“Don’t patronise me,” Axis snapped, remaining on his feet.
“I am not patronising you!” Maximilian said. “I just want you to calm down so that we can hear what Inardle has to say! None of us has the energy to deflect such bitter anger, Axis. Please, just calm down and let myself and Ishbel talk to Inardle.”
“I am not allowed to challenge her?” Axis said, his eyebrows raising.
“Not in the mood you are in now,” Maximilian said. “Be quiet for the moment, Axis.”
Axis hesitated, then gave a curt nod, sitting down and gesturing to his father to do the same.
“I think Inardle has a great deal to tell us,” Ishbel said, “and I think she will. Inardle, you must have felt yourself in an impossible position.”
Inardle looked at Ishbel, fighting back the tears. That single phrase of sympathetic understanding on Ishbel’s part almost undid her. She had kept herself under such tight control from the moment she’d seen Axis walk into the chamber . . .
“Inardle?” Ishbel prompted.
“I was sent by Eleanon and Bingaleal to spy on Axis,” Inardle said, her voice brittle and hard as she tried to stop herself from weeping.
“You put yourself through the horror at Armat’s camp deliberately?” Axis said. “You allowed Armat to cripple you, and Risdon to rape you . . . all to get into my bed and my trust?”
Inardle could not look at him. She swallowed, then gave a tight nod.
“And look at her now,” Axis said, his voice hard with hatred. “Her wings healed perfectly. Doubtless she could have healed herself any time she wanted, but no, she played the cripple well enough to engage our sympathies, and played BroadWing so that I would trust her above him. You are loathsome to me, Inardle.”
She flushed and her entire body tensed.
“Leave it for the time being, Axis,” Maximilian said. “For now it is information we need, not recrimination.”
Axis grunted in disagreement, but he leaned back a little in his chair and stared studiously at the far wall, and the mood in the chamber eased a fraction.
“The Lealfast always meant to betray Axis, and Maximilian?” Ishbel said to Inardle.
“No,” Inardle said, then cleared her throat to speak more clearly. “No. We were always undecided whether to offer our loyalty to you, Maximilian Persimius, as Lord of Elcho Falling, or to the One in DarkGlass Mountain.”
“You knew of the One,” Maximilian said.
“Yes,” Inardle said. “Always. We have known of the pyramid since the Magi first began its construction.”
At the back of the room the dark, handsome man who Axis had noticed earlier, leaned forward very slightly, his eyes intense.
“We, the Lealfast,” Inardle continued, “wanted power and we did not know who could best offer us that.”
“Just power?” Maximilian said.
“We wanted also, want also, more than anything else, to be free of our half and half heritage,” Inardle said. “Always we were half Skraeling and half Icarii, and both the Skraelings and the Icarii loathed us for it. We wanted our own identity and purpose, not our half and half hatefulness. We wanted our own home, far away from the frozen northern wastes. We did not know who could best offer us all that we wished, Maximilian or the One.”
“How did you know of the pyramid, and the One?” Ishbel asked.
“Two thousand years ago, give or take,” Inardle said, “the pyramid known as Threshold, which you know today as DarkGlass Mountain, was dismantled under the orders of the Magus Boaz and his half-brother Chad Zabryze, ruler of Ashdod. The glass was taken from its surface, the Infinity Chamber dismantled. Everything was buried, even the stone carcass of the pyramid itself. Worship of the One was forbidden and his Magi were disbanded. The libraries of the Magi were burned.”
Inardle’s voice strengthened, and she looked about the room with far more courage than previously.
“But not everything in the libraries was burned and not all former Magi forgot their loyalty to the One, nor their learning and training. Five escaped northward. They travelled fast, and they travelled far, fearful always that somehow the soldiers of Zabryze would find them, or cause others to apprehend them.
“With them they carried the few scrolls and books pertaining to the One and Infinity that they had managed to save from the hateful fires of Boaz and his brother.”
“I am descended from Boaz,” said Ishbel. “You know this, yes?”
