of the plunging animal.
He grabbed automatically, finding the Sanctuary of a horse’s mane with his left hand, and the wiry
strength of a man’s forearm with his right.
“Keep still!” a man’s voice barked. Axis turned his eyes up, and looked into the face of his hated
son, Drago.
Except this man was not Drago. Axis instinctively felt it the instant he lay eyes on his face, and
he knew it for sure once the man had deposited him on the road to Sanctuary.
This was a man who had once been Drago.
Axis bent over, resting his hands on his knees, and drew in great breaths, trying to recover his
equilibrium at the twin shock of the bridge’s death and the appearance of … of …
Axis looked up, although he did not straighten. “What happened?” he said, not asking what he truly
wanted to know.
The man slid off the horse, and Axis spared the animal a brief glance.
Gods! That was Belaguez!
Utterly shocked, Axis finally stood up straight, staring at the horse.
“I do not understand why the bridge died,” the man said, and Axis slid his eyes back to him. He was
lean but strong, with Axis’ own height and musculature and with coppery-coloured hair drawn back into
a tail in the nape of his neck.
The way I used to wear it as BattleAxe, Axis thought involuntarily.
The man was naked, save for a snowy linen cloth bound about his hips, and the most
beautiful — and most patently enchanted — sword that Axis had ever seen. Its hilt was in the shape of a
lily, and Axis could see the glimpse of a mirrored blade as it disappeared into a jewelled scabbard. The
scabbard hung from an equally heavily jewelled belt, balanced by a similarly jewelled purse at the man’s
other hip.
Axis slid his eyes to the man’s face.
Plain, ordinary, deeply lined, somewhat tired … and utterly extraordinary. Alive and hungry with
magic. Serene and quiet with tranquillity.
Dark violet eyes regarded him with humour, understanding, and …
“Love?” Axis said. “I do not deserve that, surely.”
His voice was very hard and bitter.
“It is yours to accept or not,” DragonStar said, “as you wish.”
Axis stared at his son, hating himself for hating what he saw. “What have you done with Caelum?”
DragonStar paused before he replied, but his voice was steady. “Caelum is dead.”
Axis’ only visible reaction was a tightening of his face and a terrible hardening of his eyes. “You led
him to his death!”
“Caelum went willingly,” DragonStar replied, his voice very gentle. “As he had to.”
Axis stared, unable to tear his eyes from DragonStar’s face, although he longed desperately to look
somewhere, anywhere, else. “I —” he began, then stopped, unable to bear the hatred in his voice, and
unable to understand to whom, or what, he wanted to direct that hatred.
There was a movement behind him, and then Azhure was at his side, as she had been for so many
years.
And as she had so many times previously, she saved him from this battle.
Azhure touched Axis’ arm fleetingly, yet managing to impart infinite comfort with that briefest of
caresses, then she stepped straight past her husband to DragonStar.
She paused, then spoke. “Did Caelum see you like this? As … as you were meant to be?”
DragonStar nodded, and Azhure’s entire body jerked slightly.
Then she leaned forward and hugged her son.
He pulled her in tight against him, drawing as much love from her as she drew comfort from
him.
Axis stared, not understanding, and not particularly wanting to.
Eventually Azhure pulled back and turned slightly so she could hold out a hand to her husband. Her
eyes and cheeks were wet, but there was sadness in her face as well, and she continued to hold
DragonStar tightly with her other hand.
“Axis? I —”
“What is this, Azhure?” His voice was harsh. “Caelum is dead. Dead! And —”
“Caelum knew he was going to die,” Azhure said. “He accepted it.”
Axis closed his mouth into a cold, hard line.
“And he accepted,” Azhure said, “as we should have done earlier, that Drago …” she
glanced back at her son, “that DragonStar was born to be the true StarSon.”
