Pilgrim

by Sara Douglass

  “What do you propose?” Axis snapped.

  Azhure laid a hand on his arm, smiling apologetically at Urbeth.

  Urbeth shrugged in her own ursine way, and did not seem perturbed. Indeed, she seemed mildly amused.

  “Axis, Azhure, the time has come to say goodbye to your son.”

  “No!” Azhure sounded terrified, and Axis took her arm, surprised at her emotion, even though he, too, was angry with the bear.

  “We will go south with him,” he said.

  Urbeth shook her head, and although she kept her voice pleasant, her eyes were hard.

  “This Caelum needs to do on his own. Let him go.”

  Caelum turned to his parents. “She is right. I do need to do this on my own.”

  “Caelum—” Azhure said, her voice breaking, and held out a trembling hand.

  Caelum ignored the hand and enveloped her in a huge hug. “Thank you,” he whispered. “For everything. For my life, and for your love and belief in me.”

  She clung desperately to him, weeping inconsolably, and Caelum had to lean back and push her slightly away so he could look into her eyes.

  “Let me go, Azhure,” he whispered. “It is time.”

  Azhure didn’t know what to do, what to say. What could she say? And how could she just let him go and turn away? How could she?

  “Azhure,” Urbeth said. “Let him go.”

  Azhure wrenched herself out of Caelum’s hands and stumbled a few paces away.

  Axis stared at her, distraught by her emotion but not understanding its full depth, then embraced Caelum himself. “Stars go with you,” he whispered, then stood back.

  Caelum reached out and touched his father’s face one last time, wishing that he could have been the son Axis had wanted.

  “Remember what you promised, Father.”

  Axis nodded. “But Drago will not need it.”

  Caelum let that go. He half-smiled, lifted his hand again as if he wanted to touch his father just one more time, then let it drop. Axis nodded at him, then took Azhure gently by the hand.

  “Come, my love,” he murmured. “Come home with me.”

  The last Caelum saw of his parents were their backs disappearing into the wind and snow.

  “Well?” he asked of Urbeth, “what now?”

  “Now? Why, we sit by the fire and wait.”

  Caelum narrowed his eyes. “What fire? Wait for what?”

  “This fire,” and suddenly there was a fire burning several paces distant. “And we wait for Drago. He will let us know when the time is right.”

  Caelum hesitated, then he shrugged and walked over to the fire. “I am sure we will have much to discuss while we wait,” he said.

  “That we will,” Urbeth said. “That we will.”

  She paused. “Would you like a fish?”

  58

  The Deep Blue Cloak of Betrayal

  Faraday left Leagh, put Katie to bed, and wandered the corridors of the palace. It was a strange night, and a strange walk, and Faraday found herself in the clutches of some strange sensation—not of the Demons’ doing, but of Fate’s. She wandered the corridors, plunging from the extreme of hope and love to the nadir of despair and bitterness as she felt Fate’s cold hand close about her. She loved Drago, but felt trapped by that love, and felt she would be lost if she ever admitted her love to Drago, let alone gave herself to him.

  And, oh Gods, how she wanted to give herself to him, to tell him she loved him! Yet, if she did that, she would die. Faraday understood that very completely now…she’d understood it the moment she’d walked into this long abandoned chamber.

  Very many things had become clear to her as she’d wandered into this chamber.

  It was empty, save for a great wardrobe that stood against a far wall. The wardrobe stared at her, screaming at her to come closer, and fling open its doors.

  It had a gift for her.

  Faraday stared, then helplessly drifted over and flung open the doors. The wardrobe contained a deep blue cloak and nothing else. The deep blue cloak she’d worn when she’d gone to Axis the day he’d killed Borneheld.

  She trembled violently, and stood back, wrapping her arms about herself.

  Every muscle of her body, every nerve ending, screamed at her to now slip off her clothes until she stood white naked, save for the mantle of her desire. And then? Then to lift the cloak from its hook and slip it about her shoulders, tying the tassels at her throat, and walk the corridors of this palace until she came to Drago’s chamber.

