StarMan (11 page)

For almost an hour Azhure wandered the ground-floor rooms, unwilling to climb any of the stairs lest she become lost and disorientated. She had expected that once she was inside the tower WolfStar would appear as quickly and as mysteriously as he had that last time - but the rooms remained stubbornly empty and the stairwells disappointingly silent.

Finally, tired and dispirited, Azhure sank down onto the bare floor of one of the chambers.

Sicarius whined and pressed his head into her hands.

"Well, my fine fellow," Azhure said as she scratched the hound behind the ears. "Did WolfStar ever bring you here? Do you know how to find your former master?"

But the Alaunt remained as obstinately silent as Spiredore itself and Azhure sighed. Perhaps she should have brought CaeJum. Perhaps the only reason WolfStar had come to her before was to see his grandson. But even as she thought this, Azhure realised WolfStar's interest in Caelum that night had been only tangential; his real focus had been her.

Azhure shifted her weight, uncomfortable on the hard floor, and thought that the answer
must
lie within her somewhere. Hadn't WolfStar told her that the tower had been built just for her? Well, here the tower stood, but the builders had forgotten to give her the key.

"Stop it, woman!" she said to herself, annoyed at her negative thoughts. WolfStar had also told her how to use this tower, hadn't he? Her brow creased as she tried to remember his exact words. So much had happened since that meeting to crowd out the memory of her conversation with him...so much . . .

but just as Azhure thought she had indeed lost the memory forever WolfStar's words suddenly echoed around the chamber.

It is very simple. If you wander willy-nilly in Spiredore you will, as you thought, get completely lost.

You must decide where you want to go before you start to climb the stairs, and then the stairs will take you to that place.

"Of course!" Azhure laughed, and struggled to her feet. "Of course! Thank you!" She patted the wall she had been resting against, then she walked as fast as she could back to the atrium and stared at the nearest staircase. Before she tested WolfStar's advice she leaned down to the hound. "Sicarius, should I become lost or disorientated in the stairs and chambers above, do you think you can understand enough of the magic of Spiredore to see me safely back to the door?"

The Alaunt gave a short, sharp bark in reply, and Azhure smiled. "Good. Well, Sicarius, shall we go see your former master?"

Azhure placed one hand firmly on the stair rail and with the other gathered up the skirts of the loose lavender gown she wore. She pictured WolfStar in her mind, the beautiful and powerful face, the copper curls, the golden wings.

"Take me to WolfSrar SunSoar," she said, and began to climb.

With his power and experience, WolfStar felt Azhure move through the maze that was Spiredore, heard her call his name. He smiled in surprise, yet with deep pride, at her grasp of Spiredore's power.

Nevertheless, WolfStar knew that it would be a disaster if she came to him in his present location, so he moved quickly to meet his daughter before she transferred out of Spiredore.

Azhure was finding the climb difficult and, as she grew more and more breathless, she wondered if she had understood WolfStar's words correctly. Surely even her climb to the rooftop had not taken her this long?

Beside her Sicarius climbed easily, his paws silent on the wooden treads.

"Stars, Sicarius," Azhure panted, pausing and resting her head on the railing. "I do not think even WolfStar is worth all this trouble."

"Then I am sorry for the effort I have caused you," a rich voice said above her, and Azhure started so violently she would have fallen had not WolfStar reached down a hand and steadied her.

"Come," he said, smiling, "there is a comfortable chamber just above. Two or three more steps and we are there."

Azhure blinked and looked past WolfStar. She could have sworn that before she had rested her head the stairway spiralled up into infinity, but now it ended in a landing not two or three steps ahead. Beyond this the door to a chamber stood invitingly open.

"Come," her father repeated, and Azhure let him lead her into the chamber. She sank down into a comfortable couch, richly embroidered and cushioned, and WolfStar, after patting and murmuring to the hound, walked to the window to stare over the Grail Lake towards Carlon while Azhure caught her breath.

She studied him curiously. He was as beautiful as she remembered, and she wondered why s.he had inherited none of his colouring or his Icarii bone structure.

"You know that I am your father?" WolfStar asked as he turned back into the chamber.

