Enchanter Read Online Free Page B

another seduction?
    "I love Rivkah," StarDrifter said slowly. "I demonstrated my love through marriage - even though I believed she had lost our son. In ages past Icarii birdmen simply took thebabies of human—Icarii unions and never spared a thought for the women they had bedded who had struggled to birth their children."
    Appalled at such evidence of Icarii insensitivity, Axis suddenly understood the depth of hate and loathing that had led the Acharites to finally drive the Icarii from Tencendor.
    The Icarii had a lot to learn about compassion.
    The Wolven
    Azhure walked through the confusing maze of cor-f-\ ridors in the Talon Spike complex, hoping she had remembered EvenSong's instructions correctly. Over at least a thousand years the Icarii had tunnelled and excavated the mountain into myriad chambers, connecting corridors and shafts. The Icarii not only used horizontal corridors, but also vertical shafts - foot travellers needed to be wary of wells opening abruptly at their feet.
    Azhure paused at one of the main connecting shafts of Talon Spike, which not only extended up to the very peak of the mountain, but also fell into its dizzying depths. She grasped the waist-high guard rail and peered down. Two Icarii, already several levels below her, slowly spiralled down through the shaft side by side. Both had gorgeously dyed emerald and blue wings, and the soft enchanted light of the shaft shimmered across their jewel-bright feathers. Azhure had to blink back tears at their loveliness. Nothing in her previous life in Smyrton had prepared her for the beauty and passion of life among the Icarii of Talon Spike.
    On her arrival six weeks ago Azhure had wondered at the height and width of the corridors - but their spaciousness was explained the moment she saw several Icarii wing their graceful way along the corridor, several paces above her head. Fortunately for her, the complex also had stairs that wound about the walls of the vertical shafts. Icarii children did not develop wings until they were four or five years of age, and did not learn to fly well until they were eight or nine. And occasionally an Icarii who injured a wing might have to walk the corridors or climb the stairs. MorningStar, StarDrifter's mother, was such a one.
    She had been unable to attend the Yuletide rites in the Earth Tree Grove after snapping a tendon in her left wing, and was still grumbling about the indignity of having to use the stairs.
    Leaving the shaft, Azhure passed the doors to the massive Talon Spike Library. The Avar Bane Raum spent most of his days here, teaching the wingless youngsters about the Avar and their forest home. Azhure's thoughts drifted to Rivkah as she walked. Over the many years that Azhure had known Rivkah - or GoldFeather as she had been called until recently — she had never known her so at peace with herself as she had been since Axis' arrival. Rivkah might yet have her unhappinesses with StarDrifter, but the reunion with the son she had long thought dead had healed a festering wound in Rivkah's heart. She spent many hours each day guiding Azhure through the intricacies of Icarii society, teasing the young woman mercilessly when she gaped open-mouthed at some of the more permissive practices of the Icarii.
    "You are already a much sought-after prize, Azhure Groundwalker, with your raven-black hair and mysterious smoke-filled eyes," Rivkah had said only this morning. "Will you survive the Beltide festivities without being cradled within some lovers wings?"
    Azhure had blushed and turned away, thinking uncomfortably of the way StarDrifter had begun to watch her recently. The last thing she wanted to do was come between StarDrifter and Rivkah, who was rapidly filling the void caused by the loss of Azhure's mother so early in life. Azhure couldn't remember a time when she hadn't woken several nights a week, her cheeks wet with tears of loss; but now sheslept soundly, and the unsettling dreams that had troubled her for more