Pilgrim

“Zared,” Leagh said, glancing at Faraday. “What can we do but wait? Where can we go? We cannot move beyond the shelter of this forest for more than a few hours at a time, and that is no time to get an army anywhere. We must wait. Drago — what will you be able to tell us when you get back?”

“Leagh, I don’t know. I am sorry.”

Zared sighed, accepting. Leagh was right. They needed some answers. “Well, at least take two of our best horses. You might as well move as fast as you can.”

Faraday laughed. “I thank you, Zared, but no. My two donkeys can carry us, and they know the way well enough.”

Faraday sat awake late into the night, watching as Tencendor’s army slept curled up in blankets or wings in an unmoving ocean spreading into the unseeable distance.

Drago lay close to her, and she reached out, hesitated, then touched his cheek briefly.

He did not stir.

She sighed, and turned her gaze to the forest canopy, needing to sleep, but needing more to think. She was appalled by the scene earlier, and the face of hatred Axis had chosen to show Drago.

All Axis could see in Drago was the malevolent infant, using every power he had to try to put Caelum away so that he, DragonStar, could assume the name and privileges of StarSon. Faraday could hardly blame Axis and Azhure, and certainly not Caelum, for their distrust of Drago — but it was going to make things difficult. Very difficult.

At that thought Faraday almost smiled. Here she was fretting at the fact that Drago’s parents did not welcome the prodigal son with open arms and tears of joy, when beyond the trees ravaged such misery that SunSoar quarrels paled into insignificance.

But to counter the misery there was Drago. And somewhere, secreted within his craft, there was Noah. Between them, those two must somehow prove the saving of Tencendor.

Faraday let her thoughts drift for a while, content to listen to the sounds of the sleeping camp. Somewhere a horse moved, and snorted, and a soldier spoke quietly to it. The sound of the man soothing the horse made Faraday think, for no particular reason, of the stunning moment when Sicarius had leapt to the aid of Drago. Drago? Faraday knew how devoted those hounds, and especially Sicarius, had always been to Azhure, but she also remembered that for thousands of years they had run with the Sentinel, Jack, and she wondered if their origins lay not in Icarii magic, but deep below the Sacred Lakes.

Perhaps no wonder, then, that Sicarius had leapt to Drago’s defence.

There was a slight movement at her side, breaking Faraday’s thoughts.

She looked down. Drago had rolled a little closer, and now lay with his head propped up on a hand.

“Faraday — what did I come through the Star Gate as? You transformed me somehow, back to this form … but what did I come through the Star Gate as?”

“You came through as a sack of skin wrapped about some bones.”

A sack, he thought … an empty sack, just waiting to be filled.

“And the rosewood staff was with me?”

“Yes. You insisted on searching for it before you would let me drag you from the Chamber.”

Drago frowned slightly. “I can remember almost nothing of the Star Gate Chamber, or the first few hours afterwards. Everything, until I woke refreshed in the cart, is blurred and indistinct.”

Faraday remained silent, content to let Drago think.

“You evaded Axis’ questions about the Sceptre very nicely,” he said finally. “You know the staff is the Sceptre.”

“Probably.”

“I wanted to give it to Caelum. Damn it, Faraday, I stole it. It belongs to him, and he needs it back.”

She tilted her head very slightly so he could not read her eyes, and again remained silent.

“When Axis taxed me about the Sceptre I looked for the staff, intending to hand it to Caelum. But it had disappeared. Later, hours after Caelum and our parents had gone, I chanced upon it. Faraday, do you know where it was?”

She turned her face back to him again. “No.”

“It was in the blue cart.”

“It has its own purpose, Drago. And, undoubtedly, it did not want to be handed back to Caelum.”

He sighed and rolled onto his back, staring at the forest canopy far above. “Like all beautiful things,” he said, and glanced at Faraday, “I do not understand it.”

She bit down a grin, but he saw it anyway, and smiled himself.

“Why do you help me, Faraday? Why were you there in the Star Gate Chamber, waiting for me?”

“Someone needed to believe in you. I found that no hard task.”

“You evade very well.”

“It comes naturally to me.”

