Pilgrim (29 page)

B
y early Hungry-month Drago and Faraday were in the extreme northern plains of Ichtar, now moving directly north along the ancient road towards Gorkenfort and then Ravensbund. The Hawkchilds had troubled them no more, although both spent much of the day anxiously scanning the heavy skies for their sweeping shadows.

Drago had pushed Belaguez as fast as the ancient horse would go. He knew he wouldn’t survive another interview with the feathered horrors.

During the day Faraday’s obsession with finding the lost child faded in a flood of gloomy memories. She had come this way once before, a long, long time ago. Then she’d been, if not exactly naive, then too innocent. Too determined to play her role in a Prophecy that demanded only her death. She had ridden with Timozel and Yr, escorted by Lieutenant Gautier, towards Borneheld.

Borneheld.

Faraday’s arms tightened instinctively about Drago, and he turned his head slightly, feeling the warmth of her body against him keenly.

“Faraday?” he asked softly.

“Memories, Drago.”

“Ah.” Drago was not unaware that Gorkenfort was an unwelcome destination for Faraday, for more reason
than that she would have preferred to have gone straight to Star Finger. “Was there
no
happiness for you in Gorkenfort?”

As Drago had, so did Faraday hesitate. “I don’t think I had much happiness anywhere, Drago.”

To that, Drago had nothing to say.

They saw no person, and no animal, on the final few leagues of road leading to Gorkenfort. The cold, bleak wind had swept the land completely bare; the sense of hopelessness in the air was palpable. During Magariz’s time as Prince of the North, Gorkenfort and town had been re-established as a major juncture of Ichtarian and Ravensbund trade, but now both had apparently been abandoned again. Drago wondered where the people had gone. There was too much horror to the south, and he suspected they may have fled yet further north through the Gorken Pass into Ravensbund itself.

Perhaps the Ravensbund Necklet, the series of curious sinkholes stretching from the foot of the Icescarp Alps to the western coast, might be harbouring more than the Ravensbund. Drago hoped so. He did not think he could bear it if the entire population of northern Tencendor had been lost.

Belaguez plodded on, his nose pointed ever north, his mind lost in the mists of age.

Gorkenfort was indeed deserted, as was the town that spread out beneath its walls.

As they drew close to the town in the late afternoon, Drago tugged at Belaguez’s mane, pulling the horse to a halt.

Both Drago and Faraday stared ahead. Several months of winter snow had collected in frozen drifts about the walls of the town; one particularly large mound had propped open the gates.

Behind the town rose the black walls of the fort, and behind that, leagues distant, but still so massive they blocked out much of the sky, the sheer cliffs of the Icescarp Alps surged towards the stars. The peaks were lost in mist and cloud, and
thicker clouds billowed beyond the alps and streamed through the mountain passes towards Gorkentown and fort.

A gust of icy wind hit them, and Belaguez momentarily struggled with his footing.

Faraday shivered, and clung as close to Drago’s back as she could with the feathered lizard curled between them.

“There’s a storm coming,” Drago murmured over his shoulder. “But we can find shelter enough in the fort, and build a fire to see us through the night.”

“’Tis not the cold that makes me shiver so,” Faraday said.

Drago twisted so he could see her face. Her green eyes appeared abnormally bright in her face, and her lower lip was an angry scarlet where she had caught it between her teeth. Tendrils of her bright hair fluttered in the wind, making her seem even more lost and uncertain.

“Borneheld still lives for you, doesn’t he?” he said.

Faraday blinked, and a tear ran down her left cheek. “I didn’t realise how much I loathed him until I saw this place again.”

“You don’t have to go in—”

“What?” Anger had replaced the sadness in her voice. “Do you expect me to wait out here for you? No, you say we must go inside, so inside we will go. Both of us!”

She slammed her heels into Belaguez’s flanks, and the horse obediently plodded forward.

“Faraday—”

“Don’t say anything,” she hissed. “
Just don’t say it
.”

Drago held her eyes a moment longer, then he turned back and looked into what awaited them.

