Free Crusader by Sara Douglass Page B

majesty and beauty, feathered in glossy black, powerful, graceful, the physical manifestation of the Icarii “otherness”, the means by which the Icarii believed they were the creatures of the stars.
    The Star Dance loved the Icarii for their beauty, and for their ability to fly.
    “Wrong,” said the ground. “The Star Dance has tolerated your beauty and your flight skills, but it has loved you for other reasons.”
    “Really?”
    “Your inner beauty, which thrives despite your arrogance —”
    DareWing winced, and hung his head.
    “— as well your courage to dare. You and your people are composed of jewel lights, DareWing. Don’t hide them behind your arrogance.”
    DareWing nodded. Courage, he thought, is not required for what I do now. It is boundless humility.
    And so DareWing turned his shoulders, and lifted his arms, and he took hold of one of his wings. He took a deep breath, flexing the powerful flight muscles of chest and shoulder.
    Then he tore the wing out.
    He screamed, and doubled over, sobbing in agony, still gripping the wing. Blood poured down his back, obscuring the brief glint of bone.
    DareWing dug his teeth into his lips, fighting to remain conscious, then he threw the wing aside.
    It landed some two paces away, a useless appendage of flesh and feather.
    Waves of blackness threatened to consume DareWing, but he fought against them. He took hold of his remaining wing, his hands slipping in the blood from his back, then he steadied himself, his eyes wild, his chest heaving in frantic breaths, and he tore it free.
    It fell useless to the ground, and DareWing managed one final scream before the agony tipped him into oblivion.
    Faraday knelt by DareWing’s side, and her hand tightened its grip on his shoulder. His eyes were wide, staring but unseeing, and his body jerked and jittered as if caught in some crazed, sickened dance.
    “Faraday…” Leagh said, her voice tight, and she shifted on her chair.
    “He will come through this shortly,” Faraday said. She paused, and her jaw tightened as if she shared DareWing’s pain. “He must.”
    “Nevertheless,” Leagh said, “he needs all of our aid.”
    She, as Gwendylyr and Goldman, rose from their chairs, circled slowly, then knelt with Faraday. Gwendylyr placed her hand on DareWing’s other shoulder, while Leagh and Goldman each took one of the birdman’s hands. “We love you,” Leagh whispered.
    We love you , whispered her voice through DareWing’s tortured existence.
    All of us , said a different voice, and DareWing realised it was the land itself.
    “Really?” he said.
    “Really?” DareWing whispered, and his eyes opened and stared into the four faces above him.
    “I have relinquished my wings,” he said, and smiled.
    Faraday returned his smile. “Is that so? Then how is it that they still sprout from your back?”
    DareWing jerked in surprise, and rolled so he could see them for himself. “Oh,” he said, with such an expression of amazement on his face that his companions laughed.
    “DareWing,” Goldman said. “Did you realise your ground fever has broken?”
    “I am well,” DareWing said. “I am well.”
    And then Leagh gasped, and all looked about. Flowers were spreading over the entire field of bare, ploughed earth, covering the ridges and furrows so completely that no one could see where the plough had been.
    “Artor is truly dead,” Faraday said, “and we are finally free.”

Chapter 9
Of Predestination and Confrontation
    T hey stood before the seven-sided, white-walled tower and hated.
    “It stinks of the Enemy,” Sheol said. “Badly.”
    Qeteb did not speak. He sat his black beast and regarded the tower thoughtfully.
    Finally he turned his head slightly to where StarLaughter half-sat, half-crouched on the ground. “Tell me of its nature,” he said.
    StarLaughter hissed.
    Something frightful reached out from Qeteb and sunk deep talons into StarLaughter’s mind, and she screamed, writhing amid the