Azhure remembered their kiss, but she felt no shame. "I know that you are WolfStar SunSoar, come back through the Star Gate, and I know that you are my father. I know my mother's name was Niah, and that she was a Priestess in the Temple of the Stars." Azhure's voice became harsher as bitter resentments bubbled to the surface. "I know you got Niah pregnant and then abandoned her to her death. I know you thought so little of me that you let me linger under the appalling care of Hagen. I know you murdered MorningStar."

WolfStar stepped into the centre of the room, his face tight with anger.

Azhure, angry herself, ignored the danger. "And I know that you are the Traitor who will betray Axis to Gorgrael - you probably already have."

"You know
nothing!
You have guessed my identity, and you have surmised that I came back through the Star Gate. You realise that I am your father, but the rest. . .
bah!"

Azhure held his stare. She had not meant to accuse him so quickly, but she was tired and she was heartsick and here was the birdman who was at the root of all their problems. Did he think that she would fall into his arms weeping for joy once she had gleaned his identity?

"Then tell me why it is," she said, "that Niah and I were left to fend for ourselves. Niah died horribly, WolfStar - but perhaps you don't care about that - and I suffered many long years, lost, alone, despairing. Tell me why I should
not
accuse you?"

His eyes softened. "There are so many things that I cannot yet speak of, Azhure, and Niah's death and your life in Smyrton is one of them."

She turned her face away from him, tears of anger springing to her eyes.

"Azhure," he said, and she felt him sit down by her side. "You are my daughter and I think you know that I love you." He picked up her hand. "I did not willingly abandon either of you to...oh! By the Light of the Stars, Azhure!
What is this you wear?"
His voice sounded tortured, and Azhure whipped her head about. WolfStar was staring at the ring on her finger, and he was trembling so badly that Azhure's arm also shook. "WolfStar?"

"What is that you wear?" he whispered, his face colourless. He raised his great violet eyes to her own.

"It is the ring of the Enchantress, or so I am told. WolfStar? Why do you tremble so?"

"The Enchantress' ring," he said, his voice still soft. "I thought never to see this again. Azhure, how did you get this?"

His distress was catching, and Azhure had to lick her suddenly dry lips before continuing.

"Axis gave it to me. He was given it by the Ferryman, Orr." In the past days Axis had told her much of what had happened to him in the waterways. "And Orr said that -" "That I gave it to him." "Yes."

WolfStar took a deep breath and composed himself. He'd been driven by a powerful but little understood need to conceive Azhure with Niah, but until this moment he'd not realised the precise nature of what he'd seeded. Hesitantly he touched the ring.

"This ring is representative of great and unimaginable power." Reluctantly he let Azhure's hand go. He looked up and tried to smile but it was an abysmal failure. "When I gave it to Orr I thought never to see it again. To find it now on the finger of my own daughter is almost beyond my comprehension."

"Should I fear it, WolfStar?"

He lifted his hand and softly touched her cheek, wonder in his eyes. "No. No. The ring has chosen you, it has come home

to you."
By the Stars!,
he thought,
the Circle has completed itself in my daughter!
"That is an unimaginable honour. Unimaginable. You need not fear it." Now his mouth did curl slightly, wonderingly.

"It makes me fear
you,
though."

Azhure felt herself succumbing to WolfStar's immense appeal as he stroked her cheek and smiled into her eyes. She knew she should be angry with him, she knew she should hate him for abandoning Niah and herself to Hagen, but her anger was fading with every stroke of his fingers. Again she understood why her mother must have yielded to him.

But while her anger faded, her curiosity and her desperation for answers still flared bright. "Who was the Enchantress, WolfStar, what power does her ring contain? And why did you tremble so when you spied it on my finger?"

"So many questions, Azhure."

A touch of determination hardened her voice. "I have almost thirty years of questions, WolfStar.

These three will do to start with."

He sighed and dropped his hand. These three questions would not be the worst she would ask him.

"What do you know of the Enchantress? No, wait," he said quickly as he saw Azhure gesture in irritation. "I only ask this so that I do not repeat what you already know."

