StarMan (83 page)

As he passed the scrap of green cloth on the floor he bent down and snatched it, wrapping it about the head of the Sceptre.

The Rainbow light died, but Axis could still feel the rod pulse in his hands.

"Faraday," he said once more, and left the chamber.

They ran through toppling walls and ice spears that plunged from crumbling ceilings. The maze of corridors buckled and slipped, and Axis and Arne fell time and time again, one helping the other to his feet, one hauling the other from danger and death by his hair or by a hand buried in folds of cloth. Axis never knew how they emerged from the Ice Fortress alive, but emerge they did, to stagger into sunlight.

Sunlight?

Had a whole night passed without his knowing?

Thirty paces from the Ice Fortress they stopped, the breath rasping in their throats in the frigid air, and they turned and looked behind them.

The entire Fortress was collapsing inwards; collapsing, Axis realised, towards the central chamber and Gorgrael's body. A sudden and infinitely strange thought hit him - this beautiful ice prism had been the outward manifestation of the beauty that Gorgrael craved within his own person.

And just for the moment that the thought survived, Axis realised the full loneliness and horror of Gorgrael's existence. Sympathy almost flared then, but at that instant the Fortress collapsed completely and both thought and sympathy disappeared from Axis' mind as if they had never existed.

It was over.

Axis bent to one knee in the snow, his head resting in one hand. Arne stood helplessly beside him, feeling something of the man's grief.

For a long time they stood there, a cold northerly breeze riffling through their hair and fluttering their cloaks, two men frozen into the frozen landscape.

Axis raised his head. He rose to his feet, the movement stiff and painful, and handed the Rainbow Sceptre to Arne.

"Here, take this."

"But, StarMan." Arne stumbled, taking the Sceptre as though it were red-hot. "What do you want me to do with -"

"Take it," Axis said, his voice harsh. "Take it back to Sigholt and give it to Azhure. She can look after it."

Arne's eyes hardened with determination. "My place is with —"

"Yowr
place is to do what I tell you!"
Axis screamed, and Arne recoiled a step at the pain and anguish he saw in Axis' eyes.

"There'are no Traitors standing at my back now," Axis continued more moderately, regretting the harsh words. "It is
over,
Arne. And where I go now, I can only go alone. Please, take the Sceptre and go."

Arne nodded, but he paused. Walk out into this wasteland by himself? He didn't have a horse, he didn't have a pack...no food...no fuel...

"I'll take him," a gruff voice said to one side.

Both men turned.

Urbeth sat seven or eight paces away.

"Urbeth?" Axis said, almost unable to believe what he saw.

She looked at the pile of ice melting in the sun. "It made such a noise crashing down, StarMan, that it woke my cubs. I decided to investigate."

"I apologise for the rude interruption, Urbeth. Can you take Arne? Show him the way?"

She inclined her head. "I like Arne. He has a nice sense of humour. Come, Arne. I can take you as far as Talon Spike, and from there I think you can manage on your own."

Arne turned to Axis, opened his mouth, but found he could say nothing.

Axis put his hand on his shoulder. "I thank you, Arne. Do not fear for me, for I shall see you again."

Arne nodded, and turned aside. He looked at the gigantic bear, now lumbering to her feet, and eyed her back.

"You can
walk'."
she snapped, and turning around she ambled westwards.

Without a backward glance Arne followed her, the Sceptre tucked safe under his cloak.

Of Deceptions and DisguisesAxis watched them for a long time, watched the great pale shape with the smaller darker figure walk into the west, the low rumble of their voices reaching him for almost twenty minutes.

Finally, when he was surrounded by nothing but silence and the light powdery snow that was kicked up by the wind, Axis took a deep breath. It was time to visit the Sacred Grove. Time to fulfil the promise he had made Faraday.

Oh, gods,
Faraday!

Axis bent almost double as his grief over her hit him anew.

Faraday!

Again he saw Gorgrael, his face twisted with hate, slice open her belly, tear her throat apart. But worse than that was the pain and fear in her eyes, pain and fear that Axis could do nothing to allay.

In order to win, he'd had to let her suffer...and she knew it. She'd known she was going to die, and Axis realised she'd known it for a very long, time.

