Battleaxe (41 page)

For a moment or two Rivkah hung there, then she pulled herself back onto the bed. “Help,” she whispered to no-one in particular. “Help me! They have stolen my son!” The door slowly swung open and Rivkah turned to look. “You,” she said woodenly, all hope draining from her face. “I might have known it would be you. Have you come to kill me then?”

Two Brothers entered the room, walked over to the bed and stared at Rivkah dispassionately. Neither said anything. They looked at each other, then the larger bent down, wrapped Rivkah in one of the stained blankets she lay on, and picked her up. As they turned from the bed Axis and Faraday had a clear look at their faces. Even Faraday recognised them. Jayme and Moryson.

“You have advised me well,” Jayme said in a conversational tone to Moryson. “We will take her to the foot of the Icescarp Alps and dump her there. Let the crows eat her tainted flesh.”

“Quite,” replied Moryson as they left the room. “We need her no more.”

Faraday released Axis and stood back to look at him. His face was hard and brittle. “If there was a body in the crypt here it wasn’t my mother’s,” he said harshly. “The ravens have undoubtedly picked her bones well-clean by now.” His face turned to Faraday’s. “I trusted
that man for almost thirty years, Faraday. He was the only parent I ever knew. And now I find that he and Moryson murdered my mother.”

Faraday started to speak but her mouth was so dry that she had to clear her throat. “Axis, why didn’t they murder you as well? Why keep you alive?”

“I don’t know. But rest assured that one day I will ask them both—just before I slit their throats.”

Faraday leaned close again and hugged him, but this time Axis’ arms hung limp by his sides and his eyes stared into space. The lies that had bound him all his life were shattering about him.

Below them, hidden deep in the shadows, Timozel waited, dark with anger, for Axis and Faraday to emerge from the Retreat. An hour or so ago the old brother had trotted out the door and back up the street towards the fort, but Axis and Faraday remained within. What was she doing in there with the BattleAxe? Only the fact that his Lady Faraday had walked into this building of her own free will kept him from decisive action.

He would have to remind her that her future lay with Borneheld. She was weak, and she needed a strong hand to guide her.

The battles were over. Timozel sat before the leaping fire with his Lord, Faraday at their side. All was well. Timozel had found the light and he had found his destiny.

They drank from crystal glasses, sipping fine wine, Faraday in her wedding gown.

All was well.

Unseen by Timozel, a Dark Man stood behind him, a hand on Timozel’s shoulder.

He was crying with silent laughter.

A
t the beginning of the third week of Snow-month, four days before the most sacred festival of Yuletide, the GhostTree Clan arrived at the groves of the northern Avarinheim at the foot of the Icescarp Alps. Over the past week they had met up with the last of the other Avar Clans who were moving towards the groves and by the time they arrived their group was some eighty strong. Barsarbe cautioned Azhure not to speak with the other Avar until after the Clans had met to discuss her case. Mindful of Barsarbe’s cold eyes Azhure avoided the other Avar Clans, sitting lonely by a small campfire at night while the Avar gossiped and passed news about, joined only by GoldFeather, and occasionally Pease and Shra or Raum. She was glad to have left Smyrton behind her, but daily wished she had found some better way to free Raum and Shra.

Sometimes GoldFeather worried that Azhure was unnaturally quiet, but she had grown into such a reserved woman herself that she easily accepted reticence in others. And since Azhure had revealed the shocking news that the BattleAxe, Axis, was her son, GoldFeather had thought of little else. Rivkah. She thought she had buried Rivkah on the slopes of the Icescarp Alps. Over the past thirty years GoldFeather had rarely let herself think back on her last year of life as Rivkah,
burying her old life with her dead son. She had established a new life as GoldFeather, finding a new meaning and a new happiness.

Now she let herself think back to the day when StarDrifter had landed on the roof of Sigholt. GoldFeather had known instantly what he was. An Icarii Enchanter. Although she had listened to the Seneschal’s teachings about the Forbidden, GoldFeather—Rivkah as she had been then—had developed a fascination for the Forbidden in her early teens. A new troubadour had arrived in Carlon, a handsome man with coppery hair, and he spent many days performing before King Karel and his court. But he had also entertained the young Princess, singing songs for her ears alone. Songs about the lost Icarii and Avar and their magical lives. He was a very unusual man, sitting wrapped in a dark cloak even on the warmest days, but Rivkah had been fascinated by the songs he sang…and she had remembered them for years after the troubadour had left Carlon. So she had not been afraid when StarDrifter alighted before her; she had looked up from the baby she nursed, looked into his eyes, and was lost. They had conceived their magical child that day, and both had yearned for the moment when they could hold him in their arms.

But Jayme had deceived her! GoldFeather’s lips curled in fury when she thought of how Jayme had stolen her son and tricked her into believing he was dead. Her grey eyes hardened when she thought of how the midwives had fled the room with her son still breathing in their arms. She had thought that she would have died, except that somehow, from somewhere, enough strength and love flowed into her to enable her to survive her trial on the mountain.

