Pilgrim

Drago looked impotently at Zenith.

“And the donkeys kicked at me,” Faraday whispered.

Zenith glanced at her brother, then wrapped an arm about Faraday. “Hush, Faraday. Drago is right. They have their reasons.”

“But to kick!”

Drago dropped Faraday’s hand, not knowing what to do. He watched Zenith rock the woman to and fro, crooning to her, and then heard a step behind him and turned, grateful for the interruption.

Zared, his face puzzled, an eyebrow raised. “Do you want horses, Drago?”

Drago started to nod, then stopped himself. “No,” he said, and wondered why he said that. Why refuse horses? “We will walk. It is what the donkeys want us to do.”

The donkeys relaxed, their ears flopping, and each shifted their weight onto one of their hind legs, resting the other.

The feathered lizard suddenly appeared, investigating the wreckage of the cart. It rippled sinuously between the spokes of one of the wheels, and then disappeared under the tray.

“We will walk,” Drago repeated softly, watching the donkeys.

Faraday walked slowly into the grove. It hardly deserved the name, for it was only some three paces across and four or five deep, but it was beautiful nonetheless, with heavy-scented scarlet brambry bushes and clumps of spiked blue and pink rheannies filling the spaces between the trees.

Isfrael was standing in the shadows at the far end of the grove.

“It has been so long,” Faraday said softly. She felt like weeping. Seeing him standing here within the forest made her remember vividly the betrayal in which he’d been conceived — those glorious eight days with Axis when she’d thought to become his wife, while he’d thought of his mistress, Azhure — and the pain and misery of crawling on her hands and knees across half of Tencendor, her belly heavy with her baby, replanting the forests.

The agony of his birth in the Sacred Groves. The far deeper agony of saying goodbye to the infant to fulfil her destiny in dying for the Prophecy.

Azhure and Axis had raised him. Not Faraday.

Faraday had been left to wander the forest paths as a doe, hating her confinement there, and knowing that she slipped from everyone’s minds, including her son’s. It was difficult to reconcile the knowledge that she’d been relegated to legend, with the need to live … live! … and hold her son for just one day in her arms.

Spending brief hours with him in Niah’s Grove when Isfrael had been a child had not been enough, for either of them.

“Mother,” he said, and took a step forward into a shaft of sunlight.

She drew her breath in. In his own strange way he did remind her of Axis, although his wildness was all Avar. His hair was the same faded blonde, the musculature of his chest and arms … his hands. He had Axis’ hands.

Faraday stared at them, remembering how Axis had touched her, and betrayed her with that touch.

“Why did you leave the forests to walk with Drago?” Isfrael asked.

Faraday walked forward a few steps until she was within a pace of her son. “You know why.”

He nodded. “WingRidge told me who he was. But why did you leave the forests?”

Faraday thought about telling Isfrael of how the Sceptre had pulled her to Drago, and thence to the Ancient Barrows.

She thought of telling Isfrael how Drago had saved her with the Rainbow Sceptre, when Axis had refused to use it to save her from Gorgrael. She thought of telling him about Noah, and her promises to him.

But none of this did she say.

“Because I think I can help,” she said eventually, speaking such a colourless truth it was almost a lie. She dropped her eyes to her hands clasped in front of her.

“So you would walk with Drago,” Isfrael said, folding his arms across his chest, “but you would not walk to my cradle when I was an infant and croon me to sleep?”

“Isfrael, I have hardly had a choice in what —”

“I wish,” Isfrael said, and his voice was wistful, almost tender, through its bitterness, “I wish that just once during my childhood you had been there to rock me to sleep. I wish you had cared that much.”

“I have loved you with all my being —”

“No. No, you cared more for those donkeys than you have for me. No wonder Axis preferred Azhure’s love to yours.”

He paused, and his lip curled slightly. “You have no place in my life, Faraday. As you deserted me as an infant, as you deserted Shra to her death, so now I abandon you.”

And he turned and walked into the trees.

Faraday stood and stared at the spot where he had disappeared, absolutely stricken.

It was not my fault, she wanted to cry, but … but was it her fault? Could she have aided Shra? No, no, there was nothing she could have done.

