All he”d wanted was to snatch the Weeper and walk away. He didn”t really want to know
about what Salome had endured after he”d taken the Weeper, and he very much didn”t want to be
faced with it now.
She didn”t say anything. Not at first. She stood before him, regarding him with such a
passion of hatred that StarDrifter was forced to drop his eyes.
“Do you have any idea?” she whispered finally. “Any idea, StarDrifter, what you did to
me?”
There wasn”t anything he could say. He wanted to say that it hadn”t been him, that it had
been Ba”al”uz, but he knew he couldn”t say that.
In the end, he was as guilty of what had happened as Ba”al”uz.
StarDrifter forced himself to meet Salome”s eyes again.
They were brilliant with emotion.
“They murdered Ezra,” she said, her voice close to breaking. “They brought him before
me and, not enough that they”d raped me, they raped him, five men, or perhaps ten. I lost count.
They brutalized him so badly…”
Her voice broke, her entire body shook, and for a moment StarDrifter thought she would
fall over.
He reached out a hand, but she flinched away from him.
“Don”t touch me!” Salome took several huge breaths, managing to bring her emotions
under control enough to resume speaking. “They raped and brutalized him, before the entire
court, then took a knife and cut off his penis and his testicles, and they let him bleed out in front of me, over me…I still feel his blood all over me, StarDrifter! It stained me, it stains me, to this
day, and it stains you, too…can”t you feel it, can”t you see it? Can”t you…can”t you…”
She burst into sobs. StarDrifter knew he should do something, but didn”t know what, then
in a moment Maximilian was beside her, an arm about her shoulder, pulling her against his body,
murmuring something into her hair.
StarDrifter wanted to sink into the ground. He wanted one of Gorgrael”s Ice Worms to
appear right now and swallow him. He wanted a gryphon to drop down from the sky and seize
him in cruel talons and carry him to a mountaintop where he would be torn apart and released
from this damned, cursed misery of guilt.
He thought he could have weathered a Salome accusing him of the hurt done to her, but
this broken woman before him now, accusing him of the hurt and harm and death done to Ezra,
who StarDrifter had never meant to hurt, against whom he had held absolutely no grudge at all…
“I”m sorry,” he murmured, and Salome tore herself out of Maximilian”s arms.
“Do you have any idea what it is like to watch your child die before you?” she screamed
at him.
StarDrifter”s eyes filmed with tears—not tears of pity for himself, but for Salome. “Yes,”
he said, very softly, remembering watching his granddaughter Zenith being torn to pieces before
his eyes.
He”d been responsible for that death, too.
“Yes,” he said, “I do know, Salome. I am so sorry, I don”t know what I can do to—”
“I don”t want you to do anything!” she shouted. “Nothing! I want nothing from you! I
want…I want…”
Suddenly she wheeled to one side, almost leaping the two or three paces between herself
and Doyle. The movement shocked and surprised everyone, and before Doyle could stop her
Salome had seized his sword, and was back before StarDrifter again.
She shrieked, lifted the sword above her shoulders, and, even as Maximilian grabbed
frantically at her, hit StarDrifter across the cheek with the flat of the blade with all the strength she could muster.
StarDrifter staggered back several paces. He raised a hand to his cheek, watching Salome,
now held firmly about the waist by Maximilian.
He pulled his hand away from his cheek. It was slick with blood. Salome had hit him
with only the flat of the blade, but even so the twin edges of the blade had cut into his flesh, and
now he had two parallel cuts along his cheek.
“I want to murder you,” Salome said in a voice half hiss, half whisper. “I want to stick
this into your belly, and make you suffer the way Ezra suffered, but I can”t…I can”t…I can”t kill you…”
She bent half over, still holding the sword, the point of the blade now resting on the
ground, and sobbed again, once, twice, then she looked up to StarDrifter, her eyes swollen with
emotion and grief.
