Sinner

Sa’Domai shrugged, the tiny bells in his braided hair jingling merrily. “I can think of no reason Caelum would pull us from our beds this early, Zared.”

“Not for Council, surely?”

His question was effectively answered as RiverStar and Zenith joined them from one of the landings. Neither had a seat on the Council. Zenith, Zared noticed, looked as haggard as he felt.

She shook her head at Zared’s enquiring glance, while RiverStar ignored both him and Sa’Domai. RiverStar had her own reasons for feeling tired this morning.

Below them Zared heard FreeFall softly greet Yllgaine of Nor, then both the Icarii Talon and the Nors Prince were behind them. Zared nodded greetings at them, noting that both wore worried expressions.

What was wrong? Invasion? Surely not – who would invade?

Have farflight scouts reported the troops I have mustering west of Jervois Landing? Zared wondered, fear turning his belly to ice. But he quelled the thought quickly, filling his mind with jumbling images of the landscape between Severin and Sigholt. This place was full of Enchanters – and the most powerful of all would be in this hastily convened gathering. Zared needed none of them reading his mind. Even Zenith had indicated last night that she owed her highest loyalty to Tencendor itself.

Where were Herme and Theod? Not called to this meeting, that was apparent. Were they already in chains in the dungeons? Were their confessions already being signed with their blood?

Stop it! Zared carefully arranged his face in a neutral expression. Rivkah had carefully nurtured her son’s vivid imagination, now Zared cursed it.

Caelum lived in the spacious apartments that had once belonged to his parents. The central chamber was large, but it now seemed crowded with people moving about, finding themselves seats or stools, murmuring greetings, raising eyebrows in puzzled anxiety.

“By the stars themselves,” muttered FreeFall SunSoar behind Zared, clapping a friendly hand on the prince’s shoulder. “I hope my nephew has had the foresight to order us breakfast!”

Zared nodded, smiling slightly. He respected FreeFall greatly. The Icarii Talon was an extraordinary birdman, not only because, as most of the SunSoars, he was exceptionally beautiful with his violet eyes and silvery white wings, but because he had once died for Axis, only to have the Star God himself plead for the return of his soul with the GateKeeper in the realms of the Underworld. FreeFall’s journey to the gates of death had changed the birdman. He was still fun-loving and quick-witted, but there was a depth of experience and knowledge about him, even an eerie stillness, that touched the souls of all in his presence.

FreeFall found a stool to sit on, folding his wings neatly behind him and his hands patiently in his lap. Yllgaine of Nor, his dark eyes mischievous and his person beautifully clothed and jewelled even this early in the morning, touched Zared on the elbow. “There, a couch … if we leap and shove and scream I believe we can get there before Askam drapes himself along it.”

Zared bit his cheek to stop himself grinning and followed Yllgaine, decorous and polite despite his words, across the room, and sat down next to him.

He chatted quietly with Yllgaine about inconsequential matters while looking about the chamber. Caelum, who had called everyone so hastily from their beds, had yet to make an appearance. All the Five were here. Askam was lounging against a window, and Sa’Domai had taken a stool next to FreeFall. As well as RiverStar and Zenith (who, Zared was amused to note, had sat as far away from her sister as possible), Caelum had also invited SpikeFeather TrueSong and WingRidge CurlClaw. Zared did not know either very well. Both, if not aloof, were in some undefinable way unapproachable. Besides, SpikeFeather now spent so much time with Orr the Ferryman it was little wonder that few among the Achari – human, dammit! – race knew him well.

The gathering had arranged themselves comfortably and were either quiet, or murmuring softly to their neighbours, when Caelum entered from a door hidden behind a curtain.

Zared’s eyes widened a little at the sight of him – Caelum had also spent a sleepless night, it seemed. He was dressed and groomed perfectly, but his eyes were lined and weary.

Something was worrying Caelum badly.

A knot of fear coiled about Zared’s belly. Had he seen any guards stationed in the main stairwell or the corridors as he’d come to Caelum’s chambers? No, but they could now be lining the walls, and the Strike Force could be wheeling outside the windows, for all he knew.

He caught eyes with Zenith. She shrugged slightly, but indicated with a small gesture of her head not to worry. Caelum had not discovered that Zared had spent so many hours with Leagh last night.

Maybe not that, Zared thought, but what else? Gods! Where was Herme? Theod?

Caelum walked to a spot before the unlit fireplace, so large and extensive that its mantel loomed above his head. “I am sorry to have called you here so early,” he said, “but something has happened that –”

The outer door opened and Drago walked through. Two steps inside he stopped, apparently astonished at the gathering in Caelum’s apartment.

He ran his eyes slowly about those assembled, his eyes lingering on Zenith and RiverStar, then he looked questioningly at Caelum. “Brother? I do beg your forgiveness for so intruding –”

Zared thought he sounded anything but apologetic. In fact Drago’s voice was so carefully neutral, so perfectly modulated, that his words sounded like a speech he’d carefully rehearsed walking up the stairwell.