"Had she come north with me to offer herself as a sacrifice that I might live?" he whispered.

Had she loved him that much?He bent his head and wept anew.

When he rose, drained of all emotion, the sun was sinking in the western horizon, and Axis realised he'd spent most of the day grieving for Faraday. Yet even most of one day was not enough. A lifetime would not do Faraday or her love or bravery justice.

He turned, thinking to face east as he sang the Song of Movement, the song that could transfer him to the Sacred Grove, and paused . . . stopped...his heart constricting and then racing in his chest.

Across the tundra, striding like vengeance himself, came a black figure. His cloak billowed out behind him like the wings of some great bird of prey, and the hood flapped and ballooned, and yet Axis could see none of the man's features.

But he could feel him smiling.

"The Dark Man?" Gorgrael had asked, puzzled.

Axis knew who this was.

The figure drew closer, and Axis could hear him whistling, whistling some merry ditty, and could see his gloved fingers snapping away as if he were enjoying himself hugely.

The sound of his whistling danced across the tundra towards Axis, and Axis' emotions sparked from grief to rage in the space of a heartbeat.

The Dark Man finally stopped some three paces away, his whistling fading although one booted toe still tapped merrily.

"Well," he said cheerfully, "all's well that ends well, and it
did
end well, did it not, Axis?"

Axis leapt for him. He had no weapons, and he knew that this Dark Man commanded Dark Music, dark power, but he leapt for him all the same. All he wanted was to feel his hands wrap themselves about the Enchanter's throat.

His leap was enough to drive the Dark Man to the ground, but his fingers found no purchase, and the Enchanter-Talon rolled out from underneath him. The next instant Axis found himself pinned to the ground, a black boot to his throat and blackness swirling above him.

"You are Axis Rivkahson SunSoar," the Dark Man said, his voice quiet now, "once BattleAxe, now StarMan, and God of Song, but do not think that you can out manoeuvre
me
yet! You still have a long way to go, further yet to grow, and many more paths to travel, before you know what I know, and wield the same tricks I do."

Axis' breath rattled harshly through his throat and he wrapped his hands about the Dark Man's ankle, but he made no effort to try to push the boot away.

"Very wise, Axis," the Dark Man said. "You learn fast...but then you always were a quick learner, even as a child."

"Who are you?"

"Me?" the Dark Man cried, the merry tone returning. "Me? Why, I am Dark Man, Dear Man, mentor to Gorgrael himself. Don't you think I did a good job?"

"Who are you?"

"I found him, you know," the Dark Man said, "wnen he was but a babe. And I held him and cuddled him. I was the only one, apart from those silly Skraelings, to show him any love. Of course, I betrayed him."

Who are you?

"Who am I? In what guise did I come to
you
as a babe and then as a man? Well now, let me think."

And the Dark Man's cloak twirled so Axis could see beneath its darkness.

A handsome young man's face laughed back at him, merry eyes and coppery curls.

Axis frowned in puzzlement. "Who...?"

"Ah!" The young man snapped his fingers in contrition. "Forgive me. Thus I appeared to
Rivkah
in
her
youth - a troubadour who sang her songs of such beauty about the mysterious Forbidden races that when StarDrifter alighted on Sigholt's roof she accepted him instantly. I prepared the way, you see. Planned."

Who. .

The cloak twirled again, and now a middle-aged face haggard with toil and sadness stared down at Axis. Dark hair flopped untidily over features shadowed with a two-day growth of beard. He scratched irritably at his whiskers, and Axis saw his hands were knobbed and calloused with years of labour.

"Don't toy with me. I've never seen ..."

"Never seen me? Oh!
Oh!"
And he grinned. "Forgive me yet again, Axis. Thus I appeared to
Azhure
in
her
youth."

He bowed in mockery over Axis. "Alayne the blacksmith at your service, m'Lord. I kept Azhure occasional company through her suffering."

Axis' face twisted with anger, and his hands clenched tighter about the boot at his throat, but before he could move or say anything, the Dark Man abruptly threw off his cloak, letting it flutter away in the wind.

Mild blue eyes, thinning brown hair, a form riddled with age and arthritis.

He roared with laughter as he saw the expression on Axis' face. "The
perfect
disguise, BattleAxe!

