Crusader

  One moment the sea had been calm, if sullen, under an overcast sky, the next it was rolling so madly the crews of the five vessels all thought they were moments away from death.

  And the next moment, it was calm again.

  One of the seamen, a man called El’habain, was clinging to the railing about the prow of the leading vessel where he’d been standing watching for seals. He was soaked through, and frightened as he had never before been in his arrogant life.

  He raised his head, shaking it from side to side to clear the salty water from his eyes and ears, and looked for someone to curse and blame for his fright and his soaking.

  In the end El’habain said nothing. He merely stared into the distance, towards where the Tencendorian cliffs lined Widewall Bay.

  They were crumbling. Great rocks toppled into the ocean and, as El’habain stared, the length of the cliffs as far as he could see fell beneath the ocean waves.

  There was nothing left but the rolling waves.

  Tencendor had gone.

  Chapter 71

  The Waiting

  There was a blackness, and an unknowingness, during which all creation ceased to exist. There was simply nothing.

  Save, as far as Axis was concerned, the harsh and fearful sound of his breathing.

  “Is anyone else there?” he said, and a being shifted under him, and he realised that Pretty Brown Sal also existed.

  “Yes,” whispered a voice across the void, and Axis recognised it as Zared’s, and then a hundred other whispers reached him, and Axis realised that somehow the convoy still stretched out behind him.

  “Axis?”

  A faint voice, unsure.

  “Azhure!” Gods! He’d thought to have lost her forever.

  There was an unseen movement at his side, and Axis felt a hand groping along Sal’s shoulder.

  “Azhure! Here!” He reached down a hand and grabbed hers, and at his touch and warmth Azhure burst into sobs.

  He hauled her up into the saddle and hugged her tight. “SpikeFeather? Katie?” he eventually said.

  “Katie has gone,” said a voice somewhere to one side, and Axis recognised it as SpikeFeather’s. “But Urbeth’s daughters are still with us—”

  And somehow Axis had the distinct impression, although he could not see a thing, that the two women stood to either side of SpikeFeather, each holding one of his hands.

  “—as is…”

  “As is…I,” said a chilling voice, and Axis jumped, knowing the voice instantly.

  The GateKeeper laughed, a grating, dry sound. “We meet again, Axis.”

  “Why aren’t you at your Gate?” Axis said.

  There was a silence, and when the GateKeeper answered, her voice was puzzled and unsure.

  “I sat at my table,” the GateKeeper said, “when, just then, just now, a moment ago it seems to me, the soul of a beautiful girl child drifted up. Before she went through the Gate, she turned to me and she said, ‘Rejoice, GateKeeper, for your task is done. Time is ended, and the Gate must close.’

  “And then she stepped through the Gate. And then…then it imploded, and I had seized the birdman and your wife and Urbeth’s two girls and brought them here.”

  “Then I thank you for that—” Axis began.

  “Oh, I did not think of you when I returned your wife and companions,” the GateKeeper said. “It was merely convenient that I brought them with me.”

  “Then why did you come here?” said Axis.

  “Because of Her,” said the GateKeeper. “The Child.”

  And Axis nodded, and understood. Not Katie at all, but Leagh’s Child.

  They waited.

  “Has ma’am finished?” said Raspu, returning from wherever he had been, and Faraday put her cup back into its saucer and extended it into the dark. The mausoleum had completely vanished, and now there was only a nothingness.

  “Yes. Thank you.” Faraday was not perturbed by the dark and the nothingness, nor by the fact that she currently shared the void with a former Demon.

  All would be well as it eventuated.

  They waited.

  DragonStar rode his Star Stallion through the void, his pale hounds fanning out behind him in a comet’s tail.

  There was something he should do, but for the moment he did not care. There was only the wild ride, the freedom, and the void.

  Nothing else mattered.

  The stallion snorted, and shook his head.

  Sicarius bayed, and the Alaunt clamoured.

  DragonStar sighed.

