Starman

by Sara Douglass

  He wanted to use his power, but it was not time. Not yet…not yet. He needed to husband what he had, because what he intended to do would take all of his ability—and even then he would risk damaging himself with the amount of the Star Dance he would have to manipulate.

  Axis leaned down from Belaguez’s back and seized a Skraeling by the throat. It had already been mauled by another sword and was easy prey, but its silvery eyes gleamed defiantly even as Axis’ sword plunged down.

  “Timozel,” it whispered as it died.

  Axis reeled back in shock, and only Arne’s quick action disposed of another Skraeling as it leapt for the golden man’s throat.

  “Timozel?” he rasped. “Timozel?”

  Arne seized Belaguez’s reins and pulled the horse out of the direct line of fighting. Axis still stared incredulously at the spot where the Skraeling’s body had dissolved, now hidden by struggling Skraelings and men. His sword hung limp in his hand.

  Arne reached across and slapped his face. “So the traitor strikes, StarMan! You knew he would! Now, fight on! Win for us!”

  Axis’ eyes cleared and his hand firmed about the hilt of his sword. “Timozel!” he said again. “Oh, gods!”

  He looked into the sky. Far Sight? Where are we positioned?

  At the banks of the Azle, StarMan. If you are going to do it, then do it now. None of your ground forces will hold out much longer. Already the back ranks of the Skraelings mass forward with renewed purpose. You have ten minutes, perhaps, before they swarm all over you. Do it now!

  Yes. Pull back, FarSight. I have risked you enough.

  Far along the line to the north Axis saw Belial. He signalled frantically, and saw Belial nod tersely. He turned his head towards Magariz in the south, and Magariz also acknowledged his signal. It would be hard, and some of his own men might well die, but more would die if he didn’t attempt this.

  Axis backed Belaguez even further away from the front line, Arne pushing men out of the way behind the horse. He slid the glove off his hand, glancing one more time at what the ring told him, and then emptied his mind of all but the Song he needed to sing.

  He hummed, his voice strengthening into music and words, and as the music drifted over the battlefield, his own men cheered, then made sure their footing was as firm as it could get.

  Hello, Axis. What pretty music. Shall it be your dirge?

  Axis was so shocked at Timozel’s interruption—his ability—that for an instant the Song faltered. But he forced Timozel’s words from his mind, and strengthened his grip on the Song.

  I fight for a Great Lord now, Axis, and in his name I shall win great victories. You are pitiful compared to Gorgrael.

  Axis’ face worked. Damn him! Questions and emotions battled in Axis’ mind. More than anything else he wanted to hunt Timozel down, ask him why? Why Gorgrael? But he could not afford to do that. The Song. There could be nothing but the Song. He thought of Azhure’s calm smile, and that banished thoughts of Timozel from his mind.

  The power of the Star Dance roped through him, and Axis fought, battled, to keep it under control. He had never attempted to manipulate so much power before, and he feared its effect on him.

  Underneath the feet of the front line, hairline cracks splintered their way across the ice covering the Azle. Men slowly edged backwards, even though it meant the Skraelings gained some ground.

  Further beneath the ice, the waters of the great river seethed in response to the Song.

  Timozel cursed, watching from halfway atop one of the low hills to the north of the river. He could see what Axis was going to do.

  The enemy used foul magic this day, and Timozel’s forces were grievously hurt…

  But what could he do?

  “Gryphon,” he grated. “I should have used them sooner. Now!”

  And so the Gryphon attacked.

  They lifted out of the rocks of the Murkle Mountains where they had been secreted. They stretched their wings on the stiff northerly wind, and screeched with the voice of despair.

  There were over nine hundred of them.

  They went for the withdrawing Strike Force first, as Timozel had told them, and those units not yet withdrawn to a safe distance were decimated.

  Then some five hundred wheeled back and attacked Axis’ army, leaving four hundred to murder as they willed among the Icarii, and they wheeled and dived, and every time they dived they carried off a man.

