Pilgrim (19 page)

There was no music save careful scuffling movement and the occasional exclamation and thump as someone fell down a step that had surprised their feet, and it was to that accompaniment that StarFever led them into the Talon’s audience chamber.

There was more light in this chamber, for the roof soared into one of the massive spires that characterised the Minaret Peaks, and welcome sunlight filtered down from the skylight far above. The chamber, decorated with swirls of gold and silver on its walls and ceiling, was empty of everything save a round table and chairs directly beneath the spire, a glowing brazier to one side (a dusty pile of coal beside it), and FreeFall and his wife EvenSong, standing close together by the heat. They turned as StarFever led StarDrifter and Zenith into the room.

“Uncle! Zenith!” FreeFall strode across the room and enveloped StarDrifter in a huge hug, turning to embrace Zenith as EvenSong wrapped her arms about her father.

Behind them, StarFever quietly exited the Chamber, closing the door as he went.

“I swear,” FreeFall said, as he stepped back from Zenith and studied StarDrifter, “that you look better than I do.”

StarDrifter tried to smile, but was unable to. Both FreeFall and EvenSong looked careworn and tired beyond measure. As with StarFever, their skin was abnormally pale and their eyes overly bright, and StarDrifter realised the toll that maintaining a constant facade of strength had exacted on his
daughter and nephew. He thanked every Star in existence that Rivkah had died before she could see the fate that had enveloped her daughter. At least, he thought, she died thinking that EvenSong would live out a long life in joy and comfort.

“Things have not been good here,” he observed.

FreeFall grimaced. “As good as they are on the unprotected plains, no doubt. We might not be subject to this disgusting miasma I am told issues forth during the Demonic Hours, but the loss of enchantment, and all that means to us, has been devastating.”

“We have tried our best to cope, father,” EvenSong said. “We have tried so
hard
, but trying to find the food to feed over a hundred thousand Icarii, and the means to warm them and light their way, has been…taxing.”

Zenith shot her a sympathetic glance. EvenSong was a resourceful and emotionally strong birdwoman. Seeing her face wreathed in so much helplessness bespoke the difficulties of life in this dying complex.

“But at least you two look well,” FreeFall said. His voice tightened. “What news? We are as starved for news—and hope—as we are for bread and warmth.”

“Zenith and I are weary,” StarDrifter said, “for we have come many leagues to see you. May we sit?”

“Oh!” EvenSong cried, distraught at her rudeness. “Please. And we shall find some refreshments for you—”

“Just something to drink, EvenSong,” Zenith said. “We do not need food.”

“You need it as much as EvenSong or I,” FreeFall said dryly, “and as much as the smallest child among us. We can manage a cup of warm ale at the least.”

He rang a small chime, then escorted StarDrifter and Zenith to the table.

“So,” FreeFall said. “Talk.”

And so they talked, their hands gratefully wrapped about the warmth of the ale cups the servant brought them. First
Zenith, telling FreeFall of her adventures with Drago, and then her struggle for life with the Niah-soul that battled to claim her.

EvenSong and FreeFall listened silently, their eyes wide, their hands clasped together on the table before them.

Then StarDrifter spoke of Faraday’s reappearance—

Both FreeFall’s and EvenSong’s mouths dropped open at that point. Her return could mean only hope, surely?

—and her help in saving Zenith, and then leading her toward the Star Gate.

“Oh, Stars, FreeFall,” StarDrifter said, his voice hoarse with emotion as he remembered the hopelessness and horror of the chamber of the Star Gate. “Axis and Azhure, as well the other Star Gods, WolfStar and all the Enchanters the Icarii nation could summon—”

“
And
Isfrael and his Banes,” Zenith put in.

“—and then with all the strength of the Mother and trees behind us…and yet we could do nothing. Nothing.”

“And now,” FreeFall said, leaning forward and staring at StarDrifter, “what is to be done about the Demons? Am I to be Talon of nothing but a disintegrating people? Are we to watch Tencendor destruct before our eyes?”

StarDrifter exchanged a glance with Zenith—how could he say blandly that, yes, that
is
what Drago wanted them to do?

“There is more we must tell you,” Zenith said softly, and she began to speak of Drago, and how he had come back through the Star Gate to help, not hinder. She spoke of her own belief in him, of the man who’d had his own incredible potential strangled in retaliation for his infant crime, and yet who nevertheless had shown her humour and compassion. She spoke of what he’d said when he’d returned from Cauldron Lake, and hoped she’d been as persuasive as Drago had been.

As FreeFall and EvenSong both opened their mouths to speak their objections, Zenith hastened on, speaking of
Faraday’s similar belief in Drago, and of Drago’s peculiar connection with the craft that lay at the foot of the Sacred Lakes.