  “Faraday,” he said.

  She heard him before she saw him. The faint fall of a horse’s hooves, the snuffling of a pack of hounds.

  Slowly Faraday rose to her feet, accepting Raspu’s hand on her elbow.

  Then, suddenly, there was a presence, and the faintest of luminescence, and there was DragonStar, sitting his stallion, his hounds milling about him.

  “Come,” he said. “We have a Garden to plant.”

  Raspu watched as DragonStar helped Faraday mount behind him, and then, as they rode away and the darkness closed in again, he waited.

  The Star Stallion stopped, and DragonStar turned slightly.

  “Faraday? Are you ready?”

  “Ready for what?” she said. What had he meant, plant the Garden?

  She felt, rather than saw, him smile. “You have something of mine,” DragonStar said. “Something you have kept for a very long time. Will you now give it back to me?”

  Faraday frowned, and then jumped slightly in surprise as she remembered what it was. “Oh!”

  When DragonStar had worked the enchantment to ensnare the twenty thousand crazed people in the Western Ranges, he had shot the enchantment into the sky with an arrow.

  After the arrow had done its work, it had fallen to the ground at Faraday’s feet, and, eventually, she’d wound it into the rainbow band that the Mother had given her.

  Together with the sapling.

  Her hands trembling, Faraday leaned back very slightly from DragonStar’s warmth, and unwound the band.

  She took the arrow, the sapling still safely coiled about it, into her hands.

  And then Faraday gasped, for the arrow had been strangely supple all this time it rested so close about her waist. Now, in the space of one heartbeat, it solidified into strength again.

  The sapling still wound its way about its length.

  “Faraday?”

  She took the arrow, and passed it to DragonStar.

  He held it briefly, then lifted the Wolven from his shoulder and fitted the arrow to it.

  He paused, and Faraday could tell he was crying, then in one fluid movement, DragonStar lifted the bow and shot the arrow high into the darkness.

  Chapter 72

  The Tree

  The arrow rose into the darkness, and the hopelessness, and the void. It rose until it could rise no more, and then it fell.

  It fell, and fell, and fell until it reached impossible speeds.

  And then, when it could fall no more, it struck a resistance, and its head buried itself within the resistance.

  Somewhere far, far away, the Star Stallion screamed, and reared and plunged, and stars fell in their millions from his mane and tail.

  A great wind consumed the blackness, and it swept the stars high and higher.

  There was an explosion of light and sound from the point where the arrow struck.

  It washed out in great rippling waves, engulfing all those who waited within the darkness.

  It caught the stars, and twisted them high, and higher, feeding their fire, so that they grew a million-fold in intensity, and then the wind swept them higher still.

  Then the arrow sighed, and let itself be consumed, for its work was done.

  Something grew.

  Axis and Azhure both cried out and clung to each other as the waves of light and sound engulfed them. Pain and joy in equal amounts devoured them.

  Peace, said Leagh’s Child.

  The pain eas
ed, and the intensity of the light dulled back to a soft and gentle radiance.

  But the joy remained.

  Azhure, among all others, was the first to open her eyes and look.

  She shuddered, wracked by emotion as the import of what she saw sank in.

  A Tree. Gigantic, all-encompassing. Its leaves every shade of green, its trumpet flowers a brilliant gold edged with scarlet.

  It stood in the void, shedding a soft, gentle light.

  Then, as Azhure put trembling hands to her face, and everyone else opened their eyes, the Tree’s leaves trembled, and…

  …and a garden rippled out from its base, consuming the blackness and the void, and all trembled as earth and grasses and flowers formed under their feet as the Garden flowed outwards.

  For those who had known the Field of Flowers, the Garden was like, and yet unlike. It was filled with flowers and their scents, but the Garden was more formed than the Infinite Field of Flowers had been. There were paths and glades, and shadowed, dappled spots of coolness where trees congregated.

  It was like Sanctuary, save it did not share Sanctuary’s sense of impermanence.

