CHAPTER EIGHT

The Marshlands Outside Narbon, Escator

M aximilian blinked, and she was gone.

He blinked again, and the driving wind and rain blocked any sight he may have had of the crest of the hill.

He blinked yet again, and the woman was standing before him, bending down to him, squatting at his side, her hand lifting back the sodden hair from his brow.

“Hello, Maxel,” she said softly.

He stared at her, still too shocked by the events of the past half hour to comprehend what now was happening.

“It has been a long time,” she said. “Perhaps too long. Don’t you recognize me?”

Her hand continued to stroke back his hair, her fingers combing it into some order.

Maximilian still stared at her, trying to take her in. The one thing that instantly struck him, almost overwhelmed him, was that she was walking magic.

The second was that she was lovely—very long, thick, dark hair that, somewhat remarkably given the storm, appeared only slightly damp; an exquisitely structured face, pale skin, the lightest gray eyes he’d ever seen, ringed with thick, luxuriant dark lashes…

It was the eyes that were so different, Maximilian realized. They were far lighter than he remembered.

And her face was much stronger, and far more mature.

“Ravenna,” he whispered.

Ravenna, the marsh girl who had helped Garth rescue him from the Veins.

Ravenna, the girl who rescued him from his madness, but then left him, and Garth—with whom she was close—to run with the Manteceros and Lord of Dreams, Drava, whose likeness Maximilian wore carved into his upper right biceps.

“You do remember,” Ravenna said, and smiled. “What are you doing here, Maximilian?”

“Pulled here by magic,” Maximilian said, managing to get to his feet with Ravenna’s aid, and suppressing a wince at the pain in his shoulder. “You?”

Ravenna shook her head, looking at the man still lying half in the water behind Maximilian. The storm had abated now. It still blew about them, and it still rained, but it was a gentle and mild thing compared to what had enveloped both sea and land only a few minutes earlier.

“It was magic that brought me here, too,” she said. She stepped past Maximilian and bent to the man lying at the edge of the tide. “Who is this man, Maxel?”

“I don’t know.”

Ravenna rolled him over. “He has a strange aspect.”

Maximilian stepped to her side, looking down. “He is Icarii,” he said, “but with no wings.”

“I have heard of the Icarii,” Ravenna said.

“No doubt from Drava,” said Maximilian.

She looked at him at that. “I heard about them while I was with Drava, yes,” she said. “Our lives together were filled with the pursuit of mysteries.”

“And now?”

“Now the dreamworld is waking, Maxel. The barriers between it and this world are cracking.”

“So Drava sent you back?”

“I wandered back of my own accord. I am a marsh woman, Maxel. I belong to no man, whether he be flesh and blood, or dream.”

This was, Maximilian thought, a bizarre place and time to be having this conversation.

He looked back to the Icarii man, now softly moaning as he regained consciousness. “Power dragged me here, to this man. I have no idea why.”

“Maxel?”

He looked at Ravenna.

She nodded at an object lying in the water a few feet behind the Icarii, almost obscured by the darkness and rolling waves. “What’s that?”

Maximilian walked over, leaning down and grabbing at the object with his uninjured arm.

Almost immediately he swore softly, and jumped back.

“Maxel?” Ravenna said again, now at his side.

“You’ll have to pick it up,” Maxel said. He indicated his left shoulder. “I injured my shoulder. Can’t use my left arm very well. Don’t worry,” he added. “It isn’t dangerous.”

She gave him a level look, then bent down and lifted the object gently from the water—it was an exquisitely worked bronze figurine of a young man.

It reeked with magic, which Ravenna knew Maximilian must have felt as well, but which, as he had, she instinctively knew wasn’t dangerous to her.

Not dangerous, but Ravenna received the faint impression that the object didn’t like her very much.

“It is very sad,” she said, softly.

“He is the Weeper,” said a weary voice from behind Ravenna and Maximilian, and they turned about.

“And he is indeed very sad.”

The Icarii man had lifted himself onto one elbow. “My name is StarDrifter SunSoar,” he said, “and I beg your aid in finding me a dry and warm spot.”

“StarDrifter SunSoar,” murmured Maximilian. “Dear gods…are they all coming back?”

Ravenna looked at him, an eyebrow raised in query.

“His son, Axis,” Maximilian said, his voice infused with weeks-old fatigue, “has also returned from the land of the dead, and now has my wife, Ishbel. I was traveling to rescue her when this,” he waved his hand about, encompassing the storm and all it had wrought, “intervened.”

