murmured, and followed them into the kitchen.
He stopped, surprised. According to WingRidge, Sigholt had been deserted for many
days, yet the kitchen ranges lining the far wall glowed with the strength of well-stocked firepits,
and the tables lay dust-free and with cooking implements laid neatly out in ranks for the sleepy
hands of the morning breakfast cook.
Several mixing bowls sat in the centre of one table, and Drago walked slowly over,
ignoring the cats who had settled down in a semi-circle before the ranges.
Stars, but he loved this kitchen almost as much as he loved the cats. How many nights
had he whiled away the sleepless, loveless hours creating the perfect crust, the tenderest sirloin?
Drago ran the fingers of one hand softly over the table as he passed by, imagining he could feel
warmth and friendship radiating out to him from the well-scrubbed wood.
―Why?‖ he asked softly, raising his head and looking at the cats.
They purred, and slowly blinked their twelve-pair of eyes in immense self-satisfaction,
but they did not answer.
Drago‘s fingers glanced against one of the white ceramic mixing bowls, and he picked it
up idly, balancing its weight in the palm of his hand. He stared at it, almost entranced, and then,
with no idea why he did it, he slipped it into the sack at his side.
It should have almost filled the sack. At the very least, its weight should have made the
sack too heavy and unwieldy to hang from Drago‘s belt, but to his amazement as soon as it had
slipped from his fingers into the dark, close womb of the sack the weight vanished. Even the
form of the bowl vanished, and the sack hung as close and as comfortable as if he only had two or three marbles in it.
Drago stood still, one hand still poised over the sack. Over the past weeks, since he‘d
come through the Star Gate, he‘d been adding odd bits and pieces to the sack without ever
knowing why. A piece of moss from a table-top tree growing on the edge of the Silent Woman
Woods; a crumbling handful of desiccated clay from the ravaged Plains of Tare; a crust he‘d
found on the doorstep of a deserted hamlet in northern Aldeni; a river-washed pebble from the Nordra; several white hairs from Belaguez‘s tail. Many, many things. He‘d added them only on
impulse—or so he‘d thought. Now he realised there was something else at work, for he‘d added
so much the sack should be bursting at its seams by now.
Magic? Enchantment?
Certainly. But what enchantment?
And why?
Drago abruptly realised the cats were purring so loud the kitchen was vibrating very
slightly with the strength of their rumbles, and he looked over to them. Again, as one, the twelve
motley cats got to their feet and stalked, tails waving in the air, towards the door that led to the
interior rooms and spaces of the Keep.
Drago followed.
They led him through the lower service corridors, past storerooms, servants‘ quarters and
unknown, unexplored chambers, up the stairs leading into the main living and reception areas of
Sigholt, and finally into the Great Hall.
A pace inside the door, Drago stopped, and then walked forward hesitantly. The cats had
walked over to a far wall and sat down under one of the huge tapestries that lined its stone.
Drago did not look at them. Instead, his eyes were fixed on the dais at the far end of
chamber. This hall held no pleasant memories.
Here, the SunSoar family had sat about the fire and laughed without him.
Here, great Councils had been held. Without him.
Here, receptions and galas and the magnificence of the SunSoar court had glittered, and
all, all of it, every last single bloody bit, without him.
And here Caelum and WolfStar had twisted and manipulated to do away with him once
and for all. Here he had been falsely accused and then convicted of RiverStar‘s murder.
Drago‘s feet slowed even further as he reached the centre of the hall. Caelum‘s
enchantment falsifying Drago‘s memory of his sister‘s death had been powerful beyond
compare.
―What a waste,‖ Drago said to the hall, listening to his words echo about its vastness.
―What a waste of a wonderful man and an extraordinary power.‖
And even as he said it, Drago did not truly know if he referred to Caelum with those
words…or to himself.
