Pilgrim

by Sara Douglass

  “Here,” Faraday withdrew the cube of light from her pocket and expanded it into the doorway, “is the beginning of the path. As yet I do not know where it will lead, but I ask you to trust me, and to trust in the future.”

  The grey-beard looked at the doorway, then he bent, took the hand of his daughter, and raised her up.

  Without hesitation, they both stepped through the doorway.

  A silence, and a moment of decision.

  Then, almost as if of the one mind, the entire Avar nation rose to their feet and, one by one, stepped through the door.

  “No,” Isfrael shouted. “No, this is madness! We can survive, I guarantee it!”

  “Isfrael.” Faraday’s soft voice.

  “Isfrael,” she repeated, and he raised his eyes to hers.

  She opened her arms. “I love you, Isfrael. Do you not remember me saying those words to you?”

  “It’s too late,” he said. “Way too late.”

  The line of Avar moved rapidly through the door. To one side stood Faraday, to the other, Isfrael. They stared at each other, neither willing to let go the other’s eyes, the shifting Avar flickering shadows over their faces.

  Why don’t you let me love you? Faraday thought, but all she received in reply was a wall of implacable silent hatred from her son. She had abandoned him, and now she had disinherited him, and Faraday knew she had undoubtedly alienated her son forever.

  One child, she thought. Fate gave me but one child, and look what I have done to him!

  The last Avar clan group stepped into the doorway, hesitating briefly, as if not wanting to leave these two alone.

  Then they were gone.

  “You should not have done that,” Isfrael said quietly, but with malevolence vibrating through his voice. “You should not have done that.”

  And then he, too, was gone.

  Gone to nurse his hatred and resentment within Sanctuary.

  “Oh, Shra,” Faraday whispered into the empty grove. “What have I done?”

  Faraday lowered her face and turned it to one side.

  When she raised it again she was alone in the grove.

  Alone, save for a pleasant-faced woman in late middle age standing just before the circle of stone about the Earth Tree. Her dark brown hair was greying and coiled loosely about Her head. She had cheerful blue eyes and a friendly smile with slightly crooked ivory teeth. She wore a soft pale blue robe, belted about Her waist with a rainbow-striped band.

  The Mother.

  “Mother?” Faraday said, and suddenly the Mother was before Faraday, and folding her in Her arms. Faraday wept, and clung tighter.

  “Daughter,” the Mother said, “do not grieve.”

  Faraday leaned back and made a poor effort at wiping the tears from her face. “Do not grieve? The land is desecrated about us, and worse is to follow. These forests will become wasteland, and you…you…”

  The Mother hugged her again, then took Faraday’s face in Her warm hands. “You are a dear girl,” She said, “to worry so much about an old woman like Me. Ah.”

  Her face took on a mock grave expression. “Here you are, lecturing to your son about paths which must be taken, and yet you do not dare the path yourself? You will not open the gate never opened?”

  “What do you mean?”

  The Mother laid a hand on Faraday’s breast. “Follow your own path, Daughter. Follow your heart.”

  Faraday averted her eyes. “I cannot. If I…if I allow myself to love Drago, then he will betray me.”

  The Mother shook Faraday’s face slightly until the woman looked back at her. “Trust,” She said.

  Faraday did not answer.

  “If Tencendor is to be redeemed, and brought through the darkness,” the Mother said, “then it will need love to do so.”

  “As Axis betrayed me, so will Drago—”

  “Silence!” The Mother frowned in annoyance. “Have you never thought, you simpleton, what rewards an honest love will bring you?”

  “Drago says he will never betray me, but he will…for Tencendor. How can you say he won’t?”

  “I can only say to you…trust. Until you learn to dare, you will never learn to live. What is this you exist in now? Some half-life, not daring a single risk? Faraday…take that risk, and learn to laugh!”

  “And death is worth that laughter? Noah told me that by aiding Drago I would either gain complete and lasting happiness and peace, or annihilation. I cannot risk annihilation again, Mother! I cannot!”