Within two hours of CrimsonCrest dropping to her side and asking politely, with the utmost arrogance, as was the Icarii way, if she truly intended to die beneath his favourite roost, StarDrifter had held her in his arms. Soothing her, loving her, healing her, crying with her at the death of their son, he had carried her personally back to Talon Spike, refusing all help from his fellows. Her healing had taken weeks, weeks during which StarDrifter had not left her side, refused to let her die, refused to let her give in to self-pity. “We have
our lifetimes to create other sons,” he would whisper, and in the end GoldFeather had believed him.

Yet neither had ever totally recovered from the loss of a son who had been conceived among the joy of newly discovered love. StarDrifter had been enthralled with the growing babe, spending hours with his hands planted on her belly, feeling his son wake to awareness within her womb. He would sing to him for as long as Rivkah could sit still without her legs cramping, and one day during her sixth month of pregnancy he had lifted his remarkable face from her belly in astonishment. “He sings back!” StarDrifter whispered, amazed. “He sings back to me! Truly, Rivkah, you have conceived a child that will wake Tencendor with his voice!” They had laughed then, but the laughter had died when Searlas had returned. Before StarDrifter could act Searlas had spirited her away to the Retreat in Gorkentown.

GoldFeather had eventually come out of her healing process in Talon Spike with her body completely healed of its injuries. The Icarii Healers had even managed to return the blood flow to her frozen extremities so that she lost none of her fingers or toes. The only sign of her physical ordeal was her magnificent auburn hair which had turned completely silver except for a golden streak where StarDrifter had rested his hand on her brow. But even safe within Talon Spike at StarDrifter’s side GoldFeather could not find complete happiness. The Icarii were a prickly lot with their damnable pride and haughtiness and their obsession with enchantments and mysticism, and though they quickly overcame their initial suspicion of her and tried to be kind, GoldFeather could often sense their pity for her not far below the surface. And StarDrifter’s insistence on taking a Groundwalker for his wife caused more than a few raised eyebrows.

Now StarDrifter and she shared another sorrow. One that they never, never spoke of, yet one that nevertheless caused them deeper unhappiness with each passing year. The Icarii were a race of remarkable longevity. They easily lived five or six times the span of a human or Avar life. StarDrifter was an Icarii Enchanter still early in his life and his natural lifespan would carry him hundreds of years past her death. The knowledge that she would age and die before he
had reached the middle years of his life was a knowledge that both refused to ever mention. Already GoldFeather was ageing before his loving eyes. She found that difficult to accept. Part of the reason she was spending longer and longer periods away from Talon Spike with the Avar was her discomfort in the disparity in their ageing and in the as-yet-unconscious pity she could see in StarDrifter’s eyes. It is difficult, she mused, for a human woman to love an Icarii. The love will never last. Already she had doubts about StarDrifter’s continued commitment to her. She sighed. What would she do once she could no longer tolerate the pity in his eyes? GoldFeather shivered and turned her thoughts to her daughter.

Four years after she had joined StarDrifter in Talon Spike GoldFeather had given birth to EvenSong. Her birth brought them great joy and EvenSong was a beautiful daughter, her voice reflecting the soaring notes of the bird she had been named after. She was now approaching her twenty-fifth year, the year of coming of age for the Icarii. Soon she would join the Strike Force for the obligatory five years of military service. Stars help her if she was in the Strike Force during the time of the Prophecy of the Destroyer.

EvenSong had inherited little from her mother; her Icarii blood ran stronger than her human. Though all Icarii children were born as human babes, at about the age of four or five the children started to develop the buds of their wings which, by age seven, were developed enough to carry them. Because of her human blood EvenSong literally had to have her wingbuds coaxed out of her, and when she was a child StarDrifter had spent many a long hour singing to her, stroking her back, encouraging the wings to form.

Would her son have developed wings too, had StarDrifter been there to assist him? Had he inherited the Icarii longevity, as EvenSong had in its entirety? What other Icarii characteristics were coursing about in his blood? He had not forgotten to sing, if he had sung the Song of Recreation for Shra. GoldFeather breathed deeply, thinking of that. No Icarii Enchanter, not even StarDrifter, the most powerful of them all, could sing the Song that well. Yet…Axis…had not had a moment’s training, had not had the benefits of years
of preparation and study that all other Icarii Enchanters had. What had she and StarDrifter bred?

Axis. GoldFeather’s mouth slowly lost its hard line and curled softly. What an unusual name. It was not an Acharite name. Who had given it to him? Jayme? She and StarDrifter, like all joyous parents, had discussed names as they waited for the birth of their son, but had left it too late to fix on one or the other. Well, Axis it would have to be. It was, somehow, appropriate.

Now as GoldFeather helped Azhure and Grindle’s two wives set up the tents in the trees beside the groves she fretted for StarDrifter’s arrival. It had been almost three weeks since she learned that her son had not died, and in those three weeks she had not been able to get word to StarDrifter. All her thoughts were now of Axis and StarDrifter. Azhure had told GoldFeather all she knew about the BattleAxe, but it was not much, and it left GoldFeather hungering for more information.

