“Your old nightmare?” Rivkah said after Raum had finished questioning Axis about his dream. “What do you mean?” she asked, thinking of her son, lost and alone without either of his parents and in the grip of nightmare.
Axis had never spoken of the nightmare that had haunted so much of his life to anyone, not even when his long-time lover, Embeth, Lady of Tare, had pressed him about it. Yet now he was telling this group without hesitation about the nightmare entity that had come to him throughout most of his life, the entity that claimed to be his unknown father. The dreams had stopped only after Axis escaped the fury of the head in the clouds outside the Ancient Barrows — when he’d realised that, whoever he might be, his father had loved him and could not have been the hateful voice of his nightmare.
“It was Gorgrael who came to you,” Veremund said. “Trying to break your heart and your spirit with lies about your father.”
Axis’ face flinched with the memory. “He said that my mother died giving birth to me, died cursing me for taking her life. I believed him. I had no choice, none to tell me differently.”
Appalled, Rivkah reached out and seized Axis’ hand. She finally understood what a lonely childhood he had led, thinking his mother had died hating him, not knowing who his father was. For a time both mother and son sat, holding hands, lending each other comfort.
Then Axis sighed and turned to Azhure, letting his mother’s hand go. “Azhure,” he said gently, “it is good to let go of old nightmares. Will you tell us how your back came to be so horribly scarred?”
Azhure’s reaction caused the only dark moment of the trip. Her whole body went rigid and she stared at Axis, her eyes dark and frightened. For a moment she said nothing, her mouth trembling, then she whimpered.
“No.” It was the whimper of a terrified little girl.
“No!” she shouted, her voice edging towards hysteria. “No! Stay away!”
Rivkah quickly shifted over to her, wrapping her arms about the terrified woman.
“No!” Azhure shouted again, louder, twisting against Rivkah’s hands. “Stay away! Please! Pleasel I will not do it again!” She took a deep, shuddering breath. “I promise!” she screamed.
Axis leant forward, thinking to add support to that of his mother’s, but Azhure almost wrenched herself out of Rivkah’s arms in the effort to twist away from him. “No!” she screamed, patently terrified by Axis’ approach. “Forgive me!”
Veremund hastily placed bis hand on Azhure’s shoulder. She stopped twisting immediately, but only very slowly did she relax. Veremund exchanged a worried glance with Ogden before looking at Axis.
“Withdraw the question,” said Veremund. “She doesn’t want to talk about it. The memory is too much for her.”
“I am sorry I have caused you pain with my question, Azhure,” Axis said, touching her cheek gently with his fingertips. “Please forgive my intrusion. I retrieve my words.”
A gentle melody spun through the air and Axis sat back as Rivkah let Azhure go.
“What is it?” Azhure asked, puzzled as she looked about to see everyone in the cave staring at her. “What did I say?”
Veremund caught Axis’ eye and nodded, pleased. Axis had learnt well from StarDrifter and MorningStar. Still, more lessons had been learned. One – never ask Azhure about her back. Two — find out what did happen, because that knowledge could well unlock some of Azhure s secrets. But Veremund had the dreadful intuition that to unlock that particular secret without proper precautions could well cost either Azhure her life, or that of the person who tried too insistently to make her answer.
Azhure had been the only one to sleep well that night, and Axis had lain awake for many hours, watching her gently breathing. Wondering.
Four days out from Talon Spike Axis abruptly stopped on the path, his face tight with concentration. Then he smiled, laughed, and called ahead to Raum.
“Raum! I hear her! I hear her! She sings beautifully!” Raum turned back to Axis and smiled. Although he could not hear what Axis did, he knew what it must be. Earth Tree. Earth Tree singing her Song, the Song that had destroyed the Skraeling attack on the Earth Tree Grove at Yuletide, the Song that now protected the entire northern Avarinheim against Gorgrael. If it had not been for StarDrifter and Faraday, Earth Tree might still be asleep and the Skraelings might well have eaten their way through the Avarinheim by now.
Two days later Raum began to catch the first faint strains of Earth Tree’s Song himself, and two days later yet, Rivkah and Azhure started to pick it up.
Ogden andVeremund had begun to hear it about the same time as Axis.
The night before they reached the foot of the Icescarp Alps, the group ate a splendid meal of roast partridge stuffed with breadcrumbs, cheese, raisins and almonds, and relaxed about the magical fire.
“Tell me of how you bonded Faraday to the Mother,” Axis asked Raum, reluctantly lifting his eyes from the firelight glinting through Azhure’s hair. “There is so little I know about her. So much I want to comprehend.”
Faraday’s connection with the Mother, with the power of the earth and of nature, was one of the deeper mysteries that Axis did not yet understand. There had been so little time or opportunity at Gorkenfort for Faraday and Axis to talk.
And Axis needed someone to speak of her, to remind him how much he loved her. Once her image had been so vivid in his mind, now he had to struggle to recall the exact shade of her hair and the timbre of her laughter.
Raum hesitated a little, then began by explaining the significance of the groves to the Avar people and how those Avar children who had the potential to become Banes had to be presented and bonded to the Mother. Fernbrake Lake, one of the four magical lakes in Achar, lay deep in the Bracken Ranges far to the south of the Avarinheim, and the Avar people had to travel secretly through the hostile Skarabost Plains to reach the lake they called the Mother.
“And Rivkah helped you in this?” Axis asked, smiling at his mother.
“Yes,” Raum said. “For many years now she has spent the summer months with us, often helping to take a child or two through to the Bracken Ranges.”
“And yet none in Achar knew that the Princess Rivkah walked among them,” Axis said, his eyes on the flames. “Did you never want to return to your home, Rivkah?”
“I thought my life dead, Axis. I thought you dead. Had I known you lived I would have kept walking until I reached the Tower of the Seneschal and its BatdeAxe.”
For a while there was silence, then Azhure prompted Raum to return to the story of the night he had bonded Faraday to the Mother. Ever since Azhure had seen the vision of Faraday awakening the Earth Tree on the night of the Yuletide attack, she had been fascinated by Faraday.
Raum told the story as if every moment of that night was seared into his memory. How he had tested Faraday at Jack andYr’s insistence and, to his shock, had found she talked to the trees as easily as if she had been Avar-born. He told them how Faraday had bonded instantly to the Mother, how the Mother herself had wakened the lake and how he, Faraday and the child Shra had walked into and through the lake, to the Sacred Grove.
All listened intently, astounded by Raum’s tale.
“You walked through emerald light into the grove?” Azhure asked, her blue eyes wide. This was magic beyond anything she had yet seen.
Raum told them of how the Horned Ones had greeted Faraday, and how the most ancient and sacred of them all, the silver pelt, had given Faraday the bowl of enchanted wood.
“The bowl is a way for her not only to reach out and touch the Mother,” Raum explained, “but also to reach the Sacred Grove whenever she feels the need.”
“She has been blessed,” Azhure said, admiration and wonder evident in her voice.
Raum let his hand rest on Azhure s shoulder. He had become very attached to this lonely woman and wished that the Avar had accepted her. She had saved his life, but Raum’s regard for Azhure went much deeper than gratefulness. “Yes, Azhure, she has truly been blessed.”
Axis’ eyes lingered on Raum’s hand. He raised his gaze to the Bane’s face slowly. “Is Faraday’s only role in Prophecy that of Tree Friend, Bane?”
“She has many things to do, Axis,” Veremund answered for Raum. “As do you. Concentrate on your own path, and let others find theirs as the Prophecy guides them.”
Axis nodded. “Has Faraday used the enchanted bowl, Raum? Has she stepped back into the Groves?”