Sara Douglass – The Axis Trilogy 3 – StarMan

“Come,” Arne said, gently now, “it is over.”

Axis sighed. “Yes, it is over.” He rose to one foot, every movement an effort, and as he stood he wrenched the Rainbow Sceptre from Gorgrael’s chest cavity. With that, the body fell apart completely and, as it disintegrated, so Axis felt the floor tremble beneath his feet.

Arne flung Axis’ cloak about the man’s shoulders and dragged him towards the doorway.

“Faraday is dead,” Axis said.

“Then live for her sake!” Arne cried. “If you die here, the Destroyer has won. Come. Axis! Come!”

Axis finally moved. He took one step, then another then stumbled for the door, Arne behind him.

As he passed the scrap of green cloth on the floor he bent down and snatched it, wrapping it about the head of the Sceptre.

The Rainbow light died, but Axis could still feel the rod pulse in his hands.

“Faraday,” he said once more, and left the chamber.

They ran through toppling walls and ice spears that plunged from crumbling ceilings. The maze of corridors buckled and slipped, and Axis and Arne fell time and time again, one helping the other to his feet, one hauling the other from danger and death by his hair or by a hand buried in folds of cloth. Axis never knew how they emerged from the Ice Fortress alive, but emerge they did, to stagger into sunlight.

Sunlight?

Had a whole night passed without his knowing?

Thirty paces from the Ice Fortress they stopped, the breath rasping in their throats in the frigid air, and they turned and looked behind them.

The entire Fortress was collapsing inwards; collapsing, Axis realised, towards the central chamber and Gorgrael’s body. A sudden and infinitely strange thought hit him – this beautiful ice prism had been the outward manifestation of the beauty that Gorgrael craved within his own person.

And just for the moment that the thought survived, Axis realised the full loneliness and horror of Gorgrael’s existence. Sympathy almost flared then, but at that instant the Fortress collapsed completely and both thought and sympathy disappeared from Axis’ mind as if they had never existed.

It was over.

Axis bent to one knee in the snow, his head resting in one hand. Arne stood helplessly beside him, feeling something of the man’s grief.

For a long time they stood there, a cold northerly breeze riffling through their hair and fluttering their cloaks, two men frozen into the frozen landscape.

Axis raised his head. He rose to his feet, the movement stiff and painful, and handed the Rainbow Sceptre to Arne.

“Here, take this.”

“But, StarMan.” Arne stumbled, taking the Sceptre as though it were red-hot. “What do you want me to do with -”

“Take it,” Axis said, his voice harsh. “Take it back to Sigholt and give it to Azhure. She can look after it.”

Arne’s eyes hardened with determination. “My place is with —”

“Yowr place is to do what I tell you!” Axis screamed, and Arne recoiled a step at the pain and anguish he saw in Axis’ eyes.

“There’are no Traitors standing at my back now,” Axis continued more moderately, regretting the harsh words. “It is over, Arne. And where I go now, I can only go alone. Please, take the Sceptre and go.”

Arne nodded, but he paused. Walk out into this wasteland by himself? He didn’t have a horse, he didn’t have a pack…no food…no fuel…

“I’ll take him,” a gruff voice said to one side.

Both men turned.

Urbeth sat seven or eight paces away.

“Urbeth?” Axis said, almost unable to believe what he saw.

She looked at the pile of ice melting in the sun. “It made such a noise crashing down, StarMan, that it woke my cubs. I decided to investigate.”

“I apologise for the rude interruption, Urbeth. Can you take Arne? Show him the way?”

She inclined her head. “I like Arne. He has a nice sense of humour. Come, Arne. I can take you as far as Talon Spike, and from there I think you can manage on your own.”

Arne turned to Axis, opened his mouth, but found he could say nothing.

Axis put his hand on his shoulder. “I thank you, Arne. Do not fear for me, for I shall see you again.”