  And when she slipped silently inside the door, Faraday knew what she would find.

  Drago, asleep in a chair before the fire.

  Thus had she found Axis, and thus had she given her body and love to Axis.

  Faraday bent over, screwing her eyes shut, trying to find the courage to resist the call of both body and cloak.

  Something, damned fate, now needed her to give herself to Drago as she’d once given herself to Axis. And what then…what then? Would he betray her love and need as Axis had done?

  In the past weeks she’d found herself being dragged to Gorkenfort, and now to Carlon, retracing the steps of her previous life. Would she continue to retrace her previous mistakes and naivities until she stood held in the talons of some foul Demon in some misbegotten chamber, watching Drago intent on saving Tencendor and not her?

  Was this what Noah has recreated her for? Was this her fate through life after life after damned, accursed life?

  “No!” she cried and slammed shut the doors of the wardrobe. She would deny her love for Drago, deny her need for him, and thus save her life.

  “No, no, no!” she whispered now, and tore herself away from the wardrobe. “Never! This land must find itself another way to save it than my blood!”

  For doubtless this land would need blood to save it.

  “And always my blood,” she said. “Always mine. Why?”

  She had to get out of this chamber. It was not the one she’d used when she’d gone from being Borneheld’s wife to Axis’ whore within the space of a few hours, nor even the same palace, but it was a prison nevertheless…and the blue cloak had managed to find its way here.

  Faraday took a deep breath, tucked a few stray tendrils of hair behind her ears, and wiped the wetness from her eyes.

  It was night, and Demon-free, and even though the wind blew cold, a walk on the parapets might clear her mind enough to resist all the temptations and siren calls of fate.

  But even so, Faraday’s feet slowed outside Drago’s chamber, and she paused to stare at his door for long minutes before she could force herself past.

  Gods, but she wanted him. She loved and adored him as she had never adored Axis. Drago had a gentleness that his father had never had, and a depth of compassion that exceeded anything his parents had. Did he get that from Rivkah? Faraday could not think where else.

  “Ah! Stop these thoughts!” she chided herself, and forced her feet briskly towards the stairs leading to the parapets. “Find yourself a peasant with no destiny and be content!”

  At that she had to smile. Her? Wrapped contentedly in some burly, work-odoured peasant’s arms in a straw and licefilled bed? And then her sense of humour truly resurrected itself, and Faraday laughed aloud at her own thoughts. That was her mother Merlion in her!

  She opened the door to the parapets and breathed in the air gratefully, still smiling at what Merlion would have made of her daughter’s thoughts on men and love. Sometimes Faraday pondered at the absurdity that her mother had ever submitted to the whole sweaty, thrusting business of love…but she must have done…at least once…unless her father got her so drunk one night she slept through the entire distasteful procedure.

  Faraday giggled, and clapped a hand to her mouth to stifle her mirth. What could Merlion have thought when her belly began to swell with child? That a roving dark incubus had impregnated her during some nightmare?

  Faraday’s giggles increased, and she walked over to the stone walls star
e at the sight of Carlon spread out below the palace. Gods! She had to stop this line of thought!

  “Why so merry, Faraday?” a soft voice said behind her, and she spun about, sobering into bright anger.

  “What are you doing here!” she snapped.

  Drago stopped, surprised by her tone. Hadn’t they come to some workable arrangement? “I heard you pass my chamber,” he said, “and I thought that I would—”

  “Would what? Thought that you would open the door and seize me and drag me to your bed? Is that what you—”

  “Stop it!” Now he, too, was angry. “For the gods’ sakes, Faraday! What is the matter with you? I only wanted to speak with you.”

  Her face tightened, and she turned back to the view. “I only want to be left alone.”

  “Faraday.” Drago’s voice had softened. “I would never force myself on you. You have very clearly stated you do not want me.”

