"Brother?" the scout said. "What should we do? We could attack and --"
"No," Eleanon said. "This is my battle." It had always been going to come down to just him and Axis, hadn"t it?
Eleanon looked at the sky. Night was not far away. Did he want to attack at night?
Something made him hesitant about a night attack.
Best to wait until morning.
"Dawn tomorrow," Eleanon said, naming five other Lealfast he wanted to accompany him. "We will attack at dawn tomorrow."
The scouts left and Eleanon walked a little way from the Lealfast encampment in the mountains to the north-west of Elcho Falling, and stared into the distance where his eyes could just pick out the citadel glimmering in its turquoise lake.
Axis and Inardle"s survival was irritating, frustrating, but it could be reversed easily enough. Just another day.
Everything else, though, had fallen neatly and swiftly into place. The Lealfast Nation was set to descend on Elcho Falling the moment Maximilian and his wife were inside. And they were on their way -- Eleanon"s scouts reported the pair close to Elcho Falling in their pathetic little boat. Another few days at the most.
As for Ravenna . . . well, Ravenna had done her duty and Eleanon didn"t care what happened to her. If she were discovered, and if she told all, there was nothing that could be done by those in Elcho Falling.
She had fulfilled her purpose and for the moment Eleanon forgot her.
As he did so, the additional enchantment he had wrapped about Ishbel"s curse began, very slowly, to disintegrate.
Ravenna slowly ascended the great staircase of Elcho Falling. She took her time, using her senses to scry out the location of the baby.
He was here, somewhere.
StarDancer.
She ascended floor after floor, until she reached a level where the sense of the baby was so strong her eyes filmed with tears.
Oh G.o.ds, how had she come to this?
She wandered along a hallway, then entered a s.p.a.cious chamber lit by the light from a large arched window in the citadel"s northern wall.
A winged woman sat by that window and in her arms she held a small baby.
She was nursing him.
Ravenna felt a dark stabbing pain of jealousy. Would she ever get that chance? Would Fate, the One, and all the others who hated her leave her alone to enjoy her son?
But at least his meal bought the boy some time. His last time with his mother.
Ravenna settled back into the shadows to wait.
When Inardle woke again, she saw that Axis had somehow found a large bronze curved bowl and in it glowed a small fire.
She sat up, feeling more awake, more connected, than she had on the two previous occasions when she had spoken to Axis.
Yet still the river flowed within her, deep and comforting.
"Where did you get that?" she said, nodding at the bronze dish and fire.
"I was once StarMan and Star G.o.d," Axis said. "Are you saying a small dish and fire is now beyond me?"
She smiled at him. "You have your clothes, and yet I have none. What happened to my robe?"
"It was too badly torn and stained, Inardle. I discarded it."
She nodded, understanding. "I shall need another."
"Perhaps we could --" Axis began, but she lifted a hand, waving him to silence.
"Do you remember that time when I lay injured in the column escorted by the Emerald Guard? You left us to meet up with Maximilian, and then you and he rode out to meet us as we rejoined with you."
"Yes," Axis said, "I remember that time."
"You remarked that I looked very well . . . I was wearing a rather lovely silvery robe, I believe, and you asked where it had come from."
He smiled. "You said that not all your command of the Star Dance was as fragile as I seemed to think."
"I did. I was, of course, at that time trying to hide from you that my command of the Star Dance was actually very powerful, but I could not resist a little boast. Shall I now show you from where my clothes came?"
"Please do."
Axis" eyes were twinkling, and Inardle returned his smile. "Do you like green on a woman?"
"I could get used to it," he said.
"Then I shall wear green," Inardle said. She rose, moving about the perimeter of the circle of trampled reeds, moving slowly and seductively, every so often glancing over her shoulder to make sure Axis was watching.
He was, an amused look on his face.
As she moved, Inardle collected a dozen straight reeds.
She came back to the centre of the circle and sat down to one side of the fire. She glanced at Axis, then laid the reeds out before her in an interlocking grid pattern.
"So," she said.
"So," Axis echoed. "So .?"
"So," she said and, taking the lowest reed in the loose grid, she lifted it up high.
Axis had expected all the other reeds to fall asunder, but to his amazement, as Inardle swept that lower reed into the air, so all the reeds glimmered and, suddenly, what Inardle billowed in the air was not a reed, nor a collection of loosely interwoven reeds, but a length of lovely gossamer green material.
