Crusader (12 page)

He’d adored her!

StarLaughter
knew
that even now adoration could not be very far beneath the surface of WolfStar’s sneers and outward contempt.

No, WolfStar still loved her, and WolfStar would aid her in the rescue of their son.

After all, wasn’t it his son who’d been stolen as well?

And hadn’t he adored his son, and adored her for conceiving him?

StarLaughter’s face softened into something resembling love as she stared blank-eyed into the wasted landscape. How wrong she’d been to seek revenge on WolfStar. She’d always adored him, she could understand that now, and it would take but a little effort on her part to make WolfStar understand that he still adored her.

“We are SunSoar lovers, you and I,” she whispered, one hand clutching at the tattered blue robe above her breasts. “One being, one soul. Nothing can keep us apart. Nothing.”

And on these twisted thoughts, StarLaughter built hope.

“I have to get away from Qeteb,” StarLaughter said, at what seemed like hours later. “And then find WolfStar. Oh, how happy he will be to see me!”

She jerked her eyes around the land, seeking answers. Where could she go? Where would be safe from Qeteb?

“I
know the nooks and crannies of this land better than any Demon,” she whispered, and then she nodded slightly. Yes, she knew a place to hide. A place that felt right. A place that called her.

But it would take her a while to get there…unless…

She turned her head and regarded Spiredore thoughtfully.

F
araday and Gwendylyr were wandering through an orchard of green apples and cotton trees laden with pale pink and blue flowers. With them walked Azhure and two of the Star Gods, Pors and Silton. They were chatting about DragonStar, and what had happened in something called the crystal dome, but the man who observed them did not care to listen as closely as he could have.

Isfrael had other things to think about, and other deeds to be done. He stood unobserved and watched the walkers for a short while, then he slipped silently away amid the thickness of the heavily-laden boughs of the cotton trees.

Their beauty and scent left him unmoved.

Isfrael had no qualms about what he was going to do. He did not think of it so much as a betrayal or a treachery, but as an inevitability. Sanctuary was bound to crumple before the power of the Demons at some stage or the other, and whether or not Isfrael speeded up the process was immaterial.

What was important was regaining his position at the head of the Avar, managing to exclude Faraday (didn’t the Avar realise that the time of their precious Tree Friend was well and truly over?) once and for all, and managing to save the Avar from the inevitable destruction of Sanctuary.

Isfrael wanted the forests, he wanted his position as Mage-King back, and he wanted the Avar to be safe forever from the axes and arrogance of the other two humanoid races.
There was only one place left in this existence where he could accomplish this.

The Sacred Groves.

There the Mother still dwelt, there the trees grew thick and magical, there the Horned Ones still walked in power.

There, Isfrael could regain his place.

And perhaps…perhaps Shra’s soul had found its way there when she’d died.

“Hello,” a gentle voice said behind him. “I often come here to think as well. It is a place of great beauty and contentment, is it not?”

Isfrael whipped about, only barely managing to suppress a snarl of irritation.

Leagh stood there, her distended belly making her virginal white linen gown look ridiculous, and her brown hair tumbling down about her shoulders and back as if she was trying to pretend to be a Bane (how dare she!). Her eyes, the only part of her that demonstrated some sense, revealed her trepidation.

She actually seemed to be waiting for a response, so Isfrael glanced about him. They were standing in a small glade, a waterfall and rock pool to one side, and wildflowers spreading in drifts through the short grasses of the open space.

“It’s lovely,” he said, and forced a smile.

Leagh relaxed a little, and she indicated a small pile of smooth-backed rocks beside the pool. “Will you sit with me a while? I have not had a chance to talk to you before.”

That is because you are a plains dweller and have not been welcomed in my forests
, thought Isfrael, but he sat anyway.

Leagh began to chat about innocuous pleasantries, and Isfrael replied in monosyllables whenever she paused for an answer. By the Horned Ones, she actually seemed to be enjoying herself in this pastelised version of the real, vibrant world! Isfrael would have got up and left—this woman was more than annoying—but some part of him wondered if
she might have some information that could help him achieve his ends.