“Caelum—” FreeFall began, but Zenith did not allow him to continue.

“Caelum is first-born of Axis and Azhure, and he has been named the StarSon, true, but I believe more in Drago.”

Zenith looked steadily at FreeFall and then EvenSong. “Caelum has gone with our parents to Star Finger, and the other Star Gods try and determine a method by which these Demons can be beaten back. I wish them success, but my heart…” She lay her hand on her breast, “…my heart tells me that Drago will be the one who will return to us and say, ‘I have found a way’.”

FreeFall exchanged a dubious look with EvenSong. “I find it hard to transfer my hopes to Drago.
Drago?
Did he not murder his sister, RiverStar? And I have heard it was he who led the Demons towards the—”

“I, as many, believe Drago innocent of RiverStar’s murder,” StarDrifter said. “And if he aided the Demons, then he was driven to it by a lifetime of wrongful accusations and resentments. Now his life is dedicated to righting whatever part he had in the wrong that has happened. I
believe
him, FreeFall. You have not seen Drago recently, nor spoken to him. He has my trust, as well as Zenith’s, and Zared, who has been given control of both ground and air forces of Tencendor, has given his support. And Isfrael listens to him, and accepts what he says.”

That did cause FreeFall to raise an eyebrow. “I thought Isfrael listened to nothing but the thoughts roaring about his own head.”

“Why,” EvenSong said, getting back to the kernel of the matter, “should we trust a man who says we must watch the destruction of Tencendor. That is equal to saying, ‘Die, and be glad of it!’ Damn you, father. Your wits must be addled to listen to such nonsense!”

“There is more, EvenSong,” StarDrifter said, “and the ‘more’ encompasses hope.”

He told them of Sanctuary, and the shelter that all would find there.

“And while we shelter in Sanctuary, then by whatever means Caelum and Drago and Axis and Azhure and every one of the Star Gods and scholars in Star Finger can devise, the Demons shall be destroyed without the risk of destroying every innocent soul in Tencendor as well.”

“Yet the land must be destroyed?” FreeFall said. “I cannot imagine why—”

“Sometimes,” Zenith put in, “destruction precedes new life. Think of the joy of spring after the death of winter, and imagine with what zest Tencendor will manage its own regeneration.”

“Still…” EvenSong said.

“Would you sit here and freeze to death?” StarDrifter said. “Our people will be eating each other within the month! Already Icarii are dying needlessly. Will you refuse Sanctuary out of stubborn-headedness?”

“I will personally carry every Icarii into Sanctuary myself if it will save a single life,” FreeFall said. “So, when do we leave? How far to the Sanctuary?”

“Well…” StarDrifter glanced at Zenith. “It has yet to be found—”

“Ha!” EvenSong said. “So you proffer hope, and then snatch it away.”

“—but SpikeFeather and WingRidge and the entire Lake Guard are searching for it. Believe, EvenSong. Please.”

EvenSong stared into her father’s eyes, then shrugged and dropped her own gaze.

“Wait,” she said softly. “Very well.”

She straightened on her stool and reached for the chime. “I shall have servants prepare you apartments. No doubt you are tired after your long journey north.”

Zenith lay awake for long hours that night, staring into the cold blackness of her chamber. There was a candle on the table by her bed, but she preferred not to light it.

Better the darkness, where she could think without distraction. Better the darkness, where no-one could read her thoughts.

StarDrifter. Gods! What could she do?

She trusted him, she loved him, and she even found him sexually appealing (was there a woman alive who did not?) but the thought of actually bedding with him made her stomach heave with repulsion. Over the past three days they had kissed several times, and every time they laid mouth on mouth Zenith had thought she was finally learning to conquer that repulsion. But then his hands would become more demanding, his body harder, and Zenith would panic.

Her hands clenched into the bedclothes, and she stared into the oblivion above her. StarDrifter was being so patient, so kind, so tender—so loving and protective, dammit! He was sure, as she’d been sure, that time and patience would cure the damage WolfStar had wrought.

But in these past wakeful hours Zenith had come to realise that her hesitation about being intimate with StarDrifter had nothing at all to do with WolfStar. True, WolfStar had raped and humiliated her, but that in itself formed no barrier to Zenith’s sleeping with StarDrifter. StarDrifter was everything WolfStar was not: kind, patient, gentle. Zenith was well aware that StarDrifter’s loving would be a very, very different thing to WolfStar’s rape.

But that was not the issue. While she and StarDrifter had been talking with FreeFall and EvenSong, Zenith had finally realised just why she felt so uncomfortable about forming an intimate relationship with StarDrifter.

