Ravenna watched as Ishbel walked away toward her tent, then she moved away quietly
into the night.
Ishbel stood twenty or so paces from her tent, not yet willing to enter it. She needed the
night air, needed it to clear her mind and heart and restore some peace to her soul.
She wished Maximilian had not followed her out once she”d walked away from him.
“Are you all right?” Axis said softly, stepping up behind her.
“Not particularly,” she replied, not looking at him.
He stood with her silently for a little while, his eyes wandering over the stars in the sky.
“Did you mean what you said to Maxel,” he said finally, “that what lay between you is
over?”
“Yes,” Ishbel said. “There is a freedom, you know, in not loving him as once I did, and in
not yearning for him. It is more peaceful.”
As once I did…Axis wondered what she meant by that.
“Will you be my lover?” he said.
She looked at him, momentarily startled. “You waste no time, Axis SunSoar.”
“I mean to be first in line.”
Ishbel laughed softly. “My answer is no, Axis. I have had enough of lovers for the
moment. The gods alone know my last was ill-timed enough.” She hesitated. “Did you mean it?”
He gave a small smile, his eyes reflecting the starshine. “No.”
“Azhure is a lucky woman,” Ishbel said.
Axis shrugged slightly. “Not so lucky, if you think that she rests still in the Otherworld
while her husband lives untouchable in this.”
“Do you miss her?”
“Not as much as first I did. When Isaiah pulled me from the Otherworld, from death back
into life, my yearning for her was a throbbing pain. Here.” He tapped his chest. “I used to write
her letters every night. I think Isaiah had a servant steal them from my bedchamber so that I
would think they had been spirited by magic into the Otherworld.”
Ishbel smiled.
“Then Isaiah sent me north, to fetch you from Ba”al”uz,” Axis continued, “and my
yearning for Azhure dulled. I no longer write her letters. I think of her most days…but I do not
yearn for her.” He sighed. “She has lost me, I think, to the adventures of life.”
“Do you think you will ever love again? As you did Azhure?”
“Not as I loved Azhure, no. Not that, not ever again. But love, in a different manner,
shape, and form?” Axis paused. “I hope so, Ishbel. I could not bear to live this new life
completely without love.”
When Axis left Ishbel he thought to stroll past the tents of the generals, to see if all was
peaceful. But as he turned to go, he saw that StarDrifter and Salome”s tent was still lit, and he
decided to speak with them.
The generals could wait until morning.
StarDrifter and Salome were sitting up on their bed, quite naked, Salome leaning against
StarDrifter”s chest, one of his hands resting on her distended belly. Salome was now some seven
months pregnant, glowing with satisfaction at the place in life she had unexpectedly found
herself, and somewhat amused as she saw Axis” slight discomfort at finding his father and her in
such intimacy.
But he pulled up a stool, sat down, and nodded at Salome”s belly. “What do you think,
StarDrifter?” he asked his father. “What kind of son are you breeding this time?”
“A peaceful one,” said StarDrifter, watching his son a little carefully. He was not sure
how Axis would react to this child—for so long Axis had been the favored, and then the only,
son.
Now he would have a brother.
Axis gave a slight smile at StarDrifter”s words. “Neither Gorgrael nor I had ever been
„peaceful” sons,” he said, referring to his half-brother and onetime Lord of the Skraelings whom
Axis had eventually killed in battle. “And Salome, if you forgive me for saying this, is a
considerably less „peaceful” woman than either my mother or Gorgrael”s.”
“Then feel your brother,” said StarDrifter. “Place your hand on Salome”s belly and feel
him.”
Axis hesitated. It was not simply the familiarity, and the amusement in both Salome”s and
StarDrifter”s eyes at his uncertainty, but the fact that he would be able to intimately sense the
baby. All Icarii could sense and communicate with unborn children, and it was not an ability they
had lost with the Star Dance.
Axis was not sure if he wanted to meet his new brother just yet.