  The Mother’s fingers dug deep into Faraday’s cheeks, and Faraday gasped in pain.

  “Why are you so determined to seek annihilation then, girl? Drago offers you the path to lasting peace and happiness…yet you are so preoccupied with annihilation you will accomplish it by sheer strength of will! Curse you, Faraday!”

  Faraday was again silent, remembering what Drago had said to her when they’d parted. Your Sanctuary is in my heart.

  “If you don’t risk it,” the Mother said, “then you will surely achieve annihilation. And yet you dare to castigate Isfrael for not daring the unknown and instead choosing the safe path to sure destruction. You are the agent of your own destruction, my girl, no-one else.”

  Faraday averted her eyes from the Mother.

  “Isfrael did not inherit his stubbornness only from his father, methinks,” the Mother said softly.

  Faraday sighed. “What will happen to you when Qeteb rises? Can he touch you? What about the Earth Tree?”

  “The Earth Tree’s roots stretch down very, very far…down to unknown caverns. Do you understand Me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. The Earth Tree will watch her daughters burn and crumble into ash, and she will be mightily enraged. But you don’t truly believe that everything about this forest will die. Do you?”

  Faraday managed a wan grin. “You are a very wily Mother.”

  The Mother laughed and finally released Faraday. “I will return to the Sacred Groves, and close the paths behind Me. The Demons, even with Qeteb, cannot bother Me there. I shall sit and drink tea with Ur and we shall chat about babies. But here…I want you to have this.”

  The Mother unwound the rainbow-striped band from Her waist and belted it loosely about Faraday’s. “Remember me with it.”

  She leaned forward, kissed Faraday softly on the lips, and then She was gone.

  Faraday blinked, and realised that cold stars circled about her. She’d been standing all night in the Earth Tree Grove and was chilled through. Shivering, she closed her cloak about her, but as she moved she felt something about her waist.

  The Mother’s band…but something more. There was something inside it.

  Faraday slowly unwound it.

  Nestled inside the band, warm and snug, was the arrow that Drago had shot over the mass of crazed people in the Western Ranges, its shaft now strangely flexible.

  But the arrow was not what made her eyes widen in wonder. Around the arrow’s shaft was wound a small and fragile sapling. It had a spray of fine roots at one end, and an equally fine spray of tiny oval-shaped leaves at the other.

  Faraday raised her face and looked at the Earth Tree.

  It was gone.

  68

  Mountain, Forest and Marsh

  Spiredore deposited Gwendylyr on the very peak of Star Finger. Disorientated, for Gwendylyr had never been to Star Finger—or, indeed, the Icescarp Alps—she turned slowly about, studying the view and the flat surfaces about the huge shaft that dropped away into the mountain, then halted abruptly.

  A man stood by a doorway leading to a stairwell. Dressed entirely in black, he had the lithe figure of a swordsman, a hint of the slightly alien features of an Icarii, and faded blond hair above equally faded but penetrating blue eyes.

  He was tense, and a hand rested on the hilt of a sword that hung from his weapons belt.

  “Who are you?” he asked, his voice hard.

  His features reminded Gwendylyr of Drago. “You are Axis StarMan,�
�� she said, and bowed slightly. “My name is Gwendylyr, Duchess of Aldeni, and I have come here to show you the path to Sanctuary.”

  Axis stared, trying to take in both the presence of the black-haired woman, and the words she spoke.

  “Sanctuary?” he said, stalling for time.

  Gwendylyr withdrew the cube of light from the pocket of her robe and expanded it into the glowing doorway.

  “Through here, via Spiredore, lies Sanctuary,” she said. “Lord Axis, there is only a day or so left before Qeteb rises, and—”

  “Caelum will stop him.”

  Gwendylyr paused and regarded Axis. “Maybe, and maybe not. Will you risk all who inhabit this mountain?”

  There was a movement behind Axis, and an extraordinary woman stepped up the stairwell to join him. She had hair so black it was almost blue, and the most beautiful, and powerful, eyes Gwendylyr had seen in any living person.

