"Douglass, Sara - Wayfarer Redemption 2 - Pilgrim" - читать интересную книгу автора (Douglass Sara)

"How am I?" Axis said, and, stunningly, quirked his mouth in a lopsided grin. "I am Axis, and that is all I am."
Zared stared at him, holding his gaze, still holding his hand. "Is 'just Axis' going to be enough, brother?"
"It is all we have," Azhure put in softly, and Zared shifted his gaze to her. There was still spirit in her eyes, and determination in her face. "Just Axis" and "just Azhure" might still be enough to stop the sky from falling in. Might.
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Zared dropped Axis' hand and nodded. "What do you know?"
"First," Axis said, "I need to know what you have here. Zared and Caelum ... together, in the one camp. And with no knives to each other's throats. Have you made peace? And you mentioned Faraday. Have you seen her?"
Caelum hesitated, glanced at Zared, then spoke. "Father, we fought —"
"And I lost," Zared put in, and grimaced.
"I had the advantage," Caelum said, glancing again at Zared. "We agreed to unite against the threat of the Demons. We were riding to meet you at the Ancient Barrows when ... when . . . Zared, you finish. She spoke to you, not me."
"On the night before the Demons broke through," Zared said, "we were camped some four leagues above these Woods. I'd been to talk with Caelum, and when I returned I found Faraday and Zenith seated at my campfire."
"Zenith?" Azhure said. "Are you sure it was she?"
Behind her StarDrifter finally straightened from the tree trunk and showed more interest in the conversation.
Zared frowned at her. "Yes, I am sure it was her. Why wouldn't I be?"
Azhure turned her head aside. Axis had been right then. Niah — her mother — was truly dead. Yet one more grief to examine in the dead of night.
"Faraday and Zenith had just walked out of the night," Leagh said, joining the group. She linked her arm with her husband's, and shared a brief smile with him. "They were well, and more cheerful than any I had seen for weeks previously, or since."
"She said that we had to flee for the Woods," Zared said, "and that we'd be no more use than lambs in a slaughterhouse if we continued on to the Barrows."
"In that she was right," Axis said. "None of us were of any use."
Unnoticed, StarDrifter had moved to linger at the outside of the group, listening.
"After some persuasion," Caelum said, "I agreed to divert the army here. If we had been caught outside ..."
"At least we have an army," Axis said, "although Stars knows what use it will be to us. And Faraday and Zenith. Where are they now?"
"She said she and Zenith were going to the Star Gate," Zared said. "They said they had someone to meet there. I thought it was you."
Axis shook his head. "No. And if they were in the Chamber when the Demons broke through, then they would both be dead. No-one has the power to resist them."
"Maybe." StarDrifter now spoke up. "And maybe not. Faraday has changed, and who knows now what enchantment she draws upon. Besides," he indicated the trees, "the forest's power, as the Avar's, has been wounded, but not mortally. There is hope."
StarDrifter knew who it was they had gone to meet. He did not know what kind of a hope Drago provided, but if Faraday believed in him, then StarDrifter thought he might have the courage to do likewise. Stars, but he hoped they'd survived the Demons' arrival. Faraday might well have the power to cope with them . . . but Zenith? StarDrifter prayed Faraday had shown the sense to keep Zenith well back. They'd not fought so long to save her from Niah to lose her now.
"There must always be hope," Axis said quietly. "Fate always leaves a hope somewhere. And I intend to find it."
"And Faraday," StarDrifter said. "Did she say where she and Zenith would —"
"She said that we should wait for her here, and she would eventually rejoin us," Zared said. "She said we were not to go near Cauldron Lake, for that was where the Demons would strike first."
StarDrifter nodded, and tried to relax. Faraday would
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keep them all well. She must. He suddenly realised how deeply worried he was about Zenith, and he frowned slightly.
"How does she know that?" Azhure said. "Is she somehow in league with them?"
"Faraday has always put this land before her own needs and desires," StarDrifter said sharply. "And you, Azhure, should know that better than anyone else here. Have you forgotten she died so you could live?"
Azhure's cheeks reddened, and she dropped her eyes.
"Enough," Axis said. "Caelum, you are our hope."
"Me?"
Axis looked about. "Caelum, my friends, can we sit? We all have information to share, and my legs have lost their god-like endurance."
Leagh took his arm, and then Azhure's, and led them towards a fire set mid-distance between two trees where it could do no harm. "Sit down, and rest those legs."
"What do you mean, / am your hope?" Caelum said, watching his parents. He had refused food, and had waited impatiently until Axis, Azhure and StarDrifter had eaten. They had very obviously had little in the past few days.
"Not only our hope, my son, but Tencendor's." Axis stalled for time, wiping his fingers carefully on a napkin that Leagh handed him. He hesitated, then looked his son in the eye.
"There is much I did not tell you while you were so entwined in hostilities with Zared. But now that I see you both sit side by side, in peace, it gives me the strength to say what I hesitated to speak previously.
"Caelum, I cannot say all the details, but for now listen to me well. All of you listen to me well. Beneath each of the Sacred Lakes lie Repositories, all heavily warded and defended, and in each of these Repositories lies the various life parts of the Midday Demon, Qeteb."
Axis continued on in a low voice, telling of the Maze Gate, and of its age-old message that the Crusader was the only one
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capable of defeating the Demons. Forty years ago it had named the Crusader as StarSon.
"It waited for a year after you were born, Caelum. It watched and waited until it was sure, and then it named you, StarSon, as Tencendor's hope."
"The hope of many worlds," StarDrifter said reflectively, "if these TimeKeepers can so effortlessly move through the stars."
"But how?" Caelum's eyes flickered between his parents and then about the rest of the group. "How? I have no power left! Nothing! How can I meet —"
"Caelum, be still . . . and believe." Azhure rested her hand on Caelum's knee. "There is hope, and there is a weapon you can wield."
Caelum said nothing. He dropped his eyes to where his hands fiddled with a length of leather tack.
"The Rainbow Sceptre," Azhure said. "It contains the power of this world and the power of the Repositories ... the power that currently still traps Qeteb."