Pilgrim by Sara Douglas

The girl who had come in with Drago earlier, the strange waif called Katie, sat by the

fire, her face downcast, alternately scratching and then smoothing the feathers of the lizard.

Then Leagh turned her face and looked at Drago.

He was staring directly at her, his face showing the marks of exhaustion, as if he had

recently been through some trial. Nevertheless, his eyes were soft, and he smiled a little at her regard. His legs were slightly apart, and his hands were folded before him, and as she watched he

moved one of them slightly, as he were…

…as if he were tossing a flower into a field of flowers!

As Faraday had been overwhelmed by a vision of a field of flowers, so also had Leagh

been visited by a vision which, though similar to Faraday‘s, was also different.

She had been in a dark, dark forest, the trees completely stripped of leaves so that only

dead limbs reached out. There was no sun, only a thick grey fog. The ground was thigh-deep mud, and this mud simmered about her legs; hot, horrid, sucking her down.

She was in a land called hopelessness.

Then a voice had called out. It had called a name, although she did not know she had a

name. She looked up, and there, leaning comfortably in the fork of a nearby tree, was a man. A

wonderful, glorious man, with a strong face and copper hair, and such dark violet eyes that they

seemed to absorb all the grey fog into them. He was dressed only in a white linen hip wrap, as if

he were about to leap into a bathhouse pool, but at his hip swung a golden sword, with an oddly

shaped hilt that she could not immediately discern.

A fairy sword, and yet she sensed that it was sharp and deadly, and somehow hungry.

A movement caught her eye, and she looked away from the sword.

In his hand he had held a large, pure white lily.

“This,” he said, holding out the lily to her, “represents your life.”

And she had cried, for the lily was so beautiful, its scent was so extraordinary, that she

knew it could not possibly represent her life.

“Please take me home,” she had whispered.

With a sweeping, graceful gesture, he’d thrown the lily out into the mud.

And suddenly there was no mud, and no fog, and no bare dead trees.

She was standing in a field of wildflowers, an infinite field under an infinite blue sky.

And she had felt his hand in hers. “Welcome home,” he said.

So now Leagh looked at Drago, and her eyes filled with tears, and his smile deepened

very, very slightly, and she knew that he, too, was remembering the field of flowers.

―You are a magician,‖ she said quietly, and at her words, Faraday lifted her head and

looked at Drago herself.

―And you?‖ Drago asked Leagh.

―I am different,‖ she answered and realised that, indeed, she was different.

She had now taken her place within the infinite field of flowers.

In that moment, Leagh had her first, true understanding of what Drago would do to

Tencendor, and she gasped, and looked away, shaken beyond belief.

―The night beyond the next we will go to the Western Ranges,‖ Drago said into the very

quiet room. ―All of us in this room, save Herme who will stay to watch Carlon.‖

Leagh looked at Faraday, and then both women looked at Katie.

―We will go to sow flowers,‖ the girl said, and laughed.

57

Gorken Pass

Axis, Azhure and Caelum left Star Finger immediately after Caelum had destroyed the

Hawkchild—and very nearly himself.

―There is no point sitting here and practising, or brooding,‖ Caelum had said, unusually

assertive and almost confident. ―The TimeKeepers quest, and we but waste away here in this

mound of rock and ice.‖

―Where?‖ Axis had said, accepting Caelum‘s leadership. ―Grail Lake,‖ Caelum replied,

and had picked up the Enchanted Song Book and walked from the chamber.

It felt strange…no, worse than ―strange‖, that she should set out on such a dangerous and

desperate mission with nothing more to fight with than an ordinary bow. She had asked Caelum

if they could detour via Sigholt to collect the Wolven, but he had shaken his head and said that it

would be useless in the battle before them. But it was not only the lack of the Wolven that made

Azhure feel so naked. As she had lost the Wolven, so also had the Alaunt gone. Azhure kept

looking over her shoulder, but they were never there.