But the other accusation hurt more, because Faraday felt so guilty about it.

Should she have stayed within the Sacred Grove with her son and let Azhure die in her place? If she had, things would not be much different now, would they? Gorgrael would be here to face the TimeKeepers and Qeteb instead of Axis, and Gorgrael would be as powerless as Axis was.

But the most important factor, Drago, would still be here, because Drago had allied himself with Gorgrael and would have survived the Destroyer’s push into Tencendor.

“What did I accomplish by serving out the Prophecy’s wishes,” Faraday whispered into the empty shaft of sunlight. “Not much at all, really, save for the abandonment of my son. No wonder he curses me.”

She stood for a while longer, the tears coursing freely down her face, and then she walked back the way she had come.

Drago was waiting for her, two packs leaning against his legs.

“Did you say goodbye?” he asked.

Faraday bent down and picked up one of the packs, slipping her arms through the straps and settling it on her back.

“I said goodbye to him forty years ago,” she said, “and that was the only goodbye he cares to remember.”

Drago studied her face, almost reaching out to her, then he thought better of it and shouldered his own pack. He picked up his staff, made sure his sack was securely attached to his belt, and whistled for the lizard.

It scrambled out of Askam’s sleeping roll where it had chewed several large holes for the sake of self-amusement, and ran towards them.

“North,” Drago said.

18 Shade

After Drago and Faraday had left, Zared went in search of Isfrael. The Mage-King had melded with the shadows when the meeting had broken up, but now Zared needed to know how the man could possibly help him acquire enough shade to move an army westwards.

“Shade!” Zared muttered, striding down one of the forest paths. “Shade! What next? Must I carry my own river with me in case we meet up with a band of renegade Skraelings?”

His mouth quirked at the thought. One of Axis’ main foes during his battle with Gorgrael had been the Destroyer’s army of Skraeling wraiths. They had been fearless of everything but water, and Zared was sure that Axis had managed to clog most of the rivers of Tencendor with the Skraelings’ misty bodies at some point or the other.

“Zared.”

Zared turned. Herme was jogging down the path after him.

“Gods,” the older man panted. “I am glad finally to have caught up with you. Where are you going? I need something to occupy me. This inaction is killing me.”

“Something to occupy you, Earl Herme?”

Zared whipped about. Isfrael — in his irritating, fey way — had appeared on the path before him. Behind him were six or seven Avar women.

“You need shade, Zared?” Isfrael waved at the women behind him. “I bring it.”

Numerous possibilities and images jumbled through Zared’s mind at the thought of just how these women might provide shade … and none of them were repeatable.

“Ah …” he said.

Isfrael grinned, stunning Zared even more. He’d never previously seen the Mage-King grin, but even now, there was something slightly malevolent about the expression.

“We need some twenty to thirty of your men,” one of the women said, and Zared’s mind was now so choked with unspeakable thoughts he could only stare at her. She was young and comely, with a clear creamy complexion and dark, wavy hair cascading down her back. She was dressed in a smoky-pink hip-length tunic with a pattern of clam shells embroidered about its hem, and brown leggings and boots.

“Layon,” Isfrael said, “of the ClamBeach Clan.”

Layon? Zared opened his mouth to say something, anything, and then was startled by Leagh’s voice speaking behind him.

“ClamBeach Clan?” she said, and walked to stand close by Zared’s side. “Do you live along the Widowmaker coast?”

Facing both Zared and Leagh, Layon inclined the upper half of her body and placed the heels of her hands on her forehead. “Yes, Queen Leagh.”

“Then you have travelled far to help us,” Leagh said, and smiled, stepping forward to take Layon’s hands. “Will you introduce me to your companions?”

Zared stepped back and managed to re-order his thoughts as Layon introduced Leagh to the other women. He turned to Isfrael, and was silenced by the look of cynical amusement on the Mage-King’s face.

“No doubt,” Isfrael said, “you wonder exactly what these Clan wives need with your men?”

Zared nodded, and then turned slightly to speak with Herme. “Um, Herme, perhaps you can fetch thirty men to aid these women.”