After all, wasn’t she close to DragonStar? Might she not know something that had been kept hidden from everyone else?

Once he’d thought of that, Isfrael paid more attention to Leagh herself. He began to reply more pleasantly, leading the conversation himself, making the woman laugh with some of his tales of life in Minstrelsea.

And Isfrael reaped rewards for his pains. After a short while Isfrael realised that there was something profoundly unusual about Leagh. She was not just a “plains dweller”; she was far more. In fact, the way she moved, her smile, and the shift of her eyes made Isfrael realise that an intriguing power played beneath the surface of her outwardly pleasant demeanour.

Leagh was as powerful, if not more so, than any of the Avar Banes had been!

But how could this be so? The Acharites had no access to power, had they?

Very gradually, and as carefully as he could, Isfrael started to redirect the conversation. He cloaked himself in an aura of innocuousness—

Aren’t the horns growing from my forehead cute? See the cloth of twigs that cloak my loins: isn’t that the most naively rural thing you ever saw? See my discomfort regarding my mother, Faraday: doesn’t that make you want to hug me and make it all better?

—and harvested the prize, for Leagh lost whatever initial caution she’d had, and talked and laughed freely with him.

Yes, she had power now. Woken by DragonStar, although every Acharite had the potential for such power within them.

“What do you mean?” said Isfrael, furrowing his brow in muddled puzzlement.

“Well,” said Leagh, and she told him of the original Enchantress, Urbeth—

“Urbeth!” Isfrael said, truly shocked. “Urbeth?”

“Yes! Isn’t it amazing? Well…” Leagh told him of Urbeth’s three sons. One had founded the Icarii race.

“And fathered by a sparrow, Isfrael!” Leagh said, laughing. “Can you imagine the affront to the proud Icarii?”

Another son had founded the Charonite race.

“And the third?”

“Urbeth sent the eldest son from her home, because he denied his own magic and his own potential. This son was fathered by the man she loved the most. Isfrael, you will never guess who it was!”

Isfrael wondered if this agonising process would proceed faster if he twisted his hands about her throat and physically forced the words out.

But he smiled congenially, and forced a pleasant bewilderment across his face. “No, I cannot. Tell me.”

“Noah did!”

“Noah?”

So then Leagh told Isfrael about the Enemy, and their battle many millennia ago against the Demons. Having trapped and dismembered Qeteb, they then sent his life parts across the universe in a fleet of craft. When the four craft crashed on Tencendor, creating the four Sacred Lakes, only one of the Enemy survived: Noah.

“And he met Urbeth, and fathered the eldest son. But this son denied his magic, and when he founded the Acharite race, they not only suppressed their magic, they relentlessly hunted down all other wielders of magic.”

Isfrael kept his face bland, although internally he seethed with fury. The Acharites and their axes had hounded and slaughtered his people for over a thousand years.

“And so all Acharites can use their power?”

And as he said that, Isfrael suddenly realised why this information was so vitally important. Sanctuary was a construction of the Enemy, or of their remnant power within the land…and the magic of the Acharites was the magic of
the Enemy. By the Sacred Groves…was this what he’d been seeking?

As he thought that, Leagh gave him the final element.

“No. Acharites cannot use their magic unless they can return through death.”

“What do you mean?”

“We’ve all suppressed our power so assiduously that only death can free it. Faraday, myself, Gwendylyr, Goldman, and even DareWing, who has ancient Acharite blood in him, can use the power because we have been through death, and have been recreated.”

Isfrael nodded, and said a few more polite words, but he was not ungrateful when Leagh sighed and said she’d return to her apartment for a nap. “And to see Zared, who mopes about unbearably in this place.”

Leagh smiled apologetically. “He is a man who thrives on the
doing
, not on the
waiting
.”

Isfrael nodded, and let the woman walk away.

Was this the information he could trade for his freedom to get to the Sacred Groves? Almost…almost…but how could the Demons use it?

And then Isfrael remembered the soulless automat that the Demons had with them, and he laughed triumphantly.

He had the key!

