Crusader (24 page)

“But Niah has no soul,” Gwendylyr said, trying desperately to find some shred of hope in the situation. “She is an automat only. She is—”

“She is a body ready to be filled with a soul,” DragonStar said. “As was the child StarLaughter carried about with her. Niah is willing flesh imbued with the power needed to defeat Qeteb, but which Qeteb can now use to turn against us.” DragonStar looked about at the others, meeting each of their eyes in turn. “I think none of us doubt but which soul Qeteb will use to fill her with purpose.”

“Rox,” Faraday eventually whispered. “He will fill her with Rox’s soul.”

“Are you saying,” Azhure said, “that Sanctuary will fall?”

DragonStar nodded, his eyes sick with grief and selfrecrimination. Curse him, he should have realised this earlier! He thanked the Stars that Axis hadn’t killed him earlier when Qeteb had spoken through his mouth. If Axis
had
done so, then Qeteb could possibly have had the power of the StarSon at his fingertips!
They had all come so close to complete annihilation!

“And the Sacred Groves?” Faraday said, pulling DragonStar’s thoughts back to the problem of Niah.

DragonStar nodded again. “They will go first, my beloved,” and he paused as Faraday flinched, although whether at the thought of the Groves falling, or at the endearment, DragonStar did not know. “Qeteb will destroy them first.”

“Why?” Azhure said.

“Because he wants to grow on the power of the Mother before he comes after us,” DragonStar said. “He wants to feast on the Mother.”

“No!” Faraday screamed, and threw herself at DragonStar.

A massive storm held the Icebear Coast trapped. The land had witnessed nothing like this since the days of Gorgrael,
and even he hadn’t had the power to generate this much fury. Sleet lashed down from the north in almost horizontal sheets, stinging into ice and snow with such force that shards of ice shot through the air like shrapnel.

DragonStar grabbed his cloak in the instant before the wind tore it away, and tried to shut his ears against the screaming of wind and ice about him. He was leaning against the lee side of an ice wall, but even here the storm threatened to pick him up and hurl him into some ice-needled eternity.

Nothing was sane in this world, nothing at all.

Not even him, if one believed the fearful eyes of Faraday.

From the chamber where DragonStar had realised the appalling significance of Niah, he had gone to check on Sicarius and FortHeart. They’d been in a different part of Sanctuary when he’d called them into Qeteb’s illusion, and DragonStar eventually found them under a buiche-fruit tree, being tended by an Icarii Healer.

Sicarius was the lesser wounded of the two, and likely to make a full recovery. FortHeart had lost her ear, and one of her legs was swollen, but the Healer had said that she, too, would recover, if not to her former prettiness.

From there DragonStar had dared the uncertainties of Spiredore to come to this spot. Why? DragonStar tried to force his half-frozen face into a grin as he thought that one through. Why? Because somewhere on the Icebear Coast was the one person who just
might
be able to help.

Urbeth.

DragonStar had not seen nor heard from her since Qeteb had been resurrected, but he had no doubt that she had survived the wasting of Tencendor, and currently sat with her daughters, waiting out the time before DragonStar managed to best Qeteb and set Tencendor to rights.

“Well, my lady,” DragonStar muttered through icehardened lips, “DragonStar doesn’t have a hope of besting Qeteb if the Demon harvests both the power of the Mother
and
the power of the Enemy!”

He lifted his head slightly and stared into the white oblivion before him. “Urbeth!” he screamed. “Urbeth! Where are you!”

Nothing but the shrieking of the wind and the groaning of the ice.

“Urbeth, you hairy cow, answer me now!”

Nothing. DragonStar struggled to keep his footing. Everything was coated with a slick of ice: not only the ground, but his boots, his cloak, and even his hands glistened under a thin layer of the loathsome stuff.

“Urbeth!” he yelled, his voice thinner now. “Urbeth!”

Nothing.

DragonStar groaned and sank to his haunches, trying to tug his cloak even more tightly about him. He couldn’t stay here…he must leave…Urbeth was gone…

His head sank downwards. He was so tired. Perhaps if he just closed his eyes a minute, rested a bit before he returned to Sanctuary. Some rest would be good.

His head dropped lower.

“Urbeth,” he whispered, and slumped forward onto the ice.

He woke to the frightful smell of rotten fish. He jerked awake, his head pounding so badly he thought it might explode.