And the
perfect
spot for manipulation!"

"Moryson!'"

"Aye, Moryson. I could have been Brother-Leader, but that would have been too obvious and far too dangerous - I could have been exposed there. But as First Assistant . . . ah, that was cunning itself. Poor Jayme. He thought it was he who had the ideas, who formulated the plans, but. . . but I was there all the time, whispering, planting ideas, suggesting courses of action. Advising." He cackled gleefully.

"Why, Axis, why do you think Jayme decided to visit Gorkenfort at the precise time that Searlas spirited Rivkah there to give birth?" Moryson leaned down and rested his hands on his knee above Axis.

"And who suggested that, instead of drowning her bastard in a pail of water as Searlas wanted, we take him into the Seneschal instead? Who suggested you would be the ideal choice for BattleAxe?"

"And you taught me as a baby?" Axis' voice was dangerously quiet.

"I rocked you and sang to you for years, Axis, and you lay there and listened. You were an easy baby to teach, as easy as you find Caelum now."

Axis' body tensed under Moryson's foot, and the man laughed. "And
who,
Axis,
who
suggested that you be sent to the battlefront at Gorkenfort via the circuitous route of the Silent Woman Keep and Smyrton?"

"To find the Sentinels and Azhure?"

"Oh," Moryson whispered, "you always were the quick learner."

He stepped back quickly and, as Axis scrambled to his feet, he cast aside the disguise of Moryson and assumed a far older deception.

Axis stopped, stunned by the transformation.

Before him stood a beautiful Icarii birdman, clad in a shimmery silver suit that flashed blue over the curves of his body as he moved. Behind him stretched silver wings, and his face wore an expression of such utter knowledge and sadness that Axis' breath caught in his throat.

"So I appeared to the Sentinels," he said, and Axis blinked at him in confusion.

"As the Prophet," he explained.

"Why?" Axis whispered.
"Why the Prophecy?
What was the point of all this? Tell me before I go mad!"

The Prophet's form shimmered, and WolfStar assumed his true image. "Will you sit with me, Axis, and talk? The Sacred Grove will wait a while longer, and your promise to Faraday will not be compromised by the delay of yet another hour or so."

"Do you know
everything?"

"Most," WolfStar said. "Yet even so, the Prophecy has managed to surprise me occasionally. Sit, Axis, and talk with me."

Reluctantly, Axis sank to the ground and forced himself to relax. "Well?"

"Well... what?"

"Tell me about the Prophecy. Why did you create it? Was it just idiot gabble for your amusement?"

WolfStar sighed and ran his fingers through his coppery curls. "Idiot gabble?" He laughed shortly and stretched one golden wing slightly, then he folded both wings against his body. "Oh, the Prophecy has meaning, Axis, deep meaning."

He settled comfortably. "I did not actually 'create' the Prophecy of the Destroyer, although I
ivas
the one to write it down." He grinned. "Think, Axis, of when you read the Prophecy in the Silent Woman Keep. The last fingers to trace so closely over that page were mine."

Axis waved a hand impatiently and WolfStar sighed. "There are things that would take me years to explain, Axis, and you have to grow before you can hear them anyway, so I will not attempt to explain them here. I died...you know how...and I was laid to rest in my Barrow among the others - with my death we were
nine."
His eyes locked with Axis' for an instant. "I walked through the Star Gate and entered another existence."

He stopped, and for some time there was silence between them.

"I existed," WolfStar said eventually, and Axis jumped, for he could see stars circling in the Enchanter-Talon's eyes. "I cannot say more than that. But while I...existed...there came to me certain knowledges. Knowledges that made it imperative that I re-enter this world."

"Wait." Axis leaned forward, and whatever antagonism he had for WolfStar vanished in his thirst for knowledge and understanding. "Some time ago Veremund told me your story."

WolfStar's face remained expressionless, although a nerve twitched in his throat.

"He told me of how you had been fascinated in your youth by the possibility of other worlds beyond this one. You surmised that each sun was paired with a world, perhaps like ours, that circled it, as ours does. You looked at the multitude of stars in

the universe, and surmised that a multitude of worlds also existed. The others thought it was crazy, but I wondered. WolfStar...
what
did you find beyond the Star Gate?"