dark face was now unreadable. “There are some mysteries that I will not even tell you, Axis SunSoar. We simply … change. The change picks us, we do not pick it. When we feel the change begin, we wander the ways of the Avarinheim alone, for we no longer desire the companionship of our friends and family.”
“And no female Banes ever become Horned Ones?” Azhure asked, her thick plait hanging over her shoulder.
“No, Azhure. We do not know why. But no females walk the Sacred Groves as Horned Ones.” Raum frowned. “I think female Banes transform, but they guard their mysteries closely, and I do not know into what they transform, or where they go when they do. We each have our mysteries, Azhure, and we do not pry too deeply into them.”
As Raum spoke, Axis had sunk deeper into the memory of his dream of the Sacred Groves. “The Horned Ones haunt the trees that line the Sacred Grove, watching,” he whispered. “They drift with the power that lives among the trees.”
“How do you know that, Axis?” Raum asked.
“I travelled to the Sacred Grove once, Bane Raum, in a dream.”
To one side Ogden and Veremund nodded. They had felt this when they tested Axis in the Silent Woman Keep. The Horned Ones would not welcome the intrusion of a hated BattleAxe into their mysterious realms.
“You have?” Raum said. “How?”
“It started with a nightmare,” Axis began, sitting up again, and he told them of the night outside the Silent Woman Woods when his old nightmare had claimed him, but had turned instead into a dream of the Grove. He had stood on the cool grass, feeling the power and the eyes that moved among the encircling trees, watching with horror as the man with the magnificent, but terrifying, head of a horned stag approached. When challenged for his identity Axis had said that he was Axis Rivkahson, BattleAxe of the Seneschal, and the puzzlement that he had originally felt from the eyes in the trees turned to rage. As the Horned One neared, swinging his head from side to side with hate, Axis had screamed and woken from the dream.
“Your old nightmare?” Rivkah said after Raum had finished questioning Axis about his dream. “What do you mean?” she asked, thinking of her son, lost and alone without either of his parents and in the grip of nightmare.
Axis had never spoken of the nightmare that had haunted so much of his life to anyone, not even when his long-time lover, Embeth, Lady of Tare, had pressed him about it. Yet now he was telling this group without hesitation about the nightmare entity that had come to him throughout most of his life, the entity that claimed to be his unknown father. The dreams had stopped only after Axis escaped the fury of the head in the clouds outside the Ancient Barrows – when he’d realised that, whoever he might be, his father had loved him and could not have been the hateful voice of his nightmare.
“It was Gorgrael who came to you,” Veremund said. “Trying to break your heart and your spirit with lies about your father.”
Axis’ face flinched with the memory. “He said that my mother died giving birth to me, died cursing me for taking her life. I believed him. I had no choice, none to tell me differently.”
Appalled, Rivkah reached out and seized Axis’ hand. She finally understood what a lonely childhood he had led, thinking his mother had died hating him, not knowing who his father was. For a time both mother and son sat, holding hands, lending each other comfort.
Then Axis sighed and turned to Azhure, letting his mother’s hand go. “Azhure,” he said gently, “it is good to let go of old nightmares. Will you tell us how your back came to be so horribly scarred?”
Azhure’s reaction caused the only dark moment of the trip. Her whole body went rigid and she stared at Axis, her eyes dark and frightened. For a moment she said nothing, her mouth trembling, then she whimpered.
“No.” It was the whimper of a terrified little girl.
“No!” she shouted, her voice edging towards hysteria. “No! Stay away!”
Rivkah quickly shifted over to her, wrapping her arms about the terrified woman.
“No!” Azhure shouted again, louder, twisting against Rivkah’s hands. “Stay away! Please! Please! I will not do it again!” She took a deep, shuddering breath. “I promise!” she screamed.
Axis leant forward, thinking to add support to that of his mother’s, but Azhure almost wrenched herself out of Rivkah’s arms in the effort to twist away from him. “No!” she screamed, patently terrified by Axis’ approach. “Forgive me!”
Veremund hastily placed his hand on Azhure’s shoulder. She stopped twisting immediately, but only very slowly did she relax. Veremund exchanged a worried glance with Ogden before looking at Axis.
“Withdraw the question,” said Veremund. “She doesn’t want to talk about it. The memory is too much for her.”
“I am sorry I have caused you pain with my question, Azhure,” Axis said, touching her cheek gently with his fingertips. “Please forgive my intrusion. I retrieve my words.”
A gentle melody spun through the air and Axis sat back as Rivkah let Azhure go.
“What is it?” Azhure asked, puzzled as she looked about to see everyone in the cave staring at her. “What did I say?”
Veremund caught Axis’ eye and nodded, pleased. Axis had learnt well from StarDrifter and MorningStar. Still, more lessons had been learned. One – never ask Azhure about her back. Two – find out what did happen, because that knowledge could well unlock some of Azhure’s secrets. But Veremund had the dreadful intuition that to unlock that particular secret without proper precautions could well cost either Azhure her life, or that of the person who tried too insistently to make her answer.
Azhure had been the only one to sleep well that night, and Axis had lain awake for many hours, watching her gently breathing. Wondering.
Four days out from Talon Spike Axis abruptly stopped on the path, his face tight with concentration. Then he smiled, laughed, and called ahead to Raum.
“Raum! I hear her! I hear her! She sings beautifully!”
Raum turned back to Axis and smiled. Although he could not hear what Axis did, he knew what it must be. Earth Tree. Earth Tree singing her Song, the Song that had destroyed the Skraeling attack on the Earth Tree Grove at Yuletide, the Song that now protected the entire northern Avarinheim against Gorgrael. If it had not been for StarDrifter and Faraday, Earth Tree might still be asleep and the Skraelings might well have eaten their way through the Avarinheim by now.
Two days later Raum began to catch the first faint strains of Earth Tree’s Song himself, and two days later yet, Rivkah and Azhure started to pick it up.
Ogden and Veremund had begun to hear it about the same time as Axis.
The night before they reached the foot of the Icescarp Alps, the group ate a splendid meal of roast partridge stuffed with breadcrumbs, cheese, raisins and almonds, and relaxed about the magical fire.
“Tell me of how you bonded Faraday to the Mother,” Axis asked Raum, reluctantly lifting his eyes from the firelight glinting through Azhure’s hair. “There is so little I know about her. So much I want to comprehend.”
Faraday’s