Where were they? Where? They‘d disappeared in the hour or so after Drago had gone.

Had they gone with him?

Azhure shook her head, struggling to reconcile within herself the years of ingrained

distrust she had for Drago, and that instant of overwhelming love she‘d felt from him and for him

when he‘d looked into her eyes in that dank basement.

Something was going on…something was changing—but what?

Who was Drago?

Azhure gnawed at the thought as she might worry at a troublesome tooth.

Had she ever hated him, even after he‘d proved so foul as to ally himself with Gorgrael

against Caelum? If she had hated him, and thought him completely beyond redemption, then

surely she would have killed him atop Sigholt, rather than just reversing his blood order.

Wouldn‘t she?

What had stopped her doing that? Hope, or maternal blindness?

Or, some other guiding hand?

Caelum had loathed Drago since their babyhood, and had feared him even more than he‘d

hated him. Yet now Caelum and Drago seemed to have reconciled. Why? How?

Axis had told her of Caelum‘s insistence that should he die, then the Enchanted Song

Book must go to Drago.

―DragonStar,‖ Azhure whispered into the cold northerly that whipped her words away

over the mountains. ―Could you still be there?‖

Is that why the Alaunt had gone to him?

Then a thought so devastating hit Azhure that she stopped dead in her tracks, staring

unseeing at Axis and Caelum striding away before her.

Like Caelum, Drago had also been conceived wrapped in the magic of Beltide night. The

infant DragonStar, so powerful, so amazingly powerful, had always claimed to be StarSon.

No-one had believed him. No-one, because they were always blinded by the fact Caelum had

been born first. Because Caelum had been so loved.

The Maze Gate had named the Crusader as the StarSon a year after Caelum‘s birth. They

had thought it was because it was then sure that Caelum was the Crusader, and it was then that

Axis named him StarSon. But was it, in fact, because DragonStar had just been born?

―Stars, Caelum,‖ she murmured, her eyes thick with tears. ―Is that why you now work in

tandem with Drago? Why you insist that the book go to Drago?‖

Was it…was it because Caelum expected to die? What was the understanding between

Caelum and Drago?

―Mother?‖ Caelum had walked back to her, and now stood with an expression of such

complete love on his own face that Azhure almost broke down completely.

No! No! Not Caelum! No! Not him!

He lifted a hand and gently wiped a tear from her cheek. ―Mother, whatever I do now, I

do with such joy in my soul, and such love for you and my father, and this land which we all

strive for, that you do not need to cry. Please.‖

Azhure lowered her head. When she finally raised it again, her eyes were bright with

naked pain…and acceptance.

She looked past Caelum to where Axis waited impatiently for them. ―Does…does he

realise?‖

―No.‖

―Dear Stars above, Caelum, I cannot tell him!‖

Caelum stepped forward and enveloped Azhure in a tight hug. ―Azhure,‖ he muttered,

―you and Axis have another son worth as much love as you expend on this one. Tell him that, if

nothing else.‖

―Caelum?‖ Axis called. ―Azhure? What is it?‖

―How can I ever tell him that the son he loves so much is going to—‖

Caelum stopped her mouth with a hand. ―Axis will need to acknowledge Drago one day,

Azhure, he must!‖

―But—‖

―I have welcomed him into the House of the Stars, but Axis and you must also do the

same, and Axis must also acknowledge him as—‖

―I know, I know.‖

She pulled out of Caelum‘s embrace. ―No-one will ever take your place in my heart,‖ she

said. ―No-one.‖

And she pushed past him and walked down the narrow trail towards Axis.

Late that afternoon, as dusk approached, they camped in one of the final gullies of the

western Icescarp Alps. In the morning they would enter Gorken Pass.

―Gorken Pass,‖ Axis said softly as they sat within a small cave, its mouth blocked by a

fire. ―At Gorken Pass I had thought to have freed Tencendor once and for all.‖

No-one said anything to that, but they all remembered the strange battle that had been