The woman stirred, and Faraday whispered soothingly to her, quieting her, sending her deeper into sleep.
Once Niah had stilled, her breathing now so quiet and slow Faraday knew she was lost in her dreams again, she began to knead her fingers into Niah’s belly. Probing. Deep. Looking, sensing, for the baby.
There. The slight hardness of the thickened walls of her womb. All depended on… yes! Faraday sensed the life force growing there. A girl child. Good. Very good.
“What a lovely baby,” she whispered. “So healthy. Such a willing receptacle.”
Then she lifted her hands from Niah’s body and sat back. She opened her mind to dream, seeking that which was lost.
She opened her mind to Niah’s Grove. Of course. Here Zenith had last drawn breath, here Niah’s old body mouldered, here Niah had finally consumed Zenith altogether.
Faraday looked about the grove that she could see in the shadow-lands of dream. Like all things in the shadow-lands, the grove was insubstantial. The forest faded in and out of view beyond the ring of nine great trees. Faraday had planted these trees herself to honour Niah’s memory, and now she regarded them wryly. Perhaps she should not have been so willing. This grove and this grave had harboured Niah’s spirit as a scabbed wound harbours infection.
Here Zenith had lost her fight.
Faraday wandered slowly about the grassy ring. Moonwildflowers grew here in abandon, thicker around the centre. Here Axis had brought Isfrael to see her. Here Azhure had wept over her lost mother. Here. On the site of Smyrton.
Perhaps we should have left it, Faraday thought. She remembered the day Azhure had loosed her power to raze Smyrton to the ground. She remembered the foul wind that had swept over them. Infection again. Had it befouled Niah, tied to this spot… waiting, waiting, waiting?
She raised her head and looked about. “Zenith?” she whispered, the whisper echoing strangely about the trees. “Zenith?”
There was nothing, but Faraday was patient. If there still was a Zenith, then here she would be.
“Zenith?”
Faraday sat in the very centre of the grove, ringed by Moonwildflowers, and waited. She sat, and absorbed the stillness of the shadow-forest about her, and listened to the air as it moved damply about her.
A movement. There, to her left.
Very, very slowly, for Zenith must be truly lost and frightened, Faraday turned her head towards the movement and smiled. After a moment, she lifted her arm and held out her hand, palm uppermost.
Zenith.
“I do not know where I am.”
Zenith, come sit with me.
Another movement, stronger this time, and a form rose from the grass at the edge of the trees. It was wraith-like, almost apologetic, but it was Zenith’s form.
“I am lost.”
“Surely, sweetheart.” Now Faraday used her speaking voice, and widened her smile. “Come to me. Let me show you the way home.”
The form drifted towards her. She wrung her hands, and tears slid down her cheeks. “I do not know what to do.”
“Here.” Faraday patted the grass. “There is space here.”
The form drifted across and sank down beside Faraday. She was so ethereal that Faraday thought gossamer would seem like iron scaffolding beside her.
Zenith. There was not much of her left. Niah had almost won. A week or two more, and she would have won.
Faraday folded her hands in her lap and gazed serenely at this apparition. “Poor Zenith. Would you like me to show you the way home?”
“Who are you?”
“Oh!” Faraday almost forgot herself and laughed, but she stifled her merriment before it could find voice and frighten Zenith away. Zenith had never seen her, and had never known her human form.
“I am Faraday, Zenith. Once Duchess of Ichtar, once Queen of Achar, now just Faraday, owner of her own soul and destiny.”
The apparition smiled wistfully. “To own your own soul and destiny… that must be true happiness.”
“Ah, it is, Zenith, it is. I was bound by the Prophecy of the Destroyer, bound by my guardianship of the trees, bound by the Mother and by my love for your father for too long. Now I am free.”
What was left of Zenith nodded. “I am glad, Faraday. I did not envy your role in the Prophecy.”
“And I would that you be free, too. Do you want that?”
