Pilgrim

She screamed again, thinking herself finally dead, when Sheol, Barzula and Rox simultaneously drove their horses onto the stag. It let her horse go, and suddenly StarLaughter was free, her horse bolting down the forest paths, the Demons’ horses pounding behind her.

In the forest to the west, Drago’s eyes flew open, and he fought for control as panic and terror flooded through him. In some part of him he could feel the Demons, feel their fingers reaching into him, feel them draining him. He could barely control the impulse to rise and flee through the forest, flee from something horrid that nibbled at him, that sunk sharp teeth into his heels, that lunged for his soft belly with razored horns —

He rose on his elbows, his eyes jerking from side to side.

Faraday slept serenely by his side, and the ranks of soldiers that rippled out from Zared’s campfire likewise lay calmly, lost in sleep.

Finally Drago managed to control his sense of panic. He looked to the east, troubled, and after a long, long time drifted back to sleep.

They rode for an hour, and then, as their mounts finally slaked their terror, pulled to a halt in a glade.

“When Qeteb walks again we will raze this forest to the bedrock!” Sheol screamed, turning her horse so she could see back the way they’d come, as if she might still see Isfrael standing there.

“Every one of the creatures that hide here shall become our fodder,” Rox said, with more calm but equal venom.

StarLaughter looked between them, shaken to the very core of her being. She’d thought the Demons completely invulnerable, she couldn’t believe that …

Sheol turned to stare flatly at her. “It is this forest. It is too shady” she said. “But we will grow stronger the more we feed. And one day, one day …”

StarLaughter nodded. “How far are we from Cauldron Lake?”

The Demons relaxed, and smiled. “Not far,” Mot said. “We will be there in a day or so. And after Cauldron Lake, we will be stronger.”

He looked at the flaccid child in StarLaughter’s arms. “More whole.”

There was a movement overhead, and all jerked their heads skywards, expecting further attack.

All relaxed almost instantly.

Black shapes drifted down through the forest canopy. The Hawkchilds.

“Sweet children,” Sheol whispered as they landed, and dismounted from her horse so that she could scratch the nearest under the chin.

As a whole they tilted their heads the more easily to feel her fingers, whispering softly.

“I think,” Raspu said, “that it is time we put our friends to good use.”

The other Demons nodded.

“I admit to a dislike at being so ambushed,” Sheol said. She dropped her hand, and when she spoke again her tone had the ring of command about it, even though she spoke softly.

“Scout, my sweet children. Find for us those who think to stop us. Where are the magicians of this world? Where is this StarSon who thinks to rule from the Throne of Stars? And where the armies who think to trample us underfoot?”

Behind her the other Demons laughed, but Sheol continued without paying them any heed.

“Find for us and, finding, set those who run to our song against them. Do you understand?”

“Yes, yes, yes, yes,” came back the whispered answer. “Yes, yes, yes, yes.”

“Then fly.”

And they flew.

Isfrael stood staring down the forest path for almost two hours. About him Minstrelsea’s fey creatures milled, touching him briefly, gently, grieving with him.

Eventually, Isfrael sank to one knee beside what was left of Shra. He stared a long moment, then he dropped his face into one hand and sobbed. He had loved Shra as he’d never loved another. She’d been the warmth of his youth, and the strength of his manhood. She had shown him the paths to the Sacred Groves, and she had inducted him into the laughter of love.

She had been his lover, his only companion, his only friend.

Isfrael bent down and wiped the fingers of his right hand through her torn flesh. Then he raised it and ran three fingers down his face, leaving trails of glistening blood running down each cheek and down the centre of his nose.

“By the very Mother Earth herself,” he said, looking again down the path where the Demons had disappeared, “this land will rise up against you.”

And then he rose, and walked down the path.

Towards Cauldron Lake.

Towards the man WingRidge had told him would aid Tencendor.

But Isfrael had changed. The debacle of the Demons’ passage through the Star Gate into Tencendor had suddenly become very, very personal. Now Isfrael had his own agenda, and the StarSon could be damned to a bloody mess if he thought to get in its way.

