Crusader

For others, it was more personal aggravations that made them feel like prisoners in a vast, amiable gaol.

StarDrifter, wandering the corridors and wondering what more he could do to ease Zenith into the love she tried to deny.

Zenith herself, wondering when it was that she would be able to think of StarDrifter’s embrace with longing instead of revulsion.

DareWing, dying, yet still driven by such a need for revenge that he hauled himself from tree to tree and from glade to glade, seeking that which might ease his frustration.

Azhure, weeping for the children she had lost.

Isfrael, seething with resentment at the loss of his inheritance.

Faraday, her eyes dry but her heart burning, wondering if she would have the courage to accept a love she feared might once more end in her destruction.

Katie, clinging to Faraday’s skirts, grinning silently and secretly, and wondering if Faraday would ever be able to accept the sacrifice.

Again.

Sanctuary was a brooding, sad place for something so apparently beauteous and peaceful.

Sanctuary was proving unbearable for yet one more man.

Axis had spent his life controlling the world that battered at his doorstep. As BattleAxe he had theoretically been subordinate to the Brother-Leader of the Seneschal, but in reality had largely controlled his own destiny as he had the destinies of his command. As a newly-discovered Enchanter he had found he had much to learn, but had gloried in that learning and the added power it gave him (as in the woman it brought him). As StarMan, Axis had held the fate of an entire land and all its peoples in his hand, and he had held it well, plunging the Rainbow Sceptre into Gorgrael’s chest and reclaiming the land for the Icarii and Avar.

Yet in the past year Axis had learned that he’d only been a pawn in some Grand Plan of this ancient race known as the Enemy, and an even tinier pawn of the Star Dance itself which had manipulated not only the Enemy, but every creature on Tencendor.

And for what? To breed the battleground and the champion to best the most ancient of enemies; festering evil in the shape of the TimeKeeper Demons.

“We have all been for nothing,” Axis whispered to himself, “save to provide the Star Dance with the implements for whatever final act it has planned.”

And what part would he play in that plan?

“And damn you to every pit of every damned AfterLife,” Axis murmured, “for making of me a mere pawn where once I had been a god!”

Then he laughed, for it was impossible not to so laugh at his own frustrated sense of importance. Axis consciously relaxed his shoulders, and looked about him.

It was a fine, warm day in Sanctuary — as were all days — and he was walking down the road from Sanctuary towards the bridge (at last! to have escaped the confinement of unlimited safety!). To either side of him waved pastel flowers, wafting gentle scent in the soft breeze. The plain between the mountains that cradled Sanctuary and the bridge that led from the sunken Keep apparently stretched into infinity on either side of the road, and Axis wondered what would happen if he set off to his left or right. Would the magic of Sanctuary eventually return him to the spot from which he had commenced, even though he walked in a deliberately straight line? Would he be allowed to escape the glorious inaction of Sanctuary?

“I wonder if I might ever manage to —” Axis began in a musing tone, then halted, stunned.

A moment previously he had been a hundred paces from the bridge, he could have sworn it! Yet now here he was, one booted foot resting on the silvery surface of the bridge’s roadway.

“Welcome, Axis SunSoar, StarMan,” the bridge said. “May I assist you?”

Axis grinned. The bridge sounded as enthusiastic as an exhausted whore on her way home after a laborious night’s work entertaining her clientele. His grin broadened at the thought. The bridge had borne a heavy load of bodies recently, after all.

And every one of them to be questioned as to the trueness of their intentions.

“Well,” he said, and leaned his crossed arms on the handrail so he could peer into the clouded depths of the chasm below the bridge. “I admit I grow lonesome for some witty conversation, bridge, and I remembered the pleasant nights I spent whiling away the sleepless hours with your sister.”

And was she still alive, Axis suddenly wondered, in the maelstrom that had consumed Tencendor?

“She has ever had a more companionable time than I,” grumbled the bridge. “Here I sat, spanning the depths between your world and Sanctuary, desperate for company yet hoping I would never find it.”

Axis nodded in understanding. Company would have meant — did mean — that complete disaster threatened the world above.

