Enchanter: Book Two of the Axis Trilogy. Sara Douglass

tried our best!” “But so hard to remember orders amid such excitement!” “And those Skraelings, so unreliable!” “Nasty, nasty brights!” Their excuses littered the air.

      “Your failure tells me that you do not love me!” Gorgrael screeched. The SkraeBolds cried out in denial. They loved Gorgrael, lived for him!

      Gorgrael’s face twisted in derision. “Let me show you the price of your failure.”

      He reached for SkraeFear, who had failed him the most. SkraeFear still had the arrow Azhure had plunged into his neck embedded in his flesh, the wound festering and black, oozing pus down his chest. Gorgrael grasped the arrow and twisted it viciously, and SkraeFear screamed in agony. Gorgrael waited until SkraeFear’s screams had bubbled away into low sobs, then he twisted the arrow again, twice as hard, the arrow head tearing through SkraeFear’s flesh with a sound like wet cloth ripping.

      “Will you fail me again?” Gorgrael hissed in SkraeFear’s ear. “Will you?”

      “No, no, no,” SkraeFear moaned. “Never again, never again!”

      Suddenly Gorgrael let the arrow go and SkraeFear sagged to the floor. Gorgrael grimaced in disgust. He needed a more intelligent and reliable lieutenant.

      Timozel. Gorgrael’s lip curled. But Timozel was bound to Faraday, and until those bonds were broken Timozel could continue to escape Gorgrael’s need for him.

      Well, for the moment the SkraeBolds would have to do. He patted SkraeFear on the head comfortingly.

      “I still love you, SkraeFear, you and your brothers here.”

      SkraeFear whined in adoration and clung to one of Gorgrael’s legs. “I will be good,” he whispered. “Good, good, good!”

      “Yes, yes,” Gorgrael said absently, gently prising SkraeFear loose. “Be gone for the moment. I will speak to you soon. Give new orders. Impart a new mission. But for now, be gone.”

      SkraeFear gave one last grateful whimper, then scurried out of the room on his hands and knees, his brothers hurrying after him, gladdened beyond measure that their beloved master had not seen fit to chastise them as well.

      Gorgrael prowled among the massive pieces of dark wooden furniture of his chamber; twisted and ensorcelled into strange and tormented shapes, they flung shadows into every corner. He loved the room’s gloom and clutter, its darkness and malformed purpose. It was where he did his best work.

      One corner of the chamber was dominated by a massive plate-iron fireplace. Though Gorgrael constructed many of his creatures from mist and ice, he was warm-blooded himself and needed the heat and comfort of fire from time to time. He wandered over to the cold grate and snapped his fingers. Flames licked their way about the misshapen pieces of wood piled at the back of the grate, and Gorgrael murmured to himself. Sometimes he saw strange shapes in the flames, and it bothered him.

      He turned to a sideboard, its undulating planes and angles polished smooth so that the wood shone, and lifted a crystal decanter from its depths. Gorgrael smiled. This decanter and its delicate matching glasses he had brought home from Gorkenfort, and the fact that Borneheld and Faraday had been forced to leave them behind when they fled pleased Gorgrael. He hummed a broken and grating tune as he lifted a glass with one scaled, clawed hand and filled it with good wine from the decanter.

      He was civilised. He was as good as anyone else. Certainly as good as Axis. Perhaps Faraday would enjoy the time she spent with him. Perhaps she would think him polite company. Perhaps he might not kill her after all.

      Gorgrael sipped the wine, clinking the crystal against a tusk and dribbling a little of the wine down his chin as his cumbersome mouth and tongue tried to cope with the delicacy of the glass. He reached into the depths of the sideboard again and lifted out a large parcel. Crystal was not the only item Gorgrael had brought home from Gorkenfort.

      He grunted in satisfaction and wandered over to his favourite chair, scraping it towards the fire. It was a good chair, throne-like, with a high carved back and wings that reached even higher towards the ceiling. He sat down and ripped open the parcel with his free hand. For a long time he sat there, looking at the parcel’s contents, stroking it gently, careful to keep his claws retracted. Then he drained his wine in a gulp and irritably threw the crystal into the fire where it shattered among the flames.

      In his lap, tumbled and crushed, lay the emerald and ivory silk of Faraday’s wedding gown. Looking at it, absorbing the smell and the feel of the woman who had worn it, Gorgrael felt strange, painful emotions well up inside him. They made him feel merciful – and Gorgrael did not want to feel merciful. Worse, they made him feel lost – and that feeling Gorgrael did not like very much at all.

      There was a movement in the air, swirling about the room, and the flames leapt and spat in the turbulence.

      “She is a very beautiful woman, Gorgrael,” the loved voice said gently behind him, “and it is no wonder you sit there with her silks to comfort you.”

      “Dear Man,” Gorgrael breathed. It had been months since the Dark Man had visited him.

      A heavily shrouded figure brushed past his chair and stood for a moment in front of the fire, his back to Gorgrael. The hood of his black cloak was pulled close about his face.

      “Have you met her?” Gorgrael asked, desperate for closer knowledge of Faraday. “Have you spoken with her?”

      The shrouded figure turned and sat down on the hearth. “I know Faraday, yes. And we have passed the occasional word.”

      Gorgrael gripped the silk in his hands. “Have you desired her?”

      The Dark Man laughed, genuinely amused. “Many desire her, Gorgrael, and perhaps I am one of them. It is of no account. If you want her then I will not stand in your way. You may enjoy her as you wish.”

      For a while they sat there in silence, Gorgrael fingering the silken dress, the Dark Man contemplating the flames. Gorgrael had long given up trying to see the face of the Dear Man. No matter how hard and how craftily he’d peered, always the Dark Man, the Dear Man, appeared as he was now, shrouded so heavily that no-one, not even Gorgrael with his dark talent, could understand or know what lay beneath the folds.

      The Dark Man had been a part of Gorgrael’s life since he was small. The five Skraelings who had midwived Gorgrael’s terrible delivery had brought him back to their burrow in the northern tundra, had somehow managed to feed him until he was able to crawl out of the burrow and forage in the snow, catching first small insects, then the white mice of the northern wastes, then finally the small mammals, hot and juicy, that fed his growing flesh and provided the stiff furs that kept him warm at night. The Skraelings had sheltered him and loved him, but Gorgrael had led a miserable life among the silly wraiths until the day that, scampering across a small ice field, he had seen the cloaked figure striding towards him. At first the tiny Gorgrael had been afraid of this tall and mysterious man, but the Dark Man had picked him up and whispered to him of things which soon had him cooing in delight and squirming in the stranger’s arms. The Dark Man had sung dreams to the child, had offered him hope.

      No-one but Gorgrael knew about the Dark Man – the five Skraelings, later transformed by Gorgrael into SkraeBolds, had never known he existed. The Dark Man, the Dear Man, had come to Gorgrael almost every day when he was little. Singing strange songs of power and enchantment, teaching him about his heritage, teaching him about his path for the future. Gorgrael had learned well from the Dark Man, and had come to love and respect as well as fear this stranger who taught him. He had learned very early that it was not a good thing to cross the Dark Man.

      But through all these years he had never found out who the Dark Man was. Whenever he asked, whenever he tried to pry, the Dark Man would laugh and evade his questions and inquisitive eyes. There were some things he knew about him. The Dark Man knew Axis, for he had told Gorgrael about his hated half-brother very early in life and had taught Gorgrael the Prophecy of the Destroyer. Gorgrael knew also that the Dark Man lived a dark and crafty life, using his disguises to fool many who loved him. He knew that the Dark Man was a manipulator of