Enchanter (8 page)

"StarDrifter. When Axis was growing in Rivkah's womb, did you ever sing for him the Song of Recreation?"

"No." StarDrifter smiled a little at the memory. "I sang for him many things, but not that. It is no thing to sing to a developing baby."

MorningStar nodded. "And yet, Axis knew what to sing for the Avar girl.

Raum has told me of this."

"Yes," Ogden nodded slowly. "Veremund and I heard it too. He sang beautifully."

"Yes," MorningStar repeated woodenly, her face set into hard lines. "Axis.

You have learned well since your arrival in Talon Spike. Too well. Far too well. I have wondered why many times. When you sang the Song of Harmony it confirmed my worst fears. Axis, StarDrifter and I have not been training you at all. We have simply been reminding you. You have already been trained, probably as a very small child."

She paused, and when she resumed her words were chill stones in the absolute silence of the chamber. "Who trained you as a child, Axis? Who?"

Axis gaped at her. She looked fierce, almost ready to attack, and he stood slowly. "MorningStar, what do you mean? Trained? How? Who by? If I have been already trained then why haven't I been able to use my powers all my life? No.

No, you must be wrong."

MorningStar held his eyes steadily. If he was only pretending confusion, then he was doing a good job. "You must have been trained at a very young age and undoubtedly you do not remember it. Because you never used your powers they fell into disuse as you grew older. But over the past year, as the Prophecy and its Sentinels unlocked your past, as you discovered your true identity, the Songs have drifted back."

"But, MorningStar," Veremund began, "I thought that only another Enchanter of the same family could teach an Enchanter."

MorningStar gave a curt nod. "You are right." "Then who else is there in your family who could have had access to Axis? What other Enchanters?"

MorningStar lifted her chin. "StarDrifter and I are the only two SunSoar Enchanters - apart, of course, from Axis himself. I received my powers from my mother, DriftStar, also a SunSoar, but she died some three hundred years ago."

"Are you saying that there is another SunSoar Enchanter running about?"

Azhure asked. Everyone in the room jumped slightly; they had forgotten her presence. "Someone you aren't aware of? Someone who taught Axis as a baby?"

MorningStar stared at Azhure, who had risen slowly to her feet. She nodded.

"Yes. I was afraid to say the words, but yes. That is what I think."

"But who?" Axis said. "Why hide from me? And how did an Icarii Enchanter have access to me in the Seneschal? Howl I don't understand."

"My son," StarDrifter stepped up to Axis and placed a comforting hand on his shoulder. "I fear there might be worse. If there is another SunSoar Enchanter about then...then ..." he hesitated, "then it might explain who taught Gorgrael as well."

MorningStar visibly rocked on her feet, and her hand drifted to her throat in horror. "Gorgrael?"

"After Yuletide FreeFall asked me how Gorgrael had learned his powers,"

StarDrifter said, dropping his hand from
Axis' shoulder and moving to his mothers side. "I said then that he'd obtained his powers from the music of discord, the Dance of Death, rather than the Star Dance. But I evaded the real issue. Gorgrael had to be taught how to use that music as well, and he had to be taught by someone of the same blood. A family member. A SunSoar Enchanter."

"But who? And who would teach both? And teach them each such different music?" MorningStar turned to the Sentinels. "Ogden, Veremund, can you help us? Please?"

They shook their heads and Veremund spread his hands helplessly. "There are many riddles within the Prophecy we do not understand, but I do not think the Prophecy even alludes to this problem, MorningStar. All the Prophecy tells us is that the same man fathered both the Destroyer and the StarMan - StarDrifter, as we now know. It says nothing about who trained them. But a SunSoar presumably, as they are both of SunSoar blood."

"Axis." Now MorningStar addressed her grandson. "Do you know? Is there anything you should be telling us?"

Axis' temper boiled over. "I do not lie to you, Morning-Star, and I do not dissemble! If I knew anything I would tell you!"

Azhure moved to his side and rested a soothing hand against his back. "Axis, shush. Is there nothing you remember?"

Axis' eyes snapped at her but he did not attempt to pull away from the comforting touch of her hand. "No," he said finally. "All I know is that over the past few months, ever since Ogden and Veremund gave me the Prophecy written in Icarii script to read, memories and melodies have been bubbling to the surface. I did not think to ask myself who put them there in the first place."