StarDrifter was her grandfather, and her perception of him as her grandfather was the greatest barrier to being able to perceive, and accept, him as a lover. Zenith had realised, as
she’d sat about the table with her family this afternoon, that if she and StarDrifter had been lovers, and that if EvenSong and FreeFall had realised it, then she would have been consumed with self-disgust and crippled with humiliation. Sleeping with her
grandfather?

No matter that FreeFall and EvenSong would not have felt that way, nor even been able to understand it. They were first cousins, and had indulged in sexual love since childhood. Sexual relations between Icarii grandparents and grandchildren were not forbidden, nor even unknown. Gods! EvenSong and FreeFall probably would have welcomed the news that StarDrifter was bedding Zenith! Zenith and StarDrifter could provide the heir to the throne of Talon that EvenSong and FreeFall were unable to.

At that thought, Zenith’s stomach literally did heave, and she rolled onto her side and curled up into a tight ball. Pregnant with StarDrifter’s child?

No!

Then Zenith was consumed with self-loathing that she should feel so repulsed by the idea of sleeping with StarDrifter, or bearing his child.

There was no-one to stop them, and no-one to blame them, if they did become lovers.
There was nothing to stop Zenith loving StarDrifter except her own prudery!

How could she be so ungrateful?

It was StarDrifter who had believed in her enough to beg Faraday to find her when to all others it seemed as if Niah had conquered her completely. It was StarDrifter who had stood guard the long nights when she and Faraday walked through the shadow-lands, StarDrifter who had no thought of his own safety when he attacked WolfStar in order to protect her in those first vulnerable minutes when she reclaimed her body.

StarDrifter. Always StarDrifter had been there for her. And surely now he deserved some reward? Something back?

She loved him, so why couldn’t she give him what he wanted and had every right to expect?

Because she was ashamed. Disgusted by the idea of taking a grandfather as a lover.

Zenith put her hands to her face and wept.

I
t took time to get thirty thousand odd men and horses to move anywhere save in a forced march or a blind panic, and Zared did not want to do it either way. Ten days after Layon had first appeared with her companions to show the men how to weave their shade cloth from the bark of the goat tree, the army was ready to move.

“North out of the Silent Woman Woods,” Zared muttered as he sat his horse, studying the pathway as it wound its way through the trees, “and then west, west, west to Carlon, to see how much of its pink and gold beauty remains.”

Leagh sat her fine-boned chestnut mare beside him, glad beyond measure to be moving, but fearing the journey ahead. She wished she still had Zenith here for company. She smiled to herself. How could she lack for company in this twenty-thousand strong army?
And
the man she loved more than any other person beside her day and night?

But it would be better, she thought, if she could have the empathy of a sister-companion.

For an instant her hand touched her belly, but she moved it back to the rein immediately. Best not to think about that. Not now.

Zared turned his horse and studied the ranks of men stretching into the distance behind him. Every horseman had
a large roll of the goat tree cloth strapped to the cantle of his saddle. Pack horses further back carried poles gleaned from dead wood and what the trees of the forest had been prepared to give them. There were far fewer poles than men, but each pole could take the corners of four cloths, and there would be enough to set up shelter.

Among his entire command, only the members of the Strike Force were not burdened with any cloth. It was too weighty for them to carry, but there was enough shade for them to shelter with the ground units when they needed to.

What they would have to do, Zared thought, was practice raising poles and cloth as quickly as possible. He decided that for the first few days they would have to stop well before one of the Demons was due to spread his or her horror to give them enough time to erect their safety.

He raised his eyebrows at Theod and, just behind him, his captain of the guard, Gustus. Both men nodded. The Strike Force was already lining the forest path, ready to take to the skies.

Zared swung his horse back to the empty path and raised his hand, about to signal the march…

…and stopped, his hand suspended mid-air, amazed.

Standing on the path before him were the two white donkeys, gazing placidly at him, their long white ears flopping every which way over their narrow, bony skulls.

After the donkeys had kicked their way clear of the traces when Faraday had tried to harness them to the cart, they had disappeared into the forest. All presumed they’d wanted to resume their meandering.

The donkeys blinked, snorted, then turned and trotted up the path. One paused just long enough to send an enquiring glance Zared’s way.

He shrugged, and waved his hand. “Forward!” he whispered, then collected himself. “Forward!”

The army slowly snaked its way north through the Silent Woman Woods, led by two white donkeys, covered from the
air by the Strike Force, and watched by an invisible Isfrael crouched among the branches of an everheart tree.

They reached the edge of the woods by mid-morning.

