Crusader (41 page)

“Ugh!” Qeteb said as he hit very, very solid rock.

Beside him he heard another five impacts, and low curses and moans of pain filled the dark air about them.

Qeteb struggled into a sitting position—he’d assumed his metalled, armoured visage—and felt about him with his power, ignoring the mutters and moans of the other Demons.

Where were they?

Dark, deep, cold, barren.

It
felt
like the most distant of interstellar wastes, but Qeteb understood they’d not travelled beyond the boundaries of Tencendor itself.

Where were they?

Underground, with the weight of millions upon millions of tons of rock above them.

“We’re in a mine,” Sheol said beside him, and Qeteb felt her body crowd his, almost as if she needed the comfort of what physical warmth she could draw from his armour.

He shoved her away roughly.

“And we have a mountain atop us,” Mot added, and Qeteb snarled, finally orientating himself within the geography of Tencendor.

They were deep underground in what the Tencendorians had called the Murkle Mountains.

Deep in the former home, if Qeteb had but known it, of the Chitter Chatters.

Qeteb cursed foully, and struck the rock he sat on with his mailed fist.

The sound of the impact echoed about them until its growing melody drove the Demons to a shrieking, capering dance of frustration and fury.

How dare
anyone
do this to them!

Silence, and Axis tensed, wondering what had happened.

“Forty-two thousand!” Azhure whispered beside him, “Ur said there were forty-two thousand Skraelings!”

“Yes, but—” Axis began.

“Don’t you see?” Azhure whispered furiously, and Katie laughed again, a sweet, happy sound.

“What?”
Axis said.

Azhure sighed impatiently. “There were forty-two thousand souls that Faraday transplanted out as the Minstrelsea forest.”

“Yes…”

“And Ur was their guardian during their years as seedlings.”

“Yes…”

“Don’t you understand
yet
?” Azhure cried, and Zared jumped in, his voice excited.

“When Qeteb destroyed the forests, the souls went back to Ur!” he cried, and Axis felt Azhure nod her head enthusiastically.

“Yes! That’s what she has been carrying about in that pot—the forty-two thousand souls who fled back to her when their physical forms, the trees, were destroyed.”

“And now Ur has used the Song of the Trees to destroy the Skraelings,” Axis said.

“Oh!” Azhure exclaimed, and wriggled about in further impatience. “Don’t you see? Forty-two thousand Skraelings…and forty-two thousand souls?”

Axis huddled in stunned silence as the import of what Azhure had said sank in.

“Ur has given her souls a new home,” Azhure said into the silence. “The Skraelings.”

“That’s why she needed them drunk,” Katie put in. “Drunken Skraelings put up no resistance to the souls of the trees.”

“But where have the souls of the Skraelings gone,” Zared said, “if their bodies are now occupied by the souls of the trees?”

“Fled to wander weeping and wailing across the ice drifts of the extreme north,” said a voice above them. “Only the most foolhardy of wanderers will ever be bothered by them.”

The blanket lifted, and there was Ur. “Would you like to meet your army, Axis StarMan?”

A
xis helped Azhure and Katie out of the cart as Zared leapt down into the snow. The wind still blew frighteningly hard and cold, and Axis wrapped his cloak, and a blanket over that, as tight about him as he could.

He did not say anything.

As far as he could see in the snowstorm, the entire column was flanked on either side by lines of Skraelings. They stood some four paces apart, several deep, each Skraeling staggered so that it stood in the space between the two in front of it, rather than in direct line with them.

Without exception the Skraelings stood with their feet buried deep into the drifting snow, their bodies and arms and loathsome heads drifting as they were tugged by the wind.

Their silver-orbed eyes were lively with intelligence rather than malice, and their toothsome grins were cheerful, rather than malicious.

For the first time in his life, Axis felt only curiosity as he stared at a Skraeling, not fear or the desire to kill.

But…

He looked at Ur, standing to one side with her pot, the saucer lid carefully back in place. Why, Axis knew not, for surely it was empty.

“For this army I thank you,” Axis said to Ur, “but for
what I will use it I do not know, for we will all surely be frozen solid by dawn time.”

