Pilgrim (22 page)

“He will come to get you. He will
kill
you.” She smiled. “And nothing you can do will stop that now. Look at you, you pitiful lump of mortal flesh. You dare to name yourself heir and ruler of Tencendor. Ha! You were bred beyond the bonds of marriage.
The legitimate heir,
my
son, will come to kill you
!”

The entire circle of robed watchers broke into agitated whispering.

“He will revel in your pain and blood,” StarLaughter continued, triumph and laughter replacing the fury in her voice.

“See.” The circle of Hawkchilds broke into howls of laughter, and they parted so that there was an unrestricted view of the part of the universe to which StarLaughter pointed. “See!”

Axis grabbed at Azhure and Caelum, pulling them into a tight group. Stars! What could they do! Even though he had no power himself, Axis could feel the power that vibrated from StarLaughter, as from each and every one of the robed children about them.

It must have taken unimaginable strength and skill to create this hall of stars. Had StarLaughter and the children done that, or had it been the TimeKeepers?

Of what use were swords against such enchantments as this?

“Look!” Azhure whispered, but both Caelum and Axis were staring anyway.

Caelum shuddered, then wrenched himself out of his father’s grasp. “No!”

“Caelum—” Axis began.

“
No!
”

“Yes!” StarLaughter whispered. “Here comes DragonStar to drink your blood, fool boy!”

Wheeling out of a galaxy of swirling stars came a figure as black as the others that had circled the three. Save this one rode a horse, and brandished something in his hand that caught and reflected the starlight.

Caelum screamed, a thin wail of utter terror, and turned to flee.

But the circle of children—now hawks—crowded in about him, wrapping him in their wings, pecking at his face, his eyes.

Axis jumped to help, grabbing at legs and claws and wings, trying to free his son.

Azhure would have tried to help as well, except at the very moment that Axis leaped, Azhure felt cruel hands grab her arms and hold her back.

“No,” StarLaughter whispered in her ear. “Why not let them both die together? They will only stand in the way of the true heir, DragonStar.”

Azhure struggled, baring her teeth in a desperate attempt to bite her way free, but StarLaughter countered every move Azhure made with power and mirth.

“Damn you!” Azhure cried.

“Nay,” StarLaughter said. “
You
are the one who is damned. Can you not feel it?”

Caelum was completely enveloped in feathered wings and bodies. Struggling to battle his way in, Axis still managed to wonder in one corner of his mind how the children had transformed themselves. They were as dangerous and powerful as StarLaughter and the Demons. He managed to get a good grasp of one wing, and used his entire strength to tear it back.

Something screamed, and a body fell away from the writhing black pile that contained Caelum.

Axis grabbed at another wing, but this time a horrific head rose up and pecked violently at his face so that he was forced to stumble back, his arms covering his bleeding forehead and cheeks.

“Axis!” he heard Azhure scream. “
Look!
”

Axis raised his head, wiping blood out of his left eye—and felt his heart falter, and then thud violently.

Thundering towards them was a massive black horse. Atop him was a man clad in enveloping black armour, and wielding a sword in his right hand such as Axis had never seen before.

The rider swept it through the air in great hissing arcs.

Caelum.

The word blasted through his head, and Axis saw Azhure clutch at her own skull and cry out.

Caelum!

The horse and rider drew nearer, and Axis, even though he could see no floor where he stood, could nevertheless
feel
the vibrations of the beast’s approach.

The rider now stood in his stirrups, slowly waving the sword above his head, and Axis heard a scream of triumph tear through his mind.

He screamed himself, battling the gut instinct to fling himself out of the way, and instead leaped for Caelum, still struggling with the bird-children.

As Axis leaped, they all rose in the air, leaving Caelum writhing on the floor, covered in a thin layer of blood from a myriad of scratches.

At first Axis thought it was because of his own precipitous leap, but at the moment he gathered his son into his arms, he felt the horse’s hooves slam down next to his head.

Instinctively he rolled closer to Caelum, gathering him into his arms—

Caelum
…

“No,” Axis gasped. “Don’t listen to him! Don’t look at—”

Look at my face, Caelum.

And Caelum had to. He had to. He had to see the face of the being that was about to kill him.

He twisted about in Axis’ arms, and looked up.

The rider slowly lifted the visor of his helmet.

“Drago!” Caelum screamed, and then the rider’s sword arm was flashing down, and Caelum felt the tip of the sword slice into his chest, slice
deep
into his chest, and he choked on the blood and pieces of sliced tissue that filled his lungs.

The rider leaned down from the horse, leaned down his entire weight, and twisted the blade.