8 Towards Cauldron Lake

“There was a disturbance last night,” Drago said I quietly to Faraday as he watched Zared rummaging through some gear for a sack. “In the forest.”

She looked sharply at him. “Yes,” she said. “To the southeast.” She twisted her thick chestnut hair into a plait. “How did you know?”

Drago hesitated, trying to put emotion into words. “I could feel it, somewhere within me. Terror and savage pleasure both. It was the Demons … but what happened I do not know.”

The feeling had disturbed Drago more than he revealed. It was almost as if … almost as if he had a bond with the Demons.

“Death,” Faraday said. “Death happened. But who or how I do not know. Only that the Demons were involved.”

She grimaced. The Demons were involved in every terror that struck Tencendor now. She watched Drago carefully as he walked a few steps away, pretending an interest in a saddle thrown carelessly against a tree trunk. He’d lapsed into his introspectiveness again, but Faraday was not surprised or perturbed by it. He needed to accept, and to explore, and for that he needed time and quiet.

There was a step behind her. Zared. In his hand he held a small hessian sack.

“Is this what you needed, Drago?” he asked. Zared was hesitant. There was something puzzling him about Drago, but he could not quite fix the puzzle yet in his mind, and that irritated him.

Drago took the sack from Zared, shaking it out. It was of rough weave, tattered about the edges, and with a small cloth tie threaded through its opening.

He smiled again. “It is perfect, Zared.”

He turned to Faraday. “Faraday, may I ask a favour of you?”

She frowned, still bemused by the request for the sack. “What?”

For an answer, Drago leaned down swiftly and took a sharp knife that was resting by the loaf of bread Leagh had just put out for their breakfast.

“A lock of your hair,” he said, and without waiting for an answer, reached out and cut a short length of Faraday’s hair that curled about her forehead.

She jumped, surprised but not scared. “Drago, why —?”

He grinned impishly, and dropped it into the sack. “I like to cook,” he said, and then laughed at all the surprised faces about him.

“Drago?” Zenith said. She and StarDrifter had just walked up. “What kind of answer is that? Look at us!” She gestured about to the circle of bewildered people. “Explain!”

“No,” he said, still grinning. “Sometimes an explanation would only confuse the matter. StarDrifter?”

StarDrifter shared a quizzical look with Faraday. “Yes?”

“Will you trust me enough to give me your ring?”

StarDrifter looked down at the diamond-encrusted ring on his finger. It was his Enchanter’s ring, although not the original, for that he’d given to Rivkah many, many years ago. He twisted it slightly. It was useless without the Star Dance, but still …

He looked up. “Yes,” he said, “yes, I will trust you enough. Here,” and he slid the ring off his finger and, as Drago opened the mouth of the sack, threw it in.

There was a brief glint as it fell into the darkness, and then the depths of the sack — and the lock of Faraday’s hair — absorbed it.

“Would you like me to contribute anything?” Zared asked, half-expecting Drago to lunge at his person with the knife to snip off whatever took his fancy.

“No,” Drago said. “I apologise for this mystery, but one day … one day I hope to explain what I do. There is one more thing I need, though. Leagh, will you take this knife,” he handed it back to her, “cut me a slice of that bread, and place it in the sack?”

She half-frowned, half-smiled, and did as he asked.

“I thank you,” Drago said quietly, and impulsively leaned forward to kiss her cheek. “And I am more glad than you know to see you and Zared together as husband and wife. Now, Faraday, perhaps we can eat before we go?”

They all sat, utterly intrigued by the scene, and accepted the bread, cheese and tea that Leagh and Zenith handed out.

Faraday chewed thoughtfully, watching Drago eat from under the lids of her eyes. He was growing into his heritage, and his destiny, by the hour.

It pleased her, and yet frightened her. Drago could save Tencendor — but not if the TimeKeepers came to understand who he was. No doubt the Demons were moving towards Cauldron Lake, and what would happen if they met her and Drago?

They had believed Drago dead — what would they think, what would they understand, if they saw him in the flesh? But what did it matter what they knew or understood? No doubt the Demons would do their best to kill them anyway.

“Be careful,” Zared said, and Faraday jerked out of her thoughts, and nodded.