“Then tell them what you need,” Ur said.

Axis stared at her, then looked back to the drifting lines of Skraelings.

“We need shelter,” he said, “and warmth. A place to rest and eat and sleep.”

The Skraelings grinned happily, and then they began to transform.

Beside Axis, Azhure gasped in recognition, for she was the only one, apart from Faraday, who had ever seen this process.

The Skraelings uncoiled.

Their legs thickened, and joined to form massive trunks, while their bodies lengthened and reached for the sky. The Skraelings flung their arms outwards in obvious joy, and they, too, lengthened and their fingers grew and thickened and spread until, in the space of three or four breaths, the Skraelings had transformed themselves into trees again—the huge, spreading trees of Minstrelsea forest.

With one exception. They had retained their wraith’s insubstantiality, their trunks and branches grey and mist-like, their leaves the silver of the Skraeling eyes.

They were incredibly beautiful.

And, despite their appearance, substantial enough to cut out the wind and the storm completely.

Now Axis could see why they’d staggered themselves in ranks in their long lines down either side of the column. This way not even a breath of wind could penetrate their leaves or trunks.

In the abrupt cessation of wind and storm, tarpaulins and blankets slowly unfolded back from carts, and unfolded from lumps in the snow that Axis now saw were groups of people huddled together for warmth. People sat up, then slowly climbed down onto the snow-covered ground.

It was still cool, but in the absence of the north wind and the driving ice and snow, the cold had all but disappeared.

The trees rustled, and there was a murmur of Song.

The remaining snow on the ground was swept up in gentle whirls and eddied out between the tree trunks of the forest to be swept away in the outside storm.

The ground lay clean and dry.

Axis looked at Azhure, then at Zared, and then back to the sight before him.

It was beautiful beyond description. The trees had formed a protective tunnel over the entire column, a silvery, shifting avenue of ghost-trees that gently hummed.

There was a sudden new note to the Song of the trees, and with a start Axis heard what it was.

The Bogle Marsh creatures had joined their deep voice to that of the trees, and now the entire avenue of trees dipped and swayed, reaching out gentle tendrils of silvery leaves in dance to graze against the cheeks of people and animals alike.

There was a rush of wings, and all the birds who’d escaped into, and then out of, Sanctuary lifted into the air and sought refuge among the branches of the trees.

Animals emerged carefully from their hiding places, and nosed about the grass and flowers that appeared among the ridging roots of the trees.

“I cannot believe this loveliness,” Axis said very softly, and felt a tear slip down his cheek.

“Then use it!” Ur whispered behind him. “Use it! My beauties are hungry for a revenge!”

Axis turned, and Ur smiled at him, almost girl-like. Then she lifted her pot and gave it a small shake, and said: “One more to go.”

And then she was gone before Axis could ask her what she meant.

Axis spent the next few hours traversing the column on the back of Sal (Azhure had been stunned when he told her how he’d got the horse) making sure that people and beasts alike were settled comfortably.

He could not oversee the entire column—he suspected that it must stretch for many leagues—but what he saw of the sections he did ride up and down on his patrol relaxed and comforted him.

Without any apparent effort, or prior planning (or
had
Urbeth somehow foreseen and planned this?), the peoples and creatures of Tencendor had managed to arrange themselves into much the same type of communities that they had in their former lives before the Demons had come.

Here were the inhabitants of the villages of southern Romsdale, complete with their remaining herds of livestock, grouped about a series of small fires and cooking grain and vegetables. They smiled and waved at Axis and invited him to join them for a meal, but he refused, saying he had too much to do.

Further on Axis came across the Nors folk, a shifting, brightly-scarved mass of them, their musical instruments out, their dancing boys writhing amid tight circles of admiring and leering adults. Axis grinned, and rode on.

Further on yet were the Ravensbund people, sharing space with the still-humming pile of Bogle Marsh creatures (Axis wondered if they had somehow formed an association of collective admiration for their mutually isolated and taciturn ways of life), as well as many of the fey creatures Faraday had rescued from the Minstrelsea and Avarinheim.