“Make sure they are strong, Earl,” Isfrael said as the Earl turned to go. “Their constitutions will be sorely tested by —”

“Oh for the gods’ sakes, Isfrael,” Zared snapped. “What are you going to do with them? I need shade, not innuendo.”

“‘Twas not me who first thought the innuendo,” Isfrael said softly, and then spoke normally. “The forest is replete in materials that can be woven to form mats. These women can show your men how.”

Zared stared at him, then smiled himself. “Now I have heard of everything, Isfrael. Do you think to give my army weaving classes?”

It was exactly what Isfrael proposed. For the rest of that day, and all through the next, teams of men hunted through the forest for what the Avar women called the goat tree. It was a variety of beech, but with a peculiar stringy bark that the tree continuously shed. Once a tree had been located, men spent an hour or two pulling as much of the fine, fibrous bark from the tree as they could, sweating and grunting as they climbed into the heights to reach the finest bark.

“As long as the men do not pull the under-bark free from the trunk of the tree, it will not be harmed,” Layon explained to a curious Leagh who trailed after the woman from work site to work site.

“What do you normally use the bark for?” she asked.

Layon paused to give a soldier carrying a massive bundle of the bark across his shoulders directions back to the main camp, and then turned back to Leagh. “It is useful for weaving into a rough fibre. We use it, as you shall, to provide summer shelters, although it does not provide much protection against the rain. Once sufficiently prepared and cured, it dries out to become very easy to work and then to carry as a woven cloth.”

“Do we have that long?”

Layon shook her head. “Not unless you want to waste two weeks or more waiting for the fibre to dry out completely. It is workable now, and will dry out further on your trek west. Each man will be able to carry enough on his horse to provide them both with shade, and yet not have it prove too heavy a burden.”

They walked in silence for a while as they moved back towards the campsite. Leagh, as so many “Plains-Dwellers” before her, was overawed by the forest, especially by the sense of light and space and music within it.

“I do not envy you your trek,” Layon eventually said softly. She did not look at Leagh.

“I fear it,” Leagh admitted, equally as softly. “Not only the march west, but what we will find on the plains, and in Carlon itself. I, as Zared and every man with us who has a family and loved ones left behind, worry each moment we are awake about their fate. And at night our dreams …”

Layon looked about her, lifting her eyes to study the forest canopy so far overhead.

“The forest remains a haven,” she said. “But for how long? The Demons grow stronger each day … and even when relatively weak they still managed the murder of Shra.”

Leagh’s eyes filled with tears at the grief in Layon’s voice. “We will prevail —”

Layon turned to her, anger in her face and voice. “We will what? Prevail? And at what expense? This Drago tells us that we must watch Tencendor be turned into a complete wasteland. What does that mean? The destruction of the forest?” Layon waved a hand about her. “That this should burn? I cannot believe that!”

“We must all endure —” Leagh began.

But Layon now let the Avar’s well-tended harvest of bitterness swell to the surface and would not let Leagh finish. “You Acharites know nothing of endurance,” she said. “Nothing.”

After that there was not much to be said. They walked in silence back to the camp, and then separated, Layon to one of the groups of Acharite men under the instruction of an Avar weaver, Leagh back to her husband.

Zared was standing in their personal camp, a bridle hanging from his hands. His face was set in a frown as his fingers struggled with a particularly stiff buckle, and he cursed and dropped the bridle as his fingers slipped one more time.

“You are too impatient,” Leagh said, and bent to retrieve the bridle. “Look, work it gently, so, and … lo! The strap slips through easily.”

Zared grinned wryly, and then noticed Leagh’s face. “What’s wrong?”

She hesitated, then threw the bridle down on top of a pile of tack and stepped into the protective circle of his arms. “I am afraid.”

“So am I,” he said. “Leagh?”

“Yes?”

“I want you to stay within the forest. Who knows what we will encounter —”

“No.”

“Leagh —”

“No!” She raised her face to his. “Twice no, Zared. First a no because I refuse to let my husband ride off without me — and you know what will happen if you do that.”

Zared grimaced, remembering how he’d left Leagh in charge of Carlon, only to have her ride off to Caelum’s camp.

“And a no because, as you taught me, I have a duty to my people. I am not only Leagh. I am Queen Leagh, and I, as you, have a people to put before my personal desires and wants.”