Beyond the trees, tempest reigned in the swirling grey miasma of Barzula’s hour.

There was no storm as such—no roiling winds nor gusting hail—but merely the overwhelming impression of a tempest waiting, waiting with gleaming teeth, to plunge into the mind and sanity of everyone foolish enough to dare the open spaces.

Tendrils of the grey haze drifted through the air, clinging to everything it could find.

“Gods,” Leagh whispered by Zared’s side. “It’s sickening! How will we manage to survive that?”

“It is not too late to turn back now,” Zared said. “If you wish you can stay here.”

He shifted his eyes to all within hearing distance. “I would not begrudge anyone a fear that would not let them leave these Woods.”

Men stared back at him, but all stayed their ground.

Leagh shook her head slightly. I will stay with you, her eyes said.

Zared nodded to himself, satisfied, and turned his face back to the exposed landscape. He hoped to every god in existence that Drago knew what he was saying when he swore shade would protect them from this.

Once the miasma had dissipated, Zared waved his column forwards. The Strike Force wheeling overhead, they rode silently out from the Woods into a desolate landscape.

The two white donkeys trotted some ten paces in front of the army, their ears flopping with irritating cheerfulness. But Zared, Leagh, and every man and Icarii within the force, was sickened by the sight that met their eyes, just as Faraday and Drago had been. The lush Arcness Plains had been ravaged into a desiccated landscape, swept with the
cold winds of Snow-month and left hopeless with the touch of the Demons.

Bones lay scattered everywhere across the cracked earth.

“We will be lucky indeed to find water in this desert,” Herme said, pulling his horse up beside Zared’s.

Zared nodded. “Pass the word back. We drink enough to sustain us. No more.”

A movement to his left caught his eye. Something crawled out of a crack, scuttled several paces, and dropped into another crack.

Zared narrowed his eyes, peering as hard as he could, but he could not make it out.

“Another one!” Leagh cried, pointing to a movement directly in front of them.

It stayed above ground long enough to be recognised…partly. This one was a lizard of the variety that could normally be found hunting grasshoppers through the grasslands. But was it hunting grasshoppers now?

Zared quietly sent back the order to stand ready. They’d barely been out of the Woods a half-hour—was it going to be like this the entire way to Carlon? Riding heart in mouth, expecting attack by lizards and mice and sundry other insects and rodents?

Suddenly Leagh cried out. Her horse shied violently to one side, crashing into Zared’s mount, and almost throwing Zared to the ground.

He steadied himself, and grabbed at Leagh, making sure she was all right.

She nodded, her face tight, and they both looked down on the ground.

There were two lizards there, each half out of a crack in the earth, each tugging at what remained of a baby’s head.

Leagh gagged, and turned away.

“Ride on!” Zared ordered, his eyes hard, and the column wheeled to the left to avoid the lizards.

Ahead, the donkeys started forward from where they’d been waiting patiently.

Zared held his horse back for a moment, then spurred it forward, crushing both lizards and the infant’s head beneath its hooves.

They rode through the late morning, past noon, and into the early afternoon. Zared pushed his men and horses as fast as he could, and yet not so fast they would be forced to consume too much water.

The landscape did not change. The plains were stripped of grass back to the red, drifting earth. Cracks zigzagged as far as the horizon.

“And this is the depths of winter!” Leagh said to Zared. “Imagine what it will be like next summer.”

Zared did not answer for a moment, and when he did speak, he kept his eyes straight ahead. “If we have not won out against these Demons by next summer, then I doubt we shall be here to endure its horror.”

Pray Drago finds this Sanctuary, Leagh thought. Pray all the gods of creation he finds it
soon.
Yet even that thought did not comfort her. Unless this promised Sanctuary sat smack in the centre of Tencendor, then it would be nigh impossible to manage to evacuate all of the nation’s peoples into its safety.

And how
does
one evacuate a nation? Leagh wondered. How, if we must travel through this kind of wasteland?

An hour after noon, the two donkeys abruptly halted, swung about, and stared at Zared.

He reined in his horse, returned the donkeys’ stare briefly, then called a halt.

“Mid-afternoon draws nigh,” he said, and spoke to Herme. “Quick! The shelters!”

Herme turned without answering, and spoke urgently to the lieutenants and captains behind him.

The army had practiced this manoeuvre a score of times while in the Silent Woman Woods, but out here, so
vulnerable, nervousness and haste made for thickened fingers. The Strike Force dropped out of the sky, helping where they could, but even their normally implacable temperaments were disturbed, and their agile fingers awkward.

