Axis paused just outside his father and Salome’s tent. Very gently he used a little of the Star Dance to sense inside.
He smiled.
StarDrifter lurched up from Salome’s body as Axis entered the tent.
“By the stars, Axis, did you not think to announce yourself before your entry?”
Axis sat down in a chair and stretched out his long legs. He smiled lazily. “I thought you’d be interested in what I know about the Lealfast. Forgive me, is this a poor time?”
StarDrifter muttered a curse and sat up in bed. Salome stretched languidly, not caring that the sheet only covered to her thighs, and gave StarDrifter an amused glance as he tugged the sheet higher.
Axis narrowed his eyes a little, watching Salome. She was as desirable heavily pregnant as she had been when first he’d met her. That SunSoar blood. He turned over in his mind the thought that he need not tell his father about the Star Dance, and instead could use it to win Salome to his side.
She would be drawn to it irresistibly. StarDrifter could do nothing to hold her.
He could have a SunSoar woman back in his bed once more…
“Axis?” said StarDrifter. “Why are you here?”
Axis dragged his eyes back to his father. “May I tell you a story?”
“Oh, for the gods’ sakes,” StarDrifter muttered.
“Shall it amuse us?” Salome said.
“Assuredly,” said Axis.
“Then go ahead,” said Salome, turning languidly over on her side to face Axis and allowing the sheet to fall away from her breasts.
Their eyes met.
All he would need do was to keep the secret of the Star Dance to himself, and he could have her.
Salome smiled. She was not able to read his thoughts, but she understood the expression in his eyes.
“Axis?” StarDrifter said.
“When I was a young man,” Axis said, “learning the ways of the Star Dance and the powers of the Enchanter, I spent some time with Orr, the Charonite Ferryman, who guarded the waterways of the Underworld.”
“I know this,” said StarDrifter. “I don’t know why—”
“Salome has not heard this tale,” Axis said.
StarDrifter muttered another curse and cast his eyes up to the roof of the tent as if it cradled salvation.
“I spent time with Orr, the Ferryman,” Axis continued. “He was a man, a being, of great power and wisdom. He told me something about the waterways—I’m not sure if ever I told you—”
StarDrifter made an impatient gesture with one hand.
“Well,” Axis said, “he told me that, as the Icarii Enchanters used music to mirror and then manipulate the patterns of the Star Dance, the Charonites used the waterways in the same way.”
StarDrifter suddenly shifted his gaze to Axis.
“Whenever the Charonites wanted to use the Star Dance for a purpose, to create an enchantment, instead of singing a Song, they traveled a particular waterway. They used movement—dance, if you like—to create the same effect.”
“The Star Dance was lost when the Timekeeper Demons destroyed the Star Gate,” StarDrifter said.
“That is a myth,” Axis said, holding his father’s eyes. “We both know the Lealfast still use it. We just lost the ability to hear it.”
“Axis,” said StarDrifter, now so tense he was almost rigid, “have the Lealfast told you how to access the Star Dance?”
“No,” said Axis. “I think they rather hate us, StarDrifter. They wouldn’t give me the time of day, let alone their secret to the Star Dance.”
StarDrifter’s body slumped once more against the pillows.
“Nonetheless,” Salome said, her eyes narrowed, “you are telling us this delightful little tale about Orr the Ferryman for a reason, are you not?”
“Indeed,” said Axis. “StarDrifter, all we lost was the ability to hear the Star Dance. Look, the Icarii were used to hearing the music of the Star Dance, yes? It filtered through the Star Gate from the heavens and into our daily lives. It surrounded us always. But what if we were so used to hearing it this way that we’d been blinded—and I use that word deliberately—to other means of recognizing or of allowing the Star Dance to filter through us?”
“Axis,” said StarDrifter, “have you regained your connection to the Star Dance?”
“Yes,” said Axis.
StarDrifter literally leaped over Salome and crouched before Axis, his hands on his son’s arms. “Tell me!”
“You can’t see it yet?” said Axis.
StarDrifter’s grip tightened until his fingers dug into Axis’ flesh. “Tell me!”
“We can see it, StarDrifter,” Axis said, pulling his arms away from his father’s grip. “The Lealfast can see it. And once you can see it, then suddenly you can hear it again—not as loudly as we were once used to, but hear it nonetheless. Salome.”
She jumped a little, surprised at being addressed. “Yes?”
“You have not been corrupted by a lifetime of Icarii blindness,” Axis said. “Maybe you will understand. What has StarDrifter told you of the Star Dance?”