“Can we take some of this bread with us, Leagh? I do not know if we will find much on our way.”

“Take what you like,” Leagh said, and shared a glance with Zared. “Faraday, what are you doing? None of us understand what —”

Drago leaned forward and touched his fingers briefly to her lips. “Wait,” he said.

Zared, watching, suddenly realised what it was that had been fretting at his mind. Since Axis, Azhure and Caelum had left, command had passed to Drago.

And everyone had accepted it.

None of us wait on what Caelum or Axis might do, Zared thought, but only on Drago. We have all turned to him, even though very few of us realise it yet. We wait for Drago’s word.

“I wish you luck,” Zared said, and stepped forward to grip Drago’s hand and arm in both his hands.

“Are you sure we shouldn’t have accepted Zared’s offer of the horses?” Drago asked, squirming about on the donkey’s ridged back. The forest had completely closed in about them, absorbing even the sounds of the donkeys’ hooves, and it seemed that Zared’s camp was more like a week behind them rather than two or three hours.

Faraday smiled a little to herself. “Uncomfortable, Drago?”

Drago sighed, and patted the donkey’s neck. “I can understand why you like these beasts, Faraday, but for Stars’ sakes! Surely they’d be better left to run free through the forest?”

“They are safe,” Faraday said without thinking, and then wondered why she’d said it. “Safe,” she repeated, half to herself.

Drago turned his head slightly so that he could watch her. A shaft of sunlight filtered through the forest canopy, and touched her hair so that deep red glints shimmered through the chestnut.

Drago’s breath caught in his throat.

She lifted and turned her head to face him fully. “My beauty has never helped me, Drago. Never.”

“And yet you are not bitter?”

She shrugged a little. “I have spent many years consumed by bitterness, Drago — and you of all people should know that bitterness does not help, either.”

Drago let that pass. “Faraday, who do you take me to meet?”

“A … man, I suppose … a man called Noah. Noah exists within the Repositories at the foot of the Sacred Lakes, and he asked me to bring you to him.”

She explained to Drago how, when he’d unleashed the power of the Rainbow Sceptre in the Chamber of the Star Gate, the light from the Sceptre had enveloped the Faraday-doe and wrapped her in vision.

Faraday laughed, a trifle harshly. “And you do not know how I had come to loathe visions, Drago. As a young, naive and stupid girl I first laid hand on the trees of the Silent Woman Woods, and they imparted to me a frightful vision that propelled me into my dreadful service to the Prophecy of the Destroyer. And to WolfStar, that damned Prophet!”

Drago almost asked what had happened to WolfStar, but thought better of it. “But this vision in the Chamber of the Star Gate …?”

“Was better.” Faraday smiled, remembering. “I was in a room — such a strange room, filled with twinkling lights and knobs, and with windows that commanded such a wondrous view of the stars — and a man rose from a deep-backed chair to greet me. He said his name was Noah, and that the room was within one of the Repositories at the foot of the Lakes, and he asked four things of me.”

“And they were?”

“He asked me to be your friend.”

“Ah.” Drago’s mouth twisted cynically. No wonder she walked by his side. She had promised to do so, and the world and every star in the heavens knew Faraday kept to her promises, even though they might be the death of her.

“Drago, why must you find it so hard to believe that people can like you, even love you?”

“Because for forty years I was told over and over that I was totally unlikeable.”

“And yet Zenith liked you, loved you, and believed in you.”

Drago let that hang in the air between them a while before he answered. “Zenith is special.”

Faraday smiled softly. “I think that one day you will find that all of Tencendor, and all of its people and creatures are also special, Drago.”

“Hmm. Well, what else did this Noah ask of you?”

“He asked me to be your trust.”

Drago nodded, knowing that over the past day many had decided to trust him only through their trust of Faraday. “And?”

“Third, he asked me to bring him to you — and that is what I do now.”

“Fourth?”

“Fourth, he asked me to find that which was lost.”

“Am I among the lost, Faraday?”

“Oh yes,” she said. “Most definitely.”

Just as Faraday finished speaking, Drago’s donkey snorted and tossed her head in alarm.

Something had seized her from behind.