  “SunSoar love forces itself everywhere,” she said bitterly. “Your father would not take ‘No’ as a suitable response. How can you?”

  Drago risked stepping closer to her. He put out a hand, thinking to touch her shoulder, then thought better of it. “What is wrong?”

  She turned back to him, leaning against the parapet, her face tilted up to his. “Did you know that earlier I was remembering Axis?”

  “Is that why you were laughing?”

  “I was recalling the night that I came to him here. The night I went to his bed for the first time. Although,” she paused, “one strictly cannot call the hearth rug a bed, can one?”

  Drago’s face tightened, but he did not speak.

  “What do you think of that, Drago? Did you realise that the first time I lay with your father it was here in Carlon? Did you know that, in the very chamber you now occupy, I spent many long nights with your father?”

  “Would you like to give me a thrust by thrust description?” he snapped. “Would that appease your need to hurt me? To push me away?”

  Faraday averted her face, angry with herself, but more so with him. Why was he here? Why?

  Drago suddenly reached out and grabbed her to him, pressing her against his body. “Damn you!” he whispered. “I have travelled through the very stars to return to you. Do I deserve this much hatred?”

  She tensed, her hands on his chest. “You journeyed back through the stars in your desperate need to redeem yourself to Tencendor, not for me. Is it not Tencendor you should be forcing to your bed?”

  “Curse you, Faraday!” Drago cried, and let her go. “Why do you stay with me if you hate me this much?”

  “Because I promised Noah I would be your friend,” she said. “And that is the only reason.”

  Drago stared at her a long searching minute before he replied. “I do not believe you. How hard did you have to fight with yourself, Faraday, not to come to that well-remembered chamber again tonight?”

  “And how much do you wonder,” she countered, “whose name I would have had ringing through my mind as I let you love me? Whose shoulders I would feel under my hands? Whose mouth I wanted to feel on mine before all others?”

  “All stars damn you,” Drago said weakly. “Why won’t you accept love when it is given you freely? I have no paramour hiding in Spiredore across the Lake. No lover awaiting me in some secret bed. I would be yours, and yours only.”

  “No.” Faraday shook her head slowly back and forth, and her eyes glistened with tears. “You lie. You have a paramour and a lover and one you are destined to betray me for.”

  “Oh, for the gods—”

  “If I let you love me, if I let me love you, then I would condemn myself to the same fate I suffered at Axis’ hands.”

  “Who would I betray you for, Faraday?” he asked softly. “Who, dammit?”

  She stared at him. “You would betray me for Tencendor.”

  And then she pushed roughly past him and was gone.

  59

  A Fate Deserved?

  They had come directly south, moving through the north-western portion of the ranges where the forest had not stretched so they could conserve power rather than expend it fighting the trees.

  The trees could wait. Their time for destruction had not yet come.

  The four Demons who were left were close to the maximum power they could achieve without Qeteb to aid them. They had drunk deeply of the souls available in Tencendor, and had deepened their own abilities, but until Qeteb walked beside them, snarling with the laughter of life, they were necessarily contained.

  As Rox’s death had demonstrated.

  If Qeteb had been there, the struggle would have ended somewhat differently.

  As they rode, each of the Demons’ eyes drifted to the boy riding beside StarLaughter. Her get would provide the flesh and blood for their reborn saviour, but not the reborn son she craved. StarLaughter somehow believed—foolish birdwoman—that it was her son DragonStar who would be reborn with the power of Qeteb…but the Demons knew a little differently.

  There was no DragonStar SunSoar, son of StarLaughter and WolfStar. There was only ever a scrap of flesh that was suitable to be preserved until the time was ripe for it to be suffused with the life parts so horribly stolen by the Enemy. What StarLaughter had given birth to in the extremity of her murderous plunge through the Star Gate had been a mangled, dead clump of bloody flesh. Nothing else.

  StarLaughter had clung to that scrap as she drifted through the stars, her madness and desire for revenge giving it form and life where there had been none.