He opened his eyes.

He was in an ice cave, the floor of which was covered in decomposing fish.

DragonStar gagged, and struggled to his knees. He was covered in bits of rotting fish.

“Look to what this land has been brought,” a voice said behind him, and DragonStar struggled to turn about amid the fish. He slipped over twice before he managed to turn completely around and gain his feet.

Three women stood there. All were tall and willowy, all dressed in pale grey robes, and each of them was standing
with arms crossed so that her hands rested on her shoulders. Two had raven-black hair that cascaded down their backs and over their breasts, the other, the middle one, had irongrey hair with streaks of silver through it.

“Urbeth,” DragonStar said. “Your housekeeping skills have slipped.”

She snarled, but DragonStar did not flinch. “I need your help.”

She arched an eyebrow at him. None of the three had stepped forward, nor relaxed their hands from their shoulders.

“Qeteb will win through to the power of the Enemy,” he said. “Sanctuary will fall.”

For the first time Urbeth’s face registered shock.

“Worse,” DragonStar continued, “Qeteb has access to the Sacred Groves. If you have any love, or even a single regard, for the Mother, Urbeth, then aid her now.”

And then, with hands still shaking from the cold, DragonStar drew the lily sword and created the doorway of light. Before Urbeth or either of her daughters could say anything, he was gone.

Z
enith checked Leagh before she retired herself. The woman was sleeping quietly, her skin slightly flushed but cool, her breathing calm and deep. Zenith nodded to Zared, sitting silent in a corner under the pool of light cast by a lamp, and then left the room, sighing as she closed the door.

Zenith was feeling excluded and forgotten—and feeling guilty that she felt that way in the first instance. Her brother DragonStar, her best friend Leagh, and even her parents (who had spent the greater portion of her life being distant and uninterested), were caught up in events of such great magnitude that all existence depended on the outcome. There were hurried comings and goings, hastily convened councils, newly-discovered magics and dark treacheries happening everywhere…but they were happening behind closed doors for all Zenith felt involved. She played no part in them—she might as well not exist for all the influence she could bring to bear on the current crisis.

Zenith was not a proud woman, nor one to seek attention or lust after her own role in whatever power play consumed the nation, but she
was
a SunSoar, a princess of the House of Stars, and she was not used to being brushed aside as if she was of no import at all.

“And yet what have I accomplished?” she asked herself as she walked the halls of Sanctuary towards her own apartment. “I played a small part in enabling DragonStar to
escape death at Caelum’s hands, and then…nothing. I was forcibly seduced, then as forcibly excluded from my own body. I have ever reacted, not
acted.”

And then Zenith smiled at her own foolishness. What was she doing, thinking dark thoughts about being excluded from whatever secret councils were being held this night? What was she doing lusting after some dark and dangerous furtive role in bringing about Qeteb’s downfall? All she wanted, if truth be told, was a quiet life away from the intricacies of high politics and enchantment: perhaps with a husband to love and care for her, and children to love.

Now Zenith hesitated again, pausing and resting a hand on one of the corridor walls.

She could have all that if she really wanted it, couldn’t she? StarDrifter was never far away. He never demanded, he never even mentioned the fact that what he wanted most of all in life was to have her as his wife, but Zenith could almost
feel
the intensity of his thoughts: StarDrifter’s hunger kept her awake at nights.

Guilt, guilt, guilt—that’s what kept her awake at nights. There was no reason why she couldn’t respond to StarDrifter save her own inhibitions and prudery. She loved him—Zenith had no problems admitting that to herself, nor even to StarDrifter—but whenever she thought of bedding with him, then the strength of her physical repulsion made her stomach turn over.

Would time ease her repulsion? Erode her prudery?

But how much time, and how long was StarDrifter prepared to give her?

Zenith lifted her chin, straightened her shoulders and walked forwards.
Why did she always feel so guilty?
What fault was within her that made her—

A birdwoman hurrying along the corridor interrupted Zenith’s flow of thoughts, and she studied the woman, grateful for the interruption and the opportunity to think about something other than her own inadequacies.

The birdwoman, an Icarii Healer by the name of StarWalker, was carrying a bowl of soiled cloths. The pungent aroma of ginnet—a herb used to stifle infection—rose from the cloths.

“Someone is ill?” Zenith asked, laying a hand on StarWalker’s arm to halt her.