  This Garden was the reality from which everything else had been insubstantial reflections.

  Above, in a deep blue sky, millions of stars blazed.

  Azhure cried out softly again, and pointed.

  DragonStar and Faraday were walking through great, gorgeous drifts of flowers, the Star Stallion sauntering behind them, his head nodding and dipping with happiness.

  Behind the stallion bounded the Alaunt, and behind them, carefully adjusting his vest lest it had become creased during Creation, walked Raspu.

  Chapter 73

  The Garden

  Aha!” cried the GateKeeper. “I know what this is!” “What?” said Azhure politely, her eyes still on DragonStar and Faraday.

  “It is that which existed beyond the Gate!” the GateKeeper said.

  DragonStar, now within two paces of them, smiled and nodded. “In a manner of speaking, yes. But this Garden is far more than an ‘AfterLife’. It is a ‘BeforeLife’ as well. It is a beginning and an end within itself. It is a well, a reservoir, of life.”

  Azhure disentangled herself from Axis’ grasp, and slid down from Pretty Brown Sal.

  There was something…someone…walking through the flowers towards her.

  She gave a great sob—would she never stop crying?—and leaned forward to embrace Caelum and RiverStar, and Zenith just behind them.

  And then there were the thousands, the millions, walking out through the flowers from the oblivion of death—Rivkah, Belial, MorningStar, a hundred neighbours and friends, ten thousand names and memories, faces and voices drifting out of the forgetfulness of death, but reaching out with living arms.

  But among them all, there was no StarDrifter.

  “Why?” said Azhure, distraught. “Why?”

  Rivkah, Magariz beside her, had her arms about Azhure, comforting her as she had done so often when Azhure had been so lost and lonely and friendless within Smyrton.

  DragonStar shrugged his shoulders helplessly. “I do not know.”

  The GateKeeper, strangely soft and pretty in this place, said: “I know. He did not pass through the Gate, nor even through the Butler’s gate.”

  “But I saw StarDrifter’s wings!” said Axis. “He was dead! He must have been!”

  “Nevertheless,” said the GateKeeper, her eyes resuming a hint of their former steeliness, “he did not pass through either Gate.”

  And to one side the Butler, polishing a tableful of silver, nodded his agreement.

  “Then where is my father?” Axis shouted.

  Leagh walked up with her Child in her arms.

  Beyond us, said the Girl. If he is not here, then he is somewhere back there.

  “Back ‘there’?” DragonStar said.

  The wasteland of Tencendor only was consumed, said the Child. The other lands bordering it still exist. StarDrifter, perhaps as a result of some magic, must still be there. He was not in the wasteland when it was consumed.

  “Then we must go after him!” Azhure said.

  No.

  “No?”

  No. You may not pass from the Garden and return. I would have you here with me.

  StarDrifter, somewhere in the lands bordering Tencendor? thought Axis. How? How? What magic could have transported him? And where?

  “What exactly does remain of Tencendor?” he asked the Child.

  Nothing. Not in the flesh. The land was consumed by earthquake and waves when DragonStar struck the fatal blow to Qeteb. To those who lived outside the borders of Tencendor, there is nothing left of that land. Only waves.

  Axis, as Azhure, opened his mouth to say something more, but the Child forestalled him. He is gone. Not here. Grieve, if you must, but know also that his time had not yet been completed.

  “And what,” said Zared, walking up to Leagh’s shoulder, and looking down in perplexion at his Child’s face, “do we do now?”

  The Child laughed, and thrust her tiny fists into the air. You populate the Garden in peace and contentedness!

  Epilogue

  The Corolean Emperor leaned forward on his throne, one hand absently laying to one side the heavy folds of his purple and gold silk mantle.

  “What do you mean, Tencendor is ‘gone’?”