Drago smiled again. He did not know why Faraday was with him, or how long she would stay, but he hoped it would be a while yet. It was a vastly new and immensely warm feeling to have such a beautiful woman walk by his side and say softly at night, “I believe in you.”

Drago’s grin subsided and he silently chastised himself for romanticizing Faraday’s motives. It was obvious she knew some secret of Cauldron Lake, and it was that knowledge, or that secret, that kept her by his side. Like himself, she wanted only to aid the land, in any way she could, and at the moment she apparently felt the best way was to continue at his side.

He felt her fingers at his neck, gently feeling the bandage, and he looked at her. Gods, she was beautiful.

“Does the wound hurt?” she asked, trying to divert his attention.

“A little.”

She drew back. “It should heal without giving you too much trouble. At least your father has enough experience with a blade to give you a clean cut and not some jagged hole.”

“Then I am grateful for the small mercies of parental experience and skill,” he said, “for, frankly, I thought he had me dead on the sliding edge of that blade.” He paused, his own fingers briefly probing the bandage. “Faraday … at some point after you dragged me from the collapsing chamber I asked you who I was.”

He frowned. “Why did I ask that?”

“I have no idea,” she lied. “But do you remember that you answered your own question?”

He nodded very slowly. “And yet I do not understand my answer, nor the impulse that made me mouth it.

“The Enemy. I am the Enemy. What does that mean?”

“Go to sleep,” Faraday murmured, and turned away and lay down herself, and although Drago stared at her blanketed back for a very long time, she said no more.

Drago dreamed he was once again in the kitchens of Sigholt. The cooks and scullery maids had all gone to bed for the night, and even though the fires were dampened down, the great ranges still glowed comfortingly.

He smiled, feeling the contentment of one at home and at peace.

He stood before one of the great scarred wooden kitchen tables. It was covered with pots and urns and plates, all filled with cooking ingredients.

But something was missing, and Drago frowned slightly, trying to place it.

Ah, of course. Of what use were a thousand ingredients without a mixing bowl? He walked to the pantry and lifted his favourite bowl down from the shelf, but when he returned to the laden table, he found that the bowl had turned into a hessian sack, and that the plates and bowls on the table no longer contained food, but the hopes and lives and beauty of Tencendor itself.

“I need to cook,” he murmured, and then the kitchen faded, and Drago slipped deeper into his sleep.

Night reigned. Terror stalked the land. To the south of the Silent Woman Woods seven black shapes, a cloud hovering above them, thundered across the final hundred paces of the plain, and then vanished into the forest west of the Ancient Barrows.

Zared woke early, just as Drago and Faraday were rising and shaking out their blankets.

“Are you sure you won’t take two of my fastest horses?” he asked, standing up and buttoning on his tunic.

“No,” Faraday said. “The donkeys will do us well enough.”

“However,” Drago said, and his face relaxed into such deep amusement that Zared stilled in absolute amazement at the beauty of it, “there is one thing I would that you give me. I had a sack, and have lost it. Can you find me a small hessian sack? I swear I do feel lost without it at my belt.”

And he grinned at Zared’s and Faraday’s bemused faces.

Far, far away he stood on the blasted plain, wondering where his master was. Last night he’d dreamed he’d heard his voice, dreamed he felt him on his back. Was there a use for him, after all? No, no-one wanted him. He was too old and senile for any use. His battle-days were behind him. His legs trembled, and he shuddered, and the demonic dawn broke over his back.

7 The Emperor’s Horses

They sat, arms about each other, under the relative privacy of a weeping horstelm tree. Outside the barrier of leaves moved Banes and Clan Leaders, whispering, consulting, fearing.

Isfrael, Mage-King of the Avar, lifted a hand and caressed Shra’s cheek. She was still handsome in her late fifties, and even if the bloom of youth had left her cheeks, Isfrael continued to love her dearly. She was the senior Bane among the Avar — had been since she was a child — but she was beloved to him for so many other reasons: she was his closest friend, his only lover, his ally, his helper, and he valued her above anything else in this forest, even more than the Earth Mother or her Tree.

