Sara Douglass – The Axis Trilogy 3 – StarMan

“Then I am confident you will die a ghastly death, Jayme,” she said.

Despite her brave words, Rivkah’s entire body shuddered, and she flung the door open, running past the startled guard and down the corridor.

Jayme smiled, remembering Rivkah’s agitation. But the smile died as he recalled his second visitor.

Jayme had heard Axis well before he entered the room.

Axis stood outside the closed door for several minutes, talking with the guard posted there. Jayme knew Axis was toying with him, letting the sound of his casual conversation outside increase Jayme’s trepidation.

And his tactic worked. Jayme’s stomach heaved as he heard the key in the lock.

“Jayme,” Axis said flatly as he stepped inside the room.

Axis had always carried an aura of power as BattleAxe -now it was magnified ten times and carried with it infinite threat. Jayme opened his mouth to speak, but there was nothing to say.

“I have decided to put you on trial, Jayme. Rivkah has told me of your conversation,” Axis said, “and of your wretched effort to lay the blame for her attempted murder at Moryson’s feet. But it is not only the wrongs you have done me and my mother that you should answer for, Jayme, but the wrongs you have done the innocent people of Tencendor.”

Jayme found his voice and his courage. “Yet how many innocent people have you murdered for your depraved

purposes, Axis? Justice always seems to rest with the victor, does it not?”

Axis stabbed an accusing finger at the former Brother-Leader. “How many innocent people did I murder in the name of the Seneschal, Jayme? How many people, guilty of nothing save innocent questions, did you send your BattleAxe out after, to ride down into the earth? How many innocent people have I murdered? You tell me. You were the one who sent me out to murder them in the name of Artor!”

“I only did what Artor told me, Axis. I only did what was right for the Way of the Plough.”

The anger faded from Axis’ face and he stared incredulously at Jayme. “Have you never thought to question the world about you? Have you never thought to question the narrow and brutal Way of the Plough? Have you never stopped to think what beauty the Seneschal destroyed when it drove the Icarii and the Avar beyond the Fortress Ranges a thousand years ago? Have you never stopped to question Artor?”

“Axis,” Jayme said, stepping forward. “What has happened to you? I thought I knew you, I thought I could trust you.”

“You thought you could use me.”

Axis stared at Jayme a moment longer, then turned for the door.

“I only used you for Artor’s sake,” Jayme said so softly that Axis barely heard him.

Axis looked around to his once-beloved Brother-Leader. “I shall spare no effort in dismantling the Seneschal, Jayme. I shall grind it and the cursed Way of the Plough into the dust where it belongs. I shall bury your hatreds and your bigotry and your unreasoning fears and I shall never, never, allow it or any like it to raise its deformed head in Tencendor again. Congratulations, Jayme. You will yet live to witness the complete destruction of the Seneschal.”

Jayme’s face was now completely white and his mouth trembled. He held out a hand. “Axis!” But Axis was gone.

The memory of that visit disturbed Jayme so much that he abased himself once more before Artor’s icon, seeking what comfort the crude figure could give him.

The guards had taken from his room the beautiful gold and enamel icon of Artor that had held pride of place in the centre of the main wall. During the first two days of his captivity Jayme had laboriously carved out a life-sized outline of the great god into the soft plaster of the wall. Even though he had torn his nails with the effort, at least he had an icon to pray to.

He pressed his forehead to the floor.

The sound of noisy celebrations in the streets below finally roused him in the early evening. Curious despite his despondency, Jayme wandered over to the window.

Cheerful crowds thronged the streets and Jayme listened carefully, trying to make out what they shouted. Most held beakers of beer or ale, a few had goblets of wine. All were smiling.

“A toast to our lord and lady!” Jayme heard one stout fellow shout, and the crowd happily obliged.

“A marriage made in the stars, they say!” shouted another, and Jayme was horrified to see that it came from one of several winged creatures in the crowd.

He frowned. Had Axis married Faraday already?

A tiny piece of plaster fell to the floor behind him. Then another. Deep in concentration on the scene below him, Jayme did not hear.

“To Axis!”

“And to Azhure!”

Large cracks spread across the wall, and a piece of plaster the size of a man’s fist bulged into the room.

“Azhure?” Jayme said. “Azhure?”

More plaster crumbled to the floor as further cracks and bulges raced across the wall, but Jayme was so engrossed in the crowd’s celebrations he did not hear it.

“Who is this Azhure?” Now Jayme had both hands and face pressed to the window pane in an effort to catch the shouts of the crowd.

She is one of the many reasons for your death, fool.

Jayme whimpered in terror and his eyes refocused away from the street below him and onto the reflection in the glass.

Plaster fell to the floor in a torrent as the wall came alive behind him.

Jayme whimpered softly again, so horrified he could not move. His eyes remained glued to the terror in the reflection.

Nothing in his life could have prepared him for this, and yet he knew precisely what it was.

Artor, come to exact revenge for the failings of the Brother-Leader of his Seneschal.

“Beloved Lord,” Jayme croaked.

In the reflection Jayme saw the wall ripple and a form bulge through, taking the shape of the icon Jayme had scratched in the plaster days ago.

It was too much, and Jayme screwed shut his eyes in terror.

Have you not the courage to face Me, Brother-Leader? Have you not the courage to face your Lord?

Jayme felt a powerful force seize control of his body. Suddenly he was spun around and slammed back against the window; he retained only enough power over his muscles to keep his eyelids tightly closed. Some part of his mind not yet completely numbed with terror hoped that Artor would use too much force and the window panes would crack behind him, allowing him to fall to a grateful death on the cobbles below.

But Artor knew His own power, and Jayme did not hit the glass with enough force to break it.

He was held there, his feet a handspan off the floor, and none of the crowd celebrating Axis and Azhure’s marriage spared so much as a glance above to see Jayme pinned against the window as effectively as a cruel boy will pin an ant to a piece of paper.

The great god Artor the Ploughman completed His transformation and stepped into the room. He was stunningly, furiously angry, and His wrath was a terrible thing to behold. Jayme had failed Him. The Seneschal was crumbling, and soon even those fragments that were left would be swept away in the evil wind that blew over the land of Achar. Day by day Artor could feel the loss of those souls who turned from the worship of Artor and the Way of the Plough to the worship of other gods. He was the one true god, He demanded it, and Artor liked it not that those gods He had banished so long ago might soon walk this land again.

Jayme had failed Artor so badly and so completely that the god Himself had been forced from His heavenly kingdom to exact retribution from Brother-Leader Jayme for his pitiful failure to lead the Seneschal against the challenge of the StarMan.

What have you done, Jayme?

Jayme shuddered, and found that Artor had freed those muscles he needed to speak with. “I have done my best, Lord,” he whispered.

Meet My eyes, Jayme, and know the god that you promised to serve.

Jayme tried to keep his eyes tightly shut, but the god’s power tore them open – and Jayme screamed.

Standing before him was a man-figure, yet taller and more heavily musclebound than any man Jayme had ever seen before. Artor had chosen to reveal Himself in the symbolic attire of the ploughman: the rough linen loincloth, the short leather cape thrown carelessly over His shoulders, its hood drawn close about Artor’s face, and thick rope sandals. In one hand Artor held the traditional goad used to urge the plough team onwards; the other hand He had clenched in the fist of righteous anger.

Underneath the leather hood of His cape Artor had assumed the heavy, pitted features of a man roughened by years of tilling the soil, while His body was roped with the thick muscles needed to control the team and the cumbersome wheeled plough.