“Hello,” a gentle voice said behind him. “I often come here to think as well. It is a place of great
beauty and contentment, is it not?”
Isfrael whipped about, only barely managing to suppress a snarl of irritation.
Leagh stood there, her distended belly making her virginal white linen gown look ridiculous, and her
brown hair tumbling down about her shoulders and back as if she was trying to pretend to be a
Bane (how dare she!). Her eyes, the only part of her that demonstrated some sense, revealed her
trepidation.
She actually seemed to be waiting for a response, so Isfrael glanced about him. They were
standing in a small glade, a waterfall and rock pool to one side, and wildflowers spreading in drifts
through the short grasses of the open space.
“It’s lovely,” he said, and forced a smile.
Leagh relaxed a little, and she indicated a small pile of smooth-backed rocks beside the pool. “Will
you sit with me a while? I have not had a chance to talk to you before.”
That is because you are a plains dweller and have not been welcomed in my forests, thought
Isfrael, but he sat anyway.
Leagh began to chat about innocuous pleasantries, and Isfrael replied in monosyllables whenever she
paused for an answer. By the Horned Ones, she actually seemed to be enjoying herself in this pastelised
version of the real, vibrant world! Isfrael would have got up and left — this woman was more than
annoying — but some part of him wondered if she might have some information that could help
him achieve his ends.
After all, wasn’t she close to DragonStar? Might she not know something that had been
kept hidden from everyone else?
Once he’d thought of that, Isfrael paid more attention to Leagh herself. He began to reply
more pleasantly, leading the conversation himself, making the woman laugh with some of his tales of life in
Minstrelsea.
And Isfrael reaped rewards for his pains. After a short while Isfrael realised that there was
something profoundly unusual about Leagh. She was not just a “plains dweller”; she was
far
more. In fact, the way she moved, her smile, and the shift of her eyes made Isfrael realise that an
intriguing power played beneath the surface of her outwardly pleasant demeanour.
Leagh was as powerful, if not more so, than any of the Avar Banes had been!
But how could this be so? The Acharites had no access to power, had they?
Very gradually, and as carefully as he could, Isfrael started to redirect the conversation. He cloaked
himself in an aura of innocuousness —
Aren’t the horns growing from my forehead cute? See the cloth of twigs that cloak my loins:
isn’t that the most naively rural thing you ever saw? See my discomfort regarding my mother,
Faraday: doesn’t that make you want to hug me and make it all better?
— and harvested the prize, for Leagh lost whatever initial caution she’d had, and talked and laughed
freely with him.
Yes, she had power now. Woken by DragonStar, although every Acharite had the potential for such
power within them.
“What do you mean?” said Isfrael, furrowing his brow in muddled puzzlement.
“Well,” said Leagh, and she told him of the original Enchantress, Urbeth —
“Urbeth!” Isfrael said, truly shocked. “Urbeth?”
“Yes! Isn’t it amazing? Well …” Leagh told him of Urbeth’s three sons. One had founded the Icarii
race.
“And fathered by a sparrow, Isfrael!” Leagh said, laughing. “Can you imagine the affront to the
proud Icarii?”
Another son had founded the Charonite race.
“And the third?”
“Urbeth sent the eldest son from her home, because he denied his own magic and his own potential.
This son was fathered by the man she loved the most. Isfrael, you will never guess who it
was!”
Isfrael wondered if this agonising process would proceed faster if he twisted his hands about
her throat and physically forced the words out.
But he smiled congenially, and forced a pleasant bewilderment across his face. “No, I cannot. Tell
me.”
“Noah did!”
“Noah?”
So then Leagh told Isfrael about the Enemy, and their battle many millennia ago against the Demons.
Having trapped and dismembered Qeteb, they then sent his life parts across the universe in a
fleet of craft. When the four craft crashed on Tencendor, creating the four Sacred Lakes, only one of the
Enemy survived: Noah.
