Eleanon stilled, then he burst out laughing, punching the sky in triumph.

"Welcome to h.e.l.l, Axis," he said.

Then he rose into the air, flying back to the Lealfast Nation.

Axis was dead.

Chapter 16.

Elcho Falling.

Isaiah looked at the ice ball bobbing about in the small pool of water that led to the underwater tunnel, then looked at Axis. The StarMan was sitting on the edge of the pool, coughing water out of his lungs and waving off the concerns of Georgdi and Insharah.

Isaiah's attention turned back to the ice hex. He nodded at a guardsman standing by and together they hauled it out of the water, cursing as it almost slipped from their grasp on several occasions.

Then Isaiah squatted down to run his hands lightly over its surface. He could just make out Inardle inside, curled into a tight ball. He rolled the ball over a little so he could see her face.

Her eyes were closed.

Isaiah glanced at Axis, now standing and stripping off his sodden clothes for dry attire, then grasped the ice hex a little tighter, sending his senses scrying inside.

Axis tossed aside the towel he'd been using to dry his hair, and walked over to Isaiah. "Can you help?" he said.

"No," Isaiah said, standing. "She's too far gone, Axis."

Axis stared at Isaiah. "No, surely . . . there must be something you can do."

"She's too far gone, Axis," Isaiah said, "and the hex is too tightly wound." He began to walk toward the door leading from the chamber.

"No," Axis said.

Isaiah turned back to him. "Leave it, Axis." He nodded at the guardsman who had helped him haul the hex from the water. "Push it back into --"

"No!" Axis said, taking a step forward to block the guardsman's approach.

"She is well on the path to her Otherworld, Axis," Isaiah said. "Let her go. Isn't this what you have always wanted?"

Axis opened his mouth, then closed it again. What did he want?

"There must be a chance," he said. "She's not gone completely yet. What is it you are not telling me, Isaiah?"

Isaiah walked back to him. "That ice hex has been constructed with great and malevolent care, Axis. You want honesty from me? There is a small -- a tiny-- chance that Inardle might be dissuaded from the path she takes now and led back to this life. Who knows if she wants that? Eleanon --"

"Let me take that chance, Isaiah," Axis said.

Isaiah took a deep breath as if controlling anger. "Listen to me, Axis, and listen to me well. That ice hex was not designed to trap Inardle. It was designed to trap you. Inardle is the bait. Eleanon constructed a hex that will trap you into a journey from which you likely will never emerge. It is a hex designed to isolate you completely -- from this world and from the Otherworld. It is a hex designed to trap you in some horror that I cannot understand." Isaiah frowned. "I don't understand it . . . it involves someone . . . a name I don't know ."

"What?" said Axis. "Who?"

Isaiah looked at Axis steadily. "The hex involves someone named Borneheld. Inardle has been sent to be his wife."

Borneheld.

Axis thought his heart would stop. Borneheld? Inardle had been sent to be his wife?

"Who is Borneheld, Axis?" Isaiah said. "And why would Inardle be sent to be his wife?"

"He ." Axis had to clear his throat. "Borneheld was my brother. Half-brother. We shared the same mother. We were bitter, hateful rivals in life. We loved the same woman -- Faraday. She left me to be his wife. I killed him, eventually, after great wars that cost tens of thousands of lives. I, ah ."

I battled him to the death in the Chamber of the Moons in a duel that dragged on for an entire night.

"I killed him, eventually," Axis finished.

"Be sure that Eleanon knows this history," Isaiah said. "He has constructed a hex that he is certain will both tempt you and destroy you."

Axis was so shocked by the revelation of what the hex contained that his mind could not grasp what Isaiah was saying, let alone the implications of it.

"Walk away from it, Axis," Isaiah said. "That hex is truly evil. We can destroy it and farewell Inardle's soul. There is no reason for you to enter it."

If Axis "walked away from it", would Inardle be trapped forever as Borneheld's wife?

Faraday had suffered terribly as Borneheld's wife. Terribly. Axis had been her only hope of escaping him.

Axis' mind filled with memories of that terrible night when he had battled Borneheld. They'd met in the Chamber of the Moons in Carlon. Two hundred people had filed into the circular, columned chamber to stand silently in the inadequate torchlight watching the duel between the brothers. Axis had fought only with his powers as a soldier and swordsman. He'd tossed aside his Enchanter's ring to Faraday's dismay (oh stars, Faraday had been there, watching!) and had faced Borneheld only with his sword. Borneheld had fought with muscle and tactics honed by countless battles, Axis with the grace and fluidity of the Icarii and the skill of a BattleAxe. They had been evenly matched.

It had been a terrible battle. The chamber was filled with the sound of swords clashing, the heavy breathing of the combatants and the scuffing of their boots across the green marbled floor. StarDrifter had told Axis later that the combination of these sounds had made a strange, dark music -- an echo of the Dance of Death, the Dark Music of the stars.

All Axis could recall of the battle was the hatred he'd felt for Borneheld, his exhaustion, and the growing terror that he might be the first one to slip and offer his throat to Borneheld's sword. By the end of that bleak night both had been drenched in sweat, their limbs trembling with fatigue.

There was something about that night Axis had forgotten? What was it? What was it?