When Isfrael’s father, Axis, had given his son into the Avar’s care when Isfrael was only fourteen, it had been Shra who had inducted him into the clannish Avar way of life, and into the deep mysteries of the Avarinheim and Minstrelsea forests and the awesome power of the Earth Tree and the Sacred Groves. She had made him what he was, and he owed her far more than love for that.

“Can you feel them?” she whispered.

“Yes.”

He trembled, and she felt the shift of air against her face as he bared his teeth in a silent snarl. “Demons now think to walk this forest!”

She leaned in against him, pressing her face against the warmth of his bare chest. “Can we —”

“Stop them?” Isfrael was silent, thinking. He pulled Shra even closer against him, stroking her back and shoulder.

“Who else?” he whispered.

“WingRidge said that —”

“WingRidge said many things. But what has the StarSon done to help. Nothing … nothing. The Avar have ever had to fend for themselves.”

“Can we stop them?”

“We must try. Before they get too strong.”

Shra laughed softly, humourlessly. “They are strong enough now! Did they not break through the wards of the Star Gate? Isfrael — those wards were the strongest enchantment possible! Made of gods, as well as of the trees, earth and stars!”

“The Demons used Drago’s power to break those wards.”

They sat unspeaking a while, thinking of the implications of Isfrael’s words.

Then Isfrael trembled again, and Shra leaned back. His face was twisted into a mask of rage — and something else.

Nausea.

“Their touch within the trees desecrates the entire land!” Isfrael said. “I cannot stand by and let them stride the paths unchallenged. And see, see.”

His hand waved in the air before them, and both saw what ran the forest paths.

“See what abomination they have called forth,” Isfrael whispered. “I must act.”

The seven beasts snorted and bellowed, hating the shade that dappled their backs underneath the trees. They ran as fast as they dared. Their escort had not entered the forest with them, and they were fearful without the comforting presence of the Hawkchilds. So they ran, and as they ran the trees hissed and spat, trying to drive these abominations from the paths of Minstrelsea.

But something more powerful — and more fearsome — than the trees pulled the beasts forward.

Mot lifted his head, and laughed. “They come!” he cried, and the Demons rose as one from the rubble where they had been waiting.

StarLaughter scrambled to her feet, her lifeless child clutched tight in her arms.

“What comes?” she said. They’d been waiting here for days, and although the Demons had waited calmly, StarLaughter had been almost beside herself with impatience. Her child awaited his destiny — and all they could do was sit amid the ruined Barrows. This was all they had come through the Star Gate for? She lifted her head. Something did come, for she could hear the distant pounding of many feet.

There was a movement beside her, and Sheol rested a hand on StarLaughter’s shoulder.

“Watch,” she said, and as she spoke something burst from the forest before them.

StarLaughter’s eyes widened as the creatures approached and slowed into a thumping walk. She laughed. “How beautiful!” she cried.

“Indeed,” whispered Sheol.

Waiting at the foot of the pile of rubble were seven massive horses — except they were not horses at all for, although they had the heads and bodies of horses, their great legs ended not in hooves, but in paws.

StarLaughter thought she knew what they were. When she’d been alive — before her hated husband, WolfStar, had thought to murder her — she’d heard Corolean legends of a great emperor who had conquered much of the known world. This emperor had a prized stallion, as black as night, which had been born with paws instead of hooves.

The stallion had been as fast as the wind, according to legend, because his paws lent him cat-like grace and swiftness, and he was as savage as any wild beast, striking out with his claws in battle, and dealing death to any who dared attack his rider. No wonder the emperor had managed to conquer so much with such a mount beneath him.

And here seven waited. Tencendor would quail before them.

Seven, one for each of the Demons, one for her — and one, eventually, for her son.

“DragonStar,” she whispered, cuddling her child close, and started down the slope.

They rode north-west through the forest through the night, heading for Cauldron Lake. The Demons leading, StarLaughter, her child safe in a sling at her bosom, behind them. They rode, but it was not a pleasant ride.

The horses were swift and comfortable to sit, but they were unnerved by the forest.

StarLaughter did not blame them, for she hated the forest herself — no wonder the Demons wanted to leave it as quickly as they did. To each side, trees hissed, their branches crackling ominously above, the ground shifting about the base of their trunks as if roots strove for the surface.