Arne nodded, and turned aside. He looked at the gigantic bear, now lumbering to her feet, and eyed her back.

“You can walk’.” she snapped, and turning around she ambled westwards.

Without a backward glance Arne followed her, the Sceptre tucked safe under his cloak.

Of Deceptions and Disguises Axis watched them for a long time, watched the great pale shape with the smaller darker figure walk into the west, the low rumble of their voices reaching him for almost twenty minutes.

Finally, when he was surrounded by nothing but silence and the light powdery snow that was kicked up by the wind, Axis took a deep breath. It was time to visit the Sacred Grove. Time to fulfil the promise he had made Faraday.

Oh, gods, Faraday!

Axis bent almost double as his grief over her hit him anew.

Faraday!

Again he saw Gorgrael, his face twisted with hate, slice open her belly, tear her throat apart. But worse than that was the pain and fear in her eyes, pain and fear that Axis could do nothing to allay.

In order to win, he’d had to let her suffer…and she knew it. She’d known she was going to die, and Axis realised she’d known it for a very long, time.

“Had she come north with me to offer herself as a sacrifice that I might live?” he whispered.

Had she loved him that much? He bent his head and wept anew.

When he rose, drained of all emotion, the sun was sinking in the western horizon, and Axis realised he’d spent most of the day grieving for Faraday. Yet even most of one day was not enough. A lifetime would not do Faraday or her love or bravery justice.

He turned, thinking to face east as he sang the Song of Movement, the song that could transfer him to the Sacred Grove, and paused . . . stopped…his heart constricting and then racing in his chest.

Across the tundra, striding like vengeance himself, came a black figure. His cloak billowed out behind him like the wings of some great bird of prey, and the hood flapped and ballooned, and yet Axis could see none of the man’s features.

But he could feel him smiling.

“The Dark Man?” Gorgrael had asked, puzzled.

Axis knew who this was.

The figure drew closer, and Axis could hear him whistling, whistling some merry ditty, and could see his gloved fingers snapping away as if he were enjoying himself hugely.

The sound of his whistling danced across the tundra towards Axis, and Axis’ emotions sparked from grief to rage in the space of a heartbeat.

The Dark Man finally stopped some three paces away, his whistling fading although one booted toe still tapped merrily.

“Well,” he said cheerfully, “all’s well that ends well, and it did end well, did it not, Axis?”

Axis leapt for him. He had no weapons, and he knew that this Dark Man commanded Dark Music, dark power, but he leapt for him all the same. All he wanted was to feel his hands wrap themselves about the Enchanter’s throat.

His leap was enough to drive the Dark Man to the ground, but his fingers found no purchase, and the Enchanter-Talon rolled out from underneath him. The next instant Axis found

himself pinned to the ground, a black boot to his throat and blackness swirling above him.

“You are Axis Rivkahson SunSoar,” the Dark Man said, his voice quiet now, “once BattleAxe, now StarMan, and God of Song, but do not think that you can out manoeuvre me yet! You still have a long way to go, further yet to grow, and many more paths to travel, before you know what I know, and wield the same tricks I do.”

Axis’ breath rattled harshly through his throat and he wrapped his hands about the Dark Man’s ankle, but he made no effort to try to push the boot away.

“Very wise, Axis,” the Dark Man said. “You learn fast…but then you always were a quick learner, even as a child.”

“Who are you?”

“Me?” the Dark Man cried, the merry tone returning. “Me? Why, I am Dark Man, Dear Man, mentor to Gorgrael himself. Don’t you think I did a good job?”

“Who are you?”

“I found him, you know,” the Dark Man said, “wnen he was but a babe. And I held him and cuddled him. I was the only one, apart from those silly Skraelings, to show him any love. Of course, I betrayed him.”

Who are you?

“Who am I? In what guise did I come to you as a babe and then as a man? Well now, let me think.” And the Dark Man’s cloak twirled so Axis could see beneath its darkness.