His staff, almost forgotten, scraped against the stone flagging, and Drago jerked out of
his reverie as it twisted in his hand. He looked about for the cats, saw them sitting patiently
against the far wall, sighed and walked over. He stopped three paces away from the tapestry
under which they had placed themselves, and stared.
He knew it well. How many times had he stood where he was now and gazed into its
magic for hours on end, hungering for the power it portrayed, and hungering for the woman it
portrayed to turn her eyes, just slightly, and see him?
And seeing him, laugh, and reach out to embrace him.
The tapestry depicted Azhure at the height of her magical frenzy at Gorkenfort,
slaughtering hundreds of thousands of Skraelings with her magical bow, the Alaunt streaming
out of the wraiths‘ nests and boltholes amid the rubble, driving the screaming and gibbering
Skraelings before them.
It was fully night-time, the moon casting a silvery glow upon the ethereal scene. Grey
blocks of masonry piled into massive heaps of meaningless rubble. Moonwildflowers, drifting
down from an unseen sky. Alaunt hounds, all spectral-pale save for their gaping, slavering scarlet mouths and golden eyes. Azhure atop her red Corolean stallion Venator, her raven hair
flying and her face alive with magic, the Wolven singing destruction in her hands, and the quiver
of unending arrows, all fletched in the blue of her eyes, strapped tight to her back.
Gods! Drago could almost swear he could see her lean backwards to seize an arrow and
put it to the Wolven, and then hear it scream as it flew through the night to plunge into one of the
silvery orbs of a Skraeling.
And yet now something was very, very different about this tapestry. It had lost its magic.
It was only Drago‘s memory that gave Azhure‘s face its aura of enchantment. As he
blinked and focused sharply on the tapestry, he saw that now the threads had worn and her face
was…well…a trifle threadbare.
The bodies and faces of the Alaunt, once so clearly depicted, were even more shabby,
almost as if only a memory lingered, not their form. Now they were truly ghosts in this wall
hanging. Loose ends of thread hung out in unsightly tatters, and Drago had to narrow his eyes
and concentrate to make out the individual hounds. Even then, four or five of them had so lost
their definition they had merged into one unsightly splotch, the backing canvas clearly showing
through the worn embroidery.
Everything in the tapestry had faded and unravelled, just as the Star Dance had been all
but lost.
Everything, save one thing.
The Wolven glowed. Its warm ivory wood with its golden tracery, its scarlet and blue
tassels, its silvered bowstring, all gave a sense of reality, of impatient reality, within the fading insignificance of the rest of the tapestry.
Sigholt‘s gift. The Wolven.
As the Alaunt had come to Drago, so here sat the Wolven. Waiting.
Drago tried to remember when he had last seen Azhure use the Wolven. It had been
many, many years, and Azhure had probably handed it over to Caelum with the Sceptre when
he‘d ascended the Throne of the Stars. As Caelum had hidden the Sceptre with enchantment, so
he had hidden the Wolven—in plain view of everyone, and yet more hidden than if he‘d secreted
it in the deepest dungeon.
Drago still stared unblinking at the Wolven. Here it sat—trapped by enchantment.
―So, Caelum,‖ he said, very slowly and very softly, ―what was the enchantment you
used? What must I do to retrieve this bow?‖
And Caelum did not answer. Drago knew he faced a test: release the Wolven, and
retrieve yet another part of his lost Acharite magic. Drago felt that if he understood how to
release the Wolven, he would break the thickest barrier to the full use of his ancient Acharite
power…the Enemy‘s power.
Was Sigholt‘s gift the Wolven? Or the ability to make full use of his power?
Drago sank down to the floor, sitting cross-legged, chin in hand, his staff laid before him.
Thinking.
The cats, satisfied, curled up into tight balls, but they still kept their eyes on Drago.
―I am no Enchanter,‖ Drago said, thinking it out aloud, ―for the Demons have used up all
my Icarii ability. And even had they not, there is no music of the Star Dance to manipulate with
Song. But the Star Dance still exists, even if I cannot hear it.‖