"Veremund and I should have noticed," Ogden said. "We should have asked ourselves how Axis knew the Song of Recreation. Why he seemed to know so many melodies.

But," he shrugged his shoulders, "we were so thrilled to have finally found the StarMan after so many thousands of years, so thrilled that finally the Prophecy walked after such a long wait, that we did not think to ask ourselves these questions."

MorningStar let her eyes drift over the people before her, finally bringing them to rest on Axis. "So. You have been taught, as Gorgrael has been taught, by an unknown SunSoar Enchanter. Unknown, because where could he or she have come from? Only from the loins of myself or my mother, and I can assure you that is not the case. I have only borne two children, and I was my mother's only child — through complications sustained in birthing me she was never able to have another infant." She paused, and when she resumed her voice was so soft that the others could hardly hear it. "And this SunSoar Enchanter is not only unknown, but incredibly powerful. No-one has been able to use the Dark Music previously - its use has been only theorised until now — yet this SunSoar Enchanter was able to teach it to Gorgrael. I think we have a right to be afraid of him."

For a long time there was silence as everyone stood wrapped in their own thoughts. Ogden andVeremund took each other's hands. StarDrifter turned away to hide his face as he thought. Azhure leaned a little closer to Axis, slipping her arm about his waist and giving him a quick hug; Axis smiled at her gratefully.

She was a good friend.

"Again I think we might be evading the real questions here," StarDrifter finally said into the silence, turning back to the others. "And they are: Where is this SunSoar Enchanter now? What does he plan? What does he plot? Is he for Axis? Or is he for Gorgrael?"

Dark Man, Dear ManThe four SkraeBolds

grovelled at Gorgrael's feet. Even SkraeFear, senior and bravest of them, thrust himself against the stone flagging as a man might against the body of his lover.

His clawed hands clutched at Gorgrael's toes, and he begged for forgiveness, begged Gorgrael to love him again.

Gorgrael wallowed in their misery. TheYuletide attack on the Earth Tree Grove had been a miserable failure. Not only had the SkraeBolds failed to kill the Earth Tree - and she now sang so loud that the northern Avarinheim was denied to him - but SkraeFear had almost killed StarDrifter, and Gorgrael had expressly ordered that he be brought to him alive and in good working order. They deserved to be punished horribly for their failure.

"Get up!" he snarled. "But only as far as your knees. You are not yet fit to stand in my presence!"

He swaggered away from the SkraeBolds as they inched to their knees. This was the first time he'd managed to have them all in the same room since the fall of Gorkenfort, and he intended to drag out their fear as long as he could.

"Sssss!" he hissed in frustration, swinging his head from side to side, and the four SkraeBolds behind him whimpered as his tusks glinted in the dim light. They knew they had a right to fear the fury of his tusks.

Gorkenfort had started so well. The town had fallen quickly and thousands had died. Gorgrael, watching his forces from the safety of his ice fortress far to the north of the Avarinheim, had shrieked in delight as each man died.

But Axis had escaped. Escaped with a significant force of men. Escaped to the arms of his father whom Gorgrael had so desperately desired to have here with him. Escaped, and in escaping, had destroyed so many Skraelings.

Now Gorgrael would be forced to curtail his drive south, for it was all he could do to keep a tight grip on those territories in Ichtar that he held - from the Andeis Sea to the Urqhart Hills. It was now a dead land, peopled only by frozen corpses and the Skraelings who fed on them. He could take pleasure in that, at least.

But if Gorgrael was pushed into simply consolidating rather than pushing further south, then now was the time to instil some order among the Skraelings.

Bring them back under his control. Breed some more IceWorms. Fashion some new creations from the raw material surrounding him to breach the Acharite lines and break the force that Axis would inevitably throw at him. As Axis needed time to build his numbers, so Gorgrael needed time to rebuild his.

"You are failures!" he rasped venomously. The flickering light twisted his part-man, part-bird, part-beast form into an even more hideous shape.

"We tried our best!" "But so hard to remember orders amid such excitement!" "And those Skraelings, so unreliable!" "Nasty, nasty brights!" Their excuses littered the air.

"Your failure tells me that you do not love me!" Gorgrael screeched. The SkraeBolds cried out in denial. They loved Gorgrael, lived for him!

