Isaiah turned his eyes back to the spire, studying it. “It is a nightmare from another time and place. It is Infinity itself stepped into this world. It is coldness and darkness and hatefulness, and, as you say, Garth, all with a purpose and direction. I do not know if anyone can truly control what this is, or will become. I think this, right here, is Maximilian’s worst enemy.”
Axis sat on his reed bed, disconsolately pulling on his clothes and wishing he’d just braved the mayhem and got into Elcho Falling via the front door. The back door didn’t sound like any fun at all. He was just about to slip into the water when one of the juit birds swam up to him and looked him in the eyes in that uncomfortably direct manner of the juit.
StarMan.
My friend juit. What may I do for you?
We have discovered something, StarMan. We think you need to see it.
Axis repressed a sigh. What manner of thing?
Something left by the Lealfast.
His interest pricked, Axis nodded for the juit bird to lead on as he entered the water.
Damn, it was cold!
The bird led him part way round the northern shores of the lake which surrounded Elcho Falling, and nodded at the reed banks there.
Axis, who had decided he was thoroughly sick of swimming and of pushing through juit birds while he was doing so, as also of being constantly wet and cold, heaved himself into the squelchy reed banks and began poking amongst them. For a few minutes he found nothing and was thinking longingly of hot food and a warm dry bed nestled within Elcho Falling, when suddenly he bent back a tangle of reeds and stilled.
It took Axis a moment to realise what it was . . . a dome of ice bobbing among the reeds that looked like it extended into the water, forming a ball.
He pushed away the reeds that clung to the top curve of the ball like wet, bedraggled hair.
Axis froze as his hand parted the final few strands.
Inardle’s face, warped by the ice, stared back at him.
Chapter 14
The Central Outlands
The Skraelings remained lost in their reflections and choices, completely unaware of what happened in the world. They had the ability to turn themselves back into River Angels if they so chose, and they could do this freely now they found themselves masterless with the mysterious disappearance of the One.
Would they like to change? Did they want to take this opportunity?
They could become creatures of beauty and of astounding power. Fairy-like creatures of water. Consideration of water gave the Skraelings pause, particularly as attaining their River Angel form meant drowning themselves in its vileness, but for the moment they passed over it and thought only of the beauty and power of the River Angels as Isaiah had showed them.
“But of course,” Ozll said into the Skraelings’ reflection, “the River Angels were not just beauty and power, were they?”
The Skraelings considered this also, and took pause to resent Ozll a little, for he’d begun to sound as if he were their conscience, and that they did not like.
“They were quite murderous,” said the female, Graq. “They were vile, too. Isaiah showed us that. Do we want to be that?”
One of the nearby Skraelings opened his mouth to say “Yes!” then shut it again without speaking. A puzzled look came into his eyes.
“We don’t want to think of that,” said another Skraeling. “We want to be River Angels. They were beautiful and powerful and . . . we would have no lords other than ourselves!”
“But do we want to be lords like those?” Graq said, earning herself many resentful looks, although none spoke against her.
“These reflections are truly painful,” Ozll said, “and they make me want to curl up and cry.”
At that almost childish admission, all the Skraelings relaxed. He remained one of them, after all.
“If we return to the form of River Angels,” said Ozll, “then we would return to being beautiful and powerful, but infinitely murderous because of that. We were once murderous as River Angels, we remained murderous as Skraelings. Do we want to return to that? Do we want to remain that?”
His voice was genuinely bewildered and emotional, and all the Skraelings listening curled their toes and dropped their eyes.
“Would a touch of beauty and a bit more magic really change us that much?” Ozll said. “Wouldn’t we be just as foul as River Angels, if more beautifully so? Wouldn’t we really prefer to be something other than foul, and murderous?”
Now thoroughly discomforted, many of the Skraelings wondered if they might murder Ozll, just to shut him up.
“Can’t we just make a decision one way or the other?” one of them muttered.
“We need to make the right one,” Ozll said, and everyone sighed, a great gust of regret and self-loathing that whispered over the plains of the central Outlands.
Chapter 15
Elcho Falling
For a long, long moment Axis did not know what to think or how to react. Then it struck him through his fugue of shock that Inardle’s face did not exhibit terror so much as resigned desperation.
“Inardle?” Axis said. He still could not think correctly. What was she doing curled up so tight in this ball of ice? His hands slipped a little on the ice and, as they did so, the ball turned over in the water. Axis continued to roll it over.
Inardle was wound so tight Axis wondered if she could move at all. She was curled almost into a foetal position, her wings wrapped about the front of her body. He turned the ball a little further, his breath hissing out softly between his teeth as he saw that Inardle’s spine was streaked with blood. The blood had melted a little into the ice, imparting a rosy hue to most of Inardle’s back.
Axis wondered if this was yet another of Inardle’s tricks.
He was so sick of her tricks.
Surely she wouldn’t try this one again. Poor Inardle. Trapped and in pain, needing Axis to rescue her.
“Inardle?” he said again. Then, Inardle?
Nothing. He’d rolled the ball of ice completely around and again he looked into Inardle’s ice-warped face. Axis ran his fingers over the ice, sensing it not only with his physical senses, but with his Enchanter powers as well.
This was a powerful hex.
Well, Axis hadn’t expected much else. It wasn’t as if Inardle had somehow got herself melted accidentally into a giant hailstone during the mayhem, was it?
It was a Lealfast hex. Axis could feel that much. And more . . . there was more than the power of the Star Dance here. Magi power perhaps, or threads woven from Infinity.
Axis still didn’t know what to do. Inardle was alive, he could see her blink occasionally. He supposed he couldn’t leave her here.
He also didn’t know how he felt. Anger, mostly, he decided after some reflection. What was she up to now? Why was she always such a bother?
Buried very, very deeply was a little fright on her behalf and that made Axis even angrier. He didn’t want to feel frightened for her.
Axis sat back on his haunches on the unsteady reed bed, thinking. He couldn’t leave her here, but he was certain he couldn’t do much about the ice hex, either. Could Isaiah break it? Isaiah had healed Inardle from the poison, using the water element so strong in her body . . . he might be able to fix this, too.
Isaiah? Axis called.
Eleanon had moved a little closer to Elcho Falling from the mountain retreat where waited the rest of the Lealfast Nation, but not so close he would be noticed by Axis’ eagle which circled high over the citadel.
He’d have to do something about that eagle, sooner or later.
But the eagle was not Eleanon’s immediate concern. The juit birds were.
They were a terrible, crucifying nuisance.
Eleanon suspected them of some magical power, but they didn’t even have to use that against the Lealfast. All they ever need do was to repeat their manoeuvre during the battle the day past — rise up in their millions into the air — and they’d batter any Lealfast out of the sky who happened to be above them.
The juit birds would have to go. And, in the going, Eleanon was going to teach Isaiah and everyone else within Elcho Falling a terrible lesson.
They were not in control.
Eleanon was.
He was already invisible. Now he settled himself on the ground an hour’s flight from Elcho Falling, staring with his bright, power-enhanced eyes toward the citadel.
Ice crept up his spine and frost encased his entire being outlining him to any curious eyes nearby.
Eleanon was talking to the Dark Spire.