“Niah is too strong. I tried to fight her… but she was so tenacious, so determined.”
“She had the strength of the grave behind her, my dear, and you could not fight that. You did not have that experience. Then. Now, of course, Niah has made a ghastly mistake in banishing you to the one place where you can obtain the experience and yet still return. Zenith,” Faraday’s tone turned brusque, “I have a plan.”
“Good,” Zenith said, and her tone finally made Faraday laugh.
“Yes, extremely good. Niah has taken your body to the Island of Mist and Memory. There she continues to deepen her affair with WolfStar -”
Zenith turned her head aside.
“- and grows his child within your womb. Zenith, that child will be your saviour.”
“I do not want it!”
“Undoubtedly not. It is a product of rape – who could love a child of that? And who knows what WolfStar and Niah can breed between them? Listen to me, Zenith. You must fight.”
“How?”
“Can you still feel Niah? Feel the presence of her?”
Zenith nodded.
“Very well. Eventually we will use that child for our own ends, and that infant girl shall be your saviour. But first we must get you back to your body. Back to what Niah has claimed.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Zenith, this shadow-grove is but one part of the shadow-lands that mimic entirely the world of waking. We can travel through these lands, travel towards the shadow dormitory of the priestesses where lies Niah.”
Zenith looked puzzled, but that puzzlement was underlaid with hope. “Tonight?”
Faraday smiled sadly. “Nay, child, not in one night, although we will make a start tonight. It will take us many, many nights. But get there we will, and we must get there before some other spirit inhabits the baby-child within Niah.”
“How long do I have?”
“A month perhaps. I shall come back each night and help you.”
“A month only to walk to the Island of Mist and Memory?”
“Every step we take in the shadow-lands equals fifteen in the world of waking. We travel much faster here.” Faraday smiled wryly. “It is one of the advantages of wraithdom, I suppose.”
“Then we had best begin.”
Faraday stood, then helped the Zenith-apparition to her feet. “My dear, the closer we get to the Island of Mist and Memory, the harder Niah will fight.”
“She will be aware that I approach?”
“Not as such – that’s why we move at night, only when she sleeps – but she will know something is wrong. Her own sleep-mind will raise barriers for you, try to prevent you. Zenith, there will come a time when each step you take towards the island will be agonising. It will go on for night after night. Can you face that?”
Zenith laughed, low and bitter. “Do I want life? Come Faraday, let me lean on you, and we shall take this first step.”
s (till nothing from our rear?” Zared asked Theod yet again as they sat their horses a half-hour’s ride north-east of Carlon.
“No, my Prince,” Theod said. “Caelum must be suffering from shock. He has not sent so much as a scout after us. Not,” he said glumly, “that he has many to send.”
Zared turned away from Theod, his thoughts bleak. When Theod had caught him up with the devastating news that Caelum had ridden his force straight into Kastaleon without so much as a dog to scout the place out, and had thus suffered the full force of the explosion, Zared had blanched.
“How many?” he had asked quietly.
“Between three and four thousand dead at least, my Prince. And scores more injured nigh unto death.”
“Caelum?”
Theod had not known, but Zared refused, refused, to consider Caelum dead. Besides, had Caelum died Axis would surely have known and acted.
Why in the name of every god in existence hadn’t Caelum sent in a scouting party first?
Zared had been prepared to risk five or six deaths, much as he regretted them, but he had yet to come to terms with the horror of three or four thousand dead. All he’d wanted to do was destroy Kastaleon and hold Caelum up for a few days. What he had done was create a situation where war was unavoidable.
His hands were tied, and through his own action. He could either surrender himself – an idea anathema to the proud Zared – or he could work to make his position unassailable.
His doubts had been blown away as forcibly as most of Caelum’s force. He now had no choice. He must make himself King of Achar, with Leagh at his side. Once King he could hopefully rally the support of hundreds of thousands of Acharites feverishly loyal to their resurrected monarch.