Now all he had to do was get out of Sanctuary.

S
ometimes the most insanely unhinged of people manage to assume the demeanour of the coldly logical, and so it was with StarLaughter. She had her purpose—as madly illogical as it might seem to anyone else—and purpose gave her the appearance of sanity.

She stared thoughtfully towards Spiredore, her now composed face wiped free of any remaining spittle. Then, making up her mind, StarLaughter walked confidently back to Spiredore, its white-walled towers still gleaming incongruously in the devastated landscape.

“Pray to every star in existence I have the time to do what I must,” she muttered, and then tossed her head at a low-flying mind-maddened egret. She smiled at it; one could not be sure these days, among this horde of demented livestock, of which reported directly to the Demons and which just eddied about in chaotic dementia, and StarLaughter knew she had to be careful.

After all, wasn’t almost everyone in this devastated world plotting against her?

A hand grasped her ankle, and StarLaughter shrieked and tried to jerk herself free.

The hand tightened, and StarLaughter gave in to an instant of uncontrolled panic.

Only for an instant, as she realised who held her.

“WolfStar,” she cried, almost unable to grasp her good fortune. This was a sign from the Stars themselves!

WolfStar completely missed the momentary joy that swept across StarLaughter’s face. His fingers tightened fractionally about her ankle. “I can feel your heartbeat thudding through your veins,” he whispered. “Did I surprise you?”

She pulled herself free—she would allow no-one to bind her again, not even WolfStar—and stepped back. Her husband was a mess; his body was covered in bruises, abrasions and weeping scabs. Clotting blood besmeared his chest and belly, and streaked his face and hands. StarLaughter thought he should at least make the attempt to wipe it off.

Almost as if he’d read her mind, WolfStar absently wiped a hand across his chest, and flicked some of the blood away.

It made no difference.

“Why are you still here?” StarLaughter said. “I thought you might have made good your escape by now.”

But she knew why he was still here, didn’t she? Destiny had meant him to find her. One of her hands twitched, half-extended itself towards WolfStar, then dropped.

“Who is it?” he hissed, making an unsuccessful grab at the hem of her tattered gown.

“What?” Surely he recognised her!

“Who still controls the enchantment in this Star-forsaken land?” WolfStar said.
“Why is there still enchantment about?”

StarLaughter chewed her lip, wondering if WolfStar’s experiences had left him slightly deranged.

“Tell me!” WolfStar shouted, managing to grab her ankle again and pull her over.

She fell atop him, puzzlement replaced with anger, and drove her fist into his belly.

WolfStar cried out and let her go, curling up into a ball and sobbing with agony.

“You are a fool!” StarLaughter said, finally understanding what WolfStar was on about. She scrabbled back to her feet, making sure that this time she retreated to a non-grabbable
distance. “You backed Caelum, didn’t you? You thought he was the one to defeat Qeteb, didn’t you? Ha!
He
was not the StarSon.”

“What?” WolfStar said, rolling over and staring at her. “Who is?”

She smirked, revelling in the knowledge that WolfStar needed her. “Think I am going to tell you? I—”

“Who?”

Something howled far to the north, and StarLaughter looked toward Spiredore anxiously. “The Demons will be back soon,” she said. “We must be gone by then.”

WolfStar gave a harsh bark of laughter. “Have you fallen out with them, my beloved? Have they not given you what you wanted? Have—”

Exasperated, StarLaughter threw caution to the wind and stepped close, leaning down to grab WolfStar by the hair. She gave his head a wrench.

“Shut up! Do you want to live? Do you want to stop the Demons?”

“Are you trying to tell
me
,” WolfStar whispered, “that their destruction is what
you
want?”

She stared flatly at him. “They betrayed me,” she said.

“Goodness,” he said. “How utterly surprising.”

StarLaughter pursed her lips, but let his sarcasm pass. “If you come with me,” she said, “I will tell you who the true StarSon is, who controls the enchantment left in this land, and I will tell you where he is.”

And for all this
, she thought,
you will love me and aid me
. StarLaughter’s face softened at the thought, and she half-smiled.