Enchanter: Book Two of the Axis Trilogy

“Axis. We SunSoars are a peculiar family. Our blood calls to each other so strongly that if we marry out of the family then we generally marry badly.”

Axis frowned. Today he, Rivkah, Azhure, Raum and the two Sentinels were starting their trek down through the mountain passes to the Avar groves to celebrate Beltide. “You marry each other, MorningStar? How can that be?”

MorningStar shrugged. “SunSoars are only happy when they marry each other, Axis. No, don’t look so horrified. None of us has gone mad yet. Well, not very many of us,” she muttered, half to herself. “Generally every second generation SunSoar cousins will marry each other. RushCloud, my husband, was also my first cousin. FreeFall and EvenSong, both first cousins, would have married. This pattern of marriages has kept our blood strong over the years.”

“And the generation that marries outside the family – their marriages … ?”

“Are generally passable at best, but often miserably unhappy. RavenCrest is SunSoar, but BrightFeather is not. They respect each other, but they share no passion. While RushCloud and I,” MorningStar smiled slowly, “lived our lives among the stars. Like FreeFall and EvenSong, we became lovers at thirteen.”

“Lovers at thirteen?” Axis was appalled. His sister? And FreeFall?

MorningStar raised a well-groomed eyebrow. “Well, why not? Thirteen is not young. Whether Icarii, Avar or human, at thirteen one begins to put away childish things and consider more mature pastimes. At what age did you first take a woman to bed?”

Axis reddened, and MorningStar laughed with delight before tipping her lovely silvery head on one side and regarding Axis thoughtfully. “We are both SunSoar and our blood sings strongly, Axis. Do not pretend you cannot hear it. Have you chosen your Beltide companion yet? Shall we let our blood sing together that night?”

Axis took a defensive step backwards, shocked.

“Ah,” she said seductively. “I am your grandmother, you say. Well, Axis, it has been done before, and I have no doubt it will be done again.” She smiled. “But not this Beltide, I think. Your Acharite reservation holds you back. A pity.”

She sat on a stool behind her. “I started to tell you why StarDrifter and Rivkah’s marriage ended in unhappiness. She is not SunSoar. They had a passion and a love, but StarDrifter’s blood constantly sings, looking for another whose blood sings back to him with the same Song. But,” MorningStar sighed, “there are no other SunSoar women for either him or you to marry. No,” she said tartly, watching Axis’ face, “SunSoars never marry or couple with first blood. It is Unclean. EvenSong is out of bounds to her brother and her father. Father and daughter, mother and son, brother and sister – there we draw the line, but only there. All else is freedom.”

“I will marry Faraday,” Axis said firmly, “when she is free.”

“And is she SunSoar?” MorningStar inquired archly.

“You know she is not.”

“Then you will have an unhappy marriage. Your blood, like StarDrifter’s, like EvenSong’s, will constantly crave another SunSoar. Perhaps your children will marry EvenSong’s. I hope that will be the case. They, at least, will know happiness.”

Angry, Axis turned away.

The journey through the alps was exhilarating. Rivkah had only come down these mountain passes on her own previously, had never shared the grandeur of the Icescarp Alps with anyone else. Now that she had such good companionship, she found herself enjoying the journey as never before. Since the night of the Assembly Rivkah’s manner had become more and more light-hearted, and Axis supposed that being freed from the strain of her increasingly unhappy marriage had cast her into a happier frame of mind.

The trails down the Icescarp Alps wound slowly through narrow ravines and valleys, past icefalls and, occasionally, behind them. Sometimes the gradient was steep, sometimes mild, but the view was always breathtaking. On either side of the trails great cliff faces of glassy black rock plunged into fern-bracketed glacier-fed rivers thousands of paces below them. In the afternoons, as the light began to fail and the mists thicken, Rivkah would lead them to small caves she’d discovered in her years of travelling up and down these trails. Here they would slip their cumbersome backpacks from their shoulders, laughing and complaining in the same breath, and set up camp for the night.

Before, Rivkah had always had to carry enough fuel, food, and blankets to keep her alive over the week or more it took her to traverse the trails. There was no vegetation this high in the alps to provide firewood, and no game to trap or kill.

Then the journey had been risky, but she had never travelled the mountain passes with an Enchanter before – and such an Enchanter! Axis’ powers kept the paths dry where before Rivkah had slipped and skidded dangerously, swept the shifting winds to one side where before they had often threatened to blow Rivkah from the narrow paths, and kept the cold at bay, surrounding the small party with balmy air. In the evenings he conjured up fires of green and red and purple, and provided them all with feather-soft mattresses of warm air.

Apart from the considerable difference Axis’ powers made, Rivkah enjoyed having her son virtually to herself. Previously StarDrifter had commanded so much of his attention Rivkah had found little time to talk with Axis. Now they chatted about his likes and dislikes, his life with the Seneschal, his life as BattleAxe, the good times and the bad times, as they walked side by side.

The evenings, when Rivkah shared Axis with their companions, were just as wonderful.

After they’d chosen a cave for the night, eased packs from aching shoulders and cleared the cave floor of debris, Axis would provide a roaring fire that warmed the entire party. Then he would sing to the cave walls, caressing them with his hands, and, as fast-gathering gloom descended outside, the rock gave off a gentle glow that intensified with the night.

Even their food was magical, but Axis had nothing to do with that. As he conjured fire and light each evening, Ogden and Veremund would slip off the light packs they carried, open the top flaps, rustle around mumbling and complaining for a few moments, and then draw out parcel after parcel of beautifully wrapped and packaged food. Honeyed hams, crisp-roasted poultry, peppered joints of beef and sundry other marinated delicacies ready to be warmed at the fire, fresh and dried fruits, a variety of breads and pastries, platters of vegetables, exotic cheeses, bowls of almonds and raisins and gourds of spiced wines – every evening the Sentinels unpacked a veritable feast.