“
No!
” Axis screamed, reaching around Caelum to grasp the blade in his bare hands. “
No!
”

“Yes,” whispered StarLaughter.

Yes!
whispered the voice of the rider through their minds, and he twisted the blade again, and now Axis screamed, but still he held on to the blade, even though he could feel it slicing his fingers away, trying, trying, trying to wrench it out of his son’s chest.

“A foretaste of the hunt,” StarLaughter said conversationally, and then she, the children, and the black rider disappeared.

The instant she felt the restraining arms vanish, Azhure fell down on top of her husband and son. The blade was still embedded in Caelum’s chest, and Axis still had his hands wrapped about it.

Stricken, Azhure looked into Caelum’s face.

“Drago!” he said, through a mouthful of clotting blood, and died.

Azhure blinked, and her son lay dead before her.

She blinked again, and her husband writhed screaming as he clutched his ruined hands to his chest.

She blinked once more, and she found herself kneeling on the hard black surface of the tunnel, staring at her husband and Caelum lying before her.

Perfectly whole.

The sword, the blood, the horror, all had disappeared.

StarLaughter took a deep breath, and opened her eyes back to awareness of the horse beneath her and the cold winds of the Skarabost Plains whipping past her.

She turned her head slightly to look at the Demons.

They were all watching her with expressions half-ecstasy, half-wild amusement.

“He is weak,” StarLaughter said, “and filled with hopelessness. If the StarSon can let a vision impale him, then think what will happen when the real thing hunts him through the Maze!”

There was silence as the Demons and StarLaughter smiled at the thought.

It would be a good hunt.

“Those were the three,” said Mot, “who, if there had been any power remaining, could have wielded it.”

Barzula smirked. “The Mage-King of the Avar was useless.”

“
Everyone
is useless!” cried Rox.

“Tencendor is ours,” Raspu said.

“Forever and ever and through all time,” Sheol said, and looked reverently at the child in her lap.

They had, for the moment, forgotten about the two worrying magicians to the west.

“
D
id you not live in southern Skarabost, Faraday?” Drago asked one night, idly stroking the lizard as it cuddled against his thigh.

They were crouched in their cramped tent on the shores of the Nordra as it sliced through the Western Ranges and the Rhaetian Hills. Drago had spent the best part of the day looking for a boat, but had found none. In the morning they would continue their northward journey to Gorkenfort on foot, crossing the Nordra when they found a ford or a boat. Faraday had remained silent when Drago had mentioned Gorkenfort; he knew all too well of her need to go directly north to Star Finger, and she knew it would be of no use to tell him yet again.

They sat shoulder by shoulder, with space not even for a fire. The terror raged outside, and while they knew it could not touch them, the confinement of the tent was still preferable to sitting outside by a fire with the Demons nibbling at their minds…
why? why? why?
During the day they continued to travel through the Demonic Hours, ignoring the cold fingers of the grey miasma as best they could, but at night they rested, both physically and spiritually, within the warm comfort of the tent’s interior.

Faraday took a long time to answer, and Drago was surprised that she finally did.

“Yes,” she said. “On an estate called Ilfracombe. But it is far to the east of where we will travel.”

Her voice had a decided edge to it, but Drago ignored it. He also dreamed of the girl, but he found his need to get to Gorkenfort greater, and he hoped that the answers he would find there would also help solve the riddle of the girl.

“Do you still have family there?”

“Why these questions?” she said, and raised her face. “Will whether or not any of my family survive or be damned, save or damn Tencendor in its turn?”

Drago was horrified to see the brightness of tears in her eyes. “Faraday…we will get to the girl soon enough.”

She was silent a long time, wiping the tears away with the back of a hand. It was not only the fretting for the girl that made her irritable, but her growing feeling for this man now so close to her.

Faraday didn’t like that…she didn’t like it at all.

“It is not just the girl,” she whispered. “There is another wound which will not close.”

This, at least, she would tell him.

Drago was silent, willing to let her tell him at her own pace.

“Before we left the Silent Woman Woods I said goodbye to Isfrael,” she said, her voice stronger.

Drago remembered how curt Faraday had been when she’d mentioned her talk with Isfrael as they’d left the Silent Woman Woods.

“I know,” he said gently.

Tears threatened again. “I loved that child so much!” Faraday said, and she spread her hands across her belly, as if she could still feel him growing inside of her. “And I loved Axis so
much.
I did so much for both of them. And yet both of them have preferred to cut me from their lives.

“Isfrael said…” Her voice broke. “Isfrael said that he wished that just once I’d been there to rock him to sleep as a child.”

Furious with both Axis and Isfrael for hurting Faraday so much, for
continuing
to hurt her, Drago wrapped his arms about Faraday and hugged her close.