Gorgrael's face twisted in derision. "Let me show you the price of your failure."

He reached for SkraeFear, who had failed him the most. SkraeFear still had the arrow Azhure had plunged into his neck embedded in his flesh, the wound festering and black, oozing pus down his chest. Gorgrael grasped the arrow and twisted it viciously, and SkraeFear screamed in agony. Gorgrael waited until SkraeFear's screams had bubbled away into low sobs, then he twisted the arrow again, twice as hard, the arrow head tearing through SkraeFear's flesh with a sound like wet cloth ripping.

"Will you fail me again?" Gorgrael hissed in SkraeFear's ear. "Will you?"

"No, no, no," SkraeFear moaned. "Never again, never again!"

Suddenly Gorgrael let the arrow go and SkraeFear sagged to the floor.

Gorgrael grimaced in disgust. He needed a more intelligent and reliable lieutenant.

Timozel. Gorgrael's lip curled. But Timozel was bound to Faraday, and until those bonds were broken Timozel could continue to escape Gorgrael's need for him.

Well, for the moment the SkraeBolds would have to do. He patted SkraeFear on the head comfortingly.

"I still love you, SkraeFear, you and your brothers here."

SkraeFear whined in adoration and clung to one of Gorgrael's legs. "I will be good," he whispered. "Good, good, good!"

"Yes, yes," Gorgrael said absently, gently prising SkraeFear loose. "Be gone for the moment. I will speak to you soon. Give new orders. Impart a new mission. But for now, be gone."

SkraeFear gave one last grateful whimper, then scurried out of the room on his hands and knees, his brothers hurrying after him, gladdened beyond measure that their beloved master had not seen fit to chastise them as well.

Gorgrael prowled among the massive pieces of dark wooden furniture of his chamber; twisted and ensorcelled into strange and tormented shapes, they flung shadows into every corner.

He loved the room's gloom and clutter, its darkness and malformed purpose.

It was where he did his best work.

One corner of the chamber was dominated by a massive plate-iron fireplace.

Though Gorgrael constructed many of his creatures from mist and ice, he was warm-blooded himself and needed the heat and comfort of fire from time to time. He wandered over to the cold grate and snapped his fingers. Flames licked their way about the misshapen pieces of wood piled at the back of the grate, and Gorgrael murmured to himself. Sometimes he saw strange shapes in the flames, and it bothered him.

He turned to a sideboard, its undulating planes and angles polished smooth so that the wood shone, and lifted a crystal decanter from its depths. Gorgrael smiled. This decanter and its delicate matching glasses he had brought home from Gorkenfort, and the fact that Borneheld and Faraday had been forced to leave them behind when they fled pleased Gorgrael. He hummed a broken and grating tune as he lifted a glass with one scaled, clawed hand and filled it with good wine from the decanter.

He was civilised. He was as good as anyone else. Certainly as good as Axis.

Perhaps Faraday would enjoy the time she spent with him. Perhaps she would think him polite company. Perhaps he might not kill her after all.

Gorgrael sipped the wine, clinking the crystal against a tusk and dribbling a little of the wine down his chin as his cumbersome mouth and tongue tried to cope with the delicacy of the glass. He reached into the depths of the sideboard again and lifted out a large parcel. Crystal was not the only item Gorgrael had brought home from Gorkenfort.

He grunted in satisfaction and wandered over to his favourite chair, scraping it towards the fire. It was a good chair, throne-like, with a high carved back and wings that reached even higher towards the ceiling. He sat down and ripped open the parcel with his free hand. For a long time he
sat there, looking at the parcel's contents, stroking it gently, careful to keep his claws retracted. Then he drained his wine in a gulp and irritably threw the crystal into the fire where it shattered among the flames.

In his lap, tumbled and crushed, lay the emerald and ivory silk of Faraday's wedding gown. Looking at it, absorbing the smell and the feel of the woman who had worn it, Gorgrael felt strange, painful emotions well up inside him. They made him feel merciful — and Gorgrael did not want to feel merciful. Worse, they made him feel lost - and that feeling Gorgrael did not like very much at all.

There was a movement in the air, swirling about the room, and the flames leapt and spat in the turbulence.

"She is a very beautiful woman, Gorgrael," the loved voice said gently behind him, "and it is no wonder you sit there with her silks to comfort you."