No, he could find it, but not tonight. Drago glanced at the faint stars twinkling through the forest canopy. Fifty paces before him the forest ended, for Faraday had planted around the Ancient Barrows to leave them easily accessible, but Drago ignored the call of the open spaces and crawled deeper back into the forest.
The lure of the dream beckoned.
The lure of the hunt.
Unknown to Drago, the doe curled up beside him as he slept, as she had curled up every night for the past week. She shared some of the dream, and shook, for she had good reason to fear the hunt.
But at least this time she was not the quarry.
She garnered from the man’s dreams some of the memories that embittered him, and she sorrowed. This man was Axis and Azhure’s child, and she loved both of .
them. Azhure as a beloved sister, Axis as… well, as a former lover. No longer did she harbour a passion for him, but he was a dear man to her and he and his concerned her.
Even if she rarely saw Axis or Azhure any more.
She knew why. They, like her, now travelled their own magical existence, and they rarely came back to the forest to see her. Azhure had once often come, but it had now been many seasons since Faraday had seen her. True, sometimes all the Star Gods came to dance in Niah’s Grove, but Faraday did not approach on those occasions.
This man was their son. Faraday remembered that Azhure had been pregnant with Drago and RiverStar when Faraday had first met her. Even then Faraday had an inkling of the trouble these two babes would cause, and she’d later heard of Drago’s crime against his brother.
And here he was, running through the forest, blind to its beauties, and with the Rainbow Sceptre clasped beneath his arm.
That troubled Faraday. Axis had used the Rainbow Sceptre to kill Gorgrael –
but not to save her – and had then secreted it within Sigholt, intending to study it at more leisure one day. Faraday nuzzled the sack, dreaming and remembering. The five Sentinels, Jack and Zeherah, the seductive Yr, and the irrepressible brothers Ogden and Veremund, had stolen the virulent, strangely corrupting power from the hidden Repositories beneath the waters of the Sacred Lakes to create this Sceptre. They had also given their lives. Faraday recalled that when Axis had wielded the Sceptre, she’d heard echoes of the Sentinels’ laughter in its flaring light – were their spirits still embedded in the Sceptre?
The thought gave Faraday some comfort, but then she tensed as the man moved.
She relaxed slowly – he was only moving deeper into his dream. Running through the forest, hunting, setting… his hawks? What were they? Setting his hawks to the quarry.
What was Drago doing with the Sceptre? Why had he taken it?
Should she do something? Tell someone?
But Faraday let the thought slip’ away. She so rarely spoke to anyone now. Even the once-constant shadow of the White Stag had faded; at the moment he ran the very upper reaches of the forests in the Avarinheim.
And as for Isfrael… the precious hours she’d spent with her child each year in Niah’s Grove had been too few, and Isfrael had bonded to the Avar rather than her. Now she believed he barely even thought of her let alone sought her out.
Faraday’s thoughts these days were generally vague. Deer-like. She thought about the trails and she thought about the choicest spots to nibble sweet grass and plump berries, but that was largely it. Until Drago had dragged Zenith into Niah’s Grove, for months Faraday’s thoughts hadn’t been directed to anything more than the next grazing spot.
She thought briefly of contacting Axis or Azhure about the Rainbow Sceptre, then let the thought drift away. She snuggled a little closer to the man, appreciating his warmth, and watched as he dreamed.
As he raised his sword to deal the death blow to his quarry, she rose and melted into the shadows.
Drago started out of his dream, breathing heavily, and clutching the Sceptre to himself. He smiled slowly, remembering the satisfaction of his sword driving home to smash bone and cleave heart.
He could almost empathise with his father for spending so long at war. Was this how Axis had felt when he’d driven the Rainbow Sceptre into Gorgrael’s heart?
He lay for a while, then decided he may as well get up and make an early start. He finished the last of the malfari bread he had taken from an Avar encampment two nights previously, then stood up, brushing leaves from his cloak.
For a moment he stood there in the dim light, one hand scratching at his cheeks and chin. He had not washed or changed in weeks, and his face was thick with a new growth of beard.
But would any of that matter beyond the Star Gate?
No. Nothing would matter beyond the Star Gate save that he find the means to regain his heritage.
When I have refound my enchantments, he thought, I shall create for myself an image to suit my potential.
He grinned, and laughed at his vanity, and then he set off to look for a way down to the Star Gate.
In the end the entranceway to one of the tombs was not too difficult to find. There was a small encampment of Icarü within the Ancient Barrows, and Drago simply waited until he spotted two of them wing their way to a spot about two hundred paces to the south of the Barrows themselves.
Drago took his time approaching the spot where they’d landed. Not only did he have to travel on foot, but he had to keep to the edges of the forest as much as he could. Even that proved impossible as the Minstrelsea only extended some hundred and fifty paces south of the Barrows, and he had to cover the last fifty paces virtually crawling on his belly through the thick, knee-high grasses of the Tarantaise plains.
Every three or four paces he glanced at the sky, anxiously scanning for Icarü above.
But again luck was with Drago, and he managed to approach the entranceway to the passage without detection. There was a small mound of dirt, perhaps half as high again as a man, and below that was a black hole. From his hiding spot some fifteen paces from the entrance Drago could see a smooth-floored passageway extending down, torches flickering in its depths.
He wriggled deeper into the grasses and pulled some more over him. Would the Icarü come back out? Or had they gone down to keep guard over the Gate? Drago remembered Caelum sending SpikeFeather to stand watch with Orr, but he may have since placed another guard at the Gate.
Well, he thought, I shall cope with whatever and whoever is there as best I can. I shall –
His thoughts were cut off by a movement in the darkness of the passageway, and an instant later two Icarü stepped out. Drago breathed in relief; they were the two he’d seen go down earlier. Well, whatever they had gone down for, they were obviously not a change of guard.
They flew off, Drago hiding his face in the dirt and praying they did not spot him. There was a rush of wings, a movement of air high above him, and then there was nothing but the peaceful noise of the wind in the grasses.
Drago kept his head down until he had slowly counted to five hundred, then he cautiously looked about.
Nothing.
Gathering all his courage, and feeling for the first time a knot of fear in his belly, Drago grabbed his sack and ran for the entranceway.
Far behind him, the red doe stepped cautiously out from the shadow of the forest and trotted after him.
The Rainbow Sceptre The tunnel was cool and moist, and Drago pulled his cloak tighter about him. He was still nervous, but now that nervousness was tinged with excitement and a growing sense that he must step through the Star Gate soon, soon, soon…
He set off at a trot. The downhill slope was smooth, but Drago thought he would wind about in the bowels of the soil forever. His legs grew weak, and his breath short, and eventually Drago was forced to rest for some minutes before continuing at a slower pace.
He walked for what he thought was an eternity. Torches spluttered at infrequent intervals along the walls, and Drago wondered why there were not more of them. Surely the entrance into one of the greatest mysteries of Tencendor deserved a flood of glorious light?
He muttered as he stubbed his toe on an exposed rock, and stopped and rubbed it for a moment. Was this the entranceway to the Star Gate, or was it a trap for him? Had Caelum somehow guessed his destination? Had Wolf Star spied out his whereabouts? Were there guards waiting around the next curve? Was death waiting around the next curve?