Inardle laughed at the expression on Axis" face. She rose, shook out the material, wrapped it around herself, and stood before Axis clothed in a lovely form-fitting green gown that swept down to her ankles.
"Could Azhure do that?" she asked.
"Azhure could do many things," Axis said, "but not that."
Inardle sat down. "Talk to me of Azhure. We never spoke of her before."
No, thought Axis, we never spoke of her before. He had not wanted to discuss Azhure with Inardle, because he would have felt uncomfortable doing so. Now, however, he felt no qualms and instead felt a great ease in talking of her to this woman.
"It was strange for me," he said, "when first Isaiah pulled me back into life. Azhure was in the Otherworld, but here I was, with a brand new life. We"d been lovers and companions for, what? Fifty or so years. To suddenly be without her . . . it was strange and unsettling.
"But even more unsettling and strange was how quickly I readjusted to the lack of her company. I still loved her, I still do love her, but . . . I don"t miss her. Life caught me up in its embrace. There were more adventures to be had." His eyes twinkled. "More women to meet."
"Ah, so there was a stream of women before me."
"No. None before you. I"d met Ishbel and was attracted to her, but the idea of seducing her was merely an intellectual exercise. I never for a moment thought I"d actually carry it out."
"Besides, you"d need to have competed with Isaiah and Maximilian and you must have feared failure."
Axis laughed. "You have a sharp tongue on you, Inardle."
She gave a little shrug.
"So," Axis went on, "there was no one before you."
"And what I did to you," she said, "how I betrayed you, must therefore have stung doubly."
"Yes," he said. "I"d wanted to love again, but didn"t know how. And then there you were, and I was losing myself in you, and then ."
They sat in silence, looking at the flames of the fire rather than at each other.
"I also understand," Axis eventually said, softly, "how difficult it must have been for you. How torn you must have been. How difficult it might have been to have approached me. I did not allow you an easy path to confidence."
"But here we are now," she said.
"Yes," Axis said, looking at her fully, "here we are now."
She raised her face and looked him in the eye. "I have changed, Axis. If I"d been brought back to life anywhere other than the water I would have been who I once was . . . but that didn"t happen. I regained life in the water. I have changed."
"I know," he said. "The River Angel runs deeper in you than previously."
Ravenna waited until Salome lay down to sleep, her husband beside her.
Neither of them -- nor the child this time -- realised her presence.
She waited until they were asleep and the baby asleep in the cot beside their bed.
She walked calmly forward and picked up StarDancer.
He looked at her, blinking in confusion as he woke, then his eyes widened.
I am sorry, StarDancer, Ravenna said to him. I have come to kill you.
Then before StarDancer could react, Ravenna clutched him close and ran from the chamber as fast as she dared.
Elcho Falling erupted into pandemonium.
Chapter 26.
The Central Outlands.
The Skraelings knew that Inardle had changed. The knowledge rippled through the entire congregation in a painful shockwave of realisation.
While they had been sitting here debating and complaining and remaining utterly, utterly indecisive, Inardle, a Lealfast, had changed.
Inardle was now a River Angel.
"How could she have done that!" a Skraeling cried. "How?"
"What if all the other Lealfast choose to change?" another said.
"What if we miss out?" said yet another, getting right to the crux of the matter.
"We have not yet made a decision!" Ozll shouted into the confusion. "We have not decided whether or not we want to --"
"We think we do!" came back a roar of tens of thousands of Skraeling voices.
"Why," Ozll shouted, far louder this time, trying to get control of the situation, "don"t we talk to Inardle and see what she has made of herself. Then we can decide if we, too, want to go the same way. She can be our guide. If we like what she is, then we, too, shall . . . take the plunge."
It was an unfortunate metaphor, reminding the Skraelings that the only way to return to their River Angel forms was to drown themselves.
"At least we know Isaiah wasn"t lying," Ozll said, his voice milder now the hubbub had died down. "At least we know the return to River Angel form is possible."
This statement rea.s.sured the Skraelings and they nodded their heads, prepared to listen once more to Ozll"s guidance.
"I suggest," Ozll said, "that we find Inardle. We examine her and we make our decision on what she has become."
"Good idea," Graq said, and Ozll smiled at her and thought it strange he"d never truly noticed her before.
As the Skraeling herd rose and began drifting northward, Ozll gravitated to Graq"s side.
She risked a small smile at him, although with her great jaws and fangs it displayed more as a snarl than anything else.
"Do you think," she said, "drowning would hurt?"