Faraday panicked. She opened her mouth to scream — and then stopped, very suddenly
calm.
“You choose for me,” she said. “I trust you to choose for me.”
“Good girl,” said the land, approvingly, and Faraday found herself rising slowly through a
lake of emerald water, rising, rising towards the surface.
She broke through the surface and shook the water from her hair, and laughed.
“DareWing,” she said, and her hand gripped his shoulder more strongly. “We will be here for you.”
DareWing spiralled through the air, more determined than at any time in his life.
The ground was not going to get him.
He was an Icarii! A birdman! The ground held nothing for him, nothing.
Then why did he feel the tug on his wings so painfully? Why did the weight of his body
seemingly grow with each breath so that now he found it almost impossible to stay aloft?
The ground called him: “Walk on me, be my lover, bind yourself to me.”
No!
“Bind yourself forever.”
No!
DareWing made a supreme effort, his shoulders and breast belly aching with the effort of
staying within the thermal.
But now he was spiralling downwards, not up.
The speed of his fall increased, and DareWing screamed at the ground. He would never
allow himself to be ground bound! He was a creature of the air, of the sky, of the stars!
The ground rushed towards him, and DareWing screamed in rather than anger. Not fear at
death or even pain, but fear that he would be ground bound, that he would never fly
again, never soar, never again be the proud Icarii warrior …
He hit the ground with a force that should have killed him outright, but the worst injury
DareWing felt was a bruised shoulder and thigh. He scrambled to his feet, and almost
overbalanced.
He kept to his feet only with a sustained effort. Why was his balance so out? Why was
everything so heavy?
DareWing halted, horrified.
His wings had become a burden. For the first time in his long life, DareWing realised that his
wings were a burden. They hung like great stone weights from his back, and he could barely move
them, let alone will them to lift him into the sky.
“No! Damn you! Give me my grace back! My balance! Give me back —”
My Icarii pride, he thought, and halted, amazed. Have I always been so arrogant?
So contemptuous of the ground?
So blind?
“What do you want of me?” he whispered. “How can I redeem myself?”
“Relinquish your arrogance,” the ground replied, “for that is what made the unwinged resent
you in ages past.”
Relinquish my wings? DareWing thought, and anger surged through him. No birdman
relinquishes his wings!
The ground was silent, and DareWing hung his head in shame.
His wings hung heavy behind him. A burden, not of weight, but of arrogance.
DareWing turned his head slightly so he could regard them. His wings were creations of
majesty and beauty, feathered in glossy black, powerful, graceful, the physical manifestation of
the Icarii “otherness”, the means by which the Icarii believed they were the creatures of the stars.
The Star Dance loved the Icarii for their beauty, and for their ability to fly.
“Wrong,” said the ground. “The Star Dance has tolerated your beauty and your flight skills,
but it has loved you for other reasons.”
“Really?”
“Your inner beauty, which thrives despite your arrogance —”
DareWing winced, and hung his head.
” — as well your courage to dare. You and your people are composed of jewel lights,
DareWing. Don’t hide them behind your arrogance.”
DareWing nodded. Courage, he thought, is not required for what I do now. It is boundless
humility.
And so DareWing turned his shoulders, and lifted his arms, and he took hold of one of his
wings. He took a deep breath, flexing the powerful flight muscles of chest and shoulder.
Then he tore the wing out.
He screamed, and doubled over, sobbing in agony, still gripping the wing. Blood
poured down his back, obscuring the brief glint of bone.
DareWing dug his teeth into his lips, fighting to remain conscious, then he threw the wing
aside.
It landed some two paces away, a useless appendage of flesh and feather.
Waves of blackness threatened to consume DareWing, but he fought against them. He took
hold of his remaining wing, his hands slipping in the blood from his back, then he steadied
himself, his eyes wild, his chest heaving in frantic breaths, and he tore it free.
It fell useless to the ground, and DareWing managed one final scream before the agony tipped
him into oblivion.