Zared grinned down into her face, unable to be cross with her. “I shall remind you of that next time you start to whisper your personal desires and wants into my ear late at night.”

She returned his smile, then leaned in close against him, resting her cheek against his chest.

“But, for my sake,” he whispered into her hair, “keep safe. Keep safe.”

“And you,” she said. “And you.”

They stood and held each other, both silent.

Once the fibrous bark of the goat tree had been stripped, separated and then combed — a process that took the best part of a week — then every man was given the task of weaving his own shelter.

Some took to the work better than others. Many among the army were sons of craftsmen, or were craftsmen themselves, and they quickly sat down to the job, whistling as the fine fibres spun through their fingers.

Others needed persuasion … and much instruction. The Avar women, now numbering almost fifty, moved among the army, bending over shoulders, laughing and scolding, and correcting fumbling fingers. Zared, Herme and Theod sat in a circle, with Leagh hovering on the outer amused that the highest nobility of Achar could use man-welded weapons to destroy with ease, and yet could not use the fingers they’d been born with to create.

“I wish I had a court painter with me now!” she said, amongst her laughter, “so he could record this scene for posterity.”

All three men looked up from the knotted and uneven weave in their laps and scowled at her, but their eyes danced with merriment also.

“One day,” Zared said, “I am going to see how well you wield a sword.”

“Oh, my dear,” she said, and winked at him. “Not half as well as you do, I am sure.”

All three men laughed, and Zared shook his head slightly as he looked back to where he’d managed to knot his left thumb between four strands of fibre.

Still others, although few in number, bent to the task of weaving their shade with deep resentment. Of them all, Askam harboured the deepest bitterness. Even if every man within the camp, commanders and nobles among them, were, like he, bent to the task of weaving, it did not help Askam’s sense of self-worth. He’d effectively lost all he had ever commanded, and the man who had stolen it from him, now had him sitting cross-legged in a forest assisting to weave a damned shade-cloth!

“Wait,” he murmured so that none about him could hear.

“Wait.”

19 The SunSoar Curse

D uring the mid-afternoon of their third day out of the Silent Woman Woods, Zenith and StarDrifter stopped to exchange news for malfari bread and honeyed malayam fruit with a band of Avar, then flew until the dusk penetrated the forest canpoy and flight was no longer enjoyable, let alone safe.

“How far do you think we have come?” Zenith asked StarDrifter as they cleared a space beneath a whalebone tree and sat down.

He glanced about him, wincing as a twig stabbed into his back, and readjusting his position slightly to accommodate it. Then he pointed to a shrub huddling close to the small stream that ran eastwards.

“See that kianet shrub? They only grow near the Bogle Marsh. So we have not done badly for three days’ journey.”

Zenith nodded, and handed StarDrifter his share of the honeyed malayam on a thick slice of malfari. A fair distance indeed, but if they’d been able to fly direct to the Minaret Peaks they would only have another day’s travel, if that. Forced to keep to the sheltering forests, they were swinging in a great arc to the east. Tomorrow, perhaps, they could swing back west.

“I have a hankering to spend tomorrow night in Arcen,” StarDrifter said as he broke away some of the fruit and ate it.

Zenith glanced at him sharply. “Why? We can overfly it and continue straight on. There’s no point —”

“Zenith, what difference will a half-day make?” StarDrifter said around his mouthful. “That’s all we’d lose, and I confess myself tired of these beds of pine needles and sharp-elbowed twigs.”

Zenith grinned and tore herself off a slice of malfari. Aha! StarDrifter was missing his comforts! It seemed an age since they’d been on the Island of Mist and Memory. StarDrifter had gone with Axis to the Ancient Barrows to try and strengthen the Star Gate — a useless exercise, as it turned out — and Zenith had travelled north with Faraday in the blue cart drawn by the donkeys.

“It has been a rare long time since I’ve had you to myself,” StarDrifter said, and Zenith smiled softly again, and replied without looking at him.

“Have you recovered your Enchanter powers then, StarDrifter, to read my mind so?”

StarDrifter did not reply immediately. He stared down at his fruit and bread, turning a crust over and over in one hand.