“Yes,” StarWalker said, watching Zenith carefully. The healer licked her lips, and her eyes slid away from Zenith’s.

Zenith’s eyes narrowed. “Who is ill?” she asked. “And why the ginnet? Is she—he?—so badly injured they need its strength?”

“The man
is
badly injured,” StarWalker said. “Crippling wounds…inflicted by the Demons, I believe.”

Zenith’s interest was piqued. Who had been so badly hurt? And why was StarWalker being so reticent? The birdwoman’s eyes were now sliding this way and that so desperately she looked as though she were about to have a seizure.

Dammit! Zenith thought. Is everyone resolved to keep me in the dark about every trifling detail?

“I really must go,” StarWalker said. “If you will excuse me…”

Zenith’s hand tightened on StarWalker’s arm. “Where is the sick room?”

“Oh, it’s too far for you to be troubling yourself—”

“I don’t think so, StarWalker.
Where
is the sick room? I might as well make myself useful.”

“Zenith,” StarWalker said, finally looking her in the eye, “you do not want to go there.”

“Why? Is the patient so infectious? And if so, then what are you doing wandering the corridors with a bowl full of infection in your hands?”

“Zenith,” StarWalker was now leaning close, her eyes wide and full of an emotion that Zenith could not quite read. “Zenith…DragonStar found WolfStar within the wasteland. He brought him back—frightfully injured by the Demons. I…I did not want to tell you.”

Zenith was so shocked she could not say anything for a moment. WolfStar…
here?
In Sanctuary? She had hardly thought of him since she’d come down to Sanctuary herself; somehow her mind had come to the unconscious conclusion that he’d been killed by the Demons and she need never worry about him again. But now…

“WolfStar?” she whispered.

“There is no need for you to be concerned,” StarWalker said, laying the bowl on the ground and taking both of Zenith’s hands in hers. “He is kept under close guard. He can’t be a danger to you now.”

Gods, Zenith thought weakly, does
everyone
know about his rape of me? Has everyone else been told that WolfStar is here, and is everyone wandering about thinking, Poor Zenith, we must keep this from her in case she shatters?

“Where is he?” Zenith said, looking StarWalker in the eye.

“I don’t think I should—”

“Where is he?”

StarWalker hesitated, then spoke. “He’s being kept in the underground chambers in the complex next to the apple and plum orchard.”

Zenith nodded slowly; she knew it. StarWalker must be heading back to the series of herb storerooms that were situated on the second level of this building. If Zenith hadn’t happened across StarWalker, nor pressed her for details, she would never have known about WolfStar.

“Thank you, StarWalker,” she said, absently, disengaging herself from the woman’s grip.

“He won’t harm you,” StarWalker said.

“I’m sure he won’t,” Zenith said, and abruptly turned and walked away.

She sat in her darkened room for many hours. Thinking. Remembering. Trying to decide on some course of action.

Zenith was stunned at her own reaction to the news that WolfStar had been found and then secreted within Sanctuary.
She would have imagined she might have felt fear, or anger, or even repulsion.

But she felt none of these. All she felt was an overwhelming desire to see him.

Why? To gloat perhaps. To spit in his face? To finally lay aside the memory of his repulsive rape and then misuse of her body as he encouraged Niah in her attempts to control it?

Zenith didn’t know, and that was what distressed her most of all. She had thought anger and revenge would have been at the forefront of her mind…but all she found herself thinking of was the single glimpse she’d had of WolfStar at Fernbrake Lake. She’d been horrified by his condition—but she hadn’t felt any anger or repulsion when she’d seen him,
had
she?

“No, no,” she muttered, her hands twisting in her lap, “I was distracted by the sight of Niah, that’s all. I would have been angered and repulsed if I hadn’t been distracted by Niah.”

Zenith rose and paced about the room. She badly wanted to talk to someone, but there was no-one left. Faraday, Gwendylyr and Leagh were each preoccupied with their own problems and their newly-discovered roles and powers, while Azhure, although she’d been closer and warmer to Zenith in the past few days than Zenith could remember in many years, was still not a confidante. Not for this, and certainly not where WolfStar was concerned. Azhure might superficially acknowledge WolfStar’s failings (murder, manipulation, treachery, rape…the failings of any mere mortal) but he was nevertheless her father, and she had emotional ties with WolfStar that precluded any detached discussion of him.