“And, yes,” the bridge added softly, “my sister still lives. The disaster is not yet complete, Axis SunSoar.”

Axis shifted uncomfortably. This bridge was far more adept at reading unspoken thoughts than her sister. “And when the disaster is complete? What then?”

“What then? Victory, my friend. Utter victory.”

Axis straightened, biting down his anger. “Disaster is utter victory? How can that be?”

An aura of absolute disinterest emanated from the bridge. “I am not the one who can show you that answer, Axis.”

“Then who? Who?”

There was no answer, save for a flash of blinding light and a sudden rattle of hooves.

Axis swore softly and raised a hand to shield his eyes against the rectangle of burning light that had appeared at the other end of the bridge. A large shape shifted within the light, blurred, then shifted again, resolving itself into a horse and rider.

The light flared, then faded.

The bridge screamed …

… and then convulsed.

Axis fell to his feet, sliding towards the centre of the bridge as he did so. He lay for an instant, badly winded by the impact.

He was given no time for recovery. The bridge lurched and then buckled, heaving under him, and Axis repeatedly fell over in his scrambling attempts to get to his feet.

The bridge screamed again, and Axis was raked with the emotions of death.

The bridge was dying.

Axis grabbed at one of the handrail supports, but it melted under his fingers leaving them coated with a sticky residue.

One of his legs fell through a large hole that abruptly appeared in the bridge … she was dissolving!

With a desperate heave Axis lunged towards the safety of the roadway, but the bridge was literally falling apart, still screaming, and her death throes tilted Axis further towards her centre, further away from the safety of the ground.

Another section of bridge fell away, and Axis stared down into the chasm, and certain death.

The bridge whimpered, and vanished.

Axis fell… and was jerked to a halt by a hand in the collar of his tunic.

The odour of a horse hot with sweat enveloped him, and Axis felt himself bump against the shoulder of the plunging animal. He grabbed automatically, finding the Sanctuary of a horse’s mane with his left hand, and the wiry strength of a man’s forearm with his right.

“Keep still!” a man’s voice barked. Axis turned his eyes up, and looked into the face of his hated son, Drago.

Except this man was not Drago. Axis instinctively felt it the instant he lay eyes on his face, and he knew it for sure once the man had deposited him on the road to Sanctuary.

This was a man who had once been Drago.

Axis bent over, resting his hands on his knees, and drew in great breaths, trying to recover his equilibrium at the twin shock of the bridge’s death and the appearance of… of…

Axis looked up, although he did not straighten. “What happened?” he said, not asking what he truly wanted to know.

The man slid off the horse, and Axis spared the animal a brief glance.

Gods! That was Belaguez!

Utterly shocked, Axis finally stood up straight, staring at the horse.

“I do not understand why the bridge died,” the man said, and Axis slid his eyes back to him. He was lean but strong, with Axis’ own height and musculature and with coppery-coloured hair drawn back into a tail in the nape of his neck.

The way I used to wear it as BattleAxe, Axis thought involuntarily.

The man was naked, save for a snowy linen cloth bound about his hips, and the most beautiful — and most patently enchanted — sword that Axis had ever seen. Its hilt was in the shape of a lily, and Axis could see the glimpse of a mirrored blade as it disappeared into a jewelled scabbard. The scabbard hung from an equally heavily jewelled belt, balanced by a similarly jewelled purse at the man’s other hip.

Axis slid his eyes to the man’s face.

Plain, ordinary, deeply lined, somewhat tired … and utterly extraordinary. Alive and hungry with magic. Serene and quiet with tranquillity.

Dark violet eyes regarded him with humour, understanding, and …

“Love?” Axis said. “I do not deserve that, surely.”

His voice was very hard and bitter.

“It is yours to accept or not,” DragonStar said, “as you wish.”

Axis stared at his son, hating himself for hating what he saw. “What have you done with Caelum?”

DragonStar paused before he replied, but his voice was steady. “Caelum is dead.”

Axis’ only visible reaction was a tightening of his face and a terrible hardening of his eyes. “You led him to his death!”

“Caelum went willingly,” DragonStar replied, his voice very gentle. “As he had to.”

