Pilgrim (47 page)

S
tarDrifter had not returned into Sanctuary immediately after leaving Faraday, Drago and the girl on the silver-tracery bridge. True, he’d begun to walk that way, but the thought of talking to Zenith made him feel uncomfortable, and so StarDrifter found himself walking back over the bridge and up the stairwell to the Overworld.

There he’d re-inspected the screen of trees that Drago had erected, marvelling at the skill of the man.

“But then, he is
my
grandson,” StarDrifter murmured, and grinned at his own self-satisfaction.

From there he talked a while with WingRidge, and then with FreeFall and EvenSong, who had finally made the trek from their palace in the peaks to Fernbrake below, and then StarDrifter had found himself at a loss for something to do with the evening drifting in. He still preferred not to talk with Zenith. Above all else, he feared what she might say to him.

Obviously, Zenith had talked with Faraday.
So what had Faraday counselled her?
StarDrifter tried to think what Faraday might have said, and came up with twelve different responses—none of them comfortable.

“I swear to all gods that have existed and who are yet to exist,” StarDrifter whispered, “that if WolfStar has scarred her irreparably, then I will kill him with my bare hands.”

Lost and unsure, and terrified that Zenith might reject him, StarDrifter finally forced her from his mind and wandered into the night.

Without thinking about where he was going, StarDrifter found himself rambling in the forest of Minstrelsea below the eastern ridge of Fernbrake crater. It was peaceful, the shadowed walks of the forest as calm and as beautiful as they’d always been.

StarDrifter wandered further and further into the forest, not truly looking where he was going, lost in his worries about Zenith, wondering how he would cope if she did reject him. Anything, he thought over and over, I will do anything for you Zenith—just don’t leave me, don’t leave me…

“StarDrifter? What are you doing here?”

StarDrifter leapt backwards and hit a grumpian tree. He tumbled into an undignified heap beside it.

Isfrael emerged out of what little moonlight there was and leaned down, offering him a hand. “StarDrifter?”

StarDrifter accepted Isfrael’s hand and stood up, dusting himself down. He grinned ruefully. “I was wandering and thinking, Isfrael. Obviously a combination of activities unsuited to my level of skill.”

To StarDrifter’s utter amazement, Isfrael laughed. “I did not think you capable of self-mockery!” he finally said. “But why here? This part of the forest is not a usual haunt of the Icarii.”

StarDrifter looked at his grandson suspiciously. What was he hiding? A bevy of female Avar Banes that their Mage-King was personally inducting into a higher level of mystery?

Isfrael noted the look. “WolfStar is being held in a glade a short distance from here, StarDrifter. Do you want to see?”

StarDrifter nodded, sober now, and Isfrael led him down a side path and to the edge of a small glade.

They stopped at the edge of the glade, for its internal spaces were totally immersed in a dome of emerald light, similar to the one that Isfrael and his Banes, together
with the Star Gods and Icarii Enchanters, had worked to guard the Star Gate against the TimeKeeper Demons. Isfrael hoped this enchanted dome would prove stronger than the last. Seven Banes squatted on their haunches about the glade, concentrating on the magic needed to maintain the ward.

Behind the ward, WolfStar was seething. His words did not penetrate the dome, but his vengeful expression was message enough. He paced to and fro, occasionally lunging at the Banes seated outside as if he hoped to distract them from their work, and slamming fists and heels into the walls of the dome.

As StarDrifter watched, WolfStar rose on his wings, and tore at the apex of the dome with his fingernails and teeth, until dark streaks of the Enchanter’s blood became clearly evident on the inside surface.

StarDrifter turned away, wishing Drago had allowed him to kill the Enchanter. “Where is she?” he asked quietly.

“This way.” Isfrael led him through a screen of bushes to a much smaller space.

The girl-woman—Niah, if this soulless automat dared be called by any name—sat motionless, expressionless, dead save for the rise and fall of her pubescent breasts.

Her beautiful, angelic face was almost identical to Zenith’s, bespeaking the close soul and blood bond between them, although it lacked any warmth or charm, or Zenith’s deep compassion.

“I wish we could kill her!” StarDrifter said, with a savageness that astounded Isfrael as much as his grandfather’s previous self-mockery had.

“We already tried,” he said.

Now StarDrifter was the one to stare. “You tried to—”

“Watch.”

At Isfrael’s nod, an Avar man stepped forth from the shadows of the ring of trees, a long curved knife in his hand. Isfrael nodded again, and the man stepped over to the girl,
and plunged the knife into her belly, twisting and turning it mercilessly.