  “My Lady Azhure,” she said, further introducing herself, and bowing with just a hint more respect that she’d given Axis. “Sanctuary awaits.”

  “Lady Gwendylyr,” Azhure said, “that is a most spectacular enchantment, and one I cannot fathom. How is it so?”

  Another man and woman had now emerged from the stairwell. They may not have radiated power, but they nevertheless radiated such an aura of wisdom and experience that Gwendylyr knew they must be the elder Star Gods, Adamon and Xanon.

  “It is hard for me to explain in the necessary few words, Lady Azhure,” Gwendylyr said, “but it is a product of the Acharite enchantment revived through death.”

  “What?” Axis snapped.

  With admirable patience, Gwendylyr told them all she’d learned from Faraday and Drago, and explained to them the power that Acharites could command once they’d passed through death and returned to walk in life.

  “Who else commands this power?” Adamon asked.

  “Faraday,” Gwendylyr said, “and Leagh, Goldman and DareWing—”

  “DareWing?” Xanon said.

  “DareWing has Acharite blood flowing through his veins.”

  Azhure’s mouth twitched. “He had a roving ancestor, it seems.”

  “So it seems,” Gwendylyr agreed. “Our master and teacher in all this, is—”

  “Drago,” Azhure interrupted softly. She had slipped a hand through Axis’ arm, and now gently pushed his hand from the hilt of his sword.

  Gwendylyr stared at her, seeing the understanding in Azhure’s eyes. “Yes. Drago. He has made this doorway for me.”

  Axis’ face lost its tenseness and grew instead tired. “And Caelum?” he asked. “Where does Caelum fit into all this?”

  “My Lord Axis,” Gwendylyr said, “will you believe me when I say that everything and everyone works only to aid the StarSon?”

  Of those listening, only Azhure understood what Gwendylyr really meant. The others only comprehended what they wanted to understand.

  She nodded very slightly at Gwendylyr, but it was Adamon who answered.

  “Yes, we believe you, Gwendylyr. One of the few skills that remain to me is the power to discern truth. What is this Sanctuary?”

  “A very beautiful place,” Gwendylyr said, although she’d not yet seen Sanctuary herself.

  “And who currently has sought Sanctuary?” Xanon asked.

  “All of Tencendor we can save,” Gwendylyr said. “The people…and whatever creatures accepted our offer.”

  The image of the thousands of millipedes that had crawled over her feet suddenly filled Gwendylyr’s mind, and Azhure, who caught just a little of Gwendylyr’s instinctive abhorrence, stifled a grin. Just about everything that could crawl had taken refuge in Sanctuary, it seemed.

  “There are relatively few of us here,” Azhure said. “It will not take long for us to collect what we need.”

  Axis hesitated. He did not know what to make of this woman, and there was something that had passed between her and Azhure that he could not understand.

  But if Azhure trusted her…and if Adamon and Xanon were nodding and moving back down the stairwell as if to gather those below…

  “It is a tragic thing,” he said softly, “that this mountain must once again be emptied.”

  “It survived foulness before,” Gwendylyr said, “and so we must hope it will again.”

  “Come, Axis,” Azhure murmured, and tugged lightly at his arm. “There is one thing that must not be left behind.”

  After the Mother had left her, Faraday went to her childhood home of Ilfracombe in the southern Skarabost Plains. This area was not her territory—by this time Gwendylyr had already emptied it—but Faraday had to say goodbye to her home.

  It was abandoned, and Faraday hoped it was because Gwendylyr had moved its inhabitants into Sanctuary and not because whoever had lived here had been captured body and soul by the Demons.

  Who had lived here? Were her two elder sisters still alive? Did they have children? Faraday suddenly found herself desperate to know what had happened to whatever remained of her family, and she moved through the house room by room, running fingers over remembered furniture, and studying the miniature portraits that hung in the audience room.

  There, her two sisters and their husbands, portraits drawn recently, to tell from the wrinkles and aged eyes.