There had been some ally . . . someone who had given him that single moment, that sliver of an edge against Borneheld that had, in the end, enabled Axis to defeat his brother.

The heart, the heart torn and b.l.o.o.d.y in his hand, lifted up and tossed to .

Axis' head snapped up and he looked Isaiah directly in the eye.

This was no longer about Inardle.

It was about Borneheld and about a brotherly feud that, even after almost fifty years, still smouldered red hot.

And it was about the eagle.

"I'm going in," Axis said, "and I'm taking along a friend."

Chapter 17.

The Twisted Tower.

The One climbed along the gossamer connection between himself and the Dark Spire, pa.s.sing unhindered through the wastes of Infinity. Gossamer-like it may have been, but the umbilical cord that connected him with the Dark Spire was of Infinity itself, strong enough to support him.

As he drew closer, the One became more aware, through his increasing contact with the Dark Spire, of what was happening at Elcho Falling.

There had been a battle and much bad weather. Eleanon was concentrating, not on Elcho Falling, but on Axis, which for the moment suited the One well . . . may they both keep themselves occupied and unaware of what the One was doing. Maxel and Ishbel were still far, far away in Isembaard.

Good, that was very, very good. Either or both of them might have a chance of realising what the One was up to if they had been at Elcho Falling, but they were not. They were far away and by the time they returned it would be too late.

There were two things that concerned the One as he drew closer to the Dark Spire.

One, the fleeting impression that, momentarily, someone had seen him: a pa.s.sing contact within the echoes of Infinity.

A child, perhaps, for the One sensed the presence was still somehow unformed, not yet solidified into the rigidity of adulthood.

For the moment the One ignored this. The impression had been but fleeting, and it had been but a child. He would come back to it.

The second problem was Ravenna. The marsh witch was inside Elcho Falling. The One could sense her strongly from the Dark Spire. She was somehow closely connected to the spire . . . had Eleanon employed Ravenna for his purposes? The One could think of no other reason Ravenna would be at Elcho Falling, let alone fiddling about with the spire.

The One crawled closer to the Dark Spire, hand over hand, its presence growing stronger each time one of his fists closed a little closer along the umbilical cord.

Ravenna. Maybe she could be useful..

Chapter 18.

The Ice Hex.

Axis walked through snowdrifts heavy with ice, each step an effort as his legs pushed through the snow.

He was freezing, despite the heavy cape he'd bought with him, and his arm ached from the weight of the eagle where it perched hunched and unhappy.

About him the sky hung heavy and leaden, merging with the thick fog that made the landscape to either side of the path indiscernible. Sometimes the fog shifted slightly and Axis thought he could see frozen trees, stripped bare of any life and hung only with icicles; sometimes the fog shifted slightly and he saw shapes, ma.s.sive creatures almost indistinguishable from the moisture-laden air in which they lurked.

Axis moved through his own little world, pushing ever deeper into the hex. Occasionally he glanced upward, as if to see the sky.

But that was useless. The fog encased him, the snow entrapped him. There was nothing but to battle ever onward.

Isaiah had not wanted Axis to go. He had shouted and begged, arguing that this was nothing but a construct of Eleanon's, designed to trap Axis completely within the hex, but none of it made any difference. If it was a trap, then Axis admitted himself trapped.

Borneheld was too appalling a fate to leave anyone to suffer.

Eventually Isaiah had stopped shouting and begging and had admitted Axis to the hex. Axis had taken one last long look at Isaiah's face, seeing the sadness there, then he had turned and walked forward into the snow and ice.

It reminded Axis a little of that journey he'd made so long ago to Gorgrael's Ice Fortress. Gorgrael had been a half-brother, too.

They had battled, too.

Faraday had been present for that, too. Well, only in spirit for the last little bit of it. Gorgrael had killed her in an effort to distract Axis.

Brothers, thought Axis. What a trial they always were.

He kept pushing through the snow and ice, heading inexorably for whatever confrontation awaited him.

This really did remind him of the journey he'd taken toward Gorgrael's Ice Fortress.

Which brother was he destined to meet, then? One -- or both?

As he kept pushing through the snowdrifts, stumbling now and again, Axis found himself remembering that journey. Faraday had been with him for much of it, sad and beautiful, concerned with her son who, at that time, Axis had not known about. She had been concerned also by what she perceived as her fate -- her death at the hands of Gorgrael.

Faraday had always been so d.a.m.ned fatalistic.

Axis kept on striding, his eyes fixed ahead. Lost in memories of Faraday and that long ago journey.

Faraday had not completed the journey -- at least, not with Axis. She had been taken by Timozel before they'd reached the Ice Fortress.

Timozel's hand had emerged from out of the snow and ice and fog, s.n.a.t.c.hing at Faraday's ankle.

"Gotcha!" he had crowed.

"So fatalistic," Axis murmured to himself, wiping away the frost that formed about his eyebrows and eyelashes. He pulled the hood of the cloak closer, pushing his feet and legs through the knee-high snowdrifts, remembering, remembering, remembering .

After a long, long while, Axis became aware a figure drifted along the road ahead of him.

Tall, willowy, beautiful, ethereal.

Fatalistic.