StarDrifter forced himself to watch, although the sight sickened him. The girl sat there, no change in her expression, nor in the gentle rise and fall of her breasts.

The Avar man withdrew the knife, clotted with blood and pieces of the internal organs he’d sliced apart, but as the knife slid out, so the girl’s belly skin mended as if there had never been any attack made on her person.

“I myself have tried,” Isfrael said. “We have surrounded her with dead wood and burned her. We have crushed her beneath rocks. We have—”

“Stop!” StarDrifter said. He turned away, then forced himself to look back a last time. “What will you do with her, and with WolfStar?”

Isfrael took his time in replying. “I do not know,” he said, and walked back into the shadows.

StarDrifter went back to Sanctuary. It was time he talked with Zenith. Once he had walked across the silver-tracery bridge, the long line of Icarii wending their way down to the bridge seemingly never-ending, he lifted into the blue sky of Sanctuary and flew towards the valley mouth.

StarDrifter rose high, very high, and the wind felt warm and powerful under his wings. The sky, as Sanctuary, was apparently limitless, but StarDrifter wondered what would happen if he gave in to his urge to flip over onto his back and relax and let the thermals carry him ever higher.

Would
he circle into infinity? Or would he smash against some ward that, like the emerald dome about WolfStar, would prove his imprisonment?

Unsettled, he flew further, soaring above the valley mouth and the first of the endless orchards, paths, ponds and palaces.

Everything was so perfect, so beautiful, so…so cloying.

A prison, just like a dark, barred cell.

Did those below perceive it thus, or were they still lost in Sanctuary’s beauty and comfort? Did he only see it because
he’d crossed to and fro some dozen times on various businesses?

“Stars grant Drago success,” StarDrifter whispered as he began to descend, “for I would not want to be incarcerated in this prison for ever more.”

He hunted for Zenith for over an hour before an Icarii woman told him where to find her.

She was comfortably settled in a pretty crystal-domed chamber on an upper level of one of the myriad of palaces, staring at herself in a mirror.

“Zenith,” StarDrifter said softly, and walked over to her as she twisted about on a stool. She was wearing a blue and silver gown, and he thought she’d never looked so beautiful…nor so vulnerable.

Her eyes were wide, almost frightened, and StarDrifter instinctively dropped to his knees before her, trailing his wings across the floor behind him.

Zenith hesitated, then held out her hands for him to take. “We have to talk, you and I,” she said.

“Zenith, WolfStar is bound. Safe. He will never trouble you again. Isfrael has him—”

“No. StarDrifter, the problem between you and I is not WolfStar, nor even what he did to me. Will you listen if I talk?”

StarDrifter nodded, feeling with an icy certainty that he was going to lose Zenith before he’d even had a chance to love her.

His face was rigid, unreadable, and Zenith had to briefly close her eyes and summon her courage before she could go on.

“Dear gods, I love you, StarDrifter,” she whispered, and dropped her eyes to their clasped hands, “but I do not know how I can ever be your lover—”

“No!”

“
Listen to me!
Please…please, just listen to me.”

And so Zenith talked, haltingly at first, and then with more resolve. She told him that WolfStar’s rape was not that
which lay between them—gods, how desperately she wanted some other, more loving memory to overlay that one!—but that she could not overcome her revulsion at having a grandfather touch her carnally.

Zenith stumbled at that point, still feeling guilt that she should couch StarDrifter’s love in such a shameful construct, then hurried on before he could say anything.

“Whenever you kiss me, or touch me, I feel such revulsion—”

Stars! Why had she said it so badly! What had she
done
? Zenith opened her mouth but, not knowing how to snatch back what she’d just said, said nothing at all.

Silence. StarDrifter did not speak, even his hands lay unspeaking and unmoving in hers.

She raised her eyes and looked him in the face.

And all she saw there was panic. Not condemnation. Not frustration. Not rejection. Not even puzzlement.

Panic.

“Zenith…gods! I had no idea…I don’t know what to say…what can I say…” The words tumbled awkwardly, and the depth of dread in StarDrifter’s face increased. “Zenith, I want you for my wife—”

And until those words were out StarDrifter had no idea how
desperately
he wanted Zenith for his wife.

“—and there is no shame in that. Is there?”