  Some were felled by arrows. But not many, for Gorgrael had built his flying pets well, and most arrows glanced uselessly off the creatures’ thick fur before dropping in a sad rain to the ground.

  Axis did not at first notice the Gryphon attack, nor did he notice how the sky blackened with their bodies. The power of the Song seared through him and he let it rage as much as he dared.

  The ice finally splintered apart, shattering in great sheets over the raging waters of the Azle. Tens of thousands of Skraelings, and a few score men, sank instantly, and hundreds of thousands of the wraiths were left seething impotently on the northern bank of the Azle. Over a hundred were trapped on the southern bank, and these were instantly overwhelmed by Axis’ force.

  Axis came out of his induced reverie amazed that he had actually survived the power of the Song. He looked at the now free and surging waters of the Azle with relief. We will live through this day, he thought, slumping in the saddle, and we will deal with the rest as we may after we have rested and thought some more.

  But Axis was denied both rest and thought. Almost as soon as he blinked his eyes back into awareness, Arne seized his shoulder. “StarMan!” he screamed. “Save us!”

  Hadn’t he just done that? Hadn’t he just…?

  Then he heard the scream above his head, saw Arne lunge, and felt himself being pushed out of the saddle. Belaguez reared and added his scream to whatever it was that reeled out of the sky, and Axis was dimly aware of a great shape that swooped over his head and seized the rider beyond Arne’s horse.

  “Gryphon,” Arne grunted as he hauled Axis to his feet. “Hundreds of them.”

  Axis finally looked about with cleared vision, and what he saw appalled him. Around him men were dying in their hundreds as the Gryphon swooped, beaks open in screams, eyes blazing with death, talons extended. They were covered in blood, but it was not theirs.

  “Get the men to…” shelter, Axis was about to order, but there was no shelter. The Azle valley was wide and flat, and it would take his men an hour or more to scramble to the nearest rocks in the Murkle Mountains.

  And no-one had an hour.

  Across the Azle the Skraeling mass began to laugh. They stood in their hundreds of thousands, and the sound of their mirth drifted across the surging waters to intermingle with the screams of dying men.

  Timozel stood on his hill and roared with laughter.

  He shared his thoughts with Gorgrael, experiencing his master’s joy, then he summoned his personal Gryphon. He would fly in and dispose of Axis himself. He grinned. Axis’ foul magic would not win the day now. Their commander lay crippled, and waited only for Timozel to end his misery.

  Axis circled in horror. Everywhere his men were being slaughtered. Gods! What could he do? What Songs of War were there that could destroy these wing-borne horrors?

  None. All Songs of War were lost.

  He thought frantically, twisting his ring, watching the patterns unfold. Give me a Song that will destroy Gryphon, he begged, and for a long, terrible moment he thought the stars would remain obstinately still. But slowly, grudgingly, they formed a pattern, and what they formed horrified Axis almost more than the slaughter about him.

  If he sang that it would kill him. There was so much power involved…no-one could wield that much and live. But what choice did he have? He would die anyway, and better that he die saving the remnants of his army, saving them for Azhure, or even StarDrifter, than die uselessly bemoaning his lack of ability.

  “I’m sorry,” he whispered to no-one in particular, then he began to sing.<
br />
  It was the bravest thing he would ever do.

  With the first note he felt the uncontrollable power flood his body. He fought to direct it while he still could, fought to give it meaning, but nevertheless he felt it rope and twist through his body, felt it burn and ruin. Felt himself begin to die.

  He had not thought that death could be so impossibly painful.

  Arne, standing guard beside the StarMan, turned at the scream that issued from Axis’ mouth, and at the same time had to dodge the plummeting body of a twisted and burned Gryphon. All about him Gryphon fell from the sky, but Arne had no eyes for them.

  What was happening to Axis?

  The StarMan had fallen to the ground and was now convulsing. Wisps of smoke rose from his eyes, and—Arne gagged—they were burning!

  Timozel snarled as his Gryphon burned before his very eyes. The Gryphon! Frantically he looked over the scene before him, but then he relaxed a little and smiled. Perhaps the commander across the river had won the day, but at a dreadful cost.