“Well,” said Ravenna, with a bright smile, “now you have Axis’ father. I am sure, with your undoubted royal diplomatic skills, we can arrange a prisoner exchange.”

“Axis has your wife?” StarDrifter said, having now struggled into a sitting position.

“You knew Axis was back?” Maximilian said.

“Look,” said StarDrifter, “I have no idea who either of you are, and I don’t really want to go through explanations and introductions sitting in this frigid water. Is it possible, do you think, that we can find some shelter, some dry shelter, and talk all this out there?”

“I have no idea where—” Maximilian began, but then Ravenna caught at his arm with her hand, and nodded at the crest of the hill.

Silhouetted against the night sky were the figures of Serge and Doyle, holding the reins of three horses.

“I know of somewhere,” Ravenna said.

Venetia paced back and forth by the wooden table in her small ramshackle home deep within the marshlands.

Something was happening.

Something was coming.

She had felt this for many weeks…the sense of something happening. Over the past few days the sense had intensified, and had been infused with the pain and terror of a woman far distant.

A woman was in pain, and was being brutalized, and Venetia felt some tenuous connection with her, although she could not identify it.

Venetia inhabited the marshes beyond Narbon, a witch-woman, one who lived partly in the mortal world and partly in the Land of Dreams, a guardian of the borderlands between the dream world and the mortal. Generally Venetia was happy with her solitariness, but, as the sense of impending events crowded her, she’d become nervy, constantly on the alert.

Waiting for whatever it was to strike.

When the knock came at the door, Venetia gave a startled gasp, her body tensing, her eyes widening, one hand at her throat.

She should have detected someone approaching.

That she had not told Venetia that whatever waited outside for her was a power-wielder themselves.

Taking a deep breath, summoning her not inconsiderable courage, Venetia walked to the door and flung it open.

And then immediately enveloped the woman standing outside in a fierce embrace.

“Ravenna!”

Ravenna, her daughter, lost years ago to the seductive wiles of the Lord of Dreams.

Not lost, not totally, for Ravenna and Venetia still remained aware of each other, and on very rare occasions spent brief moments together within the Land of Dreams. But this was the first time in five years that Venetia had held a flesh-and-blood daughter in her arms, and she was not about to let her go too quickly.

Ravenna laughed, hugging her mother back.

Eventually Venetia stood back, her eyes shining. “How you’ve grown!” she said. “Your power, as well as your beauty. How could I have produced such a daughter?”

“I will never be the woman you are, Venetia,” Ravenna said. “Look, I have brought people with me who need aid. Can you—”

“Of course,” Venetia said, standing back slightly so she could see who was with her daughter.

She tensed. “Maximilian Persimius,” she said softly. Venetia had never met Maximilian, but she knew him instinctively.

Venetia looked at her daughter, her eyes full of questions.

“There are many questions to be answered,” Ravenna said, “and many tales to be told this night, I think.

But they need to be spoken in some comfort and warmth. Maximilian is injured, and at least one other member of our group has been through extremity over the past few hours. May we come in?”

StarDrifter had been through many experiences in his vast lifetime, but he thought he’d never enjoyed anything so much as the wonder of being able to strip off his sodden clothes, wrap himself in a blanket, sit before a fire, and sip some of the wonderful ale the marsh witch-woman, Venetia, handed him.

Everything that had happened to him from the moment he’d been tossed overboard seemed dreamlike: the experience in the sea with the Weeper; meeting with a man who appeared to be the King of Escator, Maximilian Persimius (StarDrifter had heard of him, yes, but he’d never paid the story much attention); discovering Axis had apparently made off with Maximilian’s wife (StarDrifter had to suppress a grin every time he thought about that. Axis had not changed, it appeared); and, finally, being escorted by one witch-woman to the home of another, deep in the marshlands.

From the beach Ravenna and Maximilian had helped StarDrifter (who had been given the Weeper to carry) up a hill to where two men waited with horses, and then Ravenna and Serge had led the others, riding the horses, deep into the marshes to Ravenna’s mother’s house.

Then there was apparently much discussion and catching up to be done, but all StarDrifter could think about was the wonderful warmth of the fire, the delicious ale, the food that Venetia was spreading over the table, and the promise later of a bed…if bed this ramshackle establishment could provide.

