching, her breath jerking in her breast.
And why was she naked under this cloak, and with the marks of some assault upon her?
“The poor sweeting,” the Goodwife said. “Not only does she battle the dead soul within her, but her body and spirit were raped by WolfStar –”
StarDrifter gave a great cry and leapt to his feet. WolfStar! He had known that malevolent criminal would reappear some day. But to so harm Zenith? StarDrifter looked back at his granddaughter, and his stomach curdled in revulsion at the crime that had been visited upon her.
“Zenith,” he whispered, dropping to his knees before her again.
We cannot reach her…
“How did she come to be here?” StarDrifter asked harshly. “You said Drago was with her?”
“Her brother came with her, but has run off –”
What was going on here?
Drago was running from something. Something wrong at Sigholt.
“Drago was running from a misdeed, no doubt,” the Goodwife put in, folding her hands over her belly and pursing her mouth, but the doe continued.
Zenith was with him – we do not know why – and Drago left her with us, hoping we could help her.
“And was he a party to her rape?” StarDrifter asked.
“No, good sir, we do not think so,” the Goodwife answered. “But neither did he help her.”
Stars, but he should never have left those children alone for so long! Why hadn’t he visited?
They are not children any more, StarDrifter. All capable of choosing their own paths.
“Or fated,” StarDrifter, his thoughts returning to what fought for control of Zenith’s body and mind. Why Zenith? She had such a sweet and trusting nature – was that why she’d been chosen as a vessel for Niah’s rebirth?
Who was this on the ground before him? Had it always been Niah? Or was Zenith a separate entity? A different personality?
StarDrifter shook his head slightly, hoping to clear it. “Why call me? What can I do?”
Drago said that she wanted to go to you.
StarDrifter frowned. “Why?”
Because you once told Zenith that you would always be there to catch her.
Except I wasn’t, was I? StarDrifter thought. Should he take her? The island might be the worst place for Zenith if she was battling the reborn Niah.
But he had little choice, and, more importantly, neither did Zenith.
StarDrifter squatted down by his granddaughter and took her into his arms.
Strangely, she quietened a little as soon as he had gathered her against his breast.
“I’m here, Zenith,” he whispered, and stroked her hair.
Suddenly she stilled, her breathing eased, and her entire body relaxed.
And yet her stillness did not ease StarDrifter’s mind. Someone had won – but who?
“I will take her to the Island of Mist and Memory,” he said. “Pray to both earth and stars that I am doing the right thing.”
25
DragonStar
“Nothing?” Caelum said. “Nothing?”
Crest-Leader FeatherFlight BrightWing’s expression did not change. “StarSon, we have sent scouts out to the feet of the Icescarp Alps, to the River Ichtar, and south as far as the Minaret Peaks. Nothing.”
Caelum sat down heavily at the table in the map-room.
“Askam?” He did not even look at the prince, for he knew in his bones what the man would report.
“Nothing, Caelum.” Askam spread his hands helplessly. “The patrols could not have scoured the Urqhart Hills more thoroughly if they’d done it on their hands and knees.”
Caelum sifted through a pile of loose papers on the table. “And these…reports from Jervois Landing, Severin, most of the smaller hamlets between here and Carlon – even Gorkenfort! Nothing! No-one has seen him.” Nor Zenith. Had WolfStar found her? Or was she hiding from their grandfather in some enchanted bolthole?
“Curse it!” Caelum sent the papers scattering across the table. “Where is he? Where could he have gone?”
Askam glanced at FeatherFlight. Caelum’s nerves were strung as tight as a fishing line with a whale on its hook – and no wonder. Drago had disappeared completely. How? And how was it he’d managed to evade searchers that ranged from the strongest Enchanters to the ablest trackers?
By rights Drago should not have been able to escape more than a league or two…if he had left Sigholt! Was someone aiding him? Who? Why?
“He could have managed to get to Minstrelsea,” Askam said slowly. “If he’s in there…”
Caelum looked up sharply. “Stars, Askam! I should have you as a full-time adviser. FeatherFlight! Send word to Isfrael that Drago may well be within his domain.”
FeatherFlight nodded, saluted, and left.
Caelum settled back in his chair. “Drago will never escape the eyes and ears Isfrael can call to his command. Askam, I thank you again…will you stay a week or two longer? I have need of a sharp mind about me at the moment.”
“As you will, StarSon.”
Caelum grinned at him. “And yet you fidget as if the most practised whore awaited you in your bed…what is it?”
Askam returned the smile. “Master Horrald has been waiting for me at weapons practice this past half an hour. By the time I get there he will have broiled up a nice temper.”
Caelum managed a laugh. Master Horrald was senior among the weapons masters at Sigholt – and not known for his sweet disposition. “Begone then, Askam, and ask Master Horrald not to cut you to ribbons, if only for my sake.”
Left alone in the map-room, Caelum leaned his head into his hand and sighed. This last week had been distressful, and his nights had been filled with unsettling dreams of hunts that ran through forest and stars alike, and of huntsmen who ran down men, not animals.
