Crusader Page 3

  “And?” DragonStar asked.

  Azhure nodded very slightly. “And he is prepared to accept.”

  DragonStar laughed softly. “Prepared to, but has not yet.”

  “It is a start.”

  “Aye, it is that. Azhure…why have you accepted so easily? Even I denied it for long months.”

  “Perhaps because I fought to keep you to a viable birthing age when you fought so hard to abort yourself. I have a mother’s belief in her offspring.”

  DragonStar paled, both at her words and at the hardness in her voice. He began to say something, but Azhure stopped him with a hand on his chest.

  “I had no right to speak thus to you, DragonStar. I have no right to speak harshly to any of my children. I was too absorbed in my magic and in Axis to be a good mother to any but Caelum.”

  “Azhure—”

  Azhure well understood why he would not call her “mother”.

  “—it is never too late to be a friend to your children. I think that you and I will always be better friends than parent and child.”

  Azhure smiled, and lowered her eyes a little.

  “But,” DragonStar continued softly, relentlessly, “I think that Zenith needs you as a friend far more than I. There are many things that can be saved from this disaster, Azhure, and I do hope that Zenith will be among them.”

  Azhure’s eyes jerked back to DragonStar’s face. “And I haven’t even seen her since I came to Sanctuary!”

  “I did not know that,” DragonStar said, “but I am not surprised by it.”

  And then he turned and walked out the door without another word, leaving his mother staring at his back and with a hand to her mouth in horrified mortification.

  Axis was waiting for DragonStar in a small and somewhat unadorned chamber, so plain that DragonStar thought it almost out of character for Sanctuary. Perhaps Axis had spent hours here when he’d first arrived, throwing out all the comforts and fripperies and creating an environment austere enough for any retired war captain to feel at home in.

  Axis had never been happy or content away from war, DragonStar thought, and wondered for the first time how frustrating life must have been for Axis once Gorgrael had been disposed of and Tencendorian life was relatively peaceful. No wonder he’d handed over power to Caelum: the endless Councils spent debating the finer details of trading negotiations must have bored his father witless.

  Had it been any more challenging being a god? DragonStar wondered.

  Axis was seated at a wooden table, or, rather, he was leaning back in a plain wooden chair, his legs crossed and resting on the tabletop, his arms folded across his chest.

  On the table surface before him sat a jug of beer, two mugs, and a cloth-wrapped parcel. At the end of the table directly down from Axis sat an empty, waiting chair.

  DragonStar paused in the doorway, nodded as an acknowledgment of Axis’ presence, then strolled across to the table, pulled out the chair and sat down. “So tell me, Axis, how am I being greeted? As a drinking companion? Comrade-in-arms?” He paused very slightly. “Long-lost son?”

  Another, slightly longer pause, and the ghost of a grin about his lips. “If the prodigal son, then should I expect poison in the beer? A knife thrown from a darkened corner by a faithful lieutenant?”

  Axis stared at DragonStar for a heartbeat or two, his face expressionless, then he leaned forward, poured out the two mugs of beer, and slid one down the table. “There is no poison in the beer, nor knife waiting in the corner.”

  “Ah.” DragonStar caught the mug just before it slid off the edge of the table, and raised it to his mouth, swallowing a mouthful of the beer. “Then I am not here as long-lost son.”

  “I am here only because both Azhure and Caelum asked it of me.”

  DragonStar’s face lost its humorous edge. “I have no reason to stay here, Axis,” he snapped. “I could just take that,” he nodded at the parcel, “and leave. I have no use for faded stars!”

  To his absolute surprise, Axis burst into laughter. “And nothing could have convinced me more of your fathering than that speech, Drago! Ah, sorry, I should call you by your birth name, should I not?”

  “I should always have been called by my birth name,” DragonStar said. “As was my right.”

  “My, my,” Axis said softly, “you have my humour and you have my pride.” His voice tightened. “I have also heard it rumoured about this fabulous crystal place they call Sanctuary that you have Faraday as well.”

