wandered desolate into the land, which he eventually destroyed to assuage his grief at his
mother‘s rejection, while his younger brothers stayed many more years learning at the
Enchantress‘ knee.
―You have a duty,‖ she told her middle son, ―to wander and watch.‖ He nodded, and
thought he understood.
―You have a duty,‖ she told her youngest son, ―to dance your delight to the stars.‖ And he
too nodded, thinking he understood.
Her two younger sons made their way into the world. The middle brother was reflective,
and haunted shadows, thinking there to catch a glimpse of the unknowable. Eventually, his eyes
turned downwards to the chasms that led into the earth, and there he made his way.
The youngest brother was wide of smile and bright of curiosity. He clutched in his hand
his mother‘s ring, that which would give birth to all of the Enchanters‘ rings, and it impelled him
to cast his eye to the high places, and to there he climbed.
All three brothers took to themselves many wives from among the humanoid races that
populated the land, and these wives bore them many children. These children took to themselves
husbands and wives, and they likewise bred many children. Within a thousand years the plains and the chasms and the mountains rang with the voices of the brother races. Mankind, the
Acharites, who followed their cattle through dusty plain trails and built themselves houses of
brick. The Charonites, who explored the misty waterways beneath the trails and took the houses
others had left behind. And the Icarii, beloved of the gods, who climbed the crags and cried out
to the stars and built themselves houses of music and mystery.
Then, the Icarii did not have wings.
The story of how the Icarii found their wings is rightly the love story of EverHeart and
CrimsonStar. CrimsonStar was an Enchanter unparalleled in the as yet young history of the
Icarii, but his love for the stars and for the Star Dance paled into insignificance beside the love
he bore his wife, EverHeart. CrimsonStar and EverHeart lived in the lower ranges of the Icescarp
Alps. Then, long, long before the Wars of the Axe, the Icarii populated most of the mountain
ranges of Tencendor, the majority living in the Minaret Peaks. But CrimsonStar and EverHeart
were newly married and preferred to enjoy the relative isolation of the Icescarp Alps. Talon
Spike was only just being opened up and hollowed out, and the few dozen Icarii within their
immediate vicinity were, truth to tell, a few dozen too many for CrimsonStar and EverHeart.
They did what they could to keep themselves distant, climbing frightening precipices to
achieve privacy to indulge their frequent cravings for love, clinging to razorbacked crags to
evade curious eyes and to allow the winds of thrill and danger to deepen their passion.
They were in love and they were young, and so they were indulged by their elders. Time
enough, in fifty years or so, for them to descend from the heights of newly-married explorations.
But fifty years they did not have. Eight years after they were married, when they had
barely recovered from the breathless passion of their initial consummation, EverHeart fell. She
fell from a peak so high even the winds were frightened to assail it. She fell so far she was
swallowed by the clouds that broiled about the knees of the mountain.
She fell so fast even CrimsonStar‘s scream could not follow her.
It took him three days to find her, and when he did, he thought he had found a corpse.
She lay broken, unmoving, her spilt blood frozen in crazy patterns across the rocks that cradled
her. CrimsonStar‘s tears felt as if they, too, were freezing into solid grief as they trailed down his cheeks. He touched his wife, but she did not move, and her flesh had the solidness of rock.
Frozen.
He wailed, then screamed, then wrenched his wife from her resting place, tearing her skin
where it had frozen to the surface of the rocks. He cuddled her close, trying to warm her, then
realised through his grief that, somewhere deep within EverHeart, her courageous heart, her ever
heart, still thudded. Slowly, achingly slowly, but still it thudded.
He carried her back to their home, and there he cared for her, bringing to her side all the
Healers of the Icarii people, and even calling to her side Banes from the distant forests. They
restored her warmth, and the colour to her cheeks. They restored the brightness of her eye, and
even the gloss of her golden hair. They restored the flex to her arms and the suppleness to her
long white fingers.
But they could not restore movement or usefulness to her shattered legs, and they could
not restore the laughter to her face. EverHeart was condemned to lie useless in her bed, her lower
body anchoring her to immobility, its flesh a drain on the resources of her upper body and, more
importantly, on her spirit.
At CrimsonStar‘s request, the Icarii Healers and the Avar Banes left. They farewelled the
pair as best they could, certain that EverHeart would not survive the year, and even more certain
CrimsonStar would not survive his wife‘s inevitable death.
For seven months CrimsonStar held EverHeart‘s hand, and sang to her, and soothed her
as best he could. He fed her and washed her and ministered to her needs. He lived only to see her
smile, and to hear her tell him she was content.
But EverHeart could do neither of these things without lying, and this she would not do.
One night, late into the darkness, EverHeart asked CrimsonStar to kill her. It was a brutal
request, but EverHeart was too tired of life to phrase it more politely.
―I cannot,‖ CrimsonStar said, and turned his head aside.
―Then build me wings to fly,‖ EverHeart said, bitterness twisting her voice, ―that I may
escape these useless legs and this prison-bed.‖
CrimsonStar looked at her. ―My lovely, I cannot…‖
―Then kill me.‖
CrimsonStar crept away, not wishing EverHeart to see the depth of his distress. Knowing
she knew it anyway.
He climbed to the crag from which EverHeart had fallen so many months before. He had
no intention of throwing himself from the peak, but some instinct told him that he might find
comfort at the same point where he and she had lost so much of their lives. He sat down in a
sheltered crevice, and watched the stars filter their way across the night sky.
Tears ran down his face. EverHeart had given him an impossible request…and if he
didn‘t help her die now, then what agony of wasting would she go through over the next few
months until she died of unaided causes?
―You should not weep so at this altitude,‖ a soft voice said, ―for your tears will freeze to
your face and leave your cheeks marred with black ice.‖
CrimsonStar jerked his head up.
A sparrow hopped into the crevice, its feathers ruffled out against the cold.
CrimsonStar was so stunned he could not speak.
―I have been disappointed in you, my son,‖ the sparrow continued, and hopped onto
CrimsonStar‘s knee to better look the Icarii man in the eye.
―Disappointed?‖ CrimsonStar managed, but he straightened his shoulders and brushed
the tears from his eyes. Who was this sparrow to so chastise him?
―I am your father, CrimsonStar.‖
―No…no…my father is FellowStar…alive and well…‖
The sparrow tipped his head to one side, his eyes angry yet sadly tolerant of his wayward
child. ―Do you not understand, CrimsonStar? I am the father of the Icarii race.‖
CrimsonStar could do nothing but stare at the sparrow.
―I lay with the Enchantress, and she waxed great with our child. Her third and last son for
her life…and my fourth son that spring. It was a good spring for me that year.‖
―I…I did not know…‖
―Few knew who the Enchantress took to her bed, child. The fathers of her elder sons are
unknown to me. And I…I should not have told you of my role in your generation, save that I
could not bear your sadness and that of EverHeart‘s. Still,‖ the sparrow sighed, ―I had no choice,
for you have proved such a disappointment, and all fathers reserve their right to chastise and
redirect their children.‖
CrimsonStar slowly shook his head from side to side, almost unable to comprehend that
this sparrow ( a sparrow! ) was the father of the proud Icarii race.
―Listen to me, CrimsonStar. I shall tell you of a great joy and then I shall curse you,
because you must pay for the privilege of hearing my advice—‖
―No…I have been cursed enough.‖
―You have no choice, my son. Now…watch.‖
And the sparrow fluttered his wings, and rose a handspan above CrimsonStar‘s knee
before settling gently down again.
―Why have you no wings, CrimsonStar?‖
―Wings…‖
―Wings, CrimsonStar. You are my son, and yet you refuse to wear your heritage.‖