Axis stared, unable to tear his eyes from DragonStar’s face, although he longed desperately to look somewhere, anywhere, else. “I —” he began, then stopped, unable to bear the hatred in his voice, and unable to understand to whom, or what, he wanted to direct that hatred.

There was a movement behind him, and then Azhure was at his side, as she had been for so many years.

And as she had so many times previously, she saved him from this battle.

Azhure touched Axis’ arm fleetingly, yet managing to impart infinite comfort with that briefest of caresses, then she stepped straight past her husband to DragonStar.

She paused, then spoke. “Did Caelum see you like this? As … as you were meant to be?”

DragonStar nodded, and Azhure’s entire body jerked slightly.

Then she leaned forward and hugged her son.

He pulled her in tight against him, drawing as much love from her as she drew comfort from him.

Axis stared, not understanding, and not particularly wanting to.

Eventually Azhure pulled back and turned slightly so she could hold out a hand to her husband. Her eyes and cheeks were wet, but there was sadness in her face as well, and she continued to hold DragonStar tightly with her other hand.

“Axis? I —”

“What is this, Azhure?” His voice was harsh. “Caelum is dead. Dead! And —”

“Caelum knew he was going to die,” Azhure said. “He accepted it.”

Axis closed his mouth into a cold, hard line.

“And he accepted,” Azhure said, “as we should have done earlier, that Drago …” she glanced back at her son, “that DragonStar was born to be the true StarSon.”

Axis opened his mouth to say No! but found he could not voice the word. The man standing before him was clearly not the sullen Drago who’d moped about Sigholt for so many years, and he was just as clearly a man who wielded such great power that he … he … just might be …

Axis turned his head to one side, and was surprised to feel the wetness of tears on his own cheeks as the breeze brushed his face. “Oh gods,” he said, and sank down on the ground.

“Will you meet with your father in our apartment a little later?” Azhure asked DragonStar hurriedly. “For the time being, I think it would be best if he and I had some time alone…”

DragonStar nodded.

“Thank you,” Azhure murmured, then bent down to her husband. DragonStar vaulted back onto Belaguez’s back and rode down the trail into Sanctuary.

DragonStar chose to ride unnoticed into Sanctuary; no-one noted his entry, and thus no-one disturbed him in the three hours before Azhure sought him out.

“Your father waits for you,” she said, giving DragonStar directions to their apartment. She looked him over — DragonStar had discarded his linen hip-wrap for a pair of fawn breeches, brown boots and a white shirt, but he still wore the sword and jewelled purse at his belt.

“And?” DragonStar asked.

Azhure nodded very slightly. “And he is prepared to accept.”

DragonStar laughed softly. “Prepared to, but has not yet.” “It is a start.”

“Aye, it is that. Azhure … why have you accepted so easily? Even I denied it for long months.”

“Perhaps because I fought to keep you to a viable birthing age when you fought so hard to abort yourself. I have a mother’s belief in her offspring.”

DragonStar paled, both at her words and at the hardness in her voice. He began to say something, but Azhure stopped him with a hand on his chest.

“I had no right to speak thus to you, DragonStar. I have no right to speak harshly to any of my children. I was too absorbed in my magic and in Axis to be a good mother to any but Caelum.”

“Azhure —”

Azhure well understood why he would not call her “mother”.

“— it is never too late to be a friend to your children. I think that you and I will always be better friends than parent and child.”

Azhure smiled, and lowered her eyes a little.

“But,” DragonStar continued softly, relentlessly, “I think that Zenith needs you as a friend far more than I. There are many things that can be saved from this disaster, Azhure, and I do hope that Zenith will be among them.”

Azhure’s eyes jerked back to DragonStar’s face. “And I haven’t even seen her since I came to Sanctuary!”

“I did not know that,” DragonStar said, “but I am not surprised by it.”

And then he turned and walked out the door without another word, leaving his mother staring at his back and with a hand to her mouth in horrified mortification.

Axis was waiting for DragonStar in a small and somewhat unadorned chamber, so plain that DragonStar thought it almost out of character for Sanctuary. Perhaps Axis had spent hours here when he’d first arrived, throwing out all the comforts and fripperies and creating an environment austere enough for any retired war captain to feel at home in.