  With a jolt of surprise DragonStar realised that, if nothing else, Axis was treating him as an equal. This was man to man, and it was not about Caelum or who was or who was not StarSon, but about the passing over of the baton of legend.

  And Axis didn’t want to let it go.

  DragonStar took a deep breath. Axis had never felt threatened by fumble-fingered Caelum, but he now felt intimidated by DragonStar’s surety of grip. The baton was slipping away from Axis’ grasp…had slipped.

  What if DragonStar had always been the point and the meaning of the high adventure of Axis’ battle with Borneheld and Gorgrael? What if Axis had only ever been the pawn, and DragonStar the true champion?

  If Axis had not been the true champion, then nothing would demonstrate this more in his eyes than the fact that Faraday had gravitated to DragonStar. Faraday’s preferences in love would demonstrate who was the pawn, and who the king.

  “Faraday chooses to walk alone,” DragonStar said, and, just as Axis visibly relaxed, continued, “although I have let her know well enough that I would enjoy her warmth and company by my side.”

  Axis paused in the act of drinking some beer, stared coldly at DragonStar over the rim of his mug, then set it back on the table.

  “Caelum is dead,” he said. “I have lost my son and I am in mourning. Forgive me if I do not fawn at your feet.” He stared at DragonStar. You sent my beloved son to his death, and now you say you want to take the woman who was my lover.

  DragonStar half-grimaced, then turned it into a small smile. “I do not think you want another son, do you, Axis? But it would be better for you and I, and for Azhure, and for every one of the living creatures left in Sanctuary, if we could be friends.”

  Axis dropped his eyes, and turned his half-empty mug around slowly between his hands. Surprisingly, his overwhelming emotion was one of relief. DragonStar had just presented them both with the perfect solution. Axis knew he could never think of this man across the table as his son—too much love had been denied, and too much hatred had been passed between them for it ever to be possible for them to embrace as father and son. But “friend”? Axis suddenly realised how much he had missed having a friend…how much he had missing relying on and loving Belial.

  Axis knew he would be catastrophically jealous if a son proved more powerful than he, but, strangely, he knew he could accept it if a friend was.

  An aeon seemed to pass as Axis thought. A friend. DragonStar a friend?

  Something dark and horrid shifted within Axis—jealousy, resentment, bitterness—and then shifted again, and, stunningly, slid into oblivion.

  He needed a friend. Badly. The thought brought such profound relief that Axis realised he had tears in his eyes.

  He blinked them away and raised his gaze back to DragonStar. “How did you realise how much I needed a friend?”

  A corner of DragonStar’s mouth twitched. “I have learned a great deal of wisdom since I demanded of you that you set Caelum aside and make me StarSon instead.”

  Axis almost smiled, and then felt amazement that he could smile at this memory. “You were a precocious shitty bastard of an infant.”

  “Well…technically ‘bastard’ I was not, but everything else you say is true enough. Axis, whatever else has happened between us, and whatever else I have said to you and thought about you and hated you for, I do thank you for setting me on the path of adversity, for without it I would have been another Gorgrael, or another Qeteb. Do you remember what you told me in Sigholt, that fir
st time you set eyes on me?”

  “I said that I would not welcome you into the House of Stars until you had learned both humility and compassion.” Axis paused, considering DragonStar carefully. “And sitting across from me now I can see a man whose face is lined, not with hate and bitterness as once it was, but with humility and compassion.

  “DragonStar—” Axis shook his head slightly, “how strange it seems to call you that—I think the time has finally arrived to welcome you into the House of Stars.”

  DragonStar paused before replying, allowing himself time to cope with the emotion flowing through him. How many hours had he spent lost in useless bitterness as a youth and man, longing for this moment, yet refusing to admit the longing?

  “I would be honoured if you would accept me in, Axis,” DragonStar said, “but as your friend before anything else.” Caelum had already welcomed DragonStar into the family House. The fact that Axis now wished to do the same meant that the final bridge between DragonStar and his birth family would finally be repaired.