Barzula laughed, but there was a note of strain in his laughter. “See the trees,” he said. “They think they can stop us, but all they can do is rattle their twigs in fury.”

None of the others replied. Mot, Sheol and Raspu were tense, watchful, while beside Barzula, Rox rode as if in a waking dream. This was night, his time, and terror drove all before it. Rox had his head tilted slightly back, his eyes and mouth open. A faint wisp of grey sickness slithered from a nostril and into the night. He fed, growing more powerful with every soul he tainted.

If the trees unnerved the Demons and StarLaughter alike, then even worse than the trees were the beings that slunk in the shadows. Scores, perhaps hundreds, of strange creatures crept, parallel with the path, through the forest. StarLaughter caught only the barest glimpses of them — but they were creatures such as she had never seen before: badgers with horns and crests of feathers, birds with gems for eyes, great cats splotched with emerald and orange.

StarLaughter did not like them at all. She tightened her hold about her son, and called softly to Raspu who was immediately in front of her: “My friend, can these hurt us?”

Raspu hesitated, then twisted slightly on his mount so he could reply. “Once your son strides in all his glory, my dear, this forest will wither and die, and all that inhabit it will run screaming before him.”

StarLaughter smiled. “Good.” She started to say something more, but there was a movement a little further down the path before them, and then a great roar tore into the night.

“Get you gone from these paths! Your tread fouls the very soil!”

The horses abruptly halted. They hissed and milled about agitatedly. StarLaughter peered ahead — and laughed.

Before them stood the strangest man she had ever seen. He wore only a wrap — a wrap that seemed woven of twigs and leaves, for Stars’ sakes! — about his hips, and was otherwise bare-footed and chested. His hair was a wild tangle of faded blonde curls, and two horns arched up from his hairline.

True, he had the feel of power about him, but StarLaughter did not think it was any match for what her companions wielded.

To one side and slightly behind the man stood a slender woman, dark haired and serene-faced, wearing a robe with leaping deer about its hemline. Her hand rested on the man’s shoulder.

StarLaughter’s lip curled. A Bane. How pitiful.

“Leave this place!” the betwigged man cried, and took a belligerent step forward.

“And who are you to so demand?” Sheol said pleasantly, but StarLaughter could hear the power that underlay her voice, and she smiled. This man was dead. The only question was who would strike the match.

“I am Isfrael, Mage-King of the Avar,” the man replied.

“And the woman?” Sheol asked. It was polite, perhaps, to find out the names of those about to die, but StarLaughter had always thought such niceties well beyond Sheol. Mayhap she was but toying with her prey.

“I am Shra,” the slender woman said. “Senior Bane among the Avar.”

“The Avar were ever troublesome,” StarLaughter said. “Grim-faced and petulant-browed. Perhaps it is time they were finally put away.”

Surprisingly, Isfrael smiled. “You do not like this place, do you. Why is that?”

Sheol shifted on her horse, and shot a look at Raspu, but when she spoke, her voice was even and calm. “It is a place that has no meaning, Mage-King. I do not like it.”

“You do not like it, Demon, because you cannot touch it.”

Sheol literally hissed, then she swivelled about on her horse. “Rox!”

The Demon of Terror slowly focused his eyes on the two before him, then his face twisted, and he cried out. “I cannot! The trees protect them!”

Isfrael smiled, and took another step forward. He raised a hand, and in it StarLaughter saw that he clutched a twig.

“You ravage freely across the plains, Demons, but know that eventually the very land will rise up against you.”

“When we are whole, we will tear this land apart, rock by rock, tree by tree!” Sheol said.

Isfrael’s grin widened … and then he threw the twig at Sheol.

Sheol knew what that twig was. It was not simply a twig, but the entire shadowy power of the trees that hurtled towards her.

She screamed in stark terror, reflexively raising both arms before her face, and then her scream turned into a roar and the twig disintegrated the instant before it hit her.

“Filth!” she screamed, and she grabbed the mane of her horse and dug her heels cruelly into its flanks.

The horse leaped forward, bellowing, its teeth bared, its neck arching as if to strike.