The Weeper lay under his stool. It had been remarkably quiet ever since they’d been washed ashore.

Venetia kept casting him uncertain, and decidedly cool, glances, but StarDrifter had no idea why, nor did he particularly care. He could worry tomorrow about where he might go, and what he might do.

Tonight he was warm, and, he smiled around his mug of ale, he was free of the damned Ba’al’uz.

Eventually Venetia handed out the food as well—thick sausage encased in warm, fresh bread, and, as people ate, Maximilian Persimius began to tell his tale in between mouthfuls.

It entranced even StarDrifter. Tales of indifferent love and of wives lost were commonplace enough, but who this wife was (a priestess, perhaps, of an order that intrigued even someone as world-weary as StarDrifter) and the powers that Maximilian hinted she may possess, made this far more interesting.

“And you say my son, Axis, stole her from you?” StarDrifter eventually said, unable to keep quiet any longer.

Maximilian turned from his seat at the table to regard StarDrifter coolly. “He has possession of her now,”

Maximilian said, “but Ishbel was stolen by a band of men led by a man called Ba’al’uz—”

“Ah,” said StarDrifter.

“Ah, indeed,” said Maximilian, now regarding StarDrifter very keenly indeed. “I think perhaps we have heard enough of my sad tale. StarDrifter, perhaps you might enlighten us as to why you are here, washed up on the shores of Escator with that bronze statue.”

Maximilian’s eyes slipped to where the Weeper lay almost hidden beneath StarDrifter’s stool.

“The Weeper is a bronze deity,” said StarDrifter, “infused with the soul of a man I am trying to release.

Let me explain…”

As clearly and succinctly as he could, StarDrifter related what had happened to him over the past few weeks: his meeting with Ba’al’uz, his seduction of Salome, the theft of the Weeper, and the adventures that led him to this hut this night.

He mentioned Salome only briefly, and only as the woman he’d needed to seduce in order to win the Weeper, but as soon as he’d stopped, Venetia leaned forward, interrupting Maximilian, who had begun to ask StarDrifter a question.

“This woman, Salome,” Venetia said. “She is in trouble, I know it.”

StarDrifter looked uncomfortable. “The Coroleans will be greatly angered at the loss of the Weeper,” he said. “No doubt they have imprisoned Salome and—”

“She has been raped and brutalized,” said Venetia flatly. “Treated with a contempt that is unimaginable. I have felt this, intimated it, over the past few days. It has unsettled me greatly. Now, as you have spoken, what has happened has clarified in my mind. Why, StarDrifter? Why has she been so cruelly treated? It is connected with you, somehow.”

StarDrifter looked down at his hands, twiddling the empty mug of ale between them.

“Salome is almost pure Icarii,” he said. “I have no idea from where she got the blood, but she has spent her life trying to hide her origins. She was a powerful member of the Forty-four Hundred First Families, and as a caste they allow no ‘new’ blood. Everyone must trace their ancestry back to an ancient group of families in pure and untainted line, or be cast from the First. Salome held the most powerful position within Coroleas, save for the throne itself…and she held it by lie and deceit. Once that lie and deceit was discovered…then Salome would have suffered for it.”

“How was it discovered, StarDrifter?” Venetia asked.

StarDrifter raised his eyes to hers. “I told Ba’al’uz of her Icarii blood, and once we had left Coroleas he told me he’d informed a member of the emperor’s court of the fact. Salome would have been seized within hours.”

Venetia gave a slight nod. “You’re speaking the truth. I can sense it, but even so…”

“I did not like the woman,” StarDrifter said. “She had done things in her life that I abhor. But I would not have wished this on her. Her Icarii blood was no fault of hers.”

“She may not see it so,” Venetia said softly. Then she straightened, and looked around the table. “There is so much we need to discuss, but it is late. I need to look at Maximilian’s shoulder, and we all need to get some rest. Perhaps—”

The Weeper sighed, stopping Venetia midsentence.

Then it gave a soft whimper.

StarDrifter put his mug on the floor, and lifted the Weeper into his lap.

“It seems to like me,” StarDrifter said. “It would never go to Ba’al’uz, and when—”

The Weeper whimpered again, this time with such longing that tears sprang into StarDrifter’s eyes.

“He wants to go to you now,” StarDrifter said, and lifted the Weeper into Maximilian’s arms. “Now you must carry him on his journey.”