  None…until she’d come to the attention of the Demons. Not only was StarLaughter, as all the children who cried out for revenge with her, a link to the land the Demons needed to get to, she’d had the lump of lifeless and malleable flesh the Demons needed.

  A house for Qeteb.

  And so they’d given it back some form for the poor woman to cuddle, and so she had clutched it to her breast for four thousand useless years.

  StarLaughter was completely, utterly, mad, and the Demons were not quite sure what to do with her once Qeteb was risen and the need for such tools negated. The Hawkchilds could still be useful—but StarLaughter?

  Qeteb could decide, the Demons mutually, and silently, agreed. If he wanted he could eat her, if he wanted he could fuck her. They truly didn’t care.

  Of Drago they thought occasionally, but they did not waste any worry on him. He should not have survived the leap through the Star Gate, but he had. They should have killed him when they had the chance, but he’d done nothing with his unexpected life—no doubt he was now secreted in some cave dribbling resentment—and could be disposed of later, like StarLaughter, as Qeteb saw fit.

  As everything would eventually be disposed of as Qeteb worked out his purpose.

  For her part, StarLaughter was just as content as the Demons were. She knew the Demons regarded her son from time to time as they rode, and she knew that sometimes their unreadable eyes were cast in her direction. But that only made StarLaughter happy. She did not trust them, and in time her son would dispose of them as he saw fit.

  StarLaughter was very, very sure of that.

  Now, she stopped.

  “He is here, close!” she hissed.

  They had halted their black creatures—no longer even vaguely resembling horses, but rather immense black worms with stumpy legs—a few hundred paces from the western rim of Fernbrake crater.

  “What?” Sheol said vaguely. She, and the Demons, were concentrating on the still-hidden Lake. There was something there…not quite right.

  “WolfStar!” StarLaughter said, and half-turned her creature so that it faced south. “So close!” StarLaughter clenched a fist and struck her own breast. “I feel him. Here!”

  Sheol looked at her fellow Demons. WolfStar? And with him…her?

  That other lump of flesh could be more useful than they’d originally planned now that Rox was no more.

  “Where?” Sheol said, far more interested now.

  StarLaughter pointed. “T
hrough there.”

  Through the forest. The Demons vacillated.

  “Not far,” StarLaughter said. “But a few minutes walk.” She paused. “Might that be too much for you?”

  “We can afford a few minutes,” Sheol said evenly, although she longed to tear StarLaughter to shreds. “Will you lead the way?”

  They abandoned their creatures, leaving them to snout through the dirt for insects, and walked down the path StarLaughter indicated. The trees closed in about them, and whispers and eyes followed their steps.

  Sheol’s lips, as those of her fellows, curled in a silent snarl, and the trees retreated slightly.

  StarLaughter slowed, and she raised a hand to caution the Demons. Then she lowered it and pointed into a small glade ahead. Here.

  The Demons nodded, and crowded at her shoulder to see for themselves.

  An enchantment! Mot cried through their minds. He has been gaoled beneath an enchantment!

  Before them WolfStar sat rigid, his back to them, beneath a glowing emerald dome. Several guards, Avar men, were spaced about the glade. They did not realise the presence lurking just beyond the first shadows of the bushes.

  Do you recognise the enchantment? Sheol asked in StarLaughter’s mind.

  It is of the trees and earth, StarLaughter replied. Easily broken by such as you.

  Sheol again resisted the urge to reach out and slice the birdwoman to shreds—by the darkness itself, she had almost outlived her usefulness!—and looked more carefully about the clearing.

  I cannot see her, she said.

  Who? StarLaughter asked.

  There was an instant’s pause as all four Demons resisted the overwhelming urge to flay her, then…

  The girl-child he had with him, Sheol said.

  Ah, StarLaughter thought, the one he betrayed me for. Well, no doubt I can wreak my revenge on her as well. WolfStar must know where she is.

  The Demons silently agreed.

  We will remove the enchantment, Mot said, and those who guard him.