Sinner

Zenith shifted nervously, as did most others in the room. She was slightly apprehensive of her older brother. Although he was only a few years older than her, and although they had shared a childhood at Sigholt, Isfrael had changed since leaving to live with the Avar in the great forests to the east. Where once had been laughter was now only studied silence. Where once had been shared warmth was now only wary distance. Now Isfrael was all forest, all for the Avar. Alien, as if he had never shared a childhood with the other SunSoar children. There was a darkness, almost violent in its intensity, about the Mage-King. A tension within him, as if he would uncoil and strike at any moment.

His mother, the creature that had once been Faraday, still roamed the Minstrelsea and Avarinheim forests, but was so fey and so shy that Zenith did not know anyone who had seen her over the past thirty years.

“Isfrael,” Caelum finally said with commendable calmness. “This is not a Council, but rather a hastily convened gathering to discuss my late-night meeting with WolfStar.”

Isfrael’s eyebrows rose almost to his horns. “Then I am indeed glad I made the effort to arrive a day or so ahead of schedule. I have long held a wish to meet this demon of myth.”

“You should have spoken earlier, Isfrael. Had I known, I would have walked the paths of the Sacred Groves to meet you long before now.”

Barely over the shock of Isfrael’s sudden appearance, everyone in the room now looked towards the gloomy, shadowy fireplace at Caelum’s back; Caelum himself whipped about, and stepped to one side.

There was a movement within the vast interior of the hearth, and then a figure stepped out.

WolfStar. For everyone in the room who had never seen him – and that was most – it was immediately apparent from whom so many of the present-day SunSoars had inherited their copper hair and violet eyes. With his colouring and his golden wings, WolfStar was not only remarkably handsome, but radiated such power that everyone in the room found themselves either stepping back, or inching as far down in their seats as they could.

Zenith cringed against a far wall, her knees threatening to buckle, her heart thumping erratically in her chest, barely able to breathe. The doom that had surrounded her last night had returned thrice-fold the instant WolfStar had spoken, and now Zenith did not know how anyone else in the room could stay so calm, when to her the entire universe seemed in danger of self-destruction.

A hand grasped her arm and prevented her sliding to the floor.

Drago.

Zenith tried to speak, to thank him, but could not, for now WolfStar was staring at her, now walking towards her, and Drago had to slide his arm about her waist to stop her toppling over in the extremity of her horror.

“Zenith,” WolfStar said, stopping a pace away. It was not a question, not a greeting, just a statement, but Zenith felt as if he had somehow taken command of her soul with that one word.

What was wrong with her? Why fear him so much? Why did he affect her this badly?

Zenith, be calm. I am with you, I will protect you.

Caelum, speaking to her with the mind voice that all Enchanters used. Together with Drago’s arm about her waist, it saved Zenith from fainting completely away.

WolfStar’s eyes moved fractionally; he had also caught Caelum’s thought.

No-one can best me, fool boy! His mind moved back to the birdwoman before him. Zenith, do not fear me. Never fear me.

And he reached out and touched her cheek.

Some of the unreasoning fear vanished with that touch, but with it came a muddle of confused thoughts and images: the Dome of Stars on the Island of Mist and Memory, but seen from the interior, where Zenith had never been; a room in a peasant house, a man advancing to her, his hands outstretched in anger; a child, a raven-haired girl, nursing at her breast.

WolfStar’s fingers dropped from her cheek, and with them went the images.

WolfStar smiled, his eyes tender, then turned slightly to Drago – and snarled.

It was a horrible, harsh, totally aggressive sound, and it appalled everyone in the room. Drago himself literally thudded back against the wall, and no-one watching knew if it was simply his own fear and shock that had caused him to leap backwards, or WolfStar’s power.

“Vile creature!” WolfStar spat at him, his hands twitching. “Azhure should have killed you for your efforts in trying to murder Caelum!”

“Why quibble about a few years between deed and execution?” Drago shot back. “My mother may not have killed me then, but she ensured my inevitable death!”