Gorkentown was not only deserted, it appeared as if it had been destroyed in some siege. As if by memory, Belaguez took them through the gates, then along the main thoroughfare that wound between gaunt-windowed and gape-doored tenement buildings towards the town square, and then up to the gates of the fort itself.

Not only were the buildings in sad disorder, goods lay in disarray as if piled by inhabitants preparing to evacuate and then fleeing in terror without them. A few walls had half-tumbled down, and the tiles of several roofs were scattered, as if they’d been caught in a spiteful whirlwind.

Although, outside the walls, snow had lain in only occasional drifts, here it lay stacked shoulder high against walls, icicles hung an arm’s length down from eaves and abandoned doorframes, and a thick layer of ice glittered in the late afternoon sun from the spires of the town and the towers of the fort.

Winter had claimed Gorkentown far earlier than it had anything else.

“Something is wrong,” Drago said, leaning to one side to scoop a handful of snow from a door ledge into his sack. “Why is everything destroyed? Magariz rebuilt this town as a major trading point with the Ravensbundmen.”

“We have ridden into memory, I think,” Faraday said. “For this is how Gorkentown appeared when it had been attacked by Gorgrael’s Skraelings. And thus…thus I rode into the town to meet Borneheld.”

“Borneheld is dead,” Drago said roughly. He wondered if she surrounded herself deliberately with the ghosts of dead husbands and dream-children to protect herself from him.

“For you, perhaps.”

Drago wished he hadn’t brought Faraday here, and wondered what he could do to bridge the distance between them.

He tried to push Faraday from his mind—hard when she clung so close to his back—and studied the town. Should it be
this
sunk in ice? Was it the effects of the Demons? Or the power of Faraday’s memory?

Or she who waited them in the fort?

He remembered the grey-haired woman, sinking her teeth into the spine of the seal, and he shivered himself.

“We have no choice,” Faraday said. “Either of us. Come, let us urge this ancient horse forwards a trifle faster. Night approaches, and I’d prefer to be in the shelter of the Keep when it falls.”

The gates to Gorkenfort stood as open as had the gates to the town. Belaguez halted of his own accord as he approached them, and he lifted his head and whinnied, as if caught in memory himself.

“Your father fought all along this street,” Faraday said, indicating the curved road that ran between a row of tenements and the fort walls. “It was their final line of defence against the Skraelings after a night spent retreating towards the fort. Borneheld…”

She lifted her head and stared at the walls rising high above them. “Borneheld had ordered that the gates not be opened to admit him. He wanted him dead.”

“But…”

“Margariz ordered them open,” Faraday said. “And I sank my hands into your father’s body and healed him. I loved him so desperately. I could not see him die.”

Drago tensed, then booted Belaguez forward.

As the town, so the fort. The inner courtyard was deserted, piles of goods left adrift as if everything had been abandoned in a hurry so terrifying that precious belongings were dropped forgotten as people fled in a thousand differing directions.

Hinges moaned in the wind, and a squall of four or five ravens launched themselves screaming into the twilight air high above.

A door banged, and Faraday jumped and cried out.

Drago swung a leg over Belaguez’s wither and dropped to the ground, slipping slightly in the ice. He turned and held out his arms for Faraday.

“Come—we need to seek shelter. I can smell a storm on this wind.”

She stared at him, as if lost in some appalling memory.

“I am
not
Borneheld,” Drago said. “
Come on
. Can you not hear the wind? We have little time.”

Faraday blinked, then leaned down to Drago. He seized her waist and lifted her down from the horse, slapping Belaguez’s rump so that he ambled—apparently totally unconcerned about the nearing tempest—into an open stable door.

The feathered lizard gave a high-pitched cry and slithered over Belaguez’s hindquarters, scampering over the snow and ice-covered paving stones to follow Drago as he carried Faraday inside the door to the Keep.

The lizard scrambled in behind them, and Drago let Faraday slide to her feet, and slammed the door closed.

Then he turned and looked about him.

They were in an entrance chamber, bare save for its ancient, rotted tapestries and banners.

Nothing but cold, damp, dark stone walls and the fungus-encrusted wall-hangings. Not a lamp or a candle, and certainly no gilt-edged explanation.