It made him think for a moment…hunt. Could his mother’s hounds…? No, Azhure had told him a long time ago that the hounds could never be set to hunt mortals.
Caelum looked at his hands, twisting about the red-gold, diamond-encrusted ring on his right hand. It was not his father’s ring – Axis still wore that – but an exact duplicate.
And Axis had taught him how to use it properly.
Enchanters wielded power by manipulating threads of the Star Dance, the music the stars made as they danced through the universe. For each purpose, a Song. For countless generations Icarii Enchanters had painstakingly discovered perhaps a thousand Songs they could weave from the Star Dance, but Orr the Ferryman had shown Axis that all an Enchanter needed to do was think of the purpose, and the diamonds on his ring would rearrange themselves to show him the particular Song to sing.
“Show me a Song for scrying,” he whispered, and after an instant’s hesitation, the diamonds on his ring rearranged themselves into a new pattern.
Caelum thought about the music his ring showed him. It would be a powerful Song, requiring him to manipulate a dangerous amount of the Star Dance, but he was powerful himself, and he could manage it.
He ran the Song through his head, absorbing the power of the Star Dance that flooded him, and directed that power to his purpose.
Instantly the room before him faded, and Caelum saw the plains of Ichtar stretching away to the west of Sigholt.
Caelum felt giddy and nauseated with the amount of power he was being forced to wield, but was determined to see it through.
“Drago,” he whispered, and the vision changed, and now he swept over the spires of the Minaret Peaks, now over Tare, now over Carlon.
“Drago!” he cried. “Find me Drago!”
He felt his body lurch, as if it had abruptly changed direction, and he saw the tranquil shores of the Island of Mist and Memory – there was a presence there…Zenith! Aha – so that is where she’d gone. Good.
But no Drago.
Caelum wondered if the Song was as lost as he. In desperation, he cried out one last time, now using Drago’s birth name, thinking the Song required that.
“Find me DragonStar!”
In the space of a heartbeat, the entire world altered…and Caelum panicked. Tencendor had disappeared. Now he was lost, lost in a black void, and in this void he could sense a presence so infinitely powerful that he understood he would die if it found him.
“StarSon?” it whispered. “StarSon?”
Caelum could feel it reaching out for him, rushing towards him as if it were a great wind.
“StarSon!”
“No,” Caelum whispered.
“You pitiful weakling, StarSon,” the voice cried, and Caelum could feel the being rippling towards him. “Let me hunt you, let me impale you, let me violate your corpse, let me –”
“No!” Caelum screamed, and with the last of his willpower broke his contact with the Star Dance.
The Song ceased, and Caelum opened his eyes to the familiar surroundings of the map-room. His chest was heaving, his body covered in sweat, his hands trembling.
“Stars,” Caelum whispered into the room, “was that you, Drago?”
That evening Caelum was visited by SpikeFeather TrueSong.
He appeared from nowhere, perhaps the door, but Caelum was not sure. The chamber had been empty when Caelum went to close the shutters at the window, yet SpikeFeather had been there when he turned back to the room.
“SpikeFeather!”
Caelum was unnerved by the birdman’s sudden appearance. SpikeFeather carried about him an aura of subtle power. Not Enchanter power, not anything any Enchanter had seen previously. Caelum assumed he’d absorbed it from Orr.
“StarSon.” SpikeFeather bowed his eye-catching red head. “Has there been any news of Drago?”
“I am surprised that you have heard of such excitement secreted down in the waterways, SpikeFeather. Drago was still here, and RiverStar still alive, when you left to rejoin Orr.”
“The waterways reflect many things, StarSon. And some of them have concerned the problems of Sigholt.”
“You do not know Drago’s whereabouts?”
“No, StarSon, I do not.”
“But surely you could –”
“There is nothing I can do, StarSon. Drago is not in the waterways – that is all I can tell you.”
Caelum sighed, and poured each of them a glass of wine. Stars knew he’d need it to sleep tonight. “Well, then, SpikeFeather. What news from the Star Gate?”
In the consternation surrounding RiverStar’s murder and Drago’s escape over the past week, Caelum had pushed to one side the strange tidings of the whispers beyond the Star Gate.
Now…now he wondered if they had anything to do with his frightening vision of this morning.
SpikeFeather sat down in a chair and sipped at his wine. “They still whisper and call, but they have come no closer. They seem to be holding their distance. Orr is tense, but he has sounded no alarm. StarSon, I would venture to advise that WolfStar was right. They pose no danger save to the over-curious mind who would be tempted to plunge after them.”
“Through the Star Gate?” Caelum laughed incredulously – and a little too loudly. The Star Gate disconcerted him. He had seen his father, and numerous other Enchanters, stand at its rim, enthralled by the Star Dance and the universe it contained, but he always felt dizzy if he stayed there more than a moment.
