It combined the power of the stars with the power of the earth, and it sang as he swung it through the air.
Hunt, his mind whispered through the forest, and the hunt intensified.
His hounds – no, they were not hounds, they were something indefinably different – obeyed, and they put their noses… no… beaks … to the scent of the prey and they coursed and whispered and hunted.
They obeyed his every command.
Hunt! he cried again.
They sped through the forest, the quarry before them. Drago felt triumph seethe through his veins – he hunted through the entire realm and all ran before him: his parents, Axis and Azhure, cowering golden and scared; his brother Caelum, hiding at their backs; even Goodwife Renkin; and there was WolfStar, cursed WolfStar, his eyes widening in horror as he was cornered by… by…
Drago woke, shaking and sweating. What was it that he hunted with? Their names and the very concept of them lurked just out of reach. He should know, he should, but he didn’t, and Drago almost cried with the frustration of it.
He shifted more comfortably against the tree and drifted back to sleep, and while his sleep was troubled by dreams, they were dreams of Zenith and his childhood, and no more did he ride to the hunt that night.
The further south he moved, the more vivid grew the dreams of the hunt. Drago did not fear the dreams; rather, he found them intriguing. What were they telling him…
that he should hunt down those who hunted him? At that thought Drago would invariably smile, or even laugh. He was not entirely sure the combined forces of Tencendor would cower to the ground in fear if he appeared, waving his sack over his head!
Nevertheless, Drago found he spent the days longing for the nights, longing for the dream where for once he was the one to hunt, he was the one with the power, he was the one who said, “Yes, you shall live, and, yes, you shall die.”
And, although Drago often killed in these dreams, he never saw who it was he killed.
Sometimes Drago came close to tears as he stumbled along the paths of Minstrelsea. He thought of all he had lost. He had, apparently, been one of the most powerful Enchanters ever birthed – even WolfStar had said so. His name, DragonStar, had reflected that power. And yet his future had been destroyed so early.
But his mother hadn’t actually destroyed his power, had she? She’d only reversed his blood order so that his human blood was dominant – except for Isfrael, all SunSoar children carried equal amounts of Icarü and human blood. That meant that somewhere within him still existed the Icarü Enchanter potential.
The day that Drago realised this his footsteps had dragged to a halt and he stood, thinking. Drago had thought he’d accepted his lot in life years ago… but now he was not so sure. What if he could retrieve his heritage, his potential?
What would it be like to live the life of an Icarü Enchanter?
As the dreams grew stronger, so the beasts that hunted for him grew more substantial in his mind, and so Drago’s thoughts about regaining his Icarü power grew ever more dominant.
One night, tired, hungry, and cold, he curled about the sack and wished himself into dream.
He hunted, the horse striding powerfully beneath him. Before him ranged… ranged… Drago twisted and moaned. They were so close, he could almost see them. They hunted, they obeyed his every wish, and they were…
Hawks.
Drago relaxed in his sleep, and smiled. Yes, that was it. They were not hounds at all, but they were hunting falcons, hawks.
Enchanted hawks.
Whispering. Whispering… revenge.
Drago woke into a clear-eyed clarity. He knew who these hawks were now. It was so obvious. So right. He should have realised days ago.
They were the children whom WolfStar had cast into the Star Gate. Roaming the interstellar wastes, crying out for revenge.
Looking for someone to direct them.
Was he that someone? Drago lay there and considered the matter. They were so much like him. Condemned to death before they’d had a chance to live. Condemned by WolfStar. And the more that Drago thought about it, the more he wondered if WolfStar had constructed the vision of RiverStar’s murder that had condemned him.
WolfStar – they could all hunt WolfStar.
All the children needed was someone to bring them back through the Star Gate.
All they needed was a leader. Someone to direct them on the hunt.
Drago’s mouth curled. Back through the Star Gate? He would die the instant he stepped through.
Maybe, but somewhere deep inside him was the blood of DragonStar, and maybe that would protect him.
Maybe once he stepped through the Star Gate, Azhure’s curse would shatter and his blood order would be righted. He would regain his heritage!
“And this will surely protect me!” Drago said, his hands opening and closing about the object within the sack.
His eyes were alive with hope. He would get his revenge, and these hawks would be the ones to accomplish it for him.
Drago did not realise that what he guarded so jealously in the sack was manipulating his mind. It desperately wanted to get through the Star Gate, and it wanted Drago to go through as well. To this end it had been veiling Drago from the eyes of the farflight scouts for weeks, and over the past days had been speeding his feet along enchanted paths deep within the forest. Drago was moving faster than any human or Icarü had a right to move.
Drago did not know it, but he was being guided by a power far older and stranger than Icarü magic.
Behind Drago, day after day, trailed the red doe, pulled as much by the object in the sack as she was by worry about what Drago was doing.
She had been instrumental in its creation, and it had witnessed her death.
And, wrapped about its head, were still the remnants of the gown she had been wearing the day when Gorgrael had torn her apart.
So she trailed after Drago, fretting, not knowing what to do, who to tell, if to tell, wondering what he was doing, where he was going.
Pulled by the Rainbow Sceptre.
StarDrifter had laid Zenith on the bed in the spare chamber in the priestesses’ quarters on Temple Mount, and then sat and waited. Zenith slept for two nights and three days. For most of that time she sweated and tossed, attended only by two of the priestesses and StarDrifter himself, but on the third day she calmed and slept soundly.
That evening she woke.
StarDrifter sat forward and took her hand. “Zenith?”
Her eyes fluttered, then opened, and she smiled at him. “You must be StarDrifter.”
Something very cold and nauseating coiled about his belly. “Zenith?” he said, more hesitatingly this time.
“If you like,” the woman who looked like Zenith said, and sat up in bed.
Automatically StarDrifter’s hand reached to help her, but he pulled it back before he touched her.
“Where am I?” she asked.
“In the priestesses’ quarters on Temple Mount.”
Her entire face lit up. “I’m home! Oh, StarDrifter, I’m home!”
He tried to smile for her, but couldn’t. This had been Niah’s home, not… “You are not Zenith.”
She eased by the bed and walked a little unsteadily to the window. “Look! There are the lavender gardens. Oh, StarDrifter, I have dreamed of being able to walk through those lavender gardens again!”
She turned back to face the Enchanter, and almost overbalanced as her wings caught against the windowsill. “Oh! I shall have to get used to these.”
“You are Niah,” StarDrifter said tonelessly. Somewhere a great anger was building, but at whom or what he did not know.
She paused in her inspection of her wings, and sent him a sweet smile. “StarDrifter, I know this must seem strange. Here I am, in what you perceive as your granddaughter’s body. But,” she walked over and knelt before him, taking his hands in hers, “I have always been here. What Zenith loved was because I had loved it first. Her dreams were but borrowings of mine. Her words and laughter were generated by my soul. Her -”
“I understand!” StarDrifter said, and pulled his hands from hers. He was angry at her, he realised. At Niah, not Zenith. But had Zenith ever existed?
“StarDrifter, do not mourn Zenith,” the woman said gently. “She was but a shell waiting to acknowledge me.”
StarDrifter’s anger threatened to break forth, and he averted his eyes from the woman. “What am I to call you?”
“Call me… Niah. My death at Hagen’s hands was but an interruption in my life. Niah is my name. And,” her hands spread over her belly and a smile lit her face, “I am pregnant with Wolf Star’s child again. I am blessed.”