Zared sat his horse, watching the sky, the horizon,
anything
, for some sign that Sheol’s time approached. The scouts had previously announced that the grey miasma swept over the land in the blink of an eye…was there
no
warning? What if his sense of time was out and they all died in madness while still erecting their pavilions?

The donkeys slowly walked back towards the army.

“Zared,
move
!” Leagh said behind him, and jolted out of his thoughts, Zared swung his horse about, casting his gaze over the army behind him.

The column of men and horses had rearranged itself into a vastly different formation of seventy-five squares. Each square comprised several hundred men and horses, and each man had unrolled his shade cloth and attached it to those of his neighbours with poles that were shared about.

Seventy-five squares of shade.

What happened if a storm hit, as was likely at this time of the year? What if the Demons saw these tempting squares, and blew a tempest down upon them?

“Gods’ help you, Drago,” Zared muttered, “if this isn’t enough!”

He swung down from his horse, unrolled his own length of shade, and helped Leagh attach it into the square they were assigned to.

He glanced anxiously about. “Herme? Theod? Gustus?”

Each man reported in. The squares were up. Everyone was under.

“Then we wait,” Zared said. “And watch.”

The donkeys shouldered their way under the square that sheltered Zared’s company, and stood to one side of Leagh, their heads turned out into the landscape.

Despair descended upon the land. It rippled out in grey concentric circles from Sheol’s location in the northern Skarabost Plains, breaking against the western borders of the Avarinheim and Minstrelsea forests, but flowing smoothly south and west.

In the southern Skarabost Plains it flowed over the dreaming, ancient white horse.

Despair surged further south. The grey tide broke and screamed and wailed over the walls of Tare and Carlon, snatching at the few dozen people who had not been fast enough inside.

It sailed straight over the shade that sheltered Zared’s army, leaving them untouched.

But hardly unaffected.

Every member of that force watched the grey twilight areas beyond their shelter. They could somehow
feel
the despair of that grey contagion, even though it did not seep beneath their shade. It felt as if a thousand eyes waited within the haze outside. Waited for a single toe to creep unnoticed over the dividing line between madness and sanity. It felt as if ten thousand bony fingers creaked and flexed out there, waiting for that mistake, that single instant it would take those fingers to
grab.

Leagh watched for ten minutes, and then could bear no more. She turned and buried her face in Zared’s shoulder, feeling his arms wrap about her.

“I do not know if I have the strength,” she whispered.

“You must have the strength,” he replied. “You have no choice.”

The donkeys crowded closer to the pair, and their warmth and apparently unruffable cheerfulness gave both Zared and Leagh strength.

Within the hour, despair passed and the wasteland was once more safe to traverse.

But Zared did not break camp. There were perhaps some three hours before dusk and the onset of the ravages of
pestilence, but Zared did not think the effort of breaking camp, riding for one hour, and then setting up camp again was worth the effort.

“We stay here until dawn has passed,” he said. “Everyone has three hours to stretch their legs, eat, forage for fodder, whatever, but half an hour before dusk, I want all back in here.”

At dusk the world changed. Pestilence reigned, and a low and utterly horrible whirring and droning came from within the miasma, as if great clouds of insects flew within its grey clouds. As the hour deepened, the surface of the earth itself developed great boils that eventually burst to reveal writhing masses of grubs and worms.

When full night descended, terror replaced pestilence. Men swore they could hear teeth gnashing in the darkness beyond the sheltered areas, or the whispers of nightmares too terrible to be contemplated. Terror writhed amid the untamed landscape of the night, and it waited—as had pestilence and despair—for that single error that would let it feed.

Few managed any sleep, and the horses jostled nervously the entire time, forcing men to their heads to try and keep them calm.

A league beyond the boundaries of the camp, coalesced a terror more terrible than any could imagine.

For days the Hawkchilds that flew over the central plains had been driving south-eastwards an army many thousands strong. It had been instructed by the Hawkchilds, and given its purpose by them, but it was led by an immense brown and cream badger intent on its own hunt after a lifetime of being hunted.

All that it saw in its mind and smelt with its nose was the heady brightness and aroma of blood.

It wanted to feed.

As did every creature that lurched, scampered, hopped and flew behind it.

There were hundreds of once-white sheep, their wool now stained with madness and the blood of those who had proved themselves a nuisance.

There were twice that number of dairy cows, their udders straining with accumulated pestilence, their minds fixed on destroying those who had abused them in their former life. For the past week they’d been sharpening their horns on every stone they came across.

There was a mass of pigs,
thousands
of them, grown strange tusks in hairy snouts, their eyes almost enclosed by thickened, puffy eyelids, grunting with every step they took. They too wanted revenge against those who’d bred them exclusively for the table.