Zenith was crying. “No, no, there’s
no
shame in that save what I feel in here!” She wrenched her hands from his and buried her fingers in her hair, giving her head a shake. “Oh gods! Why did RiverStar get all the wantonness and I all the inhibitions? Why can’t I—”

“Zenith!” StarDrifter leaned forward as if to wrap his arms about her, hesitated, then gave an incoherent cry of frustration and, jumping to his feet, stalked over to the window.

Outside the sham sun shone over the sham world of Sanctuary, and StarDrifter thought he would scream if he saw so much as one smiling face.

And then, gently, hesitantly, stunningly, he felt arms slide about him, and Zenith’s damp face press against his back.

“Please don’t blame me,” she whispered. “I want so much to be able to love you as we
both
want.”

StarDrifter’s heart broke. He turned around in her arms and hugged her to him.

“Don’t run away from me,” he whispered into her hair. “Please. I will do anything—”

She raised her face and looked at him. “Will you wait for me?”

Wait for
what
? he wondered. Wait for instinctive revulsion to fade?

“One day,” and now she was smiling a little through her tears, “your silly granddaughter will grow up and become a woman who will see you with a woman’s eyes. Will you wait for that day?”

StarDrifter nodded, and Zenith turned her face away so she did not have to see the tears in his eyes.

“
L
eagh?” Zared asked. “Why Leagh? Do you need to view her yourself? Would you like a portrait done of her in her current curious animalistic form? Would you like to see—”

“That’s enough, Zared!” Drago snapped. “You are
King
of the Acharites, damn you, and you have been given responsibility for
all
Tencendor, not just one woman. How dare you sit here and go into a guilt-ridden fugue while Theod desperately tries to save the last remaining vestiges of your realm outside this city.
He
has a right to verbally lash me…but not you.”

Zared visibly flinched, but he sat up slightly straighter. “I ask again, Drago.
Why
do you need to see Leagh? She does not deserve to be inspected like a curious freak displayed on fair days.”

“I ask to see her so that I might help Tencendor.”

“That makes no sense, Drago,” Theod said, his voice hard. “At least I agree with Zared on the issue of displaying Leagh like a freak.”

Drago bent down, retrieved his staff from the floor, stroking one of the cats as he did so.

He stood up, adjusting the sack at his belt. “Zared, is it your opinion that Leagh’s mind is completely possessed by the Demons?”

“Yes.”

“So,” Drago said slowly, and he glanced at Faraday as he spoke. “Would you say that Leagh, as her own person, character, entity and soul, is completely dead?”

“Oh!” Faraday whispered, utterly shocked as she realised what Drago was going to attempt. “By all the heavens, Drago.
Can you do it?
”

“Can you imagine, Faraday,” Drago said, ignoring the others’ angry confusion, “what resources Tencendor would have at its side if we could?”

He held Faraday’s gaze, and then he smiled, sweetly and tenderly, utterly transforming his face.

“
What are you going to do?
” Zared yelled, stepping forward and seizing Drago by the upper arm.

“I am going to bring Leagh back,” Drago said. “With
all
the heritage of her Acharite blood.”

“You can bring her back?” Zared whispered hoarsely. He paid no attention to the second part of Drago’s statement.

“Indeed he can,” Katie said, rising from her spot on the floor. “If I aid him.”

Drago looked at her, puzzled, but he did not say anything.

Zared looked wildly at Herme and Theod, neither of them knowing what to think or say, and then his grip on Drago’s arm tightened yet further, and he pulled him towards the door. “Come!”

Theod and Herme began to move as well, but Drago shook his head. “Only Zared, Faraday, Katie and myself,” he said.

A movement at the corner of Drago’s eye caught his attention.

“And the lizard,” he added hurriedly, and allowed Zared to drag him forth.

The walk was relatively short in distance and time, but thick with Zared’s wild hope and Faraday’s unspoken queries.

Herme’s place before the door to Leagh’s chamber had earlier been taken over by a palace guard, and Drago
dismissed him. “Go down to the kitchens and ask the cooks to prepare a light but nutritious meal. The Queen will require it soon enough.”

The guard looked hesitantly at Zared, but when his King said nothing, he nodded and set off down the corridor towards the main stairs.

Zared still had Drago by the arm, and now he fumbled with the doorknob with his free hand. His hand slipped, and he lost his grip, but he pushed aside Drago’s attempts to help him.

“I can do it!” he said.