“And he met Urbeth, and fathered the eldest son. But this son denied his magic, and when he
founded the Acharite race, they not only suppressed their magic, they relentlessly hunted down all other
wielders of magic.”
Isfrael kept his face bland, although internally he seethed with fury. The Acharites and their axes had
hounded and slaughtered his people for over a thousand years.
“And so all Acharites can use their power?”
And as he said that, Isfrael suddenly realised why this information was so vitally important.
Sanctuary was a construction of the Enemy, or of their remnant power within the land … and the
magic of the Acharites was the magic of the Enemy. By the Sacred Groves … was this what he’d
been seeking?
As he thought that, Leagh gave him the final element.
“No. Acharites cannot use their magic unless they can return through death.”
“What do you mean?”
“We’ve all suppressed our power so assiduously that only death can free it. Faraday, myself,
Gwendylyr, Goldman, and even DareWing, who has ancient Acharite blood in him, can use the power
because we have been through death, and have been recreated.”
Isfrael nodded, and said a few more polite words, but he was not ungrateful when Leagh sighed and
said she’d return to her apartment for a nap. “And to see Zared, who mopes about unbearably
in this place.”
Leagh smiled apologetically. “He is a man who thrives on the doing, not on the waiting.”
Isfrael nodded, and let the woman walk away.
Was this the information he could trade for his freedom to get to the Sacred Groves? Almost …
almost … but how could the Demons use it?
And then Isfrael remembered the soulless automat that the Demons had with them, and he laughed
triumphantly.
He had the key!
Now all he had to do was get out of Sanctuary.
Chapter 13
Hidden Conversations
Sometimes the most insanely unhinged of people manage to assume the demeanour of the coldly logical,
and so it was with StarLaughter. She had her purpose — as madly illogical as it might seem to anyone
else — and purpose gave her the appearance of sanity.
She stared thoughtfully towards Spiredore, her now composed face wiped free of any
remaining spittle. Then, making up her mind, StarLaughter walked confidently back to Spiredore, its
white-walled towers still gleaming incongruously in the devastated landscape.
“Pray to every star in existence I have the time to do what I must,” she muttered, and then
tossed her head at a low-flying mind-maddened egret. She smiled at it; one could not be sure these days,
among this horde of demented livestock, of which reported directly to the Demons and which just
eddied about in chaotic dementia, and StarLaughter knew she had to be careful.
After all, wasn’t almost everyone in this devastated world plotting against her?
A hand grasped her ankle, and StarLaughter shrieked and tried to jerk herself free.
The hand tightened, and StarLaughter gave in to an instant of uncontrolled panic.
Only for an instant, as she realised who held her.
“WolfStar,” she cried, almost unable to grasp her good fortune. This was a sign from the
Stars themselves!
Wolf Star completely missed the momentary joy that swept
across StarLaughter’s face. His fingers tightened fractionally about her ankle. “I can feel your heartbeat
thudding through your veins,” he whispered. “Did I surprise you?”
She pulled herself free — she would allow no-one to bind her again, not even WolfStar — and
stepped back. Her husband was a mess; his body was covered in bruises, abrasions and weeping scabs.
Clotting blood besmeared his chest and belly, and streaked his face and hands. StarLaughter thought he
should at least make the attempt to wipe it off.
Almost as if he’d read her mind, WolfStar absently wiped a hand across his chest, and flicked some
of the blood away.
It made no difference.
“Why are you still here?” StarLaughter said. “I thought you might have made good your escape by
now.”
But she knew why he was still here, didn’t she? Destiny had meant him to find her. One of her hands
twitched, half-extended itself towards WolfStar, then dropped.
“Who is it?” he hissed, making an unsuccessful grab at the hem of her tattered gown.
“What?” Surely he recognised her!
“Who still controls the enchantment in this Star-forsaken land?” WolfStar said. ” Why is there still
enchantment about?”
StarLaughter chewed her lip, wondering if WolfStar’s experiences had left him slightly
deranged.
“Tell me!” WolfStar shouted, managing to grab her ankle again and pull her over.