“But, MorningStar,” Veremund began, “I thought that only another Enchanter of the same family could teach an Enchanter.”
MorningStar gave a curt nod. “You are right.”
“Then who else is there in your family who could have had access to Axis? What other Enchanters?”
MorningStar lifted her chin. “StarDrifter and I are the only two SunSoar Enchanters – apart, of course, from Axis himself. I received my powers from my mother, DriftStar, also a SunSoar, but she died some three hundred years ago.”
“Are you saying that there is another SunSoar Enchanter running about?” Azhure asked. Everyone in the room jumped slightly; they had forgotten her presence. “Someone you aren’t aware of? Someone who taught Axis as a baby?”
MorningStar stared at Azhure, who had risen slowly to her feet. She nodded. “Yes. I was afraid to say the words, but yes. That is what I think.”
“But who?” Axis said. “Why hide from me? And how did an Icarii Enchanter have access to me in the Seneschal? How? I don’t understand.”
“My son,” StarDrifter stepped up to Axis and placed a comforting hand on his shoulder. “I fear there might be worse. If there is another SunSoar Enchanter about then … then …” he hesitated, “then it might explain who taught Gorgrael as well.”
MorningStar visibly rocked on her feet, and her hand drifted to her throat in horror. “Gorgrael?”
“After Yuletide FreeFall asked me how Gorgrael had learned his powers,” StarDrifter said, dropping his hand from Axis’ shoulder and moving to his mother’s side. “I said then that he’d obtained his powers from the music of discord, the Dance of Death, rather than the Star Dance. But I evaded the real issue. Gorgrael had to be taught how to use that music as well, and he had to be taught by someone of the same blood. A family member. A SunSoar Enchanter.”
“But who? And who would teach both? And teach them each such different music?” MorningStar turned to the Sentinels. “Ogden, Veremund, can you help us? Please?”
They shook their heads and Veremund spread his hands helplessly. “There are many riddles within the Prophecy we do not understand, but I do not think the Prophecy even alludes to this problem, MorningStar. All the Prophecy tells us is that the same man fathered both the Destroyer and the StarMan – StarDrifter, as we now know. It says nothing about who trained them. But a SunSoar presumably, as they are both of SunSoar blood.”
“Axis.” Now MorningStar addressed her grandson. “Do you know? Is there anything you should be telling us?”
Axis’ temper boiled over. “I do not lie to you, MorningStar, and I do not dissemble! If I knew anything I would tell you!”
Azhure moved to his side and rested a soothing hand against his back. “Axis, shush. Is there nothing you remember?”
Axis’ eyes snapped at her but he did not attempt to pull away from the comforting touch of her hand. “No,” he said finally. “All I know is that over the past few months, ever since Ogden and Veremund gave me the Prophecy written in Icarii script to read, memories and melodies have been bubbling to the surface. I did not think to ask myself who put them there in the first place.”
“Veremund and I should have noticed,” Ogden said. “We should have asked ourselves how Axis knew the Song of Recreation. Why he seemed to know so many melodies. But,” he shrugged his shoulders, “we were so thrilled to have finally found the StarMan after so many thousands of years, so thrilled that finally the Prophecy walked after such a long wait, that we did not think to ask ourselves these questions.”
MorningStar let her eyes drift over the people before her, finally bringing them to rest on Axis. “So. You have been taught, as Gorgrael has been taught, by an unknown SunSoar Enchanter. Unknown, because where could he or she have come from? Only from the loins of myself or my mother, and I can assure you that is not the case. I have only borne two children, and I was my mother’s only child – through complications sustained in birthing me she was never able to have another infant.” She paused, and when she resumed her voice was so soft that the others could hardly hear it. “And this SunSoar Enchanter is not only unknown, but incredibly powerful. No-one has been able to use the Dark Music previously – its use has been only theorised until now – yet this SunSoar Enchanter was able to teach it to Gorgrael. I think we have a right to be afraid of him.”
For a long time there was silence as everyone stood wrapped in their own thoughts. Ogden and Veremund took each other’s hands. StarDrifter turned away to hide his face as he thought. Azhure leaned a little closer to Axis, slipping her arm about his waist and giving him a quick hug; Axis smiled at her gratefully. She was a good friend.
“Again I think we might be evading the real questions here,” StarDrifter finally said into the silence, turning back to the others. “And they are: Where is this SunSoar Enchanter now? What does he plan? What does he plot? Is he for Axis? Or is he for Gorgrael?”
The four SkraeBolds grovelled at Gorgrael’s feet. Even SkraeFear, senior and bravest of them, thrust himself against the stone flagging as a man might against the body of his lover. His clawed hands clutched at Gorgrael’s toes, and he begged for forgiveness, begged Gorgrael to love him again.
Gorgrael wallowed in their misery. The Yuletide attack on the Earth Tree Grove had been a miserable failure. Not only had the SkraeBolds failed to kill the Earth Tree – and she now sang so loud that the northern Avarinheim was denied to him – but SkraeFear had almost killed StarDrifter, and Gorgrael had expressly ordered that he be brought to him alive and in good working order. They deserved to be punished horribly for their failure.
“Get up!” he snarled. “But only as far as your knees. You are not yet fit to stand in my presence!”
He swaggered away from the SkraeBolds as they inched to their knees. This was the first time he’d managed to have them all in the same room since the fall of Gorkenfort, and he intended to drag out their fear as long as he could.
“Sssss!” he hissed in frustration, swinging his head from side to side, and the four SkraeBolds behind him whimpered as his tusks glinted in the dim light. They knew they had a right to fear the fury of his tusks.
Gorkenfort had started so well. The town had fallen quickly and thousands had died. Gorgrael, watching his forces from the safety of his ice fortress far to the north of the Avarinheim, had shrieked in delight as each man died.
But Axis had escaped. Escaped with a significant force of men. Escaped to the arms of his father whom Gorgrael had so desperately desired to have here with him. Escaped, and in escaping, had destroyed so many Skraelings.
Now Gorgrael would be forced to curtail his drive south, for it was all he could do to keep a tight grip on those territories in Ichtar that he held – from the Andeis Sea to the Urqhart Hills. It was now a dead land, peopled only by frozen corpses and the Skraelings who fed on them. He could take pleasure in that, at least.
But if Gorgrael was pushed into simply consolidating rather than pushing further south, then now was the time to instil some order among the Skraelings. Bring them back under his control. Breed some more IceWorms. Fashion some new creations from the raw material surrounding him to breach the Acharite lines and break the force that Axis would inevitably throw at him. As Axis needed time to build his numbers, so Gorgrael needed time to rebuild his.
“You are failures!” he rasped venomously. The flickering