  Tencendor could not be rebuilt without it.

  Axis stood, and as he did so the door to the chamber opened and Azhure walked in.

  DragonStar rose, staring at her. He wondered if it was her womanly instinct that allowed her to walk into the chamber at precisely the right moment, or just her attentive ear at the keyhole. She had changed from the ordinary day gown she’d been wearing when she’d fetched him to this chamber, and now wore a robe of purest black that was relieved only by a pattern of silvery stars about its hem. Her raven hair tumbled down her back to be lost in the folds of her skirt, and her blue eyes danced with love and, possibly, even a little of her lost magic.

  DragonStar stared, then collected himself and half-bowed in her direction, acknowledging her as mother, woman and witch.

  Axis smiled and held out his hand to Azhure, then held out his other hand for DragonStar. “It seems, my beloved,” he said to Azhure, “that we have a new companion for our faded constellation.”

  She laughed, then embraced them both. “I welcome us all back into the House of Stars,” she said.

  Chapter 4

  WolfStar

  WolfStar rolled over on his back and screamed. Agony knifed through his belly, then ran down his legs in rivulets of liquid horror. He jerked his knees to his chest and hugged them, now gasping for breath, and trying to ride out the successive waves of pain that coursed through him.

  Raspu’s poison, he supposed, or Mot’s, or Barzula’s, pumped into him during successive rapes.

  “Ahhh,” he groaned, and rolled over, weeping with the pain and the loss and the overwhelming humiliation. Humiliation, not so much from the demonic rapes he’d been forced to endure, although that was part of it, but from the realisation that everything he’d done, and everything he’d thought himself master of during the past few thousand years had been a lie. He’d been a tool and a pawn as much as had the sweatiest and stupidest peasant and now he’d been disposed of as easily.

  The Maze—well taught by the Star Dance—was the hardest and cruellest master of all.

  WolfStar—Enchanter-Talon, feared by every Icarii in existence.

  WolfStar—crazed murderer, loathed by scores of generations of Icarii.

  WolfStar—Dark Man, Dear Man, friend and ally of Gorgrael the Destroyer.

  WolfStar—lover and ultimate destroyer of Niah.

  WolfStar—manipulator of the entire world and all who lived within it.

  WolfStar—utter, utter Fool.

  A rat ran over his right foot, scratching deeply into his flesh as it went, but WolfStar paid it no heed. Over the past hours (days? weeks? he did not know) countless creatures had scrambled over him, trampled him, urinated on him, nibbled, bit and tasted him, and yet none had done him the kindness of killing him.

  All WolfStar wanted was to die…to escape the utter humiliation his existence had become. But no thing or one would grant him death in this world of death made incarnate—this damned, cursed Maze. Bleakness swarmed constantly over him, and madness probed intermittently at his mind: the hours when the Demons raged drove him to the brink of insanity, but never (oh please, stars, let the horror tip me over!), never beyond into the oblivion of total insanity.

  Why? Why couldn’t he become one of these mindless creatures that swarmed incoherently and incontinently through the Maze? All WolfStar wanted was to become mindless, because then he would feel no pain.

  WolfStar’s fingers scrabbled over his chest, feeling again the clotting blood of Caelum. He gagged, sickened by the feel, as also by the damned persistence of the blood.

  He couldn’t wipe it off, it wouldn’t go away. It wouldn’t even dry to a scab that he could scrape off.

  WolfStar was marked by Caelum’s blood, and he wondered if that was what protected him.

  What had happened to the boy? Why had he walked onto the point of Qeteb’s blade?

  WolfStar had turned the horrific moments of Caelum’s death over and over in his mind, and yet he still could not understand them. What had gone so wrong? Why hadn’t Caelum fought back?

  Or, at the least, why hadn’t he made an effort to escape? WolfStar could crawl no more. He propped himself up against a wall, holding his belly with one hand, dragging air into his lungs.