“Shhh, Faraday,” he whispered into her hair, gently rocking her. “Shush now.”

Very slowly and very hesitantly, as if she regretted every movement, he felt Faraday slide her arms about him.

“I shouldn’t have abandoned him,” she whispered. “I shouldn’t have abandoned him.”

“Shush now, Faraday,” he said again. “Shush.”

They sat in silence, and gradually Drago rocked Faraday to sleep as if she were a child.

Drago dreamed.

But this night it was not the girl who intruded into his subconscious.

He dreamed he stood outside a great abandoned fortress of ice-covered black stone. Winds and snow buffeted the fortress, and he had to fight to maintain his feet. The great gates hung open on rusted hinges, and Drago struggled inside.

The courtyard was bare of anything but snow and ice drifts. Drago looked about, shielding his eyes as best he could from the gusts of ice-needled wind.

Twenty paces away was the door into the Keep, and Drago slipped and slithered his way across the courtyard, hoping the door was not bolted.

It opened with a painful squeal as he leaned against it, and Drago stumbled inside, grateful to be out of the wind. But it was no warmer inside. Ice crept down stone walls and cascaded in a frozen waterfall down the stairs.

They were impassable.

Drago walked slowly into the great hall, then stopped. Here a fire roared in the fireplace. A table was set before it, and on that table lay a dead seal, its blank eyes staring in Drago’s direction.

There was a rustle of movement in a shadowed space at the rear of the hall, and Drago swung his gaze in that direction.

A woman emerged from the shadows. She was tall and willowy, dressed in a pale grey robe that clung to her form. Iron-grey hair, streaked with silver, cascaded down her back. On the ring finger of her left hand she wore a circle of stars.

She had very deep blue eyes, and a red mouth, curved in a welcoming smile.

“North,” she whispered, and yet the whisper reached Drago easily. “Come north to
Gorkenfort
, Drago. Listen not to Faraday’s pleadings. I have more need of you than the weeping girl.”

Her smile widened momentarily, and then she moved gracefully to stand behind the table, her back to the fire.

She continued to stare at Drago, and then suddenly, horrifically, she snarled, revealing sharp fangs, and she bent to sink them into the spine of the seal.

Bones crackled, and blood spattered about the table.

She lifted her head. Her mouth and chin were red.

“Come north,” she said. “I need to talk to you.”

His mother. His ancestral mother…

Drago nodded, understanding even though he could put no words to his understanding, and turned and left the dream.

Terror buffeted the tiny tent, and when dawn broke, hunger tried to poke its skeletal fingers through the openings.

But the two inside did not notice, nor fear.

They slept.

Drago let Faraday sleep until it was full daylight.

“It’s late!” she cried, springing into instant awareness. She pushed her hair back from her face and hastily twisted it into a long plait down her back.

“We have not lost long,” Drago said, watching with amused eyes as Faraday leapt to her feet and stuffed their few possessions into their packs.

“We can eat as we walk,” she said, handing Drago a dried apple and a piece of cheese. “Get moving! I cannot dismantle this tent while you still sit there!”

Drago did as he was told. He unlaced the top of the tent from his staff, which doubled as a pole, and helped Faraday fold it.

Then he checked that his pack was properly loaded, swung it onto his back, made certain his sack was securely hung at his belt and picked up his staff. “Ready?”

“At this rate, it will be full summer by the time we reach Gorkenfort,” Faraday grumbled, swinging into step beside Drago.
And we will never reach Star Finger in time.

Drago heard both spoken and unspoken words, but he did not answer. He stared at the landscape about them. It was still windswept, but here, at the edge of river and the Rhaetian hills, there was more vegetation and dozens of deep burrows where, Drago thought, might huddle those creatures not yet driven insane by the Demons’ touch.

Every so often, as if to confirm his hopes, he spotted the glint of dark eyes watching him from deep within the shadowed burrows. Sometimes the lizard would investigate the burrows, and he always seemed to emerge grinning.

Drago and Faraday had seen evidence of the maddened creatures that roamed the plains, but they had not been attacked, nor had they seen the creatures in groups of any more than four or five.

The lizard emerged from a burrow to Drago’s left, and trotted over to him.

Drago leaned down and scratched his head, smiling.

“How will we cross the Nordra?” Faraday asked.

He turned back to her, watching the northerly wind whip fine strands of chestnut hair about her face and press the material of her dress close to her body.

“Until we find a boat, or a ford, we shall have to travel north along this bank. I…”

His voice trailed off.

“Yes?” Faraday said.

“I dreamed last night of she who we go to meet at Gorkenfort.”