SpikeFeather watched him, then shrugged. “No doubt the issue of the children will become no more than a passing curiosity, StarSon.”
“I do hope you are right,” Caelum said, and abruptly stood to pour himself some more wine. “I do hope so.”
He dreamed that night. He dreamed he was hunting through the forest. A great summer hunt, the entire court with him. His parents, laughing on their horses. His brother, Isfrael, and his sisters, even RiverStar. It was a glorious day, and they rode on the wind and on their power, and all the cares of the world and of Tencendor seemed very, very far away.
But then the dream shifted, changed. They still hunted, but Caelum could no longer see his parents or his brother and sisters. The hounds ran, but he could no longer see them either. The forest gathered about him, suddenly threatening.
And now even his horse had disappeared. He was running through the forest on foot, his breath tight in his chest, fear pounding through his veins.
Behind him something coursed. Hounds, but not hounds. They whispered his name. Oh, Stars! There were hundreds of them! And they hunted him.
They whispered his name. StarSon! StarSon!
Caelum sobbed in fear. What was this forest? It was nothing that he had ever seen in Tencendor. He cut himself on twigs and shrubs, fell, and scrambled, panicking, to his feet.
Something behind him…something…something deadly.
Running.
He heard feet pounding closer, he heard horns, and glad cries. They had cornered him!
Caelum fell to the forest floor and cowered as deeply into the dirt and leaf litter as he could.
But he couldn’t resist one glimpse, and that one glimpse was enough to push him to the brink of insanity.
A man, clad in enveloping dull black armour, rode a great dark horse. In his hand he wielded a massive sword. The horse reared to a halt before him and, as it did so, Caelum found breath for one final scream.
“DragonStar!”
26
The Sack (1)
Drago moved south through Minstrelsea, not really knowing where he was going, only driven by some urge to go south, south, south.
During the day he crept within the shadows, avoiding the few Avar he heard coming down the forest paths, ignoring the brilliant birds and magical creatures that inhabited the forest.
Ignoring all but one. Drago had become aware on the second day after leaving Niah’s Grove that the red doe followed him.
Damn her! Why follow him? Had she managed to contact StarDrifter? Was Zenith safe? The doe would not let him approach, so Drago had to continue on his way with his questions unanswered, trying his best to put her out of his mind, but wishing at every step that she would just leave him alone.
The evenings he spent gathering what fruit and berries he could from shrubs, and digging for the tuber roots he knew formed the subsistence food of the Avar. But he found little. One day he managed to catch a fish in a stream, and had to eat that raw because he did not have the implements for making a fire.
Its flesh was cold and slimy as it slid down his throat, and Drago choked and gagged, but forced it down. Disgusting as it was, Drago still preferred his current existence to the one he’d lived at Sigholt. Raw fish was surely better than lying in the corpse yard!
In the evenings, when he huddled beneath the overhang of some great-leaved plant, or in the exposed roots of the massive trees, when he had nothing but his thoughts for company, Drago reflected on his life.
It had been wasted thus far, he decided. He’d been kept trapped within the SunSoar family, trapped by their hatred and distrust, trapped by his reputation. He’d been allowed no role in the new Tencendor – and what role could he be given? Surely the black-hearted Drago would have only manipulated that role
for his own gain and his brother’s downfall!
Drago’s bitterness, always a small, hard canker in his heart, began to expand. He could have been an Icarii Enchanter, a SunSoar Enchanter, yet here he was, running through the forest, falsely condemned of murder so Caelum could finally have the excuse to do away with him.
And so, late in the nights, Drago would hug his sack to him, and wonder if Caelum had missed it yet. And he would wonder further, how can I use this? How can I wield it? How…?
He dreamed he was hunting through the forest. A great summer hunt, the entire court with him. His parents, laughing on their horses. His brothers, Caelum and Isfrael, and his sisters, even RiverStar. WolfStar was there, too, grinning maniacally as he strode beside the horses in his billowing black cloak. It was a glorious day, and they rode on the wind and on their power and all the cares of the world and of Tencendor seemed very, very far away.
He shifted, uncomfortable, and the dream shifted with him.
He dreamed he hunted, and he rode a great horse. In his hand he wielded a weapon, the likes of which Tencendor had never seen before – not even the Wolven bow compared in strength and enchantment with this.
It combined the power of the stars with the power of the earth, and it sang as he swung it through the air.
Hunt, his mind whispered through the forest, and the hunt intensified.
His hounds – no, they were not hounds, they were something indefinably different – obeyed, and they put their noses…no…beaks…to the scent of the prey and they coursed and whispered and hunted.
They obeyed his every command.
Hunt! he cried again.
They sped through the forest, the quarry before them. Drago felt triumph seethe through his veins – he hunted through the entire realm and all ran before him: his parents, Axis and Azhure, cowering golden and scared; his brother Caelum, hiding at their backs; even Goodwife Renkin; and there was WolfStar, cursed WolfStar, his eyes widening in horror as he was cornered by…by…