“I can”t kill you, StarDrifter, because I am pregnant with your baby. An Icarii baby, and I
know more than anyone that if a woman bears an Icarii baby without its Enchanter father there to
sing it out, then the baby will tear her to pieces, and I don”t want to die like my grandmother
died, screaming and bleeding as her child was born…I don”t want to die like my grandmother
died…”
StarDrifter already felt as if his world was falling apart—his child? She was pregnant
with his child?—but then Salome uttered the words that exploded his entire life into a million
jagged, terrible pieces.
“I don”t want to die like Embeth died,” she whispered.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The FarReach Mountains, Southern Kyros
Something terrible had happened. No one was quite sure what, but as soon as Salome
had mentioned the name of her grandmother—Embeth—StarDrifter had let out a choked cry and
sunk to the ground, his face contorted, his fingers clawing into the earth.
Maximilian was tired. Tired of all the complications the SunSoars brought into
everyone”s lives. They just couldn”t lead normal, straightforward, blameless lives. Instead, the
SunSoars demonstrated a remarkable talent for destroying everyone within flesh-touching
distance.
It was dusk, and they were all now sitting about the campfire. Maximilian had introduced
Salome to everyone—she was very quiet now, clearly emotionally and physically
exhausted—and they had sat down. Ravenna, Serge, and one of BroadWing”s companions,
SongFlight, handed about food and flasks of wine.
Maximilian thought they”d all needed the wine.
StarDrifter had joined the circle about the fire, but he refused the food, and had taken
only a couple of sips of wine from the flask being handed about.
He looked completely wretched, and Maximilian sighed, supposing it would be up to him
to find out what now had gone so wrong in StarDrifter”s life.
Doubtless it would affect them all sooner or later.
“Who was Embeth?” Maximilian said, looking at StarDrifter.
His face tightened. He did not speak, and it was Salome who answered.
“My grandmother,” she said, her voice quiet and lacking in any emotion at all. “The birth
that killed her produced a daughter, Hasweb, who was my mother.”
“Hasweb,” StarDrifter murmured, and passed a hand over his eyes.
Maximilian glanced at him, but addressed Salome. “You said she died giving birth?”
Salome sighed, more from weariness than anything else. “Yes. She was not a Corolean.
She came from Tencendor—”
Maximilian had a sudden terrible premonition of where this tale would lead.
“—but married into a noble Corolean family. She was pregnant at the time. Everyone
thought it was her new husband”s child, but…she had a terrible labor. The child would not be
born. It tore my grandmother apart. My mother, Hasweb, survived, but Embeth did not.
“Hasweb was an Icarii child. But she was a wanted and loved child, and Embeth”s
husband forgave the fact she”d come into their marriage pregnant with an Icarii child, for he had
loved Embeth, and raised the child as his own.
“When she was five they sent her to a specialist, who cut from her back her wing nubs.”
“Oh, gods!” StarDrifter said. “No! How could they—”
“StarDrifter, you will say no more until Salome has finished,” said Maximilian. “You
will say nothing, do you understand?”
StarDrifter gave one tight nod.
“It was done cleanly and kindly,” said Salome, “as it would later be done to me. Hasweb
was given a powerful drug that rendered her unconscious. There was only a little pain from the
incisions later, when she awoke, and the scarring faded within a year or two. As it faded with
me.” She paused, then continued. “Hasweb was married into the First. Embeth”s Corolean
husband was a member of the First…and he passed Hasweb off as the child of his former wife, who had died only weeks before he”d married Embeth while he”d been on a diplomatic mission
within Tencendor. So no one knew that Hasweb was not a born and bred child of the First. No
one knew that I was not, until…” She shot a vicious glance at StarDrifter.
“So that is how you came by your Icarii blood,” said Maximilian. “From your mother”s
unknown father.”
Salome grimaced slightly. “Not all of it. My mother Hasweb had married into the First,
but…she took an Icarii lover herself. My own father was Icarii. I am almost full blood Icarii.”
“And did Hasweb die in your birth?” Venetia asked.
Salome shook her head. “No. Her lover came back for my birth, for he had loved my