Sara Douglass – The Axis Trilogy 3 – StarMan

Axis would win, he was sure of it – he had to be sure of it -but could he also save Faraday’s life, or was that already gone?

She was numb with cold and with terror. Timozel held her arm with talon-like fingers, and her delicate skin had bruised hours ago. Now he dragged her down a long ice-tunnel. Creatures

leaped and cavorted on the other side of the ice-walls, their shapes distorted by the ice, but Faraday was beyond caring if she saw them clearly or not.

At the end of the ice-tunnel was a door, and Faraday knew what lay beyond it.

“I trusted you, Timozel,” she managed to say. “Fool.”

“Doesn’t my trust mean something? You promised once to be my Champion, you promised to protect me…then what is this you do now?”

Timozel stopped, and Faraday sank to the floor. Her gown had half torn away from her, and her flesh was marked both by the cold and by Timozel’s cruel hands.

“You broke all the vows that bound us!” he screamed. “You broke them and released me to Gorgrael’s tender mercy! Don’t weep now that I break any trust between us.”

He took a vicious breath. “Look at me.”

She turned her head even further away.

“Look at me!”

She responded to the wrench on her arm if not to his voice, and raised her head slowly.

“Harlot,” he said. “If you reap the fruits of your lusts now then so be it.”

His fingers tightened and Faraday could not help a small sob of pain..

“Light your face with gladness, Faraday, for before you waits Gorgrael. He will be your true Lord, and we will sit by the fire and drink fine wine from crystal glasses for ever and ever and ever.”

Her eyes widened at the madness in his voice, but then the door at the end of the corridor creaked and she jerked her head in that direction.

Timozel hauled Faraday to her feet. He swung her into his arms and strode down the corridor towards the open door. Behind it a shadow flickered across the floor.

Faraday buried her face in Timozel’s chest, hating even to do that, but Timozel was infinitely preferable to what lay beyond. She tried to reach the Mother’s power within her, but that was gone, smothered by the blanket of the Destroyer’s dark enchantments. Faraday prayed that in those final paces before the door Timozel would somehow see reason, would somehow remember the friendship and loyalty he had once professed, and would turn and run with her into safety and into the light.

But she knew he would not.

She could feel the temperature change the instant they crossed the threshold. It was warmer here. She whimpered, screwing her eyes still further shut, and tried to contract into as small a ball in Timozel’s arms as she could. “Faraday.”

The name was spoken with a sickening hiss and a slap of tongue, as if the creature had trouble with it. “How I have longed for you.”

And then she felt Timozel’s stance alter, stiffen, as if he…”No/” she screamed, and Timozel passed her into the Destroyer’s arms.

She fought as hard as she could, she kicked and bit and scratched (and gagged when she felt the creature’s lizard-like skin against her own bare flesh and mouth and fingers), but she made no impression on him, and he laughed and wheezed with triumph.

“Go!” he screamed at Timozel. “Go/”

They sat before the fire, with fragile crystal glasses of fine wine in their hands.

Gorgrael was half asleep, eyes lidded as he looked at Faraday in the chair opposite. She had managed to pull the all-but-destroyed gown about her again, and her hand trembled uncontrollably as she held the glass. Most of her wine had spilled down her arm and lay in a crimson pool in her lap.

Gorgrael was more than replete. He was prepared to be generous. It would be a pity to kill her. A shame. Again he wondered if he might keep her. Perhaps he could dispose of Axis without the need to destroy Faraday in the process. He felt almost tender, certainly protective. She had not been willing, but willingness would come in time.

Timozel sat in front of the fire, between the two. He could feel the comforting touch of vision, and he knew that Gorgrael had won.

The battles were over. Timozel sat before the leaping fire with his Lord, Faraday at their side. All was well. Timozel had found the light and he had found his destiny.

They drank from crystal glasses, sipping fine wine.

They had won.

Five Handspans of Sharpened Steel In the early morning light, Erode was clearly dying, but he insisted on taking them to the Destroyer’s door. “I can feel him, StarMan,” he wheezed “Not far.”

“This is between him and me,” Axis said gently. “Erode, you have done enough. Wait here for my return.” He looked at Arne standing next to Erode, his arm supporting the Avar man. “You too, Arne. Wait here for me. You cannot protect me against Gorgrael.”

Both merely stared at him, their eyes hard with determination.

“Please.” Axis tried one more time, knowing it was useless. “Stay here. The snow has cleared. I will leave a fire for you.”

They had woken in the pre-dawn darkness to find that sometime overnight the snow had ceased to fall. Even the wind had abated. Axis wasn’t sure if Gorgrael still had any control over the weather; if he had, then perhaps he wanted them to walk the last morning in pure light.

So that they could know exactly what they would miss when dead, perhaps.

Axis looked away from Erode and Arne across the tundra. Everything was flat white, sparkling painfully as the first rays of the sun caught the snow crystals.

Where was Faraday? Did Gorgrael have her? Or had she decided sensibly to stay in the Sacred Grove?

Axis knew that Gorgrael had her. He could feel the Destroyer, feel his malignant presence seep like a dark stain over this desolate landscape.

And he could feel its joy. That had changed overnight. Yesterday Gorgrael’s presence had been malignant, yes, but it had also been cautious. Now it gloated. It almost danced across the snowscape in its glee.

Axis shivered. He bent down and picked up the Rainbow Sceptre. He wasn’t sure how he would use it, but he had some idea…and for that idea he had Azhure to thank. He stared at it for some minutes, stared at the head wrapped in the cloth that Faraday had torn from her gown, then abruptly thrust it into a loop on his weapon belt.

His fingers slipped to the sword resting in its scabbard, and he absently fingered its hilt. Today, he hoped, it would find a different scabbard to rest in.

He lifted his head and smiled at the two men. It ‘was a dazzling smile^ full of hope and courage, and the men could not help but respond with smiles of their own.

“Come, my friends,” he said. “Shall we go? Erode? Which way?”

Brode nodded north-east and grunted as Arne’s arm tightened about him.

Axis glanced at him with concern, but the man picked up his pace after a few minutes, and soon managed to walk by himself.

They walked for three hours. Their eyes hurt from the glare coming off the snow, and after a while they had to pull the hoods of their cloaks close to try to cut down the glare.

Towards noon Axis stopped, and stared to the west.

“What is it?” Arne asked.

“The waves,” Axis said. He turned his head. “Can you hear them?”

Arne and Brode both shook their heads.

“The waves of the Iskruel Ocean,” Axis continued. “Beating along the Icebear Coast.” He paused, remembering, then shrugged and continued the march.

They saw it mid-afternoon, rising in the distance.

“Stars,” Axis breathed in awe, “but it is beautiful!”

He had not expected anything like this. He knew that his brother had a bolt-hole somewhere, and he had always imagined it to be dark and festering – nothing like this prism that speared from the snow plain like a pure white hand rising jubilantly from the grave. It was gigantic but graceful at the same time, and the sun glinted off it in a thousand different colours.

“Ice Fortress,” Brode gasped, and Axis glanced at him.

But he could not keep his eyes from the beautiful structure rising to the north-east. He did not think he had the imagination to create such a thing himself, and he wondered at his brother who, though so dark and cruel, could still create such beauty.

“Beauty is as beauty does,” Arne remarked cryptically.

“You’re right,” Axis said. “Brode, are you strong enough to continue?”

“I want to see the Destroyer dead before / die,” Brode said. “I will be all right, StarMan.”

Axis nodded, and without another word the three men crunched their way through the snow.