Above the plains of Tare a black cloud wheeled and whispered. The old speckled blue eagle, now watching from a vantage point under the roof of one of the watchtowers on the walls of the city of Tare, shifted, ruffled its feathers, then opened his beak for a brief, low cry.

It did not like the cloud. During those hours of the day when the eagle had learned it was safe to venture out, it had flown as close as it dared to the cloud.

And that was not very close, for that cloud was dangerous, very dangerous.

It was composed of hundreds of … bird-things. The eagle did not understand them. They had the scent of the Icarii bird-people about them, but that scent was somehow tarnished and warped. They also carried the scent of hunting hawks, a scent the eagle was familiar with, for he had spent many a cold winter’s night huddled safe within a nobleman’s hawk stable murmuring love songs to unresponsive lady-hawks.

But as they were not quite Icarii, then they were also not quite hawks.

They behaved as a flock with one mind — yet that mind was not their’s, for the eagle sensed that the mind that controlled them was far distant.

These bird-things spent many hours of the day hunting and eating. They hunted anything that moved, horses, cattle … people. When they had spotted a target, the bird-things swooped, and tore it to pieces. Once they had fed — and they left nothing uneaten, not even a speck of blood — they rose again as one, and recommenced their whispering patrol of the skies.

There was a brief movement on the streets below, and the eagle glanced down, distracted. A group of three or four people, scurrying from one house to another, baskets of food under their arms. The people of this land had been almost as quick as the eagle to realise that certain hours of the day were … bad … to venture forth. Now they, like the eagle, spent the bad hours huddled inside, or under whatever overhang provided shelter.

Many — thousands — had not been so wise. In his forays over Tencendor, the eagle had seen bands of maniacal men and women, and groups of children, roving the land. Some had been ravaged by despair, some by terror, others by disease; still others by internal tempest so severe some extremities looked as though they had self-destructed.

And still others wandered, so hungry that they consumed everything in their path. For several hours one day the eagle had roosted under a chimney stack, watching in absolute horror as an aged man had literally eaten his way across a stony field. He had crawled on his hands and knees, and everything he touched that could be picked up he stuffed into his mouth and swallowed.

Stones, brambles, thorns, dried cattle dung — the man had even bitten off four of his own fingers in his quest to assuage his hunger.

He had died, eventually, by the low stone wall that had bounded the field. His internal organs had finally exploded with the weight of the rocks he carried within him. He’d died stuffing scraps of his bowel and liver into his mouth.

Sickened, the eagle had watched it all, and wondered if, eventually, he also would be caught outside when the badness billowed abroad.

Now he sat safe under the watchtower roof. The black cloud swooped low over a band of pigs that roamed savage and crazed to the west of Tare — yesterday, that band of pigs had caught and devoured several people trying to scrabble among the fields for some scraps to eat — and then rose into the sky again, and flew eastwards.

The eagle shuddered as their whispering sounded directly above him, and then slowly relaxed as they continued to fly westwards.

Drago lurched forward as the donkey bucked and kicked, and tried to grab at her brush-like mane.

But it was no good, and with a grunt of surprise, he slid to the ground.

He rolled to his feet immediately, grabbing his staff to use as a weapon — and then froze in utter astonishment.

Faraday already had her hands to her mouth, stifling her laughter.

The donkey bucked and kicked in a small circle, trying to dislodge what appeared to be a blue-feathered lizard that clutched at her tail trying with narrow-eyed determination to climb onto the donkey’s back.

Drago slowly rose to his feet, laid both staff and sack on the ground, and then cautiously approached the aggrieved donkey, holding out one hand and murmuring soothing words.

The donkey gave one final buck — the lizard still gripping her tail — and halted, trembling, allowing Drago to rub her cheek and neck.

The lizard gave a hiss of triumph, and then, with almost lightning speed, scrabbled up the donkey’s tail and onto her back.

Drago looked at it, looked at Faraday — who had quietened herself — and then ran his hand down the donkey’s neck and across her withers towards the lizard. He hesitated, then gently touched the lizard’s emerald and scarlet feathers just behind its head.

They were as soft as silk.

The lizard’s crest rose up and down as Drago scratched.