Axis had never been happy or content away from war, DragonStar thought, and wondered for the first time how frustrating life must have been for Axis once Gorgrael had been disposed of and Tencendorian life was relatively peaceful. No wonder he’d handed over power to Caelum: the endless Councils spent debating the finer details of trading negotiations must have bored his father witless.

Had it been any more challenging being a god? DragonStar wondered.

Axis was seated at a wooden table, or, rather, he was leaning back in a plain wooden chair, his legs crossed and resting on the tabletop, his arms folded across his chest.

On the table surface before him sat a jug of beer, two mugs, and a cloth-wrapped parcel. At the end of the table directly down from Axis sat an empty, waiting chair.

DragonStar paused in the doorway, nodded as an acknowledgment of Axis’ presence, then strolled across to the table, pulled out the chair and sat down. “So tell me, Axis, how am I being greeted? As a drinking companion? Comrade-in-arms?” He paused very slightly. “Long-lost son?”

Another, slightly longer pause, and the ghost of a grin about his lips. “If the prodigal son, then should I expect poison in the beer? A knife thrown from a darkened corner by a faithful lieutenant?”

Axis stared at DragonStar for a heartbeat or two, his face expressionless, then he leaned forward, poured out the two mugs of beer, and slid one down the table. “There is no poison in the beer, nor knife waiting in the corner.”

“Ah.” DragonStar caught the mug just before it slid off the edge of the table, and raised it to his mouth, swallowing a mouthful of the beer. “Then I am not here as long-lost son.”

“I am here only because both Azhure and Caelum asked it of me.”

DragonStar’s face lost its humorous edge. “I have no reason to stay here, Axis,” he snapped. “I could just take that,” he nodded at the parcel, “and leave. I have no use for faded stars!”

To his absolute surprise, Axis burst into laughter. “And nothing could have convinced me more of your fathering than that speech, Drago! Ah, sorry, I should call you by your birth name, should I not?”

“I should always have been called by my birth name,” DragonStar said. “As was my right.”

“My, my,” Axis said softly, “you have my humour and you have my pride.” His voice tightened. “I have also heard it rumoured about this fabulous crystal place they call Sanctuary that you have Faraday as well.”

With a jolt of surprise DragonStar realised that, if nothing else, Axis was treating him as an equal. This was man to man, and it was not about Caelum or who was or who was not StarSon, but about the passing over of the baton of legend.

And Axis didn’t want to let it go.

DragonStar took a deep breath. Axis had never felt threatened by fumble-fingered Caelum, but he now felt intimidated by DragonStar’s surety of grip. The baton was slipping away from Axis’ grasp … had slipped.

What if DragonStar had always been the point and the meaning of the high adventure of Axis’ battle with Borneheld and Gorgrael? What if Axis had only ever been the pawn, and DragonStar the true champion?

If Axis had not been the true champion, then nothing would demonstrate this more in his eyes than the fact that Faraday had gravitated to DragonStar. Faraday’s preferences in love would demonstrate who was the pawn, and who the king.

“Faraday chooses to walk alone,” DragonStar said, and, just as Axis visibly relaxed, continued, “although I have let her know well enough that I would enjoy her warmth and company by my side.”

Axis paused in the act of drinking some beer, stared coldly at DragonStar over the rim of his mug, then set it back on the table.

“Caelum is dead,” he said. “I have lost my son and I am in mourning. Forgive me if I do not fawn at your feet.” He stared at DragonStar. You sent my beloved son to his death, and now you say you want to take the woman who was my lover.

DragonStar half-grimaced, then turned it into a small smile. “I do not think you want another son, do you, Axis? But it would be better for you and I, and for Azhure, and for every one of the living creatures left in Sanctuary, if we could be friends.”

Axis dropped his eyes, and turned his half-empty mug around slowly between his hands. Surprisingly, his overwhelming emotion was one of relief. DragonStar had just presented them both with the perfect solution. Axis knew he could never think of this man across the table as his son — too much love had been denied, and too much hatred had been passed between them for it ever to be possible for them to embrace as father and son. But “friend”? Axis suddenly realised how much he had missed having a friend … how much he had missing relying on and loving Belial.