Faraday knelt by Dare Wing’s side, and her hand tightened its grip on his shoulder. His eyes were wide,
staring but unseeing, and his body jerked and jittered as if caught in some crazed, sickened dance.
“Faraday …” Leagh said, her voice tight, and she shifted on her chair.
“He will come through this shortly,” Faraday said. She paused, and her jaw tightened as if she
shared Dare Wing’s pain. “He must.”
“Nevertheless,” Leagh said, “he needs all of our aid.”
She, as Gwendylyr and Goldman, rose from their chairs, circled slowly, then knelt with Faraday.
Gwendylyr placed her hand on DareWing’s other shoulder, while Leagh and Goldman each took one of
the birdman’s hands.
“We love you,” Leagh whispered.
We love you, whispered her voice through DareWing’s tortured existence.
All of us, said a different voice, and Dare Wing realised it was the land itself.
“Really?” he said.
“Really?” Dare Wing whispered, and his eyes opened and stared into the four faces above him.
“I have relinquished my wings,” he said, and smiled.
Faraday returned his smile. “Is that so? Then how is it that they still sprout from your back?”
Dare Wing jerked in surprise, and rolled so he could see them for himself. “Oh,” he said, with such
an expression of amazement on his face that his companions laughed.
“DareWing,” Goldman said. “Did you realise your ground fever has broken?”
“I am well,” DareWing said. “I am well.”
And then Leagh gasped, and all looked about. Flowers were spreading over the entire field of bare,
ploughed earth, covering the ridges and furrows so completely that no one could see where the plough
had been.
“Artor is truly dead,” Faraday said, “and we are finally free.”
Chapter 9
Of Predestination and Confrontation
They stood before the seven-sided, white-walled tower and hated. “It stinks of the Enemy,” Sheol said.
“Badly.”
Qeteb did not speak. He sat his black beast and regarded the tower thoughtfully.
Finally he turned his head slightly to where StarLaughter half-sat, half-crouched on the ground. “Tell
me of its nature,” he said.
StarLaughter hissed.
Something frightful reached out from Qeteb and sunk deep talons into StarLaughter’s mind, and she
screamed, writhing amid the dirt.
“Spiredore! Its name is Spiredore!”
“You are such a fount of information,” Qeteb said. “Mother dear.”
The other Demons giggled.
StarLaughter quieted, but her eyes never left Qeteb’s form.
She had been a fool to allow this Demon to steal her son! Could she yet save her boy? Was there
something to be done that might mean —
“Your son died thousands of years ago,” Qeteb said. “Nothing can bring him back. Resign
yourself to a worthless and unwanted motherhood, StarLaughter.”
Her eyes glinted.
Qeteb took no notice. “Tell me about this tower.”
StarLaughter thought about remaining silent, but her lust for revenge had imbued her with a strong
sense of self-preservation.
She knew Qeteb was now only looking for the merest hint of an excuse to kill her.
Qeteb shifted slightly, and StarLaughter spoke. “Only a very few Icarii have ever been able to use
the tower. Its secret was closely guarded.”
Sheol muttered irritably, but Qeteb sat his mount silently, waiting.
“Nevertheless …” StarLaughter smiled, remembering how powerful she had once been, and
how great her destiny was bound to be, “I have eyes with which to observe, and a mind with which
to think —”
Mot sniggered.
“— and I believe that the tower will take a person — maybe any who ask it — wherever they wish
to go. Even its name points to its actions. It is a spire and it is a door.”
Qeteb sat, staring at the Icarii woman, knowing she spoke the truth. A useful piece of Enemy magic,
then, he thought, and pondered its implications. Could he use it? Perhaps. Was it a trap? Possibly…
possibly …
Could he risk the trap?
He turned his head and regarded the other Demons. He could send one of them …
No. Rox was gone — for the moment — and Qeteb did not want to risk the others. Qeteb’s
eyes flickered over Niah, but she was an impossible choice. Niah had no soul with which to form
the question, let alone a desire strong enough to make Spiredore act.
Who else?
Ah, of course! The Midday Demon lifted a mailed hand and beckoned.