She jumped a little, surprised at being addressed. “Yes?”
“You have not been corrupted by a lifetime of Icarii blindness,” Axis said. “Maybe you
will understand. What has StarDrifter told you of the Star Dance?”
She glanced at her husband, then looked back to Axis. “The Star Dance is the music
made by the stars as they weave their way through the heavens.”
“Yes,” said Axis. “Good stock answer. Carry on.”
Salome gave him a black look, but continued. “The music made by the stars filtered
through the Star Gate—”
“Tell me, Salome,” Axis said, “was that the only way to see the stars, through the Star
Gate?”
She sent StarDrifter another glance. “Well, no, we can see them in the night sky. But I
have been told that the stars in the night sky are but a pale reflection of what was visible through
the Star Gate.”
Axis sat and waited, regarding Salome steadily, and StarDrifter turned away from his son
and stared at Salome also.
She narrowed her eyes, thinking. “The stars in the night sky are but a pale reflection of
what you could see through the Star Gate…but they are still there.”
Axis” mouth curved in a small smile.
“Ergo,” she said, “the Star Dance is still here, too, but a paler reflection of what you
could once hear via the Star Gate.”
Now Axis was grinning, and looked between his father and Salome. “The Star Dance is
still here. It falls to earth gently about us, day and night. It drifts down from the heavens. It isn”t as concentrated nor as loud as what we heard via the Star Gate, but it is still around us. We just need to open our senses to it. Listen, when I watched the Lealfast do their pretty snowflake thing
in the sky above Maximilian, my mind was screaming at me to make some connection, and I just
couldn”t.”
“They were making patterns,” said Salome.
“Yes,” said Axis. “They were making patterns. And as that thought came into my head I
remembered what Orr had told me about the waterways making patterns so the Charonites could
manipulate the Star Dance…and suddenly it just clicked.”
“What just clicked? ” StarDrifter said.
“It would have been better to do this during the day,” said Axis, “as our sight would be
clearer then, but there is a light snow falling and it will do better than nothing.” He stood, and
picked up a lamp. “Come with me. Oh, and toss on some clothes. It will be cold outside.”
StarDrifter cursed, and grabbed at his breeches.
Axis led StarDrifter and Salome outside and held up the lamp. “The Star Dance is drifting
down gently from the heavens,” he said. “Look at the pattern of the snowflakes as they fall.”
StarDrifter and Salome stared, their brows furrowed.
“Would it help,” Axis said softly, “if I said that you can see music as well as hear it? That
you can write music, and understand it? That the—”
“Star Dance is twisting the snow as it falls!” said StarDrifter. “The twists and cadences of
the snow as it falls show us the music of the Star—”
He stopped, his face going completely blank.
Axis watched him, then saw the instant the Star Dance filled his father”s consciousness.
StarDrifter”s entire body sagged and his eyes filled with tears.
“Everything about us is affected to some extent by the gentle fall of the Star Dance from
the heavens,” Axis said. “Everything. All we have to do is open our eyes to it. The motes of dust
dancing in the air, the tilt of a bird”s wing in the sky, the clouds as they bubble and tumble across
the sky. And once you can see it, once you understand that the Star Dance is all about us—albeit in a more subtle form than we were used to hearing it previously—then the music fills our souls
again. Salome, can you feel it? See it?”
“Yes,” she said, and gave Axis a lovely smile, “I think that I can. You know, I used to
hear this as a child, and then I thought it a figment of my imagination. It used to fill my dreams
at night.”
They stood in silence for several long minutes, wonder transfixing Salome”s face,
thankfulness StarDrifter”s.
“But what I don”t understand,” Salome said eventually to Axis, “is that if the Star Dance
was all about you anyway, why could the Icarii Enchanters not use it anymore when the Star
Gate was destroyed?”
“Because we were so blind,” said StarDrifter. “Because we were so used to hearing the
harmony of sound from the Star Gate that we were utterly blinded to the subtlety of this gentler
music. Because it takes, on average, a thousand years for the damned Icarii to comprehend the
easiest of secrets!”