As if from nowhere, another twig appeared in Isfrael’s hand, and this he brandished before him. “Shra! Stand firm!” he cried. “I rely on you now as never before!”

The horse lunged, snapping at the twig, but it did not seize it.

“Filth!” Sheol screamed again, and now Barzula and Mot also drove their creatures forward.

Unnoticed, the seventh, and riderless, horse, slunk back a few steps until it merged with the night.

“Shra!” Isfrael murmured. As mighty as he was, he still needed her power to sustain him. The three black beasts roiled before him, snapping and snarling, swiping their claws through the air.

Yet still they held back, so that their teeth and claws came within a finger span of Isfrael, but did not actually touch him.

“The very land will rise up against you!” Isfrael shouted one more time, and at his shout the trees themselves screamed.

Shra staggered, almost unable to control the power that Isfrael was using. She could feel it rope through her, feel it burn up through the soles of her feet where they touched the forest floor, flood through her body, and then flow into Isfrael through her hand on his shoulder.

All the Demons were screaming now, unstinting in their efforts to drive their mounts forward over this man before he could bring the full power of the trees to bear upon them. The air before Isfrael was filled with the yellowed teeth of the horses and the fury of their talons — but he was holding, and with luck he might even manage to drive the Demons back.

The seventh horse abruptly materialised out of the darkness behind Shra. Utterly silent, it surged forward, reared up on its hind legs, and then brought all its weight and fury to bear in one horrific slashing movement of its forepaws.

Neither Shra nor Isfrael had realised it was there. All their concentration was on the Demons before them, on driving them out, on … Shra’s eyes widened in complete shock, and she staggered backwards, breaking the contact between her and Isfrael. Claws raked into her flesh from her neck to her buttocks, ripping the flesh apart to expose her spine.

“Isfrael!” she cried, and collapsed on the ground.

At the loss of contact Isfrael spun about — to see the massive beast tear her apart. Blood splattered across his face and chest.

“Shra!” he screamed.

Behind him the horses lunged, but as they did so Isfrael dropped to his knees by Shra’s side under the flailing paws of the black horse, and tried to scoop her into his arms.

The other horses, the screaming Demons on their backs, milled above the two, biting and slashing.

StarLaughter, who had kept her own steed back, sat and smiled. The scene reminded her of the kill at the end of the hunt. She could see nothing save the plunging bodies of the horses, the Demons — now laughing and screaming hysterically — on their backs. Or almost nothing, except for the scattering drops of blood that flew through the air.

“A Mage-King,” she murmured to herself. “How utterly, indescribably useless.”

And then something swept past her.

She spun about, gasping. It was so fast that she did not get a good look at the creature — all she had was an impression of white. Of white, and of horns.

Something horned.

An owl fluttered down from the forest canopy and nipped at StarLaughter’s hair.

She screamed, crouching over her baby.

Something else slithered out from between the trees — a snake, but a snake with small wings just behind its head. It sank its teeth into her horse’s back paw, and the creature panicked and bolted, careening into the bloody melee before it.

StarLaughter, clinging desperately to the horse’s mane, and trying to protect her baby, only had momentary impressions of the nightmare her horse had plunged her into.

The Demons were now silent, fighting an enemy that she could not immediately see.

Horses’ heads, rearing back, eyes rolling white with terror.

A bloodied mess on the ground, and the horses’ paws and lower legs thick with ropy blood and flesh.

The Mage-King — still alive — slowly rising, his face terrible with vengeance.

All StarLaughter wanted to do now was escape, any way she could. She fought to free her hand from her horse’s mane, but it was tangled tight. Her wings beat futilely, trying to lift her from the horse’s back, but she couldn’t free herself, she couldn’t free herself, she couldn’t —

Suddenly a white form rose, almost as if from the very earth beneath her horse.

StarLaughter screamed in utter terror. A huge white stag reared before her, and then it plunged down, sinking its teeth into her horse’s neck.

Both beasts writhed, both trying to gain the advantage. The stag’s horns razored through the air, inches from StarLaughter’s face, inches from her precious child — and still her hand was trapped in her horse’s forever-damned mane!