She actually seemed to be waiting for a response, so Isfrael glanced about him. They were standing in a small glade, a waterfall and rock pool to one side, and wildflowers spreading in drifts through the short grasses of the open space.
“It’s lovely,” he said, and forced a smile.
Leagh relaxed a little, and she indicated a small pile of smooth-backed rocks beside the pool. “Will you sit with me a while? I have not had a chance to talk to you before.”
That is because you are a plains dweller and have not been welcomed in my forests, thought Isfrael, but he sat anyway.
Leagh began to chat about innocuous pleasantries, and Isfrael replied in monosyllables whenever she paused for an answer. By the Horned Ones, she actually seemed to be enjoying herself in this pastelised version of the real, vibrant world! Isfrael would have got up and left — this woman was more than annoying — but some part of him wondered if she might have some information that could help him achieve his ends.
After all, wasn’t she close to DragonStar? Might she not know something that had been kept hidden from everyone else?
Once he’d thought of that, Isfrael paid more attention to Leagh herself. He began to reply more pleasantly, leading the conversation himself, making the woman laugh with some of his tales of life in Minstrelsea.
And Isfrael reaped rewards for his pains. After a short while Isfrael realised that there was something profoundly unusual about Leagh. She was not just a “plains dweller”; she was far more. In fact, the way she moved, her smile, and the shift of her eyes made Isfrael realise that an intriguing power played beneath the surface of her outwardly pleasant demeanour.
Leagh was as powerful, if not more so, than any of the Avar Banes had been!
But how could this be so? The Acharites had no access to power, had they?
Very gradually, and as carefully as he could, Isfrael started to redirect the conversation. He cloaked himself in an aura of innocuousness —
Aren’t the horns growing from my forehead cute? See the cloth of twigs that cloak my loins: isn’t that the most naively rural thing you ever saw? See my discomfort regarding my mother, Faraday: doesn’t that make you want to hug me and make it all better?
— and harvested the prize, for Leagh lost whatever initial caution she’d had, and talked and laughed freely with him.
Yes, she had power now. Woken by DragonStar, although every Acharite had the potential for such power within them.
“What do you mean?” said Isfrael, furrowing his brow in muddled puzzlement.
“Well,” said Leagh, and she told him of the original Enchantress, Urbeth —
“Urbeth!” Isfrael said, truly shocked. “Urbeth?”
“Yes! Isn’t it amazing? Well…” Leagh told him of Urbeth’s three sons. One had founded the Icarii race.
“And fathered by a sparrow, Isfrael!” Leagh said, laughing. “Can you imagine the affront to the proud Icarii?”
Another son had founded the Charonite race.
“And the third?”
“Urbeth sent the eldest son from her home, because he denied his own magic and his own potential. This son was fathered by the man she loved the most. Isfrael, you will never guess who it was!”
Isfrael wondered if this agonising process would proceed faster if he twisted his hands about her throat and physically forced the words out.
But he smiled congenially, and forced a pleasant bewilderment across his face. “No, I cannot. Tell me.”
“Noah did!”
“Noah?”
So then Leagh told Isfrael about the Enemy, and their battle many millennia ago against the Demons. Having trapped and dismembered Qeteb, they then sent his life parts across the universe in a fleet of craft. When the four craft crashed on Tencendor, creating the four Sacred Lakes, only one of the Enemy survived: Noah.
“And he met Urbeth, and fathered the eldest son. But this son denied his magic, and when he founded the Acharite race, they not only suppressed their magic, they relentlessly hunted down all other wielders of magic.”
Isfrael kept his face bland, although internally he seethed with fury. The Acharites and their axes had hounded and slaughtered his people for over a thousand years.
“And so all Acharites can use their power?”
And as he said that, Isfrael suddenly realised why this information was so vitally important. Sanctuary was a construction of the Enemy, or of their remnant power within the land … and the magic of the Acharites was the magic of the Enemy. By the Sacred Groves… was this what he’d been seeking?
As he thought that, Leagh gave him the final element. “No. Acharites cannot use their magic unless they can return through death.”
“What do you mean?”
“We’ve all suppressed our power so assiduously that only death can free it. Faraday, myself, Gwendylyr, Goldman, and even DareWing, who has ancient Acharite blood in him, can use the power because we have been through death, and have been recreated.”
Isfrael nodded, and said a few more polite words, but he was not ungrateful when Leagh sighed and said she’d return to her apartment for a nap. “And to see Zared, who mopes about unbearably in this place.”
Leagh smiled apologetically. “He is a man who thrives on the doing, not on the waiting.”
Isfrael nodded, and let the woman walk away.
Was this the information he could trade for his freedom to get to the Sacred Groves? Almost … almost … but how could the Demons use it?
And then Isfrael remembered the soulless automat that the Demons had with them, and he laughed triumphantly.
He had the key!
Now all he had to do was get out of Sanctuary.
Chapter 13 Hidden Conversations
Sometimes the most insanely unhinged of people manage to assume the demeanour of the coldly logical, and so it was with StarLaughter. She had her purpose — as madly illogical as it might seem to anyone else — and purpose gave her the appearance of sanity.
She stared thoughtfully towards Spiredore, her now composed face wiped free of any remaining spittle. Then, making up her mind, StarLaughter walked confidently back to Spiredore, its white-walled towers still gleaming incongruously in the devastated landscape.
“Pray to every star in existence I have the time to do what I must,” she muttered, and then tossed her head at a low-flying mind-maddened egret. She smiled at it; one could not be sure these days, among this horde of demented livestock, of which reported directly to the Demons and which just eddied about in chaotic dementia, and StarLaughter knew she had to be careful.
After all, wasn’t almost everyone in this devastated world plotting against her?
A hand grasped her ankle, and StarLaughter shrieked and tried to jerk herself free.
The hand tightened, and StarLaughter gave in to an instant of uncontrolled panic.
Only for an instant, as she realised who held her. “WolfStar,” she cried, almost unable to grasp her good fortune. This was a sign from the Stars themselves!
WolfStar completely missed the momentary joy that swept across StarLaughter’s face. His fingers tightened fractionally