Sara Douglass – The Axis Trilogy 2 – Enchanter

Dark Man, Dear ManThe four SkraeBolds grovelled at Gorgrael’s feet. Even SkraeFear, senior and bravest of them, thrust himself against the stone flagging as a man might against the body of his lover. His clawed hands clutched at Gorgrael’s toes, and he begged for forgiveness, begged Gorgrael to love him again.

Gorgrael wallowed in their misery. TheYuletide attack on the Earth Tree Grove had been a miserable failure. Not only had the SkraeBolds failed to kill the Earth Tree – and she now sang so loud that the northern Avarinheim was denied to him – but SkraeFear had almost killed StarDrifter, and Gorgrael had expressly ordered that he be brought to him alive and in good working order. They deserved to be punished horribly for their failure.

“Get up!” he snarled. “But only as far as your knees. You are not yet fit to stand in my presence!”

He swaggered away from the SkraeBolds as they inched to their knees. This was the first time he’d managed to have them all in the same room since the fall of Gorkenfort, and he intended to drag out their fear as long as he could.

“Sssss!” he hissed in frustration, swinging his head from side to side, and the four SkraeBolds behind him whimpered as his tusks glinted in the dim light. They knew they had a right to fear the fury of his tusks.

Gorkenfort had started so well. The town had fallen quickly and thousands had died. Gorgrael, watching his forces from the safety of his ice fortress far to the north of the Avarinheim, had shrieked in delight as each man died.

But Axis had escaped. Escaped with a significant force of men. Escaped to the arms of his father whom Gorgrael had so desperately desired to have here with him. Escaped, and in escaping, had destroyed so many Skraelings.

Now Gorgrael would be forced to curtail his drive south, for it was all he could do to keep a tight grip on those territories in Ichtar that he held – from the Andeis Sea to the Urqhart Hills. It was now a dead land, peopled only by frozen corpses and the Skraelings who fed on them. He could take pleasure in that, at least.

But if Gorgrael was pushed into simply consolidating rather than pushing further south, then now was the time to instil some order among the Skraelings. Bring them back under his control. Breed some more IceWorms. Fashion some new creations from the raw material surrounding him to breach the Acharite lines and break the force that Axis would inevitably throw at him. As Axis needed time to build his numbers, so Gorgrael needed time to rebuild his.

“You are failures!” he rasped venomously. The flickering light twisted his part-man, part-bird, part-beast form into an even more hideous shape.

“We tried our best!” “But so hard to remember orders amid such excitement!” “And those Skraelings, so unreliable!” “Nasty, nasty brights!” Their excuses littered the air.

“Your failure tells me that you do not love me!” Gorgrael screeched. The SkraeBolds cried out in denial. They loved Gorgrael, lived for him!

Gorgrael’s face twisted in derision. “Let me show you the price of your failure.”

He reached for SkraeFear, who had failed him the most. SkraeFear still had the arrow Azhure had plunged into his neck embedded in his flesh, the wound festering and black, oozing pus down his chest. Gorgrael grasped the arrow and twisted it viciously, and SkraeFear screamed in agony. Gorgrael waited until SkraeFear’s screams had bubbled away into low sobs, then he twisted the arrow again, twice as hard, the arrow head tearing through SkraeFear’s flesh with a sound like wet cloth ripping.

“Will you fail me again?” Gorgrael hissed in SkraeFear’s ear. “Will you?”

“No, no, no,” SkraeFear moaned. “Never again, never again!”

Suddenly Gorgrael let the arrow go and SkraeFear sagged to the floor. Gorgrael grimaced in disgust. He needed a more intelligent and reliable lieutenant.

Timozel. Gorgrael’s lip curled. But Timozel was bound to Faraday, and until those bonds were broken Timozel could continue to escape Gorgrael’s need for him.

Well, for the moment the SkraeBolds would have to do. He patted SkraeFear on the head comfortingly.

“I still love you, SkraeFear, you and your brothers here.”

SkraeFear whined in adoration and clung to one of Gorgrael’s legs. “I will be good,” he whispered. “Good, good, good!”

