“You must have loved my father very much,” Zenith remarked softly as Faraday finished.
Faraday thought about that a long time – so long Zenith had assumed she wanted to escape the question by pretending sleep.
“I was young, impressionable,” she finally said, “and Axis was everything a young and impressionable girl dreamed of.” She gave a low laugh. “Every young girl in Achar was more than half in love with him, I think. And then I was caught up in the Prophecy, so much rested on my role, that I was consumed by joy that it should have been me whom the Prophecy had picked. But,” her voice turned sourer, “I did not know then what a dreadful price I would have to pay. That the Prophecy required my death to fulfil its purpose.”
“You died so that my mother could live,” Zenith said.
“Yes. But I am not bitter about that. Azhure, as Axis, as everyone including Gorgrael, was as much a victim of the Prophecy’s manipulations as I.”
“But you were transformed into the doe. I saw you occasionally when I was a child and Azhure brought Caelum, Isfrael and myself into Minstrelsea.”
Faraday reached out and touched Zenith’s cheek. “And I saw you, too, Zenith. I envied you your freedom -of course I did not know about Niah’s legacy then.”
“My freedom? But I thought you the most carefree of creatures —”
Faraday laughed harshly. “I was trapped by the forest, trapped by my timidity, trapped by my form. Drago,” her voice altered, “Drago freed me with the Sceptre as much as your father trapped me with it. With his careless wielding he cast off all the chains of Prophecy and fate that had bound me. Free. I was finally free.”
There was quiet between them a long time, then Faraday quietly said goodnight, and rolled over and went to sleep.
Zenith stayed awake a good deal longer.
By noon the next day they had reached Pirates’ Town. It was a thriving port town, populated by brightly scarved, gleaming-knived pirates who plied the southern seas seeking rich merchants and Corolean bullion ships. Beside them strode their hard-eyed wives, and thousands of thin-flanked dogs and scrawny chickens.
“Has no-one ever thought to put a stop to the pirates?” Faraday whispered, her cloak clutched tight about her as they wandered down the main thoroughfare. For a thousand years the pirates had served to guard the secrets of the Island of Mist and Memory, but she thought that now Tencendor had been freed from the grip of the Seneschal life would have been more tightly regulated on the island.
“I mean,” she added, “they don’t still… pirate… do they?”
Zenith laughed. “I’m afraid they do, Faraday. Neither Axis nor Caelum has been willing to try and restrain them, beyond insisting they keep their ships away from Tencendorian waters. Besides, the pirates prefer the rich pickings off the Corolean shores. Still,” she nodded a greeting to a pirate wife wringing the neck of a chicken on her front doorstep, “I know Caelum has had to deal with more than one complaint from the Corolean ambassador about them.”
Faraday went a little green at the sound of the chicken’s neck cracking. “You like it here?”
“I spent many weeks of each year on the island when I was a girl. StarDrifter often sent me down here for a few days. Once – although don’t tell StarDrifter this – I even went out on a pirate ship for two days.”
Faraday stared at her with round eyes. “I did not think you such the adventurer, Zenith.”
Zenith shrugged. “Oh, I grew out of it.”
“I wonder.” Faraday grinned. “Oh look, here is the wharf.”
Zenith looked about. “There’s a ship over there swinging supplies aboard. If they’re going to Nor they may well take passengers. Did you bring any coin with you? I forgot in our rush to leave.”
“No coin required,” Faraday said quietly, and pointed to the very end of the main pier. “Not for this ferry trip.”
There bobbed the small flat-bottomed ferry that Faraday had provided for Zenith in the shadow-lands.
Zenith suddenly remembered where she’d seen the ruby cloak before. “The cloak, the ferry, these are Orr’s!”
Faraday nodded. “He has no need for them now. Come. The ferry shall carry us smooth and calm to Nor.”
And so it did. Faraday sat in the prow, the hood of the cloak cast back, her chestnut hair streaming out behind her, her face calm and beautiful as she looked into the distance. To each side of them the Sea of Tyrre raised fat waves that swelled the height of two men above the ferry.
And yet that ferry sailed smooth and calm through the heavy seas as if it glided across the still surface of an ornamental pond.
Zenith sat further to the rear of the ferry, her eyes shifting from Faraday, to the waves, then back to Faraday again. She knew the woman wielded power, but she did not know of what kind it was. Zenith knew of the power of the trees and the earth, and she could sense it whenever Banes wielded it in her presence – but this was so different. Faraday used a source of power that Zenith had never experienced before.
Faraday turned her head slightly so she could see Zenith from the corner of her eye. “It is simply different, Zenith. It is the only way I can put it.”
“And you feel no diminishing as the Star Gate clouds over?”
Faraday shook her head. “This is not related to the stars, nor even to the trees or the earth.”
She lifted her shoulders in a wonderfully evocative shrug, smiled, and turned back to the seas before them. The ferry glided on.
Within two hours of setting out from Pirates’ Town, the ferry sailed into the port of Ysbadd. A normal vessel would have taken a day at least to sail the distance. Zenith just accepted it.
Faraday stepped calmly off the ferry, climbed the ladder on the side of the wharf, and waited for Zenith to join her. Zenith looked back at the ferry, bobbing gently against the wharf, then looked up to see Faraday already halfway down the wharf. Sighing, she hurried after her.
“How are we going to get to -” she started, but Faraday waved a hand lightly.
“We go to the market, of course, and we shall find what we need there.”
Zenith rolled her eyes and gave up asking. No doubt Faraday would discover a ferry on wheels that could glide them to the Ancient Barrows.
Not quite a ferry on wheels, but something equally astounding, and something Zenith recognised immediately from all the tales she’d heard about Faraday. Faraday had led her into the bustling, hot, heavy-aired market square in the centre of Ysbadd, and then stood looking, a small frown on her face.
“Ah,” she finally said. “There. The livestock section.” Faraday walked over to a far corner of the square where stood lines of oxen, horses and three short-haired dromedaries from Coroleas. She walked slowly, looking down the lines, her frown deepening, a mystified Zenith at her shoulder.
“Ah!” she cried as she saw the vendor. “Good man, I am looking for something I have lost. Would you perchance…?”
The man, barrel-chested and red of face, stared at her, then his face cleared and he smiled and bowed. “My Lady. Yes. I wondered when you would claim them. They have been eating me out of my best oats.”
And he waved a hand to the overhang of a canvas awning.
Underneath it, harnessed lightly to a dainty blue cart, stood two white donkeys.
As they caught sight of Faraday they twitched their ears, and one gave a low bray of welcome.
“Oh!” Faraday cried and, hurrying over, hugged and patted both the donkeys.
Zenith approached more slowly, smiled, and wiped the tears from her eyes.
Old friends, indeed.
AnArnpfNor$HD Eblone Aszrad, silk merchant and bastard son of a ^orolean soldier seeded during the Tencendorian wars f forty years past, pulled back his horse and swore. His laden mules would be crippled if they were forced off the road surface and into the uncertain gullies on either side.
And he had buyers waiting impatiently in Carlon’s markets and palace halls for this silk.
But he had little choice. Swearing again, but a little more softly this time, Aszrad waved to his muleteers to hurry their charges into the side gullies.
“But carefully!” he roared as a long-haired youth jerked at the lead mule and almost pulled it off its feet. Damn these Nors boys! They were useless for anything save sloe-eyed dancers and entertainers.
Useless, that is, until they reached their manhood. Aszrad’s eyes slipped to the dust approaching from the southern reaches of the Tarantaise road. Here, if he was not mistaken, came a goodly force of Nors knights.
And bound for where?