Axis opened his mouth to say No! but found he could not voice the word. The man standing before
him was clearly not the sullen Drago who’d moped about Sigholt for so many years, and he was just as
clearly a man who wielded such great power that he … he … just might be …
Axis turned his head to one side, and was surprised to feel the wetness of tears on his own cheeks
as the breeze brushed his face. “Oh gods,” he said, and sank down on the ground.
“Will you meet with your father in our apartment a little later?” Azhure asked DragonStar hurriedly.
“For the time being, I think it would be best if he and I had some time alone …”
DragonStar nodded.
“Thank you,” Azhure murmured, then bent down to her husband. DragonStar vaulted back onto
Belaguez’s back and rode down the trail into Sanctuary.
DragonStar chose to ride unnoticed into Sanctuary; no-one noted his entry, and thus no-one disturbed
him in the three hours before Azhure sought him out.
“You father waits for you,” she said, giving DragonStar directions to their apartment. She looked him
over — DragonStar had discarded his linen hip-wrap for a pair of fawn breeches, brown boots and a
white shirt, but he still wore the sword and jewelled purse at his belt.
“And?” DragonStar asked.
Azhure nodded very slightly. “And he is prepared to accept.”
DragonStar laughed softly. “Prepared to, but has not yet.”
“It is a start.”
“Aye, it is that. Azhure … why have you accepted so easily? Even I denied it for long months.”
“Perhaps because I fought to keep you to a viable birthing age when you fought so hard to abort
yourself. I have a mother’s belief in her offspring.”
DragonStar paled, both at her words and at the hardness in her voice. He began to say something,
but Azhure stopped him with a hand on his chest.
“I had no right to speak thus to you, DragonStar. I have no fight to speak harshly to any of my
children. I was too absorbed in my magic and in Axis to be a good mother to any but Caelum.”
“Azhure —”
Azhure well understood why he would not call her “mother”.
“— it is never too late to be a friend to your children. I think that you and I will always be
better friends than parent and child.”
Azhure smiled, and lowered her eyes a little.
“But,” DragonStar continued softly, relentlessly, “I think that Zenith needs you as a friend far more
than I. There are many things that can be saved from this disaster, Azhure, and I do hope that Zenith will
be among them.”
Azhure’s eyes jerked back to DragonStar’s face. “And I haven’t even seen her since I came
to Sanctuary!”
“I did not know that,” DragonStar said, “but I am not surprised by it.”
And then he turned and walked out the door without another word, leaving his mother staring at his
back and with a hand to her mouth in horrified mortification.
Axis was waiting for DragonStar in a small and somewhat unadorned chamber, so plain that DragonStar
thought it almost out of character for Sanctuary. Perhaps Axis had spent hours here when he’d first
arrived, throwing out all the comforts and fripperies and creating an environment austere enough
for any retired war captain to feel at home in.
Axis had never been happy or content away from war, DragonStar thought, and wondered for
the first time how frustrating life must have been for Axis once Gorgrael had been disposed of and
Tencendorian life was relatively peaceful. No wonder he’d handed over power to Caelum: the endless
Councils spent debating the finer details of trading negotiations must have bored his father witless.
Had it been any more challenging being a god? DragonStar wondered.
Axis was seated at a wooden table, or, rather, he was leaning back in a plain wooden chair, his legs
crossed and resting on the tabletop, his arms folded across his chest.
On the table surface before him sat a jug of beer, two mugs, and a cloth-wrapped parcel. At the
end of the table directly down from Axis sat an empty, waiting chair.
DragonStar paused in the doorway, nodded as an acknowledgment of Axis’ presence,
then strolled across to the table, pulled out the chair and sat down. “So tell me, Axis, how am I
being greeted? As a drinking companion? Comrade-in-arms?” He paused very slightly. “Long-lost son?”
Another, slightly longer pause, and the ghost of a grin about his lips. “If the prodigal son, then should
I expect poison in the beer? A knife thrown from a darkened corner by a faithful lieutenant?”