Faraday arched an eyebrow, but did not speak, and Drago thought she had never looked so beautiful.

“Urbeth,” he said. “Urbeth waits impatiently for us at Gorkenfort.”

“
She
is your ancestral mother?”

Drago gave a little shrug. “I understand it as much as you.”

Faraday dropped her eyes. Urbeth awaited them? She lifted her eyes again and stared directly north towards Star Finger. Then she sighed and bent down to lift her pack.

“We had better walk,” she said, “for there is a long way to go, and many directions to be taken.”

The lizard heaved a great sigh and got to his feet.

They walked through that day, stopping only to eat a brief meal at midday. Their food was getting low, but Drago hoped they’d meet with some Aldeni communities, or find their abandoned homes, who might have stocks of food.

Faraday privately wondered about Drago’s optimism on that score. With the devastation that had struck at land and lives alike, people were likely to be wary of strangers, and even more wary of sharing what little food they had left.

They camped that evening still on the east bank of the river. Drago was clearly impatient at the delay in finding a way to cross the Nordra, for the river was now angling back to the east. They spent the evening in silence, each lost in their own thoughts, and when it came time to sleep they slept wrapped tight in their individual blankets, and tight in their individual dreams.

“Why do you continue to deny your birthright?” Faraday said unexpectedly over the dried apple they shared for breakfast.

Drago took his time in answering. “I am not ready to deny Caelum
his
birthright,” he said.

“You are a fool.” Faraday stood up. “Especially since you say that you will let nothing stop you from aiding the land. What if…”

She stopped folding her blanket and fixed him with her eye. “What if you can best serve Tencendor as StarSon and
not
Caelum’s lackey?”

Drago drew in a sharp, angry breath. “I am
not
StarSon. That was but a childish dream. I will not stand in Caelum’s way again!”

“It is your denial that is childish!” Faraday snapped, and turned her back to him.

They walked in silence that morning.

An hour before midday Drago halted, his hand shading his eyes. “There’s something ahead,” he said.

Faraday strained to see, but could see nothing. “What? Is it dangerous?”

Drago chewed his lip in frustration. “I can’t see it properly. It’s too far away. A pale smudge…but it doesn’t fit into the landscape. It’s not natural.”

Faraday glanced at the lizard ranging some fifteen paces ahead of them. It showed no fear, or sign of any consternation.

“Then we must walk,” she said, and shifted her backpack into a more comfortable position. “We cannot let a smudge deter us.”

Drago could not help a grin at her words, but Faraday, who had walked ahead, did not see it. Within a few minutes she could see the smudge as well, and both she and Drago quickened their stride, trying to get close enough to see.

When they did make it out, they both slowed slightly in amazement. It was a white horse, sway-backed with age, standing as still as death.

“Is it crazed?” Faraday asked.

“It must be,” Drago said. “We’re too far from any shelter for the horse to be anything other.”

Faraday checked their surrounding. “Perhaps we should give it a wide berth.”

“Another few paces,” Drago said. “We can see better from there, and we’ll still be a safe distance away.”

The halted within twenty paces of the horse. It gave no indication that it was aware of their presence, standing with its head drooping almost to the ground, apparently fast asleep.

“We’d best give him a wide berth,” Faraday said again.

Drago did not answer immediately, standing staring at the horse.

“No,” he finally said slowly. “No. I want to have a closer look at him.”

There was something about that horse…something…

Faraday looked at him oddly. “Are you certain it’s safe?”

“No.” Drago gave a sudden grin. “If he tries to bite, will you save me?”

She shot him a hard glare, and his grin widened slightly.

“If the horse refuses to wake, then perhaps we can throw him into the Nordra, and use him to float us across.”

Faraday’s mouth jerked, but she managed to keep her face straight, and waved Drago forward. “Off you go then, if you’re so curious. But I would have thought one old horse was surely much the same as the next.”

Drago walked forward, and after an instant’s hesitation, Faraday followed him.

The lizard ranged ahead of Drago, dropping to its belly and slithering towards the horse, almost like a snake.

The horse stood with his head drooping so close to the ground his nose almost touched the soil. He did not seem aware of the two people or the lizard. The lizard slowed as it neared, then carefully planted its clawed feet on the ground and walked very carefully about the horse.

“Stop here,” Drago said, his hand catching at Faraday’s arm, his eyes still fixed on the horse.

“Be careful,” she said.

Drago eased the pack from his back and put it on the ground, then cautiously approached the horse. How, if the horse was
not
one of the Demons’ minions, had it managed to survive without shelter? And why, if the horse
was
crazed, did it not attack? Was this a trap?

Were the Demons aware that he was still alive, and that he could resist their incursions?