“And I find,” he said, very hesitatingly, but encouraged by her response, “that I do so very much enjoy this time spent alone with you.”

He looked up. Now Zenith was staring at the food in her hands. Again StarDrifter hesitated, but he was not a man for leaving unsaid that which needed to be shared.

“I also find,” he finally said, “that I resent every moment that I must share you with someone else. Dear gods, Zenith, I adore Faraday, but she trailed so happily — and so damnably consistently! — about after us on the Isle of Mist and Memory that I could have thrown her over the cliff face!”

StarDrifter stopped, wondering if he had said too much. But, curse it, it needed to be said! And so, having come this far, StarDrifter leapt over the cliff himself.

“It is the SunSoar curse that our blood calls out so boldly for each other,” he said. “But I find it no burden, and no curse, to love you as I do.”

There, it was said.

“StarDrifter —”

“Let me say one more thing,” he said, in gentler tones. “I know WolfStar hurt you, and that the introduction to love you suffered at his hands has likely scarred you for life. But —”

“Now is not the time to be talking of this,” Zenith said. Her voice was very brittle.

StarDrifter raised an eyebrow. “Now, in this gentle companionship under the trees, is not the time to be speaking of ‘this’?”

She looked at him steadily. “The TimeKeeper Demons are tearing this land apart. Surely there are more important things we should be —”

“Don’t evade me, Zenith.”

Zenith’s eyes filled with sudden tears, and she jerked her gaze away from StarDrifter’s face.

“Zenith …” StarDrifter reached over, took the now damp and useless food from Zenith’s hands, put it to one side, and clasped her hands very gently in his own. “Please, talk to me.”

She took a deep breath. StarDrifter had been courageous enough to speak of the bond that both knew had been developing between them, and she knew she should be as well. “RiverStar … RiverStar always chided me for not taking a lover. She said it was not the SunSoar way.”

StarDrifter grinned mischievously, his eyes twinkling with undemanding humour. “She was right.”

Zenith allowed herself to be reassured by his grin, and half-smiled herself. “I always told her I wanted to wait for the right man, she always said it was mother’s Acharite primness showing through.”

Maybe RiverStar was right, StarDrifter thought. And maybe it was just that Azhure, like Zenith, had preferred to wait until she found the man she loved.

“I wish,” Zenith’s smile faded, “I wish that I had succumbed to the blandishments of some Icarii Strike Leader, or Enchanter, during those wild Beltide nights that I spent watching from beneath the safety of the trees. I wish that I had, because then I would not have been left with WolfStar as my only memory of love!”

“Shush,” StarDrifter said, disturbed by the emotion in Zenith’s voice.

Zenith took another deep breath, calming herself. “But … but I waited, because I felt that somewhere was the one man that I could love more than any other.”

StarDrifter’s heart was racing. Why would she have said that, unless … unless … “And have you found him yet?”

Zenith stared at StarDrifter, wishing he had not forced this conversation, and yet relieved beyond words that he had. Had she found the man she could love beyond any other? Yes, she had, and she’d known it for a very, very long time. Why else had she been so frantic to know if he’d survived the Demons’ push through the Star Gate?

“Yes,” she whispered.

Strange, StarDrifter thought, strange that I do not feel overwhelming triumph at this moment. Ever before when a woman has looked into my eyes and whispered “yes,” all I have felt was triumph. Now? Relief. Sheer relief.

He leaned forward to kiss her.

Zenith jerked her head away, her eyes round and fearful, and StarDrifter pulled back as if he’d been burned.

“Why let WolfStar ruin your life? Love does not have to be what he showed you. Zenith, do you want WolfStar to colour your perception of love for the rest of your life?”

“No,” she whispered, and StarDrifter nodded slightly.

“Good.” He leaned forward, very, very slowly, giving her every chance to move away if she wanted, and then, having hesitated as long as he was capable, he kissed her.

Zenith tensed as his lips touched hers, but he was so gentle, and so tender, that she forced herself to relax and to accept his kiss. Feeling her muscles lose their rigidity, StarDrifter drew back slightly, his eyes searching Zenith’s face, then he drew her close and kissed her again, this time with more passion, and more insistence.