that he will attend me for as long as I need him, and so he says and so it will be. There are only a few days before Fire-Night, so I will try to shake friend Arne slightly by taking him to travel the waterways with Orr.”
She cuddled closer to Axis. “Perhaps Arne can discuss the mysteries of the Stars with Orr. When will you leave?”
“When we leave this ledge. There is no reason to wait.”
Azhure’s eyes filled with tears. “Come home to me, Axis.”
His hand tightened about hers. “Will you get to Rivkah in time?”
“I think so, although she will be cross that I have tarried so long. Axis?”
“Hmmm?”
“What do you want me to do at the birth?”
Axis was horrified. He knew what she referred to; Rivkah had asked Azhure to midwife the birth – and a talented midwife could make any infanticide look so much like a still-birth even the mother would not be aware of what had happened.
“Oh, Azhure! Rivkah trusts you. Would you break her trust for me? No!” He looked away. “Do not answer that, Azhure.”
He took a deep breath, and turned back to her. “She trusts you, Azhure. I do not want you to break that trust for my sake.”
They sat in silence for some time, then Azhure lifted her fingers to his face. “Come home to me, Axis.”
He pulled her back against his body and hid her face in his shoulder.
“Come home to me.”
And the seagulls wheeling far below them took up the cry and spread it up and down the Icebear Coast.
Come home to me! Come home to me!
The Test must consider,” Barsarbe said, her eyes sharp, her voice soft, “what to do.” The Avar had assembled in the Earth Tree Grove for Fire-Night. This festival was of only minor importance for the Avar, and usually they would celebrate it in their own Clan groups wherever they happened to be in the Avarinheim. But this Fire-Night would be special. This Fire-Night would see the crafting of the Rainbow Sceptre. And so the Avar had gathered in the Earth Tree Grove.
“This will be our last chance to plot our own future,” Barsarbe continued, walking slowly around the outside of the great circle of stone that guarded the Earth Tree. “Tomorrow night is Fire-Night. Tomorrow night the StarMan will appear and ask for our assistance. Tonight we must decide whether or not to give it to him.”
A confused murmuring rose from among the Avar. Many of the Banes, who sat in the front ranks, stared at Barsarbe unbelievingly. But it was Grindle, leader of the GhostTree Clan, who spoke out.
He stood respectfully. “Bane Barsarbe. I thought there was no question of aiding the StarMan. Surely we wait only for Tree Friend? When she joins us …” He hesitated. None of the Avar had seen Faraday Tree Friend since she disappeared the evening the Avarinheim was joined to Minstrelsea. The Avar realised Faraday was in the Sacred Grove, but when would she join them? When would she lead them into their new home?
Grindle abruptly realised that Barsarbe and the entire Avar people were staring at him, waiting for him to continue. “When Faraday joins us she will present the StarMan to us and we will follow her lead. We must unite with the StarMan, as the Icarii have, in order to defeat Gorgrael. This much is clear from the Prophecy of the Destroyer.”
“Thank you, Grindle,” Barsarbe said. She touched his shoulder, and he sat back down.
Around him the Avar still looked puzzled. “My people.” Barsarbe resumed her pacing. “I am senior Bane among you. Mine is the responsibility for ensuring the Avar step onto the right paths, chose the right fork. No-one can deny that tomorrow night we will face a fork in the path. But which is the right direction? Which the road to surety?”
“With the StarMan, surely,” someone said, and Barsarbe could see several heads nod.
“My people. I have thought long and hard about our future, and while I travelled with Faraday Tree Friend, I learned of events that disturbed me. They made me see our future path differently. Now is the time that I must share my thoughts with you.”
She walked several paces with her head bowed. When she spoke again, her voice was stronger, and harsher. “Avar! Do you know that the StarMan has betrayed Faraday Tree Friend?
“He pretended to love her, but did he not leave her in Gorkenfort to survive or not while he escaped? And now . . . now I have learned that he treacherously betrayed Faraday for another. Azhure. You must remember her.”
Again Grindle rose to his feet, more cautiously this time. “It was Beltide, Barsarbe. Bonds and promises are set aside on Beltide.”
“Worse than Beltide,” Barsarbe hissed, spinning on her heel to face him. “Far worse! The StarMan has married this woman
Azhure and cast Faraday out of his house.” Grindle sank down, his eyes on the ground. “Faraday should have married the StarMan. Faraday should have given him his heir!”
She ran her eyes ran over the assembled Avar. None of them moved. “And we can all remember what kind of woman this Azhure was. Violent. Is that not why we refused her acceptance into the Avar? Violence trails after her.”
Grindle made as if to stand up again, but Barsarbe stopped him with an angry glance. “Now she has embraced violence fully. Now she walks with bow and arrows, and hounds clamour at her heels. She is a huntress’. You did not see what she did to her home village, my people. She destroyed it, burned all who lived within it… and smiled as she did it.”
Shra, seated besides her father, narrowed her eyes, but for the moment she held her peace.
“You said there was a fork in our path, Bane Barsarbe,” said Brode of the SilentWalk Clan. As one of the senior Avar, his word would weigh heavily in whatever decision the Avar made.
“Yes, Brode. We have passively accepted whatever the Prophecy told us. The Prophecy says that we must unite with the Plough and the Wing in order to defeat Gorgrael.”
She took a deep breath. “But what if we have a different choice? My people, is this our fight? We have the Avarinheim, and now we have Minstrelsea to the south. The Earth Tree sings, and the forests sing with her. We are safe. Gorgrael cannot touch us!”
Barsarbe spread her arms wide, hands and voice entreating. “Don’t we have what we wanted? So why help Axis? It will surely only bring further pain to our people, and Mother knows we have endured enough. We have what we want,” she repeated slowly, lowering her hands. “/ say we have the choice of refusing the StarMan.”
Apart from the Song of the Earth Tree, which the Avar had grown so used to they hardly noticed it any more, the grove was completely silent. Here and there heads nodded as the Avar considered Barsarbe’s arguments.
But Shra had heard enough. Now, as the Mother had told her, was the time to speak.
“You use poisonous words, Barsarbe,” she said, and stood up. Shra was small and fragile, even for an Avar child, but her eyes shone with a knowledge that the Avar respected, and her demeanour was far older than her years. “Your mind has been so addled by your spite and jealousy that you can no longer distinguish bright glade from shadowed night.”
“Shra.” Brode walked forward, and stood by Barsarbe’s side. “I think we should listen to Barsarbe. She is, after all, senior among the Banes, and you…you are but a five-year-old girl-child.”
Shra stepped out of the crowd so that all could see her.
“I am but a five-year-old girl-child,” she said, “but I have been presented to the Horned Ones and I am training to be a Bane. And even the little I have seen of the events in the world beyond the Avarinheim has been more than anyone else here, even Barsarbe. I…I am appalled,” and she stamped her tiny foot, “at Barsarbe’s misrepresentation of the true nature of the events and people that surround us. If it takes the mouth of a five-year-old girl-child to speak the words of truth, then so be it.”
To the watching Avar she no longer seemed such a child. She radiated such assurance, and such righteous anger, that even Brode retreated a step as Shra walked to where he stood with Barsarbe.
Had her recreation when so close to death wrought this change in her?
Barsarbe stared at the child with dark, cold eyes.
Shra ignored her. “As the Earth Tree is my witness,” she said, her voice sweet and clear, “I am sick of the Avar reluctance to act, and I am shamed by it! Are you proud that such as Axis and Azhure fight for our cause? Are you proud that the Icarii have spilt so much of their own blood on our behalf as well as theirs?”