“– but I was searching for Zenith and one of the guards told me I could find her here.”

Drago paused, as if waiting for someone to say something. When no-one did, he carried on. “If I may ask, why so many people crowded into your chamber, Caelum? This all seems a trifle … unusual.”

Caelum stared at his brother, his eyes blazing, but Drago held his stare easily, his own face carefully set into an expression of inquiry.

Zared thought it extraordinary. Few people could hold Caelum’s gaze when he was angry, as he so obviously was now, but Drago apparently had no difficulty.

“Every member of our family who is currently in Sigholt seems to be present,” Drago said very softly, “and yet I wonder why it is that you forgot to extend me an invitation as well.”

Zared had to repress a small, hard smile. There was the crux of the matter. Drago had heard about this hastily convened meeting, and decided to attend as well. He’d put Caelum in a difficult position. If he asked Drago to leave, Caelum would look petty; if he asked him to stay, it would be clear that Drago had forced him to back down.

“Perhaps as Drago has business with me,” Zenith said into the silence, “he could stand with me here until this meeting is over … unless your errand is so important you suggest I leave with you now, Drago.”

Drago finally dragged his gaze away from his brother. “No, it was but a trivial idea I had for a new board game, Zenith. But, as I find the rest of the family here, I might as well stay.”

And he walked over to his sister, stepping around FreeFall and Sa’Domai as he did so.

Caelum looked at Zenith, looked at Drago, then took a deep breath and noticeably bit down his temper. Zared thought it must have taken a particular effort, for Drago had verged on the insolent – but Zared also had to admire Drago’s nerve, and sympathise with the man for being so obviously excluded from the life of Sigholt. For a SunSoar, that would indeed be galling treatment.

Despite the terrible deeds of Drago’s youth, Zared rather liked the man, and had always got on well with him. Drago was quick-witted and fast on his feet, and often spent a morning at weapon practice with Zared when the Prince stayed at Sigholt; Zared had good cause to rue the occasional lapse of concentration that had seen Drago give him a deserved nick with the sword blade. Watching him slip in beside Zenith, giving her a small smile, Zared decided that Drago was talent and intellect ignored and wasted by most of his family.

Then Caelum spoke again, and Zared turned his eyes back towards him.

“WolfStar has reappeared,” Caelum said, and watched the faces of everyone in the room. All wore varying expressions of horror, amazement, and shock. All, Caelum noted with disquiet, save Drago, who managed to combine shock with a certain degree of thoughtfulness, as if weighing up the possibilities for mischief in this development.

Caelum shifted his gaze to Zenith, who was so pale as to be ashen, and held a trembling hand to her throat as if deeply disturbed, and then he looked at RiverStar. She had recovered quickly from her shock, it seemed, for she held his gaze easily, her lips curled in one of her secretive smiles.

The gathering was quickly recovering from its surprise, and now voices rose and fell, asking questions, demanding explanations. WolfStar was a name well known throughout Tencendor, and equally deeply distrusted. The renegade Enchanter-Talon had not only murdered hundreds of Icarii children, but had – to all intents and purposes – allied himself with Gorgrael, enabling the frightful creature to all but destroy Tencendor with his ice and Skraelings.

True, he had fathered Azhure, and she had been instrumental in enabling Axis to eventually defeat Gorgrael, and true, the word was that WolfStar had been fighting on behalf of Axis all the time he had stood at Gorgrael’s side.

But that was almost beside the point. WolfStar was an Enchanter of frightening power – enough to see him come back from death through the Star Gate – and who worked only for his own purposes. And even if WolfStar’s purposes might ultimately be for Tencendor’s well-being, they had an appalling habit of causing the death of tens of thousands in their unravelling.

FreeFall locked eyes with Caelum. “I like this not!” he spat. “What mischief does WolfStar now?”

Caelum shrugged, made as if to say something, and then turned to Zenith as she spoke.

“I felt a horror last night,” she said, her eyes huge and round, her cheeks still pasty. “A sense of doom, as if the stars were falling in. Was this WolfStar?”

“Undoubtedly, Zenith.” Caelum swept his eyes about the room. “He appeared at the Star Gate, while Orr was there. And what they heard, and then what I heard, needs to be told so that –”

“Has Council been called already? Without my presence?”

An extraordinary figure had appeared in their midst. No-one was sure if he had slipped in through the door unnoticed or had simply used his extensive powers, a combination of both the Earth magic and the Star Dance, to materialise among them.

The man was tall, slender, bare-footed, bare-chested and smooth-backed, his lower body wrapped in a cloth that, although it hung gracefully about him, looked as if it had been woven from bark and twigs. His eyes were emerald green, and fierce, as if he might snap at any moment. His hair was a tangle of wild curls the colour of sun-faded wheat, and at his hairline, on each side of his forehead, curled two unmistakable horns.

Isfrael, hope of the Avar, conceived of Axis StarMan and Faraday, when she had been Tree Friend.