  Faraday stared at them a long time, trying to come to grips with the aging of her sisters. Here she stood, in physical form not a whit older than twenty-one or two, and here their likenesses hung, older than Faraday remembered their mother when she’d died.

  Unnerved, she turned away.

  Children had lived here—perhaps her sisters’ grandchildren—for all the bedrooms had been occupied, and in many of them toys lay scattered as if thrown about in the ruckus of a hasty departure.

  Faraday hoped that meant Gwendylyr had taken them, and the children had grabbed what toys they could in the time they’d been given.

  But what moved Faraday the most was that her own bedroom had been left exactly as she’d left it…what? Forty-five years ago? Her bed, dresser, and drawings lay as last she’d placed them. Even her favourite rag doll sat on a chair where she’d always put it as a child.

  Faraday stared at the doll a long time, then impulsively she snatched it up, and fled back through the house to where the glowing doorway waited outside.

  From Ilfracombe she went to Arcen, packed with frightened and increasingly desperate people.

  They needed no persuasion to empty into her doorway. Once Arcen was bare, Faraday moved to the few communities remaining in Tarantaise—the hamlets in the northern Plains of Tare had been lost to the Demons—and from Tarantaise Faraday went to the one place she’d not had time to study when she’d passed through here forty years ago as she’d planted out the forests.

  Bogle Marsh.

  It bubbled and seethed happily under a grey and low-slung sky.

  Did anything save dragonflies and insects live in this pestilent marsh? In her childhood Faraday had heard of strange creatures that lived here, but were they tales meant to scare children or versions of reality?

  She clutched her rag doll and stared uncertainty at the marsh.

  “Sanctuary?” she asked with some considerable hesitation.

  Instantly a number of the strangest creatures Faraday could ever have imagined—and she had seen some strange things in her lifetime—emerged from the marsh in a series of loud sucking sounds as the mud reluctantly let them go.

  The creatures were covered in grey mud so thickly the true lines of their forms could not be discerned, but what Faraday could see made her take an instinctive step back.

  The creatures were large and bulky, larger than a horse and twice as heavy, but with cumbersome flippers rather than legs, and lumpish faces with wriggling snouts for noses. Behind them they carried wide, flat muscular tails which they used to propel themselves forwards.

  Bright brown eyes regarded her happily as they humped and lurched past Faraday into the doorway, and she could hear them snorting and thumping
as they negotiated the stairs within Spiredore.

  “Goodness,” she said quietly as the last one managed to get itself through the doorway, and, picking up her skirts very carefully in one hand, she followed them through.

  And after Bogle Marsh there was only one thing left for Faraday to do, and something she had purposely left to last.

  The fey creatures of the forests.

  And Raum.

  She met him the instant she re-entered the forest of Minstrelsea. He waited for her in a glade, his white coat luminescent even though there was no sunshine, his skin trembling even though there was no obvious danger.

  He held his head high, and slightly to one side, and his eyes great and dark and staring.

  The Sacred White Stag of the forests.

  She stood and stared at him, then moved slowly forward, lovely herself in her white robe with her chestnut hair cascading down her back.

  He trembled anew as she neared, but he let her stroke his coat.

  Do you remember that night you bonded me with the Mother, Raum?

  The White Stag thought, a dim memory of himself as Raum stirring in his mind. Faraday’s mouth jerked in a tiny movement that may have been a smile.

  That night was the first time a man had ever seen me naked.

  The White Stag regarded her anew, wondering that nakedness was something to be remembered and noted.

  Now, too many men have seen me naked, and seeing, attacked my vulnerability.

  The Stag understood now that the woman was talking in metaphors, and metaphors he understood very well.

  The forests lie naked before the rape that would be inflicted on it. They are vulnerable, lovely woman.

  Do you remember the years I ran at your side?

  I had a mate, but she disappeared.

  Aye, she disappeared. The woman’s mind grew sadder. Wild one, these forests will soon die. Will you now step through the door into Sanctuary?

  And my brethren?

  Take them with you.

  Will you join me?

  Yes, but I will never run by your side again.