“Ogden always sees to the packing,” Veremund said the first evening. “I have no idea how he does it.”

Ogden gaped at Veremund. “What? I packed not a crumb of this! I thought you did!” Then he frowned into his pack. “Where did you put the napkins?”

Axis, rising from the fire laughing, had told them to stop arguing and advised the others to simply enjoy the food and not push the Sentinels on where it came from. “They will just argue with each other,” he said to Azhure and Raum, “to keep from answering you.”

Each evening after they had eaten, Axis entertained with his wonderful voice and his skill on the harp. He sang Icarii melodies for the first part of the evening, but as the night deepened Axis’ mood changed and he sang ballads and songs of Acharite extraction, making Rivkah and Azhure smile and tap their fingers in pleasure. He far surpassed any court bard Rivkah had ever heard.

Axis often asked the others to sing with him, or to sing their own songs. Rivkah and Raum both sang well, Ogden and Veremund enthusiastically, but Azhure had one of the most dreadful voices anyone had ever heard, and after one attempt at joining them in song, she had laughed and promised not to sing again.

But they did not simply sing the evenings away. For long hours into each night they talked, Axis walking soft melodies up and down the strings of his harp as he listened. Sometimes they talked of the Icarii or Avar myths and legends, sometimes of the Star Gods. Occasionally Rivkah recalled her early fife amid the intrigue of the Carlon court. Ogden and Veremund, rascals that they were, told tales of the exploits of some of the early Icarii, tales of when the Icarii had first learned to fly and had sometimes fallen from the sky in tangled and embarrassing wreckages.

Late one night, early in their trek, Axis stretched out comfortably, his legs extended towards the fire, hands behind his head, his eyes on Azhure as she finished plaiting her raven hair for the night.

Azhure smiled a little uncertainly at him, then spoke to Raum. “Raum, may I ask about the Horned Ones? Are they Avar?”

Raum seemed not to mind answering Azhure’s question. “Yes. The Horned Ones were once Avar Banes. But only the strongest of the male Banes are allowed to complete the transformation to Horned Ones. It is the responsibility of the Horned Ones to act as the guardians of the Sacred Grove.”

“How do you change?” Axis asked, remembering the frightening beast of his nightmare outside the Silent Woman Woods. How could someone so apparently gentle as Raum metamorphose into such a frightening, angry creature?

Raum’s dark face was now unreadable. “There are some mysteries that I will not even tell you, Axis SunSoar. We simply … change. The change picks us, we do not pick it. When we feel the change begin, we wander the ways of the Avarinheim alone, for we no longer desire the companionship of our friends and family.”

“And no female Banes ever become Horned Ones?” Azhure asked, her thick plait hanging over her shoulder.

“No, Azhure. We do not know why. But no females walk the Sacred Groves as Horned Ones.” Raum frowned. “I think female Banes transform, but they guard their mysteries closely, and I do not know into what they transform, or where they go when they do. We each have our mysteries, Azhure, and we do not pry too deeply into them.”

As Raum spoke, Axis had sunk deeper into the memory of his dream of the Sacred Groves. “The Horned Ones haunt the trees that line the Sacred Grove, watching,” he whispered. “They drift with the power that lives among the trees.”

“How do you know that, Axis?” Raum asked.

“I travelled to the Sacred Grove once, Bane Raum, in a dream.”

To one side Ogden and Veremund nodded. They had felt this when they tested Axis in the Silent Woman Keep. The Horned Ones would not welcome the intrusion of a hated BattleAxe into their mysterious realms.

“You have?” Raum said. “How?”

“It started with a nightmare,” Axis began, sitting up again, and he told them of the night outside the Silent Woman Woods when his old nightmare had claimed him, but had turned instead into a dream of the Grove. He had stood on the cool grass, feeling the power and the eyes that moved among the encircling trees, watching with horror as the man with the magnificent, but terrifying, head of a horned stag approached. When challenged for his identity Axis had said that he was Axis Rivkahson, BattleAxe of the Seneschal, and the puzzlement that he had originally felt from the eyes in the trees turned to rage. As the Horned One neared, swinging his head from side to side with hate, Axis had screamed and woken from the dream.

“Your old nightmare?” Rivkah said after Raum had finished questioning Axis about his dream. “What do you mean?” she asked, thinking of her son, lost and alone without either of his parents and in the grip of nightmare.

Axis had never spoken of the nightmare that had haunted so much of his life to anyone, not even when his long-time lover, Embeth, Lady of Tare, had pressed him about it. Yet now he was telling this group without hesitation about the nightmare entity that had come to him throughout most of his life, the entity that claimed to be his unknown father. The dreams had stopped only after Axis escaped the fury of the head in the clouds outside the Ancient Barrows – when he’d realised that, whoever he might be, his father had loved him and could not have been the hateful voice of his nightmare.

“It was Gorgrael who came to you,” Veremund said. “Trying to break your heart and your spirit with lies about your father.”

Axis’ face flinched with the memory. “He said that my mother died giving birth to me, died cursing me for taking her life. I believed him. I had no choice, none to tell me differently.”

Appalled, Rivkah reached out and seized Axis’ hand. She finally understood what a lonely childhood he had led, thinking his mother had died hating him, not knowing who his father was. For a time both mother and son sat, holding hands, lending each other comfort.

Then Axis sighed and turned to Azhure, letting his mother’s hand go. “Azhure,” he said gently, “it is good to let go of old nightmares. Will you tell us how your back came to be so horribly scarred?”

Azhure’s reaction caused the only dark moment of the trip. Her whole body went rigid and she stared at Axis, her eyes dark and frightened. For a moment she said nothing, her mouth trembling, then she whimpered.