Sara Douglass - Pilgrim

There was a step behind her. Zared. In his hand he held a small hessian sack.

“Is this what you needed, Drago?” he asked. Zared was hesitant. There was something puzzling him about Drago, but he could not quite fix the puzzle yet in his mind, and that irritated him.

Drago took the sack from Zared, shaking it out. It was of rough weave, tattered about the edges, and with a small cloth tie threaded through its opening.

He smiled again. “It is perfect, Zared.”

He turned to Faraday. “Faraday, may I ask a favour of you?”

She frowned, still bemused by the request for the sack. “What?”

For an answer, Drago leaned down swiftly and took a sharp knife that was resting by the loaf of bread Leagh had just put out for their breakfast.

“A lock of your hair,” he said, and without waiting for an answer, reached out and cut a short length of Faraday’s hair that curled about her forehead.

She jumped, surprised but not scared. “Drago, why —?”

He grinned impishly, and dropped it into the sack. “I like to cook,” he said, and then laughed at all the surprised faces about him.

“Drago?” Zenith said. She and StarDrifter had just walked up. “What kind of answer is that? Look at us!” She gestured about to the circle of bewildered people. “Explain!”

“No,” he said, still grinning. “Sometimes an explanation would only confuse the matter. StarDrifter?”

StarDrifter shared a quizzical look with Faraday. “Yes?”

“Will you trust me enough to give me your ring?”

StarDrifter looked down at the diamond-encrusted ring on his finger. It was his Enchanter’s ring, although not the original, for that he’d given to Rivkah many, many years ago. He twisted it slightly. It was useless without the Star Dance, but still …

He looked up. “Yes,” he said, “yes, I will trust you enough. Here,” and he slid the ring off his finger and, as Drago opened the mouth of the sack, threw it in.

There was a brief glint as it fell into the darkness, and then the depths of the sack — and the lock of Faraday’s hair — absorbed it.

“Would you like me to contribute anything?” Zared asked, half-expecting Drago to lunge at his person with the knife to snip off whatever took his fancy.

“No,” Drago said. “I apologise for this mystery, but one day … one day I hope to explain what I do. There is one more thing I need, though. Leagh, will you take this knife,” he handed it back to her, “cut me a slice of that bread, and place it in the sack?”

She half-frowned, half-smiled, and did as he asked.

“I thank you,” Drago said quietly, and impulsively leaned forward to kiss her cheek. “And I am more glad than you know to see you and Zared together as husband and wife. Now, Faraday, perhaps we can eat before we go?”

They all sat, utterly intrigued by the scene, and accepted the bread, cheese and tea that Leagh and Zenith handed out.

Faraday chewed thoughtfully, watching Drago eat from under the lids of her eyes. He was growing into his heritage, and his destiny, by the hour.

It pleased her, and yet frightened her. Drago could save Tencendor — but not if the TimeKeepers came to understand who he was. No doubt the Demons were moving towards Cauldron Lake, and what would happen if they met her and Drago?

They had believed Drago dead — what would they think, what would they understand , if they saw him in the flesh? But what did it matter what they knew or understood? No doubt the Demons would do their best to kill them anyway.

“Be careful,” Zared said, and Faraday jerked out of her thoughts, and nodded.

“Can we take some of this bread with us, Leagh? I do not know if we will find much on our way.”

“Take what you like,” Leagh said, and shared a glance with Zared. “Faraday, what are you doing? None of us understand what —”

Drago leaned forward and touched his fingers briefly to her lips. “Wait,” he said.

Zared, watching, suddenly realised what it was that had been fretting at his mind. Since Axis, Azhure and Caelum had left, command had passed to Drago.

And everyone had accepted it.

None of us wait on what Caelum or Axis might do, Zared thought, but only on Drago. We have all turned to him, even though very few of us realise it yet. We wait for Drago’s word.

“I wish you luck,” Zared said, and stepped forward to grip Drago’s hand and arm in both his hands.

“Are you sure we shouldn’t have accepted Zared’s offer of the horses?” Drago asked, squirming about on the donkey’s ridged back. The forest had completely closed in about them, absorbing even the sounds of the donkeys’ hooves, and it seemed that Zared’s camp was more like a week behind them rather than two or three hours.

Faraday smiled a little to herself. “Uncomfortable, Drago?”

Drago sighed, and patted the donkey’s neck. “I can understand why you like these beasts, Faraday, but for Stars’ sakes! Surely they’d be better left to run free through the forest?”

“They are safe,” Faraday said without thinking, and then wondered why she’d said it. “Safe,” she repeated, half to herself.

Drago turned his head slightly so that he could watch her. A shaft of sunlight filtered through the forest canopy, and touched her hair so that deep red glints shimmered through the chestnut.

Drago’s breath caught in his throat.

She lifted and turned her head to face him fully. “My beauty has never helped me, Drago. Never.”

“And yet you are not bitter?”

She shrugged a little. “I have spent many years consumed by bitterness, Drago — and you of all people should know that bitterness does not help, either.”

Drago let that pass. “Faraday, who do you take me to meet?”

“A … man, I suppose … a man called Noah. Noah exists within the Repositories at the foot of the Sacred Lakes, and he asked me to bring you to him.”

She explained to Drago how, when he’d unleashed the power of the Rainbow Sceptre in the Chamber of the Star Gate, the light from the Sceptre had enveloped the Faraday-doe and wrapped her in vision.

Faraday laughed, a trifle harshly. “And you do not know how I had come to loathe visions, Drago. As a young, naive and stupid girl I first laid hand on the trees of the Silent Woman Woods, and they imparted to me a frightful vision that propelled me into my dreadful service to the Prophecy of the Destroyer. And to WolfStar, that damned Prophet!”

Drago almost asked what had happened to WolfStar, but thought better of it. “But this vision in the Chamber of the Star Gate …?”

“Was better.” Faraday smiled, remembering. “I was in a room — such a strange room, filled with twinkling lights and knobs, and with windows that commanded such a wondrous view of the stars — and a man rose from a deep-backed chair to greet me. He said his name was Noah, and that the room was within one of the Repositories at the foot of the Lakes, and he asked four things of me.”

“And they were?”

“He asked me to be your friend.”

“Ah.” Drago’s mouth twisted cynically. No wonder she walked by his side. She had promised to do so, and the world and every star in the heavens knew Faraday kept to her promises, even though they might be the death of her.

“Drago, why must you find it so hard to believe that people can like you, even love you?”

“Because for forty years I was told over and over that I was totally unlikeable.”

“And yet Zenith liked you, loved you, and believed in you.”

Drago let that hang in the air between them a while before he answered. “Zenith is special.”

Faraday smiled softly. “I think that one day you will find that all of Tencendor, and all of its people and creatures are also special, Drago.”