Had GoldFeather not been so lost in her own thoughts and tumbling emotions she would have seen that Azhure was suffering much the same way that she herself had when she first joined the Icarii. All races, whether the haughty Icarii, the suspicious Avar, or the blinded Acharites instinctively regarded newcomers with some degree of intolerance or pity.

Azhure looked about her curiously as they set up camp about thirty paces into the tree line that surrounded the groves. She and Pease were staking down the first tent while Fleat and GoldFeather were starting on the second, lifting the heavy leather covers over the rigid framework of wooden poles. Around them the Avar Clans that had joined them during the last few days were also setting up their tents, and there was an air of suppressed excitement that was impossible to ignore. Both Pease and Fleat had been very quiet since arriving at the groves; even the children moved quietly about the GhostTree camp, helping their mothers clear a space for the campfire and lay out some cold food for a simple supper. Raum and Barsarbe had left to meet with the other Banes, while Grindle and Helm had vanished into the trees almost as soon as they arrived.

Pease noticed Azhure looking about and smiled at her. “You have felt the excitement, haven’t you?”

Azhure nodded. “Everyone seems very quiet, though. I would have expected, oh, I don’t know, people greeting each other, exchanging news, that sort of thing. The Clans don’t normally meet together very much, do they?”

Pease shook her head, sucking her thumb to relieve the sting where she had caught it between one of the leather thongs used for tying the tent flaps down and a tent pole. “No. We only congregate in these numbers for the Yuletide and Beltide Meets. This evening we will all gather in the Earth Tree Grove and exchange greetings and news. Tidings will have to wait until then.”

Azhure thought for a moment, her eyes downcast. “And will you discuss my case then?”

Pease moved over to Azhure, her dark eyes gentle. “Azhure, we do not mean to be rude or unwelcoming to you. But you must understand that we are a cautious people. You are one of the Acharites, one of those who drove us from our homes and murdered the forests that once stood as far as the Widewall Bay. And,” Pease did not particularly like to mention this again, but perhaps Azhure still did not realise how seriously the Avar regarded those who caused another’s death, “you have committed violence. The killing of
anyone,
let alone a father, we regard as abhorrent. Yes, I know that you killed him accidentally and in defence of Shra—but there is also the fact that you struck the Axe-Wielder. Two acts of violence, one through carelessness, one premeditated.” She shrugged. “For the Avar to allow one who has committed violence to walk the paths of the Avarinheim is extremely rare. Your people have murdered with their axes most of the once great Avarinheim as they once murdered the Icarii and Avar. Now you have killed your father. Don’t you see that we believe that your people are inherently violent?”

“Pease, I have nowhere else to go. If you reject me, then where can I go? I have no-one who wants me.” And that was the crux of the matter, she thought. No-one except her mother had ever loved her, and her mother chose to leave her with Hagen. After a lifetime
of rejection and ill-treatment, Azhure yearned to be loved, needed, and valued.

“Azhure!” Pease was distraught at the distress in Azhure’s face. “We thank you from the depths of our souls for the life of Raum and Shra. But if you want to be accepted among the Avar and make your home among us then it must be by the acceptance and invitation of the entire Meet.”

Azhure nodded.

The entire congregation of the Clans of the Avar met that night in the grove of the Earth Tree. The Icarii would not be joining them for another day or so, and tonight was reserved for the Avar people alone. There were several groves used for the religious rites of both the Avar and Icarii peoples in the northern Avarinheim, but of them all the Earth Tree Grove was the most venerated and played the most important role in both Yuletide and Beltide rites. At dusk the Avar people, having eaten light meals in their own camps, began to move reverentially through the groves, their feet soundless on the carpet of soft grass and pine needles.

All the groves were circular, open to the night skies. The tall secretive trees of the Avarinheim surrounded them, keeping the mysteries of the groves safe from outside eyes. Azhure walked with the GhostTree Clan, her eyes downcast. Raum and Barsarbe rejoined them, and Barsarbe stared at Azhure so coldly that Azhure’s feelings of shame and remorse deepened. GoldFeather finally caught something of the woman’s heartache, and as they approached the Earth Tree Grove she stepped up beside Azhure and took her hand.

“I have been too preoccupied with my memories and the news of my son to think much of your troubles, Azhure,” GoldFeather said very quietly. “Do not fear the Meet too much. Already it stands well in your favour that the GhostTree Clan have allowed you to walk with them this far. Azhure, know that I will stand with you, and Raum will speak as strongly for you to this Meet as he did to the GhostTree Clan.”

Azhure squeezed GoldFeather’s hand slightly and managed a smile. “Thank you, GoldFeather. I appreciate your support.”

Ah, the poor girl, GoldFeather thought. I should have known how she felt. But what could I tell her? That even I, loved by StarDrifter as I am, still find it hard to find a place that I can call home? “Sometimes I think we dream too much of safe haven in a world where few truly find it, Azhure. Azhure, if the Avar people decide against you this night then do not let it harden your heart, not after what you have already endured. And who knows, Azhure. The Icarii value excitement and daring far more than do the Avar.” She paused. “And beauty.”