"That she was the mother from whom both Charonite and Icarii races sprang. That she was very powerful, the first of all the Enchanters. That this ring, which was hers, holds unknown powers. She used her power differently to other Enchanters - or Charonite mages, for all I know."

"The Enchantress was the Mother of Nations, yes." Azhure blinked. The Ferryman had called her that when she had travelled with the Icarii and Raum to Talon Spike via the ancient Waterways.

"Not much is known about her. All we have now are legends...and this ring. She was a remarkable woman, and many of her powers and magic she passed on to her two youngest sons."

"Her youngest sons?"

WolfStar grinned. "The Enchantress did not favour her eldest son at all; it was he who fathered the Acharite race."

Azhure's mouth dropped open. "Do you mean that the Icarii, the Charonites and the Acharites
all
sprang from the one mother?"

WolfStar's grin became more feral. "The children of her unfavoured eldest son became the toilers of the soil, while the children of those sons she did favour grew to hunt the mysteries of the universe."

Azhure wondered how the Acharites would react if they realised they sprang from the same source as the Icarii and Charonites. "Are the Avar descended from her as well?"

"No. The Avar come from different stock altogether. Now, this ring. Again, like the Enchantress herself, what knowledge we have of this ring is ancient and riddled with mystery because of it." WolfStar knew far more than that about the ring, but it was not his place to tell Azhure. That right belonged to the .

. . others. "It does not so much contain power itself as it represents power - unimaginable power. For many thousands of years it has manipulated as it sees fit to achieve its own ends, that is why I trembled so when I saw it on your finger. I, too, have been manipulated by this ring."

He was silent a moment. "You have, no doubt, heard the Icarii tell of my reign as Enchanter-Talon."

"Yes," Azhure whispered. Her father had hurled hundreds of innocent children to their deaths through the Star Gate in an effort to understand its mysteries. Eventually WolfStar's younger brother, CloudBurst, had assassinated him before WolfStar could murder the entire Icarii race. Of course, no-one among the Icarii - or any other race that knew the story - had counted on WolfStar coming back through the Star Gate.

"My fascination was not only with the Star Gate, Azhure," and WolfStar's voice took on the quality of confession, "but also with this ring that my forebears had guarded for so many thousands of years. I know I cannot excuse what I did to those children, but the ring had haunted my dreams from childhood, and it drove me to maniacal deeds. It was the ring that whispered to me that I needed to sacrifice those children into the Star Gate...it was the ring that whispered to me that it wanted to be taken to the waterways, there to wait until it decided to move on again." And was it the
ring
that sent me to Niah?

WolfStar wondered. And whispered to me the name of the child she was to conceive?

Azhure's mind told her not to believe WolfStar, that he was merely using the ring as an excuse for his own inexcusable behaviour, but her heart told her that he spoke the truth.

"Then it will only seek to use me," she said, horrified, twisting the ring off her hand. "It will use me and force me to do its will!"

"No!" WolfStar cried and clasped her hands between his to stop her pulling off the ring. "No!

Legends said that one day the ring would seek out the hand of one who was fit to wear it -even the Enchantress was only a custodian, the ring was not truly hers. It has taken tens of thousands of years, but the ring has finally come home. Azhure, I trembled not only because I feared the power the ring represents, but also because I suddenly realised that I ought to fear you more."

Azhure was silent, staring at her father with great smoky eyes. Her entire body was still, her breathing so shallow that her breasts scarcely rose.

"Azhure, the ring has chosen you . . . and it is now subservient to you. It has chosen you as its home."

"But I do not know how to use it, or this power you say it represents," she said. "WolfStar, one of the reasons I came here today was to ask you how I can use my powers. You
must
teach me! Axis needs me!"

"One day I will teach you what I can, Azhure, but that day is not yet here." And what I
can
teach you is going to be little indeed, Azhure-heart.

"Damn you!" Azhure cried, and tore her hands from his. "I
need
to know!"

"Azhure, listen to me. This is not the time nor the place. No!
Listen
to me! I will not teach you, nor will any others, while you are pregnant with those twins - there are secrets you will learn that those babies should not know."