Sara Douglass – Battleaxe
Prologue
1 THE TOWER OF THE SENESCHAL
2 AT KING PRIAM‘S COURT
3 THE LADY OF TARE
4 AT THE FOOT OF THE FORTRESS RANGES
5 IN THE PALACE OF THE KING
6 IN THE KING‘S PRIVY CHAMBER
7 IN THE BROTHER-LEADER‘S PALACE APARTMENT
8 FARADAY‘S BETROTHAL
9 LEAVETAKINGS AT DAWN
10 ACROSS THE PLAINS OF TARE
11 UNLOCKED DOORS
12 AT THE EDGE OF THE SILENT WOMAN WOODS
13 THE CAULDRON LAKE
14 INSIDE THE SILENT WOMAN KEEP
15 SILENT WOMAN NIGHT
16 TWO WHITE DONKEYS
17 THE ANCIENT BARROWS
18 THE SENTINELS SPEAK
19 A CLOUDY DAY
20 THE STORM
21 INSIDE THE ENCHANTER-TALON‘S TOMB
22 EVENING BY THE BARROWS
23 THE STAR GATE
24 ACROSS THE PLAINS OF ARCNESS
25 THE GOODPEOPLE RENKIN
26 ―BELLE MY WIFE!‖
27 TOWARDS FERNBRAKE LAKE
28 FERNBRAKE LAKE
29 THE BANE AND THE CHILD
30 THE MOTHER
31 SMYRTON
32 THE PRISONERS
33 THE FORBIDDEN VALLEY
34 GHOSTTREE CLAN
35 STARMAN
36 THE GHOSTTREE CAMP
37 JERVOIS LANDING
38 SIGHOLT
39 RIVKAH AWAKES
40 GORKENFORT
41 THE DUCHESS OF ICHTAR
42 RE-ACQUAINTANCES
43 THE SKRAEBOLD SPEAKS
44 VOWS AND MEMORIES
45 THE GROVES
46 IN THE HAND OF ARTOR
47 IN THE HANDS OF THE MOTHER
48 YULETIDE MORNING
49 YULETIDE
50 THE STREETS OF GORKENTOWN
51 THE LAKE OF LIFE
52 THE EARTH TREE GROVE
53 DEPARTURES
54 THE CHARONITES
55 THE ASSEMBLY OF THE ICARII
56 FREEFALL SUNSOAR
57 ESCAPE FROM GORKENFORT
58 BATTLEAXE
Glossary
About the Author
The Prophecy of the Destroyer
A day will come when born will be
Two babes whose blood will tie them.
That born to Wing and Horn will hate
The one they call the StarMan.
Destroyer! rises in the north
And drives his Ghostmen south;
Defenceless lie both flesh and field
Before Gorgrael‘s ice.
To meet this threat you must release
The StarMan from his lies,
Revive Tencendor, fast and sure
Forget the ancient war,
For if Plough, Wing and Horn can‘t find
The bridge to understanding,
Then will Gorgrael earn his name
And bring Destruction hither.
StarMan, listen, heed me well,
Your power will destroy you
If you should wield it in the fray
‘Ere these prophecies are met:
The Sentinels will walk abroad
‘Til power corrupt their hearts;
A child will turn her head and cry
Revealing ancient arts;
A wife will hold in joy at night
The slayer of her husband;
Age-old souls, long in cribs,
Will sing o‘er mortal land;
The remade dead, fat with child
Will birth abomination;
A darker power will prove to be
The father of salvation.
Then waters will release bright eyes
To form the Rainbow Sceptre.
StarMan, listen, for I know
That you can wield the sceptre
To bring Gorgrael to his knees
And break the ice asunder.
But even with the power in hand
Your pathway is not sure:
A Traitor from within your camp
Will seek and plot to harm you;
Let not your Lover‘s pain distract
For this will mean your death;
Destroyer‘s might lies in his hate
Yet you must never follow;
Forgiveness is the thing assured
To save Tencendor‘s soul.