The Avar had split to set up Clan camps within the trees from where they nodded to passers-by, but otherwise made no attempt to speak or commune with other peoples or with Axis. Above them, many of the Icarii had taken up residence with the birds in the branches of the trees, talking and laughing and playing their harps and singing, and floating down in drifts to partake of hot meals at the campfires that were dotted like bright sparks of hope along the length of the column.

People shifted, walked, traded and laughed up and down the avenue. It was, Axis finally realised with a jolt, a land
entire unto itself, protected by the shimmering, magical, musical avenue of trees. Family and community groups had reformed, livestock had huddled comfortably back together in their field companies, and wild creatures had sought isolation and refuge in and among the trees.

Amid the desolation of the frozen tundra, Tencendor had found hope again.

In the morning
, Axis thought,
I will shift this entire avenue south, and see how DragonStar can use us.

His good humour and hope dissipated the moment he rode back to the cart where Azhure and Katie had set up camp. (Zared had long since ridden back to the spot where the folk of Severin had established themselves.)

As he slid off Sal’s back, he saw that StarDrifter was talking earnestly, almost angrily, to Azhure and that her face wore an expression of deep distress.

Axis almost hated StarDrifter at that moment. What had he said to so upset Azhure?
Why couldn’t he just leave well enough alone?

“Azhure?” Axis said, moving to join her where she stood with StarDrifter by a small campfire.

An iron pot swung gently on its tripod, the delicious smell of stew and dumplings rising up in heady waves from its interior.

“What’s wrong?” Axis slid an arm about Azhure’s shoulders, and shot StarDrifter a hard look.

“It’s WolfStar,” Azhure said, and Axis forgot all his animosity towards StarDrifter in a well-remembered surge of ill-feeling towards the ever-cursed WolfStar.

Dammit, he’d forgotten him in the fear and haste of abandoning Sanctuary! Axis had left WolfStar in the care of the Lake Guard, but where was he now? Damned birdman! Left to his own devices for more than an hour and he could ruin the future of an entire realm without even breaking into a sweat!

“Where is he?” he asked.

“About half a league back,” StarDrifter said, and Axis thought he must have turned Sal’s head around to come back to the head of the column just before he would have reached WolfStar.

“And?” Axis said.

StarDrifter took a deep, distressed breath. His eyes suddenly, horrifyingly, filled with tears, and he looked at Azhure, unable to speak any more.

Azhure briefly closed her own eyes, summoning the courage to speak. How much of this was her own fault? If only she’d taken more care, more damned
time
with her children!

“Azhure?” Axis said, his voice tight, angry and fearful.

“WolfStar has got Zenith,”

Azhure said. “What?” Axis exploded. “He’s stolen her again?”

“What damn right have you got to say that?” StarDrifter shouted, stunning Axis into a shocked silence. “What damn fucking right? You abandoned Zenith when she needed you most—
curse you
! You
encouraged
WolfStar to pursue her, and to aid Niah in her frightful conquest of Zenith’s body and soul.
How dare you now stand there and pretend an indignation that WolfStar has her again?
”

There was silence.

Axis glanced at Azhure, then looked down to the ground, studying the shine on his boots with a deep intensity.

Feelings of anger, resentment and horrifying guilt flowed through him. Anger at WolfStar, resentment at StarDrifter for putting the truth so baldly, and such deep guilt at how he’d treated Zenith that Axis thought he could hardly bear it.

Eventually he raised his eyes and looked steadily at StarDrifter.

“Tell me,” he said quietly.

StarDrifter took a deep breath, steadying his own emotions. “I fought so hard for Zenith,” he said. “Fought for her and loved her when no-one except Faraday would do the
same for her. Faraday and I saved her from Niah and WolfStar—and, dammit, no-one fought harder in that battle than Zenith!—and, oh gods, the joy when we succeeded!”

StarDrifter had to turn away for a moment, his chest heaving, gulping down his tears.

When he finally had himself under some control, he turned back and continued. “Zenith and I became close after that. Very close.”

Axis narrowed his eyes. “You fell in love.” It was not a question. More than anyone, Axis understood the SunSoar attraction each to the other. Stars! He could remember the leap in his own blood when his grandmother, MorningStar, smiled at him with seduction in her eyes.