“Through here,” Faraday said, stepping over to a closed door. “The Great Hall.”

Surely, Drago thought,
surely
whatever he needed to find would be in here. But the Hall was as bare as the entrance chamber, except for a table and chairs scattered around the massive fireplace at the far end.

The Hall was freezing, far worse than outside, and Drago pulled his cloak tighter about him, trying to repress his shivering.

Faraday stood and looked at the far fireplace.

There Borneheld had stood and stared at her with his frightful, open lust as she’d entered, stunning in an emerald and ivory silk gown that had bared her breasts more than concealed them…

The same gown that Gorgrael, with equal lust, had forced her to wear so he too could
—

“No!” she cried and spun about.

Here, in this Hall, Axis had stared at her, believing she’d betrayed him with his brother, and so precipitating, perhaps, his own betrayal of her.

“
No!
” she cried again. “
No!
”

Appalled, Drago caught her to him. She struggled blindly, sobbing, and Drago dragged her from the Hall, realising the horror of her memories, even if he was unable to participate in them.

In the antechamber Faraday calmed, although she still shook, and tears continued to course down her face.

“There must be a room upstairs where we can light a fire and warm ourselves,” he said. “Faraday, can you—”

“I can walk,” she said, and hastily wiped the tears from her cheeks.

“I shouldn’t have brought you here,” Drago said, but took her arm and led her yet deeper into the Keep.

Up the stone stairwell he found a bedchamber with enough wood stacked into the grate to sustain a hot fire for the night. Leaving Faraday standing by the bed, the lizard playing with the laces of her boots, Drago squatted down and lit the fire.

Fnally he rose once the flames took hold and caught sight of Faraday, completely still, looking at him with her great eyes. Gods, she was so lovely!

“You should wear silks rather than that peasant gown, Faraday.”

“I have had enough of the lies and betrayals silks bring.”

“Why so cold to me, Faraday? What have I done?”

She turned her face away.

“Is it Axis, is that why you refuse to love me?”

She looked back at him, her eyes even more stricken than before. Why had he spoken those words?

“Why should I love
you
, Drago?”

He winced, and she immediately regretted her words. She fought to find something else to say, and then said the first thing that came to her mind.

“Did you know that this was the chamber of my marriage night, Drago? That this was where Borneheld took my virginity?”

“Are you determined to throw every past lover in my face, Faraday?”

“I am determined
never
to be betrayed again, never to be hurt again,” she countered.

Drago strode across the room, angry with her. Damn it, why did she deny what he
knew
existed between them?

He took her shoulders in hands suddenly surprisingly gentle. “I would not betray you, Faraday.”

“And yet you betray this land by refusing to accept what Noah told you, by refusing to accept what
I
know, and what WingRidge and all his damned Lake Guard knows, and what Isfrael and StarDrifter and Zenith know!”

Drago shifted his eyes so he did not have to bear the angry scrutiny in her own.

“
You
are the StarSon, Drago.
You!
”

Still he did not speak, and Faraday, her frustration at his obstinacy almost unbearable, tore at the throat laces of the gown. She pulled the bodice apart, exposing the swell of her breasts.

“If you accept your heritage, Drago, if you accept your role as StarSon, then you may bed me. Tonight. Here. Now. But tell me that
you
are the StarSon.”

“And what shall I tell Caelum?” Drago said softly, once more looking her in the eye. “That I again betrayed him? And this time for a night with our father’s lover?”

The colour drained from Faraday’s face and she wrenched away from him, jerking the bodice closed over her breasts.

“What lies between us,” Drago snapped, “needs no blackmail to force a consummation!”

He turned and strode over to the door. “I’ll get some food from our packs,” he said, then slammed the door behind him.

Faraday lowered her head into her hands, and her shoulders shuddered.

“Never, never say you love me,” she whispered into the lonely night, “for that I could not bear.”

She trod the snowdrifts with the firmness of one who regarded the winter as a lover.

About her Gorkentown lay windswept and frosty, and she raised her great head and sniffed the thickening wind, half-expecting to find the scent of prey upon it.