Standing slightly behind the two men, Faraday felt sick. She had a very good idea of what she would see within the chamber, and she did not want to see Leagh thus degraded. She wiped damp palms against the rough weave of her gown. Could Drago truly do what he intimated? Had he come this far, this quickly?

By her side, Katie looked up into Faraday’s anxious face. She patted at the woman’s skirts, drawing her attention, and smiled when Faraday looked down. Faraday took a deep breath, and nodded. If Katie was confident…

The door swung open, and revealed the horror inside.

Leagh herself was not immediately apparent, but her stench flew out the open door and struck the faces of those who would enter. Drago and Faraday had to quell sudden nausea, and the lizard spat. Then it scurried past the hesitant legs before it, and disappeared inside.

Its entrance was greeted by a wild shriek, and the sound of a body shuffling about the floor.

Drago and Faraday forced themselves inside.

“Stars in heaven,” Faraday whispered, and turned aside momentarily.

Now free of Zared, who had entered and then crept to one side of the door, Drago stared at the sight before him.

What had once been Leagh roiled at the end of its chains, a bare two paces from him. Its face had convulsed out of any
resemblance to the woman who had once borne it, and its body was covered with sores and boils, scores of self-inflicted wounds and several layers of flaked excreta.

Ribs and hip bones jutted at wild angles, while muscle and flesh had shrunk into deep valleys between them. Its hair was knotted and dark with grease, dirt and blood, its fingernails were torn and bleeding, and yellowed saliva hung down from its mouth. But all Faraday could stare at, all she could see, was the frightful sight of the distended belly.

She was with child!

“Zared,” Drago said, remarkably evenly, “that door in the far wall…does it connect to another chamber?”

“What? Ah, yes. To the diamond chamber.”

“Good. I want you to go and arrange for a bath, medicinal supplies and some well-watered wine to be placed in there.”

“But—”

“And then I want you to go and wait with Theod and Herme.”

“I will not leave her!”

In an instant Drago was on him, seizing both his shoulders. “Do as I say, Zared. For the gods’ sakes,
do you want her to realise that you have seen her like this
?”

Zared stared. “I never thought…I didn’t…”

“She might forgive the fact that Faraday and I have seen her,” Drago said more quietly. “But she will never,
never
, forgive you the sight of her in this condition.”

“Help her, Drago. Help her,” he begged.

Drago nodded, and gently shoved Zared out the door. “Go. Do as I ask.”

He shut the door, paused to listen to Zared’s footsteps shuffle down the corridor, and turned back into the room.

“We begin,” he said.

He stood silent for a few minutes, his head down, his left hand gently opening and closing about the staff, ignoring the shriekings and slaverings of the creature lunging two paces away at the end of its chain.

Faraday watched him silently, understanding that Drago was communicating with the staff in his hand.

Katie? Faraday dropped her eyes, and placed a gentle hand on the girl’s head. Katie tilted her eyes up briefly, and smiled, but quickly returned her gaze to the scene before her.

Faraday looked back to Drago. She understood that she was about to witness a miracle unparalleled. A miracle not only in Leagh’s own rebirth, and her redemption from the many-fingered madnesses of the TimeKeeper Demons, but in the rebirth of true hope for Tencendor.

For the first time Faraday understood why Tencendor had to die. It was the only way it could be reborn into its true nature. Drago looked up, catching her eyes, and perhaps even understanding a little of what she was thinking. He smiled, a movement that only just touched the corners of his mouth and eyes, but which, nevertheless, was rich with warmth and love.

Warmth and love for everyone, Faraday realised, not just for her.

Faraday could not help smiling back. She realised she also smiled with love, but for the moment she could not stop it. He was so extraordinary, and what he was about to do was so extraordinary, Faraday could not help but respond to his warmth.

She blinked, and the room had disappeared and she stood in a field of flowers. Drago still stood some paces from her, but here he wore nothing but a simple white linen cloth about his hips.

He held out his hand to her in the traditional Icarii gesture of seduction, but it was not empty. He held a single white lily.

“You will be,” he said, “the first among lilies.”

And he smiled.

Faraday’s heart was thudding in her chest, and she could not tear her eyes away from his. There was nothing in his face of his father’s arrogant confidence…nothing but that incredible warmth and tenderness, nothing but the promise of safety, and of the love she’d always been denied.

Faraday took a step through the flowers, and then she
—

Two paces away the frightful thing that had once been Leagh snapped and drooled and dribbled thick urine down its thighs, and Faraday snapped out of her vision.

