“I am not yours to command,” the captain muttered.
“Nevertheless, I am sure you would like StarSon Caelum and Prince Askam informed of my actions?”
The captain stared silently at him.
“Yes, I am sure you would. Well, I would like you to take a message to Caelum for me.”
The captain continued to stare at Zared.
“I am ordering you to carry a message to Caelum!” Zared snapped, and the captain nodded curtly.
“You will inform Caelum that I have seized Kastaleon in part compensation for the loss of trade Prince Askam’s exorbitant tariffs on river cargo have caused me and most of Western Tencendor. Nevertheless, I am a generous man, and I will be prepared to forget the loss and hand Kastaleon back into Prince Askam’s care once Caelum is prepared to negotiate the matters I discussed with him in Sigholt. Please repeat what I have just said.”
The captain hesitated, then repeated the message.
Zared sat back in his chair. “Good. You will ride north with all possible haste.”
“Are you invading the West?” the captain said.
Zared noted the lack of a title, but understood the captain’s attitude. No doubt Askam would not receive news of his failure to defend Kastaleon with much good cheer.
“Not if I don’t have to,” he said. “Now, get you gone from here. There is a horse and an escort waiting.”
Once the captain had gone, Herme emerged from a shadowy corner. “The first act has been played out in this war of nerves, my Prince. And now?”
Zared thought for some time. “I don’t want Caelum receiving intelligence that Kastaleon is surrounded by an army fourteen thousand thick, Herme. I will keep the five hundred here, but the rest… the rest I want to start to move,” he hesitated, “move them inland to the Western Ranges.”
Herme nodded. Within striking distance of Carlon. Whatever Zared was saying publicly, he’d been thinking of Carlon. Well, if he truly wanted the throne, Kastaleon was never going to be enough. “Do you think Caelum will move against us, Zared?”
“Frankly, I doubt it.” Zared stared into the flames of the fire in the hearth across the room. “I think your counsel that he would do anything to avoid a serious confrontation was wise. But just in case… just in case. Who knows what Askam might push him into? If I have to stand and fight I do not want to do it here. Kastaleon is not built to withstand a siege, and this is a bad place to stage a battle. I need to be prepared for…”
“For?”
“For whatever else might eventuate…”
“My Prince -”
“I saw that man’s face, Herme. He hated me. Until a few moments ago this was all such an academic exercise. Too easy. A routine deployment. But I very much fear we may have to fight this one out, Herme.”
“Most of the Acharites will fight for you, Zared! You fight for them, for their pride!”
“I most certainly hope so,” Zared said very softly, his gaze still unfocused in the flames. “I most certainly hope so.’
As Herme left the room Zared saw Leagh standing in the gloom of the door. The expression on her face was very cold.
After a moment she presented her back and walked away.
Tbe Leap He woke to the feel of StarLaughter’s fingers trailing down his body, and he smiled, although he kept his eyes closed. But she had seen the smile, and she laughed, low and jubilant, and bent her mouth to the task of arousal even as her fingers slipped lower.
Drago continued to play at being asleep. This must be true happiness, surely. Here no-one hated him, no-one constantly threw infant misdeeds in his face, and here the distractions were only ever of the pleasurable kind.
Here power beckoned, and life as a SunSoar Enchanter seemed a tangible certainty rather than a hopeless dream.
Here everyone lived only to regain what they had been robbed of, and Drago revelled in the single-minded atmosphere of revenge. Revenge? No, he didn’t want to think that. All here only wanted what had been wrongfully taken from them. Restitution, perhaps. Satisfaction, certainly.
“StarLaughter,” he murmured, and reached for her. Here his lover was no kitchen girl, but a powerful Enchanter, and the wife of the most powerful Enchanter-Talon of all. He did not know why she loved him; it was just enough that she did, and Drago was grateful.
When they were done, and StarLaughter had exhausted him, Drago drifted back to sleep. He dreamed of the hunt, of riding through the forests, riding down all in his path, invulnerable in his armour, riding until he had his quarry at the point of his sword, and then on the point of his sword. That felt very good. Very good indeed. Even StarLaughter could not make him feel that good.
Drago rolled over, half asleep…
… and rolled against something cool and clammy.
He recoiled immediately, leaping into full wakefulness. It was the baby, StarLaughter’s damned not dead, not alive child that should have been decently interred four thousand years ago.
Repulsed, Drago rolled completely out of bed and stood looking at him.
StarLaughter carried the babe everywhere, offering him her breast when they sat down, apparently unaware that the child did not breathe or move or blink.
He just lay, and stared with his undead eyes.
StarLaughter crooned constantly to the baby, whispering words of love and encouragement, and her attention to the child sickened Drago.
He leaned down, hesitated, then poked the baby in the ribs.
The baby rolled a little at his touch, but otherwise made no response. And yet… yet Drago had the strangest sensation that somehow the baby had filed away that minor insult. Locked it away in some dark room of its mind where it kept all experiences. Kept it until it could be examined with… with more life and some decision made as to the response it merited.
Well, Drago tried to joke to himself, if the infant hadn’t made any response in the past four thousand years, doubtless he wouldn’t any time soon.
“My baby,” crooned StarLaughter behind Drago, and he jumped guiltily. Had she seen?
Apparently not. “My beautiful boy,” she said, and picked up the baby, cuddling him to her. “See how he grows!” and she looked to Drago for confirmation.
“A very beautiful boy,” he finally said. Why didn’t she accept that the baby was… wrong?
But maybe all that had kept StarLaughter going these past millennia was the baby. Maybe she kept him to stoke her hatred and need for revenge.
But Drago discarded that thought almost as soon as it crossed his mind. No, StarLaughter seemed genuinely to believe that the baby was alive.
“Come, my love,” she said, and Drago realised she was speaking to him. “Come walk a while with me.”
Drago dressed, in finer clothes now than those he’d arrived in, although he knew not from where they had come, clasped the sack of coins to his belt, and escorted StarLaughter and her strange undead child into what Drago had come to call the orchard.
Orchard it was not quite, for no fruit drooped from the branches of these strange anaemic trees, and the sun shone only fitfully from amid the roiling violet clouds, but orchard conjured up images of peace and happiness for Drago, and it reminded him of home.
That surprised him, for he had not thought to so miss Tencendor. But miss it he did, and he could not deny he would be glad to go back through the Star Gate. It would be good, he thought, going back cloaked in so much power people would envy him, rather than revile him.
The cloud flitted through distant trees, and Drago turned to watch them. StarLaughter called them her Hawkchilds, and the name suited them. She may have retained her Icarü resemblance and her loveliness, but the children had changed in the wastes. They looked Icarü
enough, with their delicate features and their jewel-like wings, but at the same time they had developed such a quintessence of bird, of predatory bird, that they appeared more the flock of hunting hawks than the crowd of children. Whatever childlike qualities they’d once possessed had been lost in their transformation to birds of prey.
Hunting hawks, not children.
Drago smiled and held out his hand as the cloud drew closer. It whispered, a constant undertone of WolfStar’s name repeated over and over, and the children – the hawks – wheeled this way and that, as if of one mind, one heart.
The cloud approached him as if it would envelop him, but it halted at the last moment, the two hundred staring at him with their heads on an identical tilt, their eyes identically dark and curious.
StarLaughter smiled. “See how they come to you, Drago. Will they hunt for you, do you think, when we return to Tencendor?”