  “Highest One,” the Admiral said from his position of laying face down on the floor, arms spread out to either side of him. His voice was very slightly muffled. “We spent weeks sailing over the entire ocean. The continent is gone. Sunk beneath the waves. Even the barren land bridge connecting our continents has gone. Waves. Only waves are left.”

  “Nothing is left? Not a single piece of flotsam? Not one puffy corpse?”

  “Nothing, Highest One.”

  “What happened?”

  The Admiral took his time answering, not knowing quite what to make of the hundreds of reports he had had from, not only the crews of Corolean fishing vessels in the area but also from Escatorian cargo ships sailing for Tencendor, as well as the odd pirate, who relinquished their information only grudgingly, and under the threat of having their genitals skewered by hot pokers.

  “Highest One,” the Admiral eventually said. “From what I can gather, the land suffered a cataclysm so complete we can barely comprehend it. The entire continent of Tencendor has sunk beneath the waves. Even the barren land bridge connecting our continents has gone. Waves. Only waves are left.”

  The Admiral paused again, wondering whether to relate the other piece of information that had persistently come to his ears.

  “Tell me!” the Emperor snapped.

  “It is said,” the Admiral said very slowly, “that Tencendor was so riddled with sin, corruption and vileness that the gods decided absolute destruction was better than redemption.”

  The Emperor stared, then sat back in his throne, his chubby, sweating face smiling beatifically.

  “I always knew they were a bad lot,” he said.

  At the very back of the crowd in the public throne chamber, a fair-haired man with extraordinarily compelling blue eyes grinned sardonically. After a moment he turned away, wincing as some unseen injury caught at his back, and he faded into the crowd.

  The pain of not finding StarDrifter faded. His time had not been right, and he had passed elsewhere, not into the Garden.

  So be it.

  Axis and Azhure, as every other person who had passed through death—whether during the final moments of Tencendor, or ten thousand years beforehand—accepted the joy and peacefulness of the Garden.

  They were contented, as were the entire populations of peoples and creatures who had entered the Garden.

  The Icarii fanned out in the skies, beautiful jewel-like creatures who populated the air with music and wonder.

  The Ravensbund, with Urbeth grumbling good-naturedly at their head, moved to the cliffs and beaches of the never-ending coasts that bounded the Garden, and explored the myst
eries they found there.

  The Avar wandered the Garden, shaded by the ethereal trees, learning the ways of the flowers and the winds that tipped them into cascades of delight.

  They became gardeners.

  The Acharites built themselves pale-stoned homes that bordered the glades and walks, and spent their time—not ploughing—but sitting on doorsteps or in rocking chairs under verandahs, and passing the time of day with each other, and any other who passed by.

  SpikeFeather wandered off with Urbeth’s two daughters, and the threesome explored the more secretive glades, and kept to themselves.

  The Alaunt settled down, and FortHeart gave Sicarius a fine litter.

  Belaguez courted Pretty Brown Sal, but she spent her time sliding tantalisingly just beyond his reach.

  Axis and Azhure were reunited with the other seven once-Star Gods come back from their spin through the stars, and they, as had been their wont in the years before the TimeKeepers’ invasion, explored the mysteries they could see circling in the star patterns above their heads.

  Theod and Gwendylyr raised their twin boys, and added a baby girl to their family.

  Zared and Leagh, meanwhile, raised their Daughter through wondrous babyhood, into girlhood, and then into womanhood. The Woman sat beneath the Tree, and dispensed laughter and advice and wisdom, and She and the Tree were the centre of Creation.

  Sometimes people thought they saw Katie flitting between trees, and in the shadows of glades, but none ever spoke to her, and the Woman told them to leave her alone.

  She has had her share of pain, and now is at peace in her aloneness. Leave her.

  DragonStar and Faraday grew restless. Everyone else had adjusted themselves to the Garden, and its serenity and beauty, but they could not.

  They had not been granted the grace of contentedness.

  One day, they went to see the Woman. “We think,” DragonStar said slowly, holding Faraday’s hand tightly in his own, “that there remains something else for us to do.”