  Suddenly Caelum walked about the corner and came directly towards him.

  He had a beatific smile on his face.

  “Caelum StarSon!” Qeteb screamed, and stood in his stirrups and raised his sword.

  Caelum, now directly before WolfStar, turned and stared at the horror approaching, stared at the rearing, plunging creature above him, and at the Demon screaming on its back.

  “Oh, how I love you,” he said.

  “No!” Qeteb shrieked, driven beyond the realms of anger, not only by Caelum’s words, but also by the serene expression on his face.

  The Demon drove down his sword.

  WolfStar could not believe it. As the sword plunged downwards, Caelum held out his hand and seized the blade.

  It made not a whit of difference.

  The sword sliced through Caelum’s hand and plunged into his chest, driving Caelum back against WolfStar, who grunted with shock.

  Qeteb leaned his entire weight down on the sword, twisting it as deep as he could go, feeling bone and muscle and cartilage tear and rip, seeing the bright blood bubble from the StarSon’s mouth.

  What had the boy been doing, wandering through the Maze with a beatific smile on his face while all the Demons of Hell rode at his heels?

  “There had been magic worked there,” WolfStar whispered, inching his way further down whatever dead-end of the Maze he’d chosen this time. “An enchantment…Caelum was caught in enchantment…but whose? Whose?”

  Suddenly WolfStar was angry, and it chased away all his bleakness and humiliation. Someone—not the Demons—had worked an enchantment on Caelum…Who had control of enchantment in this Star Danceless world?

  And if someone did have control of enchantment, how could WolfStar work that to his own will?

  “Who are you?” he whispered, now dragging himself along with one hand while the other held his ruined belly in vaguely one piece. “Who are you?”

  He repeated the sentence, over and over, making of it a mantra. He repeated it for hour after hour, dragging himself through the Maze, ignoring the countless creatures—once-animal and once-human or Icarii—that flowed about and over him. He continued to repeat it through the Demonic hour of dusk that probed at his mind, and he continued to repeat it through the night until it almost drove him mad.

  At dawn, as the light broke over the Maze, WolfStar realised something.

  He was not mad. And he was not dead. Neither madness nor Demon had touched him, or even taken any interest in him. He had survived, for whatever reason and for whatever purpose.

  And he had to have a purpose, because without a purpose he was nothing but a pawn.

  A glow of light filtered down through the stone walls of the Ma
ze, lighting the flagstones before him.

  A million symbols flowed over and through the stone. The Maze, taunting him.

  “Damn you! Damn you!” WolfStar whispered, furious that the Star Dance and the Maze had manipulated him for so many millennia. From the heights of power, the glory days of thinking that all Tencendor danced to his manipulations, WolfStar had fallen to being nothing but a useless puppet crawling through the stone corridors of the Maze.

  A Talon-Enchanter with no more power than an ant.

  “No!”

  No, he could not bear that. There was power out there somewhere—he could feel it!—and that meant there was power available for the taking.

  And he would take it. No-one would laugh at WolfStar!

  “Who are you?” he whispered over and over as he crawled hand-over-hand across the rough stone. “Who are you?”

  As crazed birds tumbled through the sky above his head, so plans and intrigues tumbled through WolfStar’s mind.

  There was power out there, and he would find a way to control it.

  “Who are you? Who are you?”

  WolfStar crawled for hours, lost in his own thoughts, his anger giving him strength when he should have collapsed, until eventually he thought he heard something whisper. He raised his head, and stared.

  Then he laughed, knowing hope for the first time in many days.

  Ten paces ahead rose the gateway into the wasteland.

  Chapter 5

  Of Sundry Enemies

  “This land is not enough,” Sheol whispered. “We need the entire world and all its souls to feed from. When can we take it all?”

  She was lying sprawled across the floor of the mausoleum, writhing in an agony of need and desire. Her last feeding hour had been good, but not good enough.

  There were other souls out there, and she wanted them.