  A dreadful cost.

  Timozel laughed again. There were over seven thousand Gryphon younglings waiting in Gorgrael’s Ice Fortress, for these nine hundred who now died had given birth some months previously. Soon the seven thousand would give birth themselves, and when they had done that, then they could fly south to join him.

  And the man who had used such foul magic to destroy these nine hundred now lay screaming and writhing on the ground, his eyes burning in his head, his skin rippling and crisping, his fingers smouldering into black claws, and Timozel knew he would never, never, wield such power again.

  Or any power, for that matter.

  “The day is yours,” he whispered. “Enjoy your death.”

  Tomorrow he would find a way across that river and set the Skraelings to what was left of Axis’ army. Perhaps the IceWorms could swim across. Yes. Yes, they did not mind the water, and they could disgorge tens of thousands of Skraelings into the pitiful remnants of that foul army.

  Timozel laughed again.

  Arne dropped his sword and fell to his knees. “Axis,” he whispered.

  The man’s twitching had stopped and he was almost dead. His face—what was left of it—twisted, and from somewhere he found the strength for a last whisper.

  “Azhure, I am so sorry. So very sorry.”

  27

  AZHURE

  Azhure was sitting under a marmalade tree in the orchards of Temple Mount, nursing Caelum and enjoying the sunshine of the enchanted isle, when she felt the fragile link between her and Axis snap.

  For several heartbeats she sat unmoving, staring into space, wondering at the sense of complete loss that consumed her. Then, just as she realised what it was, a whisper reached her mind.

  Azhure, I am so sorry. So very sorry.

  “Noooo!” Azhure screamed, and Caelum screamed with her, for he too felt the living link with his father break. She lurched to her feet, running with ungainly strides towards the Temple where she knew StarDrifter was. “Noooo!”

  He reached her by the Dome of the Stars. StarDrifter had known instantly what had happened, for he remembered the feeling at the moment when MorningStar had been murdered, and this was the same—except now it was his son’s life force that had been snuffed out.

  Azhure was sobbing hysterically, and Caelum no better, and StarDrifter managed to quell his own grief in his efforts to calm mother and child.

  But Azhure would not be calmed. StarDrifter seized Caelum from her arms and set him down in the grass—there was not much Caelum could do to harm himself there—and wrapped arms and wings about Azhure, trying desperately to stop her writhing and her cries.

  She beat at his chest and at his encircling wings, wanting to strike out, wanting to hurt, wanting to deny what that snap and whisper meant. “No!” she kept screaming. “Live for me!”

  “Azhure,” StarDrifter muttered, broken-hearted. His son? Dead? How could that be? After having lost him for so long, only to lose him again like this?

  “Azhure…he’s gone. There’s nothing we can do. Nothing.”

  She started to sob, and buried her face against StarDrifter’s chest. “No, no, no, no,” she muttered over and over again, a litany of denial, and StarDrifter was about to guide her back to her chamber in the Priestess’ dormitory when she shrieked, agonised this time, and collapsed to the ground.

  “Azhure? Azhure? What is it?”

  Azhure writhed and clutched at StarDrifter. She stared at him, her eyes wide with agony, but she could not speak as a contraction so violent seized her she doubled over and gagged.

  “Oh gods,” StarDrifter groaned, and screamed for the Priestesses.

  It was a terrible birth.

  StarDrifter never left Azhure’s side, but neither he nor the three Priestesses who attended could do much to help her.

  The twins were intent on escaping her body, and doing it as fast as they could. It was the boy who led, who forced the birth, and nothing StarDrifter could say to him or his sister could stop their headlong rush. Unlike most Icarii babes, they were not scared by the birth, merely so impatient they did not, would not, pause to consider the damage they did to their mother.

  If they cared about it.

  For the final half hour Azhure lay limp and mercifully unconscious, and StarDrifter stopped his efforts to plead with the twins to focus his entire energy on Azhure.

  After an indeterminate time he turned to stare at the First. “Gods, Lady, what can we do?”

