He smiled, revealing crooked, yellowing teeth, and horrid thoughts consumed DragonStar’s mind.
Caelum had enjoyed it all. He’d had forty years of love, forty years of respect, forty years of lording it over the peoples of Tencendor. So he’d died horribly — so what? Now he dwelt in the Field of Flowers, no doubt enjoying the adulation of everyone else who lived there.
And what was Drago, poor Drago to do. Why! destroy the Demons of course, while Caelum continued to enjoy himself. He’d had only a few minutes of pain, while Drago had forty years behind him, and more ahead.
DragonStar felt such consuming envy ripple through him that he literally growled. He felt his own back hunch over, and his hands twist into claws. Caelum was nothing but a spoilt bastard who’d had everything handed to him on a golden platter, while he, he, had to do all the hard work.
The misshapen figure of Envy capered about before him, clapping its hands, and howling with merriment. “Why don’t you visit the Field of Flowers and destroy him forever,” he whispered. “You can do it, you know. You have the power.”
The lizard growled, and backed away a few paces.
DragonStar whipped about, raising his hand as if to strike the creature — what had that lizard ever done but enjoy a free ride? He’d spent aeons as an unfettered spirit in the Sacred Grove, and then the Minstrelsea forest, and had then simply attached himself to DragonStar’s cause with no hard work involved at all — and then halted the instant before his hand flashed down in a cruel blow. What was happening?
DragonStar struggled to control the envy, and the other emotions envy bred — hate and cruelty and a cloying, horrid self-justification — but he couldn’t… he couldn’t…
The old man capered about him in circles, clapping his hands. “Enjoy it!” he cried. “Give in to it! Why bother with such inconveniences as regard for others? Enjoy it! It’s the easiest way!”
And DragonStar could feel how easy it would be. All he’d have to do was give in and let the envy consume him, and all would be well, all would be well, and he could finally relax and bathe in the emotions that he’d nurtured for so many years as a resentful man locked inside the hate of Sigholt and the SunSoar family.
A small hand slipped into one of his, and DragonStar jerked. It was Katie, her eyes frightened, her mouth trembling.
DragonStar saw that she was terrified.
Envy howled with rage.
“The cats!” Katie whispered. “The cats!”
The cats? DragonStar stared at her. Why was she helping him … or was she helping him at all? Why, Faraday cherished this little girl in a way that she did not cherish him, DragonStar could see that now. Faraday gave this weak little girl all the love and attention that she never gave him.
DragonStar growled again, and jerked his hand from Katie’s.
Envy laughed.
And something small and furry wound its way about DragonStar’s legs.
He jerked his eyes down. It was a white and marmalade cat, and its body shook with the strength of its purrs.
DragonStar lifted his hand to strike the thing —
— and remembered. He remembered that the cats had given him nothing but unconditional love when he’d been rejected by everyone and everything else in Sigholt. He remembered that they’d left their food to comfort him; they’d been content in his company, and they had revelled in his friendship.
They had asked for nothing in return.
They had not envied him his strength, or his speech, or even his name.
They had just loved him.
DragonStar lifted his eyes to Envy. “I pity you,” he said, and Envy screamed.
“Let me offer you my friendship,” DragonStar said, and extended his hand, palm upwards.
Envy stared, whimpered, and suddenly disappeared.
DragonStar shuddered, and leaned down, hands on knees, trying to regain his equilibrium.
The lizard had scuttled across the room, and now was hunched down on the floor with his claws firmly tucked underneath his body. He wanted nothing more to do with enchantments from that Book.
The white and marmalade cat was curled up behind him, watching DragonStar carefully.
“I cannot use this Book,” DragonStar eventually whispered.
“Use it you must,” Katie said, “or all who have sacrificed themselves before you, and who will sacrifice themselves in the future for you, will have done so in vain.”
DragonStar straightened and stared at the girl. “The Book contains nothing but foulness.”
Katie stared at him.
“Dammit! What is its secret? How do I use it!” She continued to stare silently at him. “You have most to lose, damn you — so tell me its secret!”
“I cannot,” Katie said, her voice sad. “You must learn it for yourself.”
DragonStar fought an overwhelming urge to throw the Book across the room, then he forced himself to relax, slowly rotating his neck and shoulders, and finally offered Katie his hand. “I am sorry.”
She smiled and slipped her hand into his. “You should already have learned one lesson,” she said. “What was it?”
DragonStar almost grated his teeth, then chose to think it carefully through. “Envy consumed me,” he finally said, “and I could not control it.”
“And what broke the spell that Envy had thrown over you?”
“The cat,” Drago whispered. “Unconditional love.”
Katie nodded, and kissed his hand.
Faraday found them sitting on a pillowed bench seat in a window. The view beyond the glass panes was breathtaking: gardens and ponds stretched over several leagues to where the enclosing blue-cliff walls of Sanctuary rose.
“It’s so beautiful,” Faraday said as she sat on the other side of Katie.
DragonStar turned his head from the window and smiled at her over the girl’s head. It is cloying, he wanted to say, but he could not explain his emotions, so he merely nodded.
“What have you two been doing?” Faraday said, sensing the remaining tension.
DragonStar sighed, and indicated the Enchanted Song Book lying on the end of the seat. “I have been playing about with that.”
“And does it tell you what you need to know?”
“Yes,” said Katie, and DragonStar shot her a mildly irritated glance.
“It tells me many things,” DragonStar said, “and all of them uncomfortable.”
Faraday looked between DragonStar and Katie, her face growing more puzzled. She slid her arms about the girl and drew her back into her body, an instinctively protective gesture.
“Can you … we … fight against the Demons with what the Book tells you?” Faraday said.
DragonStar shifted even more uncomfortably. “The Book is filled with the Demons’ hatred and horror,” he said. “I know I should use it … mirror it back to destroy the Demons —”
Faraday felt Katie tremble in her arms, and she glanced down, worried.
“— but it feels so repulsive … so …”
“Whatever it takes to destroy the Demons will surely be taxing,” Faraday said.
DragonStar