She blinked, disorientated, her heart still thudding. Drago was no longer looking at her, but considering Leagh.

“We will need to restrain her far more than she is now,” Drago said, studying the lengthy chain attached to the iron spike in the centre of the room.

He snapped his fingers at the lizard, who was sitting to one side of the door, and spoke to Faraday.

“Faraday? Will you take hold of Katie, and stand just here?”

The lizard ambled over, and Drago positioned him just in front of Faraday and Katie.

They were grouped directly in front of Leagh.

“Take this,” Drago held out the staff to Faraday, who took it hesitantly, “and taunt her with it. Tease her. Keep her distracted.”

“I cannot taunt her!” Faraday said.

“You must,” Drago said gently. “I need to be able to wrap that chain about the spike, dragging her into the centre of the room, and to do that,” he paused, “with any degree of safety, I will need
you
, with Katie and the lizard, to distract her. Can you do that? The lizard will keep you safe.”

“I am not worried about my safety,” Faraday said quietly, her eyes on Leagh.

“I know that,” Drago said. “Come, taunt her with the staff, and stay but one pace before her. She will see nothing else.”

Taking a deep breath and steeling her nerves, Faraday pushed Katie halfway behind her skirts, then leaned forward over the lizard and struck the Leagh-creature a glancing blow across the cheek.

The creature screamed, and snatched wildly at the staff, which Faraday only barely managed to pull away in time.

The lizard shrieked as well, its crest rising up and down rapidly, and the creature went completely berserk, tearing at its chains, and flinging itself full forward, as if trying to stretch the metal links.

Drago moved quietly and smoothly about the side of the room until he was directly behind the creature, then he moved forward, step by careful step, until he was by the spike.

The creature backed up a pace, preparing itself for another lunge at the three tormentors before it, and Drago seized the chain and wrapped it twice about the spike. The creature lunged forward, and found itself brought up a pace earlier than it had expected.

It made no difference to the ferocity or single-mindedness of its attack, for the lizard and Faraday and the girl had also crept closer a pace, and the staff once more struck a glancing blow on the creature, this time across its back, drawing blood from one of its open sores.

Again and again the creature lunged, and each time the chain slackened slightly as it moved and Drago would wrap the links yet further about the spike.

Soon the creature’s buttocks and heels were a bare pace away from Drago and the spike, and Drago motioned Faraday to further her efforts at distracting the beast. Again Faraday struck a glancing blow to the creature, and again, and then once more.

But on the third stroke the creature managed to seize the staff in its claws, and Faraday cried out as she felt herself being pulled forward.

Suddenly there was a flash of light. The creature screamed, and Faraday felt its grip on the staff lessen. She hauled it back, and seized Katie, pulling her out of harm’s way as well.

The lizard, retracting its talons, also shuffled back, hissing and growling at the creature, who kept its eyes on him, although it had been frightened away from further attempts to reach the horrible light-wielding lizard.

Drago used the moment to secure the chain with the thong from the neck of the sack, then also retreated to a safe distance and rejoined Faraday.

“Did she…?”

Faraday shook her head. “She did not touch me.”

“Good. Faraday, will you wait by the wall for the moment?”

“Yes.” Faraday hesitated. “Drago…”

“Yes?”

Faraday stared at him, wanting to say everything, but unable to say anything.

“Nothing,” she said, and took the girl’s hand and walked over to stand by the wall.

Drago faced the creature, almost completely restrained by the now short chain. He placed his hand on the lizard’s head, and it sat down beside him, alternately looking up at Drago and over to the creature.

“Faraday,” Drago said very quietly without looking at her, “what time of day is it?”

Her eyes flickered towards the window. They had come across the Lake during Sheol’s mid-afternoon time, and had then spent at least two hours walking up through the palace and talking with Zared, Theod and Herme. “It lacks but an hour to dusk.”

“Good,” Drago said. “We are free of the miasma, and the Demons will not know what now we do.”

He bent slightly, and the lizard raised its head to him. “Watch carefully,” Drago told him.

Then he straightened, and sketched a symbol in the air. It was not accomplished with his usual speed and fluidity, but it was fast nevertheless, and Faraday was sure that if Drago wanted the lizard to learn it, he must surely repeat it several times.

But apparently not.

The lizard watched with its great black eyes, absorbing the symbol into their depths, and then it raised a languid foreclaw into the air and redrew the symbol.

With light.

Faraday gasped, and the child laughed delightedly.

The creature howled, and cowered.