Prologue
The woman struggled through the knee-deep snow, the bundle of dead wood she had tied
to her back almost as great a burden as the weight of the child she carried in her belly. Her breath
rasped in her throat before frosting heavily in the bitterly cold southerly wind. She was short and
strong, her legs and shoulders finely muscled by twenty-eight years of hard-won survival in her
harsh homeland. But she had always had the help and company of her people to aid her. Now she
was alone, and this, her third child, she would have to bear without assistance.
This would be her last trip across the valley. The severe winter storms of the past few
weeks had kept her iced into her shelter so that her supply of the precious hot-burning Timewood
was almost exhausted; if she did not have enough wood and dry stores remaining for her
confinement, then she would die and her child would die with her. Only in the past day had the
weather broken sufficiently to allow her to struggle through the snow to reach the Timewood
trees. Now the wind was growing harsher and the snow heavier and she knew she had only a
short time to reach her shelter. The knowledge that once the baby was born she would not be
able to travel far from her shelter drove her on.
Although her current solitude was a path she had chosen freely, worry ate at her bones.
And worry about her child also gnawed at her. Her previous two pregnancies had been
uncomfortable, especially in the final weeks, but she had borne those children with little fuss.
Her body had recuperated quickly and had healed cleanly each time. With this child she feared
her labour more than the lonely winter ahead. It was too large, too…angry. Sometimes at night
when she was trying to sleep it twisted and beat at the sides of her womb with such frantic fists
and heels that she moaned in pain, rocking herself from side to side in a futile bid to escape its
rage.
She paused briefly, adjusting the burden of wood on her back, wishing she could ease the
load of the child as easily. Last night it had shifted down into the pit of her belly, seeking the
birth canal. The birth was close. Perhaps tonight, perhaps tomorrow. She could feel the bones of
her pelvis grating apart with the pressure of the child‘s head each time she took a step, making it
hard to walk.
She squinted through the snow to the thick line of conifers about three hundred paces
ahead. She had done her best with her camp. It was sheltered well behind the tree line in the lee
of a rocky hill that, jutting above the peaks of the trees, was the first in a long range of hills
leading into the distant Icescarp Alps. Well before her pregnancy had begun to show, she‘d
slipped away from her friends and family and travelled the Avarinheim to reach this lonely spot
far to the north of her usual forest home. From the first of the autumn months, DeadLeaf-month,
she had occupied her days with gathering and storing as many berries, nuts and seeds as she
could. As hard as she searched, however, she had found only small amounts of malfari, the sweet
fibrous tubers that provided her people with most of their winter sustenance. She had been forced
to go without, and fears of what malnourishment might do to her and the child kept her awake at
nights. The remains of a few scrawny rabbits, dried into leathery strips, were all she had for
meat. She sighed and absently rubbed her belly, trying to ignore the fiery ache in her legs and
pelvis, desperately wishing for a few chickens or a goat to supplement her diet.
She should never have tried to carry this child to term. Had she remained with her people
she would not have been allowed to. It was a Beltide child, conceived during the drunken revelry
of the spring rites, a time when her people, the forest dwellers, and the people of the Icescarp
Alps assembled in the groves where mountain and forest met. There they celebrated the renewal
of life in the thawing land with religious rites, followed, invariably, by an enthusiastic excess of
whatever wine was left over from long winter nights huddled by home fires. Beltide was the one
night of the year when both peoples relaxed sufficiently to carry interracial relations to extremes
never practised throughout the rest of the year.
Every Beltide night for the past three years she had watched him, wanted him. He came
down to the groves with his people, his skin as pale and fine as the ice vaults of his home, his
hair the fine summer gold of the life-giving sun that both their peoples worshipped. As the most
powerful Enchanter of his kind he led the Beltide rites with the leading Banes of her own people;
his power and magic awed and frightened her yet she craved his skill, beauty and grace. This last
Beltide night past, eight months ago now, she had drunk enough wine to loosen her inhibitions
and buttress her courage. She was a striking woman, at the peak of her beauty and fitness, her
nut-brown hair waving thick down her back. When he‘d seen her striding across the clearing of
the grove towards him his eyes had crinkled and then widened, and he had smiled and held his
hand out to her. Eyes trapped by his, she had taken his outstretched fingers, marvelling at the feel
of his silken skin against her own work-callused palm. He was kind for an Enchanter, and had
murmured gentle words before leading her to a secluded spot beneath the spinning stars.