  “Pray, StarDrifter,” the First muttered, “that these babies birth themselves soon. She is almost gone.”

  “Gone?” StarDrifter whispered, then stared back at Azhure. Her breathing was shallow, her skin slack and damp, gleaming with unhealthy pallor.

  “She has little strength,” the First said again. “And I fear she does not want to live. What brought this on?”

  StarDrifter told her how he and Azhure had felt Axis’ death.

  The Priestesses shared horrified glances, but they did not have time to mourn the loss of the StarMan. Not when the Sacred Daughter’s life veered so close to extinction itself.

  StarDrifter leaned over Azhure and seized her slack face in his hands. “Live, Azhure. I could not bear it if you died too.”

  And so the birth went on, with only the Priestesses sharing a thought for the babies struggling to be born, and then only a sparing one, for the mother was far more important.

  As the babies slipped from her body Azhure haemorrhaged, and they almost lost her. As it was she bled so much before the First could persuade her womb to contract and stem the flow that both the First and StarDrifter found themselves covered in blood.

  It was left to the two junior Priestesses to take the babies to one side and wash and bind them. They squalled healthily and happily enough, pleased to finally make their own way in the world, and they did not spare a thought for their mother’s struggle for life.

  It was not until late that night, after five hours of effort and strain and worry, that the First told StarDrifter that Azhure had a chance of life.

  “If she does not develop a fever or infection,” she said, “and if she still has the will to live.”

  StarDrifter lifted his eyes from Azhure’s face. “If she does not have the will, First, then I will infuse her with mine! I will not let her die!”

  The Priestess stared at him for long minutes, then she nodded and silently left them alone. Time would tell.

  28

  HILLTOP CONVERSATIONS

  Timozel stood atop his low hill, watching the tattered remnants of what had once been Axis’ army withdraw to the south-west. He was almost incandescent with rage.

  Great Lord. We have them at our mercy!

  In his Ice Fortress Gorgrael paced back and forth, back and forth. Nevertheless, I want you to do as I bid.

  Timozel tensed, trying to bring his rage under control, trying to come to grips with Gorgrael’s utter stupidity. Great Lord, I can quash them in a day. Two at
the most. When morning comes I can begin to direct the IceWorms across the Azle.

  No. I want you to move north.

  Gorgrael had been devastated by Axis’ destruction of nine hundred Gryphon. His pets! Axis had burnt them! The fact that Axis had ruined himself in the effort had slipped completely from Gorgrael’s mind. His Gryphon were dead!

  You have seven thousand with you, Master, and in only six weeks’ time they will birth over sixty-five thousand. Master! Hear me! Let me finish them now! Victory is within our grasp!

  NO! Gorgrael’s voice roared through Timozel’s head. NO! You WILL do as I order! Retreat to the north. Once we have recovered from our grievous loss then we can finish the job. But I will not risk any more. You said you would win this battle!

  And I bloody well have! Timozel seethed, but kept the thought from Gorgrael. Retreat may well kill us, master.

  How, Timozel? How? Is not Axis and his army all but destroyed? I want you north. Now.

  Dammit, Timozel thought In only a day he could wipe out—

  Suddenly he was gripped by Gorgrael’s power and he arched his back and screamed with such agony that the Skraelings massed below shifted and whispered in agitation.

  DO AS I ORDER!

  Yes, Master, Timozel whimpered, and turned to give the orders.

  “My pets!” Gorgrael muttered angrily. “How could he destroy my pets!” He bent to touch the heads of his remaining two Gryphon, the originals created from the disintegrating mass of dead SkraeBolds. Thank the Dark Music, he thought, that I had these two here to keep me warm at nights. Gorgrael’s immediate reaction was to pull his arm back to the protection of the year-long ice and snow, closer to home.

  “A brave move,” the Dark Man said by the fireplace. “But I see he has not tricked you.”

  “I had not thought Axis capable of such power,” Gorgrael continued to fret. “I had not thought the Star Dance could be used to destroy so easily…I had not bargained on this.”