“What is it?” he asked, raising his eyes to Faraday.

“It is one of the fey creatures of Minstrelsea,” Faraday said. She explained how, when she’d planted the last tree for the forest, the borders between the forest and the Sacred Grove had opened, and Minstrelsea had been flooded with the strange creatures of the Groves. “I think it likes you.”

Drago grinned and ran his hand down the lizard’s blue back. “It’s beautiful,” he said, watching the shafts of light glint from its talons. “Entrancing …”

The lizard twisted a little, and grabbed at his hand with its mouth — and then began to wash the back of Drago’s hand with its bright pink tongue.

The donkey, grown bored, sighed and shifted her weight from one hind leg to another.

The lizard slipped, and Drago instinctively caught it up into his arms.

“What am I supposed to do with it?” he asked helplessly.

“I think it wants to come with us,” Faraday said. “And as to what you are supposed to do with it … well, I think it expects you to love it.”

For the rest of that day, and all the next, they travelled further south through the Woods. The lizard travelled with Drago, curled up in front of him on the donkey, the crystal talons of its fore-claws gripping the donkey’s mane for purchase.

The donkey put up with it with some bad grace, her floppy ears laid back along her skull, and she snapped whenever the lizard slipped. But at night she did not seem to mind when the lizard curled up beside her for warmth.

On the morning of the third day they neared Cauldron Lake, descending through thickening trees, and Faraday indicated they should dismount and walk the final fifteen or twenty paces to the edge of the trees.

The lizard, silent and watchful, crawled a pace behind them, careful of its footing on the slope.

“There,” Faraday murmured as they stopped within the gloom of the line of trees. “Cauldron Lake.”

Drago’s breath caught in his throat. As with so many of the wonders of Tencendor, he’d heard tales of this Lake, but had never seen it previously.

It lay in an almost perfectly circular depression, the entire forest sloping down towards it on all sides. To their left, perhaps some two hundred paces about the Lake’s edge, stood a circular Keep, built of pale yellow stone. Its door and all its windows were bolted tight.

But it was the water of the Lake that caught Drago’s attention. It shone a soft, gentle gold in the early-morning sun.

Without warning, a vicious hand clenched in his stomach, and Drago gagged.

Faraday grabbed his arm and dragged him behind a tree.

“Look,” she mouthed, and pointed across the Lake.

On the far shore a blackness had coalesced, and spread like a stain. It took Drago a few minutes to realise that it consisted of seven black and vaguely horse-like creatures.

And the Demons and StarLaughter.

9 Cauldron Lake

“Curse them!” Faraday cried softly. “Gods! I’d hoped we could get here before them!”

“Should we —”

“No,” Faraday said. “If we try to get to Noah now they will see us.”

Drago sank down to the ground. He felt physically ill this close to the Demons, and he wondered again at the bond that existed between them.

“Will Noah survive them?” he asked.

“He’ll have to,” Faraday replied.

She sat down next to Drago and regarded him with concerned eyes. “Are you all right?”

He nodded, briefly closing his eyes, then he managed a small smile for her. “I am sick with frustration, no more. All I want to do is to see this friend of yours, and find out what it is I must do to help this land. Yet here the Demons have arrived before us, and so we must sit, and wait, and hope there is still a Noah to speak to once they have done.”

She touched his arm briefly, but did not reply.

The Demons had not enjoyed a particularly pleasant ride through the Silent Woman Woods. Their encounter with Isfrael and Shra had unnerved them and, even though they grew progressively stronger each hour that they hunted, the trees had made their way difficult.

Tangled roots had snapped at them from the soft, treacherous soil.

Branches had dipped and swayed and snapped.

Leaves had flowed through the air, burrowing beneath robes and into corners of eyes.

And things had hissed and wailed at them from behind trees.

StarLaughter had been terrified, not only by the malevolence of the Woods themselves, but by the fact that the Demons seemed unnerved by them as well. Surely they were too powerful for such as this?

But maybe they needed the power of Qeteb before they could rise to their full potential.

And that power was not so very far away, surely. Soon Qeteb would be reborn, and her son would rise to his full potential.