Pilgrim. Sara Douglass

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СКАЧАТЬ Faraday. Over the past two weeks since he’d returned through the Star Gate, he’d never seen her anything but calm and sure of herself. Now her cheeks were flushed, her hair in disarray, and her eyes bright — with tears, Drago realised with a start.

      “Faraday?” She jumped as a soft hand fell on her shoulder.

      Zenith.

      As Drago had done, Zenith stared about her, unable to believe what she was seeing. The donkeys adored Faraday. They had comforted her during the time Faraday had planted out Minstrelsea, and Zenith herself had seen their devotion to the woman on their trip from Ysbadd to the Ancient Barrows.

      Zenith looked at Drago, registering his own shock.

      “The cart just fell apart,” Faraday said. “It just fell apart!”

      “Shush,” Drago said, and took one of her hands between his. “Both cart and donkeys doubtless have their reasons.”

      Faraday made a helpless gesture with her other hand, and a tear ran down her cheek.

      Drago looked impotently at Zenith.

      “And the donkeys kicked at me,” Faraday whispered.

      Zenith glanced at her brother, then wrapped an arm about Faraday. “Hush, Faraday. Drago is right. They have their reasons.”

      “But to kick!”

      Drago dropped Faraday’s hand, not knowing what to do. He watched Zenith rock the woman to and fro, crooning to her, and then heard a step behind him and turned, grateful for the interruption.

      Zared, his face puzzled, an eyebrow raised. “Do you want horses, Drago?”

      Drago started to nod, then stopped himself. “No,” he said, and wondered why he said that. Why refuse horses? “We will walk. It is what the donkeys want us to do.”

      The donkeys relaxed, their ears flopping, and each shifted their weight onto one of their hind legs, resting the other.

      The feathered lizard suddenly appeared, investigating the wreckage of the cart. It rippled sinuously between the spokes of one of the wheels, and then disappeared under the tray.

      “We will walk,” Drago repeated softly, watching the donkeys.

      Faraday walked slowly into the grove. It hardly deserved the name, for it was only some three paces across and four or five deep, but it was beautiful nonetheless, with heavy-scented scarlet brambry bushes and clumps of spiked blue and pink rheannies filling the spaces between the trees.

      Isfrael was standing in the shadows at the far end of the grove.

      “It has been so long,” Faraday said softly. She felt like weeping. Seeing him standing here within the forest made her remember vividly the betrayal in which he’d been conceived — those glorious eight days with Axis when she’d thought to become his wife, while he’d thought of his mistress, Azhure — and the pain and misery of crawling on her hands and knees across half of Tencendor, her belly heavy with her baby, replanting the forests.

      The agony of his birth in the Sacred Groves. The far deeper agony of saying goodbye to the infant to fulfil her destiny in dying for the Prophecy.

      Azhure and Axis had raised him. Not Faraday.

      Faraday had been left to wander the forest paths as a doe, hating her confinement there, and knowing that she slipped from everyone’s minds, including her son’s. It was difficult to reconcile the knowledge that she’d been relegated to legend, with the need to live … live! … and hold her son for just one day in her arms.

      Spending brief hours with him in Niah’s Grove when Isfrael had been a child had not been enough, for either of them.

      “Mother,” he said, and took a step forward into a shaft of sunlight.

      She drew her breath in. In his own strange way he did remind her of Axis, although his wildness was all Avar. His hair was the same faded blonde, the musculature of his chest and arms … his hands. He had Axis’ hands.

      Faraday stared at them, remembering how Axis had touched her, and betrayed her with that touch.

      “Why did you leave the forests to walk with Drago?” Isfrael asked.

      Faraday walked forward a few steps until she was within a pace of her son. “You know why.”

      He nodded. “WingRidge told me who he was. But why did you leave the forests?”

      Faraday thought about telling Isfrael of how the Sceptre had pulled her to Drago, and thence to the Ancient Barrows.

      She thought of telling Isfrael how Drago had saved her with the Rainbow Sceptre, when Axis had refused to use it to save her from Gorgrael. She thought of telling him about Noah, and her promises to him.

      But none of this did she say.

      “Because I think I can help,” she said eventually, speaking such a colourless truth it was almost a lie. She dropped her eyes to her hands clasped in front of her.

      “So you would walk with Drago,” Isfrael said, folding his arms across his chest, “but you would not walk to my cradle when I was an infant and croon me to sleep?”

      “Isfrael, I have hardly had a choice in what —”

      “I wish,” Isfrael said, and his voice was wistful, almost tender, through its bitterness, “I wish that just once during my childhood you had been there to rock me to sleep. I wish you had cared that much.”

      “I have loved you with all my being —”

      “No. No, you cared more for those donkeys than you have for me. No wonder Axis preferred Azhure’s love to yours.”

      He paused, and his lip curled slightly. “You have no place in my life, Faraday. As you deserted me as an infant, as you deserted Shra to her death, so now I abandon you.”

      And he turned and walked into the trees.

      Faraday stood and stared at the spot where he had disappeared, absolutely stricken.

      It was not my fault, she wanted to cry, but … but was it her fault? Could she have aided Shra? No, no, there was nothing she could have done.

      But the other accusation hurt more, because Faraday felt so guilty about it.

      Should she have stayed within the Sacred Grove with her son and let Azhure die in her place? If she had, things would not be much different now, would they? Gorgrael would be here to face the TimeKeepers and Qeteb instead of Axis, and Gorgrael would be as powerless as Axis was.

      But the most important factor, Drago, would still be here, because Drago had allied himself with Gorgrael and would have survived the Destroyer’s push into Tencendor.

      “What did I accomplish by serving out the Prophecy’s wishes,” Faraday whispered into the empty shaft of sunlight. “Not much at all, really, save for the abandonment of my son. No wonder he curses me.”

      She СКАЧАТЬ