Free Crusader by Sara Douglass Page A

cruel purpose.
    Thorns studded her throat and cheek so that whenever she breathed, blood spurted and the thorns dug deeper.
    Must I always bleed, she thought, and must I always suffer the despair of entrapment?
    “It’s a bitch of a job,” muttered a thorn close to her ear, “but someone’s got to do it.”
    Yes, yes, Faraday thought, someone has got to do it. She had been so sure that she’d not succumb to the temptation of sacrifice any more, but here she was, embracing it again.
    Someone would surely have to die if Tencendor was to be saved, and Faraday supposed she’d have to do it all over again.
    Painfully.
    Trapped, trapped by the land. Trapped by its need to live at her expense.
    The thorns twisted and roped, and Faraday screamed.
    It seemed the right thing to do, somehow.
    “You have a choice,” said the thorns. “You can succumb and the pain will end…reasonably fast. Or you can fight and tear yourself apart in the effort to free yourself. Which will it be?”
    “I…I…”
    “Quick! The decision cannot take forever, you know!”
    “I…”
    “Quick! Quick! Time is running out!”
    Faraday panicked. She opened her mouth to scream—and then stopped, very suddenly calm.
    “You choose for me,” she said. “I trust you to choose for me.”
    “Good girl,” said the land, approvingly, and Faraday found herself rising slowly through a lake of emerald water, rising, rising towards the surface.
    She broke through the surface and shook the water from her hair, and laughed.
    “DareWing,” she said, and her hand gripped his shoulder more strongly. “We will be here for you.”
    DareWing spiralled through the air, more determined than at any time in his life.
    The ground was not going to get him.
    He was an Icarii! A birdman! The ground held nothing for him, nothing.
    Then why did he feel the tug on his wings so painfully? Why did the weight of his body seemingly grow with each breath so that now he found it almost impossible to stay aloft?
    The ground called him: “Walk on me, be my lover, bind yourself to me.”
    No!
    “Bind yourself forever.”
    No!
    DareWing made a supreme effort, his shoulders and breast and belly aching with the effort of staying within the thermal.
    But now he was spiralling downwards, not up.
    The speed of his fall increased, and DareWing screamed curses at the ground. He would never allow himself to be ground bound! He was a creature of the air, of the sky, of the stars!
    The ground rushed towards him, and DareWing screamed in fear rather than anger. Not fear at death or even pain, but fear that he would be ground bound, that he would never fly again, never soar, never again be the proud Icarii warrior…
    He hit the ground with a force that should have killed him outright, but the worst injury DareWing felt was a bruised shoulder and thigh. He scrambled to his feet, and almost overbalanced.
    He kept to his feet only with a sustained effort. Why was his balance so out? Why was everything so heavy?
    DareWing halted, horrified.
    His wings had become a burden. For the first time in his long life, DareWing realised that his wings were a burden. They hung like great stone weights from his back, and he could barely move them, let alone will them to lift him into the sky.
    “No! Damn you! Give me my grace back! My balance! Give me back—”
    My Icarii pride, he thought, and halted, amazed. Have I always been so arrogant?
    So contemptuous of the ground?
    So blind?
    “What do you want of me?” he whispered. “How can I redeem myself?”
    “Relinquish your arrogance,” the ground replied, “for that is what made the unwinged resent you in ages past.”
    Relinquish my wings? DareWing thought, and anger surged through him. No birdman relinquishes his wings!
    The ground was silent, and DareWing hung his head in shame.
    His wings hung heavy behind him. A burden, not of weight, but of arrogance.
    DareWing turned his head slightly so he could regard them. His wings were creations of