Axis looked at his father and laughed, the sound one of pure joy.
They stayed up most of the night, sitting in StarDrifter and Salome”s tent, laughing with
their joy and playing with the Star Dance. Axis and StarDrifter found their control of the music
weaker than it had been when they”d heard the full thunder of it through the Star Gate, but even
in the few hours that they had toyed with the Star Dance, they felt their use of it becoming
firmer.
Toward dawn there came a murmur at the tent flap. It was StarHeaven, one of the Icarii
who had arrived the day Maximilian and Ishbel had talked atop the hill.
“StarMan?” she said as she entered. “Talon? What is happening? Myself and several
other Enchanters,” she indicated that they waited outside, “have felt as if…as if…”
“The Star Dance has been rediscovered,” said Axis. “Come in, StarHeaven, and your
fellows, too, and rediscover yourselves.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
On the Road to Serpent’s Nest
The morning was very cold. The snow had ceased falling before dawn, and now a heavy
frost lay over everything in camp. Winter was having its final, cruel stab before spring”s warmer
breezes.
Despite the cold, everyone in camp was moving. Tents collapsed ungracefully into the
snow, sending puffs of white powder about knees and hips; horses moved restlessly as saddles
were thrown across their backs; cooks shouted irritably as hooves and boots kicked dirty snow
into their fires.
Maximilian was breaking camp and making for Elcho Falling.
Ishbel, tired after a restless night of little sleep, made her way carefully through the ranks,
Madarin trailing a few steps behind her. She was looking for Isaiah, and found him, eventually,
standing with Eleanon and Bingaleal.
“Isaiah,” she said, “may I have a brief word?”
The Lealfast bowed, then faded—quite literally—away.
Ishbel rubbed her hands together, trying to restore some circulation into them. “Isaiah, be
careful. Please.”
“I will, Ishbel. I didn”t think you would be so concerned.”
“Well, I am. You can consider it a triumph.”
He tilted her chin up with a gentle finger. “I need to get back to my river, Ishbel. I cannot
stay away from it too long.”
“I know. Be careful.”
“You and your lord must come visit me one day.”
Ishbel ignored the “your lord” for the moment. “You”re not coming back?”
“My work here is done. My work in Isembaard awaits.”
“Isaiah, you don”t know what awaits you there!”
“I have a good idea. And I will be careful. Ishbel…look after that goblet. Listen to it. And
listen to your heart.”
Then he leant down to her, kissed her softly, and was gone.
Eleanon and Bingaleal stood apart, unseen in their magical state, watching Isaiah and
Ishbel.
“I wish you luck in Isembaard, brother,” Eleanon said.
Bingaleal gave a nod. “I hope I may discover hopeful news. The more I hear about
Maximilian, and the more I talk with him, the more I feel that the One may offer us a better
pathway. Eleanon…”
“Yes?”
“It might be worth considering fooling Maximilian and Axis into thinking we are poor
fighters. It might do us good if they underestimate us.”
“And our powers. They only know of our command of the Star Dance. Not of…”
“Not of the power we learned from the Magi,” said Bingaleal. “Not of the power of the
One.”
He stopped and exchanged a small, secretive smile with Eleanon.
“Then they shall think us useless,” said Eleanon. “I will talk to Inardle about this, too,
and make certain she tells Axis only what we want him—and Maximilian—to know. You are
right. It is best for us, and best for our hopes, if they underestimate us completely.”
Isaiah walked to a snowy space some distance from the bustling encampment. One of the
Lealfast stood there, waiting for him.
Bingaleal, Isaiah”s erstwhile assassin.
About him drifted clouds and banners of snow, and from the corner of his eye Isaiah
could see a glimmer of faces and wings and hands within—the Lealfast who were to accompany
them south.
“Off to save Isembaard, then,” said Bingaleal.
“What we can of it,” Isaiah said. He studied the Lealfast, trying to see past the exterior