“Yes, yes,” Gorgrael said absently, gently prising SkraeFear loose. “Be gone for the moment. I will speak to you soon. Give new orders. Impart a new mission. But for now, be gone.”

SkraeFear gave one last grateful whimper, then scurried out of the room on his hands and knees, his brothers hurrying after him, gladdened beyond measure that their beloved master had not seen fit to chastise them as well.

Gorgrael prowled among the massive pieces of dark wooden furniture of his chamber; twisted and ensorcelled into strange and tormented shapes, they flung shadows into every corner.

He loved the room’s gloom and clutter, its darkness and malformed purpose. It was where he did his best work.

One corner of the chamber was dominated by a massive plate-iron fireplace. Though Gorgrael constructed many of his creatures from mist and ice, he was warm-blooded himself and needed the heat and comfort of fire from time to time. He wandered over to the cold grate and snapped his fingers. Flames licked their way about the misshapen pieces of wood piled at the back of the grate, and Gorgrael murmured to himself. Sometimes he saw strange shapes in the flames, and it bothered him.

He turned to a sideboard, its undulating planes and angles polished smooth so that the wood shone, and lifted a crystal decanter from its depths. Gorgrael smiled. This decanter and its delicate matching glasses he had brought home from Gorkenfort, and the fact that Borneheld and Faraday had been forced to leave them behind when they fled pleased Gorgrael. He hummed a broken and grating tune as he lifted a glass with one scaled, clawed hand and filled it with good wine from the decanter.

He was civilised. He was as good as anyone else. Certainly as good as Axis. Perhaps Faraday would enjoy the time she spent with him. Perhaps she would think him polite company. Perhaps he might not kill her after all.

Gorgrael sipped the wine, clinking the crystal against a tusk and dribbling a little of the wine down his chin as his cumbersome mouth and tongue tried to cope with the delicacy of the glass. He reached into the depths of the sideboard again and lifted out a large parcel. Crystal was not the only item Gorgrael had brought home from Gorkenfort.

He grunted in satisfaction and wandered over to his favourite chair, scraping it towards the fire. It was a good chair, throne-like, with a high carved back and wings that reached even higher towards the ceiling. He sat down and ripped open the parcel with his free hand. For a long time he sat there, looking at the parcel’s contents, stroking it gently, careful to keep his claws retracted. Then he drained his wine in a gulp and irritably threw the crystal into the fire where it shattered among the flames.

In his lap, tumbled and crushed, lay the emerald and ivory silk of Faraday’s wedding gown. Looking at it, absorbing the smell and the feel of the woman who had worn it, Gorgrael felt strange, painful emotions well up inside him. They made him feel merciful — and Gorgrael did not want to feel merciful. Worse, they made him feel lost – and that feeling Gorgrael did not like very much at all.

There was a movement in the air, swirling about the room, and the flames leapt and spat in the turbulence.

“She is a very beautiful woman, Gorgrael,” the loved voice said gently behind him, “and it is no wonder you sit there with her silks to comfort you.”

“Dear Man,” Gorgrael breathed. It had been months since the Dark Man had visited him.

A heavily shrouded figure brushed past his chair and stood for a moment in front of the fire, his back to Gorgrael. The hood of his black cloak was pulled close about his face.

“Have you met her?” Gorgrael asked, desperate for closer knowledge of Faraday. “Have you spoken with her?”

The shrouded figure turned and sat down on the hearth. “I know Faraday, yes. And we have passed the occasional word.”

Gorgrael gripped the silk in his hands. “Have you desired her?”

The Dark Man laughed, genuinely amused. “Many desire her, Gorgrael, and perhaps I am one of them. It is of no account. If you want her then I will not stand in your way. You may enjoy her as you wish.”

For a while they sat there in silence, Gorgrael fingering the silken dress, the Dark Man contemplating the flames.

Gorgrael had long given up trying to see the face of the Dear Man. No matter how hard and how craftily he’d peered, always the Dark Man, the Dear Man, appeared as he was now, shrouded so heavily that no-one, not even Gorgrael with his dark talent, could understand or know what lay beneath the folds.