Sara Douglass
StarMan
Book Three of The Axis Trilogy
For Lynne, Tim and Frances, and with thanks to
Louise Thurtell and Fiona Daniels of HarperCollins for all their hard work on this trilogy.
Nothing but idiot gabble!
For the prophecy given of old
And then not understood,
Has come to pass as foretold;
Not let any man think for the public good,
But babble, merely for babble.
For I never whisper’d a private affair
Within the hearing of cat or mouse,
No, not to myself in the closet alone,
But I heard it shouted at once from the top of the house;
Everything came to be known.
Who told him we were there?
Not that gray old wolf, for he came not back
From the wilderness, full of wolves, where he used to lie;
He has gather’d the bones for his o’ergrown whelp to crack;
Crack them now for yourself, and howl, and die.
Alfred, Lord Tennyson,
from Part II.v of Maud
Table of Contents
14 Goodwife Renkin Goes to Market
16 The Island of Mist and Memory
31 “May We Learn to Live with Each Other”
37 “Your Tongue is Far Too Sweet”!