She glanced at her husband, then looked back to Axis. “The Star Dance is the music made by the stars as they weave their way through the heavens.”
“Yes,” said Axis. “Good stock answer. Carry on.”
Salome gave him a black look, but continued. “The music made by the stars filtered through the Star Gate—”
“Tell me, Salome,” Axis said, “was that the only way to see the stars, through the Star Gate?”
She sent StarDrifter another glance. “Well, no, we can see them in the night sky. But I have been told that the stars in the night sky are but a pale reflection of what was visible through the Star Gate.”
Axis sat and waited, regarding Salome steadily, and StarDrifter turned away from his son and stared at Salome also.
She narrowed her eyes, thinking. “The stars in the night sky are but a pale reflection of what you could see through the Star Gate…but they are still there.”
Axis’ mouth curved in a small smile.
“Ergo,” she said, “the Star Dance is still here, too, but a paler reflection of what you could once hear via the Star Gate.”
Now Axis was grinning, and looked between his father and Salome. “The Star Dance is still here. It falls to earth gently about us, day and night. It drifts down from the heavens. It isn’t as concentrated nor as loud as what we heard via the Star Gate, but it is still around us. We just need to open our senses to it. Listen, when I watched the Lealfast do their pretty snowflake thing in the sky above Maximilian, my mind was screaming at me to make some connection, and I just couldn’t.”
“They were making patterns,” said Salome.
“Yes,” said Axis. “They were making patterns. And as that thought came into my head I remembered what Orr had told me about the waterways making patterns so the Charonites could manipulate the Star Dance…and suddenly it just clicked.”
“What just clicked?” StarDrifter said.
“It would have been better to do this during the day,” said Axis, “as our sight would be clearer then, but there is a light snow falling and it will do better than nothing.” He stood, and picked up a lamp. “Come with me. Oh, and toss on some clothes. It will be cold outside.”
StarDrifter cursed, and grabbed at his breeches.
Axis led StarDrifter and Salome outside and held up the lamp. “The Star Dance is drifting down gently from the heavens,” he said. “Look at the pattern of the snowflakes as they fall.”
StarDrifter and Salome stared, their brows furrowed.
“Would it help,” Axis said softly, “if I said that you can see music as well as hear it? That you can write music, and understand it? That the—”
“Star Dance is twisting the snow as it falls!” said StarDrifter. “The twists and cadences of the snow as it falls show us the music of the Star—”
He stopped, his face going completely blank.
Axis watched him, then saw the instant the Star Dance filled his father’s consciousness. StarDrifter’s entire body sagged and his eyes filled with tears.
“Everything about us is affected to some extent by the gentle fall of the Star Dance from the heavens,” Axis said. “Everything. All we have to do is open our eyes to it. The motes of dust dancing in the air, the tilt of a bird’s wing in the sky, the clouds as they bubble and tumble across the sky. And once you can see it, once you understand that the Star Dance is all about us—albeit in a more subtle form than we were used to hearing it previously—then the music fills our souls again. Salome, can you feel it? See it?”
“Yes,” she said, and gave Axis a lovely smile, “I think that I can. You know, I used to hear this as a child, and then I thought it a figment of my imagination. It used to fill my dreams at night.”
They stood in silence for several long minutes, wonder transfixing Salome’s face, thankfulness StarDrifter’s.
“But what I don’t understand,” Salome said eventually to Axis, “is that if the Star Dance was all about you anyway, why could the Icarii Enchanters not use it anymore when the Star Gate was destroyed?”
“Because we were so blind,” said StarDrifter. “Because we were so used to hearing the harmony of sound from the Star Gate that we were utterly blinded to the subtlety of this gentler music. Because it takes, on average, a thousand years for the damned Icarii to comprehend the easiest of secrets!”
Axis looked at his father and laughed, the sound one of pure joy.
They stayed up most of the night, sitting in StarDrifter and Salome’s tent, laughing with their joy and playing with the Star Dance. Axis and StarDrifter found their control of the music weaker than it had been when they’d heard the full thunder of it through the Star Gate, but even in the few hours that they had toyed with the Star Dance, they felt their use of it becoming firmer.
Toward dawn there came a murmur at the tent flap. It was StarHeaven, one of the Icarii who had arrived the day Maximilian and Ishbel had talked atop the hill.
“StarMan?” she said as she entered. “Talon? What is happening? Myself and several other Enchanters,” she indicated that they waited outside, “have felt as if…as if…”
“The Star Dance has been rediscovered,” said Axis. “Come in, StarHeaven, and your fellows, too, and rediscover yourselves.”