“I know this,” Inardle said. “We were always wary of you.”
“The Magi travelled northward,” said the handsome stranger, “to your frozen wastelands? To the Lealfast?”
“Yes,” said Inardle. And think not that you are a stranger to me, Avaldamon.
Avaldamon’s mouth curved slightly as he recognised the power behind that thought, but he did not respond, allowing Ishbel to continue to question Inardle.
“The Magi travelled northward to the frozen wastes,” said Ishbel, “and there they met with the Lealfast. I imagine a deal was brokered, Inardle, for the Magi taught the Lealfast a great deal, didn’t they?”
“They taught us everything,” said Inardle. “They taught us the way of the One and the secrets of the Magi.”
“You control the power of the Magi?” StarDrifter asked.
“Yes,” Inardle said. “Not all of us, but many of us. I control a little of this power, but nowhere near as much as Eleanon and Bingaleal, who are the most powerful Magi among us. Now that they have combined with the One and have pledged him their utter allegiance, their ability to touch Infinity and to use its power must be a hundredfold to what it was a few short months ago. My own command of the power of the One is much poorer — I am female, and the One despises females for our power to subdivide the One.”
“The ability to give birth,” Avaldamon said, “and thus subdivide the One.”
Many in the chamber now looked at Avaldamon curiously, wondering at him, but Maximilian still chose not to reveal his identity.
“You combine the power of the One with the Star Dance,” Maximilian said, and Inardle nodded.
“It was how our forbears made the spires, which Lister gave to Isaiah and others to enable them to communicate over vast distances.”
Stars, Axis thought, Isaiah! Amid the chaos I had forgotten about him!
He would be travelling north toward Elcho Falling, by now somewhere between Margalit and the citadel.
And the Lealfast were in the air, and the Skraelings fast approaching from the south. Oh, stars, stars . . .
Axis almost opened his mouth to say something, but kept it closed. He would mention Isaiah’s plight to Maximilian as soon as he had a chance.
“So the Lealfast have the ability to use the power of the One,” said StarDrifter. “Wonderful.”
“Jealous, StarDrifter?” Inardle said softly.
“Why are you still here, Inardle?” Maximilian said abruptly. “You could have left hours ago. You can leave now,” he waved a hand at the windows, “for none here would stop you.”
“Perhaps she stays to spread the treachery a little deeper,” StarDrifter said. “Taunt us a little longer, work the Lealfast’s purpose a little more accurately.”
“Inardle?” Maximilian said.
“I stay,” she said, “because I think Eleanon and Bingaleal chose wrongly when they chose the way of the One over you, Maximilian Persimius, Lord of Elcho Falling.”
“And you expect us to believe that?” Axis said. “If you had decided that Eleanon and Bingaleal had chosen wrongly, why did you not tell me or Maxel what the Lealfast had done, and what they planned? Why did you leave it until so many lay dead?”
“How easy do you think it, StarMan, to abandon the loyalties of a lifetime for a new set?” Inardle said. “And how easy do you truly believe it could have been, to have come to you, and said, ’Oh Axis, all I have told you has been lies, but I am sorry for it, and as proof I shall tell you some secrets’‘ ? You would have hated me instantly, as you have now, and refused to listen to a word I said. I was trapped, trapped by conflicting loyalties and loves. There was nowhere for me to turn, and no one to believe me.”
“I abandoned the loyalties of a lifetime for a ’new set‘ ,” Axis said softly, “when I abandoned the Seneschal for the way of the Forbidden — the Icarii. I found my conscience a good guide. I suggest you might like to try that, too, one day. f you have a conscience.”
Inardle stared at him, her face losing its colour. “I stayed for love of you, Axis. That’s why I stayed. A bitter choice, I am sure you will agree.”
Then she sighed, and looked at Maximilian. “I do not blame any of you for not believing me. Nor for your distrust of me now. So, in order to alleviate just a little of that distrust, I shall tell you a secret, that when Eleanon or Bingaleal discovers I have spoken it, will be my death sentence.”