Drago swallowed, then looked across the chamber.
There was blood everywhere. Fragments of fur, and bone.
And, in the middle of all this gore, lay a naked woman. She lay sprawled on her belly, her raised head towards Drago, and her green eyes were wide, and full of some emotion that Drago could not discern.
She stretched out a hand, then let it drop. “You are Axis’ son,” she said, and pushed herself into a sitting position. “He couldn’t save me. He couldn’t – or wouldn’t. And yet you… look what you have done.”
Then her eyes dropped. “And look at all this blood,” she whispered. “Look, everywhere… that is my blood.”
“I didn’t mean to hurt you!” Drago said, thinking she was blaming him.
He grabbed Orr’s cloak and threw it about the woman’s shoulders. “There… you’ll be warm now. Please, tell no-one I was here -”
Even as he said it, Drago knew she would tell. She had to. She was Faraday, and she was tied to his parents with bonds of love and suffering. She would tell.
“- please,” he finished lamely.
Faraday raised her eyes and stared at him, and then said something that made no sense.
“I have to take WolfStar’s place,” she said. “And you must come with me.”
“No! I cannot! I must -”
“You must come with me,” she said more firmly, and clasped the cloak about her with one hand as if she were about to rise.
“No!” Drago shouted. “I am going through the Star Gate. I must! I -”
“Then if you do that,” Faraday said, apparently unperturbed, “you must come with me when you get back.”
“If I come back,” Drago said, each word harsh with emotion, “it will only be to reclaim my heritage and to take my rightful place in Tencendor.”
“Of course,” she said, and smiled with extraordinary loveliness. “I would not have it any other way.”
Drago opened his mouth to shout, but could find no response to her ambiguities.
Damn her! Why did she speak in such riddles?
He reached out a trembling hand, then snatched it back.
Then, before he forgot himself completely, Drago tucked the sack firmly under his arm, averted his eyes from the strange expectation and – curse her! -confidence in Faraday’s face, and ran towards the Star Gate.
He stepped onto the wall with one foot, then cast himself into the universe.
New Existences There was pain, terrible pain, and a sensation as if every last breath and drop of blood were being squeezed out of him. He felt his chest explode. Then… then there was a nothingness for what seemed like a very long time.
Finally Drago – if he was still anything that resembled Drago – became aware that he was hanging suspended in a cold, dark space. No light, no warmth, no laughter. A vacuum of nothingness about him. Then he felt and saw stars, before he caught just the faintest snatches of what he thought must be the Star Dance.
Drago assumed this was the Star Dance, because none but Enchanters ever heard the Star Dance.
But whatever it was, the snatches Drago heard were so beautiful, so haunting, so powerful, that he felt cold tears slide down his cheeks.
How strange that he could cry when he was dead. Drago knew he was dead. He must be. The pain had been so terrible, and even now there were trails of it still running through his body.
Now, no doubt, he was on his journey to the AfterLife. At that thought Drago was overwhelmed with sadness. He did not want to die. His life had indeed been a waste.
For an unknowable time Drago wept in sorrow at such waste, and then, when his grief ended, he cast his eyes (or his awareness, Drago was not truly sure if he could still “see”) about him. He drifted among stars, powerless. He recognised none of them. Even though Drago had paid attention to his childhood lessons on the patterns of the heavens, none of the patterns presented to him now made any sense.
But, of course, now he was drifting among them, not viewing them from the safety of the ground, and that made his perspective different.
It made everything different.
Drago wept anew. He clutched the sack to him, cuddling it, trying to let it comfort him, and suddenly realised that the Rainbow Sceptre had gone. Destroyed, probably, in his leap through the Star Gate. Or lost to drift about the heavens, waiting for some other hand to pick it up.
What a waste his life was.
But just as Drago thought this, the stars reformed, whirling through the sky, twisted and rewoven by some powerful hand or force that Drago could not understand. He was caught up in a maelstrom, whirled about until the pain returned.
Who are you? Who are you?
Whispers, all around him. He had been consumed by a black cloud. It choked him, prodded him, invaded his mind, demanded that he answer.
Who are you? From where have you come?
“Drago,” he whispered. “And I have come from Tencendor -”
Tencendor!
Triumph erupted about him, and in that instant Drago realised that he had succeeded. He had found those who would help him, and all his sadness dissipated in a heartbeat.
“,’ am alive!” he screamed through the universe, and that cry was taken up two hundred times about him.
Alive!
And then a voice, a different voice. Calm, gentle, benevolent. “Would you like to join the quest?”
“Yes, yes, yes,” Drago cried. “Yes,'”
Faraday sat on the floor of the Star Chamber, staring at the spot where Drago had thrown himself into the Gate, until she realised she was shivering with cold. She struggled to her feet, wrapping the Ferryman’s cloak tight about her, and remembered the vision that had consumed her when she’d been struck by the light of the Rainbow Sceptre.
She stood in a strange room, so strange Faraday felt disorientated and unsure. The walls, ceiling, benches and even parts of the floor were covered with metal plates, and these plates were studded with knobs and bright, jewel-like lights. Before her were the high backs of several chairs, facing enormous windows that… that looked out upon the universe.
One of the chairs before her swivelled, revealing a man in its depths. He was silver-haired, and his face was lined with care, but there was such youthful humour in his brown eyes that Faraday did not fear him. He wore a uniform made of a leathery black material, gold braid hung at his shoulders and encircled the cuffs of his sleeves, and Faraday saw a black peaked cap, also with gold braid about its brim, sitting on the bench behind him.
He stood, and held out both hands.
Without hesitation Faraday walked forward and took them.
“You are Faraday,” the man said, his voice warm and lively, “and I have watched you for many years.”
“Who are you?”
“Like you, I am a survivor,” he said, and smiled. “But you may called me Noah. My friends…” his voice faltered, and his eyes glanced about the room, “… my friends once called me that, thinking to make me laugh. But it is an appropriate enough name, and I have made it my own.”
“Where are we?”
He sighed, and released her hands. “I no longer know quite what to call this old girl,” he said, and patted a wall almost affectionately. “She is a little different to what I once knew. This is… this is one of the Repositories.”
“Ah! I know! The Repositories lie in the depths of the Sacred Lakes.” And then Faraday frowned. “But the power of the Repositories was what killed the Sentinels. They came down here, and were so corrupted their skin blistered, and their hair fell out, and -”
“They visited the heart of the Repositories,” Noah said hastily, “where lies the corrupting power you mention. The Repositories are larger than you can imagine… and mostly not dangerous.”
Mostly, Faraday thought a little cynically. “Why am I here?”
“Because I want to ask something of you.”
She did not speak, merely raised an eyebrow.
“I know that others have asked much of you, Faraday, and that you have endured pain and loss for your troubles on their behalf. Faraday, I dare to ask you again to commit yourself to Tencendor, and for your troubles I can promise you one of two outcomes. Either complete and lasting happiness and peace, or…”
“Or?”
“Or annihilation.”
Faraday startled him by pealing with laughter. “Then I win both ways, do I not?”
Noah smiled gently. “I guess that you do, Faraday. I guess that you do.”
“What must I do, Noah? Tell me and I will consider your request.”
“Four things.”
“Four? You ask a great deal, sir.”
“You will not find them onerous, my dear.”
“Then speak them, and I will make up my mind.”