Curious, for Drago had not seen a baby this small previously, he toddled over. His face was set in a frown of concentration and his fists clenched with effort, for the stable lads had left the cobbles wet and he did not want to slip over. He was about four or five paces from the blanket when the mother had re-emerged from the kitchen.
She’d taken one look at his frown and fists, then screamed in total panic.
Her baby had woken and begun to scream as well, and so also did Drago, as thoroughly frightened as mother and baby.
The woman had snatched her baby to her, and then literally spat at Drago. “Get you gone from my child! If you come near him again I will kill your At the commotion a dozen people had come running, including his parents and Caelum, then about four or five.
At that time Azhure was heavily pregnant with Zenith, and when she had seen the woman and screaming baby, both staring terrified at Drago, she had cried out herself, and caught Drago by the shoulders, spinning him about.
“You will never go near any baby! Do you understand, Drago? When my baby is born you will never go near her… do you hear me?”
In fact, Drago could hardly hear her above his own sobs, but he nodded violently anyway. Even worse than the screams and the words was the ring of people about him, all wearing varying degrees of revulsion, disgust and fury on their faces.
You will never harm another baby again, Drago…
Think to kill again and you will be killed yourself…
You will never be allowed to harm again…
We will never forget what you did…
Against Caelum…
Against Tencendor…
We will never trust you…
Never…
Never…
The thoughts and words of accusation and hate rang about him and Drago began to spasm with his own hiccuping sobs. What was happening? Why did everyone stare at him with such hate? Why? Why? Why? He fell to the ground and hid his face in his arms.
Eventually they’d left him there, curled up into a tight ball – as tight as Zenith was now – against the hatred and disgust.
Caelum had been the last to leave, and Drago had caught a peek at his face from under his own arm.
It was such a mixture of terror – terror of him – and hatred and disgust that Drago had closed his eyes as tight as he could. Closed them against the world and everyone in it.
There he’d lain, wishing somehow he’d wake from this frightful nightmare, when a small cat had bumped her head against his arm. Reaching out to the only thing that had shown him affection, Drago had hugged the cat to him, and she’d snuggled into his chest, her body reverberating with the strength of her purring, and Drago had sobbed anew.
No, Drago had never forgotten that day.
He’d grown silent and withdrawn. Sullen, his parents said. Zenith had been born shortly after that event, and all Drago had known of his sister for the first four years of her life was her distant cry, or tiny footfall. His parents had never let him near her until she was four.
When he was five it was RiverStar who’d finally told him why everyone hated him so much. She’d told him with a smirk on her face, revelling in his hurt. Drago hadn’t believed her, hadn’t wanted to believe her, and had in fact asked Axis to tell him it wasn’t true.
Axis had stared at him, silent, and turned away.
Drago hugged his sack tighter to him, tears glinting in his eyes. He had hated himself for a while, hated himself for what he’d done to Caelum, but over the years that self-hatred had been turned back out against the world that hated him. He’d spent his teenage years deep in bitterness, then his twenties and thirties as deep in resentment. How was he to know if he’d actually done what legend stated?
And finally, by the time he’d reached thirty-five, his mortality had struck deep. His siblings were all highly magical, enchanted creatures, revelling in youth and power and the adoration of all who saw them. –
Here he was, rejected, hated, loathed by all…
Well, not quite all. The cats continued to adore him, and as a child and even a youth Drago had spent many nights curled in the hay with the courtyard cats.
And Zenith liked him. That was unbelievable. She was the child he was never allowed near, she was the one everyone feared he would hurt, and yet Zenith had never regarded him with anything except friendship – and perhaps even love.
Unbidden, a memory crashed through his mind. A night racked with violent storms long ago when the SunSoar children had all been staying with their grandfather StarDrifter in the Temple complex on the Island of Mist and Memory. He had been about twelve then, battling to reconcile his approaching puberty with his ever-increasing resentment, only to realise they complemented each other. He had been lying in bed, watching lightning streak across the night sky, when the door had opened and Zenith, only six or seven, had scampered across the room and flung herself into his arms.
“Please,” she had whispered then, “I’m scared.” And she had clung to him all through the night and Drago, so rarely hugged or cuddled himself, had lain there, holding her tight, wondering that she had come to him first of all in her fright.
Zenith whimpered in her sleep, and the sound broke Drago out of his reverie. “Zenith?”
But Zenith was trapped in her own nightmare and did not hear him.
She was in a house, and the man who approached her had death in his eyes. He forced her to her knees, and then to the floor, and then he’d begun pushing her back.
Back towards the fire.
Oh, how she’d fought him! Her terror had given her abnormal strength, but she could not fight her way free.
Heat lapped at her head, and then flames at her hair. She could feel them crackling amid her hair, she could smell them, and then with a great roar her entire head had been enveloped in a ball of fire.
The agony was extraordinary.
Fire lifted her skin in massive blisters that burst and caught fire themselves. Fire seared through her throat and lungs when she took breath to scream. She tried to beat it out, but her hands caught fire, and then she somehow comprehended that her entire dress was aflame, and she knew she was going to die slowly, horribly, from the outside in, and that the agony would take its own sweet time in killing her.
She’d called out to her daughter, but those words did not mean very much now, not when her entire body was such a mass of torment, and her spirit inside was aware, aware, aware…
Drago jumped back, almost crying out. Zenith had abruptly rolled over and screamed, beating at her body with her hands as if she were consumed by fire. She screamed again, her body convulsing with the strength of it, and Drago gathered her into his arms and tried to calm her.
She struggled against him for a long time, and then finally lay quiet, crying a little.
Caught as she had been in Niah’s torment, Zenith had realised why the sweet-natured woman had changed in death. It had been the manner of her death – the suffering, the fear, the knowledge that no-one would come to save her. She had lain there, helpless, hearing and smelling and feeling as she burned into blackened meat that crackled and joints that popped in the heat.
And all the time she had remained aware. Right to the end, when her heart finally gave out.
But her sweet nature had given out first. That had been destroyed along with her body. Even in rebirth, Niah would never be the same again.
“Zenith?”
At Drago’s soft query, Zenith raised her head and smiled.
“Will you tell me what is wrong?”
Her smile faded, but finally she nodded and spoke. “Do you remember the stories of our grandmother Niah? Then listen…”
Wear Coast Caip In the east of Tencendor the Fortress Ranges rose from an undersea range and then stretched north in wildly undulating ridges, dividing forest from plain, and the haunts of the Avar from those of the human plain-dwellers. After a score of leagues the Fortress Ranges thickened, then leapt for the sky in a series of massive, almost vertical, razor-backed ridges until they merged with the permanently cloud-shrouded Icescarp Alps. For generations these Alps had been the haunt of the Icarü, condemned to a bitter exile by the Brotherhood of the Seneschal, but now few of the brilliantly coloured birdpeople fluttered about the ice-capped mountains, preferring the milder climes of the Minaret Peaks far to the south.