Zared, watching, was consumed with two equally strong reactions. First, incredulity that Drago should have so quickly recovered to meet such frightening anger, and secondly, a sudden insight into how Drago must feel living with virtually immortal siblings – and knowing he had once shared that future – while he lined and aged day by day.

WolfStar hissed in Drago’s face, but this time the man did not flinch, holding WolfStar’s furious eyes with the ease that he’d previously held Caelum’s.

By the gods of Earth and Stars, Zared thought, that man has more courage than a battalion of battle-hardened soldiers put together!

“WolfStar!” Caelum snapped, and the Enchanter turned about, rearranging his expression into one of genial goodwill as he did so.

“But there is one more I must yet greet,” he said, as he stepped over to RiverStar and kissed her full on the lips.

Zared blinked, then decided to be unsurprised. RiverStar’s lusts were so widely gossiped about that no doubt even WolfStar had heard of her escapades. And, as sexual liaisons between grandparent and grandchild within the SunSoar clan were not forbidden, he supposed WolfStar had full right to so lingeringly enjoy RiverStar’s mouth.

Certainly RiverStar was in no hurry to end the kiss.

About the room eyes dropped and cheeks reddened. Zared himself eventually looked away; even high Tencendorian society has its pruderies, he thought, although both WolfStar and RiverStar seemed intent on making an exhibition of themselves.

“What a beautiful girl Azhure birthed,” WolfStar whispered. “And so practised.”

RiverStar almost visibly preened.

“WolfStar!” Caelum’s voice cut across the tableau, and WolfStar straightened and looked about, locking eyes here and there, smiling as people shifted and dropped their own gazes, acknowledging FreeFall and Sa’Domai with a nod.

Zared himself felt WolfStar’s power as the Enchanter’s eyes swept over him, but WolfStar apparently thought Zared of no account, for he spared him nothing more than a fleeting glance.

For the first time since he’d entered the room, Zared let himself relax. Caelum knew nothing about the troop movements to the west (and of course, Zared told himself, they are only there in case Askam moves against me), and even if WolfStar had reappeared, no-one yet had been burned to ashes, and Sigholt still stood as solid as ever.

But Zared flicked a glance at Zenith. She had recovered somewhat, but still appeared nervous and shaky.

Isfrael, who of all in the room appeared least put out by WolfStar’s presence, now stood with his arms folded across his chest and his feet well apart. “Where have you been, WolfStar? The last anyone heard of you was when you confounded my father amid the icy drifts of the northern tundra forty years ago.”

WolfStar grinned at the memory. “Axis thought to best me. He failed. But to answer your question, I have been …” he paused, his face set in a theatrical expression of thoughtfulness, “… about. Drifting.”

“That explanation will hardly relieve any minds within this room,” Caelum said. “Much can be accomplished in forty years.”

“But no mischief, Caelum. No mischief. Now, would you like me to explain to this group of open-eyed and slack-mouthed listeners what we –”

“What we heard,” Caelum interrupted, obviously increasingly irritated by the way WolfStar so effortlessly commanded the room, “was something beyond the Star Gate. Something that whispers. Something that has caused WolfStar to reappear. Whatever it is, or they are, it calls for WolfStar.”

Voices again rose in shock and bewilderment. Something beyond the Star Gate?

Caelum’s voice cut across the murmuring. “WolfStar, will you speak? Will you offer, for once, some degree of explanation?”

WolfStar, whose eyes had drifted back to Zenith, her own gaze now firmly on the floor, sighed and looked about.

“I threw two hundred and twelve Icarii through the Star Gate,” he said bluntly, horrifyingly, into the slight silence that had followed Caelum’s request. “I killed them. Including my wife, StarLaughter.”

“And her son,” FreeFall put in grimly. The SunSoar Talons had long lived with the guilt that one of their number had committed such atrocities.

“We had named him …” WolfStar shifted his weight slightly, hiding the momentary gleam of amusement in his eyes. “We had named him DragonStar.”