“Axis?” Salome said.
He leaned forward, sliding his hand over the mound of Salome”s belly as his father
withdrew his.
Her skin was very warm, very soft, and very tight over her womb.
Axis could literally feel the curve of his brother”s body and two very slight bumps, either
of hands or of feet.
And he could feel more. The rapid thrum of his brother”s heart…and his brother”s
interest, the movement of his tiny body as he shifted within the womb so that more of his body
was exposed to the gentle pressure of Axis” hand.
“What do you sense?” StarDrifter said.
“Curiosity,” said Axis. “You had not told him about me. He did not know he had an elder
brother.”
“There has been so little time…” StarDrifter said, waving a hand languidly, and Axis shot
him a sharp look, then looked back to his hand, which he shifted gently this way and that.
“He is gentle and peaceful,” Axis said. “You are right.” His mouth quirked. “That is
unexpected in a SunSoar. He wants to learn, he is so curious.”
Then Axis blinked, leaning back from Salome”s body and removing his hand from where
it rested.
“He will be a great singer,” he said. “A beautiful voice. StarDrifter, what have you named
him?”
Salome and StarDrifter glanced at each other.
“StarDancer,” said StarDrifter.
“And how shall he do that,” Axis said softly, holding his father”s eyes, “when none of us
have access to the Star Dance?”
“The Lealfast arrive soon,” StarDrifter said. “They shall tell us how to touch the Star
Dance again. They can touch it, and they will tell us.”
Axis doubted very much that the Lealfast would just “tell” anyone, but StarDrifter had
now broached the subject Axis wanted to speak to him about.
“How do you feel about them, StarDrifter?” he asked. “They number so many, a quarter
of a million, and shall be so strange to us. From my brief glimpse of the one who staged the
assassination attempt on Isaiah, they are an alien people. They are—”
“They are Icarii,” StarDrifter said.
Axis shook his head slowly. “I don”t know, StarDrifter. They have the outward shape of
an Icarii, but they are still so strange. They have Skraeling blood in them—and abilities that are
beyond us, and beyond even what we commanded when we had the Star Dance and were at the
full height of our powers.”
He paused. “And they give their loyalty to Maximilian, to the Lord of Elcho Falling. Not
to you as Talon.”
“There will come a time,” StarDrifter said, “when both the Lealfast and the Icarii shall be
one nation again. They came from us, Axis. They shall return to us.”
Axis grew more uncomfortable by the moment. Almost everything about this visit had
disturbed him, just slightly, and he felt a distance between himself and his father that he hadn”t
felt previously.
He really didn”t think the Lealfast would prove firm and fast and immediate friends to the
Icarii, and he suspected that StarDrifter expected them to accept him as their Talon.
“Perhaps,” Axis answered, then he took his leave of Salome and StarDrifter.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Sky Peaks Pass
Ishbel?”
Ishbel twisted about on the stool, caught in the act of brushing out her hair before she
dressed it for the day, irritated that Maximilian had found her at such an intimate moment.
“May I sit?” Maximilian said, coming further into the tent and nodding at the chair to one
side of Ishbel”s mirror. “I”m sorry to disturb you before your breakfast.”
“Of course.” Ishbel set her brush to one side, keeping her movements slow and ordered
and her expression carefully neutral as she regarded Maximilian.
“Ishbel, I do need to speak to you about what happened the other night in the snow.”
“There is no need to—”
“I should not have treated you in the manner I did. You did not deserve it.”
“You have done nothing these past months but allow me to believe that was how I should
be treated.”
“We have both said things hurtful, and done things that—”
“Maximilian, leave this, please. I meant what I said earlier. Our past is now past. It is
gone. I realized that after you”d left. There is no point in either of us trying to resurrect a
relationship that has caused us nothing but pain.”
Maximilian regarded her steadily for a long moment, and Ishbel had to drop her eyes.
That little speech had sounded ridiculous.