Axis knew he would be catastrophically jealous if a son proved more powerful than he, but, strangely, he knew he could accept it if a friend was.

An aeon seemed to pass as Axis thought. A friend. DragonStar a friend?

Something dark and horrid shifted within Axis — jealousy, resentment, bitterness — and then shifted again, and, stunningly, slid into oblivion.

He needed a friend. Badly. The thought brought such profound relief that Axis realised he had tears in his eyes.

He blinked them away and raised his gaze back to DragonStar. “How did you realise how much I needed a friend?”

A corner of DragonStar’s mouth twitched. “I have learned a great deal of wisdom since I demanded of you that you set Caelum aside and make me StarSon instead.”

Axis almost smiled, and then felt amazement that he could smile at this memory. “You were a precocious shitty bastard of an infant.”

“Well … technically ‘bastard’ I was not, but everything else you say is true enough. Axis, whatever else has happened between us, and whatever else I have said to you and thought about you and hated you for, I do thank you for setting me on the path of adversity, for without it I would have been another Gorgrael, or another Qeteb. Do you remember what you told me in Sigholt, that first time you set eyes on me?”

“I said that I would not welcome you into the House of Stars until you had learned both humility and compassion.” Axis paused, considering DragonStar carefully. “And sitting across from me now I can see a man whose face is lined, not with hate and bitterness as once it was, but with humility and compassion.

“DragonStar —” Axis shook his head slightly, “how strange it seems to call you that — I think the time has finally arrived to welcome you into the House of Stars.”

DragonStar paused before replying, allowing himself time to cope with the emotion flowing through him. How many hours had he spent lost in useless bitterness as a youth and man, longing for this moment, yet refusing to admit the longing?

“I would be honoured if you would accept me in, Axis,” DragonStar said, “but as your friend before anything else.” Caelum had already welcomed DragonStar into the family House. The fact that Axis now wished to do the same meant that the final bridge between DragonStar and his birth family would finally be repaired.

Tencendor could not be rebuilt without it.

Axis stood, and as he did so the door to the chamber opened and Azhure walked in.

DragonStar rose, staring at her. He wondered if it was her womanly instinct that allowed her to walk into the chamber at precisely the right moment, or just her attentive ear at the keyhole. She had changed from the ordinary day gown she’d been wearing when she’d fetched him to this chamber, and now wore a robe of purest black that was relieved only by a pattern of silvery stars about its hem. Her raven hair tumbled down her back to be lost in the folds of her skirt, and her blue eyes danced with love and, possibly, even a little of her lost magic.

DragonStar stared, then collected himself and half-bowed in her direction, acknowledging her as mother, woman and witch.

Axis smiled and held out his hand to Azhure, then held out his other hand for DragonStar. “It seems, my beloved,” he said to Azhure, “that we have a new companion for our faded constellation.”

She laughed, then embraced them both. “I welcome us all back into the House of Stars,” she said.

Chapter 4 WolfStar

WolfStar rolled over on his back and screamed. Agony knifed through his belly, then ran down his legs in rivulets of liquid horror. He jerked his knees to his chest and hugged them, now gasping for breath, and trying to ride out the successive waves of pain that coursed through him.

Raspu’s poison, he supposed, or Mot’s, or Barzula’s, pumped into him during successive rapes.

“Ahhh,” he groaned, and rolled over, weeping with the pain and the loss and the overwhelming humiliation. Humiliation, not so much from the demonic rapes he’d been forced to endure, although that was part of it, but from the realisation that everything he’d done, and everything he’d thought himself master of during the past few thousand years had been a lie. He’d been a tool and a pawn as much as had the sweatiest and stupidest peasant and now he’d been disposed of as easily.

The Maze — well taught by the Star Dance — was the hardest and cruellest master of all.

WolfStar — Enchanter-Talon, feared by every Icarii in existence.

WolfStar — crazed murderer, loathed by scores of generations of Icarii.

WolfStar — Dark Man, Dear Man, friend and ally of Gorgrael the Destroyer.