Sara Douglass - Sinner

Then Caelum spoke again, and Zared turned his eyes back towards him.

“WolfStar has reappeared,” Caelum said, and watched the faces of everyone in the room. All wore varying expressions of horror, amazement, and shock. All, Caelum noted with disquiet, save Drago, who managed to combine shock with a certain degree of thoughtfulness, as if weighing up the possibilities for mischief in this development.

Caelum shifted his gaze to Zenith, who was so pale as to be ashen, and held a trembling hand to her throat as if deeply disturbed, and then he looked at RiverStar. She had recovered quickly from her shock, it seemed, for she held his gaze easily, her lips curled in one of her secretive smiles.

The gathering was quickly recovering from its surprise, and now voices rose and fell, asking questions, demanding explanations. WolfStar was a name well known throughout Tencendor, and equally deeply distrusted. The renegade Enchanter-Talon had not only murdered hundreds of Icarii children, but had – to all intents and purposes – allied himself with Gorgrael, enabling the frightful creature to all but destroy Tencendor with his ice and Skraelings.

True, he had fathered Azhure, and she had been instrumental in enabling Axis to eventually defeat Gorgrael, and true, the word was that WolfStar had been fighting on behalf of Axis all the time he had stood at Gorgrael’s side.

But that was almost beside the point. WolfStar was an Enchanter of frightening power – enough to see him come back from death through the Star Gate – and who worked only for his own purposes. And even if WolfStar’s purposes might ultimately be for Tencendor’s well-being, they had an appalling habit of causing the death of tens of thousands in their unravelling.

FreeFall locked eyes with Caelum. “I like this not!” he spat. “What mischief does WolfStar now?”

Caelum shrugged, made as if to say something, and then turned to Zenith as she spoke.

“I felt a horror last night,” she said, her eyes huge and round, her cheeks still pasty. “A sense of doom, as if the stars were falling in. Was this WolfStar?”

“Undoubtedly, Zenith.” Caelum swept his eyes about the room. “He appeared at the Star Gate, while Orr was there. And what they heard, and then what I heard, needs to be told so that –”

“Has Council been called already? Without my presence?”

An extraordinary figure had appeared in their midst. No-one was sure if he had slipped in through the door unnoticed or had simply used his extensive powers, a combination of both the Earth magic and the Star Dance, to materialise among them.

The man was tall, slender, bare-footed, bare-chested and smooth-backed, his lower body wrapped in a cloth that, although it hung gracefully about him, looked as if it had been woven from bark and twigs. His eyes were emerald green, and fierce, as if he might snap at any moment. His hair was a tangle of wild curls the colour of sun-faded wheat, and at his hairline, on each side of his forehead, curled two unmistakable horns.

Isfrael, hope of the Avar, conceived of Axis StarMan and Faraday, when she had been Tree Friend.

Zenith shifted nervously, as did most others in the room. She was slightly apprehensive of her older brother. Although he was only a few years older than her, and although they had shared a childhood at Sigholt, Isfrael had changed since leaving to live with the Avar in the great forests to the east. Where once had been laughter was now only studied silence. Where once had been shared warmth was now only wary distance. Now Isfrael was all forest, all for the Avar. Alien, as if he had never shared a childhood with the other SunSoar children. There was a darkness, almost violent in its intensity, about the Mage-King. A tension within him, as if he would uncoil and strike at any moment.

His mother, the creature that had once been Faraday, still roamed the Minstrelsea and Avarinheim forests, but was so fey and so shy that Zenith did not know anyone who had seen her over the past thirty years.

“Isfrael,” Caelum finally said with commendable calmness. “This is not a Council, but rather a hastily convened gathering to discuss my late-night meeting with WolfStar.”

Isfrael’s eyebrows rose almost to his horns. “Then I am indeed glad I made the effort to arrive a day or so ahead of schedule. I have long held a wish to meet this demon of myth.”

“You should have spoken earlier, Isfrael. Had I known, I would have walked the paths of the Sacred Groves to meet you long before now.”

Barely over the shock of Isfrael’s sudden appearance, everyone in the room now looked towards the gloomy, shadowy fireplace at Caelum’s back; Caelum himself whipped about, and stepped to one side.

There was a movement within the vast interior of the hearth, and then a figure stepped out.

WolfStar. For everyone in the room who had never seen him – and that was most – it was immediately apparent from whom so many of the present-day SunSoars had inherited their copper hair and violet eyes. With his colouring and his golden wings, WolfStar was not only remarkably handsome, but radiated such power that everyone in the room found themselves either stepping back, or inching as far down in their seats as they could.

Zenith cringed against a far wall, her knees threatening to buckle, her heart thumping erratically in her chest, barely able to breathe. The doom that had surrounded her last night had returned thrice-fold the instant WolfStar had spoken, and now Zenith did not know how anyone else in the room could stay so calm, when to her the entire universe seemed in danger of self-destruction.

A hand grasped her arm and prevented her sliding to the floor.

Drago.

Zenith tried to speak, to thank him, but could not, for now WolfStar was staring at her, now walking towards her, and Drago had to slide his arm about her waist to stop her toppling over in the extremity of her horror.

“Zenith,” WolfStar said, stopping a pace away. It was not a question, not a greeting, just a statement, but Zenith felt as if he had somehow taken command of her soul with that one word.

What was wrong with her? Why fear him so much? Why did he affect her this badly?

Zenith, be calm. I am with you, I will protect you.

Caelum, speaking to her with the mind voice that all Enchanters used. Together with Drago’s arm about her waist, it saved Zenith from fainting completely away.

WolfStar’s eyes moved fractionally; he had also caught Caelum’s thought.

No-one can best me, fool boy! His mind moved back to the birdwoman before him. Zenith, do not fear me. Never fear me.

And he reached out and touched her cheek.

Some of the unreasoning fear vanished with that touch, but with it came a muddle of confused thoughts and images: the Dome of Stars on the Island of Mist and Memory, but seen from the interior, where Zenith had never been; a room in a peasant house, a man advancing to her, his hands outstretched in anger; a child, a raven-haired girl, nursing at her breast.

WolfStar’s fingers dropped from her cheek, and with them went the images.

WolfStar smiled, his eyes tender, then turned slightly to Drago – and snarled.

It was a horrible, harsh, totally aggressive sound, and it appalled everyone in the room. Drago himself literally thudded back against the wall, and no-one watching knew if it was simply his own fear and shock that had caused him to leap backwards, or WolfStar’s power.

“Vile creature!” WolfStar spat at him, his hands twitching. “Azhure should have killed you for your efforts in trying to murder Caelum!”

“Why quibble about a few years between deed and execution?” Drago shot back. “My mother may not have killed me then, but she ensured my inevitable death!”